[Dark Heresy 02] - Innocence Proves Nothing

by Sandy Mitchell - (ebook by Undead)

  “To some extent,” Grynner said, gesturing his protégé to one of the padded chairs ranged around the room. As was his habit, however, he remained behind the desk. “I take it you read them yourself?”

  “I skimmed through them,” Pieter Quillem admitted, unabashed, despite the clear breach of protocol which perusing a report intended for a superior represented. As such things went, though, Grynner felt, it was a minor enough transgression, and probably augured well for his promotion to fully-fledged inquisitorial status, where overmuch respect for the niceties could be more of a handicap than a help. Heretics didn’t play by the rules, and neither did those charged with rooting them out. “Just to make sure they were worth a little of your time before I brought them to your attention.”

  “Commendably efficient, as always,” Grynner commented, noting a subtle change in Quillem’s body language which betrayed the young man’s carefully concealed relief. “Even if they do seem to raise more questions than they answer.”

  “I’m a little confused too,” Quillem said, clearly taking the remark as nothing more than a habitual part of the mask of unworldliness his patron presented to the world. “If there’s any clue about what happened to Inquisitor Finurbi, I’ve not been able to spot it.” His voice took on a slightly hesitant tone, as if wary of implying some criticism of a superior. “To be honest, if you hadn’t told me he was a friend of yours, I wouldn’t have placed much credence in any of these reports. So much sounds like the wildest exaggeration, I’m not too sure how much trust we ought to place in these operatives of his.”

  “More than you might think, Pieter,” Grynner replied, allowing a tone of mild reproof to enter his voice. “Carolus does have a tendency to co-opt anyone he feels might be useful more or less on impulse, like these Imperial Guard troopers Kyrlock and Drake, but his judgement is invariably sound. As evidenced by their actions in these reports.”

  “If you believe these reports,” Quillem reminded him. He’d been Grynner’s protégé long enough to know when his mentor felt the need of a dissenting voice to test the strength of the conclusions he’d been forming. “You’ve only got their own word for what they’ve been up to.” He shrugged. “And you have to admit, all this stuff about daemons is pretty hard to swallow.”

  “Possibly,” Grynner allowed, with a faint inclination of his head. “Never having met any myself, I couldn’t really comment on that.” Quillem had never encountered one either, of course, and acknowledged the fact with a nod of his own, before Grynner continued. “Perhaps I should ask Karnaki what he thinks; it’s really more his area of expertise than mine. Nevertheless, this man Horst is a former member of the Adeptus Arbites, and in my experience such servants of the Emperor are seldom given to flights of fancy.”

  “Not as a rule,” Quillem agreed, nodding again. “So is there anything in what he says here which strikes you as useful?”

  “Oh, most assuredly,” Grynner said. “For one thing, these reports convince me I was right to approach Carolus for aid with our own investigation.”

  “The psykers, you mean,” Quillem said, to show that he was keeping up.

  “The psykers. Precisely.” Grynner nodded, the connection growing more concrete in his mind as he spoke. “The mercenaries who attacked the Black Ship containment facility on Sepheris Secundus were equipped with xenos technology. The only heretic group in the sector with access to that much of the stuff is the Faxlignae, and we found clear traces of the presence of wyrds aboard the freighter they’d been using.” To be more accurate, on boarding the crippled hulk, they’d found traces of the activities of wyrds, which had consisted largely of slaughtering the crew and absconding with the xenos artefact the ship had been smuggling.

  “That still bothers me,” Quillem said, returning to a point he’d made often. “The Faxlignae are scavengers, collecting xenos blasphemies in pursuit of Emperor knows what agenda; they’ve never shown the slightest interest in psykers before, and they’ve been active for nearly three hundred years. Why would they go to so much trouble to liberate dozens of them on Sepheris Secundus now, and why would they have some aboard one of their smuggling vessels?”

  “Two very good questions,” Grynner admitted, “to which I wish I had equally good answers.” He hesitated a moment before going on. “A rather disturbing possibility is that whatever they’ve been planning for the last few centuries is entering a new, and perhaps final, phase.”

