by Dan Abnett
"Yeah? From home?"
Limbwall blushed slightly. "Yes. Throne, please don't tell Rickens. He'll have my guts. I've enhanced the cogitator in my hab with department codes so I can keep up with the workload after hours. I'd never manage otherwise."
"Limbwall, you know that after hours is meant for recreation? A relaxed meal, a drink or two with friends, maybe even a relationship?"
"If I didn't take the work home, I'd never meet the deputy's needs. Six hours, maybe seven, I work off-duty. Don't tell me you never take work home."
"Well..."
"Yeah. Since when did you have a relationship?"
Plyton scowled and said nothing.
Limbwall pulled a file from his armful. "Here. I processed it last night. Basic stuff, like you said."
"Early drawings? Templates? Street plans?"
"Uh huh. Even records about the pioneer builders, pulled from the archives of Scholam Architectus. You ever hear of a man called Cadizky?"
"Uh, there's a Cadizky Square in Formal B."
"Named after Theodor Cadizky. Thanks to him, the original city plan was what it was."
"Bio?"
"It's all in there."
Plyton reached one hand off the wheel, took the folder Limbwall offered and stuffed it into the driver's door pocket.
"That's great. Thanks. I think location is everything with the Aulsman case. I mean, that hidden roof. It's got to be significant."
"Well, just be careful. That data took a lot of... digging out."
"Unauthorised? You mean... you stole it?"
"Let's just say I bypassed some meanings of the word 'legitimate', Emperor forgive me?"
Plyton grinned. She pulled them to a halt in Templum Square. The towering facade of the grand templum rose above them. The place was quiet in the rain. In front of the templum arch, a few Magistratum vehicles were parked. The place was still cordoned off.
"Wait here," she told him. "I won't be long. Just a few more picts for the record. I promised Rickens."
She got out of the Bergman, and hurried into the cover of the portico. A pair of Magistratum officers approached.
"Mamzel, you can't-"
"Relax. Special Crime," she grinned, flashing her shield. "This is my case."
She hurried in through the vast dome of the templum, along the cloister and into the old sacristy. She was checking the magnetic charge of her hand picter when she realised a service-issue blunt was being aimed at her face.
"That's about far enough," a man's voice said.
"What the Throne?" she began.
"Really slow now. Hand me the picter."
Plyton looked up, arms up. Two men stood before her, blocking the entrance. Both wore Magistratum armour, but armour which entirely lacked any ident or badge. Their visors were down. Their handguns were threatening.
"Easy," she said. "I'm going to reach for my badge right now, okay?"
One of them nodded.
She hooked out her shield. "Maud Plyton, junior marshal. This is my case."
One of the men took her warrant, studied it, then tossed it back to her. "Not anymore," he said.
"What?"
"Interior Cases is taking over, marshal. Walk away."
"Wait a minute..."
"Leave. Now," the other said. "This belongs to Interior Cases now."
"Why?"
"We don't have to tell you anything," said the first officer. "Report back to your department."
"You have to tell me one thing." Plyton stated.
"Yeah? What?"
"Magistratum dictate one-seven-eighty. Identity of officers. Who are you?"
"I told you. Interior Cases."
"Names?"
"Marshals Whygott and Coober. All right? Are we done?"
"We're done," Plyton said, and walked back to the Bergman.
She parked the old roadster in the depths of the rockcrete bay under the central tower, left her permit on the dash, and went upstairs with Limbwall.
The Department of Special Crime was ominously silent. There was no one around, not even Mamzel Lotilla. Under the cream-shaded electro lamps of the wooden mezzanine, the desks were silent and unoccupied, the teetering towers of files and folders stirring in the processed breeze.
Plyton and Limbwall looked at each other. They could hear voices raised in the deputy magistratum's private office.
Plyton sat down at her desk and code-entered her cogitator's data-function along with the Canticle of Awakening. Surface data fluttered up, but nothing deep. All her precious records of the Aulsman case, including the first round of picts she'd taken of the secret ceiling, were inaccessible. Blanked. Gone.
