The roar of the opening central floodgate was a terrifying, ear-splitting cascade. A churning torrent of black, oil-slicked marsh water thundering down the concrete spillway and shaking the iron foundation of the Northern Sluice Canal.
On the western retaining levee, the narrow gravel raised stone road was dangerous with slick yellow sulfur mud, grease from burst high-pressure lines, and the driving sheets of pouring rain.
Behind the heavy bulwarks of the lead refugee wagon, the nomad wagon drivers worked with desperate, disciplined urgency. Men and women hauled on wet hemp ropes. They drove heavy iron wedges beneath the steel-shod wagon wheels to prevent the heavy baggage carts from sliding backward into the churning drainage chimney pipes. In the third trailer, mothers pressed crying infants against their breasts, keeping wool blankets wrapped securely around their faces to shield their newly healed lungs from the sulfur spray.
Suddenly, a series of sharp, air-powered clicks echoed from the dense banks of blackened reeds flanking the western drainage ditch.
Through the yellow sulfur fog, six pairs of evil crimson sight sensors flared to life.
They were a backup calm distance of Promethean Beastworks cyber-spliced assault hounds—chassis model Stalker-Nine—designed specifically for rapid, amphibious flanking maneuvers. Unlike the heavy bionic mastiffs on the bridge narrow high walkways, these units were lean, low-slung, and clad in overlapping plates of dark carbon-composite armor. They didn’t bark. Their high-pressure cooling vents hissed with high-pressure glycol vapor as they sprang from the reeds, moving across the slippery mud with terrifying…
