by T. J. Bass
Tinker glanced around at the gathering of group leaders. Most bore wounds. One was a female coweye. In the distance he heard the drone of gathering Huntercraft.
‘Something has to be done now. Why don’t I take a couple of Agromecks and blademen and attack their camp?’ said Tinker.
‘No good,’ said Moses. ‘They’ll have nearly five hundred Huntercraft by tomorrow – maybe more. Five or ten Agromecks would get eaten alive. They’d be of more use on the perimeter.’
Hip held up Ball. ‘The reason I called this meeting was – my crystal ball has stopped glowing. All it says now is: “Take me to their leader.” It doesn’t talk about Olga anymore.’
‘Talk?’ said Tinker.
‘Well, I heard voices when I put my hands on it. Not with my ears – with my – head. I think,’ said Hip.
Ball sat there, a dull opaque.
Tinker picked it up. A voice told him to go into the hive and find the leader of the Nebishes. He put down the sphere and the voices went away. Odd.
‘It wants me to take it into the hive,’ he said, smiling.
Moses picked it up, heard nothing, and passed it around the circle. It spoke only to Hip and Tinker. Hugh stood and addressed the group.
‘If we stay and fight here, they’ll just wear us down. Outnumbering us the way they do – a million to one. But we have a good chance to knock out their nerve center. If it is located in any one of these shaft cities you can see how easy it should be. If Ball knows where to find their leader, Tinker and I could take a strike force and try to knock it out. Maybe even take it over. Tinker’s good with meck brains.’
‘It’s a chance – a good one,’ said Tinker.
Hip and Tinker moved through their camps quietly asking for volunteers. They turned down many buckeyes and most of the fugitives from Dundas. Only the best-armed and best-muscled would have a chance of surviving the foray.
The acromegalic held his stout spear in two hands – a quarterstaff for the shaft and a broad iron spearhead at one end. He volunteered.
Tinker shook his head.
‘No, gentle giant – your weapon is no good for the close quarters we’ll be fighting in – and your joints will slow you down if we have to do any running.’
Mu Ren stood sadly by, clutching Junior – her belly bulging. She had pleaded with Tinker – trying to keep him near her and their son. But she saw the logic of trying to knock out the hive’s cybercenter. Hundreds of her friends had died in the day’s brief encounter with the hive forces – and each day they would face the same thing. A larger hive force attacking a weakening buckeye camp. Several family groups had tried to escape through the Agrifoam – only to be tracked by Huntercraft. She doubted if any got through – to return to the safety of mountain strongholds. No, she didn’t ask Tinker to call off his attack. She cried a little as he left.
Hip spoke to the assembled strike force – five squads, axe; five, short spear; and twenty, short sword – about two hundred men.
‘Make this planet worthy of Olga’s return,’ he said solemnly – handing Ball to Tinker. ‘Free us from the hive.’
‘Free us,’ chanted the gathered multitude. Tinker looked over the gaunt faces and bandaged ragged bodies. Few were unwounded. In a short time few would be alive, if his mission failed. He raised his bipennis.
‘I have sharpened both blades of my axe. One is for the Nebishes who stand in my way – the other blade I am saving for the enslaving meck mind that runs the hive.’
Cheers.
A hundred spearchuckers ran eagerly into the shaft city to clear a path to the tubeways. The strike force could rest until it reached the heart of the hive.
Tinker stood with Ball under one arm, axe in the other, and watched his men file in – an elite unit. Marching out of step in the rear was an old man and a three-legged dog – Moon and Dan. Moon carried his stained blade, already well-worn by countless skirmishes. Tinker touched the old man’s sinewy arm.
‘Sorry, Moon, you won’t be going. Only the fast, young—’
Moon snarled and pulled his arm away.
‘Why you young pup! I’ve been carving up the Nebish since before you were born. Do you think I want to sit out here with the women and children while you’re in there where all the fighting is?’
Moses and Hugh approached truculent old Moon. Toothpick spoke up: ‘Stay with us on the surface, old man with dog. Tinker goes to fight microcircuits and soft-bellied technicians.’
‘Yes,’ said Hugh. ‘Tomorrow the armies of the hive will be on the surface. Fighting will be hand-to-hand. You and Dan will be needed here – not in the dark mushroom caves of the hive.’
Old Moon relaxed and took his fist out of Tinker’s face. Tapping him lightly on the shoulder with his knuckles, he fumbled for an appropriate curse – ‘Good luck, you dirty—’ He searched for the right word. None came. ‘Kill a circuit for me,’ he said finally.
Tinker trotted downspiral to the head of his unit.
‘Let’s hurry. If we knock out the hive’s cybercenter before dawn, the battle here on the surface may go easier on our people.’ Watcher circuits tracked the army’s progress through the tubes. Val and his personal hunter unit were tubed to intercept. They studied Tinker’s route. The buckeyes used regular passenger tubeways, carving up enough of the citizen crowd to gain standing room. Val checked the locations of his underground hunter units. He called for traffic control.
