Nemesis

strangest of all, the glimmer of a building warp signature built up around its flanks

the further it strayed away from the gravity shadow of the planet, racing for the jump

point.Warships dropped out of formation, and powered after it, following the

unidentified craft up and out of the plane of the Dagonet system’s ecliptic. They

would never catch it.

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Alone now on their headless beast of a vessel, the Ultio’s Navigator and astropath

communed with one another in a manner most uncommon for their respective kinds;

with words.

And what they shared was an understanding of mutual purpose. Protocol

Perditus. A coded command string known to them both, to which there was only one

response. They were to leave their area of operation on immediate receipt of such an

order and follow a pre-set series of warp space translations. They would not stop

until they lay under the light of Sol. The mission was over, abandoned.

Weapons fire haloed the space around the ship as it plunged towards the onset of

critical momentum, the first vestiges of a warp gate forming in the void ahead.

The blood continued to stream from Erebus’ nostrils as he shoved his way out of the

elevator car and through the cluster of helots waiting on the command deck. The

fluid matted his beard and he grimaced, drawing a rough hand across his face. The

psychic shock was fading, mercifully, but for a brief while it had felt as if it would

cut him open.

There, in his chambers aboard the flagship, meditating in the gloom over his

spodomancy and mambila divination, he attempted to find an answer. The eightfold

paths were confused, and he could not see their endpoints. Almost from the moment

they had arrived in the Dagonet system, Erebus had been certain that something was

awry.

His careful plans, the works he had conceived under the guidance of the Great

Ones, normally so clear to him, were fouled by a shadow he could not source. It

perturbed him, and to a degree undeserving of such emotion. This was only a small

eddy in the long scheme, after all. This planet, this action, a minor diversion from the

pre-ordained works of the great theatre.

And yet Horus Lupercal was doing such a thing more and more. Oh, he followed

where Erebus led, that was certain, but he did it less quickly than he had at first. The

Warmaster’s head was being turned and he was willful with it. At times, the Word

Bearer allowed himself to wonder; was the master of the rebels listening to other

voices than he?

Not to dwell, though. This was to be expected. Horus was a primarch. One could

no more hope to shackle one down and command him than a person might saddle an

ephemeral animus. The First Chaplain reminded himself of this.

Horus must be allowed to be Horus, he told himself. And when the time is upon

him… He will be ready.

Still; the voyage to Dagonet, the fogging of the lines. That did not disperse. If

anything, it grew worse. In his meditations Erebus had searched the egosphere of the

planet turning below them, but the screaming and the fear drowned out every subtle

tell. All he could divine was a trace of the familiar.

The pariah-thing. His Spear. Perhaps no longer on this world, perhaps just the

spoor of its passing, but certainly something. For a while he was content to accept

this as the truth, but with the passing of the hours Erebus could not leave the matter

be. He worried at it, picked at the psy-mark like a fresh scab.

Why had Spear come to Dagonet? What possible reason could there be for the

killer to venture off the path Erebus had laid out for him? And, more to the troubling

244

point of it, why had Horus chosen to show the flag here? The Word Bearer believed

that coincidence was something that existed only in the minds of men too feeblebrained

to see the true spider web of the universe’s cruel truth.

It vexed him that the answer was there below on the planet, if only he could reach

out for it.

And so he was utterly unprepared for what came next. The rising of the black

shriek of a sudden psionic implosion. In the chamber, sensing the edges of it, turning

his thoughts to the dark places within and allowing the void to speak to him.

A mistake. The death-energy of his assassin-proxy, hurtling up from the planet’s

surface, the escaping daemon beast brushing him as it fled back to the safety of the

immaterium. It hit him hard, and he was not ready for it.

He felt Spear die, and with him died the weapon-power. The phantom gun at the

head of the unknowing Emperor, shattered before it could even be fired.

Erebus’ fury drove him from his chambers, through the corridors of the ship. His

plan, this thread of the pathway, had been broken, and for Hades’ sake he would

know why. He would go down to Dagonet and sift the ashes of it through his fingers.

He would know why.

Composing himself, the Word Bearer entered the Lupercal’s Court without