by Dan Abnett
That pleased me too. An inquisitor's band works better when it is close knit.
Maxilla turned to Husmaan and Inshabel.
You two I don't know. But I will, as that's what dinners are for. Welcome to the Essene!
Maxilla's sculptural gold servitors, each one a work of art, had prepared a late supper for us in the grand dining lounge. A pate zephir of crab, fresh from the Caducades that morning, ontol flowers poivrade in their husks, fillets of Cadian boar hongroise, followed by an ebonfruit talmouse with cream and Intian syrup. The gilded sommelier served petillant Samatan rose, heavy-bodied Cadian claret, a sweet and sticky Tokay from a lowland dos on Hydraphur, and stinging shots of Mordian schnapps.
Our humours were good, and the impromptu supper gave us time to step back from the work at hand and relax. None of us spoke of the case, or the demands that it was likely to make of us. To rest the mind often clears it.
I was going to need clarity now.
We returned to Kasr Derth the next morning in the gun-cutter. The steel dawn over the wide island group of the Caducades was cut by the rising edge of a burning, red sun. As we swept in over the craggy mainland, the peaks and edges of the moors were caught with a pink alpenglow.
Despite the fact that we were broadcasting the correct clearances, we were challenged six times in the half-hour descent. At one point, a pair of Cadian Marauders rolled in and flanked us as they checked us over.
Military security dominated the Cadian way of life. Every non-military transport, shuttle and starship was placed under acute observation, especially those that behaved suspiciously or wandered from the authorised flight routes. Aemos told me that a pinnace carrying the Deacon of Arnush, visiting Cadia for a promulgation seminar, had been shot down over the Sea of Kansk six months earlier, simply because it failed to give the correct codes. It made me wonder how our unknown foe had got his minions on and off Cadia.
Unless, like us, he had an identity and a rank that easily turned aside routine security checks.
We were diverted sixty kilometres west of Kasr Derth because a war was going on. The dawn light was filled with the flashes and light streaks of a mass rocket attack.
Eight regiments of Cadian Shock, just a few days away from shipping out to a tour of duty on one of the inner fortress worlds of the Cadian Gate, were staging a live firing exercise.
We finally set down on the minster's launch pad over an hour late. The war-bells in every tower and shatrovy in the Kasr were ringing to signal that the roar of battle from the nearby plains and moors was just a practice.
We divided our efforts. Fischig took Aemos to the Minster's archivum to study the records we had ordered copied the night before and do further research. Bequin, escorted by Husmaan, went to search the stacks of the Ecclesiarchy's records in the apostolaeum. Inshabel and Nayl visited the Administratum's catalogue of records.
I went with Medea to the Ministry of Interior Defence.
There are no arbites on Cadia. A permanent state of martial law governs the world, and as a result, all civil policing duties are overseen by the Interior Guard, a sub-office of the Cadian Imperial Guard itself. In Kasr Derth, the region's administrative capital, their headquarters is the Ministry of Interior Defence, a grey-stone donjon adjoining the fortress of the martial governor, right at the heart of Kasr Derth.
Members of the Interior Guard are chosen at random. Worldwide, one in every ten soldiers recruited into the Cadian forces is transferred into the Interior force at the end of basic and preparatory, whatever their achievements and promise. As a result, some of the most able troopers ever raised on this planet of warriors serve out their time on the home world itself, and Cadia boasts one of the most effective and skilled planetary defence forces of any Imperial world.
We were seen by a Colonel Ibbet, a powerful, lean man in his forties who looked like he should have been leading the charge into the Eye of Terror: He was courteous, but mistrustful.
'We have no files on illegal or suspect immigration.'
'Why is that, colonel?'
'Because it doesn't happen. The system does not permit it.'
'Surely there are unfortunate exceptions?'
Ibbet, his grey and white camoed uniformed starched and pressed so sharply you could have cut yourself on the creases, steepled his fingers.
