Valdyke picked up a locking bar and wandered around to the hatch of the first container.
“Shall we?” he asked.
Eyl nodded. Valdyke beckoned the medicae over, and then unscrewed the lid of a little pot of commiphora and wiped a smear of the gum resin across his philtrum. The astringent scent filled his nose. Eyl certainly wasn’t the first person to smuggle living contraband onto Balhaut as part of the mortuary trade, and Valdyke had assisted several of his predecessors. The low-berth survival rate was worse than Valdyke had joked. Most of the time, you really didn’t want to smell what was thawing out in the box.
He broke the shipping seal, slid the locking bar into the slot, and rotated it. It took a push and a grunt of exertion, but the teeth of the lock popped, and the main drum of the lock swung away on its hinges. Valdyke pulled it wide, uncoupled the bar, inserted it into the inner socket, and heaved on it again.
The hatch seals released. There was a deep and nasty groan of bad air, an exhalation like the long, lingering and last breath a man ever took, one final lung-emptying exhalation for the ages, after which no more breaths would ever be drawn. Valdyke pulled the hatch open.
“Oh, Throne,” the medicae said, coughing, and fanning the air in front of his face.
“Yeah, that’s ripe,” said Valdyke, who could smell it despite the commiphora. It was a warm, gorge-raising stink of off-meat, of dirty blood, of gangrene. Stained meltwater ran out over the lip of the hatch and spattered on the dock. It was viscous, and filled, like broth, with lumps of organic matter.
“Mind your shoes, doc,” Valdyke said. Arbus muttered a caustic reply, and took a snifter of something medicinal from a hip-flask. Valdyke dropped the locking bar, and pulled out a hooked packing knife, a bent spar of blade forty centimetres long with the edge on the inside of the curve. He chokked the tip in through the polymer sheeting wrapping the pod’s contents, and cut down in a half-sawing, half-slicing motion. The smell got worse. Valdyke could see the first of the packets inside. Glad of his gloves, he reached in and slid it out on its telescoping rail. It came out like a side of meat, wrapped in a polymer shroud, clamped to the suspension rail by heavy-weight metal runners.
The corpse inside the bag was human. The hair had been burned off, and it was uniformly the colour of rare steak, except for the cinder-pits of its eyes and the pearl wince of its teeth. Its arms were crossed over its shrunken breast.
“Do you think you can save him?” Valdyke asked.
“Don’t be an idiot,” Arbus replied.
Valdyke laughed and clattered out the second packet. This one was even more mutilated. Both corpses had dog-tags threaded around their ankles and secured through the seals of their shrouds.
Valdyke turned and looked at Eyl. Eyl was standing a way back, at the edge of the dock, with the widow and the two men, watching the work.
“You got dead meat here, sir,” said Valdyke. “Just dead meat. In fact, it looks like a regular shipment of cannon fodder back from the front line.”
“No,” said Eyl. “Look harder.”
Valdyke frowned, and then a smile spread across his face and became a leer.
“Did you pack the front end with stiffs?” he asked, jerking his thumb at the pod. “Is that what you did? You packed the front end with genuine stiffs, in case the container got inspected?”
“No,” the widow replied suddenly, speaking for the first time. “The bodies and blood, they are for the sealing ritual, or the casket won’t be—”
“Hush, sister,” said Eyl gently, patting her arm.
“What did she say?” asked Valdyke.
“She said you’re right,” said Eyl.
“Sneaky,” said Valdyke, nodding appreciatively. “Very sneaky, my friend.”
“I’m not your friend,” said Eyl.
Valdyke brushed that off with a shrug of his shoulders. He had no great desire to be the off-worlder’s pal either. He reached back into the container, and rattled out the third sack of meat.
“Ah, damn,” he said.
“What?” asked Eyl, taking a step closer.
“This one’s gone too. Sorry, you must have had a pretty serious failure in the hiber systems. Face looks like it’s been gnawed off.”
“Valdyke?” Arbus whispered at his side.
“What?”
“This one’s alive.”
