Wyrd Dreams - Chapter Three

Chapter Three

Ferros Falls, Ground Zero

The central hub of Ferros Falls’ industrial sector was a wasteland. Piles of rubble and twisted metal lay everywhere, bodies intermingled in the carnage. Thick clouds of dust still choked the air even an hour after the quake had hit, and covered the scene with a grey patina.

Captain Barrack watched the aftermath of the hive quake in the shadow of his armoured command vehicle, parked in a wide plaza that had escaped largely intact. Captain… His rank pin shone dully on his collar. It was a relic of his flight from the ironyard five years ago. Promotion after that had felt like an insult. The truth of that mission was that it was a disaster, but like much of what had occurred during the neurone outbreak it had been spun into a positive light. Barrack’s actions that day went down on record as heroic, saving three of his team from certain death with assured command and bravery. But Barrack didn’t feel like a hero. And those other three survivors hadn’t stayed that way for long. He didn’t need the shining shield on his breast to stir his memories – the other did that – but even so, every time he looked at his captain’s badge, the thoughts of that day came back… Barrack crushed them quickly, determined not to give in, and instead focused on his task.

Something niggled at the back of Barrack’s mind as he tried to marshal his thoughts.

‘Shut the hell up,’ he muttered, though there was no one in ear shot, at least none that anyone could see. Just a conscience.

Barrack was dressed in his full riot armour, helmeted and wearing a rebreather cup over his nose and mouth to keep out the quake dust. Spores and other toxins lay dormant beneath the surface of the Necromundan hive levels. After a quake, there was no telling what kinds of poisons and other contagions could be released into the air. Huge atmospheric processors were meant to cleanse it regularly but did so inefficiently if at all, and the stagnant air, if anything, was a ripe breeding ground. Barrack was taking no chances, and had instructed all of his men to don their masks. Brushing a swathe of dust from his helmet visor, he watched the throngs of citizens emerging from the destruction caused by the quake.

Queues of people, trudging forlornly from their wrecked homes, joined a mass of other displaced habbers. Indentured factorum workers, small-time entrepreneurs whose meagre livelihoods had gone up in the quake, crooks, hookers, addicts and all the myriad detritus of Ferros Falls had gathered together and threatened to spill over into the outlying settlements. The shields had been erected quickly, fifty riot-ready and intractable enforcers locked together.

The crowd of citizens pushed hard against the black defensive line, pegged in at the sides by high piles of rubble and other debris, shouting, swearing, crying and threatening. When that failed they took up chunks of fallen masonry, lengths of broken pipe and girder, even makeshift fuel bombs. Groups of regulators, supplied by the local watchmen, together with the watchmen themselves, added some much needed extra muscle. Filtering through the broken alleyways came enforcer-led medical teams, allowed through the riot blockade, with quake survivors. Barrack had established a triage system quickly and the injured were strewn about the plaza in ragged groups.

The area behind the riot screen was thronged with enforcer vehicles, called ‘Repressors’. The slab-nosed transports came fitted with thick dozer blades that were equally adept at shifting rubble and civilians, whilst doubling up as a shield to bolster the already substantial front armour. A large crew compartment could hold fifteen enforcers in full riot gear, but also included a well-stocked weapons locker for close assault and shoot outs. Four of the massive Repressor tanks sat silently behind the shield line, since disgorged of their armoured cargo but with drivers ready and waiting to move up in support should it be necessary. Pintle-mounted flamer units, operated by remote inside the driver’s cab, had been dismantled and replaced with hydro-cannons in a gesture of uncharacteristic restraint. Barrack had insisted on the change, determined to meet the rioters with ‘minimum’ force, and keen to avoid a bloodbath if he could.

