[Ciaphas Cain 05] - Duty Calls Read online

  “I feel the shadow,” she mumbled, her flat nasal tones setting my teeth on edge as usual, “and it’s hungry.” She was dressed in fatigues, which, like most of the clothes she seemed to possess, looked a little too small for her, displaying rather too much of her generous decolletage as a result. But by her standards, I suppose, they were practical. To my surprise she was carrying a laspistol. I’d have thought with a weapon in her hands she’d be more of a danger to anyone with her than to the enemy, but if Amberley believed she could be trusted with it I wasn’t going to argue.

  “That’s a shame,” I said dryly. “We could have brought some more of those pasties with us if we’d known.”

  “Ciaphas.” Amberley looked at me reprovingly. “Don’t tease the psyker. She’s had a hard day.”

  “We all have,” a cheerful young man with an unruly blond fringe said. There were three members of the party I didn’t recognise, two of them the kind of hired muscle Amberley had employed briefly on Gravalax until the ’stealers got them, while the third was enveloped in the robes of a techpriest. I nodded a cordial greeting feeling a great deal happier for being surrounded by people with guns. (Apart from Rakel, of course, but unless she pointed it at me or Jurgen there didn’t seem much point in objecting.)

  “I’ll look forward to hearing about it,” I said, “as soon as we get to wherever we’re going.”

  “Didn’t I tell you?” Amberley asked ingenuously, Nyte still lolling across her shoulder like a feebly twitching scarf. “We’re going to the Arbites building.”

  She grinned at me again. “I’d hate you to miss your appointment.”

  “How very considerate,” I said, determined not to seem too surprised by anything she told me. “Is that where you entered the undercity?”

  “That’s right,” the young fellow confirmed. He had an autogun slung across his shoulder, and a bandolier of magazines around his chest. Like Rakel he was dressed in plain fatigues, although his fitted properly, and hadn’t been left unfastened to an indecorous degree. He seemed to have appointed himself Zemelda’s guide, which she certainly wasn’t objecting to, his affable demeanour matched by a face which, if not exactly handsome in the conventional sense, was pleasant enough, accentuated by the shock of blond hair that fell into his eyes constantly. Every time it did so he twitched it away, with a gesture so automatic he seemed genuinely unaware of it, and which I assumed accounted for his nickname until the first time I saw him fade into a patch of shadow. “The name’s Pelton, by the way, but my friends call me Flicker.”

  “What do your enemies call you?” Zemelda asked archly, and Pelton shrugged.

  “Haven’t got any,” he said, “I killed them all.” Zemelda laughed, but I felt a shiver go down my spine. Back on Gravalax Amberley had recruited a group of murderers and psychopaths for a raid on a genestealer nest, and one of them had turned on us at the worst possible moment.

  No doubt sensing my unease, Amberley smiled at me. “Flicker’s harmless,” she assured me. “Unless I tell him not to be.”

  I nodded at the other man, who had taken point next to Rakel, either by prior arrangement or on his own initiative. “What about him?” I asked.

  If anything her smile grew broader. “Simeon? Oh, he’s dangerous all right. Mostly to himself, though.” I had no trouble believing that. The man was slightly built, but seemed to burn with a nervous energy that was almost a visible glow in the gloom-enshrouded tunnels. He wore a sleeveless vest festooned with equipment pouches, and his lank, greasy hair just failed to hide the thin, flexible tube running into the base of his skull from somewhere beneath it. “I found him in a penal legion, one where they use chemical injectors to keep the cannon fodder in line. “Slaught, psychon, blissout, you name it, he’s addicted. Remove his implant, and he’ll die. Sooner or later he will anyway. In the meantime, the automatic systems keep him more or less stable by varying the proportions of the cocktail.”

  “I can see how someone like that would be useful,” I said slowly. “For as long as the tranqs work, anyway.”

  “He earned his keep in that ’stealer nest,” Amberley said. “Gave him a quick blast of “slaught and let him go. It was all I could do to keep up with him, and in this thing that’s really saying something.” I nodded.

  “Why didn’t you use the power suit on Gravalax?” I asked. Amberley shrugged, the servos whining as they tried to match the movement, and Nyte’s recumbent form swayed slightly across her shoulder.

