by Ben Counter
He took in his situation in a second. The enemy troops were sheltering ahead of him, in the cover of the fallen rubble. Orfos was in the open. He knew how long it would take for the enemy to get him in their sights and to open fire. He knew what would happen to him if he was caught by the full force of their fire. The rules and probabilities of battle rushed through his mind, placed there by sleep-teaching sessions and the study of Rogal Dorn’s war-parables.
Orfos put his head down and ran. Las-fire was already hissing through the air around him. He dropped down and skidded into the cover of the enemy ship’s fallen wing, a burning black slab that had embedded itself in the stone of some ancient mountaintop street.
‘Brothers!’ he called into his squad’s vox-channel. ‘On me! Be swift, and give not a moment to breathe!’
Enriaan was firing as he ran. Shots from his rifle cracked among the las-fire. Scout Privar leapt up onto the severed wing, slamming back-first against a control surface that was jammed sticking straight up.
Orfos risked a look past the edge of the wing. The enemy were the same visored troops his squad had faced when they took down the convoy outside Khezal on K-Day. Among them moved one who was faster than a man, who skittered between the fallen stone as fast as a striking snake. It was a woman, wearing a ball-gown of all things, but one artfully slit to give her full freedom of movement. Bolter fire stitched around her and she flipped over it even as one of the troopers beside her was blasted open. She had a metal collar around her neck and a knife in her hand that glowed golden yellow.
Squad Septuron were landing around Orfos. ‘Onward! Onward! Speed and death!’ yelled Assault-Sergeant Septuron. The cold mountain light glinted on the medals and trophies hung from his blade as he held it high like an army’s standard. His squad ran forward in his wake, charging through the opening las-shots to close with the enemy.
Orfos broke cover and ran behind them. Already Septuron’s blade was blooded, thrust through the stomach of a trooper who had leapt forwards to meet him. The other Imperial Fists were among the enemy in a second, swinging their own blades left and right, carving limbs from bodies.
The enemy were not running. Orfos shot one down with his bolt pistol, blowing his leg off at the hip. The head of another snapped back, hit between the eyes, and Orfos did not have to turn to know that Scout Enriaan had fired the shot.
In the bedlam, the impact of the Imperial Fists was winning. As resolute as the enemy were, and as numerous, Squad Septuron had hit them too hard. Blood was spattered across the stones and suddenly the fallen masonry was not cover at all, but a cruel labyrinth which forced the enemy to fight in ones and twos against Space Marines who could fight them at a range too close for their lasguns to be brought to bear.
Somewhere in Orfos’s mind, he registered movement overhead. It was something familiar, something he had seen before and which had embedded itself in his mind as a warning.
He looked up. Among the still-intact stonework of the Blood Eyrie a shape crouched, nothing more than a shadow upon a shadow, the same colour as the dark stone and barely distinguishable. But it was a human shape.
‘You!’ yelled Orfos. ‘I see you!’
The enemy sniper, the same who had taken Orfos’s hand and left Scout Geryius critically wounded, the same who had killed Lord Inquisitor Kekrops and brought war to Opis, knew he had been spotted. He jumped down from his perch and vanished among the scattered wreckage that had spilled from the crashed ship’s ruined engine.
Orfos ran again, leaping over a fallen chunk of stone. Squad Septuron had their battle, the close-quarters murder for which they had been trained by their Chapter. Orfos had his. He ignored the las-fire and death all around him, and ran straight for the man who had taken his hand.
‘An Assassin does not stand and fight,’ said Ucalegon. ‘An Assassin flees the battle, to return and bring death when the guns are silent.’
‘The words of Roboute Guilliman,’ said Lady Syncella. ‘In the Codex Astartes.’
Lady Syncella had made it halfway across the stone bridge when the Emperor’s Champion had leapt from the Thunderhawk and landed on the bridge ahead of her. The stone had splintered under his weight, but had held, just barely. Now his armoured bulk formed a complete barrier across the bridge.
‘You know of the Codex,’ said Ucalegon.
‘One never knows when a Space Marine might be one’s next target,’ replied Lady Syncella. ‘I must be familiar with the battle-lore of anyone I might have to kill.’
