The pop and crack of lascarbine fire split the air; the last of the Crescents, only a few yards behind, had taken exception to Danner’s arrival. Thankfully the speed at which they were all driving, and the unsteady surface of the ash, meant their attempts at marksmanship were dismal. Danner unslung their combat shotgun and took aim with their left hand, still bracing themself with their right. The Crescents’ trucks were heavily armoured, but no one could do much about their wheels.

  A salvo of fire ripped from Danner’s weapon. The recoil shook it viciously, but they braced it with the ease of long practice and the shells raked across the vulcanised tyres, shredding them. The Crescent truck swerved uncontrollably, and a moment later it was flipping over. Those riding it might be crushed or might survive; all Danner cared about was that they weren’t going to be interfering.

  The Dogs were coming under fire from the passengers of the big rig now, but the shots were glancing off the armoured front of Danner’s truck. Sideswipe Eddy climbed up into the gunner’s chair, largely protected by the fireshield of salvaged metal, angled the harpoon towards them and fired. Muzz let fly with hers at the same moment, and the twin impacts punched deep into the cab. Danner heard a scream: it wasn’t just the big rig’s body that had been pierced, it seemed.

  One of the Crescents’ lead trucks was angling away into the dunes to the left, either trying to act as a decoy, or just fleeing. The other had begun to fall back, but the Road Dogs’ flankers outnumbered it two to one, and the weight of fire in their favour quickly told. Something punched through and ignited the promethium, and the big rig’s last companion went up in a fireball that momentarily lit even the dismal grey of the Ash Wastes.

  The big rig itself was veering steadily off to the right. Danner frowned, confused. The steer wasn’t irregular enough to be trying to shake the harpoons loose, and they weren’t heading for safety any longer. Could the little lead truck now heading in the other direction actually be the one carrying the cargo? No time to worry about that now; they were locked in, and whatever the big rig was carrying would be worth it. It might just be Van Saar tech, but that could still fetch a decent price if you knew the right buyer.

  Fast Don and Ironhead both stamped on their brakes and the harpoon cables snapped taut, but although its pace slowed, the big rig powered onwards, dragging the smaller vehicles in its wake. Only one thing for it.

  ‘Board them!’ Danner roared, pulling out their cable clip. Sideswipe Eddy reached out and snapped his around the cable, then swung out around the side of the fireshield and let gravity carry him down and along the taut harpoon cable onto the big rig. Danner leaped up to the raised harpoon mount and hooked their clip at the first attempt, then slid down the cable after him even as Muzz and Toni Bones came down their own line. Danner felt the usual tug of fear as they dangled momentarily above nothing but Necromundan ash, racing away beneath them, but they swallowed it. There were far greater dangers here than a simple fall.

  The big rig’s escorts were gone, the crew were under attack from two sides, and they were panicking. Sideswipe let rip with his autogun, strafing the big rig’s deck, but someone kept their cool. Eddy’s head jerked back and he went limp, the handle of a knife protruding from his eye socket. Danner snarled in rage and reached past their crewmate’s body, switched their combat shotgun to shredder ammo, and pulled the trigger.

  A spray of shot rattled out, scourging the big rig’s flatbed at head height to a chorus of screams just before Muzz touched down, and she put autopistol shells through the skulls of the fallen Crescents before she’d even unclipped herself. Eddy’s body came to rest on the deck and Danner left it there, drooping bonelessly but still attached to the cable and held up at the waist; easier to get him back aboard when the Dogs were done. Danner unclipped themself and levelled their gun at the cab, ready for more resistance to emerge from within, but the hatch at the top remained shut.

  ‘Did we kill the driver?’ Muzz yelled, pointing at where the Dogs’ harpoons had struck. They’d criss-crossed the big rig’s deck and plunged into the cab, neatly bisecting where the driver would be sitting.

  ‘Looks like!’ Danner shouted back. That would explain why the truck was veering off course, anyway. Mungles was already ransacking the corpses of the Steel Crescents around them: an unpleasant job, but potentially fruitful.

  The cargo was secured under a heavy canvas in the middle of the flatbed. It wasn’t huge – probably about three foot on all sides – but that suited Danner just fine; the smaller it was, the easier it’d be to move. They vaulted up onto the cab and tried the hatch, but it was locked fast from within, so they crawled forward and cautiously peered upside down through the dust-smeared viewshield.

