WH40K: Kal Jerico, Sinner's Bounty (part thirteen

Getting close to the end. We return to Kal and Frenemies having been caught in the Cawdor supply depot by Desolation Zoom and some of his lackies, and having avoided death thanks to terrible fight choreography that Reynolds had to flub to ensure their survival. Or maybe we'll be returning to one of the other subplots, who knows, nothing like an extended cliffhanger when one is trying to pad out a book beyond all reasonable measure.

Chapter 26: Firefight​

Zoom and Kal end up face to face, isolated from their surviving companions by conveniently thick smoke. Zoom asks Kal why he only stunned the crewmate of his that he just snuck up on and knocked out rather than killing him. Kal asks why Zoom didn't just shoot him from the start instead of asking for a surrender. Zoom says that he's "not that sort of man," in contradiction to everything we learned in his own POV chapter. Kal says that he isn't that sort of man either.

Hmm. I feel like Kal and Zoom both have themselves convinced that they're much worse people than they actually are. Their third person limited reveries go on about how they don't care about (post)human life and aren't really friends with anyone, but their actions continually show otherwise. Kal, you should dump Yolanda for him. He's a little old for you, but it's still the better ship.

They invite one another to surrender, but...yeah, not happening. As they dance around each other in the smoke, they hear their friends shooting at each other, but continue their dialogue. Zoom has heard bad things about Jerico from an old Cawdor priest who he hates, which kindly disposes Zoom toward him. Still no dice. Definitely see a last minute team-up coming. As they maneuver around each other, a days-old wound of Zoom's gets opened, and he drops to his knees bleeding from the midsection. Just then, a laser sight starts sweeping toward them, and Zoom just barely manages to get out of the line of fire. Beatram? Probably Beatram, or one of his teammates. Fortunately, Yolanda pushes through the smoke in time to chase the sniper off. Zoom's boys are all down, and the ratskins and Wotan have vanished. As Yolanda is about to execute the wounded Zoom herself and Kal tries to think of a good excuse for stopping her, the Sniper identifies himself as Beatram. He says he has them surrounded (may or may not be true, given the smoke filling the room) and that they'd best just let him take this bounty.

I predict that either a wounded Gor is going to stagger to his feet and turn the tide here, or Scabs and Amenute will sneak up on Beatram and initiate a Mexican standoff.

And, yeah, Beatram isn't bluffing. He has Grendelson and the one spacer whose name I forgot with him, which means Belladonna, Goethe, and the others are probably here too. Grendelson remembers Kal himself, apparently; Kal cheated him in a card game once.

You know, for a megacity the size of Hive Primus, it strikes me as odd that *all* of the bounty hunters know each other. Then again, the population of the underhive is probably only a tiny fraction of the city's population, so I guess its plausible that the venators active downtheremight be a small community.

Also, Beladonna speaks up and starts posturing now. Apparently Yolanda is afraid of her. Okay, whatever.

A shake-up comes in the form of the Zoommobile, now being piloted by Scabs and Amenute. They promptly turn the mounted autoguns on all those assembled, killing every single one of these boring, tedious, not-nearly-as-cleverly-written-as-the-author-thinks characters in the blink of an eye, and then escape.

Okay, sorry, that was just wishful thinking taking over. They make the war rig lurch forward out of the smoke, which causes Team Beatram to all lose their sights on Team Jerico without causing any disarray whatsoever among the latter. Team Jerico (including both Gor AND the now delirious from blood loss Zoom. And also Wotan, who came back from...somewhere? IDK what Nemo is doing with that cyberdog) get inside. There's no more fuel after that last lurch, but Beatram and his pals don't know that. They start arguing what to do with Zoom, but then it turns out that the Redemptionist is either more or less delirious than he seemed; he pulls out a grenade and tells them that if they try to kill or hand him over he's taking them all with him. Inside the hauler's cockpit, there's not much chance of any of them surviving a grenade explosion...well, or is there? The interior of that thing seemed pretty expansive when it was described before. Well, either way, he's got a grenade and nothing left to lose.

Outside, Beatram and Co are in a pickle. They start trying to negotiate terms with the people in the war rig, which they quickly figure out can't move any more. Some more Cawdor, including a Redemptionist, arrive, and Father Goethe is able to bluff them into thinking he and his mercs are here trying to rescue Zoom from the bounty hunters. He seems to buy it. Standoff continues. End chapter.


