‘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.