Nemesis

by James Swallow

  Segan slammed into the floor, his gun skittering away into the shadows, sliding to a halt at the edge of the blood pool; he reacted with a sharp yelp. “Throne!” He saw Sabrat’s body and Spear felt a moment of victory as something perished inside the other man. A little bit of his will shrivelled to see his friend so violated. “Yosef…?”

  “He did it all,” said Spear. “How terrible.”

  Segan shot a venomous glare in his direction. “Liar! Never! Yosef Sabrat is a good man, he would never… never…”

  Spear frowned. “Yes. I knew you wouldn’t accept it. That was your role. There had to be one person in the Sentine who would fight this explanation, or else it would seem false. But now you’ve ruined that. I’ll have to compensate.”

  At last, understanding dawned on the other man’s face. “You. You did this.”

  “I did it all,” Spear chuckled. He let his face shift and transform, his eyes become black and dark. “I did it all,” he repeated.

  The blood drained from Segan’s face as Spear came closer, letting the change happen slowly. With trembling fingers, the reeve pulled something shiny and gold from inside his cuff and clung to it, as if it were the key to a door that would spirit him away from the horror all around him. The dour little man was pinned to the spot, transfixed with fright.

  “The Emperor protects,” Segan said aloud. “The Emperor protects.”

  Spear opened his spiked jaws. “He really doesn’t,” said the murderer.

  THE DISTANT HUM-AND-CRACK of mortar shells could be heard on the Ultio’s flight deck, through the opened vents in the canopy that let in wet, grimy air.

  Koyne’s encrypted report, burst-transmitted via tight-beam vox, had reached them just after sunset and confirmed Tariel’s worst fears. The mission was over before it had even begun. He said as much to Kell and the others, earning himself a feral snarl from the Garantine.

  “Weakling,” growled the Eversor. “You’re gutless. Afraid to get your robes dirty in the field!” The hulking killer leaned towards him, looming. He had his mask off, and his scarred, broken face was if anything more ugly than the metal skull. “Mission circumstances always change. But we adapt and burn through!”

  “Burn through,” repeated the Vanus. “Perhaps you misunderstood the meaning of Koyne’s report? Did the larger words confuse you?”

  The Garantine rose to his feet, eyes narrowing. “Say that again, piss-streak. I dare you.”

  “This war is over!” Tariel almost shouted it. “Dagonet is as good as conquered! Horus has won this world, don’t you see?”

  “Horus has not even set foot on Dagonet,” countered Soalm.

  He rounded on her. “Exactly! The Warmaster is not even here, and yet still he is here!”

  “Make him speak sense,” the Eversor said to Kell, “or I’ll cut out his tongue.”

  “It’s not Horus,” Kell explained. “It’s what he represents.”

  Tariel nodded sharply. “The turncoat nobility on this planet don’t need to see Horus. His influence hangs over Dagonet like an eclipse blotting out the sun. They’re fighting in his name in fear of him, and that is enough. And when they win, the Warmaster’s work will be done for him. This same thing is happening all across the galaxy, on every world too far from the Emperor and the rule of Terra.” He trembled a little with the sudden frustration he felt deep inside him. “When Dagonet falls, Horus will turn his face from this place and move on, his advance one step closer to the gates of the Imperial Palace…”

  “Horus will not come to Dagonet,” said Soalm, catching on. “He will have no need to.”

  The infocyte nodded again. “And everything we’ve prepared for, the whole purpose of this mission, will be worthless.”

  “We’ll lose our chance to kill him,” said Kell.

  “Aye,” snapped Tariel, and he shot the Garantine a glare. “Do you see now?”

  The Eversor’s expression shifted; and after a moment, he nodded. “Then, we must make sure he does come to Dagonet.”

  Soalm folded her arms. “How do you propose to do that? Once this planet’s Governor makes his allegiance known to the insurrectionists, perhaps the Warmaster may send some delegate to plant the flag, but no more than a starship admiral or some such. He won’t waste a single Space Marine’s time on matters of dispensation.”

  The Garantine grunted with callous humour. “You all think I’m the slow one here, don’t you? But you miss the obvious answer, woman. If Horus won’t come to a fight that has ended, then we make sure the fight does not end.”

