Editing Days of Judgement (Warhammer High) (section)

===The Investigation begins===

Zahael Joernia lived in a fashionable block on level twenty-three, close enough to the hive edge and high up enough to receive some sun from the massive armoured windows in the hive skin, which was in itself a mark of status in a hive society. Huulta obtained the master key from the hab-block supervisor, who confirmed he had last seen Joernia two days previously as he was heading out to the level forty dockyards. Huulta entered, weapon held at the ready but he was confronted by nothing. 

A brief search confirmed that the hab was empty. His hab had five rooms, an airy sitting room, a kitchen, a bedroom, a longue and a bathroom. Joernia was obviously pretty well off to be affording such a large Hab. Such wealth could easily make enemies. Was that the reason he had been betrayed him to the Chaos cult which had sacrificed him? 

Questions were all well and good, but what he needed were the answers, and hopefully some of them would be in here for him. He first checked out the sitting room, which was in perfect order. He could find nothing out of the ordinary or out of place. One wall was dominated by a large portrait of the Rock, the fortress monastery of the First Legion. Huulta’s lip curled in distaste. It had been nearly two thousand years since the crusade’s end, and in all that time the Imperial Army had proved time and time again it could do the job by itself without any help from transhuman supermen. The Legions were an anachronism; they were a relic of a more brutal age that should have been disbanded millennia ago. 

Moving on, he quickly searched the other rooms, and once again, he found nothing. Everything was in perfect order, clean and tidy. The man must have been a fanatic for tidiness when he was alive. Huulta counted himself lucky he had come here first, the Orpo had a bad habit of destroying more clues than they uncovered whenever they did a search. 

After nearly an hour of toil, Huulta came to a conclusion: there was no evidence to suggest he was kidnapped or taken from here. Everything was seemingly in perfect order; there was nothing to suggest the horrific fate which had befallen this man. Nothing he could see on the surface. But he knew there was always something hidden away. 

Sinking onto the couch, he stared thoughtfully at the holovision screen, trying to marshal his thoughts. There had to be something here; he just hadn’t seen it yet. He could feel it in his gut. He’d always had that ability, an almost sixth sense when there was something he’d missed, something important, that ability to see things others tried to hide. It was one of the reasons his record was so exemplary, why only once had he failed to solve a case. 

It clicked. He stood up, turned around and grabbed the portrait of the Rock. Lifting it off, he was rewarded with the confirmation of his suspicion. Behind the picture was a wall safe. Not a very imaginative hiding place, but still a good place to hide valuables or other sensitive items. Now all he would have to do was crack it, and find out what Joernia was hiding in there. 

Huulta reached down and unhooked a special item from his belt, one which he usually wouldn’t bother with, but which now came in handy. 

The rota-cracker was a special instrument designed to crack a safe with ease, though it was slow, time consuming and didn’t leave the safe very intact. Almost useless for thieves, but the perfect tool for the forces of law. He clamped it to the safe’s dial, switched it on and sat down to wait while it did its job. The sound of its lascutter keened up as it began to work. 

The wait was excruciating, and Huulta felt his ire rise as the device did its job. If only they had a faster model, something which wouldn’t leave him stewing in his juices while he waited. 

Finally the whining ceased and Huulta went over to unclamp the rota-cracker. It had bored a hole through the safe’s outer shell, and unlocked the safe from the inside. The safe was ruined, of course, but he now had access. 

With a creak the safe opened, and Huulta reached in. Inside there was no gold, or any precious items. Instead there were wads of paper, probably containing his records of trade, the items he had imported and exported to and from Caliban, as well as a dataslate, encrypted. But Huulta smiled in triumph regardless, this was something far more important than gold or jewels. There were clues in these papers, secrets for him to unlock which could help him identify why this man had been taken and chosen for such a fell rite. He would take them back to his office and spend a few hours poring over them, sorting the important from the chaff and finding the truth. 

His sense of triumph was abruptly ended with the beeping sound of the comms implant coming from the flesh of his arm. Only the most dedicated Arbites willingly had the tools of their trade implanted into their very flesh, forever binding themselves to their duty. Naturally, Huulta had two, one embedded into the flesh of each arm so that no matter what he would always have access. He lifted his left arm up to his face. 

“Saal, the Verispex have finished examining the body. We’re waiting for you in the courthouse Morgue with the report.” Zofall’s voice said. 

“On my way.” Huulta disconnected, gathered up the slate and the other documents and left the Hab, making sure to close the door and seal it with an Arbites notice. No-one would dare go in there now. And even if they did, he had all the evidence he needed now. 

The morgue of the precinct courthouse was buried deep beneath the main building, almost as far down as one could go. Only the auxiliary generators and self-contained life support systems were lower. Inside that space of white tiles and harsh fluorescent lights what was left of the body lay on a slab, stitched back up into the shape the man it once held. Pictures of him in life sat beside images of the murder scene. The man had been handsome once, before some sick bastard had cut him apart. 

Dr. Eisler, the chief of the Tetra Verispex, gestured at the body as he spoke with Huulta and Zofall. Eisler was an ugly son of a bitch with a squashed nose and thin lips, but there were few better than him in uncovering the methods and means of murder. 

“Murder weapon was not your normal knife. Analysis of the cutting gave up a pattern that appears consistent only with a mono-molecular blade.” 

