Nemesis

by James Swallow

  A brief smile crossed Sinope’s lips. “Oh, my dear. Don’t you realise? You have brought hope to Dagonet. That is a precious, precious thing. More fragile than faith, even.”

  “No. I did nothing. I am only… a messenger.” Soalm wanted to tell her the truth, in that moment. To explain the full scope of the Execution Force’s plans, to reveal the real reasons behind their assistance to Capra’s freedom fighters, to cry out her darkest, deepest fear – that in her collusion with it all, she was no better than her bitter, callous brother.

  But the words would not come. All she heard in her thoughts was Eristede’s challenge, the cold calculation he had laid before her; were the lives of these people worth more than the death of the Warmaster, the living embodiment of the greatest threat to the human Imperium?

  Sinope came and sat with her, and slowly the old woman’s expression turned darker. “Let me tell you what I am afraid of,” she said. “And you will understand why the struggle is so important. There are sinister forces at large in the universe, child.”

  “The Warmaster…”

  “Horus Lupercal is only an agent of that unchecked anarchy, my dear. There are manifestations coming into being on every world that falls into the shadows cast by the Warmaster’s ambition. Out in the blackness between the stars, cold hate grows.”

  Soalm found the woman’s quiet, intense voice compelling, and listened in silence, captured by her words.

  Sinope went on. “You and I, mankind itself and even the God-Emperor… All are being tested by a chorus of ruinous powers. If our Lord is truly divine, then we must know that He will have his opposite, something beyond our understanding of evil… What terrifies me is the dream of what will come if we let that hate overwhelm our glorious Imperium. There will be disorder and destruction. Fire—”

  “And chaos,” said Jenniker.

  HAD THE CHOICE been his, the killer would have preferred to wait until the Iubar and its attendant ships had reached the Sol system before attempting this penetration; but Spear’s windows of opportunity were limited, and growing smaller with each passing hour. It was simply the most expedient option to do this now. Once they were within the boundaries of the Segmentum Solar, security around the Eurotas flotilla would increase tenfold and Operative Hyssos would have much to occupy his time and attention.

  And then there was the other possibility to consider; that his target, once marked and stored, might be sufficiently powerful that Spear’s ability could be released against it from across an interplanetary distance. He hoped that would not prove to be so – Spear relished the moment of great joy when he looked a kill in the eye and saw the understanding of the end upon it. To be denied that in his crowning moment… It would be simply unjust.

  The killer kept to the lines of tiles that glowed phosphor-green through the gelatinous lenses the daemonskin had grown over his eyes; normal human vision would have noticed nothing to differentiate the tiles on the floor of the reliquary, and so a luckless entrant would wander into one of the zones of contra-gravity stitched into the chamber – there to float trapped until the guards came with guns and ready trigger-fingers.

  He ignored the works of art and objects of incredible value that arrayed the long gallery, each given pride of place in an alcove of its own. The remains of every Eurotas Void Baron since the first were held here, their ashes in urns as tall as a child, the containers made from spun diamond, tantalum, the shells of a Xexet quintal and other materials, each rarer and more expensive than the last. Portraits of lords and ladies from the clan’s history dominated every surface, and all of them stared out sightlessly at Spear as he threaded his way past, avoiding the perception spheres of beam sensors and magnetic anomaly detectors. The daemonskin’s fronds waved gently as he moved, continually tasting the ambient atmosphere and temperature to keep the intruder cooled in synchrony. The thermal monitors studding every square centimetre of the reliquary walls looked for the glow of body heat, but saw nothing. All the patient, clever machines continued to believe the chamber was still empty.

  At the far end of the gallery, inside a glass stasis cage on a plinth made of white marble and platinum, was the Warrant of Trade.

  Spear slowed as he approached it, licking his lips behind the bindings of his scab mask. The motion made the oily skin peel back over his cheeks, revealing teeth, a grin.

