Kal Jerico: Sinner's Bounty

  Other great Necromunda reads from Black Library

  TERMINAL OVERKILL

  Justin D Hill

  UNDERHIVE

  Various authors

  LOW LIVES

  Denny Flowers

  VENATORS

  A three-part audio drama

  Justin D Hill, Matt Keefe & Josh Reynolds

  KAL JERICO OMNIBUS

  Includes the novels Blood Royal, Cardinal Crimson and Lasgun Wedding

  Will McDermott & Gordon Rennie

  FLESHWORKS

  Lucien Soulban

  SALVATION

  C S Goto

  SURVIVAL INSTINCT

  Andy Chambers

  BACK FROM THE DEAD

  Nick Kyme

  OUTLANDER

  Matt Keefe

  JUNKTION

  Matthew Farrer

  STATUS: DEADZONE

  Edited by Marc Gascoigne & Andy Jones

  Visit blacklibrary.com for the full range of novels, novellas, audio dramas and Quick Reads, along with many other exclusive products

  Contents

  Cover

  Backlist

  Title Page

  Necromunda

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  An Extract from ‘Terminal Overkill’

  A Black Library Publication

  eBook license

  In order to even begin to understand the blasted world of Necromunda you must first understand the hive cities. These man-made mountains of plasteel, ceramite and rockrete have accreted over centuries to protect their inhabitants from a hostile environment, so very much like the termite mounds they resemble. The Necromundan hive cities have populations in the billions and are intensely industrialised, each one commanding the manufacturing potential of an entire planet or colony system compacted into a few hundred square kilometres.

  The internal stratification of the hive cities is also illuminating to observe. The entire hive structure replicates the social status of its inhabitants in a vertical plane. At the top are the nobility, below them are the workers, and below the workers are the dregs of society, the outcasts. Hive Primus, seat of the planetary governor Lord Helmawr of Necromunda, illustrates this in the starkest terms. The nobles – Houses Helmawr, Cattalus, Ty, Ulanti, Greim, Ran Lo and Ko’Iron – live in the ‘Spire’, and seldom set foot below the ‘Wall’ that exists between themselves and the great forges and hab zones of the hive city proper.

  Below the hive city is the ‘Underhive’, foundation layers of habitation domes, industrial zones and tunnels which have been abandoned in prior generations, only to be re-occupied by those with nowhere else to go.

  But… humans are not insects. They do not hive together well. Necessity may force it, but the hive cities of Necromunda remain internally divided to the point of brutalisation and outright violence being an everyday fact of life. The Underhive, meanwhile, is a thoroughly lawless place, beset by gangs and renegades, where only the strongest or the most cunning survive. The Goliaths, who believe firmly that might is right; the matriarchal, man-hating Escher; the industrial Orlocks; the technologically-minded Van Saar; the Delaque whose very existence depends on their espionage network; the fiery zealots of the Cawdor. All striving for the advantage that will elevate them, no matter how briefly, above the other houses and gangs of the Underhive.

  Most fascinating of all is when individuals attempt to cross the monumental physical and social divides of the hive to start new lives. Given social conditions, ascension through the hive is nigh on impossible, but descent is an altogether easier, albeit altogether less appealing, possibility.

  – excerpted from Xonariarius the Younger’s

  Nobilite Pax Imperator – the Triumph

  of Aristocracy over Democracy.

  PROLOGUE

  DESOLATION

  ‘It’s coming,’ Dozerman said.

  Fenks stirred. He blinked and stretched, swinging his legs down from the chunk of broken ferrocrete, making sure to cradle his lasrifle close to his chest. The weapon was the most valuable thing he owned, and worth more than his life. Or Dozerman’s life, anyway.

  ‘You certain this time?’ he asked, inhaling a lungful of stale air. His yawn turned into a cough. The air had been recycled a million times, but still tasted as foul as the day it had gusted up from some forgotten vent. He looked up. Dozerman was perched halfway up the pipes, his autogun braced across his thighs. Like most scummers, Dozerman was skinny from too many missed meals, and yellow from too much rotgut.

