“This is tantamount to questioning the loyalty of my own sisterhood!” she declaimed, with a fine ear for the dramatic. It seemed she’d spotted the name of the Gavarrone Militia, the PDF unit based on the plateau where the Order of the White Rose had its convent, and since Gavarrone was an Ecclesiarchy fiefdom technically independent of the planetary government, subject only to canon law, had chosen to interpret the fact as a thinly-veiled attempt to call into question the loyalty of the church itself.
To be honest I’ve no doubt that Keesh had relished the chance to get a little dig in at his rival in the never-ending squabble between church and state, but under the circumstances he was too sensible to make an issue of it, merely bowing to the furious canoness.
“I’m sure no one here would wish to do such a thing,” he assured her, his voice studiedly neutral. “If your faith in the men of the Gavarronian PDF is as strong as it is in your Battle Sisters, then you may deploy them as readily as you see fit.”
Unable to pass back the buck Keesh had so neatly dropped in her lap without tacitly endorsing the doubts she’d objected to, Eglantine nodded tightly. “We prevail by the grace of the Emperor,” she said.
“Then our victory is assured,” Keesh said blandly, twisting the knife, and the meeting dragged on into the late afternoon.
All dull things come to an end, thankfully, and at long last Keesh and Zyvan bade us farewell, a few final words about the need for absolute secrecy still ringing in our ears. Truth to tell there was little need for this, as I don’t think anyone present was unaware of the consequences if word of the tyranid menace were to leak out to the civilian population before all our preparations were in place. They were spooked enough already at the notion of traitors and heretics running around detonating random bits of the landscape, and if they got even an inkling of the real threat hanging over their homeworld the panic and civil disorder would be all but impossible to contain. I regained the relatively fresh air of the lobby gratefully, my head throbbing with boredom and fatigue, and glanced around for Jurgen, but he seemed to have vanished completely, leaving only the faintest reminder of his presence floating in the air around the sofa he’d occupied. There was a little more solid evidence that he’d been there as well: a tray containing a delicate porcelain tannapot and bowl, both empty, and a matching plate decorated with the squashed remains of what had possibly once been an ackenberry eclair. A cordon of crumbs and less identifiable detritus enclosed the space where his feet would have been.
“Commissar?” Lazurus was standing next to my shoulder, something under his robe humming faintly. “Is something troubling you?”
“Not really,” I said, masking my irritation as best I could. The sight of the remains of Jurgen’s impromptu picnic had reminded me of how hungry I was getting. Where he’d found it I had no idea, and knew better than to ask. “I was just wondering where my aide had got to.”
“I’m sure he’ll turn up,” Lazurus said blandly, his voice dropping to a level where no one else around us could hear it. “Inquisitor Vail seems to have considerable faith in your ability to find that which is lost.” He studied my face for a reaction, which I like to think I was too practiced to give him, despite the sudden shock of hearing Amberley’s name on the lips of a stranger (which he didn’t actually have, as I’ve already mentioned, but you know what I mean).
“We were lucky on Gravalax,” I said, as blandly as I could, too experienced a dissembler to take refuge in an easily challenged lie. He was evidently aware that Amberley and I knew one another, if nothing else, and could easily have been fishing if he only suspected her presence here. Obviously knowing how the game was played, Lazurus nodded affably.
“So I heard. Good luck with finding your minion.” He began to turn away, then, as I’d half expected, being no stranger to the use of that particular technique myself, glanced back as if with an afterthought.
“Oh, that reminds me. Any promising leads on Metheius yet?” Of course I hadn’t a due who he was talking about, but I was just tired and hungry enough not to be able to resist the urge to tease him a little.
“Nothing concrete,” I said, with just enough hesitation to make him think I was holding out, and he nodded again, as though I’d confirmed something.
“Of course. You’ll need to talk to the inquisitor first.” He nodded affably again, and made the sign of the cogwheel. “May the Omnissiah regulate your systems.”
