The Hacked Knee Dominion Part 10: Unwelcome Help

Not for the first time, there was a raised voice in the habhole where Vintsen Courraine made his den.

'O, this is just swell, ain't it? This is just top of the spire! Ol' Degister must be laughing his boots off up in hive city right now!'

This was Vints himself, raging away at the man who'd rocked up and declared himself a Hi-Viz Jacker. The newcomer said nothing, just smiled grimly, his cold grey eyes fixed on the ranting gang boss, who was sputtering through his barbe.

'.... I.... I might've known he'd pull some ratcrap like this! He could've assigned us a crate of weapons, a stack of creds, but no! He's gotta go and send us his own sumpdamned right-hand man from back in the day! Well, I ain't having it, you hear me! I ain't!'

The newcomer didn't respond straight off - Vints had just enough time spare a thought to how ridiculous his tantrum was. And then, 'Reckon you are having it, Vints. Not just on the overcomptroller's say-so, I'm here by warrant of the Iron Lords themselves. You oughtta be glad - I brung Lil' Quake here with me...'

The newcomer unslung the grenade launcher from his back.

'... and like you told the overcomptroller, we're exactly the kind of steady gun you need down here. So we're here to stay. Got it?'

Vints was at a loss. 'Well, dammit, you're gonna find H8 life tougher'n anything ever came up working Cruxrail - we sure have...'

'Don't I know it? Looking forward to it, so we are.'

'And... and you answer to me, got it? I'm the top man in the Jackers, no question.'

The newcomer smiled thinly. 'Oh sure thing, boss. I'll be just as loyal as a ganger can be. My life'll depend on it after all. Still, you should be minded to remember that you ain't the only one who's got the comms code for the overcomptroller...'

The newcomer tapped his temple sagely. It was all too much for Vints. His gang had no rep and no turf to speak of, his dog was dead, and now he had Degister's lackey breathing down his neck. With an exasperated roar, he stormed out of the habhole in search of some good liquor.

And that was how Tzig Oresson came to join the Hi-Viz Jackers. If Vintsen Courraine had anything to say about it, it wouldn't be for long.

The Hacked Knee Dominion Part 9: Two Fights, Two Fighters

This juve called Steez had no colours, a local lad from Nu-Bedlam, the dead-end town the Hi-Viz boys were hiding out in. Steez's pa had fallen out with the Orlock overbosses and made his way downhive to eke out a life. Pa ran an ammo shack, but couldn't get his casings straight - the bullets always ran awry.

Steez had taken to hanging around with Dwice Necrofago, whose Jacker status qualified him as something of hero. Over the cycles, Dwice had come to enjoy the cheap acclaim, seeing Steez as the loyal ganger to the gang boss he someday hoped to be. This shift, the two lads were hanging round an old dead water still, taking turns to pop holes in its side with Dwice's autopistol.

'So then what happened, huh?' asked Steez.

'After we stuck the Jacker claimstick at the corpse farm? Well, big Vints only goes and takes his new dog for a walk, leaving the rest of us to stake out the claim. That's when the Cawdor boys turned up...'

'Aw frag!' gaped Steez. 'You guys were up against it, huh?'

'Well, yeah,' said Dwice. 'There must've been like twenty of them Crimson Carrion brothers, and only like five of us. Suddenly they're coming out of the walls, firing off 'splosives and roasting us with flamers and all that.'

'Ow, like a trip to the sinks!'

'Bet your boots. Anyway, tough ol' Akilles is down, Ijax takes one in the eye, Zammy and Onzo get taken out - even though Onzo slugged it out tough with one of their juves when his auto-p ran dry. So there's just me in the end, and like twenty of them, and I'm all there is between them and the claimstick.'

Steez was picturing the scene, speechless with awe.

'I hung in there good. They tried to burn me, they tried to take me out, but I ducked and weaved and got a few shots off. I did the Iron House proud, but in the end,what ya gonna do? Their boss man clobbered me, left me with this to remember the shift.'

Dwice held up his mangled hand, and Steez gazed upon it as if it were a relic of Terra itself. The wound was healing now, and it hadn't affected his aim, but it he'd lost a lot of dexterity when it came to wielding his knife.

'So... so that's when you guys all came back here, all busted up, and...'

