Blood Royal Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Necromunda

  Prologue: Something Wicked

  1: Family Business

  2: Plan ‘W’

  3: Heads or Tails

  4: The Gang’s All Here

  5: Cat Fight

  6: Chaos Theory

  7: Bad Blood

  8: Shafted Again

  9: The Price of Redemption

  10: End Game

  Epilogue: Business as Usual

  About the Authors

  Legal

  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 rockcrete 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 firey 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.

  PROLOGUE:

  SOMETHING WICKED

  Arin Bester slipped out the door of Hagen’s Hole and leaned against the wall outside. His once-green body armour, faded and stained from years of use, disappeared into the shadows of the Glory Hole twilight. The light coming from the barred windows and narrow doorway behind him provided the only illumination for blocks around. The Underhive settlement had barely enough power to heat and light central dwellings during the hours of ‘day’, let alone outlying streets and alleys at night.

  The old bounty hunter took one last long draught of his purloined Wildsnake before tossing the empty bottle into the alley. The dark liquid burned his throat, and he could feel the dead snake from the bottom of the bottle slide past his tonsils. I must be drunk, he thought, that last swig tasted good. As he scratched at the coarse, black hair on his neck, Bester absentmindedly checked his weapons – chainsword on hip, shotgun tied to his back. The rest he could check later.

  He closed his eyes to concentrate on standing. The dull-grey wall behind him once hummed with power, but that was in a time before remembering, back when Hive Primus wasn’t even a mile high. The dome that was now home to Hagen’s and the surrounding Glory Hole settlement had been a crown jewel of the young Hive, its inhabitants slaving away at their machines to make the nobles rich. But time and the pressing weight of the ten-mile-tall Hive had pushed this once glorious dome, cracked and crumbling, into the depths of the Underhive.

  Few amongst the Hive City Houses deigned to enter Glory Hole these days, let alone those prissy nobles high up in the Spire. Not, that is, unless they had fallen from grace or had been forced to flee their enemies, or their family, often one and the same. That was, in a round-about way, how Bester had come to the Hole. He’d been a little too boisterous for the serious leaders of House Van Saar, and after one long and costly drinking binge, his loving family had finally cut him loose.

  He’d clawed his way out of the gutter the only way he could – by beating all comers in the pit fights. His fame spread through the Underhive after that, and eventually he made his way to Hagen’s. As far as Bester knew, the joint had always been called Hagen’s Hole, even though the original Hagen had been dead for centuries. Each new owner tried to make a name for themselves, but the patrons – mercenaries all – insisted on calling every barkeep Hagen, and so the name persisted.

  The Hole had been a merc bar almost as long as it had been named Hagen’s. That was probably the reason the rundown place had lasted so long. It wasn’t much to look at. In fact, it was nothing more than an abandoned power substation on the outskirts of the dome. Blown-out conduits and cracked pipes ran across the ceiling and down the walls inside, making the small rooms feel even more cramped. Iron gratings covered a maze of rusted pipes underfoot, while hundreds of years of debris, congealed into a brown sludge by spilled drinks and spilled blood, filled the voids between the pipes. Hagen – the latest Hagen, if Hagen was his name at all – didn’t so much sweep the floor at night as scrape the ooze through the grating.

  For all its decay, the presence of mercenaries brought a constant stream of gangers downhive into the settlement and into the bar and business at Hagen’s remained steady. They came seeking extra muscle for upcoming battles or guides for treasure-seeking trips beyond the White Wastes. Sometimes they came to town to make a name for themselves by taking down a famous merc. More often than not, the only name they made was chiselled into a headstone.

  Merc bars were sacred spaces to those who didn’t give a ratskin’s snout for the affairs of house or gang, unless they were being paid of course. To the mercs, Hagen’s Hole was a place of business and a source of drink and other bodily pleasures. The Hole was where you sold your services and where you spent, or lost, the rewards. It was a home away from home. No ganger or gang had ever won a battle inside Hagen’s Hole. No ganger had ever survived a battle fought inside the Hole. The mercs protected their own. They took care of Hagen and his Hole.

  Bester reached into a pocket in his skin-tight battlesuit and pulled out a crumpled pack of tox-sticks. Only one left. Damn. He flipped the stick up into his mouth and tossed the crumpled pack toward the discarded bottle. As he lit the stick hanging from his lips, Bester thought he saw movement in the buildings across the street. He switched his augmetic eye to nightvision and scanned the area.

  The ruins of an ancient machine shop stood across from the Hole. A huge gash had been blasted in the front wall long ago by archeotech scavengers, and the shop had been picked clean well before Bester’s time. It made for a good flop house now when he’d had one too many Wildsnakes. Another flicker of movement drew his attention to the hole in the wall. He adjusted the brightness on his eye and peered into the shop, but saw noth
ing. He checked the roof. Again nothing. Just a few rats scampering across the conduits that ran from Hagen’s Hole to all the other buildings in the area.

