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Assassinorum: Iron Sight – Robert Rath

About the Author

An Extract from ‘Assassinorum: Execution Force’

A Black Library Publication

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Assassinorum: Iron Sight

by Robert Rath

Absolom Raithe knew how to cut a throat.

He’d been trained in it, drilled in it. Had the steps memorised in stages like a true Vindicare. Stab behind the carotid to silence the voice box, rip outward.

It was how he’d got the dirtcycle.

‘Mission journal, Day 27, 1732 hours,’ he subvocalised into his mask’s throat-vox recorder. ‘Initial intercept unsuccessful. Jackal pack hit the likely target and scattered into the narrow alleys in ones and twos to foil pursuit, conforming to their established attack pattern. Presume surviving elements are rallying at a rendezvous point in the wastes before navigating at speed to next target.’

He leaned the dirtcycle hard over to swerve around the torched shell of a Chimera, the blackened skeletons of its crew frozen in their attempt to claw their way out of the back hatch. Clicked his throat-vox live again.

‘Ambush tactically successful. Rigged wire from descent kit across an alley along target’s expected exfiltration route, as recorded. Unseated jackal outrider and neutralised with utility blade.’ Raithe took a breath, tried to keep the unprofessional tone of disappointment from his voice. ‘Confirmed: no target kill. Repeat: no kill. Primary target used alternate route. Have mounted dead outrider’s dirtcycle and assumed its clothes. Have sighted target’s dust plume. In pursuit.’

Raithe clicked off, suppressing the urge to swear. Twenty-seven days. This had gone on long enough. The target had escaped too many times. Even Raithe’s superhuman patience, instilled at the Vindicare Temple, had worn thin.

He could not even take pride in the craft of his wire trap and knife kill, despite it being well done.

Raithe generally preferred his garrotte. Had become known for it during training. It was quiet and efficient, with less chance of getting blood on his disguise. Wrap a man fast, cut his air, and there was almost no countermove. Shake him like a game fowl and you might even snap the spinal cord. Pull hard and you could decapitate a victim if the mission called for that kind of messaging.

But the things Raithe pursued were not men, even if their silhouette looked the same at a distance. Genestealer hybrids had thicker necks, corded muscles, tough throat glands that made it difficult to strangle them. Even with his monomolecular knife edge, he’d needed to saw at the beast’s neck in order to cut through it.

He would have preferred a clean ambush kill. Now it was a chase. A lone man on a spindly machine, tearing across the hardpan of the wasteland towards the dust plume on the horizon.

Towards the target, towards the Alphus.

It was Raithe’s fifth mission, the final target that would secure his status as a journeyman of the killer’s trade. Many assassins did not live that long. Attrition was a natural consequence of this vocation. It was no easy thing to track and kill a target through hostile territory, make the shot and get away clean. Many Vindicare died on their first mission, their names remembered and passed to a new initiate if they’d completed a kill – forgotten if they’d failed. Most others fell on missions two through four.

Shot. Torn apart by shelling. Eviscerated by daemons or xenos horrors. Captured and, Emperor forbid it, tortured for unending days. An ignominious, drawn-out end for an operative trained to dispatch sudden death.

It was why a green operative often started their career on a battlefield, tasked with lower-level targets to build experience, maybe seconded to a crusade on a temporary basis, granted a broad kill order from the High Lords of Terra that encompassed the enemy command echelon plus any and all targets of tactical interest. Journeyman work.

But after five missions, things got interesting. Then the quarry changed. No more sniping mega-armoured orks or bedraggled cult leaders – no, after five missions you got the big game.

Planetary governors. Chaos lords. T’au sept leaders. Mechanicus archmagi gone wrong. Operational lynchpins.

And it meant no more mission journals dispatched back to the Temple for evaluation.

But that meant living through deadly mission number five.

Raithe almost lost focus in his itch to advance. He brought his attention back, the lenses of his spy mask scanning the orange Goviian horizon, data-traces running over the nodding heads of the pilgrim pumps.

‘Two hours until sundown.’ Raithe glanced at the environmental data in his peripheral vision. ‘Current temperature: high even for Goviian wastes, but within equipment’s operational tolerances. Temperature will drop to sub-freezing after sundown. Metal contraction in rifle will degrade accuracy at range.’

Govii was a wasteland. No one would live here were it not for its vast promethium reserves. What extractor-colonies existed tentatively clung onto life, maintaining the congregation of pilgrim pumps that bowed and rose endlessly, sucking the precious crude from the baked ground. Some of the pilgrims still had superstructures clad with folk-art depictions of devotees with clasped hands, but since the uprising many were naught but bare industrial skeletons.

