by Various
Cyrus came back into the room, smiling broadly. ‘Caffeine and cusp cake is just on its way. The cake is very fine, very gingery.’
‘I can’t wait,’ Carl said.
They’re closing in. Four now arriving at the west door. Three on the stairs behind Kara. Two more approaching from the floor above. All ex-Guard. Armed with batons. And I read at least one firearm.+
Carl rose to his feet. ‘Oh, Prefect? There is one other thing I did want to say.’
‘And that is?’ asked Cyrus.
Carl smiled his toothiest smile. ‘In the name of the Holy Inquisition, you motherless wretch, surrender now.’
Cyrus gasped and began to back away. ‘Ide! Ide!’ he screamed.
Kara hurled the casket and it slammed into Cyrus’s midsection, felling him hard. He grunted in pain and several of the heavy ingots scattered across the floor.
Move!+
Kara threw off her drab robe and flew forward as the first rigorist came in through the doorway. Guns were forbidden in the scholam, but that didn’t prevent this man from carrying one. Weapon scanners around the entry gate screened visitors for firearms. But lutillium, apart from its monetary worth, had value as a substance opaque to scanners.
Rigorist Ide raised his handgun as he came in. Kara, on her knees, reached into the fallen casket and produced the Tronsvasse compact hidden between the layers of ingots.
‘Surprise,’ she said, and buried a caseless round in his forehead. The rear part of Ide’s skull burst like a squeezed pimple and he fell on his back.
She got up, shot the sprawled Cyrus once through the back of the thigh to make sure he wasn’t going anywhere, and swung to face the door. The next two rigorists burst in on Ide’s heels, batons raised, and she shot out their knees. Thonius winced and covered his ears.
In the hall outside, the other rigorists backed in terror from the sound of gunfire. Then a shaped charge blew out the casement behind them in a blizzard of glass and leading, and Harlon Nayl swung into the hallway. He had a large automatic pistol in his left fist.
‘Any takers?’ he asked.
One ran, and Nayl shot him through the heel. The others sank to their knees, hands to their heads.
‘Good lads,’ Nayl said. He took a neural disruptor from his belt in his right hand and walked over to them, cracking each one comatose with a fierce zap from the blunt device.
In the waiting room, the air threaded with gun-smoke, Kara turned to face the opposite doors as other alerted rigorists crashed in from the stairs. Knill led them, and didn’t even blink at the sight of the small woman with the handgun. He flew at her.
‘Ninker!’ she complained, and shot him. The round penetrated his torso and didn’t slow him. He crashed into her and knocked her flat.
Souzerin and another rigorist named Fewik were right behind Knill. Fewik knocked Carl over with a blow from his baton, and Souzerin raised the battered bolt pistol that he carried since his days in the commissariat. He fired at Kara, but managed only to blow off Knill’s left foot and his left arm at the elbow.
Nayl appeared at the opposite door and yelled a warning that Souzerin answered by lifting his aim and blasting at the doorway. Brick chips and wooden splinters exploded from the jamb. Kara reached out from under Knill’s deadweight and shot Souzerin up through the chin. The rigorist left the ground for a moment, then crashed back down dead. Nayl reappeared and put a round through Fewik’s back as he turned to flee.
Nayl helped Kara out from under the half-dead brute.
‘Nobody help me up then,’ Carl complained.
Panic had seized the scholam. I could feel it, breathe it. Hundreds of children and young adults, terrified by the explosions and gunshots. And a deeper panic, a deeper dread, that emanated from the minds of the rigorists and tutors.
I hovered towards the main gate, Wystan at my side, and ripped the ancient doors off their hinges with a brisk nudge of my mind. Inside the entrance way, half a dozen tutors and rigorists were running towards us, hoping for a speedy exit.
I am Inquisitor Ravenor of the holy ordos! Remain where you are!+
I don’t think they understood the manner of the command, though several involuntarily defecated in fear as the telepathic burst hit them. All they saw was a lone man approaching beside a strange, covered chair.