  The book was made of real paper, fabricated from one of the last natural forests on Venus. The ink had been refined from burst-sac fluids harvested from Jovian skimmer rays. Artisans from Merica had assembled the tome, bound it in rich grox-hide. Inlaid on the cover, flecks of gemstones from all the colonised worlds of the Sol system shimmered in the light of the gallery’s electrocandles. This book was the physical manifestation of the Eurotas clan’s right to travel the stars. More than their fleets of vessels, their armies of staff and crew, more than the fiscal might they wielded over countless worlds and industrial holdings across the Taebian Stars – more than any of those things, the Warrant was what gave Merriksun Eurotas and his kindred the Emperor’s permission to trade, to voyage, to expand the Imperium’s influence through sheer economic power.

  The killer almost laughed at that. As if any being could parcel out sections of the universe to his followers like plots of land or portions of food. What hubris. What monumental arrogance to assume that they had that entitlement. Such power could not be given; it could only be taken, through bloodshed, pain and the ruthless application of will.

  The glass case had a complex mechanism of suspensors and gravity splines within it, and with the passage of a hand over a ruby sensor pad on the frame, the pages of the book inside could be turned without ever touching them. Spear flicked at the sensor and the Warrant creaked open, leaf after leaf of dense text flickering past.

  It fluttered to a halt on an ornately illuminated page lined in gilt, purple ink and silver leaf. Words in High Gothic surrounded a sumptuously detailed picture repeating the image depicted in the jade frieze in the audience chamber – the Emperor granting the first Eurotas his boon. But Spear’s hungry gaze ignored the workmanship, turning instead towards a wet, liquid patch of dark crimson captured upon the featureless white vellum of the Warrant’s final page.

  A single drop of blood.

  He laid his hand on the edge of the case and let the daemonskin around his fingertips deliquesce, oozing into the weld holding the construction together. The heavy duty armourglass creaked and split down the seam, the malleable flesh pressing on it, shifting it out of true. All at once, a pane gave off a snap of sound, and the killer muffled it with his oily palms. The glass fell out of the frame and into his hand. He greedily reached inside, with trembling fingers.

  Spear would rip the page from the ancient book, tear it out of the stasis field that had preserved it for hundreds of years. He would hold the paper to his lips and consume the blood, take it like the kiss of a lover. He would—

  His hand reached for the pages of the Warrant of Trade and passed straight through it, as if the book were made of smoke. Inside the glass case, the tome seemed to flicker and grow indistinct, for one blinding moment becoming nothing but a perfect ghost image projected from a cluster of hololithic emitters concealed inside the frame of the cage.

  The case was empty; and for a moment so was Spear, his chest hollowed out by the sudden, horrible realisation that his prize was not here.

  But then he was filled anew with murderous rage, and it took every last fraction of his self-control to stop the killer from screaming out his fury and destroying everything around him.

  AFTER LADY SINOPE had left her alone once more, Soalm remained where she was on the ridge and waited for the darkness to engulf her. The night sky, a sight that so often gave her a moment of peace as she contemplated it, now seemed only to veil the threats the old woman had spoken of. She shivered involuntarily and felt a cold, familiar pressure at the edge of her senses.

  “Iota.” She turned and found the Culexus standing near the cave entrance, watching
her. The dusky-skinned girl’s eyes glittered. “Spying on me?”

  “Yes,” came the reply. “You should not remain outside for too long. There are ships in orbit and satellite systems under the control of the clan forces. They will be sweeping this zone with their long-range imagers.”

  “How long have you been watching?”

  “I do not believe He is the forgiving kind,” she repeated, fingering the nullifier tore around her neck.

  Soalm frowned. “You have no right to intrude on a private conversation!”

  If that was meant to inspire guilt in Iota, she gave no such reaction. The pariah seemed unable to grasp the niceties of such concepts as privacy, tact or social graces. “What did the woman Sinope mean, when she spoke about ‘forces at large’?” Iota shook her head. “She did not refer to threats of a military nature.”

  “It’s complicated,” said Soalm. “To be honest, I’m not quite sure myself.”

  “But you value her words. And the words in the book.”

  Soalm’s blood ran cold. “What book?”

