Cardinal Crimson Read online

  As Miguel aimed his weapon, Francks’s eyes clouded over and he whispered a single word: ‘Stagger.’

  Before he could fire, Miguel crumpled to the ground, falling to the side as if something had slammed into his hips. He almost fell through the hole, but Tyler reached out and grabbed him by the belt and hauled him back onto the patch of metal flooring they had shared.

  ‘Stagger. Righteous, stagger,’ intoned Francks, and one by one the Righteous Saviours fell to the floor. Most fell through to the floor below. The rest were too dazed and confused by their sudden vertigo to move, but Francks knew this respite wouldn’t last long.

  He called out softly to the Universals with both his voice and his mind. ‘Run, Universals. Run home. Run now!’ He waited to hear the scrabbling of feet below and then stepped off the beam. Jobe Francks floated to the floor and followed the retreating Universals, disappearing into the maze of beams.

  Jerod Bitten fretted over an open ledger. Four more ledgers lay in a stack to his left and another two to his right. The columns of numbers in the open ledger were already making his old eyes blur but he knew he needed to balance the rest of the books before bed so he rubbed the heels of his closed fists into his eyes for a minute and tried to refocus.

  After a while, satisfied that the numbers in the open ledger added up, he closed the oversized book and set it on top of the short stack to the right. He was just about to reach for the next ledger on his left – one labelled US – when he heard a staccato knock at his door.

  Bitten cocked his head and counted the knocks. After listening to the rhythm twice, he rose from his desk and started for the door. Halfway there, he hesitated, shuffled back to the desk and dropped the ledgers into the bottom drawer, and then returned to the door. The knocking had continued the entire time and was getting much louder and faster by the time he reached for the handle.

  When he opened the door, the light from Bitten’s parlour spilled out onto the step, outlining a cowled figure standing there, poised to knock again.

  ‘What took you so damn long?’ demanded the voice from beneath the hood.

  ‘I was–’

  ‘Close the scavving door,’ interrupted the visitor.

  It was pitch black past the pool of light coming through his doorway. Britten stepped outside and closed the door behind him, plunging them both into darkness.

  ‘Hold out your hand,’ said the demanding voice.

  Bitten was beginning to get worried, but complied. The stranger immediately grabbed his wrist, seemingly unaffected by the inky blackness, and then slapped something down into his palm.

  ‘Here’s the package you requested,’ stated the voice in the dark. ‘You understand your part in all of this?’

  When Bitten didn’t reply immediately, the pressure on his wrist began to increase. ‘I understand,’ he said at last. His wrist was freed as soon as he replied.

  ‘Good. Don’t fail in this or your past will finally come back to haunt you.’

  Bitten opened his mouth to protest.

  ‘Don’t speak,’ said the figure. ‘He knows what you did, and you should have died long ago because of it.’

  ‘I… I won’t fail him this time,’ said Bitten.

  There was no reply.

  ‘I… Hello?’ Bitten reached out with one hand and pawed at the air in front of him. Nobody was there. He reached back and opened his door. The light hurt his eyes, which had just got used to the dark. The figure was gone. He stepped inside quickly and slammed the door. After a moment, he slid the locking bar down into place and walked back to his desk.

  He looked at the package in his hand. It was a large envelope, thicker and heavier than he had expected. He opened it and peered inside. A low whistle escaped his lips. He dumped the huge wad of credits onto the desk. Even without counting it he knew this added up to more money than the bottom lines on any two of his ledgers.

  4: IN THE TRENCHES

  Foreman Grondle scratched at his neck, his fingers completely disappearing within the thick, black tangle of his beard. Work at the site had been slow this morning. No, that was an understatement. Not a single piece of rubble had been moved since the remnants of his crew had unburied their fellow workers the day before.

  Now, he stood at the construction site alone. What workers he still had on payroll were out recruiting. Luckily, he didn’t need skilled workers at this point. He just needed grunts who could move debris from one pile to another. Once they got that blasted rock pile cleaned out, he could get some skilled tradesmen in to shore up the wall of the dome, but some days it felt like he would never even get that far.

