by Dan Abnett
A codifier of unique design. A series processor, similar in layout to the mind-impulse units used by the hallowed Adeptus Mechanicus to govern the linkage between human brain and god-machine.'
'You've seen such things?' I asked, a little taken aback.
'Once, in my travels. In passing. I do not pretend to have more than a cursory knowledge. I am certain, however, that the Adeptus Mechanicus would be interested in this device. It may be illicit technology or something derived from apparatus stolen from them. Either way, they would impound it.'
'Either way, they're not going to know about it. This is inquisitional evidence.'
Quite so,' he agreed.
There were distracting noises from below us. Tomb custodians and tech-nomagi from the cryogenerator brotherhood milled about in the chamber, supervising the mammoth and, in my opinion, futile operation to save the sleepers of Processional Two-Twelve. The whole tomb seethed with activity, and the awful screams had not yet died down.
I saw how Aemos watched the work with keen interest, making notes to himself on a data-slate strapped to his wrist. At the age of forty-two, he had contracted a meme-virus that altered his brain function for ever, driving him to collect information - any sort of information - whenever he got the chance. He was pathologically compelled to acquire knowledge, a data-addict. That made him an aggravating, easily sidetracked companion, and a perfect savant, as four inquisitors had discovered.
'Cold-bolted steel cylinders/ he mused, looking up at the heat exchangers. 'Is that to provide stress-durability in temperature change, or was it fabrication expedient? Also, what is the range of temperature change, given-'
'Aemos, please/
'Hmm?' He looked back at me, remembering I was there.
'The casket?'
'Indeed. My apologies. A series processor... did I say that?'
'Yes. Processing what? Data?'
'I thought that at first, then I considered some mental or mental-transference process. But I doubt either now I've studied it/
I pointed down into the casket. 'What's missing?'
'Oh, you noticed that too? This is most perturbatory. I'm still not certain, of course, but it's something angular, non-standard in shape and with its own power source/
'You're sure?'
'There are no power inlets designed to couple to it, only power outlets. And there's something curious about the plugs. Non-standard mating. It's all non-standard/
'Xenos?'
'No... human, just non-standard, custom made/
'Yeah, but what for?' asked Betancore, climbing up the ladder frame to join us. He looked sour, his unruly black curls framing a dark-skinned, slender face that was usually alive with genial mischief.
'I need to make further evaluations, Midas/ said Aemos, hunching back over the casket.
Betancore stared my way. He was as tall as me, but lighter in build. His boots, breeches and tunic were made of soft black leather with red piping, the old uniform of a Glavian pilot-hunter, and over that he wore, as always, a short jacket of cerise silk with iridescent embroidery panels.
His hands were gloved in light bllek-hide, and seemed to wait ominously near the curved grips of the needle pistols holstered on his hips.
'You took a long time getting here/ I began.
They made me take the cutter back to the landing cross at Tomb Point. Said they need the platform here for emergency flights. I had to walk back. Then I saw to Lores/
'She died well, Betancore/
'Maybe. Is that possible?' he added.
I made no reply. I knew how deep his foul moods could be. I knew he had been in love with Lores Vibben, or at least had decided he was in love with her. I knew things would get difficult with Betancore before they got better.
is this off-worlder? This Eisenhorn?'
The demanding voice rolled up from the chamber below us. I looked down. A man had entered the cryogenerator chamber escorted by four custodians in heat-gowns, carrying light-poles aloft. He was tall, with pallid skin and greying hair, though his haughty bearing spoke of self-possession and arrogance. He wore a decorative ceremonial heat-gown of bold yellow. I didn't know who he was, but he looked like trouble to me.
Aemos and Betancore were watching him too.
'Any ideas as to who this is?' I asked Aemos.
'Well, you see, the yellow robes, like the light poles carried by the custodians, symbolises the return of the sun and thus heat and light. It denotes a high-ranking official of the Dormant Custodial Committee/
'I got that much myself/ I muttered.