  The greying Van Saar behind the controls was not only thoroughly dead, but also impaled upon the harpoon, which had gone right through him and the front wing of the big rig as well. He was pinned in place as securely as a rat on a spit, with his foot on the accelerator; there was no hope of hauling him out and bringing the vehicle to a halt.

  Danner looked up as apprehension squeezed their heart. The landscape dipped ahead, just visible through the grey-tinged air. The ash dunes of Necromunda lay deep, but some ravines were too large to be filled.

  ‘Unload!’ Danner yelled, dropping back down into the flatbed. They drew and activated their power knife, sheared through the heavy canvas with ease and revealed a dark silver chest, somewhat battered, but still in one piece. Danner, Toni, Muzz and Mungles put their shoulders to it and heaved, scraping it over the flatbed until it dropped into the ash. If it had survived a fall from orbit, albeit in whatever protective structure the Steel Crescents had hacked it out of, it could take a drop of six feet onto ash. ‘Bail out!’

  Toni and Muzz jumped. Danner sliced through the cable of their truck’s harpoon with their power knife, freeing Fast Don to veer away, then jumped after them. The ash rose up to meet them, a soft fist that knocked the breath from their lungs as they landed. They sat up, looking around.

  Mungles was hacking at the harpoon line of Ironhead’s truck, but the monomolecular blades of his chainsword were having more trouble with the cable than Danner’s knife had. It gave after a couple more seconds, but those seconds had carried the big rig closer to the ravine. Ironhead must have wrenched the wheel of Muzz’s truck hard, because it veered away from impending disaster, but Mungles was still on board the big rig, and without the weight of the Road Dogs’ trucks holding it back, its pace had picked up again.

  ‘Jump!’ Danner bellowed, getting to their feet and setting off in fruitless pursuit. They saw Mungles grab Sideswipe Eddy’s lifeless corpse and heave it off the back, then bend his legs to jump…

  …and the big rig went over the cliff.

  ‘Scav!’ Danner swore, sprinting as best they could over the treacherous ash. It took twenty frantic seconds of running, sucking air through their respirator, to cover the distance the big rig had travelled in a handful. Danner hurdled Eddy’s body and pulled up at the edge of the cliff, sending a spray of ash over it to join the small flood that had been knocked loose and which was now following the pride and joy of the Steel Crescents down into the ravine.

  ‘Help!’

  Mungles was clinging on.

  There was an outcrop of rock perhaps ten feet below Danner, and the juve was holding grimly onto it as ash poured down over and around him, but his thick gloves were losing purchase. Danner cursed and pulled the rope from their belt. ‘Grab onto this!’

  ‘Can ye hold it?’ Mungles shouted back, eyeing the ledge doubtfully as the line slapped down across his shoulder. Losing his grip or no, he didn’t seem eager to exchange what little safety he had for a rope that might just pull his boss down on top of him.

  Danner took a few steps back from the edge and braced themself as best they could. They couldn’t wait for the rest, judging by the rate Mungles’ fingers were slipping. ‘Ye grab onto that, or I’ll shoot ye meself!’

  The sudden weight on the line suggested that Mungles had grabbed it.

  Danner nearly went headlong over the edge. They dug their boots in, but the ash was loose and fine, and it was impossible to get any purchase. Given solid footing, Danner was sure they could have taken Mungles’ weight, but solid footing in the Ash Wastes was scarcer than honest dice in a Delaque gambling den.

  Danner gritted their teeth and held on as they slid inexorably forwards. Their crew had the cargo. Either Mungles lived to take his share, or Danner went over the edge with him and the rest split the bonus.

  Five feet from death.

  Four…

  Three…

  Two…

  ‘Boss!’

  Two pairs of arms wrapped around Danner’s waist and chest, and thank the Emperor, their slide towards oblivion halted. Muzz and Toni hauled backwards, and between them they managed to get enough traction to drag an ash-covered Mungles back over the precipice.

  ‘Ye took one hell of a risk to get Eddy clear,’ Danner barked, shaking their shoulders out.

  ‘Crew comes first,’ Mungles replied, pushing himself up to his feet. ‘Always.’

