Nemesis

the light might be a deception, a falsehood filtered through trick glass or even totally

simulated. Perhaps the chamber was deep underground, or perhaps there were more

than one of them, a suite of dozens of identical rooms so exacting in similarity that to

tell them apart would be impossible.

And once within, there was no place on Earth more secure, save for the

Emperor’s Throne Room itself. None could listen in upon words spoken in a place

that did not exist, that could not be found. The walls of the chamber, dark mahogany

panels adorned with minimalist artworks and a few lume-globes, concealed layers of

instrumentality that rendered the room and everything in it completely dead to the

eyes and ears of any possible surveillance. There were counter-measures that fogged

radiation detection frequencies, devices that swallowed sound and heat and light,

working alongside slivers of living neural matter broadcasting the telepathic

equivalent of white noise across all psychic spectra. There was even a rumour that

the chamber was cloaked by a field of disruption that actually dislocated local spacetime

by several fractions of a second, allowing the room to exist a heartbeat into the

future and out of reach of the rest of the universe.

In the Shrouds there was a table, a long octagon of polished rosewood, and upon

it a simple hololithic projector casting a cool glow over the assembled men and

women gathered there. In deep, comfortable seats, six of them clustered around one

end of the table, while a seventh sat alone at the head. The eighth did not sit, but

instead stood just beyond the range of the light, content to be little more than a tall

shape made up of shadows and angles.

The seven at the table had faces of porcelain and precious metals. Masks covered

their countenances from brow-line to neck, and like the room they were in, these

outer concealments, were far more than they appeared. Each mask was loaded with

advanced technologies, data-libraries, sensoria, even microweapons, and each had a

different aspect that was the mirror of its wearer; only the man at the head of the

table wore a face with no affectation. His mask was simple and silver, as if it had

been carved from polished steel, with only the vaguest impression of a brow, eyes, a

nose and mouth. Reflected in its sheen, the panes of information shown by the

hololith turned slowly, allowing everyone in the room to read them.

What was written there was damning and disappointing in equal measure.

“Then he is dead,” said a woman’s voice, the tone filtered through a fractal baffle

that rendered her vocal pattern untraceable. Her mask was black and it fit skin-close,

almost like a hood made of silk; only the large oval rubies that were her eyes broke

the illusion. “The report here makes that clear.”

“Quick to judge, as ever,” came a throaty whisper, similarly filtered, from a

motionless mask that resembled a distended, hydrocephalic skull. “We should hold

for certainty, Siress Callidus.”

The ruby eyes glared across the table. “My esteemed Sire Culexus,” came the

terse reply. “How long would you have us wait? Until the revolt reaches our door?”

She turned her jewelled gaze on the only other woman seated at the table, a figure

whose face was hidden behind an elegant velvet visor of green and gold, vaned with

21

lines of droplet pearls and dark emeralds. “Our sister’s agent has failed. As I said he

would.”

The woman in the green mask stiffened, and leaned back in her chair, distancing

herself from the ire of Callidus. Her reply was frosty and brittle. “I would note that

none of you have yet been able to place an operative so close to the Warmaster as

Clade Venenum did. Tobeld was one of my finest students, equal to the task he was

set upon—”

That drew a derisive grant from a hulking male behind a grinning, fang-toothed

rictus made of bone and gunmetal. “If he was equal to it, then why isn’t the turncoat

dead? All that time wasted and for what? To give the traitors a fresh corpse at Horus’

doorstep?” He made a spitting sound.

Siress Venenum’s eyes narrowed behind their disguise. “However little you think

of my clade, dear Eversor, your record to date gives you no cause to preen.” She

drew herself up. “What have you contributed to this mission other than a few messy

and explosive deaths?”

The fanged mask regarded her, anger radiating out from the man behind it. “My

agents have brought fear!” he spat. “Each kill has severed the head of a key

insurrectionist element!”

“Not to mention countless collaterals,” offered a dry, dour voice. The comment

emerged from behind a standard-issue spy mask, no different from the kind issued to

every one of the sniper operatives of Clade Vindicare. “We need a surgeon’s touch to

excise the Archtraitor. A scalpel, not a firebomb.”

Sire Eversor let out a low growl. “When the day comes that someone invents a

rifle you can fire from the safely of your chair and still hit Horus half a galaxy away,