  “Deliberately prolong the civil war.” Kell said the words without weight.

  “We draw him to us,” said the Eversor, warming to his theme, showing teeth. “We make the taking of Dagonet such a thorn in his side that he has no choice but to come here and deal with it himself.”

  Tariel considered the idea; it was blunt and crude, but it had merit. And it could work. “Dagonet has a personal resonance with the Warmaster. It was the site of one of his very first victories. That, and its strategic value… It could be enough. It would be a dishonour for him to let this planet slip from his control.” Hearing footsteps across the deck, he glanced up to see Iota step on to the flight deck; behind her was a man he did not recognise in a PDF uniform.

  “Relax, Vanus,” said the man, in a cynical tone that could only be Koyne’s. “I take it you found my report to be compelling reading. So; what have we missed?”

  “You exfiltrated without any complications?” said Kell.

  Iota nodded. “What is the local time?”

  “Fourteen forty-nine.” Tariel answered automatically, his chronoimplant already synched to the Dagonet clock standard.

  “There’s six of us,” the Garantine went on. “Each has destroyed rulers and broken kingdoms all on their own. How hard could it be to add some fuel to this little blaze?”

  “And what about the Dagoneti?” Soalm demanded. “They’ll be caught in the crossfire.”

  The other assassin looked away, unconcerned. “Collateral damage.”

  “What is the local time?” Iota said again.

  “Fourteen fifty. Why do you keep asking—?” Tariel’s reply was cut off by a flash of light in the distance, followed seconds later by the report of an explosion.

  “What in Hades was that?” said Kell. “The… communicatory?”

  “A power generator overload. I made it look like the commoner freedom fighters did it,” said Koyne. “We couldn’t afford to leave any traces. Or survivors.”

  The Garantine’s grin grew even wider. “See? We’ve already started.”

  TEN

  Matters of Trust

  Breakout

  False Flag

  “DON’T RUN,” SNARLED Grohl. “They see you running and they’ll know.”

  Beye shot him a narrow-eyed look from beneath her forage cap. “This isn’t running. Believe me, you’d know if it was running. This is a purposeful walk.”

  He snorted and clamped a hand around her arm, forcibly slowing her down. “Well, dial it back to a meander. Look casual.” Grohl glanced around at the marketplace stalls as they passed through them. “Look like you want to buy something.”

  At their side, Pasri made a face. “Buy what, exactly?” asked the ex-soldier, her scarred nose wrinkling.

  She had a point. Most of the stalls were bare, abandoned by owners who were either too afraid to leave their homes, or lacking for produce to offer after the nobles had instituted martial law and imposed checkpoints on all the out-of-city highways. Beye couldn’t help but glance over her shoulder. In the distance, what had once been a precinct tower for the capital’s regiment of Adeptus Arbites was now wreathed in thin smoke. The crossed-out Imperial aquila on its southerly face was visible through the haze, and the harsh croaks of police sirens wafted towards them on the wind. “Don’t stare,” Grohl snapped.

  “You want us to blend in,” she replied. “Everyone else is staring.” Not that there were many people around. The
few daring to venture out onto the streets of Dagonet’s capital kept off the rubble-strewn roads or minded their own business. No one assembled in groups of more than four, fearful of the edicts that threatened arrest and detention for anyone suspected of “gathering for reasons of sedition”.

  Beye almost laughed at the thought of that. Sedition was the act of treason against an existing order, and if anything, she, Grohl, Pasri and the handful of others were the absolute antithesis of that. They were the ones championing the cause of rightful authority, of the Emperor’s rule. It was the noble clans and the weakling Governor who were the rebels here, rejecting Terra and siding with…

  Her eyes flicked up as they passed into a crossroads. There on the island in the centre of the highway, a statue of the Warmaster stood untouched by the street fighting. He towered over her, standing tall with one hand reaching out in a gesture of aid, the other holding a massive bolter pistol upwards to the sky. Beye noticed with a grimace that votive candles and small trinkets had been left at the foot of the plinth by those eager to show their devotion to the new regime.

