Special Condition

An Inquisitor's account of his pursuit of a devious heretic through a unique city-scape. I was a bit fed up with the fact that most stories I read had Inquisitors in them, and then hang-it-all if I didn't go and write one of my own. It is a bit different, though. I should warn you that this was an early-ish story, and shows some signs of it; long, wordy sentences and a little too much description being chief among the literary sins. There are certainly one or two things I would do differently, were I writing this today. Why am I putting it up here? Vanity! I like the story, and I think it's still worth a read. 11,000 words Writing time :7 days Finished :5th January 2006 Download as Word file

To my Lord Salubrious of the Ordo Hereticus, I commend to you my report, and beg that these words, my last, are not spoken in vain.

I have been on this Penumbragga Prime for almost a year now, following the Khedive Bel Sendentious from the Consistorial Chapels of Malebane to the Altar of the Servus Servorum Dei on the last moons of Pontifex finally to here, the canyon-cities of Penumbragga Prime. The Khedive has ran fast, and ran well, and for all my experience and resolute will he has been able to strike at me again and again, laying trap after trap as my coterie and I closed in on him.

My former Captain of Vigiles, Anabrant Fey, eviscerated and dismembered by the sliver’d knives of the Redolent Host. The self-trained assassin and rogue trader – and my lover for many, many years – Lillial Mons drowned in the blood pits beneath the Altar on Pontifex grappling with the warp-beast Bethomane. Plucky little Amenial, so brave for one so young – crushed beneath the ground-glass wheels of the auto-da-fé on Querench. So many others, faithful servants all, fallen one by one in the endless pursuit of this most brutal and devious of heretics, Bel Sendentious himself.

Like a mote in my eye he flits away whenever I think my gaze is about to seize upon him, ever dancing away just out of sight, out of reach. Catching him has been as rewarding as trying to catch shadows after turning on a light, but now – after all this time – now he has gone to ground. He has stopped running. He is here, on Penumbragga Prime. And so here I am as well.

Perhaps he believes me dead after the slaughter on board the airship above the float-city on Adumbrajj Majora. Perhaps he believes the Homo Obsidianus he summoned was enough to stop an agent of His most holy Inquisition. It almost was, and mark me – the Ordo has not seen the last of it. It pains me terribly to think that after all that has gone before I will never know what Sendentious believes about me. For I have failed.

But it is enough to know that you will hear these words – forgive my voice, Lord, I have been most cruelly treated by the heretics, but the looks in their twisted faces as I recited the glories of the Emperor in the very eye of their torments gladdens me even now – and that the enemies of the Imperium will know that where one falls, two will take his place.

Exterminatus. It does not take very long to say, does it? Exterminatus. A second and a half? Had I a vox-link now to my gun-clipper The Heretic's Redemption, this is all the time I would need to seal the Khedive's fate. Him and every one of his foul minions clinging to the skin of this diseased world. What is the fate of billions against a storm that threatens to overwhelm the entire sector? A billion pure and clean souls are born every day across the vast Imperium of Man. Would not the death of just one world seem a small price to pay to protect their future? But no. This world can be saved. The Khedive's plans are horrendous to behold and abhorrent to conceive, but they are not yet beyond the power of the Inquisition to crush. Save this planet, my Lord. Abort this heresy in its womb, but save the mother-world, and I shall consider it a fitting legacy.

Those who follow after me must know all that I know. It began, then, in the canyon-city of Opthium.

#

Penumbragga Prime is a cold, desolate world. Ice is its rock and the snows are its seas. In the depths of the winter, lasting almost the whole long year, the streets are metres-deep in compacted snow and ice. Dwellings have winter entrances on the fifth floor. But not in the canyon-cities, not in Opthium, the greatest of all such cities.

There the magma-rivers a full mile below the ice-crusted cliff-tops keep the temperature high. There a man can walk outside in the harshest of winters with only minimal cold-weather clothing, despite the fact that the chasm remains in deep and almost permanent shadow all year round. There the rich live as near to the glowing rock-stream as is possible, in almost tropical conditions, while the less well-off cling to the vertical walls of the canyon above them, getting steadily colder and colder and higher and higher as money and heat grow scarcer in direct proportion.

All the dwellings of any note are hewn out of the stratified rock wall. The sturdy entrances to these open onto the public balconies – the broad streets of Opthium – which are buttressed out over the yawning chasm to allow for all manner of traffic and, in most cases, permanent markets and stalls. Hundreds and hundreds of bridges, no two of the same design, leap from one side of the canyon to the other, stretching impossibly over the glowing depths like stitches in a garment being rent asunder. Elsewhere, as in the Commercia columns to the north, or the twin pillars of the Administratum that reach all the way from the river of magma below to the river of sky far above, the bridges swell, join and widen to become huge plateaus blocking out the thin band of blue in which the weak sun appears for scant minutes in each cycle. Day or night, gale or calm, rain or damp the balconies, bridges and plateaus are thronged with innumerable masses of people, the citizens of Opthium, swarming over the walls and crawling back and forth across the bridges like termites in their hidden nest.

And the smell, my Lord! The ruby glow at night and the smell of sulphur. Reminiscent of nothing other than the stench of the Warp and the fires of Hell, Opthium is a sobering place for a man of my background.

Even more sobering was my own smell. I had not known that a man could smell as badly as I did and not be dead. I had been huddled in an sub-balcony bin-store for two weeks, clad in foul rags that crawled with vermin and reeking like the drains.

Ah, the glory of the Emperor’s service! When I first heard about the procedures for operating under Special Condition status, all those decades ago when you were my mentor, I fancied it a glamorous pursuit; attended by sultry females in low-cut evening gowns, frantic chases through darkened catacombs and stealthy midnight penetrations of the sanctums of the mighty. I did not imagine the reality, the cold, hard, brutal reality. Bereft of all my friends and companions, isolated from my ship, my support, my Ordo. With meager resources and nothing to eat for days on end. Waking up trembling with the cold in a pile of junk, rags and pulpwood boxes to find some drunken oaf has collapsed on me without realising I was there.

