She found that fractional amounts of cargo bound for the war effort were being diverted, each one painstakingly concealed so as not to raise an alert. There were shipments of equipment, materiel, weapons. Even personnel and whole vessels that were being sent away from the lines of battle. But to where?
At Tallery’s command, a hololithic display shimmered into being over Curator Lonnd’s great desk, and she set a datum search to work, calling for destination data for all of the suspect transfers. In return, a torrent of information flowed down the phantom pane hanging in the air before her. She studied it for some clue as to the end point for all the diverted shipments.
Each one terminated with the same fragment of information. An alias that was attached to nothing. A single word.
Othrys.
Garro searched his recollection and his mnemonic-imprints for the identity and came back with nothing. ‘I know of no world by that name.’
Tallery nodded. ‘That’s because there isn’t one. I ran a cross-check with the entire Munitorum astrogeographical archive, the Navigator Houses’ Great Catalogue, everywhere. Nothing. And there is no starship, space station or orbital with that designation, nor a city or planetside outpost. It was only when I expanded my search to include historical records that I found a match to the name. It was just a passing reference, in the piecemeal historical libraries that survive from the time before Old Night.’
He considered that. ‘It is a Terran word?’
‘Just so. A place. Othrys was a mountain in what used to be the islands of ancient Hellenicae. It no longer exists, now ground to radioactive sand by acts of forgotten war and time’s passing. The references to that name are the sole constant in the discrepancies I discovered.’
‘Then it is a codename for the location where these materials are being sent.’
She nodded once again. ‘That is my guess. But I confess I do not know why it is happening.’
Garro had an inkling, however, and it chilled him. ‘Weapons. Supplies. Men. Ships. These are the elements one would gather to build an army, Scribe Tallery. If what you say is so, this discovery is of grave import.’
For the first time, he saw something other than fear on the woman’s face. She was elated that someone finally believed her. ‘Yes! You understand.’
But he did not. ‘Why did you not take this information to your colleagues, or to the Mistress of Riga herself? And if this conspiracy holds true, why are you the one named traitor this day, and not the architect of this subterfuge?’ There had to be more to this than the scribe was saying.
‘I didn’t know who to trust,’ Tallery retorted, defiant against his allegation. ‘What I have revealed to you is part of a grand conspiracy, lying right here in the heart of the Imperium! I knew I had to act, but I was paralysed. Anyone on Riga could be a part of this lie – Lonnd, Kelkinod, even those in the court of the mech-lords…’ She trailed off. ‘You see my dilemma?’
Garro took a breath, and the scars of cold memory briefly pulled tight upon his thoughts. ‘I have lived it,’ he said, with plain honesty. ‘I know what it is to face treachery in your own halls, among those you hold most trusted. But all the more reason to stand opposed to it. Deceit dies in the light, Tallery. It must be exposed, no matter the cost.’
She looked away, abashed. ‘Perhaps if I had your fortitude, I might have found it easy to be so bold. But forgive me for my frailty. I am human, and I am fallible. It is hard to go against all I know.’ Tallery sighed, and her next words were a declaration of belief. ‘I am convinced that agents of the turncoat Warmaster have infiltrated the Departmento Munitorum. I believe these agents are working to undermine Terra’s defences by diverting key materials from where they are most needed. They are weakening us, before the invasion comes.’
He eyed her. ‘You speak of Horus coming to Terra as if you think that it is inevitable.’
‘Don’t you?’ she said, tensing at the mention of the Warmaster’s name.
It was not a question he wanted to answer at that moment. Instead, he posed another. ‘What did you do with the information you recovered?’
‘I did what any loyal subject of the Emperor would,’ said the scribe.
Twelve
Puppets
Bound by law
Decision
Kelkinod had been waiting for her when she returned to the work tiers. Tallery imagined that he had been searching for her, by the florid cast of his face and the anger in his close-set, beady eyes.
‘Where have you been?’ he demanded. ‘A summons was transmitted over the watch-wire four hours ago! You did not respond.’
She brushed off the hand that grasped at her sleeve. ‘Not that it is any concern of yours, but I went down to the deep stacks. I had to check something.’
He jogged to keep up with her long-legged strides. ‘This is most irregular. I demand you halt this instant and explain yourself.’
‘What I have to say is for the ears of the new curator only,’ Tallery retorted. Her dislike and her distrust of the other scribe had hardened into a full and complete loathing.
Kelkinod had gaped like a landed fish. ‘He has barely set foot in the building! You cannot simply barge into his chambers and demand attention.’ He gave a snort of derision. ‘After your failure, I would expect you to stay out of sight.’
‘What did you say to me?’ She rounded on him at the accusation.
‘You failed to complete the tasks the centrum office assigned to you.’ He shot back the words, as if her misdeed was the highest of all crimes. ‘You have put us behind schedule! Curator Lonnd’s dockets remain incomplete, and that lies at your door, Tallery. You were told to expedite them.’
‘Something more important came up.’
‘More important than our documentation?’ The other scribe scoffed. ‘Are you deluded?’
She pushed past him towards the door of the curator’s office. ‘I don’t have time for this conversation. Get out of my way.’
