‘Feg,’ said Scabbs and he slipped the rest of the way to the ground.
Yolanda was obviously too surprised to remember to kick Scabbs. ‘What?’ she asked.
‘Vandal Feg has it,’ said Scabbs. ‘Whatever was in that safe, Feg ripped it open with his big, metal hand and now he’s in the hive with it.’
‘But Feg is dead,’ she said. ‘You said you saw it yourself. Vandal Feg is dead… right?’
The sirens blared as the wall closed. Wotan could do nothing but howl and howl. The pitches of the two sounds combined into an awful, disharmonious wail that apparently human hearing couldn’t handle very well. The guards, who had all trained their weapons on the metal mastiff, now dropped to their knees around him, holding their hands against the sides of their heads.
For several, long minutes, nothing in the plaza moved. Wotan, transfixed by the hard-wiring of his mechanical canine brain, could not stop howling, and the guards, incapacitated by the power of sound waves, fell over and twitched as spasms wracked their bodies.
Then, the automatic systems that had triggered the sirens in the first place, switched off as the wall finally closed with a thundering clang that echoed throughout the dome. With the wailing of the sirens gone, Wotan’s actions returned to his own control. The same couldn’t be said for the guards, who continued to twitch on the ground.
Wotan licked the nearest guard on the cheek and panted for a few seconds before turning and padding off out of the plaza, leaving the incapacitated guards lying on the ground. He didn’t have time for them anymore. He needed to find another way to the other side of that wall.
Feg desperately wanted to chase Kal Jerico’s half-ratskin comrade through the maze of tunnels. He knew that wherever Scabbs was, Kal was certain to be nearby, and he owed them both a great deal of pain.
However, the royals had somehow beaten him to the docks and it wouldn’t be long before someone checked in with the three guards he’d killed. He dumped their bodies down the hole and, after a short detour, slipped out of the warehouse.
The docks swarmed with security. They were methodically moving through the entire area, breaking open doors and searching every warehouse and docked ship. Luckily, they weren’t being quiet about it, so Feg could stay ahead of them. He didn’t want to risk another fight out in the open; that would surely draw too much attention.
He had one chance. The old smuggler’s tunnel wasn’t the only secret passage connected to the docks. It was far too important a place to have just the single passage. He knew of another one that would get him off the docks and even out of Hive City. The only problem was that he had to get to the rooftops to use it.
Feg made his way to the side of the dome and waited for the nearby troops to clomp away from him. He then used the claws of his mechanical arm to carve out hand holds in the masonry and pulled himself up onto the roof of the closest warehouse. Staying as low as possible while still keeping an eye on the troops below, Feg crossed the roof and jumped to the next.
The passage was close. Just two more jumps and he was there. He made the first no problem, but as he landed on the last roof, a laser beam lanced the wall next to him. He looked around trying to figure out where the shot had come from. Another shot tore into his knee and he jumped to the side.
He’d seen the direction of that last one and looked up, finding a young noble in a Yeld spyrer rig swooping towards him. ‘Damn’ said Feg. He had no ammo left, so unless she came within range of his chainsword, Feg was defenceless. His only choice was to make a run for it. He dashed off across the roof, zig-zagging as best he could with his wounded knee.
Lasers tore into the roof on either side of him but Feg was almost to the hatch. He had no time to work the secret latch, so he switched on his chainsword and slashed twice across the huge air duct that ran up the wall towards a giant fan. He crashed through the criss-crossed metal barrier as two more shots from the laser etched the wall to either side.
Feg immediately fell about ten feet, but he’d expected that and hit the bottom on his good leg and continued running, not even bothering to look back.
A short while later, as Feg jogged down the tunnel, wincing with every step, and expecting at any moment to hear his pursuers behind him, he instead saw two forms standing in front of him.
They were a pair of Orlock gangers, twins named Brynn and Riyl in matching outfits. They wore dark, leather vests over red and blue shirts with matching bandanas wrapped around their shaved heads. Dark sunglasses, which seemed an odd choice in the dimly-lit tunnel, and long, black coats, had been donned to make some sort of statement about their cold-blooded nature.
