Nemesis

The slate in Maloghurst’s gnarled fingers emitted a melodic chime, at odds with the urgency of its new message. ‘Sensors read… something,’ said the equerry. ‘Closing fast. A collision course! But weapons can’t find it…’

‘An aura cloak,’ said Erebus, peering into the stormy dark. ‘But such a device is beyond the Dagoneti.’

‘Yes.’ Horus smiled, unconcerned. ‘Do you see him?’ The Warmaster stepped to the window and pressed his hands to the grey glass.

Out among the maelstrom of energy, as javelins of fire crossed and recrossed one another, scouring the sky for the hidden attacker, for one instant the Chaplain saw something like oil moving over water. Just the suggestion of a raptor-like object lensing the light of the distant stars behind it. ‘There!’ He pointed.

Maloghurst snapped out a command over his vox. ‘Target located. Engage and destroy!’

The gun crews converged their fire. The craft was close, closer than the illusory ghost image had suggested. Unbidden, Erebus backed away a step from the viewing portal.

Horus’s smile grew wider and the Word Bearer heard the words he whispered, a faint rumble in the deepest register. ‘Kill me,’ said the Warmaster, ‘if you dare.’

4

Ultio burned around him.

The pilot was already dead in the loosest sense, the cyborg’s higher mental functions boiled in the short-circuit surge from a hit on the starboard wing; but his core brain was intact, and through that the ship dodged and spun as the sky itself seemed to turn upon them.

The ship trailed pieces of fuselage in a comet tail of wreckage and burning plasma. The deck trembled and smoke filled the bridge compartment. A vista of red warning runes met Kell’s eyes wherever he looked. Autonomic systems had triggered the last-chance protocols, opening an iris hatch in the floor to a tiny saviour pod mounted beneath the cockpit. Blue light spilling from the hatch beckoned the Vindicare for a moment. He had his Exitus pistol at his hip and he was still alive. He would only need to take a step…

But to where? Even if he survived the next ten seconds, where could he escape to? What reason did he have to live? His mission… The mission was all Eristede Kell had left in his echoing, empty existence.

The command tower of the Vengeful Spirit rose through the forward canopy, acres of old steel and black iron, backlit by volleys of energy and the red threads of lasers. Set atop it was a single unblinking eye of grey and amber glass, lined in shining gold.

And within the eye, a figure. Kell was sure of it, an immense outline, a demigod daring him to come closer. His hand found the manual throttle bar and he pressed it all the way to the redline, as the killing fires found his range.

He looked up once again, and the first sighting-mantra he had ever been taught pressed itself to the front of his thoughts. Four words, a simple koan whose truth had never been more real than it was in this moment.

Kell said it aloud as he fell towards his target.

‘I am the weapon.’

5

Across the mountainous towers of the Imperial Palace, the sun was rising into the dusky sky, but its light had yet to reach all the wards and precincts of the great fortress-city. Many districts were still dormant, their populace on the verge of waking for the new day; others had been kept from their slumber by matters that did not rest.

In the ornate corridors of power, there was quiet and solemnity, but in the Shrouds, any pretence at decorum had been thrown aside.

Sire Eversor’s fist came down hard on the surface of the rosewood table with an impact that set the cut-glass water goblets atop it rattling. His anger was unchained, his eyes glaring out through his bone mask. ‘Failure!’ he spat, the word laden with venom. ‘I warned you all when this idiotic plan was proposed, I warned you that it would not work!’

‘And now we have burned our only chance to kill the Warmaster,’ muttered Sire Vanus, his synth-altered voice flat and toneless like that of a machine.

The master of Clade Eversor, unable to remain seated in his chair, arose in a rush and rounded the octagonal table. The other Sires and Siresses of the Officio Assassinorum watched him stalk towards the powerful, hooded figure standing off to one side, in the glow of a lume-globe. ‘We never should have listened to you,’ he growled. ‘All you did was cost us more men, Custodian!’

At the head of the table, the Master of Assassins looked up sharply, his silver mask reflecting the light. Behind him there was nothing but darkness, and the man appeared to be cradled in a dark, depthless void.

‘Yes,’ spat Sire Eversor. ‘I know who he is. It could be no other than Constantin Valdor!’

At this, the hooded man let his robes fall open and the Captain-General was fully revealed. ‘As you wish,’ he said. ‘I have nothing to fear from you knowing my face.’