Hero of the Imperium, page 70
It began in her chambers, where she’d lured me with her sorcerous wiles, my mind clouded by the air of sensuous luxury which had quite disarmed my companions.53 In the manner of dreams, the room was exactly as I recalled it, small details I had barely noticed at the time standing out vividly, but with the perspective curiously distorted so that it seemed to be without physical boundaries. Emeli was reclining on the bed, half out of the green silk gown which so closely matched her eyes, smiling at me enticingly, drawing me towards her as she had before. Unlike the reality, however, the ugly crater of the laspistol wound was already clearly visible, punched through her torso, where I’d broken the spell she’d placed on my mind by the most desperate and direct method I could.
‘You’re dead,’ I told her, aware as you sometimes are that you’re dreaming, but somehow unable to reject the experience as entirely unreal.
Her smile widened. ‘I’m coming back,’ she replied, as though it were the most natural thing in the galaxy, and once again I felt drawn towards her, desire and revulsion mingling within me until I could barely tell them apart. ‘Then I’ll taste your soul as I promised.’
‘I don’t think so,’ I said, reaching for my laspistol as I had in life, only to find that the holster had vanished, along with the rest of my clothing. Emeli laughed, the familiar enchanting trill of it drawing me in, and opened her arms to embrace me. I tried to pull away, panic flaring, and her face began to change, flowing into something I didn’t dare to look upon but was powerless to turn aside from, more beautiful and terrifying than the mind was meant to perceive.
‘Are you all right, sir?’
I woke abruptly, my heart hammering in my chest, to find Jurgen standing by the light switch, his lasgun in his hands. ‘You were shouting something.’
‘Just a dream,’ I said, staggering to the decanter of amasec and downing a hefty slug, far more hastily than so fine a bottle deserved. I poured a second and drank it a little more carefully. ‘About that witch on Slawkenberg.’
‘Oh.’ My aide nodded once, his own memories of the incident no doubt prompted by my words. ‘Bad business, that.’ And it would have been a great deal worse had it not been for his peculiar talent, which, at the time, we were both blissfully unaware of. He shrugged. ‘Still. Dreams never hurt anyone, did they sir?’
‘Of course not.’
I didn’t feel like sleeping any more, though, and began to get dressed. ‘Do you think you could find me some recaff?’
‘Right away, sir.’ He slung the lasgun over his shoulder and turned to leave the room, barely suppressing a yawn, and I realised for the first time that I must have woken him; he’d commandeered a sofa in the lounge of the suite, which I was using as an office and which was the other side of the bathroom. Some nightmare if he’d heard me from that far away, I thought.
‘Better get some for yourself, too,’ I added. ‘You look as though you need it.’
‘Very good, sir.’ He nodded once. ‘Will you be requiring breakfast?’
I wasn’t sure, to be honest, still queasy from the nightmare and the amasec, which was beginning to look like rather a bad idea now that it had reached my head, but I nodded too. ‘Something light,’ I said, confident that he knew my tastes well enough and that I could trust his judgement better than my own at the moment. ‘And whatever you feel like as well.’ As he left and his distinctive aroma followed him from the room, I found myself trying to think of a reason to call him back.
This is ridiculous, I told myself firmly. I was an Imperial commissar, not a frightened juvie. I tied my sash tightly, placed my cap squarely on my head and tried not to feel quite so relieved when I’d buckled my weapon belt around my waist.
Nevertheless, as I walked through to the lounge area, fastidiously negotiating the litter of half empty plates around Jurgen’s couch, I found myself wondering if what I’d experienced had been more than just a dream. Could some psychic residue of the cultists’ ritual have crawled inside my head in the chamber I’d discovered?
The idea was so disconcerting I found myself on the verge of voxing Malden right then and there to ask if it was feasible. Then reason reasserted itself. For one thing, I’d had Jurgen with me the whole time, and I knew for a fact that nothing like that could possibly have happened in his presence, and for another raising the possibility was the surest way I could think of to have the young psyker rummaging around in my head before you could say ‘The Emperor Protects.’ And the thought of that, you can be sure, was enough to snap me out of my stupor post-haste. Apart from my own discreditable secrets, which I was keen enough not to have anyone else privy to, there was enough sensitive information about Inquisition resources and contacts cluttering up my mind to sign my death warrant ten times over54 if they became known to anyone else.
