Elite: A Hunter novel

by Mercedes Lackey

  I closed the link before she could say—or worse, ask—anything. I didn’t know just who was “allowed” to know that there were Othersiders down here, or rather, how bad the infestations had gotten, so I was erring on the side of caution. Kent had supplied me with one of the dinguses that opened the hatches to the side tunnels, so I was set. Well, as “set” as I could be, knowing that there might be another clot of those Nagas in there—or who knew what else.

  Still, this time I had come prepared. “There’s something messing with the machinery in there. I’m going to gas them,” I told the Hounds, who had gathered around me, looking expectant. “So get yourselves ready for gas, then set up for a fire ambush.” The good thing about being down here in a cement tunnel was that there just wasn’t anything to burn, so they wouldn’t have to be careful. I strapped on my gas mask and put in earplugs in case it was Nagas again, and arranged my gear. A gas grenade on a very, very short fuse, two more on my belt that I could grab in a hurry, my shotgun slung where I could reach it easily, and the dingus in my off hand.

  I didn’t have to do any tedious counting down with the Hounds. They knew what I was going to do and when I was going to do it. So I got a good, deep breath of air (just in case I hadn’t settled the mask quite right and there was a leak), got myself psyched up, triggered the dingus, and threw the grenade in as soon as the door was open enough. The grenade was already hissing gas as it lobbed into the darkness past the door.

  But what piled out, shrieking in tiny, high-pitched voices, was not a clot of Nagas.

  This tumble of tiny arms and tiny flailing legs and tiny screaming heads came pouring out. I mean that literally—there were so many they poured out like water. And they sounded like screaming mice. There was a flash of oversize wrenches and screwdrivers in the middle of the horde. Frankly, I didn’t know what they were—except that they were armed with what looked like tools, and my Hounds immediately began incinerating them.

  Tools can also be weapons, and I was taking no chances. I unloaded my shotgun into the mob still pouring out of the doorway in a literal flood, and I didn’t stop firing, reloading, and firing until there was nothing left moving but myself and the Hounds. It was a few minutes before I was able to breathe. It had all happened stupidly fast, and my heart was still racing.

  By that point, between the fire and the natural circulation in the tunnel, the air had cleared enough I could take off my mask. I walked over to the pile of bodies, but these were sort of evaporating as the Hounds inhaled the manna, and I couldn’t get a good sense of what they had looked like. “Hunter Joyeaux to HQ,” I said into my Perscom. “Did you get all that? Can you give me a playback and a freeze on one of these things?”

  “Roger, Hunter. We did and we can.” I waited patiently, but it wasn’t more than a minute later that the operator had gotten me a nice clear shot of one of these creatures just before I’d blown it apart.

  It was about the same size as a Kobold, but unlike a Kobold, it was clothed, wearing something like a hooded red jumpsuit with black boots and a white harnesslike affair. There were two horns poking through the hood, and it had what looked like a pair of welding goggles over its eyes. It had been carrying a set of wire cutters almost as tall as it was. And I had no idea what the damned thing could be. Once again, this was something I had never heard of.

  “HQ, any clues as to what these things are?” I asked, baffled.

  “Negative, Hunter. Would you have a look at the pumping station?”

  “Roger that,” I replied, and used the flashlight on my shotgun to illuminate the darkened space beyond the door. Darkened, because, although there were supposed to be lights in here, the little monsters had demolished them. They were lying on the floor of the cubby, pulled out of the ceiling, and bare wires dangling from the hole. And although the pump was supposed to be protected, they’d been doing a number on the casing housing it. Now that I could hear it clearly, it was sounding ragged, as if they’d gotten through to some part of it that made it run unevenly.

  “We’ll give P and W the go-ahead to come down there and fix that thing. Wait for them, just in case there’s something else lurking down there.”

  “Roger that, HQ,” I replied. “While I wait, can you give me a playback from all the angles you have?”

  “That would be a whole two angles and one close-up, Hunter,” came the dry reply. “And lucky to get that.”

