Nemesis

unidentified blood trace listed here. I require it to be cross-referenced with the

Consortium’s database for any matches.”

Gorospe took the slate and her practised smile reappeared. “The Consortium will

of course do anything possible to assist the Sentine in the pursuit of their lawful

duties. Please wait here.” She walked swiftly away, leaving the two silent men

standing watch.

After a moment, Daig glanced at his cohort. “When Laimner finds out you

brought us here without authorisation, the first thing he’s going to do is rip you down

to foot patrol in the slums.”

“No,” said Yosef, “the first thing he’s going to do is cover his ample backside

with Telemach so she won’t blame him for any fallout. But he won’t be able to pull

out anything about jurisdiction if we bring him some actual evidence.”

Daig watched Gorospe vanish into the main house. “There is a large chance that

she may not have anything we can use, you know.”

Yosef shot him a glare. “Well, in that case, our careers are over.”

Daig nodded grimly. “Just so we’re both clear on that.”

The night air was as warm as blood, and humid with it. It was still and oppressive,

almost a palpable thing surrounding and pressing down on Fon Tariel. He sighed and

used a micropore kerchief to dab at his head before returning to the nested layers of

hololith panes floating above his cogitator gauntlet.

Across the sparse room, in a pool of shadow at the far window, the sniper sat

cross-legged, his longrifle resting across the crook of his arm. Without turning, Kell

spoke to him. “Are you really in so much discomfort that you cannot sit still for more

than a moment? Or is that twitching something common to all Vanus?”

Tariel scowled at the Vindicare. “The heat,” he said, by way of explanation. “I

feel… soiled by it.” He glanced around; judging by the detritus scattered all about

them, the room had once been the central space of a small domicile, before what

appeared to be a combination of fire and structural collapse had ruined it. There were

great holes in the roof allowing in the light, tepid rain from the low clouds overhead,

and other rents in the floor that emitted smells Tariel’s augmetic scent-sensors

classified as human effluent, burned rodent meat and contaminated fusel oils. The

building was deep in the ghetto shanties of the Yndenisc Bloc, where low-caste

citizens were piled atop one another like rats in a nest.

“I’m guessing you don’t leave your clade’s sanctum very often,” said Kell.

“There hasn’t been the need,” Tariel said defensively. He and his fellow infocytes

and cryptocrats had taken part in many operations, all of them conducted through

telepresent means directly from the sanctum, or from aboard an Officio-sanctioned

starship. The thought of actually physically deploying into the field was almost an

impossibility. “This is my, uh, second sortie.”

“The first being when Valdor brought you looking for me?”

“Yes.”

Kell gave a sarcastic grunt. “What wild stories you’ll have to tell when you go

home to your hive, little bee.”

52

Tariel’s grimace hardened. “Don’t mock me. I’m only here because you need me.

You won’t find the girl without my assistance.”

The sniper still refused to look his way, eyes locked on the sights of his longrifle.

“That’s true,” he offered. “I’m just wondering why you have to be here with me to do

it.”

Tariel had been asking himself the same thing ever since Captain-General Valdor

had given mission command to the Vindicare and ordered them out to the tropics. As

far as he could be certain, it seemed that operational confidence for this mission was

of such paramount importance that detection of any live in-theatre signals transmitted

from the Yndenisc Bloc to the Vanus sanctum could not be risked. He wondered

what kind of foe could threaten to defeat the finest information security in the

Imperium and found he had no answer; and the fact that such a threat could even

exist troubled him in no small degree. “The quicker we get it done, then, the quicker

we can leave this place and each other’s company,” he said, with genuine feeling.

“It will take as long as it takes,” Kell replied. “Wait for the target to come to

you.”

The infocyte disagreed but did not voice it. Instead, he returned to the hololiths,

leafing through them as if they were pages made of glass hanging suspended in the

air. Anyone watching him would have only seen the motions of his hands and

nothing else; Tariel had tuned the images to a visual frequency only readable by his

enhancile retinal lenses.

The penetration of the local sensor web had presented him with a minor

impediment, but nothing that he would have considered challenging. The infocyte

sent a small swarm of organic-metal netfly automata out to chew into any opti-cables

they found, and parse what rich data flows they located back to him. Each fly was by

itself a relatively unsophisticated device, but networked en masse, the information