There's really not much for me to talk about, is there? Aside from that one interesting moment between Kal and Desolation, it's just a mediocre action sequence. Honestly, I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be doing with this kind of material.

Well, next chapter might have more going on. We'll see.

Chapter 27: Negotiations​

Back inside the war rig, Zoom is still holding everyone at grenade-pin. Fortunately, he has an offer that everyone thinks sounds reasonable, and which proves that Zoom is still sharp despite however much blood he's lost. Either he somehow got over his delirium, or he was faking it. But anyway, he recognizes their resourcefulness and combat ability, and tells them that if they help save Perdition from the besieging mutant army, he will turn himself over to them.

That's pretty reasonable, honestly? The dude knows he's dying anyway. He brought this arms shipment to Perdition seemingly in the hopes of saving it from Wart's big counterattack (at this point I'm thinking he honestly doesn't know about the Golden Sack), so why not do everything he can with what little he has left to ensure it was worth it? Admirable, and logical. I get the feeling that Zoom could be a real heroic type if he was in a setting that isn't Warhammer 40K.

Kal uses the war rig's over-abundant speakers to relay the same offer to the other bounty hunter gang outside. They can fight over who gets to turn Zoom over to the Guild (or whoever Beatram is currently planning to give him to, assuming he can even keep track) after the mutants are defeated. As it is, none of them are likely to survive the siege unless everyone inside Perdition cooperates in its defense. Kal says that Beatram can have whatever part of the cargo he's also after (how did Kal learn about that part? I forget. Eh, not important) if he's letting to let Kal bring in Zoom, which...also reasonable. Team Beatram considers. Also, Kal says that if they don't agree he'll just start lobbing grenades out of the rig; they've got plenty in there.

Then, while they wait for Beatram and Co's reply, it turns out that Desolation Zoom killed Amenute's family, and she's come all this way with Team Jerico in hope of revenge. This wouldn't have been an issue, since they were all planning to kill him up until now, but now that they're making a sort-of-alliance with him there could be trouble.

Truce is agreed upon. Kal gets out and talks things over with Beatram. And also manhandles him a little because, well, you know. Beatram seems willing to let Kal have Zoom in exchange for the Golden Sack, but neither of them are sure that their teammates will accept this (Scabs is still frustrated that he hasn't gotten time to crack that safe). In any case, that's a problem they can resolve after the mutants aren't in the way of them getting out of this damned place. A deal is struck. Zoom, for his part, agrees to convince the Cawdor to cooperate with them, and to let them leave with himself in their custody if Perdition survives the siege.

We end with a Zoom POV, with him talking to one of his surviving war rig crew after Kal lets him go so they can all get to the business of defending Perdition. Zoom seems to be totally honest in the offer that he made, but there are some unspoken (until now) complications. For one, Zoom has figured out that Goethe must have betrayed him (and the Cawdor as a whole, really), and wants to make sure he doesn't get away with this. He doesn't bear any particular ill will toward the bounty hunters, but traitors and heretics are another matter.

The other matter, of course, is Amenute. Zoom tells his underling that he recognizes her, and his crewman immediately knows who he's talking about. As we already know, the Cawdor have been genociding the ratskin, and redemptionist paladins like Zoom have been extra proactive in doing so. Psykers like Amenute in particular are pretty much the main reason why they hate the ratskin; their shamanism goes against the hateboner you're supposed to have for psychics. Zoom seems to regret what they've done to the ratskins. His friend doesn't, but Zoom does. Zoom has zero compassion for the mutants, unfortunately, but he thinks that what they did to Amenute's people was wrong, and stops just short of saying that she deserves revenge. End chapter.


No fighting this chapter, besides Kal bullying Beatram a bit. That makes it one of the rare few of the book. Desolation Zoom's scene at the end was actually really good, and at this point I think he's the most nuanced and multifaceted character of the story aside from maybe Scabs. Add him to the growing list of characters who would have made better protagonists than Kal. Even with the thematic parallels that Zoom and Kal have, the former is still by far the more interesting character.

Granted, part of this might be Elstob's take on Zoom. His character voices are hit and miss, but Zoom is probably his biggest hit so far. He's definitely channeling Hugh Keays-Byrne with the Immortan Joe voice, but with more emotional range and introspection in the deliveries. It does a lot to sell the character.


So, that's it for now. I think there's only be a few of these left!