Blood Games - Dan Abnett Read online

  His opposition to Imperial directives was not so fierce it required him to be placed under house arrest, like Lady Kalhoon of Lanark, or be removed from office entirely and charged with treason to the Imperial state, like Hans Gargetton, chancellor of the Atlantic Platforms, but Sichar was always to be handled with caution.

  After his training session, Amon changed into a simple robe and bodyglove, and went to one of the consultation suites on the floor above the Watchroom, where a strategically stationed Sister of Silence maintained an aura of absolute discretion. He laid out all the key intelligence on the screens of a stochastic processor, and began to assess them using the noetic and retrocognitive techniques taught to all Custodes.

  Sichar, already under permanent surveillance by the Custodes Watchroom, had become a security priority thanks to particular scrutiny of his communication patterns.

  His off-world holdings were considerable. His greatest possession was Cajetan in 61-Isthmus, a colonial world rich in resources that provided him with a gateway to the lucrative mineral zones of Albedo Crucis. Sichar’s trade worth was so considerable, junior houses and minor grandees of the Sud Merican aristocracy were flocking to him, and strengthening his support base. If a seat fell open on the Council of Terra, it would be hard to deny it to Lord Sichar.

  The threads of connection were vague, but their lines could be traced. Sichar was in direct and regular communication, via astropathic link, with the Governor of Cajetan, and the viceroys of Albedo Crucis II and Sempion Magnix. His correspondence with them, all of the clients he had effectively installed, was conducted in a private cipher that the Custodes had not yet broken. It appeared to be a variation of Ansprak Tripattern, one of the few wartime codes used by the anti-unionists that had never been unravelled.

  Further threads of connection could be traced, via diplomatic back-channels, to elements of the 1102nd and 45th Imperial Expedition Fleets, and through them to minor colonial holdings, and two service and supply fleets operating out of the Chirog Nebula. Intel suggested that the service fleets, amongst other duties, supplied materiel to the Imperial Army deployed forces on the Butan Group.

  There lay the question mark. Five months previously, several sections of the Imperial Army in the Butan Group were rumoured to have declared for the Warmaster. There was a distinct possibility that Lord Sichar, through a lengthy and deliberately complex chain of correspondence, was in communication with the heretics.

  Lord Sichar of Hy Brasil, in all likelihood, was trafficking intelligence between Terra and Horus Lupercal.

  As it turned, the craft caught the sun across its silver fuselage and shone like a brief star in the mauve reaches of the upper atmosphere. A civilian-pattern Hawkwing, registered to Fancile et Cie, operating out of the Zeon-Ind orbital, it was just another transport coming in along the signal pulse of the Planalto Central traffic beacon.

  The flying machine, an orbit-capable bird, wore a burnished metallic skin, and was a wide, elegant shape, like a giant ray or a skate, with broad, triangular wings and a slender dart of a tail. As it skimmed in towards the four high towers of the Planalto Central landing spire, its retarding burners lit with hot jets of green-yellow flame in the lazy evening light, and trailing edge spoilers lifted along the wings like bent feathers. The great towers, dust-brown against the indigo heavens, blinked out powerful white lights from their masts. Two kilometres below, the vast sprawl of urbanised Hy Brasil stretched out, a trillion lights in the dark.

  As the Hawkwing adjusted for its final approach, its transponders broadcast its identity packets at the request of Planalto Administratum.

  The packets informed Planalto Administratum that the craft was carrying Elod Galt, a senior negotiator for Fancile et Cie, who was visiting Hy Brasil to conduct exploratory talks with representatives of several Albedo mining congloms.

  According to Unified Biometric Verification, Elod Galt’s idents were entirely in order.

  Not a blood game this time, the real thing.

  He would have preferred to work alone, at least to begin with, but there was a role to play. To seem the part, he needed servitors, an astropath and, most likely, a pilot and a lifeguard too. Haedo, in a simple grey bodyglove and slave-mask, doubled in the last two roles. His biometric declared him to be Zuhba, no family name, a genestock migou bought on the Gangetic bodymarket.

