Other great Necromunda reads from Black Library

KAL JERICO: SINNER’S 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

UPRISING
An anthology by various authors
Includes the novella Low Lives by Denny Flowers

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

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2

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5

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7

8

9

10

11

12

About the Author

An Extract from ‘Uprising’

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.

1

The Slag Krocs had the Crackbones on the run, their war whoops almost drowning out the hammering of their boots as they chased the rival Goliath gang through the busted bowels of a ruined warehouse.

But then the krumper opened up.

Breaker Brass knew that sound. The thunderous roar that echoed off the cracked rockcrete walls and broken equipment had shaken his massive ogryn bones before. When he was home in his factorum, during those long, peaceful shifts when the Slag Krocs didn’t need his steel fists, Breaker used a krumper to fire lines of hot rivets through massive plates of metal. Krumpers were useful tools, and Breaker could make good things with them, but the gangers didn’t use them to make things. They stripped the krumpers’ safeties, modded their actions, and made them fire their heavy steel rivets farther, faster. They turned tools into weapons, and tried to kill each other with them.

Like now.

‘Down, you rat-brained idiots!’

Hasher Gob was just ahead of Breaker, a Goliath tall and lean for his house of giants. Hasher ran the Slag Krocs, and the grey that shot through the long braids of his hair and beard marked him as a survivor, even with the rapid ageing that plagued House Goliath. When he shouted, the other gangers jumped, and now they jumped damn fast, flinging themselves to the ground as the air over them filled with glowing slugs of heavy steel. But not all of them were fast enough.

One of the gangers in the lead got caught by the line of molten rivets the krumper was throwing. The superheated metal tore across his chest, digging red-hot craters in his heavy furnace plate armour, but one rivet found the exposed flesh of the Goliath’s neck. There was a wet, tearing crunch as steel smashed through the man’s throat, and then the hiss of blood flashing over to steam as the ganger hit the floor, dead and rolling.

Breaker snarled as he threw himself down behind Hasher Gob. He didn’t remember the fallen ganger’s name, but the dead man had been a Slag Kroc and when the gang came for him, Breaker Brass was part of the gang. If Hasher hadn’t shouted his order, Breaker would have been pounding towards the huge door set in the far wall of the warehouse, the hole the Crackbones had ducked through like rats, never mind the krumper’s thunderous stream of death. Breaker Brass worked best when he focused on one thing at a time, and right now he was focused on wrapping one of his augmetic hands around the head of the ganger holding that krumper and squeezing until all his fingers met.

But Hasher Gob had told him down, so Breaker Brass was down, crouched behind a rust-covered gear that was almost as tall as him, safe from the pounding bursts of rivets that were keeping the gang pinned. Waiting for Hasher to tell him what to do next – waiting, until Throater went flying by, bellowing for blood.

Hasher was yelling something then, every member of the gang was yelling something as the low-slung reptile went charging ahead, dragging its leash. Breaker Brass didn’t bother to try to sort out what they were saying. He saw the sumpkroc running, saw the red rivets slamming into the floor around it, and Breaker moved. He ran after the scaly monster, catching up with Throater in a few long strides, then dived. He caught Throater in his steel hands and rolled, dimly aware of the krumper’s roar, the stinging pain of molten steel splashing across his skin as slugs hammered down around him. But the only thing that really mattered in Breaker’s head was saving Throater, the savage, stinking mascot of the Slag Krocs.

Throater was almost as long as Breaker was tall and not much lighter. A thickly coiled column of muscle, the sumpkroc thrashed in Breaker’s arms, trying to get free. The scaly monster had got a hold of a Crackbones ganger earlier in the fight and ripped the man’s head off, chomping on it like a toy until his skull had finally shattered and Throater had been left with nothing but a mouthful of brains. The beast clearly wanted another toy, and it fought Breaker as he dragged it behind a pile of twisted scrap and out of the line of fire.

‘Right, Breaker!’ Hasher shouted. ‘You hit?’

Breaker rolled over and sat on Throater, pinning the sumpkroc under him. He had one of his massive augmetic fists wrapped around Throater’s collar, while the gang’s mascot gnawed grumpily on the steel knuckles of his other hand. When he had the toothy pet secure, Breaker finally considered his own condition. There were a few smoking spots on his hide, where boiling droplets of steel had landed on exposed skin, but those weren’t much more than what he usually got during a shift at the factorum. There was a sharper pain from the back of his shoulder, though, that came with the smell of burning meat. Breaker worried his hand free of Throater’s mouth, careful not to break any of the reptile’s vicious teeth, and reached behind him. He ran his hand over the thick metal furnace plates that Hasher Gob himself had strapped around him, searching for the source of that pain.

Breaker Brass’ hands had been replaced long ago with cybernetic steel. It made them stronger and tougher, at the cost of sensitivity. But Breaker didn’t need much of a sense of touch to find the hot crater centred in one of his shoulder plates. He dug his fingers into it and pulled out the half-melted rivet that had smashed through his armour. Luckily Breaker’s own tough hide had stopped it from going further, and all the slug had done was cook his shoulder a bit.

‘Good, Hasher,’ he shouted. ‘And Throater good.’ He rubbed a finger between the sumpkroc’s beady eyes, and the reptile finally stopped squirming, rumbling its thunderous purr at him.

There was a cheer from the rest of the Slag Krocs. Members of the gang came and went, usually in pieces, but Throater had been around for forever. ‘Right,’ Hasher shouted, his voice echoing in the sudden silence. The krumper had stopped its thunder now that the Sump Krocs were all hidden. ‘Ghork, you grease-fingered gummer! Place that bastard!’ The gang leader pointed back at a burn-scarred Goliath who was nursing a bloody hand. Ghork had been the one holding Throater’s leash.

‘Hear ya,’ the ganger shouted back, sprinting forward. He dodged and twisted across the ruined warehouse’s floor, spiked mohawk bouncing, but the krumper stayed silent. Ghork got all the way to the door in the wall before the rivet gun opened up again, thundering at the ganger as he poked his head through the opening.

Ghork flung himself to the side of the door, his hands flailing around his head. The ganger’s mohawk was smoking, split and set alight by a hot rivet. ‘They got me hair!’

‘Scav your hair!’ Hasher shouted. ‘Where are they?’

‘Is a waste pit, Hasher,’ Ghork called back. ‘Big heap o’ slag from the door to the bottom. They down there, meaning to plug us as we come.’

Hasher cursed. ‘Should have known those cowards wouldn’t go toe to toe!’ He shouted the last bit, trying to taunt the Crackbones, but if the other Goliath gang heard they weren’t coming out.

Breaker listened, staring at the door ahead, still stroking Throater’s head. ‘Can go,’ he said, scooping up the beast and taking it over to Hasher. ‘Slag Krocs follow. We get them.’ Breaker Brass nodded. It was a good plan. It used very few words. Those were the best plans.

But Hasher had other ideas. The Goliath caught hold of Throater’s collar and held the reptile, the heavy muscles of his shoulders bunching under his armour. ‘They’ll fill you full of rivets, Breaker, and then the factorum’s quota master will have my scarred hide.’ He looked past Breaker to Ghork. ‘That slag heap steep?’

‘Yeah!’

‘Slide steep?’

Ghork laughed, his mohawk still smoking. ‘Oh yeah.’

Hasher Gob grinned. ‘Breaker. Get me some of that sheathing.’ He pointed to a pile of metal sheets that lay on the floor. Breaker frowned, not sure why they weren’t charging, but did as he was told. Hasher handed Throater off and sent a few more up to the door with Ghork. They spent their time lobbing the occasional frag grenade down into the pit, giving the Crackbones something to think about while Hasher told Breaker Brass how to bend the sheathing into the shape he wanted. It was rough work, but in a few minutes the ogryn had bent up one end on each sheet, folding curves that arced back over the front of the plate.

Breaker liked making things, and by the time he was done he had forgotten about the Crackbones, forgotten the fight they were in the middle of, focused on the work. He was getting up to grab more sheets to work when Hasher punched him in the shoulder.

‘That’s enough.’ The gang leader stood in front of Breaker Brass. Goliaths were huge, gene-worked to be good workers, good fighters, but Hasher still had to look up to stare into Breaker’s eyes. ‘Gimme a listen now, big boy. We gonna show you how to slide.’

Breaker Brass stood, holding tight to the metal sheet. From each of his shoulders hung a Goliath ganger, the two smallest of the crew. Small being relative for any member of House Goliath, Breaker could feel their weight on his back, but it wasn’t too bad. He’d still be able to run when Hasher gave the sign.

Which was now.

The gang leader pumped his fist and Breaker moved. His huge muscles flexed, driving him forward, long legs eating up the floor as he sprinted towards the opening in the warehouse wall. The Goliaths clinging to him were cursing, trying to hang on, and his boots were like thunder, but the noise of Breaker’s charge was drowned out by a series of explosions as the Slag Kroc poised beside the door threw a barrage of grenades down into the pit. The ganger stopped just as Breaker reached him and bellowed ‘Now!’ in the echoes of the last blasts.

Breaker Brass did what Hasher had told him and jumped forward as hard as he could. For a long moment he hung in the air, arcing through the door, out of the warehouse into the darkness of the slag pit. He fell through the shadows, a giant target backlit by the ancient warehouse’s flickering lumens, and the darkness below him was split with muzzle flashes as the Crackbones fired at him. Shots whined by, or cracked into the steel sheet he held, a chorus of deadly greetings as gravity finally grabbed Breaker and pulled him down into a crunching landing on the heap of slag that lay below the door. The metal sheet Breaker held hit the steep pile of industrial waste with all the momentum from the ogryn’s charging run behind it, and started to slide. Fast.

The sheet roared down the slag pile, the rough curve Breaker had pounded into the front of it pushing down clinkers of ash and bits of broken waste. That curved piece of metal also blocked most of Breaker’s body from the guns of the gangers below, including the krumper, which had started firing again. A diagonal slash of red-hot rivets punched into the metal in front of Breaker’s face, but they didn’t tear through, didn’t touch him.

Breaker slid, momentum and gravity dragging him fast, protected by the shield of his makeshift sled, and it was one of the greatest things the ogryn had ever done. He whooped, a shaking bellow of joy that rose over the rattle of waste and the chatter of guns, and the Slag Krocs clinging to him shouted too as they shoved themselves up, clinging to his wide shoulders with one hand, balancing themselves so that they could open up with their autopistols as they thundered towards the other gang.

A bellow of pain echoed through the gunfire, the sound of one of the Slag Krocs’ slugs hitting home, but hard on the end of that cry came a choking gurgle over Breaker’s head and the stench of burning meat. The ganger clinging to the ogryn’s right shoulder convulsed, a still-glowing rivet planted in his belly. He pitched off the rattling sled, wasted as the rest of the pile, and Breaker snarled. He raised his head over the protective curve of the sled, and saw they were getting close to the bottom. Close enough for him to see a massive ganger standing there, holding the steaming, roaring krumper in his arms. The Crackbones stood to one side, and Breaker reached out, digging steel fingers into the waste careening by. The touch made the makeshift sled shift, until it was heading straight for the ganger. The Goliath snarled and held his place, krumper aimed right at Breaker Brass’ head. The tool roared and spat hot rivets through the air around Breaker, making the ganger clinging to his shoulder drop behind the protection of the sled’s curved front, but Breaker kept his head up. He could feel the heat of the glowing rivets as they passed, but he didn’t duck. His focus had latched on to the Goliath that held that heavy gun and nothing was going to break it now.

The sled hit the bottom of the waste pile and shot forward, steel screaming against the floor, sending sparks hissing through the air around Breaker. It headed straight for the ganger with the krumper, who jerked to one side, trying to get out of the way while still firing a storm of rivets at the ogryn. Breaker roared and grabbed at the floor, rolling, and the Slag Kroc clinging to him jumped clear so that the ogryn wouldn’t crush him. Breaker didn’t notice. He swung his head, searching, until he found his target again.

Breaker launched himself forward, charging like an ambull. His boots hammered across the floor, taking him straight at the ganger. The man was raising the krumper, trying to line it up, but Breaker Brass was already there. With a backhand swipe of one steel fist, he knocked the krumper out of his way, sending the heavy weapon clattering out of the Goliath’s hands. His other hand caught the ganger’s armour, and Breaker’s augmetic fingers dug in. The furnace plate, designed to protect Goliath workers from their deadly work around the furnaces of the factorums, was made of heavy plates of thick alloy, but those plates crumpled in Breaker’s grip, crushed by the heavy muscles in the ogryn’s arm and his metal fingers.

The ganger, like all Goliaths, was huge, thick with gene-smithed muscles, but Breaker Brass was an ogryn. He was the descendant of humans who had spent a thousand generations on harsh, high-gravity worlds, and his body bore that legacy. The Imperium classified his people as abhumans, so changed by their terrible environment that they had become a species apart, towering, massive, devastating. In his grip, the huge ganger was like a child, and Breaker drove him back into the rockcrete wall. The ganger grunted, one hand pounding at Breaker’s metal fist, trying to break his grip, while the other scrabbled for his fighting knife. Breaker pulled back his fist while the ganger jerked his knife free and slammed it into Breaker’s forearm. The sharp tip hit Breaker’s skin, hide tough as heavy leather, and dug in. Breaker felt it, but ignored it, too focused on driving his fist forward.

The punch took the Goliath in the face, smashing his nose, driving his head back. The ganger grunted, trying to pull his knife free to stab again, but Breaker Brass hammered three more blows into his head. His steel fists smashed out teeth, broke bones, tore out the metal spikes that the ganger had used to decorate his face. The knife slipped free from the ganger’s hand, fell unnoticed to the floor as Breaker threw one last punch. There was a wet crunch as his huge fist landed, and the Goliath’s head was driven backwards into the wall behind him, skull smashing into the rockcrete, splashing it red with blood that stank of rust and stimm.

Breaker Brass pulled back his hand one more time, staring at the gory ruin of the Goliath’s face. He blinked, considering the damage, and finally his focus slipped. He let the ganger go, noticing for the first time that the firefight was still going on around him.

The ogryn turned, and a slug ricocheted off the armour that covered his chest. The rest of the Slag Krocs had slid down the hill of waste and were now here, trading shots and blows with the Crackbones.

‘Breaker!’ Hasher crouched behind one of the abandoned sleds, bullets slamming down around him as he fired back with his stub cannon. ‘The krumper!’

Breaker nodded, given a new focus, and he strode across the floor to the heavy weapon. Another bullet cracked off his armour, and the searing bolt of a lasgun ripped through his trouser leg and burned a furrow across his thigh, but he ignored them. He picked the krumper up with his bloody hand, cradled the familiar tool in his arms, and looked back to Hasher.

‘There!’ the gang leader shouted, pointing to a knot of Crackbones that were on a catwalk partway up the wall, firing their guns down. Breaker raised the krumper and fired. He wasn’t used to using krumpers at this kind of distance, but the glowing red rivets made it easy to aim, and he adjusted, slamming death across the walkway. One ganger pitched forward, plummeting, but the others ducked, aiming their guns towards the ogryn. Breaker kept firing, sending a storm of metal that shattered rockcrete and broke supports until, with a groaning crash, the catwalk tore away and spilled gangers as it fell. It hit the ground with a roar, and then everything quieted, gunfire dying away as the Slag Krocs realised they were the only ones left standing. Then the silence was broken by the sound of cheers.

2

‘You did good, Breaker.’

Hasher sat across from the ogryn, reknotting the rusty barbed wire that held back the long braids of his hair. The loot they’d stripped from the other Goliath gangers was stacked around him, weapons and ammo clips, armour and piles of credits. Throater lay at his feet, scaly belly distended from feeding on the corpses, a half-crushed head gripped loosely in the reptile’s teeth as it dozed. It was the usual post-fight scene, down to the haggard Goliath called Doc hunched over Breaker Brass’ arm, trying to treat the wound left by the enemy ganger’s knife.

‘Good work,’ Breaker grunted. He frowned as Doc slammed a medical stapler against his forearm, the metal points of the staples digging into his skin but failing to actually penetrate it and close the wound.

‘Damn your hide,’ Doc grunted. He dropped the stapler and grabbed a roll of tape, the kind used to seal up leaky pipes, and wound it around Breaker’s arm. ‘Don’t take this off for half a dozen shifts,’ he said. ‘And don’t do it sober. It’s gonna take a bunch of hair with it.’ Doc slapped some more tape over the burn on Breaker’s leg then stumped off to look at the prisoners they had taken. The enemy Goliaths were wrapped in chains whether they were conscious or not. The ones who were awake looked mad enough to bite through those steel links if they could reach them with their teeth. It made Breaker uneasy, seeing them caught like that. He had taken his orders from the members of House Goliath his whole life.

‘Hasher,’ he said, and the ganger looked up from counting knives. ‘Before, when Breaker Brass fight. Always other houses.’ Always. Breaker didn’t remember all the fights, there were too many, but he remembered that. He had fought the women of House Escher, the fanatics of House Cawdor, the black-armoured members of House Van Saar, and others. But never other Goliaths. He looked at the captives. ‘Why?’

‘Good question, Breaker. We shouldn’t be fighting our own. Not like this, gang to gang. But…’ Hasher shook his head, then spat on the floor. ‘We Goliaths, we got rules, just like all the other houses. Simple ones. You wanna be in charge, you prove you deserve to be in charge by being the biggest, the meanest, the best. What you don’t do is get House Escher to poison a batch of stimm, give it to our leader, then challenge them.’

‘That’s a lie!’ snarled one of the prisoners and Hasher was suddenly holding one of the knives he’d been counting.

‘You clamp your flaps shut, rat food,’ the gang leader snapped. ‘Or I’ll carve your tongue out and feed it to my kroc.’ The other ganger’s muscles rippled and bunched as he strained at the chains that bound him, but they didn’t budge and he finally stilled, staying silent. Hasher looked back at Breaker. ‘That’s what Stamper Hack, the man who these rat-brains follow, did, whatever they say, so it don’t matter that he won that fight, we ain’t ever listening to him. Or giving up any of our turf to the bootlickers who work for him.’ Hasher snorted. ‘Let me tell you something, Breaker Brass. You’re damn fine at following the rules, which I much appreciate. But if the rules ever say that some rotten bastard like that should be in charge of your life…’ Hasher jerked his head towards the enemy ganger. ‘Then it’s time to change the rules.’

Breaker blinked at Hasher, trying to understand, but not getting it. Hasher looked back at him and shook his head, the bullets woven into his braids clicking.

‘Forget it, Breaker Brass. Just know you did good. I’ll tell ’em to double your rations for the next tenshift, and you can take the next cycle off if you want.’

‘Not work?’ Breaker said, puzzled. ‘Why not?’ If he wasn’t working in the factorum, he was fighting with Hasher. What else was there to do?

Hasher laughed. ‘You may not be a man, Breaker Brass. Not exactly. But you’re still a better one than me. I’m going back and getting loaded. Me and my whole ugly crew!’

The Slag Krocs whooped around them, and started gathering their things and the loot as Hasher Gob stood. Breaker stood too, waiting to be told what he should do. It didn’t take long for Hasher to find him a job, and it was a good one too. Throater wasn’t really all that heavy, and it was funny the way the sumpkroc gnawed on his hand as Breaker carried the overfed reptile back home.

The furnaces were blazing, sending heat rolling across the factorum like a wave.

Breaker Brass adjusted the heavy goggles that covered his eyes, protecting them from stray sparks, and watched as the red-hot metal flowed down the line through the machines, being worked as it went into heavy hexagonal rods. Tank axles, one of the Goliath floor bosses had told him when they had set up the line and started this run. For the Imperial Guard, for the war that never ended somewhere out there, among the stars. Breaker had just nodded. Wars were like gang brawls, but bigger. Tanks were like cargo servitors, but bigger. Stars… Breaker had no idea what those were, or what they were bigger than. Didn’t matter. Somewhere out there, beyond this factorum, beyond the thick walls of the hive, somebody wanted these axles, so House Goliath made them, and Breaker Brass helped.

Right now he helped by staring into the blazing light of that glowing metal, watching it flowing by, focused on its movement to the exclusion of everything else, not bored, not drifting, just watching like he’d been told. Watching for hours, not caring that he never saw anything different – until he did.

‘Cobbler!’ Breaker bellowed, his shout barely heard over the factorum’s cacophony. He kept bellowing it though, as he moved for the switch mounted on the wall beside him. It only took him seconds to slap it with one augmetic fist, but that was almost too late. Some part of the line of hot metal rushing by had snagged on a piece of the machinery that was supposed to shape it, snagged and caught, stopping. The blazing metal rushing in behind it started to bend and loop, unable to go forward, and in the time it took for Breaker to slam the override a great arc of glowing metal had shot out of the machine, spilling across the factorum floor like a blazing serpent. The ogryn workers, warned by Breaker’s bellow, dodged away, but one of them wasn’t fast enough. The metal brushed the huge worker’s heavy coveralls, and the thick fabric caught, beginning to blaze.

Button pressed, Breaker’s focus moved to the ogryn who was beating at the flames swallowing their coverall. Breaker charged over, leaping a still-glowing coil of the spilled metal, and kicked the other ogryn’s legs out from under him. Then he grabbed the worker with his metal hands, barely feeling the flames, and rolled him across the rockcrete floor of the factorum until the fire was out. Done, surrounded by smoke and the stench of burning hair, he looked down at the other ogryn.

‘Can work?’ Breaker asked. The other ogryn poked at the burned parts of his coverall, examined his hide underneath. It was reddened, but not blistered, and the ogryn nodded.

‘Can work.’

He stood, and Breaker Brass turned back to frown at the stopped machine, the spilled metal cooling on the ground. The line would have to be cleaned, the metal re-collected, which would take time, and that messed with quota, and quota… Well, according to the Goliaths that had trained Breaker Brass from his first days on the line, missing quota was practically an insult to the Emperor Himself.

