WH40K: “Kal Jerico, Sinner’s Bounty” (part eight)
Warhammer related pun, followed by a segue into chapter sixteen.
Chapter 16: High Bazaar
The highest point of Downtown above the sump's water level is given over to a market space, called high bazaar. This is where Master Blaster held court before Aunty Entity exiled them to that Cawdor barshrine, presumably. Team Jerico meanders through the bazaar, surrounded by people selling water, food, and recycled machine components, with mercenary scummers keeping watch over the gang-affiliated merchants and their wares. It's adjacent to Downtown's "water district," a sumpwater distillery that every underhive settlement has. I thought they imported water from other places across the sump, but maybe they do part of the distillation on location here. Apparently, Kal made the acquaintance of a local physician-ish-person named Moluka, and convinced him to disclose information about some recent patients of his. This agreement was made offscreen, presumably because Reynolds couldn't figure out how to turn it into a fight scene. So, they're up in the bazaar together now, knowing that the Redemptionist party Moluka treated recently will be up here again before leaving. Moluka is mad at them for trying to extort more first aid equipment than he was willing to sell, so he's happy to help Kal catch these guys and beat them up for Zoom information.
The rest of the party is hiding in the shadows around the bazaar. Except for Amenute, who isn't hiding, but just sort of sitting on the side of the street looking innocuous. An old Ratskin lady is giving Amenute a fearful look, as if afraid she might kill and eat her. Kal, for his part, is thinking that Amenute could be a great bounty huntress on her own, and also wondering why she's even still traveling with his party. One possibility is "crush on Scabs," but he doesn't think that's quite it.
No musings on the wall kraken-summoning-psyker part of the package, even when considering her bounty hunter potential. Maybe she Jedi mind tricked him into forgetting that part.
Eventually, they glimpse a red-robed Redemptionist carrying a heavy satchel that could well be full of extorted medkits. They covertly follow him, avoiding the pickpocketing attempts by the local orphans. There's been no mention of families in the underhive, just orphans. As I explained before, humans spontaneously generate at ripe child-soldier age in Warhammer 40K, and the ones that don't get claimed by one faction or another presumably become "orphans."
There's also a pointlessly detailed aside where the text goes on at length to describe a passing group of ore-salvagers and their pet cyberzombie as they block Kal's view of the target and force him to rely on his cyberdog to get around them. There's no payoff for this, it doesn't effect the pursuit at all, but it gets a large number of words. The target slips down into a little valley-like cul-de-sac full of abandoned market stalls with zero lighting. Deciding that the target must have noticed he was being followed and chosen to hide, Kal tries calling out to him, saying he knows he's down there and they can probably resolve this peacefully if he's willing to talk. Hopefully, there's no secret escape route for the Redemptionist to take.
Well, if there is, the target chooses not to take it in favor of shooting a flamethrower at Kal from his concealment. Kal dodges. Cyberdog doesn't, but his heatproofing shrugs it off with only minor armor ablation. Kal insists that the Redemptionist can make a lot of money and do a lot of redemption-y things with it in exchange for cooperation. The other man just uses his flamethrower to detonate some fuel drums near the edge of the cul-de-sac that are still half-full, setting off an explosion and smoke cloud that lets him escape, though not before Cyberdog tears off a scrap of his red cloak. Guess that means he has the scent now, or whatever. The other party members have now caught up as well. I'm not sure what took them so long. End chapter.
That was a short one. Well, on we go.
Chapter 17: Southern Gate
They track the cultist back to a rusty old garage, where they find some hastily abandoned supplies and the skid marks and fuel drippings of a large, kludged-together vehicle of the kind that typically has War Boys scurrying all over it. The drippings are still warm.
Looks like Desolation Zoom and his party hadn't actually left Downtown after all, until just a few minutes ago. The Redemptionist who blew up the cul-de-sac was one of his crewmen. I suspect the rumors about him having already moved on and gotten into fights elsewhere were deliberately spread by his local sympathizers among the Cawdor. Scabs and Yolanda start getting into a stupid fight over nothing, until Amenute interposes herself and Kal reminds them that they have a target to chase. Behind them, the fire is spreading across the bazaar, and everyone is too busy looting the stalls to bother putting it out, because, well, you know. Amenute in particular seems pleased with the fire, which is odd and unsettling. She tells Kal and Yolanda that they should really be living back up in the hive towers where it's better, and Kal assures her that really, the underhive is as good as it gets. They try and get out of here before anyone figures out that they played a role in the fire, and decide to ambush Desolation Zoom outside of the southern gate.