Unfortunately, once they opened their mouths, the twin Orlocks gave away any advantage their slick clothes provided.
‘Halt,’ said one. ‘This is Mr Nemo’s secret passage.’
‘Hey,’ said the other. ‘It was my turn to say that.’
The first figure punched the second figure. ‘Nuh uh! You did it last time.’ To which the second figure’s response was a swift kick to the shin of the first.
Feg was pretty certain he could hear the sound of footsteps echoing through the tunnel behind him. He could simply kill these two and continue running, but he had finally recognized them and knew a quicker way to deal with the situation.
‘Okay, Seek and Destroy,’ he said. ‘You got me. You’d better take me to see Nemo, and I mean right now.’
Bobo showed his invitation to the guards at the gate to the royal estate and was quite surprised to be immediately escorted through and into the palace. He was beginning to think that he probably should have dressed for the occasion. He kind of figured he’d have a little time before the wedding to get ready.
‘Am I late?’ he asked the guard walking with him through the palace. He glanced out a window and caught his breath at the sudden realization that he was near the top of the hive, in the very pinnacle of the Spire. Outside the window was not more dull-grey metal or another dingy passageway. Outside this window there was nothing but sky.
‘No,’ replied the guard. ‘I believe you are right on time. Minister Kauderer is expecting you in his office. We should be there in just a moment.’
‘Minister Kauderer?’ asked Bobo, more to himself than to the guard.
‘Yes,’ said the guard. ‘He instructed us to bring you to his office as soon as you arrived.’
Bobo smiled. Now it all made sense. Kauderer had some job for him but for some reason couldn’t risk using their normal contact protocols. Thus the ruse of the Kal Jerico wedding invitation. Kauderer knew that Bobo couldn’t resist that invitation, even though it was too preposterous to be true.
‘Guess I won’t be needing a suit for the wedding, then,’ said Bobo, almost laughing at the thought of Kal Jerico getting married and ruling the hive.
‘Oh no,’ said the guard. ‘Not yet, anyway. The wedding isn’t for several more days.’
He stopped in front of Bobo, which was good because Bobo had already stopped walking, his mouth hanging open.
‘Here we are, sir,’ said the guard. He opened the door, ushered the flabbergasted Bobo inside, and then shut the door behind him.
‘Ah, Bobo,’ said Kauderer from across the room. ‘Come here for a moment. I have something important to show you.’
Bobo shook off the surprise that the wedding was indeed real, and walked over to see what his Spire boss had for him. It was a body. A dead Delaque, from the look of the armour, although her equipment seemed to be a step or two above what he normally saw in Hive City or the Underhive.
‘Am I supposed to know her?’ asked Bobo.
‘I doubt it,’ said Kauderer. ‘She’s strictly a Spire operative, an assassin actually.’
Bobo smiled. ‘Looks like she killed the wrong person.’
Kauderer’s glare made him instantly regret the statement. A long pause followed and Kauderer’s search
ing eyes made Bobo feel like a bug caught in the web of a sump spider.
‘What did you want of me, sir?’ said Bobo at last, trying to get the conversation back on track and get himself out from under the hawkish eye of Hermod Kauderer.
‘This woman’s job was to assassinate the hive’s ruler,’ said Kauderer. ‘She failed, obviously. I want you to take her place.’
‘You want me to do what?’ asked Bobo.
Kauderer flipped a lever on the wall and watched as the body slid off the table down into a chute that opened in the floor. A moment later, smoke and a few cinders floated up into the room. He turned and stared down his nose at Bobo again. ‘I want you to assassinate Kal Jerico.’
Seek and Destroy, two of Nemo’s henchmen – and not his best, obviously – had argued all the way back to Nemo’s hideout. They hadn’t even bothered to blindfold Feg before leading him into the master spy’s secret lair. Not that it mattered much. Feg knew the way. He and Nemo went way back.
