Nemesis

by James Swallow

  He rode on a wave of frenzy, of black and mad hate that sent him howling with uncontrollable laughter, each choking snarl rattling like gunshots. He was so fast; so lethal; so satisfied like this.

  The Garantine had been awake now for the longest period of his life since before they had found him in the colony, the gnawed bones of his neighbours in his little child’s hand, the tips sharpened to make a kill with. He missed the dreamy no-mind bliss of the stasis cowls. He felt lost without the whispering voices of the hypnogoges. This kind of living, the hour-to-hour, day-by-day existence that the rest of them found so easy… it was a hell of stultifying torpor for the Garantine. He hated the idea of this interminable yesterday and today and tomorrow. He craved the now.

  Every second he was awake, he felt as if the pure rage that fuelled him was being siphoned away, making him weak and soft. He needed his sleep. Needed it like air.

  But he needed his kills even more. Better than the hardest hit of combat philtre, more potent than the jags of pleasure-analogue that issued from the lobo-chips in his grey matter – the kills were the best high of them all.

  He was pounding on the Space Marine’s helmet, smashing in the eye-lenses, beating his clawed hands bloody. The Executor was a club he used to bludgeon and swipe.

  Impacts registered on him, blasts of infernal heat throwing him off his victim, driving him hard into the road. Heavy, drug-tainted vitae frothed at his mouth and bubbled through the maw of the fang-mask. He felt no pain. There was only a white ball of warmth in the middle of him, and it was growing. It expanded to fill the Garantine with a rush the like of which he had never felt before. The implants in him stuttered and died, shattered by glancing bolter hits and knife stabs. He had nothing but rags below the right knee.

  Every muscle in his body shuddered as the death-sign triggered a dormant artificial gland beneath his sternum. The engorged, orb-shaped organ spent its venom load, bursting as the end came close. The Terminus gland poured a compound into the Garantine that made the blood in his veins boil, turning it to acid. Every drug and chemical mixed uncontrollably, becoming potent, toxic, explosive.

  The soft tissues of the Eversor’s eyes cooked in their orbits, and so he was blind to the final flash of exothermic release, as his body was consumed in an inferno of spontaneous combustion.

  THEY HUGGED THE contours of the city streets, moving fast and as low as they dared, but out on the edge of the capital the Sons of Horus had little presence. Instead, the rebel Astartes had allowed their orbital contingent to hammer at the walled estates and park-lands belonging to the noble clans. The city was now ringed with a dirty chain of massive impact craters. The blackened bowls of churned earth were fused into glassy puddles in some places, where the force of the kinetic strikes had melted the ground into distended fulgurite plates.

  The lines of refugees crossed the craters beneath them, streamers of people moving like ants across the footprint of an uncaring giant. The thick, smoke-soiled air over the destruction veiled the passage of the flyer. Tariel told them they were fortunate that the Adeptus Astartes had not deployed air cover; in this wallowing, keening civilian aircraft they would have been no match for a Raven interceptor.

  On Kell’s orders the infocyte directed the flyer out over the wastelands beyond the city walls and into the dusty churn of the deserts. With each passing second they were putting more and more distance between them and the star-port hangar where the Ultio had been concealed.

  Nothing followed them; at one point the sensors registered something small and fast – a jetbike perhaps – but it was far off their vector and did not appear to be aware of them.

  Finally, Koyne broke the silence. “Where in the name of Hades are we going?”

  “To find the others,” said the Vindicare.

  “The women?” Koyne was still hiding behind a young man’s face and the expression the Callidus put on it was too old and too callous for such a youthful visage. “What makes you think they’re any less dead than the Eversor?”

  Kell held up a data-slate. “You don’t really think I’d let the Culexus out of my sight without knowing exactly where she was, do you?”

  “A tracking device?” Koyne immediately glared at Tariel, who shrank back behind the hologram of the flyer’s autopilot control. “One of your little toys?”

  The infocyte gave a brisk nod. “A harmless radiation frequency tag, nothing more. I provided enough for all of us.”

