Necromunda - Survival Instinct

by Andy Chambers - (ebook by Undead)

  Same story, different angle. A hoard of the stupider, lesser-armed scavvies charged at the gate to draw fire while the smarter ones hung back and sniped. Now Donna had to work fast. She turned her attention to the floodlights nearest her on the stockade and shot out a couple rounds before ducking back down. She crawled along a little from the spot where she’d fired and then scrambled over the lip into a half crouch. All attention was on the gate and shots buzzed angrily back and forth punctuated by screams. Her little contribution had gone unnoticed. Donna was up and running towards the patch of darkness she’d created even as the first grenades exploding by the gate indicated the fight was getting serious.

  Now it was all down to luck. Luck that some gun-scum on the stockade didn’t send a barrage of shots her way. Luck that she didn’t hit some booby trap or deadfall. Luck that the scavvies didn’t spot her and shoot her in the back.

  But she had loaded the dice. Darkness and chaos were on her side. Even if anyone saw her she was just one running figure; a waste of ammo when there was a fire-fight going on. Her bionic’s thermal vision didn’t pick out any tripwires or pressure plates, but then she saw a trench at the base of the stockade at the last second. Wire weed confined inside it thrashed ineffectually as she leapt across. She caught a support girder and flipped an effortless somersault onto the rampart above. She didn’t register anyone close by but she didn’t stop to look. Mad Donna’s boot heels had barely rung on the grille of the walkway before she darted off into Dust Falls.

  Dust Falls was usually one the liveliest settlements in the Underhive, full of the very best readying themselves for a trip into the Abyss and survivors who have come back to celebrate their success and new-found wealth. Not many came back at all, of course, but that made the plaudits all the louder for those who did—everyone loved a winner.

  Now the streets were quiet. Throughout the jigsaw puzzle of sheet-built huts and plastic shelters that made up Dust Falls, doorways were shuttered and window meshes were down. Stray chinks of light showed here and there but otherwise the only illumination was from the stockade, the lurid lanterns of a couple of slop shops and the cold, bright floods surrounding the Dust Falls Administratia. Calling it a civic office was a bit grandiose; in truth it was an old bulk-shipping container that had been swept down from frik-knows-where during the floods. But, with some floors welded into it, and some doors and windows cut in the sides with a generator installed, it was a veritable mansion by Underhive standards. It served as city hall, courthouse, jail, armoury, safe storage and citadel for all that passed as authority at the top of the Abyss.

  Normally the area around the old container would be thick with buyers, beggars, traders, hawkers and gawkers, but the scavvy problem had pushed them all indoors. There were a couple of bored-looking guards on a gantry around the second storey and that was it. Donna waited until they had paced out of sight before gliding over to a little-used hatchway in one corner. The hatch was one of the originals and gave access to an internal crawlspace intended for checking cargo distribution levels inside the container. A single-minded machine spirit still faithfully kept the hatch sealed, the one purpose in its long half-life was to deny access to anyone who didn’t input the right clearance code.

  What few in the Underhive would appreciate was that once, before its long plunge below, the container had belonged to House Orlock. House Orlock was famed for many things in Hive Primus; primarily it was known as the House of Iron whose miners supplied much of the other Houses’ ferrous metal requirements. Only slightly less well known was their bold and aggressive seizure of the fantastically lucrative Ulanti contract from House Delaque, an action which started a bitter vendetta between the two houses that raged on to this day.

  Donna removed her glove and pressed her thumb against the reader. Scanning for a geneprint, the machine spirit correctly matched it against one of the many potential overrides to its encryption protocols. It was an Ulanti privilege. An icon flashed green and the hatch obligingly popped open. If it had been given a voice, the machine spirit would have simpered. With a cynical chuckle on her full lips, Donna slipped inside.

  Inside, the container’s remodelling had turned the crawlspace into a narrow stair running up all three levels. The internal volume of the container was blocked off with walls, floors and ceilings of a variety of materials. Many areas were simple cages to cut down on their weight, others were more substantial office-like blocks of flak-board and cement.

