Nemesis

by James Swallow

  She gave a nod. “In a way.”

  There was awe in their expressions. “Is he like he is in the picts? A giant?”

  Soalm managed a smile. “Bigger than that, even.”

  The other child was about to add something, but an adult turned the corner ahead and gave them both a stern look. “You know you’re not supposed to play down here. Get back to your lessons!”

  They broke into a run and vanished back the way they had come. Soalm turned to study the man.

  “Are you looking for something?” he asked warily.

  “I’m just walking,” she admitted. “I needed a moment… to think.”

  He pointed past her, blocking her path. “You should probably go back.” The man seemed hesitant, as if he wasn’t sure he had the authority to tell her what to do.

  The Execution Force fit strangely among the freedom fighter group. In the weeks that had passed since they liberated the prison camp in the city, Soalm and the others had gained a kind of guarded acceptance, but little more. Under Kell’s orders, each of them had turned their particular skill-sets towards aiding the rebel cause. Tariel’s technical expertise was in constant demand, and Koyne showed a natural aptitude for teaching combat tactics to men and women who had, until recently, been farmers, teachers and shopkeepers. Meanwhile, Iota and the Garantine would go missing for days at a time, and the only evidence of their activities would be intercepted reports from the communication network, stories of destroyed outposts or whole patrols eviscerated by ghostly assailants. As for her brother, he kept his distance from her, working with Capra, Beye and Grohl on battle plans.

  Soalm did her part too, but as the days drew on it disturbed her more and more. They were helping the rebels score victories, not just here but through other resistance cells all across the planet; but it was based on a lie. If not for the arrival of the assassins on Dagonet, the war would have been over. Instead they were bolstering it, infusing fresh violence into a conflict that should have already petered out.

  The Venenum was precise in what she did; surgical and clean. Collateral damage was a term she refused to allow into her lexicon, and yet here they were, their presence more damaging to the locals than the guns of the nobles.

  The man pointed again. “Back that way,” he repeated. Dispelling her moment of reverie, Soalm realised that he was trying to hide something.

  “No,” she said. “I think not.” Before he could react, she pushed past him and followed the turn of the narrowing corridor as it dropped into a shallow slope. The man reached for her robes to stop her, and she tapped a dot of liquid onto the back of his hand from one of her wrist dispensers. The effect was immediate; he went pale and fell to the ground, the muscles in his legs giving out.

  The corridor opened up into another cavern, this one wide and low. In the middle of the dimly-lit space there was a thermal grate throwing out a warm orange glow; surrounding it were rings of chairs, some scattered cushions and salvaged rugs. A knot of people were there, crowded around an older woman who held an open book in her hand. Soalm had the impression of interrupting a performance in mid-flow.

  The older woman saw the assassin and fear crossed her expression. Her audience were a mix of all kinds of people from the camp. Two of them, both fighters, sprang to their feet and came forwards with threats in their eyes.

  Soalm raised her hands to defend herself, but the old woman called out. “No! Stop! We’ll have no violence!”

  “Milady—” began one of the others, but she waved him to silence, and with visible effort, she drew herself up. Soalm saw the echoes of a lifetime of grace and fortitude there in the old woman’s face.

  She pushed through the ring of people and faced her interloper. “I am… I was Lady Astrid Sinope. I am not afraid of you.”

  Soalm cocked her head. “That’s not true.”

  Sinope’s aristocratic demeanour faltered. “No… No, I suppose it is not.” She recovered slightly. “Ever since Beye told us you were on Dagonet, I knew that this moment would come. I knew one of you would find us.”

  “One of us?”

  “The Emperor’s warriors,” she went on. “Capra said you were the instruments of his will. So come, then. Do what you must.”

  “I don’t understand…” Soalm began, but the old woman kept talking.

  “I ask only that you show mercy to my friends here.” Sinope held up the heavy book in her hands. “I brought this to Dagonet. I brought it here, to the resistance, when I fled the treachery of my former noble clan. If anyone must suffer because of that, it should be me alone.” Her eyes glittered with unspent tears. “If I must beg you, I will. Please do not hurt them because of me.”