  He heard a noise like a low rumbling back near the entrance. ‘What now?’ he asked. Grondle turned and groaned from the strain on his knees. They’d been aching all morning. The previous day’s exertion after the rock slide was the first real work he’d done in years and he’d got painfully out of shape as a foreman. ‘I’m gettin’ too old and too fat for this,’ he sighed.

  But the next moment put a smile on the large, round foreman – not that anyone would be able to see it beneath the black forest covering his face. His new crew leader, an industrious ex-Orlock ganger named Ander, with thick arms and a thicker head, was leading his crew into the dome.

  No, leading wasn’t the right word. Dragged behind him in chains was more accurate. Ander and a few of the other paid workers held long lengths of chain attached to lines of manacled people, who staggered or were dragged along behind them.

  Grondle hobbled over toward Ander and his crew. He moaned and grumbled with each step as his ponderous weight compressed his aching knees, but as bad as Grondle felt, he could tell the new workers felt worse. They were a sad mixture of scavvies, ratskins, muties and even some humans – at least what might once have been human. What little clothing the group wore was nothing more than filthy rags held together by string or worse. It was tough to tell where soiled clothing ended and dirt-encrusted limbs began. The grime was so thick that even the manacles attached to their ankles hadn’t rubbed any of it off.

  He wouldn’t have been surprised if Ander had grabbed them all from the Ash Wastes, except he knew Ander didn’t have the guts to venture outside the dome. As he neared the rag-tag group, Grondle noticed two more disturbing things about the crew. First, they stunk. A horrid mixture of urine, faeces and toxic waste radiated off them like a glowing, radioactive stench. Second, each member of the chain gang had nearly identical bloody bruises on their temples.

  Grondle asked the question he knew he shouldn’t ask. ‘Where did you get your crew, Ander?’

  Ander drew his hand down a stringy goatee and smirked. ‘At the volunteer centre,’ he said. ‘And I’m sure I can find more volunteers as needed.’

  Grondle looked at the chain gang and considered his options. He quickly realised he had none. ‘Take them to the rock pile,’ he said. ‘I’ll supervise them while you and your crew go recruit some more workers.’

  ‘Not a problem, Grondle. The streets are filled with volunteers.’ He turned to his companions. ‘It’s all in how you ask, right boys?’ They laughed, and then handed the chains to Grondle before heading back toward the dome entrance.

  Yolanda drew her laspistols and fired to either side. One shot glanced off Gonth’s shoulder pad, hardly even fazing the disfigured Goliath. The other hit the chainsword-wielder in the hand, burning off a finger. Yolanda didn’t wait around to see their reactions. She dived forward into a tangle of pipes, beams and metal plates welded haphazardly into the side of the tunnel.

  A stream of shells erupted from the autocannon and screamed through the tunnel behind her. She scrambled behind a loose piece of metal plating just as a shell exploded on the other side, spraying shrapnel into the rafters and across the floor. Above the din, she heard a somewhat more human scream of pain echoing down the tunnel. Apparently the overanxious Goliath had hit at least one of his comrades with the autocannon burst. Yolanda hoped it had been Gonth.

  ‘Scavving idiot killed
my brother!’ said one of the Goliaths.

  This was followed by two loud shotgun bangs and a dull ‘Ooph.’

  Yolanda knew from experience that a shotgun blast, even at close range, would do little more than enrage a Goliath, especially one large enough to handle an autocannon. She was right. The next sound she heard was the whine of the autocannon’s cylinder revving up. She peeked out from behind the metal plate to see Gonth and the lone shotgun wielder diving for cover. The third Goliath lay on the ground, with a gaping bloody hole where his chest should have been.

  A hail of shells screamed through the tunnel, slamming into beams, pipes, the floor and the ceiling. One hit the dead Goliath, spraying blood and limbs onto the walls. She was about to lean out a little farther to see what happened to Gonth when the screech of the chainsword impacting metal above her head made her pull back.

  ‘That hurt!’ said the Goliath, waving his four-fingered hand in the air as he came around the sheet of metal. He revved the motor of the whining chainsword and grinned at Yolanda, who had fallen into a squat in the cramped space behind the loose sheet of metal. The whine turned into a wail and then a screech as he raised the sword over his head and let it bite into Yolanda’s metal shield. Sparks flew as it ground and sawed its way through the steel.