  “The one in the chamber on the lower levels. Where the others gather with Sinope to talk about the Emperor as a god. You have been there.”

  “You followed me?” Soalm took a warning step forwards.

  “Yes. Later I returned when no one was there. I read some of the book.” Iota looked away, still toying with the tore. “I found it confusing.”

  Soalm studied the Culexus, her mind racing. If Iota revealed the presence of the hidden chapel inside the rebel base, there was no way to predict what would happen. Many of Capra’s resistance fighters followed the staunchly antitheist Imperial edict that labelled all churches as illegal; and she could not imagine what Eristede might do if he learned she had involvement with the Lectitio Divinitatus.

  “Kell will not be pleased,” said the other woman, as if she could read her thoughts.

  “You won’t speak of it,” Soalm insisted. “You will not tell him!”

  Iota cocked her head. “He is blood kindred to you. The animus speculum reads the colour of your auras. I saw the parity between them the first time I watched you through the eyes of my helm. And yet you keep that a secret too.”

  Soalm tried and failed to keep the shock from her face. “And what other secrets do you know, pariah?”

  She returned a level stare. “I know that you are now considering how you might ensure my silence by killing me. If you make the attempt, there is a chance you may succeed. But you are conflicted by the thought of such an action. It is something your… brother… would not hesitate to do in your place.”

  “I am not Eristede,” she insisted.

  “No, you are not.” Iota’s face softened. “What is it like?”

  “What?”

  “Having kindred. Siblings. I have no concept or experience of it. I was matured in an enclosed environment. A research facility. Your experience… fascinates me. What is it like?” she repeated.

  Strangely, Soalm felt a momentary pang of sadness for the Culexus. “Difficult,” she replied, at length. “Iota, listen to me. Please, say nothing to the others about the chapel.”

  “If I do not, will you try to kill me?”

  “Will you force me?”

  The Culexus shook her head. “No.”

  WHERE? WHERE WAS the Warrant?

  The question thundered through Spear’s mind and it would not let him go. He could not find rest, could not find a moment’s peace until the document had been located. Everything about his master’s careful, intricate plan hinged on the procurement of that one item. Without it, the assassination of the Emperor of Mankind was impossible. Spear was useless, a gun unloaded, a sword blade blunted. His existence had no meaning without the kill. Every single death he had performed, all of them, from the strangling of his birthparents to the ashing of the Word Bearer who came to slit his throat, the fools on Iesta Veracrux, the psy-witch, the investigators and the man whose face he now wore – all of them were only steps on a road towards his ultimate goal.

  And now, Merriksun Eurotas had denied him that. The bloody rage Spear felt towards the Void Baron was so all-consuming that the killer feared merely laying eyes on the man would shatter his cover and send him into a berserker frenzy.

  Spear had all but the most trivial of Hyssos’ memories absorbed within him, and the operative had never known that the Warrant of Trade on display in the reliquary was a fake. There were fewer than a dozen men and women in the entire Eurotas Consortium who outranked the operative in matters of security… Spear wondered if one of them might know the true location of the tome. But how to be sure? He could kill his way through them and never be certain if they had that precious knowledge until he sucked it from their dying minds; but he could not risk such reckless behaviour.

  Eurotas himself would know. But murdering the Void Baron here and now, disposing of a body, passing through another assumption so soon after having torn Hyssos’ identity from his corpse… This was a course fraught with danger, far too risky to succeed.

  No. He needed to find another way, and quickly.

  “Hyssos?” The nobleman’s voice was pitched high and sharp. “What are you doing here?”

  Spear looked up as Eurotas crossed the anteroom of the rogue trader’s personal quarters where he stood waiting. “My lord,” he began, moderating his churning thoughts. “Forgive my intrusion, but I must speak with you.”

  Eurotas glanced over his shoulder as he tied a velvet belt around the day robes he was wearing. Through a half-open door, it was possible to glimpse a sleeping chamber beyond. A naked woman was lying in a doze back there on a snarl of bed sheets. “I am engaged,” the baron said, with a grimace. He seemed distracted. “Come to the audience chamber after we enter the warp, and—”

  “No sir,” Spear put a little steel into Hyssos’ voice. “This won’t wait until we set off for Arrowhead. If I am correct, we may need to return to Iesta Veracrux.”

