[Dark Heresy 02] - Innocence Proves Nothing

by Sandy Mitchell - (ebook by Undead)

  “Sin off, before I feed you your fingers,” Keira said, grabbing his wrist and squeezing the pressure point. The vendor gasped, and went white; after a moment she let him go, and he scuttled off into the crowd without a backward glance.

  “Very subtle,” Horst said sarcastically. “That’ll keep us from attracting any attention.”

  Keira’s jaw tightened as she bit back an equally tart response, and Drake tried to hide his amusement. It seemed they were still trying to deny their mutual attraction by bickering with one another. “I’m supposed to be your bodyguard, remember?” she pointed out.

  “Are you?” Drake asked, ingenuously. “I thought that was me, and you were the amanuensis.” Their hastily arranged cover story, for the benefit of the other passengers and most of the crew, was that of a Scintillan merchant and his entourage, although the only member of the group who obviously looked his part was Horst, who had dressed that morning in the most ostentatiously expensive bad taste he could contrive. Vex could never pass for anything other than what he was, but it wasn’t unheard of for junior members of the Adeptus Mechanicus to be engaged as advisors to a mercantile house, so his presence among the party wouldn’t excite too much comment.

  “Well, I’m the bodyguard now,” Keira said, with undeniable satisfaction, and Drake shrugged. She was certainly better suited to the role, and his charcoal-grey shirt and trousers were certainly nondescript enough for him to pass as a glorified clerk.

  “I’d better practise my calligraphy, then,” he said. To his relief Keira and Horst both smiled, and the tension between them dissipated as suddenly as it had blown up.

  “What’s happening to our luggage?” Vex asked suddenly, and Drake turned. The trio of porters they’d requisitioned had abandoned the cart, backing away from it with undeniable expressions of apprehension, while a quartet of other shipfolk surrounded it possessively. They didn’t seem particularly formidable opponents for the heavily muscled porters, and for a moment Drake was at a loss to explain their sudden retreat, until he saw a glint of metal in the hand of the woman leading the group. A knife, held by someone who knew how to use it.

  “It’s being stolen!” Drake shouted, trying to force his way through the crowd to intervene, but the crush of bodies was too dense. By the time he’d ducked and danced around a couple of highborn Secundan matriarchs discussing the dress sense of a mutual friend with finely tuned malice, and their comet tail of maids and attendants, the cart had disappeared.

  “Which way?” Horst demanded, grabbing the nearest porter.

  “Thatwise.” The man pointed. “They’s Receivers, edged up withall.” He shrugged, as though he expected that to be the end of the matter.

  “I don’t give a heretic’s prayer who they are,” Horst snapped. He tapped the comm-bead in his ear. “Keira, Iocanthos side.”

  “Intercepting,” the young assassin replied coolly, and Drake turned to look back. While he and Horst had plunged impulsively into the crowd, she’d remained where she was, watching out for their quarry with the dispassionate eye of a raptor hovering over a thicket full of game. Vex hadn’t moved either, still fiddling with his data-slate, as though he expected to find an entry on baggage snatchers and how to deal with them.

  Without another word Keira turned, and slipped through the crowd in the direction Horst had directed, as smoothly as a swimmer cutting water. Comparing her progress with his own lumbering attempt to force passage through the hindering bodies, Drake set out after her.

  “Follow the thralls,” Vex advised, and Horst changed direction, Drake pacing him as best he could as he dodged around a baggage cart trundling in the wake of a bickering couple, a squalling child and a harassed-looking nanny. “Our felons appear to be heading for the same exit.”

  “Acknowledged,” Horst said, apparently happy to take his word for that, although Drake hadn’t a clue how the techpriest could possibly know. There was no time to ask, however, as their quarry was in sight at last, the two most muscular of the felons propelling the cart at a pace which would probably have menaced life and limb if their two confederates hadn’t been clearing the way for them, expertly placing themselves to divert or check wandering passengers without appearing to do so deliberately. In spite of himself, Drake was impressed; the gangers’ rapport and effortless teamwork must surely mean this was a practised routine, and that the quartet were professional thieves. Well known to the Misericordians, too; the shipfolk who observed their approach stepped carefully aside with deliberate casualness, affecting not to notice the careering trolley. Drake glanced around, but, as he’d expected, the only Merciful he could see were too far away to notice the fracas, or intervene effectively if they did. The thieves had timed their strike well, which only served to reinforce his impression of professionalism.

