Other great Necromunda reads from Black Library

KAL JERICO: SINNERS BOUNTY
Josh Reynolds

SOULLESS FURY
Will McDermott

ROAD TO REDEMPTION
Mike Brooks

TERMINAL OVERKILL
Justin D Hill

UNDERHIVE
An anthology by various authors
Includes the novella Wanted: Dead by Mike Brooks

VENATORS
A three-part audio drama
Justin D Hill, Matt Keefe & Josh Reynolds

KAL JERICO OMNIBUS
Includes the novels Blood Royal, Cardinal Crimson and Lasgun Wedding
Will McDermott & Gordon Rennie

FLESHWORKS
Lucien Soulban

SALVATION
C S Goto

SURVIVAL INSTINCT
Andy Chambers

BACK FROM THE DEAD
Nick Kyme

OUTLANDER
Matt Keefe

JUNKTION
Matthew Farrer

Contents

Cover

Backlist

Title Page

Necromunda

THE BIRTH OF HUNGER

HIS TERRIBLE VISAGE

SLUDGE HARBOUR PAYBACK

LOW LIVES

Prologue

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Epilogue

PARADISE

DEAD DROP

BANNER-JARL

LONG WAY HOME

THE LAST VOYAGE OF ELISSA HARROW

CUT AND GUT

About the Authors

An Extract from ‘Kal Jerio: Sinner’s Bounty’

A Black Library Publication

eBook license

In order to even begin to understand the blasted world of Necromunda you must first understand the hive cities. These man-made mountains of plasteel, ceramite and rockrete have accreted over centuries to protect their inhabitants from a hostile environment, so very much like the termite mounds they resemble. The Necromundan hive cities have populations in the billions and are intensely industrialised, each one commanding the manufacturing potential of an entire planet or colony system compacted into a few hundred square kilometres.

The internal stratification of the hive cities is also illuminating to observe. The entire hive structure replicates the social status of its inhabitants in a vertical plane. At the top are the nobility, below them are the workers, and below the workers are the dregs of society, the outcasts. Hive Primus, seat of the planetary governor Lord Helmawr of Necromunda, illustrates this in the starkest terms. The nobles – Houses Helmawr, Cattalus, Ty, Ulanti, Greim, Ran Lo and Ko’Iron – live in the ‘Spire’, and seldom set foot below the ‘Wall’ that exists between themselves and the great forges and hab zones of the hive city proper.

Below the hive city is the ‘Underhive’, foundation layers of habitation domes, industrial zones and tunnels which have been abandoned in prior generations, only to be re-occupied by those with nowhere else to go.

But… humans are not insects. They do not hive together well. Necessity may force it, but the hive cities of Necromunda remain internally divided to the point of brutalisation and outright violence being an everyday fact of life. The Underhive, meanwhile, is a thoroughly lawless place, beset by gangs and renegades, where only the strongest or the most cunning survive. The Goliaths, who believe firmly that might is right; the matriarchal, man-hating Escher; the industrial Orlocks; the technologically-minded Van Saar; the Delaque whose very existence depends on their espionage network; the fiery zealots of the Cawdor. All striving for the advantage that will elevate them, no matter how briefly, above the other houses and gangs of the Underhive.

Most fascinating of all is when individuals attempt to cross the monumental physical and social divides of the hive to start new lives. Given social conditions, ascension through the hive is nigh on impossible, but descent is an altogether easier, albeit altogether less appealing, possibility.

– excerpted from Xonariarius the Younger’s
Nobilite Pax Imperator – the Triumph
of Aristocracy over Democracy.

THE BIRTH OF HUNGER

DAVID ANNANDALE

Valjun still thought of the lie they had told him on his first day. ‘You’ll get used to it,’ they had said. Every Corpse Guild veteran had uttered the same words, one after the other, as they had shown him, still a child, how to operate the bone saws, how to break the bodies down before they went into the grinders, how to pull out the organs for the macerator.

You’ll get used to it. You’ll get used to it. You’ll get used to it. The lie repeated again and again, always with the same dead tone, no matter who spoke, as if every member of the Corpse Guild was, in truth, an extension of the machines, a mechanical armature covered in flesh, and the only real humans were the dead things being rendered into corpse-starch. He had always known those words were a lie, even on the first day he had heard them. That first day, when the terror and the horror and the revulsion at what he was being shown and told he must do were so great, he had thought he would have to go mad. He had thought he would go mad because it was impossible to remain sane in this place. Impossible to see the butchered corpses and smell the sweetness of rot and the cloying, damp grasp of blood, and not scream from the soul. Impossible to hear the whine of the saws through bone and the squelch of intestines hitting the floor, and impossible to rend the dead apart without screaming, without going blind, without retreating into the shrieking dark of the mind forever. So yes, on that first day, even then, even then, when any kind of hope, however weak, would seem like salvation, he had recognised the lie.

He had thought about the lie every day since he had first heard it. There had been a time, a short time, when he had tried to believe, and at the beginning of each shift he had wondered, Am I used to it yet? Is it getting easier? At the end of each shift, as he had staggered back to cramped, dark quarters that were little more than a holding tank, the answer had been No, but for that time, that short time, he had dared to hope that perhaps the next shift would be a little less terrible, the horror a little less absolute.

Such a short time.

Valjun was old now, as old as anyone in the rendering plant ever became, older in spirit than in body, old enough that death was no longer a distant prospect, though it held no true promise of release. Death meant becoming meat for grinding. There was no true escape from the machinery of the Corpse Guild.

Valjun possessed a single point of pride, the one thing in his life that he could cling to that was not tainted by failure. He had never freed himself of the corpse-starch manufactory. He should have been rotated out many years ago, but either he had become invisible to the administrative machinery of the guild, or he had made the mistake of being too efficient and too ideal a worker. He knew he was trapped here forever, as if he were another tool, soldered to the rendering floor.

He would have been proud to have saved his daughter, Mnethac, from this life. He had failed at that too. She worked, gore-spattered, at the grinder, barely thirty feet away from him.

His only pride, his single victory, was that he had not perpetuated the lie. He had never promised anyone a surcease from horror. He had only ever spoken the truth about existence on the low rungs of the Corpse Guild.

When he spoke at all, that is. He saw less and less reason to talk with the passing years. There was nothing to talk about. Even to Mnethac. Perhaps especially to her, when the mere sight of her was another reminder of pain. There was only horror to be endured.

No. Wait. That was not quite true. There was more than horror to be endured. There was also Guervis.

There was the voice of the Corpse Guild overseer now, its sharp, nasal honk of command cutting through the wet, crunching, grinding clamour of the rendering floor. Valjun was operating a bone saw. He lowered the spinning blade onto the legs of the corpse he was working on, slicing through first at the shins, then at the knees. After each act of severing, he raised the blade to drag the body forward to section it again. Even the high-pitched shriek of metal and bone failed to drown out Guervis.

Valjun pushed up on the heavy lever, raising the huge, iron blade again. He paused before repositioning the gutted corpse, and glanced left at the overseer.

Guervis and three of his enforcement guards were moving slowly along the catwalk. The vast rendering chamber, one of the cluster that made up this corpse-starch manufactory, had a network of iron walkways and ladders providing access to the butcher machines. Guervis was working his way around the gutting stations. Workers toiled around tables that were ten feet on a side. They shoved the extracted organs into chutes beside each table, which carried the material down between the heavy, rotating cylinders of the macerator one level below, where they were crushed to pulp. Gutters in the tables poured the blood into pipes that fed into the machine as well, lubricating the process of destruction.

The emptied bodies were tossed onto wide trolleys. Other workers hauled the trolleys to the bone saw stations. Valjun and his fellow operators dragged the corpses onto the saw tables and carved them into chunks. They transferred the pieces into carts that would be collected in their turn and tipped into the grinder, a gaping maw filled with interlocking teeth.

Above and below Valjun, on other levels more than fifteen feet apart, the same tasks were repeated at identical machines. It never stopped. There was no day or night here, only rotating shifts, endlessly pushing the dead towards their final service as food for the living.

Guervis and his guards were moving from worker to worker, ignoring some and forcing others to stop what they were doing and be frisked.

‘What are they looking for?’ Marrika asked. She was much younger than Valjun, yet in only a short time, she had been aged by the work into the same wrinkled, knotted, withered husk. She was working the bone saw to Valjun’s right.

‘No idea,’ said Valjun.

‘Why the search? What does he think we could steal?’

Valjun shrugged. He lowered the saw, cutting the torso in half. Then he looked at Guervis again. He was curious, and that surprised him. He hadn’t thought he still had it in him to be curious. He hadn’t thought there was room for any emotions other than revulsion and horror. But Marrika was right. There was nothing to steal in this terrible place, unless it was the souls of those who slaved here, and those were stolen on the first day on the rendering floor. The pittance earned from the work was not a living. It was just a marker of pain. And there were no items of value here, nothing to smuggle out. Did Guervis think something was being smuggled in? Valjun could think of nothing that would be of concern to the likes of the overseer. Valjun didn’t think Guervis cared about anything as long as the quota of each shift was reached, and there were no disruptions in the manufactory. If the overseer’s well-being was assured, all else was beneath notice.

Valjun raised and lowered the saw, raised and lowered it, his movements automatic. He finished sectioning the corpse. Its head rolled freely back and forth on the table. He grabbed it by its hair and tossed it into the cart. He turned to the heap of bodies next to his station. He took the next on under the arms, and paused again, staring at Guervis, enjoying the feeling of hatred displacing horror.

The overseer was a useful figure for Valjun’s hate. Guervis, strutting in his Corpse Guild livery, did not suffer as the serfs did. He had never rendered a corpse in his life. He was a thin man who had grown paunchy in middle age, though he carried himself as if his self-image were still the wiry figure of his youth. His overseer’s uniform was a bit too large, as if to camouflage his stomach, a testament to the comforts he knew that Valjun was better off not even imagining. He ate more than he needed, and his life was not one of labour. He sat a lot. He had opinions. He received coin he had not earned. He benefitted from the misery of his workers for no other reason than the luck of his position.

Valjun resented Guervis and all of his kind. He loathed the man when he could not see him, and hated him even more when he could. Guervis strutted with authority based on nothing. It was rare that he deigned to come down into the noise and filth of the rendering chambers. Now here he was, looking as if he had constructed every machine himself, even while his eyes skipped about, avoiding the sights that surrounded him.

He and his guard interrupted the workers with no warning, no consideration of what they might be in the middle of operating. ‘He’s going to get someone killed,’ Marrika said. ‘Or himself.’

Valjun grunted in agreement. He entertained the thought of Guervis slipping and falling face first into the spinning blade of a bone saw. That would be something. It was also not to be. Fools like Guervis never hurt themselves.

Valjun heaved the next corpse onto the table, and brought the saw down on its lower legs. He kept half an eye on Guervis’ progress, making sure he would have a moment to pause when the overseer reached his position.

But Guervis did not have him searched. He looked Valjun over as he passed, his expression one of haughty satisfaction, and that was all. He paused for a longer look at Marrika, but made no demands of her either, nor did he of any of the other bone saw operators.

Is he bored? Valjun wondered. Did he already find what he was looking for?

Apparently not. He rounded suddenly on the workers heaving chunks of bodies into the grinder.

‘Stop what you are doing!’ he shouted into the ear of Hesh, enraged that the worker had shown no sign of being aware of his important approach. The younger man jumped, startled.

He lost his footing.

He tipped forward, flailing, grabbing at anything.

His hand clutched at the sleeve of the worker beside him.

Mnethac’s sleeve.

Valjun’s eyes widened, horror swamping his hate in an instant as he saw his daughter’s life teeter on the point of her balance.

Mnethac threw herself backwards and tore loose. Hesh shrieked and toppled over the raised lip of the maw and down into the grinder. The machinery ground hard against the strain of a full body. A fountain of blood spurted upward. Gears whined, pumping smoke. Hesh’s scream cut short, and after a few moments, the machine’s normal rumble returned.

Guervis stepped back, wiping at the blood on his cheek. He marched away quickly, and did not search anyone else until he had reached the floor below. Valjun watched him go, the burst of relief creating room for the hatred again.

What are you looking for? Was it worth what you just caused?

For Guervis, no doubt. For Guervis, Hesh was now worth more. He was product, and did not have to be paid.

Still. Still. Guervis had killed a man, and was still looking for nothing that Valjun could imagine.

What is it? What are you seeking?

Guervis returned to the overseer’s quarters after a few more spot checks, and left the rest of the search to the guards.

‘What should we be on the lookout for?’ they had asked.

‘You’ll know it when you see it,’ he had replied, emphatically enough, he hoped, to disguise his own ignorance.

He sat down at his desk. He wiped his cheek again, reflexively, though the blood was gone.

His office was small and dark, but it was clean. It was located above the highest of the rendering chambers. There were no windows. He did not enjoy watching the Corpse Guild’s work. He did not like going to the work floors more than was necessary. Until today, he had not felt it necessary at all. But the order had come, bearing the heraldry of the Lord Helmawr, the order commanding increased and rigorous vigilance in the Corpse Guilds manufactories.

Vigilance against what? The order, delivered by servo-skull, did not say. So he had gone looking, for anything that seemed wrong, for anything his workers should not have.

He had found nothing. These people had nothing. What could he have found?

The only result of the search had been that stupid accident. That was not his fault. The man had not been paying attention. He had been worse than oblivious. He had been disrespectful. He had to have known Guervis was there. He had turned his back on a superior. It was his arrogance and his carelessness that had killed him. Not Guervis startling him.

He wiped at his cheek again, trying to remove the memory of blood, and the sight of the living body being crushed to mulch. He should not care about the face of that fool. He should not care about the explosive agony that lingered on the features after he was already dead. He should not think about seeing the face compressed and shredded by the toothed cylinders of the grinder.

He scratched his cheek until it hurt.

Just before Valjun’s shift ended, the grinder started screaming again. Hesh’s full body had been too much after all, straining parts of the rusting, centuries-old mechanism until they broke. The machinery was simple, and there were replacement parts in storage warehouses. There was no need to send for a tech-priest. This was part of the routine of the rendering floor. The machines died too, but they could be resurrected. They had value. But this grinder would be inactive for a few hours.

When he turned his bone saw over to his replacement, Valjun walked past the stilled grinder. He was still thinking about Guervis’ search, trying to imagine what its purpose was. What are you looking for? His eyes fell on the motionless cylinders. On the blood dripping from the interlocking spikes of their teeth. On the shreds of flesh clinging to them, the little pieces of Hesh, his brief memorial before the grinding started again.

Valjun stopped. He stared at the flesh and the blood.

What are you looking for?

It couldn’t be this. Yet the words kept repeating in his head. What are you looking for? What are you looking for? He wasn’t sure he was asking Guervis the question any more.

He was taking root. He couldn’t tear his gaze away. The torn, crushed remains held him. For the first time in his life, he looked at them with something other than horror. He took in more and more detail. The way a streak of blood covered one end of a larger shred of flesh. The pieces of bone, sharp and white, tiny needles, stuck to the metal in the slick of gore. This had been a life. This had been Hesh, to whom he had nodded at the start of the shift. Hesh was still present. He had been transformed. He was everywhere in the grinder.

The shapes of the crushed body called to Valjun in ways he could not understand.

Something stirred in depths he had forgotten. He did not understand what he felt. It was too old and too vast to be grasped right away.

Valjun blinked, shook himself free of his trance. He left the rendering chamber and made his way down the cramped, dark stairwells that stank of urine and blood, to the narrow alcove where he slept. He had to scramble up some rungs to reach it. The space was too small for him even to sit upright in it. It was barely larger than the coffin he would never have. He squeezed inside, and slid its grate shut.

He tried to sleep.

All the while, the thing he could not identify, yet felt like his truest self, slowly uncoiled in his chest.

Guervis was there again during Valjun’s next shift. He and his guards went through more slowly this time. If the overseer was trying to avoid another embarrassing death, he compensated the apparent care with increased brutality. The slightest hesitation on the part of a worker to stop what they were doing and submit to a search was met with a beating. Valjun kept an eye on Guervis’ approach. He forced the hatred out of his eyes. He would not give the overseer the satisfaction of disciplining him. He timed the rhythm of his work. He had the skill to do so after all these decades. He finished reducing a corpse to chunks just as Guervis was drawing abreast of his station. Valjun turned to face the overseer with an expression of utterly blank subservience.

Guervis looked him over for a moment, then nodded at the guards. Valjun raised his arms. He was indifference made flesh as they searched him. When they were done, Guervis nodded for them to move on to Marrika. He regarded Valjun for a few moments more, then said, ‘Come with me.’

As the guards continued the search, Guervis led Valjun out of the rendering chamber, and up the manufactory levels to his office. The noise of the machinery was muffled in here. It was the closest to quiet that Valjun had experienced in his memory. Standing before Guervis’ desk, he wavered slightly, the sudden sensory deprivation assailing him with vertigo.

‘What is your name?’ Guervis asked.

Valjun told him. A servo-skull hovering above the scarred, heavy desk chattered mechanically. A parchment strip unspooled from between its jaws until its teeth snapped shut. Guervis reached up and tore the parchment off, then ran his eyes over it. ‘You have been here a long time,’ he said, apparently realising this for the first time.

‘Yes, overseer.’ You needed a servo-skull to tell you that?

‘Your work record is without blemish, I see.’

‘Thank you, overseer.’ I would like to see the blemish of my handprints around your throat.

‘Your attention to duty has earned you an honour, Operator Valjun,’ Guervis said. When Valjun said nothing, Guervis cleared his throat and continued. ‘You will assist me in ensuring the compliance to order and faith of this manufactory.’

‘Yes, overseer.’ I have no idea what you’re talking about. What are you looking for?

‘You will be my eyes and ears on the rendering floor.’

‘Yes, overseer.’

‘If you witness anything unusual, you report it to me. Do you understand?’

‘Yes, overseer.’ No. I do not understand.

Valjun returned to the floor, trying to imagine what Guervis thought he might see. We turn our dead into food. What is there that can be forbidden in this place?

‘What did he want?” Marrika asked.

‘He wants me to be his spy.’ He adjusted a body on the table, then cut off its feet.

Marrika’s laugh was hard. ‘What is he afraid of? What does he think we can steal?’

Valjun shrugged. But while he worked, Marrika’s words lingered in his mind. They formed a chorus with the other questions.

What does he think we can steal?

What is he looking for?

What is forbidden?

What is forbidden?

What is forbidden?

He kept thinking, too, of the spattered remains of Hesh. How they had glinted in the light of the lumen arcs. How they had pulled the soul. And for the first time, he focused on his work and felt something very different from horror. He admired the way the saw sliced through skin and muscle, the whirring blade effortless, yet the wounds it tore ragged all the same. The bite of metal into bone, the breaking down of the human into slabs of meat, there was an intimacy here, a closeness no other act could even approximate.

What is forbidden?

He knew. The certainty hit him with the surprise of joy. Corpse-starch was a lie. What was forbidden was the truth. When the billions of Necromunda ate corpse-starch, they did not perceive the human beings it had once been. Its origins were invisible, the truth destroyed, erased, by the actions of the bone saw and the grinder. What was forbidden was to eat in the full knowledge of what one was consuming. The starch was the lie. The flesh was the truth.

Valjun cut the body into its pieces. When he reached the torso, it took him more than a single pass of the blade to slice all the way through the body. He made sure of that. He made sure that he brought the blade down in two very slightly different positions, and a strip of glistening muscle dropped from the blade to the table. As he pulled the body forward, he palmed the strip, and concealed it in the sleeve of his work tunic.

No one saw.

At the end of his shift, when he was alone in his cell, he turned his back to the grate and pulled out the morsel of flesh. He could not see it in the dark, but the damp texture of the muscle made him shiver with anticipation.

This is forbidden.

This is the truth.

He put the muscle in his mouth. He ran his tongue over sinew. He tasted blood, and the purity of its horror.

He began to chew.

The thing that had begun to uncoil in his chest the day before now rushed through his veins. He gasped at the force of revelation. He chewed and tore at the flesh, and when he swallowed, he snarled in furious joy, because in that moment, he felt the touch of the divine.

And he knew he would not keep this revelation to himself.

The thought of Mnethac no longer caused him pain.

After a month of pointless searches, and of pointless meetings with Valjun, who never had anything to report, Guervis realised that he had to accept one of two possibilities. The first was that there truly was nothing wrong with his manufactory. He liked that option. It flattered his pride and his laziness. The other possibility was that his efforts at vigilance had failed, and that he would have to try something else.

He wanted the first possibility to be true. He was afraid that the second one might be, and even more afraid of being found negligent if it was.

But what am I supposed to be looking for?

There was no point in asking. If he was meant to know, the orders would have told him.

So after a month, he tried something different. He did what he had done his best to avoid for his entire tenure as overseer. He oversaw the plant.

A narrow corridor from his office ended at a balcony that looked down upon the concentric floors of the central rendering chamber. There was another balcony above each of the other chambers as well. Guervis leaned against the railing and looked down. The work below made him think of maggots writhing through meat. The stench was suffocating. As they had during his inspections, his eyes began watering immediately. He rubbed at them, breathed through his mouth and concentrated on what he was seeing.

This is pointless. What could I possibly see?

The workers were so small from this height. They could be doing anything, and he wouldn’t know it. Even so, the fear of condemnation held him at his post. So did growing resentment at the idea that something was being concealed from him. He felt as if his superiors and his inferiors were both plotting against him. He would make someone pay. And he could only strike downward.

He stood there for hours, growing stiff, yet becoming mesmerised by the rhythms and patterns of the labour he commanded. This far up, though the smell was appalling, the revolting nature of the work was harder to see, and the activity became an abstraction. The repetitiveness of the motions was almost soothing, and when the shift changed, the interruption of the work was jarring.

Jarring enough to prick him back into alertness. And jarring enough that he noticed the single note of continuity. It was on the nearest level to him. One of the workers lingered over her bone saw after the horn sounded for the shift to end. She stayed there, leaning over the corpse on the table. Her replacement loitered a short distance away. Then she looked up and around suddenly, and walked quickly towards the exit from her level.

Guervis made a note of her station and ran back to his office. ‘Bone saw table thirty-five, level one, chamber primus,’ he said to the servo-skull. ‘Shift beta.’

The servo-skull squealed to itself in binharic, then said, ‘Operator Fantun.’

‘Give me her cell coordinates.’

After another consultation with itself, the servo-skull delivered the parchment that showed where Fantun slept.

‘Krantz! Ilden!’ Guervis shouted.

The two guards entered from the antechamber of his office. Guervis held up the parchment. ‘Come with me. We have an inspection to make.’

The two men fell into step behind him. He set a swift, determined pace and they marched from the office and down the long, echoing staircase towards the warren of the workers’ quarters.

The corridors beneath the rendering chambers were narrow, barely more than irregular fissures in the dank walls. The lumen strips were few, the ones that worked fewer still. It would have been easy to lose his way, but the guards were more familiar with this deep sector of the hive than he was, and it took them less than an hour to locate which honeycomb of floor-to-ceiling cells held Fantun’s crawl space of a home. Fantun’s cell was in the bottom row, level with the floor. Krantz held a lumen stick’s beam down while Guervis crouched before the grate. Fantun was lying on her side, her back to the corridor.

‘Operator Fantun,’ Guervis said, ‘turn around.’

She did not move.

Guervis seized the grate and yanked hard. Its rusted latch gave way and he hauled it aside. At the same moment, Fantun whipped around, fast as a snake. She grinned at Guervis, her teeth smeared with blood, bits of flesh coating her lips. In both hands she clutched a face, recently flayed from a corpse. It was tattered and gnawed. Fantun chewed slowly, mockingly.

Guervis rocked back on his heels and sat down hard. He stared at the grotesque in the cell. For a several seconds he refused to understand what he was seeing.

Krantz’s lumen stick dropped to the floor.

‘Arrest her,’ Guervis told the guards. ‘Drag her out of there.’

There was no answer. Fantun snarled.

Guervis looked up. Krantz and Ilden were standing still, heads slumped and arms hanging loose. Boning swords protruded from their chests. Their killers held them upright for a few moments longer, then let the bodies collapse.

Dark figures were emerging from all the cells up and down the corridor. Trapped, Guervis scrabbled backwards, a moan of fear rising from his chest. Hands seized his shoulders and held him in place. Valjun stepped out from the gathering shadows and into the small pool of light cast by the lumen stick. He was carrying a butcher’s cleaver. He looked down at Guervis.

‘Now we have both found what we were looking for,’ he said.

‘What are you talking about?’ Guervis demanded. He tried to summon his vanished authority. ‘Release me at once!’

Valjun shook his head. He bared his teeth in contempt. ‘You are not worthy of revelation,’ he said. ‘So it shall not be yours. But you are owed our thanks.’

‘Your thanks?’ Guervis struggled to rise, but the hands pressed him down hard, their grips like iron.

‘Yes. You showed me the way.’

‘You are speaking nonsense. Let me go!’

‘You searched, and so I searched too. You showed me the way to the Lord of Meat. And through me, all are turning to Him.’

Guervis looked around, desperate for help. The shadowy faces surrounding him were all smeared with blood. Then he remembered a detail from Valjun’s data parchment. ‘I don’t see your daughter here.’

‘No.’

‘Whatever you think you’re going to do, cease now, and she, at least, will be spared your punishment.’

‘She will join us soon. I will know when she is ready. There is nothing for you to spare us. You never did before. Now there is nothing from which you will be spared.’ The sickle in Valjun’s hand gleamed.

‘You said you owed me thanks!’

‘I have given it. Now we will collect the coin that is owed us.’

With quick, savage motions, Valjun hacked at Guervis’ legs with the cleaver. The attack was so sudden, the pain so enormous, Guervis’ scream froze in his throat. Valjun severed the legs at the knee. Another of the workers passed him two lengths of cloth, and he used them to tie off the stumps.

‘You must be awake a bit longer,’ Valjun said. He passed the limbs to his followers, who bit into the flesh with greedy, drooling pleasure. ‘You are our reward. We finally have payment from you, and in return, you will witness your sacrifice to the Lord of Meat.’

Then Valjun stepped aside. The hands released Guervis’ arms, but he was already too weak to crawl away. When Valjun’s flock closed in, though, with more sickles, and began to carve, then, at the last, he had the strength to scream.

HIS TERRIBLE VISAGE

GARY KLOSTER

Curled in his nest of rags, Tibbet clutched the tools of his penance close. A sparker, so ancient the Imperial aquila stamped into its side was almost worn away, and a thin piece of wire, its end twisted into a crude copy of that double-headed eagle sigil.

‘Master of Mankind…’ The words were familiar, but Tibbet couldn’t force them out. His teeth locked, his hands clenched, his eyes shut, and he curled in on himself, shaking with frustrated rage. Useless, stupid, know-nothing, got-nothing, weak, pathetic. Every insult that the Broken Bloods had hurled at him through their rusty masks still echoed in his head, and every word had hurt more than the kicks and punches that had followed when the gangers had driven him away.

Again.

‘I’m not useless!’ Tibbet snarled as he twisted, the meagre muscles of his scrawny body drawing tight over malnourished bones. ‘Why can’t they see it? I can see it!’ And he could, red and hot and bright behind his clenched lids. Fire filled him, hot and ready to burn. Fire so clean, so righteous – but the Broken Bloods didn’t see it. They were the fist of holy House Cawdor in this shadowed, stinking portion of Hive Primus, and House Cawdor was the instrument of the Golden Throne, the Master of Mankind. The Broken Bloods were dedicated and deadly, and Tibbet…

Tibbet shuddered, every muscle quivering with tension. He was nothing. He’d been taught that since birth. He was nothing, but he was not useless. Beneath the dirt and rags, beneath his fragile flesh, his weak mind, he burned, and he would give that holy fire to the Broken Bloods, to House Cawdor, to the Master. He would give it to them, if they would only take it.

‘They can’t see it. So I’ll show it to them.’

The words soothed him. Made his muscles unknot, let him uncurl. Slowly, smoothly, Tibbet began the ritual again. He snapped the sparker and heated the wire in its flame until the double-headed eagle began to glow, bright, bright, bright. He raised it up from the purifying flame – then pressed it down into the flesh of his forearm. The pain came first, sharp and perfect and clear, and then the smell, the reek of burning flesh that was so familiar, so comforting.

‘Master of Mankind, I have failed you again.’ Tibbet spoke the words smoothly, even as his body twitched from the pain. He’d said them many times before. The little brand he’d set into his skin was just one of many, on his arms, his legs, his belly, his chest… So many marks for such a short life.

‘I have failed you as I will always fail you.’ Tibbet slipped the sparker and warm wire back into his belt with his collection of battered tools and rusty blades, and rolled out of the louse-infested hollow of his coffin-sized cell. The scavengers called the place ‘Sepulchre’, and it stretched around him: a wide, rough dome whose walls were honeycombed by stinking cells like the one he’d just left, all carved into the rockcrete. Ropes and frayed nets climbed the walls and stretched across the dome, so that each hole could be reached by whoever wished to claim it for their rest. The floor of the great nave was too crowded for sleeping, heaped as it was with great piles of scrap, each carefully sorted by scavengers like Tibbet. The only clear area lay at its centre, where a rough plasteel tower reared up, wrapped in rusted razor wire and studded with flickering torches. The den of the Broken Bloods. Tibbet stared at it and pressed his thumb against his new brand, feeling the familiar pain.

‘May my meagre penance remind me of my unworthiness, and press me to fail you a little less,’ Tibbet breathed, finishing his prayer. Around him, he could hear the sounds of thousands, eating, arguing, sorting scrap, snoring, but all his eyes could see were the flames dancing around that tower.

‘I will show them. For you, Master of Mankind. I will show them.’

Tibbet ran his hand over the cold, pitted surface of one of the pipes that lined this narrow corridor. Condensation had gathered there, thick drops that wet his fingers, and he raised his hand to lick them clean. The rusty water quenched his thirst, but it didn’t help the hunger that gnawed at his belly, didn’t clear the thick confusion that clotted his head. How long had he been out here, staggering through cramped passages, ruined factorums, shattered storage units? It was hard to tell when the only gauge he had for the passage of time was the slow healing of the burn on his arm. He wished he could hear the scrap-forged bells that tolled the hours in Sepulchre, but he was far from their familiar sound, far from the verminous rag nests of the cells and the bowls of fungus and corpse-starch. He’d been wandering for days, spiralling out from Sepulchre, moving ever farther and deeper until he found himself here, on the edge of House Cawdor’s territory, dangerously close to the toxic shadows of the underhive.

‘Go back,’ he muttered to himself. ‘Can’t. Can’t go. Go–’

No. Going back now would be admitting he’d failed. Tibbet had spent so long searching for something, anything, that he could use to prove his worth to the masked gangers of the Broken Bloods. A stub gun. Some armour. A flamer… By His name, a flamer! But there was nothing in all the places he was used to searching, just the cast-off garbage of the towers far, far above, useless… like him.

‘No!’ Tibbet slammed his hand against the rusty pipe, scraping his knuckles against the rough metal. He wasn’t going to go back empty-handed. The fire of his faith sustained him. Barely.

Tibbet staggered down the corridor to its end. He’d only ever been this far once, with a few other scrappers, following rumours of unexplored corridors, but they’d only found an empty room and a sealed door. This time, though, maybe he’d see something they’d missed. But the room was as he remembered it, a bare hexagonal chamber badly lit with a lumen panel that buzzed and flickered. The broken light made the shadows of the place dance and shift, but there was nothing to see except that one closed door, a hatch of heavy plasteel that couldn’t be scratched with axe or torch. Tibbet glared at it. What did he expect? For it to be open, just for him, with a horde of archeotech waiting on the other side?

‘Stupid,’ he rasped. ‘Stupid and useless.’ He started to turn away, started to curl in on himself, his throat thick with tears he would not shed, but then stopped. Stopped and turned back, furious. Tibbet rushed into the room, hawking up a massive wad of spit as he moved, and when he was close enough he let fly. The disgusting blob flashed in the flickering light, then disappeared into the shadow that clung to the bottom of the hatch.

A shadow?

Tibbet blinked at the hatch. The lumen buzzed and flashed overhead, and he saw it. The gap at the bottom of the hatch. Not a shadow. An opening. One that hadn’t been there when he was last here.

‘Bless His name,’ Tibbet whispered, and then he flung himself through the narrow gap. He landed hard on his belly on the other side and lay still. There was only the faint, intermittent flickering under the half-closed hatch, barely enough for him to see that this new chamber was much like the one he’d just left, hexagonal and bare. The lumen panels overhead were opaque and dull as a dead eye, and the floor was covered with a layer of dust. But that dust… It was disturbed, heavily tracked. A group of people had ducked through this open hatch and searched the room, and then…

Tibbet peered through the dark. On the other side of the chamber there were two deeper shadows, doors that opened on the angle walls opposite the hatch he’d come through. The tracks led to both, going back and forth between them, and it was impossible to tell which one the people had gone down. But it was obvious that whoever this was, they had opened this hatch recently somehow and were the first ones to begin to explore this abandoned section of the hive in… centuries? Millennia? Who knew?

‘Master bless me,’ Tibbet whispered. He’d listened to so many stories about discoveries like this in the orphanarium-fane when he was a child. Ancient sections of the hive, long forgotten, rediscovered, full of treasure and danger. His fatigue, his hunger faded away. This was just what he needed. Here, in these forgotten corridors, he’d find what he needed to prove himself to the Broken Bloods. Tibbet dropped to his knees, ready to shout his prayer to the exalted Emperor, who had blessed him with this discovery… then slammed his mouth shut.

In front of him, buried in shadow against the blank wall that lay between the two doors, was a crawler. A boxy thing with rugged tracks, mounded with supplies tied down with a net of woven cords and scavenged wire. Whoever had opened this place had left their supplies, which meant they were still here, still close. And they could be back at any moment.

Panic rushed through Tibbet. He had no idea who was here, but he knew one thing – they’d kill him if they found him. He looked around the room, searching for a hiding place, but there was nothing but the disturbed dust and the broken lumens overhead. He could try going down one of the corridors, but he had no idea where the other explorers were. They could be down one or both of them right now. But where then? He wasn’t ducking back outside, this place was his. He had led Tibbet here. ‘Master of all Men,’ he groaned, tipping his head back, a prayer for help – and he was answered. Up above him, he could see the broken lumens bolted to a grid of metal braces, and from one of them a cable hung, a thick power conduit dangling right over the crawler.

Moving fast and quiet, Tibbet clambered up the netting holding the supplies in place. At the top he reached for the conduit, but it dangled just beyond his fingertips. He jumped for it, but the supplies shifted beneath him and he missed, tumbling back to the floor with a thump. He cracked his elbow against the stone and pain flared through him, but that didn’t distract him from the sound he heard coming down the corridor to the left. Footsteps, moving fast, and he could see a brightening glow through that empty door. Pain forgotten, Tibbet flung himself up the supplies stacked on the crawler. At the top, in the growing light, he threw himself at the conduit again, and this time caught it. He swarmed up the heavy power cord, pulling himself into the tangle of girders and brackets overhead, pressing as much of his skinny body behind one of the dead lumens as he could. He clung there, silent, as the room brightened below him.

A man came out of the corridor, light held in one hand, autopistol in the other. He was dressed in a patchwork of armour and dirty clothes, his head shaved and decorated with tattoos of women and rats, but there were no marks of any House on him. A hive scum mercenary, and Tibbet’s hand fell to the handle of one of his knife blades. A dangerous man, but a man alone, and he had a gun, armour. Those alone would be enough to make the Broken Bloods recognise him. Tibbet watched the man walking, searching, and waited to see if he would walk right below him. But instead the mercenary stopped on the other side of the room and raised his light, sweeping it through the girders, searching. Tibbet pulled his blade, readying himself to jump. If he could knock the man’s light away…

‘Voke!’

The man below twitched, almost dropping his light at the sound of the woman’s voice. He stared across the room at the other passage, and above him Tibbet stared too, clutching the edge of the dead lumen tight. She walked out of the other door, a tall woman with short hair slicked back tight to her skull. She wore a shell of dark armour and goggles that whirred and clicked as the hive scum’s light flashed across her face. A heavy medallion hung from the thick chain of brass that she wore around her neck. Guilder, Tibbet thought, as he stared from medallion to the needle rifle that she carried in her hands. Iron Guild.

‘What do you think you’re doing, shining that damn light around?’ The woman moved into the centre of the room, followed by four more hive scum, all armoured and cradling shotguns, laspistols or autoguns. ‘I told you to stay still and watch that door.’

‘Thought I heard somethin’, Lu.’

‘Yeah?’ The guilder, Lu, frowned at him. ‘Sure you weren’t looking for something to pocket while I was gone?’

‘Course not,’ Voke said. ‘I’m no thief.’ The hive scum smiled, showing a mouth full of chromed and sharpened teeth. ‘You get your salvage, and I get my share, fair and fair. I been sitting here watching this door in the dark, just like you told me.’

‘Just like I told you.’ The goggles covering Lu’s eyes spun as she stared at the man. One of her hands dropped to her belt and tapped a dark square that hung from it. Lights rippled across the device, and then from the other side of the room came a groaning, grating sound as the heavy plasteel hatch slid shut.

Voke watched the thick door close. ‘Thought you was keeping that open. In case that fancy key of yours didn’t want to work a second time.’

‘I was,’ Lu said, ‘but we’ve found a tangle of corridors back here to explore, and it’s going to take a while. Too long to leave that door open with one guard, however… obedient.’ Voke tried to look hurt, while the other hive scum snorted with laughter. Lu ignored them and kept talking. ‘We’ll have to take our chances on my key. There’s a nest of those miserable Cawdor scavengers not far from here. If they found that door open, they’d swarm this place like rot beetles.’

‘Useless fanatics,’ Voke growled. ‘We’ll stomp them if they show.’

‘I’d rather not be stuck with the stench,’ Lu said. ‘Come on, we have work.’ She started down the corridor that she had come out of, her mercenaries falling in behind her. Voke followed too, until she called back to him. ‘The crawler, Voke.’

The hive scum frowned, but he holstered his pistol and grabbed the crawler’s handles. With a muttered curse he started after his boss, dragging it behind.

Tibbet waited until the lights that they carried had faded and he was left in darkness absolute. Then he dug out his sparker and snapped it until it lit, the little flame letting him see, and dropped to the floor. He dug through the meagre supplies he kept on his belt and found his flask of promethium. Tearing a strip from his ragged tunic, Tibbet wrapped it around the end of a metal crowbar then soaked the dirty cloth with fuel. Tibbet lit the rough torch with his sparker, nose wrinkling at the smell, but now he had enough light to explore.

‘Useless fanatics,’ he growled. ‘House Cawdor isn’t useless. I’m not useless.’ Wavering a little on his feet, still hungry, still tired, still moving, Tibbet started down the other corridor. ‘I’ll show them all.’

‘Something. There’ll be something,’ Tibbet whispered to himself. ‘The Master of Mankind led me here. It can’t be empty.’ He said the words over and over as he staggered down another long hall, holding up his sputtering torch with one hand, his other pressed against the rough wall, propping him up.

He’d been walking for hours, winding through empty corridors, echoing rooms, and finding nothing. There was no treasure here, no ancient archeotech.

Nothing.

He needed food. He needed sleep. He needed… Tibbet turned his head a little, and stared at the flame of his torch. He needed nothing. He had this. Fire. Fire inside him. The fire of faith. That was all he needed. Fire. Faith. Tibbet dragged his foot forward another step. He’d find something. He’d find–

The wall Tibbet had been leaning against with his hand suddenly opened up, and he staggered to the side. His feet tangled as he tried to catch his balance, and then there was nothing but empty space. He was falling, flailing, into darkness split by the wild swinging light of his torch. Then he hit the ground, and kept moving, hitting the ground again and again. He was falling down a wide set of stairs, rolling and striking, down and down, until his head cracked against the edge of one of the steps and finally darkness swept through him, a kind of sleep that could not be refused by any faith or fire.

Fire.

It flickered in front of Tibbet, a tiny flame dancing, floating in a puddle of blood. So bright. So bright. Tibbet stared at it for a long time, watching it dance, ignoring the deep pain in his head, in his body. Pain was pain, and fire was pure, and pure was good – pure was what he could never be, pure wasn’t useless…

The flame sputtered and popped, and Tibbet coughed, a cough that split his head and made him close his eyes. In the darkness, the pain grew, trying to swallow him, but Tibbet held the image of the fire in his head. The pain might want him to curl in on himself, to lose himself in darkness again, but the fire still burned and Tibbet forced his eyes open. The flame sputtered in front of him, dancing in the pool of blood that had gathered around Tibbet’s head. It split the darkness just enough to show a smooth, dark floor – and a boot. Tibbet blinked, then tipped his head back.

He stared up at a statue of a man in armour. Armour like Tibbet had never seen before. It covered the man completely, heavy plates hewn from dark stone wrapping around a massive, powerful body. Every bit of the armour was intricately carved with cables and conduits that twisted and flowed over its surface, their paths complex and beautiful. They almost seemed to form symbols, like the script that Tibbet saw written on some of the things he scavenged sometimes, but these symbols… they were beautiful, and for the first time Tibbet wished he could read, so that he could understand.

Who was this statue supposed to be? Someone vastly important, if they wore armour like that. Tibbet looked to the statue’s head, but its face was covered, hidden by a dark lump of something that gleamed blue-black in the meagre light, something that had flowed over the head of the statue like wax, perfectly hiding its features. It wasn’t wax, though. Tibbet wasn’t sure exactly what had formed that lump, what metal had slowly built up over the years to hide that face, but he’d been trained to recognise it by the reverent keepers of his orphanarium-fane when they’d instructed him and the other children in the secrets of scavenging. They had told Tibbet that if he found a metal this colour, impossibly hard, impossibly dense, he must report it right away. It was precious, valuable beyond all other scrap. And here it had formed a perfect mask to hide the face of whoever wore that magnificent armour.

Lying on the floor, starving, delirious, wracked with pain, Tibbet stared up at the statue and its precious mask, and he knew. Knew with pure, perfect certainty. This was Him. The Master of all Mankind, the Emperor of the Golden Throne. His majesty carved in stone, His perfect, terrible visage hidden behind a veil that was as incalculably valuable as it was indestructible

Tibbet raised himself up to his knees. The statue loomed over him, beautiful, perfect. The little flame gleamed off its metal mask, and Tibbet felt himself tremble. A sacred sculpture of the Master of Mankind, hidden away for millennia. Tibbet reached up and wiped blood and tears away from his eyes. This. This would show everyone.

‘Thank you,’ he breathed, and bowed his head. When he opened his eyes again, he couldn’t look at the statue. It overwhelmed him. He looked at the black walls instead, carved with the plain, angular marks of normal script – words of benediction Tibbet was sure, even if he couldn’t read them. ‘Thank you,’ he said again, then turned away. Behind him reared the long flight of stairs that he’d fallen down. He’d have to trace his way back, find some way past that closed door, then convince the Broken Blood to follow him back here…

It didn’t matter. He’d been led here for this purpose. He’d find his way back. Tibbet tried to rise, but the dark room swung around him and he fell back to his knees. But that was right. He should be on his knees in such a holy place. Leaving the broken torch, he started to crawl up the stairs. The stone edges bit into his shins, but he crawled until he reached the top. Then he let himself stop, to stare back down at the tiny flame flickering at the base of the statue.

It was beautiful. It was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

He had to force himself to turn, to start crawling again, and that’s when the light flashed on, harsh and white, making him blink up at the woman standing over him in dark armour, staring at him with eyes hidden behind goggles that whirred and clicked.

‘Cawdor scum,’ she sighed, and then kicked him in the chin, lifting him up and knocking him back down the stairs, a crashing, crunching fall that ended again in darkness.

‘Careful, damn you!’

‘It weighs a ton!’

‘You’re the one that wanted to haul it down without unpacking it!’

‘You’re the one–’

‘Shut up.’ The last voice cut across the bickering and silenced it. Clenching his teeth against a groan, Tibbet opened one eye just a slit. Light struck him, harsh and blinding, and he had to shut it again. In the darkness, he felt the pain, heavy as a blanket. His head, his arms, his legs, his ribs… By His name, his ribs, they felt like a bundle of broken sticks, splintered ends scraping against his lungs every time he drew a breath. But Tibbet kept himself silent, and opened his eye again.

He was lying to one side of the room of the statue, which was brightly lit now by lumens being set out by a couple of hive scum. Another four, Voke included, were easing the equipment crawler down the stairs to the floor. In front of them, still as stone herself, the guilder woman Lu stood staring at the statue. No. At the mask that covered the statue. Her goggles were raised up on her forehead, and her brown eyes traced the wrinkled flows of the metal as if she were reading her fortune in its swirling patterns.

When they clanked the crawler to the ground behind her, she finally moved, turning her head to stare at her hirelings.

‘Get the saw. If I take the head off, we’ll get the whole mass.’

‘No.’ Tibbet whispered the word first, and they never even noticed as they started pulling the net off the crawler. ‘No!’ he said, louder, and tried to roll to his feet. Tried and failed as his broken ribs screamed. But he caught an eye.

‘Lu!’ Voke stepped away from the crawler, pulling his pistol. ‘Your rot-beetle is still alive.’ The hive scum walked up to Tibbet, and flipped him over onto his back with the toe of his boot. ‘Want me to fix that?’ The tattooed man pointed his gun at Tibbet’s face.

‘No.’ The guilder glanced at him, considering. The skin around her eyes was a much lighter brown then the rest of her face, protected by the goggles from dirt and glare. It made her look like she was staring at Tibbet through a mask. ‘I want to talk to him later. About how he got in here.’

Over Tibbet, his back to Lu, Voke frowned, and his finger tightened a little on his trigger.

‘Tie him up.’ Lu’s command was certain, and Voke only hesitated a moment before holstering his gun. The mercenary pulled some ties from his pocket and lashed Tibbet’s ankles together. He pulled the scavenger’s arms behind his back, making Tibbet gasp, and bound his wrists.

‘Don’t make no trouble for me, boy,’ Voke growled. ‘Or I’ll make you wish those stairs had ended you.’

Tibbet ignored him, and stared at the woman. ‘You can’t touch it,’ he rasped. ‘That statue is sacred. You can’t!’

‘That statue?’ The woman looked from Tibbet to the statue and back. ‘Do you…’ She shook her head. ‘You don’t. By the Throne, you don’t.’ Lu laughed and slid her goggles back into place. ‘Cawdor, you’re just as stupid as all the jokes about your House say. I don’t know what the hell you think that you found, but I’ll tell you what it is. My ticket to a place in a spire so high I never have to smell your kind again.’

‘It’s not yours! It’s Him! It’s His!’ Tibbet shouted, but Lu turned away, going to the crawler to help sort the tools. Voke shook his head.

‘Useless fanatic.’ The hive scum kicked him in the shoulder, rolling him towards the pile of rubble on the collapsed side of the room. ‘Remember what I said and shut up.’

‘Can’t…’ Tibbet gasped, but he couldn’t say more. His body was howling with pain. Still he shifted, trying to twist his head away from the rubble to see what they were doing, but all he managed was to shift himself a little. He could see rubble, a flicker of light, boots, part of the crawler… a flicker of light. Tibbet twisted his head a little more. There. What was left of his torch, burned cloth wrapped around the blood-slicked crowbar, still hot enough to glow. Kicked out of the way by one of the hive scum.

‘Master of Mankind, I have failed you again,’ Tibbet whispered, and then began to move, crawling forward, quiet as he could.

‘I have failed you as I always fail you.’ He reached the makeshift torch and rolled over, so that he was facing Lu and her mercenaries. They were opening boxes, unpacking tools. Reaching back, Tibbet searched for heat and found it as he burnt his forearm against the crowbar. He adjusted himself, shifting until his bound wrists were as close to the hottest spot he could find.

‘May my meagre penance remind me of my unworthiness, and press me to fail you a little less.’ Tibbet whispered the words as he pressed his wrists towards the heat. He could feel the pain as the searing hot metal touched his skin, could feel his body trying to jerk away, but he had been burned before, so many times before. He locked his teeth and forced his arms to stay still, to hurt and burn as the tie wrapped around his wrists heated and softened. Tibbet’s teeth ground together, but he held his hands still… until he felt the ties holding them loosen.

With a jerk he pulled his hands apart and the ties snapped. He pressed his blistered wrists against the cool stone of the floor, hissing his pain as he stared at Lu. She had her back to him, touching the statue, running her impure hands over its stone shoulders, trying to decide where she should cut. The rest of her mercenaries were busy setting up the saw, not paying any attention to him, and Tibbet looked over at the crawler. There were tools and rations, water and medicine… There would be stimms with the medicine.

Tibbet moved as carefully as his broken ribs would allow. He slipped a cutter from his belt and slit the ties from his ankles. Then he slithered towards the crawler, watching the mercenaries. They were watching Lu, who was picking up a heavy saw, examining its sharp-toothed blade. He had to stop her before she began her desecration. Tibbet moved, the agony in his body eclipsed by the agony of his spirit. He reached a medi-pack and found a vial of stimm inside. Tibbet pressed it against his neck and felt the little pain of its bite. There was nothing for a moment, then heat flared up around the injection site. Heat that built and spread, becoming flame that rushed through him, burning pain to ash, fatigue to smoke that blew away and left him feeling pure. Hot. Righteous.

He heard the whine of the saw starting behind him, and reached down for a pick lying on the pile of supplies, then stopped. No. Beside the heavy tool was something else, something with a canister, a hose, soot-stained steel. A flamer.

The Emperor provides, he told himself as Lu stepped close to the statue, saw raised. And I will not be useless. Pushing the pick out of the way with a clank, he grabbed the flamer.

‘Hey!’

Tibbet heard the shout and spun. One of the mercs was rushing him, swinging a heavy spanner at his head, and Tibbet ducked and sprawled back. High on stimm, everything was moving slow, and Tibbet had all the time he needed to raise the flamer while the man pulled back his arm to swing again. Time to smile viciously as he saw the man’s eyes widen, recognising what he held.

‘His fire burns in me,’ Tibbet said, and hit the trigger.

A wash of flames burst out and caught the hive scum in the chest. The man screamed as the fire wrapped around him, burning his face and hands to char as it roared over his armour. Tibbet felt the heat, ferocious and hungry, drying out his eyes, curling eyebrows and eyelashes and hair, scorching the skin of his face, but he didn’t care. Howling, laughing, he kept his finger on the trigger and waved the jet of flame in a flat arc, catching two more of the mercenaries. They fell to the ground, screaming, as the other two dived out of the way.

One of them, Voke, threw himself to the side, trying to pull his gun as he raced up the stairs. Tibbet raised the flamer to catch him, but something slammed into his leg, staggering him. A bullet, but the pain of the impact was dim and distant. He let go of the trigger as he ducked to the side, and this time he heard the crack of the autogun. The other hive scum was crouched half behind the statue, his pistol up, squeezing another shot off at Tibbet. The round hit the floor near his head, and shards of stone cut Tibbet’s face, just missing his eyes. Tibbet rolled, raised the flamer and paused. The mercenary was hiding behind the statue. The pistol cracked again, and Tibbet felt the bullet whine past his ear. He was behind the statue – but the statue was made of stone, its face armoured with metal. What did the Master of Mankind fear from flame?

Tibbet jerked the trigger just as the hive scum fired once more, felt the bullet graze across his arm like a brand, but he didn’t flinch. The fire washed over the statue, around it, and the mercenary fell back, screaming. Down, rolling on the floor and smoking, joining the other four Tibbet had cleansed, and now he was turning back to see if he could hit Voke before the man reached the top of the stairs when something came arcing down at him. Tibbet jerked and raised the flamer just in time, and the hot steel caught the descending saw as Lu swung it towards him.

‘Damn Cawdor scum!’ The guilder pressed the whirling blade against the steel and the teeth sunk in, sparking and shredding. ‘Stupid, filthy fanatic!’ The saw ripped through the flamer’s barrel and Tibbet rolled, barely escaping the blade as it slammed into the floor, tearing into the stone where his chest had just been. He rolled to the base of the statue and stopped. He reared up, trying to stand, but his leg wouldn’t support him, stimm or no stimm. He ended up on his knees, next to the reeking, still-burning-and-twitching corpse of the last hive scum he had killed, the broken flamer raised in front of him.

Lu looked at him, her goggles whirring. She reached up and slid them back, blinking eyes that were angry and tired. ‘You’re willing to die for this stupid thing, boy? Well, so am I.’ She hefted the saw and started walking towards him, ignoring the broken flamer. ‘Trade and money have been my religion since I was born, and this find will buy me into the only heaven I know. So tell you what. You can die for your cause, and I’ll kill you for mine.’ She pressed the trigger on the saw, and the blade began to whir. ‘And we’ll both get to heaven.’

‘You can’t,’ Tibbet said, his voice harsh with smoke and stimm.

Lu gave him a thin smile and started walking forward, saw cutting through the air. ‘Then stop me, you useless piece of–’

The rest was cut off when Tibbet squeezed the trigger of the flamer. The broken weapon didn’t gout any flame. But from its shattered muzzle streamed a line of liquid fuel. The viscous stuff splattered across Lu like blood, and she cursed, raising a hand to protect her uncovered eyes.

‘No,’ Tibbet said, in the same calm voice that he used for his litany. Then he reached back between the statue’s legs, careful not to touch the stone, grabbed a piece of the still-burning corpse, barely feeling the pain as he tore it free, and flung it at the Iron Guilder. ‘Not useless,’ he said as the fuel spilled across her caught, and she howled, dropping her saw and falling, rolling as the flames licked across her, until she stilled and stopped.

A bullet had ripped through the front of his right thigh, in and out, leaving two bloody holes. His hands were burned, especially the right, blistered and red and weeping fluid. His ribs grated every time he took a breath, bruises mottled his skin; his face was cut and his scalp was split, filling his hair with blood gone sticky and thick.

None of that hurt. None of that mattered.

The statue was safe. And the Master of Mankind provided.

Tibbet gathered his things. An autopistol and a needle rifle. Two good blades. Some ration bars and bottled water. Lu’s goggles, even though one lens was cracked from heat. The other still worked fine, and let him see through the dark. The key that had had let the guilder open the locked door. And all the stimm he could find.

He knelt one more time before the statue. There was a nick he had found on the back of its neck, the only mark Lu had been able to put on it, the tiny but clear sign of Tibbet’s failure. But he had done his penance.

Tibbet whispered his prayers, and limped away.

He found Voke in the hexagon chamber, hiding among the rafters, trying to ambush him. He emptied a clip from an autogun into the hive scum, opened the door as far as it would go, and walked out.

‘Here.’ Tibbet pointed to the door ahead. ‘He’s here.’

The Eldest of the Broken Bloods, a man in a mask of rusted iron and cracked, coloured glass, looked at him with eyes jaundiced and red. ‘An image of Him? A statue of the Master of Man?’

‘As I told you.’ Tibbet swayed on his feet, but stayed upright. He’d limped all the way back to the nave of scavengers, dosing himself on stimm whenever the world started to go dark, or the pain grew too great. He’d gone to the tower at its centre, and faced the gangers who had cast him out before. But this time… this time they had seen the fire in his eyes.

Or the guns on his hips.

Either way, they’d listened to him. Then brought him to others, who listened to him. Then they brought him to their leader, and then things had happened very fast, and now he was here with the Eldest and a full warband of masked Broken Bloods.

It was too bad they had taken the stimm from him.

The Eldest nodded, and two gangers swarmed into the room. A minute later they whistled the all-clear, and the Eldest followed, taking Tibbet with him. They walked into the chamber, still brightly lit with the guilder’s lumens, still reeking of smoke and burnt meat. Tibbet’s body shook as he watched the Eldest. All the stimm he’d taken was wearing off, and as the pain and fatigue came back they brought with them the nausea and vertigo of stimm abuse. Moving down the stairs was hard, and he could barely stand at the end of them. But no one offered to help. They wouldn’t, until he was actually one of them. But all that mattered was the movement of that old man’s eyes as he stared from corpse to corpse, from the crawler load of supplies, to the statue that stood silent before them. Beautiful and perfect.

‘Do you see?’ Tibbet said. ‘Do you?’

The Eldest looked at the statue silently. His eyes traced the words carved behind it, then ran over the thick lump of metal that covered its face. His gnarled hand, marked with burns and scars, reached out and landed on Tibbet’s shoulder. ‘I see, Brother Tibbet. I see.’ His hand pressed down, and Tibbet fell to his knees, and the Eldest knelt beside him. All around the chamber, the other Broken Bloods fell to their knees too.

‘I see the great gift that you have brought us. A blessing to our gang, and to our House, like no other. And I see a new brother.’ The eldest reached into the ragged cloak that covered his armour and pulled out a mask, a mask of rust and broken chains, and set it over Tibbet’s head.

The new ganger felt it press against the cuts in his face, his bruises, felt the warm blood on his skin as its weight reopened the gash on his scalp, and the world swung dark and dizzying around him, but as the black spiralled in, he held on just long enough to hear the words he longed for. ‘I see you, Tibbet, of the Broken Bloods.’ And then everything went away.

‘Is he dead?’ The Eldest stared down at his newest recruit, lying face down in a spreading pool of blood.

‘Nah,’ said the medicae that knelt beside the boy. ‘Stimmed out and shocky, but if we treat him he’ll probably live.’

‘Treat him then.’ The Eldest looked up at the statue, and at the words carved behind it. Beside him, his guards watched him mouth the words. They looked from him to the statue, their eyes nervous behind their masks. Finally, one of them spoke.

‘Sir? Is that… Is it really… Him?’

‘Don’t be an idiot,’ the Eldest said. ‘You think someone would leave an image of the Emperor in a hole like this? It’s a monument to some bleeding Van Saar from a thousand years ago, on the occasion of his winning a turf war against three other Houses, one of which was ours.’

‘Oh,’ said the guard. ‘Damn. And this useless idiot was praying to it.’

‘Child,’ the Eldest said, waving him closer. When the guard stepped near, the Eldest punched him hard in the throat. The guard fell to the floor, writhing.

‘Attend me. All of you.’ The Eldest looked around the room at all the Broken Bloods. ‘Tibbet was mistaken. He was wrong. He was ignorant. But he wasn’t useless. Why?’

‘Well, he found us all this loot,’ said one.

‘And this new area to explore,’ offered another.

‘And this!’ The Eldest slapped the metal mask that veiled the statue. ‘The biggest lump of igneous adamantorite any one of us has ever seen!’

The Eldest looked down at the boy curled on the floor at his feet. ‘He did all that. But he also showed us the true strength of House Cawdor. Our faith. We may not have armour like House Van Saar, or size like House Goliath, or mines like House Orlock. But we have faith, and through our faith we find our strength, and we use that strength to burn all those others. We burn them, and we win, no matter the cost. Do you understand?’ They shouted back at him, guns and blades raised high, and he nodded, proud.

‘Now get that equipment, tear that statue down, and then grind the pieces into dust. After you’ve given me that adamantorite.’

They shouted again, and began picking up drills and saws, hammers and picks.

The man that the Eldest had punched was sitting up, rubbing his throat. ‘But what,’ he croaked, ‘do we tell him?’ He nodded at Tibbet.

The Eldest shrugged, and settled onto the stairs to watch his men work. ‘We’ll tell him that the Emperor works in mysterious ways, and that he can pick a flamer out of the armoury. That’s all he really needs to be happy.’

SLUDGE HARBOUR PAYBACK

JUSTIN D HILL

I

Yar Umbra was more than stardust. He was star-born, birthed in the metal belly of a merchant ship and void raised. A galactic traveller whose cruel fate had marooned him planetside. In his case on the benighted hive world of Necromunda.

And Necromunda was killing him.

Any planet would. He was a butterfly being crushed in a slowly closing fist. The greater gravity gave him spiking migraines. It sent waves of nausea flooding through his bones, caused the degeneration of his skeletal frame and stabbing pain inside his worn sockets.

But in the last two hours his problems had become much, much worse.

The hive was ringed by scree slope skirts. Ten thousand years of erosion as the hive grew slowly up and outwards. He was lying in a hollow on one of those vast scree slopes, trussed up like an avian. Black plastek strips bound his wrists together. He could feel the throb of blood in his fingers. And before him sat his captor: a crazed scree-hermit, clinging on to sanity at the very edge of Hive Primus.

The anchorite clamped a lump of rockcrete rubble between her knees, and used it to sharpen her sickle knife with long, scouring strokes. ‘A surgeon’s knife must be sharp,’ she hissed to herself. ‘Dishonesty corrupts. Not the removal of organs.’

The stimms had worn off and Yar Umbra’s joints screamed in protest as he pulled at his bindings, but it was no use. The plastek cut into him and fresh blood ran down his hands and dripped from his swollen fingertips. There was no way he could break them. She had trussed him tight.

After a few long, slow, scraping strokes she looked up from under the wild fizz of her filthy grey hair. ‘The sinner always struggles,’ she whispered to herself and held the sickle knife up. The corroded blade now had a thin, silver smile along its razor edge. She did not seem satisfied and started to scrape again. After a long pause she looked almost sympathetic and tried to placate him. ‘Do not fear. Pain is only temporary. It cleanses the body as prayer cleans the mind.’

The anchorite wore a filthy mask and faded red hood, the fringes sewn with rat skulls. The hive had aged her prematurely. Her skin was blotched with toxins, her frazzled dry hair looked as though she’d been dragged through razor wire backwards. But her eyes were still young and vigorous. They fixed on him as she stroked his foot with the freshly whetted knife. ‘Only through honesty can the sinner find salvation. Be honest and I will set you free.’

He nodded slowly, but knew it was just another of her lies.

Yar Umbra and the anchorite were sitting two-thirds of the way down one of the vast moraines that fringed the skirts of the outer-hive. It was a no-man’s-land outside the hive proper – a desperate world of shoddy repairs, broken piers and leaning roofs, all tumbling down to the planet surface. The anchorite had dragged him to her den, little more than a curved tin shelter burrowed into the scree slope. Arches and buttresses soared above them into draughty darkness. The size of them served to magnify this deadly little struggle.

Yar Umbra had to get more time. He spoke quickly. ‘Honest about what?’

‘Do you see it?’ she asked him. He didn’t know exactly what she was talking about. ‘Look!’ She pointed out towards the featureless brown light of day. Before him clouds of pollution rolled out over the plain, behind him the unfathomable mass of the hive-mountain. ‘The end of everything. Infinity. How does it make you feel?’

‘Angry,’ he said.

She cocked her head sideways, like an avian, and stared at him with her right eye wide. ‘Cherish that anger! Use it to cut out the canker in your soul.’

‘There is no canker.’

She tutted and shook her head. ‘You are wrong.’ The anchorite shuffled closer. Her unwashed body had a distinct scent of burnt offerings, cheap incense and the stale smell of old sackcloth. She leant in so close he could feel the words play on his bare skin like a gentle caress. Her tone was like that you would use with a child. It was reassuring, patronising, firm. ‘Confess,’ she told him.

‘I’m innocent,’ he spat.

She laughed. Genuine open-mouthed laughter that rocked her back and showed the molars at the back of her mouth. Her cackle went on and on till she stopped, quite suddenly, and bared her arm. Her skin was inked all over with holy texts. With a single filthy nail she pointed to a line of script that read: Only the guilty plead innocent. The innocent are not caught.

She read the line aloud, and added, ‘And you were caught.’ The words dripped like saliva from the lips of a rabid canine.

‘I wasn’t fleeing. I had an important meeting…’ he told her, again, but she twisted the bindings about his wrists. He cried out. The thongs were now so tight his hands felt like they were balloons of blood. Gore oozed from under his fingernails. He felt it gathering at the ends of his fingers in sticky droplets.

‘Does that hurt?’ she whispered, and twisted further. His teeth ground out the agony. ‘What else hurts?’ she mused and cocked her head, turning her left eye to him this time.

There was a long pause.

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Oooh!’

She gave a low chuckle. It was as if she had looked into his soul and seen his deepest fears. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I see…’

She put her hand to the hood that covered his head and made as if to tug it off. ‘Don’t!’ he said sharply. ‘You don’t want to see. It’s not pretty. Give me a moment, and I will tell you everything. I promise.’

She put the point of her knife to her cheek and pressed it in, until the blood began to flow. The pain gave her eyes a distracted look. She sounded almost hungry as she whispered, ‘Everything?’

She crouched back on her haunches, her bone-worked robes hanging about her filthy shins.

He coughed to clear his throat. ‘Well,’ he said, trying to wriggle life back into his fingers. ‘It started in Sludge Harbour…’

II

Mouldering advertising hoardings claimed that the low-hive settlement of Sludge Harbour never slept. It was true enough. Of all the deviant entertainments in Sludge Harbour, sleep was at the bottom of the list. Most denizens of the shorefront settlement never came down from their narcotically induced euphoria. Even now, in what should have been dimtime, drunken laughter throbbed through the darkness.

It drifted across to where Yar Umbra crouched with his lasrifle on a narrow gantry on the rimside wall, scanning the route ahead.

From this distance Sludge Harbour was little more than a row of barge gantries and low habs clinging to the rocky shore. At the town’s base, a bar-lined pleasure pier thrust out into the putrid shallows of a subterranean septic lake. Flashing neon grog-hut signs reflected from the black sludge beneath. The reflections rippled with the popping of noxious bubbles and the slow-sliding swim of the vigilant sumpkrocs.

The darkness of the vast dripping dome only made the town look smaller. In the far distance, methane harvesters burned off excess gas. The hab-high gouts of smoky yellow fire appeared no bigger than candle flames. They flared white in Yar Umbra’s enhanced optics.

He checked his chronometer and gave the streets a final scan, then pushed himself up and strode down to the gravel track, long-las hanging from its shoulder strap. As he walked through town there was wild laughter, then a gunshot, and a scream. Nothing out of the normal.

Not for the underhive. And not for Sludge Harbour.

He found the rusting metal ladder that took him down to the road, and loped slowly towards the settlement. There was something unearthly about his tall, slender physique. People kept away from him, and that suited him fine.

It did not take him long to find the bar they had agreed on.

The sign’s wiring was clearly faulty, and the neon letters PARKING POST flickered erratically from darkness into fizzing light. The grog-shop was a dingy-looking hole, constructed with pressed-starch walls and a roof of corrugated tin that slanted unevenly. There were small rag-curtained windows lit from within, and slumped by the side of the doorway were a stimm-addled pair, their knees pulled up to their chins, their heads hanging at awkward angles.

One of them moaned as Yar Umbra stepped forward. How anyone could let themselves sink this low he could not understand. He had no pity. No softness. No mercy. They were on their own journey, and he was on his. Theirs was going steeply downwards, his… well, he had one consideration, and that was to return to the stars.

A mouldy cloth hung in front of the bar door. He pushed it aside, and stepped inside, bending under the lintel. The usual drinkers were all there propping up the bar, or sitting in the dingy corners, nursing their short glasses of grog.

Yar Umbra’s appearance was untoward, even for the underhive. He wore ship-boots, with mag-locking soles; blue rating’s trousers; an engine room overcoat; and an off-world rebreather rig. But what marked him out was the bag of faded ship’s canvas that he wore over his head, narrow eye slits glowing a dull orange.

A buck-toothed man with a white vest and a glass of Wildsnake could not stop himself. His mouth hung open at the sight of the void-born bounty hunter.

‘Got a problem?’ Yar Umbra demanded.

‘No,’ the man muttered and returned ostensibly to his drink.

Yar Umbra’s bag-covered head looked about for anyone else who wanted to challenge him. No one else dared a showdown. His reputation went far. The Voidborn was one of the most dangerous guns this side of Lightshaft 9.

Yar Umbra was looking for a particular woman. He found her sitting in the corner of the back room under a gas lamp, an untouched shot of grog on the table before her. She wore clothes that looked borrowed, dyed hair, and an upmarket holo-mask that gave her silver eyes and the complexion of a twenty-year-old. A cheap lho-stub hung from her lower lip. Thrust into her belt was a snub-nosed, twin-barrel autopistol with oversized teardrop handle worked with pink enamel.

All the details said low-hive gang-hand.