  Koyne turned the glare back on Kell. “Did you plant one on me as well?” The boy’s eyes narrowed. “Where is it?”

  Kell smiled coldly. “Those rations aboard the Ultio were tasty, weren’t they?” Before the Callidus could react, he went on. “Don’t be so difficult, Koyne. If I hadn’t factored in a contingency, we never would have found you. You’d still be in the city, marking time until Horus’ warriors cut you down.”

  “You thought of everything,” said the shade. “Except the possibility that our target would know we were coming!”

  Tariel began to speak. “The target in the plaza—”

  “Was not the Warmaster,” snarled Koyne. “I am an assassin palatine of more kills than I care to mention, and I have survived every sanction and prosecuted each kill because I had no secrets. No one to confide in. No chance for a breach in operational security. And yet here we are, with this grand and foolish scheme to murder a primarch crashing down around us, and for what? Who spoke, Kell?” The Callidus crossed the flyer’s small cabin and prodded the marksman in the chest. “Who is to blame?”

  “I don’t have an answer for you,” said Kell, in a moment of candour. “But if any of us were traitors to the Emperor, we’ve had opportunities aplenty to stop this endeavour before it even left the Sol system.”

  “Then how did Horus foresee the attack?” asked Koyne. “He let one of his own commanders perish in his stead. He must have known! Are we to believe he’s some kind of sorcerer?”

  A chime sounded from Kell’s data-slate, and he left the question unanswered. “A return. Two kilometres to the west.”

  Tariel opened another pane of ghostly hololithic images and nodded. “I have it. A static location. The flyer’s auspex is detecting a metallic mass… conflicting thermal reads.”

  “Set us down.”

  Below them, dust clouds whirled past, reducing visibility to almost nothing. “The sandstorm and the contaminants from the orbital bombing…” The Vanus looked up and his argument died on his lips as he saw Kell’s rigid expression. He sighed. “As you wish.”

  TWO OF TARIEL’S eyerats found her, slumped over the yoke of a GEV skimmer half-buried under a storm-blown dune. From what the infocyte could determine, she had been injured before getting into the vehicle, and at some point as she tried to escape into the deep desert, her wounds had overcome her and the skimmer controls had slipped from her grip.

  Kell, an expression of stony fury on his face, shoved Tariel out of the way and gathered up Soalm where she lay. Her face was discoloured with bruising, and to the infocyte’s amazement, she still lived.

  Koyne drew something from the back seat of the GEV: a sculpted silver helmet in the shape of a skull, crested with lenses and antennae of arcane design. When the Callidus held it up to look it in the eye, black ash fell from the neck and was carried away on the moaning winds. “Iota…”

  “Dead,” Soalm stirred at the mention of the psyker’s name. “It killed her.” Her voice was slight, thick with pain.

  “It?” echoed Tariel; but Kell was already carrying the Venenum back towards the flyer.

  Koyne was the last inside, and the Callidus drew the hatch shut with a slam. The shade brought Iota’s helmet back, and sat it on the deck of the cabin. It fixed them all with its mute, accusatory gaze. Outside, the winds threw rattling curls of sand across the canopy, plucking at the wings of the aircraft.

  Across the compartment, Kell tore open a medicae pack and emptied the contents across the metal floor.

  He worked to load an injector wit
h a pan-spectrum anti-infective.

  “Ask her what happened,” said Koyne.

  “Shut up,” Kell snapped. “I’m going to save her life, not interrogate her!”

  “If she was drawn away on purpose,” continued the Callidus. “If it was deliberate that Soalm was attacked and Iota killed…”

  “What could have killed her?” Tariel blurted out. “I witnessed what she was capable of in the Red Lanes.”

  Koyne scrambled across the cabin towards the sniper. “For the Throne’s sake, man, ask her! Whatever she is to you, we have to know!”

  Kell hesitated; and then with deliberate care, he replaced the anti-infective agent with a stimulant. “You’re right.”

  “That could kill her,” Tariel warned. “She’s very weak.”

  “No,” Kell replied, placing the nozzle of the injector at her pale neck, “she’s not.” He pressed the stud and the drug load discharged.

