He lay on a stone plinth in the chill of the morgue below Arbites Mortuary One. His brethren lay on numbered plinths around him, those that had been recovered more or less intact. There were labelled bins of mostly liquescent material against the back wall, the remains of those that Betan-core had slaughtered with the cutter's cannons.
The air in the underground vault was lit cold blue, and frost covered circulators pumped in sub-zero air direcdy from the ice-desert outside the Sun-dome. Fischig had provided us all with heat gowns for the visit.
I was impressed by what I saw: both the dutiful care and attention that had been used to sequester and store the bodies and by the fact that no one had touched them, according to my instructions. It seems a simple command to give, but I have lost count of the times that over-eager death-priests or surgeons have begun autopsies before I arrived.
The mortician superintendent was a haggard woman in her sixties called Tutrone. She attended us in red plastic scrubs worn over an old and threadbare heat-gown. Mortress Tutrone had a bionic implant in one eye socket, and blades and bonesaw manipulators of gleaming surgical steel built into her right hand.
'I have done as you instructed/ she told me as she led us down the spiral steps into the cold vault. 'But it is irregular. Rules state I must begin examinations, prelim examinations at least, as soon as possible/
'I thank you for your diligence, mortress. I will be done quickly. Then you can follow protocol/
Pulling on surgical gloves, I moved through the lines of dead – there were nearly twenty of them – dictating observations of Aemos. There was virtually noming to be learned from the men. Some I gauged from build and coloration to be off-worlders, but they had no documents, no surgical identifiers, no clue whatsoever about their origins or identities. Even their clothing was blank… manufacturing tags and labels had been torn or burned off. I could begin a forensic investigation to identify the source of the clothing, but that would be a massive waste of resources.
On two of mem, I found fresh scars that suggested subcutaneous idem markers had been surgically removed. Ident marking was not a local practice, so that at least suggested off-world. But where? Hundreds of Imperial planets routinely used such devices, and their placing and use was pretty standard. I had carried one myself for a few years, as a child, before the Black Ships selected me and it was dug out.
One of the corpses had a curious scarring on the forearms, not deep but thorough, searing the epidermis.
'Someone has used a melta-torch to remove gang tattoos/ Aemos said.
He was right. Again, it was tantalisingly incomplete.
I looked to Eyclone, where I thought my best bet lay. With the Mortress's help, I cut away his clothes, all of which were as anonymous as his followers' garb. We turned his naked corpse, looking for… well, anything.
There!' Fischig said, leaning in. A brand mark above the left buttock.
The Seraph of Laoacus. An old Chaos mark. Eyclone had it done to honour his then-masters twenty years ago. A previous cult, a previous employer. Nothing to do with this/
Fischig looked at me curiously. 'Vou know the details of his naked flesh?'
'I have sources/ I replied. I didn't want to have to tell the tale. Eemanda, one of my first companions, brilliant, beautiful and bold. She
had found that detail out for me. She had been in an asylum now for five years. The last report I had received said she had eaten away her own fingers.
'But he marks himself?' Fischig added. 'With each new cult he involves himself in, he carries their mark to show his allegiance?'
The man had a point, damn him. We looked. At least six laser scars on his body seemed likely to have been previous cult marks, burned off after he left those associations.
Behind his left ear, a skin inlay of silver was worked in the form of the Buboe Chaotica.
This?' asked Tutrone, shaving the hair aside with her finger blades to reveal it.
'Old, as before/
I stepped back from the body and thought hard. When I'd killed him, he had been reaching for something on his belt, or so it had seemed to me.
'His effects?'
They were laid out on a metal tray nearby. His laspistol, a compact vox-device, a pearl-inlaid box containing six obscura tubes and an igniter, a credit tile, spare cells for the gun, a plastic key. And the belt; with four buttoned pouches.
I opened them one by one: some local coins; a miniature las-knife; three bars of high-calorie rations; a steel tooth-pick; more obscura, this time in an injector vial; a small data slate.
At the moment of death, which of these things had he been reaching for? The knife? Too slow and small to counter a man who has a naval pistol wedged into your mouth. Then again, he was desperate.
And then again, he hadn't reached for his bolstered lasgun.
The data-slate, perhaps? I picked it up and activated it, but it needed a cipher to gain access. All manner of secrets might be locked inside… but why would a man reach for a data-slate in the face of certain death?
Track marks, along the forearm/ Tutrone stated, continuing her exam.
Hardly surprising, given the narco-ware we'd recovered from him.
'No rings? No bracelets? Earrings? Piercing studs?'
'None/
I pulled a plastic pouch from a dispenser on the surgical cart and put all his effects into it.
'Vou will sign for those, won't you?' Tutrone asked, looking up.
'Of course/
'You hated him, didn't you?' Fischig said suddenly.
'What?'
He leaned back against a plinth, crossing his arms. 'You had him at your mercy, and you knew his head was full of secrets, but you emptied it with your gun. I have no compunction when it comes to killing, but I know when I'm wasting a lead. Was it rage?'
'I'm an inquisitor. I do not get angry/
Then what?'
I had just about enough of his snide tone. 'You don't know how dangerous this man is. I wasn't taking chances/
'He looks safe enough to me/ Fischig smirked, looking down at the body.
'Here's something!' Tutrone called out. We all moved in.
She was working on his left hand, delicately, with her finest gauge scalpels and probes, her augmented fingers darting like a seamstress.
The index finger of the left hand. There's unusual lividity and swelling/ She played a small scanner across it.
'The nail's ceramite. Artificial. An implant/
'What's inside?'
'Unknown. A ghost reading. There's maybe… ah, there it is… a catch under the quick. You'd need something small to trigger it/
She adjusted her bionic finger settings and slid out a very thin metal probe, thin like…
… a tooth pick.
