All things die, and planets are no exception.
It wasn't war or disease that killed Gavyan Secundus; it was economics. The outer edge of the segmentum had expanded and shifts in the warp meant ships no longer needed to pass through her system to reach the border areas; bringing food and supplies. Most of the inhabitants had been spirited away to a series of newly founded Agri-Worlds. Many more had been drafted into the Gavyanian I, II and III regiments of the Guard.
Secundus had, in its heyday, been home to almost forty-five billion people. By most standards, its life had been pretty good; it was the second planet from its parent star, and the climate was rather balmy in most latitudes practically all year round. Nowadays, no one remembers when humans first set foot on its surface, or what it had even looked like. Perhaps, in that Dark Age of the tech-heathens it had oceans and mountains, or maybe it was a lifeless rock to be terraformed and tailored to human habitation.
In any case, recorded history showed that at least since 917.M.30, When the Great Crusade arrived on its doorstep, Gavyan Secundus was a entirely covered by city. A hive.
Now, the spent carcass of the city was being slowly dismantled. Every part would be appropriated to another part of the Imperial food chain. Fusion reactors, water recycling plants, even whole shrines and various hard-to-produce items were being transported wholesale to other worlds. Metals from decking and piping were slated for the forge-world of Graia to become weaponry for His Ever-Victorious armies. When they eventually got down to it, even the sludge that had settled over millennia on the bottom levels would be distilled for useful chemicals.
This recycling of the city would have struck Hastus Arc as a fitting parallel to the biological decomposition process if he weren't sick of it all.
Arc. The only thing he was thankful for about his surname was that it actually sounded pretty distinguished. Hastus Arc sounded like the kind of rakish, yet impeccably mannered, scion of a noble family who left swooning ladies in his wake.
As it happened, the surname was only about five generations old and owed it self to the fact that his great- great-grandfather had been a dab hand with an arc welder.
That said, the great- great-grandfather in question was the last one in the line to have actually wielded an arc welder. The Arcs, through a lot of good timing, a lot of threats and a not insignificant amount of bribery, now partially owned the reclamation rights to the northern hemisphere of Gavyan, along with a consortium of other minor trading houses.
This was a problem for Hastus because, while he was admittedly not up to his waist in toxic ooze and dodging falling masonry like his forebears, he was on the bottom rung in the world of nobility. He was seventeen; the youngest of three sons, and it would be a substantial high-risk, low-reward gamble for another house to marry a daughter to him, even if he were the heir to the reclamation rights, which he was not.
He pondered this situation and gazed out over the wasted city before him. Since his family had risen to their tiny bit of power after any orbital platforms had been dismantled or towed away, they instead inhabited the principia Spire, the second highest on the planet. These were better living quarters than most space stations, but still came with the perceived shame of living on the same 'ground' as the work crews who were currently tackling the more valuable parts of the hive around the central spire.
A light slap on his back jerked him out of his contemplation of a particularly ugly piece of the skyline.
"Why the long face?" queried Ednar, slapping away a half-hearted flick to his head from Hastus.
"Contemplating the strands of fate…" Hastus threw his head back and put a hand to his heart, then stuck out his tongue and blew a raspberry. "Nah, but seriously, this place looks depressing."
"Uh huh, whatever" Ednar agreed, before pulling his friend away from the window and glancing up and down the corridor of the Schola. "Check it ouuuut." He whispered in a low voice as he opened one side of his long coat.
Hastus regarded the pistol hanging from a loop on Ednar's belt with a cynical expression. "Big whoop, you have a new gun."
"Not just any gun you fethwit, it's a Helpistol!"
Hastus looked blankly at his friend.
Ednar mouthed a few curses at the ceiling as he rolled his eyes. "A HEL-pistol, my ignorant shit of a friend, is the bigger, meaner, androgen-abusing, baby-killing brother of a regular laspistol."
"And you brought this doubtlessly illegal thing to schola because…?" Hastus subconsciously backed a step away from Ednar. Just in case someone walked around the corner.
"I skipped out today, I came in to come get you! Wanna take this thing down to thirty-four hundred and shoot something?" Ednar looked almost manic at the idea.
"Put it away before you get us both executed for having that thing."
Ednar did the front of his coat up, hooked his arm through Hastus' and skipped down the corridor, dragging the reluctant boy with him. "Don't be such a wimp. I know you don't have any more classes today and nobody except your depressed arse hangs out here anyway. We're all good."
About an hour later they made it to level 3400 of Principia spire. It was 75 stories below any of the inhabited levels, and a collapsed level in between meant sound didn't travel upward very much.