  As Elod Galt, Amon was obliged to wear sheensilk robes that appeared wet and iridescent, like oil on water, as well as a wolf-pelt mantle, a formless hat with too many brims, and an ornamental sabre of considerable size that was nothing more than an ostentatious, theatrical prop and would be precisely useless in an actual combat situation. Most aggravating of all, he was obliged to wear another displacer field to visibly diminish and disguise his build.

  His six attending servitors – one for vox-casting, one for medical duties and food tasting, one for environmental surveying, one for translation, one for recording and rubrication, and one for general service – were fine creations of polished blue steel and were, apparently, exactly the sort of suite of service units that would be expected to accompany a senior industrial negotiator.

  A scallop-shell platform carried the Hawkwing down into the landing spire, down a vast flue lit by tracking lights of red and blue that lit in series. Other platforms were raising and lowering aircraft to and from the landing berths. Arriving at the designated berth-level, the platform shivered, halted and then swung sideways, delivering the cooling Hawkwing into the waiting embrace of the berth’s landing cradle. The cradle closed its digits and clamps around the craft like a carnivorous plant grasping an insect, and withdrew it into the steamy alcove of the berth, where grubby servitors, cargo shamblers and deck crewmen were waiting with hoists and blocks, and fuel umbilicals.

  Haedo glanced at Amon as the internal cabin lights changed from cold white to a muted yellow standby.

  ‘Shall we begin?’ he asked.

  Amon nodded. He looked over at the vox servitor. ‘Anything from control?’ he asked.

  The servitor dipped its head and issued an apologetic tone.

  ‘Inform me as soon as they connect,’ Amon said.

  He put on his hat. Haedo fixed his slave-mask – a screaming cocker­el, for some reason of custom and protocol – to his face, and buckled on his sidearm. Interlocks clattered as the craft’s hatches linked to the berth’s air gate, and then the boarding hatch opened.

  As he took the pre-arranged meetings with the agents of the mineral congloms, he thought of decomposition, of worms boring into a bloated carcass. His own worms were at work. False cowlings behind the Hawkwing’s afterburners had folded back during berthing, and the sterile compartments within had released sacks of vermicular probes. Sixteen thousand in all, each one an autonomous rope of articulated chrome no bigger than a chopstick. With every passing minute, they were crawling deeper into the fabric of Hy Brasil, spreading wider, chewing their way into data ducts and system trunking, gnawing their way into memory vaults, record banks and datastacks.

  Some would be found, some flushed by automated security systems, some would follow dead leads and abort when their power cells failed, but some would feast, and transmit their diet back to him.

  He sat in a stateroom panelled with Kirgizian fret-screens, and feigned interest in the boasts of gross tonnage and silicate purity made by the agents of the mineral congloms. He thought about the risks. With Constantin’s permission, they had deployed into Hy Brasil to conduct covert inspection, but they still awaited authority to move, in any open way, against Lord Sichar. If they were discovered, they could claim reasonable cause, but the worms were a breach of their legal parameters. If the burgraves of Hy Brasil discovered that the Custodes had entered their canton without a warrant and riddled their systems with a swarm of probe worms, there would be uproar. It was an egregious violation of Hy Brasilean sovereignty. Even now, unity was a fragile thing, like a sculpture made of glass or
ice: beautiful, precise, solid, but so very easy to break. In the shadow of Horus Lupercal’s great and spreading treason, the last thing the Palace needed was a continental uprising on Terra.

  ‘It is a great risk,’ Haedo had said in transit from the orbital.

  ‘It is,’ Amon had agreed, ‘but if Pherom Sichar is what we think he is, waiting to act is a far greater risk.’

  Servitors brought them refreshments. The fashion in Hy Brasil seemed to be for mannequins finished in varnished dark wood with brass articulation. They looked like naked nursery dolls: dolls with porcelain faces and hands rendered to seem utterly lifelike, yet whose bodies, beneath their clothes, were crude wood with no effort of realism at all. The servitors whirred around the stateroom, offering infusions of mint and green tea.

