Rites of passage mike.., p.16
Rites of Passage - Mike Brooks, page 16
‘You have the binders?’ Krane asked for the second time. A pair swung at his own belt too, but he’d insisted that DeShelle take some. Quite why, DeShelle wasn’t sure; if Krane couldn’t secure this servant for whatever reason, she didn’t feel that she’d have much hope.
‘Yes,’ she replied, instead of arguing.
‘And if you see any hint of witchcraft, shoot her,’ Krane added. DeShelle rubbed her bare neck uncomfortably as they turned onto a wide, ornate staircase leading down to the next level. She really didn’t like to think about that.
They were halfway to the bottom, and DeShelle’s weight was just coming down onto the next step, when the lights below went out.
‘That’s not supposed to happen, is it?’ she said, coming to a halt behind Krane. The light from above was still steady, and cast a long pool of colour in front of them into which their shadows stretched, broken up into zigzag shapes by the stairs. Beyond that, though, was the utter darkness of an unlit corridor with no windows.
‘These aren’t the quarters for Navigators with visual oversensitivity,’ Krane agreed.
DeShelle cursed silently. ‘Have you got a light?’
‘Of sorts.’ Krane unslung The Wolf and activated it. The power axe flared into life, casting a shimmering blue-white glow out into the darkness. It didn’t seem to illuminate so much as it did pick out shadows, but it was something.
‘We should call for backup,’ DeShelle offered, unholstering her laspistol. It felt cool and reassuringly solid in her hand, and she was relieved to realise that her palm wasn’t sweaty. Once upon a time, she’d have been alarmed by the prospect of even holding a gun. Those days were long, long behind her though, and it didn’t seem as if her time spent as Lady Chettamandey’s aide had blunted her readiness.
‘It could be a malfunction, or a distraction,’ Krane argued. ‘We don’t have the bodies to go jumping at shadows this evening.’
‘These shadows jumped at us,’ DeShelle pointed out, but she didn’t push it. ‘Very well. You first.’
Krane advanced down the rest of the staircase, bolt pistol in his left hand and The Wolf in his right. DeShelle followed, laspistol held low in both hands, scanning behind them. If this was a hostile move, it wouldn’t be out of the question for an attacker to get them peering into the dark and then jump them from behind, out of the light.
‘You know what I said about how tight the security is here?’ she asked. A nasty thought had just occurred to her, and was even less comfortable for the fact that it had come when she was feeling her way cautiously backwards down the staircase with her left foot. ‘And how that meant that even someone who could walk through walls wouldn’t try their luck?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Well, it’s not so tight tonight. And anyone who’s been passing them information would know that.’
DeShelle heard a slow intake of breath behind her, then a noisy exhalation followed by the barely audible click of a comm-bead activating.
‘This is Krane. Activate lockdown – I want eyes on every Navigator until further notice, and I mean eyes. Watch for trickery, and don’t assume a room is clear just because it looks like it.’
‘Thank you,’ DeShelle said after a moment of silence had passed.
‘You’ve got a good brain, DuVoir,’ Krane replied. ‘Her ladyship takes your counsel, I’d be a fool not to do the same.’
DeShelle had reached the last step now, and she was somewhat relieved to find level floor behind her. Tumbling backwards down a few steps might not have been a disaster in and of itself, but it could have critically disrupted Krane’s concentration had she collided with him. Or, if he was feeling particularly tightly wound, caused him to strike at her with The Wolf before registering that she wasn’t an assailant.
‘Come on,’ Krane said, gesturing with his axe. ‘Lord Savomir’s chambers are in this direction.’ He set off at a jog – quick enough to eat up the ground, but not a headlong charge. DeShelle followed, trying to watch everything around them as the deep shadows cast by The Wolf’s power field jerked around in time with Krane’s strides. She felt horrendously claustrophobic, which wasn’t an experience she’d ever had before, because the walls on either side of her could well be no protection from the enemy they thought they might be hunting. If they were dealing with a witch who could walk through walls, could the intruder also see through walls? Were they being stalked by a psyker who could monitor them and pick a moment to strike? Or would their quarry be coming through blind – if, indeed, their speculation about the murderer was at all accurate? Could it in fact be some species of xenos that was hunting Navigators, and not a human mutant at all?
