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  Scar Crossed – Nick Kyme

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  A Black Library Publication

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  Scar Crossed

  Nick Kyme

  The first shot hits the door-warden in the shoulder. Karg is a big man, mainly gene-bulked muscle with a little excess flab, so he takes the saloon door off as he smashes through it. His pirouette is almost balletic before the second shot takes him in the back and puts him down for good.

  Two shots, one after the other – slugger rounds. Messy. Stunned silence sweeps through the bar, followed by six rangy creeps wearing dirty trench coats and flare goggles. They step over Karg’s corpse, spreading out around the body to cover every angle. Facial ink marks these fellas as the Thronesworn, and never a more homicidal clan of zealots could you ever have the misfortune to meet in this part of the underhive. House Cawdor. I can smell the incense from where I am sitting, and practically taste the condescension and thinly veiled hypocrisy through the slug of Wild Snake I loll around my mouth.

  I look up as their preacher enters the bar. Taller than his six thugs, he has no trench coat but wears black robes under a red flak jacket. His hood is up but I can see his teeth below the line of shadow covering his eyes. They are sharp and yellow. Like plague rats’ teeth.

  ‘This place reeks of sin,’ announces the preacher, his voice a wire-taut shriek. ‘I see the unclean, the intoxicated, the debauched. Defilers all. Behold! The hand of righteous flame!’

  A spit of fire lights up the gloomy bar from the preacher’s gaping sleeve, exposing the stains and the otherwise dilapidated condition of the place. Most of the patrons hiss or clench their teeth, light as anathema to them as bathwater, judging by the overall stench.

  I lean over for a closer look, idly wondering which wretch the preacher will latch onto first, and hear the smashing of glass. Slow-witted and bleary-eyed, it takes me a moment or two to realise that I am the cause of the ruckus. A shattered bottle of Wild Snake lies at my feet.

  Just as I am lamenting the loss of some decidedly worse-than-average grog, the preacher turns his steely zealotry upon me.

  ‘Sinner!’ he proclaims, and seems to glide across the floor, his trench-coated thugs in tow. The other patrons wisely let him through.

  I am about to move when my rump slips on the stool where I am sitting and I stumble backwards. I snatch at the edge of the bar, my fingers digging into the rotwood like claws, but keep my feet.

  ‘S… inn… er?’ I slur at length, trying to appear indignant.

  The preacher comes in close, his rancid breath washing over me.

  ‘Your drunken excess is an affront to the Emperor of Mankind.’ He brings his left hand up to my left eye and I notice the small flamer he has attached to his wrist. It looks custom. Decent work. Deadly. He has the look of a man who likes burning things, I decide. A sadist-arsonist. A sarsonist? Arsodist? Never mind.

  I try to take a step back before he torches me, but feel a gun barrel jab my kidneys.

  ‘Now, hang on a second, fellas…’ I say, my drunkenness diminishing at the same rate as my sense of peril increases.

  ‘Fire shall purge the wicked,’ promises the preacher, an eager glint in his eye that I do not like one bit.

  I raise my hands in a plaintive gesture.

  ‘Can we at least discuss this like civilised…?’ I take in the expressionless faces of the Cawdor thugs, their bleached white skin, shaven heads, thin grey lips and blank-eyed goggles. My own face, somewhat worse for wear but growing ever more cognizant, reflects back at me. I look terrified. And with good reason.

  ‘Confess your guilt,’ snaps the preacher. ‘Confess and you shall be welcomed into the loving arms of the Immortal Emperor.’

  ‘Well,’ I say, trying to swallow the acrid aftertaste of vomit in the back of my throat, ‘you’ve kind of got me in a bit of a bind here.’ Belatedly, I smell the low quality grain alcohol – or sump alcohol, I don’t know, it was bad either way – soaking my shirt and breeches.

  The preacher gives me an ugly smile and I hear him feed fuel to his wrist-mounted burner.

  ‘Wait, wait!’ I say. ‘I have a story about love, of true love against the odds. Surely, there is no finer thing in the underhive, no finer affirmation of the Emperor’s benevolence than that?’

  The preacher regards me as he might a suspicious-looking stain on his robe. His thugs remain statuesque, their guns loaded and menacing.

