[Dark Heresy 02] - Innocence Proves Nothing

by Sandy Mitchell - (ebook by Undead)

  Already aware that the Conclave had apparently played some part in the conspiracy Inquisitor Finurbi had left them to investigate, Kyrlock had been surprised to find it mentioned in Greel’s dossier too; it seemed that Dylar was a member, and he had wondered for a moment if that meant he was a heretic as well. But that hardly seemed likely; every major hive or significant city in the sector seemed to support a lodge of the Conclave, at least if there were enough rich idiots in the vicinity who fancied themselves philosophers, so on balance it was probably no more than a coincidence.

  Dylar lived close to the top of the stairway, in a modest town house set back a little from the street behind a wrought-iron fence over which some neglected climbing plants straggled, and a narrow strip of garden which seemed to consist mainly of raked gravel and weeds. Kyrlock, who saw no point in subtlety given the nature of his errand, marched up the tiled path and pounded on the door with his fist.

  At first, nothing happened, and he had to repeat the operation a couple of times before a light went on, somewhere in the depths of the house. He was just raising his hand to knock again, when he heard the rattle of a bolt being drawn back, and stilled the motion.

  “Yes?” The servant who opened the door had evidently been roused from a deep sleep, and resented the fact. He was short and florid, and glared at Kyrlock over the crumpled ruin of a hastily knotted cravat; his cerulean tailcoat was creased, and his trousers sagged over a pair of battered bedroom slippers. If he was taken aback by the outlandish appearance of the unexpected visitor, he gave no sign of it.

  “I’m here to see Dylar,” Kyrlock said, raising a hand to push past him. To his surprise the servant refused to yield, merely bracing himself against the pressure. Reluctant to injure the fellow for merely doing his job, Kyrlock simply stared at him in the intimidating manner which had worked so well when he’d had occasion to face down gangers in the Tumble.

  “The master is abed. I suggest you return in the morning.” The servant obviously didn’t know a dangerous man when he saw one, or was too well paid to care.

  Kyrlock smiled, without warmth. “He’ll see me. Or Mr Greel will be very upset.”

  “Your employer’s disposition is no concern of mine.” The servant made to close the door in his face, and Kyrlock’s fist bunched: it seemed he’d have to do this the hard way after all. Fortunately, before he could draw his hand back to strike, a new voice cut across the entrance hall.

  “It’s all right, Brabinger, let him in. I’ve been expecting him.” Dylar was descending a wide, curving staircase, still knotting the cord of a silk dressing gown. He was a little taller than Kyrlock had expected from the pict, although the faint air of unworldliness it had captured still hung about him. He reached the bottom of the stairs, and looked appraisingly at the former Guardsman. “Someone like him, anyway.”

  “Very good, sir.” Brabinger stood aside to admit Kyrlock, with ill grace, then slammed the door with unnecessary emphasis. “Will that be all?”

  “I believe so. You may return to bed.” Dylar glanced at Kyrlock, with the kind of faint curiosity he might have exhibited towards something unexpected on a microscope slide. “We’ll talk in my study.”

  “If it makes you more comfortable,” Kyrlock said, recognising his type at once. Born and raised on a feudal world, he was intimately familiar with the innate arrogance of the aristocracy towards anyone of inferior rank, although it was only since joining the Angelae that he’d discovered it was possible to resent it, and even pay them back in their own coin on occasion.

  “This way,” Dylar said, leading the way towards a door on one side of the marble-floored entrance hall. It had a touch plate set into the wall next to it, and as his fingertips brushed against the smooth metal surface, a lock clicked.

  The study was larger than Kyrlock had expected; clearly his unwilling host spent a great deal of time in here.

  Bookshelves lined the walls, their contents spilling over onto every available surface, and clumping up into forlorn little dunes in quiet corners of the carpet. A compact cogitator stood on a glossy wooden desk, its brass cogs still, and its pict screen dark, while a litter of papers and a couple of data-slates hid most of the rest of the rich, brown surface.