It was all subterfuge, of course. There was nothing low-hive about her. Uphive affluence hung about her like perfume; his augmetic ocular vision saw through her holo-disguise as easily as looking through twice-distilled water.

She had to be in her third or fourth cycle of rejuvenat, but each had been done well. She didn’t have the drum-taut skin, pulled eyes and enlarged lips of a cheap job. A wave of relief crossed her face as he pulled up a chair and sat down.

She kept chewing her lip as they exchanged forced pleasantries. The bag on his head unsettled her, he could tell. This whole venture did. At last she could bear it no longer. The question was burning inside her. ‘You got it?’

‘I did,’ he said, and took the object from inside the folds of his jacket and slid it flat across the table.

She took it quickly in long, slender fingers. The object was wrapped in a scrap cut from an old grog-shop banner. The folds opened up and from the middle she lifted an expensive looking pict-slate.

‘You are sure this is it?’ she asked.

He made no response. All that came was the slow hiss of his rebreather.

There was a sophisticated gene-print lock. She thumbed the ident-cipher and the screen came to life, uplighting her face. She frowned for a moment, flicking screen to screen. At last she seemed satisfied. The expression of her holo-mask showed relief. ‘No one saw you get this?’

‘No one who still lives,’ he said, his voice a rasping hiss.

She swallowed. Deaths were to be expected. They were not her responsibility. Her shoulders rose as she took in a deep breath, and let all the tension go. ‘Good. Not many, I hope.’

She forced a smile and slid the pict-slate into her top, put out the lho-stub. There was rouge on the end of it even though there was none on her lips. He could smell the uphive perfume in her hair. It was an off-world scent. It reminded him of his days aboard the Halcyon Dawn.

‘Payment,’ he hissed.

She pushed a wad of credits across the table. He took the wad and thumbed them, but didn’t bother to count it. ‘The logs?’

She paused. ‘It wasn’t easy,’ she started.

‘Nor was your request.’

‘No,’ she said, and pulled a cheap mushroom-starch logbook from a pocket and tossed it across the table. ‘Here.’

He caught it. There was a faded blue cover, now dog-eared and stained with lubricant oil. It looked like the kind of object taken out and regularly thrust back in a jacket pocket. He flicked it open. She watched him. From the bar came the pop of a bottle being unstoppered, and the clink of glasses being emptied.

After a short time he tossed the book back to her.

‘You’re done?’

The gentle hiss of his breathing unit. At last he said, ‘We both got what we want.’

She lifted her glass. ‘And what do you want?’

‘To go home.’

She swilled the glass about in her hand. ‘Where’s that?’

His eyes glowed amber. ‘In the stars.’

III

Pain lanced through Yar Umbra’s arms as fresh gouts of blood flowed from his wrists. ‘She was in difficulty. I helped out. Nothing more,’ he hissed.

The anchorite rocked on her bare heels and cocked her head. ‘You facilitate immorality. Do you really feel no guilt?’

His answer came back immediately. ‘None.’

She showed him her left arm. In rigid Gothic script was the line: Temptation leads to death. The God-Emperor has no mercy on the slain.

She wet her lips in a way that reminded him of a whetstone being slid along a knife’s edge. ‘This woman should be brought before a court of House Cawdor and put on trial. And her guilt judged. The smallest corruptions are like seeds that grow to monstrous heresy. Dalliance. The way you speak. It is too smooth. So glib. You disgust me.’

Yar Umbra started to shake. This was Hive Primus, Necromunda. There were a thousand sins every second. The ridiculousness of the position he was in was overwhelming. ‘I am unlike you,’ he said.

‘What does concern you, heretic?’

Breaking your neck, he thought.

The anchorite ran her blade up to his throat. ‘First you must admit your guilt.’

His rebreather hissed, but he did not speak. She wet her lips again, as if she were tasting for fear, but there was none. ‘Tell me about the death of Grobius.’

He remained silent.

‘Father Grobius,’ she went on. ‘Of Low-Hive Mission Eleven. Chainsword. Autopistol. Black flak armour.’

Yar Umbra responded, ‘You mean the fat priest?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Tell me about the fat priest.’

IV

Yar Umbra was a shadow as he left the squalid alleys of Sludge Harbour.

The details were fixed in his head. House Orlock, Ash Gate 9. But where that was he did not know. Luckily he knew who could tell him the answer.

It was a day’s climb to the mineworks known as Noyce’s Bore. The prospecting slope spiralled gradually downwards, a freshly rifled tunnel, littered with shattered rocks and boulders. Here and there were rusted iron hoppers brimful of mineral ore. They reached up four times his height. Their shadows obscured him.

The further he went the louder the roar of metal parts scraping against each other became. Here and there promethium fumes hung in the hollows like mist. At the end of the burrow was a mining mole – a blunt slug of metal, with a cone drill nose, now half buried into the ore seam. It bucked and ground as the swirling teeth revolved and snagged. Yar Umbra shouted but his words were lost in the noise. The exhausts coughed black fumes as the engines revved up once more and the cone began to bore into the living rock with a screech of tearing metal.

Ore churned out to the side as the mole drove deeper into the hive. A rockfall thundered down, further burying the machine.

Yar Umbra shouted again. He did not have time to waste, so he drew his lasrifle from his shoulder and fired off a salvo that scoured the worn hull.

The mole came to a halt. There was a long pause and at last a hatch-lock screeched as it was unlocked and then thrown open.

A diminutive figure hauled himself out. The man was heavily muscled. He pulled his goggles back from his face, and looked out.

‘That you, Voidborn?’

Slag Noyce was a grizzled and thwarted veteran with red-dyed goatee and the stub of an unlit lho-stick hanging from his lip. He had been born with an abnormality that left his feet twisted and useless. Such misfortunes were common enough amongst the polluted depths of the underhive, but Noyce did not allow anything like that to slow him down. Noyce was a fighter. Literally. He had the requisite grit, ferocity and determination to survive childhood.

He used pulleys to lower himself down the side of his mole, dropped himself into a custom-built wheeled chair and powered it towards Yar Umbra.

He called out, ‘What do you want?’

‘I need answers.’

‘You scorched my paintwork.’

‘It’s important. I need to get to Ash Gate Nine. Quick.’

‘Quick?’ Noyce repeated to himself as he pushed himself forward on his wheeled chair. ‘Ash Gate Nine?’ He laughed. ‘Well. You always want to make things difficult for me, don’t you. Come up. I’ll show you.’

Noyce’s office was a small container on scaffolding stilts. Noyce used a pulley to haul himself up to the doorway, his massively muscled arms making short work of the ropes. On the metal door was a cheap gene-print lock. Noyce pressed a thumb into the reader and the lock clicked open. ‘Up you come,’ he said.

The container was furnished with a bare simplicity. There was a cheap water still, a bunk bed with a stained lice-net, a pressed-starch desk, a filing cabinet in the corner, and a desk strewn with uneven piles of paper, invoices and plastek IOU chits. A thin layer of dust turned them all grey. The smell probably came from the cups that were filled with powdery fungi.

‘Ash Gate Nine, is it?’ Slag Noyce snapped as he wheeled himself into the office.

‘Yes.’

‘Which one?’

‘There is more than one?’

Slag Noyce laughed suddenly. ‘No. Only kidding. But I can’t help you if you’ve got a contract on someone. I can’t go against my House.’

‘Nothing like that.’

Slag Noyce gave him a sideways look. ‘Then why do you want to know?’

‘It’s a long story.’

Slag Noyce swung his chair around and grabbed a cup, sloshed the mouldy liquid out, and wiped the inside with the corner of his coat. He sniffed it and seemed content, poured himself a drink of cold recaff. ‘I’ve got time.’

‘I haven’t.’ His eyepieces were starting to glow but Slag Noyce was unconcerned. He sniffed and sipped the liquid.

‘You have if you want my help. I’m not doing anything that goes against my House.’

Yar Umbra said nothing, but tossed a pile of credits onto the desk. His rebreather hissed as Noyce stared at the pile. ‘Throne’s foundations!’ Noyce said at last, and took the wad in both hands. It was more than he earned in a year. ‘Are you in trouble?’

Yar Umbra made no response.

Noyce swallowed. He weighed the credits in his hands. At last he said, ‘No one from Orlock will die?’

‘I have no contract, if that answers your question.’

Slag Noyce slid the wad inside his overalls, which bulged with the weight of them. ‘Ash Gate Nine,’ he said and rifled through the papers on his desk. He found a number of charts, which he checked and then dropped into a pile at his side. ‘Ah!’ he said. ‘Here it is.’

He unfolded the map onto the table and smoothed out the creases.

The light from Yar Umbra’s yellow eyes gleamed from the matt surface.

Noyce bent over it. ‘This is a map of the Western Districts at Strata Two-Three-Nine-Eight.’ He peered down and laid a dirty finger onto the map. ‘It’s there, look!’ he said. ‘Under the Southern Buttresses.’

Yar Umbra gave no visible reaction. Just the gleam of his eye-lenses and the hiss of his rebreather. At last he said, ‘How far?’

‘It’s about as far as it could be without being the other side of the central spine.’ Noyce pulled a face. ‘How long have you got?’

‘Six days.’

Slag Noyce puffed out his cheeks. ‘You had better get going then!’

Yar Umbra paused and stared back at Slag Noyce. At last he put out a long, slender hand for Noyce to shake. There was a strange formality to the bounty hunter.

‘Goodbye.’

‘Bye,’ Slag Noyce said. He looked uncomfortable. ‘It’s hard reading you,’ he said. ‘Are you ever going to take that bag off?’

‘Yes,’ Yar Umbra said. ‘Soon.’

V

The base of Yar Umbra’s skull ached with gravity-pain. On the second day, after a brief sleep, his joints felt as though they were filled with ground glass. His muscles screamed as he pushed himself to cover the distance.

He stopped briefly in Dust Falls for stimms and a flask of stillwater from Clear Drop Still. The Necromundan water tasted of dirt. Yar Umbra missed the chem-fragrant brew of the recyc he had grown up with. Not long now, he thought.

As far as anyone could tell, there was only one route that could get Yar Umbra to Ash Gate 9 in time. It wasn’t cheap, but in a few days he wouldn’t need Necromundan credits any more. It was an exclusive tunnel used by guilders and uphivers. Anyone who could afford to pay.

The entrance way was half a day’s hike above Dust Falls. The throb in his skull had not gone away. When he was far from town he found a private spot and carefully removed his hood, and tipped the stimms into his hand. There were three pink pills. He swilled them down. They kicked in within minutes and he was quickly loping up the long stairs, the stimms smoothing away the pain from his protesting knee joints.

The stairs were broad and well made at first, but after four hours of climbing, they started to zigzag up the vast layers of a step pyramid. Throughout the climb, a gradual rain of dust fell about him. His rebreather saved him from inhalation but the fine, sooty powder lay in drifts on the floor and lifted with each footstep, settling like water in the folds of his clothes and webbing.

He paused to dust himself down. Even with the stimms his legs felt like lead. He looked down and saw the lights of Dust Falls far, far below. Before him was a sign and an arrow, which read, Trent’s Gap.

There had been at least four wardens Yar Umbra had known named ‘Trent’. Whether they changed through inheritance or violence or contract he didn’t know. The current Trent was the longest-running occupant of the position. He was a retired pit fighter with the tattooed, muscle-bound arms and raised red chainsword scars to prove it. He sat in the control cabin, hunched in his seat, a yellow lumen flickering behind him. His head jutted almost vertically out from his hunched shoulders, with rings of fat pressed against his chest. His brows were knotted together as he sucked the end of a carbon stylus, a folded news-sheet on the counter before him. His arms were as broad as Umbra’s waist. As Yar Umbra approached, Trent looked up with irritation. ‘Yes?’

‘I’m heading rimwards. Ash gates of House Orlock.’

Trent grumbled under his breath as he slid the papers about on his counter. He wore a stained sleeveless vest that was stretched over his torso. He found a map. It was written on kroc vellum in a neat inked hand, and had been diligently updated to show broken passages and quake-sumps. He sighed as he found the right route. ‘You take this tunnel as far as Monty’s Gap. Right to the end. Through all the turn-offs. To get to the ash gates you take Addum’s Slide. You need to rent a sled. Take it down the scree slope. To the bottom. Then you’ll be less than a day’s hike away.’

Trent folded the paper back up, took his stylus and started scratching numbers. He sucked the end of the stylus again as he added the numbers up. It was a total that would have made Yar Umbra wince if he’d needed the credits… but before long he wouldn’t need them at all. Necromunda would be a bad dream from which he had awoken.

He handed the credits over. It took most of what he held in the bag at his waist. Trent made little piles of coins and notes. He slid each pile into his cupped hand. It took a long time for him to count them out, but at last he nodded, and handed Yar Umbra the appropriate chits. The dirt-streaked doorway was closed. ‘I’ll open that for you,’ Trent grunted, half in apology, half in surprise, and used both hands to pull a lever. The rusting valves ground open. It revealed an old circular service duct ribbed with metal hoops. There was a stale, dusty smell inside.

‘Good luck!’ Trent called out, as Yar Umbra shouldered his lasrifle and set off.

VI

‘Bar Owner Mae,’ the head-taker – a short, weighty man, with a long face and erratic ruffs of black hair – announced.

Bar Owner Mae was gagged and bound with ropes; her head had been crudely shaven. Her hair stood up in bloody tufts. The skin of her scalp was pale and blotched. There were scabbed welts where the hand-clippers had missed or cut too close. She cursed him as Father Grobius put his pistol to the back of her head.

Metal to flesh.

Faith to sin.

His mind wandered. ‘In the Name of the Emperor of Mankind,’ he intoned in a busy, businesslike voice, ‘I commit your soul to the fires.’

He called out to the Holy Emperor to forgive her. Then he fired.

There was a bang and an explosion, and the hard round ended her life with a comet blast of blood and gore and viscera. The lead slug sparked when it hit the floor and ricocheted away as the bar owner’s corpse slammed into the rockcrete. A line of kneeling prisoners awaited his ministrations. Crudely daubed signs hung from each of their necks.

The head-taker stepped sideways. ‘Bar Owner Kenn Rudd,’ he announced as he read the next sign. Father Grobius moved with a stiff formality. But the result was the same. Another dead heretic, lying pillowed in a spreading puddle of their own lifeblood.

He sighed. A lifetime of work lay ahead of him. This close to the wild fringes of the hive the domes were nests of sin and drink and fornication, and he was clearing it out, hard round by hard round.

When the box magazine clicked empty the priest cursed. There was an air of disappointment as he unclipped the latches and slid the empty canister out. The head-taker stood waiting to announce the name of the next in line. Father Grobius could feel the eyes of everyone on him as he moved his ammo belt about his body and chanted a rite of purity while he thumbed the hard rounds from the belt-loops and into his magazine.

The magazine took twenty rounds. He counted mentally as he pushed them in, and then heel-punched the magazine into place. It locked in with a resounding click.

As he stood over the next in line he heard the note of the fanatics about him change. The whoops and howls of his acolytes filled the dome. They were dragging a man towards him. He was tall and slim. There was something unearthly about the way he moved. Father Grobius squinted. The man had a bag over his head, such as you would put on a criminal being led to his execution. ‘He was trying to sneak down a back street!’ Patrice shouted.

Patrice was his chief hunter. A human hyena. Relentless. Hungry. Vicious. He had his hand flamer thrust into his belt. Over his back was a long-las. Father Grobius sighed theatrically as he motioned the prisoner forward.

Of all moments to run into a cleansing, Yar Umbra thought as he was dragged forwards.

He was high on stimms, every nerve tingling with richly focused sensation. He was strangely calm. He had done this before. This was just one of the many trials he had to survive. All his time on this planet was a series of deadly and dangerous tests. This was a ridiculous hindrance. He had to remain calm, considered, focused.

Time seemed to slow. The fat priest was shouting at him. The exact words were a little lost on him, but the emotions that Yar Umbra picked up were fear and self-loathing. The priest was waving his pistol in the air, which was full of the scent of human blood and propellant.

‘Name?’ Umbra heard, and announced himself, but his words were indistinct and muffled by the canvas bag, and the priest didn’t appear to be listening. He was shouting about the Emperor now.

The closest fanatic had Umbra by the elbows. He appeared to think that he had him bound tight. But Umbra’s wrists were unnaturally thin and he had already slipped one hand free, and held the cords about his wrists. It wouldn’t pass a thorough inspection, but these fanatics didn’t seem to worry about being thorough. They relied on bluster and violence and a lot of shouting, and all Umbra had to do was to pick his moment. There weren’t many left to choose from and this one seemed as good as any other.

‘In the name of the Emperor of Mankind!’ the priest said, raising his pistol.

Yar Umbra exploded into movement, his lean frame disguising his incredible power and speed. The fanatic did not stand a chance. He gaped in astonishment as Umbra swung his arms free, yanked the man’s flamer out and spun on his heel as he engaged the firing stud. A hiss of promethium, and then fire doused everyone within twenty feet in incandescent flame. Fanatics. Priest. Even the criminals. All of them started screaming as the blaze engulfed them.

Only the priest did not panic. There were flames licking up his body, but he was still shouting about the Emperor. A shot rang out. It whistled past Umbra’s ear.

A second shot went through the bag that covered his head. He felt the tug of the cloth, and the sudden blast of air over his skin. It came just as his shoulder caught the priest in the belly. He rocked the priest back and caught the man’s wrist in his hand. He forced the pistol away, lifted the flamer and pressed the firing stud.

It sputtered. Empty.

He cursed.

Change of plan: the butt of the pistol smashed into the priest’s skull. The fragile dome shattered under the force of the blow; blood spurted from the priest’s nose and eyes, and his knees crumpled.

In a bare moment Yar Umbra considered. About him was a circle of screaming, incoherent pain and rage. A burning Cawdor threw himself at Umbra. The fanatic had been soaked in flamer-grade promethium and was now wreathed in fire and slapping himself in a futile attempt to smother the flames. His skin was hanging from his body in shreds. Umbra pistol-whipped him but the fanatic kept stumbling blindly forward, burning arms flung outwards, incoherent mewling sounds pouring from a ruined mouth. Yar Umbra caught another fanatic and flung the two into each other’s grasp. They both fell together in a mess of arms and legs and blackened flesh.

The confusion was absolute. It took a millisecond for Yar Umbra to find the man he wanted. He grabbed his own rifle, wiped the smears off on his trousers, and patted away the flames. This felt almost fitting, he considered, as he made his way rimwards.

A man did not escape a planet without a few tests along the way.

VII

Trent’s directions were good. Scavengers sold sleds out to the nomads who made a living in this border land. Yar Umbra picked the best, with a light and compact mushroom-starch frame and metal rims to the sled skids.

Each scree-skirt was longer than the one before: a loose mix of fallen tiles, broken crystalflex and chunks of mortar. And each slope took him closer to the level of the Necromundan ash deserts, like the last steep steps of a pyramid. The fastest way down was by sled.

‘Will this survive?’ Yar Umbra had asked the attendant at the top.

He was short and lean, with a mop of dark hair and a ratskin cloak. He sniffed and spat. ‘It will. You might not.’

He gave Yar Umbra a few pointers, and then said, ‘Stay right of the black rock.’

‘Why?’

‘To the left is the home of the scree-fishers.’

Yar Umbra did not respond. The man looked at his yellow eye slits, as his rebreather hissed.

The sled was light enough for Yar Umbra to carry over his back. He strode out into the rubble field, the rocks turning underfoot, and stopped at the top of Addum’s Slide.

He was close to the hive’s outer gates. This was a frontier land, where the world and climate of the hive gave way to the wild, polluted soul of the ravaged planet.

Yar Umbra was going to leave it all behind. He felt gusts of toxic air rising towards him. They moaned in the tunnel mouths and buttress hollows. By the time he reached the lip of the scree it was a blast that whistled through his canvas hood. He leant into it, and felt a wave of nausea as he looked down. The drop looked almost vertical.

He laid the sled on the lip and climbed on, swallowed back his fear, and then pushed himself off.

Stay right of the black rock, he reminded himself.

At first it had been an exhilarating descent. The sled had skipped and skidded on the rocky slopes as he wound down. Here and there were giant edifices that had fallen from the hive and now lay embedded in the scree slopes, or vast buttresses that reared up like mountain crags.

None of them seemed particularly black.

He was three-quarters of the way down when he saw a boom hanging over the slope. It was a counter-levered fishing net, as he had seen used in the civilised parts of the hive. He veered away as the net swung up, empty.

As he tried to regain control he saw another net, and another, and realised with dreadful horror that he had somehow taken the wrong turning. He threw the sled desperately to the side and the craft skidded and veered, then flipped over, and he was thrown clear, skidding and bouncing blind down the scree slope, his hood pulled halfway about his head, tumbling over and over. The sled was ripped from his grasp. There was rock dust in his mouth and face.

When at last he came to himself he was suspended in a net with a barefoot woman scrambling along the scree towards him. ‘What is this?’ she hissed. ‘A man with a bag on his head. Oh Throne! He has sent you to me.’

Now the anchorite had her knife in her hand. The honed edge glinted silver. ‘So it is true. You do not deny it?’ she hissed.

‘I do not. I smashed his skull and bathed him in purifying flames.’

‘And his holy bullet went through here?’ Her finger found the hole that the priest’s shot had torn through the canvas and pushed inside.

The strangeness of what lay beneath startled her. She pulled her hand back as if stung. ‘What are you?’ She came so close he could feel her breath on his neck. She put her hand to the hood and braced herself.

He pulled back but she did not let go and yanked at his hood.

Yar Umbra’s body screamed with pain as he leapt to his feet, his right leg rising and falling in a terrifying axe kick that shattered her collar bone as she stumbled backwards on the loose scree. She collapsed on the floor, squirming in agony. His face looked down on her and she pointed a finger in hatred and accusation.

‘What are you?’

‘Your death,’ he hissed and brought his heel down on her exposed throat. The first stamp crushed her windpipe and she lay gasping for breath like a beached fish.

Yar Umbra sawed slowly though the bindings that held his wrists together. They fell in shreds onto the floor. Pain stabbed his fingers as circulation returned. He flexed them. It was a gorgeous pain.

Pain was a sign of life… All he needed now was his hood.

It was still in the hands of the anchorite. She lay on her side in a broken heap. He snatched his hood from her dying fingers.

As he did, she hissed, ‘Oh Emperor, deliver us from…’

He did not wait for her curse to fall but took her head in his hands and twisted sharply.

VIII

Yar Umbra had a pict-slate memory for details, and the image of the logbook in the dim corners of the Parking Post was fixed in his mind. The book had been full of long lists of ship names, gate numbers and scheduled arrival and departure times. On page eight hundred and seventy-four was the name that he was looking for. HALCYON DAWN. Ore-loader. Contracted to House Orlock. Ash Gate 9.

Orbital berths were in great demand. Each ship had only hours to load and unload its cargo. If he had a hope of getting off this planet he had to rush.

But first he had to tend to his wrists.

The skin had rubbed raw. Clear fluids oozed from the wounds. There was nothing clean to bind them with so he used the last of his water to wash off the blood.

The grey glimmer of daylight grew brighter about him as he skidded down the moraine. He was near the bottom when he found a broken drainage pipe leaking out of the scree. He paused to clean the dirt from his cuts. The polluted drip-water stung. But he barely felt it. His stimms had worn off, but his elation was slowly rising within him and he was giddy with anticipation.

There was not long now. Only hours separated him from the stars, and from vengeance.

IX

From where he sat, Yar Umbra could see out to the surface of Necromunda.

The planet was a benighted hell. The vast city-monolith of Hive Primus was a human-made mountain and about it whipped blizzards of ash, while a constant rain of rockcrete debris tumbled from above. Its countless peaks caused pressure differentials that resulted in violent gales and shearing columns of wind. Polluted and dusty gusts tore in from the outside. The air stank of ten thousand years of extraction, combustion, defilement, blight, adulation and desecration. The angry ripostes of a dying planet to its parasitic billions. In the lee of the raging wind, the incessant cyclones fired off a regular pulse of spinning vortexes that spiralled away across the dust-plains, the twisters carving fissures across the landscape as lightning crackled and flared in the storm clouds above them.

It was into this seething hell of turbulence that a constant stream of planetary lifters attempted to keep to their dictated schedule. They were so vast they caused storms of their own. Fat, dirty gobbets of acidic water hissed as they burnt channels deep into the rockcrete cliffs of Hive Primus. No one sane would venture out into this hell.

But none of Yar Umbra’s shipmates would ever have accused him of sanity. Nor of the ability to forgive. It was no chance that he had been marooned. He had been betrayed by his deckmaster, and that man would die in as cruel and slow a manner as Yar Umbra could think of.

The hooded warrior found a lofty crag high up in the lee of the cavernous gateway, and settled down for what he reckoned would be a six-hour wait.

Gusts blasted in from outside, showering him with dirt and grit. The rimward journey had left his long-las singed and battered. He unscrewed the barrel and eyeballed it. The tube was unbound and sound. He screwed it back on, unclipped the powercell. It was good, but he slipped a fresh one in, just in case. This moment was years in the making.

He could picture the approach of the Halcyon Dawn on its bi-yearly circuit of the Necromunda System. The trade route was simple if not entirely danger-free. On the fringes of the system it docked at one of the filter rigs that harvested precious minerals from the circumstellar clouds. It was a journey he had taken a thousand times. In his mind’s eye he could see the snub-nosed tugs filing into visual contact, could hear the clunks that ran through the Halcyon Dawn’s metal superstructure as each freight vessel was secured with mag-locks and landing claws.

It was a time when all the ship’s crew were busy. He pictured the activity as ore-tanks were clamped into place under the tugs then finally lifted clear. He recalled the slow approach to the anchor stations above Necromunda. The clang as the freighters detached and special goods were ferried to the planet’s surface by the team of tenders. He had worked the tenders before. It was an odd experience, coming down to any planet. You were still high in the atmosphere when they started to feel the tug of the planet. The competing gravitational pulls caused gravity sickness in even the toughest constitutions. Headaches. Nausea. That was what his old shipmates would be feeling now.

He wondered who it was that was piloting the tender down from the void-craft upon which generations of his family had been born.

It could be Macneel. Or Baptiste. Or Silas Rut.

He imagined the moment he revealed himself. He imagined their faces when his shipmates saw him return, and he was mulling on this when he saw an ore-loader begin to approach through the dust storms. The cargo-20 had enormous wheels, each one three times the height of a man. There was no road on the dust plains, just furrowed routes that the winds had scoured across the desert floor.

The carrier moved slowly under the immense weight of its ore-hopper. It was so far off it seemed almost like a toy that a child might push across the soil. It took an age to roll over the foothills of slag and debris. Yar Umbra checked his weapons. They were all in good order. He had nothing now to do but stand by.

‘It’s a long wait, isn’t it?’ a voice said suddenly.

Yar Umbra spun round. A young man stood behind him holding a lascarbine low. He handled it like an expert. He wore the distinctive body-enclosing suit of Van Saar membranes, the suit speckled with colour-coded tox-filters and water plugs.

Yar Umbra took in all these details in a bare moment. The Van Saar ganger had a broad chin and wide blue eyes. His face was young and hairless, with a smattering of orange freckles, and a matching mop of orange hair. Yar Umbra’s rebreather hissed. ‘Have we met?’

The Van Saar ganger did not lower his gun. ‘Don’t you know me?’

‘No.’

There was a flicker of disappointment in the stranger’s pale blue eyes. Yar Umbra saw that there was sweat on his lip and forehead. He had a noise diffuser strapped to his waist. So that was how he had snuck up on him.

‘Leave me,’ Yar Umbra warned.

The young ganger shook the pistol in his hand. ‘I am Elden Hames.’

Yar Umbra was barely listening. Another fool he would have to kill. ‘Leave!’ he hissed.

The ganger did not move. ‘Remember Dynamo Lunn. Of the Flame Serpents?’

Yar Umbra’s temper flared. ‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.’

‘We had just taken the lightning farm. The whole frekking lot.’

There was a pause.

‘You took our leader out.’

It all came back to Yar Umbra now. One of his first contracts… A rising Van Saar ganger getting too powerful for his own House’s comfort. The moments flashed back like the strobing neon lights of Sludge Harbour.

He remembered approaching the hab of one of Dynamo Lunn’s mistresses. Standing under the porch as the acid rain dripped from above. Hearing the sounds inside. A bottle opening. The call of a woman. The sound of glasses being filled. A voice calling out, ‘Who is it?’

Yar Umbra had burst inside, knocking the table over.

Dynamo Lunn was a handsome man with freshly slicked-back hair. He was fast too, flinging the glass into his face and shouting. But Yar Umbra was too savvy to be distracted. The first shot hit Dynamo Lunn in the chest. The second in his cheek.

There were screams and shouts as the concubine threw herself at him. He shook her off, kicked the table aside.

Lunn was crawling along the bottom of his hab wall. Yar Umbra stood over him, put the lasrifle to his head and fired. The body flinched as the round went through it. Then it lay still, as a spreading pillow of blood cushioned the shattered skull.

Yar Umbra left the metal Escher token his employer had instructed. It rang out on the floor like a spent cartridge as he left the room.

The yellow flashing light on top of the cargo-20 began to strobe the dark chamber.

‘We had everything a gang could dream of and you took it all away.’

Yar Umbra felt a cold chill go through him. ‘Do you want credits?’

The boy was cocky. ‘You’re in no position to bargain with me. I’ll take whatever I want when you’re dead.’ He waved his pistol. ‘But first I want to see your face.’

Yar Umbra paused.

‘Go on,’ the Van Saar ganger said. ‘Take it off. What is it you’re hiding?’

There was a steady hiss as Yar Umbra took the rebreather unit from his mouth. He put both hands to the back of his hood, and lifted it from his bent head.

‘Go on. Look up. I want to see your face.’

There was a long pause. Very slowly Yar Umbra lifted his head.

A look of terror passed over the ganger’s face. ‘Throne!’ he hissed. ‘What are you?’

‘Death,’ Yar Umbra hissed, and threw himself forward.

It was over in bare seconds. The young ganger lay on his back, the anchorite’s sickle blade embedded in his gut.

‘Such speed is not human,’ he managed. It was almost an excuse he gave himself for not killing this thing that stood over him.

‘Goodbye,’ Yar Umbra said. ‘To all this.’

The dying man started to shake. Blood welled up, but Yar Umbra realised that it was laughter.

‘Failure has changed your tune.’

‘You think you’re going home…?’ The laughter came again. ‘You’re not going anywhere…’ the Van Saar hissed. ‘The logbook. Ash Gate Nine. The pict-slate… All a trick. You’re never going to leave. You know that, don’t you? You’re going to die here, with me. You’ll never leave Necromunda!’

Yar Umbra stared down. A wave of nausea ran through him. It took the strength from his legs and they began to shake. The hurricane winds moaned in the hollows about him. Yar Umbra’s brainstem ached. His joints howled. He fell forward to his knees as the gravitational tug of the planet pulled him downwards. He needed more stimms.

Necromunda was killing him.

LOW LIVES

DENNY FLOWERS

PROLOGUE

The settlement of Hope’s End had only one watering hole.

Dunwich, the owner, claimed this was because he knew how to meet his customers’ needs. Not that these needs were extravagant – for the most part the miners were content to drink in silence, drowning their memories of the day’s toil. Even after the Granite Lords occupied the mine, few of them cared to discuss the situation; no one saw any point in discussing a problem that could not be solved.

None except for the stranger.

He had swept in with a cheery confidence that Dunwich almost found insulting. For the man was hardly an impressive figure, neither tall nor broad, his face partially covered by a faded green scarf. But he strode to the bar as though he owned the establishment, ordering a bottle of Wildsnake for himself, and another for anyone who cared to drink with him.

That was enough to draw some attention. A crowd had soon formed and, as the drink flowed, they began swapping news and stories with the newcomer.

Eventually the topic came around to the occupation.

‘See that’s what I don’t understand,’ the stranger said. ‘The mine belongs to you. You built it, you took all the risks. You should be reaping the rewards, that’s all I’m saying.’

‘It’s not that simple,’ Dunwich sighed. ‘The Granite Lords aren’t a bunch of juves fresh from the foundry, looking to make a name. Each of those men is a cold killer, and Redcap is the worst of the bunch. You’ve heard the story of how he got his name?’

‘I hear lots of stories,’ the stranger shrugged, reaching for his glass. ‘For example, I heard the Granite Lords barely survived their encounter with the Badrock Boys. Didn’t Bonesnapper kill two of them with his bare hands?’

The bar’s occupants tensed slightly. They had no love for the Granite Lords, but the gang was still House Orlock, and some loyalties ran deep.

‘That was a long time ago,’ Dunwich said after a moment’s grace. ‘Besides, the Badrock Boys were unstoppable – I heard Bonesnapper once took a krak grenade to the face and didn’t even lose any teeth.’

‘I heard that too,’ the stranger replied. ‘And yet those same unstoppable monsters were slain, cut down in a single night-cycle.’

‘That’s a bunch of grox-turd.’

The stranger spread his hands. ‘It’s just what I’ve heard.’

Some of the other barflies nodded.

‘Yeah?’ Dunwich grinned. ‘Well, someone told me one man killed all six of them, armed with only a knife.’

‘So they say,’ the stranger replied. ‘In fact, I heard it was the same man who slew the Unseen Beast of Sumptown.’

Crank, one of the eldest of the miners, nodded in agreement. ‘My brother lost half his crew to that monster,’ he said. ‘He told me it could hide inside your nightmares. No one could track it.’

‘Indeed.’ The stranger smiled. ‘But such a talent only works on prey who know fear, and that was the beast’s undoing. You see, the Badrock Boys and the Unseen Beast of Sumptown have something in common. They were both thought to be invincible, until they pitted themselves against the underhive’s ninth most dangerous man.’

The barman raised his eyebrow. ‘You mean both were slain by Caleb Curseborn?’

The stranger glared at him. ‘No,’ he said, a note of irritation creeping into his voice. ‘I mean they were slain by Caleb Cursebound. Not Curseborn, Cursebound.’

Crank frowned. ‘I heard it was “born”.’

‘Well, you heard wrong,’ the stranger snapped. He paused, taking a deep breath and composing himself, his smile slipping back into place. He then turned, hopping nimbly onto the bar stool and addressing the crowd.

‘I know all the stories of Caleb Cursebound,’ he grinned. ‘I know that he escaped the Blood River massacre and carried the sole surviving child a hundred miles through the Ash Wastes. I know that he scaled the heights of the Spire and battled the great Lord Harrow, besting him in single combat and stealing his most treasured possession. And I know that, one day soon, he will be known as the hero who freed the settlement of Hope’s End from the ruthless Granite Lords. And do you know how I know this?’

They exchanged glances. Crank shook his head.

The stranger pulled the scarf from his face and smiled.

1

Four hunters departed Slag Row. Five if you counted the unbloodied rookie, though none of the others did. The trail was not hard to follow; wherever their quarry passed there would be stories, improbable deeds and daring feats. It did not concern the hunters that the accounts were mired in contradictions. All that mattered was the hunt.

The five suffered their first casualty just outside Sump City. Whilst the rest slept, Bor Meathook pressed on alone, intent on being the sole claimant of the bounty. The other hunters found his body a day later floating in a pool of refuse, unharmed if you discounted the knife wound in his chest. They knew Meathook had been arrogant and at times sloppy, but he was no amateur. Lars the Sly, the group’s self-appointed leader, had seen him break a man’s neck with a backhand slap; had seen him dislocate a shoulder with a vigorous handshake. The former Goliath had been a mountain of muscle, and surprisingly quick for someone his size, but his life was still ended with a single thrust. The rookie obsessed over the injury, measuring the length of the incision and the path of entry, as though cataloguing the killer’s methods. The rest of the party silently paid their respects, each recalculating their share of the bounty now it would be split three ways. Four if you counted the rookie, though none of them did.

The remaining hunters continued, more cautious now. Since Meathook’s death the trail had vanished, their quarry aware of the pursuit. Perhaps they would have escaped had it not been for Garak the Seeker. The old man struggled to keep pace with the younger hunters, but he had the uncanny ability to know where their prey would flee to. It would sometimes be the smallest clue – a stray hair or errant boot print. More often there was no real sign at all, and the old man would consider each route in turn before inevitably guiding them down the right path. He’d smile when they asked how, exposing a motley collection of ill-formed teeth, and explain that he’d spent most of his life running; he knew where they ran because it was where he would have run.

The hunters lost him just outside Sinkhole, the sump lake that had long since swallowed the Orlock territory of Ironcrown. The old man had been so intent on the trail he had failed to spot yellow eyes bobbing just above the surface of the toxic waters. He screamed as the sumpkroc seized him, his fingers scrabbling on the bank as he was dragged below. The rookie fumbled for her weapon, but Lars held out his hand, motioning her to be still. There was no need for a tracker now; there was only one path left.

A few miserable souls scratched out an existence on the sump lake, cultivating fungus and trawling the waters for scraps. A handful of credits bought information, confirming their quarry’s flight across the lake, and a handful more secured passage on one of the trawlers’ barges. The two remaining hunters, three if you counted the rookie, wordlessly gravitated to the centre of the vessel, backs pressed together, gaze intent on the emerald waters. The trawler was unfazed, propelling the makeshift craft with a sculling oar that ended in a barbed hook. He would pause occasionally, reversing his oar to haul some trinket from the sump.

No one knew how far the lake extended. The trawler claimed to have sailed further than most. He told of a forgotten shore where twisted creatures wore the faces of men. When asked whether their quarry had headed for those shores, the trawler laughed, and told them that none dared cross the lake, for those who once tried had never returned. The rookie rightly asked how he knew of the creatures on the far shore if no one had ever returned, and the trawler smiled, his teeth surprisingly white and just a little too sharp for comfort, and said these were but stories.

Still, neither the hunters nor their quarry were interested in crossing the lake. Their focus was the island that lay at its centre.

The land mass was unstable, little more than jetsam drawn together by the currents, the toxic waters fusing it around a steel cylinder, perhaps ten feet in diameter and that much again in height, the top sealed by a bronze cap with a rich turquoise patina. Before the hive quake, back when Ironcrown was a centre of industry, the shaft had been one of a dozen used to haul valuable ore from the mines below. Now it was all that remained; the final passage through Sinkhole to the last remnant of the lost empire. It was their prey’s final refuge.

For a modest fee, the trawler promised to return in three days to retrieve them. Lars threatened that reneging on the deal would have dire consequences, though in truth he knew that this would be a difficult threat to enforce.

Within the former mineshaft, a cage of corroded iron and tarnished copper was suspended on frayed cables and worn chains. It was barely a few yards across, and heavily worn by corrosion and filth. The motor had long since fallen into disrepair, so they alternated operating the winch, two hauling on the rusted chain whilst the other rested. A single spluttering lumen was their only source of light, like a candle in darkness. Not that there was anything to see, suspended in a steel shaft deep within the sump. But they were not alone in the waters. Occasionally something would brush against the metal of the shaft – perhaps a trailing tentacle or malformed fin – and the cage would rock, the chain creaking as it sank deeper.

Their third loss came during the descent. The rookie awoke to find Lars pulling on the chain alone, the body of Scrag Dry lying at his feet. Psychosis, Lars would tell her, no doubt brought on by the confines of the mineshaft and the dangers lurking in the sump. Lars had been forced to act in self-defence. A pre-emptive defence, admittedly, but defence nonetheless.

The rookie said nothing.

At the next waste valve the two of them flushed the corpse. Through the viewport they could just see it floating, suspended in the iridescent sump. Then there was a shadow, and a flash of teeth the size of a Cawdor polearm. The body vanished.

They both set to work on the chain, redoubling their efforts.

Eventually they came to a juddering stop at the bottom of the shaft. When they stepped out of the cage, they emerged into a vast cavern, having left the sump far above them.

Lars stepped from the cage, rifle slung low but always to hand, his olive-green greatcoat buttoned tight, his pockmarked face set in a sneer. The rookie followed close behind, her long-las strapped to her back. Before them lay all that remained of the Ironcrown of old: a subterranean desert of ash and crumbling stone, pierced by vast stalactites the size of mountains. They grew from the dome far above, the tips having long since pierced the ash dunes. A few rusted gantries linked some of the larger stalactites, and far above he could just make out the glow of the remaining dome lights. It was hard to imagine that above those lights were the festering waters of Sinkhole. He wondered how large a hive quake it would take to open a crack in the dome and drown them in the sump, and decided it would be best not to dawdle.

The rookie was studying the maps, trying to pinpoint the under-realm’s only remaining settlement. She’d survived longer than he’d expected, outlasting three seasoned hunters, and had acquitted herself admirably during their travels. He would still most likely kill her once they had claimed their bounty, but she was worth keeping around for now. If nothing else she might catch a stray bullet intended for him.

She caught his gaze and pointed. Before them, shrouded in smog, he could just make out the settlement of Hope’s End – barely two score buildings, some welded from rusted bulkheads, others carved directly into the spoil heap. To his left a workshop was stacked with minecarts and drilling equipment. On the far side was some form of distillery, which at least raised the possibility of getting a drink. Centrally, one building stretched slightly higher than the others, presumably belonging to whoever ran the place. A crowd was gathered outside of it, and he could hear the distant echo of voices.

Lars raised his rifle, adjusting the telescopic sight. He was too far to risk taking a shot, but he could at least see clearly now. The settlement was indeed in the throes of some celebration, though it did not appear planned. People were still emerging from some of the buildings, converging on an improvised stage assembled from rusted bulkheads. On it, a bottle of Wildsnake clasped in each hand, a lone figure was addressing the crowd. He was average height, clad in a fraying shirt and tattered green scarf that had probably been the pinnacle of fashion a couple of cycles ago, his hair worn in a fading blue mohawk. His face was unremarkable until he smiled, the warmth of the expression either genuine or a flawless facsimile. Lars had the bounty in his pocket, but he didn’t need to check it. The face was all too familiar.

‘Caleb Cursebound,’ he whispered. ‘Nice to see you’re enjoying yourself.’

Satisfied, he turned to the rookie, who was still adjusting the scope on her long-las.

‘Quickly,’ he snapped. ‘Our boy seems to be making a spectacle of himself. I think we should put him to bed. Permanently.’

He grinned, pleased by the joke. Still, Caleb was only half the problem. There was a secondary target, Caleb’s accomplice. He had neither her name nor picture, but he knew the ratskin would be close, even if she was proving rather elusive. He could not find her on the stage nor in the crowd. It was only when Caleb concluded his speech, his closing remarks eliciting a roar of approval, that Lars noticed a flicker of movement on the roof of the central building. There she was, barely visible in the shadows, but he could just make out her face, the eyes framed by crimson markings that looked a little like tears. She was scowling.

‘Not enjoying the party?’ he said, grinning, and displaying an incomplete set of rotten teeth.

As he spoke her head snapped round, her gaze meeting his own. He flinched involuntarily. There was no way she could mark him; even a bionic eye could not spot someone at this distance, but he still felt a shiver of fear scurry along his spine. He would enjoy making her pay for that.

‘You think you could make this shot?’ he asked, turning to the rookie. She was still struggling with the long-las, displaying an unusual level of incompetence.

‘Give me that,’ he snapped, snatching the weapon from her hands. It was still a long shot. He was confident that he could pick off either of the duo, even at this range, but doing so could reveal his presence and potentially give the other target the opportunity to escape. The ratskin would be the better choice, he decided. Alone on the rooftop there was a good chance nobody would spot her fall. That would give him time to adjust his aim and take the second shot at Caleb.

He barely felt the rookie’s blade slide across his throat, effortlessly parting skin and flesh beneath. He managed a gurgled scream before folding to his knees, clutching weakly at the gushing wound. Then he fell forwards and was still.

Elissa wiped her blade on Lars’ shirt, sweeping up the long-las with practised grace. Through the scope she could see Caleb on the improvised stage. He raised his hands and the crowd roared again, the sound carrying to the hilltop. She felt a bubble of hate swell within her chest. For an instant her finger tightened on the trigger.

But she stopped, lowering the weapon, taking a deep, slow breath.

No.

She had pictured his death a thousand times. It would not be quick and not be clean. His last moments would be as a broken man, a pariah to the pitiful underhivers whose approval he so desperately craved.

Her fingers danced over a silver vambrace on her forearm, the metal smooth and unadorned barring the symbol of a golden dagger set against a field of blood. The holo-matrix display blossomed into life, and she pulled up a set of coordinates half a mile hence. She slung her weapon over her shoulder and set off, leaving Lars’ corpse sprawled in the ash desert.

Her pace was methodical. There was no hurry. Not yet.

2

Caleb awoke, and quickly regretted it.

He struggled to blink, wondering why his eyes were sealed shut. He tried lifting his hand to wipe them clear, but this required establishing which way was up, and at that moment this was not an easy question to answer. In fact, he only knew three things for certain. The first was that something was trying to drill a hole through his skull, presumably in order to escape. The second was that, on balance, he hoped they succeeded and left him to die in peace. The third was the dawning realisation that the foulness festering in the pit of his stomach would not be there much longer.

He managed to haul himself to a seated position but nearly fell, the ground shaking beneath him. No, not ground; he was slumped in a steel box perhaps five feet square, alongside a half-finished bottle that smelled like sterilisation gel infused with offal. The walls of his residence were a couple of feet high. Above him the dome lights were struggling to pierce the cloud of smog and dust.

His stomach clenched again as bile rose in his throat.

Caleb grabbed the metal frame, hauling himself to his feet and just managing to get his head over the side before noisily emptying the contents of his stomach. As he raised his head weakly he found himself starring at a trio of puzzled faces. They were clad in a mix of denim and studded leather, practical work clothes somewhat reminiscent of House Orlock. They too resided in their own metal box, which he could now discern was part of a convoy of minecarts, each linked to the others like a wagon train, and each occupied by a separate group. The procession was surprisingly quiet. He glanced down, ignoring the stain he’d left on the steel. The cart was suspended just above the sands on two metal tracks, riding upon a wave of magnetic force.

The trio in the adjacent cart were still staring at him.

He tried waving, offering his warmest smile, which admittedly worked better when he didn’t have vomit caking his chin. The nearest of the three offered a thin smile in return, trying and failing to keep the disgust from her eyes. Relieved, he sunk back into the cart, drenched in sweat, his eyes stealing shut.

Something struck him in the face.

He fell back, his head slamming into the steel and reawakening the creature drilling into his skull. The projectile landed in his lap. He peered at the object, eventually recognising it as a flask.

‘Water,’ said a familiar voice. ‘Drink.’

Eagerly he seized the lid, suddenly desperate, his throat as parched as the ash desert surrounding them. As he tipped the flask back a hand shot out, seizing his wrist and slowing him.

‘Not too much,’ the voice said. ‘Small sips.’

He did as she asked, filling his mouth and allowing the liquid to trickle down his throat. He felt his stomach clench like a fist but, drop by drop, he managed to get the water down. It helped far less than he’d hoped.

His rescuer took the flask from him, settling herself on the far side of the cart. He knew her face about as well as he knew anything: dark eyes framed by crimson slashes, a hard mouth set in a perpetual line, and a mess of black hair that had been cropped short with a knife. But whatever part of his brain was responsible for language was struggling to recall her name. He thought better of mentioning this; judging from her expression she was not in the best of moods, and he was starting to think that he might be at least partially responsible.

His stomach clenched again; it felt as if he’d been stabbed in the gut. He held it this time, eyes squeezed shut, counting silently under his breath as sweat dripped from his face. Slowly the pain subsided. He relaxed, letting himself slump in the cart.

She seized his hair, dragging him upright. Her palm smacked across his face. It was a hard slap, though he suspected that, if required, she could hit him considerably harder.

‘Wake up!’ she snapped.

‘Iktomi?’ he managed, the language centre of his brain suddenly online. ‘I’m awake, I just might be sick again.’

She released her grip, muttering a curse. The word she used was of ratskin origin, its precise meaning unknown to him, but intonation and tone made the message perfectly clear.

‘Thank you,’ he said, straightening his collar. ‘Now, where are we going?’

‘The mine.’

Mine. There was something familiar about the word.

‘We’re going mining?’ he ventured.

She glared at him. He would have backed away if his shoulders were not already pressed against the steel.

‘Not mining,’ she said softly, the menace in her voice palpable. ‘Stealing.’

That did sound familiar. Not so much the mine part, but the concept of stealing in general. The fog was lifting now, perhaps dislodged by the blow to his head. Stealing; that sounded about right. Stealing and running and stumbling from one near disaster to another. It was all flooding back now – the flight across the underhive, bounty hunters at his back. The descent beneath the toxic lake filled with monsters, holding out in the under-realm beneath the sump. That was his life now, ever since the incident in the Spire.

He glanced to Iktomi. She was no longer watching him, intent on the desert of ash and dust. He followed her gaze. The landscape was bizarre: inverted mountains of crumbling stone that widened as they ascended, their bulk blotting out vast swathes of the dome. Rusted girders jutted from the surface like broken bones, and a warren of tunnels had been carved into the mounds, supported by a network of scaffolding. He could not discern its purpose – perhaps some settlers lived in the caves above the desert, or retreated there if attacked? It didn’t look very secure, and there would be nowhere to fall back to. Admittedly, some of the larger mounds were connected by gantries of corroded iron, but the bridges were ancient and beyond disrepair. Many had no doubt fallen, isolating the more distant mounds, the only remnant of their presence the broken girders.

His vision swam and he suddenly felt very sick again.

‘I think I need more water.’

She passed him the flask without looking, her focus on the twisted landscape.

‘What is it?’ he asked, taking a sip.

‘Someone was watching us.’

‘When?’

‘Yesterday. Perhaps before then. Perhaps now.’

‘So, always then?’

‘No, not always,’ she said. ‘But we did not always announce our presence wherever we travelled, or sing songs about our heroic deeds.’

He could remember now. Not everything; past experience suggested that would come later. But he recalled standing at the table, a bottle of Wildsnake clenched in each fist, the audience in the palm of his hand, hanging on his every word. It was a wonderful feeling, though some of that could be attributed to the Wildsnake.

‘I admit that was probably a mistake,’ he conceded, ‘but there is no way someone could have followed us down here. No bounty is worth risking that lake.’

‘We survived the journey.’

‘Only just. But we’re in Hope’s End, right?’ he persisted. ‘This is about as low as you can lay without sinking into the actual hive bottom. Nobody will find us here. Nobody even comes here.’

‘Except the Granite Lords.’

‘The who?’ The name sounded vaguely familiar but his memories remained hazy.

‘Orlock gang,’ she replied. ‘Usually operate out of Rust Town. But the locals stumbled across something valuable down here, and the gang decided it belonged to them.’

‘Just like that?’

She nodded. ‘This used to be Orlock territory – they feel entitled to take whatever they need.’

‘Sounds familiar,’ Caleb sighed. ‘I know what you’re going to say – we shouldn’t get involved.’

‘That is what I said,’ she replied, staring darkly at him. ‘You even agreed with me. At first.’

‘I feel like I may have said something stupid last night…’

She shook her head. ‘No, not something. Many things.’

He nodded. This, too, seemed familiar. ‘Any real gems?’

‘You promised you could take back what was theirs without a single drop of blood being spilt.’

‘Right.’ He winced. ‘Well, that’s within the realms of–’

‘You promised them a better future.’

‘I feel like that’s more of an opportunity promise, as in I can give them the chance to make a better future, but the execution is more–’

‘And you waived half our fee as a gesture of solidarity.’

He swore. ‘Oh, great. So how much are we making on this?’

‘You are making nothing.’

It took a moment for him to take her meaning. He shook his head. ‘No, we split everything down the middle – that’s the rule. Our wins and our losses.’

‘Then why do you get to waive half my fee without asking?’

For a moment neither spoke, the silence broken only by the hum of the cart’s generator. Ahead of them one of the inverted mountains loomed into view between the dunes, its vast bulk casting a shadow over the convoy.

‘We need to get on the same page here,’ Caleb said. ‘I’m… not quite at my best. I’m not sure why, Wildsnake doesn’t usually hit me this hard, but–’

‘That ran out during your speech. You kept making toasts.’

‘What was I drinking then? Second Best?’

She sombrely shook her head.

‘Third Best?’ he whispered with mounting horror.

‘I suppose you could call it that. If you were feeling charitable.’

‘Then I suppose I’m thankful to still be alive. Why in Helmawr’s name was I drinking Third Best?’

‘You were very drunk.’

‘That would explain it,’ he nodded after a moment’s thought. ‘Was it at this point I came up with the plan?’

‘Some of it.’

‘Did I share any details?’

She stared at him. It was not a nice stare. He swallowed.

‘I’m going to be honest here. Last night is, frankly, a little foggy. There are a few small but significant details about our current assignment that escape me.’

‘Which details?’

‘Well, I suppose we should start by confirming exactly what it is we’re stealing.’

The stare was getting worse. Caleb had once been threatened with evisceration by a seven-foot-tall psychopath wearing a necklace of assorted ears. Somehow the man had been less intimidating. He continued regardless.

‘Also, I’m not completely clear on how we plan on doing it. Or why. Or where from, for that matter, but I think at the moment the how and what are the areas to focus on. Agreed?’

He extended his clenched fist in a gesture of solidarity.

She stared at it, and then at him.

Her eyes narrowed and Caleb realised that, until that moment, he’d never actually seen what she looked like angry.

Elissa watched the convoy glide across the ash desert. It was too far away to identify the occupants of the carts, but she knew he was there, lounging amongst the settlement’s dirt diggers. She could feel it.

Her sanctuary had been carved into one of the stalactites, a cloister barely a few yards wide, tucked beneath an overhang and invisible from the ground. It might once have served as a smuggler’s den, or a secluded venue for a lovers’ tryst, but it was long since abandoned. She would never have found it without the coordinates, though there was little to really find. Some small part of her, a part she would have sworn died long ago, had held out hope that something would have been left for her. A token from her home, or even just fresh rations that had not been reconstituted from vermin and corpse-starch. But, as she had been reminded, even a blanket would be a violation. She knew some puritans would go as far as arguing that being given coordinates was technically a breach of the code.

The code.

It had seemed romantic back in the Spire – the young nobles of her house descending into the depths of the underhive to prove their valour, armed only with what they could carry on their backs. They would return once their oath was fulfilled, though most simply vowed to take a given number of lives, the more boorish seeking to raise their tally one higher than their peers. Not that this made the task any more challenging. Each debutante wore a vambrace engraved with the house symbol, their shackle to the world beneath. The device could read the heart of its wearer and would provide proof of their triumph or failure, but it cared little for valour or honour. Defeating a score of the underhive’s most dangerous killers held the same value as murdering a score of its babes in arms, a sentiment shared by some of her peers.

She had heard some of her cousins boasting that they intended to linger in the underhive, content to spend a trifling few years carving out empires amid the squalor. A few had even suggested a tournament of sorts, where each would take a cycle to gather his forces and then wage open war, the victor claiming a conciliatory drink from the loser. Now that she had spent a few months in the festering darkness she wondered if they still shared this sentiment, if indeed any of them were alive.

When it was her time to take the oath she had promised but a single life. For she sought not to prove herself by the size of her tally, but by the life she claimed – the thief who had stolen her family’s honour and spilled her father’s blood.

The wagon train disappeared into a tunnel carved through the slag mounds. It did not matter. She knew the path it would take and the destination. Despite his numerous failings Lars had a passable gift for data gathering. There was only one place of value in the ash desert. That’s where she’d find Caleb, no doubt thrusting himself into some local squabble. If it turned into a firefight a single stray bullet could steal her kill and break her oath.

Her vow was for more than just his death. Only when his life lay in ruin, when all illusion of heroism was shattered and the underhive knew him as a murderous coward – only then would she grant mercy and end his suffering. Until then, his life belonged to her, and she would ensure no other would take it.

The long-las clicked into place upon her back, and Elissa Harrow began the descent from her sanctuary.

3

By the time they reached the shale spoil heap Caleb was sweating, though he was unsure whether this was due to the prior night’s indulgences, or the dome abruptly lurching into its midday environmental protocol. The transition had not been smooth, the climate regulators raising the temperature by twenty degrees in a matter of minutes. The dome lights were brighter too, though it made little difference and the convoy was now deep within the shadow of the largest mound.

He wiped his brow, glancing at Iktomi. She seemed unaffected, at least by the heat. But something was off. He knew her methods well enough, how she would study the landscape to identify cover and potential firing lanes. But she was preoccupied, her gaze drawn over her shoulder, as though waiting for something to emerge from the dust clouds behind them.

The convoy halted behind the shale mound, the last piece of cover before they reached the mine. The settlers dismounted and checked their equipment, whilst Caleb and Iktomi scaled the rock face. She moved like a spider, ascending without regard for hand or foothold. Caleb was more methodical, testing each handhold in turn. The rock was soft, crumbling at his touch.

They reached the summit. They had a clear view of the mine’s entrance on the plain below. His heart sank when he saw it. He’d hoped for a pit in the ground, something they could easily surround and contain, pinning the Orlock gang in place. But the main mineshaft had been carved directly into one of the upturned mountains, at the point where its tip pierced the ash desert. The entrance was reinforced by scaffold and support beams, and around it a rudimentary compound had been constructed: two crude buildings welded from scrap and a perimeter wall assembled from a motley collection of boulders and aged bulkheads. Still, it looked solid enough to repel small-arms, and well-chosen firing points had been incorporated in the structure.

Behind the reinforced gate additional barricades were welded into a crude but impressive secondary line of defence, each studded with jagged iron blades. Beyond the compound the terrain had been levelled, creating a hundred-foot kill-zone. Even with minimal defenders any frontal attack would suffer heavy casualties.

‘Damn it,’ he said. ‘It’s a fortress. Did I know it was a fortress when I made all those promises?’

She shrugged.

‘Tell me my plan again,’ he sighed. ‘Just so I’m clear.’

She repeated the instructions he’d dictated prior to blacking out, her tone impassive, her expression less so. It sounded no better on the third hearing.

They were stealing ore. Something called melerithyst. He’d never heard of it, but apparently the mineral commanded a high price. The heaviest thing Caleb had previously pilfered was the bronze bust of Gurnark the Bootking. Even this limited experience suggested to him that stealing several tons of ore would pose some significant logistical challenges. Not that it was really stealing in this instance; the settlers had stumbled across the melerithyst seam before the Granite Lords had moved in, the gang taking over the excavation and driving the locals away with threats and intimidation. He and Iktomi were heroes, defending the downtrodden against ruthless outlaws.

Quite a lot of outlaws as it turned out.

Two were visible at the mine entrance, alert but at ease, their weapons held low. He’d hoped that the gang’s guard might be down, but they seemed well drilled. Two more were further out, sweeping the perimeter. Four outlaws; five more left unaccounted for. They could be in the mine, he supposed, finalising the extraction of the ore. He recalled some mention of it being a delicate process, but the previous evening was still a blur.

Four visible. It would have to be enough.

‘You can find a way in?’ he said.

Iktomi nodded. He knew better than to ask how.

‘Okay, let’s just go through this one last time. You sneak in and sabotage whatever supplies they have left – we need to make sure their water extractor is taken out. No food, no support, nothing. They need to have no avenues of retreat.’

Saying it aloud helped. That part of the plan seemed logical; the key to ending a siege was to prevent it ever happening. Pre-emptive action. Anticipation. All commendable ploys. It was probably the part that had come to him when he was still on the Wildsnake.

Part two of the plan was a little dicier, no doubt formulated under the influence of Third Best. It involved him entering the camp alone, convincing the outlaws to load the ore into minecarts on his behalf, and the whole group departing the compound only to run afoul of the settlers’ ambush.

They descended, scrabbling down the shale mound, the rock crumbling beneath their feet. At the bottom the settlers were arming themselves. Most carried short-range weapons: sawn-off shotguns and stubguns, but there were a couple of harpoon launchers and a heavy stubber. Nothing appeared suitable for blasting a hole through the fortifications, but why should it? The weapons were for intimidation only; he’d sworn no blood would be spilled.

At the centre of the activity the settlement’s overseer was barking commands. He was tall and broad, standing at least a head above Caleb and a shoulder wider. His hair was thinning, tied in a silver braid that reached halfway down his back, and his face was worn by something more than the passage of time, the right side a twisted mess of scar tissue, the ear long departed. When he saw them he extended a broad hand, beckoning them over. Caleb glanced at Iktomi in confusion as they approached. She mouthed a name under her breath: Stone. It certainly suited him.

Caleb drew himself up to his full unimposing height, redeploying his winning smile. It was not reciprocated. He suspected he should clean his teeth.

‘You’ve seen what we’re facing. Still think this plan can work?’ Stone asked, his tone indicating he did not.

‘Absolutely,’ Caleb lied. ‘We just need to draw them out. Once they’re in the open, numbers are all that matters. They will have to surrender.’

‘And you think you can do that?’

‘Of course. I’m simply a servant of the Merchant Guild, here to finalise the sale of the ore. Money talks.’

‘Except they are not expecting you for another three days.’

‘Plans change,’ Caleb said. ‘Let me worry about the timelines. You just need to ensure you are in position when the convoy comes around the shale mound. The carts will mysteriously lose power. That is your cue.’

‘And what then?’ Stone said, raising an eyebrow. ‘I have a cell that can hold perhaps three of them. Perhaps double that if it’s for a short time.’

‘That’s all you need. Lock them up and sell the ore to the real guilders when they arrive. Once it’s gone there will be nothing more worth stealing. The gang can be escorted out of here.’

‘And you think I can just release them?’ The older man frowned. ‘Has it occurred to you they might not be happy about how things have turned out? What if they decide to return with some friends and get some payback?’

‘Why would they come back?’ Caleb replied. ‘You live in an upside-down wasteland underneath a lake of toxic death. Nobody would come here unless there was a ton of credits to be made, or they had literally nowhere else to go.’

‘You came here,’ Stone replied, fixing him with his piercing glare.

‘That’s different.’ Caleb swallowed. ‘We just wanted to… disappear for a little while. There was a minor misunderstanding with a couple of ne’er-do-wells, but it will blow over. Really soon.’

‘Is that right?’ Stone said. ‘Because we take in all sorts down here. I find it better not to ask too many questions, providing new arrivals are willing to follow our laws and pay their way. But you make a pretty speech and suddenly I have people risking their lives on the assurances of a stranger who is already on the run. Why is that?’

‘I suppose I’m just inspiring.’

Stone leant closer, his face an inch from Caleb’s. ‘I don’t see it,’ he said.

‘Well, they do,’ Caleb said, nodding to the settlers.

‘Sure they do,’ the older man replied. ‘Before you came they’d given up hope. When we first struck the melerithyst seam it changed everything. Suddenly we had a glimpse of a life beyond scratching out a living in this dead-end pit. So much excitement… I guess that’s how word leaked. Soon enough Redcap and his lads came down here, chased us off, and took over operations. I still can’t figure out how he extracted the ore so fast, but he did.’ He sighed, glancing to the miners. He looked tired.

‘There’s still hope,’ Caleb said. ‘You send me in there and I will talk the whole gang around. If I fail then I’m the only one who gets shot. You can deny any knowledge of me.’

Stone considered this. ‘That’s a fair point.’

‘I’m that confident,’ Caleb assured him. ‘Trust me – this is what I do.’

‘Con people?’

‘Well, yeah. But just bad people. Not you. Obviously.’

‘I’m really glad to hear that,’ the older man said. ‘Because, make no mistake, if you try and pull anything with me there will be unpleasant consequences.’

Stone turned, marching stiffly away to inspect the final preparations. The settlers had concealed themselves in long-abandoned extraction pipes jutting from the base of the shale mound. The rails would bring the minecarts around the mound. Once they reached the pipes the ambush could be sprung. Assuming Caleb survived, of course. Stone was barking orders, coordinating the positioning of the heavier armaments. From the way he directed them it looked as though this was not his first firefight.

‘He’s warming to me,’ Caleb said as Iktomi drew level with him. ‘Before this is done the two of us will be sharing a drink and laughing like old friends.’

‘He doesn’t trust you.’

‘Well, I’m going to change that,’ Caleb replied, vaulting onto the lead minecart. He staggered, almost falling. Iktomi caught his arm.

‘You are not in a fit state to do this.’

He looked at her. For just a moment his smile slipped.

‘I have to try. I gave my word.’

‘Or we could still disappear.’

There was no judgement in her voice. He knew the offer was genuine.

‘We made a promise,’ he said. ‘Or rather, I made a promise.’

‘Yes.’

‘But you didn’t. You could leave.’

‘I could,’ she agreed.

‘But you won’t.’

‘No.’

He grinned. ‘Well, at least I’m not the only idiot. Is there anything else I should know before I wade in?’

‘Plan B is in your pocket,’ she said. ‘But you assured me you wouldn’t have to use it.’

He reached into his coat and felt a familiar shape.

‘Won’t I need some–’

She took hold of his chin and forced his head back, jamming the filter plugs into his nostrils.

‘Thanks,’ he said, eyes watering. ‘Dare I ask if there is anything else?’

She thought for a moment. ‘I did ask what I should do if you got into trouble.’

‘And?’

‘You said it wouldn’t come to that.’

‘Right,’ he said. ‘But… let’s just pretend for a moment that it does. What’s the plan?’

‘You said it wouldn’t come to that,’ she said, slinging the grenade sack over her shoulder. ‘Good luck. Hero.’

He did not like how she made that last word sound.

4

Caleb raised his hand in greeting as the convoy approached the compound. The gangers remained at their posts. They did not return the greeting, though neither did they raise their weapons in response; that was a start.

He was beginning to question his decision to drive the carts. One of the settlers, someone familiar to the gang, would have been less conspicuous. But then they would not be able to masquerade as a representative of the guild. Besides, he’d apparently insisted that only he possessed the charm to pull off the heist, that his silver tongue would lull the gang into a false sense of security, ensuring that when the ambush was launched they would be unable to respond. It was a little unfortunate that his vaunted silver tongue currently tasted like it had died and been left to dry in the Ash Wastes for half a cycle. But then again, that was something he could use.

He reached into his pack, tearing off a strip of rat jerky. He didn’t bother much with chewing, forcing the meat down his throat and chasing it with a handful of dust and the last dregs of the Third Best. It did not sit well. But it wasn’t supposed to.

As he drew near to the main gate the guard took a step closer, raising his hand to signal a halt whilst his colleague levelled his autogun. Caleb clumsily adjusted the control panel and the cart slowed. The guard was close enough now to see his face.

‘What is your business here?’ he said. ‘And who the scav are you?’

‘My name is Amatiage Rakk, representative of the esteemed Merchant Guilder Solias the Prosperous. I am here to arrange transport of the melerithyst ore.’

He flashed his badge of credit, a symbol of his membership of the Merchant Guild. It was, even if he said so himself, a quite exceptional forgery.

The Orlock examined the emblem, a frown creasing his weathered brow.

‘But… you’re not supposed to be here yet. We haven’t completed the extraction.’

‘I appreciate that. However, my lord Solias has requested that we bring our timetable forwards. There is a minor issue with–’

He paused, held up a finger by way of apology, and bent his head over the side of the cart. There followed an extensive and audible expulsion of rat meat and Third Best, bulked out by dust and pebbles. The guard was clearly a hardened fighter, proudly wearing a six-inch scar across his cheek. But even he recoiled at the sight, retreating a step and almost levelling his weapon at the steaming vomit now adorning the bedrock. He glanced from it to Caleb, his expression a mixture of fear, pity and disgust.

‘What’s wrong with you?’ he said.

‘Prospector’s Blight,’ Caleb said, swaying as he wiped his mouth with his hand. ‘There’s a lot of it about at the moment. By the time I passed through Hope’s End half the settlement was laid up. My master is concerned that if we tarry too long the supply chain may be compromised. I do apologise, but rest assured that we–’

Abruptly there was a second eruption. He hadn’t planned it and certainly didn’t enjoy it, but it helped sell the story. It was just a shame that it was at the expense of his digestive tract.

‘Bones!’ the Orlock snapped, calling to his fellow ganger, his weapon still pointed somewhere between Caleb and the pool of unpleasantness steaming by the side of the carts. The man called Bones had apparently been watching proceedings. He shook his head, keeping his distance.

