Nemesis

sapper crew’s dozer-track. Koyne had gone to look at it; at the top of the wreckage,

part of the statue’s face was still intact, staring sightlessly at the sky. What would it

see today?

The Callidus turned away, passing a measuring gaze over the nervous lines of

PDF soldiers and the robed nobles standing back on the gleaming, sunlit steps of the

great hall. Governor Nicran was there among them, waiting with every other

Dagoneti for the storm that was about to break. Between them and the barriers, the

faint glitter of a force wall was visible with the naked eye, the pane of energy rising

high in a cordon around the point of arrival. Nicran’s orders had been to place field

generators all around the entrance to the hall, in case resistance fighters tried to take

his life or that of one of the turncoat nobles.

Koyne sneered at that. The thought that those fools believed themselves to be

high value targets was preposterous. On the scale of the galactic insurrection, they

ranked as minor irritants, at best. Posturing fools and narrow-sighted idiots who

willingly gave a foothold to dangerous rebels. Moving on, the Callidus found the

location that Tariel had chosen—in the lee of a tall ornamental column—and

prepared. From here, the view across the plaza was unobstructed. When the kill

happened, Koyne would confirm it firsthand.

Suddenly, there was a blast of fanfare from the trumpets of a military band, and

Governor Nicran was stepping forward. When he spoke, a vox-bead at his throat

amplified his voice.

“Glory to the Liberator!” he cried. “Glory to the Warmaster! Glory to Horus!”

The assembled crowd raised their voices in a thundering echo.

The Garantine ripped off the hatch on the roof of the security minaret as the shouting

began, the sound masking the squeal of breaking hinges. He dropped into the open

gallery, where uniformed officers pored over sensor screens and glared out through

smoked windows overlooking the plaza. Their auspexes ranged all over the city,

networking with aerial patrol mechanicals, ground troops, law enforcement units,

even traffic monitors. They were looking for threats, trying to pinpoint bombers or

snipers or anyone that might upset the Governor’s plans for this day. If anyone so

much as fired a shot within the city limits, they would know about it.

They did not expect to find an assassin so close at hand. Firstly the Garantine let

loose with his Executor combi-pistol, taking care to use only the needier; bolt fire

would raise the alarm too soon. Still, it was enough. Two-thirds of them were dead or

194

dying before the first man’s gun cleared its holster. They simply could not compete

with the amplified, drug-enhanced reflexes of the rage-killer. All of them were

moving in slow-motion compared to him, not a one could hope to match him. The

Eversor killed with break-neck punches and brutal, bullet-fast stabbing. He wrenched

throats into wreckage, stove in ribs and crashed spines; and for the one PDF officer

who actually dared to shoot a round in his direction, he left his gift to the last. That

man, he murdered by putting the fingers of his neuro-gauntlet through his eyes and

breaking his skull.

With a rough chuckle, the Garantine let his kill drop and licked his lips. The room

was silent, but outside the crowd cried for the Sons of Horus.

And then they came.

A knot of coruscating blue-white energy emerged from the air and grew in an

instant to a glowing sphere of lightning. Tortured air molecules screamed as the

teleporter effect briefly twisted the laws of physics to breaking point; in the next

second, the blaze of light and noise evaporated and in its place there were five angels

of death.

Adeptus Astartes. Most of the people in the plaza had never seen one before, only

knowing them from the statues they had seen and the picts in history books and

museums. The real thing was, if anything, far more impressive than the legends had

ever said.

The cries of adulation were silenced with a shocked gasp from a thousand throats;

when Horus had come to liberate Dagonet all those years ago, he had come with his

Luna Wolves, the XVI Legiones Astartes. They had stood resplendent in their

flawless moon-white armour, trimmed with ebony, and it was this image that was

embedded in the collective mind of the Dagoneti people.

But the Astartes standing here, now, were clad in menacing steel-grey from

helmet to boot, armour trimmed in bright shining silver. They were gigantic shadows,

menacing all who looked upon them. Their heavy armour, the planes of the pauldrons

and chest plates, the fierce visages of the red-eyed helms, all of it was as awesome as

it was terrifying. And there, clear as the sun in the sky, on their shoulders was the

symbol of the great open eye—the mark of Horus Lupercal.

The tallest of the warriors, his battle gear decked with more finery than the

others, stepped forward. He was covered with honour-chains and combat laurels, and

about his shoulders he wore a metal dolman made from metals mined in the depths of