[Ravenor 02] Ravenor Returned - Dan Abnett

by Dan Abnett

  "Maybe he did?" Revoke said.

  "Maybe he did..." Trice echoed.

  "I don't understand your displeasure," Revoke said. "If tonight is propitious, why are you so disappointed."

  Trice ejected the yellow tile from his engine and held it up. "I was hoping the auguries would be poor, my friend. If they were poor, I might have used them to convince the Diadochoi to delay the ritual. He understands facts, and he doesn't argue with them. It was my last hope. But the predictions are good. So I can't."

  "You really hoped for a postponement?"

  Trice nodded. "I did, Toros. I really did. This is too fast, too rushed-"

  "Everything is in place, sir."

  "Of course it is! I made it so! But I designed this moment. So long, so hard... and now I find myself rushed into it at a day's notice."

  Revoke looked at the floor. "I'm sorry to hear that, sir. I hate to see your disappointment. Maybe I could speak with the Diadochoi on your behalf?"

  Trice smiled. "There's no point, Toros. The first of my sealed orders have already been opened, haven't they?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "The first functions already underway?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Then the rock is already rolling, and woe betide any who stand in its way. Even a chief provost. Let me say now, before it's too late, I am heartened by your staunch loyalty. I may not get a chance to tell you that later."

  Revoke looked awkward. "Thank you, sir," he said.

  Trice rose and tossed the yellow tile to Revoke. Revoke caught it neatly.

  "The geometricians will be needing that. Have the data routed to all elements. Eighth hour plus six. As of this moment, the Ministry stands at condition delta. If we're going to be forced to do this, we'd better do it well."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Begin the masses."

  "They've already started." Toros Revoke replied.

  Out across the hive, temple bells were pealing in the pre-dawn dark, calling the faithful to prayer. Most temples in the hive half-filled with the usual bleary attendees, coming to worship out of habit and duty. But, that morning, nine hundred and ninety-nine city temples were packed with capacity congregations of citizens who had been up, dressed and ready hours before the dawn service.

  For three and a half years, the secretists had been running private masses in these nine hundred and ninety-nine churches. Ostensibly Imperial in nature, these masses were a skilful and insidious process of conditioning. A variety of methods had been employed, not the least being the fact that the temple bells had been subtly retimed so that their peals created a subliminal call that lured the congregation in. In the first few months, the secretists had vetted the congregations, and quietly removed any worshippers who registered as unreceptive or unsuitable on their biometric scans. Then the clerics in charge of the masses had begun to drop mesmeric subtexts into the services, using ciphered forms of Enuncia, conditioning the congregations into absolute cooperation. Not a single man or woman amongst the worshippers even suspected that the masses they were participating in were anything but the Imperial creed. On that morning, that day of days, no one in those nine hundred and ninety-nine churches so much as blinked when the clerics slid open their trip-tychs and displayed, not the God-Emperor and his saints, but stark, almost psychedelic symbols of Enuncia. Nor did they hear the words they were actually saying.

  And these were not low-hab, ill-educated people so preyed upon. Many of the private masses were held in temples that served highborn populations. Nobles, academics, lawyers, educators, merchants, magistrates, civil servants of note. One particular church, St. Pilomel Highstack, was the one preferred by the Officio Inquisitorus Planetia, and thus over a hundred interrogators, explicators and other ordo servants had been inducted. This had delighted the Diadochoi particularly - it had been a recurring question as to how the Inquisition could be contained and muzzled during the preparations for Enunciation, and simply by dint of geography, because of the temple they used, the Inquisition had not only muzzled itself, but had become active participants in the event. A cosmic irony, the Diadochoi had called it.

  The location of the nine hundred and ninety-nine chosen temples was no accident. If lines were drawn through them on a chart of Petropolis, they defined precise, invisible axes across the city plan. To a casual eye, a plan of the hive looked like a shapeless, unstructured thing, a complex blotch of intersecting stack-streets and overlapping wards. But, when such lines were drawn, as they had been drawn on the hyper-accurate chart on the floor of the Encompass Room, they revealed a peculiar, almost beautiful symmetry to the city layout.

