“Sir,” Kolea murmured and left.
Gaunt took off his cap and swung round to look at Caffran. “Any idea what that was about trooper?”
“No, sir.”
Gaunt nodded. “Sit down, Caffran. You know why I’m here.”
“To ask the same questions Kolea did, probably”
“And?”
Caffran slowly sat down on the cell’s ceramic bench. He cleared his throat and then looked up, meeting Gaunt’s gaze. “I didn’t do it sir.”
There was a long silence. Gaunt nodded. “All I needed to hear, Caff.”
He walked back to the door and put his cap back on. “Keep your spirits up, Caff. If it’s in my power to get you out of this, I will.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Gaunt stepped out into the brig hall. The Commissariate guards closed the heavy door, threw the bolts and ignited the shield. They saluted Gaunt, but he ignored them as he strode away.
In the rain, the mill-habs looked especially dismal. It wasn’t real rain, naturally. Every two days, each section of the hab-district was sluiced with water from the dome’s ceiling pipes. The idea was to maintain hygiene and keep the streets washed down.
It simply made everything glisten with wet and smell like a stale toilet stall.
The Flyte household had been boarded, and aquila seals stamped to the doors. The kids had been sent to stay with neighbours.
He jumped over the back fence into the rear yard and looked about his cloak pulled up over his head against the downpour. If the outhouse was well roofed, then there might be some traces left to find. If it wasn’t the rain would have rinsed everything of value away.
He looked around, peering in through the cracked rear windows of the hab. All sorts of litter and broken debris was scattered in the weed-rife yard.
He went into the outhouse, breaking the aquila seal and ignoring the stencilled Commissariate warning notice. Inside, it smelled of rotting fibreboard and mineral waste. There was no light It wasn’t particularly watertight but he could still see the dark stains on the wall, the floor, and the rim of the old, battered tub. One was a handprint. A perfect handprint. A woman’s.
He looked around. The rafters were low, and there was a gash in one of them right above the bath. He took out a lamp pack and shone it up, probing the cut with the tip of his Tanith knife, and carefully teased out a tiny sliver of metal that he put in his hip pouch.
He sniffed the air. He sniffed the fibreboard wall. He got down on his hands and knees and shone the lamp-pack under the tub. Something glinted. He reached for it.
“Don’t move! Not a bloody centimetre!” Torchlight shone in at him.
“Out, slowly!”
He obeyed, keeping his hands in the open.
The young cadet commissar in the doorway looked very scared, an automatic pistol aimed at him. But credit where credit was due. He’d come up fething quietly.
“Who are you?” the cadet said.
“Sergeant Mkoll, Tanith First,” Mkoll replied quietly.
“Goosen? What’s going on in there?” shouted a voice outside.
An older man, another commissar in a long, dripping storm coat, appeared behind the twitchy cadet. He almost took a step back in surprise when he saw Mkoll.
“Who the hell are you?”
“One of the neighbours reported an intruder, sir,” said Goosen. “Said he thought it was the killer come back.”
“Cuff him,” said the older man bluntly. “He’s coming with us.”
“May I?” Mkoll said, gesturing to his battledress pocket.
Goosen covered him carefully as Mkoll reached into the pocket and drew out a folded document. He held it out to the older man.
“Signed authorisation from Colonel-Commissar Gaunt, my unit commander. His instructions for me to conduct an evidential search of the scene, pursuant to the case.”
The commissar looked it over. He didn’t seem convinced. “This is irregular.”
“But it’s a fact. Can I lower my hands now?”
Goosen looked at the commissar. The older man shrugged.
“Let him be.”
The commissars looked round. Captain Ban Daur stood at the yard’s back gate. He had no weapon drawn but, despite the rain, his coat was pulled back for easy access to his bolstered laspistol.
Daur sauntered in, put his hand on Goosen’s weapon and slowly pointed it down.
“Put it away,” he advised.
“Are you with him?” the commissar asked, indicating Mkoll.
“Yes, I am, Fultingo. Gaunt’s rostered a team of us to carry out a regimental inspection of the case.”
