After an endless moment, the black-goggled face turned away and the figure moved further along the pipe. Donna willed herself to breathe in slowly without gasping.
“Crap,” the Delaque whispered. He made a low whistle.
Others moved down the pipe: six, maybe seven in all, it was hard to be sure. It was also hard to hear their voices when they spoke. The sibilance characteristic of this particular Delaque gang was always dancing at the edge of perception. There was something about “Ulanti bitch,” and “bounty.” It sounded like there was a disagreement going on. She heard “back”—which could have been about going back or a reference to the dead bounty hunter Kell Bak, or to his live cousin, Shallej. Once again she wished for a frag-grenade but knew it would probably kill her as well with the shockwave in such tight confines.
One voice was raised above the whispers, and it held the tones of command.
“We split up and keeping looking,” it rasped. “The bitch can’t get to Relli. Those are Bak’s orders.”
And that, apparently, was that. The group waded off along the pipe without another word and would no doubt start splitting up at each junction they came to. That left Donna in a prime position to descend and go in entirely the opposite direction. Or it would have done if they hadn’t left one of their number behind to watch out for her in case she doubled back. The lookout was out of sight from Donna, but by the amber light she could guess it was the same ganger they had sent to scout ahead. “Ganger” was a misnomer. He was evidently a fresh-meat juve and jittery as hell.
It was typical of these particular Delaque to send in an expendable first, one with a half-empty laspistol, and then to leave the kid behind as a back marker. All he had to do was scream or fire his weapon and the rest of the gangers would be back in an instant. Hell, he could even be bait for a trap.
The sad fact was that Donna couldn’t stay hidden in the shaft indefinitely, as sooner or later the juve would get bored and start poking his nose into things he shouldn’t. Juves were always doing dumb stuff—it seemed to be a rule.
Donna started to ease herself down the ladder. She planned to hook her feet over the rungs so she could swing down head first into the pipe and break the kid’s neck, assuming he was obliging enough to venture into neck snapping range.
The juve was most obliging, even a little too much so. As Donna’s feet reached the lowest rungs, she looked down to see the moon-faced juve was below her with one foot on the bottom of the ladder. He looked up and his mouth opened in a wide “O” of alarm.
Donna’s boot heel scrunched into his face, snapping his head back and sending broken teeth pin-wheeling into the sludge. She followed up instantly, swinging gracefully from the ladder and double-kicking his chest. His ribs were splintered into dull knives that skewered heart and lungs as her powerful legs pistoned into him with the full weight of her body behind them.
The juve flopped against the side of the pipe and slithered into the sludge vomiting red froth from his shattered mouth. Donna nimbly dropped off the ladder and onto his sagging chest to push him fully under the surface. He died with barely a ripple. Donna glared about her, expecting a barrage of gunfire, but all was quiet. In the distance she could occasionally hear the other Delaque splashing around through the sewers. Time to go.
She started wading back along the pipe, trying to keep quiet and look in all directions at once. She was perhaps half way back to the next junction when she heard a low whistle echoing back eerily from the direction the Delaque had taken. After a few more steps it was repeated, and a heartbeat after that Donna heard the unmistakable splashes of many men running.
Ploughing through the stinking sewage was like a waking nightmare, bent over and almost-running but moving so agonisingly slowly that she expected each step to be her last. There was a deafening rattle of shots behind her and autogun rounds whipped past as she breasted the corner. A las-bolt flashed into a hissing cloud of steam as it struck the surface of the liquid, scalding her as she dived sideways into the junction. Just as the situation seemed like it couldn’t get any worse, Donna heard a distant basso profundo roar cut across the thunderous weapons fire. The natives were getting restless.
The firing stuttered and died away into echoes. An illusion of peace settled for a moment, but it was only an illusion. Right now, Donna knew, the Delaque would be slinking forward silently and fanning out to catch her in a net, covering the spot where she had disappeared from sight with guns alert for the first glimpse of movement.