Kelkinod watched her go, spluttering with impotent ire. ‘You’ll be lucky if you aren’t sent to count spent bolt shells on some backwater forge world before the day is out!’
Curator Lonnd’s replacement had set up in his predecessor’s workspace, and all trace of the previous occupant had been erased. The great desk, the couch, the sparse human touches about the place, all were gone. Now the chamber was featureless and gloomy, lit only by the faint light of a hololith table, and filled with the staccato chatter of fingers on a bone keyboard.
Tallery approached slowly, her eyes adjusting to the dimness. ‘Sir? My name is Katanoh Tallery, I am a Scribe-Adepta Second Classificate. May I address you?’ At first, the new curator did not respond to her presence. She saw a thin, drawn face emerging from a heavy hood, eyes fixed upon a ghostly, projected screen floating between them. She pressed on. ‘Curator, I must speak with you on a matter of the greatest urgency. I have discovered criminality at work in this office. Treachery, sir.’
The motion of fingers over keys halted at her last words, and Tallery heard the faint buzz and whir of clockwork mech-implants.
‘I have a set of shipping logs here from the eighth and eleventh dock sectors,’ she said hesitantly. ‘These are just the most recent examples. Curator, it appears that someone is wilfully diverting important supplies away from the war effort, towards some unknown destination.’ The curator seemed to notice her then for the first time, augmetics clicking as he focused on Tallery’s words. After so many days of bottling up the evidence she had uncovered, the scribe could barely stop herself from disclosing it all. She had to share it, if only to expunge the sense of toxic paranoia that tainted the information. ‘I have imparted this to no other, sir. My colleagues here… They are not above suspicion.’
The curator said nothing, taking in every word, his thin fingers hovering suspended over the keypad before him.
‘I could
find no terminal ident to trace these alterations to their source. I have no way to locate the person or persons responsible. The only recurrent factor in this phenomena is the reference to a location designated as “Othrys”.’
‘Oth-rys.’ The curator sounded out the word in a curious, toneless diction, showing not a flicker of understanding.
‘There’s no listing for that location in any of our records. Does it mean anything to you, sir?’
‘Othrys.’ He repeated, his head tilting gently forwards. ‘Processing.’ She heard the clicking of oiled machine parts once more. ‘No,’ he said, at length. ‘Nothing. Scribe Tallery. Do not be concerned. Resume your duties.’ The long-fingered hands dropped back to the keyboard and the endless rattle of typing resumed.
A sickly sensation rolled through Tallery’s stomach and before she could stop herself, she was coming forwards in a rush, disrupting the gossamer hololith as she moved to stand over the figure at the keypad. Reaching out, she pulled away the hood covering the curator’s head.
He did not shy away from her touch as a normal human might have. Instead he sat serenely, continuing to work at his tasks as the hood fell back to reveal his true nature.
Once it had been a man. Years or decades before, this curator had been someone with a name, a life, a full identity. But all of that was gone from him now, excised like the portions of his skull and brain missing beneath the hood. In their place, there were fine mechanisms of brass and silver clockwork, tiny cogs spinning endlessly amongst networks of mnemonic crystals and data capsules. This thing that sat before Tallery lived and breathed as she did, but it was no more self-aware than the dumb terminal cogitator she used to input her dockets. Curator Lonnd’s replacement was nothing but a mind-wipe, a servitor run by programs on punch-card wafers and remote commands from… somewhere.
The first trickle of fear rose in Tallery as her gaze found the thick cables snaking down from sockets on the curator’s bird-like neck. They disappeared beneath the folds of his robe to emerge again near the floor. She followed them across the room, peering owlishly into the shadows, until she came to a hollow in the wall where the cables terminated. The curator-servitor was wired permanently into the Administratum data network, a body modification that smacked more of the Cult Mechanicum than the Departmento Munitorum.
Tallery looked into those glassy, dull eyes, seeing no recognition, no understanding. He – it – was only a puppet for some distant master elsewhere, and she wondered who it was that was looking back at her from behind them.
‘Resume your duties,’ repeated the curator.
‘Yes, of course,’ she told it, recovering her composure as best she could. ‘You’re quite right, I’m sure it’s nothing. Just a rounding error or some such, no reason to be alarmed. I will do as you say.’ Tallery crossed the chamber to the heavy wooden door and it was all she could do not to run.
Out in the office quadrant, she was suddenly aware of each and every scribe in their cubicles turning away from their work to look up at her. Some seemed indifferent, some fixed her with cold, measuring gazes that bore her nothing but ill will. She had no allies amongst her colleagues. She had never been one to socialise with the others between shifts, and that had bred suspicion of her. Before, Tallery had been indifferent to such petty behaviour, but now, when she badly needed support, she knew there would be none.
Then she spied Kelkinod across the far side of the room. His words were lost to her, but he was in animated conversation with a maniple of bulky humanoid mechanicals, the four of them towering over him. Each of the machines was detailed with a complex livery, a kind of hexadecimal heraldry that Tallery could not read. She knew only that the symbols designated them as combatant serviles in thrall to the Mistress of Riga herself, the ruler of the floating city-state and a scion of the Legio Cybernetica. The mistress’ cyborgs were what passed for law enforcement on the orbital plate, stripped-down versions of her cadre’s battlefield Thallaxii. They tirelessly patrolled the city’s streets, dealing out harsh, dogmatic justice to any criminals unlucky enough to attract their attention.
