Assassinorum- Divine Sanction - Robert Rath Read online

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  Assassinorum: Divine Sanction – Robert Rath

  About the Author

  An Extract from ‘Resurrection: The Horusian Wars’

  A Black Library Publication

  eBook license

  Assassinorum: Divine Sanction

  By Robert Rath

  ‘When the God-Emperor asks men to die, He does not ask them to die to satisfy His glory. Our Emperor is not vain. He asks men to die for each other.’

  The confessor gripped the edge of the balcony, its cold white marble hidden under a velvet banner. His hands grasped the edge tight enough to leave marks on the material.

  He paused, scanning the crowd that had gathered in St Lucretza’s Square, their faces upturned towards the pulpit balcony of the Apostolic fortress. They swayed and chanted. Counted prayer beads. Waved banners showing what manufactorum or far continent they hailed from. The throng stretched back through every avenue, until those present looked less like human beings and more like bullets crowding a conveyor belt at a munitions factory.

  They had come to hear the New Confession. And they would get it.

  The pulpit’s view of the plaza swam, distorted as a wandering servo-skull – one of hundreds that buzzed the square like dragonflies – veered perilously close to the triple-layer refractor field.

  ‘The Emperor.’ The confessor splayed his hands wide, face towards the sky. ‘The sanctified and revered Emperor, does not merely wish us to give our lives for Him…’

  ‘…but for all mankind,’ said Thacceus Velso, standing far enough behind the balcony that he was out of the crowd’s line of sight.

  ‘…but for all mankind.’ The confessor swept out a hand, as if taking in the whole of the multitude below.

  A clever bit of emphasis, Velso thought, casually mirroring the confessor’s sweep of the hand. More natural overall, but slightly unorthodox. Most preachers would put the emphasis on mankind, drawing attention to the primacy of humanity. All was a call to the collective.

  The confessor dropped his arms, worked his jaw as if thinking. ‘Is it not the Emperor’s will for us…’

  ‘…to elevate ourselves, our society, and our brethren?’ finished Velso, ensuring he pronounced breth-ren in two distinct syllables. He raised his right hand as he said it, fingers pressed together as if lifting a stemmed glass of wine.

  Before him, the confessor did the same.

  Hold it, thought Velso. One, two, three.

  The confessor opened his hand, dropped it with a shrug, as if he’d gone too far. Conscious that he’d worked himself up into a froth, and slightly embarrassed by his own zeal. A humanising gesture. A bluff. A dramatic pause before dropping the final hammer.

  ‘For what does the Emperor want His subjects to bring about…’ Velso said, in perfect synchronicity with the confessor.

  ‘…except the greater good?’ finished Confessor Thuselah Illsandor.

  Before him, the crowd wailed at the New Confession. The faithful made the sign of the aquila and held children in the air in hope of a blessing.

  The only sound that carried over the acclamation was the crackle of the firing squads.

  Not everyone believed in the Confession.

  ‘I’ve told you to stop doing that,’ sneered Mascelle Rask. The grid of her duelling scars twisted as she frowned. ‘We have one master of divinity already. Don’t need two.’

  ‘A sermon writer must know how his subject speaks,’ responded Velso, picking at the sleeve of his embroidered robe. ‘Our master is… well, he is masterful, isn’t he? I must work to keep up – just as you must work to keep him alive.’ He paused. ‘Speaking of which, how is that coming along?’ He glanced behind them, suppressing an insolent grin. ‘Any assassins lurking in this heated chamber, or are the real threats out in the cold?’

  The mercenary sniffed, put a hand on the swept-hilt power rapier that hung at her hip. ‘I’m due to check the perimeter.’

  ‘If you must deprive us of your company,’ Velso jerked his head at the two hulking forms chained in the outer corridor, their backs to the room, ‘shut the doors on the way out. No one wants to see those monstrosities.’

  ‘They’re here for his protection. They can hardly guard him if they’re shut–’

  ‘The confessor dislikes their smell.’

  The head of the Apostolic Guard set her jaw, considering, then snapped. ‘Do it yourself.’

