The Smallest Detail - Sandy Mitchell Read online

  ‘Good point,’ the provost conceded, to Jurgen’s faint, and pleased, surprise. She turned to Sergeant Merser, who was hovering uneasily nearby, a data-slate in his hand. ‘Any luck tracing the lasgun one of them was armed with?’

  Merser nodded, looking distinctly unhappy. ‘We managed to find a serial number. I would have thought the metal had melted, but the body…’ he swallowed, turning another shade paler, ‘what was left of it, had fallen on top. Protected it a bit.’

  ‘So who was it issued to?’ Liana asked.

  ‘That’s just it. It wasn’t.’ Merser held the data-slate out, as though he expected it to snap at his fingers. ‘It’s listed as still in stores.’

  ‘So it was pilfered,’ Liana said, and Merser nodded unhappily.

  ‘Looks that way,’ he replied.

  ‘Then we need to know who by,’ Liana persisted.

  ‘If we find out what’s missing, we should be able to deduce who’s responsible,’ Merser said. ‘I’ll start going through the inventories.’

  ‘We could start with yours,’ Liana suggested, fixing the heavyset sergeant with a calculating look.

  Merser flushed indignantly. ‘My records are fine,’ he snapped. ‘What’s in the files is on the shelves.’ He looked at Jurgen for confirmation. ‘He’ll tell you.’

  Jurgen nodded. ‘Everything matched,’ he agreed. He jerked a thumb in the direction of the latest corpse to be recovered, being dragged along in a tarpaulin by sweating, swearing troopers, leaving a faint trail of ash and flakes of charred meat in their wake. ‘And I’d have a roll call if I were you. Whoever’s missing’s probably them.’

  ‘Good idea,’ Liana concurred. ‘Then we can start chasing down their contacts. Wouldn’t be the first time a quartermaster started diverting stuff to the black market.’

  ‘I’ll leave you to it, then.’ Jurgen shouldered his lasgun, and turned away. ‘I’m done here.’

  ‘Maybe you should stay,’ Merser said hastily.

  Jurgen turned back, surprised. ‘What for?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, what for?’ Liana turned a questioning gaze on the portly sergeant. ‘It’s not as though Gunner Jurgen’s a suspect.’

  ‘Of course not,’ Merser said hastily. ‘But he must have assisted the commissar in his investigations. Maybe he can spot something we might overlook.’

  ‘Maybe he can,’ Liana agreed, after a moment’s consideration. She turned to Jurgen. ‘Do you think you might?’

  ‘Dunno.’ Jurgen shrugged. ‘Worth a try, I suppose, so long as it don’t take too long’ In truth, his involvement in investigations generally went no further than processing the paperwork and shooting the occasional traitor who resented his unmasking, but an appeal had been made to his sense of duty, and he felt honour-bound to respond. It was what Commissar Cain would wish, he had no doubt.

  ‘Right then,’ Liana said, looking from one man to another, and wondering if she’d just made the decision to consign her career to oblivion, ‘might as well get started, I suppose.’

  ‘What do you mean there’s no one missing?’ Liana asked, handing the data-slate she’d just been shown back to the provost who’d brought it in to her office; a small cubicle on the western side of the militia barracks, which would have seemed crowded with only one occupant. Currently it had three, Jurgen observing from a corner near the window, which Liana seemed to like jammed open as wide as it would go. He had no objection to this, as it gave him a good view of the militia compound, and the city beyond, from which the occasional crackle of small-arms fire could be heard. The rebels were making a concerted attempt to hold on to the southern quarter, with the Imperial Guard equally determined to dislodge them, and show the militia how it ought to be done by breaking the year-long stalemate in a matter of days.

  ‘I mean everyone’s accounted for, ma’am,’ the provost said, and withdrew, a little hastily it seemed to Jurgen.

  ‘Someone’s playing games,’ Jurgen said. ‘Answering twice to cover for them.’ A common enough dodge in the Guard, when troopers had overstayed a pass, or been too hungover to report for duty.

  ‘Unless the men who attacked you weren’t soldiers at all,’ Liana said thoughtfully.

