I was way ahead of him. Then they're not planning on leaving the island. Not the way they arrived, at any rate/
I had Kara Swole break into the ekranoplane. There was nothing useful inside, just a few items of equipment and personal clutter belonging to the murdered crew. The passengers had taken everything else with them.
The only thing we learned was that Thuring might have as many as twenty men with him on Miquol, given the ekranoplane's load capacity and the number of emergency life jackets.
They've gone inland/ I decided. 'And that's where we're going too/
'Shall I get Dee to fire up the cutter?' Begundi asked.
'No/ I said. ' go in on foot. I want to get as close to Thuring as possible before he makes us. We can call in the cutter if we need it/
'Medea won't like that, Gregor/ said Bequin.
I knew that damn well.
I believed Medea deserved every chance to avenge her father. Vengeance might not be an appropriate motive for an inquisitor, but as far as I was concerned it was perfectly fine for a headstrong, passionate combat-pilot.
However, her passion could become a liability. I wanted Thuring taken cleanly and I didn't relish the prospect of Medea going off in a blind fury.
Bequin was right, though. Medea really didn't like it.
'I'm coming!'
'No/
'I'm coming with you!'
'No!' I caught her by the arms and stared into her face. 'You are not. Not yet/
'Gregor!' she wailed.
'Listen! Think about this logic-'
'Logically? That bastard killed my father an-'
'Listen! I don't want the cutter giving us away too early. That means leaving it here. But I do want the cutter ready to respond at a moment's notice,
and that means you have to stay here on standby! Medea, you're the only one who can fly it!'
She shook off my grip and turned away, gazing at the rolling surge of the ocean.
'Medea?'
'Okay. But I want to be there when-'
'You will. I promise.'
'You swear it?'
'I swear it.'
Slowly, she turned look at me. Her eyes were still bright with hurt. 'Swear it on your secrets,' she said.
'What?'
'Do it the Glavian way. Swear it on your secrets/
I remembered this now. The Glavian custom. They considered an oath most binding if it was sworn against private, personal secrets. In the old days, I suppose, that meant one Glavian pilot swearing to exchange valuable technical or navigational secrets with another as an act of faith and honour. Midas had made me do it once, years before. He'd made me swear to a three-month sabbatical at a time when I was working too hard. It hadn't been possible, because of one case or another, and I'd ended up having to tell him that I adored Alizebeth and wished with every scrap of my being that we could be together.
That was the deepest, darkest secret I had been carrying at the time. How things change.
'I swear it on my secrets/ I told her.
'On your gravest secret/
'On my gravest secret/
She spat on the ground and then quickly licked her palm and held out her hand. I mirrored her gestures and clasped her hand.
We left her with Aemos, Dahault and Verveuk at the gun-cutter and made our way up the cliff stairs.
It was raining by the time we reached the top, and the last few flights were treacherously wet. Salty wind flapped in from the sea, gusting into our coats and clothes.
I was worried about Poul Rassi. Though he didn't look it, he was over a century older than me, and the climb left him pale and breathless. He was relying on his cane more than before.
'I'm all right/ he said. 'Don't fuss/
'Are you sure, Poul?'
He smiled. 'I've been in the courts and privy chambers for too many of the last few years, Gregor. This is almost an adventure. I'd forgotten how much I liked this/ Rassi raised his cane and flourished it ahead of us like a sabre. 'Shall we?'
* * *
We advanced into the hinterland of Miquol. Fischig had an auspex locked off on the old PDF base, so we headed for that as a place to start.
The sky was the luminous, hazy white of a blown valve-screen. Stripes of fog clung to the ground like walls of smoke. The rain was constant. The landscape was a mix of jagged upthrust outcrops and steep, shadowy valleys littered with scree. Boulders were scattered all around, some the size of skulls, some the size of battle tanks. The rock was dark, almost the colour of anthracite, and occasionally it was splintered out in cascades of volcanic glass. A forbidding, grey place. A monochrome world.
After two hours, we passed a rust-eaten tower of girders capped by sagging, corroded alloy petals that had once been a communications dish. One of the peripheral receivers of the listening station.