Once I’d realised that it was quite enough to put a couple of bad dreams firmly into perspective, and by the time Jurgen returned pushing a trolley laden with comestibles (having taken my injunction to pick up anything he liked as literally as he did pretty much everything else), I was already at my desk wading through the routine paperwork. It might seem strange, given the momentous events I’d been discussing only a few hours before, but it continued to accumulate regardless. Troopers are troopers, after all, and if the enemy isn’t obliging enough to keep them entertained they’ll find their own amusements.
Now breakfast had arrived I found myself surprisingly hungry and managed to put a fair-sized dent in the stack of ackenberry waffles Jurgen had thoughtfully selected for me. Watching him eat was not an activity for the faint-hearted, so I returned to my desk where I could ignore everything but the sound effects, and was thus in a position to answer the vox myself almost as soon as the first chime sounded.
‘Cain,’ I said crisply, trying not to notice the choking sound as Jurgen attempted to mask his outrage at the breach of protocol. He took it as an Emperor-given right to filter my incoming messages, deflecting the vast majority with apparently inexhaustible patience and obstinacy, for which I was normally heartily grateful. This morning, however, I needed whatever distractions I could get, the echoes of the nightmare still leaving me on edge, and felt that for once he might as well finish his breakfast in peace.
‘Commissar,’ Hekwyn said, sounding surprised. ‘I thought you’d still be sleeping.’
‘I might say the same about you,’ I said, wondering why he would be calling me this early in the day. Nothing good, I suspected.
‘”The Imperium never sleeps”55,’ he quoted with a tinge of wry amusement in his voice. ‘And something’s come up I thought you might be interested in.’ If I’d realised at the time just what this innocuous remark was going to lead to I would have cut him off with the first excuse I could think of and gone scuttling back to the relative safety of Glacier Peak, and to hell with the cold. At the time, though, I thought any distraction would do to lift my mood, and settled back in my chair to listen.
‘Sounds intriguing,’ I said. ‘What have you been up to?’
‘A bit of old-fashioned detective work,’ Hekwyn said. ‘Or at least watching the local praetors do some. They’ve picked up one of the middlemen in the smuggling operation you uncovered.’
‘I’m impressed,’ I said, meaning it for once.
Hekwyn’s voice sounded quietly smug. ‘It wasn’t that hard. As you suggested, we took a look at people with access to the rail wagons going in and out of Glacier Peak. And frak me if there wasn’t a freight dispatcher spending three times his annual income on obscura and joygirls.’
‘And does this paragon of virtue have a name?’ I asked.
‘Kimeon Slablard. We’ve got him in a holding cell at the moment, thinking about all the terrible things that can happen to citizens who don’t cooperate with the authorities in a properly public-spirited manner.’ That made sense. If he was just a cat’s-paw he’d probably spill his guts at the first opportunity, and making him sweat first would only help. If, on the other hand, he was part of the cult, he’d take as long to break as the ones we already had in custody and an hour or two’s delay in getting started wouldn’t make any perceptible difference. ‘I thought you might like to sit in. Once he realises he’s in the ordure with the Guard as well, he should snap like a twig.’
‘It’s worth a try,’ I said. I risked a glance at Jurgen and decided he might as well finish his meal. It wasn’t as if Slablard was going anywhere, after all. ‘We’ll be with you within the hour.’
In actuality it took slightly longer than that, the streets being choked by the citizens of Skitterfall setting off to work as though the day was perfectly normal and their entire world wasn’t about to be ravaged by a fleet of Chaos marauders. But then I suppose that’s a part of what makes the Imperium what it is: the indomitable spirit of even its most humble citizens. Or their incredible stupidity, which amounts to more or less the same thing half the time.56
At any event the carriageways were full of groundcars chugging along at a pace which left them being overtaken by the occasional energetic pedestrian, and even Jurgen’s remarkable driving skills weren’t enough to manoeuvre the Salamander through the narrow gaps between the smaller, lighter civilian vehicles. I was just beginning to think we should have commandeered an aircar instead, despite my aide’s reluctance to fly, when he accelerated abruptly up a flight of stone steps between two towering buildings.
