BLOODLINES
An Agusto Zidarov novel by Chris Wraight

NO GOOD MEN
A Warhammer Crime anthology by various authors

FLESH AND STEEL
A Noctis and Lux novel by Guy Haley

DREDGE RUNNERS
A Baggit and Clodde audio drama by Alec Worley

Contents

Cover

Backlist

Title Page

Warhammer Crime

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-three

Chapter Twenty-four

Chapter Twenty-five

Chapter Twenty-six

Epilogue

Glossary

About the Author

An Extract from ‘Bloodlines’

Legal

It is the 41st millennium, and far from the battlefields of distant stars there is a city. A sprawling and rotting metropolis of ancient hives, where corruption is rife and murder a way of life.

This is Varangantua, a decaying urban hellscape, full of fading grandeur and ripe with squalor. Countless districts run like warrens throughout its cancerous expanse, from greasy dockyards and factorums to gaudy spires, decrepit slums and slaughterhouses. And looming over all, the ironclad bastions of the Enforcers, the upholders of the Lex and all that stands between the city and lawless oblivion.

To be a citizen in this grim place is to know privation and fear, where most can only eke out a meagre existence, their efforts bent to feeding an endless war in the void they know nothing about. A few, the gilded and the merchant-barons, know wealth, but they are hollow and heartless creatures who profit from suffering.

Violence is inescapable on these benighted streets, where you are either a victim or a perpetrator. Whatever justice exists can only be found through brutality, and the weak do not survive for long. For this is Varangantua, where only the ruthless prosper.

PROLOGUE

A breakthrough

Probator Fyedor Blovast’s footsteps rapped upon the polished floors of the Grand Magistery, the foremost centre of the Lex Alecto in all of Varangantua. Its grand foyer enclosed such a volume of space that any sound within was reduced to a gentle hush. A forceful argument was a distant collection of clipped noises, the debates of venerable lexmasters a dying man’s sigh. Conversation was a susurration of wind over the wastes. The brash roar of Varangantua was held at bay by that quiet as fortress gates hold out an enemy.

Blovast’s haste broke the calm. The march of the sanctioner squad accompanying him was drumming artillery. A stout box held aloft on a cushion of focused contragrav hummed between the armoured men, agitating the atmosphere with spilled energies.

The party hurried past the allegorical statue of Justice that dominated the atrium. Her forty-foot height pushed her head into the great dome, and she seemed, at first glance, to reign supreme, until one passed directly before her, and the double-headed eagle of the Imperium behind her leapt out, its spread wings cloaking her with shadow. The eagle was a threat suspended, tons of stone as weighty as the might of Terra itself. One head craned around to regard Justice with a fixed, fierce gaze, daring her dissent. The other looked downward at the observer, promising retribution for the smallest of sins.

Blovast’s group paid it no heed but swept past, out into one of the hundred corridors radiating from the atrium, taking their noise with them.

Hush descended again.

Blovast’s route took him quickly to the offices of Justicius Senioris Ad Ultra Maskell Resk. Checkpoints manned by sanctioners armoured in the white plate of the Justicio Centralium were swiftly navigated, the omnipass Blovast carried opening all doors. The final set to be flung wide were those of Resk himself. Seated at the far end of his huge office, the justicius looked up from his work with an expression of only mild surprise. Music of the Piscinian school played from the mouths of a statuary group of First Founders. Their soulless glass eyes tracked the probator as he approached his lord.

‘Blovast,’ Resk said. ‘You seem particularly exercised today. Why is it that you are bursting in on me unannounced?’ His old voice was soft as sifting sand, but possessed of the undeniable power of smothering dunes.

Blovast marched up to Resk’s desk, and in his excitement dared lean upon it with his fists. ‘We have it,’ Blovast said breathlessly. ‘Finally, we’ve cracked it. All of Noctis’ journal. We’ve decoded all of it!’

‘Is that so?’ Resk’s dry lips puckered in interest. His autoquill ceased writing and laid itself back into its case. Resk was an ancient man, dried out by the passage of years, and curled in on himself like an ammonite. Only his nose, mobile and pink, appeared moist. Metal pins attached his spine to a support designed to force his posture upright. Braces on his legs extended their pistons, straightening his decrepit knees with twig-cracks. He grunted as they hoisted him to his feet. The machine that supported him looked finely built, but it wheezed as it conveyed the justicius around his grand desk, as arthritic and withered as its occupant. Fine dressing on old rot, like the city he kept in order. The justicius half stood, half hung from his motive frame, long, spidery hands folded over the swollen round of his gut: the only full thing about him.

‘This better be worth it, Blovast.’

‘It is, it is, my lord justicius, I swear it.’

‘Show me then,’ said Resk.

‘My lord.’ Resk waved the sanctioners away from the grav-casket and dismissed them. The machine-spirit was not quick enough responding to Blovast’s gestures, and the probator bodily dragged it forward before the justicius. He fought an urge to sneeze at the old man’s smell: sharp dust, old wine and urine.

‘It’s all here. The whole journal.’ He flipped up the access panel on the casket’s carved top, fingers shaking with excitement as he tapped in the codes and let the machine sample his genecode with a needle’s stab. It gave out a sombre acknowledgement chime, and the top slipped into the casket interior. ‘Together with the mem-files salvaged from the heretek Rho-1, we’ve enough to condemn, I’m sure.’ He looked at the justicius, his eyes alive with triumph. ‘We’ve got him.’

Resk’s pink nose twitched. ‘I’ll be the judge of that, Blovast,’ he said warningly.

‘Of course, my lord, I meant no impertinence.’

‘Enthusiasm oft trips diligence, my boy,’ said the justicius. ‘Be slower in your actions and your thoughts.’

Blovast nodded shakily, but could not rein in his excitement.

A glossy black dataslate screen filled the casket top. Blovast pressed his thumb to the lower right corner. The screen came alive with the emblem of the Varangantuan Enforcers, an ouroboros serpent circling a death’s head, a five-pointed coronet surmounting the whole. The image was animated to appear as if it rotated in the depths of the stone. The serpent’s throat worked on its own tail. Its eyes flashed.

‘Cogitator, unlock Blovast, Fyedor, probator first class, ident 032567AZ#-princus.’

The machine within the casket whined into life. The contragrav cushion deactivated gradually, and the box sank to the floor.

‘Cogitator unit 0087-4 active. What are your desires, Probator Blovast?’ asked a rich machine voice. A number of light keys appeared on the stone. Blovast looked at Resk for permission to begin.

Resk’s rheumy eyes widened. ‘Go on then, now you’ve made me stand up. Get on with it.’

‘It’s long, my lord.’

‘Then go back out into the anteroom and ask my secretarius to fetch some wine.’

Blovast blinked. ‘Really?’

‘Yes, really. Go now, chop-chop.’ Resk tapped his fingers together.

Blovast shook his head and touched a light key.

‘I’ll activate it,’ he said, slightly deflated, and went towards the door. ‘You can begin.’

‘And tell him none of the rubbish!’ Resk called after Blovast. ‘Let Dessis know that I know he is skimming my rations and watering me with dregs from Bakka! I’ll not be taken advantage of!’

Blovast raised a hand in acknowledgement, and pushed his way back through the office’s double doors.

Resk looked at the document displayed on the casket surface. He laid gnarled hands upon it.

‘Well then, Probator Noctis,’ he said softly. ‘Let us see what you have for me.’

The screen pulsed softly.

‘Personal journal, Symeon Dymaxion-Noctis, begins,’ the machine-spirit sighed. The black glass filled with text.

Resk began to read.

CHAPTER ONE

The bisected man

It was raining the day that I met her.

I pulled up my Ceseen-Avrostar groundcar halfway across the Redway. Behind me, Nearsteel’s habclaves huddled in the downpour. Ahead, the proud tooth of the Steelmound knifed the black morning sky.

I stepped out into the kind of soul-soaking deluge that plagues Nearsteel this time of year. Rain drummed on the brim of my hat. I like a wide brim: good for the sun and the rain both, though it wasn’t much use just then. I turned up the collar on my coat. That didn’t help either. Rivulets of cold water, gritty with desert dust, ran down my neck. Winter was on its way. Soon the mountains would be turning dirty white.

Barriers walled off our side of the red line separating sovereign Alecto territory from the Mechanicus enclave. Lights flashed through the rain, bouncing off armoured sanctioners and making them leap in and out of view. The barriers were a sorry boundary, not much of an obstacle at all. I held up my holo-seal to the nearest sanctioner. He took it from me. The rain messed with the projection and he peered at it for an age. He could tell I was a probator. We have a look. No uniformity to garb or weapons, but the eyeshine from our retinal implant marks us out as officers of the Lex, and there’s a certain physicality besides.

‘Probator Noctis?’ he said finally and loudly, competing with the roar of a ship coming into the Steelmound voidport halfway up the spire. Although it was thousands of feet in the air, its engines were louder than a hundred manufactories working full pelt.

‘Yeah,’ I said. The ship was a long black shape ablaze with lights. I wondered where it had been, and where it would go next. Somewhere better than Varangantua, I thought. ‘Still bringing ships down, even in this,’ I said. The wind was getting up. It would be blowing a gale up there.

‘What?’ the sanctioner shouted over the screaming engines.

‘Nothing.’

He handed back my holo-seal. I put the wallet inside my coat, and got a pocket full of water. It was freezing. I should have worn a thicker shirt.

‘That way!’ he said, pointing. Wind ripped at his storm cloak. Rain blew hard and cold into the backs of my legs.

I hate this time of year.

I tugged the brim of my hat. He needn’t have told me where the action was. The localis sceleris was blindingly obvious, even to a sanctioner. There was a crowd of ours on one side, a line of theirs on the other, lights flashing around them all, a lot of guns on display. A face-off between Mechanicus personnel and Alectian enforcers would have been remarkable anywhere, but it was taking place in the exclusion zone, and that made it dangerous. Nobody ever goes out in the zone, not ever. I had set foot that deep into the Redway twice in my entire life, and I’m one of the few people who can go into it without being shot.

Water bounced off the plaza. I couldn’t see the red line that marked the divide, but it was close. I was feeling the tingle I get when I know I’m somewhere I shouldn’t be.

I moved past groups of sanctioners. Rain rattled off their armour. I don’t envy them their kit; it’s heavy, hot and not much protection against a good weapon, but they were a damn sight drier than me.

Our men were scattered about. The Adeptus Mechanicus’ lot were in ranks. They had the shape of men, but they weren’t, not any more. I couldn’t see a single organic limb among them. The slit visors of their sallets glowed with blue light. They’re cyborgs, all of them, Adeptus Mechanicus soldiers. If you took the helmets off them all, you’d be hard-pressed to find a human face. They made me uncomfortable. As well as the departmento iris, my own right arm and shoulder are replacements, a memento of a case that went bad a few years back. When I see the Martian machine men, I remember I’m not as human as I was, and I don’t like that. They say the flesh is weak, but if you replace it all with machines there’s nothing human left. To be human is to be weak. The Mechanicus have forgotten that.

Focus on the job, I told myself. Get out of the damn rain.

It took me a moment to find who I was looking for.

Hondus’ broad shoulders were hunched against the downpour, a Fumario he couldn’t ever hope to light jammed between his lips. His hands were thrust deep into pockets that must have been filling like ponds. His eye glinted as he accessed the dataveil. This was a murder of a most unusual kind, worthy of deep-scan, the reason we were all out there in that filthy weather in the first place.

I went over. Hondus is more than my boss, he’s my friend, so he doesn’t get my usual level of insouciant charm. Insolence, the higher-ups call it. I prefer wit.

‘Probator-senioris,’ I said.

‘How’s the knee?’ he asked, not taking his eyes off the corpse. Or, I should say, off the top half of it, because the body had been neatly cut in two. Everything from the waist up was on our side, everything from waist down was on theirs, the bottom half hidden behind the Mechanicus grunts. Whoever had done it had left the pieces about eight feet apart on either side of the red line.

‘Still twinging,’ I said. I’d got pretty busted up chasing a suspect a couple of weeks before, one inadvisable jump and an encounter with our less-enlightened sanctioner brethren. ‘Thanks for asking.’

‘This is a Throne-damned mess,’ he said. The light in his eye went out.

‘Very neat,’ I said, looking over the torso. All the organs were sliced right through, and part cooked. ‘What have we got?’

He sighed so deeply it came out of his mouth like a deathbed complaint.

‘A world of shit, my friend. A world of shit.’ He gave a meaningful glance to the rank of cyborgs standing in the rain.

His smoke stick broke and fell, scattering crumbs of tabac down his front.

‘You’re never going to be able to smoke that in this weather, you know?’ I said.

He gave me a doleful look. His eyes were pouched, more with disillusionment than with exhaustion, though that had a hand in the sagging of his face. ‘Don’t start, Symeon,’ he said.

He took his left hand out of his pocket, and shook it in irritation. Water sprayed from his fingers.

‘Victim was found at four of the clock,’ he said. ‘Dead of night. Top half here.’ He pointed at the upper torso. The victim was on his back, skin washed fish white by the rain. The mouth was open in surprise at this unexpected turn of events, and filled with water. ‘The other half is behind those metallic freaks.’ He jabbed a finger towards the cyborgs.

Hondus stepped close to the red line, but was very careful not to cross it. ‘No vid-feeds. The whole surveillance grid on our side went out before it happened. Came back on some time after, when of course it was spotted right away. There’s a ten-minute gap.’

‘The containment systems, sentry guns?’

‘Nothing. All deactivated.’

‘What about theirs?’ I said, nodding at the motionless AdMech contingent.

‘What do you think? They’ve offered nothing,’ he snorted at me.

‘Right. Witnesses?’

‘None yet,’ said Hondus. He looked behind me to the blocks and claves. Though the commercia beyond the Redway is the busiest part of Nearsteel, there are very few windows facing the Steelmound. ‘And I bet if there are, they won’t have seen anything.’

‘No blood,’ I said. I got down in a crouch. ‘Not done here, or has the rain washed it away?’

‘I don’t think the cut killed him. It’s too neat – you’d be struggling if they did that to you, no way you’d get so straight a line,’ said Hondus. ‘The wound’s burned, a lascutter.’

I was inclined to agree. Las cuts clean. There was a lot of heat to whatever did the job, but a plasma torch or melta would have vaporised most of the corpse’s torso.

‘I think, anyway,’ Hondus went on. ‘High-power, short-length beam, probably industrial, not military.’

‘It’s a guess,’ I said. He was probably right. I peered into the man’s guts. The digestive system was cut clean in two, the fluids from it long gone down the drain.

‘The verispexes aren’t here yet,’ he said. He sniffed. ‘Throne damn it, I wish they’d get a move on. I’m coming down with something.’

‘I’ll say a prayer for you next time I’m in church.’

‘Don’t start, I said. You’re starting.’ He sniffed again. ‘Anyway, it’s not just a guess, it’s a good guess. This bloody rain makes it hard to see if it was done here or not. No time of death yet. None of that. He was rich, though.’

‘He had money,’ I corrected, moving position around the torso. ‘But he wasn’t rich. Not properly rich. He’s no gilded.’

‘How so?’ Hondus said.

‘These clothes are gaudy, recent season but not the latest. Rich man wouldn’t be seen dead in last year’s gown. No pun intended.’ I reached out and flipped his broad lapel back. There was a golden vox-stud wired into it. ‘This isn’t high class either. Looks it, but it’s too vulgar. Too obvious.’

‘Hey!’ Hondus said. ‘I just told you the verispexes weren’t here yet. You’ll contaminate the scene.’

‘Hondus, this guy’s just taken the longest pulse-shower of his life. They’re going to find nothing. He’s rinsed clean,’ I said. Alecto’s rain is often acid, especially where we are, far to the south.

He shrugged. ‘Protocol is all, you know what they say.’ He looked back down at the dead man. ‘Trust you to know a rich man,’ he said. None of them can resist taking a dig at my family connections, not even Hondus, and he’s one of the good ones.

‘Anyone could see it,’ I said. I pointed at the corpse’s jacket. The cut had sliced a thin strip of cloth from the bottom. ‘Good clothes, bad taste. The material’s novoplas, you can tell by the beading where it’s melted. And the dye’s beginning to run in the rain. This is a cheaper man than appears. A rich man wears natural fibres.’

I got up. The rain was chilling my augmetic arm. I keep thinking about getting it sheathed in synthskin again, but I don’t. For a start, it looks weird, not real – almost real, but definitely not and that puts people off, and by people I mean women. Banded metal is pretty intimidating, which is useful in our line of work. But just then I wished it was clad. My bones were beginning to hurt where the metal met them.

Hondus had his own gripes. His joints cracked like gunshots when he stood up.

‘Emperor save me, I’m getting too old for standing about in this piss-poor weather,’ he said.

‘I suppose they’ve not let you look at the bottom half yet,’ I said. I tried burrowing my head further into my jacket. It pressed the soaking cloth into my cheeks. ‘Miserable day,’ I added.

‘Uh-huh,’ he said, which covered off both my statement and my question.

The cyborgs were lined up right by the stripe, and I’d bet every one was exactly the same distance from the red tiles. Their long coats curled about metal legs. The cloth was too soaked to flap, Zhao-Arkhad grey gone black in the wet; it turned back and forth, like dead things in the surf.

Through the cyborgs’ legs I could see the gleam of bone and heat-blackened organs.

‘Are they going to let us reunite this poor soul with his legs?’ I asked.

‘Doubt it,’ he said.

‘Are we going to get to look at it?’

‘Doubt that too,’ he said.

‘So they’re not talking then? Can’t they give us the vid-feeds from their surveillance?’

‘They could, but when do the AdMech Astynomia ever talk with us?’

‘These aren’t Astynomia,’ I said. Astynomia are the Mechanicus enforcers. ‘These tinheads are part of the skitarii garrison. They’ve got their military out. Why?’

‘Big deal, this,’ said Hondus. He sniffed hard.

‘Maybe,’ I said. But people turn up dead in Nearsteel all the time. Nobody cares. Why all this fuss? My inner clarions were screaming. I shivered and looked up at the Steelmound. ‘What do they do in there anyway?’

‘They make stuff. Low-tech manufacture killed Nearsteel’s industry. But they make high-tech parts too. Lots of servitors, so I hear, for export.’

‘Perhaps we should go over the line and see, poke about a bit.’

Hondus gave me a hard look. ‘You know damn well that’s impossible, Symeon,’ he said.

‘All right, all right. We need to talk to them. There must be a way of setting up some kind of liaison here.’

Hondus gave me a sly look.

‘What?’ I said.

‘Nothing,’ he said.

‘Seriously, what?’

A honking klaxon came up from behind. Hondus craned his neck to see over the sanctioners.

‘The verispexes. About damn time,’ Hondus said. He waved the sanctioners out of the way to let the vehicle through. It came to a stop, rain sluicing off its man-high tyres.

There was a sudden burst of activity that kept my mind off the cold. The verispexes came out of their meat wagon and set about scanning the ground. From the looks on their faces and the sorry noises their auspexes made I was right about the rain cleaning the scene. The forensic devices we have are pretty good, but a downpour like that… You get the picture.

The verispex chief wanted this done. I wasn’t surprised. Relations between Nearsteel and the Steelmound had been strained of late. Hondus and he set into an argument about the state of the localis sceleris pretty much straight away. Hondus was looking at me for support when my vox-bead began to sing. I checked the ident on my arm slate. I wear it on the right arm, the false one. It took three tries to activate the touchscreen in the pouring rain.

‘Shit,’ I said, when I finally had the name up on my cogitator screen.

‘Noctis,’ Hondus said, looking for support. ‘Come over here.’

‘Can’t,’ I said. ‘It’s Castellan Illios’ damn undersecretary. The rodent’s called me in for another dressing down.’

Hondus waved me off irritably and went back to arguing with the verispex.

I turned my back on the localis, and went back to the groundcar.

I got water all over my seats. I really do hate this time of year.

CHAPTER TWO

Driving through Nearsteel

There aren’t many groundcars like my Ceseen-Avrostar. I paid for it. The Lex District doesn’t run to such luxury. The groundcar marks me out as a rich man, not as a lawdog. Probators do have transport, some of them have their own vehicles, but not like mine.

I don’t know if wherever you are has private groundcars. My uncle, who manages the family’s off-world business, he told me a lot of planets don’t have them. He said there are lots of places people use beasts, and that on some worlds the only mechanised transport they see are military vehicles.

Ceseen-Avrostar only make three models for civilian use. They’re all high end, luxury, and that’s unusual in itself. Another weakness I have. See the great hypocrite, coming to be of the people yet not being able to live like them. The C-A is fifteen feet long, promethium fuelled. It has four seats. Top speed of two hundred miles per hour, good range too. It’s fitted with loc-ref-capable auto directors. The servitor brain unit it comes with is flexible, drives like a person, but they need too much care. It’s been known for a C-A’s organics to cook when the heat transfer fails. I’m not having that, so I had mine replaced with a cogitator. I’ve added a few other extras. It was damn expensive.

I won’t drive a Dymaxion. A lot of people might call that disloyal. I would say that they’d be right. Dymaxion makes a better vehicle. But you wouldn’t find me telling my father that. If he asked I’d tell him Ceseen-Avrostar are the superior fabricator, just to watch his piss boil.

The C-A is a good groundcar. It’s got style the cars our family makes don’t have. There’s a bit of flair that most people don’t appreciate until they’re behind the guide wheel. I like it. So what? My slates, my choice.

Only some people might say they’re not my slates either, and I’d have to admit they’d be right about that too.

Why is all this important? I tell myself it is because I want you to get as complete a picture of me as possible. But as the likelihood of these journals ever reaching you is so remote, I admit that I’m doing it more for myself.

How I do it is easier to explain. I take a few neural flexers so I can remember everything; a lot of probators do anyway. My dataslate has a vox-thief and vid-capture, though the angle on the lens is a pain and the quality isn’t much to sing about. Sometimes, I stitch vid, audex and words together for you too, like those art displays fatuous young things up in the Palantyne make to stop themselves going mad from boredom. A man can’t live for work alone; he has to have purpose, and all the other things I screamed in my father’s face when I left. I’m not so much of an idealist now, but the core of my belief is as solid as Terran bedrock. If I didn’t do this, what would I have?

I know I’ll probably never see you again. I don’t think I ever will be able to grasp the truth of it. We must have hope, even if hope is a liar.

I manoeuvred my way through Nearsteel’s shitty traffic. The topography limits the number of roads, and they’re crammed to bursting all the time. Clarions and lights only give me so much of the Emperor’s Grace. I could barely see. The windscreen wipers couldn’t keep up. Rain hammered down, a watery barrage, each impact spreading shrapnel bursts of sand. Traffic nose to tail, crawling away from the Steelmound. I crawled with it.

Nearsteel’s Bastion is over away from the mountains. The ground begins to climb again there, but not nearly so much as in the east. There was a valley where Nearsteel is once, so I understand, before plasteel and ’crete filled in the space. Now the west-side hills are just bumps. Only the Varagan Mountains present any real relief round here. They’re big, and they mark the end of Nearsteel. We’re at the edge in these parts in so many ways. Get to the last habclave out past my place, and the city just stops. There’s a few ruins, buildings that were either abandoned a long time ago, or never finished. I like to go out there, sometimes. You can hike, if you’re brave enough, because there are unpleasant men out there, and worse things than men. They’ll get you if the weather doesn’t. People do it though, for the space. You assume that humanity must have evolved to live in cities, but I don’t think that’s the case. We drive each other crazy packed so close. Madness, that’s this city, this world, this Imperium.

The streets off the mountains gather up the water. The routes turn into rivers, surfaces churning with a thousand muddy braids bearing a cargo of trash. Under-pavement subdistricts like Chainward flood. There are stinking lakes down beneath the habclaves and spire roots. District water catchers mess up the traffic, cordoning off streets to direct the flow into the purifiers and fill up the reservoirs. If it weren’t for this water, we’d be even poorer than we are. We sell the excess. Excuse the pun, but it keeps us afloat.

After an hour and a half, the Nearsteel Bastion pushed itself out of the rain, the Lex Alecto seal prominent on the outside. It is made to the same pattern as nearly every other Bastion in the city. I don’t know how many there are in Varangantua. Hundreds, probably. I’m not sure anyone knows. Bastion-N is big, a fortress standing proud of the habclaves and arcologies around it like a bully in the scholam yard crowded by sycophants. Bastions are brutal, dominating. They’re supposed to be. Even I feel watched driving up to it. It reminds me to be on my guard. Not everyone in this place is my friend.

I was tracked by heavy stubber emplacements all the way from the via favora. If you attempt that ramp without the right clearance, you’ll be blasted to bits. I’ve seen it happen. They say in one hand Lady Lex holds the scales of justice. The other hand has an itchy trigger finger.

The ramps were torrents of dirty water. Swags of plastek caught on my wheel guards. Augurs and vid-thieves watched me all the time. Remote datalooms probed my car’s cogitator for the untoward. I waited a tedious, damp age while the rain beat at the roof before the gates opened and let me in. I parked up, got out, chilled to the bone. My day had started out badly and was about to get a whole lot worse.

I had yet to see Castellan Illios.

I was dripping so much water on the floor that the servo-cleansers chased me up the corridor, their idiot voices trilling with alarm. Their repetitive warnings amused me, and I walked faster to make them work harder. The units were low to the ground, sculptures of old men with brooms, with wide collection slots fashioned like grotesque mouths housing teeth of hard bristles. They look nothing like human, but they had their pound of flesh inside, brains rewired to the singular task of keeping the Bastion looking fine. Most things like that are servitors of one sort or another. I didn’t really think about it much. They’re just there.

I think about it now, though.

I passed people I knew. Some of them were as wet as me, others grimaced at what they saw, knowing that they glimpsed their future. Enforcers like getting pissed wet through about as much as any man.

‘His Hand,’ we’d say in greeting to one another.

Some of these people I like just fine. Several of them are solid colleagues. A couple of them are real friends. A whole bunch of them are mighty fools, and I had the vast misfortune to bump into Probator Dren Chanjafeen, the mightiest example of all. I was creeping past his tabularium to avoid him. My luck that he backed out of the door the moment I was passing on tiptoes. His Hand shields us, but occasionally it seems the Emperor likes to give us a slap.

‘Well, well, well, Symeon Dymaxion-Noctis.’ He used my full name. I don’t like it when people use my full name.

‘Noctis. It’s just Noctis.’

He’s a big man, the kind that pretends his insults are all fun and games until you land him with a rejoinder he doesn’t like; then he’ll start with the menacing. He has a thin skin and big fists.

‘Well, Noctis, what happened to you, you forget to get undressed before you went in the pulse-shower?’ Chanjafeen thinks he’s funny. He isn’t.

‘Yeah, well,’ I said. ‘If you got off your overfed arse and went outside to do your damn job, Dren, you’d be wet too.’

One of his cronies tittered through the open door.

I strode on, deliberately keeping my back to him to show I wasn’t afraid of him.

‘Catch you later, pretender!’ he shouted. The crony laughed again. I hate Chanjafeen. One day I am going to shoot that fucker, I swear.

The Bastion is a tall building and Castellan Yuvgany Illios’ office is right at the very top. He dwells up there like a furious eagle guarding an eyrie. Illios is a very angry man.

His secretarius, Bonneveille, raised his eyebrow at the state of my clothes. I was so wet my shoes were squelching, squeezing out water onto the carpet. Did I mention these high officers live like lords? They like getting their carpets dirty as much as they like getting their hands dirty.

‘What?’ I said, holding up my dripping arms. ‘It’s raining. It’s not my fault.’

Bonneveille made an expression that said he thought it was my fault. He pulled out a small tray from under his desk and pushed it at me. He moves with this sort of limp-muscled contempt, does Bonneveille; it’s something that marks him out as gilded. It’s quite impressive, making weakness look like power, because I could break him like a stick of bread. I sometimes think about doing just that.

‘Weapons,’ he said. He pointed at the bulge in my coat.

‘Really? I’m not going to shoot him.’

‘It’s a standing order, it’s the same every time you come here. I ask you to do what everyone has to do and you make some kind of weak quip. It’s tiresome.’

‘Tiresome?’ I said.

‘Just do it, Noctis,’ said Bonneveille.

‘What, shoot him?’

Bonneveille sat back in his chair and gave me one of his filthy looks. The man has a hundred of them. ‘Throne! Do you enjoy tormenting me?’ Bonneveille is as well born as me. His position is a sinecure, a favour for a spire lord with too many spare sons. We have a link, he and I, though he denies it. ‘You’re not funny,’ he said.

‘I know people who’d disagree,’ I said. ‘I’m one of them.’ Unlike that brainless ambull Chanjafeen, I am funny.

Bonneveille tapped the tray. ‘Gun. Now. Please.’

‘Please? That’s better,’ I said. I took out my gun from the armpit holster. It’s a solid shot, eight-round Finaliser: stupid name, good gun. I don’t trust las. You can tell me a whole winter night long that las is better – easier to charge, always got a way to get a shot out, more reliable and all that. People do, all the time. I don’t hold with it. Bullets, especially big bullets like the Finaliser shoots, are more likely to take someone down and make sure they stay there.

I went to one of the chairs in the antechamber. There were a dozen. Illios could keep you waiting for hours.

‘And that knife you keep in your sock,’ Bonneveille said.

‘I don’t keep it in my sock,’ I said. ‘That’d be uncomfortable.’

‘Knife!’ I bent down and unbelted the scabbard from my shin. The whole thing was soaked. It dripped on the leather top of Bonneveille’s desk as I put it in the tray. The leather is real. It’s an expensive desk. I wiped drops away with my sleeve, intentionally making the mess worse.

‘Sorry,’ I said.

Bonneveille dabbed the desk with a handkerchief.

‘Go and sit down.’ He scowled. ‘He’ll be with you in five minutes.’

‘Pity, I was hoping for a nap.’

I picked a chair close to the secretarius’ desk so he wouldn’t forget I was there.

‘For the love of Terra, take off your coat. Hang it there. You’re soaked.’ He pointed to a set of hooks.

I did as he asked. I enjoy annoying Bonneveille, but it’s not wise to take it too far. He’s got a lot of connections. If I keep him mostly sweet, he can be useful.

He went back to whatever it is he does to justify his existence.

I let myself meditate a bit. I’m not religious. I mean, I believe in the God-Emperor and all that, but I don’t think He’s going to answer my prayers. It’s a big universe and He’s busy. But the meditation is useful. It clears the mind. It helps me focus. I was wondering who the bisected man was. Who had done it, how had they done it without being seen? It was puzzling. There’re a lot of ways to die in Varangantua and a lot of people do. But why there, why then? Why, crucially, in so theatrical a way? Someone wanted that to be seen.

I tried to concentrate on the Marchenstka girl. She’d gone missing five weeks ago. It was her that the castellan would want to see me about, but I had no leads after Yerzy took a tumble, and my mind kept wandering back to the Redway.

Thought is the greatest traitor, they say in the cathedrum. I realised I was going to go into the castellan’s office, and I’d have nothing to say.

The door opened. It’s a massive piece of off-world wood, black as wet shale and harder than granite. The timbers are laid so the grain makes a pattern. There’s a rendition of the seal cut into it. High-power las-work. It’s a nice piece. Illios takes his style cues from his betters.

An arbitrator came out, big enough to make me think he was genhanced and a high-ranker, his uniform so sharply pressed it probably cut him every time he sat down, with a clutch of medals chinking on his overdeveloped chest. The Adeptus Arbites don’t usually give a damn about anything that goes on in the districts. They’re supraplanetary, Lex Imperium only. If you’re a planetary commander with criminal tendencies, a cardinal with suspicious off-world interests or a pirate lord skipping from system to system, they’ll come for you. If you’re some undercity scummer, you’ll only have me to deal with. If you fall into the latter category, be thankful. The Arbites are serious business, a police force, judicial system and army rolled into one. When I find out they’re involved, it gives me pause.

But involved in what?

The door shut with a distinct click.

‘Proconsul Avedire,’ Bonneveille said obsequiously. The arbitrator ignored him and strode out.

‘Not everyone wants to be your friend, Bonneveille,’ I said. I was already fetching my coat. ‘I know I don’t.’

‘He’s not ready yet,’ said Bonneveille.

‘Yeah, yeah.’ I stood in front of the door. I folded the coat on my arm. The damp cloth felt awful.

A chime sounded from the vox-panel set into Bonneveille’s desk.

‘The castellan will see you now,’ he said.

‘Of course he will,’ I said.

Bonneveille depressed a button. The locking mechanism made a charmless buzz. I thought they could have done better for a beautiful door like that. But that’s Varangantua for you, everything’s only done half right.

The door to the groom’s lair swung open.

CHAPTER THREE

Castellan Illios

Men like Illios have offices sized to fit their egos. No matter how morally righteous you are, anyone who wants a tabularium that high up in a Bastion tower has a hunger for power, and the self-belief they are deserving of it. Illios was sat at the far end of a space that would have housed a dozen families in comfort. Picture plasterwork, ormolu, pilasters of rare stone, furniture that would bankrupt one of Varangantua’s smaller districts.

Only the thing is, a lot of it is fake: fittings and furniture made from paint, wire, plaster and plastek treated to look like precious metals and even more precious wood. Those pieces that are real aren’t worth much, apart from the door. Illios is an important enforcer, but he’s only an enforcer.

He knows this. It makes him sour. He’s a social climber, little, small, sort of squeezed up, like the weight of his responsibility has crushed a larger man down, juicing out all the good and leaving a homunculus full of concentrated spite. This is all probably enormously unfair, but I’ve been on the receiving end of his rages enough times. I don’t hate him. Not in the way I hate Chanjafeen. It’s more of a boss-minion intense dislike. It’s not personal.

Illios, on the other hand, does hate me, twice over, and believe me it is personal on his part. Illios hates me for what I am, which is, in his opinion, smug, opinionated and insolent. That I’m often right doesn’t help. But mostly he hates me for what I was. To be fair, that makes two of us.

He looked up from the set of High Lex documents he was perusing. Apparently, the arbitrators had taken an interest in little old Nearsteel after all. I filed that away for later thought.

‘Ah, Dymaxion,’ he said. He appeared more angry than usual.

‘Noctis,’ I said.

‘You cannot escape your family, probator. It would be better for you if you accepted that and used the name you were born into.’

I was born into both names: Noctis is my mother’s and I’ve the right to use whichever I choose, according to gilded tradition. It doesn’t matter to Illios.

He saw me scoping the documents and flipped the fancy dossier closed. Then he frowned at the way my shoes squelched over his wooden floor – vat-grown, not natural, I thought – and his rug, which was new and actually looked like real animal fibre. There was also a bowl of fruit on his desk, none of which I was familiar with, which meant it was expensive. That was interesting.

I stopped in front of his desk and attempted a salute. It’s never come easy to me.

‘Sit down, probator,’ he said. He shoved aside his dossier. He really was angry.

‘Nice rug,’ I said. ‘You must be going up in the world, sir.’

‘I’ll have less of your insolence, Dymaxion. Sit.’

‘Yes, sir,’ I said. I sat. I dropped my damp hat on the desk. It was so large a piece of furniture that there was a mile between the castellan and the hat, but he stared at it like I’d laid down a dead sump rat on his dinner plate. He didn’t ask me to move it.

‘You want to know about the Marchenstka girl,’ I said. I thought being cocky might head off the dressing down I was about to get. It didn’t work.

‘The bloody Marchenstka girl. Where is she, Dymaxion?’

‘If I knew that, she’d not be missing any more, would she?’ I wasn’t being flippant, it was too serious a matter. I don’t like to see anyone lost or suffering, but I was tired.

He plucked at a second piece of paper, much lower quality than that from the Adeptus Arbites. It skidded away from his fingers and he growled as his hand scrabbled after it.

He had to stand up to grab it. Then he flourished it in my face.

‘This is a list of your breaches of discipline, Dymaxion. Insolence, lies, false warrant acquisition. Shall I go on?’

‘If you like, but I’ve seen it before,’ I said. The smile I gave him infuriated him. His nostrils flared. His entire face went a sort of puce.

‘Show some respect,’ he said. ‘I am not afraid of your family.’

‘I don’t expect you to be.’ He was though.

‘Listen to me!’ he growled. ‘I have Milius Marchenstka on the Throne-damned vox three times a day wanting to know where his daughter is! Do you know what he could do to this district? Do you know what he could do to you?’

He was really thinking of what Marchenstka could do to him, I thought. I shrugged.

‘What do you want me to do about it? Our only lead killed himself. Damn near got me killed too.’

‘You’re putting other cases, lesser cases, ahead of this,’ he said.

‘I’m putting cases ahead of this that I can solve, sir. The trail’s cold,’ I said. ‘The other matters I’m dealing with don’t mean any less to the people involved than Marchenstka’s daughter means to him.’

Illios’ face twisted. He slammed the paper down on the desk so hard it must have made his palm sting.

‘You of all people know it does not work like that.’ Each word came out with a little spray of saliva. ‘You come down here with the noble idea of roughing it with the rest of us. You could have stayed up there, in the Ovrin Cluster, and lived a life most people here would kill for. You know this case matters because the Marchenstkas are rich.’

I came down here because I felt like a massive Throne-damned fraud, and I had to do something about it, but I couldn’t say that to him. What’d be the point?

‘You come into my district,’ he went on. ‘You take nothing seriously, you break the bloody rules when it suits you. Everything’s a damn joke to you…’ He glared at me. ‘Don’t think I can’t toss you out because of your family. Don’t you dare,’ he said.

I didn’t think that. But it didn’t matter to me. My family obviously mattered to him a lot. I took all this very well. See how stoic I am.

Getting no rise from me, the fire went out of Illios a little.

‘It’s good for you that you are such a skilled probator, or I’d shoot you myself,’ he said. He breathed out slowly. He looked overworked. Maybe I’m too hard on him. Maybe not.

‘I’ve got another job for you,’ he said. He looked up sharply before I could speak. ‘That doesn’t mean I want you to slack off on the Marchenstka case.’

‘As you command,’ I said.

‘Right. You’re taking on the dead man found cut in half on the Redway this morning. Probator-Senioris Hondus Vilyavich recommended you. He thinks that augmetic arm you have will play well with the Adeptus Mechanicus.’ He waved at my metal hand. Self-consciously I pulled it off the table. ‘I have been in touch with the Astynomia, and they’ve sent details of a liaison they want you to work with.’

He pushed a button on a desktop fabricator. It whirred and a strong smell of hot plastek wafted over us. Illios went on talking, but I wasn’t paying much attention. Hondus. That was why he was smirking at me. I reminded myself to get him a drink next time I saw him. This could be an interesting case, and it had probably saved my career besides, if it didn’t get me killed.

‘…why we have to put up with them,’ Illios went on. ‘They’ve been nothing but trouble since they set up their enclave.’

I tuned back in to his monologue.

‘Five centuries ago?’ I shrugged and took a piece of fruit from the bowl. He scowled at me, but here’s the thing, he hates me, but he’s a bit scared of my family, so he didn’t say anything as I ate his fruit.

‘Five hundred years isn’t any time to people of power,’ he said. He dearly wanted to be a person like that. Envy is always the flaw of those who crave influence.

‘This is delicious,’ I said. Juice dribbled down my chin. I wiped it off on my wet coat. It needed a wash anyway.

‘Pay attention, Dymaxion. There are files on the Adeptus Mechanicus here in the Bastion, copies of the old agreements. They took us for fools.’ I don’t know why he said ‘us’. All those who’d negotiated the deal were centuries dead. He identified with something that had nothing to do with him. A lot of people do that. ‘The vladar at the time did not strike a favourable deal. It crippled our industry, and we still have to live with it. Now, because of the Great War, we find ourselves dependent on them, even for bloody food. Be careful with this. Don’t mess it up. Give them a little taste of high spire manners.’

‘By that, you want them to think I’m a rich idiot?’

‘Drop the coarse act, Symeon. We need to keep the enclave happy with us. If it weren’t for that arm and who you are, I’d never let you anywhere near this.’

‘That’s very generous of you.’ I finished the fruit.

The desktop fabricator let out a soft sound. He opened it, releasing a waft of steam fragranced with hot chemicals. There was a data wafer inside, newly minted. He picked it up and shook it to cool it down.

‘Upon this wafer are the details of the Adeptus Mechanicus procurator assigned to the murder from their side. She’s not Astynomia, but from some bigger organisation. The Collegiate Extremis.’

‘I’m not familiar with the term,’ I said.

‘It’s a similar organisation to the Adeptus Arbites,’ he said tersely. ‘They do for the forge worlds what the Arbites do for us. They have a lot of power, so be careful.’

He was thinking of himself, not me, when he said that.

He held out the data wafer. I took it in my steel hand. It looked hot, and I was pretty sure Illios would burn himself just so he could watch me singe my fingers.

‘Can’t you put this through the dataveil?’ I asked.

‘Classified. Too sensitive,’ he said.

‘Then do you have a name?’

‘They don’t have names, they have designations. It’s Rho-1 Lux,’ he said.

‘Rho-1 Lux. Right,’ I said. It was the first time I ever said her name. Momentous things pass unnoticed. It’s funny how life works.

‘Find out what you can. Report back to me in a few days. This is a sensitive business. This case has to be solved. If you can close it, I may forget this business with the Marchenstka girl.’

Great. In a city like ours where most probators see years go by without clearing anything up, why was it always me who got the impossible asks? I didn’t say any of that. What I did say was: ‘Thank you, sir.’

‘I’m watching you, Dymaxion.’

‘Noctis,’ I said over my shoulder.

His scowl followed me out of the room.

I got back to my car and put in a call to Hondus. His face appeared on the car screen, distorted by the view of the wrist-vox he wears. He was laughing as he picked up.

‘You got your new assignment then.’

‘I did, you bastard. You knew!’

‘I’ve got to have some fun some of the time,’ he said.

‘I should thank you,’ I said.

‘You should,’ he agreed. His voice became serious. ‘Symeon. There’s only so much Illios will take from you. He’s afraid of your family, but that won’t last. There’s a balance between anger and fear. He’s about to tip.’

‘If he found out how much I was out of favour he wouldn’t be afraid,’ I said.

‘He’s got an idea,’ said Hondus. ‘But you’ve only lasted this long because he wants to use you to get closer to the big time.’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ I said. ‘I know that too. The man’s got a lust on for the high life.’

‘Just because that’s true doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be careful.’

His voice was clear, no interference. That meant no big build-ups of storm fronts over the mountain.

‘It’s probably going to stop raining soon,’ I said.

‘You’re an optimist in a world of cynics, Symeon.’

‘I’m really not,’ I said. ‘What by the Nine Devils is there to be optimistic about?’

‘Not much, but you’re no cynic.’

That much was true. I believe people are worth fighting for.

‘Only when it comes to the Emperor giving me His undivided attention.’

‘That kind of talk can get you killed,’ he warned.

‘I do my best,’ I said.

‘Be careful,’ he said again, as if I wasn’t, mostly. ‘You’re a good probator, a good man. I don’t want to lose you.’

That reminded me of what the suspect in the Marchenstka case had said to me before he tossed himself into the abyss under the Steelmound. I lost some of my good cheer.

‘What use has Varangantua for good men?’ I murmured.

‘What?’

‘Nothing, nothing. Something Yerzy Demedoi said.’

‘Right. Never mind that,’ said Hondus. ‘See if you can get this one squared away, stamped and filed in triplicate. You need a win, my friend, I can’t save you every time.’

‘What happened with the body?’ I said.

‘The Astynomia showed up. There was an argument. In the end, I let them have the corpse on the strict understanding you got to see it and they shared all they learned. They seemed all right with that. I asked if they had vid footage of the Redway, but they wouldn’t tell.’

‘Are they hiding something?’ I said. ‘Or did their surveillance fail too?’

‘I poked at them a bit. They weren’t saying,’ said Hondus. ‘There’s something else. This procurator they’re sending. It’s someone special, not local Lex, if I guess right. Be careful there.’

I looked at the wafer, still in my hand.

‘Illios said something about that.’

A red light flashed on my groundcar’s vox-panel.

‘Gotta go, Hondus. I’ve another call coming in.’ I pressed a button. My aide’s name and ident string came up on the C-A’s display. ‘It’s Borostin.’

‘Keep me updated.’ The view fell away as his wrist dropped from his face. Last thing I saw were fingers made huge by foreshortening pressing the deactivation rune.

I switched channels. Borostin works a desk, and I got a steadier vid-feed off him. His small, round face appeared on the display. He looks more nervous than he is. He’s always surrounded by cogitator screens and runeboards, like he’s trapped inside a dataloom.

‘Probator,’ he said, ‘I have had a communique from the Adeptus Mechanicus Astynomia.’

‘Emperor they’re impatient,’ I said.

‘This was from an Astynomia Investigatus-Prime…’ He glanced at a screen. ‘It’s just a string of numbers.’

He didn’t burden me with it. He knows me well.

Knew me well.

‘They are going to close their investigation,’ he said. ‘Report reads: Murder. Cause: rogue servitor.’

‘That’s it?’ I said. I felt a strange mix of relief and foreboding. If I was going to save my seal, I’d have to find the Marchenstka girl.

‘They did send a vid-capture of it happening,’ he added.

‘The murder?’ I asked.

‘The placing of the body. It’s been marked for upload to the dataveil.’

‘Too slow,’ I said. ‘Can you send it to me directly? Put it through the district tight-beam. Priority. I want to see this now.’

‘Immediately, probator.’

Borostin was a good man. His death is another thing to feel guilty about.

A second later, the dataslate I wear on my arm buzzed, noting reception of the file. Multiple angles of the Redway flashed up. They were too small to see on the screen. I squinted at them and selected the most relevant, and shunted them to my iris.

Four distinct views appeared directly in my left eye. Nothing happened for a minute. Rain cut across all the images. They were not very high quality, but there was a lot of additional data hidden within the feed, and I supposed they weren’t intended to be viewed by normal human eyes.

A slow-moving figure came out of the Steelmound and headed towards the Redway line. It was human but heavily altered, a servitor, although as far as I could tell it was less ugly than most of them. The angles were high, and the servitor tiny in the pictures. The rain didn’t help, but the Redway was completely empty, and it was easy to follow. In its arms the servitor carried the victim, noticeably whole in the feed.

When it got to the centre of the Redway division zone it laid the body down. There was a bright flare that hid what the servitor did. The light cut out. The corpse appeared to be in one piece, but then the servitor awkwardly folded in half at the middle in a way a real person can’t, grabbed the feet and pulled. The corpse came apart in two pieces. Very carefully, it moved the legs and pelvis then dragged the other half across the line. After it did that, it walked back towards the Steelmound, as calmly as if it worked in a warehouse stacking crates of synthol, and was off to fetch another one.

The data ran on for a minute after, before cutting out in a welter of incomprehensible Lingua-technis.

Borostin waited while I watched. That’s dedication for you; I wasn’t the only probator he aided, and his workload was always heavy.

‘That’s weird,’ I said. ‘This wasn’t picked up at the time? The Redway demarcation alarms didn’t go off?’

‘They said nothing about that,’ he said. ‘They did say they had the servitor, and that it would be liquidated.’

‘Open, shut,’ I said. I tapped Rho-1’s data wafer on the guide wheel of the car. ‘Doesn’t look right to me.’

‘What do you wish me to do, Probator Noctis?’

‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘You’re busy. If I think of anything I need, I’ll call you.’

Borostin nodded and the vid-feed cut out.

I leaned back into the seat. I’d been up since the call came in about the Redway; that had been half past four, it was now getting close to ten, and I’d had a late night.

Why is none of your business. I have to have some secrets.

I rested the new plastek of the data wafer against my lips. It still had a little warmth, and the fragrance of the machine clung to it. I thought a moment, then tossed it into the passenger seat. Rho-1 Lux could wait. Why should I go poking about in a joint investigation when the other side had declared it over? It was obviously their problem. The Marchenstka girl was mine.

I signalled the Bastion-N gatekeepers that I was leaving, and drove out. The sun had risen while I’d been in Illios’ delightful company.

All that meant was that I could see the rain without my beam lights on. The weather assaulted the roof of my groundcar again, and I was off into the short gloom of a Varangantuan autumn day.

CHAPTER FOUR

Church

I headed home, intending to fit in a bunch of follow-up in the comfort of my own domicile before finally getting some sleep. I have that autonomy. We probators have a lot of freedom compared to most citizens. I live on the other side of the Steelmound to Bastion-N, up in the mountains, near City Edge in a clave called High Watch. I like it up there. There’s almost space enough to think.

The water cascaded down the high streets from the mountain district. The via favora of five major routes were closed for moisture gathering, and the others were crammed, so I let the loc-ref drive while I went through the vid excerpts for anomalies. Neither my dataslate nor my C-A’s cogitator are particularly powerful, but the tech for image manipulation isn’t widely available, and the results are crude most of the time. If it had been tampered with I couldn’t make it out, but then it was from the enclave, and if anybody could mess with a vid convincingly, they could.

I finished a bit of paperwork. I could have slept, but letting my guard down in the open would have been dangerous. I have more enemies outside the department than on the inside, and they have no regards for either the Lex or a man’s downtime.

The via favora’s load thinned out the higher we got. Official vehicles and the groundcars of rich men peeled away. The exclusive road goes right to the edge of the city; only there does it empty out entirely.

After an hour, I’d had enough and pulled into my habclave’s basilica, the Merciful Emperor. Ours is a grand church, built with the slates of the penitent rich. No riff-raff allowed. I’d be lying if I said I went in there only to pray, and not to annoy all those people who think they are better than everyone else. This time, I needed somewhere quiet to think.

There’s a gated vehicle park between the church and the cemetery. On one side, there are the flying buttresses of the building, supporting walls three hundred feet tall. On the other side, hololithic sculptures cast images of the departed wealthy through the trees, and motile statues will follow you along the paths, proclaiming the generosity of Vladar who-was-it and Chairman what’s-his-name who gave their hard-won currency to buy the Emperor’s favour. The original builders were more modest. For a fee you can visit their tombs, empty now, in the deep crypts. They built this place, and they didn’t feel the need to shout about it. Replace a gargoyle nowadays, however, and you get an automaton singing your praises until it falls apart.

From the edge of the cemetery, you can look right into the poorer district of Downslope. If you have a pair of magnoculars, on a day like this, you can see shanties floating off and people drowning. You get the picture. Nobody spends any money to help them.

I do so love the hypocrisy of the gilded.

The vehicle park is multilevel, broken up by hanging gardens, and mostly roofed. I followed a glassed-over cloister walk into the church. For a moment I thought the deacons on guard wouldn’t let me in. They stiffened and rested their hands on their mauls as I approached, so I flashed them my holo-seal and they backed off into their sentry boxes. Machine-spirits in the arch opened the doors, and I went in.

Although the side doors are nowhere near as big as the main entrance, they’re still huge – fifty feet high and made of weathered wood old as the district itself. Rumour has it they were fashioned from trees that used to grow on the mountains. If that is true, the doors were made thousands of years ago. Needless to say, there are no forests here any more, and there haven’t been for millennia.

The smell of an ecclesia is the same wherever you are. I’d bet they smell the same on every world. Dust, polish, candle wax, incense, damp, cold and despair. And the weight of the places – it’s not the masses of stone and rockcrete pushing down on the space, the smallest chapel feels the same. It’s a spiritual weight. The pressure of duty. When I’m in there I half believe that the God-Emperor really is watching me.

There are five aisles in the church of the Merciful Emperor. Each one ends in an apse with a statue in it. The middle statue is the biggest, seventy feet tall, and depicts the God-Emperor on His Golden Throne. His huge, tormented face stares over the heads of the congregation, into the distance, like you’re nothing. His mouth is set in determination, but it’s been crafted in such a way that it looks like He’s about to scream.

I did say the Emperor has more to worry about than us.

I prefer the outer statues. My favourite shows Him as a warrior, clad in armour and bearing a sword He couldn’t possibly hope to move if He were real, because it’s as big as He is. It’s ridiculous.

There was no one else about. I sat down in a pew, took out a pack of tarot cards and shuffled them, laid a few damp spreads on the seat, didn’t get so much as a pinch of sense from any of them, then put them away.

Plainsong drifted from the choir. Whispered conversations and the sharp clip of footsteps, doors opening, prayers and coughs drifted about as a sort of aural fog. The rain’s fury was kept out. The Emperor Protects from the weather, at least.

I unclipped my dataslate from my arm and set it down, stabilising it on the little legs that flip out from the bottom.

‘Cycle pict files numbers one-seven-eight through one-eight-nine,’ I said.

‘Compliance,’ the little machine replied.

The hololithic lens sparkled, and the air above it filled with a flick show of tri-d picts. None of them were pretty. A wrecked domicile, blood on the walls, the body of a man on the floor, the back of his head caved in by a saint’s statue that lay beside him. That was it, over and over again, from different angles. The localis sceleris from the seizure of the Marchenstka girl. I’d looked at these picts a hundred times and looking again didn’t help. Did she struggle? Did she know the people who’d taken her? Was she in league with her kidnappers, and this whole thing was an elaborate set-up? Anything was possible, we really had that little to go on.

I heard footsteps behind me, hurried, sandal soles slap-slapping on the flagstones. A priest.

‘What are you thinking?’ a voice said. ‘Noctis! You can’t bring that in here. There are children.’

I turned around. ‘Good morning, Frater Beneficio.’

He looked scandalised. He always does at the beginning of our conversations.

‘This is a house of the Emperor, a house of peace! Put those away!’ he said. ‘Symeon Noctis, how many times must I tell you?’ He looked at the pictures and made the sign of the aquila over his chest in hurried outrage.

