Nemesis Page 25

  NO NO NO NO NO NO

  “Shut up!” he spat, pushing away from the desk, shaking his head. “Shut up!”

  The voice within tried to cry out again, but he smothered it with a sharp exhale of air and a tensing of his will. For a moment, Spear felt it inside himself, deep down in the black depths of his spirit – the flickering ember of light. A tiny piece of Yosef Sabrat’s soul, trapped and furious.

  The killer dropped to the floor of the room and bowed his head, closed his eyes. He drew inwards, let his thoughts fall into himself. It was akin to sinking into an ocean of dark, heavy oil – but instead of resisting it, Spear allowed himself to be filled by the blackness, relishing the sensation of drowning.

  He plunged into the void of his own shattered psyche, searching for the foreign, the human, the thought-colours of a dead man. It was difficult; the faint echoes of every life he had destroyed and then imitated all still lingered here somewhere. But they had all been purged through the ritual rites, and what remained was just a shallow imprint, like the shadows burnt on walls by the flash of a nuclear fireball. Something of Yosef Sabrat was still here, though. Something tenacious that obstinately refused to allow Spear to expunge it, clinging on.

  And there it was, a glow in the gloom. Spear’s animus leapt at it, fangs out, ready to rip it to shreds. The killer found it cloaked in a memory, a moment of terrible burning pain. He laughed as he realised he was experiencing the instant when he had pierced Sabraf’s heart with a bone-blade, but this time from his victim’s point of view.

  The pain was blinding – and familiar. Spear hesitated; yes, he knew this feeling, this exact feeling. Sabrat’s memory echoed one of his own, a memory from the killer’s past.

  Too late, Spear understood that the fragment had fled his grasp, cleverly cloaking itself in the similarity; and too late, he was dragged into his own past. Back to an experience that had made him into the monster he was.

  BACK TO THE cage. The pain and the cage…

  Voices outside. The armoured warriors moving and speaking. War-angels and gun-lords, black souls and beasts.

  Voices.

  “Is this it?” A commander-master, clear from tone and manner. Obeyed, yes.

  “Aye, my lord,” says the wounded one. “A pariah, according to the logs left by the Silent Sisterhood. But I have not seen the like. And they didn’t know what it was, either. It was bound for destruction, most likely.”

  The master-to-be-his-master comes closer. He sees a face filled with wonderment and hatred.

  “I smell the witch-stink on it. It did not die with the rest of the crew and cargo?”

  “The Emperor’s Black Ships are resilient vessels. Some were bound to live beyond our bombardment.”

  A pause, during which he takes some sharp breaths, trying to listen to the voices.

  “Tell me what it did.”

  A sigh, weary and fearful. “I was attacked. It took a finger from me. With its teeth.”

  Mocking laughter. “And you let it live?”

  “I would have destroyed it, lord, but then it… Then it killed the Codicier. Brother Sadran.”

  Laughter stopped now. Anger colouring. “How?”

  “Sadran lost an ear to it. Eaten, swallowed whole. Then the witch stood there and waited to be killed. Sadran…” The wounded one is finding it hard to explain. “Sadran turned his fury on the thing and it reflected it back.”

  “Reflected…” The master-voice, different again. Interested.

  “Fires, lord. Sadran was consumed by his own fires.” The shapes move around in the shadows beyond the cage bars.

  “I’ve never encountered a pariah capable of that…” The master comes close, and he has his first real look at it. “You’re something special, aren’t you?”

  “It may be a fluke birth,” says the injured one. “Or perhaps some throwback from the experimentations of the Adeptus Telepathica.”

  A smile grows wide in the gloom. “It may also be an opportunity.”

  He presses up towards the bars, allowing himself to reach the ethereal edges of his senses towards the commander-master.

  “We should kill it,” says the other voice.

  “I’ll be the judge of that.”

  He touches a mind, and for the first time in his life finds something that is darker than himself. A stygian soul, steeped in blackness, initiated into realms beyond his ability to know.

