Nemesis

by James Swallow

  The crew all knew who Hyssos was. Among some levels of the Eurotas clan’s hierarchy, he was seen as the Void Baron’s attack dog, and that reputation served Spear well now, glowering through another man’s face at everyone he saw, before locking himself into the opulent passenger cabin provided for his use. The cabin was detailed in rich, red velvet that made the murderer feel like he was drowning in blood. That comforted him, but only for a while.

  Once the Yelene was in the thick of the warp, the daemonskin awoke and cried in his mind like a wounded, whining animal. It wanted to be free, and for a long moment, so did Spear.

  He pushed the thought away as if he were drawing back a curtain, but it snagged on something. Spear felt a pull deep in his psyche, clinging to the tails of the disloyal emotion.

  Sabrat.

  NO NO NO NO

  Furious, Spear launched himself at a bookcase along one of the walls and slammed his head into it, beating his malleable face bloody. The impact and the pain forced the remnant of the dead reeve’s persona away again, but the daemonskin was still fretting and writhing, pushing at his tunic, issuing tendrils from every square centimetre of bare flesh.

  It would not obey him. The moment of slippage, the instant when the corpse-mind shard had risen to the fore, had allowed the daemonskin to gain a tiny foothold of self-control.

  “That won’t do,” he hissed aloud, and strode over to the well-stocked drinks cabinet. Spear found a bottle of rare Umbran brandy and smashed it open at the neck. He doused the bare skin of his arms with the rich, peaty liquid and the tendrils flinched. Then, he tore open the lid of a humidor on a nearby desk and took the ever-taper from within. At the touch of his thumb, it lit and he jabbed it into the skin. A coating of bluish flame engulfed his hands and he bunched his fists, letting the pain seep into him.

  THE FIRE AND the pain.

  Outside the ship there is nothing but fire. Inside, only pain.

  Where he stands, he is shackled to the deck by an iron chain thicker than a man’s forearm, heavy double links reaching to a manacle around his right leg. It is so tightly fastened that he would need to sever the limb at the knee to gain his freedom.

  His attention is not on this, however. One wall of the chamber in which the master’s warriors placed him is not there. Instead, there is only fire. Burning madness. He is aware that a thin membrane of energy separates that inferno from him. How this is possible he cannot know; such science-sorcery is beyond him.

  He knows only that he is looking into the warp itself, and by turns the warp looks back into him.

  He howls and pulls at the chain. The runes and glyphs drawn all over his naked body are itching and inflamed, cold-hot and torturing him. The warp is pulling at the monstrous, unknowable words etched into him. He howls again, and this time the master answers.

  “Be afraid,” Erebus tells him. “The fear will smooth the bonding. It will give it something to sink its teeth into.”

  He can’t tell where the voice is coming from. Like so many times before, ever since the opening of the cage, Erebus seems to be inside his thoughts whenever he wishes to be. Sometimes the master comes in there and leaves things – knowledge, ability, thirsts – and sometimes he takes things instead. Memories, perhaps. It’s not easy to be certain.

  He has questions; but they die in his throat when he sees the thing coming from the deeps of the warp. It moves like mercury, shimmering and poisonous. It sees him.

  Erebus anticipates his words. “A minor phylum of warp creature,” explains the master. “A predator. Dangerous but less than intelligent. Cunning, in a fashion.”

  It is coming. The gauzy veil of energy trembles. Soon it will pucker and open, just for the tiniest of moments. Enough to let it in.

  “It can be domesticated,” says the Word Bearer. “If one has the will to control it. Do you have the will, Spear?”

  “Yes, master—”

  He does not finish his words. The predator-daemon finds the gap and streams through it, into the opened bay of the starship. It smothers him, skirling and shrieking its joy at finding a rich, easy kill.

  This is the moment when Erebus allows himself a noise of amusement; this is the moment when the daemon, in its limited way, realises that everywhere it has touched Spear’s flesh, across every rune and sigil, it cannot release. It cannot consume.