Behind the two defensive lines were a further two Repressors, once of which was Barrack’s command vehicle, and three armoured medi-transports, aptly named ‘Saviours’. Unlike the Repressors, the medi-vehicles had no support weapons, but their crews did all carry a sidearm in case of emergency. This then was Barrack’s strongpoint. Open and determined structurally sound, the plaza was close enough to ground zero to be considered a viable command location from which to manage the quake emergency effort. It was a directive sanctioned by the ruling industrial houses of Hive Primus, those with the power, influence and affluence to effect such an operation. Barrack knew those bastards, high above them in their lofty towers of chrome, felt no compulsion towards altruism. The citizens were not their concern. No, the hive quake had struck the industrial district, which meant a break in production and a significant reduction in indentured workforce. It meant a loss in profit. Financial imperative fuelled the House Lords’ urgency, their reaction designed to mitigate the negative remunerative impact of the quake.

A blast of flame exploded near to where Barrack was standing. He resisted the urge to raise his hand against the sudden flare, determined to show nothing but stoic and unshakeable resolve towards the rioters. The fire bomb died quickly. Mercifully it had struck an area of open ground and there were no further casualties.

Even a good fifty metres from the riot line as he was, Barrack could see the desperate faces of the citizens as they fought and snarled and spat. He was reminded again him of a time several years ago. Except those faces had been hungry, rather than angry, they had promised a grisly death and an eternity of unliving damnation. Barrack couldn’t keep it back this time – he felt a presence at his shoulder revel in his anguish at the sudden recall – and remembered, standing there on top of the lode wagon…

The stench of decayed flesh was ripe on the breeze, overlaid with a profound stink of copper. Ammo was running out. There were maybe five rounds left in his autopistol, which he’d started to fire on single shot and only when needed, to conserve what bullets he had. Three minutes was all they’d have to wait. Three minutes surrounded by screaming, three minutes on a steel rock amidst a sea of the dead. Madden, Remus and Whiter: they were all that was left of Barrack’s enforcer team when the Gauntlets finally saw the flare and converged on their position. The armoured speeder lit up the sky above, searchlights strafing the ironyard before fixing on the lode carrier were Barrack and his men cowered. The crew compartment in the side of the speeder fell open like a stepped, steel tongue.

Indiscernible shadow figures within waved in readiness before unfurling a long rope ladder with metal rungs. It clanked as it struck the side of the carrier. Barrack waved his men on first, despite their protests. The noise of the Gauntlet’s engines was deafening and he had to scream his orders for Madden to lead the embarkation. Whiter followed, abandoning the heavy vox unit on the lode carrier. Remus was next. He was wounded and his face was ashen but he dragged himself up the ladder because his life depended on it. Barrack came last of all. The absence of his enforcers meant that the zombies had gained a foothold on the carrier. Bane used four of his remaining shots to clear away the closest before he grabbed the rope. He battle-signed for the speeder to take off and with a backwash of belly thrusters the Gauntlet began to rise, kicking up clouds of dust and spinning errant pieces of trash with the down force of its engines.

Barrack started to climb when he felt his leg snagged. He looked down to see a desperate mother, cradling a baby and clinging on to his boot with her other hand. She was not a plague zombie; she had somehow found a way through the carnage and got on top of the lode carrier. The speeder was gaining altitude now, and the undead swarm was beneath them as they rose steadily. Barrack couldn’t reach for her and he felt his own grip slowly loosening as he struggled to lift the extra weight. She was screaming, tears cutting clean rivulets through her dirty face. Barrack’s fingers were slipping. He roared as he fought to hold on. The Gauntlet was rising with each passing second. Barrack’s shoulders were burning with the sustained effort. Below, he looked past the mother and saw the thronging zombie hordes swelling like an unclean ocean. They’d swamped the remaining lode carriers and with it the last of the civilians in the ironyard. This woman was all that was left.

If I can just save one…

Barrack bellowed at her to try and climb, even as he urged himself to hold on just a little longer. Then he saw the wound on her arm, the tell-tale purple-black bruise, the teeth marks. She’d been infected with the neurone disease. Even as she struggled, the air buffeting her frail body, the belly lights of the Gauntlet flashing over her, Barrack could see the life slowly dying in her eyes. When that light went out, she would be lost. Barrack pulled his autopistol from his holster. One-handed, he wouldn’t have long to do what he had to.