  ‘This’ll hurt more,’ she said. Yolanda, her forearms braced on her knees, squinted as she aimed her pistols up high. Searing red energy spat from the end of her laspistols, slicing through the air and hitting the Goliath in the wrist. Both blasts impacted at a single point, cutting a neat hole through his wrist, bone and the mass of tendons that controlled the joint.

  The Goliath looked up just in time to see his hand go limp and release the raging chainsword. It kicked off the wall and fell end-over-end in seeming slow motion toward his face. He tried to dive to the side, his mouth open in a soundless scream, but the chainsword caught him in the chin. It skipped against the jawbone and slid down to his shoulder.

  Blood sprayed into the air as the whirling blade sliced into his flesh, ripping through tendons and muscles. The Goliath fell backward, still trying to get out of the path of the tumbling chainsword. It bit into his thigh, but must have hit bone and jammed. The extra weight and loss of muscle in his leg sent the Goliath crashing to the floor.

  Yolanda sheathed her pistols and pulled herself to her feet. She stepped gingerly past the prone Goliath, who writhed in agony, the chainsword still whining and bucking as it strained against his femur.

  ‘Don’t say I never did anything for you,’ she said as she yanked the sword free of his leg. Bits of red muscle and white bone sprayed out of the wound. She flicked the off switch and carried the weapon out into the tunnel, kicking the Goliath in the head as she left.

  ‘That belongs to me,’ said Gonth, pointing at the chainsword with his meltagun.

  Gonth stood blocking Yolanda’s exit from her hiding spot, meltagun levelled at her head. His armour had been scarred and blackened from autocannon shell explosions. She could also see streaks of red splattered across his chest and neck, but he seemed too calm for any of the blood to be his own.

  Yolanda weighed her options. She did have the chainsword, but one shot from the meltagun would leave a wet spot on the floor where she stood. The other two Goliaths were nowhere to be seen, but judging from the shouting and shooting down the tunnel, at least one of them would be back soon. Plus, she could hear the injured Goliath scrambling around behind her. This was still too close to a fair fight for her liking.

  ‘Fine,’ she said as she pulled the ripcord. ‘You can have it back.’ The chainsword screamed to life, and Yolanda revved the motor once before heaving it up into the air toward Gonth. As the new Goliath leader scrambled to get out from under the spinning weapon, Yolanda turned and sprinted down the tunnel.

  The chainsword crashed to the floor behind her and the chain flew free, embedding into the wall next to her. The next moment, the wall burned red-hot, hissing and popping as the molecules became instantly super-heated. Yolanda kept running, weaving back and forth as parts of the tunnel burst into flame and melted around her.

  She felt her back start to heat up and dived forward. The heat intensified and acrid smoke filled the air around her. She began to lose consciousness with the smell of burned flesh in her nostrils. Then a hail of bullets and laser blasts streaked down the tunnel above her and the heat stopped.

  Yolanda looked up and tried to push the pain down and focus her tear-filled eyes. The tunnel was filled with Escher gangers. Several of them continued to fire down the hall, their long purple, red and yellow mohawks waving back and forth with every recoil.

  ‘Looked like you needed some help,’ said one of the women. She had bright blonde hair pulled up and over head into a ponytail. The sides of her head were shaved clean, showing the entire Wildcat tattoo that ran across her forehead and wrapped around both ears.

  ‘Thanks, Themis,’ said Yolanda to the Wildcat leader. ‘But I had it under control.’

  ‘Well, we’ll just leave you to it then,’ said Themis, smiling.

  That smile was the last thing Yolanda saw as she slipped into unconsciousness.

  ‘What are we doing here?’ asked Scabbs.

  ‘I need to think,’ said Kal. ‘And the Breath of Fresh Air was the closest bar.’ He pressed the tips of his fingers against his forehead. ‘But it’s too scavving quiet in here.’

  Scabbs looked around. He and Kal were the only ones in the place other than Squatz, the dwarfish bartender, who was hobbling back behind the bar. He disappeared for a moment and then popped back up with an oomph, obviously having difficulty climbing onto his plank. ‘This place used to be booming,’ said Scabbs. ‘What happened?’

