Nemesis

by James Swallow

  The Warmaster’s rebels and traitors would not stop on this world, or the next, or the next. They would cut a burning path across space that would only end at Terra.

  That could not come to pass. Kell’s war – his mission – was not over.

  Using the Exitus rifle to support his weight, he gathered what he needed and then the Vindicare marksman left the ruins of the terminal behind, beginning a slow walk across the cracked runways under darkening skies.

  In the distance, he saw the Ultio’s running lights snap on as the ship sensed his approach.

  EIGHTEEN

  I Am The Weapon

  Into The Light

  Nemesis

  THE GUNCUTTER CLIMBED the layers of cloud, punching through pockets of turbulent air thrown into the atmosphere by storm cells, the new-born thunder-heads spawning in the wake of orbit-fall munitions.

  Somewhere behind it, down on Dagonet’s surface, the landscape was being dissected as lance fire swept back and forth. The killing rains of energy and ballistic warheads had broken the boundaries of the capital city limits; now they were escaping to spread across the trembling ground, cutting earth like a keen skinning knife crossing soft flesh.

  The burning sky cradled the arrow-prowed ship, which spun and turned as it wove a path through the cascades of plasma. No human pilot could have managed such a feat, but the Ultio’s helmsman was less a man and more the ship itself. He flew the vessel through the tides of boiling air as a bird would ride a thermal, his hands the stabilators across the bow, his legs the blazing nozzles of the thrusters, fuel-blood pumping through his rumbling engine-heart.

  Ultio’s lone passenger was strapped into an acceleration couch at the very point of the ship’s cramped bridge, watching waves of heat ripple across the invisible bubble of void shields from behind a ring-framed cockpit canopy.

  Kell muttered into the mastoid vox pickup affixed to his jawbone, subvocalising his words into the humming reader in the arm of the couch. As the words spilled out of him, he breathed hard and worked on attending to his injuries. The pilot had reconfigured the gravity field in the cockpit to off-set the g-force effects of their headlong flight, but Kell could still feel the pressure upon him. But he was thankful for small mercies – had he not been so protected, the lift-off acceleration from the port would have crushed him into a blackout, perhaps even punctured a lung with one of his cracked ribs.

  It remained an effort to speak, though, but he did it because he knew he was duty bound to give his report. Even now, the Ultio’s clever subordinate machine-brains were uploading and encoding the contents of the memory spool from Iota’s skull-helm, and the pages of overly analytical logs Tariel had kept in his cogitator gauntlet. When they were done, that compiled nugget of dense data would be transmitted via burst-signal to the ship’s drive unit, still hiding in orbit, within the wreckage of a dead space station.

  But not without his voice to join them, Kell decided. He was mission commander. At the end, the lay of the choices were his responsibility and he would not shirk that.

  Finally, he ran out of words and bowed his head. Tapping the controls of the reader, he pressed the playback switch to ensure his final entry had been embedded.

  “My name is Eristede Kell,” he heard himself saying. “Assassin-at-Marque of the Clade Vindicare, Epsilon-dan. And I have defied my orders.”

  Nodding, he silenced himself, discarding the mastoid patch. Kell’s voice seemed strange and distant to him; it was less a report he had made and more of a confession.

  Confession. The loaded connotations of that word made him glance down, to where he had secured Jenniker’s golden aquila about the wrist of his glove. He searched himself, trying to find a meaning, a definition for the emotion clouding his thoughts. But there was nothing he could grasp.

  Kell pressed another switch and sent the vox recording to join the rest of the data packet. Outside, the glowing sky had darkened through blue to purple to black, taking the rush of air with it. Ultio was beyond the atmosphere now, and still climbing.

  Each breath he took felt tainted and metallic. Thick fluids congested at his throat and he swallowed them back with a grimace. The smell in his nostrils was no one’s blood but his own, and while the painkillers he had injected into his neck had gone some way towards keeping him upright, they were wearing thinner by the moment.

