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Dead Drop – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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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. Approach them head-on, and they could go anywhere. Hit full throttle and converge on them as they came around a large obstacle, though…

One, two of the Crescents’ trucks flashed into sight round the freighter’s shattered prow, Necromunda’s weak sun spattering off their ramshackle angles, and then the big rig appeared: larger than anything the Road Dogs had, six monstrous wheels churning up the ash as it ploughed along. Big and strong it certainly was, but not the quickest.

Danner had timed it perfectly. Their truck slammed into one of the Crescents’ trailing escorts, but Danner, Sideswipe Eddy and Mungles the juve had taken hold of the restraint webbing, and none of them were thrown over. The smaller vehicle was smashed aside, engine block exposed and gushing promethium. It slewed drunkenly, and quickly fell behind.

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 themselves 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 themselves 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 sat.

‘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!’

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