Koyne ran through the screaming, panicking civilians, laser bolts ripping through the air, cutting them down. The assassin vaulted into the corridor and ran to the dead end of it. Red light from the giant Jovian storm seeped in through the observation window, making everything blurry and drenched in crimson.
Time, again. Little enough time. The Callidus concentrated and retched, opening a secondary stomach to vomit up a packet of white, doughy material. With shaking hands, Koyne ripped open the thin membrane sheathing it and allowed air to touch the pasty brick inside. It immediately began to blacken and melt, and quickly the assassin pressed it to the glassaic of the cupola.
The robots were still coming. The shooting had stopped and the Crusaders were advancing down the corridor. Koyne saw the shadows of them jumping on the curved walls, lurching closer.
The assassin sat down in the middle of the room and drew up into a foetal ball, forgetting the face of the civilian, forgetting Gergerra Rei and the Queen Jocasta, remembering instead something old. Koyne let the polymorphine soften flesh into waxen slurry, let it flow and harden into something that resembled the chitin of an insect. Air was expunged, organs pressed together. By turns the body became a mass of dark meat; but still not quickly enough.
The Crusader maniple advanced into the observation cupola just as the package of thermo-reactive plasma completed its oxygenation cycle and self-detonated. The blast shattered the glassaic dome and everything inside the cupola was blown out into space. Rei’s guardian machines spun away into the vacuum even as safety hatches fell to seal off the corridor. Koyne’s body, now enveloped in a cocoon of its own skin, went with them into the dark.
Outside, the Ultio hove closer.
SEVEN
Storm
Warning
An Old Wound Target
YOSEF SABRAT WAS out of his depth.
The audience chamber was big enough that it would have swallowed the footprint of his home three times over, and decorated with such riches that they likely equalled the price of every other house in the same district put together. It was a gallery of ornaments and treasures from all across the southern reaches of the Ultima Segmentum – discreet holographs labelled sculptures from Delta Tao and Pavonis, tapestries and threadwork from Ultramar, art from the colonies of the Eastern Fringes, triptychs of stunning picts in silver frames, glass and gold and steel and bronze… The contents of this one chamber alone shamed even the most resplendent of museums on Iesta Veracrux.
Thinking of his home world, Yosef reflexively looked up at the oval window above his head. The planet drifted there in stately silence, the dayside turning as dawn passed over the green-blue ribbons of ocean near the equator. But for all its beauty, he couldn’t shake the sense of it hanging over him like some monumental burden, ready to fall and crash him the moment his focus slipped. He looked away, finding Daig by his side. The other reeve glanced at him, and the expression on his cohort’s face was muted.
“What are we doing up here?” Daig asked quietly. “Look at this place. The light fittings alone are probably worth a governor’s ransom. I’ve never felt so common in my entire life.”
“I know what you mean,” Yosef replied. “Just stay quiet and nod in the right places.”
“Try not to show myself up, you mean?”
“Something like that.” A few metres away, Hyssos was mumbling quietly to the air; Yosef guessed that the operative had to have some sort of communicator implant that allowed him to subvocalise and send vox messages as easily as the jagers of the Sentine used a wireless. It had been clear to him the moment the Consortium shuttlecraft had landed in the precinct courtyard, the elegant swan-like ship making a point-perfect touchdown that barely disturbed the trees; Eurotas’ riches clearly bought the baron and his clan the best of everything. Still, that didn’t seem to sit squarely with the neglect he’d seen at the trader’s compound a day ago. He thought on that for a moment, making a mental note to consider it further.
The shuttle had swiftly brought them into deep orbit, there to meet the great elliptical hulk of the Iubar, flagship of the Eurotas Consortium and spaceborne palace of the rogue trader who led it. A handful of other smaller ships attended the Iubar like handmaidens around a queen; and Yosef only thought of them as smaller because the flagship was so huge. The support craft were easily a match for the tonnage of the largest of the system cruisers belonging to the Iestan PDF.
