As he listened for the patter of following footfalls behind him, Grendl picked his way forward, finally finding Nikki’s tracks, which led him into a section of tunnels they had bypassed earlier. The walls here were even shabbier than the rest of this dingy rathole.

  He turned a corner and saw Nikki on the ground ahead of him amidst a dusty collection of plaster, metal and rock. The Orlock woman’s recent passage through the corridor must have disturbed years of dust because a haze hung in the air all around her. She knelt next to her satchel, frantically reaching for items that looked to have fallen out as she ran.

  Grendl could only guess at what those items were as the dirty haze made it almost impossible to see; one of them looked vaguely like a pistol, but not the one she had taken from the assassins. In fact, it looked unlike any handheld weapon Grendl had ever seen. The short barrel flared wider than a blunderbuss.

  ‘You okay, Miss Lyon?’ called Grendl. He must have startled the woman because Nikki immediately raised the laspistol she’d taken from the assassin – its shape unmistakable even through the haze – and aimed it unwaveringly at Grendl.

  Grendl was about to call out that it was him and not the assassins – whom he could hear approaching – but he was cut off by a low rumbling sound that echoed all around him. The hallway jumped, as if every item in the hallway, including Grendl and Nikki, was simultaneously three feet in the air.

  Grendl landed and fell to his knees as the world shuddered and shook around him. A moment later, he was falling. And then darkness took him.

  A rumble of thunder woke Grendl Grendlsen from a light slumber. No. Not thunder. There was no thunder in Hive Primus. It had a controlled climate, which the Vega Rams’ banner-jarl had read about in the mission briefing before his master, the rogue trader Constant Gerrit, had come to this accursed place to meet with Lord Helmawr.

  If not thunder, then what? thought Grendl.

  A second rumble, louder and longer than the first, shook the barracks violently. Grendl tumbled from his bunk and fell, flailing, onto the hard floor. All around him, dozens of other sleeping mercs awoke with muffled grunts as they hit the floor of the dark room too.

  ‘Lights,’ called Grendl, but the barracks remained dark. ‘Blast. That ain’t good,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Gear up, boys!’ he yelled into the darkness. ‘Assume the worst. Prepare to be the best!’

  ‘Vega Rams!’ called out the merc company in rote response.

  With the floor still vibrating from whatever had shaken the Stranger’s Tower, Grendl fumbled open his footlocker and donned his armour in the dark. As he clasped weapons in place, the front wall of the barracks detonated. Metal plates bent inwards and fragmented explosively, spraying the room with deadly metal shards that cut several of the Vega Rams to ribbons.

  ‘Defensive formation!’ yelled Grendl without hesitation. ‘Flares on. Pull the wounded to safety.’

  Half a dozen flares ignited around the barracks, providing dim light. A gaping, smoke-filled hole was all that remained of the front wall. Small fires licked at the shattered legs of bunks near the door.

  As the Rams pulled fallen comrades from beneath the debris, lasgun shots rang out from the smoky room beyond the door. Several Rams tending the wounded fell in the opening salvo.

  ‘Return fire!’ Grendl yelled, pulling his bolter from his back as he crouched by his bunk. ‘Flares into the hall!’

  Six more flares arced through the air into the smoke, illuminating the room beyond in an eerie glow as sharp reports from boltguns and autopistols thundered all around. Grendl could see a dozen dark figures silhouetted in the hazy glow. Several of those were cut down by the Rams’ first volley. Muzzle flashes flared from the closest silhouettes and more lasgun fire streaked through the barracks.

  The Rams were fish in a barrel. It was only a matter of time before the attackers switched to grenades. ‘Rotating suppressing fire!’ called Grendl. ‘Time to breach!’

  With a precision honed by constant drilling, the Vega Rams alternated their shots to produce a constant rain of fire into the smoke as they moved forward through the breached wall.

  ‘Fan and fire,’ called Grendl. The Rams sidled down the walls into a line and filled every inch of the room with live ammo. After a minute, the battle was over. Every attacker lay on the floor and only six of Grendl’s thirty-warrior platoon had been lost from the initial breach to victory.