Tallery’s heart sank as she saw Kelkinod say her name and turn to look in her direction. He pointed, and as one all four of the cyborgs set their gazes upon her. The glinting faces of the machines were featureless and utterly devoid of emotion.
‘Katanoh Tallery. Remain still.’ The voice of the Thallax was harsh and grating. ‘You are bound by law under the authority of the Imperium of Man.’ The other scribes muttered in fear and confusion, many of them shrinking back into their cubicles so as not to be seen by the mechanoids.
‘There must be some mistake,’ she insisted. If the cyborg heard her words, it gave no sign. Instead, it advanced across the room with its cohorts in lockstep formation, iron arms rising to present capture claws and the maws of electro-guns. She backed away, the action purely reflexive. Her thoughts raced. Was this how Lonnd had met his end, at the hands of these machines? Had she said too much, foolishly betraying what she had learned to the very forces trying to conceal it?
Tallery had the sudden and very certain impression that if she surrendered to the cyborgs, her life would be over. She was a good citizen, a loyal subject of her beloved Emperor… And more besides. But this day she had looked up to find herself at the centre of a whirlwind of distrust. If she were to vanish, no one would know about Othrys, the missing ships and the stolen munitions. That could not be allowed to happen.
‘Katanoh Tallery,’ repeated the machine, as it reached for her. ‘Remain still.’
‘I-I’m sorry,’ she stuttered. ‘I can’t take the risk…’ The machine was almost upon her when the scribe burst into motion. She pushed away from a grasping claw, and almost collided with a drooling servitor pushing a wheeled hod filled with heavy ledgers and data-slates. Reacting without conscious thought, Tallery grabbed the shoulders of the servitor and shoved it hard towards the Thallaxii. The thick books and glassy slates tipped from the hod and came down around the machine-soldiers like an avalanche. Their advance was momentarily blocked and she used the confusion to make a break for the corridor.
Pulses of energy lit the air as they opened fire. Tallery heard a choked-off scream as one of the other functionaries was too slow to get out of the line of attack, and she saw him go spinning to the floor, writhing as a discharge meant for her shocked through him.
‘Do not resist arrest,’ called the machine.
‘Tallery, what have you done?’ She heard Kelkinod cry out to her a moment before she slammed through a set of doors. Bursting into the corridor, she ran full tilt for the conveyor shaft at the far end.
In her mind’s eye, she was plotting out the route she would follow. The conveyor would take her all the way down the length of the Munitorum tower to the sublevels. From there, Tallery could lose herself in the thronging crowds of people, finding safety in numbers. She would need to seek a way off Riga, perhaps by shuttle or freight barge, then find someone she could trust to tell…
Her plan crumbled to dust in an instant as a second maniple of cyborgs rounded the far corner up ahead and took up a position directly in front of the conveyor shaft.
‘Throne and blood, no!’ She was trapped, her escape route cut off, with the other mechanicals close at her heels.
‘Remain still,’ droned the cyborg’s vocoder. ‘Do not resist.’
Tallery cast about desperately. She had committed herself to this course of action, and she could not draw back from it. She knew that the machines would never listen to her explanations. They considered her a flight risk now, and she would be lucky to avoid being gunned down where she stood. The rebellion of Warmaster Horus had put Terra on a war footing, and with that change had come others, more sinister and repellent. The shadow cast by the turncoat was not just from fear of him and what he might do, but from fear of his father the Emperor as well. The Imperium’s grip on its citizens was tightening as people imagined t
reachery in every shadowed corner. And they were right to do so. There were traitors on Riga, and they wanted Katanoh Tallery.
‘I won’t surrender!’ she shouted, shrugging off the near panic and fighting to concentrate. A few metres away, light flooded in through a tall window of colourful glassaic, depicting farmers hard at work in the fields of some agri world. Without hesitating, Tallery grabbed the end of a short bench resting along the wall and upended it, shouldering it through the glass.
‘Halt. You are bound by law. Halt now.’
Ignoring the commands of the machine, she vaulted up to the window frame and pushed out onto the ledge through the broken panes, where the bulky cyborg could not immediately follow. Tallery had never really considered how tall the tower was. Not until then, as she looked down towards the thronging streets far below. Cargo transports and smaller tilt-jet flyers charted courses around the building and the habitat blocks nearby.
As a passenger skiff shot past, she called out and tried to flag down the pilot.
‘Hey, you! Help me!’
But the skiff did not come back around. If Tallery could not get off the ledge, her pursuers would find a way to get out after her. Surely someone will come to my aid? A whole city’s worth of sky-traffic was racing past just a few metres away; would they all ignore her? Was everyone on Riga afraid to lift up their heads and call out injustice when they saw it? Was everyone too scared to get involved?
Part of the tower’s structure fractured with the force of a heavy impact from within, and a wide crack appeared. ‘There is no escape,’ said a synthetic voice from within.
Garro Page 21