The psyker Perrig remained on the surface, having insisted on being taken to the Blasko lodge to take a sensing. Hyssos explained that the woman had the ability to divine the recent past of objects by the laying on of hands, and it was hoped that she would find Erno Sigg’s telepathic spoor at the location. Skelta drew the job of being her escort, and the silent panic on the jager’s face had been clear as daylight. The reeve marvelled how Hyssos seemed completely unconcerned by Perrig’s preternatural powers. He spoke of her as Yosef or Daig would discuss the skills of the documentary officers at a crime scene – as no more than a fellow investigator with unique talents all their own.
In the hours after his arrival – and his blunt dismissal of Laimner – Hyssos had thrown himself fully into the serial murder case, absorbing every piece of information he could get his hands on. Yosef knew that the man had already been briefed as fully as the Eurotas Consortium could – how else could he have known the names of everyone in the precinct without prior instruction from Gorospe and her offices? – but he was still forming his view of the situation.
Daig took a few hours to sleep in the shift room, but Yosef was caught up by Hyssos’ quiet intensity and sat with him, repeating his thoughts and impressions to him. The operative’s questions were all insightful and without artifice. He made the reeve think again on points of evidence and supposition, and Yosef found himself warming to the man. He liked Hyssos’ lack of pretence, his direct manner… and he liked the man for the way he had seen right through Berts Laimner at first glance.
“There’s more to this,” Hyssos had said, over a steaming cup of recaf. “Sigg murdering and playing artist with the corpses… That doesn’t add up.”
Yosef had agreed; but then the message had come down from command. The Void Baron had arrived, and the Governor was in a fit. Normally, a visitation from someone of Baron Eurotas’ rank would be a day of great import, a trade festival for Iesta’s merchants and moneyed classes, a diversion for her workers and commoners – but there had been no time to prepare. Even as the shuttle had taken them up to meet Hyssos’ summons, the government was in turmoil trying to throw together some hasty pomp and ceremony in order to make it seem like this had been planned all along.
Laimner tried one last time to get a foot on the shuttle. He said that Telemach had ordered him to give the baron the briefing, that he could not in good conscience remain behind and let a lesser officer take the responsibility. He’d looked at Yosef when he said those words. Yosef imagined that Telemach was probably unaware of the shuttle or the summons, probably too busy fretting with the Landgrave and the Imperial Governor and the Lord Marshal to notice. But again, Hyssos had firmly blocked the Reeve Warden from using this as any way to aggrandise himself, and left him behind as he took the two lowly reeves up into orbit.
It was an experience that Daig was never to forget; it was his first time off-world, and his usual manner had been replaced with something that approximated stoic dread.
Hyssos beckoned them towards the far end of the wide gallery, where a dais and audience chairs were arranged before a broad archway. Inside the arch was a carved frieze made of red Dolanthian jade. The artwork, easily the size of the front of Yosef’s house, showed a montage of interstellar merchants about their business, travelling from world to world, trading and spreading the light of the Imperium. In the centre, a sculpture of the Emperor of Mankind towered over everything. He was leaning forward, holding out his hand with the palm down. Kneeling before him was a man in the garb of a rogue trader patriarch, who held up an open book beneath the Emperor’s
hand.
Daig saw the artwork and gasped. “Who… Who is that?”
“The first of the Eurotas,” said Hyssos. “He was the commander of a warship that served the Emperor many centuries ago, a man of great diligence and courage. As a mark of respect, for his service, the Emperor granted him the freedom of space and made him a rogue trader.”
“But the book…” said Daig, pointing. “What is he doing with the book?”
Yosef looked closer and saw what Daig was talking about. The artwork clearly showed what could only be a cut upon the Emperor’s downturned palm and a drip of blood – rendered here from a single faceted ruby – falling down towards the page of the open tome.
“That is the Warrant of Trade,” said a new voice, as footsteps approached from behind them. Yosef turned to see a hawkish, imperious man in the same cut of robes as the figure in the frieze. A group of guardsmen and attendants walked in lockstep behind him, but the man paid them no mind. “The letter of marque and statement granting my clan the right to roam the stars in the name of humanity. Our liege lord ratified it with a drop of his own blood upon the page.” He gestured around. “We carry the book in safety aboard the Iubar as we have for generation after generation.”