  ‘Listen to it, and I promise to agree to whatever punishment you deem fit,’ I say. ‘I’ll even give up my disorderly ways and swear to your creed. But if you like my story, you let me go? You won’t get a better offer this side of the sump pit.’

  Silence falls again, as every man, woman and mutant in the bar holds their breath. I like to think they are rooting for my survival, but I suspect they just want to watch a man burn.

  The preacher’s eyes narrow, as if he’s trying to decide whether I am speaking truthfully. Zealots aren’t known for their shrewdness, and I hoped this would play in my favour.

  He nods. I feel the need to void my bladder, but fear that he’d take it as reneging on the deal somehow.

  ‘Good, good,’ I say, licking dry lips and offering an ironic prayer to the Throne for the stay of execution. ‘Listen well, then, to a tale of two ignoble houses alike in indignity, in Infernal Corona where they laid their schemes…’

  Rom had taken the spillway. It was dark, and the tunnels were tight with debris from the last hive collapse. Hundreds had died in that quake. Their shiny bones jutted between pipes, girders and several tons of low-grade ferrocrete. They’d been picked clean. Meat, human or otherwise, didn’t last long in the underhive. He found a passage upwards, a broken gantry he could use as a ladder. He moved fast as he heard sump rats gathering in the dark behind him. As big as dogs, sump rats.

  One had got ahead of him, red eyes twinkling like bad rubies as it stared down at Rom from the top of the makeshift ladder. It leapt, fangs bared, but Rom’s hand snaked out whip-quick and seized the creature around its rangy neck. A twist of the wrist and he heard the bone crack before he tossed the vermin below.

  ‘Eat up, you evil bastards.’

  Rom hauled himself out of the tunnel, and left behind a cacophony of hungry screeching.

  He emerged inside a disused pump room. The machine was dead, rusted over and stripped for parts long ago. A stairwell, mostly intact, led upwards. Rom took it.

  A gallery space beckoned after the stairwell, a refectory hall, possibly for the workers. Like the bones in the spillway, it had been picked clean. A few old bloodstains remained, and some spent shell casings. As Rom made his way through the long hall, he stooped beside some of the casings, but they were too bashed up to be of use.

  He was about to press on when a voice stopped him cold.

  ‘You’re a long way from home, juve.’

  The voice was female, young.

  Rom raised his hands. He had a knife in his belt and a holstered stubber, but his mind was on the sawn-off shotgun strapped to his back. His fingers edged towards the stock.

  ‘Ah, ah…’ warned the voice, and Rom heard the low whine of a laspistol priming to fire. He couldn’t see his assailant, but judging from her voice he guessed she was behind him in his blind spot.

  ‘How’d you know,’ he said. ‘This is my turf.’

  She laughed, and he felt a slight tingle.

  ‘No Scar-Kings have ruled here for years. This is Razor-Queen territory.’

  ‘Is it now…’ said Rom. ‘I heard it was disputed.’

  ‘Ongoing,’ she r
eplied.

  ‘So, what now, girlie?’

  Rom flinched as a bolt of hot las missed his crotch by an inch. A small dot of scorched black metal smouldered just beneath where he was crouching.

  ‘Milady… A little respect or I’ll shoot something off that you’d rather not be without.’

  Rom gave a little shake of his head and smiled ruefully.

  ‘What now… milady.’

  ‘Up.’

  Rom threw open the hatch and climbed out onto a heavy mesh platform. It had been a loading bay but was empty of cargo. A vaulted roof stretched for hundreds of feet, so high he could barely see its apex. Fog occluded the view anyway, smudged by patches of yellow from the distant silo lamps. He turned, looking back down the pipe that had led up to the loading platform and caught his first glance of the girl. She was young, a little younger than him. Bright pink mohawk, the left side of her head shaved and dyed blue. A few strands of pink hair hanging down. A tight vest hugged her breasts, accentuating the curves. The armour plates had been sprayed viridian. Chain mesh hung from the bottom of the vest, swaying around a toned midriff. Her bare arms were muscular, but more athletic than juiced, and her black boots went all the way to her knees.

  ‘Eyes up,’ she warned, wagging the laspistol at him. It had a custom sight, the red-dot hovering over Rom’s forehead.

