Nemesis

The chamber became quiet, and the Master of Assassins took a breath before speaking again. ‘This rivalry and bickering serves no purpose,’ he began, his voice level and firm. ‘In all the history of this group, there has never been a target whose retirement required more than one mission to prosecute. To date, the Horus problem has claimed eight Officio operatives across all six of the primary clades. Each of you are the first of your clade, the founders… And yet you sit here and jostle for supremacy over one another instead of giving me the kill we so desperately want! I demand a solution to rid us of the Emperor’s turbulent and wayward son.’

Sire Eversor spoke. ‘I will commit every active agent in my clade. All of them, all at once. If I must spend the lives of every last Eversor to kill Horus, then so be it.’

For the first time since the group had assembled, the silent figure in the hooded robes made a sound; a soft grunt of disagreement.

‘Our visitor has something to add,’ said Sire Vanus.

The Master of Assassins inclined his head towards the shadows. ‘Is that so?’

The hooded man moved slightly, enough that he became better defined by the glow-light, but not so much that his face could be discerned inside the depths of the robe. ‘None of you are soldiers,’ he rumbled, his deep tones carrying across the room. ‘You are so used to working alone, as your occupation demands, that you forget a rule of all conflict. Force doubled is force squared.’

‘Did I not just say such a thing?’ snapped Sire Eversor.

The hooded man ignored the interruption. ‘I have heard you all speak. I have seen your mission plans. They were not flawed. They were simply not enough.’ He nodded to himself. ‘No single assassin, no matter how well-trained, no matter which clade they come from, could ever hope to terminate the Archtraitor alone. But a collective of your killers…’ He nodded again. ‘That might be enough.’

‘A strike team…’ mused Sire Vindicare.

‘An Execution Force,’ corrected the Master. ‘An elite unit hand-picked for the task.’

Sire Vanus frowned behind his mask. ‘Such a suggestion… There is no precedent for something like this. The Emperor will not approve of it.’

‘Oh?’ said Callidus. ‘What makes you so certain?’

The master of Clade Vanus leaned forward, the perturbations of his image-mask growing more agitated. ‘The veils of secrecy preserve all that we are,’ he insisted. ‘For decades we have worked in the shadows of the Imperium, at the margins of the Emperor’s knowledge, and for good reason. We serve him in deeds that he must never know of, in order to maintain his noble purity, and to do so there are conventions we have always followed.’ He shot a look at the hooded man. ‘A code of ethics. Rules of conflict.’

‘Agreed,’ ventured Siress Venenum. ‘The deployment of an assassin is a delicate matter and never one taken lightly. We have in the past fielded two or three on a single mission when the circumstances were most extreme, but then always from the same clade, and always after much deliberation.’

Vanus was nodding. ‘Six at once, from every prime clade? You cannot expect the Emperor to sanction such a thing. It is simply… not done.’

The Master of Assassins was silent for a long moment; then he steepled his fingers in front of him, pressing the apex of them to the lips of his silver face. ‘What I expect is that each clade’s Director Primus will obey my orders without question. These “rules” of which you speak, Vanus… Tell me, does Horus Lupercal adhere to them as strongly as you do?’ He didn’t raise his voice, but his tone brooked no disagreement. ‘Do you believe that the Archtraitor will baulk at a tactic because it offends the manners of those at court? Because it is not done?’

‘He bombed his sworn brethren, his own men even, into obliteration,’ said Sire Vindicare. ‘I doubt anything is beyond him.’

The Master nodded. ‘And if we are to kill this foe, we cannot limit ourselves to the moral abstracts that have guided us in the past. We must dare to exceed them.’ He paused. ‘This will be done.’

‘My lord–’ began Vanus, reaching out a hand.

‘It is so ordered,’ said the man in the silver mask, with finality. ‘This discussion is at an end.’

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