  “That was supposed to be a recon sweep,” she reminded me. “This thing’s all very well when I’m expecting a stand-up fight, but it’s not exactly tailored for sneaking around in.” The servos whined again. “Besides, it’s not entirely reliable. Keeps breaking down at inconvenient moments.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with the suit,” the techpriest admonished, in the distinctive burr of the Caledonia system. “If you will keep standing in the way of heavy weapons fire, I can only do so much to keep it running.” He waved a dismissive mechadendrite in my direction. “While she was running about on Gravalax with you, I was rebuilding the primary fluid link and re-sanctifying the fusion bottle.”

  “I didn’t hear you complaining while you were standing behind me,” Amberley replied, her bantering tone enough to confirm that the techpriest had evidently been a part of her retinue for at least as long as Mott and Rakel.

  The techpriest shrugged, a surprisingly human gesture for one of his calling, although it seemed a little stiff, hinting at extensive augmetic enhancements beneath his grubby white robe. A pair of mechadendrites waved lazily above his shoulders, and the eyes beneath his hood were blank and reflective in the light from the luminators. “A true servant of the Omnissiah gives thanks for his protection whatever form it comes in,” he shot back. “And bolters are bad for my health.” His silver eyes regarded me thoughtfully. “As it seems my lady can’t be bothered with introductions, I’m Cogitator Yanbel.”

  “Ciaphas Cain,” I said automatically. I gestured in the general direction of my aide, who seemed to have found another of Zemelda’s snacks in one of the utility pouches he was habitually festooned with, and was getting most of it more or less into his mouth. “And that’s Jurgen. Don’t be fooled by your initial impression, he is tolerable most of the time. If you don’t stand too close.”

  “The blank.” Yanbel nodded. “I know. She’s gone to a lot of trouble to get you both here.” He broke off as Amberley gave him a sharp look, and then turned her dazzling smile on me. The news the techpriest had let slip hardly came as a surprise, but it wasn’t exactly welcome. Although the prospect of spending some time with Amberley before she dragged me off on whatever suicidal escapade she had in mind went a long way towards making up for it.

  “That’s flattering,” I said, addressing her directly. “But I can’t help wondering why.”

  “All in good time.” The coquettish expression I knew all too well was on her face now, and I knew there was no point pressing the matter. “Keesh will explain. There’s a lot more going on here than I can sum up in a couple of sentences.” The sparkle of mischief was in her eyes again. “Besides, I wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise.”

  “Surprise?” I asked, trying to keep the undertone of trepidation out of my voice. Amberley nodded.

  “You’ll see,” she said cheerfully.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  A short while later we came to a halt outside a heavy iron door, like many of the others we’d passed on our walk from the site of the ambush, and Simeon flattened himself against the wall as though anticipating another attack. His febrile gaze kept flickering back and forth along the tunnel, alert for any signs of movement that might betray an enemy, and I noticed for the first time that his pallid face and arms were seamed with old scar tissue. He carried a shotgun, presumably because he wasn’t able to make use of anything that required much in the way of accuracy, and he kept it held close to his body, ready to bring it to bear with the unthinking ease of a combat veteran.

&nbs
p; Every time his eyes swept across me as he shifted his gaze from one direction to the other he seemed to flinch, and, as you’ll appreciate, I found this a trifle disconcerting given his evident mental state and the fact that he was armed. I mentioned this to Amberley, and she shook her head.

  “It’s not you,” she said, pushing against the door. The metal bent a little, but failed to move, and she took a step back, sighing with irritation. “It’s your uniform.” Well, that made sense, I supposed, it would have been his regimental commissar who’d consigned him to the living hell of the penal legions in the first place.

  “What did he do?” I asked, curious in spite of myself, and Amberley shrugged, with the whining of servos I was beginning to become so familiar with.

  “Cracked under pressure. He ordered an entire platoon executed for failure to salute a superior officer in the middle of an artillery barrage, and shot seven troopers himself with his sidearm before he was brought down. Tragic.”

