Nemesis

long continuous roar. The stimm-pods in the cavities of his abdomen broke their

regulator settings and flooded him with doses of Psychon and Barrage pumped

directly into his organs, while atomiser grilles in the frame of his fang-mask puffed

raw, undiluted anger-inducers and neuro-triggers into his nostrils.

He rode on a wave of frenzy, of black and mad hate that sent him howling with

uncontrollable laughter, each choking snarl rattling like gunshots. He was so fast; so

lethal; so satisfied like this.

The Garantine had been awake now for the longest period of his life since before

they had found him in the colony, the gnawed bones of his neighbours in his little

child’s hand, the tips sharpened to make a kill with. He missed the dreamy no-mind

bliss of the stasis cowls. He felt lost without the whispering voices of the

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hypnogoges. This kind of living, the hour-to-hour, day-by-day existence that the rest

of them found so easy… it was a hell of stultifying torpor for the Garantine. He hated

the idea of this interminable yesterday and today and tomorrow. He craved the now.

Every second he was awake, he felt as if the pure rage that fuelled him was being

siphoned away, making him weak and soft. He needed his sleep. Needed it like air.

But he needed his kills even more. Better than the hardest hit of combat philtre,

more potent than the jags of pleasure-analogue that issued from the lobo-chips in his

grey matter—the kills were the best high of them all.

He was pounding on the Space Marine’s helmet, smashing in the eye-lenses,

beating his clawed hands bloody. The Executor was a club he used to bludgeon and

swipe.

Impacts registered on him, blasts of infernal heat throwing him off his victim,

driving him hard into the road. Heavy, drug-tainted vitae frothed at his mouth and

bubbled through the maw of the fang-mask. He felt no pain. There was only a white

ball of warmth in the middle of him, and it was growing. It expanded to fill the

Garantine with a rush the like of which he had never felt before. The implants in him

stuttered and died, shattered by glancing bolter hits and knife stabs. He had nothing

but rags below the right knee.

Every muscle in his body shuddered as the death-sign triggered a dormant

artificial gland beneath his sternum. The engorged, orb-shaped organ spent its venom

load, bursting as the end came close. The Terminus gland poured a compound into

the Garantine that made the blood in his veins boil, turning it to acid. Every drug and

chemical mixed uncontrollably, becoming potent, toxic, explosive.

The soft tissues of the Eversor’s eyes cooked in their orbits, and so he was blind

to the final flash of exothermic release, as his body was consumed in an inferno of

spontaneous combustion.

They hugged the contours of the city streets, moving fast and as low as they dared,

but out on the edge of the capital the Sons of Horus had little presence. Instead, the

rebel Astartes had allowed their orbital contingent to hammer at the walled estates

and park-lands belonging to the noble clans. The city was now ringed with a dirty

chain of massive impact craters. The blackened bowls of churned earth were fused

into glassy puddles in some places, where the force of the kinetic strikes had melted

the ground into distended fulgurite plates.

The lines of refugees crossed the craters beneath them, streamers of people

moving like ants across the footprint of an uncaring giant. The thick, smoke-soiled

air over the destruction veiled the passage of the flyer. Tariel told them they were

fortunate that the Adeptus Astartes had not deployed air cover; in this wallowing,

keening civilian aircraft they would have been no match for a Raven interceptor.

On Kell’s orders the infocyte directed the flyer out over the wastelands beyond

the city walls and into the dusty churn of the deserts. With each passing second they

were putting more and more distance between them and the star-port hangar where

the Ultio had been concealed.

Nothing followed them; at one point the sensors registered something small and

fast—a jetbike perhaps—but it was far off their vector and did not appear to be aware

of them.

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Finally, Koyne broke the silence. “Where in the name of Hades are we going?”

“To find the others,” said the Vindicare.

“The women?” Koyne was still hiding behind a young man’s face and the

expression the Callidus put on it was too old and too callous for such a youthful

visage. “What makes you think they’re any less dead than the Eversor?”

Kell held up a data-slate. “You don’t really think I’d let the Culexus out of my

sight without knowing exactly where she was, do you?”

“A tracking device?” Koyne immediately glared at Tariel, who shrank back

behind the hologram of the flyer’s autopilot control. “One of your little toys?”

The infocyte gave a brisk nod. “A harmless radiation frequency tag, nothing

more. I provided enough for all of us.”