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Sanction & Sin – Extract

A Black Library Imprint

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UP IN ARMS

MIKE BROOKS

You can find better drinks in Urgeyena than in Davnan Pul’s club, but I wasn’t there for the liquor. I’d based myself in Pul’s when I first started making a name for myself in this part of Varangantua, and so that’s where I was to be found to this day. It suits me well enough, and I’m far from the only person conducting business there. Pul doesn’t mind – I buy drinks while I wait, and my employers buy drinks when they come to talk to me. In fact, I won’t talk to anyone unless they buy a drink first. Got to keep Pul sweet.

The club itself is larger than it looks at first, and ranges over a few different floors and mezzanines. It’s got dark, discreet nooks where people can grab a quiet drink or discuss a little business without being out in the open in front of everyone, but the main floor has brighter lumens overhead, so you can choose if you want to be seen. Most people aren’t there for anything other than a kick of alcohol to chase the weariness of a shift in the manufactorum, or maybe a bit of fun with whoever might be similarly minded, but that’s all for the best. You wouldn’t want an entire place where everyone’s cutting deals. You’d end up standing on each other’s toes.

I had a bottle of jeneza in front of me, but I was pacing myself. I was here to see if any business presented itself, not to get drunk. You might wonder why I’d choose to lurk in a bar where I have to pay for the drinks rather than spend time at home, but I do a lot of things for a lot of people, and sooner or later that’s inevitably going to rub someone up the wrong way. Best not to invite trouble to your door.

I don’t actually have a registered address anywhere in Varangantua’s arcane records system, thanks to a favour I did for an Administratum scribe. Deslan would get fired if his deception was found out, of course, but his gratitude runs so deep he’s prepared to take the risk. His son’s organs would have ended up on the black market without my intervention, after all.

We won’t talk about what happened afterwards to the organs of the thugs who’d snatched him off the street, but let’s just say I placed my shots carefully.

‘Sorena?’

I looked up, and didn’t bother to suppress my smile. Jarv Korden was a familiar face, and not an unpleasant one. I gestured at the empty seat opposite.

‘Good to see you, Jarv. Take the weight off.’

He didn’t move, and I felt my smile slip a little. Jarv was part of Targus Syndicate, a quasi-legal, semi-respectable conglomerate of money-spinning enterprises, with its fingers in more ration packs than a workhouse of orphans. However, the powerhouse of their operation was the munitions that Urgeyena churned out. The vast majority were destined for off-world, of course – mainly my erstwhile siblings in the Astra Militarum, or the security forces of the Imperial Navy – but Targus skimmed a percentage off the top and had become a big player by moving them on the streets. A whole lot of people wanted guns in Varangantua, and Targus could make that happen for a price.

Targus would be bad people to have mad at me, so I was a little concerned when Jarv didn’t take the seat I’d offered him.

‘Heard a disturbing rumour about you, Sorena,’ Jarv said. He had one thumb tucked into his belt and, other than his drink, nothing that looked like a weapon anywhere near to hand… yet.

‘What would that be?’ I enquired, casually switching my bottle of jeneza to my right hand and lowering my left so it brushed against my thigh. Pul didn’t allow guns in his club, but there wasn’t a person alive who could part me from my combat knife.

‘Heard you did a job for someone a couple of weeks ago,’ Jarv said. He was eyeing me, and not in the usual way – watching me, not looking at me.

‘I do a lot of jobs for a lot of people, Jarv,’ I told him, ‘and you know I don’t discuss details. But what’s got you worried?’

‘Word is that job meant Piotr Tarsh and three of his scummers aren’t walking around any more,’ Jarv said uneasily. He raised his eyebrows. ‘You doing hits now, Sorena?’

I sighed. ‘Sit down, Jarv.’ He didn’t move. I clucked my tongue in frustration, deliberately placed both hands on my bottle and nodded at the chair opposite me. ‘You wanna have this conversation? Sit. Down.’

He stepped closer, then finally lowered his arse into the chair and faced me across the table. His short dark hair was mussed upwards slightly, which suited him, and he wore a casual suit jacket with a hint of off-world style to it over a low-necked top that showed off his collarbones. His nose was very slightly crooked, and there was a small scar at the corner of his left eye. I’d never found out if those marks had come from his work for Targus or just from a street brawl, but either was possible. Jarv wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty if needed, although from what I could gather, he took little pleasure in it.

‘My work hasn’t changed,’ I told him seriously. ‘I’m a fixer. I do jobs. If obstacles present themselves, I eliminate them. That’s the long and short of it.’

