Nemesis

Crouching in the lee of a tall, broken terracotta urn, he studied the Executor pistol and worked his fingers around the grip. The desire to use it on some target, any target, was almost too much to hold in. The anticipation tingled in his lobo-chips, and he felt the chemoglands in his neck grow cool as they produced a calmative to regulate the hammering pace of his heartbeat.

‘Eversor.’ The sniper’s voice issued out from the earpiece of his skull-mask. ‘There’s a group of irregulars to the south, under the broken chronograph near the monorail entrance. They’re dug in with a heavy gun.’ The Garantine took a look around the urn and saw the shattered clock face. He grunted an affirmative and Kell went on. ‘They’re holding off a unit of Defence Force troopers. Not many of the PDFs left. Hold and observe.’

That last sentence actually drew a laugh from the Eversor. ‘Oh, no.’ He jumped to his feet, the hissing of stimjectors sounding in his ears, and rolling fire flooded through him. The Garantine’s eyes widened behind his mask and his body resonated like a struck chord. Kell was saying something over the vox, but it seemed like the chattering of an insect.

The Garantine leapt into the air from the balcony overlooking the ticketing plaza and fell two storeys to land on the top of the smashed clock, where it hung from spars extending from the ceiling. The weight of his arrival dislodged the whole construction and he dropped with it, riding it to the tiled floor below to land behind the makeshift gun emplacement. The clock exploded into fragments as it struck the ground, ejecting cogwheels and bits of the fascia in all directions, the shock of it staggering the men behind the autocannon.

Kell had called them irregulars; that meant they were not soldiers, at least in an official sense. His drug-sharpened perception took in all details of them at once. They were garbed in pieces of armour, some of it PDF or Arbites issue, and the weapons they carried were an equally random assortment. At the sight of the towering, skull-masked monster that had fallen from the skies above them, the men on the autocannon hauled the weapon around on its tripod, swinging it to bear on the Garantine.

He roared and threw himself at them, his shout lost in the scream of the Executor. Bolt shells broke the bodies of the men in wet, red bursts, and he fell into their line, raking others with the spines of his neuro-gauntlet. The barbs of the glove bit into flesh and sent those it touched reeling to a twitching, frenzied death. Those on the autocannon he killed by punching, putting his fist through their ribcages. As an afterthought, he kicked the tripod gun away, and it rolled to the tiled floor.

Shivering with the rush, he laughed again. Through his adrenaline haze, he saw the men in the PDF uniforms warily peer out of cover, and then finally advance towards him with laser carbines ready.

He gave a theatrical bow and addressed them. ‘A rescue,’ he snapped. ‘Consider it a gift from the ruler of Terra.’

‘Idiot.’ Kell’s words pierced the veil of his racing thoughts. ‘Look at their chest plates!’

He did so; all of the PDF soldiers wore the etched-out aquila that signified their rejection of the Emperor’s dominion. They started firing, and the Garantine laughed once more, diving into the beam salvo with the Executor at his lead.

4

Spear’s meal was methodical. All the eating of the human foodstuffs while it had been in quietus had been enough to fuel the camouflage aspect’s biology, but the layers of the killer’s true self were starting to starve. Sipping at the meat of the dockworker and the clerk had served to hold off the hunger pangs, but they had not been enough for true satisfaction; and the destruction of the telepath had taken a lot of energy from him.

Still; feeding now, and a full meal with it. Bones ground between razor teeth, organs still hot and wet bitten into like ripe fruits, and blood by the bucket for the drinking. Thirst slaked, for a while. Yes. It would do.

Deep in the canyons of his mind, Spear could hear the echo of the camouflage’s ghost-mind as it wept and screamed, forced to watch these deeds from the cage where it was held. It could not understand that it was only noise now, no longer a being with life and power to influence the outside world. For as long as Spear remained in control, it would always be so.