Xenoform (48 page)

‘Yeah,’ said Sofi. ‘Remember last time we had a C-projector on it.’

‘That was your own fault, Sofe,’ said Tec. ‘You were on that trippex, remember?’

‘All the same,’ said Whistler. ‘Everyone take a good look at the spot.’ They did as she commanded, trying to burn the location into their minds. ‘Let’s go.’

They reached the end of the road, moving low and slow behind whatever cover they could find. RPC loomed massively above them, seeming to fill the sky. A wide flight of steps ascended from street level to a gigantic set of doors which looked firmly closed. Somebody had run a ten-metre-long personnel carrier up the steps and parked it across the doors just to really drive the point home. A rubbish bin to one side of the doors was burning steadily, glowing embers rising from it like spirits.

At the foot of the steps was a huge battle-bot in the bright colours of RPC.

‘They have a guard dog,’ said Sofi, peeping over a low concrete wall.

‘I don’t think so, Sofe,’ answered Whistler.

The robot was vaguely centaur-oid and stood probably four metres high at the shoulder, quite unsuitably large and over-powered for any sort of urban civil-defence force. It was stomping up and down the flat square at the foot of the steps, jumping and twisting at the waist, spinning round like a dog trying to catch its own tail. They watched as it stormed up to a deserted gravpod and began to kick and smash it psychotically to pieces. There was a noise, low and feral, coming from its speakers, carried faintly on the wind, a sort of enraged growling.

‘Oh yeah,’ said Sofi. ‘I think that thing’s on its own side now. Looks like it’s gone utterly batshit.’

‘We can’t fight that thing,’ said Roland. ‘No point. Fucker‘d eat these rockets like popcorn.’

Debian considered offering to initiate wireless and hack the thing – he was sure he could do it and that he would be safe attempting it – but he decided not to voice this idea. Had he considered this decision in more depth he might have deduced that he was suffering from an inexplicable desire to keep his cards close to his chest.

Whistler ran a hand through her hair. ‘Okay, the tunnel, then,’ she said. ‘Let’s go with Ari’s idea of trying to get in from the sewers. Maybe blast through with weaponry.’

‘Melt a hole with that plasma thrower,’ suggested Tec. ‘Depending what the tunnel’s made from.’

‘Sure,’ said Ari, who didn’t sound alarmed at witnessing the degenerative condition of its fellow robot, who was still stomping and fuming up and down the square.

They followed Ari back out of the square cautiously, so as not to alert the insane battle-bot, and into a small side-street squeezed between the windowless walls of two tower blocks. Ari scuttled brightly off, slim legs all a-blur.

‘Here!’ it called in a stage whisper. ‘Manhole. I know where to go – there’s a place where the court tunnel comes within two metres of the sewer.’

‘All right, then,’ said Tec, wasting no time in heaving the metal cover out of the way, using the stock of his gun as a lever. He rolled it carefully – quietly – to the side of the road and leaned it against the wall. Ari shone its torch into the depths, although all this did was make the darkness retreat a little – it still looked like a gateway into the abyss. ‘Hmm...Fun,’ said Tec, suddenly not so keen.

‘Just get on down there,’ said Whistler.

Ari climbed down into the hole with efficient agility, not bothering to use the ladder, its sharp feet finding purchase on the bricks. Tec followed, clearly gritting his teeth, then the others descended one by one. Debian felt a smothering sense of claustrophobia almost at once and it was all he could do to keep moving downwards. What had gone wrong in his life so badly that he now found himself entering the sewers for the second time not only in his life, but in the same week? Whatever it was, he didn’t feel that he deserved this.

They moved in a cursing, near-blind procession down the slippery ladder and onto the flat. There was no actual sewage here, and for that at least they were all glad. They seemed to be in a narrow access tunnel of some sort, which stretched ahead, featureless, as far as Ari’s torch beam would show them. Even by infrared Debian couldn’t discern the end of it.

‘Hope you know what you doin’, you fuckin’ biscuit tin,’ muttered Roland.

Ari did a good impersonation of a human sigh. ‘Of course I do – we all know who the real brain of our partnership is.’

