‘God-Emperor!’ she wailed with the effort. ‘Drop him, Nayl!’
‘Trying!’ Nayl replied. He’d slapped home a fresh clip and was busy emptying that. The pit-fighter was clearly hard-wired against pain and hyped up on some serious glanding frenzy-maker. Nayl was inflicting serious tissue damage to the gladiator’s chest, but still he was fighting to reach them, his face a rictus of kill-hate.
‘Can’t hold him!’ Kys barked. Her telekinesis stalled, exhausted, and Ekkrote thundered towards them. Then a huge force lifted the gladiator off his feet and drove him hard against the chamber wall. He continued to thrash. The force, invisible, slammed him into the wall three or four times until the stone facings cracked and he went limp.
The inquisitor’s force chair powered towards them across the dock. Frauka – his limiter clearly active – walked behind it. Zael was in tow.
Nayl pushed on, past Kara, who was on her knees panting, and into the handlerman’s offices. The floor was littered with papers, slates and other belongings that had been overturned in Duboe’s frenzy to cover his tracks. Duboe was behind the desk, a heavy-grade tube-charge in his hands.
‘Uh uh!’ he warned, his hand ready to twist the arming dial. ‘Back out!’
As if alive, the tube-charge leapt out of his hands and crunched hard into his nose. Duboe fell on the floor, hands clutched to his bloody face. Kys stepped up behind Nayl and took the charge out of the air where it was floating.
Together, they bundled him out onto the dock where Ravenor was waiting with Kara, Frauka and the boy.
+Get him to the transports.+
They all started to move, then stopped when they heard the inquisitor send the word, +Wait!+
His mind-voice seemed to falter.
There was a rush of air. The main dock hatches around the outer edges of the bay were hissing open. Units of Magistratum and PDF troops were streaming in, and amongst them were several men and women dressed in simple grey suits.
Two were already heading right towards them. One was a very big man indeed. The other, small and thin, was regarding them with piercing blue eyes.
It was the psyker, Kinsky.
Six
‘You want I should…?’ Frauka began.
‘Not yet,’ I said. I was ready for Kinsky now, whoever he was. To my team, he was just a scrawny, grinning wretch. To me, he was ablaze from head to toe in lambant psi-flame. His big minder – Ahenobarb – stood ready to catch him the moment he went bodiless.
I didn’t want a mind-fight. I certainly didn’t relish the prospect of going up against this one again. But I would if I had to. And I was on the ground now, face to face. He’d find me more of a match.
+Let us pass.+ I sent.
+(Laugh) I don’t think so. Several of the people with you are armed. I want to know who and what you are.+
+Not without some notion of your authority and jurisdiction,+ I sent back flatly.
Kinsky pursed his lips. Marshals were closing in around him, weapons aimed at us. Others spread out through the cargo-dock and through into the choragium proper, rounding up the scattering circus workers. I heard weapons discharge. Some more of the poor, loosed animals brought down, I supposed.
Kinsky reached into a pocket of his grey suit and flipped open a wallet, showing us the official seal.
‘Lomer Kinsky, Ministry of Sub-sector Trade, by the authority of the lord governor himself.’
He used his voice for this, so we all could hear him.
I’d heard of the Ministry, of course. A soft, bland title for a powerful regulatory body. The lord governor’s secret police. Not a force to be trifled with. Kinsky’s presence at Sonsal’s house, and the way the marshals had deferred to him and his colleagues, now made sense.
But, as the saying goes, I had one better. The time for subterfuge had gone… or at least, had been stolen from us by circumstances. The nature of my operation on Eustis Majoris was about to change irrevocably.
I sent a mental impulse into the display mechanism of my chair, and a small flap slid open on its armoured prow. A fish-eyed projector lens flipped out, flush to the smooth bodywork, and glowed into life. I displayed the hololithic version of my rosette.
+I am Gideon Ravenor, inquisitor, Ordo Xenos.+
It was worth it just to see the look on Kinsky’s face.