I looked at the pictures. ‘As if our good God-Emperor doesn’t like a little blood, frater.’

He sighed and waddled over to my pew, and took a seat. His burst of activity had made him sweat. A dark triangle stained his rough habit. His armpits were blotched. I wasn’t fooled by the priests’ homespun poverty. They were all pretty hefty. The slates of the penitential elite paid for the upkeep of the clergy as well as the church.

He took out a handkerchief and mopped his brow.

‘Symeon…’ he said, lowering his bushy eyebrows at me admonishingly, and flicking his eyes to the rotating picts.

‘Sorry, frater,’ I said. ‘I needed some space to think. The ecclesia is better than most.’

‘Do you have to pretend to be such a heretic, Symeon?’ Beneficio said. ‘I know you are a faithful servant. These blasphemies will see you immolated one day.’

I pulled a face.

‘Come on. No one’s been burned here for centuries,’ I said. ‘Not since the days of Cardinal Fratzine.’

‘It can always start again,’ he said darkly.

I didn’t reply, and we both fell quiet. I waited.

‘What about these picts then?’ he said after a moment.

There we go. Beneficio acts like he finds my work distasteful just like I act like I think the Emperor’s a fraud. We both know each other for liars. He’s fascinated, and his advice is often useful. It’s one of the reasons I come here.

‘A girl,’ I said. ‘A rich one with a conscience. She left her family to pursue humanitarian efforts down in Nearsteel.’ I gestured at the rough apartment, as if that said it all. ‘Like all these things, it didn’t end well. Someone got her.’

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘A story not unlike your own.’

‘Yeah,’ I said tiredly. I yawned. ‘But she was an idealistic fool. I’m an idealist. That’s the difference between being alive and dead.’

‘You’re acting like you don’t care,’ said Beneficio. ‘It’s beneath you.’

‘I’ve been acting all my life,’ I said.

‘Noctis! Open your heart. The Emperor will help you find your finest self so that you may serve Him the best way.’

‘Will He now?’ I said. I looked at the statue. ‘I’m still waiting.’ I shut off the holo.

Beneficio shrugged. He had a leather purse at his front. He unfastened it, fished about, took out a tin and opened it.

‘Rose drop?’ he said.

I took one. They were dusted with synthetic sucrose powder fine as alpha-grade narcotic. It was so heavily flavoured with flower essence that I tasted perfume before I even got it past my lips.

‘There was a death, I saw,’ Beneficio said.

I nodded. ‘A boy, romantically engaged with her.’

‘Are you sure? He could have been one of the attackers. She could have killed one.’ He got a bit excited sometimes.

‘There were gen traces, though trace is too small a word. You know. All over his…’ I waved vaguely in the direction of my groin. ‘And the sheets. Old. Frequent. They’d been there together for some time. Pict-capture shows them looking close the couple of times we managed to catch sight of her. Sometimes these types strike a romantic pose to get at their victims. But this was genuine. He had nothing to do with it.’

‘Do you have any other evidence?’ he asked.

A fresh round of liturgy started up from a chapel somewhere. In the church the services never stop.

‘A lot. Chem residue. Airborne gene particles. Only we can’t match any of it because we don’t have any suspects. There have been no demands for money. No threats. Nothing. There was one guy I chased down who I suspect was running supplies to wherever she was, but he killed himself before I could question him. He was a regular piece of nasty work, did a lot of this kind of thing, but I can’t find any of his associates. I’m thinking they might have been killed.’

‘Do you have any theories?’ asked Beneficio. He ate another sweet. I waved away his offer of a second.

‘Well, the obvious take is that they snatched this girl, realised who she was, and got scared. Too high-powered a target – she’s a Marchenstka, you know, the Four Domains shipping magnates? Surface-to-orbit specialists. Carry a lot of Munitorum cargo. Very rich.’

‘Ah,’ he said.

‘If I were to follow that theory, I’d say she was dead. In fact, I hope she is if that is the case, because poor men do bad things to rich girls. But as much as her father has been riding my boss about this, he’s had no news. No demands. Nothing.’

He nodded sagely. ‘And what does your instinct tell you? What does your Emperor say?’

I sighed, leaned forward, elbows on my knees and hands clasped, like I was going to pray. It brought my face near to the pew in front, filling my nose with the scent of polish.

‘There’s something else to this,’ I said. ‘I’m not sure what. The truth is, I’ve been pressed pretty hard about this case, but if I really wanted I could push through that theory and that would be that. There’d be consequences, but I doubt I’d be kicked out or anything.’

‘Then why don’t you?’

‘Because I don’t think it’s true.’

‘Then you think she’s alive?’ he said.

I nodded. ‘It’s a possibility.’

Beneficio looked up at the Emperor in His armour. He was ringed by banks of burning candles, but rather than lighting Him, the glow pushed Him back into the dark, so that His face was shadowed.

‘You always choose this aisle. Why?’ he asked. ‘Why not a side chapel, or in the main nave?’

He was pulling his whole priestly routine on me now, but I decided to be nice and play along. Or was it that I genuinely needed spiritual guidance?

‘I like this statue,’ I said.

‘What do you like about it?’ he asked.

Here we go, I thought, penitent and absolver, the old back and forth.

‘I like His face, Frater Beneficio,’ I said, annoyed but compelled to speak. ‘He’s the Emperor, and He’s triumphant, but He doesn’t look like He’s happy. I imagine He has won a great battle, but that the victory has cost Him dear, in a way that a human being could never understand.’ I paused, uncomfortable.

‘Go on, my brother,’ Beneficio said quietly.

‘He doesn’t look like a conqueror. He doesn’t look like a saviour. He looks…’ I wanted to say human, but I didn’t dare. I cleared my throat. ‘That’s the problem with the Emperor,’ I said. ‘Everyone thinks they know what He wants from us, but we don’t. I look at that statue and I see a man on His own, just trying to do the right thing in a world that disgusts Him. He disgusts Himself.’

‘Ah,’ said Beneficio softly. ‘You see yourself in Him.’

I got up quickly. I’d said too much. I was on dangerous ground, equating my own efforts with the Emperor’s. To suggest He had doubts was worthy of Ecclesiarchical investigation, and I had no desire to get involved with the Church shriveners. ‘That would be blasphemy–’

The rings on Beneficio’s fat hand pinched my wrist as he grabbed it.

‘It is not blasphemy to see your struggle in His!’ he said fervently. ‘You see yourself in Him, He sees Himself in you. That is His bond with us. He is our master, we are His servants, but we are all fighting the same fight, Symeon, in our own way.’

He let go. I picked up my dataslate.

‘And there I thought you’d be calling for me to be burned at the stake.’

He gave me a serious look. ‘If they ever come for you, Symeon, I’ll vouch for you.’

I gave him a nod. ‘Thanks.’

He called me as I was heading for the candle box. I had a few slates to spare and a prayer to give.

‘Symeon.’

‘What?’ I said.

‘Maybe it’s not the father,’ he said. ‘If you’re sure she’s still alive.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Maybe the girl was kidnapped to get to somebody else. Maybe that’s why he hasn’t heard anything.’

That wasn’t a half-bad idea. Milius Marchenstka was a big noise, real gilded, family going back to the Firsters. He was a bona fide merchant prince. That kind of man always has a hundred enemies. Everyone assumed it was him. You get too focused on the obvious in this job sometimes. I had my doubts, though. Who else?

‘Takes a priest to see the truth,’ I said.

‘Blessing be on you, brother,’ he said, and made the sign of the aquila at me.

I lit a candle for you. I might have been imagining it, but I think the Emperor retreated a little further into the dark when the flame took.

I got home. Shebeena was pissed off with me, high-strutting, tail and nose in the air, wouldn’t look at me. I fed her, fed myself, caught up on some work – damn Administratum want everything in quintuplicate – then wrote up some of what you’re reading now. I decided on a single measure of Furstrian hard snap to take the edge off, and drank a third of the bottle. Shebeena sulked. I fell asleep on my couch in clothes that were still damp.

Same old, same old. Poor me.

I woke at three of the clock with the felid asleep on my face and my dataslate blaring at me. My iris flashed in time with its chimes. News from the enforcer dataveil coming at me from all angles. I had a missive. Text only.

I was still a bit drunk. I squinted at the message while Shebeena did her best to tie herself around my arms.

Rho-1 Lux wanted to know where the hell I was.

CHAPTER FIVE

Rho-1 Lux

Half an hour later I was in the air.

Lux sent her flyer for me. The message was curt. The return code was absent, so I couldn’t send an apology, but what was I supposed to say? The Astynomia had told my man it was done and over. The message demanded that I attend immediately. The pickup was in twenty minutes. Enough time to clean the booze-stink off my teeth and smarten myself up. Shebeena saw me off with calculated disdain. She was watching my private lifter door again, and she thinks I wouldn’t notice.

‘You can’t go out,’ I said. ‘How many times? Go sit on the balcony if you want to get wet.’

She stuck her nose in the air and stalked away. I watched my back when the lifter arrived. Shebeena has been known to make a dash for it.

I went up. The roof pad gets a lot of use. My habclave is stuffed with the cast-offs of rich families like me, fifth and sixth children with a bit of slate but not much else. But at that time there was no one about: the late-homers had yet to return from whichever revel they were at, the early risers were still fast asleep.

I waited. The wind blew skirls of rain around, making the small shelter useless. The flyer came, all warbling energy modulators and grey fuselage, with four huge round impellers flexing like wings. Contragrav does some truly spectacular things to rain. Patterns spread out like iron filings dancing under magnets, quivering, caught in the lights and the gravity downwash, never falling but looping around and around.

The machine set down. A rust-red door opened in the fuselage. I boarded and found a servitor pilot hardwired into the cockpit, but no one real.

The flyer rose up into the steady streams of air traffic over Varangantua, taking its skirts of rain with it. Lingua-technis chattered in the cockpit over a symphony of locator beeps and the semi-musical chirruping of data exchange, none of which I could understand.

I settled in for the ride.

The flyer set down at Bastion-N, which surprised me. I stepped out onto a landing pad I’ve trodden a thousand times before. A servo-skull plated in black metal greeted me. It retained its mandible and grinned at me with a full set of gold teeth.

‘Follow,’ it said. Red lumens blazed at the back of its eye sockets.

‘Why are we here?’ I said, setting my hat on my head against the weather.

‘Follow,’ it repeated. It turned around, its input spine flexing under it like Shebeena’s tail, and floated ahead, ruby rangefinders creating red corridors in the rain.

It seemed to know where it was going better than I did, taking me down through the Bastion. I assumed we’d be heading for the Technicum Lexi, the verispexes’ station, long before we got there.

The skull took me to the gate, a gothic arch bracketing a plain stone door. I flashed my credentials and it opened to me. On the other side, Verispex Superior Anita Shlo awaited. She’s the head of the verispexes, our forensic techs – not the highest ranker in that branch of the enforcers, but she has some clout. Some people think the Adeptus Mechanicus has a monopoly on technical knowledge, but that’s not the case, and technologists within the Cult of the Machine-God generally don’t get on with those outside of it. She wasn’t happy to have a cog-head in her domain. For a case that was supposedly shut before it began, this situation was getting complicated rapidly. I wish I’d drunk more.

‘You going to let me in then?’ I said, when she said nothing.

‘I will when you tell me what the Throne is going on,’ she said. She wore a soft plastek, ankle-length black coat with a button-over front, a uniform that doubles as a surgical gown. The neck covered her mouth, and her hands were gloved. Between the uniform and the augmetic eye that occupied most of the left side of her head, there was barely any flesh visible. What I could see was finely lined with age, and her scalp was a fuzz of sharp white bristles.

The skull swung to look at us.

‘Well?’ she said testily. ‘Why has this Astynomia liaison brought her corpses into my laboratory?’

Two corpses? That was news. I find it’s best not to give too much away, ever. There are many good probators, but just as many bad ones.

‘That’s classified for the time being,’ I said. ‘This is a delicate case. I am sorry you were not better informed, Mistress Shlo, but time is of the essence. There are parties at work who–’

She cut me dead with an irritated groan.

‘All right, Noctis. This is not protocol. I’ll let you in, but I will not allow it again! Ensure I am properly informed. I will be sending an official notification of displeasure to your probator-senioris.’

‘Fine, yes. I understand,’ I said.

She stood aside and swung out a hand in mocking welcome.

‘His Hand,’ I said.

She grunted.

‘I suppose it is too much to be allowed to attend this examination, seeing as it is taking place in my own laboratorium?’

‘Of course,’ I said, hoping that wouldn’t cause yet more difficulties, but I couldn’t really refuse.

The skull began to lead us off into the bowels of the Technicum.

‘I know the way!’ Shlo snapped, and pushed ahead. The skull burbled something nonsensically Martian and went to float behind me. I got the impression it was hiding from Shlo.

Upholding the Lex is a twenty-six-hour-a-day job. The Technicum was busy with verispexes of all branches, including a few of the Machine Cult who were permanently seconded to the Bastion, conspicuous in their robes of grey and red.

We reached the mortuarium. Shlo took me into its labyrinth, stopping by a room marked as Examination 17. ‘In here,’ she said. She opened the door.

Wait. This is important. This is the first time I set eyes upon Rho-1 Lux. I came to call her just Lux, but that was later. That level of familiarity didn’t come for a long time.

I miss her.

She was a surprise from the start. I was expecting a male, probably one covered in plug-in equipment, buzzing as loud as a faulty room heater and leaking oil on the floor. Instead what I saw was, well, her.

This is hard for me to put into words. You’ll understand one day.

The other thing that surprised me was how young she seemed. She was in her late twenties by Alectian standards, which if you want to get all Terran about it means she was about thirty standard years. She wore the grey and red of the Zhao-Arkhad forge world, who own the Steelmound enclave. She didn’t seem to have many augmetics. Her head was free of them barring the ubiquitous skull plug they all have, but that meant nothing. Anything could be hiding under her robes, which swamped what appeared to be a skinny body. She would have been pretty, beautiful even, if she hadn’t been so thin, though that didn’t strike me as much as the fact that she seemed lost, and tired. There didn’t look to be enough flesh on her face; her bones were prominent, and her eyes, which were big and deep brown, were smudgy with dark circles. Her hair was shaved down to a shadow on her scalp.

There were six examination tables in the room. Two were occupied, the bodies covered with shrouds.

The servo-skull flew over to her shoulder, where it bobbed about. It never stopped moving, making it look nervous. I didn’t think servo-skulls could get nervous, and that made me nervous.

‘Probator Symeon Dymaxion-Noctis,’ the skull said. ‘Procurator Vertes Rho-1 Lux, Collegiate Extremis planetary investigator.’

It was awkward, being introduced by the floating head of a dead man.

‘I prefer just Noctis,’ I said. That cut no ice.

‘Why did you not come to meet me?’ she demanded. No small talk there, then.

‘I am sorry,’ I said. ‘I have other cases. Your own colleagues told my assistant that this one had been closed.’

‘They did so prematurely,’ she said. ‘Without authorisation. The Astynomia had no right.’

‘Why?’ I said. ‘And why are you here, not at the Steelmound?’

‘I’d like to know that too,’ said Shlo. By the Emperor, she was being hostile.

Lux looked at Shlo, equally hostile.

‘I’m not leaving,’ insisted the verispex.

‘I have brought both the victim and his killer to this facility for you to foster proper relations between our organisations,’ said Lux. She spoke like a cogitator, but something was odd about her accent, like she was pretending. She didn’t sound like the other Martians I’d met. ‘If our cooperation is to function optimally, then we must operate as a single unit, correct?’

‘Yes, sure,’ I said.

‘Then observe.’

She pulled back the cover on the smaller of the two bodies. I noted her hands were flesh and blood, also very thin, so that you could see the play of tendons in them. There were a couple of input ports on the back of the left hand.

The bisected man lay on the table. Now he’d dried out, he looked like he was made of wax.

‘The subject was killed by a precision drill strike here.’ She turned his head to show a neat hole behind his ear. Rigor mortis had come and gone, and his head flopped when she released it.

‘I didn’t see that in the rain,’ I said.

She pulled the sheet off the second corpse, revealing a man created in large by extensive augmentation.

‘The servitor from the vid-feed,’ I said. It was fitted out for multipurpose use. That alone set it apart as a higher-end model, as most servitors are mono-tasked. In addition, its mechanical components were well made, and the artistry of their joining to the original flesh finely done.

‘This is the instrument of execution,’ she said, pointing out a drill a fraction of an inch across. Most of it was retracted into a housing on the back of the servitor’s hand. I could see dried blood on the bit.

‘High quality work,’ I said.

‘This is an Alpha-Plus-grade servitor, as the enclave classifies them,’ she confirmed. ‘The highest sort.’

‘On the vid, I saw the body carried out across the Redway and the machine–’

‘Servitor,’ she corrected.

‘The servitor cut him in two. With that lascutter, I’m guessing.’ I pointed at a tool mounted on a separate, mechanical arm folded against the servitor’s chest. ‘In a lesser device, the whole arm would have been replaced to carry that,’ I said. ‘This is expensive technology.’

‘That is the appropriate deduction,’ she said.

‘Do you know who the deceased is?’ I asked, walking around the two bodies. There were faded gang tattoos on the servitor’s arms, mementoes of its previous life. There wasn’t anything so obvious on the bisected man.

‘No.’

‘I can run a gene search,’ said Shlo. ‘If he’s got a record criminalis there may be tissue samples in the central repository. It’ll take a long time, but it’s worth doing.’

‘Do it,’ I said, more to get Shlo focused on something other than taking offence. She plucked a gene sampler off a tray. She hesitated as she decided which half to sample, before deciding on the legs.

She pressed the device against his thigh and it made a raspy hiss.

‘He isn’t rich,’ I said. ‘He is affecting wealth, but he isn’t gilded.’

‘Explain,’ Lux said. Her eyes followed me around the room. She moved like a machine, only that didn’t feel completely real either.

‘His clothes are last year’s pattern. Some of it’s genuine, but most are replicas.’ I mentioned the dye running in the rain and pointed out where it had stained his hands.

‘I’ll send this off,’ said Shlo. I shot her a questioning look. ‘It’ll be back in two or three days, if they have it.’

‘That’s too long. Let me try the dataveil.’ It was a long shot, as the records in our datalooms are frequently lost or corrupted for every reason from poor maintenance to out and out corruption. I ran a pattern search on his face, and was mildly surprised when the retinal flashed and gave me a pict of the man alive and kicking.

‘I have a match,’ I said. ‘Soven Iskritska.’ I brought up his file, which was also notably complete. ‘He’s got prior notifications for domicile breach, robbery and black marketeering. Lots for that,’ I told them. ‘Penal servitude in the wastes and at the polar promethium wells. One more citation and he would have been due for shipment to the Sacc-Five colony.’

Sacc-Five is the penal world we share with a bunch of other systems in the subsector. Trust me, you do not want to end up there.

‘Hardly a criminal mastermind. Nothing truly serious here,’ I said. ‘So what was Iskritska doing with a device like this? How many slates is a servitor of this sort, procurator?’

The number Lux gave me made me whistle. It was a lot of money, even for someone of my background.

‘Expensive. However, it is registered to his ownership,’ Lux said.

‘Did he steal it?’

‘Possibly,’ said Lux. ‘But unlikely. It is hard to forge marques of ownership for exclusive models like this. Deed proofs are worked throughout the non-organic programmable augmetics. Even if stolen, the Alpha-Plus model’s retuned cortex subverts natural pair bonding impulses to force an attachment to the owner. They will not willingly leave their master.’

‘When you put it like that, it doesn’t sound totally abominable,’ I said. I didn’t approve of slavery of any sort. The punishment of servitude always disturbed me, if I thought about it long enough. Of course I didn’t.

‘Acquisition by theft necessitates deep-core reprogramming,’ Lux said. ‘Only a highly skilled neuronal architect could hope to achieve reassignment of the attachment impulse to a new object without damaging the unit.’

‘Maybe it has been degraded,’ I said. ‘Maybe it’s a dumb unit, and he had it embellished for show?’

‘Negative,’ said Lux. ‘Such is the interdependent nature of the cortical alterations in these units that degeneration or damage of any but the most insignificant kind results in total loss of functionality.’

‘She’s right,’ said Shlo, who was becoming absorbed in the details of the case, despite her initial annoyance. ‘What she is describing is incredibly hard to accomplish.’

‘So, poke about in a servitor’s brain and you end up with a dead man and a pile of inconvenient scrap?’

‘Affirmative, if glib,’ said Lux. ‘All encoded documentation and the engrammatical patterns of the reconfigured brain suggest this was Iskritska’s lawful unit.’

‘How then, and why? Those are the questions we need to ask, besides why it killed him. Is there a way to find out how he came into possession? Can we do a cortical scan, piece together some of his memory?’

‘Soven Iskritska’s brain has been reduced to liquid consistency by the manner of his death.’

‘Someone thought we might try that then. Who?’ I looked at the servitor. ‘What about the cyborg? Can you get inside its head?’

‘I can.’ Lux looked again at Verispex Shlo.

‘You can trust her,’ I said, which I didn’t believe in the slightest; I don’t trust anyone, but it was her lab, and we had to get to the bottom of this.

Rho-1 Lux pulled out a data tether from the node port on the back of her hand, and stabbed the prongs into a socket in the servitor’s neck.

CHAPTER SIX

Communion

Note: The following section of the document is a transliteralisation of Rho-1 Lux’s memories, taken by direct exload from her memcore.

The jolt of neural realignment is a shock no one can ever anticipate, no matter how many times it is experienced.

I put myself into the mind of the servitor and it affects me with a power beyond anything electricity alone can explain. It is primal, a joining of souls, the Motive Force. Though the servitor is dead and its essence has fled its corporeal self, it was once a man and traces of its psychic animus remain. These impinge upon my…

WARNING<<< Mental feedback imminent.

A filthy corridor in the undercity. Darkness interrupted by the sparking ricochets of bullets hitting the metal all around me. I fire back. The gun kicks in my hand. I know I am finished. ‘Diediedie, you filthy pigfuckers! You’ll never take me, you’ll never take me, you’ll never–’

…consciousness. Ghost scraps of the dead man’s life flicker through my own mind as if they were memories I had laid down. The effect is similar to the remote readings performed by psykers, though in my case, these flashes of QUERY<<<< appropriate expression?>>> Validated insight are gathered in purely physical fashion. Yet there is great art in it, akin to magic to me, and I praise the Machine-God for his gifts.

Blessed be the Three in One. He who makes and does all that’s done. MEM-FRAG cat. Autosynaptic misfire. Personal memory, child’s rhyme, first-level indoctrination of the newly awakened. Purge from active thoughtspace and restore to memory section #03. Pending. Executed.

Human beings are visual creatures. Our brains are built around sight. I experience the servitor’s small network of flesh and steel as a vision of clouds lit by flashes of dying lightning. To a non-adept it would be nonsensical. I know what I am looking for. First, I must protect myself.

There are anti-infiltration subroutines built into the modified neurology of the servitor unit. A brain made into a machine loses some of its numinous purpose, and becomes subject to the vulnerabilities of the machine; it must therefore be shielded like a machine. Code hunters and dataphage detectors run seamlessly from the biologic to the electronic. Even in the inanimate, the potential for animation resides.

This is why I became what I became. This knowledge. This art. This power.

I deactivate code hunters. They are likely to mistake my intrusion for an act of aggression. They are soldiers fighting to the last, blind to their defeat and the death of their general.

Dataphage detectors can be deflected. They are harmless on their own. Their role is to tag and categorise. I send them away with inputs of the appropriate information.

I wonder about this man, Symeon Dymaxion-Noctis. All baseline human beings are a collection of self-curating, perpetually refined anecdotes. They forget the truth, where we of the Cult Mechanicus seek it. I wonder what his story is.

Non-relevant thought stream detected. Terminate. Concentrate. Blessed be those of single purpose.

He seems sad.

Terminated.

I deactivate noosphere-tied break walls and bypass hardware fortressing set into the meat of the servitor’s brain. The organic matter has already begun to decay, though the rate is slow in the controlled environment of the laboratorium, and outside it was cold.

External temperature, five grades and falling.

It will snow soon.

I remember flakes of it, pure whiteness speckled with soot, falling on my face.

Non-relevancy detected. Terminate.

I liked snow when I was a girl.

Terminated.

I still like snow. I like the way every flake is different. Such is the genius of the Great Maker.

Terminated!

I go deeper into the clouds. I turn my attention to the memory of the unit. A servitor of this grade has two separate memory caches. The superordinary electronica, and the organical origina. The superordinary is a simple machine device, where direct information co-opted from the servitor’s sensory centres is stored. It is little more complicated than the storage for vid-capture or auspex data. It is contained with devices implanted into servitors, those that need it. Not all units have this facility. I check that first. Pushing my way in displaces more of my own memories.

Banner poles bearing cogs moving up and down as the procession goes along the street. ‘Machine-God, Omnissiah, Motive Force. Machine-God, Omnissiah, Motive Force.’ They chant over and over again. My father is entranced. He wants to know what they know.

Terminate.

I get into the memory unit. There is nothing there. I suspected it had been wiped, brutally so. Were this unit still alive, the module would need replacing. The wipe could have happened a number of ways. Whoever did it knew what they were doing, but they did not have time to do it carefully.

The second, or organical, memory is far more complex, constituting a poly-dimensional, multiple-purpose system of intersecting data storage and retrieval. Even now, most of the secrets of its construction remain unknown. Such is the magnificence of the human brain.

In all things, the Machine-God exceeds our abilities.

It can, however, be tapped. In some units, this entire section is removed, and input for learned skills given from hard-state machines. In a servitor of this grade, it is usually left intact and integrated into the new organism, the better to make use of the brain’s marvellous complexity.

If I am fortunate, and the Machine-God is smiling upon me, then the basic function of the memory will remain active.

I am fortunate.

Scraps of memory flit past, but the latest encoded is also the last, and the easiest to find. There should be no consciousness to the servitor. It is a machine in every sense, barring its blended origins. But it remembers. And it hates. It can no longer articulate its feelings, but a lack of language does not invalidate experience, as some of the grand philosophes would have you believe. I see it walking behind its master. I feel its fury. Death is not anticipated by the victim. One hand reaches out and grasps the shoulder of the unit’s master, the other follows quickly, drill already extended, carborundum tip chewing easily through the bone.

I see it leave the Steelmound. I see the cutting done.

I have seen enough.

First though, I protect the evidence.

Exloading…

Exloading…

Complete.

She came out of her machine fugue after a couple of minutes. Her eyes cleared fast. She wiped the blood from her interface prongs with a sterile cloth and whispered a short prayer, then the tether retracted back into her wrist.

She didn’t say anything. The suspense was killing me.

‘Did you find anything?’ I asked her.

She stared at me and didn’t blink for so long it made me uncomfortable.

‘No,’ she said.

I did not believe that for one moment. Shlo was the problem. She didn’t trust her. But did she trust me? I couldn’t tell. There were the flickers of human emotions behind that studied impassivity, but they were hard to register. I’ve met some guarded people in my time, she was more skilled than most.

‘Fine,’ I said. ‘There should have been something there, if this was as simple as it looks. If it really is just a rogue servitor. They have a solid machine memory, correct?’

Lux looked at me strangely. I was showing off. There’s not many people who know anything about how even our most common devices work. ‘Yes, but sometimes the memory super bus can be wiped by the collapse of neural mindshackling.’

My understanding ran out there. ‘Can you say that again, slowly,’ I said. ‘For those not dyed Martian red at birth.’

‘She means if one of these things goes rogue, it can damage the hardware,’ said Shlo.

‘Correct,’ said Lux.

‘So you weren’t able to harvest any mem-data?’

‘No,’ she said. Once again she was lying. I was pretty certain I knew why.

‘All right, all right.’

Lux looked at the bodies. ‘Mistress Shlo, secure this evidence. Do not let anyone access it.’

Something smelled bad about all this.

‘You can’t tell me what to do,’ said Shlo.

Shlo could say what she liked to Lux, but she couldn’t say no to me.

‘I can,’ I said. ‘Secure this evidence. Do not let anyone access it.’ I shot a grin at Lux. I saw a glimmer of one in her eyes.

‘I can’t leave them in here, it’s one of our primary examination rooms,’ Shlo said. ‘We need the space.’

‘Is there a secure area in here we may utilise?’ Lux asked.

Shlo looked at me. I nodded.

‘Yes. There’s a morgue close by. You can put them in there. We’ve enough corpse space that I can lock that one down.’

‘You can see to the transfer, Mistress Shlo?’

‘I will. And no one else shall have access, I promise.’

Lux reached inside her robe and pulled out a handful of something wriggling. She made two quick casting motions, fast enough that I thought she must have muscular augments of some kind. There was a flash of silver as two small devices crawled under the sheets.

‘For observation and surveillance,’ she said.

‘Don’t you trust us?’ said Shlo.

‘Trust can only be granted when all interactional parameters are known,’ said Lux emotionlessly.

‘I think that’s a no,’ I stage-whispered to Shlo.

‘You and I shall talk soon, Probator Noctis,’ Lux said.

‘To wrap up.’

‘To conclude this business, yes.’ Lux’s servo-skull thrummed, and flew out of the room. She followed.

Shlo’s sole human eye narrowed as Lux left.

‘There’s something going on there,’ she said.

‘You think?’ I said. I make no apologies for my sarcasm.

My dataslate trilled. I pulled back the flap sewn into my coat sleeve that covered it. Text filled the screen, so overdesigned it taxed the processing power of the slate’s cogitator.

‘Oh, by the sainted balls of the nine primarchs!’ I groaned. ‘I forgot.’

‘What prompted that little outburst of blasphemy?’ Shlo said.

‘Dinner. With my parents. See to these,’ I said, waving my hand over the corpses. ‘I have to leave immediately.’

CHAPTER SEVEN

The high life

I drove myself to the revel to annoy my father. It’s not done to drive yourself, not in those circles.

Of course, I was late. The Ovrin Spire Cluster is fifty miles south of the Steelmound, in the Montanis District. It took me three and a half hours to make a journey I could have done by air in twenty minutes.

You can see the primary spire from miles away. It crawls up over the horizon, a little pile of jewelled lights, then only gets bigger, and bigger, until it is spearing the sky, gaudy and brash, outshining everything around it.

There was a little trouble at the gatehouse: apparently someone had downgraded my security level. By ‘someone’, I mean my father. By ‘father’, I mean arsehole.

Gatehouse is a wholly inadequate word for the Ovrin Spire’s main entrance. It’s a fortress bigger than most Bastions, better equipped and manned by its own private army. Security alone costs millions, but that’s rodent feed to the lords and ladies that live inside. It looks excessive, but Ovrin is the home of all the main families of the mountain clans of Varangantua. There’s the Palantyne out west from Nearsteel, and the Gunny a ways north of us: both are richer, but the Ovrin has a better pedigree. For a start, it’s older, allegedly built on one of the Ancient Landings. That’s a big deal. The oldest families trace their lines to a time before the Imperium, when the first exodus of mankind left Sol to colonise the stars, or so the stories go. There’s so much pride in Ovrin the walls can hardly contain it, and it’s as rich and dark as poison.

The story is probably not true. The claims some of the families make certainly aren’t. To the average man it doesn’t matter whether Armando FonAberskif really is descended from some prehistoric starship captain. These enclaves of wealth are sources of wild rumour, but for most people the planetary nobility might as well live next door to the Imperial Palace on Terra. Places like the gatehouse see to that. The walls are half a mile high. An exclusion zone is in effect in the skies around Ovrin – it has its own atmospheric fighters, for the sake of Terra. That might give you an idea of the kind of money I come from.

I’m not proud of it.

The tunnel through the gatehouse goes on and on, then just when you think it won’t stop, bam! You’re into a different world.

I mean that literally. Fine, so Ovrin is technically on the same planet, still in Varangantua, but it certainly doesn’t look like it.

The first thing that hits you is the change in the air. Elsewhere in the mountains the air is either desiccating or drenched. In Ovrin, it’s pleasantly humid. That’s because of the trees. The walls protect a forest – it’s supposed to be a remnant of the biome that once covered this part of the world, a wild place, though it’s nothing but a park, chopped and pruned and primped so much it could as easily be made of plastek.

There are fifteen towers in Ovrin, all tall, all rich. Seven for the greatest families, the remaining eight split level by level among the ninety-six other major noble lines of south-eastern Varangantua. The great families are older, but a good portion of the ninety-six lesser are new money, relatively speaking: families who got rich on the polar promethium mines, and ran away when the hives there failed, their pockets full of bloody slates. Merchant combines with interests across dozens of subsectors. Transportation mavens, financial barons, providers of services legitimate and obscure, manufactory princelings, and all the other kinds of parasite that suck upon the collective hide of humanity. Four Domains, Exostarsis, Habiculae, Frentstom, Oberdyre-Twillinger… Some of the biggest combines are owned by the people behind these walls.

The truest thing my father said to me when I was a boy was that rich men deal in only one thing, and that is time. Time is the most precious resource any man has; however he chooses to spend it, he won’t get any more. The great trick people like my father play is to convince others to undervalue it, or to force its devaluation, by holding it hostage for food, a roof, a pair of shoes. The rich pay slivers on the slate for every hour they steal. That’s why they’re rich.

At the scholam, which was for very rich children, as you probably guessed, they told us this was the natural order of things. I almost believed it. Almost. The whole thing’s rotten, top to bottom.

I drove through manicured groves where carefully nurtured animal specimens leapt through the high-beams of my groundcar. Skull-faced servitors travelled in networked flocks through the sky, spraying scented chemicals on the trees to keep them alive. Cherubim with scissor fingers flitted through pools of lumen light, pruning dead branches now the leaves were falling.

Dymaxion is not among the Seven, but it has a certain seniority among the lesser houses, and is established across nine hundred and ten floors of the Acerpus Tower. I drove out of the forest and into the roadways that thread the building like wormholes in a corpse. I know the convoluted route instinctively, and a small part of me raced to get home, to my disgust.

I emerged on the Dymaxion Promontory, that great, square monument to arrogance my ancestors built, cantilevered out from the side of the spire on thrusting supports decorated sycophantically with the emblems of Alecto’s ruling houses and the Imperial aquila, though the Dymaxion star is presented bigger than all of them. The promontory is a stepped monstrosity, choked by perfumed vegetation and thronged with crowds of statues. Waterfalls roar off the three exterior edges out of the giant mouths of the three principal primarchs, Guilliman, Sanguinius and Dorn. The inner edge backs onto a vast cavern full of lights that is carved out of the spire side, so full of ornamented vaulting it looks like a ribbed golden throat vomiting out the promontory, an analogy that particularly enraged my father, and therefore remains one of my personal favourites.

I drove switchback roads through the parklands, passing lodges housed in the hollow statues of dead saints that dotted ruthlessly trimmed grass. The event was at one of the three palaces on the promontory. Blood of Morning, the one that faces the dawn. That’s the one the most senior members of the Dymaxion family favour during the winter months. For the sunshine, you see, darling.

As I got closer, the lawns around it were increasingly crammed with vacuous morons exchanging pointless chat. As usual, they’d arranged themselves into circles of influence as predictable as the patterns of atoms. Those with the lowest social rank were farthest out, all of them furiously trying to talk their way into a higher ring. I wonder what a citizen plucked from a shitty hab would think of this place, or of the nobles in their laces and frills, their skin tight and thin with too many rejuvenat treatments, the reek of failing organs only partly hidden behind overpowering alien perfumes. Augments wheezed to keep corpulent bodies that should have died centuries ago upright. Strange, semi-sentient creatures gambolled between them, engineered from vat-stock culled from across the stars. Vicious beasts reworked to cowering obedience coiled around shapely legs stolen from lesser people. It doesn’t stop with the animals. There are worse than servitors there. Gene-engineered courtesans strutting the lawns, ready to offer any decadent pleasure at a word. Body slaves rebuilt to perverted ideals of beauty serving drinks and sweetmeats and flattery. Servants scurrying everywhere, overdressed, overworked, underpaid. All technically free, but how can any of them be while the nobles play their ancient games? The whole place stinks of fear, the fear of death, the fear of insignificance. It’s a show. A carnival of horrors.

Emperor, they make me sick.

I drove my car up in front of the palace. A valet hurried forward to park the machine for me. It could have done it itself, but there’s no display in that, and the enjoyment of wealth resides principally in the subjugation of others. I used a short data wand to cast permission to the valet to drive the car, then slipped a full slate into his allowance account. Poor fucker.

‘You forgot, didn’t you?’

‘Previnus,’ I said, and gave a little bow.

My cousin was waiting for me. He hustled down the golden steps of the palace to meet me. He frowned, and looked me up and down. I was wearing a three-piece outfit in iridescent blues, high collar, a lace necktie and some bloody uncomfortable pointed shoes the colour of fresh liver. I felt ridiculous.

Evidently, Previnus thought so too. ‘How old is that suit?’ he said, sniggering into his hand.

‘Two seasons, Previnus,’ I said. ‘Just two seasons.’

He fussed over it. Previnus has an eye for clothes. His other eye he keeps for handsome young men.

He clucked his tongue. ‘What’s happened to you down there? You need to get yourself back up here into civilisation. This is terrible.’

‘I like where I am just fine,’ I said.

‘If you can live with wearing such outdated clothes, I’m sure it’s perfectly lovely.’ He poked and tugged at my outfit. His fashion sense is borderline tyrannical. He took a step back. ‘There,’ he said. ‘At least you’re not rumpled any more.’ He smoothed my hair. I batted his hand away.

‘Get off, Previnus.’

He smiled sympathetically. Previnus is about the only member of my family who gets why I left. The rest just think I’m mad, or a traitor, or both. We both see through the sham of our family’s lifestyle. We chose different ways to deal with it, he by mocking it from within, me by running away, but there’s solidarity there nonetheless.

‘All right, living down there has given you some teeth,’ he said, waving generally away from the promontory. He really had very little idea about the city outside the gilded districts.

‘Yep,’ I said, ‘and I bite.’

‘It’s a good job I came to meet you. You’d cause a scene without me.’ He tapped my augmetic arm. ‘Is this it?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That is “it”.’ I felt wildly self-conscious. I wore gloves to hide my bionic, but I had the sudden feeling everyone was staring at it.

‘I heard you were injured. Are you all right, dear heart?’

‘I’m fine, thanks, Previnus.’

He lowered his voice. ‘I admire you. You’re brave.’ He linked my arm with his. A beautiful youth pouted at Previnus, but my cousin shouted at him. ‘Oh, do stop it, Avellov – this is my favourite cousin, Symeon. He likes girls.’ He leaned into me. ‘He’s new. Great in between the sheets, but he gets so tiresomely jealous.’

Previnus dragged me up the steps into the palace in a cloud of scent. He has good taste in that as well, and it protected me somewhat from the poorer choices made by my relatives. Smelling bad equals being poor, but being unnaturally ancient also equals smelling bad, so the elite have something of an obsession with perfume. It was a battleground of smells, a war of odour, and I was caught in the middle of it.

Previnus shepherded me from one group to another. ‘Cousin Letitia,’ he’d said. ‘How charming you look!’ addressing some gargantuan pile of fat held up on auxiliary wheels. Or, to a mechanical body topped by a wizened face, ‘Uncle Florenzo, it has been too long. Please, contact my major-domo so we may arrange dinner at my estate.’ And so forth. To each one he said, ‘You remember Cousin Symeon, don’t you?’

Those that didn’t remember gave me blank looks and polite, limp handshakes, physical strength being looked down upon as lower class. The augmetic didn’t help here, as even its weakest grasp is enough to make an ogryn wince. The ones who forgot me were in a minority, however. I am the black-marked son. Everybody who is anybody knows about Symeon Dymaxion-Noctis.

The Dymaxion family is immense. All noble families count their relations out to the furthest degree, but the Dymaxion core family is large. My father is the sixth of twenty children, a number my very-long-lived grandfather aimed for as it was nice and round, he said. Previnus’ mother, forty years younger than my father, is the fifteenth. Despite that, I’m only a few standard years older than Previnus.

Like grandfather, my father enjoys keeping his end up in furthering the size of the family. I myself have twelve siblings, and something like eighty cousins. First cousins. Second, third and so on number in the hundreds. There are enough Dymaxions to fill a habclave, which they do.

The majority of them are truly terrible people.

‘I have to keep your name in people’s minds, in case you come back,’ Previnus confided. ‘When you do, you’ll have a lot of work getting yourself back in favour.’

‘I’m not coming back,’ I said.

‘You say that now. You’ll thank me one day.’

‘I mean it,’ I said.

He gave me a look that said he didn’t believe me, then his ever-darting gaze found something else to latch on to.

‘Ah!’ cried Previnus. ‘Look who we have here!’

‘Oh no,’ I said. ‘Come on!’

‘Shut up, and be nice,’ he hissed into my ear.

‘Lady Noctis,’ he said, and bowed very low.

‘Hello, mother,’ I said.

My mother was safe behind a fortress of ruffled skirts and stacked collars. A corset squeezed her into a shape that looked anatomically impossible, though it was probable that some body artisan had rearranged her innards to fit the new fashion. If we’d wanted to embrace, I’d have needed a crane to lower me in from above. But we don’t embrace. It’s seen as weak. Instead she lent me a hand as purposefully limp as everyone else’s.

‘I wondered if you were coming,’ she said distantly. She wasn’t happy to see me.

‘Well, you know. Father’s natal day and all,’ I said.

She kept her head tilted back the whole time, so she could look down her nose at me. It is a very pretty nose. Access to regen and anti-agapic treatments means she looks younger than me, which is frankly discomfiting. She is my father’s third wife, and she wasn’t chosen for her brains. When I was young, a lot of my friends made uncouth comments about my mother’s assets.

What can I say? Rich people are shits.

‘So what are you doing now, my dear?’ she said distractedly. Her eyes kept looking over my shoulder to see if there was anyone more interesting she could talk to, or off up the side of the palace. Anywhere but at my face.

‘The same,’ I said. ‘I am still a probator.’

‘Ah, that’s nice,’ she said. She sighed. Her breath was perfumed with sweet pehrenberry. There was an embarrassing silence. ‘Do come back to us, my dear.’

She mimed a kiss from a yard away, separated as we were by her skirts and spines, and she drifted away.

Don’t feel bad. I always tried to make sure you had enough time with your mother, and you did. That exchange ranks as one of the longest I’d ever had with my own.

‘There we are,’ said Previnus grimly. ‘One awful meeting out of the way.’

‘You could have warned me.’

‘You would have run a mile, cousin.’

‘There’s still one to go,’ I muttered.

‘Yes, Uncle Bouriz. Your father.’ He patted my hand. ‘Tell me what you are working on now, to distract yourself.’

‘We’re having trouble with a servitor,’ I said. ‘A murder.’

‘A murder! How exciting,’ said Previnus.

‘It’s probably nothing,’ I said. ‘A malfunction, but there was a man left on both sides of the Redway.’

‘On both sides?’ Previnus said. He had hold of my elbow, and was guiding me through the throng occupying the palace’s main hall. This was excessively huge, with a pair of staircases that would accommodate a heavy combat walker apiece. The ceiling was hundreds of feet above, and everything was coated in precious metals. It’s ugly as sin.

‘He had been cut in half,’ I said.

Previnus gasped. ‘My, my! That’s even more exciting. That doesn’t sound like a malfunction to me. It sounds like someone is making a point.’

‘My thoughts too.’

He chuckled a little. ‘I myself heard a great story about a servitor the other day. Do you want to hear it?’ He smiled. ‘I’m going to tell you anyway. I was out and about in Saltstone.’

That’s a district a few hundred miles away, on the coast to the north.

‘There’s a casino there, Menem-Ba’s. Fantastic place, built into an incomplete starship, don’t you know? Anyway, rumour has it that Menem-Ba was once a servitor, but he threw off his programming.’

‘That’s nonsense,’ I said. We greeted another knot of nearer relatives. When we’d exchanged pleasantries, I went on. ‘Servitors are lobotomised. It’s impossible. Once you’re made into one of those things, there’s no going back.’

Previnus had moved ahead, and was pulling my arm, but he looked back at me. ‘I said it was a good story, dear heart, I didn’t say it was true. Even so, he seemed to know a lot about them.’

‘Doesn’t mean anything,’ I said.

‘Ironically,’ Previnus went on, ‘he trades in them now, as a side business.’

‘It’s only ironic if that ridiculous story is true,’ I said. ‘Which it won’t be.’

Father’s revel spread across the whole palace. There were different banquets in different rooms, dishes from a thousand worlds, dances, a hundred different orchestras, examples of humanity drawn from every sort of tribe, activities of myriad perversions, and places where other appetites could be sated, from the mundane to the most deeply jaded. The whole thing was designed as spectacle, a gross and calculated display of wealth. People are starving everywhere. What this festivity discarded would have fed thousands.

I coped by drinking too much, too quickly.

The night ran quickly, long though it was. Previnus had decided in advance to take pity on me and stuck to my side, making sure I had contact with key relations. He even managed to hunt out a few who professed to admire what I had done. An earnest first cousin four times removed wanted to go into politics. He had a hopeless reformist bent, and would get nowhere, but he shamed me into listening. He wanted to do something big. I just hide.

It was when Previnus was trying to wind up that conversation – he’s good at that kind of social management – that I felt a hand on my shoulder, and I was spun roughly around.

‘You little bastard.’

Count Milius Porjus Marchenstka was practically spitting in my face.

‘Where’s my daughter?’

Previnus looked uncertain.

‘My lord, I am sure that my cousin has nothing to do with wherever she is–’

‘Be quiet, you,’ said Marchenstka. ‘Well?’

‘She’s missing, Previnus,’ I said. I spoke over my shoulder to Previnus, but kept my eyes on Marchenstka. ‘In Nearsteel.’

‘Damn right she is, and that bastard runaway shirker has done nothing about it. I thought I’d find a sympathetic ear in that Throne-forsaken cesspit of a hole, but I found this wastrel instead.’ He pushed me. Unlike most aristocrats, Marchenstka embraced physicality. He was a strong man. I grabbed his wrist with my augmetic, and that was stronger. I held him fast.

‘I’m doing everything I can,’ I said, calmly as I could.

‘It’s not enough,’ he said.

I refrained from telling him if it were that important, he should have stopped her from going there in the first place. His face was twisted with hatred for me, but I could see the fear and the sorrow driving it.

‘You’ve got jaegers after her, haven’t you?’ I said. ‘What have they found?’

‘Nothing,’ he admitted.

‘Well then.’ I let him go. ‘You’re not the only one to have lost a daughter.’

He didn’t hear me. He was too far gone into anger. ‘You should be making this a priority! What’s your angle on this? How much is it going to take?’ He took out a data wand from its scabbard. ‘I can give you the slates right now. How much?’

I pushed the hand holding the wand down. ‘I have a lot of cases,’ I said.

‘I am a Marchenstka!’

‘I don’t care,’ I said.

He jabbed his finger at me. ‘You’re going to live to regret this.’

‘I probably am.’

He turned away from me. I noticed he was accompanied by a woman of indeterminate age with solemn eyes. It was his wife, Destrella, but if I’d not known that, I could have easily taken her for his daughter or his mother. Rejuve treatments make a rich person’s age impossible to guess. Unusually, her costume was restrained. Finely made, but modest, without the bizarre adornments that seemed to be in fashion that season.

‘Find her, if not for him, for me,’ she said, then hurried after him, her skirts sweeping the gleaming floor.

‘Work trouble, eh?’ said Previnus. ‘How uncouth.’

‘At least he cares about his child,’ I said angrily.

‘Sy,’ he said. ‘Wait.’

‘I need to get lost,’ I said. I threw off Previnus’ hand and pushed into the crowd. He knew better than to follow me.

I drifted into the seamier rooms, where I watched displays of the amorous arts and drank until I could barely walk.

An hour later, my father made a very short speech from the grand aquila balcony. I’d like to say I pointedly avoided it, but I was comatose in a pleasure throne deep in the palace.

I would have stayed there, if a couple of well-muscled men in expensive outfits had not scooped me up half an hour after the speech and delivered me to him.

The next I knew I was more or less sober, sitting in a chair next to a golden bucket of my own vomit. By the standards of the palace, the room I was in was small. I recognised it well, having been dragged there many times before, because my father thought it suitable for intimate chats, and oh, how he loved those. It was bigger than my entire apartment.

My father, High Voivod Bouriz Machej Adenar-Culhaven-Lordalen-Dymaxion, if we’re getting technical, was sitting in a massive, wingback chair, cradling a goblet of something that smelled herbal and foul. A fire of real wood flickered in a monumental fireplace next to him, an affectation so expensive he was almost literally burning slates. Aside from a couple of candelabras, with candles that were also real, the fire provided the only light in the room, making the corners dark and sinister. It suited him perfectly.

‘Symeon, are you with me?’ my father said, with a reasonable facsimile of concern.

He was a small man, fashionably skinny, no vulgar muscle on him. The spareness of his frame accentuated the unusual size of his head, which seemed even larger for being shinily bald.

‘Father,’ I said. I rubbed my neck. There was a sharp sting where I’d been dosed. The pneumatic had been poorly calibrated. ‘Couldn’t you have administered your detoxicant a little more gently?’

‘You resisted,’ he said.

‘Did I? I honestly don’t remember.’ I couldn’t review my iris log as the palace systems kept it offline.

‘It took me some effort to find you,’ he said.

‘You shouldn’t throw such large revels then.’

I left my neck alone. Rubbing it just made it feel worse.

‘You didn’t want to see me,’ he admonished.

I hung my head.

‘Happy natal day,’ I said. Being chemically ripped from intoxication is as bad as it sounds.

‘You look awful,’ he said.

‘Nice of you to notice,’ I said.

‘Here,’ he said. He got up out of his chair and came towards me. ‘Drink this.’ He held out the stinking goblet.

I wrinkled my nose and pulled my head out of the way.

‘Wings of the Angel!’ I said.

‘Oh, Symeon, do not be such a child!’ he said. ‘The anti-intoxicant you have taken has purged your system of the alcohol but if you do not drink this you will soon feel much worse.’

‘All right!’ I said. I took the goblet from him. It really stank.

‘Drink it all. Now.’

He returned to his chair and sat there watching me until I had drunk it down. The steam off the liquid stung my nose and eyes. The taste of it made me gag, but I finished it all.

I pulled a face so extreme it hurt.

‘Throne curse me, what is this?’

A servant emerged from the gloom and quietly took the goblet. Another took away the bucket.

‘Better?’ he said.

I nodded. ‘Better.’

‘You needn’t sound so surprised, Symeon,’ he said. ‘I have your best interests at heart, no matter what you might think.’ He opened a dark wooden box and took out a cigar rolled from ephori leaves. He held the box out to me. I shook it away. I like ephori, but the thought of smoking now made my gorge rise.

‘No thanks,’ I said.

‘Suit yourself.’ He lit his cigar and puffed blue billows until the end glowed orange.

‘Now, my son,’ he said. ‘I’m going to cut through the small talk. You’re not happy with me, though I’ve done everything a father can do.’ He took another drag. Smoke curled like ghosts around him. ‘You have chosen your life, and I have to respect that, as stupid a decision as it was.’

He was struggling to control his anger, but I had to admit that he was trying. Put it like this, were I in his shoes, I’d have been furious.

‘That’s that out of the way,’ he said. He looked at me seriously. I wished I could have done something to soothe the pain I saw in his eyes, but he didn’t understand; he never could. To him, everyone outside the walls of his spireclave was nothing. It wasn’t that he didn’t care for me – I’ve known plenty of poor little rich boys with fathers that did not love them – it was that he didn’t give a shit about anyone who wasn’t a Dymaxion. He and I could never get past that. If it were the only division between us, it would have been enough to estrange us. But there’s you as well.

‘I’ve brought you here to warn you,’ he said. ‘Milius Marchenstka is taking your failure to find his daughter personally. He came to see me last week, in person, a meeting with full inter-house decorum. He practically accused me, to my face, that the lack of progress in your investigation is a deliberate act against him by our house. He’s mad with pain, but his suspicions are not as illogical as you might think. Rivalry between the lesser houses has always been a problem. This idea of his, convoluted as it is, fits that narrative. He’s not going to go away, Symeon. You need to deal with this problem. Even if she’s dead. You need to find out what has happened to her.’

The problem with all this is that my father is an intelligent man. My life would be easier if he were as empty as the rest of them, but he isn’t, and no matter how much I pretend, it isn’t going to change the fact that he is a clever old bastard. He pretends to be decent. But he can’t be. Because there’s what he did to you.

I can’t ever forgive that.

‘Thanks for the warning,’ I said. ‘Can I go now?’ I got up. My head swam and my stomach wanted to empty itself over my shoes, but I played the tough man.

‘Don’t act like I don’t care,’ he said irritably.

‘I know you care,’ I said. ‘You care about this family’s wealth, and its position in history. In that context, you care about me just fine.’

‘There’s more to it than that.’

‘Yeah?’ I said. Tears were pricking at my eyes. I was losing control. ‘Tell that to your granddaughter.’

He stared at me, suddenly furious. His lips pressed together until they went white.

‘I did what was best.’

‘If that is true, you can at least tell me where she is.’

‘I won’t. I can’t.’

‘Then fuck you, Father,’ I said.

I walked away. The servants moved to open the doors. I shoved past them.

‘If I told you where she was, you’d just ruin her life the same way you ruined yours!’ he shouted after me.

Tears were running down my face as I pushed my way out, I’m not ashamed to say it. I made quite the scene as I called for my car. I didn’t care.

