Ciaphas Cain: Choose Your Enemies

My smile became a little more fixed. ‘I have a great many duties to my regiment,’ I said carefully. ‘One of which is liaising with other Imperial authorities when required.’

‘Wazzock,’ Zemelda muttered, not quite under her breath, as he trotted away to give his underlings a hard time.

‘And speaking of those…’ Pelton said, with a nod in the direction of the personnel door. A familiar figure was strolling towards us, a battered valise dangling from one hand, his brown robe fluttering in the currents from the air recirculators. Catching sight of Defroy he turned aside a little, putting a plodding servitor laden with cargo between the two of them, and remaining in its lee until he arrived at the landing pad.

‘What do you want?’ Amberley greeted him, and Vekkman nodded perfunctorily in response.

‘I need a lift,’ he said. ‘I gather you’re heading for one of the orbitals?’ No one bothered asking how he’d gathered it; he was an inquisitor after all.

‘Skyside Seventeen,’ Amberley confirmed after a moment.

‘Good,’ Vekkman said. ‘That’s the one with the highest probability of a Chaos cult being active among the dock workers.’

‘Then I suppose you’d better come along,’ Amberley conceded, in a faintly grudging tone.

‘Much obliged,’ Vekkman said, purely for form’s sake, and held out his travelling bag. ‘Can one of your people take this for me?’

‘No, they can’t,’ Amberley said, and turned away to confer with Mott in a muttered undertone.

‘Is she always like this?’ Vekkman asked, and I shook my head.

‘She’s a bit stressed at the moment,’ I answered without thinking.

‘I was right then,’ Vekkman said. ‘You are one of hers.’

‘I’m a commissar,’ I said, keeping my face straight and my voice steady, ‘with an Imperial Guard regiment to look after.’

‘And a number of highly classified absences in your record,’ Vekkman persisted. ‘Several of them while Inquisitor Vail was in the vicinity.’

‘Pure coincidence,’ I said.

Vekkman nodded, as though he’d expected nothing less. ‘So easy to keep bumping into people in something as small as a galaxy,’ he said sarcastically.

‘Like I said,’ I repeated, ‘pure coincidence.’

‘If you believe in that sort of thing,’ Vekkman said, ‘which, personally, I don’t.’

I felt the palms of my hands begin to itch, which is never a good sign. The thing is, I do believe in coincidence; the damn thing’s saved my life on more occasions than I can count. Perhaps because of that, though, I tend to discount it more readily than most as well. One of the great gifts of paranoia is being able to discern links between things, the patterns emerging around them, even if they aren’t actually there. But I was beginning to suspect that Vekkman and Amberley really were tugging on opposite ends of the same thread, even if she was reluctant to admit to the possibility.

‘Can you think of any reason Slaaneshi cultists would want to collect eldar spirit stones?’ I asked, keeping my voice low, as I was sure this was a conversation Amberley most definitely wouldn’t approve of.

Vekkman looked thoughtful. ‘As I told your patron–’ he began.

‘She’s not my patron,’ I said, decisively. ‘I’m simply here to observe on behalf of the Astra Militarum, and render any assistance required.’

Vekkman looked at me with manifest scepticism. ‘As I told your liaisee, xenos artefacts are her area of expertise, not mine.’

‘The first one we intercepted was routed out-system,’ Pelton interjected, having listened in to at least part of our conversation, probably to make sure I didn’t let anything slip that Amberley would disapprove of. ‘But the cargo would have been transhipped on Skyside Seventeen. And if your Chaos cult is centred on the docking areas…’

‘A heretic stevedore could easily have got his hands on it,’ Vekkman agreed, ‘with Throne alone knows what dire results. We’re fortunate that your team intercepted it.’

‘They intercepted that one, at least,’ I said, making the point that I hadn’t been there, and thereby attempting to distance myself from Amberley’s retinue, at least in his mind. Not that I thought he’d fall for it; he seemed far too astute for that.

‘And you’re sure that was the only one?’ Vekkman asked.

Pelton nodded. ‘As sure as we can be,’ he said, meaning ‘of course we’re not,’ which, again, I was sure would come as no surprise to the brown-robed inquisitor.

‘Then let’s hope it was,’ Vekkman said.

An uneasy silence fell, only to be interrupted by a faintly anxious voice in my vox-bead.

‘We’re ready to lift, now, inquisitor,’ Defroy said, his tiny figure waving from the boarding ramp of the heavy shuttle.

‘About time,’ Amberley said, although we were still well within the twenty minutes he’d promised. ‘Everyone aboard.’

‘Ladies first,’ Vekkman said, gesturing her ahead of him with a slight bow.

‘I wouldn’t dream of it,’ Amberley said, repeating the gesture with a little more emphasis, and speaking through faintly gritted teeth. ‘You’re my guest.’