Uprising by David Annandale

Author:David Annandale
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Black Library
Published: 2020-08-20T09:50:09+00:00

DEAD DROP

MIKE BROOKS

Every piece of cargo that arrived on Necromunda came through the Eye of Selene, which of course was untrue.

Everything legal came through there, certainly, taxed and registered and then shipped off to wherever it was supposed to go. A fair amount of contraband did too, and that was no lie, because the right bribe or piece of appropriately leveraged intimidation could work wonders. But there were some things you just couldn’t trust to the tender mercies of Lord Helmawr’s representatives, just in case someone got a bit curious and took a peek where they weren’t meant to… or, technically speaking, were. For some particularly sensitive things the only real option was to pack it up real good and sling it out of your craft from orbit, aimed at the Ash Wastes. Then you just had to hope the right people got to it first, while the wrong people assumed it was merely a loose piece of space debris.

Danner Grimjack had no idea what it was that had landed eighteen miles north-east of Hive Primus, and they didn’t need to know. Nor did they need to know about the finer points of orbital physics, atmospheric friction, or even who had dropped it in the first place. What they knew was that the Steel Crescents had gone haring off towards it as though they were the only gang with a working macroscope to see it come down, which meant it was valuable to someone, and that meant that it would be valuable to Danner Grimjack and the Road Dogs. All they needed to do was wait for the Steel Crescents to bring it back to them.

Which was, agreeably enough, just what was happening.

‘Thirty seconds!’ Muzz shouted down. Her words were muffled by the respirators they all wore, but intelligible enough. The winds were low and the toxic ash lay relatively still at the moment, but no one would risk uncovering just for the sake of a little clarity.

Engines coughed into life, and the noise echoed back off the ruined walls of what had once been a space freighter, until some unknown accident had seen it plummet crustwards too, and spill its metal guts across the wastes. Enough of the shell still held together for it to be a landmark on the routes between the hive spires, and most would skirt it on the northern side: you could drive straight through it, but that was a bottleneck just waiting to happen.

Muzz hopped down and landed on the bed of her truck, then stationed herself behind the deck-mounted harpoon. Danner slapped the roof of their own vehicle’s cab and it jerked into motion. One by one, the Road Dogs of House Orlock pulled out and, as the Steel Crescents of House Van Saar began to curve around the freighter’s ruins to the north, the Dogs did the same to the south.

That was the key; you had to get up to speed out of sight. If you lay in wait and let the quarry go past you, they’d leave you in their dust.

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