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Underhive: A Necromunda Anthology – Extract

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UNDERHIVE

A Necromunda Anthology

Ten shells in each mag, manstopper and scatter, sucking sour air through the respirator. Knees bent, crouched behind a half-demolished wall, lost in the shadows cast by a single flickering lumen. The girls all around, similarly hidden from even her view, waiting on the guests that Breen had promised would be coming this way. Once upon a time this hab dome in Necromunda’s Hive Primus would have undoubtedly rung to the sounds of heavy industry, but no more. An uncontrollable fire had supposedly broken out, decades or even centuries ago, burning buildings and critically weakening gantries and walkways, and leaving thick mounds of chem-dust and corpse ash everywhere. Even the most unofficial attempts to repopulate it had failed: the atmosphere was still just too toxic for humans to survive in for long. However, the main thoroughfares remained fairly clear, providing a good route along which to move heavy cargo if you didn’t mind taking a risk on your lungs.

‘Jarene.’

Larina. Barely more than a kid, her face would have still held the plumpness of youth if she’d been eating well enough. As it was, her close-shaved head, pale skin and sunken eyes gave her the look of a skeleton-in-waiting. Could be, for all Jarene knew. Juves didn’t eat until the rest of the Wild Cats had taken their fill, and that sometimes didn’t leave much. Elena Wild believed in keeping the kids hungry; kept them keen, she reckoned. Keen to prove themselves, keen to get recognition, keen to get a bigger share. And if they died, so what? Plenty more where they came from. There were innumerable Escher girls in Hive City who would view the choice between a future of eighteen-hour shifts in the chem-factories until they died from old age or toxin build-up, or picking up a gun and fighting their way into legend in the underhive, as no choice at all.

‘What?’ Jarene asked, feeling the warmth of her breath reflected back onto her lips by the mask she wore. She’d been a Larina not so many years ago, when the fights she’d always got embroiled in had started involving knives and the Enforcers had come looking for her. Then it was time to go downhive. Her, Elena and Kay-Kay had started this gang, but Elena had always come up with the best plans.

‘We sure they coming?’ Larina whispered. Her flak vest was too big for her, but it’d do its job well enough. Better too big than too small, as Kay-Kay always said. It just meant that when Larina crouched down, like now, the neckline of the vest rode up to swallow her chin like she was a sump-turtle trying to retreat into its shell.

‘Breen’s not been wrong before,’ Jarene told her. ‘She always know what going down. I’d swear she Delaque, if she didn’t have too much hair.’

‘But–’

‘Hush.’ Jarene dug into a pouch and pulled out half a protein bar. ‘Here.’

Larina fell on it like a ripperjack, stuffing it into her mouth with one hand and chewing frantically. The other hand still clutched her autopistol, because she’d feel the butt of Jarene’s shotgun in her forehead if she put her gun away when they were waiting for visitors. The Wild Cats had no time for those who lacked focus.

A shifting of shadows, a glimmer of approaching light through the fusty gloom, and Jarene felt a tingle run through her body. Not excitement exactly, but not fear either. Expectation, perhaps. Awareness. Awareness that they’d shortly be rich – in that they could eat comfortably for a few days, buy ammo without needing to haggle or prioritise, and maybe snag a few little comforts and luxuries – or, equally, might shortly be bleeding or dead.

She elbowed Larina in the ribs. ‘Eyes on.’

Larina swallowed hurriedly and noisily, and brought her autopistol up. The gun looked huge in her hands, but maybe that was because her cable-thin arms didn’t seem like they should be able to hold it steady. They couldn’t, always, but that was probably just nerves.

The caravan came closer, the beams of luminators marking its progress. Three wagons, Breen had said. Three wagons pulled by two haulage servitors apiece, wired in and non-combat. Two guards to a wagon, plus the caravan master. Six gun hands, maybe seven, whereas the Wild Cats had nine. Closer to even than they’d have liked, but the payoff should be worth it. Iron ore was the main part of the cargo, apparently, and too bulky to be worth stealing, but there should be aconite crystals too, possibly even ghast.

Now the wagons came into view. Three of them, as promised. Squat, blocky, ugly things made of sheet metal and rivets, with seats for two guards on top and large, rugged wheels designed to make the best of the underhive’s treacherous terrain. Even so, they couldn’t take all the paths available to parties simply made up of pack slaves on foot. They’d traded off versatility for sheer volume of haulage.

It made it easy to predict their route. To set an ambush.

The servitors were visible now, plodding mechanically along. No arms, the bar of the yoke passing straight through their sternums, legs replaced by bionics with hydraulic claws for feet to get the best grip through the drifts of underhive dust or puddles of sludge. Jarene suppressed a shudder at the sight of their unthinking gait. Dead-eyed, dead-brained shells of people. She’d rather her body fed the rats and the ripperjacks than end her days as a servitor, no matter what they said about the automatons having no memory of who they used to be.

The caravan reached the spot the gang had agreed on. Jarene sprang up out of cover and aimed her shotgun at the closest wagon, and all around her the ruins of the shanty town suddenly sprouted guns as her sisters responded to the same cue.

