'Ashman' Gwalt jolted
awake, nearly rolling off the rough bunk he'd been napping on.
'Oh, scut, I must've
gone lights-out, didn't hear you folks,' he said.
'Could've been the
death of you,' said Noomena Greyz, and then, with a sarcastic edge,
'We can assume no-one crept in and trapwired the place while we were
securing the zone?'
The rest of Gunn's Guns
– Noomena, 'Snags' Skivvens, 'Ratbite' Ruddlestone, 'Mumbles'
Mervik and old Jonn Gunn himself - were shuffling into the cramped
habhole that served as their current hideout. 'Drifter' Zensen was
away for the cycle, checking caravan waypoints in Dogland on behalf
of the Coin Guild.
'Ah, yeah,' said Ashman
ruefully. 'Sorry, folks.'
'Never mind all that,'
said Jonn Gunn. 'Now we've locked this place down, let's see what our
haul was.'
When the power had cut
all across Foulnest core a couple of cycles ago, a merry shift of
wanton looting had ensued, but Gunn's Guns had been too busy licking
their wounds after their previous scrap. When it had happened again,
they hadn't wanted to miss out. Alliance be sumpdamned – the
Coiners were refusing to lift the bounties off the Guns' heads, so
why not liberate some goods from the Guilders' freight-rigs while the
lights were out? They'd briefly come to blows with a newcomer Orlock
gang before both crews realised it was in their best interests to
hold fire and maximise their plunder; on the way back to the hideout,
they'd almost fallen foul of Precinct 13 – though it looked like
the enforcers were on the rob just like everyone else. Snags had
stumbled into a stand-off between the coppers and the Faithful Sons,
who'd finally found their way out of the E-Sec badzones. Things
could've got bloody, but the venators followed Jonn Gunn's lead out
of there, leaving the Cawdors and coppers to settle their
differences.
Now, back at the
hideout, they piled up their loot on a rusty old crate in the middle
of the room.
'Huh,' said Snags. 'It
don't look like much when you lay it out like that.'
'Hhhhrgh?' said
'Mumbles' Mervik through his rope gag, pointing at a small sealed
cannister.
Noomena picked it up
and eyed the code stamped on the casing. 'Looks like slaught. Nasty
stimm, gets you bloodhungry alright, but mighty addictive. Good for
one dose.'
She placed the slug
back down amongst the items. A pair of photogoggles. A mesh vest and
set of gauntlets. A boxy industrial cutting tool. And a small black
bag made of plush, shiny fabric. Its mouth was zipped closed with a
drawstring, and it vibed weird. Uphive, or something even more
exotic.
'Never mind the junk,'
said Noomena, 'what's that?'
Snags stooped and
peered at the bag. 'Dunno. Why don't you open it?'
'Why don't you
open it? you're practically kissing it,' said Noomena.
Snags straightened up,
still staring at the bag. 'I.... I don't wanna.'
Unusual tone from the
avaricious Snags. 'Ratbite' Ruddlestone tittered through his sewn-up
lips, amused at his gangmates' hesitance.
'Hrrgh mrrrgh,' said
Mumbles.
'He's right,' said
Ashman. 'That thing... feels weird.'
'That thing?' said
Noomena. 'We don't even know what it is yet.'
'Enough all this,' said
Jonn Gunn, shoving forward and picking up the bag. He loosened the
drawstring and emptied the contents onto the crate.
Two glittering
crystals, mulitfaceted to a degree that they were almost spherical.
'Huh,' said Gunn. 'Well
that's that.'
'Look fancy,' said
Ashman. 'Could be worth something.'
'Spire-straight-up,'
said Noomena. 'They're glitzy, though. Maybe they go with that cutter
box. Focusing crystals or something.'
'Fetch a few creds
either way,' said Gunn.
'Hrrrgh! Hhhh hrrrrr!
Hrrrrg!'
'Wait a click, Mumbles
is right,' said Snags. 'They look like them chrono crystals, you
know, old Bald Bryen's chrono crystals.'
'Come on,' said
Noomena, 'those things are rarer than ash clam teeth. No way we're
going to just run across one of them in a guilder stash, let alone
two.'
'Hrrrgh! Hrrrr hrrrr
hrrrgh! Ghhh!'
'So you saw one at the
Rust Town games one time, so what?' said Ashman. 'You were probably
off your nut on wildsnake.'
'Maybe so,' said Gunn,
chopping a stretched hand to halt the bickering. 'But if Mumbles is
right, what we've got here is worth a hell of a lot more than a
couple of focusing crystals.'
