A Common Ground by Mike Brooks

Author:Mike Brooks
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2019-05-20T08:13:27+00:00

About the Author

Mike Brooks is a speculative fiction author who lives in Nottingham, UK. His fiction for Black Library includes the short stories ‘The Path Unclear’ and ‘Choke Point’, and the novella Wanted: Dead. When not writing, he works for a homelessness charity, plays guitar, sings in a punk band, and DJs wherever anyone will tolerate him.

An extract from Underhive.

Ten shells in each mag, manstopper and scatter, sucking sour air through the respirator. Knees bent, crouched behind a half-demolished wall, lost in the shadows cast by a single flickering lumen. The girls all around, similarly hidden from even her view, waiting on the guests that Breen had promised would be coming this way. Once upon a time this hab dome in Necromunda’s Hive Primus would have undoubtedly rung to the sounds of heavy industry, but no more. An uncontrollable fire had supposedly broken out, decades or even centuries ago, burning buildings and critically weakening gantries and walkways, and leaving thick mounds of chem-dust and corpse ash everywhere. Even the most unofficial attempts to repopulate it had failed: the atmosphere was still just too toxic for humans to survive in for long. However, the main thoroughfares remained fairly clear, providing a good route along which to move heavy cargo if you didn’t mind taking a risk on your lungs.

‘Jarene.’

Larina. Barely more than a kid, her face would have still held the plumpness of youth if she’d been eating well enough. As it was, her close-shaved head, pale skin and sunken eyes gave her the look of a skeleton-in-waiting. Could be, for all Jarene knew. Juves didn’t eat until the rest of the Wild Cats had taken their fill, and that sometimes didn’t leave much. Elena Wild believed in keeping the kids hungry; kept them keen, she reckoned. Keen to prove themselves, keen to get recognition, keen to get a bigger share. And if they died, so what? Plenty more where they came from. There were innumerable Escher girls in Hive City who would view the choice between a future of eighteen-hour shifts in the chem-factories until they died from old age or toxin build-up, or picking up a gun and fighting their way into legend in the underhive, as no choice at all.

‘What?’ Jarene asked, feeling the warmth of her breath reflected back onto her lips by the mask she wore. She’d been a Larina not so many years ago, when the fights she’d always got embroiled in had started involving knives and the Enforcers had come looking for her. Then it was time to go downhive. Her, Elena and Kay-Kay had started this gang, but Elena had always come up with the best plans.

‘We sure they coming?’ Larina whispered. Her flak vest was too big for her, but it’d do its job well enough. Better too big than too small, as Kay-Kay always said. It just meant that when Larina crouched down, like now, the neckline of the vest rode up to swallow her chin like she was a sump-turtle trying to retreat into its shell.

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