“What?” Valdyke turned and looked down at the body hanging in the stained sack. There was blood pooling in the slack parts of the polymer sheaf, and the poor bastard’s face and shoulders looked like someone had taken a razor blade to them.
“That’s nonsense,” Valdyke said.
Arbus shook his head. He was using a receptor wand to scan the body for trace levels.
“The vitals are low, but they’re what I would associate with coming out of hibernetic suspension.” He looked at Valdyke, and Valdyke saw something akin to terror lighting the wretched old quack’s eyes.
“You’re reading it wrong, you old fool,” Valdyke told him.
“I’m not, I swear!” Arbus replied. Then he let out an exclamation of horror, and recoiled from the hanging sack.
“What?” Valdyke cried.
“The eyes! The eyes!” the medicae stammered.
Valdyke looked back down at the body. Its eyes were open, slots of yellowed irises and small, black pupils staring filmily out of the bloody mask. They were staring right at him.
“Holy Throne of Terra,” Valdyke said, and stepped back. “What is this?” he asked. He looked at Eyl. “What the hell is this?”
“It is what it is,” said Eyl. “The scars are ritual marks of allegiance. I don’t expect you to understand.”
Behind him, Valdyke could hear short, muffled gasps of breath, and the wet crackle of polymer sheathing as slippery weight moved around inside it. He heard scrabbling noises and the occasional hiss or thump from inside the pod.
“I think I’ll be going now,” Valdyke said.
Eyl shook his head. The widow started to shudder. Valdyke thought for a moment that she had burst into tears behind her veil, but then he realised she was sniggering.
Nado Valdyke yelled for his thugs. No one answered. When he turned to look, all four of his men were lying on the ground. They were lying in curiously slack, unnatural poses. Eyl’s two men were standing over them, hands limp by their sides, staring at Valdyke with their dog-eyes narrowed.
Valdyke spat an oath at them, and one of the men smiled back at him, baring his teeth. The teeth were pink. Blood flowed out over his lip.
Valdyke yelped and turned to run. He slammed into something solid, as solid as a wall. It was Eyl.
Valdyke scrambled at him, but Eyl felt like stone, cold and unrelenting. Eyl shoved him, a light shove that nevertheless felt like the impact of a wrecking ball.
Valdyke staggered backwards, breathlessly sure that some of his ribs had just parted. He felt entirely disorientated. Eyl suddenly had the packing knife that Valdyke had been using.
He put it through Valdyke’s throat, splitting the adam’s apple and driving the blade so deep that the tip poked out through the back of the neck under Valdyke’s hairline. Valdyke hung for a moment like a fish on a hook. His hands clenched and unclenched. His mouth gagged open as if he was gasping for air. Blood welled out over his chin. His eyes were shock-wide as he tried to cope with the massive pain, and tried to deal with the comprehension that he hadn’t just been hurt, he’d suffered a catastrophic injury that had destroyed his life, and which could not be repaired.
Eyl let him fall.
The medicae, Arbus, was cowering and sobbing beside the open container. He looked up as Eyl approached. “Please,” he said, “please, are you going to kill me too?”
“I need you to successfully revive my men,” said Eyl, frankly. “A-and after that?” Arbus sniffed. Eyl did not reply.
“What in the name of Terra are you?” Arbus wailed. Eyl looked down at him. “We are nothing in the name of Terra,” he said. “We are Blood Pac
t.”
SIX
An Interview at Section
The grey brick mansion known as Section stood near the heart of the Oligarchy, and dominated both Avenue Regnum Khulan, which it peeped into over high walls and black railings on its western side, and the gardens of Viceroy Square, which it faced. Its official names were Viceroy House, or the Ministrative Officio of the Commissariat, Balopolis (Balhaut), but it was referred to by everyone as Section, which was shorthand for the highest local stratum of Commissariat authority.
It was not an inviting place. Second only to the Manse of the ordos on Melkanor Street, it was the most dreaded building on Balhaut. It was part administrative hub, with whole floors devoted to bureaucratic activity, part courthouse, and part gaol. Though there were several penitentiary facilities in north-hemisphere Balhaut for the detention of military offenders, a lower level of Section contained a maximum security cell-block where the most sensitive prisoners were held.