  Without waiting for an invitation, Kyrlock dropped into the chair behind the desk. “Mr Greel was expecting to have heard from you by now,” he said.

  “You must understand that these things take time,” Dylar replied, in a studiedly reasonable tone, as though he expected immediate agreement and an apology for the franchiseman’s impatience. If he resented the implicit usurpation of his personal domain, he was too sensible to let it show, or challenge the insult; the first impression most people formed when they met Kyrlock was that he was trouble just waiting for someone to happen to, and the self-styled scholar had clearly come to the conclusion that it would be better to be nobody in that regard. Instead, he just cleared a pile of books from another chair, and sat down himself.

  “All I have to understand is that you owe Mr Greel something he wants, and I’ve been sent to collect it,” Kyrlock said, letting the statement hang significantly in the air between them.

  “I see.” Behind the pose of aristocratic detachment, it was plain that the man was very nervous. With good reason, too: the Shadow Franchise was not an organisation it was wise to cross. He gestured towards the desk. “The black data-slate.”

  “What about it?” Kyrlock asked, picking the thing up. It looked and felt like every other slate he’d ever handled.

  Dylar licked his lips nervously. “It’s all on there. Everything I’ve managed to uncover so far, anyway. I was hoping to cross-reference the information with a couple of other sources, but most of the useful texts are on the proscribed list, so of course I haven’t been able to gain access to them.”

  “Have you tried?” Kyrlock asked, masking his surprise with a show of belligerence. It sounded as though Dylar was all but confessing to heresy, and, new as he might be to the ranks of the Inquisition, he could hardly ignore something like that.

  “Of course not!” the aristocrat blurted, looking both shocked and terrified. “If anyone ever found out, I’d be hauled off to the Tricorn! Everything on there’s from legitimate sources, I swear!”

  “They’d better be,” Kyrlock said. “Mr Greel wouldn’t like the Inquisition sniffing around.” Though he spoke primarily for effect, he found himself considering his own advice. If the franchiseman ever discovered his new recruit was an agent of the Throne, he’d be dead in a heartbeat.

  “We’re all square, now, then?” Dylar asked hopefully, as Kyrlock stood, and pocketed the data-slate.

  Kyrlock shrugged. “You’d have to ask Mr Greel,” he said, watching something deflate inside the man across the desk. If he’d really believed providing the Franchise with what they wanted would get them off his back, he was too naive to be let out in the street without a nursemaid. “No doubt he’ll be in touch.”

  “No doubt.” Dylar rallied with an effort, and stood to usher him out, as though he’d simply been playing host to a business discussion. “Would you like me to get Brabinger to call you a transcab?”

  “No thank you,” Kyrlock said. Typically, the aristocrat seemed to have forgotten that he’d sent his servant back to bed; no doubt if roused again he’d do what was asked of him without complaint, but Kyrlock had spent too long being treated like that by people like Dylar to be comfortable with the idea. “It’s a pleasant night for a walk.”

  More to the point, he’d pass plenty of public vox terminals on the long climb back to the upper hive, and now he had something to justify using the code Elyra had given him. The weight of the data-slate seemed suddenly heavy in his pocket, and he found himself wondering what secrets it concealed.

  Seventeen

  Hive Sibelius, Scintilla

  257.993.M41

  Though he’d dedicated his life to the notion that pure reason was the only sure basis on which to proceed, Vex was forced to conclude that he
was feeling perturbed. If the Angelae’s enemies really had become aware of their location, they could be anywhere, even merging into the crowds thronging the streets of the middle hive through which he walked. In fact it was perfectly possible that they were watching him now…

  Irritated by the inescapable inference, he had to exert all his reserves of dispassionate analysis to prevent himself from turning his head in what was bound to be a fruitless search for unseen observers dogging his footsteps. If anything, such a reaction would be counterproductive, achieving nothing beyond warning anyone trailing him that he was aware of their surveillance.

  Not for the first time, he wished he’d asked Horst for more details about the security breach. If he’d known why the team leader was so concerned, he would have been able to analyse the situation effectively, instead of sending his thoughts skittering down one blind alley after another. As with so many things, it all came down to a lack of information.