The lord governor’s palace was a bratticed tower rising from the side of the gigantic administry monoliths in Formal A, like a pier of coral from a main reef. Heavy rain lashed through the night as we were escorted in armoured vans to the palace undercroft. We all went: myself, Kara, Nayl, Patience, Frauka and Zael. Duboe was carted off into custody by the Departmento Magistratum. Carl and Mathuin had not yet been rounded up, and I trusted they could stay out of harm’s way.
Kinsky, Ahenobarb and a female in grey whose name I wasn’t told escorted Frauka and me up to the cap levels of the palace. We left the others waiting in an anteroom off the undercroft.
Kinsky was clearly nervous. His psi-force had ebbed a great deal; it was just a flicker now. I could tell he remembered our clash at Sonsal’s house. He’d cut loose there. Now he knew I was an inquisitor, he was worried how things might go for him.
The elevator doors slid open and we emerged into a high hallway lined in wood veneer and beam lighting. At the far end, more doors opened into a wide, softly-lit apartment whose tintglas windows overlooked the entire western part of the hive.
‘Wait,’ said Kinsky, and the three of them withdrew, leaving me alone with Frauka. Frauka wandered across the room between armchairs and settees, and opened an inlaid box on the writing desk under the windows. He took out a lho-stick – a more expensive brand than the one he smoked – and lit it.
‘Should I contact the ordo here?’ he asked.
‘We’ll see,’ I said.
A man walked in from a side door. He was dressed, like Kinsky, in soft grey murray, and was slender, with a chin-beard and tied-back black hair. The third man from Sonsal’s house. The one with the power. Not power like the psyker. Real power.
‘Good evening, inquisitor,’ he said, bowing slightly to my chair. He ignored Frauka, which seemed to suit Frauka fine.
‘Good evening,’ I replied, using my voxponder.
‘My name is Jader Trice. I am first provost of the Ministry of Sub-sector Trade. I would like to start our conversation by apologising for any unpleasantness this evening.’
‘Unpleasantness?’
‘At the Circus Carnivora. You found yourselves caught up in a routine crime-raid.’
‘A routine raid? I thought you were responding to an altercation in the cavae.’
Trice shrugged. He was handsome, and immaculately groomed and manicured. A real operator. I noticed he had one brown eye and one blue. There was something else about him. An essence. A hint of something I was desperate to put a figurative finger on. But at this stage, under these circumstances, it would have been rude to probe, however discreetly.
‘Our raid had been planned for several weeks, and we’d brought in sections of Magistratum and the PDF. Fairly major scale. The Carnivora is a hotbed of crime and smuggling. We were intending to move in towards the end of the night, but the – altercation, as you put it – forced our hand. I understand this… altercation… was set off by your own investigation.’
‘I had reason to examine the circus. The criminal elements objected to my interest.’
Trice smiled. ‘Can I get you a drink?’ he asked.
‘A little malt liq with a shaving of ice,’ replied Frauka, helping himself to another lho-stick.
Trice looked at him.
‘I don’t,’ I said. ‘But please indulge my companion.’
Trice fetched Frauka’s drink from a stand on a sideboard, and poured himself an amasec. ‘The lord governor was most upset to hear that an inquisitor had been caught up in tonight’s operation.’
‘I’m sure.’
‘He extends his best wishes, and asks me to offer my services to you.?
??
Trice handed the drink to Frauka and looked at me. Like everyone else, he was put-off by the unforthcoming nature of my enclosed chair.
He sat down, facing me, and swirled the amasec in his balloon. ‘The Ministry of Sub-sector Trade is a newly created body. I don’t know if you’re aware of our purview.’
‘I am,’ I said. ‘I’m very familiar with the writings of the lord governor. A perceptive man, a reformer, an innovator. His election to office last year was a thing to be welcomed.’
I meant what I said. Oska Ludolf Barazan, who had been in his time hive mayor, senator plenipotentiary, and, since 400.M41, lord governor of the Angelus sub, was an erudite and forward-thinking politician whose reformist attitudes I much admired. Given the segmentum-wide trend for such offices to fall to under-achievers via nepotism and birthright, Barazan’s election seemed like a miracle of liberalism. Generally stagnant men inherited control of stagnant sub-sectors and thus further stagnated them. The Ministry had been part of his election platform. He had wanted to create an active, sharp-toothed instrument that would oversee the workings of Imperial bureaucracy on Eustis Majoris and beyond. Clean them up. Cut the crap. ‘Reform’ was not wide enough a word.