We're close/ said Fischig, consulting his auspex. The PDF base is over the next headland/
Durer PDF listening station 272 had been established shortly after the planet's liberation by the newly formed Planetary Defence Force as part of a global overwatch program. Through it, and around three hundred facilities like it, the Durer PDF had been able to maintain a round-the-clock watch of orbital traffic, local shipping lane activity and even general warp space movements, providing the planet with an early warning network and gathering vital tactical intelligence for this part of the sub-sector in general. Over a period of twenty years following the annexation of the territory, the network had gradually been ran down, eventually supplanted by a string of scanner beacons in high orbit and a slaved sub-net of sensor buoys seeded throughout the Durer system.
The PDF had finally vacated the obsolete station some three decades before, undoubtedly grateful that they would never have to tolerate a tour of duty on this harsh rock again.
The station lay on the shore of a long polar lake, framed by ragged infant mountains to the north. It was an exposed place, bitten by the sub-zero winds. The lake, smudged with mist, was a flat, gleaming mirror of oil-dark water, its glassy surface occasionally disturbed by a flurry of wind ripples.
On the grey shore there were eighteen longhouses arranged in a grid around a drum-like generator building, a hangar large enough to shelter several troop carriers or orbital interceptors, a cluster of store barns, a number of machine shops, a small Ecclesiarchy chapel, a central command post with adjoining modules arranged in a radial hub and the main dish array.
All of it had succumbed to the feral ministry of the environment. The modules and prefabs were aged and dilapidated, windows covered with boards. The roadways between the prefabs were littered with rusting trash: old fuel drums, the carcasses of trucks, piles of flaking storm shutters. The vast main dish, angled towards the west, was a skeleton of its former self, just a hemisphere described by bare girders and dangling struts. In the
black mirror of the lake, its reflection seemed like that of a giant, bleached ribcage. But it looked to me more like the ruins of an orrery, just the shattered remains of the central solar ball, permanently peering in the direction it had last been turned.
Hugging cover, we made our way onto the cold shore and crossed the short distance to the nearest longhouse. We all had weapons drawn by now, except Begundi. Fischig's auspex and motion tracker both indicated life-signs close by, but how close they weren't telling. Thanks to the damn magnetic interference we were forewarned but as good as blind.
We were non-verbal by now. I gestured and sent Haar ahead down the left side of the street, Fischig down the right. I'd have liked to deploy Kara too, but she was keeping to my orders and sticking close to Rassi, her assault weapon tight in her gloved hands. Rassi, his sombre, fur-trimmed robes flapping in the wind, had produced a multi-barrel pepperpot handgun of exotic manufacture.
Bequin hung back from me so that her psychic deadness wouldn't conflict with my mind. For the trek across Miquol she had changed her formal gown for a quilted body suit and stout boots, with a hooded cloak of dark green, embroidered velvet
wrapped around her. I noticed she had also left her long walking cane aboard the cutter. She had drawn a slim, long-nosed micro-las that I had given her on her hundred and fiftieth birthday. It had pearl-inlaid grips and was a custom masterpiece, an antique made by Magos Nwel of Gehenna.
The pistol suited her. It was slender and elegant and devastatingly potent.
Up ahead, I saw Fischig signal to Haar. Haar knelt down and gave the big man some cover as he crossed to the back door of the next longhouse. I sent Begundi forward in support. Begundi still hadn't drawn his hand cannons from their shoulder rig, and ran with an easy, loping gait.
Once Begundi had reached him, Fischig slipped inside the longhouse. There was a pause, and then Begundi went in too.
We waited.
Begundi appeared in the doorway and beckoned to us.
It was good to be out of the damp, though the dark, rot-stinking interior of the old prefab barrack wasn't much better. We got inside, and Haar and Kara stood guard at the doorway, with Begundi covering the front.
Fischig had found something.
Fischig had found someone.