“And yours,” I said blandly, wondering what else Amberley hadn’t been telling me.
“Looks like you’ve made a friend,” Kasteen said, moving a little closer now that the techpriest had gone. For some reason cogboys always gave her the creeps, even our own enginseers, although she could conceal it well enough if she had to. That didn’t mean she had to like being around them, though, and she tended to find something else to concentrate on in their presence if she could. While I’d been having my bizarre tête-à-tête with Lazurus she’d been chatting to her opposite number from one of the Harrakoni regiments, and perhaps fortunately had missed the entire exchange.
“Possibly,” I said, a little guardedly, and glanced around for Jurgen again. The crowd in the lobby area was beginning to thin out, and wide gaps were beginning to appear between the bodies, but still no sign of my errant aide. I turned my head, catching sight of a flicker of movement in the corner of my eye, but when I looked in that direction I could see nothing there. The last of the Imperial Guard contingent moved away, standing aside to make room for Eglantine and her escort, leaving Kasteen and me to our own devices. “You’d better go on ahead. I’ll catch up when I’ve found him.”
“Right.” Kasteen nodded briskly, conscious as I was of the need to get things moving back on Hoarfell as quickly as possible, and disappeared down the corridor, tapping her comm-bead. “Lustig we’re moving out. I want a vox relay to Major Broklaw as soon as we’re clear of the damping field.” Left on my own I sighed with impatience, and glanced around, hoping to find some clue as to Jurgen’s whereabouts. He couldn’t have gone far, the tannapot was still warm.
That simple little piece of deduction saved my life. As I inclined my head and bent forward at the waist to reach out and touch the piece of porcelain I became aware once more of that flicker of motion in my peripheral vision, and a chill breeze flashed past my cheek. That was a sensation I was all too familiar with, an edged weapon of some kind striking a great deal too close for comfort, and I drew my chainsword by reflex, flourishing it around me in a defensive pattern I’d practised so often it went beyond conscious thought. Whirling round, looking for a target, I found myself facing an empty room.
My mouth went dry, and on the back of my tongue I could suddenly taste the ozone crackle of sorcery. I’d faced psykers before, of course, but almost always in the company of Jurgen, and I fought down a rising tide of panic. Pushing it away into a corner of my hindbrain, where it could usefully speed my reflexes without getting in the way of my prospects for survival, I scanned the room, looking for that telltale blur of motion again.
I caught it flickering in my peripheral vision in the nick of time, and blocked instinctively, feeling rather than seeing the blow, and was rewarded with the unmistakable whine of diamond-hard teeth slicing into steel.
“Frot!” said a voice close to my ear, an edge of aggrieved surprise in it, and I cut at the source of the sound, but of course my invisible assailant had the advantage of being able to see the humming weapon in my hand, and evaded it easily.
“Jurgen! Kasteen!” I bawled, “get back here!” but static hissed in my comm-bead, blotting out everything else. It seemed that the psyker, whoever he was, had the eldritch ability to block communications as well as my senses.[1] [1. Quite probably; the human brain operates on minute electrical impulses, so it’s perfectly possible that his masking field would also affect anything electronic in the vicinity.]
“You’re on your own, hero,” the voice taunted me, and I flicked through a guard position purely by instinct, being rewarded ag
ain with another jolting impact as I deflected a strike no more effective than the previous one had been. “Oh very good, or very lucky.” The voice had the whining timbre of someone insignificant and ineffectual who finally gets the chance to pick on someone they think is even weaker, and the sudden surge of anger that accompanied that realisation was strong enough to drive out most of the fear I felt. After all the monstrous foes I’d faced and bested, I wasn’t about to be beaten by some pathetic nonentity.
“I’ve fought daemons and real witches,” I said, keeping my voice light and easy. “A three-for-a-credit psyker’s not much of a challenge.” You might think goading the fellow was hardly sensible, but under the circumstances I thought I didn’t have a lot to lose. Sooner or later he’d manage to get past my guard, and the best chance I had was to keep him off-balance and hope he’d make a mistake, with any luck one that revealed his precise whereabouts long enough for me to cut the legs out from under him.
