Choose Your Enemies, page 23
‘Wazzock,’ Zemelda muttered, not quite under her breath, as he trotted away to give his underlings a hard time.
‘And speaking of those…’ Pelton said, with a nod in the direction of the personnel door. A familiar figure was strolling towards us, a battered valise dangling from one hand, his brown robe fluttering in the currents from the air recirculators. Catching sight of Defroy he turned aside a little, putting a plodding servitor laden with cargo between the two of them, and remaining in its lee until he arrived at the landing pad.
‘What do you want?’ Amberley greeted him, and Vekkman nodded perfunctorily in response.
‘I need a lift,’ he said. ‘I gather you’re heading for one of the orbitals?’ No one bothered asking how he’d gathered it; he was an inquisitor after all.
‘Skyside Seventeen,’ Amberley confirmed after a moment.
‘Good,’ Vekkman said. ‘That’s the one with the highest probability of a Chaos cult being active among the dock workers.’
‘Then I suppose you’d better come along,’ Amberley conceded, in a faintly grudging tone.
‘Much obliged,’ Vekkman said, purely for form’s sake, and held out his travelling bag. ‘Can one of your people take this for me?’
‘No, they can’t,’ Amberley said, and turned away to confer with Mott in a muttered undertone.
‘Is she always like this?’ Vekkman asked, and I shook my head.
‘She’s a bit stressed at the moment,’ I answered without thinking.
‘I was right then,’ Vekkman said. ‘You are one of hers.’
‘I’m a commissar,’ I said, keeping my face straight and my voice steady, ‘with an Imperial Guard regiment to look after.’
‘And a number of highly classified absences in your record,’ Vekkman persisted. ‘Several of them while Inquisitor Vail was in the vicinity.’
‘Pure coincidence,’ I said.
Vekkman nodded, as though he’d expected nothing less. ‘So easy to keep bumping into people in something as small as a galaxy,’ he said sarcastically.
‘Like I said,’ I repeated, ‘pure coincidence.’
‘If you believe in that sort of thing,’ Vekkman said, ‘which, personally, I don’t.’
I felt the palms of my hands begin to itch, which is never a good sign. The thing is, I do believe in coincidence; the damn thing’s saved my life on more occasions than I can count. Perhaps because of that, though, I tend to discount it more readily than most as well. One of the great gifts of paranoia is being able to discern links between things, the patterns emerging around them, even if they aren’t actually there. But I was beginning to suspect that Vekkman and Amberley really were tugging on opposite ends of the same thread, even if she was reluctant to admit to the possibility.
‘Can you think of any reason Slaaneshi cultists would want to collect eldar spirit stones?’ I asked, keeping my voice low, as I was sure this was a conversation Amberley most definitely wouldn’t approve of.
Vekkman looked thoughtful. ‘As I told your patron–’ he began.
‘She’s not my patron,’ I said, decisively. ‘I’m simply here to observe on behalf of the Astra Militarum, and render any assistance required.’
Vekkman looked at me with manifest scepticism. ‘As I told your liaisee, xenos artefacts are her area of expertise, not mine.’
‘The first one we intercepted was routed out-system,’ Pelton interjected, having listened in to at least part of our conversation, probably to make sure I didn’t let anything slip that Amberley would disapprove of. ‘But the cargo would have been transhipped on Skyside Seventeen. And if your Chaos cult is centred on the docking areas…’
‘A heretic stevedore could easily have got his hands on it,’ Vekkman agreed, ‘with Throne alone knows what dire results. We’re fortunate that your team intercepted it.’
‘They intercepted that one, at least,’ I said, making the point that I hadn’t been there, and thereby attempting to distance myself from Amberley’s retinue, at least in his mind. Not that I thought he’d fall for it; he seemed far too astute for that.
‘And you’re sure that was the only one?’ Vekkman asked.
Pelton nodded. ‘As sure as we can be,’ he said, meaning ‘of course we’re not,’ which, again, I was sure would come as no surprise to the brown-robed inquisitor.
‘Then let’s hope it was,’ Vekkman said.
