by Ben Counter, Guy Haley, Joshua Reynolds, Cavan Scott (epub)
According to the reports, a rare few went voluntarily into the pit. Most were thrown in kicking and screaming. If they survived the fall they’d fight for their lives. Winner takes all.
Until the next bout.
Big Bruvva had survived more fights than any other champion, but had used his newfound infamy to spread his unholy gospel. The word of Gork.
And now his followers had clambered out of the Pit to ‘save’ anyone who would listen, and slaughter those who would not. All while a plague of real ork ships was carving its way across the system, destroying everything that stood in its way.
Bodil reached forward and extinguished the hololith, snapping Vinter’s thoughts to the here and now. ‘I’m sure it is nothing to concern ourselves over, governor,’ Bodil he said, but Vinter wasn’t having any of that.
‘Nothing to worry about?’ the governor repeated, not quite believing what he was hearing. ‘Bodil, Obstiria has already fallen. You do realise that, don’t you?’
‘Of course, sir.’
‘The hive should be preparing for incursion.’
‘As indeed we are–’
The governor had always hated being interrupted. ‘Not facing dangers from within,’ he continued. ‘For the last time, how much of a threat is this cult?’
‘The so-called ‘Bruvvahood’?’ Bodil offered another of his shrill laughs. ‘Mindless rabble, governor, nothing more. Violent, yes, but easily controlled.’
Vinter wondered if Bodil still believed they could be easily controlled when his head had been twisted from his scrawny shoulders.
He had always thought Bodil was spineless.
The governor giggled at the words crossed his mind. The sound of a crazy man.
Big Bruvva buried his fist in Vinter’s empty stomach to shut him up.
‘You’ll see,’ the cult-leader said, grabbing Vinter’s once immaculate hair and yanking his head back to face him. ‘You’ll all see when Gork comes.’
An alert blared from the cogitator embedded into the governor’s desk. No, it was Big Bruvva’s desk now, perfect for resting his filthy boots on. The cult leader plodded over and jabbed a glyph with a calloused finger.
‘At last,’ he growled. ‘What happened? Did we break out?’
‘No, Boss,’ replied in an equally guttural voice. ‘There was a problem.’
‘What kind of problem?’ Big Bruvva asked, the chords on his neck standing out like ropes.
‘You need to see for yourself.’
A grainy image flashed up on the monitor behind Big Bruvva. The Gork worshipper turned to see three of his men rushing down a dark corridor, armed to their sharpened teeth.
Vinter recalled the similar images he’d watched. His private defence force, the army he had spent years training, slaughtered at the hands of the insurgents. The dead mounting up one by one. All that effort keeping the extent of his empire building secret, skirting around rules and regulations, keeping his activities away from prying Administratum eyes whatever the cost, wasted.
Sounds hissed over the vox. Angry yells. The bark of weapons.
Screams.
The cultists dropped out of frame as a figure swept forward. A figure clad in black. A figure wearing the face of death itself.
Big Bruvva slammed his hand down on the controls, freezing the image. He took a step closer, almost pressing his flat nose against the screen, examining the stranger who had just cut down three of his best men.
And then he started to laugh; a deep, horrible sound.
‘This is it,’ he boomed, throwing his hands out wide in rapture, before whirling on Vinter. ‘The Day of Reckoning is coming. This is the final test, as it was foretold!’
When Vinter didn’t respond, Big Bruvva brought the back of his hand across the governor’s cheek. ‘Are you listening?’
The cultist snorted to himself as Vinter let out a pathetic whimper. ‘Puny human,’ he grinned, jabbing at the vox-control one more time.
‘Take him down, boys,’ Big Bruvva ordered, eyes blazing with sinful fervour. ‘Take him down hard!’
Greenie had never felt so alive. Life had always been hard in the underhive. Ever since he was a kid he’d spent his days scavenging for tech, breaking into his neighbour’s habs to pilfer whatever they’d stolen the day before, running home before his ill-gotten gains could be taken from him in turn and selling it to the highest bidder.
You never knew which gang would be in charge of the block when you woke up in the morning, not until you ventured outside to see which bodies were lying in the gutters. Not that the victors remained in power for long. Events moved quickly in the undercity.
Not anymore. The gangs were all gone, and for once Greenie was on the winning side.
On Gork’s side.
He belonged here now, with his ‘bruvvas’ by his side and a gun in his hands. Greenie ran his pierced tongue over his newly pointed teeth. Shaving them into fangs had hurt like hell, but that’s what Gork had commanded.
‘It’s a message to your enemies,’ Big Bruvva had explained as Greenie had gone to work with the file. ‘If you’re willing to do this to yourself…’
‘Imagine what we’ll do to them!’ Greenie had replied happily.
The pain had been worth it. Big Bruvva had even given him his new name. His parents had christened him Halcum, a weak human name. He wasn’t weak any more. Now he was Greenie, on account of the fact that he’d dyed his hair the colour of jade before the teeth-filing ceremony. Yeah, it was falling out now, the chemicals having scorched his scalp, but he’d proved his devotion.
The Day of Reckoning was coming. Gork would make them whole. Would make them ork.
