Across almost every system in the galaxy, orks slaughtered and pillaged their way at random, and he viciously suppressed his memories of the wartorn world of Armageddon. And this close to the eastern fringes, he knew it was only a matter of time until the expanding borders of theTau Empire reached Pavonis.
Yes, the galaxy was a hostile place, and only united through stability could the Imperium of Man hope to survive. Any other course of action was folly of the worst kind and he had sworn an oath to ensure that its stability was preserved. What had the rulers of Pavonis done to preserve the sanctity of the Emperor's realm?
He returned to his chair and activated the display terminal. The corner of the display blinked with yet another message, but he ignored it, knowing it would be another invitation to sample the hospitality of one of the cartels. Invitations to dine, to hunt, to drink and partake in other, less savoury, pastimes had come in from the every one of the commercial houses. He had politely declined them all.
He scrolled down the information he had collated over the last two days.
Of the smaller cartels, he had found nothing more than the usual round of alliances, counter alliances and pact breaking. The leaders of the larger cartels were a much more interesting cast of rogues, however.
Beauchamp Abrogas spent his time destroying his central nervous system with illegal drugs and squandering his family's fortune.
Taryn Honan was a fat fool, who spent fabulous sums on courtesans and would have a hard time managing a room full of lobotomised servitors.
He didn't know much about Solana Vergen, but had sensed the falseness of her grief over the. death of her father. And changing her cartel's vote so spectacularly in the senate chamber did not bode well for the stability of her personality.
De Valtos spent most of his time locked away at his estates or chasing after antiques scattered throughout the system. Even a blind man could see the hatred and bitterness he harboured towards the governor, though Barzano could find no direct cause for that rancour. That definitely warranted further investigation. There was also the tangible link between de Valtos and the dark eldar, but Barzano understood it was not the sort of link that would engender co-operation. He had been tortured almost unto death aboard the alien vessel and, despite all the odds against such an occurrence, survived.
Barzano had discounted Mykola Shonai at the start of his investigations. He had felt no deceit from her upon their meeting and, in any case, her second, six-year term as planetary governor was almost at an end and the constitution of Pavonis forbade her to serve a consecutive third. She had nothing to gain and everything to lose by prolonging the current state of affairs. Ario Barzano knew that this fact alone could not discount her from his suspicions: he had exposed traitors with far less motive than Shonai. But affairs such as these had been his daily bread for too many years now and he fancied that he had a talent for spotting a liar, and Mykola Shonai did not seem like one to him.
Truth be told, he admired the woman. She had tried her best for her world. But he knew that simply trying one's best was not good enough on its own. Effort had to be coupled with results and the results on Pavonis spoke for themselves.
But theTaloun…
That was a different story. Defeated twice in the elections by the combined power of the Shonai and Vergen cartels over the last ten years, Vendare Taloun had everything to gain. Whenever he approached problems such as these, he always began by asking the same question. Who has the most to gain? In the chaos of terrorist activities, alien pirates and political upheaval, Taloun's cartel stood out amongst all the others.
It had suffered less than the others in the bombings with the possible exception of the Shonai, and Barzano had long ago accepted the truth that there was no such thing as coincidence in this existence. The synchronicity of timing in the arrival of the eldar raiders and the emergence of the Church of Ancient Ways spoke of an orchestrating hand to him. Taloun had already displayed his cunning and Barzano knew that the serpentine paths of his mind were easily capable of devising such a scheme.
He pushed himself away from the terminal and finished his glass. He had an early start tomorrow and wondered what else he might uncover. He had told his Adeptus Arbites liaison to dress in civilian clothes and suddenly wondered if she actually owned such things. She looked like the kind of person who lived for her calling and he smiled, realising that they were very much alike then.
Barzano heard the low voices of his Ultramarine bodyguards outside his chambers and spared a thought for Uriel Ventris. It was unfortunate that he could not tell Uriel the truth, but Barzano knew that if he had done so, he might very well have had a problem with the Space Marine captain.
He looked over to the secure safe in the wall, hidden behind the portrait of a man called Forlanus Shonai, where he had secreted the box.
He fought the urge to open it and examine the thing it contained.
For the sake of the Pavonis he prayed that he would not need to.
Uriel could see that it irked Lord Admiral Tiberius to have a system pilot aboard his vessel, but knew the admiral was canny enough to accept its necessity. The quickest route Uriel and Tiberius had plotted towards Caernus IV, site of the most recent eldar attack, took them directly through a wide asteroid belt and, without local knowledge of the safe routes through, they would surely come to grief.
Six tense hours had passed with the pilot expertly guiding them through the maze of enormous asteroids and Uriel prayed to the Emperor, Guilliman and all the saints that they would be through soon.
The system map provided by Governor Shonai had proved to be extremely useful, marking the location of every attack of the eldar raiders. Uriel had not appreciated the scale of the raids until he had seen the map: just over a hundred attacks in just six years. Almost every attack had seen a settlement utterly destroyed or a vessel crippled and its crew slaughtered. Uriel's admiration for Kasimir de Valtos had grown as he contemplated the courage and determination it must have taken for him to engineer his escape from these despicable aliens.
