‘Whatever,’ said Kinsky. The nut he had just thrown up turned in mid-air, shivered, and smacked off his cheek with a bulleting force.
‘Whatever indeed,’ said Ravenor.
Wystan Frauka was waiting for them outside. Madsen shivered as she sealed the door behind them and faced Ravenor.
‘Wystan?’ Ravenor said politely.
Frauka deactivated his limiter. He plucked a lho-stick from his card pack and lit it, looking bored.
Ravenor faced Madsen. ‘No more chances, Mamzel Madsen. You work with me or I ditch you.’
‘I understand. Kinsky is a loose cannon and–’
‘No, he is not. He is a powerful psyker who should be enclosed in the bosom of the Guild Astropathicus, and not freelanced as a governmental pawn. Ahenobarb is just a minder. You, to me, are the mystery.’
‘Me?’ she said.
‘You, Madsen. You are clearly in charge of this Ministry team. I know why I should be wary of the psyker, and his brute minder. But they answer to you. Therefore you worry me.’
‘I assure you–’
‘I don’t even know your given name.’
‘Lusinda Madsen. Happy now?’
‘No. Work with me, in all manner of effort, Lusinda Madsen, or I will eject you and your allies into the void.’
She straightened up and faced him. ‘You would not dare. I am here by the authority of the lord sub-sector.’
‘Yes, you are. I am here by the authority of the Ordos Helican. This far out, on the verges of Lucky Space, who would know… who would care… if I had you three voided from an airgate?’
Lusinda Madsen smiled then. She said, ‘I think we understand each other, sir.’
But Ravenor thought… a smile. What a strange reaction.
‘There he is,’ said Nayl. He opened the chipped driver’s door window of the cargo-8 they sat in so they could get a better look across the crowded street.
‘You sure?’ Kara asked.
Nayl nodded. It had taken him a few hours of quiet questions and a roll of never-to-be-seen-again cash to get the skinny on Shipmaster Siskind from the traders in Tusk Verge. Trade custom along the Western Banks was notoriously tight-lipped, as Kys’s team had discovered, and Nayl and Kara had found on their own foray north. The moot-coast prided itself on being just outside rigid Imperial law, and was never happy to be pumped for answers.
But the uproar during the moot had changed that. Ironically, Nayl had benefited from the mess Thonius had been at the centre of. The locals were in mortified disarray, the slaughterbaron had suspended trading. There was unrest and rancour. The off-world traders felt edgy and vulnerable suddenly, not knowing whether to risk waiting until the moot re-opened or to get out while they were still able. What’s more, a shipman had been murdered in the firefight. As a result, the traders were closing ranks, and exchanging protective gossip, tipping one another off to slaughterman guild inspections. Nayl’s questions had seemed just part of that process.
‘That’s Siskind definitely. Red hair, glass jacket, pale tan ATV with red panels on the mudguards.’
‘He’s rolling,’ said Kara.
Nayl saw it. He turned the cargo-8’s engine over, got a throaty rev or two, and then edged out from the street-side after the tan ATV as it nudged down the thoroughfare through the bustling pedestrians.
The morning was cold and set fair. An emaciated lemon sun ached through the flat grey sky over the shore. There was a strong wind in off the sea. The town of Tusk Verge seemed dismal and bleak, filled up with people who had no wish to be there.
Siskind’s ATV turned east through the town and followed the walled roads up towards the commerce fields. It picked up a little speed as it left behind the more crowded streetways.
‘Not too close,’ Kara said.
‘Oh, please…’
Still, he idled back, and allowed a trader’s articulated cargo-12 and a billowing dung-wagon to get in between their vehicle and the ATV.
The dung-wagon turned off towards the highway viaduct. A few minutes later, the cargo-12 pulled to the right and grumbled down a causeway into the eastern loading docks of the moot pens. Nayl drove on through their dust and followed Siskind’s ATV out onto the windswept commerce fields that occupied the high pastures above the moot-town. Here, even during the day, canfires burned, marking out landing plots along with heavy-duty mechanised beacon posts that had been hammered into the dry soil. On almost all of the wide plots sat a freighter, cargo doors agape. Inter-orbit lifters of every size and design were ranged along the commerce field plots, often with small fliers and landers parked next to them. Crews lounged about, bored, smoking, drinking.
