‘I remember. I was there,’ said Gaunt.
‘You were active on Gereon for quite some time after the assassination. You worked with the resistance. You effectively built the resistance from the ground up. Though we never caught you, your name was known to us. The name Gaunt, the names of your elite team… They were notorious.’
‘That almost sounds like you’re paying me a compliment,’ said Gaunt.
The prisoner shrugged as much as the restraints would allow. ‘“Any soldier who does not respect another soldier’s achievements is a fool”.’
‘You’re going to quote Slaydo at me now, are you?’
‘I’d quote the Archon Gaur, but your ears would bleed.’
Gaunt walked over to the tank door.
‘Where are you going?’ asked the prisoner.
‘I don’t think we’ve got much to talk about,’ Gaunt replied.
‘We’ve only just begun,’ the prisoner said.
Gaunt looked back at him. ‘The Imperium wastes very little time capturing or interrogating soldiers of the Archenemy. Their corruption is considered too pernicious. No intelligence obtained from them can be considered reliable, and there is always the risk of contamination to the interrogators. You should have been executed before now, not preserved in detention.’
‘I have managed to convince my captors to allow me to remain alive this long. You are my last chance.’
‘Why should I care?’
‘For the sake of the Imperium,’ said the prisoner.
‘Is that something you care about?’ Gaunt asked, making no effort to disguise his sarcastic tone.
‘I have pretty much ceased to care about anything,’ said the prisoner. ‘But I know you care, and that’s enough. I can help the Imperium, Gaunt, but in order to do that, the Imperium has got to learn to trust me.’
‘I don’t think that’s going to happen.’
‘I believe you are the one person who can convince them to listen to me.’
‘Why?’ asked Gaunt.
‘You were on Gereon for a year,’ said the prisoner. ‘An occupied world, Gaunt. A tainted world. It doesn’t matter what you did or how bravely you served the Golden Throne, you ought to have been executed on your return. No one lasts that long without falling prey to the taint of Chaos. But you’re alive, and still in service. Somehow, you convinced your masters that you were clean.’
‘By the skin of my teeth,’ said Gaunt, ‘and there is still dissent.’
‘But you did it. There is no one better equipped to judge me, to estimate how genuine I am, and then convince the powers that be to listen.’
Gaunt shook his head. ‘I’m not sure I want to do that. I’d be damning myself.’
‘If you refuse me, I’ll be dead before the day’s out,’ said the prisoner. ‘I’m an asset, Gaunt, and only you can see it, if you look.’
Gaunt had walked back to the cell door, and was reaching out his hand to bang on it. He hesitated.
‘When you say you can help the Imperium, what do you mean?’ he asked.
‘I mean,’ the prisoner replied, ‘that I can help the Imperium win the war for the Sabbat Worlds.’
NINE
Sweet Tooth
That morning, cold and overcast in the west, the enemy was a slice of almonotte. It had a layer of cream, and another of rotchka, and the soft cake was scented with popoi nuts, and capped with a caul of blue sugar icing.
She ran north, along the Wharfblade, her usual route, keeping the river to her right and the glower of the Oligarchy to her left. She crossed the wide rockcrete paddocks where the old markets and commercias had met before the war, and paused overlooking the reservoirs to sip a little rehyde from her flask and flex out her calf muscles.
Overnight, it had snowed. The vast, mesh-covered filtration tanks that processed river water for municipal needs looked like winter-issue camo-nets. In the outhab streets, black lines in the street snow described the routes of early vehicles. When she ran on, her own trail began again.
An outhabber market was assembling on the concourse behind the Polis power mills. She could smell the brazier smoke as she approached. Hundreds of sink-dwellers and stack-rats had gathered, draped in shawls and weatherproofs, to erect the plastic tent roofs for the stalls and lay out their wares. It was a community barter moot, nothing more.
She’d been running the route so regularly, many of them waved to her as she went by. She was the girl who ran past, every morning, sun or snow. She was the girl who sometimes waved back. She was the lean, off-world girl with the cropped blonde hair and the shabby, Guard-issue exercise kit and the long legs.
From the market, she jinked left along Sloman’s Concourse, and then crossed the empty cisterns of the tidal docks on the pedestrian footbridge, enjoying the spring of the metal pans shivering under her running steps. Then she was back on the northern tip of the Wharfblade and heading for the Limecut Bridge.
The slice of almonotte lurked at the back of her mind.
She could see vermin birds mobbing the garbage barges moored out in the middle of the river. Their rasping calls floated to her on the cold air, hard and shrill, like the distant squeal of las-fire.
How far today? Across the bridge and into the Oligarchy proper? That would make the round-and-back to Aarlem more than sixteen kilometres. No one ran that far, except her. The enemy forced her to do it.
Two figures were coming towards her along the tow path, in step, a good rhythm going. It was Vadim and Haller, the only two Ghosts she knew who had a running regime even slightly as rigorous as her own. She saw them on this route every few days. The Limecut Bridge was as far as they ever went.
‘Hey, Tona,’ Haller called out as they came up to her. All three of them jogged on the spot as they stopped to talk.
‘Cold today,’ said Vadim.
‘Yeah, cold and getting colder,’ Criid agreed.
‘How far are you going?’ Haller asked.
She shrugged.
‘Maybe up as far as Tournament Square,’ she said.
Vadim whistled. He and Haller took their training seriously, and the running had kept them in shape on Balhaut, especially Haller, who was a big guy and prone to a little flab. By regular regimental standards, they were super-fit. By their standards, she was a fanatic.
‘You going to swing by Section and wave to Rawne?’ asked Haller with a snort.
‘I don’t get it,’ Criid replied.
‘Didn’t you hear?’ Vadim asked her. ‘Last night?’
She shook her head.
‘Rawne got busted real bad,’ Haller told her, with some glee. ‘That’s what I heard anyway. Hark got called in. It’s going to go to sanctions.’
‘What did he do?’ Criid asked.
‘We don’t know,’ said Vadim, ‘but he wasn’t the only one in it. Meryn. Leyr. Varl.’
‘Gak! You’re kidding?’
‘No, and Daur too.’
‘Daur? Now I know you’re kidding!’
‘Seriously, Tona,’ said Haller. ‘It was some kind of big scam and they got busted hard, and Daur was in it too.’
‘I can’t believe that.’
‘It’s off the leash,’ Vadim agreed.
‘It really is,’ Haller said. Haller was ex-Vervun Primary, and he’d known Ban Daur and his clean-cut ways for a long time. If Haller considered the story genuine, that was good enough for Criid.
‘They took them all up to Section,’ said Haller.
‘I heard they were sent to the Stockade at Braunhem,’ Vadim put in.
‘Section,’ Haller insisted. He looked at Tona and smiled. ‘On the bright side, there may be some promotion slots to fill soon, eh, “Captain” Criid?’