'Yeah, yeah, the Crimson Carrion boys took the corpse pit, but Vints had heard there was a settlement what none of the Hacked Knee gangs had laid a claim on yet. Thing was, there was five of us all bashed up after the last scrap - even with that weirdo slopper Vints hired-'

'Who, Davvo?'

Dwice didn't dig the interruption. 'Yeah yeah, Davvo. Anyways, the slop got blindside Ijax back in the mix, but it was only him and Ivan who went with Vints to claim the settlement. Well, and Vint's dog as well...'

Here, Dwice shuddered at the memory of the beast.

'... and wouldn't you know it? There's only another bunch of Cawdors looking to take the turf as their own. The Hooded Men, they called themselves, not heard much about them round the zone. But it was the same deal as before, so Ijax says. Trash-chewing redemptionst nutters swarming from all corners, popping off flamers and blunderbuss shots... Sounds like we didn't stand much of a chance.'

'And we saw 'em coming back, right? The boss man all cut up about his dog getting killed?'

Dwice made a show of matching Steez's saddened look. He didn't mean it, of course - Krakjaw's demise had come as a relief to the paranoid Jacker juve.

'Wow,' continued Steez, 'it sure is a tough life running with the gangs. So this leaves the Jackers pretty short-handed, right?'

Dwice had seen this coming. Steez was clearly bored stiff with his dead-end life in this dead-end town. It didn't take a wych to clock he was angling for memebership of Vints's crew.

'So you want in on the Jackers, right? Hell, Steez, you seen us take all kinds of knocks since we been holed up here, and you still want in?'

'I do, I do. Anything's gotta be better than rotting away in this hole. I'd rather take a hundred bullets for the House. And I'm a decent shot, right? Getting better, anyways.'

Dwice nodded slowly. Steez was indeed a passable shot, for a juve.

'Okay,' said Dwice. 'I'm'a have a talk with Vints when he's stopped being sick about the dog. See what I can do. No promises, mind.'

It was, of course, as good as a promise. The Jackers were that short-handed. Steez knew it, and his callow face cracked a broad grin. He was about to speak when a shadow fell across the two juves. 

They turned to see what was what, and found themselves facing the iron-eyed gaze of a grizzled ganger. He was Orlock, judging by his plates and heavy leathers, and had a hefty grenade launcher slung across his back.

'Hey, juve,' said the ganger. 'You in the colours.'

'Who, me?' said Dwice.

'Yeah, you. You one of them Hi-Viz Jackers?'

'Reckon I am,' said Dwice, straightening his spine and trying to look tough. 'Who wants to know?'

The ganger chuckled grimly. 'Ah, you'll find out soon enough. The bosses sent me from uphive. Now where in this throneforsaken hole am I gonna find Vintsen Courraine?'

The Hacked Knee Dominion Part 8: Dog Shtick

The Hi-Viz Jackers were, in the main, unimpressed by Vints's latest recruit. The gang boss had returned from a trip to The Square - Sector's H8's go-to fighting arena - with Krakjaw, a brutish cyber-mastiff, in tow. It wasn't the hound's potential lethality that rubbed the boys the wrong way; rather, it was that the gang was still short -handed, even with the recent recruitment of Onzo Macbacta. The hideout scuttlebutt was that another gun would have been more useful. Not that any of this was said to Vints's face, of course - the gang knew their leader's substantial pride had recently taken a blow when he'd had to grovel for favours from the House powers uphive.

In fact, the only Jacker who openly showed discontent was Dwice Necrofago - regularly kept sleepless by the  unflinching red gaze of the hound's augmetic eye, the juve was convinced that Krakjaw had plans to eat him....

The Hacked Knee Dominion Part 7: A Quiet Drink

The Shackled Well was the most notorious dive bar in the Hacked Knee, and word was that that was where the Hi-Viz Jackers would find their man. Vints Courraine had sent Akilles Lebow and Ivan Kohl to do the deed, and they reached the bar not long after the shift had turned Magnificat.

A row of can fires sputtered on the run-in and an irregular mob of Cawdors lurked menacingly, cursing the souls of anyone who made to enter the Well. The gangs of the scavenger house had claimed a significant chunk of H8 turf and were throwing their Redemptionist weight around. Akilles recognised the colours of the Slimehouse Golems and the Crimson Carrion - the rivals had forged a truce to conduct their pious picket.

