gravitated together. 'The only maps are in the Rejects' heads, and they only know part of the whole layout. So we're protected if any of us are captured. The Rejects have been digging these tunnels for centuries now, repairing old ones and blasting out new tunnels, so the maps are always changing. Sometimes I feel I need a guide just to help me find the toilet in the early hours of the morning.
'The Wolfe security forces dig tunnels of their own, too, just to complicate things. Sometimes the excavating teams run into each other, and then all hell breaks loose. The war goes on down here, as well. Tunnel rats clawing at each other in the darkness. The mercenaries don't last long in the tunnels. They can't take the constant darkness and claustrophobia. The pressure drives them crazy. The Rejects, on the other hand, actually like it down here. The protective layers of stone and metal make them feel secure. Crazy bastards. No offense, people.'
The twenty or so Rejects walking with them smiled and nodded, not insulted. Alexander Storm summoned up enough breath for another question.
'How deep do these tunnels go? It feels like we've been descending for hours. Any further, and we'll need an express elevator to get back to the surface.'
'The surface can do without us today,' said Specter Alice. She'd developed a fondness for Storm and attached herself to him whenever possible, to his clear distress. She was after all old and short and ugly, and her furs hadn't been washed since they were still on the animals that provided them. And there was madness in her eyes, right up front where everyone could see it. She smiled chummily at Storm and tried to take his hand. He avoided it with the dexterity of long practice. She wasn't put out.
'We're heading down to one of our man meeting chambers,' she said happily. 'Time you saw where the real decisions get made. Don't worry; we won't go down too far. Dangerous things live in the deep down. Creatures that have adapted to the depths and the dark, away from the weather and the war. Mostly, we don't disturb them, and they don't massacre us. Don't worry, dear; you stick with old Specter Alice. She'll keep you safe.'
Storm smiled weakly, not feeling at all safe, and looked determinedly ahead in the hope of discouraging further conversation. Random had to hide a smile of his own. Storm had been something of a lady-killer in his day. At his side, Ruby sighed heavily, and he turned his attention to her. She was scowling, her mouth turned down sullenly.
'I hate walking,' she said, apropos of nothing in particular. 'I'm a bounty hunter, not a health freak. Where are all these tunnel rats and deadly creatures? I could do with a little excitement. I didn't come to Technos III to be a tourist. When do I get to kill somebody?'
'I like her,' said Long Lankin 32. 'She's got the right attitude.'
They walked on and on. Storm had more and more trouble keeping up with the pace, even with Specter Alice at his side to encourage him. Random felt guilty. Every day he looked younger, felt younger, and Storm looked older. Where once they had been comrades in arms, now they looked more like father and son. Storm hadn't said anything yet, but Random knew his old friend was aware of the growing differences between them. Random tried not to think about the differences too much. He didn't like the idea that he might be becoming an altogether different person. Even if he did feel alive again for the first time in years. He fell back to walk beside Storm and wondered whether he did it out of friendship or pity.
'Why did we ever come here?' Storm said quietly to him. 'War is young man's work. We're too old for this, Jack. We should be sitting beside a fire in a tavern, telling outrageous stories of our youth. We've earned that. We spilled enough blood, in enough battles. Why do we have to do it all again?'
'Because the war isn't over,' said Random. 'We swore an oath, remember? We swore upon our blood and our honor that we would fight the Empire until either it fell or we did.'
'Young men swore that oath,' said Storm. 'Young men who knew nothing about war or politics, or the reality of how the Empire works.'
'Are you saying you don't believe in the Cause anymore?'
'Of course I still believe in the Cause! I'm here, aren't I? I'm just saying it's time for someone else to carry the banner. Someone younger, who doesn't feel the cold in his bones or wake up coughing his lungs up every morning. We've done our bit. And I'm too old to die on a strange world beside strange people, fighting to free a few clones from a factory.'
'You'll get your second wind soon,' said Random lamely. 'You'll feel better then.'
'Don't bloody patronize me, Random,' said Storm, and they strode along in silence after that.
