Cardinal Crimson

by Will McDermott

  ‘Oh scav!’ said Kal. He shot a few more blasts and started to scramble back up the pile. Blasts ripped through chunks of metal and concrete all around him, sending plumes of dust and acrid smoke into the air.

  Kal coughed as he inhaled a puff of powdered cement, doubling over and dropping another metre back down toward the base of the pile. Another blast screamed through the air, hitting the table he had just been clinging to.

  ‘That was a little too close,’ he muttered. ‘Time to trust my luck.’ He turned again, braced his feet against a metal door, and aimed at the approaching gang. He fired four shots in quick succession, dropping three guards and disarming the fourth. ‘Damn, I’m good,’ said Kal.

  The next volley of shots all impacted below Kal, obliterating the door under his feet. Kal slid down the blockade. He grabbed at the debris around him, but couldn’t stop himself. There was a large hole where the door had been, and he slipped right into it. Another round of blasts over his head started a small avalanche. Chunks of concrete, chairs, crates and other debris crashed down around Kal, burying him up to his neck in trash.

  ‘Well,’ said Kal. ‘Those were pretty lucky shots.’

  Yolanda grabbed the handlebars and yanked the motorcycle upright. The engine was still running. She kicked a long leg over to straddle the thrumming machine, and pumped the throttle. The engine revved. She kicked it into gear and tore off down the tunnel, leaving the former driver moaning on the ground behind her.

  Through the braids flapping around her face, Yolanda could see the other two bikers up ahead. Scabbs still tumbled along behind them. Thankfully they had slowed down, but it didn’t look like the little man was struggling anymore either.

  She didn’t know if he was alive or dead, but figured it didn’t matter. Either way, she had to kill the two gangers. Yolanda pulled out one of her weapons and gunned the bike, closing in on her quarry before she opened fire. She couldn’t really aim while zooming along at top speed through a narrow tunnel, so she just fired a stream of blasts toward the bikers.

  The first few shots went wide, but one hit the rear of the second bike, burning a hole through the frame. The rear wheel swerved and skidded, but the biker got his machine back under control just as it teetered dangerously to the side. He turned in his seat, made a rude gesture at Yolanda and gunned his own bike, burning a long black mark into the floor.

  Yolanda fired again, but misjudged the distance as he pulled away from her. She opened up her throttle all the way and crept closer. She fired a few shots at the chain holding Scabbs, but came dangerously close to his legs, so thought perhaps that wasn’t such a good idea after all.

  A loud bang brought Yolanda’s attention back to the second biker, who now held a shotgun. Shrapnel flew off the wall beside her from the blast. She swerved as sharp bits of masonry rained down on her. The biker jerked his arm, pumping the shotgun, and aimed it at her again.

  Yolanda hit the breaks and turned the handlebars sharply, putting the bike into a sideways skid. She dropped off to the side away from the shotgun, holding on with just one hand and her foot on top of the seat. The shotgun fired and the blast hit the side of the bike, sending sparks and bits of metal into the air.

  After the blast, Yolanda pulled back on the handle, straightening her bike out. Staying low and off to the side, she steered with one hand while aiming her pistol. She had a better angle from there and fired several times, hitting the second biker’s rear tyre with at least two shots.

  The rubber shredded itself away from the rim in seconds. A steady stream of sparks began to spray out from the metal wheel. Without traction, the bike lost momentum and rear end began to skid back and forth. The biker dropped the shotgun to keep both hands on the handlebars, and kept it under control.

  Yolanda pulled herself back upright and fired several more shots. Blasts hit all around the swerving biker. Chunks of metal and several gleaming pipes flew off the bike as her las-blasts rained down on him. Her last shot slammed into the biker’s back, burning a hole through his leather coat. His hands flew up as he arched his back in pain. A moment later, he tumbled off the back of the motorcycle, bouncing and rolling right toward Yolanda’s bike.

  Yolanda tried to turn out of the way, but it was too late. Her front wheel struck the biker in the shoulder, spinning him about. His legs swung under her bike and hit her back wheel. She wasn’t sure what happened next, but assumed his leather trousers got pulled up into the wheel because the back end of her machine bucked up into the air as she ran over him.