  ‘Loot and move,’ commanded Grendl. The sound of battles raging in other Vega Rams quarters nearby added a sense of urgency to his command. ‘We’re not out of this yet.’

  ‘What the hell is going on, banner-jarl?’ asked a recent Rams recruit as he scavenged weapons and ammo from a downed enemy.

  ‘No telling,’ replied Grendl. ‘Nothing good. Assume we are on our own and prepare to make our enemies pay!’

  ‘Vega Rams!’

  Grendl fell. The flickering lights from above did little more than give form to the darkness. Unseen obstacles slapped at his legs, arms and face as the bounty hunter grasped frantically at every shadow, trying to slow his descent. In desperation, Grendl swung his power hammer in a mighty, overhead arc. The head drove into a rockcrete beam, bringing the hunter’s descent to a grinding halt amid a shower of stone shards.

  As the dust settled, Grendl tried to get his bearings. Dim light from above and below limned the scene in angry shadows, allowing Grendl to see a bit. The hunter was – as had become obvious to him – in a chasm opened, apparently, by a hive quake.

  Around Grendl, the remnants of ancient construction had been laid bare. The jagged ends of iron and rockcrete beams, bundled cables, and thick, plastek pipes jutted out from the chasm wall on all sides, along with enough animal remains and detritus to make even the stout and hearty hunter quail.

  Grendl slid three feet down the chasm as the rockcrete around his hammer cracked under the strain. Luckily, the head caught again on an iron beam, but Grendl disliked trusting his life to luck, so he scanned the chasm for purchase.

  A bundle of cables hung from the wall, so the hunter swung over and grabbed at it with one hand while maintaining his grip on the hammer with the other. He tested the bundle and then unhooked his hammer and used the cables to swing to the chasm wall. From there, he could climb up or down.

  Climbing up could lead to some valuable bounties off those assassins, not to mention what he could get for their high-tech gear. Grendl could probably even recoup his losses, but that would mean abandoning Nikki and his lucrative, if troublesome, Orlock contract. Not only was that bad business, it betrayed Grendl’s core beliefs, which put duty and honour above profit.

  ‘Duty calls,’ muttered the bounty hunter as he started climbing down. His calf ached where the lasgun shot had found flesh, but the pain was manageable, and the bleeding had stopped.

  Several long, stressful minutes later, Grendl found himself hanging above a long-abandoned dome. From what he could see, the structures nearby had not been inhabited in decades. The crumbling walls of what might once have been a tenement building below him were covered in a thick layer of dust.

  Oddly, much of the dome seemed to have some power. Dim lights dotted the remains of the city and Grendl could feel and smell stale but breathable air moving as he hung above it all.

  Taking advantage of his high vantage point, Grendl searched for signs of his charge. As he did, several creatures howled in the distance. The unnatural nature of the wailing caught the hunter’s attention, so he set his sensor backpack to scan for its source. The echoes in the vast, dead dome made the howls nearly impossible to pinpoint, but he could review the vid images later if needed.

  While his shoulder-mounted sensors created a topographical record of the ruins, Grendl continued looking for Miss Lyon. Eventually, he found a dark, unmoving form lying in some rubble off to the side of the tenement building below him. A glint of golden hair confirmed it was Nikki. As Grendl looked for a safe way down to the ground, he saw several other dark forms moving towards his charge.

  ‘No time for safety,’ Grendl muttered. He swung his legs back and forth and released his grip, aiming for a section of roof that hadn’t collapsed.

  Grendl’s aim was true and he landed with bent knees on the roof, pain shooting through his calf. Before he could get his bearings, though, the rockcrete crumbled beneath him, sending the hunter tumbling through three more floors. His armour took the brunt of multiple impacts on the way down, but every thud drove the breath from his lungs. By the time Grendl hit the ground floor, he felt like the building had fallen on him. He lay there, gasping for breath, as the echo of his fall reverberated around the dome.

  The hunter took stock of his bones and gear: nothing broken, but fresh blood seeped through his boot. No time for that now, thought Grendl as he clambered over rubble to the street and ran around the side of the building. He arrived at Nikki’s side as three cyber-mastiffs rounded the other corner. Their red eyes glowed almost angrily in the semi-darkness as they stalked closer, growling.