Until the Reject in the lead came to a sudden halt and raised a hand to stop those behind him. Everyone stood quietly together in the pool of the lanterns' light, staring into the gloom ahead of them, listening carefully. Storm looked anxiously about him, but Random and Specter Alice were too busy listening to pay him any attention. Random frowned, concentrating, reaching out with his altered senses. He could just make out a low, regular thudding, overlapping itself again and again, coming from somewhere up ahead in the tunnel.
'What is it?' he asked quietly. 'What's coming?'
'Wolfe tunnel rats,' said Specter Alice. 'They have devices for detecting movement in nearby tunnels. They're close now. Brace yourselves.'
And as suddenly as that, everyone had a weapon of some sort in their hands. Mostly, swords and axes, with the occasional length of spiked chain. Random and Ruby moved automatically to stand together, swords at the ready, leaving Storm to fend for himself. He glared at their unresponsive backs and hefted his own sword uncertainly. The steady thudding grew nearer and nearer. Random's free hand hovered over the disrupter on his belt, but he didn't draw it. He didn't like to think what a ricocheting energy beam would do in these close quarters. He just hoped the Wolfe fighters had had the same thought. The wall to his right cracked apart suddenly, torn from floor to ceiling, and men in armored battle suits lurched out into the tunnel. They moved surprisingly quickly amid the whine of supporting servo-mechanisms and tore into the massed group of rebels with massive axes and long swords that only powered armor could have wielded.
The two sides clashed together, the rebels darting around and among the slower armored men, searching out their blind spots and weak points with flashing swords and axes. There wasn't much room for maneuver in the confined space. Instead, there was an endlessly shifting, boiling mass of bodies packed together, taking a stand just long enough for a solid blow before slipping away again. The slower and the unlucky cried out, and blood spurted in the thick air, and those who fell to be trampled underfoot rarely rose to fight again. Swords and axes bounced harmlessly away from the solid plates of the Wolfe armor, but there were weaker, vulnerable spots at joints and junctures, for those who knew where to look for them. But the armored men could take a dozen hits and press on unharmed, while a blow powered by their servomotors could cut clean through a Reject's body. And there were far more armored men than Rejects.
One by one the rebels fell, pushed farther and farther back down the tunnel. Three armored men were down, dispatched by blows to neck or eyes, but only three out of many. Still the Rejects fought on, determined and far from desperate. Their long adaptation to Technos III's extremes had made them somewhat more than human, and they were much more used to the fighting conditions underground. They swarmed around the armored men, ducking and dodging blows with almost impossible speed, never letting up in their attack. And slowly, step-by-step, their retreat stopped.
Right in the thick of it all, Ruby Journey braced herself and swung her sword with both hands. The blade powered around in a tight arc and sheared clean through a soldier's armored neck. The helmeted head bounced away across the sea of heaving shoulders before finally falling to the floor, the look of astonishment still clear on the bloody face. Random laughed and roared his approval. He brought his sword around in an arc, only to see the blade bounce harmlessly back from a suddenly raised armored arm. The impact jarred the sword right out of his hand, and it fell to disappear in the mess of heaving bodies. The Wolfe mercenary grinned and drew back his sword for a killing thrust. Ruby saw and cried out, but she was too far away to help. Raw fury blazed up inside Random, and he punched his opponent in the chest with all his strength. His bare fist hammered through the battle armor and plunged on into the man's chest. The Wolfe soldier screamed horribly as Random's fist closed around his heart and tore it out. Random held the still beating heart up in his hand, blood running down his arm as he laughed victoriously.
For a moment the battle seemed to stop, everyone frozen where they were, and then it began again, only this time the rebels were forcing the soldiers back. Random and Ruby pressed forward and could not be stopped, and the Rejects took new heart from their example. More of the armored men fell, screaming. Some turned to flee, but there wasn't room in the packed space, and they just got in the way of their fellows. Specter Alice crowed victoriously as she straddled the shoulders of a man in armor, leaning forward over him, her bloody dagger stabbing
