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Kal Jerico: Sinner's Bounty – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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CHAPTER ONE

BACK IN THE SUMP

‘Oh, scav.’

Kal Jerico was already dropping into a crouch as the exclamation left his mouth. The axe was little more than a rusty fan blade lashed to a length of bone, and it cut the air with a thin whistle. With no Kal to stop it, the makeshift weapon continued its arc unimpeded, burying itself in a steam pipe. A boiling fug gushed, filling the causeway corridor.

Kal cursed again and fired one of his laspistols in the general direction of the axe-wielding mutie. He threw himself aside as a second cannibal erupted from a side corridor opposite him, autogun blazing. The newcomer wasn’t aiming, just shooting. A fine old underhive tradition – fill the air with enough lead, you were bound to hit something.

‘Scabbs,’ Kal snarled. Then, ‘Yolanda!’ The only answer he received was more shooting. No sign of his partners anywhere. Slugs perforated support struts, and the causeway gave an audible groan. It only remained aloft thanks to centuries of rust and a bit of luck.

Kal shoved himself across the floor, returning fire with more enthusiasm than accuracy. No time to worry about where the others were now. Not when he could hear the whoops and howls of his attackers, as they raced up creaking gantry stairs or shimmied down through broken transit shafts. He needed to be elsewhere, and quickly.

The fug began to thin, leaving a greasy residue on the air. The mutie with the axe was down, having caught a slug meant for Kal. But the other one was still standing, curses dripping from his blistered lips as he struggled to clear a jam in the autogun’s firing chamber. Kal rose to his feet, laspistol extended. The mutie froze, staring.

Kal winked, and shot him.

A moment later, he was running down the causeway, the rest of the cannibals in pursuit. Kal fired in his wake without looking. At worst, the volley would slow the fastest ones down. At best, he might kill one or two, and the rest would stop to eat them.

The causeway was a long stretch of rusty iron and sodden ferrocrete – one of a dozen extending across the upper reaches of the ruined hab-dome. Phosphorescent flora climbed the struts and girders that held the causeway in place, and slow drifts of glimmering pollen hung heavy on the air. The causeway was crumbling in places. Wide gaps made the path treacherous, but Kal was an old hand at running for his life in difficult terrain.

Even so, he was soon forced to holster his weapons. He needed his hands free to haul his lean frame along the more unstable sections of the causeway. But however cautious he was, he didn’t slacken his pace. The muties were hot on his heels, and they were hungry, by the sounds of it. Then, they were always hungry.

Of course, they also weren’t supposed to be this far south of Pipefall. Even as he ran, he wondered what had drawn them to this badzone. If the mutie tribes were moving south, that meant they were heading up from hive bottom, and that was bad for everyone. Bad, but also profitable. Mutie scalps were worth five credits apiece in Steelgate. Too bad there was no time to stop and collect a few.

He bounded over a chunk of rubble, his sword clanking against his legs, and saw that the path fell away into darkness ahead. Without slowing, he holstered his laspistols and darted out across a broken girder that extended partially over the gap. A tumble of torn hoses and conduits dangled over the empty space and as he reached the end of the girder, he leapt.

His intention, formed in the half-second before his leap, was to swing across the gap and land adroitly on the opposite side. Unfortunately, his weight pulled many of the artificial vines loose from their corroded housings. He found himself clinging desperately to a single length of electrical conduit, his momentum lost in his momentary flailing.

As he swung out over the gap, he glimpsed a forest of glowing flora below, and the polluted streams cutting through it. The lower levels of the hab-dome had collapsed under the weight of strange growths, and he could smell the sickly-sweet stink of toxic fumes. He heard a giggle, and saw that the muties had caught up with him.

They stared at him from the edge of the gap, eyeing him the way a rat eyed a hunk of meat. At least a dozen, maybe more. Starveling-thin, or bloated with cancerous tumours, they shifted and murmured, following him with their eyes as he swung gently from side to side. A few might have been licking their lips, but it was hard to tell, given the malformation of their faces. One of them looked down, picked up a length of pipe and jabbed at him.

‘Stop it,’ Kal said, kicking ineffectually at the pipe. The effort sent him in a slow circle. This seemed to amuse them, and more jabbing followed until he managed to kick the pipe out of the mutie’s grip. It clattered away into the dark below. They watched it fall, and then looked back up at him. Kal stared back at them.

Muties were the worst of the worst. The flotsam and jetsam of hive bottom, scraped out and churned up. Inbred, gripped by disease and malnutrition, they murdered, robbed and ate anyone they could catch. In Kal’s professional opinion, life in the underhive would have been vastly improved if every mutie was dead and their corpses safely incinerated.

Nonetheless, he tried an ingratiating smile. ‘So… what’s the cost of safe passage, these days? I’m all out of credits, but I’m always up for a bit of bartering.’

‘Nice boots,’ one of them grunted.

‘Nice coat,’ another wheezed.

‘Looks like he tastes nice, too,’ a third said, smacking her lips in a manner that was decidedly not lascivious. Heads nodded, and grunts of assent followed this assertion. Kal shook his head.