“There’s no time. The execution is—”
“Postponed. Gaunt obtained a delay order from Commissar Del Mar’s office an hour ago. We have a grace period to assess all the evidence.”
Fultingo sneered at Mkoll. “You sent a trooper into a crime scene?”
“Mkoll’s unit chief of the Tanith scouts. Sharpest eyes in the Imperium. If there’s something to find, he’ll find it.”
“Who’s in charge of your investigation?” asked Fultingo. He looked angry, thwarted. “I’m going to lodge a formal complaint. You, captain? No… Hark, I’ll bet.”
“Gaunt has taken personal charge of the case,” said Daur. Mkoll had lowered his hands and was inspecting the outside of the shed.
“Gaunt?” queried Fultingo. “Gaunt himself? Why is he bothering with this?”
“Because it matters,” said Mkoll without looking round.
Fultingo stared at Daur, the dome-water dripping off his nose and cap-brim. “This is a criminal waste of resources. You haven’t heard the last of it.”
“Tell someone who cares,” hissed Daur.
Fultingo turned on his jackbooted heel and marched out of the yard, Goosen scurrying after him, kicking up wet gravel.
“Thanks,” said Mkoll.
“You were handling it.”
Mkoll shrugged. “Any progress?”
“Hark’s done what Gaunt asked him to do. Everything’s so tied up with red tape, Caff’s safe for a few days. Dorden’s examining the victim’s body this evening. Hark’s now circulating a questionnaire to the Ghosts just to see if anything flags up.”
Mkoll nodded. Daur shivered and looked about. The artificial rain was trickling to a stop, but the air was still filmy and damp. Steam rose from heating vents and badly insulated roofing. Water stood in great, black mirrors along the uneven street and in the ruts of the yard-back lane. Daur could smell stove fires and the faint, unwholesome aroma of ration meals cooking. Somewhere, children squealed and laughed as they played.
Although he couldn’t see them, Daur could feel the eyes in all the back windows of the hab-street, eyes peering out from behind threadbare drapes and broken shutters, watching them.
“Cakking miserable place,” Daur remarked. Mkoll nodded again and looked up. “The worst kind. No sky.”
That made Daur smile. “Mkoll,” he said. “Since we’re out here, off the record, as it were, you think Caffran did it?”
Mkoll turned his penetrating gaze round and directed it at the taller Verghastite officer. Daur had always admired and liked the chief scout. But for a moment, he was terrified.
“Caffran? Do you even have to ask?” said Mkoll.
“Yeah, right. Sorry.”
Mkoll wiped his wet face with a fold of his camo-cloak. “I’m done here, sir.”
“Right. We can go back then. Did you turn up anything?”
“The prosecutors did a lousy job… unless someone’s been in there since. They could have taken prints off the blood marks. Too late now, the damp’s got in. But they missed… or ignored… a knife scar in the beams. I dug out a shard of metal.”
“From the knife?”
“I think so. The frames of all these buildings are made of surplus ceramite sheathed in paper pulp. The core’s hard enough to nick a blade. Whoever did it was in a frenzy. And has a notch in his knife.”
&nbs
p; “Well, gak! That’s a start!”
“I know,” agreed Mkoll. “More interestingly, I found this. Right under the tub.”
He held out his hand, palm up, and showed what he had found to Daur.
A gold coin.
“An Imperial crown?”
Mkoll smiled. “A defaced Imperial crown,” he said.
THREE
Lord General Van Voytz had chosen a generous High Gothic style manse in the upper levels of Cirenholm’s primary dome for a command headquarters. Painted eggshell green, and supported by some of the integral pillars that rose up into the dome’s roof structure, the manse was one of forty that overlooked a vast, landscaped reservoir complete with lawns and woodlands of aug-cultivated trees.
This lakeland habitat, complete with pleasure yachts rocking in coves at the timber jetties, had been the playground of Cirenholm’s wealthiest and most influential citizens before the Blood Pact’s arrival. Two planetary senators, a retired lord general, a worthy hierarch, six mill tycoons and the city governor had all owned homes around the shore.
All of them were dead now. There was no one left to object to Van Voytz’s occupation. Not that any of them would have. The liberating lord general had power and, more crucially, influence over them all.