  They revealed its planned and exquisitely formulated perfection. They revealed its design, not as a place of habitation and commerce, but as a vast and complex mechanism.

  Trice rechecked the time on his pocket chron. Sunrise was now just six minutes away. In the previous thirty-five minutes, he had conducted a series of final briefings with some of the key operation groups. First, with the eight-man team of secretists who would fly out just after dawn and travel to Carbonopolis, the second city of Eustis Majoris, a sprawling, balkanised hive near the southern pole. There, through the course of the day, they would plant and detonate a series of devices and leak disinformation suggesting a systematic program of cult attacks. By nightfall, there would be a state of global emergency, with Carbonopolis the focus of attention for the PDF, the planet's Imperial Guard garrisons and the Navy. Misdirection on the grandest scale.

  Then Trice had briefed the chiefs of the Ministry's technical departments, whose task later in the day would be to hijack, by means of cogitation, digitation and vox, all of Petropolis' newscasts, air-networks, audio caster systems and sundry pict-channels. Some would be shut down, others would be set to broadcast specially prepared materials that would be given to the chiefs nearer to time.

  Trice had then moved to his next meeting, reading as he walked the latest clutch of despatches that Revoke handed to him. For a moment, he felt exhilarated to see the absolutely sublime way his long-prepared plan was being executed. Every last detail slotting into place, just as he had designed it.

  Then his burning despondency had returned. The haste. The foolish haste!

  The third briefing had been with the eighty-strong team of secretists, under Tolemi's command, who would raid the central hive premises of the Astropathicus during the late afternoon. They would pose as officers of the Inquisition, and the cover story would be a suspected Chaos taint, connected to the incident at the diplomatic palace. Heavy duty inhibitor units would be set up at each astropath centre, and by late evening, all legal telepathic activity in and around the hive would be blunted.

  Now it was six minutes to sunrise. At a nod from Trice, Revoke opened the doors into the climate-controlled vault of the cipherists. The perfecti, a dozen men in long green robes, were ready and waiting for him. They bowed and made their formal greeting.

  "Are they prepared?" Trice asked.

  The senior perfectus, a wizened man called Mattaray, beckoned the chief provost over and showed him the long rows of sealed desks in which the anonymic wafers had been laid out, each one covered by an opaquing field. There were nine hundred and ninety-nine of them. At the end of the afternoon, they would each be hermetically sealed into inert envelopes, placed in carrying coffers, and sent out by secretist despatchers to the nine hundred and ninety-nine axial churches and temples.

  "The wafers have been checked?" Trice asked.

  "Nine times, each one," said Perfectus Mattaray. "To such a close degree of scrutiny, eight of the perfecti have suffered mental damage. Two have died."

  "The efforts of the cipherists will not be forgotten." Trice assured him. "This is an extraordinary achievement. This is the articulation of apotheosis. For all of us."

  Mattaray nodded. "It is a shame, lord, that we had to do this so quickly. We would not have sustained injuries and losses if we had been given more time to complete the ciphering."

  Trice nodded. Again, h
e thought, the Diadochoi's haste. The purity of my plan ruffled by his demands.

  There lay the core of his despondency. There had been a time, when Trice's great scheme had already been well developed and underway, when there had been no Diadochoi to factor in. Five years ago. Five years, was that all it was? Five years before, Trice's intricate and occult network of intimates and contacts had introduced him to the hideously disfigured man, and so, almost by happenstance, brokered their partnership. The man's brilliance and immeasurable talents had been too useful for Trice to reject. The plan had instantly taken a quantum leap forward and become something momentous and grand everything Trice had ever hoped for but never believed possible.

  And he had become chief provost, and the disfigured man had become Oska Ludolf Barazan, Lord Governor Subsector, and together, through labour and genius and deceit, they had ascended the gleaming ladder of destiny to this day of days.

  "Chief provost?" Revoke said. "It's sunrise."

  Trice came out of his reverie. Sunrise, and still so much to do.