‘Do not be alarmed,’ Caleb said, half climbing and half tumbling from the minecart. ‘It’s not usually that contagious, providing you don’t touch any of the fluids. At least, not person to person. It’s the minedust, you see.’

He nodded to the mineshaft. His words must have carried because Bones flinched, glancing over his shoulder to the mine’s main entrance, like a man betrayed. The nearer guard was also hesitating. Caleb could see the uncertainty play across his face as he tried to decide what to do next. It was gratifying to note his gun was now held at his side; he must have quite correctly determined that Caleb posed zero threat in his current condition.

‘I fear I will not be able to assist with loading the carts,’ Caleb said. ‘Would you mind if I rested a moment? I think I need to lie down.’

‘Shut up!’ the guard snapped, raising his weapon, but Caleb could see his heart was not in it. He was no doubt second-guessing how he felt, trying to determine if the bubbling in his stomach was paranoia or the onset of something more serious. Caleb took a step back, raised his hands. There was no point pushing the matter. He needed the man to reach his own conclusions.

With a curse the guard shouldered his rifle, vaulting into the cart and gingerly reaching for the controls with gloved hands. The convoy shuddered, lurching across the improvised rails into the compound. Caleb followed on foot. Ahead of him Bones must have summoned the rest of the gang; three more emerged from the mine’s entrance, the two perimeter guards remaining on patrol. Seven in total, two still unaccounted for.

Caleb sunk to the ground some distance from the gang, and made no effort to listen in to their discussion. An attempt to steer the conversation might arouse suspicion. Besides, there was only one course of action. The ore needed to be moved and the possibility of an outbreak just made the situation more urgent. Nevertheless, the men argued. Voices were raised, scraps of conversation reaching him. From the way they spoke it did not seem any of them was in charge.

Eventually a decision was made. Two of the guards returned to the main shaft, shouldering their weapons. The rest loitered outside, casting the occasional glance in Caleb’s direction. He kept his head low, swaying slightly. At one point he clamped his hand over his mouth, half rising. It was gratifying to note that all five of them flinched.

He heard it before he saw it, the rumble of the mine’s cage emerging from the main shaft. On it sat a compact haulage unit, little more than a seat mounted on a smoke-belching engine. It dragged an iron trailer into the ash desert. Inside, sealed in a series of transparent membranes the size and shape of pillows, was a pinkish mineral veined with gold. It glistened even in the faux daylight of the underhive. The engine ground to a halt, the trailer running into it with an audible clang, and its contents shuddered. Three of the gangers raised their hands in horror, rushing over to berate the driver for his clumsiness.

Caleb had assumed the gang would at least try to make him perform the heavy work, but they ignored him, easing the minecarts into place beside the trailer. With the utmost care they lifted each membrane, one man a side, a third hovering nervously between them. It was a slow process, and Caleb was grateful for that. He was feeling a little better now, the second purging having apparently cleansed him somewhat, but his legs were still shaking. Still, so far everything seemed to be working. Once the carts were loaded they would proceed from the compound, but they would not get far. Barely a hundred yards from the entrance the settlers would be in place behind the shale mound. As the carts reached them Iktomi would detonate the explosive, destroying the compound. The gang would be startled, turning to face this new threat. At that moment Caleb would disable the convoy and the settlers would emerge from their hiding places, weapons drawn. Surrounded, with no avenue of retreat and no means of moving the ore, the gang would surrender. Maybe.

He sighed, finding himself wishing he still had the bottle of Third Best. There was so much that could go wrong. What if the settlers gave away their position? What if the gang refused to back down, taking cover amid the minecarts? He could see the thought processes behind the plan; it must have seemed bold and daring, snatching victory through guile and gut. But watching the gang work made him realise these were hardened men, well drilled and used to functioning as a unit. They did not seem the sort that would give up easily, but it was too late to back out. His greatest concern was that two of them remained unaccounted for.

This mystery was soon solved. As the Orlocks loaded the last of the ore, two figures approached from the rear of the compound. One of the perimeter guards raised his hand as they headed towards the gate, and the lead figure responded in kind, but there was something about the gesture that made Caleb uneasy. It was made worse by the second figure, who had something heavy slung across his shoulders. Caleb tried to convince himself that it could be anything – supplies perhaps, or a crate of Wildsnake to celebrate a job well done. But as they drew closer it became difficult to deny that he was carrying a body.

The gang had noticed this too. Their labours completed, they fanned out across the barricades, covering all angles of approach. Caleb watched as weapons were eased from holsters, a sickly feeling washing over him that had no connection to the previous night’s indiscretions. He kept his head low, as if unaware or unconcerned by these developments. With tensions rising he knew his best hope of survival was appearing as inconsequential as possible.

The two late arrivals entered the compound. They were clad in a similar manner to the rest of the gang: shoulder guards marked with chevrons, three-quarter-length greatcoats and armoured wrist guards. But the lead figure carried himself differently, his focus encompassing the compound, scrutinising every aspect of the gang’s work. There was no doubt in Caleb’s mind that this was the leader of the Granite Lords, a man who carried the troubling nickname of Redcap. He gestured and his companion dumped the body with a grunt. It flopped across the rock, arms spilling open, dead eyes staring blankly at the sky. Caleb didn’t think he knew the man, but he was too far away to be sure.

Redcap said something to one of his underlings. The man shrugged, jabbing his thumb in Caleb’s direction. The gang leader glanced at him, his expression unreadable. He turned back, muttering something inaudible, before waving to Caleb, beckoning him closer. The sickly feeling was getting worse.

Caleb took his time finding his feet, shuffling over unsteadily as if he might collapse at any moment, whilst he desperately tried to figure out what was happening. The gang were all accounted for, and the corpse did not wear their colours, clad instead in an olive-green greatcoat. Could he be a mercenary of some sort, hired to scout the area? Or had one of the locals been a little too eager and ended up paying the price?

As he drew closer Caleb ruled out the latter. The corpse was clearly an outsider, his armour cobbled from furnace plate and scraps of mesh. Slick oily hair framed a pockmarked face, the eyes and mouth bulging open, displaying rotten teeth. His throat had been slit, and for a moment Caleb thought of Iktomi and her long-bladed hunting knife, but the wound lacked her usual precision, the killer having cut from collarbone to cheek, the throat torn open as though by a hungry milliasaur. He would have died quickly, if not painlessly.

Redcap smiled at Caleb. It was not even remotely reassuring.

‘So you’re the guild’s representative,’ the gang leader said. ‘And I hear some sickness is going around? Half the settlement is laid up?’

Caleb nodded. ‘Prospector’s Blight.’ His voice did not sound convincing any more, but Redcap nodded sagely, as if the fictitious disease was a well-known ailment.

‘Well, I do wish all a speedy recovery,’ he said. ‘Especially Stone. I have a lot of respect for that man. We all do.’

Caleb nodded. He could feel the gangers moving into position around him. Redcap was still watching him. He tried to strike a pose somewhere between feverish and nonchalant, but doubted it was particularly convincing.

‘And you’re the brave man who offered to undertake the journey from Krackrok?’ Redcap continued. ‘Or are you stationed somewhere more local? Who is your paymaster?’

‘Solias the Prosperous,’ Caleb replied, his voice higher than he would like. ‘I think–’

‘Ah, of course. A man well known to me,’ Redcap continued, laying his hand on Caleb’s shoulder and squeezing just a little too hard. ‘Say, being a fellow who’s travelled and seen a few sights in his time, perhaps you can assist in identifying something we found in the wastes?’

His arm encircled Caleb, dragging him over to the body.

‘Anyone you know?’ Redcap asked.

‘I’ve never seen him before,’ Caleb replied, truthfully.

‘Well, between you and me,’ Redcap said, drawing Caleb in a little closer, ‘I think he’s an outsider. Someone who came to stir up trouble between my boys and the great people of Hope’s End.’ He shook his head, appalled by the very thought. ‘That’s what outsiders never understand,’ he continued. ‘This is Orlock territory. It will always be Orlock territory. It doesn’t matter that Ironcrown fell. We are the House of Iron and we stick together. That’s why the people of Hope’s End have so generously agreed to provide us with the ore we need to continue our campaign against the other Houses. We don’t need anyone disrupting things. You understand?’

‘Of course.’

‘But then I find myself wondering – if this is an outsider, why is he dead?’ Redcap continued. ‘None of my boys killed him. Now I could see someone from the settlement putting a bullet in him if he turned up looking for trouble, and they would have my full support in doing so, but slitting his throat? That’s not someone defending their territory, that’s the work of a killer, and not a neat one at that.’

He turned his head to face Caleb, still wearing that false smile.

‘You know what this reminds me of? When the Badrock Boys were finally put to rest. They weren’t the smartest bunch, but damn they were tough. I hated those bastards. Bonesnapper killed two of my boys the last time we tangled – just broke them like toys. Then one day I hear this story, about how all six of the gang were cut down in a single night-cycle. Bonesnapper was the last to go, just bled out in the end from a dozen wounds. I cheered when I heard the news. We all did.’

He gestured to the rest of the gang. They nodded, their collective gaze never wavering from Caleb.

‘Of course, stories are sometimes just that,’ Redcap continued. ‘I wanted to be sure. So I looked into it, got a couple of different accounts from people who were there at the time. Even met someone who’d seen the bodies. Of course, I just had to know who was responsible. Turned out to be a fellow called Caleb Cursebound, allegedly the underhive’s ninth most dangerous man.’

He grinned, reaching into his pocket and unfolding a well-worn warrant. Though the picture was faded and the bounty torn off, Caleb could not deny the resemblance.

‘I… that is, I don’t have–’

Caleb felt someone seize his arms, pinning them in place. Redcap released the grip on his shoulder, stepping away and unholstering his stubber.

‘It seems our dead friend was looking for you,’ he said. ‘Shame really. If Caleb Cursebound had walked up to me the day he ended the Badrock Boys I would have slapped him on the shoulder and bought his drinks all night. I just want you to know that – this is nothing personal.’

‘You have the wrong man,’ Caleb said. ‘I’m just making my way through. I don’t want any trouble.’

‘Too late,’ Redcap said, levelling his gun. ‘It’s a shame. I would have liked to have known what really happened to the Badrock Boys. Now we’ve met I can’t quite picture you cutting down old Bonesnapper with nothing more than a blade. You don’t seem to have that killer instinct.’

‘I don’t,’ Caleb said. ‘Most of the time I don’t have to.’

A throwing knife slammed into the eye socket of the ganger holding Caleb.

At the same instant an explosion tore through the compound, engulfing the larger building in flames and spraying the gang with splinters of scrap. Redcap was staggered by the blast, his shot whistling past Caleb’s ear. Caleb thrust his hand into his overcoat and the choke grenade bounced at his feet, engulfing them in a cloud of amethyst smoke.

‘Why did no one search him?’ Redcap roared as Caleb sprinted for the convoy of minecarts, but his voice was soon drowned out by the second explosion. The remaining outbuilding burst like a rat caught in a grinder, scraps of rusted iron hurtling in all directions. Something slammed into Caleb’s shoulder, knocking him off balance. He staggered but kept moving, vaulting into the nearest cart and ducking amid the melerithyst ore. He drew his laspistol, firing off a couple of shots in the vague direction of the gas cloud. The filter plugs had protected him from the worst of it, but his head was still spinning. From outside the compound he heard shots – the settlers were trying to provide covering fire. But they were out of position. Or rather, he was out of position; the compound remained a fortress.

A volley of bullets hammered into the minecart behind him. Caleb ducked as more shots sailed over his head. He risked a glance. One of the perimeter guards was advancing, autogun raised. Behind the man a shadow unfolded from the scrap and surged towards him. He just had time to turn before Iktomi buried her knife in the man’s chest. She never slowed, snatching the gun from his dying hands and sprinting towards Caleb.

A bolter shell slammed into the ash sand beside her, the blast throwing her to the ground. She rolled as she fell, finding her feet as Caleb’s head snapped round. The Orlocks were emerging from the smoke, goggles down and respirators in place. Redcap led the charge, his bolter poised for a second shot.

Caleb rose, firing wildly. He clipped one of the gangers’ thighs, and the man screamed and dropped to the ash. The others spun, ready to return fire, but a barked order from Redcap slowed them. Caleb could not make out the exchange, but when they fired the shots came in controlled bursts, most sailing above his head. His gaze fell on the carefully bagged melerithyst ore. They were afraid of hitting it. Not that it mattered; all they had to do was keep him pinned down. He cursed, realising he should have made for the control cart. It was at least thirty feet away and he had no chance of reaching it.

There were familiar footsteps approaching from the far side of the cart.

Iktomi.

‘Good plan,’ she shouted between volleys of gunfire.

‘Not my fault,’ Caleb replied. ‘They found some guy in the desert with his throat slit and my picture in his pocket. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that?’

Her response was drowned out by more shots. There was a pattern to them: short bursts to conserve ammunition, but tight enough that there was a chance to try to flee.

They were holding him in place. Some of them, anyway. The others would be moving into position, flanking them.

Iktomi raised the stolen autogun above the minecart, firing blind, perhaps hoping to at least slow their advance. He thought he could make out shots from beyond the compound too, the locals still apparently trying to provide covering fire. But beyond those walls was a kill-zone; a couple of heavy stubbers could hold off an army. How many of the gang were left now, six?

He risked another glance, peering through the dust and smoke from the smouldering remnants of the outbuildings. Two of the Orlocks were positioned behind a barricade, their injured comrade with them. Caleb ducked as one unleashed another volley, and glanced to the main entrance. Two more were holding off the settlers; the rest must be outflanking them.

More shots. This time from his left. On the far side he heard Iktomi return fire. He couldn’t tell if she hit anything. He couldn’t see anything while trapped inside the cart.

The scav with it.

He surged upright, hurling himself gracelessly over the wall of the cart, a rain of bullets snipping at his heels and punching a row of holes through his greatcoat. He landed heavily and considered staying there. Beside him, pressed against the cart, Iktomi was covering their left flank. He glanced to the right, expecting a second attacker to be emerging through the smoke, but there was no one. Had he miscounted?

Beside him Iktomi unleashed another hail of bullets, but now he was outside the minecart he could hear another sound: a rumble pulsing through the ash, like thunder. He’d heard it before. The cage was moving. Something was coming from the mine.

He crawled, pressed low, peering between the minecarts and trying to catch a glimpse of the main shaft. The compound was littered with the shattered remnants of the outbuildings. Though the fires had died, smoke billowed from the wreckage. He still could not make out the entrance, but the rumbling had ceased. The cage had stopped.

Then he saw it, a shadow lumbering towards him. It stood three times the height of a man and almost that again in width, its shoulders broad but hunched like an ape’s, forelimbs almost brushing the ground with each step. Through the smoke something glinted; he caught sight of a row of amber sensor banks gleaming like the eyes of a spider.

Iktomi appeared beside him, her gun discarded. She was bleeding from the forehead. He hadn’t noticed it before.

‘He is down,’ she said, nodding behind her before catching his expression. ‘What is it?’

He pointed. The smoke was thinning, enough to catch sight of the thing advancing upon them, oblivious to the carnage surrounding it. It was not a creature of flesh and blood; its body was a perversion of steel and servo, shielded by a carapace of rusted iron, the shoulders adorned with chevrons. Its forelimbs ended in massive claws powerful enough to crush rock, and were flanked by buzzing sawblades. Beneath a faceplate studded with sensors, steel mandibles clicked, the edges sharp enough to sever limbs.

He could just make out Redcap behind the automata, screaming orders and curses. The monster paid his words little heed, but it was heading straight for them, wading through smouldering wreckage as though it were nothing more than overspill from a drainage pipe.

‘What is that thing?’ Iktomi asked as the machine drew closer. One of the Orlocks’ improvised barricades lay in its path. It raised a clawed limb, the meltapod mounted in its palm hissing. The barricade glowed as the heat struck it, turning red, then yellow, and finally white as the steel began to run like wax. The machine calmly strode through it, molten metal pattering harmlessly from its armoured shell.

Iktomi swore in ratskin. Caleb turned to her, adjusting a setting on his laspistol.

‘That would be a Luther-pattern Excavation Automata, model C/21,’ he said, trying to keep his voice steady. ‘Affectionally known as an Ambot. Usually employed for ore extraction, occasionally shanghaied into a combat role. Very powerful, very durable, perfect for mining and murder alike if it wasn’t for a tiny design flaw. It just takes one well-placed shot to shut it down.’

He took a deep breath. The hulking automata was drawing closer. Once it reached the carts their cover would count for nothing. He only had one chance to neutralise the monster. The moment was all that mattered; he had to make it count.

He waited until it was a dozen steps away before surging upright, ignoring the shots pinging from the steel around him, his focus on the connect port just behind the Ambot’s left sensor bank. It was barely a finger’s width.

He squeezed the trigger.

The blast struck true. The machine froze instantly, head bowing as the light in its artificial eyes slowly died. Beside it, Redcap had drawn his pistol, intent on returning fire, but hesitating as his iron enforcer ground to a halt. He ducked behind the machine for cover, screaming at it. His fist glanced from its armoured leg joint. It did not seem to register the blow, or anything else for that matter.

Caleb grinned at Iktomi, blowing on the barrel of the laspistol.

Then the machine’s mandibles clicked, once, then twice. Its sensors flared with a scarlet light. It straightened, gaze sweeping the compound, as though seeing it for the first time, before finally settling on Redcap. The wrist-mounted sawblades whirred.

‘Ah,’ Caleb said, wincing. ‘On reflection I think this might be the B/34 model.’

‘It that bad?’ she asked.

‘It’s bad for someone.’

The machine raised its fist and casually backhanded Redcap. He was hurled through the air, blood spraying from his chest, and slammed into a barricade some ten feet from them. He did not move.

Caleb grabbed Iktomi, pulling her low just as the machine’s sensors swept over them, seeking new prey. It turned its head, mandibles clicking, before its unblinking gaze settled on the two gangers providing covering fire. It took two stumbling steps towards them, and then broke into a loping run. The barrage of autogun fire did nothing to deter it.

‘Why is it doing that?’ Iktomi hissed as the machine surged towards the panicking gangers.

‘I must have damaged its cranial governors,’ Caleb said.

She frowned, not understanding his meaning.

‘The stuff in its head that keeps it under control,’ he said. ‘It’s just an animal now. It will kill them and us and everything else it can find.’

She stared at him blankly, still failing to understand.

‘Why?’ she said. ‘Why build a machine that will turn on its owner?’

‘It’s not just a machine,’ he said. ‘It’s alive. Or partly alive. I don’t understand it exactly. Its body is mechanical but inside it’s… the frame is built around some xenos beast. They’re apparently quite temperamental in the wild. I damaged whatever it is that keeps the creature docile.’

They heard screaming, punctuated by occasional bursts of autogun fire, which were becoming fewer and further between.

‘It’s an animal,’ she said, watching the carnage from the gap between the minecarts. ‘It’s alive?’

‘In a sense.’

‘Then we can lure it. And we can kill it,’ she said. ‘Do you have more explosives?’

‘A couple,’ he said, handing her his last two krak grenades. She slipped them into the shoulder sack, crouching low behind the convoy as she crept in the direction of the mine. He searched for a weapon, anything with more stopping power than his pistol. There was nothing.

‘Wait!’ he cried, but she was gone, darting not towards the machine but the mine entrance. The surviving gangers were scattering, the slowest already seized by the Ambot. One of them spotted her, raising his weapon. Caleb opened fire, and the ganger ducked for cover under the barrage.

The Ambot was slowly ripping flesh from bone, its bloodied mandibles slicing the ganger into ragged chunks. It would have looked almost pitiful as it tried to feed if not for the human remains dangling from its jaws. The machine caught sight of Iktomi as she reached the entrance, its head craning to follow the movement. Steam hissed from beneath its faceplate.

It dropped the broken ganger.

She turned to face it, standing just before the cage, amid the scaffold of support beams. Her knife was drawn, though Caleb had no idea what she intended to do with it. Her other hand clasped the grenade sack.

She shouted something, the words unknown to him. Whatever was said, it caught the Ambot’s attention. It headed straight for her, breaking into a lumbering run, the sawblades whirring in anticipation. It was a few scant feet away when she moved, ducking under the snapping claws and wrapping the grenade sack around its wrist, her knife piercing the machine’s knee joint. The blade snapped, but it was enough to throw it off balance. The machine stumbled, clawed limbs grasping at the support beams for purchase, just as the grenades detonated, unleashing a cloud of smoke and rock. Iktomi had cleared the entrance but the shockwave threw her to the ground. For a moment the entrance hung lopsided, the scaffold bent by the blast and the beast’s fury.

Above them the mountain shuddered.

Then the main shaft erupted, an avalanche of dust and rock swallowing the Ambot as the mine collapsed. Iktomi had found her feet and was moving when the ash wave struck her and she vanished from sight. Caleb too ran, abandoning the shelter of the minecarts as they were engulfed by the cloud of dust. He kept running even as it consumed him, until the air became clay and everything was darkness. He couldn’t breathe, the weight of the rubble and dust crushing his chest.

But he felt a breeze on his fingers. A way out.

He scrabbled, dragging his way from the darkness, gasping as he burst clear. The air was choked with dust, the barricades, minecarts and everything else swallowed by ash. There was no sign of Iktomi, no indication even of where she was buried.

Then something stirred in the ground. Fingers, clawing, drawing hand then arm from the ground as Iktomi tore herself clear. She took a shuddering breath, struggling as she tried to free her other arm, but it was held fast, pinned under the rubble.

Caleb stumbled to his feet, breaking into a faltering run, intent on freeing her.

It was this that saved him.

The bolt-round whistled past, detonating against the compound wall. Caleb spun to face the shooter but lost his footing, falling to his knees. Before him, Redcap emerged from the ash cloud. The Orlock was barely on his feet, his left arm clutching his side, blood oozing between his fingers and staining his undershirt crimson. But his right hand still clutched his weapon, now aimed squarely at Caleb’s chest. His breath came in shallow gasps, ribs no doubt cracked by the Ambot’s blow, but he was trying to speak, perhaps to offer some final words before pulling the trigger.

The shot came from beyond the compound. It was silent until it struck, the las-pulse piercing the boltgun’s magazine. The explosion was comparably small, but sufficient to tear Redcap’s arm from his shoulder. Remarkably, he didn’t fall, steadying himself and staring down at the newly acquired stump with a look of incomprehension. A second shot blew a hole in the side of his head. It was an even smaller explosion, just enough to spray Caleb with blood and brain tissue.

Caleb tried to stand and failed. He suddenly felt very tired. He glanced to Iktomi, who was still trying to claw her way clear. In the distance he could hear the settlers drawing closer to the devastated compound, the mine and all its equipment buried under ash and rubble.

‘See?’ he said with the ghost of a smile. ‘I told you it would work. We’re heroes.’

5

Elissa watched as settlers burst into the compound. They fanned out, assessing the chaos. The smoke was thinning now, the last of the wreckage buried by the explosion, but the air was still thick with ash. Caleb lay sprawled in the dust. Beside him, his accomplice clawed like an animal, trying to drag herself clear.

Elissa sighed, weary. It had almost been a disaster.

She had been complacent. Redcap had entered the compound before she realised his underling was carrying Lars’ body. She had left it lying close to the settlement, assuming one of the locals would have discovered it along with Caleb’s warrant. It would have been the first step in her plan to turn the settlement of Hope’s End against him.

She had scrabbled for her rifle, but before she could take a shot the compound was flattened by a series of explosions. She’d lost sight of Caleb in the unfolding chaos, only spotting him again when he’d confronted the berserk mining robot. She had seen some unpleasant sights since descending to the depths of the hive, but few were quite as disturbing as watching the machine attempting to devour a ganger alive.

But then she appeared. The ratskin.

Elissa watched as the settlers ran over to her, where she was still trying to claw her way clear of the dust. They seized hold of her shoulders, dragging her free, but she twisted from their grip, grasped the nearest settler’s forearm and wrenched it behind his back. There was an audible crack. He screamed. The rest of them swarmed her, pinning her in place beneath the weight of their bodies.

Elissa had heard the stories. Not just those told in the dives of the underhive, but accounts of witnesses and survivors. A few had spoken of Caleb’s accomplice, a ratskin girl who was rarely seen and even more rarely heard. None of them knew her name, or much about her, beyond how unsettling they found her presence. Elissa could only assume the ratskin had been responsible for the explosions, and at least some of the casualties. But she knew for a fact that it had been the girl who had stared down the bloodied Ambot, armed with nothing more than a knife and some krak grenades, and still somehow triumphed.

The settlers had her in chains now, dragging her from the compound. Two others had Caleb, his arms pinned behind his back, though he didn’t seem to be resisting much.

Elissa knew she had been lucky. She may have saved Caleb from Redcap, but there had been a dozen occasions where a stray shot could have picked him off, and Elissa doubted she could have done anything to halt the rampaging machine.

She heard her vambrace click, signalling that it had finally connected with the Spire. The image that greeted her was indistinct, a faded sketch in flickering blue light. It was not the face of the woman she had tried to contact.

‘Where is Lady Harrow?’ she said.

‘Her ladyship is indisposed,’ a voice replied. ‘But she has tasked me with attending your needs. How can I assist, my lady?’

‘I require information on an automata. I’m sending a description. I need to know its name, how it works, any weaknesses. Send me anything you can find – I do not want to risk facing a beast like this without knowing more about it.’

‘As you command,’ the voice replied.

She closed the image without another word. Once again Lady Harrow was unavailable. She knew the bondsman could fulfil her request, and would do so whether she had spoken to Lady Harrow or not. But she was still tired of being ignored.

Still, events had ultimately worked out in her favour. Caleb, too, was now in chains, ready to receive the settlement’s justice. She wondered how he would be punished; a flogging perhaps, or imprisonment? Either suited her well enough.

But the ratskin could be a problem. Elissa thought it would be better if she was disposed of quickly.

It wasn’t the worst cell he’d ever been in.

It was clean for the most part, unless you counted the ash. Or the bloodstains. But even they felt established, as much a feature of the cell as the walls carved into the rock face, or the two-inch-thick steel bars that secured the cell door. Besides a barred window overlooking the main square, the only light came from a stained fluorescent lumen suspended fifteen feet above them. There was a rusted iron bucket in the corner which, mercifully, neither of them had needed to make use of yet. The only remaining point of interest was an iron ring welded directly into the floor. It was even thicker than the bars, its surface tarnished but still as strong as it had ever been.

Caleb had an excellent view of the ring, as did Iktomi. This was because they were chained to it, their hands shackled by heavy manacles strong enough to restrain a member of House Goliath. The padlocks were equally massive, the keyholes almost the width of his finger. He’d quickly given up trying to support the weight of the shackles and was now sprawled on the floor, staring up at the flickering bulb. Beside him Iktomi sat with her legs crossed, her hands folded in her lap. Her left hand was bandaged, her knuckles bruised.

For the first hour she had studied the cell, inspecting each bar and every foot of rock, seeking a single flaw or weakness. Now she was still.

Caleb had argued, pleaded, even offered some implicit threats. The settlers had heeded none of them. He’d tried screaming down the corridor, feigning further illness, and had considered starting a fight with Iktomi to attract a guard’s attention. Given her current temperament he’d decided to hold that back as a last resort.

‘Well?’ he said, gaze fixed straight ahead. ‘Any ideas on how we escape?’

She did not respond, or even acknowledge his words. She had not spoken since their incarceration.

‘All right,’ he sighed. ‘I know what you’re going to say. We should have kept our heads down.’

Silence.

‘I meant I should have kept my head down, not got involved in a local dispute.’

More silence. This felt unwarranted to him; things hadn’t gone that badly, relatively speaking. They were alive and for the most part unhurt. He’d certainly got them into worse spots; no one was trying to sacrifice them on a scrap altar or feed them to the sump jellies.

‘It would have worked, though,’ he continued, unable to stop himself. ‘They were loading the carts, ready to set off. There was no way Redcap would have recognised me if he hadn’t found that body. I couldn’t have planned for that.’

Silence. Except it wasn’t completely silent. Iktomi exhaled softly, the sound not quite loud enough to warrant being referred to as a sigh.

‘Fine,’ he said, rolling his eyes. ‘But for once it’s not my fault we have a bounty on our heads. I didn’t kill a member of the upper hive. I didn’t mutilate the body. And I’m not the one who always tries to solve our problems by stabbing people.’

She glared at him. For a moment he wondered if that was the expression her enemies saw right before she gutted them. Then again, she usually seemed far calmer when she was killing people, almost serene.

‘I saved your life in the Spire,’ she said, her voice sharp as a stiletto blade. ‘And I didn’t kill the bounty hunter.’

‘I never said you did.’

‘You accused me.’

‘I asked you,’ he replied. ‘I asked you if you’d killed him. And given that he was hunting us, and that someone had snuck up behind him and slit his throat, I think it was a reasonable assumption… I mean question.’

‘Well it wasn’t me. Someone else killed him.’

Caleb considered this, drumming his fingers on the iron cuffs.

‘You’re sure?’ he asked. ‘On reflection I don’t find the idea of someone else slitting his throat very reassuring. Perhaps you killed him a while ago and then it slipped your mind?’

‘Or perhaps it was the same killer that shot Redcap.’

‘I thought that was covering fire from one of the miners?’

She shook her head. ‘The shot came from the wrong direction, and none of the settlers were carrying a las-weapon.’

‘Maybe you missed it. You’ve been a little distracted.’

‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘Because someone is hunting us.’

‘But he’s dead now. And if what you’ve said is true then it sounds like we actually have someone looking out for us.’

‘Or someone who wants to claim a bounty for themselves. Maybe you’re worth more alive.’

‘I’ve always thought so,’ he said. ‘But most of the people who dislike me tend to disagree.’

‘Understandable.’

There was a flash of light beyond the bars. A door opened; he could hear metal scraping against the stone. Footsteps echoed down the corridor, the sound strangely inconsistent, as though every other step carried greater weight and purpose.

Caleb rose on his second attempt, dragging himself as upright as he could manage, the cuffs digging into his wrists. He nodded to Iktomi, gesturing for her too to rise. She ignored him.

A shadow fell across the bars.

‘You’ve made a lot of people very unhappy.’

Stone stared at them from beyond the cell. His face was grim, though this might have been in part due to the bruising around his left eye, the skin purple and swollen.

‘We took care of the Granite Lords,’ Caleb said. ‘As agreed. For the most part.’

Stone raised his good eyebrow. ‘Is that right?’

‘More or less.’

‘As I recall, the agreement was no blood would be spilt,’ Stone replied. ‘I have two men getting their wounds stitched, a third with a broken arm and a juve who was gutshot and is lucky to still be alive. He’s not out of the sump yet either, there’s still a risk of infection.’

‘We’re sorry to hear that. Really.’

‘The Granite Lords are all dead too, as far as we can tell. Won’t know for sure until we’ve dug them out. Sad end for those boys.’

It was Caleb’s turn to look puzzled. ‘Those boys were robbing you.’

‘Perhaps,’ Stone said. ‘But they were just doing what they needed to do to survive. Besides, this used to be Orlock territory. They may have pulled out after the quake, and since then we’ve let in all sorts of folk, but we of the House of Iron remember, and loyalty is bred into us. When we stumbled across the melerithyst seam and those boys came to claim it, some of us thought they were within their rights, that we shouldn’t have put up a fight.’

‘Did you?’

‘No,’ he admitted. ‘But that doesn’t mean I wanted to see them dead, and I certainly didn’t think we should risk our lives fighting them. But then you arrived and gave your little speech about outsmarting them and freeing us from oppression, and everyone was so wanting to be convinced.’

He looked Caleb up and down. ‘I don’t know how you do it. But you have a real gift for making people think you’re worth more than you really are.’

‘I’m sorry people got hurt,’ Caleb said, meeting the older man’s gaze. ‘But that was always a risk. You must have known that.’

‘Yeah, I knew,’ Stone nodded. ‘And if everything else had gone well I think I could have accepted that. But it didn’t.’

He sighed, pulling up a chair and reversing it. He sat, one arm folded over the backrest, the other absently massaging his right knee.

‘You know how melerithyst is formed?’ he asked.

Caleb didn’t answer. It didn’t seem that sort of question.

‘The mineral has a crust,’ Stone continued. ‘Like the shell of a sumpkroc egg, except even thicker. The outside is inert and worthless, but if the deposit is large enough and the shell gets thick enough then you sometimes get a little pearl in the centre, like a gemstone. Still worthless, mind, unless you put just the right amount of charge through it. Then the stone sparkles. I suppose it’s pretty enough if you like that sort of thing. The rich people uphive will pay a lot for a really pure gem. I gather they make it into jewellery or something.’

He shrugged at this, as if the rationale behind such behaviour was quite beyond him.

‘You can’t make a living out of it, chiselling through a boulder to extract one shiny bauble. But you stumble across a big seam… Suddenly that’s real money, providing you can get to it. Extracting the stuff is delicate work, of course. Once that shell is broken a tiny contaminant can ruin everything inside.’

‘The landslide…’ Caleb whispered, a horrible sinking feeling drawing over him.

‘Indeed,’ the older man nodded. ‘All the melerithyst. All that money. Gone. Buried in the dust. We’ve already started excavating, hoping some of it is salvageable. We might get lucky.’

He did not sound hopeful, and suddenly looked a lot smaller.

‘We didn’t cause the landslide.’

‘Oh?’ Stone frowned. ‘Those weren’t your grenades going off?’

‘Yeah,’ Caleb conceded. ‘But it was only partially our fault. It was mainly the Ambot.’

‘Ambot?’

‘Yeah, they’re like a–’

‘I am of Orlock, the House of Iron,’ Stone replied icily. ‘I know what an Ambot is.’

‘Right, well the miners must have been using it to excavate the ore – that’s how they finished so fast. When we–’

‘Where is it?’

‘What?’

‘The Ambot. Where is it?’

‘Buried?’ Caleb suggested. ‘Maybe it dug its way clear and wandered off. I don’t know.’

‘Well, once it digs its way back we can renegotiate the situation. Until then I decide what we do with you.’

He regarded them in turn, his fingers drumming on the backrest.

‘I’m sure we can be of better use outside this cell,’ Caleb began. ‘I’d be happy to–’

‘No,’ Stone said, shaking his head. ‘You won’t be happy. Not once you see what your job is going to be. You ever worked on a clearance crew before?’

‘I haven’t had the pleasure.’

‘Then you are about to receive an education.’ The older man rose from his seat. He winced slightly as he straightened his knee, and Caleb heard the distinct whine of servos. He unhooked a weighty set of keys from his belt, unbolting the door. The cell bars ground open, protesting as they scraped across the rock floor. Their captor entered the cell, his footsteps still echoing with the uneven gait. He approached Caleb, looking him over one final time. Then he unlocked the manacles. They fell to the ground with a satisfyingly loud clang. Caleb rubbed his wrists; it did little to ease the discomfort of where the metal had dug into his flesh, but there was such a thing as protocol.

He turned to Iktomi, expectant. She remained cross-legged on the floor. Their captor made no move to release her.

‘Aren’t you going to free us both?’ Caleb asked.

‘You’re not free,’ the older man replied. ‘You’re just going to work. I’d keep you cuffed if I thought you were an actual threat.’

‘I don’t want any trouble.’

‘See, there I actually believe you,’ Stone said. ‘You were meek as anything when we carted you away, despite having blood and brains splashed across your face. Shame the same could not be said for your friend.’ He glared at Iktomi and tapped his swollen eye.

‘You put your hands on me,’ she muttered, refusing to meet his gaze.

‘I was trying to pull you out. As was the man whose arm you broke.’

‘Your skull hurt my hand,’ she said, holding up her bandaged finger. ‘Call it even?’

Stone cursed and turned away, seizing Caleb by the arm.

‘Can I just have a moment?’ he pleaded. ‘Just… to say goodbye.’

Stone rolled his eyes, but released his grip. ‘You have a minute. And keep it clean.’

Caleb nodded in thanks, squatting down beside Iktomi, clumsily trying to take hold of her hands despite the manacles. ‘My love,’ he said, staring longingly into her rather baffled eyes. ‘I swear we will be together again.’

She blinked, confusion morphing into something akin to panic. He leant closer, pressing her to him in an awkward embrace, his mouth resting against her ear.

‘Can you escape?’ he whispered.

‘The cuffs?’ she asked. ‘Maybe. I could pick the lock if I had a pin or small piece of bone.’

‘Stone swept this place clean,’ Caleb said. ‘Well, maybe it would be safer to stay here for now. If things get really dire I’ll signal you.’

‘How?’

‘You’ll know it when you see it.’

‘So, you don’t know, then?’

‘Not as such.’

‘Enough,’ Stone said, seizing Caleb’s shoulder. ‘You have a debt. It’s time to repay it.’

Stone marched him through Hope’s End, one arm hooked behind his back. There would have been little point struggling; the older man’s grip was like steel. Literally. His right hand was entirely mechanical, the bionic limb strong enough to shatter bone.

For the most part, the people of Hope’s End seemed to ignore Caleb, and he did his best to keep his head down and his eyes low. But he caught the occasional exchange of words, and from the corner of his eye he could see small groups gathering, merging like tributaries as they followed the two-man procession. Without Iktomi to watch his back he felt vulnerable. Perhaps Stone read something in his expression. The older man slowed a fraction, his grip easing.

‘Just keep your head down.’

‘That’s what I’m doing. But I still get this sense people are eyeing my neck a little too closely.’

‘Maybe,’ Stone said. ‘But they won’t cross their overseer.’

‘And when your back is turned?’

‘It will be different once you get to the mine. And once the main shaft and the compound are clear I’d prefer it if you both disappeared back uphive. That is, providing your woman can refrain from injuring any more of my people.’

‘You are very lucky she didn’t hear you call her that,’ Caleb murmured as they drew towards the workshops. A line of minecarts were propped on their sides, secured by industrial clamps, while the workers buffed the magnetic runners clean. As Caleb approached, they turned as one, a dozen pairs of eyes staring balefully at him.

‘I’m dead, aren’t I?’ Caleb whispered, speaking mainly to himself. But Stone heard him.

‘No,’ the older man replied. ‘The mine has a code.’

‘My gang before my House, my House before all others?’

The older man smiled. ‘Not that code. At least, not all of us. No, there is just an understanding that once you climb that mineshaft there is no room for rivalries and grudges. It doesn’t matter if you stole my wife or wronged my family. If two people get into an altercation up there, they can end up not only killing each other but also everyone else.’

‘I’d find that more reassuring if– sorry, did you say “up” there?’

‘Yes.’

‘I thought mines traditionally went down?’

‘If only we could. You dig a few feet through the ash and rubble and the bedrock is as tough as ceramite. We can barely scratch it, let alone mine it.’

‘Then where does the mineshaft go?’

Stone nodded to the inverted mountains. Caleb’s eyes widened.

‘You go up those things?’

‘They are all we have left. We took all the easy deposits centuries ago.’

‘You know there’s a lake above us?’

‘Sinkhole? Yeah, we know.’ Stone chuckled. ‘How do you think we ended up with such unique scenery? Those stalactites, we call them the King’s Tears. That’s where the sump found weak points between the domes. It burned a path through, the rock running like wax, dripping through till it reaches the bedrock below.’

‘So, just to be clear, the upside-down mountains are actually funnels of acid-fused rock?’

‘That’s what formed them. They’re clear now. Mostly.’

‘So you aren’t worried about maybe poking a hole into the lake?’

‘We get leaks all the time. The rock melts and eventually seals the breach.’

‘That doesn’t sound so bad.’

‘At least, that’s what we think happens. Usually there aren’t enough survivors to be sure.’

‘I see,’ Caleb said. ‘Well, if I do get caught in an acid shower I’ll do my best to try to make some notes.’

Stone smiled with genuine humour. ‘No need to panic just yet. You’re in the clearance crew, not deep excavation. I doubt you’ll be digging high enough to be at risk.’

‘I feel like you’re enjoying this more than you should.’

‘I enjoy no part of this,’ Stone replied as they drew to a stop beside the workshop. ‘I didn’t enjoy your little speech. I didn’t enjoy watching you raising my people’s hopes only to dash them. I didn’t enjoy watching those young men die when it all blew up in your face. I didn’t even enjoy watching you come to terms with how badly you messed this up.’

‘I really did want to help,’ Caleb sighed.

‘I believe you,’ Stone murmured. ‘But I also think you were more interested in playing the hero than actually being one. Do you feel like a hero?’

Caleb didn’t answer. Stone presented him to the mine workers.

‘One more for your crew,’ he said, addressing the foreman. He was of average height and similar girth, clad in the same combination of leather and denim as the rest of the crew. Goggles adorned his head and a respirator hung around his throat. His hair was either greying or powdered by ash; it was hard to tell.

Caleb smiled, even though he’d long since lost confidence in the expression. The foreman looked him up and down.

‘Fancy threads,’ the foreman said, rubbing Caleb’s torn and stained shirt between his fingers.

‘Thanks. They certainly were.’

‘I’m guessing from how you dress that you don’t have much experience mining?’

‘I’m used to crawling through narrow spaces. But besides that, no.’

‘Well, we can change that,’ the foreman said, grinning. ‘Providing you survive.’

6

Stone was true to his word, at least in the beginning. Caleb had been relegated to clearance crew, shoving ash into the minecarts as they endeavoured to clear the compound. He kept hoping to stumble across the Ambot, so that its presence might corroborate at least part of his story. When he finally heard the clank of his shovel striking metal he was ecstatic, until further investigation revealed that it was the body of one of the gangers. There was a las-burn on his thigh, and Caleb realised it was the man he’d shot. Perhaps if he’d been uninjured he’d have had a chance to escape; it was impossible to know for sure. The body was dragged away and loaded into the cart along with the rest of the curiosities extracted from the dust.

When the settlers uncovered the toppled minecarts everything changed, the mine clearing as workers surged towards the discovery, discarding shovels as they dropped to their hands and knees, brushing the ash with their fingers. The first bag of melerithyst was split, its contents little more than a brown mulch, but they continued digging as the foreman caught hold of Caleb.

‘I need to pull some more people down here. You’re needed upstairs,’ he said, jabbing his thumb towards the main shaft, where the cage awaited.

Two prospectors flanked the entrance, each protected by a thick leather apron. They wore goggles, their mouths covered by ancient respirators. Both nodded as he approached, gesturing wordlessly to a backpack that was about half his height. As he heaved it into place part of him wondered if this was just part of his punishment. It might explain why the rucksack seemed to be filled with rocks.

The mine’s cage had been welded from old bulkheads, the gate a mesh of steel. There was room for perhaps half a dozen on the platform, but only the three of them ascended, the winch whirring as it raised them into the darkness.

Caleb had lived most of his life in the cramped confines of the underhive. He was familiar with the warren of pipes and tunnels and knew how dangerous it could be, but it had still always felt somehow natural to him. The mine was different. He was an invader venturing into hostile grounds; every twist in the tunnels felt like an ambush waiting to happen. The tunnel walls had an unpleasant sheen, almost like rotten flesh, and the air still burned his throat in spite of his goggles and respirator. Even without the risk of bullet or blade, prolonged exposure to the fumes would no doubt prove fatal.

The prospectors surged ahead, exchanging monosyllables as they examined the branches of the tunnel, marking off sections with incomprehensible symbols; perhaps warnings or directions. Caleb stumbled, struggling to drag his feet over the rough terrain. Ahead the tunnel branched in two, the left passageway clear, the right a mess of broken pipes. Caleb made for the clear path, but one of the prospectors’ hands snaked out, barring his way. The man reached into his pack, rummaging, withdrawing an extendable metal pole. It stretched out before him, tapping the walls and floor as he slowly moved along the passageway.

A dozen tendrils suddenly surged from cracks in the tunnel, their bladed tips stabbing at the pole.

Lashworms.

The creatures’ bodies would be buried deep in the rock, safe from retaliation, while their bladed tails sought to tear a meal from anything that stumbled too close. The prospectors marked the tunnel entrance with a red cross, and the three of them picked an awkward path down the passage that ran parallel.

Beyond lay a chamber of buckled iron – a fragment of the Ironcrown of old preserved in the rock. It was at least twenty feet high and wider still, a framework of warped iron bulkheads. But the metal was tarnished, tinged with a sickly green veneer, poisoned by the toxins in the air. The prospectors slowed, exchanging worried looks. They trod warily across the slanted floor, testing the corroded iron with needles of glimmering silver, wiping the metal on silken cloths and peering intently at the residue, as though discerning the future from Ironcrown’s entrails. They were meticulous, each taking two steps and repeating the process as they made their way through the chamber. They had almost reached the end when one of them shouted, thrusting his needle into the air.

It was stained emerald green.

More worryingly, steam was rising from the metal.

The first prospector seized Caleb’s arm, dragging him from the chamber, the second hurrying beside him, swinging a brass handbell. As it rang others joined it, a procession of miners joining them from branching tunnels as they made for the cage. Only a handful could descend at a time and the rest waited in silence, their gaze intent on the shaft. Caleb glanced to the prospector waiting on his right. He still held the silver needle, though it was now bent, the tip dripping onto the rock.

Outside, the light cycle had shifted to dusk, the dome lights dimmed and tinted a warmer shade. The minecarts were now partially excavated, though most of the melerithyst ore had spoiled and was now brown mush. Still, a few stones had survived – gems of pink flecked with gold. They had been painstakingly preserved in transparent membranes. It was all that remained of the priceless mineral. He was glad they had left it out to see. It was gratifying to fully quantify the extent of his failure.

The prospectors and foreman were deep in conversation, no doubt debating how to secure the mine. He took the opportunity to slip away, drifting silently along the compound wall, now halved in height thanks to the mine’s overspill. They would no doubt be after him as soon as they realised he had gone, but he wanted just a moment of quiet, away from the noise and the stink of sweat. The air was clogged with dust but still tasted so very sweet, freed from the acid taint that permeated the rock. He had never been so happy to see the dome lights flickering above like stars.

Movement.

He jumped, pressing himself against the compound wall. There had been a shadow. It only lasted a heartbeat, but it looked as though something had shifted on the wall above him.

He peered through the amber haze. Nothing.

Perhaps it was another malfunction – one of the dome lights failing. Still, he no longer felt the need for solitude. He turned, intent on returning to the settlers, when he felt something land almost silently behind him, and the hairs on his neck rose. He spun around just in time for a fist to slam into his face.

It wasn’t the hardest punch he’d ever received, but it was perfectly placed; the cartilage in his nose cracked, tears flooding his eyes. Two more stinging jabs followed in rapid succession, snapping his head back. He could barely see or make out the silhouette rushing towards him. For one instant he thought one of the settlers was seeking payback, but the punches were too crisp, closer to a cage fighter than an angry miner.

Another blow caught his chin and he fell, fingers scrabbling in the dust, hurling a handful into his assailant’s face. He’d hoped to blind them, but a visor shielded their eyes. Still, it took a moment to clear it, time enough for him to regain his feet and aim a kick at their knee. His opponent’s leg buckled but they recovered quickly, lashing out again with a series of hooks. Caleb tried to cover his head as best he could, but more and more were landing. A right cross hammered into his ear, throwing him off balance. Desperate, he swung as hard as he could but hit only air, his opponent neatly bobbing out of reach before swooping in to deliver another flurry of blows.

He staggered, head bowed.

A knee slammed into his face and he fell to the ground. His assailant seized his shoulder, rolling him onto his back, something sharp and cold pressing to his throat. As his vision swam into view he found himself staring at his attacker’s forearm, and the silver vambrace on their wrist. He could feel breath on his cheek, short, ragged gasps of hate.

Footsteps.

His attacker turned. One of the miners loomed over them. Caleb blinked, unsure for a moment what was happening. His assailant surged upright, the knife slipping between the miner’s ribs, twisting before it was torn clear. Blood sprayed across the dust. As the miner fell his killer sped past, vaulting over the compound wall.

Caleb could not find his feet. Instead he crawled to the miner, intent on stemming the flow of blood. But one look into the man’s lifeless eyes told him he was too late. He wanted to shout for help, but his ear was still ringing, his lungs choked by the dust. He could no longer tell in which direction the attacker had fled, or why he had been spared. His vision was failing.

Voices were drawing closer, but they too were fading.

They dragged Caleb’s unconscious body into the wagon train, dumping it alongside the motley collection of treasures exhumed from the dust. The dead miner was laid reverently in the final cart, his face covered by the foreman’s overcoat.

Elissa lay atop the broken stalactite, watching them through the rifle’s scope.

She had followed him ever since he had left Hope’s End. When the crew first departed for the mine she had been disappointed, having hoped the settlement would have elected for a more visceral punishment, like a public flogging. But she had enjoyed seeing Caleb drudging through the ash at the place of his failure, reduced to little more than a dreg hauler.

Her unease had begun when he’d entered the mine, doubt eroding her resolve. What if he overcame his guards? He could escape through one of the walkways that linked the stalactites. He could escape uphive. She would never know.

She tried to cover the entrances, her long-las trained on the causeways, but she had never been inside the mine. There could be other ways, secret paths leading to the dome above. She found herself constantly edging closer, as though her presence might draw him out.

She did not know what had happened next, only that the mine emptied suddenly, the settlers gathering in the centre of the compound. In the confusion Caleb had made a break for it, and she found herself clambering onto the ledge above him.

He’d spotted her, and ducked into the shadows, perhaps intent on warning the settlers. She had to act.

But when she struck him something had awakened inside her, the hate and fury she’d suppressed finally gifted with an outlet. Her training took over as she hammered her fists into his self-righteous face. With each blow she saw her father laid out in the family’s mausoleum. In life he had been a giant, but death diminished him to nothing more than a shell, a remnant of the man who had meant the world to her.

Her fist had struck his face and suddenly Caleb had fallen and she was atop him, her knife pressed to his throat. She could not recall drawing the weapon, as though the blade sought his death of its own volition.

She could have ended it then with a twist of her wrist. She still could end it; the convoy was well within range of the long-las. One shot would draw a close on Caleb’s sordid story. She could return to House Harrow a hero, her family’s honour restored.

But it wasn’t enough.

He needed to know why he was dying. He needed to know who was responsible. Not some hivescum whom he’d cheated at cards, or a jilted lover seeking vengeance for broken promises. He needed to know that a pitiful piece of underhiver filth could not saunter into the Spire and murder a noble without paying for it. He needed to learn that the House of Harrow would not allow such a slight to go unpunished. He had stolen both her and her family’s honour; in return she would take everything.

So she had hesitated, blade pressed to his throat.

It was then the miner had made his untimely appearance.

She could not let the man live, not after he’d seen her. News of a mysterious attacker would rouse the settlement against her. Perhaps Caleb would spin a story, try to pin his failings upon her. Perhaps he would succeed.

But the death granted her an opportunity. Caleb had been found beside the body. There were no other suspects, and now the settlers could only see him for what he truly was: a cold-hearted murderer.

Elissa watched as the convoy departed, carrying both corpse and killer to face the judgement of Hope’s End. She had intended to follow, to find some way to isolate him so she could have her final revenge, but as she stood her gaze landed on something glinting in the ash, no doubt forgotten in the chaos – a partially exhumed armour plate adorned with chevron markings.

The miners had no doubt assumed it was part of the scrap from the explosions, but she recognised the pattern on the carapace.

She had found the Ambot.

7

They hauled him into the main square, his feet trailing through the dust. He fell once, his legs giving out, but two of the miners seized his arms, dragging him upright. The others surged ahead, the foreman urging them to gather the settlers in the main square. Caleb’s ear still rang from the attack, but he caught snatches of conversation. The consensus seemed to be that he was the killer, the only debate whether the settlement should undergo the formality of a trial or simply shoot him and be done with it.

He sagged in their arms and they soon tired of holding him upright, throwing him to the ground and binding his hands to a support strut from the improvised stage. A day ago he had stood there and roused the settlement into following him into battle.

He could see the foreman screaming, gesturing towards the gaol cells.

‘What are you–’ he began, but a fist smashed into his jaw. He blinked, trying to focus. His right eye didn’t seem to be working right. He could feel the swelling in his cheek squeezing it shut. His nose was still clogged with dried blood, and he could barely move his lips.

He did not have to wait long for an answer.

Iktomi walked calmly from the cell block, her hands still secured by the iron manacles. She was flanked by two of the burlier settlers, each clasping her arms, pinning them to her sides. Against their bulk she looked like a child, just like when he’d first found her in the Ash Wastes.

Their eyes met. He tried to smile, but it hurt too much.

‘Both of them!’ the foreman yelled, as they tied her to the adjacent support strut. ‘We end this now!’

She glanced at him, her face expressionless.

‘It went well, then?’ she asked.

‘Why are you still here?’ he replied, his voice hoarse. ‘I thought you could escape whenever you wanted?’

For a moment she didn’t answer.

‘I thought it might be safer in the cell,’ she said. ‘What happened to your nose?’

‘I had a scuffle. Did they mention it?’

‘I overheard a little. They said you killed someone.’

‘No. I was attacked.’

‘They said you were found with the body.’

‘I didn’t kill him. You have my word. Isn’t that enough?’

‘Depends,’ she said. ‘Do you need my word that I did not slit that bounty hunter’s throat?’

‘I shouldn’t even have questioned you. I’m sorry.’

She shrugged, the chains clinking with the movement.

‘Well, I think it’s fair to say that someone is after us,’ Caleb sighed. ‘You were right. How does it feel?’

She considered the question as the miners lined up before them, loading their stubbers.

‘Not great.’

The foreman approached, eyes blazing.

‘Caleb Cursebound,’ he said, voice thick with repressed rage. ‘You destroyed our livelihood, endangered our people, and have now resorted to cold-hearted murder. Before we pass judgement on you and your accomplice, do you have any final words?’

‘Yeah. Do you offer a last meal?’ Caleb asked. ‘Because there’s this wonderful place in Port Mad Dog that serves sump jellies broiled in their own brine. It’s a bit of a journey, but I think it’s worth–’

The foreman smashed him in the face again, this time with the butt of his pistol. For a moment all he could see was stars. The man was screaming, spraying him with saliva, tears freely streaming down his face. Caleb could not hear his words though, just the ringing in his ears.

‘–barely more than a boy, you understand, you piece of grak?’ the foreman said, backhanding him across the face again before turning to face the four settlers, their stubbers drawn.

He raised his hand and they raised their pistols, the barrels aimed squarely at Caleb and Iktomi.

The shot was deafening, drowning out the crowd.

The impromptu firing squad turned in the direction of the noise. There, in the centre of the square, stood Stone, his smoking shotgun aimed at the sky. His shirt was unbuttoned and he was barefoot, the bionic toes of his right foot clearly visible. It would have been comical if not for the expression on his face.

The foreman opened his mouth to speak but was drowned out by a second shot parting the heavens.

‘What in the Emperor’s name do you think you’re doing?’ Stone roared.

A dozen voices tried to respond. All were silenced by the look in his eyes.

‘I, and most of you, are from the House of Iron,’ he said, each word striking with the force of a hammer. ‘We are not unthinking brutes like the Goliaths, or backstabbers like the snakes of Delaque. We do not administer justice from the shadows. We live by a code and our word is like iron. Now, someone tell me what is happening before I lock up the whole sorry bunch of you.’

For a moment no one spoke.

‘Grimm is dead.’

The voice came from somewhere in the crowd. Stone glanced at him, lowering his gun. He gestured and the crowd parted. Caleb vaguely recognised the man as one of the crew.

‘How?’ Stone asked.

The miner pointed at Caleb. ‘Him. He stabbed Grimm in the heart.’

Stone glanced at him. Caleb could not read his expression, his gaze as cold and hard as the steel.

‘You saw him do it?’ he asked.

The miner hesitated. ‘No,’ he admitted. ‘We found him though, right beside the body.’

‘Was he trying to escape?’

‘No. Grimm must have put up a fight. He was unconscious.’

‘He killed Grimm whilst unconscious?’ Stone asked, frowning. ‘Where’s the knife?’

‘We don’t have it.’

Stone considered this. All eyes were on him.

‘You don’t have it because I didn’t kill anyone. I don’t hurt people unless I have to, and I would never take a knife to an innocent man.’

Stone rounded on Caleb, stabbing his finger at him. ‘For once in your miserable life you will shut your mouth,’ he said. ‘I will tell you if and when you get to make your case. Until then you do not speak unless I ask you a question. You understand, boy?’

Caleb nodded.

‘I need to see the body,’ Stone said, turning back to the crowd. He seemed to be counting them. His gaze swung to the foreman. ‘Who did you leave to secure the mine?’

The man shrugged. Stone stared at him and he flinched.

‘Get a five-man crew and get back up there,’ he said. ‘Tanner – I want you on guard duty. Watch these two, keep them safe until I’m done. The rest of you, go back to your homes. Now where is the body?’

Elissa did not know how long she’d been toiling in the dirt.

Light in the underhive was a precious resource, with vast sections condemned to an eternal night. But the ash desert beneath the hive held to its own fractured light cycle that no longer bore any resemblance to the planet’s natural rhythms. Dawn became twilight, the long shadows clawing at the pit. She would have welcomed their aid; no matter how hard she dug the Ambot seemed forever trapped in the ashes.

But she would not stop. She had seen the destruction the machine had wrought, how it could tear a gang of armed men to pieces. With the mining robot’s schematics despatched to her vambrace there was a chance she could reactivate it, and if she was to confront Caleb one final time she needed an enforcer – something that could keep the settlers occupied, or eliminate Caleb’s accomplice if required.

She had cleared to the Ambot’s midriff. The machine lay askew in the dust, its massive frame pinned by the mine’s broken support struts. In her mind’s eye she could picture its sensors blazing back into life, servo-driven claws tearing open its tomb, but the machine was quite still, as inert as the spoiled melerithyst.

She had no means of lifting the beams clear, resolving to cut though them instead. She had just located the welding torch when she caught the hum of the minecart approaching.

She retreated behind the furthest barricades, unclicking the rifle as the sounds drew nearer. There was no way of hiding the Ambot.

Voices drew closer. The settlers.

She eased the rifle into place, adjusting the sight. They were only a few dozen yards away. She recognised the foreman, leading a handful of men.

‘We should have just ended it here,’ the foreman said. ‘Put the bastard out of his misery.’

Another shook his head. ‘Stone would never have allowed it.’

‘Stone is an old man wedded to an old code,’ the foreman replied. ‘That lying bastard Caleb has brought nothing but misery. And now one of us is dead by his hand. What more does he have to do for us to take action?’

‘Stone will get to the bottom of it.’

‘There is no bottom of it!’ the foreman snapped, spinning to face the workers. ‘That snake sank his fangs into our brother. I should never have let Stone convince me to let him join the crew. We should have granted him a stubber’s mercy when we had the chance. Him and that ratskin, too.’

The miners exchanged glances.

‘You can’t blame her for Grimm,’ one of them said. ‘She never left the cell.’

‘Didn’t she?’ the foreman said in response. ‘There’s something not right about her. Have you seen her eyes? It’s like she doesn’t see people, just looks through them. I’d wager she’s witch-born.’

‘Boss?’

One of the miners was pointing to the pit. He’d spotted the partially unearthed Ambot.

‘Emperor’s Light,’ the foreman whispered as it became apparent what had been uncovered. ‘When was this found? Why did no one tell me?’

‘I guess during the disturbance?’ one of the miners said. ‘Maybe during the evacuation?’

‘Doesn’t matter. If we can get this machine working it changes everything. We might even have a means of digging beneath the bedrock now. Someone get the torch – we need to cut it free.’

Elissa watched as they set to work, slicing though broken beams, relieved that the miners would complete her work. But their exchange troubled her. She’d believed Hope’s End passed for what was considered civilised in the underhive, but it sounded as though the civility was about to descend into barbarism. If she was to claim Caleb’s life in the name of her House she would have to move quickly.

The crew manoeuvred the crane into position, raising the slumbering machine from its tomb and easing it into a minecart. The foreman was grinning. She adjusted her gunsight, centring his beaming face in the crosshairs.

She took a deep breath, exhaling slowly. Then she squeezed the trigger.

The las-pulse exploded just above his ear. She cursed herself as he fell, the shot having pulled a fraction to the left. Her weapon made no sound, and for an instant the remainder of the crew were unsure why he had fallen. The second shot tore through a miner’s chest. The third clipped a knee, the victim tumbling to the ground, clutching his leg. The fourth missed entirely, a tremble having spoiled her aim.

She stopped, breathing slowly, steadying the weapon. The next shot finished the crippled miner. The rest of them had vanished from sight, ducking behind the carts and equipment.

She wasn’t used to this.

In training she had always excelled with the weapon, picking off her targets with a coolness that bordered on contempt. But she had been able to take her time, lining up each shot and making it count. This was not the sterile training grounds in the Spire. Now she had lost the advantage of surprise and her prey had gone to ground. The dust was still thick and the light was poor. Her window was narrowing.

Something moved behind the crane.

She brought the rifle up too sharply, the shot searing the dust a few feet from the vehicle. One of the miners broke, scrambling for the mine’s entrance. She adjusted her sight, but as she squeezed the trigger he ducked behind the barricade.

No one else moved. How many were left?

She cursed, realising that she hadn’t counted them on arrival, too preoccupied with concealing herself. She’d underestimated the crew, thinking no more of them than the scum she’d encountered back in Slag Row. But they were disciplined and hardened. Even without their leader the crew would not break.

Minutes passed. She supposed a relief team would come at some point. They would be an easy enough target, the minecart gliding slowly across the magnetic rails. But if there was more than a handful of reinforcements she could suddenly find herself surrounded, and if she returned fire it would potentially give away her position. From what she’d seen the crew only carried basic firearms, but if there was a single heavy stubber then it would be over the moment they spotted her.

She detested the thought of abandoning her position. The moment she stepped into the open a stray shot might pick her off. The anger still smouldered inside her, but she pushed it down. There were times when her fury was a weapon, but not here. The sniper’s temperament was cool and calm; rage would not lend strength to her weapon or keenness to her eye. She had to think laterally; find a means of drawing them out.

Her first thought was the Ambot. Caleb’s las-shot had caused it to run amok, tearing the gang to pieces. She knew she was a better shot than him, but the machine lay dormant and she did not know how he had pulled off the feat. She had the automata’s schematics stored in her vambrace’s databanks, but there was no time to pore through pages of near-indecipherable etchings, hunting for an unknown weak spot.

She shook her head. Her anger was still guiding her, seeking a means to prove her superiority over him. She did not need to beat him at his own game – she merely needed to beat him.

It was then she spotted the welding torch.

It lay abandoned at the foot of the crane, the pilot light off. With a flick of her thumb she adjusted her weapon, upping the intensity to maximum. It would burn through most of the power reserves. She had to make the shot count.

Two long, slow breaths, just as she’d been taught. The tension eased from her shoulders. It was just another target; a challenge at which to excel.

On the next exhalation she squeezed the trigger.

The las-pulse pierced the torch’s fuel tank, the liquid erupting in a ball of flame. It was a modest blast, nothing compared to the chain of explosions that had levelled the compound, but enough for the fireball to engulf the extraction site, the burning fuel setting the very rock alight.

She heard the screams before there was movement. One of the miners broke from cover, his clothes ablaze. A las-pulse burst open the back of his head. As he tumbled, a second miner emerged from behind the barricade, tearing at his overalls with blackened fingers as the flames consumed him. She granted him mercy, despatching him with a shot through the heart.

There was no further movement. Then again visibility was falling; the compound was wreathed in oily smoke, and the last of the light was fading as the dome shifted back into its night-cycle.

Her rifle was almost out of charge. She folded it with practised grace, clipping the weapon between her shoulders as she drew her double-edged knife, the blade blackened so as not to catch the remaining light. There was no other option – she had to risk exposing herself.

She crept from cover, her footsteps silenced by the micro-stummers embedded in her boots. The pair were once exquisite, gifts from her father, but the ripperskin was now tarnished by the filth of the underhive. She’d first worn them at the debutante ball. It was supposed to be the beginning of her last rite of passage, a celebration before she descended into the depths to prove herself. But the day was now tainted, the glorious moment stolen from her. She held on to that anger now, confident it would bring strength to her blade.

She moved low and slow, gaze sweeping to encompass the compound. It was a question of luck now, and the thought shamed her. She’d been taught that a Harrow found victory through strength of will, that chance was the refuge of the weak and foolish. It was just another compromise, one of many she had made since her descent.

She found the last survivor not far from the excavation site. He was uninjured, and well concealed behind one of the barricades. Perhaps this was why he had failed to make a break for it, reluctant to abandon his position. She understood this, even as her knife slid across his throat. He died choking on his own blood, no doubt trying to issue a warning. But there was no one left to warn; a quick sweep of the camp confirmed it.

She knew the bodies could not be concealed for long, but it was a simple matter to douse them in the fuel from the crane. Perhaps the locals would think it an accident; perhaps they would suspect foul play. It did not matter now. She needed to act quickly, before the settlers passed sentence and her chance for vengeance was stolen.

It was time for Caleb to leave his cell, and she had the perfect tool to liberate him.

It was Iktomi who first saw the smoke.

They were still bound in the main square, the guard known as Tanner keeping a silent vigil, his weapon trained on them. Caleb’s head was bowed, his gaze fixed upon the bedrock. He had been silent ever since his exchange with Stone. She knew the expression on his face, just as she knew better than to try reaching out to him. But she tapped his foot with her own and he lifted his head, following her gaze and seeing the smoke billowing from the distant mine.

It was not long before the settlers saw it too. They gathered in the main square. Stone was soon summoned. He stared impassively at the distant smoke before barking orders to the nearest settlers. He then approached them, his mouth a grim line.

‘Is this more of your work?’ he asked.

Caleb looked at him. ‘None of this is our work,’ he sighed. ‘I accept responsibility for ruining the mining operation, but I don’t kill people in cold blood. I don’t kill them at all if I can help it. We’ve been down here the entire time – you can’t blame a fire on us.’

He glanced to Iktomi.

‘And you can’t blame any of it on her. She’s been locked up. You said yourself that nobody could break out of the cell.’

‘Maybe,’ Stone shrugged. ‘Some folk think it’s a conspiracy. Maybe you have someone else working with you on the outside.’

‘Is this the same person who beat me half to death?’

‘Grimm could have put up a fight.’

‘If he fought that hard I never could have stabbed him. I bet there wasn’t another mark on him. I’m beaten half to death and he has but a single wound? Doesn’t sound like much of a fight.’

‘Well, I never said it was a good theory,’ Stone countered. ‘But you can’t blame us for being suspicious. This trouble started right about the same time that you arrived. I can’t help but think there’s a connection. Things like this don’t happen this far downhive. Our work is dangerous, and people die. But we don’t kill each other.’

‘What about the Granite Lords?’

‘They didn’t kill anyone,’ Stone said. ‘A couple of them used to be local boys.’

‘And that’s the only trouble you’ve had?’

‘We get the occasional bandit,’ he said. ‘And the odd mutant. Did your attacker have three arms?’

‘No.’

‘Did they steal anything?’

‘No.’

‘Then it doesn’t sound like a mutant or bandit,’ Stone said. ‘Any other suggestions?’

‘I think the killer is connected to us somehow. They want revenge.’

‘And we’re just caught in the crossfire?’

‘That’s how it seems.’

‘Lucky us,’ the older man said. ‘Any idea who this mysterious enemy might be?’

‘No. But maybe they left a clue at the mine.’

‘We have no reason to suspect that the smoke is suspicious. Perhaps the hauling rig’s engine caught fire.’

‘Perhaps,’ Caleb shrugged. ‘Is that what you think?’

‘I think we are on lockdown until I know more. I’m heading up there.’

‘Just you?’

‘It might be a setup. I’m not risking any more lives.’

‘I could go with you,’ Caleb said. ‘Then you’d only be risking mine.’

Stone frowned. ‘You think I should free you?’

‘I think we should accompany you and try and uncover our mutual enemy.’

‘We?’ Stone said, raising an eyebrow. ‘No, I don’t think the two of you should go anywhere together. One of you stays in custody, just to keep the other one honest.’

‘Fine. I’ll go’, Caleb said. ‘Put Iktomi back in the cell. She can escape on her own anyway.’