  That got his attention. Eurotas’ eyes narrowed, but not enough to hide the flicker of fear in them. “Why would that be so?”

  “I have been retracing my steps, going over my notes and recollections from the Iestan murders.” He fixed the baron with a level gaze and began to pay out the fiction he had created over the last few hours; a fiction he hoped would force the nobleman to give up the information he so desperately needed. “The two men… Yosef Sabrat and Daig Segan, the ones who did those terrible deeds. There was something they said that did not seem right to me, at the end when I thought I would be killed by them.”

  “Go on.” Eurotas went to a servitor and had it pour him a glass of water.

  “Sir, they spoke about a warrant.” The baron stiffened slightly at the word. Spear smiled inwardly and went on. “At the time I thought they meant warrants of arrest… But the thought occurs that they may have been talking about something else.” He nodded towards a painting on the wall, an impressionistic work showing the current Void Baron reading from the Warrant of Trade as if it were some scholarly volume of esoteric knowledge.

  “Why would they be interested in the Warrant?” Eurotas demanded.

  “I do not know. But these were no ordinary murderers, sir. We still cannot be certain by what exact means they terminated poor Perrig… And the things they did at the sites of their kills in the name of their Theoge cult—”

  “They were not part of the Theoge!” snapped the baron, the retort coming out of nowhere. He shook his head and paced away a few steps. “I always knew…” said the nobleman, after a moment of silence. “I always knew that Erno Sigg was innocent. That’s why I sent you, Hyssos. Because I trusted you to find the truth.”

  Spear bowed, allowing his stolen face to grow saddened. “I hope I did not disappoint you. And you were correct, my lord. Sigg was a dupe.”

  “Those murdering swine were not part of the Theoge,” Eurotas repeated, turning to advance on him once more. His face had lost some of its earlier colour and his gaze was turned inwards.

 
; “High-Reeve Telemach seemed to think otherwise,” Spear pressed. “If I may ask, why do you disagree with her?” The killer saw something ephemeral pass over the other man’s face; the shadow of a hidden truth. The understanding was coming up from Hyssos’ captured persona, from the operative’s instinctive grasp of fragile human nature, his ability to perceive the falsehood in the words of a liar. Spear let it rise; Eurotas was going to incriminate himself, if he could only be encouraged to do so. The Void Baron had known more than he had revealed about this situation all along, and only now was it coming to light.

  “I… I will tell you what I… believe,” said the nobleman, moving to the door to close it. “Those madmen on Iesta Veracrux were not just spree killers tormenting and bloodletting to satisfy their own insanity. I am certain now that they were agents of the Warmaster Horus Lupercal, may he rot. They were part of a plot that casts a shadow over the Taebian Sector, perhaps over the whole galaxy!” He shuddered. “We have all heard the rumours about the… things that happen on the worlds that have fallen.” Then his tone grew more intense. “Discrediting the Theoge and blackening the name of our clan is just one part of this conspiracy of evil.”

  Spear said nothing, dissembling the man’s words in his thoughts. It was clear now why Eurotas had been so quick to call the matter closed and depart from Iesta Veracrux as fast as decorum would allow. The involvement of Erno Sigg in the murders had been bad enough, but Eurotas had to be sure that sooner or later the clan’s name would become connected to the incident in another, more damning way. He was afraid…

  On a swift and sudden impulse, Spear rocked off his feet from where he stood at attention and snatched at the Void Baron’s robes, pulling the man off-balance.

  “What in Terra’s name do you think you are doing?” Eurotas cried out, affronted at the abrupt assault.

  But in the next second his flash of anger died in his throat when Spear pulled up the voluminous sleeve of his robe to reveal a golden chain tight around his wrist, and on it the shape of an aquila sigil. This time he couldn’t resist letting a small smile creep out over Hyssos’ lips. “You’re one of them.”