Krane came to a T-junction and cut left, then came to an abrupt halt. ‘You! Stop!’
DeShelle reached the junction a moment later and swung to face right, sweeping her laspistol across the gloom there just in case it should disgorge a threat. The sound of running feet on thick carpet pulled her attention around, and a moment later she jerked involuntarily as Krane’s bolt pistol roared and the walls were lit up for a moment by the bolt’s propellant flame.
DeShelle had heard a bolt weapon discharged in an enclosed space before, but the sheer force of the noise still nearly buckled her knees. There was a crash from further down the corridor, and as she peered past Krane’s imposing frame she saw a slight figure disappearing around the next corner, at the furthest reaches of the illumination cast by The Wolf. Half a yard away from where the figure had just vanished was a large hole in the wall, beyond which further darkness lurked; closer to them, the carved and gilded door of what had to be Savomir Brobantis’ chambers stood ajar.
‘Come on!’ Krane barked, breaking into a flat-out run. DeShelle did her best to keep up, but the head of security was moving quicker than anyone she’d ever seen.
‘Is it the killer?’ she called at his receding back. By the Emperor, she didn’t want him to get too far ahead and leave her alone and in the dark, away from the light of The Wolf…
‘It’s Bettan!’ Krane shouted. He’d reached the next corner already and was going so fast he actually jumped up and took two quick steps along the wall on the far side, bounding off to continue his pursuit with a minimum of loss of momentum. He disappeared around the corner, and so did the light of his axe. DeShelle gritted her teeth and tried to speed up, even though her brain was whirling. Should she go back and check on Savomir? But his chamber had looked pitch-dark as well, and if there was a killer close by then she’d be better off sticking close to Krane – if she could.
She skidded around the corner, giving brief thanks for the thick carpet that actually afforded her some traction, rather than the polished wood or stone that was favoured in some areas of the palace, and stumbled to a halt just before she collided with Krane’s broad back. He was only a few paces past the corridor junction, and standing over a sprawled body.
‘You got her?’ DeShelle asked breathlessly, covering the body with her laspistol just in case.
‘Not I,’ Krane said, his voice heavily weighted with unease. He leaned low over the body, bringing The Wolf down in close proximity to it to maximise the illumination the weapon could provide. His head and upper body was directly over it, lighting him up in cold blue-white and casting a deep shadow onto the ceiling. He reached out with the muzzle of his bolt pistol and prodded Bettan’s head, which lolled limply. ‘Broken neck. But how–?’
DeShelle recognised the sudden surge of nausea that rose up within her, a split-second warning of danger. ‘Look out!’ she screamed, not knowing what she was warning of, nor from where it was coming.
It dropped from the black morass of shadows that hid the ceiling and plunged a glowing powerblade of its own into Krane’s back.
The head of security threw himself to one side, but the knife still sheared through his carapace armour and bit deep, just to the left of his spine. Krane roared and spun, throwing his assailant off him. The other man’s power knife winked out, and he was lost in the shifting shadows as Krane swung The Wolf through where the attacker had been a moment before. DeShelle stumbled backwards in alarm as the axe cut through the air within a hand’s span of her face, then raised her laspistol as the power knife snapped into life again.
‘Behind you!’
She couldn’t get a clear shot. Krane staggered sideways as the powerblade plunged into his ribs, then was yanked out to release a gout of blood, terrifying in its ferociousness. Whatever stimulants had supercharged Krane’s metabolism weren’t enough for him to lay a weapon on his adversary, and would merely ensure he bled out far quicker than he otherwise might.
‘Run!’ Krane rasped at her, turning and cutting clumsily with The Wolf but hitting nothing except empty air. He raised his bolt pistol and fired wildly as he staggered in a circle, sending bolts into the ceiling and the walls. DeShelle dropped to her knees as he swung towards her, suddenly cut off from her escape route by the wavering muzzle of his gun.