‘Scrapers!’ Breaker bellowed. It would be the ogryns’ job to clean up the mess while the Goliaths fixed the line. He headed for where the tools hung along the wall, but as he reached them he paused. The other ogryns, who had been starting to follow him, halted too, staring around, confused. The factorum… was falling silent.

All around them, machines were shutting down, growing still. The huge ladles of molten metal moving overhead from furnace to forge had ground to a halt, and the ogryn workers were staring around, wondering what was going on. Then came the sound of gunfire.

The staccato pops of guns echoed through the factorum and the ogryn near Breaker Brass looked at him. He was one of their biggest, one of their oldest; he was the one most frequently picked by Hasher Gob to go out and break heads. Breaker was as close to a leader as they had, but Breaker… he listened to the gunfire, and he had no idea what to do. The Slag Krocs hadn’t come for him. This was the factorum, this was the place he made things. This wasn’t where they were supposed to break things.

This was wrong.

‘Wait,’ he said. ‘Will be told what to do.’ It was all he could think of, and so they waited as the slugs cracked and whined off their equipment, as las-bolts hissed into metal and rockcrete. Waited, until a Goliath finally showed. The human came pelting around a great stack of finished axles, clutching his side and cursing. It was Ghork from the Slag Krocs, Throater’s keeper, and Breaker could see the leash tied around the Goliath’s hand. It didn’t end with a collar full of sumpkroc though, it ended with a ragged tear, the leash broken and flapping behind the ganger as he ran. Breaker stepped out to meet him, to ask him what they should do, but there was a crack of a gun and Ghork pitched forward, blood spurting out of his mouth as he hit the floor in a heap.

‘Breaker!’

Breaker Brass looked up from the pool of blood spreading around Ghork and saw Hasher. The tall Goliath dodged around the pile of axles, trying to run, but he was dragging one of his long legs, the armour plates gouged with the marks of lasgun strikes. Throater scuttled beside the gang leader, the heavy reptile moving fast as slugs cracked off the floor between its scaly side and Hasher’s boots. Breaker stepped forward, forgetting about Ghork, focusing on the Slag Kroc’s leader. Hasher would tell him what to do.

Hasher spun, pointing his stub cannon behind him. The ganger fired off a string of shots, the huge gun thundering. ‘Rat bastards snuck up on us,’ Hasher snarled, fingers pulling rounds out of his braids and slamming them into the cannon, reloading. ‘Came through the sewage like the sneaking scavs they are!’ Hasher shot another round back at some target Breaker couldn’t see, then spun to face the ogryn. ‘Got most of my crew, Breaker. I need you, need all of you, take your–’ The rest of whatever Hasher was going to say was cut off when something huge and shiny flashed out of the shadows behind the gang leader and slammed into his back with a sickening crunch.

Hasher pitched forward, landing on his belly. There was a handle sticking out of his back, heavy steel wrapped with leather, attached to a forge-honed axe blade. Blood streamed out around the weapon, staining the floor as Hasher tried to move, trying to flip over, but his legs wouldn’t shift and his arms were shaking. Breaker reached for him, but a deep voice warned him back.

‘This ain’t your business, servitor.’

A Goliath stepped out of the shadows, a man a little shorter than Hasher but much wider. He had huge shoulders and heavy muscles, even for a Goliath, muscles that were clearly visible because he wore no armour. His skin, pallid and smooth as bone, was uncovered except for a rusty iron skull that covered his groin, the chains that held it in place, heavy boots, and the thick collar that pumped the growth stimms needed to maintain his thick physique into his neck. He had no hair, and every heavy muscle could be seen moving and shifting beneath his too-pale hide. But he was marked. Everywhere over him, legs and arms, back and chest, shoulders and scalp, there were little circles of gold, metal planted in the man’s flesh, and in the centre of each one gleamed a light like a tiny red eye.

The studded Goliath walked towards Hasher, swinging an axe that was twin to the one planted in the other ganger’s back. ‘This is house cleaning business, isn’t it, Hasher?’ Behind him, a line of Goliaths stepped out, cradling weapons. Each of them had a red eye tattooed into the skin of their forehead, and a vicious grin on their face. Their guns were pointed at Breaker Brass and the other ogryns. Breaker froze, wanting to help, wanting to do what he was told, and stared down at Hasher’s face. The Goliath looked up at him through his tangled braids, his eyes dull with pain, and his head shook, just a tiny movement, not enough to rattle the shells still woven in his hair. But enough to make Breaker Brass lean back, to hold his place.

‘You Slag Krocs and your friends thought you could defy Stamper Hack.’ The metal-studded ganger’s voice was filled with satisfied contempt. ‘Thought you didn’t need to listen, ’cause you took down the Crackbones, those pitiful little pukers. Well, the Blood Eyes have come to tell you–’ The pale Goliath bent over Hasher, grabbed the handle of the axe planted in his back, and rocked the weapon back and forth, grinding its blade deeper into the ganger’s shattered vertebrae. ‘You’re dead wrong.’

Hasher twisted his neck, looking away from Breaker, trying to see past his shoulder, to meet the gaze of his tormentor. ‘I’d say the Slag Krocs are dead certain not listening to you now, you murderous dumbass. Except for poor old me… and the one you forgot.’ Hasher snapped his fingers, and from the shadows of the machine beside him Throater lunged out. The sumpkroc had slithered there when Hasher had fallen, watching its master with dark eyes, and when the gang leader called for it the deadly reptile flung itself forward like a bullet. It came, jaws wide, and snapped its mouth shut on the studded Goliath’s head – or tried to.

As its massive teeth slammed home, the red lights centred in each of the studs in the Goliath’s skin brightened, intensified, light bursting out from them like a strobe. Breaker Brass flung up his metal hands and shut his eyes, but not nearly fast enough. The world was gone, lost in a flood of crimson light that took a long time to recede. Breaker blinked, eyes tearing up, waiting until he could finally see again. When he could, he saw the pale Goliath standing over Hasher, wiping his axe off on the other ganger’s clothes. Throater lay on the floor by his feet, the sumpkroc’s tail twitching, claws spasming, its head split open and spreading thick brown blood across the floor. Breaker blinked his still-smarting eyes at the dead reptile, and his hands twitched. Clenched. But while he was blind more Blood Eyes had shown up, surrounding him and his people. Beside him, just out of reach, a Goliath stood with a flamer, the weapon’s blackened muzzle aimed right at him. The ogryn stared at that dark circle, the pilot flame cutting across it like a bright iris, and held his clenched fists still.

‘I guess you’re right, you slaggy lizard,’ the pale Goliath growled. ‘None of you are going to have to listen to us again. Including you.’ The big ganger reached down and jerked his other axe out of Hasher’s back. He whirled both blades over his head and then brought them down, hard and fast, on either side of Hasher’s head. There was a wet crunch, and then the axes were rising again, streaked with blood and strands of long hair. Hasher’s head was gone, a mess of flesh and blood and broken bone spread across the factorum floor.

‘I’m Dead White. Leader of the Blood Eyes. Killer of men and monsters.’ White stood over Hasher’s body, his axes held high, blood splashed over his boots, running down his arms, dripping across his shoulders and head. ‘I claim this factorum for Stamper Hack.’ His eyes, a pale blue that was almost white, fell on Breaker Brass. ‘Get this place cleaned up, and get back to work. There’s still quota.’ He turned and stomped away, a few of his gang falling in behind, while the rest spread across the factorum, shouting at the Goliath floor bosses and ogryn labourers to get the machines going again.

The ganger with the flamer grinned at Breaker. ‘You deaf? Clean up.’

Breaker Brass stared at him, steel fists clenched tight with anger… But he had his orders, and he started towards the bodies. This wasn’t his business.

It wasn’t.

But even when the flesh and blood had been hosed from the factorum floor, and the hot metal was roaring again through the machines, it was hard for him to bring his focus away from the image of those axes falling.

3

‘Mallet back.’

Breaker Brass ran a finger around the inside of his ration bucket, scraping up the last remnants of the thick fungus and corpse starch blend that the factorum fed its servitors. There was less of it lately, even though there had been plenty of corpses to throw in the processors after the Blood Eyes had rampaged through the sector. It didn’t make any sense, but Breaker had heard some of the Goliath floor bosses muttering that Dead White was selling some of the nutritional sludge to guild traders in exchange for new weapons for his gang.

Setting down the bucket, Breaker looked up at the ogryn standing over him. She was called Pulley, just out of the juvehalls where the young ogryns worked with the smaller equipment. A bruise mottled half of Pulley’s face. Many of the ogryns bore marks like that now. When the Slag Krocs had been watching over the factorum, they stayed out of it mostly, leaving things to the floor bosses and managers that ran the place. But the Blood Eyes were more involved. Which meant they liked to wander the floor sometimes, improving production by doling out beatings to any ogryn who they thought wasn’t working hard enough, which confused Breaker. His people worked hard. But the Blood Eyes seemed to always be angry at them, and they took every opportunity to use their fists and clubs.

Breaker Brass had asked one of the floor bosses why, and the woman had told him they were jealous of the ogryns’ strength. Which made no sense. The ogryns used that strength to work for House Goliath. How could they be mad about that?

The anger it stirred deep in Breaker made more sense.

‘Take to,’ he said. Pulley led him through the tangled warren of the ogryn servitor quarters, great stacks of ancient shipping containers heaped up in a storage dome that had been converted to quarters for them long ago. Thick chain bridges ran from stack to stack, shaking under the weight of the ogryns stomping back and forth, going out to work or coming back to rest. Just a few cycles ago, the air would have been full of shouts and cheers, curses and laughter as different shifts announced how much they’d produced, earning praise or jeers. But now… now the ogryns were grim and exhausted. The fight for the factorum had damaged equipment, destroyed supplies, killed workers. It had set them back, and the Blood Eyes…

The Blood Eyes. Breaker Brass stomped across another bridge, his weight shaking the heavy chains. When the Slag Krocs had held the factorum, Breaker barely thought of them, except when they took him off the line to fight. He couldn’t stop thinking about the Blood Eyes. They were everywhere, glowering, watching, beating, shouting. They pushed his focus away, made it hard to work. They took up space in his head, and ogryns didn’t have space to spare, damn it. The only time they had any peace to work was when the gang went out to raid or fight, and when they did that, they always took some of the ogryns with them.

And then they brought them back broken, if at all.

‘Here,’ Pulley said, pointing to the container in front of her. ‘You see. Have work.’ She turned, but Breaker caught her shoulder, holding her.

‘Can work?’ he asked, not sure exactly why. The bruise was nothing, but her eyes were dead, empty. Seeing them twisted something in Breaker Brass, made him hurt. Made him angry.

Pulley shrugged. ‘Have to work.’

Have to. Her words made that hurt, that anger, worse. The Blood Eyes… could they actually take the joy out of work? It didn’t seem possible, but they took up so much space in his head, in all the ogryns’ heads, maybe they could crowd out that too.

‘Go,’ Breaker Brass said, dropping his hand. When she started to turn, he punched her in the shoulder, rocking her a little. ‘Good shift, good worker.’

Pulley looked back at him, and through the strands of wiry red hair that had escaped her tight braids Breaker could see that her eyes had lit a little at the compliment. She strode away, not as slumped, and Breaker Brass stomped into the container she’d led him to. And stopped, staring.

Mallet was a ruin.

The ogryn leaned against the container wall, dried blood thick on his skin. Deep cuts ran across his face, across his forehead and cheeks. One thick arm was shattered, bent at a strange angle between shoulder and elbow, and both legs were pocked with bullet wounds. The ogryn’s chest and belly were whole from what Breaker could see, the skin unbroken, probably covered by armour, but there were huge bruises covering him, great dark things that probably meant broken ribs beneath. Breaker sighed, an angry, sad gust of air that stirred the thin strips of metal that some other ogryn had carefully carved and hung from the roof in this place long ago, making them tinkle and chime against each other.

‘Who?’ Mallet said, a whisper through battered lips.

‘Breaker Brass.’ He crouched, looking Mallet over. With care, he might survive. Maybe.

‘When work?’ Mallet breathed.

‘Soon,’ Breaker said. It wouldn’t be soon. But what good was it to tell terrible truths like that now? ‘Stay now. You have repair needs.’

‘I–’ For a moment, Mallet tried to move, maybe to stand, but when his shattered arm rubbed against the wall the ogryn shuddered and gritted his teeth, slumping back down. ‘Repair needs,’ he said, then his head tipped back as he fell into unconsciousness.

‘Need see Dead White.’

Breaker Brass stood at the door that led towards the rooms that the Blood Eyes had claimed. The gang had trashed the rooms that the Slag Krocs had used, then taken the places that had once belonged to the Goliath managers who ran the factorum, telling them to use the Slag Krocs’ ruined quarters. It put them right next to the factorum, right where they could watch over everyone easily. It put them right in Breaker Brass’ head.

‘Shouldn’t you be working, servitor?’ The ganger at the entrance was young, his muscles not as heavy, the stimm collar around his neck still too large, too loose. The combat shotgun he held in his hands was probably older than him. But he sneered up at Breaker as if the ogryn were a ratling.

‘Should be sleeping. Not on shift. But need see Dead White.’

‘Too bad. He’s busy.’

Breaker Brass looked down at the ganger, his metal hands folded carefully at his sides. ‘Need see.’

The shotgun rose, muzzle pointing at Breaker’s head. ‘Listen, mutant. I said White was–’

‘Busy.’ The voice came from behind Breaker, and the ogryn turned. Dead White was there, axes slung from the chains holding the skull at his groin, a couple of Blood Eyes behind him, lasguns leaning back against their shoulders.

‘And I was.’ White stepped forward, the thick muscles under his skin rippling. He was shorter than Breaker, but almost as wide. The golden discs set in his skin gleamed as he moved, the red lights in their centres bright. A conversion field, built right into the Goliath’s skin, a kind of tech magic that somehow turned attacks against the ganger into blinding flashes of light.

Doc had explained it to Breaker, or tried to. The Goliath medic had somehow survived the Blood Eyes’ takeover, and after he’d been busy patching up those that had been hurt during the fight. Breaker had taken quite a few ogryns to him over the past shifts, those injured by angry Blood Eyes or by the rapid pace of the great metalworking machines, cranked to their fastest by the new masters of the factorum. Doc had spoken to him then, in clipped words and low mutters, telling Breaker what he knew about the Blood Eyes, their strengths, their weaknesses, their vicious habits. Breaker didn’t know why Doc told him all that. The Blood Eyes… Breaker didn’t like them. He didn’t like any of them, especially their axe-carrying leader. But the Blood Eyes ran the factorum now. It didn’t matter that Breaker Brass didn’t like them. All that mattered was the work. The Slag Krocs were gone, but the work remained, and Breaker and all the other servitors would do it. That was the rule of life.

But if the rules ever say that some rotten bastard like that should be in charge of your life… Then it’s time to change the rules.

Breaker didn’t like how Hasher Gob’s words echoed in his head sometimes. They broke his focus away from his work. And they seemed to come to him more after seeing Doc. But Doc was who he needed now.

‘What do you want, servitor?’

Breaker Brass kept his gaze low, on the gang leader’s booted feet. The Blood Eyes didn’t like seeing the ogryn looking down at them. ‘You have Doc. Kept away. Need him for repairs.’

‘You look healthy to me.’ Dead White’s hands were on his axes, fingers tapping the leather bound handles. A gold disc sat centred in the back of each hand, the red light in its centre glowing like a baleful eye.

‘Not me. Mallet. You took on last fight. Now needs repair.’

‘Mallet.’ White laughed. ‘Yeah. He got busted up a bit, didn’t he? Tangled up with a whole mob of that House Cawdor scum. Kept ’em busy while we took out their gun emplacements. You ogryns… you’re stupid, but you’re good at absorbing damage.’

‘Needs repair.’

White’s hands stopped moving on his axes, and the ganger went still, his muscles flexing. ‘You giving me orders, servitor?’

‘No,’ Breaker said, his head still down. ‘We serve. But Mallet necessary for work. Needs repair. Doc being held by you. So…’ Breaker spread his hands, metal gleaming. He didn’t know what to say. Talking to Hasher had been easy. Talking to White…

The ganger stepped forward, getting close to Breaker, staring up into his face with his pale, pale eyes. ‘Your Doc started a fight with one of my gang. Only reason he isn’t dead is because he’s good at keeping you stupid mutants up and working. But he needs to learn his lesson. He took his whipping, now he gets to think about it in a box, locked up in the dark. He’s not coming out until I say. I don’t care how much repair this Mallet needs. Or how necessary you think he is.’

Breaker looked down at White’s boots, hearing his words, but he had committed himself to asking for this. It was his focus now, and he couldn’t just let it go. ‘Mallet necessary for changing the line. For switching machines when we finish axles, so we can forge tank barrels needed next for quota. Mallet best at that. Will take twice as long without. Without, miss quota.’

‘No,’ White growled. ‘That’s not happening.’

‘Must not happen,’ Breaker Brass agreed. ‘Need Mallet. Need repair.’

White stepped forward and slammed his fist into Breaker’s gut. The surprise strike, driven by all the thick muscles of the ganger, made Breaker grunt and take a small step back. White looked up at him, still standing, and snapped a flurry of punches into the ogryn’s belly, pushing him back. But Breaker Brass stayed on his feet, confused, hands raised, until the gang leader suddenly pulled one of his axes and swung it in a short, vicious arc at Breaker. The ogryn reacted without thinking, reaching up with one steel hand and stopping the flashing blade with his metal palm, catching it before it could touch his flesh. Breaker Brass stared down at the smaller human and spoke in a deep rumble. ‘Quota must be met. Need Mallet. Need Breaker Brass.’

Dead White’s lips peeled back in a silent snarl as he leaned in, pushing on his axe, but the weapon didn’t move. Breaker Brass stood still as stone, holding it, waiting, until the ganger suddenly snatched it away and took a step back. He stared at the ogryn, his pale blue eyes flashing beneath the red-lit gold circle centred in his forehead. ‘Quota. It’ll be met, all right. Or I’ll see all you servitors fed into the furnaces for fuel.’ White stalked around Breaker, and the young ganger guarding the door didn’t move fast enough. White smashed him out of the way with a backhand sweep of his axe, catching the boy on the side of the head with the metal handle, dropping him twitching to the floor. White stopped and glared back at the men who had been following him.

‘Go get Doc, and give him to this mutant. Tell him if we don’t meet quota, I’m going to cut off his tongue and both hands and sell him to the ratlings. And you, ogryn.’ White shoved his axe back into its sheath. ‘Next time we go after another gang and need a meat shield? You’re coming with us.’

4

They moved through tunnels, narrow and dark, and Breaker Brass forced himself to take deep breaths of the damp, foetid air. He didn’t like close spaces – no ogryn did. Getting caught somewhere you couldn’t move was a nightmare common to his kind. But Breaker didn’t hesitate. His focus was on Dead White, splashing through the puddles of waste just behind him, axes in his hands and murder in his eyes.

‘House Escher. Finally.’ White spat out the words, anger and anticipation in every syllable. ‘Seems like every other house had to try for us after that rebellion. Now those feathered back-stabbers finally want to make their challenge? I can’t wait to tear them apart.’

The Blood Eyes around Breaker laughed and slapped their weapons, building themselves up for the fight. Breaker didn’t share their eagerness. Every gang of every house was dangerous, but the women of House Escher worried Breaker Brass because of the weapons they carried. Thick skin and heavy muscles helped against many things, but they didn’t stop the poisons that coated their ruthlessly sharp blades, or block the toxic gases that poured out of the shells their guns fired. Broken bones and torn flesh were one thing. The gangs of House Escher wanted to kill you from the inside out. Breaker Brass had seen the aftermath of a skirmish that the Slag Krocs had with House Escher once, and he still remembered gangers keeling over, dying slow and ugly as they puked their lungs out.

Breaker Brass didn’t want this fight. But White had come for him personal, pulled him off the line and told him to follow as the gang headed out, dropping down deep through the hive, leaving the factorum behind for these waste tunnels that burrowed through every sector, every overlapping territory of house and gang. The Razor Wires, the Escher gang, had seized a corridor nexus on the edge of the Blood Eyes’ territory and were blocking the movement of Trade Guild caravans into House Goliath’s territory. Moving through these tunnels would bring the Blood Eyes up close to the Escher fighters without having to deal with the traps and mines that they had spread through the corridors above. Breaker had heard the Goliath gangers talking about it, and for once he approved of their sneaking, so different to the usual Goliath bull rush. Escher traps were nasty things. Nasty enough that White had made sure to put Breaker Brass in the lead, in case the Escher gang had found these passageways and trapped them too.

‘We’re close, White.’

The Blood Eye stalking along beside Dead White was a scout, leaner than the other gangers and older, his buzzed hair sprinkled with grey, and one of his arms was gone, replaced with a crude claw made of corroded metal and rough resins. He’d been the one pointing out the route through these twisted tunnels, telling White where to go. Then the pale ganger would prod Breaker Brass’ back with an axe, guiding him like a malfunctioning cargo servitor. Now though, he just growled, ‘Stop.’

Breaker Brass came to a halt, turned to face the Blood Eyes drawing up behind him. White was looking at his gang, both his axes out. ‘Almost there, you red-eyed killers. From now on, we shut it up. Not a noise, we’re going right under those poisonous witches. Up this tunnel is a pit with a ladder. Go up that, and we come up right behind ’em. We’ll be on them, having a proper fist-to-face fight, before they can spring all that bad chemistry.’

White looked up at Breaker. ‘And you. You’re going up that ladder first. There’ll be a hatch at the top. You bust it, then get out and move. Getting through that hatch is our choke point. You slow us down, you stupid mutant, and I’ll bury an axe in your arse and haul you out of our way. Got it?’

Breaker’s metal fingers scraped together as his hands moved at his side. He would do his job. He always did his job. Hasher Gob had known that. Hasher hadn’t ever threatened him.

But Hasher was dead, and the work never ended.