They hadn’t gone much further when the robot piped up again: ‘Here it is.’ It was indicating an undistinguished area of tunnel wall, opposite which another tunnel branched off into utter darkness. ‘You can stand back from the target wall in that other tunnel – you don’t want to get too close to that plasma. Get blasting.’

‘You think we’ll set off any alarms in there?’ asked Tec.

‘I think we have to assume so until we know better,’ admitted Whistler. ‘Everybody ready for the shit to hit the fan. Worst case scenario is a running gunfight all the way to the cells, where Spider is presumably being held. Sofi, get up here with that plasma thrower. What’s the melting point of brick, anyone?’

‘Varies between about one- to two-thousand centigrade, usually,’ said Ari. ‘I realise that’s a wide margin of inaccuracy but I couldn’t tell you the exact composition of these bricks without proper chemical analysis. We should be fine – that plasma burns at about the same temperature as the sun’s photosphere – that’s something in the order of six-thousand centigrade, so plenty of headroom.’

Sofi keenly shouldered her way to the front of the group and waved everyone else away brusquely. She readied the massive weapon, planting her feet firmly on the slippery tunnel floor.

‘Watch the burst cohesion on that thing,’ warned Roland as Sofi checked the settings. ‘It splashes you, you lose an arm, and that’s if you lucky.’

‘Sure,’ answered Sofi. ‘I’ve got it set as tight as it’ll go. Stand back.’

‘
Well
back,’ added Roland, ushering the group back up the main tunnel as Sofi readied herself.

The plasma thrower made barely a whisper of noise as it gouted brilliant flame, too bright to look at, but the heat generated as the tiny jet of dazzling fire sliced into the wall was almost overwhelming, even from the group’s vantage point back in the main tunnel. Humid, steamy waves rolled over them as the damp brick melted and vaporised. They turned their faces away, cowering against the slimy wall. The stink of burning minerals mingled with the underlying reek of the greenshit to stomach-churning effect. Debian felt suddenly, terrifyingly claustrophobic. He fought the urge to just turn and run, flee from this awful subterranean other-world. He pressed the filter plugs more firmly into his nostrils and sank to the floor.

‘How’s it going?’ yelled Tec.

‘Give me a minute!’ Sofi shouted back. They waited for what seemed more like five minutes than one and then she called out again: ‘Okay, I’m done. Come back!’

They returned to Sofi, who was holding the plasma thrower at arm’s length as its cooling system kicked in. She looked a little singed around the edges and her eyes were streaming again. They surveyed the patch of wall, impressed. The burst cohesion had indeed been tightly-focused – so much so that Sofi had been able to cut a precise, door-shaped oblong into the brickwork. She had cross-hatched the oblong with a lattice of cuts that glowed fiercely in the dark.

‘Nice,’ said Tec. ‘D’you think it burned all the way through?’

‘Let’s find out,’ said Sofi.

‘If I may,’ said Ari. It scuttled five or six metres up the side tunnel, bracing its sharp feet on the floor. Its headlight played across the section of wall as it charged. Ari ducked its head down, running like a charging bull, hitting the weakened wall like a battering ram. There was a terrific, shattering noise that had probably alerted half the city and Ari disappeared in a cloud of debris. Its light-beam waved randomly about, illuminating roiling clouds of dust.

‘Hey, tinpot!’ yelled Roland.

‘I’m through,’ Ari replied, reappearing into sight. ‘All the way into the other tunnel. Thrower cut through brick and earth alike. Come through, but don’t touch the edges or you’ll burn your fingers off.’

The humans gingerly stepped through the opening, passing through brick, scorched, chalky earth and then foot-thick concrete to stand amazed in a wider, clearly much newer tunnel piled with rubble. The tunnel was dimly lit by red emergency lights. It stretched, arrow-straight, into the distance. They could just make out the outline of a doorway at one end, in the direction of RPC headquarters. There was nobody else in the tunnel. They relaxed slightly, though Whistler still held her smartgun at shoulder height.

‘Stronger than you look, eh?’ Tec remarked to Ari. He was staring coldly at the machine – it looked back at him calmly.

There was a pregnant pause before Ari said, ‘You don’t have to worry about me. Now, do you want to go and get your friend?’

‘So we just walk in?’ asked Debian, his stomach full of butterflies.

‘Sure,’ said Sofi. ‘Who’s gonna stop us?’ And she set off determinedly up the passage towards the door.