'All right, then/ I said, changing tack. 'What if someone wanted to get onto the planet anonymously? How could that be managed?'
'It couldn't/ he said. He wasn't giving at all. 'Every identity and visit-purpose is logged and filed and any infractions quickly dealt with.'
'Then I'll start with the files annotating those infractions/
Resignedly, Ibbet showed us into a codifier room and assigned us a military clerk to take us through the records. We sorted and checked for about three hours, slowly becoming bored with the interminable lists of orbital boardings, air-space interceptions and ground-based raids. I could tell that a thorough review of these records alone was going to take weeks.
So that's what we did. We spent ten and a half weeks scouring the archives and catalogues of Kasr Derth, working in shifts and living out of the quarters on the gun-cutter. Every few days, we returned to the Essene for a little rest and reflection. It was the dead of winter by the time we were finished.
FOURTEEN
Winter brings a chance. The damned has a name. The pylon at Kasr Gesh.
Wintertide on Cadia.
There had been glinting ice-floes in the gun-metal waters of the Cadu-cades that morning, and light snow had fallen on the moors. At that time of year, the foul corona of the Eye of Terror was visible even during the fleeting hours of daylight. The unholy mauve radiance of the nights became a violet fuzz in the cold daylight, like a badly-blotted ink stain on white paper.
It made us feel like we were under surveillance all the time. The Eye, bloodshot, angry, peering down at us.
Worst of all were the moor winds, cold and sharp as a Cadian's bayonet, blowing down from arctic latitudes. The high lakes were all frozen now, and lethal pogonip fogs haunted the bitter heaths and uplands. In the Kasr itself, it seemed like the locals had a morbid fear of heaters or window insulation.
Chilly gales breathed down the hallways of the minster and the Admin-istratum building. Water froze in the pipes.
Despite it all, the war-bells sounded every few days, and the moors rolled with the sounds of winter manoeuvres. I began to imagine that the Cadians were simply shooting at each other to keep warm.
Ten and a half long, increasingly cold weeks after we had begun our systematic search of the Kasr's records, I was making my now habitual morning walk from the minster of the Inquisition to the headquarters of
the Interior Guard. I wore a thick fur coat against the cold, and spike-soled boots to combat the sheet ice on the roads. I was miserable. The search had left us all pale and edgy, too many fruitless hours spent in dark rooms.
There had been so many promising leads. Links and traces of the Sons of Bael, unauthorised starship traffic, suspicious excise logs.
They had all dwindled away into nothing. As far as we could make out, no living member of the Sons of Bael, or any living associate or family member, remained. There had been no pylon-related cult activity, not even registered xeno-archaeological work. I had interviewed specialist professors at the universitary, and certain tech-priests from the Mechani-cus who were shown in the records as having expert knowledge of the pylons.
Nothing.
With Inshabel, Nayl or Fischig, I had travelled the region, as far afield as Kasr Tyrok and Kasr Bellan. A worker in the gunshops of Kasr Bellan, who had been identified as a Bael cult member, turned out to simply have the same name, misfiled. A wasted ten hour round trip by speeder.
Aemos had constructed a codifier model by which we checked record anomalies against the timetable of past cult activity.
There seemed to be no correlation at all.
I walked up the steps of the Ministry of Interior Defence,
and submitted myself to the clearance check in the postern guardhouse. It should have been a formality. I had been arriving at the same time almost every day for the last seventy-five. I even recognised some of the guardsmen by sight.
But still, it was like the first time I had ever been there. Papers were not only stamped, but read thoroughly and ran through an anti-counterfeit auspex. My rosette was scrutinised and tagged. The duty officer voxed my details through to the main building to get authorisation.
'Doesn't this ever bore you?' I asked one of the desk officers as I waited, folding my papers back into my leather wallet.
'Doesn't what bore me, sir?' he asked.
I hadn't seen Ibbet since the first week. I'd been rotated between a number of supervisors. One told me it was because of shift changes, but I knew it was because none of them liked to deal with an inquisitor. Especially a persistent one.
