Soulless Fury, page 1
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STATUS: DEADZONE
Edited by Marc Gascoigne & Andy Jones
Visit blacklibrary.com for the full range of novels, novellas, audio dramas and Quick Reads, along with many other exclusive products
Contents
Cover
Backlist
Title Page
Necromunda
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Epilogue
About the Author
An Extract from ‘Road to Redemption’
A Black Library Publication
eBook license
In order to even begin to understand the blasted world of Necromunda you must first understand the hive cities. These man-made mountains of plasteel, ceramite and rockrete have accreted over centuries to protect their inhabitants from a hostile environment, so very much like the termite mounds they resemble. The Necromundan hive cities have populations in the billions and are intensely industrialised, each one commanding the manufacturing potential of an entire planet or colony system compacted into a few hundred square kilometres.
The internal stratification of the hive cities is also illuminating to observe. The entire hive structure replicates the social status of its inhabitants in a vertical plane. At the top are the nobility, below them are the workers, and below the workers are the dregs of society, the outcasts. Hive Primus, seat of the planetary governor Lord Helmawr of Necromunda, illustrates this in the starkest terms. The nobles – Houses Helmawr, Cattalus, Ty, Ulanti, Greim, Ran Lo and Ko’Iron – live in the ‘Spire’, and seldom set foot below the ‘Wall’ that exists between themselves and the great forges and hab zones of the hive city proper.
Below the hive city is the ‘Underhive’, foundation layers of habitation domes, industrial zones and tunnels which have been abandoned in prior generations, only to be re-occupied by those with nowhere else to go.
But… humans are not insects. They do not hive together well. Necessity may force it, but the hive cities of Necromunda remain internally divided to the point of brutalisation and outright violence being an everyday fact of life. The Underhive, meanwhile, is a thoroughly lawless place, beset by gangs and renegades, where only the strongest or the most cunning survive. The Goliaths, who believe firmly that might is right; the matriarchal, man-hating Escher; the industrial Orlocks; the technologically-minded Van Saar; the Delaque whose very existence depends on their espionage network; the fiery zealots of the Cawdor. All striving for the advantage that will elevate them, no matter how briefly, above the other houses and gangs of the Underhive.
Most fascinating of all is when individuals attempt to cross the monumental physical and social divides of the hive to start new lives. Given social conditions, ascension through the hive is nigh on impossible, but descent is an altogether easier, albeit altogether less appealing, possibility.
– excerpted from Xonariarius the Younger’s
Nobilite Pax Imperator – the Triumph
of Aristocracy over Democracy.
CHAPTER 1
SLUDGE TOWN
Kordon Brann surveyed the dingy little town he’d built in one of the underhive’s deepest holes and mused about his lot in life. If there is one constant in the universe, he thought, it is this: crap runs downhill.
Brann, a young businessman with big plans, knew that for every ruler sitting on a throne, living in luxury under sparkling stars at the top of the world, there must be uncountable serfs and peasants living in squalor, hip-deep in the murky runoff that collects at the bottom of the heap.
This was never more true than within Hive Primus, the largest and most impressive (and most oppressive) hive city on Necromunda. The glittering spire reaching to the heavens kilometres above was just the tiny tip of an immense, grubby iceberg. Filled with fat, wealthy, clean nobles, it sat above the nightmarish rioting masses of Hive City, and the vast wasteland of a planet stripped clean of natural resources.
The wealth of the entire world had been syphoned off over the centuries to feed the gluttonous desires of those few noble houses, while the common people toiled their lives away at the bottom, amidst the accumulated muck, dust and effluvia of the vast complex.
And yet for some, like Kordon Brann, there was still a glimmer of hope for a better life. While most denizens of the underhive’s numerous settlements were content to lie low and make a meagre living outside the oppressive conditions of Hive City, some ventured forth into the depths to seek their fortunes.
The heartiest and foolhardiest hunted the sump-spiders in the toxic lake at Hive Bottom. The adventurous searched for hidden pockets of long-lost archeotech that remained as yet uncrushed by centuries of settling domes. Others simply scavenged whatever they could sell. Plasteel piping, rockcrete fittings, copper wiring and clean water all brought handsome sums of scrip to the right buyers. Even humans, when they had been deemed waste in the eyes of the law, could be sold, making bounty-hunting a growth industry in the underhive.
There was an old saying in the underhive that Kordon Brann had taken to heart: one man’s waste is another man’s profit.
