Nemesis

A black blur fluttered in the light of an explosion and the armoured windscreen

cracked and crazed as indigo fire lashed across it. Great gobs of polymer glass

denatured and collapsed, smothering the servitor in a suffocating blanket of

superheated plastic. The car spun out and collided with a bollard.

Jun pulled wildly at the door’s locking handle, then stabbed it with the pushdagger.

He was operating on blind panic.

Taking her time, the Culexus clambered in through the destroyed window and

disarmed him, almost as an afterthought. The warlord soiled himself as the skull

came closer. “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry—”

“Kiss me,” she said, her voice devoid of all emotion.

Jun’s lips were pressed to the cold steel of the mask, and agony spiked through

him. He fell back, and spat dust. Raw pain boiled at his extremities as his flesh

blackened and became thick ash, crumbling before his eyes until those too rotted in

their sockets and shrivelled to nothing. Jun Yae Jun’s very energy of life was drawn

from him, leached into the force matrix webbing the assassin’s stealthsuit, until there

was nothing left of him but a slurry of indeterminate matter.

Iota left the target’s vehicle and the area around her was suddenly drenched in

brilliant white light. The downdraught from a gravity drive beat at the ground,

stirring up debris and what remained of the warlord. The sensor suite inside her helm

registered a gunship’s weapons grid locking on to her silhouette, and she paused,

wondering if it were possible for her to die.

In the next moment, she saw a line of light across the infrared spectrum as a

single high-impact bullet passed through the armoured canopy of the gunship,

beheading both the pilot and the gunner. Suddenly unguided, the Cyclone’s autoflight

system kicked in and brought it down to a soft landing.

61

Presently two men, one in the operations gear of the Vindicare clade and another

in a more basic stealth rig, emerged from one of the smouldering buildings. Iota

glanced at them, then went back to watching the spreading fires.

As the sniper tipped the corpses from the flyer’s cockpit, the other man warily

approached her. “Iota?” he asked. “Protiphage, Clade Culexus?”

“Of course it’s her,” said the Vindicare. “Don’t be obtuse, Tariel.”

“You have to come with us,” said the one called Tariel. He indicated the gunship

as the sniper took the controls.

Iota ran a finger over the grinning teeth of her skull-mask. “Will you kiss me

too?” The man went pale. “Perhaps later?”

62

FIVE

Fears

Release

Innocence

“Husband?”

Renia’s hand on Yosef’s shoulder shocked him out of the dreamless doze he had

fallen into at the kitchen table; so much so that he almost knocked over the glass of

black tea by his hand. Before it could tip, he snatched it back upright without spilling

a drop.

He gave her a weak smile. “Heh. Quicker this time.”

Yosef’s wife gathered her thick housecoat around her and took the seat across

from him. It was late, deep into the evening, and the house was unlit except for a

single lume over the table. It had a sharp-edged shade around it that forced the cast

light into a cone, reducing everything beyond it to vague shapes in the shadows.

“Is Ivak up as well?”

“No. He’s still asleep, and I’m pleased to see it. With everything that’s been

going on, he’s had a lot of bad dreams.”

“Has he?” Yosef asked the question and immediately felt a flicker of guilt. “I’ve

been absent a lot recently…”

“Ivak understands,” Renia said, cutting him off. “I didn’t hear you come in,” she

noted.

Yosef nodded and resisted the urge to yawn. “You and the boy had already turned

in. I didn’t want to wake you, so I made tea…” He sipped at the glass and found the

contents had gone cold.

“And fell asleep in the chair?” She tutted quietly. “You’re doing this too often

these days,” Yosef Renia brushed some stray threads of copper-coloured hair out of

her eyes.

He nodded. “I’m sorry. It’s the investigation.” Yosef sighed. “It’s… troubling.”

“I’ve heard,” she said. “The watch-wire was running stories about it for a while,

before the news from Dagonet came in. Now that is all anyone is talking about.”

Yosef blinked. “Dagonet?” he repeated. The planet was a trading partner with

Iesta Veracrux, a few light years distant down the spine of the Taebian Sector’s

mercantile routes, in a system orbiting a pale yellow sun. By the interstellar scales of

the Imperium of Man, Dagonet was practically a neighbour. He asked his wife to

explain; Yosef and Daig had both been buried in research on the serial murders all

day long, fruitlessly looking for information about Erno Sigg, and neither of them

had seen anything that wasn’t a case file or medical report.

63

For the first time since she had broken his dozing, Yosef realised that Renia was

hiding something, and as she talked it became clear. She was worried.