by Dan Abnett
And you say he's now on a polar island?'
Fischig nodded. 'Nayl took off after Thuring, found out he had arranged passage to this place Miquol. Used to be a PDF listening station there, years ago, but it's uninhabited now. We don't know what he's doing there, or even if he's been there before. Nayl should have reached the island himself by now. He hasn't checked in, but the magnetosphere is wild as hell up near the pole, so comms are out. Long-range, anyway/
This is excellent work, old friend/ I told Fischig, and he smiled appreciatively. Godwin Fischig, once a chastener in the arbites of Hubris and a law enforcer of considerable ability, was one of my real veterans. He'd served at my side for fifteen decades now, for as long as Alizebeth Bequin.
Only Aemos had been with me longer. The three of them were my rock, my foundation, the cornerstones of my entire operation. And they were my friends. Aemos provided wisdom and an unimaginably vast resource of knowledge. Bequin was an untouchable, and ran an academy of similarly gifted individuals called the Distaff. They were my greatest weapon, a corps of psychically blank individuals who could be used to block even the most powerful psykers. Bequin was also my emotional rudder. I confided in her more than the others and looked to her for support when I was troubled.
Fischig was my conscience. He was an imposing man with an age-grizzled face that was now quite jowly. A thin down of grey hair covered his scalp where once he had been blond. The scar under his milky eye had gone pink and glossy over time. Fischig was a formidable warrior and had gone through some of the worst times at my side. But there was none more single-minded than he, none so pure… puritanical, if you will. Good and evil, Law and Chaos, humanity and the warp… they were simple, black and white distinctions for him. I admired that so. Time, experience and incident had greyed my attitudes somewhat. I depended on Fischig to be my moral compass.
It was a role he seemed happy to perform. I think that's why he had stayed with me so long, when by now he could have become a commissioner of arbites, a divisional prefect, maybe even a planetary governor. Being the conscience of one of the sub-sector's most senior inquisitors was a calling that gave him satisfaction.
I wondered sometimes if Fischig regretted the fact that I had never sought higher office in the Inquisition. I suppose, given my track record and reputation, I could have become the lord of an ordo by now, or at least been well on my way. Lord Rorken, who had become something of a mentor to me, had often expressed his disappointment that I had not taken up the opportunities he had offered to become his heir. He had been grooming me for a while as successor to the control of the Ordo Xenos, Helican sub. But I had never fancied that kind of life. I was happiest in the field, not behind a desk.
Of all of them, Fischig would have benefitted most if I had followed that kind of course. I could well imagine him as the commander-in-chief of the Inquisitorial Guard Helican. But he had never expressed any hint of unhappiness in that regard. Like me, he liked the challenge of field work.
We made a good team, for a long time. I'll never forget that, and despite what fate was to bring, I'll always thank the God-Emperor of mankind for the honour of working alongside him for as long as I did.
'Aemos/ I said, 'perhaps you'd like to review Fischig's data and see if you can make any further deductions. I'm interested in this island. Punch up the data, maps, archives. Tell me what you find.'
'Of course, Gregor/ Aemos said. His voice was very thin and reedy, and he was more hunched and wizened than ever. But knowledge still
absorbed him, and I think it nourished him in the way that food or wealth or duty or even love kept other men going way past their prime.
'Fischig will assist you/1 said. 'And perhaps Inquisitor Rassi too. I want a workable plan of operations in-' I checked my chronometer '-sixty minutes. I need to know everything it is possible or pertinent to know before we hit the ground. And I want a positive, uncomplicated plan of what we do when we get there. Alizebeth?'
'Gregor?'
'Get in contact with as many of our specialists here on Durer as you can find and get them moving in to support us. Distaff especially. I don't care how long it takes or what it costs. I want to know we have solid backup following us.'
She nodded graciously. She was a brilliant man-manager. Bequin was still as demure and beautiful as the day I had met her, a century and a half before, a spectacular testament of the way Imperial science can counter the effects of aging. Only the faintest creases in the corners of her eyes and lips betrayed the fact that she was not a stunning woman in her late thirties. Lately, she had taken to walking rather regally with a shoulder-high ebony cane for support, claiming that her bones were old, but I believed that to be an affectation designed to reinforce her very senior and matriarchal role.
