by Adam Browne
“I’ll be nearby.”
“Ivan!” Uther seethed, “Wait!”
But Ivan had already slipped away into the shadows, leaving Uther to his captors.
Meanwhile, the argument between the hyenas had died down and Nurka affectionately patted Themba on the side of his massive neck. The two of them bumped their helmeted snouts together in a show of soldierly accord.
Themba returned to his duties, shepherding fellow hyenas into the sewers, whilst Nurka returned to Uther.
“I apologise for Themba’s manners,” he rasped. “He’s easily provoked.”
Uther said nothing.
“His family was murdered, you see,” Nurka went on regardless. “His was one of many rounded up and shot by the wolves you call Watchers. Themba only escaped the massacre because he and I were out… hunting. We returned to find his village burnt, his mother and father, brothers and sisters, all gone. They had been led away and shot, their bodies piled in a mass-grave and burnt.”
“You hyenas are full of schmutz mate,” Uther sniffed nonchalantly. “Look, why don’t you just give up and tell me where the hostages are, eh?”
Nurka’s reply was swift; he stepped forth and thumped Uther in the gut. The Howler bent double and coughed violently, before Nurka grabbed the scruff of his neck and forced him back over the bend in the pipe. Drawing his short sword, the hyena tickled the wolf’s bobbing throat with its sharp, blue-tinged kristahl tip.
Uther wondered where Ivan was right about now.
“For Themba’s sake I should kill you, Howler scum, as you’ve killed so many of my people!” Nurka growled, purple eyes burning. “But I want you to tell your Den Fathers of us. Tell them the Chakaa shall dispense justice to them all. Tell them, if the rape of my people continues, our vengeance shall be a thousand-fold greater than any wrong done to us. They will all rot where they stand!”
Nurka suddenly drew back, one paw clapped to his helmeted skull. He breathed deep, vast chest heaving, then shook his head and blinked rapidly, as if waking from a nightmare.
“Goodbye… Howler Uther,” he rasped.
Sheathing his sword, Nurka joined Themba by the entrance to the sewer, leaving the winded and indignant Howler Uther spluttering for breath.
“Ivan!” Uther seethed between coughs, twisting round to see into the maze of pipes. “Cap’n! Come on, they’re gonna get away! Ivan?”
Nothing.
“Iv-”
“Aaaaagh!”
Uther whirled round, ears pricked by a blood-curdling scream echoing up from the sewers.
Themba and Nurka looked on in alarm as their fellow hyenas started to clamber back up the ladder and into the refinery, their faces scrawled with terror.
Themba grabbed one of them by the arms and shook an explanation from him. “Howlers?”
Uther heard the hyena yelp, “S-sss-sewer centipede!”
Then the stocky Chakaa Madou popped up through the hole. When only half way clear he slipped and grabbed onto the ladder with both paws.
“Gaaagh!” he screamed. “My foot! It’s got my foot!”
Throwing himself on his belly, Nurka grasped his comrade’s wrists just in the nick of time. “Hold on, Madou!”
“Chief! Help me! Please!”
Big Themba reached down, took the relatively small Madou by the thickly-furred scruff of his massive neck and together he and Nurka pulled their snarling, squirming comrade up. With a sudden jolt Madou was extricated from the sewers and the three Chakaa hyenas fell about the floor in a heap of spotty fur and black and white armour.
They scrambled clear of the drain just as two enormous, segmented, fiery-orange feelers twitched fitfully up through the hole and whipped around its rim, causing the lesser hyenas to scatter fearfully in all directions.
Whilst Nurka helped Madou limp to safety, Themba grabbed his long, kristahl-headed hammer from where it stood leaning against some pipes and cautiously approached the antennae licking around the drain.
“Themba!” Nurka seethed, in a sort of loud whisper.
“That’s the only way out,” Themba replied in kind, hefting his hammer in both paws. “Better to die fighting a noble hundred-legs than those Politzi scum, Nurka.”
Nurka, given a moment’s hesitation, set Madou down and rallied the troops.
“My kristahl bow!” he said.
