As the vehicle drew closer, Donna saw a blank-eyed servitor at the controls. It was severed at the waist and attached to a turntable at the prow. A long, narrow hull covered by a grimy plastiglas cabin stretched back behind it, large enough to carry perhaps twelve. At the rear of the felucca, a larger turntable bore what looked like a huge crab claw, but instead of gripping the rails it only touched them with its two points, seeming to stick there and carry the whole weight of the craft. The arcane sciences of electromagnetism were at work.
D’onne waited for Hanno to open the door for her before going onboard first, intending to turn at the threshold and send him away. She was so shocked at what she saw inside, however, she completely forgot about him for a moment. The narrow bench seats inside the felucca showed that it was intended for transporting at least forty or fifty people, with overhead rails for others to steady themselves while standing. D’onne was mortified at the idea of so many people crushing themselves into the filthy vehicle and was glad that the nose plugs kept out the stink of the unwashed. Although the felucca was only half full at most, D’onne stood and gripped a rail; she couldn’t face sitting on one of the hard plastic benches amid the filth.
Hanno stepped neatly aboard behind her and slid the door shut. Without further delay the felucca swung on its turntable and started picking up speed in the direction of the main traffic flows.
D’onne suddenly saw that the streams of vehicles hung both above and below the rails. Weaving, splitting and rejoining, their head and tail lamps made knotwork traceries in the mist. Buildings swirled past: great slabs like tombstones pierced by roads at different levels, skeletal towers covered in lights, squat-looking steely ziggurats. All different, all ugly.
Enforcer Hanno took off his helmet and regarded her levelly as if about to say something. He had cropped hair that was greying at the temples and a craggy, not displeasing countenance D’onne would have labelled “honest” if it weren’t for his eyes. They were pale grey and all-too-sharp, glittering from his otherwise impassive face like stab-lights, probing, examining, weighing and measuring.
D’onne was frankly offended and responded with a look that was withering enough to send Enforcer Hanno’s gaze skating off elsewhere. She pointedly turned back to watching Hive City slide past. They were descending between two towering blocks interconnected by a multitude of bridges, or it might have been a single block cloven through by the road. It was hard to be sure.
Without warning, the felucca juddered to a halt, almost throwing D’onne off her feet. She looked up, expecting to see the blocks sliding past vertically as they fell to their deaths, but saw they were stationary aside from a slight swaying that may have been her own unsteadiness. Without thought she sat down on one of the benches with a bump. Near-death experiences were coming way too thick and fast at present and she was feeling distinctly weak at the knees.
Hanno creaked uncomfortably in his armour and tried to sound formal and comforting at the same time. “Swing shift, nobledam. There’s always a power drop so they clamp off the road net temporarily to avoid accidents. Here they come now.”
He was looking out of the grimy plastiglas window at the bridges, D’onne realised, and all the other vehicles had stopped too, just as he had said. She looked down in horrid fascination. Where the bridges had been all but empty before, they were now filling with the tiny dots of moving people. Thousands, tens of thousands thronged the bridges within sight alone. There were two streams on each bridge crossing in opposite directions. One stream was swift and disciplined, almost martial. The other was sluggish and meandering. One shift of proles were coming off the lines and returning to their habs, and another shift was coming from their habs and going to the lines.
On occasion the two flows intersected in violent little swirls. At one bridge in the distance D’onne saw black-armoured enforcers wading in to separate them. In another place several tiny figures fell from one bridge onto another, the tiny ripples of their impact conveying none of the carnage they must have wrought on those below. Hanno called in something on his vox at that and D’onne turned away from the sight. It was too reminiscent of a murder less fresh than the one presently in her mind, but more painful.
“Stupid.”
D’onne realised immediately that Hanno wasn’t addressing her, he was watching the ritual anarchy of swing shift and talking to himself. Caught up in the moment, he had voiced his inner thoughts, forgetting she was even there. He thought swing shift was stupid. Interesting—a bit of a reformist at heart too, this Hanno—she could work with that.
A moment later they jolted forward as the traffic started moving again. D’onne felt a tiny stab of guilt as they swept past platforms crammed with proles. No doubt they were waiting for feluccas like this one to take them back so they could begin their downtime: ten precious hours in their habs before they were on the lines again.
“Officer Hanno, why do they fight?” D’onne discovered the taint wasn’t as bad as she’d feared when she opened her mouth, and besides she was going to have to get used to it.
“Every reason you can come up with, nobledam. Anger, frustration, revenge, jealousy, prestige, spite, self-gratification, goods, money, men, women, drugs, even pets. There are antagonistic work-gangs on different shifts that elevate quota-rivalries to the level of house warfare. That’s all without any real inter-house conflict to contend with.” Hanno’s voice was weary and edged with contempt.
“You haven’t answered my question, Hanno. I asked why they fought, not what reasons they give you for it.”
Hanno looked at her shrewdly. She recognised the look of someone wanting to say something they felt was controversial and bursting to share their view with someone else.
“Because they have no hope of salvation.”
D’onne decided to dig a little deeper. “Really? Not shortages or austerity measures or the eighty-hour work cycle?” These were all things her tutors had cited as causes of unrest.