That had never happened before.
Well, that wasn't actually true. A year or so earlier, there had been a case, a street-crime woman who had claimed she was an Imperial inquisitor. Gideon something. Two men had come to see Rickens, and shortly afterwards the file trace had been erased. She queried, and Rickens had told her to forget it. "No good will come of it," he'd said.
Plyton had tried to forget about it, but it wasn't easy. She'd always assumed the affair had really concerned an Imperial inquisitor. Why else would Rickens have erased the file? It made her feel better about it to think she was secretly serving the holy ordos of the God-Emperor.
But this?
What was the excuse this time?
The main elevator hatch swished open, loud in the quiet office space. The breeze ruffled the stacked paper files. A squad of cogitator adepts from Technicus, escorted by a phalanx of Magistratum marshals, entered the Special Crime department.
The adepts set to work at once, dismantling the department's cogitators.
"What the hell is this?" Limbwall cried.
The marshals slammed him against a wall and began to beat him. Plyton rose from her seat slowly. Weapons were aimed at her.
The marshals were wearing the bright orange flame-badges of Interior Cases.
"Stop it," Plyton said. "Stop hitting him."
The visored marshals carried on punching and kicking Limbwall until he fell down on the floor, one optic unit cracked.
"I want to know where in the name of the Emperor you find the authority to do this," Plyton said.
The door of Rickens' office flew open and a large man strode out. Plyton recognised him immediately. Senior Magistratum Sankels, the head of the Interior Cases Division, the wing of the Magistratum that investigated the Magistratum itself.
Sankels turned and yelled back into Rickens' office. "Today, you hear me? Today!"
Walking past Plyton, Sankels glared at her.
Then he was gone.
"Maud?" Rickens called from the door of his office. She hurried over to him, and he drew her inside and closed the door.
"What's going on?" she asked.
Rickens looked pale, as if in shook, and sat down in his ornate cathedra. "Something," he said.
"Sir?"
He looked up at her. "Maud," he said. "I'm going to hate myself for asking this, but did you knowingly break procedure when you investigated the Aulsman death?"
"No, sir."
"I didn't think so. You recorded every particular of your crime scene entry?"
"Yes, sir."
"Every particular?"
"By the book, sir. What's going on?"
Rickens set his hands down on the console before him. His hands were shaking. "As of nine-twenty this morning, the Department of Special Crime was suspended pending investigation."
"What?"
"Suspended. Interior Cases is taking over. There has been a submission that we have mishandled the Aulsman case. A lack of procedure. A cover-up."
"Not at all, sir..."
"I know. I believe that, Maud. But Sankels has other ideas. We've been told to stand down, confined to domestic habs, while the investigation proceeds. Apparently there are strong links between our handling of the Aulsman death and the attempt on Chief Provost Trice's life last night."
"Oh my Throne!
They tried to kill him?"
"Who?"
"Sir, I have no idea! I heard rumours..."
"The rumours were true. And here we stand. I need your shield and your weapon, Maud."
"What? Why?"
"Because as of now you are relieved of duty. Interior Cases will want to question you. You are required to return to your hab and wait there until they come."
"I did nothing wrong!"
"I know, Maud. But still..."
Plyton unhooked her token and unfastened her holster. She placed the shield and her weapon on Rickens' desk.
"Go home and wait." Rickens told her. "I'll try to get this affair straight as best I can."
THIRTEEN
In its sleep, the Arethusa groaned gently. The layover at Eustis Majoris high anchor meant there was time to afford a general system shutdown and a proper overhaul. Inert and slumbering, the old ship settled, its superstructure groaning and creaking as the stresses of the voyage were soothed away by the unexpected rest.
Wandering the half-lit sub-tunnels and lower decks, Sholto Unwerth was pleasantly reassured by the creaking and sighing of the metal hulk around him. The sounds made him think of the ship as alive. Besides, he'd sent the twenty men of his crew ashore for relaxation at the harbour taverns, and total silence would have been unnerving.