And all the while I watch. Watch and wait. I had caught a scent of the Khedive off this woman as she passed me by on a foodmarket-balcony late in the afternoon two weeks before. My mind had been searching, touching lightly here and there, composing a scrap-book of collected memories and imaginings from the crowds of people who ignored with practiced ease this pathetic-looking wretch in their midst. Myself, in case you are wondering. A conversation-fragment here, a sexual fantasy there, impotent fury at worthless colleagues, a sense of panic at a looming business deadline – they all fluttered across the psy-scape of my senses. And then it came. A face, half-hidden in the darkness of short-term memory. A face I knew like I knew my own. Bel Sendentious. And this woman – this self-assured woman with her graceful head held high, her patrician face aquiline in its beauty as she studied an expensive bunch of ghrai-fruit – this woman had seen him, recently.

I followed her. The trinkets of her Clan Legalis tinkling on her robes and exposed skin told me exactly who she worked for and just how important she was in the Clan. As they were supposed to. As you would expect from one of Opthium's finest legal minds, she had excellent psy-guards in place. Excellent for civilian use, that is. I had no difficulty in shimmering past them as I trailed her from across the street, the perfect annular smoothness of the shields as they flowed around her mind suffering not the slightest turbulence as my psy-sense slipped under and hunted around.

Ahmedine of the Clan Legalis Opulus was her name and she was, so far as she and her Clan partners were aware, giving asset finance and protected-market importation advice to a new commercial client. She did not know he was Bel Sendentious. To have known that would have meant death for her and all her Clan, so it was hardly surprising, but if she had seen him once she might be seeing him again.

She was also the closest thing to a lead I had come across in nearly a year on Penumbragga Prime, so I followed her. To her office. To her home. To each and every client she visited in the Commercia, although I found it taxing to keep up with the autoshaws and hovercarts she used to travel around the Commercia columns and risers.

Was I not stopped as I hurried around the balconies and plateaus of the Commercia? Did the Vigiles not challenge me? Did no man ask me my business? No, my Lord, they did not. It never ceases to surprise me how invisible one becomes when one wears the rags and adopts the shuffling demeanor of the lowest of the under-classes. Eyes slid off me like water off ice. Important men of trade and business stepped around me as if I were a pillar of salt. As long as I kept to the corners and the gutters and the sub-balconies and the bin-channels I may as well have been a blast of chill air, and given no more thought than that.

For two weeks, I sat outside her dwelling at night, unnoticed and unnoticeable in the detritus of the market across the balcony. High-ranking lawyer she may have been, but it took more money than she had to afford one of the exclusive apartments lower down the canyon wall, and her vertical neighborhood had plenty of local character in which a person such as I could conceal myself, but I was beginning to despair.

The entrance to her dwelling opened, as they all did, onto the street and in Opthium not only was there no such thing as a back-door, there was no such thing as the dead of night to attempt a clandestine entry. The thoroughfares of the balcony were never less than full. For a man looking as I did to even approach her doorway would mean an immediate alert to the Vigiles.

There had been another flash of the Khedive in her mind exactly one week ago as she hailed a flitwalker, but none of the visits she had made had thrown up anything I could use. No other traces of Bel Sendentious. I had to talk with her. Alone.

The pitch darkness above me was slowly being divided by a ribbon of the deepest purple as the distant sky began to brighten in the unseen pre-dawn light. I coughed, painfully, my lungs heaving with a nighttime of acrid fumes from the rock-river far below me. The cold of the surface couldn’t reach me here, but Penumbragga Prime provided plenty of ways to die, and choking sulphur fumes were one of the slowest. I could not spend much longer in the open.

An elderly man approached me out of the gloom, stepping down from the yellow-lit public walkways and making his way towards me through the detritus of the market. As he stopped before me, one arm went up to cover his face as he caught the smell. I could see the look of disgust in his deeply-wrinkled eyes blink to one of amazement.

“Holy Throne!” the man breathed. “In the name of – father? Is that you?”

His voice was weak and I could hear sickness in his chest. I pretended to double over, faking a coughing spasm, and flowed out with my mind. A father himself, this man. A family – no, a dead family. A lonely man. A sick and lonely man. There were thoughts on the surface, but they slipped and slid over each other in no discernible order and as I sank further I saw that surface was all this poor wretch had. His conscious mind was completely cut-off from the rest of his reason, which lurked, silent and dark and impotent deep beneath the roiling illusion of personality and thought that was all this man possessed. Something had happened to him, something tragic and painful and very damaging. His reason was gone, and it was beyond even my powers to help him.

“Father? It is you, I don’t believe it! They told me you were – father! You were lost, you had gone. After mother - I thought you were dead, all these years, I thought you were – come on! Up with you, easy now.” He had reached out and grabbed me under my arms and was trying to haul me to my feet.

He could barely have lifted a babe-in-arms, as his arms were thin and weak from forgetting to eat. I stood myself up, staying silent. I did not need or want to draw any attention to myself – the last thing I needed was some poor unfortunate deciding I was his long-lost father. Hopefully when he got a good look at me he would see that there was no way I could be his father. I looked young enough to be his son, despite my actual age in years, but once his foundering mind had grasped an idea in the maelstrom of confusion it wandered in, it seemed very reluctant to let it go. He was crying now, weeping in fact, a display of emotion that disgusted me.

“Father! Oh my God Emperor! God Emperor!” He hugged me with his stick-like arms, burying his face in my shoulder. I felt a sense of revulsion at the contact, at the closeness of his damaged mind. I tried to track down the errant thought in his head, to snap it and make him realize his error, but it would have taken hours of solitude to find that thread in the canvas of chaos.

Passers-by on the thoroughfare were looking over at us now. How long before the Vigiles happened by?

I stood upright, silent, and did not react to his embrace. Eventually he stopped sobbing and muttering and disengaged. I kept hoping some other random thought would trace across his mind and he would turn away in pursuit of it, but it seemed he had a good hold of this one, and was not letting go.

I considered whether I should kill him quickly and silently, but decided that the chances of being noticed were too great.

Even more loudly now he was exclaiming the praises of the Holy Emperor, and began taking his heavy over-coat off. As he draped it across my shoulders I saw, a fair distance away down the busy balcony but coming this way, a squad of Vigiles passing through the conic pools of yellow light as they marched their patrol-route. More and more faces were turning our way as the man’s words reached their ears. I had to get out of this situation.

I bent my head and whispered in his ear, my voice hoarse from months spent in the open air but nowhere near as bad as it sounds now. “Son. We should go.”

