Nemesis

There was none. Digging deeper, he reached for his stunted past. He remembered back as far as he could – an hour, perhaps? He replayed the moment. A sudden awakening. The transit cocoon that held him in its silent, womb-like space, where he could wait out the non-time until his next glorious release; suddenly broken. An error, or something else? Enemy action? That assumption was the Garantine’s default setting, after all. He reasoned – as much as he was able – that surely if he had been awakened for any other reason, the hypnogoges would have ensured he knew why.

But there was nothing. No parameters, only wakefulness. And for an Eversor, to be awake was to be in the glory of killing. A cocktail of stimulants and battle drugs boiled through his bloodstream, heavy doses of Fury, Spur and Psychon synthesised to order by the compact biofac implants in his abdomen. Under normal circumstances, the Garantine would have been armed with more than just his skinplanted offensive weapons and helm-mask; he would have been sheathed in armour and arrayed with a suite of servo-systems. That he did not have these only served to modify the killer’s approach to his targets. He had taken and employed several light stubber guns, using each until the ammo drum ran dry, then making the weapons into clubs he used to beat his kills to the floor; but the stubbers were only good for a few hits before his violence broke them across the frame and he was forced to discard them.

He punched a man with enough energy that it shattered his skull, and then he vaulted a makeshift barricade, moving faster than the men hiding behind it could aim. He killed them with their own guns and ran on, deeper through the complex.

Parts of the building might have looked familiar to him, if the Garantine had been able to stop the racing pace of his thoughts, if he had been able to slow his kill-need for just a moment; but he could do neither.

In the absence of orders, with no target to aim for, the Eversor did what he was trained to do; and he would go on, killing here and then moving on to the next set of targets, and the next and the next, forever in the moment.

5

Afterwards, Daig felt refreshed by his experience, but he had not come to the meeting for personal reasons. While some of the others talked amongst themselves, the reeve took Noust to one side and the two men shared cups of the warm wine, and questions.

Noust listened in silence to Daig’s explanation of his caseload, and at length, he gave a nod. ‘I know Erno Sigg. I guessed that might be why you’d come to see me. His face was on the public watch-wire. Said that he was sought after to assist in your “enquiries”.’

Daig suppressed a wince. Laimner, on Telemach’s orders, had deliberately leaked Sigg’s image to the media in a ham-fisted attempt to flush him into the open; but if anything, it appeared to have driven the man deeper into hiding.

Noust continued. ‘He’s a troubled fellow, to be certain. Someone without a compass, you could say. But that’s where the Theoge can be of help to a man. He learned of the text while he was incarcerated, from a ship-hand. Erno found another path with us.’ He looked away. ‘At least, for a time he did.’

Daig leaned in. ‘What do you mean?’

Noust eyed him. ‘Is that you asking, Daig Segan? Or is it the Sentine?’

‘Both,’ he replied. ‘This is important. You know I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t.’

‘Aye, that’s so.’ Noust sighed. ‘Here’s the thing. For a while, Erno was a regular fixture here, and he was trying to make something of himself. He wanted to make amends. Erno was working to become a better man than the angry, frustrated thug he’d left out there in space. It’s a long road, but he knew that. But then he started to come around less often.’

‘When did this happen?’

‘A few demilunars ago. Two, maybe. When I did see him, he was twitchy. He said that he was going to have to pay for what he had done.’ Noust paused, sorting through his thoughts. ‘I got the impression that someone was… I don’t know, following him? He was irritable, paranoid. All the old, bad traits coming back to the fore.’

Daig rubbed his chin. ‘He may have killed people.’

Noust gave the reeve a shocked look. ‘No. Never. Maybe once upon a time, but not now. He’s not capable of that, not any more. I’d swear that to the God-Emperor himself.’