Only when I looked into her eyes could I see the distances of age. Her life had been hard and she had witnessed many terrible things. There was a sort of wistful pain in the depths of her gaze, a profound sadness. I knew she loved me, and I loved her as much as any being I had ever known. But long ago, mutually, we had set that aside. I was a psyker and she was an untouchable. Whatever the sadness we both felt because of our denied love, being together would have been so much more agonising.
'Dahault…'
'Sir?' the astropath answered smartly. He had been with me for twenty years, by far the longest stretch any astropath had managed in my employ. They wear out so quickly, in my experience. Dahault was a vital, burly man with a spectacular waxed moustache that I believe he grew to compensate for his shaved head. He was certainly powerful and able, and had taken to my regime of work well. Only in the past few years had he started to show the signs of psychic exhaustion – the shallow, drawn skin, the hunted look, the aphasia. I dearly hoped I would be able to retire him on a pension before his calling burned out his mind.
'Check ahead/ I told him. 'Fischig says the magnetosphere is blocking vox traffic, but Thuring may be using astropaths. See what you hear.'
He nodded and shuffled away to his compact, screened cabin under the bridge to connect his skull-plugs to the astro-communication network.
I turned last to Bex Begundi and Duclane Haar. Haar was an ex-Imperial Guard marksman from the 50th Gudrunite Rifles, a regiment I had an old association with. Of medium build, he wore a matt anti-fleet bodyglove, the cap-pin of his old outfit dangling round his neck on a cord. He had
lost a leg in action on Wichard, and been invalided out of service. But he was as good a shot with the sniper-variant long-las as Duj Husmaan, now long gone and in a manner I sorely regretted.
Haar was clean shaven and his brown hair was as neatly trimmed as it had been in the days of parade ground drill. He wore an optic target enhancer that clamped around the side of his skull, looping over his ear, and could drop the articulate arm of the foresight down over his right eye for aiming. He preferred the enhancer to a conventional rifle-mounted scope, and with his tally of clean hits, I wasn't about to argue.
Bex Begundi was a rogue, in the strictest sense of the term. A desperado, old Commodus Voke would have called him. An oudaw, scammer, con-artist and low-life, born in the slums of Sameter, a world I had no love for as I'd once left a hand there. He was one of Harlon Nayl's recruits – possibly one of his intended bounties who had been offered a life or death choice – and had joined my team six years before. Begundi was unspeakably cocky and prodigiously skilled with handguns.
Tall, no more than thirty-five years old, he was not exactly handsome but oozed a devastating charisma. He was dark haired, a jet-black goatee perfectly trimmed around his petulant smile, with hard cheekbones, and corpse-white skin dye contrasting with the wipes of black kohl under his dangerously twinkling eyes, as was the gang-custom of the slums. He was dressed in a leather armour body jacket embroidered with rich silk thread and preposterous panels of sequins. But there was nothing remotely comical about the paired Hecuter autopistols holstered under his arms in a custom-made, easy-draw rig.
'We're in for a fight when we get down, make no
mistake/ I told them.
'Rockin' good news/ said Begundi with a hungry smile.
'Just point me at the target, sir/ said Haar.
I nodded, pleased. 'No showboating, you hear me? No grandstanding/
Begundi looked hurt. As if!' he complained.
'Actually, I was thinking of you, Haar/ I replied. Haar blushed. He had proved to be extremely… eager. A killer's instinct.
'You can trust me, sir/ he said.
This is important. I know it's always important, but this is… personal. No screw ups.'
'We're after the guy who popped Dee's dad, right?' asked Begundi.
Dee. That's what they called Medea Betancore, my pilot.
yes, we are. For her sake, stay alert/
I went up into the cockpit. The high-altitude cloudscape was sliding past outside. Medea was flying like a daemon.
She was just over seventy-five years old, just a youngster still. Stunning, volatile, brilliant, sexy, she had inherited her late father's pilot skills as surely as she had inherited his dark Glavian skin and fine looks.
She was wearing Midas's cerise flying jacket.
