The first thing that
hit Vintsen Courraine was the searing pain in his head. Then, the
reek of disinfectants and surgical chems, accompanied by the whirr of
micro-mech tools. And then, as his vision resolved, the distinctive
silhouette of Doctor Proxi's head, framed by the fierce glow of
angled lumens.
Ah, frag, he
thought, I'm back on the slab.
He moved to sit up but
found he was clamped in place at the neck and wrists. Proxi, in her
grimy chirurgeon's robes, impassively masked as ever, was stooped
over and right in his grill. She was working away at one side of his
head with the blades and fleshweavers on her augmetic hand, but Vints
couldn't see what she was about.
Wait, thought
Vints, my eye...
'Be still, please,
senor Courraine,' said Proxi tonelessly. 'I'm at a particularly
delicate moment in the procedure. Your eye is gone. I'm trying to
refix the plate in your head and seal up the wound.'
Not the first injury
Vints had sustained running the downhive life. But still. 'Frag, that
hurts.'
'I can't give you any
more kalma chems,' said Proxi. 'Your heart wouldn't take it.'
'Doc, we went looking
for that escaped ambull...' winced Vints. 'In the badzones... me and
Edzra.... where is he, anyhow?'
'Senors Macbacta and
Lebow are just outside,' said Proxi, nodding almost imperceptibly
towards the cutting room door. 'Now please, don't move.'
To take his mind off
the pain, scanned back to what had brought him here.
+ + +
Word had got out
that a truly gnarly specimen – an ambull no less - had escaped from
the Ba'Kings' menagerie, and that the guilders were offering a hefty
reward for the beast's carcase.
Naturally, this had
drawn guns from right across Hacked Knee Nord, and hunting crews had
formed along guild alliance lines. Vints and Edzra, the latter
hefting his newly-acquired mining laser, had fallen in with two of
the Van Saar Blitzkrieg Boppers – their leader Jurgex and a juve
called Andreas – and two of the Hooded Men – ganger Greum and the
brutal ogryn Oisin. Any lingering aggro from the Jackers' recent
scrap with the Cawdors was set static – there was more at stake
this shift. The Reprobates and Harbingers had teamed up for the Wind
Sore Clan, and the Battersump H.E.A.T. were represented by the Wasted
Youth, Krass Dynasty, Hellhounds and the Church of the Amethyst
Emperor.
Of course, there
would be blood.
First, though, the
hunters had to gun and cut their way through the weird carnival that
had gathered around the rogue ambull in a tight mazework of tangled
tunnels. An unsanctioned witch and a crew of chittering, misshapen
dreg-muties had gathered in awe of the beast, and some kind of crazy
spyko connection had kicked in and set a couple of nearby ambot units
running riot.
The faction gangs
had their work cut out, and Vints and the Ba'Kings crew decided it'd
be sharp to hang back and let their rivals thin out the murderous
throng before ducking in and hitting the real target. They split into
two crews: Vints with Greum and Oisin to the left, shadowing the Wind
Sore mob, and Edra with Jurgex and Andreas, moving into a small
chamber towards the Battersump side of the fightzone.
Gunfire and death
screams echoed through the corridors ahead. Turned out the Battersump
boys, who had the biggest crew, were doing most of the gruntwork,
slaying muties and even hammering two ambots into junk.
But then there was
the ambull. Neither Vints nor Edzra had yet clocked the beast, but
its ragged, booming roars sounded through the tunnels, along with
repeated oaths and curses as the hunters found their bullets and
blasts unable to pierce the monster's flinty hide.
Vints and the Hooded
Men were debating whether to pitch in alongside the Harbingers to
purge a gaggle of dreg-muties when Edzra's voice crackled through on
their two-way vox link.
'Uh, boss, we got a
situation back here – there's commotion up ahead. It's those
three-armed Battersump muties, you know, Krass and his like. And I
think the ambull's real close... O frag, Bopper boys, heads up!'
The vox cut out.
Straight off, Vints
turned and started running to Edzra's position. Greum looked
surprised – at least as surprised as you can look when your face is
covered by a pointed hood – but Oisin wasn't narked. The ogryn was
already lumbering off towards the sounds of battle, chuckling deeply
and ominously.
As he reached the
small chamber, Vints just caught Edzra letting rip with a blast from
his mining laser. The heavy lasbolt punched the torso and abdomen
clean out of a gibbering dreg-mutie standing in the opposite doorway.
But there was closer trouble: the two Boppers were fighting off
another dreg-mutie on the left of the room.
'Where's the
ruckus?' said Vints.
'Right through
there,' said Edzra, pointing the muzzle of his industrial las at the
doorway ahead. 'Reckon the big bastard's just round to the left.'
Vints thought for
half a click that maybe they should help out the Boppers. Of course
not. A grin broke through his barbe.
'I'm going for it,'
he said. 'Cover me.'
With that, he
clicked on his chainsword and ran full tilt across the room and
through the doorway.
Vints Courraine had
crossed paths with some real Necromundan horrors in his time –
starve-crazy ripperjacks, sump spiders the size of load-luggers,
nests of seething blindsnakes – but nothing could have prepared him
for the heaving slagpile of a monster he found himself up against.
