'Fischig will assist you/1 said. 'And perhaps Inquisitor Rassi too. I want a workable plan of operations in-' I checked my chronometer '-sixty minutes. I need to know everything it is possible or pertinent to know before we hit the ground. And I want a positive, uncomplicated plan of what we do when we get there. Alizebeth?'
'Gregor?'
'Get in contact with as many of our specialists here on Durer as you can find and get them moving in to support us. Distaff especially. I don't care how long it takes or what it costs. I want to know we have solid backup following us.'
She nodded graciously. She was a brilliant man-manager. Bequin was still as demure and beautiful as the day I had met her, a century and a half before, a spectacular testament of the way Imperial science can counter the effects of aging. Only the faintest creases in the corners of her eyes and lips betrayed the fact that she was not a stunning woman in her late thirties. Lately, she had taken to walking rather regally with a shoulder-high ebony cane for support, claiming that her bones were old, but I believed that to be an affectation designed to reinforce her very senior and matriarchal role.
Only when I looked into her eyes could I see the distances of age. Her life had been hard and she had witnessed many terrible things. There was a sort of wistful pain in the depths of her gaze, a profound sadness. I knew she loved me, and I loved her as much as any being I had ever known. But long ago, mutually, we had set that aside. I was a psyker and she was an untouchable. Whatever the sadness we both felt because of our denied love, being together would have been so much more agonising.
'Dahault…'
'Sir?' the astropath answered smartly. He had been with me for twenty years, by far the longest stretch any astropath had managed in my employ. They wear out so quickly, in my experience. Dahault was a vital, burly man with a spectacular waxed moustache that I believe he grew to compensate for his shaved head. He was certainly powerful and able, and had taken to my regime of work well. Only in the past few years had he started to show the signs of psychic exhaustion – the shallow, drawn skin, the hunted look, the aphasia. I dearly hoped I would be able to retire him on a pension before his calling burned out his mind.
'Check ahead/ I told him. 'Fischig says the magnetosphere is blocking vox traffic, but Thuring may be using astropaths. See what you hear.'
He nodded and shuffled away to his compact, screened cabin under the bridge to connect his skull-plugs to the astro-communication network.
I turned last to Bex Begundi and Duclane Haar. Haar was an ex-Imperial Guard marksman from the 50th Gudrunite Rifles, a regiment I had an old association with. Of medium build, he wore a matt anti-fleet bodyglove, the cap-pin of his old outfit dangling round his neck on a cord. He had
lost a leg in action on Wichard, and been invalided out of service. But he was as good a shot with the sniper-variant long-las as Duj Husmaan, now long gone and in a manner I sorely regretted.
Haar was clean shaven and his brown hair was as neatly trimmed as it had been in the days of parade ground drill. He wore an optic target enhancer that clamped around the side of his skull, looping over his ear, and could drop the articulate arm of the foresight down over his right eye for aiming. He preferred the enhancer to a conventional rifle-mounted scope, and with his tally of clean hits, I wasn't about to argue.
Bex Begundi was a rogue, in the strictest sense of the term. A desperado, old Commodus Voke would have called him. An oudaw, scammer, con-artist and low-life, born in the slums of Sameter, a world I had no love for as I'd once left a hand there. He was one of Harlon Nayl's recruits – possibly one of his intended bounties who had been offered a life or death choice – and had joined my team six years before. Begundi was unspeakably cocky and prodigiously skilled with handguns.
Tall, no more than thirty-five years old, he was not exactly handsome but oozed a devastating charisma. He was dark haired, a jet-black goatee perfectly trimmed around his petulant smile, with hard cheekbones, and corpse-white skin dye contrasting with the wipes of black kohl under his dangerously twinkling eyes, as was the gang-custom of the slums. He was dressed in a leather armour body jacket embroidered with rich silk thread and preposterous panels of sequins. But there was nothing remotely comical about the paired Hecuter autopistols holstered under his arms in a custom-made, easy-draw rig.
'We're in for a fight when we get down, make no mistake/ I told them.
'Rockin' good news/ said Begundi with a hungry smile.
'Just point me at the target, sir/ said Haar.
I nodded, pleased. 'No showboating, you hear me? No grandstanding/
Begundi looked hurt. As if!' he complained.
'Actually, I was thinking of you, Haar/ I replied. Haar blushed. He had proved to be extremely… eager. A killer's instinct.
'You can trust me, sir/ he said.
This is important. I know it's always important, but this is… personal. No screw ups.'
'We're after the guy who popped Dee's dad, right?' asked Begundi.
Dee. That's what they called Medea Betancore, my pilot.
I went up into the cockpit. The high-altitude cloudscape was sliding past outside. Medea was flying like a daemon.
She was just over seventy-five years old, just a youngster still. Stunning, volatile, brilliant, sexy, she had inherited her late father's pilot skills as surely as she had inherited his dark Glavian skin and fine looks.
She was wearing Midas's cerise flying jacket.
You need to stay focused, Medea/1 said.
'I will/ she replied, not looking up from the controls.
'1 mean it. This is just a job/
'I know. I'm fine/
'If you need to stand down, it can be arranged/
'Stand down?' She snapped the words and looked round at me sharply, her large, brown eyes wet with angry tears. This is my father's killer we're going for! All my life I've waited for this! Literally! I'm not going to stand down, boss!'
She had never known her father. Fayde Thuring had murdered Midas Betancore a month before her birth.
'Fine. I want you with me. I'd like you with me. But I will not allow emotion to cloud this/
'It won't/
Tm glad to hear it/
There was a long silence. I turned to go.
'Gregor?' she said softly.
'Yes, Medea?'
'Kill the bastard. Please/
In my cabin, I made my preparations. The soft robes I had been wearing as lord chief examiner went in favour of an armoured bodyglove, steel-reinforced knee boots, a leather jacket and a heavy storm coat with armoured shoulder panels. I pinned my badges of office on my chest, my Inquisitorial rosette at my throat.
I selected my three primary weapons from the safe: a large calibre bolt pistol, the runestaff handmade for me by Magos Bure of the Adeptus Mechanicus, and the curved, pentagram-engraved force sword that I had commissioned to be forged from the broken half of the Carthaen war-blade, Barbarisater.
I blessed each one.
I thought of Midas Betancore, dead nearly a century now. Barbarisater purred in
