‘But Kal is my: not so much my friend,’ said Bobo, ‘but he’s a kindred spirit. We understand one another; respect each other.’
‘Are you telling me that if ordered to kill Kal Jerico, you would refuse?’
Bobo’s professionalism jostled with his emotion for just a brief moment before the personal detachment he’d trained long and hard to turn into a reflex kicked in. ‘No sir,’ he said. ‘I will do whatever is necessary for the good of House Helmawr. You know you can count on me.’
‘Good,’ said Kauderer. Bobo wasn’t sure, but he thought he saw a smile for a brief moment cross Kauderer’s stern features. ‘That’s what I wanted to hear.’
‘So, how is it to be accomplished?’ asked Bobo. ‘I assume you chose me because I can get close to Kal without arousing suspicion.’
Kauderer sighed. ‘As much as it pains me to say this,’ he said, staring at his desk as if the words truly gave him physical discomfort, ‘I do not actually want you to kill Kal Jerico.’
Bobo forgot himself and sat down on the low table. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘Someone sent an assassin to kill Lord Helmawr,’ said Kauderer. He pointed at the table. ‘That assassin. Now it seems the new target is our future ruler, Kal Jerico.’
Bobo detected just the slightest hesitation in Kauderer’s voice before saying Kal’s name. He knew better than to ask the unanswered question about the first assassination attempt.
‘It seems that Kal Jerico is much tougher to kill than he looks. Not only did he survive his encounter with the assassin, he made sure I couldn’t get any information out of her.’
He looked up at Bobo again. ‘That’s where you come in,’ he said. ‘I chose you because you are unknown up here in the Spire. You’ve spent your entire career below the wall. And you’ve proven your loyalty to this house.’
‘So, what is it you want me to do?’ asked Bobo. ‘How can I help you?’
‘Your mission is to root out whoever is behind these attacks,’ said Kauderer. ‘I have established an alias for you. Once you leave here, you will become, to all eyes in the Spire, an off-world assassin trying to establish new business in Hive Primus.’
Bobo pointed at the floor. ‘You’re hoping whoever hired her will come to me once they realize she’s failed?’
Kauderer nodded. ‘Once we are done here, you will be smuggled off the estate to an apartment. Information about your new identity as well as a new wardrobe will be waiting for you there, along with a list of possible suspects and their regular haunts.’
‘Do I make contact or let them come to me?’
‘I will leave that up to your discretion,’ said Kauderer. ‘The word of your arrival should be out by now, and I will leak news of the death of the assassin as soon as you are in place.’
Bobo nodded and stood up.
‘However,’ said Kauderer. ‘You only have three days. After that Kal Jerico may well be the master of House Helmawr, and Emperor help us all if that happens.’
Scabbs sat with his back up against the wall at the end of the old smuggler tunnel and described his aborted battle with Vandal Feg for Yolanda. He only embellished a little about his role in his own escape.
‘You sure you only saw three guards?’ asked Yolanda.
Scabbs nodded. ‘And Feg cut one in half right before I jumped down the hole. The others looked like they were about to run. Why?’
‘Because my guess is that there are a lot more on the docks than those three,’ she said. ‘Sonny was right. They did bring down a royal transport, but that’s not all. The troops on the first transport are all dead, along with dozens of muties.’
‘First transport?’ asked Scabbs. ‘There were others?’
Yolanda nodded. She turned to look out over the Ash Wastes, still visible beyond the tunnel entrance some distance away. ‘At least one more landed and the troops in that ship laid waste to a couple of hundred muties and a group of scummers without losing a single man.’
‘Maybe the muties and the scummers killed each other,’ said Scabbs. ‘Can we go home now?’ His foot ached and he really just wanted to get back to the Sump Hole and not worry about muties, scummers, packages of spire tech or especially Vandal Feg.
‘No, most of the scummers were killed by explosions and I saw shell casings from a bolt launcher. It was the second transport and they had some heavy firepower with them. Whatever Feg has is valuable, really valuable to the right people.’