  No one spoke as Soalm stepped past the two warriors and took the book from the old woman’s trembling hands. She read aloud the words on the page. “The Emperor protects.”

  “We only seek solace in His name,” said Sinope, her voice falling to a whisper. “I know that it is forbidden to speak openly of Him and His divine ways, but we do so only among ourselves, we do not proselytise or seek out converts!” She clasped her hands. “We are so few. We take in only those who come to us of their own free will. We have hurt no one with our beliefs!”

  Soalm ran her fingers over the pages of dense, solemn text. “You are all followers of the Lectitio Divinitatus. You believe the Emperor is a living god. The only god.”

  Sinope nodded. “And I will die with that belief, if that is what is required. But promise me I will be the only one. Please!”

  She understood, finally. “I have not come to purge you,” Soalm told them. “I… We did not even know you were here.” There was a strange, giddy sense of events shifting around her.

  “But you were sent from Terra…” said one of the men.

  “Not for this,” said the Venenum, turning to meet Lady Sinope’s gaze, raising her arm as she did so and drawing back her cuff. “And until this moment, I was not certain why.” Soalm showed them a small golden chain clasped around her wrist, a charm dangling from it in the shape of the Imperial aquila. “But now… Now I have an inkling.”

  “She’s one of us,” said the man. “She believes.”

  Sinope’s expression became one of joy. “Oh, child,” she said. “He sent you. He sent you to us.”

  Soalm returned the book to her and nodded.

  KELL LOOKED UP as the men boiled into the central chamber in a rush of energy and jubilation, weaving through the scattered clumps of hardware and containers, the groups of people who stopped and smiled to see them returning. They still had the smell of cordite, woodsmoke and exertion on them. He scanned the group with a practised eye and saw they had all come back, and only with a few minor injuries. The squad leader, an ex-pilot named Jedda, came over to where Capra was standing at a vox console and enveloped him in a bear hug. “It’s done?” said Capra.

  “Oh, it’s more than done!” Jedda laughed, the rush of battle still there in his voice. His men shared the moment and laughed with him. “Tariel’s information was dead on! We blew out the supports for the bridge and the whole cargo train went down. Hundreds of clanner troops, a dozen fan-jeeps and armoured GEVs, all of it scrap at the bottom of the Redstone river!”

  “They’ll feel that,” snorted one of the others. “The nobles will be tasting blood tonight!”

  Capra turned and gave Kell a nod. “Thank your man for me. In fact, thank them all. A month ago I would never have thought I’d be saying this, but we actually have them on the defensive. The data and guidance you’ve provided us has enabled the resistance to make coordinated strikes all over the planet. The nobles are reeling.”

  “The mistake they made was their arrogance,” said Koyne, wandering up to the group. The men parted to let the Callidus come closer; they were all unnerved by the bland, unfinished cast to the assassin’s neutral features. “They believed they had won, and lowered their guard. They didn’t expect you to hit back in synchrony. You’ve put them off balance.”

  “We’ll h
elp you keep up the pressure,” Kell told the resistance leader. “All we’ve done so far is show you how to find the cracks in their armour. You need to keep widening them until they break.”

  Jedda nodded to himself. “We didn’t lose a single man tonight. We keep this up, the commoners who haven’t committed will side with us.” He grinned at Kell. “At this rate, your fleet might get here and find it has nothing to do!”

  “We can only hope,” said Koyne, drawing a look from the Vindicare.

  “Capra!” Beye crossed the chamber at a jog, “Grohl’s back!”

  Kell saw the grim-faced freedom fighter following her, unfurling his overhood and cloak. He had a scuffed carryall over one shoulder.

  “From the capital?” said Jedda. “We made a lot of noise tonight, Terrik! Did they hear it back there in the towers?” His triumphant mood rolled against the other man’s stony countenance and rebounded without effect.

  “They heard all right,” said Grohl. He dropped the carryall on a crate being used as a makeshift table and threw off his robes with an irritable shake. “The Governor made a broadcast over all the communications channels. A declaration, he called it.”