Seeing my father only made my determination greater.

One day, Mira, I’m going to find you.

CHAPTER EIGHT

An unexpected house guest

I returned home long after midnight. As soon as the detox was out of my system, I felt a powerful need to get drunk again. I parked the C-A, and cursed the speed of my private lifter. It couldn’t take me home fast enough.

As soon as I was out of the nightmare constriction of my outfit and into something softer, I selected a nice Slivitz – it’s a good prunus liqueur made from fruit grown in the equatorial hothouses. Needless to say, it’s wildly expensive. I poured a large measure and was about to make myself comfortable when my dataslate started acting up. It emitted a loud buzzing noise that made my teeth shake, and then I started to get serious electrical feedback from the small neural pads that join it to my nervous system when it’s on my arm. It’s thought-operated to a basic level. There are no spikes or permanent interface ports, apparently it picks up what it needs through contact, but by Holy Terra’s dry dirt, when it feeds back it bloody well hurts. It caught me by surprise, making me yelp. The shock was so unexpected, so sharp, that I didn’t think to deactivate my augmetic’s pain circuits, but swore loudly and tore at the clasps holding the slate in place. I threw it down, and shook out my metal arm.

Shebeena was licking at the Slivitz I’d dropped. ‘Don’t drink that! It’s no good for felids!’

I shooed her off and mopped at the mess. The smell of the liquor spread was nauseating. I kept looking at my dataslate unit lying on the couch. The screen was the bright black of malfunctioning image dots. It emitted a steady hiss.

‘Piece of shit,’ I grumbled.

I was so preoccupied I pricked my finger on a shard of glass, and blood mingled with the booze.

‘For the Emperor’s shitting sake!’

The arm unit continued to hiss at me. It couldn’t wait.

By the time I had another glass of Slivitz and the dataslate on my lap, a mix of hail and rain was bouncing off my windows. I’ve picture oculi on two sides of my domicile. Great views, but not in bad weather. On the worst days before the rains start, the hot wind brings blizzards of ash and sometimes hails of grit, scooping them up from the Eastern Barrens and hurling them over the mountains. The folk of the deep places who claim descent from the Firsters say the gods are angry. I laugh at them, and tell them not to let the priests hear that, because we all know there’s only one god. Even so, when there’s a bullet storm of gravel battering at your hab, I start to wonder.

I drink too much. In general, but especially on those days.

I nearly didn’t hear the tapping on the window. I was puzzling over the arm unit. I recognise a datasphere attack when I see one. Someone was shutting me down from outside. I had my gun next to me, and the private lifter to my domicile on lockdown. Rich people live in my clave. The security is good. But people like Marchenstka can afford to hire some talented people, dangerous people. Last thing I wanted was some off-world jaeger hunting me. I was starting to get nervy.

My dataslate has no aggressive function to it, and it is completely isolated from my home’s dataloom. Aside from giving me a nasty interface shock, it couldn’t physically hurt me, so I had no qualms about handling it. I could count on my metal fingers the number of people I knew who could effect a shutdown like this. Four out of five of them were Martian machine-priests.

I heard a dull, hollow clack. Very different to the hail, and once noticed, obvious.

There was something outside.

‘Throne damn it,’ I said.

I put the unit down, and picked up my gun.

‘Lumens dim,’ I commanded quietly.

‘Compliance,’ my domicile’s machine-spirit answered. It had a weird lag to it. All the lights went out. They didn’t dim, they failed, and the vox-mitters I have embedded in the walls started up the same hissing as the arm unit. This was more serious than I had thought.

I stalked over to the inner wall, feet silent on the carpet. There are seven rooms in my domicile. The living area is the largest, and the most exposed. It houses the largest run of windows. I was vulnerable there to armed constructs outside. However, for anything to happen all the building’s security would have to have been taken offline, and it hadn’t been, because there was no alarm. There’s a mag-fence, power fielding on the manses, and if that fails, guns to take down things like that. None of that had tripped. Still, I kept low as I scooted towards the window. I live high up. Whoever had got up there had serious tech, serious guts, or both.

The tapping was coming from the balcony doors.

I crept over, straining my eyes against the gloom. The light of the city diffused through the downpour, but being so close to City’s Edge means it’s darker than most places above ground, though it’s never truly dark in Varangantua.

I groped about for the stablight I keep in a drawer. My false fingers closed on it, and I crept towards the noise.

When I thought I’d located the source, I levelled my gun, turned on the light and shone the beam through the window.

Rho-1 Lux’s servo-skull swivelled to look at me.

I let out a yelp and nearly put a bullet through the glass.

‘Emperor on the Throne-damned Throne. Terra! Shit!’ The Finaliser wavered. I didn’t know what to do.

Its eyes flashed. It was saying something to me. I didn’t get it.

The hab vox-mitters buzzed loudly.

‘Let me in, Probator Noctis,’ Lux’s voice said. There was interference beneath her words, a jamming pattern. Was I at risk from her, or was she stopping eavesdroppers? Emperor alone knew. I was just glad it wasn’t Marchenstka.

I took a chance. I lowered my gun and went to the balcony doors. They’d gone into automatic security shutdown, and I had to key in the release code.

The wind rushed in accompanied by a gaggle of raindrops. The skull floated in serenely, and I shut out the storm.

‘Tonight is a write off,’ I said. I slid the safety catch on my Finaliser back into no-fire and tossed it onto my sofa. ‘You better be Procurator Lux and not an imposter. There’s no needle pistol waiting in the jaw of that skull, is there?’ I turned away and padded off to fetch my drink.

‘No,’ said Lux. I sat down. The skull coasted to a stop over my rug, its steady red gaze glaring at me.

‘Dim the eyes, would you?’ I said, holding up my hand.

The skull’s mouth opened and a slimline holo-projector slid out. It began sweeping back and forth rapidly to draw in an image of Lux standing in front of me. A single sweeper hololithic lens produces a poor representation, badly rasterised to the point of dissolution, so it wasn’t like she was actually there, but it was good enough to read her expression.

‘That’s a jamming pattern,’ I said, waving in the direction of the nearest hidden vox-mitter. ‘There’s a small chance you’ve come here to murder me, but I think it more likely that this incident with the dead black marketeer is tied into something bigger, no?’

‘Maybe,’ she said. She looked around. The skull followed the movement of her light image as much as it could, matching the position of her sight line so her image was looking at me. ‘This is a large domicile. I have looked into your background. You are a rich man.’

I sighed. People would not stop going on about that. ‘Symeon Dymaxion-Noctis, middling scion of the great Dymaxion Holdings multi-interest merchant combine.’ I raised my glass. ‘Guilty as charged.’

She paced around the room. The lights flickered back on. She had control of my domicile’s internal systems. I wasn’t surprised.

‘It’s not very nice to be poking about in the personal history of your colleagues,’ I said.

‘I needed to know if I could trust you,’ she said.

‘Did I pass the test?’

‘Analysis of your personality and professional history suggests a seventy per cent probability that I can,’ she said. ‘Why do you live here?’

‘What, slumming it with the lower orders, rather than living it up at the Ovrin Cluster or the Palantyne?’ I sucked in a mouthful of my Slivitz. ‘Because everyone up there is hollowed out at birth and filled to the brim with poison, that’s why.’

‘You left behind an existence that would be the dream of any human being in this city,’ she said.

‘If you had ever lived that life, you might understand why.’

‘Might I surmise you gave up your position because you were ashamed of it?’

‘Something like that.’

She paused by a work of art that is, I admit, obscenely expensive. She turned back to me. The skull floated around the back of the light sculpture, so that its eyes shone through hers and the skull’s fixed, golden grin could be seen through her face.

‘But you live like a rich man,’ she said.

‘I never said I was perfect,’ I said. My father’s words stung me, and I was shorter with her than I intended. I didn’t want to say that wealth is relative, or that compared to the life I used to lead, I was living like the rankest pauper, because it’s a non-argument. Most people live badly for forty years then die miserably. But she’s right, I was and am a hypocrite. ‘This is an old argument, I’ve had it many times already. Why are you here?’

The skull peered through her light phantom at me. I felt the tickle of an active auspex scan. That construct packed a serious loadout.

‘I do not know if I can trust you,’ she said. ‘But I must.’

‘Let me guess, someone higher up the food chain than you wants this case shut down.’

She actually smiled; it was thin and fleeting, but it was there.

‘You ascribe the petty factionalism of your own part of the Imperium to mine.’

‘I bet I am completely wrong about that,’ I said. I was being sarcastic, in case you didn’t get that. I downed my drink. The Slivitz was fruity and coated my tongue in a way that was pleasant while drinking it, and perfectly horrible the day after.

‘You are correct, to an extent. The office of procurator is unconnected to the Astynomia. I am an independent investigator assigned to incidents of high importance by the Collegiate Extremis.’

‘Right,’ I said. The bottle rang loudly off the glass as I poured another. ‘So you’re telling me this isn’t just a murder.’

‘You are tired. Drinking will not help.’ The skull hummed. ‘The alcohol content in your blood is dangerously high. You should stop.’

‘I am tired, yeah,’ I said. ‘And my drinking is none of your Throne-damned business, so get to the point.’

‘You are an impolite man,’ she said.

‘I can be.’

She didn’t get offended. I was liking her more by the moment. ‘There are signs that the causes of this incident are being occluded purposefully,’ she said. ‘The lack of alarm and the temporary disappearance of the servitor unit after the crime are of particular concern.’

‘Where exactly was it?’ I asked.

‘In a servicing stable with others of its kind,’ she said. ‘Although it was obvious there, barely hidden. It is a high-grade unit.’

‘Then who put it there?’ I asked. I’d filled my glass much higher than I would have done if she hadn’t mentioned my drinking, to make a point about how damn grown-up I am. Emperor, my father had really got to me. Forgive me.

‘Someone may not have put it there,’ she said. ‘Basic safeguarding protocol for stray servitors will have them seek out such places if they begin to malfunction, even a high-grade unit such as this.’

‘Right,’ I said.

‘I am suspicious. There may be something amiss with the servitor’s core programming. It could have been tampered with.’

‘So, not rogue, but programmed?’

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘You told me feedback from the broken mindshackling can fry its machine memories.’

‘I did not use those words,’ she said.

‘That was the sense of it, do you have to be so literal?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Clarity of expression is a blade that cleaves through misunderstanding.’

‘Whatever,’ I said. ‘Am I right, though?’

‘It is possible,’ she said.

‘That you are literal or that I have the sense right?’ I sat down.

‘You are mocking me.’

‘Yeah, yeah, sorry about that.’ I rubbed my head. I really wanted to drink myself into a stupor.

‘You do not believe this incident is so simple either, do you?’ she said.

‘I do not,’ I said. ‘Someone has gone to some trouble here to remove the evidence, but they haven’t done a very good job.’

‘Explain,’ she said. She came across as haughty, but she wasn’t really, as I learned later. Her desire to appear like a good member of the Cult Mechanicus dictated how she behaved. We all play our parts.

‘Tampering with the servitor to make it kill Iskritska is difficult, right? It needs skill and organisation. So if you have that skill, why do it? What’s the motive for cutting a man in half after he’s dead and leaving him out for everyone to see?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘The motive is the missing variable.’

‘But then there is this cover-up, the broken vid-feeds, the servitor disappearing, that’s really amateurish,’ I continued. ‘Pathetic almost. That begs another why.’

‘Those were my thoughts.’

‘Right,’ I said. ‘It looks to me like someone is trying to bring our attention to something, and someone else, for reasons of their own, wanted it covered up.’

‘Yes,’ she said. She became briefly animated. She checked herself, and the steel shutters of impassivity dropped again.

‘All right then, that still leaves us with “why”, on both counts.’ I took another drink. ‘The Steelmound makes a lot of servitors, doesn’t it?’ I said.

‘Servitors are the primary export from the enclave off-world. One of the primary reasons for its location here is proximity to a ready supply of good quality subjects for transformation into servitors.’

‘Why not set yourself up on Sacc-Five?’ I wondered.

‘There are servitor-processing units at the penal colony,’ she said, ‘but the quality of the inhabitants is low. The environment is harsh. The inmates are often damaged, making them suitable only for mono-tasked units. The enclave here specialises in high-grade, semi-independent cybernetic organisms.’

‘Well then,’ I said. I drank down another mouthful. ‘If that trade came under threat somehow…’

‘There are magi that would go to some lengths to prevent that from happening,’ she said.

‘And that is why you are involved.’

She paused before answering. I could almost feel her weighing up the variables as to whether I was trustworthy. ‘This is why I am involved,’ she agreed. Her light ghost looked at me. The skull’s glowing eyes blurred through it, like lamps in the mist. ‘This is a crime of serious nature.’

‘So what do we do?’ I asked. ‘Is there a way to discover if this unit was tampered with or whether it actually did go rogue? What if it is a genuine accident?’

‘There is a way,’ she said. She smiled at me, warmly this time, and forgot to stop herself. ‘I am enjoying our association. I thought you might be slow. You are not.’

‘Thanks,’ I said. I raised my glass in salutation.

‘I have not yet been able to examine the servitor’s brain down to the synaptic level,’ Lux said. ‘This is necessary. Once it is done, we will know for sure whether the unit was tampered with physically, was subverted remotely, or if it malfunctioned.’

‘All that is in the brain architecture?’

‘All of it,’ she said.

‘I can get Shlo on the vox, tell her to open up the morgue again.’

‘I would rather this matter were handled discreetly.’

‘To avoid tipping off whoever might be responsible?’

She nodded. ‘As you suggested, someone wants this kept quiet. The external memory module was wiped hurriedly.’

‘So someone is trying to cover it up.’

‘A full examination of the synaptic architecture will be detectable. I will not make the same mistake as them. If I am to perform the cerebral micropsy, then we must be careful not to alert any third party.’

‘That will happen if someone gets hold of the corpse after you’re done, though.’ I waved my glass around. ‘Look, you don’t trust Shlo, I understand.’

‘I trust no one,’ she said.

‘Fair enough,’ I said.

At that moment, Shebeena chose to launch herself onto me, making me jump. Lux’s skull did a swift down pivot, breaking up the projection completely for a second, and this time a weapon did protrude from its mouth.

‘Put that away!’ I said, a little panicked. I held up my hand.

Shebeena looked at the skull with sharp, feline disinterest.

‘What is it?’ Lux’s voice returned before her image did. ‘Some kind of rodent?’

‘It’s a pet, damn it,’ I said. ‘She’s a felid. Don’t you know what a felid is?’

Actually, most people don’t know what felids are, although I hear they’re ancient animals from Old Earth itself. People know lions, tigers, that kind of thing, all the larger breeds from Imperial heraldry. Then there are the xenos analogues you might see in a xenological garden, and the rogue mutants in the deep dark, but you tell the common man you’ve a dwarf lion living in your hab and they think you’re insane.

Lux fell into that category. I don’t think she had access to her full noospheric linkage right then or she’d have known. She was playing it safe, isolating herself like that. I started to stroke the felid and she purred, which puzzled Lux. She stared at Shebeena a moment longer, then went on.

‘We require a full examination of the synaptic architecture of the unit. To this end, I have a full tri-d scan of the servitor’s brain. I lack the skill to judge whether the unit was tampered with without access to the original material, but I do know someone who can read synaptic architecture from a scan.’

‘A contact?’ I smiled. ‘It’s almost like you Adeptus Mechanicus work like us. I thought it would be all wires and mummified heads and pistons.’

‘We are human,’ she said.

‘Humanity is a broad set of experiences corralled under one ragged banner,’ I quoted.

‘Who said that?’ she asked.

I smiled. ‘A heretic I had to execute once. I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume you want me to take this material to whoever needs it?’

‘I do. They will not be watching you yet, as this case is supposedly closed. It will buy us some time. It is inevitable that our investigation will be tracked by various interested parties, whether benign or malign.’

‘All right. Give me the data.’ I beckoned with my flesh-and-blood fingers.

A data stick pushed itself from the side of the skull. I got up and plucked it out.

‘You will find the location of my contact upon your cogitator unit when I have departed. His name is Gulfang Li-quan. When you go, make sure you get the maker’s mark from him. It will speed our investigation, whether he discovers anything else or not.’

‘Rho-1 Lux,’ I said, because I really had no idea how to address her. ‘Why are you trusting me? Seventy-thirty in favour still aren’t great odds. I know, I like to play the tables sometimes. This is your life. You could lose it.’

An interference wave pulsed over her image.

‘Instinct,’ she said. ‘Something tells me you are a good man.’

‘I didn’t know the Adeptus Mechanicus relied on instinct.’

‘None of us are what others assume us to be, are we, probator?’

The image snapped off. The skull moved back towards the window. I half thought it’d fly right through the glass, but the doors opened for it, and it flew out into the storm. The door closed. My systems returned to normal. The lifter unlocked. The denial pulse faded. The lumens came back on, dimmed as I had asked.

‘Compliance,’ said my domicile’s machine-spirit. If I didn’t know better, I would have said it sounded confused.

The vox-hardline rang. One of the habclave’s security team was on the other end.

‘Pardon me, sir, but we have anomalous readings coming from your domicile.’

‘Anomalous readings, eh?’ I’m sure the man heard my tone, but it’s dangerous to respond to a rich man’s barbs, and he remained studiously neutral.

‘A disturbance. Systems anomaly. Did your security system go offline?’

‘What do I pay you people for?’ I said.

‘Sir?’

I regretted my attitude. It was the same as my father’s.

‘Nothing. There was a glitch,’ I said. ‘All is normal now.’

‘We shall despatch a remedial team tomorrow,’ he said.

‘No need,’ I said. ‘Thank you for enquiring.’

The man was taken aback at being thanked. I’m a regular hero to the working classes.

‘It is my duty and my pleasure, sir, goodnight.’

My dataslate was active again, and chimed with the arrival of a missive. Probably Lux’s contact. I forced myself not to look at it, because I knew if I did, I would be out of the door and on my way to see him moments later.

I couldn’t have that. Slivitz keeps very poorly once it’s opened.

CHAPTER NINE

Old debts

Come the morning, I wished I had some more of my father’s potion. Slivitz has a nasty sting. I suppose I did it to myself on purpose.

I took a few medicaments, they made me feel mostly human.

The weather had cleared a little, though when the rain came in it did in increasingly sleety squalls, as the temperature was dropping. A cold front was welling up from the south. Snow was predicted, but that was a few days away.

By the time I got down from the heights into Lower Nearsteel, it was raining again, and the temperature was up a few grades. The via favora were clear, it being still early. A convoy of matt-black sanctioner transports hurtled past me, on their way to some incident at the edge of the district, that was it. I made good time to the Australiaris Arterial. Its fat legs crept towards me, carrying the ribbon of the road like a shy, gargantuan creature coming in out of the rain. I lost sight of it behind the city, but then I was out to the edge of the abandoned Vistula yards and the arterial stretched forever across the urban landscape.

I raced down the Vistula Main. There was practically no traffic, though it paid to keep alert for engine gangers out for an easy steal. I made the major access routes without incident and relaxed. The arterials are guarded by highway enforcers, and more or less safe. I accelerated up the on-ramp straight into the via favora, a stark black to the other lanes’ grey rockcrete, separated by blinking lumen poles. I enjoyed the freedom its empty length gave me, taking the C-A up to maximum speed. I picked up a couple of enforcer monitor skulls that chased me until I datacast my ident at them, and they peeled away to harass someone else.

I had a couple of hundred miles to go. During that time, I spoke with Borostin and asked him to look into the dealings of other members of the Marchenstka clan, to see if there had been any suspicious activity relating to Nearsteel, but mainly to figure out if there was anyone besides the father close to the girl with interests murky enough that they might be open to pressure – though by then I was becoming certain I was looking at a murder. I reviewed case files when I got bored of driving, letting the groundcar guide itself.

An hour and a half later, I was in the district where Rho-1 Lux’s contact lived, and my, what a perfect shithole that was.

Gladdown is a nowhere place on the coastal plains, further north and nearer the sea than Nearsteel. The weather is milder, and it was raining a hideous, chemical-infused drizzle over a tangle of roads and ancient tenements. There were a couple of large habclaves dominating the skyline, and in the distance I could see the cluster of starscrapers marking Oceanwell, but for the most part it was a repetitive landscape of low-rise, crumbling brick buildings that were all the same. They could have been a hundred years old or ten thousand. There didn’t appear to be any industry – no manufactories, agricolae-cellae, mines, whatever; nothing at all where people might work.

I cruised the maze of streets. Washing flapped in the wind between tenements, already dirty from the poor air. Tangles of cables hung from supports strangled each other. There were a few figures on the streets, all in browns and greys, hunched down against the rain so it was impossible to say whether they were male or female, too miserable to pose any threat.

The groundcar’s cogitator was as confused by the identical buildings as me. The loc-ref was next to useless, the dot on the display marking our position kept leaping from one parallel street to another so that just as I thought I had arrived, I found I hadn’t.

Eventually, I found what I thought was the right address. I got out of the cocoon of warmth of the C-A.

I told the car to circle the streets. The door shut itself. It drove off. I figured letting it patrol around a few blocks would be safer than parking it. The only other vehicles around there were burned-out shells wrapped in rubbish by the wind.

I turned to the building, checked the address I had on the printout in my hand. 4492821 Osterlucht, it said. The number above the door was rendered in filthy ceramic, one digit to a tile. Half of them were spidered by subsidence. Cracks worked their way around the door lintel and ran angularly from window to window. The lowest windows had bars and broken glass replaced with squares of pasteboard. The higher windows were whole, but all of them were filthy. Sickly light spilled from most. Steam gushed from an open casement on the sixth floor. The strains of a poorly played viol sounded from another.

‘Apartment Z-Seven,’ I said, and crumpled the paper.

I went through the door. Instinct kept my hand near the butt of my gun. There was a double entrance lobby designed to keep out the cold, but the inside doors were so poorly fitting it didn’t work, and the edges banged loudly on each other as I pushed through. The interior was soporifically warm and damp. The hall smelled of vegetables boiled for too long. I wondered where they grew them. I doubted anyone here could afford to buy any.

There was no one about. It felt like half the apartments were empty. Rusty stairs wound round each other at sharp angles. Far above was a grubby square of light. A peeling schema on the wall had the Z apartments on the topmost floors.

‘Great,’ I said. I mopped my brow. I’d like to say it was the heat, but I was sweating from being drunk, being chemically sobered up, getting drunk again and taking more pills to sober up again.

It was a long climb to the top.

The climb felt like forever. I’d had too many hard nights recently. By the time I got to the top I had to stop. My hands were shaking and I felt sick. I’d already eaten but my body was craving all the things I’d thoughtlessly flushed out of it with liquor. Couldn’t be helped. I pushed on to Z-7 and knocked on the peeling door. It was flimsy, made out of compressed waste fibres, and it shook under my fist. Plaster sifted down from the frame. I moved to the side of the door to wait. Standing in front would have been stupid.

I could hear Lux’s contact moving about on the other side. There was a spyhole set into the fibreboard. It seemed to be just glass. I expected something with a higher tech-rating than that, but you can never tell what exactly a tech-priest will employ. I’ve seen them wielding weapons of immense complexity, yet replace their lungs with leather bellows. They’re an odd lot.

I didn’t say, did I? I assumed this Gulfang Li-quan would be a tech-priest. As it turned out, I was half right.

I heard locks, but they were muffled. I figured there was a heavier door behind the fibreboard one. Fine, I didn’t see that coming.

There was a soft bump. A gun touching the fibreboard door, almost certainly.

‘Yes?’ A wavering voice came from the other side.

‘I’m here to see Gulfang Li-quan.’

‘He’s not here,’ said the voice.

‘Rho-1 Lux sent me,’ I said. I pulled my gun out.

‘Then why didn’t you say so?’ he said.

The door remained shut.

‘Are you going to let me in or what?’

‘Passcode!’ he said. His voice was weak, but insistent.

‘For… Hang on.’

I brought up Lux’s data on my cogitator.

‘There are directions, your name, the best time to find you. No passcode.’

‘Good enough,’ he said. ‘Rho-1 Lux never uses a passcode.’

There were a lot of bolts on the door, though it looked like I could have punched it in with my organic hand. It creaked open. The barrel of a radium pistol emerged. Now that’s a Mechanicus weapon; no one in their right mind but a Martian would use a firearm that radioactive. This one was bulky with additional rad baffles, but I still felt sorry for his neighbours. I cast a quick mental note onto my dataslate to take some anti-rad after this conversation.

Gulfang’s face came next. He was a scrofulous example of humanity, pale, wrinkles seamed with filth. He smelled the way people who don’t do any exercise and never wash smell: stale and sweet, not entirely dissimilar to the boiled-vegetable odour of the communal stairwell.

The viol started up again. A child cried a few flights down.

Gulfang was horribly scarred. His left eye was covered over with a patch, but the damage was too extensive to hide. Part of his skull was missing, and his face was lopsided because of it. Scar patterning on his flesh suggested he’d had an augmetic there that had been removed. This impression was reinforced when I saw the side of his face. Where the shiny chrome of a cranial plug should be was a puckered hole. A bulkier, more primitive augmetic had replaced it, but had been put further back, leaving the signs of the older implant clearly displayed. His left hand was also a crude augmetic. I suspected if I’d had any desire to look under his grubby robe, I’d have found further scars.

‘What the hell happened to you?’ I asked.

He smiled, showing metal teeth in pink gums. ‘A theological dispute,’ he said. ‘What can I do for you…?’ His remaining eyebrow rose in question.

‘Probator Symeon Noctis,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry!’ I held up my hand and put my gun away. ‘I’m here for help.’

‘I see. A member of the enforcers. Interesting.’

‘Lux and I are working on a case together,’ I said.

‘Something that bridges the worlds of the Mechanicus and the wider Imperium? Interesting,’ he said. He looked expectant.

‘Look,’ I said, ‘I’ll tell you what you need to know, which is everything we know. So if you’ll just let me in–’

He put a palm up to halt me.

‘Description of the problem, then payment,’ he said.

‘Really?’ I said.

‘This is a binary situation – no payment, no entry. Payment, then entry.’ He smiled. His gums looked sticky.

‘I need a tri-d subatomic scan of a servitor’s brain examining,’ I said.

‘To look for tampering?’ he said.

‘To look for tampering,’ I said.

‘Interesting,’ he said. He liked that word.

‘Look, Lux didn’t tell me anything about payment,’ I said.

‘Oh,’ he said. He didn’t look the least surprised. He found his expectant look again, and put out his hand.

‘How much?’ I growled. I reached for my currency wand.

‘Four hundred slates.’ He held up a grubby finger. ‘Three-fifty seeing as it’s Lux. Delightful girl. Lovely. I owe her my life.’

‘Interesting,’ I said mockingly. ‘She saves your life and the best you can do is fifty slates off?’ I keyed the wand on with my thumbprint.

‘Fifty slates is a lot of slates,’ he said.

‘Three hundred and fifty is a lot more,’ I said.

He cocked his eyebrow at me. Evidently he’d retrieved some information from somewhere.

‘You are related to those Dymaxions?’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ I said. ‘Fine.’ He didn’t have a device to take currency transmission, so I waved it towards the general direction of his head. He gave a pleased smile, showing more of those sticky-looking gums.

‘Marvellous,’ he said. ‘Please, come in.’

He stood aside, and put out his arm in welcome. I stepped inside. The fibreboard door was carefully pushed to and locked.

‘Stand out of the way,’ he said. He beckoned me forward.

As soon as I stepped through, a heavy plasteel door slid into place. Gulfang methodically locked a dozen locks of various kinds – most were mechanical with anti-tumbler cracker fittings. I suppose because anything with a machine-spirit can be subverted. This was one cautious smelly old man.

‘Now then, let me say welcome,’ he said. He smiled again. ‘Welcome.’ He did an odd curtsey. ‘I shall make us some tea.’

Gulfang Li-quan led me from his tiny hall into his hab. If I’d wanted to detain him I’d have had ample cause under Lex domiciliary, because the modifications he’d made to his house were entirely non-compliant.

The internal walls had been removed, turning a pokey three-room into a respectable space. The external walls were skinned with plasteel, as was the floor. The ceiling had been taken out, opening up the apartment into the attic space and doubling its size. The undersides of the rafters had also been removed. This inner layer of plasteel, which must have been armour-grade, was without gaps. I suspected if the building fell down, Gulfang’s little lair would have bounced down the bricks in one piece.

I thought the damage I’d seen on the outside of the building was probably caused by his home. Plasteel of that thickness was heavy. There was no way the building was designed to take its weight.

It wasn’t soundproof though. I could still hear that bloody viol being strangled.

A mezzanine was fitted at the point where the ceiling had been. Banks of machines occupied the half-floor and the space beneath, burbling away to themselves and tracing mystifying phosphorescent patterns across their screens. There were plastek storage boxes all over the place, many with their contents hanging out, spoiling the little attempt Gulfang had made to bring some order to his home. The contents were machine parts of all types, part sorted, with a preponderance of heavy metal pieces in one box, say, and bundles of wires in another – but they somewhat intermixed, like Gulfang had given up whatever system he’d devised to organise himself.

‘Tea, tea, tea,’ Gulfang hummed. He picked his way around piles of cogitator casings. There was a workbench running along almost the whole length of one wall, but a little break had been left to accommodate an ablutorial. A small sink pushed out from the side, right over it. It must have been hellishly difficult to take a shit.

On the other wall, one of the windows had been left uncovered by plasteel, though a massive shutter on rollers waited to be slammed closed. Beneath that was a small culina, basically just a single worktop piece, with another sink set into it, a tiny kettle, and a home-made set of heating rings balanced precariously on one end. Gulfang’s technical stations were relatively clear compared to the filthy culina.

He went there, and turned on his kettle. The taps didn’t work, so he went to a grubby fridgerator and took out a jug of water. Mercifully, this was clean. As were the mugs he picked up. I decided to risk the tea, because I felt Throne-damned terrible.

‘How do you know Rho-1 Lux?’ I said. The kettle made its bubbling roar. Steam poured from its funnel, condensing on the plasteel skin of the ceiling. Above the kettle, the paint was bubbled.

‘Oh, little Rho?’ said Gulfang. ‘I’ve known her since she was a girl. She was a member of my church.’

‘Church?’

‘Yes, yes, the First Church of Omnissiah Missionarius,’ he said, as if that were obvious. ‘We’re unusual in the Cult, I admit, but there’s no harm in that. We believe that the truth of the Machine-God should be spread, so that the real truth of the galaxy, the Great Work, as we call it, can be shared. Improvement of the mind and body through the acquisition of knowledge is the only route to salvation. It is our duty to help our fellow humans avoid damnation.’

‘Hang on,’ I said. ‘You mean she wasn’t born into the Cult?’

‘Why, no! She’s a convert, you know,’ said Gulfang cheerfully. He poured boiling water over a couple of bags of herbs and let them steep. The boiling water should finish off whatever germs were lurking in there, I thought.

‘She and her family came into the glorious light of technology. A happy day. After that, they were very active in the church.’

‘So… she’s not from Zhao-Arkhad?’

‘Goodness, no!’ said Gulfang. ‘Nor am I, for that matter. I’m from very far away.’ He looked out of the window for a moment, at the sky, as if he could see through the filthy weather to his home, wherever that was. He waved me over to a chair and brought over the steaming mugs. ‘Zhao-Arkhad is the foremost forge world in this part of the segmentum. They own all the enclaves on this world. Well,’ he corrected himself, ‘most of them.’

‘Are you an actual Martian?’ We often refer to the Adeptus Mechanicus as Martians, though most of them aren’t.

‘Good grief!’ he said. ‘Nothing like that. No, no.’ He sipped his tea and smiled. ‘I have never been to the holy forge-temples of Mars.’ I got the impression he wouldn’t be drawn on where he was from, so I dropped it.

‘All this,’ I said, waving my fingers at his injuries. ‘You said theological dispute.’

‘Yes, well, I suppose hailing from a fairly unusual sect, it isn’t surprising that I might find myself falling into more extreme ways.’

‘I don’t like the sound of that,’ I said. I sipped my tea. It was surprisingly good, and had only a few unidentifiable bits floating in it.

‘It’s nothing, nothing. The Cult of the Machine has as many little offshoots and buddings as the Adeptus Ministorum. I certainly don’t believe anything as extreme as some of the fringe cults we have here in the city.’ He sipped again. ‘Tell me, have you ever heard of Belisarius Cawl?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I have not.’

‘Oh well,’ said Gulfang with a sigh. ‘A pity. He’s an important magos. He’s got a set of beliefs that I subscribe to. A lot of my fellows don’t like them. He is, as you might say, persona non grata on Zhao-Arkhad.’ Again he smiled his sticky, gummy smile. ‘I was tried, and found guilty of being a heretek. The punishment was to be ritually stripped of my augmetics. It’s technically not a death sentence, but for most of us it is, because we replace so much of ourselves in honour of the Machine-God we can’t live without our bionics. I probably should have died. I nearly did, in fact, but I did not.’ He looked into his tea and smiled, as if this mad old bastard had anything to smile about. ‘It was Lux who found me, and repaired me as best she could.’ He tapped the bulky augmetic strapped to his head. ‘She didn’t know what she knows now, but even then she was talented, and she did her best. I am alive because of her.’

‘Right,’ I said.

‘Right? Is that all you have to say? What she did was remarkable,’ he said. ‘Do you know how badly brain damaged one of us is when our cranial augments are torn out? Somehow, she managed to fix me. She’s Omnissiah-sent, in my eyes.’ He sipped, a fussy little suck of the boiling liquid. ‘I wouldn’t charge her, I owe her everything, but what she asks me to do is often without the bounds of the Lex Mechanicus, both church and state lores, and even when it isn’t, like today, there are usually interested parties I must evade. Then there is the cost of replacing my lost augmetics.’ He put down his tea and stroked absent-mindedly at his arm. ‘That is what I desire the most, so I may continue my work, you see.’ He rose. ‘Now,’ he said. ‘If you would allow me to access the data?’

I handed him the data stick. He took it with a serious expression that turned into a smile. He whistled a tune and sat at a stool before his instruments under the small mezzanine. He plugged in the stick, and set his eyes to a rubberised screen collar, then began to hum. This went on for some time. I poked around his domicile, until he gave me a sharp look and I stopped. Thereupon he started whistling again.

After half an hour, the whistling ceased suddenly. His shoulders hunched in. I knew what he was going to say before he said it.

‘Interesting.’ He raised his head. He started to speak. My vox-connection buzzed. I shushed him.

‘Priority call,’ I said. ‘I have to take this.’

He nodded.

Borostin was on the other end of the line. ‘Probator,’ he said. ‘Where are you? Probator-Senioris Vilyavich has been trying to raise you for the past half-hour.’ I thought Gulfang’s paranoias probably had something to do with that. There had to be a denial device in there somewhere.

‘I’m chasing a lead,’ I said.

‘You need to get back as quickly as you can. There’s been another murder. Same modus operandi, a servitor going rogue.’

‘Have you got the servitor?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It’s still at the scene.’

‘Don’t let anyone move it. Inform Procurator Rho-1 Lux. I’ll be there as soon as I can.’ I cut the call.

‘You,’ I said to Gulfang. ‘Someone else is dead. I need you to explain exactly what we’re dealing with, quickly.’

Gulfang nodded. ‘Well,’ he said, pushing himself back from the machine. ‘Your servitor has not been tampered with. Not after it was reborn, anyway.’

‘No?’ I said.

‘No,’ he repeated. ‘It was made to kill.’

‘What?’ I said.

‘I said it was made to kill. Whoever made this created it to kill its ward. It’s all in there. Very well hidden. Fine work, I have to say. A remote trigger, then off it goes, from companion to assassin with one data package.’

‘Right,’ I said, my mind racing. So why did the maker of this thing want Iskritska dead? And now this second murder.

The maker. We had a suspect.

‘Do you have a maker’s mark? Lux wanted a maker’s mark.’

‘Not yet. It appears it has been scrubbed from the usual places. But artisans who produce this level of work are proud. It will be in there somewhere.’

‘Then find it for me.’ I made for the door. Gulfang cleared his throat. I stopped.

‘You want more slates,’ I said.

‘Fifty slates,’ Gulfang said. ‘Just a trifle.’

‘Before you said fifty slates was a lot,’ I said.

He smiled. ‘That was before I knew who you were, probator.’

CHAPTER TEN

A second murder

I left in a hurry, emerging into a sodden noon. There was gunfire popping streets away, gangs fighting over one miserable stretch of hardtop or another. The maze of Gladdown’s sorry brick buildings hid the direction, so I was relieved when the C-A pulled up unharmed. I got in.

‘Relinquish control. I’ll drive.’

‘Compliance,’ the machine said.

I drove quickly, passing through the sprawl of Gladdown and a bunch of other nowhere districts to climb back up into the mountains. I was glad to get back. The lowlands are depressing.

The short day was halfway done when I arrived. The rain had stopped, and yellow, gloomy mist hugged everything, blunting vision and imprisoning sound.

The second murder had taken place in a habclave occupied by middling sorts, bureaucrats working for Nearsteel’s vladar, and therefore not the wealthiest. They were richer than the workers, and had an enclosed park shared by the complex, but that was mean, tiny and barely fertile. There was a single, sickly tree, but someone had made an effort to keep the place neat. It was a shame, therefore, that the body was discovered there. The park was big enough that the localis sceleris wasn’t visible from the entrance; even so, the verispexes were out in force, fully hooded, long probes sniffing the ground. Servo-skulls and remote units hummed through the air, scanners sweeping over everything. I looked for Lux’s companion device, but did not see it. Maybe she hadn’t arrived yet, I thought.

‘Hondus?’ I said, striding through the exclusion beams set up around the perimeter. Ribbons of light shone dead straight between projection posts, carrying a flickering auto-admonition reading Keep Out. Enforcers, scrolling round and round. There was a high-intensity microwave flow running alongside the red light. Without the right ident broadcast, it’d give you a nasty sting. But my holo-seal and dataslate keyed into the temporary noosphere buzzing around the crime scene, letting me pass.

Hondus was his usual cheery self. ‘We’re on duty, Noctis,’ he said.

‘My apologies. Probator-Senioris Vilyavich,’ I said.

‘Better. This is supposed to be your case. Why am I out here?’

‘Nice to see you too, sir,’ I said. ‘I was chasing something up.’

‘Borostin said. Something good, I hope.’

‘We’ll see,’ I said. ‘I’ve got a feeling it might pay out, but I’m not willing to lay any slates on the outcome just yet.’

‘Fine,’ said Hondus. He’d replaced his smoke stick with a plastek toothpick that he worked around and around his mouth. ‘Keep me apprised.’

‘Trying to quit again?’ I asked.

‘Huh,’ he said. He was non-committal because every attempt he’d made to ditch his smokes had ended the same way: him chuffing on tabac like it’d be outlawed tomorrow. ‘This way.’ He looked at me and grinned. ‘Your new girlfriend’s here.’

We went onto the scrubby lawn. Polluted soil bears little fruit, and the ground was as much hard-packed dirt as grass. In the middle, there was what looked like a sculpture of a hero of the Imperium slaying an enemy of mankind, a large man holding his foe up by the throat; the usual sort of thing. Only when the illumination of stablights cut through the fog and hit it square on did I see it was not.

‘Woah,’ I said.

‘Yep,’ said Hondus.

I approached, flashing my seal at a verispex when he started to grumble.

The servitor had remained in situ when the deed was done. It had frozen, braced so it would not fall, one powerful augmetic arm aloft. The figure I’d taken for an allegorical enemy of the Imperium was a slight man dressed in the dull uniform of a voidport official. His hands were locked around the gripping arm. His head was back and his face purple with strangulation. Eyes red with petechial haemorrhaging, tongue thick and lolling. Blood leaked from his nose and mouth. The signs of death by choking can be so subtle they’ll not be spotted by any but the most diligent medicae. This death was not one of those. The servitor had crushed the man’s neck to half its normal diameter.

‘Brutal,’ I said.

‘At least he’s still in one piece,’ said Hondus drily.

I caught a verispex. ‘This ground’s all been checked, right?’

‘Yes, sir,’ he said.

I walked around the cyborg. Getting a human being to stand in exactly that position without toppling is no mean feat. Human beings constantly move to maintain stability. Take that away, they generally fall over, especially when they’ve the dead weight of another person dangling from their hand. A lot of servitors have heavy-duty leg units, or even tracks or wheels, but this was another high-end unit and looked more human than most. Like the first, its modifications were artful, obviously false, but deliberately so. The bionics were sophisticated, and only looked like bionics because of the whim of the maker.

‘Who is the victim?’ I asked.

‘We have a name this time, Pluon Felpsko,’ Hondus said.

‘This is like the first one, done for display,’ I said. ‘I’m sure someone’s trying to tell us something.’

‘Or they’re just showing off,’ said Hondus. He hunkered deeper into his coat. ‘I hate the show-offs.’

‘Another recidivist?’ I paused by the dead man. His trousers were damp with his last emissions, front and back. He stank. Death is not a dignified business.

‘Not as far as we know,’ said Hondus. ‘I put Borostin onto checking out his record.’ He looked about and sniffed. He still had a cold. ‘Now you’re here, I’ll leave all this in your capable hands. I’ve got other things to do besides nursemaid your cases, and I’m freezing.’

‘Thanks,’ I said.

‘Don’t thank me,’ said Hondus. ‘I put you on this because it might save your career. It’s probably your last chance. I hope you crack it, Symeon, but I’m not optimistic.’

‘Right.’

Hondus raised his hand in farewell without turning around.

I looked at the macabre display from every angle, more in appreciation for the trouble gone to than to find anything; that was the job of the verispexes. I looked about, but I still couldn’t see Lux.

I caught the arm of a passing probator-novus who was hurrying off to the verispexes’ mobile laboratorium with handfuls of bagged soil samples. Illios wasn’t kidding when he said he wanted this cleared up.

‘Have you seen Procurator Rho-1 Lux?’ I asked.

The officer pointed me to the other side of the park. I found her standing stock-still, facing the murder scene. Her skull was close by, and in an act of almost necrophilic intimacy, its vertebral column had wriggled under her robes at the back of the neck, no doubt plugged into the port in her spine. It disturbed me seeing her like that. It lessened her humanity. Her eyes were open, the dilated pupils giving me a clear glimpse of silvered retinas. She was deep in machine communion.

I waited to see what she came up with.

Note: The following section of the document is a transliteralisation of Rho-1 Lux’s memories, taken by direct exload from her memcore.

}}6723over13 LUX[RHO-1] PROCURATORA, PLANETA INVESTIGATORA, Collegiate Extremis Non-theta alacrity////ACCESS GATEWAY PERMISSION REQUESTED>>>>

}}SERV.UNIT grade Ultimata-low 8612-099-12576 responding////NON-RECOGNISED COMMAND GIVER:::: SUBVERSION SUSPECTED;;;;ACCESS GATEWAY DENIED>>>>>

}}6723over13 LUX[RHO-1] PROCURATORA, PLANETA INVESTIGATORA, Collegiate Extremis Non-theta alacrity//// ACCESS GATEWAY PERMISSION DEMANDED, in the name of THE Machine-God His OMNISSIAH and that-which-moves-THE MOTIVE FORCE>>>>OVERRIDE INVOCATION EXITUS-6 INPUT

>>>> SUBROUTINE SEQUESTRATION ATTEMPTED>>>>

}}SERV.UNIT grade ALPHA-PLUS Ultimata-low 8612-099-12576 responding////MEMORY LOCKS DISENGAGED

}}6723over13 LUX[RHO-1] PROCURATORA, PLANETA INVESTIGATORA, Collegiate Extremis Non-theta alacrity///ACCESS GATEWAY PERMISSION REQUESTED>>>>

…

PENDING

…

PENDING

…

}}SERV.UNIT grade Ultimata-low 8612-099-12576 responding///ACCESS GATEWAY PERMISSION GRANTED>>>>OPEN YE ALL THE VAULTS OF KNOWLEDGE, so that YE MIGHT KNOW THAT WHICH IS and that WHICH IS POSSIBLE, in the name of the THREE IN ONE. Ave Omnissiah, enthroned in wisdom upon MOST HOLY TERRA////

The servitor’s objections are quickly overcome. It is still functional, unlike the last. Its security apparatus resists me on only the most superficial level, and I will not be denied.

I slip into its mind. Machine-God be praised, both flesh and non-organics are uncorrupted. I push my consciousness through the wet and dry. The interface of the two is where the art of the cyborg is to be found. Wary that the memory cache could yet be wiped remotely, I race for it, quickly undoing the numerous code locks placed upon it. There is a knack to this. If the device feels itself under attack, it will turn against me. I tie up its inquisition protocols in endless loops of non-logic. Infiltrating a live unit of this grade is dangerous. They are made for powerful people of the sort that value their privacy and their secrets highly. Within the infosphere of the servitor, hunter-killers lurk, still at full strength, and more than capable of inflicting a damaging data cascade upon my own non-organic systems.

Haste, haste, but not speed. Speed blunts wisdom. Speed robs the tool of its edge.

I am in. The data cache is intact. I exload it immediately into Lukas, what is left of him. His skull contains many useful devices, and he will shunt even so large an amount of data into my permanent storage units in my facilitas without drawing attention to us.

Yet I cannot resist looking. As they pass through me and into Lukas, I unspool the numbers that encode the past and let them play, running them through rapid decoders until I snag the thread I desire, and call forth the living past from its dormant, solid state.

The servitor remembers.

It is dark in the park.

There is a man.

I, that is, the servitor, watches. It is hard to maintain separation from subject in full memory immersion. This must be guarded against. Full synchronisation leads to intense cognitive dissonance, and is potentially deadly when terminal events are encountered in mem-form. Who knows why this unit attacked? Who knows why it froze? Reliving either could harm me.

I see the world through human eyes, but the vision I experience is not human. The parts of the brain needed to process complex colour vision have been co-opted for other functions, and their role taken over by external augmetics. The result is grainy, outlines of objects picked out in pixellated reds and greens. Read-outs of current environmental conditions are displayed along the periphery of its field of sight, along with other data. The servitor does not understand these displays, and nor is it intended to. To the vestige of the human mind residing in the cyborg, they are nothing.

I can taste its consciousness. It is oily and bitter, the soapy flavour of lead. There is a remnant of awareness somewhere. I can feel it, but it is faint. Certainly too faint to understand the horror of what has been done to it. There is a residue of loss in there, and it is numbing.

At times like this, I am glad I am not a psyker. The more heretical magi-psykana say that servitors have no minds, but they retain their souls, and these suffer terribly.

All I sense is the physical, the truncated nerve clusters, the complex machines grafted in the places where self and will once resided. The yes/no of binharic exchange overwriting consciousness.

I am thankful for it.

‘Where are you?’ The man is speaking quickly into a vox-bead disguised as a button on his bureaucrat’s uniform. He has another communications device, but this is bulky, low quality, the type of machine one would expect a man of his station to possess. This miniaturised vox-bead, and this servitor, are things he should not have.

The servitor recognises him as Pluon Felpsko: its master. We watch our master placidly, the servitor and I. He is agitated.

‘Why have you called me out here at this hour? It’s not safe, Emperor curse you. Have you got any sense? There’s nowhere for me to talk. I–’ He is interrupted. He pauses. ‘I’m in the quad. The park. No, no, there’s no one here.’

There is a noise. Felpsko does not hear the witness, but we do. We swing our head around, slowly, ponderously. There is a woman with a child about four years old, another but a babe in arms carried in a papoose on her front. She sees the Machine-God-given might in our limbs and retreats fearfully.

This is public. It is supposed to be.

The man shakes his wrist, staring at his vox-bead and cursing. He is getting no reply. He hopes it is a malfunction, but suspicion is gathering on his face.

He is too occupied to see us come to life.

The displays around our vision freeze. Artefacting renders them unreadable to me. A new urgency takes the servitor’s rump of a mind. It senses a little freedom.

Silently, we lurch into motion.

Felpsko is speaking into his vox-bead again. His voice is strangulated, he wants to shout but dares not.

‘Come on, Throne damn you! Answer me, Letorian. Answer me!’

Letorian. A name. Real, or assumed? I tag this information as high priority.

Too late, the man, this petty bureaucrat, this Pluon Felpsko, this slavemaster, sees us coming. He starts.

‘What are you doin–’

One hand slaps the vox-bead from his arm. That was our intention, to deprive him of his link to his accomplice and destroy the device. That the blow fractures his ulna is incidental. He shrieks. It is a loud noise, but brief, cut off as our crushing grip seizes him by the throat and lifts him into the air.

He takes a minute to die, his feet kicking hopelessly against our grafted flak plating. One final, augmented squeeze and the gristle of his neck pops wetly. His face goes dark. His eyes bulge. He knows by now he is going to die, and he is afraid.

We witness the fleeing of existence from his mortal shell. The transformation of a living, dynamic organism into an empty vessel. What we feel is…

Satisfaction…

Satisfaction…

Satisfaction…

Satisfaction…

///TERMINATE LINK///

‘Emperor! Lux!’

The probator is here, designation Symeon (Dymaxion) Noctis. I find myself strangely relieved.

‘Yes?’ I say.

The angle is wrong. I realise he is looking down at me, so is Lukas.

These same heretical magi-psykana also say the human soul clings to servo-skulls. I look at Lukas’ fleshless face. I get a flash of what he used to be. He was a handsome boy.

I hope they are wrong. I hope he is with the Machine-God now.

The ground is cool.

I rest.

///CONSCIOUSNESS SUSPENSION ENACTED///

When Lux fell down, so did the servitor, pitching forward with the slow, folding grace of a tower undergoing demolition. Its right knee went first, and it landed on the victim. As if the poor bastard hadn’t suffered enough indignity, his neck, arms and ribs broke. Felpsko’s corpse found itself pinned under the cyborg, gently leaking shit into the park soil.

Didn’t matter. He was dead. Lux I was concerned about. I hurried to her. It didn’t take her long to recover. I was relieved.

She spent a few minutes collecting herself.

‘I have a name,’ she said. She looked at me with those silvered eyes.

‘Who?’ I said.

‘Letorian.’

I shook my head. It meant nothing to me.

‘I must get to work on the servitor immediately, before the brain matter deteriorates or is destroyed. I have a comprehensive exload of the unit’s short-term external memory, but I want to get a deep scan myself this time.’

‘Gulfang was helpful on that score,’ I said. ‘He told me the other servitor was made to kill.’

‘A generalised assassin unit?’

‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘He gave me the impression it had been made to kill Iskritska specifically.’

‘Do you have the maker’s mark?’

‘Not yet. He’s working on it.’

She bit her lip, a very human expression for one of the Cult.

‘I will concentrate my own endeavour to find if the same is true here,’ she said. ‘Quickly. What time we could steal, we have already gained,’ she added. ‘Our enemies will be moving. There was a witness. A female and her child, from this complex. Find her.’

I commandeered the verispex mobile laboratorium for her to use. Shlo would hear about that and complain, but whatever. That was for later. If we broke the case it wouldn’t matter, and even if we didn’t, I enjoyed throwing my weight around a bit.

I called Borostin and asked him to get me a search running on Letorian, which was an annoyingly common surname in south-west Varangantua, and was most likely an alias. I then called in a platoon of sanctioners to go door to door to see if I could find the witness. We scared them up soon enough, scared being the operative word. She was called Aniasa. It took me half an hour to calm her down and convince her she wasn’t in any trouble. Sanctioners are supposed to provoke fear. Who could blame her for being afraid?

‘It was late,’ Aniasa said. I spoke to her in her home, a tiny two-room domicile. Every surface was scrubbed, but it smelled heavily of mould. There was one slit window in the exterior wall, so caked with filth it was black. Her elder kid crawled about on threadbare bedding. The younger one fussed. This was the reason she was out, she said.

‘Jethrico doesn’t sleep,’ Aniasa said, bouncing him on her knee. ‘He cries a lot. He’s a good boy, but he just won’t sleep.’ She kissed his head.

The baby kept up a thin squalling throughout our interview. Poor woman was exhausted.

‘Where’s your husband?’ I asked.

‘He’s gone,’ she said. ‘I don’t know where. My husband worked for the voidport authorities. He had a good job, prospects, then one day he didn’t come home. I got an official letter, five hundred slates, this place. That was it.’

She nodded to a side table. A scrap of paper lay curled under a pebble there, a memento perhaps.

‘May I?’

She nodded. The baby cried. ‘Shush shush shush,’ she said. ‘Shush shush shush.’

I picked up the paper.

We regret to inform you, it said, of the death of your husband, Myorsev Blituv. He served.

‘That it?’ I said.

She nodded. Her eyes were brimming.

‘Throne,’ I said.

‘I never got any kind of explanation. No memorial, I didn’t even get to see his body. Two weeks after that, they moved us into here. Widow’s quarters. It’s bad for the children. The mould…’

The baby cried. The kid looked at me. His eyes were solemn glints in shadowy pits. He didn’t look well.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. I meant it. This kind of thing is why I left Ovrin. This is what my father could never understand. For him, these people suffer because that is just the way it is. He’d say they were lucky, that the vladar could have them out on the street, that they were ancillary to purposes and should be culled if they could not serve. But it doesn’t have to be like this. I know that, deep down. I think we all know it, but we pretend not to.

‘Tell me about the servitor. The man.’

‘I took the children out. Irus couldn’t sleep because of Jethrico crying. At night, he gets to run around a little. The other children, you see, the other children. They aren’t kind to him.’ More tears. They ran down her face freely, but she spoke firmly, like the tears and the voice belonged to two different women. ‘And the air outside, it’s filthy, but it’s better for Jethrico than this place.’