Well screw that, Donna thought, and she kept wading until she could duck down a narrower branch in the pipes than she had tried before. Whatever monstrosity had started roaming around sounded so big, hopefully it wouldn’t fit down there.
The narrow pipe gave way to a tunnel the size of a boulevard within twenty wallowing steps—so much for that plan. Donna mounted crumbling steps onto one of the walkways that ranged down either side. Now that her ears weren’t filled by the sound of her own progress, she could hear all kinds of distorted echoes in the pipes around her: continuous splashings, occasional shots or crackling salvos, more blood chilling roars, babbling or gibbering voices. Nothing was in sight; the slurry in the wide channel was serene and undisturbed, but the echoes made it sound as if the end of the world was occurring just a few steps away.
Donna was paralysed by indecision. Staying here left her exposed with no cover if anyone came out of the half dozen tributary pipes that entered the tunnel from either side. To keep moving was to risk blundering into a Delaque in the confusion, or worse still she might run into whatever they were shooting at—because it certainly wasn’t her any more.
As she was standing there, her dark-adjusted eyes (real and artificial) picked up light flowing from one of the tributary pipes on the opposite side of the channel like moonlight. It was a cold phosphorescence, pallid and diffuse but it seemed unfeasibly bright in the gloom. Donna watched in horrified fascination as the light brightened perceptibly; whatever was making it was moving closer. She could hear a slithering, splashing sound coming with it that could only be made by something really, really big moving through the pipes. Little wavelets raced away from slurry pushed down the pipeway by its displacement.
The glow died away in one pipe and then started to grow in the next one. Donna heard chuffing breath and a low, throaty rumble like an engine ticking over. Was the thing was moving along parallel to the tunnel, casting about for more victims? Probably. The next pipe dimmed as it moved on. Two more pipes and it would be opposite Donna.
She had a brief internal struggle between curiosity and common sense before discovering she had no real desire to find out what it was. She selected the nearest pipe on her side and made for it, intending to put as much distance between her and the thing as possible.
Donna saw the Delaque illuminated in the tunnel mouth as he fired a single manstopper round from his shot cannon aimed straight at her head.
A scatter round would have smeared the contents of her skull across the tunnel, but the manstopper trades spread for hitting power. She was already turning and a preternaturally fast flinch meant the solid lump of lead tore a smoking hole through her dreads instead of her brain. The shock of it made Donna fall prone instantly, as though her brain was so scared by the close call that the only thing it could come up with was to drop her like a puppet with its strings cut.
Donna wildly loosed off shots with her las—none of them even vaguely close to where the Delaque had been standing. He spun away with his long coat-tails fluttering like bird’s wings. He was out of sight before she recovered her aim enough to shoot accurately.
She heard him rack the slide on his shot cannon and the plop-hiss of a spent cartridge being ejected into the slurry. That sent her rolling to one side so that if he came out for a snap shot she wouldn’t be right where he expected her to be. It was a standoff now with both fighters alerted, close enough to touch and with only a single corner between them. She hoped he didn’t have any frag bombs.
&n
bsp; “Ulanti bitch! You should have stayed out of the Underhive. You were a fool to come down here.” The Delaque’s venomous hiss echoed from the pipe.
“What, and miss all the marvelous ambience? And the fine company?” Donna was silently shifting into a crouch by the wall and inwardly bewailing the smell of her burning hair. It was a safe guess by now that he didn’t have any frags.
“Stay out of Relli’s affairs or it’ll be the death of you.”
She wondered what the Delaque was trying to pull, probably just covering the pipe and waiting for his buddies to arrive.
Donna caught a flicker of pallid light across her; the dim shadow she cast on the stained tunnel wall was growing. The monster!
She whipped around to see great, fanged jaws issuing from the pipe on the opposite side of the tunnel. Actually, it was more like the tunnel had grown a circle of teeth, the maw filled it so perfectly. The dull, luminescent flesh was streaked with blood and gore, tatters of skin and cloth hanging from the dagger-like fangs like grisly banners. Donna heard the Delaque snickering as he backed away to safety.
