Deathstalker 04 - Deathstalker Honor

climbed to the top. On the other side, at the bottom of what had once probably been a pleasant valley, lay Brahmin City, its gleaming silver towers glowing brightly in the
    gathering evening. From far away came the sound of endlessly working machinery, from a city that no longer slept. Owen and Hazel made their way carefully down the far side of the ridge and into the valley, and Hazel led them straight to the sewer outlets, a series of great metal pipes protruding from the sides of what had once been a roughly cut canal. No water ran at all now, but the smell from the pipes was still pretty bad. Hazel strode back and forth before the pipe outlets, studying them with a deepening frown.
    “What’s the problem?” said Owen after a while.
    “Give me a break, Deathstalker. I’m trying to remember which pipe is which. I was only here once, and that was years ago. I choose the wrong one, and we could end up going around in circles.”
    “Wonderful,” said Owen. “Oz, you got any ideas?” “Of course,” murmured the AI immediately.
    “Through my ongoing link I have access to all the city’s computer records, and they have extensive maps of the city’s entire sewage system. You want the largest opening, on the far right. Follow that, and it will take you right into the main system, with openings all over the city.”
    Owen relayed this information to Hazel, who nodded reluctantly. “Sounds right.
    Okay, follow me in and stay close.”
    She pulled herself up into the wide metal opening and crouched there a moment, peering into the gloom beyond. The pipe was about eight feet in diameter, the lower part coated with a thick black residue.
    “Smells even worse than I remembered. And I don’t even want to think about what I’m standing in.
    There used to be a lighting system in these pipes, for the sewer-maintenance people, but I can’t see any switches.”
    “Allow me,” said Oz. Light suddenly appeared in the roof of the pipe, running away into the distance.
    The small green globes shed an eerie light, and there were wide patches of shadow and darkness.
    Hazel sniffed loudly. “Oz showing off again, is he? Tell him to check for any old security alarms in the pipes. Or any new ones, come to that.” “I’m on it,” said Oz. “As long as I’m still linked in, I have complete control over what the city computers register.”
    Hazel straightened up and strode determinedly down the pipe. Owen steeled himself against the stench and followed her. The thick black gunk on the floor squelched loudly under his feet and made the going treacherous. Owen hoped fervently that there weren’t any leaks in his boots. There was some kind of slime caked on the walls too, and Owen was careful not to reach out to them for support.
    He lurched and stumbled on after Hazel, who made her way slowly but carefully down the pipe, ignoring the first openings she came to, and then diving without hesitation into a turning on the right that looked no different from any of the others. Presumably her memory was coming back. Owen followed her, and found himself in a system of smaller brick tunnels, barely six feet in diameter. The walls had been scrubbed clean sometime in the not too distant past, but the floor was still pretty disgusting. Hazel hurried on in the lead, following a map in her head that she hadn’t consulted in years. Owen could have asked Oz to check if they were going the right way, but he didn’t. He trusted Hazel. The flat green light made it hard to judge distances and details, and there seemed to be a haze in the air. The smell was so bad by now it left a constant furry feeling in the mouth and nose. God only knew what conditions must have been like when actual sewage ran through these tunnels. Owen increased his pace to walk alongside Hazel, and they strode on in silence for a while, turning as Hazel thought necessary. The only sound in the tunnels was their boots on the sticky floor, the air too still even to allow an echo. “I’m surprised we haven’t seen any rats yet,” Owen said eventually. “I mean, wherever there are sewers, you find rats, even
    in the most salubrious parts of the Empire. Which this isn’t.”
    “No self-respecting rat would set foot in a sleazebag operation like this,” said Hazel. “But I take your point. There was certainly something scuttling in the shadows the last time I was down here.”
    “Maybe they all left when the sewage ran out.”
    “Or maybe the Hadenmen put