I became aware of Nayl as he came up beside me.
‘Halstrom?’ he asked.
‘No, it’s me,’ I said.
‘Ah. Thought so. Guessing that was you who suckered Skoh outside too?’
‘Yes.’
Nayl nodded. ‘Thanks for that.’
I was working too hard for decent conversation. Despite the boosted shields, large parts of the starboard flank, the focus of Thekla’s onslaught, were still vulnerable, lacking as they did any remaining shields to reinforce. The Oktober Country would still kill us in short order, unless…
Another little trick from Halstrom’s mind. With what little motive power I could squeeze from the damaged real-space drive, I got the ship moving and turning. We slid through coruscating flame walls of the solar storm, turning hard to port. Thekla’s ship spurred after us, still firing its fusion batteries.
‘Can you… fly this thing?’ Nayl asked.
‘No. But Halstrom can,’ Turning her hard, I was presenting the Hinterlight’s undamaged port side – and active shields – to Thekla’s ruinous guns. Of course, with very much less motive thrust than the Oktober Country, it was going to be near-impossible keeping it there. Already, Thekla was steering out under us to come around at our wounded quarters again.
‘Harlon… see what weapons we have left,’ I said.
He crossed to the fire control station and started to fumble with the unfamiliar function controls. I kept the turn tight, rolling the ship to keep the full shields pointing at Thekla’s dogged attack.
‘Frig all,’ Nayl said at last. ‘Most of it’s shot out. Forget lasers, fusion beamers. I’ve got one missile battery under the prow that’s still live.’
‘Arm it and target it on the Oktober Country’s bridge,’ I said. It was getting hard to maintain control over Halstrom. He was fading fast. I could feel perspiration dripping off his brow as he struggled to stay conscious.
‘They’ll be shielded,’ Nayl scoffed. ‘Especially around the bridge section.’
‘I know, Harlon.’
‘They’ve been whaling on us for a good ten minutes. We’re junked. They’re still at optimum. We’re not going to achieve anything firing at their bridge except wasting our last missiles.’
‘I know. Please do as I ask.’
‘Very well…’ he shrugged.
Halstrom was slipping away. I made one last effort to turn the ship and then stepped out of his mind. Released, he fell back in the chair. Non-corporeal, I looked at the displays. We’d turned hard, but in another sixty seconds, the Oktober Country would pull clear and resume firing on our damaged sections.
‘Armed and targeted,’ Nayl reported.
+Harlon, when you hear me give the word, fire. No questions.+
He nodded.
I left the bridge.
Through plating, through insulation layers, through inner and outer hull sections, through raised shields, into open space.
Firetide swelled around me, as far as my mind could see. An ocean expanse of flame and seething discharge, crackling and shimmering. Behind me, the wounded bulk of the Hinterlight, sagging and wallowing in the storm. Ahead, the great, dark shape of the predatory Oktober Country, roaming in for the kill, weapon banks flaring and spitting.
It was a gigantic sprint trader, ornate and exquisite, one of the most ancient human ships I had ever seen. I could smell its great age, the dusty odours of its long, rigorous life, the musky, spiced auras of the far flung places it had visited, the xenos perfumes of its more ungodly voyages.
I could taste the steely resolve of its ruthless master.
I swept on, through the cavorting radiance of the storm and went in, through its shields, its hull…
Thekla stood on a raised platform, studying his actuality sphere. Target runes were clustering around the graphic of the Hinterlight. He was a tall man, regal, in a selpic blue coat furnished with gold braid and a silk cravat. His face was an organic tracery of inlaid circuitry. MIU linkage cables tracked out from the base of his skull, from under the powdered wig he wore, and connected his mind to the sprint trader’s systems. His hands were augmetic. He was shouting orders to his bridge crew.
There were thirteen of them, arranged around the edge of his platform, operating polished brass stations. Helm, sub-helm, system-control, vox-and-com, navigation supervisor, ordnance officer, defence officer…
Defence officer. I plunged into the man’s mind.
+Now, Harlon. Now.+
‘The Hinterlight has launched missiles, master!’ the ordnance officer called out beside me.
