The echo of that thought rang hard in his chest, and the press of the sudden emotion surprised him. He remembered the look in her eyes when she had entered the room in the Venenum manse – the coldness and the loathing. It was identical to the expression she had worn all those years ago, on the day he had told her he was accepting the mission to find mother and father’s killer. Only then, there had also been pity there as well. Perhaps she had lost the capacity to know compassion, over time.
He had hoped, foolishly, he now realised, that she might have come to understand why he had made his choice. The killing of their parents had been an aching, burning brand in his thoughts; the need for raw vengeance, although at the time he had no words to describe it. A deed that could not be undone, and one that could not go unanswered.
And when the kill was finished, after all the deaths it took to reach it… Mother and father were still dead, but he had avenged them, and the cost had only been the love of the last person who cared about him. Kell always believed that if he had the chance to change that moment, to make the choice again, he would have done nothing differently. But after looking his sister in the eye, he found that certainty crumbling.
It had been easy to be angry with her at first, to deny her and hate her back for turning her face from him, eschewing her family’s name. But as time passed, the anger cooled and became something else. Only now was he beginning to understand it had crystallised into regret.
A slight breeze pulled at him and Kell frowned at his own thoughts, dismissing them as best he could. He returned to the mission, made his hide, gathering his gear and assembling what he would need for the duration in easy reach. Backtracking, he rigged the stairwells and corridors leading to the laundry room with pairs of trip-mines to cover his rear aspect, before placing his pistol where he could get to it at a moment’s notice.
Then, and only then, did he unlimber the Exitus longrifle. One of the Directors Tertius at the clade had told him of the Nihon, a nation of fierce warriors on ancient Terra, who it was said could not return their swords to their scabbards after drawing them unless the weapons first tasted blood. Something of that ideal appealed to Kell; it would not be right to cloak such a magnificent weapon as this without first taking a life with it.
He settled into a prone position, running through meditation routines to relax himself and prepare his body, but he found it difficult. Matters beyond the mission – or truthfully, matters enmeshed with it – preyed on him. He frowned and went to work on the rifle, dialling in the imager scope, flicking through the sighting modes. Kell had zeroed the weapon during their time with Capra’s rebels, and now it was like an extension of himself, the actions rote and smooth.
Microscopic sensor pits on the muzzle of the rifle fed information directly to his spy mask, offering tolerance changes and detailing windage measurements. He flicked down the bipod, settling the weapon. Kell let his training find the range for him, compensating for bullet drop over distance, coriolis effect, attenuation for the moisture of the late rains still in the air, these and a dozen other variables. With care, he activated a link between his burst transmitter and the Lance. A new icon appeared a second later; the Lance was ready.
He leaned into the scope. The display became clearer, and solidified. His aiming line crossed from the habitat tower, over the stub of a nearby monument, through the corridor of a blast-gutted administratum office, down and down to the open square the locals called Liberation Plaza. It was there that Horus Lupercal had killed the crooked priest-king that had ruled Dagonet’s darkest years, early in the Great Crusade. There, he had expended only one shot and struck such fear into the tyrant’s men that they laid down their guns and surrendered at the sight of him.
A figure swam into view, blurred slightly by the motion of air across the kilometres of distance between them. A middle-aged man in the uniform of a PDF troop commander. As he looked in Kell’s direction, his mouth moved and automatically a lip-reading subroutine built into the scope’s integral auspex translated the words into text.
He’s coming, Kell, read the display. Very soon now.
The Vindicare gave the slightest of nods and used Koyne’s torso to estimate his final range settings. Then the disguised Callidus moved out of view and Kell found himself looking at an empty patch of milk-white marble.
THE SANDSTORM HID her better than any camouflage. Iota moved through it, enjoying the push and pull of the wind on her body, the hiss and rattle of the particles as they scoured her metal skull-helm, plucking at the splines of the animus speculum.
The Culexus watched the world through the sapphire eye of the psionic weapon, feeling the pulse and throb of it on the periphery of her thoughts like a coldness in her brain. Humans moved through the arc of fire and she tracked them. Each of them would register her attention without really knowing it; they would shiver involuntarily and draw their sandcloaks tighter, quickening their step to reach warmth and light and safety a little faster. They sensed her without sensing her, the ominous, ever-present shadow of null she cast falling on them. Children, when she turned her hard, glittering gaze in their direction, would begin to cry and not know the reason. When she passed close to tents full of sleeping figures, she could hear them mutter and moan under their breath; she passed over their dreams like a windborne storm cloud, darkening the skies of their subconscious for a moment before sliding beyond the horizon.
Iota’s pariah soul – or lack thereof – made people turn away from her, made them avert their eyes from the shadowed corners where she moved. It was a boon for her stealth, and with it she entered the sanctuary encampment without raising an alarm. She scrambled up a disused crane gantry, across the empty cab and along the rusted jib. Old cables whined in atonal chorus as the winds plucked at them.
From here she had a fine view of the beached ship at the centre of the settlement. What pathways there were radiated out from here, and she had already spotted the parked skimmer peeking out from beneath a tethered tarpaulin; the last time she had seen that vehicle, it had been in Capra’s hideaway. She settled in and waited.
