conspiracy on Geremanthius. Traitors at every level. It didn’t take a Vigiles offi cer to know they weren’t hearing the whole story, but with all off-planet comms jammed and all ships being scorched before they breached atmo, no-one on Geremanthius ever would. What do you do when the Sword
of Damocles is literally hanging over your
head? Charkorov reached for the bottle, remembering as his fi ngers closed on the neck that it was empty.
#
++A favour.++
++The world’s ending, and you choose this moment to call in your favour++ Another pause. ++You did say you would collect one day++
++I did. I am++
#
For the last forty eight hours, he had organised patrols and manned the
barricades, trying desperately to keep the city from tearing itself apart with an ever- dwindling force of men. He had awoken red-eyed and soul-sick on the Sector-House fl oor at dawn and, before he was even fully awake, knew he was the last person left in the building. He had kept what order one man could on the streets outside all day, but there was nothing he could do anymore. He stood, and fl ung the empty jolliq bottle out the window. His last one.
He was alone in the longest, darkest night Geremanthius would ever know, and duty was all he had left. So be it. When I stand
before Him in four hours time, the Emperor will not fi nd me wanting. If duty is all I have, then that is what I will give Him.
He knocked the ranting pub-vox off his desk and picked up the case-slate it had been sitting on. Before Exterminatus had been declared, this one case had been consuming Charkorov’s every waking hour. A body in the canal. A low-level Ecclesiarchy by the name of Almoner Strang. It was not the victim that had made this one stand out, but the reaction. A torture-kill that had all the hallmarks of a professional job, as did the cover-up Charkorov had run into. Blocked at every turn; denial, stonewalling and outright obstruction. There had even been threats: serious ones.
There was only one witness, although Charkorov had had to burn plenty of good informants just to fi nd out her name – Sister Tanaquil of the Orders Hospitaller. He’d learned that the Arbites were holding her covertly, and that they weren’t letting anyone talk to her. The whole thing stank.
But the Arbites had gone, armoured columns heading for Mueller Fields and the orbital shuttles just hours before the pub-vox began screaming Exterminatus at a stunned population. The Courthouse on Eternal Hill was abandoned. Rumour was escaped prisoners held it now.
He sighed. She was almost certainly dead, if she had ever been there at all. It was
probably a complete waste of time. But what else was he going to do? The pocketwatches were heavy in his coat. Duty and justice. #
++I see. Cat stuck up a tree? Old lady trying to cross a road? Some rude graffi tti on your meatwagon?++
++No. I want you to help me lead an armoured attack on the Arbites’ Courthouse++
A very long pause. ++You better run that one by me again, Chief Inspector. Slowly++
#
He took his gun from the safe-box beside his desk and tucked the case-slate into his overcoat. Then he tagged Colonel Guutheim’s number and called in one last favour.
#
Towering high above the city; the Arbites Courthouse on Eternal Hill. It wore the sunset well, Charkorov thought, sheer walls like blood, imperial eagles and gun embrasures of burning brass. A cold wind from the coast carried the sound of bedlam. Standing beside his Bruennhilde light armoured personnel carrier, Guutheim looked old. Charkorov told him so. The big man in the immaculate dress uniform
jumped at the sound of Charkorov’s voice, then fl icked his ghutka stick away as he turned to face the shadows.
“They teach skulking at the Academy, Chief Inspector?”
“They teach sentry duty at boot camp?” Guutheim sniffed the air. “Cheap jolliq. You’re drunk, lad.”
“Sadly, no. I keep drinking, but can’t seem to get drunk.”
Nodding, Guutheim lit another ghutka stick slowly, the tip fl aring in the dark for a long moment. His face was drawn, heavy; bleached of hope. Like himself, Charkorov realised, duty was the only thing keeping him going. “Over the comms is one thing. You asked, I came. But now. You tell me what this is all about, I think.”
“Ask me again in the morning.”