  As she crept up the stairway, Donna could see shadows moving and caught snatches of conversations that indicated a number of people were around and involved in eating, sleeping, tending the injured or repairing weapons. She stopped bothering to sneak; it was only going to make her stand out more. She walked blithely into the second storey entry of an ugly looking block with bars on the windows, acting as if she had every right to be there.

  Once inside she travelled down a short corridor with two doors off it before coming to a stairwell at the end. She tried the door on the left and found it open. Slipping inside, she found a darkened office with worn furniture covered in teetering piles of parchment. A brass-framed baseline cogitator burbled quietly in one corner, its bone keys ticking out a slow rhythm. Hearing footsteps coming up the stairs and voices in the corridor, Donna stepped smartly behind the door as they stopped outside.

  “Yes, and the fact remains that there’s nothing that can be done while we’re besieged, warrant or not. She’s not going to show up here anyway.” This in a tired-sounding baritone.

  “You can at least post warrant fliers, Hanno. As chief watchman I’d have thought that was your job,” a sneering whisper replied.

  The first voice turned cold. “I’ll not dance to your tune, Bak. I’ve got bigger fish to fry as you well know. If you want some help, go down to the slop shops. There’s plenty enough gun-scum there too precious of their hides to risk them on the rampart. Go form a purge if you want. You can start right outside the gate.”

  “Shallej will hear of this!”

  “Well, tell him he can come right down and we’ll discuss it man to man if you like. No? Then you better get going. I’d offer you a drink but I don’t really like you, so get lost.”

  Footsteps retreated, the door opened and a man came in, dropping a heavy-framed pump shotgun on the desk. He rubbed a hand over close-shaved grey hair and massaged his thickly muscled neck before reaching for a bottle on the desk. The hand had a blocky, black Aquila tattoo on the back of it, and a number.

  “Same old sins, Hanno? I’m disappointed in you,” Donna said in her most seductive tones.

  Hanno dropped the bottle and half-whirled around, grabbed for the bottle in mid-air, caught it, juggled it and finally caught it again after slopping some. He glared at her.

  “Damn it, harlot, you almost cost me the last liquor this side of Slag Town.”

  Mad Donna laughed out loud for the first time in days. “I need your help, and it sounds like Kell has rather nicely just filled you in on the details of why.”

  His hand was on the butt of his well-oiled bolt pistol. “You’ve got some nerve coming here.” Hanno sounded angry. “It’s my sworn duty to protect Dust Falls from people like you and Bak: outlaws, bounty hunters and anyone else who thinks they can shoot the place up or settle a score here and breach the peace. Well, not on my watch.”

  A bolt pistol was great for a fire-fight but was a liability in a fast draw where its heavy magazine made it difficult to pull cleanly in a hurry. Really slick operators learned to overcome this by hip firing—simply angling the pistol in its holster to let off a first round before drawing the gun. You could spot practitioners by the way they strapped their gun high on the hip with an open-toed holster. Well, practitioners and posers anyway. Hanno strapped his bolt pistol high on the hip, and he wasn’t a poser.

  “Hanno, if you point that hand cannon at me, I’ll have to take it off you. You know you wouldn’t like that.” Donna shifted slightly and there was an almost palpable aura of menace in
the movement.

  Hanno froze and then relaxed his grip slightly. “I can’t have you running around in Dust Falls right now,” he said, his voice calming to stern disapproval. “Not now.”

  “Yes, I met the new neighbours on the way in. I can’t say I like them much.”

  “If you were sneaking around on your own out there you’re lucky to be alive. So far we’ve had to listen to them skinning and cooking four men who thought they were savvy enough to sneak out.” Hanno shook his head and took a pull at the amasec. “Some people are born stupid and they die stupid.”

  “I can look after myself.”

  Hanno put the bottle down, realising it gave away the fact that his hands were shaking. He asked her bluntly, “What will it take to get you out of here? You know that by rights I have to report your presence to the bounty hunters, unless you’re prepared to kill me to keep quiet.”