I’m sorry.

Grim-faced, he mouthed the words and took aim. He’d never forget the woman’s expression when she realised what he was about to do. Barrack had her in his sights when the baby cradled in her arm cried out. It was like a dagger in his heart. Closing his eyes, Barrack pulled the trigger. Thunder roared inside his head and for a moment he thought he might fall anyway. But then the weight was lifted and he swung around quickly to grasp the ladder, weaving his arms through the rungs to get a better hold. He stayed there like it for the rest of the journey, not daring to let go, unable to climb higher. Barrack crushed the ladder close like it was a living thing, and tried not to picture her face, to hear her baby’s scream…

***

‘You look like hell.’

Trank’s voice came through the vox-ponder built into the forward cab of the judicial grav-car, filtering into the passenger compartment where Bane was sitting. They’d left the apartment ten minutes after he’d aborted the call to Alicia. Trank had been ready and waiting when Bane had reached the motor pool, which was a short lifter journey from his abode. Bane had dressed quickly in a plain, deep navy suit. Collar and jacket studs carried the Hive City judge seal. Polished black boots bore silver buckles. He finished the ensemble with a crimson storm cloak that had a judicial clasp at the collar. The voluminous mantle provided an air of authority, but also helped to mask the bulge of Bane’s autopistol beneath his jacket. It wasn’t his preferred attire. But this was official business, after a fashion, and Bane was wily enough in the politicking of Hive City to know that a dirty vest and combat fatigues wasn’t how you greeted the natives.

‘Thank you, Trank. As ever, your candour cuts to the heart of the matter. Don’t hold back, though, will you,’ Bane replied with a wry grin. Trank was more than a mere chauffeur and aide; more, in fact, than a bodyguard. He was Bane’s conscience. Three years he’d been in Bane’s employ. And for three years Trank had kept him off the booze, the drugs, even kept the despair at bay. Despite all that time, Bane still knew little about him, save that he was once an assassin – Trank didn’t like the term and preferred ‘fixer’, claiming it expressed a broader remit of his skills – paid for by Spire credit. Trank alleged that he’d had an epiphany during a particular job that in his words went ‘bad’. The precise nature of what had transpired, what ‘bad’ actually meant, was never spoken, and Bane didn’t press him for the details. Bleeding and close to death, Trank had found his way past the Spire Wall and into Hive City Upper. In his debilitated condition that was a feat in itself. That’s where he’d crossed paths with Bane, who’d taken him in and patched him up. Bane thought he was a decent judge of character, and figured Trank possessed a sense of honour of sorts, plus he was so damn dangerous that not to have him on side was a pointless risk, so Bane gave him a new vocation, one that better suited his newfound sensibilities. So far, he had no cause to regret that decision. In fact, Trank was about the only person in Hive Primus that Bane trusted.

‘Just saying,’ Trank answered. Bane could almost imagine him raising his eyebrows plaintively at the remark.

‘I haven’t been sleeping well,’ Bane said by way of explanation, though Trank hadn’t pressed for one. He peered out of the tinted armourglas at the world beyond the grav-car. Gloom-drenched tunnels made from bare rockcrete with titanium rebars, and punctuated by intermittent strip lights, gave way to towering smoke stacks, blocky gunmetal structures and interwoven railstrips and trackways as they emerged from the access tunnel of the motor pool. This was Hive City. Winking neon was everywhere. Pipes ran the length and breadth of vast, partially constructed, levels that were connected by giant lifters rammed with people. The lifters rose and fell with circadian rhythm, venting steam in hot, white plumes. A thick, ugly green-yellow fug drenched the streets and massed precipitator banks churned slowly as they trickled out ‘rain’ that built into toxic sheets by the time it struck the ground.

‘More bad dreams?’ Trank ventured after a short pause, navigating the grav-car inexorably downward. A skilled driver, Trank wove the vehicle through a myriad of obstacles, the territory thickening the lower they went: steel overhangs that stretched for kilometres in every direction; vox antenna and the covert listening spires of intel-traders; localised picter arrays, advertising the services of gambling dens, whore houses and meat farms; and the jutting spikes of half-finished or half-collapsed sub-levels full with wrecker-crews or clinging scavengers.

