Death was knocking at
the door of Gunn's Guns' Foulnest hab-lodgings. Old Jonn Gunn cursed
through gritted teeth, his left arm and hand a shredded mass of
lasburnt gore. Drifter Zensen was unconscious, his head a
plasma-scorched mess. Crusher Rezto moaned and clutched at his belly,
trying to keep his guts from spilling out. The wounds were
tox-tainted and wouldn't stop bleeding. If a doc wasn't found soon,
none of the trio would live to see the next cycle.
The venators' attempt
to claim the rackets associated with the Omnissiaic brotherhood
hadn't gone well. Another crew, the Delaque outlaws of the Veiled
Cartel, had the same idea, and the two gangs met on a high-level
network of walkways that overhung the edge of the Dogland wastes. A
cold dust-storm was blowing in from the drained sump, skewing
everyone's bearings, and the gangs came at each other piecemeal,
disoriented but intent on defending the stake-markers they'd laid.
Crusher made initial
contact, finding himself in a close brawl with a Cartel fighter.
First blood could have gone to the Guns, but Crusher was, as usual,
playing his own game, running a freelance bagman job for some black
marketeer. From what the rest of the gang could figure later on,
Crusher and the Cartel creep got tangled up trying to resolve some
unpaid debts on behalf of their respective criminal clients. Crusher
bagged a ton of creds, but then the interaction turned bloody and he
ended up on the deck with his belly slit open.
Ratbite was finding it
nigh-impossible to get a clean shot through the dust, but Jonn Gunn
and Ashman, one of the scummers in the Guns' employ, had worked their
way round the back of the Cartel's position. The ash storm was
hindering the Cartel sharpshooters as much as it was Ratbite, and
Gunn had a fair chance of trashing the enemy stake, but he found
himself charged by the Delaques' ally, rebel noblewoman Astrid Glaw.
Gunn had been in more
than his fair share of close-quarter brawls in his long cycles on the
hunt, but few were as tight as the one that ensued. Gunn's power
knife met Glaw's stiletto blade and digi-lasers, downhive brutality
versus uphive precision. Each fighter's mettle was tested, blood was
drawn on both sides, but in the end the intervention of one of the
Cartel members tipped the balance in Glaw's favour. That's how Gunn
got taken out.
The dust storm blew
over, but the Veiled Cartel pulled a house-typical move and killed
the lumens that hung along the walkways. Far down below, strings of
lanterns stretched out across Dogland, marking the safe routes, but
their distant light was no use to Gunn's Guns. The Veiled Cartel, on
the other hand, were equipped to a man with photogoggles – the time
had come to draw the noose.
Ratbite and Snags
Skivvens rightly clocked their predicament and took off, unknowingly
crossing paths with Drifter, who blundered into the crossways at the
centre of the scrap zone and was caught in the crossfire from the
Cartel's guns. It fell to Mumbles Mervik to scrape a little honour
back for the venators by mounting a defiant defence of the Guns'
stake-marker. He threw out some fresh meat as bait, attracting the
attention of a stranded sump-creeper that lashed its monstrous
tentacles around the walkway ahead of the stake. This cut off the
Delaque's only means of approach, but Cartel boss Lucien only plays
games where he makes the rules: he gave the word, and a sharp shot
sent Mumbles tumbling off the walkway and into a bat-trawler's net
some fifty metres below.
The fight was over. For
all their outlaw status, the Cartel's performance had impressed the
emissaries of the Omnissiah, who agreed to pay the Delaques for
protection. No such luck for Gunn's Guns – Devinscar, Skinflint of
the Coin Guild, deigned to guide the crew back to Foulnest core, but
informed the venators that Crusher's shakedown on behalf of his
recidivist contact was a transgression too far. Though their alliance
with the Guild of Coin would continue on the quiet, Gunn's Guns were
declared outlaws. Nice work, Crusher.
So dishonour and
death's shadow hung over Gunn, Drifter and Crusher as they lay
wracked with agony in the crew's hab. They waited for what felt like
a dozen cycles before Snags got back with a doc in tow.
'This fella's one of
the best in the 'Nest,' said Snags, breathlessly, jerking a thumb at
the medic. 'But there's a catch. Prices he's charging, we only got
enough in the stash to save two of you.'
Here was a crumb of
consolation. An easy choice to make.
'Get to work on Drifter
and me,' snarled Jonn Gunn at the doc. 'Let that other fragger die.'
For all that it's a
hellhole, there's a strange kind of justice in the Underhive.