  Rask swept out, throwing her embroidered half-cloak over one shoulder to keep her rapier in easy reach. ‘Keep Leonine and Taurus ready,’ she said to the guard standing by the hulking forms as she passed. ‘Sentinel protocol. Sensors maximum.’

  Velso rolled his eyes and followed her. He closed one of the heavy wooden doors, then the other, trying to keep his gaze low as he did, so as not to look at the two abominations. Still he saw their metal feet sinking deep into the woven carpet. Caught the stench of human waste, blood and funerary oil that emanated from their unwilling pilots. One had leaked, staining the hallway floor.

  Velso turned the lock, leaving the confessor alone with his sermon writer.

  Sycorax turned back to the confessor, reflecting how easy it was to play arrogant men. That was one of the earliest lessons in the Callidus Temple: take the place of someone unlikeable, and you’ll go undetected until the Emperor rises.

  It had taken months to get this close. Sycorax had come into the city as a worker from the promethium rigs wearing a man’s face and body. Checked into a flop-hab and grew their hair out long and red, their body soft and appealing. Got a job serving at the tavern where the Apostolic Guard drank. Brought one back to the hab.

  A girl and a guard went in – only the guard came out. That one was difficult. Apostolic Guardsmen kept close. Many had served in the same Militarum regiment before they heard the New Confession and defected. Knew each other in ways that were hard to replicate.

  But Viridian was a city under stress. After curfew the streets flooded with anti-Confessionists building barricades and throwing promethium bombs. And each night, the Apostolic Guard went to work on them with shock mauls and choke gas. In that environment, it was not strange for a man to become suddenly distant and closed-off – so that was the mask Sycorax chose.

  Sermon-writer Velso was easy by comparison. Arrogant and superior, he had no close friends. Velso had no doubt thought of himself as a complex man, but apart from moderate rhetorical skill, he was no challenge.

  Confessor Illsandor was another matter. He was indeed an orator of rare talent, and Sycorax had dispatched and replaced Velso because his proximity to the confessor made close study of the subject possible. It had also given Sycorax brief glimpses into Illsandor’s duplicity.

  She had only seen the t’au delegation once in the three months she’d been here. A door left open a moment too long, betraying a room of flat blue-grey faces and canny golden eyes.

  She. That was a crucial benchmark. A sign the time was close. She was mentally identifying as a woman again, reverting to her real identity, not the male body she’d been wearing the past three months. Her psycho-indoctrination training ran so deep that during longer operations her assumed identities took over the conscious mind and her true self merged into the black waters of the subconscious.

  But that time was over. Months of careful tradecraft would culminate today. Her studies were complete.

  The confessor finished blessing the crowd, kissed the Emperor’s Skull on his vestments, and turned into the room.

  ‘That went rathe
r well, Brother Velso,’ he said, cheeks rosy with cold.

  ‘A wonderful performance,’ Sycorax answered. She whistled, and Velso’s spider-legged writing desk clicked over to the confessor, bringing a carafe of spiced wine and a crystal goblet. ‘You should be proud.’

  ‘Save your praise for the Emperor.’ Illsandor poured a tall drink – sermons made him thirsty. ‘I am but His instrument.’

  ‘And according to this,’ Sycorax picked a tape-communique off the ambulatory desk, ‘Lady Falessca is now your instrument. The Promethium Guild has backed you and declared for the New Confession.’

  ‘Praise Him,’ Illsandor smiled. ‘Our planetary absolution continues. With the Emperor’s help, the rest of the Industry Lords should follow.’

  ‘You should thank them.’

  ‘For their support?’

  ‘For their neglect.’ Sycorax tugged at the sleeve of her robe, feeling the poisoned needle hidden there. ‘It’s always the same with revolution, isn’t it? The people have problems, obvious problems. Needs that those in power ignore, or declare themselves unwilling or unable to address. It precipitates a governance crisis, and that opens the door to people like us.’

  ‘My dear Brother Velso, the people have heard our New Confession. That is why they’re out in the street.’

