CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

A CLEAN KILL

 

 

“THEM,” SAID EVELYN War as the whistles rang around the tunnels.

Everyone in the war band knew that the foe was on Track Nine, but Evelyn couldn’t help giving voice to the knowledge. The sounds had begun almost as soon as they had left the Hansa Pack. The echoes overlapped and seemed to be coming from more than one direction.

“Hansa Pack, them can fight Them?” asked Evelyn War. “Them can kill Them?”

“Makewar Thackeray, him Alpha dog,” said John Steel, “him tougher and tough. Him truer and true. Hansa Pack, them will kill or die.”

“There is strength in numbers,” said Evelyn War, almost under her breath, as if trying to reassure herself.

Ben Gun fist-bumped Evelyn’s upper arm.

“Evelyn War, tougher and tough,” he said to her.

“Ben Gun, him have muscles in his head,” said Evelyn War, looking down on the pup and smiling slightly. She breathed a little deeper as she jogged down the tunnel beside the young Aux. She began to feel calmer.

This was what her father wanted. If she died today, in this foreign tunnel, she had achieved what her father had wanted. She had kept her word to him. Zoo Pack had made alliances with Hacker Pack and Hansa Pack. There was strength in numbers. They were fighting Them.

The whistles and their echoes repeated around the tunnels, deadened by the sounds of three dozen pairs of soft boots jogging on gravel.

She concentrated on the crunch of the overlapping footfalls. Her feeling of calm increased. Then she remembered all the anger she had felt over the last few weeks. She remembered the stilettos in her boots and the crossbow on her back.

She breathed in so that she could feel the pressure of the bandoliers crisscrossing her body. The crossbow bolts were useless, but their presence reassured her anyway. The pebbles in her cuffs, pressing against her wrists, reassured her, too.

Evelyn War remembered the plan. She was satisfied.

Robert Browning’s war band walked the first kilometre to Turmstrasse without incident. There were only the whistles, and the lookouts calling when they saw anomalies. They followed the same procedures as Holeman Hunt’s war band walking in from Leopoldplatz.

Neither war band knew where they would meet or when. Neither knew how many Them they would encounter in the tunnels along the way. How many they would have to kill and how many casualties they would take in the scraps.

The service tunnel at Turmstrasse was dark and narrow, and closed at one end. Its greasy black walls were more reflective than the dull black walls of the larger tunnels, and the small amount of light reflected unevenly off its surfaces. Evelyn War hated service tunnels.

As always, the cover and check procedure was carried out. The Aux saw nothing.

They turned their backs on the service tunnel and continued to jog along the track the last dozen metres to the platform. There were more service tunnels and the platform still to check. Robert Browning had also selected two pairs of Aux to scout outside the station.

The war band broke ranks when the Them exited the service tunnel they had just checked a dozen metres behind them. They heard the screech of its claws on the rails.

A lookout shouted, and a fire thrower shot a burst of fire back down the tunnel, lighting up the Them.

It was an imposing figure lit up in the orange glow of the flames. Its thorax was long and tapered, speckled yellow and green, and its head a bulbous form resting on a long, narrow neck. It opened its mouth to wail, forming a hole half the size of its head, raw and hollow, with its concentric rings of jagged dentition.

Its limbs throbbed as the flame pulsed. They were jointed, with narrow upper arms and great curving forearms like barbed scythe blades ending in impossibly sharp points where the colour concentrated in a lurid luminous green. The upper hind limbs were narrow, too, but the lower limbs were bulky, ending in flat, clawed feet that clung to the track rails.

The rails screeched as the Them ran its yellow claws along them, walking towards the flames, drawn to the heat.

Three more Aux with flame weapons joined the first. The four walked tight abreast in the tunnel, towards the Them. They set the nozzles of their fire throwers to the narrowest, hottest stream and killed the flames until they were close.

The tunnel went black.

Almost within range of the Them, the four fire throwers hit the triggers on their weapons in unison. Four streams of flames hit the Them’s body virtually simultaneously.

It screamed in pain as its hard shell rapidly changed colour through a range of greens and blues to purple. Then it began to blacken and smouldered. The chitin flared red, burning through to the flesh beneath. The monster thrashed its forelimbs, but they were useless. The Them could do nothing but back away from its death.

The four Aux followed.

Heated from within, a boiling cauldron of flesh, the thorax carapace could contain the pressure no longer. It exploded in a shower of purple chitin shrapnel and half-cooked organs. Ichor sprayed the tunnel walls as the Them expired.

The Them crashed onto Track Nine, oddly intact, but for its exploded torso.

The Aux who had begun the firefight released the trigger on his weapon, and waited while the other three Aux cut their own fire throwers. Then he waited another moment or two before approaching the Them.

He nudged a forelimb. He picked up a piece of purple shrapnel the size of an axe blade, orange ichor running and dripping from it. He wiped the worst of the stinking muck onto his leather apron and shoved the souvenir into his belt.

Then he took a stride to the head of the Them, still intact. He kicked it once, hard, with his soft-soled boot. The bulbous mass rocked and wobbled. The Aux spat in one of the Them’s lazy bulging, magenta eyes, already turning milky in death, and walked away.

That was the scrapping. That was the cleanest kill. No Aux died.

The four Aux walked back to the platform, all the adrenaline of the firefight leached from their bloodstreams. They sat in a row on the edge of the platform for a moment, the other Aux gathering around them. They were praised and congratulated. They were hailed as the heroes of the hour.

Then it was back to business. Their tanks were replenished. Their nozzles were checked and cleaned. Their triggers and flints were tested.

It was less than ten minutes before Robert Browning’s war band was back on the tracks, back on the long walk along Track Nine towards the next station at Birkenstrasse.

Still the whistles did not stop, nor their echoes.