Editing Bleeding Out (Warhammer High) (section)

===Revelations===

The man sat on a steel chair in a windowless interrogation room, staring with mild interest at the inside of the two-way mirror.  He’d never been arrested before.  It was new.

A team of Treasury agents had swarmed in, kicked the rifle away from him, and zapped him with some kind of energy weapon.  He had woken up here, with a splitting headache and a group of Arbites staring at him coldly.

He’d been read his rights, curtly and clearly, and been offered a lawyer.  He had politely declined.  He had no argument to make.
The door swung open, and a man in a neat black suit walked in, a small recorder in his hands.  He sat down at the table, closing the door behind himself as he did.  He clicked the recorder on and started talking.

“My name is Arthur.  What’s your name?”

“Useless,” the man said.

“I can hardly converse with you if I don’t know your name,” Arthur pointed out.

“No, my name is Useless.  My father was very dull.”  Arthur stared at the man for a moment, then sighed and dug out the wallet the man had carried when he had been captured.

“Says here your name is Ulysses Keiter.”

“Maybe, but I’m Useless.  To my friends,” the man said, shrugging.  Arthur nodded slowly.

“All right, Sieur Keiter.  I’m the lead legal counsel to the Emperor’s Courts, representing the Treasury and VIP Protection offices.  They would very much like to know why you shot Lady Primarch Morticia this morning.”

The man’s mouth dropped open.  “I…did what?”

“You shot a Lady Primarch.  A seventeen-year-old girl.  Royalty too.  Why’d you do it?”

“I didn’t shoot a Lady Primarch!” the man exclaimed.  “I didn’t!”

“The slug we found in her back matched the ones from your rifle’s magazine perfectly,” Arthur said.

“But I didn’t!  I swear, I didn’t!  All I did was shoot some random bitch at the café!  Some greedy bitch!” the man said, slapping his hands down on the table and propelling himself upwards, voice rising to a desperate shout.

“The ‘greedy bitch’ you shot is the daughter of Lord Primarch Mortarion,” Arthur said, concealing his own surprise.

“NO!” the man said, paling.  He gripped his hands on the edge of the table in desperate fear, every inch of his body racing with adrenaline-fuelled horror.  “No, no, no, no, I didn’t, I didn’t!  I shot…I…she was just some rich bitch, some little moneyslut from Startseite, nobody who…no…”

“Nobody who…what?” Arthur asked.

“Nobody who…” the man sank back in his chair, his hands shaking.  “…nobody…”

“Just a nobody?  Why did it not matter who you killed?” the lawyer asked.

The man’s eyes widened, shock grabbing him and shaking him by the stomach, until he lurched out of his chair and violently emptied it into the drain on the floor, heaving until he felt like his sides were going to implode.

“No…” he managed, spitting the taste away.

“So, it did matter who you killed.  Just pick a rich girl and shoot?” Arthur said, shaking his head.

The man sank down to his knees, holding himself over the drain, eyes and skin white with shock.  He couldn’t answer.

“May I assume you want that lawyer now?” Arthur asked.  The man nodded once.


The Emperor opened the door into the bunker, taking in the tableau of anguish.  His grandchildren – and a few others – were arranged around holoscreens and tables, all looking angry or scared.  His son Leman was there, and spotted the Emperor first, gently shaking Freya’s shoulder.  “Hey.  Short stuff.  Look who’s here.”

Freya looked up blearily, and spotted the Emperor at the door.  She launched out of her seat and nearly tackled him, holding back tears.  “Grandpa, Morticia’s hurt,” she managed.

“I know,” the Emperor said heavily, as the rest of the room took notice.  The guards snapped off brisk salutes, the daughters generally queued up for a hug of reassurance, and the assorted boyfriends and others just stared or genuflected.  “I’m glad the rest of you are safe.  Where are Isis and Lyra?”

“On the way, my Liege,” one of the guards said, tapping his earpiece.  “They were in a café in the middle of a mall, didn’t want to start a panic.”

“Very well.”  The Emperor made eye contact with Russ, and jerked his head towards the hall.  Russ nodded and walked out discreetly, as the Emperor gradually disentangled himself from the flock of his granddaughters.  As he closed the door to the hall, Russ glared at the nearest guards until they edged off a few reluctant meters.

“Did they find the shooter?” Russ asked.  “The news said it was one man.”

