Scourge The Heretic

by Sandy Mitchell

  ‘He might,’ Vex agreed, looking far from happy. ‘That might explain why the daemon attacked him as soon as the dampers went down.’

  Horst shook his head, and sighed in frustration. It was all connected somehow, he could feel it, but the specifics just wouldn’t come into focus. They needed more pieces of the mosaic, and right now he didn’t have a clue how to get them. Perhaps they’d know more after tonight.

  ‘Right.’ He took a deep breath, and poured himself another recaf. If he kept this up, he thought wryly, he was going to become as addicted to the stuff as Danuld seemed to be. ‘Let’s focus on specifics. As soon as the Ursus Innare transits into the warp, we hit the Franchise compound, and close down the pipeline from this end. Malakai can handle that, he’s itching for some payback, and it’ll do his men good to have something to shoot. Any objections?’

  ‘Don’t the Franchise come under Arbites jurisdiction?’ Drake asked. ‘They’re only common criminals.’

  ‘If they’ve been consorting with psykers and heretics, they’re ours,’ Keira said, a predatory gleam beginning to kindle in the depths of her eyes.

  ‘Think of it as damage limitation,’ Horst explained. ‘There’s no telling what kind of taint they’ve been exposed to, even if they don’t realise it themselves. Far safer to cut out the cancer before it spreads.’

  ‘You’ll get no argument from me,’ Drake agreed, ‘after some of the things I’ve seen in the last few days. What are we going to be doing while Malakai’s having fun?’

  ‘Keira’s going to a party,’ Horst said, ‘and the rest of us are going to crash it the moment we get the evidence we need.’

  ‘Sounds good.’ Drake slipped the Scalptaker from his shoulder rig, and spun the chamber thoughtfully, checking the load. Then he looked up, grinning. ‘Do you think they’ll have those little cheesy things on sticks?’

  Nineteen

  The Gorgonid Mine, Sepheris Secundus

  107.993.M41

  ‘My dear, you look positively stunning,’ Adrin said, as a quietly spoken servant ushered Keira into the drawing room of the underground mansion. The house was more opulent than she’d expected, and airier too, the corridors broad, and the ceilings high. Finely woven carpets and tapestries covered most of the walls and floors, the few uncovered surfaces polished so smooth that it was easy to forget they were actually tunnels hacked into the surface of the planet, and everywhere was illuminated by crystal chandeliers of elegant and intricate design. If it hadn’t been for the complete absence of windows, Keira thought, there would have been no visible clue that they were underground at all.

  ‘I thought I should make an effort,’ Keira replied, smiling. Lilith had selected a loose tabard in violet silk, slashed at the sides, from her bulging wardrobe. Ignoring her maid’s barely concealed air of disapproval, she’d passed over the formal gown that the conscientious servant had laid out beside it, slipping it on over her synsuit instead.

  The skintight garment was now mimicking the precise shade of the material, blurring the outline of her body where the loose fabric fell, concealing the weapons beneath it, while revealing enough of her lithe, athletic build to distract the attention of almost anyone looking at her. After a show of careful consideration, Lilith had nodded thoughtfully, conceding that the makeshift ensemble did indeed set off the result of her hairdressing to perfection, and that a breath of off-world exoticism would set tongues wagging in the salons of Icenholm for days to come. ‘It’s all a bit last season, to be honest, but it’s comfortable, and fads come and go so fast in the Lucid Palace it’s impossible to keep up with them anyway.’

  ‘It may be a little passé on Scintilla,’ Adrin assured her, ‘but here you’ll have set the trend.’

  Noting the expressions of the other women present, a mere half dozen or so scattered around the overstuffed divans or circulating slowly through the small groups of quietly chatting guests, Keira somehow doubted that. All were wearing the kind of gowns the Secundan nobility seemed to favour, loose and voluminous, and few if any looked as though skintight garments would do them any favours.

