designed by Medea and Maxilla. According to its signature, we were a research team from the Royal Scholam Geologicus on Mendalin.
They've cleared us to touch/ Medea reported, easing us past another buffet of gravity turbulence. They've activated the guide pathway/
'Any vox contact?'
She shook her head. 'It could all be mechanical/
Take us in/
Cinchare Minehead was a cluster of old industrial structures plugging the cone of an upthrust impact event. Flight approach was down a rille in the crater edge. The buildings seemed at first sight to be rude and unfinished, rough-hewn from the blue rock, but I quickly realised they were standard Imperial modular structures caked with accretions of blue dust and gypnate. As far as records showed, Cinchare Minehead had been here for nine hundred years.
We set down on a cleared hardpan surrounded by serially winking marker lamps. The braking jets kicked up a swirling halo of eluviam into the air-less sky. After a short wait, two monotask servitors, heavy-grade units on caterpillar tracks, emerged into the hard starlight from the shadows of a docking barn, attached clamps to our front end and silently towed us back into the barn.
It was a grim place of dirty bare metal and lifting gear. Two battered prospector pods sat in berthing bays, and in the gloom at the far end was a cargo shuttle that had seen better days.
The barn doors closed behind us, and flashing hazard lamps in the berthing dock moved from amber to green as the atmosphere was cycled back in. Apart from the servitors, there was no sign of life.
'Cutter's systems show green on outside conditions/ said Medea, swinging out of her seat.
Are we ready?' I asked.
'Sure/ said Medea. She had switched her regular Glavian pilot's gear, with its distinctive cerise jacket, for a much more anonymous set of grubby flight overalls. Heavy, tan and baggy, they were actually the quilted liner of an armoured void-suit. The surface was covered in eyelets, laces and stud- connectors where the armour segments would lock on and there were umbilical sockets in the chest. Medea had removed the helmet ring and allowed the heavy collar to hang open. She wore workgloves and steel-capped military boots, and tucked her hair up under a billed cap with the Imperial eagle on the front.
Aemos had adjusted the hydraulic settings of his augmetic exo-skeleton to hold him in the stiffest, most upright stance possible. Witb a long tunic-cloak of black bagheera, a white skull cap and an engraved data-cane, he looked every centimetre a distinguished scholam academic.
I lacked any trace of my usual inquisitorial garb. I wore learner breeches and high, buckled boots, an old flak-armour jerkin with dirty ceramite over-plates, and a full-face filter mask with tinted eyeslits that resembled nothing so much as a snarling skull. Nayl had lent me a motion tracker unit from his personal kit, which I had strapped over my right shoulder, and a heavy, snub-nosed laspistol that hung in an armpit rig under my jerkin. A combat shotgun rested in a scabbard between my shoulder blades, and I had a belt of shells for it around my waist. I looked and felt like hired thug-muscle… which was precisely the point.
Medea popped the hatch and we descended into the barn.
It was cold, and the air was parched from too many automatic scrub-bings. Odd mechanical noises sounded sporadically in the distance. Squat, short-base servitors were busy tinkering with the old shuttle's exposed engine-guts.
We clanged up the grille stairs to the interior hatch. It was marked with a bas- relief symbol of the Adeptus Mechanicus, and an enamelled sign below it announced that the tech-priesthood was the supreme authority at Cinchare Minehead.
The heavy hatch whirred back into its wall-slot revealing a gloomy prep-tunnel lined with empty void-suits that swung on their hooks in the breeze. Beyond that, there was a dank scrub-room, a darkened office with a padlock on the door, and an empty survey suite with a deactivated chart table.
'Where is everybody?' Medea asked.
We followed the echoing hallways through the complex. Grubby mining equipment was scattered or piled in corners. A small first-aid station had been stripped of surgical equipment and stacked with crates of pickled fish. A side room was empty except for hundreds of broken wine bottles. A disused walk-in freezer store exuded the stink of spoiled meat mrough its open door. Water spattered from the dark, lofty ceilings of some vaults. Chains swung from overhead hoists. Cold, dry breezes gusted down the halls.
When the wall-speakers boomed, we all started.
Allied Imperial Minerals! Duty rotation in fifteen minutes!'
The voice was an automatic recording. Nothing stirred in response.
This is most perturbatory/ murmured Aemos. According to Imperial records, Cinchare Minehead is an active concern. Allied Imperial has a workforce of nineteen hundred running their deep- cast mines, and Ortog Promethium another seven hundred at their gypnate quarries. Not to mention independent prospectors, ancilliary service workers, security and the personnel of the Adeptus. Minehead is meant to have a population of nearly three thousand.'
We had reached a main concourse, a wide thoroughfare lit by overhead lamps, many of which were smashed. Abandoned merchant shops and bars lined either side.
'Let's look around/ I said. We fanned out. I walked to the north end of the trash- littered concourse and found steps leading down into a wide plaza full of more empty shops and businesses.
I heard the whine of an electric motor from down to the left, and followed it. Round the corner of a boarded-up canteen, a fat-tyred open buggy was pulled up outside the unkempt entrance of a claims registry. I went inside. The floor was covered in spilled, yellowing papers and dented data-slates. A snowdrift of used and mouldering ration cartons filled a side door into a filing room.
Nayl's motion detector clicked and whirred. It projected its display on the inside of my mask's right lens. Motion, the rear office, eight metres.
I edged to the door and peered in, my hand on the grip of the holstered las.
A long-limbed man in filthy overalls was crouching with his back to me, rummaging through a foot locker.
'Hello?' I said.
He jumped out of his skin, turning and rising in the same frantic motion, then crashed backwards against a row of metal cabinets. His long, gawky face was pale with fear. His hands were raised.
'Oh crap! Oh dear God-Emperor! Oh, please… please…'
'Calm down/1 said.
'Who are you? Oh, crap, don't hurt me!'
'I'm not going to. My name is Horn. Who are you?'
'Bandelbi… Fyn Bandelbi… mining superintendant second class, Ortog Promethium… crap, don't hurt me!'
I'm not going to/ I repeated firmly. At least the frayed nametag on his dungarees agreed with him: 'BANDELBI, F. SUPER 2nd O.P.'
'Put your hands down/ I said. 'Why did you think I was going to hurt you?'
He lowered his hands and shrugged. 'I didn't… sort of… I don't know…'
He regained a little composure and squinted at me. Where did you come from?' he asked. He was an ugly, lantern-jawed fellow with unkempt
greasy hair and stubble. There was the hint of a raw pink birthmark on the side of his throat.
'Off rock. Just got here. I was wondering why there was no one around.'
'Everyone's gone.'
'Gone?'
'Gone. Shipped out. Left. Because of the Gravs.'
'The Gravs?'