'Oh, well his name is Nissemay Carpel, and he's High Custodian, so you should address him as such. He was born here, on Vital 235, fifty standard years ago, the son of a-'
'Enough! I knew we'd get there eventually/
I walked to the rail and looked down. 'I am Eisenhorn/
He stared up at me, barely contained wrath bulging the veins in his neck.
'Place him under arrest/ he told his men.
THREE
Nissemay Carpel.
A light in endless darkness.
The Pontius.
I shot one, meaningful glance at Betancore to stay his hand, then calmly walked past him, slid down the ladder frame and approached Carpel. The custodians closed in around me, but at a distance.
'High custodian,' I nodded.
He fixed me with a steady but wary gaze and licked spittle off his thin lips. 'You will be detained until-'
'No/ I replied. 'I am an inquisitor of the God-Emperor of Mankind, Ordo Xenos. I will co-operate in any investigation you bring to bear here, fully and completely, but you will not and cannot detain me. Do you understand?'
'An... inquisitor?'
'Do you understand?' I repeated. I wasn't using my will at all, not yet. 1 would if I had to. But I trusted that he would have the sense to listen to me first. He could make things awkward for me, but I could make things intolerable for him.
He seemed to soften a little. As I had judged, part of his rage came from shock at this incident, shock that so many planetary nobles in his care had suffered. He was looking for somewhere to pin the blame. Now he had to temper that with the idea that he was dealing with a member of the most feared institution in the Imperium.
'Thousands are dead/ he began, a tremor in his voice. This desecration.. . the high born of Hubris, violated by a... by a-'
'A murderer, a follower of darkness, a man who, thanks to me, lies dead now under a plastic sheet on the upper landing platform. I mourn the great loss Hubris has suffered tonight, high custodian, and I wish I had been able to prevent it. But if I had not been here at all to raise the alarm... well imagine the tragedy you would be dealing with then/
I let that sink in.
'Not just this processional, but all the hibernation tombs... who knows what Eyclone might have wrought? Who knows what his overall ambition was?'
'Eyclone, the recidivist?'
'He did this, high custodian/
You will brief me on this entire event/
'Let me prepare a report and bring it to you. You may have answers for me too. I will signal you in a few hours for an appointment to meet. I think you have plenty to deal with right now/
We made our way out. Betancore presented the junior custodians with a formal register of evidence to be stored for my inspection. The list included the casket and the bodies of Eyclone and his men. None would be tampered with or even searched until I had looked at them. The gunman I had subdued in the cryogenerator chamber, the only one left alive, would be incarcerated pending my interrogation. Betancore made these requirements abundantly clear.
We took Vibben with us. Aemos was too frail, so Betancore and I handled the plastic-shrouded form on the gurney.
We left Processional Two-Twelve by the main vault doors into the biting cold of the constant night and carried Vibben down towards a waiting ice-car, taking her through the hundreds of rows of corpses the Custodians were laying out on the frozen ground.
During Dormant on Hubris, while ninety-nine percent of the planetary population hibernates, one location remains active. The custodians and the technomagi weather out the long, bitter darkness in a place called the Sun-dome.
Fifty kilometres from the vast expanse of the Dormant Plains where the hibernation tombs stand in rows, the Sun-dome sits like a dark grey blister in the ongoing winter night. It is home to fifty-nine thousand people, just a town compared with the great empty cities that slumber below the horizon line waiting for Thaw to bring their populations back.
I stared out at the Sun-dome as the gun-cutter swept us in towards it through wind-blown storms of ice. Small red marker lights winked on the surfaces of the dome and from the masts jutting from the apex.
Betancore flew, silent, concentrating. He had removed his tight-fitting gloves so that the intricate Glavian circuitry set like silver inlay into his palms and finger tips could engage with the cutter's system directly via the control stick.