  And he collapses to the deck, writhing in agony as it tries to break free, fails, struggles, and finally merges.

  As the hatch closes off the compartment from the red hell outside, Spear hears the master’s voice receding.

  “It will take you days of agony to dominate it, and failure will mean you both die. The magicks etched into you cannot be broken. You are bonded now. It is your skin. You will master it, as I have mastered you.”

  The words echo and fade, and then there is only his screaming, and the daemon’s screaming.

  And the fire and the pain.

  A THIN AND cold drizzle had come in with the veil of night, and all across the star-port, the rain hissed off the cracked, battle-damaged runways and landing pads in a constant rush of sound. Water streamed off the folded wingtips of the Ultio’s forward module, down through the broken roof of the hangar, spattering against the patch of dry ferrocrete beneath the vessel where it crouched low to the ground. It resembled an avian predator, ready to throw itself into the sky; but for now the ship’s systems were running in dark mode, with nothing to betray its operable state to the infrequent patrols that passed by.

  The star-port had remained largely abandoned since the start of the insurrection. It was still a long way down the clanner government’s long list of important infrastructure repairs. Rebel strikes against power stations and communications towers made sure of that, although Capra had been careful that lines of supply were kept open so that the native populace would not starve. He was winning hearts and minds, for all the good that would do him in the long run.

  Kell stood at the foot of the Ultio’s landing ramp and peered into the rain through the eye band of his spy mask, letting the built-in sensors do their work, considering the freedom fighters once more. How would they react when they found the members of Kell’s team gone? Would they think they had been betrayed? Perhaps so. After all, they had been, in a way. And when the mission reached its endpoint, Capra would know full well who had been behind it.

  “Any sign?” Tariel’s voice filtered down from above him. “The pilot-brain reports that the passive sensors registered a blip a short time ago, but since then, nothing.”

  Kell didn’t look up at him. “Status?”

  Tariel gave a sigh. The Garantine has sharpened his knives so much he could slice the raindrops in two. “I am monitoring the public and military vox-nets, and I have prepared and loaded all my data phages and blackouts. Koyne is in the process of mimicking the form of the troop commander we captured. I take it the Culexus and the Venenum have still yet to arrive?”

  “Your powers of perception are as sharp as ever.”

  “How long can we afford to wait?” he replied. “We’re very close to the deployment time as it is.”

  “They’ll be here,” Kell said, just as something shimmered in the downpour beyond the open hangar doors.

  “I am,” said Iota, emerging from the grey rain. Her voice had a strange, echoing timbre inside her skull-helmet. She removed the weapon helm as she stepped into cover, and shook loose the thin threads of her braided hair. “I was delayed.”

  “By what?” Tariel demanded. “There’s nobody out there.”

  “Nobody out there now,” Iota gently corrected.

  “Where’s the Venenum?” said Kell, his jaw stiffening. Iota glanced at him. “Your sister isn’t coming.”

  Kell’s eyes flashed with shock and annoyance. “How—?”

  Tariel held up his hands in a gesture of self-protection. “Don’t look at me. I said nothing!”

  The Vindicare grimaced. “Never mind. That’s not important. Explain yourself. What do you mean, she’s n
ot coming?”

  “Jenniker has taken on a mission of greater personal importance than this one,” the Culexus told him.

  “I gave her an order!” he barked, his ire rising by the second.

  “Yes, you did. And she disobeyed it.”

  Kell grabbed the other assassin by the collar and glared at her. He felt the black shadow of the pariah’s soul-shrivelling aura rise off her in a wave, but he was too furious to care. “You saw her go, didn’t you? You saw her go and you did nothing to stop it!”

  A flicker of emotion crossed Iota’s face, but it was difficult to know what it was. Her dark eyes became solid orbs of void. “You will not touch me.”

  Kell’s skin tingled and his hand went ice-cold, as if it had been plunged into freezing water. Reflexively he let the Culexus go and his fingers contracted in pain. “What were you thinking, girl?” he demanded.

  “You don’t own her,” Iota said, in a low voice. “You gave up your part in her life.”