  The stateroom, high in a tower in the Sao Paol division of the Planalto, overlooked the vast and luminous landscape of the Winter Fields. Hy Brasil drew its power from a series of vast reactors buried in the heart of the main conurbation. The reactors required monumental heat-exchange processes to keep them running within safety tolerances, and as a consequence, the surface levels of the reactor district were caked in thick sheet-ice all year round, forming a gigantic frost park thirty kilometres square in the centre of the Planalto that the hive populations used for recreation. From his vantage point, Amon could see the tiny shapes of skaters near the frozen shore, and children on the banks and ice walks with kites and slithering mechanical toys. Further out, in the yellow haze of the open fields, ice yachts skimmed silently under coloured sails, and powered rakers raced one another around the lighted masts of the speed circuit, spraying up wakes of ice spume.

  Negotiations resumed. Amon checked his data-slate, which was discreetly monitoring all infeed to his vox servitor. Authority had still not been sent through from the Palace.

  The next meeting took place in a monolithic tower on the far side of the Winter Fields. For amusement’s sake, proud of their frozen landscape, the agents of the congloms conveyed Elod Galt to the meeting aboard an ice yacht. Amon tried to look impressed.

  Their host was waiting for them on the quay below the tower, a tall man dressed in furs.

  ‘I am Sichar,’ he announced, bowing to Galt.

  Ptolem Sichar was the fourth brother of Lord Sichar, but used the name unqualified for effect. Lord Sichar had installed Ptolem as the chief executive officer of Cajetan Imports, the trade consortium and shipping line he had founded to service his immense mineral resources.

  Ptolem Sichar had dark green eyes that suggested to Amon an overuse of sabenweed. Though a large man, with duelling scars proudly displayed on his cheek, he was no threat. His body was soft, and out of the habit of regular exercise. His mind was soft too. A few minutes’ conversation with him assured Amon that Ptolem Sichar was a superficial dolt.

  His retinue was otherwise. He was flanked by the usual servitors, and a quartet of houseguards in scaled green armour. They were warriors of Hy Brasil’s military wing, a body known as the Dracos, competent and efficient soldiers. Amon was certain that the Dracos detailed to guard the ruler’s brother would be members of the specialist veteran squads.

  Another figure accompanied the brother, a figure in a coal-black velvet coat and jet body plate. Ptolem introduced him as Ibn Norn, and he was one of the infamous and almost extinct Lucifer Blacks. Such was Lord Sichar’s power and wealth, he had provided every member of his blood family with a bodyguard from the ancient and elite Ischian brigade of Lucifers.

  Trailed by Haedo in his cockerel mask, and his string of blue-metal servitors, Amon walked with Ptolem Sichar up the quay and into the tower. They spoke of ice sports, of the coming war, of the effect on trade. Amon was aware that the Lucifer Black was studying him closely.

  As they stepped onto a grav platform to be lifted up into the upper decks of the tower, Amon realised, with absolute certainty, that Ibn Norn knew he was wearing a displacer field. He had no idea what subtle thing had given it away. The Lucifer Blacks were as famous for their perception and their razor-sharp minds as for their fighting prowess. Ibn Norn knew that Elod Galt was, at the very least, disguising something or, at the very worst, concealing a dangerous lie.

  It was too late to disengage. Waiting and hoping for a confirmation from control, Amon began his meeting with Ptolem Sichar. They sat at a mahogany table on a radial platform high in the tower’s skylight levels. Sichar was easily distracted, and Amon encouraged this foible to buy time, leading the man off on discursive ruminations of such random topics as orbital viticulture, gerontological breakthroughs, genethliacal provenances and the wisdom of studying extinct religions to extract viable ethical value systems.

