Nemesis

The rogue trader’s flagship had dropped out of the churn of the warp near a neutron star in the Cascade Line, to take sightings and rest the drives before setting off to the rendezvous at Arrowhead. They would be here no more than a day, and once the Iubar was back in the immaterium, the energy flux from the vessel’s Geller field generators would interfere with Spear’s plans to break into Eurotas’s personal reliquary. The flux had the unfortunate side effect of causing distress to the daemonskin, rendering some of its more useful traits ineffectual. It would have to be done soon, then–

NO

Spear flinched and his whole body rippled with a sudden jolt of pain. The echoing screech lanced through him like a laser.

NO NO NO NO NO NO

‘Shut up!’ he spat, pushing away from the desk, shaking his head. ‘Shut up!’

The voice within tried to cry out again, but he smothered it with a sharp exhale of air and a tensing of his will. For a moment, Spear felt it inside himself, deep down in the black depths of his spirit – the flickering ember of light. A tiny piece of Yosef Sabrat’s soul, trapped and furious.

The killer dropped to the floor of the room and bowed his head, closed his eyes. He drew inwards, let his thoughts fall into himself. It was akin to sinking into an ocean of dark, heavy oil – but instead of resisting it, Spear allowed himself to be filled by the blackness, relishing the sensation of drowning.

He plunged into the void of his own shattered psyche, searching for the foreign, the human, the thought-colours of a dead man. It was difficult; the faint echoes of every life he had destroyed and then imitated all still lingered here somewhere. But they had all been purged through the ritual rites, and what remained was just a shallow imprint, like the shadows burnt on walls by the flash of a nuclear fireball. Something of Yosef Sabrat was still here, though. Something tenacious that obstinately refused to allow Spear to expunge it, clinging on.

And there it was, a glow in the gloom. Spear’s animus leapt at it, fangs out, ready to rip it to shreds. The killer found it cloaked in a memory, a moment – a terrible burning pain. He laughed as he realised he was experiencing the instant when he had pierced Sabrat’s heart with a bone-blade, but this time from his victim’s point of view.

The pain was blinding – and familiar. Spear hesitated; yes, he knew this feeling, this exact feeling. Sabrat’s memory echoed one of his own, a memory from the killer’s past.

Too late, Spear understood that the fragment had fled his grasp, cleverly cloaking itself in the similarity; and too late, he was dragged into his own past. Back to an experience that had made him into the monster he was.

4

Back to the cage. The pain and the cage…

Voices outside. The armoured warriors moving and speaking. War-angels and gun-lords, black souls and beasts.

Voices.

‘Is this it?’ A commander-master, clear from tone and manner. Obeyed, yes.

‘Aye, my lord,’ says the wounded one. ‘A pariah, according to the logs left by the Silent Sisterhood. But I have not seen the like. And they didn’t know what it was, either. It was bound for destruction, most likely.’

The master-to-be-his-master comes closer. He sees a face filled with wonderment and hatred.

‘I smell the witch-stink on it. It did not die with the rest of the crew and cargo?’

‘The Emperor’s Black Ships are resilient vessels. Some were bound to live beyond our bombardment.’

A pause, during which he takes some sharp breaths, trying to listen to the voices.

‘Tell me what it did.’

A sigh, weary and fearful. ‘I was attacked. It took a finger from me. With its teeth.’

Mocking laughter. ‘And you let it live?’

‘I would have destroyed it, lord, but then it… Then it killed the Codicier. Brother Sadran.’

Laughter stopped now. Anger colouring. ‘How?’

‘Sadran lost an ear to it. Eaten, swallowed whole. Then the witch stood there and waited to be killed. Sadran…’ The wounded one is finding it hard to explain. ‘Sadran turned his fury on the thing and it reflected it back.’

‘Reflected…’ The master-voice, different again. Interested.

‘Fires, lord. Sadran was consumed by his own fires.’ The shapes move around in the shadows beyond the cage bars.

‘I’ve never encountered a pariah capable of that…’ The master comes close, and he has his first real look at it. ‘You’re something special, aren’t you?’

‘It may be a fluke birth,’ says the injured one. ‘Or perhaps some throwback from the experimentations of the Adeptus Telepathica.’

A smile grows wide in the gloom. ‘It may also be an opportunity.’

He presses up towards the bars, allowing himself to reach the ethereal edges of his senses towards the commander-master.

‘We should kill it,’ says the other voice.

‘I’ll be the judge of that.’

He touches a mind, and for the first time in his life finds something that is darker than himself. A stygian soul, steeped in blackness, initiated into realms beyond his ability to know.