by William King
He looked down into the departure bay and saw that Kham Bell and his boys had rousted the crew out from under their assorted rocks. Simon smiled as he saw familiar figures hove into view and head up the departure ramps.
There were a few unfamiliar faces too. Some of the old crew would have shipped out with other craft or were lurking in some hellhole too remote for even Bell's bruisers, or were perhaps lying face down in a pool of blood with a knife in their back and their pay-packets in the purses of some dockside aims. A sailor's life could be a cruel one, as Simon well knew. No doubt a lot of those new men had signed on when they heard of the bonuses being offered for this trip.
A start of guilt passed through him. He did not expect to return from this voyage, and he had no idea to what fate he was taking these men. He had done all he could to let them know the risks involved without giving away any information about the eldar's mission.
Sometimes, he thought, being a Navigator was not easy. When he had been raised to the position, he had sworn an oath to bring his ship safely to port, or die in the attempt. While breath was in his body, and the spark of life in his soul, he would not shirk from that task.
A black-garbed figure had entered the departure bay. He saw one of Bell's security men move to intercept it, and then take it to the sergeant. He saw words being exchanged and Bell looking up at the window, then all three headed up in his direction.
He felt a little uneasy. Kham Bell was bringing the eldar up here, to him. He breathed deeply and tensed and relaxed his muscles in preparation. He was unsure of his ground, which was unusual for him. He was the scion of a House that predated the Imperium, and had held its wealth and position through ten thousand years of deadly intrigue, yet there was something about the eldar that made him feel like an unsophisticated barbarian. He allowed himself a small smile, wondering if that was a deliberate ploy on the part of the aliens or whether it was simply just their way. Maybe it had nothing to do with them, Simon thought, with a small flash of insight. Maybe I am merely projecting my own doubts onto them, seeing myself reflected back in the mirror of their faces.
After all, they were xenogens—who knew what went on in their minds? Behind the mask of those beautiful and human-seeming faces might lie a mind as alien as that of a tyranid. Merely because something wore the form of a human did not make it human. Simon reviewed what he knew of the eldar, hoping to find something to give him an edge in his dealings. Given ten millennia of intermittent contact between his House and the aliens, it was little enough.
The eldar were by reputation fearful foes. Swift, savage and ferocious they appeared for no reason, killed without mercy, and disappeared back who knew where. Their weapons and vehicles spoke of a science at least as advanced as mankind's, possibly far more so. No examination of eldar artefacts had provided any clue as to how they worked or what powered them. They appeared to operate on entirely different principles from the machines of men. Simon had heard it speculated that the underpinnings of their science were psychic or even daemonic, for the two were after all very close. Other philosophers claimed that their machineries were so advanced as to be beyond human comprehension, or the products of a way of looking at things that was beyond human understanding. Simon had himself seen enough eldar artefacts to understand how such a theory had come about. They were alien, and looked more like elaborate works of art than devices intended for mundane use. Their vehicles and weapons resembled sculptures more than technological artefacts.
There was no doubting that they worked though, and exceedingly well. Whenever eldar forces appeared on the battlefield, they usually contrived to more than hold their own against human forces. Simon supposed that was understandable given that they appeared to pick and choose their battlefields to suit themselves.
He had heard tales of torture and humans being taken as sacrifices to the Dark Gods, and saw no reason to doubt them. Not for the first time, he wondered what it was that this menacing and mysterious people could have done for his ancestors to so place them in debt. He resigned himself to the fact that he might never find out. The records from that period were sealed, and it was all so long ago that only the most tenuous and legendary tales even hinted at possible explanations. Nonetheless, the contract had been held to with all the tenacity of House Belisarius which showed that whatever its cause, the debt was real enough, and now it had fallen on him to repay part of it.
There was a mystery here that niggled at Simon. Why did the eldar need this ship? And why were there only two of them? He knew enough about the xenogens to be certain that Auric was a being of great rank among the old race. And he knew that the eldar had their own powerful ships. What need could they possibly have of a human one, unless Auric was doing something that was forbidden by his people, or was trying to keep his destination secret? But why would he do that?
And then there was the mystery of those eldar ships themselves. That they existed was beyond a shadow of a doubt. Eldar raiders had struck many an Imperial convoy. Simon had fought against them himself in his time. And eldar battle fleets had intervened in many struggles against Chaos and orks, as well as against the Imperial fleet. But not one had ever been sighted in the immaterium. Ork craft, Chaos craft and many types of human and xenogen craft had been logged by the Navigators who had sensed their presence, but never, not once in more than ten millennia, had an eldar ship been sighted.
Of course, statistically speaking it was possible that this was a result of chance. The odds against it were astronomical given the number of Navigators and number of passages made, but it was still a possibility that had to be allowed for.
Had it been the only unusual thing it might have been worth noting, but there were other anomalies. Not once in all the times an eldar ship had been encountered in true space had one ever been seen to enter the immaterium. Eldar ships had been seen to leave solar systems, but they simply vanished. There had been no gathering of powers, no opening of ways, no transition of the ship into the immaterium. During their departure no Navigator had ever spotted the disturbance on the surface of true space that would have told him a ship had just been there. No Navigator had ever succeeded in following an eldar vessel to its port by following the ripples of a probability wake. There simply never were any. It was as if the vessels just vanished.