“And how common are those around here?” Zofall asked. 

“You’re seriously asking that? The only ones around are either trophy weapons taken from renegade Eldar, or else ex-legionary weapons such as scout combat knives.” 

“Either way, rare as fug and most likely unregistered.” Huulta tugged on his armoured gloves. “What about the time of death?” 

Eisler sniffed. “Hard to gauge, but my best guess would be between midnight and 04:00 hours this morning. Can’t get it any closer I’m afraid.” 

Huulta thought about it, but couldn’t find anything in that time which would shed more light on the murder. They knew who was responsible, but they didn’t know why, or who the specific culprits were. Nothing made sense. To use a term, it was chaos. 

Saal and Zofall took their leave, Eisler informing them if he found anything else of use he would contact them immediately. No sooner did he return to his office than Huulta sank back into his chair, and idly began to sort through the papers he had removed from the victim’s house. 

“Saal, what do you think it can be?” Zofall asked. 

“It’s a ritual, it can’t be anything else. I just wish I knew what that ritual is all about. Are they just trying to curry favour with their gods, or is it something worse?” He added, as he gestured at the scattered files. As well as the tide of paperwork from the murder itself and the evidence from the deceased’s house, packets of fiche and other picts had arrived from a couple of the sub-precincts from across the planet, automatically flagged by the reports of the incident sent out on the planetwide watch-wire. Not one matched what had happened here. There had been several murders in the Hives of Macharia, but none as gruesome, none as inexplicable. If it was a full blown chaos cult, then they were taking great pains to hide themselves and their crimes away. 

“Well, at least I found this in the deceased’s house,” Huulta gestured to the sheath of papers on his desk. “Papers which belonged to the victim. Should be a clue of two in here somewhere, a hint as to why he was taken. Whoever did it; they have to have their reasons.” 

“Chaos doesn’t need reasons Saal. That’s why it’s called ‘Chaos’. But they won’t have chosen this particular man at random; the amount of preparation alone tells us that.” Zofall had a point. 

For the next few hours Huulta threw himself mind and soul into working through the sheaths of paper and digital records, one by one reading and scanning them for anything which might give a hint. They seemed mundane, papers about business transactions, payments made and loans outstanding, the usual sort of business dealt with by a trader. Somewhere within he was something he could use, he could feel it. 

He didn’t notice the hours pass; he only briefly nodded to Zofall as he went home to his family and then settled back to work. Time and again he promised himself he would stop for a bite to eat or a quick break after this particular sheet, but every time he’d look at the next one and think, ‘just one more, there might be a clue there’ and one became ten became a hundred. The world vanished, all that mattered was the papers and the clues he knew were held within. 

Suddenly the door banged open, and Reinhold walked in. He glared at Huulta. 

“Bloody hell, it’s nearly twenty-two hundred! Saal, go home. You’ve been here triple overtime and you have your religious services in the morning, the only time you ever take off.” His eyes flicked over the vast pile of papers on Saal’s desk. 

“Dammit, if I didn’t bloody well force you out, you’d move in and live here with all the rookies and support staff. Even I have a life outside these four walls you know, you don’t seem to.” 

Huulta nodded, but after the Judge had left he continued to work for another hour until Reinhold came in and almost forcibly dragged him out of his office, scowling all the while. Huulta’s complete and total dedication to any case he worked on was one of the reasons he had such an exemplary record, but the fact he let his cases take over his life was a cause for concern for Reinhold, especially after the Fontaine case. 

The drive home was in silence, and once there Huulta spent another two hours with the material he had been allowed to bring home with him, but still there was no sign of anything which could lead him to the perpetrators. Finally he was forced to call it a day as the clock reached midnight. He needed to get some rest, and prepare for the next day’s investigations. 

His Hab was very small, and even more Spartan then the Judge’s office in the Precinct Courthouse. It had only four rooms, and the absolute barest minimum in furniture and necessities. Huulta only ever came here to sleep. Even in the void between cases he preferred the Courthouse. 

Saal emerged from the shower and stopped at the mirror, his eyes catching on the many scars that latticed over his body. Almost every inch of his body was marked by scars. Some were relics of past fights and disturbances during his many years in the Arbites, barfights and scuffles, those who resisted arrest, the usual marks of service. And then there were the others, whose origin he couldn’t place. The deep gouge which stretched from behind his left eye to his jaw and framed the left side of his face, usually hidden beneath his helmet. Zofall had given him the nickname of ‘scarface’ because of it when they had first met, before they had become friends. The loop just below his right elbow, something had nearly taken the arm clean off at some point he couldn’t recall. He didn’t know when he had done it, but he had a good idea why. 

The void. It always came back to the void, the eternal emptiness which had always haunted him, the feeling that something vital was missing, that he wasn’t all there. It was the one thing in his life he couldn’t control, and he had tried every method, which must have included cutting at one point, but none of them had ever worked. Though control eluded him, he had found a way to harness the void, turn it into his prime motivator, the thing which drove him and focused him in his pursuit of duty. If only he could harness his other problem as well. 

Huulta flopped back on the bed and stared at the ceiling. He didn’t want to sleep, didn’t want the dreams which haunted him every time his eyes closed, but sleep took him anyway and the dreams returned. 

[[Category:Warhammer High]][[Category:Stories]]