  The merc knew from personal experience that these pipes no longer carried power. He’d crawled through them often enough to escape the attention of the Watch or to bypass the Glory Hole gates through a hidden escape tunnel beneath Hagen’s. All the wiring in these pipes had also been scavenged long ago. Along with machinery parts and abandoned weapons, copper wiring was just about the most valuable archeotech a hiver could find in a sunken dome.

  The stink of sweat, sludge and Wildsnake wafted from the doorway into the slightly less toxic night air of Glory Hole, snapping Bester from his reverie. The stench nearly made him puke, and he forgot about the suspicious movement in his flop house as he swallowed the bile. The Hole smelled like a mixture of salty vinegar, fuel vapour, and mouldy hivewasp honey. The odour stuck to your nose hairs and stayed with you long after you left the bar.

  Leaving the stench behind, Bester ambled across the street toward the abandoned shop to check on the unwanted guest. It was time to make himself scarce anyway, lest his card-playing buddies come looking for their money. He’d told his companions that he needed to step outside to get a breath of ‘fresh’ air. But, in reality, he was up three hundred credits and knew that Skreed, Beddy and Dungo wouldn’t let him out of the game until they’d won their money back, but he needed these credits to pay off Jerico. Bester had no intention of heading back into the Hole tonight.

  No, it was time to sleep it off, and now it appeared he would have to kick out a squatter before he could bed down. He sidled up to the hole in the wall and peered inside. The bare workshop shone in shades of green to his augmetic eye, while shadows loomed and danced in the periphery of his normal eye, giving the room an eerie, otherworldly appearance; but Bester was used to the odd duality and found that the shadows often gave up more information than the stark, black-and-green world of his nightvision eye.

  As he scanned the room, the shadows transformed from amorphous blobs into a series of sharply focused images. Twisted scraps of metal that once held machinery in place dotted the shop floor. The far wall was scorched by fire and laser blasts. A crack ran diagonally from corner to corner. To the side, a crumbling stone stairway led upstairs.

  A shadow on the stairs moved abruptly as Bester glanced toward it. He twisted his head to catch the intruder in his nightvision eye, but once again he saw nothing.

  ‘Damn fast,’ muttered the bounty hunter. Bester reached over his shoulder and grabbed his shotgun before creeping into the room. He pumped a shell into the chamber and called out. ‘I ain’t got nothing against you, but this is my place. Get out now and I won’t have to shoot you.’

  He listened intently, but heard only echoes. Whatever was upstairs moved fast and silent, and seemed to like to keep to the shadows. Maybe it was just a rat. A big rat. Ratskins were known to come into town. Bester had even met a couple of Ratskin mercs acting as guides to the Underhive. They seemed alright to him, but this was his place.

  He snuck to the base of the stairs and peered into the darkness above. A man-sized shape flew past the opening, leaving just a streak of black across the green nightvision field. Bester fired. The blast turned the green world blinding white for a moment. From his normal eye, he thought he saw a billowing black shape like wings or a cape.

  Bester pumped the shotgun again and moved up the stairs. He blinked away the afterimage of the shotgun blast and then, switching back to normal vision, flicked on the torch attached to the barrel of his weapon.

  ‘Let’s see how you like the light, Mr Shadow!’ he yelled. As Bester neared the top of the stairs, he unloaded two more cartridges into the room before running in after the shots. He did a quick pirouette, shining the torch around the room. Again, there was no trace of anyone in the place. Not even movement in the shadows.

  He raised the shotgun to pump another cartridge into the chamber, and then he saw it. A black shape loomed above him. It grabbed the barrel of the gun and pulled Bester from his feet, up into the air. He pulled the trigger, but there was no cartridge in the chamber.

  The creature slammed Bester into the ceiling. He let go of his weapon and dropped to the floor. Rolling to the side to escape an immediate assault, he heard a clatter behind him and the lights went out. The bounty hunter scrambled to his feet, switched back to nightvision, and unsheathed his chainsword. With a flick of his wrist, the chain began screaming along the length of the blade.

  His shotgun lay in the middle of the room. The barrel had been crimped and bent in half. The attached torch lay shattered nearby. He searched the room, but saw nothing but a ragged hole in the ceiling that led to the roof.

  Bester looked again at the crumpled shotgun and then at the hole he’d have to crawl through to follow the beast he’d seen. The next decision came easy to the battle-hardened mercenary. ‘Okay!’ he called out. ‘You keep the place. I can sleep mine off somewhere else.’