Now!+
My psi-wave threw them all backwards violently, like the pressure blast of a hurricane. Windows shattered. They tumbled over, robes shredding, flying like dolls or desperately trying to grip onto the floor.
Wystan lit a lho-stick. ‘What I like about you,’ he said, ‘is that you don’t muck around.’
‘Thank you.’
I had switched to vox-ponder and now I activated my built in vox-caster. ‘This is Ravenor to Magistratum Fairwing. Your officers may now move in and secure the building as instructed.’
‘Yes, inquisitor.’
‘Do not harm any of the children.’
IX
I had expected to find many things within the scholam: evidence of abuse and cruelty certainly, damaged souls, perhaps even answers, if I was lucky.
I had not expected to find traces of psyker activity.
‘What’s the matter?’ Kara asked me.
I’m not sure.+
We moved down the long hallways, past the frightened faces of pupils herded along by the Magistratum officers, past whimpering tutors spread against the old walls as they were patted down for concealed weapons. The traces were slight, ephemeral, fading, like strands of gossamer clinging to the brickwork. But they were there.
There was a psyker here.+
Kara stiffened.
Relax. He… no, I believe it was a she. She’s not here anymore. But she was here for a long time and she left only recently.+
‘When you say a long time, you mean?’
Years.+
‘And when you say recently..?’
Days, maybe less.+
We explored the tower. For Kara, this was a curious process. She could not see or feel, taste or smell the traces that were so evident to me. She just followed me around, one empty room after another. I could sense her boredom and her frustration. She wanted to be with the others, active, rounding up the last of the scholam’s inhabitants.
‘Sorry. This must be tedious for you,’ I said.
‘It’s fine,’ she replied. ‘Take your time. I can be patient. Patience is a virtue.’
‘Indeed.’ We entered a large dining hall in the upper reaches of the tower. The traces were strongest and freshest there.
‘Telekine,’ I said. ‘I’m in no doubt. A telekine, raw but potentially strong.’
‘We have to find her,’ Kara said. ‘If this damn place really was grooming subjects for the cognitae, she could be a lead. A direct connection to a cognitae procurer.’
Kara was right. Amongst their many crimes, the cognitae prided themselves on recruiting and retaining unlicenced psykers for their own purposes.
‘Go and find Carl for me, Kara,’ I requested. ‘I want to get him working on discovering who this psyker was and where she might have gone.’
‘Because of the cognitae link,’ she nodded.
‘Yes, because of that,’ I replied. ‘But even if no link exists, we still have to find her. An unsanctioned psyker, lose on Sameter. That cannot be permitted. We must track her down. And dispose of her.’
X
‘I’m sorry,’ Carl Thonius said. ‘Sir, I’m very sorry.’
The device was very small, no larger than a hearing aid implant.
‘I should have searched him right there, but with all the shooting and screaming.’
‘Don’t worry about it, Carl,’ I said.
‘I think I will, sir. Everything’s blanked.’
The device was a trigger switch, coded to Cyrus’s thumb pr
int. An advanced piece of tech. Down on the floor, helpless from the wound Kara had delivered to his leg, Cyrus had plucked this device from his pocket and activated it. And the scholam’s entire data archive had been erased.
‘Can you recover anything?’ I asked.
‘It’s a fairly comprehensive wipe. I might be able to recode the last few days worth of material. The stuff most recently processed might still exist in the codification buffer.’
‘Do what you can,’ I advised. Privately, I was annoyed with his lapse. But we had, with the assistance of local law-enforcement, rounded up dozens of tutors and scholam elders, including Cyrus himself. And who could say what the poor pupils themselves might be able to tell us?
Besides, it was hardly surprising. Carl was so poor in circumstances of violence. I don’t believe he had ever fired a shot in anger, though he performed well enough in weapons drill.
‘I’ll get to work, sir,’ Carl said. ‘I’m so very sorry–’
‘So you bloody should be,’ Nayl snorted.