  Fenks knew he didn’t look much better, but at least the old defence force uniform he wore under his armour was clean. Dozer­man wore his clothes until they rotted off.

  ‘Because you said the same thing over an hour ago.’

  ‘I’m sure. Listen.’

  Fenks did. A low grinding sound permeated the ancient transit tunnel. It sounded close, but a lifetime in the cramped confines of the underhive had taught him better than to believe his ears. He dropped to his haunches and pressed a calloused palm to the cracked surface of the ground.

  Dozerman looked down at him. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Feeling the vibrations. Old ratskin trick.’

  ‘You’re not a ratskin.’

  ‘Don’t have to be a ratskin to pick up some tricks,’ Fenks said, defensively. ‘Now be quiet. I’m listening.’

  ‘To the vibrations.’

  ‘Right.’

  Dozerman snorted. Fenks ignored him with an ease born of experience. He’d partnered with Dozerman often enough to know how to tune him out. It took focus to be a good gunman, which Fenks liked to think he was. You had to be able to ignore anything that didn’t help you hit your mark. Granted, that was easier said than done, most days.

  ‘Anything yet?’ Dozerman called down.

  ‘I thought I told you to be quiet.’

  ‘I’m bored.’

  ‘Then maybe you should have stayed in Rickety Splits with the rest of the trash, and left this to the actual gunners,’ Fenks snapped, not looking at him. Rickety Splits was the closest settlement – a day out, as the sheen bird flew, and ten pipes west of Girdercity. It wasn’t much of anything. A candle in the dark, as a Cawdor of his acquaintance liked to say. A candle that was half-melted, with a bent wick and a funny smell coming from it.

  It was the sort of place that attracted scummers like Dozerman, and Fenks, though he didn’t like to admit it. Out of reach of the enforcers, ignored by the guilders – save when they needed warm bodies. Like now.

  Fenks frowned. He didn’t mind working for the guilders, normally. Caravan jobs or archeotech digs were easy money. But this was different. He could feel it in his marrow.

  What he couldn’t feel was so much as a twitch beneath his hand. No vibrations, no twitch of loose stone. But that didn’t mean anything. The transit tunnels were reinforced for industrial and military haulage. When Hive Primus finally collapsed under its own weight, the tunnels would still be there. And whatever was living in them.

  The thought made him glance around nervously. The tunnel was a long, lightless stretch of industrial decline. It had been built generations before Fenks’ ancestors had even drawn breath, and had been forgotten for longer than he could remember. There were thousands just like it, stretching through the dark at world’s bottom.

  This one had seen better centuries, in Fenks’ opinion. The pipes that followed the curve of the roof and walls had mostly rusted through, disgorging their contents on the stone below. Old spillages had eaten craters in the ground, and become makeshift lagoons of greenish water and softly twitching fungal grasses. Support pillars slumped like fallen trees, and broken statues occupied the spaces between.

  The weight of the levels above, forever pressing down, had driven great cracks through the walls, rupturing the ferrocrete and causing the ground to buckle in places. Where once there had been weighing stations and vox-points, there were now caves. And in those caves–

  ‘Fenks?’

  Fenks jumped. He glared up at Dozerman. ‘What?’

  ‘Hasp wan
ts to know what you’re doing.’

  ‘Then she can ask me herself,’ Fenks snarled. He pushed himself to his feet, annoyed at how easily he’d been startled. It was being out here that did it. A man wasn’t meant for the wilds. The bad zones between settlements were hungry places, where folk vanished all the time, and the tunnels especially so. Even the ratskins avoided them.

  He looked around. ‘Where is she, anyway?’

  ‘Right here.’

  Fenks jumped again and spun, a curse on his lips. Hasp tapped her own.