‘Are you still seeing that… specialist?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ Bane answered simply, inwardly smirking at Trank’s careful use of words. After a beat, he added, ‘to both questions. We’re headed there next, after I find out what’s going on down there.’

‘I assume you’ll keep the appointment this time?’

‘Yes, Trank,’ said Bane, a tremor of annoyance at the incessant questioning, and then whispered to himself. ‘I’m not backing out this time.’

‘Are you hoping to bump into her?’ Trank asked, changing the subject to one that was even less comfortable.

‘Not especially,’ Bane lied. ‘I just want to see how badly damaged the area is. She might need something.’

‘She might,’ Trank answered, letting it linger.

‘You’re unusually talkative today, Trank,’ Bane observed. It wasn’t a criticism, just a comment on the out of the ordinary. Trank was as taciturn as they come.

‘I find a drive brings out the conversationalist in me, sir,’ he replied. ‘That and too much caffeine.’

Bane smiled at the remark, turning away from the urbanised vista beyond the grav-car’s armourglas and back to the vehicle’s interior. Immediately he noticed the external surveyors flashing red for atmospheric toxins.

‘Adjusting,’ Trank said through the vox, clearly having been seen the warning icon, too. A few seconds passed and the red icon turned green, the toxin filters and air scrubbers doing their work, before it winked out altogether.

The grav-car wasn’t hermetically sealed, but carried sophisticated environmental filtration systems and was extremely well armoured. The sleek, black outer carapace belied its durability, and could withstand a close range grenade or krak missile attack. It was also fire proof and came fitted with psy-dampeners to ward off all but the most ardent psychic assault. All in all it was tank, its thrusters designed to carry the extra weight that all the tech and armour entailed.

Inside, the grav-car was opulent with dark leather and polished chrome. Bane had removed the modest mini-bar for obvious reasons, but he’d also had Trank rip out the audio-voxcaster. Instead he’d had a fold out compartment installed in the back of the driver’s cab where he kept a heavy-gauge, wide-bore combat shotgun and five hundred shells on an auto-loader array. The right side door panel interior also had a secret chamber where a pair of fully-loaded stubbers with hollow-point, dum-dums, sat snugly in case of emergency.

Other than the munitions modifications, the vehicle was a standard judges’ grav-car, afforded to Bane by dint of his lofty position. Not that he sat on council much, or got involved with the internal politicking or inevitable power struggles that went on. He kept his ear to the ground though, tried to keep tabs on certain individuals – friends, foes and, as of yet, unknowns that he’d crossed paths with in both his former lives.

The outer of the grav-car armour was emblazoned with the judicial emblem in gilded chrome on both sides of the vehicle, which sped like a glossy dart through the poison clouds of pollution to reach their destination.

‘Any cravings?’ Trank asked, returning to the earlier topic, the noise of the engine lessening as he slowed for their final ascent.

‘Some,’ Bane admitted. It was like going through a checklist: sleep patterns, narcotic urges, state of mind etc. It had worked so far, but Bane’s dreams, particularly of late, had been getting worse. They’d forced him into taking a step he didn’t want to make. Bane filed the thought away for now as they closed on the quake centre.

Altimeter readings said they were five-hundred metres from their destination when Bane looked out of the grav-car window again. A rapidly expanding dust cloud rolled over a scene of carnage below. Shattered buildings jutted at improbable angles like broken limbs, gaping fissures in metal and rockcrete gaped like jagged maws, and raging fires spat out plumes of coiling black-grey smoke.