Eventually, a hatch opened, spilling yellow light into the dusty air, and Iota shifted down along the length of the crane jib, watching.
A quartet of armed men exited, two carrying a small metal chest between them. Following on behind was the Venenum and the old noblewoman who had spoken in such strange ways about the Emperor. Auspex sensors in Iota’s helmet isolated their conversation so she could listen.
Soalm was reaching a hand out to brush it over the surface of the chest, and although she wore her hood up, Iota believed she could see a glitter of high emotion in her eyes. “We have a small ship,” she was saying. “I can get the Warrant aboard… But after that—” She turned her head and a gust of wind snatched the end of the sentence away.
The old woman, Sinope, was nodding. “The Emperor protects. You must find Baron Eurotas, return it to him.” She sighed. “Admittedly, he is not the most devoted of us, but he has the means and method to escape the Taebian Sector. Others will come in time to take stewardship of the relic.”
“I will protect it until that day.” Soalm looked at the chest again, and Iota wondered what they were discussing; the contents of the coffer had some value that belied the scuffed, weather-beaten appearance of the container. Soalm’s words were almost reverent.
Sinope touched the other woman’s hand. “And your comrades?”
“Their mission is no longer mine.”
Iota frowned at that behind her helm’s grinning silver skull. The Culexus would be the first to admit that her grasp of the mores of human behaviour was somewhat stunted, but she knew the sound of disloyalty when she heard it. With a flex of her legs, she leapt off the rusting crane, the jib creaking loudly as she described a back-flip that put her down right in front of the four soldiers. They were bringing up their guns but Iota already had her needier levelled at Sinope’s head; she guessed correctly that the old woman was the highest value target in the group.
Soalm called out to the others to hold their fire, and stepped forward. “You followed me.”
“Again,” said Iota, with a nod. “You are on the verge of irreversibly compromising our mission on Dagonet. That cannot be allowed.” From the corner of her eye, the Culexus saw Sinope go pale as she dared to give the protiphage her full attention.
“Go back to Eristede,” said the poisoner. “Tell him I am gone. Or dead. It doesn’t matter to me.”
Iota cocked her head. “He is your brother.” She ignored the widening of Soalm’s eyes. “It matters to him.”
“I’m taking the Ultio,” insisted the other woman. “You can stay here and take part in this organised suicide if you wish, but I have a greater calling.” Her eyes flicked towards the chest and back again.
“Horus comes,” said Iota, drawing gasps from some of the soldiers. “And we are needed. The chance to strike against the Warmaster may never come again. What can you carry in some iron box that has more value than that?”
“I don’t expect you to understand,” Soalm replied. “You are a pariah; you were born without a soul. You have no faith to give.”
“No soul…” Sinope echoed the words, coming closer. “Is that possible?”
“In this chest is a piece of the Emperor’s divinity, made manifest,” Soalm went on, her eyes shining with zeal. “I am going to protect it with my life from the ruinous powers intent on its destruction! I believe this with my heart and spirit, Iota! I swear it in the name of the living God-Emperor of Mankind!”
“Your beliefs are meaningless,” Iota retorted, becoming irked by the woman’s irrationality. “Only what is real matters. Your words and relics are ephemeral.”
“You think so?” Sinope stepped fearlessly towards the Culexus, reaching out a hand. “Have you never encountered something greater than yourself? Never wondered about the meaning of your existence?” She dared to touch the metal face of the skull. “Look me in the eye and tell me that. I ask, child. Let me see you.”
Somewhere in the distance, Iota thought she heard a ripple of jet noise, but she ignored it. Instead, uncertain where the impulse came from, she reached up a hand and thumbed the release that let the skullhelmet fold open and retreat back over her shoulders. Her face naked to the winds and sand, she turned her gaze on the old woman and held it. “Here I am.” She felt a question stir in her. “Is Soalm right? Can you tell? Am I soulless?”
Sinope’s hand went to her lips. “I… I don’t know. But in His wisdom, I have faith that the God-Emperor will know the answer.”
Iota’s eyes narrowed. “No amount of faith will stop you from dying.”
THE SHIP CAME out of the void shrouded in silence and menace.
Rising over the far side of Dagonet’s largest moon like a dragon taking wing, the Astartes battleship came on, prow first, knifing through the vacuum towards the combat-cluttered skies. Wreckage and corpses desiccated by the punishing kiss of space rebounded off the sheer sides of its bow as serried ranks of weapons batteries turned in their sockets to bear on the turning world beneath them. Hatches opened, great irises of thick space-hardened brass and steel yawning to give readiness to launch bays where Stormbird drop-ships and Raven interceptors nestled in their deployment cradles. Bow doors hiding the mouths of missile tubes retreated.
What few vessels there were close to the planet did not dare to share the same orbit, and fled as fast as their motors would allow them. As they retreated, they transmitted fawning, obeisant messages that were almost begging in tone, insisting on their loyalties and imploring the invader ship’s commander to spare their lives. Only one vessel did not show the proper level of grovelling fear – a fast cutter in a rogue trader’s livery, whose crew broke for open space in a frenzy of panic. As a man might stretch a limb to ready it before a day of exercise, the battleship discharged a desultory barrage of beam fire from one of its secondary batteries, obliterating the cutter. This was done almost as an afterthought.