“A-ha! A joke! I always knew you had it in you, Chief Inspector. Come. Indulge a tired, old man. Or I might just take all these troopers and head back to barracks.”
Charkorov shrugged. He could barely explain it to himself. How would it sound
“I fail to see how they could get any worse,” snorted Guutheim. He tugged at his sleeves, drew himself up. “Fine. You won’t talk,
except auroch-shit not even a cadet would swallow. No more than I expected, frankly. In the absence of anything better to do, let’s get on with it.”
Guutheim leapt onto the running board of his APC, the frame rocking under his weight. He barked orders; terse, fast - too fast for Charkorov to follow. He’d never served in the Autocrator’s Auxiliary. When his year were trucked off to induction camp he’d snuck out and turned up at the Vigiles Academy on South Street. He looked sixteen and he wasn’t drunk or a cripple, which pleased the recruiting sergeant for whom two out of the three was usually enough. In the Bondsmen’s Quarter, where he’d grown up, the Vigiles were hated only slightly less than the xeno, and his family hadn’t spoken to him since. Charkorov sometimes wondered if that had been his goal all along.
The sounds of the dying city swept over him as he waited; distant gunfi re, screams, singing, shouts and more. He tried to shut it out, then realised why he could hear it all so clearly – the mills in the Unthank Quarter
The thought chilled him.
The engines of the Bruennhilde column roared into life, the comforting noise masking out the death rattle of the city beyond the stablights. Rill jogged beside them as they crawled up the narrow, switch- back approach past security fences and ghostly pillboxes, the guns and gunners long gone to Mueller Fields. Acrid smoke whipped past in pale threads turned golden by the last kiss of the sun.
The thunder of their progress drew faces from the deepening gloom. Some ran after the armoured cars, arms outstretched, only to fall away after a dozen paces. A group of women wearing medical gowns stood and hurled abuse. Unseen others threw stones. The Courthouse, in all its massive, forbidding strength, drew the people to it. A tall man clothed in black stood at the head of a great, grey mass of shuffl ing workers – a preacher. He spat at Charkorov as he jogged past. The Courthouse loomed around the last corner. As the column chewed up the cobbles between the ancient Lime Lions, someone atop the Courthouse walls spotted them, and small arms fi re cracked off the armour. Shouts and calls fi ltered down from
Charkorov pointed at the immense armaplas gates that stood on the other side of
Imperial Square.
Guutheim winked. “All Autocrators have a plan for taking the Arbites Courthouses, Chief Inspector, even the loyal ones. It’s just like having insurance-”
His words were cut off in a spasm of noise as the twin autocannons of the Chimerax sprayed the embrasures and fi ring slits. High above, fountains of ironcrete dust erupted as if summoned by the tracer fi re.
Guutheim shouted more orders, then bent his head low to Charkorov. “You think he was – what the pub-vox says? Autocrator Mallik was a traitor?”
Something low, heavy and tracked clanked and screeched towards the Courthouse gates.
Charkorov shook his head. “Like you, I know auroch-shit when I hear it. Mallik’s gone, anyway. The Navy fl attened Regent’s House from orbit.”
“Feck. The whole complex? The Senate? Put these on.” Guutheim handed Charkorov a set of ear-masks. “The Cyclops makes quite a bang.” “The whole damned island,” Charkorov shouted. “Wiped it out. What’s a Cy-?” Even with the ear-masks the thunderclap of noise was agonising, if brief. The dust was already rolling over him when Charkorov realised he had been knocked off his feet.
He scrambled up. Guutheim appeared out of the cloud, looking pleased.
“The whole island? So that’s what happened to my chain of command,” he said. A jerk of the thumb. “I assume we’re not taking prisoners in there.”
The tracked vehicle had turned into a crater, and the lower third of the armaplas doors was a smoking ruin. Already, the fi rst APC was bouncing over the toothed rubble and disappearing down the throat of the Courthouse.
“We’re bringing the Emperor’s law to the lawless, Colonel. They had their chance to die with dignity.”
