“What a delightful image,” murmured Soalm.
“He needs it,” said Iota, distractedly. “He actually feels a kind of emotional pain when separated from his firearms. Like a parent torn from its child.”
“I’ll show you torn,” grated the hulking killer, menacing the Vanus. “I’ll do some tearing.”
“Open!” Tariel fairly shouted the word and the mechanism controlling the lock hissed on oiled hydraulics. The pod split along its length and rolled back, presenting brackets of guns, support equipment and other wargear.
The Garantine’s face lit up with something approximating joy. “Hello, pretty pretty,” he muttered, drawn to a rack where a heavy pistol, ornate and decorated with metallic wings and sensor probes, lay waiting. He gathered it up and hefted it in one hand. Cold laughter fell from his lips as gene-markers tingled through him, briefly communing with the lobo-chips implanted in his brain, confirming his identity and purpose.
“The Executor combi-pistol,” said Tariel, blinking rapidly as he drew the information up from a mnemonic pool in his deep cortex. “Dual function ballistic bolt weapon and needle projectile—”
“I know what it is!” snarled the Garantine, before he could finish. “Oh, we are very well acquainted.” He stroked the gun like it was a pet.
Kell spoke up. “All of you, take what you need but make sure you use what you take. Go back to your compartments and prepare your gear for immediate deployment. We have no idea how long we may have between our arrival and the target’s.”
“He may already be there waiting for us,” offered Koyne, drifting towards a different rack of weapons. “The tides of the warp often flow against the ebb of time.”
The Garantine greedily gathered armfuls of hardware, taking bandoliers of melta-grenades, a wickedly barbed neuro-gauntlet and the rig for a sentinel array. With another guttural laugh, he snagged a heavy, blunt-ended slaughterer’s sword and placed it under his arm. “I’ll be in my bunk,” he sniggered, and wandered away under his burden.
Iota watched the Eversor go. “Look at him. He’s almost… happy.”
“Every child needs its toys,” said Soalm.
The Culexus gave the racks a sideways look, and then turned away. “Not me. There’s nothing here that I need.” She shot the Venenum poisoner a look, tapping her temple. “I have a weapon already.”
“The animus speculum, yes,” said Soalm. “I’ve heard of it. But it is an ephemeral thing, isn’t it? Its use depends on the power of the opponent as much as that of the user, so I am led to believe.”
Iota’s lips pulled tight in a small smile. “If you wish.”
Tariel nervously approached them. “I… I do have an item put aside for your use, Culexus,” he said, offering an armoured box covered with warning runes. “If you will?”
Iota flipped open the lid and cocked her head. Inside there were a dozen grenades made of black metal. “Oh,” she said. “Explosives. How ordinary.”
“No, no,” he insisted. “This is a new technology. An experimental weapon not yet field-tested under operational conditions. A creation of your clade’s senior scienticians.”
The woman plucked one of the grenades from the case and sniffed it. Her eyes narrowed. “What is this? It smells like the death of suns.”
“I am not permitted to know the full details,” admitted the infocyte. “But the devices contain an exotic form of particulate matter that inhibits the function of psionic ability in a localised area.”
Iota studied the grenade for a long moment, toying with the activator pin, before finally giving Tariel a wan look. “I’ll take these,” she said, snatching the box from his hand.
“What do you have for the rest of us in your delightful toy box?” Koyne asked lightly, playing with a pair of memory swords. They had curved, graceful blades that shifted angles in mid-flight as the Callidus cut the air with them.
“Toxin cordes.” The Vanus pressed a control and a belt threaded with glassy stilettos extended from a sealed dram marked with biohazard trefoils.
Koyne put up the swords and reached for them, only to see that Soalm was doing the same. The Callidus gave a small bow. “Oh, pardon me, cousin. Poisons are of course your domain.”
Soalm gave a tight, humourless smile. “No. After you. Take what you wish.”
Koyne held up a hand. “No, no. After you. Please. I insist.”