'Helm control, come right to heading zero-two-five, thirty degrees down angle,' called the system pilot. 'Come on, my beauty, we can fit you through there.'
Uriel glanced up from the plotting table in surveyor control towards the viewing bay and blanched as he saw the gap in the gently spinning asteroids the pilot was aiming for. He held his breath, watching as the two giant rocks, each bigger than the Vae Victus by several million tonnes, slid past the ship. Uriel saw Tiberius gripping the edge of the captain's pulpit tightly, his knuckles white and his face lined with worry. He had only reluctantly allowed a pilot with local knowledge to direct his ship, but had drawn the line at allowing him to do so from his pulpit.
'Do you have to fly so close to these damned rocks?' snapped Tiberius, his patience with the pilot finally fraying. 'If you even graze one of them, we'll all be sucking vacuum.'
The pilot, a native of the Altemaxa forges by the name of Krivorn grinned, exposing yellowed stumps of teeth.
'This?' he scoffed. 'Ha! I'm takin' it easy on you boys. This is the easy route. I coulda taken you along Derelicts' Alley. Then you would've seen some flying.'
' ''Derelicts'' Alley?' quizzed Uriel. 'That's not marked on this chart of yours.'
'Nah,' agreed Krivorn. 'It's just a name I came up with after I nearly lost a ship there once.'
'You nearly lost a ship!' exploded Tiberius.
'Yeah, weren't my fault though,' protested Krivorn. 'We was flyin' along, happy as an ork in fungus, when all of a sudden this damn great hulk appears outa nowhere! I swear, one minute it weren't there, the next, we're losing power and hauling hard to starboard on full reverse.'
'I expect you made a navigational error, pilot.'
'Me? No, my lord, I checked the surveyors not a second before and it weren't there. Helm control come to new heading three-two-four, ten degrees up angle.'
'So what was it?' asked Uriel, unnerved by Krivorn's lackadaisical helm directio
ns.
'Never did find out, but I reckon it was one of them space hulks you always hear about,' replied Krivorn. 'And I ain't the first to have seen it, neither. Lot of space-farers say they seen it around the Pavonis system. They calls it the half-moon ship on account of its shape. Helm control come to new heading zero-zero-zero, all ahead level.'
Uriel knew of such derelict vessels, wrecks lost in the warp, destined to become ghost ships, forever plying the icy depths of space.
No one could predict their movements and their appearances were completely at random, as capricious fate vomited them from the immaterium. The thought that there might be such a ship in the vicinity filled Uriel with nothing but loathing.
'Look, enough of this damn nonsense,' said Tiberius. 'How long until we are through this asteroid belt and reach Caernus IV?'
Krivorn smiled his gap toothed grin and bowed deeply to Tiberius. 'We just came through the belt, my lord. At current speed and heading, we'll be in orbit around the planet in roughly an hour. And you're welcome.'
Kasimir de Valtos felt his guts contract again and vomited a froth of viscous, blood-flecked matter into the bowl of the commode. Sweat beaded his brow and painful cramps locked his belly in their powerful grip. His vision blurred as another surge of black vomit burned along his throat and into the pan. Those damned aliens. Every day his body rebelled against the foul toxins with which they had poisoned him. Only daily infusions of intense purgatives kept the most debilitating effects at bay and even then it was only marginally less painful.
He hauled himself up from the floor of his ablutions cubicle and pulled his bathrobe tightly about his slender frame. He splashed water onto his face as the last of me wracking spasms faded. De Valtos swilled ice-cold water around his mouth in a futile attempt to clear away the acidic taste and dried himself with a silk towel. He ran an ivory comb through his albino white hair.
He stared into the mirror and wondered how his life had taken such a turn. The answer came easily enough. It had begun the day his expedition had discovered the caverns beneath the ruined city on Cthelmax and the inscriptions of the heretic abbot, Corteswain. If only he had not translated the inscription there. If only he had not followed their dire words of prophecy.
If only he had not encountered the eldar.
But follow them he had, and this was what it had led him to. He raised a pallid, blotched hand to his face and prodded the nerveless synth-flesh that covered his skull, knowing that he touched his face only by the reflection before him. Once, he had been considered handsome and had courted the finest beauties of Pavonis, but no longer. The white-hot blade of an alien torturer had seen to that.
He had considered suicide many times after his encounter with the eldar, but had lacked even the courage for that. The lure of Corteswain's words had too firm a hold on his soul and de Valtos realised that hope was indeed the greatest curse of humankind.
Why else would he continue down this path if not for hope?
De Valtos tossed aside the towel and stepped into his private bedchamber. The room was mirrorless and spartanly decorated, with none of the finery many would have associated with the leader of such a wealthy cartel. He removed his robe and strolled naked into his walk-in dresser, selecting his favourite midnight blue suit, the one with the narrow lapels and high collar. He donned the suit, the scar tissue the eldar torturer had gifted him pulling painfully tight across his chest and arms. His guest would be arriving soon and he did not want to be late.
No matter that he despised him and every petty small-minded thing he believed in.
No matter that scant years ago he had believed those same things himself.