That morning, it was Major Revll who escorted me in. Revll, a surly young man, was new to me.
'How can I assist you, sir?' he asked curtly.
I sighed.
Open log books and data-slates were piled around the workstation where I had abandoned them the night before. Revll was already calling for a clerk to tidy them away and make space for me before I could explain that I'd made the mess in the first place.
He looked at me warily. 'You've been here before?' I sighed again.
I had two hours. At eleven, I was due to meet Inshabel and Bequin and fly out to a village on one of the islands in the Caducades to investigate a rumour that a man there knew something about smuggling. Another waste of time, I was sure.
I started in on the air-traffic day-book, reading through the lists of orbital transfers for a summer day two years earlier. Halfway down the slate was an entry showing a shuttle transfer from an orbiting ship to a landing field near Kasr Gesh. Gesh was near to one of the pylons frequented by the Sons of Bael. Moreover, on checking, I realised the date put it three days before the last incident of cult activity at the pylon.
I stoked up the data-engine, and requested further information on the entry. I was immediately denied. I used a higher decrypt key, and was shown a report that withheld both the name of the ship and the source of its authority. I began to get excited, and scrolled down. Even the purpose of the visit was restricted.
Now I typed in the teeth of my highest decrypt key. The terminal throbbed and chattered, sorting through files and authorisations.
The name came up. My elation peaked, and plunged away.
Neve. The mysterious entry had been a record of a classified mission by the inquisitor general. Back to square one.
The island was cold and bare. A small fishing community clung to the rim of the western bay. Inshabel swung the speeder down onto the cobbled tideway where spread nets had gone stiff with ice.
'How much longer, Gregor?' Bequin asked me, winding her scarf around her throat.
'How much longer what?'
'Until we give up and leave? I'm so sick of this fate-forsaken world.'
I shrugged. 'Another week. Until Candlemas. If we haven't found anything by then, I promise we'll say goodbye to Cadia/
The three of us trudged up the icy walk to a grim tavern overlooking the sea wall. Anchor fish, as tall as men, were hung outside, salted and drying in the winter air.
The barman didn't want to know us, but his steward brought us drinks and led us through to a back parlour. He admitted that he had sent the message about the smuggler. The smuggler was here to meet us, he said.
We entered the back parlour. A man sat by the roaring grate, warming his jewelled fingers at its flames. I smelled cologne.
'Good morning, Gregor,' said Tobias Maxilla.
Despite the shouting coming from the back parlour, the steward brought us herb omelettes and bowls of steaming zar-fin broth, along with a bottle of fortified wine.
'Are you going to explain?' asked Inshabel tersely.
'Of course, dear Nathun, of course/ Maxilla replied, pouring a careful measure of wine into each glass.
'Be patient.'
'Now, Tobias!' I snapped.
'Oh/ he said, seeing my look. He sat back. 'I confess I have become despondent these last few weeks. You've been so busy and I've just been waiting up there on the Essene… well, anyway, you've said a number of times that the answer you're searching for depended on one key thing. It depended on you establishing a way of getting past this dire planet's obsessively tight security. Anonymously. And I said to myself… "Tobias, that's what you do, even though Gregor doesn't like to think about it. Smuggling, Tobias, is your forte." So I decided to see if I could smuggle myself down here. And guess what?'
He sat back, sipping his glass, looking disgustingly pleased with himself.
'You smuggled yourself onto the planet to prove it could be done?' asked Bequin slowly.
He nodded. 'My shuttle's hidden in the spinneys behind the village. It's amazing how many zipped mouths and blind eyes you can buy with a purse of hard cash round here/
'I don't know what to say/ I said.
He made an open-handed gesture. 'You told me weeks ago that the Interior Guard recognised no illegal or suspect immigration. Well, I'm here today – literally – to prove that claim wrong. Cadia's a tough nut to crack, I'll admit. One of the toughest I've faced in a long and naughty career. But not impossible, as you see/
I sank my wine in a single gulp. 'I should sever my links with you for this, Tobias. You know that/
'Oh, pooh, Gregor! Because I've shown up the Cadian Interior Guard as a bunch of fools?'