‘Short cut,’ he said, heedless of the gaggle of Administratum drones scattering before us spewing an interesting assortment of profanity. He directed us across a wide plaza cluttered with statues of noble Adumbrian bureaucrats. A few vertiginous swerves later and an equally precipitate descent down another staircase apparently leading through a shopping district and a tram terminal, he drew up outside the Arbites building in a space reserved for official vehicles.
A couple of officers stared at us suspiciously, but a glance at my uniform and the heavy weapons aboard our sturdy little vehicle seemed to disincline them to challenge our right to be there.
‘Thank you, Jurgen,’ I said, clambering out, unexpectedly grateful for the amasec I’d drunk earlier after all. ‘That was very resourceful.’
‘Couldn’t have you missing your appointment, sir,’ he said cheerfully.
Further conversation seemed superfluous, so I left him to deal with the praetors who seemed to have plucked up the courage to approach by now, and went inside.
‘Commissar.’ For a moment I failed to recognise the young praetor who stood inside the cool marble atrium beyond the heavy wooden doors, clearly waiting for me, then the nagging sense of familiarity clicked. Young Kolbe. With his helmet off the resemblance to his father was quite striking, although his build was taller and slimmer. ‘It’s good to see you again.’
‘I’m pleased to find you so well,’ I said.
Kolbe inclined his head in the same manner as his father. ‘Your medic did an excellent job. I’m supposed to be on light duties, but under the circumstances…’ his gesture took in the bustle surrounding us. Uniformed praetors were hurrying in all directions, many of them leading prisoners who were either cursing loudly or protesting their innocence according to temperament, and I even caught a glimpse of a couple of black-bodygloved members of the Arbites itself.
‘Things do seem a little hectic,’ I said as he escorted me across the echoing space towards the bank of elevators under a vast and tasteless mural of the Emperor scourging the unrighteous.
‘We’ve been rounding up every low-life in Skitterfall who might have a connection to the heretics,’ he told me cheerfully. ‘And then there’s the usual unrest you get in a civil emergency.’ We side-stepped a redemptionist preacher and his congregation, still happily bawling his lungs out about the apocalypse about to descend on the unworthy in general and the riot squads who’d waded in to prevent them making an early start on the vice district in particular, despite their escort’s frequent and enthusiastic application of shock batons. ‘So arbitrator Hekwyn thought it might be a good idea to send me along to meet you.’
‘Good idea,’ I said, as we gained the sanctuary of the elevators and the relative shelter of the large stone eagles flanking them. Young Kolbe punched a couple of runes on one, and the doors clanked open, the brass filigree forming a pattern of interlocking eagles mirroring their large stone cousins.
‘Sub-basement seventeen,’ Kolbe said, looking up and drawing his own baton as the Redemptionist party collided noisily and violently with a group of joygirls on their way to an adjacent holding pen. ‘If you’ll excuse me?’
‘By all means,’ I assured him, grateful that here at least was a mess I didn’t have to worry about sorting out, and watching him wade into the fracas with every sign of enjoyment. The doors creaked closed as I pressed the icon he’d indicated, and I began my descent into the lowest level of the building.
After about thirty seconds of tedium, made even worse by a scratchy recording of Death to the Deviant apparently performed by tone-deaf ratlings with nose flutes, the doors rattled open to reveal a plain anteroom with a scuffed carpet and an arbitrator in full body armour behind a desk pointing a riot gun in my direction.
‘Commissar Cain,’ I told her as casually as I could while staring down a gun barrel I could have comfortably fitted my thumb inside. ‘I’m expected.’
