Nemesis

‘I want this murderer found and brought to justice,’ Eurotas concluded. ‘This case is important, gentlemen. Complete it, and you will let your people know that we… that the Imperium… is still in power out here. Fail, and you open the gateway to anarchy.’ He began to turn away. ‘Hyssos will make available to you any facilities you may need.’

‘Sir?’ Daig took a step after the rogue trader. ‘My, uh, lord baron?’

Eurotas paused. When he looked back at the other reeve, he did so with a raised eyebrow and an arch expression. ‘You have a question?’

Daig blurted it out. ‘Why do you care? About Iesta Veracrux, I mean?’

The baron’s eyes flashed with a moment of annoyance, and Yosef heard Hyssos take a sharp breath. ‘Dagonet is falling, did you know that?’ Daig nodded and the baron went on. ‘And not only Dagonet. Kelsa Secundus. Bowman. New Mitama. All dark.’ Eurotas’s gaze crossed Yosef’s and for a moment the nobleman appeared old and tired. ‘Erno Sigg was one of my men. I bear a measure of responsibility for his conduct. But it is more than that. Much more.’ Yosef felt the rogue trader’s gaze pinning him in place. ‘We are alone out here, gentlemen. Alone against the storm.’

‘The Emperor protects,’ said Daig quietly.

Eurotas gave him an odd look. ‘So they tell me,’ he replied, at length; and then he was walking away, the audience at an end and Yosef’s thoughts clouded with more questions than answers.

2

When the gull wing hatch of the flyer opened, the first thing that Fon Tariel experienced was the riot of smells. Heady and potent floral scents flooded into the interior of the passenger compartment, buoyed on warm air. He blinked at the daylight streaking in, and with wary footsteps he followed Kell out and into… wherever this place was.

Unlike the Eversor, who had not been afraid to provide the group with the location of one of their Terran facilities, the Clade Venenum made it clear in no uncertain terms that the members of the Execution Force would not be free to come to them of their own accord. The Siress had been most emphatic; only two members of the group were granted passage to the complex, and both were required to be unarmed and unequipped.

Tariel was learning Kell’s manner by and by, and he could see that the Vindicare was ill at ease without a gun on him. The infocyte was sympathetic to the sniper; he too had been forced to leave his tools behind on board the Ultio, and he felt strangely naked without his cogitator gauntlet. Tariel’s hand kept straying to his bare forearm without his conscious awareness of it.

The journey aboard the unmarked Venenum flyer had done nothing to give them any more clue to the whereabouts of the complex called the Orchard. The passenger compartment had no windows, no way for them to reckon the direction of their flight. Tariel had been dismayed to learn that his chronometer and mag-compass implants were being suppressed, and now as he stepped out of the craft they both flickered back to life, giving him a moment of dizziness.

He glanced around; they stood on a landing pad at the top of a wide metal ziggurat, just shy of the canopies of tall trees with thick leaves that shone like dark jade. The jungle smells were stronger out here, and the olfactory processor nodes in his extended braincase worked furiously to sift through the sensoria. Tariel guessed that they were somewhere deep in the rich rainforests of Merica, but it was only a speculative deduction. There was no way to know for sure.

A man in a pale green kimono and a domino mask emerged from a recessed staircase on the side of the ziggurat and beckoned them to follow him. Tariel was content to let Kell lead the way, and the three of them descended. The sunshine attenuated as they dropped below the line of the upper canopy, becoming shafts of smoky yellow filled with motes of dust and the busy patterns of flying insects.

A pathway of circular grey stones awaited them on the jungle floor, and they picked their way along it, the man in the kimono surefooted and confident. Tariel was more cautious; his eyes were drawn this way and that by bright, colourful sprays of plants that grew from every square metre of ground. He saw small worker mechanicals moving among them; what seemed at first glance to be wild growth was actually some sort of carefully random garden. The robotics were ministering to the plants, harvesting others.

He paused, studying one odd spindly blossom he did not recognise emerging from the bark of a tall tree. He leaned closer.

‘I would not, Vanus.’ The man in the kimono placed a gentle hand on his shoulder and reeled him back. Before he could ask why, the man made an odd knocking noise with his lips and in response the blossom grew threadlike legs and wandered away, up the tree trunk. ‘Mimical spiders, from Beta Comea III. They adapt well to the climate here on Terra. Their venom causes a form of haemorrhagic fever in humans.’