Why do they assume he's gone out the southern gate? Apparently, because there's an active mine out that way (I can only assume that by "mine," they mean a place with lots of metal scrap in it. My understanding was that there was no natural ore left in Necromunda's crust, and that if any was discovered this close to the planet's seat of government it would never be left in underhiver hands). Lots of ore haulers like the one Zoom built his war rig out of coming and going along that way all the time, many of them independently operated. Kal thinks that Zoom will likely head out that way and do the school bus camouflage trick that the Joker used at the beginning of The Dark Night.
What I'm not sure of is how Zoom is supposed to blend in when his rig is covered in speakers, religious graffiti, heavy metal gargoyle sculptures, and three times the usual amount of defensive gun placements. Did he strip it all down back to a normal hauler at some point? That would be surprising. And also kind of disappointing, given how much boss fight buildup that rig has gotten. Then again, this is a world in which sailing masts can appear, break, and disappear again at a moment's notice, so maybe rapid vehicle transformation is just an unspoken assumption.
Anyway, they reach the traffic jam of haulers moving out, and spot one that looks like its just been in a firefight and only hastily repaired. No decorations, so yeah, either he stripped it down, or it's just the magic of Warhammer again. There's a "crawler trail" along the scaffolding that goes along the tunnel and crossing over it at a few points, and if they hurry they can maybe catch up to Zoom's hauler before it reaches the end of the queue and vanishes off into the mines. However, they also catch sight of a bunch of Goliaths with motorbikes gathering slightly ahead, as if waiting for the order to charge. Reynolds is really going all in on the Mad Max vibe for this battle, isn't he?
Granted, we're not even halfway through this book yet (FOR SOME FUCKING REASON), so obviously this won't be the final confrontation. Either Kal is going to find himself having to recover the Golden Sack from someone else after they get it from Zoom, or Zoom is getting away from Kal and the Goliaths while they fight over who gets to fight him.
There's also a third possibility, though, and I think this is the most likely one. We know that Nemo has hacked the cyberdog. We know that whatsisname the guild guy who hid the God Testicles in that warehouse in the first place is working against his own organization and their Goliath allies to keep it a secret. If him and Nemo have also been in touch, then they could have conspired to get all the competition off of Zoom's back to to ensure Beatram's success. Cyberdog led Kal and his companions to the wrong garage, misleading them about where Zoom is and how recently he's left (if he even has). The Goliaths were given similar plausibly deniable bad intel. Zoom himself might be in on this, since Goethe is working with Nemo while pretending to be Zoom's ally, so he could have filled Zoom in on how the hunters were going to be misdirected and how to best take advantage of it, just without mentioning the whole Beatram part.
Yeah, the more I think about it, the more likely this seems.
Back into Kal's limited POV though, he's got no particularly strong reason to suspect this. He also spots those Goliath tweakers who gave them shit on the ferry boat among the assembling force. An assembling force that is conveniently all spread out and not keeping an eye on each other. And the tweakers have motorbikes that can be stolen. Well, here we go!
Scabs complains about this plan. Kal complains about him complaining, but at least the dialogue is a little funnier than usual for these exchanges. Anyway, they run up, beat up the tweakers, and steal their bikes before the other Goliaths spread out across the scaffolding can react. The others see motorbikes moving, and think that its time to advance themselves, so the Goliath biker gang is right behind them. Kal expects the watch towers along the tunnel to start shooting at what appears to be a random raider gang, but they turn out to be unmanned; this means that the Goliaths must have arranged this with the local miners' guild ahead of time. Noted.
Anyway, Kal and the others peel off to the sides, letting the Goliaths move on ahead. It'll look suspicious, they know, but still, the Goliaths are more likely to go for the big bounty target than they are to risk letting it escape by investigating. Kal hopes to let them engage Zoom, and then look for a good opportunity to swoop in and finish off both parties. And then, as the Goliaths start really closing the distance, the battered-looking hauler (alone among the others) opens its aft armor ports and starts unloading its machine guns up at the bikers on the scaffolding.
Huh. Is that actually Desolation Zoom? If so, Nemo has gotten careless and/or distracted.
The armed - but undecorated - hauler that is probably the real ZoomMobile but may still turn out to be some kind of crazy decoy takes out a few Goliaths right away. Either the gunner has good aim, or the turrets have a good aimbot. A few heavier goliath trike-vehicles get close enough, after letting the first few bikes absorb the damage, to shoot grappling hooks at the hauler and yoink themselves down onto the road on either side of it, where the crews produce welding torches and start cutting their way in.
God, this is so shamelessly Mad Max lol. This whole time, thanks to him being described as elderly, religious, and driving a weaponized hauler vehicle, I've been imagining Desolation Zoom as literally Immortan Joe with the mask and breastplate and everything. And now this scene is happening, and just...well, I doubt even a detailed description of the guy is going to be able to change my mental picture at this point.