‘You go out at night?’ I said.

‘The subdistrict is mostly safe,’ she said. ‘This habclave is hard to get into if you don’t live here. There are genelocks. The machine-spirits are vigilant.’

It still wasn’t safe.

‘You saw the servitor, and it scared you off?’

She shuddered. ‘I don’t like them,’ she said. ‘I’ve never liked them.’

‘That’s it?’

She nodded. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t see anything else. But…’ She hesitated.

‘Go on,’ I said.

‘You won’t believe me. It could have been the light.’

‘Just tell me,’ I said. ‘Any detail could be important.’

‘There was something strange about its eyes.’

‘How so?’ I said.

‘You know how a servitor’s eyes are dead-looking?’ she said. ‘Flat. Soulless.’

‘I do.’

‘The ones on this weren’t. Not completely. It felt like when it was looking at me, it was really looking at me, you know?’

‘And there’s nothing else?’

‘No. I swear by the Holy Throne.’

I put my hands on my knees and pushed myself up. ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘His Hand shield you. You have been very helpful.’

‘Then I’m not in trouble?’ She looked relieved.

‘Not at all.’ I looked around the shitty domicile, at the kids, the old furnishings. The smell of mould made me want to sneeze.

‘Do you have a slate stick?’

She shrunk in on herself, suddenly terrified. I cursed myself for a fool. She thought I was going to take her money, which I could. Our devices will override most security, and that gets abused far too often.

‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘I’m not going to steal from you. I want you to take the children to the medicae, get them checked out.’

‘How? I’ve got nothing!’

‘I’m going to help you. I’m going to give you some money.’ She looked more scared. There is more than one form of corruption, and kindness rarely comes without cost in Varangantua. ‘Look, honestly.’ I held up my hand. ‘By He of Terra and His sainted primarchs I swear I want nothing from you. Really. I just want to help.’

She still didn’t believe me and had become meek. She wanted me out of there.

‘In the drawer there,’ she said, her voice only now beginning to crack. The baby cried more loudly.

I took out her data wand. It was the sole piece of tech she had, and she was lucky to have even that in her situation; most people depend on chit books and ration tokens, and they’re so easily stolen. I took out my own wand, thought out a command to my arm dataslate. Four hundred slates should be enough.

The number flickered on my screen. Transfer, yes/no? Action irrevocable, it read.

Fuck it, I thought, and amended it to four thousand, then ten thousand slates. I took it on trust she wasn’t lying to me, and that she wouldn’t spend it all on bliss or ambrosia.

You might think I’m crazy, because ten thousand slates is a fortune. If she could keep hold of it, it was enough to get her out of that dump, get her children onto Administratum evaluation; they might even get into one of the better schola, if they could pass the tests. But to me, a man who grew up shitting into an ablutorial made of solid platinum, it was nothing, nothing at all. It was a mean bet on a gaming table. A night of drinking in a half-decent bar. A fraction of a second of my father’s stupid Throne-damned revel.

And that is the problem with this city right there.

I shut the wand back in the drawer before she could check it. Let her think me a thief for a few moments.

‘Thank you for your time, madam.’

I shut the door softly behind me.

Lux was waiting for me outside the mobile laboratorium. The site was in the final stages of forensic investigation. Verispex teams were going over the ground one last time. The sanctioner detail were already taking down the exclusion ribbon. The laboratorium was being packed away. Its wings had been folded in, and the stabilisers retracted.

‘The maker is Magos Chen-Chen Zifo Sigma,’ she said. ‘Flesh-tech artisanal at the Zeria Plantis servitor manufactory.’

‘So you’ve examined the cyborg’s synaptic architecture?’ I said.

‘Do not use the word “cyborg” so. The man who provided the component sinned against the Omnissiah, but he has redeemed himself. A servitor is in communion with the Machine-God. It is through sacrifice of will that the sinner finds salvation. You yourself are a cyborg.’

I didn’t like that. ‘Can you answer me without a sermon, did you get into its head?’

‘Down to the neuronal level,’ she replied. ‘Your verispexes may do what they like with the corpse. I have learned all I need to know.’

‘Let me guess, it was tampered with, but designed to kill from the outset.’

She nodded. ‘Indeed.’

‘Hmm,’ I said. I checked the dataveil on my iris. As I’d hoped, there was a vox-script waiting for me from Gulfang, short and to the point.

‘Gulfang names the same man. He etched his name across the hippocampus, mono-atomical engraving.’ I peered at the image Gulfang had appended to his message. ‘It’s very neat.’

‘As it is here,’ said Lux. After a brief moment of vulnerability following her collapse, she’d taken on her haughty manner again. Was she always this way, I asked myself, or had the Cult Mechanicus forced her to change?

‘If this happens again, we’ll at least know where to look first,’ I said.

‘You think it will happen again?’ she said.

‘Looks that way,’ I said. ‘If he’s responsible for these servitors’ actions, this Chen-Chen’s a serial murderer now. Why would he stop?’

‘The question is, why did he start?’ said Lux.

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Why do the Martians murder?’

‘You referring to us as Martians is offensively reductionist. I do not refer to you as a Terran,’ she said. ‘The empire of Mars is as diverse as the empire of Terra, equal in importance within the Imperium of Man, and yet you seem to think it appropriate to categorise us inaccurately.’

To an outsider the forge worlds seem to be much of a muchness, but I didn’t say that.

‘I see,’ I said. ‘You’re right, I suppose.’ A sneaky feeling came over me. It wasn’t becoming, and I should’ve kept my mouth shut, but it had been a long day. ‘You’re not even from Zhao-Arkhad, are you? You’re Alectian, like me. Gulfang told me.’

Her nostrils flared. ‘My physical origins are unimportant. I am a faithful follower of the Cult Mechanicus.’

‘You just told me it was important,’ I pointed out.

‘Only insomuch as your faulty understanding of the Adeptus Mechanicus could jeopardise this investigation.’

‘Fair enough. Fine.’ I rubbed my face. ‘Our first point of inquiry has to be Chen-Chen.’

‘That will be hard,’ she said. ‘You do not have clearance to enter the enclave.’

‘This cooperation’s a real two-way street,’ I said.

‘Are you being sarcastic?’ She knew I was. I was figuring her out. A lot of this emotionless act was just that, an act. I was annoying her. That was ungallant of me, so I pulled back a bit.

‘Can you get me into the Steelmound?’ I said. ‘We have to go to Zeria Plantis. That’s where all this starts.’ Can I trust you not to tip off Chen-Chen, or whoever is trying to cover this up? I thought to myself. The Adeptus Mechanicus are close-knit. I had to be careful.

‘It will take time, but it is possible.’

‘Good, we should do this together. Don’t let on who we’re going to see.’

‘Now you are implying I am an idiot,’ she said.

Throne, I couldn’t say anything right to this woman. I opted for the tried-and-true route of apology. ‘I’m sorry. I’m tired,’ I said. ‘The castellan’s office has put a lot of resources into this. You never see such commitment, not for a murder. Something larger is at stake here.’

‘I concur,’ she said. ‘For both sides.’

‘Castellan Illios could be putting in all this extra effort only to keep relations sweet with the Steelmound,’ I said.

‘He could. But the motive may also be personal. A desire for influence, for wealth,’ she said. ‘The pursuit of wealth corrupts, even if he only wishes to impress those more powerful than he.’

Sounded like she’d got Illios figured out, and she’d never even met him. Her comment on wealth made me think, and I nearly asked what the AdMech needed with slates, but I refrained. ‘The cover-up on the first murder was poorly executed. What does that mean in all of this? Another party? A separate need to keep it quiet?’

‘Unknown,’ she said. Her servo-skull bobbed over her shoulder and back again, patrolling three feet of clear air with utmost diligence.

‘I need to sleep. I can’t think.’ I ground the heels of my hands into my eyes. ‘Do you want to grab a quick drink, something to eat? There are a few fine establishments in my habclave. We could talk.’

She gave me a look that would freeze promethium. ‘No,’ she said. A thrumming came from above, and her transport descended from the sky, whipping the mist into weird shapes. ‘I am leaving.’ She was on guard. I think she suspected my motives. She was attractive, and she can’t have been so removed from humanity not to know it, but I really did only mean a drink.

‘I shall be in contact when there are further developments,’ she said.

A cone of blue light snapped on, and she rose up it into an iris hatch in the belly of her ship. Contragrav cargo beam, very tricky to calibrate for something as small as the human body.

‘Show off,’ I muttered. The transport wheeled around and sped off, rattling the windows of the clave, and rapidly dwindled to a square of navigation lights that lost itself among ten thousand others tracking across the sky.

The last of the enforcers were finishing their work. I signed off on a few things, and took myself back to the C-A.

I was sure that when I got back home, Shebeena still wouldn’t be speaking to me. The best I could do to curry favour would be to make sure she was fed on time. The damn felid made me hurry, and that made me careless.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Count Marchenstka’s fury

I went up into the parking levels of the High Watch habclave. Every domicile over a certain grade has an assigned groundcar dock, but only slightly more than half were occupied. Of those, a lot of them contained groundcars covered in plastek shrouds. They were rarely used, status symbols. Without access to the via favora, driving in Varangantua was a fool’s game.

I parked up, summoned the refuelling servitor and cast it an open tally of slates. It plugged in its hoses.

As fuel gurgled from the servitor’s tank into my groundcar, I leaned against the bonnet. There were several days of nightmarish bureaucracy ahead while Lux attempted to gain us access to the Steelmound. I don’t think it was just me. I was sure she’d be obstructed too. Nobody welcomes the intrusion of the enforcers, Astynomia, whatever, into their business, and I didn’t see why machine-priests would be any different. I ran through what I had to do over the next few days. The Letorian lead needed aggressive pursuit. I thought it would probably be a good idea to have Shlo go through the servitor’s brain and see if she came up with the same result as Lux. I mostly trusted Rho-1 by then; I suppose I had from the start, because she seemed to trust me. But as any good enforcer knows, instinct needs validating by fact, or it’s just another step on the path to an early retirement, and by that I mean the kind that ends with a funeral.

My thoughts turned to the poor Marchenstka girl. I was feeling genuinely sorry for old Count Milius. I know from personal experience what he was going through.

There was a scream, a plea for mercy, classic damsel in distress. The parking levels were dangerous even in a clave-cluster of High Watch’s standing. There was another scream, then a male shouting. I went towards it with my gun in my hand.

‘Who’s there?’ I shouted. ‘Show yourselves! Probator!’

Water pattered from a poor building seal, thunderously loud to my straining ears.

There was a scuffle, another scream. I began to run.

‘No! Stop!’ the woman cried.

I couldn’t see anything but the empty groundcar spaces and the plastek-covered vehicles. I swung the Finaliser around, covering every angle. A bang echoed down the parking level some way behind me.

I heard footsteps retreating at pace, then sobbing.

I came around a pillar cast from bubbled rockcrete. The statues moulded into it were rough with leakage deposits, so that their noses were long with fatty-looking calthemites.

A woman was sprawled on rockcrete, her possessions strewn on the floor. Her leggings were torn and her knees were bloodied. It was a robbery, nothing more serious, but she was shaken up by it.

‘Hey,’ I said. ‘Hey!’

She didn’t look at me, but continued to weep.

I approached. I held out my hand, but I kept my gun ready.

‘Hey, it’s fine,’ I said. ‘They’ve gone. You’re safe.’ She still didn’t look up. There was something off about her. I realised I could see through her to the greasy hardtop beneath.

Light ghost. A hololith. The image jumped, and returned to the beginning of its loop.

‘Shit,’ I said.

I’d run right into a trap.

I was turning when the first of my assailants tackled me from the side. He was dressed head to toe in black, with a light cameleoline weave that helped him blend into the shadows. I fired, but the round went wide, furrowed the ceiling, ricocheted and sparked off a groundcar’s roof – then I was carried down to the ground. I landed with a wind-robbing impact, and my gun clattered across the floor. There was a brief scuffle. I got my augmetic arm free and swung wildly.

I punched him so hard I nearly broke his neck. I did break his jaw. His head snapped back and he sprawled off me. I got up, scuffed, damp and oily. He was on the floor, clutching his face and moaning next to the hololithic lure.

‘They did tell you I have an augmetic arm, right?’ I said.

The second of them came in from behind. The first I knew was a massive blow to the kidneys from a shock goad. The pain was extraordinary, and I fell through the hololith of the weeping woman, taking a large bruise on my thigh from the unit projecting her image.

My nervous system sparkled with aftershocks. My augmetic fist scraped on the ground uncontrollably, interfaces jumping.

The second man landed on my chest with his knees, thumping out my breath just as I’d regained it. He grabbed my lapels in one hand and half hauled me off the floor.

‘Noctis!’ the man hissed into my face. I grinned stupidly at him.

‘You got my name right.’

His fist wiped the smile right off my face.

‘They said you had a smart mouth.’

He bunched up my lapels tighter in his fist, then hit me again. My smart mouth filled with blood.

‘Lord Marchenstka sends his regards,’ he said. ‘That was a shitty thing you said the other night. Not sensitive. You want to refocus your efforts. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll get on with finding Lady Iuliana. Focus on only her! Nothing else is important, do you understand?’

‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m busy. Got a talk on being a good citizen at the local orphanage.’

That earned me another punch. He had a mean right hook that bounced my head off the hardtop. In between the dancing black dots and the ringing in my ears, I was calculating how long it would be before the building machine-spirits recognised an act of aggression and sent down habclave security, if they hadn’t been bribed.

‘Do your job,’ said the man. He let go of me. His companion was still on the floor. His hand went back to the goad hanging from his belt. He drew it out, stretching the curly powerfeed wire taut.

‘This is for him,’ he said, and jabbed it straight into my gut. The charge was set to high, strong enough to stun livestock. All the muscles in my abdomen convulsed. I felt something tear, and vomited on myself. I was lucky they didn’t jab me in the balls. The shocker pulled his dazed companion to his feet, then scooped up the projection unit.

‘Find Lady Iuliana, Noctis, or you won’t be walking away from the next beating.’

That was enough for them. They ran off. I noted that the parking gate was open, I could see the glare from the approaching lights bouncing off the rockcrete and floor.

‘Fucking amateurs!’ I croaked after them. I would have followed, but that shock goad had knocked the life out of me.

I groaned. I was covered in puke and oil.

I was going to be a mass of bruises the next day.

One of the access doors to the inner building opened, and four armed clave securitors spilled out. Two ran up towards the open gate, and locked it down. The others came over to me.

‘Are you all right, Probator Noctis?’ The one who spoke was nervous; the other was stony-eyed, but trying to look shocked. I noted that well. He’d taken the bribe.

‘Seriously,’ I said from the ground. ‘What am I paying you people for?’

I spent several very sore days while Lux tried to arrange us passage into the Steelmound. It was easier for her. Though Zeria Plantis dragged their feet, her office reported directly to the magos ambassadoris of the whole enclave, and as long as she kept on the right side of them, she had an open warrant to do whatever she pleased. I spoke to her once or twice, and got the impression the same dance of mutual obligation and factional manoeuvring took place within the Adeptus Mechanicus as it did outside. But me, I was a different proposition. Illios had to get involved, papers had to be passed up the chain. The office of the lexmarshal needed to countersign several of the documents, an imposition they didn’t take kindly to, as Castellan Illios took his time telling me about in a lengthy vox call. It was immensely frustrating, and although Lux told me the application was going through quickly as these things are measured, it only increased my certainty of a cover-up.

I spent most of the time at home working on the case while I recovered from the attack. Making vox calls and setting Borostin onto people was easily done from my domicile, but I wasn’t in a good way. My face was swollen, I was badly bruised, the convulsions had torn several muscles in my abdominal wall, and they’d put my nose out. The medicae centrum in the High Watch habclave took care of that, but they couldn’t do anything about the nerve shock. It felt like my entire nervous system was dancing. Most annoyingly, the accord between my augmetic and my body was compromised, and for a couple of days afterwards I kept breaking stuff. All very unpleasant, and getting my other injuries fixed proved expensive. When Illios called, he had the decency to ask me what had happened before he started haranguing me, but didn’t care much more than that. However, later that same day Hondus came round with a bottle of middling booze and a measure of sympathy. I drank both up.

‘Do you know who it was?’ Hondus asked.

‘Is that you or the castellan asking?’ I said around a mouthful of fiery spirit.

Hondus shrugged. ‘Take your pick,’ he said.

‘I have my ideas,’ I said. ‘I’ve requisitioned the building sensorium data and have that safely backed up in case it accidentally gets “lost”. I don’t have time to follow it up now.’

‘I’ll put a team on it,’ said Hondus.

‘Don’t,’ I said.

‘Symeon,’ he said. He put his glass down. ‘We can’t have attacks on enforcers of any kind. If we show we’re weak, then–’

‘This wasn’t a gang hit or a local matter,’ I said. ‘This is noble groxshit stuff. Trust me, you’re better off out of it.’

‘Symeon–’

‘I will sort it out myself. I promise you.’

‘Right,’ he said. He wasn’t convinced. He turned his attention to my work. I’d put up a board in my hab-chamber, and covered it with bits of paper, ideas, pictures, lines joining them. I could do it all on a cogitator, but I find being able to touch things, real things, fires up my mind better. It helps me see.

‘Where have you got with the servitor case?’ He looked over the board. ‘This is impressive. I think you might even be impressing Illios.’

‘I thought he was a little less foul-tempered than usual,’ I said.

‘Take me through what you have,’ said Hondus.

‘Well,’ I said. I got stiffly to my feet and went to the display. ‘I’m pretty sure we’re looking at some sort of internal dissension in the Adeptus Mechanicus enclave that has spilled out into the district.’

‘The servitors didn’t go rogue.’

‘That’s right. Nor were they tampered with afterwards.’ I paused. ‘This is between us, right?’

‘Not a word from me,’ he said. He spread his thick arms across the backrest of my couch.

‘Right. They were designed to attack. What triggered them to do it at exactly the moments they turned on their masters is as yet undetermined, but we suspect that the manner of the deaths and the place were choreographed for maximum visibility.’

‘That was pretty obvious from the localis sceleris,’ Hondus said. ‘The bodies were displayed. We were meant to find them like that.’

‘We still have no idea what Iskritska was doing in the Steelmound, but the second victim, Pluon Felpsko,’ I rapped a finger against his image, ‘was lured out into the open by someone. Lux ripped the memory. Pluon knew whoever called him, or thought he did. He referred to a “Letorian”.’

‘Common name.’

‘Damn right. I still don’t know what the connection between the two is.’ I stood back.

‘What are these two nobodies doing with such high-grade mechanisms?’ Hondus asked.

‘That’s another thing that’s been bothering me. Soven Iskritska was a petty criminal gone straight, supposedly. Borostin chased down some of his associates. Apparently he’d not been back to his old stomping grounds for months, and what was he doing in the Steelmound? Pluon Felpsko was a mid-ranking bureaucrat. I’ve put some queries out to the Port Vorbis Regio Custos, and they said his main duty was export tariffing. All the goods from the southern districts go out through Vorbis, even those made at the Steelmound. The Adeptus Mechanicus’ rights don’t go as far as dodging Imperial taxes, it appears.’

‘They damn well get every other concession.’

‘I imagine they see routing their products through Vorbis as an immense inconvenience, seeing as they have their own voidport they could use,’ I said. ‘If we think about this, isn’t it likely that Felpsko was involved in something there? So, why did he have a servitor of that grade? Was it a gift? Was it to keep him happy or to silence him? Both? He also had a machine-priest-made vox-bead concealed in his button. Why? I’ve got an ex-felon and what looks like a man on the take. How are they mixed up in this, and why have they been killed? What’s the connection?’ I stood back and scowled with pain. My abdominal wall hurt like fire.

‘Right,’ said Hondus. He took out a pack of smoke sticks and stuck one into his mouth. Evidently he hadn’t managed to give up.

‘Don’t light that,’ I said. ‘You’ll make my place stink.’

‘Says the man living with an animal,’ he said, but he put the stick back in the box and tapped it down with his finger. ‘Where is she?’

‘Shebeena?’ I said. ‘We’ve had on ongoing dispute about whether she is allowed to go outside on her own. She isn’t. She’d be gone in minutes – the raptors would take her, she’d be stolen and sold off, or she’d find her way down into the undertunnels and not get out. She doesn’t see it like that though, so she’s not speaking to me.’

‘She talks?’ he said. ‘I thought it was just a felid.’

‘It’s an expression,’ I said. I sometimes forgot that only the gilded had the money and the space for companion animals.

‘Right,’ he said. Not allowed to smoke, he pulled out a packet of dried grains and began to crunch on them. I frowned at the crumbs, but he carried on.

‘Now, the one rockcrete-solid thing we do know is that both these servitors were made by this man.’ I tapped a grainy vid-capture Lux had found me. It showed a short man with broad shoulders. He wore a third, mechanical arm wired into his left shoulder. ‘Chen-Chen Zifo Sigma. His maker’s mark was atom-etched onto the surface of both servitors’ brains. He works in the Zeria Plantis servitor manufactorum – right now, he is our prime suspect.’

‘The name, Zeria Plantis, it sounds familiar.’

‘They advertise,’ I said. ‘In the spires. I looked into them.’ That was a small lie. I knew enough about high-end products to know who they were without having to do that. They supplied a lot of luxury tech to the gilded. ‘Zeria Plantis is one of several Zhao-Arkhad/Alecto corporate partnerships based in Varangantua to make use of our resources, in this case, the population.’

‘Criminals,’ said Hondus firmly.

‘Still people,’ I said.

‘Maybe that’s why Iskritska was involved. A middleman, maybe?’

‘Would you buy anything off him?’ I said.

‘Nope.’

‘Well then. At the moment I’ve a couple of theories. First one, Chen-Chen is trying to extort something from his masters. Slates, position, I don’t know.’

‘Do they use slates?’ Hondus asked. ‘I mean, they trade goods for money, but what do they do with them?’

‘Their world is a mystery,’ I agreed. ‘My other theory is that he’s trying to tell us something. That implies he’s a victim, or a reluctant participant. Maybe he’s been mixed up in something and has had enough.’

‘Maybe,’ said Hondus. ‘Bit theatrical though, all this. High profile. It draws a lot of attention onto him.’

‘It also draws a lot of attention onto the Steelmound,’ I said. ‘They don’t like it. Illios won’t speak to me about high-level communication between the district and the mound, but ten slates to one he’s pushing this to get rid of eyes on the AdMech.’

‘Begs the question why he put you onto this in the first place if he won’t share everything,’ Hondus said.

‘I’m disposable, aren’t I?’ I said. ‘This is all very knotty, tied up in inter-world diplomacy, but not enough to get the Adeptus Arbites involved. I can’t see what the endgame is for anyone, for Chen-Chen, or for whoever else higher up in the world is pulling his strings, if there is anyone at all. I also can’t tell if Illios wants me to succeed or fail. What’s his stake in this game? Could he be involved even?’

‘Careful,’ said Hondus. ‘He’s an arsehole, but he’s a good man. Mostly.’ Hondus sneezed loudly and blew his nose on a handkerchief. ‘He’s keeping the lexmarshal off his back. Nearsteel is poor, but the Steelmound is among the most powerful Adeptus Mechanicus enclaves on the whole planet.’

‘I do wonder why they chose this district,’ I said. ‘We’re so affected by their presence we even take our name from them, for Emperor’s sake.’

‘You think too much.’ Hondus leaned forward and picked up his glass, drank it dry, then filled it up with more of the spirit.

‘As soon as we get into the Steelmound, we’ll get some answers,’ I said.

‘Why doesn’t Lux just go on her own?’ said Hondus.

Because she needs outside eyes on whatever is going on in there, I thought, but sometimes it’s wiser to play dumb. I won’t say I suspected Hondus. He was my friend, but you know that feeling you get in poorly maintained buildings, when the floor begins to give way beneath your feet, you know it’s going, but you can’t stop it?

I was having that feeling then.

‘I don’t know,’ I said.

CHAPTER TWELVE

The Steelmound

The day after Hondus came to see me, the permissions came through.

I was going to go into the Steelmound.

It’s hard to overstate how important this was. Members of the Adeptus Mechanicus are found throughout the society of Varangantua, wider Alecto, and all the way across the Imperium. Without them, complex machines would break down, nothing more complicated than a stub gun or room heater would get made, and everything would basically go to shit. We have our own machine-adepts, and there are people outside of the Cult that dabble in the higher arts of the arcane sciences, but they’re mavericks. Knowledge of technology is controlled ruthlessly by the Adeptus Mechanicus.

Certification and deployment of tech-priests of all ranks is coordinated centrally by the Adeptus Administratum here on Alecto, the planetary government and the Adeptus Mechanicus. Generally speaking, we only see fully qualified priests at work. We assume they have some kind of society where there are people who aren’t priests, but we never see them.

The important thing here is that this arrangement is not reciprocal, not in this city at any rate. The magi who are embedded in our society are ubiquitous, but from our side, it’s only the higher officials and people with large business interests that get to go into the enclaves.

I was born rich. I had a good education. This division between ‘Terra’ and ‘Mars’ goes back to the beginning of the Imperium. To all intents, the forge worlds are an empire within the Imperium.

That long preamble is a way to say that I was unusual in being allowed in. I’m sure the arbitrators have an easier time getting into forge world sovereign territory, but I’m just the local Lex.

After she picked me up in her flyer, Lux was at pains to express what a big deal this was. She was nervous, and made it abundantly clear she thought I’d embarrass her. She spoke quickly over the thrum of the machine’s contragrav. When its jet turbines kicked in to give it extra loft she began to shout, and she seemed to be pleading with me when she did that.

‘Don’t call anyone a Martian,’ she said, which was not the first prohibition she gave me, but she kept coming back to that particular one. ‘This enclave is the property of Zhao-Arkhad. It is a power in its own right. They don’t like being called Martians.’

‘Don’t you mean “we”?’ I said.

She gave me a black look.

‘Respect the technology, respect the rituals, respect the ranks, even if you do not understand them.’

‘That’s a certainty,’ I said. ‘Every tech-priest I’ve met has a different title, though most of them seemed to do the same damn job.’

‘And don’t call them tech-priests!’ she said. ‘It’s too broad a category. It doesn’t take into account the subtlety of each magos’ specialisations. It’s demeaning.’

‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Is there anything I can do or say in the Steelmound?’

‘And don’t call it the Steelmound!’ she said, as if remembering how very important that was. ‘That’s the local name for it.’

‘Then what do I call it? Cogtown?’

‘This is serious, Probator Noctis.’

‘I think you can call me Symeon, you know,’ I said.

‘I mean it!’ She was flustered. Her coldly logical facade was entirely gone, and I realised that she was still a young woman, with a lot to prove. I had the sudden certainty that her career rested on this case, whichever way it went. She was a convert. What did that mean, going into a closed world like the Cult Mechanicus, from outside? It can’t have been easy.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said again, sincerely this time. On impulse I took her hand and squeezed it. It felt even thinner than it looked, the bones threaded through with wires and implants. She smiled at the brief human contact, remembered herself, and pulled away.

‘One of the reasons you are getting in at all is this.’ She tapped my steel hand. ‘You have an augmentation. It is high quality. You have meshed well with it. Your body shows no sign of rejection. You move with it as if it were your own limb. To our eyes, that suggests a natural synergy with the Machine-God. This marks you out as a favoured ignorant.’

‘Charming,’ I said.

‘It is not an insult. You are an enlightened-in-waiting. It will give you an edge in our dealings inside.’

‘How are they going to treat me? What do they think of us, really?’

Lux looked ahead through the cockpit’s bulbous windows. We were sat to the left of the servitor pilot on a broad flight couch. The pilot’s dry, mummified scent was all pervasive.

‘You think we of the Machine Cult venerate technology, and that is all there is to us.’

‘That’s about right,’ I said. I clenched my metal hand.

‘It is not true. Our religion is complex, but the root of it is simple. The Machine-God made this universe, his perfect machine, the Great Work. He made us, and put us into it so we might flourish, and we do so by knowledge, which begets improvement, which allows understanding. The priests of the Emperor say that the human form is perfect. We believe so too, but to us it is not perfect in its form as it is given to us. It is instead the perfect beginning. We were made weak by the Machine-God to test us. Our role in life is to learn all there is to learn, to improve upon what the Machine-God gave us, and enrich his creation in the process.’

How by the Throne this cabal of heretics had flourished at the heart of the Imperium for so long is beyond me. The Ministorum will happily burn someone alive for saying something a little bit different to the official line, then turn to a clanky Martian cyborg with an oven for a face and kindly ask him to sort out their power generator. It wouldn’t matter that the tech-priest would say the Emperor was a part of the Machine-God. Pragmatism held, when it was necessary. Fanaticism filled the space when it was not. It’s all just another fat hypocrisy, though of course I’m smart enough never, ever to say that.

‘So, best manners, show respect, no throwing my weight around, no casual religionism. No anti-cybernetic statements. Nothing.’

‘Please,’ she said.

‘Well, all right then.’

There was a pause. Lux was one nervous thought from gnawing her fingernails.

‘If it’s not called the Steelmound inside, what is it called?’

‘Enclave ZA Four-Five-Two, Al-o, Seg TS.’

‘Snappy,’ I said.

‘Noctis!’ she said.

‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I’ll just avoid the subject.’

We spent the rest of the short flight staring out of the windows. Wisps of brown cloud coyly reached to tickle the flyer before being blasted apart by contragrav or sucked into the air intakes. Streams of traffic followed flight paths just as clogged as the roads on the ground. Habclaves and smaller buildings rose and fell in predictable patterns.

And then, the Steelmound. It cut out of the smog like a sword, and we flew into a different world.

Where do I start?

How can I possibly describe how different the inside of that complex was to Nearsteel?

I’ve seen tri-d picts and vid of hive worlds. The Steelmound was among the few structures that I knew in Varangantua that approached the sheer insane majesty of a true hive. The starscrapers where our preening lords and ladies live would be minor flourishes on the shoulders of a real hive, but though the Steelmound is not as big as a hive, it looks like it could be. It looks like it doesn’t belong, an impression that is only accentuated by the brutally empty space of the Redway around it. The Redway is a wound, a plug of flesh cut neatly out of the city, and this alien monstrosity the instrument of hurt. I’ve been looking at the Steelmound since I came here, years ago. It is as familiar to me as my own metal fingertips, and like them it doesn’t belong. It is an imposition. It is an occupation.

Lux closed her eyes, slipping into communion with her servitor pilot, and the flyer pitched up, taking us into the cloud layer. The skies were low that day, obscuring the voidport where all air traffic was required to land.

Brown clouds enveloped us. The servitor pilot stared ahead with glass eyes. He had arms still, though the hands were augmetic replacements. Otherwise all his human form was gone. His body had been cut across the pelvis, reminding me of the bisected Iskritska lying in the rain. His stomach had been pulled in around his spinal cord, in a way that took him closer to the realm of object. His spine was exposed, polished white, capped with plasteel and plugged directly into a socket. From behind it looked like he sat on a chair, but he was a half-man, raised up on a pedestal festooned with wires and gurgling tubes, his bones reinforced with metal to stop them crumbling away.

I had never really looked at servitors. This case was affecting me. I began to wonder who the poor bastard used to be.

The flyer cleared the clouds. Dim, pink sunlight washed over the cloud tops, turning them bloody. It’s never very bright here. Exposure to even that dim winter orb made me wince and cover my eyes until they adjusted.

The Steelmound came at us, now a sword stained with the blood of the sun. The top reached up out of sight to scrape at the underside of the void. There were more docks up there for heavier ships, but the main port was cantilevered out from the side not far above the cloud layer. I always think it looks like a big fat ironfungus, leeching off a support pillar. Only the illusion today was broken by proximity. The top was flat, covered in atmospheric flyers and small void-capable craft. More went in and out of the docking slots and hangars that covered its every outer surface. Gathering in crowds, they rose and fell like swarms of insects over open water.

The false eyes of Lux’s pilot tracked docking telemetry invisible to me. His hands moved unhurriedly over the levers that guided the ship.

The Steelmound grew larger. At the back of the landing fields the spire was open to the sky. Golden light blazed from inside. It reminded me of the throat of the Dymaxion Promontory, but though they shared some superficial similarity, they were completely different in character. The way into the hive was uneven and narrowed rapidly, being lined with jutting gantries and boxy extrusions. Guide lights and warning beacons blinked from communications masts. Trains ran like trickles of quicksilver from the port into the spire, and we swooped down over these, and followed them within.

The gap in the spire skin was two hundred yards across at the widest extremes. I saw warriors of the Adeptus Mechanicus patrolling catwalks, and men with mechanical wings preening false feathers atop metal eyries. Varangantua is old, rotten, but elegant in parts, its architecture human, with statuary and details that appeal to the artist in us all. The Steelmound seemed wholly industrial.

The flyer slowed to a near hover. Runes blinked all over the pilot’s instruments, red, then green, and with the colour change we flew onward, one of only a tiny handful of craft to pass into the spire interior.

Lights shone from every surface. Giant etched patterns pulsed with slow illumination. If they were functional circuits or artworks designed to mimic them, I could not say. Metal surfaces predominated, and that went for the people as much as the architecture. Some of the inhabitants that I glimpsed from the cockpit window appeared entirely mechanical. A number of them had shapes that were far from human.

We descended, passing through a complex tangle of platforms, piping and buildings. The flyer slowed again. The servitor pilot, still unhurried, made a series of increasingly small corrections. I heard landing gear extending from the ship’s underside, then the heavy clang of contact.

The craft settled.

We had arrived in the Steelmound.

Lux stood and indicated I do the same.

‘Follow me,’ she said, ‘and say nothing.’

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Zeria Plantis

The ramp went down. Hot air blasted in and sweat sprang up on my skin. I took off my coat. It didn’t help much. Wet patches spread beneath my organic arm, staining my brown shirt black. Lux went out first, her attendant skull floating sedately behind her, its spinal column twitching.

A magos waited for us with a clade of skitarii in attendance. All of them bore the badges of the Astynomia. The symbols had some meaning that wasn’t clear to me then, and wouldn’t be until Lux explained it to me later, but I knew the marks from other members of the Adeptus Mechanicus law enforcement I’d encountered. The warriors were different, possibly a specialised unit, as they wore black robes with cream cog-tooth edgings, and their many augmetics were plated a bright, uniform chrome.

The magos was a different matter. He wore the usual grey-and-red colours of Zhao-Arkhad, though he also bore the Astynomia’s badge. He was oddly fat, with a bulging stomach, and the rod of office he used as a cane was gripped in a pudgy, scabrous hand. He was bowed low by the weight of his augmetics. Upon his back there was a heavy carapace that peaked in a gothic arch to allow his tall hood to stand erect. This strange weight of metal covered over the top of his head, his shoulders and his upper arms. I could see no advantage to it. Mechadendrites waved from the top in constant motion, reminding me of the snake grass in my father’s gardens, and which still grew in the few wild places of Alecto. Amid them were hardline tethers for the five servo-skulls that floated over his back, their glowing yellow eye-lenses staring in every direction.

I could not see his face until Lux approached and he raised it. I almost recoiled. There was not a scrap of flesh upon it, the skull being completely exposed. The jaw had been removed and replaced by a thick, corrugated tube that led to a unit embedded in his chest. Small rubber balloons inflated and deflated with his every breath, pushing their way out from behind dirty teeth then retreating again. His nasal cavity was filled with a dull plastek grille, and his eyes were lenses that matched those of the servo-skulls, so that his face looked like a sixth servo-skull stitched in place of his head. He was grotesque, horrifying, far more disturbing to look upon than the relatively human tech-priests I’d had dealings with outside of the Steelmound.

Now I knew why Lux had asked me to keep my mouth shut.

The magos’ neck extended on a spine lengthened by steel vertebrae surrounded by cables and tubes. He peered at me, then looked at Lux, and emitted a long blurt of warbles and screeches. Binharic, the machine language.

Then Lux opened her mouth as wide as it would go, and locked it there, and from somewhere within her delicate neck the same awful noise came out. It seemed wrong somehow. I don’t know why, but it affected me.

They blurted back and forth like this for several seconds before Lux turned to me.

‘The Probus Magnificans Selvelt 18u723 greets you,’ she said.

The skull face dipped as the probus performed a bow. The weight of the machine on his back seemed fit to break him, and his flesh hand shook. His flock of skulls swivelled to look at me. I was sure he could see through their eyes.

‘I am honoured,’ I said. ‘We thank you for your cooperation in this matter.’

Yellow glass eyes glared at me. He screeched his ugly song again. A translation unit set in the mouth of one of the floating skulls spoke for him.

‘Crime is the nullification of natural order,’ it said in a relentless, awful monotone. ‘The resolution of this matter is in the interests of both heads of the aquila.’

Great, I thought, gnomic too.

‘I agree,’ I said.

‘Show him your hand,’ Lux said to me.

I glanced at her. Selvelt’s inhuman lenses glinted with a sense of expectation.

I’d draped my coat over my right arm. I took it off, and rolled up my shirt sleeve, then held up my augmetic arm, hand open at first, then fist clenched.

He let out a single squeal.

‘Beautiful,’ his skull droned. ‘You are favoured by the Machine-God.’

He pointed into the Steelmound and blurted something. The motionless skitarii turned on their heels in perfect unison.

‘This way,’ Lux translated.

Twenty sharp metal feet emerged from under Selvelt’s robe, lifting him up and carrying him forward with small, skittering steps. His natural legs did not move.

We were escorted through a world of cramped spaces and dim lights, where steam and heat were ever-present. The whole of the Steelmound shook with the actions of machines deep inside its towering body. We could not feel these vibrations outside, though by all rights we should. Loud noises rang from deep within the spire, boomings, ringings and clattering metal. Periodically we would emerge into vast open spaces full of the activity of industry. There seemed little space there for human beings. Everything was geared towards the needs of machines. The skull and cog and the strange sigils of Zhao-Arkhad adorned everything, but there was no other sign of art. Everything was functional. Even the strips of parchment that festooned thundering machines had a purpose.

‘What’s his story?’ I said to Lux.

‘Do not speak,’ she said.

‘Just tell me why he has that inconvenient augmetic,’ I whispered.

‘He bears the weight of vigilance against corruption,’ she said quietly. ‘It is a heavy duty. His augmetic represents that.’

I thought it was madness.

‘Does he outrank you?’ I asked.

‘It is not so simple. I am not Astynomia,’ she said. ‘Be quiet. He can hear every word you say. You will see many things you will not understand, and these spaces are holy to our cult. You risk causing offence.’

A bell began to toll deep inside the Steelmound, and I realised then that this was not only a giant manufactorum, diplomatic outpost, voidport and habitat.

It was also a temple.

Selvelt stopped at the junction of two catwalks. I looked over the edge. The drop went on forever, past the level of the subterranean district of Chainward that surrounded the Steelmound. I thought I could see a dim, orange glow far down the shaft, but I’m not certain. There are legends that the roots of the mound go into the heart of Alecto. The light could have been expectation on my part.

A skull unplugged the swathe of cables that connected it to Selvelt. The magos squeaked and honked at Lux. She did that horrible thing with her mouth to reply. Then Selvelt and his little group of guardians left, leaving us with his skull.

‘He’s not coming with us?’ I said.

She glanced at his servo-skull.

‘He is coming with us,’ she said.

‘Does this go all the way to the planet’s mantle?’ I asked, and pointed down the shaft. Selvelt’s skull swooped low and rebuked me with an angry rasp.

‘Do not put your hand over the railing,’ she said.

‘Why not?’

‘Blasphemy,’ she said. ‘You obstruct the flow of energy.’

I pulled my hand back. ‘Does it go down that far?’

‘Not quite that far,’ Lux said.

After her little panic in the flyer she was behaving in a very superior way, regal almost, like my Throne-damned family. It didn’t suit her and I was tempted to say so; then I questioned what right I had to talk about her behaviour on her home territory and figured it was zero. The assumption the rich can do and say as they please was what drove me out of the high spires into the real city.

‘This way,’ she said, pointing in the opposite direction to the way that Selvelt had gone.

I followed. I didn’t mention her manner. That was a good call, I decided later, when I’d got to know her better.

The walkway joined another as big as a road. We were still suspended over the bottomless pit by means I could not see. There was traffic on the wider way, a profusion of people, dozens of servitors and multi-legged walkers. The road went through a giant arch decorated with mechanical motifs. Beyond that we passed into a cavity winding through the outer walls, or so I assumed. Swarms of servo-skulls flew over the crowds, often stopping to exchange data with the two following us: Selvelt’s spy and Lux’s own aide. At least, that’s what I assumed they were doing, for they just locked eyes for a moment before moving on. We kept to raised pedestrian paths in the main, though in places these vanished, and we were forced to walk among the machines plodding the carriageway. At one point a droning procession of holy men went past us, and the whole road cleared, machines, half-machines and enslaved cyborgs pulling respectfully to the side. To me they looked like any other tech-priest: robed, heavily augmented with a panoply of ugly cybernetics and permanently implanted tools; but this group seemed to command respect from the others, and as they sang their burbling data cant and wafted smoke from burning oils over us, the Martians bowed their heads and added short modulations of their own to the song. The procession moved on, leaving my eyes streaming from their foul incense, and though I struggled not to cough, I did, earning myself a sharp look from a man mounted on a spider’s body and with fifteen bright green glass buttons for eyes.

Strangely, my presence drew no other comment, not so much as a stray and curious look. Any one of the freakish amalgams of man and machine would draw outright stares in the streets of the greater city, but me being in the enclave seemed to trouble no one. Maybe my augmetic really did buy me acceptance, or maybe they knew all about us, informed through their networked minds or whatever other Horus-cursed abominations they’d inflicted on themselves, rendering me devoid of fresh information, and therefore uninteresting.

The tech-priests prize data, of any kind. That’s what my father had said to me, during one of his long and unsuccessful attempts to inform me about how the Imperium worked. I didn’t listen to him, and I should have, because I had to learn it all again later, and that time my father employed a man with a stick to make sure the lessons went in.

Selvelt’s skull trailed rather than led us. Lux knew where she was going. She took me into an area where transportation pods raced to a dead stop. They were baroque things, two big brass wheels that ran on dull toothed rails. The passenger compartment was a confection of glass and buzzing energy fields. Skulls mounted to the fore stared into the smoky air with gleaming glass eyes. When the pods arrived, the centre of the wheels opened to allow people out, before taking in new passengers and shooting off again.

She led me onto the platform, where we waited for the next pod and got in. A bronze skull casing for a servitor brain looked at us accusingly from the back wall.

‘Hold on,’ she said.

The pods had no seats, but a variety of clamps on the ground and every kind of socket you can imagine. Some of them were most definitely live, and I gingerly reached for one. She shook her head.

‘Hold on to that,’ she pointed. ‘And use your augmetic.’

I grabbed the vent or duct or whatever the Throne it was and hung on.

A scan beam played down over both of us. It flickered over me momentarily longer than over her.

‘If I didn’t have this arm, we’d be going nowhere, right?’ I said.

She said nothing. The machine-spirit squealed at her in their electronic language. She squealed back. I looked away so I didn’t have to watch her crack her jaw like that. I think I did it because I thought she was pretty. If she hadn’t been I can’t say I would have cared too much. I can be shallow. You need to know that.

Clamps raced around on the floor. I felt contragrav plating lift us up a few inches. Various fittings tried to clasp my feet but they retreated with metallic squeals. A pair found Lux’s quick enough and she let out a contented sigh as they bonded to her. The transpod made a series of irritable honks as it tried a number of clamps on me, until in the end my ankles were wrapped about by banded metal tentacles in a way that suggested to me it was improvised. Something made a noise that might have sounded musical to a member of the Cult but to me was an ear-wounding rasp. Then the pod raced off, nearly throwing me down and breaking my ankles. Then it dropped. And I mean that, it just dropped. My stomach ended up in the top of my throat. The metal tendrils almost cut through my ankles.

The pod decelerated and I breathed more easily for precisely one breath; then it raced off to the left, following a curving path for a full half-minute. It tilted extremely. My metal fingers left scratch marks in the vent I was holding on to.

I heard a flywheel hum. The transpod bled velocity and came to a whining stop.

It jerked a little as it finally halted, and I almost lost my grip. I looked at the bronze skull. Its green eyes stared into mine.

‘I get the feeling it did that on purpose,’ I said.

The doors opened, and Lux went out. The tendrils let me go, and I followed.

We’d arrived at a transit hub. Other pods were racing in and out behind us, slowed by contragrav slings. We stepped away from the hub. There were so many Martians lined up to take the lifters that I was ready to push through, but as soon as Lux approached they parted and let us by.

‘Ident broadcast?’ I asked her.

‘Of course,’ she said.

The district we found ourselves in seemed of a lower sort than the one before. For the first time I saw people who were just people. They wore the same colours as their masters, and tattoos that suggested a mimicry of augmentation, but actual bionics beyond simple interface plugs were a rarity among them. These unaltered examples were more interested in me than their masters, stealing looks when they thought they wouldn’t be noticed. Still, they too moved back from Lux, and they bowed to her to boot. There were fewer of what I’d call priests. The few I did see walked at the head of columns of clanking servitors, or rode in motive carriers at the centre of massive work gangs of standard humans. Some of them were undoubtedly from Alecto. You can tell the type: we’re pale down here in the south, but nowhere near as pale as the Arkhadians. Zhao-Arkhad is a death world, with corrosive environments and unpleasant wildlife. Everyone lives underground. The stunted, pallid humans I saw in the base of the Steelmound fit the morphology. There were people from all over the segmentum and beyond in Varangantua, but it was unusual to see so many off-worlders in one place together.

We were in the working heart of the Steelmound. All these people were on their ways to foundry, forge and factory. So much industry in so small a place.

A heavy smell hit me soon afterwards. Like chilled meat, faintly sharp, a smell on the edge of putrefaction.

We approached another gargantuan gate. Smaller portals were open in the bottom, through which trooped the workers, the slaves and their enigmatic masters. There were sentries on the gate, not military or Lex enforcement, but heavily augmented and dressed in a uniform, probably of the facility rather than of the enclave.

One began to query Lux in binharic squeals, but stopped when he caught sight of me.

‘Procurator Rho-1 Lux?’ he asked, in accented Alectian Gothic. ‘Probator Symeon Noctis?’

‘Yeah,’ I said, stepping forward. I was getting tired of keeping quiet. It’s not in my nature. ‘Are you expecting us?’

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Please, wait a moment.’

I gave Lux a look. This wasn’t good news. We were supposed to be there unannounced. Although they were aware we’d be visiting, we had not given them precise arrival times, not even the day. They’d had time to get ready for us and were on higher alert than I expected. Someone had warned them we had arrived. From the frown on Lux’s face, she shared my opinion.

A minute later a small, officious-looking adept bustled through the port in the gate. ‘Many apologies,’ he said. ‘Many apologies!’ His only visible augmetics were two cranial plugs at either temple, and a pair of eyes that would have looked entirely human were it not for their solid bronze colour. ‘I am Supervisorius Djelling,’ he said. ‘Shift master, enumerator and master of materials for this facility. I am sorry you have been kept waiting – if you had informed us that you had arrived, we would have sent transport for you. This is most embarrassing. I am, personally, embarrassed.’ He clasped hands whose backs sported tiny threads of silver. These lifted up like hairs and waved around. ‘This way.’ He beckoned us through the door. ‘Please, please, come with me. Our lord Cybertheurge Archmagos Genetor 237089 is waiting for you. I am sorry he cannot greet you in person, but…’ He smiled at us. ‘You’ll see. Come! Come!’ We stepped through the port after him.

‘Put these on,’ said the sentry. He held out floppy pieces of plastek full of metal flakes. An ident patch. I slapped one on my arm. Zeria Plantis probably had internal defences that would take us apart without them.

‘The archmagos is most eager to greet you. Such a terrible business, a terrible business! He is desirous in ultima extremis to see you and smooth out all these misunderstandings!’

So what if he threw High Gothic phrases into his speech and was desperately solicitous? I’d met this kind before. Guilty, my instincts said. Of what, we’d just have to find out.

Lux approached a heavy steel door. I could hear noises coming through it. Heavy, industrial sounds, and screaming.

‘Not that way!’ Djelling held up his hand, and flashed a conciliatory smile. ‘Quicker this way.’

He gestured expansively towards a corridor that headed up at a steep angle.

‘What are you hiding?’ I said, jerking my metal thumb over my shoulder.

‘Nothing at all! You are welcome to explore all parts of this facility, whether it is pursuant to your investigation or not.’

‘Noctis,’ warned Lux. ‘We do not suspect you of anything, magos,’ Lux said to Djelling. ‘My associate is unfamiliar with our ways, and tends towards flippancy.’

Right. People who tell you they have nothing to hide almost always very much have something to hide.

He could tell that’s what I thought. Those eyes might have been blank, but his face spoke volumes.

‘I will gladly conduct you on a tour of the facility after your interview with Archmagos 237089 if you wish. You have but to ask. Anything we can do to help you resolve this business, we shall provide.’

Lux gave me a sidelong look. I was itching to speak to her. I wondered if I could get her to set up a direct feed between my vox-unit and her skull. I bet she could. It wouldn’t have been safe, though, not in there.

Djelling took us through a long, richly appointed corridor. This was the first place I’d seen anything like human comforts, though all of them were decorated with designs that evoked the machine. A pattern of gold circuitry ran over the red walls. Interlocked cogs patterned the carpet. Sculptures were either abstract representations of machines or abstractly designed machines. I’d seen xenos art and devices from faraway human worlds, but these items seemed more alien. Despite the finer finish to everything, the heavy, cold meat smell grew thicker, and I could taste blood underneath it.

At the top of a brief run of steps was a heavy copper door. Something in the walls saw us coming, and the exposed cogwork on the surface spun and whirred. It was unnecessarily complicated for the job it had to do, but I suppose that was the art in it, seeing machinery move for its own sake.

Three locks disengaged audibly, and the door opened. Djelling gestured, his face full of eagerness that we enter.

‘Please go within.’ The golden circuit patterning on the wall came alive behind him, and a vestibule opened in the wall. It was so full of probes and spikes it seemed far too small to accommodate Djelling, but he backed into it. ‘I shall be here, waiting.’ He was engulfed in a network of metal, and drew into the wall.

The vestibule shut. The circuitry turned about, forming new patterns, and when it stopped I could see no join in the wall surface.

‘Are all Adeptus Mechanicus facilities like this?’ I asked her.

‘If you are asking me would they all appear bizarre to you, they would, and more so.’ She spoke very quietly and quickly, showing her nerves again. ‘This is only an enclave. The cognitive shock of perceiving a forge world’s majesty would permanently damage you.’

‘Great,’ I said. ‘Remind me never to go to one.’ I tilted my head at the door. ‘Shall we?’

She took a deep breath, and nodded.

I went in first.

I’d gone so far past being confronted with things I wasn’t expecting that the strangeness of Cybertheurge Archmagos Genetor 237089’s room didn’t sink in until we’d left the Steelmound.

Overall, it had an irregular shape, walls of some silvery alloy that gleamed red, yellow and green in the many recesses. Large spatial volumes protruded from the walls, covered in an endless pattern of whorled loops, uncomfortably close to the folds on the surface of the human brain. A long pier went out to the centre, where there was a circular platform. The pier and platform had the only regular shapes in the room.

‘Where is he?’ I said. I peered over the edge of the walkway. The floor was the same as the walls and the ceiling. Selvelt’s skull buzzed around my head. Lux’s skull kept it away from her, so Selvelt’s automaton was annoying me.

‘Everywhere,’ Lux said. ‘He is close to complete rapture with the machine.’

A faint rasping came from the walls and reverberated around the chamber. The pulsing waves of sound reinforced each other. The walls began to glow softly as iridescent patches shifted around the cerebral coils. The sound of metal scraping on metal increased. Small holes opened all over the room, and from them ran a stream of tiny spheres the size of ball bearings. They used the grooves as tracks to run around in complex patterns as more and more of them came out of the holes. A heavy feeling of electricity settled on the room. The spheres ran together, and began to build outwards opposite Lux and I to create a face as tall as a man. Thousands of the spheres continued to race around the tracks, sometimes joining or leaving the face. Facsimiles of eyes opened, and looked down on us, the constant motion of the spheres giving it the illusion of life.

‘I am Cybertheurge Archmagos Genetor 237089,’ it said. The voice too was generated by the spheres, and came out as a musical scraping. ‘Be quick in your questions. Time is valuable, and you are stealing mine.’

‘You know why we are here,’ I said. Lux gave me a sharp ‘be quiet’ kind of look, but I pretended I didn’t see. ‘Servitors produced in this plant have murdered their masters in plain and public sight. They were designed to do so by one of your artisans. We were wondering what light you could shed on these incidents for us, genetor.’ Archmagos 237089’s ersatz eyes swivelled noisily to look at me. His giant, show-off’s face bore an expression of supreme animosity.

‘These matters are beneath my attention, probator.’

‘Murder is beneath no one’s attention.’

‘All flesh must pass. It is weak. I am not responsible for the actions of my underlings.’

‘The Lex says different.’

The face boiled and swivelled towards me.

‘Hold your insolence! It is only under sufferance that I allowed your visit to this manufactory.’

‘Then you’ll be glad to see us go,’ I said. ‘Why did he do it?’

Lux came forward. ‘Forgive the probator, my lord genetor. He is Terran-affiliate. Symeon Dymaxion-Noctis is ignorant of our customs.’

‘Dymaxion? Manufacturers of groundcars, cargo units and other earthbound transportation?’ said 237089. He appeared interested.