The tip of the power knife burst through the front of Luc Krane’s throat in a sizzle of burned meat and flash-drying blood.
DeShelle sprang up from the floor, firing her laspistol one-handed at and around Krane in the hope that she might hit something, and fleeing back down the corridor along which she’d come, away from the murderous phantom with a glowing powerblade who could apparently appear and disappear at will. She’d not had time to call for help, but what should she say? If she called reinforcements here, would she not leave others unguarded? If the attacker could move so freely–
Another nauseous lurch, another instinctive scream of warning inside her skull. She dived forwards and rolled as she’d been trained to, just as a blue-white power knife flashed into life and slashed through where her head should have been. She didn’t stop to gape at the impossibility that someone who’d been behind her had got ahead of her, didn’t stop to shoot, just kept running as she heard a snarl of apparent frustration. Luc Krane had tried to fight this killer, and he’d died. She wouldn’t stand a chance, gut warnings or no.
The blue-white glow of the powerblade snapped out again behind her, just as she turned into the first corridor where the lights had gone out, with the still-lit staircase at the end. She accelerated, expecting at any moment to feel a searing pain in her spine, or see a knife-wielding silhouette lunge from the walls at her, with her intuition abruptly and fatally silent.
The Holy Ordo
Chetta couldn’t say anything for a few seconds, while her brain desperately tried to recalibrate itself. Then she turned painfully on the spot, away from Vass’ – no, Ngiri’s – calm expression, which was underlit by the dancing hololith, until her gaze landed on Kennevario Xudine in his grav-chair. The cadaverous old Navigator looked utterly unsurprised.
‘You!’ Chetta spat, pointing at him angrily with the hand that wasn’t clutching her cane. ‘You knew!’
‘I knew,’ Xudine confirmed in that sonorous voice of his, with an acknowledging dip of his head. ‘Lady Ngiri identified herself to me, and requested that I aid her disguise as a rogue trader. I was, of course, only too happy to be of service to His Imperial Majesty’s Inquisition.’
‘I did tell you that House Xudine had demonstrated their loyalty,’ Ngiri commented from behind Chetta. ‘I didn’t say that it was to the Emperor, not to me personally. Although of course in real terms, that’s the same thing.’
‘So, why?’ Chetta demanded, rounding on Ngiri again. ‘Why the pretence? Were you pulling the strings all along? Why did you insinuate yourself into my family’s home?’
‘The Imperium has many enemies, Chetta, within and without,’ Ngiri replied. ‘Some inquisitors concern themselves with the “within”, and hunt down heretics, mutants and witches. I deal with the “without”. I deal with the alien.
‘Everywhere humanity goes – barring freak warp phenomena, or occasional blasphemous xenos tech – Navigators go too. You’re more widely spread than any other group within the Imperium, even the Administratum. Virtually any time that humanity has contact with an alien civilisation, a Navigator is present. And the alien can be so, so subtle, Chetta. Aeldari minds…’ The inquisitor’s words trailed off, and she shook her head. ‘They play regicide over millennia, while we bet on coin flips. Any xenos adversary with insight into our society wouldn’t take on our armies. They’d attack our infrastructure – disrupt the supply chains, leave planets starving and weak, or prime for corruption by an alien bearing food and friendly words.
‘Your late husband was fascinated by the aeldari, wasn’t he?’
Chetta’s throat tightened to the point that oxygen was suddenly something of an issue.
‘That wasn’t a question,’ Ngiri continued levelly, although she seemed to be waiting for a response.
Chetta forced her neck muscles into a nod. ‘Yes, he… he had a burning curiosity in that regard.’
‘Not one that you shared?’
The tightness in Chetta’s chest eased very slightly. She felt back on safer ground here. ‘Not in the same manner. I saw action against a couple of their raiding parties in the Pacificum fleet, and any fascination tends to burn away quite quickly when something’s trying to kill you. Azariel was a civilian. He’d never fought them.’
Ngiri nodded slowly. ‘And the various relics that he managed to acquire during his life?’