Nayl eased back again, as if he was about to turn in to one of the plots. The ATV bellied on ahead, heading up to the north end of the landing field.
They followed, slowly. The tan ATV turned right and slewed to a halt in front of the jaw-doors of an ancient bulk lifter that sprawled across its appointed plot like a wallowing hippo. Its entire rust-riveted bulk was raised from the scorched ground on six vast hydraulic legs.
Nayl pulled them over and they sat and watched. The ATV drove up to the foot of the bulk lifter’s ramp and paused, allowing Siskind to jump down. Sunlight flashed on the links of his glass jacket. As he began to converse with the dynast-appointed lander man, the ATV revved again and nosed up into the belly of the lifter. Expressing steam, the vehicle’s huge cargo doors began to close.
‘He’s leaving,’ Kara said.
‘Let’s go,’ agreed Nayl.
Nayl killed the engine and they jumped out either side of the truck. Siskind was still arguing with the local plot official. A dispute over landing tariffs, perhaps. Kara and Nayl ran up along the adjacent plot, keeping a battered old Latimar Ind bulker between them and Siskind’s lifter.
It was a long run. Each plot was about three hundred metres long. By the time they had reached the far end of the plot and had turned in and behind Siskind’s vessel, it was raising thrusters and sealing for take-off. Siskind, distant now, was turning from the argument with a dismissive shrug and heading for the gangway. He jogged his way up it, and sealed the hatch behind him. The automated gangway retracted into the bulk lifter’s flank and heat-shield armour extruded to cover its socket.
The roar of the lifter’s power plant rose abruptly by a factor of ten. There was a fierce downrush of jetted air and AG repulsion that Kara and Nayl could feel even from the edge of the plot. It was suddenly like trying to walk into a gale. Dust and dry grass kicked up in a blizzard. The lifter began to rise, arduously, into the air, creating a heat-haze distortion between itself and the soil.
Shielding his face, Nayl raised the heavy-gauge coil-bow he’d been carrying and aimed it up at the ship, into the deluge.
Kara shouted something he couldn’t hear.
He pulled the trigger and fired the bow, feeling the solid kick of the coil-spring. A direct hit impacted on the belly line of the ascending cargo ship. A direct hit that went completely unfelt by the ship’s crew.
The bow-shot load had been custom made. A wad of adhesive suspension coating a disk of very special material. Wraithbone.
Siskind’s lifter rose into the morning air, nose dipped, gouted black smoke, swung heavily to its left and then turned and began to climb on full down-thrust, its burner-flares blue-white. Rapidly, it became just another dot leaving a contrail in the flat grey sky.
Nayl keyed his link. ‘Mr Halstrom?’
‘Mr Nayl?’ the vox contact crackled.
‘On your scopes, I trust?’
‘Tracking it now.’
The Allure broke orbit five hours later. It performed a smooth series of mass-velocity transactions and turned out, sliding effortlessly away from the shoal of anonymous rogue trade ships at high anchor above Flint. To all intents, it was just as anonymous as the rest – none of the trade ships chose to identify themselves electronically. But Halstrom’s scopes had followed the bulk lifter to it. It was most certainly the Allure.
It powered clear of Flint’s gravity trap, bending its course rimward and under the elliptic plane. Cloaked behind extremely non-standard disguise fields, another ship went with it.
The Allure was nine astronomical units from Flint and accelerating towards its encoded translation point when its master finally became aware he had a problem.
Bartol Siskind had taken off his jacket of Vitrian glass and hung it over the back of his command seat. The Allure’s bridge was capacious but low ceilinged. Much of the flight deck instrumentation extended down from the ceiling over the raked crew stations. Siskind took a sip of caffeine and leaned back to study his master display.
He had already received a signal to go from his enginarium, and his course had been plotted and laid down by his Navigator. All systems were functioning well within parameters, and he was getting a particularly fine output rhythm from the principal drive. He reached up and touched a few runes on the screen, tuning tiny, expert adjustments into the mass-drive regulators.