“I’m powerful enough to gut you!” Well, the getting him angry part of the plan appeared to be working. His voice rose in a petulant whinny, and a nearby armchair rocked a little as something banged into it. I struck out instantly, releasing a cloud of stuffing as my shrieking chainblade sliced through the grox hide upholstery, and was rewarded with a muffled curse. I could only just have missed him.
Stepping into the gap, following up my advantage by instinct, I suddenly found the flickering outline of a human figure solidifying like mist in front of me, wavering in and out of visibility like a badly-tuned hololith. There was an abrupt crash somewhere behind me as something ceramic shattered with an unmistakably expensive sound, and a familiar and surprisingly welcome odour filled the room.
“Hold on, commissar! I’m coming!” Jurgen bellowed, but the mere fact of his arrival was enough. Abruptly the ozone tang of sorcery was gone, replaced by the reassuring blend of old socks and flatulence, and a weasely little fellow, waving a wickedly-serrated combat blade as though he barely knew which end to point forwards, was standing in front of me, his eyes wide with shock.
“What did you…” he began, in tones of outrage, before my gently humming blade detached his head from his shoulders. He continued to stare at me for another instant, trying to comprehend his own death, until the pressure of his heartbeat pushed a fountain of blood through his neck and sent his head bouncing into a corner.
“Where were you, Jurgen?” I asked, trying to sound calm as I cleaned and resheathed the blade that had just saved my life yet again.
My aide shrugged, and indicated a tray on the floor, which contained the shattered remains of a tanna service not unlike the one he’d been using, and a spilled mound of sandwiches. “I saw the guards on the door standing aside to let everyone leave, so I went to get you and the colonel some refreshment. I thought you could do with it after all that talking.” He contemplated the wreckage of his errand for a moment, and re-slung the lasgun he’d readied across his shoulder. “I’d better go and get you some more.”
“Thank you,” I said, more by reflex than because I wanted the tanna, and turned to join him. “I’ll come with you and save you the trouble.” There didn’t seem much likelihood of another unnatural assassin lurking in the vicinity, or they would have attacked me together, but I wasn’t in the mood to take any more chances than I had to.
“Commissar?” Lord General Zyvan was emerging from the auditorium, Keesh at his shoulder, and a squad of his personal guard levelling their hellguns as they took in the unexpected vista of carnage. He glanced at the dead psyker, and raised an eyebrow. “I can see our dinner conversation is going to be even more interesting than I’d anticipated.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“It seems whoever was trying to kill you, he wasn’t a hybrid,” Zyvan said, handing the data-slate he’d been glancing at across the table to me. The aide who’d delivered it bowed formally and disappeared again, leaving us to our recaf. The dinner preceding it had more than lived up to my expectations, and although I was to become a great deal better acquainted with the genius of Zyvan’s personal chef in the years to come, up until that point I’d seldom tasted anything to compare with it.
The lord general had proven to be an affable and engaging host, which reinforced the positive impression I’d already formed of him after our initial meeting on Gravalax. All in all I’d found myself enjoying a remarkably pleasant evening, one that had improved even more after Amberley joined us.
Her appearance halfway through the first course, with polite but guarded apologies about having been unavoidably detained, had come as a most pleasant surprise, and the enthusiasm with which she began making up for lost time as soon as she got hold of a fork hinted that whatever she’d been called away to do earlier in the day had proven to be somewhat strenuous. She didn’t volunteer the information, and I knew better than to ask, as did Zyvan, of course, unless he knew already.[1] [1. He didn’t.]
Both had listened to my account of the day’s activities with every sign of interest, interrupting only to ask pertinent questions or for someone to pass the condiments. I’d started with the incident at Darien aerodrome, resisting the temptation to embroider things, because I knew from long experience that the more matter-of-fact I sounded about my supposed heroism the greater the credit tended to snowball.