  “Which would explain the wraithbone,” Quillem conceded. The ill-fated freighter, the Eddia Stabilis, had been carrying a fragment of the enigmatic eldar substance, according to their most reliable information, although the Librarian attached to the Deathwatch kill team Grynner had dispatched to search the vessel had assured them there wasn’t a trace of the stuff aboard by the time the Emperor’s Justice had intercepted it. That had been good enough for Grynner: nothing so tainted by the energies of the warp could have escaped the preternatural senses of a Space Marine sanctionite.

  “Indeed it would,” the inquisitor agreed. “Which raises the further question of why, if they were allies, the psykers acted as they did.”

  “No mystery there,” Quillem said, with rather too much assurance for his mentor’s peace of mind. Promising as he was, the boy still had a regrettable tendency to jump to conclusions. “Just a good old-fashioned double-cross. Heretics are treacherous by nature, and psykers are usually insane to boot. They just wanted the wraithbone more than the Faxlignae did, and grabbed it as soon as they got the chance.”

  “Perhaps.” Grynner suppressed a sigh, and cleaned the lenses of his spectacles on the end of his neck cloth, a practised affectation which, like the rest of the facade of absentmindedness behind which he preferred to mask his intellect, had long since become a habit so ingrained he barely noticed it. “Which rather begs the question of what they wanted it for. Not to mention the somewhat pressing matter of where it is now.”

  “I wish I could offer an opinion on that,” Quillem said. “But I really have no idea.”

  “Of course not,” Grynner said, replacing the spectacles on the bridge of his nose. He had no real need of them, the periodic juvenat treatments which maintained his physical age at around a quarter of his actual one keeping his eyesight as keen as his mind, but they were an essential part of the vague persona he liked to project, like the neat grey robes he habitually dressed in. He’d lost count of the number of heretics over the years who’d discounted the faintly absurd little man with the air of a minor Administratum functionary as any threat to their interests until it was far too late. “But perhaps Carolus can help us make sense of it, if he resurfaces in time.”

  “Perhaps,” Quillem said cautiously. He laid a new data-slate on his patron’s desk. “At least these agents of his ought to be arriving in-system soon. I thought you might like to review the arrangements you asked me to make concerning them.”

  “Of course,” Grynner said, picking up the slate and paging through it. After a moment he nodded. “Well done, Pieter. I think this will do admirably.”

  “Thank you, inquisitor.” His protégé nodded, unable to completely conceal his satisfaction. “Then, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll return to our own lines of enquiry.”

  “By all means,” Grynner said, dismissing the young man with a nod. But he remained thoughtful long after the door had closed behind him.

  The Misericord, the Warp,

  Date and Time Meaningless

  It was an article of faith among the acolytes of the Omnissiah that emotions were a weakness of the flesh, to be overcome by pure reason and the judicious application of augmetic enhancements, but in spite of the meditational subroutines he was running in the background of his thought processes, Vex felt perturbed. His initial shock on hearing of the disaster at the bridge had subsided, but the full ramifications had still to be processed, likely outcomes calculated and assigned numerical probabilities, and the worst-case contingencies planned for.

  He had already begun the task when the other An
gelae rejoined him in the concourse, their mood subdued, and he’d had little attention to spare for his surroundings as Prescut had ushered them out of the echoing hall, towards the passenger accommodation. It was all very much as the account of an earlier voyage he’d been reading on his data-slate described in any case; perhaps to ease any psychological discomfort the passengers might be suffering from, the public areas of the vessel had been decorated in a fashion intended to resemble a planetary environment. For reasons known only to the ship crew, however, if any of them could still recall what they were, the style was that of a feral world, where the blessings of the Omnissiah had barely advanced beyond hammered iron and gunpowder. Corridors were flagged with stone, concealing the deck plates beneath, while tapestries hung from every wall, the gaps between them veneered with wooden panelling, intended to obscure the pure, clean lines of the metal from which the vessel had been constructed, and which he would have found far more congenial to contemplate.

  At length, the mute steward had conducted them to a suite of rooms and left them to their own devices, no doubt with a sense of relief scarcely less acute than Vex’s own.

