James Swallow - Nemesis

Reeve Daig Segan opened his eyes and let out a sigh. “This isn’t sleep, Yosef.

This is deep thought. Have you ever had one of those?” He took off the headset and

looked up at him. Yosef heard the tinny twitter of a synthetic voice from the

speakers, reading out the text of an incident report in a clicking monotone.

Daig was a study in contrasts to his cohort. Where Sabrat was of slightly above

average height, narrow-shouldered, clean-shaven and sandy-haired, Segan was

stocky and not without jowls, his hair curly and unkempt around a perpetually

dejected expression. He managed another heavy sigh, as if the weight of the world

were pressing down upon him. “There’s no point in me listening to this a second

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time,” he went on, tugging the rig’s jack plug from its socket on the pillar with a snap

of his wrist. “Skelta’s reports are just as dull with the machine reading them to me as

him doing it.”

Yosef frowned. “What I saw out there wasn’t any stripe of dull.” He glanced

down and saw a spread of picts from the storage shed crime scene. Even rendered in

light-drenched black and white, the horror of it did not lessen. Mirrors of liquid were

in every image, and the sight of them brought sense memory abruptly back into the

reeve’s forebrain. He blinked the sensation away.

Daig saw him do it. “You all right?” he asked, concern furrowing his brow.

“Need a moment?”

“No,” Yosef said firmly. “You said you had something new?”

Daig’s head bobbed. “Not so new. More like a confirmation of something we

already suspected.” He searched for a moment through the papers and data-slates

before he found a sheaf of inky printout. “Analysis of the cutting gave up a pattern

that matches a type of industrial blade.”

“Medical?” Yosef recalled his impression of the almost clinical lines of the

mutilation; but Daig shook his head.

“Viticultural, actually.” The other reeve pawed through a box at his feet and

produced a plastic case, opening it to reveal a wickedly curved knife with a knurled

handle. “I brought one up from evidentiary so we’d have an example to look at.”

Yosef recognised it instantly, and his hand twitched as he resisted the urge to

reach for it. A harvestman’s blade, one of the most familiar tools on the planet, made

by the millions for Iesta Veracrux’s huge army of agricultural workers. Blades

exactly like this one were used in every vineyard, and they were as commonplace as

the grapes they were used to cut. Being so widespread, of course, they were also the

most common tool of murder on Iesta—but Yosef had never seen such a blade used

for so ornate a killing as the one at the airdocks. To use the crude tool for so fine a

cutting would have required both great skill and no little time to accomplish it. “What

in Terra’s name are we dealing with?” he muttered.

“It’s a ritual,” said Daig, with a certainty that seemed to come from nowhere. “It

can’t be anything else.” He put the blade aside and gestured at the scattered files. As

well as the tide of paperwork from the airdock murder, packets of fiche and other

picts had arrived from a couple of the sub-precincts in the nearby arroyo territories,

automatically flagged by the reports of the incident sent out on the planetwide watchwire.

There had been other deaths, and while the nature of them had not been exactly

the same as Jaared Norte’s, elements of similar methodology were expressed in each.

Daig had suggested that their killer was “maturing” with each assault, growing more

confident in what they wished to convey with their deeds.

This was not Iesta Veracrux’s first serial murder spree. But it seemed different

from all the others that had gone before it, in a manner that Yosef could not yet fully

articulate.

“What I don’t fathom,” began a voice from behind them, “is how in Stars the

bugger got the poor fool up on the ceiling.” Yosef and Daig turned to where Reeve

Warden Berts Laimner stood, a fan of picts in his meaty paw. Laimner was a big

man, dark-skinned and always smiling, even now in a small way at the sight of

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Norte’s grotesque death; but the warm expression was always a falsehood, masking a

character that was self-serving and oily. “What do you think, Sabrat?”

Yosef framed a noncommittal answer. “We’re looking into that, Warden.”

Laimner gave a chuckle that set Yosef’s teeth on edge and discarded the images.

“Well, I hope you’ve got a better reply than that up your sleeve.” He pointed across

the room to an entranceway. “The High-Reeve is just outside that door. She wants to

weigh in on this.”

Daig actually let out a little groan, and Yosef felt himself sag inside. If the

precinct commander was putting her hand on this case, then the investigators could

be certain that their job was about to become twice as hard.

As if Laimner’s words had been a magical summons, the door opened and High-

Reeve Kata Telemach entered the office with an assistant trailing her. Telemach’s

appearance was like a shock going through the room, and every reeve and jager

scrambled to look as if they were working hard and being diligent. She didn’t appear

to notice, instead making a direct line for Yosef and Daig. The woman was wearing a

well-pressed dress uniform, and around her neck was a gold rod with one single

silver band around it.

“I was just telling Reeves Sabrat and Segan of your interest, ma’am,” said

Laimner.

The commander seemed distracted. “Progress?” she asked. The woman had a

sharp face and hard eyes.

“We’re building a solid foundation,” offered Daig, equally as good at giving nonanswers

as his cohort was. He swallowed. “There are some matters of crossjurisdictional

circumstance that might become an issue later, however.” He was about

to say more, but Telemach shot Laimner a look as if to say Haven’t you dealt with

this already?

“That will not be a concern, Reeve. I have just returned from an audience with

the Lord Marshal of the Adeptus Arbites.”

“Oh?” Yosef tried to keep any sarcasm out of his voice.

Telemach went on. “The Arbites have a lot of wine in their glass at the moment.

They’re engaged in a few operations across the planet. This… case doesn’t need to

be added to that workload.”

Operations. That seemed to be the current word of choice to describe the actions

of the Arbites on Iesta Veracrux. A colourless, open term that belied the reality of

what they were actually doing—which was quietly dredging the lower cities and the

upper echelons alike for the slightest evidence of any anti-Imperial sedition and pro-

Horus thinking, ruthlessly stamping out anything that might blossom into actual

treason.

“It’s only bodies,” noted Laimner, in an off-hand manner.

“Exactly,” said the High-Reeve. “And quite frankly, the Sentine are better suited

for this sort of police work. The Arbites are not native to this world, and we are. We

know it better than they ever will.”

“Just so,” offered Yosef.