‘Last time I looked,’ I said.

‘Inferior items,’ he said haughtily.

I shrugged. ‘I don’t care what you think of my father’s products. I care about these murders.’

Lux intervened again. ‘My lord, we thank you deeply for agreeing to this meeting. We have only a few questions, then our inquiry will be done.’

The seething pits of spheres serving as 237089’s eyes tracked from me to Lux and back again. Selvelt’s escort continued to orbit me.

‘Very well,’ the facsimile said. ‘Chen-Chen Zifo Sigma is responsible for creating high-grade artisanal servitor units. His work is of the fifth grade. More than adequate, but not exceptional. He repeatedly asked for rank elevation. I deemed the quality of his output insufficient to warrant the honour.’

‘Is this the reason for his actions, in your opinion?’ I asked.

‘I have reviewed the information you have and deem it impossible,’ said 237089. ‘He cannot have preprogrammed them to kill. All units are subjected to a deep-level scan before they are placed with their owners. These are high-end units, not intended for mass-market distribution. Our clientele expect certain guarantees of quality.’

‘Being murdered isn’t covered by that,’ I said.

‘Your humour masks your fear. You are weak,’ said 237089. ‘You bear the blessing of the Machine-God, yet you are subject to the poor reasoning of all organic organisms.’

‘I am trying to do my job,’ I said. I looked at Lux. She didn’t respond. For all her insistence I be quiet, she wasn’t saying much. I took this to be part of the play and pressed on. ‘Who buys these servitors?’

‘Rich men and rich women,’ said 237089. ‘The production of multi-task servitors that are capable of near-human levels of interaction is extremely difficult. It is our art and our pride that we create the very best, in glory of the Machine-God.’

I smiled. ‘Very laudable, but profit seems to be more important from what I’m hearing. What does the Adeptus Mechanicus need with slates, anyway?’

‘The Great Work comprises multiple systems of being overlying each other,’ said 237089. ‘Many are invisible, but vital all the same. Commerce is one engine of the Great Work, a pleasing addition to the complexity of the universe. The slates we generate from our business here are spent mostly on the acquisition of further materials to perpetuate the work of endless creation.’

‘All of it?’ I asked.

‘Certain funds are translated to non-Alectian currencies and transferred off-world. These funds are disposed of according to the will of the Omnissiah. This is perfectly normal. Why do you come here and ask me for lessons in simple economics?’

‘I never thought you people would need slates,’ I said.

‘To quote a very old aphorism, probator, money makes worlds go round,’ said 237089.

‘Where is Flesh-Tech Artisan Chen-Chen Zifo Sigma now?’ asked Lux.

‘You have no lock on his location?’

‘None,’ said Lux.

‘Then it is unknown to all of us in this room. He left the enclave five days ago and has not reported in since.’ The face rearranged itself. ‘If Chen-Chen did somehow manage to make alterations to these servitors, then it is self-evident that he did so in order to embarrass the Zeria Plantis servitor manufactorum. He was a bitter man, prone to many emotional maladies. He could not overcome the weaknesses of his flesh.’

‘Let’s not be so quick to solve this puzzle,’ I said. ‘They’re never as simple as they look.’

‘Master logic, probator, and simplicity will follow. You have a suspect and a motive. The means remain questionable, our systems are infallible, but the balance of probability suggests he is guilty.’

Patronising bastard. ‘What of the victims?’ I said. ‘Why were they targeted?’

‘Both of them had contact indirectly with Chen-Chen. The first, Soven Iskritska, was a procurer of flesh components. His role was to assess criminals and mark those of above-average intellect for sequestration to the artisanal workshops. The creation of Alpha-Plus-grade servitors requires good quality parts.’

‘I looked into him,’ I said. ‘There was no official record of him performing this role for you.’

‘Why would we rely on non-Mechanicus systems? They are inferior, and misleading. Iskritska worked for us on a contractual basis, using his contacts and his knowledge of these people first-hand. He was a criminal once, but it was all perfectly legal according to the Lex Imperium, Lex Alecto and Lore Mechanicus. I will send you the appropriate documentation, if you wish.’

‘What do you need him for? Don’t you assess people, the components, internally, when they get here?’

Archmagos 237089’s face rippled with irritation. ‘It is part of the process. However, synaptic scans are not infallible. Often the processing power of the individual brain exceeds what its base architecture might suggest. Iskritska’s role was to predefine, to allot the components to smaller groupings intended for deeper testing. The field must be narrowed to ensure maximum productivity. He had a talent for this kind of work.’

‘He was an assessor, then?’

‘As I have already stated, nothing he did for us was illegal.’

‘Who was Pluon Felpsko?’ Lux asked.

‘Your investigative methods are poor if you have none of his records, either. He worked for the Port Vorbis Regio Custos in outward clearing services. He handled our export licences.’

‘Even though the servitors were manufactured here?’

‘Everything made on this world must pass through the global system. Our units must also adhere to the Lex Imperium as well as the Lore Mechanicus regarding the creation and maintenance of semi-sentients. It is a necessary part of the chain of creation, certification and supply.’

I knew all this, you understand, I’m not an idiot. I’d have bet my last slate Lux did too. Sometimes, you can catch somebody by getting them to describe the most mundane things. Little lies expose bigger ones, especially if they think you’re stupid.

‘Did you have any trouble with either of them?’ I asked. ‘Anything out of the ordinary? Secretive behaviour, anomalies in their working patterns?’

‘With Iskritska, no,’ said 237089. ‘I believe that despite his past, he was happy performing this legitimate function for us. According to the representative sample recordings of his behaviour lodged in our datalooms, he bragged about his gang days, but had left them behind him. He was content. That is the nature of all sound components, to be content with good function. He performed well within the mechanism of this manufactory. Pluon Felpsko attempted, unsubtly, to encourage us to bribe him for more expeditious export of the finished units. I threatened to expose him to his masters. He became pliant thereafter.’

That kind of thing wasn’t unusual. In a system like ours, where rewards are thin and work is hard, everyone’s on the lookout for a little more. Often, it’s the only way to survive.

‘Tell me, lord genetor, why you gave them such expensive servitor units,’ Lux asked.

‘As reward. They are manufactured here,’ said the genetor. ‘To us, though they have a large monetary value, providing them as gifts to valued associates carries only a small material cost at source, and is accounted for in our financial projections.’

‘It keeps your costs down, paying them in kind.’

‘Exactly.’

‘And let me guess,’ I said, ‘they received these units as special gifts just before Chen-Chen went missing.’

‘Your supposition is correct. Three weeks before. Chen-Chen must have become aware of the payment and performed his sabotage. Now, if you have no other questions, my time is valuable to me.’

‘Just a minute,’ I said. ‘Can we get a list of the units Chen-Chen produced over the last few months? He may have planned more murders. We should track down all of his works before they go rogue.’

‘We would also like to speak with his direct supervisor,’ said Lux. ‘He may have some insight into Chen-Chen Zifo Sigma’s location.’

Genetor 237089’s false face began to shrink. The spheres were rolling back into the walls, although as it diminished, the effigy kept its shape.

‘Flesh-Tech Superior Andus will speak with you. He will provide you with the data you require.’ Archmagos 237089’s face was now only a few times bigger than a normal man’s, and vanishing quickly. ‘Solve this crime swiftly. I will brook no embarrassment to this facility. The reputation of Zeria Plantis must remain intact, or I shall hold you personally responsible, Procurator Rho-1 Lux.’

‘How is it our fault, if your staff go rogue?’ I said.

There was only a mouth left now, no larger than my own.

‘And who is Letorian?’

The spheres paused for a fraction of a second.

‘That name means nothing to me,’ the mouth said. ‘This interview is over.’ The last of the steel balls ran back towards the wall, spread out and vanished into the holes. The shifting lights on the metal folds froze and dimmed.

The rasping quietened to nothing.

‘Nice fellow,’ I said, trying to ignore Selvelt’s skull. It was just hanging there at the edge of my vision, staring at me.

Lux scowled at me. I grinned at her.

‘It takes more than a giant face made out of balls to intimidate me,’ I said.

The door opened. Djelling came in, wringing his hands and bobbing obsequiously.

‘If you would please follow me, I can show you to Flesh-Tech Superior Andus.’

Lux went out first. I looked over the walls of the genetor’s room. We were actually inside the genetor, I saw. All was quiet. The sense of energy on the air was ebbing.

Djelling caught my arm as I passed him.

‘I apologise in advance if you witness things that may disturb you,’ he said.

‘Why?’ I asked.

He looked uncomfortable. ‘We must cross over the manufactory floor.’

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

A master of flesh and steel

Djelling led us back down the rich corridor, onto another corridor, and to a door inset with a round of green glass. The skulls trailed us.

‘The manufacturing floor,’ Djelling said. He put his hand to a palm lock, and the door opened.

The cold smell hit me like a brick. Like a meat store, where astringents can’t hide the smell of incipient rot. There were notes of faeces to go with the blood and decay.

The sound was the worst. Shouting, screaming, praying, weeping, all the cries of human terror and misery.

I’m not a squeamish man, and nor do I spare tears for those who deserve punishment, but what I saw in that processorium haunts me still.

Naked human beings were standing in a switchbacked line between high fences. Outside the fences Adeptus Mechanicus menials in environment suits stood guard with shock goads in hand. The people, all mature men and women, were shepherded down the caged walk like livestock. And they were food beasts being led to the slaughter, meat for the ravenous appetite of the Machine-God. I grew up lucky enough to eat real meat. I was unlucky enough to see where it came from – another gift of my father on another damn tour of my family’s various businesses. The manufactorum produced servitors, but it was more akin to an abattoir than a workshop. Every surface was easily cleanable. Large plastek flaps divided areas from each other. Servitors with spray units surgically attached to their backs prowled about, hosing filth into slit drains set into the perfectly smooth, slanted floors. We walked above all this, past sentry pods on spikes occupied by galvanic rifle-armed snipers. Our path went from one end of the hall to the other, and I could see pretty much the whole sorting process, beginning to end.

As the line slowly advanced, the people were passed through various scanning devices, most of them mounted in ugly, functional arches that let out a constant series of acceptance chimes. Occasionally, one would let out an angry blare, and the indicator lumens would flash red. The rejected person was then swallowed up by a trapdoor opening beneath their feet. From these pits wafted a hideous stench, and the grinding sounds of industrial mincers. One rejected man grabbed on to the lip and hung there, arms and hands bloodied, shouting a stream of defiant profanities. Guards lined the grating either side of him and shocked him until he fell. The adepts wouldn’t even waste bullets on these people.

The trapdoor flipped up, and the next terrified person was ushered forward.

A number of pneumatic gates separated the people from each part of the process, snapping open and shut with bone-crushing force.

Violent metal arms snatched them up and spread-eagled them in the air, and a servitor shearer shaved them all over. At another they were subjected to a high-pressure counterseptic wash whose chemical stink made me choke from a hundred feet away. More scanners, more rejects winnowed out. Machines forcibly dressed them in the heavy rubberised garments common to all mono-tasked servitors. These were saggy on them, all one size, until another process force-shrank them to fit their bodies where metal cuffs, sockets and collars bit into vulnerable flesh. The last few prayers gave way to screams at that point, and even the most stoic shouted in pain. They were ushered over a floor buzzing with power that made them shriek with every footstep.

‘What’s that for?’ I asked.

Djelling answered only reluctantly. ‘Follicular inhibitor. To stop their hair growing,’ he said.

‘How?’ I asked.

Djelling was done answering. ‘Come, come, this way.’ He waved me over to a door.

I didn’t come this way. I watched numbly. The shivering lines of terrified men and women reached a final series of gates, where a high-energy augur beam of such potency it made my dataslate buzz passed over them. Dazed, they were manhandled into different queues, and then hustled from the room to their fates.

Djelling gripped my elbow with surprising strength and pushed me out of the hall.

‘This way. Please,’ he said.

Thankfully, I was spared a view of the surgeries. I doubted the Adeptus Mechanicus provided anaesthetic, for the same reasons they would not dull the pain of a nail under the hammer.

Djelling left us outside an oily door and withdrew hurriedly to another odd little cavity. My reaction to the sorting room had upset his balance, and he was eager to closet himself away.

Flesh-Tech Superior Andus came out from the artisanal workshop and gave us the usual obsequities. I didn’t like him. He was an awkward character, gangly but stooped, making him tall and short at the same time. He had the air of a machine only partly activated, and that the right stimulus would have him unfold to intimidating height. Though nervous, he was unable to hide his irritation at our presence. He had his hood back, showing an ageing face with short, stubbly hair turning from black to grey. A large, square augmetic ran from his occiput to his left eye, widening his head to almost double its original breadth. Neck reinforcements to keep his head level similarly broadened his neck. The front of his augmetic possessed a triple-lensed false eye. Every time he scowled, which was with every other word, the lenses rotated. Both his arms were augmetic, his legs too, I think.

‘Chen-Chen’s station,’ Lux said. ‘Take us there.’

‘His divining berth is this way. We have separate areas for machining and surgical work.’

‘The divining berth will do to begin with,’ I said.

‘If you’ll follow me.’ He led us through the door. Selvelt’s spy skull followed us.

There were a few other tech-priests at work. They were very quiet, each absorbed in their own world. But most of the workstations were empty.

‘Where is everyone today?’ I asked.

‘Contemplating the higher mysteries,’ Andus said, as if that explained it all.

‘And that means…?’ I prompted.

‘They are praying. Our work here is an act of worship. Meditation is important to what we do.’

‘Convenient it is happening now,’ I said.

‘It is nothing out of the ordinary,’ Andus said.

‘I will remotely interview them all,’ said Lux.

‘As you wish,’ said Andus. He stopped. ‘This is Flesh-Tech Chen-Chen Zifo Sigma’s primary place of worship.’

He meant Chen-Chen’s desk. It was scrupulously clean.

Someone was planning to leave, I thought, taking in the neatly arrayed ink pencils and tightly rolled, blank parchments waiting for consultation in their pigeon holes. A cogitator unit regarded us with a single vid lens, a sharp green light behind the glass showing it was active. A cluster of grey screens hung on drooping gimbals. We weren’t going to find much there, I could see that straight away.

Lux plugged herself into a port set into the top of Chen-Chen’s desk. The screens came on, but she killed them so Andus didn’t get a look at what she was doing.

‘Sit down,’ I told Andus. He’d been hovering over us the whole time. Lux needed to crack Chen-Chen’s cogitator, and if that had been my job, Andus’ constant peering and fidgeting would have annoyed the life out of me.

I pointed to a chair away from Lux. Andus sat in it. I leaned against an empty desk.

I looked around, half an eye on the flesh-tech.

The department was a quiet place, poorly lit by flickering screens. These displayed images of servitors mostly, supplemented by paper blueprints held up by magnetic blocks. Aside from Chen-Chen’s desk, the divining area was a mess, every desk covered in piles of papers, some obviously ancient, and scrying tools. The workbenches beyond the design stations were as much in disarray, being cluttered with the components of half-assembled bionics. That was only half the space. The other was occupied by a large operating theatre separated from the machine shop by a tall glass wall. It couldn’t have been more different. Twelve operating tables were arranged in a circle with the feet pointing inwards. Auto-chirurgeons hung with their dead spider legs pulled in. It was brightly lit, spotlessly clean, and free of clutter. Two different worlds side by side, like Nearsteel and the Steelmound, Lux and me; like the two halves of the servitors expressed as rooms, an architecture of flesh and steel.

Presently, Lux came out of her machine rapture.

‘Nothing,’ she said. She retracted her datashunt back into her wrist. ‘It has been wiped clean.’

‘What did you expect from a criminal?’ Andus said sourly.

‘I don’t know, what did you expect?’ I said, throwing the question back at him. ‘Or maybe you did it to cover his tracks. Why don’t you tell us?’

Andus glared at us.

‘I’ve done nothing but dedicate myself to the glory of the Machine-God. What business is it of mine if Chen-Chen slipped into poor modes of behaviour?’ he said.

‘As his superior, you are culpable under the Lore,’ Lux said.

‘I didn’t have anything to do with his crimes,’ Andus said. He laced metal hands together. The workings were exposed, and tiny pistons flicked back and forth as he moved his fingers. ‘Chen-Chen was a good flesh-tech, with a genuine connection to the artistries of biologia and mechanica, but he thought himself a great one. I did my part. I submitted two reports condemning him for minor modus unbecoming and other violations of the Lore. He was disciplined. But though he was arrogant, he was valued.’

‘Who by?’ I asked.

‘Who do you think? The Cybertheurge Archmagos Genetor 237089 had him marked out as a favourite. That gave him ideas well above his ability.’

‘Cybertheurge Archmagos Genetor 237089 told us Chen-Chen was passed over for elevation to the higher mysteries,’ Lux said. ‘Why would he say that if he thought Chen-Chen was a superior artisan?’

‘That I could not tell you, madame procurator,’ said Andus.

‘Try,’ I said.

‘Archmagos 237089 overuses blandishment to exert his will. He praises when no praise is due. It fuels the ego furnaces of my minions. It makes my life hard.’

No love lost there, then. I made a show of consulting my dataslate. ‘Chen-Chen designed and built Alpha-Plus-grade servitor units. What does that mean exactly?’ I asked.

Andus looked at me like I was mentally subnormal. Click-whirr, the lenses shifted.

‘Most humanoid servitors are specifically created to perform a limited number of tasks. Usually only one. They are mono-tasked, you have heard the phrase?’

‘Sure,’ I said with a shrug.

‘An Alpha-Plus servitor is capable of much more.’ He became almost enthusiastic. ‘They retain organic learning potential alongside their inbuilt programming, and have a personality of sorts. Strictly a facsimile, you understand. Their original is stripped from them.’

‘Then they are aware of their status?’ I asked. Lux had told me most of this. The answer was no. She could see what I was doing, and kept quiet.

‘No, that would be impossible. They are mind-wiped,’ said Andus. ‘They retain higher functions, and in truth have only a limited capacity for autonomy. The balance between sentience and adaptive non-sentience is very fine, hard to build, and easy to get wrong, but we have this skill here. Demonstrating that is our holy purpose.’

‘Who buys these things?’

Andus looked at me imperiously. ‘What do I care for the grubby business of commerce? That is not my purview. I do my worship through acts of creation.’

‘You know. Just tell us,’ I said.

‘Many of them are specifically designed for their owners,’ he said. ‘Some are destined for great service with high agents of the Imperium, including the Inquisition. Those with such fates should be proud, and we tell them before they are converted. It brings them comfort.’

Having seen the selection process, I doubted anything would bring them comfort. Besides, the majority would end up with rich men and women as under-utilised toys.

‘Doesn’t that mean Chen-Chen may have had a point? If he could make such good units, I mean, perhaps he was undervalued by you, and the cybertheurge archmagos genetor was correct.’

Another glare. Click-whirr. ‘Compared to a lowly mono-tasker flesh-tech, I concede that Chen-Chen was an artist. But he was here, in this room, where he was the colleague of many flesh-techs,’ Andus said. He waved a clicking metal hand around him. ‘Here we have some of the very finest cybertheurgians operating in this enclave. Do you understand, probator, the skill that our vocation requires? In terms of the general populace of this enclave, Chen-Chen was skilled, but among such technologists as work for me, he was a junior member of the fraternity. Although I admit he showed promise, his arrogance got the better of him before he could truly shine. He asked for too much, and he has fallen from the Machine-God’s Grace because of it.’

‘Why?’ I asked.

‘It is our role as flesh-techs to take the most complex creation of the Machine-God, the human brain, and to bastardise it with our imperfect understanding. To the oldest variants of the Cult, this was seen as blasphemy. But the Machine-God gave us this resource so that we might comprehend his purpose more clearly. We tread the line between outrage and perfection daily. It is a knife-edge ridge. Our eyes must be ahead at all times, lest we fall. Evidently, Chen-Chen could not do this.’ He clenched his fists. ‘So he fell.’

‘If you think you’re messing up your god’s work, why do you do it?’ I asked. I was genuinely curious. Servitors aren’t exactly common in the city, but it’s a rare day you don’t see one. As a rich little princeling, I’d been surrounded by them my entire life. Suddenly, I wanted to know.

‘Ours is a complex society. The machines that your lives rely on are many, and you are entirely ignorant of them,’ said Andus. ‘The compact between Mars and Terra puts great responsibility on our shoulders, yet we do our service willingly for He who is the Omnissiah upon the Throne. But we cannot be everywhere at once. Servitors ensure that your sewers flow, your food is grown, your aircraft are maintained, that you have air to breathe. With a coterie of servitors, a magos may perform the work of a hundred Cult acolytes. Without them, you would see nothing but decay and failure. We use the human mind because it is adaptable, and sophisticated. The use of human components is time-honoured and sanctioned by the Emperor, whereas the minds man might construct himself are blasphemous.’

‘Beware the evils of the Silica Animus,’ said Lux.

Andus nodded. ‘A truly artificial mind is a dangerous thing. They are soulless. By providing us with malcontents and broken humans, and giving instruction through the wisdom of ages past handed down to us, the Machine-God shows us the way. Some hold that he waits for the time when we have rediscovered true mastery, and can produce a machine that has not only a mind, but a soul. Until that time comes, we do what we can, and we do it with your cast-offs, probator.’ He crossed his arms. A defiant expression settled on the organics of his face.

‘I see,’ I said. He’d told us all he was going to. You get a feeling for these things. ‘If you could provide us with a manifest of all Alpha-Plus-grade servitors manufactured here in the last three months, and arrange times for Procurator Lux to interview your other artisans, we will be on our way.’

He looked at Lux for support. ‘Surely this is excessive. This is sensitive data. Our clientele are private individuals. I am often baffled by your ways, probator, but I understand the people we conduct business with.’

‘I thought commerce was a grubby business?’

Andus glared at me.

‘The cybertheurge archmagos genetor agreed that you would comply with our request,’ said Lux.

‘I must protest,’ said Andus. He was sweaty. He was hiding something. ‘I must verify this information.’

‘There is no need,’ said Lux. ‘I am a member of the Collegiate Extremis. I have been assigned to this matter by the Ennearchy.’

Andus swallowed. Now he was shaken. ‘The Ennearchy?’

‘I operate with the authority of the nine who command all those of the Cult of Mars present upon this planet. I can and will compel you if necessary,’ she said. ‘Perform the data transfer now.’

Djelling was waiting for us in his hole in the wall. Whatever he’d been doing in there had calmed him a bit, and he was neither as jumpy as he had been when we left him, nor as wheedling as when we first met him. Because these fellows were all into each other’s heads, I thought the reason was that we hadn’t found anything.

The route out was suspiciously much shorter than the route in, leading me to believe I’d been deliberately shown the processing floor to disturb me. Well done there, it worked. I braced myself for the surgical rooms, but we avoided those. The smell came and went with the screams. We went down a boxy staircase, and out into a high, arched hall. Half of it was occupied by barred enclosures, holding pens. Each of these was inhabited by exactly twenty people.

Djelling marched past them without a glance. Thick-suited menials kept watch over the praying, weeping livestock, their shock goads held across their bodies. Given the kind of people imprisoned in the cages, they’d surely be called upon to break up the fights.

Shock goads.

I stopped.

I approached one of the menials, my holo-seal still in my hand.

‘Can I see that?’ I said.

The menial nearly jumped out of his coveralls. A strange kind of terror passed over his face. He stared dumbly at me. Lux came to stand at my shoulder.

‘Procurator Rho-1 Lux. Collegiate Extremis planetary investigator,’ she said, data-blurting her credentials.

The menial bowed his head, put his goad into the crook of his arm and made a circle of his hands, in representation of a cog, I supposed.

‘What is your will, sagacious one?’ he asked submissively.

‘Allow my colleague to see your weapon,’ she said softly but firmly.

The man held out his goad, flat on his palms.

I picked it up. The last time I’d seen a maul like this, I’d been on the business end of it. It was heavy, the conducting prongs cruel as serpent’s teeth. A wire spiralled into a power pack at his hip, and there was a hook halfway down the shaft so it could be hung on a belt. I’d seen that make before, when it was being shoved into my ribs by Marchenstka’s hired thugs.

What was the connection there?

Pale leather bound the grip. I hazarded a guess where that came from, and decided not to touch it.

‘Who manufactures these?’ I asked.

Djelling had noticed by now that we had stopped and came hustling back. His manner returned to nervousness.

‘My lord…’ the menial began, unsure. Djelling answered him.

‘We manufacture the goads here,’ he said. ‘It provides greater efficiency if we create some of the tools we use here, in the facility. Naturally, we are dependent on other manufactories for the larger machines and devices, but items like these are perfectly within our capabilities to assemble.’

‘Do you sell or exchange this particular model with the greater city?’ I asked. ‘They may be useful for our work, and I have not seen this model in our district armoury.’

‘No, the returns on selling these devices are too low to warrant investing the effort in commercialising their production. They are purely for our own use.’

‘A pity,’ I said. I gave the goad back.

Djelling held out his hand again. He was forever showing us which way to go. ‘If you will, probator, procurator.’

We proceeded down the cages. I looked into them. One of the occupants saw me and stood up suddenly.

‘Noctis?’ he said. He pushed his way past the others imprisoned with him. He gripped the bars and pressed his face as far through as he could. ‘Hey! Enforcer. Noctis! Noctis!’

I stopped, greatly discomfiting Djelling, and looked the man over. I didn’t recognise him at first.

‘Do I know you?’ I said.

‘Fucking right you do,’ he said. He gave me an ingratiating grin. ‘Alonzo Yetsin,’ he said. ‘Remember? You busted me for that skin ring last year. Got me good!’ He pointed to a bullet scar on his arm.

‘I remember,’ I said. I looked at his arm. ‘I was aiming for your heart. I don’t miss often.’

‘Old news,’ he said. ‘I was wondering, maybe we can make a deal. Get me out of here. I’ll go straight, turn informer. There’s a lot I held back. Get me out and I can help!’

He nodded agitatedly. He was terrified. I didn’t care. I hated skin men.

‘You made your choice,’ I said. ‘Your punishment is fit for your crime.’

I left him.

‘Noctis!’ he shouted desperately. ‘Noctis! We can strike a deal! You and me! Noctis, come back!’

I didn’t look back, which relieved Djelling. He continued to shout until I heard shock goads cracking and his shouts turned to swearing.

Djelling took us out of the facility and bade us farewell. He made it abundantly clear he was glad to be rid of us.

We made the journey back in silence. I accessed the dataveil as I had a number of people to talk to. Lux was engaged with her own kind over an internal link. Her flyer was prepped and ready to go, with a few servitors unhooking fuel feeds from the tanks as we came down onto the landing pad.

We got on board. Only then did Selvelt’s skull depart soundlessly from my side.

‘Lux,’ I said, when the ramp was safely closed.

‘A moment,’ she said. Her eyes stared off into the deep spaces of the machine world. ‘I am running a scan on the vessel.’

‘Sabotage?’

‘A possibility,’ she said.

She was thorough, for she only came out of her trance minutes later.

‘It is clean,’ she said.

‘Who do you think is working against you?’ I said.

‘I am suspicious,’ she said. ‘The testimonies of our interviewees today do not tally. It is probably not safe to discuss this here, even in my craft. We must wait.’ Lux must have been communing with her machine, because the engines started up.

‘I agree,’ I said. ‘Lux. Lux, look at me.’

She turned to face me, as did her attendant skull.

‘I know somewhere we can talk. I need a drink after that. You’re coming with me. I’m not going to take no for an answer this time.’

Macho groxshit. She could have shot me right there and got away with it, given how high her rank was. She didn’t have to say yes.

She hesitated, then gave a little nod. ‘I concur,’ she said. She looked tired, and that made her look more human. ‘I think I might need one too.’

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Noctis and Lux

The buildings facing the Steelmound are respectfully windowless, showing only sober metal and ferrocrete. They surround the Redway as sombre as magistrates handing out a capital sentence. Behind the blank facades it is another matter, because outside the Redway is one of Nearsteel’s most productive subdistricts, the commercia majoris, or Slate City as we call it unofficially. As the district’s industry has collapsed over the last few centuries, the commercia has become Nearsteel’s lifeblood, which is ironic when all the money comes in one way or another from the enclave, and it was that which sucked the life out of Nearsteel’s economy.

It wasn’t always like this. Before the Adeptus Mechanicus came, Nearsteel was a productive district. Now we’re dependent on the good graces of others. The rich got richer, of course, that’s why the enclave was permitted, but the poor, who cares about them?

Merchant-barons come from all over the city to ink parchment with the machine-priests. They don’t let many people into the Steelmound, but the Adeptus Mechanicus maintains several mercantile offices outside their spire to facilitate commercial negotiation. All are subject to district and city tithes, and though nominal, the deals involved are so large the income they generate is immense.

The commercia is a ring of expensive hab-rises containing places of recreation, saloons, cantinas and the famous Tempestan Hotel. By Nearsteel standards the Redway district is rich, and it is surrounded by a further, lesser ring of prosperity, where the impresarios and entrepreneurs who provide for the various men of business live. After that, the shanties and abandoned zones creep in. Every poor boy and girl wants to work in the commercia, where the lights are bright and there is a semblance of ease, but it’s a sham. Even close to the Redway there’s grinding poverty. Right beneath all this is the subterranean district of Chainward, dirt poor and getting poorer, and under that are the buried zones, the closest we’ve got to an underhive. Only a few thousand feet from some of the finest eateries in the whole city, children are starving to death.

That’s the Varangantuans for you, shit and gold lying in the same bed.

I took Lux to Exultatia, a bar on the four-hundredth floor of a short spire two streets back from the Redway. It likes to think itself as an exclusive place, as it is frequented by diplomats, higher officials and industrial magnates doing business with the Steelmound. It was middling to my rich man’s sensibilities, but ruinously expensive to the enforcer I’d become. Like everything else in my life, it was a compromise. You’ll have noticed I have money. I still get a familial stipend from the Dymaxion conglomerate, but I have to be careful sometimes. After giving ten thousand slates away, now was one of those times.

Even so close to the enclave, tech-priests of any sort were rare visitors to places like Exultatia, and Lux got a couple of inquiring looks. I put them off with discreet flashes of my holo-seal.

I was known at Exultatia – at several places in the commercia, actually. Their attitude to me veered between worshipful of who I was and scornful of who I’d chosen to be, but they were scared enough by both the rich man and the lawman that they kept up the usual oily patter well enough.

I paid for a private booth with a view down the Via Carnelian leading from the Redway. It ran up a little as it cleared the foothills. Where it met the horizon it cut a notch in the cityscape. Beyond that highpoint it began the long expressway down to the plains and the ocean, propped up on fat columns where the topography dropped off to keep the angle constant. It was the straight-down route, and I’d driven it on my way to see Gulfang. I liked that view. It reminded me there was a way out of Nearsteel.

I ordered us a bottle of ambrosian, a thick liqueur made on Kappa Veldt. Being off-world liquor, it was expensive, even by Exultatia’s standards. It’s made of some sort of insect secretion, sweet, full of sugar crystals that crunch pleasantly between the teeth. I guessed Lux might like it. If that seems overly confident or patronising, remember a good part of my education comprised assessing women for the purposes of match-making. Second-guessing such trivial preferences came naturally to me.

I activated the privacy field contained in my dataslate. It was nothing fancy, a basic conversation scrambler and vox-thief blocker. It was usually enough to keep the curious ignorant.

She detected it immediately and looked at me questioningly.

‘Better safe than sorry,’ I said.

She agreed.

I poured for us both into tall flute glasses of Mordian crystal. I might seem like a cynic, but it still amazes me when I think of things like that coming halfway across the galaxy. The drink glopped out of the bottle. On contact with the air it began to glow softly, a characteristic that the drink is famous for, and by her smile, it delighted Lux. Free of the Steelmound, she was evidencing what I regarded as more human behaviours again.

‘His Hand,’ I said, and saluted her with the glass.

She returned the gesture, and sipped at the drink. The look of pleasure on her face intensified. I smiled around my own glass. I remembered my first taste of ambrosian. The sugar fractured against the warmth of my tongue, making it tingle. It didn’t wash out the lingering taste of blood and shit. My whole body was contaminated by that, but it was a start.

‘It’s delicious. I’ve never had anything like this before,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’

‘You’re welcome,’ I said. ‘A lot of people hate me for my family’s money, so I like to use it for the good of others.’

She nodded. The mechanical blankness of her expressions before was gone. She appeared smaller then, too thin, swallowed up by her robes. She put her glass down and dipped her finger into the glowing drink, then put it to her lips. Funny, everyone who drinks ambrosian does that. It’s the light. It’s fascinating.

‘Can I ask you a question, Probator Noctis?’

‘Sure, but call me Symeon.’ I leaned back against the smooth, cream leather of the couch. I felt grubby in my long coat and hat, especially after the servitor plant. My gun was on full display. I could see the other patrons looking at me. They were wondering what we were doing there. What we were talking about. Let them.

‘Symeon,’ she said, trying it out for the first time, like the ambrosian. She made a little face and shrugged as if the name were passable.

Ambrosian is a powerful drink, like slipping into a warm bath with a head full of mood dulls. I looked west out of the window down the Via Carnelian.

‘If you look out at the right time from this spot, the sun sets in that cleft,’ I said, gesturing with my glass. ‘You can’t see it now, though,’ I added. ‘The rain.’

Drops spotted the glass. The lights of the traffic far beneath us winked in the gathering night, grinding along at less than walking pace. Not far from us, the road passed between two giant statues, four and fifty feet each if they were an inch. They must have been impressive once, but they’d been made on the cheap from rockcrete, and the decaying iron cores had fractured the surface, turning the faces into orange messes of corrosion. Sky traffic went a little quicker, but the airlanes were congested too, the flyers’ progress impeded by flocks of servo-skulls and cherubs, and priests in hover pulpits berating the people of the street for their sins.

She nodded in appreciation, or maybe just out of politeness. What do I know of what tech-priests think?

‘Who was that man?’ Lux asked. ‘The one in the holding pens.’

I grinned, a savage, reflexive jerk of the facial muscles. ‘I am sure you can find out easily enough.’

‘Machines are remarkable collators of data, but for a true perspective on any matter, one must return to the source material,’ she said, coming over all inhuman again; then she smiled warmly and it went away. ‘You must tell me, otherwise my data set will be incomplete. Human reaction. Human connection.’

I sipped some more of the drink. It fizzed all the way down into my gut, warming me from within. I half thought that if I looked down, I’d see my stomach aglow. I was getting giddy. I leaned forward, elbows on the table, and tried to stay serious.

‘Do you know what a skin ring is?’ I didn’t wait for her to answer. ‘Skin rings are trafficking groups. Prostitution mostly, some forced labour, particularly of abhumans. I hate them. They exploit the young and the poor, using their own hopes as bait. I’ll get you a job in Slate City, they’ll say, and that is true, but rather than a passable life as a hostel server, little Trazinia or Yulia will find herself locked in a joy-house until she gets old and is tossed onto the street. Skin runners like him…’ I shook my head. ‘Bad men.’ I suddenly couldn’t look her in the eye, but stared into the soft glow of my drink. ‘He’d condemned others to unending servitude. He was getting what was coming to him.’

‘I understand,’ she said. ‘What he did is terrible.’

I dipped my finger into the liquid and drew a glowing line with it across my hand. ‘Then can you tell me why it still doesn’t sit easily with me, what was going to happen to him?’

I looked up at her. She was staring at me intently.

‘Because you have a kind heart,’ she said.

‘You can judge things like that?’ I said.

‘As you pointed out earlier, we are still human.’

Growing uncomfortable with where the conversation was going, I finished my drink, reached for the bottle, and changed the subject.

‘What are we dealing with here?’ I said. ‘If this is Chen-Chen’s crime alone I’ll run around the Grand Basilica naked in contrition.’

She actually laughed.

‘I agree.’

‘Then what is the crime beyond Chen-Chen’s?’ I asked. ‘What kind of people are involved in this? That might help us.’ I looked at her earnestly. ‘I have an idea you might know.’

‘Cybertheurgy is a complex art,’ she said. ‘It attracts tech-priests from many subsects, unusually mixing organicists and mechanic artisans. It is a multidisciplinary vocation, being an intersection between the spirits of machines and the souls of humanity and therefore requiring knowledge of both.’ Again, coldly delivered, like a machine reading an encyclopaedia entry.

‘You’re all enhanced, so there must be billions of cybertheurgists.’

‘Not of the kind we are dealing with here,’ she said.

‘Hmmm.’ I filled up my glass. ‘Let’s look at this. Djelling was pleased and relieved when we left. He was worried what Andus might tell us, but whatever it was he could reveal, he probably didn’t. Then there’s the contradiction between Andus and the genetor. According to Andus, 237089 supported Chen-Chen, but when we spoke with the genetor, 237089 acted like he was nothing to him.’

‘That could be genuine,’ she said. ‘A magos of his rank will have hundreds of adepts working for him. We do not conduct our interpersonal relationships the same way you do. Andus did say Cybertheurge Archmagos Genetor 237089 manipulated his workforce emotionally.’

‘Even so, it struck me as odd,’ I said. ‘Andus is easier to judge. He was too quick to dismiss Chen-Chen’s work. He was lying. That bulky augmetic hid most of his expression, but I could read it. Chen-Chen was better than he said.’

‘Are you sure?’ said Lux. ‘I detected no change in his brain patterning suggestive of untruth.’

‘You were scanning him?’

‘I scan everyone,’ she said.

‘Right,’ I said. ‘So.’ I dipped my finger in the ambrosian again, and sucked the liquid up. ‘Are you scanning me?’

She gave me a small smile. ‘As they say, a lady does not speak her secrets.’ I don’t know if they do say that, but then I don’t suppose I know many ladies.

I mulled this over. ‘A man of his rank might be able to set his brain into certain…’ I hunted for the word.

‘Modes?’ suggested Lux.

‘Yeah, modes,’ I said.

‘Brain waves are not an expression of mental activity, they are mental activity. You cannot moderate them as you might your heartbeat or other functions.’

I pushed back off the table and slumped again. ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘He was lying. Say he could tune his mind, so he believed he was telling the truth, or he could mask your scanning. These things are possible.’

‘We are the Adeptus Mechanicus. Anything is possible, but I still do not hold with your hypothesis. He told you a lot. Tech-priests are close-mouthed. The accumulation of knowledge is the principal goal of us all. We do not share what we know lightly. Knowledge is a currency, social influence and political power to us. Indeed,’ she said, the silvering on her retinas flashing, ‘it troubles me how willing he was to tell you what he did.’

‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘I know. He glanced away when he was talking. He was sweating. He was nervous. He had all the tells.’ I lifted my augmetic hand. ‘He was lying. I’ll tell you something about people. The art of a good lie is to ensure it is partly true. A bad liar lies about everything. But a really good liar will bury his lies in mounds of truth. They’ll give you something valuable to mask what they don’t want you to know.’

‘Is that why you feigned ignorance about the processes and general informational topics you questioned him on?’ Lux asked me. ‘The information I sent you prior to our visit should have covered most of what you asked.’

‘Guilty as charged.’ I saluted her with my glass.

‘Then you were lying.’

‘I was.’

‘Then my own understanding of human nature suggests that you must be a good liar,’ she said.

I grinned around a mouthful of ambrosian. ‘Which only makes my opinion more valid. Set a thief to catch a thief. He was lying. I know it.’

‘Very well. Let us assume he was lying, and knew more than he intimated. That means 237089 and Andus are possibly implicated in something, as well as Chen-Chen.’

‘Djelling?’ I asked.

‘He’s an underling,’ she said. ‘No influence. He was nervous because of the impact on his master. Chaperoning us was a significant responsibility for one of his station.’

‘And Selvelt?’

‘He was doing his job. The Astynomia and the Collegiate Extremis are suspicious of one another, but I have worked with him many times, and he is an honourable man.’

‘You could have told me that before,’ I said.

‘I did not think it pertinent.’

‘I think we have to ask why they tried to cover up the murder in the first place. If we unravel that, and who did it, we’ll be on our way to solving this.’

She drank some more. ‘You are correct. The cover-up is the key. Poorly executed, it makes their guilt more apparent. Panic is a typically organic reaction,’ she said. ‘I suspect Djelling, acting on his own initiative, or someone of similar rank and augmetic attainment. That does not mean he is guilty of anything more. If it were him, then we must ask what would prompt such a level of fear?’

‘The flesh is weak,’ I said. ‘So you people are still human after all.’

She gave me a wry look. ‘As I have been trying to tell you,’ she said.

‘They’re all involved in this, somehow. Whether covering it up out of embarrassment or because they have something worse to hide…’ I let my sentence trail off. ‘Can you speak with Djelling again?’

‘I will,’ she said. ‘It should be a relatively easy matter to make him talk. But the principal effort must be directed towards finding Chen-Chen,’ she added.

‘I have my people working on that,’ I said.

‘This may be dangerous for us.’

‘There are slates involved in this,’ I said. ‘Where there’s slates, there’s always blood.’

‘You were rich. Why did you leave your home?’ she asked, quite without warning.

‘You’re asking because my family has wealth?’

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘A lot of blood there,’ I said. ‘There are other reasons. My father’s a mean bastard. My mother maintains a strictly professional relationship with the world.’

She raised an eyebrow.

‘She’s not what you’d call loving. I don’t get on with people with more slates than sense. There are some sensible people up in the high spires, but a whole lot more slates. They’re intoxicated by wealth. I couldn’t stand it any more. I wanted to make a difference.’

‘But you left,’ she said.

‘Yes, I did.’

She frowned. It was bothering me how attractive I found her. It had been a long time since I’d had a relationship with anyone outside of work. Emperor, this had been a strange few days. I put it down to the drink. Ambrosian can get you into a lot of trouble.

‘Logic dictates that a system is more easily changed from the inside,’ she said. ‘Being outside of the organisation you wish to alter negates much of the efficacy of whatever action the agent of change makes.’

‘You mean, if I’d stayed put I could have used my immense wealth and influence to change the way the world is, rather than saving dredges who’ll die anyway?’ I said.

‘I did not mean to be so reductive, or offensive, but–’

‘I’ll tell you why,’ I interrupted. The ambrosian was really beginning to bite. It has a sweet flavour but bitterly sharp teeth, and my perception of the world was twisting out of true. ‘You’re a member of the Cult Mechanicus, so tell me, is the direction of the groundcar changed by the wishes of one of its body panels?’

‘No,’ she said.

‘That’s why I left.’

She stared at me for a long time. Her silvered eyes seemed to pull me in, a sensation only broken when she blinked. ‘You are withholding information,’ she said.

‘Stop scanning me,’ I said. I slugged back more of the gloopy drink.

‘I am not scanning you. I can see it in your face.’ She sipped at her own glass. She drank like a normal person, savouring the flavour, licking the residue off her lip. She didn’t fit my preconceptions of what a machine-priest was at all. Maybe I was prejudiced.

‘We are all accumulations of experience,’ she said. ‘Repeated exposure to certain stimuli permanently shapes us. However, there is often an instigating incident, a single occurrence more powerful than others that acts upon previously gathered experience to trigger a mental cascade, that then precipitates action. What was the deciding moment for you?’

I thought of the frightened pleas of an old man. The laughs of drunken youths. The crunch of a shoe worth more than the man’s house, family and life combined kicking in his teeth. I thought of Aleitha, half-abandoned by me while I looked for answers at the bottoms of bottles, and deciding she’d had enough of me, of you, and ultimately life itself.

I thought of you. I thought of what my father did when I was away, feeling sorry for myself.

‘I don’t like to talk about it,’ I said.

‘I shall respect that,’ she said, some of her forced, distant manner returning.

‘What’s your story?’ I asked.

‘You like that phrase. Why?’

‘Everyone is a kind of story that they tell themselves,’ I replied.

‘They are,’ she said. She seemed pleased, like she thought the same way.

‘The way I see it, the job of people like us is to figure out what happened before, and guess how it’s going to end. It’s just like reading a book, or a piece of dramaturgy.’

She smiled for real now. ‘You sound like my mother.’

‘You had a mother?’

‘I had a mother.’

‘You’re unusual, aren’t you?’ I said. ‘How many converts to the machine faith are there?’

She tilted her head, a gesture I’d come to understand meant she was accessing informational space. ‘In Nearsteel and the Steelmound, four hundred and forty-two. In Varangantua, eighty-six thousand, five hundred and six. On Alecto, eight hundred thousand plus, precise figure unavailable.’

There are billions of people on Alecto.

‘Then the answer is not very many,’ I said.

‘Yes. Not many. The sect that recruited my family is small. The Cult Mechanicus is self-contained. They believe themselves to be the chosen of their god, so why should they seek out others? The Sect Missionarius Mechanicus is unusual.’

‘Is it frowned upon? Are you frowned upon, being an outsider?’

She tilted her head equivocally.

‘I can guess it isn’t easy to get accepted. Being an enforcer of the Lex is not a popular role.’

‘What is the correlation between these two facts?’ she said. Her tone was harsher; she knew what I was driving at.

‘Unpopular outsiders often end up taking law jobs,’ I said. ‘There’s a modicum of power in it for the power hungry, a modicum of safety in it for the scared, a way to serve for those with something to prove.’

‘Which one are you?’ she said.

‘All of the above,’ I said. I finished my second glass. My head should have been full of warm, fuzzy feelings. I couldn’t work out why I felt so bitter.

‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘I have a sense of duty, like you. Enforcer work provides a broad knowledge base, biology, forensics, psychology, and the course of my investigations brings me into contact with many fields of technological study. I will not be performing this role forever. We of the Adeptus Mechanicus often pass through several roles before settling on our magos specialisation.’

The more she drank, the more human she seemed, but then she’d do something like quote the exact number of AdMech converts at me, or a look of blankness would take hold of her face, and that would throw me. Talk about mixed signals.

‘Does it matter why I am the way I am, or why I do what I do?’ she said. ‘The important part of any process is the conclusion. Our lives are hypotheses until they are run. Only then can the sum of our life’s work be calculated, and our value to the Machine-God be ascribed.’

‘I don’t know what you mean, but we get the bad guys,’ I said. I raised my glass. She surprised me by knocking hers against it and downing her ambrosian. She held it out for more. I obliged.

‘Your turn to answer some questions,’ I said.

‘Proceed,’ she said.

‘What is the Collegiate Extremis?’ I asked.

‘Roughly,’ she said, ‘it is the equivalent of the Adeptus Arbites.’

‘You are not part of the Astynomia, that much I know.’

‘We are not,’ she said.

‘Then what are you doing on this case?’ I said. I sat up a little straighter. ‘The Arbites would never touch anything like this.’ I wasn’t becoming suspicious, though I had more than enough reason to be. I was more curious.

‘Our duties cross over more into the realm of the day-to-day than the Imperial judges’,’ she said. ‘The higher ranks are concerned with great crimes against the Lore, but I am a planetary investigator, assigned to a single world. I am given tasks according to the wishes of the Ennearchy, the nine magi who run what you call the Steelmound and the other enclaves here on Alecto in the name of Zhao-Arkhad.’

‘That still sounds like a big deal to me,’ I said. I put my drink down, and turned so I was facing her fully. ‘I think it’s time you told me exactly what’s going on here.’

She rotated her own glass around on the little cushion of frictionless moisture gathered underneath it. Beneath the silvery tracing of her enhancements, she had very pretty hands, I thought. My own augmetic twitched. I hated my metal arm, it never really felt part of me. Sometimes I imagined that it had its own, dissenting mind. I had nightmares about its malevolent spirit displacing my own. Yet the Adeptus Mechanicus embraced their replacements. They welcomed them. They mutilated themselves in order to take them. Why do they do these things to themselves? I wondered.

The flesh is weak.

‘I believe we are investigating the crime of tech heresy,’ she said. ‘The level of awareness the servitors retain is beyond what is permitted.’

‘Seriously? You’re telling me that now?’ I said.

She looked at me plainly. ‘You did not need to know.’

‘And now I do?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘In regard to your investigation it makes no difference.’

‘Then why tell me?’

She looked at her glass.

‘I like you,’ she said. ‘I don’t know why. I do not meet many people who accept me. Either for my work, or for who I am.’

I didn’t know what to say. I get uncomfortable with this kind of thing. There was a pause, the feeling of an important moment passing, and her manner changed again.

‘Chen-Chen is a heretek. Perhaps the cybertheurge archmagos genetor too.’

‘He’s a rogue tech-priest like your friend?’

‘Not like my friend,’ she said. ‘Through punishment, he atoned for his sins. This is different. A bad element operating in a facility like Zeria Plantis can corrupt the entire system.’

‘Great,’ I said. My mood had soured. ‘And you’ve known this from the beginning.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I was assigned only because of the high visibility of the initial murder. It was obviously something strange, and if it wasn’t, the Ennearchy wanted it dealt with quickly, for the same reasons your superiors want this dealt with quickly.’

‘Trade,’ I said. ‘Then you’re not here because of the murders. You’re here because someone is misusing technology.’ I shook my head. I don’t know why.

‘Yes. That is the paramount concern. But yours is the deaths. Your investment in the loss of human life is most unusual,’ she said.

‘Someone has to care,’ I said.

‘Even about someone like Iskritska, or the skin runner?’

‘Let me tell you about Iskritska,’ I said. ‘You see that road, the Via Carnelian?’ I pointed a metal finger out at the rain. ‘Iskritska was born at Baddrop, just past that notch in the city. It’s a slum on the edge of the district, where the foothills drop towards the plain. It’s a miserable shanty built of contaminated scrap dragged from an old fissile genetorium under the expressway. It’s radioactive as hell. Most people don’t live out past their thirtieth year there. He was orphaned at the age of six. Indentured to a gang aged seven, put out to work, begging, thieving and worse. By fourteen he’d killed his first man. By nineteen he was head of a vicious black market racket dealing in foodstuffs that were barely fit to eat. One time the district had him under surveillance, and he boasted he’d killed twenty men.’

‘You think he deserved to die then.’

‘No!’ I said. ‘That’s exactly the opposite of my point. He sounds like a bad man, but did he have any choice? If I had been born into that pit, would I have been better? Would I have even survived? The food he sold was inedible, but there was nothing else to eat. People like him mean other people, weaker people, don’t die. The people nobody look out for, and he’s one of them. People who are no different to you or to me. He might have been a shit, but that wasn’t his fault. Now he’s dead, and that wasn’t his fault either. The least I can do is find out why.’

I reached for the ambrosian. I was tired, and my augmetic was shaking from biochemical feedback. It would only stop once I’d slept and my body had had the chance to clear out expended carrier proteins. Despite what the tech-priests say, augmetics aren’t as good as what you’re born with. The neck of the bottle rattled on the glass. Lux gripped my wrist to steady it. The pseudo-haptics in the metal told me she had warm, soft skin.

I’d never had sensation that clear through my augment before.

‘Tech heresy is the greatest crime in our Lore,’ she said. ‘We pursue it ruthlessly.’ She gently tipped my hand. Sluggish ambrosian surged into my glass, and the glow of its agitated molecules lit up our faces. ‘But I frown on murder too.’

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Chen-Chen Zifo Sigma discovered

My dataslate was blaring. I woke up with my mouth furry from ambrosian and my head furry with felid. I panicked at the dead weight on my face, and shoved. Shebeena scrambled away in a flurry of claws. My efforts tipped me off the couch after her, and I hit the floor with distinctly less grace. I staggered up, still half-drunk. I clamped a hand to my stinging cheek. Felid scratches are dirty and itch like bastards. I needed to clean it out, but first I had to answer the call.

Priority call was displayed across the screen.

‘Answer,’ I said. My voice was croakier than a penitent sinner on his nine-hundredth hosanna, and I had to repeat myself before the dataslate accepted it was me.

Hondus’ face resolved itself. He was soft and grainy, suggesting some kind of signal suppression. He didn’t look much better than me.

‘Symeon.’ He squinted out of the small screen like an ogryn peering through a letter slit. ‘Symeon, I can hardly see you. Why aren’t you connected to the dataveil?’

‘I turned it off.’

‘Don’t,’ he said.

‘I’m here, aren’t I?’ I said.

‘I can hear you at le…’ His voice turned into a cascade of static. His image froze and split into an artefacted mess. ‘We’ve this place on lockdown. Outward datapulse is affected. I called to say we’ve got your man. Can you hear me?’

‘What?’

‘We’ve got him! Chen-Chen Zifo Sigma. Borostin tracked him down. He’s… holed up. It’s …ting messy.’ Hondus was in the back of a Bulwark transporter. The door was open. The scene outside was dark, a bright searchlight swept by. Blurred shapes ran past.

‘I’ve sent you the location. Shouldn’t take you long.’

‘What’s going on out there?’ I said.

‘Hell is open, and the Nine Devils are loose,’ he said. I heard gunfire. ‘Get here quickly, or you’ll miss the fun.’

He cut the call.

‘Emperor’s Throne,’ I said, then, as I’d left no lights on and everything was indistinct in the second-hand glow of the city, ‘Lumens, on low!’

‘Compliance,’ my domicile’s machine-spirit said. It had the same disinterested monotone no matter the situation. I could be being murdered and it wouldn’t sound any different.

The lights came on.

‘Sainted primarchs,’ I said.

My hab-chamber looked like the holy war machine of Terra itself had staged a battle there.

It’d wait. I cleaned out the cut. The counterseptic stung worse than the scratch. I felt so weak, and sick. I had no idea how much ambrosian I’d drunk. I poured a handful of antitox tablets into a shaking hand and crunched them up. They tasted horrible, but they got into the system faster that way.

I called Lux but got no response. I sent her an audex script with the location appended.