The ambull was huge,
taller than two Goliaths, all ceramite-strong muscle and fist-thick
chitin. A cluster of Battersump gangers were attacking from the
front, and it was taking wild swings at them with its ponderous
forearms, each wider than a heavy-duty prommy can. The claws on the
end of each arm were jagged and barbarous, same as its mandibles,
which gnashed and clicked frantically either side of its slavering
maw. And the less said about the stench, which would have made the
sump smell sweet by comparison, the better.
It was enough to
overwhelm even an experienced gang runner. But Vints noticed one
particlar detail in all the horror.
The ambull was
bleeding.
Someone had got a
telling blow on it. What bleeds can be killed.
Encouraged, Vints
screamed an old Orlock battlecry and opened fire at the beast with
bolt pistol. He aimed at the monster's lower back: the shells blew
off a couple of chunks of chitin, and that was where he followed
through with his chainsword. The blades bit deep and churned up the
flesh just below the ambull's waist. A torrent of sticky, grey-blue
blood gushed out.
The ambull reared
back, filling the corridor with an ullulating roar. It twisted round
with disturbing speed, bringing one of its claws towards Vints. He
gasped and ducked. The claw swung over his head and he almost laughed
– and then something hit him in the side of the head. It was heavy
and blisteringly hot, and Vints dropped to the floor.
Prone, Vints reeled.
It was bad. He could hardly see. Whatever had hit him, it wasn't the
ambull, but he couldn't focus on anything. Looking up, he saw the
monster looming over him, blocking out almost everything else. He
tried to roll away and, as he twisted, he caught glimpse of Jared,
bossman of the Reprobates, ten metres away and hurling a
hefty-looking bomb at the ambull and its attackers. Everything
caught fire and then went dark....
+ + +
So Vints was wondering
how he'd made it from there to the fleshweaver's slab.
'Doc, stop for a click
or two, will you? And get Edzra and Akilles in here.'
Doctor Proxi sighed –
exasperation was about the only emotion she ever displayed – but
duly paused and summoned the two Jackers into the cutting room. Vints
demanded Edzra give him vox and pict, as it were, on the rest of the
hunt.
'Well, boss,' said
Edzra. 'Things ran pretty crazy after that meathead chucked the flame
bomb. Fraggers were burning here and there, the ambull looked to be
on its last legs. That's when that young Bopper we were running with
– Andreas - ducks out and takes a shot with his fancy laspistol.
Wouldn't you know it, it pops straight through the ambull's eyeball
and, I guess, into its brain. Big bastard drops dead right there.'
Vints gasped a laugh
and regretted it as pain lanced through his head.
'And that's not the
craziest of it,' continued Edzra. 'Practically before the ambull's
hit the deck, that Wasted guy Stray Tom – the one who took out
Murgen last cycle – he comes running up and shoots Andreas in the
head with his sawn-off. Shoots him sump-dead. This juve, who's just
killed a fragging ambull...'
This got a chuckle from
grim Akilles, even though he'd heard the story before.
Edzra went on: 'Good
shift turned real bad real quick for the Blitzkreig Boppers... And
that's not all. Seems like there's trouble with the Battersump
H.E.A.T. boys, bad blood between the Amethyst church guys and the
Hellhounds. The three-arm mutie guys start laying into the Hounds
like it's Sanguinius Day, bullets flying everywhere, things go
sumpwards real fast...'
'No kidding,' said
Vints. 'And what happened to our, uh, good pals from the Hooded Men?'
'Dunno about Greum, but
Oisin got heavy over where the Wind Sore mob were operating. Took out
a bunch of poor fraggers, and we know how that feels.'
'That all?'
'Not quite. Those
Harbinger snakes were skulking round through all this. Looks like
they knew well enough not to get involved, but get this – last
thing their bossman Crowley did before they cleared off was take a
shot at the Amethyst mutie boss Ghilabrious. Killed him straight off
and all.'
Another chuckle from
morbid Akilles.
'Sumpdammit, what a
busted shift,' said Vints. 'So how'd it all play out in the end?'
'Fragged if I know,'
said Edzra. 'They were all still blasting and scragging away when I
grabbed you and hauled boots out of there. Figured it was better to
get you here to the Doc's after, uh, after you got, uh, took out...'
'Yeah,' said Vints.
'So... what exactly happened there? One click I'm bringing bullet and
blade to the ambull, the next....'
'Uh, I didn't rightly
see,' said Edzra. He was slowly sidling toward the door.
Doctor Proxi broke in.
'The burns you took from the incendiary device were superficial. But
the shot that burst your eyeball and warped your cranial plate? It
hit you from behind... From the wound pattern I would guess it was an
industrial las device. Perhaps, say, a mining laser?'
Groggy as he was, Vints
got the message.
'Well, frag me - ' he
began, but Edzra was already talking over him.
'I swear, boss,'
stuttered Edzra, 'I didn't mean to do it, I thought I had a clear
shot at the ambull, if I'd've thought I was going to hit you, I never
would've taken the shot...'
The confession rolled
on, accompanied by a torrent of threats from Vints about what he was
going to do to Edzra when the clamps were off and he was up from the
meatslab.
Akilles grinned as he
took in the show. Now here was a shift's entertainment in the making.
Doctor Proxi shrugged
and shook her head at the sight of these damned boorish Orlocks.