They were poor fighters, but aggressive. They attacked together, raking at her with filthy fingernails, ripping the regimental uniform issued to her for the Crusade to tatters and scoring the skin underneath with burning scratches. She was fortunate that her enforcer’s armour protected her from the worst of it.
The leader went down, its pointed head sporting a new and fatal dent. The last gibbered and shrilled in the orkish tongue, flailing at her with arms that were too long for its body. Its pointed nose and ears flapped as it jumped onto her, trying to throttle her with grasping, greasy fingers. She gasped for air. Pointed yellow teeth snapped millimetres from her nose, spattering her with saliva. She fell backward to the ground, luck more than effort putting her maul in the right place. She slammed the butt into its eye. It screamed and reared up. She scrambled backward and caved its ribs in with a panicked swipe.
Panting hard, she pushed the dead creature from her legs. The energy of fear left her, and she struggled to get herself upright. Her head swam. She had not eaten since the Crusade had departed, and was so hungry she considered going through the slaves’ filthy clothes to find some morsel of food or drink, but was not yet so desperate that she could bring herself to do it.
Numbly, she stared at the corpses.
A noise made her start.
By a kink in the corridor, framed in dull ruddy light, a fourth creature stood staring at her with wide red eyes, ears flat against its head in fear.
‘Throne!’ she exclaimed.
The creature’s thin-lipped mouth worked wordlessly. Suddenly, it dropped its burden, turned on its heels and fled, squealing out a shrill alarm.
‘No, no, no, no, no!’ she shouted, staggering after.
The creature was fast, moving with a bounding scamper that she struggled to match. It cast terrified looks behind it at her, shouting without pause as it ran. Her throat burned with thirst and the polluted air of the moon, and the creature was gaining ever more ground.
Haas raced round a corner to see it diving through a crack between two armoured plates bolted to the rock. Haas threw herself after. Anything could be on the other side, but if the creature raised the alarm, she was dead anyway.
With relief, she saw it was all alone, quaking against a wall ahead, arms spread wide on the stone.
Hefting her maul, she approached.
A giant hand cuffed her across the back of the head, sending her sprawling face first into the rock. Stars swam in front of her eyes. She got to her hands and knees, blood flowing from her mouth. Something slammed into her neck. Wide metal jaws closed around her throat with a click. She grabbed at them futilely as she was hoisted high. Almost gently, the pole shifted around, bringing her face to face with the ork holding it.
Her captor regarded her with curious eyes glinting from eye sockets like caves. Its jaw was covered in a beard of bright but dirty hair, and more of the same crested its head. A single ivory fang, as long as Haas’ forearm, jutted from the left side of its mouth. The damn thing was smiling at her, its eyes twinkling with vicious humour.
It rumbled something in the tongue of the orks. Haas raised her maul. It shook its head and flicked a switch on the haft of its catchpole. A massive shock cracked out from the jaws, and Haas fell unconscious.
‘She’s coming round,’ said a man’s voice.
‘Be quiet, Marast, you’ll have One Tooth in here on us!’ hissed another.
‘Looks different,’ said the one called Marast. ‘She’s not one of us. She’s a standard.’
‘So? The galaxy’s crawling with them. Give her something to drink, for the Emperor’s sake.’
‘It means, Huringer, that we’re somewhere else, do you see? We’ve moved away from home,’ said the first irritably.
‘Don’t talk to me like I’m stupid!’ said Huringer.
‘Don’t be stupid, then. This armour too, enforcer or arbitrator, I’d say. But those badges aren’t like anything I’ve ever seen.’
A canteen was pressed to Haas’ lips. Warm, metallic water spilled into her mouth. She coughed, and swallowed gratefully. Her head felt heavy as a boulder, but she struggled up onto her elbows anyway.
There was not much light but it hurt her eyes. She was in a sweltering cell plated with metal. There was one door, a small grille at the top of it letting in a little light from outside. A little more came from a buzzing lumen globe dangling from a bare wire in the middle of the room.
Two odd-looking faces peered at her. She squinted until they came into focus, and pushed herself back in alarm when they did. Bald heads with pronounced eyes looked back, their owners crouching on unnaturally long legs.
‘What are you?’ she said. Her stomach rolled with nausea.
‘Oh, that’s charming. Very nice,’ said the one called Marast. ‘People, that’s what we are. If you don’t like us, we can call the orks. Maybe they’ll give you a waking you’d prefer?’
Haas blinked. They were human, of a sort, but stretched in the body. Her eyes strayed to their legs.
‘Guess she’s never seen a longshanks before,’ muttered Huringer.
Marast patted his leg with a thin-fingered hand. ‘That’s what we are. Don’t stare so — in here you’re the odd one out.’
‘You’re… mutants?’
‘Abhumans!’ said Huringer angrily. ‘We’re loyal subjects of the Emperor, same as you, lovey. Ain’t our fault our home’s low-g.’ He turned away from her pointedly.
Haas groggily got to her feet. The room was crammed with longshanks. They had arrayed themselves as best they could around the walls, backs to the metal, long legs drawn up in front of them.
‘Where are you from?’ she asked. Haas was aware there were sanctioned sub-strains of humanity scattered around the galaxy, but that was as far as her knowledge went. On Terra any deviation from the norm was a mutation, and a mutant was a criminal by default.
‘Orin’s Well,’ said Marast. ‘Greenskins overran the planet and took thousands of us up here. Seems we’re good for working on the moon. Most of it ain’t got no gravity generators. Doesn’t bother us as much as it bothers them. You?’
‘You don’t know where you are?’
Marast shook his head. ‘Not a splinter of an idea. Been down here slaving for weeks now. Not many of us left.’
‘Terra! You’re in orbit over Terra!’ She tapped the badge on her shoulder guard, much worn now, that marked her out as an arbitrator of the Imperial Palace, 149th Administrative District, General Oversight Division.
Marast’s mouth opened wide in amazement. ‘Terra?’ He made the sign of the aquila over his chest. Murmurs went up from his freakish compatriots. A few reached out to touch her. She shook their hands off and stepped over their fragile-looking legs to the door.
‘Don’t do that!’ hissed Marast. ‘You’ll have One Tooth in here on us!’
Something grunted outside. Haas threw herself against the wall as a bucket-jawed giant squinted into the room. One fang, a dirty beard. Her captor.
It banged on the door hard, making it shake in its mountings, and roared out a string of gruff alien words.
Marast crept to her side and pulled at her arm. ‘Don’t do that, don’t talk, don’t look them in the eye!’ he said fearfully. ‘If you do, they’ll hurt you bad, might kill you, take you… take you through there!’ He pointed at the wall.
‘What’s through there?’ asked Haas, dreading the answer.
Marast winced. ‘The meat pen.’
Haas could not help but look, her eyes drawn by a force outside of herself to the wall separating their holding pen from the room next door.
‘I can’t stay here. There must be a way out!’ she said.
‘Where to?’ said Marast. ‘Get out of that door and there are a million orks. Even if there weren’t, where would you go? Walk to the surface and toss yourself off into space? Although that’s better than the alternative, I suppose. But you can’t. The only way we’re getting off this moon is if someone comes and rescues us, and let me tell you something sad, lady arbitrator — no one’s coming, not for the likes of us. You keep your head down, work hard, and they mostly leave you alone.’