He looked at me with such pain and longing in his eyes I almost felt moved by it, before he put a skinny arm around my shoulders and began to lead me towards the thoroughfare.

With my head down, a clean over-coat covering my filthy rags and a respectable-looking elder by my side, we walked untroubled by the Vigiles along the walkway, across a narrow bridge and up three levels of risers. Finally he guided me to a small but still expensive looking hab, talking excitedly all the way in a low voice.

I learned his name – Aryon Wethlan – and that I was supposedly Declere Wethlan, and that there was no-one else who shared his hab. I searched among the welter of images and gibberish, but could not see any trace of my own face, or the Khedive's for that matter – although such would have been serendipitous in the extreme. There was also a plethora of confusing rubbish, of course, the flotsam of a broken mind, of a man who could now only really serve his Emperor in one final way, but I disregarded all of that. I had been given a golden opportunity, a blessing from the Holy Emperor Himself I was certain, and I was not about to waste it.

Wethlan was a man of modest means, but with his clothes and resources I could finally rid myself of the rags that clung greasily to my scabbed skin like wet fur on a dog. I could rid myself of the stench of living beneath the balconies in the trash-runnels. I could rid myself of the lice and other foul pets I had unwillingly acquired.

I could pay a visit to Ahmedine of the Clan Legalis Opulus without drawing any untoward attention. I could finally break this case.

#

“Speak!”

I knew from long familiarity that she would be home, alone, at this hour. But not yet retired for the night. Not fully.

“My name is Aryon Wethlan, worthy,” I replied into the vox-grille. “I bear a data-package from Opulus Data-control.”

A messenger with some important out-system communication, perhaps. It would have to be important, to bother her with it at this hour. I could feel the glass eyes of the security monitor on me. Fortunate, then, that Wethlan’s best suit fit me reasonably well, and that once I again I looked like the young man I was.

A sigh, rendered into a hiss by the mysteries of the vox-circuit, and then, “Very well. I will -.” Another sigh, and a muttered oath. “Never mind.”

I had hoped to catch her as she prepared for her rest. If she was in her night-dress and unwilling to come down to the door –

Hidden catches around the frame released with a sudden click. “Just come on in. Put it in the kitchen. Tell them I refused to sign for it. Tell them – pah! – whatever you want, just leave it and go.”

– and I was in.

I could watch the kitchen from the vestibule, as well as the stairs to the bedrooms on the upper floors, without being seen myself. The main door had closed and sealed again loudly behind me, but I was still inside the hab. I hoped she had not checked her security monitor to ensure I had actually left. I was counting on her trust in her Clan and the lateness of the hour. I was not to be disappointed.

The lady Ahmedine came down the stairs briskly, clad in a warm and thick night-coat of unduline fur and Bethian water-silks. She saw the bulky data-slate I had left on the table. Until she picked it up she would not be able to tell that it had nothing to do with her Clan. As she turned to fix herself something from the chill-cupboard I stepped out of my place of concealment.

“My lady Ahmedine,” I said quietly. There are plenty of Inquisitors and Interrogators of my acquaintance who would not be able to resist a crooked, indulgent smile at the expectation of the lady’s reaction to these words. I find no such twisted pleasure within myself. My face, clean-shaven of its ragged beard, betrayed no emotion. Only the hardness of the duty that the Emperor compels me to.

The advocate turned in a blur of expensive fabrics, shock and fear written fleetingly across her pale face, before her natural haughtiness reasserted itself once more. Like most lawyers, she was more comfortable in attack than defence.

“Did you bang your head, fool? I thought I told you to go. Unless you have something else for me, get out.”

I could hear the slight tremor in her voice creeping out with the last two words, and I did not need to expend the effort to penetrate her mental shielding to know she was unsettled.

I am no cat, to toy with my prey. My business is always pressing.

“I am here about the Khedive, my lady. You know him as Ommitral of Valorent. He is, in fact, the Khedive Bel Sendentious. Yes. I see you recognize that name. My name is Somneus. Inquisitor Somneus.” I brushed my first and fourth fingers over the skinplant on my forearm to reveal the electrogram of the blue rosette.

She glanced at my arm and then stared at me, for quite some time. I could see the vein in her temple begin to pulse. Her dark, liquid eyes narrowed, and she turned away. Not the reaction I was expecting.

“Is this some – some kind of joke? Who put you up to this? Hardinger? Was it Hardinger?” she said as she rumbled around in the ice-cabinet, but I could tell her mind was not focused on her words. They were mere distraction.

For a second I caught a glimpse of a concealed weapon in the shimmering colours of her mind – an ice pick that her madly fumbling fingers were struggling to locate.

I could still move quickly, inhumanly quickly despite my debilitated condition, and the impromptu use of the heavy data-slate brought her crashing to the floor.

The colours of her mind were muted, but still active. Good, she was still alive.

For a member of the educated elite like a top advocate to attempt to assault an Inquisitor was so unlikely that I knew the Khedive must have done something to her mind. My name, or perhaps the mention of his real name, perhaps my rosette – something had triggered some autoschediastic response placed there by the Khedive. Time to find out what she knew. Time to find out what the Khedive was up to.

#

I know you have questioned my methods on previous occasions, although I know you value the results they produce. The simple fact remains that I must use my Emperor-given talents in the only manner I can. The side-effects are regrettable, but the results impeccable. I shall not go into the detail of these methods again, suffice to say that I saw all I needed to in the unconscious mind of the lady Ahmedine.

The Khedive was indeed here, in Opthium. He had a base of operations somewhere in the old lava tubes that riddled the lower levels, and in some cases ran under the current rock-river. Finding him there would prove difficult, if not impossible, without assistance – the tubes ran for hundreds of miles in all directions and had never been properly mapped. Collapses and sudden lava flows were not unknown, either. I needed something more specific, and fortunately the lady Ahmedine supplied that too.

The assets Bel Sendentious had been seeking to finance were transmission towers and orbital relay platforms, primarily ones used for the planetary vid-cast networks. These had unexpectedly come up for sale by their long-term owners – I suspected the Khedive had had something to do with that also – and the Clan Opulus was assisting in their acquisition.

The Clan’s psy-guard was, as you know, no obstacle to me, but I had been stalled by the additional, deeper blocks the Khedive had placed on Ahmedine’s mind. Specific information – names and addresses – were walled-off, and in my weakened state I lacked the raw power to punch through. I had a trick, however, one that had stood me in good stead once before.

