by Dan Abnett
I tried a few key phrases – ‘the psyker’, ‘the telekine’, ‘Patience’ – pushing them at his mind in the way a child rams shaped blocks at a box, hoping to find the right hole to fit. He responded with various recurring words: Loketter, the game, trophy worth…
I wasn’t sure how hard to push. I wasn’t sure if I was slamming him back against the limits of truth, where there is nowhere left for sanity to go, or simply meeting some form of substitution. Substitution was another standard Cognitae mind ploy. Anticipating psychic interrogation, the brotherhood mnemonically learned to replace the details of true memories with engrammatic euphemisms. Narcobaron, for example, could stand for procurer. Game might stand for purpose. It was a simple but almost unbreakable deceit. Well schooled, a Cognitae brother could mask memories with metaphors. He could not be caught in a lie, because he wasn’t lying. The truth had been erased and replaced with other facts. Using such techniques, a member of the brotherhood might withstand the most serious psyk-scrutiny, because the truth was no longer there to uncover.
‘He’s giving me nothing,’ I cursed, turning away. ‘Unless it is the truth. Do you have an active lead, Carl?’
Thonius nodded.
Kara got to her feet.
‘Let’s go and find her,’ she said. ‘If the story’s real, I mean if there is this frigging barbaric game actually going on, there’s a girl out there who really, really needs help right now.’
‘Throne! Let her die!’ Nayl barked. ‘Frigging psyker! What? What?’ Kara and Thonius were already heading for the door.
‘One life, Harlon,’ I said as I slid past him. ‘I learned many things from Eisenhorn, but ruthlessness was not one of them. Thousands may die, millions even, unless Molotch is found and brought to justice. But any count of a million starts with one, and to ignore one life when there is still a chance of saving it, well, one might as well give up on the other nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine as well.’
‘Whatever,’ said Nayl.
‘Thank you for your vote of confidence,’ I said. ‘Kara, inform the Magistratum that these interviews are suspended until we return.’
XIII
The armoured manse did indeed belong to the man named Loketter, and nineteen counts of narco-traffic were outstanding on his name. The manse was a brass mushroom that dominated a long slope of rubble scree above the shadowland of the slum-tracts. Down here, with the monolithic bulk of Urbitane behind us, the immensity of the urban squalor and ruin was shocking to see.
The manse was ferro-armoured, and shielded, but our scanners lit with the buzz of electromag activity inside.
‘Signals!’ Kara reported. ‘They’re running drones out into the slum.’
‘Can you track them?’ I asked.
‘Working…’ She adjusted some dials. ‘I’ve got a lock on nine. Covering a hex-grid twelve by ten. Map comparison… Throne, these archives are so old! Here we go. An area known as Low Tenalt.’
‘Details?’
‘Serious slum-land,’ Carl said, speed-viewing the data on his codifier. ‘Basically wreckage. High probability of gang activity. Territorially, the gangs are the Dolors and, to the west, the ruin-burbs are run by the so-called Pennyrakers. Magistratum advice is to avoid this area.’
‘Really?’
Carl shrugged. ‘Magistratum advice is a blanket “avoid the slum-tracts”, so what the hey?’
‘How far?’ I asked.
At the helm of the cargo-gig, Nayl consulted the gyro-nav built into the stick. ‘Eight spans to the Low Tenalt area from here, on boost.’
‘Do it,’ I said.
‘You don’t want to level this manse first?’ Nayl asked.
‘They can wait. This girl can’t.’
Nayl nodded reluctantly, and hit the boosters. He wasn’t in this like the rest of us were. Running low, like a pond-fly skating the surface, we zipped through the ruined landscape, skipping rubble heaps, ducking under shattered transit bridges, running fast and low along the brick-waste gouges that had once been hab-streets.
Everything was a grey gloom, caught in the immense shadow of the city. Such ruin, such endless ruin…
‘Coming up, point three,’ reported Nayl, hauling on the stick. The engines whined shrill. ‘Two… one… setting down.’
The gig thumped and slithered as it settled on the loose brick.
Carl, Nayl and Kara were already up, arming weapons.