‘Hold it!’ Elena bellowed, training her bolter-needler on the caravan. The guards Jarene could see froze, save for their heads, luminators casting beams here and there as their wearers looked around and realised they’d suddenly become sitting rats. They hadn’t been as alert as they should have. Going for a gun would be tantamount to suicide.

The servitors, however, kept plodding. They were incapable of independent thought, and none of their owners on the wagons had given them an instruction.

‘She said hold it!’ Larina screamed at the still-advancing wagons, her voice edged with panic. Jarene drew in breath to tell the juve to shut up, that they’d stop in a moment, to stay quiet and let Elena handle the talking.

Larina opened fire.

The autopistol went off with a rattle, sending a spray of small-calibre shells at the wagons. Sparks flew and the Wild Cats ducked instinctively as ricochets spanged off into the darkness. A servitor staggered as a hydraulic or important piece of circuitry was hit. Jarene swore and drove the stock of her shotgun into the side of Larina’s head, dropping her, but the damage was done.

The guards might have frozen when violence was merely threatened, but they weren’t going to just sit still once some freakhead juve had started trying to waste them. They drew their guns and began firing back.

‘Down!’ White Eye shouted from somewhere off to the left and Jarene threw herself to the ground, landing uncomfortably on top of the semi-stunned Larina. White Eye must have hit her detonator only a second later, because the frag trap the old woman had half-buried in a dust drift went up with a flash and a roar. Jarene scrambled back to her feet, chambering a manstopper round and assessing the situation with an expert eye.

The lead wagon had been tipped over by the force of the blast, its servitors now little more than shredded meat and twisted metal. One of the guards didn’t seem much better off, but the other must have been largely shielded by the wagon’s bulk, as she’d been thrown clear and was clawing in the dust for her lasgun.

Jarene sighted for half a second, then blew the guard’s head apart.

The chatter of autogun fire, the bark of White Eye’s shotgun. The cracking hiss of another lasgun rang out and was answered by the distinctive roar of Elena’s bolter, to little obvious effect. Then a screaming shadow sprang out of the gloom and bodily tackled another guard from the front of a wagon, down into the dust. Quinne landed atop her victim and raised her crackling powerblade, apparently oblivious to the second guard, whose stubber was now tracking towards the back of her head.

Jarene’s heart leapt and she fired from the hip, but her shot went wide. She opened her mouth to scream a useless warning to Quinne and braced herself for the muzzle flash – surely he couldn’t miss at that range…

Half of the guard’s upper body disappeared as Elena’s bolter found its mark this time, and Quinne stabbed downwards to finish off her own opponent without having her brains blown out. Beyond her, the guards of the rearmost wagon were suddenly enveloped in a hissing cloud of gas and fluid as Kay-Kay’s chem-thrower hosed them down. Jarene ran forwards, ignoring the suddenly retching duo. Someone else would make sure they didn’t cause any more trouble.

She grabbed Quinne by the bicep and hauled her upright. ‘You trying to get yourself sumped?’

Quinne grinned at her, her eyes and teeth points of bright, bloodthirsty mischief in her death’s head face paint. ‘Knew you’d have my back, Jay.’

Jarene swallowed a sudden surge of bile. ‘Elena made the shot. I missed.’ It was bad enough that she’d thought Quinne had been reckless. It was worse to find out that Quinne had trusted Jarene to cover her, and Jarene had failed.

Quinne shrugged, apparently unbothered. ‘Still alive. All that matters, right?’

‘Not even wearing your respirator,’ Jarene muttered. In answer, Quinne reached up and tugged Jarene’s mask off, causing the straps to tangle in her hair, then grabbed the back of Jarene’s head and pulled her in for a kiss. Jarene got a momentary taste of the chalky paste on Quinne’s lips that mimicked a skull’s teeth, and a brief flash of whatever Empress-forsaken booze she’d had a slug of before they’d laid their ambush, and then Quinne drew back, smiling.

‘You worry too much, Jay.’

A door of the nearest wagon slammed open, metal clanging off metal as it hit the wagon’s frame, and a hooded shape leapt out. Quinne whirled, her powerblade crackling to life again and her stiletto knife, the twin of the one sheathed at the small of Jarene’s back, suddenly in her off-hand and held low and ready. Jarene brought her shotgun up, determined not to fail her partner a second time.

Kay-Kay’s shock whip lashed out and wrapped around the hooded figure’s throat, arresting its attempted flight. The figure’s hands flew up to grab the constricting cord, and in the low light Jarene saw something glinting on its chest.

‘Wait!’ she shouted at Kay-Kay, but it was too late. Her old friend flicked a switch and electrified the whip, and the figure collapsed into a spasming heap. A couple of moments later the thrashing had devolved into nothing more than twitching, the muscles reacting to the current still coursing through them but the body now dead in all other respects.

Now Kay-Kay shut the power off. Jarene saw her cock her head, her eyes reflecting puzzlement above the lurid designs painted on her own respirator.