“Bon appétit, nobledam.” His whispered taunt was barely audible over the rumbling hiss of the newcomer. “I do hope you find your dinner guest engaging.”
Donna was already running.
She didn’t look back. When running for your life that only makes you trip over and lose it; your life that is. She sprinted along the walkway past the pipe where the Delaque had been hiding. The dull boom of his shot cannon came on her heels a split second after. He was way off, and he must have been a good distance away by now, and putting in still more distance had probably become a bigger priority than covering the end of the pipe.
The analysis of the Delaque’s intentions flipped through one part of her mind while another watched for broken sections of walkway or slippery patches as she ran. A third monitored the hissing, splashing progress of the thing behind her. In the corner of her eye she could see a bow wave surging along the channel after her. Whatever it was, it was big and it was fast.
Ahead the walkway and channel apparently stopped in empty air as the tunnel opened out into an inky gulf. She was cornered.
She kept running for the edge anyway. Perhaps the monster would be as dumb as the giant and just run right off it? Failing that, Donna decided she might just want to jump rather than get eaten.
As she got closer, Donna’s enhanced eye could pick out that it wasn’t a sheer drop, rather the channel became a sluiceway, a sheer slope at an angle of about forty-five degrees. She couldn’t see if there was a walkway or steps along the side of it. Peachy.
Her ears told her that the monster was slowing down. It was smart enough to know she was trapped and it wasn’t about to go charging off a concealed edge. Donna had a second to stop and take in the sluiceway before turning to confront her pursuer.
The sluiceway converged with three others into a wide vertical shaft maybe twenty metres in diameter. The mouth of the shaft was covered by a gridwork of thick bars which had caught all kinds of detritus despite their wide spacing and corroded condition. Donna glimpsed fallen spars, rubble, bones, even the wreck of an old utility vehicle. It was like a huge, sagging web spun by industrial strength spiders, an image she tried put out of her mind as she spun around.
The monster was regarding her with reptilian eyes from twenty metres back along the channel. From blunt snout to bladed tail tip it must have topped ten metres long, its jaws fully a third of that. Four stubby legs barely lifted its heavy body out of the slurry, but its thick, powerful tail meant it could belly-surf through the muck with surprising speed for something that weighed a good few tonnes.
Thick plates and scales covered its upper surface. Its eyes were relatively small and widely spaced, hard to hit, and as for brains—who knew? They were probably small and hard to find too. Its flesh glowed with an ashen corpse-candle light from encrusted slime or fungus, probably parasitic since it didn’t look like the monster hunted primarily by using its eyes, although using taste or smell down here didn’t bear thinking about.
It rumbled a challenge and scissored open its three-metre jaws to reveal rows of gleaming teeth. It definitely had the edge at close fighting—Seventy-six was quite outmatched. In fact, Donna decided, one rush and it would all be over. She had fought some big Underhive critters in her time, but never something big enough that she could stand in its open mouth and still have room to stretch her arms above her head.
She jumped down the sluiceway and immediately started sliding away towards the deceptively solid-looking surface below. The monster gave a rumbling cough of annoyance behind her and started slithering forward. She caught sight of the stumps of corroded railings to one side and kicked over towards them, stumbling onto crumbling steps at the side of the sluiceway.
Her momentum carried her forward so fast she had to skip down the rest of the steps to avoid losing her balance and going headlong. She bounded to the bottom of the sluiceway and out onto the grill over the shaft in the space of a few panic strewn seconds. Rubble dropped away treacherously beneath her feet before she had even taken two steps, but she was ready for that and neatly pirouetted to hop up onto a large fallen slab.
The monster was crawling over the edge of the sluice, using the worn old steps to slow itself down as it scraped down the slope. It looked mightily sure of itself. Donna had a sudden inkling this might be the beast’s lair.