‘Commissar.’ She put the clumsy weapon down and did something to a keypad on the desk. She must have had a comm-bead inside her helmet, because she nodded at something I couldn’t hear, and waved me to a seat in the corner. ‘The arbitrator senioris will be with you shortly.’ I’d heard that one before and was beginning to think I should have brought something to read, but I’d barely had time to sit down before a thick steel door behind her swung open and Hekwyn emerged.
‘Glad you could make it,’ he greeted me, holding out a data-slate in his new augmetic hand. He seemed to be getting used to it now, judging distances as easily as he did with his original one. I took the slate, skimming through Slablard’s record as quickly as I could. It was similar enough to the military charge sheets I was intimately familiar with for the job to take little time. By the time I reached the end we were halfway along a plain corridor, finished in unpainted rockcrete, in which blank metal doors were set at intervals, identical save for the numbers stencilled on them. The air was close, smelling of old sweat, bodily fluids and the unmistakable tang of acute fear which no one familiar with an eldar reiver slave pit can ever forget. ‘He’s in here.’
The door looked no different from any of the others around us, but Hekwyn seemed positive enough, tapping a six digit code into the keypad too rapidly for me to follow. The door opened, releasing the smell of flatulence, and I motioned the arbitrator through ahead of me politely.
I was pretty sure our smuggler wouldn’t have the wit or the determination to be waiting in ambush, in the hope of overpowering whoever next came through the door and making a run for it, but there was no point in taking any chances.57 As it turned out, there wasn’t much chance of that anyway, as he was quite firmly shackled to a chair in the middle of the chamber, and didn’t strike me as the kind to chew his own arm off to escape. (Which I suppose pretty much ruled him out as Chaos cult material.)
I wasn’t quite sure what I’d expected him to look like, but I knew I’d expected something a little more impressive. He was a small man with watery eyes which refused to make contact with whoever was talking to him and thinning brown hair; the net result was uncannily like a startled rodent.
‘I want to see a legal representative,’ he blustered as soon as we appeared. ‘You can’t just keep me here indefinitely.’
‘What we want and what we get in life are seldom the same,’ Hekwyn said regretfully.
Slablard squirmed. ‘I want to talk to someone in authority.’
‘That would be me,’ Hekwyn said, stepping further into the room. Slablard’s eyes widened at the sight of his uniform, then positively bulged when he saw mine. ‘I have overall responsibility for the operation of the Arbites on Adumbria.’ He paused a moment, giving this time to sink in, then indicated me. ‘This is Commissar Cain, who you may also have heard of. I’ve invited him to sit in on our conversation as a matter of courtesy, since acts of treason also fall under military jurisdiction in a time of emergency.’
‘Treason?’ Slablard’s voice rose an octave, sweat stains appearing under the arms of his coarse blue shirt as though someone had turned on a tap. ‘I just moved a few crates!’
‘Containing weapons subsequently used to attack His Majesty’s Guardsmen,’ I said as sternly as I could. ‘And that’s treason in my book.’ Slablard looked desperately from one of us to the other, finally fixing on Hekwyn as the slightly less intimidating of the two.
‘I didn’t know.’ he whined. ‘How could I?’
‘Perhaps if you’d asked?’ Hekwyn suggested mildly.
The little man wilted visibly. ‘You don’t know these people. They’re dangerous. You don’t want to cross them, you get what I’m saying?’
‘These people are heretics,’ I said. ‘Worshippers of the Ruinous Powers, sent here ahead of the invasion fleet to undermine our defences against them.’ I leaned forward, fixing him with my best commissarial glare, which had made generals turn pale before now. ‘Have you any idea how much harm you’ve done?’
‘They told me it was just black market ore!’ Slablard was practically in tears. ‘You have to believe me, I’d never have dealt with them if I’d known they were heretics.’
‘It’s not me you have to convince,’ I told him. ‘It’s the Emperor himself. You’d better just pray that your soul hasn’t been corrupted by your association with the agents of darkness, or you’ll be damned for eternity.’ All claptrap, of course, but I delivered it as fervently as Beije would have done and felt quite pleased with my acting ability.