Daig glanced about him, as if for a moment thinking he might actually see the real thing; but then disappointment clouded his face and his jaw set in a thin line.
“My lord,” said Hyssos, with a bow that the reeves belatedly imitated. “Gentlemen. Allow me to introduce his lordship Merriksun Eurotas, Void Baron of Narvaji, Agentia Nuntius of the Taebian Sector and master of the Eurotas Trade Consortium—”
“Enough, enough,” Eurotas waved him into silence. “I will hear that a thousand times more once I venture down to the surface. Let us dispense with formality and cut to the meat of this.” The baron gave Yosef and Daig a hard, measuring stare before he spoke again. “I will make my wishes clear, gentlemen. The situation on Iesta Veracrux is delicate, as it is on many worlds among the Taebian Stars. There is a storm coming. A war born of insurrection, and when it brushes these planets with the heat of its passage there will be fire and death. There will be.” He blinked and paused. For a moment, a note of strange emotion crept into his words, but then he flattened it with a breath of air.
“These… killings. They serve only to heap tension and fear upon a populace already in the grip of a slow terror. People will lash out when they are afraid, and that is bad for stability. Bad for business.”
Yosef gave a slow nod of agreement. It seemed the rogue trader understood the situation better than the reeve’s own commanders; and then he had a sudden, chilling thought. Was the same thing happening on other planets? Had Eurotas seen this chain of events elsewhere in the Taebian Sector?
“I want this murderer found and brought to justice,” Eurotas concluded. “This case is important, gentlemen. Complete it, and you will let your people know that we… that the Imperium… is still in power out here. Fail, and you open the gateway to anarchy.” He began to turn away. “Hyssos will make available to you any facilities you may need.”
“Sir?” Daig took a step after the rogue trader. “My, uh, lord baron?”
Eurotas paused. When he looked back at the other reeve, he did so with a raised eyebrow and an arch expression. “You have a question?”
Daig blurted it out. “Why do you care? About Iesta Veracrux, I mean?”
The baron’s eyes flashed with a moment of annoyance, and Yosef heard Hyssos take a sharp breath. “Dagonet is falling, did you know that?” Daig nodded and the baron went on. “And not only Dagonet. Kelsa Secundus. Bowman. New Mitama. All dark.” Eurotas’ gaze crossed Yosef’s and for a moment the nobleman appeared old and tired. “Erno Sigg was one of my men. I bear a measure of responsibility for his conduct. But it is more than that. Much more.” Yosef felt the rogue trader’s gaze pinning him in place. “We are alone out here, gentlemen. Alone against the storm.”
“The Emperor protects,” said Daig quietly.
Eurotas gave him an odd look. “So they tell me,” he replied, at length; and then he was walking away, the audience at an end and Yosef’s thoughts clouded with more questions than answers.
WHEN THE GULL wing hatch of the flyer opened, the first thing that Fon Tariel experienced was the riot of smells. Heady and potent floral scents flooded into the interior of the passenger compartment, buoyed on warm air. He blinked at the daylight streaking in, and with wary footsteps he followed Kell out and into… wherever this place was.
Unlike the Eversor, who had not been afraid to provide the group with the location of one of their Terran facilities, the Clade Venenum made it clear in no uncertain terms that the members of the Execution Force would not be free to come to them of their own accord. The Siress had been most emphatic; only two members of the group were granted passage to the complex, and both were required to be unarmed and unequipped.
Tariel was learning Kell’s manner by and by, and he could see that the Vindicare was ill at ease without a gun on him. The infocyte was sympathetic to the sniper; he too had been forced to leave his tools behind on board the Ultio, and he felt strangely naked without his cogitator gauntlet. Tariel’s hand kept straying to his bare forearm without his conscious awareness of it.
The journey aboard the unmarked Venenum flyer had done nothing to give them any more clue to the whereabouts of the complex called the Orchard. The passenger compartment had no windows, no way for them to reckon the direction of their flight. Tariel had been dismayed to learn that his chronometer and mag-compass implants were being suppressed, and now as he stepped out of the craft they both flickered back to life, giving him a moment of dizziness.