‘Got,’ he grunted, and White reached out with one of his axes, shoving the wickedly sharp curve of its blade against one of Breaker’s massive biceps. It drew a thin line across the ogryn’s heavy hide, not quite biting in. White may have wanted a meat shield to block any traps, but he hadn’t given Breaker the heavy furnace plate armour that he’d worn when he went battling with the Slag Krocs. It didn’t make sense, but Breaker didn’t ask. He just took the equipment that the Blood Eyes gave him – a gigantic wrench with a heavy spike welded to one side, one of the massive improvised clubs that the Goliaths called spud-jackers. Breaker turned with White’s push and started down the corridor, moving as quiet as his bulk and boots allowed.

A little way ahead, the tunnel intersected with a drainage pit. The great vertical tunnel stretched up to a dome three hundred feet overhead, but the trickle of water running out of the tunnel Breaker Brass was standing in disappeared into darkness, dropping who knows how far into the bowels of the hive. There were other tunnels opening into the shaft, dark circles like the empty sockets of a skull, but Breaker ignored them. He had found the ladder built into the shaft beside the tunnel entrance. Looking up, he could just make out a hatch at its top, set in the base of the dome that rose overhead. A dull orange lumen lit the heavy wheel in the centre of the hatch, and Breaker Brass stared at it. The rest of the shaft, Dead White, the other Blood Eyes, the waiting fight, all went out of his thick-skulled head. His focus was on that hatch. Opening it and getting through, that was his work. That was all that mattered, and Breaker spun the spud-jacker in his hands and gripped the rusty ring set in its end between his massive teeth. Steel hands free, he grabbed the ladder and began to climb.

The rungs were heavy metal staples, set deep in the rockcrete, but the corrosion of countless years made some of them tremble beneath the ogryn’s weight. Breaker Brass barely noticed, focused as he was on the hatch. Quickly, skipping over rungs set far closer than he needed, Breaker climbed. White and the Blood Eyes were scrambling behind him, cursing silently as they tried to keep up, but Breaker didn’t notice. The hatch was the only thing that mattered now.

He reached the top of the ladder and grabbed the rusty wheel. Breaker tried to turn it, but it didn’t move. Locked, or corroded shut, it didn’t matter. The huge muscles in Breaker’s shoulders shifted, and he pressed into the wheel. The rusted steel groaned beneath his grip, not moving as he pressed harder, harder. The wheel began to warp, the metal creaking as it deformed, but Breaker kept pressing, relentless. Then, with a dull thunk, the thick stem of the lock snapped, and the wheel came free in Breaker Brass’ hand.

Below him, White snarled. ‘You stupid bloody mutant! If you’ve locked us out I’ll–’

Breaker flipped the wheel away, letting it fall down the centre of the shaft to whatever hell lay below. He didn’t hear Dead White’s threats, still focused on the hatch. The wheel was gone, but he could see the heavy metal latches that locked the hatch into place around its edges. Gripping a metal rung tight with one hand, he pulled back the other and swung it up. Hard.

His metal knuckles cracked into one of the latches. Once, twice, and then it shattered. Without slowing, Breaker struck out at the next latch. This one smashed on the first blow. Not blinking, not thinking, his focus absolute, Breaker crashed his augmetic hand into one of the latches on the other side. It resisted, but on the third massive blow it shattered. Breaker Brass, breath hissing through teeth clenched on the ring holding the spud-jacker, smashed the next latch with one blow and the whole hatch jumped, barely held in place. That movement made Breaker shift his aim straight to the centre of the hatch, right on the broken stem of the wheel. The hatch jumped again, metal screaming, then with one more punch Breaker Brass smashed it free, made the heavy metal door fly up and off.

Breaker Brass paused for a moment. The hatch was his focus. The hatch was done. But there was something more he was supposed to do…

‘Move, rat-brain,’ White shouted. The Goliath smashed his axe into the side of Breaker’s boot, the blade biting through the thick leather. ‘Move!’

Breaker Brass’ hand tightened on the ladder rung, and his leg shifted, pulling away, ready to kick down as a flicker of pain flared through his ankle. But something stopped him before he drove his heel into White’s face. The pale Goliath was his boss, he had work to do, and with sudden clarity, Breaker snapped into focus. He swarmed up the last few rungs, shoving the broken hatch out of his way, and popped out into the corridor above.

It was wide and tall, thankfully, the hatch set low in one of its side walls. Breaker Brass landed in its centre, staring up and down its length. In one direction it ran off seemingly forever, walls drawing together with distance beneath the dim lumens that lit it. In the other, it ended in a set of heavy doors. There was a woman crouched there, staring at Breaker, her eyes wide beneath a crest of feathers that had been woven into her hair. Then she was shouting, her arms coming up. In one hand, an autopistol blazed, muzzle flashing as it sent a stream of slugs towards Breaker. Her other hand slammed the wall beside her, hitting a switch, and the metal doors on either side of the corridor began to slide shut.

The bullets screamed by Breaker, then two of them slammed into him. The first grazed his forearm, drawing a hot line just above where his flesh met the steel of his augmetic hand. The other slammed into his chest like a punch. It tore through the heavy industrial coveralls he wore, but Breaker’s thick ogryn hide and heavy ribs stopped the low-calibre round before it could penetrate. It still hurt though, and Breaker spat out the ring that he was using to hold his spud-jacker. He grabbed up the broken hatch from the floor beside him with both hands and flung it down the corridor, the oval metal door spinning through the air. Its heavy metal edge caught the House Escher fighter in the stomach, knocking her back with a grunt. She landed on the floor, pinned beneath the broken hatch, which was now wedged between the sliding doors, keeping them open.

Breaker picked up his spud-jacker and started to run down the passage. Behind him the Blood Eyes were pouring out of the open hatch, White in the lead, roaring. There was no use keeping quiet now, and they bellowed their battle cries as they charged.

The ogryn barrelled through the stuck doors, leaping over the hatch he had thrown. The ganger caught beneath snarled at him as he went by, trying to get her arm free to shoot, but Breaker ignored her as his boots hit the floor in the room beyond. It was a square old storehouse, a massive door set in each wall, ceiling high overhead criss-crossed with catwalks and broken loading cranes. Across the room from him, Breaker could see a barricade set up, a low wall of piled containers and rusted equipment. It blocked off the door opposite the one Breaker had run through, the one that the Razor Wires had expected the Blood Eyes to come for. It was on the wrong side now, and the House Escher gangers were cursing as they scrambled to adjust their positions for the Blood Eyes’ attack.

It was an almost perfect ambush, and the Goliath gang was pouring into the room under the sporadic pop of autogun fire and the crackling of needlers instead of a hail of metal-and-chemical death. Dead White was laughing as he stomped on the hatch that Breaker had thrown, crushing the Escher ganger beneath, and then he was off, howling, his axes raised as he charged the nearest Razor Wire, followed by the rest of his gang. Breaker watched him run and saw the lights of the Goliath’s implants flicker, not flashing fast enough to stop a bullet that left a bloody furrow in his shoulder. The ogryn turned his head away, not wanting to be blinded if White’s shield worked better for the next shot, and saw two women across the room from him grabbing at something that had been mounted behind the makeshift wall, something blocky and long-barrelled that they were fighting to get spun around to face Breaker. The ogryn didn’t know what it was, but he knew one thing. The bigger the barrel the weapon had, the bigger the hole it made, and the Razor Wires were meaning to put that hole in him. With bravery born of not thinking, Breaker Brass charged forward, pounding across the room as he swung the spud-jacker up and back.

That barrel, wide as one of Breaker’s augmetic fists, was pointed straight at his belly and one of the Escher gangers was screaming ‘Fire!’ as the other hit the trigger. Breaker dived to the side as he swung the spud-jacker, but he could see the weapon lighting up as something deadly sprang to life in it. It was coming to tear him apart, but his club slammed into the end of that barrel, moving it to the side as he twisted and fell, knocking its aim off. Off enough that the missile that exploded out of the barrel went wide of him, though it was so close the heat of its flaming exhaust burned the hair off his arm and made the back of one of his steel hands momentarily glow.

The missile screamed past and tore across the room – straight at Dead White and a couple of Blood Eyes that were running behind him. The Goliath saw the missile coming and leaned forward, axe raised and bellowing, and the rocket slammed into him, exploding with a roar and a flash of red light. When the light was gone, White was still there, untouched, the gold studs in his skin gleaming. The two gangers that had been behind him were gone, just tattered armour and long smears of blood on the floor, and the gang leader bellowed with laughter and charged forward.

From the floor, Breaker ripped his attention away from the Goliath and back to the launcher, and the Escher gangers that manned it. They were shifting the weapon again, trying to line it up with White’s charge, but Breaker took his spud-jacker and threw it at the launcher. The heavy steel wrench smashed into the weapon and sent it crashing over on its side even as it fired. The second missile skipped off the floor not far from Breaker and ricocheted up, spinning in crazy loops to explode in the rafters overhead. Debris fell, pieces of twisted rafter and broken rockcrete, bouncing off Breaker’s head and shoulders, but he ignored them, charging forward towards the Razor Wire ganger who had just fired the missile.

She saw him coming and moved fast, dropping and ducking under his steel fists. The ganger pulled a blade as she dived, long and thin, and slashed it at Breaker Brass’ leg, but it glanced off the heavy leather of his boot. They circled each other, strength and size and steel fists versus speed and a slender blade whose flashing edge gleamed with toxin. The fight raged around them, guns roaring, Goliaths bellowing, Escher gangers cursing and calling orders as they tried to pull back together, but Breaker had shifted his focus to the woman in front of him and the blade that carved deadly curves through the air.

He threw a punch but she slipped it, moving away even as she brought her blade down. Its edge skittered across his metal knuckles, its poison useless against Breaker’s augmetics. They danced like that, Breaker sending pounding blows in that would crush the ganger if they hit her, the ganger weaving and spinning, too fast to touch, but unable to get past the ogryn’s long reach, her blade clicking off his armoured fists. Finally she gave up and dived forward under one of his swings, going in low.

Breaker swung his foot at the ganger and caught her a glancing blow, his boot hitting her in the ribs. The woman grunted and rolled away, coming up slower, hand clutching at her side. The dark skin of her face was flushed, and her eyes filled with pain, but she flashed her teeth at Breaker, her smile vicious.

‘You cracked my ribs, you scav slagger,’ she hissed. ‘But that’s okay. You can keep my blade.’

That’s when Breaker noticed that her hands were empty, and when he noticed the pain. It was a pinprick at first, a little thing. His eyes flashed down, and he could see his boot, the leather split where Dead White had smacked him in the ankle with his axe. In the shadow of that split leather, something gleamed – the Razor Wire woman’s knife, stabbed into his lower leg. Just a little knife, and Breaker stepped forward to take another swing at the ganger, but when his foot hit the floor it crumpled beneath him. The pain in his leg was growing, growing huge as it spread through his foot and up towards his knee. Growing, and Breaker Brass felt his focus slipping. Going away, as he reached down. He grabbed the blade out, flung it away, but it was too late. Whatever toxin had coated it was in him, digging into his flesh, and Breaker could see something leaking out of his boot. Not blood, something darker, nauseatingly thicker, pouring out of the split leather to form a stinking pool on the floor.

‘Looks like we’re going, meatbag,’ the woman growled. ‘Looks like you scavs won this one. But I’m going to buy a big-arse feather to wear in my hair to mark this kill, ogryn.’

Breaker Brass couldn’t answer; the pain in his leg was too much, wiping out everything. He didn’t notice Dead White’s arrival, just heard the ganger bellow and the woman’s laughter.

‘Sorry, slagger, guess we’re done playing today. You can keep this dirty hole, and if you ever want to play again, please do us a favour and find some pants.’

White bellowed again, and Breaker could hear the Goliath’s boots as he charged after the Escher ganger, but her laughter was fading, fading, gone, the only thing left her poison, which was slowly devouring Breaker Brass from the inside.

‘Will it work again?’ Dead White ran his hands over the missile launcher, his eyes hungry.

‘Maybe. Receiver is bent to all the hells, the autoloader is broken, and the launch tube may be out of true.’ The Blood Eye looking over the missile launcher with White rubbed his jaw and spat a bloody clot out on the floor. Bruises mottled his jaw and face, and the stiff crest of his mohawk was broken, but he was in better shape than most of the Goliath gangers who’d been wounded in the fight. The Eschers’ poisoned weapons didn’t leave many survivors. ‘Got to get it back to my shop to know that.’

White grunted. The ganger turned and kicked Breaker’s good leg, a blow sharp and vicious, but the ogryn barely noticed. The pain in his other leg was massive, a slow-burning fire that was spreading inexorably up his thigh. ‘Idiot. Best loot we’ve ever come across, and you hit it with a damn spud-jacker.’ He looked at Cuts, who served as the gang’s medic, and who was checking the ropes holding one of the Blood Eyes down to a length of fallen rafter. The bound ganger was foaming at the mouth and snapping at anyone who came close. ‘What about these two? Are they worth dragging back?’

Cuts shrugged. ‘Heavy Hagen, sure. He just got a whiff of some hallucinogen. He’ll stop trying to kill everyone in a couple of days. Though we might want to keep his hands bound for at least a week. The ogryn…’ The Goliath ganger looked at Breaker Brass and shook his head. ‘Whatever necrotic these witches were using, it’s nasty. It dissolved Vorg’s belly, and ate Stum’s face right off. Good of you to axe ’em. Those screams…’ The medic shuddered. ‘Surprising how much noise somebody can make without a tongue. Or lips. Or–’

‘The ogryn,’ White snapped.

‘Well, the leg is gone past the knee. Dissolved into protein slurry, and the poison keeps going. But it’s slowing.’ Cuts shrugged. ‘Bastard’s big enough, he might survive if it stops before it reaches his guts. I’d say cut it off, try to stop the spread, but doing a field amputation that high after he’s already lost so much blood? He’d probably never live through it. Letting the poison run out… Maybe he’ll survive that. Maybe.’

‘Maybe.’ White crouched down over Breaker. He took one of his axes and poked it at the ogryn’s trouser leg. The fabric was soaked with fluids, and it squelched beneath the Goliath’s weapon. ‘Maybe he’ll live. But he sure as hell isn’t walking out of here, is he?’

The axe pressed into Breaker Brass’ leg, and he breathed out through clenched teeth. The pain of the touch made the room around him go dark, made Breaker clench his metal fists, but he didn’t slap the weapon away. He forced his eyes to stay open and looked up at White.

‘Will work.’

‘You don’t have a leg, servitor. How can you work?’

‘Have repair need,’ Breaker breathed. ‘Will work.’

‘I wish,’ White said. ‘I want you to carry that missile launcher you tried to break back for me. But you ain’t got no leg, servitor.’ The Goliath pressed harder against Breaker’s thigh, where the poison was still slowly breaking him down. ‘So how you gonna bloody serve?’

Breaker jerked, and his hand shot out. Steel fingers closed over the haft of the axe, pushing it up, away from his burning leg. White’s muscles tightened, bulged as he pressed down, but the axe slowly rose, up and away. Suffering, dying, the ogryn was still stronger. Holding the axe up, he spoke slow, grinding out the words. ‘Repair. Will work.’

Dead White flexed thick muscles, pressing down one more time, but the axe didn’t move. It sat in Breaker Brass’ steel fist as if it were fixed in stone, until White suddenly jerked it back, away from the ogryn. Breaker let it go, let his hand fall back to the floor with a click. The pain in him was enormous, but worse was this incapacity, the inability to get up, to move, to pick up the missile launcher and carry it back to the Blood Eyes’ base. Not because he liked White, or any of his gang, but because that was the work, it was what needed to be done. ‘Get Doc. Can repair.’

‘Doc’s a long way off,’ White said. His voice was flat as he walked over to Cuts and whispered something in the ganger’s ear. He looked back at Breaker Brass, his face as expressionless as his voice, except for two red spots bright on his pale cheeks. ‘Cuts’ll give you something for the pain.’

Breaker Brass wanted to tell the medic no, but… White was ordering it, and the pain was enormous as the toxin crept up his leg, so he kept his mouth shut. Cuts came over, clutching a syringe that looked more like a dagger, and looked at White, frowning.

‘Do it,’ the ganger growled, and Cuts shrugged and slammed the hypodermic into Breaker’s neck. The pain of it was nothing compared to his leg, and from the site Breaker felt a cold numbness begin to spread. Up through his head and down his arms and chest, down his belly and into his legs. In less than a minute he felt chill, detached. The pain ebbed a little but didn’t go away. What did go was Breaker’s ability to move.

‘Wha…’ he slurred, but his tongue wouldn’t shape the words, his lips wouldn’t shift. His breath still came, but in shallow heaves. Something stirred in him, a kind of fear Breaker had never felt before, even when he’d watched Hasher die. He was helpless, useless, immobile.

‘Feeling better, servitor?’ White walked back to him, axe hanging from one hand. He pressed it down on Breaker’s leg. The blade slit through his trousers, digging into flesh half dissolved. Whatever Cuts had given Breaker, it held him immobile, but blocked almost nothing of the searing pain that ran up Breaker’s leg. But he couldn’t move his hands to stop the Goliath, couldn’t even scream. He just had to lie there and take the pain. ‘No, I didn’t think so.’

Dead White lifted his axe. With one heavy boot he kicked Breaker’s hand away from his body. The metal fingers clanged on the stone, as unmoving as his flesh. ‘You gotta understand something, servitor. I’m the boss. Of this gang, of your factorum, of all this territory. I’m the leader, and leaders make decisions. About what’s worth repairing, and what’s not. That missile launcher?’ White pointed at the weapon with his axe. ‘The one you almost broke? Worth repairing. You, a one-legged idiot ogryn?’ He shifted the axe, holding it up. ‘You’re only good for parts.’

White’s axe flashed down, slicing into Breaker Brass’ forearm, just above the augmetic. It drove through the ogryn’s heavy hide, his thick muscle and buried itself into bone. White swore, ripped the axe back up, and brought it down again. This time bone shattered, and Breaker’s left arm was severed. The pain of it was enormous, as much as his leg, and the fact that he couldn’t move, couldn’t cry out, made it that much worse.

White splashed through the puddle of Breaker’s blood and went to his other side. He kicked that arm out too, and slammed his axe down again. This time he got it in one blow, and he gave a satisfied grunt as he bent and picked up both arms.

‘These,’ the Goliath said, ‘are worth something.’ He clapped the steel palms of the augmetics together, and from the floor Breaker watched his hands twitch, metal fingers shifting as his severed forearms spasmed.

White tossed Breaker’s hands at Cuts. Then he looked at Breaker and spat. ‘Now you’re worth nothing. Except to the rats.’ He reached down and grabbed Breaker’s good leg and with a little effort dragged him across the room, back to the dark hole which had contained the hatch Breaker had smashed out. ‘I thought about taking your head back with us too, to motivate the other servitors, but your hands are heavy enough.’

On his back, Breaker Brass barely heard him. Between blood loss and the agony of being dragged, he was barely holding on to consciousness. The world had dissolved around him into a tunnel of shadows and pain, and he didn’t realise where he was until White had shifted him so that he lay looking down through the broken doorway, down, down, down, into darkness.

‘Goodbye, servitor,’ Dead White said, his voice almost pleasant for once. ‘Go work in hell.’ The Goliath grabbed him and shoved, and Breaker Brass was falling, spinning down into the black, and then there was nothing but pain, enormous, overwhelming, eternal.

5

Pain.

Pain and water.

Cold on his face, lapping near his nose, his mouth. Trying to choke him.

Pain.

Breaker Brass turned his head. It was hard, but he focused, fighting against the pain, and got his mouth away from the water. He couldn’t drown. He had work. He had…

He had pain, all through him. But his arms, his legs, in those places the agony was sharp, tearing. Breaker groaned and tried to shift but the drug was still in him, and his body… his body needed repair. But he’d been tricked, butchered, stripped, abandoned. There was no repair coming. There was no work. There was only pain and nothing, that was all White had left him.

…if the rules ever say that some rotten bastard like that should be in charge of your life…

The words ran through his head, unattached. Work. He should be back at the factorum. He should… Breaker shifted one arm, the other, trying to crawl, but he barely moved and the pain made the darkness pulse.

Then there was light.

‘Get off him!’ Blinded by the brilliance, Breaker couldn’t see, but he heard squealing, felt the brush of bodies over him. The pain in his limbs lessened. A little.

‘By all the hells.’ The voice was deep, but not as deep as Breaker’s. A hand touched him, huge but gentle. ‘What did they do to you?’

Breaker tried to answer, but nothing came out, and the light was fading. It was being swallowed by darkness, and the last thing Breaker Brass saw before it took everything was a woman’s face, an ogryn’s face, staring down at him.

The darkness broke slowly, pushed back by a light flickering and low.

Breaker Brass blinked, and turned his head towards it. A flame floated in a bowl of dark liquid, shedding just enough light to show him walls of crumbling rockcrete, holding up a ceiling studded with dead lumens that would have been too near for him to stand were he not laid out on a pallet.

‘It lives.’

The voice came from Breaker’s other side, a human woman’s voice, but there was a metallic quality to it. The ogryn rolled his head and saw her, an angular shape in the dim light. The little flame shone on polished metal, warmed olive skin, traced over heavy hydraulic hoses and white braids, gleamed off green eyes. The woman looked like a cargo servitor, but not like any Breaker had ever seen before. Her cyborg body gleamed, and her human face… it wasn’t slack, dead. It was alive. Amused.

‘Looks like I owe Torque credits. You’re a survivor.’ She glided forward, her lips twisting into a smile. ‘So far.’

‘What?’ Breaker grunted. The pain that had filled him was now just a dull ache in his arms and legs. His arms and legs. Breaker looked down at the rough sheet covering him, and tried to pull it off, but… but he had no hands to grasp it. Breaker remembered Dead White’s axe falling, and he twisted, shoving the sheet off. Underneath, he wore nothing but a hygiene cloth wrapped around his groin, and bandages. So many, taped over his chest and belly and shoulders, but Breaker barely noticed them. He was looking at his limbs. Both arms ended just below the elbow. Further down, the leg that the Escher ganger had poisoned was gone, just gone, and the leg on the other side ended partway down his huge thigh. Breaker shifted on the bed, holding up what was left of his arms. ‘I…’ He stared at the strange cargo servitor, and there was no focus in him, just need. ‘I need repair,’ he said, and the cargo servitor laughed.