The 88th Tallarn had been a natural fit for the deployment. Raithe liked the Tallarns, respected their tradecraft, shared their dedication to specialising in a narrow type of operational violence. But even they hadn’t been able to catch the Alphus.

The Alphus who had drilled acid-impregnated bullets through the skulls of twenty-six Militarum officers of field rank or above. Majors. Colonels. Two generals. It had hollowed out the headquarters section of multiple regiments, imperilled the war effort across the continent. Rigged a promethium field with demolition charges and blew them as the 88th Tallarn’s Second Battalion moved through, killing a full forty per cent of the unit in the inferno.

That’s when Raithe received his orders. He’d analysed the Alphus’ pattern, pinpointed the lieutenant it had planned to strike next to cripple another platoon, and set his ambush on the expected escape route.

That failure had been his third attempt. Each time, the Alphus had slipped away, the only sight of its pack a retreating dust plume. Yet this time he’d picked up its trail immediately, was gaining on them.

After a month of pursuing them across the wastes, amid the bowing pilgrims and scorching sun, it would end today.

Hardpan tore past beneath his tyres. Stolen cult robes streamed out behind him over the protective shell of his synskin. Adrenaline purred in time with the throaty growling of the dirtcycle beneath him. He saw black dots rise from the wavering heat haze on the horizon – heads.

He clicked on his throat-vox.

‘Enemy sighted. Moving to shooting position. Pilgrim extractor one mile north-north-east, will scale it and find a firing solution on–’

A sharp chime in his spy mask. Red text in his peripheral, warnings, plastered where it wouldn’t interfere with his shot.

LASER RANGEFINDER DETECTED.

Raithe slammed the cycle’s handlebars to the side and paired it with a severe lean, dropping the vehicle into a slide.

‘Engaged. Engaged. Engaged.’

He hit the ground hard, dirtcycle still between his legs. Hardpan scraped across his mask. Razor-edged pebbles scoured his right side as he went flat, tearing at his synskin, shredding the cultist robes. He felt a large piece of duneglass part his flesh from knee to upper thigh as it ground under his right leg.

But that was better than the bullet that cracked by two inches above his head.

He dug a gloved hand into the soil and pulled his legs back, letting the bike spin forward without him. He hoped the fantail of dust it kicked up would cover him.

Another alert chime: RANGEFINDER.

Raithe rolled to his left as a bullet thumped into the dirt, ploughing the earth where his skid had tilled a furrow in the hardpan.

The Alphus was good, but outclassed. It had preyed too long on the Astra Militarum and grown used to their counter-sniper capabilities. No Guardsman, however high up the chain, had a sensor suite like Raithe’s. It was so advanced that should he be killed, the mask would automatically fry its own logic-board to prevent capture, and trigger incendiary capsules in his weapons.

But two miraculous escapes were all Raithe would get. By now, he reasoned, the Alphus knew the game. In his mind’s eye he could almost see a pale hand switching off the rangefinder.

Two seconds. That’s what he had. Before the dust cloud disappeared. Before it got a clear shot. Muscle memory was already working the problem, Raithe’s hand finding the screen grenade and clicking the timer once before he even thought about using it.

He threw it to his left to catch the crosswind.

BANG.

Two stages. First, a flash to dazzle the Alphus’ scope and give Raithe a chance to reposition. Purple smoke, impenetrable to most advanced optics, fountained from the gunmetal cylinder and drew across his position like a stage curtain.

‘Countermeasure deployed, moving to firing position.’

Raithe belly-crawled through the haze, wriggling like a snake. In the enhanced optics of his mask he could make out a shallow depression, one of the many sinkholes that dotted this over-extracted world. Purple smoke pooled there, the same way it revealed every small scar in the wasteland.

Only six inches deep, but it would do.

He slid inside, willing his body flat, unslung his Exitus rifle and deployed the bipod. Unshipped a small wire from his mask and plugged it into the scope. Blinked twice to ensure his optics were correctly slaved to the device. Planted his face in the dirt to flatten his silhouette. Let the rifle be his eyes, trusting the active camouflage of his synskin stealth suit to blend his body with the wastes.

Blue sky, orange earth. A perfect line of the horizon – flat country, bad to hide in. Nothing but the long pendulums of the pilgrim extractors eternally bowing. His scope, calibrated to cut through the haze, tracked to the right.

Data columns shuffled in his peripheral vision. The ballistic cogitator in his scope calculated the trajectory of the second shot based on the sensor suite information collected by his mask.

There.

A quadrant of the horizon tinted pink. It was to Raithe’s right, and he eased in, soft-focusing his eyes to see broken patterns. He was unsurprised to see that the shot had originated from the field of pilgrims.

It’s where he’d planned to be.

