Nemesis

Across the cargo bay, sitting uncomfortably upon a canvas seat that vibrated each time the transport forded a pocket of turbulence, Valdor’s companion on this journey was bent forwards over his right arm. Wearing a sandcloak similar to the Custodian’s, the smaller man was busy with a pane of hololithic text projected from a cybernetic gauntlet clasped around his wrist. With his other hand he manipulated shapes in the hologrammatic matrix, his attention on it total and complete. His name was Fon Tariel; the light of the text threw colour over his pale olive skin and the dark ovals of his eyes. A tight nest of dreadlocks drawing over Tariel’s head did their best to hide discreet bronze vents in the back of his skull, where interface sockets gleamed alongside memory implants and dataphilia. Unlike the cohorts of the Mechanicum, who willingly gave themselves fully to the marriage of flesh and machine, Tariel’s augmentations were discreet and nuanced.

Valdor studied him through lidded eyes, careful to be circumspect about it. The Sigillite had presented Tariel to him in a manner that made it clear no questioning of his choice would be allowed. The little man was Sire Vanus’s contribution to the Execution Force, one of the clade’s newest operatives, with a skull crammed full of data and a willingness to serve. They called Tariel’s kind ‘infocytes’; essentially they were human computing engines, but at the very far opposite of the spectrum from the mindless meat-automata of servitors. In matters of strategy and tactics, the insight of an infocyte was unparalleled; their existence cemented Clade Vanus as the intelligence-gathering faction of the Officio Assassinorum. It was said they had never been known to make an error of judgement. Valdor considered that as little more than disinformation, however; the creation and dissemination of propaganda was also a core strength of the Vanus.

From the corner of his eye, the Custodian saw the movement of a monitor camera high up on the roof of the cargo bay. He had noted earlier that it appeared to be dwelling on him more than it should have, and now the device’s attention seemed solely fixed on him. Without turning his head, Valdor saw that Tariel had moved slightly so that his holoscreen was now concealed by the bulk of his body.

The Custodian’s lip curled, and with a quick motion he was on his feet, crossing the short distance between the two of them. Tariel reacted with a flash of panic, but Valdor was on him, grabbing his arm. The hololith showed the monitor’s point of view, locked onto the Custodian. Data streams haloed his image, feeding out bio-patterns and body kinestics; Tariel had somehow invaded and co-opted the flyer’s internal security systems to satisfy his own curiosity.

‘Don’t spy on me,’ Valdor told the infocyte. ‘I value my privacy.’

‘You can’t blame me,’ Tariel blurted. ‘I wondered who you were.’

Valdor considered this for a moment, still holding him in an immobile grip. They had both boarded the transport in silence, neither speaking until this moment; he was not surprised that the other man had let his inquisitiveness outstrip his caution. Tariel and his kind had the same relationship with raw information that an addict did with their chosen vice; they were enrapt by the idea of new data, and would do whatever they could to gather it in, and know it. Quite how that balanced with the Assassinorum’s obsessive need for near-total secrecy he could not imagine; perhaps it went some way towards explaining the peculiar character of the Vanus clade and its agents. ‘Then who am I?’ he demanded. ‘If I caught you staring at me through that camera, then surely you have been doing that and more since we first left the Imperial City.’

‘Let go of my hand, please,’ said Tariel. ‘You’re hurting me.’

‘Not really,’ Valdor told him, but he released his grip anyway.

After a moment, the infocyte nodded. ‘You are Constantin Valdor, Captain-General of the Custodian Guard, margin of error less than fourteen percent. I parsed this from physiological data and existing records, along with sampling of various other information streams.’ Tariel showed him; inputs from sources as diverse as traffic routings, listings of foodstuffs purchased by the Palace consumery, the routes of cleaning automata, renovation files from the forges that repaired the robots Valdor had smashed during his morning exercises… To the warrior it seemed like a wall of white noise, but the infocyte manipulated it effortlessly.

‘That is… impressive,’ he offered. ‘But not the work of an assassin, I would think.’

Tariel’s expression stiffened at that. ‘Clade Vanus has removed many of the Imperium’s enemies. We do our part, as you do, Captain-General.’

Valdor leaned in, looming over the man. ‘And how many enemies of Terra have you killed, Fon Tariel?’

The infocyte paused, blinking. ‘In the way that you would consider it a termination? None. But I have been instrumental in the excision of a number of targets.’

‘Such as?’