An uneasy silence fell, only to be interrupted by a faintly anxious voice in my vox-bead.
‘We’re ready to lift, now, inquisitor,’ Defroy said, his tiny figure waving from the boarding ramp of the heavy shuttle.
‘About time,’ Amberley said, although we were still well within the twenty minutes he’d promised. ‘Everyone aboard.’
‘Ladies first,’ Vekkman said, gesturing her ahead of him with a slight bow.
‘I wouldn’t dream of it,’ Amberley said, repeating the gesture with a little more emphasis, and speaking through faintly gritted teeth. ‘You’re my guest.’
‘If you insist,’ Vekkman said, and strode through the airlock, while Amberley fell in next to me.
‘Oh, I do,’ she said, before lowering her voice. ‘If he thinks I’m turning my back on him for a second, he’s got another think coming.’
‘We’ll watch it for you,’ I promised, while Rakel scuttled up the ramp, eyeing Jurgen with even more evident distaste than most people did.[159] Pelton, Mott and Zemelda followed, the tech-priest having boarded several minutes before in the wake of the laden servitors, leaving Amberley, Jurgen and me to bring up the rear.
‘They’ll be having a few words with their sergeant,’ Jurgen remarked as we turned towards the boarding ramp. The troopers who’d been guarding the personnel entrance were double timing it towards the massive cargo lifter, Defroy urging them on as its engines began to fire up, deafening everyone in the vicinity.
I nodded. ‘Must be rookies,’ I said, or, rather, bellowed in his general direction. Normally a group of soldiers running fall into a natural rhythm, in sync with one another, but these were all over the place, arms and legs windmilling as they lurched across the floor. I’d never seen anything so ill-coordinated outside a boot camp, and seldom then; even the irregulars I’d fought with on occasion had managed to show more martial aptitude.
‘If that’s the best of what’s left defending the upper levels, then the Emperor help us all,’ Amberley said, as the hatch thunked closed behind us, cutting off the noise from outside and sealing us in with Jurgen’s halitosis.
I nodded soberly. ‘Let’s hope he’s not too busy, then,’ I said, as the engines began to vibrate the deck plates and the gig rose incrementally into the air, eliciting a faint – and hastily suppressed – groan from my aide. ‘Because I think we’re going to need all the help we can get.’
TWENTY-ONE
I lost no time in settling myself into one of the excessively padded seats in the gig’s passenger compartment which, as I’d expected, had been fitted out with as much of an eye to comfort and the ostentation expected of an aristocrat as to utility. The floor was carpeted with a deep, springy pile, which I suspected would never be the same after the passage of Jurgen’s boots across it, and the walls panelled in some glossy wood with a distinctive close grain which I immediately failed to identify. Cabinets of the same material, containing refreshments and all the other small necessities of life,[160] were scattered about the place, and small tables were strewn between the seats.
From habit I seated myself as close to the door leading to the flight deck as possible, although I was sure Pontius would have no need of my intervention in a crisis, only realising as I fastened the crash harness that this had put me in the chair next to Vekkman.
‘I’d get strapped in if I were you,’ I said. ‘This is liable to get rough.’
‘Ship’s gig Fictus Primus requesting permission to depart,’ Pontius’ voice echoed in my vox-bead, and glancing through the armourcrys viewport I could see the huge struts and buttresses of the hangar bay drifting past as he nudged the utility craft towards the vast portal sealing us off from the outside lack of atmosphere. Faint wisps of vapour indicated that the chamber was already depressurising,[161] and the tiny vessel rocked a little as he compensated for the hurricane-force air currents being created by the pumps. Most of the cogboys I’d seen before continued to work on the crippled Aquila, apparently indifferent to either the departure of the other vessels or the removal of most of their oxygen; no doubt their augmetic enhancements put them above such mundane considerations. ‘Taking up formation with the Avis Tonitrus Duo,’ which I presumed was the heavy freighter lumbering towards the portal ahead of us.
