Nemesis

The fizzing wash of static issuing from his vox broke for a moment and Tariel

heard Koyne’s flat, emotionless drone in his ear. “Do not engage it, Vanus,” said the

static-riddled voice. “We’re coming to you—”

Then the signal was swallowed up again by interference as somewhere off in the

distant city, a new slew of warheads were detonated.

The killer’s spasms of pain were calming, and Tariel came as close as he dared.

He hesitated, the question spinning in his thoughts, the pulse generator humming and

ready. Attack or flee? Flee or attack?

The faces faded, melting back into the crimson-hued flesh, and suddenly those

black, abyssal eyes were staring into him, clear as nightfall.

Tariel triggered the blast of focussed electromagnetic force, but it was too late.

Spear moved at the speed of hate, diving into him with his hands aimed forwards in a

fan of unfolding claws, knocking his arms away. Wicked talons punctured the Vanus’

torso and tore through dermal flex-armour and meat, down into bone and organs;

then the hands split apart and ripped Tariel’s ribcage open, emptying him on to the

wet stones.

232

The slaughterhouse stink of Fon Tariel’s bloody demise reached Koyne as the shade

bolted from the broken-ended skywalk spanning the main terminal atrium. The

Callidus skidded to a halt and spat in annoyance as what was left of the infocyte was

shrugged off his killer’s claws and pooled at the feet of the red-fleshed thing.

Koyne saw the shoals of mouths emerging all over the surface of the monstrosity,

as they licked and lapped at the steaming remains of the Vanus. A furious surge of

censure ran through the assassin’s mind; Tariel had been a poor choice for this

mission from the start. If Koyne had been given command of the operation, as would

have been the more sensible choice, then the Callidus would have made sure the

Vanus never left the Ultio. Tariel’s kind were simply incapable of the instincts

needed to operate in the field. There was a reason the Officio Assassinorum kept

them at their scrying stations, and now this wasteful death had proven it. This was all

the Vindicare’s fault; the entire mission was breaking apart, collapsing all around

them.

But it was too late to abort now. The killer, the Spear-creature, was looking up,

sensing the Callidus’ presence—and now Koyne’s options had fallen to one.

With a flexion of the wrist, the haft of a memory sword fell into Koyne’s right

hand and the Callidus leapt from the suspended walkway; in the left the shade had

the neural shredder, and the assassin pulled the trigger, sending an expanding wave

of exotic energy cascading towards Spear.

The red-skinned freak skirted the luminal edge of the neural blast and dodged

backwards, performing balletic flips that sent Spear spinning through pools of dark

shadow and shafts of grey, watery sunlight.

Koyne pivoted to touch down on altered legs, shifting the muscle mass to better

absorb the shock of the landing. The koans of the change-teachers learned in the

dojos of the clade came easily to mind, and the Callidus used strength of will to

forcibly alter the secretions of polymorphine from a series of implanted drag glands.

The chemical let bone and flesh flow like tallow, and Koyne was a master at

manipulating it from moment to moment. The assassin allowed the compound to

thicken muscle bunches and bone density, and then attacked.

Spear grew great cleavers made of tooth-like enamel from orifices along the

bottom of his forearms, and these blades whistled as they slashed through the air

around Koyne’s head. A downward slash from the memory sword briefly opened a

gouge on Spear’s shoulder, but it was knitting shut again almost as soon as it was cut.

Another neural blast went wide. Koyne was too close to deploy the pistol properly,

and feinted backwards, resisting the temptation to engage the enemy killer in close

combat.

Spear opened his mouth and shouted awls of black cartilage into the air. Glancing

hits peppered Koyne’s green-eyed hood and the darts denatured, dissolving into tiny

crawling spiders that ate into the ballistic cloth with their sharp mandibles. Before

they could chew through the emerald lenses to the soft tissues of Koyne’s eyes, the

Callidus gave a snort of frustration and tore the hood away, discarding it.

The assassin saw a glimpse of a familiar face-that-was-no-face, reflected in a

sheet of fallen glass. It was not as blank a canvas as it should have been; Koyne’s

aspect trembled, moving of its own accord. The Callidus’ anger deepened, and so in

233

turn the face became more defined. There was a slight resemblance there that veered

towards the scarred visage of the Garantine.

Koyne didn’t like the thought of that, and turned away as Spear attacked again.

The tooth-blades were continuing to grow, lengthening and becoming brownish-grey

along the edges. Before the killer could close the range, Koyne aimed the neural

shredder and depressed the trigger pad. Energy throbbed from the focussing crystal in