by Dan Abnett
So she’d borrowed her uncle’s transport and driven in to work instead. Uncle Valeryn was getting on, and pretty much housebound. He’d been a musician in his day, though mental infirmity meant the clavichord no longer sang under his fingers. But he’d been successful enough to accumulate modest wealth, and afford a two-storey town-hab in an inner formal, and a private nurse.
Maud was his only living relative, and she’d come to live with him when she started her work with the Magistratum. Valeryn hadn’t really approved of his niece’s occupation, though nowadays he often couldn’t remember what it was she did.
‘Can I borrow the Bergman, Uncle Vally?’ she’d asked that morning, drinking a caff over the sink, clad in her full uniform. It was early still, dark outside, but her uncle had been up for hours, sitting at the spinet as if wondering what the ebony keys were meant to do.
He hadn’t driven the Bergman since ’89, when the Administratum had cancelled his permit on health grounds. But he kept it garaged in the private bunkers under the hab block, and once in a while allowed Plyton to drive him out to the Stairtown Parks on her day off.
‘Are we going to the parks?’ he asked.
‘Not today, Vally. But I need to get into the A. Work. It’s important.’
He looked at her, in her full Magistratum harness, body-plate, helmet hooked at her waist, and said, ‘What is it you do, Maud?’
‘I work, Vally. Can I use the Bergman?’
He shrugged. ‘I suppose.’ He turned away, and started to plink at middle C.
She let herself out quietly, taking the keys from the jar on the shelf above the hall heater.
The Bergman Amity Veluxe was a four-litre carbide coupé with slate-green bodywork and extravagant chrome. Plyton adored it, adored its leather and linseed smell, its rumbling under note. On her salary, even allowing for promotion, she’d never afford a private transporter like the Bergman herself. The story went her uncle had been given it as a gift by a conductor who had been brought to tears by the way Valeryn had played a particular work.
As she drove up through the expressways and interlinks of the inner formals, the traffic grew denser. Thick clouds of acid fog had draped the streets with a yellow mist. She saw rail transit stations closed and guarded, and PDF detachments manning unshrouded weapon emplacements on the buttresses of high stacks. The hive had armed itself.
Regular roadblocks hemmed in the choking traffic, Magistratum officers in rain-slickers checking permits and idents. Plyton began to wonder if she’d have been better off staying at home.
She began to wonder what the hell had happened at the diplomatic palace.
She risked a down-ramp, and used her knowledge of the sink-level street-grid to pull ahead of the blocked arterials. At Whiskane Circus, she took a surface ramp and tried to join the Formal A South Express.
Another impasse. A vast multitude of Administratum workers had attempted to meet the start of their shifts by walking in along the pavements and overpasses. Now the foot traffic was also bound up, as the Magistratum checked IDs and gradually let them into the inner formal walks a few at a time.
She waited patiently until the crawling line of traffic brought her up to a checkpoint.
An officer approached.
Plyton opened the cab window and flashed her warrant. ‘Special Crime Department. I’m trying to get to work.’
‘Not this way, marshal,’ the officer said. ‘Sorry. No road access to A along here.’
‘What do I do?’
The officer waved with his lumin baton in the fog. ‘Turn east. We’re allowing Magistratum personnel into the formal along Parsonage Avenue.’ He turned. ‘Magistratum! Let it through!’
Plyton yanked on the anchor-shaped wheel, and pulled through the gap he had indicated as other officers lifted aside a sawhorse barrier. Other traffic – omnibuses and private cargoes – hooted in disgust as they watched her slip through.
Plyton edged the Bergman along through packs of pedestrians slow to give way. Through the rain and the stroking wipers, she glimpsed a familiar face and thumped the horn.
Grim, weary faces turned to scowl at her.
She leaned out of her window. ‘Limbwall! Hey, Limbwall!’
In the crowd, the department’s skinny secretary officer, laden down with an armful of files, turned and saw her.
‘Get in!’
Perplexed, he clambered in the passenger side, and Plyton moved off through the crowd.
‘Morning,’ she said.
‘Is this yours?’ he asked, trying to wipe the sudden condensation off the fat lenses of his augmetic optics.
‘I borrowed it.’
‘Who from?’
‘My uncle.’
‘And he’s what? The playboy nephew of the lord governor sub?’
‘I know. Nice, isn’t it?’
‘Doesn’t even begin to cover it. Throne, what a morning! Like a fool, I tried to walk in. Rail was closed.’
‘You walked from Formal E?’
He looked at her. ‘I serve the aquila. What else was I supposed to do? I mean, what in the name of Terra happened here last night?’
‘I was hoping you could tell me that.’
Limbwall shrugged. ‘I don’t know much. I heard rumours that an attempt had been made on the chief provost’s life last night.’
‘Where? At the palace? Someone tried to kill Trice?’
‘That’s what I heard.’
‘From?’
‘People in the crowd.’
‘Not a great source, Limbwall. Stick to your clerking. No one’s crazy or powerful enough to try for Trice.’
Limbwall glanced out of the window. ‘You got a better explanation?’
She hadn’t. The clogging tides of pedestrians had thinned out now, and they were making better time through almost deserted streets and sink-routes that the barricades had closed off. Even so, they had to stop twice to allow unfriendly squads of PDF to check their authority.
‘You realise that we’re going to have to go all the way round the inner circle to get to mag central.’
Plyton nodded. ‘Better that than wait in a queue. Besides, this way we can stop in at the sacristy en route. I was going to have to go there this morning anyway. This saves me a trip. If you don’t mind.’
‘Not at all,’ Limbwall said. He was clearly enjoying his ride in the ornate roadster. ‘By the way, speaking of the sacristy case, I pulled that file for you.’
‘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 any more,’ 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’s 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’s 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’s 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.