Nemesis

ribcage and lung before emerging from his back in a splatter of dark arterial crimson.

Hyssos was not quite dead as Spear began to cut him into pieces. His last

awareness was of the sound of his own flesh being eaten.

Shots and cries of pain sounded distantly as they drew closer to the engagement. The

crackling drone of an emplaced autocannon sounded every few moments from down

in the open plaza.

They had found plenty of dead along the way, and to begin with the Eversor

paused at the sight of each clash, looking around to see if any of the combatants had

perished carrying weapons of any particular note. But he found nothing he wanted to

salvage, all of it basic Nire-pattern stubbers and the occasional lasgun. The Garantine

didn’t like lasers; too fragile, too lightweight, too prone to malfunction when worked

hard. He liked the heavy certainty of a ballistic gun, the comforting shock of recoil

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when it fired, the deep bass note of the shells crashing from the muzzle or the

whickering sizzle of needle rounds. The bulky combi-weapon in his mailed fist was a

perfect fit; it was his intention rendered in gunmetal.

Crouching in the lee of a tall, broken terracotta urn, he studied the Executor pistol

and worked his fingers around the grip. The desire to use it on some target, any

target, was almost too much to hold in. The anticipation tingled in his lobo-chips,

and he felt the chemoglands in his neck grow cool as they produced a calmative to

regulate the hammering pace of his heartbeat.

“Eversor.” The sniper’s voice issued out from the earpiece of his skull-mask.

“There’s a group of irregulars to the south, under the broken chronograph near the

monorail entrance. They’re dug in with a heavy gun.” The Garantine took a look

around the urn and saw the shattered clock face. He grunted an affirmative and Kell

went on. “They’re holding off a unit of Defence Force troopers. Not many of the

PDFs left. Hold and observe.”

That last sentence actually drew a laugh from the Eversor. “Oh, no.” He jumped

to his feet, the hissing of stimjectors sounding in his ears, and rolling fire flooded

through him. The Garantine’s eyes widened behind his mask and his body resonated

like a struck chord. Kell was saying something over the vox, but it seemed like the

chattering of an insect.

The Garantine leapt into the air from the balcony overlooking the ticketing plaza

and fell two storeys to land on the top of the smashed clock, where it hung from spars

extending from the ceiling. The weight of his arrival dislodged the whole

construction and he dropped with it, riding it to the tiled floor below to land behind

the makeshift gun emplacement. The clock exploded into fragments as it struck the

ground, ejecting cogwheels and bits of the fascia in all directions, the shock of it

staggering the men behind the autocannon.

Kell had called them irregulars; that meant they were not soldiers, at least in an

official sense. His drug-sharpened perception took in all details of them at once. They

were garbed in pieces of armour, some of it PDF or Arbites issue, and the weapons

they carried were an equally random assortment. At the sight of the towering, skullmasked

monster that had fallen from the skies above them, the men on the

autocannon hauled the weapon around on its tripod, swinging it to bear on the

Garantine.

He roared and threw himself at them, his shout lost in the scream of the Executor.

Bolt shells broke the bodies of the men in wet, red bursts, and he fell into their line,

raking others with the spines of his neuro-gauntlet. The barbs of the glove bit into

flesh and sent those it touched reeling to a twitching, frenzied death. Those on the

autocannon he killed by punching, putting his fist through their ribcages. As an

afterthought, he kicked the tripod gun away, and it rolled to the tiled floor.

Shivering with the rush, he laughed again. Through his adrenaline haze, he saw

the men in the PDF uniforms warily peer out of cover, and then finally advance

towards him with laser carbines ready.

He gave a theatrical bow and addressed them. “A rescue,” he snapped. “Consider

it a gift from the ruler of Terra.”

“Idiot.” Kell’s words pierced the veil of his racing thoughts. “Look at their chest

plates!”

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He did so; all of the PDF soldiers wore the etched-out aquila that signified their

rejection of the Emperor’s dominion. They started firing, and the Garantine laughed

once more, diving into the beam salvo with the Executor at his lead.

* * *

Spear’s meal was methodical. All the eating of the human foodstuffs while it had

been in quietus had been enough to fuel the camouflage aspect’s biology, but the