Of course, there were theories to account for this. It was possible that the eldar had invented some sort of cloaking device that prevented their ships from being spotted. Or perhaps their farseers, who were powerful psykers, could simply hide their trails or cloud the minds of those who followed. Simon found this idea hard to credit. He knew how potent the psychic shields that protected a starcraft were, and he doubted that they could be broached without the ship itself being destroyed. And, anyway, why would the eldar be so subtle?
One theory suggested they had something to hide, that they wanted no one to find their mysterious home worlds. Simon found this plausible. If the Imperium ever located the places they would be vulnerable to huge strikes by the overwhelming power of the Imperial fleet. So far nothing like an eldar home world had been found by humanity, only a few remote planets, lightly populated by relatively backward eldar, who bore little resemblance to the proud people Simon had encountered.
Another theory was that the eldar home worlds lay far beyond the boundaries of the Imperium and that the eldar encountered were simply the harbingers of some awesome and awful force to come. It was a possibility Simon did not discount. The galaxy was vast, and despite the size of the Imperium, huge swathes of the map were unexplored.
The door slid open, and Kham Bell and one of the eldar entered the luxuriously appointed lounge. It was Auric.
'He says he is one of our passengers.' Doubt and mistrust showed in the sergeant's every word and gesture. He liked xenogens even less than he liked most strangers, and he liked most strangers not at all.
'He has chartered the ship,' stated Janus.
'An eldar!' Astonishment turned Bell's words into a parade-ground roar.
Even used as he was to the sergeant's manner, it took all of Simon's self-control to keep from being startled. The eldar gave no sign of discomposure whatsoever. 'Does the captain know?'
'Apparently.'
'Apparently?'
'So our friend here says. When Janus arrives we will soon see if it is true.'
Kham Bell glared at them as he headed for the door. 'I'll be watching you. Some of your kind killed my family.'
Simon shook his head. Kham Bell made that claim to everybody he disliked. Maybe he even believed it. You could never be sure with him.
'A very strange man,' said Auric, as the mercenary disappeared.
'A very good soldier,' said Simon.
'Are you ready to depart?' asked Auric.
'We await only Captain Darke's arrival, and the last of our supplies.'
'Janus Darke will be with you soon,' said Auric with a strange certainty in his voice. 'And he will come with enemies snapping at his heels. You had better be prepared for instant departure.'
Simon considered asking more, but he was sure the eldar would be evasive. 'Then you'd best get aboard the shuttle. Where is Athenys?'
'She has some unfinished business. She will be here soon.'
Janus Darke loped out onto the darkened street. So far, so good, he told himself. No one seemed to have raised the alarm yet. No Arbites had appeared to check out the disturbance. No inquisitors had come for him... yet. It was only a matter of time now, he knew. He pulled his stolen cloak tight around himself. None of the crowd in the street paid him the slightest attention. That was good.
The chill night mist swirled clammily about him. The smell of sulphur and rotting food assaulted his nostrils. He staggered like a man drunk. Enormous fatigue lay on him like the weight of the world. Whatever he had done back there had drained him of strength, tired him more than a fifty kilometre march on half rations. He felt as weak as a man recovering from breakbone fever.
He strode along through the press of bodies, hoping to get his bearings. He was on a high roadway looping around the outside edge of a hive spire. Off in the distance he could see the running lights of a shuttle as it blasted off into orbit, its fiery contrail a line of light scratched on the darkness of the sky. Spaceport was that way then, he thought. Good. That means I must still be on Hark Spire.
He considered his options. He could wait for his enemies to come and find him, or he could call a phaeton and make his own way back to the port. Or he could find a place to hide, maybe make his way down into the distant labyrinths of the Underhive where even the Arbites feared to tread. That was not a prospect he relished. It was where the lowest of the low, the most lost of the lost, took refuge. Soon he should call on Justina and find out what she had done with the dreamstone. It was worth a small fortune and fairly soon he would need all the money he could get.
If worse came to the worst, he could try to contact the smugglers and get them to take him off-planet. It was a long shot. The smugglers were mostly in bed with the crime syndicates, but there were still one or two independents who would take him if the price was right. Even as the thought crossed his mind, he realised he had come to a decision. For better or worse, he was not going to give himself up to the Inquisition. They were going to have to come and get him.
In the long run that would almost certainly mean death or flight to those places where the Imperium's writ did not run, but he was prepared to face up to that. Soon, he thought, once the word is out, every man's hand will be against me. The sentence of the Inquisition would make him an apostate, and any man who aided him or gave him succour would be considered just as much a spawn of darkness as he, and liable to the same fate.
He thought about his friends and comrades—Simon Belisarius, Kham Bell and Stiel among them. Perhaps they would aid him, perhaps not. He would be doing them no favours by accepting any aid. Perhaps it would be better for him to simply disappear from the ken of man. If that was the case he was certainly going to need the money. He needed to see Justina again. She had his money, and she had the contacts to help him out.
