Eisenhorn Omnibus

in my direction.

They're coming again!' The cry went up from Heldane's men. Down the street, moving through the fire spills, figures were lurching towards us.

Weapons! Stand ready! Heldane had spoken, but not with his voice. His psychic command shook through our skulls and some of our own troopers looked dismayed.

Missiles rained down on us, and the Interior Guardsmen raised an umbrella of riot shields. Small arms fired at us too, and an arbites near me fell with his knee buckled the wrong way.

Our attackers, some hundred or more, were hive citizens, blank faced and moving like marionettes. As Heldane had reported, some monumental

psychic force was making puppets out of them. The smoky night air ionised with the psionic backwash.

I take no pleasure in actions like the one that followed. The beast Esarhaddon was forcing us to fight innocent civilians just to protect ourselves.

Maybe he thought we'd shrink from the task and leave him alone.

We, however, were the Inquisition.

Kurvel led his White Consuls at the front, banging their weapons against their chest-plates and howling defiance through their helmet speakers. I saw a promethium bomb strike one and shatter, swathing him in liquid flame. He simply strode on.

We fired over the mob's heads, trying to break them, but they had no will of their own. Our firing became kill-shots. In ten minutes, we had reluctantly added a fair number to the planet's rising death toll.

That brought us to the corner of the street, facing the high walls of the garden and the edge of the palace's iridescent force shield itself.

I could hear a low chuckling in my head.

Esarhaddon.

Where's Lyko? I heard Voke ask Heldane psychically.

He took a team around the front to try and disable the force wall.

You idiot!' I said, out loud, looking over at Heldane. This monster can control a crowd that big and you mind-speak this close to him?'

This monster/ Heldane replied, 'can read every mind in the city and beyond. He knows what we're all doing. There is no point in secrecy. Just effort. Is that beyond you?'

'How long until the next attack?' Kurvel asked, reloading his weapon.

They've become less frequent since we first arrived/ replied Heldane. 'However long it takes Esarhaddon to mind-search the surrounding habs and recruit another puppet force. He's having to cast his net wider each time/

'How did he get in there?' Roban asked.

Heldane simply shook his head and shrugged. Roban, a robust inquisitor of middle years dressed in brown and yellow layered robes, was a good man, though I didn't know him well. But he was an outspoken Xanthanite and the ultra-puritan Heldane had little time for him.

Voke and Heldane fell to discussing possible assault plans with Kurvel as the soldiers around us formed a defensive position.

This is a damned thankless task/ Roban said to me. 'I don't even know why we're here!'

'Cannon fodder/ said his youthful interrogator, Inshabel, bluntly, and it made us both laugh.

There has to be something…' I said. I took out my pocket scope and tried to read the energy patterns and spectrums.

'You!' I called to one of the arbites in our party, a grizzled precinct commander in full riot gear.

'Inquisitor?'

What's your name?'

'Lucius, sir.'

'Dear God-Emperor!' I sighed again and Roban laughed once more.

'Okay, Luckless – this palace must come into your precinct's patrol area.'

'Yes, sir.'

'So street security around it is your responsibility.'

'Again, yes sir.'

'So… just as a matter of procedure, your section house will have on file the shield type and harmonics for the palace, in case of emergencies/ In my experience, it was standard protocol for any arbites precinct to know such things about key structures within their purview.

'It's classified, sir.'

'Of course it is,' I sighed again. 'But now would be a good time.

He got on his vox-link and after a lot of effort, managed to get a channel open to the section house.

'You're on to something, aren't you?' Roban asked me.

'Maybe/

The wily Inquisitor Eisenhom-'

'The what?'

'No offence. Your reputation precedes you/

'Does it now? In a good way?'

Roban grinned and shook his head, like a man who might have heard something, but who had decided to make up his own mind.

'It's an old type-ten conical void/ Arbites Commander Lucius reported presently. Tangent eight-seven-eight harmonic wave. We don't have an override code. Lady Lange wouldn't permit it/

'I bet she wishes she had now/ said Interrogator Inshabel, caustic and to the point once again. I was beginning to like him.

Thank you, Luckless/ I said.

'It's… Lucius, sir/

'I know/

I tried to remember everything Aemos had counselled me about shields over the years. I wished I had his recall. Better still, I wished I had him here.

'We can collapse it/ I said, with fair confidence.

'Collapse a void shield?' Roban asked.

'It's conical… super-surface only. And it's old. Voids shrug off just about anything, but they don't retain their field if you take out one or more of the projectors.

That buttress there, the one the garden wall is built around, that's got to be one of the projector units, seated down into the ground/

Roban nodded, apparently impressed. 'I see the logic, but not the practice/

I walked over to Brother-Sergeant Kurvel, interrupting his conversation with Heldane without apology, and explained what I wanted to do.

Heldane scoffed at once. 'Lyko's already trying that!'

'How?'

'He's located the outer controls at the front gate and is trying to break their coding…'

'Coding and controls that will be dead and locked out thanks to Esarhaddon. Lyko's wasting his time. We can't switch this off. We can't break Esarhaddon's control over its system. But we can