  The group fell silent. Kell saw the moment radiate out across the cavern to every person within earshot.

  “Let’s see it, then,” said Capra.

  Grohl opened the case and produced a memory spool, the commercial kind that any core world civilian home of moderate means possessed. “One of our contacts recorded this off the public watch-wire. It’s repeating in a loop at the top of each hour.” Jedda went to take it from him, but Grohl didn’t give it up. “Perhaps you should look at this somewhere more… private.”

  Capra considered that for a moment, then shook his head. “No. If it’s on the wire, then everyone else knows about it. Our people should too.”

  Jedda took the spool and inserted it into a hololithic reader. With a buzzing hum, the device projected the ghostly image of a man in heavy dress uniform, a braided cap upon his head. He was standing before a lectern, and Kell noticed that it bore the sigil of an open, slitted eye; the symbol of the Sons of Horus.

  “Governor Nicran,” said Jedda with a sneer. “I wonder where he recorded this? Cowering in the basement of his mansion?”

  “Quiet!” hissed Grohl. “Listen.”

  Kell watched the hololith carefully as the Governor began with empty pleasantries and vapid words of praise for his puppet masters in the noble clans. He read the politician’s expressions, for a moment imagining he was seeing that face down the sights of his Exitus longrifle. Nicran had all the look about him of a desperate man. Then he turned to the important part of the announcement.

  “Citizens of Dagonet,” he said, “I have been gravely disturbed to learn of the deaths of many of our brave PDF troopers in the ongoing and ruthless attacks perpetrated by the resistance. Attacks that have also claimed the lives of many innocent civilians…”

  “Bollocks they have,” snarled Jedda. “Clanner blood only!”

  “I applaud the vigilance of our troopers and recognise their bravery,” Nicran continued. “But I also listen when their commanders tell me that the enemy hiding among us is a clear and present danger we have yet to overcome. And so, rather than prolong this terrible fighting and waste more precious Dagoneti lives, I have petitioned for assistance.”

  “What does that mean?” muttered one of Jedda’s men. Kell kept his expression unchanged, aware that Koyne was watching him closely.

  Across the chamber, a hush had fallen as everyone hung on Nicran’s words. “Centuries ago, when Dagonet was beneath the shadow of corrupt priest-kings, we faced a similar crisis. And then, as now, a warrior came to aid us. A master of war who freed us from fear and terror.” The Governor blinked and licked his lips; Kell felt an odd tingle of anticipation in his trigger finger. “Citizens, I have this day received word from the fleet of the Sons of Horus. They are coming to Dagonet to deliver us, and the great hero Horus Lupercal will be with them. Have no fear. The retribution of the Astartes will be swift and terrible, but in its wake the freedom we crave, freedom of liberty, freedom from the stifling rule of a distant and uncaring Emperor, will be ours.”

  Grohl tapped a key on the projector and the image died. “And there it is.”

  It was as if something had sucked all the air from the chamber; Nicran’s statement had shocked the rebels into silence.

  Jedda spoke first. “Astartes…” he whispered, all trace of his earlier elation gone. “Coming here?” He looked to Capra. “We… We can’t fight Space Marines. Clan troopers are one thing, but the Warmaster’s elite…”

  “They are like nothing we have ever seen,” Grohl said darkly. “Genetically enhanced superhumans. Living weapons. Angels of death. A handful of them can crush armies—”

  “So what should we do, then?” snapped Beye angrily. “Surrender at once? Shoot ourselves and save them the trouble?”

  “They’ll destroy us all,” Grohl insisted. “The only hope we have is to disband our forces and lose ourselves in the general populace, that or flee off-world before their warships arrive.” He glared at Kell. “Because our salvation won’t be here before Horus, will it?”

  “He’s right, Capra,” said Jedda, his tone bleak. “Against men, we’ve got a fighting chance. But we can’t beat war gods—”

  “They’re not gods,” Kell snarled, quieting him. “They are not invulnerable. They bleed red like any one of us. They can die.” He met Grohl’s look. “Even Horus.”

  Capra gave a slow nod. “Kell’s right. The Astartes are formidable, but they can be beaten.” He gave the Vindicare a level stare. “Tell me they can be beaten.”

