[Dark Heresy 02] - Innocence Proves Nothing

by Sandy Mitchell - (ebook by Undead)

  “Of course, inquisitor,” the sergeant said, lowering her gun, and suddenly becoming a model of polite cooperation. It seemed that at least the rumours of their presence had filtered down to the rank and file of the Merciful, and none of them were keen to emulate the last patrol to have got in their way. She hesitated. “What should we do about the bodies?”

  For the first time since he’d joined the Angelae, Drake began to fully appreciate the power he was able to wield, even as so lowly a functionary of the holy ordos. It could get addictive, he thought, finding the notion an uncomfortable one. There didn’t seem much point in correcting the sergeant’s misapprehension about his status within the organisation, so he let that go without comment.

  “These two killed each other,” he said. “Probably over money, or the favours of a joygirl. I’m sure your investigation will find a plausible reason.”

  “I’d recommend disposing of the corpses as rapidly as possible,” Vex added. “Even a dead psyker can sometimes be an attractive host to a warp entity.”

  “They’ll be over the side before you leave the Gallery,” the sergeant said, her tone sober.

  The trooper who’d spoken before shrugged. “Lucky that one committed suicide so thoroughly,” he added.

  “Maybe he didn’t,” Vex said, once the Angelae had moved out of earshot. “He probably just lost control of his curse while attempting to use it against us.”

  “It saves us a problem, anyway,” Drake said. “Although it would have been nice to interrogate him first.” He looked at the techpriest narrowly. “He might have told us why they were after you in the first place.”

  “To recover this, I imagine,” Vex replied, pulling the sliver of ivory from a pocket in his robe, and returning it after a moment’s puzzled examination, much to Drake’s relief. “The seer seemed able to sense its presence.”

  “Oh,” Drake said, scanning the crowds around them with renewed vigilance, although the third psyker seemed to have vanished into the maze of narrow streets as thoroughly as if the warp itself had reached out to swallow him. None of the other passers-by seemed tainted by the realm of Chaos, or particularly interested in a couple of passengers making their way back to the Beyonder’s Hostelry; nevertheless, he found himself wishing he’d reloaded the Scalptaker while he’d had the chance. “Then let’s hope we’ve scared him off for good.” Or at least until Keira could track him down and send him to the Emperor’s judgement.

  “Indeed,” Vex agreed, although it was clear from the care with which he spoke, and his watchful demeanour, that he didn’t believe that any more than Drake did.

  Seven

  The Ursus Innare, the Warp,

  Date and Time Meaningless

  The bandits made their move while Kyrlock was on watch, which was their first mistake; after a lifetime of expecting unpleasant surprises from the wildlife in the forest where he’d foraged for timber, and the scarcely less savage denizens of the Tumble, he could hear what they undoubtedly thought of as a stealthy approach long before they realised they were in earshot.

  “Elyra.” He spoke quietly, nudging the psyker with his foot, as he pretended to do nothing more than throw another piece of fuel on the fire. The luminators in the ceiling of the cargo hold were as fitful as ever, still throwing the rubble-choked space below into perpetual twilight, and he wanted the wanly flickering flames as bright as he could make them before their assailants arrived. “Company’s coming.” At first that would work to their attackers’ advantage, the light from the fire dulling the defenders’ night vision, while making them more visible from outside the circle of firelight; but once the brigands moved into the attack they’d be dazzled for a moment as their eyes adjusted, giving him and Elyra the edge.

  “How many? Where?” Elyra asked, waking at once, her voice so low that Kyrlock found himself straining to hear her. Her hand moved slowly under her blanket, flicking off the safety catch of the laspistol she’d been grasping even in her sleep.

  “Half a dozen, maybe. Two groups, trying to flank us. Ten and four o’clock, from where I’m sitting.” He flicked the safety of his shotgun off as he spoke, his hand curling round the butt, concealed, he hoped, by the angle of his body.

  “Most of them are to your ten,” Zusen whispered, surprising him. He’d thought the juvies were asleep. “I can feel their anger, feeding off one another. There’s less emotion the other way.”

  “Thanks,” he whispered back, grateful for the extra information despite its source. “Now keep your head down.”