It took me five minutes to find my shoe. I was lucky the felid hadn’t pissed in it.

He’d been hiding in the Downslope subdistrict all along. Practically on my doorstep. When I’d been in the basilica of the Merciful Emperor, he’d been less than three miles away. I sped out of the parking levels so fast the groundcar bounced on the lip, spraying sparks, and forced my way into the ever-present traffic. Sleet thumped onto the windscreen in sodden clumps. Horns blared at me. I flashed my lumens and blasted the clarions. The C-A projected a motile holo of the Enforcers’ badge in front of me, and I found the going easier. I got onto the main downward run towards the commercia and the Steelmound. The enclave rose in the distance, hazy in the downpour, lit up with self-importance as much as light.

I took a tight right turn down a side route, heading on switchbacks away from the wealthier part of the subdistrict. The tenements, almshouses and boarded-up factorums looming over the road blocked the Steelmound from my view, but I could still feel the damn thing, like it was stalking the city, looking for me, and when it found me it would kill me, or worse, I’d find myself on the Zeria Plantis processing floor.

I was sweating. My gut roiled. The tenements shrank from twenty storeys to ten, to three. The quality of construction got poorer, then I was into the shanty proper, a collection of domiciles built in repurposed buildings, or knocked together from collections of scrap. The street surface worsened, until there were more potholes than road. Gangs of children lobbed half-bricks at me from alleyways as I drove past. Shaking addicts staggered into my path. I passed a joy-house, every one of the smile-girls shivering under the awning showing the signs of pox.

There was an ugly mood on the streets back then. We were suffering from lack of supply. You’d never notice in the richer sectors, but food was running short with increasing regularity, and places like Downslope always starve first. I’d barely survived a food riot in Chainward subdistrict myself not long before.

The sleet was turning to fat flakes of snow when I got to the localis sceleris. They tumbled down but were whipped up again by thermals rising from heat exchangers, and sent confused back towards the sky. A Bulwark blocked the street, its dozer blade down and extended to its fullest extent so that it touched the buildings either side. That the wagon had its blades out would have told me there was something of a situation going on, even if Hondus had not, so I loosened my Finaliser in the holster when I stopped. I got out of the car and was hit by an icy, wet blast of wind. Downslope is one of the few places you could see the actual bedrock, and the mountainside reared up in front of me, tall and black where the stone was exposed, but most of it was covered in more small domiciles clinging to the face, their tumble of colour all grey and indistinct in the weather. The basilica’s towers could be seen peeking over the lip of the cliff, blind to the people suffering beneath it.

A sanctioner came out from a doorway, gun ready to shoot. More emerged from the other side. ‘Halt! Lex business. This area is closed. Turn around and…’ He put up his gun. ‘Oh, it’s you, Noctis.’

‘It’s me,’ I agreed. ‘Good to see you, Balthuis.’

Balthuis was in full kit, face hidden by helmet, visor and rebreather. Only his voice and the sergeant’s stripe down his shoulder armour clued me in to who it was. He waved his men back and they vanished into the buildings again.

‘They’re waiting for you,’ he said. He jerked his thumb past the Bulwark. Lights were flashing, and the falling snow was lit up by floodlights. ‘You’re too late. It’s all over.’

‘What about my suspect?’ I peered into his mirrored visor. I couldn’t see a thing through it.

Balthuis’ vox, clipped to his shoulder, let out a brief, incomprehensible squawk.

‘He’s dead,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘You heard.’ Balthuis waved a hand at the Bulwark, spinning his finger around. ‘Let him through!’ he shouted.

‘Did we get him?’ I felt frustrated, and I suspected Chen-Chen’s death was no accident, whoever had killed him.

‘You probators don’t tell me shit like that, Noctis.’

Hydraulics whined. One side of the Bulwark’s barricades retracted.

‘That way,’ said Balthuis unnecessarily, pointing at the scene of utter mayhem on the other side.

I saw the first body on the far side of the Bulwark. A man. The left arm had been torn off and the head reduced to a pulpy sack of broken bone and brain. A sanctioner stood guard over it while a priest wailed pleas to the Emperor to watch over the man’s soul.

The road opened out into a small square. A water fountain made of scrap and fed by a short aqueduct dominated the centre. There were more bodies strewn about the place, most of them badly mutilated. There were plenty of enforcers around, but no verispexes. There were medicae though, tending to wounded sanctioners, some of them sporting serious injuries.

I found Hondus. He was standing by the biggest corpse of all. A servitor, similar in design to the others from Zeria Plantis, lay on the ground on its side, hands and feet crossed as if it had tripped and knocked itself unconscious. Its organics were riddled with bullet holes and las-burns. The corpses of three sanctioners lay around it, their weapons shattered and armour broken.

‘Shit,’ I said.

‘Shit indeed. Your shit that I have to clean up,’ said Hondus.

‘What happened?’ I said.

‘Borostin lucked out. He tried to get hold of you, but you weren’t contactable.’

‘My dataslate was on,’ I said.

‘No response on the dataveil, though,’ said Hondus. ‘You know it’s supposed to be on. Why wasn’t it?’

‘You know why,’ I said quietly.

He nodded, slowly. ‘You and me are going to have to have a little talk about your drinking, my friend. I know you were in Exultatia with her, last night.’

‘Hondus–’

‘Save it. Let’s get this cleared up first. I’ll keep it from Illios, but I’m making no more promises than that. What a mess,’ he said. The snow was settling on the corpses. He shook his head. ‘Borostin!’ he called.

‘He’s here?’

‘See for yourself,’ said Hondus.

Borostin came out of the snowstorm, blinking. He hadn’t got over the surprise of being let out of his office.

‘Probator Noctis?’

‘You found him. Well done.’

Borostin looked even pastier and slight than he did on the vid-screen. He looked around at the bodies. He saw plenty of horrors at one remove, rarely for real. He was shaken up.

‘Not soon enough,’ he said.

‘What happened? How did you track Chen-Chen down?’

He looked at me distantly. ‘There was a braid of unusual data traffic coming from this subdistrict. He’d tried to hide it in the noospheric feed coming off High Watch, but at times of low data traffic, it was pretty obvious. I tried to call you, but–’

‘We’ve already been through that,’ said Hondus. ‘Borostin called it in. I gave the go-ahead. As soon as the first enforcer got on the scene this thing went berserk, smashed out of Chen-Chen’s building and killed all these poor bastards.’

‘Where’s Chen-Chen? Did you get him, or did someone else?’

Hondus gave a long, sombre look to Borostin, then swung his pouchy face at me.

‘Better come and see,’ he said.

He and Borostin led me through the square. Snow was settling everywhere, soaked red on slicks of blood. They took me to a building larger than the others. The door and door frame had been ripped out, and half the front wall had gone with it.

‘Watch this,’ said Hondus, sweeping his hand over the pile of rubble. There was a body to the side, the face punched into the back of the skull, and brain matter in globs all over the cobbles.

Borostin led us up a set of stairs. The first floor of the building was one large room, kitted out with the simple furniture of shanty dwellers. There were a few effects in there that were out of place, most notably a portable cogitator unit in a brushed-steel case, and a medium-output fuel cell.

‘He’s over there,’ said Hondus. Borostin stayed with the equipment. He was evidently in the middle of interrogating it, for a district-issue dataslate was hooked up to the cogitator. He sat on a dirty plastek crate with his back to the corner of the room. He didn’t want to see what was there.

‘See if you can find Lux. We need her here. She can help you,’ I added, not wanting to offend Borostin, who was proud of his abilities with machines, though he was no tech-priest. He nodded and began to make some calls.

‘Hey, Noctis,’ said Hondus impatiently. He wanted to be out of there. I went to join him.

I could smell the blood before I saw the body.

Chen-Chen was in the space between the bed and the wall. He was recognisable only by the servo-arm bonded to his shoulder, which I knew from his pict. The mechanism was outstretched, partly disarticulated, like a specimen laid out to view. The rest of him was a crushed mess of bloodied fabric and metal. His head, particularly, had received a lot of attention, having been battered flat. His chest was crushed, his arms and legs broken.

Taking care not to disturb anything, I crouched next to him and gave him a visual once over.

I pushed my hat back. Whoever had done this had been thorough. Smashing the skull in would stop us going through his memories, as I’d bet my last slate his memcore and any other useful augmetic would be thoroughly wrecked.

‘Ah, damn it,’ I said. ‘There’s nothing left to examine. It would take a genius to extract anything from that.’

‘He was your prime suspect,’ said Hondus. ‘Some might say that this means the case is over, for real this time. What a pity,’ he added guardedly.

I got up and picked my way carefully back across the room. I felt like shit.

‘Everyone wants this case to be shut,’ I said.

Hondus paused before speaking, low and slow.

‘Have you not thought that might be a good idea?’ he said.

I looked up at him sharply.

‘Have you got something to say?’ I said.

He stared at me, his face unreadable. I could hear Borostin talking in the background over the clatter of his runeboard. His cogitator made smalls chimes and bleeps.

‘Just tell me you’ve got a list of Chen-Chen’s machines. I want this over with,’ Hondus said eventually, speaking quietly so Borostin would not hear.

‘Not yet,’ I said. ‘We’re working on it.’

‘Work faster,’ said Hondus.

This wasn’t like Hondus. Someone was putting pressure on him. I looked at Chen-Chen’s wrecked corpse. What the hell was going on here?

Borostin’s vox was going off. He picked up.

‘Make sure this is kept clean,’ I said. ‘Maybe Lux can salvage something from the victim. Don’t let anyone touch anything before the verispexes get here.’

Hondus gave me another serious look. ‘Are you sure you want to go that far? This could be over.’

‘How so?’ I said, eyes narrowed.

‘Well, from one perspective, it looks to me like this coghead here was out for advantage, blackmailed his superiors, but tragically tampered with his own servitor. It went berserk, killed him. A fine example of the Emperor’s justice.’

‘We could make that stick?’

‘We could make that stick,’ he said meaningfully. ‘Case solved. You get to keep your job, we get to close the lid on this for good, once you’ve found the rest of his cyborgs, of course. It’ll go down as a strange case, perhaps with a couple of murders done after the prime suspect is dead. That’s it.’

It was attractive. It would save me, but it wouldn’t be the truth. I sucked air through my teeth.

‘How many people did that thing kill?’ I asked.

‘Six,’ said Hondus.

‘Then you know my answer.’

‘Symeon,’ Hondus said, dropping his voice lower. ‘Think about it. I know I put you onto this case, but it’s making me jittery. If you know what’s good for you, back off.’

‘Probators,’ Borostin interrupted. ‘I’ve been tracing Lux. Her communications are being blocked, but I’ve found multiple vid-feeds of her. She’s on mass-transit, with Djelling. She’s headed east, to Twelfth Subdistrict.’

‘Saint Verring?’ I said. That was a long way out. Another alarm bell.

He nodded.

‘What the hell is she doing out there?’ Hondus asked.

‘I don’t know, she was supposed to be questioning Djelling,’ I said. ‘I assumed she’d speak to him remotely, or go to the Steelmound, and not right away. I’ve no idea why she’d be heading out on a train with him now, nor why her communications would be blocked.’

‘I don’t like that,’ said Hondus.

‘Borostin, can you get an exact fix on her?’ I said.

‘Whatever is shrouding her isn’t affecting her servo-skull, I have a mark on that.’

‘Keep it locked on at all times.’

‘Do you think she’s in trouble?’ asked Hondus.

‘Throne, I don’t know. It could be nothing,’ I said. ‘But are you willing to risk harm coming to an AdMech Lex official, on top of everything?’

Hondus grumbled. ‘This is enough of a shitshow as it is,’ he said. ‘Borostin, get us air transport to Saint Verring. We’ll meet her off the train.’

‘I best take a sanctioner squad too,’ I said. ‘Just in case.’

Hondus worked his jaw thoughtfully. ‘This is going to kill my budget for the month,’ he said. ‘All right. I’m coming too.’

‘I’ve called in a Zurov. Air transport is on its way,’ Borostin said.

I made for the door. ‘Stay here, Borostin. Don’t let anyone touch that body or the servitor.’

Borostin looked up from his screen.

‘Do what he says,’ said Hondus.

Five minutes later, we were in the air, riding a black-liveried turbine gunship out towards the mountains.

I just hoped we were rushing for nothing.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Djelling’s testimony

Note: The following section of the document is a transliteralisation of Rho-1 Lux’s memories, taken by direct exload from her memcore.

It is Djelling himself that reaches out to me.

I put Noctis into his groundcar. He is virtually incoherent, and I command his vehicle to take him home. I tell him to take some antitox, but he is not listening. He is highly emotional.

He told me about his daughter, in the bar, before we left. He tries to embrace me before I push him into the rear seat of his car. My scans of his physiology suggest he may be developing a romantic interest in me. His pulse has quickened, and blood is moving to the surface of his skin. He is perspiring. I make him nervous. These signs are indicative of the initial stages of pair-bonding.

I do not know what to think of that. Sexual attraction is the greatest weakness of the flesh. But I like him.

He mumbles and tries to speak.

‘Goodnight, Symeon,’ I say.

This occurrence is wholly unanticipated.

As his vehicle departs, I flush my system through my internal augmetics. One of my kidneys has been replaced with a discreet, bioengineered upgrade that possesses comprehensive tox-screening capabilities. Using it makes me need to evacuate waste, but I am sober in moments.

It is a long time since I was drunk.

I think I enjoyed this evening.

I must meditate on this.

The time for my rest cycle has not yet come. I head through the commercia for the public transit hub that will take me back across the Redway to the enclave. The streets are full of humanity in its multifarious forms. The commercia of Nearsteel attracts people from all over the planet and beyond. I see human beings of every colour, shape and size. An ogryn shadows a rich merchant from the north. In the sea of people, the ogryn’s bulk is a living vessel, while hats and elaborate hairstyles are the crests of waves. A servitor gang in orange coveralls plods in a long line behind an enginseer. Rich men and women shout at the crowds from autorickshaws and palanquins scuttling on mechanical legs. Flocks of servo-skulls buzz by, mimicking the patterns of sky traffic high above the starscrapers. By the roadsides a constant stream of private groundcars stop and disgorge their occupants, heading up into the maze of walkways at every end of which are casinos, joy-houses, cantinas, tavernas and sundry dens of iniquity.

I take a stairway leading downward. It is monumental, hundreds of steps in length, hundreds of feet wide, made from fine off-world stone and decked with ostentatious artworks. Yet it is old, and dirty. Below is the transit station. There is one line that goes to the enclave, cutting through the poor under-district of Chainward.

The grand stair empties out into a large plaza, its once glorious paving cracked by subsidence, and a third of its perfect oval is hidden by a forest of rusty girders holding up the ceiling. I descend from there into the heaving nest of mankind beneath the streets. Stairways cross over each other in a shaft bored deep into the ground. The walls are covered in rippled calcium leached from the ’crete. Statues appear half-melted effigies of wax.

I step from one descending walkway to another. The air smells of hot oil, human grease, and dust blasts up from the deeps with the arrival of every translocomotive.

It is at that moment that I realise I am being followed. My servo-skull, Lukas, is above me, operating a surveillance pattern. I am not ignorant of the danger I am in. There are parties involved in this affair who would risk assaulting a member of the Collegiate Extremis. Money makes men reckless.

I remain facing forward. I give no indication I have noticed my tail. I switch half my attention to Lukas’ view, and the sights he sees fill a portion of my inner world.

The figure appears male, but that is no guarantee of truth, for there are many means of masking physical attributes. He is of the Cult. He is broadcasting a low-range baffle field, and Lukas cannot scan him. However, his gait is a match for Djelling’s.

I was going to summon him. Why is he following me now? He either wishes to talk to me, or he wishes me harm. Either way, he is going about it clumsily. He has not noticed he is being watched. I am certain now that our hypothesis that he was responsible for the cover-up of the first murder is accurate.

I have long practice in dividing my consciousness so, and continue my descent without misstep. I watch Djelling pushing his way through the throngs on the staircases. He is gaining on me. I realise I may be wrong. It may not be Djelling. I may be succumbing to paranoia. I test my theory when I reach a circular platform and purposefully take the wrong exit. Unhurriedly, he follows. I change routes again, then again, before taking an escalator back up. Through Lukas’ eyes I watch him pause. He realises, I think, that he has been spotted, but he does not hesitate, and follows. I am now sure he is following me. I also suppose that he is not intent on doing me harm, for he persists, even now he knows I am watching him. There are sanctioners in pairs stationed at three places I can see, watchful. One word to them, and he will die. I calculate he will catch up to me by the time I reach my transit tube.

I am now on the lower concourses. Arches lead off to platforms and stairs that go to more platforms. The clatter of the trains is constant. The air is hot and heavy.

I see no reason to obscure where I am going. I take a downward run of steps to the enclave platform. A heavy fretwork of iron bars the way in. Members of the Astynomia check the identities of all passing through. Non-Mechanicus travellers are siphoned off to the left and questioned at length. The attendant cyber-constructs of magi and standard human alike pass through a circular gate at the apex of the arch, where oily servo-skulls on articulated necks scan them through.

The Astynomia know me. They bow as they pass their scanning appendages over me. I pass onto the platform, and head for the end where golden paint marks out the place the superior carriages stop.

A train arrives, pushing a pillar of hot air in front of it. Doors open. Metal limbs clash on rockcrete as the passengers disembark. I am alone. There are few of high enough status to ride the superior carriages. I wait for my pursuer to reach me. Lukas is above my head, facing backwards. Djelling is coming through the gate.

The train departs, sucking air after it. My clothes ripple in the current. Djelling stands next to me.

A private message request blinks in my noosphere. I examine it for malicious code and infiltrative memes before allowing the channel to open.

Text scrolls across my mind’s eye.

Do not look at me, it says. It is Djelling.

Understood, I say.

I am in danger. My superiors do not like the way I handled the aftermath of Iskritska’s murder.

Then it was you who removed the vid from the interior of the enclave.

Affirmative, he says. I wished only to preserve the reputation of the Zeria Plantis. I miscalculated. Now, they are after me. When we get into the carriage, he says, I will switch to a direct tight-beam data link. It is more secure.

Another train rattles in. We board it, heading for seats near enough to each other that we can tightcast without obstruction. There is only one other occupant in the carriage: he is a theologis of the cult, a priest of machine-priests, one whose quest for knowledge takes him into theoretical metaphysics. He is absorbed by facsimiles of holy texts printed on plastek flimsies spread on the table in front of him. Three eye clusters on stalks read them simultaneously. He ignores us.

The carriage is a mix of Imperial and Mechanicus sensibilities. Half the carriage is taken up by booths. Small lamps adorned by crystals that tinkle and chime with every break of the rails sit on the tables.

The rest of the carriage is divided between bays for larger cult members, charging points and long benches. Djelling installs himself in a charging point. I sit on a bench near but not directly opposite him. Lukas nestles into an alcove provided for servo-skulls and connects to charge. I ward his programming to prevent unwanted ingress. I do not trust public facilities.

There is a chime in my inner spaces requesting direct tight-beam linkage. I shut down multiple gates leading into my deeper self and perform another hard interrogation of Djelling’s communication artifice, but it is as simple as I expect, and I let him in.

How did you get access to enclave security? I ask him.

I have access to the cybertheurge archmagos genetor’s codes, he says. He was furious with me for using them. He was furious with me for covering up the crime. I wished only to serve him.

Do you retain copies of the vid?

Please, he said. Have them.

Tight-beam is a quick manner of data transfer. In seconds I have the full collection of the enclave’s security vid-feeds for the day covering the place of the murder. I dedicate a portion of my consciousness to watching them.

Iskritska is leaving the enclave. His servitor plods behind him, mindlessly attentive. The view shifts. Iskritska heads past a checkpoint, where he is obliged to show his credentials. Data from the scanning and passing of these is provided alongside the feed. It is genuine. He was working for the Zeria Plantis.

They reach the end of a corridor. The view shifts again. They pass only one person, who does not acknowledge them. There is a sign pointing to a stairwell that will take him to the transit station. He is heading back into Varangantua.

They pass a sealed service door. The enclave is riddled with access tunnels that allow the servicing of its machineries. As soon as they move past, a change comes over the servitor. What is the trigger? Is it the door, which in moments it will use to exit the enclave, or the fact that they are alone?

The cyborg is only a pace behind its master. It need only reach out with its bionically enhanced arm and grasp him at the shoulder. The man’s head jerks sideways. The servitor lifts him bodily with one hand, the pistons attached to its leg augmetics preventing it from falling forward. The other hand comes up as the man struggles and kicks. The drill extends from its housing, and enters the man’s head. Iskritska jerks for a moment, then goes limp.

The servitor backs up three steps, and executes a perfect ninety-degree turn. It inserts a finger into an interface plug, and the door opens. It goes through. The door shuts.

The corridor is empty. There is no blood. There is no sign of the murder.

From here the unit took Iskritska into the Redway, says Djelling. I acted as soon as the murder was reported. I assumed it was a rogue servitor. It happens, more often than my superiors would like. It is part of my role to make sure such incidents do the plantis no harm.

The train rushes into the enclave’s transit hub. This is smaller and far more utilitarian than the one in the commercia.

I have what you need. The documents. The shipping details. It is Andus. He is responsible. I have proof.

I am not surprised. Noctis suspected him. It would be hard for him not to be aware of Chen-Chen’s actions.

Where? I ask him.

Follow me.

I am growing suspicious again, but he is personally no threat to me, and though there may be a trap here, it is baited with information I require.

I follow him.

We change trains twice, and head back out of the enclave. With his baffle still active I cannot observe the physiological changes in his body that might give me a clue as to whether he lies or is truthful. The tell-tale signs of mendacity are more easily concealed in our kind, and even in an unaltered subject there is no certain way of determining truth.

Still, it adds to my wariness.

The train pushes under the skin of Nearsteel, before emerging a dozen miles away into the open air. The track remains level. It is the ground that falls away, as the mountains slump down towards the plains through their mean foothills. The train rushes through a night of glaring neon. Advertisements and Imperial proclamations are projected onto the sky. A million bright signs cling to the building. The train alternately cleaves to the tops of lower buildings, using their summits as piers on its elevated track, then passes onto the hidden shoulders of the hills, where it rushes through the feet of the higher ranks of towers.

Abruptly, it turns east, and goes back into the stone. The track begins to climb. We travel for half an hour at a steady incline. Djelling is at pains to hide his route.

I decide then that we are heading to Saint Verring, Nearsteel’s most remote subdistrict; almost unique in its separation from the rest of the city, it is little more than an outpost on the far side of the mountains.

I am correct. The train bursts out of the stone on the eastern side of the Varangan peaks. It is pitch-black outside. There is a cluster of lights below to our left, the towers of Saint Verring, but they are an island in the night. I switch on my visual filters and glimpse the great barrens of the wastes far below. A rough road winds itself up from the deserts. This route is taken by the traders who dwell out there in the emptiness, and is the only way down. The rails terminate at Saint Verring. Further north, there are transcontinental railroads that link Varangantua to Alecto’s other great conurbations, but there are none this far south. Only a few hundred miles further towards the pole, the wastes blend into tundra stained black with promethium and lit by the flares of the extraction rigs.

I think on why Djelling has contacted me. Supposition one: Djelling has brought me here because he is afraid and he wishes to help resolve the investigatus. I do not believe this. Supposition two: he has brought me here because he is going to kill me.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Fusion beams at dawn

Note: The following section of the document is a transliteralisation of Rho-1 Lux’s memories, taken by direct exload from her memcore.

The train coasts to a squealing stop at Saint Verring’s terminal. The sun is coming up for its short procession across the winter sky. At this time of the year it hardly rises over the horizon. The distance between red orb and blasted ground will shrink rapidly as the season wanes. Alecto has a severe axial tilt. Winter nights are very long. In a few weeks, there will be only hours of sunlight. Only a little further south the days are entirely black, and remain so for months.

For now, there is sun. It is weak, but the skies on this side of the mountains are clear. The peaks wall in the pollution and smog Varangantua produces. Out here, I see the pink-grey of early morning skies; the stars are fading, but the lights of void craft and orbital facilities are strong, a shifting constellation of human effort. The lower craft and stations are lit by the coming sun, and seem overly real against the heavens, like paper cut-outs pasted onto a child’s ceiling.

The tracks branch and branch again into a hundred sidings. Wagons sit silently. They are rusted the same colour, tracks and trains both, as if all of a piece. Thin threads of silver gleam shockingly on the rail tops. Everything has the pink cast of dawn.

The train’s wheels squeal on iron. It jerks, then stops. Chimes sound. Djelling gets up.

Follow me, he tight-beams.

Lukas rises from his perch. We go downstairs to the carriage’s lower deck. It is hot there and smells unpleasant. The people within are poor. Some will be criminal. I am not concerned. None would dare touch me. You can never say for certain what weaponry a tech-priest is carrying.

The doors open with a chugging wheeze of pneumatics. Cold wind blasts in. The air is sharp and fresher than any I have experienced in a long time. My organics shiver. My skin goosebumps. I set my internal temperature higher to fight off the cold.

Djelling goes out. There are a dozen passenger platforms here. Saint Verring is a frontier town of barely half a million souls, only under the jurisdiction of Nearsteel because there is nobody else to govern it. Public facilities are grudgingly provided and poorly maintained. If it weren’t for the trade from the wastes, there would be none, and even then it is only the occasional archeotech find or a mineral lode strike that makes it economic to support Saint Verring at all.

We leave the station. I vary the distance between myself and Djelling. I debate whether he intends to harm me. His baffle field has me isolated no matter how near I am to him. This is not for his protection. I keep Lukas live to external data links. Djelling must know that I suspect his motivations. He could be relying on my curiosity and my confidence to trap me. He could be genuine.

Notation: be wary.

There is a centre to Saint Verring. The buildings there seem tall only in comparison to the sprawl around it. Were they to be resited in Nearsteel, they would be lost. This zone occupies a grid five by five streets in area. Past that, the buildings are meanly constructed. All industry here is dependent on organisations from the city. Tech brokerages, scrap breakers, mining operations, all belong to one of Varangantua’s larger mercantile conglomerations, no independents, no matter how mean. Paradoxically, it is harder to hide somewhere like this. It is far from the centre of things on this world, but the low population only makes everyone exposed. Anything of worth is owned by someone of power.

We descend steep steps cut into the bedrock. The barrens stretch away into caramel distances. Early mists burn off the wastes. Valleys house rare glimpses of natural vegetation, and the glint of rivers nosing through the sand.

Djelling heads towards a rundown facility. Chainlink forms an outer barrier. It is rusted and loose, ringing on its poles as the morning wind rises. On the other side of a rubbish-strewn space, there is a rockcrete wall, its paint sanded away to patches by autumn storms. Djelling ducks through a gap, and walks along the space between wall and fence until he reaches a small subsidiary portal. The metal door is half-open, rusted in place. He goes into the inner yard, squeezing uncomfortably through the doorway past the door.

If he means to kill me, I wonder if he will try to do it himself. Djelling does not look like the kind of man who could pull a trigger: he is too nervous, too deferential. However, an internal modification could deal with that. A simple hypnotic phrase might turn him into a functional psychopath. Or he could possess semi-autonomous machine-spirits who would guide his hand for him without compunction. There are other ways, of course. Traps, drones, combat-oriented constructs.

My organics anticipate the danger, and I feel a rise in fear. I adjust my limbic system to prevent extreme reactions. I do not wish to eliminate the emotion entirely; the increase of blood sugars, leukocytes and calcium enables heightened physiological performance, but they are of no use if my body is tipped into a freeze response or if I become irrational. In all things, it is a matter of balance between the Machine-God’s work, and mine.

Djelling is waiting for me in the courtyard. A low building makes up the eastern edge, blocking out the rising sun. Its frontage is made of transomed windows, hundreds of individual panes, not a single one intact and all the fragments scoured milky by gritty winds. Sand creeps sinuously to the walls. Edges of metal poke through. Dust blows in wavering lines from the crests. There is an air of ruination hanging over Saint Verring. Alecto has been in economic recession ever since the Rift and the beginning of the crusade in the heavens. It is a planet on the wane. Nowhere is that more evident to me than here.

‘Thank you for coming, procurator,’ Djelling says. They are the first words he has spoken aloud to me. Though he possesses an augmitter, he uses his native voice, as if he does not trust his own implants.

He glances upward. ‘Your servo-skull?’

‘Lukas is in a holding pattern over this facility.’

He nods. ‘That is wise,’ he says. ‘We are in danger.’

‘I am aware,’ I say. ‘What is this place?’

‘It is mine. Nobody knows I own it. I had a mind one day to set up here and delve into the mysteries of archeotech.’

Everyone needs a dream.

‘Does anyone know you are here?’ he says. ‘I am unwilling to give you what I am about to if it will end up in the hands of the Varangantuan enforcers. I am in danger enough. If this goes any further, I will be killed by the non-believers. They will find a way to get to me.’

He is remarkably matter of fact. I did not believe before that he could be so calm in circumstances like this. His data baffle makes him impervious to my scans. It is a shame. I would like to know what enhancement has given him such courage.

‘Nobody knows I am here,’ I said. ‘This is first and foremost the business of the Collegiate Extremis, thereafter the Ennearchy and the Zhao-Arkhad extra-planetary Astynomia. Any conclusions I draw from what you show me will be shared with them in the way that I see fit, but I guarantee you will not be harmed by my hand, or by the Varangantuan authorities.’

Djelling sighs. Such human sounds we make, we who worship machines. This is the greatest mystery of the Machine-God: how to balance his many perfections. It is a fascinating quest.

‘It is the best I can hope for. This cannot go on. I will die anyway.’ He is convincing himself, not me. I begin to think he may be sincere.

‘This way, this way!’ he says abruptly, and now he seems more like his old self.

He waits for me to join him, then we pass into the building. Our feet crunch over glass hidden in the sand.

The building is large. I cannot guess with any accuracy as to its original purpose. It is an empty box. Paint hangs in scabrous bulges from the walls. Metal rusts through. There are two doors at the rear leading into a dark room or rooms.

‘It was mostly Andus,’ Djelling says. ‘They fetch a high price, you know, multipurpose units. The more flexible in thought the better.’

We approach the door into the back.

‘What did he need the slates for?’

‘I have no idea,’ said Djelling. ‘But he must have amassed millions, if the documents I am to show you are anything to go by.’

We go into the back. The doors open into a corridor. There are four more doors, each leading into an identical room. Windows let in sunlight that falls through doorways in rectangles upon the cracked wall. I run scans of our surroundings from my internal sensorium. I miss Lukas then; his abilities are greater than mine, and Djelling’s baffle reduces their effectiveness further. I see only empty space, and forgotten purpose.

We go into the leftmost middle room. There is a cogitator on the table, and a small, armoured datavault. Djelling opens the cogitator and activates the screen. His fingers move rapidly over brass rune keys. Apparently he does not trust direct interface, even here, in so isolated a place. Numbers in columns run up the screen. They are shipping manifests, with details of import and export taxes displayed. This is the data Andus provided to me, though I have not yet had time to examine it thoroughly.

‘The Cybertheurge Archmagos Genetor 237089 told Andus to give you this information,’ said Djelling.

‘He acceded to my request.’

‘The reputation of our plant is all to him,’ said Djelling. ‘All this looks perfectly legitimate, and to the authorities outside of the enclave these figures would arouse no suspicion.’

‘Then tell me the problem,’ I say.

‘They do not match our own records.’

He depressed several more keys. The screen divided. Two tables of figures were displayed side by side; then they overlaid themselves on one another. The cogitator made an angry noise, and a score of lines went red where the two sets of data did not match.

‘Maybe I was being over diligent, comparing the two,’ he said quietly. ‘But when I saw this…’ He glances at me. He looks hopeless.

‘Explain,’ I say.

He holds his finger up to one of the red lines. ‘In this mismatch, our records show the creation of forty-six Alpha-Plus-grade servitors intended for off-world export, but in the documents provided to the Varangantuan tithe authority at Port Vorbis these batch numbers refer to mass exports of lower quality, Theta-class units, four hundred in number. I looked for the source of the discrepancy, and when I went to overlook the processing documents for the base components’ – he means the human beings turned into the servitors. The process is so horrific those who perform it resort to bland euphemism – ‘there were large gaps in the records for the higher-intellect intake. These were displayed as dataloom corruptions, but each one of them occurred at a time three weeks before these anomalous entries.’

‘Give me your conclusion, magos,’ I say.

‘Andus has been overproducing high-level servitors, and selling them illegally. There is complicity within the Varangantuan port authority.’

‘It’s more than that,’ I say calmly. ‘The devices exceed prescribed servitor capabilities. Some of them retain residual consciousness. This is tech heresy.’

The expression on his face at this news finally confirms his innocence to me. He is aghast, and ashamed. He is not going to try to kill me.

‘I did not know.’

I look at the shipping notes, and follow the lines of data to the column where the official code string of expediters is recorded. Against all of the anomalous entries is a lambda and a theta. LT. The name Pluon Felpsko used comes to mind.

Letorian.

There is no ship, shipping company or personage with that name connected with off-world trade on the entire planet. It is a common name, but a commoner’s name.

‘Andus is the ringleader, I am sure,’ said Djelling. ‘Chen-Chen must have been about to expose him. I know he had been pushing for elevation to a higher degree in the mysteries.’

‘Blackmail,’ I say. What I do not tell him is that this seems very convenient.

There is a noise from one of the other rooms.

‘Are you sure this place is secure?’ I ask.

‘As secure as anywhere I know of,’ he says, but now he looks frightened. ‘My surveillance tells me no one has been here for weeks.’

‘Surveillance equipment can be induced to lie,’ I say.

‘Andus has found me! I do not–’

‘Shh!’ I say. I can hear a high whine. It is the sound of compact energy cells powering up. Several of them.

I am not foolish enough to check the sound of the disturbance. I draw my volkite serpenta from under my robes and initiate its charging sequence. Djelling gasps at the sight. The volkite is a rare and beautiful weapon.

‘Stay back, stay in cover,’ I say. I go to the door and stand flat against the wall. I summon Lukas down from above, but get no reply. I curse my own stupidity. A larger, more comprehensive baffle field has been overlaid on that of Djelling. His own caution has caught us out.

Djelling whimpers, and crouches behind the table holding the dataloom.

‘Get that off the table,’ I command. He fumbles at it, not daring to rise, and pulls it down on top of himself.

I put my head around the door frame. The sound has stopped. I hold my breath. The thump of my heart is an unwelcome distraction. I cannot silence it, and I wish for the day when I will replace it with a soundless pump.

‘Maybe there is not–’ Djelling’s statement is interrupted by the roaring discharge of an energy weapon, a melta beam of some capacity. The partition wall between our room and the next glows briefly white then explodes into vapour, filling the room with searing gas. Djelling is closer and screams, drops the dataloom, and crawls across the floor to escape. The vapour scalds my face. I hold my breath. Melta wash in an enclosed space will cook lungs if inhaled.

There is a large figure on the other side of the breach, a silhouette of a man bulky with augmetics. A red targeting beam flashes through the smoke. Set on a heavy shoulder mount is the industrial bulk of a heavy meltagun, its twin barrels glowing with excessive heat-bleed indicative of clogged venting.

I disable my breathing reflex, bringing it under conscious control. Oxygen counters run down in my mind’s eye, warning me how long I have until my body’s supply is up.

The servitor sweeps its laser eye across the room. The reactions of combat servitors are usually slow. Not this one. Only the brief power whine of charging microwave emitters warn me. I leap across the room as the weapon discharges again, taking out a three-yard circle from the wall where I was standing. Molten brick and steel reinforcement drip on the floor. The ancient paint has caught alight, and burns with eager tongues of fire. Black smoke races up the wall like an inverted cataract.

I hit the ground, and grab the dataloom. My synaptic enhancers kick in, speeding the operation of my mind. Time appears to slow. Another counter appears in my mind’s eye, giving me the few seconds I have before my accelerated synaptic network cooks my brain. I do not have additional heat sinks or bleeders fitted. I must rectify that.

My own movements feel clumsy, although I know I am moving faster than I ever have. Djelling is on the floor in the middle of the room. His knees are cut by the broken glass. His robes are smouldering, the skin on his hands burned black. I can see them clearly because he is holding them out to me beseechingly, pleading for me to save him. He is speaking, but his speech is slowed to incoherence. His baffle is down and his data emissions are panicky and confused. I deny him access.

I do not know if he is innocent, or was complicit in this whole affair, but he has outlived his purpose.

Djelling is a clearer target and the servitor fires upon him instead of me.

He is violently converted to meat-scented steam. He explodes. His demise catches me and I am thrown hard into the exterior wall. My oxygen counter is screaming at me to breathe but I will not inhale Djelling. Not only will it kill me, the thought disgusts me. A sharp pain in my leg indicates a shrapnel wound. My enhancements tell me I have an inch-long gash in my left calf, that the object is lodged within, that it is burning me. It is not close to an artery. None of the augmetics that spread through my body are damaged.

I roll over. The servitor turns and lowers its gun. This is it, I think. I have failed. Overconfidence has condemned me. The Machine-God’s primary method of admonition is hubris, and I have embraced it completely. I will become a warning to others. That will be my sole contribution to the Great Work.

The gun charges. My oxygen monitor is flashing red. My head feels fever-hot. The whine of power transfer reaches its crescendo. The Machine-God is with me. There is no shot.

I react instantly and spring to my feet. I feel muscle fibres tear. I am pushing my body too far. I will pay for this.

The servitor is caught between two behavioural subroutines. Its programming tells it to fire at me, but it cannot. The meltagun’s beam can affect its own operation, causing the focal arrays in the barrels to overheat. No issue ordinarily, the melta-class of armaments is not so temperamental as plasma weapons, but I see that the heat slots are caked with sand, and that some of it is part-vitrified by the weapon’s discharge. The gun cannot cool, so it will not fire. Built in fail-safes shut it down and the weapon trills an alarm.

The cyborg’s sole eye of flesh stares at me with a hatred I have never seen before on a lobotomised unit. It is oblivious to its own pain. The skin on the servitor’s slack, grey face is turning red, cooked by the malfunction. If it grabs me, it will kill me. I expect to have half a second before its close-combat protocol asserts itself. I have far less. By the Omnissiah, it moves so fast. It retains its organic right hand, though it is reinforced with strength amplifiers and is provided with subdermal armour. With this weaponised limb it reaches for me. I try to dodge, but it grabs the dataloom, fingers closing across the width of it, and wrenches it from my grasp. Pistons hiss with machine-given strength, driving the cyborg’s fingers through the casing and shattering the delicate mechanisms within. It throws the loom to the ground, raises its metal-clad foot and crushes it flat.

I run for the window. I allow myself to breathe now, and the disgusting, hot stench of Djelling coats my throat and lungs. I can taste him. The servitor is quick after me, lunging for my robe. It snags the hem, but it tears as I jump. I fling up my weapon arm to protect my face. The wound in my leg sends a rip of pain through my nervous system I cannot ignore and I cry out. Then I hit the window.

My forearm takes the brunt of the impact. The aluminium muntins are oxidised brittle and they break, but the shock bruises my flesh. Damage runes flash in my inner data-spaces. Pain spikes. Glass slices open my arm. Blood soaks my robe.

I turn it off, all of it, hit the ground. I am becoming delirious with the exertion, but I cannot disengage my mental enhancements yet, for the servitor is coming.

I am up and running towards the rising pink disc of the sun when the servitor bursts through the wall. As it comes, it crashes its malfunctioning weapon against the brick, bashing sand from the barrels. I hear the vitrified material break musically, each note low and dull to my hyper-sped senses. The ready chime is a funeral bell.

Damage inflicted by a melta weapon is the result of molecular agitation, which produces heat. The amount of damage is determined by energy transfer to target. The energy transfer to target is a simple inverse square. Simply put, the further away one is from the weapon, the less the danger is. The energy drop-off for melta weapons is rapid. They are short-ranged. But this is a heavy variant, with a high energy output. It will be deadly to me at fifty yards, maybe up to seventy, depending on conditions. The simple calculation loops around and around my mind.

I cannot outrun it. I run anyway.

I hear the powercells charging the capacitors.

There is a roar from above. A Zurov-class gunship slews around in the sky, its wings bearing the emblem of the Varangantuan Enforcers. A multi-laser flickers beams of light. In my accelerated state, I can only just see them, thin scalpel lines cutting across the chill morning in killing blue. Lasers are accurate, but the Zurov has not yet stabilised its hover, and the beams slash everywhere. One, at least, must have hit, for the anticipated melta beam goes wide, boiling the air a yard to my left. The atmosphere explodes outward along the track of the beam, creating a crash of linear, artificial thunder. A perfectly straight, miniature lightning storm dances beneath as the damp air ionises.

I feel the heat searing my arm. My robe bursts into flames. The shock wave punches my shoulder, and I crash down.

The servitor is still coming. A cauterised wound smokes in its right shoulder. It is leaning forward as if fighting deep water. It builds up momentum.

Flames dance along my sleeve, slow and seductive. I am dazed. I cannot think. I feel vomit rising.

[[[DANGER CRANIAL TEMPERATURE UNSUPPORTABLE TERMINAL EVENT ANTICIPATED]]]

I am forced to shut down my cognitive accelerator. The world crashes back to normal speed. The fires swirl about. The servitor is running. The Zurov’s engines scream. Sand-laden jet wash scours me. Sanctioners are jumping from the open sides, already firing their rifles.

Then Noctis is there, his gun out in a two-handed grip. He takes his time to fire. Bang bang bang. Three shots, pause, re-aim, three more shots. Bang bang bang.

The servitor staggers. Probator Noctis carries a high-calibre weapon. The bullets fragment on impact, blasting red craters in the servitor’s body. Blood pours down its front. I can see pieces of its inorganic mechanisms poking from the wounds, wires, bits of shattered carbon-plate armour.

Its grafted systems will not allow it to accept death. It reels from the impacts, but it is already selecting its next target. I can almost feel the priority algorithms running through its systems.

It opens fire. A sanctioner dies. One moment there is a man there, firing his gun, performing his service. The next there is only steam and fragments of fluttering cloth.

This has to stop.

I raise my volkite, thumb off the safety catch.

I take a full third of a second to aim.

I shoot a thermodynamic ray right through the servitor’s heart. It flash-cooks the organ. I see the light of the hit in the back of its silently screaming throat. Flesh runs like wax. It falls to its knees, then topples over to the side, burning from the inside out.

I follow it into darkness.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

A modicum of pity

It sticks in my throat that our Zurovs carry the Dymaxion badge; my father secured a template licence from Zhao-Arkhad a couple of years ago. I think he might have got the idea from my job, which annoys me even more.

‘Down there!’ I screamed. I was worried about Lux. We’d lost the lock on her, and had been flying around Saint Verring for three minutes trying to get eyes on her.

I pointed to a thick column of smoke pouring from a disused building.

‘There, there!’ The scream of the Zurov’s engines drowned out everything, even the thoughts in my head. I had to shout into the vox-pickup.

‘Affirmative,’ the pilot voxed back.

We’d overshot Saint Verring and were headed into the desert. I hung on to a strap as the ship went into a fast, violent turn. The engine noise increased. Heat wash off the turbines displaced the frigid air blasting through the open compartment, filling the passenger bay with hot oil stink. The lurch pushed me towards the void, and I strained against the strap, nearly losing my footing. Hondus grabbed my arm and hauled me back, then he pointed.

‘There she is!’ His voice was crisp and fragile in the vox-bead jammed into my ear.

Lux burst out of a window and hit the ground; then she was up, bleeding heavily but moving faster than a human had any right to. She was obviously more heavily enhanced than I had thought. She carried a long, thin gun in her hand that I came to learn was a rare type of sun pistol.

‘She’s full of surprises, isn’t she?’ said Hondus.

We were passing over her when the wall exploded outward, and a servitor burst out, a combat-adapted model, its left arm replaced with a heavy fusion cooker.

‘Stop us! Stop us!’ I shouted. ‘Target that servitor. Protect the procurator.’

If I thought the turn back to the city was bad, the pilot excelled himself in scaring the shit out of me bringing the Zurov to a hover. It slid across the sky, the nose las already spitting deadly light at the servitor. The wall filled with baked black holes. One speared the servitor’s shoulder as it fired, forcing it to miss Lux, but the beam passed dangerously close and she fell anyway.

‘Down!’ Hondus shouted.

We held on hard. The pilot dropped the ship like a rock, tilting the tail back to fire the main thrusters as brakes at the last moment. Our sanctioners jumped out first. I followed them. We were all firing, peppering that damn thing with gunfire, but it just wouldn’t go down. I put three rounds in it with the Finaliser, and I mean, that gun earns its name under normal circumstances, but the cyborg wouldn’t die. It destroyed one of our men, there’s no other word for it. I ran for Lux. She was lying on her back, watching the servitor running at her. By the Emperor, the thing was massive, heavily armoured. I half believed then that it had been specifically made to kill her. I’m even more convinced of that now. The melta it carried was a military-grade weapon, designed for slagging tanks or killing giant xenos. You do not see something like that on the streets of Nearsteel, and the effect of it shook me.

I put another three rounds in the servitor. It still didn’t die.

Then Lux sat up, put an energy beam into that fucker’s heart and dropped it.

The whole thing, from seeing the smoke to the death of the servitor took maybe ten seconds. I felt I’d aged ten years.

My instinct was to go to Lux, but I had to make sure the damn thing was dead. I ran up to its burning body. It was still alive, rolling about even while its internal organs burned.

Up close it was even more intimidating, its cannon the size of a table. I had one bullet left in the chamber, and I levelled it at the head.

It looked at me with eyes cooked white by flames boiling out of its mouth. Its lips were black strips of flash-fried steak, but it tried to talk. Its jaw moved, and though its throat was burning, from the voxmitter set in the left of its metal integument feeble words crackled out.

‘Help me… Help me… Help me…’

I experienced a modicum of pity. I probably should not have done it, but I didn’t think, and put the last bullet from my gun between its eyes. I was too close, and my face was spattered with brain.

It at least stopped moving after that.

‘Noctis!’ Hondus was knelt down by Lux.

I holstered my gun.

‘She alive?’

Hondus nodded. ‘Barely.’

‘Damn it.’ I looked to the building. ‘Call in medicae support. I’m going to check out the building.’

‘Noctis! Wait!’ Hondus shouted.

I didn’t listen. There was nothing in the building. Djelling was a stain on the floor and a lingering smell. There was a dataloom that was completely useless, and a cogitator whose internal memcores were blank. I found a pit in the corner of one room. Evidently, someone had been there, dug a hole for the servitor and left it, deactivated, for Djelling to arrive. I couldn’t be sure if he was the target and Lux an unexpected bonus, but I had to work on the assumption that Lux and I were on a hit list. If so, that meant that this conspiracy would go deep. Hondus had already hinted as much.

It was the beginning of a very hectic day.

Lux was taken to the medicae at Nearsteel Bastion. We were due to hand her off to the Steelmound’s Astynomia, but she came around long enough to tell us not to do that. She had a little time to tell me what had happened to her, and to Djelling, and to warn me.

‘This goes deep,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ I replied. Then the medicae sedated her, and she managed to tell me to summon Gulfang. She didn’t trust her own kind or our medicae with her implants. Then she passed out.

I sent Borostin in my own groundcar to get him, and waited by her side until he arrived.

Lux had suffered superficial burns to her left arm, blade wound to the right, serious bruising and a shrapnel laceration from Djelling’s disintegration. That turned out to be part of his cranial augmetic. But most of the damage was caused by her augments, our chief medicae, Genevedus said.

‘I don’t know why they do this to themselves,’ Genevedus said, as he took me through her injuries. He had wanted to give me the rundown in his office, but I made him do it from the observation chamber next door, whose two-way mirror allowed me to keep an eye on her.

‘The human form is holy. It is the Emperor’s form. What they do is blasphemy,’ he said.

I self-consciously covered my steel hand with my organic left, and he looked a little embarrassed.

‘Yeah, well, if she didn’t have them, she’d be dead,’ I said.

This was getting out of hand. The military fusion cannon escalated the situation seriously. While I waited for Gulfang to arrive, I seriously considered Hondus’ suggestion that we smooth it over and back off, but then I’d look at Lux, and see what had happened. That made me kind of mad. That it could also have been me in there didn’t help.

I made some calls. I finally got through to the Astynomia in the Steelmound. Selvelt took my query: where was Andus?

‘Gone,’ was Selvelt’s answer. He told me they’d already been to detain him and found his desk as neat and abandoned as Chen-Chen’s. Selvelt seemed to think that wrapped the whole case up rather nicely. He was wrong about that.

I thanked him and ceased vox. Andus was almost certainly dead. The conspirators were burning out their network. Lux must have found something, or seen something, for them to act so. I was impatient to know what.

Gulfang arrived. He smelled bad, and I thought of my poor C-A. He hustled me out of the room, and when I went next door to watch through the window he grumpily hung a sheet over it.

I sat in the chair in there, eyes fixed on the glass. I must have fallen asleep despite my best efforts, for the next I knew Gulfang was shaking me awake.

‘She wants you to have this,’ he said. He lifted up my left hand and pressed a small data block, about as big as a fingernail, into the palm. ‘It’s a direct feed from her memcore. She said that although the data was lost from the dataloom, she saw several screens of it, and that is recorded here. There will be both vid and audex.’ He looked at me accusingly, as if I were personally responsible for what had happened to Lux. ‘What is going on?’ he asked.

‘She’s doing her job, I’m doing mine,’ I said. I closed my hand around the data block. ‘Thank you.’

‘I do wish you would take better care of her,’ he said. He took a seat next to me. ‘We have been through much together, and I owe her a lot. When she told me she was to undertake the selection examinations for the Astynomia, I urged her to rethink. When she excelled and was contacted by one of the Lords Dragon of Zhao-Arkhad, and offered a role within the Collegiate Extremis, I was horrified. It’s a dangerous role.’

‘What else is she supposed to do?’ I said. ‘She’s a convert. I imagine they are not accepted. Outsiders never are.’

‘She was ruled by her ambition, not forced into it. For all the dogma, the search for knowledge is all. She could have done anything, if she wished.’ He folded his hands over his grubby robe. ‘Just keep an eye on her. She’s like a daughter to me.’

That hit hard. ‘I understand,’ I said, because I did.

‘Interesting,’ he said. He examined me a moment; his single eye glittered. The empty socket of the other was a pit of shadow. ‘You should rest. I will watch over Lux.’

‘Will she be all right?’

‘Yes, of course,’ he said. ‘She is well provided with augmentation. One of them is a grade-three medi-unit implanted in her chest. She’ll be back at it within a couple of days, more’s the pity.’

‘Right. Don’t go anywhere.’ I stood. ‘I’m going to see what’s going on here.’ I put the data block into a sealable pocket, and left.

Before I set off from the Bastion, I sprayed the inside of my car with sanitising agent. It didn’t shift Gulfang’s stink.

When I got home almost a full twenty-six hours had passed. I was exhausted and had forgotten about the mess. Shebeena watched me accusingly from the worktop in my culina as I tidied up.

Once I’d set the place straight I checked the security feed from the night before. I’d come home alone, which was a relief, because I was nervous that I’d see myself bringing Lux here, and find myself drunkenly pawing at her.

There was none of that. Instead I had sat at my desk writing, but not in my journal. Watching the vid-feed stirred vague memories in me. I couldn’t remember exactly what I’d written. It was something about you, about what father did, very personal. Maybe that’s why I’d put it on that separate page. It could have been that I was simply too drunk to find the book. My intoxicated self is a mystery to me.

I found the page down the back of my bureau. I was right. It was personal.

When I’d finished the letter I’d lost my temper and that’s why the place was such a mess. Crime solved. Well done me.

I selected some Erdberry wine to drink, and fetched some pills. Then I sat down to review Lux’s vid-feed.

Lux’s altered vision evidently had high-fidelity image capture, for when I slid the data block into my slate, I was given a still, sharp view of the inside of the building at Saint Verring. Frozen in time, it was the perfect pict. It’s strange to look through another’s eyes. We move all the time, our eyes are never still. Watch someone, and you’ll see, the glances aside, the distractions, the constant surveying for threat. Hardened criminals don’t do this. Their gazes are steady. Some of them were born with cold-iron confidence that gives them a gaze that’ll melt plasteel. The rest have to learn the trick.

I set the vid in motion. Clean, pure sound came with it, making me wonder again at the extent of Lux’s augments. She followed Djelling into a room at the back of the facility. He spoke to her about his suspicions, and he sounded genuine enough. He took her to a portable cogitator unit next to an armoured dataloom pack, and showed her a bunch of numbers. This was the part I needed to see, and I tasked my dataslate and iris to copy the segment. I listened to what Djelling had to say. When the attack began I watched in fascinated silence as I relived Lux’s fight with the cyborg. The damn thing seemed even bigger from her point of view. I think I would have lost my nerve facing it alone like she did. My respect for her grew.

The feed cut out as I walked past, firing at the servitor.

I was glad when it was over.

I brought up the stills, and called up Borostin. He answered almost immediately, the man never sleeps. His face appeared, surrounded by his battalions of screens, the light they cast on him the same no matter what time of day or night I called him.

‘Probator.’

‘Could you check these for me?’ I asked. ‘They’re ship registration numbers.’

I sent the picts to him. He frowned at them. ‘They might be,’ he said. ‘But they’re not Alectian numbers. There’s not enough digits for that. These are too short.’

‘Then what are they?’