Hanno shook his head. “It’s my belief that all these can be borne, have been borne in the past, when men have hope of a better future.”
He looked back at the city outside. They were still descending, the blocks rising higher above them all the time and the felucca passing through more and more tunnels as they wormed deeper into Hive City’s guts.
“Did you know that some logistician has calculated that if someone fell from those bridges every time we took a breath, then newborns in the city would replace them a hundredfold before we took another? We have made a place that makes and breaks men faster than we can breathe.”
D’onne was thrilled that Hanno was so easy to draw out and now she couldn’t resist going further. No doubt he had harboured feelings of disquiet for a long time and had been unable to voice them to anyone. The truth is that everyone liked the sound of their own voice. The speaker just had to believe that the listener was interested in what they had to say.
“And how can it be made right? What would give them hope?”
Hanno spread his hands out helplessly. “I… I don’t know.”
Stupid! She had pushed too soon. Now Hanno had reverted back to his introverted manner instead of remaining extroverted and expansive. Her tutors would have scolded her for such an elementary blunder. To speak any more on this topic would only serve to make him sullen. It was time for a subject change.
“Is it much further?” D’onne asked in a dignified yet vulnerable voice, hoping to draw him back to his protector role.
“No, nobledam. We are almost at the border of Escher territory now, proceeding to a main interchange to seek access.” Predictably, Hanno put his helmet back on. Doubtless it made him feel more comfortable after the moment of vulnerability he had shown. Encouragingly, he left his vox unconnected for the time being so he spoke normally.
“Do you have a preferred point of entry, nobledam?”
“The closest.”
“Very good, nobledam.”
The roadway was converging with many others,
plunging into a conical well where the traffic’s controlled procession broke up into a maelstrom of turnoffs, docks and lay-bys. The felucca came to rest at the bottom of the well beside a broad pavement of white stone. A great portcullis of glittering chrome reared above them, so baroque and heavy-looking that it had to be ornamental.
Members of House Escher were scattered everywhere but Hanno and D’onne were quickly singled out and approached by armed House Escher guards in combat fatigues. They approached the enforcer warily, but not at all deferentially. Just as the stories had claimed, every member of House Escher was female. Many were craning an ear to find out what was happening. Strangers here were obviously rare.
“What is your business here, enforcer? Why were we not informed of your arrival?” The house guards were brusque and edgy with Hanno, and they barely even seemed to notice D’onne. She stepped between them and Hanno before he could reply, ready to deliver the lines she had been rehearsing ever since she exited the Spire.
“This enforcer has been good enough to accompany me here for my safekeeping,” she said in her best Spire accent. “I am D’onne Astride Ge’Sylvanus Ulanti, and I formally seek sanctuary with House Escher.”
6: THE ABYSS
“Are you not men?” Mad D’onne challenged, her magnificent bosom heaving with scarcely controlled passion. “Wouldst you let your poor women and babes be slaughtered and Dust Falls burn about your ears while you sit here drinking and gambling and hiding from the fight?”
The gangers had hung their heads in shame at that. To be scorned for want of bravery was bad enough, but to be impugned by a lady of the Spire, one who had shared the many hardships and adventures of the Underhive at their side, that was almost too much to bear. One fierce fellow, a mighty Goliath named Krug Hammerhand, spoke up for all. “Pray tell us nobledam, how can we save the settlement? Is it too late?”
She drew her slender duelling sword and brandished it high. A woman I may be, but this I learned at my father’s knee. It is never too late for cold steel and the fierce resolution of true men to win the hour. Come with me now to the gate and we shall see what can be done!
And such was her beauty and such was the virtue of her words that the fighters readied their arms and came willingly, where not even Lord Helmawr could have commanded them to go before.
They marched to the walls and set about the foe with the awesome fury of true men. The battle raged ceaselessly for hours. On the one hand stood teeming multitudes of foul, tainted abominations hungering for human flesh, on the other stood the stalwart folk of Dust Falls, resolute in their faith.
Shoulder to shoulder they fought, Delaque beside Orlock, Goliath beside Escher, Wan Saar beside Cawdor and always D’onne at the fore. Wave upon wave of horrors were forced back into the abyss from whence they came. D’onne’s mad bravery inflamed them all to ever greater efforts. Wherever the battle-line bent, she held them. Wherever the enemy retreated, she attacked, but a dire tragedy struck the gallant defenders with their victory all but won. Brave D’onne was seen battling at the brink of the abyss with a mutant giant of tremendous stature and scales of grey iron. After a titanic struggle she laid it low with a mighty blow to its brow, yet even as it fell the beast carried her over the edge and into the pit. Hearts were broken and men wept openly to see the noble lady lost so.
Excerpt from Tales of Terror and Adventure Chapter
XXIV—How Mad D’onne Saved Dust Falls,
Free Salvation Press.
Donna was splashing along a sewer pipe somewhere beneath Dust Falls. A scarf across her face was failing to keep out the eye-watering stench and she was in a mood to match the stink. Every few minutes she stopped, listened and shook her head before moving on again. She was lost in the labyrinth of pipes and had been for hours since escaping the battle. Now she thought she could hear something else moving down there. Every time she halted, the sound of splashing carried on for a second or two before stopping. At first she had convinced herself it was just weird echoes of her own progress, but that didn’t explain why the sound kept getting closer.