He glanced around; they stood on a landing pad at the top of a wide metal ziggurat, just shy of the canopies of tall trees with thick leaves that shone like dark jade. The jungle smells were stronger out here, and the olfactory processor nodes in his extended braincase worked furiously to sift through the sensoria. Tariel guessed that they were somewhere deep in the rich rainforests of Merica, but it was only a speculative deduction. There was no way to know for sure.
A man in a pale green kimono and a domino mask emerged from a recessed staircase on the side of the ziggurat and beckoned them to follow him. Tariel was content to let Kell lead the way, and the three of them descended. The sunshine attenuated as they dropped below the line of the upper canopy, becoming shafts of smoky yellow filled with motes of dust and the busy patterns of flying insects.
A pathway of circular grey stones awaited them on the jungle floor, and they picked their way along it, the man in the kimono surefooted and confident. Tariel was more cautious; his eyes were drawn this way and that by bright, colourful sprays of plants that grew from every square metre of ground. He saw small worker mechanicals moving among them; what seemed at first glance to be wild growth was actually some sort of carefully random garden. The robotics were ministering to the plants, harvesting others.
He paused, studying one odd spindly blossom he did not recognise emerging from the bark of a tall tree. He leaned closer.
“I would not, Vanus.” The man in the kimono placed a gentle hand on his shoulder and reeled him back. Before he could ask why, the man made an odd knocking noise with his lips and in response the blossom grew threadlike legs and wandered away, up the tree trunk. “Mimical spiders, from Beta Cornea III. They adapt well to the climate here on Terra. Their venom causes a form of haemorrhagic fever in humans.”
Tariel recoiled and blinked. Looking again, he drew up data from his memory stacks, classifying the plant life. Castor, nightshade and oleander; Cerbera odollam, digitalis and Jerusalem cherry; hemlock and larkspur and dozens of others, all of them brimming with their own particular strains of poisons. He kept his hands to himself from then on, not wavering at all from the pathway until it deposited them in a clearing – although clearing was hardly the word, as the place was overgrown with vines and low greenery. In the middle of the area was an ancient house, doubtless thou
sands of years old; it too was swamped by the jungle’s tendrils, and Tariel noted that such coverage would serve well as a blind for orbital sensors and optical scopes.
“Not what I expected,” muttered Kell, as they followed the man in the kimono towards an ivy-covered doorway.
“It appears to be a manse,” said the infocyte. “I can only estimate when it was built. The rainforest has reclaimed it.”
Inside, Tariel expected the place to show the same level of disarray as the exterior, but he was mistaken. Within, the building had been sealed against the elements and wildlife, and care had been taken to return it to its original form. It was only the gloom inside, the weak and infrequent sunlight through the windows, that betrayed the reality. The Vanus and the Vindicare were taken to an anteroom where a servitor was waiting, and the helot used a bulbous sensing wand to scan them both, checking everything down to their sweat and exhalations for even the smallest trace of outside toxins. The man in the kimono explained that it was necessary in order to maintain the balance of poisons in the Orchard proper.
From the anteroom, they went to what had once been a lounge. Along the walls there were numerous cages made of thin glassaic, rank upon rank of them facing outward. Tariel’s skin crawled as he made out countless breeds of poisonous reptiles, ophidians and insects, each in their own pocket environment within the cases. The infocyte moved to the middle of the room, instinctively placing himself at the one point furthest from all the cage doors.
A thing with a strange iridescent carapace flittered in its confinement, catching his eye, and the sheen of the chitin recalled a recent memory. The flesh of the Callidus had looked just the same when they had pulled Koyne out of the vacuum over Jupiter; the shapeshifting assassin had done a peculiar thing, turning into a deformed, almost foetus-like form in order to survive in the killing nothingness of space. Koyne’s skin had undergone a state change from flesh to something like bone, or tooth. Tariel recalled the disturbing sensation of touching it and he recoiled once again.
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