Perhaps he might even begin to tease out some of the hints she had dropped—although part of him shuddered with fear at the very thought.
'That's him, mistress,' said Eruk. 'Shall we take him now?'
Justina looked out of the window of the parked phaeton, and saw that it was indeed Janus Darke, moving through the crowd outside the entrance of Fat Roj's meat packing business. Her informants had been right. She was glad there had been no need to use the amulet she had given him to trace the rogue trader's location—you could never tell when an Inquisition psyker might detect such a thing.
'Shall we take him now?' repeated Eruk. There was a petulant whining note in his tone of voice. The young noble sounded too eager. He had always been a little too quick to inflict pain, Justina reflected. Like many of his friends, he took too much pleasure in it, and she had carried the bruises as proof. She allowed herself a faint ironic smile. What was she thinking? How could a devotee of Slaanesh even think that there was such a thing as anybody taking too much pleasure in something?
'Wait!' she said, before the youth and his foolish and rather attractively muscular compatriots could rush forward and grab the tottering merchant prince. 'There is something strange going on.'
And indeed there was. Janus Darke reeled like a man drunk but he showed no obvious signs of wear and tear that Justina could see. It was not like Fat Roj just to let a victim go unmarked. One of her major worries on the phaeton bringing them here was that they would arrive too late. Fat Roj enjoyed his work and sometimes became overzealous to the point of fatality. How had Janus Darke escaped from his clutches?
Had he cut a deal with the gang lord? Janus could be a persuasive enough talker when he wanted to be, but it would take more than words to dissuade Roj from taking his pound of flesh. She was certain that Janus had no money, save a few terces in his purse. She held the dream-stone that was all the wealth he had in the world at the moment. No, it had not been that. Had he somehow fought his way clear? Impossible, she decided. Well, she would find out soon enough when her scouts returned from casing the meat-packing plant.
There were other worrying things going on. Her agents, normally so efficient, had lost sight of one of the two eldar.
The other was at the starport with Simon Belisarius. That was another troubling report. The Navigator had apparently paid off all of their outstanding debts, leaving the Star of Venam clear to boost. All the signs seemed to indicate that the trader was ready to lift, taking the eldar with him. That was not something she could allow. Shaha Gaathon had been most insistent that Darke be found and prepared for the great ritual. It seemed like he was just about ready to play his role. He could not be allowed to go roaming around the galaxy in the company of xenogens.
She considered her options. She could simply approach Janus in the phaeton, and lure him inside. That seemed easy enough, but how would she explain it? Did it matter? He would be suspicious, but not of her. She could simply say that she had sold the dreamstone and had street people looking for him. Why should he doubt her? No need for force at all, now that he was clear of Fat Roj.
Just at that moment Cutter strode up. The tall bodyguard's face was pallid beneath her makeup. She looked as upset as Justina had ever seen her. 'What is it?' she asked.
'I found Fat Roj and his men.'
'And?'
'You'd best see for yourself, mistress.'
Justina nodded and indicated for Eruk and his men to follow Darke. 'Make sure he doesn't get away. On no account must he reach the spaceport,' she said. 'And on no account must he be hurt.'
Eruk nodded and looked disappointed. Justina gave him a warning look to emphasise her command and then strode down the ramp way to the cold place where horror waited.
NINE
ASSASSINATIONS
Janus slumped down into the carved chair of human bone and glanced around. On three sides of him were the open fronts of shophouses,
displaying their wares to any strangers who might pass.
Scattered in the open plaza between the shophouses were a sprinkling of tables and stalls selling food and beer. The fourth side of the area ended in a barrier wall that marked the edge of this external level of Hark Spire. Away in the distance he could see flames dancing along the side of another hive.
A small woman, thickly robed against the cold, emerged from her stall to take his order. Thinking it best to conserve his money, he ordered ten skewers of wall-rat and some pungee bread. He was hungry as sin, as well as tired beyond belief, but at least the voices in his head had stopped. He did not believe this would last for long, but he was glad of the respite. Despite the fatigue his mind felt clearer than it had in days. The woman noted down his order on a pad, then turned and bellowed instructions to the cook at his grill. She gave him a pleasant enough smile before retreating.
He glanced around. Considering it was the middle of the night, there were a fair few people out. Commerce never sleeps, Janus thought, remembering the old proverb, although I desperately need to.
He saw that he was attracting a few looks from the other tables. Most of the men were drinking honey beer and scarfing down food. Some looked like ne'er-do-wells, bullyboys, gamblers, muscle for the protection rackets of the syndicates. Others looked like small traders on their break or possibly dayshift workers from the facs, trying to get the necessaries of life before getting to work at dawn. It was the usual mix for such a time. He knew it well enough from the night markets of Crowe's Town when he was a boy. Things had certainly come full circle now, he thought. Back where you started.
A few of the bullyboys glanced his way to see if he was a mark worth taking. One look at his tattered clothing and array of weapons convinced them otherwise. He must look like a licensed bounty hunter, or some other high-grade muscle, he thought. He pulled his hood down across his face, hoping none of them could get a close look in the dim light of the flickering glow-globes. When word of what he had done to Fat Roj got out, many folk would be on his trail.