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.