Guutheim simply grunted his assent, jumped up onto the running board and slapped the car’s roof hard. It shot away from Charkorov as he jogged after it, gun held low.
He checked the time on one of Alitov’s pocket-watches. Three and a half hours until midnight.
#
20:32
+++Fleet Tactical notice: Attention of: Irisia Wing. Spear of Sanctity beginning fi nal manoeuvres. Will achieve polar orbit suitable for cyclonic torpedo release in 179 minutes. Final fl eet elements to assume formation M/732A/RaptorShadow on arrival from warp translation. Swift death to His enemies+++
#
Resistance was fragmented and sporadic – none of the escaped prisoners had expected a full-blown armoured assault when they’d seized the empty Courthouse and closed the gates behind them. Charkorov slipped away from Guutheim’s men as quickly as he could and into the rat’s nest of hallways and stairwells that lay under the building.
A combination of memory, educated guesses and cryptic signs led him to the subterranean holding cells, and from there a quick scan of the duty log told him which oubliette Sister Tanaquil was in. The lights were out, but he’d brought a torch. The halls stank of guts and death; the walls ran black with blood. He moved quickly, glancing at each corpse as he stepped over it. He’d expected the prisoners to settle their scores when the Arbites left. They had done so with relish, and a little torture and mutilation thrown in.
Down dank stairs into solitary. A long, low hall with yellow lights fl ickering. The prisoners hadn’t managed to break the seals in this wing, or simply hadn’t bothered yet, and there were no corpses to check. Even so, it was as silent as the grave. The air was cold and smelled of cleaning fl uid and dust. He found the hatch, fl ush with the steel fl oor in an alcove off the main walkway. He knelt, his torch beam picking out a black, waxy seal on the face. It was unfamiliar, but the raised skull had the look of a death warrant about it. His heart sank. He interrogated the machine spirit in the hatch, holding
his breath in case it too had departed, but it replied, red words fl ashing angrily. Cell
vacant. Occupant terminated.
He swore. Something moved at the end of the hall; the ghost of a sound summoned by his swearing, but it was like a bell in the silence. Torch off, he advanced quickly and quietly, darting from alcove to alcove. Light ghosted from under a door, just enough to see by. A shadow moved in the light.
Charkorov’s boot hit the door a fraction of a second after his pistol blew the lock out. Then he was in the room, back to the wall, torch back on and hunting the gloom.
“Vigiles!” he shouted. “In nomine Imperator, yield and submit!”
The data-slate nearly took the top of his head off, but he got an arm in the way.
Whoever threw it was fast, he gave them that – they were nearly past him and out into the hall when he body-slammed them against the open door.
They fell together hard, his attacker writhing like a pit of snakes. Fists, knees and elbows struck him, but he had the weight advantage and the fl urry of blows ended when he jammed his pistol under his captive’s chin.
There was something dark on her face. He saw more spots appear; heavy drops. Blood. His own. He was suddenly aware of her hand at his throat, and the fact that she had been holding something in it when she had been hitting him.
“Ditch the shiv,” he hissed. “Drop the gun.”
“Not going to happen, Sister.” “Likewise.”
“I don’t have time for Catachan standoffs. I’m Chief Inspector Charkorov of the Vigiles. It’s you I’m here to see – about Almoner Strang.” “I bet you are. I’ve been waiting for you.” She tried to push him off. He shifted his weight, keeping her pinned, and she retorted by digging her blade in a little. “But I thought your master had upped the stakes.”
“There’s an execution warrant on your cell, and the spirit in the hatch thinks you’re dead. What’s going on?”
“I suppose he’s paying you to fi nish the job? He promise you a seat? I wouldn’t count on it being there, Vigiles!” She spat the last word in his face, struggling again.
gun on the steel fl oor beside her head, eased the catch off. “Pax, Daughter of the Emperor.” He lifted himself up. Her hand stayed steady at his throat. He looked her in the eyes, sight adapted to the gloom. There was steel there, an iron will. He doubted the Arbites would have got anything from her. Then she blinked and her hand was gone from his throat. He caught a glimpse of glass and then she was holding his gun, pointing it at him, rock-steady as she got to her feet. He felt his gut go cold.