Splash-splash-splash.
The Pig was out of juice, Seventy-six was down to a half charge. Her arm was still tingling with the aftereffects of Kell’s poisoned blade. If it came to a fight she would be at a serious disadvantage.
Splash-splash-splash.
Every hundred steps or so there was an alloy inspection ladder hanging down from a vertical shaft in the top of the pipe. She had tried climbing up the first half dozen ladders she found but every one had ended at a cover that felt suspiciously like it was sealed shut by tonnes of compacted rubble on the other side. After that she had given up and had tried to navigate the confusing branches and turns of the sewers instead. She had considered marking her progress with scratches on the wall to help find her way, but now she didn’t want to leave a handy trail for whatever was following her.
She consoled herself with the fact that her noble laspistol was still as brim full of power as it would be had it never been fired. She was far from defenceless.
Splash-splash. Stop.
In the distance: Splish-splash-splish-splash. Then nothing. The sound died away abruptly as if something else had stopped to listen. Donna wet her lips beneath the scarf. This was not good.
She went up the next ladder she came to and found it blocked like all the others. Instead of climbing back down, she wedged herself in the narrow shaft with her feet pushing her back into the opposite wall. She pried a few small chunks out of the cracked rockrete and dropped them into the sewage below to simulate the sound of her jumping back down into the main pipe.
Splash.
She waited. Minutes dragged by and her calves started to cramp up. She tried to ignore the nagging sensation and focus on the dark instead. When Donna had first come to the Underhive it had seemed a realm of inky midnight to her. The Spire is a place of sunlight and open, airy chambers where filterglass and silvered armourplas is as common as steel and iron is below. When access to open skies becomes a statement of power and influence, every artifice and architecture is used to put it on display. Even in the inner hub of the Spire there were countless balconies, promenades and vista windows overlooking the open spaces of the arboreta.
Nothing had prepared her for the impenetrable gloom she had encountered, nor for how the yellow sodium, lurid neon and bright halogen of the settlement lights could only push it back for a space but could never defeat it. Eventually Donna made friends with the dark and began to appreciate it like all Underhivers do. Once your eyes become adjusted you start to understand that what people mean when they say “pitch-dark” usually means little more than “there’s less light than I’m used to.”
The truth was the slightest scatter of photons would be picked up and processed by those hungry little cones and rods inside your eyes. In normal light your brain had plenty to handle without trying to utilise every tiny shred of information—it just kind of fudges it like a pict journalist does. If there was a hive quake they wouldn’t show you every fallen stone and broken bone, you just got a few picts of fires and mortuary wagons and your imagination would fill in the rest. The point being, when they know there’s been a hive quake anyway, human beings are curious and want to know more, but not every last detail. That’s what human brains are like. As long as it thinks its got the big picture, it’s not too bothered about the details.
But when your brain gets starved of its normal levels of info it pays more attention to what it has got available. After an hour or two in the dark, a human brain would start to realise it’s not really “pitch-dark” anywhere in the Underhive. A faint backwash of light from settlements and even caravans carries remarkably, reflecting off rockrete here and getting absorbed by shadow there to give a grey, grainy illumination for kilometres around, not unlike moonlight.
The hive was full of microscopic fungi and lichens everywhere, giving off a faint phosphorescence that could be used to navigate through pipes and tunnels. Most old structures an
d machines had lamps and telltales shining out like beacons even though their long-dead masters would say that they were but dim ghosts of their former selves.
With the help of her bionic eye, Donna had found that the dark was the greatest ally a lone fighter could have in the Underhive. It became both her cloak of invisibility and her sanctuary in one.
Peering down into the darkness, Donna saw it getting lighter in the pipe at the bottom of the ladder and thought somehow that her hunter had crept up silently enough that she hadn’t heard anything. Nothing appeared in sight and she waited, fretting about how exposed she would be if whatever it was chose to just look up. Still nothing. She was about to climb down and look when she heard a whisper of sound.
Splish-splash-splish-splash.
It sounded like a group. The sewage threw what light there was into thin pearly ropes on its surface as it rippled in response to the not-too-distant disturbance. Donna caught the faint clink of metal on stone, and the murmur of breath rasping from unhealthy-sounding lungs.
Splish-splash-splish-splash.
The light grew stronger and gained an amber colouration. There was a group coming. Donna froze, willing her calves to stop trembling for a moment. A shape appeared at the bottom of the shaft, weirdly underlit by something casting a diffuse fountain of light that was caught and reflected by the slurry. Donna mentally flipped her bionic eye to a passive thermal scan. Ethereal blooms of heat from the skin of the weird figure below betrayed its shape to Donna’s enhanced vision as it glanced up the shaft towards where she was hiding.
It looked like a Delaque.
Donna held her breath as the Delaque seemed to look straight at her. Part of her mind registered that the light beneath his upturned face was the tiny glow from a power readout on the ganger’s laspistol.
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