‘And Piotr Tarsh was an obstacle?’ Jarv demanded.

‘He made himself into one,’ I said bluntly. ‘I was moving cargo – don’t ask me what – and it seems Piotr wanted a piece of what I was carrying. That would have meant I didn’t get paid, so I took exception to that.’ I took a swig of my jeneza, relishing the dark, malty flavour. ‘I’m not a contract killer, Jarv. Never have been, never will be.’

That had been a dirty few minutes. A hail of gunfire, a screaming face as Cratton Tarsh’s only son tried to smash my window. I’d put a las-bolt through his head before I’d even realised who he was.

‘Piotr Tarsh tried to rob you?’ Jarv said incredulously.

I shrugged. ‘He might not have even known it was me. Besides, no one ever accused him of being smart, just nasty. We all know his sister got the brains.’ The Tarshes weren’t a respectable outfit like Targus Syndicate, but they were a damned sight more vicious. I’d been watching my back ever since.

Jarv rubbed his chin. ‘Well, that changes things, I guess.’

I raised an eyebrow. ‘It does?’

Jarv nodded. ‘Yeah. The barons wanted to hear your side of what went down. A few people would have been concerned if you’d become an assassin.’

I cocked an eyebrow. ‘Don’t tell me the high and mighties would be getting nervous about me.’

Jarv looked uneasy. ‘They didn’t get where they are by ignoring threats, Sorena, and if you’d started taking hit contracts, freelancer as you are… well, you might just become a threat. But it’s just business as usual?’

‘Business as usual,’ I confirmed.

‘Then maybe we can do business,’ Jarv said, and smiled for the first time that evening. ‘Got us a cargo that needs moving to Saltstone, plus one of us to take payment. A small load, but valuable.’

I nodded. Knowing Targus, it would be guns and ammo – I didn’t need to know exactly what. All I needed to do was get it from one place to the other without the Lex seizing it. ‘Anything unusually heavy?’

‘Not unless you count Mirea,’ Jarv said with a snort. ‘But no, she ain’t.’

I paused, my bottle halfway to my mouth. ‘Mirea?’

‘New girl,’ Jarv said. ‘She’s learning.’

‘And you figure the best way for her to do that is to come on a delivery?’

Jarv snorted a laugh. ‘Who better to learn from than the best?’

I grunted. ‘I’m not a babysitter, Jarv.’

‘She’s no baby,’ Jarv objected. ‘She’s not a data-scribe – she’s from my side of the organisation. She’s just new. She’ll see a bit more of the operation this way. Besides, would you prefer to take Ugan to make the deal?’

I grimaced. You could bathe Ugan Wrodin for a day in fresh water and cleansers and he’d still be oilier than a Chimera’s gearbox. Besides, it was Targus’ deal – if one of theirs was there, I didn’t have to barter on their behalf with whoever was buying, which was fine by me.

‘Fine, fine. I’ll take the new kid.’

In the five years I’ve spent in Varangantua, I’ve come to realise it has a real variety of shadows. There are the long, tired shadows cast during the day by its old red sun, and the dusty, forgotten shadows of the abandoned parts, home to vermin and old memories. There are the clean-edged, overlapping shadows cast by a multitude of different lumens at night, and the cloying, muffling shadows where secret business is conducted. Darkness is Varangantua’s natural state, and it’s where people like me thrive.

However, my least favourite sort of shadows are the ones that contain people holding guns, and when I pulled my Zalamar into the loading bay of the Targus warehouse in High Ledge, strong white lumens snapped on overhead that left a lot of darkness around the edges. The Zalamar was a monster – it had to be, to resist local hazards like acid rain, chemical effluent, bad roads and worse drivers – but its strength was in its engine, which a genius named Sevastian Dex had tweaked to the very limits of performance. It could turn a stray round or two, but it wasn’t armour-plated. I was illuminated, and I had an urge to pull on the pair of photo goggles I keep handy to see if I had company.

I resisted, because only a few seconds after the lumens lit up, Jarv appeared in my field of view followed by a cargo-servitor bearing several packing cases. If Targus had lured me here to take me out, Jarv wouldn’t be walking out into the middle of it.