‘And to the wrong people, it’s lethal,’ said Scabbs. He unwrapped his bandage and looked at the gash in his foot. It had started to heal okay. He picked at the scab a little as he talked. ‘I mean we have to fight either Feg or these royals to get the stupid package, and given a choice between Vandal Feg and a unit of royal troops, I pick a bottle of wildsnake in the Sump Hole.’
Yolanda turned and glared at Scabbs. As the silence grew around him, he looked up at her and withered under her gaze. ‘What we need,’ she said, ‘is our own shock troops.’
‘The Wildcats?’ said Scabbs. ‘You sure you want to drag them into this? I mean they’ve stopped trying to kill you now. Do you really want to get a bunch of them killed again? That just makes them mad.’
‘This could be the biggest score of our lives, Scabbs,’ said Yolanda. ‘Just think about it, we get this piece of tech and sell it back to whoever it is wants it so badly, and then we never have to go bounty hunting with stupid Jerico ever again.’
‘But I like Kal,’ said Scabbs. He pulled at the scab on his foot a little too hard and blood started running down towards his toes again. He hastily wrapped it back up. ‘And I like living even more. This sounds like suicide. Besides, what if the uphivers from that second transport already have it?’
Yolanda yanked the half-ratskin off the ground, easily lifting him into the air before dropping him back onto his feet. ‘Only one way to find out,’ she said. ‘Come on.’
She half-pulled, half-dragged Scabbs along behind her as she began climbing back up through the smugglers’ tunnel towards the Hive City docks.
When Scabbs and Yolanda got to the top of the tunnel, they found the bodies of the three dead royal troops that Feg had obviously dropped down the hole.
‘Well, I guess we know Feg survived this battle, anyway,’ said Yolanda. She stepped on the bodies as she reached for the ladder, then she heard voices from above.
‘In here, captain,’ said the first voice. ‘A trail of blood leads right into the warehouse.’
‘Stein, get more troops and investigate,’ said the second voice, presumably the captain. ‘I don’t want any more deaths today. Mageson and I are heading into the secret passage that behemoth escaped through.’
‘Yes, captain,’ said Stein.
Yolanda heard the door to the warehouse open and the unmistakable sound of a spyrer rig clomping across the floor above her.
‘Oh scav,’ she muttered. She turned to Scabbs and motioned for him to follow.
As they tromped back down the tunnel, Yolanda kept looking over her shoulder. Once she felt they were out of earshot, she said, ‘Just what we needed, a trigger-happy noble in a spyrer rig finding us standing over his dead men.’
Scabbs limped along beside her, grunting with each step. ‘How do you know he was trigger happy?’
‘They all are.’
They continued on for a little while before Yolanda spoke again. ‘At least we know Feg escaped with that Spire tech.’
‘Yippee,’ said Scabbs.
Yolanda ignored him. Sure, it would be tough. They had to find Feg and somehow get the item from him without getting killed. Then they had to find a way to sell the item back to its owners without getting killed. It would all be worth it if it meant she never had to follow Kal Jerico’s orders ever again.
Something began to gnaw at the back of Yolanda’s mind as they got closer to the bottom of t
he tunnel again. Then it hit her. ‘Hey Scabbs,’ she said. ‘Do you know about another secret tunnel leading out of the docks?’
Scabbs grunted and then said, ‘No, but there’s probably several. It’s got to be a hot target for smugglers and such.’
‘Sure,’ said Yolanda. ‘But the enforcers sweep the docks pretty regularly. I remember them shutting down a couple of back entrances recently. How did they miss both the one we’re in and the one Feg used to escape, and how did Feg know about them?’
They had reached the Ash Wastes again and Yolanda turned towards Scabbs. He shrugged and said, ‘I dunno. I guess they were paid off. I mean this one wasn’t hard to miss. We fell right into it.’
‘Right,’ said Yolanda. ‘That’s the only explanation. But who can pay off so many enforcers, and keep them paid off.’
The sudden realization hit them both harder than the wave of heat from the Ash Wastes.
‘Nemo,’ they said together.