Greenie couldn’t wait.
‘He’s in the power plant,’ Rippa shouted from up front. Rippa was Greenie’s hero. Other than Big Bruvva, Rippa was the largest cultist he’d seen so far, and therefore the best. He had more tattoos than anyone else too, thick green runes snaking across his broad back. Most of them were weeping, of course, the edges encrusted with dried blood. Rippa had made the ink himself, using the fungus that had started spreading across the walls of the hive the day that Big Bruvva had taken control.
Old Raine had said Rippa was an abomination – the mould had got into his blood.
Rippa had torn the old man’s tongue out and left him to die in the street. Served him right. Greenie had always hated the arrogant old git. Always thought he knew best. He’d meant to go back and take Raine’s head, boil off the flesh and present it to Big Bruvva himself as an offering, but the rats had got there first. There wasn’t much left.
This was his chance to prove himself to them all. To Rippa, to Big Bruvva – to Gork.
‘You’ll go far, Greenie,’ that’s what Rippa had said. ‘Just do what you’re told.’ And today he was being told to kill. Best kind of telling there was.
Of course, he didn’t really know who it was they had to kill.
Rippa had shrugged when Greenie asked. ‘Some git from outside the hive.’
‘An invader?’
‘Big Bruvva reckons it’s a test, sent by Gork.’
Greenie didn’t care about that. He just wanted to try out this new gun. He ran his head over the smooth barrel. What had Rippa called it? Yeah, that’s right – a ‘shoota’!
‘Main generator room,’ Rippa yelled. ‘Come on!’
They obeyed without question. Of course they did. Rippa would crack their skulls otherwise. Greenie wanted his skull to stay the way it was – although he did fancy getting some of those fancy horn implants he’d seen on the others. Maybe he’d get one after he’d killed the git. A trophy.
The cultists ran into the vast chamber, giant turbines stretching up on either side like vast metallic cliffs. There was a narrow path down the middle, similar channels on either side. The noise was incredible, generators roaring like mud-l
izards.
Greenie’s skin tingled. You could almost feel the power in the air, the energy that the spire-scum had denied the underhivers for so long. Not now. Big Bruvva had shut off their power on the first day. Made them beg, just so that they could use their stupid little machines again – and then Big Bruvva had killed them anyway.
‘Where is he, then?’ one of the other cultists called out, struggling to be heard. They swept down all three paths, checking between the turbine towers, firing around corners, just in case the git was hiding in the shadows like the cowardly human it was. Not like them. They were going to be orks. They were going to win.
Greenie stuck close to Rippa, itching to find a target. He didn’t have to wait long.
Shots rang out across the generator room, mixed with cries of triumph and then fear, as Greenie’s brothers finally found their prey. He soon wished they hadn’t.
‘Get him!’ Rippa yelled, running between two of the turbines and firing wildly ahead. ‘Knock him down! Stomp him good. Dakka, dakka, dak–’
Rippa’s head exploded. Just like that. One minute it was there, the next it was gone. His body continued to run before his legs realised that his brain had been pulped and simply stopped. Rippa’s headless corpse toppled forward to land wetly on the floor.
Hot metal buzzed through the air like a swarm of angry hornets. Greenie ducked, slipping on Rippa’s blood, and fell, a tumble that saved his life – for a few moments at least.
He never saw who fired the mortar that screamed above his head and barely even registered its trajectory in the chaos, but by Gork did he feel the fireball that burst out of the turbine behind him, the clothes on his back melting in an instant. The pain of filing his teeth was nothing compared to this, but even with the world going mad, he knew what he had to do. For Rippa. For himself. Gritting his teeth so tight he thought they would crack, he scrabbled across the slick floor towards where his gun had fallen. Someone else snatched it up – another new recruit, hardly a tattoo on his skin. The runt hadn’t even been granted an ork name yet. He was still called Vorn, the same snivelling wretch Greenie had known in the schola.
‘Hey, that’s mine,’ Greenie cried, staggering back up to his feet, ready to pull the weapon out of Vorn’s hand, to kill him if necessary – but he didn’t need to. A look of complete surprise flashed over the runt’s face, four sharp points bursting out of his chest. They vanished as quickly as they’d appeared and Vorn dropped to the floor, his body convulsing.
Greenie didn’t hang around to see Vorn’s veins blackening, blood streaming from his dimming eyes. He was running from the thing that had already stepped over Vorn’s corpse. Turned out Greenie didn’t care about proving himself so much after all. All he cared about was survival.
As he fled, Greenie threw a look over his shoulder, more a reflex than any desire to know how much distance he’d put between him and certain death.
Not enough.
The claws raked against Greenie’s skull as they slashed clean through his screaming face.
Big Bruvva roared in fury, sweeping a heavyset arm across the governor’s table, sending its contents flying across the chamber.
Behind the cult leader, Vinter allowed himself the ghost of a smile.
Are you scared, yet Bruvva? Are you feeling as helpless as I was when I watched my own guard trampled beneath your followers’ boots?
