Kell’s lips thinned. He didn’t approach any closer. Although the Garantine was not tethered to the deck by any chains or fetters, there was no way he could have come to his feet. The gravitational plates beneath the floor of the Eversor’s compartment were operating well above their standard setting, confining the assassin to the floor with the sheer weight of his own flesh. Veins stood out from his bare skin as his bio-modified physiology worked to keep him alive; an unaugmented human would have died from collapsed lungs or crushed organs within an hour or so.
The Garantine had been in the room for two days now, enduring a regimen of antipsychotics and neural restoratives.
Kell studied him. “It must be difficult for you,” he began. “The doubt. The uncertainty.”
“There’s no hesitation in me,” gasped the Eversor. “Let me up and you’ll see.”
“The mission, I mean.” That got him the smallest flash of hesitation from behind the Garantine’s skull-face. “To wake without direction… That can’t have been easy on you.”
“I will kill,” said the Eversor.
“Yes,” agreed the Vindicare. “And kill and kill and kill, until you are destroyed. But it will be for nothing. Worthless.”
With an agonised grunt, the Garantine tried to lurch forward, clawing towards the open doorway. “I’ll kill you,” he grated. “Worth something.”
Kell resisted the reflex to step back. “You think so?”
“Broke your gun, back there,” muttered the Eversor, the sweat thick on his bare neck. “Pity. Were you… attached to it?”
Kell didn’t rise to the bait; his prized longrifle had been custom-made by Isherite weaponsmiths, and it had served him well for years. “It was just a weapon.”
“Like me?”
He spread his hands. “Like all of us.” Kell paused, then went on. “The accident that woke you early… The Vanus Tariel tells me that it would take too long to put you under again, to go through all the hypno-programming and conditioning. So we either vent you to space and start anew with another one of your kindred, or we find—”
“A different way?” The rage-killer gave a coughing chuckle. “If I was chosen by my clade for whatever is planned, I’m the one you need. Can’t do it without me.”
“I’m compelled to agree.” Kell gave a thin smile. The Garantine was no mindless thug, appearances to the contrary. “I was going to say we would find an understanding.”
The other assassin laughed painfully. “What can you offer me that would be richer than tearing your head from your neck, sniper?”
The Vindicare stared into the Eversor’s wide, bloodshot eyes. “Nothing has been said yet, but the directors can only be bringing us together for one reason. One target. And I think you’d like to be there when he dies.”
He said the name, and behind his fanged mask the Garantine grinned.
YOSEF’S HANDS WERE tight fists, and it was all he could do not to haul back and smack that weak half-smile off the face of Reeve Warden Laimner. For a giddy moment, he pictured himself with Laimner’s greasy curls in his hand, smashing his face against the tiled floor of the precinct house, beating him into a broken ruin. The potency of the anger was startlingly strong, and it took an effort to rein himself in.
Laimner was waving his hand in Daig’s face and going on and on about how all of this was Segan’s fault for not following proper channels, for not calling in backup units. He had been singing the same song all the way back from the Blasko lodge.
“You lost the suspect,” the warden bleated, “you had him and you lost him.” Laimner glared at Yosef. “Why didn’t you take a shot? Leg hit? Put him down, even?”
“I could have walked Sigg in through the front door,” Daig grated. “He was going to surrender!”
Laimner rounded on him. “Are you an idiot? Do you really believe that?” He stabbed at a pile of crime scene picts on the desk before him. “Sigg was playing you. He wanted to make meat-toys out of you both, and you almost let him do it!”
Yosef found his voice and bit out a question. “How did you know where we were?”
“Don’t be stupid, Sabrat,” said the warden. “Do you think the High-Reeve would let you off on a major case like this without having you tracked every second?”
Yosef saw Daig go pale at that, but he didn’t remark on it. Instead, he pressed on. “We had a solid lead, from a… a reliable source! We could have brought Sigg to book, but you came in mob-handed and ruined it!”
