by Xenos (lit)
I shaved, and dressed in black linen with high boots and a formal jacket of scaled brown hide. I wore my inquisitorial rosette at my throat. I intended to show Carpel I meant business.
Aemos and I descended from the landing platform superstructure by caged elevator and found yellow-robed custodians waiting to escort us. Despite the rancid white light all around, they still held ignited light poles. We made short, hard shadows on the dry rockcrete of the concourse as we crossed to an open limousine. It was a massive chrome-grilled beast with pennants bearing the Hubris crest fluttering on its cowling. There were four rows of overstuffed leather benches behind the centre-set driver's cockpit.
We hummed through the streets on eight fat wheels. The boulevards were wide and, needless to say, bright. To either hand, glass-fronted buildings rose towards the blazing plasma sun-globe high above, like flowers seeking the light. Every thirty metres along every street, chemical lamps on ornate posts strained to add their own light to the brilliance.
Traffic was sparse, and there were at most a few thousand pedestrians on the streets. I noticed most wore yellow silk sashes, and that garlands of yellow flowers decorated every lamp post.
The flowers?' I asked.
'From the hydroponic farms on east-dome seven/ one of the custodians told me.
'Signifying?'
'Mourning.'
'Same as the sashes/ Aemos whispered in confidence. 'What happened last night is a major tragedy for this world. Yellow is their holy colour. I believe the local religion is a solar belief
The sun as Emperor?'
'Common enough. Extreme here, for obvious reasons.'
The custodial hall was a glass spire close to the town centre, a solar disk overlaid with the double-headed eagle of the Imperium decorating its upper faces. Nearby was the local chapel of the Ecclesiarchy, and several buildings given over to the Imperial Administratum. It amused me to see they were all built of black stone and virtually windowless. Those Imperial servants stationed here obviously had as little track as me with the constant light.
We drew in under a glass portico and were escorted into the main hall. It was seething with people, most of them custodians in yellow robes, some local officials and technomagi, some clerks and servitors. The hall itself was of the scale of an Imperial chapel, but raised in yellow-stained glass on a frame of black cast-iron. The air was full of golden light shafting down through the glass. The carpet was vast, black, with a sun-disk woven into its centre.
'Inquisitor Eisenhorn!' declared one of my escorts through a vox-hailer. The hall fell silent, and all turned to watch us approach. High Custodian Carpel sat on a hovering lifter-throne with gilt decorations. A burning chemical light was mounted above the head of the floating chair. He swung in through the parting crowd towards me.
'High custodian,' I said with a dutiful nod.
They are all dead,' he informed me. 'All twelve thousand, one hundred and forty-two. Processional Two-Twelve is dead. None survived the trauma.'
'Hubris has my sincere sympathies, high custodian.'
The hall exploded in pandemonium, voices screeching and shouting and clamouring.
"Your sympathies? Your damned sympathies?' Carpel screamed above the roar. A great part of our ruling elite die in one night, and we have your sympathies to console us?'
That is all I can offer, high custodian.' I could feel Aemos shivering at my side, making aimless notes on his wrist slate about custom and clothing and language forms... anything to take his mind from the confrontation.
'That's hardly good enough!' spat a young man nearby. He was a local noble, young and firm enough, but his skin had a dreadful, sweaty pallor and custodians supported him as he stumbled forward.
Who are you?' I asked.
Vernal Maypell, heir-lord of the Dallowen Cantons!' If he expected me to fall to my knees in supplication, he was in for a disappointment.
'Because of the gravity of this event, we have roused some of our highborn early from their dormancy/ Carpel said. 'Liege Maypell's brother and two of his wives died in Processional Two-Twelve/
So the pallor was revival sickness. I noticed that fifty or more of the congregation present were similarly wasted and ill.
I turned to Maypell.