Two hundred metres from the scene and bodies were made visible, thronging in the destruction. A mass of them was gathered together and thrashed against a thin black line of enforcers like an undulating tide. Others were spread out in disparate groups. Bane could see some through the haze of roiling quake dust trapped beneath debris or knelt by the cooling corpses of loved ones, weeping disconsolately. The devastation, the streams of desperate, displaced habbers went on for kilometres. As Trank swept them over the entire scene, Bane saw a clutter of vehicles, Repressors and Saviours in a horseshoe pattern, parked on an open plaza and situated behind a modest defence line of other armoured vehicles.

‘Down there,’ Bane said into the vox-ponder.

‘Looks like a lot of quake dust kicking around, sir,’ Trank said, engaging the landing thrusters when he had them in position.

‘Wear your filter plugs,’ Bane answered, taking a pair of discrete nasal filters from his jacket and inserting them up both of his nostrils individually. The air in the grav-car became stagnant through the plugs, but at least when they got outside it wouldn’t choke them.

‘Landing in one minute, sir.’

Bane regarded the thronging hordes through the armourglas as the grav-car descended through the murk, their pallid faces pleading for succour. It wasn’t so different from the dread visages that haunted Bane from his past.

‘Take us in slow,’ Bane said, as he turned away from the window and checked his gun.

***

Medicae crews and enforcer relief units scattered as the armoured grav-car hove in to view. Landing lights stabbed out into the dust-choked gloom below and lit up stark overlapping patches of white showing that the area was clear. Dust and drifting smoke from the multiple fires beyond the riot line, recoiled from the grav-car’s descent-thrust.

Barrack turned when he saw the vehicle slowly coming down and moved as if entranced from the side of his Repressor. The grav-car came down steadily, exhaust jets venting a metre from the ground before it drifted to a perfect landing. Barrack felt his heart beating wildly beneath his carapace body armour and not from the Hive City judge icon emblazoned on the grav-car’s armoured flank. The throaty engines of the vehicle died to a low murmur and with a pressure-hiss the grav-car door unlocked and slid open.

The driver emerged first, a massive, slab-like individual with a minimalist black suit, bereft of collar and buttoned right up to his trunk-like neck. He wore long, black boots that came to his knees and the discrete bulge beneath his suit jacket could only be a side-arm. The driver had hard eyes and a long, square face. If he felt any discomfort from the raging dust storm kicked up around him, he did not show it. His hair was close-cropped, Barrack guessed ex-military or at the very least enforcer academy trained, and he stood a few inches above the enforcer captain, despite the fact that Barrack was bulked out by his riot armour.

After scanning the crowd, the driver moved with slow purpose to stand by the side of grav-car. As soon as he was in position, a second door slid open, this time to the passenger compartment, and another figure stepped out.

This was the judge, wearing the trappings of his office, perhaps less ostensibly than some, Barrack thought. Age lines marked his face, but his jaw was firm and set; his eyes hard like his bodyguard’s but less dangerous somehow. A crimson storm cloak, snapped in a light breeze coming from the grav-car’s cooling engines but fell still as they wound down to an all stop. Barrack saw the judge say something into his cloak clasp and the bodyguard touched his ear and nodded. The enforcer captain guessed they had personal comm-links. In any case, the judge approached and the bodyguard stood sentry at the grav-car, discretely surveying the area with low sweeps, his thick neck turning like an industrial crane.

‘Enforcer Captain Barrack,’ shouted Barrack, above the crowd noise. ‘I’m in charge, here.’ The rioters had been whipped up into an even greater frenzy at the appearance of the grav-car and more missiles had started flying overhead, the occasional spit of flame as the more volatile ones smashed against carapace riot shields.

‘Judge Bane,’ the other man replied, shaking hands firmly with the enforcer captain.

Barrack felt a faint twinge of excitement in his gut. This was the Erik Bane, ex-enforcer turned watchmen, turned Hive City judge. Most within the ranks of the Enforcers had heard of him, and opinion was divided as to whether or not Bane should have been given a second chance. Some wild theories even postulated that it was he that started the neurone plague outbreak in the first place, others that once a washout always a washout. Barrack was not one of those people. In his eyes Bane was a hero, a survivor like him. He knew first hand what it had been like five years ago, the desperation, the hopelessness, the terror… Barrack wondered whether or not Bane still felt it. Just by looking at him it was impossible to tell.