  An indicator rune on the control console flared green; Ultio had been sent a line-of-sight signal from the drive unit. Out there in the wreckage-strewn orbits, the drive module was awakening, stealthily turning power to its warp engine and sublight drives. In moments, the astropath and Navigator on board would be roused from their sense-dep slumber. The Ultio’s descent module needed only to cross the space to the other section of the ship and dock; then, reunited, the vessel could run for the void and the escape of the immaterium.

  Kell leaned forwards to stare out of the canopy. The only flaw in that otherwise simple plan was the gathering of warships between the guncutter and the drive module.

  An armada barred his way. Starships the size of a metropolis crested with great knife-shaped bows, blocks of hideously beweaponed metal like the heads of god-hammers, each one detailed in shining steel and gold. Each with the device of an opened, baleful eye about them, glaring ready hate into the dark.

  At the centre of the fleet, a behemoth. Kell recognised the lines of a uniquely lethal vessel. A battle-barge of magnificent, gargantuan proportions haloed by clouds of fighter escorts; the Vengeful Spirit, flagship of the Warmaster Horus Lupercal.

  “Pilot,” he said, his voice husky with the pain, “put us on an intercept heading with the command ship. Put all available power to the aura cloak.”

  The cyborg helmsman clicked and whirred. “Increased aura cloak use will result in loss of void shield potentiality.”

  He glared at the visible parts of the pilot’s near-human face, peering from the command podium. “If they can’t see us, they can’t hit us.”

  “They will hit us,” it replied flatly. “Intercept vector places Ultio in high-threat quadrant. Multiple enemy weapon arcs.”

  “Just do as I say!” Kell shouted, and he winced at the jag of pain it caused him. “And open a link to the Navigator.”

  “Complying.” The Vindicare thought he heard a note of grievance in the reply as the guncutter turned, putting its bow on the Vengeful Spirit. The sensors were showing the first curious returns from the picket ships in Horus’ fleet. They were sweeping the area for a trace, uncertain if their scry-sensors had seen something; but the Ultio’s aura cloak was generations ahead of common Naval technology. They would be inside the fleet’s inner perimeter before anyone on the picket vessels could properly interpret what they had seen.

  Another rune on the console glowed; a vox channel was open between the forward module and the drive section. Kell spoke quickly, fearful that the transmission would undo all the work of the cloak if left active a second too long. “This is Kell. Stand by to receive encoded burst transmission. Release only on Omnis Octal authority.” He took a shaky breath. “New orders supersede all prior commands. Protocol Perditus. Expedite immediate. Repeat, go to Protocol Perditus.”

  It seemed like long, long seconds before the Navigator’s whispering, papery voice returned through the speaker grille. “This will be difficult,” it said, “but the attempt will be made.” Kell reached for the panel to cut the channel just as the Navigator spoke again. “Good luck, assassin.”

  The rune went dark, and Kell’s hand dropped.

  Beyond the canopy, laser fire probed the sky around the ship, and ahead the battle-barge grew to blot out the darkness.

  CLOSE-RANGE LASCANNONS ON the hull of the drive module blew apart the paper-thin sheath of metals hiding the aft section of the ship, and the Ultio’s drive section blasted free of the station wreck in a pulse of detonation. Fusion motors unleashed the tiny suns at their cores and pushed the craft away, climbing the acceleration curve in a glitter of void shields and displaced en
ergy. In moments, the vessel was rising towards one-quarter lightspeed.

  Picket ships on the far side of the Warmaster’s fleet, ex-Imperial Navy frigates and destroyers crewed only by human officers, saw it running and opened fire. Most of the ships belonging to the Dagoneti had been obliterated over the past few hours, and the stragglers had either been forced down to the surface or cut in two by their beam lances.

  Targeting solutions on the odd craft that had suddenly appeared on their holoscopes behaved unexpectedly, however. Weapon locks drifted off it, unable to find a true. Scans gave conflicting readings; the ship was monstrously over-powered for something of its tonnage; it seemed unmanned, and then it seemed not. And strangest of all, the glimmer of a building warp signature built up around its flanks the further it strayed away from the gravity shadow of the planet, racing for the jump point.