“As you wish.” The Venenum carefully retrieved one of the daggers and turned it in her fingers. She held it up to the light, turning it this way and that so the coloured fluids inside the glass poison blade flowed back and forth. At length, she sniffed. “These are of fair quality. They’ll work well enough on any man who stands between us and Horus.”
The Callidus picked out a few blades. “But what about those who are not men? What about Horus himself?”
Soalm’s lips thinned. “This would be the bite of a gnat to the Warmaster.” She gave Tariel a look: “I will prepare my own weapons.”
“There’s also this,” offered the Vanus, passing her a pistol. The weapon was a spindly collection of brass pipes with a crystalline bulb where a normal firearm might have had an ammunition magazine. Soalm took it and peered at the mesh grille where the muzzle should have been.
“A bact-gun,” she said, weighing it in her hand. “This may be useful.”
“The dispersal can be set from a fine mist to a gel-plug round,” noted Tariel.
“Are you certain you know how to use that?” said Kell.
Soalm’s arm snapped up into aiming position, the barrel of the weapon pointed directly at the Vindicare’s face. “I think I can recall,” she said. Then she wandered away, turning the pistol over in her delicate, pale hands.
Meanwhile, Koyne had discovered a case that was totally out of place among all the others. It resembled a whorled shell more than anything else, and the only mechanism to unlock it was the sketch of a handprint etched into the bony matter of the latch—a handprint of three overlong digits and a dual thumb.
“I have no idea what that may be,” Tariel admitted. “The container, I mean, it looks almost as if it is—”
“Xenos?” said Koyne, with deceptive lightness. “But that would be prohibited, Vanus. Perish the thought.” There was a quiet cracking sound as the Callidus’ right hand stretched and shifted in shape, the human digits reformed and merging until they became something more approximate to the alien handprint. Koyne pressed home on the case and it sighed open, drooling droplets of purple liquid on to the decking. Inside the container, the organic look was even more disturbing; on a bed of fleshy material wet with more of the liquid rested a weapon made of blackened, tooth-like ceramics. It was large and off-balance in shape, the front of it grasping a faceted teardrop crystal the sea-green colour of ancient jade.
“What is it?” Tariel asked, his disgust evident.
“In my clade it has many names,” said Koyne. “It rips open minds, tears intellect and thought to shreds. Those it touches remain empty husks.” The Callidus held it out to the Vanus, who backed away. “Do you wish to take a closer look?”
“Not in this lifetime,” Tariel insisted.
A pale tongue flickered out and licked Koyne’s lips as the assassin returned the weapon to the shell. Gathering it up, the Callidus bowed to the others. “I will take my leave of you.”
As Koyne left, Kell glanced back at the Vanus. “What about you? Or do those of your clade choose not to carry a weapon?”
Tariel shook his head, colour returning to his cheeks. “I have weapons of my own, just not as obvious as yours. An electropulse projector, built into my cogitator gauntlet. And I have my menagerie. The psyber eagles, the eyerats and netfly swarms.”
Kell thought of the pods he had seen elsewhere aboard the Ultio, where Tariel’s cybernetically-modified rodents and preybirds and other animals slept out the voyage in dormancy, waiting for his word of command to awaken them. “Those things won’t keep you alive.”
The Vanus shook his he
ad. “Ah, believe me, I will make sure that nothing ever gets close enough to kill me.” He sighed. “And in that vein… There are also weapons for you.”
“My weapon was lost,” Kell said, with no little venom. “Thanks to the Eversor.”
“It has been renewed,” said Tariel, opening a lengthy box. “See.”
Every Vindicare used a longrifle that was uniquely configured for their biomass, shooting style, body kinestics, even tailored to work with the rhythm in which they breathed. When the Garantine had smashed Kell’s weapon into pieces out in the Aktick snows, it was like he had lost a part of himself; but there inside the case was a sniper rifle that resembled the very gun that had been his constant companion for years—resembled it, but also transcended it. “Exitus,” he breathed, stooping to ran a hand over the flat, non-reflective surface of the barrel.
Tariel indicated the individual components of the weapon. “Spectroscopic polyimager scope. Carousel ammunition loader. Nitrogen coolant sheath. Whisper-head suppressor unit. Gyroscopic balance stabiliser.” He paused. “As much of your original weapon as possible was salvaged and reused in this one.”