  “I didn’t know you cared,” she replied, the feeble attempt at levity undermined by the trembling of her voice, and, moved by an unexpected flare of compassion, Kyrlock squeezed her arm reassuringly with his free hand.

  “It’ll be all right,” he told her, hoping that would turn out to be true, and she nodded, barely perceptibly in the darkness.

  “They’re coming! Death in the dark!” Ven sat up suddenly, his face blank, the echoes of his voice splintering from the jagged piles of rock surrounding them. Kyrlock swore colourfully and brought up the shotgun, all hope of luring the bandits inside the circle of firelight, where the odds would be evened again, gone.

  “There!” Zusen pointed, and he discharged the weapon along the line of her arm, hearing a scream among the enveloping shadows.

  “Thanks, juve, I owe you one,” he said, pulling the trigger again. The larger group had evidently scattered, though, as he failed to hit any more of them: instead the rockpiles echoed to the sound of hurrying feet as the startled bandits scrabbled for cover.

  “I’m not a…” the young psyker began indignantly, then fell, a stone the size of his fist smacking into her forehead. More of the improvised missiles began to whistle through the air around them, and Kyrlock dropped to the shale beside the girl, sending two more hailstorms of shot in the direction they’d come from.

  “Slingshots?” Elyra asked, and Kyrlock nodded, surprised for a moment, before remembering that his brother had shown her one of the makeshift weapons while they’d been hiding out with him in the Tumble.

  “Must be,” he agreed. Normally they wouldn’t be all that effective against firearms, but it would only take another lucky shot or two to neutralise the advantage their superior weapons gave them. He fired again. “We need to even the odds a bit. I can’t see well enough to pick them off.”

  “Who needs to see them?” Trosk asked, sounding a little more animated than he usually did. The pose of sardonic detachment had slipped, allowing a harsh, cold edge to enter his voice, and Kyrlock shivered in spite of himself.

  “What do you mean?” Elyra asked warily, cracking off a couple of pistol shots, which seemed equally ineffectual; at any rate, the rain of stones continued unabated.

  “This.” Trosk stood, apparently unconcerned about the possibility of being struck down, and raised his hand as if waving an oncoming groundcar to a halt. “This is your only warning,” he called into the surrounding shadows. “Leave now or die!”

  A hail of derision and profanity was his only answer, along with another barrage of rocks, none of which touched him.

  Although he couldn’t have said why, Kyrlock felt the hairs rising on the back of his neck. He glanced at Elyra, who was staring at the young wyrd, an expression of stunned surprise on her face.

  “Trosk, no!” she shouted, but he was either too intent on whatever he was doing to hear her, or simply didn’t care. His face had taken on an expression of grim concentration, completely oblivious to anything happening around him.

  Abruptly, Kyrlock’s attention was snatched by the sound of running feet crunching on the shale around them, and he rolled to his feet, bringing up the shotgun. Two men were closing in on him, taking advantage of the distraction the hail of stones had afforded, one of them the leader of the bandits he’d challenged over the crate of food. The other he didn’t recognise, but he knew the type: physically strong but not overly bright, always willing to follow the lead of someone a little cleverer and
more charismatic, so long as the easy scores kept coming. When they didn’t, he’d look for someone else to do the thinking for him. Clearly this attack was the leader’s last-ditch attempt to keep control of his followers.

  Kyrlock squeezed the trigger, blasting the fellow’s chest to bloody ruin, expecting to see the leader felled by a las-bolt from Elyra’s pistol as he did so. By the time he realised that her attention was still on Trosk, running towards the young wyrd in a desperate attempt to prevent him from unleashing whatever power he had against their attackers, it was too late: the bandit chief was too close for him to bring the shotgun round and fire again.

  Screaming with inchoate rage, the bandit struck at him with the edge of a sharpened spade, which Kyrlock dodged by millimetres. Dropping the shotgun, he unslung the chainaxe from across his shoulders, powering up the weapon as he aimed a blow with the butt end at his opponent’s head. The bandit ducked, slashing for his belly with the end of his improvised weapon, but Kyrlock was too quick, and brought the whining polearm round in a wide arc, stepping back to open up the distance enough to bring the rapidly rotating adamantium teeth into play. Sparks flew as they hit the metal of the blade, and the bandit retreated a little, looking for an opening.