A hyena passed Nurka his bow and quiver. The bow was indeed made of kristahl, whilst the arrows were fletched with various coloured flights made from the wings of moths and flies. Nurka picked an arrow fletched with iridescent, transparent wings and notched it to his bow; it had a shining kristahl tip. He took aim at the centipede’s feelers, waiting for its head to appear.
Despite his wound, Madou limped ahead of Nurka, a long kristahl axe in his paws.
“Out the way, Madou!” Nurka spat.
“Stay back, Chief, it’s too dangerous,” Madou replied, hefting his axe in both paws. “You could get bitten.”
Several lesser hyenas fearfully approached the drain in a circle, spears held protectively forth.
Themba, at the head of them all, spied a piece of metal on the floor – a big rusty bolt. With an armoured foot he chipped it neatly towards those quivering antennae.
In an instant the bug revealed itself, shooting up through the hole – a great orange centipede, perhaps as long as a bus! Its many, shiny legs clacked over the smooth concrete floor and its antennae groped around the bolt, searching for the source of the vibration, for prey.
Themba took his chance. Without a word, the powerful hyena brought his hammer down on the beast’s armoured, wedge-shaped head.
Crack!
The giant centipede’s segmented body writhed under Themba’s kristahl hammer before slipping limply back into the hole, leaving a smear of white blood in its wake. There was a prolonged splash as its doubtless twenty-foot, two ton body flopped into the shallow waters below.
The hyenas stood around in silent astonishment.
“Hahaaah!” Themba woofed, triumphantly raising his hammer over his head. “Jua-mataaaaa!”
Everyone cheered and patted him around his mighty shoulders.
Then, as if to dampen spirits, the gas lights slowly went out, casting the refinery into the grey gloom of an overcast Lupan day. The deafening centrifuges wound down, the bubbling vats silenced, and within a few seconds the only sound was the rain patting on the iron roof high above.
“The Politzi must have cut the gas,” Nurka said to his spooked brethren, looking all around. “They’re preparing to storm us.” He looked to his two Chakaa comrades, “Is the black-imperium all gone?”
“Yes, chief,” Madou seethed, standing on one foot.
“Then let’s not overstay our welcome.”
“Hurry, into the sewers,” Themba instructed, looking to Nurka specifically. “You first, chief. You help Madou. I’ll bring up the rear this time.”
At length, Nurka accepted the plan with a simple nod.
Madou, however, shook his head. “I can’t make it with this foot,” he said nobly. “I’ll stay behind and help hold them off.”
“No, Madou,” Nurka said flatly.
“Chief, please. Let me do this for you.”
“Do what? Die and leave me? I need you by my side!”
Once Madou had accepted his lot, Nurka peered down into the blackness of the sewer. Satisfied all was well, he slung his bow and quiver over his shoulders. One of Nurka’s comrades passed him an imperium lantern and he clambered onto the ladder.
Uther watched and listened, silently impressed at how these hyenas had dealt with that centipede.
Suddenly the Howler felt something, a strong imperious presence, strong enough to disturb the overwhelming ambient imperium. Was it Ivan, back to rescue him? He looked behind but saw nobody.
Uther felt something more, something vibrating through the pipe to which he was tied, through the very floor, the clickety-clack of a hundred armoured, bone-like feet moving in rhythmic, chattering
waves. The sensation passed rapidly underneath Uther, like an underground train screaming by.
The penny dropped.
“Oh schmutz,” Uther mouthed.
Not halfway down the ladder, amidst the slimy, brick-lined stink of the pitch-black sewer, Nurka heard a rapid clicking echoing down the tunnel. It emerged from the gloom, a glistening river of colours, charging down the tunnel, sluicing round and round its cylindrical walls in a writhing spiral that defied gravity and logic. In the last second before impact Nurka’s mind made sense of it all – every limb, every segment, every sound, added up to an enormous sewer centipede at least twice the size of the last.
The many-legged beast struck, smashing head-first into the ladder in its haste to snatch the tasty morsel that was Nurka. The corroded ladder protected the hyena, but broke away from its rusted moorings and fell backwards into the water, taking Nurka and his lamp with it.
“Nurkaaa!” Themba cried.