‘Sit down, Carl,’ I said. ‘I need you to run scope from here.’
‘Oh,’ he said.
‘I want full scanner input,’ I said as I hovered towards the opening hatch behind Kara and Harlon. ‘Wystan can watch your back.’
‘You’re going yourself?’ Wystan asked, surprised. It was one of the few times I’d ever heard emotion in his voice.
‘Yes,’ I said.
Kara and Harlon looked at me.
‘Yes, I’m coming with you,’ I said. ‘Have you got a problem with that?’
‘It’s just–’ Kara began.
‘You don’t usually…’ Nayl finished.
‘This isn’t usually,’ I said, and powered out past them into the chilly gloom.
Nayl leapt out after me, his Urdeshi-made assault gun cinched high around his broad frame. Kara paused and looked back at Wystan and Thonius.
‘Lock the door,’ she grinned. ‘And don’t open it unless you know it’s us. Even then, keep your powder dry.’
She jumped out, raised her Manumet 90 riotgun, and ran to join us.
Carl swallowed. Wystan Frauka got up, and locked the hatch shut. He looked at Carl, lit yet another lho-stick and patted the handgun tucked into his belt.
‘I got your back, Carly,’ he said.
‘Great,’ said Thonius. He turned to regard the sweeping screens of the scanner, and adjusted his vox-mic.
‘Getting this?’ he called.
‘Loud and obnoxiously clear,’ Nayl crackled back.
‘A ha ha. Funny. Not. Move west, two hundred metres, then head north along the axis of the old fuel store. The drones seem to be gathering there.’
‘Thank you, Carl,’ I responded.
We moved through the wasteland. It was one of the few times my state allowed me speedier and quieter access than my able-bodied friends. Nayl and Kara followed, clambering over the dunes of rubble.
‘See anything you like?’ Kara said.
‘I don’t frigging believe we’re doing this,’ Nayl grumbled.
‘Move left. Left!’ Carl’s voice rasped over the vox. ‘I’ve got drones moving now. Gunshots.’
‘I heard them,’ Nayl said, and started away to the left.
‘Flank him wide, Kara,’ I said, and she moved away in the opposite direction.
‘Throne,’ I heard Carl say. ‘I think we were right. I think this is some kind of frigging game.’
I propelled myself forwards. Both Kara and Harlon were out of sight now, though I could sense them just fifty metres away, each side of me. The twisted ruins of the tracts rose up on left and right. I tasted lifesigns.
‘Hello?’ I transponded.
The Dolors appeared out of the gloom. Ragged, emaciated, filthy, feral. There were twenty of them.
Blackened teeth bared in wild grins. They raised their cudgels and spears and charged.
‘Your mistake,’ I said.
XIV
The barons were laughing. Most of them were drunk, or out of their heads on lhotas and obscura.
DaRolle looked up from the drone relay.
‘Have we got the bitch yet?’ Boroth demanded.
‘You wish,’ DaRolle said. He walked across the lounge and crouched down beside Loketter.
‘What?’ asked the man in red.
‘New players just entered the game,’ DaRolle said.
Loketter sat up. ‘Show me.’
DaRolle held out his data-slate. ‘Three on the ground. A gig too, grounded there.’
‘What the hell is this?’
; ‘Problem, Loketter?’ asked Vevian.
Loketter rose and smiled. ‘Not a problem, but a bonus element to our game today. Look at your scans. See? Newcomers.’
‘Who the frig are they?’ Gandinsky blurted.
‘Interlopers,’ Loketter said. ‘House will pay two thousand for each one killed. Firearms permitted.’
The intoxicated crowd applauded this energetically.
Loketter looked at DaRolle.
‘The ones on the ground I can get these fools to mess with,’ he whispered. ‘You go and fry up this gig.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah. Find out who these fools are. Then burn it and every one on it.’ DaRolle nodded.
‘Pleasure,’ he said.
XV
Patience was still running. The Dolors, invisible in the shadows but everywhere now, were jeering and caterwauling, their strangled cries echoing around the ragged walls and shattered windows.
They were calling out to her, taunting her, abusing her with obscene words and suggestions, many of which, thankfully, were so choked by the gang-argot they made no sense.
