CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

PINCER MOVEMENT

 

 

THE TONE OF the whistles changed. The pitch changed. There was menace and anguish in it suddenly, as Holeman Hunt’s war band travelled south along Track Nine from Westhafen.

“Listen,” said one of the Aux.

They stopped en masse in the tunnel, their feet falling still on the gravel. All that remained was the soft sound of their breathing.

The whistle had changed. Something was happening further down the tunnel.

“Them,” said Oscar so Wild. “Them are attacking.”

“No,” said Holeman Hunt.

“Scrappers, them are attacking Them.”

The screeching echoes, broken and desperate, continued for a minute or maybe two as the gathered war band listened.

Then, as suddenly as they had begun, they stopped. The strange tone of the sounds stopped and the echoes died away. Then they began again, a keening in the tunnels, a breathy whistle all around them. Things were changing.

“Is it dead?” asked one of the Aux. “The Them, is it deader and dead?”

“Yes,” said Holeman Hunt.

“And how many Aux, them dead with it?” asked another voice, low and bitter.

Oscar so Wild turned on the war band.

“Us, we are Aux, tougher and tough. Us, we are Aux, truer and true,” he said. “Us, we are faster and fast. Us, we are braver and brave. Us, we stand in alliance. Us, we stand together.”

Holeman Hunt put his hand on the lieutenant’s shoulder.

“Oscar so Wild, Alpha dog, him is right,” he said. “You, scrap like an Aux or whine like a pup.” He glared at the Hacker Aux. “Have you got the bone for it, Fred Walker?”

Fred Walker puffed out his chest. He was a young beta dog, and he was afraid. He didn’t want to show it. He had spoken out of turn, and out of fear. He needed to rally.

“Me, I scrap like an Aux,” said Walker, taking hold of the nozzle of his fire thrower and pulling down the visor of his mask as if to prove his point.

Holeman Hunt fist-bumped the male in the chest and strode back to his position at the head of the pack.

The keening echoes continued to sound all around them, bouncing off the tunnel walls as they made their way towards Birkenstrasse.

They had travelled only a couple of hundred metres when quiet descended again. They stopped, suspicious. Silence was their enemy as much as the whistles were, as much as the shrieking of the Them was as it dropped out of the ceiling.

Holeman Hunt signalled to the fire thrower to his left, who sent up a long, arcing beam of flames into the ceiling of the tunnel for several metres ahead of them. There was nothing. The whole tunnel lit up with the red and orange glow of the flames, but they could see nothing ahead of them.

The quiet unnerved the war band more than the whistles and echoes had.

They continued down the track at a much slower pace. Weapons drawn, they stalked the tunnel, hugging the walls away from the mass of gravel that gave away their every footfall.

The fire throwers faced into the tunnels towards the front of the war band, the Aux carrying bladed weapons kept further back, weapons drawn. They made slow progress for another twenty or thirty metres.

“There.”

The call came from halfway down the pack.

An answering gout of flames shot into the ceiling space of the tunnel.

Nothing.

The Aux who had made the call pulled the fire thrower into the tunnel and pointed.

“There!” he shouted again, pointing dead ahead. The flame shot low between the ranks of Aux pressed flat against the tunnel walls.

The Them was not high in the ceiling space; it was on the tracks ten metres in front of them, ready.

Behind it was another pair of Them. Behind that, the shadows of more.

Holeman Hunt stepped into the tunnel and waved his arm.

“Flames!” he called.

The word was cut off by the shriek of three, or four, or half a dozen Them as they emitted their battle cry in unison.

It didn’t matter, the call had gone out. The scrappers knew what they must do.

The fire throwers stood shoulder to shoulder across the tunnel. When an Aux’s gasoline supplies ran low, he stepped back to refuel and another fire thrower took his place.

The Them surged towards the heat and light of the streaming fires until the flames lit them up and made their carapaces glow yellow and green.

Their heads swung back and forth, their cutting limbs slicing and hacking at the air, but they could not reach their targets. They backed up in the glow of the flames, wailing and howling their joy and their rage, their carapaces dancing with colour as the heat of the flames ebbed and flowed.

Robert Browning’s war band, approaching along Track Nine from the opposite direction, was engulfed in a cacophony of noise. They were overwhelmed by the cries of half a dozen Them and were wrong-footed for a moment. Then they saw firelight in the tunnel ahead. The pincer movement was in effect. They were no more than a hundred and fifty or two hundred metres from Holeman Hunt and his party.