Their words covered up the process of weighing up one another’s strengths and weaknesses. Both knew it.
Lady Syncella was an extraordinary sight. Ucalegon had never faced anything like her. Compared even to the mind-wiped Assassinorum troops, she was slight in form – tall, but seemingly without muscle. Compared to a Space Marine, she was hardly there at all. Her dress was as unlike a soldier’s uniform as could be imagined. Her skin was flawless. Only the ugly, thick iron collar around her neck, and the power knife in her hand, spoiled the effect. But for them, she could have been hosting a ball for the elites of the Imperium’s noble houses.
Ucalegon took a two-handed grip on the obsidian sword, aiming its tip at the woman’s throat. ‘The Officio Assassinorum brought war to Opis,’ he said. ‘A war in which battle-brothers of mine have lost their lives. Their blood is on your hands. You have manipulated my Chapter into fighting your battles. Our honour is befouled. Either crime would be enough to compel me to exact satisfaction. Of both are you guilty, Assassin.’
‘I marvel, Imperial Fist, that the Imperium’s finest soldiers can be so damnably blind.’ The woman switched to a reverse grip on her power knife. ‘Is that all you see? Crimes against your Chapter? Mine is the Imperium to save. We are here on Opis for the good of mankind.’
‘Then you will not be swerved by words,’ said Ucalegon. ‘Only deeds remain.’
‘Only deeds,’ said the woman. ‘Well put.’
Lady Syncella moved so fast it seemed that slices of time fell out as she moved, jolting her from point to point with no visible movement in between. She handsprang over Ucalegon, landing behind him before he had powered the obsidian blade forward in a thrust. Ucalegon swivelled on his front foot, bringing the sword around in a wide arc, but Lady Syncella flipped over the blade.
The power knife in her hand was aimed at Ucalegon’s heart. It flickered forwards quicker than Ucalegon could react. Its power field spat blue sparks as the blade punched through the ceramite of Ucalegon’s breastplate and the inner armour of his fused ribcage.
It speared through his heart. He could feel it, feel the spasms of pain running down his limbs as his heart was sliced in two. He fell, coldness flooding through his body.
Syncella stepped over him, heading for the adjacent mountaintop of the Blood Eyrie.
Ucalegon’s gauntlet closed on her ankle. Syncella was thrown forwards onto her face.
‘We have two hearts,’ said Ucalegon. ‘You forget your prey.’
The second blade was in Syncella’s hand as quickly as a magic trick. Without a word she stabbed it down through Ucalegon’s hand, transfixing it to the stone. It was a normal blade, without a power field, and it lodged in the stone.
‘I left you a heart intact so the Imperium would not be robbed of such a warrior,’ she said. ‘I take it a man of honour would not stoop to scorn such a gift?’
‘Harpy!’ spat Ucalegon, and tore his hand free. He jumped to his feet, regaining his grip on the obsidian blade. ‘I will take your heart for mine. And you will not fare as well without it.’
‘I tire of this!’ snapped Syncella. With a mental impulse she unfastened the clamps holding the collar around her neck.
The wave of cold, agonising hatred hit Ucalegon as hard as a gunshot. He fell back onto one knee. He had never felt anything like it before. Perhaps it was something like being plunged into ice-cold water, but the chill ran right through him, as if every cell of his body was immersed. And it had an emotion, as well.
It was pure scorn, the emotion of someone who despised him made real, congealing into reality and encasing him from head to toe.
His internal organs felt frozen solid. He had barely enough control over his body to keep himself from toppling off the edge of the narrow bridge. This was not pain – a Space Marine knew pain well enough to understand it when it came, set it aside and keep fighting. This was something else. A violation of mind and body, an invisible hand that closed around his soul and crushed.
‘I gift you your life again,’ said the woman, giving Ucalegon a final backwards glance. ‘Take care you do not owe me too much.’
Then she flitted the rest of the way across the bridge, disappearing among the spurs of the mountaintop, leaving Ucalegon gasping for breath.
Lysander stepped out just as Syncella passed, and could not keep the feeling of satisfaction from his mind as he felt her slam into his storm shield.