  "The officers of deliberation await you in the east wing," Revoke reminded him.

  "I'm coming," Trice said. He nodded to the perfecti. "Your work astonishes and delights me, and the Diadochoi thanks you for your pains."

  The perfecti bowed.

  As they marched out of the vault, Trice glanced at Revoke.

  "Sunrise, you say? Stand the Ministry at condition gamma."

  Revoke pulled out his hand-vox. "This is Revoke on the command channel. Condition gamma. Repeat, we are at condition gamma."

  "Hey, where are you going?" Kara said.

  "It's dawnsong," replied Belknap, pulling on his coat. "Can't you hear the bells?"

  "Yeah, they woke me," she yawned.

  "Here's an idea, why don't you come with me?"

  Kara shook her head. "Plyton and I have got to brief the inquisitor at breakfast," she said. "Do you have to go?"

  "Yes," Belknap said, very directly.

  "Oh. It appears to me that you're a very... devout person, aren't you, Belknap?"

  "I suppose. Is there something wrong with that?"

  She shrugged. They were standing in the doorway of the lock-up. Everyone inside was asleep, except Carl, who was toying with Belknap's cogitator. The sink streets were quiet at last. Just empty walkways, littered with refuse from a heady night before. A few, dim figures hurried past to attend the local service.

  "Does my faith put you off?" Belknap asked.

  "Put me off what, doctor?" she asked.

  He blushed as he realised what he'd said. "I meant... as a patient, you might be uncomfortable with me talking about my belief while I treat you. Some do, and I try not to. I know I should just be a medicae, not an evangelist. There are others who should minister to the health of the spirit."

  "It doesn't bother me," she said.

  "But I almost insisted you attended temple..."

  "And that seems to have paid off," she grinned.

  He scowled, but he wasn't offended. "That's not quite what I meant. I was never a particularly religious man in my younger days. But on active service and working here, the things I've seen, I-"

  "Patrik?"

  He shook his head. "Sorry. Kara, there's darkness everywhere, it seems to me. In this proud, almighty galaxy of ours, there's only war and corruption and infamy. I can't make sense of it. Unless I believe. Believe absolutely in the pure condition of mankind. It's the only thing that keeps me sane. And I truly believe that the quality and purpose of your remaining lifespan will improve if you embrace the love of the God-Emperor."

  "I do embrace it, Patrik. Just not the way you do. Doctor, are you trying to save me?"

  He smiled. "I think I am. In every meaning of that word."

  "Then, thank you. But will you forgive me if I do this my way. In the time I have left, there are many things I'd like to embrace."

  There was a quizzical look on his face. She stepped closer.

  "Like what?" he asked, his voice tight.

  Kara reached up on tiptoe and kissed his mouth. The kiss lingered for a few, delicious moments. Then he pulled away.

  "Don't."

  "Why not?" she whispered.

  "Because. Because I want you to. Because I want to touch you."

  "You've touched me already."

  "Yes, as your physician."

  "That's not what I meant."

  Belknap smiled and looked down. He cleared his throat. "I can't, Kara. Because I know that if I start to touch you, I won't be able to stop."

  He buttoned up his coat and walked to the door. "I'll be back in an hour," he said.

  "Patrik?"

  "Yes?"

  "Would you say a grace for my friend Zeph?"

  "Of course." Belknap went out and closed the door behind him.

  "Mamzel Swole?"

  Kara looked round. Plyton had appeared behind her.

  "Are you all right?" Plyton asked.

  Kara wiped her eyes. "Yeah. I'm fine."

  "Good. The inquisitor's calling for us."

  FIVE

  Plyton coughed, awkward. "I don't know how these things are done. I mean, in the Inquisition."

  "So do it your way, junior marshal," I said.

  She nodded and coughed again. "The morning before that ruckus at the diplomatic palace, I was called to the old sacristy adjoining the grand templum in A. There's restoration work underway there, and one of the limners had found something."

  "Something?"

  Plyton clenched her teeth and sucked in a breath. "Yes. He'd found a false ceiling. The building's very old, one of the hive's first edifices. Its original ceiling had been architecturally boxed in and hidden."