  “Can we talk?” Horst asked, as soon as the polished wooden door had closed behind him, and Vex nodded, after a quick recitation of the ritual of seclusion, with the aid of a pocket auspex calibrated to detect any vox-transmitters in the vicinity. At last, sure that the battered but comfortable furnishings in the cramped common area concealed no eavesdropping devices, he stowed the auspex in a pocket of his robes, next to his precious data-slate.

  With everyone present, the small room felt crowded. Even so, it was far larger than the cabins and the tiny balnerea radiating from it; each was scarcely large enough for a single person to occupy at any one time, and Vex felt a barely acknowledged sense of relief that the latter was one facility he wouldn’t have to bother taking his turn at more than a few times during the voyage. Like the corridors outside, the metalwork of the walls had been covered with tapestries depicting scenes from Saint Drusus’ crusade, although rather than stone the floor in here had been covered with wood, in rough-sawn planks, over which a couple of rugs had been thrown, apparently at random.

  “You’d think they’d have cleaned up in here a bit,” Keira grumbled, patting the arm of the padded chair she’d taken and raising a small cloud of dust. “They’re charging us enough for the passage.”

  “We’ve got a lot more to worry about than a bit of dirt,” Horst told her, leading Vex to anticipate an equally tart response from the assassin; to his vague surprise, however, she held her tongue, merely nodding in agreement. The differences which had bedevilled them on Sepheris Secundus appeared to have been resolved, at least partially, for which the techpriest was quietly grateful. The incipient tension between Keira and Horst had disturbed him, threatening as it had done to disrupt the smooth functioning of the team, not least because the reasons for it continued to elude him. The former arbitrator turned to Vex. “Have you still got the artefact?”

  “I have.” Vex nodded, and produced the sliver of ivorylike material for everyone’s inspection. As usual, they all seemed reluctant to take it from him, or examine it too closely, and he returned it to an inner pocket of his robe after ensuring that everyone had seen it. “Although without the manuscript, I’m far from confident of being able to deduce its origin or purpose.”

  “Then recovering it should be our highest priority,” Drake said, eliciting nods of agreement from the rest of the group.

  “Easier said than done, though,” Keira demurred. “It’s a labyrinth down there. Throne alone knows how we get to the bottom of the shaft, or what we’ll find when we do.”

  “We could ask for a guide,” Drake suggested. “The senior crew know we’re Inquisition. They won’t dare refuse a direct appeal for help.”

  Horst shook his head. “But it won’t stop them gossiping about what we’re looking for. Even if we don’t tell them, it’ll only take one person to notice, and word of the manuscript gets out.”

  “They’re hardly likely to tell any of the passengers,” Vex put in, and Horst nodded again.

  “Of course not,” he agreed. “But there are thousands of shipfolk aboard, and heresy spreads like the pox in a bordello.” Keira flushed at the metaphor, and Horst cleared his throat hastily. “Better to keep all knowledge of it to ourselves, if we can.”

  “If we take a guide with us, they don’t have to come back,” Keira pointed out reasonably, and with impeccable logic.

  Horst shook his head. “I’d rather not expend any more of the shipfolk if we can avoid it. We’re going to be aboard a long time, and if we upset them too much they can make life extremely awkward. We’ve enough bad feeling to smooth over as it is.”

  “How long are we going to be here, exactly?” Drake asked uneasily, and Vex turned to look in his direction, happy to supply the information he wanted.

  “It’s hard to be precise,” he said. “Time within the warp has little meaning in the conventional sense. We should emerge in the Scintilla System around two weeks after we entered it, as such things are measured in the materium, but our subjective experience may seem considerably longer or shorter than that.”

  “I see.” Drake clearly didn’t, but nodded anyway. “That’s a big help. Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome,” Vex said, wondering for a moment if the Guardsman was being sarcastic, but even if he was, devotees of the Machine-God ought to be above responding to petty slights of that nature.

  Horst tapped his comm-bead. “Barda. Have you finished recalibrating the auspexes yet?”

  “Just about,” the young pilot confirmed. “The returns are fuzzy, but I’m getting what looks like an image of the hull metal. Anything that doesn’t read solid is a gap of some kind.” He paused for a moment. “I’m sending it through now.”