‘I doubt that,’ Stone said, untying him from the chair. Caleb raised his hands, holding the manacles forwards. Stone shook his head.

‘Oh, come on!’ Caleb exclaimed. ‘You expect me to go after a known killer with my hands tied?’

‘No. I expect you to come with me to try and shed some light on who’s doing this,’ Stone said as Caleb stepped past him. ‘We’re investigating, not playing at heroes.’

He glanced at Iktomi. She bowed her head, as though her gaze were intent on the cuffs.

‘Praying?’ Stone asked.

She shook her head. ‘Thinking.’

‘You’re still planning on escaping?’

‘If I have to.’

‘You mind sharing this escape plan?’ he asked. ‘I’m curious how you intend to get out of those manacles. They could hold a Goliath ’Zerker.’

‘They have a simple lock,’ she said. ‘I just need a metal pin or a small piece of bone to pick it.’

‘Perhaps,’ he conceded. ‘But I searched you both and check those cells every day. I know you have neither of those things.’

She didn’t reply. Stone nodded to Tanner.

‘Put her back in the cell. Then I want this place on lockdown.’

‘What do you think it is?’ Tanner asked.

Stone’s face hardened. ‘I’ll know when I get there. Meanwhile, keep your eyes open.’

Tanner led Iktomi back to the cell block, securing her cuffs to the iron ring. She kept her head down, her gaze still fixed on the iron manacles. The chain was as thick as her wrist, the keyhole the width of her finger.

She studied it for some time.

She had no pin.

The guard secured the cell door, retreating to the corridor beyond.

Iktomi took hold of her bandaged finger with her right hand. She breathed slowly, steadying her grip, before wrenching the finger sharply to the right.

There came a loud crack.

8

The minecart had died a dozen yards from Elissa’s hideout, the magnetic fields bowing under the weight of the Ambot, the cart grinding to a halt. It did not matter much either way; she had no means of raising the creature from the ground. Still, it felt like yet another setback.

She had no idea how the machine worked. Her training for the underhive had not covered engineering. She could field-strip a rifle in seconds, identifying every part by touch alone, but she had little idea how the weapon actually functioned. The machine’s schematics could be accessed via her vambrace, but the etchings made little sense to her.

Still, the machine did not look seriously damaged, the collapsing mountain doing little more than chipping its already well-worn paintwork. The automata had been designed to tunnel through solid rock; it must have been built to endure cave-ins. Likewise there was no sign of the damage inflicted by Caleb. She supposed his shot must have overridden a system somewhere. Could it be fixed? She needed a weapon that could be aimed; awakening the Ambot whilst it was still primed to attack anyone close by could prove a costly mistake.

Her vambrace whirred, the telltale click of the interface connecting with the upper hive. Once the holo-matrix would have displayed a flawless facsimile of her former life – the gleaming structures and cultivated gardens, the picture so perfect that she almost felt like she’d returned home. But the underhive had tarnished the device, just like it did everything else. She was now greeted by a flickering image of faded blue, the lines blurred and indistinct. She could just make out the figure of a middle-aged woman. She wore black, the colour of mourning, though her dress was pinched a little tighter on the waist than was customary, and her veil was a delicate silk rather than the more traditional weave. Though her face was hidden, Elissa could picture the look of disdain she no doubt wore. It was quite familiar to her.

‘Greetings, beloved daughter,’ Lady Harrow said, the words free from sincerity.

‘And to you, beloved mother,’ Elissa replied, addressing the woman who had neither birthed nor raised her. ‘Something troubles you?’

‘A great many things trouble me,’ her stepmother replied. ‘Our situation becomes ever more dire. Those jackals from House Catallus have been sniffing around our holdings, seeking any source of weakness. They wish to swallow our legacy and take claim of our glories.’

‘They are our allies, mother.’

‘They are upstarts and ingrates who do not know their place!’ Lady Harrow snapped. ‘If your father were still with us…’

She trailed off, giving a theatrical sob and dabbing her eyes with a lace handkerchief. The holo-matrix was too poor for Elissa to tell if there were any actual tears shed. She waited for her stepmother to finish the display.

‘Well, I suppose what’s done is done,’ Lady Harrow sighed, tucking the handkerchief neatly into her sleeve. ‘When will your little escapade conclude?’

‘Soon.’

‘Soon cannot come soon enough. Your father’s death has left us on the brink of civil war. And now your cousin Perin has returned from his hunt in triumph. Any fool can see he plans to make a play for control of our house. Worse yet, he might succeed.’

‘Then let him.’

‘You are a foolish child!’ her stepmother snapped. ‘There is already talk of him stepping out with Lady Catallus’ second daughter. With the backing of House Catallus it will be impossible to oppose him. And that will be the end of our legacy. We will become just another footnote in the Catallus family’s chronicles. Is that what you want?’

‘What I want is to avenge my father.’

‘And you shall,’ Lady Harrow soothed. ‘He would be so proud of the oath you chose. Proud that you have dedicated your time in the underhive to avenging him, and bringing an end to that wretched killer. But this is more important than vengeance. Until you fulfil your oath I cannot open my door to you, or welcome you into my home. Until that murderer is brought to justice I cannot call you daughter and you cannot take your place as our new Head of House.’

‘He will die. But first I will take everything from him. Everyone he cares about. Only when he has nothing left but pain will I grant him mercy.’

‘Oh, just put a bullet in the back of his head and be done with it,’ her stepmother said. ‘It’s an oath, not a poem.’

‘He dies. My way.’

‘Fine. Then send that robot thing you found. You have your little instruction manual – I saw to it.’

‘It’s not as simple as that,’ Elissa retorted. ‘It’s offline, and last time it was working it was attacking anything that came near. I might be able to awaken it, but I have no way of knowing if that will restore it to normal or if it will still be in the grip of a murderous rage.’

‘Pardon my bluntness, child, but that does not sound like a warrior’s problem. A warrior does whatever is needed to crush their enemy. They do not let cowardice govern their actions.’

‘I am not a coward,’ Elissa spat. ‘But if I die this is all for nothing. If I make a mistake here, then–’

‘A Harrow does not worry about failing,’ her stepmother told her. ‘A Harrow does not dawdle over matters of could or should. A Harrow imposes their will and changes the world.’

The display went dark. Elissa stared at it for some time, her stepmother’s after-image burned into her eyes. She pressed her thumb to her vambrace, the holo-matrix displaying a blurred blueprint of the Ambot. Beneath, the text was barely visible: a set of directives for awakening the machine.

She had her oath. That was all that mattered.

She reached for the Ambot’s control panel.

They travelled in silence, broken only by the hum of the minecart’s generator as it glided upon the rails on a wave of electromagnetic energy. Stone was sat behind Caleb in the control cart, one hand ever on his stubber. Caleb sat with his hands still bound. He found his own focus skirting over the landscape. Behind every dune and mound he saw a sniper’s opening. They were such an easy, predictable target. He wondered if that was how Iktomi felt all the time – suspicious of every dripping pipe or rusted outlet valve.

‘You think someone is following us?’ Stone asked.

‘I’m just being cautious.’

‘Doesn’t seem to be a natural trait of yours,’ the older man replied. ‘Who’s after you?’

Caleb shrugged, or attempted to, his shoulders weighted down by the manacles. ‘I don’t know. It could be anyone.’

‘It could be,’ Stone replied. ‘But in my experience there is usually a prime candidate.’

‘Your experience?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Were you hunter or hunted?’

‘I think everybody gets to be both,’ Stone said. ‘Providing you live long enough.’

‘Well I’m one of the hunted,’ Caleb said. ‘I could probably write a book about it if I had the chance to sit still long enough.’

‘You certainly have a gift for tall tales.’

Caleb turned his head, glancing back at him. ‘I prefer to think of them as embellishments.’

‘I bet you do,’ Stone replied. ‘I was especially impressed by that story of you killing an invisible monster. Very creative.’

‘It wasn’t invisible,’ Caleb argued. ‘It just had a way of muddying perceptions. That’s how it got close enough to feed.’

‘And you killed this monster?’

‘Sort of. I was the bait. Iktomi killed it. Once it was dead you could see it properly – a shrivelled little creature, some kind of mutant.’

‘What about that gang you killed?’ Stone asked as they reached an incline, the cart slowing. ‘Could there be any survivors? Someone seeking payback?’

‘No, they’re all dead.’

‘You really killed them?’

‘Not me. But I saw the bodies.’

‘Fine. Any of your other enemies want you dead?’

‘Of course,’ Caleb replied. ‘But I don’t think many care enough to send bounty hunters this far downhive.’

‘Any other suspects? I’m guessing there wasn’t much to that story about the Blood River massacre?’

‘No, that was true. For the most part.’

There was silence. Caleb turned to face his gaoler. Stone fixed him with his piercing glare. Caleb stared back.

‘Is that right?’ Stone said. ‘You fought against those unspeakable creatures and somehow prevailed?’

‘I wouldn’t say I fought them. Fended off a couple perhaps. But they were already leaving. I hid for most of it.’

‘And the child?’

‘What about her?’

‘In the story you said you carried her on your back for one hundred miles through the Ash Wastes.’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

The question was asked so casually. For a moment Caleb wasn’t sure how to answer.

‘Because she was a child?’ he said. ‘What else could I do?’

Stone didn’t reply straight away. Caleb could tell they were getting closer. He was starting to recognise landmarks, the piles of debris and tunnels running through the dunes. Ahead lay the shale mound where the ambush should have been sprung.

‘So, we’ve ruled out monsters and gangers seeking vengeance,’ Stone continued. ‘Who else has reason to hate you?’

‘Present company excluded?’ Caleb coughed, then cleared his throat. ‘Well, I… there was an incident in the Spire. Have you ever heard of the Hand of Harrow?’

‘I’ve heard of it,’ Stone replied. ‘But I thought it was just a myth.’

‘Yeah, that’s the funny thing,’ Caleb said. ‘Myths always seem to have a little grain of truth.’

‘You’re saying you stole the Hand of Harrow?’ Stone frowned. ‘You broke into the Spire, stole a treasured artefact, and somehow escaped with your life?

‘Lives. And yes. Sort of.’

‘Then it sounds like we have a suspect. I’m just surprised you’re not already dead.’

‘I don’t think I’m a priority at present. The whole incident caused something of a succession crisis. The House is on the brink of civil war – until that’s dealt with I doubt they care much about seeking restitution.’

‘How do you know all this?’

‘I have an info broker.’

‘House Delaque?’

‘Aren’t they always?’

Stone rolled his eyes. ‘Snakes, the whole bunch of them. Why would you trust this one?’

‘That’s a question I’ve asked myself more than once. But he’s honest more often than he lies.’

‘You sure about that?’

‘I keep a ledger. Besides, he was the one who tipped me off that the hunters were coming.’

‘But not who hired them?’

‘No.’

Stone rubbed his chin. ‘Well, someone holds a grudge. And they don’t care about people getting caught in the crossfire.’

A cloud of oily smoke hung over the mine, the dome’s extractor fans failing to clear the fumes from the fire, but at ground level they could see well enough. The fires had died now, but bodies were strewn about the compound. There was no point checking for signs of life; most were badly burnt.

While Stone checked the bodies Caleb examined the extraction site. The workers had found something, that much was clear from the gaping hole. The winch had also been brought into place. Whatever it was must have been large as well as heavy. Yet now it was gone.

He heard Stone curse and looked up. The older man was examining one of the bodies.

‘Headshot,’ he sighed. ‘Another one over here too. This was no accident.’

‘You believe me then?’

‘I’m starting to,’ the old man said. ‘But I still don’t understand why these people had to die.’

‘I think I have some idea about that,’ Caleb replied, nodding to the extraction site. ‘Someone has dug an Ambot-sized hole. But there’s no actual Ambot. I’m not much of a detective, but I think I see a pattern here.’

‘Could be.’ Stone nodded, approaching the pit. ‘Something’s been taken all right. Something heavy.’

‘Then where is it?’

Stone did not answer. He was reading the impressions left in the ash. They made little sense to Caleb, contaminated by footprints, but the older man seemed to know what he was looking for.

‘Minecart’s gone,’ he said, nodding to the ground. There was something: parallel lines running through the dust. Stone dipped his finger into the ash and brought it up, metal filings clinging to his armoured gloves. ‘Magnetised,’ he said, retrieving a small device from his pocket.

He raised it, the needle spinning before being drawn to one of the distant stalactites.

‘There,’ he said, pointing.

Caleb shrugged, not following.

‘The cart,’ Stone continued. ‘Someone took it. That way, according to the compass.’

‘But there are no rails?’

‘There don’t need to be,’ Stone replied. ‘There is enough ferrous ore in the bedrock to move the cart, at least for a time. It wouldn’t get far though, especially if it was carrying something heavy.’

‘Can you track it?’

‘Yeah,’ Stone nodded. ‘You interested in some payback?’

‘I could be persuaded.’

‘Then maybe it’s time we took those cuffs off you and gave you a weapon. I think this–’

The las-pulse struck Stone in the shoulder, the blast hurling him from his feet. He tumbled as he fell, landing heavily. A second shot punched into the side of his head.

Caleb turned.

She stood at the compound entrance, rifle braced against her shoulder, clad in an exquisite leather and mesh underskin, though the material was worn, spoiled by exposure to the toxic underhive. A silver vambrace adorned her left arm, the metal curiously untouched. Her hair was tightly bound behind her head, though strands had worked their way clear of the bun and hung loose about her face. But it was her eyes that most troubled him. He’d seen madness and hatred; both were common within the underhive. But her eyes held the deranged glint of the zealot, like the fanatics of House Cawdor. There was a manic joy in her hate that engulfed all reason.

‘Never where you’re supposed to be,’ she said. She took a step closer, the rifle aimed at his head. ‘But I think this is better. I would have found you in Hope’s End, but it would have been messy, rushed. This is better. This way I get to take my time.’

Caleb returned her gaze, his brow furrowed. He tilted his head, like a dog struggling with a difficult command.

‘Sorry, have we met?’ he asked.

The las-pulse struck the ground in front of him, singeing his boot. He took a step back.

‘You met my father!’ she snapped, voice shaking, the quiver creeping into her arm.

She slowed and took a deep breath, finding her centre. The tremble ceased.

‘My name is Elissa Harrow,’ she said, calmer now, though her eyes still brimmed with hate. ‘You broke into my home, murdered my father, and mutilated his body.’

‘Well, that certainly narrows it down a bit,’ Caleb replied, shuffling his feet a hair’s breadth closer to the mine. ‘Was this recently, or–’

The shot was placed perfectly between his legs, barely singeing his crotch in passing, and striking the ground behind him.

‘You do so enjoy the sound of your own voice, don’t you?’ she continued, drawing closer, her mouth split in a zealot’s grin. ‘Everywhere you go you tell all these stories. About who you killed and where you went and what you did. How you even scaled the heights of the Spire, like you’re some kind of hero of the underhive. Well, do you know how your story will end?’

He shook his head.

‘In ignominy,’ she said. ‘They will say how a petty slight caused you to unleash a murder-machine on the innocent people of Hope’s End. They will tell how it tore their settlement apart, almost wiping them out in the process. But fortunately Caleb the Hivescum will be stopped at the last moment by a brave warrior from the upper hive, who avenges her father’s death and puts the pitiful thief in the ground like the dog he is. Caleb the Cursebringer is what they will call you from now on – how does that sound for a send-off?’

‘Not bad,’ he conceded after a moment’s thought. ‘I mean, purely from a narrative point of view – on a personal level it’s not ideal. I take it this murder-machine you’re referring to is the Ambot?’

‘I sent it to liberate you,’ she said, still smiling. ‘It was going to tear open that cell and let you both walk free. Of course, I would then have switched the inhibitors off and allowed it to vent some of my frustration on that cesspool of a town. Since you’re here I suppose I’ll need to change my story a little. I think we’ll say I arrived in time to stop you, but too late to prevent you taking the life of another poor settler.’

‘One small point,’ Caleb said as she aimed her weapon at his face. ‘I didn’t actually kill your father. Or mutilate him. The person responsible for that is currently residing in that cesspool. You may kill me, but she will come for you.’

Elissa’s smile twitched. ‘You’re lying.’

‘Why should I?’ he said. ‘You’ll still kill me. I just wanted you to know before I die that this is not over. You must have seen her in action. Who do you think is more capable of defeating your father, her or me?’

Caleb saw movement behind Elissa. Stone had risen to an elbow. His face was a bloodied mess, the skin burnt away on one side, revealing a steel skullplate. He raised his stubber.

She hadn’t moved, her weapon still trained on Caleb.

‘Even if that were true, it doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘The Ambot will–’

‘She will beat it. Just like she did before. And then she will come for you. And there will be no soliloquies, no elaborate schemes or convoluted plots. She will simply find you, kill you, and carve out your heart.’

Elissa didn’t reply, but her finger tightened on the trigger.

Stone fired, the stub-round clipping her side, the mesh armour absorbing the worst of the shot. She swayed but stayed on her feet, swinging the rifle round to return fire.

Caleb turned, darting towards the mine’s entrance, his movements hampered by the iron manacles. Behind him he heard the pistol fire once more before it was silenced by a las-pulse. He threw himself into the cage, another pulse soaring over his head, and slammed his fist on the controls. Slowly the cage doors ground shut. As the cage ascended the mineshaft he could just make out the figure of Elissa Harrow on the ground below, rifle levelled at Stone’s prone figure.

9

Iktomi watched from the cell’s narrow window. Her hands were unbound, though the right clasped the left, stemming the trickle of blood.

She’d seen the settlers move out after Stone and Caleb left, setting up guards to patrol the perimeter, two more ascending to the main building, acting as spotters for the ground forces.

Now she watched the main square.

Small groups would pass, always alert, weapons drawn. She caught snatches of conversations that gave away little; they did not know what was coming, only that they must be wary. Her gaze fell on the bedrock at the centre of the square, where the pebbles had started to dance, the movement almost imperceptible, like the beating of a fly’s wings.

She frowned.

More miners passed but she ignored them, her focus reserved for the tiny vibrating stones. She could feel the force that shook them now, like distant thunder beneath her feet.

A crack crept though the rock, no thicker than a knife’s edge.

She turned from the window. Her chains were wound in a circle by the iron grate, the bloodstained manacles beside them, a bone chip still lodged in the lock. She picked up the chain, ignoring the ache in her bandaged hand.

Voices. They were running towards the square. She could not make out their words beneath the thunder rising through the rock.

The Ambot burst from the main square, wading from the crumbling bedrock as though it were a shallow stream. Its steel mandibles clicked and it surveyed the settlements, sensors glinting a sickly amber as it searched for its target.

Gunfire. The settlers closed in on the machine, unloading their shotguns. The shells pattered from its carapace, like shingle against steel. It paid them no heed, advancing towards her cell. It did not move like she remembered; each step was slow and deliberate, like a clockwork toy. There was no fury in its eyes, merely a cold purpose. As it drew near it raised its claws, the underslung meltapods flaring.

Iktomi retreated to the far end of the cell, the chain clasped tight. She could feel the heat radiating from the wall, the metal smoking at the weapon’s caress. The Ambot’s claws sank into the iron, sparks flying from its sawblades as it peeled the wall open, tearing a doorway the width of a bulkhead.

It stepped back, as though inviting her to pass.

She did not move.

The miners were drawing closer, weapons trained. The machine did not respond, its purpose apparently fulfilled.

Then it stiffened, servos locked.

Its sensors flashed red, as though in warning, the steel mandibles snapping.

It stared at her through artificial eyes, steam hissing from its jaws.

She waited.

The machine’s claw swept forwards, the meltapod flaring, but she was already moving, hurling herself to the left, the chain clasped two-handed. She spun on her heel, channelling the momentum through the weapon, and hurling it with all her strength at the machine’s faceplate. As it passed through the melta-beam the chain glowed white-hot, the metal running like wax as it struck the machine’s sensor bank.

The Ambot’s claws flew to its faceplate, metal scraping against metal as it struggled to clear its vision. She swept past it, darting through the opening torn into the cell’s wall. In the square beyond, the settlers had formed a semicircle, their weapons aimed at the ruptured wall.

She froze, gaze darting from one face to another, until she found their former guard, the man Stone had referred to as Tanner.

He met her gaze.

‘Stone said keep us safe,’ she said. ‘And he said your word is like iron.’

Behind her the Ambot’s engine roared in fury. It turned awkwardly, hampered by its bulk, before swinging its fist in a murderous arc. She ducked beneath the blow, fingers closing around a broken bar from the cell’s window. She smashed it into the Ambot’s faceplate, a shockwave rippling down her arm.

The machine didn’t even flinch at the blow, sawblades spinning as it reached for her.

A volley of stubber rounds ricocheted from its chestplate.

The Ambot hesitated, its mandibles clicking, as though caught between conflicting protocols.

The settlers had opened fire, Tanner at their head. She ran between the settlers as they retreated, guns still blazing, and the machine waded through the barrage in pursuit. At the far end of the settlement lay the workshop. There would be machines there, perhaps powerful enough to pierce the beast’s shell.

She glanced back. It had fallen some way behind but was still following, its crimson sensors focused on her.

A harpoon pierced its wrist, the projectile finding a weak point between the plates.

The Ambot slowed, glancing from its arm to the gunner now linked to it by the steel cable. The man had a moment to realise his mistake before the machine wrenched the weapon from his grasp, dragging him from his feet. As he scrambled to rise the Ambot swept forwards, its meltapod flaring. The air was filled with the stench of burning fat. His cries were mercifully short.

The automata slowed, sensors sweeping across the square, as though searching for something, oblivious to the gunfire. One of the settlers moved too close, trying to unload his shotgun into the machine’s relatively unprotected hip joint. It suddenly surged towards him, claw slamming down, the impact reducing the man to pulp. It immediately lost interest, returning to its search, as though seeking a trail.

It was hunting.

She slowed, and Tanner drew level with her.

‘What’s it doing?’ he said.

‘It remembers me,’ she murmured.

He looked at her. ‘What?’

‘Look.’

The machine had caught sight of her. Steam hissed from its jaws as it broke into a lumbering run. The miners moved with it, formed a semicircle around the beast, firing controlled bursts from their autoguns. The Ambot twitched at the impacts, but did not slow.

She glanced back to the workshop and the lines of upturned minecarts still undergoing repairs.

‘Do they still work?’ she asked.

Tanner shrugged. ‘I could get them working.’

‘Do it,’ she said, springing towards the workshop, the machine thundering after her, charging through the storm of bullets.

She dived between the carts, rolling to her feet, the broken bar held in her right hand, the left trailing blood behind her.

The Ambot lurched closer, its mandibles clicking. Perhaps some echo of the predatory creature it once was still drove the machine’s consciousness. Around it, the miners were moving into position, adjusting the levers and cranks as they slowly brought the generators to life.

The Ambot gave no sign that it saw them, its sensors squared solely on Iktomi. It lurched forwards, claw raised, meltapod flaring. There was a hiss as water vapour was boiled from the air. She ducked beneath the blast, the heat scorching her shoulders, and swung the bar in a wide arc. It struck the barrel, the metal liquefying on impact, the molten steel cascading over the weapon. She turned just in time to avoid a blinding flash.

The Ambot glanced at its blackened limb, as though unable to quite process the injury. Then it raised its undamaged claw, unleashing a second blast of heat. She ducked beneath it, feeling her face blister, and the air filled with the stench of singed hair. The machine turned to follow, its mandibles clicking in what could almost have been frustration. She ducked behind it again, trying to keep the lumbering beast between the carts. She was tiring, and clumsy as the machine was, it never tired, never stopped.

But something was wrong.

It was slowing, its movements sluggish, as though wading through water. Metal scraps slithered from its path as the machine staggered, servos creaking as they pressed against some unseen force.

The miners had activated the upturned minecarts, and the Ambot was caught between them in a magnetic bubble.

She turned, vaulting over the barricade. The miners were adjusting the outputs, trying to pull the creature apart. The nearest looked at her and shook his head; the generator was at full power, but they could only slow the beast, not stop it.

She sought a weapon.

There. Behind the generator: a discarded harpoon, cable still attached.

She called to Tanner, who was now running the generator.

‘On my signal, cut the power. Then get ready to run it through the cable.’

He nodded.

The Ambot could not comprehend the strange force exerted on it, robbing the strength from its limbs, but the machine must have been aware enough to recognise the settlers as a threat. It raised its remaining weapon, and a surge of heat lashed against the minecart, the frame warping and buckling as the miners hurled themselves away from the blast. As the metal bubbled the cart shut down, distorting the magnetic field. The Ambot was suddenly off balance, staggering as the remaining carts dragged it backwards. Instinctively it strained against the force, claws tearing into the bedrock as it sought to drag itself forwards.

She strode to meet it, a step from the magnetic bubble, the harpoon raised, cable trailing behind her.

The Ambot hissed, redoubling its efforts, scrabbling towards her. As it struggled to its feet she raised the harpoon.

‘Now!’ she said.

Suddenly the field was gone. The Ambot surged forwards, off balance. As it fell she lunged to meet it, driving the improvised spear into the machine’s sensor bank. She tried to leap clear, but the wounded automata landed a glancing blow, the impact sending her sprawling. She landed heavily, rolling to a knee, clutching her shoulder.

The machine rose, the harpoon still embedded in its faceplate, a cable dangling from it. The Ambot hissed, lumbering towards her, its sawblades whirring in anticipation. It ignored the miners scrabbling with power outlets, their intentions quite beyond it. Its mandibles twitched one last time in anticipation. It raised its fist to deliver the killing blow.

Tanner threw the switch.

The workshop’s generator sent a surge of power down the cable, through the harpoon and straight into the Ambot’s sensor bank. The machine stiffened, servos locking, its sensor lights flaring red, then white, then finally dimming to nothing.

Smoke wafted from its faceplate, and the beast was still.

Elissa crept through the narrow confines of the mine. She moved awkwardly, her ribs bruised from the stub-round. She couldn’t believe the old man had survived the headshot, but three more rounds in his chest had silenced him.

It had taken an age for the cage to descend. She’d half expected Caleb to have left some surprise for her – a shredder mine or plasma charge – but there was nothing. He was nothing, she kept reminding herself. This was merely a setback.

The mine stank, the fumes burning her lungs. She should have taken a respirator, but she’d never thought she’d need it. She’d considered waiting him out, except the mines were linked by walkways. If he found a way across she might never catch him.

She still had her long-las, but in the confines of the tunnels it was a clumsy weapon; the barrel was too long to negotiate the tight passageways. She’d tried strapping it to her back, but even then she found it catching on the tunnel walls. She debated stripping the rifle, but doing so would not only deprive her of her weapon but also slow her pursuit. She had a stub pistol holstered in her belt, along with the knife; perhaps she could leave the gun and press on without it?

But what if Caleb had hidden somewhere ahead?

If she left the weapon behind he might double back, retrieve the gun and wait for her to emerge from the tunnels.

Her heart was pounding. She took a breath, calming herself, choking back the worst of the fumes. She tried to remember what Garak the Seeker had told her during the hunt. He never needed a trail, he just followed the route he knew his prey would take. Caleb’s wrists were bound; that would limit his movement, especially climbing. They were heavy too, chained with thick iron. It would be hard to muffle the sound of those chains, especially if he tried to move quickly.

She slowed, holding her breath, listening.

There. The clank of metal. The echo made it hard to pinpoint the source, but she could tell which direction it came from, and followed the sound, her rifle catching against the tunnel walls. There were a dozen turnings, the entrances marked with coded symbols.

Which way?

She held her breath, waiting, the only sound the pounding of blood in her ears. Every instinct told her to run forward, that to hesitate was to risk losing him. But her father had told her that the mark of a great hunter was patience, knowing when to act and when to react. He must be tiring. Most likely he had found a hiding place somewhere and was waiting for her to move past him. A single step could give her presence away. She had to outlast him, let him think she had given up the search.

Footsteps. She spun, running as fast as she could, rifle held low. Ahead the tunnel branched in two, the right passageway blocked by broken pipes, the left clear. Something was painted on the wall above it: a red cross. She saw movement at its far end, a figure diving for cover. She darted down the tunnel, raising the rifle, trying to get a clear shot.

A stabbing pain lanced into her side.

She screamed, losing her grip on the rifle as something pierced her thigh. A whiplike coil spun out of the rock before her, slashing across her cheek and tearing a morsel of flesh. More were emerging along the corridor. Lashworms – the tunnel was infested.

She managed a half run, the muscle in her thigh protesting as blood pulsed from the wound. The corridor ended just ahead, less than a dozen strides away. She dived through, tumbling onto her side and rising awkwardly.

Something smashed into the side of her head. She staggered, somehow staying on her feet, raising her hands to shield her face. A second blow swept her defence aside, iron cracking her wrist, and she lost the feeling in her fingers. Through blurred eyes she saw Caleb lunge at her, his mouth covered by a respirator, swinging the iron padlock that secured his restraints like a club. She retaliated, launching an awkward right hook that glanced off his chin. A second caught his temple, staggering him. She tried to follow up, but he anticipated the third strike, ducking aside and wrapping the chain around her forearm. He twisted, rolling behind her and wrenching her arm across his shoulder.

Something tore in her elbow.

She screamed, snatching her knife with trembling fingers, slashing wildly, her training momentarily forgotten. The blade sheared across his hand. He gave a gratifying grunt of pain, releasing his grip on her arm. She stabbed again, the knife piercing just below his shoulder blade. He staggered but lashed out in return, driving his fingers into the wound in her thigh. Her leg gave and she fell to one knee, losing her grip on the knife, which remained embedded in his shoulder.

Caleb was moving awkwardly, hands still bound, unable to reach the knife in his shoulder. Elissa rose slowly. Only one leg could hold her weight and her right arm was near useless, her grip too weak to hold anything, but feeling was returning to the fingers of her left. She scrabbled, seeking the stubber, but the holster was empty, the weapon lost to the struggle.

She knew she was tiring, her strength seeping from a dozen wounds, but Caleb was not faring much better. Her gaze darted about the tunnel, seeking a weapon that could finish it, while Caleb backed away, retreating towards what appeared to be a chamber of rusted iron embedded in the rock, the metal buckled and tarnished by the poisonous fumes of the mine. She hobbled after him, slowed in part by the wound in her leg. Worse than that was the burning in her throat. The mine was killing her; she knew that now. But if she could kill him quickly there was still a chance: she could take the respirator and return to the Spire, her oath kept, her honour intact. So she pressed forwards, still scrabbling for a weapon, as though the pistol could somehow be lodged somewhere in her belt.

Her hand closed around a krak grenade.

It was risky. An explosion in the tunnels could crush them both. For all she knew the toxic fumes were flammable. But she was running out of time.

He ducked into the chamber, backing slowly to its centre. She edged closer, seeking an opening, but he continued to slink away from her, always just out of reach. Even though his mouth was covered by the respirator she could tell from his eyes he was smiling.

‘Are you feeling all right?’ he asked. ‘You look a little off colour.’

She darted forwards, hands raised to his throat, but he stepped into her, slamming his forehead into her face. She staggered, eyes watering, and barely avoided a kick aimed at her head. Caleb spun, off balance for a moment, but she was too dizzy to take advantage.

‘Seeing you like this reminds me of your father.’

She screamed, drawing strength from her fury, scrabbling for the knife still lodged in his shoulder. His thumb stabbed out again, piercing the wound in her side. She howled, collapsing, all her strength gone. Even shackled, even with a knife in his shoulder, he had won. She was too weak to pursue him, choked to death by something she couldn’t kill. Somehow he’d manoeuvred around her so she lay dying at the centre of the chamber, his back to the entrance.

He bowed to her, set to depart. Her fingers found the krak grenade again.

She managed a smile. She could still fulfil her oath.

She launched herself up one final time, grasping the chain binding his wrists and priming the grenade. But he twisted, thrashing like a beast, and the chain slipped from her blood-slick fingers. The explosive tumbled from her hand, bouncing once before coming to a stop in the centre of the chamber.

There came a moment that lasted a lifetime: Caleb disappearing into the tunnel beyond, footsteps pounding on the rock, the red light flashing on the grenade, counting down her final moments.

She saw her father on the day of the debutante ball, admiring her in her finery. She knew he was suffering then, his age finally catching up with him. But none would have known that from the speech he gave, the strength in his voice. He’d been so proud of her.

The explosion tore through the crumbling iron, unleashing a torrent of toxic sump-liquid distilled from the waters of Sinkhole. Elissa’s final thoughts before the wave struck her were of the glittering spires of House Harrow.

10

Caleb stared out across the emerald waters of the sump lake known as Sinkhole, his back pressed to the mineshaft that led down to the settlement of Hope’s End.

He sighed, lowering to his haunches, his hands crossed, fingers drumming against his wrist.

Beside him, Iktomi merely sat.

‘We’re going to die out here,’ Caleb mused. ‘You know that, right? After everything we’ve endured, we will finally meet our end in the middle of nowhere because a trawler didn’t bother showing up.’

‘He said he comes every three days.’

‘And if he doesn’t?’

‘Well, if you die first I can survive by eating your corpse.’

‘That’s what we’re reduced to? If you die first I get to eat you?’

She glanced at him, brow furrowed. ‘Sure,’ she said, turning away. ‘Why not?’

‘That’s if we even last long enough to starve,’ Caleb said. ‘This island doesn’t exactly look that stable.’

He was right enough. The island had been formed by jetsam floating across the toxic waters, a halo surrounding the entrance to the world below. He rose, gingerly picking his way across the island until he was near the edge. He prodded the uneven ground with his toe and a two-foot section broke off. It floated a few yards out into the lake before a score of tentacles emerged from the sump and lazily drew it beneath the waters.

‘Well, that’s encouraging,’ he said, stepping slowly away from the edge.

‘Try not to break the island.’

‘We should have stayed in Hope’s End,’ he complained. ‘At least for a while. We could have persuaded them to build us a raft.’

‘They wanted us gone.’

‘I could have talked them round,’ he said.

She raised an eyebrow. ‘The last time you talked them round it ended with two of them getting shot and us blowing up their main source of income.’

‘You’re focusing on the negative – the point is I talked them round.’

‘They let us go because it was easier. Let’s not do anything to change their minds.’

‘And we let them keep that Ambot,’ he continued. ‘Once they get that up and running it will change everything. We didn’t even charge our half fee either. All in all, I think they owe us – they could have at least given me a bottle of Wildsnake so I could die happy.’

‘Do you wish to go back and tell them?’

Caleb paused for a moment, recalling the passage below the sump, and the terrible creatures that prowled the depths of the toxic waters.

‘Stone would have let us stay,’ he said, taking a seat beside Iktomi. ‘Y’know... if he’d survived.’

‘You can’t be sure of that.’

‘No, I can’t. But I still wish he’d survived.’

‘He was a tough man,’ she said. ‘He died well.’

‘He was tough because about half of him was bionic. I have no idea how someone who lived down there could afford to be so extensively rebuilt. Did he used to be somebody important? Was there some other reason he was down there?’

She shrugged. ‘Everyone has a story.’

‘Yeah,’ Caleb murmured. ‘Harrow’s daughter certainly had a story in mind, and I’m pretty sure we were the villains of the piece. How strange is that?’

‘Sickening,’ Iktomi agreed. ‘If I’d met the girl I would have cut out her heart.’

‘Well, quite.’

They watched the sump lap against the shore, staining it green.

‘There’s still a bounty on my head,’ Caleb said. ‘I don’t know for sure who set it. That’s not good.’

‘Maybe you should learn to keep your head down?’

‘Maybe.’

‘And your mouth shut.’

‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘It would be better if we forgot this little adventure.’

‘No stories of your great deeds?’

‘None,’ he agreed. ‘Well… unless someone asks. I don’t want to be rude.’

‘They might ask about your nose.’

‘It’s crooked, isn’t it?’ he groaned, examining his face with his fingers. ‘I knew it. How bad does it look?’

‘That depends how vain you are.’

He thought for a moment. ‘Let’s assume excessively.’

‘Then maybe I should try and straighten it,’ she said, beckoning him closer.

He bent down. She took hold of his nose between thumb and forefinger.

‘Ready?’ she asked. Before he could answer there was a sharp crack and a surge of eye-watering agony. He swore, surging to his feet, his hands clasped to his face. She waited.

‘How does it look?’ he asked. ‘Better?’

She studied his face. ‘Better,’ she agreed. ‘But not quite what it used to be.’

‘I think I can live with that,’ he said. ‘I don’t think you get to be quite the same after something like this.’

They stared out across the sump. In the distance the silhouette of a barge was slowly drifting through the smog, the oarsman propelling it towards the island.

‘I’m sorry I got you into this,’ he said, as they watched the barge draw closer.

She shrugged.

‘And I’m sorry about your finger.’

She held up her bandaged hand to examine its three remaining fingers.

‘I didn’t use it much.’

They watched as the barge drew closer.

‘You didn’t have to stay,’ Caleb said. ‘When I let things get out of hand… it’s not your problem.’

‘I took an oath,’ she replied. ‘I swore that if I survived that journey through the Ash Wastes I would repay you, protect you in return.’

‘Yeah, but you’ve saved my life half a dozen times since.’

‘And yet you still need to be protected,’ she said. ‘Until that is no longer the case, or one of us dies, I will uphold my vow.’

Caleb frowned. ‘That was a poorly thought-out oath.’

‘I know,’ she sighed. ‘I was young and dying of exposure. Also, I had been bitten by many spiders.’

The barge rolled into place, the oarsman offering a smile as he extended the gantry. Caleb was about to board when Iktomi touched his shoulder.

‘We could keep going,’ she said, nodding across the waters. ‘Perhaps it’s safer on the other side of the lake?’

‘Didn’t you listen to the oarsman’s stories on our voyage here?’ he replied. ‘All that talk about beasts on the far shore who wear the faces of men? I think I’d rather face more bounty hunters.’

‘Those were just stories,’ she said as they stepped onto the barge.

‘Perhaps.’ Caleb shrugged, his gaze intent on the distant waters. ‘But a story is always a little true.’

EPILOGUE

The bondsman bowed as he entered the room.

Lady Harrow glanced up from the desk, her face half hidden by the black veil. The bondsman bowed low, his head almost touching the marble floor. She waited a moment before indicating he could rise.

‘Yes?’ she said. ‘Is there news?’

‘The main shaft leading to Hope’s End has been sealed off,’ he said, his remarks addressed to a point just above her head. ‘Apparently, the settlers do not wish to speak with outsiders for a time.’

‘Those useless dirt diggers,’ she said. ‘Is there no one else in that filth heap who knows what happened?’

‘Your agents made contact with one of the trawlers of Sinkhole,’ the bondsman said. ‘He claimed to have witnessed everything.’

‘Then what did he say?’

The bondsman cleared his throat.

‘He said that Caleb Cursebound slew a renegade gang known as the Granite Lords by dropping a mountain on them.’

He kept his gaze fixed just above her head, avoiding her gaze.

‘Was that all?’ she asked, her voice unnaturally calm.

‘The trawler also claimed Cursebound was accompanied by a nine-fingered assassin who defeated a rogue automata that had besieged Hope’s End. Apparently, he then gifted it to the settlers.’

‘What a quaint little folk story,’ Lady Harrow said. ‘Did my daughter’s name form part of this diatribe?’

‘He did not name her,’ the bondsman replied, ‘though he claimed a score of bounty hunters came after Cursebound.’

‘I assume they all failed?’

‘He still lives. The hunters appear to be dead.’

‘Appear?’ she asked.

The bondsman shuffled his feet. ‘The trawler claimed that on the other side of the lake there are beasts that walk like men. Mutants perhaps, or simply more of his delusions. Nevertheless, he claims that two days ago a person was washed up on that distant shore, so badly burned and twisted that the creatures took pity on it and claimed it as one of their own.’

He risked a glance at Lady Harrow’s face, but could not read her expression through the veil.

‘My lady?’ he said. ‘I think the man was quite mad – he spoke often of mountains whose peaks pierced the ash desert. But you could always despatch a small party to–’

She raised her hand. He felt silent.

‘A Harrow would rather die than be taken in by the dregs of the underhive,’ she said. ‘My beloved daughter Elissa Harrow is sadly deceased, and I will not sully her reputation by giving the slightest credence to such a tale. You will not repeat it.’

‘Of course.’

Lady Harrow sighed heavily.

‘Please extend my formal mourning period by a further lunar-cycle. Oh, and send for Perin Harrow. We must discuss the matter of succession.’

PARADISE

JONATHAN GREEN

He did not know her true name. He only knew her by the moniker those who lived in fear of her authority had bestowed upon her.

The Quantum Queen.

There wasn’t anything that was traded within her territory that she didn’t know about, and her territory stretched from Tunnel Town as far as Ferrohead. Thanks to an extensive network of spies and agents, she was everywhere, all of the time. The walls didn’t just have ears within her domain, they had eyes and, more importantly, guns and mauls as well.

And now he found himself kneeling before her throne on the cold floor of her ogryn-guarded inner sanctum, with his hands cuffed behind his back.

‘You had one job to do.’ Her voice, sharp as a Delaque’s stiletto knife, cut him to the core, even as it echoed from the vaulted roof of the chamber.

His contact, Crixus Phall, the masked man who had actually engaged his gang’s services, stood at her right hand. He knew his place, and he knew it was best not to stand between the guilder queen and the pitiful wretch who had become the target of her wrath.

‘So, I find myself wondering, what went wrong?’

He laughed then, despite himself, even though it caused him some considerable pain.

‘That’s what I’d like to know,’ he spluttered through bloodied lips and broken teeth.

‘Then perhaps you should tell me precisely what did happen, starting from the beginning.’

The echoes of the catastrophic collapse faded, replaced by the descending whine of the graviton weapon powering down.

It took longer for the dust to settle, the report of autoguns and stubbers chasing the echoes from the curving wall of the dome’s edge, out into the wastes beyond. But as the obscuring clouds of airborne particles did finally start to clear, the sporadic shots of the Dust Dogs died too, as the broken bodies of the Badzone Brawlers became visible, lying among the debris of tumbled gantries, buckled girders and twisted scaffolding poles. Not one of the gene-smithed giants remained alive. The Krusher had seen to that.

Klinker Ludd was the first into the mess of wreckage, to see what choice items he could recover from the dead Goliaths, but Gotin and Veld were not far behind. Invar Latten joined them, making a beeline for the big brute who had been wielding the heavy stubber.

Chase and Scoria hung back, as if not convinced their rivals really were all dead, and certainly not in a hurry to find out by scrabbling for autogun cartridges in the dirt. The twins followed the older women’s lead.

Oss swept the badzones behind them, on the lookout in case one of the Goliath gang – or a hired hanger-on who had been running with them – had somehow survived the Krusher’s devastating graviton assault and was even now watching them through the sights of a long-las, out there in the rubble ruins of the abandoned hab-blocks.

The distraction that the Goliaths had presented dealt with, Bruno took the opportunity to check the ancient dome-runner map again.

It felt greasy to the touch and, not for the first time, he found himself wondering if it was just because of the sweat and grime that had soaked into it, from all those who had handled it over the years, or if it was made of something particularly unsavoury.

He found the dome they were in now, matching the close approximation of the hab-blocks marked on the map with the ruins behind him, rotating the ‘parchment’ until it was orientated the same way he was looking.

Latten cursed, interrupting Bruno’s map-reading, but he quickly returned to the task in hand when he saw the Orlock turning the crumpled metal barrel over in his hands, studying it with clear disappointment. The heavy stubber was beyond repair, deformed by the Krusher’s devastating assault as surely as its owner’s organs had been pulverised by the graviton pulses.

‘So, boss, have you worked out where we are yet?’ Scoria asked, peering over his shoulder at the map.

‘Yes, of course I have,’ said Bruno, trying to sound confident at least. ‘The problem is, this thing is so old it doesn’t precisely correspond with what’s here now. Hive quakes, floods, toxic spills, structural collapses, manufactory meltdowns – they’ve all taken their toll over the years.’

He looked up from the map, which clearly showed a wide tunnel connecting the dome they were in now to another similar structure, and finally to the solid wall in front of them.

‘See that?’ He pointed at the tangle of malformed metalwork and the mound of compacted detritus and ferrous slag behind. ‘That’s our way in.’

‘You’re kidding?’ said Klinker Ludd, joining Bruno and Scoria on top of the rubble heap, and following his leader’s pointing finger to the blank wall in front of them. He was carrying a newly acquired, blunt-nosed Goliath-pattern boltgun over one shoulder. ‘That’s not a way in. That’s a wall.’

‘No, the boss is right.’ Scoria traced a curve in the air. ‘You can just make out the edge of where the inter-dome tunnel once was.’

‘We can see it too,’ Talmi Damascene said excitedly, speaking on behalf of both herself and her sister Chaly.

Her use of the word ‘we’ made Bruno bristle. The twins, only identifiable by their tattoos, unnerved him.

‘All right, I can see it too now,’ Ludd conceded. ‘But even though that might have been the way in once, there’s no way through there now.’

Bruno smiled. ‘Then we’ll dig our way in. Oss?’

Oss – sometimes called ‘the Grox’, when he wasn’t within earshot – set to work shifting the collapsed scaffolding, not even breaking a sweat as he used his servo-claw to lift the poles and drag them clear, while Bruno reactivated the Krusher. The machine clumped forward, the cracks in the parched earth widening still further under the weight of its splayed metal feet.

‘The ground’s compacted,’ Ludd persisted. ‘It’ll be hard as ferrocrete.’

Bruno’s fellow Orlocks fell back, keeping their distance as the Krusher approached the slag heap. With a grinding of servo-motors, it brought its huge mechanical arms up before it as it advanced, the circular saw blades attached to either side of its fists whirring up to cutting speed. The high-pitched whine made by the blades biting into the compacted ore waste hurt Bruno’s ears, and made several of the others wince. But as the tunnelling claws dug in, the whine became a thrumming bass-note hum, the automata’s alien instincts took over, and the Ambot started to dig.

The Luther-pattern Excavation Automata – or ‘Ambot’, for short – had been designed as a versatile, heavy-duty mining construct. It combined a densely durable robotic chassis with the natural tunnelling instincts of the ambull, a monstrous, coleopteran xenos species thought to have originated on some far-flung arid death world. At least, that was what he’d been told by the guilder who had sold it to him.

Thanks to the implantation of cranial governors, the creature’s more aggressive tendencies were held in check, making the Ambot a compliant slave, ready to obey any command given by its master. But the option was also there to deactivate those same cranial governors – for those brave enough, foolish enough or desperate enough to do so – at which point the ambull’s true nature would take over and the Ambot would be transformed into several tons of weaponised berserker automata.

He recalled the last time he had resorted to such measures with both a shudder of fear and a thrill of excitement; he would never forget what the mining construct had done to the Cawdor cult-gang the Dust Dogs had run afoul of in Krynda’s Gorge.

As the Ambot dug through what passed for earth down here, in the infertile underhive, chunks of dislodged matter tumbled down around it, bouncing off the hazard markings of its ceramite shoulder guards. The construct ceased its advance, its cutting blades idling, as it paused to rake out the spoil its digging had so far produced, using its massive metal arms to clear half a ton of slag waste in mere moments.

The Krusher continued in this fashion – grinding away at the obstruction, breaking up the compacted spoil, and then clearing it away with efficient, economical movements of its shovel arms – its power unit thrumming as it worked.

‘Here, Oss!’ Latten called, joining the others where they were watching the Ambot work. ‘I’ve got something for you.’

He was struggling to carry the bulky mass of a rivet-cannon, a favourite of muscle-head Goliath gangers. Only Oss, who was not unlike a member of House Goliath, in terms of his build at least, had the muscular physique required to heft something so heavy and cumbersome in combat.

‘Cheers, Invar!’ the Grox said, taking the scavenged weapon from the older man with one hand, and marvelling at the blunt barbarity of the cannon, a delighted grin on his face. ‘Looks like it’s got a full load too.’

Sometimes, Bruno thought, it wasn’t only his physical strength that made Oss seem like a misplaced member of the House of Gene-Smiths.

‘When you’re quite done looking at your new toy…’ Bruno nodded towards the tunnel the Ambot was rapidly digging out of the compacted slag heap.

‘Sure thing, boss,’ the big Orlock replied, a red tinge colouring his cheeks.

Picking up a heavy girder with the aid of his servo-claw, Oss followed the Ambot into the tunnel, using the girder to shore up the ceiling, before returning to the tangle of wreckage to select another appropriate support strut. He repeated the process again and again, until Bruno and the others felt confident that it was safe to follow. Picking up scaffolding poles and iron supports of their own, they followed their leader into the noisy gloom.

Inside the Ambot-dug tunnel, the whine of the tunnelling claws was focused and intensified, setting Bruno’s teeth rattling inside his head. Dust and flying gravel chips suffused the air, as did the hot metal smell of friction-heated ferrous slag, which reminded Bruno to pull his rebreather up over his mouth, and his protective goggles down over his eyes.

The luminescence emitted by various elements within the Ambot’s robotic chassis, not least the eerie green glow of its optical arrays, provided enough light to see by. And so they continued in this way, keeping close enough to the digging beetle-machine for it not to end up out of voice-control range, but not so close that were the roof to cave in, the Orlocks wouldn’t still be safe within the shored-up section of tunnel.

After all, Bruno didn’t know when or where the Ambot might break through to the other side. And even then, it could either be the dome they were searching for or the gulf of a near-bottomless crevasse within the stratified remains of the hive’s ancient foundations. Or it might be a forgotten heat sink that would see the Ambot tumbling to its doom, deep within the geological crust of the planet itself.

The underhive was best thought of as a honeycomb of ancient, half-subsumed structures, ruins built on top of collapsed domes, built on top of ruins. There were all manner of hidden sinkholes, crevasses and who knew what else, including unmapped unnatural caverns, home to nests of mutant hive-rats and sludge jelly spawning pools.

As he considered the nature of the inter-dome spaces, Bruno began to question the sense in attempting to follow the map their mysterious employer had provided him with, or the sense in taking the guilder’s coin for this job at all. They were just as likely to be ambushed by milliasaurs or have ripper jacks swoop down upon them from some airy ventilation shaft and try to rip their faces off, as they were to find some long-hidden paradise.

The thought of mutated six-foot-long centipedes scuttling over his body made his skin crawl and he almost considered turning back. But then, the squealing note of the Ambot’s tunnelling claws changed pitch and a great cascade of broken material came tumbling down on top of the mining construct.

Bruno’s first thought was that it was a cave-in, until the tunnel was suddenly flooded with light.

He put a hand up to shield his eyes, and if he hadn’t been wearing his goggles they would have been stinging with salty tears, as the incandescent luminescence chased away the gloom of the subterranean shaft. They were through!

The Krusher exited the tunnel, stumbling a few yards down a steep, boulder-strewn slope, trailing dust and rock chips in its wake, before coming to a complete stop.

Not waiting for Oss to shore up the last section, Bruno jogged after the excavator, his mouth dropping open as he quickly stumbled to a halt again as well. Slowly, he removed his goggles.

Voices raised in surprise and delight followed him out of the tunnel and down the slope.

‘Helmawr’s arse!’ gasped Veld, as he joined Bruno in gazing out across the rediscovered dome, now revealed in all its glory before them.

Gotin’s curse was more imaginative and profane.

Bruno only tore his eyes away from the vista arrayed before them when he felt Scoria’s hand on his shoulder. He turned to look at her and saw the silent tears leaving flesh-coloured tracks through the rock-dust covering her cheeks. ‘It’s beautiful,’ she managed at last.

‘Yes, it is.’

But Chase put it better than anyone else. ‘It’s paradise,’ she said, her voice barely more than a whisper, as if the dome were as sacrosanct as an Imperial shrine or the resting place of some Ecclesiarchy saint, and she did not want to disturb its hallowed peace.

As the excited murmurs of the others faded into a speechless silence behind him, Bruno took a moment to absorb every last glorious detail of the scene.

The dome was a feast for the eyes. The first thing that struck him were the colours. The underhive, like the habzones far above, was almost uniformly grey, brown or black, with the occasional splash of something brighter – the rich red of a proliferation of rust, the jaundice-yellow glow of a caged lumen strip, or the toxic emerald overflow of a leaking sump pipe – but the view before him surpassed even the profusion of colours of juve-painted gang allegiance graffiti.

The overriding colour was a verdant green – not a common colour in the underhive – for the bowl of the dome was filled with a lush forest of gigantic ferns and thick-leafed succulents. The Krusher had brought them out at the top of a steep gradient, composed of the same ferrous slag and compacted earth as had blocked the interconnecting tunnel leading from the Goliath-claimed territory. The incline descended to the concave floor of the dome, where the profusion of plants flourished, bathed in the light of a thousand radiant glow-globes.

At the foot of the slope another forest grew, tall and strong, this one composed of towering fungi, their thick fleshy stems the colour of milliasaur eggs, their broad orange caps creating a thick canopy, before they gave way in turn, half a mile further on, to the lush green undergrowth.

To the left, from the foot of the slope, rose a ridge of deposited material that was also covered with ferns and cycads. The ridge followed the curving wall of the dome into the hazy distance, where Bruno could just make out the rust-red façade of some ancient edifice. Below and before it, he could see the broken light of the glow-globes dancing on the rippled surface of a lake.

He had never seen such a vast expanse of water that wasn’t choked with industrial effluent or stained the same ochre hue as the compacted dust that passed for earth in much of the underhive.

Taking off his rebreather, Bruno took a long breath, filling his lungs and savouring the sweetness of it on the back of his tongue. He had never tasted air so pure before either.

The air wasn’t only redolent with sweet scents, it was also filled with a cacophony of strange sounds – beetle-like clicks, the buzzing of bejewelled wings and a distant sound like water thundering from a reservoir outflow.

As he took in his surroundings, he saw now that the boulders dotting the incline were in fact portions of the dome’s ceiling, which had cracked and been pushed out by a clump of wire weed that had broken through from a crawl space or conduit behind the rockcrete superstructure. And there, beside the gaping fissure, in stencilled letters thirteen feet high, was the dome’s original designation: L-16G.

‘Will you look at that…’ Invar Latten said, rubbing at the greying stubble on his chin with a callused hand, letting his autogun swing free from its strap about his neck.

All Bruno could manage was, ‘I know.’

‘I never thought I’d see paradise while still on this side of the veil. So now I guess we head back, yes?’

‘What?’ exclaimed Chase.

‘No!’ cried the twins together.

‘Why not? Job done,’ Latten said. ‘We head home with an updated map of the route to this place, pass it on to your guilder contact and take the money, thank you very much.’

A gleeful grin spread across Bruno’s face.

‘Or, we take a look around first, and if we happen to stumble across some old archeotech, or a ghast deposit, so be it. We salvage what we can, and then we return to the guild with the map and the route to this dome marked on it.’

‘But I thought the job was just to find this place, not explore the dome ourselves,’ persisted Latten.

‘And so it was,’ Bruno agreed, ‘but there’s nothing wrong with a little improvisation. Crixus Phall didn’t say we couldn’t scope the place out.’

‘Sounds good to me,’ chimed in Klinker Ludd, setting off down the incline towards the towering fungi, checking the load on his boltgun as he did so.

The grizzled ganger scowled.

‘Come on, Invar, when have I ever let you down?’ Bruno asked.

‘The boss is right,’ Scoria said. ‘It would be a crime not to check this place out for ourselves first, especially after all we’ve been through to get here.’

Scoria’s comment caused Bruno to call to mind the encounter with the tentacled thing lurking in a flooded service conduit and the foraging mutie pack, as well as the battle with their old enemies the Badzone Brawlers.

‘That’s right. And I’m not leaving until I’ve discovered what secrets this place is hiding.’ He indicated the structure on the other side of the dome.

‘Very well,’ Latten conceded grudgingly. ‘If you say so.’

‘I do say so.’

Bruno turned his attention to the rest of the Dust Dogs.

‘We’ll split into three groups and meet up again on the other side of the dome. Oss, I want you, Chase and the twins to check out that ridge.’ He pointed to the escarpment hugging the dome wall to his left.

‘Understood,’ the Grox said, giving a curt nod.

‘Ludd and Scoria, you’re with me.’

‘Yes!’ Klinker Ludd punched the air, knowing that wherever Bruno went, the Krusher would go too. And if they did run into anything unwelcome in this strange paradise – a sumpkroc perhaps, or even some unspeakable overgrown mutant, like those that were said to dwell within the unmapped depths of Hive Bottom – any ganger in their right mind would want to be where the Ambot was.

Just as Ludd couldn’t hide his delight, Gotin wasn’t afraid to air his disappointment either, offering up an imaginative curse that Bruno chose to ignore.

‘Invar, you happy to take these two miscreants,’ he looked pointedly at first Gotin and then Veld, ‘and follow the perimeter of the dome in the other direction?’

‘Will do,’ Latten replied, meeting Veld’s furious gaze with a steely stare of his own.

‘Then let’s get going, people. Time’s a-wasting.’

While the Grox and his team climbed the ridge to the left, and Latten and his skirted the dome wall to the right, Bruno led the way into the fungus forest, Scoria following, with Klinker Ludd coming after her. Last of all came the Krusher, the hydraulics of its robotic chassis wheezing with every step it took.

As they descended the slope the ground became softer underfoot, until they were enveloped by the shadows that pooled beneath the crowded canopy formed by the broad caps of the fungi. Passing between the pale fleshy stems, they found themselves advancing over a spongy loam that gave up rich, earthy scents with each step they took. The smell was intoxicating.

Bruno had never seen anything like this place. He was used to the underhive being little more than a sterile wasteland. Finding himself somewhere like this, that had lain undisturbed for the Emperor alone knew how many centuries, was overwhelming.

But despite his sense of euphoria and the raw emotions assailing him, the alpha of the Dust Dogs had spent too long scrapping with rival gangs for territory in the subterranean badzones to take leave of his senses entirely, even when those same senses threatened to overpower him with all the wondrous scents, sights and sounds Dome L-16G had to offer.

He still scoped the way ahead, sweeping his autopistol from side to side. There were dangers lurking everywhere you looked in the underhive, man-made or otherwise, and he doubted this seeming paradise, no matter how magnificent its fauna and flora, was any different.

Their comms crackled, making him start.

‘What is it?’ Klinker Ludd demanded.

‘This place is amazing!’ Oss’ voice came over the vox, unable to hide his unalloyed joy. ‘From up here we can see a… a…’ He faltered as words failed him. ‘I don’t know what it is. I mean, it looks like part of the sump but without the coating of scum or the dead rats floating in it.’

‘You mean… it’s a lake?’ Bruno suggested hesitantly.

‘That’s it!’ Oss exclaimed in excitement. ‘It’s a lake of clean water! I’ve never seen anything like it.’

‘Have you got eyes on that structure yet?’

‘Yes,’ the Grox replied.

‘Any idea what it is?’

‘No. Not yet.’

‘Understood. Then stick to the plan and we’ll meet you there.’

‘Oss out.’

The comm went dead.

A split second later, Bruno reactivated the vox himself.

‘Invar. How are things with you?’

‘Nothing to report,’ buzzed back Latten’s less obviously delighted voice, ‘other than Gotin’s attitude and the fact that anything that might be waiting for us will have been able to smell Veld from the other side of the dome.’

Bruno suppressed a laugh. ‘See you at the structure,’ he said and cut the vox.

As they continued their advance towards the heart of the dome, the sound of water trickling over pebbles announced the presence of a stream. It wasn’t wide or deep, and it was easy enough to cross in a single bound, but Bruno stopped at the water’s edge nonetheless, marvelling at the glassy clarity of the water. He could see the polished stones that formed the bed of the stream, where the soft soil had been washed away in the time the dome had remained undisturbed, quite clearly.

The only sign they had so far seen that anyone had been here before was the presence of the rusted edifice.

He bent down and let the cool, clear water run over his fingers, before scooping some of it up in his cupped hand.

‘Careful!’ Scoria chided as he drank.

Bruno gave a satisfied sigh, relishing the sensation of the water trickling down his throat, cooling his body as it did so. He had never tasted anything so good, not in all his thirty-three years.

He smiled at the anxious Scoria and the scowling Ludd. ‘Go on, try it. I can guarantee you won’t have tasted better. Not ever!’

The pair crouched down beside the stream, Scoria using the cap of her canteen to sample the stream-water while Ludd went all in, slinging his gun out of the way over his shoulder, so he could use both hands to gulp down great scoops of the refreshing liquid. He even went so far as to wash the dust from his face and moustache, clearly enjoying the chance to be clean again after their travels through the underhive.

Before going anywhere else, the three of them emptied their canteens of the recycled chemical-aftertaste swill they had been using for rehydration, and refilled them with the pure bounty offered by the stream.

Only when that was done did Bruno’s party set off again. The Ambot, which had come to a halt when they did, pulled its splayed-toed feet from where they had sunk into the soft loam, and resumed its steady trudge, following them.

Beyond the stream, the thick grey-stemmed fungi gave way to a profusion of yellow-capped toadstools, thirty feet tall, their pink gills filled with clusters of spores, which in turn took them to the edge of the lake. Gangly limbed, jewel-winged insects flitted over its surface, beneath which Bruno could see thick growths of hairlike waterweed, the verdant beards rippling in the currents that followed in the wake of whatever life thrived within the lake’s green depths.

Skirting the right-hand shore, they came to a morass of wet mud, which ran all the way to the wall of the dome, where the toadstools gave out. A moment later, Latten announced the arrival of his team with a shout and a wave as they emerged on the far side of the fungus forest.

Bruno looked to his left, to see if there was any sign of Oss lumbering through the plant growth covering the elevated ridge. On cue, he saw a disturbance among the cycads, and then the Grox himself emerged, leading his team across an overgrown gantry that led from the ridge to the rusted structure, past a thundering waterfall cascading from the mouth of a semicircular pipe, where it looked like the edifice actually merged with the curvature of the dome.

Bruno, Scoria, Ludd, Latten, Gotin, Veld and the Krusher negotiated the quagmire, the black mud glittering with mineralised deposits, taking care where they put their feet and using a combination of half-sunken masonry, exposed pipes and drier patches of ground to stitch together a path through the swamp, until they passed from the stinking marsh and into the jungle of giant ferns.

Wet leaves slapped at their legs as the Orlocks climbed towards what was quite clearly now not one structure, but actually an interconnected complex of prefabricated units.

The place looked not unlike one of the manufactories where the work-clans of House Goliath laboured at furnace and foundry, but Bruno instinctively knew that this was something different, although he could only guess as to its purpose.

Wondrous as the lost paradise dome was, it was nothing compared to the fortune he was certain could be made salvaging the ancient archeotech that doubtless lay within.

‘So what’s the plan?’ asked Latten, as he gazed up at the towering façade of the edifice, a wall of rust-red pipes, fluted metal columns, grand arches, ornamented buttresses and STC-stamped bulkheads.

‘This place is ripe for plunder, so we pillage it of all the archeotech we can carry, and then we return to the Quantum Queen, having first taken a quick detour to the trading post at Mercury Falls. That way we’ll get paid twice for this little endeavour.’

‘And Oss can carry more than most,’ added Veld.

‘Talking of which, where is the Grox?’ grunted Gotin.

Veld began to skirt the perimeter of the edifice, heading in the direction from which the remaining Dust Dogs were expected to arrive.

‘Oss!’ he shouted. ‘Where are you, you lazy b–’

Veld’s derogatory remark was cut short by a sharp crack, and the ganger dropped to the ground. Bruno knew he was dead, because his head had vanished in a puff of blood, bone and brain matter.

Scoria screamed.

‘What the sca–’ Gotin swore, before a second shot took him out as well.

The gangers’ weapons were in their hands in an instant, shotgun slides racked and safeties taken off as the Dust Dogs scoped the rusted metalwork of the curious manufactory, searching for any sign of the marksman.

Bruno was horribly aware of how exposed they were, gathered on the open ground between the building and the fern forest. Questions concerning who could be shooting at them and why were swamped by the overriding consideration that they needed to get into cover.

The pounding of heavy footsteps, ringing from a metal gangway, had Bruno glancing to his left. The Grox was leading his team at a run across the final span of the rust-red bridge over the lake, heading towards the other Orlocks’ position.

‘Oss!’ he shouted, as he and the others ran towards the arched entrances of the edifice. ‘Take cover!’

As the big bruiser ran towards the structure, he hefted the Goliath-forged rivet-cannon in both hands and opened fire. The bullet-hard projectiles panged off the rigid bulkheads, erratically cleaning the structure of its patina of rust.

Bruno didn’t see the tumbling sphere until it flashed silver in the intense light of a glow-globe, a moment before it landed a few paces in front of Oss on the bridge.

The grenade detonated with a dull boom and the Grox disappeared behind a ball of greasy smoke and roiling flame. The sound of the explosion was followed a moment later by a splash, as something heavy hit the lake.

As the smoke cleared, Bruno saw the shocked looks on the faces of Chase and the twins, and the twisted hole ripped in the side of the walkway, but no sign of Oss.

‘Hurry!’ Bruno cried out, as he and his fellow survivors moved as one towards the shelter they hoped the alcoves and culverts of the manufactory would afford them.

The twins hung back. ‘The killer is in there!’ Talmi’s voice carried to him, causing Bruno’s bounding steps to falter.

His eyes fell on Chase, as she crossed the bridge onto dry land.

There was the crack of another echoing shot and she stopped running, momentum carrying her forward, making it look like she was diving for cover as her body hit the ground hard, face first.

His panic grew. They were four down already, and they still didn’t know who was shooting at them!

‘Stand your ground!’ he commanded, his voice breaking with emotion. ‘And open fire!’

Their guns already in their hands, the Dust Dogs unleashed a storm of stubber rounds and autogun shells at the façade of the structure, aiming for the shattered ruins of windows and open accessways. The sniper had to be in there somewhere. And whoever it was, they would soon regret ever taking on Bruno’s Dust Dogs.

A few moments later, the sound of autogun and stubber gained a chugging bass-note rivet-cannon accompaniment. Bruno risked a glance back over his shoulder and was rewarded with a vision of Oss wading out of the shallows of the lake, dripping with waterweed, the looted Goliath weapon on full-auto, and his teeth clenched in a vengeful grimace.

Weapons fire continued to pummel the edifice, crumpling pipework and twisting window frames, until steadily, the chattering of the guns ceased, one by one, and silence chased the echoes away. Finally, all Bruno could hear was the panting of his breathless fellows, and the harsh cough of the rivet-cannon running on empty.

‘Got ’em!’ Oss snarled, casting the spent weapon aside and bringing his autogun to bear once more, before absent-mindedly pulling a strand of sodden plant matter from his shoulder. There was blood mixed with the lake water running down his face, and a ragged gash on his forehead.

Bruno eyed the openings in the front of the structure, searching for any sign of movement, anything that might indicate the sniper was still a threat, his stress-heightened pulse thumping in his ears.

There was another distinct crack, and something impacted the ground at the ganger’s feet, sending up a spray of dirt.

‘Take cover!’ he screamed at his companions, and with his next breath, ‘Krusher, step forward and activate grav-fist!’

The Ambot did as commanded, a slight tremor passing through the ground with every step it took, as the Dust Dogs sought out what little shelter they could find.

When it was in front of the Orlocks’ position, the bug-like robot raised an arm as heavy as a steam-hammer, channelling power from its energy core into the mysterious device fitted to the limb, which turned it from a simple ore-excavating claw into a lethally effective ranged weapon.

‘Fire!’ Bruno yelled, diving for cover among the dense foliage behind him.

The air distorted, rippling like an ash desert mirage, as the Ambot directed a succession of graviton pulses at the manufactory. And while the gangers might not have been able to see the device’s discharge directly, they bore witness to its devastating effects.

At first, as the localised gravity field slowly increased in strength, the building began to blur as the graviton pulses vibrated its superstructure, causing great patches of rust to break free and fall to the ground as a shower of glittering crimson particles. And the effects didn’t stop there.

Under the Krusher’s relentless assault, the beams and pillars themselves buckled, and the structure started to come apart. The tangle of pipework that threaded through the edifice was crushed flat, unleashing powerful jets of clean water that drenched the watching gangers. But still Bruno waited, withholding the command that would force the Ambot to cease its assault.