  ‘Can’t a man offer a lady some assistance?’ he said innocently. He held out his hand to her, muscle and sinew glistening in the overhead sodium glow. The spikes on his leather wristband winked in the light, hinting at their sharpness and lethality. He thought again about his stubber, his knife.

  ‘Back off. Stay where I can see you,’ she said, as an errant strand of hair fell across her eye. She had a scar. Just like him. Hers cut her face, a razor wound, hence the gang name. His crossed his torso in a crude ‘X’. Not very kingly, he had to admit.

  Rom obeyed.

  He kept his eyes on her as she climbed out, and she kept hers on him.

  As they stood facing each other, she said, ‘Rom “the Reaper”.’

  Rom gave a mocking bow, the chains around his neck rattling noisily.

  ‘My legend precedes me.’ He smiled, exposing a few missing teeth, and ran a meaty hand over his closely shorn scalp. It was split in two by a stubby mohawk that paled in magnificence to the girl’s.

  ‘Hardly. Did you choose that name for yourself?’

  He took a step closer, a slight swagger in his walk.

  ‘What if I did?’ he asked in a deep voice.

  ‘Then I’d say you have a high opinion of yourself.’

  ‘Is that right?’ He took another step. ‘And what do they call you?’

  ‘Yuli,’ she said, her voice sinking to a husky whisper as Rom closed. They were almost touching. ‘The Siren.’

  ‘That you are,’ purred Rom, letting the laspistol push against his chest as he drew Yuli close.

  ‘Yeah…’ uttered Yuli, looking up into Rom’s eyes, ‘and don’t you forget it.’

  They kissed, long and hard, the pretence falling away as quickly as Yuli’s laspistol.

  ‘I missed you,’ said Rom as they parted.

  ‘I can tell,’ said Yuli, and raised her eyebrow. A quirk of a smile vanished as quickly as it appeared, a much darker expression replacing it. ‘They’ll kill us if they ever find out.’

  Rom gently held her cheek. It felt small but strong in his massive hand.

  ‘I’m the Reaper. No one touches me. Or you.’

  He was about to run a soot-stained finger over her blue-painted lips when Yuli frowned.

  ‘They will kill us, Rom.’

  His smile faded. ‘I know, I know.’

  ‘Ulet is already suspicious. She has me followed.’

  A tremor of alarm registered in a nerve in Rom’s cheek and his hand fell away from Yuli’s face.

  ‘You never told me that.’

  ‘It’s a recent development.’

  ‘Scav,’ he swore, backing off and turning away.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she said, trying to be soothing and closing the distance again to put her hands on his broad shoulders. ‘I gave her the slip.’

  Rom turned to face her, wearing a half-smile, and only half convinced. He was about to say something when another voice interrupted.

  ‘Yeah, but he’s not so smart.’

  Yuli whirled around just as a figure stepped from the shadows.

  ‘Reach for that and I’ll kill you both.’ A Razor-Queen emerged onto the platform, a stubber held in each outstretched hand. She wore the same colours as Yuli, but was older, meaner looking, more heavily armoured. Thick spikes protruded from her boots, and she had three scars to Yuli’s one.

  Rom held up his hands for the second time that day. He didn’t like that it was becoming a habit.

  ‘Landra… please,’ said Yuli.

  Rom’s jaw clenched to hear her beg like that.

  ‘Step aside, juve,’ snapped Landra, in no mood for negotiation. ‘Ulet wants to deal with you later.’

  ‘Do it, Yuli,’ Rom said softly. He leaned in close to her ear. She smelled like sweet cordite. ‘It’s all right.’ When he felt her about to resist he lightly touched her hand. ‘It’s all right.’

  Yuli stepped away as Landra stepped forward to make sure of the kill. She sneered at Rom.

  ‘Dirty fragging–’

  A flash of light punctured her throat. The wound cauterised instantly, but the damage was done. She sagged, losing all her strength, then collapsed, glaring at her murderer.

  Yuli looked back emotionless, laspistol smoking in her grasp, as Landra fell forwards and did not stir again.

  ‘Holy shit, Yuli,’ said Rom, hurrying down next to Landra to make sure she was dead.

