Nemesis

Nothing followed them; at one point the sensors registered something small and fast – a jetbike perhaps – but it was far off their vector and did not appear to be aware of them.

Finally, Koyne broke the silence. ‘Where in the name of Hades are we going?’

‘To find the others,’ said the Vindicare.

‘The women?’ Koyne was still hiding behind a young man’s face and the expression the Callidus put on it was too old and too callous for such a youthful visage. ‘What makes you think they’re any less dead than the Eversor?’

Kell held up a data-slate. ‘You don’t really think I’d let the Culexus out of my sight without knowing exactly where she was, do you?’

‘A tracking device?’ Koyne immediately glared at Tariel, who shrank back behind the hologram of the flyer’s autopilot control. ‘One of your little toys?’

The infocyte gave a brisk nod. ‘A harmless radiation frequency tag, nothing more. I provided enough for all of us.’

Koyne turned the glare back on Kell. ‘Did you plant one on me as well?’ The boy’s eyes narrowed. ‘Where is it?’

Kell smiled coldly. ‘Those rations aboard the Ultio were tasty, weren’t they?’ Before the Callidus could react, he went on. ‘Don’t be so difficult, Koyne. If I hadn’t factored in a contingency, we never would have found you. You’d still be in the city, marking time until Horus’s warriors cut you down.’

‘You thought of everything,’ said the shade. ‘Except the possibility that our target would know we were coming!’

Tariel began to speak. ‘The target in the plaza–’

‘Was not the Warmaster!’ snarled Koyne. ‘I am an assassin palatine of more kills than I care to mention, and I have survived every sanction and prosecuted each kill because I had no secrets. No one to confide in. No chance for a breach in operational security. And yet here we are, with this grand and foolish scheme to murder a primarch crashing down around us, and for what? Who spoke, Kell?’ The Callidus crossed the flyer’s small cabin and prodded the marksman in the chest. ‘Who is to blame?’

‘I don’t have an answer for you,’ said Kell, in a moment of candour. ‘But if any of us were traitors to the Emperor, we’ve had opportunities aplenty to stop this endeavour before it even left the Sol system.’

‘Then how did Horus foresee the attack?’ asked Koyne. ‘He let one of his own commanders perish in his stead. He must have known! Are we to believe he’s some kind of sorcerer?’

A chime sounded from Kell’s data-slate, and he left the question unanswered. ‘A return. Two kilometres to the west.’

Tariel opened another pane of ghostly hololithic images and nodded. ‘I have it. A static location. The flyer’s auspex is detecting a metallic mass… conflicting thermal reads.’

‘Set us down.’

Below them, dust clouds whirled past, reducing visibility to almost nothing. ‘The sandstorm and the contaminants from the orbital bombing…’ The Vanus looked up and his argument died on his lips as he saw Kell’s rigid expression. He sighed. ‘As you wish.’

6

Two of Tariel’s eyerats found her, slumped over the yoke of a GEV skimmer half-buried under a storm-blown dune. From what the infocyte could determine, she had been injured before getting into the vehicle, and at some point as she tried to escape into the deep desert, her wounds had overcome her and the skimmer controls had slipped from her grip.

Kell, an expression of stony fury on his face, shoved Tariel out of the way and gathered up Soalm where she lay. Her face was discoloured with bruising, and to the infocyte’s amazement, she still lived.

Koyne drew something from the back seat of the GEV: a sculpted silver helmet in the shape of a skull, crested with lenses and antennae of arcane design. When the Callidus held it up to look it in the eye, black ash fell from the neck and was carried away on the moaning winds. ‘Iota…’

‘Dead,’ Soalm stirred at the mention of the psyker’s name. ‘It killed her.’ Her voice was slight, thick with pain.

‘It?’ echoed Tariel; but Kell was already carrying the Venenum back towards the flyer.

Koyne was the last inside, and the Callidus drew the hatch shut with a slam. The shade brought Iota’s helmet back, and sat it on the deck of the cabin. It fixed them all with its mute, accusatory gaze. Outside, the winds threw rattling curls of sand across the canopy, plucking at the wings of the aircraft.

Across the compartment, Kell tore open a medicae pack and emptied the contents across the metal floor. He worked to load an injector with a pan-spectrum anti-infective.

‘Ask her what happened,’ said Koyne.

‘Shut up,’ Kell snapped. ‘I’m going to save her life, not interrogate her!’

‘If she was drawn away on purpose,’ continued the Callidus. ‘If it was deliberate that Soalm was attacked and Iota killed…’

‘What could have killed her?’ Tariel blurted out. ‘I witnessed what she was capable of in the Red Lanes.’

Koyne scrambled across the cabin towards the sniper. ‘For the Throne’s sake, man, ask her! Whatever she is to you, we have to know!’