'Liege. I repeat, you have my condolences/
Maypell exploded with rage. 'Your arrogance astounds me, off-worlder! You bring this monster to our world, battle with him through our most sacred sanctums, a private war that slaughters our best and you-'
'Wait!' I used my will. I didn't care. Maypell stopped as if stunned and the vast hall rang silent. 'I came here to save you and deny Eyclone's plans. But for the efforts of myself and my companions, he might have destroyed more than one of your hibernation tombs. I broke none of your laws. I was careful to preserve your codes in pursuit of my work. What do you mean, I brought this monster here?'
We have made enquiries/ answered an elderly noblewoman nearby. Like Maypell, she was ailing with revival sickness, and sat hunched on a litter carried by slaved servitors.
What enquiries, madam?'
This long feud with the murderer Eyclone. Five years, is it now?'
'Six, lady/
'Six, then. You have hounded him here. Driven him. Brought him, as Liege Maypell said/
'How?'
4Ve registered no off-world ship these past twenty days except yours, Eisenhorn/ Carpel said, reviewing a data-slate. The Regal Akwitane. That ship must have brought him as it brought you, to finish your war here and damn our lives. Did you choose Hubris because it was quiet, out of the way a place where you might finish your feud undisturbed, in the long dark?'
I was angry by now. I concentrated to control my rage. 'Aemos?'
Beside me, he was muttering '... and what silicate dyes do they use in their stained glass manufacture? Is the structure armoured? The supports are early Imperial Gothic in style, but-'
Aemos! The report!'
He started and handed me a data-slate from his leather case.
'Read this, Carpel. Read it thoroughly/ I pushed it at him - then snatched it away as he reached for it. 'Or should I read it aloud to all here assembled? Should I explain how I came here at the last minute when I learned Eyclone was moving to Hubris? That I learned that only by astro-pathic decryption of a cipher message sent by Eyclone two months ago? A cipher that killed my astropath in his efforts to translate it?'
'Inquisitor, I-' Carpel began.
I held up the data-slate report for them all, thumbing the stud that scrolled the words across the screen. And what about this? The evidence that Eyclone has been planning a move against your world for almost a year? And this, gathered this last night - that an unregistered starship moved in and out of your orbit to deliver Eyclone three days ago, unnoticed by your
planetary overwatch and the custodian "Guardians"? Or the itemised stream of astropathic communication that your local enclave noticed but didn't bother to source or translate?'
I tossed the slate into Carpel's lap. Hundreds of eyes stared at me in shocked silence.
'You were wide open. He exploited you. Don't blame me for anything except being too late to stop him. As I said, you have my sincere condolences/
'And next time you choose to confront an Imperial inquisitor/ I added, 'you may want to be more respectful. I'm excusing a lot because I recognise the trauma and loss you have suffered. But my patience isn't limitless... unlike my authority/
I turned to Carpel. 'Now, high custodian, can we talk? In private, as I think I requested/
We followed Carpel's floating throne into a side annexe leaving a hall full of murmuring shocked voices behind us. Only one of his men accompanied us, a tall, blond fellow in a dark brown uniform I didn't recognise. A bodyguard, I presumed. Carpel set his throne down on the carpet and raised a remote wand that tinted the glass plates of the room at a touch.
Reasonable light levels at last. From that alone, I knew Carpel was taking me seriously.
He waved me t
o a seat opposite. Aemos lurked in the shadows behind me. The man in brown stood by the windows, watching.
What happens now?' Carpel asked.
'I expect your full co-operation as I extend my investigation/
'But the matter is over/ said the man in brown.
I kept my gaze on Carpel. 'I want your consent for me to continue as well as your full co-operation. Eyclone may be dead, but he was just the blade-point of a long and still dangerous weapon/
'What are you talking about?' the man in brown snapped.
Still I did not look at him. Staring at Carpel, I said, 'If he speaks again without me knowing who he is, I will throw him out of the window. And I won't open it first/
This is Chastener Fischig, of the Adeptus Arbites. I wanted him present/
Now I looked at the man in brown. He was a heavy-set brute with a loop of shiny pink scar tissue under one milky eye. I'd taken him to be a young man with his clean skin and blond hair, but now I studied him, I saw he was at least my age.