‘You sure as hell do.’ Hydraulics rumbled, and she set powerful cargo clamps onto Breaker’s pallet. ‘My name’s Track. You can tell me yours when we see Torque. Who you’ve already met before, but I don’t think you were in any shape for introductions then, what with the rats eating you.’

Track carried Breaker through empty corridors, lit only by a light mounted on her shoulder. ‘We’re in an old security base, built by some dead nobles ages ago.’ Her voice rose over the whir of her heavy treads. ‘Solid place. Good defences, and full of interesting things, but we’re deep in the underhive. Power here’s sketchy. We’ve got good conduits in the wreck room though. Here.’

Track pushed the pallet through a set of swinging doors, and Breaker blinked in the sudden glare. The lumens were working in the big room beyond the doors, shining off white-painted walls. Heavy tables were grouped in two clumps on either side. On the left, the tables were covered with disassembled weapons and half-gutted machines. On the right, they were more neatly organised. Jars of mould and fungi were lined up beside racks of surgical instruments, their razor-sharp edges gleaming. Bent over one of those tables, sorting supplies, was an ogryn – the woman Breaker had seen in the darkness.

‘Told you he’d live,’ she said.

‘You’ll get your credits, Torque.’ Track set the pallet down and pulled two normal human arms out of her heavy cargo clamps like she was slipping them from the sleeves of a shirt. The clamps hung motionless as she folded her arms across her chest. The skin covering them was the same olive as that of her face, the only other part of her not buried beneath metal shiny as chrome. That face was sharp, like her green eyes, which were bright in their brackets of wrinkles.

They weren’t cargo servitor eyes.

The ogryn walked over to Breaker Brass, looking him up and down. ‘I found you by the smell of your blood.’ She peeled a bandage away from what was left of Breaker’s thigh and looked at the scabbing wound beneath. ‘And the sound of the rats, fighting over you. A few minutes later they would have been in your guts, and even I wouldn’t have been able to save you.’

‘Save.’ Breaker frowned. ‘You repair? Need repair.’

‘You think?’

‘Track,’ Torque warned. She was examining the other wounds that mottled Breaker’s torso, touching them with careful fingers. ‘Does this hurt?’

‘No,’ Breaker said, and she frowned. ‘Little,’ he admitted. Torque was unsettling. The way she moved, her expressions, the way she talked. She seemed more human than ogryn.

But ogryn she was. Torque was almost as tall as Breaker Brass, and she had the same massive musculature, the same dark skin, the same yellow eyes, the same frizzy red hair as him and almost all the other ogryns that worked in this sector of the hive. But… she was strange.

‘True ogryn. Won’t admit pain.’ She started to unwind the bandages on Breaker’s hip. ‘You had an Escher necrotic in you. It almost killed you, and it saved your life.’ She pulled off the bandage, and Breaker Brass could see that there was nothing left of his leg, only an open, ulcerated sore on his hip, his pelvis visible at its bottom. ‘They make it so it eats you slow and painful, and mix a coagulant in to keep you from bleeding out too fast. That’s the only thing that kept you from dying after your arms got cut off, or when you shattered your other leg in the fall.’

Breaker looked at the hideous wound. ‘Need repair.’

Torque sighed. ‘So you can work?’

‘Yes.’

‘For who?’ Track asked. ‘Those Goliath bastards who got you into that fight?’ She tapped her left bicep with her right hand, touching the same spot where the House Goliath mark was branded into Breaker’s skin. On her bicep, there was only scar tissue, where her own had been cut away. Breaker looked over at Torque. Her arm was the same, scarred where her brand had once been.

‘Rebels,’ he said. ‘Runaways.’ The Goliaths had warned him about such things. ‘Jobless.’

‘Oh, we work.’ Track said. ‘We just work for ourselves.’

‘Wrong,’ Breaker said. It felt wrong, deep to his core. The Goliaths had made him focus hard on those lessons when he was a juve. But …if the rules ever say that some rotten bastard like that should be in charge of your life… Breaker shoved that voice away. It broke his focus. ‘Is wrong. Do the work told.’

‘Ugh. Standard psych-imprinting.’ Track shook her head. ‘You ogryns take to that crap like rot-beetles to fresh sewage. You expect me to fix this idiot?’

‘You fixed me,’ Torque said.

‘You were less damaged. And smarter.’ The cargo servitor glared at Breaker. ‘You want repair?’

‘Said that.’ Breaker raised his maimed arms. ‘Need repair.’ That wasn’t confusing, unlike these two. He needed hands to work with, legs to stand. They could be steel, like his old hands. Just as long as he could work.

Track and Torque stared at each other for a long moment, then Track shrugged. ‘Okay. I’ll give you new legs, new arms, better than your old. But you’re going to pay.’

‘Pay?’ Breaker Brass said. ‘No credits. No nothing.’

‘We’ll work something out.’ Track said. ‘For now, you have your story. I want to know how you ended up down here like this. And you have your brain.’

‘Track!’ Torque snapped, but the cyborg ignored her.

‘Brain?’ Breaker Brass said. ‘Need brain. Like hands. Can’t work without.’ Though the Goliaths sometimes claimed that the ogryns were brainless, Breaker was sure that wasn’t true.

‘Don’t worry, you’ll keep it. I just want to make it better. Like your arms and legs.’

‘Track.’ Torque stomped over to the cargo servitor. ‘He’s not one of your experiments.’

‘He is if he agrees to it.’

Breaker Brass looked from cyborg to ogryn. He wanted repair. But he remembered White, and Cuts, and the injection that had made him helpless. ‘What do?’

‘She’ll install a BONE unit in your skull,’ Torque said. ‘Biochemical Ogryn Neuronal Enhancement. Someone in the Imperium has a sick sense of humour. They call ogryns that have them BONEheads and use them to lead other ogryns. Track got a hold of a few, and she’s been experimenting with them, for her own amusement.’

‘So ungrateful,’ Track said. ‘Yours… almost works.’

‘Mine works perfectly well,’ Torque growled. ‘The fact that you think it doesn’t makes me worry about what you think working would mean.’

‘You,’ Breaker said, looking at Torque.

‘Yes, me,’ she said. ‘And one other. He killed himself, not long after his unit was implanted.’

Killed himself? Breaker Brass frowned, not understanding. But understanding didn’t matter. He had to be repaired, so he could work. That’s what mattered. ‘Need repair.’

‘There. See?’ Track said. ‘He’s fine with it.’

‘He doesn’t understand,’ Torque said, her deep voice almost a growl.

‘That’s okay.’ Track smiled. ‘He will.’

6

The wind moaned around the shattered hull of the transport, swirling black smoke. The noxious stench made his eyes water, and the other ogryns were hacking. They should move, but the humans had ordered them to stay and–

‘He’s coming out of it. Get–’

The voice cut off when Breaker shoved himself up, staring around. He was in the wreck room, on his pallet, Torque standing beside him.

‘Breaker. You’re okay.’ She touched his shoulder, soothing, but keeping him in place. On the other side of the table, Track smiled.

‘I’d say those work,’ she said, pleased.

‘What?’ Breaker swung his head. That place – the smoke, the ship, the ogryns, the bizarre absence of walls or roof… It had seemed so real, but he’d never seen anything like it before. Breaker rubbed his aching head, confused. Then pulled his hand away, staring at it.

It hovered in front of his face, gleaming yellow in the light. He shifted, realising for the first time that he was sitting up, supporting himself with his other arm. Leaning forward, he raised that one too. Two hands. Augmetic, like the ones he’d had for so long, and completely unlike them. His old hands had been steel, silver-grey metal scarred by years of use. These hands were bright gold, unmarked.

‘Breaker?’ Torque asked, moving next to him. ‘Are you okay?’

‘Saw something,’ he said, distracted, staring at his hands. ‘Funny dream.’

Torque growled. ‘I thought you said you were going to clean that unit out, Track?’

‘I did.’ The cyborg shrugged. ‘Look, it’s a brain implant ripped out of a dead man’s skull. I can’t predict every complication.’

‘Hands,’ Breaker said. He wiggled his fingers. They moved – jerky, but they moved. He remembered his first augmetic fists, how awkward they were at first. These new hands were not nearly so bad. He tapped his fingers together, hearing the click of metal on metal. He could feel them touch. Was he feeling it better than he had from his old hands? He thought so, but it was impossible to say. But he had hands again. ‘Gold hands.’

‘Brass,’ Track answered. ‘Well, not really. It’s a military-grade plasteel alloy, similar to what’s used in Imperial armour. Those hands may be salvage, but they’re quality salvage, especially after I fixed them up.’ Track reached out and tapped a silver finger against one of his new hands. ‘I plated them this colour when I was adjusting them to fit you, because of your name. Form is as important as function.’

Breaker Brass lifted his arms. He could see the brass-coloured metal run up to the base of both his biceps. A web of that metal ran up the rest of his arms to his shoulders, over the red marks of his healing scars. He’d spent so long waiting while Track had fussed over these salvaged augmetics. More than enough time for him to tell them his story, about his life in the factorum, about Hasher Gob, about the Blood Eyes, and Dead White.

‘I know him.’ That’s what Torque had said, when he first mentioned the ganger’s name. ‘Pale. He didn’t have that fancy conversion field implant then. He wore armour, and was part of a gang called the Neck Snappers. They–’ Torque had gone silent, and Breaker had eventually gone back to telling his story. Later, Track had told him that Torque had barely survived a gang raid on her factorum, that fleeing from the carnage had been what led to her being down here.

‘The Neck Snappers were supposed to be defending that factorum,’ Track had said. ‘They were raided by some Cawdor fanatics, and the Neck Snappers went berserk and killed everyone they could get their hands on – Cawdor, Goliath workers, servitors. Almost killed Torque.’ Track looked at Breaker, a thin smile on her lips. ‘Just another day serving the houses, though, right?’

Breaker looked up from his chest. Track had spent so long working on these augmetics. And during that time, she’d kept up her talk of how terrible his old masters were. How lucky he was to be with her. He’d tried to ignore her, but it got harder and harder. Maybe it was the memory of Hasher Gob’s words, which wouldn’t leave his head. Or maybe it was the memory of Dead White, hacking off his hands.

Breaker Brass slapped his new hands on the pallet. It didn’t matter. He was being repaired. He pulled at the sheet that covered his hips, and looked down at the empty space below it. ‘Legs?’

‘Damn, meatslab,’ Track said irritably. ‘I just gave you two new arms and doubled your brains. Have some patience.’

‘Been patient. Been long.’ Breaker pushed himself up on his new hands and, wobbling, walked on them off the bed. He was weak, but the movement felt good. He hand-walked across the floor of the wreck room, moving until his right hand got tangled and he toppled over. He righted himself and looked back. Torque was watching him with a smile, Track thoughtfully.

‘It’s good to see you moving,’ Torque said.

‘Good to move.’ Breaker leaned against a table and a box of gears slid off it and thumped to the floor, spilling. He righted the box and started cleaning up, immensely satisfied as he closed his fingers on the first gear and dropped it into the box.

‘Sort them by size first,’ Track said.

Breaker nodded, and started sorting the spikey metal wheels into piles.

‘Your legs will take time,’ Track said. ‘I don’t have salvaged ones available, the way I did with the hands.’

‘Don’t rush.’ Torque said. ‘He needs time to heal. All those wounds, those new arms, the BONE implant. It takes its toll.’

‘He’s ogryn,’ Track said. ‘You people are tougher than the damn rats. When I get those last parts, he’ll be ready.’

‘Parts.’ Breaker kept working, pleased with how his fingers were slowly improving their movement. But these last few days he had been wondering something. ‘All these parts.’ He waved a gear at the tables. ‘Where from?’

Track looked smug. ‘Different places. This base has a lot of things. I fix some of them, and trade others. With underhive scum, gangers, guild traders. Reaching out further each time, until…’ The cyborg tilted her head, looking up, past the lumens. ‘There are shafts that run all the way up to where the sun sometimes shines. Where there are all manner of riches.’

‘Scum.’ Breaker had heard of them. Raiders. Jobless. ‘Why…’ He tried to think of the word he needed, still sorting. The concept was frustratingly close, but the words were hard to catch. ‘Scum. Why no take?’ Breaker asked.

‘Because they profit from us. We make them things. And…’ Torque sighed and shrugged. ‘They’re scared of us.’

‘An ogryn and a heavily armed cyborg,’ Track said. ‘They’re smart to be scared. Even though–’ She cut herself off and looked at Breaker, looked at him until he noticed and raised his eyes to meet hers. ‘What would you do, Breaker Brass, if someone attacked us?’

Breaker raised one golden fist. ‘Can’t stand. But can fight.’

Track looked twice as smug. ‘Of course you can.’ Beside her, Torque sighed again.

‘What?’ Breaker asked. The gears called to him, a job unfinished, but… there was something going on here.

‘It’s working,’ Track answered. ‘The BONE unit. You’re curious about what we’re doing here, where we got our supplies. You noticed something was going on, that we weren’t telling you something, by the way we were acting. And those gears.’

Breaker looked at the piles in front of him. ‘What about gears? Have sorted before.’

‘Sure,’ Track said. ‘That’s just the kind of job for an ogryn. Simple, repeating. Boring for a regular human. But for you, perfectly absorbing. You’re probably very content, doing jobs like this. Right?’

‘Work is good,’ Breaker said. But some work was better. He started stacking gears again. ‘Sorting is good.’

‘Of course.’ Track smiled. ‘The Imperium thinks ogryns are stupid. They’re not completely wrong, the average ogryn is more limited. But ogryns are great at focusing. Give you a simple, repetitive task, you’ll do it until you drop. Normal humans can’t, we get impatient. You people are better at work like this, but that focus is a double-edged sword. You have trouble dealing with more than one thing at once. Your average ogryn, he’ll sort gears for hours, perfectly happy, but he couldn’t talk or listen while doing it. You can.’

Breaker stopped, a gear gripped between his new fingers. ‘Me.’

‘You,’ Track said. ‘You’re changing, Breaker Brass. Your speech, the way you watch us, your expressions. The way you focus.’

‘But focus…’ Breaker frowned. ‘Focus good.’

‘It is. And you’ll still have it, but it won’t be so overwhelming because of what I did to your BONE unit.’ The cyborg smiled. ‘I can’t use the same techniques as the Imperial Guard, I don’t have the equipment. I had to figure out my own way to get these salvaged units into your brains. Which I did, and my technique may be better than theirs.’

Torque snorted. ‘You may have better surgical techniques than the Imperium. Or maybe me and Breaker were already smarter than the average ogryn.’

Track waved a silver hand. ‘Does it matter? You’re special or I’m special or maybe both. What’s important is that you’re smarter than any BONEhead the Imperium makes. You could outsmart the average house gang scummer, and I bet you Breaker will be just as smart.’

‘Smart but dangerous,’ Torque said quietly. ‘You must be thrilled.’

‘What?’ Breaker set down the last gear. ‘Dangerous?’

‘When I put the salvaged BONE unit in Torque, there were problems.’ Track shrugged. ‘These units came from an abandoned crate of Imperial supplies, the last effects of a destroyed Imperial Guard ogryn unit. The ones in your heads used to be in the skulls of some now-dead ogryns. There were unexpected side effects when they were reused.’

‘Side effects,’ Torque said, her voice bleak. ‘You mean nightmares.’

‘Not nightmares. Memory echoes, from the previous user. Apparently the most stressful memories, the nasty ones, stuck.’ Track sighed. ‘I had no idea. Luckily those memories fade over time, but they leave a mark.’

Torque shuddered. ‘They sure do. Those nightmares… They’re why I became a healer.’

‘A healer, and a pacifist. A pacifist ogryn.’ Track laughed. ‘Who’d believe it?’

‘Pacifist?’ Breaker asked.

‘Someone who thinks it’s wrong to hurt anyone,’ Torque said. ‘Ever.’

‘Ever?’ Breaker Brass tilted his head. ‘What if told to?’

‘Then I wouldn’t listen.’

‘What if hurt you?’

‘Then I’d try to stop them without hurting them,’ she said. ‘Or run.’

‘Run.’ Breaker tried to understand. It was too hard though, despite what Track had said about him being smarter. So he gave up and looked down to where his legs should be. ‘Me not pacifist,’ he said. ‘Can’t run.’

Torque blinked at him. ‘Was that a joke?’

‘Well, he’s smiling,’ Track said. ‘So I’d say yes. Sense of humour, sort of. He’s coming along just fine.’

7

The wind moaned around the shattered hull of the transport, swirling black smoke. The noxious stench of it made his eyes water, and the other ogryns were hacking. They should move, but the humans had ordered them to stay and–

‘This it?’

The human woman wore a mask, but he could hear her clearly as she strode by.

‘All that’s left,’ he heard the man beside her say. ‘The rest died in the crash.’

‘Just as well. We lost most of the rations. But we need muscle.’ The woman shook her head. ‘We’ll make do. Pick out the ones that can carry a transport pod and send them to the cargomaster.’

‘The others?’ the man asked.

He watched the woman stare at the wasteland surrounding them. ‘We leave our enemies nothing. Put them back in the ship.’

‘Breaker!’

The voice snapped Breaker Brass awake, and he sat up fast, almost falling from his pallet.

‘Breaker, easy.’ Torque stood over him, frowning. ‘The dream?’

‘Yes.’ Breaker rubbed one of his new hands over his face, blinking around at the now familiar wreck room. He must have dozed off while Torque had been running her tests, tracing the nerves left in the ruins of his legs. ‘Stupid.’

‘Expand,’ Torque said, and Breaker sighed. The other ogryn always pushed him.

‘Not mine.’ Torque stared at him, and he started again. ‘It’s not my memory. That ship, that place…’ Torque had tried to explain the concept of sky to him, but she seemed uncertain of it too. ‘It’s not mine. Why can’t it go away?’

‘It will,’ she said. ‘Eventually. Mine did. But they are real, real memories of something that happened. Just not to us. Track got these BONE units cheap, because who wants a smart ogryn? But she likes to experiment. So here we are, two ogryns stuck with the memories of dead men in our heads.’

‘Two.’ Breaker looked up at her. ‘You said once, another.’

‘Grammar, Breaker.’ She didn’t make him say it again though. ‘Turn Bolt was his name. He’d got lost down here, separated from his gang. We took him in and Track convinced him to let her help him. Tricked, really.’ Torque sighed. ‘We’re easy to trick.’

‘What happened?’ Breaker asked.

‘Track made him smart, the way she made us smart. It’s strange to watch. When it happened to me, it just happened. With him, I could see it, the way he talked, the way he acted. He got smart like me, but he got memories like me too. So he ended up like me, but worse…’ Torque shook her head, scowling. ‘I don’t want to say worse. That’s how Track thinks of it, but not wanting to hurt people isn’t wrong.’ Her eyes flicked to him, then away. ‘No matter what anyone thinks.’

Did he think it was wrong? Breaker Brass wasn’t sure, but it was strange. Though sometimes he thought he could understand it. Maybe.

‘Anyway,’ she sighed. ‘Turn Bolt stopped wanting to hurt people, but he remembered doing it. His gang had used him as an enforcer, made him break people, slow and thorough. He remembered that, all the people he’d tortured, and he couldn’t take it. He ended himself.’

Ended. Breaker Brass didn’t understand that. You worked until you died, or until the Goliaths ended you because you couldn’t work. Ending yourself seemed wasteful… Because he had been trained to be a slave.

Breaker shook his head. That was one of the things Track kept saying. The cyborg’s ideas, burrowing into his head. The kind of thing a jobless would say, but those things kept digging deeper into him.

‘This sounds cheerful,’ Track said, rolling in. She set down the crate she was carrying beside them. ‘Lighten up, you two. I brought presents.’ Track pulled her arms out of her cargo clamps and reached into the crate, grunting as she pulled out a massive gun. ‘Torque, give this thing to Breaker before it snaps my wrists.’

Torque frowned, but she grabbed the gun and tossed it to Breaker Brass. It was huge and sturdy, and when he lifted it in his arms the massive stock fit perfectly against his shoulder. It was strange to be holding a weapon obviously made to be used by an ogryn, instead of struggling with something human-sized.

‘What this? What is this?’ he repeated when both women pointedly cleared their throats.

‘Ripper gun,’ Track said. ‘Full-auto shotgun. Usually fitted with a burst limiter, because ogryns like to listen to the noise. This one’s been removed though – I trust you’ll be smart enough to stop shooting when the target has been reduced to slurry.’

Breaker didn’t answer. The gun was simple, brutal, effective, like a krumper but more dangerous. So much more. ‘Where’d you get this?’

‘From that same lost crate that had your BONE units, and your hands. Not these though, unfortunately.’ Track waved at Torque, who hefted out the next thing from the crate. A long, heavy box. ‘Two legs, almost done. I’d show them to you, but I can’t plate them until after I’ve made my last few adjustments and I don’t want you to see them before they’re pretty.’

Breaker Brass stared at the box, hungry. He wanted to get up. To walk. To work…

That was all he cared about, at first, but the longer he was down here – the more he talked to Torque, to Track – the more his mind grew. He still thought of the factorum, but not of the work. He thought of the workers, the other ogryns he’d left there with the Blood Eyes. As every day passed, Breaker worried less about what quotas they might be missing and more about them. His people.

Some part of his mind still rebelled against those thoughts. The training that had been pressed into him, that the work was the most important thing, that nothing else mattered. But that part seemed to be quieter every day.

Was that wrong?

…if the rules ever say that some rotten bastard like that should be in charge of your life…

It didn’t feel wrong.

And maybe that was wrong.

