Her voice trailed away and she collapsed on the bed.
'Get dressed. Stay here. I will want to talk to you.'
I moved to the door of the chamber and looked out into the unlit hall. Below, down the stairwell, gunflashes and shouts echoed up.
Seeing my shape in the doorway, a man ran towards me.
'Wylk! Wylk! They've found us! They've-'
A moment before he realised I was not Wylk, I decked him with the butt of my weapon. He fell hard.
Two solid shots raked the doorframe next to me.
I ducked back in, sliding back the grip of the shotgun.
Shots punched through the wall above the bed-head. Bequin screamed and rolled off the bed.
I blasted back, punching two more large holes in the door.
Two men slammed into the room, wild-eyed and desperate. Both were dressed in light interior clothes. One had a laspistol, the other an autorifle.
I dropped the lasgunner with one direct shot that hurled his body against the wall. The man with the autorifle opened fire, his shots chewing through one of the bed-posts.
I dived for cover as the automatic fire ripped up tufts of carpet, shattered mirrors and demolished furnishings.
Rolling, I frantically sought cover.
My would-be killer dropped face-down onto the bed. The girl pulled a long retractable knife out of the back of his neck.
'I saved your life/ she told me. 'That'll make it better for me, right?'
I told the girl to stay put in the bedroom, and from her nod I was pretty sure she would.
I stepped out into the gloomy hall. The level below had fallen silent.
'Fischig?' I voxed.
'Come down/ his reply crackled back.
A spiral stairway led down into a large, split-level lounge area. The air was thick with smoke, which coiled out of the terrace window-doors we had opened. The hard daylight of the Sun-dome streamed in, making ladder-bars of light in the drifting haze. The opposite wall of the room
was a wide segmented shutter. If opened, it would reveal a view over the freezing wastes beyond the dome.
A storm of gunfire had ruined the expensive furniture and decorative fittings. Five corpses lay twisted at various points on the floor. Fischig, his visor raised, was hauling a sixth man up into a high-backed chair. The man, wounded in the right shoulder, was wailing and crying. Fischig cuffed him into place.
'Upstairs?' Fischig asked me without looking round.
'Clear/1 reported.
I walked round the room, eyeing the dead and examining items left scattered on tabletops and bureaux.
'I know some of these men/ the chastener added, unsolicited. 'Those two by the window. Locals, low-grade labourers. Long list of petty convictions on both/
'Hired muscle/
'Seems to be your man's way. The others are off-worlders/
'You've found papers?'
'No, it's just a hunch. None of them have got any ID or markers, and I haven't found a cache anywhere/
What about this one?' I walked over to join him by the prisoner he had cuffed to the chair. The man coughed and whined, rolling his eyes. Unless he possessed unnaturally boosted strength thanks to drugs or hidden aug-metics, this man wasn't muscle. He was older, spare of frame, with grizzled salt and pepper growth on his chin.
'You didn't kill this one deliberately, did you?' I asked Fischig. He smiled slightly, as if pleased that I had noticed.
'I– I have rights!' The man spat suddenly.
'You are in the custody of the Imperial Inquisition/ I told him frankly. 'You have no rights whatsoever/
He fell silent.
'Off-worlder/ Fischig said. I raised an eyebrow. Accent/ Fischig explained.
I'd never have detected it myself. This was one of the reasons I used local help whenever I got the chance, even a potential troublemaker like the chastener. My work takes me from world to world, culture to culture. Slight differences in dialect or incongruities of slang regularly pass me by. But Fischig had heard it at once. And it made sense. If this was a leader rather than muscle, one of Eyclone's chosen lieutenants, then the odds were he was from off-world.
'Your name?' I asked.
'I will not answer/
'Then I will not have that wound treated for a while/