The massive craft passed in front of the sun, throwing a partial occlusion of black shadow across the landscape far below. It sank into a geostationary orbit, stately and intimidating, hanging in place over the capital city as the dawn turned all eyes below to the sky.
Every weapon in the battleship’s arsenal was prepared and oriented down at the surface – torpedo arrays filled with warshots that could atomise whole continents in a single strike, energy cannons capable of boiling off oceans, kinetic killers that could behead mountains through the brute force of their impact. This was only the power of the ship itself; then there was the minor fleet of auxiliary craft aboard it, wings of fighters and bombers that could come screaming down into Dagonet’s atmosphere on plumes of white fire. Swift death bringers that could raze cities, burn nations.
And finally, there was the army. Massed brigades of genetically-enhanced warrior kindred, hundreds of Adeptus Astartes clad in ceramite power armour, loaded down with boltguns and chainswords, power blades and flamers, man-portable missile launchers and autocannons. Hosts of these warlords gathered on the mustering decks, ready to embark at their drop-ship stations if called upon, while others – a smaller number, but no less dangerous for it – assembled behind their liege lord high commander in the battleship’s teleportarium.
The vessel had brought a military force of such deadly intent and utter lethality that the planet and its people had never known the like, in all their recorded history. And it was only the first. Other ships were following close behind.
This was the visitation granted to Dagonet by the Sons of Horus, the tip of a sword blade forged from shock and awe.
FAR BELOW, ACROSS the white marble of Liberation Plaza, a respectful hush fell over the throng of people who had gathered since the previous day’s dusk, daring at last to venture out into the streets. The silence radiated outward in a wave, crossing beyond the edges of the vast city square, into the highways filled with halted groundcars and standing figures. It bled out through the displays on patched streetscreens at every intersection, relayed by camera ballutes drifting over the Governor’s hall; it fell from the crackling mutter of vox-speakers connected to the national watch-wire.
The quiet came down hard as the planet looked to the sky and awaited the arrival of their redeemer, the owner of their new allegiance. Their war-god.
SOALM’S HANDS WERE trembling, but she wasn’t sure what emotion was driving her. The righteous passion erupting from laying eyes on the Warrant rolled and churned around her as if she were being buffeted by more than just the gritty winds – but there was something else there. Iota’s hard words about Eristede had come from out of nowhere, and they pulled her thoughts in directions she did not wish them to go. She shook her head; now of all times was not the moment to lose her way. The ties that had once existed between Jenniker and her brother had been severed long ago, and dwelling on that would serve no purpose. Her hands slipped towards the concealed pockets in the surplice beneath her travelling robe, feeling for the toxin cordes concealed there. She wondered if the Culexus would fight her if she refused to carry out the Assassinorum’s orders. Soalm knew the God-Emperor would forgive her; but her brother never would.
The tension of the moment was broken as two figures approached out of the haze of the sandstorm, from the direction of the dry canal bed. She recognised Tros, his steady, rolling gait. At his side was a dark-skinned man whose threads of grey hair were pulled out behind him by the wind, where they danced like errant serpents. The new arrival had no dust mask or eye-shield, and he gave no sign that the scouring sands troubled him.
Sinope stepped towards him, and from the corner of her eye Soalm saw the noblewoman’s men tense. They were unsure where to aim their guns.
Iota made an odd noise in the back of her throat and her hand went to her face. Soalm thought she saw a flash of pain there.
“Who is this?” Sinope was asking.
“He came in from out of the storm,” Tros replied, speaking loudly so they all could hear hi
m. Nearby, people had been drawn by the sound of raised voices and they stood at slatted windows or in doorways, watching. “This is Hyssos. The Void Baron sent him.”
The dark man bowed deeply. “You must be the Lady Astrid Sinope.” His voice was resonant and firm. “My lord will be pleased to hear you are still alive. When we heard about Dagonet we feared the worst.”
“Eurotas… sent you?” Sinope seemed surprised.
“For the Warrant,” said Hyssos. He opened his hand and there was a thickset ring made of gold and emerald in his palm – a signet. “He gave me this so you would know I carry his authority.”
Tros took the ring and passed it to Sinope, who pressed it to a similar gold band on her own finger. Soalm saw a blink of light as the sensing devices built into the signets briefly communed. “This is valid,” said the noble, as if she could not quite believe it.
Iota moved away, and she stumbled a step. Soalm glanced after her. The waif gasped and made a retching noise. The Venenum felt an odd, greasy tingle in the air, like static, only somehow colder.
Hyssos extended his hands. “If you please? I have a transport standing by, and time is of the essence.”
“What sort of transport?” said Tros. “We have children here. You could take them—”
“Tros,” Sinope warned. “We can’t—”
“Of course,” Hyssos said smoothly. “But quickly. The Warrant is more important than any of us.”
Something was wrong. “And you are here now?” Soalm asked the question even as it formed in her thoughts. “Why did you not come a day ago, or a week? Your timing is very opportune, sir.”
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