‘Ready soon?’ Breaker cursed when Track just stared at him. ‘Will they be ready soon, oh great savant?’ Breaker was still unsure about that word, but Torque called Track that sometimes, and it seemed to both annoy and please the cyborg.

‘Soon,’ she said. ‘Oh, and one more thing.’ Track pulled the last thing out of the crate, another large metal box. ‘Pit spider. Biggest one I’ve ever seen.’

‘Why–’ Torque’s question cut off when Track bobbled the box, then dropped it.

‘Look out!’ Track shouted as the metal lid popped off, and a green-legged horror flew out and skittered across the floor.

Torque swore and jumped back, moving away from the deadly thing, but Breaker Brass leaned forward, the ripper gun light in his hands as he pulled the heavy trigger, hoping that the storm of pellets wouldn’t clip Track before they tore the spider apart.

But the weapon only clicked and rattled in his hands, spilling empty shells without firing. They hit the floor, rolling over to where the spider had come to a halt. Motionless, its legs in a tangle around it, its many eyes were grey and glazed.

‘What,’ Torque growled, staring at the obviously dead spider, ‘was that?’

‘A test,’ Track said, looking at Breaker. ‘I had to make sure.’

‘Be sure,’ Breaker grunted, setting the gun aside. ‘Legs or not, I’m no pacifist.’ He could see Torque’s face, her anger at Track’s trick fading into a kind of disappointment. It made him feel strange. Wrong, though he’d done nothing wrong. Things like that, conflicting emotions, had been happening more and more. Part of getting smarter, he suspected.

He wasn’t very happy about it.

Track looked from Torque to him. ‘I don’t know why you’re both so cranky. This is good! Breaker’s going to be a welcome addition. Now we won’t have to worry about what we’ll do if someone shows up here, looking to do us damage.’

‘Is that what I am, now?’ Breaker asked. ‘Your muscle?’

‘Not now,’ Track said. ‘After the surgery.’ The cyborg smiled. ‘We’ll get your legs under you. Then you’ll be ready to kick some arse.’

For her, were the words left unsaid. Breaker Brass looked at the gun, heavy and dangerous. He wasn’t a pacifist, but he was different, and the idea of fighting for someone else didn’t appeal any more.

Breaker Brass picked up the ripper and stared down its sights at the cracked ceiling above, thinking of his factorum, of the Blood Eyes, of Dead White, and wondered what it would be like to fight for himself for once.

8

‘Beautiful, aren’t they?’

Breaker Brass’ new legs lay on a table beside Track. They were like his arms, a plasteel alloy, but these were black with shining brass highlights.

‘Beautiful,’ Breaker said, and he meant it. Not just because he wanted to walk again so badly. The things that Track made were beautiful, sleek and elegant instead of just crude and sturdy, which was what Breaker was used to with the Goliaths. It made him wonder. ‘Where do you come from, Track?’

The cyborg stilled, her hands hovering over the trays of gleaming instruments. Breaker was laid out on a table, naked beneath a sheet, waiting for the drugs that Torque had injected into his spine to take effect. She had promised Breaker that he wouldn’t feel a thing, right before she’d gone to get some more equipment, but that he’d be awake and able to watch. Which was both reassuring and troubling.

‘The spires,’ Track finally said.

The spires. Breaker Brass only knew of them dimly. He knew there was more of this vast, ancient city than the factorum and the levels that he had moved through with the Slag Krocs. Below was this place, the underhive, dark and dangerous, abandoned and crumbling. And far above was the spires, where there were no ogryns or factorums or gangs, a place where the humans lived in luxury. Breaker had never understood what that word meant until Torque had explained it and so many others while reading to him. She kept threatening to teach him to read.

Luxury. A life of leisure. The humans saw being jobless as a thing to be envied. There was so much Breaker didn’t understand, but he was focused now on Track. He could still focus.

‘How’d you end up here?’

‘I made the wrong person mad.’ The cyborg tapped her finger on a tray of scalpels. ‘I was an engineer, an artist. I designed custom augmetics for those that could afford them. I had a good life. I had… It doesn’t matter.’ She rolled away from the instruments, away from him. ‘I made a mistake, I got caught, and I was punished. My beautiful augmetics stripped away, my body torn apart and then trapped in a crude servitor frame. And they took my mind. Fitted me with something like your BONE unit, except mine took my memory, most of my intelligence, my will… Until it came back.’

‘Why?’ Breaker asked.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Something in me, fighting against it?’ Track shook her head. ‘No. It was probably just luck, a fault in the unit they put in my head. But it happened, and I fought the unit until I was free, and I could escape the hellhole they had put me in.’

‘And come here,’ Breaker said.

‘And come here,’ she echoed.

‘Got free.’ Breaker poked at his hip, but his lower body was a lump of unfeeling flesh. When he looked up, Track was watching him, her face blank. ‘Escaped. Found this base. Replaced that crude servitor frame. But then reached back.’

‘Your language gets worse when you try to be clever, Breaker.’ Track spun in a circle, the polished metal that encased her shining under the bright lights like a mirror. ‘What are you trying to say?’

Breaker growled, but spoke more carefully. ‘The spires betrayed you, cast you out, but when you got free you reached back to them. You trade with them, you work for them, after what they did to you.’

‘They have the best things,’ Track said.

‘Is that it?’ Breaker asked.

‘Is what it?’ Torque said, stomping back into the room, carrying a rack of blood-filled bags. Breaker wondered where she had got them, then decided he didn’t care. He went back to watching Track, who was sorting through her instruments, the scalpels bright as her chrome. Eventually, her hands stopped and she looked up at him.

‘Escape is never as simple as we hope, ogryn. Sometimes our past…’ She held up a blade, curved and keen. ‘Isn’t so easy to cut away.’

Breaker Brass lay back and laced his metal fingers behind his head, her scalpel reminding him of the shining blade of an axe. ‘No. No, it’s not.’

The wind moaned around the shattered hull of the transport, swirling black smoke. The noxious stench of it made his eyes water, and the other ogryns were hacking, their lungs burning with contaminants. They should move, but the humans had ordered them to stay and–

‘This it?’

The human woman wore a mask, but he could hear her clearly as she strode by.

‘All that’s left,’ he heard the man beside her say. ‘The rest died in the crash.’

‘Just as well. We lost most of the rations. But we need muscle.’ The woman shook her head. ‘We’ll make do. Pick out the ones that can carry a transport pod and send them to the cargomaster.’

‘The others?’ the man asked.

He watched the woman stare at the wasteland surrounding them. ‘We leave our enemies nothing. Put them back in the ship.’

And that’s what they did. He carried his brother with the shattered leg back, set his little sister with him, told her to quiet her questions. The humans knew best. Then he went with the others to the cargomaster, took his load and started across the sandy waste, following the humans who were carrying stretchers loaded with their wounded. He walked, thinking of those left behind, until the humans told him to stop. He stared at the distant dot of the wreck, resting beneath its tower of smoke, and saw it disappear behind a brilliant burst of light. His eyes slammed shut, and he was blind when the shock wave hit, almost knocking him off his feet. He caught himself and forced his eyes open. The wreck was a brilliant ball of orange and red, pouring black smoke into the sky. He blinked at the fire, and inside his guts shifted.

‘It hurts,’ he heard the woman say. She was holding a control in her hands. She sighed and threw it down to the ground. ‘Losing a ship. It’s like losing family.’ The man beside her nodded, and they walked away, and the line started moving again. All except the ogryns, staring back silently at the rising smoke.

‘Damn it!’ a voice snapped out of the dark. ‘Grab him!’

Arms wrapped around Breaker Brass, holding him, and Breaker blinked, trying to pull himself together, to shed that dead ogryn’s memory. This wasn’t some barren wasteland, beneath a sky he’d never seen. He was in the wreck room, leaning against Torque, his legs unsteady beneath him.

His legs.

He blinked at them, black and brass, holding him up. Sort of. A wave of dizziness went through him, and he leaned into Torque’s hold. She grunted and moved, shifting so that when she let him go he sprawled onto the pallet he’d been trapped on so long. But not any more. Breaker stretched out his legs, watching them shift, and almost forgot his dream for a moment.

‘That stupid memory still bothering you?’ Track asked. The cyborg pulled a clean sheet off the table beside her and threw it at Breaker.

The ogryn, still naked from the surgery, wrapped it around himself, trying to sort out his emotions – the elation from being able to walk again fighting the vicious gut punch of betrayal that had filled his head.

‘Was it bad?’ Torque asked.

‘It finished.’ Breaker didn’t understand how he knew that, but it felt right. ‘I saw…’ What he was meant to see. A strange thought, but it felt right. Like this dead ogryn had been determined to share this. The faces of his siblings, before they died, and the reason that they had died. The truth of it. ‘I saw–’

‘Somebody else’s bad day.’ Track rolled over. ‘That’s all it was. Forget it, and let’s start our diagnostics.’

Torque’s jaw clenched, biting something back. Then she took a breath. ‘Track. Give him a break, okay? He just had surgery. You could use a break too. Go eat. Take a nap.’

‘Fine. Wallow in it.’ Track shook her head, spinning away. ‘Take your break. But if I come back here and he says he’s a pacifist too, I’m kicking you both out.’

Torque watched her go, then looked at Breaker Brass. ‘You okay?’

‘Yes. No.’ He reached down, tapping his fingers against his knees. They clicked metal to metal, and he felt every tap. ‘I knew it. The humans told me that we weren’t the same, that we were abhuman. Mutants by a nicer name. But I didn’t know it. Now I do.’ That memory from the dead ogryn clicked with all the insults the Goliaths had thrown at him through his life, even when they thought they were being kind, all the terrible things he’d watched the Blood Eyes do, all the terrible things Dead White had done. It all snapped together in his new brain, and he knew it. ‘They hate us.’

‘Sometimes,’ Torque said. ‘Most of the time, we’re just tools. Machines of meat, to do their work. Nothing more.’

‘Machines of meat.’ Breaker Brass looked at Torque. ‘I can’t do it. Can’t work for her. Track is one of them, was one of them. She thinks of us the same way, doesn’t she? We’re not people, we’re experiments, tools that she’s trying to use and improve.’

‘Yes,’ Torque said. ‘But the question is, what will you do instead?’

Breaker stared down at his hands, gleaming in the light, and thought of the bright iron of the factorum, of red lights in white skin, and he heard Hasher Gob’s voice in his head again. If the rules ever say… Gob hadn’t been preaching revolution, not to a servitor that he used just as readily as Dead White did, if kindlier. But it didn’t mean his words weren’t true.

‘I want to go back,’ Breaker said. ‘To my people. The past… Track was right, we can’t just cut it away. But maybe we can cauterise the wound.’

Clunk… clunk… clunk…

The sound of heavy boots against the rockcrete floor was a steady beat behind Breaker Brass’ thoughts. That many ogryns. That many Goliaths. That many Blood Eyes. That many weapons…

It was a loose plan, but it was something to focus on, and he’d been down here too long, getting his hands, his legs, his smarts. It was time to go.

After this.

‘What do you think she’ll do?’ he asked Torque, who stood working with some of her dried fungus while she watched Breaker pace back and forth, getting used to his legs.

‘Try to stop you.’

‘Can she?’

‘Depends.’ Torque looked up at him. It felt strange to be taller than her. ‘Will you let her?’

Breaker didn’t get a chance to answer. The wreck room doors banged open and Track rolled in. She looked at them both and frowned. ‘What’s going on?’

‘I’m leaving,’ Breaker said.

‘Leaving?’

‘I’m going back to my factorum. To kill the Blood Eyes, and free my people.’

‘Your people.’ Track snorted. ‘Good luck.’

‘What?’ Breaker asked.

‘You know what they are. You were one of them. They can’t even spell the word free, much less understand the concept.’ Track rolled to a table and started sorting through the equipment piled on it. ‘It won’t work. You’re just going to get yourself and a lot of others killed.’

‘Ogryns aren’t stupid,’ Breaker said. ‘Just focused. You said that.’

‘When I was being nice,’ Track said. ‘The truth is, ogryns are pretty damn stupid. And so are you, apparently, despite that implant.’ She picked up a mass of wires. ‘Let me tell you about Sparky.’

‘Who?’ Breaker asked, confused.

‘The only other ogryn who ever tried to lead a revolution.’ Track pulled at the wires, untangling them. ‘It happened a long time ago. Sparky got smart too, somehow. Something House Van Saar did to him. They made an ogryn smart and he turned on them, put together an army of abhumans and mutants and started a revolution.’

‘And?’ Breaker asked.

‘And you never heard of him for a reason. Sparky started his war and scared the great houses enough that they banded together and hunted him down. They drove him to the bottom of the hive, and then they slaughtered every abhuman in his sector and built a chapel from their bones. I went to a wedding there once.’ She dropped the wires. ‘I didn’t put that implant in you to make you stupider, Breaker Brass. Stay here, work for me, and live.’

Breaker turned and walked away. It was getting easier. Like his arms, the legs Track had made for him were very good. But her story wasn’t. It went through his head and tore at his focus. He knew if he did this, many would die. He wasn’t a pacifist, no, he’d escaped that fate, but he still didn’t like that thought.

But he liked the thought of Dead White ruling over his people even less.

…if the rules ever say that some rotten bastard like that should be in charge of your life…

‘No.’

‘No?’ Track said, her voice hard. ‘Listen, ogryn. I’ve put time and credits into you. You think you’re just going to walk out on that debt?’

‘I’m not staying,’ Breaker said, his fists clenched. ‘Thank you for what you did for me, Track. But I’m not anyone’s slave any more, and you can’t keep me.’

‘Oh really?’ she asked, her green eyes dangerous.

‘Oh enough.’ Torque went to her bench, picked up a glass jar filled with powder and tossed it to Track. ‘Here. Payment for what you’ve done for us, and more for your trouble.’

‘For us?’ Breaker asked, confused.

‘What is this?’ Track said, catching the jar, ignoring him.

‘Ghast.’ She pointed to the jar. ‘I found a bolthole stash filled with the stuff while salvaging medical supplies. I can show you where the rest is.’

‘Us?’ Breaker asked again, and Torque looked at him, annoyed.

‘Yes, you idiot. Now shush, I’m negotiating.’

‘Dangerous, but… That would be profitable.’ Track stared at Torque. ‘And I can believe this?’

‘I’ve never lied to you.’

‘You’ve done nothing but let me down,’ Track said. ‘Why should this be any different?’

‘Just believe me,’ Torque said.

They looked at each other, cyborg and ogryn, until Track finally shook her head, spun around and headed out. ‘You’re never going to stop, are you? Fine. Get out then. I don’t need you.’

There was an edge of pain buried in her metallic voice, almost hidden, and Torque’s face twisted as she watched the cyborg go.

‘Torque–’ Breaker started, but she just shook her head.

‘When do we leave?’

‘As soon as we can.’

‘You’re pushing those legs,’ she said.

‘Dead White is pushing me. One missed quota, one gang war, and there might not be anyone for me to rescue.’

‘All right,’ she sighed. ‘It’ll have to be time enough. I’ll talk with Track and get what supplies I can from her.’ She looked around the wreck room. ‘I never thought I’d leave this place.’

Breaker reached out, and punched her lightly on the arm.

‘Thank you.’

All those new words they had forced into him, and that’s all he could think to say.

9

The Blood Eyes had given Breaker an easy path back through their defences.

Climbing up the shaft White had pushed him down, Breaker Brass realised how lucky he was to have survived the fall. It didn’t take him long to find the right tunnel, and soon he’d lead Torque back to the heart of the Blood Eyes’ territory. To the place where he’d grown up, the factorum where he had spilled so much blood and sweat. Crouched beside a grate that led up into a shadowy corner of one of the factorum’s storerooms, he could feel those memories, stirred by the smell of the grease and steel of the ancient machines, the burning stench of molten iron. The heat, the noise, the bright ruddy light. He had left this place not that long ago, but it felt like a lifetime. This place hadn’t changed, but he had. And his new arms and legs were the least of it.

‘Well, here we are,’ Torque said, her face lit by the distant red glow. ‘Now what?’

‘Wait and watch,’ Breaker said. He itched to go, to shoulder the ripper gun and get this fight started – but his new brain, which he hated but still listened to, warned him about that. He needed to know what was going on out there. So he settled in the grimy tunnel beside the grate, ignoring the rats and rot grubs, and watched. Torque settled in beside him, pulling out some ration bars of hard-pressed corpse flour.

‘The factorum I grew up in wasn’t so bright,’ she said. ‘We didn’t have forges. We had presses, mostly. Giant ones that could shape a slab of plasteel into the side of a tank with one push. When those Cawdor raiders attacked, I remember Goliaths and ogryns fighting them between the presses. Then the Neck Snappers came…’ She trailed off, staring up at the grate for a long time. ‘There was an old ogryn. He was showing me how to work in the factorum. Teaching me to take over for him when he went to the food processors. When the Neck Snappers came and started killing everyone that moved, Cawdor and Goliath and ogryn… he shoved me down a hole like this. Told me to run. Last I saw of him, he was fighting a crowd of Cawdor, trying to keep them from jumping down the same hole. He wrestled them back, into one of the presses – and then one of the Neck Snappers hit the button and started it up.’

‘White?’ Breaker asked.

‘Does it matter?’ Torque said. ‘Anyone would have done it. And laughed the same way he did when the press opened back up and there was just–’ She stopped. ‘I’m a pacifist, Breaker Brass. Or at least I try to be, as crazy as that is in this terrible place. But sometimes I’m a bad one. I hope this little war of yours works out.’

Hours passed. Shifts changed. And then came the chance Breaker was waiting for. An ogryn came into the storage room, dragging a battered cart. In the light of the lumens and the occasional flash from the forges, Breaker recognised her. The young woman, Pulley. Moving fast, he took hold of the grate and popped it out of the rockcrete wall with a shrug of his massive shoulders. The sound of it coming out was barely audible over the sound of the machines in the factorum, and Pulley didn’t notice him until he dropped his metal hand on her shoulder.

‘What?’ The ogryn spun, facing him. ‘Breaker Brass?’ Her face was confused. ‘Not dead?’

‘Not dead.’ Breaker catalogued the damage on the woman’s face, overlapping bruises new and old, a jagged cut on her cheek half healed into a nasty scar. Dead White and the Blood Eyes had been busy. ‘What happens?’

‘Work,’ Pulley said. She blinked, remembering, and tried to turn back to the shelves. ‘Parts needed. New quota.’

Of course there was. There was always a new quota. In the past, that hadn’t ever occurred to Breaker. The quotas never ended. One finished, and the next began, and that’s all there was: the work, the quota. But Track had messed with his brain, and now…

‘New work,’ Breaker growled, holding Pulley in place. ‘Where Blood Eyes?’

They crouched on one of the catwalks at the top of the factorum, staring down. Breaker hadn’t been up here since he was a juve, and much smaller. The steel grating groaned under his weight, and the weight of Pulley and Torque, but he ignored it. Up here he could see and not be seen.

It had been hard enough, getting here. The ogryns in the factorum weren’t a problem, they were focused on their work. But there were the Goliath floor bosses and a few Blood Eyes scattered around. They had to move past them, carrying parts they’d taken from the storeroom. Helping Pulley finish her task – because she would have been useless if she hadn’t.

Now she was between them, her bruised face confused. ‘What work?’ she asked.

‘Find all the Blood Eyes.’ Breaker pointed to two of them below, slumped against a machine.

‘Two more on the other side,’ Torque said, squinting against the bright light of liquid iron pouring into moulds on that end of the room. The gangers over there were silhouettes, recognisable only by the dark lines of the shock staves slung over their shoulders. ‘Them, and that lone one next to that door.’ She pointed to a single ganger, wrapped in armour but slumped on the floor beside the door that led to the Blood Eyes’ quarters. ‘That’s all I see. Are there usually just five?’

‘I don’t know.’ Breaker ground one golden hand against the rusted steel grate of the catwalk. All that time he’d spent here, working under the Blood Eyes after they took over, and he knew nothing about how they ran their routine. He’d never paid attention then, focused on his work. How many guards they used in the factorum, how they stationed them, where they might have other guards… critical information he just didn’t know. He couldn’t even remember how many Blood Eyes there were. Doc, the Goliath medic, had talked about numbers, about the gang’s weapons and capabilities, but at the time Breaker hadn’t understood much of what he’d said. So now he had to scout, watch, spy. He couldn’t just jump in with his ripper blazing, that would be stupid.

The steel weave of the grate tore beneath his fist, and Breaker pulled his metal hand away. Sometimes he missed being stupid. ‘Seems low. And those below, they look like they’re barely awake.’

‘And one of the ones on the other side is limping,’ said Torque.

‘Pulley. Blood Eyes go fighting?’ Breaker could see Torque roll her eyes, but it was easy for him to slip back to his older ways of talking with the young ogryn.

‘Few shifts ago,’ Pulley said. ‘Took Spanner Chrome, Sockets. No come back. Making pour harder, not enough hands.’

White. Breaker Brass felt a flash of anger, hot as the iron being poured out of the massive ladle across the room. How many ogryns had the Goliath killed, or got killed? He stared down across the factorum at the massive shadows of his people. There weren’t as many as there should be. Breaker might not have been able to remember the habits of his guards, but he could keenly remember the pulse of the factorum, the numbers needed to work the machines, to meet the never-ending quotas. There wasn’t enough, not enough.

‘Blood Eyes win?’ Breaker growled.

‘Yes.’ Pulley looked at him, bruised face confused. ‘What work needed?’

Breaker ignored her, looking at Torque. ‘After the Blood Eyes win, they go to their quarters and celebrate.’

‘So they’ve been drinking and stimming their brains out.’ Torque frowned. ‘Don’t. I know you want an excuse to charge in, but you’re still outgunned. You have to get some of your old friends on your side.’ She tapped the packs they’d carried up to the catwalk with them. ‘We didn’t haul this hardware here just for you to use.’ Torque had traded for two more rippers to take with them, and ammo to fill their magazines.