With a dreadful groan of distorting metal, the ground cracked open, more water erupting in great fountains from buried cisterns, the manufactory collapsing under its own weight as the gravitic effects intensified.

The screeching sounds issuing from the collapsing structure were like the death screams of the disintegrating manufactory. And so it continued, until there was no more shrieking of shearing steelwork, or the crashing of toppling columns, but just the rattle of pulverised rubble settling among the debris and detritus, and nothing remained of the structure but a flattened mound of mud and metal.

‘Cease fire,’ Bruno said, and immediately the Krusher’s grav-fist deactivated, the Ambot glowing with the suffused light of overheating internal components.

The automata’s insectile mouthparts scissored together hungrily.

Warily, the Orlocks began to emerge from cover, taking their places before the levelled edifice.

‘That’ll do it,’ said Oss.

In the aftermath of the building’s destruction, everyone present heard the sharp crack of an autopistol firing, and the top of the big Orlock’s cranium became a red ruin. Eyes rolling up into the top of his head, the Grox toppled forward.

But as he did so, his dying muscles contracted and his finger tightened on the trigger paddle of the autogun. A sweeping arc of shredding gunfire stitched a bullet-riddled line across the broken ground before carving a bloody channel through Talmi Damascene.

Oss hit the ground at last, his gun giving up the ghost too. A mere moment later, the near-bifurcated Talmi joined him, now no more than a bloody ruin on the ground in front of the demolished building.

Klinker Ludd gave voice to his panic in the form of a deranged howl and took off at a run, disappearing into the dense ferns.

Bruno spun round, making a full three-sixty-degree sweep of their surroundings, frantically trying to determine where the latest attack had come from. Was there more than one assassin out there, in this so-called paradise? It certainly didn’t seem like much of a paradise now, with five of their number dead and one fled, having clearly lost his mind to panic and fear.

He took in the remaining three Dust Dogs, who were either too stupid, too stubborn or too stunned to run as well. Only Latten, Scoria, Chaly Damascene and himself remained.

‘Klinker Ludd was right! We have to get out of here!’ he shouted at them, his pulse racing, his heart pounding against the cage of his ribs.

All of them were in a state of shock. Silent tears were streaming down Scoria’s cheeks, Latten’s complexion had become grey and waxy, while Chaly just stared at him, her expression slack, her eyes vacant, as if something inside her had died along with Talmi.

Without waiting to see if they were following him, Bruno set off after Ludd, praying to whatever ancient spirits held sway within the dome that they might let him escape with his life. The Krusher set off after him, having been programmed to always stay within six yards of its master, unless otherwise instructed.

Moisture-dripping fronds slapped his face and body as he ran through the thick undergrowth, spurred on by a high-pitched buzzing hum that he was sure was now chasing him through the fern forest.

A pathetic whimper escaped his lips, born of the paranoid fear that a high-velocity round might punch through his heart or his head at any moment. And then the ferns gave way to the stinking morass of the marsh, and his boots splashed through the black mud, stiff reeds whipping at his thighs.

He heard a cry behind him.

‘Boss, wait!’ came Scoria’s agitated voice a moment later.

He didn’t stop.

‘Bruno, please! Wait!’ Scoria screamed.

Bruno winced, feeling the pain of the emotion cracking her voice and, only a few strides from the fungus forest, turned.

The Krusher came to an abrupt halt behind him. Behind the Ambot was Scoria, her pleading eyes beseeching him to help, while a few paces behind her Chaly languished up to her waist in the sucking bog.

‘We can’t leave her!’ Scoria cried.

Invar Latten clearly could: the old Orlock hadn’t lasted in the underhive for this long without having a streak of self-preservation as wide as a heat sink. He had already passed Chaly and now overtook Scoria, legs pumping as he charged through the swamp.

Bruno heard the dreaded humming sound again and then the report of a gun firing somewhere nearby, which was promptly returned as an echo by the curving wall of the dome.

Latten cried out as he took a dive into the quagmire, clasping the meat of his calf. The gun barked a second time and the Orlock flopped onto his back and didn’t move again.

Another pitiful moan of panic escaping his own mouth, Bruno turned and resumed his run towards the looming, mushroom-grey growths. Behind him he could hear Scoria cursing, even as she desperately exhorted Chaly to take her hand so that she might help her struggle free of the swamp.

And then he was sprinting between the towering yellow-capped toadstools once more, the air thick with the heady compost scents of decomposing vegetable matter and fungal spores.

He could hear the Krusher clumping after him, its hydraulics wheezing.

From somewhere far behind him now, he heard a cry. He couldn’t tell whether it was Scoria or Chaly.

He ran on, eyes stinging with rising tears, struggling with shaking hands to load a fresh clip into his autopistol as he did so, having used up the last one during the gang’s bombardment of the building complex.

The thirty-foot tall toadstools gave way to the thick grey stems of the copper caps, and then there was the babbling brook again. But the crystal-clear waters of the stream had become polluted, running red with the blood of the man lying there with his face under the water. It was Klinker Ludd.

Less than an hour since entering the dome, as far as Bruno knew, the rest of the Dust Dogs were dead. There was just him and the Krusher left.

His feet sinking into the soft soil of the fungus forest, Bruno emerged at last from the cloying shadows at the foot of the slope, eyes half closed against the glare of the humming glow-globes overhead.

As he started to climb the mound of ferrous waste towards the automata-dug tunnel, he glanced back to check that the Ambot was still following him. The hulking excavator pushed its way clear of the thick-stemmed fungi, the yellow and black chevrons on its shoulder armour almost glowing in the bright light.

Bruno’s heart was racing still, but now it was with the thrill of escaping this haunted paradise as much as the adrenaline rush of the hunted fleeing the hunter. He would be all right as long as the Krusher was with him, he was sure. After all, nothing could stand against it.

He glanced back at the brute construct as it started to climb the broken slope behind him, the sight of its great ceramite-armoured bulk as reassuring as the weight of the autopistol in his hand.

The Ambot’s hum changed in pitch, abruptly sharp, and its heavy shoulders sagged, powerful tunnelling claws hanging limp.

‘What–’

It finished its stride, suddenly slow, almost lethargic, and stopped. The lights peppering its body dimmed to nothing.

The crunch of gravel underfoot had Bruno turning his attention back to the mouth of the tunnel.

A figure stepped out of the shadows.

He was tall and lean, his body swathed in a long trench coat that flapped about his legs as he strode from the Ambot-dug accessway, and much of his face was hidden in shadow beneath a wide-brimmed hat.

Slung at his hip was a holstered stub gun, a twelve-shooter by the look of it. A gloved hand hovered over the grip, ready to draw in an instant, while in the other hand was gripped a slim, black plastek-sheathed device.

Bruno gave a gasp of shock and collapsed onto his knees in front of the stranger, his pistol slipping from his sweat-slick palm as he did so.

The figure strode up to where Bruno was pitifully scrabbling about in the dirt, and casually kicked the pistol out of his reach with the toe of a boot.

Helpless, Bruno peered up into the face half hidden by the hat, taking in the stubble on the grim-set jaw, and the steely half-closed eyes.

‘And then there was one,’ drawled the stranger, and cruel realisation dawned like the cold, grey sun over the Ash Wastes.

This individual was responsible for the deaths of Bruno’s Dust Dogs. Somehow he had taken them out, one by one, and beaten Bruno back to the entrance to the dome. And yet the man clearly wasn’t out of breath. He hadn’t even broken a sweat!

Bruno heard the buzzing hum again and a servo-skull emerged from between the towering toadstools behind him. It came to a halt, hovering above the ground, not five yards from his position, the compact autopistol bolted to the side of the cranium holding him in its sights.

‘Who hired you?’ Bruno railed, finding the courage to challenge his fate as he faced his end. ‘Was it the Brawlers?’

‘I’ve been trying to get into this place ever since I learned the Quantum Queen had agents searching for it,’ the stranger said, entirely ignoring the question.

‘What?’ exclaimed Bruno.

‘Not what, why? And then you turned up with your Ambot and dug your way in and I had my answer. She was after the ultimate prize.’

Fear giving way to confusion, Bruno stared at the bounty hunter in utter bewilderment.

‘That complex of buildings your Luther-pattern Excavation Automata razed to the ground. I take it you didn’t know what it was, otherwise you wouldn’t have been so quick to demolish it.’

Bruno’s confusion become a cold hard lump in the pit of his stomach.

‘It was a purification plant,’ the stranger went on. ‘Priceless. How else do you explain the clean air and water in here?’

Bruno felt sick.

‘Course, with the plant gone it won’t be long before this paradise is lost too. Dome El-One-Six-Gee will be worthless to her now, so there’s that.’

A grim smile split the man’s rugged face.

‘And, as they say, to the victor, the spoils.’

Nonchalantly, he strode down the slope to where the Krusher had frozen mid-stride.

From Bruno’s perspective, the stranger simply seemed to raise his hand. With a whir of servo-motors and the decompression of carbon-fibre muscle bundles resetting, the Ambot came online again, rising to its full height, before assuming a standby stance.

‘Acknowledged.’ The Krusher’s mechanical mouthparts twitched in imitation of mandibles. The movements did not match its stilted automated speech patterns. ‘Standing by. Awaiting instruction.’

Bruno stared in stunned horror at his mechanical bodyguard, which was his no longer, shock quickly boiling away to leave nothing but raw rage.

His gun lay only a few yards off. Crawling through the dirt on his hands and knees, he grabbed the autopistol and, turning it on the bounty hunter, pulled the trigger.

There was the sharp click of the trigger mechanism but nothing more.

Bruno cursed under his breath. But of course, the gun was empty. He had fumbled and failed to reload it as he fled through the fungus forest.

The gun skull’s propulsion unit activated with a shrill whine that sounded like a hiss, as the drone prepared to neutralise the threat.

The bounty hunter turned, and fixed Bruno with a weary scowl. ‘Stand down,’ he instructed the servo-skull.

‘Who are you?’ gabbled the leader of the dead Dust Dogs. With no one left to lead, he was now just a gang-less ganger, simply an Orlock of the House of Iron.

‘I’ll trade you,’ the bounty hunter replied, his expression unchanging. ‘A name for a name.’

‘I-I am Bruno,’ he stammered.

‘Not yours!’ the bounty hunter cut him off sharply. ‘Who are you working for, Bruno... Backshooter?’

‘And what did you tell him?’ the silhouette seated upon the ornate throne demanded.

‘Nothing!’ Bruno protested. ‘I swear, I didn’t tell him anything!’

The Quantum Queen said nothing. The silence stretched out between them, becoming painfully thin, until finally:

‘So who was he?’

‘Creed,’ replied the exhausted Orlock. He felt utterly wrung out. The cold was seeping into his knees, and his gums were throbbing. ‘He said his name was Nathan Creed.’

Crixus Phall shifted uncomfortably, as if fighting his innate fight or flight response.

‘Do not lie to me!’ the Quantum Queen screamed, making Bruno jump. His nerves couldn’t take it any more: he was as highly strung as a Redemptionist preacher.

‘I’m not!’ Bruno protested, clearing a gobbet of congealing blood from his mouth and spitting it out onto the floor. ‘That was the name he gave me.’

‘Exactly!’ the guilder came back at him. ‘You expect us to believe that you didn’t give him the information he wanted but he still told you his name and let you go?’

Bruno blanched.

‘And there we have the truth of it, as plain to see as the broken nose on your misshapen face. You must have given him something – he would not have given up his name so easily otherwise.’

Bruno ached all over. Pins and needles beset his toes and fingers, his mouth hurt, his lips were numb, and he just wanted this torment to be over.

‘All right, I gave him a name, the only one I could give him.’ Bruno drew his gaze from the guilder to her agent. He pointed at the masked man shifting his weight uneasily from one foot to the other beside the throne. ‘You. Crixus Phall.’

Bruno sensed the tension in the room ease slightly, as the Quantum Queen’s posture relaxed a little.

Crixus Phall raised a gloved hand. In it he held a needle pistol.

‘Then that concludes our business dealings,’ he said, his finger tightening on the trigger. ‘Your services are no longer required.’

He didn’t miss.

‘He’ll be coming for you,’ the Quantum Queen said, as she regarded the corpse of the ganger dispassionately.

‘With the greatest respect, milady, he’ll be coming for both of us,’ her right-hand man pointed out. ‘And who can blame him, after what we did to him?’

‘He doesn’t know what we did to him!’ the Queen hissed. ‘Not all of it, anyway.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Crixus Phall said with a weary sigh. ‘What he believes we did to him is bad enough.’

‘Then we must prepare to defend ourselves,’ the Queen said, her voice steel. ‘And I find that the best form of defence is attack.’

Crixus Phall met his mistress’ icy sapphire stare.

‘I want you to make it known that there is bounty on his head.’

‘Thank you, mistress.’ Crixus Phall swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry. ‘How much for?’

‘A thousand credits,’ the Quantum Queen replied. ‘I want Nathan Creed dead!’

DEAD DROP

MIKE BROOKS

Every piece of cargo that arrived on Necromunda came through the Eye of Selene, which of course was untrue.

Everything legal came through there, certainly, taxed and registered and then shipped off to wherever it was supposed to go. A fair amount of contraband did too, and that was no lie, because the right bribe or piece of appropriately leveraged intimidation could work wonders. But there were some things you just couldn’t trust to the tender mercies of Lord Helmawr’s representatives, just in case someone got a bit curious and took a peek where they weren’t meant to… or, technically speaking, were. For some particularly sensitive things the only real option was to pack it up real good and sling it out of your craft from orbit, aimed at the Ash Wastes. Then you just had to hope the right people got to it first, while the wrong people assumed it was merely a loose piece of space debris.

Danner Grimjack had no idea what it was that had landed eighteen miles north-east of Hive Primus, and they didn’t need to know. Nor did they need to know about the finer points of orbital physics, atmospheric friction, or even who had dropped it in the first place. What they knew was that the Steel Crescents had gone haring off towards it as though they were the only gang with a working macroscope to see it come down, which meant it was valuable to someone, and that meant that it would be valuable to Danner Grimjack and the Road Dogs. All they needed to do was wait for the Steel Crescents to bring it back to them.

Which was, agreeably enough, just what was happening.

‘Thirty seconds!’ Muzz shouted down. Her words were muffled by the respirators they all wore, but intelligible enough. The winds were low and the toxic ash lay relatively still at the moment, but no one would risk uncovering just for the sake of a little clarity.

Engines coughed into life, and the noise echoed back off the ruined walls of what had once been a space freighter, until some unknown accident had seen it plummet crustwards too, and spill its metal guts across the wastes. Enough of the shell still held together for it to be a landmark on the routes between the hive spires, and most would skirt it on the northern side: you could drive straight through it, but that was a bottleneck just waiting to happen.

Muzz hopped down and landed on the bed of her truck, then stationed herself behind the deck-mounted harpoon. Danner slapped the roof of their own vehicle’s cab and it jerked into motion. One by one, the Road Dogs of House Orlock pulled out and, as the Steel Crescents of House Van Saar began to curve around the freighter’s ruins to the north, the Dogs did the same to the south.

That was the key; you had to get up to speed out of sight. If you lay in wait and let the quarry go past you, they’d leave you in their dust. Approach them head-on, and they could go anywhere. Hit full throttle and converge on them as they came around a large obstacle, though…

One, two of the Crescents’ trucks flashed into sight round the freighter’s shattered prow, Necromunda’s weak sun spattering off their ramshackle angles, and then the big rig appeared: larger than anything the Road Dogs had, six monstrous wheels churning up the ash as it ploughed along. Big and strong it certainly was, but not the quickest.

Danner had timed it perfectly. Their truck slammed into one of the Crescents’ trailing escorts, but Danner, Sideswipe Eddy and Mungles the juve had taken hold of the restraint webbing, and none of them were thrown over. The smaller vehicle was smashed aside, engine block exposed and gushing promethium. It slewed drunkenly, and quickly fell behind.

The pop and crack of lascarbine fire split the air; the last of the Crescents, only a few yards behind, had taken exception to Danner’s arrival. Thankfully the speed at which they were all driving, and the unsteady surface of the ash, meant their attempts at marksmanship were dismal. Danner unslung their combat shotgun and took aim with their left hand, still bracing themself with their right. The Crescents’ trucks were heavily armoured, but no one could do much about their wheels.

A salvo of fire ripped from Danner’s weapon. The recoil shook it viciously, but they braced it with the ease of long practice and the shells raked across the vulcanised tyres, shredding them. The Crescent truck swerved uncontrollably, and a moment later it was flipping over. Those riding it might be crushed or might survive; all Danner cared about was that they weren’t going to be interfering.

The Dogs were coming under fire from the passengers of the big rig now, but the shots were glancing off the armoured front of Danner’s truck. Sideswipe Eddy climbed up into the gunner’s chair, largely protected by the fireshield of salvaged metal, angled the harpoon towards them and fired. Muzz let fly with hers at the same moment, and the twin impacts punched deep into the cab. Danner heard a scream: it wasn’t just the big rig’s body that had been pierced, it seemed.

One of the Crescents’ lead trucks was angling away into the dunes to the left, either trying to act as a decoy, or just fleeing. The other had begun to fall back, but the Road Dogs’ flankers outnumbered it two to one, and the weight of fire in their favour quickly told. Something punched through and ignited the promethium, and the big rig’s last companion went up in a fireball that momentarily lit even the dismal grey of the Ash Wastes.

The big rig itself was veering steadily off to the right. Danner frowned, confused. The steer wasn’t irregular enough to be trying to shake the harpoons loose, and they weren’t heading for safety any longer. Could the little lead truck now heading in the other direction actually be the one carrying the cargo? No time to worry about that now; they were locked in, and whatever the big rig was carrying would be worth it. It might just be Van Saar tech, but that could still fetch a decent price if you knew the right buyer.

Fast Don and Ironhead both stamped on their brakes and the harpoon cables snapped taut, but although its pace slowed, the big rig powered onwards, dragging the smaller vehicles in its wake. Only one thing for it.

‘Board them!’ Danner roared, pulling out their cable clip. Sideswipe Eddy reached out and snapped his around the cable, then swung out around the side of the fireshield and let gravity carry him down and along the taut harpoon cable onto the big rig. Danner leaped up to the raised harpoon mount and hooked their clip at the first attempt, then slid down the cable after him even as Muzz and Toni Bones came down their own line. Danner felt the usual tug of fear as they dangled momentarily above nothing but Necromundan ash, racing away beneath them, but they swallowed it. There were far greater dangers here than a simple fall.

The big rig’s escorts were gone, the crew were under attack from two sides, and they were panicking. Sideswipe let rip with his autogun, strafing the big rig’s deck, but someone kept their cool. Eddy’s head jerked back and he went limp, the handle of a knife protruding from his eye socket. Danner snarled in rage and reached past their crewmate’s body, switched their combat shotgun to shredder ammo, and pulled the trigger.

A spray of shot rattled out, scourging the big rig’s flatbed at head height to a chorus of screams just before Muzz touched down, and she put autopistol shells through the skulls of the fallen Crescents before she’d even unclipped herself. Eddy’s body came to rest on the deck and Danner left it there, drooping bonelessly but still attached to the cable and held up at the waist; easier to get him back aboard when the Dogs were done. Danner unclipped themself and levelled their gun at the cab, ready for more resistance to emerge from within, but the hatch at the top remained shut.

‘Did we kill the driver?’ Muzz yelled, pointing at where the Dogs’ harpoons had struck. They’d criss-crossed the big rig’s deck and plunged into the cab, neatly bisecting where the driver would be sitting.

‘Looks like!’ Danner shouted back. That would explain why the truck was veering off course, anyway. Mungles was already ransacking the corpses of the Steel Crescents around them: an unpleasant job, but potentially fruitful.

The cargo was secured under a heavy canvas in the middle of the flatbed. It wasn’t huge – probably about three foot on all sides – but that suited Danner just fine; the smaller it was, the easier it’d be to move. They vaulted up onto the cab and tried the hatch, but it was locked fast from within, so they crawled forward and cautiously peered upside down through the dust-smeared viewshield.

The greying Van Saar behind the controls was not only thoroughly dead, but also impaled upon the harpoon, which had gone right through him and the front wing of the big rig as well. He was pinned in place as securely as a rat on a spit, with his foot on the accelerator; there was no hope of hauling him out and bringing the vehicle to a halt.

Danner looked up as apprehension squeezed their heart. The landscape dipped ahead, just visible through the grey-tinged air. The ash dunes of Necromunda lay deep, but some ravines were too large to be filled.

‘Unload!’ Danner yelled, dropping back down into the flatbed. They drew and activated their power knife, sheared through the heavy canvas with ease and revealed a dark silver chest, somewhat battered, but still in one piece. Danner, Toni, Muzz and Mungles put their shoulders to it and heaved, scraping it over the flatbed until it dropped into the ash. If it had survived a fall from orbit, albeit in whatever protective structure the Steel Crescents had hacked it out of, it could take a drop of six feet onto ash. ‘Bail out!’

Toni and Muzz jumped. Danner sliced through the cable of their truck’s harpoon with their power knife, freeing Fast Don to veer away, then jumped after them. The ash rose up to meet them, a soft fist that knocked the breath from their lungs as they landed. They sat up, looking around.

Mungles was hacking at the harpoon line of Ironhead’s truck, but the monomolecular blades of his chainsword were having more trouble with the cable than Danner’s knife had. It gave after a couple more seconds, but those seconds had carried the big rig closer to the ravine. Ironhead must have wrenched the wheel of Muzz’s truck hard, because it veered away from impending disaster, but Mungles was still on board the big rig, and without the weight of the Road Dogs’ trucks holding it back, its pace had picked up again.

‘Jump!’ Danner bellowed, getting to their feet and setting off in fruitless pursuit. They saw Mungles grab Sideswipe Eddy’s lifeless corpse and heave it off the back, then bend his legs to jump…

…and the big rig went over the cliff.

‘Scav!’ Danner swore, sprinting as best they could over the treacherous ash. It took twenty frantic seconds of running, sucking air through their respirator, to cover the distance the big rig had travelled in a handful. Danner hurdled Eddy’s body and pulled up at the edge of the cliff, sending a spray of ash over it to join the small flood that had been knocked loose and which was now following the pride and joy of the Steel Crescents down into the ravine.

‘Help!’

Mungles was clinging on.

There was an outcrop of rock perhaps ten feet below Danner, and the juve was holding grimly onto it as ash poured down over and around him, but his thick gloves were losing purchase. Danner cursed and pulled the rope from their belt. ‘Grab onto this!’

‘Can ye hold it?’ Mungles shouted back, eyeing the ledge doubtfully as the line slapped down across his shoulder. Losing his grip or no, he didn’t seem eager to exchange what little safety he had for a rope that might just pull his boss down on top of him.

Danner took a few steps back from the edge and braced themself as best they could. They couldn’t wait for the rest, judging by the rate Mungles’ fingers were slipping. ‘Ye grab onto that, or I’ll shoot ye meself!’

The sudden weight on the line suggested that Mungles had grabbed it.

Danner nearly went headlong over the edge. They dug their boots in, but the ash was loose and fine, and it was impossible to get any purchase. Given solid footing, Danner was sure they could have taken Mungles’ weight, but solid footing in the Ash Wastes was scarcer than honest dice in a Delaque gambling den.

Danner gritted their teeth and held on as they slid inexorably forwards. Their crew had the cargo. Either Mungles lived to take his share, or Danner went over the edge with him and the rest split the bonus.

Five feet from death.

Four…

Three…

Two…

‘Boss!’

Two pairs of arms wrapped around Danner’s waist and chest, and thank the Emperor, their slide towards oblivion halted. Muzz and Toni hauled backwards, and between them they managed to get enough traction to drag an ash-covered Mungles back over the precipice.

‘Ye took one hell of a risk to get Eddy clear,’ Danner barked, shaking their shoulders out.

‘Crew comes first,’ Mungles replied, pushing himself up to his feet. ‘Always.’

Danner smiled behind their respirator. ‘And that’s why I couldn’t let ye go over the edge, kid. Ye know how we do things.’ The trucks were pulling up now, cautious and slow this close to the edge of the ravine. ‘All right, let’s get the goods and find a buyer.’

‘Might be we already know the best place to go, boss,’ Mungles said, and tossed a small, glittering object to Danner. ‘Took that off one of ’em.’

Danner turned it over between their gloved fingers. It was a sigil token; the same size as a credit piece, but potentially far more valuable, for it identified the bearer as acting on behalf of the individual whose mark they carried. It was also potentially far more dangerous, because the grinning skull resting on piles of coin and topped by crossed axes belonged to Caradog Huws, renegade guilder and founder of the infamous Outlaw’s Deep.

‘Boss?’ Muzz asked.

‘Ye did good, kid,’ Danner said slowly, nodding at Mungles. Huws was a big fish, but he was known to pay well and deal fairly, at least with those that dealt fairly with him. Danner would just have to hope Huws wouldn’t take it too personal if his goods were delivered by someone other than those he’d sent out to get them, but that didn’t seem likely. Caradog Huws might not backstab those as hadn’t crossed him, but the meritocracy of the underhive was near-universal: if you got sumped by someone else, odds were they were more deserving than you of whatever spot you had in someone’s operation.

‘Load up,’ Danner said. ‘And keep a weather eye out. We don’t need someone doing to us what we did to the Crescents. We can’t have been the only ones to notice what came down out there.’

‘What’s the heading?’ Toni Bones asked.

Danner grunted, and rolled their shoulders again. ‘Port Mad Dog.’

Of all the towns that had grown up around the Ash Gates – the only (official) ways through the towering external walls of Necromunda’s Hive Primus – the greatest by far was Port Mad Dog. Large enough to count as a city in its own right on many worlds, it was still nothing more than a boil festering at the foot of the titanic man-made mountain: ugly, hard to remove and filled with foulness.

The Spider Ways converged as the different routes approached the hive, and the Road Dogs had fallen in amongst the mighty land trains – lumbering and slow, but easily capable of crushing their trucks if they steered wrong. Enough ash was being kicked up that the entire world was nothing more than a grey soup, with chains of running lights the only visible illumination. Danner stood tall on their truck’s flatbed, as a leader should, but they could see little, and hear nothing over the constant roar of the mighty engines that drove the land trains onwards, while the Orlocks’ trucks weaved in and out between them like rodents dodging through the feet of a herd of grox.

When they reached the Ashheap, the dirty sprawl of miserable shanty dwellings made from ash-brick and sheet metal, the Road Dogs left the convoy. The land trains rumbled on towards the massive ore conveyors that would hoist them up to the Ash Gate, but Danner had a different destination in mind, and Fast Don led their little group down a warren of alleys lit only by the occasional lumen, lonely orange beacons the light of which were almost swallowed by the grey gloom. They finally rolled to a halt outside a single-storey building squatting low and wide on the ash, as though hunkering down to prevent itself from being blown away in a storm; which, to be fair, wasn’t far from the truth. A sign in Low Gothic, ash-blasted and semi-obscured, was still just legible as reading ‘DEENO’S’.

Toni Bones hopped down from the back of Ironhead’s truck and leant on the buzzer. Danner, shaking the worst of the trail ash out of their ears, just heard the response.

‘Who’s there?’

‘Ye going to keep us outside all cycle, bro?’ Toni demanded.

‘Ye not dead yet?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Best ye come in, then.’ A lock clicked and one of the large doors, welded together from metal scavenged from the Emperor knew where, began to swing open under its own weight. Toni grabbed it and hauled it wide, and the Road Dogs’ trucks rumbled inside.

Deeno’s was a vehicle medicae bay and graveyard; a symphony in metal, promethium fumes and lubricant to the mysteries of the internal combustion engine. Folk uphive might have a tech-priest or enginseer to take their machines to when they stopped working, or had been blown full of holes, but no such sages graced the Ashheap. Here there were only folk like Deeno Bones, who applied to the problems of others whatever tools he’d stolen or bodged, knowledge gained through trial and error, and a good deal of swearing.

‘Good to see ye, bro,’ Deeno said, hauling himself up from where he’d been prostrate under something missing a couple of wheels, and engulfing his brother in an oily hug. Once he’d disengaged, he nodded respectfully at Danner. ‘Boss. All well with ye?’

Danner sighed. ‘We lost Eddy this run.’

Deeno grimaced, and pulled his bandana off his head. ‘Ah, rust and rivets, boss, I’m sorry.’

‘He knew the risks,’ Danner said heavily. ‘And we got what we went for. Now we need to get it inside.’

‘Not one for the conveyors, then?’ Deeno asked, settling his bandana back into place. Danner shook their head.

‘We hit the Steel Crescents to take it, and one of ’em was carrying Caradog Huws’ token. Gotta be contraband. Doubt Cripplefingers’ boys would take a close look, but just in case…’ They spread their hands. ‘Better safe than sorry, eh?’

‘Eh,’ Deeno nodded in agreement, then jerked a thumb towards the back of his workshop. ‘Well, ye know the way. I take it I ain’t seen ye, if anyone comes asking?’

‘That’s the one, lad,’ Danner replied, clapping him on the shoulder. ‘Right, crew, let’s get this done, then we can come back and give Eddy a proper send-off. Ye all right to look after him ’til then?’ they added to Deeno.

‘Aye, boss,’ Deeno said soberly. ‘He’ll be safe with me.’

The Road Dogs left their old colleague leaning on the side of Ironhead’s truck and looking down at Sideswipe Eddy’s corpse, one hand still holding a wrench and the other resting absent-mindedly on the heavy brace that supported what remained of his right leg.

The tunnels that ran under Deeno’s chop shop were neither spacious, well lit, nor particularly fragrant, but they passed clean through the exterior of Hive Primus out of sight and knowledge of those in authority, and that made the unpleasantness more than worthwhile. Deeno could have made a lot more money had he sold the use of them more widely, but that could have compromised the Road Dogs. Crew came first, always, and it didn’t matter that Deeno’s leg meant he couldn’t run and fight with them any longer. A Van Saar gang might have come up with some fancy prosthetic with flashing lights and whirring bits, and Danner had no doubt that the uphive nobs would barely be inconvenienced by such a thing, but the Road Dogs didn’t have access to such toys. It didn’t matter: like the gang itself, Deeno’s worth was more than just the sum of his parts. He stuck by them, and they’d stick by him.

The Road Dogs traipsed along through the sludge, the case they’d salvaged resting in a simple covered trolley that occasionally had to be lifted over obstacles. Danner was on point, their combat shotgun ready, for it was doubtful the gang were the only ones to know of these tunnels, no matter how closely they’d guarded the secret. They crept deeper and deeper into the hive, past smells of cooking and sounds of fighting, freezing as a ventilation grate above rang to the heavy tread of footsteps moving in unison, and pressing on hurriedly when distant echoes behind them suggested the presence in the tunnels with them of a large, possibly inhuman body.

They came out in Dust Falls, blinking in the comparatively bright light like Delaques hauled out of a hidey-hole. Danner always kept tabs on where the movers and shakers in the underhive were rumoured to be, and Caradog Huws’ name had been mentioned in conjunction with Dust Falls more than once, of late. It was risky ground for him: quite apart from the Palanite enforcers who’d love to get their hands on him, and not to mention his former colleagues in the Merchant Guild, word was that Huws was in the Narco Lord Balthazar Van Zep’s bad dataslates too – and that meant it was risky ground for the Road Dogs, but meek hearts made small profits, as the saying went.

Ironhead and Muzz stayed with the cargo, lurking as unobtrusively as possible down an alley, while the rest of them split up to take the lie of the land. Danner didn’t know too many folk in these parts, but Dust Falls was where Hive City and the underhive met and merged: it wasn’t like the distrustful townships downhive, where outsiders were regarded with suspicion at best, and as an emergency food source at worst. Gossip and goods flowed freely here, at least so long as cash flowed freely in the other direction. Nonetheless, after half an hour Danner had still yet to find anyone who’d heard a whisper of Caradog Huws’ whereabouts; at least, not a whisper anyone wanted to part with in the direction of a hard-faced Orlock leader who might come back and take issue with them if it turned out to be untrue. Danner was just starting to get properly frustrated and angsty about the possibility of having their cargo jacked in turn, when Mungles found them.

‘The old meatpacking district,’ Mungles beamed, looking pleased as a cyber-mastiff that had bitten a thief. ‘No one wanted to be too clear on it, but I heard it from three different folk. Building with a red door, looks abandoned, but ain’t.’

Danner clapped him on the shoulder, relief breezing through them. ‘Kid, ye’re a gift from the Emperor Himself. I’ve had nowt but closed lips and shrugs!’

‘Aye, well I’ll remember ye said that when it comes time to share out the spoil,’ Mungles grinned at them. Danner frowned.

‘Let’s not be getting ahead of ourselves. Ye’ll get ye fair share, ye’ve got me word on that, but we need to get our hands on it first. Dealing with Caradog Huws is like playing dice with a witch. We’ll need our wits sharp, and enough swagger t’look confident without stepping on his toes.’

‘Ye got it, boss,’ Mungles said, straightening his shoulders and wiping the smirk from his face. ‘Eyes and ears open, mouth shut.’

‘That’s the one, lad,’ Danner said approvingly. ‘Now, let’s round up the others and see if we can turn a profit on the day.’

They’d had to drag Gunner Harks out of the Six Clans, which he swore blind he’d been working for leads, but Danner smelled the Wildsnake on his breath and had belted him across the face for it. With order restored, the Road Dogs made their way as unobtrusively as possible through the streets of Dust Falls to the old meatpacking district where, sure enough, a derelict-looking building with a prominent red door stood amidst its equally run-down neighbours.

‘I don’t like it,’ Muzz commented.

‘How so?’ Danner asked.

‘It’s too obvious,’ Muzz said. ‘Huws is a wanted man. Why would a wanted man hole up in a place like this?’

‘Just because he’s a wanted man don’t mean anyone’s looking for him here and now,’ Fast Don put in.

‘The enforcers will be,’ Muzz pointed out.

‘Maybe he’s bought ’em off?’ Mungles suggested.

‘Ye can’t buy off enforcers,’ Muzz muttered darkly.

‘Well, it’s the only lead we’ve got,’ Danner said firmly. ‘If Huws ain’t here, we’ll take a look in that chest and try to work out who else might be willing to pay for whatever-it-is. I’m not chasing the man all around the blasted underhive. But since we’re here, and he might be there, we’ll see if we can sort this nice and quick, then go back and honour Eddy proper like.’

Muzz didn’t argue further; she’d had her say, and Danner had made their decision. Crew came first, always.

Foot traffic here was sparser than in the main highways, and Danner felt exposed as they pushed the door – which proved to be unbolted – inwards and ducked in off the street. Still, most times, if you looked like you had every right to be doing what you were doing, most folk took no notice.

It was dark inside; there were no lumens lit, merely strips of light bleeding in from outside through grime-stained windows, doing little more than giving edges to the gloom.

‘Hello?’ Danner ventured. The place felt empty, but they knew better than to judge by appearances. Caradog Huws was a wanted man, as Muzz had pointed out; he’d hardly be holding court just inside the main entrance. All the same…

‘I’ll watch the door,’ Mungles said, and there was the faint whisper of his stub gun clearing its holster.

‘Right,’ Danner said, fighting down their unease. ‘Quick to it then, Dogs. Let’s make sure no one’s home, and then if there ain’t, be on our way afore anyone takes an interest in us.’

They’d taken maybe half a dozen steps, with the rest of the gang spreading out, before the darkness was abruptly pierced by multiple cones of blinding light that pinned the Road Dogs down at their centre.

‘HALT!’ a distorted voice bellowed. ‘PALANITE ENFORCERS!’

Danner tasted bile, but didn’t raise their combat shotgun any farther. They couldn’t see a target, and while ‘shoot for the lights’ was a possibility, it would be a desperation move when they were already surrounded. Thinking of which:

‘Mungles?’ Danner shouted, not daring to look over their shoulder, but not daring not to either. If the kid had been hurt…

‘Sorry, boss,’ Mungles replied, his footsteps approaching from behind, and Danner breathed again. One kid with a stub gun was never going to have been able to stop a squad of enforcers.

Except that most of the squad must have already been inside.

‘I really am,’ Mungles added, putting his gun to Danner’s head. The sheer shock of betrayal froze Danner in place as much as the cold metal did, long enough for Mungles to pluck their combat shotgun from their hands.

‘Why?’ Danner breathed, as ugly mutterings rose in the rest of the Dogs. Violence had suddenly got a lot more likely. Enforcers were an occupational hazard, but traitors… well, that was personal.

‘Crew first, always,’ Mungles said flatly, taking a step towards the enforcers and their guns. ‘But you were never my crew.’

The lights shifted, and a dark-armoured figure stepped forwards, their gun levelled at Danner’s chest. It was enforcer riot-issue, well maintained and deadly.

‘What do you know about Caradog Huws?’ the enforcer asked, their voice now at a normal volume, but still distorted by their helmet’s speaker.

‘That he ain’t here,’ Danner spat. ‘Least, unless he’s already been took down.’

‘You might want to share what you know,’ Mungles said, and Danner glowered at him.

‘I told ye, I’ve never dealt with the man before! Owt I’ve heard of him since we got here’s come from the traitor’s mouth!’

‘And the box?’ the enforcer demanded.

‘Not opened it,’ Danner sneered. ‘Could be crystal toothpicks for all I know.’

The enforcer jerked their head, and another one came forwards holding a pry bar.

‘Move back,’ the first enforcer commanded. ‘Failure to comply will be rewarded with lethal force.’

The Road Dogs backed off, grudgingly. Danner watched the second enforcer approach the crate and set to levering the lid off, which they managed in short order. Danner had half-expected some sort of explosion or other booby trap, but nothing of the sort occurred, and of course the enforcer’s full-face helmet gave no indication of what was within. Judging by the way the enforcer pulled out a luminator and shone it inside, they weren’t sure what they’d found either.

‘Don’t tell me it’s empty,’ Muzz commented bitterly.

The enforcer with the pry bar turned to Danner and beckoned them closer. ‘You. Come here.’

‘Am I gonna be rewarded with lethal force?’ Danner asked.

‘Unless you comply.’

‘Need to make their bloody minds up,’ Danner muttered, but took cautious steps forwards until they stood by the crate. ‘Well?’

‘What is this?’ the enforcer demanded, gesturing at the crate interior. Danner looked at them, then leaned over and peered inside.

‘Looks like… slime.’ Danner frowned. ‘And, uh… I dunno.’

‘It looks like eggs, sergeant,’ the enforcer said grimly. ‘Xenos eggs.’

‘Hey, now,’ Danner said, raising their hands. ‘Let’s not get hasty here! Xenos eggs? That’s just crazy talk. And besides, there’s barely any of those things what might be eggs!’

‘It’s damaged,’ the enforcer said, and Danner could hear the uneasiness in their voice even through the distortion of their helmet speaker. The lumen shifted, tracking back the way the Road Dogs had come… and picking out a trail of slime, faint but discernible, from one corner of the battered crate. Danner realised they’d seen it, but had assumed it was leftover from the tunnels; the Emperor knew the rest of them had ended up grimy enough from their journey. ‘The contamination is not contained.’

Guns ratcheted, all around them. Trafficking in xenos life forms was punishable by death, by order of Lord Helmawr. Since Danner couldn’t give the enforcers any information about who’d sent this, or why, their life expectancy had likely dropped to seconds.

Danner wrenched the pry bar from the distracted enforcer’s hands and, turning, hurled it as hard as they could. It tumbled end over end and took Mungles in the throat, dropping the juve in a spray of blood. The Road Dogs raised their guns and began firing: firing blind, firing with determination, firing in the knowledge that they were very likely about to die. Gunner Harks tackled the nearest enforcer to the floor with a howl. Muzz’s autopistol struck sparks off armoured plates; Toni Bones fell, one arm nearly blown off by a shotgun blast.

None of them would surrender; none would sell out their fellows in the hope of receiving the enforcers’ leniency.

Crew first.

Always.

BANNER-JARL

WILL McDERMOTT

Grendl Grendlsen stared down a dimly lit and dingy hallway, tucked in a corner of an unused section of one of the deepest levels of the underhive – at least, the deepest any ‘respectable’ hivers dared to venture.

Steam vents slung from the ceiling had slipped their straps over the years and now rested inches above the flickering lights. Yet, no steam escaped from the low-hanging pipes and Grendl hadn’t heard hum nor creak from the vents as he and his charge had ventured into the section.

He rested the barrel of his boltgun on his shoulder and considered the hallway as he tugged on the twin beard braids that hung from his chin to his weapon belt. All the possible perils that could lie ahead swirled around in his brain.

‘Is there a problem, Mister Grendlsen?’ asked his companion. The young uphiver’s lilting and all-too-cheerful voice reminded the bounty hunter of actresses in frivolous vids – the kind used to pacify the masses and distract them, for a time, from their problems.

Grendl sighed. He’d told the friendly Orlock dignitary to wait behind the corner while he checked the approach to her meeting place, but she’d crept up behind him, again. He had to admit one thing, however: she moved as quietly as an assassin.

‘Something don’t feel right,’ he replied in a gravelly hiss.

In fact, the feeling of wrongness about this mission had begun when he’d been introduced to Miss Nikki Lyon, supposed House Orlock bigwig, who needed escorting to an underhive meeting. She was too clean and too pretty, for one thing, and no one in the underhive smiled that much. No one was that shiny and smooth-skinned.

It was a ‘simple and easy’ trip according to the Orlock agent who brought him the assignment. And it had been. He and Miss Lyon had made good time through the levels and encountered zero opposition – not even hungry carrion looking for a quick bite in the tunnels between domes.

And the companionship had been pleasant – overly so, in fact. Grendl had never once needed to scold the uphiver to keep up and she had never complained about the pace or footing, even when they were forced to shimmy across a narrow bridge support above a river of muck.

In fact, had Grendl been a less suspicious man, Miss Lyon’s demeanour and competence might have made him lower his guard. In his experience, pleasant people were either selling something or hiding something, and nothing was ever simple down here in this crap-hole. Nothing was ever easy.

‘Looks like a good spot for an ambush, ma’am,’ said Grendl, pointing to the low-hanging pipes. ‘I don’t like it.’

‘Relax,’ said Nikki, tapping Grendl gently on the shoulder. ‘Look, we’re nearly there, and my contacts assured me the meeting site would be clear. I was told it would be perfectly safe for me down here.’ Nikki brushed past the squat soldier, her fingers lingering on Grendl’s armoured shoulder a moment longer than needed.

Before Grendl could react, Nikki Lyon of House Orlock strode confidently past him down the hall, the large shoulder bag she’d carried across half the underhive tucked firmly under her arm. Taken aback by her boldness and sheer confidence, Grendl hesitated.

In that instant, the shadows lengthened in the space above the flickering lights and two dark figures dropped to the floor between the squat bounty hunter and his charge.

‘Look out!’ yelled Grendl. He swung the boltgun off his shoulder and grasped the forestock to steady it.

The figures whirled to face Grendl. One held twin matt-black laspistols that drank in the dim light. The other spun a power sword in quick, intricate patterns. Behind them, two more black-clad assassins dropped to the floor between Nikki and the end of the hall.

‘Right!’ said Grendl. He squeezed off a shot at the laspistol-wielding assassin. The assassin neatly sidestepped the shot, which detonated on the wall behind him.

‘Blast,’ muttered Grendl. These were no dive-bar juves. Someone had paid good credits to kill Miss Lyon. As if on cue, Nikki scrambled as the other two assassins advanced. Before they could grab her, she swung her satchel by the strap and slapped their laspistols from their hands. All three figures dived to the floor in a mad scramble for the weapons.

No time for finesse, thought Grendl, and charged. Two shots rang out from the matt-black laspistols, but that didn’t slow the stout hunter. As the shots clanged off his armour, Grendl barrelled into the pistol-wielding assassin, driving him to the ground and sending the black-as-night weapons clattering to the floor. Grendl landed on the man with his full weight, pinning him. Without hesitation, the hunter lifted the barrel of his boltgun to the trapped assassin’s chin and pulled the trigger.

As the man’s head exploded, Grendl’s shoulder-mounted sensors recorded the kill. Good thing, thought Grendl, looking at the bloody stain where the man’s head had been. Otherwise it’d be impossible to claim a bounty on this one.

The hum of the power sword slicing through air broke Grendl’s reverie and alerted him to the incoming attack. He dived and rolled off the headless assassin, dropping his bolter as he hit the ground. Instead of moving away from his assailant, though, the hunter rolled towards the second assassin and under his blade. The vibrating sword swung past Grendl, throwing the surprised assassin off balance as the heavy squat hunter slammed into his legs.

The assassin stumbled and almost fell on top of Grendl, but at the last moment he turned the fall into a dive. After clearing the stout hunter’s barrel-shaped chest, the assassin tucked and rolled, coming up behind his headless partner.

The assassin set his blade spinning again and turned to face the bounty hunter. With his bolter lying on the ground, Grendl hefted his power hammer and squared off against the swordsman. He then beckoned the man forward with a hooked finger as a cruel smile curled his lips.

The assassin slowed his blade’s deadly dance as he glanced at the body between them, then shook his head and motioned Grendl forward instead. The hunter shrugged, nodded, and took two steps towards the headless corpse. As the swordsman’s blade began spinning again in earnest, Grendl heaved his hammer at his opponent’s head.

Instinctively, the assassin parried. Hammer and sword met with a loud clang, nearly tearing the sword from the assassin’s grip. By the time the hammer clattered to the ground, Grendl had dropped to his knees and grabbed his boltgun. The shot blasted through the power sword and detonated in the assassin’s chest, spraying blood and leather across the corridor.

With two assassins down, Grendl grabbed his power hammer and turned to find that Miss Lyon had not only survived, but seemed unhurt. The mad scramble for laspistols had ended in a draw with one assassin firing at Nikki from cover as she backed away, holding the second weapon on the other assassin, who advanced on her with a knife.

At that moment, all three seemed to notice Grendl standing alone next to the two bloody corpses. The four people in the corridor stood in tableau for a long moment, as if surprised to see the others still alive. Then all hell broke loose.

Grendl yelled at Nikki to run as he stepped forward and looked for an angle to shoot at either assassin without catching his charge in the crossfire. The knife-wielder gave up on Nikki and rushed at the hunter, while the other turned his pistol towards Grendl and fired. The shot ricocheted off Grendl’s helmet, making his ears ring.

Nikki shot wildly and ran down the hallway, disappearing around the corner as the knife-wielder reached Grendl and stabbed. The blade dug into the hunter’s armour. Grendl twisted his body, breaking off the stuck blade, and then grabbed the assassin and used him as a shield from his partner’s laspistol shots. With Nikki in the wind and unprotected, though, the bounty hunter didn’t have time for finesse.

Instead, he reared back with his power hammer and slammed it like a battering ram into the man’s chest, cracking several ribs and sending the human shield flailing backward into his partner. The assassins fell to the floor in a tangle of arms and legs. The one on the bottom screamed at his partner to get off, but the only response was a gurgling wheeze.

Grendl used the opening to take off down the corridor. As much as it galled him to leave behind all the high-end gear those assassins were wearing and, more importantly, the bounties they undoubtedly had on their heads, his first priority had to be the protection of his charge. He could always come back later to finish the job and claim his prizes.

As Grendl turned the corner, a pistol shot tore through the gap in his armour just above his boot and below his coat. It stung like hell, but he couldn’t let the pain slow him down. Nikki was nowhere to be seen or heard ahead of him, and the sudden silence in the aftermath of the battle unnerved Grendl more than the sneak attack had. The underhive was most deadly when the silence and darkness enveloped you.

As he listened for the patter of following footfalls behind him, Grendl picked his way forward, finally finding Nikki’s tracks, which led him into a section of tunnels they had bypassed earlier. The walls here were even shabbier than the rest of this dingy rathole.

He turned a corner and saw Nikki on the ground ahead of him amidst a dusty collection of plaster, metal and rock. The Orlock woman’s recent passage through the corridor must have disturbed years of dust because a haze hung in the air all around her. She knelt next to her satchel, frantically reaching for items that looked to have fallen out as she ran.

Grendl could only guess at what those items were as the dirty haze made it almost impossible to see; one of them looked vaguely like a pistol, but not the one she had taken from the assassins. In fact, it looked unlike any handheld weapon Grendl had ever seen. The short barrel flared wider than a blunderbuss.

‘You okay, Miss Lyon?’ called Grendl. He must have startled the woman because Nikki immediately raised the laspistol she’d taken from the assassin – its shape unmistakable even through the haze – and aimed it unwaveringly at Grendl.

Grendl was about to call out that it was him and not the assassins – whom he could hear approaching – but he was cut off by a low rumbling sound that echoed all around him. The hallway jumped, as if every item in the hallway, including Grendl and Nikki, was simultaneously three feet in the air.

Grendl landed and fell to his knees as the world shuddered and shook around him. A moment later, he was falling. And then darkness took him.

A rumble of thunder woke Grendl Grendlsen from a light slumber. No. Not thunder. There was no thunder in Hive Primus. It had a controlled climate, which the Vega Rams’ banner-jarl had read about in the mission briefing before his master, the rogue trader Constant Gerrit, had come to this accursed place to meet with Lord Helmawr.

If not thunder, then what? thought Grendl.

A second rumble, louder and longer than the first, shook the barracks violently. Grendl tumbled from his bunk and fell, flailing, onto the hard floor. All around him, dozens of other sleeping mercs awoke with muffled grunts as they hit the floor of the dark room too.

‘Lights,’ called Grendl, but the barracks remained dark. ‘Blast. That ain’t good,’ he mumbled.

‘Gear up, boys!’ he yelled into the darkness. ‘Assume the worst. Prepare to be the best!’

‘Vega Rams!’ called out the merc company in rote response.

With the floor still vibrating from whatever had shaken the Stranger’s Tower, Grendl fumbled open his footlocker and donned his armour in the dark. As he clasped weapons in place, the front wall of the barracks detonated. Metal plates bent inwards and fragmented explosively, spraying the room with deadly metal shards that cut several of the Vega Rams to ribbons.

‘Defensive formation!’ yelled Grendl without hesitation. ‘Flares on. Pull the wounded to safety.’

Half a dozen flares ignited around the barracks, providing dim light. A gaping, smoke-filled hole was all that remained of the front wall. Small fires licked at the shattered legs of bunks near the door.

As the Rams pulled fallen comrades from beneath the debris, lasgun shots rang out from the smoky room beyond the door. Several Rams tending the wounded fell in the opening salvo.

‘Return fire!’ Grendl yelled, pulling his bolter from his back as he crouched by his bunk. ‘Flares into the hall!’

Six more flares arced through the air into the smoke, illuminating the room beyond in an eerie glow as sharp reports from boltguns and autopistols thundered all around. Grendl could see a dozen dark figures silhouetted in the hazy glow. Several of those were cut down by the Rams’ first volley. Muzzle flashes flared from the closest silhouettes and more lasgun fire streaked through the barracks.

The Rams were fish in a barrel. It was only a matter of time before the attackers switched to grenades. ‘Rotating suppressing fire!’ called Grendl. ‘Time to breach!’

With a precision honed by constant drilling, the Vega Rams alternated their shots to produce a constant rain of fire into the smoke as they moved forward through the breached wall.

‘Fan and fire,’ called Grendl. The Rams sidled down the walls into a line and filled every inch of the room with live ammo. After a minute, the battle was over. Every attacker lay on the floor and only six of Grendl’s thirty-warrior platoon had been lost from the initial breach to victory.

‘Loot and move,’ commanded Grendl. The sound of battles raging in other Vega Rams quarters nearby added a sense of urgency to his command. ‘We’re not out of this yet.’

‘What the hell is going on, banner-jarl?’ asked a recent Rams recruit as he scavenged weapons and ammo from a downed enemy.

‘No telling,’ replied Grendl. ‘Nothing good. Assume we are on our own and prepare to make our enemies pay!’

‘Vega Rams!’

Grendl fell. The flickering lights from above did little more than give form to the darkness. Unseen obstacles slapped at his legs, arms and face as the bounty hunter grasped frantically at every shadow, trying to slow his descent. In desperation, Grendl swung his power hammer in a mighty, overhead arc. The head drove into a rockcrete beam, bringing the hunter’s descent to a grinding halt amid a shower of stone shards.

As the dust settled, Grendl tried to get his bearings. Dim light from above and below limned the scene in angry shadows, allowing Grendl to see a bit. The hunter was – as had become obvious to him – in a chasm opened, apparently, by a hive quake.

Around Grendl, the remnants of ancient construction had been laid bare. The jagged ends of iron and rockcrete beams, bundled cables, and thick, plastek pipes jutted out from the chasm wall on all sides, along with enough animal remains and detritus to make even the stout and hearty hunter quail.

Grendl slid three feet down the chasm as the rockcrete around his hammer cracked under the strain. Luckily, the head caught again on an iron beam, but Grendl disliked trusting his life to luck, so he scanned the chasm for purchase.

A bundle of cables hung from the wall, so the hunter swung over and grabbed at it with one hand while maintaining his grip on the hammer with the other. He tested the bundle and then unhooked his hammer and used the cables to swing to the chasm wall. From there, he could climb up or down.

Climbing up could lead to some valuable bounties off those assassins, not to mention what he could get for their high-tech gear. Grendl could probably even recoup his losses, but that would mean abandoning Nikki and his lucrative, if troublesome, Orlock contract. Not only was that bad business, it betrayed Grendl’s core beliefs, which put duty and honour above profit.

‘Duty calls,’ muttered the bounty hunter as he started climbing down. His calf ached where the lasgun shot had found flesh, but the pain was manageable, and the bleeding had stopped.

Several long, stressful minutes later, Grendl found himself hanging above a long-abandoned dome. From what he could see, the structures nearby had not been inhabited in decades. The crumbling walls of what might once have been a tenement building below him were covered in a thick layer of dust.

Oddly, much of the dome seemed to have some power. Dim lights dotted the remains of the city and Grendl could feel and smell stale but breathable air moving as he hung above it all.

Taking advantage of his high vantage point, Grendl searched for signs of his charge. As he did, several creatures howled in the distance. The unnatural nature of the wailing caught the hunter’s attention, so he set his sensor backpack to scan for its source. The echoes in the vast, dead dome made the howls nearly impossible to pinpoint, but he could review the vid images later if needed.

While his shoulder-mounted sensors created a topographical record of the ruins, Grendl continued looking for Miss Lyon. Eventually, he found a dark, unmoving form lying in some rubble off to the side of the tenement building below him. A glint of golden hair confirmed it was Nikki. As Grendl looked for a safe way down to the ground, he saw several other dark forms moving towards his charge.

‘No time for safety,’ Grendl muttered. He swung his legs back and forth and released his grip, aiming for a section of roof that hadn’t collapsed.

Grendl’s aim was true and he landed with bent knees on the roof, pain shooting through his calf. Before he could get his bearings, though, the rockcrete crumbled beneath him, sending the hunter tumbling through three more floors. His armour took the brunt of multiple impacts on the way down, but every thud drove the breath from his lungs. By the time Grendl hit the ground floor, he felt like the building had fallen on him. He lay there, gasping for breath, as the echo of his fall reverberated around the dome.

The hunter took stock of his bones and gear: nothing broken, but fresh blood seeped through his boot. No time for that now, thought Grendl as he clambered over rubble to the street and ran around the side of the building. He arrived at Nikki’s side as three cyber-mastiffs rounded the other corner. Their red eyes glowed almost angrily in the semi-darkness as they stalked closer, growling.

Grendl unslung his boltgun and fired at the lead mastiff. The shot detonated on the metal hound’s jaw, leaving it hanging by a single hinge. With most mastiffs, that shot would have been enough to dissuade it from attacking. They were generally programmed not to engage well-armed foes without a significant numerical advantage. Whoever ordered these cyber hounds to protect this city was long gone, however, and the mastiffs had apparently shaken loose some of their original programming. It was as if they’d gone feral. The pack growled and charged.

Grendl searched for options. A hole in the wall two storeys above him provided a possible escape route. He grabbed the slight form of his charge, slung her over his back and began climbing as if their lives depended on it, because they did.

With the cyber-mastiffs jumping and snapping at his feet and legs, Grendl scrambled up the wall, leaving a thin trail of blood behind. He drove his gauntleted fingers into loose mortar and hauled with his arms more than his legs. At one point, an entire block fell out, nearly crushing his fingers and barely missing Nikki.

After a minute of desperate climbing, Grendl crawled through the hole in the wall to find a fairly undamaged room. Even the door was intact – and closed. He lay Nikki down in the corner and returned to the hole. The mastiffs growled and prowled below.

Grendl grabbed a frag grenade off his belt, pulled the pin and dropped it on the mastiffs. The explosion rocked the side of the building, dislodging several more chunks of rockcrete around the hole, including a small section of the floor Grendl was standing on.

Gotta be smarter, he thought as he took a step back. That could have brought the building down on us. After the dust cleared, though, the shredded remains of the mastiffs were strewn across the rubble. In the distance, Grendl heard the howling of more hounds.

‘What the hell have you got me into, Miss Lyon?’ Grendl asked as he turned back to his charge.

Nikki lay unconscious in the corner of the room where Grendl had left her, the strap of her large satchel draped over one shoulder and under her other arm. Other than a walnut-sized bump on her temple and a few scrapes on her forearms, she seemed in decent shape. The same could not be said for her fine uphiver’s clothes, though. The filigree on her jacket had been torn in several places and the white fabric was now a dusty grey.

Grendl weighed proper bodyguard protocol against the nagging doubts that had plagued him from the beginning of this mission. The timing of that hive quake had been suspicious, and the trembling beforehand had reminded the old Vega Ram of the explosion that had killed his lord all those years ago.

‘Time to see what you’re hiding in that bag,’ Grendl muttered as he limped across the room. He knelt next to his unconscious charge and opened the loose flap on her soft-leather satchel. In the dim light, the interior looked nearly empty, but earlier Grendl had seen it bounce as if weighted down with gear.

Perhaps it all fell out during the quake, Grendl thought. He reached inside to see if anything remained and found just a handful of flares and a bundle of detonator caps. The flares were standard issue, but the caps had some sort of emblem stamped on them that Grendl couldn’t make out in the dark room.

‘Huh,’ he muttered as he stared at the bundle. ‘What the hell is she doing with these?’

Grendl was about to take the bundle to the hole in the wall to get a better look at the emblem, but before he could move, Nikki moaned and stretched. He dropped the detonators back in the satchel and crab-crawled away into a dark corner.

Nikki’s eyes fluttered open and then immediately narrowed as she scanned the room. At the same time, she snaked her hand into a side pocket of her satchel that was camouflaged so well by the stitching that Grendl hadn’t even noticed the opening. Before she could draw out whatever lay inside the secret pocket, though, Nikki locked eyes with the hunter in the corner. She slipped her hand out quickly and beamed a friendly smile at Grendl.

‘What happened?’ she asked. ‘Where are we?’

‘Hive quake,’ replied Grendl. ‘We fell into an abandoned dome.’ The hunter removed his boot and began cleaning the wound on his calf. The shot had gone clean through, but his earlier fall hadn’t done him any favours. His foot had swollen and a massive blue-black bruise encircled the hunter’s ankle.

‘Are you hurt?’ asked Nikki. Her face contorted into a look of sympathy as she got to her feet. ‘Here, let me help.’

‘No need,’ said Grendl, waving her back. ‘I got it.’ He pulled a thick bandage from his pack and began dressing the wound.

‘Did that happen when those gangers attacked?’ asked Nikki, a grimace forming on her lips. ‘I am so sorry.’

‘Stow it, Miss Lyon – or whoever you are,’ snapped Grendl. ‘You know those weren’t gangers. And I know you’re no simple House operative.’

Nikki looked shocked. For a moment Grendl thought she might try to continue to feign innocence with her ‘sweeter than candy’ act, but then her face hardened, and her stance changed. Nikki Lyon stood before Grendl, hands on hips, and shoulders back.

‘You’re absolutely correct, Mister Grendlsen,’ she said. ‘I am not a simple House operative. I am a top demolitions expert for House Orlock.’

The lilt in her voice was still discernible, but now was layered with a stern undertone that likely commanded respect from underlings. A tone that Grendl had to admit had more effect on him due to his years of military service than her beauty and charm ever did. This more commanding personality did not, however, calm his suspicions.

‘And the assassins?’ asked Grendl.

‘Rival House, I would guess,’ Nikki said. ‘We took precautions to keep my mission a secret, but I guess someone found out and wanted to stop me.’

Her story seemed plausible, but something still wasn’t quite right about any of this. ‘But the assassins hardly touched you,’ he said, ‘And they had chances – plenty of ’em. How do you explain that?’

Nikki considered the bounty hunter’s question for a few seconds. Finally, she shrugged and said, ‘I don’t know. Perhaps they planned to kill you and force me to reveal what we learned from the report.’

‘What report?’

‘Orlock historians came across an old report that suggested the existence of this dome,’ said Nikki, sweeping her arms around to indicate where they had landed. ‘We commissioned extensive seismic testing to determine its location, but only I knew how to gain access.’

‘Hmph,’ said Grendl. ‘Makes sense, I guess.’ There was more to Nikki’s story, that was certain. The truth – the full truth – did not take time to compose. A well-crafted lie filled with some truth, on the other hand, sure did.

Best to leave it for now, Grendl thought. Let her think she convinced me.

A chorus of howling off in the distance – but closer than earlier – interrupted the discussion and brought Grendl back to the most pressing concern.

‘We’re not safe in this dome,’ he said. ‘Those are cyber-mastiffs, and they seem to be off their programming, practically feral. I fought a few. I wouldn’t want to face an entire pack. You know how to get out of here?’

Nikki nodded but furrowed her brow. ‘We’ll need explosives,’ she said. Grendl noticed her briefly glance at her satchel. ‘I… I was supposed to… pick them up at the meeting,’ she added.

‘Explosives?’ asked Grendl.

Nikki nodded. ‘Not the sort of thing I could risk carrying through the hive. What if they took a round in a firefight?’ She dropped to the floor, a dejected look on her face. ‘Without explosives we can’t leave. There’s only one way out and it’s blocked by hundreds of tons of rubble.’

‘Grenade!’ yelled Grendl, as a grey metal cylinder bounced towards the Vega Rams. Without a moment’s hesitation, Balthor, Grendl’s huskarl, his second-in-command, ran forward and swung his chainsword in a low arc. The huskarl whacked the frag grenade with the flat of his blade and sent it flying back down the corridor, where it exploded in a blinding flash.

Screams of pain from beyond the explosion were followed by the staccato beats of retreating footsteps and weapons fire. Grendl motioned the Rams forward. The walls had been shredded by shrapnel and the light fixtures shattered. Two assassins lay bleeding on the floor at an intersection. In the distance, several others continued firing to harry the Rams as they retreated to a safe distance. Balthor and a few other mercs returned fire to drive the assassins back, but Grendl could hear the sounds of fighting coming from all around them as other pursuers hunted down the escaping Rams.

‘Who sent you?’ demanded Grendl of one of the assassins injured in the explosion. He needed answers fast before more assassins closed in on their location. He pressed the barrel of his bolter to the man’s forehead. ‘What are your orders?’

A wet gurgle was the only response. Blood oozed from a long gash in the man’s neck. Grendl pointed his weapon at the other wounded assassin, a woman whose dark-red hair was matted with blood.

‘Speak,’ demanded the banner-jarl, ‘or die!’

The woman laughed a dry, hacking laugh that turned into a coughing fit. She rolled onto her side and grasped at her chest, tightening her hand into a fist.

After she recovered, the assassin spoke. ‘It’s you who are dead,’ she said in a raspy voice. ‘All Rams will die today! Those are our orders.’

With that, the female assassin opened her fist and dropped a handful of grenade pins on the floor.

‘Scatter!’ yelled Grendl.

The Rams rushed away from the live grenade belt down the intersecting corridors. A moment later, a giant explosion rocked the hallway, engulfing a few straggling mercs in its destructive radius.

‘Dammit!’ yelled Grendl when he returned to the epicentre. The blast had killed three Rams. Their charred bodies smouldered next to a gaping hole. The floor sagged beneath Grendl’s feet as he approached. The corridor ended in shattered rockcrete and exposed metal rebar. Through the mass of twisted metal, cracked pipes and slagged rock, Grendl could see the level below.

‘What now?’ asked Balthor, who had been caught on the other side of the hole from Grendl with half of the remaining Rams.

‘We keep moving,’ replied Grendl, pointing at the floor. The sound of weapons fire was growing louder behind them and Grendl could see the group that had fled from the grenade returning with reinforcements. ‘Down. It’s our only way out.’

Balthor hurried the Rams into the hole as Grendl’s group laid down suppressing fire to cover their retreat. The banner-jarl looked at the dead Rams in the hall. ‘We need to be smarter to survive,’ he said to himself before barking an order to Balthor. ‘Send out scouts to search the next level.’

‘Yes, banner-jarl,’ replied Balthor from below.

Several hours, numerous battles and countless levels later, the Vega Rams reached the lowest level of the Stranger’s Tower. But the death squads had given them little time to stop and catch their breath. Grendl had lost more than half of his platoon, but they had gathered the remnants of several others along the way. He still had a decent-sized fighting force.

‘The scouts have returned, banner-jarl,’ said Balthor as he came up to Grendl.

‘Report!’

‘There’s only one way out of the tower,’ Balthor replied. ‘The tower gate, and it’s blocked by four death squads. The enemy’s forces seem inexhaustible.’

Grendl nodded. ‘And they herded us into this trap,’ he said with a heavy sigh.

‘Not true, banner-jarl,’ replied Balthor. ‘Sure, they hounded us at every turn, but we gave as good as we got.’

‘No. It has been a campaign of attrition,’ Grendl replied. ‘We have been attacked from all sides throughout this firefight. Every time we tried to push back or take an alternate route, our efforts were stymied by reinforcements.’

The unknown enemy had committed multiple squads to the initial attack, obviously hoping to catch the Rams asleep. But after losing the element of surprise, their foes had resorted to harrying their escape with hit-and-run tactics combined with a strong presence at critical junctures.

Their one hope had been to disappear into the underhive. Once down in the depths, Grendl could have employed criminal elements to procure safe transit home. Then, they could have planned their revenge. On whom Grendl did not yet know, but they would have made someone pay.

That had been the plan, anyway. Now, it seemed moot. The trap was set. If the Rams tried to fight their way through the enemy forces at the gate, the assassins that had pushed them into the trap would converge from behind and squash the Rams in the middle. Disappearing into the underhive was more going to be more complicated than he realised. Grendl needed a new plan.

‘Go to ground, Balthor,’ Grendl said, coming to a decision. ‘Find an abandoned storage room or maintenance hall. Dig a hole and climb in.’

‘You want the Vega Rams to hide?’ asked Balthor, his brow furrowed quizzically. ‘Why? What are you planning?’

‘I plan to get us all off this damn rock, huskarl!’ Grendl growled at his second. ‘You have your orders. Go to ground. Do not engage the enemy until you hear from me. Then, and only then, attack the tower gate – with extreme prejudice. Burn it to the ground if you must.’

Balthor saluted and strode back to the company. As his second started barking orders, Grendl slipped into the darkness. It was time to gather the shepherds and prevent them from following the herd.

Nikki was lying, of this Grendl was sure. One look at the Orlock woman’s satchel, which she clutched to her chest, was all the evidence he needed. The leather bag had definitely been heavier and bulkier before the hive quake. She was still hiding something.

But why the lie? What did she have to gain? Grendl wondered. Had she caused the cave-in? She was a demolitions expert, after all. That part of her story certainly rang true. If so, was the cave-in meant for him? For the assassin squad? Both? She was caught in the fall as well, though, so any explanation that included Nikki setting explosives was full of holes.

Perhaps she was telling the truth about the explosives and the satchel had contained something else: something Nikki didn’t want Grendl to know about, or the assassins to find. He had seen that strange weapon-like object on the ground next to her. But what could be so important for her to haul it halfway through the underhive?

Grendl had more questions than answers, and that left him unsettled. He needed more intel before he could act.

‘Is everything all right, Mister Grendlsen?’ asked Nikki, breaking the bounty hunter’s concentration.