Times had changed since men and his responsibilities had grown far beyond profit and loss, production and labour. He selected the black, carnodon-skin shoes to wear with his suit and sat on the end of his bloodstained bed as he slipped them on his feet and straightened his suit coat.
He heard the chime from the vestibule and knew that his guest had arrived. Right on time as usual. Fully dressed, de Valtos moved to the head of his bed and gathered up the bloody knives that lay scattered about the mutilated human carcass on the mattress, careful to avoid the sticky pools of blood that had collected.
He placed his items of torture in a black, leather case and slid them under the bed, feeling the familiar sense of disappointment as he stared at the corpse. This one had not even come close to satisfying his urges and he knew he would soon need to procure another fleshy canvas on which to exorcise his demons.
He pictured Solana Vergen on the bed and his heart raced with eagerness.
De Valtos turned on his heel and exited his chambers, descending the wide marble staircase to the vestibule and his guest.
He saw him below, nervously shuffling from foot to foot.
Almerz Chanda looked up at the sound of de Valtos's footsteps.
Kasimir de Valtos smiled.
Jenna Sharben felt acutely uncomfortable out of her judge's uniform and wished for the hundredth time that Virgil Ortega had not assigned her to baby-sit this infernal adept. She wore a functional, close-fitting blue tunic with loose sleeves and an internal holster, where an autopistol nestled under her left armpit. She stood at parade rest in the adept's chambers and examined his quarters.
She prided herself that she could tell a lot about a person by the way they lived: their tastes, their likes and dislikes, whether they were a stickler for order or whether they liked to live in a constant state of disarray.
Her brow creased at what the varied signals the man's quarters were telling her. A dozen books stacked on the desk were arranged in alphabetical order though they had clearly not been part of the room's furniture, yet a pile of clothing lay untidily pooled on top of the bedcovers. A gunmetal grey footlocker had been placed at the bed's foot, securely locked by a geno-keyslot, while on the desk was an open journal with all the adept's hand-written notes. A half drunk decanter of uskavar sat next to the journal, alongside a crystal glass containing last night's dregs.
'What kind of man was this adept?
'Seen enough?' asked a voice from the far end of the room and she started, her hand involuntarily reaching for her gun. A man in stained overalls, in the red of the Taloun cartel, slouched against the wall, chewing on a piece of tobacco. He was unshaven and rough looking, with three days' worth of growth on his round chin.
Jenna opened her mouth to ask the man his business here when she suddenly realised that it was the adept she had introduced herself to the previous evening. The change was quite remarkable.
'I have now,' she said, as the adept ambled towards her.
Barzano smiled. 'Today I am going to be Gulyan Korda, technician secundus, Smeltery three-six-two of the Taloun. What do you think?'
Jenna was speechless. Had she not known differently, she would have sworn the adept was a native of Pavonis. He had the accent, the clothes and the same apathetic slouch the manufactorum workers effected. His hair had been slicked back and she could see that his cheeks were now fuller.
As though reading her mind, Barzano withdrew two wads of cheek padding and winked before replacing them in his mouth.
'You think I'd pass for a local?'
'Without a doubt,' assured Jenna. 'Though why would you want to?'
'Well, I hardly think that given the local climate of unrest and the unpopularity of the current administration, anyone is going to open up to an off-worlder, let alone one from the Administratum. Do you?'
Jenna could see he had a point, men suddenly his insistence on her wearing civilian clothes made sense to her. He wanted to go outside and mingle with the workers. And she was to be, what - a bodyguard, a guide? Both?
'Just what are you planning, Adept Barzano?'
'Oh, just a little jaunt into the worker areas outside the city walls. Nothing too strenuous, I promise.'
Barzano indicated the books and data terminal. 'It's all very well getting information from these, but I always think that you-get the best r
aw data from the ground up. Don't you? Yes, today Gulyan Korda, recently dismissed from the service of the Taloun, will be mingling with similarly minded malcontents and discussing the terrible state of affairs the governor has led us to.'
'And what will be my purpose there?'
'You, my dear, are my bodyguard,' whispered Barzano, obviously enjoying this new role immensely. 'You see when Gulyan left the employ of the Taloun, he took some rather incriminating records with him.'
'He did?'
'I think so. Yes, in fact I'm almost certain he did.'
'And what would that incriminating information concern?'
'Haven't a clue,' chuckled Barzano. 'Something juicy though, I'm sure.'
'What about the Space Marines outside? You're not going to be able to pass unnoticed with two armoured giants following you about everywhere.'
'Oh I know that, but they're not coming.'
'And how are you going to get out of the palace without them?'
'Simple, they won't see me,' promised Barzano. 'They'll see you and a ramer disreputable looking fellow in overalls heading outside and believe that the slugabed adept is still within. Believe me, it's easier than you think.'
Jenna Sharben shook her head.
'I really don't think that this is such a good idea,' she said.
NINE
Uriel stared at the scorched human wreckage lying on the small cot bed and wondered how, in the name of all that was holy, this man could still be alive. The instant he had laid eyes upon the poor, tormented soul, he had called for the company apothecary to minister to the young man. The physician of this settlement had done what he could, but his skills were no match for the horrendous damage done to his body.
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