  ‘They were in uniform,’ Jurgen objected.

  ‘I went to a party dressed as an ork once,’ Liana retorted. ‘That didn’t make me a greenskin.’

  Jurgen nodded, the way he’d seen the commissar do while considering an unexpected suggestion, and tried to see what she was driving at. ‘You mean they were pretending to be militia troopers,’ he said at last, reasonably certain he got it.

  ‘That’s right,’ Liana said, looking at him a little oddly. ‘Using stolen uniforms to get onto the base.’

  Which sounded reasonable to Jurgen. If they could steal guns, they could steal uniforms just as easily. ‘If it was me,’ he added, ‘I’d have set charges in the armoury as soon as I’d finished helping myself.’

  ‘First thing we checked, believe me,’ Liana assured him. ‘Nothing there.’

  ‘Hm.’ Mindful that he was a guest in her office, Jurgen spat out of the window, rather than letting the gob of saliva land where it would. ‘Even the rebels here aren’t up to much.’

  If Liana realised that was a thinly-veiled criticism of the local forces, she was tactful enough to let it go. Instead, she looked thoughtful. ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘If rebels could sneak in and steal weapons, they’d definitely have sabotaged what was left so we couldn’t use them.’

  Jurgen’s brow furrowed. ‘Who does that leave?’ he asked.

  ‘Gangers, I suppose,’ Liana said. ‘Plenty of those around, carving up territories for themselves while the fighting keeps us too busy to rein them in.’ She looked up, as Merser entered the office. ‘Any luck?’

  ‘I can tell you the records are a mess,’ Merser said. ‘Overstocks, items missing, half the inventories read like fiction ’zines.’

  ‘No change there, then,’ Jurgen said, shrugging. ‘Yours are the only ones I ever saw that tallied exactly.’

  Merser flushed. ‘I like to pay attention to the details.’

  ‘I noticed,’ Jurgen said. He glanced at his chronograph, and stood. ‘I need to get back. Anything I can help with, contact the commissar’s office.’

  ‘Of course.’ Liana stood too, began to hold out a hand, then withdrew it hastily. ‘We’ll keep you informed.’

  ‘Of course we will,’ Merser added, standing aside to make room at the door. ‘Where’s your vehicle?’

  ‘Came on foot,’ Jurgen lied, and left them to it.

  In fact he’d commandeered a motorcycle, which someone had been careless enough to leave unattended in the regimental motor pool, the better to navigate his way around the warren of streets surrounding the Imperial Guard deployment zones. He’d have preferred a Salamander, but he’d have had to divert around so much rubble if he’d chosen one that it would have all but doubled the distance he would have to travel.

  After retrieving his mechanical steed, he coasted into the lee of a battle-damaged Chimera, which a party of enginseers were energetically reconsecrating, and waited a few moments.

  As he’d expected, the distinctive figure of Sergeant Merser emerged from the building almost at once, at the closest to a trot he could manage. The heavyset non-com swung himself into the cab of a parked truck, against which a soldier with no visible unit patch had been lounging, and gunned the engine, while his companion scrambled up beside him. No sooner were they both aboard than Merser slammed the lorry into gear, roaring out of the yard as though half the daemons of the warp were after him.

  It was almost too easy. After a quick conversation over his vox-bead, Jurgen opened the bike’s throttle, and set out in pursuit. He hung well back, keeping the luminator off, despite the rapidly gathering night, well able to judge the presence of any major obstacles in the carriageway by the
intermittent flaring of his quarry’s brake lights. The risk of being spotted was minimal, he knew. Merser’s attention would be entirely on the road ahead, looking for a solitary pedestrian.

  Before long, the lorry coasted to a halt at an intersection, where Merser paused, glancing up and down the converging carriageways. Nothing moved in either direction, except a Chimera patrolling the deserted streets. With nightfall came the curfew, and nothing would be moving now except military traffic. Nothing legal, anyway, but there was nothing to worry about. No one would look twice at a militia truck.

