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Red Salvage – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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Red Salvage

Josh Reynolds

The rapid booming of the autogun was loud in the close confines of the abandoned transit tunnel – a rhythmic thunder that doubled and redoubled itself as an ammunition drum was steadily emptied. Sheltering behind a fallen support girder, Kal Jerico closed his eyes, counting the moments until the noise finally ceased. Thunder faded. A few despairing clicks echoed through the tunnel, followed by a flurry of obscenities.

Kal grinned and stepped out into the open. ‘All done, Grisuh?’ he called out. ‘Got it out of your system now?’ The tunnel was a compact space made claustrophobic by partial collapse. Ruptured pipes spat steady streams of filthy water down through the convolutions of scattered rubble. Dead wires and torn cabling hung like vines, and the solar-powered lumen cells that provided light for the tunnel had dulled to shadowy dimness.

Despite the gloom, Kal had little difficulty spotting his quarry, high atop a collapsed heap of shattered gantries. Grisuh Battoon wore a coat the colour of jaundice, and his greying hair had been stiffened into a spiky halo about his narrow skull. The coat, like Grisuh himself, had seen better decades.

He was a narrow, stoop-shouldered old reprobate, and his hands visibly shook as he tried to reload the drum-fed autogun he’d just emptied in Kal’s general direction. ‘Scav you, Jerico,’ he shouted, fumbling with the weapon. ‘You’re not taking me back. I didn’t do anything! This is an illegal seizure.’

‘That’s for the adjurator in Girdercity to decide,’ Kal said, lazily. In contrast to his prey, Kal was relatively young, and the green, armoured coat he wore was of the highest quality despite the occasional bullet hole or scorch mark. Long hair, bound in plaits, framed a lean, wolfish face. He wore a sword sheathed at his side, and a top-shelf laspistol holstered on either hip. He let his hands rest on their grips as he strode towards Grisuh, ready to draw down if the old man decided to resist further. Not that he expected it. Battoon was at the end of his tether, and probably out of ammunition. ‘I’m just the middle man, Grisuh. This isn’t personal.’

‘They’ll send me to the mines!’

‘Maybe you should have thought of that before you robbed Honest Cabas,’ Kal drawled. He squinted, taking in the heap. It didn’t look very stable. It was amazing that it hadn’t already collapsed, given the way Grisuh was moving around. ‘Don’t do the crime and so on, and so forth.’

‘He’s a cheat,’ Grisuh snarled.

‘Obviously, especially with a name like that.’ Kal set a boot atop the lowest of the gantries. The pile creaked slightly and he paused, waiting for it to settle. ‘But he pays his tithes like everyone else. That means he’s entitled to swear out a warrant for your arrest and extradition. Which he did, and which I am now enacting. So come along quietly…’

‘That money was mine,’ Grisuh said, finally clicking the ammunition drum into place. Kal cursed and leapt to the side as Grisuh fired down at him. He scrambled through the mucky waters, ducking beneath a buckled outcropping of ferrocrete. Grisuh tried to track him, but the ferrocrete effectively hid Kal from view. ‘You hear me? It was mine!’

‘I hear you,’ Kal muttered. ‘Tried to handle this the easy way. Tried to be nice about it.’ He flinched as high-velocity rounds chewed into the outcrop, filling the air with splinters and dust. ‘Fine. Have it your way, Grisuh.’ He stuck two fingers in his mouth and loosed a piercing whistle.

There was an answering bark. Not an organic sound, but a clangorous metallic noise. Ferrocrete shifted as something heavy, but relatively small, arrowed across the field of rubble, straight towards Grisuh’s perch. Grisuh saw it coming and swung his autogun around. He unloaded the remainder of his drum on it, hitting it, but to no avail. Bullets ricocheted, careening off in whining arcs through the tunnel.

Kal peered out and watched in satisfaction as the four-legged form of his cyber-mastiff, Wotan, bounded up the pile towards the old man. Wotan was a machine construct, wrought in the form of a canid. There was nothing organic to the beast, but that hadn’t stopped Kal from treating it like a pet, rather than a tool.

Grisuh yelped in panic and flung his empty weapon at the cyber-mastiff. Wotan caught the gun in mid-air and bit through it with a loud crunch. Grisuh slid down the opposite side of the incline, cursing, just as Wotan reached the summit.

Kal moved to intercept his quarry. ‘Don’t run, Grisuh – you’ll only die tired,’ he called out. Grisuh wasn’t in the mood to listen. The old man took off like a rat, scrambling along the centre of the tunnel. Kal whistled for Wotan, and set off in pursuit.

