by Dan Abnett
"What happens now?" asked Harlon Nayl. No one answered immediately. Nayl stood on the Hinterlight's bridge. Aided by her servitors and her freed crew, the ship-mistress was trying to repair some life into the wounded ship. She was crying. The damage was immense.
Halstrom, along with Frauka, was down in the infirmary. Last Nayl had heard, Zarjaran was fighting to save both of them.
"Now?" Ravenor replied. "Harlon, this isn't about the fleets anymore."
"Got that much." Nayl smiled.
"We have been presented with a strong possibility that the local Imperium authorities are trading in heretical technology. The lord subsector's private ministry, at least. I don't know if the corruption goes right up to the lord subsector himself, but the chances are high. We have a much, much bigger deal on our plate."
"We're going back to Eustis Majoris, then?" Kys asked.
"Yes," said Ravenor. "But now we have an advantage. Our adversary thinks we're dead. Without Thekla to contradict this fact, we can return in disguise. Disguise is essential. I have no way of knowing how deep this corruption runs. Maybe into the Officio Angelus itself."
"The Hinterlight isn't going to get us there," Mathuin said. That was true enough. So badly wounded, the Hinterlight would need months to limp back to a safe harbour outside Lucky Space and begin repairs. Besides, there was a real chance that Preest, shaken and tearful, would refuse another mission for the ordos.
"I... I have an idea..." Nayl began.
Zael stood alone on the observation deck, gazing out at the storms of Firetide. They were fading now, the solar storm dying away. Still, the flashes outside jumped his long shadow back and forth across the deck.
"We're going back," Kys said as she joined him.
"Back?"
"To Petropolis. That all right?"
Zael nodded.
"You're all right with that?" she said.
"It'll be good to see home again." Zael walked away from her and exited the deck.
"He's more than nascent," Kys said to Ravenor. The chair coasted up beside her.
"Much more."
"Passive like you thought?"
"Yes. Mirror psyker. From what you told me, I think he's very rare. I think the flects he's used have touched off something in his mind. Empowered deep potentials. He's not active at all, but I think he might become a powerful reflective. I think I might be able to teach him to farsee. To predict. To foretell."
"Yeah, I felt that too. It's like he knows what's about to happen."
"Not knows, so much as... echoes. The damned flects have woken something in him, but it's something quite amazing."
"I hope he thinks so," said Patience Kys.
Carl Thonius sighed. His arm really hurt, but this would make it better.
They'd gone over and searched the Oktober Country before imprisoning its surviving crew and allowing it to tumble away into the star's gravity well, undirected and helm-less, tracing the doom it had reserved for the Hinterlight.
Thekla's holds had been packed with flects. Raw ones, not even yet packed into their red-tissue wraps.
Carl had one cupped in his hands. It felt warm. He opened his fingers and looked down.
At the end of Firetide, a bulk lifter had flown into Bonner's Reach. Transponder codes identified it as belonging to the Oktober Country. Hooded, cloaked, three figures left the lifter and hurried to an arranged meeting in a private booth on one of the first salon's upper galleries.
A diminutive figure entered the booth, as pict and psi screens folded down around him.
"I am Sholto Unwerth, and I requent your fulsome advantages," he said.
Harlon Nayl pulled back his hood. "Master Unwerth, we have a business proposition for you."
SOON
Late winter time, Petropolis, Eustis Majoris, 402.M41
"That's a lot of trucks." Junior Marshal Plyton said, looking down out of the windows of the Department of Special Crimes. Secretary Limbwall scurried over and joined her, peering out at the lorries far below, caught on the rockcrete plaza in a downpour of acid rain. Burn alarms were sounding.
"Yeah, what are they here for?" Limbwall said.
Deputy Magistratum First Class Dersk Rickens tapped his way over, leaning hard on his cane. He peered down at what his underlings were looking at.
"That? That's the new codifiers they've been promising us. Upgraded units, more powerful cogitation. They've been shipped from a provider planet."
Down below, servitors began to unload crated cogitator units from the trucks.
"Rejoice and be merry," Rickens said, walking away. "Departmental upgrade. Think yourselves lucky."
"Excellent!" Plyton exclaimed.
Limbwall clapped his hands.
Far below them, elevator banks began to carry the units up to their floor. Boxed, the cogitators they brought were still damp from the humid atmosphere of Spica Maximal.
Excited, Plyton hurried towards the elevators.
On the ledge outside the window, a perching sheen bird watched her go. It blinked.
One perfectly machined mechanical eye opened and closed. It cocked its head. It waited in the pouring acid rain.
Looked back.
And blinked.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dan Abnett lives and works in Maidstone, Kent, in England. Well known for his comic work, he has written everything from the Mr. Men to the X-Men in the last decade, and is currently scripting Legion of Superheroes and Superman for DC Comics, and Sinister Dexter and The VCs for 2000 AD. His work for the Black Library includes the popular strips Lone Wolves, Titan and Darkblade, the best-selling Gaunt's Ghosts novels, and the acclaimed Inquisitor Eisenhorn trilogy. He was voted "Best Writer Now" at the National Comic Awards 2003.
Scanning and basic
proofing by Red Dwarf,
formatting and additional
proofing by Undead.
Table of Contents
THEN
NOW
PART ONE
TWO
THREE
MUCH LATER
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SOON
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Table of Contents
THEN
NOW
PART ONE
TWO
THREE
MUCH LATER
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SOON
ABOUT THE AUTHOR