‘Permission granted, Fictus Primus,’ the woman on the other end of the vox-link responded, with the faintly detached intonation of someone who repeated the same stock phrase a hundred times a day, before adding ‘Emperor be with you,’ as though she expected us to really need His help.
‘I’ll stick as close to the freighter as I can,’ Pontius told Amberley on an internal channel, and she nodded faintly in approval.
‘Good idea.’
‘What is?’ Vekkman asked, and she shrugged in a manner calculated to get under the skin of an anchorite.
‘Nothing of any significance. Just a status update.’
‘Of course.’ Either willing to take her word for it, or unwilling to give her the satisfaction of pressing unsuccessfully for an answer, Vekkman buckled his crash harness. Everyone else had already taken that particular precaution by now, having flown with Pontius before, and I felt my mouth becoming a little dryer as we passed through the thick bronze doors and the clean, white light of the upper atmosphere punched me in the eyes.
After a moment Pontius moved us into the shadow of the huge heavy lifter, within a score of metres of the slab-like hull, and my vision began to clear, although the air around me was growing noticeably thicker.
‘Is that safe, do you think, sir?’ Jurgen asked, looking a slightly lighter shade of grime than usual, and clasping the stock of his melta so hard that I half expected to see deformations in the metal beneath his fingers.
‘Pontius knows what he’s doing,’ I said, as reassuringly as I could without actually saying yes. Safety out here was a relative thing, and I was pretty sure he wasn’t about to bump into our colossal neighbour by accident. On the other hand I was still faintly surprised not to have been jumped by a swarm of eldar fighters or a squadron of Vypers the moment we’d cleared the hangar bay. I shouldn’t have been, of course; the hangars and docking ports all over the hive were well protected by overlapping defensive batteries and patrolling fighter planes, which accounted for the trouble the spaceborne invaders had had so far in establishing a foothold. The really hard part would come once we were negotiating the nebulous zone between the last wisps of atmosphere and the vacuum of space itself.
I glanced out of the viewport. Other shuttles were rising from landing platforms lower down the spire, or emerging from the layer of murk which hid the majority of the hive, spinning upwards like sparks from a forge to join us. Gradually they began to reach our height, taking up formation around us, leaving our gig[162] at the centre of a loose swarm of cargo vessels. Some were as large as the one we accompanied, others a good deal smaller, but they all rose with the same grim determination. There seemed to be some activity going on around the nearest of the distant spires too, sunlight glinting on flecks of metal swarming about it, although I couldn’t make out anything more from this far away. Impelled by what was little more than idle curiosity – although under the circumstances anything which took my mind off the imminent prospect of being shot out of the sky had to have something going for it – I retuned my comm-bead.
‘Ciaphas.’ Kasteen’s voice had a distinct undertone of concern, which I suppose was quite flattering really. ‘Where are you?’
‘In one of the shuttles delivering aid to the orbitals,’ I said, more or less truthfully. An Inquisitorial warband was aid of a sort, I supposed, even if it wasn’t the kind the Skysiders were expecting.
‘Of course you are,’ Kasteen said, a trace of amused exasperation entering her voice. ‘Not nearly enough eldar down here to keep you occupied.’
‘I thought I ought to leave you enough not to get bored,’ I said, matching her bantering tone.
‘Chance would be a fine thing.’ Kasteen sighed. ‘The eldar are moving up hive faster than we expected. The planetary defence force is pulling back above the minefields, which ought to contain them for a while, but the levels just above the gates are being swamped with refugees from the underhive.’ There was a short pause, during which a faint voice which sounded like Broklaw said something I couldn’t quite catch, then she spoke again. ‘Oh, right, nearly forgot. You’ve had a message from General Porten, eyes only. Turned up in the despatch pouch[163] a few minutes ago. Do you want me to hang on to it until you get back,’ meaning ‘if you get back,’ although she was too tactful to say so, ‘or just send it down to your quarters?’
‘Read it to me,’ I said. If this was a clue to whoever was pulling the heretics’ strings, it couldn’t wait.