‘That will take time. White and the others will recover.’ Breaker hefted the ripper gun he’d kept out, the one he’d tuned to fit him exactly, the one he’d been practising with. The destruction he could wreak with it was staggering. ‘Pulley. Most Blood Eyes in rooms?’

‘Yes.’ The ogryn had been watching them, clearly lost.

‘The entrance to their quarters is right there.’ Breaker pointed to the door across the factorum floor. The guard slumped in front of it had tipped over and was now sprawled on the ground, the bright light of the pour gleaming off the chromed spikes implanted in his scalp and the puddle of vomit that surrounded him. ‘There’s no other way in or out. I’ll have them trapped.’

‘They’ll have you trapped too,’ Torque said. ‘You can stomp the one on the door as you go in, but the other four won’t sleep through that gun of yours going off. And don’t forget the other Goliaths. The floor bosses. They might not like the gangers, but a rogue ogryn? They’ll weld those doors shut and never let you out.’

Torque was right, and Breaker couldn’t stand it. ‘If you’d just–’

The other ogryn looked at him, her eyes hard. ‘Finish that sentence, Breaker, and I walk away. You know what I am. I’ll risk my life for you, but I won’t kill. Ever. Understand?’

He looked at her, his gun heavy in his hands. Understand? No. No matter how smart he was now. But he knew she meant it.

From behind them there was a great clang, and the whole factorum dimmed. The great ladle had finished its pour and tipped back. The huge bowl was sliding back along its track, while the doors of another furnace were opening, lighting up the factorum with its ferocious glow.

‘Next pour. Should help.’ Pulley was rising, ready to head for the ladder, and Breaker Brass had to catch her wrist and hold it hard to stop her. ‘Work,’ she said, puzzled. Then she stared from him to Torque and back. ‘You. Her. Your shift? Breaker Brass works hard. Help pour?’

Breaker Brass started to speak, but then he stopped. He looked at the opening furnace, and saw the massive ladle inside as it started to grind slowly forward, on its way out of the furnace, ready to travel down the length of the factorum to start the next pour. He could feel the heat radiating from it, crisping his hair, drying his eyes. ‘Help pour,’ he said. ‘Yes.’

Torque tilted her head, questioning, and then he saw the horror in her eyes as she suddenly understood.

‘I told you reading was important,’ Torque said.

They stood in the shadows of the factorum floor, backs pressed against one of the great pillars of rockcrete that held up the distant ceiling. Around the corner from them was the panel that controlled the movements of the giant ladles overhead, a steel panel covered in heavy switches and flickering lights, manned by two Goliaths. There were marks next to each switch, words written in the Low Gothic script that Torque had tried to start teaching Breaker Brass a few times. But he’d ignored her, too focused on learning to make his new arms and legs work. Now though…

‘Okay. You were right. Now tell me which ones to pull.’

Torque refused to do it herself. Flipping those switches was going to cause a lot of death. But she did agree to tell him how to do it, which didn’t seem like much of a distinction to Breaker. Still, what did he know? He hadn’t been smart for long enough to think in circles like that.

Torque dropped a set of distance goggles that Track had made her over her eyes and looked around the corner. ‘The one by that flashing yellow light will stop the ladle. The switch below it and two to the left will start the pour. You remember when I taught you your right and left?’

‘Better than grammar.’

‘Then go, you giant idiot,’ she growled, punching him hard in the shoulder. ‘You’re running out of time.’

Breaker looked up at the slowly moving ladle. It had almost reached the beam that he was using as a marker. He punched her back, then rounded the corner, running hard.

The factorum was loud as always, full of the sounds of the great machines, but the floor bosses at the panel heard Breaker Brass’ boots just before he reached them. They spun to face him, and he could see their eyes go wide at the sight of an ogryn with golden hands carrying a massive gun charging towards them. One tried to dive for the control board, thick fingers reaching for the alarm switch, but Breaker was already there, swinging. The heavy reinforced stock of the ripper caught the Goliath under his jaw and there was a crack as the bone broke. He tumbled across the floor, coming to a crunching halt against the base of another pillar.

Breaker turned and saw the other Goliath coming at him, swinging a heavy sledgehammer. The ogryn drove his hand out and caught the head on his metal palm. The brass-coloured alloy didn’t even scuff, and Breaker flung the floor boss down. He kicked the man hard in the ribs, pulled his leg back again, but stopped. The Goliath was curled up on the floor, clutching his chest and trying to breathe. He wasn’t a threat any more, and he wasn’t a Blood Eye. Breaker rolled him out of the way and turned to the control board.

There was the flashing yellow light, and beside it a switch that would have been big even for the Goliaths. Which meant it was a decent size for Breaker. He put his thumb under the handle and looked up at the ladle. The huge bucket of molten steel had reached the marker beam and was just starting to pass beneath it. Breaker watched it move until its edge had just passed the beam, then flicked the switch.

With a groan the ladle shuddered to a halt. Somewhere someone yelled, barely heard over the factorum’s noise, but Breaker knew that another floor boss would be here soon to see what had happened. He looked for the next switch, below and two over, reached for it–

‘Wrong one, idiot,’ Torque yelled from behind him, and Breaker realised he’d gone right. He reached for the switch, then his metal fingers hesitated. Doing this would kill so many, but that wasn’t what stopped him. He would be ruining a whole pour, would be destroying equipment, damaging the factorum. He’d be destroying any chance the workers here would have of making quota for so, so long, and part of him, trained for years by the Goliaths, fought against that idea as hard as it could.

‘What are you doing, servitor?’

Breaker threw a glance over his shoulder, saw the floor boss running towards him. Saw not far behind him the two Blood Eyes who had been standing half asleep on this side of the factorum. They weren’t running, not yet, but they’d be close enough soon to see the ripper gun, and then… With a flick, Breaker Brass threw the switch, and high above the ladle groaned and creaked as it began to tilt. The supervisor slid to a stop, staring up in horror as the great iron vessel started to tip, and Breaker Brass could see his face clear as ruddy light flooded the air around them, light and a blast of heat as a stream of molten iron began to pour out of the ladle.

‘No!’ the Goliath howled, charging forward again, but Breaker Brass swung one gold fist into the man’s chest. The blow cracked sternum and ribs, sent the man tumbling down to land on his back, his face turning purple as he tried to breathe.

All through the factorum alarms were cranking up, groaning and screeching like dying beasts, and the white and amber lumens that accompanied them were strobing through the hellish red light of the spilling iron. That glow flashed off the barrels of the Blood Eyes’ autoguns as they pointed them at Breaker. The ogryn was already swinging his ripper up, settling it into his arms, and after a tiny moment of thought he actually aimed before pulling the massive trigger.

The gun roared in his arms, heavy shells rattling through it. A cloud of shot tore through the air and slammed into the Blood Eyes. The one in the lead took most of it, and the ganger’s feet jerked off the floor as he fell back, blood exploding from his face and neck as the steel shot tore through his flesh. He hit the floor with a sound like a dropped bag of nutri-slush and didn’t move. The other Blood Eye was howling, one bullet-shredded arm flopping uselessly by his side as he raised his autogun with the other, squeezing off shots at Breaker.

The rounds went past the ogryn and slammed into the control board, breaking switches and turning lights red before they shattered. Breaker hit his trigger again, and three shells shuddered through the gun, all he needed. The other ganger was falling, half his head a wet red ruin, and Breaker didn’t need to see him hit the ground twitching to know he was dead. He spun and looked at the control panel, then up at the great ladle. Whatever damage the Goliath’s slugs had done, they hadn’t stopped the pour. They’d accelerated it. The huge iron bowl was tipping more and more, spilling molten iron faster. Breaker could hear the shouts of the floor bosses and ogryns as they watched the liquid metal fall, and Breaker started to run, moving to where he could see what he’d done.

Rounding a massive cut-off machine, Breaker found what he was looking for. Ahead of him, the liquid iron was hitting the ground, hissing and splattering. The blazing hot metal flowed down the sloped factorum floor, towards the grated drains set at the base of the wall. Two of those drains flanked the door that led to the rooms where the Blood Eyes had holed up, and there were rivers of iron now flowing into them. As more metal poured down from above, those rivers widened, pulling together, heading for the door between the grates. Through the blazing light, Breaker Brass could see the Goliath who’d been passed out before the door. He was awake now, up and cursing as the molten metal flowed towards him. Its ruddy light gleamed off the spikes in his scalp, and the vomit on the floor where he had been lying flashed to steam when the hot metal touched it. The guard’s mouth was moving, but in the roar of the falling iron, the screeching of the alarms, his screams were lost. Breaker Brass saw him duck through the door, slamming it shut behind him. The glowing iron followed, piling into the heavy door.

Overhead the ladle tipped farther and farther, and the fall of metal grew thicker, brighter. Spatters of iron were hitting near Breaker’s boots, and he could feel the heat blazing against his skin. The liquid iron was piling up over the drains, blocking them, and more was flowing in between, pushing against the door that led to the Blood Eyes’ quarters. Breaker squinted against the bright light, and he could see the door glowing, buckling, twisting in its frame as the hot iron pressed against it – and then it collapsed. Through all the other noise came a thick, liquid sound as the molten metal poured through the broken door, and the narrow space over its flow exploded with flames as everything in the rooms burned.

Done. The thought went through Breaker’s brain, bouncing around in all that new territory Track’s device had opened up. A short fight, two flipped switches, and the Blood Eyes were trapped, burning, done. Because he was smart now, he could kill a whole gang with his brain, and not his fists. It felt like cheating.

The stream of falling iron was thinning, the heat and the light ebbing as the last of the liquid metal joined the pool of iron that was cooling on the floor, fading from gold to dull red. The ladle groaned overhead, unbalanced in its cradle, the deep noise of its complaint mixing with the sound of the alarms that still filled the air. But through all that clamour, Breaker still heard the sound of the boots. Many boots, heavy boots, running towards him. The ogryns of the factorum had come, their massive bodies drawing up into a ragged wall around Breaker as they stopped to stare at the ruin he had wrought.

So many shadows. But not enough.

Breaker Brass’ metal fists tightened, hard enough that the reinforced grips on his ripper groaned beneath his fingers. He couldn’t say how many ogryns had worked here in the factorum, even though he’d lived with them all his life. He’d never been able to count that high before. Looking around though… there had been more than this. Anger curled through him, hot as the iron that had killed the Blood Eyes. Had killed them too fast, Breaker thought, and his eyes fell on the floor bosses that were pushing their way forward through the ogryns. They weren’t gangers, but they were Goliaths; they were the ones who had bossed and controlled and killed…

The ogryns were rumbling, calling out to the humans standing in front of them, asking them what they should be doing, how they were supposed to handle this disaster, but the Goliaths were silent. They could see the iron-choked doorway of the Blood Eyes’ quarters, leaking smoke, and they could see Breaker Brass, standing before the ruins, a massive gun cradled in his arms. They looked at him, and he looked back, and the ripper was rising.

‘Breaker!’ Torque’s shout cut through all the other noise, a bellowed warning that crashed through Breaker’s anger. He jerked his eyes away from the men he’d started to aim at and saw a ripple moving through the crowd as someone shoved their way through. Someone shorter than the ogryns, hidden by their massive bodies, but as they neared the edge Breaker caught a flash of pallid flesh and gleaming gold and red, and in an instant he had found a furious new focus.

Dead White stepped out of the crowd, an axe in each hand and hate in his eyes. Another Blood Eye stood behind him, the grey-haired scout with the crude mechanical arm, and that arm was supporting a long rifle that was aimed at Breaker’s face.

‘You,’ White said, swinging his axes up. ‘The rats should have crapped you out long ago. Who saved your worthless life?’ The Goliath stepped forward. ‘Who sent you back to piss me off?’

Breaker didn’t answer. He started to lower his gun, watching the Blood Eye with the rifle, as he slowly raised his other hand, holding it open. The scout’s rifle stayed pointed at Breaker… and then Breaker flung his hand in front of his face. The sudden move made the Blood Eye hit his trigger, and the rifle spoke. Breaker’s hand jerked back, barely missing his face as the bullet cracked off it then ricocheted to the floor. Breaker ignored the sharp flare of pain from his augmetic hand and shifted to the side, getting out of the way of the next round as he pulled his trigger and sent a cloud of steel shot tearing through the air to slam into the scout’s belly. The Goliath’s armour caught some of it, but not enough, and he pitched forward, his metal claw clanging against the floor as he collapsed face down into a puddle of gore.

Breaker had aimed well, but some of the shot had still spread away from his target, and at least one ogryn in the crowd behind the ganger was cursing and stumbling back, clutching his arm. But Breaker couldn’t tell how badly the ogryn had been hit because of the bright flash that dazzled his eyes. Another piece of shot must have aimed itself for White, and set off his conversion field. The wash of light made Breaker curse as he rolled up to his knees, ripper raised in front of him. Track had explained how the field worked to him, how it turned the energy of an attack into a flash of light. She’d also explained that such devices weren’t perfect and failed to block attacks as often as they succeeded. It had worked then, though, and Breaker was still blinking his eyes clear when he felt something smash into his hand, knocking the ripper across the floor.

Snarling, Breaker Brass swept his new arms together. Being half-blind didn’t matter now, when he could feel his metal palm slam into White’s forearm as the Goliath tried to pull his axe back. Breaker grabbed him, holding tight as he jerked the ganger off his feet. He dimly saw White swinging his other axe at Breaker’s head, and the ogryn ducked and slammed the gang leader into the floor.

Breaker rolled up onto Dead White, his massive metal knees grinding down onto the man’s muscled arms as he slammed his weight onto the ganger’s chest. The ogryn wrapped one golden hand around White’s throat and tightened it. He stared down at the ganger, watching his face go red, then purple.

‘Who sent me?’ Breaker said, his voice a cavernous growl. ‘You did, Dead White. You used me, parted me out, and left me for dead. You abused me, you killed me, and now you’re doing the same to my people. You sent me, White, and now here… I… am…’ With each word, Breaker leaned in more, settling his weight on his choking hand, and White convulsed below him, dropping his axes, his hands scrabbling uselessly against Breaker’s new legs, his eyes rolling back as something crunched in his thick throat. Then a bullet whined past Breaker’s head, close enough for him to feel the heat of its passage by his cheek, and smashed into the rockcrete floor.

Breaker Brass spun, rolling over, but he kept his grip on Dead White. He held the Goliath up, between himself and where he thought the shot had come from. There was another crack, and Breaker shut his eyes, but there was no flash of light, only a flash of pain as a bullet slammed into his metal calf, scraping the glossy black alloy Track had made. Breaker moved, shifting back, still holding White up in front of him, and then closed his eyes again when he heard the gun fire once more.

This time closing his eyes was worth it. He caught just the edge of the flash when White’s shield went off, but when the gunfire ended and he opened his eyes, Breaker could mostly see. Could see enough to spot the last two Blood Eyes guards standing at the edge of the crowd, rubbing their eyes and waving their guns.

Breaker chucked White away from him, towards the cooling pool of iron. The blinded gangers heard the sound of White landing and one of them opened up with his stub gun, firing at the noise. Breaker ignored him and rolled to where his ripper lay on the floor. Scooping it up, he shifted so that none of the crowd of ogryns, who still stood gaping at the fight, was in the way, and opened up. The shot slammed into the gangers and they went down, blood spraying in wide arcs as they collapsed. Then he spun to face Dead White again.

The Goliath was pulling himself to his feet, the whites of his eyes as red as the lights that studded the implants set in his body. Blood ran from his nose and mouth, and a massive bruise was forming on his throat, but the ganger was forcing himself to stand up straight, tightening his empty hands into fists.

‘Come on,’ White snarled, his voice a harsh croak barely heard over the still-wailing alarms. The ogryn dropped his ripper and stepped forward, raising his massive metal fists. Dead White had cut off his hands once. Now Breaker Brass was going to use his new hands to smash the Goliath down for good.

And then he heard the groan of tortured metal buckling overhead, and looked up. The ladle, overtipped, unbalanced, was beginning to shift, its heavy steel mounts twisting, breaking.

‘Get back!’ he shouted at the other ogryns, diving away as the ladle fell, crashing down into the iron pool. The cooling crust of metal broke beneath it, and liquid iron splashed out, spattering. A sizzling drop landed on Breaker’s back and he slapped it out as he stood, looking around. The ogryns had listened to his order and pulled back, escaping the burning splash. The spot where Dead White had stood was coated in smoking iron, but there was no sign of the ganger, nothing but one of his axes slowly melting into the liquid metal.

Breaker Brass looked at the melting axe, then at the spot where White had been. The ganger might have been splashed with molten iron and crawled off to finally die, but Breaker didn’t believe it. He wouldn’t believe it until his fist closed around the sadistic ganger’s neck.

With a frustrated roar, he grabbed up his gun before the slowly spreading iron claimed it. Then he turned. The ogryns stood there, staring at him, eyes gleaming with the dull red of the cooling metal. Behind them he could see Torque, moving out from behind the machinery, Pulley trailing her with the bag of weapons on her back, eyes wide as she stared at the destruction. Torque went to where the damaged control panel sat, slapped some switches, and the screaming alarms finally quieted.

It wasn’t silence that followed. There was the drip of liquid iron, the groan of broken metal from high above, the crackle of fire, and the deep, heavy breathing of half a hundred ogryns. But it was quiet enough that Breaker Brass didn’t need to shout.

‘The Blood Eyes are dead. The Goliaths are gone. You’re free.’

From the crowd of massive bodies, one stepped out, and Breaker recognised him. Mallet. Still battered, but still alive. The ogryn stared at him, and then past him at the broken ladle, the spilled iron, the fire and ruin carved out of the heart of the factorum, and spoke.

‘How make quota now?’

10

The cabinets hit the floor with a crash, dusty dataslates bursting out and scattering across the floor. Breaker Brass gave them a kick, but there was nothing useful among the debris, no weapons, no vox-unit, no supplies. Useless.

With a growl, Breaker grabbed one of the cabinets and flung it across the room. It slammed into the rockcrete wall, destroying the layers of graffiti that had been drawn there by generations of bored Goliaths working in these cramped rooms, doing the tedious bureaucratic work of tallying production and tracking parts. A drawer handle ricocheted off the ceiling and hit the floor in front of the door, spinning in a circle in front of Torque’s heavy boots. Breaker frowned at the other ogryn as she ducked her way into the room, trying not to hit her head on the ceiling. These offices had been made for humans, not ogryns, and even if the humans were Goliaths, the scale was too small for them.

‘Nothing?’

‘Nothing.’ Breaker swept a heavy desk clean and sat on it, ignoring its groaning complaint. It might crumple under him, but at least sitting he could straighten his back. ‘All the damn weapons were in the Blood Eyes’ quarters, of course. All we have are the rippers and the things those Blood Eyes guards had.’ Four stub guns, a few knives that were too small for their hands, and after that it was nothing but spanners and screwdrivers. ‘Idiot. I thought I was supposed to be smart now!’

‘You sure seem it.’ A Goliath limped into the room after Torque. Most of the humans that had worked at this factorum had disappeared when Breaker had taken out the Blood Eyes, but a few had been asleep or trapped or caught. Doc… Doc had never walked right after the Blood Eyes had gone over him, and the Goliath medic hadn’t bothered trying to run. ‘Something happened to you, Breaker Brass.’ Doc found an unbroken chair on the floor, set it up and settled into it. ‘But being smart doesn’t mean you can’t screw things up. Look at me.’ The Goliath looked around the room. ‘Did you happen to find any of my stash while you were wrecking this place?’

Breaker shifted a cabinet with his boot and found an unbroken bottle of some clear liquid among the shattered glass of two more. The smell of raw alcohol was strong as he handed it over to Doc. The Goliath nodded and popped it open, tipping it back and taking a long swallow.

‘Weapons are the least of your problems, Breaker Brass. What the hell are you still doing here? When Stamper Hack hears what’s happened, he’s going to round up every gang he can get his fists around and send them here. When they come, they’ll make what you did to the Blood Eyes look like a mercy killing.’

‘They don’t have to,’ Breaker said. ‘If they come to kill us, a lot of Goliaths are going to die. This factorum will be ruined. Quotas shot, equipment destroyed, supplies gone. A lot of good workers lost. But that doesn’t have to happen.’ Breaker leaned forward, the desk creaking beneath him as he tapped one golden finger into Doc’s chest. ‘I can send you to them with a message. They don’t have to change a damn thing. Keep the supplies coming, keep the food coming, and we’ll keep working. We’ll get this factorum up and running, and we’ll be making quotas again. Just leave us alone, that’s all they have to do, and we’ll make this factorum work for them. And they won’t even have to leave a gang here to watch us.’

Doc took another long swig from the bottle. ‘Yeah, you’re a genius,’ he said, wiping his chin. ‘That’s proper logic. The way you ogryns are, I bet you’d do better if we just left you alone. You’d work so damn hard, you’d probably make quotas that House Goliath couldn’t dream of. We’d all get rich, and climb the spires, and see those great big lumens that they call the stars.’

Breaker tilted his head, unsure of what he was hearing. Was this really going to work? ‘So you’ll do it? You’ll take our message to them?’

Doc laughed, long and hard, stopping only to take another swig. ‘No! By every mutie in the underhive, no! Are you kidding me? If I went to them with that they’d rip my head off and use my skull to store stimm capsules. You want to be really smart, Breaker Brass? Learn this. People, especially gangers, don’t give a damn about what you can do for them. They care about what you can do to them. You just showed those rot-grub kissers that one free ogryn can take out a whole gang of Goliaths. There’s no way they’re going to let more than fifty of you sit here free and clear. They’re going to kill every one of you, Breaker Brass. They have to. They can’t let this rebellion succeed, or what’s to stop the next one? It’d be the Sparky slaughter all over again.’ He frowned, looking at Breaker over his bottle. ‘You heard of that?’

‘I heard.’