Occasionally, stones or pieces of trash came flying out of the darkness at her, and she deflected all those she could. Some found her, especially the stinging stone bullets launched from catapults and slings.
Her instinct was to head back towards the colossal city, but no matter how much ground she managed to cover, it seemed not to get any closer. Its sheer scale made the distance hard to judge. It was probably kilometres away still.
She reached the ruins of a manufactory, its ply-steel roof collapsed. Seas of garbage and rubble spread out from its eastern side, and she began to pick her way across the weed-choked waste. Behind her, she could hear the gangers scurrying through the manufactory ruins. A few missiles flew out after her.
A figure suddenly appeared ahead of her, across the sea of trash. A small male, or perhaps a female, who’d been in cover behind the remains of a yard wall, hidden by a chameleon cloak. Glancing up, Patience cursed as she saw a hunter drone that had obviously been shadowing her for several minutes.
Patience changed course, and began to run away from the figure. She ran wide across the overgrown trash. The figure started to follow, trying to cut her off, running hard, but neither made particularly good going. The trash and rubble was so uneven, so treacherous. Patience kept tripping, stumbling, turning her ankles.
As soon as the hunter appeared, the jeering from the invisible Dolors grew more ferocious. Catapult missiles and even the occasional arrow whipped out from the manufactory at the hunter.
The hunter – and it was clearly a female – stopped in her tracks, and produced an autopistol. She slammed in a clip and fired three times at the manufactory.
The shells must have been high-ex, because each impact went up like a grenade. Sections of the manufactory ruin blew in, and the Dolors went very quiet suddenly.
Patience was still running. The hunter put the gun away and resumed the chase.
A second drone zoomed into view suddenly, circled Patience once and then headed for the hunter. The woman stopped again, looking around frantically as she reached for her sidearm. Patience half-heard her shout a question into her vox-set.
There was a loud crack, a peripheral flash of light, and the female hunter jolted suddenly as a las-round went clean through her torso. She crumpled without a sound.
Her killer appeared, directly ahead of Patience. She skidded to a halt. He was big, and wore segmented plating over a coat of green hide. A glowing augmetic implant covered one eye. He had a lascarbine in his hands. He stared at Patience for a moment, then put the carbine away in the leather boot over his shoulders. Then he drew a large dagger with a twisted black blade, and took a step towards her.
‘Make it easy now, and I promise you won’t feel nothing,’ he said. Patience was breathing hard from the running. It made it easier somehow to summon up her gift. The man thought the first couple of stones that came flying at him were from the gangers, but then more came, and more, larger rocks, pieces of trash, chunks of garbage. Debris started showering off the ground all around her, whipping at him.
He cried out, shielding his face with his hands, and backed away. She heard him cry again, in pain, as a greasy lump of broken-off machinery hit him in the chest. He staggered, trying to fend the blizzard away. Then a piece of cinder block caromed off the side of his head, and he fell to his knees, holding his head. Two more large rocks struck his face and forehead, and he slumped over entirely.
Patience sighed, and the rain of trash subsided, pieces bouncing off the ground as they landed. Silence.
She gave the body one last look, and started to run again. Behind her, in the manufactory, and all along the outer fence line, the invisible gangers started to whoop and holler again.
XVI
I had just seen off a second assault by the slum-gangers when I felt the telekinetic burst. Fierce, unfocused, not too far away.
‘Turn west,’ I voxed.
‘Understood,’ Kara responded.
‘I read that,’ said Nayl. ‘I just heard bolter fire from that direction too.’
I slid through the ruins, my mind wide open. There were psi-traces all around me, at least a dozen as close as fifty metres. Most were the feral impulses of the hidden Dolors. But there. One other. Harder.
Two las-rounds struck the front of my chair and fizzled off harmlessly. I found the hunter as he was about to fire again, and picked him up. He yelled in fear as he left the ground, dragged into the air ten metres, twenty. Then I let him go.
I didn’t even bother to watch him land. The sharp light of his mind went out abruptly.