'Because you've broken the law!'
'Ah ah ah! No, I haven't. Bent it, possibly, but not broken it. My presence here is entirely legal, under both Cadian local and Imperial general law/
"What?'
'Come on, my old friend! Why do you think my shuttle wasn't blasted out of the heavens this morning by eager Cadian lightning jockeys? That was a rhetorical question by the way. Answer… because when the interceptors came scrambling up to meet me, I broadcast the right security clearance, and that contented them/
'But the day codes are privileged! The counter-checks are triple! They are issued only to those with appropriately high credentials. What authority could you possibly have used to get them?'
'Well, Gregor… yours, of course/
* * *
It had been staring me in the face, and it took the grandstanding flamboyance of Maxilla, in his very worst showing-off mode, to reveal it. The reason the Interior Guard had no file on illegal or suspect immigration was because there was nothing of that nature to file. Those that tried to run the strict gauntlet of Cadian security and failed, died. The ones that got through were never noticed.
Because they were using high-level security clearances, masquerading as the sort of official visitor who would not be stopped.
People like me. People like Neve.
'I never made this trip/ Neve said, staring steadily at the data-slate I was showing her. 'Or this/
'Of course not. But someone borrowed your authority code. Used it to gain trans-orbital access. That's how they were getting in. Look here, your code again, and again. And before that, the code headers of your predecessor, Gonfal. It goes back forty years. Each and every flurry of activity from the Sons of Bael… and other cults… can be matched by space-to-surface transfers cleared as genuine Inquisition flights/
'Emperor protect me!' Neve looked up. She put down the data-slate and called hoarsely for a servitor to bring more lights into her octastyle sanctum.
'But my authority code is protected. How was it stolen? Eisenhorn, yours was used to prove this. How was that stolen?'
I paused. 'It wasn't, not exactly. One of my associates borrowed it to prove the point/
Why doesn't that surprise me? Oh, no matter! Eisenhorn, there's a great deal of difference between you and me. You may have rogue elements in your band who act behind your back in unorthodox, unilateral ways. I do not. My code could not have been abused so/<
br />
'I accept your point, but it could. Who has access to your code?'
'No one! No one below me!'
'But above you?'
'What?'
'I said this could be one of ours. A senior inquisitor, a grandmaster even. Certainly a wily veteran with enough clout to pull the right strings/
That would require a direct override at the highest levels.
'Exactly. Let's look/
In the end, that was my adversary's downfall. All the blood and fury and combat we had gone through was as nothing to this prosaic clue that revealed his identity. To steal Neve's authority code, and the authority codes of her predecessors, my adversary had been forced to use the clout of his own identity get into the files.
The record of that operation was encrypted, of course. Sitting side by side at the codifier in her sanctum's annex, Neve and I quickly found it. It wasn't even hidden. He never thought anyone would look.
But still, it was encrypted.
The cryptology was beyond both me and Neve. But together, combining our ranks, we could request, via the Astropathicus, permission to use the Inquisition's most powerful decryption keys.
It took five hours to approve our joint rating.
Just after midnight, a scribe from the Officio Astropathicus brought us the message slate. Midwinter winds shook the sanctum's casements.
I was alone with Neve. We had felt it inappropriate to have company. This was a matter of the gravest import. We had talked, of this and that, to pass the time, though both of us were restless and edgy. She poured generous glasses of Cadian glayva, which took the edge off the cold.
Her aide announced the scribe, and he entered, bowing low, his aug-metic chassis grinding beneath his robes. He held out a slate to her clutched in the mechadendrites that served as his hand. Neve took it and dismissed him.
I rose, and put down my barely touched glass of spirits.
Neve limped over to me, leant on her silver crutch, and held up the slate.