Nemesis

automated barrier mechanical ponderously drawing a thick cable lined with warning

flags around the edge of the nearest staging area.

A familiar face caught his eye. “Sir!” Skelta was tall and thin of aspect, with a

bearing to him that some of the other members of the Sentine unkindly equated to a

15

rodent. The jager came quickly over to his side, ducking slightly even though the

coleopter was long gone. Skelta blinked, looking serious and pale. “Sir,” he repeated.

The young man had ideas about being promoted beyond street duty to the Sentine’s

next tier of investigatory operations, and so he was always attempting to present a

sober and thoughtful aspect whenever he was in his superior’s company; but Yosef

didn’t have the heart to tell the man he was just a little too dull-witted to make the

grade. He wasn’t a bad sort, but sometimes he exhibited the kind of ignorance that

made Sabrat’s palms itch.

“Jager,” he said with a nod. “What do you have for me?”

A shadow passed over Skelta’s face, something that went beyond his usual

reticent manner, and Yosef caught it. The reeve had come here expecting to find a

crime of usual note, but Skelta’s fractional expression gave him pause; and for the

first time that morning, he wondered what he had walked into.

“It’s, uh…” The jager trailed off and swallowed hard, his gaze losing focus for a

moment as he thought about something else. “You should probably see for yourself,

sir.”

“All right. Show me.”

Skelta led him through the ordered ranks of wooden cargo capsules, each one an

octagonal block the size of a small groundcar. The smell of matured estufagemi wine

was everywhere here, soaked into the massive crates, even bled into the stone flags of

the flight apron. The warm, comforting scent seemed cloying and overly strong

today, however, almost as if it were struggling to mask the perfume of something far

less pleasant.

Close by, he heard the quick barks of dogs, and then a man’s angry shout

followed by snarls and yelps. “Dockside strays,” offered the jager. “Attracted by the

stink, sir. Been kicking them away since before sunup.” The thought seemed to

disagree with the young man and he changed the subject. “We think we have an

identity for the victim. Documents found near the scene, papers and the like. Name

was Jaared Norte. A lighter drivesman.”

“You think,” echoed Yosef. “You’re not sure?”

Skelta held up the barrier line for the reeve to step under, and they walked on,

into the crime scene proper. “Haven’t been able to make a positive match yet, sir,” he

went on. “Clinicians are on the way to check for dentition and blood-trace.” The

jager coughed, self-consciously. “He… doesn’t have a face, sir. And we found some

loose teeth… But we’re not sure they were, uh, his.”

Yosef took that in without comment. “Go on.”

“Norte’s foreman has been interviewed. Apparently, Norte clocked off at the

usual time last night, heading home to his wife and son. He never arrived.”

“The wife report it, did she?”

Skelta shook his head. “No, sir. They had some trouble, apparently. Their

marriage contract was a few months from expiration, and it was causing friction. She

probably thought he was out drinking up his pay.”

“This from the foreman?”

The jager nodded. “Sent a mobile to their house to confirm his take on things.

Waiting on a word.”

16

“Was Norte drank when he was killed?”

This time, Skelta couldn’t stop himself from shuddering. “For his sake, I hope so.

Would have been a blessing for the poor bastard.”

Yosef sensed the fear in the other man’s words. Murder was not an uncommon

crime on Iesta Veracrux; they were a relatively prosperous world that was built on

the industry of wine, after all, and men who drank—or who coveted money—were

often given to mistakes that led to bloodletting. The reeve had seen many deaths,

some brutal, many of them sordid, each in their own way tragic; but all of them he

had understood. Yosef knew crime for what it was—a weakness of self—and he

knew the triggers that would bring that flaw to light, jealousy, madness, sorrow…

But fear was the worst.

And there was much fear on Iesta Veracrux these days. Here out in the ranges of

the Ultima Segmentum, across the span of the galaxy from the Throne of Terra, the

planet and its people felt distant and unprotected while wars were being fought, lines

of battle drawn over maps their home world was too insignificant to grace. The

Emperor and his council seemed so far away, and the oncoming storm of the

insurrection churning sightless and unseen in the nearby stars laid a pall of creeping

apprehension over everything. In every shadowed corner, people saw the ghosts of

the unknown.

They were afraid; and people who were afraid easily became people who were

angry, directing their terror outwards against any slight, real or imagined. Today’s

killing was only the newest of many that had rolled across Iesta Veracrux in recent