Unwerth was assessing the general repair of the ship. Three small servitors clattered after him obediently. Two were basic maintenance units. The third carried a massive, leather-cased book in its upper limbs, supporting it open as if its arms were a lectern. The book was the Arethusa's repair ledger. At every inspection point, Unwerth would make some observations then walk over to the book the servitor held for him. With an ink pen, Unwerth carefully added any work needed to the manifest list, which the crew would consult later as they rostered for repair duties. A simple data-slate would have done the job, but Unwerth had a particular devotion to the sheer material substance of paper.
The shipmaster's penmanship, like the shipmaster himself, was small and intricate.
"Sub-duct one-three-four-one, lower service deck, renew insulation on power trunking and replace digita valves two-six-two through two-six-nine," he murmured to himself as he wrote, timing the words to the speed of his pen, so they came out with an odd, halting cadence. He screwed the lid back on the pen. "There. That is a sufficiency in this venue. Let us constitute ourselves to the next juncture." He set off. The three servitors twitched and abruptly rattled along in his wake. He stopped suddenly and examined part of the dingy hallway's wall. "Oh dear. Bless me, no. That's unacceptable. See, this formentable rustication?"
The three servitors cocked their metal skulls. "Rustication of this magnetism is unacceptable, as it underwhelms the integrated solidnessity of the vessel." Unwerth unscrewed his pen and made some more fastidious notes.
"Lower service deck, treat rusticated wall patches with sealant. Also buff theresaid."
They continued with their tour and entered the gloomy cave of the ship's rear hold. It was a poor twilight in here, half the overhead lumins out of action (Unwerth noted this carefully). There was also some buckling to several of the deck plates. Unwerth had the two repair units hold up their photovoltaic lamps and aim the beams at the floor while he hunched down to inspect it.
There was another creak of metal, but Unwerth ignored it. He ran his fingers over the damaged deck-section and tutted quietly. Then something blocked out the light of the lamps.
"Arise them gainfully, you defuncts!" he called out. He was still in shadow.
"You," said a voice. It was low, so very, very deep.
Sholto Unwerth turned and gazed up at the titanic figure behind him. He blinked. He knew all too well who this man was, and what line of business he was in.
"I do not have a remembrance of inviting you aboard my ship, Master Worna," he said, trying and, for the most part, failing to keep the note of anxiety out of his voice.
"That's because you didn't, Unwerth," replied Lucius Worna.
"You know m-my name?"
"Sholto Unwerth, shipmaster of the Arethusa. It's my business to know facts like that. Particularly as I've been looking for you."
"L-looking? For me? W-why? Why? Why for have you been looking for me?"
"Because we're going to have a conversation."
"I have nothing to converse with you, sir. My lips are soiled."
"I heard you usually had plenty to say Unwerth. A babbler, that's what I've heard. Plenty to say and ninety per cent of it crap. I'm interested in the ten per cent of sense you sometimes manage."
Unwerth drew himself up to his full height - which put his eyes on a level with Worna's navel - and said, "I would be most ingratuitous if you were kindly permissive and removed your personable from my ship."
Lucius Worna turned casually and struck one of the repair servitors with the back of his hand. The force of the brutal slap sent the delicate machine tumbling across the deck, dented and cracked, sparks fizzling from torn hoses and servo-meshes. "A conversation," he rumbled. "End of story."
Worna took the shipmaster up to the small retiring lounge behind the bridge. En route, Unwerth saw other intruders aboard his ship, rough-looking crew-types, all of them armed with handguns. They were standing watch at hatches and junctions, ready to greet any of Unwerth's own crew who came back. Several more were on the bridge itself, searching through the database and the paper records.
Unwerth would have been bristling with outrage, if total fear hadn't been eclipsing every other emotion and thought. He was not a brave man, and avoided confrontation at all costs. In a quiet life of trading, he'd never been boarded, never been attacked, and never had his life and welfare threatened so comprehensively.
He said nothing, just did what he was told. Worna indicated he should sit down on the leather bench built into the retiring cabin's end wall.