It was where principia's youth came to hang out and let off steam. Some enterprising group had knocked through a couple of hab walls and created a dance hall, complete with a sound system ripped from one of the upper levels.
Hastus avoided eye contact with the few people who were lounging around, smoking Emperor-knew-what out of an elaborate vase-shaped device. He had only been here a couple of times before, and felt a bit out of place amongst the rebellious and doubtlessly cool bunch who came here most of the time.
Ednar waltzed around like he owned the place, of course. His older sister had recently taken hold of the family business; the Gens Sabinius were pretty big fish in the small pond of reclamation in the sector. This afforded anyone with their second name a lot of pull. Philomena Sabinius had also, in her early twenties, been one of the people who created the hangout on thirty-four hundred, meaning the name had a lot of pull there too.
Hastus gazed at the floor as Ednar winked and pointed his fingers in a pistol shape at one of the girls smoking, earning him a rude gesture.
They left the main room and carried on down past rows of old habs, the place stank of spilt alcoholic drinks and lho sticks, with an aftertaste of rust.
Ednar bounced happily into a hab that looked particularly abandoned.
Hastus leant against the doorframe and chewed his fingernails as Ednar hefted the gun. "So normally, these things run off a powerpack in your rucksack." Ednar explained as he inserted a box into the bottom of the weapon. "I got this one from one of my sister's Cadian bodyguards in exchange for chocolate from the kitchens, apparently that shit is rare as hell where he comes from. Anyway, this one's been modified so you don't need the backpack." He pointed the gun at the oven on the far side of the room, and pulled the trigger.
Nothing happened.
Ednar looked quizzically at the helpistol. "I swear I charged this thing this morning…" he smacked the magazine. "Awww come on, stupid thing."
Hastus let him verbally abuse the weapon for a few minutes before walking over and flicking a switch above the trigger guard. "You left the safety on, fethwit!"
Flicking the switch on again, Hastus wrested the gun from his friend and pushed him aside.
He levelled the large gun at the oven, flicked off the safety once more, and fired.
A flash of light and a whipcrack heralded the demise of the appliance, a ragged hole the size of a throne Gelt coin was burnt into the door; smoke coiled lazily out of the opening.
"My go!" Hastus quickly safed the gun as Ednar tried to grab it back from him.
"It isn't a toy Ednar! Throne, you'll kill yourself!"
Ednar emptied the gun into the oven as Hastus shielded his eyes from the light, even the flash suppressor couldn't hold back the full force of each shot.
Whooping, Ednar walked across the room and kicked the oven, which partially collapsed, a few rivulets of molten aluminium pooled on the floor.
"Congratulations Lord Sabinius, you have defeated the cooker of doom." Hastus called out from the other side of the kitchen.
Leaning against the oven, Ednar reholstered the gun and tilted his head regally. "Secundus is saved Ladies and Gentlemen!" He bowed. "I have like four more battery packs for it, want another go?"
Before Hastus could reply, a small beeping sounded from his left hand. The small wrist communicator informed him his father wanted to see him.
"Sorry bro, the old man calls." He gestured at the device. "See you tomorrow."
He left Ednar to immolate the rest of the kitchen, wondering what on Terra his father found important enough to actually talk to him about. Arc the Elder seldom conversed with any of his family, he practically lived in his offices at the centre of Arc family 'territory'; where they had reclamation rights.
….
"…The Guard. Are you serious?" Hastus was half in shock, half nauseated.
"Completely serious." Ulmann Arc sighed. This was going about as well as he'd expected.
"… But, what? Am I that useless?!" Hastus spluttered. "They'll send me off on the crusade… even if I don't die I'll be settled on some bloody outer rim world!"
"And if you stay here? Then what? What'll you do? You know if you stay in this business, as your brother's office boy when he takes charge, you'll just waste away or end up at each other's throats. We Arcs are nobody in this sector, you know how long it took to finagle a deal to get Castor married?"
"What'll I do in the damned Guard?"
"Why do you think I had the boys teach you how to shoot? You're doing well in Schola, with your grades, you'll make officer immediately if not sooner."
"If I'm not xeno-food within five minutes!" The nausea had passed, but Hastus was now sweating at his prospects.
"You think I want this? There's no other way to make sure you don't rot on this skagheap of a planet."
The elder Arc was absolutely correct of course, but Hastus' pride wasn't going to let that stop him. He pleaded, he twisted logic in all sorts of convoluted ways, he vaguely complicated offering to kill his older brothers, but knew that wouldn't fly and he couldn't do it anyway.