  The comment came out of nowhere, and Kell was actually startled by it. “I… This is about the mission,” he went on, recovering swiftly. “Not about her.”

  “You tell yourself that and you pretend to believe it.” Iota straightened up and stepped around him.

  He turned; at the top of the ramp Tariel had been joined by the Garantine, the Eversor rocking back and forth, his massive hands clenching and unclenching with barely-restrained energy. A middle-aged man in PDF-issue rain slicker stood nearby, toying with a poison knife. The expression of the face that Koyne had borrowed was wrong, ill-fitting in some way that Kell could not express.

  “How much longer?” snarled the Eversor. “I want to kill an Astartes. I want to see how it feels.” His jittery fingers played with the straps of his skull-mask, and the pupils of his bloodshot eyes were black pinpricks.

  Kell made a decision and stepped after the Culexus. “Iota. Do you know where she went?”

  “I have an inkling,” came the reply.

  “Find Soalm. Bring her back.”

  “Now?” said Tariel, his face falling. “Now, of all times?”

  “Do it!” Kell insisted. “If she has been compromised, then our entire mission is blown.”

  “That’s not the reason why,” said Iota. “But we can tell her it is, if you wish.”

  The Vindicare pointed back out into the rains, which had begun to grow worse. “Just go.” He looked away. There was something in his chest, something there he had thought long since vanished. An emptiness. A regret. He smothered it before it could take hold, turning it to anger. Damn her for bringing these feelings back to the surface! She was part of a past he had left behind, and he wanted it to remain that way. And yet…

  Iota gave him a nod and her helmet rose to cover her face. Without looking back, she broke into a run and was quickly swallowed up by the deluge.

  The Garantine came stomping down the ramp, seething. “What are you doing, sniper?” He spat the words at him. “That gutless poisoner flees the field and you make things worse by sending the witch away as well? Are you mad?”

  “Is the notorious Garantine actually admitting he needs the help of women?” said Koyne, in the troop commander’s voice. “Wonders never cease.”

  The Eversor rage-killer loomed over the Vindicare. “You’re not fit to lead this unit, you never were. You’re weak! And now your lack of leadership is compromising us all!”

  “You understand nothing,” Kell snarled back.

  A steel-taloned finger pressed on his chest. “You know what’s wrong with your clade, Kell? You’re afraid to get the blood on you. You’re scared of the stink of it, you want things all neat and clean, dealt with at arm’s length.” The Garantine jerked a thumb at Koyne. “Even that sexless freak is better than you!”

  “Charming,” muttered the Callidus.

  The Eversor went on, hissing out each word in pops of spittle through bared teeth. “Valdor must have been making sport when he put you in charge of this mission! Do you think we’re all blind to the way you look at that Venenum bitch?”

  In an instant, Kell’s Exitus pistol was in his hands and then the muzzle of it was buried in the exposed flesh of the Garantine’s throat, pressing into the stressed muscles and taut veins.

  “Kell!” Tariel called out a warning. “Don’t!”

  The Eversor laughed. “Go on, sniper. Do it. Up close and personal, for the first time in your life.” His clawed hands came up and he rammed the gun into the thick flesh beneath his jaw. “Prove you have some backbone! Do it!”

  For a second Kell’s finger tightened on the trigger; but to murder an Eversor rage-killer at point-blank range would be suicidal. The gene-modifications deep inside the Garantine’s flesh contained within them a critical failsafe system that would, should the assassin’s heart ever stop, create a combustive bio-meltdown powerful enough to destroy everything close at hand.

  Instead, Kell put all his effort into a vicious shove that propelled the Garantine away. “If I didn’t need you,” he growled, “I’d blow a hole in your spine and leave you crippled and bleeding out.”

  The Eversor sniggered. “You just made my argument for me.”

  “This is pointless,” snapped Koyne, striding down the ramp. “No mission plan ever works as it should. Every one of us knows that. We can complete the assignment without the women. The primary target is still within our reach.”