  “It happens.” I shrugged too. “Some junior officers just can’t take the pressure of combat. That’s why we have commissars.”

  “He was a commissar,” Amberley said, and I looked at the poor wretch with a curious amalgam of horror and pity. You hear stories about members of the Commissariat who go off the deep end, but no one ever pays them much mind, and it was the first time I’d ever seen one of my compatriots brought so low. I had little time to brood about it, though.

  “Scuse me.” Yanbel glided smoothly past us on little wheels attached to the soles of his augmetic feet and started doing something complicated to one of the ubiquitous junction boxes with his mechadendrites, his regular hands busy with a small incense burner and, to my surprise, a viridiens pasty apparently scrounged from Jurgen. He met my gaze and shrugged. “Been a while since lunch,” he explained indistinctly.

  Reflecting that most techpriests of my acquaintance had been indifferent to the flavour of food, viewing it simply as fuel for the body (which I suppose under the circumstances was just as well), I took his impromptu snack as confirmation of the impression I’d long since formed that at least a mild degree of eccentricity was an essential requirement for joining Amberley’s entourage.[1] “Ah, that’s got it.” With a hum of servos, the slab of metal began to move aside to let us in, and the techpriest grinned at Amberley. “Thirty-seven seconds. Perhaps we should tell the arbitrator it’s time he updated his security protocols.” [1. Not as such, but as most of my fellow inquisitors will undoubtedly agree, the nature of our work tends to bring us into contact with a higher than average proportion of people whose view of the galaxy is somewhat unconventional.]

  “I’ll bear that in mind,” Amberley said dryly, leading the way into the brightly lit space beyond.

  I followed, finding myself in a utility area not much different to those in the cellars of buildings throughout the Imperium: dust, pipe work, a scurrying rodent or two, and a staircase leading upwards. The main difference from most of the others I’d seen was the group of justicars aiming guns at us, but Amberley didn’t seem too bothered by that, and with most of her entourage between me and the weaponry I wasn’t either, at least as soon as I’d noticed that most of them were beginning to relax now that the heavy door to the undercity was beginning to close behind us.

  “The inquisitor has returned,” the squad leader reported crisply, presumably to some higher authority through a voxcaster built into his helmet, as the fact was blindingly obvious to everyone in the room. Then his voice faltered a little. “With additional… personnel.”

  “I’m Commissar Cain,” I said, stepping forward to seize the initiative before he could get the impression that I was just another of Amberley’s underlings. “The arbitrator’s expecting me. I’m afraid I got a little sidetracked on the way to our meeting.”

  “That sounds like an interesting story,” a new voice chimed in from the top of the stairs. I glanced up, seeing a grey-haired man in the unmistakable black uniform of an arbitrator senioris gazing down at us with an air of mild curiosity. “I look forward to hearing the details in more salubrious surroundings.”

  “We need a medicae,” Amberley said, slipping Nyte off her shoulder and handing him casually to a couple of nearby justicars. Arbitrator Keesh stood back to let them pass, and resumed his position at the top of the stairs.

  “What about the other two?” he asked.

  “They didn’t make it. Sorry.” Amberley glanced in my direction. “Ciaphas will fill you in, I’m sure.”

  “Aren’t you sitting in on the briefing?” Keesh asked.

  Amberley shook her head. “I’ll join you as soon as I’ve changed into something more comfortable,” she said, and led her band of misfits, now apparently augmented by Zemelda for the foreseeable future, up the staircase and out of sight. Accustomed as I was to reading people’s body language, I could hardly help noticing the way Pelton and Keesh avoided eye contact with one another, each of them positively bristling as they passed, Pelton’s conversation with the green-haired snack-seller apparently becoming the most engrossing piece of small talk in the galaxy, while the arbitrator’s attention was taken up completely with routine status reports.[1] There was no time to wonder about that either, as Jurgen and I were approaching the top of the staircase ourselves by this time. [1. Which Cain presumably overheard on his comm-bead.]

  “Commissar Cain.” Keesh stuck out a hand to shake mine, which I took automatically, and smiled with every sign of sincerity. “Welcome to Periremunda. I’m sorry your reception wasn’t quite as cordial as we would have liked.”