The whole bar would be under a truce tonight - up to a point. Like the Cawdors outside, the gangs within were there to be seen, not to fight, but no doubt they'd all be packing, and no doubt it'd only take the slightest spark to kick things off, whether between or within Houses.

The Jacker duo shouldered their way past the Cawdors. One of the Golems leaned in close and hissed through broken teeth: 'Your vice will see you burn in warpfire eternal, sinner...'

'I'll see you in the badzones first, jack,' replied the Orlock with a grimace, ducking through the bar entrance.

To Ivan, he said, 'Stay tight. Remember what we're here for.'

'Got it, chief,' said Ivan.

They paused beyond the threshold, letting the room take in their colours - it needed to be known that the Jackers were in the house. Clouds of lho smoke filled the low domespace, which was alive with H8ers determined to show the mealy-mouthed Cawdors outside just how much vice they could handle. 

Most of the patrons were hive scum and holesteaders blowing off steam, but the Jackers clocked members of some of their turf war rivals. At a table in the centre of the dome, a few Goliath Reprobates were gleefully mainlining blindsnake through their stimm packs and challenging all comers to a headsmashing contest - already, half a dozen scummers lay prone with bloody cranial injuries that would likely kill them. The Savage Kittens had occupied a corner booth, imbibing hyperdistilled spirits and hookah hits while casting literal and metaphorical daggers at anyone who dared approach them. A bunch of Van Saars sat impassively at a table, not drinking, just observing and collecting data - for a second, Akilles took them for Nubis Machina and feared the whole caper would blow up in their faces, but then clocked them from their colours as Dust Gate Orb Weavers. At the shadowy fringes of the room, gaunt, black-eyed figures drifted - Delaques, presumably some of Rawshaq's Rogues - a drinking hole like this was natural territory for them, and they were likely here to scope out ways to seize it from its current owners.

And there they were, the Slagwell Springsteens, masters of the Shackled Well, the crew who'd thus far claimed the most turf in the Hacked Knee war, carousing on a raised platform at the back of the dome. The wildsnake was in full flow and the Sprinsgteens were lording it over their patrons. Akilles and Ivan nodded respect to their Orlock kin, but didn't feel inclined to join the revelry - of late, the Jackers hadn't done much to earn the respect of the Iron House.

Instead, they elbowed ther way through the wider throng until they found the man they were looking for, who was sitting at the bar and nursing a bottle of wildsnake.

'Onzo Macbacta,' growled Akilles, clapping the lone drinker the shoulder. 'Heard tell you'd been seen in this sector, and here you are...'

Onzo turned round, and grinned. He was the spit of his brother, Droo, who'd died during the Jackers' first Sector H8 fight.

'Well, well, Akilles Lebow... and ol' Lemmy's boy Ivan as well! We're a long way from Bedlam Town, eh?' He waved the bottle. 'Mine's another of this.'

'Get 'em in, Ivan.' 

Ivan went to do so, and Akilles turned back to Onzo. 'Damn shame about your brother, he was a good hand on the Cruxrail crew, could have made for a fine ganger...'

'Aye,' said Onzo, 'I ain't hardly seen him since we was juves, but that's a hell of a bad fate for a good lad like him.'

'Bet your last bullet it is,' said Akilles. Ivan had procured another bottle and a couple more scrap cups, and the three men drank a toast to dead Droo.

Having knocked back his slug of liquor, Akilles exhaled with satisfaction, and then asked Onzo, 'So where you been all these cycles while we were working the Cruxrail build?'

'Long story short,' said Onzo, 'I got to working on the Great Ash Road, running with a consignment crew between the Palatine and Vosroth.'

Ivan muttered an impressed oath - it wasn't often that downhive lads like the Jackers made it beyond the shell of Primus.

Akilles played it cool, though. 'And what, you heard about Droo all the way out there?'

'Well, not exactly,' shrugged Onzo. 'We was on a rotation back to the Palatine when word came through on the sumpvine. I had to come see for myself if it was true.'

'True it is, I'm sorry to say,' said Akilles. 'So here you are. You need work. We need hands. We all want revenge.'

'That we do,' said Onzo with a malicious grin. 'So where do I get me one of those hi-viz jackets, jack?'