It was an old man. Filthy, wizened, lice-ridden and diseased. He cowered in the corner, whining each time the beam of Fischig's hand-lamp probed at him. If I'd passed him on the streets of Eriale, I'd have taken him for a beggar and not given him a second look. Out here, though, it was different.
'Give me the lamp/ I said. The old man, who seemed more animal than human, shrank back as I turned the hard white light on him. He was caked in filth, starving and gripped by fear.
But despite the dirt, I could recognise his robes.
'Father? Father hierarch?'
He moaned.
'Father, we're friends.' I unclasped my rosette and held it out to show him.
'I am Inquisitor Gregor Eisenhorn, Ordo Xenos Helican. We are here in an official capacity. Don't be afraid.'
He looked at me, blinking and slowly reached out a dirt-blackened hand towards the rosette. I let him take it. He looked at it for a long time, his hands trembling. Then he started to weep.
I waved Fischig and the others back and knelt down beside him.
What's your name?'
'D-Dronicus/
'Dronicus?'
'Pater Hershel Dronicus, hierarch of the parish of Miquol, blessed be the God-Emperor of Mankind.'
The God-Emperor protects us all/ I answered. 'Can you tell me how you come to be here, father?'
I've always been here/ he replied. 'The soldiers may have gone, but while there is a chapel here, there is a parish, and so long as there is a parish then there is a priest/
By the Golden Throne, this old fellow had lived here alone for thirty years, maintaining the chapel.
They never deconsecrated the ground?'
'No, sir. And I am thankful. My duty to the parish has given me time to think/
'Go mad, more like/ Haar muttered.
'Enough!' I snapped over my shoulder.
'Let me see if I understand this right/1 said to Dronicus. You served here as a priest and when the PDF abandoned the site, you stayed on and looked after the chapel?'
Yes, sir, that is the sum of it/
'What did you live on?' asked Fischig. That detective brain, looking for holes in the story.
'Fish/ he said. From his astonishingly foul breath, I believed that.
'Fish... I went down to the landing point once a week and fished, smoking and storing the catch in the hangar. Besides, the soldiers left a lot of canned produce. Why? Are you hungry?'
'No/ said Fischig, unprepared for the generosity of the question.
"Why are you hiding in here?' Bequin asked softly.
Dronicus looked at me as if needing my permission to answer.
'Go ahead/ I nodded.
They drove me out/ he said. 'Out of my hangar. They were mean. They tried to kill me, but I can ran, you know!'
'I have no doubt.'
'Why did they drive you out?' Fischig asked.
'They wanted the hangar. I think they wanted my fish.'
'I'm sure they did. Smoked fish, that's worth something out here. But they wanted something else, didn't they?'
He nodded, a bleak look on his face. 'They wanted the space.'
What for?'
'For their work.'
'What work?'
'They are mending their god.'
I glanced sidelong at Fischig.
'Their god? What god is that?'
'Not mine, that's for sure!' Dronicus exclaimed. Then he suddenly looked reflective. 'But it's a god, nevertheless/
Why do you say that?' I asked.
'It's big. Gods are big. Aren't they?'
'Usually/
You said "they",' said Rassi, crouching down next to me. Who do you mean? How many of them are there?'
Rassi's tone was admirably calm and reassuring, and I could feel the gentle bow-wake of the psychic influence he was cautiously bringing to bear. No wonder he had such a great reputation. I almost felt stupid for not asking such obvious questions.
The god-smiths/ the old priest replied. 'I do not know their names. There are nine of them. And also die other nine. And the fourteen others. And the other five/
Thirty-seven?' breathed Fischig.
Dronicus screwed up his face. 'Oh, there's a lot more than that. Nine and nine and fourteen and five and ten and three and sixteen...'
Rassi looked at me. 'Dementia/ he whispered. 'He's able to account for them only in the groups he's seen them. He's not capable of identifying a whole. They are just numbers of people that he's seen at various times/
'I'm not stupid/ cut in Dronicus simply.
'I never said you were, father/ Rassi replied.
'I'm not mad either/
'Of course/
The old man smiled and nodded and then, very directly, asked, 'Do you have any fish?'