  Grohl paused at the intersection, rubbing at his thin beard, his eyes flicking this way and that. Finally, he made a choice. “Over here.”

  Beye and Pasri followed him across the monorail lines towards an alleyway between two shuttered storefronts. She managed not to flinch as a patrol rotorplane shrieked past over the rooftops, klaxons hooting.

  “It’s not looking for us,” Pasri said automatically; but in the next moment, Beye heard a change in the aircraft’s engine note as it circled, looking for a place to put down.

  “Are you sure about that?”

  Grohl swore. This entire operation had been a cascade of errors from start to finish. Firstly, the man who was meant to drive the GEV truck did not arrive at the rendezvous, forcing them to improvise with rods and ropes to hold down the steering yoke and throttle – because of course, Grohl would never have considered sacrificing himself for the cause on a target so ordinary. Then, at the approach, they found the barricades placed by the clanner troops had been moved, making their straight shot at the precinct doors impossible. And finally, as the payload of crudely-cooked chemical explosives had at last detonated in a wet blast of noise and light, Beye saw that the damage it inflicted on the building was superficial at best.

  She had at least hoped they could escape the security dragnet. But if they were captured, their failure would be total and complete. Beye knew that the patrol flyers carried nine-man teams with cyber-mastiffs and spy drones. The first icy surges of panic bubbled up in her chest as she imagined the interior of a dank interrogation cell. She would never see Capra again.

  Grohl broke into a ran and she followed him with Pasri at her heels, listening for the metallic barks of the enhanced dogs. He slipped through a gap between two waste skips and down towards a side road. Ahead of him, a woman in a sun-hood and sarong stepped out from a doorway and looked up at them. Beye was struck by the paleness of her face; Dagonet’s bright sunshine tanned everyone on the planet’s temperate zone, which meant she was either a shut-in noblewoman or an off-worlder; and neither were likely to be seen in this part of the inner city.

  “Pardon,” she began, and her accent immediately confirmed her non-Dagoneti status. “If I could trouble you?”

  Grohl almost missed a step, but then he pressed on, pushing past the stranger. “Get out of my way,” he growled.

  Beye came after him. She heard the yelps of the mastiffs in the distance and saw Pasri looking back the way they had come, her expression unreadable.

  “As you wish,” the woman said, spreading her hands. Beye saw the glint of metal nozzles at her wrists just as she pursed her pale lips and blew out a long breath. A vaporous mist jetted from the nozzles and engulfed them all.

  The ground beneath Beye’s feet suddenly became the consistency of rubber and she stumbled, dimly aware of Grohl doing the same. Pasri let out a weak cry and fell.

  As Beye collapsed in a heap, her limbs refusing to do as she told them, she saw the pale woman smile and lick beads of the spray off her fingertips. “It’s done,” she heard her say, the words drawing out into a liquid, humming echo. Beye’s senses went dark.

  THE ACRID CHEMICAL stink of smelling salts jolted her back to wakefulness and Beye coughed violently. Blinking, she raised her head and peered at the room she found herself in, expecting the pale green walls of an Arbites cell; instead, she saw the gloomy interior of some kind of storehouse, shafts of daylight reaching down through holes in a sheet-plas roof.

  She was tied to a chair, hands secured behind her back, ankles tethered to the support legs. Grohl was in a similar state to her right, and past him, Pasri looked back at her with an expression of tight fear. Grohl met her gaze, his face a mask of rigid, forced calm. “Say nothing,” he told her. “Whatever happens, say nothing.”

  “Right on schedule,” said a new voice. “As you said.”

  “Of course.” That was the pale woman. “I can time the actions of my toxins to the second, if need be.”

  Beye focussed and saw the woman in the sarong talking with an odd-looking youth wearing what looked like some form of combat gear. He was working a device mounted on his forearm, a gauntlet that grew a flickering holoscreen. Both of them glanced at their prisoners – for that was what they were, Beye realised belatedly – and then past their heads.

  She heard motion behind her and Beye sensed someone standing at her back. “Who’s there?” she said, before she could stop herself.

