The cold steel felt good against my face. I felt so hot and it was rough but at least it was cool. The vibrations rang through it as feet moved past me on several occasions. They hurt because my teeth were loose and rattled when the panel I lay on vibrated.
I concentrated on the coolness of the grid and the Emperor.
It helped keep my mind off the fact that in between the explosions of gunfire I could hear my own blood dripping through the metal grid.
I don't even remember exactly what happened.
Before this week I had never even been to the Bellows* before.
It just wasn't our turf. Another Cawdor gang held it, but they got wiped out in the Tsunami**.
We had just come in here to claim some vacant territory when we ran into that Goliath two days ago. We gave them what-for and seized some new ground here.
I guess that wasn't good enough for them because they came back at us today. Things were already not going well.
We were trying to hold a bridge against a Goliath charge. We were failing pretty miserably. It was our Principle Son, Clarky and me holding. I hadn't seen Clarky much since the last fight we had but he got back just in time for the Goliath attack.
I accidentally shot the Principle Son in the back, he tried to light up the Golaiths as they charged across the bridge without any success.
Even with bits of flaming metal still sticking in his skin one of the Goliath's charged the Principle Son as he was trying to reload his blunderbuss. The charge carried our leader to the ground and the brute pinned him there as he hacked at him with his cleaver.
Chucky charged in then with his polearm. He missed the Goliath with the attack and the Golaith then brought his cleaver down on Chucky's head.
That didn't go how I expected it to. Half of Chucky's face was sheared away with the strike but there wasn't much blood.
I could see a look of shocked surprise on the Goliath's face.
"Chucky" slapped the cleaver out of his opponent's hand as he dragged the surplice off of himself. The thin man standing in his place was enveloped in a brown cloak and he drew twin bolt pistols.
The Goliath didn't even budge. Goliath's don't shiv.
He went down all the same though as the point blank shots ripped his boiler plate armour apart.
I fired my autogun at it as the Goliath still on the bridge pumped a number of shots into it from his stub cannon.
In a flash it was gone.
And then it was behind me.
I barely had a chance to even turn around. Its bolt pistols were aimed at me and the Goliath.
I went crashing to the deck as bolter rounds shredded my surplice and my body.
As I fell I saw the Goliath fare no better.
The cyborg walked past me and looked at the Principle Son. I guess he figured the Goliath had done enough damage as his bolt pistol only passed over our leaders face for a moment.
That or the plasma charge that struck him took his mind off of the proposed murder.
He was now taking fired from whoever it was running down the corridor towards us. He then ran towards the Goliath leader who I could hear cursing his plasma pistol for running out of ammo.
I heard the distinctive sound of a round being chambered into a shot but and then fired and heard a very Goliath scream.
Then footsteps disappearing down the hallway.
There was a brief conference as two people stood in the intersection looking at the carnage all around them.
I couldn't hear every word, as I was drifting in and out, but it sounded like they decided not to go after the cyborg and to call a truce for now.
The next thing I remember is waking up in our Martyrium with Clarky saying "Brother Jake, are you awake now?"
It gave me quite a start, as you can imagine.
* The Bellows are a region of tunnels connecting a number of important industrial sites in the Underhive. They are so named because of the flow of air currents that change direction in them with two minute intervals.
** the Tsunami was a wave of violence that overtook the Bellows. A Delaque plot misfired when Delague agents from two different gangs both infiltrated an Escher and Van Saar gang in an attempt to get them to war with each other.
The fighting ended with the two infiltrated gangs very weak but with enormous enmity between the two Delaque gangs who had both had agents in both gangs during the brief war.
Their agents in other gangs caused deliberate paranoia in the other gangs they had infiltrated in the Bellows in an attempt to purge the other Delaque infiltrators. The efforts were successful in that all the Delaque infiltrators were purged, but failed in that the purge was a spiral of violence in which gangs turned on themselves and each other in an attempt to find and eliminate the Delaque threat.
Quickly the Bellows were depopulated of gang and civilian presence and soon after the survivors, now too paranoid and traumatized to continue, fled the carnage strewn tunnels to the rats and other gangs that wanted the territory.