‘Translation point in eleven minutes, accelerating…’ the Navigator intoned calmly from the adamite crypt recessed into the deck in front of him. Siskind nodded and turned to Ornales, his first officer, about to order him to stow for warp space.
Ornales sat at the position next to him, his face downlit by the massive overhead console that arched down over his raked-back seat.
By the light of the dancing green glow, Siskind could see a perplexed expression on his number one’s face.
‘What?’
‘Are you getting that?’ Ornales asked.
Frowning, Siskind looked up at his own master display. A new dialogue box had appeared on top of the scrolling system data. It wasn’t especially large. It said: Cut your engines now.
‘What the hell…?’ Siskind tried to clear it. It wouldn’t cancel. ‘Is this a damn joke?’
‘It’s external,’ Ornales replied, his voice tense. His hands were dancing over his mainboard. ‘External source. Pict-only communication.’
‘But there’s nothing in range…!’ Siskind said.
He activated the return mode and typed: Identify?
The box blinked. Cut your engines and heave to now.
Identify now! Siskind wrote angrily.
There was a brief pause. Then the box blinked again and read: Heave to. Depower and drop to coasting. By order of the Inquisition. Do not make me cripple your ship, Siskind.
Once the Allure had coasted down, the outlets of the huge drive assemblies at its stern glowing frosty pink as potential power descaled, the Hinterlight made itself visible. The Allure was a medium-sized sprint trader of non-standard design, heavily modified during its long life. It was long, craggy and bulky, its only concession to elegance the long chevrons of armour ridging its prow like the steel toe-cap of a pointed boot.
The Hinterlight was somewhat smaller and a great deal sleeker, shaped like a blade, with the flared bulk of its drive section at its stern. It flickered menacingly into view, appearing on Siskind’s sensor panels a few seconds before it was eye-visible. A combination of xeno-derived technology and Ravenor’s own mental strength generated the disguise field. It was a system that Ravenor would be forced to have removed from the Hinterlight if his arrangement with Preest wound up.
As it visibly manifested, the Hinterlight tracked its primary batteries to target the Allure. Preest made damn sure the Allure’s systems got a clear indication of multiple target lock. Neither ship was military, neither an outright fighting vessel, but they were both rogue traders, and where rogue traders went, a decent level of firepower was a professional asset.
Siskind’s response, just as obvious, was to make sure his batteries were both depowered and stowed, and his targeting system off-line. It was a clear submissive gesture, an indication of compliance. Even out here, just a few days’ voyage from Lucky Space, no one fooled around when the Inquisition called the tune.
An armoured transport shuttle, little more than a gig, dropped down out of the Hinterlight’s belly hangar, ignited its thrusters in a blaze of blue light, and went flitting across the silent gulf towards the Allure. As it approached the other ship, and became dwarfed by its great, battered bulk, guide-path lights began to pulse sequentially along the Allure’s flank. The gig zipped along after them, tracking in close to the merchantman’s scarred hull, and arrived at a hangar dock where the outer hatches and blast curtains were slowly gliding open. The gig paused, adjusted its attitude with a tight burst of point-thrusters, and slid inside.
The resealed hangar was thick with swirling exhaust smoke and hydraulic steam. There was a loud, repetitive hazard buzzer sounding, almost drowned out by the huge atmospheric fans under the deck. The echoing buzzer finally cut off and the flashing warning lamps ceased. Overhead floods kicked on and illuminated the gig where it rested on its landing skids in the middle of the primary platform. Several other inter-orbital craft, including the scabby bulk-lifter Nayl had tagged, were berthed in lock-cradles off the platform, connected up to ropes of heavyweight fuel and system-fluid lines.
An internal hatch hissed open and Siskind strode out into the vast hangar flanked by three senior members of his crew. They were all armed, and made no effort to disguise the fact. Siskind was wearing his glass-weave jacket, and a bolt pistol hung in a holster at his hip. Two of his comrades were human – a tall, dark-haired man and a shorter, older, balding fellow – both carrying wire-stocked las-carbines. The third was a nekulli, slender and humanoid, but with long spine-scales flowing back from his scalp. The nekulli’s eyes were white slits, his nose virtually absent, his lower jaw thrust forward. Two thin fangs hooked up from this underbite over his top lip. Like all nekulli, he walked with a hunch-shouldered waddle.