“Keesh’s people are following up on the crew of the dirigible,” Amberley said, through a mouthful of sautéed grox heart. “Several key workers in the transport company have already disappeared, which seems significant, but no one they’ve netted so far seems tainted with the ’stealer genes.”
“So at least they won’t be trying that again,” I said, more in hope than expectation, and to my relief Amberley nodded.
“Keesh is stepping up security checks on all commercial air crews, so no one flies from now on without a gene scan.” She ladled a spoonful of grated radish onto the fragrant offal filling her plate. “I must say he seems pretty efficient for an arbitrator assigned to a backwater dirtball like Periremunda.”
“Maybe he annoyed the wrong people,” I said. It happens in every branch of the Imperial service, able and ambitious individuals getting sidelined by the nervous incompetents above them, or just backing the wrong side in the endless round of internal politics and getting their careers derailed as a result. Whereas I, who would have liked nothing more than to sit out my years of service in a pointless sinecure as far from harm’s way as possible, kept getting entirely the opposite. That just goes to prove what I’ve always suspected: the Emperor has a nasty sense of humour.
“Either way, it’s been good luck for us,” Zyvan said. He’d invited Keesh to join us as well, but the arbitrator had declined, preferring to follow up on our mysterious psyker as quickly as possible before the trail went cold. I hadn’t been all that surprised when his preliminary report arrived, and our would-be assassin turned out to be fully human (in so far as the phrase can ever be applied to someone touched by the warp, of course). None of the ’stealer spawn I’d encountered previously had shown any talent for warpcraft, and I mentioned as much.
“It’s never been documented,” Amberley agreed, which is as close as an inquisitor will ever get to dismissing something as impossible.
“That raises the question of where the fellow came from,” Zyvan pointed out, with a fastidious sip of his recaf, “and why he was so determined to kill the commissar.” I nodded in agreement.
“I was wondering about that myself,” I said. “I would have thought you or Keesh would have been the obvious targets.”
“Then I take it you haven’t seen a pictcast lately,” Amberley said dryly. I hadn’t, of course, taking no more interest in the mundane gossip of the indigenous civilians here than I had on any of the other planets I’d visited, and the attractive inquisitor lost no time in filling me in, amusement sparkling as always in the depths of her eyes. “The newsbands are full of you, and so are the printsheets. So far as the Periremundan in the street goes, you’re the public face of the Imperial Guard here.�
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“I see,” I said slowly, taking a sip of the bitter liquid in my cup, and feeling as though I’d suddenly sprouted a target icon between my shoulder blades. In my experience civilians had only the sketchiest idea of how the military actually functioned, and it seemed horribly feasible that some halfwit insurrectionist would think removing me from the equation would somehow undermine our ability to fight them.[1] That brought me right back to the most fundamental question. “So who was he, and who could have sent him?” [1. In actual fact, given his popularity among the Imperial Guard contingent, Cain’s assassination would have had a noticeably adverse effect on morale, something which, typically, seems not to have occurred to him.]
“Well, he was evidently a psyker,” Amberley said, “and a relatively weak one at that.” I nodded, trying to look as though I was keeping up, and fortunately Zyvan asked the obvious question before I could.
“How do you know he was weak?” He glanced at the data-slate again. “According to the autopsy he was at least forty years old, possibly close to fifty. He must have successfully concealed his curse for decades, or he would have been picked up by a black ship long ago.” I nodded too. According to the received wisdom, the taint of the warp usually appeared with the onset of puberty, and I mentioned as much.
“That’s generally true,” Amberley admitted, “but there are exceptions.” She shrugged, her pale yellow gown slipping across her skin in a fashion that distracted me very pleasantly for a moment or two. “You’d have to ask someone in the Malleus or Hereticus about that, though, rogue psykers are their department. But I do know enough about them to recognise a witch who can’t really control his powers.” She nodded at me. “You kept seeing flickers of movement in his general vicinity, you said.”
[Ciaphas Cain 05] - Duty Calls Page 11