“It was, and they did.  He’s being interrogated now,” the Emperor said.  He hesitated before delivering the next line.  “And it seems that Morticia was not the target.”

“What?  Who was?  Kelly?” Russ asked in surprise.

“Apparently not.  I’ll let you know when I have more,” the Emperor said, turning back down the hall.  “Take care of them, Leman.”


The man huddled against the surface of the interrogation room table, trying to die.  Arthur kept pressing.  “The woman you were trying to shoot, you’d never met her?”

“I don’t know anyone,” the man said, his head reeling.

“Listen to me, Ulysses, you need to focus, here,” his lawyer said, trying to get his client to pay attention.

“No, no, no, no, I’m nobody, I didn’t, I couldn’t,” he mumbled, squeezing his fingers against his skull until the knuckles turned white.  “No no no…”

“All right, then.  Tell me why you decided to shoot someone this morning,” Arthur said, hoping that it would be enough to break the man from his chattering.

“…I had to do it…” he whimpered.

“Had to shoot someone?” Arthur pressed.

The public defender glared at the Emperor’s counselor, but the reedy voice from the tabletop kept going.  “…It’s too much; they have to be stopped…”

“Who has to be stopped?” Arthur demanded.

“…those selfish vermin…” the man muttered, then shot bolt upright in sudden rage, his teeth clenched.  “Those self-centered TRASH!”

“Who?”

“Those PARASITES!” the man roared, then lowered his voice to a hateful whisper.  “Those Startseite and New Arks and Albiona parasites…”

“Those are the three richest cities in the entire system,” Arthur said.  “I assume that isn’t a coincidence.”  He leaned back in his seat, glaring at the man.  “Was it?”

“Of course not!” the man shot back.  “They’re a DISEASE!”

Arthur nodded slowly, thinking.  “You know.  I was a senior DA for Startseite for two years.  One thing I learned, is that there’s really only six reasons that someone ever, ever commits a high crime.”  He raised his fingers and counted along.  “Money, compulsion, madness, ideology, ego, and conscience.  You’re not completely insane.  So that’s madness gone.  Which other one are you?  Hmm?  Compulsive?”

“Stop trying to provoke my client with such juvenile arguments, Sieur Hane,” the PD said tartly.  “Ulysses, we’re leaving.”

“No,” the man said, jerking his arm away from his lawyer’s grasp.  He turned to glare back at the counselor.  “I’ll tell you.  This was payback.”

“Ah.  Ego, then?  Were you trying to kill someone who had insulted you?” Arthur said, playing the role a bit longer.

“Insulted me?” the man said coldly, leaning forward, his remorse melting away.  “No.  DAMAGED me.  Like I don’t matter.  Like I don’t have a place in this Imperium.  Me, or anyone else who wants things to get fucking BETTER around here!”

“Do tell,” Arthur said patiently.

“This Imperium…it’s straining at the seams,” the man said angrily, his eyes turning to the table, staring right through it to some unknown destination.  “The parasites and the real people.  Can you even tell us apart?”

“ ‘Real people,’ eh.  Define ‘real.’”


A pair of forensics officers gingerly lifted the rifle, carrying it over to the air-tight evidence case in the back of their truck.  Neither of them saw much point, since the killer had already been caught, but the media had this strange idea that the more famous the crime, the more twists and turns there were in the trial, so they did it anyway, both studiously avoiding the literally hundreds of reporters and on-lookers outside the police cordon.  At the edge of the ring of Arbites and beehives, a small cluster of formally-uniformed Treasury officers were briefing the press.

“No, ma’am, we do not yet know why this attack was launched, but I have been authorized to report that it does not appear to have been part of an assault on the Royal Family specifically,” the officer at the front of the cluster said, before raising his hands to head off the surge of questions.  “I will say that the shooter seems to have been working alone.  Lady Morticia is stable and undergoing treatment.”

“Major, do you know how long this attack was planned?” one reporter yelled, brandishing a microphone like a cudgel.

“No comment,” the Major said.  Another reporter stepped up, waving their hand.

“Major, for the people elsewhere in the Imperium, what can you tell us about the attacker?”

“It was a male, working alone, Terran, and that’s all we have to say so far,” the Major said.  A beehive stepped up to his ear, whispering a new dispatch.  The Major nodded slowly, then turned his attention back to the anxious blob of reporters.  “That’s all I have time for, folks, thank you for your patience.”  He stepped back within the cordon, two more beehives brandishing riot shotguns stepping up to fill the empty spot.