Eventually they both stood in silence for about five minutes before Ulmann attempted to hug Hastus, who batted his hand away and strode out of the office, barely containing the lump in his throat.
The fething Guard.
…..
Hastus stared at the ceiling. He was in bed, but fully clothed. He needed to do something, his shock and, frankly, fear at his future prospects had boiled over into a combination of itchy feet and anger.
He swung his feet of the edge of the bed and into his boots. Absent-mindedly he keyed a message to Ed on his comm, the reply was almost instantaneous: thirty-four hundred. If you're coming down, come prepared.
Hastus frowned at the device. Ed was usually overexcited about everything, to get such a succinct message from him was odd. Momentarily forgetting his situation, Hastus grabbed some gloves and a small bag with the kit he and Ednar used to 'explore' abandoned areas of Principia and padded silently out of the Arc household, grabbing a leather duster that belonged to his father, feth him, maybe it'd get messy and he'd need to pay to get it cleaned.
He raced down the mostly deserted corridors to thirty-four hundred. The night cycle of the hive was in operation and the strip lighting in the cavernous tunnels had dimmed from their usual glare, rather than spooking him, Hastus found the subdued tone rather pleasant.
He heard thirty-four hundred before he reached it, deep bass penetrated up three floors and by the time he strode out into the corridor he could feel his ribs reverberating.
Passing the dance area he made for the hab he had left Ednar in earlier.
Before he even got there he could see something was afoot. Several guys in their early twenties were standing in the corridor, a few were visibly sporting weapons.
Not a party then.
As Hastus walked up he saw Ednar crouched beside a kit bag full of ropes and other equipment. He looked up as Hastus joined the little group, trying his best to look tough and nonchalant as the others sized him up.
Luckily Ednar provided him with some cred immediately, "Yo H," he spoke in a slightly deeper tone than usual.
"I got two words for you: Hive Dive."
Less than an hour later Hastus was freefalling.
Principia spire was built in a ring around a central shaft more than two miles across. The space was originally ringed by lifts and cargo hauling mechanisms to bring people and good up and down, but it had long since been disconnected from the power grid.
Tightening his grip on the rope slightly he swung inwards towards the walls, timing it perfectly, his boots kissed the parapet of level thirty-three fifty and he swung onto the mezzanine floor to join Ed and a bearded fellow by the name of Adjak.
Hive diving basically entailed abseiling as far as you dared down into the guts of the dead spire. Since the families of some of the reclamation houses lived and held offices in the very top, the lower levels hadn't yet been touched by machinery and blowtorch, laying in darkness for a few hundred years.
Hastus unclipped the belay device from the rope and gave it a hard shake to signal to the people at the other end that he was down.
An awkward silence threatened to form so Hastus turned to Adjak "So how far have you been down?"
"Uh… to about Twenty-nine hundred-ish," He replied. "We were gonna go further, but my mate lost his stones, swore he saw a mutant or something so we jumarred back up. It was pretty ganky down there and we weren't packing heat, I'm not sorry we didn't go further."
"Cool." Ednar injected himself into the conversation as he examined a scrawl of marker on the wall reading 'Augustus woz 'ere 842.M41'
"Hastus reached out and flicked the rope, which was swaying and spinning as Bernhardt lowered himself down. "And how far down do the fixed ropes go?"
"I think about twenty-six hundred and five. That's what Regine told me anyways."
Despite the eerie surroundings, Hastus was relaxing. The darkness of the abandoned city was distracting him from the confrontation with his father. He peered over the edge, a few bits and pieces of plasteel and ferrocrete were jutting out at odd angles where levels had subsided and collapsed a few levels below. Further than that his headtorch couldn't penetrate.
Bernhardt whizzed over his head and thumped onto the ground beside Ednar. "Watch yer head kiddo." He shot good-naturedly.
A thought struck Hastus as he watched Ednar go through his duffel bag. "If there's fixed rope all the way to twenty-six whatever, how come we're bringing some? We planning to push further Ed?"
Ednar grinned back at him, "Damn right, my sister made it to thirty-hundred before turning back, I'm gonna show her who has the stones in Gens Sabinius or die trying!" He stuck his head over the wall and shouted up at the last member of the party. "Come on Roman, Some of us want to make it down sometime this week!"
Several curses and remarks about Ednar's parentage floated down from Roman to the delight of Adjak and Hastus.
The conversation flowed easily from there as they prepared the third abseil, then the fourth, and the fifth.
It was at abseil number six that everything went to sideways.