Kell nodded. He saw that the grip and part of the cheek-plate were worn in a way that no newly-forged firearm could have been. As well as the longrifle, a pistol of similar design lay next to it on the velvet bedding of the weapon case. Lined up along the lid of the container were row after row of individual bullets, arranged in colour-coded groups. “Impressive. But I’ll need to sight it in.”
“We’ll doubtless all have many opportunities to employ our skills before Horus shows his face,” said Soalm. She hadn’t left the room, but stood off to one side as the sniper and the infocyte talked.
“We will do what we have to,” Kell replied, without looking at her.
“Even if we destroy ourselves doing it,” his sister replied.
The marksman’s jaw hardened and his eyes fell to a line of words that had been etched into the slender barrel of the rifle. Written in a careful scrolling hand was the Dictatus Vindicare, the maxim of his clade; Exitus Acta Probat. “The outcome justifies the deed,” said Kell.
* * *
What he saw in the room was like no manner of death Yosef Sabrat had ever conceived of. The killings of Latigue in the aeronef and Norte at the docks, while they were horrors that sickened him to his core, had not pressed at his reason. But not this, not this… deed.
Black ashes were scattered in a long pool across the middle of Perrig’s room, cast out of a set of clothes that lay splayed out where they had fallen. At the top of the cascade of cinders, a small hill of the dark powder covered an iron collar, the bolt holding it shut still secure, and in among the pile there were the silver needles of neural implants glittering in the lamplight.
“I… don’t understand.” The Gorospe woman was standing a few steps behind the investigators, outside in the corridor with Yosef where the jagers milled around, uncertain how to proceed. “I don’t understand,” she repeated. “Where did the… the woman go to?”
She had almost said the witch. Yosef sensed the half-formed word on her lips, and he shot her a look filled with sudden fury. Gorospe looked up at him with wide, limpid eyes, and he felt his hands contract into fists. She was so callous and dismissive of the dead psyker; he fought back a brief urge to grab her and slam her up against the wall, shout at her for her stupidity. Then he took a breath and said, “She didn’t go anywhere. That’s all that is left of her.”
Yosef walked away, pushing past Skelta. The jager gave him a wary nod. “Heard from Reeve Segan, sir. They called him in from his off-shift. He’s on his way.”
He returned Skelta’s nod and took a wary step through the field barrier and into the room, careful not to disturb the cluster of small mapping automata that scanned the crime scene with picters and ranging lasers. Hyssos was crouching, looking back and forth around the walls, staring towards the windows, then back to the ashen remains. He had his back to the doorway and Yosef heard him take a shuddering breath. It was almost a sob.
“Do you… need a moment?” As soon as he said the words, he felt like an utter fool. Of course he did; his colleague had just been brutally murdered, and in an abhorrent, baffling manner.
“No,” said Hyssos. “Yes,” he said, an instant later. “No. No. There will be time for that. After.” The operative looked up at him and his eyes were shining. “Do you know, I think, at the end… I think I actually heard her.” He fingered one of the braids among his hair.
Yosef saw the semi-circle of objects on the floor, the stones and the paper. “What are these?”
“Foci,” Hyssos told him. “Objects imbued with some emotional resonance from the suspect. Perrig reads them. She read them.” He corrected himself absently.
“I am sorry.”
Hyssos nodded. “You will let me kill this man when we find him,” he told Yosef, in a steady, measured voice. “We will make certain, of course, of his guilt,” he added, nodding. “But the death. You will let me have that.”
Yosef felt warm and uncomfortable. “We’ll burn that bridge after we cross it.” He looked away and found the places on the far wall behind him where the markings had been made. On his entry into the room, he hadn’t seen them. Like the paintings in blood inside the aeronef or the shape that Jaared Norte’s body had been cut into, there were eight-point stars all over the light-coloured walls. It seemed that the killer had used the residue of Perrig as his ink, repeating the same pattern over and over again.
“What does it mean?” Hyssos mumbled.