‘What?’

Jarene edged past Quinne, avoiding her partner’s powerblade, and knelt down next to the body. She tasted the acrid stench of the remains of Kay-Kay’s chem-blast and clamped her respirator over her face: a blinding headache would be the least of her troubles if she breathed in any more of that, even just wisps of it.

She set her shotgun down and pulled back the robes; heavy, ornate things they were, denoting an individual of considerable wealth and resources, at least by the standards of the underhive. And that wasn’t surprising when she found what she thought she’d seen reflecting the light, the thing she’d most feared to see.

A Guilder badge.

‘Oh, skut.’ Jarene got up and backed away from the corpse instinctively, but uselessly.

‘What is it?’ Elena Wild rounded a wagon, her combi-weapon held ready. The other Wild Cats were appearing now. Everyone seemed unhurt; apart from Quinne they’d all hung back, leaving the guards with nothing but shadows to shoot at. Now Kay-Kay and Sorcha were examining the Guilder’s body, and Jarene heard them both mutter curses of their own.

‘’S a Guilder, boss,’ Jarene told Elena, feeling her stomach twist. ‘We scragged a Guilder.’

Elena’s face settled into the blank mask that Jarene had long since worked out meant that somewhere behind her eyes, the leader of the Wild Cats was screaming in rage.

‘We what?’

‘Got a badge,’ Jarene said helplessly. ‘Legit. This a Guilder caravan.’

‘Jacques,’ Sorcha said from behind her, her finger tracing along the Guilder’s badge. Most Escher girls could read to some extent, mainly because those who couldn’t decipher chem-labels tended to die early. ‘Yanai Jacques. Anyone heard of her?’

There was a general muttering and uncomfortable shuffling. No one had, but that didn’t matter. A Guilder was a Guilder, and a dead Guilder meant fast trouble. Lord Helmawr’s Enforcers could be avoided, with some effort; the Merchant Guild were everywhere, trading the goods that virtually everyone relied on, and for all their infighting they had a zero-tolerance policy on violence towards their members.

‘Why in the name of the Abyss did the kid start shooting?’ Elena demanded, rounding on Jarene. ‘Was s’posed to be a stick-up, not a shoot-out!’

Jarene shrugged. ‘Panicked, I guess. That ain’t the problem now.’ She gestured to the carnage around them. ‘We ain’t hiding this. Even if we ditch the bodies, we can’t lose the wagons so easy.’

Elena glared at her. ‘Yeah, I know. Don’t mean it has to be linked to us, though.’ She raised her voice. ‘Leave the dead, and their stuff. We don’t want to be seen with it. Take what you can carry easy from the wagons, only the most valuable! Rayvenne, Downpipe!’ She pointed at Guilder Jacques’ body. ‘Hide that one, but before you do, mess her up proper. Don’t want anyone to see it was a shock whip what killed her, even if she gets found.’ She hissed in frustration and rolled her left shoulder; Jarene heard the joint click, an old injury from a Goliath wrench. ‘Anyone tell anyone, and I mean anyone, that they was coming here to do this?’

The gang shook their heads as one. Loose lips emptied clips, as the old saying went. You told someone outside the gang where you were going or what you were doing, odds were you’d have to fight someone else off your score before you were done.

‘You know there’s one,’ Jarene said quietly.

‘Breen,’ Elena replied, nodding, then turned the movement into a shake of her head. ‘Can’t believe it. She been good, for years. Why would she set us up?’

Jarene felt her eyebrows rise in shock. ‘You think she did that deliberate?’

‘That girl the best source this side of Filth Pond,’ Elena said sadly. ‘No way she know about this but not know it a Guilder train. Breaks my heart, but she don’t just decide to sump us off her own back. Someone got to her.’

Jarene nodded. It made a certain amount of sense. ‘What we gonna do?’

Elena licked her lips, like she always did when she was thinking. ‘We’ll tidy up here. You take your girl and go see Breen. Find out who put her up to this – don’t care how you do it.’ She sighed. ‘Then make sure she never do it again.’

Jarene swallowed, but nodded once more.

‘Get going,’ Elena told her, looking around. ‘I’m gonna go find that kid, see if she can give me a good reason why I don’t scrag her myself here and now.’ She strode off towards where Jarene had left Larina nursing her head.

Quinne came up behind Jarene, slid an arm across her shoulders. Jarene squeezed her around the waist in return, taking momentary comfort from her partner’s warm, solid presence.

‘Tell me again,’ she murmured, ‘about how I worry too much?’

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A Black Library Publication

Wanted: Dead first published in 2018.
‘Death’s Head’, ‘Dirty Dealings’, ‘Burned’, ‘Emp-Rah’s Eye’, ‘Scar Crossed’ and ‘Once a Stimm Queen’ first published digitally in 2018.
‘A Common Ground’ first published in Inferno! Volume 1 in 2018.
This eBook edition published in 2019 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Filipe Pagliuso.

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ISBN: 978-1-78999-417-9

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