'Chastener/1 nodded.
'Inquisitor/ he returned. 'My question stands/
I sat back in my chair. 'Murdin Eyclone was a facilitator. A brilliant, devious man, one of the most dangerous I have ever hunted. Sometimes to hunt down your prey is to finish his evil. I'm sure you have experience of that/
'You called him a "facilitator"/
'That was where his danger lay. He believed he could serve his obscene masters best by offering his considerable skills to cults and sects that needed them. He had no true allegiances. He worked to facilitate the grand schemes of others. What he was doing here on Hubris was to advance and develop someone else's plans. Now he is dead, and his scheme thwarted. We may be thankful. But my task is not done. I must work back from Eyclone, his men, from any clue he left and dig my way into whatever greater, secret darkness was employing him.'
'And for this you want the co-operation of the people of Hubris?' asked Carpel.
The people, the authorities, you... everyone. This is the Emperor's work. Will you shrink from it?'
'No sir, I will not!' snapped Carpel.
'Excellent/
Carpel tossed a gold solar-form badge to me. It was heavy and old, mounted on a pad of black leather.
This will give you authority. My authority. Conduct your work thoroughly and quickly. I ask two things in return/
'And they are?'
You report all findings to me. And you allow the chastener to accompany you/
'I work my own way-'
'Fischig can open doors and voiceboxes here in the Sun-dome that even that badge may not. Consider him a local guide/
And your ears and eyes, I thought. But I knew he was under immense pressure from the nobility to produce results, so I said: 'I will be grateful for his assistance/
'Where first?' Fischig asked, down to business at once, a hungry look on his face. They want blood, I realised. They want someone to punish for the deaths, someone they can say they caught, or at least helped to catch. They want to share in whatever successes I have so that they can look good when the rest of their population wakes up to this disaster in a few months' time.
I couldn't blame them.
'First/1 said, 'the mortuary/
Eyclone looked as if he was asleep. His head had been wrapped in an almost comical plastic bonnet to contain the wound I had dealt him. Framed in the plastic, his face was tranquil, with just a slight bruising around the lips.
He lay on a stone plinth in the chill of the morgue below Arbites Mortuary One. His brethren lay on numbered plinths around him, those that had been recovered more or less intact. There were labelled bins of mostly liquescent material against the back wall, the remains of those that Betan-core had slaughtered with the cutter's cannons.
The air in the underground vault was lit cold blue, and frost covered circulators pumped in sub-zero air direcdy from the ice-desert outside the Sun-dome. Fischig had provided us all with heat gowns for the visit.
I was impressed by what I saw: both the dutiful care and attention that had been used to sequester and store the bodies and by the fact that no one had touched them, according to my instructions. It seems a simple command to give, but I have lost count of the times that over-eager death-priests or surgeons have begun autopsies before I arrived.
The mortician superintendent was a haggard woman in her sixties called Tutrone. She attended us in red plastic scrubs worn over an old and threadbare heat-gown. Mortress Tutrone had a bionic implant in one eye socket, and blades and bonesaw manipulators of gleaming surgical steel built into her right hand.
'I have done as you instructed/ she told me as she led us down the spiral steps into the cold vault. 'But it is irregular. Rules state I must begin examinations, prelim examinations at least, as soon as possible/
'I thank you for your diligence, mortress. I will be done quickly. Then you can follow protocol/
Pulling on surgical gloves, I moved through the lines of dead - there were nearly twenty of them - dictating observations of Aemos. There was virtually noming to be learned from the men. Some I gauged from build and coloration to be off-worlders, but they had no documents, no surgical identifiers, no clue whatsoever about their origins or identities. Even their clothing was blank... manufacturing tags and labels had been torn or burned off. I could begin a forensic investigation to identify the source of the clothing, but that would be a massive waste of resources.