The governor knew what that thing was down there, knew what it could do. He’d seen reports, highly classified reports that no one outside Hive Jensen had been supposed to see. Secrets that had been commodities to trade, back when the world made sense, when he’d had been lord and master. Before this brute had ruined everything.
Big Bruvva wiped his mouth with the back of a hairy hand, shoulders heaving. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he growled. ‘That freak will bleed soon enough, whatever it is.’
‘He’s coming for you, you know?’ Vinter was surprised to hear a voice challenging the oaf, even more so when he realised it was his own. ‘He won’t stop until he’s killed you too.’
Big Bruvva peered at the governor over his shoulder, a cruel grin spreading over his blunt features.
‘I’m counting on it…’
Anya could barely breathe, the stench of her fellow prisoners becoming more overpowering by the day. She had no idea how long they’d been crammed in these cages, suffocating in their own filth. The survivors of Big Bruvva’s purges. The lucky ones.
A bony elbow jabbed her in the ribs, but she’d taught herself not to react. Cause a scene and you’d be pulled out of the cage. Cause a scene and you’d die.
And so she kept quiet, watching their two guards inhaling spores from the mould they heated in a small metal bowl, their bodies shuddering with every ragged breath.
‘Blades,’ the thinner one of the two called out, his rough voice catching on the smoke. ‘You’ve got to try this stuff. Think I just saw Gork.’
Beside him, his obese companion half-choked on the fumes. ‘Where is Blades anyway?’ he hacked, his abnormally stretched earlobes joggling.
Anya knew exactly who they were talking about – the largest of their three guards. Tall, muscular and cruel with the habit of clanging his knife blades along the bars of the cages, not caring if he cut the terrified prisoners within.
‘Who cares?’ grinned the first guard. ‘All the more for us. Gork be praised.’
He raised his gaunt face, a dozy smile stretching across his tattooed features before his eyes went wide. He didn’t even have time to shout a warning before something heavy crashed wetly down between them, guttering the small fire and sending the bowl clattering across the floor.
In her cage, Anya gagged as she realised what had fallen from the access panel high above their heads. A slab of meat that had once been a man, his green-inked skin covered in blood, the arms that had once carried long wicked knifes missing, ripped off at the shoulders.
The fat guard gaped before a jagged hole opened in his forehead, as another figure leapt down from on high, landing heavily on Blades’ corpse, gun still smoking. The thin cultist jumped back, grabbing his own weapon, but couldn’t even drag it from its holster before his face was shredded by the newcomer’s claws.
The guard hit the floor, limbs jerking as what was left of his features started turning black.
Anya looked up, locking eyes with the living nightmare that had so proficiently dispatched her tormentors; furious red orbs glaring back from a bone white face.
There were shouts from behind, the sound of running feet. She glanced over her shoulder, trying to see through the gaps lefts by her panicked fellow prisoners. A mob was running towards them, more cultists than she’d ever seen, guns already up and firing.
A shot thudded into their skull-faced saviour’s chest, followed by another, but it didn’t fall. It didn’t even make a sound, simply swinging up its own weapon and firing a single bolt – not at its aggressors, but at the lock on Anya’s cage. The door was open in an instant, the prisoners pouring out of the corridor and straight into the path of the approaching gunfire.
Anya didn’t run. She shrank back into the cage and watched as the former captives were struck down, those who escaped the hail of bullets running in every direction, blocking the cultists’ view of their skull-faced target, a perfect shield.
And then it was in the midst of them, moving so fast Anya could barely see. She slid down the bars, pressing her palms over her ears, trying to block out the rattle of bolts and the shrieks of those breathing their last. She screwed her eyes tight, expecting any minute for one of those shots to find her, cringing in the corner of her cage like an animal.
But the shot never came. After a while, Anya realised the sounds had stopped. Her hands dropped from her ears as, still shaking, she turned to see a carpet of bodies on the floor – prisoners and cultists alike. Limbs were at awkward angles, blood running in rivulets do
wn rapidly cooling flesh. Somewhere someone was weeping, faint sobs that ended abruptly with a wet cough and a dry rattle.
She’s seen enough massacres in the last few weeks, but nothing like this, cultists and prisoners alike united in death.
One body was missing as Anya nervously stepped out of the cage – a body with a bone-white face.
Big Bruvva’s fist piled into the screen.
For the first time since the revolt, Vinter wanted to live, if only to witness their beloved leader’s despair as his forces were diminished level by level. It couldn’t be stopped now.
Any perverse enjoyment the cult leader had been deriving from the bloodshed was gone. As Big Bruvva turned to the vox his face was a mask of pure hatred. The heretic hunched over the desk, thumbing open a vox-channel that could deliver a message to every speaker in the structure simultaneously. The new lord and master of Hive Vinter was about to address the masses.
‘You think you’re so hard,’ he growled, leaning close to the vox-bead, his voice echoing around the corridors deep below them. ‘Well, Big Bruvva is about to teach you a lesson, do you hear?’
The doors of the cathedral blew open, blessed splinters hammering against the pews – and that wasn’t all. A figure was thrown into freshly defiled nave, knocked back by the force of a frag grenade, crashing into the ancient wooden benches.