The Cache, James Brogden [ebook e reader TXT] 📗

and other meagre belongings, a deep metal wash sink in the other. A rough mattress served as her bed. Scowling at the fever sweat dampening her thin sheets and blankets, and shivering at the chill prickling her flesh like a haunting spirit, Morgravia hauled her weary body into a sitting position. Pain struck her with a legion of daggers. It was all she could do to stop herself from crying out.

A single hexagonal skylight let in the flame-lit predawn of the low-hive. She stepped through its grainy shaft and over to the chair, where she rummaged around in her longcoat. Finding a handful of stimms, she bit down, wincing at the chalky non-taste, and went to stand before the room’s full-length mirror. She looked upon her naked form, enacting a daily ritual.

She was lean-limbed, muscled but not grotesquely so. Pale, milky skin reflected the light. She was tall, around six foot. One ice-blue eye looked back at her, alive with more vitality than she felt; the other one, yellowed and bloodshot, was a truer reflection of her physical and mental state. Silver-grey hair, shaved at the temples, a short mohawk forming a raised channel running between them, framed a stern but not unkind face. Yet it was strange to her, a rogue identity staring back from the dirty glass. Only the scars made sense, and these she found mostly unchanged. They threaded her body like zippers, a cross-hatching of permanently discoloured flesh that forced a mildly disgusted frown onto her face. One pull and she would unravel. All the warm wet red inside would come tumbling out, her flesh left a flaccid and empty vessel in its wake.

Undone, she thought, tracing the frenzied lines of scarification with her fingers.

It had been thirty-one days since the tunnel.

‘Emperor’s mercy…’ she whispered, and looked away, reaching for her tunic.

Morgravia froze, her hand poised in midair, her body half-turned.

A sinister figure stood before her, limned by the skylight, and for a moment she wondered if it were an actual spectre and not just the fever sweat washing her skin that had caused the chill in her bones. It smelled of blood and oil, and detached itself from the shadows with silky, yet syncopated movements. A blade flashed, its edge silvering in the light. A face with a rictus grin, two hollow sockets gaping around faintly glowing red eyes, regarded her.

Morgravia set down the pistol she had snatched from her gun belt, letting out a shuddering breath.

The rictus face crumpled into a frown.

‘You should put on some clothes, Mother. You will catch your death.’

Morgravia scowled and grabbed her tunic. ‘What do you want, Hel?’

Cristo had worked in the labour-pits of Meagre all his life. He was a bullet-maCristo had worked in the labour-pits of Meagre all his life. He was a bullet-maker, and a good one. His shells and munitions had a ninety-three per cent approval rate. Not many factorum labourers hit ninety-three per cent. He took pride in his work, though it was back-breaking and largely thankless. His proficiency at his job did yield some benefits. Slightly better food, his pick of the munition lines. Not much, but it left his belly fuller and his skin cooler, positioned as he was as far away as possible from the smelting furnaces under the labour floor.

It also attracted jealousy from some of his fellow workers. Toil in the pits was hard, relentless; it bred strong bodies but resentful minds. That resentment was usually reserved for the overseers, who tempered the slightest suggestion of unrest with the lash or the pain-maul, all the while sermonising on the purity of hard labour, the cleansing baptism of honest sweat given in the Emperor’s name. When offered the opportunity to direct his impotent fury somewhere other than the untouchable enforcers of the Emperor’s will and war machine, a man would take it. He would exercise that crushing sense of futility where it could be vented, where his suffering could be displaced onto another.

Cristo had heard the muttered threats, and caught the bitter glances directed his way; he had never believed they would be acted upon. Not at first. The labour-pit was a congested battery farm of human bodies, lurching in metronomic tandem. So numerous were the workers that maintaining vigilance over the entire labour cadre at all times was impossible, and yet no one man would raise hands against another for fear of reprisal. Not in the labour-pits, at least.

There were antechambers that bled off from the main pit, however, and these were less frequented. Several refectoria allowed for the taking of meals and an ablutions block served doubly as a decontamination chamber.

They had come for him here, jagged metal shivs glinting in the grimy washroom light. Three men, none of whom Cristo knew by name, though he recognised their faces well enough. The encounter had been short, brutal. He had killed them all, naked and caked in the rough, powdery scrub that served as a cleansing agent. Cristo was not a small man. He had bulk and muscle that his attackers’ strength in numbers failed to balance. It had happened quickly and almost silently. Cristo had been left with half a dozen lacerations, bleeding red into the grainy grey run-off gurgling down the drainage vent. Of his three attackers, one suffered a broken neck, another took a shiv through his jaw and up into his skull, and the third had his eyes gouged out so deeply it was possible to glimpse the inside of the back of his head through the grossly distended sockets.

Cristo had dressed quickly, sluiced the ablution cubicle down and dragged the dead men one by one to the furnace. Dull-eyed and indifferent servitors were the only witnesses to the deed.

He had never spoken of what had happened, for to do so would invite the strictest censure. The men would not be missed. Their loss, if it was noticed at all, attributed to the high attrition rate within the labour-pit. Punishment for murder would result in