I heard Thekla laugh. ‘One last effort, eh? Rather too little, too late, I think.’
The defence officer was fighting me. He struggled and contorted.
‘Lefabre? What the frig’s the matter with you, man? You’re twitching around like an idiot!’
I was hurt, weak. The man’s mind was strong. At this range, and through the turmoil of the storm, my abilities were desperately limited, especially without the boosting relay of a wraithstone marker.
But I would not let him go. Frantically, I blew out his neural system, and forced his twitching hands onto the brass levers of his station.
And cut the Oktober Country’s shields.
In the last millisecond of his life, Thekla realised what was happening and screamed out a name.
My name, in fact.
Eight missiles, in tight formation, screamed in silently out of the storm and vaporised the Oktober Country’s bridge, taking everyone with it.
SIX
‘READY FOR THIS?’ Kys asked.
‘Yes, I am. Quite ready,’ Ravenor replied. His voice still sounded odd, anguished almost. There had been no time to repair his chair’s damaged voxsponder.
The hatch opened. Ravenor slid forward into the bare cell, flanked by Kys and Carl Thonius.
Feaver Skoh shivered and looked up at the trio. He had been stripped naked, and chained to the wall.
‘You,’ he murmured. They could smell his fear. He had been expecting this.
‘We are going to have a conversation,’ Ravenor said. ‘How pleasant it becomes is up to you.’
Skoh shrugged. ‘I’ve got nothing left,’ he said. ‘Ask what you want, inquisitor.’
‘Where do the flects come from?’
‘The Mergent Worlds,’ he said simply.
‘The Mergent Worlds are out of bounds. Forbidden, interdicted by the Fleet,’ Kys said. ‘How can that be?’
Skoh looked at her. ‘Rogue traders go many places that are forbidden,’ he said. The very best can get wherever they want. If the return is good enough.’
‘The best?’ Thonius asked. ‘Like your friend Thekla, you mean?’
‘Thekla, and the others.’
‘A consortium?’ Ravenor said. Skoh shrugged again.
‘Thekla… and Akunin?’
He nodded. ‘Akunin, Vygold, Marebos, Foucault, Strykson, Braeden. Those are the ones I know.’
‘What is contract thirteen?’ Thonius asked.
Skoh blinked, amazed.
‘I heard you and Mamzel Madsen talking,’ Thonius explained.
‘And it was in Duboe’s mind,’ Ravenor added.
‘That frigging idiot. All right. It’s… it’s the reason the flect thing began in the first place. Contract thirteen is an off-books arrangement between the rogue consortium and the Ministry of Sub-sector Trade. The terms of the contract are simple. The traders go to the Mergent Worlds and recover tech salvage.’
‘What do you mean by “tech salvage”?’ Kys said.
‘Whatever they can find. Spica Maximal is the target of choice. Hive cities, population centres, whatever, all just resurfaced from the warp storm. They’re loaded with stuff. Hive towers of the Administratum, full of codifiers, cogitation banks, out-use terminals. That’s what the Ministry wants. The consortium hauls it back, holds filled to bursting, and delivers it to Petropolis. In return, the Ministry pays. Pays pretty well. And also supplies the cons
ortium with times, dates and codes to help them get around the fleet interdiction blockade.’
‘Why does the Ministry want the tech?’ Thonius asked.
Skoh shook his head. ‘I don’t know,’ He winced as Ravenor squeezed his mind with a psi-tweak. ‘Really, I don’t! I’m just a game agent. I ride with Thekla.’
‘Make that… rode with Thekla,’ Kys smiled.
‘Whatever. I relied on him for a lift out to the rip-worlds. More often than not he was going that way because he was on a contract run. I got to see what he did. I was there. But I don’t know why. Tech… tech stuff is valuable, right? Isn’t that why?’
‘Perhaps,’ Ravenor said.
‘What about the flects?’ Kys said.
‘They were there. Everywhere. I mean, on a place like Spica Maximal, they were all over the ground, far as the eye could see. When we found out what they did, we brought them back with us. The Ministry paid good for the contract cargoes, but it got that a trader in the consortium could double, triple his earnings running flects on the side. That’s… that’s where I got into it. The side action,’ Skoh looked down, as if he was ashamed. That seemed unlikely. Just caught.