The woman did not fall. She rolled as she fell, coming up in a low, dangerous crouch, power knife in hand, her lips drawn back in a look of feline rage.
Lysander bit down on the ice rising in him, keeping it from filling up his veins.
‘I faced an Untouchable on Fortis Magna,’ he said. He teeth were clenched with the effort. ‘It was an abomination. It was an affront to the very soul. The closest I ever came to giving in to fear. But I overcame. I killed him. And now your favourite trick has failed.’
Syncella growled and stalked to one side, circling Lysander. The waves of anti-emotion coming off her faltered a little, a ripple running through them, as she refocused on a new enemy.
‘We are alone on this mountaintop,’ said Lysander. ‘Your men are assailed by my battle-brothers and soon they will die.’
‘I am nothing,’ she said. ‘Even now my best agent takes your brothers in his sights…’
‘I saw you fleeing your ship!’ retorted Lysander. ‘I knew you were the one. You cannot hide the trappings of an Assassin. Not many of my brothers have witnessed the ways of the Culexus Temple, but I have.’
‘And now you are going to kill me,’ said Syncella, ‘because that is what you do. You are no more sophisticated a weapon than the mindless souls who do my bidding. At least they do not claim to be anything more.’
She darted forwards as fast as a bullet. Lysander jumped forwards to meet her and deflected the power knife off his shield. He swept the Fist of Dorn around to trip her up but she spun in the air as she leapt over it, landing behind him.
‘Unless,’ she said, ‘you want answers.’
‘It is not a case of wanting anything,’ said Lysander. ‘I will have them.’
Syncella leapt backwards and powered off the stone spur behind her, diving at Lysander from above. Lysander held his shield up but Syncella had read the movement before he made it. She hit the ground just in front of him, knife flicking up towards his abdomen.
Lysander had read her, too. He did not have the room to bring the Fist of Dorn to bear, so he cracked the back of his fist into the side of her head.
Syncella sprawled away across the stone. Lysander stepped after her and brought the Fist of Dorn down towards her. She rolled to one side as the hammer’s head fell and smashed a crater into the mountaintop. Splinters of stone fell.
‘How long since someone laid a hand on you?’ said Lysander. ‘What are you? A Grand Master of the Assassinorum? How long since you faced someone who could defeat you?’
Syncella touched a hand to her face. She was bleeding.
‘It seems that every day, I face a foe who can beat me,’ said Lysander. ‘One who can hurt me. But not one of them has done for me yet. That is why I call myself a soldier, and not an Assassin.’
‘I am Lady Syncella of the Culexus! And I thank you, Captain Lysander. I have not felt a hostile hand on me for three hundred years. I had forgotten what it really was to fight.’
‘Then tell me why you brought war to Opis,’ said Lysander. ‘Or I will teach you what it means to lose.’
‘Stop killing my men, Lysander, and perhaps I will be minded to talk.’
For a moment the two faced one another, every muscle wound up ready to pounce.
Then Lysander switched to the all-squads vox. ‘Cease fire, brothers! Cease fire! Put up your swords!’
Scout-Sergeant Orfos dived at the Assassin, his combat knife in one hand and bolt pistol in another, forcing his eyes to focus on the barely visible shadow that was his opponent.
He hit the Assassin shoulder-first. But the Assassin was ready, wrapping an arm around Orfos’s waist and throwing him over his body to slam back-first onto the rock.
The Assassin’s camouflage flickered and Orfos saw him properly for the first time. He was dressed in a complete covering of black synskin, ribbed and panelled to protect the vital organs. The synskin covered his scalp, and his face was concealed by a mask with an opaque eyepiece and breathing grille. His sniper rifle was as long as he was tall, with a pistol in a holster as a backup. Orfos recognised the technology of the synskin from the Assassinorum facility, but had no time to register anything else before the Assassin’s pistol was in his hand.
Orfos knocked the gun aside with his knife. The Assassin kicked Orfos’s own bolt pistol out of his hand. Orfos kicked up into the Assassin’s midriff but the Assassin was suddenly not there.
He had moved faster than anything Orfos had fought before. The cold against the back of his skull was surely the barrel of the Assassin’s pistol, and he had a split second to live.
