Dan Abnett - Eisenhorn Omnibus

This?' asked Tutrone, shaving the hair aside with her finger blades to reveal it.

'Old, as before/

I stepped back from the body and thought hard. When I'd killed him, he had been reaching for something on his belt, or so it had seemed to me.

'His effects?'

They were laid out on a metal tray nearby. His laspistol, a compact vox-device, a pearl-inlaid box containing six obscura tubes and an igniter, a credit tile, spare cells for the gun, a plastic key. And the belt; with four buttoned pouches.

I opened them one by one: some local coins; a miniature las-knife; three bars of high-calorie rations; a steel tooth-pick; more obscura, this time in an injector vial; a small data slate.

At the moment of death, which of these things had he been reaching for? The knife? Too slow and small to counter a man who has a naval pistol wedged into your mouth. Then again, he was desperate.

And then again, he hadn't reached for his bolstered lasgun.

The data-slate, perhaps? I picked it up and activated it, but it needed a cipher to gain access. All manner of secrets might be locked inside… but why would a man reach for a data-slate in the face of certain death?

Track marks, along the forearm/ Tutrone stated, continuing her exam.

Hardly surprising, given the narco-ware we'd recovered from him.

'No rings? No bracelets? Earrings? Piercing studs?'

'None/

I pulled a plastic pouch from a dispenser on the surgical cart and put all his effects into it.

"Vou will sign for those, won't you?' Tutrone asked, looking up.

'Of course/

'You hated him, didn't you?' Fischig said suddenly.

'What?'

He leaned back against a plinth, crossing his arms. 'You had him at your mercy, and you knew his head was full of secrets, but you emptied it with your gun. I have no compunction when it comes to killing, but I know when I'm wasting a lead. Was it rage?'

'I'm an inquisitor. I do not get angry/

Then what?'

I had just about enough of his snide tone. 'You don't know how dangerous this man is. I wasn't taking chances/

'He looks safe enough to me/ Fischig smirked, looking down at the body.

'Here's something!' Tutrone called out. We all moved in.

She was working on his left hand, delicately, with her finest gauge scalpels and probes, her augmented fingers darting like a seamstress.

The index finger of the left hand. There's unusual lividity and swelling/ She played a small scanner across it.

'The nail's ceramite. Artificial. An implant/

'What's inside?'

'Unknown. A ghost reading. There's maybe… ah, there it is… a catch under the quick. You'd need something small to trigger it/

She adjusted her bionic finger settings and slid out a very thin metal probe, thin like…

… a tooth pick.

'Back! Back now!' I yelled.

It was too late. Tutrone had undone the catch. The false nail sprang back and something flew out of the cavity in the finger tip. A silver worm, like a thread of necklace chain, flashed through the air.

Where did it go?'

'I don't know, I said, pushing Tutrone and Aemos behind me. 'Did you see it?' I asked Fischig.

'Over there/ he said, pulling a short-nosed gloss-black autopistol out from his robes.

I reached for my own gun, then remembered I'd given it back to Vibben.

I snatched up a bone knife from the trolley.

The worm slithered back into the light. It was a metre long and several centimetres thick now. What foul sorcery had caused that expansion, I did not want to know. It was made of segmented metal, and the head was an eyeless cone split by a hissing mouth full of razor teeth.

Tutrone cried out as it flew at lis. I pushed her down and the thing whipped across over us, hitting a corpse on a nearby plinth. There was a dreadful sucking, gnawing sound and the worm disappeared into the corpse's torso through a jagged hole.

The corpse vibrated and ruptured, filling the air with a foul mist of vapour. The worm swished up out of it and disappeared across the floor. By then, Fischig had opened fire and blasted the shattered corpse off its plinth. The worm was long since gone.

'Touch-activated mechanism/ Aemos was murmuring to himself, 'very discrete, probably of Xenos manufacture, a guard weapon, with some mass-altering system that expands it on contact with air and/or release, hunting by sound…'

'So shut up!' I told him. I bundled him and Tutrone against the far wall. Fischig and I moved in parallel courses down through the plinth rows, weapons ready.

It reappeared. By the time I saw it, it was almost on me, thrashing forward through the air on its metallic tail. In a split second, I reflected that this was how Eyclone had wanted me to die. This was what he had intended to unleash against me on the landing platform at Processional Two-Twelve.

Rage made me deny him. I stabbed out and my extended blade jabbed directly between the gaping teeth and down the gullet. The impact knocked me back. I found I had the whole, heavy, two-metre thing thrashing on the end of my knife like a lash.

Shots banged past me. Fischig was trying to hit it.

You'll kill me, you idiot!'

'Hold it still!'

With a metallic rasping, it was chewing down the blade and the handle towards my hand.

Tutrone came in from behind me and together we wrestled the powerful, coiling thing onto a plinth. She activated a bone-saw on her augmetic hand and sliced down through its neck with a shrill scream of spinning blades.

The body continued to thrash. She grabbed it and dropped it into an acid trough usually reserved for bio-waste. The hissing head and the knife it was still chewing away at quickly followed it.

The four of us gazed down at the thrashing remains as they disintegrated.

I looked round at Mortress Tutrone and Fischig.

'I know which one of you I'd rather have around in a fight/1 muttered.

Tutrone laughed. Fischig didn't.

'What was it?' Aemos asked me as we raced in Fischig's landspeeder through the streets to the Arbites' headquarters.

'You guessed more than I know/ I replied. A gift from his masters, certainly/

'What manner of masters make a thing like that?'

'Powerful ones, Aemos. The worst kind/

Our meeting at the Arbites' grim chambers was brief. At my request, Fischig had summoned Magus Palastemes, the head of the cryogenerator technomagi.

He took one look at the casket in the evidence room and said, 'I have no idea what it is/

Thank you. That will be all/ I told him. I turned to Fischig. 'Have this sent immediately to my vessel/

'It is state's evidence-' he began.

'Who do you work for, Fischig?'

The Emperor/

"Then pretend I'm him and you won't be far wrong. Do it/

* * *

Hadam Bonz was waiting for us in the interrogation room. He had been stripped naked, but Fischig assured me nothing of import had been found in his clothes.

Bonz was the gunman I had laid out in the cryogenerator chamber, the only one of Eyclone's men to have survived the night. His mouth was swollen from my blow. He had admitted nothing except his name.

Fischig, Aemos and I entered the room, a dull stone box. Bonz was shackled to a metal chair and looked terrified.

So should he, I thought.

Tell me about Murdin Eyclone/ I said.

Who?' The darkness had gone from his eyes now, Eyclone's spell broken. He was bewildered and confused.

Then tell me the last thing you remember.'

'I was on Thracian Primaris. That was my home. I was a stevedore in the docks. I remember going to a bar with a friend. That is all/

The friend?'

'A dock master called Wyn Eddon. We got drunk, I think/

'Did Eddon mention an Eyclone?'

'No. Look, where am I? These bastards won't say. What I am supposed to have done?'