  Grendl unslung his boltgun and fired at the lead mastiff. The shot detonated on the metal hound’s jaw, leaving it hanging by a single hinge. With most mastiffs, that shot would have been enough to dissuade it from attacking. They were generally programmed not to engage well-armed foes without a significant numerical advantage. Whoever ordered these cyber hounds to protect this city was long gone, however, and the mastiffs had apparently shaken loose some of their original programming. It was as if they’d gone feral. The pack growled and charged.

  Grendl searched for options. A hole in the wall two storeys above him provided a possible escape route. He grabbed the slight form of his charge, slung her over his back and began climbing as if their lives depended on it, because they did.

  With the cyber-mastiffs jumping and snapping at his feet and legs, Grendl scrambled up the wall, leaving a thin trail of blood behind. He drove his gauntleted fingers into loose mortar and hauled with his arms more than his legs. At one point, an entire block fell out, nearly crushing his fingers and barely missing Nikki.

  After a minute of desperate climbing, Grendl crawled through the hole in the wall to find a fairly undamaged room. Even the door was intact – and closed. He lay Nikki down in the corner and returned to the hole. The mastiffs growled and prowled below.

  Grendl grabbed a frag grenade off his belt, pulled the pin and dropped it on the mastiffs. The explosion rocked the side of the building, dislodging several more chunks of rockcrete around the hole, including a small section of the floor Grendl was standing on.

  Gotta be smarter, he thought as he took a step back. That could have brought the building down on us. After the dust cleared, though, the shredded remains of the mastiffs were strewn across the rubble. In the distance, Grendl heard the howling of more hounds.

  ‘What the hell have you got me into, Miss Lyon?’ Grendl asked as he turned back to his charge.

  Nikki lay unconscious in the corner of the room where Grendl had left her, the strap of her large satchel draped over one shoulder and under her other arm. Other than a walnut-sized bump on her temple and a few scrapes on her forearms, she seemed in decent shape. The same could not be said for her fine uphiver’s clothes, though. The filigree on her jacket had been torn in several places and the white fabric was now a dusty grey.

  Grendl weighed proper bodyguard protocol against the nagging doubts that had plagued him from the beginning of this mission. The timing of that hive quake had been suspicious, and the trembling beforehand had reminded the old Vega Ram of the explosion that had killed his lord all those years ago.

  ‘Time to see what you’re hiding in that bag,’ Grendl muttered as he limped across the room. He knelt next to his unconscious charge and opened the loose flap on her soft-leather satchel. In the dim light, the interior looked nearly empty, but earlier Grendl had seen it bounce as if weighted down with gear.

  Perhaps it all fell out during the quake, Grendl thought. He reached inside to see if anything remained and found just a handful of flares and a bundle of detonator caps. The flares were standard issue, but the caps had some sort of emblem stamped on them that Grendl couldn’t make out in the dark room.

  ‘Huh,’ he muttered as he stared at the bundle. ‘What the hell is she doing with these?’

  Grendl was about to take the bundle to the hole in the wall to get a better look at the emblem, but before he could move, Nikki moaned and stretched. He dropped the detonators back in the satchel and crab-crawled away into a dark corner.

  Nikki’s eyes fluttered open and then immediately narrowed as she scanned the room. At the same time, she snaked her hand into a side pocket of her satchel that was camouflaged so well by the stitching that Grendl hadn’t even noticed the opening. Before she could draw out whatever lay inside the secret pocket, though, Nikki locked eyes with the hunter in the corner. She slipped her hand out quickly and beamed a friendly smile at Grendl.

  ‘What happened?’ she asked. ‘Where are we?’

  ‘Hive quake,’ replied Grendl. ‘We fell into an abandoned dome.’ The hunter removed his boot and began cleaning the wound on his calf. The shot had gone clean through, but his earlier fall hadn’t done him any favours. His foot had swollen and a massive blue-black bruise encircled the hunter’s ankle.

  ‘Are you hurt?’ asked Nikki. Her face contorted into a look of sympathy as she got to her feet. ‘Here, let me help.’