Grendl realised he’d been staring for quite some time. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Sorry. I was… I was just thinking about how to get us out of here.’

‘So, did staring at me offer any insights into our predicament?’ she asked with a smile, some of her former light demeanour returning.

The question took Grendl by surprise. Nikki was either shrewd to put him on the spot or, perhaps, she enjoyed making men squirm. Probably both, Grendl decided. Beauty and brains often went hand in hand, and they made for a dangerous combination.

Luckily, several feral mastiffs picked that moment to howl in the distance, breaking the silence and resetting the mood of the room. Nikki’s smile vanished, and Grendl noticed her grab her satchel tightly again.

More importantly, the howls reminded Grendl of the recording he’d made with his shoulder-mounted sensors. He played it back through his goggles and took a good look at the layout of the dome’s settlement. ‘Yes!’ exclaimed the bounty hunter as he watched the recording.

Nikki stared at Grendl as he turned the feed off and stood, taking a moment to test his injured leg. The thick bandage held, and he had added a makeshift splint from strips of metal he’d pulled off the dead mastiffs while reconnoitring. ‘I think I know where we can get your explosives,’ he said. ‘There is a walled compound in the centre of the dome.’

‘Sounds like the mayoral compound,’ said Nikki, showing she was better informed than she let on. ‘It was in the reports,’ she added quickly.

Grendl nodded. ‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘It should also house the HQ for the dome’s security forces.’

‘You think it will have any munitions we can salvage?’ asked Nikki. She stood and dusted off her outfit as best she could, but her clothes would never be white again.

‘Your employers would know better than me,’ replied Grendl. ‘But it’s our only shot.’

The grating howls of the metal beasts sounded again, closer than ever. ‘It won’t be easy,’ said Grendl. ‘You up for this?’

Nikki reached inside the secret pocket of her bag and pulled out a stiletto knife. At least Grendl now knew what she was reaching for when she thought she was alone. She unsheathed the blade and held it with a perfect and practised grip. ‘Are you?’ she asked.

Over the next hour, Grendl and Nikki picked their way through the rubble of decaying buildings towards the centre of the dome. The air in the city was breathable but stale, as if the air recyclers had only recently been turned on and had not yet blown the decades-worth layer of dust out of the ducts.

Packs of three or four cyber-mastiffs attacked several times during their trek. Each time, all it took was a single blast to the metallic head of the leader to send the pack scurrying back into the shadows. An alarming difference from their first encounter. Were they communicating with one another? Learning? Perhaps the hounds had simply grown more cautious.

Grendl also noted he could hear the mastiffs coming. Their metal joints hadn’t been oiled in ages. They screeched like nails across a blackboard with every step, sending rusty flakes of metal accumulated from years of standing guard cascading to the ground. He heard that sound again coming from a side street just ahead.

Grendl halted and held his arm out to stop Nikki. He pointed to the corner and raised the barrel of his bolter. The first mastiff rounded the building and growled. Two more growls responded behind the crumbling wall.

Grendl squeezed off a round, catching the first mastiff in the chest and snout and knocking it back behind the wall. The hunter rushed forward, chambering another round as he ran. The mastiff lay on the ground, its forelegs severed at the hip. The other two beasts fled around another corner down the street.

The wounded lead beast pushed its way along the ground towards Grendl, snapping its jaws as if it intended to bite the hunter’s kneecaps. Grendl holstered his bolter and slammed his power hammer through the injured mastiff’s skull.

Grendl shook his head as he walked back to his charge. ‘Hit-and-run,’ he muttered under his breath. ‘I’ve seen this before.’

‘What did you say?’ asked Nikki.

‘You knew about these beasts, didn’t you?’ he asked, ignoring the question.

The Orlock woman glanced at the power hammer, which Grendl held at the ready in front of him.

She swallowed hard before answering. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘The reports indicated the mayor had purchased a large number of cyber-mastiffs. The security forces used them to maintain order.’

‘Did you know they had gone feral?’ he prodded.

‘Our sources suggested it was possible,’ she said, in a whisper, continuing to stare at Grendl’s weapon. ‘After all this time, their programming was bound to get corrupted. What effect that would have was only conjecture.’

‘You have some way to deal with that?’ Grendl asked. ‘Our survival may depend on it.’

Nikki nodded quickly, but then shook her head. ‘I did,’ she said, real desperation tingeing her voice. ‘I lost it during the hive quake.’

‘Great,’ said Grendl, lowering his weapon finally. ‘Just great.’ He turned and continued down the street. The outer wall of the mayoral compound was just ahead.

‘What’s the problem?’ Nikki hissed as she ran to catch up. ‘You’ve been handling them easily so far.’

Grendl kept trudging as he spoke. ‘They’ve been herding us to that wall,’ he said. He stopped for a moment and turned to face Nikki. ‘They’re not feral. Don’t you understand?’ he growled. ‘They’re highly intelligent and coordinating their attacks. It’s a trap!’

Grendl sighed again and strode off towards the wall of the compound. ‘It’s always a trap,’ he muttered.

Grendl left the Vega Rams in the capable hands of Balthor Stonesen and doubled back the way they had come. The banner-jarl slipped silently through the corridors, listening for the pursuing forces of assassins. It didn’t take long to find a death squad assembled near the Rams’ last skirmish.

Just as I suspected, thought Grendl. Harry and push us along, cut down our choices, and then close the net from the rear. But, how could he find and neutralise enough groups at once to give Balthor and the Rams a fighting chance at the gate?

A crazy – potentially suicidal – plan formed in the banner-jarl’s head. If successful, though, it would give the Rams their best opportunity to escape. Grendl took a moment to prepare a little surprise, then steeled his nerves, raised his bolter and rushed out of the shadows.

He shot a male assassin on the end in the torso as they locked eyes. The bolt detonated in the man’s chest, dropping him on the spot. Grendl leapt the body and swung the stock of his weapon at the next assassin in line, catching the woman in the jaw and sending her reeling. Before the rest could react, Grendl turned the corner and ran down the next hall.

Grendl heard a voice bark out behind him: ‘A banner-jarl has breached the net. All squads be on alert!’ This was followed by, ‘After him, you idiots!’

Grendl stopped long enough to make sure he heard footsteps before running off again. Now, all he needed to do was circle around the corridors around the gate room and get as many death squads as possible to chase him.

It was tough to keep ahead of his pursuers while staying alert to squads ahead of him, but Grendl found several more in short order. A single bolter shot down each corridor announced his presence with a bang and reduced the enemy forces even further, leaving two more assassins with holes in their chests. His crazy plan seemed to be working perfectly.

But then, with pursuers hot on his heels, Grendl turned a corner and ran into a ramshackle barricade across the hall. Overturned tables filled two-thirds of the corridor. Chairs, cots and shelving units were piled to the ceiling, effectively blocking his only escape.

‘As good a place as any to make a stand,’ said Grendl, putting his back against the barricade several yards back from the corner. He had enough room to maintain cover – for the moment, anyway.

Grendl spoke into his vox. ‘Move out, Balthor,’ he said into the device. ‘Go make a big noise.’

He couldn’t wait for a response. The sounds of the enemy forces pursing the banner-jarl put them less than a corridor away. Grendl unstrapped his bandolier of frag grenades, held it up by the leather strap and measured its weight as he moved around the corner to watch the open corridor.

‘We’ve got him trapped,’ called a voice in the distance.

The other way around, thought Grendl as he grabbed the string he’d wound through the pins and waited for his pursuers to appear.

‘There he is,’ called the first assassin to round the corner. He raised a laspistol and pointed it at Grendl. ‘Drop the grenades, scummer,’ he said as he stalked forward. Several more pursuers entered the corridor behind him.

Grendl just smiled and pulled the string to release the pins, which clattered to the floor, and heaved the bandolier down the hall. The belt bounced twice and slid to a stop in front of the first assassin. He turned to flee but ran into his companions.

Grendl dived back around the corner as a blinding and thunderous explosion erupted in the hallway, knocking the banner-jarl to the ground. When he could see again, Grendl drew his boltgun and peeked around the corner.

Half the corridor was just gone. The walls, floor and ceiling ended in jagged pieces of wood, metal and masonry. Small fires licked at the wooden studs and steam shot into the air from ruptured vents beneath the floor. The air smelled acrid from burning flesh.

Parts of at least six bodies were strewn down the length of the corridor. Not as many as Grendl had hoped for, but the blockade had forced his hand. At least he was alive. Now he could attack the enclosing net of assassins from behind at the gate.

‘Don’t worry, Balthor,’ Grendl said as he looked for a way past the hole. ‘I’m coming.’

‘You’re too late, Grendlsen.’ The weak, gurgling voice came from somewhere in the steam by the hole.

Grendl rushed forward, bolter at the ready. There, hanging over the edge of the steaming hole, hung an assassin. A jagged chunk of flooring had pierced his stomach, impaling him and holding him in place.

‘What do you mean?’ growled Grendl.

‘The Vega Rams are no more,’ said the impaled assassin, spraying blood as he spoke. ‘The purge… can’t… be stopped. You’ve lost!’

His head dropped to the floor and his arms went slack. Grendl screamed and raised his boltgun to remove the man’s head as the body began to slip into the hole. Before he pulled the trigger, though, the assassin’s vox crackled to life.

‘Pursuit group! Report!’ came the call over the vox. ‘What the hell happened up there?’

The body continued to slide off the jagged floor fragment. Grendl dived and grabbed the dead man’s wrists before he slipped into the steamy darkness. He heaved on the dead weight, breaking off chunks of flooring and shredding the man’s flak jacket as he dragged the corpse out of the hole.

Grendl flipped the corpse over and grabbed the vox. Blood pounded at his temples as rage and fear gripped his heart. He paused a moment to calm his emotions before opening the channel.

‘Grendlsen is dead,’ he stated as flatly as he could. ‘Blown to bits by his own grenades.’

‘Good work,’ came the response. ‘A fitting death.’

Grendl released the button and took a deep breath before opening the channel again. ‘Status of the Rams?’ he asked

‘We found their hiding place and hit them a few minutes ago. Nothing left now but mop up. Head to the exfiltration point.’

‘Understood,’ replied Grendl before slumping to the floor next to the dead assassin. He sat in silence for what seemed an eternity, recounting and second-guessing every decision he’d made over the past several hours. Darkness threatened to envelop the former banner-jarl. He’d failed his lord, failed his men. Failed the Rams. They were no more.

No, Grendl thought. As long as I still breathe, the Vega Rams survive. Let the enemy assume I’m dead. Then they’ll never see me coming! Grendl forced aside the darkness gripping his heart. He had work to do.

First, he stripped the dead assassin of anything that could identify him. Beneath the shredded flak vest was a tunic emblazoned with a strange emblem, which Grendl tossed aside.

Next, Grendl removed every piece of his own gear displaying the Vega Rams emblem and draped them over the corpse. The man was taller and thinner than Grendl, but that wouldn’t matter for long. With the strength of a man consumed by loss, Grendl reached into the exposed wall and ripped out a burning length of timber, which he dropped on the corpse.

Once the fire had engulfed the corpse from head to toe, Grendl kicked the body over the edge and watched it burn in the hole. As the flames licked at the dead man’s face, Grendl reached up to his shoulder and removed his banner-jarl’s badge of office. He stared at the insignia and recalled the names of the soldiers he’d lost this night. Then, with a vow of vengeance, he tossed the badge onto the flaming corpse.

Grendl turned from the blaze and looked at the dead man’s gear, which he needed to destroy. He picked up the tunic and stared at the unfamiliar House emblem – a strange ankh-like symbol that used an infinity symbol as the crossbar. ‘What House do you work for?’ he asked. ‘Who did this to us?’

‘Stay close,’ Grendl told Nikki as he strode towards the compound’s outer wall. He was determined not to repeat old mistakes. ‘Follow my orders without hesitation.’

Nikki had to quicken her pace to keep up with Grendl, despite being nearly a head taller than the squat hunter. He glanced at her as she caught up. Her bright eyes were now tightly focused under furrowed brows. Grendl saw no fear behind those eyes, though. Just a grim look of determination. There was more to this Orlock woman than he’d realised. They might just live through this.

Grendl aimed for an undamaged section of wall away from any breaches. ‘There’s a gap in the wall over there,’ Nikki said, pointing towards a corner of the compound.

‘That’s where the beasts want us to go,’ said Grendl. He glanced furtively between the breach Nikki had pointed out and several darkened streets and alleys that opened onto the plaza around them. He couldn’t see any mastiffs lurking in the shadows, but he could feel their presence.

‘We’re going over,’ said Grendl as he quickened his pace. They had one advantage over the metallic hounds. They could climb. It had saved them – barely – at the tenement building. It just might get them into and through the compound. But they had to get to the wall before the mastiffs figured out his plan.

Ten yards from the wall the howling began. ‘Run!’ yelled Grendl.

Grendl and Nikki sprinted towards the wall as the sound of metal claws against pavement echoed around them. The hunter strengthened his grip on his power hammer, leapt and drove it into the wall. Rockcrete sprayed from the impact. Grendl pulled himself up, grabbed the lip of the hammer hole with his fingertips, and reached overhead to slam the weapon home again.

Little by little, Grendl hammered and scrambled his way up the wall with Nikki close behind. The howls were almost on top of them, though, and Nikki’s legs were dangerously close to the ground. Grendl drove his hammer home one more time, but held there, hanging by one hand.

‘Hug the wall,’ he cried as he drew his boltgun. Nikki flattened her body against the wall as Grendl fired past her, taking out the lead mastiff. Most of the beasts stopped in their tracks, glancing at each other as if waiting for some other packmate to be the first to brave the firestick.

Two mastiffs near the front of the pack did just that. But as they loped forward, Grendl fired twice more, dropping the first one at the base of the wall and the second mid-leap. The back half of its metal body slammed into the wall next to Nikki, who, Grendl noted, didn’t flinch.

After that, the mastiffs kept their distance, giving Grendl and Nikki time to reach the top of the wall. While Nikki caught her breath, Grendl scanned the compound with his shoulder-mounted sensors, zooming in on likely spots for the munitions depot. Won’t be close to the wall, he thought. Somewhere near the mayoral residence but not attached. Most politicians like to keep the military close at hand but still at arm’s length.

‘Um… Mister Grendlsen?’ said Nikki behind him, a bit timidly. ‘Hello? Mister Grendlsen?’

The hunter ignored her and kept searching. They were safe up here. There! he thought, as the sensors focused on a set of three buildings. The one in the middle was long and low – the design of every barracks he’d ever called home. To either side of the barracks stood blocky, two-storey buildings that screamed military. One would be command and control, the other the armoury. Fifty-fifty, he thought. I’ll take those odds.

‘Grendl!’ hissed Nikki. ‘We have a problem.’

Grendl turned to his charge. ‘What else is new?’

Nikki pointed down to either side of their vantage. The dozen cyber-mastiffs that had followed them to the wall had more than doubled. Plus, another couple dozen now prowled the base of the wall inside the compound. ‘We’re trapped,’ said the Orlock woman.

‘No. We’re not,’ Grendl replied. ‘I have a plan.’ He turned and picked his way along the top of the wall. Below, the two groups of mastiffs followed along. Eventually, Nikki followed as well.

Grendl stopped near the breach that Nikki had pointed out earlier. Long ago, a gate had filled the space. Just inside the wall, a guardhouse still stood. He held up his hand and said, ‘Watch and do as I do.’

Grendl gauged the distance from the edge of the wall to the guardhouse and ran forward. He pumped his short legs for all the speed they could muster, and leapt. He arced through the air towards the top of the guardhouse, legs running in air. At the last moment, Grendl tucked, hit the roof, and rolled.

It was almost perfect, but his rolling momentum carried him too far and Grendl slipped over the far edge of the roof. As he fell, the hunter grabbed at the masonry with both hands. One block broke away from its mortar, dragging Grendl’s hand off the lip, but his other hand held. After a moment, he clambered back onto the roof.

‘Your turn,’ he yelled after standing up, but Nikki was already in the air. She hit, rolled, and came up in the centre of the roof. ‘Hmph,’ muttered Grendl, once again surprised by the aptitude of the young, so-called uphiver. ‘Well done.’

From there, the two of them made their way across the compound – rooftop to rooftop – towards the military buildings. Twice, they were forced down to street level when the buildings were too far apart to leap. Both times, Grendl scouted the route from door to door before they left the roof.

Once at ground level, Nikki would open the door so Grendl could toss a frag grenade into the street. In the commotion that followed, he and Nikki ran across the street into the next building and closed and barricaded the door behind them.

They made a good team and, by the time they reached the military buildings, Grendl felt like Nikki would make a decent partner – if only he could trust her. Still, he’d lived alone with his regrets and vengeance since the purge, and it felt good to be able to rely on someone else, if only because of mutual need.

‘One of those two buildings should be the armoury,’ Grendl said, pointing to the two-storey stone structures on either side of the barracks. One was intact, but the other had a large hole where the door should have been. ‘We’ll try the secure one first.’

Grendl and Nikki made their last leap to the top of the square building. Grendl slammed his hammer into the roof access door and they descended into the building. It was full of offices and file rooms. The first floor held a large conference room with a tattered map of the dome hanging on the wall, and a separate briefing room filled with chairs.

Outside, they could hear the howls and growls of the cyber-mastiffs closing in on their location. They had dispersed for a while after a grenade caught several of them in its blast. But now, it seemed as if they knew their prey had gone to ground, and so were approaching to surround them.

‘Quick,’ said Grendl. ‘We should make a break for the other building while there’s time.’

Nikki stopped and looked around the room. ‘I remember this building from the salvaged reports,’ she said, snapping her fingers. ‘The cyber-mastiff commander’s office is upstairs.’ She turned to head up the stairs.

‘No time,’ said Grendl. ‘Come on.’

‘Trust me,’ replied Nikki. ‘This is worth it.’

Grendl had had reservations about Nikki and this mission from the beginning, but she’d proved herself trustworthy during the infiltration. He nodded. ‘Be quick.’

Grendl went to the barred windows and watched for cyber-mastiffs, but kept his ears open for Nikki’s return – just in case. The metallic howling grew louder as he heard her rummaging around upstairs. Then everything grew quiet. The howling stopped and the scraping and slamming of drawers and doors ceased.

Grendl glanced at the stairs, but at that moment several packs of mastiffs emerged from the streets between the closest buildings and stalked towards the military base. The glow in their eyes told Grendl they intended to attack – soon.

‘Nikki?’ he called over his shoulder as he watched the mastiffs advance. ‘Are you okay?’

‘I am now,’ she said, coming up behind him so silently he almost jumped. No one ever got the drop on him like that. Who is this woman? he thought.

‘What were you doing up there?’ he asked aloud.

Nikki held up a strange piece of tech. It had a grip and trigger like a pistol, but instead of a barrel, it ended in a tiny radar dish. The design looked familiar to Grendl, but he couldn’t put his finger on where he’d seen anything like it before.

‘It’s a sonic modulator,’ Nikki said. ‘I had one our techs built based on schematics in the report, but I lost it in the hive quake.’

Grendl remembered the device sitting next to Nikki in the tunnel before the quake. He hadn’t seen it clearly then.

‘The cyber-mastiff commander had the original in her office,’ continued Nikki. ‘She used it to control the mastiffs.’

‘That one has been down here for decades,’ he said, noting the layers of dust and rust on the device. ‘You sure it still works?’

‘Should work long enough to get us safely to the next building,’ replied Nikki. She set the dials on the side of the sonic modulator, strode to the door and opened it. ‘Follow me.’

Outside, dozens of mastiffs howled and charged. Nikki pointed the modulator at the pack and pulled the trigger. Grendl didn’t hear anything, but he did feel a slight pressure in his inner ear. The cyber-mastiffs reacted immediately, however. Their howls and growls turned to yelps of pain as soon as Nikki pulled the trigger, and every single one turned tail and ran.

Nikki released the trigger as some sparks sprayed out the back of the device. She then sprinted into the street. ‘Come on,’ she called.

Grendl followed Nikki to the second building. She stopped inside the broken front wall and handed her satchel to Grendl. ‘Fill it with plastic explosives and primer cord,’ she said. ‘I’ll keep the mastiffs at bay with the modulator. Be quick. No telling how long this old thing will last.’

Grendl grabbed the bag and ran into the building. It was indeed the armoury. He yanked open cabinet after cabinet searching for the explosives. One cabinet held bandoliers of frag grenades, so he grabbed a spare. Another had bolter ammo, which he also snagged.

Finally, Grendl found the explosives stores. He opened the satchel and, deciding he shouldn’t toss ordnance on top of detonators, pulled out the bundle and set them aside. He filled the bag with putty-like bricks and rolls of yellow cord before grabbing the detonators again.

That’s when he saw the emblem imprinted on the detonators – the detonators Nikki had brought along for the job. It was a specialised ankh with the crossbar replaced by an infinity symbol!

Thoughts and questions swirled through Grendl’s mind. How did Nikki get these detonators? Was she part of the purge of the Vega Rams? A hired gun sent to kill him? If so, why was he still alive? She’d had plenty of opportunities to finish the job over the past few hours.

Grendl looked from the detonators to Nikki and back again. Could it be a coincidence? he wondered. The one piece of information he had gleaned about the purge in the years since was that it was ordered by a rival rogue trader, who killed Lord Gerrit to take over his territory. The purge was meant to prevent the Rams from retaliating. It was possible this rogue trader now supplied the Necromundan Houses with munitions – as Gerrit had done in the past.

‘Grendl!’ called Nikki. ‘We have to go. Now!’

In the distance, Grendl heard the howls of the returning cyber-mastiffs. He dropped the detonators in the satchel and slung it over his shoulder. ‘Coming,’ he called.

The questions could wait for now because one thing was certain: Grendl needed Nikki to get out of this accursed dome. At least he could keep an eye on her as they ran for the exit. For extra insurance, he grabbed a laspistol from a cabinet on the way to the door and stashed it inside his coat. In the end, Grendl did not believe in coincidences.

‘Let’s go,’ he said.

Nikki ran out of the building and down the street towards the main gate of the compound. A pack of mastiffs loped towards them but yelped and fled as soon as she fired the sonic modulator at them. Grendl scanned side streets and checked behind them for stray beasts, firing his bolter at any that charged.

After leaving the compound, Nikki turned and headed back towards the section of the dome where they had fallen earlier. A few turns past the building where they had holed up, Grendl saw the entrance to a dark, shadowy tunnel leading up and out of the dome. Behind them, the howls began anew.

A short way inside the tunnel, the light from the dome dimmed to almost nothing. Beyond was only darkness. Nikki stopped at the edge of the light and turned towards Grendl. The hunter fully expected her to come at him with her knife, but instead she handed him the sonic modulator.

‘Use this to keep the mastiffs off us while I set the explosives,’ she said. ‘It’s intricate work to blow open a hole without burying us. It will take time.’

Grendl nodded as he took the modulator.

‘We’ll need to retreat to a safe distance before I detonate them,’ added Nikki. ‘So, protect our backs.’

Nikki grabbed the satchel, grunting from the effort, and slung it over her back. Grendl watched as she trudged into the darkness, her blonde hair matted with sweat and dirt and her white jacket now looking more like an underhive rag than a fine uphiver’s raiment. Beneath her torn garments, Nikki’s taut tendons and rippling muscles flexed with a strength that had remained hidden earlier. The soft ‘uphiver’ Grendl had met earlier had been washed away in only a few hours, revealing a hardened underhive ganger.

The howls brought Grendl’s mind back to the task at hand. Whatever and whomever Miss Nikki Lyon might be, he needed her demolitions expertise – and she needed his battle skills – if they were to get out of this dome alive. For now, at least, they were partners.

Grendl retreated into the shadows and checked out the modulator. The controls were straightforward. Two dials set intensity and beam width. The intensity was set in the middle and the beam was at its widest radius, which had worked well to send large swaths of beasts running.

Grendl left the settings alone and waited for the cyber-mastiffs to arrive, boltgun in one hand and the modulator in the other. As soon as the first set of beasts ventured into the mouth of the tunnel, he steadied the bolter on his forearm and began firing. He dropped three mastiffs before the others charged. Pulling the bolter back, he raised the modulator and pressed the trigger. The rest of the mastiffs ran off, but the sparks showering off the modulator were increasing.

Grendl repeated this process twice more before the mastiffs grew wise to the trick. The howling trailed off to silence, but Grendl could see the beasts massing outside the entrance, waiting. He glanced up the tunnel to see how Nikki was faring. In the glow of a dozen flares, he could see her still setting explosives. Primer cord was strung in an intricate pattern across half of the far wall.

Grendl considered the mastiffs, who now guarded the mouth of the tunnel. He could move forward and disperse them with the modulator, but they would just come back, and he doubted the old tech would last much longer. He needed to clear the tunnel entrance once and for all before Nikki was ready to blow the wall. He had to finish the job.

‘Sometimes old tactics work the best,’ muttered Grendl. He set the modulator to full power and narrowed the beam to a pinpoint and then chuckled as he prepared a little surprise for the mastiffs.

Once he was ready, Grendl ran down the tunnel towards the cyber-mastiffs spread across the entrance. The beasts hesitated in the face of the modulator, which gave Grendl the opening he needed. He fired his boltgun at the mastiff closest to the tunnel wall and aimed the modulator at the beast next to it. The bolter shot detonated, ripping off the first beast’s forelegs and leaving a gaping hole in its metal chest. Under the intense vibrations of the narrow, max-powered sonic beam, the head of the other beast simply melted.

With that, however, the showers of sparks engulfed the modulator and it began smoking. The handle grew red-hot, forcing Grendl to drop it as he ran. He was almost to the line of mastiffs and they started to converge on him. He fired the bolter again, dropping another beast, and then pumped his squat legs as fast as he could.

After a harrowing moment of snapping jaws, Grendl was through the line and back into the domed city. He fired his bolter over his shoulder a few times as he ran to keep the closest mastiffs off his back, but the pack continued to gain on him.

Then, he saw it: a building ahead of him in his direct path. The entire pack was on his heels. Never slowing down, Grendl stowed his bolter and pumped his legs harder. Just before slamming into the wall, the hunter jumped into the air and hit the side of the building. Grabbing handholds he’d dug into the mortar earlier, Grendl scrambled up the wall and into the room where he and Nikki had rested.

Glancing down, Grendl watched as the entire pack assembled below him, growling and jumping at the wall. He pulled the extra bandolier off his shoulder, yanked on the string he’d wound around the pins, and dropped it onto the feral monsters.

Grendl sprinted for the door and rushed down the hall. The explosion rocked the tenement building as the hunter reached the top of the stairs, sending him tumbling down to the first floor. With the building shaking apart and falling down around him, Grendl rushed out the front door.

After the dust had settled, the hunter checked for stray mastiffs in the rubble. A few had survived, which he executed with his bolter, but most of the pack was buried under the building. Still-twitching legs jutted out at odd angles here and there, but the mastiffs’ metal bodies had been hammered into salvage.

With a satisfied smirk, Grendl jogged back towards the tunnel. His smirk disappeared, however, when he realised that with the mastiff menace removed, Nikki no longer needed him. Guess I’ll find out if I can truly trust you now, Miss Nikki Lyon, he thought. Grendl hoped for the best, but he was too much of a cynic to expect it – out of anyone.

Something felt off when Grendl returned. The tunnel had darkened. The flares still burned brightly, illuminating the intricate pattern of primer cord on the far wall – which looked complete – but every single flare had been pushed against the wall and Nikki was nowhere to be seen.

Grendl stopped at the edge of the light. ‘Nikki?’ he called. ‘Are you there?’

‘You destroyed them all, didn’t you?’ The voice echoed off the walls, coming from somewhere within the pitch-black section of tunnel between Grendl and the flares. It was impossible to tell where Nikki stood. ‘That was half my profit on this job,’ she continued with a heavy sigh.

‘And I was the other half?’ asked Grendl. He turned to the side to present a smaller target and slowly drew out his bolter.

Nikki laughed in the darkness. ‘I never once thought killing you would be tougher than handling the cyber-mastiffs,’ she said, ‘but the assassins they hired were little better than juves.’

‘You set the explosion that caused the hive quake,’ said Grendl. He took a small step forward towards the shadows.

‘Stay right where you are,’ said Nikki. ‘I wouldn’t want you to blow up. You’re worth double alive. Something about torture?’

‘Blow up?’ asked Grendl, stopping just inside the shadows.

Nikki laughed again. ‘I set some traps for you,’ she said. ‘Try to rush me and you will die. And don’t even think about running. I found a needler in the room with the sonic modulator.’

To prove her point, Nikki fired. A pinpoint laser beam burned the wall next to Grendl. When the beam ended, he saw a tiny needle embedded several inches into the rock. A dark, viscous liquid seeped from the hole.

‘Neither of us has to die today,’ said Grendl, trying to stall while his eyes adjusted. ‘You have skills and we work well together.’

‘Partner up?’ she asked, as if the very idea was repugnant to her. ‘No!’

‘Why not?’ asked Grendl, hoping to keep her talking a bit longer.

‘Look at me,’ said Nikki, and then laughed and added, ‘Right. You can’t. I’m smart, skilled and gorgeous, while you are, well, you.’

Desperate, Grendl tried one last gambit. ‘This goes way beyond the two of us. I have a vendetta against the bastard who ordered my death,’ said Grendl. ‘You have intel. I have credits. Tell me what I need to know to take him down and then we can go our separate–’

‘Enough talking!’ yelled Nikki. ‘Drop your weapons or I will fill your thick body full of poison and cash in the “dead” half of the bounty.’

Grendl couldn’t stall any longer, but he still couldn’t see Nikki. He had one last play, but it was a long shot. The hunter hesitated, but another needler beam singed the leather on his shoulder pads, convincing him to hurry.

He dropped his boltgun at his feet and then drew his power hammer and stared at it for a moment. It was the last piece of his old life with the Rams. He couldn’t bear parting with it, but he had little choice. In the end, Grendl flung it to the side and watched where it landed out of the corner of his eye. He then pulled his last grenade bandolier off his shoulder. ‘This too, I assume?’ he asked.

‘No,’ said Nikki from the darkness. ‘You can keep that. For insurance.’

Grendl wasn’t sure what she meant until a coil of primer cord flew out of the darkness and landed on the ground at his feet.

‘Tie yourself up with this,’ Nikki said. ‘And feed it through your grenade belt. If you try anything, I will light the cord and say goodbye.’

Grendl suppressed a smile as he picked up the primer cord. Even better, he thought.

He wound the cord around the grenades and bandolier, tying it tightly at the end. He lifted the bandolier over his head as if to hang it back over his shoulder again, but instead heaved the entire belt into the darkness, trying to match the arc the coil of primer had taken on its way out of the shadows.

As soon as the bandolier left his grasp, Grendl dived to the side and rolled. One needler beam caught him above the boot, and a second tore into the ground where he had stood.

No time to think about that, thought Grendl as he pulled the spare laspistol from his coat and fired at the trailing end of the primer cord, igniting it. The cord burned bright and fast along its length as Grendl continued rolling, illuminating Nikki in the darkness.

Grendl came up into a crouch next to his power hammer as another needler beam struck his helmet. The hunter aimed and fired twice in quick succession. His first shot hit Nikki in the arm, making her drop the needler, but the second struck her in the gut – after ripping through the bandolier.

Grendl grabbed his power hammer as the grenades detonated, and sprinted down the tunnel. Before he reached the dome entrance, though, the hunter was thrown to the ground as a second, larger explosion rocked the tunnel. He scrambled to his feet and ran out the end of the tunnel as a third, massive explosion shook the entire dome and sent him flying. When Grendl landed, he felt the ground beneath his body shudder with afterquakes that continued for nearly a minute.

Grendl rolled onto his back and looked back at the devastation. Rubble filled the mouth of the tunnel and had spilled into the dome. Above the blocked opening, cracks spiderwebbed out in all directions across the dome ceiling.

Remembering the stray needler shot that had hit his leg, Grendl scrambled to remove his boot. There, embedded in the metal plate he’d wound into the bandage around his calf to act as a splint, he found the poison needle. The hunter tore off the rest of the bandage but found no puncture wound.

Grendl wiped the sweat from his forehead and ventured back towards the tunnel mouth to look through the rubble for signs of life, but the entire tunnel had collapsed, adding several thousand tons of rock between him and escape: a thousand tons of rubble on top of Miss Nikki Lyon of House Orlock.

Grendl stared at the wall of stone, rockcrete and mangled rebar, and sighed. ‘Lost my favourite bolter,’ he said, before turning to walk back to the armoury, his power hammer in hand. ‘Now, how the hell do I get out of here?’

LONG WAY HOME

FILIP WILTGREN

‘Excellent work!’

The words washed over Skinny Verhven like a synth-shot full of bliss. Getting a compliment out of Harsher Harman, leader of the Van Saar DeltaV gang, was a bit less common than getting a brace of grilled sump-rats from a hive trader for free.

And this in the eatery, before the entire gang. Verhven felt like whooping and head bashing like a stimm-crazed scummer. He almost missed Harman dismissing the gang. Dutifully, he turned away from his moment of glory.

‘Not you, Skinny,’ said Harman.

Verhven froze, unsure what to think. DeltaV members brought up for a private conference with Harman had a disturbing propensity to end up in the ash-and-crash squad, or as burnt corpses head down in the sludge vats.

But then Verhven forced himself to relax. He’d just got one of Harman’s rare compliments. The boss must simply be extremely happy with him, to give a juve a private audience. Maybe he was due some piece of rare tech, or a promotion to full gang member. He tried to convince himself of this as the rest of the DeltaV filed out of the hall, leaving the low benches and the scarred, black reinforced plasteel tables empty.

It took time. The eatery could comfortably hold thirty Van Saar gangers and was almost full. It was the armoured centre of the DeltaV’s hideout, and like everything else in the Van Saar gang’s fortress, built to function as a defensive barrier, or a weapon. For all its utilitarian black paint, the eatery was the closest thing to a heart the gang had. Only the armoury and Harsher’s private quarters were better guarded.

DeltaV members in their black bodygloves passed by Verhven. Some shook their heads in pity, clearly expecting him to end up face down in the Red Slime. A few gave him a discreet thumbs up instead. Harsher did have his good days, after all. Verhven was almost despairing at how few supportive winks he’d got, when Maial gave him a grin and an elbow to the ribs.

‘Making your way up in the hive,’ she said. ‘Chatting with the mighty and all that.’ Verhven grinned back, projecting a confidence he didn’t feel. Maial’s own smile looked forced.

Harsher Harman wasn’t known for his mercy, or any tolerance of failure.

The eatery’s blast doors slammed shut behind Verhven. Only he, Harman and Harman’s ever-present champion and bodyguard, Bleyn Cautious, remained.

The two senior gangers could have been pressed from the same mould. Both were bald, their skin pale bordering on white, the colour set off against their black bodysuits. Both were powerfully built, more muscular than was the norm for the Van Saar, and their faces were lined with radiation-induced cracks that showed angry, red welts deep in their centres when they talked, making them look like they were about to fragment into bleeding pieces. Both wore full flak armour and held weapons, a combi-melta/lasgun for Harsher, a suppression laser for Bleyn.

Ready for battle in the safest place on the gang’s turf.

‘What do you think?’ said Harsher.

Verhven stuttered, thinking that the leader had asked his opinion. Then Bleyn answered.

‘Might be a traitor,’ the DeltaV champion said, his voice flat, almost disinterested, as if he were discussing a sewage seep that needed fixing.

Harsher thumbed the activation rune on his combi-melta. Bleyn took a step away from Verhven, leaving their leader a clear line of fire.

Verhven realised he was a trigger twitch away from dying. His breakfast of boiled synth-gruel started to climb up his throat.

‘Might be telling the truth, though,’ said Bleyn. ‘You never know.’

‘Ash Wastes trader finds an insanely valuable piece of archeotech, one that anyone, especially a Van Saar, would pawn their skin-suit for, then sends a pit slave to contact a juve and offer the trade?’ said Harman.

Bleyn shrugged. ‘Could happen,’ he said.

It did happen, Verhven wanted to shout. But one did not shout at Harsher Harman, or Bleyn Cautious. Not if one wanted to live. Verhven’s breakfast was still trying to claw its way out. He considered injecting some chem-calm, but rejected the idea. The stimm would make him feel good, but would dull his wits. And fear was already doing that.

‘Why did you suggest the meet in the Flats?’ Harman suddenly said.

‘I didn’t,’ blurted Verhven. He tried to move his gaze away from the end of Harsher’s combi-melta, and failed. The gun was emitting a soft hum, dangerous and pleasant at the same time. A strange pride filled Verhven. If he was about to die, he would be killed by the best tech in all of Necromunda – a Van Saar-made gun.

‘Who did?’ said Harsher.

Verhven considered trying to figure out what the gang leader wanted to hear. But he’d always been bad with people. Technology was so much easier to understand.

‘The trader,’ Verhven said, truthfully. ‘He wouldn’t come further into the hive. Not even when I said we’d pay for safe passage all the way to DeltaV turf.’

‘The trader,’ said Bleyn, ‘or the slave?’

‘The slave,’ Verhven admitted. ‘I never saw the trader, only the pit slave. He had a rock drill servo-arm, well cared for, not rusty or disused. And he had a death collar.’ In his mind’s eye, Verhven could see the steel collar, slightly tarnished, a small black box, barely the size of his fist, mounted on its side. ‘Injection, I think. Explosives are usually mounted at the neck or chin – this one was side-bolted, with an embedded skin clasp on the opposite shoulder.’

Bleyn grinned.

‘Told you he had all his sprockets on the right cog,’ he said.

‘So you believe him?’ asked Harman.

Bleyn shrugged casually.

‘Slave overhears his master discussing,’ he said, in the same disinterested, dead tone. ‘Decides to make a better deal, finds the first slugger who looks to be able to pay sufficiently and makes an outrageous demand. Hopes that the master will be happy enough to reward him, maybe even grant him his freedom. Forty cases of Van Saar-made weapons will make our trading party a target, though. Enough credits will make even muties hunger, and the DeltaV has grown fast enough to make other gangs envious.’

The eatery fell silent as Harman considered, only the hum of his charged melta and the muted clangs of a pair of distant explosions, reverberating through the hive’s plasteel walls, disturbing the peace. Then the combi-gun’s muzzles shifted away from Verhven.

‘Not if we go out in force,’ said Harman.

‘The entire gang?’ said Bleyn.

‘The entire gang,’ confirmed Harsher Harman. ‘You take out a scouting party first. We’ll follow as soon as I can arrange for the weapons. It will put us in debt to a lot of people higher in the hive, but if we pull it off, it will be worth it.’

‘Scouting and returning in time will be difficult,’ said Bleyn. ‘It will leave us a hole after we scout the place and before we fetch the gang. Someone could set up an ambush in the meantime.’

Harsher pursed his lips, cracking the dry skin.

‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘Better take the deep-vox. I’ll order Jain to open the vault for you. Activate it when it’s safe and we’ll come. And Bleyn.’

‘Aye?’

‘Take the juve with you. If it turns out that he is a traitor, shoot him in the head.’

‘Twice,’ grinned Bleyn Cautious.

There were seven of them. The corridor they travelled through was an ancient, well-worn pipe. Once, water – or other, fouler things – had flowed through it, as evidenced by the layers of rust and the thick line of greenish-red crud flaking away at shoulder height. Now, the pipe was dry, and an excellent discreet conduit of fighters and their equipment out of DeltaV turf, shaking lightly where it passed near the Red Slime, the massive refuse canal that marked the edge of the DeltaV’s possessions.

Bleyn Cautious raised a hand, closed fist held at eye level. Instantly, the DeltaV scouting party stopped.

‘We wait here,’ said Bleyn quietly. ‘Theyn, Hallor, front and rear.’

The two gangers, one blooded, one newly promoted, both tech-trained, moved ahead and behind the party, bio-scanners sweeping the pipe before them. They walked a dozen paces, then settled into identical crouches, one hand on their scanners, the other on their lasguns.

Verhven sank to a crouch in the middle, one kneepad resting on the pipe’s dark, dry floor. He dug into his chest harness, and pulled out a corpse-starch ration bar. Twisting the squishy material in two, he offered one half to Maial.

‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘And for recommending me for the scout team.’ Verhven gave her a quick nod, keeping his eyes on the flickering light further down the pipe, where it ended in a shadowed cranny of a thoroughfare.

‘What are friends for?’ he said. ‘Besides, you’re good with a knife.’

Maial grunted, her mouth full of ration bar. She wiped her fingers on one of the armoured plates protecting her thigh. The black body armour made her dark skin look sallow, the Van Saar curse of radiation damage bleaching it in palm-sized splotches.

‘I’m better than you with a gun,’ she said, chewing.

‘Nah,’ Verhven said, ‘just luckier.’ Maial punched him lightly in the arm. The plasteel insets in her combat glove thudded softly against the protective shoulder pads of Verhven’s bodyglove.

‘Quit that,’ hissed Bleyn. He shook his head. ‘Juves.’

They waited. The older gangers drank from their harness-mounted water reclamation units, or checked their equipment. The Van Saar party was armed for speed and bursts of overwhelming firepower, with Van Saar-made lasguns and las-subcarbines, the latter being rapid-fire sidearms. Prone to draining their energy cells, the small weapons could put a lot of las-blasts in the air at the same time and while not accurate at long ranges, they were excellent in suppressing enemies up close.

Each ganger in the scouting party had one for close-in combat, in addition to the shock batons they carried at their belts. Only Verhven and Maial hadn’t been given any, lacking the DeltaV tags that signified full membership in the gang, and gave them unrestricted access to the armoury. Instead they had to make do with their regular weapons, a hand-me-down lasgun for Verhven, its black anodised finish polished to a mirror-like sheen, and a laspistol and a pair of fighting knives for Maial.

‘Inbound,’ the lead scout suddenly said, and the entire DeltaV party raised their weapons. Only the trailing scout remained where he was.

‘Four, seven, six,’ came a hiss from up the pipe, and Bleyn nodded. The experienced gangers all lowered their weapons, Verhven and Maial following suit.

A man in a dirty, ash-grey plastic hooded cloak hobbled up the pipe. Bleyn reached out and clasped his hand with the thud of armaplast glove on armaplast glove.

‘Erihs,’ Bleyn said. ‘How does it look?’

‘Clear to the end of the pipe,’ the returning DeltaV ganger said. ‘I checked our booby traps and they’re both active and sealed. No one has come this way.’

‘No one we know of,’ said Bleyn. ‘Remember, the DeltaV are the best, but that doesn’t count for anything if we walk into a well-set ambush. And Taamas, careful with the deep-vox.’

‘What’s it do?’ blurted Verhven. Maial gave him a quick elbow to the side, but Bleyn held up his hand, fist clenched, and every ganger froze in place.

‘Show it,’ Bleyn said.

Taamas, one of the blooded DeltaV veterans, gently opened the pack he carried strapped to his chest. Inside was a palm-sized, square box, heavily enscrolled with Imperial High Gothic runes.

‘This is the deep-vox,’ Bleyn said. ‘Made by the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus on the Red Planet in the time of the Emperor Himself. A most sacred piece of archeotech, bestowed upon us for favours rendered.’

‘What does it do?’ said Verhven again.

‘It sends a signal,’ said Bleyn, ‘through any material known to man, no matter how thick. It’s part of a matching set.’ Bleyn pointed to one side of the box, not quite as tarnished, with clear holes where something was supposed to hook into it. ‘Harman’s got the other one. We press the right runes, and his will light up. That is the signal for the all-clear. Now quit your yammering and cover your gear.’

The remaining seven gangers started pulling on their own tox-resistant, black cloaks.

The air swirled with ash. Tiny particles of airborne slag stung Verhven’s cheeks. They wormed their way into his eyes, making them water. His bodyglove noted the influx of toxic material and blinked a sickly blue notification light, indicating that he should put up his filter mask. Verhven shut the notification off. The filter restricted his vision, and he wanted to drink the view in.

The Flats stretched out before him, a circular cluster of six slowly spinning turbines, each three hundred yards across. In the centre, each turbine had a flat mounting ring, fifty yards wide. Here, Ash Wastes traders and hive scum set up shop, with weapons, wargear, foodstuffs and all manner of banned and scavenged products changing hands.

Each mounting ring was a bazaar in its own right, suspended on sixty-five-foot-wide iron girders above the dark drop into the furnaces and factorums below. Each ring held tens of closely packed stalls, crammed with hundreds of milling customers, dozens more climbing up and down the suspension girders. Gangers from scores of gangs of all Houses mixed it up with pit slaves, hive scum, rogue technomages and unlicensed bio-docs. Guns, knives, armour, tech-implants and body-mods glittered with reflected light from the searing white overhead scan-beams. Around the great circle, thin, wall-mounted gantries stretched into the spire, the minuscule shapes of scummers and beggars, wrapped in grey ash-plast ponchos for protection from the searing winds, crawling over them.

It was an awe-inspiring sight.

The rings pulled contaminated air out of the factorums below, making the Flats scorchingly hot, but Verhven barely noticed. His bodyglove would keep his internal temperature within tolerable levels, and the Flats fascinated him. A nominally neutral ground where a single misstep would plunge a body screaming into the abyss. The edges of the platforms and girders were sparsely populated. Neutrality only went so far when an enemy walked close and a quick shove could end you.

‘See anyone you recognise?’ Bleyn said.

Verhven shook his head. ‘No, sir,’ he said. ‘But the slave said to look on the first leftward ring.’

Bleyn nodded, while looking at the appointed bazaar.

‘Take these,’ he said, unclipping a black harness-bag from his drop rig and handing it to Verhven.

Inside were a pair of matt-black, Van Saar-made photo-goggles.

Verhven grinned. Photo-goggles were a marvellous piece of tech, enabling the wearer to see in absolute darkness, view distant objects up close, or magnify close ones.

‘What are you waiting for?’ said Bleyn, irritation in his voice. ‘Don’t stand gaping like a stimmed-out Goliath, put them on.’

Verhven pushed the goggles over his eyes, then winced and squinted until he managed to turn down the light amplification from blinding to merely bright. Seen through the photo-goggles, the Flats became a sea of milling faces. Verhven could clearly see the expressions on individual gangers at stalls several hundred yards away.

Here, an Escher with a bright red mohawk raged at a bio-doc, her servo-claw hand raised and flopping limply. There, a trio of Orlocks haggled with a gaunt scummer, the hood of his brown cloak pulled low over his face while another scummer held a partially disassembled lascannon.

A sudden commotion drew Verhven’s eye. A pair of Goliath gangers, fist-sized studs embedded in the bulging muscles on their arms, pushed and shoved at a pit slave with a buzz saw in place of his left arm. Suddenly, one of the scummers haggling with the Orlocks raised an arm, unveiling a slim gun clasped in a dark glove. The gun spat a string of slugs into the adjacent Goliaths, blasting chunks of muscle and implants from them. One Goliath staggered, his head partially severed by the explosive slugs. The other, blood fountaining from a deep chest wound, bellowed and charged the scummer.

‘Sir,’ said Verhven, ‘there’s a fight.’

‘There’s always a fight in the hive,’ said Bleyn. ‘Care only for the las-blasts directed at you, ignore everything else.’

In the distance, the surviving Goliath had grabbed the scummer and hoisted him into the air. Then he himself was hoisted up, a spinning rock drill ripping flesh from his torso. The rock drill belonged to a second pit slave, dressed in a long, brown cloak like the scummers. His hood had slipped off during the fight.

Verhven was about to look away, but something in the pit slave’s motion made him stop. He adjusted the photo-goggles for maximum magnification.

Rock drill. Shaved head with a string of studded implants. Dark, steel death collar, secured by an implant on the right shoulder.

‘Bleyn, sir,’ Verhven said. ‘I’ve found the slave.’

Bleyn put on his own photo-goggles. ‘Where?’ he said.

‘There, the one in the cowl.’

They both observed as the scummers and pit slaves dumped the dead Goliaths over the edge of the ring. One struck a fan blade, and slid down it, adding a fresh red streak to the dozens of black, flaking ones that already covered the rusted vane. The body reached the end of the vane, teetered for a moment, then went over, falling into the depths.

The pit slave pulled his hood over his face. The scummers turned their backs on him. Commerce resumed, the rest of the ring’s population ignoring them all. The entire set-up felt strange to Verhven.

‘Something’s cracked about this,’ said Bleyn. Verhven pushed up his goggles and studied the DeltaV champion. Outwardly, Bleyn looked relaxed, almost bored. He fingered the strap of his suppression laser with studied nonchalance, like he was considering whether to sit down and field-strip the weapon or just lean against a wall and loaf.

He did neither.

‘Hallor,’ he said. ‘Manguis. Scout that ring. Go over it like a malfunctioning servo. I want to know the colour of the underwear of every person up there.’

‘Aye, Bleyn,’ said Hallor, a grimace on his age-lined face. He slung his lasgun over his shoulder, strapping it tight and tying a yellow ribbon across the strap, marking him as nominally peaceful. He started jogging towards the closest girder holding the ring. Half a step later, Manguis did the same.

Verhven wanted to ask what he was supposed to do now, but refrained, not wishing to look like a juve. To look more like a juve. Hallor and Manguis had reached the girder. They stopped jogging and started up it, keeping close to the middle. There was little traffic on the massive iron beam, only a few hooded scummers, and an obvious Ash Wastes trader, a bulky air filter covering his face beneath his dark goggles.

Verhven looked upward. The edges of the Flats were straight, the vents spaced evenly around the thousand-yard-wide hexagon. Grey rockcrete walls stretched hundreds of feet into the air, crisscrossed by steel gantries, embedded ladders and small utility platforms. Right above Verhven hung a massive lascannon, its swivel mount large enough to house seats for two gunners side by side and its barrel wide enough to walk upon, pointed to the opposite edge of the Flats, where a one hundred and thirty-foot tall wall topped with rip-wire and electro-cutters separated the hive from the Ash Wastes and all the twisted creatures that lived therein.

Someone was climbing beneath the lascannon. Verhven maxed the magnification on his photo-goggles. The climber was a slender figure in a dark-grey disguise cloak. The hot wind pumping from the gently twirling vents made the cloak billow out, showing a long, slim sniper rifle held in one of the climber’s hands. It was a strange position to post a sniper. Atop the lascannon’s platform would have made more sense.

Another climber was making his way to the first. Another scummer, by his looks, dressed in coarse plastiweave cloth. Then a stray gust of wind caught him, and his cloak flattened against his torso, outlining the familiar long, slender shape of a rifle. A second sniper.

Verhven counted more than a dozen figures in the girders surrounding the Flats, all scummers, lazing around, bags of scavenged metal or foodstuffs beside them. But as he watched the scummers, Verhven realised they all had long cloaks or robes, and all had at least one hand hidden beneath their plasticloth.

Cloth voluminous enough to hide a long-las, or a small cannon.

Even though they were trying to look like dejected individuals, the climbers were spaced out in groups of twos or threes. They were like the sprockets of a giant cog, but the cog was misaligned. It didn’t centre on the Flats.

It centred on the entrance where the DeltaV had entered, and was spacing itself out evenly as the scummers moved into position.

‘Bleyn,’ said Verhven. ‘There is something.’

‘Not now, Skinny,’ said Bleyn.

Hallor and Manguis had reached the ring. They started walking around the outside of the circle, away from the girder.

The snipers above were still moving. Some of them were kneeling. There was something truly cracked about the whole set-up.

‘Bleyn,’ said Verhven.

‘Shut up, juve,’ said Bleyn, grabbing Verhven by the collar of his armoured bodyglove, all the time staring at the two DeltaV on the ring.

‘We’re being over-flanked up top,’ said Verhven, pointing.

Bleyn looked up. His eyes widened.

‘Cover!’ he yelled, diving sideways and pulling Verhven with him.

The first shots tore through the air around the Van Saar.

Verhven flung himself to the ground, his head bouncing off the hard steel floor and his lasgun slamming into his belly beneath his protective chestplate. A las-blast struck the steel a handspan from his face, splattering him with droplets of molten metal. He looked up.

Rays of light crawled downward towards him like spun syrup poured over the edge of a glowing lumen. The entire world was quiet. To Verhven’s side, Taamas hung suspended in the air, his body pierced by a pair of light rays, exposing inner organs in glorious, fiery detail.

Verhven blinked.

Suddenly everything was back in motion, screams ringing in Verhven’s ears, las-blasts splattering steel from the floor and walls, stubber slugs ricocheting away in wailing arcs. Beside him, Bleyn was firing his suppression laser ineffectually skyward, the gun’s shrill cries competing with the fading scream of the dying Van Saar.

Bewildered, Verhven raised his lasgun, aiming for the gantries above. He couldn’t see the green dot of the sight reticule, the snipers’ las-blasts blinding him. He fired anyway, sending his own rays shooting roofward and blasting pieces from the gantries directly overhead.

Someone kept yelling beside him. Only when an arm grabbed his shoulder did Verhven recognise Bleyn’s voice.

‘Fall back,’ the Van Saar champion yelled. ‘Fall back.’

He yanked Verhven towards the dark entrance to a maintenance tunnel, grabbed another DeltaV ganger and pulled him backward.

Verhven stumbled on a black shape, looked down.

Maial. Crawling. Why would she be crawling?

Verhven paused.

‘Move!’ called Bleyn. A las-blast struck the champion’s flak armour, blasting away pieces of reinforced armaplast. The glowing orange pieces rained down around Maial. Bleyn stumbled backward, into the dark maw of the tunnel, another ganger diving in behind him.

Why was Maial crawling? Verhven considered asking her. Then his injector rig triggered.

A jolt of pure cold flared through Verhven’s neck. His mind rushed into overdrive. He was under fire. In combat. Maial wounded. Bleyn hurt. The tunnel the only way out. He had to do something. Anything. Fast.

Now.

He grabbed Maial by the armoured plates on the back of her bodyglove, hoisted her into the air, and ran.

He managed seven steps before his right leg folded beneath the weight, but it was enough to get both of them into the darkness of the tunnel. Arms grabbed him, dragging them both further in. Verhven started to drop to his knees.

‘Move, juves!’ screamed Bleyn, yanking him upright. The DeltaV champion slapped his hand onto Verhven’s injector rig. Another jolt of cold clarity coursed through Verhven. He raised himself, rushing down the dark tunnel. Glancing behind, into the light, he saw a black speck fall from the centre of the closest ring. The scouts Bleyn had sent out were dead.

Around the remaining DeltaV, the walls glowed with splatters from las-blasts hitting just outside the tunnel. For the moment they were safe, until their attackers climbed low enough to shoot into the tunnel opening. Then their refuge would become a deathtrap.

‘Taamas, the deep-vox,’ said Bleyn. Nobody replied. ‘Where’s Taamas?’ Bleyn said.

‘Dead,’ said Verhven after a moment. ‘He took two blasts into the chest right at the start.’

‘And the deep-vox?’ Bleyn said.

‘It must have been destroyed,’ said Verhven.

Bleyn looked ready to rush out into the rain of lasgun fire. Then he thumped his fist against the thick armour plate on his thigh. Even with the Van Saar-made armour, running out into the ring would be suicide.

‘And if it isn’t?’ Bleyn said, quiet rage in his voice. ‘If our enemies get a hold of it and send the signal? Harman will lead the gang right into the trap.’

‘Could they?’ whispered Maial. ‘Activate it, I mean.’ Bleyn gave her an angry look.

‘I’m not betting the survival of the DeltaV on the supposed incompetence of an enemy who managed to set a successful trap in the middle of one of the most trafficked trade hubs in the entire spire. We go back, as fast as we can, and stop Harman from leaving the hideout. Now run.’

They ran through the depths of the hive maintenance network, old tunnels encased in steel, rockcrete, even armaplast. Piles of collapsed rockcrete choked with jagged pieces of metal passed below them in the shine of Bleyn’s gun-light, and the lumen belonging to Theyn. They forced their way past rusted, half-closed grates, broken security doors and abandoned barricades.

Thrice, they stopped when a junk pile or a crack in the wall allowed them to create a makeshift trap using grenades and tripwire. Twice the traps detonated. It didn’t help. Whoever chased them was minutes behind.

As they reached a five-way crossing in the tunnel, Bleyn called a halt, and Verhven gratefully stopped, steadying himself against the wall’s rough rockcrete and drawing deep gulps of air. The tunnel had sloped upwards, leading them higher into the hive, and Verhven’s leg muscles burned with the exertion of continuous climbing.

Of the eight initial gangers, only four remained. Hallor and Manguis, dead on the ring. Taamas shot in the first seconds of the ambush, the las-blasts illuminating him from within. The image of torn flesh and pierced bodyglove replayed itself in Verhven’s mind and he shuddered, trying to remain calm. At least the fourth ganger had been lost somewhere on the edge of the Flats, out of his view. Verhven couldn’t even recall his name.

‘Not good,’ said Bleyn, and for once his voice betrayed a hint of trembling. He was breathing heavily, and Theyn’s lumen glittered on a trail of wetness on the champion’s armour. Blood, mixed with coagulating agent from Bleyn’s Van Saar bodyglove.

‘What now, sir?’ said Verhven, with trepidation. If the champion was wounded, things were rusting solid fast.

Bleyn shot him a grim look. Belatedly, Verhven remembered Harsher Harman’s orders to Cautious, to execute him if things turned sour, and wondered whether the DeltaV champion would splatter him against the dirty grey tunnel wall with his suppression laser. But Bleyn didn’t raise the weapon.

‘We have to get word to Harsher,’ he said. ‘Whoever staged this ambush was well prepared, and knew when we’d be coming. They expected us.’

‘Orlocks?’ said Theyn. ‘The Flats are mostly their turf.’

‘The Flats are neutral,’ said Verhven before he could stop himself.

‘Nothing is neutral,’ said Bleyn. ‘And this doesn’t feel like an Orlock plan.’

‘Delaques then?’ said Theyn. ‘I think I saw one of their freakishly thin guns.’

‘Possibly,’ said Bleyn. ‘Not that it matters. We got beat, but not beaten. It can’t be more than one gang working against us, or we’d have heard of it. Someone weaker than us, not strong enough to storm the hideout and take us in a fight. So as long as we make it back to Harsher before the DeltaV walk into the Flats, we can avert the ambush, or turn it upon them.’

Maial stirred from where she’d collapsed on the ground, her leg foaming with white med-spray.

‘Harsher won’t go until we clear it,’ she said, her voice slurred. Her injector rig must have filled her with stimms and calms.

‘He will,’ Bleyn said. ‘And go easy on the stimms. You’re losing focus.’

And Verhven realised that, yes, if the deep-vox signal activated, Harsher would walk the DeltaV into the trap, even if Bleyn wasn’t there at the edge of the Flats. Because he’d committed to delivering forty cases of Van Saar guns, guns he’d have to trade a lot of political favours for, favours that would destroy the DeltaV if Harsher couldn’t deliver something truly spectacular in return. And it would have been possible for Bleyn to go out into the Flats in advance, to talk to the trader directly. Harsher would follow Bleyn’s signal, even if Bleyn wasn’t there. Once the gang was out in strength, they could not back down.

The gang had grown fast. The pride Verhven felt for being DeltaV had a dangerous flip side. Lots of other gangs were jealous of them. Fearful of them. Would do anything to engineer a disaster that would bring the DeltaV down.

And Verhven had been the one to trigger the disaster.

‘Skinny,’ hissed Bleyn, his hand halfway up to Verhven’s injector rig.

‘Sir?’ said Verhven, crunching back to reality.

‘We split up,’ the champion said. ‘Have you got a flash?’

Verhven shook his head. Maial merely pointed to the disfigured blob where a las-blast had melted her utility pouch into her leg armour.

‘Theyn,’ Cautious said. ‘Give them your flash.’ He nodded towards an opening across from where the four DeltaV had entered the five-way crossing. ‘We split up. Get to the hideout and warn Harman.’

Maial hobbled to her feet, accepted the flash from the ganger. Verhven took a step towards the opening Bleyn had indicated, then stopped, waiting for Maial.

‘The machine-spirit guide you,’ said Bleyn. He stretched out a hand, offering a black, double-sewn cargo-cloth to Verhven. ‘Use this,’ he said.

Verhven nodded, accepting the small reinforced bag. Together he and Maial made their way into the dark.

Behind him, he could hear faint steps as the two other DeltaV slipped off down another tunnel, and then the clang of a pipe falling from the Van Saar’s last improvised barricade.

Their pursuers, whether Delaque or Orlock or someone completely different, were coming.

Verhven and Maial made their way into the tunnel, Maial’s lumens casting dancing shadows on the walls. She squinted against the harsh light, but Verhven’s photo-goggles cut it to a mere distraction, and let him see further into the depths of the darkness.

The floor still sloped gently upward, carrying them above the level of DeltaV turf.

‘We’ll have to go down,’ Verhven said, between breaths. He was supporting Maial as she struggled forward, her wounded leg tending to twist inward at the worst possible moments.

‘Not much choice,’ she gasped. ‘The hive grows where the hive wants. What’s in the grab bag?’

‘Spare flash?’ Verhven said.

‘Bleyn already gave us a flash,’ Maial replied. ‘And he wouldn’t carry a spare one in a reinforced bag.’

It made sense. Verhven stopped, discreetly giving Maial a chance to lean against the rough wall and catch her breath, and her bodyglove a chance to spray her wound with more sealant. He felt around in the cargo-cloth.

‘Grenade,’ he said, puzzled. Strange that Bleyn would carry one in a blast-resistant bag. He picked it up, seeing the uneven surface of the breakaway shrapnel of a frag grenade. The surface was fractalised, spiralling into ever-tinier pieces. Van Saar work. No other House could produce weapons this fine.

Pride filled Verhven. Then it doubled as he examined the fuse.

‘Proximity detonator,’ he said. ‘Twist the cap and leave it in the open. With any luck our pursuers will step right on it before it goes.’

‘So set it,’ said Maial with a grin. Verhven grinned back. This portion of the tunnel was relatively flat, with few obstacles that could provide cover from the blast. And Verhven had always appreciated a good explosion.

The activator twisted easily at first, then stuck.

‘Crud,’ Verhven said.

‘What?’ said Maial.

Something began ticking inside the cap. Verhven tossed the grenade down the tunnel, and grabbed Maial.

‘Run,’ he yelled.

They jerked away from the wall, stumbling onward. Behind them, nothing happened. They slowed down.

‘Waste of a grenade,’ Maial said.

Then the sharp crack and flare of the explosion washed over them.

‘Well,’ said Verhven. ‘Now they know which tunnel we went up.’

The thought that this was exactly what Bleyn Cautious had planned came to his mind, but he stubbornly pushed it away and focused on getting his legs moving.

The first las-blast threw him forward a few minutes later.

It was a lousy place to make a stand. The tunnel had been twisting back and forth for some time, horizontal drill-shafts branching off right and left. Some of them had been collapsed, and Verhven and Maial had backtracked twice, trying to find a side passage that didn’t lead to a dead end, but only managed to find loops that invariably led back to the main tunnel.

This part of the hive resembled a gigantic roll of carbonised nano-tubing, forever folding in on itself. Long ago, someone had excavated here, mining for iron, crud; maybe preparing a hidden fungal farm. Now the shafts were nothing more than an open labyrinth of corridors, giving their pursuers the ability to flank them at will.

‘Almost like they knew and planned for it,’ whispered Verhven. ‘We have to figure out a way to break free of them.’

‘Shut up and scout,’ Maial whispered back.

They crouched behind a knee-high rockcrete boulder, fallen from a wide crack in the ceiling. Maial had shut off her lumens, and Verhven had only the limited range of his photo-goggles to let him see. His lasgun’s green targeting reticule connected with the goggles, allowing him to aim in the total darkness. It might give him a chance to ambush whoever had taken a long-range shot at Maial’s light. His back still stung from the glancing hit, but his bodyglove had saved him from further damage. Hiding behind the rock, with the superior Van Saar photo-goggles, they had a chance to stop their pursuers. But if the enemy had bio-scanners, the two Van Saar were truly cogged.

From a side tunnel came the scraping of rock on rock. Verhven’s heart pounded in his ears. He almost shifted, but then felt motion ahead. At the very extreme range of his photo-goggles, the shadows grew darker.

Verhven fired.

His lasgun illuminated the tunnel, the photo-goggles showing him four shapes moving forward in a crouch. The las-blast went too high, leaving a glowing hole in the ceiling. The tunnel went momentarily dark again.

Then the shapes fired back, shooting blindly in Verhven’s direction. He wanted to kick himself for revealing his hiding place instead of waiting for them to get closer.

Their las-blasts illuminated tall, slim men in dark coats made bulkier by internal armour plates. Beside Verhven, Maial fired her laspistol, striking one of the men and driving the rest into the cover of a side tunnel.

Darkness fell again.

‘Definitely Delaques,’ Maial hissed. ‘Rusting corpse-stealers. May the warp take them.’

She steadied her laspistol on the boulder, aiming into the darkness. Off to the side came another scraping sound.

‘Come on,’ Verhven whispered, pulling on Maial’s shoulder. ‘They’re flanking us.’

‘I can’t see,’ she whispered back.

‘Grab me and walk,’ Verhven said, moving backward in a crouch. To his relief, Maial took hold of his arm and followed.

By the time there was an explosion from where they’d been, they’d already passed a turn in the tunnel. Verhven gave a silent thank you to the Omnissiah. Then he added a plea for more luck. But as Verhven dragged Maial forward, he heard the scrape of nearby boots on loose gravel, and realised the machine-spirits were not inclined to grant him any more favours.

The ground trembled, gentle vibrations penetrating the walls and making Verhven shiver.

‘Where are we?’ he whispered. Even with the photo-goggles, he’d lost his way. They’d managed to pass out of the maze of drill-shafts without incident by listening for their followers and going in the opposite direction. There seemed to be a lot of fighters following them, with at least three different parties trying to flank them on their right. Verhven had realised they were being herded somewhere, but he saw no other option. It was either that or fight, and they’d been lucky to get away so far.

With two or three enemies, he and Maial could set an ambush and hope to survive. But there were at least four, and maybe as many as ten pursuers, so there was no choice but to let the Delaques herd them like steelspiders gathering rust-fleas, and hope that they’d be able to outpace the pursuit.

Which they hadn’t been able to do.

Maial stopped and sniffed loudly.

‘Do you feel that?’ she said.

Verhven sniffed, but his nose was clogged. It always clogged when he used stimms for some reason.

‘No,’ he said. ‘What?’

‘Smells like water,’ Maial said. She sniffed again. ‘And rust.’

Verhven touched the rough wall. The rockcrete dust was tacky, and slightly coarse, held together with moisture. Bits of slime-fungus made his skin slippery when he rubbed his fingers together. Realisation poured through Verhven.

‘The Red Slime,’ he said. ‘I can hear the sludge in the canal. We’re close to home.’

Maial shook her head.

‘It doesn’t feel that way. The Slime stinks of acid and tox-chems.’

‘We’ve been climbing,’ Verhven said. ‘Maybe the tox doesn’t go upstream.’

Maial struck his shoulder.

‘Crud brain,’ she said. ‘Tox goes everywhere.’

‘Not if we’re far enough up,’ Verhven said. ‘The Slime picks up a lot of tox going down-spire.’ He didn’t add that it would mean going above DeltaV turf, and into the turf of their enemies.

The sound of a stray rock kicked along the tunnel behind them got the two Van Saar moving again.

They almost fell into the chasm. Verhven had been busy looking back along a long, flat, featureless stretch of tunnel. With nowhere to hide and no cover, he was walking backward, his lasgun at the ready.

The tunnel was a dark bore behind them, unchanging. Only the even grooves marking the edges between rockcrete slabs, and Maial’s occasional blind stumble, told him that he was moving at all.

Then Maial yanked on his back, and cursed.

‘Crud and grox-spines,’ she hissed, flailing her free arm. Verhven grabbed her by the neck, and pulled her backward.

The tunnel had terminated at a semicircular platform. The safety railings had been cut away recently, the edges of the steel pipes poking up from the rockcrete conspicuously free of rust to Verhven’s eyes. A slim bridge, nothing more than a set of iron gratings between two plasteel cables, spanned a great chasm. Verhven could not see the opposite edge.