‘I warn you, I’m fairly certain I’m mostly gristle.’

‘Soft,’ a mutie crooned. ‘Soft uphiver. Smells so sweet.’

Kal began to regret taking his weekly bath so recently. It was just that a man wanted to look his best before going on a job. He had a reputation to maintain, after all. He was glad there was no one to witness him dangling here.

At the thought, he looked around, hoping to spot the familiar forms of his partners. They’d got separated when the muties had sprung their ambush. It was every man – or woman – for themselves in such situations, and Scabbs and Yolanda were experienced enough to look after themselves. Unfortunately, the muties had followed Kal, rather than the others.

‘Go find Scabbs,’ he said. ‘He’s slow and I’m sure that unsightly dermatitis of his will make him easy to chew.’ The muties, unfortunately, didn’t seem inclined to follow his advice. ‘No one ever listens to me,’ Kal muttered, as he spun slowly around and around. ‘I’m doomed to be unappreciated in my own time. Or eaten. Or both.’

He looked down, trying to gauge the distance to the bottom of the hab. Or even just to the glowing canopy of flora. But it was too far, even for someone with his luck. He looked up. The conduit wasn’t going to hold forever. There was no telling if it would last long enough for him to try and climb it. He was stuck, good and proper.

‘I admit, this is not a good day for the underhive’s greatest bounty hunter,’ he said, out loud. A mutie laughed and Kal made an obscene gesture. ‘Who asked you, you blister-faced sump-rat?’

One of them tossed a chunk of stone at him, and he drew a laspistol. Those closest drew back. Others levelled their own weapons.

‘Not the wisest option,’ Kal called out. ‘Shoot me and that’s your dinner gone.’ He gestured downwards meaningfully. ‘Wouldn’t want that, would you?’

The muties paused. Jaundiced gazes flickered back and forth, and they began to murmur among themselves. It soon took a heated turn. An exchange of blows swiftly followed. They were clearly at odds over the best course of action.

Kal used the opportunity to take stock of his surroundings. Experience had taught him that there was always a way out, if you had the wit to see it. He twisted about, looking for anything that might be of help.

The causeways stretched like a web of ferrocrete across the upper reaches of the dome. After centuries of neglect, toxic rains and hive quakes, most were little more than sections of skeletal struts and support beams. The cavernous slopes of the dome’s interior were a latticework of rotting walkways and abandoned transit shafts. Thousands of pipes jutted from among the ferrous escarpments, spilling sump-water down into the dark below. Hot slurry gushed ceaselessly through broken aqueducts, joining the rest of the spillage in torrential rivers of chemical toxicity.

In the distance, hidden by the steamy fug that rose from those slurry rivers, ancient mechanisms the size of battleships loomed like mountains of rusting slag. He’d heard stories to the effect that mutie tribes sometimes worshipped the primeval machines, but he’d never seen any evidence of it.

‘Picturesque, but unhelpful in the short term,’ Kal muttered as he blew a blond plait out of his face and turned his attentions to his immediate surroundings. As he’d expected, no sign of Scabbs or Yolanda. Not even any sign of Wotan, his loyal cyber-mastiff. Then, something had been a bit off about Wotan since he’d got his sprockets jangled during the… thing, the last time Kal had had the bad fortune to journey spirewards.

Thinking about the… thing made Kal even more desperate to escape. ‘You’ve been in worse situations, man,’ he said, out loud. ‘I mean, is this honestly worse than being – gah – married to Yolanda Catallus?’

Yolanda was an ideal partner in crime – most of the time – but as a partner in matrimony? He felt a shudder run through him at the thought. Yolanda was beautiful, in the same way that a Phyrr cat was beautiful – all the colours and general slinkiness hid a murderous temper. He’d once seen her beat a man to death with another, slightly smaller man. Then there were all the times she’d tried to kill him, either to collect one of the occasional bounties on his head or just because she’d been in a bad mood at the time.

And yet, there was something about her. A gutter-sheets poet of his acquaintance had once described her as Our Lady of the Underhive, in an ode to her fierce beauty. The poet had claimed that Yolanda was the underhive manifest – all its good points and bad, wrapped up in one tattooed package. Of course, when she’d heard about it, Yolanda had fed the poor bastard to a sumpkrok. Some people weren’t good with compliments.

But still, the thought lingered. Until he remembered where he was, and that now was definitely not the time to be thinking about Yolanda bloody Catallus. ‘Steady on, Kal,’ he muttered. ‘One problem at a time.’

The muties were still brawling. No one had started shooting yet, but it was only a matter of time. He spotted the girder he’d leapt from. He could just about reach it with his foot. He swung himself closer. If he could use it to boost himself, he might gain the momentum to swing to the other side.

But as his boot touched the girder, a mutie turned. Eyes wide, the mutant gabbled something unintelligible and swung a crude billhook out, trying to catch Kal’s ankle. Kal shot him, and swung backwards as the rest of the muties set up an ear-splitting caterwaul.