‘I heard shots,’ Kara voxed. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Fine,’ I replied. ‘Kara, it is a game. An obscene hunting game. We have to find this girl, whatever she is, before they do.’
‘Understood. Absolutely.’
Kara was about a third of a kilometre away to my right.
‘I’ve got a drone active in your vicinity,’ Carl told her over the link.
Kara acknowledged, and glanced around. That was when the two hunters, twins clad in silver-grey skin sleeves, pounced. One pinned her arms from behind, the other came at her with a chainfist. She rolled her body back, using the man pinning her as a back-brace, and bicycle-kicked the other in the face. He went over in the rubble, rolling.
But the man pinning Kara from behind rammed forwards and headbutted her in the back of the skull.
+Kara!+
Even at that distance, I felt her pain, and sensed that she had blacked out. They’d have her gutted before she could come round.
I knew I had no choice. I had to ware her. It wasn’t something she – or anyone else I knew – enjoyed, but it was necessary. Besides, we had trained for this. Kara Swole was a particularly receptive candidate.
The wraithbone pendant around her neck lit up with psychic energy. Kara’s body suddenly animated again, but it was me moving her. I had taken her physical form over, put it on like a suit of clothes.
Blank-eyed, Kara’s body twisted hard and broke the pinning hold. She tore clear, landed well, and swept out the legs of the hunter with the chainfist so he went over on his backside.
Then she turned, raising a forearm block against the other’s attack, following the block with two rapid jabs to his face and a side-stamp that caught and dislocated his right knee.
He howled in pain. Kara/I grabbed his flailing arms and swung him bodily around right into his partner, who was returning to the fight for the second time.
The partner’s forward-thrust chainfist, which had been sweeping at Kara/me met the ribs of his fellow hunter instead. The whirring bite-blades of the gauntlet weapon punched clean through the man’s side in a shocking welter of blood and torn tissue. He screamed as he died, his whole body quivering in time to the rending vibrations of the glove’s cycling blades.
His partner and accidental killer screamed too: in outrage and horror at what
he had just done. He wrenched the glove out, but it was too late. His twin, a huge and awful excavation yawning in the side of his torso, stopped quivering, and dropped. A film of blood covered everything in a five-metre radius.
Berserk, the remaining hunter hurled himself at Kara/me. We leapt, boosted by a touch of telekinesis, and executed a perfect somersault over his head.
He swung around. But by then Kara/I had grabbed up her fallen riotgun. Her puppet hand racked the slide. A single, booming shot blew the hunter backwards eight metres.
We heard a sound behind us, and turned, bringing the pumpgun up. ‘Steady!’ Nayl warned.
‘What are you doing here?’ Kara/I demanded.
‘You were in trouble, Kara!’ he said. ‘I heard it over the vox. I came as fast as I could.’
‘What about the girl? What about the girl we’re looking for?’
Nayl shrugged. ‘Kara?’
‘No, it’s me, dammit!’ I said with Kara’s voice. ‘Catch her for Throne’s sake, I’m coming out.’
Nayl hurried forwards, and took Kara’s limp form into his arms as I ceased waring her. She was semiconscious, and the trauma of being a ware subject would leave her disorientated and sick for a good while.
+Guard her, Harlon. In fact, get her back to the transport.+
‘Where are you going?’ he asked the empty air.
+To find the girl.+
XVII
Closed back into the womb-like nowhere of my support chair, I impelled it forwards again, trying to reacquire the raw psychic-pulse I’d felt before. I felt edgy. Having to ware someone was a curious thing to deal with, and the feelings always left me conflicted. I was aware that the subject loathed the sensation, and it was also most usually done in moments of extremis, involving violence and furious levels of adrenaline. But for me it was a brief delicious escape, a cruel reminder of what I had lost. I despised myself for deriving pleasure from such painful, demeaning moments.
+Carl?+
‘Yes, sir?’
+Do you have a fix on me?+
‘Yes, sir. I’ve got two more drone tracks about half a kilometre ahead, converging. Please hurry, sir.’
+I’m hurrying.+
Back in the gig, Carl looked up from his scanner displays, fidgeting with his cuffs nervously. He looked at Wystan, who was reading his data-slate again.