  “That’s all right,” I said smoothly. “I’m sorry we dented your car.”

  “It must have been a simple case of mistaken identity,” Keesh said, once we were comfortably settled in his office and I’d run through a quick and concise summary of our adventures on the way in from the aerodrome. It was a large, well-appointed room several storeys up, with a spectacular view across the city and the open wilderness beyond, the sky flaring red and gold as the sun finally set behind the spires of rock on the horizon. “The insurgents obviously thought it was me in the car, and hoped my removal would cripple our efforts to root them out.”

  “That sounds plausible,” I agreed, sipping a goblet of amasec of even finer quality than the vintage I’d found in the decanter that had been vaporised by Amberley’s firebomb. “I’ve hardly been here long enough to have made any enemies of my own.”

  “Other than the one we’re all facing,” Amberley said dryly. She was sprawling on a sofa against one of the walls, having donned a gown of a smoky grey colour, which set off the blue of her eyes very nicely, a delicate porcelain cup of recaf in her hand.

  I nodded in agreement. “Just how deeply entrenched is the ’stealer infiltration?” I asked.

  “Deeply enough,” Keesh said, staring out at the luminators beginning to spark into life across Principia Mons. “Judging by the number of cells we’ve uncovered in the last year, they’ve been here for generations. No one even suspected their presence until they began their campaign of insurrection.”

  “Which raises the question of why now?” I glanced at Amberley. “We’re in big trouble, aren’t we?”

  “We are.” She shrugged, setting up ripples in the misty material, which fell away from her shoulder. “At least we’ve taken out the brood lord, which ought to leave them disorganised, here at any rate. There are bound to be others, in nests on other plateaux.”

  “Like Hoarfell?” I asked anxiously, and to my relief she shook her head.

  “We can’t rule it out, of course, but that seems unlikely. We’ve had no reports of unrest there yet.” She looked at me appraisingly, no doubt divining my main concern. “Of course they’re bound to have a cell of hybrids in place. Darien’s a large enough city for them to hide in, even without a tunnel complex below it.”

  “That’s true,” I agreed, the memory of the sprawling conurbation I’d seen from the air filling my mind. There was no point worrying about it at the moment, though.
“Can I tell Colonel Kasteen what we’re really facing?”

  “You might as well,” Amberley conceded, after a quick exchange of glances with Keesh, who was clearly unhappy about that but understandably disinclined to argue with an inquisitor. His disquiet had obviously registered with her, however, as she returned her gaze to the arbitrator almost at once. “The 597th helped to clear up the ’stealer infestation on Gravalax,” she explained, “and they’ve fought tyranids before too. They’ll be far more effective if they know what they’re dealing with.”

  “I see.” Keesh nodded, somewhat mollified. “Then by all means tell them, commissar. I assume you can rely on your colonel’s discretion?”

  “Of course,” I said, trying not to sound nettled at the question. I’m sure I’d have asked the same thing in his position.

  “Very well.” Keesh turned, and activated a hololith built into his desk. A slowly-rotating image of Periremunda appeared, flickering slightly in the manner of most such devices, blue icons marking the major population centres, and red ones the locations of cult cells tracked down and eliminated in the last year or so since they’d begun to show their hand. Amber dots marked the ones where some members were believed to have escaped the cleansing zeal of the justicars and the PDF, and a rash of sickly purple ones the locations where the existence of cells was suspected, but unproven. He nodded at Amberley. “I can see why you insisted on that particular regiment being assigned here if that’s the case.”

  “It seemed prudent,” Amberley said, with the faintest of glances at Jurgen, who sat uncomfortably in the corner of the room, chewing absently on yet another of the snacks he’d squirreled away in the depths of his uniform. Divining her hidden meaning, I couldn’t help agreeing with her. My aide’s peculiar gift had disrupted the telepathic bond of the brood we’d discovered in the tunnels beneath Mayoh,[1] and it might prove equally effective here. Of course that implied that she expected us to get close enough to the damn things for his abilities to kick in, which was somewhat disturbing in itself. To distract myself from the thought, I indicated the hololith. [11. The planetary capital of Cravalax.]