‘Light your flash,’ he hissed. ‘I’ve got to see.’

Maial obediently turned her lumens on.

The bridge stretched a hundred yards or more across the chasm, a steel thread barely wide enough for a single person. There were no railings. From below came the rumble of water, possibly the Red Slime fighting its channel. If so, it was too far down to see in the light of the lumens. For a second, Verhven wished that they’d run through the working parts of the hive, full of light and people.

People who would be happy to shoot a pair of isolated, running gangers in the back. Better to flee through abandoned turf.

Something moved in the shadows high up on the opposite wall. Another bridge, a wider one with railings like a proper gantry, spanned the chasm there. Verhven increased the magnification on his photo-goggles but saw only darkness. Probably some kind of animal had run from their flash. Rat-traders hunted their meat using lumens and net-guns.

The clanging echo of steel on steel came from the tunnel behind them.

‘They’re coming,’ Verhven said. Maial merely nodded. She slouched forward, gingerly getting onto the narrow bridge. It swayed and she fell to her knees.

A bolt spanged off the bridge, closely followed by the crack of a long rifle. Verhven jumped forward, grabbing Maial’s foot and pulling hard. Another rifle shot echoed, punching a hole through the grating where Maial’s head had been a moment before.

Suddenly, an autogun roared into life above them, spraying the platform, sending ricocheting bullets and shards of rockcrete flying over the edge.

‘Back!’ yelled Verhven, as Maial twisted and slammed into him, sending them both into the cover of the tunnel.

A trio of las-blasts illuminated the dark. Two slammed into the rockcrete walls well away from Verhven, the third briefly illuminating the chasm before splattering on the other side.

Maial grabbed the lumens, dropped in the confusion, and pushed the activation rune. The tunnel was plunged into darkness.

‘Trapped,’ she coughed.

A flare of anger ripped through Verhven.

‘No, really?’ he said, regretting it instantly. It wasn’t Maial’s fault. If anything, it was his. He’d been the one to lead them here, he was the one with the photo-goggles; he should have spotted the ambush earlier, should have got Bleyn to listen faster, should–

A blow rocked him backward, his head bouncing from the uneven rockcrete, the photo-goggles shifting.

‘Wha–’ he said.

‘Ver, you stimming out on me?’ said Maial. Verhven shook his head, the photo-goggle image twisting. His mind felt light, like he was swimming. Automatically, he reached for the injector rig on his neck, triggering a sharp jab and the cold clarity of the stimm. He’d be paying for that later, if there was a later.

A thud echoed from deep in the tunnel, followed by a bright speck launching itself at Verhven.

‘Down,’ he shouted, dragging Maial after him. They hit the floor as the speck bounced towards them.

A flare, shot from a gun or a catapult, rolled to a halt some fifty yards away, illuminating their end of the tunnel.

A brilliant idea. The thought made Verhven giggle.

Stimm overload. Craziness incoming. Thoughts fighting each other in his mind.

The first las-blast shot pure, natural adrenaline through Verhven’s veins, fear clearing his head.

The light marked them as targets, while keeping the Delaques hidden in the shadows. They’d effectively countered Verhven’s superior Van Saar-made photo-goggles.

A las-blast splattered against the floor off to the side, another flew over Verhven’s head into the chasm.

‘We have to move,’ Verhven hissed between clenched teeth.

‘Where?’ said Maial. ‘There’s a sniper above the bridge.’

‘And an autogun,’ said Verhven. ‘But we’ve got no choice. We’re like ash-rats in a barrel here.’

‘So, run?’ said Maial.

‘Run,’ said Verhven, ‘and don’t fall down.’

Maial grinned.

‘Go,’ she said, then turned and jumped to her feet, sprinting towards the narrow bridge.

Verhven pushed away from the floor as the las-blasts searched for Maial’s back, and followed her, his boots pounding against the rockcrete, his pulse pounding in his ears.

Three yards, and he was on the ledge. Another, and he hit the edge of the bridge, already swaying from Maial’s weight, the light from the tunnel casting their dancing shadows onto the far wall.

The crack of the long rifle filled his ears, and suddenly Maial was screaming. She fell to the bridge, just as the staccato hammering of the autogun filled the air.

A slug struck Verhven a glancing blow, making him stumble down beside her.

Maial hung halfway off the bridge, her torso swaying over the side, one boot shoved beneath the opposite cable.

A las-blast zipped above them, followed by another crack from the long rifle, this one missing. The bridge drooped towards the middle, hiding them in shadow.

But the light in the tunnel was moving, coming closer.

‘Crawl,’ said Verhven, desperately pulling on Maial, dragging her back onto the bridge.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Hold tight.’

She pulled her laspistol, aiming right at his legs.

‘Stop!’ yelled Verhven. ‘You’ll hit me!’

He fumbled with his lasgun, trying to get it aimed at the ledge.

‘Slug head!’ yelled Maial. ‘Hold me, you crud brain!’

Her first shot hit the plasteel cable, causing it to glow. Her second snapped it, twisting the bridge.

Verhven grabbed for her, wrapping his arm around her legs, grabbing the bridge with his own.

‘Hold tight!’ yelled Maial. She shot the remaining cable.

It parted with a distressed twang.

Verhven flew in darkness. His heart soared, his guts clenched, his mind tried to block out the input his eyes forced on it. Then they struck the wall.

With a whoosh and a groan of parting gratings, Verhven and Maial tumbled into an open corridor. The bridge came apart beneath them, sending them tumbling amid flying slabs of metal.

Verhven struck his shoulder, the rock ripping him to the side. He bounced, a grating crashing into his gut and forcing the breath out of his lungs. Then everything was quiet, with only fading echoes and the distant cursing of Delaque voices disturbing the peace. Verhven shut his eyes.

‘Ver, you alive?’ came Maial’s voice.

She stood above him, spinning upside down and left to right, together with the corridor. Everything was spinning. Even the glow of Maial’s lumens was spinning.

‘Gret,’ Verhven said. ‘Armur took et. Some luk. ‘Aight?’

He puked, sending a wave of half-digested synth-gruel across the floor, causing Maial to jump back.

‘Crud,’ she said, grabbing him and pulling him upward. ‘Wow, you’ve cracked your chestplate.’

Verhven swayed. The world was starting to slow its spinning, up separating from down. He brushed a hand across his belly, feeling the rough edges of the cracked plasteel armour on his bodyglove.

‘I’m… alive?’ he said, half disbelieving.

‘Not for long,’ said Maial, and Verhven could hear the high-pitched whine of drop rigs coming from the chasm.

‘Run,’ he choked out.

They ran.

Lights spotted the corridor at intermittent intervals. The walls were rockcrete painted with gang marks in red, yellow and white glow-spray. The Tunnellers, Synic7, Ratborn Breaks, Omega Warriors, dozens of others.

‘We’re in the Top Lines,’ panted Verhven, naming the disputed areas hundreds of feet above DeltaV turf. At least one and possibly two other gangs stood between them and the DeltaV hideout. The Delaques had pushed them in the opposite direction. At this rate, they’d need to fight their way through hostile turf before being able to warn the gang.

The crack of a long rifle sounded behind them, but no ricochet. Either the sniper had fired on the run, or he was shooting at shadows.

Or wanted to keep them running. There were doors in the corridor, great slabs of iron, chained and locked with fist-sized brass padlocks. Given time, Verhven would be able to pick the locks with his flexi-tool. But as long as the Delaques were behind them, they didn’t have time.

‘We need to go down,’ Verhven said.

‘Where?’ growled Maial. She was clutching her side, blood seeping through a ragged hole in her bodyglove. Verhven realised that her previous bravado was as stimm-induced as his own had been. He wondered which one of them would collapse first.

Another crack of the sniper rifle, this time with the sharp whine of a ricocheting bullet from behind.

‘They’re gaining on us,’ said Maial. Her face was covered in sweat, and paler than Verhven had ever seen her, almost as white as Harman’s or Bleyn Cautious’ radiation-damaged skin.

The corridor ended with a sharp turn and a blank, grey wall. They skidded to a halt, trapped.

‘Crud,’ yelled Verhven. ‘Rip-rusting cogstripper.’

He hit the wall, slamming his open palm into it with all his might.

It echoed.

Not much, but enough to be noticed, a deep, hollow sound.

Verhven looked askance at Maial. She grinned, the pupils of her eyes dilated with combat stimm.

‘Secret passage,’ she said, and started searching, running her hands over the wall.

Verhven pulled out his tech-scrivener toolkit, withdrawing a tiny scanner from the fold of the small, hardened pouch. It was a weak scanner, but a marvel of Van Saar technology that could detect power fluctuations as much as two inches into solid rockcrete.

He found a buried power cable in the featureless wall, and followed it to a recessed hollow hiding a disguised rune-reader. Push the right rune against it, and the door would swing open.

But Verhven had no runes.

From the corridor came the sound of running steps. Maial swung around the corner, her arm extended into a shooter’s stance, her laspistol firing before her body had fully turned.

From the corridor a voice screamed, harshly, and Maial fired again, ending the scream.

Verhven prised open the reader. It was ancient, green corrosion staining the copper wires, yet as fine as anything the Van Saar could build. It was connected to a series of thin cables, encased in sheaths of faded red, blue, green and a banded yellow-brown.

Red usually meant power. Two of the others would go to a hidden computational core, one that processed the input from the reader. The third would unlock the door.

Which?

The corridor filled with the roar of an autogun and Maial jumped back into cover.

‘They’re coming,’ she said, needlessly.

Uttering a short prayer to the machine-spirits, Verhven jammed all four cables together. The cables sparked, sending a shock through his arm.

The wall split, a crack appearing from the ground to waist height. Verhven pushed on it, and the door swung open on well-oiled hinges. He grabbed Maial, dragged her through and pushed the door closed.

It wouldn’t stick.

‘Jam it!’ he said, looking around.

They were in a lift shaft. Three tall, black plasteel tubes stretched from the floor up to the ceiling. Each had a door at ground level, and a keypad blinking green.

The Machine-God was smiling upon the DeltaV today. With luck, Verhven and Maial would be able to ride the secret lift tubes all the way down to DeltaV turf and warn Harsher before the gang left the hideout. And if Harsher didn’t know about the tubes, they’d certainly get a reward. Two rewards in a single day, that would be a record for any DeltaV juve. The Van Saar would talk about Skinny Verhven for years to come.

He pressed an activation rune, and one of the lift tubes whooshed open, the black door sliding into the tube facing. Dust rained from the top edges. The lift cage inside was round, and wide enough to fit a dozen gangers. A giant, if cracked, Imperial eagle painted in pure gold on the black walls called to Verhven, its wings stretching as if to surround him.

‘Ancient,’ he whispered. ‘Blessed archeotech.’

Then he noticed the buttons. There were three of them, marked with runes Verhven didn’t recognise. The lowest one was glowing.

They were at the lift tube’s bottom range. It would only go upward.

A grenade exploded outside the secret door, sending dust falling from the ceiling, but Maial’s boot knife, jammed into the rockcrete frame, kept the door closed. Then somebody struck it and the knife moved a fraction of an inch.

‘Get in,’ yelled Verhven, and Maial stumbled towards the open lift tube. Verhven yanked up his lasgun, putting a las-blast into the keypads of each of the other two tubes. Then he dived into their own, pressing the middle button.

As the doors closed, Maial’s knife fell out of the secret door. Armed Delaques flooded the chamber outside the lifts. Then the lift doors shut with a satisfying thud.

Acceleration pushed against Verhven, and he let it carry him to the floor.

The door opened, letting in cold, blue light. Verhven staggered to his feet, leaned against the opening.

The floor on the other side was new grey rockcrete, with an inlaid cross-hatch anti-slip pattern. Above, tiny blue emergency lights sparkled every few steps. Iron access hatches dotted a long, oblong chamber. Everything looked fresh, not a spot of rust on the iron hatches, not a crack in the rockcrete walls. Even so, a thin layer of black dust spotted the floor, with most of it near a gently spinning ventilation fan high up on the wall.

A factorum nearby, or maybe a badly patched vent shaft.

Verhven dragged Maial out of the lift tube. He pulled at one of the hatches, then another, but both were locked. He studied the floor, finding the access hatch with the most dust surrounding it. By reason, it should be the least used, and the safest. Wherever they were, they would be in some other gang’s turf, where a pair of wounded DeltaV were nothing more than easy targets.

His injector rig had shot go-chems through him during the flight, steadying his shaking legs and making him able to force himself forward, but it had come at a price. He felt thick in the head, his tongue swollen.

Maial grunted, heaving herself to her feet and swaying like Verhven had done moments before. She shook her head, and Verhven wished for a drink of water but his back-mounted dispenser had shattered, fragments of an autogun slug stuck in it. Instead, he focused on the hatch and pulled out his flexi-tool, inserting it in the lock and twisting.

The driver’s vari-blade snapped. For a moment Verhven stared dumbly at the broken tool. Then Maial handed him her own.

‘Here,’ she said, and he nodded tiredly. On his second try, the lock clicked and the hatch swung open, revealing a short corridor and another hatch, this one painted black around the edges. The two DeltaV juves walked up to it, and Verhven pushed the release lever. The hatch swung open inward.

‘Where?’ said Verhven, confused. The bright, blinking light before him, and the many shapes milling in it, made his eyes strain.

They were in a rotunda, a hundred yards across or more. The walls were clean and freshly painted blue. In the centre of the rotunda, a square spire hung down from the ceiling, its four sides decorated with a golden aquila. The Imperial eagle’s outstretched wings were easily twice Verhven’s height.

‘Up-spire,’ mumbled Maial, sounding just as tired and bewildered as Verhven felt. ‘This is bad.’

‘I’ve never been this high up,’ said Verhven.

‘Me neither,’ said Maial. ‘Look at how they dress. They must be richer than a rag-trader with a pocket full of fungal pearls.’

The crowds were dressed in sombre greys and blacks, with a few wearing accents in bright green, red or yellow. Verhven couldn’t tell what they signified, but the wearers walked with their heads high, as if accustomed to being obeyed. The entire space felt strange to him – too clean, too rich – and in the middle…

‘Astartes,’ he breathed. ‘The machine-spirits preserve us.’

Maial shrank back at the name of the Emperor’s chosen warriors. But then she struck Verhven in the side.

‘Crud brain,’ she said. ‘That’s no Space Marine.’

The figure in the middle of the rotunda looked the part, dressed in massive, deep-yellow carapace armour with red accents and the aquila riding its shoulders.

‘It’s a statue,’ Maial said.

Verhven shook his head to clear it. ‘But a full squad of enforcers,’ he added, pointing to the black-visored men surrounding the statue.

The hive’s lawmen were well armed and armoured, easily a match for any ganger, even champions. A squad of them could destroy an entire gang.

‘We’d better get back,’ Verhven said. ‘Nobody here is armed. They see our guns and they’ll grab us for sure.’

Maial nodded, and they both took a step back into the tunnel.

From the lift chamber came the whine of electro-impellers. The Delaques had managed to get a lift tube working. The chamber was about to become enemy turf.

‘We have to find a way down,’ said Maial. ‘We’re far above the hideout, somewhere above the origin-cisterns of the Red Slime. That means going across.’ She nodded towards the rotunda. Then she straightened and stuck her chin out, trying to look like she belonged.

‘Wait,’ said Verhven, grabbing her. ‘Give me your gun.’

He removed his torn cloak, wrapping his own lasgun into it, then adding the laspistol Maial handed him. She refused to give him her knives. The enforcers looked away, across the rotunda.

‘Now,’ said Verhven, and they started walking, aiming for the nearest of the rotunda’s wide connecting corridors. Behind them, deep in the tunnel, came the sound of a lift tube door whooshing open.

The crowds swallowed Verhven and Maial, buffeting them like sludge in a waste pipe. Verhven walked purposefully, trying to discreetly support Maial as she occasionally stumbled, her burnt leg failing. Halfway across the rotunda, Verhven glanced back at the tunnel entrance.

The shadows moved. Fighters, five, maybe ten of them, in close-fitting dark cloaks, pale faces glimmering in the gloom. One of them started to lift a long, slim lasgun, but another forced it down again, jerking his chin towards the enforcers in the middle of the rotunda. As Verhven turned into one of the main corridors, he saw a few shadows break away, backing down the tunnel. The rest started out across the rotunda, their coats hiding their weapons. Then the wall of the corridor blocked Verhven’s view.

‘Hurry,’ he said to Maial. She was sweating, droplets running down her dark skin and soaking the collar of her bodyglove.

The corridor was full of people, a flow of humanity that threatened to choke and crush them. Verhven kept them near the right-hand wall, smooth rockcrete with inlaid strips of what looked like coloured armaplast, or lumens.

‘Wait,’ whispered Maial, her mouth by Verhven’s ear as she leaned heavily on him. Her face was twisted in pain, and she pressed at the injector rig at her neck.

Verhven could see the tiny needle working, but Maial’s grimace did not go away.

‘I’m dry,’ she said after a moment.

Run out of stimm juice. She must be in worse shape than him.

‘We’ll need to settle for a moment,’ he said, half carrying, half dragging her to a shadowed alcove in the corridor wall.

They sank down on a bench of polished iron with long, curved legs. The front legs were painted with tiny golden aquilas. There was an access hatch on the rockcrete behind the bench, with runes in ordered rows around its edges.

‘Doesn’t that mean water?’ said Verhven, pointing to one.

Maial gaped, then cuffed him lightly on the shoulder pad.

‘Ver,’ she said, ‘when the bullet comes that takes your life, I swear you’ll spend your last moments reading the calibre markings on the side.’

‘Sure,’ grinned Verhven. ‘And I’ll probably figure out a way to manufacture it smoother and faster as well.’

‘Which will die as it splatters your crud brains all over the wall,’ said Maial. ‘Stop reading and think.’

‘I am thinking,’ said Verhven. ‘We went up from near the Red Slime. If that’s water, it must mean the Red Slime Falls, or one of its tributary pipes.’

Maial leaned over the edge of the bench, studying the runes.

‘What if it does?’ she said. ‘It won’t help us find a way down.’

‘Might be a service corridor by it,’ said Verhven. ‘Or an old access pipe like the one Bleyn used to get us out of our turf.’

‘Might,’ said Maial, ‘but there’s water here too.’ She pointed at the opposite edge of the hatch.

The hatch clicked open.

‘Did you–’ started Verhven.

Then the hatch was pulled back, and a long, pale face with small metal studs embedded along the brow looked out at them. The muzzle of a slim lasgun poked out of the brown coat it wore.

They stared at the Delaque ganger, who stared back, surprise evident on his face.

Maial recovered fastest, yanking a knife from her belt and jumping across the bench. She stabbed the Delaque as he was opening his armoured coat to bring his gun up. The knife screeched along the surface of an armaplast breastplate beneath the folds of the coat. Then it found the ganger’s armpit.

Another ganger shouted in the darkness of the access tunnel, evidently blinded by the bright light in the corridor. Verhven threw himself over Maial, the butt of his lasgun striking the second Delaque in the face. The woman fell backward, striking her head against the wall. Verhven jerked back his gun, then smashed it forward again. The woman slumped to the floor.

‘Quick,’ said Maial, her knife dripping with blood. She pushed against the hatch, and Verhven helped her shove it closed. It clicked in place with devastating finality. As Verhven turned, Maial plunged her knife into the unconscious Delaque.

‘Why?’ said Verhven. ‘You didn’t–’

‘One less enemy to worry about,’ said Maial, wiping her knife on the dead ganger’s coat. And Verhven had to agree with her. They were in no position to take prisoners.

It was a loss of good credits, though. The guilders would pay handsomely for Delaque slaves. But maybe they could recoup some from what the Delaques were carrying.

Hastily they scavenged the bodies, grabbing a pair of photo-goggles for Maial, and both the lasguns. Verhven grinned as he withdrew a slim flechette pistol with a narrow bore, and a pouch of fresh magazines for it.

‘Careful with that,’ whispered Maial, ‘some of those are poisoned.’

‘Yes,’ said Verhven. ‘And now we’ve got the poison.’

He stuffed a handful of triangular, silver credits into his pocket.

‘Let’s go,’ he said.

‘Where?’ said Maial. ‘There will be more of them around.’

‘Let’s hope they take it slower after seeing these two,’ said Verhven. ‘We head for the water.’

He turned away from the Delaque corpses, heading for the hum of a massive pipe somewhere in the distance.

With both of them having photo-goggles, the going was faster, and they carried no light to betray them to the Delaques. Still, they moved slowly, hobbling along, worn like badly greased chains.

The sound of crashing water came louder and louder, until it made speaking hard. The corridor filled with a light mist that itched when it struck Verhven’s skin. And then they walked into the spray of a massive waterfall.

A gigantic stream of water pounded down from above, smashing against the walls and making the ledge slippery. Verhven pulled up his breathing mask. No telling what kind of tox the water contained.

A gust of wind made the pillar of water twist and smash into Verhven. He grabbed desperately at the thick iron railing around the ledge, wondering where the pipe that led the water was. Then he realised he was standing in it.

‘We have to backtrack,’ he shouted at Maial. It took him two tries before she understood.

Pushing away from the railing, they stumbled into the relative calmness of the corridor.

Shadows moved at the very edge of the photo-goggles’ range. Then the corridor flared to light with lasgun blasts. The Delaques had caught up to them.

Verhven pulled back, out of the corridor and into the enormous water pipe. The falling water frothed and misted, hiding the corridor from view, and hopefully hiding him and Maial too.

The pipe lit up with las-blasts. The Delaques were laying down suppressive fire. Likely moving up to where they could see through the mists, and kill off Verhven and Maial at their leisure. There was only one thing to do.

‘Over the side,’ Verhven yelled, pointing. Maial’s eyes went wide, then she nodded. She, too, could see the implications of their position.

Together they climbed onto the railing. Verhven adjusted his breathing mask, pressing the sealing rune. It would keep the mask on internal supply for three minutes. Then he would start to choke.

He grabbed Maial’s arm, felt her fingers dig into his own. For a heartbeat, Verhven doubted the sanity of his actions. Then a las-blast flew past them, vaporising part of the pillar of frothing water in front of them and adding to the mists.

They jumped.

Falling, falling, falling, the water almost immobile around them, falling like they, falling.

Bend your knees, breathe, hold on to your gear, hold on to your partner. Time stretched in Verhven’s mind.

Slam!

A great blow punched him as he struck the surface of the water below, his bodyglove going rigid, mitigating some of the force. Maial’s arm was torn from his grasp. The strap of his lasgun yanked up, pushing his breathing mask aside, flooding his face with filthy sludge.

Verhven flailed, clawing against the force of the water, trying to press his mask back on, trying to find the surface, his lungs burning, his eyes blind, the photo-goggles askew on his head.

A tug on his collar. His lasgun had caught on something. He struggled, trying to break free, then his arm caught, fingers gripping his wrist, pulling.

He let the arm pull, helping it, air escaping from his lungs.

Maial pulled him onto a thin ledge poised above the Red Slime. Watery sludge poured from her, stuck to her bodyglove in tox-patches. Verhven coughed, spat, coughed again, managed to draw a breath of air that burned with acid and tox. A three-foot-wide, newly sprayed DeltaV tag glowed green above his head.

Home turf. Safety.

‘Let’s go,’ he gasped.

Together they made their way towards the hideout.

‘They’re gone,’ said Jain. He was one of the DeltaV’s three ammo-jacks, a veteran that, having lost his right leg in a battle years past, had become the chief of the hideout’s armourers. ‘Harman assembled everyone four hours ago, then moved out.’

‘Crud,’ swore Verhven, frustrated anger and fear slamming into his gut.

‘Weren’t you two with Cautious?’ said Jain.

‘Yes,’ said Maial. ‘We got ambushed by Delaques.’

‘Who have infiltrated the Flats and are waiting for Harman to walk into the trap,’ added Verhven.

Jain looked over the pair, Verhven’s cracked chestplate, Maial’s bloody and holed bodyglove.

‘Crud,’ he said. ‘Let me get my iron leg.’

They were late.

Jain and another veteran accompanied Verhven and Maial to the Flats, leaving the defence of the hideout to the few DeltaV too wounded to walk. They’d made their way to the Flats, arriving at the edge of the thousand-yard-wide hexagon through a different entrance than the one Cautious, and Harman, had chosen. Verhven had argued that the Delaques could not guard every entrance, only the ones the DeltaV were most likely to use.

He was regretting that choice now, as the head of the DeltaV column approached the sixty-five-foot-wide girder that held the fan and the first, leftmost bazaar ring.

A trio of scouts had made it up onto the girder, followed some fifty yards back by the rest of the column. Verhven could see the shape of Harsher Harman leading the twin rows of gangers hauling heavy crates. Small groups of other gangers were hastily leaving the ring, only the Delaques’ fake Ash Wastes traders remaining to greet the DeltaV. Above everyone, the gantries swarmed with cloaked shapes.

‘Vox-bead is blocked,’ said Jain. ‘Nothing but static.’

He tapped the bead in his ear, a twin to the one Harsher, and Bleyn if he was alive, wore.

‘We’re too far,’ said Maial. ‘They’ll never hear us from here.’

‘They’ll see if we shoot,’ said Verhven.

Jain shook his head.

‘Crud, juve,’ said Jain. ‘Nobody cares for gunshots unless they’re directed at them.’

‘Then we aim well,’ said Verhven. He sank down into a firing stance, bracing against a rockcrete ledge. Then he shot the first crate in the column, missing Harsher by less than a yard.

As the DeltaV dropped back into defensive positions, using the crates as cover, Verhven jumped up and started waving his arms over his head. Through the maximum magnification of the photo-goggles, he saw the expression on Harsher’s face and wondered if the DeltaV leader would forgive him.

But then the Delaques decided to spring their trap, choosing to gamble on the ambush even though the DeltaV were ready.

The firefight was intense, Delaque snipers firing down on the DeltaV, their false Ash Wastes traders on the rings opening fire at long range, pit slaves storming down the suspension girder to engage Harsher’s forward units in hand-to-hand combat, and hired scum boiling out of side tunnels to try to cut the Van Saar gang off.

But after a minute, the outcome was no longer in doubt. The DeltaV hadn’t gone far enough out on the girder to be easy targets, and forcefully hit back against the nearest Delaques. The pit slaves charging down the girder fell, their bodies blackened by Van Saar lasguns, or blown over the edge to smash against the fan blades below. The two who made it to the DeltaV positions, one of them the drill-armed slave Verhven had spoken to, were despatched by Harsher’s forward squad.

The hive scum saw the battle turning and ran. The Delaque snipers disappeared from the gantries, swallowed by shadowy doorways and tunnels, only a few falling prey to Van Saar lasguns. Harsher sent out a party to clear the ring, but all they managed to do was capture a few slaves, and some worthless junk in boxes previously owned by the Delaques’ fake traders. Harsher ordered the boxes fired, shoving the burning coals over the edge of the fan. Verhven, who’d managed to rejoin the DeltaV during the firefight, thought it a wise decision. There was no knowing what sort of tox or chems the Delaques could hide in seemingly innocent trade goods.

Then the DeltaV picked up their dead and wounded, grabbed their crates, and marched for home.

Taking a longer, but more defensible, route back they came across Bleyn Cautious, unconscious but still alive, dragged towards the hideout by a heavily bleeding Theyn. As the hideout’s armoured gates closed behind them, Jain clapped Verhven on the shoulder.

Verhven was so tired he almost missed it.

‘Dismissed,’ said Harsher Harman. The DeltaV gangers rose and started filing out of the eatery, leaving behind the smell of grilled grox and spiced bitter brew. Verhven drained the last of the foaming, slightly slimy, green drink, the hot spices in it making his nose water. He dutifully followed the rest of the gang towards the big, black doors.

‘Not you, Skinny,’ said Harsher.

Verhven stopped, taking a moment to collect himself. It’d been three days since the debacle at the Flats, and he’d started to believe that Harman had forgotten about his part in it, and especially about the lasgun shot almost clipping him. Apparently not.

Harsher and Bleyn, the latter with a pair of injector kits strapped to his chest where a frag grenade had taken a big chunk out of his lung and his bodyglove was struggling to aid his healing, relaxed near the front of the eatery, their weapons at the ready.

‘Sir?’ said Verhven. Harsher nodded towards a recently vacated seat in front of him. Verhven sank down into it.

A hand slapped his shoulder, and he looked up to see Jain Ironleg giving him a tight-lipped smile. Verhven nodded in return, trying to project a confidence he didn’t feel. His nose ran, and he snivelled, then swallowed the bitter brew trying to claw its way out of his gullet.

Surely Harsher wouldn’t have given him priority on the replacement chestplate for his bodyglove if he intended to execute Verhven?

‘So, what’d you think?’ said Harsher.

‘Still think juve’s got all the right sprockets on his cog,’ said Bleyn, his voice calm and disinterested. ‘Got sent out for bait and made it all the way home instead.’

Harsher grunted. ‘And taking a shot at his gang leader?’ he said. ‘Suspicious?’

‘Got your attention,’ said Bleyn. ‘Besides, you ordered me to shoot him if I thought he was a traitor.’

‘That I did,’ said Harsher. He dug into one of the ammunition pouches on his belt, withdrawing something small. ‘Your dues,’ he said, flinging it to Verhven.

Verhven almost recoiled, images of micro-grenades and tox-coated knives springing to mind, but he caught the object.

It was a small, shiny, black disc, the DeltaV tag on one side, his name on the other. His breath caught.

‘Sir?’ he said, holding the ganger tag gently in his open palm. With it, he was no longer a juve but a full, blooded member of the DeltaV, with access to the armoury and the micro-factorum.

‘Get rid of that malfunction-prone Delaque pistol and get yourself a real Van Saar gun,’ said Harsher. ‘And grab another one for your knife-loving friend,’ he continued, tossing Verhven another gang tag, this one with Maial’s name on the back. ‘I’m assigning you to Bleyn’s scout squad. He’ll sort you out. And Skinny?’

‘Sir?’

‘Excellent work!’

THE LAST VOYAGE
OF ELISSA HARROW

DENNY FLOWERS

The raft drifting through the toxic waters was a humble construction, little more than a dozen barrels lashed together with bindweed. Its sole occupant, stationed at the rear of the vessel, stood awkwardly, favouring her front leg and clasping the oar tightly in both hands. Though her right arm had strength enough to ferry the raft, her left barely clung to the oar, the flesh pallid and blistered.

Elissa Harrow did not acknowledge the damaged limb any more than she heeded the pain running from hip to forehead or the absence of sight in her left eye. Her gaze was fixed forward, as though intent on some distant shore that was a mere dozen strokes further.

She did not look back, nor did she dwell on the thing at the raft’s stern – the shadow that clung to the vessel. The past was dead and she could only go forward.

The sump was featureless, an ever-changing tide of effluence and toxins wreathed in smog. Still she sought a pattern in the shifting colours – signs of an outflow pipe or a drainage valve, anything that could suggest a reprieve from the endless waters.

You’re rowing in circles, a voice whispered from behind her.

Her grip tightened on the oar.

It wasn’t real, she reminded herself, merely a manifestation of thirst and hunger, just like the tawny eyes she swore were watching her from the shadows. It was to be expected, and there was no shame in being so afflicted, but she was a noble of House Harrow, above the petty superstitions of the underhive, and she would not tolerate the delusion.

Still, the delusion had a point. She knew not the currents of the sump, and with her left arm near worthless there was little chance she was rowing straight. Most likely, she circled the lake’s centre, slowly squandering the last of her strength in yet another a futile gesture.

Her gaze slid to her left wrist. She tried not to look at the twisted fingers, or the pallid skin sloughing from her forearm, focusing solely on the vambrace she wore. The metal was surprisingly untouched by the filth of the underhive, and the House symbol was still visible: a golden dagger on a field of blood. With shaking fingers she tapped a sequence across the smooth surface.

‘Can you hear me?’ she whispered, barely recognising the croak that was her voice. ‘Lady Harrow?’

The device had once been her link to the world above. The holo-matrix projected a facsimile of home and provided a means of communicating with her kin. But the sump had taken even this from her, and she was quite alone. Still, even if she could make contact with House Harrow, they would not provide salvation. Her stepmother had offered the occasional guidance during her quest – a scrap of information, the location of a rest hole – but even that would have been frowned upon by some of her more puritanical relatives. Until her vow was fulfilled, direct intervention was expressly forbidden. Her family would prefer she died in agony than consider something as crass as cheating.

She had almost died once already, suffocating in the bowels of the underhive, her father’s killer just out of reach, his mocking smile hidden beneath a respirator. With the last of her strength, she had seized him and primed a grenade, intending the explosion to claim them both. But he had slipped from her grasp, causing the explosive to tumble from her hand. The blast had opened a path for the sump waters, and she had been borne away by the toxic tide.

A ripple passed through the water and the raft swayed beneath her feet. She shifted her weight, wincing as pain flared in her left ankle. She suspected it was broken, shattered against the bedrock. She hadn’t felt it at the time, the pain meaningless against the searing agony from her burnt flesh. Darkness had crept in then, and she had welcomed it, until her body was violently expelled through a water pipe and she broke the surface scum of the lake.

Perhaps the flood had claimed the life of her father’s killer too. She knew she was dying – few survived untreated exposure to the sump – but there would be solace in finding his body floating face down in the waters. At least then she would die with her honour intact.

The thought of his corpse reminded her of the shadow at the vessel’s stern.

She coughed and tasted blood on her lip. If she were home in the marble halls of House Harrow then perhaps something could be done – her blood cleansed, her flesh rejuvenated – but there was little time left.

Her remaining eye glanced at the festering waters. She shivered. There was no doubt they would claim her, but she still had a choice in her passing. A true daughter of House Harrow would choose to die on her feet, so she would continue to row until she dropped. It was all she had left.

Just let go.

The whisper came from just below the waterline. She shook her head slowly, her eye fixed on the unseen shore ahead.

It won’t burn so much this time. It won’t hurt as bad.

A sound bubbled from her throat, a pathetic whimper like a babe in arms. Anger flared, the last embers of a rage that set her on this path, that convinced her she could avenge her father and claim her birthright as the Head of House. She was not this trembling creature charting a blind course through the sump. She was Elissa Harrow. The only thing she feared was failing to uphold the honour of her House. Death was a far kinder fate.

But as quickly as her ire rose it faded, a spark swallowed by a deluge. Because she knew the truth. It was no longer honour that kept her standing, for there was now something she feared far more than shame.

Her gaze slipped back to the waters.

If there had been another way she would have taken it. If she still had her knife the voyage would long be over. But the blade was lost, buried in the murderer’s shoulder. Perhaps it was there still. That gave small comfort.

You don’t need a weapon to take a life.

‘I had no choice,’ she whispered, before cursing herself for responding. It was all in her head, the words creeping from snatches of half-sleep. It was a pity; she would have preferred a quieter end.

There was another ripple in the water. She anticipated it this time, using the oar to balance, her weight resting on her good leg. There was a wet thump as something collided with the rear of the raft. Elissa didn’t look back, she didn’t have to. She could picture the trawler’s body in the waters, his skin blanched a sickly yellow by the sump. She’d assumed death would have separated him from the vessel, but a thin chain bound his wrist to the craft’s stern. She could not break it, so it seemed he would accompany her for the last leg of her journey. Perhaps that was her final penance.

There had been no choice. She was almost sure of that.

Elissa knew her return to the Spire was a dream, even as the gilded coach glided soundlessly towards the great Cathedral of House Harrow. She let the illusion wash over her, stepping smoothly from the carriage, her ripperskin boots pristine and silent against the marble floor. Ahead lay the main entrance, framed by the fresco of Saint Harriette, the patron of House Harrow. She paused by the image, a smile playing upon her lips. The living saint stood proud, armour shining like the sun, her spear held high as she vanquished the three-eyed dragon, its vile emerald blood pooling at her feet.

Her smile flickered just a fraction, the image reminding her of the filth that lay below the Spire, of the hunt that had taken her to the very depths of the underhive in pursuit of the man who had murdered her father. She had taken lives – some deserving, others less so – but in the dream her quest had not ended in failure, nor was she condemned to an ignominious death in the sump. In the dream she had claimed the head of Caleb Cursebound, the man who had defied House Harrow and slain her father.

She smiled again, striding forward gracefully, unhindered by pain or injury, her skin flawlessly radiant. The grounds were lit by the soft amber glow of dusk and her mirrorglass robes shimmered as though with the light of a stolen star. Beyond the gates lay the gardens, the foliage imported from the finest pleasure worlds in the galaxy. The scent of honey rose floated upon the breeze as she stepped across a bridge of burnished bronze. Beneath it, a crystal-clear brook babbled, the water painstakingly filtered to absolute purity.

On the far side of the bridge her family waited, clad in full masquerade finery, their faces hidden beneath exquisite masks of ivory and gold. She was unsurprised to find she was suddenly dressed likewise, her robes discarded, a half-mask not quite concealing her smile. Two dozen bondsmen fussed over the proceedings, distributing canapés and glasses of sparkling Quaddisian wine.

All conversation ceased as she approached, their focus solely on her.

She knew them all, their masks as distinct and familiar as the faces beneath. Many were as much rival as ally, a complex network of half-cousins that were as content clinking glasses as trading blades. But this was not a time for petty rivalries, for she had triumphed over House Harrow’s enemies and her victory was theirs as well. Her vow was fulfilled and Lord Harrow was avenged. On this day she was hero to them all.

It did not seem strange to see Lord Harrow standing at his rightful place at the centre of the group. He was tall again, the rigours of age banished, his shoulders broad and strong, just as she remembered from her childhood. He raised his glass to her and even beneath his mask she knew he wore the smile that no other ever saw. Her heart swelled and it took all of her self-control to prevent a tear running down her cheek.

A bondsman approached, offering her a glass of the sparkling wine. Suddenly, her throat was parched, dry as ash. She suppressed the urge to snatch it, delicately plucking the glass from the tray and swirling the crystal-clear liquid. She raised the glass to her family, nodding to each in turn until only her father remained. She bowed slightly before raising both head and glass high.

He did not return the gesture.

She frowned beneath her mask and tried again.

Silence.

Her gaze crept to the glass. The wine was now a thick slurry veined with sickly green tendrils. The glass cracked and burning liquid seared her hand. She smelled her skin burning, the pain coursing through arm to shoulder to face. She screamed, tearing the mask clear, seeking the cleansing waters of the stream. But it too was mired by scum, the bronze bridge stained with a turquoise veneer.

Behind her came the sound of more breaking glass.

As one, her family had discarded their drinks, hands slipping into stained robes and withdrawing dull blades of folded steel. They advanced leisurely, their footsteps silent, as though gliding over the chipped marble. She tried to speak, to protest her treatment, but no words emerged from her throat, only the mewling of a pathetic beast. She tried to run but fell, her left ankle giving out. She rolled to her side as the figures drew close. They were little more than shadows now, staring out through cracked masks – all except her father. He still wore his mask, but his attire had shifted to his hunting clothes that she remembered from her youth. He had worn them when forming a hunting party, descending from the Spire to test his mettle against the denizens of the underhive.

She raised her hands, grasping at his wrist to fend off the blade. Her fingers found purchase on his mask and tore it free.

A single dead eye stared back at her. The other was gone, stolen by the thrust that had ended his life. His grey skin was sallow and stretched, his mouth split in a rictus grin. He pressed the blade to her throat, and she was briefly surprised to recognise it as her own.

She awoke, curled at the aft of the boat, shivering, ashamed to find tears staining her cheek.

Perhaps it was the sump vapours that blurred the line between dream and material.

She would think herself awake and alert only for the waters to swell at the edge of her vision, some terrible creature approaching through the murk. She’d blink, swinging to face it, the oar raised like a spear. Her movements were painful, her left arm near useless.

Braced on her one good leg, she stared out across the still sump, the lake giving every impression of being devoid of life. She knew that was not the case, that terrible things prowled the depths of the sump, though so far none had shown signs of breaching the surface. Perhaps they found the upper echelon inhospitable. It must be that, she told herself.

Twice she had heard the beat of wings, and once felt a shadow pass across her face. That time she was sure that she had caught sight of something darting from her field of vision, and a lingering impression of tawny eyes gleaming in the shadows. Its face had looked almost human. The vision had seemed real enough, but she could no longer trust her eye.

The dome barely maintained a light cycle, the lurch from night to day erratic and with no discernible pattern. The dark brought a chill that the trawler’s coat almost kept at bay. There had been precious little else of value on the raft – a few scattered trinkets that might be worth a few credits at a trader’s post, but would be little more than refuse in the Spire. Only one piece caught her eye: a page on which a figure brandishing a spear of light faced off against a vast scaled beast, its tattered wings eclipsing the sun. It was familiar somehow, though the image was faded.

As the light shifted into a pastiche of dawn, she breakfasted – a mouthful of liquid extracted from the trawler’s water condenser and the last of what she assumed was an edible fungus. The trawler had stashed it beside his crude condenser, but for all she knew it was some hallucinogen he had taken to ease his passage through the lake.

You could ask.

‘No, I could not,’ she replied. Her voice sounded strange, the burns to her throat distorting her words.

You do not wish to talk?

‘There is no one to talk to. The trawler is dead. Whatever secrets he carried died with him.’

Then whom do you address?

She did not answer. She should not have spoken, but the voice persisted.

You take life so easily.

She tried not to react, keeping her gaze fixed on the sump.

Perhaps retrieving you from the waters was an act of charity.

‘You only… the trawler only hauled me from the sump because he thought I was dead and that my corpse might have value. He would have killed me the moment he realised I lived.’

She did not know for sure. The trawler never had a chance to speak. As soon as he’d dragged her onto the raft her fist had slammed into his throat, stealing his breath. While he choked she’d seized his head, using her weight to drive it into the sump. Then it had been a matter of waiting for his struggles to cease.

How noble.

‘I did what I must in pursuit of my vow,’ she said, turning to the stern of the boat where the trawler floated in the water. His dead eyes stared at her.

Was that your vow? To murder an unarmed man?

The voice came from the corpse, though his lips did not move and there was no breath in his drowned lungs.

‘If a lesser being must perish then so be it. That is the Harrow way.’

You don’t look much like a Harrow.

There was laughter in the voice.

The spark of anger flared again. She stooped, wincing at a stab of pain in her side, seeking the chain that bound the corpse to the raft. The metal was tough, inured to the toxic sump. She turned her attention to the lock binding it to the stern, the fingers of her right hand picking at it ineffectually, the left held by her side, useless.

Problems?

She snarled, grasping hold of the corpse. It was heavier than she’d expected, bloated by the sump water, but she managed to drag the torso onto the boat, its legs still dangling in the water. She could not cut it free, but if she smashed the bones in his hand then perhaps she could slip the chain over the trawler’s wrist.

A shadow passed across the boat. She froze, glancing upwards and almost falling as a wave rocked her craft. The corpse suddenly surged against her, the pull threatening to drag her from the vessel as though the sump sought to reclaim the trawler and her along with it. She braced herself, straining with all the strength that she had left, until abruptly the pull was gone and the body slid easily back onto the raft.

What was left of it.

The trawler had been torn in half, legs ripped from the body. Bone jutted from the bloodless stumps. She froze, gaze fixed on the terrible wound, her hands still gripping his tunic. She could not remember how to breathe.

Something brushed her shoulder.

She spun, clawing at her back, and caught the glint of tawny eyes before the shadow darted from her sight. She lunged after the creature as it soared towards the raft’s bow.

It was this that saved her.

The sumpkroc erupted from the waters at the vessel’s stern, slamming down on the raft and pitching her from her feet. Her fingers scrabbled for purchase on the deck as she slid towards the monster’s maw, snatching a handful of bindweed. She twisted her legs clear as the jaws snapped shut, barbed teeth ripping into the trawler’s body. The creature tore a mouthful of flesh clear before diving back into the darkness of the sump.

The remnants of the trawler’s corpse, now little more than a head and shoulder, grinned up at her, its remaining arm still firmly anchored to the stern.

They drifted, propelled solely by the tides of the sump. Elissa sat curled in the stern, her only movement to scan the water’s surface, seeking any sign of the monster’s return. What was left of the trawler lay on the deck beside her. She dared not risk breaking his wrist and releasing the chain, not when a ripple could summon the beast. She could not remember how a sumpkroc hunted, whether smell or sound would attract it. Perhaps neither mattered. She was marked now and wherever they drifted it could find her.

She knew how it would kill its prey, seizing it in those crushing jaws, either tearing it in half or diving to the bottom of the sump. She had watched it with her own eyes when she’d travelled with a party of bounty hunters for a time. One of the creatures had claimed the old tracker, and she could still picture him clawing at the bank as the sumpkroc drew him into the dank waters. The tracker had treated her well in the time they’d travelled together, but she could no longer remember his name. Garak, maybe? Or Garnex?

Perhaps this was the same beast. Then again, the lake was vast – territory enough for many such predators. Did it nest ashore? Perhaps the attack meant she was close to land. Not that it mattered; she would not risk using the oar. She did not want her last moments to be spent struggling against the sump, those terrible jaws clamped around her flesh. Perhaps it was better to let the raft drift and remain silent, and pray the beast did not find her until after she had long since passed.

Prayer?

She glanced to the corpse resting beside her, the trawler’s face still split in a rictus grin. He had said nothing since the attack. She had hoped the absence of lungs might have finally silenced him.

You pray for death now?

‘At this moment all I pray for is quiet,’ she whispered. ‘Or, failing that, a means of cutting you free.’

In truth, she knew little of prayer. When House Harrow gathered in the cathedral she would perform the rituals, but paid little heed to the psalms and verse. To her mind a family gathering was just another chance to assess her rivals at close hand. A few of her cousins would bow their heads and close their eyes, giving every appearance of solemnity. Most however, like her, were more intent on sniffing out weakness and opportunity.

She could recall a few lines of a family prayer, but the services were conducted by a series of eloquent yet passionless priests and she seldom listened. Lord Harrow was careful to heed the doctrines of the Ecclesiarchy, as he did to all the Imperium’s great powers, but neither he nor any other member of the family gave her the impression of being particularly devout.

Except for her mother. Her true mother. The woman who raised her, not the harlot her father anointed as the new Lady Harrow. To her mother the God-Emperor was a saviour, even if her husband saw the Church as little more than another tiresome but necessary imposition from distant Terra. Elissa had always been her father’s daughter, and like him saw the Harrow family cathedral as a repository of wealth and taste. Only the image of Saint Harriette really touched her. She had felt a kinship. Perhaps that was her mother’s influence – it was the shrine she’d prayed at before she passed.

Elissa wished she knew what prayer her mother offered. All she could recall was the first verse from the Harrow Family Prayer.

‘My… God-Emperor,’ she started. Her voice sounded strange, as though the words were lodged in her throat.

She closed her eyes.

‘God-Emperor,’ she said, stronger now. ‘I am of the House of Harrow. To you I pledge my life and soul, and from you I ask only the strength to crush your enemies.’

The words were swallowed by the sump. She felt there should have been more.

‘…God-Emperor,’ she said, clasping her hands before her. ‘I ask you to forgive me my failures and free me from this purgatory.’

Still silence.

‘God-Emperor,’ she finally whispered. ‘As I come to the end of a failed life, all I ask is that you grant me a proud death.’

Nothing.

She sighed, opening her eyes and staring out across the sump waters. She had half-expected the ’kroc to swallow her mid-prayer, but all was still. Almost peaceful.

Her gaze flicked back to the corpse beside her.

A knife was clasped in its hand.

She stared at it, unable to process the image, unable to look away lest it vanish. The blade was stained by its passage through the underhive, the steel yellowed by toxic filth, but she recognised it. It was her knife, lost during her final battle.

Tentatively she reached for it, expecting her hand to pass through the handle, but it was real, the weight comforting. She examined the blade, testing it with her thumb. It was still sharp enough to draw a bead of blood. She watched the crimson bead swell on her finger.

Had she carried the blade the whole time? Somehow forgotten it was on the raft?

‘You found my blade?’ she asked, addressing the trawler’s body. He was silent.

No, that was absurd. The blade could certainly have been swallowed by the sump, but there was no way it could have reached the surface. The ’kroc then; that was possible. The blade had somehow become imbedded in the creature’s hide, only to be dislodged during the attack. It made a sort of sense.

Except she had found the knife in the trawler’s hand. He could not have torn it from the beast.

She stared at the blade. It did not matter. She could now sever his wrist, remove the chain, and send what was left of his corpse to the bottom of the sump.

She looked to her own wrist.

There was another choice – a way out of her choosing, by her own hand. No more pain.

The only thing that held her back was senseless pride. Death came to all, whether noble or hive dweller. Her father’s power was nothing to it.

But he had died on his feet, and so would she.

The light shifted and Elissa Harrow greeted her last dawn cycle.

She had slept little, huddled in the stern with the oar resting beside her. Dreams and memory drifted. She saw her father laughing, his body lying in the chapel, her quarry fleeing through the mines, the rush of the sump water. The sump claimed everything in time.

Before her, at the boat’s bow, the remains of the trawler bobbed in the sump, his dead smile beaming heavenwards. He was now bound to the vessel only by the remnants of his tunic, freed from both the chain and his wrist by the stroke of her blade. She’d then split the end of the oar, binding the knife in place to form a crude spear – a challenging process with only one hand. It was unlikely the weapon would remain intact after the first thrust, but given the size of the beast, there was little point in planning for a second.

She watched the sump, seeking a trail of bubbles or a ripple in the scum – some sign of the sumpkroc’s passage. She had placed the bait at the fore of the raft. Assuming the beast took it, she would have only one chance to strike, one chance to wield her clumsy weapon with a single hand and on a broken ankle.

She smiled. In the muted light of the faux dawn it could be said that she’d merely chosen a more flamboyant method of suicide. But when death came it would find her armed, and it would not just be her blood that was spilled.

The smog still clung to the toxic waters, restricting her vision to a few dozen yards. At first she did not recognise the shadow swallowing the horizon. She wondered if the dome’s lumens were failing, or if something even more vile had contaminated the sump. Perhaps a cloud of noxious gas would render her whole ploy moot, but as the raft drifted closer details began to emerge: an outcrop of rock jutting from the lake; pale pink sediment drifting in the scum, cast off from the jagged shadow of the distant shore.

Land.

Her grip tightened on the oar but she did not move, instead silently trying to calculate the distance. Three dozen strokes would bring her in reach of the coastline.

She turned, scanning the waters. There was no trail of bubbles or suspicious waves, but she knew not if the beast left such signs. Perhaps it lay ahead of her, the snatch of land its nesting site. Soon she would drift into its waiting maw.

Or would she?

The currents were unpredictable, dictated not only by the geography of the lake but also the submerged network of pumps and outlet valves. The raft was veering to the right, drawn from the shoreline by an unseen undercurrent. The land was fading from view.

Perhaps the shore extended further, concealed by smog clouds?

No, she knew what was happening. The raft was drifting back into the endless sump. She would idle there, spending her final hours cursing her hesitation.

She seized the oar with her good arm, the shaft cradled beneath the other, and dragged it against the current, the blade pointing Spirewards. Adrenaline powered the first few strokes, but soon she had no strength left, the shore tantalisingly out of reach. The raft rocked beneath her feet as she struggled against the sump’s final attempt to claim her.

The raft crept a foot closer.

She redoubled her efforts, each breath a tortured wheeze, arms burning, head down, her gaze settling on the fore of the raft.

The trawler was gone.

She stopped. The current seized the raft, drawing it further from salvation.

The oar felt heavy in her hand, but she raised it as best she could, the bladed end aimed at the vessel’s fore.

She felt the beat of wings, but it was not the reason she turned; it was the only movement there was to make, as though her action had long since been decided. Even as the sumpkroc slammed into the rear of the raft she already faced it, spear swept about, the moment almost languid. She watched, detached from her physical self, as the raft shattered against the monster’s leathery hide, bindweed snapping and barrels cascading about her in a swirl of sump water, the droplets glistening vivid hues of red and green. The ’kroc’s jaws split open in a mocking grin, wide enough to swallow her whole. She brought the spear up, the movement painful, her left arm useless, bracing herself on her one good leg.

It felt familiar, as though long rehearsed.

The spear plunged into the sumpkroc through its open mouth, piercing the soft palate, the beast’s hunger and bloodlust causing the blade to drive deep into its brain.

The oar snapped and the dying beast slammed into her, driving the air from her lungs. She was flung from the raft, tumbling through the air like a broken toy. She saw the shadow swoop past, its tawny eyes meeting her own, its expression indecipherable.

Then she struck the sump, the waters almost cool against her burnt flesh. She managed to break the surface; the shore was just in sight.

Three hooded figures stood on the bank, watching.

As she tried to snatch one last breath, the sump swallowed her.

There were voices but the words were garbled. Callused hands gripped her shoulder. She tried to speak, but the effort brought only darkness, then a blessed silence.

The long-sought oblivion was ended by a burning pain in her shoulder. She managed a groan and her good eye flickered open. Hideous creatures bore down on her, their faces stretched into silent screams, flesh desiccated and long dead. She tried to rise but something clamped over her face and darkness found her again.

She awoke in something resembling a bed, the rusted frame softened only a little by stiff blankets. The room was dark, the flickering light of a single candle barely etching the walls. She willed herself upright but her body would not obey the summons. Then darkness stole the candlelight.

There were whispers of dreams: the endless sump; the sumpkroc’s fanged maw; tawny eyes glinting in the shadows. Twice she dreamt she was perched high above the bed with her body lying below, her wounds crudely dressed and face heavily bandaged. She could hear voices, but the tongue was alien to her – a dirge of periodic grunts.

She dreamt of her father standing in the entrance to the Harrow grounds, framed by the fresco of Saint Harriette slaying the dragon. His shoulders were bent, his frame supported by an ebony cane. She stood beside him, both of them staring silently at the expanse of metallic flowerbeds that made up the gardens. The habitat protocols had long since shifted to winter and the greenery was intentionally wilting. Petals fell onto the dying beds.

She wanted to speak to him one last time but could not think what to say.

Perhaps it was only days she spent at death’s threshold, perhaps it was longer – time belonged to the waking world. But there came a point where her eye opened to find she was no longer alone. The figure seated at the foot of the bed revealed little to the candlelight. His head was hidden by a cowl and he was clad in a tunic stitched from rags, the noose knotted about his neck the only decorative element.

But she recognised him well enough. He was of House Cawdor – the bone-pickers.

House Harrow had never had contact with the deranged scrap haulers in the Spire. Even the few she’d encountered in the underhive were little more than rats skulking in the shadows, plucking petty trinkets from the filth and venerating them as relics. But their attire was distinctive enough: hooded robes and sinister masks. It seemed she had them to thank for postponing her death, though the thought was not wholly reassuring given their predilection for burning captives alive.

He raised his head as he spoke. ‘Well met, Mistress Harrow.’

His voice was eloquent, untouched by the guttural tones of the underhive, though she could not place his accent.

Elissa propped herself on her elbow, wincing. The pain was still present, though dismissed to a tiresome ache.

‘…well met,’ she managed before her voice gave out. She could hardly speak; her throat was ash.

He rose, took a bottle from the side table and poured water into a waiting cup. The water was tepid and flush with sediment, but she drank greedily, draining it in desperate gulps.

He was close now. She could see his robes were adorned by shards of glass and metal that shimmered like stars in the candlelight. Beneath the hood he wore a face of flayed skin, the brows and lips still distinct and stretched into a hideous smile. She shivered and lowered the glass, but he gave no sign of noticing her discomfort. He stared at her bandaged arm, his expression unreadable.

‘I thank you, sir,’ she said, her voice a little stronger, ‘but you have me at a disadvantage. I do not know your name.’

‘Isaiah, milady,’ he replied, nodding to her. ‘Welcome back. Some of my flock did not think you would recover.’

She stared back at him with her remaining eye. ‘I do not think I will.’

‘You will,’ he said. ‘The stinger mould is doing its job, though it would work a lot better if we could remove that vambrace. It won’t do much for the scars, but you should be able to use that arm again. We have also set your ankle. You will not be running on it anytime soon, but I think you will be able to walk.’

Though his words were gentle, she could not look away from the flayed mask stretched across his face. House Cawdor always wore masks but most were simple things stitched from stolen cloth.

‘Please,’ she said, hating the weakness apparent in her voice. ‘If you know who I am then you know my life has value. Return me to my House and–’

‘Your family have already announced your death,’ he said, cutting her off. ‘We have been keeping an eye out for the castoffs. Your people always have a clean-out before they inter the newly departed, even when there is no body to bury. We’ve snatched a few trinkets already. You would be amazed at how quickly they can descend to the pit of the hive.’

It made no sense to her. Her stepmother would not have declared her dead. She was the heir, the future of her House. They had told her that. It was the reason she had vowed to avenge her father, to prove her rank and title.

‘…if you return me I–’

‘They will not acknowledge you, not now. Who would break bread with you, or invite you to one of those lavish galas? Do you think they wish to see you hobbling across the ballroom in all your finery?’

She frowned. ‘You seem to know a lot about my family.’

‘I know enough,’ Isaiah said with a shrug. ‘All of your treasures eventually end up down here, and I spent a little time uphive when we first docked. Have you ever seen the stars?’

She shook her head.

‘I did,’ he continued. ‘I was void-born. By His blessing I saw the galaxy. But there are things out there. Things in the darkness. Once you see them…’ He trailed off.

‘It does not matter,’ he said, returning from his reverie. ‘It all ended when our vessel landed on this hellhole of a planet. My master was to dine with the great Lord Helmawr – it was supposed to be the easiest money we ever made.’ He grew distant again.

‘I saw him, you know. Helmawr. Emblazoned in his finery, his robes gilded, a caryatid on his shoulder. He was like a god amongst men.’

He glanced at her, his eyes blazing beneath the mask.

‘If you take all that away, he’s no different from the lowliest bone-picker. Even with all his power, Helmawr is but a pebble against the majesty of the God-Emperor.’

‘How did you end up here?’ Elissa asked.

‘I don’t know,’ he replied. ‘Perhaps Helmawr betrayed us, perhaps we cheated him. I wasn’t important enough to know. But something went wrong. The ship was seized and his enforcers took care of most of the crew. My master and I ran, first to Hive City and then to the underhive. I had to do terrible things just to survive – to save him, to save us both. I should have burned for it.’

Isaiah glanced at her, his icy eyes blazing with the faith of a zealot.

‘But the God-Emperor offered me a means of redemption, and though I dwell in the lowest abyss in this hellish world, though I shepherd the very worst of House Cawdor, I am grateful for the chance He has granted.’

Isaiah turned his back to her as he reached up to unclasp his mask before placing it on the bed beside him. He turned back around, his face still wreathed in shadow.

‘Every day I pray for Him to guide me, that I might find something of worth for Him in this pit. And even though He does not answer, I never lose faith.’

He glanced at her, only his eyes visible beneath the hood.

‘Do you pray, my child?’ he asked.

‘I… I have,’ she said, remembering the knife.

‘And did He answer?’

‘Not in the way I hoped.’

‘No, He rarely does,’ Isaiah said with a ghost of a smile. ‘But He led us to you. We found you before there was even word of your death, Elissa of House Harrow. Do you know your House’s patron saint, milady?’

She did not answer. He rose, crossed the room and lifted the candle from its stand on a rusted crate. He opened the box and retrieved a roll of parchment, unfurling it reverently before her. It took Elissa a moment to recognise it, the image bleached by the sump. It was the torn page from the trawler’s raft. She could make out the faint image of a warrior brandishing a spear against a terrible beast.

‘This is Saint Harriette. She slew the dragon in the name of our Emperor, only to perish from the pool of pestilent blood that seeped from its wounds. Like you, she died slaying the beast, and like you, the God-Emperor chose to preserve her.’

Elissa stared at the image – an echo of the fresco in the Cathedral of House Harrow – and she finally understood.

‘It was a sumpkroc,’ she murmured.

‘It was a sign. You have been chosen.’

‘Chosen?’ she spat, her rage burning away the fear. ‘I lost an eye, I lost my face – I lost everything! This is how He chooses His followers?’

‘The glory we gain first blinds us with its lustre,’ he said, leaning closer, the candle revealing his face.

He might have been handsome once, but his skin was now marred by inscriptions, passages of holy texts carved from brow to chin. ‘Outsiders do not truly understand,’ he said. ‘We do not wear masks to hide our faces. My once-master bore the sin of pride, and by his lead I followed. I was granted the chance to free myself of such failings, but regrettably my master found he could not accept the God-Emperor’s grace. I carry his sin with me as a reminder to be better.’

She glanced to his mask of stretched skin. Realisation dawned.

Isaiah smiled. ‘The God-Emperor may have marked you, but by doing so He has granted you the chance to be better. Your suffering is His gift.’

As she heard these words, something inside her broke.

‘I cannot,’ she said, voice cracking. ‘I cannot… I was meant to die out there, I know it. I yearned for it before the end. Then the knife appeared… It was my way out and I should have taken it. I should have taken it and let it be over. I cannot live like this. I cannot be… this.’

He watched her as she sobbed, before gently taking hold of her chin, raising her head to meet his gaze.

‘Listen to me,’ he whispered. ‘Elissa Harrow died on the water – you carry her face and name no longer. I have prayed and you are His answer. It knows this, and that is why it delivered you to us.’

He glanced upwards. She followed his gaze.

Something was watching from the rafters – a shadow, ever so slightly darker than the gloom that encompassed it. Tawny eyes peered down at her.

‘I thought it was a dream…’ she whispered.

‘It is a caryatid,’ Isaiah said. ‘It followed you, and none would risk opposing it. To anger such a creature is to assure an unpleasant demise. It seems quite taken with you.’

The creature soared downwards, landing gracefully on the bed beside her. It was holding something: a masquerade half-mask. She recognised the design, though the decorative gold leaf had been picked clean and the ivory-coloured face was stained and cracked. She could just make out a faded beauty spot beside the mouth – a golden dagger, the symbol of House Harrow.

The caryatid’s mouth split open, baring its needle teeth in a manner somewhat akin to a smile.

Isaiah rose, his mask now in place again. He reached for his belt, unsheathing a blade before reversing it and offering the handle. She knew her knife well enough, even in the dark. She took it, feeling its familiar weight in her good hand.

‘It is time to choose your end,’ he said, turning from her. ‘If you are strong enough, you should join us downstairs. It is time to pray, Sister Harriette.’

He departed, leaving her alone with the winged caryatid.

It still clutched the mask.

She studied it for a while before turning her attention to the knife. The blade was sharp enough, it would only take a moment.

Her gaze then slid to the creature sat beside her. It wore an almost human face, except for those eyes. Its pupils had swollen in the candlelight, the slits now wide enough to swallow the iris, leaving only a tawny halo, a dying star.

Her left arm was heavy, laden with the silver vambrace. But she raised it weakly, her blistered fingers closing around the ivory mask.

CUT AND GUT

ROBERT RATH

Word on the hab-block was that Arsonia Vayne had killed one of her own a while back. Torched the girl with a hand flamer and gave her the long drop off a refinery tower. They said the girl, Rink Scavino, was skimming on the protection racket that Vayne and her Promethium Queens charged on every fuel train running in and out of the Palatine Cluster.

Word on the hab-block was wrong: she hadn’t been skimming.

Rink Scavino died because she’d been Servalen’s informant.

And because of that failure, Servalen – the scrutinator primus of Lord Helmawr’s most august Palanite enforcers – had come here to St Thekla Docks. Walked narrow, crowded streets, where people wore gauze masks and respirators because the air was toxic.

And she went to the market, hoping that history wouldn’t repeat itself. Hoping this time they would get Vayne.

St Thekla Wet Market ran downhill between two narrow towers that stretched up seventy storeys, forming a canyon of rank smells, babbling voices and crowds. Electric signs extended so far into the street they overlapped in the centre, giving the impression that you were descending into a tunnel. Through the tangle of obstacles, you could see grey light on water. The St Thekla Docks, gateway to Runoff Bay.

The last part of the inland ocean that still existed within Hive Primus.

There was a market for everything on Necromunda. Weapons. Augmetics. Human organs. But people came to St Thekla for fish.

Servalen watched, entranced, as the market vendor worked.

Bubbling aquarium tanks stood before the man’s stall. They rose in tiers, like stairs, or the growing terraces on some far-flung agri world. Each tank teemed with wriggling fish, the scrabbling limbs of crustaceans, or the pulsing suckers of octopods. All pressed together, tight as the crowd watching.

‘New catch,’ called a fishmonger. ‘New catch, hooked just before dawn.’

With practised hands, the vendor dipped into a tank and caught hold of a whiskered bottom feeder. She hoisted it out, the fish’s scales flashing an iridescent turquoise as the tail beat the air, throwing droplets in panic. She slapped the gaping creature on a cutting block so ancient and scarred that it dipped in the middle.

Her wide knife did its work. Crunching down behind the gills, meeting spine, turning and slicing the length of the squirming fish right to the tail. The vendor peeled the side of meat away, exposing the cancerous growths that clustered within its flesh; tossed the cut into a trash bin, flipped the fish, severed the other flank. She laid the prized section – the head and its attached organs – on a bed of rust-coloured ice.

The fish was dead, but didn’t know it. Gills opened wide in gasping spasm, exposing their fibrous interior. Lungs inflated and deflated. Its whiskered mouth yawned in confusion.

Buyers jostled in, inspecting the slick, balloon-like organs. One, with a jeweller’s loupe pressed in his eye, asked to test the liver. When the vendor nodded, he lanced it with a long needle. The probe came away coated with green bile that glowed like the pastel signs above.

The fish’s meat was too toxic to eat. Runoff Bay was true to its name. Chemical outflows had poisoned the water, triggering a massive marine die-off.

But the creatures that didn’t die developed a resistance to the environment. Evolved to catalyse the toxins, store them. The deeper the fish, the thicker the contamination and, therefore, the purer the chems inside its liver.

The buyer took a snuff from a plastek narco-inhaler. Licked the bile-soaked needle. His eyes rolled back. Veins bulged in his neck, muscles tensing and swelling.

A pause.

‘Abyssal,’ breathed one of the buyers.

‘Ninety-five per cent pure,’ the monger added. ‘Will double the punch of any stimm. And I got nineteen others from the same haul.’

Suddenly everyone in the crowd began shouting, waving credits.

This was what these buyers had come for. Indeed, it was the only reason anyone cared about St Thekla Wet Market. They were here for the fish.

But Servalen wasn’t. She slid her narrow frame through the crowd to escape being crushed in the sudden bidding war. Buyers ran past her, trying to see what had caused the commotion.

Though in a way, Servalen was here for a different kind of fish. The big fish.

She was here for Arsonia Vayne.

Vayne’s Escher cartel charged protection on every shipment of fuel that ran in and out of Hive Primus. But Servalen’s boss, the right honourable lord provost marshal, couldn’t care less about that – that was a problem for the Promethium Guild.

Servalen had been pushing the lord provost marshal to authorise an op against Vayne for months. Indeed, if Vayne had been the average gang leader, she’d have been raided long ago – Servalen posing for pict-capture behind a table stacked high with weapons and banded credits. Another win for her special task force to pin up on the basement wall of Precinct Triple-Six.

But big cartels like the Promethium Queens were different. The fact was, when a gang got to a certain size the whole thing became political. Vayne’s organisation were less extortionists, and more quasi-official security for the Promethium Guild. And their massive profits insulated them. See, Vayne kicked a tithe upstairs to House Escher, who kicked a tithe to the Hive Lord, who kicked one to Lord Helmawr. If Vayne stopped earning, so would everyone else.

On Necromunda you could traffic narcotics, run rackets and kill thousands in turf wars provided that whatever dirty credits you made ran to the top. And, of course, provided you didn’t step over the line. Upset the balance. Gain too much power and disturb the Pax Helmawr.

And Vayne was finally about to cross that line – so Servalen had her op.

But she was way out on a rusty gantry, here. The lord provost marshal was no friend, and resented the semi-autonomy Helmawr had given his favourite investigator.

Servalen couldn’t help but wonder if this was a political snare, that he’d given the op his signet-stamp because if things went sideways, it would blow Servalen’s career spire-high.