They looked at each other for a moment, and then Yolanda left the tunnel and turned to walk along the edge of the hive. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘I know another way back in.’
‘Where are we going?’ asked Scabbs.
She stopped and turned to look at Scabbs. ‘You remember when Crimson chased us out of the hive a few years back?’ she asked. ‘Those tunnels aren’t too far from here. Then we can head to the Sump Hole to forget about this whole mess.’
‘What? Why?’
‘Vandal Feg is one thing,’ said Yolanda. ‘But you know my feelings about Nemo. There is nothing in this world worth going up against him for.’
They shuffled down the tunnel in silence. ‘You know,’ said Scabbs. ‘We should have seen it earlier. Vandal Feg isn’t smart enough to pull this off himself. He must have been working for Nemo the whole time.’
‘I don’t work for you anymore, Nemo,’ said Vandal Feg.
Nemo stared at the giant mercenary through his reflective, black mask and smiled, secure in the knowledge that his smile could not be seen. ‘Everyone works for me,’ he said, ‘whether they know it or not.’
He looked at Seek and Destroy, his loyal and ruthless henchmen who, unfortunately, spent as much time fighting each other as doing their job. They were currently playing ‘punch the shoulder’ while guarding the door. At least they’d stopped arguing.
‘Well, this is my job, this time, Nemo,’ said Feg, ‘not yours. Now, I’m willing to cut you in on the action if you help me. You see, I want you to work for me.’
Nemo decided to humour Feg for the moment. ‘And what would be my role in this little venture?’ he asked. As Feg spoke, Nemo flipped a few switches on one of his consoles. Several views of the Hive City docks sprang to life on his screens.
‘All I require is transport into the Spire,’ said Feg. ‘I was supposed to meet up with a contact in the docks, but I guess you already know what’s going on there.’
‘Yes,’ said Nemo. ‘Yes, I do. Bit of a botched job, don’t you think?’ One view showed two nobles in spyrer rigs entering the secret entrance that Feg had sliced open. He switched to a different pict-camera that showed the interior of the tunnel.
‘There’s no way those royals should have beaten me back to the docks,’ said Feg. ‘Anyway, my contacts will pay you a handsome fee for providing me safe and quiet passage through the wall.’
‘Including expenses?’ asked Nemo. ‘All expenses?’ his fingers hovered over a switch on his console as he watched the monitors. When the two spyrers moved into view of his tunnel camera, Nemo flipped the switch. The monitor flashed brightly, illuminating his face for a moment as the explosion he triggered tore through the tunnel. Almost immediately static replaced the bright image as he lost the signal from the camera.
He looked back at Feg, who hadn’t spoken; perhaps distracted by the flash of light in Nemo’s otherwise darkened office. ‘It would seem we shall be adding the cost of a new access point to the docks to your list of expenses,’ he said. ‘Will that be agreeable to your contact?’
Feg seemed to consider it and looked back at the two guards behind him, perhaps wondering if he could fight his way out. He then looked back at Nemo and smiled. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘Because we’re old friends…’
Nemo shook his head.
‘Partners? Associates?’
‘Associates, perhaps,’ said Nemo.
Feg smiled again and talked quickly. ‘Because we’ve worked together in the past, I’m willing to cut you in for half of my take, and all you got to do is get me to the Spire. That should be easy for Nemo, the Underhive’s master spy.’
Nemo flipped a few more switches on one of his control panels before continuing. ‘But why should I cut you in for any of the profit?’ he asked.
Feg was taken aback. This was obviously not going the way he’d planned. But he still had one card to play. ‘Because you don’t have the package,’ he said. ‘I do. It’s hidden. Besides, you have no idea what it is or who wants it so bad, that it’s worth a hundred thousand creds.’
Nemo placed his hand over one last switch. ‘You’d be surprised what I know,’ said Nemo. ‘There’s very little that happens beneath, or above, the wall that I don’t find out about. I know exactly who wants your precious medicine and why. And as for finding the package, I’m sure you’ll tell me in time.’