Wherever waste products formed in the underhive – whether they trickled down or bubbled up – some guilder would come along and find a way to make a profit from that waste. Take corpse-starch, for example. The dead were not done working for the hive. Without that proteyn, every hive on Necromunda would starve. When some new use for a waste product was found, someone always got rich; normally the first guilder to recognise the potential of that waste.
Thus was Sludge Town born.
Residents of Dust Falls, the border settlement lying between the edge of Hive City and the underhive, knew of the sludge pits burrowed deep into the White Wastes beyond their borders. Within the layers of ancient domes crushed together beneath those cliffs lay a vast manufactoria labyrinth that stretched for kilometres underground. The level below the manufactoria was filled with thousands upon thousands of vats’ worth of sludge, the accumulated toxic runoff from a dozen decades of industry.
No sane soul had ventured into those levels since the manufactoria had closed more than two generations past. Rats had ruled the floor, while creatures more foul had lived in and slithered among the vats. That all changed a decade ago when an enterprising (and too-trusting) archeochemist named Scoot Hunder devised a process for safely extracting and storing promethium – the liquid fuel upon which all of Hive Primus runs – from the sludge.
This new fuel source would have made Scoot rich beyond his wildest dreams if he hadn’t had an unfortunate accident in the sludge pits shortly after demonstrating his process to a young and industrious guilder looking to prove himself and make his fortune. With the initial backing of the guild, Kordon Brann began building the infrastructure to collect and refine the sludge into promethium.
Within a year, Sludge Town, housed on the manufactoria floor above the pits, was bustling with residents. People came where credits were, after all. The shells of behemoth machines that once formed plasteel pilings or the giant rockcrete slabs used in dome construction, their internal workings long ago stripped clean, were converted into buildings to house the gamut of establishments required by a boom town: markets, supply stores, saloons, gambling dens and pleasure houses.
Windows and doors were cut into sheet-metal housings and holes bored through the tops to allow for ventilation. Long-dead machines that once produced the walls, doors and roofs of manufactured buildings had unironically been converted into tract housing for workers. Power for the entire settlement was supplied by the first slud
Unfortunately for Kordon Brann, the sludge pits were only just starting to turn a profit. In addition to the enormous investment needed to bring the sludge convertors online and transport promethium off the side of a cliff, cost overruns, bribes and gang-related damage had kept Brann’s books in the red, forcing him to plead for more time and more funds from his nominal superiors. Brann’s visions of rising above this squalor and finding his place amongst the Spire-born were quickly fading. If things didn’t turn around soon, Brann knew he would be replaced as plant director – permanently.
‘This is your year, Kordon,’ Brann told himself as he stood on the balcony outside his office and surveyed the early morning shift change. Below him, sufficiently rested and lubricated workers stumbled out of their cramped sheet-metal homes, where they lived with dozens of others, and shambled towards the ramps that would take them to the pits. They barely nodded at the wearier crews heading towards off-shift activities before crashing for a few hours of rest until the cycle started all over again.
What Kordon called a balcony was, in reality, the roof of a control room that jutted off the side of the ancient two-storey-tall machine, which had been turned into the main offices of the Mercator Pyros sludge operation. He had insisted his office have access to this roof so he could better monitor the town and his workers. To be honest, it was the only bit of status Kordon Brann had been able to wrangle out of this cursed enterprise. At least some crap could still run downhill, past him.
As the streets started to clear, Kordon allowed himself a moment to imagine a brighter future for himself. If production continued to ramp up as he knew it could, and he became responsible for a lucrative new source of promethium, there was no telling what heights he could reach in the guild. Who could deny him his rightful place within the upper echelons? How much of the smell of this place could he finally get out of his skin?
Kordon considered reaching out to his Mercator Nautica contact about a bathtub, but he knew the guilder would inflate the costs of the tub and the supply of water it would need. It would negatively impact his bottom line.
‘Not to mention that excessive bathing is seen as sinful in the eyes of the redeemer,’ Kordon chuckled. ‘But then, what isn’t?’
Brann glanced down the main street towards the large building at the other end of Sludge Town, which House Cawdor had claimed for its own. It was by far the largest of the converted machines that made up the town. Rumour had it that the three-storey-tall manufactorum had once produced battleship plating for some off-world noble house’s fleet.
The machine had been deemed perfect as a meeting place for the numerous Cawdor workers that Brann had been forced to hire early on. Brann hadn’t minded. The Cawdor worked hard, cheaply, and were easy to manipulate with a little theatre. As a house with little to no industry of their own, their most valuable assets were the lives of their people.
So, the director gave House Cawdor the flagship building at the edge of town while he worked in a much smaller converted machine. He looked the other way when the Cawdor workers stole small trinkets they had found in the sludge vats.