  “You’re disappointing this here turnip,” I said, just as dryly. “No twenty-angle shots with zoom good enough to see the hairs on a wart? Here I thought you high-techie city slickers could do anything!” I thought I heard muffled laughter on the other end of the comm, and smiled a little.

  Well, I didn’t learn much more from the three playbacks I got before the work crew arrived to fix the pump and the lights. Just that the little monsters looked alike, they were all carrying tools of various sorts, and clearly they had no problem with anything ferrous (although the shotgun pellets at close range hadn’t done them any good at all). HQ confessed to equal bafflement. Like the Nagas, these things were new. Unlike the Nagas, these creatures seemed right at home with human tech, at least to the extent of trying to destroy it. From the sound of things, HQ was just as disturbed by this new trend as I was.

  This was twice now that the Othersiders had shown the ability to deal with our technology. The first time, when the Folk Mage I had encountered on the train to Apex had dismantled the electrified cage that protected the train far enough ahead of the engine that the cage was safe to meddle with, and now, when these unknown Othersiders had the tools and the know-how to sabotage equipment. It was one thing to be able to pop locks with magic—Othersiders had been doing that for a long time now, and if anything, I suspected that electronic locks were easier for them to deal with than the sort that required a key or a combination. This was different, and I tried not to show that it was making my skin crawl.

  By the time the work crew arrived, the Othersiders had vanished, along with their tools, leaving nothing to examine. That wasn’t unprecedented; sometimes the objects that Othersiders carried were purely magical constructs that vanished when they died; sometimes they were physical, like the Redcaps’ knives or the Kobolds’ hammers. The Nagas had had both: the swords had been physical, but the jewelry had been constructs. Which was…I won’t lie…kind of sad. Because it had been lovely jewelry, and a shame to have it vanish like that, and I know that probably makes me sound like a pirate or something, wanting to loot the bodies, but on the other hand, they had wanted to chop our heads off, so a little loot would have been fair payback.

  It wasn’t the same work crew as last time, but a couple of them were just as starstruck as Kelly had been. Fortunately, their supervisor wasn’t, or it could have gotten embarrassing.

  We all stood guard while the work crew put things to rights, but nothing else showed up. When the pump was humming away properly again and the lights had been put back together, they went back up, and we went back on patrol.

  The Hounds were satisfied, so they didn’t mind taking things slowly, but I was glad I was solo down here, because most people would probably have been impatient with how cautious I was being—even some of my fellow Hunters from back home. As we went on—yard after yard of boring concrete tunnel, empty and echoing—all my caution started to feel as if I was overreacting. I had to keep reminding myself that it was stupid to get complacent.

  Finally, we got down into an area under the Hub itself. We hadn’t gotten this far the last time; now I could see why Uncle was concerned. There were lots and lots of intersecting tunnels here—it wasn’t exactly a maze since there were signs inset into the walls telling you exactly where you were and what street you were under, but there were plenty of places for things to hide in ambush, and there were a lot of blind spots and dead ends where there were no cameras or lights. I’m not exactly an architect, so I had no idea how the logical and mathematical storm-sewer tunnels had turned into this warren, but it sure wasn’t the ideal
situation for work crews afraid of what was getting down here.

  My Hounds didn’t much care for it either, and they went alert and cautious. One or another would peel off from the pack to check out side tunnels or suspicious sounds every few minutes. I was letting Myrrdhin and Bya handle all that; there was no way, with my limited human senses, that I would be better at deciding what to investigate than they were.

  And I was very grateful for the flashlight installed on the top of my shotgun where sights would be on a rifle. There were too many shadows down here; I liked being able to flood where my gun was pointing with light.

  I was just about ready to turn everyone around and start making our way back, when Gwalchmai called us. I believe you should all come here. There is a body, he said in my mind. It is freshly dead.

  Well, that left out it being a victim of the flood. Human, or Othersider? I asked.

  Human, came the reply, making my heart sink.