‘Cease fire, brothers!’ came Lysander’s voice over the vox. ‘Cease fire!’
The pistol did not fire. Orfos did not die.
‘I have been given my orders,’ said the Assassin. ‘And so have you.’ His voice was utterly calm, as if synthesised. He was not even out of breath.
‘Holster your gun,’ said Orfos.
‘I have not been given that order,’ replied the Assassin.
In the corner of his eye, Orfos could see the Assassinorum soldiers, their lasguns lowered, standing motionless. Their dead lay around their feet. The only sound from the battle was now the whirring of Squad Septuron’s chainblades.
‘You killed Kekrops,’ said Orfos.
The Assassin did not reply.
‘You shot my brother Scout and me.’
‘You were in my way.’
Orfos thought back to the mountainside where he had last encountered the Assassin. The face of Lord Speaker vel Sephronaas before Orfos had blown the traitor’s head off. The feel of hot steel slicing through his arm, Geryius’s blood spraying across his back.
Suddenly, he began to understand.
‘You seeded Opis with moral threats,’ said Lysander. ‘And killed Kekrops when he came here to investigate them. Why?’
‘Why else does an Assassin do anything?’ said Lady Syncella.
Neither had moved. Each was still ready to kill the other.
‘You have a target on Opis.’
‘Of course we do,’ said Syncella. ‘Would the Assassinorum have come here at all, have sacrificed so much for this war, if there was no target?’
‘Who is it?’
‘Someone whose existence is prejudicial to the continued survival of the human race,’ replied Lady Syncella. ‘The worst kind of foe that exists.’
‘The same could be said of every target the Assassinorum hunts down,’ replied Lysander. ‘I would imagine those exact words are used in the Senatorum Imperialis when debating the Assassinorum’s use. What makes this different?’
‘It is enough that we know,’ replied Syncella.
‘Then the honour of my Chapter is not satisfied!’ snapped Lysander. ‘The duty of the Imperial Guard is to fight and die without ever asking why. But I am a Space Marine! I am the chosen of the Emperor! I will not see the blood of my brethren shed in the darkness! When we risk our lives, we do it on our terms, not yours!’
‘Honour?’ said Syncella, her voice heavy with scorn. ‘You are better than that! Are you not Captain Lysander, for whom no
sacrifice is too great? We know what you will do for victory. We know how many have died, and much worse, at your behest, for victory.’
Lysander took a half-step forward. With the tension crackling between them, it was as threatening a gesture as the cocking of a gun. ‘You will watch your words,’ he said.
‘Why?’ said Syncella. ‘Because of honour?’ She shook her head. ‘The common soldier must believe that he is fighting for good against evil. Perhaps even a Space Marine must believe this. But you and I, Lysander, know the war we fight is not a matter of right or wrong. It is a clash between two different flavours of amorality. One path has us survive. One, the path of disorder, Chaos and the predatory xenos, has us die out. Neither is right or wrong. You know this, Lysander, he for whom no sacrifice is too great for victory, as well as I. As well as anyone.’
Lysander fought for an answer, but he could find none.
She was right. It was not about right or wrong. Lysander had done things that any right-minded man would call evil, because that was the only way to secure victory.
‘But this is Opis,’ he said finally. ‘This is war. Millions will die.’
‘You can do better than that,’ said Lady Syncella, and even to Lysander his words had sounded hollow. ‘Do not fight us,’ continued Syncella. ‘We are both on the side of survival, and nothing else matters. Not right or wrong, not honour, nothing. You who would do anything for victory must also let us conduct this war as we will. For victory.’
‘You summoned the daemons of the warp!’ retorted Lysander. ‘You made pacts with sorcerers and witches!’
‘We broke them!’ snapped Syncella. The remark had hit a nerve. ‘We tracked them down and shattered their will. We bound them into our service. And when we are done, they will be summoned into our presence and executed. We will have done more to eliminate such threats to the Imperium than any servant of the Emperor could claim, and in doing so, will have destroyed a far greater threat. Do not pretend that great men, saviours of the Imperium, have not stepped over that line, too.’
Lysander took a long breath. ‘What is your target?’ he asked.