They all thought they were being so sly, but Brann knew exactly what was going on. Most Cawdor were devout Redemptionists who spent their lives scavenging through the refuse of the Hive, hoping to unearth blessed relics from the past. The sludge pits and the Cawdor were a natural match that Kordon had no problem profiting from… at least while he was forced to do so.
But then the religious services had started. House Cawdor had turned the main floor of their building into a church and held regular services inside that all workers were required to attend. In fact, the heat stack rising up into the dome above from one end of the half-kilometre long machine had been turned into a church steeple, complete with the mark of the Cult of the Redemption.
Brann understood the power of the church better than most. A good dose of religious fervour helped keep the masses in line. A strong sermon helped make workers pliable to obeying orders that often went against a more rebellious mind’s sense of self-preservation. And the occasional burning of a heretic kept the worst of those minds in check, while offering a nice spectacle for everyone else.
As Brann watched, the more zealous stragglers among the overnight shift shuffled past the drinking holes, brothels and gambling dens towards the Cawdor shrine. All of these distractions were of equal value to Brann. Anything these workers could latch on to to make their off-hours pass without incident and that re-energised them for their next shift was good for the guild.
Of course, Brann was open with his faith. All Promethium Guilders abased themselves before the God-Emperor in his aspect as the Eternal Flame, and no aspirant to the upper echelons of the guild could afford to be seen as less than entirely devout. He could recite the prayers and devotions to the letter. But truth be told, Brann’s pragmatic nature had never allowed him to cross the line from flourished recitation to fanaticism. He’d never seen the profit in believing too deeply. To Brann, it was one tool amongst many.
As the last score of stragglers from the overnight shift milled around the various distractions that Main Street provided, Brann heard shouting coming from the ramps behind him. His first thought was that another vat had broken open, spilling a tidal wave of sludge that would drown his workers and eat into his profits. He’d lost more money and employees that way than he ever had to gang violence.
But then the sharp retort of gunfire echoed through the cavern, immediately followed by the bloodcurdling screams of valuable employees dying.
‘Damnit,’ hissed Brann. ‘Another scavving gang attack?’ He ran to the other side of the balcony to get a better look. ‘They always attack at shift change. My venators know that. Where are they?’
Brann got his answer as soon as he reached the edge of the balcony. Six members of the venator gang he’d hired to guard the vats lined the sides of a tunnel cut into the floor of the cavern. As Brann watched, they fired autoguns and stub pistols into the tunnel that led down to the vat level.
More screams emanated from down the ramp followed by a great gout of blood and gore and, Brann swore, a severed head that flew up into view before falling back down through the hole in the floor.
To their credit, the venators kept firing while they backed away from the entrance, the lead one shouting at the others.
‘They’re scavving unstoppable! What the hell is–’
His exclamation was cut short by a crack of thunder as a superheated stream of plasma vaporised the venator’s chest, dissolving him into a pink sludge. The rest of the venators retreated from the edge of the tunnel hole, but not before a second peal of thunder echoed through the cavern and another dissolved from a second plasma bolt.
Brann’s feet and legs felt like lumps of lead, rooting him to the spot despite the obvious danger to him if the four remaining venators broke ranks and ran. They weren’t the best, but they were what he could afford, and were more loyal than Brann deserved. The four survivors moved back and formed a line facing the tunnel opening.
What emerged was like nothing Brann had ever seen before. The monstrous beast stood at least two metres tall and its barrel-shaped chest was nearly a metre across. Its legs and arms were as big around as the torsos of the venators facing it. What looked like conspicuously well-made albeit worn armour plates were strapped across its shoulders and centre-mass. It carried a shield as big as a door in one hand and a metal club the size of a normal man’s leg in the other.
The venators opened fire as soon as the beast’s metal-plated face appeared, but their autoguns and stub-pistol shots bounced off the creature. Once it cleared the hole, the beast roared and slammed its massive club against its shield as if in challenge. The venators dropped their projectile weapons and drew long fighting knives, axes and flails. But none were brave, or dumb, enough to be the first to advance.
Brann wasn’t sure what the beast was waiting for. From his vantage point, it could easily take out the venators with a single sweep of that gigantic club. Behind him, Brann heard another squad of his venators rushing down Main Street to join the battle. Perhaps this fight could still swing in his favour.
That’s when he heard it. The grating, metallic sound of grinding gears and whining motors echoed through the caverns as a chainsword thrummed to life. Behind the beast, another figure climbed the ramp and strode into view.