Gaunt arrived before first light.
Though the chronometer on his wrist put the sun at less than five minutes away, there was no trace of dawn in the sky. Daybreak, the order despatch had said. He’d never been late for anything, and he was not going to start now.
He got out of the car. Over to the west, above the lights of the city, another lit city passed over head. It was like a brown thunderhead cloud moving against the night sky, speckled with lights, like a mirage, as if the sky was a still lake that was reflecting Balopolis beneath. It was one of the orbital docks, Highstation probably, gliding past on its cyclical turn, catching the sun earlier than the land below it.
Behind the wheel of the car, Scout Trooper Wes Maggs yawned. Gaunt bent down and looked at him.
“Too early for you?”
Maggs straightened up fast. “Sorry, sir.”
“You’re going to have to wait,” Gaunt said. “There’s a gate around the side where you can show your pass and park. I’ll send for you when I need you.”
Maggs nodded.
The previous evening, frustrated by the poor service provided by the local drivers, Gaunt had told Beltayn to detail one of the Tanith instead. He had suggested making it someone who had punishment duties to work off. As a consequence, he’d got up that morning to find himself with Wes Maggs as a chauffeur.
Maggs was a Belladon trooper, one of the first Belladon to make it into the Tanith scout cadre. He had a mouth on him, and certain unruly ways that reminded Gaunt of Varl, but he was a damn fine soldier, and an excellent stealth fighter.
“What did you do?” Gaunt had asked him.
Maggs had murmured something in reply.
“I can’t hear you, Maggs.”
“Commissar Hark put me on a charge for disreputable behaviour, sir. I’ve got to do sixty hours of punishment duty.”
“Looks like you’ll be doing them with me, Maggs. You know how to drive a staff car?”
Gaunt entered the main lobby of Viceroy House. The lights were down, just glow-globes fixed over the reception desks. A man was up a long ladder, changing filaments in one of the massive but unilluminated chandeliers. Three Commissariat cadets were on their hands and knees, scrubbing the marble floor with bristle brushes.
Whhshrrk, whhshrrk, whhshrrk! went the brushes as Gaunt walked past. None of them dared to look up.
Been there, done that, Gaunt thought.
The duty officer at the desk had been alerted to Gaunt’s arrival by the outer gate, and was waiting, on his feet.
He saluted. “Good morning, sir.”
“Good morning.” Gaunt handed him the slip, and the man read it quickly, as if he already knew what it said.
“Thank you, sir. I’ve called through and announced you. Someone will come for you in a moment, if you’d just wait.”
Gaunt nodded, and stepped away from the desk, removing his gloves and unbuttoning his stormcoat. The duty officer resumed his seat and got back to work. A minute passed. The brushes continued to go Whhshrrk, whhshrrk, whhshrrk! A courier ran down the hall and out through the main doors. The man fixing the chandelier climbed down off his ladder, folded it up, and carried it away.
Gaunt heard more footsteps, and turned.
It was Viktor Hark.
“Where did you come from?” Gaunt asked.
“I’ve been here all night,” replied Hark. Gaunt could see how much sleep Hark hadn’t had. Hark was the only man in the regiment whose workload and responsibilities seemed to have increased since they’d moved off the line. War gave men something to do, and when you took that away…
“It must be bad.”
“You don’t want to know,” said Hark. “Sometimes I think we’re in charge of a penal unit.”
“Who is it?”
Hark sighed. “It’s a little team this time. A little team of hustlers that includes two captains and a major.”
“Not Rawne?”
“I’m afraid so.”
It was Gaunt’s turn to sigh. In the two idle years since Hinzerhaus, Major Rawne seemed to have slowly regressed back to the venomous and untrustworthy malcontent that Gaunt had first encountered in Tanith Magna.
“And Meryn too, if Rawne’s involved?”
Hark nodded.
“Who’s the other captain?”
“You’re not going to believe this,” Hark replied. “Ban Daur.”
