Salvation's Crucible by Denny Flowers

Author:Denny Flowers
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-07-08T16:07:05+00:00

About the Author

Denny Flowers is the author of the Necromunda short story ‘The Hand of Harrow’ and novella Low Lives, featuring the characters of Caleb and Iktomi. He lives in Kent with his wife and son.

An extract from Kal Jerico: Sinner’s Bounty.

‘Oh, scav.’

Kal Jerico was already dropping into a crouch as the exclamation left his mouth. The axe was little more than a rusty fan blade lashed to a length of bone, and it cut the air with a thin whistle. With no Kal to stop it, the makeshift weapon continued its arc ­unimpeded, burying itself in a steam pipe. A boiling fug gushed, filling the causeway corridor.

Kal cursed again and fired one of his laspistols in the general direction of the axe-wielding mutie. He threw himself aside as a second cannibal erupted from a side corridor opposite him, autogun blazing. The newcomer wasn’t aiming, just shooting. A fine old underhive tradition – fill the air with enough lead, you were bound to hit something.

‘Scabbs,’ Kal snarled. Then, ‘Yolanda!’ The only answer he received was more shooting. No sign of his partners anywhere. Slugs perforated support struts, and the causeway gave an audible groan. It only remained aloft thanks to centuries of rust and a bit of luck.

Kal shoved himself across the floor, returning fire with more enthusiasm than accuracy. No time to worry about where the others were now. Not when he could hear the whoops and howls of his attackers, as they raced up creaking gantry stairs or shimmied down through broken transit shafts. He needed to be elsewhere, and quickly.

The fug began to thin, leaving a greasy residue on the air. The mutie with the axe was down, having caught a slug meant for Kal. But the other one was still standing, curses dripping from his blistered lips as he struggled to clear a jam in the autogun’s firing chamber. Kal rose to his feet, laspistol extended. The mutie froze, staring.

Kal winked, and shot him.

A moment later, he was running down the causeway, the rest of the cannibals in pursuit. Kal fired in his wake without looking. At worst, the volley would slow the fastest ones down. At best, he might kill one or two, and the rest would stop to eat them.

The causeway was a long stretch of rusty iron and sodden ferrocrete – one of a dozen extending across the upper reaches of the ruined hab-dome. Phosphorescent flora climbed the struts and girders that held the causeway in place, and slow drifts of glimmering pollen hung heavy on the air. The causeway was crumbling in places. Wide gaps made the path treacherous, but Kal was an old hand at running for his life in difficult terrain.

Even so, he was soon forced to holster his weapons. He needed his hands free to haul his lean frame along the more unstable sections of the causeway. But however cautious he was, he didn’t slacken his pace. The muties were hot on his heels, and they were hungry, by the sounds of it.

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