  Soalm reacted with a hollow gasp, her back arching, eyes opening wide with shock. In the next moment, she fell back against the deck, wheezing. “You…” she managed, her gaze finding Kell where he stood over her.

  “Listen to me,” said the Vindicare, that curious unquantifiable expression on his face once again. “The Garantine is dead. The mission was a failure. Horus sent a proxy in his place. Now his Astartes are punishing the city for what we have done.”

  Soalm’s eyes lost focus for a moment as she took this in. “A killer…” she whispered. “An assassin… hiding behind the identity of a rogue trader’s agent.” She looked up. “I saw what it did to Iota. The others it just murdered, but her… And then the blood…” The woman started to weep. “Oh, God-Emperor, the blood…”

  “What did she just say?” Koyne asked. “Idolatry is outlawed! Of all the—”

  “Be quiet!” Tariel snapped. The infocyte leaned forward. “Soalm. There is another assassin here? It killed Iota, yes?”

  She gave a shaky nod. “Tried to end me… Murdered Sinope and the others in the sanctuary. And then the book…” She sobbed.

  Kell extended a hand and laid it on her shoulder as she wept.

  “I can show it,” said Tariel. Koyne turned to see the Vanus grasping Iota’s helmet in his hands. “What happened, I mean. There’s a memory coil built into the mechanism of the animus speculum. A mission recorder.”

  “Do it,” said Kell, without looking up.

  In short order, Tariel used his mechadendrites to prise open panels along the back of the metal skull, and connected cords of bright brass and copper between the hidden ports on the device and the hololith projector built into his cogitator.

  Images flickered and jumped. Fractured moments of conversation blurred and sputtered in the air as the infocyte plumbed the depths of the memory unit, cutting though layers of encryption; and then it began.

  Soalm looked away; she did not want to witness it a second time.

  TARIEL WATCHED IOTA die through her own eyes.

  He saw the man in the Eurotas uniform transform into the thing that called itself “Spear”; he saw the perplexing readouts on the aura scans that matched nothing the psyker had encountered before; and he saw the horrific act of the taking of her blood.

  “It tasted her…” Soalm muttered. “Do you see? In the moment before the kill.”

  “Why?” Koyne was sickened.

  “A genetic lock,” Tariel said, nodding to himself. “Powerful psionic rituals require the use of an organic component as an initiator.”

  “A blood rite?” Koyne shot him a look. “That’s primitive superstition.”

  “It might appear so to a certain point of view.”

  Iota died again, the audio replay catching the raw terror in her death-scream, and Tariel looked away, his gorge rising. The peculiar waif-like psyker had not deserved to perish in so monstrous a way as this.

  No one spoke for a long time after the playback ended. They sat in silence, the images of the daemonic abomination embedded in their thoughts, the revolting spectacle of the girl’s murder echoing in the howling winds outside.

  “Sorcery,” said Kell, at length. His voice was cold and hard. “The rumours about Horus’ sinister plans are true. He is in league with allies from beyond the pale.”

  “The ruinous powers…” muttered Soalm.

  “It is not magick,” Tariel insisted. “Call it what it is. Science, but the darkest science. Like Iota herself, a creation of intellects unfettered by morals or boundaries.”

  “What are you saying, that this witchling Spear is like her?” Koyne’s eyes narrowed. “The girl was something bred in a laboratory, deliberately tainted by the touch of the warp.”

  “I know what it… what he is,” said Tariel, yanking out the cables from the gauntlet and dousing the hologram’s deathly images. “I have heard the name of this creature.”

  “Explain,” demanded Kell.

  “This must never be repeated.” The infocyte sighed. “The Vanus watch all. Our stacks are filled with information on all the clades. It is how we maintain our position.”

  Koyne nodded. “You blackmail everyone.”

  “Indeed. We know that the Culexus seek to improve upon their psychic abilities through experimentation. They gather subjects from the care of the Silent Sisterhood. Those they do not induct into their ranks, they spirit away for… other reasons.”

  “This Spear was one of ours?” Koyne was incredulous.

