The year is 572.M41. In the Settlement of Frag Hole Rock, deep in the lawless Underhive of Necromunda's capital city, events are rapidly coming to a head.

Three days of (relative) peace remain...

He wanted to kill someone. He didn't much care who.

Maxi was picking up on his stress. The great grey canid whined piteously as he sidled along on his master's heels.

A young Escabar Corgan stalked the streets. His streets. No frakker had ever been big enough or tough enough to take them from him. And no frakker ever would. He was the top dog, leader of the pack, alpha male. He ruled the streets of Frag Hole Rock by virtue of his reputation and by the ability to back that up with sudden, unstinting violence. He'd be damned if he was going to let a girl take the edge off that advantage.

She wasn't worth the energy, he told himself. But it felt like there was some kind of hole in his belly since the break up, like he was gut-shot or something, only it didn't hurt in quite the same way.

The streets were dark. It was the middle of the settlement's night-cycle. He and Maxi walked the beat alone, with only the night-vermin to bother them… and a group of caparisoned malcontents that haunted the shadows.

The first he knew of them was when a boom and a flash sent a shower of shot-lead his way.

Stupid! He thought. The shot was robbed of its punching power by too much range. The shower of still-warm ball bearings stung the skin but bounced harmlessly from his flak-jacket, leaving him otherwise unscathed as he dived for cover in the opposite direction. A round of familiar cursing followed the gunshot.

'You frakking idiot! What did I say about waiting till he was in range? Get the frak out of my sight, you useless dink-stain!'

Corgan recognised those nasal tones. His only hope was that the idiots had delivered their message before coming back for revenge. He decided he didn't care. They'd crossed a line and there was no going back.

He sidled into the shadows, slipping a slim-line pistol from his boot and screwing on the silencer attachment. Maxi whined from somewhere is the shadows to his right. Corgan followed the sound and found him hunkered behind a pile of rusted iron sheeting.

'C'mon, boy, let's go find out how many there are out there. I'll need your nose for this one.'

He tossed the mutt a sliver of dried rat-meat. The dog snatched it up and headed off, loping along on silent pads. Maxi led them through a series of narrow by-ways. Corgan had to squeeze between sagging walls and through chain-link fences, clamber over pipe-stacks and through calf-deep pools of stagnant, oil-slicked water. But Maxi led him true. They came around into another walkway and stopped. The dog slunk back but Corgan continued on more carefully. Up ahead he could just make out the crouching form of a carapace-armoured Arbites.

When he was close enough he tapped the man on his shoulder. The Arbites whirled but before he could bring his bulky shotgun around Corgan put a silenced bullet through his visor. The man crumpled. Corgan worked quickly. He took a length of filament wire from a pouch and looped it through the pins of two grenades secured to the man's belt. He tied the ends off to a pipe on the wall and retreated back into the shadows.

The silenced pistol disappeared back into his boot and he took out a pair of twinned Velossi 7's, powerful pistols loaded with armour-piercing rounds. When Corgan was happy with the range and the amount of cover he was in, he cleared his throat and let rip a throaty bellow of pain.

'I'm hit, Bull! Help me out, Bull, please… I don't wanna die!'

He had no idea if it sounded convincing or not, but he reasoned it wouldn't take too much to dupe the great oaf. He sat back and waited.

It wasn't long before Bull's distinctive bulk came stomping over, closely followed by a smaller, much more cautious figure, still muttering imprecations at his lunk-headed companion over his earlier mistake.

'You okay, Pes?' asked the big man, addressing the prone figure of the man Corgan had slain.

'Keep it down, dink-head. That frakker won't be far away,' said Eddi, darting nervous glances in all directions, his combat shotgun up and ready. Even so, the two men were still way too overconfident, their bravery rooted in the heavy armour they wore. Corgan smiled and waited.

Bull crouched down over Pes' sprawled corpse, shoving at him and imploring him to wake up.

'Leave him, you idiot, he's dead!'