  “My Lord Erebus—” the injured one tries to argue, but the master silences him with a look.

  “These are your orders, brother-captain,” says the dark-hearted one. “Remove all trace that we were ever here, and ensure that this vessel becomes lost to the void. I will gather what we came for… and bring our new friend here into the bargain.” The one called Erebus smiles again. “I think we will have use for him.”

  As the other warrior departs, the master leans in. “Do you have a name?” he asks.

  It has been a long time since he has spoken, and it takes a moment to form the word; but finally he manages. “Spear.”

  Erebus nods. “Your first lesson, then. I am your master.” Then the warrior is a blur, and there is a blade in his hand, and then the blade is in Spear’s chest and the pain is blinding, burning.

  “I am your master,” Erebus says once again. “And from now on, you will kill only who I tell you to kill.”

  Spear reels back. He nods, giving his fealty. The pain fills him, fills the cage.

  The pain and the cage…

  THE MOMENT SNAPPED like brittle glass and Spear jerked upright, his foot kicking out and knocking over a chair. He scrambled to his feet, catching sight of his face in a mirror. Hyssos’ aspect was pasty, like unfired clay. He grimaced and tried to concentrate; but the encounter with the memory fragment and the flash of his past had cut to his core. He was breathing hard, the daemonskin on his hands rippling crimson.

  “Operative?” Someone was knocking on his cabin door. “I heard a cry. Are you all right in there?”

  “I’m fine!” he shouted back. “It… I fell from my bed. It’s nothing.”

  “You’re sure?” He recognised the voice now; it was one of the duty officers on this deck. “Go away!” he snapped.

  “Aye, sir,” said the officer, after a moment, and he heard footsteps recede.

  Spear walked to the mirror and glared at Hyssos’ face as it resurfaced. “You can’t stop me,” he told the reflection. “None of you can. None of you!”

  IN RECOGNITION OF their help, the rebels had given all the members of the Execution Force quarters in one of the smaller chambers off the main corridor. The rooms were no bigger than holding cells, but they were dry and they had privacy, which was more than could be said for many of the communal sleeping areas.

  Soalm didn’t knock and wait outside her brother’s compartment; instead she slammed the corroded metal door open and stormed into the room.

  He looked up from the makeshift table before him, where the disassembled components of his longrifle lay like an exploded technical diagram. Lines of bullets were arranged in rows like tiny sentries on a parade ground. He stopped himself from drawing his Exitus pistol and returned to the work of cleaning his firearm. “Where are your manners, Jenniker?” he said.

  She closed the door and folded her arms. “We’re doing this, then?” she said. “We’re actually going to sacrifice all these people just to complete the mission?”

  “What was your first clue?” he asked. “Was it when I told you that was our plan, on board the Ultio? Or when Valdor made it exactly, precisely clear what our objective was?”

  “You’re manipulating Capra and his people,” she insisted.

  “This is what we do,” said her brother. “Don’t pretend you’ve never done the same thing to get close to a mark. Lied and cheated?”

  “I’ve never put innocents in harm’s way. The whole motive for the Officio Assassinorum is to move sightless and unseen, leave no trace but the corpse of our target… But you’re cutting a road of blo
od for us to follow!”

  “This isn’t the Great Crusade anymore, dear sister.” He put down his tools and studied her. “Are you so naive that you don’t see that? We’re not thinning the ranks of a few degenerate bohemian fops in the halls of some hive-world, or terminating a troublesome xenos commander. We’re on the front lines of a civil war. The rules of engagement are very different now.”

  Soalm was quiet for a moment. It had been many years since she had seen Eristede, and it made her sad to see how he had changed. She could only see the worst of him behind those dark eyes. “It’s not just the resistance fighters whose lives we are threatening. By keeping this conflict alive we will doom countless innocent people, perhaps even threaten the future of this entire planet and the sector beyond.”

  “Are you asking me if the death of Horus Lupercal is worth that price? That’s a question you should put to Valdor or the Master of Assassins. I am only doing what I was ordered to. Our duty is all that matters.”