  “I see them,” Keira voxed, her eagerness to shed blood thickening her voice. Hearing it, Drake shivered, seeing again in his mind’s eye the spectre of death incarnate he’d first encountered in the blizzards of his home world, where she’d come within a heartbeat of killing him and Vos just to prove some kind of point. If Inquisitor Finurbi hadn’t been there to call her off she might well have done, without a second’s hesitation or remorse. “I can take them easily.”

  “Wait,” Horst replied. “Let them get somewhere less public first.”

  There was a flicker of movement in Drake’s peripheral vision, and Keira was suddenly there, nodding in reluctant agreement. “Good point,” she conceded, to both men’s unspoken relief. A public display of her lethal talents would effectively end any chance the team had of remaining undercover. A tight smile played across her face. “At least we won’t have to wait long.”

  That much seemed to be true. The woman leading the thieves had reached a portal in the wall, big enough to have driven a Chimera through, and was tapping out a code on another datapad welded to the jamb. It began to creak open, splitting down the middle to retract into the bulkhead on either side.

  “Hurry,” Horst said, as their quarry slipped through, and the twin doors began to grind closed again. Drake redoubled his efforts, but the faster he tried to go, the more he became mired among the ever-shifting bodies surrounding him. Keira slipped easily though the narrowing portal, and a moment later Horst broke free of the entangling crowds to follow her. Cursing, Drake lengthened his stride, and felt himself falling as his shin caught against the outstretched leg of an overdressed young man in the colours of a minor Scintillan noble house, who had turned to converse with his cronies, heedless of anyone else who might be in the way.

  “Have a care, there, fellow,” the nobleman drawled, while his friends sniggered in sympathy. “You’ll wrinkle my hose.”

  “Rut your hose, and the drab who bore you,” Drake snapped, rolling to his feet and making a running dive for the closing door. For a moment he thought he’d left it too late, and condemned himself to an agonising death as the constricting slabs of metal met, crushing him between them, but Horst was there, grabbing his arm and dragging him to safety just as they met with a resonant clang, cutting off the indignant babbling of the affronted parasites behind him.

  “Which way?” Keira asked urgently, and Drake looked around, trying to get his bearings. They were in a corridor similar to the one Prescut had guided them along on the other side of the reception hall, its metal walls bare and corroded with age. Deep pits of shadow lay between the wall-mounted luminators, several of which were flickering in a fashion he found subtly unnerving, and which Vex would no doubt have found an affront to the Omnissiah had his attention been drawn to them. It stretched away in both directions, its ends lost in the gloom, and several side corridors could be seen branching from it whichever way he looked. Right in front of them a wide staircase descended into the bowels of the ship; Drake could see nothing of where it went, but judging by the clamour echoing upwards, that was the direction the thralls had taken.

  “Left,” Vex replied confidently, his voice echoing faintly in Drake’s comm-bead. The Guardsma
n didn’t have a clue how the techpriest could know this, but the other Angelae seemed to trust him, and pelted off in the direction he’d indicated without hesitation. Drake followed, drawing his pistol, now that they were out of the public areas, the weight in his hand a reassuring presence.

  “Stop where you are!” a voice yelled, and he glanced down the corridor ahead of them. A pair of Merciful, on a routine patrol judging by the casual way they were holding their shotguns, had just emerged from a side passage, and were staring at the oncoming Angelae in wrathful astonishment. “Back beyonderside, you swive-brained maggots!”

  They might have been able to talk their way past, Drake reflected later, if it hadn’t been for the gun in his hand. As it was, the pair of comic opera troopers noticed it almost simultaneously, and began to bring their own weapons to bear. Cursing, Drake levelled the Scalptaker, hoping he’d be able to bring them down without killing them, but he never got the chance. Ululating gleefully, Keira leapt into the attack, drawing her sword in a single fluid motion.

