Nemesis

He was a blur of claws and gun, too fast for the eye to process the images. Sparks

flew as the Eversor assassin collided bodily with the Astartes and knocked him down,

the Garantine firing his Executor into the impact holes in the warrior’s chest at pointblank

range, clawing wildly at his helmet with the spiked talon of his neuro-gauntlet.

Koyne could hear the Astartes snarling, angrily fighting back, but the Eversor was

like mercury, slipping through his clumsy armoured fingers.

Then dark, arterial blood spurted as the armour was cracked and the Garantine

dug into the meat he found inside. His bolter dry, the Astartes punched and

bludgeoned the Eversor, but if any pain impulses reached the Garantine’s mind, the

brew of rage-enhancers and sense-inhibitors swimming through his bloodstream

deadened them to nothing.

With a croaking, wet rattle, the Astartes sank back and collapsed. Chattering with

coarse laughter, the Garantine swept up the fallen combat blade and pressed all his

weight behind it. The weapon sank through sparking power cables and myomer

muscles until it pierced flesh and cut bone.

After a minute or so, the Eversor dropped to the floor, still shaking with the

aftershock of his chemical frenzy. “Ss-so…” he began, struggling to speak clearly,

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forcing himself to slow down with each panting gulp of breath. “Th-this is how it

feels to k-kill one of them…” He grinned widely behind the fanged mask. “I like it.”

The Callidus stood up. “We need to move, before more of his brethren arrive.”

“Aren’t you… aren’t you going to th-thank me for saving your life, s-shapechanger?”

Without warning, the Astartes suddenly lurched forwards, gauntlets snapping

open, savage anger fuelling a final surge of killing fury. Koyne’s neural shredder was

at hand and the assassin fired a full-power discharge into the skull of the Son of

Horus; the blast disintegrated tissue in an instant wave of brain-death.

The warrior lurched and fell again. Koyne gave the Garantine a sideways look.

“Thank you.”

209

SIXTEEN

Collision

The Choice

Forgiveness

A bombardment had begun, and the people of Dagonet’s capital feared it was the end

of the world.

They knew so little of the reality of things, however. High above in orbit, it was

only the warship Thanato that fired on the city, and even then it was not with the

vessel’s most powerful cannons. The people did not know that a fleet of craft were

poised in silence around their sister ship, watchful and waiting. Had all the vessels of

the Warmaster’s flotilla unleashed their killpower, then indeed those fears would

have come true; the planet’s crust cracked, the continents sliced open. Perhaps those

things would happen, soon enough—but for now it was sufficient for the Thanato to

hurl inert kinetic kill-rods down through the atmosphere, the sky-splitting shriek of

their passage climaxed by a lowing thunder as the warshots obliterated power

stations, military compounds and the vast mansion-houses of the noble clans. From

the ground it seemed like wanton destruction; from orbit, it was a shrewd and

surgical pattern of attack.

Koyne and the Garantine stayed off the main avenues and boulevards, avoiding the

roadways where processions of frightened citizens streamed towards the city limits.

Hours had passed now since the killing in the plaza, and the people had lost the will

to ran, numbed by their own terror. Now they stumbled, silently for the most part,

some pushing carts piled high with whatever they could loot or carry, others clinging

to overloaded ground vehicles. When people did speak, they did so in whispers, as if

they were afraid the Adeptus Astartes would hear the sound of a voice at normal

pitch from across the city.

Listening from the shadows of an alleyway across from a shuttered monorail halt,

the Callidus heard people talking about the Sons of Horus. Some said they had set up

a staging point in Liberation Plaza, that there were hordes of Stormbirds parked there

disgorging more Astartes with each passing moment. Others mentioned seeing

armoured vehicles in the streets, even Battle Titans and monstrous war creatures.

The only truth Koyne could determine from what he gleaned was that the Sons of

Horus were intent on fulfilling the orders of Devram Korda to the fullest; Dagonet

City would be little more than a smouldering funeral pyre by nightfall.

The assassin looked up to where a massive streetscreen hung at a canted angle

from the front of the station building. The display was cracked and fizzing with

210

patchy static; text declaring that the metropolitan rail network was temporarily

suspended was still visible, the pixels frozen in place. Koyne eyed the device warily.

The public screens all had arrays of vid-picters arranged around them, connected to

the municipal monitoring network. The Callidus had a spy’s healthy disdain for being

caught on camera.

As if it had sensed the shade’s train of thought, Koyne saw very clearly as one of