Ciaphas Cain: Choose Your Enemies

Most of them, anyway. As we disembarked in a small docking bay apparently intended for a single vessel and formed up behind Amberley, resplendent in her glossy black power armour chased with intricate gold filigree depicting icons of the Emperor and a reasonable selection of His saints, the gaggle of local dignitaries rounded up and herded in to meet us shifted and bleated uneasily like herbivores catching the scent of a predator on the wind. Eventually, one in the formal robes of a local aristo was shuffled to the front – or the others proved to be more successful in their efforts to hide at the back – and made a stiff, formal bow.

‘Welcome to Skyside Seventeen, inquisitor,’ he said, his voice quavering no more than people’s generally do when they’re not quite sure whether you’re going to shoot them or not. ‘To what do we owe–’

‘It’s not an honour, and you don’t owe me anything,’ Amberley said, cutting him off before he could get into the sort of rambling, cliché-ridden speech reluctant spokesmen tend to go in for, her voice growling like a Space Marine through the suit’s external speakers. ‘I need up-to-date schematics of the whole orbital, in as much detail as you can manage. My savant will know what to look for.’ Servos whined faintly, like summer insects, as she gestured Mott forward. The visor of her helmet was down, concealing her face, so only I was able to picture the mischievous grin I was certain lurked just behind the mask.

‘Yes. Yes, of course.’ The aristo seized on the implied dismissal with alacrity. ‘If you’d care to come with me…’ he said, turning to Mott.

‘Not particularly, but the sooner I obtain the information, the sooner we can conclude our business,’ Mott said, adopting a rather less affable air than usual. He gestured to Vekkman, whose brown robe had probably let him fade far enough into the background to escape the notice of most of the assembled dignitaries entirely up to this point. ‘You too.’

Vekkman nodded, and fell into place at Mott’s side as the savant strode away in the wake of the nervously scurrying spokesman. We’d spent a few minutes discussing how best to get him out of the hangar and free to follow up his leads in the docking bays without being noticed, and acting the part of a minion seemed the best bet.

As soon as they’d gone, Amberley turned to the next in line, a middle-aged woman in the plainer garb of a senior Administratum functionary, who turned a distinct Jurgen-ish shade but, to her credit, stared up at the blank features of Amberley’s helmet as though looking her straight in the eye. ‘You. Where are the military people?’

The bureaucrat swallowed. ‘They’re all rather busy at the moment, inquisitor. Our senior commanders were invited to join us, of course, but regretfully declined the honour of meeting you, as they felt the security of the orbital came first.’ Which was quite diplomatically put, I thought.

‘Good. They were right,’ Amberley said, and the collective sigh of relief from the assembled functionaries practically blew my cap off. She stood aside a little, to bring me out from behind the shadow of her power suit, and everyone duly gawped at the Hero of the Imperium. ‘I’m sure you know Commissar Cain.’

‘We know of him, of course,’ the woman said, the reflexive pedanticism of a true bureaucrat apparently unquashed even in the presence of an inquisitor, ‘although none of us, I believe, has had the honour of making his acquaintance before now.’

‘My loss, I’m sure,’ I said, smiling affably, in a manner calculated to put everyone at their ease – or as close to it as possible while they were facing a power-armoured agent of the Inquisition backed up by a group of acolytes with visible guns, anyway. ‘I’m here to inspect your defences, and congratulate your local commanders on the splendid job they’re doing in holding the enemy at bay. Things would be a lot grimmer down on the ground if it wasn’t for their efforts, I can assure you.’ Which, of course, was the perfect line to take. Amberley had intimidated them, and now I was flattering them, at least by association, so between us we could mould them like a potter kneading clay.

‘Of course.’ The bureaucrat nodded eagerly, before her expression went back to one of apprehensive uncertainty. ‘That might take a little while to arrange, however.’