The Birkenstrasse station lay between them.

Robert Browning gave the signal, and the war band jogged another hundred metres. They knew they could not be heard, but the scrappers’ hearts began to pound with anticipation. The pack moved faster and fast, with a purpose.

A second signal brought the fire throwers to the fore.

Evelyn War fist-bumped Ben Gun on his bicep. The pup cringed slightly. The dam didn’t know her own strength, in the thrill of imminent battle.

For the first time, Ben Gun felt his hands shake as he put his finger through the loop in his slingshot. He took several short steps up to Robert Browning and tapped him on the shoulder.

Robert Browning looked down. Ben’s wide eyes told him everything he needed to know, even before the pup raised his hand and waved: they should move forwards. They weren’t close enough. Ben Gun was not confident that he could make the shot.

John Steel stepped up on the other side of the pup. He put his hand on Ben Gun’s shoulder, looked over his head at Robert Browning and frowned. Robert Browning glared back. The message was clear. Ben Gun could do this. Browning trusted him. It would happen.

Robert Browning lifted his arm high in the air, making the signal for the war band to move forwards. They jogged another fifty metres.

Holeman Hunt’s war band had been pressing the Them, and Browning’s Aux were within twenty metres of their targets. They were right on top of Birkenstrasse station. The plan had to work. It had to work first time.

The air in the tunnel of Track Nine vibrated with the shrieks of the Them as they backed slowly away from the flames.

Them longed to attack the Aux, who were out of reach beyond the deadly flames. But more than that, Them revelled and basked in the heat and light the fire afforded Them. There was a price to pay for bliss.

Ben Gun felt the heavy weight of a huge Aux hand on his shoulder. He looked down at it and then up into John Steel’s face. His eyes darted across to Robert Browning as he reached into his waxed pouch for the first of the little balls of fuel that were such a crucial part of the plan.

Then he felt pressure on his head. He whipped around.

Evelyn War was right there with him.

John Steel was suddenly gone, and Evelyn War was at his side instead. She dropped in her knees to come down to the pup’s level. Ben Gun looked into the dam’s eyes for a second.

He saw everything there that he needed to see. They were friends. She trusted him. If she could have said something, over the battle cries of Them, she would.

It didn’t matter, he had listened to every word she had spoken since they had first met, whether she had known it or not. Every word she had spoken was ringing in his mind. Every word Walter Sickert had spoken was there, too, urging him to do his job, to be the most important Aux in the scrap.

The tale-teller’s voice in his head told him that he would become a legend, that tales would be told of Ben Gun for generations, that every pup would hear those stories a hundred-hundred times.

Ben Gun filled his lungs deeply. He rolled the little metal wheel of his sparking mechanism with his thumb and felt the flint engage. The spark lit the ball of fuel nestled in the fireproof slingshot. The rest was instinct.

Ben Gun heard the nozzle of the weapon in the hands of the scrapper next to him open. He heard a drip of fuel fall to the ground at the Aux’s feet. The fire thrower, a Hacker called Damien Hurts, thumbed the trigger without igniting the spark.

Lighting the fire was Ben Gun’s job. Except Ben couldn’t have heard those things with all the noise in the tunnel. He must have imagined them.

Ben Gun saw the arc of liquid fuel as it flowed through the air down the tunnel. He saw where the gasoline landed and pooled ten or a dozen metres distant, to the left of the tunnel.

He whipped his arm and loosed the sling. He watched the trajectory of the little ball of fire as it flew through the air towards the pool of gasoline against the wall of the tunnel.

The Aux war band did not see the flaming projectile hit the fuel, but they saw the surge of flames as the gasoline lit. Part of the tunnel floor was filled with flames, which climbed the wall where the gasoline had sprayed.

Ben Gun loaded a second fuel pellet and lit it. Damien Hurts triggered his nozzle once more and sprayed the right hand side of the tunnel with more gasoline. Ben Gun whipped his arm and let loose his projectile. He hit his target again. More flames filled the tunnel.

Evelyn War grasped his shoulder in triumph, and then urged Ben forwards as the pack moved towards their prey.

Two fire throwers stood ready, one on either side of Ben Gun. They were fully loaded and ready to go. Two of the best Aux fire throwers in the Hacker Pack, two of the most reliable, with the best aim.

