Uprising, page 4
‘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.’
‘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.’