On two of mem, I found fresh scars that suggested subcutaneous idem markers had been surgically removed. Ident marking was not a local practice, so that at least suggested off-world. But where? Hundreds of Imperial planets routinely used such devices, and their placing and use was pretty standard. I had carried one myself for a few years, as a child, before the Black Ships selected me and it was dug out.
One of the corpses had a curious scarring on the forearms, not deep but thorough, searing the epidermis.
'Someone has used a melta-torch to remove gang tattoos/ Aemos said.
He was right. Again, it was tantalisingly incomplete.
I looked to Eyclone, where I thought my best bet lay. With the Mortress's help, I cut away his clothes, all of which were as anonymous as his followers' garb. We turned his naked corpse, looking for... well, anything.
There!' Fischig said, leaning in. A brand mark above the left buttock.
The Seraph of Laoacus. An old Chaos mark. Eyclone had it done to honour his then-masters twenty years ago. A previous cult, a previous employer. Nothing to do with this/
Fischig looked at me curiously. "Vou know the details of his naked flesh?'
'I have sources/ I replied. I didn't want to have to tell the tale. Eemanda, one of my first companions, brilliant, beautiful and bold. She
had found that detail out for me. She had been in an asylum now for five years. The last report I had received said she had eaten away her own fingers.
'But he marks himself?' Fischig added. 'With each new cult he involves himself in, he carries their mark to show his allegiance?'
The man had a point, damn him. We looked. At least six laser scars on his body seemed likely to have been previous cult marks, burned off after he left those associations.
Behind his left ear, a skin inlay of silver was worked in the form of the Buboe Chaotica.
This?' asked Tutrone, shaving the hair aside with her finger blades to reveal it.
'Old, as before/
I stepped back from the body and thought hard. When I'd killed him, he had been reaching for something on his belt, or so it had seemed to me.
'His effects?'
They were laid out on a metal tray nearby. His laspistol, a compact vox-device, a pearl-inlaid box containing six obscura tubes and an igniter, a credit tile, spare cells for the gun, a plastic key. And the belt; with four buttoned pouches.
I opened them one by one: some local coins; a miniature las-knife; three bars of high-calorie rations; a steel tooth-pick; more obscura, this time in an injector vial; a small data slate
.
At the moment of death, which of these things had he been reaching for? The knife? Too slow and small to counter a man who has a naval pistol wedged into your mouth. Then again, he was desperate.
And then again, he hadn't reached for his bolstered lasgun.
The data-slate, perhaps? I picked it up and activated it, but it needed a cipher to gain access. All manner of secrets might be locked inside... but why would a man reach for a data-slate in the face of certain death?
Track marks, along the forearm/ Tutrone stated, continuing her exam.
Hardly surprising, given the narco-ware we'd recovered from him.
'No rings? No bracelets? Earrings? Piercing studs?'
'None/
I pulled a plastic pouch from a dispenser on the surgical cart and put all his effects into it.
"Vou will sign for those, won't you?' Tutrone asked, looking up.
'Of course/
'You hated him, didn't you?' Fischig said suddenly.
'What?'
He leaned back against a plinth, crossing his arms. 'You had him at your mercy, and you knew his head was full of secrets, but you emptied it with your gun. I have no compunction when it comes to killing, but I know when I'm wasting a lead. Was it rage?'
'I'm an inquisitor. I do not get angry/
Then what?'
I had just about enough of his snide tone. 'You don't know how dangerous this man is. I wasn't taking chances/
'He looks safe enough to me/ Fischig smirked, looking down at the body.
'Here's something!' Tutrone called out. We all moved in.
She was working on his left hand, delicately, with her finest gauge scalpels and probes, her augmented fingers darting like a seamstress.
The index finger of the left hand. There's unusual lividity and swelling/ She played a small scanner across it.
'The nail's ceramite. Artificial. An implant/
'What's inside?'
'Unknown. A ghost reading. There's maybe... ah, there it is... a catch under the quick. You'd need something small to trigger it/
She adjusted her bionic finger settings and slid out a very thin metal probe, thin like...
... a tooth pick.
