Nemesis

a thumb at Koyne. “Even that sexless freak is better than you!”

“Charming,” muttered the Callidus.

The Eversor went on, hissing out each word in pops of spittle through bared teeth.

“Valdor must have been making sport when he put you in charge of this mission! Do

you think we’re all blind to the way you look at that Venenum bitch?”

In an instant, Kell’s Exitus pistol was in his hands and then the muzzle of it was

buried in the exposed flesh of the Garantine’s throat, pressing into the stressed

muscles and taut veins.

“Kell!” Tariel called out a warning. “Don’t!”

The Eversor laughed. “Go on, sniper. Do it. Up close and personal, for the first

time in your life.” His clawed hands came up and he rammed the gun into the thick

flesh beneath his jaw. “Prove you have some backbone! Do it!”

For a second Kell’s finger tightened on the trigger; but to murder an Eversor

rage-killer at point-blank range would be suicidal. The gene-modifications deep

inside the Garantine’s flesh contained within them a critical failsafe system that

would, should the assassin’s heart ever stop, create a combustive bio-meltdown

powerful enough to destroy everything close at hand.

Instead, Kell put all his effort into a vicious shove that propelled the Garantine

away. “If I didn’t need you,” he growled, “I’d blow a hole in your spine and leave

you crippled and bleeding out.”

The Eversor sniggered. “You just made my argument for me.”

“This is pointless,” snapped Koyne, striding down the ramp. “No mission plan

ever works as it should. Every one of us knows that. We can complete the assignment

without the women. The primary target is still within our reach.”

“The Callidus is correct,” added Tariel, working his cogitator. “I’m reconfiguring

the protocols now. There are overlapping attack vectors. We can still operate with

two losses.”

“As long as no one else walks off,” said the Garantine. “As long as nothing else

changes.”

Kell’s face twisted in a grimace. “We’re wasting time,” he said, turning away.

“Secure the Ultio and move out to your kill-points.”

The man’s name was Tros, and he didn’t talk much. He led Soalm out of the caverns

through a vaulted hall of rock that had once held fuel rods for Dagonet’s long-dead

atmosphere converters, and to a waiting GEV skimmer.

Once they were on their way out into the wilds, the noise of the hovercraft’s

engines made conversation problematic at best. The assassin decided to sit back

behind the rebel and let him drive.

The skimmer was fast. They wound through the canyons of the Bladecut at

breakneck speed, and then suddenly the wall of rock dropped away around them,

falling into the ochre desert. As storm clouds rolled in above them from the west,

they went deeper and deeper into the wilderness. From time to time, Soalm saw what

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might have been the remains of abandoned settlements; they dated back to the early

colonist decades, back to when this desert had been fertile arable land. That had been

in Dagonet’s green phase, before the human-altered atmosphere had changed again,

shifting the good climate northwards. The population had moved with it, leaving only

the shells of their former homes lying like broken, scattered tombstones.

Finally the GEV’s engine note downshifted and they began to slow. Tros pointed

to something in the near distance, and Soalm glimpsed the shapes of tents flapping in

the winds, low pergolas and yurts arranged around the stubs of another forsaken

township. As the skimmer closed in and settled to the sand in a cloud of falling dust,

what caught her eye first was the mural of an Imperial aquila along one long pale

wall. It looked old, weather-beaten; but at the same time it shone in the fading

daylight as if it had been polished to a fine sheen by decades of swirling sand.

There had only been a handful of people in the makeshift chapel hidden in the

rebel base, and Soalm had been slightly disappointed to see how few followers of the

God-Emperor were counted among the freedom fighters. But she realised now that

small group had only been a fraction of the real number.

The followers of the Lectitio Divinitatus were here.

She stepped from the skimmer and walked slowly into the collection of

improvised habitats and reclaimed half-buildings. Even at first glance, Soalm could

see that there were hundreds of people. Adults and children, young and old, men and

women from all walks of life across Dagonet’s society. Most of them wore makeshift

sandcloaks or hoods to keep the ochre dust from their mouths and noses. She saw

some who carried weapons, but they did so without the twitchy nervousness of

Capra’s rebels; one man with a lasgun eyed her as she passed him, and Soalm saw he

was wearing the remnants of a PDF uniform, tattered and ripped in the places where

the insignia had been stripped off—all except the aquila, which he wore proudly.