‘The Ministry didn’t object to the flect trade?’ Thonius asked.
‘At first. But they tolerated it. Everyone was happy.’
‘Until my team opened it up, through Duboe and yourself,’ Ravenor said.
Skoh nodded. ‘Yeah. That’s why we got into this. You had to be silenced.’
‘Because my interest in the flect trade had put me close to something much bigger?’
‘Yes.’
‘And the parties involved couldn’t very well move against an inquisitor on a world like Eustis Majoris. Not without blowing everything. So they decide to lure me out to Lucky Space, dropping hints and clues to keep me interested. And out here… I could be disposed of, and no one would know better.’
‘That was the plan,’ said Skoh.
‘Madsen’s plan?’ Kys asked.
‘Madsen’s plan,’ Skoh agreed. ‘But Kinsky made it work by thinking ahead of you. Duboe, Siskind… whatever it took. Planting clues, shielding other memories. Drawing you on.’
A sudden chill wrapped the cell. Frost crackled up the metal walls.
‘One last thing…’ said Ravenor.
‘Oh!’ gasped Skoh. ‘Shit, please…’
I SLAMMED INTO his unhappy mind, turned away his surface thoughts and buried my mind in his memories. From the first scent of the synapses, I knew everything he had told us had been the truth. But I went back. Further.
Spica Maximal. Mergent World. Lately resurfaced, dead, from the horrors of the warp storm, like lost ships dredged up, dripping and rotten, from an ocean depth. I was Feaver Skoh, crunching down a blasted slope with others of Thekla’s landing party.
Before me, a vast wasteland of jet cinders and blackened material, twisted, bulbous, shattered, crusted. The sky was domed and full of rushing, splintered cloud. A sun, red as a blood-shot eye, was rising in the firmament. There were buildings ahead of me, towers and spires and cyclopean citadels, all ruined, all made of solidified night. A burned city. A murdered hive. I walked down the vast towers, and saw their countless windows, row upon row, tier upon tier, deadlights like eye sockets, giving back no reflection, stained by unimaginable ages spent in consuming darkness. The crazed black soil under my feet was covered in a myriad shards of broken glass. Imperfectly, like a deranged mosaic, they reflected back Skoh’s image.
For a moment I shivered. I was back in Bergossian’s dream, the dream that had nearly dragged me to my doom in the deadlofts of Petropolis.
But this was no dream. It was Skoh’s memory of Spica Maximal. Bergossian, poor lunatic Bergossian, had seen it in his visions.
The visions of the flects.
They were under my feet. The endless, shattered pieces of glass blown out from the numberless windows of the great hive. Each one charged with power from the long ages they had lingered, submerged in the warp. Each shard was loaded with a reflection of something.
And some things were too terrible to look upon.
This was what Skoh and the other freebooters had collected and dealt. Broken glass from the ruins of a warp-engulfed hive.
I withdrew from his memory. Skoh slumped back, gasping.
‘That is all,’ I told him.
‘I… I have one question. About my brother. Who killed him?’
‘He was shot by my warrior Zeph Mathuin during combat,’ I said. ‘But Mathuin serves me, so the actual answer to your question is… I did.’
‘WHAT HAPPENS NOW?’ asked Harlon Nayl. No one answered immediately. Nayl stood on the Hinterlight’s bridge. Aided by her servitors and her freed crew, the ship-mistress was trying to repair some life into the wounded ship. She was crying. The damage was immense.
Halstrom, along with Frauka, was down in the infirmary. Last Nayl had heard, Zarjaran was fighting to save both of them.
‘Now?’ Ravenor replied. ‘Harlon, this isn’t about the flects any more.’
‘Got that much,’ Nayl smiled.
‘We have been presented with a strong possibility that the local Imperium authorities are trading in heretical technology. The lord sub-sector’s private ministry, at least. I don’t know if the corruption goes right up to the lord sub-sector himself, but the chances are high. We have a much, much bigger deal on our plate.’