The twins pushed against one another as they both tried to fit through the doorway into Nemo’s office at the same time. One started calling and then the other joined in: ‘Mr Nemo. Mr Nemo,’ they cried. ‘I caught someone in your special tunnel…’
‘No, I caught him. You weren’t even there…’
The twin Orlocks grabbed each other by the lapels of their leather coats and screamed at each other.
‘Yes I was…’
‘No you weren’t…’
Before their argument devolved into a brawl, again, Feg pushed his way past them and strode into Nemo’s office.
As usual, the master spy sat in a well-padded chair surrounded by a dozen or more pict-screens. His black helmet, which constantly reflected the images on his screens, was hooked by wires into the wall behind him. What those wires brought to the master spy, Feg had never dared ask. Perhaps messages from informants. Maybe data that he somehow routed directly into his brain, or some sort of medication or mind-altering drugs, although Feg doubted the latter. Nemo was far too serious to let his mind be altered in any way.
‘Ah, Mr Feg,’ said Nemo. ‘It is good to see you again. My sources said you were dead. But after I heard about the job today, I knew you were alive. Do you have the item in question?’
Feg smiled. ‘I’m not that stupid,’ he said. ‘It’s somewhere safe. Now, let’s talk about what we can do for each other.’
5: THREATS AND BARGAINS
Kal pulled back from the unconscious body of Gerontius Helmawr and turned around. Valtin stood just inside the pool of light, staring at him with an odd look on his face, somewhere between a smirk and a sheepish grin. He’d been caught lying – again – but obviously knew that Kal wouldn’t kill him; at least not until he learned the truth.
Kal’s first question had nothing to do with Helmawr or the assassin who tried to kill him earlier. ‘How did you know I was here? How can you see me?’
‘The answer to your first question is obvious,’ said Valtin. ‘After you disappeared, I thought, where is the one place I didn’t want you to go. And, as usual, Kal Jerico did exactly what he wasn’t supposed to do.’
Kal raised his finger to interrupt, but Valtin waved him off. That’s when Kal noticed that his hand wasn’t invisible anymore. Valtin held up his own hand, showing a small black box with an antenna at the top.
‘It sends out a pulse that disrupts electro-magnetic fields,’ he said, turning the gizmo over and over in his hand. ‘Handy in the spy business. When Cait showed us the dead Delaque assassin and Kauderer mentioned the shimmer he’d seen in the office, we figured out what had happened.’
Kal hadn’t really listened past the first sentence. ‘You broke my holo projector?’ he screamed.
Valtin shrugged. ‘Sorry, I can’t afford to have the heir to the Helmawr throne sneaking around the palace unprotected.’
Kal pulled the holo-projector from his pocket and tossed it on the ground. ‘Just unprotected, right?’ he said. ‘That’s what this whole charade is all about.’
The sheepish smirk returned to Valtin’s face. ‘I would have told you all of this up front,’ he said. ‘But it was decided you couldn’t be trusted with the information.’
‘Well, you’re going to tell me now,’ said Kal. Before Valtin could even respond, Kal whipped out his pearl-handled laspistols and held them at arm’s length to either side of his body. One he aimed directly at Valtin’s head, the other he brought down slowly until it rested on the gaunt, pale face of Lord Gerontius Helmawr.
‘All of it, nephew,’ added Kal. ‘And if I even think you’re holding anything back, I commit patricide and then, um, nephew-cide.’
Valtin held his hands up in front of him. ‘Okay. Okay,’ he said. ‘There was an assassination attempt on Lord Helmawr and it almost succeeded. He was injected with some sort of neuro-toxin. We don’t know how it happened, but I would guess now that it was that same Delaque agent. But even with the holo-projector, she must have had help from the inside to get past all of our security.’
‘Everyone has a price,’ said Kal.
Valtin nodded. ‘Exactly. Anyway, we rushed him to his doctors, but there was nothing they could do for him. The toxin had already begun shutting down messages from his brain to all of his vital organs. But we do have the most advanced medical tools on all of Necromunda at our disposal. These machines are the only thing keeping him alive. They breathe for him and pump his blood and everything else a body needs to sustain life.’