You need to stay focused, Medea/1 said.
'I will/ she replied, not looking up from the controls.
'1 mean it. This is just a job/
'I know. I'm fine/
'If you need to stand down, it can be arranged/
'Stand down?' She snapped the words and looked round at me sharply, her large, brown eyes wet with angry tears. This is my father's killer we're going for! All my life I've waited for this! Literally! I'm not going to stand down, boss!'
She had never known her father. Fayde Thuring had murdered Midas Betancore a month before her birth.
'Fine. I want you with me. I'd like you with me. But I will not allow emotion to cloud this/
'It won't/
Tm glad to hear it/
There was a long silence. I turned to go.
'Gregor?' she said softly.
'Yes, Medea?'
'Kill the bastard. Please/
In my cabin, I made my preparations. The soft robes I had been wearing as lord chief examiner went in favour of an armoured bodyglove, steel-reinforced knee boots, a leather jacket and a heavy storm coat with armoured shoulder panels. I pinned my badges of office on my chest, my Inquisitorial rosette at my throat.
I selected my three primary weapons from the safe: a large calibre bolt pistol, the runestaff handmade for me by Magos Bure of the Adeptus Mechanicus, and the curved, pentagram-engraved force sword that I had commissioned to be forged from the broken half of the Carthaen war-blade, Barbarisater.
I blessed each one.
I thought of Midas Betancore, dead nearly a century now. Barbarisater purred in my hands.
THREE
Miquol.
Durer PDF listening station 272.
The turnabout.
Miquol was a vast volcanic slab jutting from the black waters of the polar ocean, sixteen kilometres long and nine wide. From the air, it looked bleak and lifeless. Sheer cliffs a hundred metres high edged its shape but its interior was a ragged desert of crags and rock litter.
'Life signs?' I asked.
Medea shrugged. We weren't picking anything up, but it was obvious from the jumping, hiccuping displays that the magnetics were playing hell with our instruments.
'Shall I set down topside?' she asked.
'Maybe/ I said. 'Bring us around for another pass to the south first/
We banked. Cloud cover was low, and banks of chill fog swathed the island's gloomy sprawl.
Fischig joined us in the cockpit.
"You said there was an old facility here?' I said.
He nodded. 'A listening station, used by the Planetary Defence Force in the early years after the liberation. Been out of use for a couple of decades now. It's high up in the interior. I've got a chart-ref/
"What's that?' Medea asked, pointing down at the southern cliffs. Down below, we could make out some derelict jetties, landing docks and prehab sheds clustered on a sea-level crag at the foot of the cliff. Some kind of vertical trackway, a row of rusting pylons, ran from the back of some of the larger sheds up the face of the cliff.
That's the landing facility/ said Fischig. 'Used to serve the island when there were still PDF staffers stationed here/
There's a sea-craft down there/1 said. 'Fairly large/
I looked across at Medea. 'Put down there. The crag there beside the sheds. The cliffs will keep the cutter out of sight too/
It was bitingly cold, and the air was dank with fog and sea-spray. Aemos and Dahault stayed with Medea aboard the cutter and the rest of us ventured out. On the ramp, I turned to Verveuk. 'You stay aboard too, Bastian/
He looked dismayed. That damned yearning look again.
'I'd like to feel I have someone I can count on watching the cutter/ I lied smoothly.
His expression changed immediately: pride, self-importance.
'But of course, lord!'
We crossed the crag in the lee of the high cliffs towards the prefabs. They were old-pattern Imperial modulars, shipped in and bolted together. Time and weather had much decayed them. Windows were boarded and the fibre-ply walls were rotten and patched. Rain and spray had scrubbed away most of the surface paint and varnish, but in places you could just make out the faded crest of the Durer PDF.
Haar and Fischig led the way. Haar had his long-las raised to his shoulder, his fore-sight dropped into place, hunting for targets as he paced forward. Fischig carried a las-rifle in one hand. A motion tracker unit was buckled over his left shoulder, whirring and ticking as it subjected Fischig's immediate vicinity to invisible waves of vigilance. Rassi and I were close behind them, with Alizebeth, Kara and Begundi at the rear.