To her credit, Kasteen didn’t waste time pointing out that technically this was information she shouldn’t be privy to; we’d been through enough together by this time for me to take her discretion for granted. There was another short pause while she slit the envelope, then her voice returned, tinged this time by puzzlement. ‘It just says “the governor’s office”. Does that make any sense to you?’
‘I’m afraid it does,’ I said, although it had hardly come as a surprise. I was already as certain as I could be that someone from Fulcher’s household had arranged my attempted assassination, so it had been odds-on that the order to collect the spirit stones had come from the same source. But the confirmation that the two inquisitors were indeed investigating the same conspiracy was still troubling. ‘I don’t suppose there’s anything more? Like a name, perhaps?’
‘No, that’s it.’ Kasteen hesitated. ‘Is this something I should be worried about?’
‘No,’ I assured her, hoping it was true. ‘The eldar are more than enough to be going on with.’
‘You’re not wrong there,’ Kasteen agreed. ‘Is there anything you actually wanted, or did you just check in again to let us know you’re not dead yet?’
‘Bit of both,’ I said. ‘I can see what looks like aerial activity over Quartzvein. Are the other hives under attack now?’ Hardly likely, of course, as that would run counter to everything we’d deduced so far about the eldar strategy, but if it was true it would relieve the pressure on us immeasurably, and I couldn’t help indulging in a short bout of wishful thinking.
‘That’ll be their relief flight assembling,’ Kasteen said. ‘All the hives are launching at once, for different orbitals. Porten’s hoping the eldar will have to spread themselves thinner to intercept them all, so more of the shuttles will get through.’
‘Makes sense to me,’ I conceded, and cut the link.
‘And me,’ Mott said, which was my first clue that Amberley and her people had been listening in on the entire conversation – which, I must confess, hardly came as a surprise. ‘Given the estimated number of aerial assets at the enemy’s disposal, and assuming a roughly similar composition to all the relief flights, the probability of any one vessel reaching its destination unscathed rises to a little over fifty-two point four seven per cent.’
‘Which works for me,’ I said, trying not to get too carried away. This wasn’t going to be a milk run by any means, however much the odds were beginning to tilt in our favour, and the image of the crippled Aquila we’d so recently shared a hangar with rose up with disconcerting rapidity in my mind’s eye.
‘What did Defroy say?’ Amberley asked, turning to Pelton, apparently reminded of his recent errand by the contents of the despatch Kasteen had just read. ‘Any progress in finding out who tried to have Ciaphas murdered?’
Pelton shook his head. ‘None to speak of. He’s been reviewing security of the governor’s household as a matter of urgency, but his main priority is plugging the loophole the assassin used in case someone takes advantage of it again and has a crack at Fulcher.’
‘Fair enough,’ I conceded. ‘But if an agent of a Chaos cult can just stroll in, kill one of the household servants, and impersonate them to try and assassinate a guest, why is he even bothering to try and secure the place? I’d have the governor out of there first, and worry about security breaches afterwards.’
‘Fair point,’ Amberley agreed, raising her voice a little over the increasing volume of our engines. The horizon beyond the viewport tilted, in a manner which elicited a barely suppressed groan from my aide, and we began to climb, still keeping station with the lumbering freighter in whose shadow we were hiding. ‘But I imagine that’s not really an option with the eldar investing the planet. Where’s he going to go?’
‘And it doesn’t look good with the hoipolloi,’ Zemelda added, ‘bailing and leaving ’em to twist.’
‘Indeed it doesn’t,’ Vekkman agreed, unexpectedly disentangling her meaning with even less thought than I required. ‘The general populace needs to know the governor is standing shoulder to shoulder with them in this sort of crisis. Otherwise your friend the colonel will be hip-deep in rioters before she can blink.’ So, he’d been eavesdropping too. No surprise there.
‘I hate to bring up the obvious,’ Yanbel said, ‘but if there’s a traitor among the governor’s household, able to exploit a security breach no one else even realised was there, Defroy’s your most likely suspect.’
Pelton nodded. ‘Except he’s been liaising with Clarys every step of the investigation. If he was trying to cover something up, he’d be keeping her at arm’s length.’