  Danner smiled behind their respirator. ‘And that’s why I couldn’t let ye go over the edge, kid. Ye know how we do things.’ The trucks were pulling up now, cautious and slow this close to the edge of the ravine. ‘All right, let’s get the goods and find a buyer.’

  ‘Might be we already know the best place to go, boss,’ Mungles said, and tossed a small, glittering object to Danner. ‘Took that off one of ’em.’

  Danner turned it over between their gloved fingers. It was a sigil token; the same size as a credit piece, but potentially far more valuable, for it identified the bearer as acting on behalf of the individual whose mark they carried. It was also potentially far more dangerous, because the grinning skull resting on piles of coin and topped by crossed axes belonged to Caradog Huws, renegade guilder and founder of the ­infamous Outlaw’s Deep.

  ‘Boss?’ Muzz asked.

  ‘Ye did good, kid,’ Danner said slowly, nodding at Mungles. Huws was a big fish, but he was known to pay well and deal fairly, at least with those that dealt fairly with him. Danner would just have to hope Huws wouldn’t take it too personal if his goods were delivered by someone other than those he’d sent out to get them, but that didn’t seem likely. Caradog Huws might not backstab those as hadn’t crossed him, but the meritocracy of the underhive was near-universal: if you got sumped by someone else, odds were they were more deserving than you of whatever spot you had in someone’s operation.

  ‘Load up,’ Danner said. ‘And keep a weather eye out. We don’t need someone doing to us what we did to the Crescents. We can’t have been the only ones to notice what came down out there.’

  ‘What’s the heading?’ Toni Bones asked.

  Danner grunted, and rolled their shoulders again. ‘Port Mad Dog.’

  Of all the towns that had grown up around the Ash Gates – the only (official) ways through the towering external walls of Necromunda’s Hive Primus – the greatest by far was Port Mad Dog. Large enough to count as a city in its own right on many worlds, it was still nothing more than a boil festering at the foot of the titanic man-made mountain: ugly, hard to remove and filled with foulness.

  The Spider Ways converged as the different routes approached the hive, and the Road Dogs had fallen in amongst the mighty land trains – lumbering and slow, but easily capable of crushing their trucks if they steered wrong. Enough ash was being kicked up that the entire world was nothing more than a grey soup, with chains of running lights the only visible illumination. Danner stood tall on their truck’s flatbed, as a leader should, but they could see little, and hear nothing over the constant roar of the mighty engines that drove the land trains onwards, while the Orlocks’ trucks weaved in and out between them like rodents dodging through the feet of a herd of grox.

  When they reached the Ashheap, the dirty sprawl of miserable shanty dwellings made from ash-brick and sheet metal, the Road Dogs left the convoy. The land trains rumbled on towards the massive ore conveyors that would hoist them up to the Ash Gate, but Danner had a different destination in mind, and Fast Don led their little group down a warren of alleys lit only by the occasional lumen, lonely orange beacons the light of which were almost swallowed by the grey gloom. They finally rolled to a halt outside a single-storey building squatting low and wide on the ash, as though hunkering down to prevent itself from being blown away in a storm; which, to be fair, wasn’t far from the truth. A sign in Low Gothic, ash-blasted and semi-obscured, was still just legible as reading ‘DEENO’S’.

  Toni Bones hopped down from the back of Ironhead’s truck and leant on the buzzer. Danner, shaking the worst of the trail ash out of their ears, just heard the response.

  ‘Who’s there?’

  ‘Ye going to keep us outside all cycle, bro?’ Toni demanded.

  ‘Ye not dead yet?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Best ye come in, then.’ A lock clicked and one of the large doors, welded together from metal scavenged from the Emperor knew where, began to swing open under its own weight. Toni grabbed it and hauled it wide, and the Road Dogs’ trucks rumbled inside.

  Deeno’s was a vehicle medicae bay and graveyard; a symphony in metal, promethium fumes and lubricant to the mysteries of the internal combustion engine. Folk uphive might have a tech-priest or enginseer to take their machines to when they stopped working, or had been blown full of holes, but no such sages graced the Ashheap. Here there were only folk like Deeno Bones, who applied to the problems of others whatever tools he’d stolen or bodged, knowledge gained through trial and error, and a good deal of swearing.

  ‘Good to see ye, bro,’ Deeno said, hauling himself up from where he’d been prostrate under something missing a couple of wheels, and engulfing his brother in an oily hug. Once he’d disengaged, he nodded respectfully at Danner. ‘Boss. All well with ye?’