She advanced on him slowly, her voice as steady as her grip, her stare as cool and
calculating as a surgeon contemplating the fi rst cut. “A spiritu dominatus, Domine, libra nos.” He could see nothing but the barrel of his gun and her mouth, speaking the words of the Battle Hymn of the Adepta Sororitas. “Wherever you think you’re going, holy Sister, you’re not going to get there alive. Not even with my gun.”
“From the Lightning and the Tempest, Our
Emperor, deliver us.”
“Guutheim’s men are up there, and they’re here to kill escaped prisoners. Which as of right now, includes you.”
The gun pressed forward. The wall behind his head was cold and hard, the metal in front more so. “That thou wouldst bring
them only death, we beseech thee, destroy them.”
“Maybe we can help each other.”
A whisper. “From the follies of His chosen,
Our Emperor, deliver us.”
Charkorov gritted his teeth, waiting for the sound he wouldn’t hear. Then he realised that last line was not in the Battle Hymn. Then the gun was before his face, handle towards him.
He brought his torch up, getting his fi rst proper look at her. On the tall side, fi gure rounded under the coarse prisoner’s habits, dark, alabaster skin streaked with blood and grime and sweat under the straight, white hair. She was beautiful, he realised, but it was the uncaring beauty of snow and ice, with cold, green eyes that had already seen everything death and suffering had to offer. He reminded himself what Sisters Hospitaller did in the scream-fi lled saw-tents of the Imperial Guard. He took his gun with what he hoped was a nonchalant nod.
“If you were being paid by him, you would have told me rather than die, and you were ready to die,” Sister Tanaquil said. “Perhaps we can help each other after all, Chief Inspector.”
#
They made good time, all the more so when Charkorov decided to borrow Guutheim’s personal transport.
It was clear Sister Tanaquil did not entirely trust him, but he decided she realised she had to trust someone. He checked his watch. Less than three hours to midnight. The clock was counting down fast, but it felt good to be doing something – anything. He hated to think what the alternative might have been. He drank, the burn of jolliq welcome in the chill of the car. “Thirsty?” he asked, offering her the hip. She turned quickly, saw the fl ask and looked away again, a curl of distaste on her lips. “Well,” he muttered, wondering why he was apologising, “it’s not very good anyway. It’s just the cheap stuff.” He jammed the stopper in and thought about what she had told him.
A junior Arbitrator had come to her oubliette two days ago, the whole Courthouse in uproar over the evacuation, and told her she had been sentenced to death by off-world authorities. Then the Arbitrator had removed her helm, to reveal an angry, devout and confused young woman, shocked at what she was about to do. Unable to kill a Daughter of the Immortal Emperor in cold blood, she had dumped another prisoner’s corpse into the cell and locked Tanaquil in the abandoned watch-station. Tanaquil would still die with the rest of Geremanthius, but the Arbitrator’s conscience was salved – it would not be she who had killed her.
Then Tanaquil had told Charkorov about the baby.
Two weeks ago: her Order had taken in an infant, barely a few days old, found bundled and placed between the penitence pews at the shrine to St. Katherine in Whitelock. Men arrived a few days later, asking about newborns, and the only authority they would display was guns and the threat of unanswerable violence when they returned. Sister Tanaquil had taken the child that night to the Ecclesiarchy, to Almoner Strang at the Cathedral of the Frozen Tear, and left her in his care. A week later, Strang’s body was found – dumped headless and brutalized by Tanaquil’s dorm at the rear of the shrine. A message to her. She had moved the body, but then the Arbites had come for her – for her own safety, they said. That hadn’t lasted long, and the questioning had begun. Charkorov knew the rest.
“Who is the baby?” he asked, but Tanaquil’s green eyes just looked out over the city as