‘Come on,’ said Whistler and followed her. The others trailed after.

The door at the tunnel’s end was of solid-looking ceramicarbide, but it was no match for Ari who braced against the door-frame and slowly forced it open. The ceramicarbide itself didn’t so much as bend but eventually the metal bolts simply tore away and the door banged open with a boom that echoed off down the tunnel, rolling heavily from wall to wall like a vast bowling ball of sound.

They went through in cautious single-file, weapons readied. Debian wondered how Roland hoped to use the immense rocket launcher indoors and actually survive. They slunk up a flight of steps and emerged into the basement level of the Resperi building. The interior of the headquarters was also awash in the dim red light. Ari had killed its headlight in the court tunnel, and it took a moment for them to discern that they were actually standing in the cell-block itself, presumably very close to where they wanted to be. Nobody came to intercept them.

Somewhere in the labyrinth somebody was screaming in a pitch so high and desperate that it was impossible to tell their gender. The group headed down the corridor to a sort of nexus from which it was clear that the level was in fact a dense honeycomb of cells and interrogation rooms. Sofi moved under Whistler’s cover into the centre of the space where a reception desk stood in solitude. She checked the computer terminal, found it to be dead, ransacked the drawers, hoping for some sort of list of cell occupants. She shook her head in frustration but then she noticed a whiteboard on the far wall. ‘Ha!’ she cried, approaching it. ‘Cell fifteen.’

‘Good, then let’s find it,’ said Whistler, moving off.

‘Where is everybody?’ asked Debian, following her. Against his better judgement he unlimbered the submachine gun Roland had lent him. Tec and Ari fanned out to the sides, checking every shadow.

‘Dead? On strike?’ suggested Whistler.

Just then there was the now-unmistakable howl of a GDD victim, close-by. They all spun as one to face the sound. Whistler cursed, the smartgun alight in her hands. That howl again, utterly monstrous yet also strangely lonely and mournful. And this time, the answering shout of a desperate human voice: ‘No fucking way! Get away from me!’

Whistler, Sofi and Tec exchanged startled looks. ‘Spider!’ they all said as one. They were off down the corridor before the others even understood what was going on.

‘Weapons ready – let’s go!’ urged Roland, darting off after them with surprising speed. Debian followed, fumbling with the safety catch of his weapon as he ran. Ari bolted past him in a glittering, metallic blur, small gun barrels suddenly bristling on its carapace. Debian almost ran into Roland’s back as he dashed round a corner.

Whistler, outlined in a doorway, crowded by the other members of the group, was firing into a small room. There was some vast mass of twisted machinery mostly blocking the door and Debian shuddered as he recognised the dead hulk of the brain-diver from his recent delve into the net. Whistler let off three rounds in close succession, turning slightly as she presumably tracked some out-of-sight target, moving into the room as she did so, flanked by her team-mates. And then there was the roar and rush of heat from Sofi’s plasma thrower, punctuated by the hammer-blows of Tec’s light machine gun. Silhouetted against the flashes Debian could see Sofi and Whistler moving rapidly, in fluid concert – lithe, darting forms that looked no more solid than shadows. The shooting ceased abruptly, leaving an ear-ringing sound vacuum, and Debian, Roland and Ari squeezed past the dead brain diver into the cell.

Spider looked in bad shape, strapped to some enormous wheel. Clearly he had been beaten quite severely, but his blood-encrusted, gap-toothed mouth cracked in a huge smile as he surveyed his rescuers. In front of him was a bubbling puddle of slime. Vapour hissed from a hole in the wall where one of Whistler’s shots had buried itself.

‘And the cavalry came over the hill!’ cried Spider in a cracked but booming voice. Sofi rushed forwards, dropping her plasma thrower, and flung her arms around him.

‘You big stupid bastard!’ she admonished him, kissing him roughly on one cheek and then, contradictorily, punching him square in his massive chest.

‘Get me off this fucking wheel!’ demanded Spider.

Ari scuttled forwards and deftly undid Spider’s bonds. The huge man, clearly weakened, virtually fell forwards out of his restraints, into the arms of Whistler and Tec who struggled to set his heavy body down gently. The group gathered round him, slapping him on the back and expressing their relief to find him alive.