  “Don’t think I haven’t considered it, especially ’cause I heard you talking to Kell Bak. When the hell did that bastard show up anyway? I nearly broke a nail myself getting here this fast.”

  “Just over two shifts ago he came in with a couple of ratskin scouts. The word is they set out from Glory Hole with two pack slaves as well, but they didn’t make it through. Knowing Kell he probably sold them to the scavvies.”

  “They didn’t try to stop him getting in?”

  “They let any extra warm bodies in—more mouths to feed, see. They just don’t let anybody out.” He looked at Donna, seeing her as if for the first time. “Throne, you’re a mess. You look like you’ve been dipped in the sump. Is that blood?”

  “Some of it, not mine. And brains, also not mine. And a lot of stings too, which are mine and I wish they weren’t.” She tilted her head coquettishly. “Forgive me for not bathing acceptably before presenting myself, noblesir Hanno, but I was breathless to be by your side.”

  Hanno pulled a sour face and was about to retort but he refused to be baited. “Why are you here, Donna?”

  “I need to take a quick peek at your guilder manifests.”

  Incredulity cracked Hanno’s shaky self-control like breaking glass. “I knew it. Like there isn’t enough trouble here, you want me to make more by letting you assault the guilders.”

  “Look Hanno, all I know is that a guilder contacted me in Glory Hole and arranged a meet. When I got there I found Kell and Shallej waiting to jump me.” A slight distortion of the truth, but it would have to do. “I hightailed it over here as fast as I could because, after Two Tunnels, this is the best place in the Underhive for checking up on guilders.”

  Two Tunnels was a sprawling settlement at the bottom of the most well-trodden paths down from Hive City. At some point the wares of most guilders passed through there on their way up or down. Dust Falls occupied a similar position in relation to the Abyss; any guilder caravans moving up or down it came through there. Sump Lake and its surrounding strata of compacted scrap held some of the richest prizes to be found in the Hive Bottom, so much so that even though it remained almost completely uncharted and extremely dangerous (even by Underhive standards), no guilder could stay away from it for long.

  “You’re an outlaw D’onne. You chose to walk that path. Bounty hunters will come after you wherever you go.” Hanno was consciously trying to reassert his control of the situation. He obviously didn’t like this talk of guilders one bit.

  “Frik you, Hanno. That pompous crap isn’t true and you know it. You’re just hiding behind a watchman’s badge. Even when daddy dearest had the whole of the Underhive posted with my name and face the guilders stayed out of it. They never get involved in family feuds. It’s like a rule to them.”

  Hanno was looking stubbornly determined. He laid his hand back on the butt of his pistol. “No dice, Donna. I’m taking you in this time. Your personal vendettas will just have to wait.”

  The outer gate rolled back smoothly, and warm, foetid air washed in. D’onne almost fainted. It was like the worst body odour she had ever smelled multiplied by a million, but also suffused with streaks of sulphur, machine oil, faeces, smoke, plus a hundred other obnoxious taints.

  She remembered the filter plugs Lars had given her and suffered the indignity of shoving the soft little cylinders into her nostrils. The discomfort of wearing them was definitely worth it. At least D’onne now felt she could breathe in without gagging, as long as she kept her mouth closed.

  Outside the gate it was hazy, and a dull mist crawled over an iron walkway leading to a road lit by the yellow glow of overhead lamps. It was hard to focus her eyes with the flashes of memory that kept replaying in her mind: the sprawled bodies, the Count…

  She swayed and almost fell. A figure stepped out onto the walkway, the sinister black silhouette seeming to tower above D’onne.

  “Nobledam, are you all right?” A voice crackled from a vox-speaker mounted in the figure’s armoured chest. Its helmeted head turned suspiciously from side to side as if looking for an assailant.

  “No, I-I am perfectly well,” she hazarded a guess, “enforcer.” Opening her mouth to speak allowed the foul vapours to rush in once more and she stifled a cough at the noxious taste.

  “You have no entourage, nobledam?” The flat effect of the vox rendered the speaker emotionless, but to D’onne’s etiquette-trained ears, the cadence of the words relayed a level of surprise verging on incredulity.