Worna remained standing. The bounty hunter idly began to unclasp and remove the armoured gauntlets of his carapace armour, and set them on a side table. His big hands were as scarred and gnarled as his head.
"You were at Bonner's Reach, for Firetide."
Unwerth shrugged, not sure if it was a question, and not at all certain he wanted to answer it if it was.
"Then you came down the sub-lane during the course of the season, via Encage, Bostol, that route. And ended up here, six days ago."
Unwerth shrugged again.
"Good trip, was it? Good trade? You carry cargo?"
"Some pulchritude of an amount. It has been a poor season."
"Gonna get worse yet," Worna said. "What about passengers?"
Unwerth said nothing.
Worna smiled. "You're afraid of me, aren't you?"
"I cannot receive of a notion why I shouldn't be."
"Damn right. I'm a scary man. And maybe that's what's gluing up your famous blabbermouth. Maybe you'd be happier talking to a kindred soul?"
Worna went to the cabin door and beckoned for someone. A red-haired man in a jacket of Vitrian glass entered the room.
"Hello, Unwerth," he said. "You know who I am?"
Unwerth nodded. "Master Siskind of the Allure."
"Now don't mind Lucius here. He's working for me. Help me out, and I won't pay him to damage you."
"I am most revived to hear so, Master Siskind. In what fashionable way can I help you?"
"Let me start by apologising, Unwerth," Siskind said. "Boarding your ship like this, taking control. No master likes to be treated like that."
"Indeed not."
"But understand, until I get what I want, my men will remain in control. And any of your crew who tries to alter that fact will regret it. I'm looking for the Oktober Country, Unwerth. I'm looking for the Oktober Country and its master, Kizary Thekla."
Unwerth cleared his throat. "Then you have importuned your radiation in the unrequisite direction, Master Siskind. I am not he, nor is he here, in manner of fact. When last I left my eyes on him, he was at the Reach, during Firetide."
> "You saw him there?" Siskind said, picking up an astrolabe from a shelf and toying with it.
"In consideration, yes. I spoke at him. He was deferably present, as was Master Akunin, and other worthied eminencies of their cartel."
"All of whom had left the Reach by the time I put in." Siskind told Worna. He looked back at Unwerth. "What did you talk to Thekla about?"
"I took a meeting with the beneficial master, and extravagated about mercantile dealings that might arise, perspicaciously, between our two selves."
Siskind burst out laughing. "Unwerth, Unwerth... the cartel Thekla and Akunin belong to is out of my league, let alone yours. How do you deal with the shame, trying to broker deals with men like that? Throne, you're a nothing. A nobody midget in a tramp ship."
Blinking hard, Unwerth looked aside.
"Listen to me, Unwerth," Siskind said. "I was supposed to meet Thekla at the Reach, but I was delayed. By the time I'd got there, he'd gone. Under normal circumstances, he would have left a message for me, but he didn't. Naturally, I was worried. So I hired Master Worna to do some hunting around. Guess what he turned up?"
"I have no ideology of that answer," Unwerth said.
"Just after Firetide, a bulk lifter, registered - according to its transponder codes - to the Oktober Country, docked at Bonner's Reach. Its occupants were not identified. In fact, the Vigilants' records show the lifter's occupants chose anonymity. But there's one thing the records do show. Those people, whoever they were, took a private meeting with you. Shortly after, this heap of junk left the Reach and began its journey here."
"Who were those people?" Worna asked.
"I can't quite reminisce..." Unwerth began.
"Don't give me that!" Siskind spat. "We saw the records. Facts, Unwerth. Don't embarrass yourself with a lie. Either you met with Thekla, or with representatives of his ship, or you met with people who had somehow acquired a lifter belonging to the Oktober Country. Which was it?"
Sholto Unwerth, so small his feet swung off the bench seat and didn't reach the ground, bravely shook his head.
"You carried passengers on this run, didn't you?" Worna growled. "All the way from the Reach to Eustis."