‘It’s an honour to meet you, sir,’ Barrack replied. His voice held the kind of formal reserve that wouldn’t be out of place on the parade ground. ‘I too served during the neurone plague.’

‘I didn’t serve anyone, save myself,’ Bane responded curtly. ‘I survived, captain, that’s all. Now, bring me up to speed with the situation.’

‘Of course, sir,’ Barrack answered, reining in his deference to re-establish a more professional demeanour.

***

The enforcer captain walked Bane over to the command Repressor, appraising him as they went. The hivequake had hit without warning, the tremor and subsequent aftershocks affecting several blocks over fifty kilometres. The damage at the centre had been massive, several structures levelled with multiple civilian casualties. Opportunist gangers had been emboldened by the carnage, looting, murdering and vandalising as they’d emerged from the relative obscurity of the underhive. The captain had told Bane that crews of regulators, working alongside local watchmen, were being tasked with corralling the belligerent gangers into order. For the most part they were succeeding.

Once at the command Repressor, Captain Barrack escorted Bane inside and showed him surveyor reports on a series of data-slates to back up his initial debrief. They showed seismic readings emanating from an epicentre about half a kilometre from the plaza, as well as several heat signatures from multiple fires both above and below ground.

‘This area has been deemed safe, then?’ Bane asked as regarded the first data-slate again. This one showed casualty estimates and medicae injury reports. Crucially, for those with less humanitarian concerns, it extrapolated the negative effect on production in the area and the subsequent impact on revenue expectations.

‘The plaza is reinforced with adamantium rebars and in-filled with rockcrete,’ Barrack replied, swiftly. ‘It’s the safest location in the quake area.’

‘And beyond the plaza?’

‘We’ve received reports from our tech-adepts of post quake fissures opening up as well as crete-fall and heavy dust clouds. It’ll be another sixteen hours at least before the outlying zone is secure,’ Barrack said.

The crew compartment of the Repressor was unusually compact given the additional command instrumentation inside. It was dark too, the dull neon of the consoles, coupled with the faded screen glare of the data-compiling monitors, casting a weak light into the stark, black metal chamber. There were two officers present, command aides in uniform but bereft of riot armour. Bane had noticed a broad side-locker as they’d entered through a sloping rear entry gate that doubled up as stairs, and assumed there were two suits and some combat shotguns secured within. Both men to their credit at least wore their sidearms.

Bane had some experience in riots situations and knew they could turn ugly very quickly. It was part of the reason he’d left Trank with the grav-car. The bodyguard had strict orders to get the hell out if the barricades were overrun, and meet up at the apartment complex later. If Bane needed him, he’d call and they’d work out an extraction routine on the fly. In any event, there was no sense in risking the judicial transport getting damaged or hi-jacked. Trank, though, was enough deterrent for anyone, so Bane felt satisfied his property was well safeguarded.

In addition to the two command aides, peering like insomniacs at the streaming data and listening intently to the surveyor net linking all of the enforcer helmet voxes, was a cogitation servitor. Severed at the waist, the meat and metal creature was slaved to the main control console and managed all of the data coming in from external intel relays set throughout this area of the city as well as the reports filtering in from the medical teams and enforcer security detail that shadowed them. The servitor’s blank eyes darted left to right as more information was fed to it, the thick cables from his cranium, draped over the back of the port into which its torso was affixed, carrying the neural data to its partly lobotomised brain to be regurgitated in binary then finally translated into the reports that Bane was, at that moment, considering.

Cyborgs and the use of augmetic enhancement were commonplace in Hive Primus. There was a lucrative black market trade on cybernetic limbs and replacement organs. Of course, such items were not guaranteed and the cost, and risk, in having a back street surgeon, cum tech, insert them was great. At least those used by the Enforcers were serviced and regularly checked. Van Saar tech of the highest quality provided much of the actual resource required, the House having held the contract to do so for several years. A contract viewed with envious eyes by a number of the other industrial Houses. But Van Saar kept their tech a closely guarded secret and so with an effective monopoly there was no one to challenge them. Despite such assurances as to its quality and function, the servitor still reminded him of a zombie in many ways, except it was even bereft of the base desires of those things, no more than rudimentary electrical brain impulses running through pre-programmed protocols and routines. Bane envied its fate even less than that of a neurone plague victim.