  “Receiving,” Vex said, attuning his data-slate to the vox frequency the shuttle used for remote telemetry. A faintly diffuse image began to appear on the screen, dark lines coiling around and through it like the veins and arteries of a diseased heart. There was too much information to fit on the tiny pict receiver, even at maximum reduction, and he tracked and zoomed the image, searching for the section he wanted. After a moment he identified the Beyonder’s Hostelry, pinpointing their suite by the echo of everyone’s earpieces, and from there was able to backtrack to the reception deck. He angled the device so that his companions could see the display, although he privately doubted that anyone else would be able to make much sense of the image.

  “It’s a labyrinth!” Drake said, obviously trying to pick out the location of the shaft, and failing completely.

  “I’ll refine the image before we attempt to enter it,” Vex assured him.

  “Will that take long?” Keira asked, and Vex suppressed the faintest of sighs. The lost cogitator would have made short work of the task, but the comparatively limited data-slate would just have to do.

  “Several hours at least,” he said.

  “That’s the last of it,” Barda said, then hesitated. “You know you asked me to listen out for anything unusual?”

  “Yes,” Horst said. “What have you got?”

  “I’m not sure how significant it is,” Barda admitted, “but according to the internal vox traffic, the bridge lost contact with one of their damage control teams about twenty minutes ago. They don’t seem too worried about it yet.”

  “Hardly surprising,” Vex said. “There’s so much metal in the hull, any short-range vox-casters would be unreliable at best.”

  “Thank you for bringing it to our attention, though,” Horst added.

  “Why have they got damage control parties assigned while we’re in the warp?” Keira asked, intrigued.

  “There was a minor collision early this morning,” Barda said. “A piece of junk from the debris field impacted just aft of the primary heat exchangers. They didn’t have time to repair the hull damage before getting under way, so they sealed off the section, and sent teams in to chec
k the adjacent ones for any signs of structural stress.”

  “Isn’t that dangerous?” Drake asked, clearly picturing daemons swarming in though a hole in the hull plating, and Vex shook his head reassuringly.

  “No. The Geller field extends for some distance beyond the hull, so the warp itself is repelled far beyond any weaknesses in the outer structure.”

  “Which is how come the junk follows the ship about in the first place,” Keira added helpfully.

  “Quite.” Horst reactivated his comm-bead. “Barda, can you try and find out exactly where the impact was? If there’s any damage near the shaft we lost the manuscript down, we might have to plan a way around the sealed section.”

  “Will do,” Barda promised, and cut the link.

  “So.” Keira leaned forwards, eager to be active again. “What’s our next move?”

  “Talk to Raymer,” Horst said. “Those thieves were professionals. If he doesn’t know who they were, he’s no good at his job.”

  “That makes sense,” the assassin agreed. “What about me?”

  “What you’re best at,” Horst said, and the girl smiled. “Who do you want killed?”

  Horst stared at her for a moment, then evidently realised she was joking. His shoulders lost a little tension, and the corners of his own mouth widened a little. “I meant the other thing you’re best at. Scout around, blend in, get the feel of the place.”

  Keira nodded, and stood. “No problem.”

  As she reached the door, Horst called her back. “If you do have to kill anyone,” he added as an afterthought, “for Throne’s sake make it look like an accident.”

  The Ursus Innare, the Warp,

  Date and Time Meaningless

  “Someone’s at the door,” Ven said, his eyes unfocused, a faint tremor shaking his body. Elyra looked at him, masking her concern, still conscious of the part she was playing. If warp travel was hard on most people, it was far more so on psykers; even shielded as she was by the rituals of sanctioning, she could feel the taint of the unclean realm beyond the freighter’s Geller field scratching at her mind, taunting and insidious, like the breath of a ravening animal on the back of her neck. The juvies must be feeling it too, she knew, even more strongly, as they were unprotected by the blessing of the Emperor, and Ven worst of all. The lad was a nascent seer, his gift still undeveloped, and, like most of his kind, seemed to have trouble distinguishing between objective reality and the constant barrage of outside impressions echoing through his head.