“Watch your tone, reeve!” Laimner shot back. He ran a deliberate finger down his warrant rod to emphasise his rank. “Remember who you’re talking to!”
“If you want to run this case, then do it,” Yosef continued. “But otherwise don’t second-guess the investigating officers!”
The warden’s sneering smile returned. “I was following Telemach’s orders.”
Yosef’s lip curled. “Well, thanks for making that clear. I thought it was just your impatience and poor judgement that would make this case fall apart, but it seems like the problem is further up the line.”
“You insubordinate—!”
“Sir!” Skelta burst into the wardroom before Laimner could finish his sentence. “He’s here! The, uh, man. The baron’s man.”
Laimner’s attitude transformed in the blink of an eye. “What? But they’re not supposed to be here until tomorrow morning.”
“Um,” Skelta gestured at the door. “Yes. No.” Yosef turned to see two figures entering behind the jager. The first was an ebon-skinned man who matched Sabrat for height, but was broader across the chest, with the thickset look of a scrumball player. He had ash-coloured hair that fell to his shoulders and an oblong data monocle that almost hid a faint scar over his right eye. At his side was a pale, thin woman with a bald head covered in intricate tattoos. Both of them wore the same green and silver livery Yosef had seen on Bellah Gorospe, but the man’s cuffs bore some kind of ornate flashing that had to be indicative of rank. The woman had a golden brooch, he noted, in the shape of an open eye. As he looked at her she raised her head to meet his gaze and he saw the unmistakable shape of an iron collar around her neck, like one that might be used to tether a dangerous animal. It seemed crude and out of place on her.
The man surveyed the room; something in his manner told Yosef he had heard every word of the argument that had preceded his entrance. The woman – it was hard to determine her age, he noted – continued to stare at him.
Laimner recovered well and gave a shallow bow. “Operatives. It’s a pleasure to have you here on Iesta Veracrux.”
“My name is Hyssos,” said the man. His voice was solemn. He indicated his companion. “This is my associate, Perrig.”
Daig was gawking at the woman. “She’s a psyker,” he blurted. “The eye. That’s what it means.” He tapped his lapel in the same place where Perrig’s brooch was pinned.
Yosef saw that the eye design was subtly repeated in among the woman’s tattoos. His first reaction was denial; it was common knowledge, even on the most parochial of worlds, that psykers were forbidden. The Emperor himself, at a council called on the planet Nikaea, had outlawed the use of psionic sensitives, even among the Legions of his own Space Marines. While some stripes of psyker were approved under the tightest reins of Imperial control – the gifted Navigators who guided ships through the immaterium or the telepaths who carried communications between worlds, for example – most were considered mind-witches, dangerous and unstable aberrants to be corralled and neutered. Yosef had never been face to face with a psyker before this day, and Perrig unnerved him greatly. Her gaze upon him made him feel like he was made of glass. He swallowed hard as at last she looked away.
“My lord baron has sanction from the Council of Terra to employ an indentured psionic,” Hyssos explained. “Perrig’s talents are extremely useful in my line of work.”
“And what work is that?” said Daig.
“Security, Reeve Segan,” he replied. Hyssos’ manner made it clear he knew the
name of every person in the room.
Yosef nodded to himself. He knew that the Eurotas clan wielded great power and influence across the Ultima Segmentum, but he had never guessed it had such reach. To be granted dispensation against so rigid a ruling as the Decree of Nikaea was telling indeed; he couldn’t help but wonder what other rules the Void Baron was free to ignore.
“I had expected you to go straight to the Eurotas compound,” Laimner ventured, trying to recover control of the conversation. “You’ve had a long journey—”
“Not so long,” replied Hyssos, still sweeping the room with his gaze. “The baron will arrive very soon. He will want a full accounting of the situation. I see no reason to delay.”
“How… soon?” managed Skelta.
“A day,” Hyssos offered, his answer drawing Laimner up short. “Perhaps less.”
