Nemesis

nerve. All about him, the blood was a matted, dried pool, a sticky patina that had

mixed with wine spillages and doubtless seeped down through the floor of this level

and the next. Thousands of gallons of carefully matured liquor was tainted, polluted

by what had been done here.

At the edges of the ocean of vitae where the fluid ran away, eight-point stars

dotted the bland wooden panels. Amid it all, Hyssos’ eyes caught a shape that

focussed his attention instantly; a face. He gingerly stepped closer, his gorge rising as

his boots sucked at the flooring. Narrowing his eyes, the operative drew up the

auspex, turning its sensoria on the blood slick.

It was Erno Sigg’s face, cut from the front of his skull, lying like a discarded

paper mask.

The chime of the auspex drew his gaze from the horror. Hyssos had been trained

by the Consortium’s technologians on the reading of its outputs, and he saw datums

unfurl on its small screen. The blood, it told him, was days old; perhaps even as

much as a week. This atrocity had been done to Erno Sigg well before Perrig’s

execution, of that there was no doubt. The auspex could not lie.

Swallowing his revulsion, Hyssos let the scanning device drop on its tether and

raised his gun upwards, finger tightening on the trigger. His hand was trembling, and

he could not seem to steady it.

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But then the footsteps reached him. From across the other side of the lake of dried

blood, a shadow detached from the darkness and came closer. Hyssos recognised the

purposeful gait of the Iestan reeve; but he moved without hesitation, straight across

the middle of it, boots sucking at the glutinous, oily mess.

“Sabrat,” called the operative, his voice thick with repugnance, “What are you

doing, man? Look around, can’t you see it?”

“I see it,” came the reply. The words were paper-dry.

The amplifier glasses seemed like a blindfold around his head and Hyssos tore

them off. “For Terra’s sake, Yosef, step back! You’ll contaminate the site!”

“Yosef isn’t here,” said the voice, as it became fluid and wet, transforming.

“Yosef went away.”

The reeve came out of the dimness and he was different. There were only black

pits glaring back at Hyssos from a shifting face that moved like oil on water.

“My name is Spear,” said the horror. The face was eyeless, and no longer human.

117

NINE

Dagonet

Assumption

Falling

The orbits above Dagonet were clogged with the wreckage of ships that had tried too

hard to make it off the surface, vessels that were built as pleasure yachts or

shuttlecraft, suborbitals and single-stage cargo barges for the runs to the near moons.

Many of them had fallen foul of the system frigates blockading the escape vectors,

torn apart under hails of las-fire; but more had simply failed. Ships that were

overloaded or ill-prepared for the rigours of leaving near-orbit space had burned out

their drives or lost atmosphere. The sky was filled with iron coffins that were

gradually spiralling back to the turning world below them. At night, those on the

planet could see them coming home in streaks of fire, and they served as a reminder

of what would happen to anyone who disagreed with the Governor’s new order.

The Ultio navigated in on puffs of thruster gas, having left the warp in the

shadow of the Dagonet system’s thick asteroid belt. Cloaked in stealth technologies

so advanced they were almost impenetrable, it easily avoided the ponderous turncoat

cruisers and their nervous crews, finding safe harbour inside the empty shell of an

abandoned orbital solar station. Securing the drive section in a place where it—along

with Ultio’s astropath and Navigator—would be relatively safe, the forward module

detached and reconfigured itself to resemble a common courier or guncutter. The

pilot’s brain drew information from scans of the traitorous ships to alter the

electropigments of the hull, and by the time the assassin craft touched down at the

capital’s star-port, it wore the same blue and green as the local forces, even down to

the crudely crossed-out Imperial aquila displayed by the defectors.

Kell had Koyne stand by the vox rig, ready to talk back to the control tower. The

Callidus had already listened in on comm traffic snared from the airwaves by Tariel’s

complex scanning gear, and could perform a passable imitation of a Dagoneti

accent—but challenge never came.

The tower was gone, blown into broken fragments, and all across the sprawling

landing fields and smoke-wreathed hangars, small fires were burning and wrecked

ships that had died on take-off lay atop crumpled departure terminals and support

buildings. Gunfire and the thump of grenade detonations echoed to them across the

open runways.

Kell advanced down the ramp and used the sights on his new longrifle to sweep

the perimeter.

118

“Fighting was recent,” said the Garantine, following him down. The hulking rage

killer took a deep draught of air. “Still smell the blood and cordite.”