  Danner sighed. ‘We lost Eddy this run.’

  Deeno grimaced, and pulled his bandana off his head. ‘Ah, rust and rivets, boss, I’m sorry.’

  ‘He knew the risks,’ Danner said heavily. ‘And we got what we went for. Now we need to get it inside.’

  ‘Not one for the conveyors, then?’ Deeno asked, settling his bandana back into place. Danner shook their head.

  ‘We hit the Steel Crescents to take it, and one of ’em was carrying Caradog Huws’ token. Gotta be contraband. Doubt Cripplefingers’ boys would take a close look, but just in case…’ They spread their hands. ‘Better safe than sorry, eh?’

  ‘Eh,’ Deeno nodded in agreement, then jerked a thumb towards the back of his workshop. ‘Well, ye know the way. I take it I ain’t seen ye, if anyone comes asking?’

  ‘That’s the one, lad,’ Danner replied, clapping him on the shoulder. ‘Right, crew, let’s get this done, then we can come back and give Eddy a proper send-off. Ye all right to look after him ’til then?’ they added to Deeno.

  ‘Aye, boss,’ Deeno said soberly. ‘He’ll be safe with me.’

  The Road Dogs left their old colleague leaning on the side of Ironhead’s truck and looking down at Sideswipe Eddy’s corpse, one hand still holding a wrench and the other resting absent-mindedly on the heavy brace that supported what remained of his right leg.

  The tunnels that ran under Deeno’s chop shop were neither spacious, well lit, nor particularly fragrant, but they passed clean through the exterior of Hive Primus out of sight and knowledge of those in authority, and that made the unpleasantness more than worthwhile. Deeno could have made a lot more money had he sold the use of them more widely, but that could have compromised the Road Dogs. Crew came first, always, and it didn’t matter that Deeno’s leg meant he couldn’t run and fight with them any longer. A Van Saar gang might have come up with some fancy prosthetic with flashing lights and whirring bits, and Danner had no doubt that the uphive nobs would barely be inconvenienced by such a thing, but the Road Dogs didn’t have access to such toys. It didn’t matter: like the gang itself, Deeno’s worth was more than just the sum of his parts. He stuck by them, and they’d stick by him.

  The Road Dogs traipsed along through the sludge, the case they’d salvaged resting in a simple covered trolley that occasionally had to be lifted over obstacles. Danner was on point, their combat shotgun ready, for it was doubtful the gang were the only ones to know of these tunnels, no matter how closely they’d guarded the secret. They crept deeper and deeper into the hive, past smells of cooking and sounds of fighting, freezing as a ventilation grate above rang to the heavy tread of footsteps moving in unison, and pressing on hurriedly when distant echoes behind them suggested the presence in the tunnels with them of a large, possibly inhuman body.

  They came out in Dust Falls, blinking in the comparatively bright light like Delaques hauled out of a hidey-hole. Danner always kept tabs on where the movers and shakers in the underhive were rumoured to be, and Caradog Huws’ name had been mentioned in conjunction with Dust Falls more than once, of late. It was risky ground for him: quite apart from the Palanite enforcers who’d love to get their hands on him, and not to mention his former colleagues in the Merchant Guild, word was that Huws was in the Narco Lord Balthazar Van Zep’s bad dataslates too – and that meant it was risky ground for the Road Dogs, but meek hearts made small profits, as the saying went.

  Ironhead and Muzz stayed with the cargo, lurking as unobtrusively as possible down an alley, while the rest of them split up to take the lie of the land. Danner didn’t know too many folk in these parts, but Dust Falls was where Hive City and the underhive met and merged: it wasn’t like the distrustful townships downhive, where outsiders were regarded with suspicion at best, and as an emergency food source at worst. Gossip and goods flowed freely here, at least so long as cash flowed freely in the other direction. Nonetheless, after half an hour Danner had still yet to find anyone who’d heard a whisper of Caradog Huws’ whereabouts; at least, not a whisper anyone wanted to part with in the direction of a hard-faced Orlock leader who might come back and take issue with them if it turned out to be untrue. Danner was just starting to get properly frustrated and angsty about the possibility of having their cargo jacked in turn, when Mungles found them.