Koyne came as close as the Callidus dared, standing near a pair of worried-looking PDF majors who couldn’t decide if they should go to the side of Nicran and the other nobles, or wait for the Astartes to give them orders.
The sergeant bent down over the corpse and did something Koyne could not see. When he stood up once more, he was holding a gauntlet in his hand; but not a gauntlet, no. It was a master-crafted augmetic, a machine replacement for a forearm lost in battle. He had removed it from the corpse, claiming it as a relic.
But Horus does not–
‘My captain,’ rumbled the sergeant, hefting his boltgun with a sorrowful nod. ‘My captain…’
Koyne’s heart turned to a cold stone in his chest, and movement caught his eye as Governor Nicran pushed away from the rest of the nobles and started down the stairs towards the Astartes. The noise of the crowd was getting louder, and the Callidus had to strain to hear as the sergeant spoke into the vox pickup in the neck ring of his breast plate.
‘This is Korda,’ he snarled, his ire building. ‘Location is not, repeat not secure. We have been fired upon. Brother-Captain Sedirae… has been killed.’
Sedirae. The Callidus knew the name, the commander of the 13th Company. But that was impossible. The warrior Kell had shot wore the mantle, the unique robe belonging to the primarch himself…
‘Horus?’ Nicran was calling, tears running down his face as he came closer. ‘Oh, for the Stars, no! Not the Warmaster, please!’
‘Orders?’ said Korda, ignoring the babbling nobleman. Koyne could not hear the reply transmitted to the sergeant’s ear-bead, but the shift in set of the Space Marine’s jaw told the tale of exactly what had been said. With a jolt of fear, the Callidus turned and broke away, sprinting down the steps towards the crowds.
Koyne heard the peal of Nicran’s voice over the rush of the mob and turned in mid-run. The Governor was shaking his hands, wracked with sobs in front of the impassive, grey-armoured Astartes. His words were lost, but he was doubtless begging or pleading to Korda, vainly making justifications.
With a small movement, the warrior raised the barrel of his bolter and shot the Governor at point-blank range, blasting his body apart. As one, Korda’s men followed his example, turning their guns towards the nobles and executing them.
Over the bass chatter of bolt-fire, the Astartes roared out an order, and it cut through the bedlam like a knife.
‘Burn this city!’ he shouted.
Soalm stumbled through the butchery clutching the bact-gun and dragging the chest behind her. Sinope was with her, trying to support the other end of the container as best she could. The noblewoman’s men were all gone.
The dust-filled air was heavy with the sound of weapons-fire and pain, and there seemed nowhere they could turn that took them away from it.
Soalm stumbled against a shack just as a wave of ephemeral terror radiated out and caught her in its wake. The air turned thick and greasy with the spoor of psionic discharge – and then she heard Iota’s echoing screams, amplified through the vocoder of the Culexus’s helmet.
‘Holy Terra…’ whispered the old woman,
It could only have been Iota’s death-cry; no other voice could carry such dreadful emotion in it.
Soalm turned towards the sound and saw the ending of her happen. Particles of sickly energy were liberated from Iota’s twitching body in a rush of light and noise, and then her stealthsuit collapsed, the silver-steel helmet falling away. Clogged puffs of grey cinders spilled from the black uniform as it crumpled into a heap, the body that had filled it disintegrated in a heartbeat. The skull-faced helmet rolled to a halt, spilling more dark ash into the churning winds.
‘Jenniker!’ Sinope cried out her name as a shape blurred towards them. The Venenum felt a massive impact against her and she was thrown aside, losing her grip on the chest. She managed to fire two quick bursts from the bact-gun as she tumbled, rewarded with the pop and hiss of acids striking flesh.
Iota’s killer loomed out of the buzzing sands, back-lit by the harsh light of the sunrise. She was reaching for a toxin corde as he punched her savagely, disarming her with the force of the blow. The bact-gun tumbled away and was lost. Soalm felt a jagged slash of pain in her chest as her ribs snapped. Falling to the ground, she tried to retch, and found herself in a damp patch of earth, mud formed from sand and spilled arterial blood. A clawed foot swept in and struck her where she had fallen, and another bone snapped. Soalm looked up, hearing laughter.
The writhing shadow loomed, bending towards her; then a length of iron pipe came from nowhere and slammed into the killer’s spine, drawing an explosive hiss of fury. Soalm moved, agony racing through her, trying desperately to retreat.
Sinope, her face lit with righteous fury, drew back her improvised weapon and hit him again, the old woman putting every moment of force she could muster into the blow. ‘For the God-Emperor!’ she bellowed.
The killer did not allow her a third strike, however. He arrested the fall of the iron pipe and held it in place, his other hand snapping out to grasp Sinope’s thin, bird-like neck and pull her off her feet. With a vicious shove, he twisted his grip on the pipe and used it to run the noblewoman through; then he discarded her and strode away.
He came upon the chest where it had fallen, and Soalm gave a weak cry as the murderer’s inky, liquid flesh streamed into the locking mechanism and broke it open from within. The ancient book fell into the sand, and Soalm saw the stasis shell around it sputter out and die.
‘No,’ she croaked. ‘You cannot… You cannot take it…’
The killer crouched and picked up the Warrant, flipping through the aged pages with careless speed, the paper fracturing and tearing. ‘No?’ he said, without turning to her. ‘Who is going to stop me?’
He reached the last page and released a booming, hateful laugh. Soalm felt a lash of sympathetic pain as he ripped the leaf from the binding of the priceless Eurotas relic and cupped the yellowed vellum in his hand. For a moment, she thought she saw the shimmer of liquid on the page, catching the rays of the sunlight.
Then, as if it were some delicacy he was sampling at a banquet, the killer tipped back his head and opened his mouth, his forked jaws opening like an obscene blossom. A dozen more tiny fanged maws opened across his cheeks and neck as he tipped up the paper and swallowed the blood of the God-Emperor.
He began to scream and howl, and the riot of malformation in his flesh became a storm of writhing fronds, tenticular forms, gnashing mouths. His body lost control over itself, the red-black skin warping and distending into shapes that were nauseating and vile.
Weeping in her agony and her failure, Soalm dragged herself away towards Tros’s skimmer, desperate to flee before the killer’s rapture came to its end.
Kell was already on his way out even as the echo of his gunshot died around him. He drew up the cameoline cloak across his shoulders, pulling the Exitus longrifle over one arm. He set the timers on the emplaced explosives to ignite once he was clear. The Vindicare paused to add an extra krak charge to a support pillar in the middle of the laundry room; when it detonated, it would collapse the ceiling above and with luck, obliterate what remained intact of the hab-tower’s gutted upper levels. He had left no trace behind him, but it paid to be thorough.
Kell heard the sounds rising up from the streets as he dropped down to the tier below, moving towards his exit point. Disorder would spread like wildfire in the wake of the assassination; the Execution Force had to get beyond the city perimeter before the pandemonium caught up to them.