Donna kept moving, trying to reach the opposite sluiceway, but what had looked like an almost solid surface from above was a patchwork of detritus islands with gaping holes in between them big enough to swallow her whole. She had to pick her way carefully while the monster slithered forward untroubled. It was too big to even notice the metre-wide gaps let alone be impeded by them, and it was gaining on her.
She reached the bottom of the sluiceway and her heart fell. The steps on this side were completely obliterated. Climbing the slope would be too slow—one good rear-and-snap and the monster would have her in its jaws before she got halfway up.
One of the things that had marked Mad Donna as a natural gang fighter was her ability to adapt instantly to changing circumstances. Where others would vainly cling to their plans even in the face of certain failure, she could recognise one course of action as fruitless and change to another without missing a beat. So she did here. With her retreat blocked she didn’t waste a breath cursing the vagaries of fate, or attempt to climb anyway in the hope of being lucky. Mad Donna turned and levelled her laspistol defiantly.
The beast might get its kill but it was going to have to fight for it.
It crawled around the last rubble pile and lazily spread its titanic jaws wide to claim her. Donna shot it in the roof of the mouth, hoping to hit its brain. She didn’t succeed in that, but she succeeded in seriously pissing it off. It hissed horribly and the jaws slammed shut with a snap loud enough to hurt Donna’s ears. It lunged at her then, its four stubby legs driving it forward with shocking speed. She got off another shot aimed at its eyes but they were too small and it was moving too fast. The las-bolt creased the end of its muzzle and made it flinch reflexively back, saving Donna from being crushed against the sluiceway by its bulk. She skipped aside as it lashed its jaws furiously back and forth.
Donna saw a chance and took it, darting-past the beast and towards the bottom of another sluiceway. It caught her a glancing blow with its thick tail, a flying lesson of several metres duration that left Donna bruised, breathless and clutching desperately at the open grillwork so she didn’t tumble through. She caught a fleeting impression of a deep well beneath her with the glimmer of sludge at the bottom stirred by restless, hungry shapes. Tearing her gaze away, she saw the monster coming for her again.
No mere flinch was going to save her this time. She aimed as carefully as she could—there was only going to be time for one shot. The tiny reptilian eyes gleamed at her with mocking intensity, as if it knew it was an impossible shot. Donna pulled the trigger… and missed. The monster opened its
jaws again. There would be no reprieve this time.
Suddenly the staccato rattle of a heavy stubber filled the sluiceways with false thunder. As if the monster wasn’t enough, the Delaque had caught up with her too. Sparks flew as high velocity bullets chewed up rubble and ricocheted off the grillwork. The stream of flying lead tracked towards her and then veered into the monster. Bloody impacts stitched across its bleached flesh. Its answering roar was edged with pain for the first time.
The monster shuddered and twisted aside, crawling away through the rubble to escape its tormentor. More bursts of autofire followed its pale bulk into the gloom. A voice called down.
“Grab the line, D’onne, be quick girl!”
It was Tessera.
Formal sanctuary was a piece of law left over from the house wars of millennia ago, before there was a ruling house on Necromunda. Put simply, it meant throwing yourself on the mercy of one house in order not to be given up to another. In theory, a noble seeking sanctuary could not be ransomed off, executed or exchanged, nor held against their will. That was the theory, though it had been found wanting on a number of occasions when put to the test.
D’onne and Hanno were conducted inside the great gate without hindrance. Then they had to stand waiting while the sergeant of the guard (or whatever the Escher equivalent was) had a long, haggling vox call with their supervisor. They relieved Hanno of his shot cannon before letting him go further, although they allowed him to keep his sidearm—which was ironic considering the holstered bolt pistol he wore at his waste was a far deadlier piece than the cannon he carried.
The white paving stones outside also formed the avenue they stood on behind the gate. D’onne mused that it had been a bad choice, showing its age in the millions of scuffs and drag marks on its surface. High arched ceilings and concealed uplighting gave the illusion of space, a poor imitation that left her feeling briefly homesick for the sweeping colonnades of her home.
Necromunda - Survival Instinct Page 11