I placed the data-slate contained all of the lady Ahmedine’s contacts before her eyes and, one by one, ran through them all. As a powerful and successful advocate in a major city she knew just about everyone of note, and the combination of my subtle mental probe focusing her mind on the Khedive and the steady drip-drip of names and faces eventually produced a flicker of recognition behind the psy-wall.

Bel Sendentious had a broker in all of this. A fixer. A money man by the name of Eliast Gra, and now I knew where to find him.

#

Getting to see Gra was not difficult. People in his line of work have to be accessible, after all. On the face of things he was simply an accountant. All I had to do was make an appointment. Better yet, I could have Ahmedine make an appointment. Gra would surely make a house-call to see her, especially if the message hinted at some deeper purpose.

I had already taken all of Ahmedine’s codes from her, and it was a simple matter to have the hab-cogitator compose a message from her to Gra requesting a meeting the next morning to discuss Ommitral of Valorent.

#

Gra was a disappointment. I had – in my elation at making a break in this investigation – forgotten to clear up the mess in the kitchen, and he had tried to run when he saw it. May the Emperor damn my worthless soul for such arch stupidity. I was forced to use one of my twitch-weapons on him, but it misfired, Gra screamed as his eyes bulged with fear and I had to resort to the slug-gun that Ahmedine had kept beside her bed.

I was left with two messes to clear up, and no amount of punitive scourging on my part was going to change the fact that unless I could coax something from the slowly cooling body of Gra, my investigation might now be at an end.

My usual methods will work on the recently deceased as well as on the living. Damage to the actual brain matter is not as serious as some might think. The consciousness of an individual is surprisingly dilute throughout the body, but as ever, the eyes are the key. I found a mirror and went to work once again.

For hours I struggled in vain, my head aching and my own eyes pounding with the singular effort of wresting meaning from the fading colours of a dying psy-aura. I was getting nowhere, and was becoming dangerously fatigued. This was no time to leave myself open to the perils of the warp as my mind traveled in increasingly dangerous places.

And then, for the second time in as many days, the beneficent smile of the Emperor shone upon me. I had left the vid-screen turned on the background; the usual talking heads chattering to themselves inanely, the vapid, violent and ludicrous dramatizations of the lives of notable or fictional figures, the news of local events of no consequence to any but the teeming cattle of these hives. Frankly I have no idea what the public vid-channels show, I have no time for such distractions, but the screen provided just the kind of random, flickering back-light I needed for my activities.

As I moved aside for a rest, my hands clasped to my head futilely trying to relieve the agonies of what I was attempting to do in the realm of the immaterial, I felt a tremor of awareness from Gra’s fading resonance. I realized his eyes were pointing at the screen, and I looked up.

A man. Administratum by the look of him. Some current events bulletin. I hunted for the key that would summon the sound to accompany the flickering images, finding it after only a few seconds. As the man’s voice filled the room I saw words appear on the screen. His name was Thole Fraternahl and he was a senior volcanographer with the Administratum. I quickly wrote it all down before the words vanished.

“– is pleased to co-operate with the Governor’s office to assist in this latest effort to map the lava tubes. The prospect of storing the city’s waste by-products in these tunnels is –“

Of course. It made perfect sense. Bel Sendentious would have needed someone to chart the tunnels for him. Someone to find him a place for his base of operations. Someone who was familiar with the lava tube network. He had gone to Thole Fraternahl. He had needed money to finance secret construction works. He had gone to Gra. That was how they knew each other.

But that was not all. Gra’s eyes were still staring at the screen, even after Fraternahl’s image had vanished, and I began to perceive detail in the gloaming of his consciousness. The Khedive was interested in the public vid-channels, that much was immediately clear. The network, the hardware, the towers and satellites were just a means to an end. He intended doing something with the network itself. Something across the whole planet. This much and no more Gra’s soul told me before it slipped forever beyond my reach.

My heart sang with the joy of holy duty as I realized my next step lay open before me. I had to visit the colossal pillars of the Administratum to the north, beyond the Commercia columns, and find this Fraternahl. He would lead me to the Khedive’s lair.

#

It was raining when I left the lady Ahmedine’s apart-hab the next morning. I would not return there, and instead planned to use poor, deluded Wethlan’s dingier but safer hab as a base of operations. He would not be missed. The Vigiles would not knock on his door for months.

The rain was heavy, and was driven mad by the winds that howled down the chasm, the sheer walls dragging vortices and whorls from it that sent the sheets of rain spinning and lashing across the broad balconies. Every man and woman was soaked to the skin within minutes. The sound of the droplets drumming on the balconies thrummed around the canyon, echoing from wall to wall until it seemed like the murmuring of some far-off crowd of millions.

A surprising amount of rain reached the lower levels, where the heat from the lava river flashed it into steam that rose again into the cooling air. The steam would turn into clouds, clouds that were already forming hundreds of metres below my feet. Eventually they would grow large enough to shed rain themselves, and so the process continued. A single rainstorm could last a week in this manner, shrouding the lower levels in perpetually recycled clouds before the winds finally blew them apart. It was some slight consolation to those poorer dwellers higher up that unlike the rich far below, they only had to put up with any given rainstorm just the once.

With the money I now had, I bought a ride in a passing hurry-cab. The lad, whose augmetic legs enabled him to keep the cab moving fast all day long, took me to Wethlan’s hab first of all, where I dropped off some items and then to the public riser network, which I could take all the way to the Administratum towers.

It was while I was in the riser-pod that I caught my first actual glimpse of the Khedive since I had arrived on Penumbragga Prime. I had not taken a riser-pod for nearly a year, as available funds and my own appearance and rank odor would not permit it, and I had forgotten about the vid-screens arranged on almost every available surface. Through some mystery of the Mechanicus the sound of each reached my ears, but only when I looked at the screen. Look away and I heard nothing. Look at another screen and I heard that one. It was very distracting, and I was trying to avoid the screens while I dipped in and out of my fellow passengers’ thoughts when I saw the face of the Khedive out of the corner of my eye on one of the screens, his eyes fixing mine for a fraction of a second and then he was gone.

