Reading people’s minds is harder than you think. It isn’t because of any innate psychic defenses or anything like that, nor any trick of training or willpower, it is simply because most people don’t go through their lives thinking about anything that is particularly profound. Two of them were thinking carnal thoughts about me. One of them was thinking carnal thoughts about me and Clara together. This was not particularly useful information, as in frontier camps like this women were almost always in a minority among men of an age to still be troubled by testosterone. Hadrian was trying to make my job easier by using keywords like ‘off worlder’ but strangely it was Clara who took the trick. The scope had been salvaged from a Carnadon kill nearly two hundred miles south of us. The mangled body was still in his mind and I could make out what I thought was the face of Hadrian’s agent. I probed gently. Even the unaware can detect too much in the way of overt mind probes and the man shivered and pulled his mind back inside of harder defenses than I could breach without notice. I did manage to snatch enough information to know where to look.

“Your friend’s dont feel like talking,” the would be threesome asked, revealing a mouthful of teeth stained with some plant based material. 

“Lady Sark has no words for the likes of you,” Clara replied, setting the scope down on the table to keep her hands free in case of trouble.

“And why is that?” Red teeth leered.

“For ze same reason lion’s do not speak to curs,” I replied in a Travensal accent. The Ordo files included voice recordings of Ammaretta Sark and I had done my best to imitate her mode of speech. My voice dripped with contempt, which was both appropriate to the situation and to Sark more generally. The man reeled back as though slapped, though his companions laughed good naturedly at his chagrin.

“Melton, ve have vat we need. Prepare us to depart, weeks on board ship with nothing to kill leaves me out of sorts,” I snapped and turned to leave. Clara took point in front of me as a life ward might, leaving ‘Melton’ to cover my back.

Outside we found Lucius growing agitated and drawing stares from everyone who passed. I had intended for him to remain in stasis until we needed him, but Hadrian had decided that having him on hand might prevent hostility from breaking out. Assuming Lucius wasn’t the cause of the hostility of course. I reached out and touched his now familiar mind, calming him with the exercises we had practiced back at Agesola House. It didn’t always work, but this time it did.

“Ve vill need transport,” I told Hadrian as he exited.

I fear your agent is dead. I saw a body on a beach south of here.
“Porters as well, perhaps half a dozen,” I continued.

What do you propose? Hadrian’s thought came back to me.

“It shall be as you command Lady,” he said out loud.

We travel to the kill site. I may be able to learn more there.

Was it wildlife? Hadrian asked in my mind.

Not unless they learned to use las rifles.

_____

We left camp two hours later riding in a pair of cargo tens which had their rear four tires linked into tracks for off road work. Lazarus had been able to piece my mental impression of the kill site together with orbital imagery he had pirated from the shuttle on the way in and we had a reasonably good guess as to where we needed to go. We hired six locals for fetch and carry, one of whom claimed to be a tracker, though in truth this was all for show. The sort of thing a rich off world hunter would do. Lazarus cunningly disabled their vox unit so that it appeared to remain functional without actually sending and receiving. It was probably overkill for a low level operator like Nagrip, but he had been underestimated before, and it wasn’t beyond the realm of possibilities that he might have paid some locals to take an interest in any off world visitors.

For the first two hours we drove eastwards away from the caldera, following an ancient rutted path through the forest. The trees were colossal, some nearly a hundred meters tall with large bulb-like canopies. Direct sunlight was almost completely absorbed by the time it reached ground level and so the undergrowth was more mycologial than arboreal. Our party rode in the forward cargo ten where we could speak freely. The mood was grim. I had only shared the image of the agent, little maw than a gnawed skeleton whose head was still attached, with Hadrian but no one had any trouble imagining it. We reached a small river just before sundown and turned south. This irritated our local help considerably but we passed it off as having picked up auspex readings matching carnadons. In truth, Lazarus was scanning for big game and other threats, but the true reason was that we could make reasonable time along the river bank. Seasonal floods had swept most of the undergrowth aside and so we could make bumpy progress southwards. Even so we had to pause once the first of the two moons set. We parked our vehicles in echelon against the side of the river and made camp for the night. 

“We should be there by midday tomorrow,” Lazarus told us as we sipped amasec and ate our expensive trail rations around a fire constructed for us by our now surly locals. The would be tracker, a one eyed brute named Kelden, insisted that we would have had better luck finding carnadons to the east. I ignored him with aristocratic disdain until Clara had put her hand on her autorifle to let him know that he had crossed the line. He threw his hands up and went back to his fellows, making a wide curve around Lucius who sat gnawing at a haunch of grox.

“Then all we have to do is find a grave site a sex addled psyker pulled from the mind of a local drunk,” he groused.