Nemesis

For a while she thought about how simple it would be to introduce a philtre of

time-release metasarin into the water system of the rebel hideout. Tailored with the

right mix, she could make it painless for them. They would just fall asleep, never to

wake. They would be spared the brutal deaths that were fated to them all—the

payment that would be exacted no matter if the Execution Force succeeded or failed.

She thought about Lady Sinope, of trusting Beye and the ever-suspicious Grohl.

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Some might have said it would be a mercy. The Warmaster was not a

magnanimous conqueror.

Soalm shook her head violently to dispel the thought, and hated herself in that

instant. “I am not Eristede,” she whispered to the air.

A sharp knock at the rusted metal door startled her. “Hello?” said a voice. She

recognised it as one of the men she had seen in the makeshift chapel. “Are you in

there?”

She slid the door open. “What is it?”

The man’s face was flushed with worry. “They’re coming,” he husked. She didn’t

need to ask who they were. If Beye’s contacts in the city had spoken to Capra, then it

was logical to assume that others in the rebel encampment knew of what was on the

horizon as well.

“I know.”

He pressed something into her palm. “Sinope gave me this for you.” It was a

tarnished voc-locket, a type of portable recording device that lovers or family

members gave to one another as a memento. The device contained a tiny, shortduration

memory spool and hologram generator. “I’ll be outside.” He pulled the door

shut and Soalm was alone in the room again.

She turned the locket over in her hands and found the activation stud. Holding her

breath, she squeezed it.

A grainy hololith of Lady Sinope’s face, no larger than Jenniker’s palm, flickered

into life. “Dear child,” she began, an urgency in her words that Soalm had not heard

before, “forgive me for not asking this of you in person, but circumstances have

forced me to leave the caves. The man who gave you this is a trusted friend, and he

will bring you to me.” The noblewoman paused and she seemed to age a decade in

the space of a single breath. “We need your help. At first I thought I might be

mistaken, but with each passing day it has become clearer and clearer to me that you

are here for a reason. He sent you, Jenniker. You said yourself that you are only вЂ˜a

messenger’… And now I understand what message you must carry.” The image

flickered as Sinope glanced over her shoulder, distracted by something beyond the

range of the locket’s tiny sensor-camera. She looked back, and her eyes were intense.

“I have not been truthful with you. The place you saw, our chapel… There’s more

than just that. We have a… I suppose you could call it a sanctuary. It is out in the

wastes, far from prying eyes. I will be there by the time you receive this. I want you to

come here, child. We need you. He needs you. Whatever mission may have brought

you to Dagonet, what I ask of you now goes beyond it.” She felt the woman’s gaze

boring into her. “Don’t forsake us, Jenniker. I know you believe with all your heart,

and even though it pains me to do so, I must ask you to choose your faith over your

duty.” Sinope looked away. “If you refuse… The rains of blood will fall all the way

to Holy Terra.”

The hologram faded and Soalm found her hands were shaking. She could not

look away from the locket, grasping it in her fingers as if it would magically spirit

her away from this place.

Lady Sinope’s words, her simple words, had cut into her heart. Her emotions

twisted tight in her chest. She was a sworn agent of the Officio Assassinorum, a

secluse of the Clade Venenum ranked at Epsilon-dan, and she had her orders. But she

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was also Jenniker Soalm—Jenniker Kell— a daughter of the Imperium of Man and

loyal servant of the divine God-Emperor of Humanity.