Crafty Snags pursued
the thought. 'Yeah, and even if they ain't the real deal, all we
gotta do is, ah, disabuse some skuthead buyer of the notion... hey!'
This exclamation
because Ratbite had wormed his way between his crewmates and grabbed
the two crystals. He capered to the hatch end of the habhole, Snags
right after him. Ashman and Mumbles, exasperated, stalked back to the
bunk end. Gunn and Noomena remained in the centre, cursing after
Ratbite. Cackling wildly, the abhuman sniper had pulled out his
stiletto knife and started juggling, tossing the crystals in the air
alongside the blade.
'Sumpdammit, you wee
scrape, come here!' snarled Snags, lunging for Ratbite.
'Cut your fool feed,'
ordered Gunn. 'That's a lot of creds you're messing with.'
Ratbite ignored them
and continued his act, which was all going well – until it wasn't.
He caught his hairy foot on a loose cable protruding from the hab
wall and stumbled. The knife clattered to the deck. One of the
crystals landed safely in his palm. The other didn't.
It hit the deck and
shattered. For a moment, a hurricane torrent, louder and fiercer than
the worst ash storm, blasted through the habhole. Everything turned
white. And then, just as suddenly, back to normal. Well, almost.
'Ashman' Gwalt jolted
awake, nearly rolling off the rough bunk he'd been napping on.
'Oh, scut, I must've
gone lights-out.... hey, wait, what?'
Next to him, in front
of the bunk, Mumbles bent double and clutched his stomach. He was
desperately hungry.
A step along, Gunn
blinked and stared around. His armour was more pitted, more corroded
than before, and dusted with a thin coat of ash. 'What in Emprah's
name just happened?' he growled, scratching his beard, which was now
long and unkempt.
'Frag me, my eye! I'm
half fragging blind!' This was Noomena, on her knees and clutching at
her face. Her hair was longer, natural black at the tips beyond her
customary dye job.
Gunn glanced past
Noomena and saw an old man, older than Gunn himself. The old man
looked like Snags would look if he'd seen two dozen more long cycles
pass by. The old man was Snags, rolling and moaning on his
back.
And at the end of the
chamber, Ratbite – or something like him. A strange homunculus, dry
and wizened. A mummified ratling. Before the crew's eyes, it began to
crack and flake away, crumbling into a pile of ash at the habhole
door.
Two things glinted in
the lumenlight, half-buried in the ash. Ragged Jonn Gunn took a step
forward and clocked what they were.
The second chrono
crystal. And Lurbo 'Ratbite' Ruddlestone's imperial guard dog tags.
++++++++++++++++
At the outermost
extreme of the Necromunda system, aboard astropathic relay station
Clarion of Helmawr, High Logicsticite Bremmed Strees was
locked in debate with the black-clad delegation who'd translated in
from the outer void and thoroughly ruined his work rotation.
'By the Throne, it's
not that I doubt the veracity of your credentials,' he implored with
a nervous wince. 'Far be it from me to show such impertinence. It's
just... just... there's been nothing, nothing irregular. And you
arrived unannounced – we were unable to conduct the proper rites!'
Strees shook his head
and fervently twisted his hands into an aquila. The leader of the
black-clad delegation said nothing but smiled and stared at the
Logisticite across the control-pulpit.
'It's... it's simply so
irregular! I mean, to arrive with no -'
A low-grade factotum
sidled up to Strees and handed him a dataslate before slinking away.
Strees was raising the slate to read it when the delegation leader
cut in.
'It says there's been
an urgent transmission from the Eye of Selene. Relaying a report from
the psykana overwatch choirs in the Palace Imperial. Specifically,
from the tempus division, seventeen of whom spontaneously combusted
approximately three solar hours ago. Cause unknown, but concurrent
with a spike of empyrico-temporal energy emanating from the lower
reaches of Hive Primus.'
Strees's eyes flicked
from the hooded delegate to the dataslate and back. And then to the
dataslate. And back. And back and forth several more times.
'That's... that's
exactly what it says. But we've only just received this transmission,
how could you possibly....?'
The delegate smiled.
'Oh,' said Strees. 'Oh,
of course. Blessed are we, that Him-on-Earth provides us with such...
perspicacious defenders. Please, if you and your fellows would come
this way?'
Like any Throne-fearing
Imperial subject, Strees knew better than to question the authority
of the Holy Inquisition, and his grasp of High Gothic was such that
even he could see that whatever had happened in the bowels of Hive
Primus was necessarily of interest to the Ordo Chronos.