  ‘The people are in the street because they’re hungry and disenfranchised,’ corrected Sycorax. ‘They would not have been so amenable to the Confession if the Industry Lords had given them a stake in the old order.’

  Illsandor stared at his sermon writer, brow knitted in indignation. For a bare moment, Sycorax worried she’d pushed too hard, but then the confessor’s fury passed and he barked a laugh. ‘Of course. Yes, of course, you’re right, brother. Feed the belly, feed the soul, eh?’

  ‘I think it’s time we came clean with each other,’ Sycorax said. ‘We are partners in this New Confession, are we not? I need to know what the t’au offered you, and what you’ve agreed to.’

  Because when I meet them, they will expect me to know, Sycorax thought.

  ‘Really, brother, I don’t know what–’

  ‘I simply want my cut,’ assured Sycorax. ‘And to tailor my speeches to best fit your aims. Are you to prepare the ground rhetorically? Edge the populace closer to the xenos doctrine? Make them amenable to accepting vassalhood in their empire?’

  Illsandor took a long drink of wine, his big, red-rimmed eyes searching her flesh-formed mask.

  As he did so, Sycorax planned which eye would get the needle. The left, she decided. Downward angle. Straight to the brain stem, cutting off nerve impulses for breathing and heart rate.

  ‘Something like that,’ said Illsandor. ‘I’ll be sector governor. And I can continue preaching. Whatever I wish, not the ossified dogma of the theologians. Life would improve here. For everyone, us included.’

  Sycorax hid her hands in the robe’s big sleeves. Nestled the poisoned needle in her palm. Took aim. ‘I believe they have a phrase for that.’

  ‘Yes,’ said the confessor. ‘It’s all for the greater g–’

  His head exploded. Illsandor’s face disappeared in a cloud of blood, grey matter spattering a centuries-old tapestry. A piece of skull shrapnel tore Sycorax’s cheek open.

  She was already down, rolling into the cover of Illsandor’s enormous desk. The priest’s body toppled, his ruined head hitting its marble corner with a wet sound.

  A sniper? Unlikely. The Apostolic fortress had counter-snipers, kill-servitors and a sensor grid that stretched out a mile. Some kind of cranial detonator installed by the xenos, in case of exposure?

  She fixed a monocular to one of her eyes, and used a handheld pict-feed to scope around the corner of the desk. No one.

  She waited. The confessor’s thick blood seeped into the carpet.

  Could the mission be salvaged?

  Her orders were to study the confessor, remove him, then assume his identity. Stall the t’au. Keep the sermons going, perpetuate the rebellion so the Assassinorum and Inquisition could see which Industry Lords remained loyal. Let the servo-skulls out in the square keep taking pict-captures of faces in the crowd. Evidence for the coming purge.

  This… made that complicated. She had a cleaning kit, but this was rather more gore than she’d expected.

  And if it was indeed a sniper, she would need to expose herself to fire in order to take the confessor’s place.

  She dived behind the ambulatory writing desk to get a different view. Reconstructed angles in her mind. If it was a shot, it would have passed through the curtain.

  Yes, there. A hole in the velvet. She crept across the room, flattened herself against the wall, inched back the heavy drape.

  And swore.

  A hole in the masonry, as if it had been bored through with a drill. She stuck a finger in and felt the smooth sides.

  It had angled in high. An impossible trajectory. There was no building in range with that kind of elevation, unless it was fired from a speeder. She edged her way to the window, peered out with the corner scope.

  Unless it came from the Tower of St Goneril.

  Closed for renovation after a seismic shock fourteen years back. Extremely unstable.

  And two miles away.

  Two-mile range, without line of sight to the target. Somehow penetrating the fortress’ refractor field, which cycled every half-second. Boring right through a wall, leaving a tunnelling pattern that spoke of staggered melta-detonations.

  Only one shooter could do that: one trained and equipped at the Vindicare Temple.

  Did I take too long and they assigned another operative? she wondered. Unlikely. She had made her check-ins. Was the shooter still there? Was it a rogue?

  No time, she decided. She had orders, and seconds to salvage them.