  The transit terminal he’d used to get to the shrine was still some distance away, and he turned down a side street, intending to take the most direct route he could to the transport hub. It was a high-ceilinged thoroughfare, lined with manufactoria and warehousing units, and he should have been safe from attack there; lorries were entering and leaving in a steady stream, and by his initial estimate there must have been at least three score workers in sight along its length, dotted sporadically about the narrow pavement. Far too many potential witnesses to be casually disregarded.

  Which made the attempt on his life all the more disturbing when it came. It was skilfully executed, and carefully planned, although the real shock was the identity of the perpetrators.

  His enemies struck without warning as he passed a small, narrow door, set into a much larger one intended to provide vehicular access to one of the warehouses. The big cargo door was closed, rolled down to the ground, but the personnel one had been propped open with a makeshift doorstop which looked as though it had once been a paint tin, any indication of its contents long since obliterated by a rash of rust. Vex had just moved level with it when a nimbus of electrical discharge enveloped him.

  Surprised, he tried to react, but the unexpected overload was wreaking havoc on his augmetic enhancements. His meat muscles went into spasm, inducing considerable discomfort, and most of his implants shut down, autonomic failsafes protecting them from the sudden power surge. Instinctively, he tried to channel the worst of it into his capacitors, but there was far too much excess energy to bleed off that way, and he collapsed on the pavement, twitching feebly.

  “Get him inside,” a voice said, with the level inflection of a vox-coder. Hands grabbed him, and he was obscurely reassured to realise that they were augmetic rather than flesh and blood. His vision was still blurred, but as he was half-helped, half-carried into the dim, echoing warehouse, he was able to make out the swirl of white robes like his own.

  He attempted to greet the strange techpriests, but the appropriate implanted systems were still shut down, leaving him unable to communicate in binary with his peers. That was galling; he was used to being able to exchange information almost instantaneously with others of his calling, instead of having to rely on the slow and clumsy channel of conversation in Gothic which he was forced to use with his fellow Angelae. Fighting down a surge of embarrassment, he tried to speak, but it seemed his biological systems were still grievously impaired as well; all that emerged from his mouth was a strangulated gurgle.

  “He’s still functional,” the techpriest who’d spoken before said, and as Vex’s vision began to clear, he could see that he was holding a vox-unit in his hand. Mechadendrites were waving in the air above the man’s shoulders, and one of them suddenly snaked out to start rummaging through the pockets of Vex’s robe.

  “Then deactivate him as soon as you’ve secured the wraithbone,” whoever was on the other end of the vox-link directed, and Vex began to feel seriously alarmed.

  “If he’s actually got it,” another voice said; it spoke in the carefully modulated fashion that Vex himself cultivated, and which was common among acolytes of the Omnissiah who had been unable as yet to replace their original larynxes with augmetic ones. The higher register suggested to him that its owner was female, and, as she let him fall to the floor and took a step backwards, he was able to confirm that impression.

  “You said that was the most logical inference,” the voice on the vox said, in tones which implied very strongly that it didn’t want to hear any suggestions to the contrary at this stage.

  “Roughly ninety-seven per cent,” the male techpriest assured his superior. “In the absence of Inquisitor Finurbi they had no one at the Tricorn to give it to, and a member of the Adeptus Mechanicus would be less likely to find handling the substance disturbing than any of his colleagues. It’s possible, but unlikely, that he would have left it wherever his team has found refuge—” He broke off suddenly, then withdrew his mechanical tentacle, the sliver of ivory grasped in the handling filaments at its tip. “We have obtained it.”

  “Then deactivate him and return at once,” the voice directed, before cutting the link from the other end.

  “I comply,” the female said, miniature lightning arcs beginning to crackle between her fingers.