‘Reroute hunter unit 32-5K into shaft base #47-B3 and tell them to nock arrows. I’ll pull manual stop from here,’ shouted Val.
Ball eavesdropped. ‘Blades up. Eyes right,’ said a voice in Tinker’s head. He issued the orders sharply. One minute later the right wall of the tubeway opened unexpectedly and a force of hunters – two hundred strong – pulled back their bowstrings. They were not prepared for the instant rush of blade-swinging buckeyes. Arrows wobbled and stuck in gristle over shoulder and skull. Twenty seconds later Tinker’s troops moved on.
Val cursed and pulled levers. He flooded several shafts and tubeways, but the buckeyes stayed dry.
‘Damn! Can’t you give me better sequence charts than these?’ he shouted at the meck console.
A traffic controller stood nervously behind Val.
‘The charts are in order, sir,’ explained the controller. ‘You just have to be familiar with the symbols and signs. That is a pretty specialized field.’
‘Well, call someone in who can handle these controls. I want that band of killers stopped.’
The tubeway halted again. The buckeyes hacked their way forward through a crowd of complacent hive citizens. Some died before they were even touched. Others stood along the walls, unconcerned, and uninvolved – wrapped up in their private little dreams.
‘God! What mindless bastards!’ said Tinker, wiping his blade.
A giant sphincter door blocked the tube. Axes began to swing. The door was three feet thick.
‘Go around,’ said Ball through Tinker’s mouth. ‘Cut the right wall.’
The wall peeled away under the blades – exposing bundles of wires and pulsating conduits. Thick mats of dust caked their bare feet as they traversed the ’tween walls. Rats blinked out of the darkness. Fetid odors brought tears to their eyes. When they hacked back into the tubeway they faced a Security force of five hundred.
‘Why, they’re just armed with quarterstaffs!’ exclaimed the first buckeye through the gap. He swung his sword, making room for those who followed. Nets were thrown, fouling his blade. Hi Vol injectors quieted his struggles with Molecular Reward.
The Security guard at the far end of the tubeway section reported to Val over his communicator. Val’s face was more confident now that he had sphincter control.
‘I think we can hold them here, sir. They are ’tween walls. When they try to cut their way back in here we can be ready for them.’
Tinker peered out of the moldy darkness.
‘Can we go around this section?’
‘Negative, sir,’ said t
he scout. ‘The next sphincter is at a weight-bearing wall.’
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.
Mushroom liked it chocolate, cool.
Dampness soothed his aching cap.
He sent his toes into the grime,
Searching for nutritious pap.
His basidium fingers curled tight,
Pinching spores into tiny balls.
His photophobic catatonia ended,
When Mushroom died between the walls.
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?’
Val took his personal guard back to the Huntercraft camp. The three hundred miles from Cybercenter were covered in less than two hours by tubeway. Tracks of the buckeyes remained – blood stains and weapons. Sweepers and repair crews were busy.
Fat Walter waved him into their group.
Val practically beamed as he reported the smashing of the buckeye strike force.
‘You should have seen their faces – struggling in the whirlpool,’ he laughed.
Walter was serious.
‘I’ve done some calculating,’ mumbled Walter. ‘The wizard from Mount Tabulum may have been right after all. Look at these diagrams.’
He projected the solar system on the screen. The sun was in the center. The signs of the zodiac around the circumference.
‘Geocentrically both Venus and Mercury are in Gemini. But they are on the same side of the sun as we are – so,’ and he pointed to the diagram, ‘heliocentrically they are in Sagittarius.’
Val scowled. ‘You’re just a frustrated Follower of Olga – trying to see her hand in everything.’
‘But the beads—’ protested Walter.
Val sighed and studied the beads again.
‘OK’ challenged Val. ‘So you managed to get Mercury and Venus into Sagittarius; but the beads show four planets – Jupiter – and?’
‘Earth.’
‘Earth?’ exploded Val. ‘We aren’t in any sign!’
‘Heliocentrically we are – we are part of a four-planet conjunction.’
‘But who can stand on the sun to see it?’
‘Olga,’ said Walter.
Val threw up his hands.
‘I won’t be going over the buckeye camp tomorrow. I can’t attack a Follower of Olga – even a five-toed one,’ asserted fat Walter.
Val sat down weakly.
‘That’s fine with me, old man. I was going to suggest just that very thing. We’ll be going in on foot after the preliminary attacks. It might be dangerous for a man in your condition.’
‘You seem pretty confident,’ said Walter – suspicious.
Val smiled wickedly.
‘I’ve cleared it with the CO. We are going to tightbeam self-destruct orders to the buckeyes’ Agromecks, and put up energy fields on the shaft caps. That should isolate them outside and panic them. We have over three thousand Huntercraft massed now. Thousands of bowmen will move into the shaft caps behind the fields. It will be like shooting on our own target range.’
Fat Walter tuned in on an audio pickup of the buckeye camp. They were singing their praise of Olga. Walter moved his lips – adding his prayers for their safety.