‘They are still ship idents, just not Alectian ones.’ He peered at them. ‘According to the Lex Alecto, every ship that comes here should have a local code, but sometimes a captain will submit a ship’s universal registration code instead, which are given by the Chartists. These can be any length, some are just names. All ships in the Imperium have to have them, for the records of the Adeptus Terra. Now, the mercantile guilds have to maintain strict registers of–’

Borostin likes detail. He can frolic off down a tangent for half an hour, if you let him.

‘Right, I understand,’ I said. Borostin is hard to offend. He’s one of those odd, focused individuals that don’t respond to the usual social cues. ‘Can you run them?’

‘It’ll take time. If they’re from far away I may have to get an astropathic message out to the sector capital.’

‘Too long,’ I said.

‘But they’re too regular. There’s three of them only, all similar. I wonder…’

He clattered away at three different claviboards. His cogitators trilled happily at the attention.

‘They could be keel-laying dates,’ he said. ‘Or launch memoranda. Both can be used instead of Alectian ident or universal registration. Shipping is complicated.’

In theory, there’s a simple way of doing everything, but nothing ever stays simple for long. It’s typical of the Imperium. Too many interest groups, individuals with their own ideas and competing organisations to allow any one system to hold. It’s the same everywhere.

‘Can you find out which ships these codes belong to?’

‘Easily, though you’d have to go through the port authorities to get the matches. We have capability to read Alectian ident – universal registration is harder, keel-laying dates and the like are obscure, but it’s not going to stop me finding out.’

‘I don’t think that’s the point,’ I said. ‘This is an alarm system, of sorts. Felpsko worked at the port, which meant someone else might have been involved, which means you asking about these numbers directly would warn whomever I am after. When you’re dealing with something like this, you have to manoeuvre events so that you can surprise your opponent. If you don’t get the drop on them, you never catch them. If we speak to the wrong person, we’ll find ship records suddenly different to the way they were the day before. I’ve turned up at hangars or a warehouse where my quarry would have been until hours previously, and found them empty.’

‘Then there’s the lambda and the theta,’ said Borostin.

‘Letorian,’ I said.

‘Do you want me to go ahead and begin the ident trace?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I need to narrow this down. If we can find out who Letorian is, we’ll be able to focus on one or two shipping companies. Then we’ll have the chance of tracking the ships down without tipping off whoever owns them. We need to catch them at this. The last shipping date on the list is in two days’ time.’

‘Exporters are required to provide detailed schedules of departure five weeks in advance of–’

‘Fine,’ I said, cutting him off again. ‘I saw that. If we can find out who they are, we can blow this thing wide open. Wait for my call.’

‘How are you going to find out?’

‘I’ve got an idea of which company it is,’ I said, my mind going back to the shock goads deployed in the attack on me, but I couldn’t tell even Borostin about my suspicion, not until I was sure. ‘I need someone who isn’t connected directly to the district, but who is well connected enough planetwide to get me this information discreetly.’

‘Do you have an idea?’

‘I do,’ I said, and terminated the vox.

I called Previnus. He did sleep, and I woke him. He appeared on my dataslate dishevelled and half-conscious. Behind him in the bed was a well-muscled figure, who groaned and rolled over.

‘Symeon?’ Previnus said. There were carafes of wine and bottles of oils visible in the foreground. He could have cut the vid, but then nobody would know what a good time he was having. There’s an art to carefully presented dissipation. Previnus was a master. ‘To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?’ He yawned and rubbed his face, then smiled. He was happy, rolling around with his drugs, booze and one-night stands. Sometimes when I spoke with him, I wondered if I’d made a bad choice with my life.

‘What was the name of that place you were at, that one you told me about at Father’s birthday celebration?’

‘What?’

‘That one out in Saltstone. The one with the exotic owner. The one with the improbable legend about him being a servitor that broke its programming.’

‘Ah!’ The light of recollection lit up Previnus’ face. ‘You mean Menem-Ba!’

‘Yeah, that’s him,’ I said.

‘Menem-Ba, eh?’

He sat up in bed. He had good tech, and the vid-lens followed him, framing him perfectly. His sheets slipped aside.

‘I don’t need to see that, cousin,’ I said.

‘Sorry.’ His smile broadened. ‘You have to go to his place. It’s quite the trip.’

‘That’s why I’m calling you. I need to speak to him.’

Previnus became suspicious. ‘Wait a minute, speak to him? As in business?’

‘As in business, cousin. Enforcer business,’ I said. I sound ridiculous when I speak like that. No enforcer speaks that way, but Previnus’ ideas of what I did were completely formed by fictional imaginings.

‘And I thought you just wanted to have a good time, like the good old days. You’ve become so Throne-damned boring, cousin.’ He poured himself some wine.

‘They weren’t good. They’re not even particularly old,’ I said. ‘And I assure you I’m just the same happy-go-lucky fragger I ever was.’

‘Liar,’ he said. He looked expectant.

I had to stop myself from rolling my eyes. Previnus wasn’t stupid, he wanted to be asked.

‘I need you to set up a meeting for me. There’s something I need to check.’

‘Ooh, the probator’s instinct!’ he said, again lapsing into cliché.

‘If you like,’ I said, though it was a bit more solid than a guess.

‘Promise me you’ll have a few spins on the rajet tables. You’ve got a lucky hand.’

‘I promise,’ I said.

‘Then I’ll see what I can do. I can pull a few strings. I spend a lot of money there, and there’s the family. He might want to see you because–’ He caught himself.

‘What?’ I said.

‘Because you’re something of a curiosity, cousin.’ He sipped his wine, still grinning at me.

‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Whatever you need to do. The name, parade me about like a simian with a portable dulcimer, so long as I get what I need.’

‘Will you? That’d be a sight!’

‘You know what I mean.’

He laughed, prompting another groan from his companion.

‘I’m sleeping, Prev!’ the figure said.

‘I’m teasing you! It’s done, it’s done. It’ll be good to spend some time with you. When?’

‘Tomorrow night. It has to be quick.’

‘Emperor rise!’ he said. ‘You’re desperate, eh?’

‘I mean it.’

‘I can do it. I’ll have to… Never mind. I better start now.’ He leaned forward, about to key off the vox, but he stopped. ‘But you can do something for me.’

‘And that is?’ I said wearily, fearing some sort of ridiculous forfeit or impossible request. Previnus can be childish.

‘Buy yourself a new suit, please. You’ll be doing us both a favour.’

He switched the vox off.

I felt Shebeena looking at me. I turned around. She was wearing a smug expression you only ever see on felids.

‘What, you think I need a new suit too?’

She blinked and began to lick herself.

‘I like my suit,’ I grumbled. ‘It’s a good suit.’

She didn’t say anything, but I knew she didn’t agree.

CHAPTER TWENTY

A house of pleasure

Previnus was good to his word. The next evening, well after dark fell in the afternoon, he and I were heading for Saltstone in his ornithopter. It was brand new. He rarely keeps flyers for longer than a year. He came in escorted by House Dymaxion men-at-arms in three light speeders, military models, better than we enforcers have.

When I got in, he took in my attire and pursed his lips appraisingly. I really didn’t want to listen to him criticise my dress sense, so I’d gone full out, buying the most expensive, most ridiculously fashionable outfit I could find. My make-up was the height of modishness, I wore a scent that was all the rage in the high spires, and when I thought I had enough on already, I put on twice as much. I was pulled, laced, pushed and primped to the point I couldn’t breathe. It had been a nightmare to get on on my own, as anyone who has a suit like that usually has a dozen servants to hand. Previnus was even more ludicrously attired, with make-up thick enough to sculpt, and a wig so tall it was bent double under the ’thopter roof.

‘Very nice,’ he said, nodding approvingly. ‘Looking very handsome, and even fashionable. I honestly thought I would never see the day.’

‘Don’t,’ I said. ‘I feel ridiculous.’ Though I admit I was secretly pleased by his flattery. I affected ill-temper to cover it, because Previnus would be insufferable if I let on. ‘You got anything to drink in here?’

‘You know I do,’ he said, and gestured at the cabinet, which opened soundlessly, displaying its cornucopia of chemical oblivions.

I helped myself.

Besides the wig, Previnus was wearing flared breeches, and shoulder pads made of coppery metal that made him twice as broad. He can’t possibly have been comfortable in that outfit, though he was affected to be, lounging in his leather seat, and prodding around the edges of my mission while we flew and drank, but I told him straight out that I couldn’t really say anything. He politely dropped it, and we slipped into small talk, laughing about various shared cousins. It was pleasant to see him without the presence of my father hanging over me, and for a while we relaxed. The city slipped by under the ornithopter, heading north a few hundred miles to the coast and Saltstone District.

The sea announces itself by absence. Varangantua is a mass of lights, the sea a field of black. The endless blaze of the city broke up at the coast into scattered oceanic habitats and offshore industrial sites, which petered out to nothing. Past them was nothing but Alecto’s oily seas. The centre of the district was bright with glaring lights, laser-written messages in the sky, jumping holo-displays and all the other garish signs of a thriving commercia. The rest of it was elegance gone to ruin. Great temples and palaces slumped into each other like accretions of marine debris.

Menem-Ba’s was conspicuous in the harbour. Previnus told me this edifice to greed had been a voidship of war never launched. Whatever graving yard had birthed it was long gone, and I wondered by what mechanism it was intended to get into orbit. Voidships are usually constructed in space, for obvious reasons of gravity. Previnus was keen to show off his familiarity with the place, and I was interested in seeing what he had to say, so he had his driver circle it a couple of times. I’d have hated to be his escorts, because Previnus never behaved predictably. He called for abrupt manoeuvres, and ordered his flyer above the operational ceiling of the speeders unannounced. Their life must have been hard.

The establishment was hard by the land, where lit roads enticed fresh clients in over bridges, but the body of it sat in the water. I reflected it was as likely to be a nobleman’s folly, or a misguided shipwright’s dream, a show of fealty to the Emperor built on the surface against all wisdom. It could also have crash-landed there, or been brought down for breaking on the surface, its unfinished appearance the result of incomplete demolition. Varangantua was an old city, and people forget.

Whatever the truth, in its new life it had become something of a singular marvel. There was nothing else like it anywhere on the seaboard. The ship was hundreds of yards long, its exterior covered in low-intensity las-projectors that filled the air around it with a dazzling display. Commercia logos, short advertisements, animated figures that leapt and twirled. It was so colourful, and there was not one example of Imperial propaganda or governmental hectoring in all the show. Menem-Ba’s was a rare monument to hedonism.

The vessel operated under a strict system of social apartheid. The lower orders gambled in vast halls just above the waterline, where they spent their hard-earned slates in exchange for a few hours of adrenaline. Most of them would go home with empty pockets. The middle decks hosted more genteel clientele. Both these zones were further separated into finer gradations of class, with restaurants, joy-houses, bars, theatres and narcotoria of an increasingly refined sort until one reached the very top of Varangantua’s greasy pole, and were admitted into the domain of the planetary elite.

Naturally, this was where we were heading.

The escort landspeeders peeled away as our flyer was guided into a hangar intended for attack craft. Whether it had ever held any or not, the hangar now provided a parking zone for the very richest inhabitants of Alecto. It was brightly decorated in a hideous military pastiche style. Long banners showed portraits of Imperial soldiery ready to do battle, though I’d hazard a guess they wore more uniform and were less well oiled before they engaged with the enemy.

We bypassed the ground entrances. The flyer was guided in to a rotating parking platform. As soon as we were down, liveried attendants dashed forward and opened the doors.

There’s something else I should mention here. Saltstone stinks. I mean really, really stinks.

You’ve never smelled before, before you’ve smelled the Saltstone sea, and you’ll never smell again, once you’ve imbibed its briny breeze.

That’s how the old song went. It’s a terrible song, but it’s one everybody knows. It’s stuck because it’s true. I came out of the flyer and choked.

The flunkies ushered me out. You could feel the tension behind their solicitous manner. These bastards were being worked hard.

Previnus came out, preceded by his huge, cosmetically enhanced grin. ‘The smell of the sea, dear cousin,’ he said. He slapped me on the back as if the stink were pleasant, but I could tell he was glanding some sort of scent-suppressor. ‘And chemical refineries, manufactories, broken sewage processing plants and illegal industrial discharge. But mostly the sea. Don’t worry! Once we’re inside you’ll smell nothing but perfume and the sweet scent of perfect bodies.’

The front opened, and the pilot was politely but firmly directed to a waiting area behind a greasy door. I caught sight of servants garbed in the uniforms of a dozen different noble houses reading and drinking.

Nobody else got out. I glanced back. The rear compartment remained shut.

‘You keeping your bodyguards outside? You don’t have a protector?’

‘They’ll wait.’ Previnus made a noise when he saw my expression. ‘Please, this is Menem-Ba’s! It’s the safest place in the city.’

It really wasn’t. ‘Don’t be naive,’ I said. Previnus is reckless. All this is too much like a game to him. I saw the guards Ba had, both uniformed and plain clothes, lurking everywhere. That would put someone like Previnus at ease, but not me, because they could just as easily put us down.

‘This way, sirs, this way!’ the attendants said.

We had drinks thrust at us. The attendants politely but firmly took us off the platform and it rotated into the wall, freeing up a fresh, empty space into which a new aircar was guided like a bullet slotted into a stubber.

Off the platform, a scrum of screaming people in extravagant costume tried to force their cards and wares on us. Body-slaves called out their prices from galleries against the back wall. The assistants guided us through with fixed expressions, into a cordoned-off area, where the presence of very large men with solid shot carbines warned off the hucksters.

‘Quite the rush, isn’t it?’ Previnus said.

‘Quite,’ I agreed half-heartedly.

We were taken to a cloakroom, beyond which a door opened into Menem-Ba’s proper.

An attendant barred the way. He wore the same bright red uniform as the rest and was covered in gold piping, his hair plastered down to his head. He’d been adapted to fit his role, half his chest replaced by a security augmetic bristling with sensors, and his left arm split into three limbs, each tipped with a nimble hand.

Bits of the man clicked and burred at us. His eyes flashed. There was something not right about him besides the cyborganics, and then I saw the thick cables bonded to the back of his skull and snaking off into the wall. He might have been sentient, or he might have been a servitor, whatever – other people were looking through his eyes.

‘Menem-Ba’s gives greetings to you, Lord Previnus Dymaxion, Lord Symeon Dymaxion. Before you are taken through into a world of delights, I must request you leave your weapons here for safekeeping,’ the attendant said.

‘I have none,’ said Previnus with misplaced pride. Only a fool walks the streets unarmed.

‘Your companion Lord Symeon does.’ He fixed me with a shockingly white smile.

I put my holo-seal on the counter. The image of authority flashed into life over it. ‘I’ll be taking my gun in.’

‘No exceptions, probator. We have had a recent incident. Deaths aboard. No weapons.’

I hesitated. The guards paid me zero attention. This was one weird place.

‘You are free to leave, sir,’ said the attendant.

I cursed inwardly, unbuckled the Finaliser and put it down on the countertop. Then I took out my spare cylinders, and the knife from my ankle sheath.

The attendant magicked them away into a box.

‘Thumbprint, please,’ he said, gesturing to a panel on his chest.

I did the necessary.

‘Enjoy your time at Menem-Ba’s, gentlemen,’ he said, and we were ushered through a golden door into the main body of the ship. Deafening music blasted out from the other side.

There was another man in a golden uniform rattling with random buttons on lines of cord waiting for us. His eyes were covered by short periscopes with rotating lenses, probably to give him a better view over the heads of the crowd.

‘My lords, if you would accompany me, Ser Ba awaits the pleasure of your presence.’

‘You know,’ Previnus shouted into my ear, ‘there are very few people who could get you in to see Menem-Ba himself.’

He took a snuff tin from his pocket and snorted two generous pinches.

‘I owe you then,’ I said.

The flunkey waited for us to finish; he was under a lot less pressure than the hangar attendants. He only bade us follow him once Previnus had offered me whatever he was snorting and I’d refused.

Disorienting describes the interior of Menem-Ba’s. I don’t think there’s another word for it. We were on one of the middle floors, where those who had a few slates to spare might live a little. It was a confusion of noise and smell. Revellers gripped in drug fugues swayed in the arms of smile-girls, and everywhere were Menem-Ba’s ubiquitous gaming tables. An air of fevered enjoyment gripped everything. The current shortages of food and water forgotten, for a while.

We weaved through the crowd, and left through doors of pure crystal whose innards throbbed with coloured lights in time to the music. As soon as we were through, and they had closed behind us, the sound was cut to a barely heard pulse, like the heart of a slumbering leviathan.

Previnus laughed, and threaded his arm through mine. My ears rang.

On it went. The attendant took us through gambling halls of every description, from quiet games of Tarot’s Favour, lively betting on zan-abas, through the rowdier dice and cards of rajet to a fighting pit built into the base of a transit nexus, where off-world beasts tore at servo-gladiators for the thrill of the crowd and slates changed hands at a furious pace. Every pleasure that can be legally bought in Varangantua and most of the ones that can’t passed in front of me.

The route was deliberately circuitous. I’m no genius, but Ba was showing off his kingdom. He was telling me how powerful he was. He was making it clear I was being granted an audience with an emperor more immediate, and therefore more dangerous, than the one on Terra.

It was an illusion, like most displays of power. When I looked beyond the lumens I glimpsed huge spaces where the ship’s ribs were black against the night. Decaying holds that echoed with the sounds of frivolity. Only a fraction of the ship was being used. Perfumes and the air-recyc couldn’t keep out the smell of the sea, and everywhere was tainted with it.

Finally, we arrived at a lifter plated in scintillating alien alloys and set with oval gems whose hearts shifted with changing hues.

‘Aeldari,’ said Previnus, naming one of the major xenos species we are forced to share our galaxy with. ‘Menem-Ba has an extensive collection.’

‘That’s dangerous,’ I said. ‘An interest in this kind of thing can attract the wrong kind of attention.’

Previnus laughed. ‘Oh, dear cousin, Menem-Ba doesn’t care about things like that.’

True, I thought. He’d have them exactly because they were provocative.

The lifter was a private one. Our guide made a great fuss of showing how difficult it was to summon. When it opened, Previnus made a small noise of delight.

‘His private lifter,’ he said. ‘Well I never. His private lifter.’

‘Hey,’ I said out of the corner of my mouth. ‘Calm down.’ My lack of awe only annoyed Ba’s flunky.

The lifter doors opened with a deliberately tuned opulent swish, bathing us in scented air. Though more xenos artefacts were trapped in the glass of the walls, the back was completely clear, and gave a view of the vast shaft of the nexus.

‘Please, my lords,’ said the man.

We followed him in.

The lift went up slowly, once more to show us just how vastly rich our host was. We had a good view of the arena, one of the few areas, I suspected, where rich and poor were allowed to mingle. Most of the decks had been opened up to the shaft. Vegetation tumbled from balconies. Every floor travelled offered us a peek into a new world of decadence. A large refectoria was situated on the flat platform of a cargo lifter, and moved down past us at a sedate pace. It travelled through what would have been the grand processional way on the ship’s spine, converted to an arcade. Through the roof we glimpsed the holo-displays lighting up the night outside. We went further, into the highest, richest levels of all the ship. The personal playgrounds of Alecto’s ruling classes, the jutting towers of the ship’s superstructure.

The lifter coasted to a stop, and opened out onto the command deck, now a gambling den for the very richest. A crystal dome occupied the far end, a large platform and tapering balcony beneath it. There was a high table there, guarded by men and heavily augmented half-men whose auspex eyes scanned the crowds ceaselessly. Servitors and sentients alike were enhanced for combat. Previnus made to go that way, through the throngs of youths and rich dynasts, but our escort cleared his throat.

‘This way, my lords.’

He took us to the other end of the bridge. Vat creatures and servo-skulls floated over us. Dozens of people bet a lifetime’s wages on a single toss of the dice.

I’d never been on a starship before, and could not imagine how it would have looked had it been finished, but to put something so grand to this use seemed tawdry.

We came to a roped-off area. A few beautiful people, their faces locked with sneers of disdain, looked us up and down as the escort unclipped a velvet rope and led us through. I felt the faint tingle of a permanent augur cataract pass through us. There was a privacy field woven into it, and the sounds of gaiety from the gaming tables became dull.

Beyond the couches and shared hookah pipes was a round door, still stamped with the Imperial aquila. Four Hercutor servitors stood guard over it. They’d been dressed up in suits, and had dark glasses covering their eyes. If the effect had been to help them blend in, it had the opposite result. I suspected that was intentional.

Two of them came forward with the stiff, heavy tread of something that was more metal than flesh.

‘Anomalous scan result,’ one said, in the idiot manner of the mono-tasked.

I held up my augmetic arm. ‘This it?’ I said.

There were a lot of augmetics on display in that hall, but none of them would have had the capabilities of mine. It was a weapon, the augury had rightly spotted that.

The servitor stiffened as some external influence took hold.

‘Proceed,’ it said.

The two parted. The escort led us on. The door opened into the ceiling.

‘My lords,’ said the escort. ‘Menem-Ba awaits.’

The Hercutors closed up behind us. Previnus’ excitement became trepidation.

‘Let me do the talking!’ he hissed.

‘Nope,’ I said.

‘Symeon! You’re not used to this kind of situation!’

‘You have no idea.’

The only way was forward.

I went in first.

Menem-Ba was a smooth-skinned man of indeterminate age and obvious physical prowess. Echoing the size of his guardians, the golden mono-suit he wore strained with muscle, and his fingers were thick and strong. He waited for us in a nest of sofas, a smile-girl at each side, their fashionably thin bodies accentuating the mass of his arms. There was a miserable-looking animal in a cage behind him, with a vaguely humanoid shape and miniscule hands. The room was heavily patterned with gleaming silver set into the walls, but there was nothing else in there besides three nests of couches, the animal, the girls and Menem-Ba.

This was a private space. I did not even want to begin to think about what went on in there.

‘My lords Dymaxion,’ he said. ‘Always a pleasure to entertain the scions of that great house.’ He had a surprisingly high voice – not womanish, but not low enough to suit that massive frame either. ‘Please, take a seat.’

His companions flashed their teeth and arched their backs. One giggled in that way smile-girls do. The skin men teach them that. It is a laugh devoid of personal pleasure, designed only to flatter and excite their clients. They leaned into their master and gently caressed him. Ba gave us a world-weary smile as we sat opposite him. There were no refreshments visible. This was to be a short audience, then.

‘Ser Ba! Thank you so much for agreeing to speak with us. I myself am a faithful patron of–’

Ba didn’t so much as look at Previnus when he cut him off. His shrewd eyes were only for me. ‘What is it that I can do for you?’ he said. ‘Before you speak, I must tell you I only agreed to this because I was curious to meet the famous Probator Noctis, the man who fled paradise.’

‘What can I say?’ I said. ‘My reputation precedes me. I have Previnus to thank for suggesting you to me.’

Ba gave a humourless snort of laughter. ‘Your cousin is annoyingly persistent, and he does spend a lot of slate here.’ He finally deigned to give Previnus a nod, which made him flush with pride. ‘Now I have to ask, suggested me for what exactly?’

‘I have a criminal matter I want to get to the bottom of. I thought I’d ask an expert.’

‘I’m no lawman, Probator Noctis.’

‘But you are a criminal.’

Ba laughed musically, but there was a bladed edge of warning to it.

‘Careful, probator. I am a businessman. I believe you’ve had a tour of my property here. I am an upstanding citizen.’

No he wasn’t. Menem-Ba was a lot of things, but a legit trader was not one of them.

‘I understand you are having some trouble with servitors in Nearsteel, and the Adeptus Mechanicus?’ he went on.

‘You’re remarkably well informed,’ I said. I’d dealt with Ba’s ilk before, but I had to admit he impressed me. Remember what I said about the steady gaze of dangerous men? He had that. It was hard to hold, but I did not look away.

Ba toyed with the girls’ hair. ‘The ill-informed end up dead,’ he said.

‘That’s why I’m here.’

‘Let us get down to business then.’

I rolled up my sleeve and cast a holo-projection of the shipping records into the air from my dataslate.

‘Can you tell me anything about these numbers?’

He looked them over, then looked back at me. ‘Ships,’ he said. ‘What interest do I have in ships?’

‘Plenty, I’ve heard,’ I said. ‘I want to make use of your networks. I want you to tell me, discreetly, whose ships they are. Can you get one of your men to do that for me? I’ll pay, of course.’

‘Such a philanthropist! Burning his father’s money to save the day.’

‘He’ll live with it,’ I said. ‘Can you do it? I’m under a little time pressure here.’

‘No need,’ said Ba. ‘I recognise them. They are the keel-laying dates of three ships I am personally acquainted with.’

‘How do you know that?’ I said.

‘That would be telling,’ he said.

‘And why would you tell me?’

‘Let us say that there are many legitimate businessmen like myself in this city, and sometimes there are rivalries.’

‘Then you’re seeking commercial advantage?’

Ba lifted a meaty hand, almost unseating the woman snuggled into his side.

‘I like to know who is doing what. I have business coming through Port Vorbis myself, let’s leave it at that.’

‘Why keel dates?’

‘They’re an acceptable form of identification for the port authorities here, so they do not mask the identity, but they do delay identification for people like you who might not have access to obscure facts like this.’

That was as much as I’d told Borostin.

‘I assume you have come to me because you believe a more official inquiry would alert the men you wish to catch?’ Ba continued. ‘That’s the reason these numbers are used in place of the more ordinary cyphers.’

‘If you’d made a bet, you’d have just won it,’ I said. ‘What price will you take for the information?’

Ba pursed his lips. He disengaged himself from the women and leaned forward. They got the hint and left quietly. He read the data again, then looked at me through its faint ghost.

‘It’s a price you might not want to pay,’ he said.

‘Name it,’ I said.

‘I will ask nothing of you now, probator. Consider this an act of goodwill, a gesture of my deep concern for the people of Varangantua and desire to see less crime blighting our society. But I may wish to call on you, in your official capacity, at some point in the future. A little act of reciprocity.’

There we had it. The highest price of all. A favour. Well, I knew men like Ba, and compared to my father he was an amateur at this game. I figured I’d take my chances.

‘Done,’ I said.

Previnus looked at me. ‘Are you sure?’

‘The adults are talking, Prev,’ I said.

‘Even your cousin is aware of what I am asking you, Symeon Dymaxion-Noctis,’ said Ba. ‘Maybe you should reconsider?’

‘I know what I’m doing.’

‘Well then,’ said Ba. ‘The three ships there are the property of Marchenstka Conveyance, a subsidiary of Four Domains Shipping. They are heavy cargo haulers, surface-to-orbit, a modest range beyond the gravity well, enough to reach the high anchors. Their names are the Verdant, the First People, and The Return Journey. Whimsical names, good ships.’

Marchenstka. So he was tied up in this. That’s why his men had the Zeria Plantis shock goads, and it was why his daughter was missing: servitor runners were putting pressure on him, or someone close to him. This was beginning to make some sense. It’s funny how often these things are connected.

‘And you know this because you’ve used them?’

‘I know this because I know this,’ said Ba.

‘Marchenstka is in the bulk business. Servitors aren’t his game.’

‘From what I’ve heard, probator, the kind you’re chasing might well be.’

‘So you know a little more about that?’

‘Another question. I shall indulge you, for I am in a generous mood,’ said Ba.

I turned off my projection.

‘There have been rumours of servitors beyond the ordinary specialisation being trafficked off-world,’ he said. ‘It’s a rare trade, but it’s becoming more frequent. It could only be taking place with the collusion of the Adeptus Mechanicus.’

‘That’s a given,’ I said.

‘And also figures relatively high up in the various departmentos of this world’s administration.’

I said nothing, not wishing to give Ba any more insights into what was going on. Obviously there was some collusion between the AdMech and the planetary government. I couldn’t rule out involvement within the Adeptus Administratum either. No wonder Lux was chasing this down.

‘I have heard you have an interest in related trades, shall we say,’ I said.

‘I have interests in everything,’ said Ba. ‘I have dealt in servitors before. Some people even say I used to be one, but even if I had a tendency towards criminal behaviour, I would not partake in this. Slavery is illegal on Alecto, I am sure you know.’

‘Servitors aren’t slaves.’

‘That depends on your definition of what a servitor is,’ Ba went on. ‘Most servitors are designed for simple, repetitive tasks, but the human brain is among the most complex objects in the universe, and can be made to do many things,’ said Ba. ‘If one had discerning clientele who wanted servitors of unusual sorts, then they would pay for it. There are some men, and they are nearly always men,’ said Ba, ‘who would crave the total domination of another’s will that servitorhood brings, for all manner of reasons. It is a relatively simple task to leave a little of the person that was in the cyborg that is. The more flexible the unit is required to be, the more of the original neural architecture must be preserved. The more that is preserved, the further from the Lore of the Mechanicus the unit drifts. There is money in this trade. I even remember some decades ago someone selling citizens mindshackled with xenotech and passing them off as servitors. It’s a murky world out there, probator. Nothing is ever what it seems, and the delineation between categories of things or of actions is never as clear cut as our rulers would have us believe. Your cousin here would be executed for his sexual preferences on some worlds, but here, it is nothing.’

‘He does nothing wrong.’

‘That’s not my point. Human diversity of action and opinion is.’ He smiled. He had perfect teeth. ‘This is a big galaxy, and human wickedness more than encompasses it.’

‘Then I’m glad we don’t live on some worlds,’ I said. ‘I am surprised. Milius Marchenstka makes a big deal about his probity.’

Ba laughed. ‘Milius Marchenstka? No! No, no, no!’ He wagged his finger. ‘Those two letters, lambda and theta, after the ship idents, do you know what that is?’

‘Letorian,’ I said.

‘Well done,’ he said. ‘But do you know where the name comes from?’

‘I do not,’ I said.

‘In ancient Terran myth, Leto was the mother-manager of the twelve mythic Lunites in ancient times. When mankind arrived here, some of the Firsters took the name as their own. It was meant as a mark of nobility, but over the years a lot of other people assumed the title. They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. It became rather common, and therefore obfuscatory.’

‘There are a lot of Letorians,’ I agreed.

‘The clue to the identity of the person you seek is in the name, Probator Noctis. People can’t help but show off.’

‘Who is it?’ I said.

Ba pursed his lips, looking bored. ‘I’ve laid enough of a trail for you. You’ll have to work that out yourself.’

I had a good idea who he was talking about.

The door opened. Two of the Hercutor servitors came in.

‘That is the end of our chat, gentlemen,’ said Ba. ‘Please, I have extended to you five hundred slates credit. Use it to purchase whatever pleasures you wish.’

‘Thank you for your courtesy and generosity, Ser Ba,’ said Previnus. It was sickening to watch a man from so powerful a house grovelling to this thug. I spared Menem-Ba a nod. It was more than he deserved.

‘You can keep your money,’ I said. ‘I’ve got a ship to catch.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Notes from a dead man

I didn’t want to dwell on what I’d promised Menem-Ba. One problem at a time, that’s the only approach that works in a city as broken as Varangantua, and besides, I had nearly everything I needed to unpick the big, blood-soaked knot tying Nearsteel and the Steelmound together. Despite my bold statement to Ba, I did end up spending his slates. Previnus wheedled at me to stay for a few hands of rajet, and given what he’d done I couldn’t say no. We hit the tables; we flirted with the beautiful people selling themselves on the top deck, he with the boys, me with the girls. I was half tempted, Previnus more so, but when I declined to pay out, he demurred himself, which I thought was pretty big of him. He actually did want to spend a bit of time with me, and for a couple of hours we lived it up on Menem-Ba’s largesse.

My mind wasn’t on the game. I was too preoccupied, thoughts racing as I put together the last facets of the case. I am a good rajet player, and I have been known to clean up. I didn’t win anything, though I spun out Ba’s free credit a fair old while and didn’t dip into my own slates.

Previnus would have been annoyed any other time, but I think he liked getting involved in my work. He had a buzz about him; he was excited and scared in equal measure, and to be fair, that’s why most people like me do the job we do.

He was sleepy on the flight back, but happy.

‘This is your life?’ Previnus said, more than once. ‘Emperor upon the Throne, what a thrill! What a thrill.’

He got even happier when I thanked him. ‘You’ve been a genuine help, cousin, I mean it.’

He beamed fit to split his face in half, drank a huge glass of Paragonian gleece and promptly fell asleep.

I watched the city slip by; the lights of foundries crowded the coast north of Saltstone, their domination pushing far inland. That place drew in ores from all over the planet. Even now, after thousands of years of exploitation, they were still clawing the riches out of the ground.

I had an idea of what to do. I had to put a case to Illios, and it had to be good. He wasn’t going to easily accede to what I needed.

The last part fell into place as I too was dozing off. Facing down men like Ba takes it out of you. Unlike most near-death experiences, an encounter of that sort can rear up and turn into an actual death experience years down the line. There’s a whole lot of worry ladled onto days like these. But I had an idea now of how we were going to wrap this up.

A message tone sang from my dataslate.

‘Lux?’ I said. I rubbed my face, hoping sleep would brush away like mud. It never does.

‘Probator Noctis,’ she said, which was as much small talk as I ever got out of her. ‘I have some new information. I have been able to examine the corpse of Chen-Chen Zifo Sigma, and have found a message encoded in a molecular arrangement of his bone tissue.’

‘Smart,’ I said, ‘seeing as that servitor pulped his head and ripped out his augmetics.’ I stopped. ‘Hang on, what are you doing out of the medicae?’

‘I am sufficiently functional to permit active duty,’ she said.

‘Right,’ I said. ‘Because to me and my amateur medical eye you looked kind of messed up.’

She paused. Was there a little smile in her voice when she continued? ‘I am, as you say, “messed up”, but duty cannot wait. The Omnissiah suffers for us on His Golden Throne in eternal agonies. I will not let a few bruises keep me from my work.’

‘Fair enough,’ I said. I knew what she was saying. I’m not the type to lie around malingering either.

‘I also calculated a high probability that Chen-Chen’s body would be disposed of to prevent me from examining it, in case I found something like this message. Our perpetrators are very close to closing off our lines of inquiry.’

‘So play me this message then,’ I said.

‘I was attempting to,’ she said. ‘Beginning playback.’

At Lux’s volition, my slate’s holo-lens projected an image of the ever-elusive, and now thoroughly dead, Chen-Chen Zifo Sigma. He hunched forward, staring intently into a vid-thief lens set a bit too low. The quality was appalling. I suppose there’s only so much data you can encode into a seemingly random patterning of atoms on your own skeleton. Sigma was a collection of graphical blocks arranged into low-res suggestions of his features, but it was him, of that there was no doubt. His personal ident seals and codes ran through the picture, and there was just enough resolution to make out his face.

‘My name is Chen-Chen Zifo Sigma,’ he said. ‘And this is my confession.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Chen-Chen confesses

Chen-Chen’s message jumped, badly cut or corrupted. ‘For five years now I have been involved with illegal operations in the Zeria Plantis facility within Enclave ZA Four-Five-Two, Al-o, Seg TS.’ He paused. ‘That is the place the locals call the Steelmound, in Varangantua, on Alecto.’

He hunched a little further forward. This was a man who knew he was done. ‘These crimes were extensive and blasphemous in nature, but the essence of our sin is the creation of servitor units of a level of sentience far above that accepted in the Lore, for sale to unlicensed off-world parties. We have been guilty of slavery, of cruelty, of profiteering from the misery of others, and of misappropriating the service of other beings for our own gain. I cannot say that I am blameless. I confess now only because I miscalculated. Simply, I did not believe I was being rewarded sufficiently for the risk or my talents. These were my designs, my work! When I asked for admittance to the fourth level of mysteries, as was my right, I was deflected, and eventually refused. Andus could not support my elevation, he said, because my work was “unofficial”.’

The bitterness in his voice took me aback. Such venom. And I thought the Adeptus Mechanicus were all about talking to air ducts.

‘Thinking myself indispensable to the operation, I made a threat. That was my last mistake, and now, ironically, I find myself carrying out that threat when I had no intention to do so, in the full knowledge that it will not save me. Perhaps it will lessen the severity of the Machine-God’s judgement upon my works. I failed to live up to my potential. I failed to follow the true path to understanding. I was sidetracked by greed.’

I listened intently. I knew that the Zeria Plantis staff were involved, but I was keen to find out just how far it went. This was the last piece of the puzzle, I was sure.

‘But I am not guilty of these murders. They were done by others in order to discredit me and to cover their crimes. If anything good can be said to have come from this, it is that our wrongdoing is now over. I understand that now.’ He sat up a little.

‘The list of the people involved is as follows…’

The image jumped and my slate let out an unpleasant grinding sound.

‘The list of names is as follows…’ said Chen-Chen.

‘The list of names is as follows…

‘The list of names is as follows…’

‘Stop recording,’ said Lux.

‘That’s it?’ I said.

‘Recovery of that message was very difficult,’ said Lux, a little frostily. ‘There is no more. I have taken apart his remains down to the molecular level with the help of Verispex Shlo. This is all we could recover.’

‘I’m sure the genetor is involved,’ I said. ‘How couldn’t he know? I’ve been suspicious of him from the start. And what would someone like Andus need with Alectian slates?’

‘Certainly,’ she said. ‘An adept of Sigma’s rank would not take so much trouble to hide this message if we were dealing with common criminals.’

All tech-priests I’d dealt with had arrogance in common, so she must have been right about that.

‘Did you examine the servitor?’

‘I did.’ She started to lay out her findings, but I interrupted her.

‘Now,’ I said, ‘I’m certain you’re going to tell me that the massacre in Downslope was down to remote meddling, and not owing to Chen-Chen’s own modifications.’

‘That is correct,’ she said. ‘The unit was a standard Alpha-Plus servitor. Unfortunately for Chen-Chen, that made it perfectly capable of processing and acting upon the combat doctrines imposed upon it.’

‘By whom?’ I asked.

‘Someone with all the correct access codes. They would have had to have been near to bypass Chen-Chen’s security matrix.’

I had then dismissed the thought of looking for witnesses. It was Downslope. No one would talk.

‘What about the servitor from Saint Verring?’

‘Standard combat model. Also produced at Zeria Plantis.’

‘Right,’ I said. ‘We don’t have much time. That last shipment on the manifest is due to fly out tonight. After that, we won’t be able to catch them. You’re still at the Bastion?’

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘Stay there,’ I said. ‘Don’t go in alone. Wait for me, we’ll go together.’ I began to key access codes to the Bastion hangars in probator’s cypher. I stopped. ‘If you’re up to it.’

‘I will be. I wish to see this out to the end. You must have the identity of the ship owner.’

‘I do,’ I said. ‘Here are the codes for the hangar levels. Anyone stops you, refer them to me. I’ll datacast you the information I’ve got in a moment. This is nearly over, but first I’m going to have to see Illios. We’re going to need warrants of detention and search. Don’t be tempted to head off on your own, wait for me! What I have to do is not going to be easy.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Noctis makes a case

‘Absolutely not,’ Illios said. He reread the autoscribed report I’d handed him. ‘I cannot allow you to crash your way into Count Milius’ abode! This is outrageous, they’re one of the foremost families in this part of the city. Think of the political damage.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘Being rich doesn’t stop you being a criminal. The opposite applies more often, I’d say.’

‘Where’s your evidence?’ he said. ‘You’re asking me to light a fuse on something that will bring us all down.’

‘He’s got all the evidence,’ said Hondus. He pulled himself up and stuck his chest out, thumbs hooked into his belt loops. I think he was enjoying this.

‘I have. Ships, times, it’s all in there,’ I said, stabbing my finger onto the report. ‘Everything.’

Illios unwound the scroll to the relevant point. The scrivener I’d used was old and slow, winding everything onto aluminium scroll holders, but it did a nice line in illumination. I wanted the report to look important. Scrolls have that effect on pompous arses like Illios.

‘So what? They’ve been transporting these half-men off-world. That’s it? That’s all you’ve got?’

I shook my head. ‘That’s not all I’ve got, and you know it. If we pull this thread the whole tapestry will unravel. We have proof. You just don’t want to move against a major house.’

He peered up at me balefully. ‘Mind your assumptions, probator.’ He pushed the scroll aside. ‘Lay it out for me.’

I looked at Hondus. Hondus shrugged. ‘Go ahead,’ he said.

‘Right,’ I said. ‘Here’s how it goes. Zeria Plantis has been manufacturing illegal servitors and selling them off-world.’

‘Illegal how?’ Illios said. ‘What’s the crime, and under what Lex?’

‘Servitors are supposed to be non-sentient,’ I said. ‘It prevents them rebelling against their programming. The Adeptus Mechanicus use the brains of those given over to them as a basis for the neural architecture for the servitors. Procurator Lux informs me that this means they can be adapted for multiple purposes, and the highest models have the capability for limited self-determination. Your average servitor is more machine than man, in these the balance goes the other way.’ I tilted my machine hand by way of demonstration. ‘And it goes too far. This is a hereteknical work, according to the Adeptus Mechanicus Lore. They’re not fond of things that can think for themselves.’

‘And?’ said Illios. ‘What does that have to do with us? That’s their Lex, not ours.’ He glowered at me through the tri-d projection of Zeria Plantis. ‘Lux’s problem.’

I sighed. Illios was being deliberately obtuse. He was making it damn clear he just wanted all this to go away. ‘Look, it’s simple enough. The Zeria Plantis has been exporting large numbers of servitors of illegal specification. Chen-Chen was one of their foremost makers. He got a little upset he wasn’t getting due respect for his efforts, so when he was asked to make servitors as rewards for Felpsko and Iskritska, and possibly others we don’t know about yet, he decided to create himself a little leverage. When he wasn’t elevated in rank like he wanted, he made his threat – fulfil my demands, or I’ll reveal the racket. I have my means, you know how these people work. From what we know, he didn’t intend to go through with it, but when the Zeria Plantis moved against him, he had no choice. He must have known how risky this was, and even if he didn’t, he got the idea pretty quickly that he was a dead man.

‘Then Chen-Chen’s play went from a case of blackmail to revenge. Regardless of his reasoning regarding the risk, his plan to blow open the racket was sound. By taking out two of Zeria Plantis’ agents, people from our side of the Redway, he knew we would get involved, embarrassing the Adeptus Mechanicus. By cutting Iskritska in half and leaving him like that, he made sure of it. I think his superiors – and we know Andus is involved, and I think that the cybertheurge archmagos genetor is too – underestimated the damage he could do, or how inventive he was. In a way, his acts were just as much about proving how clever he was as anything else. Iskritska’s murder certainly blindsided them, enough that they couldn’t stop Djelling panicking. He tried to cover it up in his clumsy way, and that only made things worse. By then we were on the trail, as was the Collegiate Extremis. This whole thing shines a light on fractures in the local Mechanicus that they’d rather we didn’t know about. If we know they’re as divided and petty as we are, they lose a lot of their menace. I think that explains some of the pressure to clean it up quickly.’ I said this with some emphasis.

Hondus’ eyes slid sideways to look at me. Watch it, they said.

‘Zeria Plantis, and I mean 237089, decided to shut the whole thing down. They went after Djelling, who was too diligent for his own good, intending I’m sure to kill Lux in the process. Then they took Chen-Chen down, using similar methods to the ones he used in the hope that we’d close the case there.’

I could feel Hondus staring hard at the side of my head.

‘Wasn’t he killed by his own cyborg?’ said Illios.

‘The man dealt in modified servitors, there is no way he would make an error so profound,’ I said. ‘Chen-Chen’s death was caused by outside reprogramming of the servitor. Lux has the proof. But they were too late. It exposed something that goes right into one of our most celebrated gilded houses. This isn’t some street-level nonsense. Slavery is illegal on Alecto, it is throughout all of this subsector. These servitors, being sentient, are slaves. Even if we discount that, the criminals condemned to mind wipe and servitude as servitors have been misappropriated.’ I ticked off my points on my fingers. ‘Then there’s miscategorisation of export goods, tithe evasion, forced relocation of Alectian workers, and provision of uncertified machinery to unlicensed buyers.’

‘Do you think anyone is going to give a damn about that level of corruption, in this city?’ said Illios. ‘Look around you! You should know, being who you are, Dymaxion.’

‘Look at it from both angles. The murders of Soven Iskritska, Pluon Felpsko, Flesh-Tech Chen-Chen Zifo Sigma, and Supervisorius Djelling give us more than enough cause to move on them. We can add to that the attempted murder of Procurator Rho-1 Lux, the deployment of military weaponry on Varangantua sovereign territory, trespass into the Redway.’ I leaned on the desk. ‘Do you want me to go on?’

Illios narrowed his eyes. ‘You’re not going to let this drop, are you?’

‘No.’ I stood up straight. ‘You’ve been getting at me to solve the Marchenstka girl case. Here it is.’

He looked at Hondus, who shrugged again. His level of non-committal was heroic, but he was better at playing politics than me.

‘Castellan, I know this is a headache for you,’ I said. ‘But if we don’t do something about this ourselves, there will be interest from outside. Adeptus Arbites, maybe, the Collegiate Extremis, certainly. Something like this could even draw the eye of an inquisitor.’

Illios rubbed his face. ‘All right,’ he said.

‘These are our suspects. This man, Flesh-Tech Superior Andus, was in charge of production.’ I projected an image from my dataslate. ‘He recruited Iskritska for his criminal contacts to make sure they got the best components, by which I mean they had the pick of the most intelligent criminals processed by the courts.’

‘The more intelligent make the best half-men,’ said Hondus.

‘Yes, thank you Probator Super-Ordinary Vilyavich,’ said Illios acidly, but he was interested now. His eyes were narrowed in calculation.

‘We think Iskritska probably recruited Felpsko, who was their man on the inside at Port Vorbis. He was a third-class export classifier, more than high enough to make sure their shipping manifests went through unchallenged. Through Felpsko, we get to Marchenstka.’

‘Transport,’ said Hondus. ‘They needed to get these things off the planet in as clean and legitimate a way as possible. Marchenstka has the contacts, the influence and the reputation to ensure that could happen.’

‘And that brings us back to the murders,’ said Illios. ‘What about Marchenstka’s daughter?’

‘Coming down from the spires to live in Nearsteel wasn’t the smartest course of action.’ Says me, I thought to myself. ‘I’m pretty certain she was taken to secure continued cooperation. It wouldn’t take much effort for a major house to break off all contact with something like this, especially if you look at the timing. Lady Iuliana was taken around the time I believe Chen-Chen made his demand for elevation. She was insurance, not against them pulling out, but against them trying to save their own reputation at a cost to Zeria Plantis.’

‘Djelling?’

‘Not Djelling. He was innocent. Emperor bless his sense of duty, he discovered that the information provided to us by Andus, information that went to the port authority, did not match internal records. For that he was killed. By now Andus was firmly implicated, so he went missing too. I’m sure that the trail of guilt goes higher up Zeria Plantis.’

‘How can you be sure of that?’

‘Zeria Plantis has influence in the Steelmound. The Astynomia were keen to drop this as soon as possible. That would require someone with more power than Djelling, who would have done the same just to save the facility the embarrassment of producing faulty devices. The Ennearchy knew that, which is why they asked the Collegiate Extremis to investigate. That’s why I think 237089 is involved. We can’t do anything about that, but Lux can.’

‘It’s compelling,’ said Illios. ‘But we’re talking about more than one crime here. Why should we drag Marchenstka down?’

‘This material is intended for an off-world market,’ I said. ‘Snagging Marchenstka is our only hope of finding out where this goes. We get them, we can pull the whole lot down. We can find out where the servitors are going and who’s responsible for overall control of the racket.’ I leaned in a bit closer. ‘It’s the kind of thing that could make an ambitious man’s name here. Think of all the merchant-barons who would be grateful for a shake-up of the competition.’

Illios sat back and laced his fingers over his stomach.

‘This is a chance to put things back to normal, sir,’ said Hondus. ‘The Steelmound Ennearchy will be happy. We’ll be out of their faces, they’ll be out of ours. An action against a noble house right now might be advisable,’ he added, talking as if there were any other consideration than justice, which there always is. ‘The populace is hungry, we’ve resentment on the streets. If they see that the great houses of Varangantua are not above the Lex, it may calm things down for us.’

I looked at Hondus in amazement. He shook his head slightly.

Illios considered all we had said. ‘All right, all right,’ he said. He reached into the drawers of his desk and began pulling out various forms. ‘You can do it, but if this blows up in your faces I’ll drop you in the fire myself.’ He pressed the button on his intervox. ‘Bonneveille, set me up a vid-meeting with the justicius of Nearsteel – I’m going to need his approval on this. Secure channel.’

‘The fewer people who know the better,’ I said.

‘It’ll go no further than he and I,’ he said. ‘You better be bloody sure about this, Dymaxion. I’m not writing Count Milius’ name on here lightly.’

He reached for the detention warrant. I put my hand on it, and smiled apologetically.

‘It’s not his name I need on there, sir.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

A different name

I waited for Lux on the ramp of the Zurov. People and servitors moved around the hangar in almost constant motion, atomic gyrations re-enacted by human beings. Another gunship came in, nose up, engines shrieking. Ours wasn’t the only operation going out of the Nearsteel District that day, but it was the biggest, and most of the chaos in the hangar was my doing.

‘She not here yet?’ Hondus shouted from the back. He was wearing full tactical gear, and blended into the squad of sanctioners seated on the twin benches in the transport bay. If he hadn’t been standing up, I would have struggled to see him.

‘Not yet,’ I said.

‘What?’

‘I said not yet!’ I shouted. I too was wearing the black tactical gear of the sanctioners, but I had my helmet off.

Hondus finished briefing the sergeants-at-arms and came down onto the ramp.

‘Throne, man, look at you, nervy like a juve.’

I was behaving weirdly, I admit, so I couldn’t muster up a smart reply.

‘I’ve briefed the men. No vox until operation begins. The pilots won’t receive their orders until we’re in the air,’ he said. ‘We might just keep this from getting out.’

‘That’s if Illios isn’t involved in this.’

Hondus took the toothpick out of his mouth and put a smoke stick in its place, lighting it up in clear defiance of the No naked flames signs adorning fuel tenders and the Zurovs themselves.

‘You seem to be hell-bent on coming out with the most dangerous shit you can think of,’ he said. ‘It’s a wonder you’re still alive.’

‘We don’t know how high this goes,’ I said.

‘Sometimes, Symeon, it’s best to keep the truth in your head.’ He tapped my skull with his forefinger. ‘But, if Marchenstka has gone, then we will know.’

‘Indeed. Hey, looks like Lux is here,’ I said.

I saw her servo-skull before I saw her. The skull dipped under the lintel of a door and flew up, making a straight bullet line for the ship. Klaxons honked and personnel announcements boomed incomprehensibly from voxmitters around the hangar.

A squad of sanctioners clattered up the ramp of the recently landed Zurov. Behind them was Lux.

She was pale, and looked pained. She was using a skull-tipped cane to walk, though from its power block it must have been a weapon as well as a support.

‘Get in,’ I shouted to Lux. Lukas came aboard first, scanning the sanctioners. Lux came in after.

‘We’re ready then.’ Hondus slapped me on the shoulder. ‘Good luck,’ he said.

He went down the ramp.

‘He’s going to the port, we’re taking the Marchenstkas,’ I said into Lux’s ear. She nodded. ‘Strap yourself in. Sergeant Balthuis, are you ready?’

Balthuis gave me the affirmative sign. I picked him personally. I needed someone I could trust.

We took our seats. Lux’s servo-skull settled on her lap.

I banged on the cockpit door. ‘Let’s go!’ I said.

Timing was crucial. Hondus and his party of three sanctioner squads were going to hit the ship, the First People. It had to be simultaneous. Grabbing the cargo too early would tip off Marchenstka, and grabbing Marchenstka would tip off the ship. I took only the single craft with me. Going in too heavy would provoke a bloodbath from Marchenstka’s private army.

I told the pilot to head north along the mountains, only giving him the actual location when the Ovrin Spire was in sight. He didn’t question it, and I double-checked his vox messages were strictly connected with matters of air traffic control. Permissions were given from the spire when we were within effective range of its anti-air defences. I logged this, providing my personal access codes as a member of the spire elite as well as our Lex-given authority.

‘State destination,’ Ovrin’s flight zone controller demanded.

‘Dymaxion Promontory,’ I lied.

We flew over the wall. I got little view of the complex from my place behind the pilot, but the spires crowded us in on both sides.

‘Dymaxion Promontory ahead,’ said the pilot.

‘Great,’ I said. ‘We’re not going there. That way.’ I pointed off to the left, where the Marchenstkas’ familial holdings were situated. Thirty-four floors occupying the pinnacle of one of the lesser spires. They were rich, on the up. Old Milius had his eyes on the main spire, but they weren’t there yet.

I keyed on the vox again. ‘Attention, Ovrin flight zone command, this is Probator Symeon Dymaxion-Noctis. Be advised of immediate course change, Marchenstka private airdock, Messalian Spire.’

There were interceptors in the sky a second later. The Zurov’s sensors bleeped with a dozen alarms warning of target locks.

‘Maintain previous course,’ the controller voxed.

‘Stand down your intercept craft,’ I said. ‘Prepare to receive warrants of detention and investigation.’ I sent my documentation with a push of a button.

‘This is irregular,’ said the controller.

He was only saying that because most gilded buy us off. Not this time.

‘We are the Lex. Stand down all defences.’

A tense second slipped by.

‘Compliance,’ said the controller.

The interceptors shot past us, jets screaming to show us how much better their equipment was than ours, then peeled away back to their base. One by one the target locks blinked off.

I turned back to Lux. ‘Now comes the hard part.’

‘What if they run?’ she said.

‘Then all they’re doing is showing us that they are guilty.’