  Most had elaborately sculpted hair, which made Lilith’s efforts seem positively restrained by comparison, and many were glancing in her direction with barely concealed hostility. Ignoring their reactions, and the murmur of conversation through which the phrase ‘ten credit joygirl’ seemed to be forming the leitmotif, she inclined her head towards the assembled company with every appearance of indolent ease. ‘These must be your friends,’ she said, just loud enough to be overheard. ‘I can see that everything I heard about Secundan hospitality is true.’

  ‘You’ll have to forgive a certain amount of reserve,’ Adrin said. ‘This is a very exclusive gathering, and we’ve found over the years that it pays to be cautious with new arrivals.’

  ‘How thrilling,’ Keira said, appearing not to notice the way two of the men had moved to unobtrusively block the door. They both wore ceremonial duelling swords, with ornately gilded hilts, apparently no more than part of their typically elaborate outfits, although the stances they’d fallen into left her in no doubt that the blades were perfectly functional, and their owners were skilled in their use. She suppressed a smile. No matter how good they might be against other fops, she was certain that neither of them would prove anything but a minor irritation to a graduate of the Collegium Assassinorum. ‘You sound as though you’re about to tell me the Inquisition might be listening to us again.’

  She sincerely hoped they were. Wearing the pendant, with its concealed vox circuit, would have attracted too much attention, the colourful jade at odds with her severely functional attire, but Vex had secreted a similar unit among the mass of braids on her head, which obscured it nicely. So long as the layers of rock above the mansion weren’t too deep to block the signal, her friends would be able to track her position to within a handful of metres, and hear most of what was going on around her.

  ‘That’s not something we like to joke about,’ Adrin said, the bantering tone slipping from his voice. Heads around them nodded in agreement, and Keira found herself assessing the odds if she really had to fight her way out of here. The women she discounted immediately as any kind of threat, but there must have been almost a score of men present too, and at least half of them looked as though they could put up a reasonable amount of resistance before she cut them down. ‘They’re dangerous, like all misguided fanatics.’ As he spoke, he studied her face carefully, attempting to read her reaction to the casually uttered treason.

  ‘Misguided?’ Keira asked, shading her voice with just the right amount of caution, as though hesitant to agree too quickly in case she was mistaking his meaning. ‘They’re certainly fanatical, I grant you that, but most people seem to think they’re a necessary evil.’ She placed just enough stress on the phrase ‘most people’ to hint that it meant ‘most other people.’

  ‘Do you?’ Adrin asked, picking up on the implication, and apparently tiring of the game. Sensing that it was time to commit herself, Keira looked at the faces surrounding her, as though appraising them carefully.

  ‘Do I what?’ she asked, as a palpable air of tension began to rise in the elegantly furnished room. Overdressed aristocrats were enclosing her on all sides, their expressions intent, and for a moment she found herself wondering how many loyal servants of the Emperor had answered the question incorrectly, never to leave the secluded chamber alive. ‘Think it’s right for them to go charging around the galaxy like a bunch of ignorant greenskins, slapping down anyone who dares to think for themselves? Of course I do.’ She judged the fractional pause just long enough to note which of the fops, and, surprisingly, a couple of the ladies, began to move towards her with obviously murderous intent, before laughing as though the whole thing was a tremendous joke. ‘At least if there’s a chance that their thugs might still be listening.’

  ‘There’s no fear of that here,’ Adrin said, joining in her feigned merriment with every sign of sincerity, while the thunderstorm crack
le of incipient violence dissipated as suddenly as it had erupted. ‘You’re among friends here.’

  ‘I’d like to think so,’ Keira said, noting the guarded welcome beginning to appear on some of the faces. ‘Do any of them have names?’

  ‘None that we share,’ Adrin said. ‘They all know me, of course, and I know them, but in general we prefer to preserve our incognito.’

  ‘How very wise,’ Keira said, concealing her vexation beneath another display of relaxed good humour. A prolonged round of introductions, assuming the vox hidden in her hair was getting through, would have identified the key players in this shabby little cabal of heretics, and allowed the Arbites to round them up in a single coordinated strike the following morning. She glanced around the room, as if searching for refreshment. ‘I take it this evening’s discussion will be rather less inhibited than it was in the Conclave.’ An air of polite amusement rippled around the assembled conspirators.

