Nemesis

Kell understood his position. Even after they had done what he had charged them to do, and obliterated a major stockpile of turncoat weapons into the bargain, Grohl could still not find the will to trust them.

Because he is right not to, said a voice in his thoughts; a voice that spoke with his sister’s words. The rebels believed Kell and the others were some kind of advance unit, a scouting party of special operatives sent as the vanguard of an Imperial plan to retake Dagonet in the Emperor’s name. Like so many things about the assassins, this too was a lie.

A man in a hood emerged from the midst of the rebels and said something to Beye; but it was Grohl’s reaction that gave away his identity, the sudden jerk of the severe man’s head, the tensing of his body.

Kell drew himself up as the man came closer, drawing back the hood. He was bald and muscular, with a swarthy cast to his skin, and he had sharp eyes. The Vindicare saw the tips of complex tattoos peeking up from his collar. Kell offered his hand. ‘Capra.’

‘Kell.’ The freedom fighter took it and they shook, palm to wrist. ‘I understand I have the Emperor to thank for this.’ He nodded at the trains. ‘And for you.’

‘The Imperium never turns its face from its citizens,’ he replied. ‘We’re here to help you win your war.’

A shadow passed over Capra’s face. ‘You may be too late. My people are tired, few, scattered.’ He spoke in low tones that would not carry. ‘It would be more a service to help us find safe passage elsewhere, let some of us come back with the reprisal force as tactical advisors.’

Kell did not break eye contact with the rebel leader. ‘We did this in a day. Imagine what we can do together, in the days ahead.’

Capra’s gaze shifted to where the rest of the Execution Force stood, waiting silently. ‘Beye was right. You are an impressive group. Perhaps… Perhaps with you at our sides, there is a chance.’

‘More than a chance,’ insisted Kell. ‘A certainty.’

Finally, the man’s expression changed, the weariness, the doubt melting away. In its place, there was a new strength. New purpose. He wanted so badly for them to be their salvation, Kell could almost taste it. Capra nodded. ‘The fate of Dagonet rests with us, my friend. We will not forsake it.’

‘No,’ he said, as Capra walked away, gathering his men to him as he began to rally them with firebrand oratory.

But the rebels would not know the truth, not until it was too late; that the fate of Dagonet was only a means to a single end.

To place the Archtraitor Horus between Eristede Kell’s crosshairs.

PART TWO ATTRITION

ELEVEN Hidden / Sacrifice / Cages

1

The caverns were deep inside the canyons of a rocky and forbidding landscape that the Dagoneti called the Bladecut. From the ground, the real meaning of the name wasn’t clear, but up high, when glimpsed through the lenses of one of the aerial drones the rebels had captured, it was obvious. The Bladecut was a massive ravine that moved easterly across the stone wilderness beyond the capital, the shape of it like a giant axe wound in the surface of the landscape. There were no roads, nothing but animal trails and half-hidden hunting routes that meandered into sharp gullies which concealed the mouths of the cave network. Thousands of years ago, this had been the site of the first Dagonet colony, where the new arrivals from Terra had huddled in the gloom while their planetforming technologies, now lost to history, had worked to make the world’s harsh environment more habitable for them. The rebels had retaken the old halls of stone, secure in the knowledge that deep inside nothing would be able to dislodge them short of bombing the hills into powder.

Jenniker Soalm walked through the meandering tunnels, her face concealed in the depths of her hood, passing chambers laser-cut from the rock, ragged chainmail curtains hanging over their entrances, others closed off behind heavy impact-welded hatches. Inside the caves everything was in a permanent twilight, with the only constant the watery glow of biolume pods glued to the stone ceiling at random intervals. Capra’s people – some of them warriors, many more civilians and even children – passed her as she walked on.

Soalm glimpsed snatches of the everyday life of the resistance through gaps in the curtains or past open doors. She saw Beye and a few others surrounding a chart table piled high with paper maps; across the way, a makeshift armoury full of captured PDF weaponry; a skinny cook who looked up at her, in the middle of stirring a huge iron drum of thick soup; refugees clustered around a brazier, and nearby a pair of children playing, apparently ignorant of the grim circumstances. The latter was no surprise to her; the rebels did not have much choice about where their people could go to ground.