‘What in Hades was that?’ said Kell. ‘The… communicatory?’
‘A power generator overload. I made it look like the commoner freedom fighters did it,’ said Koyne. ‘We couldn’t afford to leave any traces. Or survivors.’
The Garantine’s grin grew even wider. ‘See? We’ve already started.’
TEN
Matters of Trust / Breakout / False Flag
‘Don’t run,’ snarled Grohl. ‘They see you running and they’ll know.’
Beye shot him a narrow-eyed look from beneath her forage cap. ‘This isn’t running. Believe me, you’d know if it was running. This is a purposeful walk.’
He snorted and clamped a hand around her arm, forcibly slowing her down. ‘Well, dial it back to a meander. Look casual.’ Grohl glanced around at the marketplace stalls as they passed through them. ‘Look like you want to buy something.’
At their side, Pasri made a face. ‘Buy what, exactly?’ asked the ex-soldier, her scarred nose wrinkling.
She had a point. Most of the stalls were bare, abandoned by owners who were either too afraid to leave their homes, or lacking for produce to offer after the nobles had instituted martial law and imposed checkpoints on all the out-of-city highways. Beye couldn’t help but glance over her shoulder. In the distance, what had once been a precinct tower for the capital’s regiment of Adeptus Arbites was now wreathed in thin smoke. The crossed-out Imperial aquila on its southerly face was visible through the haze, and the harsh croaks of police sirens wafted towards them on the wind.
‘Don’t stare,’ Grohl snapped.
‘You want us to blend in,’ she replied. ‘Everyone else is staring.’ Not that there were many people around. The few daring to venture out onto the streets of Dagonet’s capital kept off the rubble-strewn roads or minded their own business. No one assembled in groups of more than four, fearful of the edicts that threatened arrest and detention for anyone suspected of ‘gathering for reasons of sedition’.
Beye almost laughed at the thought of that. Sedition was the act of treason against an existing order, and if anything, she, Grohl, Pasri and the handful of others were the absolute antithesis of that. They were the ones championing the cause of rightful authority, of the Emperor’s rule. It was the noble clans and the weakling Governor who were the rebels here, rejecting Terra and siding with…
Her eyes flicked up as they passed into a crossroads. There on the island in the centre of the highway, a statue of the Warmaster stood untouched by the street fighting. He towered over her, standing tall with one hand reaching out in a gesture of aid, the other holding a massive bolter pistol upwards to the sky. Beye noticed with a grimace that votive candles and small trinkets had been left at the foot of the plinth by those eager to show their devotion to the new regime.
Grohl paused at the intersection, rubbing at his thin beard, his eyes flicking this way and that. Finally, he made a choice. ‘Over here.’
Beye and Pasri followed him across the monorail lines towards an alleyway between two shuttered storefronts. She managed not to flinch as a patrol rotorplane shrieked past over the rooftops, klaxons hooting.
‘It’s not looking for us,’ Pasri said automatically; but in the next moment, Beye heard a change in the aircraft’s engine note as it circled, looking for a place to put down.
‘Are you sure about that?’
Grohl swore. This entire operation had been a cascade of errors from start to finish. Firstly, the man who was meant to drive the GEV truck did not arrive at the rendezvous, forcing them to improvise with rods and ropes to hold down the steering yoke and throttle – because of course, Grohl would never have considered sacrificing himself for the cause on a target so ordinary. Then, at the approach, they found the barricades placed by the clanner troops had been moved, making their straight shot at the precinct doors impossible. And finally, as the payload of crudely-cooked chemical explosives had at last detonated in a wet blast of noise and light, Beye saw that the damage it inflicted on the building was superficial at best.
She had at least hoped they could escape the security dragnet. But if they were captured, their failure would be total and complete. Beye knew that the patrol flyers carried nine-man teams with cyber-mastiffs and spy drones. The first icy surges of panic bubbled up in her chest as she imagined the interior of a dank interrogation cell. She would never see Capra again.
Grohl broke into a run and she followed him with Pasri at her heels, listening for the metallic barks of the enhanced dogs. He slipped through a gap between two waste skips and down towards a side road. Ahead of him, a woman in a sun-hood and sarong stepped out from a doorway and looked up at them. Beye was struck by the paleness of her face; Dagonet’s bright sunshine tanned everyone on the planet’s temperate zone, which meant she was either a shut-in noblewoman or an off-worlder; and neither were likely to be seen in this part of the inner city.
‘Pardon,’ she began, and her accent immediately confirmed her non-Dagoneti status. ‘If I could trouble you?’
Grohl almost missed a step, but then he pressed on, pushing past the stranger. ‘Get out of my way,’ he growled.
Beye came after him. She heard the yelps of the mastiffs in the distance and saw Pasri looking back the way they had come, her expression unreadable.
‘As you wish,’ the woman said, spreading her hands. Beye saw the glint of metal nozzles at her wrists just as she pursed her pale lips and blew out a long breath. A vaporous mist jetted from the nozzles and engulfed them all.
The ground beneath Beye’s feet suddenly became the consistency of rubber and she stumbled, dimly aware of Grohl doing the same. Pasri let out a weak cry and fell.
As Beye collapsed in a heap, her limbs refusing to do as she told them, she saw the pale woman smile and lick beads of the spray off her fingertips. ‘It’s done,’ she heard her say, the words drawing out into a liquid, humming echo.
Beye’s senses went dark.
The acrid chemical stink of smelling salts jolted her back to wakefulness and Beye coughed violently. Blinking, she raised her head and peered at the room she found herself in, expecting the pale green walls of an Arbites cell; instead, she saw the gloomy interior of some kind of storehouse, shafts of daylight reaching down through holes in a sheet-plas roof.
She was tied to a chair, hands secured behind her back, ankles tethered to the support legs. Grohl was in a similar state to her right, and past him, Pasri looked back at her with an expression of tight fear. Grohl met her gaze, his face a mask of rigid, forced calm. ‘Say nothing,’ he told her. ‘Whatever happens, say nothing.’
‘Right on schedule,’ said a new voice. ‘As you said.’
‘Of course.’ That was the pale woman. ‘I can time the actions of my toxins to the second, if need be.’
Beye focussed and saw the woman in the sarong talking with an odd-looking youth wearing what looked like some form of combat gear. He was working a device mounted on his forearm, a gauntlet that grew a flickering holoscreen. Both of them glanced at their prisoners – for that was what they were, Beye realised belatedly – and then past their heads.
She heard motion behind her and Beye sensed someone standing at her back. ‘Who’s there?’ she said, before she could stop herself.
A third figure moved around the captives and came into view. He was tall, clad in a black oversuit with armour patches and gear packs. A heavy pistol of a design Beye had never seen before hung at his hip. He had a hawkish face that might have been handsome if not for the hardness lurking in his gaze. ‘Names,’ he said.