An Imperial transport speeder still wearing its invasion camouflage skimmed Gaunt over the lake. Evening had fallen, and lights from the shoreline twinkled out over the dark water. Despite the gloom, Gaunt could see the burnt-out ruins of some of the properties, grim as skulls. He could also see the silhouettes of crosses dotted along the shore. No one had found the time yet to take down the murdered worthies of Cirenholm.
The speeder slowed and ran up the little beach in front of the manse in a wash of spray. Shielding their eyes from the drizzle Urdeshi sentries waved the vehicle in. The speeder crossed a lawn and some low box hedges and settled on the arc of mica-shingled driveway outside the manse.
Gaunt stepped out into the night air, pulling on his storm coat. He could smell the water and the fading ozone reek of the cooling engines. Two staff limos were pulling away from the front steps, and speeder bikes and other Imperial transports sat parked under wet trees.
There were more sentries on the steps. Two of them, and Van Voytz’s junior aide hurried down to meet him.
“The lord general is waiting for you in the library, colonel-commissar. Go through. Have you eaten?”
“Yes, with the men.”
“A drink then?”
“I’m fine.”
Gaunt walked into the light of the hall. It was a stunning interior of polished rethuric panels, gold-laced shaniffes and displays of antique porcelain. He wondered how the hell any of this had survived unbroken.
The trompe l’oeil ceiling showed him vistas of the Empyrean, complete with dogged starships. The hall floor was piled with Guard-issue locker crates and roll-bags full of clothes.
“Through here,” the aide said.
Gaunt passed a side room which was bare apart from an enormous ormulu fireplace and a single escritoire lit by a floating glow-globe.
The tactician, Biota, sat working at the desk, veiled by holo displays and charts. He didn’t look up.
Two Urdeshi storm-troops hurried past in full kit. They broke step only to salute.
The aide stopped outside a towering pair of gordian-wood doors. He knocked briefly and listened to his micro-bead.
“Colonel-Commissar Gaunt,” the aide said into his vox-mic. A pause. “Yes, sir.”
The aide opened the doors and ushered Gaunt inside.
As libraries went, this one was contrary. The huge, arched roof, three storeys high, encased a wide room lined with shelves, with wrought iron stairwells and walkways allowing a browser access to the upper stacks.
But the shelves were empty.
The only books were piled on top of a heap of army crates in the centre of the parquet floor.
Gaunt took off his cap and wandered in. Lamps glowed from wall-brackets and autonomous glow-globes circled and hovered around him like fire-flies. At the end of the room, under the big windows, was a recently unpacked tactical desk. Its power cables snaked off and were plugged into floor sockets. A half-dozen library chairs were drawn up around it.
An open bottle of claret and several glasses, one half full, sat on a salver on a side table.
There was no sign of Van Voytz.
Gaunt looked around.
“A tragedy, isn’t it?” said Van Voytz, invisible.
“Sir?”
“This house belonged to Air Marshal Fazalur, the father of our friend Major Fazalur. A splendid soldier, well decorated, one of the planet’s heroes. An even more splendid bibliophile.”
Van Voytz suddenly appeared from under the wide tactical desk. Just his head and shoulders. He grinned at Gaunt and then disappeared again.
“Dead now, of course. Found his corpse on the beach. Most of his corpse, anyway.” Van Voytz’s voice was partially muffled by the table.
“He had the most amazing collection of books, charts, data-slates and first editions. A wealth of knowledge and a real treasure. You can tell by all the empty shelves what size his collection was.”
“Extensive,” Gaunt said.
“They burned them all. The Blood Pact. Took all the slates, all the books, ferried them out into the woodland behind the manse, doused them with promethium, and burned them. There’s a huge ring of ash out there still. Ash, melted plastic, twists of metal. It’s still hot and smoking.”
“A crime, sir.”
Van Voytz appeared again.
“Damn right a crime. Gaunt!” He reached over, took a swig of wine from the glass, and then dropped out of sight once more.
Gaunt wandered over to the pile of books and lifted one. “The Spheres of Longing… Ravenous greatest work. Feth, this is a first edition!”