  ‘No need,’ said Grendl, waving her back. ‘I got it.’ He pulled a thick bandage from his pack and began dressing the wound.

  ‘Did that happen when those gangers attacked?’ asked Nikki, a grimace forming on her lips. ‘I am so sorry.’

  ‘Stow it, Miss Lyon – or whoever you are,’ snapped Grendl. ‘You know those weren’t gangers. And I know you’re no simple House operative.’

  Nikki looked shocked. For a moment Grendl thought she might try to continue to feign innocence with her ‘sweeter than candy’ act, but then her face hardened, and her stance changed. Nikki Lyon stood before Grendl, hands on hips, and shoulders back.

  ‘You’re absolutely correct, Mister Grendlsen,’ she said. ‘I am not a simple House operative. I am a top demolitions expert for House Orlock.’

  The lilt in her voice was still discernible, but now was layered with a stern undertone that likely commanded respect from underlings. A tone that Grendl had to admit had more effect on him due to his years of military service than her beauty and charm ever did. This more commanding personality did not, however, calm his suspicions.

  ‘And the assassins?’ asked Grendl.

  ‘Rival House, I would guess,’ Nikki said. ‘We took pre­cautions to keep my mission a secret, but I guess someone found out and wanted to stop me.’

  Her story seemed plausible, but something still wasn’t quite right about any of this. ‘But the assassins hardly touched you,’ he said, ‘And they had chances – plenty of ’em. How do you explain that?’

  Nikki considered the bounty hunter’s question for a few seconds. Finally, she shrugged and said, ‘I don’t know. Perhaps they planned to kill you and force me to reveal what we learned from the report.’

  ‘What report?’

  ‘Orlock historians came across an old report that suggested the existence of this dome,’ said Nikki, sweeping her arms around to indicate where they had landed. ‘We commissioned extensive seismic testing to determine its location, but only I knew how to gain access.’

  ‘Hmph,’ said Grendl. ‘Makes sense, I guess.’ There was more to Nikki’s story, that was certain. The truth – the full truth – did not take time to compose. A well-crafted lie filled with some truth, on the other hand, sure did.

  Best to leave it for now, Grendl thought. Let her think she convinced me.

  A chorus of howling off in the distance – but closer than earlier – interrupted the discussion and brought Grendl back to the most pressing concern.

  ‘We’re not safe in this dome,’ he said. ‘Those are cyber-mastiffs, and they seem to be off their programming, practically feral. I fought a few. I wouldn’t want to face an entire pack. You know how to get out of here?’

  Nikki nodded but furrowed her brow. ‘We’ll need explosives,’ she said. Grendl noticed her briefly glance at her satchel. ‘I… I was supposed to… pick them up at the meeting,’ she added.

  ‘Explosives?’ asked Grendl.

  Nikki nodded. ‘Not the sort of thing I could risk carrying through the hive. What if they took a round in a firefight?’ She dropped to the floor, a dejected look on her face. ‘Without explosives we can’t leave. There’s only one way out and it’s blocked by hundreds of tons of rubble.’

  ‘Grenade!’ yelled Grendl, as a grey metal cylinder bounced towards the Vega Rams. Without a moment’s hesitation, Balthor, Grendl’s huskarl, his second-in-command, ran forward and swung his chainsword in a low arc. The huskarl whacked the frag grenade with the flat of his blade and sent it flying back down the corridor, where it exploded in a blinding flash.

  Screams of pain from beyond the explosion were followed by the staccato beats of retreating footsteps and weapons fire. Grendl motioned the Rams forward. The walls had been shredded by shrapnel and the light fixtures shattered. Two assassins lay bleeding on the floor at an intersection. In the distance, several others continued firing to harry the Rams as they retreated to a safe distance. Balthor and a few other mercs returned fire to drive the assassins back, but Grendl could hear the sounds of fighting coming from all around them as other pursuers hunted down the escaping Rams.

  ‘Who sent you?’ demanded Grendl of one of the assassins injured in the explosion. He needed answers fast before more assassins closed in on their location. He pressed the barrel of his bolter to the man’s forehead. ‘What are your orders?’