Klaus Van Saar fired a burst in
the dark tunnel ahead, his sister Elizabeta threw a grenade. A
deadly-wounded Ratskin crawled out in a rattle, he smashed his skull
with the stock of his gun.
«We are rich, eventually.»
He pointed his torch to the brown
glyphs marked on a clay and rust architrave, the huge access to the
dark soiled with scattered wastes. Of lifeless bodies of their men
and most importantly those villain Rats.
«It seemed all too easy...»
Elizabeta replied.
He angrily nodded her towards
Tulp and Jacopa’s bodies on the ground, Hans slain, Jona and Werder
riddled with bullets. Amongst dozens of enemies burnt from plasma and
meltaguns, those sewer savages with machetes and autoguns.
«We are the only ones left. By
the skin of our teeth.»
«I don’t think the treasure is
hidden in this dump.»
«This pit is the deepest in this
section of the Underhive.»
«Those drawings, what do they
say?»
«Gods, marvels»
«And they use crap to paint
them?»
«You know: Ratskin..»
They put their masks on, injected
a dose. The poisonous sewage and acid juices in the dark tunnel, the
entrails, the wastes did not damage the black fibres of the Van
Saar’s suits. The grim bellow of a fan or a pump stunned them.
Elizabeta observed the walls increasingly thick with signs and
letters, bracing her combi-bolter while getting tenser and warier:
«What do you think we will
find?»
«Rumour has it that the Rats hit
a big score, the whole of Necromunda knows it: a robbery at the
Apotecarion. One may expect some containers of supplies by the
Militarum.»
«Never seen them pushing drugs.
Weird, primitive.»
«The Ratskin care for dosh like
everybody else. There we are.»
Klaus saw two red lights
glimmering in the dark: like the lights of a warehouse or a safe
door. His torch did not manage to light the tunnel up to that point.
He thought hearing a noise
under the bellowing of the fan and, the further he went, the more it
sounded like a breath or a hiss. A persisting metallic clinking, a
beat, a scrape. He raised his rifle, moved firmly forward, nodded at
his sister.
Elizabeta was disgusted by a
mauled corpse that the sewage reversed on the sewer side: it appeared
to her the body of an elderly man in sacerdotal vestments.
A huge and monstruous rat,
plagued and swollen with mutations, emerged from the dark and limped
on towards them, with vials of chemical serum piercing his bowels and
his spine. His pupils were burning of a mad red hunger, his
meter-long sharp teeth dripping venom.
Klaus crazily fired his boltgun
on that thing,
Elizabeta hit it with a grenade: but bullets and splinters died on
his skin, his sick and flaccid rose flesh instantly scarring over.
Another furious stupid
burst broke the rings of the chain holding that abomination.
They seemed hearing a drunk chant
of the Ratskin, praising to a prodigy and treasure
of the abyss.
(traduzione dall'italiano all'inglese: Matteo Scrima)