‘Too smart, and you know too much. None of the servitors are supposed to know that ever happened. To think that something like that could ever happen.’ Doc shook his head. ‘House Goliath is going to be coming back here, Breaker Brass. They’re going to come and crush the skull of every ogryn they can find, except yours. They’re going to take you apart bit by tiny bit, Breaker Brass, and they’re going to make you suffer every second they do it.’

‘He’s right,’ Torque said, after she had shut Doc in one of the adjoining offices with his bottle.

‘I know.’ Breaker’s hands were on the edge of the desk he was using for a chair, and he could feel the metal crumpling under his fingers. ‘Dead White has told them what’s happened by now. Which means they’ll be here as soon as they think they have enough guns and muscle to kill us.’ Breaker looked at Torque, sitting on the floor. ‘White got away. The iron I spilled to kill the Blood Eyes went into the drains and blocked the tunnel we used to sneak in here, and I don’t know any other way out that doesn’t go straight into Goliath territory. We only have a few guns. And the other ogryns…’ The desk edge tore beneath Breaker’s grip, and he prised his fingers out of the wreckage. ‘All they want to do is work on the factorum.’

‘They are what they are,’ Torque said. ‘They are what we were.’

‘They’re dead,’ snapped Breaker. ‘Unless I can get them to fight, or run, or do anything besides worry about quota!’

Torque just looked at him, silent, until Breaker stood too fast and cracked his head on the ceiling. He growled and kicked the desk he’d been sitting on. ‘I came here to free them. But I don’t know how. What am I supposed to do?’

She looked up at him. ‘What do you want to do, Breaker Brass?’

‘I want to get out. Get out of this trap.’

‘Then go,’ she said. ‘You’ve got legs now, you can run. You might even get away, while the Goliaths are focused on this factorum.’

‘I can’t do that!’

‘No, you can,’ Torque said. ‘Damn it, Breaker Brass, you don’t understand what’s happened to you. You’re smart, for the first time in your life, and you’re figuring that out, but you’re also free for the first time, and you have no idea what that means. You’ve spent your life being told what to do. By the floor bosses in the factorum, or the gangers. But now? Now you’re free. Which means you can run, if you want.’

Breaker rubbed his head, aching from where it had hit the ceiling, aching from what Torque was telling him. ‘I could,’ he said, and suddenly he was keenly aware that she was right. He could. Except… ‘I can’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I don’t want to,’ Breaker said.

‘What do you want then?’ she said, her voice a low rumble.

‘I want to do what I came here to do. I want to free my people. And kill Dead White.’

‘Then do that.’

‘What if can’t?’ Breaker said, his words broken by frustration, anger, fear.

Torque smiled at him, showing him her massive teeth. ‘Then the Goliaths will kill us all.’

‘Same as they’ve been doing all along. Just quicker.’ But if the rules ever say that some rotten bastard like that should be in charge of your life… Hasher Gob’s words echoed through Breaker Brass’ head, and he reached down and flipped over a cabinet, staring at the plans and schematics it spilt across the floor. ‘Bring me Doc, and take that bottle from him. We need to talk.’

‘About what?’ Torque asked, getting up.

‘Changing the rules.’

The factorum floor fell silent when Breaker Brass climbed to the top of the now cold pile of iron slag. Standing on it, he looked down at the ogryns gathered there, all the ones left. They held hammers and chisels, buckets and cutters and picks. Ever since the Blood Eyes had burned and the other Goliaths had fled, they had spent their time attacking the spill, chipping the iron up and hauling it away. It was work, simple work they understood, like cleaning up from a cobbler, and Breaker understood why they were doing it, even as he wanted to scream at them for wasting their time like this. But that wasn’t what he’d come here to do.

Not exactly.

‘Listen up, rat-brains!’ he bellowed, the traditional opening that the floor bosses had used forever in the factorum. ‘We got work!’

The ogryns below him shifted and muttered, unsure. They didn’t know how to react around Breaker now, confused as much by his new way of talking as they were by him killing the Blood Eyes. But Mallet stepped out of the crowd, looking up at him. ‘What work?’ the ogryn shouted.

Breaker Brass smiled down at him. ‘Hard work!’ he called back, then jumped down, boots slamming onto the battered rockcrete floor. ‘I need a wrecking crew of ten. You’re going to go with Torque and seal every corridor marked on this map.’ He pointed at the paper rolled up in the healer’s fist. They had pored over it for hours with Doc, finding every way into the factorum big enough to let in a Goliath. ‘Then I need a crew of five to line up here with Mallet. For special duty.’

‘Special duty. Hard work.’ Mallet frowned. ‘Not leaving the factorum.’

Breaker frowned back. Mallet had been resisting him the hardest, refusing to leave this place. ‘Did I say leave?’ Breaker growled. ‘I said work.’ Mallet met his eye, still frowning, still uncertain. Breaker Brass leaned forward and shouted into his face. ‘Now!’

Mallet blinked, then shrugged his massive shoulders and nodded. ‘Count ’em, boss!’ he said, and while Torque picked out her crew and his, Breaker turned back to the others.

‘Rest of you. You’re gonna clear some slag, and you’re gonna do it fast!’ There was a cheer, and the air was suddenly filled with a thunderous sound as hammers and chisels began to fall.

‘No,’ Breaker bellowed over the din, grabbing a chisel from Pulley, who was eagerly attacking the pile. ‘Not here. There!’ He took the chisel and flung it, slamming it into the rockcrete wall over one of the iron-stuffed drains. ‘Clear it there! There’s a tunnel behind that slag, and I want it opened. Now!’ With great bellows, the ogryns surged past him, waving their tools, and attacked the pile of slag like it was a wounded beast, carving pieces of iron away like fresh meat.

‘Pulley.’ Breaker reached out and snagged the woman’s shoulder as she tried to rush after the others. ‘Other work. Go to juves.’ They had found a dozen young ogryns mixed in with the adults, forced by the Blood Eyes to work the floor. Torque had set them in the guard shack, watching the monitors linked to the pict-feeds that monitored every approach to the factorum. ‘Leave six to watch. Remind them, anyone comes, hit alarm. Other six, take with you to kitchens. Get all the food packs. Bring them here. Repeat.’ Pulley nodded and rattled his orders back to him, then took off, eager to work.

They were all so eager to work.

They’d be eager to fight if he told them to, probably. Now that they’d decided he was the new boss. Now that he was treating them like slaves.

‘I’ll deal with that if we live,’ he muttered and stomped to the side of the huge factorum. Doc was standing there, the last few Goliaths they’d kept as prisoners standing behind him. ‘Time to go. We’ll have this place sealed in a few hours, except for the central loading dock.’

‘A last stand, Breaker Brass?’ Doc asked.

‘A last shift, Doc.’

The Goliath laughed, his breath reeking of alcohol, and slugged Breaker in the arm, wincing when his knuckles hit the yellow alloy. ‘You don’t have to let us go, ogryn. Probably shouldn’t. When this lot tells them about you and Torque, Stamper Hack will take you apart to see what makes you tick.’

‘He’ll take me apart anyway. And you didn’t have to help me with those plans.’

Doc shrugged. ‘Owed you. You got me drunk. And…’ He leaned in, waiting until Breaker bent his head to listen close. ‘I can’t stand that sneaky git running the house now. You people make enough trouble, and the rest of the house will probably agree with me.’

‘Don’t let the rotten bastards run your life,’ Breaker said, and Doc nodded.

‘How the hell’d you get so smart?’ Doc said. Then he grabbed Breaker’s shoulder and rumbled into his ear. ‘One last thing that I shouldn’t do. You missed one weapon. Check the metal shop, in the repair locker.’ Doc punched him again, this time in the gut, then walked away, gathering his Goliaths and heading for the loading dock.

When they were far out of earshot, Breaker Brass went back to Mallet and his crew. ‘Furnaces three, four and five,’ he told them. ‘Get them going. I want three ladles full.’

‘Gonna pour, boss?’ Mallet said.

Boss. Breaker frowned, but he nodded. ‘Yeah. We’re gonna pour.’ Then he turned and headed for the metal shop.

11

‘Will it work?’ Breaker said, looking at the missile launcher. They had set the weapon up behind a wall of shipping containers that Torque and her crew had welded together after they had got back from blocking the other passage, and then piled a thick layer of loose slag in front of the barricade. It made a rough fortress in front of the factorum’s loading dock.

‘I think so.’ Torque squinted at the panel on the side of the weapon, trying to decipher the instructions printed there in worn paint. ‘It looks like they fixed whatever it was that you broke.’

‘Good. This will help.’ Breaker Brass checked the weapon’s aim again, making sure it was pointed straight down the shadowy throat of the long corridor that was now the one unblocked entrance to the factorum.

‘It’s not enough.’ Torque kicked the box that sat beside the launcher. ‘You’ve got half a dozen missiles, then that thing’s as useless as the slag. Why are you doing this, Breaker? Why are you taking this chance?’

‘It buys us time. We need more time.’ They had to clear that iron out of the way, and the Goliaths… They were coming. Breaker didn’t know when. But they were coming.

‘You want time? We could collapse this corridor,’ Torque said. ‘With all paths blocked, they might just try to starve us out.’ Breaker just looked at her, and she growled. ‘Fine. You’re right. They’ll only be happy if they get to kill us themselves.’

‘They’d tear their way through one of the smaller blocks,’ Breaker said. ‘We wouldn’t know which. And then they’d tear us apart. But if we leave them a path open, that’s the one they’ll charge down. We have strength, but they have guns and numbers. We have to concentrate them. Make them fight us toe to toe.’

‘Which, being Goliaths, is what they’ll want to do anyway.’

‘Right. You know them, you know the plan.’ Breaker frowned. ‘So why don’t you like it now? Because people are going to die?’

‘People are going to die no matter what, Breaker Brass.’ Torque shook her head, her frizzy hair brushing broad shoulders. ‘I just…’ She sighed, then slugged him in the chest, hard enough to send him falling backwards on his arse. ‘I’m going to go to the panel and set up the damn pours. They’re coming, Breaker Brass, and I’ll bet you Dead White is with them. When they get here…’ She glowered down at him. ‘Kill them and live. I don’t want to be the only damn one left who knows how to actually talk.’

She turned and stomped away, brushing past the group of ogryns that had been patiently standing behind them, waiting to be given work. Pulley, part of the group, looked at her then at Breaker. ‘Torque likes,’ the ogryn said, grinning.

On the floor, Breaker Brass took a deep breath, wincing. Well, that explained it then, he thought. Apparently pacifists could punch people they liked. With a grunt he pulled himself up, his augmetic legs moving smoothly, and looked them over. They all held weapons, Mallet and an ogryn covered in old iron burns named Knife the rippers, then a group of the smallest ogryns he could find the Goliath-sized stub guns. The rest were all the biggest brawlers in the factorum, each one now armed with a spud-jacker, except for Pulley.

‘What work?’ Mallet asked.

‘Waiting work,’ Breaker Brass said, and he saw them frown. ‘Important. Bad gangers come soon. To kill us and wreck the factorum.’ The other ogryns’ faces went dark, their eyes tightening. Not at the thought of being murdered, but at the thought of the factorum being destroyed. ‘Fight when come. Understand?’ When they nodded, he turned to Pulley. ‘Message duty,’ he told her. ‘Go to clearing crew. Tell me how close they are to quota.’ Quota was now a hole big enough for an ogryn to fit through, into the tunnel that led out of this deathtrap.

‘Yes, boss.’ She turned to go, but Breaker caught her with a gold hand before she could start running.

‘On way back, check on juves. Tell me what they see.’ He let her go and she took off, moving fast for an ogryn. He waited until she disappeared, then looked down the corridor. Empty. Dark. Silent, except for the buzzing of a flickering lumen. He snarled to himself, wanting more time, and wanting this to be over.

If he survived this, he might break Track’s treads for making him smart.

‘Okay. Guns up,’ he said. ‘Let’s learn aiming.’

‘Not done.’ Pulley stood before Breaker, panting, sweat rolling off her. With three furnaces going, the factorum was getting hot.

‘How close?’ Breaker asked, too used to this to be mad.

‘Closer,’ she said.

Well, maybe he could still get a little mad.

‘How much–’ He cut off. It didn’t matter. The ogryns back in the factorum were working as hard as they could. It would be done when it was done. ‘What about the pict-feed?’ The alarms were still silent, but… But they had to be coming.

‘Nothing. No gangers, no Goliaths,’ Pulley said. ‘Empty spaces. And nothings.’

Where were they? Breaker Brass frowned. The Goliaths would have had to gather their forces, but… they were nearly as impulsive as the ogryns. A slap like this, a factorum seized, a gang killed, they should have come roaring back here as soon as they had the minimum amount of gangers they thought they needed. So where were they? Then Breaker looked at Pulley.

‘Empty spaces and… nothings? What nothings?’

Pulley shrugged, taking a drink of water from a canteen. ‘Some screens got nothing. Just black. But no Goliaths.’

Just black.

‘Line up!’ Breaker Brass roared. ‘They’re coming!’ He slapped the canteen out of Pulley’s hands. ‘They’re breaking the pict-feed, damn it, so you can’t see them!’ The ogryns just blinked, and Breaker had to fight to pull himself together. ‘The Goliaths are coming. Go back to the guard shack. Hit the alarm. Now!’ he bellowed, and Pulley was gone, tearing away from him.

Breaker checked the missile launcher. It was loaded, ready. His ripper was beside it, in easy reach. He stared down the still-empty corridor, checked the instructions on how to fire, then checked the other ogryns. They had taken their positions along the makeshift wall, right where he’d told them to.

‘Rat-brains, listen!’ he said, falling so easily into the familiar abusive patterns of the floor bosses. ‘Don’t fire until I say! Right?’

‘Right, boss!’ they shouted back, happy now that they had something to do.

Breaker looked at the scratched screen on the missile launcher, the crosshairs glowing on the end of the empty corridor. He reached for the launcher’s trigger with one golden finger, moving carefully so that he didn’t accidentally set it off while trying to work a weapon made for much smaller hands. Nothing. Nothing.

When the alarm went off, shrieking its warning through the factorum, Breaker came within a hair of slamming his finger down. He caught himself though, his heart hammering, and checked the other ogryns again. They were all fine, waiting unflinching for his signal. Focused.

Focus. Breaker took a deep breath and stared down at the screen. Focus. He still had it. Track’s BONE unit hadn’t taken it all from him. So he forced himself to stop thinking. To ignore the alarm. To stare at the screen. To wait.

Until they were there.

A crowd of Goliaths, sprinting down the corridor towards them. In his focus, Breaker Brass could see them, armoured, spikes in their skin, tattooed, hair shaved or spiked or braided. All of them young, all of them carrying chains and spud-jackers and stub pistols. New gangers, trying to claim their fame and pay their dues by leading the charge.

By charging towards death.

Breaker’s finger twitched, and the launcher shuddered as the first missile flew out of it and shrieked down the corridor. It tore straight down the centre and Breaker saw it smash into one of the Goliaths, a massive ganger waving a huge serrated axe over his head. The screen flashed to white, and Breaker tore his eyes from it and scanned the length of the corridor. There was nothing there but fire and chaos. The frag missile had shattered into a thousand lethal shards, and the razor-sharp pieces of metal had torn through flesh and armour, ripping the Goliaths apart and then slamming into the walls of the corridor, turning rockcrete into dust and filling the air with a boiling grey cloud tinted red with blood.

Breaker Brass hit the trigger twice more, sending the next two missiles into that hazy hell. They boomed and exploded inside it, and he could hear screams mixed with the rattle of shrapnel. For a moment there was quiet, broken only by the patter of shattered rockcrete falling. Then the fire alarms kicked on, blaring their warnings, and the sprinklers built into the corridor started, spraying rusty water down.

Breaker cupped a hand over the screen, keeping the water mostly off, and watched as the air in the corridor cleared, dust and aerosolised blood washed down by the sprinklers. There were a lot of bodies, a few twitching, but nothing moving towards them.

‘Got some,’ Mallet said, looking out his firing hole. ‘More than some. Many!’

‘Many,’ Breaker agreed. But not nearly enough. He looked at the launcher, and the three missiles still remaining. Two were painted red, like the three frags he had just launched. But the next one up was painted black.

‘Well?’ he muttered to himself, laying his finger back on the trigger. ‘Let’s see who’s smarter.’

He waited again, watching the screen, as the sprinklers ran out. The corridor stretched before them, scarred, wet, dim, half the lumens blown out. But in that half-light Breaker finally saw something. A wall, moving down the corridor towards him.

As it got closer, he recognised it. A shipping container full of scrap iron, moving slowly forward. Probably being pushed by a group of cargo servitors, like Track had been.

‘Right,’ Breaker said. They were being smart, for Goliaths. But not smart enough. He watched and waited as the container ground over the corpses, smearing them to pulp. Pulp that sometimes screamed horribly, not quite dead before the container passed. Breaker ignored the horror of it all and focused on how close the container was getting. A little more. A little more. Now.

‘Duck!’ Breaker Brass shouted to the ogryns with him, and hit the trigger.

The black missile shot out of the launcher and flew up the corridor to the container, then blew. The sound of its explosion was much deeper, louder, and Breaker could feel the air punch at him even through the wall built in front of the weapon, even though he’d dropped like the other ogryns after pulling the trigger. There had been one krak missile mixed in with the frags, a weapon meant to smash tanks, and from the feel of the explosion that shook the floor beneath Breaker he was sure that it could handle a container filled with scrap.

He stayed on the floor for a few hammering beats of his heart, then pushed himself up to look down the corridor. There was nothing to see but a swirling cloud of smoke and dust, but he reached for the launcher anyway. Breaker hit the trigger and another frag missile shot out, the roar of its passage faint in his overwhelmed ears. It vanished, but Breaker saw the dust heave and swirl when it exploded somewhere beyond, unleashing its storm of deadly fragments. Anything that had survived the destruction of the Goliaths’ makeshift ram was dead now, and Breaker Brass picked up his ripper.

‘No fire!’ he shouted again at the ogryns, who were peering out at the destruction. ‘Only when I say!’ The ones closest to him nodded, and hopefully the other ones heard. Or maybe he’d be cut in half by a crossfire, but if things got that far Breaker figured the plan was probably going better than he expected. He clambered over the wall, slid down the slag they’d piled on the other side. It was covered in scraps of broken shipping container, bone fragments and blood. The air was full of smoke and dust, and it was hard to breathe, hard to see. There were no sprinklers any more, and barely any light. But as the time slowly passed, Breaker could make out the corridor stretching away in front of him through the haze, choked with scrap and bodies. But far off, where the lights still worked, he could see the flicker of shadows – Goliaths moving as they planned their next attack.

Time to break those plans.

‘I am Breaker Brass,’ he bellowed, and the sound caused a fresh rain of broken rockcrete from the shattered ceiling. ‘And this is my turf! You want it, then call challenge!’

His shout was answered with silence, and after a minute he bellowed it again. Waited, and again. They had to hear him. The echoes of the explosions had faded, and so had the fire alarms, their mechanical screams destroyed by the missiles. There was just his challenge.

Challenges between Goliaths were serious, respected. But would they listen to his? Would they dare?

‘Challenge me!’ he shouted, and kicked a chunk of twisted iron over the shredded remains of a cargo servitor. ‘Or are you cowards?’

Silence again, for a long drawn-out moment. Then, in the distance, a roar.

‘I challenge!’

The deep voice was familiar, so familiar, and Breaker Brass smiled. Dead White. But… there was something different about it. Something harsher, something broken but hard. Squinting against the haze and bad light, Breaker saw the Goliath coming, a blot against the distant lumens. Breaker’s hand tightened on his ripper, but he kept the gun down. Challenges had their own simple rules, and if he broke them the Goliaths would stop playing this game and start their next attack. An attack that would probably break through.

‘Breaker Brass. Mutant. Rat-brained scum.’

Through the unsettled dust Breaker could see the baleful red lights of the golden implants set into White’s pale hide. They were set in a shadow thick and twisted, almost as tall as Breaker was. Then Dead White broke out of the haze, his skin gleaming in the light of the lumens that still illuminated the loading dock.

In the short time since the Goliath had escaped, running away from Breaker Brass’ avenging hands, he had got taller, wider, thicker. His muscles, already huge, had swollen grotesquely, and the Goliath moved strangely, uncoordinated, jerking as if his control over his monstrous new body was uncertain. Awkward or not, when White’s pale blue eyes found Breaker Brass, the Goliath lurched forward faster, throwing huge chunks of debris out of his way as if they weighed nothing.

Breaker watched the monstrous Goliath approach, and now he raised his ripper. ‘Do you challenge me, Dead White?’ he said.

White looked at the gun, lips curling back into a snarl, but he stopped. His face twisted, his rage barely held in check as he tried to concentrate enough to speak. ‘Yes. Challenge. Challenge you, Breaker Brass. Hand to hand, fist to fist. Took my axes, mutant, so get rid of gun and fight.’

Dead White raised his hands, and they were twisted and grotesque, the skin torn and bloody around the thick spurs of bone that had grown like rough blades through the Goliath’s flesh. Behind his hands, mixed with the glowing red implants of his conversion field, there were metal tanks and glassy domes full of sloshing liquids implanted in him, his flesh raw and oozing around them. Surgical staples strained to hold the ganger’s new muscles together as he flexed and snarled, glaring, and Breaker finally understood what had happened.

All Goliaths wore auto-rigs, collars that contained the stimulants and growth serums that sustained their size and mass. But some Goliaths chose a different kind of rig – or were chosen for it. They were given stimulants and elixirs that caused them to swell even larger, that made them stronger, tougher than any normal human could dream of being. It made them into monsters they called ’zerkers, and all it cost them, if they survived it, was most of their intelligence.

‘Challenge!’ Dead White bellowed. ‘Fight, Breaker Brass! Die!’

Breaker could see the other Goliaths gathering a safe distance down the corridor, watching, waiting. Slowly he set aside the ripper and raised his fists. Smooth and polished, beautiful. White had torn him apart, and he had been rebuilt, made stronger, smarter and sleek. Then he had beaten White, and the Goliath had been rebuilt in his way, stronger, stupider and monstrous. Now… now they would see which would win out.

