'Bring out yer dead,'
croaked Flin Fleckus as he shunted his corpse cart through the
dripping dankness. The semi-automated tracked cart buzzed ahead,
bereft of cargo this early in the shift.
He was down in the
half-collapsed stack of warehouses on the lowest levels of Foulnest,
where the settlement's darkest deeds took place. Most of the
fatalities from bitter gang fights and duels would have been scooped
up by the Guild harvesting parties, but there were sometimes
leftovers for a lowly drudge like Flin,who earned a meagre living
collecting whatever dead flesh he could find for delivery to the
Guild-sanctioned corpse-processing farms. He didn't intend to spend
much time down here, lest he end up killed and carted away by some
other carrion-scraper.
Not bad findings this
time: a few shrivelled limbs wedged between the deck plates, even a
ripe torso the corpse grinders must have overlooked. Still, best to
leave these half-badzone haunts to the true professionals. There was
a crude, slime-lined elevator at the end of the corridor. He rolled
his cart onto it and set about working the crank. The gears rattled
and, inch by inch, he ascended to the level above.
'Bring out yer dead,'
croaked Flin Fleckus as he shunted his corpse cart along the
rust-thick quayside. There was activity here: teams of dock-hands
hooking and slinging cargo off the moored dust-runners. Some of the
ash-rigs – and some of the dock-hands – were branded with sigils
of the Iron and Coin Guild; others were more discreet, their loads
hustled furtively onto wagons and the backs of pack-slaves. Flin
averted his gaze from these latter- no good would come of paying
attention where it wasn't bidden. He steered his cart carefully
between the work gangs.
Just the one finding,
but a good one: a fresh hanging. Delaque male, suspended over the
quayside from a metal beam. The body twisted languidly in the wind
that gusted in from the cavernous, sludgy vaults of Dogland. The
cadaver's viz-augmetics dangled down his either side of his face,
squeezed out of their sockets by the death throes. Who could tell if
this was a suicide or a gang killing? The House of Snakes runs its
schemes dark and complex: maybe murder, or maybe this poor soul had
backstabbed his way into a corner with a terminal exit. Either way,
no-one in the cargo game seemed to care – they went about their
business, leaving the body where it was. Not so Flin. Here was good
meat for the rending vats. He sawed through the rope and added the
corpse to his cart. Onwards and upwards.
Flin steered the corpse
cart up a few levels, rattling unsteadily over the rickety bridgeways
linking the cold furnaces that now served as squalid habholes. Not
much chance of any findings here – the desperate furnace-dregs
would already have pounced upon any meat matter and made short work
of it. But there were better prospects ahead.
'Bring out yer dead,'
croaked Flin Fleckus as he shunted his corpse cart through the bustle
of Cut End market. He made the rounds of the butchers' stalls and
checked in with a few Cawdor ratcatchers of his acquaintance. Even a
few scrapings of offcut fat from the former or critterlimbs gnawed
off to escape the latter's traps could fetch a tenth of a cred or
two. Not much else happening on the market this shift – no brawls
or stand-offs escalating into murder – so on to the next stop.
'Bring out yer dead,'
croaked Flin Fleckus as he shunted his corpse cart between the
tumbledown hovels of Dhan's Town, one of several hab clusters that
had sprung up in the dead factoria domes around Foulnest core. Flin
usually got something out of the locals – some poor skuthead who'd
carked it from a stimm overdose or acute spore sickness. If worst
came to worst, he'd siphon off the contents of the communal dunny
into his cart – it's all organic, after all.
Flin was halfway down
the main drain that cut through the middle of the cluster of habs. He
nodded and growled greetings to the locals he knew. Tattle was traded
– since the Sin Eaters took off, the Smokestack Needles and Gunn's
Guns had been throwing their weight around town, each looking to
take over the protection rackets. Things were coming to a head, and
this shift would see a reckoning. Flin clocked a clutch of enforcers
from Precinct 13, on patrol and looking for trouble. Over the other
side of the shantyways, he clocked the bright colours of the Needles
and the drab colours of the Guns, stealthing into position. There
would be gunplay, blood and – if Flin was lucky – fresh meat for
the finding.
What the tattle had
missed was the arrival of the Rustgate OMC, those notorious outlaws.
Suddenly, there they were, whooping and hollering from the mechworks
at the dome's edge, getting involved just for the violence. Flin's
prospects were looking better by the click – as long as he didn't
get caught in the crossfire.
The scrap went down
pretty fast. There were bullets and lasbolts flying everywhere. Half
the hive dwellers panicked and ducked for cover, scrambling between
the hovels or into the mechwork perimeter. The other half, which
included Flin, had seen it all before. They tried to go about their
business – if Emprah wills it, there's no dodging that fatal shot.
Flin rolled his cart
between the hovels, glancing down at the gutters and drainholes for
carcass matter, and glancing up to check he wasn't about to be
charged by a battle-mad ganger. The things he saw would give him
tales to tell in the Working Hivers' Club for the next dozen shifts:
That enforcer who
clambered on the dunny to lob a grenade at one of the Needles. The
grenade bounced back at him and blasted him right back down to the
dome floor. So much for Helmawr's long arm.
Gunn's lad Mumbles and
Needle juve Jek going at each other with knives in the shadows of the
mechworks. Another grenade went off right in the middle of their
duel, but they scrapped on regardless, and Jek got the better of
Mumbles in the end.
Old Jo Genge of the
Rustgaters fumbling a point-blank shot at venator Noomena, then cracking his foot as he tried to drop to safety on the domefloor. Jonn Gunn put a hotshot lasbolt in his arse, but Genge but
staggered on regardless.
Truth be told, that
Rustgate resilience burned through the whole rumble. The enforcers,
the venators and the Eschers rained fire on the Orlocks, but they
just hung on like ash clams. The other gangs took a few casualties
and, unlike the outlaws, didn't have much stomach for shooting up the
locals. Before long, Gunn and veteran Needle Kes looked to have
changed their minds about the takeover, ordering their crews to
scarper.
One enforcer by the
name of Angel looked to be hanging in there, ready to make a stand
against the Rustgaters as they moved down from the mechworks into the
hovels, but he thought better of it and ducked out back to his
precinct. Flin didn't blame him, the way the Orlocks were fighting on
through their wounds. No-one was going to stop them.
So that was the shift
the Rustgate OMC took over the protection rackets in Foulnest core.
Some would say it was dark news, another slice of the action falling
into the hands of men beyond the law, but to the likes of Flin
Fleckus, it was business as usual. The gangs will run their
shakedowns, be they clean or outlaw. The best an underhiver can do is
try to scrape a living between the bulletstorms.
Flin Fleckus scoured
the alleyways between the hovels but, for all the carnage, there'd
been no kills in Dhan's Town that shift. Time to roll the cart over
to the corpse farm and see how much he could haggle for his haul.
One last call, just in
case.
'Bring out yer dead,'
he croaked.