Nemesis

There was the whisper of well-lubricated cogs and the door opened. Spear slipped inside.

2

Dagonet’s sun was passing low over the top of the ridgeline, and soon night would fall. Jenniker Soalm stood out on the flat expanse of stone that served as a lookout post, and looked out at the ochre rocks without really seeing them. She knew that the mission clock was winding down towards zero, and at best the Execution Force had only hours until they entered the final phase of the operation.

She could see that the others sensed it too. The Garantine had at last returned from whatever lethality he had been spreading on the clanner forces, menacing all who saw him. Tariel, Koyne and the Culexus waif were all making ready – and her brother…

Soalm knew exactly

what her brother was doing.

‘Hello?’ The voice made her turn. With slow, careful steps, Lady Sinope emerged from the cave mouth behind her and approached. ‘I was told I might find you here.’

‘Milady.’ Jenniker bowed slightly.

Sinope smiled. ‘You don’t need to do that, child. I’m a noblewoman only in name now. The others let me keep the title as a gesture of respect, but the truth is the clans of this world have wiped away any honour we ever had.’

‘Others must have rejected the call to join Horus’s banner.’

The old woman nodded. ‘Oh, a few. All dead now, I think. That, or terrified into compliance.’ She sighed. ‘Perhaps He will forgive them.’

Soalm looked away. ‘I do not believe He is the forgiving kind. After all, the Emperor denies all word of his divinity.’

Sinope nodded again. ‘Indeed. But then, only the sincerely divine can do such a thing and be true in it. Those who think themselves gods are always madmen or fools. To be raised to such heights, one must be carried there on the shoulders of faith. One must guide and yet be guided.’

‘I would like some guidance myself,’ admitted the assassin. ‘I don’t know where to turn.’

‘No?’ The noblewoman found a wind-smoothed rock and sat down on it. ‘If it is not too impertinent a question, may I ask you how you found your way to the light of the Lectitio Divinitatus?’

Soalm sighed. ‘After our… after my parents were killed in a conflict between rival families, I found myself isolated and alone in the care of the Imperium. I had no one to watch over me.’

‘Only the God-Emperor.’

She nodded. ‘So I came to realise. He was the single constant in my life. The only one who did not judge me… Or leave me. I had heard stories of the Imperial Cult… It was not long before I found like-minded people.’

Sinope’s head bobbed. ‘Yes, that is often the way. Like comes to like, all across the galaxy. Here on Dagonet there are those who do not yet believe as we do – Capra and most of his people, for example – but still we share the same goals. And in the end, there are still many, many of us, child. Under different names, in different ways, everywhere you find human beings. As He led us to greatness and dispelled the fog of all the false gods and mistaken religiosity, the God-Emperor forged the path to the one truth. His truth.’

‘And yet we must hide that truth.’

The old woman sighed. ‘Aye, for the moment. Faith can be so strong at times, and yet so weak in the same moment. It is a delicate flower that must be nurtured and protected, in preparation for the day when it can truly bloom.’ She placed a hand on Jenniker’s arm. ‘And that day is coming.’

‘Not soon enough.’

Sinope’s hand fell away and she was quiet for a moment. ‘What do you want to tell me, child?’

Soalm turned to look at her, eyes narrowing. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I’ve been doing this since before you were born,’ said the woman. ‘Believe me, I know when someone is holding something back. You’re afraid of something, and it isn’t just this revolution we find ourselves in.’

‘Yes.’ The words came of their own accord. ‘I am afraid. I am afraid that just by coming to your world we will destroy all of this.’ She gestured around.

A brief smile crossed Sinope’s lips. ‘Oh, my dear. Don’t you realise? You have brought hope to Dagonet. That is a precious, precious thing. More fragile than faith, even.’

‘No. I did nothing. I am only… a messenger.’ Soalm wanted to tell her the truth, in that moment. To explain the full scope of the Execution Force’s plans, to reveal the real reasons behind their assistance to Capra’s freedom fighters, to cry out her darkest, deepest fear – that in her collusion with it all, she was no better than her bitter, callous brother.

But the words would not come. All she heard in her thoughts was Eristede’s challenge, the cold calculation he had laid before her; were the lives of these people worth more than the death of the Warmaster, the living embodiment of the greatest threat to the human Imperium?

Sinope came and sat with her, and slowly the old woman’s expression turned darker. ‘Let me tell you what I am afraid of,’ she said. ‘And you will understand why the struggle is so important. There are sinister forces at large in the universe, child.’

‘The Warmaster…’