  The next thing Yolanda knew, she was going over the handlebars. She tried to hold on to the seat with her powerful legs, but to no avail. She flew into the air and landed on her back in front of the bucking bike. With only a second to react, Yolanda fired two shots from her laspistol, hitting the handlebars with both.

  The bike turned, tipped and skidded. The rear wheel slid right toward Yolanda. She rolled to the side, not even looking back. She didn’t stop until she hit the side wall of the tunnel. The bike continued skidding down the tunnel until it slammed into the far wall.

  Yolanda got up. Her back ached so hard she could hardly stand up straight, and she was bleeding from her knees and elbows. She looked down the tunnel. She could just see the last bike, with Scabbs, unconscious or dead, skipping along behind. She started to stagger down the tunnel as fast as she could.

  Then her bike exploded.

  Jobe Francks dreamed.

  As usual, he looked down at himself to try to determine his age. For someone who could relive his own past, it helped to place the dreams in time. On this occasion, though, he didn’t recognise his clothes or his body for that matter.

  He was walking through a dark tunnel. Pools of light flashed over him as he walked. He was carrying something over his shoulder. He looked at it when he walked through a pool of light. It was a body.

  The body had a blue cloak and he could see a patch of orange armour when the cloak flapped aside. A dull ache began to gnaw at his stomach. He tried to stop in the pool of light to look more closely at the body, but he had no control over his body. Another spot of light approached. He stared at the back of the body when he entered the light. It was there. A scorched hole in the cloak between the shoulders. His heart sunk.

  He was carrying the dead body of Syris Bowdie.

  He walked on, trapped in someone else’s body, unable to alter the flow of time. He came to a round metal door. It curved slightly away at the top and sides. There was no handle in the door. Just a wheel sticking out from the middle. He spun the wheel and pulled. The door opened with a whoosh.

  Francks noticed a small window in the door as it opened. He looked at the window as it came into the pool of light and saw a reflection there. It confirmed what he had begun to suspect. He was inside the body of Jules Ignus.

  Ignus went through the door into the inky blackness beyond. He turned and pulled the door shut behind him. He switched on a torch and the beam hit the curved wall. They were inside a dome.

  Even the poorest settlements had some power. Some lights would be burning somewhere, but this was pitch black. They were in an abandoned dome.

  They walked through the dome for quite some time. Francks couldn’t tell what Ignus was looking for. He was along for the ride but couldn’t sense anything within Ignus. Perhaps there really was nothing there to sense.

  After a time, Ignus stopped. He waved his light around. They were still near the wall of the dome, but had come quite a distance around from the door. They stood on the edge of a hole. The light hit crumbling walls around the hole. It was a bombed out building. The walls of the basement had crumbled in, leaving just a debris-filled hole.

  Ignus pulled the body off his shoulder and dropped it down into the hole. Francks screamed, but no sound came out. Ignus turned around and flashed his torch on the wall of the dome behind him. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a metal box. There was a crude timer on the front. He set the timer to ten minutes and then taped the box to t
he wall as high as he could reach.

  He then walked back toward the door, whistling as he went. When he reached the door, he opened it again and walked through, but then stood there waiting. The bomb exploded, lighting up the small dome with a flash. The dome shook and rumbled as the wall fell in and covered up Jules Ignus’s murder. He closed the door and began to whistle again as he walked back down the tunnel.

  Francks began to cry as the vision faded.

  The assassin had tramped around the Underhive all day, with no sign of his quarry. The old man had disappeared somehow from Hagen’s Hole. It seemed inconceivable but he must have known about the secret exit. He’d left Glory Hole the same way, but the trail had long since gone cold.

  Then he’d got lucky. A piece of news came his way that the old man had gone to see an old friend in Hive City. It was dangerous to do a job in the city, but not impossible, and he was being well paid.

  And it had paid off. The information was good. He stood at a window, covered in a blanket of darkness and a special cloak he’d taken from a Delaque agent he’d taken down a few years back. The cloak soaked up the darkness and radiated nothing back, not even heat. He was all but invisible, even to infrared or night vision goggles.