Fischig pointed to the vertical trackway we had seen from the air. 'Looks like a cable-carriage or a funicular railway. Runs up to the cliff top/
'Functional?' Rassi inquired.
'I doubt it, sir/ said Fischig. 'It's old and hasn't been maintained. I don't like the look of those cables/ The main lifting lines were heavy-gauge hawsers, but they swung slackly in the wind between the pylons and showed signs of fraying. There are stairs, though/ Fischig added. 'Right up the cliff alongside the track/
We crossed to the jetties. They too were badly decayed. Rusting chains slapped and clanked with the sea-swell. The craft moored there was a modern, ocean-going ekranoplane, twenty metres long and sleekly grey. Stencils on the hull told us it was a licensed charter vessel from Finyard, presumably the vessel Thuring had hired to bring him here.
There was no sign of crew, and the hatches were locked down. There wasn't even a hint of standby automation.
Want me to force entry?' asked Kara.
'Maybe-' I was interrupted by a shout from Haar. He was standing in the entrance of the nearest prefab, a docking shed that stood over the water on stilt legs. Haar gestured inside as I joined him. In the half-light, I could see
four bodies slumped on the duckboards of the dry well. Fischig was kneeling beside them.
'Local mariners. Their papers are still in their pockets. Registered operators from Finyard/
'Dead how long?'
Fischig shrugged. 'Maybe a day? Single shot to the back of the head in each case/
The crew from the sea-craft/
He rose. 'Makes sense to me/
"Why didn't they dump the bodies at sea?' Haar wondered.
'Because an ekranoplane is a specialist vehicle and they needed the crew alive to get them here/ I suggested.
'But if they killed them once they were here-' Haar began.
I was way ahead of him. Then they're not planning on leaving the island. Not the way they arrived, at any rate/
I had Kara Swole break into the ekranoplane. There was nothing useful inside, just a few items of equipment and personal clutter belonging to the murdered crew. The passengers had taken everything else with them.
The only thing we learned was that Thuring mig
ht have as many as twenty men with him on Miquol, given the ekranoplane's load capacity and the number of emergency life jackets.
They've gone inland/ I decided. 'And that's where we're going too/
'Shall I get Dee to fire up the cutter?' Begundi asked.
'No/ I said. ЧУе'И go in on foot. I want to get as close to Thuring as possible before he makes us. We can call in the cutter if we need it/
'Medea won't like that, Gregor/ said Bequin.
I knew that damn well.
I believed Medea deserved every chance to avenge her father. Vengeance might not be an appropriate motive for an inquisitor, but as far as I was concerned it was perfectly fine for a headstrong, passionate combat-pilot.
However, her passion could become a liability. I wanted Thuring taken cleanly and I didn't relish the prospect of Medea going off in a blind fury.
Bequin was right, though. Medea really didn't like it.
'I'm coming!'
'No/
'I'm coming with you!'
'No!' I caught her by the arms and stared into her face. 'You are not. Not yet/
'Gregor!' she wailed.
'Listen! Think about this logic-'
'Logically? That bastard killed my father an-'
'Listen! I don't want the cutter giving us away too early. That means leaving it here. But I do want the cutter ready to respond at a moment's notice,
and that means you have to stay here on standby! Medea, you're the only one who can fly it!'
She shook off my grip and turned away, gazing at the rolling surge of the ocean.
'Medea?'
'Okay. But I want to be there when-'
'You will. I promise.'
'You swear it?'
'I swear it.'
Slowly, she turned look at me. Her eyes were still bright with hurt. 'Swear it on your secrets,' she said.
'What?'
'Do it the Glavian way. Swear it on your secrets/
I remembered this now. The Glavian custom. They considered an oath most binding if it was sworn against private, personal secrets. In the old days, I suppose, that meant one Glavian pilot swearing to exchange valuable technical or navigational secrets with another as an act of faith and honour. Midas had made me do it once, years before. He'd made me swear to a three-month sabbatical at a time when I was working too hard. It hadn't been possible, because of one case or another, and I'd ended up having to tell him that I adored Alizebeth and wished with every scrap of my being that we could be together.
