Gardens of Tycho (Short Story)
 | |
| Author | Dan Abnett |
| Publisher | Black Library |
| Collected in | Fear the Alien The Magos Lord of the Dark Millennium: The Dan Abnett Collection |
Cover Description
On the world of Gershom, people are dying. Nearly thirty corpses sit in the morgue, linked by nothing other than their cause of death – vicious, animalistic murder. Magistratum Marshal Macks brings in an expert – and old friend – to investigate. Magos Biologis Drusher and Macks must discover the cause of these brutal killings before they become the next victims.
Synopsis
Magos Drusher is teaching in the Natural History in the town of Kaloster on the Bone Coast for a small salary. One night he arrives home from moonlighting as a watercolour painting tutor to find the Magistratum officer Falken inside his small hab-unit. Falken informs Drusher that he must accompany him back to the capital Tycho. Drusher is worried that his moonlighting is the cause and joins Falken inside his transporter for the two hour journey, only to arrive in Tycho to be greeted by an old comrade, Germaine Macks, who informs him that Falken was playing a trick and that she had requested his presence. Having previously worked with Drusher on a previous case, Macks had him brought to her in order to give her an expert opinion. Showing him the bodies of a recent spree of killings she asks whether the wounds, specifically those where the face appears to sheared away cleanly and completely, are inflicted by an animal, to which Drusher replies most likely, all though having the appearance of a chainblade wound.
Macks takes Drusher to the Gardens of Tycho, an exotic zoo of the city where they piece together the possible predatory survivors of the civil war, where Drusher narrows it down from four, to one, a Carnodon from the planet of Gudrun. Once this is deduced, the two of them report to the site of the discovery of another body in a Hab-block. Climbing the staris, Drusher notices a mark on the wall where the Carnodon has scent marked, a noted example of felid behavior, confirming their theory. Entering the hab-unit they find an old womans corpse, devoured from the legs up with several bones broken open and the marrow sucked out. Studying the injuries to the body, Drusher confirms that this was caused by an animal, assuming the Carnodon. Macks and Drusher return to Magistratum Headquarters to sleep, with Drusher rising in the early hours and studying the dossiers of all the previous victims, waking Mackls in the process. Some hours later there is a call out in the dawn to the Commission of Works ruin where Falken and two fellow magistrates, Edvin and Rimbaud, who have found the corpse of a local volunteer watchman with his face sheered off. Rimbaud states that he believes he glimpsed the killer in the ruins, so the 5 of them go in to search with Drusher and Edvin taking the lower floor whilst the other three take the upper. There is a commotion and shots fired whereupon a body falls through the collapsing ceiling, burying Drusher and Edvin, followed by the killer, glimpsed only by Drusher briefly. Recovering their wits, they realise that Rimbaud has been killed, face sheared off almost surgically once again.
Returning to the Magistratum Headqaurters, Drusher starts analyzing the locations of the attacks, where he finally makes a discovery which he tries to show Macks who interupts him and takes him down to the morgue where Falken and a crowd are gathered around a Carnodon, killed by Falken with little resistance. The beast is old and emaciated, in terrible condition. Macks tells Drusher that she will have someone take him home now and pay him for a weeks work. He counters this by telling her that the killings weren't all perpetrated by the Carnodon, referring to a map he recently plotted of all the recent killings. By removing the nine bodies with signs of feeding from the Carnodon, there is left a crescent distribution pattern east of the Commission of Works ruins. When mirrored over the abandoned area west of the Works building, a circular pattern forms, centred on the area behind the Commission of Works building, which turns out to be the old Administratum headquarters, now leveled to rubble during the civil war. Macks and Drusher rush out to the Commission building, meeting with Falken, Edvin, Roderin, Mantagne and Levy. Pushing into the rubble behind the Commission building they encounter the killer, with Mantagne and Roderin dying before Drusher baits the killer into appearing in the open and charging him, whereupon he sticks a full pistol clip into the beast which gets back up and charges him again before Macks blows its head off with her riot-gun. The killer is revealed to be reminiscent of a combat servitor or arco-flagellant, with chainswords mounted to its forearms, with wires and sensory feeds plugged in to all over its body. Macks leaves with Drusher offering him a permanent job at the Magistratum, which he takes, partially because he is dissatisfied with his teaching job back in Kaloster and partially because he can be closer to Macks.
Setting
The city of Tycho on the planet of Gershome, recovering from a recent civil war.
Characters
- Magos Biologis Valentin Drusher - Brought to the planet Gershome 14 years previous by the Lord Governor in order to produce a full taxonomy of the planet only to become embroiled as a witness in some legal proceedings keeping him planetside for 2 years and depleting him of his payment, leaving him stranded.
- Germaine Macks - Head Magistratum of Tycho city. Previously worked with Drusher on another case in Outer Udar some years previous.
- Falken - Right hand man of Macks.
- Rimbaud - Magistrate who is killed in the Commission of Works building first time round with his face sheared off.
- Edvin - Magistrate.
- Roderin - Magistrate killed in the Commission of Works building second time round in the same manner as the others, face sheared off.
- Mantagne - Magistrate killed in the Commission of Works building second time round from a blow splitting him from the scalp to the sternum.
- Levy - Magistrate with an auspex in the final search of the Commission of Works building.