I fear I may have cried out loud with surprise and anger, for a number of my fellow passengers registered alarm in their faces and in their shifting thought-auras. Pushing my way over to the screen in question I could see nothing but commercial entreatments of one kind or another. I had missed him. I looked around, from screen to screen, hoping to capture a repeat of whatever it had been on one of them, but by the time the riser-pod had reached the East Tower of the Administratum I had still not been able to add anything to that fleeting glimpse.

I stayed on the riser-pod as it continued its circular path, taking over two hours of the morning to arrive back at the mile-high half-column of the East Tower, all the while moving from one screen to another, hoping that one of the channels would repeat the broadcast, but eventually I gave up and left the pod at the Tower stop.

Bel Sendentious must be confident indeed if he would allow his face to appear on the vid-channels like that. I could not imagine a man as manipulative and devious as he was not being the one responsible for his sudden manifestation. What could he hope to obtain by it? Perhaps he was reaching the point in his plans where he thought he had nothing to lose, where he thought he was beyond the powers of righteousness to thwart him?

Please, my Lord Salubrious, prove him wrong as I have so lamentably been unable to do.

#

It took the remainder of the morning and most of the early afternoon to find the right queue in the Administratum’s public atriums. The wait was long, and boring, but I have grown expert at waiting, and bided my time patiently recounting in my head the Virtues of the Blessed and the other Litanies of our Ordo. Nothing can calm my mind so much as the words I recall being taught so forcefully all those years ago. I hope you will forgive the presumption, but you were a good teacher and I a poor pupil.

Night had fallen by the time I was directed to the correct floor. I could, of course, have used my electrograph to arrive at Fraternahl’s offices in a fraction of the time, but I did not want to risk revealing myself in public when I was close. So close.

Fraternahl was, naturally, no longer there at such a late hour, but even so the queue for his department was quite long indeed and I resigned myself to another lengthy wait.

My stomach was growling and my head was fuzzy with lack of sleep, but at lunchtime the next day I finally reached the front of the queue and was permitted access to speak to Fraternahl. My slight psy-nudge not only helped persuade the scribe to stamp the permission slate, but was evidently too small to be noticed by the psy-alarms.

Fraternal was a bitter-looking little man, with a short, dark beard covering a tight, pinched face. His eyes were dull and hard, like flint, and gave nothing away. Seated behind his small desk, scattered and strewn with implements and tools of his craft, he waved a limp hand at me irritably as I stepped through the doorway. Clearly I was imposing on his precious time.

The only other seat was piled high with parchments and slates, and Fraternahl made no move to clear it, but I preferred to stand anyway.

Wary of the psy-alarms that monitored the environs of every Administratum building I tentatively sought out his thoughts. My mind-worm recoiled as if burned. The foul taint of the Khedive’s psykers were all over this man’s resonance. I would not be able to see anything here. Not like this.

“Yes, yes. Wethlan is it? I don’t have all day, you know. What do you want?”

The man’s voice was nasal and grating, tinged with the indulgent self-pity of those who have an inflated opinion of their talents but find those talents unappreciated by the world at large. Perhaps I could play on those insecurities. It suddenly occurred to me that Fraternahl’s name had not featured in Ahmedine’s list of contacts. If I was wrong Fraternahl would spot me immediately, but I had to gamble that he and Ahmedine had never met and did not know of the other’s involvement in the Khedive’s plans. Why would they, an advocate and a volcanographer?

I took a deep breath and, at the same time, one of Ahmedine’s business cards from my coat pocket, blessing the Emperor’s fortune that had made me take them with me. I passed the card to Fraternahl, who took it and examined it with an expression of curiosity.

He plugged it into his portable cogitator and then looked up an me after reading the contents.

“What can I do for the lady Ahmedine and the Clan Legalis Opulus? I don’t think – hah! – I have need of a lawyer at this time, not even one so fair as your lady-master.” His sharpness had been blunted slightly, but he was still a little prickly. He also did not seem to recognize Ahmedine.

I played the part of the dutiful servant. A role I know very well indeed, although my true master is the greatest of all masters.

“My lady Ahmedine begs a meeting with you, Master Fraternahl. She wishes to discuss certain rights of passage as they pertain to the lava tubes, rights that her clients believe may be affected by any proposal to utilize the tubes for waste storage. She may be willing to engage your services as the foremost expert in this matter should it proceed to litigation.”

“Ah, I see,” said Fraternahl, his dull eyes brightening slightly at the possibility of personal reward. Calling him the foremost expert had probably not hurt either. “I see. I would be delighted to –“ he paused. “What does the lady want to do? A meeting? Here?”

His eyes cast around his cramped and dismal office as he said this. I was fairly certain he would meet in the street if I suggested it, but I had to be certain of getting him out of this office and away from the psy-alarms.

“Sadly, that is not possible for my lady-master. Her psy-guards would have to be deactivated within the Administratum precincts, and her Clan cannot permit such a potential breach of confidentiality, even in such a secure location as the Tower. No, my lady suggests a meeting at her residence. She awaits your convenience.”

I had no intention of actually taking him back to Ahmedine’s apart-hab, as you know. I just needed to get him out of the Tower. I made a slight gesture towards the open door behind me, and gave a polite half-smile backed up by the weakest psy-nudge I could manage in the circumstances.

“Now? She wants – well, I – that is – now? Well, why not? Eh, why not? Indeed. I suppose I could – yes. Very well!”

Fraternahl had a self-satisfied smile on his face as he stood up and gathered himself and his papers together. I could see his thoughts written across his face even without sending a psy-probe – clearly if the lady-advocate wanted to meet him so urgently the prospect of considerable remuneration must be a good one. They are all alike, these middle-ranking Administratum servants, keen to be seen as public-spirited souls working for the good of the Imperium, but still grubbing in the dirt for money and influence like all the rest.

Once back in the public atrium of the East Tower I sought out the autocab stand. It was expensive, but it would be worth it. I needed the privacy of a cab without a human driver.

I excused myself while Fraternahl settled himself into the plush seating of the autocab behind the darkened windows, and made my way quickly to the public restrooms. As I hoped the Administratum did not waste money on reflector-panels in public restrooms, and I jogged back to the autocab with a sliver of mirror in my jacket pocket.

#

The autocab was worth the price I paid, if only for the considerable luxury it afforded, although that could not have been further from my mind. I was relishing the opportunity to probe Fraternahl’s memory on the subject of the Khedive’s whereabouts.

