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And then he was gone.
They were called the Glacier Rats.
And yes, Pahvulti's answers had arrived where he had promised, lowered from some unknown tier down a disused elevator shaft, and Sahaal's cursory attempt to distinguish its source had failed. The information broker was far too sly to be so easily undone: wherever he had his base, he was free — for now — of retaliation.
And yes, Sahaal had roared with hunger as he learned his enemy's name, flexed his claws, chanted their name again and again, but even so... even so...
He was not accustomed to being indebted.
The Glacier Rats. The thieves were named the Glacier Rats.
They were a raider band, the document said. A clan of pirates unconcerned with the territorial squabbles of hivegangs, collecting then pawning such valuables as they purloined. Their founder had been a native of the ice-world Valhalla, joining then promptly deserting the Imperial Guard on his first tour of duty, sensing far greater opportunity for wealth in the Equixus hive. His name was Tuahli Teqo, and Sahaal's lips curled in a mirthless smile as he recalled the ugly legend sprawled on the side of the thieves' transport: a tag to honour his memory.
Their current leader, in as much as Pahvulti's spies could keep up with the endlessly changing hierarchies of such clans, was named Nikhae, and was recognisable by the luminous spiral electoo on his forehead.
'Nikhae.'
Sahaal said it out loud, as if to ensure its reality, and waved a single claw through the air, dissecting the very sound of the thief s name.
'Nikhae... Nikhae...'
Yes. Yes, it was him. The false hunchback. The thief. The scum. The worm.
He had taken it.
At the rear of the sheaf of pages Pahvulti included a map. Marked in blotched ink, scrawled thick by Pahvulti's own hand, the centre of the page sported a bold, dark X.
Sahaal checked the straps on the blocky package attached to his waist, its faint green glow shimmering across the blades at his fingertips.
The Glacier Rats. They were called the Glacier Rats.
Every last one of them would die.
Herniatown had fallen from grace.
At its edges the weight of the city had broken its own base and collapsed downwards, whole streets sagging into the abyss. Underhivers kept their distance from Herniatown's bowed arcades, naming it well: its wilted streets were a raw bulge of viscera that had squeezed through the muscle wall above, dipping into inky darkness. Once it had been a part of Cuspseal, but no longer. Nestled at the underhive's anarchic heart, it seemed an invasive probe of order, albeit warped incontrovertibly by its descent.
Herniatown was where the Glacier Rats had made their home.
Sahaal reco
The time would come, he told himself.
They wore long coats of grey and white, a stylised snowflake — dagger tipped and skull-centred — patterning each lapel. They carried lasguns with the exaggerated care of those who'd purchased their own weaponry, and Sahaal bridled to see such fireworks treated with such reverence. Stalking the shadows of their boundaries, he registered not a single, threat, and formulated their demise with predatory ease.
Their band was well named, he decided. They were scum, untutored and untrained, as meaningless as their namesakes. Rats, yes. And he was the owl.
He laid his plans with care, awaited his opportunity from the shadows, and then struck.
A sentry — young eyes flitting across all the wrong shadows — was the first to die.
Pacing at the town's northern entrance, the youth had never considered turning an eye upon the ventilation stacks halfway along the tu
The sentry's throat was cut before he registered another's presence, and in his brief instant of surprise — if indeed he felt anything at all — it must have seemed like the walls themselves had exuded claws. The body slumped, its knees folded, and Sahaal passed into the shadows long before its head struck the uneven floor with a wet slap.
Herniatown opened around him like a sacrifice bearing its heart, inviting a blade between its ribs, and he obliged it with savage pleasure. He killed another three sentries in parallel streets, impatient for violence, dispatching each with the speed and silence of a wraith. He displayed their bodies artfully, faint lights catching at every wet cut, glistening in unbroken sluices of crimson, and paused in each case only to curse the soul of his victims as if keeping a tally of his revenge.
'Warp take you...' he hissed, helm absorbing every sound. 'Warp eat you whole.'
When finally the noises he had waited so long to hear arose he was poised within the inverted dome of what had once been a chapel. He clung to the ceiling with the damp-claws of his feet, dangling like a bat, and relished every echoing nuance of the Glacier Rats' alarm.
It began with a single cry, flitting across the town like a dream, and then multiplied: first a handful of voices, then a score, each crying out in outrage and anger, demanding reinforcement.
The first body had been found.
Sahaal dropped onto and through the chapel's mosaic floor, gliding along the cracked seams of rock at its base, and hastened to Herniatown's opposite fringe. He used the crawlducts to travel in secret: swatting aside giant roaches and rats as he went, jump pack driving him along like a bullet down a barrel. At the town's southern entrance he hopped from a service hatch and quickly snickered thrumming claws through the meaty joints of the gatekeeper's legs. Scraps of the man's coat twisted aside, blossoming with redness, and his strangled grunt of astonishment warmed Sahaal to his core. The man toppled like a felled tree — more surprised than pained — and thrashed in a deluge of his own blood.
This time Sahaal allowed his victim the privilege of screaming.
Before he left the wailing cripple, arteries belching their vibrant load across tu
'Don't let go,' he said, tonguing the external address stud of his vox-caster.
Then he was gone.
The man's screams echoed like the howl of a gale, and already the cries of alarm from the north were becoming those of query, groups meeting at intersections, trading orders, pointing fingers, heading south to investigate this new tumult. Sahaal watched them rush about like insects from above, safe within a collapsed attic, and relished their panic. To them it must seem as though their territory were surrounded: imperilled from opposite directions, menaced by unseen attackers.
'Fear and panic,' his master had once said, 'are but two sides of the same die!'
The sentry's screams weakened and died shortly before the bobbing torches reached the south gate. Sahaal imagined him alone in the dark, clutching with increasingly feeble fingers at the grenade in his hand. Sooner or later his grip would falter and the bomb's priming trigger would release.
The foremost group of guards entered the tu
To Sahaal, perched like a gargoyle on high, gazing across the levelled towers of Herniatown, the explosion rose like a luminous bubble from the south, its flickering radiance rising across the entire realm. Shadows and highlights were scrawled across every surface, and when the brightness diminished a gout of oil-black smoke twisted, snake-like, above the southern gatehouse.