As he followed the old man, he wondered where Grisuh thought he was going. The transit tunnel wasn’t long, and dead-ended at a vertical shaft that had once housed a lift-platform. Now it was home to various crawling things. Then, Grisuh wasn’t the sort to think ahead. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have been in the situation he was in.

Grisuh wasn’t really worth all this effort. He was just a thief, and not a particularly good one at that. And the bounty on him was probably less than what it had cost to find him. But it set a bad precedent to let a man go after he shot at you.

The tunnel was full of twists and turns, but Wotan stayed on Grisuh’s heels, herding him down one of the maintenance offshoots. Kal took it more slowly, and carefully. No reason to get winded chasing someone who wasn’t going to be running for much longer. Or worse. You had to watch where you were going down here. He’d lost more than one bounty when a scummer had broken their neck in a tunnel, or fallen into a hidden shaft.

Grisuh, on the other hand, wasn’t in the right frame of mind to pay attention to his surroundings. His bad luck. The arm came out of nowhere, long and lean-muscled, as the old man turned a corner. It caught Grisuh in the throat and he tumbled backwards, gagging. He rolled on the ground and clutched at his throat, as Wotan circled him, barking.

Kal caught up with them a moment later and pinned the old man in place with a boot. ‘I did warn you,’ he said, looking down at Grisuh. He looked up as one of his partners stepped into view. ‘And where were you while I was being shot at?’

‘Watching you get shot at,’ Yolanda Catallus said, as she holstered her autopistol. She was taller than Kal, and her bare shoulders and arms were thick with muscle. Her aristocratic features were covered by tribal gang tattoos that ran across her forehead and both cheeks, and her hair hung in long, somewhat filthy dreadlocks. She turned. ‘What about you, Scabbs?’

‘Watching you watching him get shot at,’ Scabbs said, mildly, as he stepped out into the open, from wherever he’d been lurking. He was shorter than both Kal and Yolanda. Beneath his lank, mud-coloured hair, his face was a mask of peeling eczema and various skin irritations. He carried a battered autogun in his grubby hands. He shifted the gun so that he could scratch at his scalp, causing a brief flurry of white flakes to tumble across his hunched shoulders.

‘You’re all heart, the pair of you,’ Kal said. He knocked his knuckles against Wotan’s head. ‘At least I have one friend.’

‘The automaton is literally programmed to serve you,’ Scabbs said, doubtfully.

Kal looked at him. ‘That’s what I just said.’ He holstered his pistol and looked down at Grisuh. ‘Caught your breath, Grisuh?’

‘She almost crushed my throat,’ the old man gargled. He tried to rise, but Kal shoved him back down.

‘You’re lucky I didn’t snap your spine,’ Yolanda said. ‘That’s what I usually do to people who run from me.’

‘Technically, he was running from me,’ Kal said.

Yolanda shrugged. ‘What’s the difference?’

‘Well–’ Scabbs began.

Yolanda spun, a warning finger extended towards Scabbs. ‘Don’t say it.’

Scabbs tried to look innocent. ‘Say what?’

‘Quiet, both of you,’ Kal said. ‘What are we going to do with him? Somehow, I think he’s going to be a handful to get back to Girdercity.’ Grisuh wasn’t the type to go quietly. He’d try to escape, the first chance he got.

‘You could let me go,’ Grisuh rasped, hopefully. Kal stomped on him, just hard enough to shut him up.

‘Easier just to carry his head,’ Yolanda said, looking down at the spluttering old man. She patted the chainsword sheathed on her hip meaningfully.

‘But think of the smell,’ Scabbs said.

Yolanda snorted. ‘It’s only a few days to Girdercity. It won’t even be properly juicy. Besides, we’ll wrap it in something.’ She peered down at Grisuh. ‘That coat of his looks absorbent. We’ll use that.’

Scabbs scratched his chin. ‘That might work.’

‘Sounds good to me. One of you can carry it though,’ Kal said. He stepped back and Grisuh rolled onto his back, desperation etched on his features.

‘Jerico – you can’t let them kill me,’ he said, grabbing at Kal’s legs. ‘It ain’t right!’

Kal shrugged. ‘But it’s efficient, and I’m lazy. Besides, you shot at me. I’m not really in the mood to be merciful.’ He used the toe of his boot to shove Grisuh back. ‘I gave you a chance to surrender. You chose the hard way.’

‘They always choose the hard way,’ Yolanda said, shaking her head. ‘That’s why I shoot first.’