The four walked out onto the platform, knee-deep in the repressurisation fog still wreathing the deck, and came to a halt ten metres from the gig.
Siskind cleared his throat. He looked edgy and pissed off.
The cabin hatch on the side of the gig retracted in three, segmented sections. Ravenor’s chair hovered out, and sank down to deck level, facing the shipmaster. With a little hiss that made the dark-haired man jump, the chair displayed its hololithic rosette.
‘I’m Siskind, master of this vessel,’ Siskind said carefully. ‘My papers and my letter of marque as an Imperial free trader are in order. If you wish, you may inspect them. Like all true servants of the Throne,’ – Siskind stressed that part – ‘I have every desire to cooperate and assist the Ordos Officio Inquisitorus. May I enquire… is this a random inspection?’
‘No,’ replied Ravenor. ‘I am Gideon Ravenor, inquisitor, Ordo Xenos Helican. I am hunting a ship called the Oktober Country, a ship that I know has had contact with you in the last week.’
Siskind shrugged and chuckled. ‘You’re after information? That’s it? You inconvenience me in the pursuit of my business… for information? Am I accused of any crime?’
‘No,’ said Ravenor. ‘But withholding information from an authorised agent of the Inquisition is a crime, so I advise you to be thoughtful about your next statement.’
Siskind shook his head. He was a handsome man, but there was an unpleasantly cruel set to his features. ‘I know the Oktober Country. But I’ve had no contact with it. Not even seen it for, what, three years? There is my information. Now remove yourself from my ship.’
‘You are in no position to make demands,’ said Ravenor. ‘My ship–’
‘Will hardly fire on mine with you aboard. I hate to play games, but it was easier to let you aboard. Does the concept of “hostage” mean anything to you?’
‘Oh, absolutely,’ said Ravenor.
‘Shit!’ cried the dark-haired man suddenly. Off to their left, Harlon Nayl stood in the knee-deep fog, a heavy automatic pistol aimed at them in a two-handed grip.
Siskind jumped back. To his right, Kara Swole had an assault cannon on them.
‘And behind you,’ Ravenor added.
All four turned. Mathuin smiled. The barr
el-cluster of his rotator cannon cycled menacingly. Siskind and his men had been so intent on Ravenor they’d not even noticed the others slip out under cover of the deck fog from the other side of the gig.
‘I was being polite,’ said Ravenor, ‘but we will play it your way. Harlon?’
Nayl fired a single shot and blew off the balding man’s left kneecap. Hit, the man fell onto the deck, shrieking and writhing.
‘I think that’s established the ground rules,’ Ravenor said. ‘Now let’s get to business.’
I had no desire to waste time. Exposing all of the Allure’s secrets would have taken months of painstaking research. It was a big, old ship, its history, manifests and logged records lousy with all manner of dubious deals, illegal transactions and outright crimes. Like any rogue trader, in fact. I’d never seen Preest’s ship-log, and she’d never volunteered it to me. It was the fundamental understanding on which our relationship was based. Rogue traders, even the best of them, tested the limits of Throne Law. Don’t ask and you won’t be disappointed. All I’d required of Preest was she keep her activities clean all the while we were associated.
My worthy, long-departed master, Gregor Eisenhorn, had once told me that if you examine any one man, any group of men, any institution, or any world long enough, you will uncover something untoward. I am proud of the achievements of the Imperium, and the virtues of its society, but I am not naive. There is corruption and crime and heresy everywhere. It is endemic. To operate successfully, an inquisitor must learn to be selective, to focus on the principal matters of his current case. To do otherwise leads to stagnation and failure.
Thus, I ignored the forty-eight freight tariff evasions the Allure had notched up. I ignored the conviction for grievous assault First Officer Ornales had evaded on Caxton. I turned a blind eye to the fact Siskind had a fugitive murderer working amongst his enginarium crew, and also to the fact that his ship’s surgeon had been disbarred from practice due to gross anatomical misconduct. I passed over the fifteen illegal or prohibited weapons carried aboard the ship, the largest two of which were battery-mounted on the hull. I didn’t even care about the consignments of yellodes, gladstones and grinweed we dug out of cavity spaces.