Bull let slip a mournful cry and swept Pes up in his arms. The shout disguised the pinging of grenade pins springing loose. Corgan counted to five. The explosion illuminated the night, tearing Bull and Pes into five discernible pieces and sending Eddi flying top over tail to land in a crumpled heap.

Still Corgan waited. Two more armoured figures came running, shouting in unintelligible horror at the carnage, sweeping the area with their large-bore shotguns. One of them ran over to Eddi, who'd been knocked unconscious by the concussive force of the blast, the other peered into the areas of deep shadow all around.

They called themselves Arbites. Typical bully boys with about as much street-nouse as a three week old kitten. It never ceased to amaze Corgan how these people survived to adulthood.

He took careful aim and let rip.

The man crouching over Eddi took three rounds, two to the midriff and another through the hip. The second was hit twice, one taking his legs out from under him, the second burrowing in through the top of his shoulder. The third shot careened overhead as he pitched onto his back.

Corgan moved fast. Both men were only wounded – even his punchiest bullets were slowed by all that armaplas resin and the range had been steeper than he thought. He closed the gap with the one he'd hit twice and put three more rounds through his helmet, shattering the helm and spraying brains all over. The other man was trying to sit up and take aim with his shotgun when Corgan finished him too.

Standing over the prone form of the one called Eddi, the "brains" of the outfit, Corgan considered the implications of his actions.

He'd just killed four Adeptus Arbites and broken a fifth into small but still basically connected pieces. This was going to have consequences. The thought didn't stop him executing Eddi with as little mercy as he'd dispatched the others.

Two Years Earlier...

The Greasy Spoon was your typical Underhive dive, so different from the sterile environment he'd been brought up in. The kind of place he loved by virtue of the fact that it was so far removed from his beginnings uphive. The floors were packed earth, tracked in over the original grille-work floor until the cavity beneath had become more an archaeologist's dream than a maintenance crawl-space. The walls were a nondescript brown colour, grubby and pitted from years of misuse and abuse, gunfights, bar-brawls and gang-raids. There was a long, L-shaped bar that started in the main common room and the front of the building and curved around into the back where partitioned booths offered a modicum of privacy. The floor was laid out with rickety, much-repaired tables and chairs where the regulars congregated to swap stories and jaw with each other.

When Corgan had walked in from the badlands this was the first place where they made him feel welcome. Frag Hole Rock had been a tough joint in those days. Prosperity tended to breed a lot of competition in the Underhive, but that wasn't true of Frag Hole. The Guild Enforcers had the whole place locked down tight. The Arbites had helped them to re-establish the settlement after an outbreak of a particularly virulent neurophagic virus – the so-called zombie plague. As a result the local gangs hadn't had a look in and once the Enforcers had got themselves established they made sure there was no room for competition.

The Greasy Spoon was where the old-timers hung out. The Enforcers didn't give them any trouble on account of how they were all dirt poor and pretty toothless. They welcomed Corgan like a prodigal son, a link to the world at large of which they no longer felt a part. He was young and full of energy and it reminded them of their youth. There was nothing they liked better than telling stories about the old days, and a fresh pair of ears was always welcome. They regaled him with heroic tales of when the Low Domes were won!

They didn't ask him about his past. The subject was taboo. So he didn't have to tell them he'd runaway from a powerful gang up in Tower Head a couple of weeks before. Nor did he have to tell them that he'd been raised by Sororitas nuns up in hive city orphanage before running away from there too. He'd been running all his life, it seemed. He finally found somewhere that didn't make his feet itch.

He was sitting talking to an old prospector called Grady. The old-timer was a gold-mine of advice and hive-lore. Corgan had already learned a lot from him in the short time that he'd known him. Grady was drinking some foul spirits that tasted like battery acid while Corgan fell back on the somewhat more mellow flavour of One Eyed Petra's home brewed fungus beer.

He would have been the first to admit, however, that his attention wasn't entirely focused on what Grady was jawing about. Which brings us to the other reason that Corgan favoured the Greasy Spoon.

Little Luci Low-Brow.