  ‘I think you’ll find we do something more constructive here than mere debate,’ Adrin said.

  ‘Really.’ Keira raised an eyebrow. ‘You do intrigue me.’

  ‘Then it would be impolite to keep you waiting any longer,’ Adrin said, turning towards the door. ‘If you’d care to accompany me?’

  Above the Gorgonid, Sepheris Secundus

  107.993.M41

  ‘She’s moving again,’ Vex reported, his attention on the pict screen of his data-slate, where the schematic of Adrin’s house was being displayed. A red rune marked Keira’s position within it, and was wandering steadily through the maze of conjectural corridors he’d extrapolated. With a sense of quiet pride, he noted that it hadn’t deviated through any of the areas he’d marked as solid rock, at least so far.

  ‘What about Elyra?’ Horst asked, from his seat near the narrow door leading to the shuttle’s flight deck. He’d visited the cockpit a couple of times since they’d taken off, ostensibly to consult the auspex for any sign of the lander from the Ursus Innare, but mainly, Vex suspected, to relieve the tension of waiting.

  Barda was keeping them in a wide holding pattern over the vast pit of the Gorgonid, where they could intervene at either site if they were needed, but so far events seemed to be proceeding precisely as planned. Vex was pleased about that. It was a matter of faith with him that every eventuality could be predicted, given enough information, and enough time to process it.

  ‘Still holding position,’ Vex assured him, switching his attention to the screen of the gaudy data-slate Horst had obtained from the Secretary of the Conclave.

  Despite its offensive casing, the mechanisms within it were sound enough, and he’d set it up to display both women’s positions on a smaller scale map of the Gorgonid. Drake glanced across from his own seat, where he was checking over his old Guard issue lasgun with practised precision, and grinned sympathetically. Vex had answered the same question several times already, and, he suspected, would continue to do so at regular intervals until the group of fugitives the psyker had managed to infiltrate had left the ground.

  ‘Good.’ Horst nodded. ‘What about Malakai’s men?’

  ‘Still inbound from the Citadel,’ Vex reported, privately wondering just how much progress their leader had expected them to make in the five minutes since the last time he’d asked. ‘ETA seventeen minutes, assuming the headwinds remain constant.’

  ‘Then I guess we’ve got nothing else to do but wait,’ Horst said grimly.

  ‘I’ve got a contact on the auspex,’ Barda chipped in, his voice attenuated slightly by the comm-bead in Vex’s ear. ‘Traffic control just tagged it as a lander from the Ursus Innare. Looks like you’re in business.’

  ‘I’ll be right there,’ Horst said, rising and disappearing through the door of the cockpit.

  Vex returned his attention to the pict screens in front of him, trying to extrapolate the most likely course of events, and monitoring the sporadic chatter from Keira’s hidden vox. It appeared that the heavy lifter from the ore barge would be down and away before the shuttleful of storm troopers arrived, which would simplify matters. The Ursus Innare would undoubtedly break orbit before the raid began, and enter the warp in blissful ignorance of the fate of their planet-bound confederates. That would leave the Angelae free to extract Keira, should the situation demand it.

  Suddenly aware that Drake had left his seat, and was hovering, somewhat diffidently, at his elbow, Vex glanced up. ‘Can I be of any assistance?’ he asked politely.

  ‘If it’s no trouble,’ Drake said, holding out the lasgun, ‘I was just wondering if you’d mind blessing this for me.’

  ‘A wise precaution,’ Vex assured him, taking the weapon. Beginning the simple ceremony, he was surprised to find how much the familiar litany settled his own mind. As he chanted the hallowed words he glanced out of the viewport, and wondered which of the descending lights in the distance was the lander on which Elyra and Kyrlock were about to embark.

