Nemesis

months; murders spawned from trivialities, suicides, panicked attacks on illusory

threats. While life went on as it ever did, beneath the surface there lay a black mood

infecting the whole populace, even as they pretended it did not exist. Had Jaared

Norte become a victim of this as well? Yosef thought it likely.

They moved around a tall corner of containers and into a small courtyard formed

by lines of crates. Overhead, another cargo ballute drifted slowly past, for a moment

casting a broad oval shadow across the proceedings. A handful of other jagers were

at work conducting fingertip sweeps of the location, a couple from the documentary

office working complex forensic picters and sense-nets, another talking into a bulky

wireless with a tall whip antenna. Skelta exchanged looks with one of the docos, and

she gave him a rueful nod in return. Behind them all, there was a narrow but high

storage shed with its doors splayed wide open. The reeve immediately spotted the

patches of brown staining the metal doors.

He frowned, looking around at the identical rust-coloured greatcoats and peaked

caps of the Sentine officers. “The Arbites are inside?” Yosef nodded towards the

shed.

Skelta gave a derisive sniff. “The Arbites are not here, sir. Called it in, as per the

regulations. Lord Marshal’s office was unavailable. Asked to be kept informed,

though.”

“I’ll bet they did.” Yosef grimaced. For all the grand words and high ideals

spouted by the Adeptus Arbites, at least on Iesta Veracrux that particular branch of

the Adeptus Terra was less interested in the policing of the planet than they were in

being seen to be interested in it. The officers of the Sentine had been the lawmen and

wardens of the Iestan system since the days of the colony’s founding in the First

17

Establishment, and the installation of an office of the Arbites here during the Great

Crusade had done little to change that state of affairs. The Lord Marshal and his staff

seemed more than happy to remain in their imposing tower and allow the Sentine to

function as they always had, handling all the “local” matters. Quite what the Arbites

considered to be other than local had never, in twenty years of service, been made

clear to Yosef Sabrat. The politics of the whole thing seemed to orbit at a level far

beyond the reeve’s understanding.

He glanced at Skelta. “Do you have a read on the murder weapon?”

Skelta glanced at the doco officer again, as if asking permission. “Not exactly.

Bladed weapon, probably. For starters. There might have been, uh, other tools used.”

What little colour there was on the jager’s face seemed to ebb away and he

swallowed hard.

Yosef stopped on the threshold of the shed. A slaughterhouse stink of blood and

faeces hit him hard and his nostrils twitched. “Witnesses?” he added.

Skelta pointed upwards, towards a spotlight tower. “There are security imagers

on the lighting stands, but they didn’t get anything. Angle was too shallow for the

optics to pick up a likeness.”

The reeve filed that information away; whoever had made the kill knew the

layout of the airdocks, then. “Canvass every other imager in a half-kilometre radius,

pull the memory coils and have some of the recruits sift them. We might get lucky.”

He took a long inhalation, careful to breathe through his mouth. “Let’s see this,

then.”

He went in, and Skelta hesitantly followed a few steps behind. Inside, the shed

was gloomy, lit only by patches of watery sunshine coming in by degrees through

low windows and the hard-edged glares of humming portable arc lamps. On splayed

tripod legs, a quad of gangly field emitters stood at the corners of an ill-defined

square, a faint yellow glow connecting each to its neighbours. The permeable energy

membrane allowed objects above a certain mass or kinetic energy to pass through

unhindered, but kept particulates and other micro-scale matter in situ to aid with onsite

forensics.

Yosef’s brow creased in a frown as he approached the field; the area of open,

shadowed floor between the emitters seemed at first glance to be empty. He stepped

through the barrier and the stench in the air intensified. Glancing over his shoulder he

saw that Skelta had not followed him through, instead remaining outside the line at

stiff attention, his gaze directed anywhere but at the scene of the crime.

The stone floor was awash in dark arterial blood, and there were fleshy shapes

scattered randomly in the shallow little sea of rippling crimson. Ropes of what had to

be intestine, shiny lumps of organ meat that caught the light, and other things pastywhite

and streaked with fluid. An array of butcher slab remnants, discarded not in

haste but with disinterest.

The reeve felt disgust and confusion in equal measure, but he reined them in and

let his sharp eye take the lead. He looked for patterns and impressions. It had been

done with care and precision, this. No crime of passion, no murder of opportunity.