Perhaps sensing better prey, the mighty centipede whirled round in an instant and burst through the hole in pursuit of Themba and the others. Its sinuous, blue body licked around the refinery in a circle like a giant plate armour tongue, knocking barrels and hyenas aside with equal ease as it struggled to pull the remainder of its body through the hole.
Some of the hyenas fired their pistols, but the pellets bounced hopelessly off the creature’s thick, iridescent armour and served only to enrage it further. Others threw their yellow-imperium spears, the crystalline tips breaking on impact, then fizzling and exploding. In this enclosed space, however, the resulting fumes and irritation caused the hyenas more discomfort than the centipede.
In the chaos, Themba found himself separated from Madou and the other hyenas. He wound up near Uther. He gave the wolf a few sideways glances, before suddenly turning to him, hefting his hammer, and swinging it at the wolf’s head.
Uther cringed, every muscle and sinew, tooth and claw.
Wham!
Themba’s kristahl hammer crashed through the pipe to which Uther was tied, splitting it at a join and sending imperium ash venting forth in a noxious cloud. The next Uther knew, Themba grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and bodily lifted him off the broken, ash-spewing pipe, before throwing him down into the shadows behind the machinery.
Coughing and spluttering, Uther rolled to a stop on the cold, hard ground. He looked up at Themba, panting for breath and utterly baffled.
“Go on then!” Themba spat, kicking him, “It is what Nurka would want. Go!”
The hyena turned to leave, to rejoin the fight and help his comrades, but the cold silver pistol that was thrust into his chin stayed him.
“Halt,” Ivan said, slowly emerging from the hissing ash cloud; the Howler just said it, as if saying ‘hello’. “Drop it,” he instructed, tapping Themba’s robust hammer with his delicate imperium rapier, adding, “Quietly.”
Given a moment’s thought, Themba lowered his hammer, letting the hefty, imperium-laden head hit the ground relatively softly, then the rest. With Ivan’s pistol and sword digging in his throat and ribs respectively, Themba was pushed deep into the murky maze of pipes and machinery. Amongst the chaos and obscuring clouds of ash, nobody noticed Themba’s disappearance, even less Ivan’s appearance.
“You all right?” the Howler asked Uther.
“Yeah,” he grunted.
With great effort, and some snarls, the gymnastic Uther tucked his feet in and managed to loop his bound paws round in front of him, whereupon he was able to kneel down and tease out the cruel, Howler-wire with his teeth and so begin to free himself.
“I could have killed him,” Themba told Ivan.
“You wanted to,” he replied coolly.
“Please,” the big hyena said, hearing the shouts of his comrades fighting the centipede. “Let me go to them; let me die by their sides-”
“Or escape to terrorise and murder hundreds of innocent citizens? I think not.”
“As you murder my kin, wolf!”
“Save it for your interrogators, Chakaa.”
Surprised Ivan even knew the term, Chakaa Themba took a moment to growl, “All I need do is shout for help and-”
“And I’ll kill you, then all of them,” Ivan countered instantly. “Your followers are not Chakaa. They’re nothing. Uther and I will squash them. Is that what you want?”
“They are ready to die.”
“But they don’t have to; my superiors only want the ringleaders,” Ivan explained. “Tell your followers to stand down, all of them, and the Howlers will take care of the centipede. You, Nurka and Madou will be executed in the end no doubt, but not the others. I’ll see to it.”
Themba huffed, “I am not their chief, Howler.”
“Become their chief. Take charge. Save their lives.”
“I cannot. I will not.”
“Shout then,” Ivan goaded. “Disgrace yourself and cry for help like a wet-eared pup.”
Themba’s eyes twitched beneath his skull helmet. After an age, the hyena swallowed hard and said, “If I give myself to you… will you let them go, Howler?”
Ivan met him halfway, “I’ll not interfere. If they die, let it be by the centipede. That’s an honourable end for a hyena warrior. They’ll pass across the Eternal Plains and sit beside the Ancestors. How’s that?”
Themba was surprised, “You… you know us well, wolf.”
“I had a good teacher, hyena.”
After listening to the sounds of battle awhile, Themba closed his eyes and nodded just once – his word was given. Hyenas were many things, in Ivan’s experience, but they kept their word more often than wolves.