  In the room beyond were two old men, one asleep in a chair and the other sitting at a desk. One was the target and the other his friend. It didn’t much matter which was which. He’d let the authorities sort out the bodies later. It was almost time to go to work.

  6: THE CARDINAL RULE

  A blast of flame and heat hit Yolanda in the face, throwing her back down the tunnel. She flew five metres through the air and landed on her back.

  ‘Ow!’ she said. Yolanda was pretty sure nothing was broken, but felt she deserved a little rest after the second tunnel attack in two days. She lay there in a pool of light, staring at the roof of the tunnel and wondering how many more times this would happen this week. Then she rolled to the side. She crossed her arms and turned over and over.

  A burning tyre landed behind her with a squelch. Yolanda stopped rolling when she hit the wall. She looked back to see the wheel roll down the tunnel, leaving a trail of smouldering tar and black smoke. ‘I just don’t need this,’ she muttered as she pushed herself back to her feet.

  Yolanda walked gingerly toward the burning bike. Smoke billowed toward the ceiling as a flaming puddle of fuel spread across the tunnel. She held her breath and darted past the puddle before it cut her off. On the other side, she searched for the trail of the final bike. It wasn’t hard to find. Apparently, the motorcycle had been leaking oil, which mingled with drops of blood and bits and pieces of Scabbs’s clothes and flesh.

  As she jogged down the tunnel, following the trail of blood and oil, the black smoke behind her must have reached the ceiling. A decrepit sprinkler system cut in and stale-smelling water rained down on Yolanda, drenching her in seconds. Her dreadlocks soaked up the water and stuck to her face like thick, doughy strands. Rivulets of water ran down into her ears and eyes, and the ridge of her nose became a waterfall. Her leather vest and loin cloth became heavy with water and began slapping her bare skin.

  Worst of all, a few minutes after the sprinklers started, the water all but washed away the trail.

  ‘Helmawr’s rump!’ she yelled.

  The assassin crept across the roof of the old man’s hab, searching for a way inside. The hab backed up to the wall of the dome, so there was no back door and the buildings on the block had been built side-by-side, so there were no alleys. The only door led right into the room where the two men had been sitting, and the windows were all barred, even those on the second floor.

  Whoever lived here was highly security conscious. The home was secure from anything but a frontal assault and that would surely bring the enforcers, probably preventing a quick and quiet escape. But if there was one thing the assassin knew, it was that no hab in the hive was totally secure.

  The roof yielded only one possible entrance. A metal, box-shaped ventilation unit ran across the roof and down the entire block of buildings. A small pipe dropped from the metal box into each building to push air in, while a larger shaft allowed the recycled air to re-enter the ventilation unit from the building.

  All he had to do was crawl into the unit and climb down the shaft. He found an access panel to the unit three buildings down, but it had been welded shut. This guy is pretty good, he thought, but he was better. He pulled out a welding torch, set the flame to a blue-white pinpoint, and went to work on the welds.

  A while later, after using his torch again on the attic vent, the assassin climbed out of the shaft, switched to nightvision on his goggles, and tiptoed across the rafters. He found the attic access panel, but then sighed when he realised it was screwed into place from the other side. He checked the small gas tank for his welding torch. It felt light. ‘Should be enough,’ he said.

  He cut around the screws, leaving a small sliver of metal to hold each one. He then attached a suction cup and pushed the panel out. After pulling the panel up into the attic, he dropped down into what looked like a bedroom. He slipped out the door and down the steps.

  At last, he peeked around the doorway into the main room. Both men were right where he had left them. If his luck held, this would be over in a minute and he could slip back out the way he came in. These two could rot for days before anyone found them.

  Sliding a long, thin dagger out from a fold inside his light-drinking cloak, he slipped in behind the man at the desk. He reached around and clasped his free hand around the man’s mouth as he jabbed the dagger through his neck from the other side.