  ‘Get rid of her,’ she answered coldly, and gestured to the edge of the platform. ‘Over the edge into the sump pit.’

  One side of the platform was bracketed to the industrial structure of the spillway and pump stations but the other side fell into a deep, oily oblivion – the sump pit, a lagoon of toxic crud some hundred feet or so below.

  Rom hauled Landra over the edge and they watched the body plummet until it was lost to swirling, bile-yellow fumes.

  ‘Nothing and no one stands between us,’ vowed Yuli. ‘Not even kin.’

  Rom pulled her close. She looked fierce.

  ‘I’ll kill them all if I have to. Grue, Ulet, every one of them.’

  He felt a warm sensation growing over his back as the heavy lamps of uphive began to glow. A solar harvesting grid, a mass hydroponics farm… no one knew where the light came from, only that it did. This was the Infernal Corona, and its light bled across most of this part of the underhive. It was as close to the sun as anyone downhive was ever going to get. Cascading down on them from the vaulted roof, it was almost beautiful.

  ‘I have a plan,’ said Rom, holding Yuli close. ‘A way out. Uphive. A cache. No one else knows.’

  ‘Archeotech?’

  Rom nodded, grinning. ‘It’s buried treasure, Yuli. A chance at something better.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘I am telling you. Now. I couldn’t risk anyone else finding out about it.’

  ‘What the hell will we do with it?’ Yuli asked, her eyes far away but already imagining a new life.

  ‘Anything we damn well want.’

  Yuli looked back at Rom. She was smiling. ‘I never even dreamed…’

  ‘Now you don’t have to. It’s what we wanted. No more gangs, no more fighting to live. We can be together. I need to go back to the Ironyard first, but then–’

  ‘Rom…’ said Yuli, looking up into his eyes. ‘Shut up.’

  He did.

  They sank down onto the platform, the Infernal Corona bathing them in its mildly radioactive glow, and forgot
about Razor-Queens and Scar-Kings and the gangers that would certainly kill them if they ever found out they were together.

  From across the vaulted sump pit, inside one of the disused silos, unfriendly eyes regarded the lovers through the dirty lenses of an old ocular scope. A whirring sound echoed dully as the picter device powered down, too far away and smothered by industrial noise to be heard by anyone but its owner.

  The watcher snapped the scope shut and dropped it into his belt pouch. Then he scurried away into the darkness, smiling at all the creds he was about to make.

  Grue regarded the wretch with cold and obvious disdain.

  ‘You bring me here on the word of this shit stain?’

  He leaned forward in his ‘throne’. Large, even for a Goliath, the synth-leather creaked ominously under Grue’s stimm-fed bulk. His men called him ‘Mount’, and with good reason. He was lord of the Scar-Kings and expected to be treated as such, hence the throne. It was a pilot’s chair, ripped from a gunship crash-landed downhive. A gift from the heavens. Grue had the gunship’s autocannon laid menacingly across his lap. In his hands it looked wieldable one-handed.

  The wretch, a weaselling scavvy called Runt, visibly shrank before the Mount’s gaze, but it was the saw-boned woman behind him that he was really scared of.

  ‘Show him,’ demanded Ulet, she of the Razor-Queens, their leader and known as ‘Carve’ on account of how she liked to cut her rivals to ribbons. The dry-blooded chain-blade on her back provided unnecessary evidence of her commitment to this task.

  She nudged Runt with a cleaver. She carried a lot of blades.

  Grue looked askance at the pair of Scar-Kings he had brought with him to this parlay, one-eyed Skafe and ‘Handsome’ Hector with the metal spikes studding his face like bad acne. They shared some private joke.

  Ulet’s Razor-Queens, Hekka ‘Three-Fingers’ and ‘Tiny’ Friga, stared daggers but the old truce kept their weapons holstered.

  They had met in a dockyard, an expansive square of pitted ferrocrete that was light on cover but also offered little by way of vantage for any potential snipers.

  ‘Can’t kill you, won’t give up the turf for you,’ said Grue, surveying the grey horizon for the fourth time in as many minutes. ‘You reckon this’ll change all that?’ He gestured to the rad-scarred scavvy. Runt fumbled with the device, grubby fingers slick with fear.