The Reeve Warden licked his lips. “Well. In that case, I’ll have a briefing prepared.” He gave a weak smile. “I will make myself available to the baron on his arrival for a full and thorough—”
“Forgive me,” Hyssos broke in. “Reeves Sabrat and Segan are the lead investigators in the case, are they not?”
“Well, yes,” said Laimner, clearly uncertain of how he should behave towards the Eurotas operative. “But I am the senior precinct officer, and—”
“But not an investigating officer,” Hyssos went on, his tone level and firm. He gave Yosef a brief glance through his monocle. “The baron prefers to have information delivered to him as directly as possible. From the men closest to it.”
“Of course,” the warden said tightly, catching up to the realisation that he was being dismissed. “You must proceed as you see fit.”
Hyssos nodded once. “You have my promise, Reeve Warden. Perrig and I will help Iesta Veracrux to bring this murderer to justice in short order. Please pass that assurance on to the High-Reeve and the Landgrave in my stead.”
“Of course,” Laimner repeated, his smile weak and false. Without another word, he left the room, shooting Yosef a final, acid glare as he closed the door behind him.
Yosef felt wrung out by the events of the day even though it had hardly begun. He sighed and looked away, only to find the woman Perrig watching him again.
When she spoke, her voice had a melody to it that was at odds with the fire in her eyes. “There is a horror here,” she told them. “Darkness clustering at the edges of perception. Lies and murder.” The psyker sighed. “All of you have seen it.”
Yosef broke her gaze with no little effort oh his part and gave Hyssos a nod. “Where do you want to start?”
“You tell me,” said the operative.
ULTIO DRIFTED INTO the gravity well of the gas giant, crossing the complex web of orbits described by Jupiter’s outer moons. It was almost a solar system in miniature, with the gas giant at its core rather than the blazing orb of a sun. The cloud of satellites and Trojan asteroids surrounding it were full of human colonies, factories and forges, powered by drinking in the radiation surging from the mammoth planet, feeding on mineral riches that in centuries of exploitation had yet to be fully exhausted. Jupiter was Terra’s shipyard, and its sky was forever filled with vessels. Centred around Ganymede and a dozen other smaller moons, spacedocks and fabricatories worked ceaselessly to construct everything from single-crew Raven interceptors up to the gargantuan hulls of mighty Emperor-class command-carrier battleships.
In a zone so dense with spacecraft and orbitals of every kind, it should have been easy for the Ultio to become lost in the shoals of them; but security was tight, and suspicion was at every point of the compass. In the opening moves of the insurrection, an alliance of turncoats, men of the Mechanicum and traitors from the Word Bearers Legion, had assembled in secret a dreadnought called the Furious Abyss, constructing it in a clandestine berth on the asteroid-moon Thule. The small Jovian satellite had been obliterated during the ship’s explosive departure and the ragged clump of its remains still orbited far out at the edges of the planetary system; but the shockwave from Thule’s destruction and the Abyss incident was still being felt.
Thus, the Ultio moved with care and raised no uncertainties, doing nothing to draw attention to itself. Secure in its falsehood, the vessel passed under the shadow of the habitats at Iocaste and Ananke and then deeper into the Galiliean ranges, passing the geo-engineered ocean-moon of Europa and Io’s seething orange mass. It followed a slow and steady course in across the planet’s bands of dirty orange, umber and cream-grey clouds, down towards the Great Red Spot.
A vast spindle floated there, bathed in the crimson glow; Saros Station resembled a crystal chandelier severed from its mountings and cast free into the void, turning and catching starlight. Unlike the majority of its industrial and colonial cohorts, Saros was a resort platform where the Jovian elite could find respite and diversion from the works of the shipyards and manufactories. It was said that only the Venus orbitals could surpass Saros Station for its luxury. Avenues of gold and silver, acres of null-g gardens and auditoriums; and the finest opera house outside the Imperial Palace.
THE STATION FILLED the view through the Ultio’s canopy as the ship drifted closer.
“Why are we here?” asked Iota, with an idle sullenness.