‘Doesn’t sound like living to me,’ said Kal. ‘Sounds like I would be doing old dad a favour if I finished the job right now.’
Valtin stepped forward and reached out towards Kal.
‘No,’ he said.
Kal snapped the laspistol in his hand and motioned for Valtin to stop.
‘There is medicine that can reverse the effect of the toxin,’ said Valtin. The concern on his face was evident and Kal began to believe his nephew was truly telling him everything this time.
‘We had the medication shipped in from an off-world supplier, but somehow our enemies found out about it. They shot down the transport and stole the medicine. It’s now lost in the hive. Just before coming in here, I got a communiqué from Captain Katerin. They had the thief cornered in the Hive City docks, but he got away through some hidden passage.’
‘So let me see if I have all this straight,’ said Kal. ‘Dad’s not dead and you have medicine that can save him. Only you’ve lost the medicine, which is by now somewhere deep in the Underhive. I was brought up here to be your lightning rod to flush out the assassins because you had no leads. Oh, and I’m not really going to be the master of House Helmawr and there is no wedding. That about sum it up?’
Valtin nodded. ‘I wanted to tell you all of this as soon as you got here, but I was convinced that it would be too much of a security risk.’
‘And I’m guessing it was old hawk-face who convinced you of that, right?’
‘Kauderer?’ asked Valtin and then the smirk returned. ‘Yes, although we don’t call him that to his face.’
‘Well, in that case,’ said Kal as he lowered and holstered his weapons, ‘I guess I’ll be leaving now.’
Valtin raised his hands again. ‘No.’ he said. ‘Wait! We still need you, uncle. You killed the assassin. Now we don’t have any leads. There really is a wedding, and we think that now that their assassin is dead, whoever wants to destabilize House Helmawr will try to stop the wedding. It may be our only chance to find out who’s behind all of this.’
Kal shook his head. ‘I’m nobody’s target,’ he said. ‘All of the money in dear old dad’s coffers wouldn’t make me stay up here unprotected.’
‘But Kal,’ pleaded Valtin, ‘When I said earlier that you were the only person I could trust, I meant it. I need your help with this. I’m trying to hold the house together, but now that the medicine is gone it’s likely Geronti
us will die. Believe me, there will be a civil war over succession that will rip this house apart.’
‘I don’t care,’ said Kal. ‘It’s all Spire politics and it has nothing to do with me.’
‘You don’t think this will affect your world?’ asked Valtin. ‘What do you suppose happens to the economy of Hive City if the Spire destabilizes? By the time the political war is over up here, the Underhive will extend all the way to the great Spiral Gates.’
Kal thought it over. He had to admit his nephew had a point. It was always the lowest level of society that paid for the problems of the elite. Besides if the Hive economy collapsed, who would pay for Kal’s services? But dammit, why did it always have to be his job to clean up the family’s business.
‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do, nephew,’ said Kal. ‘I’ll find that medicine for you then you call off this damned wedding and we all get back to normal.’
Valtin thought about it and then nodded. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘We’ll smuggle you out so nobody knows you’re gone. But I must continue to prepare for the wedding just in case you fail. The doctors tell me that Gerontius can’t last on those machines for more than a week, and it’s already been four days. You’ve got three days to find the medicine or we have to go through with the wedding. I won’t let House Helmawr perish, even if that means putting Kal Jerico on the throne.’
‘You want me to kill Kal Jerico?’ asked Bobo. He looked for a place to sit, but the only spot seemed to be the low table that had just tipped the Delaque’s body into the incinerator. He decided to stand.
Kauderer used a towel to wipe down the table and dropped the rag into the incinerator chute. Then he walked back towards his desk, flipping the lever that shut the incinerator door along the way. Only after he had taken a seat did he look back up at Bobo and respond.
‘We work in a difficult business,’ he said. ‘It is often necessary to perform the unpleasant tasks that no one else is willing to do.’
Lasgun Wedding Page 10