  Vex tried to move, reach for his autopistol, but his meat muscles were still knotting, refusing to obey. A detached part of his mind began to calculate the voltage the woman was able to generate; she’d managed to disable him at a distance of at least three metres, possibly more. If she touched him directly, she’d burn out every augmetic component he had, and that would be the end of him; he’d been upgraded so much since joining the Adeptus Mechanicus that he seriously doubted his remaining flesh could continue to function without them. Even if he could survive the trauma, he wouldn’t want to, cut off from the perfection of the Machine, to be imprisoned in a mere bag of meat again.

  Trying not to flinch as his murderer bent smoothly towards him, her hand outstretched, he prepared himself for transfer to the eternal files.

  “Desist in the name of the Emperor!” someone shouted, and the female straightened abruptly, stretching out her hand towards the doorway; but before she could discharge the lightning sparking around her fingers, the unmistakable hissss crack of a miniature bolter echoed through the cavernous space, and her torso erupted in a crater of viscera and shredded augmetics. The energies she’d been hoarding earthed themselves suddenly, arcing through her remaining metal implants, and she toppled to the rough rockcrete floor in an unpleasant miasma of scorched insulation and charred meat.

  “Mordechai?” Vex asked, managing to regain a measure of control over his body at last, and rolling to a semi-recumbent position. No one else he knew carried a bolt pistol, but he couldn’t imagine how Horst had even known he was in trouble, let alone managed to get here so quickly.

  Then he caught sight of the man who’d saved his life. He was a complete stranger, but the crimson sigil of an Inquisition rosette gleamed in his raised left hand.

  Vex reached for his autopistol, unsure who he intended using it on. The stranger might indeed be an ally, but Inquisitor Finurbi’s note had been quite unequivocal: no one in the Calixis Conclave could be trusted.

  Abruptly, the decision was taken out of his hands. The male techpriest was already running, making for the back of the warehouse, the artefact still gripped in his mechadendrite. No doubt there was another entrance there, leading Omnissiah knew where in the labyrinth of the middle hive. If he got away now, they’d never recover the sliver of ivory, or be able to determine its purpose. He squeezed the trigger.

  Normally, Vex took a quiet pride in his standard of proficiency with firearms, which, although nowhere near as high as a professional gunfighter like Horst or Drake, was sufficient for him to be reasonably confident of hitting the mark with a single aimed shot. This was no time to indulge in self-aggrandisement, though; his enfeebled state was bound to degrade the accuracy of his shooting, so he flicked the seldom-used selector to the burs
t setting.

  It proved to be a wise precaution. The hail of bullets cut the air around his erstwhile assailant, but only two struck their mark. The renegade techpriest staggered, then rallied, feeding power to his legs.

  “Halt or die!” the stranger shouted, and when the fugitive made no response except to take another couple of steps, fired the bolt pistol again. The explosive projectile detonated between the techpriest’s shoulder blades, pitching him forwards, and detaching the mechadendrite holding the artefact. The metal tentacle clattered to the floor.

  In severe discomfort, Vex dragged himself to his feet, and staggered towards the gleaming sliver of ivory. He was going to have to carry out a considerable number of repairs before his systems were able to operate at anything like an acceptable standard of efficiency again.

  Noticing the movement, the stranger walked forwards too, an unmistakable expression of stunned surprise appearing on his face as he registered the presence of the artefact. Tucking his rosette away inside his jacket, he bent down and picked it up carefully.

  “I’ll take that,” Vex said, bringing up his gun.

  The stranger shook his head. “I don’t think so. We’ve been looking for it for a very long time.” He brought his own weapon round to cover Vex. “I’m sure you’re well aware that if you shoot me, my finger will tighten on the trigger purely by reflex. At this range, we’ll both be dead before I hit the floor.”

  “I could say the same,” Vex replied, unable to find fault with the logic of the man’s position.

  “Precisely.” The stranger nodded. “So rather than make saving your life a pointless waste of effort, I suggest we talk.” He smiled, in a manner Vex felt far from reassured by. “My name’s Pieter Quillem, and I work for a friend of your employer. With a bit of luck and common sense, I think we can help one another.”

  Tarsus High Orbital Docks, Scintilla System

  258.993.M41