  She shook her head. “KindlydirectmetoHouseEscher,” she rushed out in one breath before clamping her mouth shut again.

  The figure stopped and regarded her for a moment, as if truly seeing her for the first time.

  “House Escher?”

  She nodded imperiously in response, determined not to let any more of the stench into her mouth.

  “Please wait one moment.”

  The figure stepped back out of view and she heard a clipped snarl of comm-link vox chatter go back and forth. The seeds of doubt in D’onne’s guts started to take root in earnest. She was never going to get away with this. Imagine that she could just walk out of the Spire and no one would stop her! After what she had done every enforcer in Hive Primus was probably looking for her by now.

  The enforcer reappeared carrying quite the biggest gun D’onne had ever seen. Her shoulders slumped in defeat as she looked at the man blocking her way to freedom. He was alert, armed, and just about fully armoured head to foot with smooth black plates of ceramite, including a full helmet. D’onne fancied she could just about see his chin and make out where his eyes should be beneath the tinted visor. The pistol tucked into the small of her back felt icy cold against her flesh.

  The enforcer turned his back to D’onne and started clumping along the walkway.

  “This way, nobledam. I have permission to accompany you as far as House Escher territory.”

  D’onne blinked as the mists tried to swallow up the figure of the enforcer and then after a moment’s indecision she hurried after him. For whatever reason the enforcers weren’t all over Hive Primus looking for her. Obviously daddy dearest was hushing things up. Not too surprising given that the enforcers amounted to being Lord Helmawr’s official policing force and private army within the hive.

  The planetary governor was known as a keen proponent of humbling noble houses on any possible pretext; “cleaning house” as he had famously described it. It stemmed from an ancient political creed that the noble houses showed weakness by failing to keep order among themselves. The creed stated that the most powerful faction—that of Lord Helmawr—could and should take the opportunity to demonstrate dominance over the other bloodlines while coincidentally ensuring the matter was not resolved to anyone’s lasting satisfaction.

  How scandalous. It was a classic lever for keeping the houses off-balance, squabbling among themselves and seeking favour from the governor like lap dogs. That was something that Patriarch Sylvanus of House Ulanti would find unbearable. Centuries of his life’s work could be swept away within a decade by one wayward child. His child, that was. D’onne Ulanti.

/>   She reached the roadway thinking of the enforcer as protection instead of a threat. Enforcer armour was sculpted to make its wearer look threatening and impersonal, from the wide shoulder plates to the heavy boots. But as D’onne stood looking at the man, she also realised that it was subtly designed to show there was a man within it. The lower face was visible and, although he had heavy gauntlets threaded in his weapon belt, the enforcer’s hands were bare and stark against the black metal of the gun. He had a tattoo on the back of his hand that showed an abstract, triangular eagle gripping a number in its talons.

  The enforcer seemed to catch her looking and either assumed, or pretended to assume, that she was looking at the gun.

  “It’s a new model eighty-nine shot cannon, nobledam,” the vox crackled flatly. “Personally, I hold best with the old seventy-fives. They were fine pieces in their day.”

  There was a pause as if the enforcer was thinking that he had forgotten himself and had spoken out of turn.

  “Sadly necessary around swing shift, nobledam,” he continued gruffly. “The proles are apt to get a little antsy as they come off the lines. I’ve summoned a felucca for you. It should be along presently.”

  With that he obviously decided to shut the hell up. D’onne considered for a moment. He must be burning with curiosity as to why a noble woman, a mere girl really, would be going into Hive City alone. Such things were almost unprecedented. But he was constrained by the laws of obeisance not to enquire after a noble’s affairs without due cause and empowerment. He was probably sticking with her to spy for Helmawr, but had a quite legitimate claim to be protecting her in Hive City, which was perfectly within his jurisprudence.

  D’onne decided to use the arrival of the transportation vehicle (she presumed that was what a felucca was) as the opportunity to politely but firmly send the enforcer back to his post. Then they would see whether the man in the big armour had the balls to argue with a noble, no matter how young she looked. She decided to start laying groundwork now to better assert her dominance later.