Nemesis

blossom. A dozen more tiny fanged maws opened across his cheeks and neck as he

tipped up the paper and swallowed the blood of the God-Emperor:

He began to scream and howl, and the riot of malformation in his flesh became a

storm of writhing fronds, tenticular forms, gnashing mouths. His body lost control

over itself, the red-black skin warping and distending into shapes that were

nauseating and vile.

Weeping in her agony and her failure, Soalm dragged herself away towards Tros’

skimmer, desperate to flee before the killer’s rapture came to its end.

Kell was already on his way out even as the echo of his gunshot died around him. He

drew up the cameo-line cloak across his shoulders, pulling the Exitus longrifle over

one arm. He set the timers on the emplaced explosives to ignite once he was clear.

The Vindicare paused to add an extra krak charge to a support pillar in the middle of

the laundry room; when it detonated, it would collapse the ceiling above and with

luck, obliterate what remained intact of the hab-tower’s gutted upper levels. He had

left no trace behind him, but it paid to be thorough.

Kell heard the sounds rising up from the streets as he dropped down to the tier

below, moving towards his exit point. Disorder would spread like wildfire in the

wake of the assassination; the Execution Force had to get beyond the city perimeter

before the pandemonium caught up to them.

He went to the edge of the shattered flooring and looked out. He could see people

beneath him, the tiny dots of figures running in the avenues. Kell kicked aside a piece

of fallen masonry and recovered his descent gear.

The vox link in his spy mask crackled as the seldom-used general channel was

keyed.

Kell froze. Only the members of the team knew the frequency, and all of them

knew that the channel was a mechanism of last resort. Even though it was heavily

202

encrypted, it lacked the untraceable facility of the burst transmitters; the fact that one

of the team was using it now meant something had gone very, very wrong.

The next sound he heard was the voice of the Callidus. Every word said was

being simultaneously transmitted to Tariel and the Garantine. “Mission fail,” said

Koyne, panting with the exertion of running. He could hear bolter shots and

screaming in the background. “Confirming mission fail.”

Kell was shaking his head. That could not be true; the last thing he had seen

through the Exitus’ scope was the flash of radiation as the Lance ended the target’s

life. Horus Lupercal was dead…

“Broken Mirror,” said Koyne. “I repeat, Broken Mirror.”

The code phrase hit Kell like a physical blow and he sagged against the

crumbling wall. The words had only one meaning—a surrogate, a sacrificial proxy

had replaced their target.

A storm of questions rushed through his thoughts; how could Horus have known

they would be waiting for them? Had the mission been compromised from the very

start? Had they been betrayed?

The warrior Kell had placed between his crosshairs could only have been the

Warmaster! Only Horus, the liberator of Dagonet clad in his mantle, would have

made his grand gesture of the single shot into the sky… It could not be true! It could

not be…

The moment of doubt and uncertainty flared bright, and then faded. Now was not

the time to dwell on this turn of events. The first, most important directive was to

exfiltrate the strike zone and regroup. To reevaluate. Kell nodded to himself. He

would do that, he decided. He would extract his team from this mess and then

determine a new course of action. As long as a single Officio Assassinorum operative

was still alive, the mission could still be completed.

And if along the way, a traitor came to light… He shrugged off the thought. First

things first. The Vindicare keyed the general channel. “Acknowledged,” he said.

“Extraction sites are now to be considered compromised. Proceed to city perimeter

and await contact.”

Kell secured the longrifle and fixed his descent pack to his back. “Go dark,” he

ordered, ending the final command with the tap of a switch that deactivated his vox

gear.

An explosion made his head snap up and his spy mask’s optics located the

thermal bloom in the corner of his vision, surrounding it with indicator icons. A

vehicle had apparently been blown up by an exchange of gunfire. He wondered who

would be foolish enough to shoot back at an Astartes just as a roar of engine noise

swept over his head. Kell shrank into the cover of a partly-collapsed wall as a heavy,

slate-coloured aircraft thundered around the habitat tower on bright rods of thruster

flame—a Stormbird in the livery of the Sons of Horus.

For a moment, he feared the Astartes had detected his firing hide; but the

Stormbird swept on and down into the city, passing him by unnoticed. Kell looked up

into the early morning sky and saw more raptor-shapes falling from the high clouds,