  ‘Quiet, scummer. Sound carries out here.’ She was short and stout and he thought she had some ratskin in her. Something about the eyes. Too close together and too dark. Like him, she was wearing cast-off military gear, and carrying a refurbished lasrifle scavenged from some downhive bazaar. ‘Bogdan wants to know what you’re doing,’ she added.

  Fenks grimaced. Bogdan was nominally in charge, and had deep pockets. That wasn’t surprising, given that he worked for the guilders. He’d splashed his cash around Rickety Splits and hired two dozen of the most desperate gunners this side of Steelgate. Fenks knew some of them. Besides Dozerman and Hasp, there was Andrey Winks and the Two-Credit Kid. Dupes Finn and the Kettle ­Brothers. Even Long Sally Shakes. As motley a crew as ever was hired, all scattered across the tunnel. A part of him doubted it would be enough.

  ‘What’s he doing?’ a deep, bull-voice bellowed. Bogdan. He was somewhere back amid the rubble field.

  ‘He hasn’t said,’ Hasp shouted back. She looked at Fenks. ‘Well?’

  ‘He’s feeling the vibrations,’ Dozerman called down.

  Hasp looked up at him. ‘What?’

  ‘Ratskin trick!’ Dozerman shouted.

  She stared up at him a moment longer, and then looked at Fenks. ‘What?’

  ‘I’m trying to see if he’s getting close.’

  ‘By fondling the ground?’

  Fenks’ reply was interrupted by the sound of someone heavy clambering through the rubble. Bogdan stepped past a fallen statue, his shotgun braced across his broad shoulders. Bogdan still wore Orlock colours, though he hadn’t fought for his Clan House in close to a decade. Bogdan’s only loyalty was to the almighty credit.

  ‘What is he doing?’

  ‘Ratskin magic,’ Hasp said.

  Bogdan blinked. ‘You’re a ratskin?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Then why are you doing magic?’

  Fenks groaned. ‘I was checking for vibrations.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To see if they were close.’

  Bogdan squinted at him. ‘We can hear them. I sent the Two-Credit Kid and Bluff Canter up to the northern shaft to give us early warning.’

  ‘Canter is half-blind and the Kid can’t find his arse with both hands.’

  Bogdan laughed. ‘Maybe I should have had them talk to the hive spirits, hunh?’

  Fenks bit back a retort. It would be a waste of breath. Bogdan shook his head and continued.

  ‘I’m not paying you to pat the ground, Fenks. I’m paying you to waylay and kill a man. Think you can focus, maybe?’

  ‘I heard he wasn’t a man at all,’ Dozerman called down.

  Bogdan looked up. ‘Who?’

  ‘Desolation Zoon.’

  The name hit the air like a gunshot. Everyone fell silent, just for a moment. Desolation Zoon had that effect on people.

  Hasp looked up. ‘And what is he, then? A witch? A sump-gheist?’

  Dozerman shrugged. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘The Redemptionists aren’t witches,’ Fenks said. The others looked at him. ‘What? They’re not. They’re a lot of things, the red-robes, but witches isn’t one of them.’

  Bogdan sniffed and spat. ‘He’s a man. A stupid man. Only a stupid man would rob a guilder tithe-house.’

  ‘From the sound of it, he was pretty smart about being stupid,’ Fenks said.

  Bogdan glared at him. ‘And what would you know about it, scummer?’

  ‘I know we ain’t the only ones after him.’

  Bogdan poked him in the chest with a thick finger. ‘But we’re the ones who are going to catch him.’ He looked around. ‘You hear me?’

  Fenks shook his head. ‘How do we even know he’s coming this way? That sound could be anything.’

  ‘I have it on good authority,’ Bogdan said. ‘Now get ready, because once that crazy scavver shows up, we’re going to have a fight on our hands.’

  Fenks looked at Hasp. She was frowning. Fenks knew how she felt. Desolation Zoon wasn’t just some scummer on the prod. He was a legend, and a nasty one. A mad, bad Redemptionist of the fire and promethium variety, who’d burned witches, heretics and at least one scummer who’d looked at him funny.

