‘Throne! Let her die!’ Nayl barked. ‘Frigging psyker! What? What?’ Kara and Thonius were already heading for the door.

‘One life, Harlon,’ I said as I slid past him. ‘I learned many things from Eisenhorn, but ruthlessness was not one of them. Thousands may die, millions even, unless Molotch is found and brought to justice. But any count of a million starts with one, and to ignore one life when there is still a chance of saving it, well, one might as well give up on the other nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine as well.’

‘Whatever,’ said Nayl.

‘Thank you for your vote of confidence,’ I said. ‘Kara, inform the Magistratum that these interviews are suspended until we return.’

XIII

The armoured manse did indeed belong to the man named Loketter, and nineteen counts of narco-traffic were outstanding on his name. The manse was a brass mushroom that dominated a long slope of rubble scree above the shadowland of the slum-tracts. Down here, with the monolithic bulk of Urbitane behind us, the immensity of the urban squalor and ruin was shocking to see.

The manse was ferro-armoured, and shielded, but our scanners lit with the buzz of electromag activity inside.

‘Signals!’ Kara reported. ‘They’re running drones out into the slum.’

‘Can you track them?’ I asked.

‘Working…’ She adjusted some dials. ‘I’ve got a lock on nine. Covering a hex-grid twelve by ten. Map comparison… Throne, these archives are so old! Here we go. An area known as Low Tenalt.’

‘Details?’

‘Serious slum-land,’ Carl said, speed-viewing the data on his codifier. ‘Basically wreckage. High probability of gang activity. Territorially, the gangs are the Dolors and, to the west, the ruin-burbs are run by the so-called Pennyrakers. Magistratum advice is to avoid this area.’

‘Really?’

Carl shrugged. ‘Magistratum advice is a blanket “avoid the slum-tracts”, so what the hey?’

‘How far?’ I asked.

At the helm of the cargo-gig, Nayl consulted the gyro-nav built into the stick. ‘Eight spans to the Low Tenalt area from here, on boost.’

‘Do it,’ I said.

‘You don’t want to level this manse first?’ Nayl asked.

‘They can wait. This girl can’t.’

Nayl nodded reluctantly, and hit the boosters. He wasn’t in this like the rest of us were. Running low, like a pond-fly skating the surface, we zipped through the ruined landscape, skipping rubble heaps, ducking under shattered transit bridges, running fast and low along the brick-waste gouges that had once been hab-streets.

Everything was a grey gloom, caught in the immense shadow of the city. Such ruin, such endless ruin…

‘Coming up, point three,’ reported Nayl, hauling on the stick. The engines whined shrill. ‘Two… one… setting down.’

The gig thumped and slithered as it settled on the loose brick.

Carl, Nayl and Kara were already up, arming weapons.

‘Sit down, Carl,’ I said. ‘I need you to run scope from here.’

‘Oh,’ he said.

‘I want full scanner input,’ I said as I hovered towards the opening hatch behind Kara and Harlon. ‘Wystan can watch your back.’