Holeman Hunt was within twenty metres of them. He and his war band were dangerously close. They wanted no casualties on their own side. Accidents were not an option.

Them were the target. Herding Them was the objective.

Flames flickered and flashed across the bodies of Them on both sides. They were surrounded by fire. Despite their thrashing and lurching, both factions of the Aux counted five foes. Five of Them!

Killing one had been tough. Tougher and tough!

Killing five!

Damien Hurts, staying close to Ben Gun, triggered a short burst of fuel into the gaggle of Them. It splashed and splattered, landing in a puddle in their midst.

Ben Gun had loaded his slingshot, and was about to light his missile when he hesitated. He looked into the dark mask of the fire thrower, but could not see the Aux’s eyes. Damien Hurts shrugged.

Ben Gun thumbed his sparking mechanism and lit the missile in his slingshot. He looked hard at the Them, the light from the flames strobing over their bodies.

He whipped his arm and let the missile loose. It flew high into the ceiling of the tunnel, looking like a tiny comet as it passed over the heads of Them.

Ben Gun watched its trajectory. Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw one of Them watching it too, arching its neck to get a good look at the little ball of fire.

It landed, and a sheet of flames rose into the air between Them. Flames darted from one to another as the splashes of gasoline that had landed on Them and rolled over their hard-shelled bodies lit up. The flames burst, and burned out quickly, leaving flashes of blue on their glossy green chitin.

Them began to scamper and lurch in a tight circle, not knowing where to go or how to escape the flames.

Holeman Hunt’s war band had closed in, keeping up a barrage of flames. One fire thrower switched out for another, and then another, as fuel supplies began to dwindle. They could not get any closer. It was up to Ben Gun.

Damien Hurts took his cue and sent up another arc of gasoline, puddling it among Them. Ben Gun lit another missile and loosed it. Another wall of flames rose in their midst.

Them shrieked and keened. Their heads lurched. They swayed and scythed their luminescent limbs.

A wail went up from one of Them as it was skewered by the spiked limb of its neighbour. It swung a speckled limb in retaliation, and an answering screech filled the tunnel.

The Aux fire thrower sent up another arc of gasoline, and another.

Ben Gun lit the puddles.

Them began to huddle together.

Them had no choice but to move towards the platform of Birkenstrasse station.

Ben Gun felt another firm squeeze to the back of his neck. Evelyn War was right there with him, willing him to succeed.

Robert Browning’s war band followed Them. They walked through the wall of fire that Damien Hurts and Ben Gun had built. It had begun to die away; there was room for the Aux to pass between the fires, single file.

As they passed through, the puddle fires began to die away too.

Holeman Hunt’s fire throwers kept flames at Them’s backs. Damien Hurts triggered his weapon and rained gasoline over Them’s heads in puddles. Ben Gun lobbed his torch missiles into the puddles. Them lurched onwards, up onto the platform and through the station.

Holeman Hunt’s war band was able to track around Them as the space opened up, sending flames into the gaggle of Them, herding Them, steering their movements.

Them had become confused. It was too bright and cold as they got closer to the outside. Them were increasingly mesmerised by the warmth of the flames.

The Them that had been injured by its mate kept lower to the ground, angrier, wailing more readily. It ducked its blue head out between the flames, looking for a means of escape, keen to attack, hurting and spiteful.

It struck out twice, but to no avail; Holeman Hunt’s Aux scrappers had room to manoeuvre, to keep out of its reach. They also had the fire power to drive the Them back into the gaggle.

At last, it sprang out between two puddles of flaming gasoline and swung a scything blade at Ben Gun. The pup was short and light. He ducked fast, hitting the ground on his belly.

Ben grabbed Evelyn’s hand and took her with him, but the Aux to her right, another dam, was caught in the curve of its hot, blue forelimb. She was carved in two just below her armpits. One arm was severed across the bicep and her chest was opened.

The war band was close-packed, and the corpse of the dam fell hard against the Aux standing next to her. He ducked his head, taking her weight. As he lowered her to the ground, a second strike came in, but Damien Hurts had reset his weapon. Fire came out of the nozzle of his fire thrower instead of liquid gasoline.

He fired high to avoid a splash-back. He managed to hit the Them in the head, nevertheless, driving it back into the gaggle.

Little by little, Them were driven out of the station, onto the open ground outside.

Them were getting angry and Them were getting desperate. Their cries and shrieks were getting increasingly alarming. At least, outside, the sounds could dissipate more easily.