  He was also a thief, according to the guilders. The way Fenks had heard it, Zoon had crashed an ore-hauler through the doors of a guilder tithe-house in Steelgate, and emptied the building of everything of value. That was pure brass, even for a Redemptionist. The guilders had been impressed enough to drop a bounty in excess of several thousand credits for Zoon’s head – attached to his body, or otherwise. Now every scummer with a gun and a need for credits was on the hunt, chasing down even the smallest whiff of Zoon. Some, like Bogdan, had decided to play it smart. The former Orlock was hoping numbers and surprise might prove a winning combination.

  Fenks had his doubts. But he knew better than to voice them. Especially where Bogdan could hear him.

  A sharp whistle sounded through the tunnel. Fenks and the others turned. He saw the slim, dark-clad form of the Two-Credit Kid racing towards them. ‘It’s coming! It’s coming!’ he shouted, drawing his autopistols as he ran.

  Fenks felt it then. The ground shook beneath his feet. Bogdan grinned. ‘Back to your positions, scummers. Time to collect some credits.’ Hasp and Bogdan clambered out of sight. Dozerman crawled higher into the canopy of pipes, back to his shooter’s nest. Fenks and the Kid took cover behind a fallen support pillar. The Kid was breathing heavy. Whether excited or scared, Fenks couldn’t tell.

  The Kid was young and unscarred. He was fresh from Hive City, or so Fenks had heard. He fancied himself a master gunner, and had killed a fair few fools since coming downhive. Mostly, he got them drunk, baited them into showdowns, and then looted and sold the bodies for corpse-starch. This was a different sort of game entirely.

  ‘Where’s Canter?’ he asked.

  The Kid shrugged. ‘He was behind me. What do we do? When they get here, I mean.’

  Fenks lifted his rifle and shrugged. ‘Shoot them.’

  ‘What if they don’t stop?’

  ‘Keep shooting them.’

  Debris fell from above. It pattered down softly at first, and then in great chunks as ancient stone buckled and snapped beneath industrial treads. The sound echoed like thunder through the ancient transit tunnel, and the reverberations of the machine’s passing shook centuries of dust from the rusted gantries overhead.

  ‘Sounds big,’ the Kid said.

  ‘The bigger they are,’ Fenks muttered. The plan was a simple one. Krak mines had been scattered across the tunnel. Bogdan swore they were still functional, even if they were close to a century old. Once the ore-hauler struck a mine, it’d stop. Hopefully it’d do more than that, but looking at it, Fenks wasn’t optimistic. Once it was no longer moving, they’d hit it with everything they had.

  But as the ore-hauler came into sight, Fenks’ breath caught in his throat. It was a brute of a machine. A marvel of function over form. Its broad, wedge-shaped hull was capable of breaching the debris-slides that often blocked the older tunnels. And what it couldn’t smash through, its treads could carry it over.

  ‘Emperor’s teeth,’ he muttered. A normal ore-hauler was an imposing prospect. This one might as well have been a battle tank. Heavy plates of furnace-iron had been welded to the hull, reinforcing its frame. Lines of scripture had been etched into these armour plates by heat and acid. Tool-blisters had been replaced with stub-cannon mounts, and archaic vox-casters had been attached to the canopy. A constant stream of prayers and hymns echoed from these, heralding the vehicle’s coming to any who might be listening.

  ‘Why are they screaming?’ the Kid asked, eyes squeezed shut.

  ‘It’s singing,’ Fenks said, between gritted teeth. ‘What they call singing.’

  Vents along its dorsal canopy spewed black smoke, as augur-nodes oscillated, scanning its immediate area. Normally, those sensors would be keyed to potential avalanches, cave-ins and deadfalls. But at the moment, they were doubtless seeking more immediate threats, hidden among the pipes and crumbling entry hatches that ran to either side of the tunnel.