As he looked through the various reports, Bane became aware of the anxious demeanour of the captain. When they’d first met outside on the plaza, Bane had looked into the man’s eyes, even shrouded as they were behind the vision slit of his helmet, and seen unease or perhaps even fear. Now inside the Repressor, Barrack had removed his helmet, keen to cool the sweat lathering his hair and face with the vehicle’s inadequate air filtering system, and the sunken eyes, the slightly fevered expression was all too apparent. Not the kind of impression Bane had been looking for in the man allegedly in charge of the situation.

Bane turned to the enforcer and fixed him with a glare.

‘You seem preoccupied, Captain Barrack,’ he said, deciding to give voice to his concerns.

‘We’re stretched, that’s all,’ Barrack replied, regaining some of his composure under Bane’s steely gaze. ‘I have fifty shields to hold back over five hundred citizens and rising,’ he added. ‘When the quake hit it crushed tenements, entire hab blocks, displacing a lot of people. Where else are they going to go but to us? Do you know how many times that rescue crews have been attacked going out into the quake zone to look for survivors?’

Bane answered him with silence.

‘Eighteen times out of twenty; and that’s just based on the last hour’s figures. We’re holding it together, sir, but I’ll not lie to you and say we aren’t being pushed to the limit here.’

Bane felt his disquiet ebb. The man was doing his best. There was a time when Bane could’ve claimed to be under similar pressure, only he had buckled catastrophically. Maybe that was the reason why he was so sensitive now.

‘My apologies, captain,’ Bane conceded. ‘I know you’re only trying to do your job.’

Barrack smiled thinly and was about to reply when a report crackled through on his helmet vox.

‘Captain, it’s Proctor Fort here. We’ve cleared a way through to the epicentre, sir,’ came a voice from somewhere in the quake zone. ‘And you won’t believe what we’ve found.’

‘What is it, Fort?’ Barrack asked, his brow rippled with concern.

‘I’d rather not say on the open vox, sir. I think you need to see this for yourself.’

Barrack glanced over to Bane, who kept his expression neutral.

‘We’re on our way, Fort,’ the captain replied after a moment. ‘Make sure the area is secure. I don’t want anyone near it who doesn’t have to be,’ Barrack added, about to replace his helmet when the proctor spoke again.

‘There’s something else, sir.’

‘Yes.’

‘There’s already an investigator at the scene.’

Investigators were just another branch of the enforcers, though they actually dealt with the business of detection and crime syndication, rather than riots and urban pacification. Essentially, they were just another rank echelon within the institution, though one with broader remit, who often acted covertly as intelligence gatherers and occasionally assassins. Most thought they were a law unto themselves, and in many ways they were.

‘Who is it?’ asked Barrack, his expression tense as he awaited the answer.

‘Investigator Rauke,’ Fort replied.

Barrack’s face hardened and for a moment he didn’t speak, as if weighing up what Rauke’s presence there meant.

‘Damn it,’ he breathed and jammed his helmet back on.

‘Problem?’ Bane asked, setting down the data-slate.

‘Rauke travels with bad company,’ Barrack replied, and started securing his helmet clasps. Clearly he wasn’t about to elucidate. Instead, just before he affixed his rebreather, he added, ‘If you’d like to accompany me, a safe route has been cleared through the quake zone that’ll get us straight to the epicentre. I assume you want to see it?’

‘Of course, captain,’ Bane said, noticing the fluctuation in demeanour as he tried to decide if the man was actually unstable or just fighting the pressure. He supposed that time would tell. ‘Lead on,’ he said, and followed Barrack out of the Repressor and into the dust and the noise outside.