  And no need to hide. If the sniper wanted her, there was nothing she could do. So Sycorax knelt next to the confessor, whistled at the desk to attend her.

  It ambled over, unsteady on the thick carpet. She keyed a catch and a false bottom sprang open on quiet hinges. A metal document case and black zip-kit lay nestled inside.

  She tore the sermon writer’s robe open, shoved it in the desk’s false bottom. Reached down on her upper thigh and rolled up the leg of her synthskin bodysuit, feeling for the subdermal polymorphine injector. Found an unnatural bulge, tumour-hard. Twisted the lump so it armed. A button sprang up, stretching the skin like a tent.

  She studied the confessor’s face and realised she’d have to put on some weight. Sucked a breath. Cleared her mind.

  It would hurt like a bastard – no amount of training helped that.

  Three. Two. One.

  The polymorphine hit her bloodstream. A tremor rattled her system. Small seizures. Controllable. Pain came, a sensation like being crushed inwards by the pressure of the deep sea. Sweat beaded out of the black synthskin suit.

  Ordinarily, Sycorax could slip from one body to another with ease. But when the subjects were as physically different as the rail-thin Velso and robust Illsandor, she first needed to achieve a transitional state. Genderless, featureless, more a sculptor’s model than a human. Sycorax felt her nose retreat until it was two holes in her face. Her brow levelled out. Cheeks flattened and lips went thin. The teeth she was clenching against the pain wandered and reshuffled in her mouth. Veins retreated, making her skin grey and ashen. Velso’s close-cropped hair fell away, ready to be replaced.

  Halfway there. Her most malleable form.

  She reached for the black zip-kit in the desk, laid it out like a butterfly to see her tools.

  A black plastek bag to isolate the body, a valve-port at one end. Aerosolised phosphorus to spray inside the bag’s valve-port, dissolving the body and clothes. Nano-scrubs for the blood. A knit-gun to repair the target’s clothes.

  Now, the transformation.

  Sh
e focused, held her breath. Imagined the rustling of trees on her home world.

  Instead, she heard a click.

  Door handle.

  With the damn sniper, she realised, she hadn’t locked the door.

  Rectangular light spilled across her. A wide-shouldered shadow. Sycorax twisted, grabbed the metal document case from the desk.

  Rask was in the doorway, shock and fury on her scarred features. Her cut-off lascarbine was already swinging up.

  Sycorax dived, shielding herself with the case. Tucking into a tight roll, she made it behind Illsandor’s huge marble desk. Las-bolts shredded the carpet and tore holes in the dead confessor.

  She hunched low, back against the desk. Looked to her left. Spot fires smouldered on the bloodstained vestments. In her hand, the char of a deflected las-shot smoked on the metal case. Too close.

  Sycorax popped the catches on the case. She opened it up, saw hard metal in soft velvet niches.

  Inventory: a bulbous pistol, its chamber full of emerald gas; a vambrace; a blade broken in several parts; a power pack with combat webbing and collapsed cabling.

  Did she have time to assemble it?

  Another spatter of las-bolts hit the marble desk, throwing scorched papers across the room. A golden clock tumbled to the floor next to Sycorax, the cherubs that held the timepiece gazing at her with melted faces.

  ‘Cruciform One to armoury,’ Rask called. Sycorax heard the blip of a vox-bead. ‘Code Vermillion. We have an assassin pinned.’

  Sycorax was about to abandon the weapon case – grab the clock as an improvised weapon and move in close – when she heard the next sentence.

  ‘The damn t’au killed him!’

  Sycorax paused. Rask had mistaken her formless state for a xenos assassin. That might serve. That might serve well. But to preserve that, she could not be killed.

  ‘Truce!’ Sycorax called out, accenting her speech. ‘I will give myself up.’

  She greyed her skin. Narrowed her eye sockets. Widened her mouth.

  ‘You said it was a peaceful delegation,’ Rask sneered.

  ‘It was,’ Sycorax lied. Lies came easily to her. ‘But he became zealous. Called me xenos scum. Attacked me. I had to defend myself.’