  Her first strike took the leading Merciful’s right hand off at the wrist, and sheared through the stock of the shotgun as though it was no more substantial than paper; even before the severed limb hit the floor, she’d spun the weapon to lead with the pommel, smashing it into the narrow strip of the forehead of the second man visible between the bridge of his nose and the lip of his helmet. He went down hard, hitting the deck with a clangour of metal against metal, and she whirled again, poised to dispatch the first with a thrust through the heart.

  “Stop!” Horst yelled, in the nick of time, and she checked the motion with palpable reluctance. “The manuscript!” He hurdled the fallen trooper, and kept running. With a moue of disappointment, Keira turned to keep pace with him. “They’re out of our way, that’s enough.”

  Drake hesitated for a second as he passed the fallen men, but the injured Merciful was already scrabbling a pocket vox from the sabretache at his belt; reasonably certain that aid would be with them before he bled out, and mindful of Horst’s injunction to keep their minds on the objective, he followed his colleagues without a second thought.

  “I thought you were only supposed to kill sinners,” he panted, catching up with Horst and Keira.

  The girl looked at him as though he was stupid. “Everyone’s guilty of something,” she said.

  “Oh.” Drake was completely taken aback. “I guess that simplifies things, then.”

  “Generally.” If she recognised the sarcasm in his tone, she was refusing to rise to it.

  “They’ve turned right,” Vex said in his ear, and he seized on the distraction gratefully. “About thirty metres ahead of your current position.”

  “I see it,” Horst responded, angling towards a cross corridor, from which a flickering orange light could be seen. It struck Drake as somehow sinister, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on why.

  “They’ve slowed,” Vex added, a moment later. “You should be closing the distance now.”

  “Thanks, Hybris,” Horst said. He glanced at Drake. “I guess they must be tiring, with the weight of the cart.”

  Keira was drawing ahead of both men again, like a hunting hound let off the leash, and disappeared into the shadowed passageway several seconds before they reached it. “I think they’re about to get a lot slower,” Drake said.

  Despite the urgency of their errand, he found himself moving more cautiously as they reached the new corridor. The air currents wafting from it smelled of dust and decay, and most of the luminators along its length were broken, working only fitfully, if at all. The orange glow came from somewhere in the depths of it, and Drake tightened his grip on the comforting weight of the Scalptaker.

  A single, choked-off scream echoed through the air around them, and both men plunged unhesitatingly into the gloom.

  “Two heretics down,” Keira reported, an unmistakable edge of satisfaction in her voice even through the attenuating effect of their comm-beads. “Pursuing the others.”

  “Wait for us,” Horst said. “We don’t know what’s in here.”

  “Nothing but dead heretics,” Keira said, a hint of the same exultation Drake had noticed back at the villa suffusing her tone. “Some of them are still moving at the moment, that’s all.”

  “There could be other crewmembers around,” Horst said, “and we don’t want any more unfortunate incidents if we can avoid them. Don’t engage anyone else unless you’re certain they’re hostile.”

  “These ones definitely were,” Keira said, glancing up as they approached her. She was standing on the edge of the pool of light cast by one of the functional luminators, although she’d discarded her kirtle, becoming barely visible in the shadows surrounding them as the cameleoline of her bodyglove had adjusted to the new environment. She shuffled her feet, moving the soles of her boots fastidiously away from the spreading slick of blood on the deck plating.

  Two of the bandits had evidently attempted to ambush her from the shadows, a mistake they’d paid for in a brief flurry of sword strokes. The woman who’d led the gang had been neatly sliced into three sections, her torso, legs and head scattered around the passageway, the knife she carried still gripped in one flaccid palm, while the man who’d helped her clear the way for the cart in the crowded reception hall lay a few paces beyond, bisected by a single diagonal strike as he attempted to flee. Drake was no stranger to death and destruction, and had inflicted enough of it himself in his earlier life as a Royal Scourge and an Imperial Guardsman, but the casual precision of the kill still chilled his blood. Or perhaps it was the smell.