Emperor on the Throne, how does the woman know about them? Chetta bared her teeth in a humourless grin. ‘Would you believe me if I said that they made me very uncomfortable, and that I’d intended to dispose of them as soon as I felt it would not be seen as callous?’
‘Perhaps.’ Ngiri tapped her lips with a finger. ‘Is it fair to say that you disagreed with your late husband’s view of the aeldari?’
‘We disagreed on a number of things,’ Chetta pointed out. ‘Including, as you witnessed at his funeral, the marriage arrangements for our children.’
‘Is that why you had him killed?’
Ice gripped Chetta’s heart. She opened her mouth to protest, to demand that Ngiri provide some proof of her allegation, but it would serve nothing. An Imperial Inquisitor needed no proof. Their authority was essentially limitless, although they presumably had their own hierarchy. However, since no other, more senior inquisitor seemed likely to pop up in Ngiri’s gun-cutter and come to Chetta’s defence, that was something of a moot point.
‘I have very little doubt that you arranged for your husband’s death on Necromunda,’ Ngiri said flatly. ‘And quite frankly, if you did that on your own then it’s the concern of the Arbites, not me. You’re an intelligent and capable woman, and would presumably have a plan to assume power with the minimum of disruption.’
Chetta had to try twice before she could form words. ‘You’re telling me that you think I killed my own husband… and you’re fine with that?’
‘If it was your plan,’ Ngiri said. She leaned a little closer. ‘Your husband’s death had the prospect of throwing all sorts of things into utter mayhem, if someone didn’t assume control soon afterwards. The disruption to House Brobantis, the inevitable jockeying for position amongst the other houses… It could have had a huge impact on the operation of the Imperium, in this sector and beyond. Without reliable service from the Navis Nobilite the Imperium would fall apart. We’d go back to the days of Old Night, and be picked off by whatever xenos warlords fancied taking a bite.’ She shook her head. ‘I’ve had my eye on the Navigator houses of Vorlese for a while, Chetta, thanks to some disturbing trends in xenos goods that I’ve become convinced are passing through here. I needed to make sure that you were acting of your own accord.’
Chetta stared at her. Of course she had been… hadn’t she? Was it possible that some malicious agent had guided her hand? Had played on her unease with Azariel’s choices, and her opposition to his plans for their children, to ensure that she attempted to supplant him and thereby threw everything into turmoil?
‘Truly, I believe that I was,’ she said soberly, reflecting how unlikely it was to be hoping that an inquisitor would believe her when she said that she was acting entirely of her own volition when she’d planned to murder her husband. ‘Azariel was a good man in many respects, and skilled, but I disagreed strongly with some of his choices, and as for the marriages… I spoke truly at his funeral. Dukarr is heading for shadow and pain, but Azariel was too concerned with our political gains to care what that meant for our children. The Tarot’s warning was too clear to ignore, and I may be a three-eyed mutant, but I still accept the Emperor as the guiding light of humanity. I refuse to believe that any xenos could have corrupted that.’
Ngiri pursed her lips. ‘Perhaps I place too much trust in my ability to judge character. But you don’t strike me as a person easily influenced by others, Chetta. Perhaps I can, for now at least, take your words at face value.’
Chetta released a breath she hadn’t realised she’d been holding.
‘Besides,’ Ngiri added, ‘we have other, more pressing concerns.’
‘We do?’
‘Well, there’s the matter of Gallimo Prime, for one,’ Ngiri said. ‘And the possibility that whoever managed that particular atrocity might have similar designs on this planet. Don’t look so surprised,’ she continued. ‘I am an inquisitor, after all, and you gave a statement to the Arbites. I was hoping you’d stay out of it after that, but it appears you are as persistent as you are perceptive. How is Goodsire Yunn? Gurrit adhered to my instructions not to engage you, but it appears he neglected to pass those instructions on to his underlings.’
Chetta shook her head in disbelief. She’d thought herself mentally adept, but it was hard to keep up with Ngiri’s parade of revelations. ‘It was you who removed the data files! And broke into Yunn’s old hab!’
