Out
beyond the Slagdrift Gate, it's quiet most of the time. The further
you go from Sinkside, the less the cacophonies of the Scorch Works
and Slamdrome echo off the walls of the broad tunnel as it delves
shellwards and sumpwards. This shift, the Bloke was distant enough
from the korf that could hear his prey, whimpering nearby. Impressive
how far the thronebothering skinny had got with only a leg and a
half.
By
the Bloke's reckoning, the prey was maybe twenty paces away, on the
far side the slag dune up ahead. He paused and considered his
options. The skinny's raider cronies were already dead; there was no
rush to finish the hunt. After some thought, the Bloke slung his
bolter and drew his cleaver. Why waste another shell?
The
Bloke's footfalls sounded crisp and clear as he trudged up the dune.
Black-plated, masked and goggled, he was barely visible in the dim
lumenlight as he reached the crest. His prey was a greasy-green smear
in the trough between the slagpiles. A ragged Cawdor zealot in Scrap
Saint colours.
Working
his way down into the trough, the Bloke grunted, satisfied, as he
noted the abrupt, gory termination of the prey's left leg. He'd aimed
for the knee, and he'd hit the knee. Nice shooting. The prey was
flailing belly-down, muttering desperate prayers, clawing forward on
bloody fingertips. Hearing the approaching footfalls, the prey tried
to twist round onto his back. The Bloke didn't give him the chance.
He raised his cleaver and, in one smooth motion, dropped to one knee
as he brought the blade down. Dirty cloth and tox-raddled flesh were
cut apart. The prey's head rolled away down the trough.
The
Bloke took pride in his craft, but little pleasure. He wasn't like
many of his fellow Goliaths, with their roiling-furnace hearts. He
was unborn, bound to the House of Chains by surgical alteration and
post-juvehood stimmplant rather than geneforging and lineage.
Sound
filled the wide tunnel for a few kliks as a train rolled past on the
elevated railroad that ran between the dunes. It was laden with slag
waste and a work crew of bantering brons tasked with shovelling the
load out onto the furthermost edges of the ever-expanding dumping
ground. They'd have to fight off Scrap Saints as they did so: turf
war had been simmering away beyond the Slagdrift Gate for more cycles
than any Sinksider could remember, for the Goliaths' chosen tipping
zones were also claimed as valuable scavenging troves by House
Cawdor.
The
brons' war songs faded away and the lumens strung along the railroad
supports stopped shaking. The tunnel was quiet again. Confident he'd
dealt with the whole raiding crew, the Bloke knelt and twisted the
dead prey's gnarled, bloodied hand off in a mass of torn sinews. He
added the trophy to the bag at his belt, and withdrew back to the
shadows under the viaduct.
Sometimes
the Scrap Saints mustered the courage to send rocket-armed sabotage
crews up towards Sinkside. The Gate was fortified, its bunkers and
watchtowers manned by a small garrison of korf-brons. But the Bloke
preferred to hunt out here, beyond the gate. The vatborns and
natborns – even most of his fellow unborns – couldn't fathom his
preference for the cold, quiet kill, but they were willing to accept
it: every few shifts, the Bloke would prove his worth by returning to
the Gate and dropping off a bag of hands.
He
stopped there, in the shadows beneath the railroad, silent and still
like a sumpspider waiting to pounce. Klicks turned into the better
part of a shift.
And
then there was sound again. Not the approaching rumble of a slag
train. Voices, and booted feet crunching on slagdrifts. But they
weren't Cawdors muttering catechisms as they steeled themselves to
attack the Gate. No, these were Goliaths, coming down from Sinkside.
The
Bloke shifted his position and stared through the strutwork as the
crew came into sight. No familiar faces from the Gate-guards. These
brons were about different business.
There
were five of them. The stimmer stood out instantly, taller and
broader than the rest. His face was slack-muscled from chem-damage,
but his eyes were beady and sharp - he'd dosed himself up for this
trip into the wastes. The next face was known to the Bloke even
though he seldom visited the korf proper: Heavy Wrecks, the top
forge-boss in Sinkside. What was he doing out beyond the Gate? And
there were two juves, one a heavy-set bully type, the other a lean
forge-born, probably fresh from the vats. You could see from their
wide eyes and careless trudging that this was their first time in the
wider hive. The fifth figure was cloaked and hooded – the Bloke
couldn't make out much about him – but he was clearly a seasoned
ganger, moving with the same rough poise as Wrecks and the stimmer.
The
bully juve spoke, too loud, 'Hey boss-meyn,'
Viper-fast,
the stimmer lashed out with a pinkish, half-regrown hand – looked
like he'd recently sustained a nasty injury - and cuffed the juve
round the head.
'Shhhhhhhhh,'
said the stimmer, eyes gleaming in the gloom.
The
bully rubbed his head ruefully, continuing in a falsetto whisper:
'Boss-meyn, how we find this Bloke bron in all these skrud-piles?'
This
got the Bloke's attention. Careful not to make a noise, he unslung
his bolter. He couldn't let them leave unchallenged.
The
crew passed by, and the Bloke ghosted after them, sticking to the
shadows. He saw the seasoned gangers – Wrecks, the stimmer and the
hooded one - shift their stances, lowering their centres of gravity
as they moved, ready to spring into action. The juves hiked on as
before, oblivious to what their gangmates had scoped: they were being
stalked.
The
Bloke figured there wasn't much use delaying things if they were onto
him. He stopped, took aim with his bolter, and fired a single shot.
It hit the slag just ahead of the lean juve's feet, exploding on
impact and sending up a spray of sharp fragments. The juve ducked
back, yelping, as Wrecks and the stimmer lunged into back-to-back
combat readiness, scanning the dark tunnel for signs of the shooter.
The dumb bully juve brandished his spud-jacker and strutted forwards,
chest out, stopping short when he realised he didn't know where he
should be looking.
Only
the one in the cloak stayed cool. Casually pulling his hood back, he
turned to face the direction the shot had come from. The lumens cast
deep shadows onto a craggy face that the Bloke recognised
immediately. Fraggenstein.
'Come
out from there, lone dog,' called the old boss-meyn, addressing the
exact spot in the shadows where the Bloke was lurking. 'Time's come
due on your debt to me.'
Over
the subsequent cycles, Scrap Saint raids on the Slagdrift Gate grew
more frequent. Not a problem as far as the guard-brons were
concerned, but still they puzzled over it, and eventually their slow
Goliath brains figured it out: the Bloke wasn't stalking the tunnel
any more. If they'd really thought about it, they might have figured
from the timing that the Bloke had joined Fraggenstein in his
downhive quest. But who has time to think when there's violence afoot
at the Gate, in the Slamdrome, in the Hablocks? Already, the Bloke is
just another Sinkside legend.
+++++
And
so they set out into the Underhive: Fraggenstein the Elder and Bad
Boi Boosty seeking death in battle before their vatborn bodies burnt
out; Heavy Wrecks and Turbo-22 keen to test their turf-war mettle
after long cycles on the forge lines; Fraggenstein the Younger with a
name to prove; and the Bloke with a debt to repay. What bound them
together was the brutal determination that makes a Goliath a Goliath.
They called themselves the Bullkroks, and the shift came when they
arrived in the disreputable badzone boom-town of Foulnest.
But
of course, that's another downhive tale....