  “It is possible,” Tariel went on. “There was a project… it was declared null by Sire Culexus himself… they called it the Black Pariah. A living weapon capable of turning a target’s psionic force back upon it, without the aid of an animus device. The ultimate counter-psyker.”

  “What became of it?” said Kell.

  “That data is not available. The starship the Culexus used as their base of operations was to be piloted into a sun. So the orders said. I know this because my mentor was tasked with gathering this intelligence.”

  “And this Spear is the Black Pariah?” Kell frowned. “Not dead, but in service to the Warmaster.” He shook his head. “What have we been thrown into?”

  “But why is it here, on Dagonet?” insisted Koyne. “To destroy Iota? To disrupt our plan against Horus?”

  Soalm gave a shuddering breath. “Iota was just in the way. Like all the pilgrims and the refugees. Collateral damage. Spear wanted the book. The blood!”

  “What are you talking about?” Kell took her arm and pulled her around. “Jenniker, what do you mean?”

  She told them; and as he understood, Tariel went weak and slumped against the side of the hull, shaking his head. His mouth silently formed the words no, no, no, over and over again.

  KOYNE SNORTED. “THE Emperor’s blood? That cannot be! This is madness… Horus’ assassin tears a page from some ancient tome and with that he can strike at the most powerful human being who ever lived? The very idea is ridiculous!”

  “He has what he wants now,” Soalm went on. “Synchrony with the God-Emperor’s gene-marker. Spear is like a primed bomb, ready to detonate.” She blinked back tears. “We have to stop him before he leaves the planet!”

  “You saw what Spear did to Iota,” Kell looked towards the Callidus. “If this thing is a mirror for psychic might, can you imagine what would happen if he got through to Terra? If he came close enough to turn that power on the Emperor?”

  “A cataclysm…” husked Tariel. “The same thing that happened to Iota, but multiplied a million times over. A collision of the most lethal psychic forces conceivable.” The infocyte swallowed hard. “Throne’s sake… He might even… kill him!”

  Koyne gave a sarcastic snort. “The Emperor of Mankind wounded by something so fantastic, so ephemeral? I can’t believe it is possible. Spear will be swatted away like an insect. This woman’s reason cannot be trusted! Her kind are governed by archaic spiritual fanaticism, not facts!”

  “The God-Emperor alone guides me…” she insisted.

  The Callidus stabbed a finger at the poisoner
. “You see? She admits it! She’s part of a cult forbidden by the Council of Terra!” Before anyone else could respond, the shade went on. “We have a mission here! A target! Horus may have sent this Captain Sedirae to his death by design, or we may have tipped our hands by moving too soon, but it does not matter! The end result remains the same. Our mission is not yet ended.”

  “He will come down to Dagonet,” said Tariel. “The Warmaster has no choice now. The punishment of this world must be seen to come from his hand.”

  “Exactly,” insisted Koyne. “We have another chance to kill him. The only chance. A moment like this will never come again.”

  Soalm painfully pushed herself to her feet. “You understand nothing about me, shapechanger, or what I believe!” she snarled. “His divinity is absolute, and you delude yourself by your denial of it. Only He can save humanity from the darkness that gathers around us. We cannot fail Him!” She lurched and fell against Kell, who caught her before she could stumble to the deck. “I cannot fail Him… Not again.”

  Tariel spoke up. “If Soalm is right, if this is the Black Pariah and he has ingested a measure of Imperial blood… Spear will seek to flee this world and make space to Terra as quickly as possible. And if he has a ship that can get him to the warp, or worse, if Horus’ fleet is waiting for the assassin to come to them, there will be no way to stop him. Spear must be killed before he leaves Dagonet.”

  “Or we can trust in the Emperor and follow our orders,” Koyne broke in. “You think him divine, Soalm? I may not agree, but I do believe he is strong enough to shrug off any attack. I believe that he will see this Spear coming and strike him from the sky.” The Callidus’ boy-face twisted. “But Horus? The Warmaster is a serpent, rising for just one moment from his hiding place. We kill him here on this world and we end the threat he represents forever.”