  The old man stiffened under his grip and kicked at the desk twice before going limp. The assassin looked up at the man sleeping in the chair. He hadn’t stirred. He pulled the dagger out of the wound and leaned the dying man’s head back against the top of the chair. Blood sprayed out the hole in his neck and pooled on the floor.

  Being careful to avoid the growing puddle of blood, the assassin crept over toward the other victim. ‘One down, one to go,’ he said to himself as he prepared to strike.

  ‘Get up!’ screamed a voice in Scabbs’s head. In his semi-conscious state, he couldn’t tell if the voice was his own or Kal’s, or perhaps someone else entirely. But the little half-ratskin had been so conditioned to respond to loud commands through his years of working with Kal and Yolanda, that he reacted out of pure instinct.

  He stood without opening his eyes, snapping to attention before the voice spoke again and, more importantly, before the subsequent smack hit the back of his head. In retrospect, he probably should have opened his eyes first, for as soon as Scabbs got to his feet, he pitched over forward, hitting the ground hard enough to knock the wind out of his gut.

  ‘Get up!’ came the command again, quickly followed by a sharp rap on his back. This time it was definitely audible and definitely not Kal. Scabbs opened his eyes, and immediately wished he hadn’t. A bright light pierced his skull, bringing the splitting headache that he’d only dully been aware of before into sharp focus.

  In fact, his body ached from his feet to his teeth and beyond.

  A hand holding a short length of pipe emerged out of the light and hit him between the shoulder blades again. Scabbs scrambled to his feet, trying to ignore the aches and sharp pains that wracked his body. He looked at his feet and saw the reason he had fallen earlier. His ankles, red, raw and swollen, were shackled together.

  He started to remember. The motorbikes. The chain. Being dragged down the tunnel.

  ‘Ow,’ he said.

  ‘Shut up and get moving,’ said the Orlock ganger connected to the pipe-holding hand. He wore a red bandana around his melon-shaped head, a leather vest over a thin shirt and thick steel-bound boots, which probably explained the pains Scabbs felt in his ribs. But he had no visible weapons beyond the pipe. As Scabbs looked at him, the ganger raised the pipe for another blow, but Scabbs shuffled his feet forward, complying before the blow fell.

  As he w
alked, Scabbs checked his injuries. He probably had some cracked ribs and a concussion. He rubbed the back of his head, and checked his hand; no blood, but there was a thick knot at the base of his skull. His grimy grey clothes were stained brown and red, but even though his shirt was mostly tattered fabric now, he was no longer bleeding from being dragged along by his captors. His swollen ankles ached and chafed against the manacles, but he felt no sharp pains as he walked, so the bones were likely intact. He felt lucky to be alive.

  ‘Start over there,’ commanded the Orlock, pointing at a large pile of debris.

  Scabbs looked up. A couple of dozen other dirty, bloody, manacled people carried rocks, chunks of metal and other bits of unrecognizable objects down the hill and dropped them in bins. Other slaves – there really was no other word for the manacled workers – pushed full bins away from the hill while others brought empty bins back. Those that had dropped their loads off climbed back up the hill.

  The Orlock guard shoved Scabbs in the back with his pipe. He stumbled a few feet before gaining his balance. Taking a shallow breath so his ribs wouldn’t hurt so much, Scabbs followed the slaves up the hill and grabbed a crumpled piece of pipe.

  Yeah. Lucky. That’s what he was.

  Snap!

  Kal Jerico hadn’t thought his life could get any worse after spending an afternoon trudging through raw sewage.

  Snap!

  He’d even spent a moment during his meeting with Nemo later that night musing. Now I’ve definitely hit bottom and things have to start to get better, he’d thought back then.

  Snap!

  Now, he realised those moments of his life were all just prelude to this one. This was definitely the lowest of the low.

  Snap!

  The whip hit Kal just below his knees on that tender piece of flesh above the calf. He marvelled at the precision. He had also just about bitten through his lower lip trying not to scream.

  ‘Stop,’ said a familiar voice.

  Kal exhaled slowly through pursed lips, trying to force the pain out of his body with the air. It worked only slightly. His inhale was slightly harder. He’d always found it tough to breathe in while suspended above the ground by his wrists.