“Where are the hostages?” Blade-dancer dared ask. “The refinery workers, we know you have them.”
With a tinkle of ear-piercings, Themba just raised his chin haughtily.
Meanwhile, Uther slipped his sore wrists free of the wire and joined Ivan. He relieved Themba of his short sword and tucked it down his own armoured leg.
Ivan glanced at the battered Uther. “Tie him up,” he instructed insipidly.
Uther paused a moment, but if he harboured any misgivings in the light of Themba’s moment of mercy back there, the feeling instantly evaporated when he remembered just how zealously this fanatic had wanted him dead before that.
If anyone had been merciful, it was that Nurka, not his oversized henchbeast.
With that in mind, Uther grabbed Themba’s big paws and, using the very same wire that had bound him, got his sweet revenge. “Told you I’d have yer,” he said in Themba’s ear, twisting the wire especially tight.
“My people will win in the end,” Themba snorted.
“Yeah? We’ll just see about that.”
*
Rufus weaved through the barriers and parked his standard-issue Bloodfang monobike next to Vladimir’s standard-issue Bloodfang car.
The soaked Janoah looked longingly at the car, “Why don’t you use your car? I didn’t have Amael leave you my rank and privileges for nothing, you know.”
“Not my style, Jan,” Rufus said, shutting down his mono. “Train or mono for me, you know that.”
“I miss my old car.”
“Don’t you have one in ALPHA?”
“Only Grand Prefects get those,” Janoah huffed.
“Oh dear. Hard times.”
Standing at the grim refinery gates, Vladimir spied the married couple approach. Rufus took the lead, striding boldly forth as usual, whilst the snoopy Janoah cast her eyes around even more than was normal, as if looking for something, or someone.
Linus saluted Rufus, “Grand Howler!”
Rufus waved the youngster’s salute away. “Don’t worry, Linus,” he said positively, “we’ll get Uther out.”
“And Ivan,” Vladimir added.
“Ivan?” Rufus queried.
“He’s simply… vanished,” his fellow Grand Howler huffed, looking sideways at Linus, then at the three other Redcloaks who had made up the motorcade, as well as Constable Claybo
urne. “Nobody’s seen him apparently.”
The guilty party remained silent.
Vladimir turned to Janoah, “Very amusing, by the way. What were you doing at the Ark, noting down the names of dissident speakers, perhaps?”
Janoah hummed innocently, “Mm?”
Vladimir went on. “You’ve no business here, Prefect,” he stated. “Your remit is to police the Howlers. Since none of us has committed any crimes you will have nothing to do.”
“THORN is as much ALPHA’s problem as yours,” Janoah said. “You’ll be glad of my reinforcements.”
“We don’t need any more zealous Prefects, thank you.”
“Who said anything about Prefects?”
Vladimir frowned and looked at Janoah, who cocked her head just a little.
Grunting, Vladimir then filled Rufus in on the situation, though short of Ivan’s disappearance nothing much had changed since their phone conversation. Werner and the Politzi had the building surrounded and the power cut off, THORN were pointing pistols right back at them, and Uther was inside, presumably captured or worse.
“What do you suggest?” Rufus said.
“That’s what I was going to ask you,” Vladimir replied.
“Negotiate?”
“With THORN? The Elders will go insane.”
“But if we assault the place they’ll kill themselves, if their previous record is anything to go by.”
“Short of letting them walk out of there, I don’t see a way around that,” Vladimir grumbled. “We will just have to storm them and try and catch one before he swigs black-imperium.”
Rufus shook his head, “It’ll be a bloodbath.”
“Doubtless.”
“Killing a few more members won’t stop the movement. We have to find out what they’re up to.”
Vladimir mumbled sarcastically, “Why don’t we ask your wife?”
Rufus glanced back at Janoah. “She doesn’t know any more than us,” he whispered.
“Do you think I’m stupid?” Vladimir growled. “I know she shares secret ALPHA files with you. Yes. She was in your office doing exactly that, wasn’t she? She was plying you for your extensive hyena expertise, no doubt. What’s she got on them?”
“Look,” Rufus snapped, “all I want is to get as many beasts out of this mess alive as possible!”