Nemesis

own life as the orchestra struck an ominous chord. Against reason, Rei hoped that the

play might suddenly diverge from the story he knew so well; but it did not. As the

actress’ body melted away into the wings and the final scenes of the opera unfolded,

he found he could not focus on the fate of poor, blinded Oedipus, the lead actor

giving his all in a finale that brought the audience to its feet in a storm of applause.

It was only as the floating viewing box returned to the high balcony with a silken

thud that Rei regained a measure of composure, pulling himself back from a daze.

She had truly moved him. It had almost been as if this new Jocasta were

performing only to Rei; he could swear that even in the moment of her drama’s

suicide, she had looked directly to him and wept in unison.

Rei’s ranking meant that he had, as a matter of course, an invitation to the postshow

gathering in the auditorium proper. Usually he declined, preferring the

company of his machines to those of the venal peacocks who drifted about Jupiter’s

entertainment community. Tonight, however, he would not decline. He would meet

her.

The party was jubilant, high with the thrill of the performance’s energy as if it still

resonated around the theatre even after the last note of music had faded. Critics from

the media took turns to congratulate the director and the actor who had played the

tortured king, but all of them did so while looking about in hopes of catching a

glimpse of the true star of the show; the queen of this night, the new Jocasta.

Under the aegis of this, the invited nobles alternated between praising the opera

and discussing the matters of the moment; and the latter meant discussion of the

rebellion and of the pressures upon Jupiter and her shipyards. The wounds opened by

the incident at Thule had not been healed, despite assurances from the Council of

Terra, despite the quiet purges and the laying of blame. But accusations still crossed

back and forth, some decrying the Warmaster for such perfidy and base criminality,

others—those who spoke in hushed tones—wondering if the Emperor had let this

thing occur just so he might tighten his grip on the Jovians. Every heartbeat of their

forges was now turned to the construction of a military machine designed to break

the turncoat advance, but many felt it was bleeding Jupiter white. Those who

questioned this questioned other things as well; they asked exactly how it was that a

force of Mechanicum Adepts and Astartes with traitorous intentions had been able to

build a warship of the scope of the Furious Abyss, without alerting anyone to their

duplicity.

Was it possible that Jupiter harboured rebel sympathisers? It had happened with

the Mechanicum of Mars, and so some whispered, even among the warlords of

Earth’s supposedly united nation-states. The questions turned and turned, but they

faded when Gergerra Rei entered the room.

Resplendent in the circuit-laced robes of a Mech-Lord, Rei’s high status as

master of Kapekan Sect of the Legio Cybernetica was known to all. Two full cohorts

of combat mechanoids were under his personal command, and they had fought in

many battles of note during the Great Crusade alongside the Luna Wolves and the

Warmaster.

85

Like many of the Cybernetica, Rei eschewed the gross cyborg augmentations of

his colleagues in the Mechanicum in favour of subtle enhancements that did not

disfigure or dilute his outwardly human aspect; but those who knew Rei knew that

whatever humanity he did show was rare and fleeting.

Behind him, moving with fluidity, his bodyguards were a three-unit maniple of

modified Crusader-class robots. Painted as works of art, each insect-like machine

was a stripped-down variant of its battlefield standard, armed with a discreetly

sheathed power-rapier and a lasgun. A fourth mechanical, this one custom-built to

resemble a female form rendered in polished chrome, walked at his side and served

as his aide.

No one asked questions about loyalty when Rei was nearby. His machines could

hear a whisper among a roaring crowd, and those who dared to suggest aloud that Rei

was anything less than the Emperor’s obedient servant lived to regret it.

The Mech-Lord took a schooner of an indifferent Vegan brandy and pecked at a few

small sweetmeats from ornamental serving trays offered by menials, allowing his

mechanoid aide to delicately sniff at each before he ingested it; the robot’s head was

filled with sensing gear capable of picking up any particulate trace of poison. The

machine shook its head each time, and so he ate and drank but none of the rich

foodstuffs sated the real hunger in him. Rei engaged in a moment or two of small talk

with the director of the opera house, but it was a perfunctory and hollow exchange.

Neither of them wanted to spend time with one another—Rei was simply

uninterested and the director was doubtless wracked with worry over the reason why

the Kapekan general had decided to take up his long-ignored invite—but both of