Aemos sat in a rear cabin, poring over manuscripts and data-slates. Two independent multitask servitors waited for commands in the crew-bay The ship had five in all. Two were limb-less combat units slaved directly to the gun-pods and the other, the chief servitor, a high-spec model we called Uclid, never left his duties in the engine room.
Lowink, my astropath, slumbered in his chamber, linked to the vox and pict systems, awaiting a summons.
Vibben lay shrouded on the cot in her room.
Betancore swung the cutter down towards the dome. After an exchange of telemetry, a wide blast shutter opened in the side of the dome. The light that shone out was almost unbearably bright. Betancore engaged the cockpit glare shields and flew us into the landing bay.
The inside surface of the vast dome was mirrored. A plasma-effect sun-globe burned high in the roof of the dome, bathing the town below in fierce white light. The town itself, spread out beneath us, seemed to be made of glass.
We set down on the wide bay, a twenty-hectare metal platform that overlooked the town. The surface of the platform gleamed almost white in the reflected glare. Heavy monotask servitors trundled out and towed us into a landing silo off the main pad, where pit-servitors moved in to attach fuel lines and begin fundamental servicing. Betancore didn't want anybody or anything touching the gun-cutter, so he ordered Modo and Nilquit, our two independent servitors, to take over the tasks and send the locals away. I could hear them moving around the hull, servos whirring, hydraulics hissing, exchanging machine code data bursts with each other or with Uclid in the drive chamber.
Aemos offered to find accommodation for us in the town itself, but I decided a landing berth was all we needed. The gun-cutter was large enough to provide ample facilities for our stay. We often spent weeks, or months living aboard it.
I went to Lowink's small cabin under the cockpit deck and roused him. He hadn't been with me long: my previous astropath had been killed trying to translate a warp-cipher six weeks before.
Lowink was a young man, with a fleshy, unhealthy bulk hanging from a thin skeletal frame, his body already deteriorating from the demands of a psyker's life. Greasy implant plugs dotted his shaved skull, and lined his forearms like short spines. As he came to the door, some of these plugs trailed wires, each marked with parchment labels, which led back to the communications mainbox above his cradle. Thousands of cables spilled or dangled around his tiny cabin, but he instinctively knew what each one did and could set and adjust plug-ins at a moment's notice. The room reeked of sweat and incense.
'Master/ he said. His mouth was a wet pink slit and he had one lazy, half-hooded eye that gave him a superior air quite belying his actual timidity.
'Please send a message for me, Lowink. To the Regal Akwitane.' The Regal was a rogue trader we had employed to convey the gun-cutter and ourselves to Hubris. His vessel awaited us in orbit now, ready to provide further warp-passage.
'Give Trade Master Golkwin my respects and tell him we are staying for now. He can be on his way, there is no point in him waiting. We could be here for a week or more. The usual form, polite. Tell him I thank him for his service and hope we may meet again.'
Lowink nodded. 'I will do it at once.'
Then I'd like you to perform some other tasks. Contact the main Astro-pathicus Enclave here on Hubris and request a full transcript of off-world traffic for the past six weeks. Also any record of unlicensed traffic, individuals using their own astropaths. Whatever they can make available. And a little threat that it is an inquisitor requiring this data wouldn't hurt. They don't want to find themselves caught up in a major inquisition for withholding information/
He nodded again. 'Will you be requiring an auto-seance?'
'Not yet, but I will eventually. I will give you time to prepare/
'Will that be all, Master?'
I turned to go. 'Yes, Lowink/
'Master...' he paused. 'Is it true that the female Vibben is dead?'
Yes, Lowink/
'Ah. I thought it was quiet/ He closed the door.
The comment wasn't as callous as it sounded. I knew what he meant, though my own psychic abilities were nascent and undeveloped next to his. Lores Vibben was a latent psyker, and while she had been with us, there had been a constant background sound, almost subliminal, broadcast unconsciously by her young, eager mind.
