Liar's Due - Ben Swallow Read online

  The youth began to tremble, rocking back and forth, begging fate to make the sensation go away; and then, as quickly as it had come, it dissipated.

  ‘It is done,’ the woman was saying, her voice carrying to him. ‘Traitor swine.’

  Mendacs stepped back and sniffed. ‘That’s a very simplistic view,’ he replied. ‘Loyalty is an elastic concept. You’d be surprised what it can encompass, given enough impetus.’

  ‘You will not succeed,’ spat the psyker. ‘I know what you are. I see the brand. Alpha Legion.’ She pointed at his arm, where a tattoo protruded from his sleeve. ‘You’re the tool of monsters and turncoats. A liar, a walking falsehood!’

  ‘I will succeed,’ Mendacs countered. ‘I have succeeded. Here, on Virger-Mos II and dozens of other worlds, all of them of similar stripe. This is not the first planet I have brought to the edge, nor the last.’

  ‘If

  If your masters come to invade, they will be made to pay for whatever they take. The Emperor’s Legiones Astartes will come here and take it back!’

  He shook his head, smiling slightly. ‘You don’t understand. Let me make it clear to you, mind-speaker. I alone am the invasion. And my work is done. There will be no massed attack from the stars, no bombardments and battle fleets.’

  ‘But Horus–’

  Mendacs chuckled. ‘The Warmaster has more important things to do than send his men to this dreary corner of the galaxy. Are you so arrogant as to think it would be worth a primarch’s effort? Do you really believe he would commit ships to the capture of a farm?’ He spat the last words with a harsh sneer. Mendacs was warming to his subject; Leon recognised the same manner in his speech that the man had shown to the youth when speaking of his travels. ‘Horus’s fleet, as large as it is, cannot be everywhere at once. But to sow fear into the hearts of the loyalists, it must appear as if it can. Do you see? I am only one of dozens of operatives sent by Alpharius to create dissent and dissolution all across the galaxy.’ He nodded. ‘You are quite correct. I am indeed a liar, and one of the most potent strength. I sampled the signals you sent down to the populace, copied them, emulated them. Then it was only a matter of inserting them into the telegraph network, and letting the paranoia and petty fears of these parochial fools do the work for me. A handful of small asteroids captured from the Oort cloud and kicked into the atmosphere by automata-drones, and the fires were lit.’ He flashed a grin. ‘I made their sky fall.’

  With each word the man said, Leon’s fury had grown and grown. His terror gave way to anger, hard resentment at his betrayal. Finally, he could hold it in no more, and he burst from his cover and threw himself at Mendacs, cursing his name.

  The remembrancer – no, the spy – let him come running, at the last moment swinging up the laspistol and using it to crack the boy across the face. Leon cried out in agony as the butt of the gun broke his nose and he tripped, stumbling to the floor.

  Without pause, Mendacs turned back to the astropath and executed her, the howl of a single las-bolt resonating in the chamber as it blew through the psyker’s heart and killed her instantly.

  Leon scrambled backwards, bringing up his hands in a fruitless gesture of self-protection, gagging on the stink of burnt meat. Mendacs ignored him, instead stooping to pick up the box-shaped device lying on the floor. He holstered the gun and walked away.

  He was almost out of the room before Leon gathered the wits to call after him. ‘She was right, you are a traitor bastard! You’re a mass-murderer!’

  Mendacs halted on the threshold. ‘That’s not true, Leon. I’ve taken only one life since I came to this planet.’ He nodded at the dead psyker. ‘It’s the people who are killers. People down there, in Town Forty-Four and every other place just like it. People like your father and Prael and all the rest. They let themselves be manipulated, because deep within them, they want to be right. They want to have their darkest fears come true, to validate their loathing of the lives they lead.’

  ‘You did it all!’ Leon shouted. ‘You faked the drop-pods in the sky; you used those things in your case to corrupt the broadcasts

  You turned neighbours against each other with your lies and propaganda!’

  ‘I did. And I will again, and again

  ’

  Leon’s shoulders fell. ‘Are

  you going to kill me now?’

  Mendacs shook his head. ‘No. I knew you were following me. I wanted to see how far you would come.’

  ‘Why?’

  He shrugged. ‘It amused me. I so rarely have a witness to the full scope of my work.’ The man nodded in the direction of the transfer station core. ‘You’re clever enough to find a set of cargo pods on the downbound rails. They’ll take you home.’

  Leon climbed unsteadily to his feet. ‘When I get back,’ he husked, ‘I will tell everyone what you have done. I’ll stop you. I’ll make sure all the other worlds are warned!’

  ‘No, you won’t.’ Mendacs turned away. ‘You have a choice, Leon. You must swear your loyalty to Horus Lupercal and deny the Emperor’s dominion. Because by the time the Skyhook carries you down to the surface, the colony of Virger-Mos II will belong to the Warmaster. Not through force of arms, but because of the weakness of the people who live there. Because they have exchanged their fear of one thing they have never seen for the fear of another.’ He spared the youth one last look. ‘And if you do not join them, they will be the ones who kill you.’

  The warp-cutter detached and turned about its axis, the slower-than-light fusion engines coming online to propel the vessel up and away from the colony world.

  In the cockpit module, Mendacs finished the last of the entries in his mission log, pausing to study the details of the mining outpost six light years distant where he would begin his work anew.

  Content that he was prepared, he settled back into the acceleration couch and reached for the stasis field generator. He keyed the deactivation timer to trigger a week out from orbital insertion, so that he would have time to intercept the outpost’s vox-transmissions and begin work on a new plan of subterfuge.

  Mendacs closed his eyes and flipped the switch; to him, he would awaken a second later and begin again.

  It was what he was best at.

  Leon Kyyter leaned forwards and let his forehead touch the cold glassaic of the armoured viewport, his hands splayed palm open either side of his face.

  He looked down, not daring to glance towards the threatening dark, watching the agri-world beneath him. Night covered the landscape, but there was light, here and there in scattered bands and broken commas of colour.

  Light from the fires of burning towns, yellow-orange and hellish in shade, falling everywhere he turned his gaze.

  In the cold and the silence, Leon watched the distant flames spread.