That had been her gang name, back in the day. Throne knows how she picked it up but it certainly wasn't a reference to the way she looked. Okay, so she wasn't exactly a goddess, but she was a good wholesome, healthy girl which is saying a lot in the Underhive. Her most distinguishing feature was the gang tatt that wound from her left wrist all the way up and around her arm to frame her cheek.

She and Corgan had made a connection from day one. They had this thing going on where they could communicate whole sentences with nothing but meaningful looks and expressions. Some of these were so subtle they could conduct whole conversations without anyone noticing. It was a talent that came in handy at times.

So the scene is set. Grady was chattering away and Corgan was watching Luci serve drinks. She had a lithe, strutting grace that made her a joy to watch, a legacy from the days when she'd run with a gang. Dusty Piet was propping up the bar with Joss Whails and Croupier Croop who worked nights at the Gambling Den down the street. One Eyed Petra stood stoically behind the bar, rubbing at a grubby tankard with an even grubbier towel.

In short, things couldn't have been more ordinary.

Then the door exploded inward in a shower of splinters and in looms Helmut Wulfenska, one of the most notorious independents in the Low Domes area.

'Wulfenska looking for Egg Hanson,' he rumbled. 'You tell Wulfenska where he is. Hold out on Wulfenska, Wulfenska will break your face. Lie to Wulfenska, Wulfenska come back later and break your face.'

Helmut Wulfenska had made his name as a bounty hunter… breaking faces. He had the typical Goliath physiology and had inherited their deliberate way of speaking. But Helmut Wulfenska wasn't as stupid as he sounded. He had at least the low cunning of a canid, which was much more intelligence than you would have given him credit for from the way he spoke.

No one looked like answering so Corgan shrugged to himself and stood up to do it for them. He couldn't really blame them for being intimidated. Wulfenska was a big man with a big rep. But, as Corgan would to find out over the next couple of years, the bigger the rep, the farther there was to fall. Corgan was nobody, but he wasn't afraid of Wulfenska either. That gave him a significant advantage.

'Egg Hanson, eh? Sounds like a made-up name to me. We've certainly never heard of the fella. You sure you haven't been sent on a wild goose chase, pal?'

It usually took a while for Helmut to process so many words spoken in so little time, Corgan gave him a minute. Luci shot him warning look that said; 'You're in it up to your neck!' He replied with a shrug that intimated; 'I can handle this, trust me!'

'Who would dare mock Wulfenska? Wulfenska would break face…'

'Course you would, mate, course you would. All I'm saying is we never heard of no Egg Hanson. He ain't never been here and that's a fact!'

Luci moved behind the bar and prodded Petra in the back, a clear gesture that said; 'Get your cudgel out, there's gonna be trouble…'

He couldn't help it… it made him smile.

Fortunately it took Wulfenska a few minutes to sort through the double negatives, but in the end he proved himself the equal of his reputation and just assumed Corgan was lying. Not only that, but he was mocking him, which warranted a broken face.

He gathered himself up – all twenty stone of iron hard muscle and sinew – lowered his boulder of a head and charged.

Ducking aside and under his reaching arms Corgan spun behind him and delivered a swift kick to his prodigiously muscled rump. His headlong momentum – suddenly bereft of breaks – added to the small amount of force Corgan was able to bring to bear was enough to send him crashing face-first into the wall of the bar.

It was quite a hefty impact and one that left him stunned. During this time Corgan relieved him of the heavy navy revolver in his hip-holster and the heavy blade opposite. The blade he tossed to Luci, who hid it behind the bar.

The old-timers were a little braver now that they'd seen what the mighty Wulfenska was truly capable of. Grady stood beside Corgan and Petra too. Dusty Piet had already made himself scarce but Joss and Croop stood fingering their knives and grinning at each other. Even Luci had picked up Petra's second-favourite bar of lead and joined the party.

Wulfenska came back to his senses, shaking his head like a dog. When he saw the number of people facing up to him, blocking the only exit and hefting pistols, cudgels and knives, he became a little more reasonable.

'You sure you never heard of Egg Hanson?'