  “You can still end this,” Kyrlock said, with an apprehensive sideways glance at Trosk; Elyra had closed half the distance between them, and he became abruptly aware that only a handful of seconds could have elapsed since the duel began. “Walk away now, while you can.” Before Trosk did anything to reveal what he was…

  “You’re afraid of me.” To Kyrlock’s amazement, the man was grinning, completely misunderstanding why he wanted to end the confrontation as quickly as he could. “Well you should be, you grox-rutting son of a mutant.”

  He charged in again, a berserk, bar brawler’s attack, completely devoid of finesse, and Kyrlock evaded him easily, striking out at his leg with the chainaxe. The whirling teeth bit deep, in a spray of blood and macerated tissue, and the man howled, falling heavily to the ground.

  “Big mistake,” Kyrlock said, preparing to finish him. Before he could administer the coup de grace, however, he felt a faint trembling in the kilotonnes of rock surrounding them. The bandit chiefs eyes widened in shock, and Kyrlock turned, just in time to see the largest heap of shale sliding inexorably downwards, engulfing the patch of shadow the volley of stones had emerged from. A few faint screams, abruptly terminated, echoed for a moment over the rumbling of the landslide, then silence descended, wrapped in a cloud of choking dust.

  “Merciful Throne! You’re all witches!” The bandit chief soiled himself, and scrabbled backwards, stark terror etched on his face.

  “Not all of us,” Elyra said, turning to face him. She brought up the laspistol. “Vos there’s perfectly normal. Whatever that is.”

  “I won’t tell anyone! I swear!” the bandit babbled, still trying to back away.

  “No, you won’t,” Elyra said, and shot him through the head at point-blank range, reducing his expression to a charred, bloody mask in an instant. Only Kyrlock knew her well enough to see the momentary hesitation before she pulled the trigger.

  “You had no choice,” he said. “But if you’d waited a second or two, I’d have done the job for you.”

  “I know.” Elyra smiled thinly, grateful for the gesture of sympathy. “But sometimes you have to make the hard decisions yourself.”

  “What was so hard about it?” Trosk asked, looking at her curiously. “They were scum. They deserved to die.”

  Elyra sighed, the mask of detachment already back in place. “No argument there, hotshot. But using your talent like that was dumb. What if one of them got away, or someone else saw what happened here?”

  Trosk shrugged. “We’d kill them too, I guess. Who cares about a couple more sheep one way or the other?”

  “You just don’t get it, do you?” Elyra said, her anger more genuine than feigned if Kyrlock was any judge. “You can’t just kill everyone you come across in the hope of covering your tracks. Sooner or later someone’s going to realise that bodies are turning up wherever you go, and start to wonder why. Next thing you know, you’ll be on the first Black Ship out of the system. I’ve survived as long as I have by only using my gift when it’s absolutely necessary.”

  “Right.” Kyrlock nodded. “We could have handled a few dregs without you dropping an ore heap on their heads.” He cocked his head quizzically. “How did you manage that, anyway?”

  “He’s a geist,” Elyra said.

  Trosk nodded. “I prefer the term telekine, though,” he said.

  “Like I give a rut what you prefer,” Elyra said, her assumed persona now fully in place again. “Any more grandstanding, and you and the other juvies can find your way to wherever you’re going on your own. Clear?”

  “Pellucid,” Trosk assured her. “And speaking of the others…” He gestured towards them. Ven was curled up in a foetal position, whimpering quietly, his mind overwhelmed by the sheer volume of sensory and extrasensory input flooding through it, while Zusen was still stretched out on the shale, groaning quietly as consciousness began to return.

  “Go and help Ven,” Elyra ordered; after a moment, to Kyrlock’s quiet relief, Trosk complied, which meant that her leadership of the group was still going unchallenged, in spite of any reservations the shaven-headed wyrd might have. She glanced down at Kyrlock, who was squatting beside the prostrate girl. “How is she?”