The reeve licked his lips; they were suddenly dry. He had a strange sensation, a tingling in the base of his skull like the dull headache brought on by too much recaf and not enough fresh air. The shapes were all he could see, and he felt like there was an answer there, if only he could find the right way to look at them. They were no different from the mathematical problems in Ivak’s schola texts, they just needed to be solved to be understood.
“Sabrat, what does it mean?” said Hyssos again. “This word?”
Yosef blinked and the moment vanished. He looked back at the investigator. Hyssos had removed something from among the ashen remains; a data-slate, the screen spiderwebbed and fractured. Incredibly, the display underneath was still operating, flickering sporadically.
Gingerly, Yosef took it from him, taking care to avoid touching the powder-slicked surfaces of the device. The touch-sensitive screen still remembered the words that had been etched upon it, and flashed them at him, almost too quickly to register.
“One of the words is ‘Sigg’,” Hyssos told him. “Do you see it?”
He did; and beneath that, there was a scribble that appeared to be the attempt to form another string of letters, the shape of them lost now. But above the name, there was another clearly-lettered word.
“Whyteleaf. Is that a person’s name?”
Yosef shook his head, instantly knowing the meaning. “Not a person. A place. I know it well.”
Hyssos was abruptly on his feet. “Close?”
“In the low crags, a quick trip by coleopter.”
The investigator’s brief flash of grief and sorrow was gone. “We need to go there, right now. Perrig’s readings decay over time.” He tapped the broken slate. “If she sensed Sigg was in this place, every moment we waste here, we run the risk he will flee again.”
Skelta had caught the edge of their conversation. “Sir, we don’t have any other units in the area. Backup is dealing with a railganger fight that went bad out at the airdocks and security prep for the trade carnival.”
Yosef made the choice then and there. “When Daig gets here, tell him to take over the scene and keep Laimner occupied.” He moved towards the door, not looking back to see if Hyssos was following. “We’re taking the flyer.”
The operative had lost colleagues before, and it had been difficult then as it was now; but Perrig’s death was something more than that. It came in like a bullet, cutting right into the core of Hysso
s’ soul. Losing himself in the rash of the dark, low clouds outside the windows of the coleopter, he tried to parse his own emotional reactions to the moment without success. Perrig had always been a good, trusted colleague, and he liked her company. She had never pressured him to talk about his past or tried to worm more information out of him than he wanted to give. Hyssos had always felt respected in her presence, and rewarded by her competence, her cool, calm intelligence.
Now she was dead; worse than dead, not a corpse even, just dark cinders, just a slurry of matter that did not bear any resemblance to the human being he had known. He felt a hard stab of guilt. Perrig had always given him her complete and total trust, and he had not been there to protect her when she needed it. Now this investigation had crossed from the professional to the personal, and Hyssos was uncertain of himself.
Looking from the outside in, had he been a passive observer, Hyssos would have immediately insisted that an operative in his circumstances be withdrawn from the case and a new team assigned from the Consortium’s security pool. And that, he knew, was why he had not yet sent an official report on Perrig’s death to the Void Baron, because Eurotas himself would say the same.
But Hyssos was here, now, and he knew the stakes. It would take too long to bring another operative up to speed. As competent as locals like Sabrat were, the reeve’s seniors couldn’t be trusted to handle this with alacrity.
Yes. All those were good lies to tell himself, all gilded with the ring of truth, when in fact all he wanted at this moment was to put Perrig’s killer down like a rabid animal.
Hyssos clasped his hands together to stop them making fists. Outwardly his icy calm did not shift, but inside he was seething. The operative glanced at Sabrat as the flyer began to circle in towards a landing. “What is this Whyteleaf?”
“What?” Sabrat turned suddenly, snapping at him with venom, as if Hyssos had called out some grave personal insult. Then he blinked, the strange anger ebbing for a moment. “Oh. Yes. It’s a winestock. Many of the smaller lodges store vintage estufagemi here, holding barrels of it for years so it can mature undisturbed.”
[Horus Heresy 13] - Nemesis Page 18