'What's the bounty on this fella?' Corgan asked. Helmut had conveniently forgotten about the butt-kicking episode, which was somewhat of a relief to the youth. Maybe he hadn't felt it, but Corgan wasn't going to mention it just in case.

'Two hundred credits.'

'Blimey! What did he do?'

'Wulfenska not care, Wulfenska just want get paid.'

'Tell you what. For a small fee, I'll help you find this Egg Hanson. What do you say?'

'Helmut Wulfenska work alone…'

'Yeah but it doesn't seem to be working out very well does it. You're being bullied by a kid and some old timers…'

'Wulfenska have big reputation…'

'Yeah, I've heard of you. Don't worry about that. The question you've got to ask yourself is why I'm not scared of you.'

Wulfenska wrinkled his brow in thought. Corgan decided to help him along.

'Because when you work alone it doesn't always pay to play on your rep, my friend. If you go around blasting doors off their hinges you're gonna start pissing poor innocent people off. You need to exercise some subtlety, mate.'

'Wulfenska not know subtlety… Wulfenska not like subtlety!'

'I Thought as much, and that's why you need a partner. I know all there is to know about subtlety. Tell you what, for a twenty five percent cut of the bounty I'll demonstrate. You can teach me your intimidation techniques and I'll teach you about subtlety. How's that sound?'

'Wulfenska not sure…'

'Also, as an added bonus, whenever you do get yourself into a predicament, like this one for example, you'll have some backup. You can't go wrong with me, Helmut, old feller.'

'I give you trial period.'

Corgan gave him one of his most winning smiles and, without hint of perturbation flipped the revolver and offered it back to him.

'You keep pea-shooter, little man, Wulfenska prefer this…'

He reached back and pulled a massive autocannon from the sling on his back. Corgan froze as the blood drained from his face and everyone else scattered for cover. It occurred to him that he may just have made his last mistake. Wulfenska laughed.

'Good thing I have sense of humour, little man. Come, let us learn subtlety.'

The old timers returned to their gassing as Wulfenska stomped out. Corgan turned to Petra.

'I'll pay for the door out of my cut.'

Luci took two steps towards him and planted a kiss full on his lips. When she pulled away she had a sultry "Don't be a stranger" expression on her face.

That day marked the beginning of two very important acquaintances in Corgan's career. One saw him starting upon his inexorable rise to infamy. The other had much longer-term implications.

Two years later, with three days to go...

Guildsman Rake had once been the foremost Housecarle of the Sott Franchise… once being only a few days ago. He had commanded Obel Sott's own bodyguard before being cast out in disgrace. Ordinarily he was a well paid and highly valued commodity, but ever since the House had been driven out of one of their most lucrative Underhive holdings, Rake had been on the receiving end of Old Man Sott's temper. He had refused to pay Rake until such time as he restored Frag Hole Rock to its rightful owners. Rake was a professional. He knew the nature of the world he lived in and so he didn't let this anger him. Instead he directed all his energies into achieving that goal.

He had used his own personal savings, a considerable sum, to hire a personal army of hard-knocks from every corner of the Low-Domes region. Many of these men had suffered losses. The fact that they put these down to the machinations of the same man was a trump card in Rake's favour. The aggrieved banding together to take revenge on the aggressor. It was fitting.

But this would not be enough. Rake knew that he had to secure the good-will and co-operation of other local gangs if he was to not only flush out his opponent, but crush him utterly. It was potentially another very expensive necessity, perhaps, but Rake had another ace up his sleeve and that was why he out here, in the deserted borderlands between Frag Hole Rock and Tower Head.

The machine-barn that he and his cronies had occupied for the meeting had long ago been stripped of anything remotely resembling machinery, a valuable sales commodity to the neighbouring residents. As a result it was little more than an echoing shell. Some of the catwalks had retained their structural integrity. From here some of Rake's men would retain the advantage of elevation, while he and three others stood exposed at ground level.