‘Enough, Harlon!’ I rebuked. ‘Carl is my interrogator and you will address him with respect.’
‘I’ll do that,’ Nayl replied, ‘when he earns it.’
‘Do what you can, Carl,’ I said. ‘But remember, your priority is to find out all there is to know about the unsanctioned psyker they had here. Who she was, where she went. She has to be found and dealt with, quickly.’
‘Yes, sir.’
As Carl moved away, the senior magistratum approached. His enforcement officers, clad in black and silver, were still clearing the scholam floor by floor. I could sense his unease. He was an experienced criminologist, but he’d never had his entire station house requisitioned to assist the Inquisition before. He was terrified of screwing up. He was terrified of me.
‘Problems?’ I asked.
‘A few scuffles, sir. You’d rather taken the wind out of their sails.’
‘I want all the children to be given medical checks, and then safe-housed until statements can be taken from them all. Inform the Administration that welfare assistance will be required, but not yet. No one is to be rehoused or re-homed unless they’ve been examined. Why do you frown?’
The magistratum started a little. ‘There are over nine hundred children, sir…’ he began.
‘Improvise. Ask the local temples for alms and shelter.’
‘Yes, sir. May I ask… is this an abuse case, sir?’
‘Indirectly. I can’t say more. The staff I’ll interview here, now. I’ll need some of your men to assist in guarding them while the interrogations are underway. Once I’m done, I will file charges, and you can begin to process them.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I’ll start with the Prefect.’
A magistratum first-aider had patched Cyrus’s leg wound, and they’d shackled him to a chair in one of the refectories. He was in pain, and very frightened, which would make it easier to extract information.
Cyrus stared at me as I rolled in to face him. Nayl followed me in, but sat his ominous bulk down at the far end of the long table from Cyrus, a threat waiting to happen.
‘I… I have rights,’ Cyrus began. ‘In the eyes of Imperial Law, I have–’
‘Nothing. You are a prisoner of the Inquisition. Do not ask for or expect anything.’
‘Then I’ll tell you nothing.’
‘Again, you are mistaken. You will tell me everything I ask you to tell me. Harlon?’
From the far end of the table, Nayl began to speak. ‘His name is Ludovic Kyro, Cognitae-trained, wanted on five worlds for counts of heresy and sedition…’
Cyrus closed his eyes as the words came out. We already knew his true identity. What else did we have?
‘Tell me about Victor Zahn.’
Cyrus frowned. ‘I don’t know a Victor Zahn…’ I was watching his mind. It wasn’t the truth, but it wasn’t an outright lie either. Cyrus didn’t immediately recognise the name.
Tell me about Victor Zahn.+
Cyrus blinked as the telepathy slapped him. My interrogative was accompanied by an image of Zahn’s corpse in the Hinterlight’s morgue which I dropped into his mind like a slide into a magic lantern.
‘Oh Throne!’ he murmured.
‘You know him, then?’
‘He was a pupil here, years ago.’
And Goodman Frell? And Noble Soto?+
Two more graphic images.
‘Oh, Holy! They were pupils too. This was years ago. Five or more.’
‘And you groomed them,’ said Nayl. ‘You and your staff. Groomed them like you groom all the poor strays who wind up here. Sold them on.’
‘No, this is a respectable place and–’
‘So respectable,’ I said, ‘that you wipe all your records so we can’t see them.’
Cyrus bit his lip.
‘Zahn. Frell. Soto. Who did you sell them too?’
‘T-to a merchant, as I remember.’
Lie. Bald and heavy. And well formed, not just vocally, but mentally too. A layer of mendacity cloaked Cyrus’s thoughts, like a cake of dried mud. A mind-trick, one of the many taught by the Cognitae. I had been expecting as much. For all his fear, Cyrus was still a product of that heretical institution, and therefore had to be unlocked with precision. If I’d just burst into his mind telepathically from the outset, I might have damaged or destroyed many of his locked engrams. But now I had a solid lie out of him, and that lie revealed the way his mind-shields worked: their focus, their strengths, their inclination.
