Nemesis

eradicated men with each hit. Those who didn’t die in the initial volley were killed as

they ran when Spear came around in a tight loop to strafe them off the line of the

wall.

Threads of sinew and knots of transformed tissue flared out behind the killer’s

head in a fan. Fronds from the daemonskin fluttered, sucking the mist of blood from

the air as the bike passed over the wall and skimmed the runway towards the parked

shuttle.

The Eurotas ship was untouched, although Spear noted two corpses off by the

prow. The autonomic guns in the shuttle’s chin barbette had locked onto the pair of

opportunists, who had clearly thought they could claim the craft to escape. The little

turret turned to track the jetbike as Spear came in but it did not fire; the sensors saw

nothing when they looked at him, only a jumble of conflicting readings the primitive

machine-brain could not decipher.

He abandoned the flyer and sprinted towards the shuttle. Spear was electric; his

every neuron sang with bubbling power and giddy anticipation. The tiny droplet of

blood he had consumed was like the sweetest nectar. It bubbled through his

consciousness like potent, heady wine; he had a flash of Yosef Sabrat’s memory, a

sense-taste of drinking an elderly vintage with Daig Segan, savouring the perfection

of it. This was a far greater experience. He had dared to sip from the cup of a being

more powerful than any other, and even that slightest of tastes made him feel like the

king of all creation. If this were an echo of it, he thought, what glory the Emperor

must feel to simply be.

Spear released a deep, booming laugh to the clouded skies. He was a loaded gun,

now. Infinitely lethal. Ready to commit the greatest murder in history.

He just needed to be close…

Under the starboard wing, he glimpsed a small drum-shaped vehicle on fat tyres;

it was a mechanised fuel bowser, governed by simple automata. The device was one

of many such systems in the star-port, machines that could do the jobs of men by

loading, unloading or servicing the ships that passed through the facility; but like so

many things on Dagonet, in the disorder that had engulfed the planet no one had

thought to stand down the robots, and so they went on at their programmed tasks,

ignorant of the fact that buildings had collapsed around them, unaware that their

human masters were most likely dead in the rubble.

The automaton had dutifully done its job, and refuelled the shuttle with fresh

promethium. Spear hesitated on the cockpit ladder and his ebullient mood wavered.

222

Overhead, red light and thunder rolled in across the runway from the burning

city, and Spear’s fanged mouth twisted in something like a scowl. In truth, he had not

expected the Sons of Horus to be so close behind him to Dagonet. He had hoped he

might have a day, perhaps two—but the tides of the warp were capricious. He

wondered if some intelligence had been at work to bring all these players to the same

place at the same time. To what end, though?

Spear shook the thought away. He was so set on leaving this place behind he had

not stopped to think that his means of escape might no longer be in place. It was

likely that if the Warmaster’s fleet was here, then the cutter Yelene was either in their

possession or smashed to fragments.

“I must get to Terra…” He said the words aloud, the need burning in him; and

then he sensed a distant taint upon his perception. A powerful, sinister presence.

Unbidden, Spear looked up again, into the storm.

Yes. The master was up there, looking down on Dagonet, searching for him. The

killer could see the dark, piercing gaze of Erebus in the patterns of the clouds. The

master was waiting for him. Watching to see what he would do next, like a patient

teacher with a prized student.

Spear dropped off the ladder and moved back to the front of the shuttle. It was all

falling into place. With the blood taken, he needed only to ride to his target and

perform his kill. Erebus was here to help him; the master would give him the ship he

needed. It would be his final act as a mentor.

The killer took one of the bodies on the runway and dragged it into the lee of the

wing, under cover from the thick gobbets of black rain that were falling. Spear

remembered the rituals of communication that Erebus had seared into his memory. It

would only take a moment to arrange. He dipped his fingers into a deep wound on

the man’s torso and cupped a handful of thickening blood; then, quickly, Spear used

it to draw glyphs of statement on the cracked ferrocrete surface. He made the circles

and crosses, building the shape of an eightfold star line by line. Once complete, it

would be visible to Erebus like a flare on a moonless night. The master would see it

and know. He would understand.

The wind changed direction for an instant, blowing the smell of the corpse and

the tang of promethium across the sensing pits in Spear’s fanged maw; and, too, it

brought him the skirl of humming turbines.