“Master Fraternahl. I have been less than honest with you,” I said, as I brushed the first and fourth fingers of my right hand over the electrograph on my left forearm. The rosette glowed bright in the dim light of the cab's interior.

Fraternahl stared at me, and I watched and waited for signs of autosuggestion implanted by the Khedive's psykers. All I could see was the blackness of their taint befouling his aura.

“What are you – Wethlan, I don't understand –”

“My name is not Wethlan, it is Somneus. Inquisitor Somneus of the Ordo Hereticus. You are now the subject of the Emperor's scrutiny, Fraternahl.”

His eyes widened, the harsh flint turning to brittle coal. They fell upon the twitch weapon in my left hand, which had wrapped itself around my first and second fingers.

“What – what is that? Inquisitor? How? I mean - but, but – what are you going to do with -? Oh, dear God Emperor, what have I done?” His voice was rising, and he was starting to panic. Beads of sweat had appeared on his temples, and his real surface thoughts were beginning to poke through the Khedive's oily masking layer.

Suddenly his eyes widened even further, and his brow furrowed. Here it came. “Did you say Somneus? Inquisitor Somneus?”

He started to laugh as the Khedive's programmed response triggered to the sound of my name, high and yelping like a snow-dog, but as with Ahmedine it was just a distraction. I could see images beginning to form, just beneath the surface, barely visible but there all the same. A gun. In his jacket pocket – he was reaching for it.

I slammed my right fist into his chin. The blow was weak, my muscles wasted from months of starvation, but I managed to take him by surprise. His head rammed backwards into the low bracing strut just behind him, and he dropped dead away, slumping onto the cushioned seat.

I instructed the autocab to begin a lengthy tour of the Commercia levels, confident that I would not be interrupted. I removed the sliver of mirror from my coat pocket, placed it carefully down on the table in the middle of the cab floor and settled my mind to its task.

The inky blackness the pskyers had wrought to shield his consciousness did not last long to a sustained assault from me, as my powers had recovered fully from my efforts with Gra two days before.

Fraternahl had indeed seen the Khedive – and on more than one occasion. He had seen him roughly every week for a period of several months earlier in the year. I probed further, and as ever the eyes of the subject reflected all that he knew, all that he had seen.

There was a location – a glimpse of bare rock walls and razor-sharp lava stalactites. Somewhere in the lava tubes, then, but where? Fraternahl knew the location, he knew it well, but something was stopping him from telling me where it was. The Khedive, again. Never content with one psy-block where two could be made to fit.

Very well. But I had thwarted his psy-blocks before, and I would find a way past this one too. The autocab was still cruising comfortably, and with the credit I had inserted, it would do so for a considerable time to come. I could afford to be patient.

Delicately I slipped around inside the unconscious volcanologist’s mind, his thoughts a hazy stream meandering through his psy-scape. I could not get past the Khedive’s barriers – I could not even find them yet – but I might be able to get the information some other way. Tell me, Fraternahl, how would you get to this place? How would you find your own way back there?

I sent this psy-worm into the flow disguised as one of Fraternahl’s own thoughts, colouring it with his distinctive purple-browns and sentient oranges. My lure snagged a quicksilver thought after only an hour or two – Fraternahl’s own papers, the ones he had packed in his pannier as we left his office.

With hurried hands I tore the buckles off the soft sap-skin carry-all and spilled the contents on the floor of the autocab. Of course, Fraternahl had been on his way to see Ahmedine about the lava-tubes. It would make sense for him to take data-slates and nodes, to be ready for whatever high-paying endeavor the advocate had in mind. Perhaps he had been over-eager. Perhaps he had packed something he ought to have kept private.

With one hand on Fraternahl’s eyes, two fingers resting lightly on the orbs, I began riffling through the papers with the other. Reading headings, summaries, contents and précis I watched Fraternahl’s psy-aura in the sliver of mirror as I kept feeding him the traitor-question. How would you get to this place?

It was not long before the description of a data-node had excited something in his mind. Plugging the node into his portable cogitator I scanned the information. Charts regarding the last survey of the lava-tubes directly beneath the Commercia levels. I let Fraternahl unconsciously guide me to the correct zone.

A network of passages, crossing over, under and through each other in a myriad of confusion. A labyrinth – not unlike a well-designed psy-guard – but existing in the real world. As I rotated the view of the network something struck me, hard. I paused the view and began to trace certain passages with my finger on the small vis-panel. This one. And that one. These two here. Before I had even finished I knew what I had found, and then I dared not finish.

Through some awful co-incidence of nature, or more likely through some terrible machination of the ruinous powers, this particular labyrinth of lava-tubes contained an expression in solid rock of one of the foulest runes of Chaos. My trembling finger could not – would not – complete the hideous shape, and with a curse I erased my markings and spat the foul taste from my mouth.

Bel Sendentious had chosen well. The very centre of this rune-network was the location I had glimpsed in Fraternahl’s mind. That was where the Khedive was, and it was where I would finally run him to ground. Despite the chills and sweats coursing through me, despite how close I had come to inadvertently inscribing a glyph of the utmost evil, I laughed in triumph. They would all be avenged; Fey, my beautiful Mons, Amenial and the others. So many others.

How foolish I was.

#

Before I confronted the Khedive in his lair for one final time, I had to know more about what he was planning to do. It could be fatal to rush in alone and unprepared. Although my death meant – and means – next to nothing, I was charged with the fate of billions. I had to know.

Fraternahl’s hab was the obvious place to start, so there I went. As with Ahmedine, I now had all of Fraternahl’s personal codes, and it was the work of minutes to access his records in his own portable cogitator and learn where he lived. Where he lived alone. Good.

I recovered some items from Wethlan’s hab first, including the lady Ahmedine’s gun. My twitch weapons seemed to have suffered from lack of maintenance in my year on this planet, and I needed something more reliable. While I was in the hab, which was starting to smell, I checked the local data-networks – anonymously, of course.

My decision to abandon the lady Ahmedine’s apart-hab had been a good one. Her disappearance had been noted earlier in the morning, and the Vigiles had visited her dwelling. Time was running out.

I took the autocab to Fraternahl’s own apart-hab. As a mid-level Administratum functionary he warranted a location deeper, and warmer, than wretched Wethlan, but not as deep as Ahmedine had been able to afford. Nevertheless, it was about a mile to the south, and took me well away from any Vigiles activity associated with the advocate’s dwelling.

