James Swallow - Nemesis

it was a mechanised fuel bowser, governed by simple automata. The device was one

of many such systems in the star-port, machines that could do the jobs of men by

loading, unloading or servicing the ships that passed through the facility; but like so

many things on Dagonet, in the disorder that had engulfed the planet no one had

thought to stand down the robots, and so they went on at their programmed tasks,

ignorant of the fact that buildings had collapsed around them, unaware that their

human masters were most likely dead in the rubble.

The automaton had dutifully done its job, and refuelled the shuttle with fresh

promethium. Spear hesitated on the cockpit ladder and his ebullient mood wavered.

222

Overhead, red light and thunder rolled in across the runway from the burning

city, and Spear’s fanged mouth twisted in something like a scowl. In truth, he had not

expected the Sons of Horus to be so close behind him to Dagonet. He had hoped he

might have a day, perhaps two—but the tides of the warp were capricious. He

wondered if some intelligence had been at work to bring all these players to the same

place at the same time. To what end, though?

Spear shook the thought away. He was so set on leaving this place behind he had

not stopped to think that his means of escape might no longer be in place. It was

likely that if the Warmaster’s fleet was here, then the cutter Yelene was either in their

possession or smashed to fragments.

“I must get to Terra…” He said the words aloud, the need burning in him; and

then he sensed a distant taint upon his perception. A powerful, sinister presence.

Unbidden, Spear looked up again, into the storm.

Yes. The master was up there, looking down on Dagonet, searching for him. The

killer could see the dark, piercing gaze of Erebus in the patterns of the clouds. The

master was waiting for him. Watching to see what he would do next, like a patient

teacher with a prized student.

Spear dropped off the ladder and moved back to the front of the shuttle. It was all

falling into place. With the blood taken, he needed only to ride to his target and

perform his kill. Erebus was here to help him; the master would give him the ship he

needed. It would be his final act as a mentor.

The killer took one of the bodies on the runway and dragged it into the lee of the

wing, under cover from the thick gobbets of black rain that were falling. Spear

remembered the rituals of communication that Erebus had seared into his memory. It

would only take a moment to arrange. He dipped his fingers into a deep wound on

the man’s torso and cupped a handful of thickening blood; then, quickly, Spear used

it to draw glyphs of statement on the cracked ferrocrete surface. He made the circles

and crosses, building the shape of an eightfold star line by line. Once complete, it

would be visible to Erebus like a flare on a moonless night. The master would see it

and know. He would understand.

The wind changed direction for an instant, blowing the smell of the corpse and

the tang of promethium across the sensing pits in Spear’s fanged maw; and, too, it

brought him the skirl of humming turbines.

His head snapped up, catching sight of a white-and-green shape dropping down

through the mist. Something flashed in the open hatch and Spear jerked away on

reflex.

A bullet creased the surface of his daemonflesh face like a razor blade, opening a

ragged gouge that spat out a fan of ebon fluid; the tainted blood spattered over the

half-drawn glyphs, ruining the pattern. Spear stumbled. A fraction of a second slower

and the bullet would have struck him between the fathomless black pits of his eyes.

Tightening the muscles in his arms, Spear put up his palms with a snap of the

wrist, and the daemonflesh grew new orifices. Long spars of sharp bone clattered into

the air in a puff of pinkish discharge.

“Watch out!” Tariel called, stabbing at controls to throw the flyer into a half-roll that

showed the belly of the aircraft to their target.

223

Kell staggered, losing his balance for a second as he clung on to his rifle. Koyne,

surprisingly strong for wearing a body that seemed insubstantial, grabbed him and

held him up. Nearby, Soalm hung on for dear life, shivering in the cold draught

billowing through the open hatch.

Bone shards peppered the hull of the flyer and punched through the metal

fuselage. Kell flinched as several impacted his chest and buried themselves in the

armour there. Koyne cried out and as the aircraft righted itself, the Callidus fell

backwards, a circle of bright crimson blossoming through the material across the

shade’s thigh.

Kell swept a hand over his chest, flicking the shards away. As they fell to the

deck they denatured, becoming soft and pliant. To the Vindicare’s disgust, the shards

began to writhe like blind worms. He stamped them into patches of white pus and

brought the Exitus up to his shoulder. “Tariel! Bring us around!”

The flyer had come in upwind, their approach masked by the clouds and the

thunder from the shelling of the capital. Now they were circling the parked shuttle,

the livery of the Eurotas Consortium clear as day across the hull. What Kell saw

through his targeting scope was disturbing; he had faced humans of every stripe,

mutant creatures, even xenos. Spear was unlike any of them. Even from this distance,

it exuded a tainted menace that sickened him to look at.

“It’s making for the cockpit,” Tariel called out. “Kell!”

The marksman saw the blur of the assassin-creature as it ran; the thing hazed the

air around it like waves of heat rising from a searing desert, making it hard to draw a

bead. His finger tensed on the trigger. There was a high-velocity Splinter round in the

chamber—on impact with an organic target it would fracture into millions of tiny

hair-like fragments, each a charged piece of molly-wire. The wires would expand in a

sphere and rip through flesh and bone like a tornado of blades.

It would do this, if he hit his target. But Kell had missed with the first shot. Even

from a moving platform, through rain, against a partly-occluded target, he should

have found the mark.

The Vindicare made a snap decision and worked the slide of the rifle, ejecting the

unspent Splinter bullet, in one swift motion thumbing a red-tipped round from a

pocket on his arm into the open chamber.

“What are you waiting for?” Koyne shouted. “Kill it!”

The breech of the Exitus closed on the Ignis bullet and Kell swung the longrifle

away from the target. He ignored Koyne’s cries and his scope filled with the shape of

the fuel bowser.

The incendiary compound in his next shot hit the main promethium tank and

combusted. A fist of orange fire flipped the shuttle over and engulfed it in flames.

Shockwaves of damp air struck the flyer and the aircraft was forced down hard, the

impact of the landing snapping off the undercarriage.

Kell got up as bits of hull metal clattered out of the sky, bouncing off the runway.

For a moment, all he saw was the jumping, twisting shapes of the flames; but then

something red and smoking tore itself out of the wreckage and began to run for the

star-port terminal building.

The Vindicare snarled and raised the rifle, but the weight of the gun told him the

magazine was empty. He swore, slamming a new clip into place, knowing as he did