‘I’ll pass your comments on to the lord governor,’ Trice said. ‘He’ll be flattered. He is an avid student of your own work.’
I had written a few things: a number of treatises, an extended essay or two. They had been well received. If I’d had a visible face, it would have been blushing.
‘He is troubled, however,’ Trice went on. ‘His central doctrine is openness. Clarity.’
‘Full disclosure,’ I remarked.
‘Quite so. And yet, you chose to operate on the capital world… clandestinely.’
Frauka snorted. Trice looked round at him and he raised his glass. ‘Don’t mind me,’ he said.
‘I’m sure,’ I said, ‘the lord governor is not unfamiliar with the workings of the Inquisition. Our success in preserving the purity of Mankind relies entirely on our unquestioned power. The Inquisition does not have to ask, or obtain permission. It may look where it wishes, and do what it wishes. It is the most absolute power in the Imperium of Man, save the God-Emperor himself.’
‘Oh, quite,’ said Trice, swirling his drink some more. I notice that he had not touched it. Keeping his mind sharp. ‘There is, however, an inference that you did not inform the lord governor of your activities here because you suspected the authorities as well.’
‘Of course I did. No offence to the lord governor, but corruption is everywhere. Is that not why he created your Ministry, Provost Trice? To clean the house from the top down? Consider me to be cleaning from the basement up.’
‘May I enquire the nature of your investigation?’ he asked.
‘You may. Prompted by my ordo masters, I have undertaken an investigation into the nature and origin of the addictive substances know as flects.’
Trice frowned. ‘Narcotics are an Magistratum matter, and smuggling…’
‘The flects are not narcotics, provost. Not in the chemical sense, whatever their characterising traits. They are most definitely xenos in nature.’
‘Xenos?’ he breathed, uneasy.
‘They are artifacts. Tainted artifacts. Their abuse has spread, these last two years, down through the Angelus sub, into the Helican sub and the Ophidian too. All signs indicate the root of that trade is here on Eustis Majoris.’
Trice got up and set down his untouched drink ‘We… we are on the same side, inquisitor.’
‘I’d hate to doubt it, Mr Trice.’
He smiled at me. ‘I mean to say, we are aware of the flect problem. It is rife here. We… uhm… we know we are the source of it. The fact pains the lord governor greatly. It is, consequently, uppermost in my Ministry’s list of actions. Tonight’s raid on the Carnivora was part of our ongoing war on flect-distribution.’
‘You had identified the circus as a source?’
He nodded. At last, he took a sip of his amasec. ‘The Imperial pits are a focus of contraband crime on many worlds, inquisitor. The staff has powerful contacts with rogue traders and commercial outfitters, all licensed to import xenos-breeds on-planet for the games. It is an obvious source. A trader imports a snarl-cat from Riggion for the circus, under license… What else does he bring in the snarl-cat’s cage? Grinweed. Gladstones. Phetamote thrill-pills baggy-packed into the animal’s intestine.’
‘And flects,’ I said. ‘The ship traders and outfitters are moving flects through the circus businesses. Through other outlets too, I’m sure. Wood, metals, weapons perhaps. But the Imperial pits are key. They have the most open trade permits, necessarily, to cater for the creatures they bring in.’
He nodded again, sagely. There was a click-clacking sound. By the desk, Frauka was trying to light another lho-stick from an ornamental desk igniter that refused to spark. He became aware of us staring at him, and put the igniter down.
‘Sorry,’ he said and pulled a match book out of his jacket.
Trice looked back at me. ‘You detained a man tonight.’
‘His name was Duboe. Chief handlerman at the cavae. A dealer.’
‘My Ministry had suspected as much.’
‘I’d like him returned to me for questioning.’
‘Of course!’ Trice smiled, as if anything else was unthinkable.
‘And I’d like to continue with my work… unimpeded.’
Trice nodded. ‘I have a request. From the lord governor. He asks that we pool our efforts.’
‘How so?’