  “Any sign of the others?” Horst asked, and Keira shrugged.

  “They must have come this way, and known we were after them. Why else would these two be trying to mount an ambush?” she pointed out.

  “Makes sense to me,” Drake agreed. “They must have been counting on their local knowledge to take you by surprise.”

  “Well, the surprise was all theirs,” Keira said, with vindictive satisfaction. She shook the blood off her sword with deft precision, and slipped it into her scabbard. Then she turned towards the orange glow. “Coming? Or shall we just wait for them to die of old age?”

  As she led the way towards the glow in the distance, Keira felt her senses expanding as they always did on a hunt, taking in every detail of her surroundings. This section of the ship was clearly little used, the scent of dust and decay in her nostrils enough to tell her that, even if the dilapidated state of the walls and the malfunctioning luminators hadn’t already made it perfectly obvious.

  People definitely came through here though, and in considerable numbers, there could be little doubt of that: the layer of dust and grime underfoot had been disturbed in the middle of the corridor, drifting more thickly along the edges and in the corners. Too many feet had passed for her to be able to estimate numbers and frequency, the prints overlapping and obliterating one another, but two parallel lines were still visible on the top layer, where the cart she pursued had passed mere moments before.

  She smiled eagerly, anticipating the bloodshed to come. The grace of the Emperor still glowed within her, the deaths of the sinners she’d just sent to His judgement a sacrament she burned to repeat.

  She took a deep breath, and murmured one of the calming litanies the Collegium Assassinorum had taught her. The holy zeal of Redemption would help her to visit the Emperor’s wrath on the unworthy, but could lead her into error in the more measured phase of the hunt. Her instructors had shown her how to refine that fire, and shape it into a more subtle instrument of His divine will, and she exulted in that knowledge now, as it made her a more effective servant of Him on Earth.

  She listened carefully, tuning out the most easily identifiable sounds from her consciousness one by one: the almost inaudible padding of her own footsteps, far softer than the footfalls of either of the men hurrying behind her, the susurration of her breath and the thudding of her heart. That left others: the drip and trickle of water, betraying a corrode
d pipe somewhere in the darkness ahead of her, and a gentle regular splashing sound. That, though subtle, was enough to mask any other noises unless she concentrated hard, trying to pierce the auditory barrier they erected across her synapses.

  There. A faint murmur, which might have been voices, and a booming rattle, perhaps made by the cart.

  “You’re closing the distance,” Vex said, his voice as level as ever in her comm-bead, and her smile widened, sure now that the Emperor was with her. She could picture the techpriest, still standing among the whirling crowd in the embarkation hall, oblivious to his surroundings, his head bent over his data-slate, following their progress on the tiny screen as he tracked the signal of their earpiece transmitters.

  “Good,” Horst said. “Any idea what we’re getting into?”

  “None at all,” Vex replied. “The section you’re in is off the map appended to my travel guide. Hardly surprising, as they wouldn’t expect passengers to be there. I’ve asked Barda to use the auspexes in the shuttle to obtain a rough idea of the topography, but the recalibration required is complex, and he has yet to complete the necessary rituals.”

  “Good idea, anyway,” Horst said. “Tell him to keep trying.”

  “Watch your feet,” Keira said. “The floor’s uneven here.” A small step, little more than a centimetre in depth, ran across the corridor from side to side, disrupting the smooth run of plating underfoot, and she crossed the discontinuity without breaking stride. It seemed to be canted, a millimetre or two higher at one end than the other, and the floor appeared different on the other side as well. “Cross corridor. Which way?”

  “Right,” Vex said, and she turned to follow the direction he’d indicated, Drake and Horst hard on her heels. Like the passageway they’d just left, the luminators here were wall-mounted, although for some reason they were only on one side this time. The shape of it was different too, higher than it was wide, and the floor, ceiling and right-hand wall were all textured the same: only the wall opposite the luminators was distinctive, panelled in a metal lattice like the one they’d been walking on a few moments before.