‘Who did you sell them too?’
‘I told you, a merchant. A free trader.’
Who?+
He squealed as the psi-jab rattled his mind. He was utterly unprepared for the sharpness of it.
‘That was a demonstration of how things will be if you resist,’ I said. ‘Now I’m going to ask the question once more…’
XI
Patience heard the buzzing, not with her ears but with her mind, and slid into cover behind a crumbling rockcrete wall. Moments later, a varnished human skull hovered past through the gloom. Tech implants decorated the back of its cranium, and lights shone in its hollow orbits. A sensor drone, sweeping for her. She’d heard the bastards talking about them before her release. This was the first physical proof that men were actually after her.
Men. Hunters. Killers.
The skull hovered on the spot for a moment, circled once, and then sped away into the shadows. Patience stayed low. After another minute, a second drone – this one built around the skull of a dog or cat – skimmed past and made off in another direction.
She slowed her breathing, and deliberately encouraged her mind to do the sort of tricks that usually happened unbidden. She reached out. She could feel the area around her in a radius of ten metres, forty, sixty. The shape of the geography: the sloping trench to her left, the broken columns ahead, the line of burned-out habs to her right. Behind her, the sewer outfall pouring sludge into a cracked storm drain. She sensed bright sparks of mental energy, but they were just rats scuttling in the ruins.
Then she sensed one that wasn’t.
This spark was bigger, human, very controlled and intense. Right ahead, beyond the columns, moving forward.
Moving slowly so as not to dislodge any loose stones, she turned and began to creep away around the storm-drain chute towards a jumble of plasteel ruins. Her left toe kicked a rock and it rolled away off the drain’s edge and started to fall. Patience caught it neatly with her mind and lifted it up into the silence of her hand.
The brief delay had been to her advantage. Now she sensed three or four human mind-traces in the ruins ahead of her. Not focused like the other one, feral. In the shadows.
Don’t trust the black, that’s what DaRolle had said to her. Trouble was, could she trust DaRolle’s advice?
She crouched low, and stayed there until she could see them. Ragged human shapes, barely visible, moving like animals through the ruins. Gangers, members of the notorious Dolor clan. She could see three, but was sure there were more. The hunter was closing from the right, now almost at the rockcrete wall.
Patience lifted the rock in her hand and threw it, sending it far further than her arm alone could have managed. It landed in the trench with a loud clatter.
The hunter turned and made for it immediately. She got a glimpse of a man in an armoured jack and high boots scurrying towards the lip of the trench.
Then the Dolors saw him too.
A pivot-gun roared and the hunter was knocked off his feet. The gangers rushed forward at once, baying and yelling, crude blade weapons flashing in their dirty hands.
The hunter’s jack had stopped the worst of the ball round. He leapt back up, and shot the closest Dolor through the neck with his handgun. The savage figure spasmed and went down thrashing. Then the others cannoned into the hunter and they all went over into the trench.
Patience started to run. She heard another shot behind her. A scream.
She scrambled over a rusted length of vent-ducting, and dropped into the cavity of a roofless hab…
…where a man was waiting for her.
Patience gasped. There had been no spark off him at all. Either he was shielded, or his mind just did not register to her gift like regular human minds.
He was tall and thin, clothed head to foot in a matt-black, skin-tight body suit. Only his eyes were visible through a slit in the tight mask, but she saw the way the fabric beneath them stretched to betray the smile that had just crossed his face. He held a long, slender spike-knife in each hand.
Patience stretched out with her mind, hoping to push him away, but the tendrils of her gift slipped off his black suit, unable to purchase. He lunged at her, the twin blades extended, and she was forced to dive sideways, grazing her palms and knees on the rough ground. She started to roll, but he was on her at once, the tip of one blade slicing through the flesh of her left shoulder.
Patience cried out, but the pain gave her strength. She kicked out, and as the man jumped back, she flipped onto her feet. She backed as he circled again. She could hear him chuckle, feel the blood running down her arm.