‘I challenge,’ Breaker said, and stepped forward.

With a roar, White charged. He hurtled through the broken debris, his earlier awkwardness gone, pushed aside by stimm-fuelled rage. The Goliath swung a massive fist at Breaker, and the ogryn barely had time to swing his augmetic one up to block. Bone spurs scraped off metal with a hideous screech, and Breaker felt himself jerked to the side. He caught his balance, but White was swinging his other fist, and Breaker had to shift, catching the blow on his shoulder, not his head. Pain slammed through him as jagged bone tore into his skin, and the force of the blow almost knocked him down.

Breaker Brass staggered back, grunting. Dead White’s blows were sloppy, but they unbalanced him. The stimm-swollen Goliath was insanely strong, stronger than anyone Breaker had ever fought – stronger than him. And White wasn’t stopping.

White threw another punch, another, and Breaker was falling back, his arms held high, blocking his head. If the Goliath had been smart he would have dropped his strikes and driven the ripping bone spurs deep into Breaker Brass’ gut. But Dead White was frothing, snarling, focused only on driving his twisted knuckles into Breaker’s face, and the tunnel was filled with the clang and screech of bone on metal.

Breaker had to do something. He was keeping those tearing knuckles away, barely, but the heavy blows were driving his own metal hands back into him and it was only a matter of time before one of the Goliath’s fists drove through his guard and tore his face off. He waited for another huge punch to land, then muscled forward, lashing out with his leg.

Breaker’s boot caught the Goliath in the thigh, left a huge red welt on White’s pale flesh and shoved him back. The ogryn lashed out again, slamming his heel just over White’s knee, pushing the Goliath back again, and Breaker Brass kicked one more time, this time smashing his boot into the rusted iron skull that covered Dead White’s groin. That kick slammed the Goliath into a shredded piece of shipping container, and he was tangled in its jagged metal points.

Caught in the wreckage, White snarled at Breaker Brass. The ogryn stared back, dropping his arms and breathing hard. He watched as the Goliath shrugged his massive shoulders, and one of the clear, fluid-filled blisters embedded in White’s skin bubbled, sending more stimm into his system.

‘Strong, mutant.’ White shoved his way out of the wreckage, ignoring the ragged cuts it tore in his pale skin. ‘Stronger now than you.’

‘Stronger,’ Breaker said, ‘and stupider.’ He stomped on a piece of scrap on the floor, a three-yard length of thick steel pipe, and caught it in his hand as Dead White charged forward. He swung it hard at White’s head, but the ’zerker ganger managed to catch the pipe on the back of one thick arm, blocking it, trying to grab it. Breaker ripped the pipe down, and smashed the end into White’s foot. For the first time, something like pain flashed across the ganger’s face, and he brought his hands down, trying again to catch the pipe. But Breaker jerked it back, whipping the steel through the air in a vicious loop. The pipe cut through the air, and with all of his might, Breaker Brass brought it down on White’s head.

And then the world turned red.

The explosion of light sent Breaker lurching back, eyes shutting far too late. That field, that damn conversion field, he thought – then a fist like a spiked spud-jacker slammed into his cheek. The blow sent him spinning, but Breaker somehow stayed on his feet. He swung the pipe around him, trying to keep White back as he waited for his eyes to clear. Laughter rumbled from one side, and he pivoted towards it, swinging, but something caught the pipe and tore it away. There were hands on him, hands that cut and crushed as they grabbed his shoulders and pushed him back into the wall.

‘Smarter?’ Dead White growled. Breaker’s vision was clearing, and he could see the shadow of White’s face, could see the dull red gleam of the light set in the gold stud in his forehead. ‘Not smarter either. Not stronger, not smarter. Just deader.’ White laughed again, and shoved Breaker hard against the wall, his hands wrapping around the ogryn’s neck.

Breaker swung his fists, driving the hard alloy into the Goliath’s ribs, but the man barely grunted and his grip didn’t let up at all. His hands dug into Breaker’s throat, sharp spurs of bone tearing into his skin. He stopped hitting and tried to slam the hands away, but they wouldn’t budge, and it was getting harder and harder to breathe as White closed his monstrous grip tighter.

‘Tried to choke me, mutant,’ Dead White said, his voice low and harsh. Another of the blisters on his back gurgled and sighed, pumping him full of viciousness. ‘Now you.’

Breaker tore at the hands that were killing him, trying to get them away. If he had just a little breath, he could tell the ogryns at the dock to open up, to kill White and the other gangers behind him, to run… But he couldn’t speak, and they wouldn’t do it unless he told them. He moved his hand, trying to drive his fingers into White’s blue eyes, but the ganger ducked his head, evading them easily as he laughed and tightened his grip. Breaker’s fingers slid uselessly over White’s skin, but he was losing his sight again, not to brightness but to darkness, closing in from all sides.

Focus. The light was going, but he had to focus. He still had work to do. Focus.

Focus on the light.

Breaker’s fingers clicked against something, metal to metal, and in the closing circle of life he saw a light, dim and red, and he focused on it. Focused, and with all his strength, he grabbed for it. Dug his fingers in, into skin pale and thick, until he found the hard metal border, the edge of the implant buried in White’s swollen flesh. Found it and drove his fingers under it, getting a grip and tearing it up and out.

Dead White roared with pain, and his murderous grip loosened. Breaker gulped a huge lungful of air, and the darkness that had been about to swallow everything was shoved back. He could see his hand again, his fist wrapped around the implant that had been sunk into White’s forehead. There was a raw wound there now, spurting blood, but not enough, not nearly enough. The Goliath jerked his head, pulling away from Breaker’s golden hand, and White’s conversion field flashed again, but it stuttered, flickering, weak. Breaker blinked back the light, and saw it. A wire, hair-thin, gleaming in the unsteady flash, stretching from his fist to the wound on White’s head. The wire that linked this implant to all the others still seated in White’s flesh. Breaker jerked his fist back, trying to break it, even as White roared and leaned in, his hands closing hard on Breaker’s throat.

Strangling, crushing, and the circling darkness was getting ready to close on Breaker Brass again, but he was focused on the implant he held, the wire that connected it to Dead White. He pulled, but the wire wouldn’t separate. It spooled out from the Goliath’s flesh, long, unbreaking, and suddenly Breaker knew what to do.

‘Stupid…’ Breaker Brass rasped, spending precious breath on the words. ‘Weak.’

‘Weak?’ Dead White leaned in further, glaring up at Breaker Brass. ‘You weak. You!’ His hands tightened again, spurs digging deep into the ogryn’s neck, right on the edge of crushing his trachea, but the Goliath was close now, close enough.

With one last surge Breaker made a circle in the air around White’s head and the wire trailing from his fist followed, wrapping around the Goliath’s thick neck. The strand, so thin, so strong, sank into Dead White’s pale skin and vanished beneath a line of blood.

Focus. Breaker forgot everything else. The other Goliaths watching, the other ogryns waiting, the fact that he was dying. All that mattered now was pulling that wire tight, and with a jerk of his massive shoulders he did.

The wire cut deep. It caught on the vertebrate lying just beneath White’s skin in the back of his neck and stopped, but the thick muscle on the front and side of the Goliath’s neck only slowed the metal strand a little. It sliced through them and found the great vessels that lay beneath. Blood suddenly burst out of Dead White’s neck, a spray of gore that stank of stimm. It splashed over Breaker Brass, coating his face and chest, filling his eyes with a different wash of red. Around his throat, White’s fingers tightened in spasm, and Breaker fell, knees buckling, hitting the shattered floor. Everything was going, away, going, but he fought to keep his focus, to blink his eyes clear and search for that light…

The red light that lay in front of him, glowing weakly in the centre of the implant that lay in his metal palm. Breaker blinked at it, and then his chest heaved as he pulled in air stinking of dust and blood.

He was lying on the floor, with Dead White lying on him. The Goliath’s hands were still on his neck, bone spurs digging into Breaker’s skin, but their killing strength was gone. White’s faded eyes were on him, bright with malevolence, and on his back every clear blister was bubbling as they emptied their loads of stimm into the ’zerker, but every added drop just made the Goliath’s heart pump blood faster out of his slit throat. When he opened his mouth, no words came out, only more blood, but Breaker thought he could read the twist of Dead White’s lips. Mutant. Or maybe Stronger. It didn’t matter. Because with one last pulse of blood, the ganger’s hands fell to the floor, and his eyes went dull, flat, dead.

Breaker Brass stared into those lifeless eyes, breathing hard, then shoved White’s corpse off him and stood. His augmetic legs were steady, though his flesh was unsteady, shaking, but he forced himself up to stand and glare down the corridor. The Goliath gangers stood there, still so many of them, the flickering lights of the remaining lumens dancing off the metal spikes set in their skin and the heavy plates of their armour, off the muzzles of their guns and their narrow, hating eyes.

‘Won.’ Breaker Brass coughed out the word, his throat aching. ‘I won challenge. My turf now. Go!’

The Goliaths gathered before him stared, silent, hands on their weapons. Then one of them stepped forward, the crest of his mohawk striped with grey, his face lined. ‘Servitor,’ he said, his voice hard. ‘Mutant. You have no honour. No turf.’ His hand moved, and pulled the huge stub cannon strapped to his hip out, aiming it at Breaker Brass. ‘You have nothing!’ he shouted, and fired.

Breaker threw himself down and to the side, catching up the pipe he had been swinging at Dead White as he hit the floor and rolled. Slugs tore through the air where he had been, but he was moving, throwing the pipe down the corridor. It spun through the air and smashed into the Goliath leader, crushing into his face and sending him flipping backwards – but Breaker wasn’t watching; he was charging through the debris, weaving, the sound of guns filling the air. Slugs screamed past him, one denting the yellow alloy of his left arm as he bent down, scooping up his ripper. He turned and started running backwards as his finger fell on the trigger and the massive gun jumped and roared, sending a storm of shot down the corridor.

‘Now!’ he bellowed, and the ogryns behind the barrier opened up.

Stub guns cracked, but their shots were lost under the roar of the other rippers. Unlike Breaker’s, those guns were still fitted with their burst limiters, which were working hard as Mallet and the other ogryns tried to fill the corridor with shot. Luckily they seemed to be remembering Breaker’s lessons on aiming, and he wasn’t hit by the other ogryns’ fire as he pelted back to the wall they had built. The Goliaths’ attack had faltered under the ogryn barrage, but as Breaker dived in through the gap he felt something slam into his shoulder, like a hard punch that kept pressing into him, burning. He hit the ground on the other side of the wall, his roll turned into a crash by the slug’s impact, but he ignored the pain of it and pulled himself up.

‘Good fight!’ Mallet shouted to him, pumping another series of rounds down the corridor. ‘Much blood!’

‘Much.’ Breaker Brass could feel blood running down his back, but he could move. ‘Are they coming?’ he shouted over the roar of the rippers.

‘Yes!’ Mallet shouted, grinning.

‘Run soon!’ Breaker shouted. ‘After boom!’

‘Boom?’ Mallet yelled, just as Breaker hit the trigger on the launcher and fired the last frag missile.

He didn’t have time to aim, he had no idea where he hit, but it didn’t matter. The missile screamed away and then exploded, filling the corridor with a cloud of spinning metal fragments.

‘Now!’ Breaker Brass shouted, ‘Run!’ but the gathered ogryns were still shooting, despite the dust that filled the corridor and made them blind. Cursing, Breaker punched Mallet in the back, getting the other ogryn’s focus on him, and between the both of them they made the others stop firing and run, away from the loading dock and into the light and heat of the factorum.

12

They charged past the great machinery and hurtled over the low barrier that they had built in an arc before the loading dock entrance. Behind them they could hear the bellowed war cries of the Goliaths, starting to pursue. Mallet and some of the other ogryns started to slow, raising their guns, eager to turn and fight the chasing gangers, but Breaker Brass punched some backs, grabbed Mallet’s arm, and made them keep going until they got to the battered control panel where Torque was waiting, with Pulley right beside her.

‘Coming?’ she asked.

‘Fast,’ Breaker said. ‘Tunnel?’ he asked, looking at Pulley.

‘Through,’ she said. Her face was flushed, and she was breathing hard. ‘Run to tell. Finished.’

Breaker Brass slugged her in the arm, hard enough to stagger Pulley back. The ogryn rubbed her arm and grinned. ‘Run back,’ he said, ‘and tell them we’re going into the tunnel. Take all the food and as many tools as they can. New job.’ Pulley nodded, and took off running, and Breaker turned to the control panel. ‘Which switches?’

Torque pointed them out, and Breaker tried to put his hands over them, but his left arm was jerky. Torque frowned, looking him over, checking out the blood on his front, his mangled neck, then stepped behind, looking at his back. ‘You’ve been shot,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘We clear?’ He looked around, counting heads. All the ogryns that had been with him were here, and his right hand flipped one massive switch, then another.

Overhead, two huge ladles lurched into motion, grinding forward on their track then stopping and slowly tipping.

Beside Breaker, Mallet made a noise, his broad face twisted between satisfaction and frustration. ‘What?’ Breaker asked him. Behind him, Torque was doing something with his clothes, trying to check his wound.

‘Burn Goliaths.’ Mallet smiled at that, then his face twisted again. ‘Burn factorum too.’ Before them, two columns of liquid iron suddenly appeared as the ladles tipped, bright red bars that blared heat back at them. The factorum’s machinery blocked most of their view, but they could tell when the iron hit the ground from the thunderous roar of it pounding into the rockcrete floor, and the sudden screams of the first Goliaths. The area they had barricaded off was too big to be filled with liquid iron, but much of it would be ankle-deep in the molten metal soon, which should slow the Goliaths’ charge.

But it was also unleashing fire and destruction on the only home Mallet and all the other ogryns had ever known.

‘Mallet,’ Breaker started, then snarled as pain seared through his back. He looked behind him, and Torque was holding a pair of forceps, sized for her hands. The flattened slug gripped in their points seemed too small to cause that much pain.

‘Hold still,’ she snapped at him as he started to curse, and sprayed his back with something that burned in the wound, then made it cold, made the pain fade.

Breaker swallowed a curse. ‘Forget about that,’ he said. ‘Get out, get to the tunnel, and take them with you.’ Breaker jerked his head towards the other ogryns gathered around them. ‘Get them organised and go!’

Torque stood unmoving, glaring at him. ‘And leave you.’

‘Someone has to dump that last ladle.’

‘You said you had a plan for that.’

‘I do,’ Breaker Brass said. ‘This is it.’

‘It’s suicide.’

‘No. I’m not ending myself like Turn Bolt. I’ll run and hide and fight, and slow down the Goliaths even more.’ Breaker turned to the control panel, not wanting to look at her. ‘Now go!’

‘No.’ She grabbed his hand, muscles shifting, and Breaker could barely hold his hand in place. ‘You just finally learned about leading, and a leader is what these people need, and God-Emperor help them that’s you.’

‘No, you,’ Breaker said. ‘Mallet. Take Torque and go, now!’

Behind him, Mallet rumbled. ‘Ha. No fight Torque. No fight Breaker Brass.’ The ogryn reached out and put his hand on Torque’s, and between the two of them they shoved his augmetic fist away. ‘Breaker Brass too strong. Kill Dead White. Kill man who almost kill Mallet. Will fight Goliaths instead.’

Breaker Brass looked at the older ogryn. ‘What?’

‘New job, says Breaker Brass. New work. Okay.’ Mallet shrugged. ‘But Mallet work is here, in factorum.’ Mallet dropped his hand onto the switch. ‘Always here.’

Breaker looked at Mallet, remembering something Dead White had said long ago – leaders make decisions. But sometimes decisions were made for them. He reached up and tapped the factorum clock mounted in the centre of the control panel. It still ticked away, marking six minutes until the next shift. ‘Okay, Mallet. At shift change, start the pour.’

‘Yeah, boss,’ Mallet said.

Breaker Brass nodded, and punched him in the chest. ‘Make quota.’

Mallet tapped the switch, then held up the ripper Breaker had given him. ‘Quota,’ he said, smiling. Then he hit Breaker in the chest with the butt of the gun, sending him stumbling back. ‘Go.’

Breaker nodded, turned, and with the others started to run.

The tunnel was madness.

Ogryns were arguing, shoving each other, picking things up and slamming them down. Breaker Brass looked at them, ready to roar, but Torque beat him to it. The healer flew into the middle of the almost-riot and started swinging, slapping backs and punching arms as she shouted orders. Soon the ogryns were moving, grabbing up supplies and jumping through the narrow hole they had tunnelled through the slag.

‘I’m the leader,’ he said, and laughed. Then he grabbed the ogryns armed with guns and kept them with him, sending the rest to help Torque. He shouldered his ripper and stared back at the factorum. A clock, slaved to the master one on the control panel, was spinning down the time. Three minutes thirty seconds. ‘Pulley!’ Breaker shouted at the woman as she moved past, a huge pack of food on her back.

‘Yeah, boss?’

‘Stay here and watch that ladle!’ Breaker pointed to the great iron cup high overhead, glowing a baleful red. ‘If it moves, shout!’

‘Yeah, boss!’ she said.

Then the shooting started.

Breaker Brass heard the crack of autoguns, the sizzle of lasers. Then, mixed in, the thunder of a ripper.

‘Come on, Mallet,’ he growled. ‘Hold them.’ His words were lost in the sound of the fight, and he gripped his ripper tight, helpless… until a las-bolt slashed through the air in front of him. It missed him, barely, but smashed into Pulley’s leg.

The ogryn grunted and dropped, slapping at the charred hole melted through her coveralls. Breaker didn’t have time to see how bad she was hit though, too busy trying to follow the path of the bolt back. He found the gangers above, on the catwalks that criss-crossed the factorum. Breaker cursed. He knew those catwalks would be the way around the iron they’d spilled, but they hadn’t had time to collapse them.

‘Shoot them!’ he shouted, and opened up with his ripper.

The ogryns beside him roared, their guns barely louder as they fired up at the gangers. The catwalk sparked and shook, hit by slugs and shot, and a Goliath tumbled howling from above to hit the factorum floor with a splattering crunch. But another ogryn went down, gurgling, hit in the eye by a slug, and more shots were slashing from overhead.

Breaker cursed and walked forward, his ripper up, his finger holding the massive trigger down. Slugs slammed into metal around him, and a las-bolt brushed one arm, making a black line across the gold, but he kept firing. One Goliath fell, then another, then another, and the two left broke, throwing themselves behind a corner. Breaker Brass smashed a few rounds after them, then looked at the clock again.

It was a minute past shift change.

‘Damn me,’ Breaker said. The sounds of shooting back at the control panel had gone quiet during their little fight. The Goliaths must have got to Mallet before change, and of course he wouldn’t have pulled it early, against orders.

‘Damn me,’ he said again, then bellowed to the other ogryns. ‘Go! To the tunnel! Run!’ Then he started to run the opposite way, back towards the panel.

He only got two steps though before he heard a shout. ‘Breaker Brass!’

He skidded to a halt and looked back. Pulley was still there, sitting on the ground, pointing up at the ladle. Which was slowly, slowly beginning to tip.

‘Good shift, Mallet,’ he said. ‘Good worker.’ With that deeply felt benediction, he started to run back. He slowed down just enough to throw his ripper to Pulley, then tossed the wounded ogryn over his shoulder and kept going. He could see the gap in the slag in front of him, the last few piles of abandoned supplies. Could see Torque standing in the gap, shouting, then disappearing down the hole. Could see the air around him getting bright, brighter. Behind him came the crack and sizzle of molten iron, then a wave of heat. With a grunt, he threw himself forward and into the gap.

Rough bits of slag tore at him, and he heard Pulley curse, but Breaker drove himself through the narrow gap until it suddenly widened into a tunnel. He heard Torque shouting, followed by a roar of noise. He staggered to a halt and looked back. The gap he’d gone through had just vanished, choked off with slag and stone thrown into it by a group of ogryns. Through the thin cracks between the rubble, a few bright dribbles of molten iron flowed like glowing blood.

‘Close, Breaker Brass,’ Torque said. She took Pulley from him and began to examine her wound.

‘Shift change came a little late,’ he said. ‘But Mallet did it.’

‘We all did it,’ she said. ‘Dead White?’

‘Just dead, now,’ he said.

Torque nodded, satisfied, if not exactly happy. She looked up from Pulley’s wound to the blocked tunnel leading back to the ruined factorum. ‘The other Goliaths. They won’t stop. Ever.’

‘We stopped White. We stopped the Blood Eyes. The rest of the Goliaths… maybe they can be stopped too.’ Breaker Brass shouldered his ripper, and Torque shook her head.

‘And you think my pacifism is crazy.’

‘We’re all crazy.’ Breaker put a hand on her shoulder. ‘But we’re going to do this. We’ll go deep, into the underhive. We’ll make a place for us, so deep the Goliaths won’t ever find us. It’s a hard place down there, but we’re a hard people. Tough. We’re built to survive.’

Torque’s lips twisted into something like a smile. ‘You are crazy.’ But there was something in her eyes. Something like hope.

‘Crazy smart,’ Breaker said, then dropped his hand and punched her in the arm. ‘Now patch Pulley up, we need to go.’ He looked at the gathered ogryns with their supplies and tools and weapons, and behind them the empty tunnel leading to darkness, to the unknown, to freedom. ‘We have work to do.’

About the Author

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.

An extract from ‘Sludge Harbour Payback’ by Justin D. Hill,
from the Necromunda anthology Uprising.

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.’

Click here to buy Uprising.

A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2020 by Black Library.
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 Akim Kaliberda.

Spark of Revolution © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2020. Spark of Revolution, 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: 978-1-80026-415-1

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.

See Black Library on the internet at
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Find out more about Games Workshop’s world of Warhammer and the Warhammer 40,000 universe at
games-workshop.com

Find out more about the underworld of Necromunda at
necromunda.com

To Alex & Camille – for giving me time, inspiration, and patience

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