‘We have information that may assist you… You have the force of the Inquisition behind you to empower it. I have to admit, Inquisitor Ravenor, my Ministry – for all it is newborn and fresh – is hard stretched. We would like to combine our efforts with yours and close off the flect trade at source.’
I slid my chair a few centimetres forward towards him. ‘Your information. Try me.’
Trice pursed his lips. ‘Our investigations have shown that Duboe’s source was a game agent from the outworlds called Feaver Skoh, one of a famous dynasty of xeno-hunters. Skoh operates from a rogue trader called the Oktober Country, captain of which is one Kizary Thekla. The Country runs the lanes up through our sub to Flint, Ledspar and beyond, sometimes as far as Lenk, every half-year, to buy choice stuff from the beast-moots there. Sometimes they go on into Lucky Space so that Skoh can hunt for himself on the rip-worlds up there. We believe they’re sourcing flects, maybe from the moots, maybe, from Lucky Space.’
‘Trice. Why are you telling me this?’ I asked.
‘In the spirit of cooperation. Full disclosure,’ he said.
‘And?’
He knocked back his drink in one tug. ‘The Oktober Country broke orbit fifty minutes ago, without permission from ground traffic. Its last vectored course was up the line to Flint.’
Nayl, Kys and Kara were waiting for me on the palace pad. Zael was hanging back behind them, and they had Duboe in manacles.
As the drop ship came down out of the night on columns of spitting flame, I rolled out onto the pad to join them, Frauka at my side. Behind me came three figures in soft grey cloth-suits, their crewbags slung over their shoulders: Kinsky, Ahenobarb and a female called Madsen.
Nayl looked at them.
‘Who the hell…?’ he breathed.
‘Say hello,’ I replied. ‘They’re coming with us.’
PART TWO
Lucky Space
One
He’d been on wherries down the overfloat, trucks and cargo-8s a few times and, once, a train over to Formal R to visit a cousin or some such. He’d been pretty young at the time; he barely remembered the cousin, let alone the train.
He’d never been off the ground for more than a few seconds, never flown, not even in a lifter. He’d certainly never been on a starship.
The guy (Zael still thought of Harlon Nayl as ‘the guy’ even though he knew his name – it was kind of a comforting thing to cling on to) t
old him the ship was called the Hinterlight. Meant nothing. Might as well have been called Yer Momma is a Smiley-Girl, Zael still hadn’t heard of it. But he was sort of impressed, and funny-excited. It was a starship, and it was all that word implied. Off-dirt, the void, distant worlds whose names he couldn’t spell.
The big deal, as far as Zael saw it, was that they were taking him too. Where, he didn’t care. Had to be better than the J stacks. His little, knucked-up life had just taken an interesting swing.
It occurred to him to wonder why they were taking him. The Chair had talked to him several times since he’d hooked up with the guy, said a few things that seemed to indicate that he thought Zael was special somehow. Well, that was fine. The Chair was the big shot in this little gang, and if The Chair thought Zael was special, it probably meant he was.
Though he kind of wanted to know special how?
The Chair’s gang had been scaring the life out of him since he’d met them, but they were sort of cool too. He’d seen the guy do his thing, for a start. The guy was a piece of work. Then there was Kys. She was as scary as the guy, but in a different way. Zael tended to look aside when Kys glanced his way. Kara was nicer. She always asked if Zael was doing okay. She was sexy. Kys was probably sexy too, in a blade-thin, dangerous sense, but her scariness got in the way. Kara was just nice, simple as that. And she had these killer curves that made him feel tingly.
Thonius was a freak, though. Unpleasant and sneery. Zael got the feeling Thonius didn’t like him much. Well, that was fine. And also mutual. There was Mathuin, who was simply a surly bastard. He reminded Zael of the worst kind of moody. But Zael had to feel a little sorry when the flier stopped to pick Thonius and Mathuin up. The bastard had been hurt bad. There was a lot of blood, and a spew-making smell of crispy flesh. Kara and the guy carried Mathuin into the rear compartment to patch him up.
Zael sat in his seat as the flier rose up out of the city. There were window ports, but he couldn’t see much. He could feel it, though, in his stomach. A little up and down. So this was flying. It made him queasy.