  “The Callidus is correct,” added Tariel, working his cogitator. “I’m reconfiguring the protocols now. There are overlapping attack vectors. We can still operate with two losses.”

  “As long as no one else walks off,” said the Garantine. “As long as nothing else changes.”

  Kell’s face twisted in a grimace. “We’re wasting time,” he said, turning away. “Secure the Ultio and move out to your kill-points.”

  THE MAN’S NAME was Tros, and he didn’t talk much. He led Soalm out of the caverns through a vaulted hall of rock that had once held fuel rods for Dagonet’s long-dead atmosphere converters, and to a waiting GEV skimmer.

  Once they were on their way out into the wilds, the noise of the hovercraft’s engines made conversation problematic at best. The assassin decided to sit back behind the rebel and let him drive.

  The skimmer was fast. They wound through the canyons of the Bladecut at breakneck speed, and then suddenly the wall of rock dropped away around them, falling into the ochre desert. As storm clouds rolled in above them from the west, they went deeper and deeper into the wilderness. From time to time, Soalm saw what might have been the remains of abandoned settlements; they dated back to the early colonist decades, back to when this desert had been fertile arable land. That had been in Dagonet’s green phase, before the human-altered atmosphere had changed again, shifting the good climate northwards. The population had moved with it, leaving only the shells of their former homes lying like broken, scattered tombstones.

  Finally the GEV’s engine note downshifted and they began to slow. Tros pointed to something in the near distance, and Soalm glimpsed the shapes of tents flapping in the winds, low pergolas and yurts arranged around the stubs of another forsaken township. As the skimmer closed in and settled to the sand in a cloud of falling dust, what caught her eye first was the mural of an Imperial aquila along one long pale wall. It looked old, weather-beaten; but at the same time it shone in the fading daylight as if it had been polished to a fine sheen by decades of swirling sand.

  There had only been a handful of people in the makeshift chapel hidden in the rebel base, and Soalm had been slightly disappointed to see how few followers of the God-Emperor were counted among the freedom fighters. But she realised now that small group had only been a fraction of the real number.

  The followers of the Lectitio Divinitatus were here.

  She stepped from the skimmer and walked slowly into the collection of improvised habitats and reclaimed half-buildings. Even at first glance, Soalm could see that there were hundreds of people. Adults and children, young and old, me
n and women from all walks of life across Dagonet’s society. Most of them wore makeshift sandcloaks or hoods to keep the ochre dust from their mouths and noses. She saw some who carried weapons, but they did so without the twitchy nervousness of Capra’s rebels; one man with a lasgun eyed her as she passed him, and Soalm saw he was wearing the remnants of a PDF uniform, tattered and ripped in the places where the insignia had been stripped off – all except the aquila, which he wore proudly.

  These people, the refugees, were in the process of gathering themselves together for the coming night, tying down ropes and securing sheets. Out here, the winds moved swiftly over the open desert and the particles of dark dust would get into everything. The first curls of the breeze pulled at the hems of her robes as she walked on.

  Tros matched her pace and pointed to a strangely proportioned building with a slanted wall and a forest of skeletal antennae protruding from where its roof should have been. “Over there.”

  “These are Lady Sinope’s followers?” she asked.

  The man gave a snort of amusement. “Don’t say that to her face. She’d think it disrespectful.” Tros shook his head. “We don’t follow her. We follow Him. Milady just helps us on the path.”

  “You knew her before the insurrection?”

  “I knew of her,” he corrected. “My da met her once, when she was a younger woman. Heard her speak to a secret meet at Dusker Point. Never thought I’d have the chance myself, though… Milady has done much for us over the years.”

  “Your family have always been a part of the Imperial Cult, then?”

  Tros nodded. “But that’s not a name we use here. We call ourselves the Theoge.”

  They approached the building and at once Soalm realised that it was no such thing. The construction was actually a small ship, a good measure of its keel buried in the cracked, ruddy earth. Beyond it she saw the rusted frames of dock wharfs, extending into the air. Once this place had been a wide river canal.