  All the while, Amon thought of the probes, squirming through the dark recesses and cybernetic cavities of the Planalto like mealworms. He thought of the views that he and Haedo had seen en route to Hy Brasil: hive cities closing their meteoritic shields; conurbations reigniting field bulwarks and auto defences left over from the last Terran conflicts; oceanic platforms rigging for submarine function and slowly submerging into the protective bosom of the waters. The homeworld was bracing itself for the traitors’ onslaught, an event that would be, perhaps, the single greatest holocaust mankind would ever have to endure. There was too much at stake to disengage.

  At a break in the meeting, Amon checked the infeed of his communication servitor. Nothing had been received from control. Using the data-slate, he also ascertained that nothing of any consequence had so far been received from the probes. In particular, no progress had been made elucidating the version of Ansprak Tripattern used in the questionable transmissions.

  A bell rang, and Amon assumed it was supposed to signal them back to the table for the next round of discussions. The atmosphere had changed, however. Ptolem Sichar and his staff hung back, in quiet and solemn discussion. Certain data displays on the radial platform had been masked.

  Be ready, Amon signalled to Haedo.

  ‘My lord Galt,’ said one of the Dracos, striding over to attend them. ‘I’m afraid there’s been an incident. We must suspend talks for the day while it is dealt with. My master expressly apologises for the delay.’

  ‘What manner of incident?’ Amon asked.

  ‘A breach of data confidence,’ the Draco replied indirectly.

  ‘How so?’

  ‘An outrage. An act that impugns this canton’s–’ The Draco cut himself short. ‘Forgive me, I’m not at liberty to discuss it. It is a sovereign matter.’

  ‘It sounds grave indeed,’ said Elod Galt with apparently genuine concern. ‘Should I arrange to return to my orbital?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  They turned. Ibn Norn, the Lucifer Black, had joined them. ‘Security issues are under review across the Planalto. Transit would be an unnecessary complication, and you would be greatly inconvenienced by delays and searches. We have arranged a suite in this tower where you can relax in comfort until the present circumstances are over.’

  Where you can watch us, Amon thought. Elod Galt nodded graciously.

  The suite lay on the sixtieth level. Once the escort had departed, Haedo swept the rooms for surveillance devices using scanners concealed in the torso of the food-tasting servitor.

  ‘I would ask you to respect our integrity measures and refrain from using your vox servitor,’ Ibn Norn had remarked cordially before leaving them. The servitor’s function displays showed that vox channels were being jammed anyway.

  Haedo opened the back of the rubrication servitor and initialised the compact cogito-analyser hidden behind the ribs. Using invasive programs so acutely coded that no Hy Brasilean systems would even notice them, Haedo linked the unit to the Planalto’s data-sphere.

  ‘The probes have been discovered in the memory cores of the Planalto Administratum,’ he reported. ‘There is…’ He scanned the data rapidly. ‘There is a palpable sense of outrage. Security across the Planalt
o has been raised to level amber six. The canton parliament is calling an emergency session to discuss the incident. There is furious debate in the intelligence communities as to whether the data invasion is the work of a foreign power or industrial espionage.’

  ‘If Sichar is guilty as charged,’ said Amon, ‘he’ll know the probable cause and the probable origin. How long will it take them to analyse and trace the vermicular probes?’

  ‘They were sterile and trace-free until they were launched,’ said Haedo, ‘but they would collect specific particulates during transit. A decent forensic examiner should be able to trace them back to our craft in a few hours.’

  ‘We are already suspected,’ Amon said.

  ‘Already?’

  ‘That Lucifer Black knows we’re not what we seem to be. I believe they are just looking for evidential confirmation before they confront us.’

  ‘And we still have no authority,’ said Haedo.

  Amon nodded, slowly.

  ‘But they don’t know that,’ he said.

  Haedo didn’t respond. He was studying the cogito-analyser intently.

  ‘What is it?’ Amon asked.

  ‘Parliament has initiated a system-wide purge to flush out and destroy the probes,’ Haedo replied. ‘The order was countersigned by Pherom Sichar, presiding over the parliament. But that’s not it… I’m getting feedback from the probes. Seven of them have penetrated the Planalto’s communication archive, and one has sourced Lord Sichar’s archive log for the last seven months.’