‘Backup would be nice,’ he shouted, hoping that someone might hear. ‘Anyone? No? Well scav you both!’ As he swung back towards the gathering muties, he fired again, not bothering to aim. The cannibals were so densely packed that he couldn’t fail to hit a few of them. But even as the wounded fell, the others pressed forwards, grabbing awkwardly for his legs or the edge of his coat.

‘Hands off the material, this is prime off-world leather,’ Kal snarled, as he lashed out with a boot and sent rotten teeth tumbling from a blistered mouth. He spun on his cable, swinging back out over the gap. The muties howled in frustration. Kal stretched out a foot, trying to hook a piece of broken pipe extending from the far side. He just missed it, and the motion sent him drifting back towards the muties. Another howl, this time of jubilation, stabbed at his ears. He spun in mid-air, his stomach lurching.

‘Shut up, shut up, shut up!’ He fired his laspistol again and again. ‘Slither back into your holes, because today isn’t your day, sump-scum. No one eats Kal Jerico.’ Leprous hands clawed at his trousers, and he thrashed his feet. ‘I said… back off!’ His grip on the conduit began to slip, and he quickly holstered his weapon. He looked up, wondering if he could reach the top before the conduit gave way. ‘Got to risk it. If the old plan doesn’t work, come up with a new one.’

He started to haul himself up, but the muties weren’t giving up so easily. He needed to get out of range of grabbing hands. He shifted his weight slightly, and the conduit swung away once more, out of easy reach.

A mutie held on a moment too long, and was dragged along with Kal as he swung back towards the opposite side. The mutant wailed in panic, mouldering paws clutching desperately at Kal’s legs. The creature was stick-thin, and wrapped in filthy bandages and rags that might once have been a cheap hazard suit. A ragged cowl covered his – her? – head, but for a mouth full of splintered, yellowing fangs.

Kal swatted at the mutant, trying to dislodge him. The conduit wouldn’t hold both of them, not for long. The mutie snarled and jerked a knife from his rags. They spun in an awkward gavotte as Kal caught the mutant’s bony wrist, narrowly preventing the knife from opening his belly. Dust and pollen sifted down from above, as the rubber casing of the conduit began to stretch and tear. Kal looked up.

‘Oh, scav me.’

The mutant twisted, trying to tear his hand loose from Kal’s grip. Kal tried to get a boot up between them, but found that such contortions were useless without any sort of leverage. As they spun faster and faster, the mutant lunged, jaws wide. If he couldn’t use his knife, he looked as if he was going to settle for getting a mouthful.

Just before the jaws reached him, the mutant’s head popped like a blister. He heard the shot that had killed his attacker a moment later. Kal wrenched the knife from the lifeless hand of the mutie a second before the body sagged and tumbled away. Someone was looking out for him after all. Not one to ignore opportunity’s call, Kal began to shimmy up the conduit while the muties were still trying to figure out what had just happened.

More shots pierced the gloom. He couldn’t tell where they were coming from, and neither could the muties. Most scattered, looking for cover. Some unlimbered antique weapons that even a Cawdor ganger would turn up his nose at and returned fire in all directions. But a few, with more hunger than sense, leapt for the conduit. It spun wildly as several of them caught it. One didn’t, and fell with a piteous wail. The others began to climb, their eyes fixed on Kal.

Kal climbed faster, muscles straining against gravity’s pull. Luckily, a cannibal’s diet wasn’t the best, and his pursuers weren’t as fast as he’d feared. A few tense moments later and he’d reached the thin framework of struts that stretched above the causeways. Despite a moment of vertigo, he managed to haul himself up off the conduit. He turned, rolled onto his stomach and began sawing away with the mutie’s knife.

It was hard going, but a bit of elbow grease and a hint of desperation was all it took to cut through the conduit sheath. The rubber slid down the metal, and he had a moment to appreciate the look of horror on the closest mutie’s blistered features as she suddenly lost her grip on the conduit and plummeted downwards. Screams rose as Kal’s pursuers fell away into the darkness. ‘Happy landings,’ he called out, and waved cheerfully.

Then, carefully, he began to clamber through the perilous canopy of rusted struts. Down below, the muties continued to shoot, but whoever had turned the tables on them had obviously got what they’d come for. Kal hoped whoever it was had a good explanation for leaving him hanging so long.

It took him some time, but he found his way down to the causeway below. A transit shaft had pulled away from the side of the dome and slumped against it. He swung himself down through the top of it, and picked his way down its length. One of the first lessons he’d learned in the underhive was how to climb quickly and safely. Down here there was no telling when you were going to need to move to higher ground, or, conversely, head for the safety of the lowest depths.

When he reached the bottom, he allowed himself to drop to the causeway. He landed in a crouch and turned. This part of the causeway resembled a forest of girders and support pillars, with a canopy of struts, conduits and rusty chains overhead. Though he could no longer see them, he could still hear the muties shooting at phantoms. He smirked. ‘Have fun,’ he muttered, as he rose to his feet.

From behind him, he heard the click of a weapon’s safety being disengaged.

Kal closed his eyes.

‘Oh, scav me.’

Click here to buy Kal Jerico: Sinner's Bounty.

A Black Library Publication

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

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Marta Nael.

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