  Chainsword still screaming in his hand, Bester walked over to pick up his ruined shotgun, muttering, ‘Whatever you’re on will take more than a night’s sleep to clear up.’ As he bent over to get his gun, the bounty hunter felt a shift in the shadows. He raised his chainsword toward the hole, but it was too late.

  The figure swooped through the hole in the ceiling, grabbed Bester by the neck and sword arm, and vaulted back through the hole. Bester finally looked into the face of his assailant just before the hand holding him under the chin twisted, snapping his neck with a loud crack. The chainsword, still screaming, slipped from the dead merc’s grasp and fell through the hole, landing next to the shotgun in the room below.

  1: FAMILY BUSINESS

  Sun streamed past thick, velour drapes – a luxury not known nor needed in the sunless depths of Hive City – and glinted off gold-flecked cords hanging in loops across the bank of windows. The glittering light fell on the back of Gerontius Helmawr, Lord of Hive Primus, and thus ruler of all Necromunda. Helmawr, who normally towered over every room, his political and economic power giving him the stature of a demigod, now sat head in hands and nearly curled into a ball on one of the soft, leather couches arrayed beneath the windows.

  From his vantage point atop the spire, the Lord of Hive Primus was used to the sun beating on his back and the rich appointments of the Imperial quarters. In fact, they were a birthright. House Helmawr had ruled Necromunda in the Emperor’s name since time immemorial. Helmawr himself had ruled for hundreds of years, longevity was just another commodity his immense wealth and power easily afforded him.

  But as brightly as the sun shone on this glorious day, it was a dark mood Lord Helmawr found himself sinking into as he looked at the macabre scene before him. It was hard enough to hold onto his sanity at the best of times, but the stress of today threatened to tip him over the edge. Helmawr was not used to the sight of blood and dead bodies – at least not in his home. Assassination was one thing, many a noble had succumbed to the assassin’s blade or a vial of poison emptied into a bowl of soup, but those deaths were clean, artful even, and were accepted practice within the Noble Houses of the Spire. Brutal murder, though, that belonged in the world beyond the Spiral Gates. Violence was a fact of life in Hive City and a way of life in the Underhive. Violence of this nature did not belong in the Imperial palace.

  And yet, here it was again.

  Helmawr heard himself giggle at the absurdity of the scene before him, and then tried to get a hold of himself. Murder was no cause for laughter.

  A palace guard lay dead on the velvet rug at Helmawr’s feet. The pool of blood surrounding the body blotted out most of the house crest woven into the fabric. ‘That will have to be replaced,’ said the lord, pointing at the rug. Four attendants, who always hovered around him like moths fluttering around a flame, jotted down the order on four separate notepads. ‘And I suppose we’ll need to order some more guards.’ Another small giggle escaped his lips.

  The body of a se
cond guard lay half on and half off the mahogany four-poster bed that lay opposite him, across the chamber. He’d been cut in half, perhaps while rushing toward his attacker. Blood still dripped off the edge of the silk sheets onto the floor where the rest of the guard’s torso and legs had fallen. The blood had probably soaked through the silk sheets all the way to the down mattress, Helmawr realized. The entire bed would have to be destroyed. ‘What a waste,’ he muttered.

  Details. That’s what the doctors told him. Concentrate on the little details. He must re-train his mind to be able to maintain focus. ‘Have that bed destroyed,’ he said to the attendants. ‘Or better yet, clean it up and send it to Lord Ty as a birthday present.’ The attendants scribbled furiously. It didn’t matter whether it was Ty’s birthday or not. None of Helmawr’s attendants would ever contradict him.

  Helmawr was getting bored with this gruesome detail. He felt that there must be some important meeting or another he should be attending. That fact was that he rarely remembered where he should be at any point during the day or, for that matter, what had happened at the last meeting. The attendants kept him apprised of the details he often forgot, but it fell to the royal chamberlain to keep track of his daily itinerary and ensure that Helmawr didn’t miss any important meetings.

  But that was not possible this day, which made this affair all the more intolerable. The third and final body in the room had belonged to Stiv Harper, Gerontius Helmawr’s royal chamberlain and most loyal servant. The battle for the chamberlain’s life must have been gruesome. He had been literally hacked to death. The man’s severed arms and legs lay at odd angles to his body, forming a crude ‘W’ on the floor. Helmawr didn’t know if it meant anything, but had the attendants make a note of it anyway.

  It was the chamberlain’s head that most upset Helmawr, though. The top had been sawed off and most of the contents spilled across the polished hardwood. Unlike the two guards, though, there was very little blood around the dismembered chamberlain. Of course, the man had been more machine than flesh. Stiv had been with Helmawr since the beginning, and no expense was spared to keep such a trusted advisor alive. But this time, there would be no saving Stiv. His wayward son had seen to that. The damage was too severe for even Lord Helmawr’s physicians and augmetists to fix.