  The Gorgonid Mine, Sepheris Secundus

  107.993.M41

  ‘They can’t be much longer,’ Kyrlock said, as Elyra glanced at her chronograph for what felt like the thousandth time. ‘Greel said 107, and it must be almost 108 by now.’ His voice was casual, but his posture betrayed a tension almost equal to her own. The payment had been made. If the Franchise was going to betray them, now would be the time.

  ‘There’s still almost an hour until then,’ Elyra replied, striving to sound relaxed. The person she was pretending to be wouldn’t want to betray any sign of weakness in front of her partner, let alone the trio of juvies they’d unexpectedly found themselves saddled with. She glanced in their direction, adopting what she thought would be an appropriately patronising expression. ‘Don’t worry, we won’t leave without you.’

  ‘How very reassuring,’ Trosk replied dryly. Out of the three of them, he was the one who worried her the most. She still had no idea what his abilities were, and couldn’t ask directly without undermining her pose of indifference. He was the sharpest of the group, though, of that she had no doubt, and she was quite resolved not to underestimate him. Ven just looked dazed and confused most of the time, periodically muttering in an undertone, which was normal enough for a diviner, even one as weak and untrained as he appeared to be. Zusen was still quiet and withdrawn, apparently traumatised by Kantris’s assault on her the day before, hardly bothering to speak unless she was addressed directly, and even then responding in little more than monosyllables. The contrast with her earlier overconfidence was striking, and Elyra had to remind herself not to be too sympathetic. Any overt sign of compassion would be incompatible with her cover story, but even more importantly, the girl was a rogue psyker, a living embodiment of the Great Enemy, an abomination that could unleash the power of the warp at any time, and she couldn’t allow herself to forget that for a moment.

  As I was once, a faint voice whispered in the back of her mind. There but for the grace of the Emperor…

  She knew that she’d been lucky, the strength of the faith her parents had imbued her with protecting her against the perils of the outer darkness until the blessed day she’d met Carolus. He’d spotted her potential, had arranged for her screening and her training as a sanctioned psyker, and had brought her into the service of the Inquisition. Perhaps she could do the same for Zusen when all this was over, but she was realistic enough to doubt that. The chances were strong that the girl was already tainted by the warp, and a zeta grade would hardly be worth the effort of trying to salvage anyway.

  ‘All right there, Zu?’ she asked, hoping to break the dismal chain of thought.

  ‘Fine.’ The girl lapsed back into silence, sitting on the rough stone floor with her chin on her knees, as she had done for hours. She was still sticking close to Kyrlock, as though the solid bulk of the man lent her confidence, and if he found her presence as uncomfortable as Elyra suspected, he at least had enough tact or common sense to conceal the fact.

  ‘Good.’ Elyra’s casual tone suddenly became businesslike, as a flur
ry of activity began to manifest itself further up the tunnel. ‘Look alive, I reckon we’re moving out.’ The shuffling of feet and the low murmuring of voices was all around them in the darkness, growing louder and more purposeful as the word rippled down from group to group, and the nearest clusters of refugees were already gathering their meagre possessions together with an air of hopeful expectation.

  ‘About time,’ Kyrlock said, rising easily to his feet, and slinging the pack he’d been sitting on across his shoulder. After a moment of irresolution, which only Elyra could see, he steeled himself and held out a hand towards Zusen. ‘Come on if you’re coming, kid.’

  ‘I’m not a kid,’ Zusen said, a tentative smile appearing on her face for the first time in hours, in spite of her petulant tone, and she took the proffered hand, rising easily as Kyrlock hoisted her to her feet. Once upright, she relinquished it slowly, with palpable reluctance. ‘I’m a grown woman.’

  ‘Yeah, right.’ Kyrlock cleared his throat awkwardly, and glanced at Elyra, clearly seeking some kind of distraction. ‘You got everything?’

  ‘Right here,’ Elyra assured him. ‘Is Ven still with us, or away with the cherubs again?’

  ‘I’ve got him,’ Trosk said, prodding his friend into motion.

  After a moment, the young seer’s expression cleared. ‘I can manage perfectly well on my own,’ he said pettishly.