After alighting on the landing zones on the balcony, I sent the autocab away, its fare paid for another few hours at least. It was a broad balcony, and I felt I could almost reach out and touch the far canyon wall.

It was noon, but the chasm was deep in shadow and the ribbon of sky far above me was a dirty white. The sun was nowhere to be seen. Another blizzard, then, raging across the open and empty surface nearly half a mile straight up. A faint drizzle of melted snow fell in the gloom, the tiny drifting droplets only becoming visible as they fell into the cones of yellow light that defined the darkness. A sullen, baleful glow underlit the innumerable balconies and bridges clinging to the black rock walls all around me in Opthium. It gladdened me to think I would soon be gone from this dreadful place.

The studded plasteel door opened to Fraternahl’s crypt-key, and I disabled his alarms. The hab was small, but well-kept. Nothing like his office. Perhaps he had a maid. I keyed the panel that locked the front door from the inside just to make sure I was not caught unawares, and continued my search.

I was checking the contents of his refuse-tip when I heard the sound of the main door locks opening suddenly. Someone with a key had come, but the interior locks could only be disengaged from the panel. There was a knock on the door and a muted buzzing sound from the same panel.

“Mr Fraternahl. Mr Fraternahl. Are you home, sir?”

I paused by the panel, my finger hovering over the respond button. I could not see anything of the man’s mind from here.

“Mr Fraternahl. This is Detective Krajken of the Vigiles. Your name has come up in connection with a homicide, Mr Fraternahl, and I’d like to speak to you. You weren’t at your office.”

Vigiles. That explained how he had undone the exterior locks. But I did not trust he was telling the whole truth. He had found me far too quickly for just the local Vigiles. Did the Khedive have some way of knowing I was closing in on him? It was beginning to seem likely. I had to be careful.

I pressed the respond button, remembering how Fraternahl talked.

“Yes, of course I’m here, officer. I came home to collect some data-nodes for a meeting. Is this necessary? I’m a busy man.”

There was a pause. “Can I come in, Mr Fraternahl?”

I took the slug-pistol out of my coat pocket. He suspected something. My voice, perhaps. “You appear to be doing that anyway, Detective. Come on in. I’m in the study to your left. Wipe your feet. Please.”

Releasing the internal locks, I moved to the corner of the passageway, gun in hand. I heard ‘Detective’ Krajken open the door and step inside. I could see him now, in my mind. There was no psy-guard in place, and I dove in, hunting for information, moving quicker in the sea of thought than I have ever done, a shark twisting in the silver light as I plunged deeper.

Ah! There he was. The Khedive – he was all over this man Krajken’s thoughts, just as with Fraternahl. Frequent contact – the face was strong and clear. And more. Much more. This Krajken was one of the Khedive’s most trusted Lieutenant’s, one of his personal bodyguard, a key player with detailed knowledge of the wretched plans of Bel Sendentious. In my weakened state I was no match for him physically. I was only going to get one chance to take him.

I heard the front door clunk shut again.

Using all my craft I planted a thought in his mind, the image of Fraternahl sitting sorting his data-nodes on a chair in the study. The thought swamped Krajken’s conscious mind and I heard him turn towards the study to his left and begin to call out.

As he did so I stepped out into the corridor behind him, raised the gun and pressed it to the back of his bald head. His own gun, held in his right hand, came up briefly and then stopped.

“Drop it.”

He did so.

“On your knees.”

He paused, and a dig with the muzzle into the flesh of his neck helped him reconsider.

“Hands behind your head. Now, ‘Detective’. Shall we talk about why you are really here? Who sent you?”

“I am a Detective with the Vigiles. Assaulting me is a capital offence. If you put the gun down now you may only serve a short penal sentence for obstruction of justice. I am going to –“

I pushed again with the gun muzzle, hard.

“You are going to do nothing I do not tell you to do, Krajken.”

I had to get him secured, fast, before he decided to act. Then I could interrogate him at my leisure. It was a simple matter to have him hand me his wrist- and ankle-bonds, and then I marched him into the study where I fastened him to a sturdy chair. I watched his psy-aura as I did so, and so I got early warning of his attempt to overpower me just before I fastened the first set of bonds. A blow from the butt of the pistol to the side of his head dazed him momentarily, stopped his effort to free himself before it had begun, and allowed me to get the bonds locked in place without further distraction.

He had various accoutrements common to a non-uniformed Vigiles about his person, and I retrieved these, and set them to one side. He also had a small arsenal concealed about him in a variety of places. I located them all, with the unwitting assistance of his own sub-conscious.

I left him and went to Fraternahl’s restroom, and then to his bedroom. I located a small shaving mirror, broke it carefully, and took a large piece back to the study.

Krajken was an middle-aged man, older than I, and very heavy-set. Everything about him breathed strength and solidity. His deeply-sunken eyes widened when he saw what I carried. Perhaps the Khedive had told him of my methods. I placed the piece of mirror on the side-table.

“Who are you? What’s your name?” he asked, his voice carrying the pain of the blow to the head I had given him.

“I do not play games, Krajken. I do not expect someone like you to, either. The Khedive has told you who I am already, I suspect, and I will confirm it for you now. I am Somneus. Inquisitor Somneus of the Ordo Hereticus. You are to be put to the question, Krajken. How you fare depends on how well you co-operate, although I think I can guarantee that you will not fare well, regardless.”

I revealed the mark of my sacred office in the usual manner.

The man’s mouth tightened, and he licked his lips. His eyes fixed on mine – fierce, penetrating eyes – before flitting off to dart around the shadowy room.“Somneus, eh?” He nodded to himself. There was no sign of any psy-coded response. Perhaps the Khedive trusted his Lieutenants too much. “And the Khedive. You’re tracking the Khedive?”

“Co-operation, Krajken. I would appreciate it, although I have other methods that do not require it.”

“Ok. Ok. What do you want to know?” He licked his lips again, and I could see he was sweating in the cool air.

“Very well. We will talk, for now.” I monitored his psy-aura very carefully. I would know if he lied. “I know about Fraternahl and the location he chose for Bel Sendentious in the lava-tubes.”

Krajken nodded, wincing at the pain this movement caused.