‘Is that the reason?’ Kal asked, innocently. ‘I thought it was because you’re a back-shooting psychopath.’

Yolanda’s glare only lasted a moment, before she broke into a grin. ‘That too.’ She drew her chainsword. ‘Someone stretch his neck a bit. We want a clean cut.’

‘Wait, wait, wait!’ Grisuh cowered, his hands over his head. ‘I can make you rich!’

‘Did he say rich?’ Scabbs asked.

‘It’s a trick,’ Yolanda said, as she gave her blade a test swing.

Kal frowned. ‘Might be. Might not be.’ Grisuh was known for a lot of things. Lying wasn’t one of them. He nudged the old man with the tip of his boot. ‘Talk. Quickly.’

Grisuh looked up. ‘Red’s Gamble,’ he said.

‘Hunh,’ Kal said. Red’s Gamble was one of the more persistent legends of the underhive. A lost sump-trawler with a fortune of archeotech in its hold. Supposedly, it had been sunk during the mother of all hivequakes, and the treasure lost to the currents of the sump. Every so often, someone claimed to have found it, but it always turned out to be so much scav. Just another story in an underhive full of them.

Scabbs whistled. ‘That’s interesting.’

‘Definitely a trick,’ Yolanda said, dismissively. ‘Can I cut off his head now?’

‘Hold on,’ Kal said. He dropped to his haunches in front of Grisuh. ‘What about it?’

Grisuh swallowed. ‘I… I know where it is.’

‘Nobody knows where it is.’

‘Nobody but me.’

‘So why aren’t you rich?’ Kal asked, pointedly.

‘It’s not the sort of thing one man can do alone,’ Grisuh said, after a moment’s hesitation.

Kal smiled. ‘Keep talking.’

‘I was out on the sump, sifting the shallows, you know,’ Grisuh said, haltingly. Kal nodded. Lots of things wound up in the sump, from all over Hive Primus. Sometimes they even washed up close to shore. Slime-sifting was often a good way to make a quick credit, if you didn’t mind the smell. ‘Found something.’

Kal gestured. ‘Speed it up, Grisuh. We’ve got places to be, heads to deliver.’

Grisuh blanched. ‘I-I saw something. Out on the sump. Remember that hivequake a week or so back?’

‘Yeah.’ Hivequakes were a regular occurrence, this far down. Ratskins claimed it was the doing of the hive spirits. Kal wasn’t a believer in spirits. It seemed more likely that it was a result of the ever-increasing weight of the upper hive causing the lower levels to buckle and shift. Regardless, every few days, tremors would ripple through the underhive – some fairly gentle, others violent.

This last one had been violent indeed. Whole hab-zones had vanished, swallowed up by the convulsing hive. Kal had even spilled a bottle of Wild Snake during the worst of it. The thought of all that wasted alcohol still sent a pang of regret coursing through him. Sad times.

Grisuh went on. ‘There are places where the sump drained – cracks in the fundament, burst filter-caps, whatever. Lakes turned into mudflats, rivers made into gullies. You know what I mean.’ He shook his head. ‘I was out on the sump when the quake hit. I thought I was going to die. The fundament shifted, mountains of rock and pipe rose as the waters dropped.’ His voice went soft. ‘And there she was.’

‘Red’s Gamble,’ Kal said.

Grisuh nodded, and gestured. ‘Perched – no, impaled – on a spike of ferrocrete taller than a sump-tower. It rose at an angle, like, and hung over the tidal flats. Must have got hooked on the stone, invisible until the water dropped.’ He rubbed his face nervously. ‘Sump-waters are already starting to rise, though. It’ll be gone again, taken by the current, if we don’t get to it quick.’

‘There are a lot of wrecks under the sump,’ Yolanda said. ‘How do you know this one is Red’s Gamble?’

‘I saw the ident-tag, didn’t I?’ Grisuh said, sounding insulted.

‘So where is it?’ Scabbs said.

‘I’m not telling you that,’ Grisuh said quickly. ‘I need guarantees, Jerico.’ He looked pleadingly at Kal. ‘I’ll lead you there. I can’t do it alone.’ He looked around, his expression becoming sly. ‘But maybe… us together… a four-way split?’

‘Three ways, and you go free,’ Kal said, after a glance at the others.

Grisuh frowned. ‘That’s not fair.’

‘Life’s not fair. Call it a lesson and move on.’ Kal reached down and dragged him to his feet. ‘Now… where’s this boat of yours at?’

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A Black Library Publication

First published in Underhive in Great Britain in 2019 by Black Library.
This eBook edition published in 2020 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

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