Nemesis

and with a sudden leap of understanding, Iota realised she was seeing into a hazy

mirror of the warp itself; this being was not one life but two, and between them

gossamer threads of telepathic energy sewed them both into the inchoate power of

the immaterium. Suddenly, she understood how he had been able to resist the animus

blast. The energy, so lethal in the real world, was no more than a drop of water in a

vast ocean within the realms of warp space. This killer was connected to the ethereal

in a way that she could never be, bleeding out the impact of the blast into the warp

where it could dissipate harmlessly.

The shifting aura darkened and became ink black. This Iota had seen before; it

was the shape of her own psychic imprint. He was mirroring her, and even as she

watched it happen, Iota felt the gravitational drag on her own power as it was drawn

inexorably towards the shifting, changing murderer.

He was like her, and unlike as well. Where the clever mechanisms of the animus

speculum sucked in psionic potentiality and returned it as lethal discharge, this

man… this freakish aberration… he could do the same alone.

It was the blood that let him do it. Her blood, ingested, subsumed, absorbed.

Iota screamed; for the first time in her life, she really, truly screamed, knowing

the blackest depths of terror. The fires in her mind churned, and she released them.

He laughed as they rolled off him and reverberated back across space-time.

Iota’s mouth filled with ash, and her cries were silenced.

The moment seemed to stretch on into infinity; there was no noise across Liberation

Plaza, not even the sound of an indrawn breath. It was as if a sudden vacuum had

drawn all energy and emotion from the space. It was the sheer unwillingness to

believe what had just occurred that made all of Dagonet pause.

In the next second, the brittle instant shattered like glass and the crowds were in

turmoil, the twin flood-heads of sorrow and fury breaking open at once. Chaos

exploded as the people at the front of the crowd barriers surged forwards and

collapsed the metal panels, moving in a slow wave towards the ragged line of

shocked clanner soldiers. Some of the troops had their guns drawn; others let

themselves be swallowed up by the oncoming swell, deadened by the trauma of what

they had witnessed.

199

On an impulse the Callidus could not quantify, Koyne leapt from the base of the

pillar and ran behind the line of crackling force-wall emitters. No one blocked the

way. The shock was palpable here, thick in the air like smoke.

The hulking Astartes were in a combat wheel around the corpse of their

commander, weapons panning right and left, looking for a target. Their discipline

was admirable, Koyne thought. Lesser beings, ordinary men, would have given in to

the anger they had to be feeling without pause—but the Callidus did not doubt that

would soon come.

One of them shoved another of his number out of the way, tearing off his helmet

with a twist of his hand. For a fraction of a second Koyne saw real emotion in the

warrior’s flinty aspect, pain and anguish so deep that it could only come from a

brother, a kinsman. The Astartes had a scarred face, and this close to him, the

assassin could see he bore the rank insignia of a brother-sergeant of the 13th

Company.

That seemed wrong; according to intelligence on the Sons of Horus, their

primarch always travelled with an honour guard of officers, a group known as the

Mournival.

“Dead,” said one of the other Astartes, his voice tense and distant. “Killed by

cowards…”

Koyne came as close as the Callidus dared, standing near a pair of worriedlooking

PDF majors who couldn’t decide if they should go to the side of Nicran and

the other nobles, or wait for the Astartes to give them orders.

The sergeant bent down over the corpse and did something Koyne could not see.

When he stood up once more, he was holding a gauntlet in his hand; but not a

gauntlet, no. It was a master-crafted augmetic, a machine replacement for a forearm

lost in battle. He had removed it from the corpse, claiming it as a relic.

But Horus does not—

“My captain,” rumbled the sergeant, hefting his bolt-gun with a sorrowful nod.

“My captain…”

Koyne’s heart turned to a cold stone in his chest, and movement caught his eye as

Governor Nicran pushed away from the rest of the nobles and started down the stairs

towards the Astartes. The noise of the crowd was getting louder, and the Callidus had

to strain to hear as the sergeant spoke into the vox pickup in the neck ring of his

breast plate.

“This is Korda,” he snarled, his ire building. “Location is not, repeat not secure.

We have been fired upon. Brother-Captain Sedirae… has been killed.”

Sedirae. The Callidus knew the name, the commander of the 13th Company. But

that was impossible. The warrior Kell had shot wore the mantle, the unique robe

belonging to the primarch himself…”

“Horus?” Nicran was calling, tears running down his face as he came closer. “Oh,