  ‘You two. That’s what,’ said Squatz. He spat on the bar and wiped it up with a dirty rag. ‘You turned my doorstep into a battlefield against the blasted vampire, and my business has never been the same.’

  ‘I thought your customers were eaten by the vampire well before we came along,’ said Scabbs. He looked with suspicion at the bottle of House Special Brew that Squatz had placed in front of him. It had no snake in the bottom, which was a plus, but he didn’t like the way it continued to bubble and froth.

  ‘Or perhaps this stuff killed them,’ he said. He took an experimental sip and gagged. It felt like his mouth was on fire. Scabbs scraped his tongue against the palm of his hand and gagged again as a wad of skin flaked off in his mouth.

  ‘Careful,’ called Squatz from the bar. ‘That stuff’ll stunt your growth,’ he laughed. ‘Looks like you’ve had too much already.’

  Scabbs spat the dead skin into the bottle, where it fizzed and popped and shrunk as if being eaten away. ‘You’re one to talk,’ he said. ‘I don’t need to stand on a plank to see over the bar.’

  ‘Girls! Girls!’ said Kal. ‘Get to the part where you’re pulling each other’s hair, already, would you? A good brawl would at least help me think.’

  ‘If it’s a bar brawl you want,’ said Squatz, ‘Go back to your precious Sump Hole. This be Hive City. The Enforcers keep this place civilised.’

  Kal snorted. ‘Yeah. Thugs with power mauls roaming the city busting heads, that’s civilised.’

  ‘Besides,’ added Scabbs. ‘Kal’s got debt collectors and assassins after him.’

  Kal tried to shush him, but Scabbs kept talking. ‘He had to duck out of the Sump Hole just last…’ Kal jammed the still fizzing bottle of House Special into Scabbs mouth and tipped it up. The burning liquid scorched his throat as he was forced to chug it down.

  ‘So,’ said Squatz. ‘That was you who dropped the assassin last night, then?’

  Kal released his hold on the bottle. ‘Assassin?’ he asked. ‘What assassin?’

  Squatz dropped back down from his plank and waddled around the end of the bar. ‘Maybe not, then,’ he said. ‘Whoever took down old Krellum was a hell of a skilled fighter. Shattered his knee and put two big holes in his chest. At close range too. Like someone got the drop on him.�
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  Scabbs grabbed the bottle from his mouth, spilling the rest down his shirt. He watched Squatz climb up onto the chair opposite Kal and stand looking at the bounty hunter in the eye, as if sizing him up.

  ‘Couldn’t have been you,’ said Squatz. ‘I don’t think you’re that good. Lucky, sure, but not skilled enough to get the drop on Krellum.’

  Scabbs pushed his chair back, hoping to get out of the line of fire. Kal was never one to let an insult go unchallenged, but he almost dropped the empty bottle when his friend laughed.

  ‘Heh. You’re probably right,’ said Kal. ‘And I’d have taken him in for the reward. As I remember, Krellum has quite a healthy bounty on his head. Where’d you say he was found?’

  ‘I didn’t say,’ replied Squatz. He stared hard at Kal, perhaps debating how much more he should divulge. ‘And you don’t get any more out of me for free.’

  Kal looked at Scabbs. ‘Pay him,’ he said.

  ‘Do what now?’

  ‘We owe Squatz for letting us use his place as a base of operations last time,’ said Kal. ‘Pay him.’

  Scabbs dug into his trousers and pulled out the few credits he had left along with a handful of ash grey detritus. He scowled at the smiling Squatz and dropped the whole dirty handful into the little man’s pudgy hands. Squatz looked down at the wad of credits and crud in his palm and swore under his breath.

  Then they both looked back at Kal, who had his pearl-handled pistols out and trained on Squatz. ‘Now, you’ll tell us what we want to know and maybe you live to spend that money.’

  Scabbs’s scowl turned into a smile. That was the Kal Jerico he remembered.

  ‘I… I don’t know much,’ said Squatz. His face was the same ashen colour as the dirty credits in his hand. ‘Krellum was found by the Enforcers this morning in an alley, just like I said – two blasts in his chest and a broken leg.’

  ‘Where was this alley?’

  ‘Just a few blocks from here.’

  ‘Who was the target? Who ordered the hit?’