'Boss!' Haar hissed suddenly. I rose quickly.
"What is it?'
'Movement... thirty metres...' His fore-sight was twitching as it downloaded the data. He knelt in the doorway and eased his rifle up to a firing position.
'What do you see?'
Trouble. Eight men, armed, moving like an infantry formation. Coming this way/
We must have tripped something on the way in/ said Begundi.
'I don't want a fight. Not yet/1 looked at the others. 'Let's exit that way and regroup/
We have to take him/ said Rassi, indicating the old priest.
Agreed. Let's go/
Begundi opened the far door of the hut and led the way out. Bequin followed him, then Fischig. Rassi reached out to help the old priest up.
'Come on, father/ he said.
Seeing the hand coming for him, Dronicus yelped.
'Shit! We're rumbled!' said Haar. They're coming!'
Las-fire, bright and furious, suddenly hammered at the doorway and blew holes through the rotten fibre-ply.
Kara dived down for cover. Haar kept his place and I heard his long-las crack.
'One down/ he said.
Rassi and I hauled the old priest to his feet and bundled him towards die back exit. Behind us, the long-las cracked again, and was joined by the chatter of Kara Swole's assault weapon. Return fire hammered into the side of the longhouse, perforating the wall.
'Get him out/1 told Rassi and ran to the door.
Standing over Kara as she fired, I shot several bolt rounds through the gaping window. Las-shots seared down the street and burst against the side of the hut. I got a glimpse of figures in bulky grey combat fatigues scurrying closer and pausing to unload their lasrifles in our direction.
A sudden thought, true and clear, lanced into my brain. I grabbed Kara and Haar. 'Move!' I howled.
We had made it to the rear door when the grenade took the front off the hut. The entire doorway area where Haar had been crouching erupted in a flash of flame and shredded fibre-ply.
The blast-rush blew us out into the street.
Fischig haule
d me up.
'Go! Go!'
Kara was bleeding from a shrapnel wound on her temple and Haar was dazed. But we ran, dragging them with us, up the muddy roadway towards the main dish.
Three men in insulated combat armour raced into the street ahead of us, raising lasrifles.
Begundi's Hecuter pistols were in his hands faster than any of us could raise the weapons we already held. He blazed out twin streams of shots, the shell cases spraying out from the slide-slots of his weapons. All three men ahead of us lurched back and sprawled.
Begundi ran ahead, chopping down another two as they emerged, his handguns roaring. Then he dropped suddenly onto his back, rolled round and blasted another assailant off the roof where he had suddenly appeared.
Five more loomed behind us, breaking out of the rear door we had escaped through.
Fischig and Kara turned, firing. They dropped three of them. Bequin brought down the fourth with a single well-placed head-shot. A round from my bolt pistol knocked the fifth five metres back down the road.
Thorn? Desiring Aegis? Pattern oath?' my vox suddenly squawked. Medea was monitoring the activity over the vox-link.
'Negative! Thorn wishes Aegis repose under wing!' I replied, using Glos-sia, the informal private code I shared with my staff.
Aegis stirred. The flower of blood.'
Aegis repose, by the thrice ignited. As a statue, to the end of Earth/
'Gregor! Let me come!'
'No, Medea! No!'
We were in a serious firefight now. Las-shots and hard rounds whipped in all directions. Fischig and Haar laid down heavy cover fire. Kara and Bequin selected targets more particularly and hit most of them. Begundi blazed away with his matched handguns. I fired carefully, cautiously, keeping the old priest behind me. Rassi's fission-lock pepperpot banged and sparked and hailed lead balls at the enemy. Every few seconds, he raised his cane and sent forth a drizzle of psycho-thermic flame from the silver
tip-
'Brace yourselves,' I yelled. 'You especially, Poul.'
He nodded.
Reveal yourselves! I urged, using the will at full force.
Such a raw outburst would usually have floored all those around me, but Haar, Begundi and Kara had all been mentally conditioned during rigorous training to black out my psy-streams. Bequin was untouchable and Fischig wore a tore that protected him.