Nemesis

‘Through the front door.’ The Callidus watched the men walking back and forth in front of the communicatory, considering the cautious motions in their steps, analysing the cues of their body language not just for infiltration’s sake, but to parse their states of mind. Data-slates, recovered from what remained of the corpses of the turncoat patrol murdered by the Garantine, had provided the Execution Force with a lead on this facility. It was the nearest thing to a garrison for kilometres around, and at this stage Kell wasn’t ready to send the group out from the relative safety of the Ultio and down the long highway to the capital city, several kilometres to the south. The metropolis itself, the largest of all on Dagonet, could be seen clearly against the darkening sky. Some of the taller towers were still smoking, some had half-collapsed and fallen like drunkards suspended on each other’s shoulders; but no snakes of tracer lashed at the skies, there were no mushroom clouds or flights of assault craft buzzing overhead. It seemed calm, or at least as calm as a city on a world at war with itself had any right to be.

When Koyne had asked the Vindicare what he had learned on his scouting mission, the Eversor had just grinned and the sniper replied with a terse dismissal. ‘It’s complicated,’ he said.

Koyne did not doubt that. The Callidus had learned through many hundreds of field operations, a lot of them in active zones of conflict, that what generals in their places of comfort and control called ‘ground truth’ was often anything but true. For the soldier as much as the assassin, the only equation of truth that always worked was the simple vector between a weapon and a target. But now they were here, Koyne and the pariah girl Iota, the Culexus’s skin-crawling null ability brought along to protect the shade from any possible psionic interception.

‘Tariel was correct in his evaluation,’ said Iota, as a rotorplane chattered past overhead. ‘There is an astropath inside that building.’

‘Is it aware of you?’

She shook her head, the distended skull-helm moving back and forth. ‘No. I think it may be under the influence of chemical restraints.’

‘Good.’ Koyne stood up. ‘We don’t want the alarm to be raised before we are done here.’ Concentrating on a thought-shape and impressing that on flesh, the Callidus altered the dimension of its vocal chords, mimicking the tonality of an officer caught on one of the intercepted vox broadcasts. ‘We will proceed.’

6

The shapeshifter was as good as its word.

Keeping to the shadows and the low rooftops along the star-port’s blockhouses, Iota followed the Callidus and watched Koyne become a simulacrum of a turncoat PDF commander, advancing through the outer guard post of the communicatory without raising even a moment of concern. At one point, Iota lost sight of the Callidus, and when a man in Dagoneti colours approached her hiding place, she made ready the combi-needler about the wrist of her killing hand in order to silently end him.

‘Iota,’ called an entirely different voice. ‘Show yourself.’

She stepped into the light. ‘I like your tricks,’ said Iota.

Koyne smiled with someone else’s face and opened a door. ‘This way. I relieved the guards at the elevator in here so we won’t have much time. They’re holding the astropath on one of the sublevels.’

‘Why did you change it?’ Iota asked as they moved through the ill-lit corridors. ‘The face?’

‘I bore easily,’ replied Koyne, halting at a lift shaft. ‘Here we are.’

As the Callidus reached for the switch, the doors opened, flooding the corridor with light; inside the elevator two troopers saw the dark shape of the Culexus and went for their guns.

7

Spear swallowed Hyssos’s one undamaged eye before depositing the dead man’s reamed head among the rest of him; and then with a swift spin of his body, he pitched the remains into the canyon and watched them fall away.

Returning to the tank room, he skirted the beauty of the blood-art he had made from Erno Sigg’s corpse. He had used poor Erno as his stalking horse, tormenting him, pushing him to the edge of sanity before destroying him. The man had served his purpose perfectly. Spear moved on, checking once more that the body of Yosef Sabrat had been arranged just so. The evidence he had fabricated over the past few weeks was also scattered around, arranged so that when it was discovered, it would lead the investigators of the Sentine towards one undeniable conclusion – the killer of Jaared Norte, Cirsun Latigue, Perrig and Sigg and the rest of them was none other than their fellow lawman.