  She felt a surge of emotion in her chest and crashed it before it could become a snarl or a sob. “How can you be so cold-blooded, Eristede? We are supposed to protect the people of the Imperium, not offer them up as fodder for the cannons!” Soalm shook her head. “I don’t know who you are.”

  With a flash of anger, her brother bolted to his feet. “You don’t know me? I’m not the one who rejected her own name! I didn’t turn my back on justice!”

  “Is that what you tell yourself?” She looked away. “We both had a choice all those years ago, Eristede. Escape, or revenge. But you chose revenge, and you condemned us to a life where we are nothing but killers.”

  The memory came back to her in a giddy rash. They were both just children then, the scions of their family. The last surviving members of the Kell dynasty, their holdings destroyed and their parents exterminated during an internecine struggle among the aristocrats of the Thaxted Duchy. Orphaned and alone, they had been drawn into the halls of the Imperial schola and there both secretly selected by agents of the Officio Assassinorum.

  Brother and sister had shown promise – Eristede was an excellent marksman for one so young, and Jenniker’s genius for botany and chemistry was clear. They knew that soon the clade directors would make their decisions, and that they would be split up, perhaps never to see one another again. In the halls of the schola they had made their plans to flee together, to eschew the assassin’s path and find a new life.

  But then Clade Vindicare offered something that Eristede Kell wanted more than his freedom; the chance to avenge his mother and father. All they asked for in return was his loyalty – and consumed by hate, he gave it willingly. Jenniker had been left behind with nowhere to go but to the open arms of the Venenum.

  Months later, she had learned that innocents had been killed in the hit on the man who murdered their parents, and that had been the day when she swore she would no longer go by the name of Kell again.

  “I’d hoped you might have changed since I last saw you,” she said. “And you have. But not for the better.”

  Her brother seemed as if he was on the verge of an outburst; but then he drew it back in and looked away. “You’re right,” he told her. “You don’t know me. Now get out.”

  “As you command,” Soalm said stiffly.

  TWELVE

  A Single Drop

  Messenger

  Wilderness of Mirrors

  THE MEN GUARDING the chamber housing the Void Baron’s private reliquary had allowed their concentration to falter. Spear listened to them speak as he stood in the shadows beyond their line of sight, a few metres up along the vaulted corridor. News had filtered down through the crew hierarchy aboard the Iubar, fractions of the reports from the communicatory that warned of sightings of Adeptus Astartes on the move. No one seemed to know if they were warriors still loyal to the Emperor of Mankind, or if they were those now following the banner of the Warmaster; some even dared to suggest that all the mighty Legions of the Astartes had turned their faces from their creator, embarking on a jihad to take for themselves what they had captured for Terra during the Great Crusade.

  Spear understood only small elements of the unfolding war going on across the galaxy; and in truth, it mattered little to him. The killer’s keyhole view of intergalactic conflict was enough. He cared little about sides or doctrines. All Spear needed was the kill. It was enough that his master Erebus had given him murders to commit; perhaps even the greatest murder in human history.

  But before that could happen, he had steps to take. Preparations to be made.

  Spear allowed the daemonskin to regain a small amount of control over itself, and the surface of his surrogate flesh shivered. Removing the shipsuit overall he had been wearing, he stepped naked into the deep shadows. Hair-like tendrils emerged from his epidermis, sampling the air and the ambient light all around. In moments Spear’s body became wet with sticky processor fluids, changing colour until it was night-dark. His features retreated behind a mask of scabbing crusts, and then he leapt soundlessly to the high ceiling. Secreted oils allowed him to adhere there, and the killer snaked slowly along his inverted pathway, passing over the heads of the guards as they fretted and spoke in low tones about threats they could not understand.

  At the entrance to the reliquary there was an intelligent door possessed of a variety of sensory and thought-mechanical systems designed to open only to Merriksun Eurotas, or a member of his immediate family. It was little impediment to Spear. He slapped the daemonskin lightly as it whined in his mind, dragging on him a little as it sensed the guards and expressed a desire to drink their blood. Chastened, it obediently extruded a new, thickly-lipped mouth at his palm. Spear held the mouth over the biometric breath sensor, as the same time sending new hair-tendrils into the thin gaps around the edges of the door. They wormed their way into the locks and teased them open one by one.

