Dan Abnett - Eisenhorn Omnibus

'You're sure?'

'There are no power inlets designed to couple to it, only power outlets. And there's something curious about the plugs. Non-standard mating. It's all non-standard/

'Xenos?'

'No… human, just non-standard, custom made/

'Yeah, but what for?' asked Betancore, climbing up the ladder frame to join us. He looked sour, his unruly black curls framing a dark-skinned, slender face that was usually alive with genial mischief.

'I need to make further evaluations, Midas/ said Aemos, hunching back over the casket.

Betancore stared my way. He was as tall as me, but lighter in build. His boots, breeches and tunic were made of soft black leather with red piping, the old uniform of a Glavian pilot-hunter, and over that he wore, as always, a short jacket of cerise silk with iridescent embroidery panels.

His hands were gloved in light bllek-hide, and seemed to wait ominously near the curved grips of the needle pistols holstered on his hips.

'You took a long time getting here/ I began.

They made me take the cutter back to the landing cross at Tomb Point. Said they need the platform here for emergency flights. I had to walk back. Then I saw to Lores/

'She died well, Betancore/

'Maybe. Is that possible?' he added.

I made no reply. I knew how deep his foul moods could be. I knew he had been in love with Lores Vibben, or at least had decided he was in love with her. I knew things would get difficult with Betancore before they got better.

ЧУЬеге is this off-worlder? This Eisenhorn?'

The demanding voice rolled up from the chamber below us. I looked down. A man had entered the cryogenerator chamber escorted by four custodians in heat-gowns, carrying light-poles aloft. He was tall, with pallid skin and greying hair, though his haughty bearing spoke of self-possession and arrogance. He wore a decorative ceremonial heat-gown of bold yellow. I didn't know who he was, but he looked like trouble to me.

Aemos and Betancore were watching him too.

'Any ideas as to who this is?' I asked Aemos.

'Well, you see, the yellow robes, like the light poles carried by the custodians, symbolises the return of the sun and thus heat and light. It denotes a high-ranking official of the Dormant Custodial Committee/

'I got that much myself/ I muttered.

'Oh, well his name is Nissemay Carpel, and he's High Custodian, so you should address him as such. He was born here, on Vital 235, fifty standard years ago, the son of a-'

'Enough! I knew we'd get there eventually/

I walked to the rail and looked down. 'I am Eisenhorn/

He stared up at me, barely contained wrath bulging the veins in his neck.

'Place him under arrest/ he told his men.

THREE

Nissemay Carpel.

A light in endless darkness.

The Pontius.

Ishot one, meaningful glance at betancore to stay his hand, then calmly walked past him, slid down the ladder frame and approached Carpel. The custodians closed in around me, but at a distance.

'High custodian,' I nodded.

He fixed me with a steady but wary gaze and licked spittle off his thin lips. 'You will be detained until-'

'No/ I replied. 'I am an inquisitor of the God-Emperor of Mankind, Ordo Xenos. I will co-operate in any investigation you bring to bear here, fully and completely, but you will not and cannot detain me. Do you understand?'

'An… inquisitor?'

'Do you understand?' I repeated. I wasn't using my will at all, not yet. 1 would if I had to. But I trusted that he would have the sense to listen to me first. He could make things awkward for me, but I could make things intolerable for him.

He seemed to soften a little. As I had judged, part of his rage came from shock at this incident, shock that so many planetary nobles in his care had suffered. He was looking for somewhere to pin the blame. Now he had to temper that with the idea that he was dealing with a member of the most feared institution in the Imperium.

'Thousands are dead/ he began, a tremor in his voice. This desecration.. . the high born of Hubris, violated by a… by a-'

'A murderer, a follower of darkness, a man who, thanks to me, lies dead now under a plastic sheet on the upper landing platform. I mourn the great loss Hubris has suffered tonight, high custodian, and I wish I had been able to prevent it. But if I had not been here at all to raise the alarm… well imagine the tragedy you would be dealing with then/

I letthat sink in.

'Not just this processional, but all the hibernation tombs… who knows what Eyclone might have wrought? Who knows what his overall ambition was?'

'Eyclone, the recidivist?'

'He did this, high custodian/

You will brief me on this entire event/

'Let me prepare a report and bring it to you. You may have answers for me too. I will signal you in a few hours for an appointment to meet. I think you have plenty to deal with right now/

We made our way out. Betancore presented the junior custodians with a formal register of evidence to be stored for my inspection. The list included the casket and the bodies of Eyclone and his men. None would be tampered with or even searched until I had looked at them. The gunman I had subdued in the cryogenerator chamber, the only one left alive, would be incarcerated pending my interrogation. Betancore made these requirements abundantly clear.

We took Vibben with us. Aemos was too frail, so Betancore and I handled the plastic-shrouded form on the gurney.

We left Processional Two-Twelve by the main vault doors into the biting cold of the constant night and carried Vibben down towards a waiting ice-car, taking her through the hundreds of rows of corpses the Custodians were laying out on the frozen ground.

My band and I had deployed onto Hubris the moment we arrived, such was the urgency of our chase. Now it looked like we would remain here for at least a week, longer if Carpel proved difficult. As we rode the ice-car back to the landing cross, I had Aemos make arrangements for our stay.

During Dormant on Hubris, while ninety-nine percent of the planetary population hibernates, one location remains active. The custodians and the technomagi weather out the long, bitter darkness in a place called the Sun-dome.

Fifty kilometres from the vast expanse of the Dormant Plains where the hibernation tombs stand in rows, the Sun-dome sits like a dark grey blister in the ongoing winter night. It is home to fifty-nine thousand people, just a town compared with the great empty cities that slumber below the horizon line waiting for Thaw to bring their populations back.

I stared out at the Sun-dome as the gun-cutter swept us in towards it through wind-blown storms of ice. Small red marker lights winked on the surfaces of the dome and from the masts jutting from the apex.

Betancore flew, silent, concentrating. He had removed his tight-fitting gloves so that the intricate Glavian circuitry set like silver inlay into his palms and finger tips could engage with the cutter's system directly via the control stick.

Aemos sat in a rear cabin, poring over manuscripts and data-slates. Two independent multitask servitors waited for commands in the crew-bay The ship had five in all. Two were limb-less combat units slaved directly to the gun-pods and the other, the chief servitor, a high-spec model we called Uclid, never left his duties in the engine room.

Lowink, my astropath, slumbered in his chamber, linked to the vox and pict systems, awaiting a summons.

Vibben lay shrouded on the cot in her room.

Betancore swung the cutter down towards the dome. After an exchange of telemetry, a wide blast shutter opened in the side of the dome. The light that shone out was almost unbearably bright. Betancore engaged the cockpit glare shields and flew us into the landing bay.