Elite: A Hunter novel (13 page)

“Lose anyone?” I said, not sure I understood what he was saying, or implying.

“Start subconsciously repressing their powers,” he said hastily. Maybe too hastily? What kind of “crèche” was this? What kind of school? Then he flipped the subject as if trying to avoid exactly that question. “Kids with minimal powers get weeded out at around nine or ten and go to a different school, where they are taught mostly regular stuff and how to use what little they’ve got. They’re never in PsiCorps at all. That’s why they’re available to take jobs with the vid-channels, work as gifted assistants, or go into the army.”

This was getting way too serious. So I changed the subject entirely and asked him about what other storms had been like—and what he and the others stuck in Uncle’s building had done during them. It turned out they did a lot of stupid things that often ended up really funny…and resulted in edicts like
Personnel shall no longer engage in racing games using office chairs
and
Personnel shall not use the copying machines for copying any object other than a document.

At that point, both our Perscoms beeped, letting us know that we weren’t
entirely
off the leash on this date, and that we both were on duty in the morning.

“Our masters call,” I said wryly. He laughed. “Look, you live, what, a few blocks from here?” I continued. “There’s no reason why you should ride back all the way with me only to turn around and ride back by yourself.”

“But I like your company,” he objected, so I gave in and we ordered a pod and he went with me back to Hunter HQ. Unfortunately, we got a driver-run pod, so we just held hands until the pod delivered me back where I’d started. I wished we’d had another chance to make out a little more. And I kind of wanted to smooth things over after the way he broke off that kiss. I went back inside feeling as if I’d somehow missed something, even though I wasn’t sure what it was I could have missed.

THIS TIME I WENT down into the storm sewers from an entrance to the west of the Hub. The pass-box at the door of the little bunker accepted my Perscom just fine, and the Hounds and I made our descent.

The sewer tunnel looked so innocent, and once again smelled of nothing but scoured cement and damp—but after turning up those
Nagas
, even if I hadn’t been a Hunter I would have regarded it with suspicion. I looked over the Hounds and decided that since we were alone, I’d let them arrange themselves around me as they saw fit. “Form up how you want,” I told them as they all turned their muzzles toward me, waiting for orders. “We’re heading to the Hub again.”

Bya and Myrrdhin (who seemed to have become Bya’s default second-in-command) both nodded. Myrrdhin ranged on ahead of us, Bya put himself right at my side, and the rest packed up loosely around the two of us.

We moved slowly, much more slowly that we usually did in the open. That was partly because I would stop every twenty paces or so, in order that we could all listen and probe with other senses for a few moments. If I’d still had my own channel, our progress would have put my viewers to sleep.

But this wasn’t all that different from the way I patrolled in the deep forest. Stop frequently and listen; let the Hounds use all their senses. Use all of mine as well. I wasn’t as good at detecting magic and magical creatures as they were, but there were a few times when I’d done so before they had.

On the other hand, I had one thing going for me that they didn’t, down here in an all-man-made Hunting ground. I knew machinery. And sometimes I could tell when something wasn’t quite right.

As we had made our way down the tunnel, there had been distant sounds getting louder. I already knew from my map what it was: a pumping station, sequestered in one of those side tunnels that contained pipes and cables. The storm runoff didn’t need to be pumped, but sewage and potable water sometimes did. And the nearer we got, the more I became aware that there was something “off” in how the pump sounded. As if it was straining, or not functioning quite right. “Contact Apex Power and Water, Reclamation Division, human operator,” I said, feeling sure that there must be humans in charge of things there as well as computers. There was. I immediately was put in contact with a bored-looking woman who sat straight up and stared at the screen, flustered, when she saw who was calling her. “Hunter Joyeaux here,” I said crisply, before she could stammer out anything. “I’m patrolling sector”—I switched screens and checked my map—“six seventy-one and I’m just on the other side of the wall from what I think is a pumping station.”

I’ll say this for her, she went straight to business.
“It is, Hunter.”
Then she frowned.
“This is odd. That pumping station was just given an inspection and a clean bill of health less than a month ago. But now—”

“Now there’s something wrong with it. I thought so,” I said. “Don’t send anyone down here yet. I’ll keep in touch. Hunter Joyeaux out.”

I closed the link before she could say—or worse, ask—anything. I didn’t know just who was “allowed” to know that there were Othersiders down here, or rather, how bad the infestations had gotten, so I was erring on the side of caution. Kent had supplied me with one of the dinguses that opened the hatches to the side tunnels, so I was set. Well, as “set” as I could be, knowing that there might be another clot of those
Nagas
in there—or who knew what else.

Still, this time I had come prepared. “There’s something messing with the machinery in there. I’m going to gas them,” I told the Hounds, who had gathered around me, looking expectant. “So get yourselves ready for gas, then set up for a fire ambush.” The good thing about being down here in a cement tunnel was that there just wasn’t anything to burn, so they wouldn’t have to be careful. I strapped on my gas mask and put in earplugs in case it was
Nagas
again, and arranged my gear. A gas grenade on a very, very short fuse, two more on my belt that I could grab in a hurry, my shotgun slung where I could reach it easily, and the dingus in my off hand.

I didn’t have to do any tedious counting down with the Hounds. They
knew
what I was going to do and when I was going to do it. So I got a good, deep breath of air (just in case I hadn’t settled the mask quite right and there was a leak), got myself psyched up, triggered the dingus, and threw the grenade in as soon as the door was open enough. The grenade was already hissing gas as it lobbed into the darkness past the door.

But what piled out, shrieking in tiny, high-pitched voices, was
not
a clot of
Nagas.

