The service chimney pipes beneath Hangar Bay Nine were never designed for human passage. They were heavy-duty living channels. Six-foot-wide circular tubes made of corrugated iron, slick with stale water drops and crusted with thick layers of dried nutrient settled mud that smelled of fermented yeast, stale bile, and cold bone meal.
Arthur crouched at the mouth of the opened air-flow shaft, adjusting the straps of his tactical harness. The air rising from the darkness was fifteen degrees warmer than the freezing high-sky wind outside, heavy and humid with the rhythmic thrum of massive air-powered pumps running deep within the citadel’s core.
“Pipeline Flue Fourteen-B,” Arthur said, consulting the light-projected blueprint projected from his wrist unit. “This channel runs directly beneath the hangar foundations, connecting the main living waste processors to Splicing Factory Beta. If we follow this line, we bypass the armored security inner walls and drop straight into their main incubation floor.”
“And if it’s trapped?” Toby Mallow asked from the lip of the shaft. He held a heavy battery-powered halogen lantern that cast long, jittery shadows across the wet iron rungs. “Cultists don’t leave upkeep pipes open for visitors, Arthur. They know that if someone breaches the hangar, this is the only direct route into the nursery.”