  "The fabric of temples is altered all the time," Carl said, sipping one of the polysty cups of hot caffeine Nayl had brought in from a street kettle stand.

  "Sure," said Plyton. "But this had been deliberately concealed. Anyway, that doesn't matter. The limner brought it to the attention of the supervising cleric, an Archdeacon Aulsman, and upon inspecting the revealed roof, the archdeacon either committed suicide or was murdered by person or persons unknown."

  "This limner's gotta be high on the suspect sheet," Nayl said.

  Plyton nodded at that. "Of course, sir. But he insisted it was suicide. And it looked like suicide to me."

  "I like her," Nayl said, looking over at me. "She called me 'sir'. Did you hear her call me 'sir'?"

  "Oh, shut up you obnoxious grunt," Carl said.

  "Why did you think it looked like suicide, junior marshal?" I asked.

  "Because I've seen plenty of them, inquisitor. But that is still not the point. I went up there, took some picts, looked around-"

  "What did you see?" Kys asked.

  "Not much, mam." Plyton replied. "I was just looking through a hole in the plasterwork with a handlight. It was very dark. But I saw enough to know there was a spectacular ceiling up there. Very, very old, ornate, beautiful. There were golden figures, inset precious stones, a chart of some sort. There was a landscape too, rolling hills and woodland, temples. The figures all had haloes-"

  "A lovely golden place. Like a landscape." I played back my chair's vox record. "Green hills, woods, a glade, all these beautiful people walking around with haloes of light around them. There were some buildings too. I think they were golden."

  "Was that Zael's voice?" Kys asked.

  "Yes. The other night. When he told me his vision of Kara and the sacristy."

  "But I never got to see that," Kara said.

  "I don't think that matters," I said. "I think Zael was conflating details. He's not trained."

  Carl snorted, as if to suggest that wasn't ever going to happen now.

  "Continue, please, junior marshal," I said.

  "I took some picts, like I said. Used them as the basis of my report. The next day, I found that the case had been erased from my database and reassigned to another division. Shortly after that, my entire department was suspended by Interi
or Cases. There was some suspicion that Special Crime had made a procedural mishandling of the sacristy case and, further more, there was a link to the attempt on the chief provost's life. We were stood down and sent home, to await interview."

  "Your entire department?" Carl asked.

  "Yes," she shrugged.

  "And then what?" I asked.

  "I was sure something was wrong. I contacted a colleague. His name is... His name was Limbwall. I couldn't reach my superior, in fact I haven't been able to ever since. I believe he's dead. Limbwall and I tried to piece things together. We knew that the sacristy was the key. Then..."

  Plyton paused and glanced away for a second. "Excuse me. This is hard to talk about. Then the killers came for me, and they... uhm..."

  "They missed her," Kara said, getting up and pulling Plyton against her body in a tight hug. "They had her address. They murdered her uncle and his nurse. Maud did manage to slay one of the killers. From what Patience has told us, I think they were using the sheen birds as a murder weapon."

  "Throne! Screw that!" Kys muttered. "I never want to see those things again."

  "Like Genny X," Nayl said.

  "What?" I said.

  "On our first visit here," Nayl said. "A black marketeer Zael found for me. The same spec. Looks like the birds are our enemy's weapon of choice when it comes to keeping things secret."

  I rolled my chair forward to face Plyton. "Are you all right to continue?"

  She nodded, and smiled at Kara as she broke the embrace. "Limbwall and I decided to go to the old sacristy to scope around and take some more picts. Everything I'd shot at the scene of crime on the first day had been erased. So we went in last night. To our dismay, the place was as tight as a drum. They were building something in there."

  "Who were?" Carl asked.

  Plyton shook her head. "Who knows? Ministry, I'm pretty sure. Agents of the Ministry of Subsector Trade. They run this city, as you may have noticed. As soon as we realised we weren't getting in, Limbwall and I tried to get out. They came for us. They... they killed Limbwall. Just shot him. Just shot him dead..."