  A third figure moved around the captives and came into view. He was tall, clad in a black oversuit with armour patches and gear packs. A heavy pistol of a design Beye had never seen before hung at his hip. He had a hawkish face that might have been handsome if not for the hardness lurking in his gaze. “Names,” he said.

  Grohl made a derogatory sound deep in his throat. The youth with the wrist-device sniffed and spoke again. “Liya Beye. Terrik Grohl. Olo Pasri.”

  “The nobles have files on all of you,” said the hawkish man. “We took these copies of their database on the resistance when we destroyed the Kappa Six Communicatory.”

  “You did that?” said Pasri.

  “Shut up,” Grohl snarled. “Don’t talk!”

  Beye kept silent. Like the rest of them, she’d been wondering just what had happened at Kappa Six ever since the newsfeeds had announced the “cowardly, treacherous attack by terrorist militants” a few days earlier. In the end, Capra had suggested that it was either the work of an independent cell they weren’t aware of, or just some accident the nobles had decided to blame on them.

  “We’re nothing to do with those resistance radicals,” insisted Pasri. “We’re just citizens.”

  The youth sneered. “Please don’t insult my intelligence.”

  “Things are going badly for you, aren’t they?” said the man, ignoring the interruption. “They’re getting close to finding your hideaway. Close to finding Capra and all his cell leaders.”

  Beye tried not to react when he said the name, and failed. He turned to her. “How many of your people have surrendered in the past few weeks? Fifty? A hundred? How many have taken the offer of amnesty for themselves and their families?”

  “It’s a lie,” Beye blurted out, ignoring Grohl’s hiss of annoyance. “Those who give up are executed.”

  “Of course they are,” said the man. He nodded towards the youth. “We even have picts of the firing squads.” He paused. “Your entire resistance network—”

  “Such as it is,” said the youth, with an arch sniff.

  “Your network is on the verge of collapse,” continued the other man. “Capra and his trusted core of freedom fighters are the only things holding it together. And the nobles know that all they really need to do is wait.” He walked down the line of them. “Just wait, until you run out of supplies, of ammunition. Of hope. You’re all exhausted, pushed beyond your limits. Hungry and tired. None of you want to say it, but you all know it’s t
rue. You’ve already lost, you just can’t admit it.”

  That was enough for Grohl to break his own rules. “Go screw yourself, clanner bastard!”

  The man raised an eyebrow. “We’re not… clanners, is it? We are not in the employ of the nobles.” He leaned down and pulled something from the neck of his armour; an identity disc on a chain. “We serve a different master.”

  Beye immediately recognised the shape of an Imperial sigil-tag, a bio-active recognition device gene-keyed to its wearer. An etching of the two-headed aquila glittered there on its surface. It could not be forged, duplicated or removed from the person of its user without becoming useless. Anyone wearing such a tag was a soldier in service to the Emperor of Mankind.

  “Who are you?” Pasri was wary.

  The man indicated himself. “Kell. These are Tariel and… Soalm. We are agents of the Imperium and the authority of Terra.”

  “Why tell us your names?” hissed Grohl. “Unless you’re going to kill us?”

  “Consider it a gesture of trust,” said the pale woman. “We already know who you are. And in all honesty, knowing what to call us hardly makes you a threat.”

  Beye leaned forward. “Why are you here?”

  Kell nodded to Tariel, and the youth produced a mollyknife. He moved to where Pasri was sitting and cut her loose, then proceeded to do the same with Grohl.

  “We have been sent by the Emperor’s command to aid the planet Dagonet and its people in this time of crisis.” Beye was certain that she saw a loaded look pass between Soalm and Kell before the man spoke again. “We are here to help you oppose the insurrection of Horus Lupercal and anyone who takes his side.”

  Grohl rubbed at his wrists. “So, of course you would like us to take you to the secret retreat of the resistance. Introduce you personally to Capra. Open ourselves up so you can murder us all in one fell swoop?” He turned his head and spat. “We’re not fools or traitors.”

  Tariel cut Beye loose and offered a hand to help her to her feet, but she refused. Instead, he gave her a data-slate. “You know how to read these, correct? Your file says that you served the Administratum as a datum clerk in the office of colonial affairs, prior to the insurrection.”