  All the things it could have been ran through my head as the rest of the pack and I caught up with Gwalchmai in a side tunnel, one without a camera and with only one feeble little light in it. I dreaded finding it was a maintenance worker. It would be almost as bad to discover one of the police. Was it possible it could be an ordinary Cit who had managed to get a door open and had gone wandering down here out of curiosity? I had a weird and unsettling wave of all kinds of stuff come over me: anger and grief—mostly grief—and fear, to the point where I had to stop for a moment and put a hand on the wall to steady myself. My throat got tight and my eyes stung, and suddenly, as I choked back a sob, I understood why. The last body I’d found in a sewer tunnel had been Karly’s….

  But when the beam from my flashlight fell on the body, I saw with a shock by the black-and-silver uniform that it was none of these things.

  It was a Psimon. I felt sick and a little scared and jumpy all at the same time.

  I was as much puzzled as I was shocked. Why was a Psimon down here in the first place? I hesitated a moment, then decided not to get any closer than I was. Because I’d seen vid-dramas, and I knew enough about police stuff to realize this might just be a murder scene, and anyone who was going to investigate didn’t need me trampling all over the evidence. Nor did they need any magical presence other than Gwalchmai near the body. There was such a thing as forensic magic, and if eleven Hounds and I swarmed the vicinity, it would be as bad as sending a herd of kids romping all over the place.

  Are there any wounds, or other signs of violence? I asked Gwalchmai.

  No, he said shortly.

  Well…that didn’t necessarily eliminate murder. It just meant there was no blood, and nothing on the part of the body that Gwalchmai could see. Come back, I told him, as the others gathered closely around me. I need to call this in.

  I was shivering as I did so. It’s not that I am a stranger to death; no Hunter is—usually horrible, violent death. I’ve seen nearly twenty folks dead in my life, a lot more hurt bad, and come way too close to death myself more than I like to think. But this…this was putting the hair on the back of my neck up. “Hunter Joyeaux,” I said. “I’m in sector 832 of the storm tunnels. Psimon down, fatality, cause unknown.”

  The comm link went very, very quiet. As I stood there in the semidarkness, every movement we made, every click of claw or shuffle of feet echoing strangely out of the tunnels around us, I felt a cold sickness in my gut. This was wrong in ways I couldn’t quite quantify but certainly felt.

  “Have you approached the body?” came the reply, finally. It wasn’t a voice I recognized. Not one of my usual dispatchers.

  “No, sir,” I said promptly. “One of my Hounds discovered the Psimon and ascertained he was deceased. I kept all the rest away and have not approached myself.”

  “PsiCorps verifies they will handle it from here. You are to vacate the immediate area and make your way to your exit promptly and without further investigation. HQ out.”

  All I could think was, Well, all right, then. Orders were orders, and I followed them. I wasn’t going to go blindly, of course, nor was I going to leave something behind me to ambush me from the rear, so I sent the Hounds around to cover everything that might hold a nasty surprise behind us, and headed back to my exit. They didn’t find anything else—more to the point, they didn’t find any signs of what could have killed the Psimon. I didn’t know whether to be more worried or relieved.

  On the other hand, I most certainly did want to be away from that spot as fast as I could. I suspected that PsiCorps would send its own to see to this…and I didn’t want to be there when they came. They would certainly notice I wore a Psi-shield. They might want to know why. They might order me to turn it off, and they would be perfectly within their rights to do so, seeing as I had found a Psimon dead. And I had no idea if my mantra of One White Stone would be sufficient to keep them out of my memories of the Mountain, the Monastery, and the Masters. It worked well enough against the Folk, but…high-ranking Psimons were supposed to be better than even the Folk Mages at psionics.

  It hadn’t been lost on me that most Hunters don’t like PsiCorps. PsiCorps really doesn’t like Hunters. Most people, not just Hunters, don’t trust them, and I don’t know why they don’t like us, unless they don’t like all the attention we get. Worst case, my finding a dead Psimon was going to look very…unusual, and no one likes “unusual.” And if PsiCorps decided to make an issue out of it, they’d want to know why I was down here and not the regular police, since this was under the Hub and so supposedly safe. Then they’d be asking how I found the body “so easily,” and might try to imply I knew the Psimon was in trouble and let him die.