The streets outside the station were empty. Noise rattled around the buildings that surrounded them, but nothing like the continuous echoes that filled the tunnels below ground.

Them did not seem to suffer in the sunlight as the Aux did. They did shrink from the cold. They lifted their clawed hind feet from the ice in jerking movements, as if walking on hot coals and their lower limbs turned from green to yellow to grey. Their breath steamed in great billowing clouds. They puckered their wide, round mouths to contain the heat of their respiration so that only thin streams remained. Their movements slowed.

Ben Gun looked around. He saw the flags dotted at intervals in an oval shape in the broad street. Holeman Hunt and Robert Browning had seen it too, and the fire throwers. All their efforts were put into driving Them into position within the battlefield marked out by the flags.

As soon as they were inside the area, Ben Gun began to snap off his flaming projectiles, ring-fencing the combat zone. Them would not escape. The Aux would kill or be killed on this battlefield.

More than half the fuel the Aux had carried along Track Nine from Leopoldplatz and Hansaplatz had been used. The supply was limited by what the Aux could carry. The flame weapons’ tanks had been refilled several times, and many of the Aux were carrying empty jerry cans and camelbacks. There was nowhere to refill them.

Three more minutes and the circle of fire was complete, but it would not last forever. The pools of gasoline were generous, and had been laid down carefully, but they, too, were limited by what fuel had been barrowed and carried to the site by the veteran Aux. No one could predict where Them would be found, so the gasoline had been spread out over several sites.

The Aux war bands had to kill Them, and they had to do it fast.

Holeman Hunt and Robert Browning both gave the signal at the same time. More than sixty Aux spread in a wide circle around the five Them.

The fire throwers stepped forwards to attack on all sides with hot narrow blasts of fire, aimed at their thoraxes.

The cold air and the bigger distances counted against the Aux. The fire throwers were more effective in the confines of the tunnels. They braced themselves and strode towards the gaggle, one step at a time, a tight circle of Aux. Their faces shielded, big shapes in long, leather aprons, they looked almost as monstrous as Them.

Them spread as the heat from the flame weapons dissipated around Them. All the blue had gone from their hard shells and they were dull and green. The bright sun and the blue sky gave Them the false sense of an unreal warmth. Only the ice beneath their clawed feet seemed to bother Them at all. But that only made Them move more quickly, skittering across the surface skittle-scuttle fast, tiktiktik, tiktik. Their claws dug into the ice, giving them grip, holding them steady.

The Aux were at a disadvantage once more. The fire throwers had no time to weave metal into the soles of their boots, though most of the blade scrappers had rotated to the rear of their groups to prepare for coming outside.

Them ducked and wove. Them surged into the flames and then retreated.

One of Them lurched forward, screaming, its head low, teeth bared. Its lower forelimb hooked under a hose and cut through it, and fuel gushed out of the feeder line.

Realising what was happening, the Aux holding the nozzle, which was now attached to nothing, threw her arms up in horror. Her body was thrown into the air as the flames all around ignited the fuel, and her newly filled tanks exploded on her back, killing her instantly.

Her body flew several metres through the air and landed full in the chest of one of Them, turning it instantly blue and glossy. The startled creature was bowled over and sat down heavily. It recovered quickly, taking most of the Aux’s arm into its hideous maw as compensation, biting it off and chewing it down.

Damien Hurts had left Ben Gun’s side to join the battle. He tried to back out of the attacking line when his fuel ran dry, but he was too late.

One of Them saw the last drizzle of fire splutter out of the scrapper’s nozzle and dived towards him. The squeal of its claws on the ice was almost more devastating to Hurts’s senses than its shriek of delight as it brought down two curving limbs from on high.

The Them cut diagonally across Damien Hurts’s body, slicing through from shoulder to hip on one side and from armpit to knee on the other.

The Them cut through the straps of the tank harness as it carved, and the apparatus fell away in one piece, without a scratch on it.

Damien Hurts’s body was in more pieces than anyone cared to count.

There were more than two dozen fire throwers and only five of Them, but the conditions were poor. The battlefield was too big. Them thrived too easily under the heat of the sun. Them had too much ease of movement outside the confines of the tunnels.

Every time a fire thrower got close to a Them, the Them attacked. Them scythed and sliced and hacked. The flames bounced off their hard shells, spraying blue speckles among the green, and spread thinly through the cold air.

The Aux were dying.