We came into the Marchenstka airdock hard. There was, of course, a group of their private troopers lined up to meet us on the gleaming stone steps. Their armour was gold, but sturdy-looking despite its ostentation.

They all levelled their guns at me as I strode out. I’d left my helmet off so they could see who I was. It wouldn’t have stopped their las-bolts anyway. I told Lux to wait. Her attendance was a complicating matter, and in her injured state she’d be vulnerable in a fight, no matter how good her augments were.

‘Put those guns down,’ I said. I held up my warrant and thrust it at the lead guard, his rank apparent by his metallic, scarlet helmet.

My sanctioners filed out and spread across the landing apron. Idiot servitors, their programming too inflexible to process what was going on, got in the way. The sanctioners raised their guns.

I looked about myself. ‘This is a lot of guns,’ I said. ‘Let’s put them all down, nicely. You drop yours on the floor, and my men will lower theirs. I won’t ask twice.’

‘A moment,’ the red-helmed guard said. I assumed he was speaking into his helm’s integrated vox. Consultation done, he gestured to his men.

‘Do as he says.’ The troopers put their guns down gently. ‘Come with me,’ he said. ‘Lord Marchenstka is awaiting you in the dining hall.’

The situation under control, Lux came out.

‘Good,’ I said. ‘We shall go alone, the procurator and I.’

I turned to my sanctioners. ‘Balthuis, wait here. Keep an eye on them.’

Red-helm made to escort me, but I held up my hand and stopped him. ‘You can wait here,’ I said with a smile. ‘I know the way. I’ve been here for dinner.’

He looked at me unsurely for a long moment.

‘Vox the count if you like,’ I said.

He let us pass.

Lux was shocked by the wealth on display, I could tell. She was quiet the whole way through the Marchenstka mansion, and her behaviour was the most human I’d seen. She kept her eyes forward most of the time, then they’d dart to the side at the sight of some ludicrous extravagance or other. I couldn’t say I blamed her. The Marchenstkas had appalling taste.

Count Milius was making a show of his lack of concern, as his family and he were calmly eating their dinner when we walked into their dining room. It was as big as a cathedrum nave, the table lost in the vastness of it, despite having space for sixty settings. The family were clustered at the far end: Milius at the head; his wife, Destrella, to his left; their two adolescent sons opposite her.

‘You better be here to give me some good news about my daughter, Dymaxion,’ he said around a mouthful of steak. He pointed his knife at me. He was a bold man, that’s for sure.

‘You know I’m not here for that.’

‘I’ve no idea what you are talking about.’

‘No, probably not,’ I said.

‘If you are not here for my daughter, then why are you here?’ He finished his food, stood, balled up his napkin and threw it onto the table. ‘What is this, coming into my home in this manner? I’ve nothing to hide! I’ve done nothing wrong. You’ve five minutes to explain yourself, then I’m ordering my men to open fire and damn the consequences.’

‘Then watch,’ Lux said.

Her servo-skull overflew us, and stopped halfway up the table. Its built-in projector painted its fuzzy light picture line by line into the air.

‘The Castigari Docks at Port Vorbis,’ said Lux.

‘What?’ said Milius. His sons looked at each other, not knowing what to do. His wife stared ahead, her knuckles white from gripping her cutlery so tightly.

‘Do you recognise this vessel?’ Lux asked as the image panned up the side of a bulk lander. It was being loaded by a couple of cargo-8s; people, tiny in comparison to its huge size, worked sedately around the open ramp.

‘Of course I do, it is the First People,’ said Milius. ‘One of several medium haulers we operate.’ But his poise was cracking. He leaned forward. ‘I know my portfolio intimately – that vessel is supposed to be in graving dock in orbit undergoing maintenance. What is the meaning of this? Some trick, Dymaxion, to ensnare me? You’re supposed to be better than us, and here you are, abusing your power for your father’s advantage.’

‘It’s got nothing to do with that,’ I said. ‘We’re about to raid it. You’ll see why.’

The sanctioners arrived. They ran stealthily into view, their guns held straight out, muzzles pointing at the floor. Someone, I believe it was Hondus, stepped to the front. The audex was terrible, and we couldn’t make out what he said, but there was a flash of gunfire in response, and a sanctioner went down with a wound to the thigh. Hondus’ men all fired back. A couple of Marchenstka’s people died. More ran. The rest got to their knees and held up their hands over their heads. It was over in moments.

‘This is one of three ships that have been taking illegal servitors off-world,’ I said. ‘Your ships.’

Marchenstka was flabbergasted. I’ve rarely seen a man’s face go so pale and so slack.

‘But, I don’t understand… I… This is impossible. This is some mistake. This is a crime! I would have nothing to… Somebody must have infiltrated my organisation! This is nothing to do with me!’ As he spoke his dismay transformed itself into anger, rolling along and getting bigger and louder until he was jabbing his knife and shouting. ‘The truth will out, then I’ll have your seal and your miserable hide! How dare you abuse the Lex so, for your own gains!’

Lux and I stared at them. I kept my face deadly serious. There was bad blood between us, but I believe Count Milius to be an honourable, and mostly honest, man.

‘As much as I’d love to call you a liar, I can’t,’ I said. ‘Because it’s not you we’re here to see. You’re assuming our warrant of detention is for you. It’s not.’ I looked at Destrella. ‘It’s for your wife.’

Destrella dropped her knife and fork and stood up so abruptly her chair toppled over and hit the floor with a bang. Gaping servants looked on.

‘What by the Nine Devils are you talking about?’ Marchenstka had gone an ugly shade of purple, and his voice became a dying man’s whisper. I don’t think anyone has ever hated me as much as he did in that moment. He would have killed me if he could.

‘Lady Destrella?’ I said. ‘Don’t try to dissemble. I have plenty of proof. Why don’t you tell your husband what is going on.’

She shook her head.

‘The name gave you away. Leto, the mother of gods who flew in the heavens. I know it’s you.’ I paused, changed the tone of my voice, aiming for sympathetic and understanding. ‘It’s your daughter,’ I said. ‘They have her, don’t they? That’s why you did it.’

She held herself up straight, and looked me dead in the eye. Alectian nobles are proud, and that’s why she said what she said next. It may or may not have been true, but there’s no way to know now. She could have lied, I told myself later, either way.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I did it for myself.’ She glared at her husband. ‘All my life, prepared like a beast for breeding. No choice. No determination. Do you know, a quarter of my husband’s fortune comes from my family?’

‘What are you saying?’ said Count Milius. He looked sick now. The poor man was living a lifetime’s emotion in those moments.

‘A quarter. My slates, given over to someone else, including those three ships. Their crews were loyal to the memory of my father. Speak the right words, exploit the right sentiments, and it’s easy to get a man to do anything.’ She looked at Lux. ‘People think the rich have it easy, but not me, not us. We poor broodmares. I wanted to do something for myself. I wanted to make my own way.’

‘But Iuliana…’ said Marchenstka.

Destrella held her head higher. ‘They took her. They have her. Once that fool Chen-Chen pushed for advancement, they needed to buy my silence, and my continued cooperation.’

‘Who?’ I said. ‘If you tell us, we can help you.’

‘You shall have the protection of the Collegiate Extremis, you have my word,’ said Lux.

‘What?’ said the count. He was bewildered, on the precipice of shock.

‘Quiet,’ I said.

‘My silence has been bought,’ she said. ‘I will not talk.’ She looked at her husband. ‘You are not a bad man, Milius. I never enjoyed being married to you, but it could have been worse. I’ll not let the chasteners have me, for Iuliana’s sake.’

Lux and I worked out what she was going to do the moment she did it.

‘No!’ I shouted. I lunged, Lux’s servo-skull darted through the air, but Lady Destrella bit down hard, there came a quiet crunch, and she fell down almost immediately. She fitted on the floor for a moment, and then lay still, foam pouring from her mouth and nose. A moment after that, blood.

I ran to her side and checked for a pulse.

‘I have doctors,’ Milius said, rallying himself. ‘Bring the medicae!’ he shouted at his servants. They stood, paralysed by the events they’d witnessed. ‘Now!’ he roared.

‘No,’ I said. I let my hand fall from Destrella’s neck. There was no pulse. ‘You’re too late. Lady Destrella is dead.’ I stood. ‘Nobody leave, nobody at all.’

Milius looked at me.

‘Why?’

‘Your daughter, Count Marchenstka.’

‘This means they’ll release her, Iuliana. She’s coming home, is that not so?’

‘No, it doesn’t,’ I said, although he was too clever a man not to know that already. ‘But I’m going to do what I can. We don’t have much time.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Save the girl

Count Marchenstka did what I told him to, because he knew then that I was the best hope he had of ever seeing his daughter alive again.

First, I had him call his men and form a cordon around the dining hall.

‘Everyone who bore witness to this has to stay here, no exceptions,’ I said. ‘Everyone, do you understand? If the wrong person gets to a vox or a cogitator terminal, and they send out a message your wife is dead, that’s it, we won’t get Iuliana back.’

Marchenstka started to speak but I cut him dead. ‘Trust me, there will be someone on your staff who has taken slates to watch Lady Destrella. The news will get out.’

Marchenstka understood. His soldiers were kept out of the hall, and were not told why they were covering the doors. Everybody, family or servants, who had witnessed Destrella’s death was kept inside. Luckily, there hadn’t been too many witnesses. Lux checked for data exchange from within the hall and found none. By that time, I was already racing back to the Zurov. Lux opted to stay behind, in a manner of speaking. She was too beat up to come with me personally, but her servo-skull flew with me, and through it she was manifest.

‘Iskritska is the key,’ she said, her voice tinny through the servo-skull’s voxmitter.

‘Damn right,’ I said, and I cursed myself for not looking into it before. ‘He was a criminal. If there’s anyone who’d know someone who could pull off a kidnapping, it’d be him.’

We made it back to the Zurov in double quick time.

‘What’s going on?’ asked Balthuis.

‘Let these men go,’ I said. ‘Leave half the squad here. None of them are to go into the dining hall, and I mean it, pain of death.’

‘Pain of death,’ said Balthuis grimly.

‘Get me my helmet,’ I said. Leaving it behind was an error; there was no way for me to make a secure vox connection without it. Text exchange via dataveil would be too slow. I needed to talk.

Balthuis split his squad, then went into the Zurov and came back out with my helm, tossing it to me as I approached the entrance hatch. I put it on.

I engaged the helm’s privacy features, dulling sound from outside. ‘Get us in the air, Balthuis!’ I said, then opened a channel to our communications hub. ‘Bastion-N, connection to Enforcer Borostin, alpha priority, code three-eight zero-nine.’

‘Compliance,’ the machine-spirit said.

A moment later, the line made a sharp snap, and Borostin’s voice was in my ear.

‘Probator Noctis.’

‘Tell no one what I am about to ask you,’ I said. ‘I want you to go through Iskritska’s files. Did he and Yerzy Demedoi know each other?’

‘I’ll see what I can find,’ he said.

We were already lifting off, the Zurov’s turbines screeching as they sucked in air. The craft gained altitude, I fielded an angry request for information from the Ovrin sky warden, then we were out into the day.

‘Which way?’ shouted Balthuis over the rush of air and the roar of engines.

‘South,’ I said. ‘Past the Steelmound. Fly down the Via Carnelian.’

I had a pretty good idea where we were going.

Borostin works marvels with our district’s wheezing informational network.

‘Probator,’ he came back to me. ‘I’ve the information you wanted. They were both members of the Road Wyrms mo-sked gang as juveniles. They were picked up together a few times.’

How did we miss that, by the Throne? I asked myself. The answer was simple enough. Too much data of the wrong kind, in the wrong machines, and not enough eyes to go over it. I could have accessed the same files through the dataveil and my iris or dataslate, but if it weren’t for Borostin, it would have taken days to find the connection.

I knew the Road Wyrms. Bad people, groundcar jackers and snort dealers, caused a lot of trouble for us.

They also had a fine sideline in kidnap for ransom.

‘Where’s their current base of operations?’

‘Way down over the border into Tremane District.’

We’d driven them out of Nearsteel a while ago. Not that that mattered, as they’d be back, as soon as our colleagues at Bastion-T had had enough of them and kicked them out themselves.

‘They will not be there,’ said Lux, who had somehow tapped into my secure channel.

‘Where?’ I said.

‘Their current locus is too obvious.’

‘Isn’t it likely, though?’

‘We only have one opportunity to save this girl,’ Lux responded. ‘Where is the last place they were housed?’

I didn’t need to ask Borostin that. I’d been there.

‘Under the Carnelian overpass,’ I said. ‘Right in our territory.’

‘Probator!’ Sergeant Balthuis said. ‘The pilot needs a destination.’

We’d hit the far end of the Via Carnelian; it’s a long road. I could see the blunt blade of the Steelmound cutting the sky miles away, off to the side.

‘Have him maintain this course,’ I said. It wasn’t safe yet to tell the pilot our destination. It was pretty obvious, but I’d grab for any advantage.

I knew where we were going.

We were going to Baddrop.

I had the Zurov swoop down low over the crowded rooftops of the slum. A difficult manoeuvre, for Baddrop’s teetering shack towers were built so high there wasn’t much space to fly under the road.

‘Get yourselves close, but not too close,’ I told Balthuis. ‘If we all go in together, she’s dead. Surprise is our only chance.’

Balthuis nodded at me. He and the half-squad of sanctioners were going over their weapons.

‘You come in only when I signal,’ I said.

Then it was time to go. The Zurov kept to an unsteady hover over a shanty-stack. I slid out, half expecting to go right through the sheet of ferritium I landed on, but it held. Lux’s skull came with me. The whole building shook as the Zurov flew off, clarions and lights going, away from the Road Wyrms’ old hideout.

I looked about. I saw no one. Civilians tend to make themselves scarce when a Zurov flies by.

‘Have we been detected?’

‘I cannot tell,’ said Lux’s voice from the skull. ‘I am registering no power sources sufficient to fuel detection equipment, nor any particle emissions.’

I nodded. There might not be many auspexes in a subdistrict like this, but there were plenty of eyes. We would have been seen.

The mountain plateau sheers off steeply at Baddrop. It’s a dizzying place clinging to cliffs. The western parts open into tunnels in the rock, joining it to the far edges of the Chainward undertown. The eastern prospect is a sweeping roofscape that plunges into chemical mists. Via Carnelian is a fat ribbon in the sky, its towering legs holding it to a gentler incline that sees it thrust far out into thin air.

We were heading back, me running over shaking roofs of plasteel and plastek, leaping onto adobe towers crumbling in the acid smogs. Between the buildings, roads cut gorges. Down there, gangs like the Road Wyrms hunted on their mo-skeds: fast, two- and three-wheeler power cycles that could cut through this urban tangle as easy as they could speed down the great arterials.

I strained my ears for sounds of pursuit. I was in battlegear, sanctioners garb. They are hated in places like Baddrop.

‘Target ahead,’ said Lux. She accessed my iris, and painted up a blocky, low building in reds onto my sight. ‘I have scried the building. Here are floor plans. There is an access in the roof.’

I had to descend fifty feet to get to it. The only way down was via a series of layered roofs bounded by a terrifying drop. Air circulation pipes stuck out seemingly at random, drawing off the stifling warmth of the people inside, using it to drive jury-rigged power generators, and sucking in fresher air so the populace might breathe. It was difficult to negotiate, and speed made me careless. I slipped, and nearly fell grabbing a pipe that stung my hands with its heat, then half came off its mounting. I swung out a way from the edge, free arm wheeling, augmetic hand crumpling the metal. The pipe swung back in, and I threw myself onto a welded steel roof that creaked with the additional weight.

‘That was too close,’ I said.

I made it to the marked building.

‘What was this place?’ Lux asked. ‘Some kind of warehouse?’

‘It’s big enough,’ I said quietly. ‘But it was not built for that purpose. The Road Wyrms are a brazen gang. They made this place themselves to service their skeds when they ran this subdistrict.’

‘There is the access,’ she said.

‘That?’ I said. ‘Seriously?’

It was a grubby skylight, badly fitted to begin with, now with huge gaps around it where the plasteel roof had corroded. Most of the glass was missing. Until I got up to it, all I could see was forbidding darkness. The view up close was worse.

The glass looked straight down onto a rockcrete floor where abandoned service cradles rusted. The rockcrete was stained with corrosion and mottled with water damage. Light shone in grey shafts from numerous holes in the roof and walls. There was a rickety catwalk underneath the skylight. Halfway down to the floor, chains hung from tracks over abandoned workbenches, one set still dangling an engine block. It was forty feet from the skylight to the ground, at least.

‘Emperor,’ I said. ‘You want me to go through this?’

‘You chose to approach over the roofs,’ she pointed out.

‘Can you see anyone in there?’ I asked.

‘I have six life signs in the rear of the building, off the main floor. Two more outside the front. They are all armed. Except one.’

‘Iuliana Marchenstka,’ I said.

‘Is Balthuis in position?’

‘He is three streets away. They are doing as you said and conducting a random search operation.’

I thought a moment. This was going to be extremely risky. Me against five criminalis. They weren’t great odds, but my only other option was to call in the sanctioners. If I did that, they’d come in shooting, and the girl was dead.

‘Shit,’ I said. I hunted around the skylight for a section that opened. There was one, but so heavily rusted that I had to use my augmetic to force it. It gave out a raspy squeak. I stopped, completely still, the window raised over my head, my hand on my gun.

‘No movement,’ Lux said.

I went in, lowering myself as slowly and carefully as I could onto the catwalk. I didn’t trust it one bit. The whole thing shuddered as one shoe touched it. I was convinced that as soon as I put my weight onto it, it would collapse, more so as I crept along it to the back wall. It bounced with every step, sending cascades of rust flakes spinning down to the ground.

It held, and I made it to stairs running down the back wall in a tight run of switchbacks. There was a door on the ground floor. On the other side of the wall were the majority of the life signs. I wasn’t too concerned about the two out front, not yet, though they’d come running the moment a gun was fired. Two I could take. Five was another matter.

I went down the stairs as quickly as I could. They grumbled a little. The noise was slight but amplified to painful levels in the empty workshop. Still no one came.

I approached the door.

Lux’s skull hung back over my shoulder.

The first life sign is through there. She projected this as text to my iris.

I nodded. I pulled out the Finaliser, slid off the no-fire catch.

I reached out for the door with my augmetic hand, grasped the handle, and turned it slowly.

‘Groven, that you?’ a voice said from behind. ‘You better not be fixing to give me a shock again, you whoreson bastard. I’m ready for you this time.’

That gave me a start, but when the door started to push hard from the other side, I let it yield.

‘Every Throne-damned day you’re…’

The ganger saw me, and stopped, tattooed face the definition of confusion.

‘Surprise,’ I said, and smashed him hard in the face with my augmetic. I didn’t hold back. The front of his head cracked. He went down. I gave him a fifty per cent chance of ever getting back up again, and if he did, he’d be on a liquid diet for the rest of his life.

I stepped over his body into the dark corridor behind. I could hear people arguing down the corridor. Blood was already gathering under the ganger’s face. I couldn’t do much about that, but I could use his body. I pulled him through the door, tugged his belt out from its loops, wrapped it around his neck and looped the other end over the door handle. An unconscious human is heavy. Whoever came to that door wouldn’t be getting through it in a hurry, and it would buy me precious seconds.

‘One down,’ I said.

‘He still has a pulse,’ said Lux.

‘Pity,’ I said.

No one came, though my encounter had not been entirely silent. I can only assume the argument had something to do with that. Three voices, raised, angry.

‘Can you give me a location?’ I whispered.

Lux’s servo-skull puttered along behind me.

‘Here,’ she said. Again, she hijacked my iris, giving me an overlay view of three human figures on the other side of the door at the end of the corridor. One was sitting, two were standing; one in particular was agitated and waved his arms about. There were three other doors in the room. One off to the left, two in the wall opposite the entrance. Behind the left-hand one of those two, was a fourth, faint life sign. My heart quickened. I was sure that was the girl.

‘Thanks.’

I crept up to the door, grabbed the handle, and flung it wide open.

The seated man was the first to die. He was facing the door directly, less involved with the argument, and therefore would have been able to react quickest. I got a glimpse of a makeshift table made of a cable drum and a flat piece of plasteel, with cards and slate chits on it. The game was the cause of the dispute.

The Finaliser turned his head into a ragged flap of skin and bone. He flew over backwards, kicking the table over. I shot the man waving his arms about next. He barely registered I was there, but the other one, he was quick.

He was dropping as I swung the gun over to target him. My first shot went wide. He hit the ground and rolled, coming up with a snub-nosed las. These are unusual weapons, short range, giving up a bit of distance for hitting power. Not so powerful as a hotshot gun, but better than your average pistol.

He was a good shot, too. He was aiming for my head, and he almost hit it.

I shot at him again. The bullet scraped a gouge in the water-softened floor. He was running, leaning far forward, almost throwing himself towards the right-hand door in the back room. My third shot winged him. My last shot put him down.

There was a scrape and a shout from behind. I turned to see a fourth man holding out his gun. He’d come in from the door in the left wall, probably too far down a corridor or into a room there to have registered on Lux’s auspex. I’d been so intent on finishing quick-draw that I’d totally forgotten that door. He would have had me, but when I turned he was already falling, a small, bright red puncture wound in his forehead.

The jaw of Lux’s skull shut with a small click.

Turns out there was a needle pistol in there after all.

There was hammering and shouting coming from the door leading into the machine shop. The two guards from outside had finally woken up to what was happening in the building, and were tugging at the door, yanking the belt strapped around their friend’s neck. I have to say, he made a better doorstop than he did a sentry.

I put a bullet through the door at about head height. There was a quick burst of yelling. The yanking stopped.

‘Balthuis, make your approach now, quickly. Two criminalis. Both armed.’

‘His Hand,’ Balthuis voxed in acknowledgement.

I took cover by the door, waiting for the last two Road Wyrms to try the corridor again.

‘Is there another way in here?’ I asked Lux.

‘No,’ she said.

As it happened, it didn’t matter. Balthuis got there fast. I heard more shouting, and a couple of shotgun blasts, thunderously loud in the machine shop.

‘Clear,’ Balthuis voxed.

I looked to the skull.

‘Clear,’ Lux said through the fleshless mouth.

I holstered my gun and went to the door at the back. I knocked gently.

‘Iuliana Marchenstka?’

No reply. I eased the door open. There was a lumen switch on the wall. I turned it on.

The girl was definitely Marchenstka. They’d shackled her about the neck and hands with chains that ran through loops in the wall. A filthy mattress occupied one corner, and she wasn’t much cleaner. She had some clothes on, which was something, but I’m not naive.

I was very glad to see she had kept her wits. Though she stared at me unsurely, I could already see the glimmer of hope.

‘My name is Probator Noctis,’ I said. ‘Nearsteel District Divisio, Lex Alecto. I’m here to take you home.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

A timely intervention

‘So this is where you are from,’ said Lux.

‘Yes,’ I said.

I’d gone back with the sanctioners and the girl to the Ovrin Cluster. There was no point taking her to Bastion-N. Marchenstka’s facilities were a hundred times better than ours, and if I got her dragged into post-crime bureaucracy she’d have been there for days. Whatever, she’d had a hard enough time of it. I’d let Illios smooth it all out.

So Lux and I stood on one of the balconies of the Marchen-stkas’ mansion, looking over the cluster’s manicured park-lands.

‘When I was young, before I found my faith, I was told places like this existed. I didn’t believe it.’

She sounded resentful. To be fair, anyone who isn’t born to this life is resentful of those who are.

The place was crawling with enforcers now. Try to bust a noble and it’s hard to scrape up the manpower; one dies in unusual circumstances and their kidnapped daughter is found in a slum, and we’ll be all over it like corpsemould on an undercity orphan. That’s always the way. The rich get everything.

She looked at me earnestly, those beautiful eyes of hers in that too-thin face, orbits permanently marked by fatigue. ‘It is like the Machine-God’s heaven,’ she said.

‘Yeah.’

She looked at me.

‘But I think I understand why you left.’

‘That means a lot,’ I said. ‘Not many people do.’ I leaned onto the balcony. A flock of avians flew below, lazy wingbeats carrying them over the trees.

‘Are you going to go after Cybertheurge Archmagos Genetor 237089?’ I said, already knowing the answer.

‘I cannot,’ she said. ‘We have no proof.’

‘This was his operation,’ I said.

‘It was,’ she said. ‘Very few magi have the influence or the skill to do what he did, triggering Chen-Chen Zifo Sigma’s servitor to kill him in the same way Sigma triggered the others to kill their masters. Djelling too will be regarded as another of Sigma’s victims, killed by his own servitor.’

‘It wasn’t his servitor,’ I said.

‘The records will say it was,’ she said, ‘and the trail will stop at Flesh-Tech Superior Andus.’

‘What will happen to him?’ I asked.

‘He will be running now, if he is not already dead,’ said Lux.

‘If we could find him, we might turn him,’ I said.

‘We won’t find him,’ said Lux.

I sighed. ‘So that’s it? We end up with this? This is not the truth.’

‘To the Adeptus Mechanicus, data is truth,’ she said. ‘No matter what the reality of the situation, if the data says something different, it will be believed. This is a limitation of the Lore.’

‘Maybe the archmagos will start again.’

‘He will not. It is illogical to do so. He knows he will be caught, because I will be watching him.’

‘And we can’t get anything out of Lady Destrella,’ I said. She’d used a nerve toxin that had destroyed her brain. Nothing short of a primaris-grade sanctioned psyker could have retrieved information from her now, and good luck to me finding one and getting the right permissions for that. ‘It’s over.’

‘It is,’ she said.

I drummed my hands on the balcony rail. ‘I still want to know why 237089 needed those slates.’

‘Maybe one day we will find out,’ she said.

I smiled at her, pleased at the idea we’d work together again. She took a deep breath of the cluster’s purified air, and the scents of living things it carried. ‘We have a small victory. The crime has been part way solved, tech heresy has been halted. It is within my power to have the remaining servitor units hunted down and destroyed. If their keepers still live, I may extract more information from them.’

‘You’ve got to count the small wins,’ I said. ‘That’s what Hondus says.’

‘Probator Senioris Vilyavich is wiser than he looks.’

I laughed.

The weak sun was making her appearance, red, huge and tired. Her light glinted off the servo-skull and the implants in Lux’s head.

I held out my machine hand. ‘It’s been a pleasure working with you,’ I said. I didn’t want it to be over. But if I’ve learned one thing, it is that nothing lasts forever.

She shook my hand. Again, I felt a depth of sensation I never experienced through the bionic. It made my spine shiver.

‘Thank you, probator.’ She smiled again, showing the human face behind the assumed, mechanical air. ‘Perhaps we shall see each other again.’

‘I would very much like that,’ I said.

‘So would I,’ she said.

She left, her task finished.

I watched the sun come up a little longer, then went back inside to supervise the search. Count Milius had suffered enough for one day. It was only right we be careful.

Still, count the small wins, says the apparently wise Hondus.

The day went quickly, as busy days do. There was a lot to accomplish. Multiple reports, too much damn paperwork, an interview with Illios, debriefing from sector command, intrusions from the gossipmongers. Exhausting. I got back very late. I wasn’t going to drink. I was going to feed Shebeena and go the hell to sleep. But then I saw the piece of paper I’d left on the desk, and read what I’d written, so I got out this journal and started to put events back in order.

Of course, I did have a drink.

In Exultatia, I’d told Lux about the day Previnus came to drag me out of the shitpit dive I was drinking myself to death in. I still hadn’t forgiven myself then. I couldn’t take it. I saw no future for me with my family, and none outside it. I thought crawling down the neck of a bottle was the only way out, the more expensive the better, because every slate of my father’s money I wasted was a satisfying slap in his face.

That was another childish lie I told myself.

I had a lot to be guilty about. There was the hunt, but there was your mother.

Oh Throne, your mother.

You shouldn’t have found her. How was I to know that she’d do that? Womanising and drinking and gambling are what rich young men do. How could she not have known that when she agreed to marry me?

I was a fool. I thought I could have it all, choosing a woman I loved over one my father insisted on. Watching her be ignored by my mother, belittled by my siblings, tormented by my father. He told her she wasn’t right for me or our family. He was telling the truth. But it was me, my behaviour, that killed her.

Poor Kasyna. I’m sorry.

She committed suicide on the sixth anniversary of our wedding, in her nuptial gown, while I was in bed with the daughter of the margrave of Iventa. She was making a point. I broke her heart and she had nothing but her life to make that point with. I broke her. I was embarrassed by her gaucheness when I should have supported her. I got bored. I abandoned her to the mercies of her family, and when it happened, when she hanged herself like that, I drank all the more.

Then the thing happened with you, and that part of my life was over.

‘You’ve got to come. Now,’ said Previnus. He was nervous in that bar; he had two houseguards with him, no more than two feet from either shoulder the whole time he was in there, their black full-face visors glinting with stripes of reflected neon. I lifted my head up long enough to laugh at him.

‘Coward,’ I said. ‘Frightened of a few daytime revellers.’

I went back to my drink.

Previnus was wearing an outfit in silver and dark blue. He looked like a bad dramaturge’s idea of a voidship captain, and in that bar he was ridiculous. It was dark and filthy. A scratched plastek panel pumped out glow that was a more or less accurate facsimile of the sun’s light. You could almost believe there was a view out there, but we were buried deep in some nameless hole. The tables were sticky. The other two patrons were maudlin paupers, nursing drinks that wordlessly listened to their troubles. The tender went by the name of Onibua, a once strong man grown fat. Bad music scraped the ears, and everything smelled of cheap counterseptic, sweet, inexpensive drinks, while under all that was the undeniable scent of vomit.

I laughed again at Previnus, because the look on his face was priceless and I had fuck all to laugh at any more. But then he did something he had never done before, and which I did not think him capable of. He grabbed my hair in his ludicrous silver gloves, yanked me up, and slapped me very hard.

‘Ow!’ I said. I shoved my chair back and wobbled to my feet, quite prepared to fight him. That roused the paupers and the barman. Onibua made a half-hearted move for the hand cannon he had taped under the bar, but the houseguards raised their guns. The dangerous click of safety catches warned Onibua off. He stepped back, hands up.

‘You fucking listen to me, you waste of Throne-shitting space,’ Previnus hissed. ‘If you do not come home right now,’ he said, pronouncing every word so hard it made me wince, ‘you are going to lose your daughter.’

That hurt more than the slap. ‘What?’

‘Good, that shook you out of your self-pitying shit. Come with me. Now.’

We left the bar. One of Previnus’ bodyguards covered us as we left, laughably, really; Onibua was once a soldier, but he hadn’t killed anyone for years, and the other two would have probably soiled themselves if they stood up too quickly. But the guards’ presence, and their professionalism, lent the strange procession we made a heroic quality.

I winced when the roof door banged open and thin daylight streamed in. It was summer, that brief window of the year when days are long, and the glare of the sun was another punch. I suddenly felt very drunk. We were on a gantry leading to a landing platform, all constructed in better days and now scabbed with flaking paint. I staggered to the edge, and was sick. Most of it was picked up and carried off by the wind before it could hit the sloped side of the clave. I stood there, blinking stupidly at the view. Hundreds of towers groped blindly upwards, an army of them stood in ranks of decay, all reaching for a god that did not care for them.

‘Come on!’ Previnus grabbed me.

He hustled me down the gantry. It shuddered and squealed with every step. One section let free a rain of bolts as we passed over it, each one a potential death in the streets below.

My eyes adjusted. There was a new-model Dymaxion aircar waiting at the end for us, a Borealin, turbofans already snickering up to speed, and grav-motors throbbing.

Previnus shoved me into the passenger compartment. Doors hissed open in the back and the bodyguards got in.

The aircar’s light frame wobbled as Previnus joined me.

I took in his outfit again. It had a little cape and everything.

‘You look so stupid,’ I said.

‘Yeah, well, I was on my way to a revel, instead I’m out here trying to stop you pissing away what’s left of your life.’ He glared at me. I looked back at him.

‘You’re welcome,’ he snapped. He leaned towards the smoked glass dividing the passenger compartment from the driver’s station up on the nose. It slid down, and the driver angled his head back. ‘Dozekmov, get us in the air. Make all haste for Ovrin.’

Grav-impellers warbled. The seat shook.

‘Faster, damn it!’ Previnus said, and keyed the window shut.

Previnus scrabbled about in a drinks cabinet lined with mirrors and velvet. There was a section for pills of all kinds. He plucked out several from cut-glass jars and shoved them into my hands, then got me a glass of water.

‘Anti-emetic, vitamin boost, antitox, minerals and glucose. Get it into yourself.’ He watched me as I took them, making sure I swallowed every one. He relaxed a bit.

‘It is going to be close,’ he said. ‘I came as soon as I could.’

‘Thank you,’ I said.

‘Thank me later,’ he said. He seemed wrung out by his experience. ‘Look, I heard he’s going to send her away. One of the maids, bless her.’

‘What?’ I said.

‘We might make it,’ Previnus said gently.

We weren’t fast enough.

We arrived at the promontory and I was shown into my father’s study. It was full of solemn advisors watching him write out his commands on pieces of formal parchment. The pomp of it was suffocating.

‘Lord Minors Symeon Dymaxion and Previnus Dymaxion!’ my father’s herald announced. Previnus strode in proudly, his poise befitting a lord. I shuffled through the echoing aftermath of the herald’s voice, an embarrassment to myself.

My father’s pen ceased its scratching. An aide immediately leaned in with a cushion and a cloth. My father laid down the quill and the aide reverently wiped the nib. The ink was liquid gold.

‘Leave us,’ my father commanded. His voice was barely audible, but it cut through the room so sharply I half expected the air to bleed.

The courtiers were gone in a flurry of rustling silks. I blinked, and the three of us were alone.

‘You too, Previnus,’ said my father.

Previnus bowed, and marched out. The herald shut the doors, sealing me in with my doom.

Father leaned back in his chair and placed his arms on the rests, an ersatz emperor on a cheap throne.

‘So you’ve finally decided to show your face. How very,’ he searched ostentatiously for the right word, ‘paternal of you.’

‘Where is she? Where is Mira?’

‘So you do actually care about your daughter? Well, it’s a little late for all that,’ he said, and he was savagely satisfied. ‘While you’ve been drinking away our family’s reputation I had to make a decision about what to do with her.’

I walked to his desk and leaned on the wood. ‘Where is she?’

My father made a show of finding my smell offensive.

‘Take a pulse-shower, Symeon. She is safe, and in good hands. I have found her a career.’

‘A career?’ I had expected you’d have been packed off to live with an aunt or given to a lesser branch of the family to foster.

‘Yes,’ he said, feigning surprise, but it was clear he was enjoying himself. ‘You’re the one who’s always preaching to the rest of us about our parasitic lifestyles, I thought you would be happy for her to serve properly.’

‘Throne alive, Father, what have you done?’ I would have sat if there were any chairs, but Father’s was the only one in all of that vast room.

‘The schola progenium will care for her well. She scored highly in her tests. I expect she will make a fine commissar or shock trooper captain, or maybe an inquisitor?’

‘But… but…’ I said. ‘She’s only five.’

‘That’s the age they take them,’ he said harshly, ‘or I would have sent her away sooner.’

I put my hand to my mouth and bit my knuckle so hard it bled. I carried that scar until I lost my arm.

‘No!’

‘Come now, boy,’ he snapped. ‘You’re a wastrel. An embarrassment. You can’t even look after yourself. Why should I let you pour your poison into her ears and breed a whole line of ungrateful whelps? Whatever they decide to do with her, it will be better than a life with you. Maybe you’ll stop with this now, and listen to me. Maybe you’ll finally grow up.’ Throughout all this he remained seated, but his hands gripped the chair arms hard, and spittle flew from his thin mouth. ‘Call it a timely intervention. Who knows? Perhaps one day, I’ll let you have another child, and we can all try again.’

I let out an inhuman cry so loud I would not have thought it possible. Armed men appeared from hidden alcoves and levelled their weapons at me. They would have shot me too. Even so, I found myself weighing the chances of attacking him. I almost did. I could have killed him before they got me. I wish I had.

Instead I collapsed inside. My knees folded and I almost fell down, then I turned, and fled the room. My father shouted after me.

‘That’s right, you disgrace, run back to your drinks and your whores! Nothing you have done just now tells me I was in any way wrong.’

He continued to shout, but my feet carried me faster than wings, and I was away down the grand staircase, and out into the evening.

That night at Exultatia, I told Lux that there were three reasons I left my home. Here I have described two of them, your mother’s death, and you being sent away. Both of those things were my fault, as was the third.

It is the worst.

I don’t think I’m ready to go into that yet. But I will. I have to. You have to know what kind of man I am.

So that was that. My embarrassing, tear-streaked confession to Lux. She was good about it. She’s got a big heart for a machine-priest.

I won’t finish my drink. I’m looking out of the window. It’s snowing again. This is hard for me. I think I’m going to go to church for a while. I can already hear Beneficio’s sandals slapping on the stone in my head, and it calms me. I think I need to speak to him, he’s useful for getting things off my conscience. I’m tired, really tired, but I need to confess. This writing isn’t enough. It’s too one-sided, I’m sorry. I don’t know if you can forgive me, but maybe the God-Emperor can, in exchange for my service. I did a good thing today, after all.

I’ll tell you more later, my Mira, I promise.

EPILOGUE

The third reason

Justicius Senioris Ad Ultra Maskell Resk looked up from the chest’s screen. ‘Is that it?’

Blovast shook himself back to attention. He’d taken station in an uncomfortable though beautiful chair, and allowed himself to get lost in thought, far away from Resk’s temper, while the justicius read.

‘My lord justicius?’ Blovast stood up and stifled a yawn.

‘I said,’ said Resk, slowly and loudly, ‘is that it?’

‘No, my lord,’ said Blovast. ‘That is merely the first part.’

‘I see,’ said Resk. He looked down at the screen again. ‘I was wondering what this third reason was.’

‘So you find yourself intrigued?’ said Blovast hopefully.

Resk snorted. ‘If you think I’m getting all excited by your amateur scribings here, then think again. Next time something like this comes in, present it as a bloody report, not this pathetic novelisation.’

‘But it’s all in his own words,’ Blovast said.

‘You told me yourself that you had edited it, for effect.’

‘Perhaps a little…’ said Blovast.

‘Don’t give up your duties just yet, Blovast,’ Resk interrupted. He glanced back at the casket. ‘Time for a break.’ His exoskeleton wheezed as it pushed him fully upright again, then clanked him back around behind his desk.

‘We’re not finished,’ said Blovast. ‘There’s so much more in there. This first file only establishes his disregard for procedure. There is much more damning information to come.’

‘Yes, yes, yes!’ snapped Resk. ‘But I want my repast first before I carry on with your lacklustre dramatisations, boy. Go tell Dessis to summon my chefs. I’ve got a powerful hunger on me.’

Blovast bowed, and tried not to let his frustration show.

‘Blovast, wipe that miserable face away.’ Resk pointed a gnarled finger at the casket. ‘We’ll have more of Probator Noctis’ misdemeanours after we’ve eaten.’

GLOSSARY

Ambrosian, Off-world alcoholic beverage (rare, and difficult to procure)

Astynomia, Planetary Adeptus Mechanicus investigators (equivalent to enforcers)

Baddrop, Slum subdistrict at the edge of Nearsteel, borders Tremane District

Bulwark, Enforcer armoured wagon

Castellan, Bastion commander

Ceseen-Avrostar, A high-end make of groundcar

Chainward, Subterranean subdistrict of Nearsteel (impoverished)

City Edge, Last subdistrict of Nearsteel. Ends in uninhabited wastelands of the mountain peaks

Clarion, Siren (usually law enforcement)

Collegiate Extremis, Judicial branch of the Adeptus Mechanicus

Culina, Kitchen (domestic, also referred to as ‘refec’)

Dataveil, System of city-wide comms/archive files, accessible to anyone with an iris augmetic

Downslope, Varangantuan poor district below High Watch

Ennearchy, Group of nine Adeptus Mechanicus magi who oversee Zhao-Arkhad’s enclaves on Alecto

Fridgerator, Refrigeration unit (domestic)

Finaliser, Eight-shot revolver stubber

Gilded, Slang for the aristocratic class

Gladdown, Varangantuan poor district (coastal)

Grand Magistery, Foremost centre of the Lex Alecto in all of Varangantua

Habclave, Urban district

‘His Hand’, Common greeting between enforcers, referring to the Emperor’s holy will and judgement

High Watch, Habclave near City Edge

Investigatus, Criminal case

Ironfungus, Parasitic fungal growth that eats away metallic structures. Has the appearance of a big bulbous bracket fungus

Iris, Implant comms/data-retrieval mechanism, linked to the dataveil

Localis Sceleris, Effectively the area where a crime is committed and any evidence collected therein

Narcotoria, Upmarket drug den

Nearsteel, Varangantuan district split between the Imperium and the Adeptus Mechanicus

Novoplas, Cheap, man-made material (usually for garments)

Merciful Emperor, Basilica in High Watch

Mortuarium, Medical facility where corpses are stored and autopsies conducted

Montanis, District in the mountains, some way north of Nearsteel; relatively wealthy, contains the Ovrin Spire Cluster

Oceanwell, Rich coastal district

Ovrin Spire, Home of many of the richest families in southern Varangantua

Plastek, Plastic-like materials

Plasteel, Versatile metal alloy

Port Vorbis, Major voidport servicing much of southern Varangantua

Probator, Detective rank

Probator-Novus, Low-ranking detective, usually probationary (note: pre-dataveil)

Probator-Senioris, Experienced detective of high rank

Probus, Astynomia rank

Magnificans Redway, Proscribed ‘exclusion zone’ between Nearsteel and the Steelmound. Highly dangerous without appropriate sanction

Revel, Party, social gathering

Runeboard, Simple data-input device (also referred to as ‘claviboard’)

Saint Verring, Remote subdistrict of Nearsteel on the far side of the Varagan Mountains, overlooking the wastes

Sacc-Five, Penal colony world shared with other systems in the subsector

Secretarius, Secretary

Securitors, Private security guards

Snake Grass, Motile grasslike plant native to Alecto. Still grows wild in some places

Steelmound, Adeptus Mechanicus enclave in Nearsteel (owned by the Zhao-Arkhad forge world)

Tabularium, Work cubicle (usually law enforcement/administrative)

Technicum Lexi, Verispexes’ domain within a Bastion

Tremane, District neighbouring Nearsteel, on the plains

Varagan Range, Mountain range that dominates the eastern side of southern Varangantua, divides the city from the wastelands

Via Favora, Lanes and roads reserved for official use (usually law enforcement/administrative)

Via Carnelian, Road leading out of Nearsteel. Goes to Tremane, descends over Baddrop on huge bridge piers

Zurov, Enforcer turbine-powered gunship

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Guy Haley is the author of the Siege of Terra novel The Lost and the Damned, as well as the Horus Heresy novels Titandeath, Wolfsbane and Pharos, and the Primarchs novels Konrad Curze: The Night Haunter, Corax: Lord of Shadows and Perturabo: The Hammer of Olympia. He has also written many Warhammer 40,000 novels, including the first book in the Dawn of Fire series, Avenging Son, as well as Belisarius Cawl: The Great Work, Dark Imperium, Dark Imperium: Plague War, The Devastation of Baal, Dante, Darkness in the Blood and Astorath: Angel of Mercy. He has also written stories set in the Age of Sigmar, included in War Storm, Ghal Maraz and Call of Archaon. He lives in Yorkshire with his wife and son.

An extract from Bloodlines.

Down, down below, down under the flyovers and the transit arches, down to where the lumens floated on wheezing suspensors and the windows were steamed with condensation. People packed in on all sides, some high on topaz, some exhausted, all smelling of euphoria.

She breathed it in. She let her fingers graze along the rockcrete of the close wall, feeling its coldness against the wet heat of the night. She looked up, and saw the smear-glow of private club entrances, vivid in neon. She heard the rumble of turbine traffic overhead, and the hiss of groundcars on damp asphalt.

She’d taken it. Topaz. It was as good as she’d hoped – she was giddy, enjoying the freedom. Every face she looked at was one of a friend, smiling back at her, rouged, whitened, darkened, flared with photoreactive pigments, glittering with augmetic baubles. Music thumped away, spilling from the open doorways of the sanctioned haze dens, threatening to drag her in, smother her in the heat and the noise.

She could have walked along that street forever, just drinking it in. She liked the smells, overlapping one another, competing like jostling suitors for her attention. She stuck her hands in the pockets of her overcoat, pushed her shoulders back, slipped through the crowds.

She didn’t know what time it was. The deep of the night, for sure, a few hours before dawn. It didn’t matter. Not any more. That was the point of freedom – make your decisions, stupid ones, good ones, get out, do your own thing.

A man lurched into her way, grinning and drunk. He shoved up against her, and she smelled his breath.

‘Hello, young fish,’ he slurred at her, swaying. ‘Come to swim with me?’

He had plastek-looking hair, too clean, too sculpted. She kept on going, sliding past him, out into the middle of the street. The press of people swept him away, giving her more faces to gawp at. Fireworks went off in the sky, dazzling, smelling of chems, picking out high arches overhead engraved with skull-clusters and fleur-de-lys finials. Commercia chameleon-screens flashed and whirled, spinning pixelated images one after the other – a woman smiling, a man gazing at an altar, a Navy drop-ship wheeling across a starfield, troops in uniform marching under a crimson sky on another world.

For the first time, she felt a spike of danger. She had walked a long way, away from the friends she had come with. She had almost forgotten about them entirely, and had very little idea where she was.

She looked back and saw the plastek-hair man following her. He was with others, and they had latched on to her.

Damn.

She picked up the pace, skipping on her heels, darting to the street’s edge, to where the grand avenue, scarred with twin steel ground-tracks, met another one, cobbled and glinting, that ran steeply downwards.

If she hadn’t taken topaz, she’d have stayed, by instinct, with the crowds, where the press of bodies provided its mute kind of safety. But it got darker quickly, and the lumens faded to red, and the old cobblestones underfoot got slippery. The beat of the music felt harder – dull, like the military dirges they transmitted every evening over the communal prop-sets.

Down, down, down.

She felt a bit sick. She shot a glance back and saw that they were still coming, only jogging now, four of them, all drunk on jeneza or rezi or slatov. They all had those sharp, fake haircuts, smart dress, clean boots. Defence-corps trainees, maybe – officer-class, full of entitlement, untouchable. She’d come across the type so many times before. Hadn’t expected to find them down here – perhaps they liked to slum it from time to time as well, to skirt against the grime for fun, see whether it stuck to their uniforms.

Just as she began to worry, someone grabbed her by the arm. She pulled back, only to see a girl smiling at her, a girl her age, pale emerald skin, orange hair, a metal serpent-head stud in her cheek.

‘Come on,’ the girl said, her irises glittering. ‘I saw them too.’

She followed her. She went down a narrow passageway between two big hab-blocks built of dark, crumbling prefab slabs. It soon smelled of urine and old sweat, of drains and discarded carb-bars. As she wound further down the alley, the noise of the men’s footfalls, their laughter, faded. Perhaps they’d gone straight on past. Perhaps they’d never really been that close.

It got hotter. She felt the boom of the music well up from under her, around her, as if the walls themselves were vox-emitters. She needed a drink. For some reason she was very thirsty.

The girl brought her to a door – a heavyset door in a blockwork wall, one with a slide panel in the centre. She activated a summon-chime, and the slide opened, throwing out greenish light from within.

‘Elev in?’ the girl asked.

‘He is,’ came a man’s voice.

The door clunked open. Warm air billowed out, and music came after it, heavy, thumping music. She felt it move through her body, make her want to get going, to get back to that place she’d managed to reach a while back, where everything was forgotten save for the movement, the heat, the heartbeat of escape.

The girl pushed her inside. They were at the head of a long flight of plastek-topped stairs. The walls were bare cinder blocks, the floor sticky with spilled drinks. It was hard to hear anything at all over the music, which seemed to be coming from everywhere at once.

‘Down,’ said the girl, smiling at her again, encouragingly.

They went together. Soon they were in a bigger chamber, one full of bodies moving, throwing shadows against lumen-scatter walls. What had this place once been? An assembly chamber? A chapel, even? Not now. The light was lurid, vivid, pulsing in time to the heavy smack of the music. She smelled sweat fighting with commercial fragrances. She smelled the acrid tang of rezi. There was a high stage with murals half-hidden in a haze of coloured smoke, men and women dancing on platforms surrounded by kaleidoscopic lumen flares. The floor was jammed, crushed with damp bodies in motion. It was hard to breathe.

‘Just keep moving,’ said the girl, taking her by the hand.

They somehow threaded through the crowds. A drink was passed to her and she took it. That made her feel better. She started to look for the source of the music. Faces swelled up out of the dark, flustered and glowing, all grinning at her. They were nice, those faces, and interesting, with their slim metal exo-frames and their holo-halos that waved and flashed like prisms. Where had they all come from? Did they work in the manufactories she had heard about, during the drab day? Or were they all the sons and daughters of the gilded, writhing down here until they collapsed into narc-induced sleep? They were like exotic beasts, feathered, horned, wrapped in silks and sequins, coming in and out of the flickering shadows, fragments of strange bedtime stories, moving in unison under old gothic arches.

She danced for a while. The girl seemed to have gone, but that was fine. She thought back to the past, to the rules that had kept her in her chamber every hour, all the hours, at her studies, learning the catechisms and the rotes, and wanted to scream out loud for the joy of being free of it. Her limbs moved, clumsily, because she had never been able to do this before, but she learned fast, and the topaz made it easier.

They pressed around her, the others – reaching out for her hair, her arms. She lost track of time. More drinks appeared, and she took them again.

And then, much later, the girl came back. She led her from the chamber of lights and heat, and down some more narrow, slippery stairs. That was a relief, for she was getting tired. It would be good to rest, just for a moment. Away from the music, it was cooler, and she felt the sweat patches on her shirt stick to her skin.

‘Where are we going?’ she asked, and was surprised to hear how the words slurred.

‘Time out,’ said the girl. ‘I think you need it.’

It was hard to follow where they went. Some stairs went down, some went up. At one point she thought they’d gone outside, and then in again, but she was getting very tired and her head had started to hurt.

‘Do you have any water?’ she asked.

‘That’s where we’re going,’ came the reply. ‘To get some.’

And then they were through another heavy door. She had the impression of more people around her, though it was very dark, and increasingly cold. They went down yet more stairs, a well so tight that it scraped against her bare arms, even though she wanted to stop now, just sit on the floor, clear her head.

Eventually they ended up in a narrow, empty room with bright overhead lumens that hurt her eyes. She really wanted a drink.

A man was there, one with sallow skin, a tight black bodysuit and collarless shirt, a knotwork tattoo just visible at the base of his neck.

‘What’s your name?’ he asked, pleasantly enough.

‘Ianne,’ she replied.

‘Ianne. That’s unusual. I like it. Are you having a good time?’

‘I could use a drink.’

‘Fine. Come with me, then. We’ll get you something.’

By then, the girl seemed to have gone. She felt hands on her arms, and she was heading down again. The lumens were turned down low, and she struggled to make anything out.

She had the vague sense of being surrounded by people again. She heard a noise like breathing, in and out. She shook her head to clear it, and saw metal shelves, many of them, all with glass canisters on them. She saw tubes, and she saw machines that had bellows and ampoules and loops of cabling. She saw the padded couches, in rows, running back into the dark, and it looked like people were sitting on them.

She felt a lurch of worry. There was no music. It was quiet, and cold, and she didn’t know the way back out.

‘Where am I?’ she asked.

They found a chair for her. It was a recliner, but it was hard and uncomfortable. She thought she should struggle then, but it became hard to think about anything clearly. She felt something wrap around her wrists.

‘Where am I?’ she asked again, more urgently, suddenly thinking of all those catechisms, and the rules, and home, and its certainties.

A face loomed up out of the shadows. She didn’t recognise this one. It was a hard face, with hollow cheeks, and the smile it gave her made her feel suddenly panicky.

‘You’re Ianne? Just relax. You’re in the right place.’

She tried to kick out, but something had tied her ankles down. She looked up, and saw a collection of needles hanging over her, glinting in the cold light. Fear welled up fast, as if she would drown in it.

‘Get me out.’

‘Don’t worry about a thing,’ said the man soothingly, reaching up for one of the needles. It was connected to a slender tube, which looped down from a bag of clear fluid. ‘It’ll all be fine.’

‘I want to get out!’ she cried, starting to struggle.

‘Why would you want that?’ the man asked, tapping the needle and preparing to insert it. He looked up and down the rows on either side of her. Her eyes had adjusted. She could see that the other couches were all occupied. No one lying on them was moving. ‘You’ll do so much good here.’

He set one of the machines running. The device beside her started to whirr, with a thud-tick-thud that sounded like some monstrous heartbeat.

‘Wh– what are you doing?’ she asked, her throat choking up with a thick sense of horror.

‘Just relax,’ he said, reaching over her. ‘I say the same thing every time. This is a place of dreams. So I’m going to give you something now. Something good. And after that – believe me when I say this – you’re going to live forever.’

Click here to buy Bloodlines.

WARHAMMER CRIME

A BLACK LIBRARY IMPRINT

First published in Great Britain in 2020.
This eBook edition published in 2020 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Amir Zand.

Flesh and Steel © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2020. Flesh and Steel, Warhammer Crime, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, Warhammer, Space Marine, 40K, Warhammer 40,000, the ‘Aquila’ Double-headed Eagle logo, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.
All Rights Reserved.

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-78999-378-3

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.