  The only way to completely establish my innocence would be to take off my Psi-shield and let them waltz through my skull, which…was not going to happen. The best I could hope for would be that they would leave me alone.

  When I emerged from the tunnels, I knew I was not going to get my wish. There was a Psimon waiting for me, standing beside a waiting pod. He was nothing like Josh; his backbone was so straight he could have had a poker instead of a spine, and he literally had no expression on his face. He was bald as an egg, and he could have been a statue or a giant doll. He hid his eyes behind a dark visor, and it was clear from the way he turned to watch me lock up the entrance that he had been waiting for me.

  “Elite Hunter Joyeaux Charmand,” he said, making it a statement, not a question.

  I suppressed a shudder at his cold tone, turned, and faced him. “Yes, sir,” I replied. “At your service, Senior Psimon.”

  I’d been down there all afternoon, and the sun was well into the west. It was behind me and glared into his face. He didn’t seem to notice.

  He didn’t beat around the bush at all. “You are to say nothing about the unfortunate victim you found under the Hub,” he told me severely. “That is a direct order, Hunter.”

  Not that he had any right whatsoever to give me orders. The Hunters reported to Uncle and Premier Rayne and no one else. But the last thing I wanted to do was to give him any excuse to look deeper than the surface. So I just dropped my eyes and nodded and said, “Understood, Senior Psimon.”

  He looked at me coldly for a moment longer, not with any curiosity, though I guessed he was trying to gauge whether or not I would obey him. So I added, “What do I say to my superiors, Senior Psimon? If they ask?”

  “That PsiCorps thanks you for discovering our unfortunate comrade and is undertaking an investigation on its own,” he said.

  “Thank you, Senior Psimon,” I replied, and that seemed to satisfy him. Without another word, he got into the pod, and it whirred off. I waited until he was well out of sight before heaving a sigh of relief and summoning a pod of my own.

  When I got back to my room after dinner, my message indicator was flashing. But when I pulled up the message, I got something I had never seen before.

  First, the words State your designation and name flashed on the screen. Puzzled, I said aloud, “Elite Hunter Joyeaux Charmand,” and t
he screen flashed with Voice recognition verified. Then the screen said State unlock code found on your Perscom. I checked my Perscom, and sure enough, a text message headed “Unlock Code” had just been sent to it. I opened the message and spoke the words aloud, just some nonsense strung together for a security code. Unlock code verified said the screen, and a simple text message appeared.

  It pretty much said the same thing that the Psimon had said, but in more detail—you know, the sort of detail you’d go into with a five-year-old who is trying to find a loophole in your orders not to eat the cookies. “But what if I just nibble the edge? But what if I just lick them?” A first, I thought it was insulting, actually, and I started to get angry, when it occurred to me that if they were being this condescending they were hopefully underestimating me.

  But then my latent paranoia kicked in, and it stopped being insulting and started being frightening. Remember that even the Elite are not immune to disciplinary actions if you violate orders, it continued. Discipline can include your home community as well as yourself.

  It ended with need not reply, which is just as well, since I might have been tempted to say something I shouldn’t have. First they send a senior Psimon to loom over me and intimidate me. Then, when I think I’m in the clear, they follow it up with a threatening message? They threaten my home? Then I got scared all over again at how easily they had manipulated me into being angry. Psimons know all the buttons to push, I reminded myself. And they must have known damn well that with a turnip like me, threatening my people was absolutely where I was most vulnerable. Well, look how Mark Knight got blackmailed into being sent here! I had let myself get complacent about them, being with Josh so much. But Josh wasn’t like the Psimons that my Masters had warned me about, or like the one I had just encountered. That one was much more like the Psimons I had been told to avoid. Even if they didn’t get directly into my head, it was clear they knew exactly how to manipulate me so I’d let things slip or let stuff about home get into my surface thoughts where it would more easily be read.