Several doors opened behind Feg and a dozen more guards entered the room with weapons drawn. Seek and Destroy stopped their punching game and pulled out their weapons as well.
‘You think you can hold me?’ asked Feg. As he reached towards his arm to activate his chainsword, Nemo pressed the switch, which released a reinforced plasteel net that dropped over the head of the huge man, dragging him to the ground under the weight of heavy and nearly indestructible metal.
‘I do, actually,’ said Nemo. ‘Needle him!’
Several guards shot Vandal Feg with needlers, knocking him out before he could even attempt to cut his way through the heavy metal net.
A small, thin man wearing a suit and tie had escorted Bobo off the royal estate, through a series of tunnels that opened into the Spire docks. Before leaving the estate, Kauderer had given Bobo a new set of clothes, which he now wore.
The clothes were pure silk and fitted perfectly. Bobo had never felt so comfortable in a set of clothes before. He’d always seen clothing as an inconvenience. He wore them only because he would draw attention otherwise. The rough texture of his old clothes and the way they bound in all the wrong places had not only been uncomfortable but had hindered his movement, which he abhorred when he was on the job.
These clothes looked similar to his old set. They were grey in colour and fairly non-descript so as to not draw any undue attention. Functional without looking too utilitarian, but refined enough to not look out of place amongst the residents of the Spire.
‘Here you are, sir,’ said Bobo’s temporary guide, who he suspected was another of Kauderer’s agents even though he looked like a scribe. The man carried himself like a spy and his eyes had constantly scanned their path as they walked.
He motioned Bobo towards a blank wall down the tunnel and then disappeared into the darkness. Bobo moved forwards and opened the secret door at the end of the tunnel. The mechanism was the same as the one the ‘scribe’ had opened at the other end.
He stepped into a secluded section of the docks and closed the door before walking towards the docking ports ahead of him. As he reached the end of the corridor, a group of people began passing by right on cue. He slipped into the group and walked with them to a large building where their luggage waited. He looked around and found a set of bags with the name Jackal Bristol on them. He picked them up and left the docks.
Bobo was worried someone might try to contact him on his way to his apartment, because he wanted some time to look through his belongings and immerse himself in the role before beginning. Luckily, the tr
ip was uneventful and he breathed a sigh of relief when he closed the door behind him.
When he looked up, Bobo gasped. He had thought the rooms in the royal estate had been huge and lush. It had nothing on this apartment. It was roughly the size of an entire floor at Madam Noritake’s. He dropped his bags and wandered around.
The sitting room alone had enough furniture for all of Noritake’s girls and their clients. The bedroom had a bed that apparently had been built for five and a closet with enough silk clothing to outfit the entire dock workers’ union. The most impressive thing in the apartment by far was the window, which covered both walls in the bedroom. He’d been given a corner apartment. It seemed Jackal Bristol liked to live well.
Foremost amongst the obvious symbols of wealth was an expensive looking bottle of fluid which immediately caught Bobo’s attention. He opened the bottle and took a swig. The bubbly liquid glided down his throat, gently warming his mouth and chest as it passed, a far cry from the acidic burning sensation of a bottle of wildsnake. He sat on one of his many couches and looked through the information Kauderer had given him in his luggage.
It seemed the most promising option was a young prince from House Ko’Iron, who’d been very vocal of late about the unworthiness of House Helmawr’s continued rule. ‘Interesting,’ said Bobo. ‘It seems our young prince likes to frequent the Kitty Club. Looks like I’m going out tonight.’
He took another swig from his bottle. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I could get used to this.’
Wotan’s air analyzers had been taxed almost to their limits. His body had actually heated up to the point that his paws sizzled slightly on the stone floor of the Hive City dome. He’d finally tracked down the source of an odd odour he’d first smelled while the wall had been open. It was a non-metallic, non-toxic odour that had no place on this side of the wall.
After the wall closed, Wotan had searched the city blocks near the wall for any indication of that scent coming from anywhere other than the wall itself. His analyzers had picked up trace amounts and he’d followed the scent like a bloodhound into and out of buildings, up and down ramps, and across numerous catwalks.
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