This tumble of tiny arms and tiny flailing legs and tiny screaming heads came pouring out. I mean that literally—there were so many they poured out like water. And they sounded like screaming mice. There was a flash of oversize wrenches and screwdrivers in the middle of the horde. Frankly, I didn’t know what they were—except that they were armed with what looked like
tools
, and my Hounds immediately began incinerating them.

Tools can also be weapons, and I was taking no chances. I unloaded my shotgun into the mob still pouring out of the doorway in a literal flood, and I didn’t stop firing, reloading, and firing until there was nothing left moving but myself and the Hounds. It was a few minutes before I was able to breathe. It had all happened stupidly fast, and my heart was still racing.

By that point, between the fire and the natural circulation in the tunnel, the air had cleared enough I could take off my mask. I walked over to the pile of bodies, but these were sort of evaporating as the Hounds inhaled the manna, and I couldn’t get a good sense of what they had looked like. “Hunter Joyeaux to HQ,” I said into my Perscom. “Did you get all that? Can you give me a playback and a freeze on one of these things?”

“Roger, Hunter. We did and we can.”
I waited patiently, but it wasn’t more than a minute later that the operator had gotten me a nice clear shot of one of these creatures just before I’d blown it apart.

It was about the same size as a Kobold, but unlike a Kobold, it was clothed, wearing something like a hooded red jumpsuit with black boots and a white harnesslike affair. There were two horns poking through the hood, and it had what looked like a pair of welding goggles over its eyes. It had been carrying a set of wire cutters almost as tall as it was. And I had no idea what the damned thing could be. Once again, this was something I had
never
heard of.

“HQ, any clues as to what these things are?” I asked, baffled.

“Negative, Hunter. Would you have a look at the pumping station?”

“Roger that,” I replied, and used the flashlight on my shotgun to illuminate the darkened space beyond the door. Darkened, because, although there were supposed to be lights in here, the little monsters had demolished them. They were lying on the floor of the cubby, pulled out of the ceiling, and bare wires dangling from the hole. And although the pump was supposed to be protected, they’d been doing a number on the casing housing it. Now that I could hear it clearly, it was sounding ragged, as if they’d gotten through to some part of it that made it run unevenly.

“We’ll give P and W the go-ahead to come down there and fix that thing. Wait for them, just in case there’s something else lurking down there.”

“Roger that, HQ,” I replied. “While I wait, can you give me a playback from all the angles you have?”

“That would be a whole two angles and one close-up, Hunter,”
came the dry reply.
“And lucky to get that.”

“You’re disappointing this here turnip,” I said, just as dryly. “No twenty-angle shots with zoom good enough to see the hairs on a wart? Here I thought you high-techie city slickers could do anything!” I thought I heard muffled laughter on the other end of the comm, and smiled a little.

Well, I didn’t learn much more from the three playbacks I got before the work crew arrived to fix the pump and the lights. Just that the little monsters looked alike, they were all carrying tools of various sorts, and clearly they had no problem with anything ferrous (although the shotgun pellets at close range hadn’t done them any good at all). HQ confessed to equal bafflement. Like the
Nagas
, these things were new. Unlike the
Nagas
, these creatures seemed right at home with human tech, at least to the extent of trying to destroy it. From the sound of things, HQ was just as disturbed by this new trend as I was.

This was twice now that the Othersiders had shown the ability to deal with our technology. The first time, when the Folk Mage I had encountered on the train to Apex had dismantled the electrified cage that protected the train far enough ahead of the engine that the cage was safe to meddle with, and now, when these unknown Othersiders had the tools and the know-how to sabotage equipment. It was one thing to be able to pop locks with magic—Othersiders had been doing that for a long time now, and if anything, I suspected that electronic locks were easier for them to deal with than the sort that required a key or a combination. This was different, and I tried not to show that it was making my skin crawl.

By the time the work crew arrived, the Othersiders had vanished, along with their tools, leaving nothing to examine. That wasn’t unprecedented; sometimes the objects that Othersiders carried were purely magical constructs that vanished when they died; sometimes they were physical, like the Redcaps’ knives or the Kobolds’ hammers. The
Nagas
had had both: the swords had been physical, but the jewelry had been constructs. Which was…I won’t lie…kind of sad. Because it had been lovely jewelry, and a shame to have it vanish like that, and I
know
that probably makes me sound like a pirate or something, wanting to loot the bodies, but on the other hand,
they
had wanted to chop our heads off, so a little loot would have been fair payback.

It wasn’t the same work crew as last time, but a couple of them were just as starstruck as Kelly had been. Fortunately, their supervisor wasn’t, or it could have gotten embarrassing.

We all stood guard while the work crew put things to rights, but nothing else showed up. When the pump was humming away properly again and the lights had been put back together, they went back up, and we went back on patrol.

The Hounds were satisfied, so they didn’t mind taking things slowly, but I was glad I was solo down here, because most people would probably have been impatient with how cautious I was being—even some of my fellow Hunters from back home. As we went on—yard after yard of boring concrete tunnel, empty and echoing—all my caution started to feel as if I was overreacting. I had to keep reminding myself that it was stupid to get complacent.

Finally, we got down into an area under the Hub itself. We hadn’t gotten this far the last time; now I could see why Uncle was concerned. There were lots and lots of intersecting tunnels here—it wasn’t exactly a maze since there were signs inset into the walls telling you exactly where you were and what street you were under, but there were plenty of places for things to hide in ambush, and there were a lot of blind spots and dead ends where there were no cameras or lights. I’m not exactly an architect, so I had no idea how the logical and mathematical storm-sewer tunnels had turned into this warren, but it sure wasn’t the ideal situation for work crews afraid of what was getting down here.