Deathstalker 01 - Deathstalker

trouble in dealing with underground movements, thought Valentine Wolfe waspishly, is that sometimes they take their name too literally. He struggled on through the narrow service duct, shoulders hunched and head down to keep from banging it on the low tunnel roof. It stretched endlessly away before him, cramped and gloomy and unreservedly depressing. Low-intensity lamps hung down from the roof at regular intervals, providing just enough light to make him squint painfully. An insane tangle of interwoven cables stretched along the walls and ceiling, colored-coded in a way that presumably made sense to someone.
    Valentine thought them unforgivably gaudy and garish. Some of the cables were frayed and dangling, like hanging vines, and he had to bat them aside with his arms as he progressed. There was dirt and dust everywhere. Clearly no one had passed through the tunnel in some time, and Valentine for one didn't blame them.
    The view was monotonous, his back was killing him, and the smell was appalling.
    He was deep in the guts of the world, in its hidden underside: the maze of sewers and access tunnels and service ducts that linked the varying
    self-contained worlds that existed within Golgotha. Although the complicated maze was necessary for the inner world's survival, few people ever thought of them. Only service personnel were authorized to use the passageways, but then, Valentine was used to being in places he wasn't supposed to be. His lip curled in disgust as the slime he was treading in grew steadily deeper. It was already lapping at the ankles of his very fashionable thigh-length leather boots and was doing nothing at all for their shine. Valentine didn't know what the slime was and didn't feel in the least like investigating its nature. He had a strong feeling he was better off not knowing. It looked worryingly organic, and he thought it best not to disturb the stuff any more than he had to. He trudged on down the tunnel, one hand casually resting on the gun at his hip, trying without much success to ease the aching muscles of his hunched back.
    He'd discarded the frailer parts of his outfit before setting out, replacing them with more robust and anonymous items, and wrapped himself in a long black cloak. He'd wiped the heavy makeup from his face, tied back his long hair in a functional braid, and together with his new outfit he presented a quite different appearance, which was just as well. It wouldn't do for anyone to discover Valentine Wolfe attending meetings of the clone and esper undergrounds.
    They wouldn't understand.
    It was a shame he'd had to rush away so soon after the wedding debacle. He'd expected a dull and lifeless affair, followed by appalling food and worse dancing, but in the end it had turned out to be rather amusing. He would have liked to hang around and drop a few exquisite bon mots where they could do the most harm, but the call from the underground had arrived by its usual roundabout route, and when the underground called, he answered. He didn't take kindly to
    being summoned by such lowlife trash, but as long as they had something he wanted, he'd go along with the game. It did have its amusing moments. Though he had to admit this wasn't one of them.
    He stopped suddenly and peered suspiciously about him in the gloom. The dimly glowing lamp shed a blue-white light before and behind him, but between the widely spaced lamps there was a darkness so deep even his chemically boosted eyes couldn't pierce it. He listened intently, holding himself perfectly still, but nothing stirred. Valentine scowled thoughtfully. He could have sworn he'd heard something, but sound traveled strangely in the narrow service duct. God only knew what kind of small, disgusting life might have made a home for itself down here.
    He wasn't that far from one of the main sewer offshoots, according to the map he'd memorized earlier. There were all kinds of stories about what strange and malignant creatures flourished in the sewers. Also, according to rumor, sewer workers received battle pay and bonuses for the heads of anything they brought back with them. Not that Valentine ever listened to such stories. He looked round sharply, sure he'd picked up something just at the edge of his hearing, but there was only the silence and the gloom. He concentrated, and deep within his body, drug caches dumped their loads into his systems. His breathing quickened and deepened as his metabolism speeded up, ready for action. He was