“I know about the transmitters and the towers and the orbital platforms. I know that the Khedive is planning to use these to transmit something. To transmit something around Penumbragga Prime on the public networks. What I want to know is what he intends to transmit, and why. And then I am going to pay him a visit.”

“Tubes. Towers. Signal. Yes. Yes. He – he will kill me if I tell you, Inquisitor. Me and my family.”

“Your fate is in the hands of the Inquisition now, Krajken. It is no longer your concern. Your family is another matter. I can and will see that they are kept from harm, provided they are blameless of course.”

“Of course. The signal. He has built – no, no – he is building a – a resonance engine, an amplifier in the lava tubes. It – it takes psychic energy and – and – feeds it back on itself, focuses it and – yes – concentrates it. At the centre of the – the rune, yes – in the lava tubes. That’s it. Concentrates it there. Where his psykers are.”

“Even with an amplifier and the hateful runic configuration he cannot hope to accomplish anything beyond summoning some foul daemon or other. He has bigger plans. What of the signal? Tell me of that.”

Krajken licked his lips again, and glanced around like a caged animal.

“Tell me, Krajken. Tell me or your eyes will tell me what they have seen, and I will not need your co-operation any longer.”

Krajken glanced at the mirror as more sweat broke out. “Right. The signal. The Khedive has found a – what is it? An ancient incantation in a forbidden language, yes, that’s it. It is a ritual of hate, and – and – fear. He – he intends to broadcast this incantation across the whole world. It will – will play on every vid-screen on every wall in every city and in every home. It will – will send the populace into a frenzy – an orgy of violence. All at once. Billions will tear and smash and kill and destroy.”

I could see it now. I silenced Krajken with a wave of the gun.

All that hate and fear and pain would create a massive pulse of psyker energy. Bel Sendentious intended to capture and channel this energy into the device at the heart of his Chaos engine, his foul rune. The power – the sheer psyker power – of an entire planet focused into one, single point in a hideous ritual of the ruinous powers. There was no telling what he could accomplish.

I pressed the gun hard against his slick temple. “Why? What is going to do with all that power? Talk, you worthless worm!”

Krajken craned his neck away from the gun, and gasped. “The Warp! He hopes to – hopes to take the entire planet into the Warp. A – a daemon planet, with him as its master. I can help you! He’s insane, he thinks –“

I shut his babbling mouth with another blow from the gun. Was this even possible? To take an entire planet into the Immaterium? Nothing could retain its form in that most evil of places, unless – unless he could use the psyker-rage of the population of billions as a net. A net stretching over the entire surface of the planet, that would keep it together, allow it to keep its shape. And once in the Warp, he could move, he could move through the Warp and emerge into real space at any point he chose. A daemon planet, ready to deliver a billion howling Warp-beasts to any location in the galaxy that the Khedive chose!

This was beyond madness. This was beyond anything the Khedive had attempted before, and the risk to the Imperium was appalling in its dreadful ambition.

I had to see this psyker engine the Khedive was building. I had to see it to know how to destroy it. I needed to see what Krajken had seen. As I put one hand on his trembling face and reached for my short-knife with the other I caught a thought bubbling up from somewhere in Krajken’s mind. Perhaps my blow had knocked it loose, for it was clearly one he had been trying to hide from me.

…must keep him talking…

I froze, for a fatal instant, and turned, but I was too late. Fool that I am I had forgotten that Vigiles travel in pairs, and when Krajken had not re-emerged from Fraternahl’s hab, his partner had come looking for him. And I had not re-engaged the internal door locks.

I never saw the blow that robbed me of my consciousness.

#

Captured. Imprisoned by the Khedive’s minions, who laugh at my failure, torture me with their rough and primitive implements of pain and mock my very existence. Perhaps to taunt me further they have permitted me this holy device, to record my words, and so I leave a message for you my Lord Salubrious.

A message of failure and evil purpose that goes unchallenged. May my name be stricken from the Ordo records for my pitiable attempts here on Penumbragga Prime, but may this message reach you, that you may finish what I have started.

Destroy the engine. Save this world, whatever way you can.

TRANSCRIPT OF PRISONER 387A786GH76 ENDS

*************************************************

“Think he’s finished. Poor old bugger.”

“Poor old bugger? You're kidding me right? That fecker killed his own son, and three other people we know about, and nearly killed a Detective. He’s getting exactly what he deserves, if you ask me.”

“I didn’t. You seen this?”

“No, what is it? Oh. Oh, right. Guard veteran, was he?”

“According to those records. His retinal scan matches. Declere Wethlan, 82 years old. Went missing from the Veteran’s Home up on 95th about a year ago. Seems he’s been living rough since. Then he started killing people.”

The man laughed. “Thought he was Inquisitor Somneus, yeah? Funny stuff. Mental old fecker. You ever watch that?”

“’Special Condition’? Yeah, I watched the last series, and the one before. The new one starts soon I think. You watch it?”

“Nah. Too busy busting heads and taking names, pal. To busy being a cop! Was that Khedive guy he keeps talking about in the last one?”

“No, the series before. Must have seen it at the Veteran’s Home, I guess, before he went AWOL. Krajken watches it. Says he didn’t know whether to laugh or piss his pants when the old fart told him he was Somneus. Guy was holding a gun, so I’m guessing Krajken pissed his pants!”

The two men laughed. “Lucky bastard, Krajken, though. You see what our man here did with those others?”

“Yup. The eyeballs on the mirror? That’s fecked up, that is. That wasn’t in the show.”

“Yeah, no shit. When I heard about that I came down here and gave the old bastard the beating of his life. Just laughed at me and kept chanting some shit over and over again.”

“Aye, but you always did hit like a poof!”

“Feck off!”

There was a pause.

“Creeps you out though, doesn’t he?”

“What d’you mean?”

“Well, they say he can read minds.”

“Think so?”

“Dunno. He called me a ‘foul minion of the Khedive’. I got the impression – somehow – he knew I had seen the show. Creeped me out.”

“Well, I dunno about that. Psyker-craft is well beyond me. Just your run-of-the-mill serial killer, is my guess. Killing folk at random. There was no connection between any of them after the son, you know. They were just unlucky.”

“They’re coming for him, you know.”

“Who?”

“Them.”

“The Black – seriously? Shit. The Ships? Here? Maybe he is a psyker after all.”

“Poor old bugger.”

There was a pause.

“Yeah. Poor old bugger.”

THE END

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