Above and Beyond - Episode 3 by Áron Németh

Author:Áron Németh [Németh, Áron]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Warhammer 40000, Games Workshop
Publisher: The Black Library
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

The prisoner was a member of a mercenary group that had been employed by one of the many factions on Rengris. Since the death of the previous governor, the system was ripe for such work – the risks were nicely counterbalanced by the rewards, and with the decline of interstellar trade, the other options were so abysmal that anyone with a gun or the guts was eager to sign up. No major purges had been authorised, curfews were selectively upheld – based on political allegiance – by the crony law enforcement officers, but the man had heard about some pinpoint strikes that had taken out various cults full of undesirables. Rumour had it, among the bounty hunters and similar lowlifes, that the nobility was doing as much to destabilise the economy as the Genestealers – the presence of which was strictly controlled information. It was a miracle of co-ordination and the Emperor’s blessing that the entire world had not fallen into the gutter yet. Mercer now understood how Stolde’s pointed remarks about the tithes had been like juggling live grenades in a promethium storage facility.

The mercenary did not know for sure whether he was working for the Governor or some other party, but had accepted sabotage and assassination jobs from the same contact person, and these hits had benefited people who were members of, or very close to the Nieslannen family.

They had been tasked now to stand ready for deniable wet works and report anyone who seemed to be snooping around. When they saw Rydia, with her obvious Imperial Guard training, they knew they had found their target. They called it in and received instructions to feed her false information about the two-pronged attack and prepare an ambush. Their employer ordered them to avoid alerting the guardsmen or Nieslannen security.

The employer had used serious modulation on their vox messages so the mercenary was not even sure of their gender, much less of their identity. Mercer concluded that the aim of this diversion was to draw out and identify those who were able to act outside the confines of the ball room.

The assailants had special pass-cards that opened every single door but left an error message which the garbage collector routines picked up and deleted every few minutes. They were also given special voxcasters, located in a conveniently placed rubbish bin. That spoke of the employer having intimate knowledge of the security arrangements and the location. According to Warren, who had used the time to worm his way into the security arrays of the palace, at the moment no one was using such cards.

When the mercenary ran out of solid information to give, he told Mercer so, and waited patiently for his verdict. He was a smart man, too smart to remain a rifle-for-hire.

Mercer knew what was expected of him – after all, he was not entirely without mercy.

‘Your family will live,’ he told the prisoner before shooting him twice in the chest and once in the head.

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