  “I killed a Space Marine,” said Kell. Koyne’s bland expression flickered as something like surprise crossed the other assassin’s face. Kell ignored it and went on. “And I’m still here.”

  “Capra…” Grohl started to speak again, but the rebel leader waved him into silence.

  “I need to think on this,” he told them. “Beye, come with me.” Capra walked away with the woman, and Kell watched him go. Grohl gave the Vindicare a harsh look and left him with Jedda and the other warriors following.

  Kell picked up the memory spool and weighed it in his hand.

  “Did you really terminate an Astartes?” said Koyne.

  “You know the rules,” Kell replied, without looking away. “A clade’s targets are its own concern.”

  The Callidus sniffed. “It doesn’t matter. Even if you did, it’s just one truth among a handful of pretty lies. That one, Grohl? He’s the smartest of all this lot. The Sons of Horus will destroy them, and turn this world into a funeral pyre along the way. I’ve seen how the Astartes fight.”

  Kell rounded on the shade and stepped closer. “The Warmaster is coming here. That’s all that matters.”

  “Oh, indeed,” said Koyne. “And by the time Capra and the other ones who have decided to trust you realise that’s all we want, it will be too late.” The other assassin leaned in. “But let me ask you this, Kell. Do you feel any remorse about what we’re doing? Do you feel any pity for these people?”

  The Vindicare looked away. “The Imperium appreciates their sacrifice.”

  THE QUARTERS ABOARD the Iubar belonging to operative Hyssos were as predictably dull as Spear had expected them to be. There were only a few flashes of individuality here and there – a cabinet with a few bottles of good amasec, a shelf of paper-plas books on a wide variety of subjects, and some rather indifferent pencil sketches that the man had apparently drawn himself. Spear’s lip curled at the dead man’s pretension; perhaps he thought he was some kind of warrior-poet, standing sentinel over the people of the Eurotas clan by day, touching a sensitive artistic soul by night.

  The truth was nowhere near as dignified, however. Delving through the morass of jumbled memories he had stolen from Hyssos’ dead brain, Spear found more than enough incidents where the security operative had been called upon to use his detective skills t
o smooth over situations with native law enforcement on worlds along the Taebian trade axis. The Consortium’s crews and officers broke laws on other worlds and it was Hyssos who was forced to find locals to take the blame or the right men to bribe. He cleaned up messes left by the Void Baron and his family, and on some level the man had hated himself for it.

  Spear had extruded a number of eyes and allowed them to wander the room, sweeping for surveillance devices. Finding nothing, he reconsumed them and then rested, letting his outer aspect relax. The fleshy matter coating his body lost a little definition; to an outside observer, it would have looked like an image slipping out of focus through a lens. He sensed a faint call from the daemonskin. It wanted fresh blood – but then it always wanted fresh blood. Spear let some of the remains of Hyssos he had kept in his secondary stomach ooze out to be absorbed by the living sheath, and it quieted.

  He sat at the desk across from the sleeping alcove. Laid out over the surface were a half-dozen data-slates, each of them displaying layers of information about the Iubar. There were deck plans and security protocols, conduit diagrams, patrol servitor routings, even a copy of the Void Baron’s daily itinerary. Spear’s long, spidery fingers danced over them, plucking slates from the pile for a moment, putting them back, selecting others. A strategy was forming, and the more he gave it his consideration, the more he realised that it would need to be implemented sooner rather than later.

  The rogue trader’s flagship had dropped out of the churn of the warp near a neutron star in the Cascade Line, to take sightings and rest the drives before setting off to the rendezvous at Arrowhead. They would be here no more than a day, and once the Iubar was back in the immaterium, the energy flux from the vessel’s Geller field generators would interfere with Spear’s plans to break into Eurotas’ personal reliquary. The flux had the unfortunate side effect of causing distress to the daemonskin, rendering some of its more useful traits ineffectual. It would have to be done soon, then—

  NO

  Spear flinched and his whole body rippled with a sudden jolt of pain. The echoing screech lanced through him like a laser.