  “She’ll live,” Kyrlock said, probing the mat of blood-soaked hair around the wound cautiously, eliciting a faint whimper of pain as he did so. “No sign of a fracture, thank the Emperor, but she’s going to have a hell of a headache for a while.” As if to confirm the fact, Zusen stirred, groaning as she tried to move her head. “Luckily she’s a tough little runt.”

  “If that’s your idea of a compliment, no wonder you haven’t got a girlfriend,” Zusen said, trying to sit up. After a moment she gave up the attempt, and slumped back again.

  Kyrlock caught her before her head could hit the stones, despite the deep unease he always felt in close proximity to her. She felt surprisingly light in his arms. “How do you know I don’t just prefer boys?” he asked, trying to sound unconcerned.

  Zusen started to laugh, then stopped abruptly, wincing. “I’d know,” she said, with complete assurance.

  She probably would at that, Kyrlock thought.

  Elyra glanced at Kyrlock, and smiled without humour. “Looks like we’re still kings of the spoil heap,” she said.

  “For the time being,” Kyrlock agreed, retrieving his weapons.

  The Misericord, the Warp,

  Date and Time Meaningless

  “Can we trust her?” Drake asked, with a glance towards the balnerea, where Jenie was changing into the clothes she’d bought in the market. He’d been more than a little surprised when Horst returned to their quarters accompanied by a common joygirl, but he supposed the team leader knew what he was doing.

  “I think so,” Horst said, keeping his voice too low to be heard through the intervening door. “She seems sincere enough about wanting to help. Keira thinks she’s after the reward money we dangled in front of the Receiver who found some of our stuff.”

  “Sounds reasonable,” Drake said. “Whatever we run into down there, it can’t be any worse than the usual way she makes a living.”

  “Verren seemed pretty scared,” Horst said, “but I don’t think we should take that too seriously. The state he was in, he’d have run from his own shadow.” He was wearing a comm-bead again, and broke off suddenly, apparently listening to something in his earpiece.

  Drake slipped his own into place, just in time to hear Barda responding to an earlier enquiry.

  “The Riggers are still missing,” the young pilot confirmed. “The bridge issued an edict about two hours ago, requiring the Receivers of Bounty to keep an eye out for them, and render any assistance they might require. No one seems worried enough to dispatch a search party yet, though.”

&nb
sp; “Any other disappearances been reported?” Drake asked.

  “Not as such,” Barda replied. “There are rumours on some of the internal channels, but no one in authority seems to be concerned. Receivers tend to wander off on their own anyway.”

  “Could the psykers Danuld and Hybris ran into have anything to do with it?” Horst asked.

  “I suppose it’s possible,” Barda said, after a momentary pause for thought. “But nothing’s been said about wyrds and witches, and I’d expect that sort of story to spread fast.”

  “That’s true,” Drake agreed. “Anyone flinging fire and ice around is kind of hard to miss.”

  “Which brings us back to our assailants,” Vex put in. He took the sliver of bone from his pocket, and gazed at it speculatively. “I’m sure this was what they were after.”

  Drake nodded. “The seer seemed able to divine its presence,” he agreed. “He seemed to know exactly where you were the whole time I was following them.”

  “Which implies he knows what it is,” Horst said.

  “Why wouldn’t he?” Vex asked rhetorically. “The most logical inference is that they were members of Adrin’s coven, fleeing from the purge on Sepheris Secundus. It’s quite likely that they had their abilities boosted by Tonis’ infernal machine.”

  “Perhaps we’ll know more when Raymer and his toy soldiers have finally got round to identifying them,” Drake said. He’d given the Merciful instructions to trawl through the passenger manifest for anyone matching the descriptions of the three wyrds, a job Vex could have done in a fraction of the time if they hadn’t lost his cogitator, and was chafing at the delay. “A search of their quarters should turn something up.”

  “Like the one that got away?” Horst said, and Drake fought down a flash of resentment at the implied criticism.

  “If he remains beyonderside, it should only be a matter of time before the Merciful find him for us,” Vex said reasonably. “It’s a relatively confined area, and Danuld and I were able to furnish them with a detailed description.”