Tinker and his troops crawled over and around the segment of tubeway. The weight-bearing walls that hemmed them in were composed of several yards of stone and steel. Security held the tubeway. Their Hi Vol injectors had a range of only a foot or so. But that was enough to make hand-to-hand combat impossible in such crowded quarters.
Tinker carefully sliced into several cables. A maze of color-coded wires ballooned out—too numerous to analyze by a random search. Sphincter controls had to be taken inside. He followed struts to the ceiling and peered down at Security through darkened air vents. The ceiling sagged under the weight of his men. He studied stress lines for a moment.
“Where do we cut in again?” asked an eager blademan.
“The roof,” said Tinker, swinging his axe. He parted a cable. The false ceiling cracked and shifted.
The anxious Security guards milled around under a rain of chips as ominous teethmarks crept across the ceiling. A jagged slab sailed down, slicing into the guard. Sewage spewed from a nicked pipe. Screaming their battle cries, the buckeyes turned vicious, throwing down everything they could lay their hands on. Slabs, struts, bolts and short spears crunched into the guards. Rose-water blood mixed with foul sewage. Indole and skatole choked bronchi.
Tinker opened the sphincter manually. The communicator stood alone—spattered with nondescript drippings. Val’s voice called repeatedly.
“Are you there, Security? Hello. Hello.”
Tinker scowled into the optic, waving his bipennis.
“I’m coming for you, Val,” he threatened. “I’m saving this blade for you.”
With the skill that comes from practice, Tinker swung the gleaming axe blade deftly past the optic—scratching the lens. A second teasing cut admitted air and clouded the retina. Val watched, nervously—his cremasters tightened.
“Send for Dag Foringer,” said Val.
Tinker’s men staggered into the next shaft station lopping off Watcher optics. A squad of Security blundered into the axemen walking point and were dismembered. Several of the naked buckeyes squatted down beside an eviscerated guard to eat the liver. Others began to divide up a couple of citizens. Tinker looked at the watery, gray liver being passed around.
“That may fill you up, but it won’t ease the hunger pangs—too deficient in the MDR. Protein-poor protoplasm. Stick to the browner livers of their best hunters,” he advised.
“It fills you up, but you get hungry right away…” repeated a young buckeye. He gave away his soft tan meat and chopped into a shaft base dispenser for calories—scant flavors there too. Crowds began to fill the spiral.
While his blademen scattered the Nebish citizens and secured the spiral, Tinker sat down with Ball to map out their route. He drew in the pasty grit on the floor.
“We’re here. The nerve center of the hive is over here—still a hundred miles away. Ball thinks that there are two fast routes. The passenger tubeway, which we are on now; and this freight tube over by the sewer line. The sewer line drains into digesters under the Coweye Sump near the nerve center. If we take the center, we control the mecks of the hive.”
The buckeyes nodded eagerly.
“I’m coming for your head, Val,” shouted Tinker, waving his axe. Watcher circuits relayed the message. Val sweated.
Two thousand Security guards marched into the tubeways.
“Ten to one,” smiled Val. He closed sphincters again.
The tubeway halted.
“Still thirty miles to go,” cursed Tinker.
His men formed a wedge—axes in front—and chopped their way slowly through a dense crowd. As they reached the sphincter it opened. A solid wall of guards surged in on them carrying Hi Vol injectors. The drugs darted around catching Nebish and buckeye alike. Tinker withdrew, letting the Nebish crowd flow back into the path of the guard. The wedge turned right and cut its way out of the tubeway.
Buckeyes—wounded, drugged and dazed—crawled ’tween walls for darkness and solitude.
Tinker’s force ran into the freight station swinging blades. Nebish heads rolled. The traffic meck told them which lanes were open to Cybercenter. They programmed freight capsules, sending ten men in each. Tinker traveled in number five.
“See you at the next station,” he shouted, closing the hatch. He braced himself for the dark, rough ride. Webbing provided handholds. Ball tried to glow. Only a feeble, eerie light resulted. Sudden blind turns threw men and weapons against the walls.
Acceleration. Deceleration. A jerky stop.
Tinker braced himself—axe ready. It wouldn’t surprise him if Val’s damned efficiency had arranged an armed welcome. When the hatch opened he saw the smiling faces of his own men.
“We made it,” they shouted. “How much time do we have?”
Tinker held Ball.
“Plenty of time,” he mouthed. “The nerve center is right above us—about a quarter of a mile.”
Tinker glanced around the station. Freight capsules popped in and out of tubes—tracks and dollies were all over. Near the far wall Nebish crews went about their chores sluggishly. Closer, Nebish bodies lay in their own blood. Tinker’s crew numbered less than a hundred now. Most had minor wounds. Some assisted others who were dazed by Molecular Reward.
“Let’s go upspiral,” he shouted enthusiastically.
Bowmen held the spiral against them. Arrows plinked at the doorways to the station, pinning them inside.
“Bring up that dolly,” shouted Tinker.
A pile of crates offered them a shield. They pushed it ahead of them, upspiral. Arrows chunked into the soft syntheboards. The squads of hive bowmen backed up slowly, showing a surprising degree of discipline.
“Now!” said Val from his control room.
Dag Foringer pulled a lever. His fingers danced over buttons that turned valves in a dozen pipes. Irrigation waters drained downshaft collecting drinking water and sewage as they flowed. Ball twitched nervously. Flood! Flood! The words rang in Tinker’s head.
The wall of water spilled out onto the spiral collecting citizens and drowning them immediately. Bowmen were swept up. The roar became deafening. The bolus of bodies crunched into Tinker’s dolly, smashing and crushing. Waves swept them back out into the freight station. Heavy iron weapons were dropped as the water level surged upwards.
Ball was swept out of his hands. The last words he heard from the sphere were not encouraging—“All is lost, all is lost. Flee! Flee!”
Ball swirled off on a choppy wave flecked with bodies.
The buckeyes tried to swim—keeping familiar shaggy heads in view. The flood swept them up against the giant sewer gratings. The force of the waters pinned them to the two-inch gauge, eighteen-inch mesh. Tinker tried to swim up to the surface repeatedly. A dizzying whirlpool vortex sucked him back to the grating. Exhausted, he fell through. One by one his battered men followed.
“Good work,” said Val, patting Dag’s shoulder. They checked the scanners—nothing. The freight station was clear. Dollys and capsules were piled on the sewer grating with a jumble of stained bodies.
“Now we can get back to the buckeye camp. What time is it?”
“Two hundred hours,” said Dag.
“We’ll attack at dawn. Want to come on a Big Hunt?”