A red-robed cultist throws open a bigger hatch behind the aft gunport and uses a handheld machine gun to kill the first couple of Goliath climbers, but it looks like he'll soon be overwhelmed. It's Yolanda who comes up with the smartstupid plan here, and- since the tug-o-war between the trikes and the war rig have slowed them down and held up the line, letting her and Kal close the distance, she finds a suitable ramp and launches her bike onto the back of the hauler, dismounts, and takes out the Redemptionist gunner and the nearest Goliaths with her chainsaw. Did I mention she uses a chainsaw, in any of the previous battles? Well, she does. It's kind of an iconic 40K thing, so at least one party member has to. Now that there's a more obvious target, Kal does a more careful version of the same thing, driving his own bike up in front of a now-empty Goliath harpoon-trike that's still being dragged along after the hauler and jumps onto the big rig, clearing his landing space and helping Yolanda out with a few well placed laser shots.
I guess Scabs is still lagging behind? Did he have Amenute with him, when he mounted his own stolen bike? Can they seat two people? Not sure what's going on with either of those two at the moment.
Cyberdog catches up and climbs on as well, but then ends up tumbling with a couple more Goliaths back onto a trike, that gets torn loose and left behind. Well, there goes Nemo's insurance lol. Kal and Yolanda finish off the last of the Goliaths, with the very last boarder being shot by Desolation Zoom as he creeps out of the open back hatch himself with a pistol in each hand. He wears a mask of a stern-looking old man's face, crowned with a laurel of sensors and burning candles that somehow don't get in each other's way. I'm still picturing Immortan Joe's skull mask, sorry. Zoom has the drop on them, and with two machine pistols he can sweep the entire aft of the vehicle with bullets. The only way Kal and Yolanda can avoid getting hit is by falling off the hauler and rolling painfully along the road, unmounted. Meanwhile, Zoom cuts the other trike free, letting his hauler speed up again and leave Team Jerico behind.
Scratch part of that last bit, actually; Kal grabbed Yolanda and pulled her off the rig with him. She'd been too stubborn to do the same herself, apparently. So, he saved her life. She bitches at him for getting her seperated for her lasergun that got left on the roof of the rig, and kicks him hard in the stomach for doing so.
Maybe they actually do care about each other, despite both of their internal monologues insisting otherwise. It's so grimdark in this future, that tsundere is the only kind of dere left.
Another bike, bearing Scabs and Amenute, catches up. Scabs explains that he saw early on that this was a really stupid idea, so he and Amenute just hung back with the intent of picking Kal and Yolanda up if they were still alive afterward. Okay, that got a laugh out of me. Scabs is still easily, head-and-shoulders, the best character out of Team Jerico, moreso than Amenute I think. Jerico whines about his lack of faith in the team, and looks up at the tunnel that the war rig is disappearing into. Zoom is still watching them out the back hatch as he disappears into the darkness. Kal picks up his sword and salutes him before he vanishes; a worthy foe, he's earned it. Yolanda bitches at Kal for being that respectful of their target. Kal tells her to shut the fuck up. End chapter.
The other characters are starting to grow on me a little bit. Kal in particular, between his decision to save Yolanda (though if you asked him he'd probably argue that conserving his team members was the pragmatic choice) and his ability to honor a worthy foe and accept defeat with grace. The way he's been acting throughout the story thus far is consistent with the "hardass with a heart of gold he doesn't want to show" archetype, but his internal monologues and inner thoughts haven't supported that reading. Now, it's like he's a hardass with a heart of gold who's had it driven so deep into the closet that he can't admit its existence even to himself. Like he wants to care about things, and has to constantly keep himself from doing so, or justify his actions based on such as something else. Not sure if that's true for Yolanda as well, but eh, it's precedent.
Kal is still bland and boring as a protagonist, even if there's hints of some greater complexity. And Yolanda is still equally so as a main cast member. Scabs got to shine this chapter, though, and in general the humor (self-parodying and otherwise) was on point more often than not. Desolation Zoom didn't say anything, but he was still characterized pretty strongly in his brief appearance; he's as brave, mission-focused, and good at what he does as has been foreshadowed. He didn't say anything, because there was nothing for him to say to yet another group of bounty hunters that needed fending off.
Also, was Nemo really just asleep when all this happened? Kal could have very, very easily ruined everything there, and he COULD have used the cyberdog to make things go differently. Hmm.
So, that's one short, worse-than-average chapter, followed by one long, better-than-average one. I guess we'll see how Jerico tries to continue the hunt in the next update.