I found Betancore outside, standing under the shadow of one of the gun-cutter's stubby wings. He was gazing at the ground, smoking a lho-leaf tube. I didn't approve of narcotics, but I let it go. He'd cleaned himself up these past few years. When I'd first met him, he had been an obscura user.
'Damned bright place/ he muttered, wincing out at the abominable glare.
A typical over reaction. They have eleven months of pitch dark, so they light their habitat to an excessive degree/
'Do they have a night cycle?'
'I don't believe so/
No wonder they're so messed up. Extreme light, extreme dark, extreme mindsets. Their body clocks and natural rhythms must be all over the place/
I nodded. Outside, I had begun to be disarmed by the notion that the night was never going to end. Now I had the same feelings about this
constant noon. In his brief, Aemos had said the world was called Hubris because after spending seventy standard years getting here aboard their ark-fleet, the original colonists had found the surveys had been incorrect. Instead of enjoying a regular orbit, the world they had selected pursued this extreme pattern of darkness and light. They'd settled anyway, co-opting the cryogenerational methods that had got them here as part of their culture. A mistake, in my view.
But I wasn't here to offer a cultural critique.
'Notice anything?' I asked Betancore.
He made a casual gesture around the landing platform. They don't get many visitors in this season. Trade's all but dead, the world's on tick-over/
"Which is why Eyclone thought it vulnerable.'
"Yes. Most of the ships here are local, trans-atmospheric. Some are for the custodians' use, the others are simply berthed-up over Dormant. I make three non-locals, aside from us. Two trader launches and a private cutter/
'Ask around. See if you can find out who they belong to and what their business is/
'Sure thing/
'Eyclone's pinnace, the one you shot down. Did it come from here?'
He took a suck on his narc-tube and shook his head. 'Either came from orbit, or up from some private location. Lowink picked up its transmissions to Eyclone/
Til ask to see those. But it could have come from orbit? Eyclone may have a starship up there?'
'Don't worry, I already thought to look. If there was one there, it's gone, and it made no signals/
'I'd like to know how that
bastard got here, and how he was intending to leave again/
Til find that out/ said Betancore, crashing the tube stub under his heel. He meant it
What about Vibben?' he asked.
'Do you know what her wishes were? She never mentioned anything to me. Did she want her remains sent back to Tornish for burial?'
"You'd do that?'
'If that was what she wanted. Is it?'
'I don't know, Eisenhorn. She never told me either/
Take a look through her effects, see if she left any testament or instructions. Can you do that?'
'I'd like to do that/ he said.
I was tired by then. I spent another hour with Aemos in his cramped, data-slate-filled room, preparing a report for Carpel. I set out the basic details, reserving anything I felt he didn't need to know. I accounted for my actions. I made Aemos check them against local law, to prepare myself in case Carpel raised a prosecution. I wasn't unduly worried about him, and
in truth I was bulletproof against local legislation, but I wanted to check anyway. An Amalathian prides himself on working with the structures of Imperial society, not above or beyond them. Or through them, as a mon-odominant might. I wanted Carpel and the senior officials of Hubris on my side, helping my investigation.
When my report was complete, I retired to my room. I paused by Vibben's door, went in, and gently placed the Scipio naval pistol between her hands on her chest, folding the shroud back afterwards. It was hers, it had done its work. It deserved to be laid to rest with her.
For the first time in six years, I did not dream about Eyclone. I dreamed of a blinding darkness, then a light that refused to go away. There was something dark about the light. Nonsense, I know, but that was how it felt. Like a revelation that actually carried some grimmer, more profound truth. There were flashes, like lightning, around the edges of my dream's horizon. I saw a handsome, blank-eyed male, not blank-eyed like one of Eyclone's drones, but vacant like an immense, star-less distance. He smiled at me. At that time in my life, I had no idea who he was.
I went see Carpel at noon the next day. It was always noon in the Sun-dome, but this was real noon by the clock. By then, Lowink, Aemos and Betancore had all dredged up new information for me.