Arthur stepped into the bunker, eyeing the sorry crowd.  The guards had been forewarned of his arrival, and silently lined up against the walls, as the lawyer nervously cleared his throat.  “Forgive me, Lord Russ, Ladies Primarch, but I wanted you all to hear the news.”

“Who are you?” Furia asked bluntly, as the other girls took notice of their visitor.

“My name is Sir Arthur Hane, madam, Chief Counsel to the Emperor’s Courts, and I was present for the interrogation of the man who shot Lady Morticia,” Arthur said, drawing the immediate attention of nearly everyone in the room.  Before he could continue, the door swung open again, and Isis and Lyra walked in, completing the set.  The others welcomed them in, as Arthur took advantage of the pause to collect his thoughts.

“I suppose I should say…first and foremost…I’m sorry you all had to go through this.  I can’t imagine what it’s like,” he said solemnly.

“Don’t try, either,” Lyra said.  “What happened?”

“Apparently…” Arthur hesitated as the enormity of what he was about to say held him up.  “Apparently, he wasn’t aiming for Lady Morticia at all.”

“WHAT?!” Roberta snapped, as most of the other people in the room shared a look of astonishment and various other proclamations of disbelief.  “Then what the hell was he doing?!”

“Apparently, he thought that killing a random passer-by in the richest city on the planet would…break the Imperium free of cultural inertia,” the lawyer reported uncomfortably.  “He’s a long way from rational.”

“So this was a political statement?” Roberta pressed.

“He himself said that he was proving a point,” the lawyer replied cautiously.  “However, I must repeat that Morticia was not the target.”

Cora sank down into her chair, head in her hands.  “She…was just unlucky?  How…”

“How did the shooter not know who she was?” Victoria demanded.

“Well, his roost was over two klicks off, madam, it would have been almost impossible to identify someone at that range.  Especially since he wasn’t specifically looking for her.”  Arthur shrugged uncomfortably.  Why, he wondered, was he having more trouble talking to a room full of young women than he did a room with a hardened killer in it?

The door swung open again, and the guards on either side snapped to attention.  The Emperor walked back in, eliciting a chorus of confused questions from the Royal daughters.  He greeted them in turn, before turning to his counselor.

“My Liege,” Arthur said, bowing respectfully.

“Stand up, Hane.  We need to talk about this revelation you’ve had regarding the man who shot my granddaughter,” the Emperor replied.

“Yes, Sire,” Arthur said, straightening back up and marshaling his thoughts.  “Well, I can’t run it as a murder case since he didn’t actually kill anyone, but I could try to get him on the Attempted Murder charge.  That said, Sire, I suspect I would find more success if I offered him a plea, of Attempting an Act of Terrorism.”

“And what’s the sentence for that?” Remilia asked.

“The sentence for accepting a plea of guilty would be seventeen years per act,” Arthur reported, “and since it’s his first charge, did not resist arrest, purchased the gun legally and didn’t break into the building where he fired from…it may be the best I can do.”

“Seventeen years in prison for trying to kill a member of the Royal Family?” the Emperor asked quietly, his face darkening.  “Unacceptable.”

“Sire…he wasn’t trying to kill a member of the Royal Family,” Arthur said, shrugging helplessly.

“Then do as you see fit, Sieur Hane,” the Emperor said grimly, turning away before his disgust became too evident.  He addressed his granddaughters next.  “You are, of course, all welcome to stay here, but since the threat seems to have abated, you may choose to return to your homes, instead.”

“I’ve sure had enough of this place for one lifetime,” Roberta said heavily.

Several hours passed.  A small ocean of reporters lapped at the base of the Palace gates, waiting for a chance to grab the images of the Royal Daughters.  None were so fortunate, since they left as they arrived: in Treasury vehicles or their own cars, flying back to their respective families’ homes.

Andrew had been nearly pacing in his room when his vox finally rang, with Hana’s tone.  He snatched it off the table.  “Hana?” he asked breathlessly.

“Hey, Andy.  I’m back home.”

“Thank God.  Is it cool if I come over?”

“No, sorry.  The Treasury guys are still swarming the place, and I don’t think they’d let you in,” Hana said regretfully, looking out the window to the street, where a Treasury vehicle was parked in nearly every spot.

“Ah, damn.  Well, call me as soon as you can, all right?”

“Of course.”