After all, no one particularly liked Servalen. Not if they spent time with her. There was something unnerving in her dark eyes and severe features that made her a peerless interrogator. Before she’d made her bones as a scrutinator, she’d been shuttled from assignment to assignment. Even her own special task force spent little time with her, their work coordinated remotely via vox and dataslate, paired with ad hoc briefings whenever she dropped into their headquarters at the Triple-Six.

But Servalen had survived every attempt to push her out, because she’d learned to live by the Plasteel Rule: always be useful.

If you were useful, they wouldn’t get rid of you. No matter how much people disliked you. Useful people stuck around.

It was how she’d recruited her task force. Found the outsiders, the oddballs that excelled in specialist roles but couldn’t play politics. She wanted the weird ones that didn’t fit in. Those who, like her, preferred to work alone and could be trusted to largely manage themselves. And when the lord provost marshal started calling them ‘Servalen’s Circus’?

They just rolled with it.

‘Ringmaster,’ buzzed the micro-bead in her ear. ‘Your relay unit is checking out. Proceed towards the docks and take up position.’

‘Confirmed, Circus,’ she whispered. ‘Moving.’

Thekla’s contamination-phobia worked in their favour. With everyone wearing masks, no one noticed Servalen’s hushed words into the rubber cup of the rebreather.

To anyone with a wandering eye, she was just some tank-scrubber from the Promethium District. Grey industrial bodyglove, baggy enough to conceal the custom-milled autopistol holstered at her back and double-barrelled stub-compact on her ankle. Tattered black coat with shock knuckles in the pocket. Bulky auditory augmetic – tank-scrubbers often went deaf due to the cleaning solvents – hiding her high-grade cranial plug and the micro-bead linked to her throat-mic.

Probably just a stimm-junkie trying out the hot new thing. Indeed, she’d made sure to visit six times in the past few weeks, scoring uppers laced with Abyssal. That way no one got alarmed when they saw a new face on the day Arsonia Vayne was scheduled to meet the Thekla Dockers, and take control of the district.

Servalen walked downhill, past a food stand. The old woman behind the simmering pot hauled a wire basket full of proteyn-balls out of the boil and speared them on a stick before handing them to her first customer. He moved immediately to the side, let the next woman order. No pleasantries. No please or thank you. With so many people living so close together, efficiency was the highest form of courtesy.

You kept the queue moving. Didn’t gum things up with false sentiment.

Servalen loved that about the underhive. No one got close enough, for long enough, to notice anything amiss. On her previous trips, she’d loved acting normal. Playing normal. Pretending she belonged with these people.

She hated what Vayne’s gang war with the Orlocks and local Docker gangs had done to this district. Firefights in the street. Burned corpses dumped on doorsteps with threatening signs around their necks.

That made her think of Rink Scavino.

What was left of Rink sat in a refrigerated drawer at the medicae mortis facility. She’d been there a year, and was now crusted with ice crystals and freezer burn. They were lucky. After Vayne had torched Scavino and dumped her from a thirty-storey refinery stack, she’d hit a balcony ten storeys down. The half that stayed on the balcony remained relatively intact. And that’s how they knew it hadn’t been a flamer that lit her up.

Rink Scavino had burned from the inside out. Warpcraft. Pyromancy.

Scavino had been an Escher juve. Servalen recruited the girl by popping her on a weapons charge and giving her the choice between a penal detail or informant work. Rink had a taste for danger and a talent for tradecraft. Servalen had trained her personally. It had been Scavino who’d told them that Vayne was moving on St Thekla.

Then she’d missed her check-in. Now she was in a drawer.

That was the first big push Servalen had made to take Vayne out. She played the wych card. Used Scavino’s remains to argue that Vayne had crossed the line by running a wyrd. She leaned on every Escher she could find, grilled them in interrogation rooms until they howled and clawed at the door. No one knew anything about Vayne’s psyker. Worse, bureaucratic appetite wasn’t there for a sting.

You lost a criminal informant? Get another one. Put someone undercover. Risk another life.

That had taken some effort, but she had – Acrobat. And Acrobat was about to be inside the peace meeting between Vayne and the Dockers. Miss this, and Vayne wouldn’t emerge for another year, maybe two.

‘Approaching Point Alpha,’ Servalen said into her mask.

‘Roger, Ringmaster,’ said Tellic over the link. ‘When you get to Alpha, turn on the relay unit and hold tight. Eyes are reporting an incoming convoy. Probably Vayne.’

Servalen looked up, saw small heads leaning out of hab windows. Children. One had a hand-vox pressed to his cheek, clearly working for the local Docker gang. ‘Must be Vayne. I have child spotters scanning the street.’

‘If one reports you, maybe they’ll promote him to juve,’ Tellic joked. ‘I’m detecting increased signals traffic. Big beautiful spike. Military-grade sets. Some are scanning for enforcer signal bands. Vayne’s being careful.’

Tellic was sitting in the comms centre a block inland – the closest they’d dared get for fear of being noticed. He’d spent the last week living in a converted cargo container, kitted out as a surveillance suite. An undercover team dressed as longshoremen had placed it over a manhole cover. He climbed in and out through a sewer pipe. Servalen had been there between forays into the market, but mostly he was alone.

Mostly.

‘How’s my pup?’

‘Terrifying. Missing you.’

Servalen could imagine. KB-88 was programmed to stay by her side, and when commanded to stay its machine-spirit became agitated. Servalen could visualise the cyber-mastiff lying down, facing the container doors with its boxy snout resting between steel paws. Static growling in its vox-augmented throat.

That was in the small container. In the bigger one next door, fifty members of an insurgence subdual were sitting in armoured ram-vehicles. They were heavies, half of them subjugators, loaded out with combat shotguns, bolters, assault shields and shock batons. Grenade launchers for crowd control and a heavy concussion ram that could punch a plasteel door off its hinges. Their sergeant, a bulldog-faced man whose shock stave was topped with a chrome skull, had not liked working with Servalen’s oddball team.

Still, they were on board.

All Servalen had to do was confirm Vayne’s presence, signal ‘Execute’, and they’d be inbound. Ten to fifteen minutes, depending on traffic.

But before that happened, Acrobat had to signal that Vayne was at the meet. They needed proof she was taking over the Abyssal trade, evidence to keep House Escher and the Promethium Guild off their back when they brought her down.

Proof the Promethium Queen had overreached.

Abyssal was the purest source of precursor chemicals on Necromunda. The substances in the rotting marine organs could create ultra-potent stimms and gene-hancing mods. Merely lacing an existing drug with Abyssal kicked up its effectiveness.

Within a fortnight of sale, the neon sludge would be separated into its components via centrifuge, dried, cut with liquid pharms, and loaded into some Goliath’s stimm-slug unit.

Abyssal sold at sixty credits a brick.

It was fine if Vayne wanted to be the Promethium Queen, but to be the Promethium Queen and purveyor of the hive’s most potent and lucrative stimms? That was leverage. Enough leverage to skew the market’s numbers. Pick winners and losers in the narco-gangs. Play favourites with the guilds. Withhold stock to control price or flood the market to put competitors out of business. Maybe not to completely upset things, but to create a blip – or better yet, threaten to create a blip.

And then there was the power.

Sixty credits a brick bought a lot of power.

Enough to brand even Vayne a recidivist.

Servalen squeezed through the crowd. Walked by a block of bubbling street aquariums and watched the fish shy away as she passed, pressing their heads against the back of their tanks and beating their tails as if they had somewhere to flee. She watched as a steel-gauntleted vendor reached into a bucket of blind eels, confused at why the creatures had begun to writhe and snap at each other in panic.

She was close to the wharfs now, the canyon of hab-block towers falling away so she could see the low clouds collecting in the upper reaches of the dome, the great concave scoop of it barely visible on the horizon. Warm air off-gassing from the main hive created the humid clouds, while the cooler air hit the curve of the dome and washed back towards St Thekla, giving the illusion of a sea breeze.

Small one- and two-man fishing junks crowded the nearshore water, tied together in flotillas, outfitted with light rigs used to bait pelagic low-light dwellers to the surface. It wasn’t so much a fishing fleet as a floating village. Marine clans who sailed through the sea gates in the dome each night, following the currents downhive towards Sump City – or at least through the parts that were still navigable, between the trash gyres and coagulation-burgs. That was St Thekla, filled with desperate people doing a nasty job. Those too poor even to afford habs.

The whole place had been abandoned sixty years before, its fishing industry unviable due to the contamination. A rusting cannery still sat, squat and deteriorating, at the edge of the district. Not even people who lived on corpse-starch wanted to eat fish caught in Runoff Bay.

But then they discovered the toxins. And the families who’d never left the empty wharfs of St Thekla – who’d been too poor to leave, and stayed to scratch out a living on the bay – now controlled the burgeoning trade. They became the Dockers, a closed upper echelon of society with their own dialect and customs, ruling over the desperate outsiders who came to serve on the fishing fleet.

Some Dockers had done very well. A collection of pleasure yachts idled offshore, anchored together in their own parody of the floating village.

‘Ringmaster,’ her micro-bead pipped. ‘Convoy incoming.’

‘In position.’ She stopped and lit a lho-stick. An excuse to linger on a block corner.

Down the street to her left, Servalen saw the convoy approaching. Heavy cargo-8s with bike outriders leapfrogging the transports to stop cross traffic. The outriders wore hardened flak armour – enforcer-issue.

‘Outriders. Enforcer gear. Subjugators need to pick targets carefully when they go in.’

‘Confirmed,’ said Tellic. ‘Ident?’

‘Precinct Nine-Nine-Seven.’

‘They lost a patrol a few months back. No bodies.’

Servalen watched the convoy pass through the smoke of her lho-stick. It would’ve been too suspicious not to. One of the fake enforcers stopped her bike a few feet from Servalen, held out a hand to warn her back as the cargo-8s rumbled by.

The fake patrolwoman wore only a half-helm, the rebreather removed and buckled to her belt. Not used to it, Servalen guessed. Enforcer helms had heavy-duty filters, which made breathing difficult for those without proper training. One of the biggest washout days at the Palanite Academy was the first full-helm formation run. Half the cadets routinely passed out.

You’re out of uniform, arsehole, she thought, and keyed the vox-relay live.

‘–nce we get to the cannery, nobody talks but the boss, savvy?’ A voice cut into her micro-bead. It was tinny, echoing, but there. ‘We’re here to show the flag. Keep the Queen secure. Weapons in hands, but always pointed down. You juves, do not chamber a round. I swear to the God-Empress, if one of you lets a hammer fall and frags this up I’ll gut you like one of these fish.’

‘We’re recording,’ said Tellic. ‘Reading clear, she did it.’

Acrobat was in. The undercover had made it onto the convoy.

Now they just had to wait for her signal – the confirmation Vayne was there, keyed via a transmitter implant in the undercover’s molar.

It was happening.

But that’s when Servalen saw the small boats ripple in the harbour, rising and falling on a wave. Which was impossible. No wave sets penetrated the hive shell.

It wasn’t a wave, it was a bow wake. A massive triple-decked yacht had pulled anchor and was moving towards the cannery dock.

It was a bluff. The task force had all the land routes blocked off, and Arsonia Vayne was coming by sea.

Arsonia Vayne stood at the prow of the yacht like a reaver-captain from the old sump ballads. The craft’s bow waves glistened in rainbow hues, a product of the fuel oil that coated the bay’s surface.

She was every inch as opulent as her craft. Dressed for maximum intimidation. Hair dyed in the hues of a candle flame. Her uphive raiment – from its bell-shaped bustle skirt to chin-high collar – inlaid with overlapping carbon-weave armour plates in the shape of a rising inferno. Filigreed vambraces clasped her wrists, each fitted with a discreet hand flamer.

It made her smell pleasantly of promethium.

‘They look impressed,’ Vayne said, nodding at the small party waiting on the cannery dock. ‘Told you it was a business expense.’

Lilly Base-Eight grunted and consulted figures on a dataslate. ‘These fisher folk are hardscrabble, a ship half this fancy would’ve done the trick.’

‘Yeah, but it ain’t just transport.’ Vayne grinned, slapped the rail. ‘Big engines. Lots of cargo space. We’re gonna run serious stimm in this stately lady.’

‘And naturally we also needed the staterooms, the boil-pool, the wine cellar?’

‘Naturally,’ said Vayne. ‘A queen’s gotta keep up appearances.’

‘A queen needs some treasure in her treasury,’ replied Base-Eight.

That was how it had always been, ever since they were coming up as obscura-pushers, slinging smokes and clipping rivals down in Dust Falls. Vayne brought the ideas and the violence, Lilly Base-Eight kept the numbers square. A lot of gangers with potential ended up stuck as small-time hustlers because they lacked the vision to make big scores, or the financial planning to capitalise on them.

It hadn’t been easy, climbing the ladder. Lilly earned the name ‘Base-Eight’ when a stub-round clipped off two of her fingers. Arsonia took maybe more stimms than were good for her. And they’d had to isolate themselves for the past year, after that Rink Scavino thing. Make sure that neither of them got too close to anyone and only talked business between themselves.

But all that was a worthy trade-off. They headed a syndicate. Soon a multi-district narco-syndicate. And they had a big-arse boat.

‘You remember our position?’ Base-Eight asked.

‘I remember.’

‘No more than twenty per cent per brick.’

‘What’d I just say?’

‘The Orlocks offered the matriarch twelve, start there.’

‘I swear, Lil.’ Vayne raised a regal hand, waved at the Docker welcoming party on the wharf. ‘I swear if you ever talk to me like this in front of anyone, I’ll crisp you where you stand.’

‘I’m too smart for that,’ said Base-Eight, her voice flat.

‘Good,’ said Vayne, still waving. ‘Just remember what Rink Scavino smelled like when she went up.’

Base-Eight folded her arms over the slate. ‘You have a mean sense of humour, ’Sonia.’

‘And that isn’t where the mean stops,’ Vayne said, stepping down the gangplank.

The Docker welcoming party gave little bows when Vayne stepped onto the quay. She gave a respectful nod back. Base-Eight had told her the protocol.

Toxin peddlers don’t shake hands.

The cannery was a corroded mass, rusting layers of ugly on top of more ugly. Like a rotting wedding cake. Her Docker escort guided her into its bulk, her entourage flanking her at a respectful distance, autoguns pointed at the deck.

All of St Thekla stank. Gutted fish. Human waste. The acid tang of the chemical bay. But the smell inside was different, concentrated. A humid fug of old fish oil that permeated every surface.

That’s the smell of money, Vayne reminded herself.

Inside was a riot of objects. Plastek-wrapped pallet loads that had sat untouched for half a century. Lines of cans, filled and unfilled, circling around the work floor on a track that dipped and swooped like some mag-coaster at a sump fair. Rusted fishmeal grinders leered from the shadows. On one ground floor wall, an incongruous stained-glass window depicted some maritime saint.

A haunted palace of corroded equipment.

And in the centre, the matriarch with her Dockers, standing uneasily apart from the convoy party of Promethium Queens that had come separately to throw off any ambushers.

Vayne bowed to the matriarch, a little deeper this time. Fish bones threaded her long robes, and two oversized fishhooks – carved from the bones of some extinct aquatic giant – rose from her back like wings. Bright eyes twinkled behind a waterfall veil of chemically treated pearls, which rattled when she dipped her head in acknowledgement of the bow.

‘Locusta?’ Vayne asked.

‘Here, my queen,’ the juve said, stepping forward. Nervous. Jaw clenching and releasing in an anxious chew. The Escher affiliate tattoo still fresh on her face.

‘Start the preliminaries, yeah?’

Locusta nodded, bowed to the matriarch, and launched into a formal greeting.

She’d been a find, Locusta. For eight months the Promethium Queens had been warring with Orlock crews to loosen their control over St Thekla, and though they’d dumped most of the competition in the bay, in truth they’d been fighting Dockers as much as House Orlock. That was not ideal. She wanted this district because it produced Abyssal, and only locals had the knowledge to make it in quantity. That meant negotiating a surrender – problematic, since the Dockers didn’t much trust outsiders, and spoke a dialect unique to their closed society.

Thank the God-Empress for Locusta. Usually Dockers didn’t ink up with outside gangs, but Locusta had got stabbed in lockup and transferred to Cellblock Gamma-72 for safety.

It was an Escher block. She’d pledged in order to survive, making her the only member of the House that could speak Thekla creole and knew the social protocols. Vayne had swapped three of her own gangers to a crew in Sump City in exchange for the juve.

‘She’s ready to begin,’ Locusta said. ‘She says Orlock kicked her twenty per cent of every brick sold. If you want to control the district, she needs thirty.’

Vayne smiled with a warmth she didn’t feel. ‘Tell this haggard sea crone the Orlocks paid twelve, not twenty, and we’re prepared to offer fourteen.’

‘Figure I’ll skip the sea crone part,’ said Locusta, chewing again. ‘Only polite.’

‘What’s going on?’ Servalen’s micro-bead buzzed. Tellic sounded agitated, on edge. ‘Ringmaster, you read?’

‘Standby.’

Servalen had approached the cannery via the wharf road, weaving in and out of alleys so the picket guards didn’t make her. She’d got around to the far side, away from the main gate.

She slid into a shoulder-width alley, nestled behind a coolant system housing, and pulled the relay unit from her pocket. The signal-strength runes had gone to zero. She cued up her micro-bead. ‘Talk.’

‘Sir! I was capturing audio from inside the convoy, little interference, but mostly clean. Then it–’

‘We have a problem. We’d assumed they’d meet in one of the block towers. Standard ganger pattern. But they’re in the old cannery.’

Tellic swore. ‘That place is full of metal. Bad for signals. It’s like a headshot with a small-calibre bullet – the waves just bounce around inside, no way to exit.’

‘So even if the target is in there, Acrobat can’t signal us. And we can’t pick up the signals intelligence to justify our move.’

‘Can you get closer?’

‘Risky,’ she said. ‘Security patrols, heavily armed.’ She leaned out, spotted a fake enforcer standing at the gate in the cannery’s side fence. It was the one with the rebreather on her belt, a combat shotgun slung across her chest.

‘We’re fragged if we do, fragged if we don’t here,’ she said. ‘Vayne’s almost never this exposed. If we don’t go in, we’ll miss our shot. But if we execute and Vayne’s not there, we’ll drive her underground and expose Acrobat. Another undercover burned.’

But even if Vayne’s there, Servalen thought, there’s no guarantee there will be enough evidence to placate Escher and the guilders. The lord provost marshal would have an opening to take away her task force – maybe even bust her to patrol. A death sentence, given the grudges she’d formed in the underhive.

‘Your call, boss. Just remember it’s a fifteen-minute inbound for the subjugators.’

‘If we wait much longer, this thing will be over.’ She sighed. ‘Standby, I’m going close.’

She keyed the link off. Bounced on her heels, psyching herself up. Breathed in long, huffed the breath out in puffs. Then slapped herself, hard, mashing her nose with the heel of her hand. She checked her palm, made sure there was blood. Called up some tears, slipped out of the alley when the guard was looking the other way.

‘Officer? Officer?’ Servalen wailed, staggering towards the fake enforcer.

The armoured ganger stared for a moment, uncomprehending, before realising how close Servalen was getting. She fumbled with the shotgun slung across her chest. Clearly, she wasn’t used to it, because she’d belted it too tight during the convoy ride. Not enough slack to bring it into play.

‘Thank the Throne, officer. He took my credit purse. He looked like a real vendor, said we were going to look at some knock-off handbags at his workshop, but then he had a knife and…’

‘Er, go to the station, miss,’ the ganger said, wrong-footed. ‘We’re on special business, like. Public’s s’posed to stay away.’

‘I think he went this way, did you see anyone?’ She thrust a hand in her pocket, pointed with the other hand. ‘I think that’s him.’

The ganger looked.

Idiot, thought Servalen.

She didn’t even need to hit her – just pressed the shock knuckles’ contact pads to the ganger’s exposed throat. A pop like a fuse blowing, a whiff of skin char, and she went down.

‘That’s why we use the faceplate, officer.’

‘Fine,’ growled Vayne. ‘We will pay you twenty per cent of street price per brick we sell. No higher. For that, the Queens buy all the Abyssal you can produce.’

Locusta translated, halting to find the right words. Each stutter was another little delay, getting under Vayne’s skin, making her itchy to run.

Negotiations had dragged out. Thirty minutes at least. She didn’t like being pinned down. Wanted to get in, strike the deal, and be on her way. But the matriarch had sensed that impatience and used it as leverage.

‘On your side,’ Vayne continued, ‘you use this factory to can the bricks and ship them between hive levels. On our side, the Queens provide protection for all shipments and security for the district. You produce, we distribute. You get twenty per cent.’

‘Purity clause,’ Base-Eight interjected.

‘Right, yeah. You guarantee each brick to be ninety per cent pure or better.’

The old woman shifted, responded, her pearls rattling.

‘The wet market revenue,’ said Locusta. ‘She wants to tithe only ten per cent.’

‘Whatever,’ Vayne growled. ‘Queens don’t quibble over pocket credits.’

The matriarch said something else. Locusta paused.

‘What did she say?’

‘She…’ Locusta’s brow knit. ‘She wants to offer you an alternate deal. You pay her twenty-five per cent of street price on each brick. And she’ll… solve a problem for you?’ She repeated something in Thekla.

The matriarch pulled aside her curtain of pearls, making direct eye contact with Vayne for the first time.

‘I said,’ she started, in halting Low Gothic, ‘that for twenty-five per cent, I can do you a favour.’

Base-Eight stepped forward. ‘This is highly–’

‘What kind of favour?’ Vayne rubbed two fingers together, itching to cook this impertinent old crone.

‘A mole. A traitor. I can give you them.’ She smiled with coral-inlaid teeth. ‘Worth five per cent, hein?’

‘Deal,’ said Vayne.

The matriarch turned to Locusta. ‘I know your family, Jessen Locusta. Grandparents lived on my hab-block before they moved uphive. But they visit. And old women talk about their grandchildren, you know? Share picts.’ She drew a knife from her sleeve. A fisherman’s fillet knife, long and thin, swept back at the point. ‘You don’t look like the Jessen Locusta I know.’

Locusta took a step backward, eyes darting.

‘But there’s an easy way to check. Jessen Locusta has a glass eye. Lost it as a girl. Perhaps you can tell your boss which one, and she’ll give it a little tap?’

The matriarch held the knife out to Vayne.

Locusta bolted, but a ganger snared her, pinned her arms.

Vayne swept up the knife, grabbed the front of Locusta’s flak vest and pulled her up close. ‘So which eye, sis? Eh? Look at your mouth. You look like one of them fish in the market. Gape, gape, gape. Innit an easy question?’

‘I…’

Vayne laid the knife on her cheek, resting the tip a finger width below the orbit of Locusta’s right eye socket.

‘Tell you what, love, let’s try the right one first…’

Locusta felt the blade slide under her cheek like a piercing. Felt the pressure as it worked its way towards the globe of her eye.

The first shot sparked off the grille of the factory floor. Then another, then another. Hard rounds slashed down from above, landing among the milling gangers like a rain squall. An Escher screamed as a slug ricocheted into her shin. Base-Eight grabbed Vayne and threw her towards cover. Eschers and Dockers scattered for the safety of rusted equipment.

Vayne had left the fillet knife in Locusta’s cheek. The ganger slammed her head back into the woman holding her, felt the hands let go. Pulled the blade free and slashed backward. Her captor fell away screaming. Most of the gangers were already gone, probably drawing beads on her from behind cover.

Then Locusta saw the matriarch, struggling, tottering, bone-woven vestments impeding her flight. Locusta moved fast, collaring the old woman and swinging around behind her, knife at the wrinkled throat.

‘I’m backing up,’ she yelled. ‘Everyone easy.’

Temporary respite. The Dockers wouldn’t shoot, and if the Queens risked firing at her, the whole neighbourhood might take up guns and smoke Vayne’s crew.

More hard rounds spattered down from above, pinging off equipment, keeping the Queens pinned.

Perfect timing. Locusta – or rather, Scrutinator Kress – ditched the old woman and darted for the shadows.

The Eschers opened fire, muzzle flashes stabbing at Locusta, at the catwalks above – damn near everywhere.

Servalen ran, boots clanging the catwalk. Shots sparked on metal decking behind her. A las-bolt caught the handrail to her left, snapping it upward. Its bent ends glowed orange like metal fresh from the forge.

The autopistol she’d ditched on the catwalk – one she’d stripped off the fake enforcer – had been nearly as hot, bleeding smoke from both barrel and cartridge ejector. She’d put two clips through it within thirty seconds, full-auto.

It had been extreme range for an autopistol. Even an enforcer-trained marksman couldn’t hope to do more than cause a panic. But that’s all she’d wanted. Stir things up. Put a boot in the vent-wasp nest.

Now she had to deal with the swarm.

Las-shots sizzled past. Hard rounds chewed the rockcrete ceiling. She’d come up here because she knew the signal would be best, and that decision was saving her life. The sheer height of the upper galleries was protecting her, along with the tangle of equipment.

She’d nearly reached the back staircase when an impact struck her lower back. It kicked her a half-step forward, the oversized enforcer armour she’d looted from the ganger taking most of the impact. Her hand went to her back and came away warm and sticky – she looked at the black blood on her fingers before realising why she felt no pain.

There were chunks of rotted grey meat in the sticky ichor. A las-bolt had overcooked one of the ancient fish cans and exploded it, sending a chunk of shrapnel and a handful of rotting fish into her backplate.

She had no plan. But her overhead vantage point meant she could see what direction Kress – AKA Acrobat, AKA Locusta – was headed. Servalen went the same direction.

She keyed her micro-bead. ‘Circus. Circus, come in. Execute on cannery. Execute. Code one-one-three-omega, enforcer in danger. One-one-three-omega.’ Her hand found the emergency beacon in her pocket and she mashed the button, stumbling as she ran, bent nearly double to avoid the storm of chasing fire.

Her micro-bead spat back white noise and bleated syllables.

‘Ring–ster, sig–’ Static. ‘–firm order.’ Static. ‘Vayne th–’ Static. ‘–xecute?’

Either the signals had made it through, or they hadn’t. No time to do a rebroadcast. She made the end of the gantry, drew her custom autopistol and pointed it down the stairs.

They were clear and shielded from fire, bracketed between a solid wall on the right and heavy equipment on the left.

The steps led to an overseer’s office, a place for the floor boss to observe the cannery-jacks at work. It was the logical defensive strongpoint. Elevated but not so exposed as the catwalk. Limited avenues of approach. Fix some ballistic board over the windows and it might as well be a damn bunker.

Servalen descended quickly, quietly. Pistol braced in an isosceles stance, arms extended in a sharp triangle, her body bent forward at the waist. A stance that faced the hardened plates of her flak vest towards potential attackers.

Her whole career, colleagues had ribbed Servalen about her boxy little autopistol, saying it lacked stopping power. Even the precinct armourer, who she’d paid out of pocket to mill a lighter, narrower frame and disable the burst fire, had chuckled a little handing it over. But Servalen liked to hit what she shot at, and the auto gave her tight groupings even after several hundred rounds. Besides, its concealability meant the custom could travel where her bulky service revolver couldn’t.

Another blistering crackle of gunfire. Someone below had exposed themselves, dodged out of cover and caught some fire.

Footsteps, light and agile, sounded in the overseer’s office below. A shadow fell on the bottom of the steps.

‘Ringmaster,’ challenged Servalen.

‘Acrobat,’ came the countersign. Clearly Kress had come to the same conclusion about this office. ‘They’re regrouping, sir. Will hit us in thirty, for sure.’

Servalen swept down the stairs, fast but careful. The overseer’s office was no bigger than a hab-block living room. On her left, a metal desk sat before a double picture window that surveyed the factory floor. On the right, a rusted vox-set stood on a table. And directly in front, a mesh staircase leading down to the factory level.

So there were two exits – one up to the catwalk, one down to the canning floor.

Kress stood by the down staircase, flattened against the wall, a knife in one hand, ready to gut whoever followed her.

‘Good to see you, Eriene,’ said Servalen, bent double to stay below window level. ‘Brought you something.’ She shrugged off the combat shotgun and passed it over.

Kress racked the slide. ‘Cavalry coming?’

‘Breachers. Fifteen minutes.’

A hard round spiderwebbed one of the window panels and flattened against the back wall.

‘Spectacular,’ Kress said.

Servalen slid into a crouch beside the desk, keeping below the broken pane.

Two more slugs hit the glass, cracking it so badly it looked like a mosaic. Servalen smashed it outward with the butt of her pistol, before another shot could explode it inward and cover them in shards.

‘Nine months undercover was too damn long, sir.’

‘To be fair, we pulled it off until two minutes ago.’ Servalen peeked over the sill. ‘Docker coming up the right.’

Kress swung her combat shotgun around the door frame. The boom of its discharge was like artillery in the small space. ‘Got him.’ Kress flattened again, racked the slide. A red plastek shell ejected in a somersault, still smoking as it rattled across the rockcrete floor.

The second panel of the window blew inward, autogun fire chewing it apart.

Servalen adjusted position, came out from the side this time. The full-auto fire made the gunner easy to locate – an Escher, sheltering behind a conveyor belt. Servalen fired twice, bursting cans and driving the gunner down. She saw movement on her left, swept the auto around.

Found herself looking at the black barrel of a huge stub-revolver. It banged.

A hard round punched the left side of her vest. She felt a rib crack.

But that was a one-and-done shot. The shooter, a Docker, was doing all the dumb ganger crap enforcers were trained not to do. Firing a large-calibre pistol one-handed like in the propaganda picts, the recoil ensuring only the first trigger pull would be accurate. Facing her side-on because he thought it made him a smaller target. Really, it just exposed the weakest part of his flak– the side buckles where the plates met.

Servalen drilled three shots into the gap. Tight grouping.

She ducked before he hit the floor, las-bolts ionising the air above her head. They temporarily dazzled her, leaving white-hot after-images on her vision.

Servalen blinked away the bars of light. Fumbled at the round impact on her vest. There was a hole there. Warm liquid pulsing along with her elevated heartbeat.

Not a fish can this time.

Kress’ shotgun roared twice.

Boom. Rack. Boom.

‘Only six more shells,’ Kress said. ‘You got anything else?’

‘One stubber reload for the auto. Two-shot compact.’

‘We’re gonna make it through about three minutes of this fifteen-minute siege.’

Servalen heard chains rattle. ‘Catwalks,’ she said, firing twice at shadowy figures carrying a bulky item between them. A support weapon.

Below on the factory floor, gangers were rolling towards them like they were the corner pocket on an uneven cue-ball table.

She opened her micro-bead. ‘Circus. Circus, despatch all units. Execute. Execute. Execute.’

From the catwalk, the heavy stubber began to fire.

Well this whole day had turned into a great big skut-burger, thought Arsonia Vayne.

By now she was supposed to be on her blinged-out sump yacht, poppin’ corks and toasting her new district. She’d even built a pyramid of glasses, ready for the chilled Wildsnake. Written a damn toast.

Instead, she’d been humiliated by some Docker clan-mother. Found out she’d brought an infiltrator to the most important meet of her life. And now she was flattened against canning equipment, getting rust on her dress, trying to count how many top gangers she’d lost.

And against enforcers, no less.

At first, she’d thought Locusta might be an Orlock plant, sent to scuttle the deal. But no. The way these two bastards moved was tactical. Helmawr-trained killers, polished and efficient. Boring, really. Lacking identity.

What the hell was the point of fighting if you didn’t add a little flourish?

Base-Eight slid up beside her, a vox headset in one hand, the cord trailing to a caster unit on the back of a crouching juve. Militarum model, big-time powerful.

‘We’ve got enforcer teams incoming,’ said Base-Eight, offering the earpiece. ‘Must’a been a sting. We’re holding them for now. Nin fixed their signal.’

Vayne took the earpiece, blocked her other ear to cut out the incessant hammering of the heavy stubber.

She heard screaming. Crosstalk. Signals overlapping.

‘–alted. Repeat. This is Fire Team Beta, we’ve hit street barricades. Taking fire from hab-block windows. Can you support, Alpha? We–’

‘–ingmaster, did you light your emergency beacon? KB battered the damn container doors open and took off runn–’

‘–the frag was that? Something tore past us. Waist-high. Metal. Any of you arseholes running a combat servitor?’

‘These bastards ain’t worth getting caught,’ said Base-Eight.

Vayne snarled. Fingered the enamelled stimm-slug unit fixed to her chest like a cameo. ‘I’ll scrag them fast, then.’ She grabbed the vox-girl. ‘Tell them to use the heavy stuff. I don’t care about damage.’

The girl nodded, swallowed.

Servalen was halfway through her second magazine when the grenade fell between her feet.

It might have rolled out of reach, if not for the carpet of brass shell casings clustered around her, made tacky with her own blood. Instead she got a moment, quick as a picter-flash, to see the stencilled designation between the white bands: M-223 PHOS.

Incendiary, of course. Promethium Queens.

She scooped up the canister and pitched it over her shoulder, back through the window. The detonation was a hollow sound, like a metal beatball bat hitting a good drive. Ear-piercing shrieks carried back on the superheated air.

The screams were so loud, she almost didn’t hear the wash of the chem-thrower.

‘Masks!’ Servalen shouted, the word coming out muffled through the enforcer helm’s respirator. Jets of mauve smoke swept down the catwalk stairwell.

Kress sucked a breath, fired a shell up the staircase, then dropped the street-sweeper.

Coughing, she fumbled out a respirator, held it to her face. ‘Shotgun out,’ she shouted, through the cheap rubber.

That’s it, then, Servalen thought. Subjugators didn’t make it.

As scrutinator primus, she’d rate a public funeral. Probably Kress too. Good placement for their ash boxes at the Judicial Cenotaph. She wondered if her mother might see it in the pict-reels, if she’d bother to visit the grave. Probably not. Old Mum had volunteered Servalen for service to get rid of her, after all.

They’d gone down swinging, the forensics would show that. The place looked like Hive Arcos after Hale’s last stand. Floor littered with casings, glass, discarded magazines and blood. Every surface pockmarked and las-scorched. The vox-set on the back wall shredded. Upper steps stained gang-tag-bright from the chem-thrower. Purple haze in the air.

‘Incoming topside!’ gagged Kress, knife out.

Servalen dived across the floor, scattering brass as she slid, coming to a stop with her auto trained up the hazy staircase. Shadows lurked there. Confusing shapes above the tangled body of the chem-thrower girl. Too many legs – a spindly tripod.

The heavy stubber crew. They were setting up to fire right down on them.

Servalen blazed away, half blind. The Dockers twitched, juked, slumped against their weapon.

‘Below!’

Servalen rolled over, pistol pointed between her knees. Saw mohawks.

Eschers coming up the low stairs. Almost on top of her, the lead pointing a lasrifle. A flash. Servalen’s head bounced off the deck.

Kress barrelled into the lasgunner from the side, arm barred across her throat. Slammed her against the wall, shivved her prison-style where her short-cut flak vest ended at the midriff.

Dizzy from the las-shot, Servalen pulled the trigger on the second one. The round flattened against her flak vest. She pulled the trigger again.

Nothing. The auto’s slide was back. Empty. Barrel wafting smoke.

The ganger was on her with a stiletto. Grappling, stabbing. The blade slashed up towards her throat. Servalen dropped her chin so it raked along the ribbed front of her rebreather.

Wild eyes flared down at her. Pupils huge. Stimm-crazy. Ganger hadn’t even thought to use the laspistol in her off-hand. Instead she beat at Servalen with pistol and blade, like a bird defending a nest.

The knife plunged straight at her eye, so directly the blade looked like a diamond. Servalen felt the jarring impact as it cracked into the eyepiece and lodged there between ballistic glass and helmet, right where the tear duct would be.

Servalen pushed her feet up under the girl, tried to throw her off. No dice, too tenacious. So she reached for the large-bore compact holstered at her ankle. Found the dual trigger.

Didn’t even bother drawing it – just fired straight through the holster.

Gore blanketed the ceiling. The stimmed ganger slid away.

Servalen scrambled for the laspistol. Found it. Yanked the stiletto out of her fractured eyepiece.

God-Emperor, her head. She put a palm to her helm and found a burned crease along the side, hot to the touch. There was a ringing – no, an electronic shriek.

‘Another grenade?’ jabbered Kress. ‘Is that a grenade?’

It was coming from Servalen’s pocket. She removed the device, adrenaline-addled mind unsure of what it was.

The words came: emergency beacon.

KB-88 burst through the stained-glass window, legs extended, spraying pieces of shattered saint onto the factory floor.

The cyber-mastiff landed on a Docker, dug into his back with hooked claws and launched itself onto a fishmeal grinder, rebounding off the top to take an Escher down four yards away. The ganger fell, screaming into the serrated jaws, until KB-88 clamped her throat. Hard rounds bounced off its plasteel skin. Crimped one decorative ear. Unheeding, it shook the Escher like a rat. Blood spattered. Vertebrae popped. Then it took off after the next target, straight into a hail of lasgun fire.

It responded with a howl of firing servos and charged them.

Vox-speakers, faint in the distance, growing louder: ‘PALANITE ENFORCERS, PLEASE CLEAR THIS AREA. AUTHORITY FOR THIS ORDER GIVEN UNDER EDICT 2846/T SUBSECTION EPSILON. NON-COMPLIANCE IS AN OFFENCE.’

Servalen and Kress came down the mesh staircase, winging shots at the retreating gangers. The gangs had had enough. Enforcers meant it was time to clear out.

‘Vayne,’ Kress said, pointing.

Servalen saw the bell-shaped skirts disappearing through the door.

They pursued across the floor, weapons braced, looking for ambushers. None came. The only ones left were dead or too wounded to walk. Servalen whistled, and KB-88 stopped worrying at a corpse. It fell in, trotting beside her and looking up for approval, bloody jaws open.

If it had a tongue, it would be lolling, Servalen thought.

‘Good dog,’ she said.

Arsonia Vayne was running from the howl of sirens.

Enforcer breaching vehicles were driving over the chain-weave fences at the front of the cannery. Valkyrie engines screamed on the horizon.

But she could make it. The yacht was fast. They could be out through the sea gate in the dome before the trap closed.

Base-Eight, though, she wasn’t keeping up. Turned her ankle running from that dog-thing. Maybe broke it.

Too bad. Vayne could still hear Base-Eight calling out, begging Vayne to come back as she climbed the yacht’s boarding ladder. Vayne didn’t look round.

She probably should’ve shot Base-Eight, she reflected. Two in the cranium, just to be sure. If the enforcers took her alive, there was a lot of evidence in her head. In that dataslate she carried. But Vayne was a sentimental sod at heart, when it came down to it.

‘Cast off,’ she told a deckhand.

Seconds later, Servalen and Kress came across Base-Eight, still limping along the dock, begging Vayne for help.

She looked just like the photo pinned to Servalen’s push-board. The one marked Lilly AKA ‘Base-Eight’ – Bookkeeper.

Servalen pointed to her. ‘Detain.’

KB-88 sprung onto Base-Eight’s back, fixed its jaws around her skull and pinned her to the weathered dock, growling into the back of her head.

‘Stay,’ said Servalen, as she limped past the rigid hound and shaking ganger. Her headache was unbearable now, and the wound in her side maybe more serious than she’d imagined. It was getting hard to breathe through the respirator, so she stripped the damaged helmet and dropped it.

But Kress, Kress ran. Knew that this was their chance, and her blood was up. Shouldered her lasgun, sprinted, calling to Servalen. Clambered up the ladder and disappeared into the second deck, barrel first.

Climbing the ladder was like driving a spike into her side. Thankfully, everyone was too scattered to realise who was who, and the crew didn’t pay Servalen any mind. After all, she was wearing the stolen enforcer armour from the Escher convoy, and during the siege, none of them had got a look at her up close.

A lasgun cracked in the interior of the ship. Kress. She should go with her, hunt down Vayne. Because as good as Kress was – she’d spent time in Long-Range Elimination – Vayne was going to kill her. She knew the terrain and had the crew on her side, plus a rogue wyrd. If Servalen didn’t intervene, Kress might manage to eliminate Vayne, but would certainly die in the attempt.

Or…

They had the evidence in Base-Eight. They’d stopped the deal. And if they killed Vayne, what good would it do them if the ship managed to slip out of the dome? The crew would kill them.

Disable the engines, though. Do that and Vayne couldn’t escape. The subjugators would take her, or at least kill her.

But Kress, Kress who she’d left undercover so long – perhaps too long – would die.

Servalen reminded herself of her rule: a person is only valued as long as they remain useful. And Kress, Emperor bless her, had outlived her usefulness.

Was that soulless of her?

There was a stab-light mounted outside the hatch that led below deck. Servalen grabbed it, clicked it on, and crossed her wrists in a low-light search stance – pistol braced directly above the stab-light so she could dazzle an attacker just before ending them.

And she descended into darkness.

Kress could feel the deck vibrate beneath her feet. The engines had started. In the corner of her eye, she saw small fishing junks slide by the porthole.

Kress took each narrow corridor, careful, precise. Clearing staterooms one by one. No one was looking for her. A few times, gangers sprinted past. They were all focused on the external threats – lining up at the rail to fire at the shoreline. Getting heavy weapons topside. She could hear the howl of Valkyrie engines, official threats broadcast via mega-vox. Occasionally, aerial stab-lights washed the ship, spearing in through the portholes to make bright, shadow-puppet displays of the objects inside.

She heard the explosive whoosh of a rocket launcher. Hammering stubbers.

Kress didn’t care. She wanted Vayne. Wanted her for the things she’d seen that woman do – the things that woman had made her do. That Orlock juve they’d taken on the container ship raid, with the brown eyes. That old mamzel who’d wandered into the crossfire one day. All the times she’d had to walk into the businesses of poor and desperate people, barely making it, and wreck the place because they’d paid the wrong gang.

Scrutinators avoided sending an enforcer undercover for extended periods. Mental breakdown and defection rates got too high after six months. Kress had done nine. Far too long.

Throne-damned Servalen. She’d done the same thing to that kid Rink. Ran her until the stress made her sloppy, kept pushing to get deeper rather than pulling her out. And now she’d killed Kress, too.

But Kress wasn’t going down alone.

Ahead, a room. A big room. Running footsteps. A ganger came out, a burn-scarred lieutenant named Ferral. Kress had once watched her douse a captured Orlock with promethium and light a match. She sprinted into the corridor and stopped short in the gloom.

‘She wants the vox,’ said Ferral. ‘Have you seen Nin… oh.’

Kress dropped her with one shot.

The room was a canteen. Arsonia Vayne stood behind the bar, an open bottle of Wildsnake in her hand. She took a slug from the neck. There were three more in a bucket nearby, next to a pyramid of glasses. Promethium lamps, one on each white-clothed table, lit the canteen a tasteful orange.

‘I should’ve been more careful with you,’ said Vayne. ‘Elaborate though. Who’d have thought? If you’d come straight to me, I would’ve known you were a plant. But that bitch Servalen made me come to you. Sacrifice for you. Baited me. Suppose the real Locusta is dead, eh?’

She was. Knifed in a prison brawl. Kress had replaced her, stolen her identity in the prison hospital after they’d taken the real Locusta out in a bag. Made the ‘safety transfer’ to an Escher-held block.

But she wasn’t going to tell this flaming scav-bag anything.

She opened fire. Las-bolts drilled towards Vayne. Glanced off her armoured dress. She slapped her cameo and ducked behind the bar, and Kress kept firing. Scorching holes in the bar front. Exploding the pyramid of glasses. Bursting the liquor bottles racked behind the counter so alcohol cascaded like a sump waterfall.

It looked wild and random. It was not.

Kress picked up the nearest lamp and threw it into the back wall.

The liquor caught. Flames raced down, licked upward.

Arsonia Vayne stood, wreathed in flame – and took a step. Then another.

She stepped out of the inferno, unburnt. Her eyes were two candle flames, licking at her eyebrows, matching the active pilot lights on each hand flamer vambrace.

‘Stupid juve,’ she said, extending a hand. ‘You think a pyromancer can burn?’

Kress raised her lasgun, but flame washed towards her. She dived, rolled. Saw that a track of flames had seared right through her last position. She fired again.

Arsonia Vayne triggered her flamer, a short burst, and swept her hand through it, wiping it left and right as if painting in the air. Las-shots winked off of the flamewall, scorching ceiling and floor.

The lasgun clicked empty.

Vayne laughed, snatched a roiling handful of fire out of the air and flung it towards Kress.

Kress dived. Crawled on her belly between the tables as they ignited. Vayne followed, tracing flames in the air like an orchestra conductor. The whole canteen was so hot, Kress felt like she might pass out. Her lungs filled with oily smoke.

The heat lessened. Disappeared.

‘Best not torch my own ship,’ said Vayne, looming above her. She dragged her fingers through the air, slow, the flames dying down and winking out like candles at the end of their wicks.

Kress coughed, felt like she’d never get a whole breath of air again.

‘Rink Scavino was one of you, yeah?’ Vayne picked up a glowing ember. Enfolded it in her hands. Closed her eyes, like she was praying. ‘Let me show you how she died.’

It started as a small ember within Kress. Hot and dull, similar to heartburn. Then it spread. Lighting up along her veins and nerves like refinery pipework gone ablaze. Hit her head. She burned with fever. Sweat popped on her brow then sizzled off in the superheated air.

‘Arsonia Vayne,’ said a voice.

The pain relented. Kress looked. Through tunnel vision, she saw a light, white and pure. For a foolish minute, she believed it was an angel. Then her eyes adjusted and she saw Servalen, laspistol braced on a yellow boating stab-light.

‘Scrutinator Primus Servalen,’ said Vayne. She opened her hand to show the crackling ember, blew it to flaring life, then crushed it. ‘Burn,’ she willed.

‘You’re such a disappointment, Arsonia.’ Servalen took a step forward, unfazed. ‘All this time, I thought you had a real wyrd, not a stimm-slug full of ghast.’

Kress felt a creeping sensation as Servalen stepped closer. Like an illness coming on. Like bugs on her skin. Her gorge rose.

Vayne crushed the dead ember again. ‘Burn!’ she willed. Nothing. ‘Burn! Burn!’

Servalen stepped forward.

Vayne triggered her flamer, collected the flames in her hand. Snarled in defiance.

And howled. Orange flames caught cloth, roiling up her armoured sleeve. Blackened her hand to char. Licked up her high-necked dress to her dyed candle-flame hair.

Kress began to crawl backward. Not away from Vayne, but Servalen.

She got it, finally got it. The boss was a Pariah. A null. A blank, untouchable by the powers of the warp. More of a monster than the stimm-psyker that had tried to kill her.

Soulless.

Servalen had a bead on Vayne’s head. A perfect execution shot.

She didn’t take it. She let the Promethium Queen burn.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

David Annandale is the author of the Warhammer Horror novel The House of Night and Chain and the novella The Faith and the Flesh, which features in the portmanteau The Wicked and the Damned. His work for the Horus Heresy series includes the novels Ruinstorm and The Damnation of Pythos, and the Primarchs novels Roboute Guilliman: Lord of Ultramar and Vulkan: Lord of Drakes. For Warhammer 40,000 he has written Warlord: Fury of the God-Machine, the Yarrick series, and several stories involving the Grey Knights, as well as titles for The Beast Arises and the Space Marine Battles series. For Warhammer Age of Sigmar he has written Neferata: Mortarch of Blood and Neferata: The Dominion of Bones. David lectures at a Canadian university, on subjects ranging from English literature to horror films and video games.

Gary Kloster is a writer, a stay-at-home father, a librarian and a martial artist – sometimes all in the same day, seldom all at the same time. He lives among the corn in the American Midwest and his short fiction can be found in Analog, Apex, Clarkesworld and others. For Black Library, he was written the Necromunda novella Spark of Revolution, and a number of short stories.

Justin D Hill is the author of the Necromunda novel Terminal Overkill, the Warhammer 40,000 novels Cadia Stands and Cadian Honour, the Space Marine Battles novel Storm of Damocles and the short stories ‘Last Step Backwards’, ‘Lost Hope’ and ‘The Battle of Tyrok Fields’, following the adventures of Lord Castellan Ursarkar E. Creed. He has also written ‘Truth Is My Weapon’, and the Warhammer tales ‘Golgfag’s Revenge’ and ‘The Battle of Whitestone’. His novels have won a number of prizes, as well as being Washington Post and Sunday Times Books of the Year. He lives ten miles uphill from York, where he is indoctrinating his four children in the 40K lore.

Jonathan Green’s contributions to the Warhammer 40,000 universe include the Black Templars books Crusade for Armageddon and Conquest of Armageddon and the novel Iron Hands. In the Warhammer World, he wrote Necromancer, Magestorm and The Dead and the Damned. He is also the author of numerous short stories and the Path to Victory gamebooks Herald of Oblivion, featuring Imperial Fists Space Marines, and Shadows over Sylvania. He lives and works in London.

Mike Brooks is a science fiction and fantasy author who lives in Nottingham, UK. His work for Black Library includes the Warhammer 40,000 novel Rites of Passage, the Necromunda novel Road to Redemption and the novella Wanted: Dead, and various short stories. When not writing, he plays guitar and sings in a punk band, and DJs wherever anyone will tolerate him.

Will McDermott is a fantasy and science fiction writer who is well known for his novels featuring the Necromundan bounty hunter Kal Jerico: Cardinal Crimson, Lasgun Wedding and Blood Royal, co-written with Gordon Rennie. He recently returned to the underhive to write about the exploits of ‘Mad’ D’onne Ulanti in the novel Soulless Fury. He lives and works in Bothell, Washington with his family.

By day, Filip Wiltgren is a mild-mannered communication officer at Linköping University, where he also teaches communication and presentation skills at a post-graduate level. But by night, he turns into a frenzied ten-fingered typist, clawing out jagged stories of fantasy and science fiction, which have found lairs in places such as Analog, IGMS, Grimdark, Daily SF, and Nature Futures. Filip roams the Swedish highlands, kept in check by his wife and kids.

Denny Flowers is the author of the Necromunda short story ‘The Hand of Harrow’ and novella Low Lives, featuring the characters of Caleb and Iktomi. He lives in Kent with his wife and son.

Robert Rath is a freelance writer from Honolulu who is currently based in Hong Kong. Though mostly known for writing the YouTube series Extra History, his credits also include numerous articles and a book for the U.S. State Department. He is the author of the Black Library novel The Infinite and the Divine, and the short stories ‘The Garden of Mortal Delights’ and ‘War in the Museum’.

An extract from Kal Jerio: Sinner’s Bounty.

‘Oh, scav.’

Kal Jerico was already dropping into a crouch as the exclamation left his mouth. The axe was little more than a rusty fan blade lashed to a length of bone, and it cut the air with a thin whistle. With no Kal to stop it, the makeshift weapon continued its arc unimpeded, burying itself in a steam pipe. A boiling fug gushed, filling the causeway corridor.

Kal cursed again and fired one of his laspistols in the general direction of the axe-wielding mutie. He threw himself aside as a second cannibal erupted from a side corridor opposite him, autogun blazing. The newcomer wasn’t aiming, just shooting. A fine old underhive tradition – fill the air with enough lead, you were bound to hit something.

‘Scabbs,’ Kal snarled. Then, ‘Yolanda!’ The only answer he received was more shooting. No sign of his partners anywhere. Slugs perforated support struts, and the causeway gave an audible groan. It only remained aloft thanks to centuries of rust and a bit of luck.

Kal shoved himself across the floor, returning fire with more enthusiasm than accuracy. No time to worry about where the others were now. Not when he could hear the whoops and howls of his attackers, as they raced up creaking gantry stairs or shimmied down through broken transit shafts. He needed to be elsewhere, and quickly.

The fug began to thin, leaving a greasy residue on the air. The mutie with the axe was down, having caught a slug meant for Kal. But the other one was still standing, curses dripping from his blistered lips as he struggled to clear a jam in the autogun’s firing chamber. Kal rose to his feet, laspistol extended. The mutie froze, staring.

Kal winked, and shot him.

A moment later, he was running down the causeway, the rest of the cannibals in pursuit. Kal fired in his wake without looking. At worst, the volley would slow the fastest ones down. At best, he might kill one or two, and the rest would stop to eat them.

The causeway was a long stretch of rusty iron and sodden ferrocrete – one of a dozen extending across the upper reaches of the ruined hab-dome. Phosphorescent flora climbed the struts and girders that held the causeway in place, and slow drifts of glimmering pollen hung heavy on the air. The causeway was crumbling in places. Wide gaps made the path treacherous, but Kal was an old hand at running for his life in difficult terrain.

Even so, he was soon forced to holster his weapons. He needed his hands free to haul his lean frame along the more unstable sections of the causeway. But however cautious he was, he didn’t slacken his pace. The muties were hot on his heels, and they were hungry, by the sounds of it. Then, they were always hungry.

Of course, they also weren’t supposed to be this far south of Pipefall. Even as he ran, he wondered what had drawn them to this badzone. If the mutie tribes were moving south, that meant they were heading up from hive bottom, and that was bad for everyone. Bad, but also profitable. Mutie scalps were worth five credits apiece in Steelgate. Too bad there was no time to stop and collect a few.

He bounded over a chunk of rubble, his sword clanking against his legs, and saw that the path fell away into darkness ahead. Without slowing, he holstered his laspistols and darted out across a broken girder that extended partially over the gap. A tumble of torn hoses and conduits dangled over the empty space and as he reached the end of the girder, he leapt.

His intention, formed in the half-second before his leap, was to swing across the gap and land adroitly on the opposite side. Unfortunately, his weight pulled many of the artificial vines loose from their corroded housings. He found himself clinging desperately to a single length of electrical conduit, his momentum lost in his momentary flailing.

As he swung out over the gap, he glimpsed a forest of glowing flora below, and the polluted streams cutting through it. The lower levels of the hab-dome had collapsed under the weight of strange growths, and he could smell the sickly-sweet stink of toxic fumes. He heard a giggle, and saw that the muties had caught up with him.

They stared at him from the edge of the gap, eyeing him the way a rat eyed a hunk of meat. At least a dozen, maybe more. Starveling-thin, or bloated with cancerous tumours, they shifted and murmured, following him with their eyes as he swung gently from side to side. A few might have been licking their lips, but it was hard to tell, given the malformation of their faces. One of them looked down, picked up a length of pipe and jabbed at him.

‘Stop it,’ Kal said, kicking ineffectually at the pipe. The effort sent him in a slow circle. This seemed to amuse them, and more jabbing followed until he managed to kick the pipe out of the mutie’s grip. It clattered away into the dark below. They watched it fall, and then looked back up at him. Kal stared back at them.

Muties were the worst of the worst. The flotsam and jetsam of hive bottom, scraped out and churned up. Inbred, gripped by disease and malnutrition, they murdered, robbed and ate anyone they could catch. In Kal’s professional opinion, life in the underhive would have been vastly improved if every mutie was dead and their corpses safely incinerated.

Nonetheless, he tried an ingratiating smile. ‘So… what’s the cost of safe passage, these days? I’m all out of credits, but I’m always up for a bit of bartering.’

‘Nice boots,’ one of them grunted.

‘Nice coat,’ another wheezed.

‘Looks like he tastes nice, too,’ a third said, smacking her lips in a manner that was decidedly not lascivious. Heads nodded, and grunts of assent followed this assertion. Kal shook his head.

‘I warn you, I’m fairly certain I’m mostly gristle.’

‘Soft,’ a mutie crooned. ‘Soft uphiver. Smells so sweet.’

Kal began to regret taking his weekly bath so recently. It was just that a man wanted to look his best before going on a job. He had a reputation to maintain, after all. He was glad there was no one to witness him dangling here.

At the thought, he looked around, hoping to spot the familiar forms of his partners. They’d got separated when the muties had sprung their ambush. It was every man – or woman – for themselves in such situations, and Scabbs and Yolanda were experienced enough to look after themselves. Unfortunately, the muties had followed Kal, rather than the others.

‘Go find Scabbs,’ he said. ‘He’s slow and I’m sure that unsightly dermatitis of his will make him easy to chew.’ The muties, unfortunately, didn’t seem inclined to follow his advice. ‘No one ever listens to me,’ Kal muttered, as he spun slowly around and around. ‘I’m doomed to be unappreciated in my own time. Or eaten. Or both.’

He looked down, trying to gauge the distance to the bottom of the hab. Or even just to the glowing canopy of flora. But it was too far, even for someone with his luck. He looked up. The conduit wasn’t going to hold forever. There was no telling if it would last long enough for him to try and climb it. He was stuck, good and proper.

‘I admit, this is not a good day for the underhive’s greatest bounty hunter,’ he said, out loud. A mutie laughed and Kal made an obscene gesture. ‘Who asked you, you blister-faced sump-rat?’

One of them tossed a chunk of stone at him, and he drew a laspistol. Those closest drew back. Others levelled their own weapons.

‘Not the wisest option,’ Kal called out. ‘Shoot me and that’s your dinner gone.’ He gestured downwards meaningfully. ‘Wouldn’t want that, would you?’

The muties paused. Jaundiced gazes flickered back and forth, and they began to murmur among themselves. It soon took a heated turn. An exchange of blows swiftly followed. They were clearly at odds over the best course of action.

Kal used the opportunity to take stock of his surroundings. Experience had taught him that there was always a way out, if you had the wit to see it. He twisted about, looking for anything that might be of help.

The causeways stretched like a web of ferrocrete across the upper reaches of the dome. After centuries of neglect, toxic rains and hive quakes, most were little more than sections of skeletal struts and support beams. The cavernous slopes of the dome’s interior were a latticework of rotting walkways and abandoned transit shafts. Thousands of pipes jutted from among the ferrous escarpments, spilling sump-water down into the dark below. Hot slurry gushed ceaselessly through broken aqueducts, joining the rest of the spillage in torrential rivers of chemical toxicity.

In the distance, hidden by the steamy fug that rose from those slurry rivers, ancient mechanisms the size of battleships loomed like mountains of rusting slag. He’d heard stories to the effect that mutie tribes sometimes worshipped the primeval machines, but he’d never seen any evidence of it.

‘Picturesque, but unhelpful in the short term,’ Kal muttered as he blew a blond plait out of his face and turned his attentions to his immediate surroundings. As he’d expected, no sign of Scabbs or Yolanda. Not even any sign of Wotan, his loyal cyber-mastiff. Then, something had been a bit off about Wotan since he’d got his sprockets jangled during the… thing, the last time Kal had had the bad fortune to journey spirewards.

Thinking about the… thing made Kal even more desperate to escape. ‘You’ve been in worse situations, man,’ he said, out loud. ‘I mean, is this honestly worse than being – gah – married to Yolanda Catallus?’

Yolanda was an ideal partner in crime – most of the time – but as a partner in matrimony? He felt a shudder run through him at the thought. Yolanda was beautiful, in the same way that a Phyrr cat was beautiful – all the colours and general slinkiness hid a murderous temper. He’d once seen her beat a man to death with another, slightly smaller man. Then there were all the times she’d tried to kill him, either to collect one of the occasional bounties on his head or just because she’d been in a bad mood at the time.

And yet, there was something about her. A gutter-sheets poet of his acquaintance had once described her as Our Lady of the Underhive, in an ode to her fierce beauty. The poet had claimed that Yolanda was the underhive manifest – all its good points and bad, wrapped up in one tattooed package. Of course, when she’d heard about it, Yolanda had fed the poor bastard to a sumpkrok. Some people weren’t good with compliments.

But still, the thought lingered. Until he remembered where he was, and that now was definitely not the time to be thinking about Yolanda bloody Catallus. ‘Steady on, Kal,’ he muttered. ‘One problem at a time.’

The muties were still brawling. No one had started shooting yet, but it was only a matter of time. He spotted the girder he’d leapt from. He could just about reach it with his foot. He swung himself closer. If he could use it to boost himself, he might gain the momentum to swing to the other side.

But as his boot touched the girder, a mutie turned. Eyes wide, the mutant gabbled something unintelligible and swung a crude billhook out, trying to catch Kal’s ankle. Kal shot him, and swung backwards as the rest of the muties set up an ear-splitting caterwaul.

‘Backup would be nice,’ he shouted, hoping that someone might hear. ‘Anyone? No? Well scav you both!’ As he swung back towards the gathering muties, he fired again, not bothering to aim. The cannibals were so densely packed that he couldn’t fail to hit a few of them. But even as the wounded fell, the others pressed forwards, grabbing awkwardly for his legs or the edge of his coat.

‘Hands off the material, this is prime off-world leather,’ Kal snarled, as he lashed out with a boot and sent rotten teeth tumbling from a blistered mouth. He spun on his cable, swinging back out over the gap. The muties howled in frustration. Kal stretched out a foot, trying to hook a piece of broken pipe extending from the far side. He just missed it, and the motion sent him drifting back towards the muties. Another howl, this time of jubilation, stabbed at his ears. He spun in mid-air, his stomach lurching.

‘Shut up, shut up, shut up!’ He fired his laspistol again and again. ‘Slither back into your holes, because today isn’t your day, sump-scum. No one eats Kal Jerico.’ Leprous hands clawed at his trousers, and he thrashed his feet. ‘I said… back off!’ His grip on the conduit began to slip, and he quickly holstered his weapon. He looked up, wondering if he could reach the top before the conduit gave way. ‘Got to risk it. If the old plan doesn’t work, come up with a new one.’

He started to haul himself up, but the muties weren’t giving up so easily. He needed to get out of range of grabbing hands. He shifted his weight slightly, and the conduit swung away once more, out of easy reach.

A mutie held on a moment too long, and was dragged along with Kal as he swung back towards the opposite side. The mutant wailed in panic, mouldering paws clutching desperately at Kal’s legs. The creature was stick-thin, and wrapped in filthy bandages and rags that might once have been a cheap hazard suit. A ragged cowl covered his – her? – head, but for a mouth full of splintered, yellowing fangs.

Kal swatted at the mutant, trying to dislodge him. The conduit wouldn’t hold both of them, not for long. The mutie snarled and jerked a knife from his rags. They spun in an awkward gavotte as Kal caught the mutant’s bony wrist, narrowly preventing the knife from opening his belly. Dust and pollen sifted down from above, as the rubber casing of the conduit began to stretch and tear. Kal looked up.

‘Oh, scav me.’

The mutant twisted, trying to tear his hand loose from Kal’s grip. Kal tried to get a boot up between them, but found that such contortions were useless without any sort of leverage. As they spun faster and faster, the mutant lunged, jaws wide. If he couldn’t use his knife, he looked as if he was going to settle for getting a mouthful.

Just before the jaws reached him, the mutant’s head popped like a blister. He heard the shot that had killed his attacker a moment later. Kal wrenched the knife from the lifeless hand of the mutie a second before the body sagged and tumbled away. Someone was looking out for him after all. Not one to ignore opportunity’s call, Kal began to shimmy up the conduit while the muties were still trying to figure out what had just happened.

More shots pierced the gloom. He couldn’t tell where they were coming from, and neither could the muties. Most scattered, looking for cover. Some unlimbered antique weapons that even a Cawdor ganger would turn up his nose at and returned fire in all directions. But a few, with more hunger than sense, leapt for the conduit. It spun wildly as several of them caught it. One didn’t, and fell with a piteous wail. The others began to climb, their eyes fixed on Kal.

Kal climbed faster, muscles straining against gravity’s pull. Luckily, a cannibal’s diet wasn’t the best, and his pursuers weren’t as fast as he’d feared. A few tense moments later and he’d reached the thin framework of struts that stretched above the causeways. Despite a moment of vertigo, he managed to haul himself up off the conduit. He turned, rolled onto his stomach and began sawing away with the mutie’s knife.

It was hard going, but a bit of elbow grease and a hint of desperation was all it took to cut through the conduit sheath. The rubber slid down the metal, and he had a moment to appreciate the look of horror on the closest mutie’s blistered features as she suddenly lost her grip on the conduit and plummeted downwards. Screams rose as Kal’s pursuers fell away into the darkness. ‘Happy landings,’ he called out, and waved cheerfully.

Then, carefully, he began to clamber through the perilous canopy of rusted struts. Down below, the muties continued to shoot, but whoever had turned the tables on them had obviously got what they’d come for. Kal hoped whoever it was had a good explanation for leaving him hanging so long.

It took him some time, but he found his way down to the causeway below. A transit shaft had pulled away from the side of the dome and slumped against it. He swung himself down through the top of it, and picked his way down its length. One of the first lessons he’d learned in the underhive was how to climb quickly and safely. Down here there was no telling when you were going to need to move to higher ground, or, conversely, head for the safety of the lowest depths.

When he reached the bottom, he allowed himself to drop to the causeway. He landed in a crouch and turned. This part of the causeway resembled a forest of girders and support pillars, with a canopy of struts, conduits and rusty chains overhead. Though he could no longer see them, he could still hear the muties shooting at phantoms. He smirked. ‘Have fun,’ he muttered, as he rose to his feet.

From behind him, he heard the click of a weapon’s safety being disengaged.

Kal closed his eyes.

‘Oh, scav me.’

A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

Low Lives first published in 2019.
‘Dead Drop’ first published digitally in 2019.
‘The Last Voyage of Elissa Harrow’ first published digitally in 2020.
This eBook edition published in 2020 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Thomas Elliott.

Uprising © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2020. Uprising, Necromunda, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, The Horus Heresy, The Horus Heresy Eye logo, Space Marine, 40K, Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000, the ‘Aquila’ Double-headed Eagle logo, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.
All Rights Reserved.

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-78999-377-6

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

eBook license

This license is made between:

Games Workshop Limited t/a Black Library, Willow Road, Lenton, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, United Kingdom (“Black Library”); and

(2) the purchaser of an e-book product from Black Library website (“You/you/Your/your”)

(jointly, “the parties”)

These are the terms and conditions that apply when you purchase an e-book (“e-book”) from Black Library. The parties agree that in consideration of the fee paid by you, Black Library grants you a license to use the e-book on the following terms:

* 1. Black Library grants to you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, royalty-free license to use the e-book in the following ways:

o 1.1 to store the e-book on any number of electronic devices and/or storage media (including, by way of example only, personal computers, e-book readers, mobile phones, portable hard drives, USB flash drives, CDs or DVDs) which are personally owned by you;

o 1.2 to access the e-book using an appropriate electronic device and/or through any appropriate storage media; and

* 2. For the avoidance of doubt, you are ONLY licensed to use the e-book as described in paragraph 1 above. You may NOT use or store the e-book in any other way. If you do, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license.

* 3. Further to the general restriction at paragraph 2, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license in the event that you use or store the e-book (or any part of it) in any way not expressly licensed. This includes (but is by no means limited to) the following circumstances:

o 3.1 you provide the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.2 you make the e-book available on bit-torrent sites, or are otherwise complicit in ‘seeding’ or sharing the e-book with any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.3 you print and distribute hard copies of the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.4 you attempt to reverse engineer, bypass, alter, amend, remove or otherwise make any change to any copy protection technology which may be applied to the e-book.

* 4. By purchasing an e-book, you agree for the purposes of the Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000 that Black Library may commence the service (of provision of the e-book to you) prior to your ordinary cancellation period coming to an end, and that by purchasing an e-book, your cancellation rights shall end immediately upon receipt of the e-book.

* 5. You acknowledge that all copyright, trademark and other intellectual property rights in the e-book are, shall remain, the sole property of Black Library.

* 6. On termination of this license, howsoever effected, you shall immediately and permanently delete all copies of the e-book from your computers and storage media, and shall destroy all hard copies of the e-book which you have derived from the e-book.

* 7. Black Library shall be entitled to amend these terms and conditions from time to time by written notice to you.

* 8. These terms and conditions shall be governed by English law, and shall be subject only to the jurisdiction of the Courts in England and Wales.

* 9. If any part of this license is illegal, or becomes illegal as a result of any change in the law, then that part shall be deleted, and replaced with wording that is as close to the original meaning as possible without being illegal.

* 10. Any failure by Black Library to exercise its rights under this license for whatever reason shall not be in any way deemed to be a waiver of its rights, and in particular, Black Library reserves the right at all times to terminate this license in the event that you breach clause 2 or clause 3.