“You’ve read Ravenor, Gaunt?”
“A personal favourite. They spared some things then? This volume alone is priceless.”
“It’s mine. I couldn’t bear the place looking so empty so I had some of my own library freighted up from Hessenville.”
Gaunt put the book down carefully, shaking his head. He couldn’t imagine the sort of power that could order the Imperial Munitorium to fast ship a person’s private book collection to him in a war zone. Come to that, he couldn’t imagine the sort of power that would enable one to own a first edition of The Spheres of Longing.
He glanced at some of the other books. The Life of Sabbat, in its folio print. The Considerations of Solon, mint. Garbo Mojaro’s The Chime of Eons. A perfect copy of Liber Doctrina Historicas. The complete sermons of Thor, cased. Breaching the Darkness by Sejanus. An early quarto of the Tactica Imperium, with foil stamps and plates complete. A limited issue of Slaydo’s treatise on Balhaut, on the original data-slate.
“You like books. Gaunt?”
“I like these books, sir.”
Van Voytz emerged from under the desk and gave the display machine’s cold flank a slap.
“Bloody thing!” He was clad in dress-uniform breeches and boots, but stripped down to an undershirt. Gaunt saw the lord general’s tunic was hung over the back of one of the chairs.
“They shipped this thing in,” said Von Voytz, sweeping up his glass and sipping it as he flapped an arm at the tactical desk. “They shipped it in and left it here. Did they plug it in and test start it? No. Can I get the holo-display to work? No. I tried. You saw me under there.”
“It’s really a tech-magos’ job, sir.”
Van Voytz grinned. “I’m a lord general, Gaunt. I can do anything!” They both laughed.
“Where are my manners?” said the general. He sloshed some of the contents of the bottle into one of the empty glasses. Gaunt took it He realised he was still holding the copy of the Tactica Imperium.
“Cheers,” said Van Voytz.
“Your health, sir. The Emperor protects.”
“You like that one?” Van Voytz asked, pointing at the
book Gaunt was holding.
“It’s beautiful—”
“Keep it. It’s yours.”
“I couldn’t. It’s priceless.”
“I insist. It’s mine to give. Besides, you deserve it. A gift to recognise your efforts here on Phantine so far. I’m serious. Keep it.”
“I… thank you, sir.”
Van Voytz waved a hand. “Enough of that. Damn desk.” He took a sip of claret and kicked the offending piece of furniture. “I had holo graphics of Ouranberg to show you. The whole assault plan.”
“I could come back tomorrow, sir.”
“Don’t be silly, Gaunt. You’ve got your hands full. I’ll speak. You’ll listen. You’ll get the gist. It’ll be like it was back in the days of Sejanus and Ponthi. You’re Ponthi.”
“An honour, s—”
“I’m kidding, Ibram. Just kidding. I asked you here to talk about the Ouranberg assault. Biota’s been totting things up, and he says I’m crazy. But I have an idea. And it involves your mob.”
“So you said, sir.”
“Don’t look so… constipated, Ibram. You’ll like this. I had the idea when I was reviewing your attack report. Damn fine men you’ve got there.”
“Thank you.”
“Good at stealth work. Smart. Capable. If we’re going to take Slaith down, we’ll need all of that.”
Gaunt put the book back on the pile and gulped his drink. “It is Slaith then, sir?”
“Oh, you betcha. Probably with loxatl mercenaries. Ouranberg’s going to be a real party.”
Van Voytz refilled his glass. “Before we get into the planning, I hear there’s a problem in your regiment.”
“A problem?”
“A fellow up on capital charges.”
“Yes sir. I’m dealing with it.”
“I know you are. And you shouldn’t have to. It’s a company level matter. Just let him hang.”
“I can’t sir. I won’t.”
The lord general swigged his wine again and sat down on one of the chairs. “You’re a regimental officer now, Gaunt. Trust your staff to deal with it.”
“This matters to me, sir. One of my men has been falsely accused. I have to clear him.”
“I know all about it. I spoke with Commissar Del Mar this afternoon. I’m afraid you’re wasting your time, Ibram.”