He was trailed by a woman I assumed was the Mirea he’d mentioned, and I sized her up quickly. Medium height, medium build, with half her scalp shaved and the hair on the other half worked into a long braid that hung down past her shoulder. She had a chunky autopistol in a hip holster, and a swagger that suggested she wasn’t as confident as she was trying to seem. She was young, but not a child. That didn’t necessarily mean a lot, because I’d seen juvies pick up guns to defend their families, and grown adults who’d wet themselves in fear, but Targus weren’t the sort to tolerate dead weight. Despite my words to Jarv, if they were willing to let her represent them, she had to have at least some clue what she was about. Still, it never hurts to express some reluctance to your potential employer. It helps keep your prices high.

I popped the cargo hold, leaving the door to rise with a mechanised whine, then opened the driver’s door and stepped out. ‘Jarv.’

‘Sorena,’ he replied. ‘You all set?’

‘Wouldn’t be here otherwise.’ I looked past him. ‘You must be Mirea.’

‘Sure am,’ she said. Her eyes licked over me, sizing me up. I don’t look like much, but that’s sort of the point. I try not to draw attention to myself. Plasweave and synthleather over my armoured bodysuit, and to hide some of my more noticeable scars. Imperial Guard muscle, and hair so short it’s nearly my old military buzz cut. The Zalamar is the flashiest thing about me, and I’d tone that down if I could, but you can’t easily get that sort of performance out of a more standard-looking vehicle.

‘I don’t know you, so here are the rules,’ I told her bluntly, and watched her face fall. ‘My job is to get you and the merchandise to where you need to go. Once we get to the other end, that’s your responsibility. For as long as we’re travelling, you do as I say. If I say duck, you duck. If I say we’re stopping, we’re stopping. If we’ve stopped and I say we need to get back to the groundcar, you get back to the groundcar. You disobey me when you’re in my vehicle, you disobey your barons who hired me to get you there, because they know how I work, and they hired me all the same. You understand me?’

Mirea threw a questioning glance at Jarv, who looked steadily back at her. ‘I think Sorena asked you something, Mirea,’ he prompted.

‘I understand you,’ she muttered in my direction. ‘Anything else?’ she added a moment later, sarcastically.

‘Yeah. No lho-sticks – the machine-spirit doesn’t like it.’ I beckoned to Jarv’s servitor. ‘Follow me.’

‘Follow her,’ Jarv clarified to it, and it did so. He came around to the Zalamar’s cargo hold as well, but I held my hand up to stop him when he tried to pick up one of the crates. He laughed. ‘You don’t trust me, Sorena?’

‘Weight distribution is my job,’ I told him seriously. ‘I can’t have the car’s balance thrown off if I need to get creative.’

Jarv sighed. ‘You really are a pain to work with, you know that?’

‘Yup.’ I flashed him a grin. ‘It’s why I get the results.’

‘And we can’t argue with those,’ Jarv conceded as I began to load up. The rad shielding I’d installed on the last job had things fitting more snugly than it would have before, but a little less room to slide around is only a good thing when you’re running munitions. A knock or two should have been fine, but there’s no such thing as a guaranteed smooth ride in Varangantua, and sometimes I have to get creative.

‘Ready,’ I announced, closing up and heading back to the driver’s door, still shadowed by Jarv and his servitor. I jerked my head at Mirea. ‘You getting in, or what?’

‘Am I allowed?’ she sneered, but she skulked to the passenger door without me having to dignify her question with a response. The door clunked shut behind her, and I turned to Jarv.

‘I hate to be so mercenary,’ I said, completely insincerely, ‘but… my payment?’

‘Here you go.’ Jarv passed me a fat pouch, and didn’t even tut when I opened it to check it was all there. I prefer to deal in physical formats when the amounts are manageable. The odds of some lexator savant trawling through my accounts isn’t likely, but if it ever does happen, I’d prefer there to be as little obvious evidence of where my money comes from, and in what quantities, as possible.

I tucked the pouch away. ‘No speech about how good it would be for me to join Targus properly, instead of living my dangerous freelance life?’

He half smiled. ‘I know a lost cause when I see one. Drive safe, Sorena.’

I touched my index finger to my temple and flipped it towards him. I’d saluted a rogue’s gallery of bastards, incompetents and even one or two actual heroes during my time in the Astra Militarum, so I could spare one for a man whom I personally respected, in the Varangantua way.

By which I mean, everything could have changed by the morning.

I got back into the Zalamar, where Mirea was sitting somewhat sullenly.

‘Ready?’ I asked.

I didn’t wait for her to respond before I threw it into reverse.

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Warhammer Crime

A Black Library Imprint

First published in Great Britain in 2021.
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Cover illustration by Micha McMahon.

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