“Our next recruit,” Tariel told her. “Koyne, of the Clade Callidus.”
At the rear of the flight deck, the Garantine bent his head to avoid slamming it against the ceiling. He made a rasping, spitting noise. “What do we need one of them for?”
“Because the Master of Assassins demands it,” Kell replied, without turning.
The Vanus glanced up from the displays fanned out around his gauntlet. “According to my information, there is an important cultural event taking place. A recital of the opus Oedipus Neo.”
“The what?” sniffed the Eversor.
“A theatrical performance of dance, music and oratory,” Tariel went on, oblivious to his derision, “It is a social event of great note in the Jovian Zone.”
“Must have lost my invite,” the Eversor rumbled.
“And this Koyne is down there?” Iota wandered to the viewport and pressed her hands to it, staring at Saros. “How will we know a faceless Callidus among so many faces?”
Kell studied the abstract contact protocols he had been provided and frowned. “We are to… send flowers.”
GERGERRA REI WEPT like a child as Jocasta went to her death.
His knuckles turned white as he held on to the balustrade around the edge of the roaming box the theatre had provided. Behind him, the machine-sentries in his personal maniple stood motionless and uncomprehending as their master’s lips trembled in a breathy gasp. Rei leaned forward, almost as if he could will her not to take the steel noose and place it over her supple neck. A cry was filling his throat; he wanted to call to her, but he could not.
The nobleman had seen the opera before, and while it had always held his attention, it had never touched him as much as it had this night. Every biannual performance of Oedipus Neo was a lavish, sumptuous affair orbited by dozens of stately dinners, parties and gatherings, but at the core it was about the play.
Everyone in the Jovian set shared the same fears about this year’s act; at first it had only been dreary naysayers who claimed it should not be put on because of the conflicts, but then after the diva Solipis Mun had perished in a tragic airlock accident… Many more had felt the opera should not have continued, as a mark of respect to her.
But if he was honest, Rei did not miss Mun onstage. As Jocasta, she had played the part with gusto and power, indeed, but after so many repetitions her investment in the character had grown careworn and flat. But now this new queen, this new Jocasta – a woman from the Venusian halls, as he understood it – had taken the part and breathed new life into it. In the first act, she seemed to mimic Mun’s style, but soon she blossomed into her own interpretation of the role, and with it, she eclipsed the late diva so completely that Rei had all but forgotten her predecessor as the opera rolled to
wards its conclusion. The new actress had also brought with her new direction, and the performance had been shifted from the usual modern-dress style to a strangely timeless mode of costume, all in metallic colours and soft curves that Rei found quite alluring.
And now, with the stage drenched in blood-coloured light and flickers of lightning from the Red Spot beyond the skylights, the character of Jocasta took her own life as the orchestra struck an ominous chord. Against reason, Rei hoped that the play might suddenly diverge from the story he knew so well; but it did not. As the actress’ body melted away into the wings and the final scenes of the opera unfolded, he found he could not focus on the fate of poor, blinded Oedipus, the lead actor giving his all in a finale that brought the audience to its feet in a storm of applause.
It was only as the floating viewing box returned to the high balcony with a silken thud that Rei regained a measure of composure, pulling himself back from a daze.
She had truly moved him. It had almost been as if this new Jocasta were performing only to Rei; he could swear that even in the moment of her drama’s suicide, she had looked directly to him and wept in unison.
Rei’s ranking meant that he had, as a matter of course, an invitation to the post-show gathering in the auditorium proper. Usually he declined, preferring the company of his machines to those of the venal peacocks who drifted about Jupiter’s entertainment community. Tonight, however, he would not decline. He would meet her.
THE PARTY WAS jubilant, high with the thrill of the performance’s energy as if it still resonated around the theatre even after the last note of music had faded. Critics from the media took turns to congratulate the director and the actor who had played the tortured king, but all of them did so while looking about in hopes of catching a glimpse of the true star of the show; the queen of this night, the new Jocasta.
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