‘We’re going back to Eustis Majoris, then?’ Kys asked.
‘Yes,’ said Ravenor. ‘But now we have an advantage. Our adversary thinks we’re dead. Without Thekla to contradict this fact, we can return in disguise. Disguise is essential. I have no way of knowing how deep this corruption runs. Maybe into the Officio Angelus itself.’
‘The Hinterlight isn’t going to get us there,’ Mathuin said. That was true enough. So badly wounded, the Hinterlight would need months to limp back to a safe harbour outside Lucky Space and begin repairs. Besides, there was a real chance that Preest, shaken and tearful, would refuse another mission for the ordos.
‘I… I have an idea…’ Nayl began.
ZAEL STOOD ALONE on the observation deck, gazing out at the storms of Firetide. They were fading now, the solar storm dying away. Still, the flashes outside jumped his long shadow back and forth across the deck.
‘We’re going back,’ Kys said as she joined him.
‘Back?’
‘To Petropolis. That all right?’
Zael nodded.
‘You’re all right with that?’ she said.
‘It’ll be good to see home again,’ Zael walked away from her and exited the deck.
‘He’s more than nascent,’ Kys said to Ravenor. The chair coasted up beside her.
‘Much more.’
‘Passive like you thought?’
‘Yes. Mirror psyker. From what you told me, I think he’s very rare. I think the flects he’s used have touched off something in his mind. Empowered deep potentials. He’s not active at all, but I think he might become a powerful reflective. I think I might be able to teach him to far-see. To predict. To foretell.’
‘Yeah, I felt that too. It’s like he knows what’s about to happen.’
‘Not knows, so much as… echoes. The damned flects have woken something in him, but it’s something quite amazing.’
‘I hope he thinks so,’ said Patience Kys.
CARL THONIUS SIGHED. His arm really hurt, but this would make it better.
They’d gone over and searched the Oktober Country before imprisoning its surviving crew and allowing it to tumble away into the star’s gravity well, undirected and helm-less, tracing the doom it had reserved for the Hinterlight.
Thekla’s holds had been packed with flects. Raw ones, not even yet packed into their red-tissue wraps.
Carl had one cupped in his hands. It felt warm. He opened his fingers and looked down.
AT THE END of Firetide, a bulk lifter had flown into Bonner’s Reach. Transponder codes identified it as belong
ing to the Oktober Country. Hooded, cloaked, three figures left the lifter and hurried to an arranged meeting in a private booth on one of the first salon’s upper galleries.
A diminutive figure entered the booth, as pict and psi screens folded down around him.
‘I am Sholto Unwerth, and I requent your fulsome advantages,’ he said.
Harlon Nayl pulled back his hood. ‘Master Unwerth, we have a business proposition for you.’
SOON
Late winter time, Petropolis, Eustis Majoris, 402.M41
‘THAT’S A LOT of trucks,’ Junior Marshal Plyton said, looking down out of the windows of the Department of Special Crimes. Secretary Limbwall scurried over and joined her, peering out at the lorries far below, caught on the rockcrete plaza in a downpour of acid rain. Burn alarms were sounding.
‘Yeah, what are they here for?’ Limbwall said.
Deputy Magistratum First Class Dersk Rickens tapped his way over, leaning hard on his cane. He peered down at what his underlings were looking at.
‘That? That’s the new codifiers they’ve been promising us. Upgraded units, more powerful cogitation. They’ve been shipped from a provider planet.’
Down below, servitors began to unload crated cogitator units from the trucks.
‘Rejoice and be merry,’ Rickens said, walking away. ‘Departmental upgrade. Think yourselves lucky.’
‘Excellent!’ Plyton exclaimed.
Limbwall clapped his hands.
Far below them, elevator banks began to carry the units up to their floor. Boxed, the cogitators they brought were still damp from the humid atmosphere of Spica Maximal.
Excited, Plyton hurried towards the elevators.
On the ledge outside the window, a perching sheen bird watched her go. It blinked.
One perfectly machined mechanical eye opened and closed. It cocked its head. It waited in the pouring acid rain.