“Well, that’s got to be a mistake. Not Daur. He’d only be involved by accident.”
Hark shrugged.
“So it’s bad?”
Hark nodded again. “It’s a genuine mess, and the charges are going to be severe. I’m not sure how we’re going to pull their arses out of this little conflagration.”
“So why was I only called in this morning if you’ve been here since last night?” asked Gaunt.
Hark paused. “Well, I was handling it. I was going to go back to Aarlem about an hour ago, but someone told me you had been summoned, so I waited.”
“You didn’t send for me?”
“No,” said Hark.
Gaunt showed him the slip. “They sent me this last night.”
Hark looked it over. “Damn, Ibram. This isn’t anything to do with Rawne’s latest disgrace. This is something else entirely.”
Somehow, Gaunt already knew that. He’d known it the moment he’d seen Hark coming across the lobby to meet him.
Gaunt sent Hark back to Aarlem to get some sleep, and waited to be seen. It was another twenty minutes before anyone appeared.
“Sorry to keep you waiting, Gaunt,” Commissar Edur offered as he approached. Gaunt shrugged a no-matter, and decided against asking, right away at least, why he was being received by an officer he’d lunched with just the day before.
The truth was, he hadn’t known Usain Edur long, and he didn’t know him well. Hargiter and Zettsman had been regulars at the club for seven or eight months, and Gaunt knew them and the regiments they were attached to. He counted them as decent acquaintances, two of the semi-regular faces that frequented the Mithredates for lunch or supper. Edur had only been in the city for a week or two. He’d gravitated into their company easily enough; Gaunt had a feeling that Zettsman had introduced him. Edur was affable, a reasonable conversationalist, and expressed an attitude towards duty that Gaunt found appealing, but he had no idea of Edur’s background, service or attachment, and as he followed Edur along the hall, he realised that was unusual. That kind of talk always came out. Men talked about their service, and looked for points of shared experience. They noted the places, people and battles they had in common.
Over the two or three times Gaunt had been in Edur’s company, Edur had not volunteered anything of the sort, which meant that he was either a remarkably private individual, or he was concealing something.
Gaunt could see that now, too.
Edur led him into a side office. There was a stenographic servitor, and a desk with a chair on either side of it. Edur gestured to one of the chairs.
“Has anybody offered you caffeine?” he asked as he to
ok the other seat.
“No one’s even offered me an explanation,” replied Gaunt.
Edur looked up from the closed dossier on the desk in front of him and held Gaunt’s gaze. Edur was a few years younger than Gaunt and a few centimetres shorter, and he was good-looking in a clean-cut but bloodless way, like a classical statue. His skin was regally black, and he reminded Gaunt of the Vitrians he’d served alongside. Edur smiled, and the smile was relaxed and genuine.
“Let’s just ease our way into this,” he said. “I’ve only just been put on this one, so I’m coming up to speed. I know it’s a little awkward that you and I have encountered each other socially in the last week or so, but I think that’s why I was put on the matter. I’m known to you, and so this brief can be a little less formal before—”
“Before what?” asked Gaunt.
“We’ll get to that,” said Edur.
You’re not really known to me at all, Gaunt thought. Where is this going? How much of a chance was it that you suddenly started coming to the club and moving in my circle of comrades? I can almost see through you.
Edur nodded to the servitor, which whirred into life. Delicate cogs chattered the drum of transcript paper around, and the blocks of letter keys lowered into place on their servos.
“Preliminary interview, Ibram Gaunt,” Edur began, and followed that with the date and time. The servitor started to chatter, the little keys tapping the paper, the paper advancing under the platen with a soft ratchet sound. Edur opened the dossier, creased the first page flat with a slide of his hand and read out Gaunt’s service summary, which was also duly recorded by the servitor.
“Can you confirm those details?” he asked.
“I confirm them,” Gaunt replied.
Edur nodded. “You’re the CO of the Tanith First?”
“That’s correct.”
“A position you’ve held for twelve years?”
“Correct, aside from a hiatus period about five years ago.”
Edur turned a couple of pages. “That would have been during the… ah… insert mission to Gereon?”