  Warships dropped out of formation, and powered after it, following the unidentified craft up and out of the plane of the Dagonet system’s ecliptic. They would never catch it.

  Alone now on their headless beast of a vessel, the Ultio’s Navigator and astropath communed with one another in a manner most uncommon for their respective kinds; with words.

  And what they shared was an understanding of mutual purpose. Protocol Perditus. A coded command string known to them both, to which there was only one response. They were to leave their area of operation on immediate receipt of such an order and follow a pre-set series of warp space translations. They would not stop until they lay under the light of Sol. The mission was over, abandoned.

  Weapons fire haloed the space around the ship as it plunged towards the onset of critical momentum, the first vestiges of a warp gate forming in the void ahead.

  THE BLOOD CONTINUED to stream from Erebus’ nostrils as he shoved his way out of the elevator car and through the cluster of helots waiting on the command deck. The fluid matted his beard and he grimaced, drawing a rough hand across his face. The psychic shock was fading, mercifully, but for a brief while it had felt as if it would cut him open.

  There, in his chambers aboard the flagship, meditating in the gloom over his spodomancy and mambila divination, he attempted to find an answer. The eightfold paths were confused, and he could not see their endpoints. Almost from the moment they had arrived in the Dagonet system, Erebus had been certain that something was awry.

  His careful plans, the works he had conceived under the guidance of the Great Ones, normally so clear to him, were fouled by a shadow he could not source. It perturbed him, and to a degree undeserving of such emotion. This was only a small eddy in the long scheme, after all. This planet, this action, a minor diversion from the pre-ordained works of the great theatre.

  And yet Horus Lupercal was doing such a thing more and more. Oh, he followed where Erebus led, that was certain, but he did it less quickly than he had at first. The Warmaster’s head was being turned and he was willful with it. At times, the Word Bearer allowed himself to wonder; was the master of the rebels listening to other voices than he?

  Not to dwell, though. This was to be expected. Horus was a primarch. One could no more hope to shackle one down and command him than a person might saddle an ephemeral animus. The First Chaplain reminded himself of this.

  Horus must be allowed to be Horus, he told himself. And when the time is upon him… He will be ready.

  Still; the voyage to Dagonet, the fogging of the lines. That did not disperse. If anything, it grew worse. In his meditations Erebus had searched the egosphere of the planet turning below them, but the screaming and the fear drowned out every subtle tell. All he could divine was a trace of the familiar.

  The pariah-thing. His Spear. Perhaps no longer on this world, perhaps just the spoor of its passing, but certainly something. For a while he was content to accept this as the truth, but with the passing of the hours Erebus could not leave the matter be. He worried at it, picked at the psy-mark like a fresh scab.

  Why had Spear come to Dagonet? What possible reason could there be for the killer to venture off the path Erebus had laid out for him? And, more to the troubling point of it, why had Horus chosen to show the flag here? The Word Bearer believed that coincidence was something that existed only in the minds of men too feeble-brained to see the true spider web of the universe’s cruel truth.

  It vexed him that the answer was there below on the planet, if only he could reach out for it.

  And so he was utterly unprepared for what came next. The rising of the black shriek of a sudden psionic implosion. In the chamber, sensing the edges of it, turning his thoughts to the dark places within and allowing the void to speak to him.

  A mistake. The death-energy of his assassin-proxy, hurtling up from the planet’s surface, the escaping daemon beast brushing him as it fled back to the safety of the immaterium. It hit him hard, and he was not ready for it.

  He felt Spear die, and with him died the weapon-power. The phantom gun at the head of the unknowing Emperor, shattered before it could even be fired.

  Erebus’ fury drove him from his chambers, through the corridors of the ship. His plan, this thread of the pathway, had been broken, and for Hades’ sake he would know why. He would go down to Dagonet and sift the ashes of it through his fingers. He would know why.

  Composing himself, the Word Bearer entered the Lupercal’s Court without waiting to be granted entry, but even as Maloghurst moved to block his path, the Warmaster turned from the great window and beckoned Erebus closer. He became aware of alert sirens hooting and beyond the armourglass, fashioned in the oval of an open eye, he saw rods of laser fire sweeping the void ahead of the flagship’s prow.