In the surrounding structures, most of which had long since collapsed and corroded into twisted metal skeletons, a further seven men stood sentry, watching for the arrival of the Punishers. Rake paced the floor, mulling over and over the carefully scripted offer he was about to make.

Jendo hurried into the barn.

'They're here, Markus is escorting them in.'

'How many?'

'Just three. No scouts or bodyguards. It's just Jamma, Wolfe and Bevier!.'

Rake shook his head at the sheer arrogance of these men. At the same moment he realised he was intimidated. He realised at the same time that this was exactly what Jamma had intended. Three Catachans walking into a ring of fifteen heavily armed Necromundan hive-trash. The odds were still well in Jamma's favour.

'Take up your position, Jendo, and try not to wet your pants when they arrive.'

The man slid to one side like a mutt that had been soundly kicked. Rake had begun to doubt his decision to bring his nephew along on this venture. He wasn't as street-wise as he liked to make out and it was embarrassing.

Rake brushed these distractions aside as he waited, entering a meditative state in final preparation for the confrontation. He needed to be in absolute control for the next few minutes.

The trio entered. At a glance and seen alongside the native stock they would have been taken for very tall Goliaths. They were heavily built and muscular. But in actual fact they bore more resemblance to scaled-up Orlocks with their square jaws and close-cropped hair. They had also adopted the Orlock fashion-sense, with their sleeveless jackets of leather and denim, adorned with haphazard accoutrements in ruddy steel.

Jamma was dark-skinned and slightly portly, with a thick, acrid cigar clamped between yellow-stained teeth. He wore a pair of silver-rimmed shades even in the murky innards of the barn. Wolfe was the shortest of the three but still huge, with the typical glowering, calculating countenance of a hard-knock bodyguard. Bevier was a heavily scarred, twitching mass of muscle. He'd suffered some grievous head-wound in his early days in the Underhive. As a result he had what most people would very tactfully call an unstable temperament. Rake had heard the stories. Bevier was a frakking loon!

They approached until they stood uncomfortably close, uncomfortable because of their obvious height and weight advantages. They loomed.

'You Rake?' asked Jamma in his heavily accented cant.

'That's me. You must be the infamous Punishers. I'm glad you took the time to come.'

'Get to the point, babalon. Catachans no like to beat roun' de bush. Never know wha kind o trouble you gon scare up…' Jamma grinned. It was an unnerving experience.

'Very well. You heard of Helmut Wolfenska?'

'I heard o' him.'

'Did you know he'd taken over at Frag Hole Rock?

Jamma nodded.

'You hear he was dead?'

'Sure did, too.'

Rake hesitated. It stood to reason the Catachans had a pretty good network of spies in the locality. He wondered if they knew about Wolfenska's erstwhile partner already.

'He was done in by one of your runaways, as I hear it.'

'Yeah, so you say in your message. So what is dis all about, babalon?'

'You want him back?'

'If we wanted dat little runt back, wha's to stop us?'

'You haven't tried already?'

Jamma stepped closer, Rake had to make a conscious effort not to back off. He could no longer look the man in the eyes without craning his head back.

'What business of yours is dat?'

'We've tried ourselves. Wolfenska was plan A and he failed. Plan B was a bit more subtle, but your little runaway is a scary individual. He's seen off every thug, hood and hard-knock we've sent into Frag Hole. Single-handedly. We reason it might be time for plan C.'

'Plan C involves us?'

'In a way. We'd like to encourage a spirit of co-operation, so that there are no misunderstandings in the days to come. We're offering you the kid as payment for your good will when we re-take the Rock.'

'When you have de Rock and we have de kid, all bets are off. Until den you have my co-operation. Just send your boy Jendo whenever you need any assistance, I'll make sure you get wha's comin to you, babalon.'

'It's a deal!' Rake turned his head to the left and spat to seal the deal. Jamma followed suit, turned and marched off with his boys in tow.

When Rake could breathe again he sighed with relief.

'That was cheaper than I reckoned,' he said, to no one in particular. But that was just as well. It left more money in the pot for the hefty bribes he was planning. Corgan was going down.