Chapter 38: The Sump-Gate Breakout
Kian Voss led the charge, his PDF autogun barking in rhythmic bursts. The "rats" in his path shrieked in terror, scrambling over one another to escape the lead storm. If a group was too slow to scatter, Kian didn't hesitate—two or three controlled bursts, seven or eight bodies on the floor, and the path was clear again.
He turned his head for a fraction of a second. Joel's parents weren't stupid; they were huddled right behind him, the father pushing the mechanical wheelchair with a strength fueled by pure, survivalist adrenaline.
Good, Kian thought. Keep moving. Break the line.
Underhive dregs are a cowardly lot. They respect strength because strength usually means you have more bullets than they have lives. But they are also opportunistic predators. If you show a single flicker of weakness, they will swarm you like piranhas in a chem-vat until not even your shadow remains.
Kian was desperate to clear the main plaza. If they reached the narrow corridors leading to the Water Guild district, the sheer numbers of the mob wouldn't matter.
Suddenly, Kian heard a sharp whistle of air from his left. He ducked instinctively. A heavy iron pipe spun through the space where his head had been a second ago.
He snarled and looked toward the source. A bald, tattooed lunatic was charging him with a jagged meat-cleaver, screaming incoherently. There was no logic to the attack; the man had simply been driven mad by the sound of the gunfire and the scent of blood. In the Underhive, madness was as common as the rot.
Kian didn't waste words. He leveled his rifle and put a single heavy slug through the man's forehead. The junkie's skull vaporized, and he crumpled into a heap.
Kian tried to push forward again, but a woman's scream shattered the air behind him. It was Joel's mother.
In the chaos of the last few seconds, another scavenger had lunged from the shadows, grabbing the small boy from the mother's arms. The mother was clawing at the man's face, screaming as he tried to drag the child into the darkness of a side-pipe.
"Throne's blood!" Kian cursed.
He snatched the cleaver from the dead bald man's hand and lunged. He didn't use the gun—too much risk of hitting the kid. He raised the cleaver and brought it down in a brutal, vertical arc.
CRACK-SQUELCH.
The cleaver severed both the scavenger's arms at the elbows. The man let out a gargling shriek as blood sprayed the mother's rags. Kian followed up with a horizontal swipe that took the man's head clean off. The skull rolled away into the muck like a discarded ball.
Kian looked around. The mob's fear was being replaced by a dangerous, feverish greed. They saw the autogun. They saw the "Spire-soft" family. In the Underhive, a military rifle was a ticket to becoming a local warlord.
The crowd began to tighten their circle again. They were willing to bet their lives for that rifle.
Kian's mind raced. His Mental Clarity was at 16; he could see the tactical map as clearly as a cogitator display. He had seconds before they were overwhelmed.
He emptied the rest of his magazine into the thickest part of the crowd to the North, creating a brief, gory corridor. Then, he grabbed the rifle by its strap and hurled it with all his might toward the South.
The PDF autogun spun through the air, glinting under the dim emergency lights. The mob's collective gaze followed it like a pack of hounds. They forgot about the family. They forgot about the scavenger. They launched themselves into a fratricidal frenzy, stabbing and biting one another just to touch the plasteel casing of the weapon.
"MOVE!" Kian roared.
He pulled the semi-auto pistol he'd taken from Rudolphson and shoved it into Little Joel's hands. The boy was shaking, but his eyes were wide and focused.
"Go! Run toward the Mercator Aqua sector! Find Overseer Reno. Tell him Kian Voss sent you! He'll protect you!"
Kian delivered a heavy, motivating punch to the father's shoulder. "RUN, DAMN YOU!"
The father let out a desperate cry and sprinted, the wheelchair's wheels screeching against the floor. The mother clutched the younger brother and followed, heads down, running for their lives.
Kian acted as their Orbital Sentry, prowling the perimeter of their retreat with the scavenged cleaver in one hand and his 15mm stub-cannon in the other. Anyone who got within five meters died. He hacked, he shot, and he carved a red wake behind the family.
The Water Guild gates were in sight. They were going to make it.
Then, the world tilted.
POP.
A single gunshot rang out from the crowd—a lucky shot from a rusted pipe-gun. Kian felt a hammer-blow to his abdomen. The bullet punched through his rags and buried itself deep in his gut.
He stumbled, his boots sliding in the filth. He rolled once, trying to regain his feet, but the gap between him and the family had opened. The mob, sensing the "Alpha" was wounded, instantly flooded the space.
Kian scrambled up, his right hand gripping the cleaver, his left hand clutched over the bloody hole in his stomach. He coughed, tasting copper.
He looked up. Hundreds of pairs of hungry, bloodshot eyes were fixed on him. The dregs held their pipes and knives high, waiting for the final collapse.
Kian didn't feel fear. He felt a cold, dark amusement. Well, that's one way to extract, he thought.
He let out a jagged, bloody laugh and charged the nearest group.
He swung the cleaver, split a man's skull to the jawline, and used the momentum to drive his elbow into another's throat. He was a dervish of desperate violence. He hacked and stabbed, taking four, five, six men down with him as the weight of the mob finally bore him to the floor.
Blades fell. Pipes crushed.
Kian Voss fought until the very moment of his absolute death, his scavenged cleaver never stopping as he thrust upward from the ground, wounding and killing four or five more of the bastards before he was finally reduced to a pulp of meat and bone.
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