  It had been easy to sample the Void Baron’s breath; simply by standing close to him, Spear’s daemonskin sheath had plucked the microscopic particulate matter and DNA traces of his exhalations from the air, and stored them in a bladder. Now the second mouth puffed them out over the sensor.

  There was the whisper of well-lubricated cogs and the door opened. Spear slipped inside.

  DAGONET’S SUN WAS passing low over the top of the ridgeline, and soon night would fall Jenniker Soalm stood out on the flat expanse of stone that served as a lookout post, and looked out at the ochre rocks without really seeing them. She knew that the mission clock was winding down towards zero, and at best the Execution Force had only hours until they entered the final phase of the operation.

  She could see that the others sensed it too. The Garantine had at last returned from whatever lethality he had been spreading on the clanner forces, menacing all who saw him. Tariel, Koyne and the Culexus waif were all making ready – and her brother…

  Soalm knew exactly what her brother was doing.

  “Hello?” The voice made her turn. With slow, careful steps, Lady Sinope emerged from the cave mouth behind her and approached. “I was told I might find you here.”

  “Milady,” Jenniker bowed slightly.

  Sinope smiled. “You don’t need to do that, child. I’m a noblewoman only in name now. The others let me keep the title as a gesture of respect, but the truth is the clans of this world have wiped away any honour we ever had.”

  “Others must have rejected the call to join Horus’ banner.”

  The old woman nodded. “Oh, a few. All dead now, I think. That, or terrified into compliance.” She sighed. “Perhaps He will forgive them.”

  Soalm looked away. “I do not believe He is the forgiving kind. After all, the Emperor denies all word of his divinity.”

  Sinope nodded again. “Indeed. But then, only the sincerely divine can do such a thing and be true in it. Those who think themselves gods are always madmen or fools. To be raised to such heights, one must be carried there on the shoulders of faith. One must guide and yet be guided.”

  “I w
ould like some guidance myself,” admitted the assassin. “I don’t know where to turn.”

  “No?” The noblewoman found a wind-smoothed rock and sat down on it. “If it is not too impertinent a question, may I ask you how you found your way to the light of the Lectitio Divinitatus?”

  Soalm sighed. “After our… after my parents were killed in a conflict between rival families, I found myself isolated and alone in the care of the Imperium. I had no one to watch over me.”

  “Only the God-Emperor.”

  She nodded. “So I came to realise. He was the single constant in my life. The only one who did not judge me… Or leave me. I had heard stories of the Imperial Cult… It was not long before I found like-minded people.”

  Sinope’s head bobbed. “Yes, that is often the way. Like comes to like, all across the galaxy. Here on Dagonet there are those who do not yet believe as we do – Capra and most of his people, for example – but still we share the same goals. And in the end, there are still many, many of us, child. Under different names, in different ways, everywhere you find human beings. As He led us to greatness and dispelled the fog of all the false gods and mistaken religiosity, the God-Emperor forged the path to the one truth. His truth.”

  “And yet we must hide that truth.”

  The old woman sighed. “Aye, for the moment. Faith can be so strong at times, and yet so weak in the same moment. It is a delicate flower that must be nurtured and protected, in preparation for the day when it can truly bloom.” She placed a hand on Jenniker’s arm. “And that day is coming.”

  “Not soon enough.”

  Sinope’s hand fell away and she was quiet for a moment. “What do you want to tell me, child?”

  Soalm turned to look at her, eyes narrowing. “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve been doing this since before you were born,” said the woman. “Believe me, I know when someone is holding something back. You’re afraid of something, and it isn’t just this revolution we find ourselves in.”

  “Yes.” The words came of their own accord. “I am afraid. I am afraid that just by coming to your world we will destroy all of this.” She gestured around.