‘On my mark.’
Armoured bodies tensed. Riot shields and shock batons were gripped. The red lumens of breaching charges pulsed steadily.
Provost-Savant Arkion looked at the enforcer squad’s leader.
‘Vox?’
‘Jammers active, sir.’
‘Pict recorders?’
‘Deactivated, as you ordered.’
‘Good. You may proceed, in the name of the Lex.’
‘Mark!’ the squad leader barked, and the breaching charges exploded. Similar reports echoed down the corridors as other entrances to the Departmento Analytica’s chamber were raided simultaneously.
The Provost-Savant was first through the breach.
‘SURRENDER! RESIST AND DIE!’
The vox-amplifiers of his armour turned his words into a deafening roar. In his wake, the enforcers emerged from the smoke, crunching across the debris and fanning out across the chamber. Other squads were doing the same from different directions.
‘Wha-what is the meaning of this?’
A man in the trappings of a senior scribe demanded weakly. Around the chamber, his subordinates were remorselessly dragged from their desks and thrown on the cold stonecrete floor face down, hands and legs zip-tied with ruthless efficiency. Even the slightest hint of resistance was rewarded by brutal beatings.
The Provost-Savant marched up to the scribe and glared down at him. The man shrank beneath the weight of the gaze, even hidden behind the mirrored visor of the Arbitrator’s helm.
‘Tertiary Ledger Inspector Barnerd Klur is under suspicion of aiding and abetting criminals. You will surrender him for investigation,’ Provost-Savant Arkion declared, his words brooking no argument.
The senior scribe gulped painfully, whimpered something and shuffled to Klur’s station. Arkion’s target lay on the hard ground, his thin frame wracked by silent sobs. One eye was swollen already, but the other looked up at the Provost-Savant with wide-eyed terror.
‘I haven’t done anything wrong,’ Klur slurred through broken teeth and lips. ‘I-’
His feeble protestation was cut short as the Provost-Savant racked his Executioner shotgun. The shell slid home with an ominous cha-chunk.
‘I’ll be the judge of that,’ the Arbitrator growled. ‘Take him away!’
The two closest enforcers grabbed Klur under his armpits and hauled him away unceremoniously. Arkion would deal with him later, but first, he had to erase the evidence.
He waved another faceless enforcer to him.
‘Bag and tag all of Krul’s belongings and have it delivered to my office.’
Hayn screamed as gunfire blew the plasglass door of his tiny ablution-cell into a hail of glittering shards. The impact threw him against the wall, where he crumpled, bleeding from a thousand cuts. Before he could even understand what was happening, an armoured glove grabbed his ankle and dragged him through the broken remains of the doorframe. The tattooed skin on his back was torn to bloody ribbons over the jagged edges. Hayn screamed again.
‘You might be wondering why you’re still alive,’ Provost-Savant Arkion said as he let go of Hayn’s ankle and left him bleeding, naked in the middle of the cramped hab-unit.
‘Aye,’ Hayn said through gritted teeth, fighting down the pain. ‘Ain’t yer style, boss.’
‘That is so. Those who break the Lex shall die by my hand.’
Hayn chortled despite his predicament.
‘Yer an Emperor damned hypocrite! Ya break the law just like we do!’
The Arbitrator rounded on the gang leader and kicked him squarely in the groin. Hayn howled in pain.
‘You dare presume to lecture me about the Lex?’ Arkion sneered as he tapped the savant-implant at the back of his head. ‘I know every word of it. Every permutation of it, from the sector capital’s to the most remote solar system’s. If you look long enough, you will find everything is permitted.’
‘But,’ Hayn wheezed, ‘it’s still wrong.’
‘Too late to grow a conscience,’ Arkion said, crouching down next to the tortured gang leader. ‘But you’ll tell me who put you and Klur up to this.’
‘Never!’
‘We’ll see about that,’ the Provost-Savant stood up and opened the hab-unit’s door. Men entered with plastek wraps and serrated blades in hand. ‘You’ll have time to reconsider while the boys slowly harvest your organs.’
‘Hands in the air where I can see them,’ Provost-Savant Arkion barked at the priest, who spat his recaff all over his vestment. Father Pokoska was not prepared for a late-night visit by the Adeptus Arbites in his bedchamber.
‘I’m not asking twice.’
The old man raised his hands slowly, an empty tin mug dangling from his fingers, and turned towards the unexpected visitor.
‘I do not know why you are here, lawman, but I assure you, I am no threat,’ Pokoska said as calmly as he could manage while staring into the yawning maw of a large-bore shotgun’s barrel.
‘Lies,’ spat Arkion and tossed a bloodstained journal at the priest’s bare feet. ‘Klur was meticulous. He wrote everything down. You sent him sniffing.’
Father Pokoska lowered his hands despite the threat and bent down to pick up the journal with a weary sigh.
‘And you found him,’ the priest replied, clutching the journal to his emaciated chest. ‘Because he had found evidence of your dirty money, hadn’t he?’
‘Evidence? No. Just bookkeeping errors.’
‘Yet you silenced him. Same as Hayn.’ The priest shook his head sadly. ‘And just when he was starting to see His light.’
‘Irrelevant. What matters is that you deceived Lex-abiding citizens into questioning my actions. I have done nothing that the Lex Imperialis does not permit.’
‘Permit?’ Father Pokoska asked, his voice rising in anger. ‘The word of the God-Emperor is more than just a collection of laws! It is our guiding beacon, our way through the infinite horrors that seek to devour us! A moral compass showing us true north so that we might never lose our way! And you, my son, are lost!’
‘Wrong, Father. The Lex guides me unerringly,’ Arkion replied with absolute conviction.
‘Then you are damned, Arbitrator!’
‘Damned? I think not, Father. For you cannot have damnation without salvation,’ the Provost-Savant drew his shotgun. Racking the slide, Arkion chambered an Executioner round. ‘And there’s no such thing as salvation.’
About the Author
Daniel was born on a sunny, peaceful spring morning in Budapest, Hungary. He preferred watching television over reading books. That changed when his school took him to the public library and everyone was forced to pick a book to read. He chose The Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs. despite his initial distain, our hero devoured the book in a few days and hasn´t stopped reading since. If you got this far, please send help, his budget (and shelves) can´t handle more books. Oh, and he occasionally entertains the idea of being a writer. The fool.