  ‘Where is he?’ his companion demanded, nursing a laspistol the armourer still hadn’t noticed was missing. ‘You said he was on foot.’

  ‘He can’t have got far,’ Merser said, still hovering indecisively. If he picked the wrong direction, the Guardsman would be safely back in the Imperial Guard compound, reporting to the commissar before they could double back and correct their mistake. Before he could make up his mind which road to take, a motorcycle roared up out of the darkness behind them, and parked, its engine revving, next to the cab.

  Merser glanced down, and found himself staring along the length of a lasgun barrel, with a well-remembered face at the opposite end.

  ‘I thought you’d leg it,’ Jurgen remarked, conversationally. ‘But I wanted to be sure. The commissar always likes to be sure, before he accuses anyone.’

  ‘Accuses them of what?’ Merser blustered, playing for time.

  ‘Trying to kill me, for starters,’ Jurgen said, as though that had been a perfectly reasonable thing to attempt. ‘You sent those frakkers after me, didn’t you?’

  By way of an answer, Merser floored the accelerator. Jurgen debated pursuit for a fraction of a second, then squeezed the trigger of his lasgun instead. There was no way the cumbersome truck would be able to outrun the motorcycle anyway, so he might as well bring things to an end now. The hail of las-bolts shredded the lorry’s tyres, and he watched it veer off course and collide with a half-collapsed storefront with detached interest.

  As it came to rest, amid a small landslide of displaced brick, the passenger door popped open, and the ersatz soldier bailed out, firing wildly as he came. He was no better a shot than his deceased companions, and Jurgen dropped him easily, without even bothering to dismount. As he swung his leg over the saddle, and began to walk towards the crippled lorry, the Chimera ground to a halt a few metres away.

  ‘Took your time,’ he said, as the hatch clanged open.

  ‘What can I say. Traffic,’ Liana said, which didn’t make much sense to Jurgen. So far as he could see, the streets were still deserted. She flung the truck’s tailgate open, and a cascade of ration packs spilled out onto the cracked pavement. ‘Looks like you were right.’

  ‘Course I was,’ Jurgen said. ‘Inventories never match up to what’s actually in stores. The only reason Merser’s would is if he was covering something.’

  Liana nodded. ‘The way things are now, food’s like currency on the streets. Better. Him and his ganger friends must have been making a fortune.’ She paused to glare at the sergeant, who was being prised, none too gently, out of the battered cab by a couple of her provosts. ‘He must have realised you’d spotted something was wrong, and sent his accomplices to keep you quiet.’

  ‘That’s how I see it,’ Jurgen agreed. ‘I still don’t get why he wanted to keep me around, though.’

  ‘So we could try again, you idiot!’ Merser called, as he was half-dragged, half-carried towards the Chimera. ‘If you told the commissar, we’d be finished!’

  ‘Told the commissar?’ Jurgen repeated, in tones of honest astonishment. ‘Why would I bother him with a bit of pilfering? Everyone’s at it.’

  Merser’s response was vocal, prolonged, and unflatteringly inaccurate about Jurgen’s genealogy.

  Jurgen listened impassively for a moment, before quietening him down with a well-aimed punch to the face. ‘Ladies present,’ he admonished, although he suspected Liana had already heard a good deal of profanity in her line of work. Besides, he resented people trying to kill him.

  ‘We might need a statement,’ Liana said, after a moment, during which the power of speech seemed to have deserted her for some reason.

  Jurgen shrugged, his attention already on the crippled truck. ‘You know where to find me,’ he said.

  After all, he still had a bit of space left in his utility pouches, and the motorbike he’d borrowed had commodious panniers. And you never knew when a few extra ration bars might come in handy.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Sandy Mitchell is one of Black Library’s best loved authors, and has written fiction set in both the Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 universes. He is best known for the nine books of the Ciaphas Cain series, along with a plethora of associated short stories and audio dramas. Also known as Alex Stewart, he writes screenplays for film and television.

  A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

  Originally published in the Black Library Weekender Anthology 2012.

  Published in 2012 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK

  Cover art by Clint Langley

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  ISBN 978-0-85787-893-9

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