  Horus nodded to him, the hellish light of the weapons discharges casting his hard-edged face like blunt stone. He was, as ever, resplendent in his battle gear. In his haste, Erebus had come to the Court still in his dark robes, and for a moment the Word Bearer felt every bit of his inferiority to the Warmaster, as Horus seemed to loom over him.

  None of this he showed, however. He bottled it away, his aspect never changing. Erebus was a prince of lies, and well-practised with it. “My lord,” he began. “If it pleases the Warmaster, I have a request to make. A matter to address—”

  “On the surface?” Horus looked away. “We’ll visit Dagonet soon enough, my friend. For the work to be done.”

  Erebus maintained his outwardly neutral aspect, but within it took an effort to restrain his tension. “Of course. But perhaps, if I might have leave to venture down before the rites proper, I could… smooth the path, as it were.”

  “Soon enough,” Horus repeated, his tone light; but the chaplain knew then that was the end to it.

  Maloghurst hobbled closer, bearing a data-slate. He shot the Word Bearer a look as he stepped in front of him. “Message from the pickets,” he said. “The other target is too fast. They scored hits but it will make space before they catch it.”

  The Warmaster’s lips thinned. “Let it go. What of the other, our ghost?” He gestured at the inferno raging outside.

  “Indeterminate,” the equerry sniffed. “Gun crews on the perimeter ships report phantom signals, multiple echoes. They’re carving up dead sky, and finding nothing.” Erebus saw his scarred face’s perpetual frown deepening. “I’ve drawn back the fighter screen as you ordered, lord.”

  Horus nodded. “If he dares come so close to me, I want to look him in the eyes.”

  The Word Bearer followed the Warmaster’s gaze out through the windows.

  The slate in Maloghurst’s gnarled fingers emitted a melodic chime, at odds with the urgency of its new message. “Sensors read… something,” said the equerry. “Closing fast. A collision course! But weapons can’t find it…”

  “An aura cloak,” said Erebus, peering into the stormy dark. “But such a device is beyond the Dagoneti.”

  “Yes.” Horus smiled, unconcerned. “Do you see him?” The Warmaster stepped to the window and pressed his hands to the grey glass.

  Out among the maelstrom of energy, as
javelins of fire crossed and recrossed one another, scouring the sky for the hidden attacker, for one instant the Chaplain saw something like oil moving over water. Just the suggestion of a raptor-like object lensing the light of the distant stars behind it. “There!” He pointed.

  Maloghurst snapped out a command over his vox. “Target located. Engage and destroy!”

  The gun crews converged their fire. The craft was close, closer than the illusory ghost image had suggested. Unbidden, Erebus backed away a step from the viewing portal.

  Horus’ smile grew wider and the Word Bearer heard the words he whispered, a faint nimble in the deepest register. “Kill me,” said the Warmaster, “if you dare.”

  ULTIO BURNED AROUND him.

  The pilot was already dead in the loosest sense, the cyborg’s higher mental functions boiled in the short-circuit surge from a hit on the starboard wing; but his core brain was intact, and through that the ship dodged and spun as the sky itself seemed to turn upon them.

  The ship trailed pieces of fuselage in a comet tail of wreckage and burning plasma. The deck trembled and smoke filled the bridge compartment. A vista of red warning runes met Kell’s eyes wherever he looked. Autonomic systems had triggered the last-chance protocols, opening an iris hatch in the floor to a tiny saviour pod mounted beneath the cockpit. Blue light spilling from the hatch beckoned the Vindicare for a moment. He had his Exitus pistol at his hip and he was still alive. He would only need to take a step…

  But to where? Even if he survived the next ten seconds, where could he escape to? What reason did he have to live? His mission… The mission was all Eristede Kell had left in his echoing, empty existence.

  The command tower of the Vengeful Spirit rose through the forward canopy, acres of old steel and black iron, backlit by volleys of energy and the red threads of lasers. Set atop it was a single unblinking eye of grey and amber glass, lined in shining gold.