The door was blown in by a shotgun blast at point-blank range. The proctors poured in and the servo-skull floated in after them. Scanning lumen beams picked out blood and bodies, and then someone found the control for the apartment’s main light source.

‘Three bodies, all deceased through violent means,’ someone said dispassionately. ‘Estimated time of death, three to five days. Wounds appear to have been inflicted by a short-bladed power weapon.’

‘That’s what he had,’ DeShelle said urgently, a note of alarm in her voice. ‘That was what he used in the corridor!’

‘Bedroom is clear.’

‘Washroom is clear.’

The pict-feed lingered on one face-down body, with a sheet of dried blood that had spilled out from it across the floor, scanned over another, then descended slightly to focus on the face of the third. This one was definitely female, and was sitting propped up against a wall with a wound in the top of her skull.

Chetta felt as if someone had a hand around her throat. The face of the third body had been distorted and the flesh discoloured by the interim between death and discovery, but she still recognised its features, and the remarkably pale shade of its skin.

‘Emperor on the Throne,’ DeShelle breathed beside her. ‘That’s Jalamar’s aide!’

If Jalamar had known of Niklau, and had sent people hunting him, why feign ignorance earlier that evening? Why not seek plaudits by bringing the threat to the authorities earlier?

Unless…

‘These pictures,’ she said desperately, turning to Ngiri. ‘Are they being broadcast to the Jo’Sin shuttle as well?’

‘They should be,’ Ngiri said grimly, and Chetta could tell by the expression on the other woman’s face that she’d just come to the same alarming conclusion. The only convincing reason for Jalamar Jo’Sin’s aide to be where she was, when she’d been there, was if she’d had prior contact with Niklau. If she had, for example, facilitated his arrival and activities on Vorlese.

If at least some of Radimir Niklau’s actions had been sponsored by House Jo’Sin – the house that had a flyer tailing Ngiri’s craft at this very moment.

‘Jekri,’ Ngiri voxed into her comm-bead, ‘evasive–’

There was a roar from the stern of the gun-cutter, and it shook as though in the hands of an angry god. Chetta’s legs gave out beneath her and the deck came up with punishing force to strike her in the hip, the arm and the side of her head. She tasted the tang of blood in her mouth where her teeth had momentarily dug into her cheek. Her shoulder was numb.

The lights flickered and died, and, with a stomach-churning lurch, the gun-cutter began to fall out of the air.

The Smog Deeps

The Smog Deeps