‘You are bluffing.’
‘I assure you I am not,’ said Vangorich. ‘And you cannot afford to assume I am.’
Kubik wilted. ‘You have me,’ he said finally. ‘You slight my loyalty to the Imperium and ask me to prove my loyalty to Mars. Here it is, then, the last act of a true servant of the Omnissiah.’
Kubik threw back his hood, revealing a head underneath made entirely of metal. He cast down his rod of office and depressed a panel on the side of his skull. A fingerwidth column rotated and withdrew from his head. He pressed out the centre of the column and held it out to Vangorich.
‘My intelligence core. The essence of who I am is encoded herein.’
Vangorich came forwards and took it. He passed it over a machine at his belt that beeped and shone green. Vangorich put the intelligence core in his pocket. ‘You are finally doing the right thing.’
‘You will pay for this, in time,’ said Kubik, his voice slurring.
‘Maybe I will, but you are paying for your sins first. Goodbye, Fabricator General,’ said Vangorich.
The indicator lights of Kubik’s augments dimmed and went out. His limbs folded in on each other and he slid gracefully to the floor.
When he was down, Vangorich filled him with toxin needles.
‘A man’s work is never done,’ said Vangorich. He strode from the muttering diagnostiad into a small chamber lined with cogitator banks. A single, immovable red glass eye stared out from their centre. Vangorich stood in front of it and leaned in.
‘Come on, Kubik, I knew about this last bolthole. I can’t have you exloading your consciousness once I’ve gone.’ He tutted. ‘Don’t you know non-organic intelligence is forbidden? This really is the end for you.’
Whistling a jaunty tune, Vangorich got down on his hands and knees and yanked wires out of the cogitators until they stopped working. Then he took out a compact melta bomb and set it to go off where the connections had been thickest.
Just to be sure.
Chapter Twelve
Voice from the past
The Medicae Heroum was eerily quiet and smelled of unguent and healing agents. Machine glow lit up the treatment bays punched into the wall. Of the twenty, three were occupied by injured Inquisitorial agents. Veritus was situated in the very last. Wienand trod carefully, wary of disrupting the calm of the ward. Tanks of brightly coloured fluids bubbled in decorative brackets. Her servo-skull escort floated behind her. A second detached itself from an alcove in the wall and floated to the first. Wienand paused as the two exchanged security codes. The medicae skull swung about. A compact augur embedded in the polished bone of its eye socket swept her up and down with a broad beam of red light. An arcane, psychically sensitive pict unit in the other eye took a snapshot of her soul. A mechadendrite whipped out and jabbed her with a needle. She winced as it drank her blood.
‘Wienand, Marguerethe A, genetic imprint confirmed,’ said the skull. ‘Aura imprint confirmed. Security clearance Ultima Black confirmed. Welcome, Lady Inquisitor.’ Its machine-spirit satisfied, the medicae servo-skull withdrew to its alcove. Nestled inside, it became just another part of the room’s decoration.
The Coroner General of the Inquisition himself treated Veritus. Dressed in severe black robes, he waited for Wienand at the foot of Veritus’ bed.
‘Lady Inquisitor,’ said the coroner.
‘How is he?’
‘He will be dead soon,’ the coroner said baldly. ‘There is nothing we can do. Vangorich was thorough with his poison. The Inquisitorial Representative’s body is undergoing cellular collapse. I have tried every sanctioned technique and treatment, and a few that are not. He does not have long. I have interred him in a stasis field at his request, because he wished to speak with you before the end. Alone. I am sorry, Representative.’
The Coroner General bowed his head and departed.
Through the blue shimmer of the stasis field, Veritus looked impossibly small and frail. His armour had been removed and he was swaddled in bright white sheets.
Hesitantly she shut off the field, knowing that in doing so she signed his death warrant. Wienand had seen many people die in the course of her duty. They had never troubled her. This one death of a man who had tried to kill her did.
The field vanished like ice from a heated window. Veritus drew in a long rasping breath. His mouth gaped and his eyes rolled before he settled himself.
‘Wienand?’
‘I am here, Veritus.’
Age had him firmly now. He appeared so ancient that he should not be alive, his skin sagging so much his skull was visible beneath it. But his mortal frame contained life yet, and he fixed rheumy eyes on her and smiled.
‘I half expected Vangorich.’
‘So you know it was him,’ she said.
‘The conclusion did not require a great leap of logic. How long have I been suspended?’
‘Five days,’ she said. ‘I came as quickly as I could. There have been complications.’
‘Vangorich has assassinated the rest of the High Lords.’
Wienand nodded. ‘Most of them. Lansung and Verreault were set up to look like they murdered each other. Their bodies were discovered by Ekharth, but it is probable he is an Officio Assassinorum plant. Sark and Anwar had their souls sucked out by a member of the Culexus Temple. Gibran was killed within the Navigators’ Quarter in what looks like an internal squabble between the Houses.’
‘Vangorich’s hand will have mixed that pot.’
‘I don’t doubt it. The same can be said of Tull’s death. She killed herself, but I believe she was encouraged. She had a longstanding servant who vanished the night of her death. Zeck was killed by Krule. Only Kubik seems to have escaped, and I cannot be sure if he has. He may have struck a deal with Vangorich, the Paternova certainly did, but Vangorich held Kubik and Lansung most responsible for the ork crisis. If I know him, he will have gone after the Fabricator General zealously. And there is, of course, you,’ said Wienand. She laced her hands behind her back and averted her eyes, uncomfortable at the emotion she was showing. Then she remembered that was a particular posture of Vangorich’s and put her hands at her side.
‘I make the full house. I expected him to move against me, I attempted to prevent it, but I underestimated his cunning,’ said Veritus.
‘The poison, how did he administer it to you?’
‘On the Potus Terrae, in the observation gallery. It was the only opportunity he had. My own quarters were hermetically sealed.’
‘But you drank no wine nor took anything else from his hand.’
‘You did,’ said Veritus, ‘and you live. The wine was not poisoned.’
‘The pressure leak,’ said Wienand. ‘But our servo-skulls detected nothing in the gas mix that should have caused you harm, and like the wine, I was exposed. I am still fine. I have been thoroughly examined.’
Veritus nodded weakly. His papery skin rasped on the crisp sheets. ‘The gas mix was non-toxic on its own, but it contained an agent that reacted with the compounds my suit produces for me to breathe. A single molecular binding altered my serums to a form indistinguishable from the benevolent variety, but enough to turn them deadly in my system. It reversed my anti-gerontic medicines, so they attacked my genetic code where they should have preserved. By the time I was ill enough to notice, the damage was irreparable. I am too old to recover from this.’ He laughed drily. ‘Vangorich is clever. He used what was keeping me alive to kill me.’
‘Then I am at risk too,’ said Wienand. She began to pace. ‘I should stay away from the Palace. If I take refuge here in the Inquisitorial Fortress I should be safe enough. From there, I can set the Inquisition to eliminating him.’
‘Not yet. You cannot kill him. You must let him live.’
‘What?’ said Wienand, ceasing her pacing in surprise.