Despite his superior tools, Raithe knew he was at a disadvantage. At the wrong end of a deadly equation.

The Alphus must have noticed him following and peeled off into the forest of nodding extractors to find a shooting position while the rest of the jackals led him into its line of fire.

The Alphus had played its game magnificently. Perhaps even intentionally baited him into the trap.

‘Stand-off. At disadvantage. Target knows my position within a few feet. Has advantage in elevation, a prepared position, the sun behind it. Am searching for possible target location in a field an eighth of a mile wide.’

Poor start to a sniper duel.

Deadly number five.

Raithe felt no fear as he calculated these odds. It was a problem to solve, nothing more. An automated mantra-meditation looped through his augmented brain, regulating his breathing.

His hand caressed the grip of his rifle. Connection nodes beneath the skin of his palms bonded with sensors on the surface, bringing it live. Making it a part of his body.

Enhanced optics gridded out the area. Analysed patterns. Splashed yellow across platforms and rebar joints to tag them as areas for further visual investigation – places where the silhouette broke or shadows fell strangely.

He thought-banished half of them, knowing a marksman of the Alphus’ calibre wouldn’t choose such obvious positions. Removed six others, knowing they were false hits due to the bulging nests of waste-wasps.

The Alphus had not fired yet. It was being careful, likely suspecting that Raithe was now looking through his scope, and that anything but a clean kill shot would betray its position. Perhaps it was reloading.

Slow breath reflected back at him from the mask’s respirator. He searched the remaining grid squares. Neural augmetics in his occipital lobe allowed him to rule them out with a sweep of the scope.

Clear. Clear. Clear.

Stop.

A shadow fell the wrong way. It seemed to bulge up from the crook of two pieces of rebar on the extractor’s base superstructure. A dark patch nestled between hot metal on one side and a bulging waste-wasp nest on the other.

Raithe centred his crosshairs, squeezed the trigger.

Saw a flash.

He felt the hit on his skull. His vision shattered.

‘Hit. Hit… blind.’ Uncharacteristic panic in his voice. ‘Operative is blind.’

It had taken his vision, the only thing that mattered. Lying still in the dark, head throbbing, the reality of his failure descended on him.

Deadly number five.

No, there were words in the darkness.

OPTICS DAMAGED.

He lifted his head, saw light. Realised what had happened.

The hit had been on his rifle. It had smashed into the bottom lip of his scope, mangling it so badly it had sheared off and impacted the side of his mask, cracking the nano-weave plasteel housing. Blood poured from a scalp lesion on the right side of his skull.

Putting his face in the dirt, rather than behind the scope, had saved him.

‘Disregard. Optics damaged. Engaging.’

He snapped his head up, dropping his eyes in behind the Exitus. He used the optics of his mask and onboard ballistics cogitator to settle the rifle to its last position, using the notched iron sights at the front and rear of the gun for reference. Didn’t even take the time to zoom in the mask magnoculars – he wanted to stop the second shot.

He’d only lived this long because the Alphus had seen the spurt of blood and believed him dead.

Iron sights. No better than wild fire at this range. He noticed a hairline crack running along the Exitus’ stock, starting where his scope had been and continuing five inches forward towards the barrel. To fire would mean further damage, and he could not hit the Alphus.

But he could hit the bulbous waste-wasp nest.

He hammered out four turbo-penetrator rounds.

The hairline yawed wider with each shot, creeping towards the barrel. He suppressed an urge to vomit at the damage.

His magnoculars raced towards the Alphus’ position, and he saw it running, rifle slung, scuttling down the superstructure of the pilgrim like an arachnid. A cloud of waste-wasps from the shattered nest pursued it.

It was headed down to a dirtcycle parked at the base, leaned up against the pilgrim’s bare feet where it would have been concealed from his approach.

That was the Alphus’ attack pattern: shoot, then run.

No way to hit it, not moving. The crack had made the Exitus’ barrel unstable. Raithe felt the damage as he would a broken limb – a distant marrow-deep ache, kept at bay by combat drugs and mental conditioning. Chill-stimms flooded his system to keep him steady and counteract the nausea.

He couldn’t hit it, not with no scope and a loose barrel, but he could hit a stationary bike.

Raithe resighted, flicked a shot-selector to feed from the other side of the magazine. Mask ballistics spooled in his vision. He let out a long breath and pressed the stock so deep into his shoulder he felt it on the bone.

He sent two hellfire shells downrange, driven by fyceline and prayer.

On the final shot, the crack reached the front sight and the rifle’s body split.

But so did the bike.

The first hellfire shell clipped low between the tyres, rattling it with grit. The second ignited the promethium tank, sending the bike leaping forward into a fiery somersault.

Raithe was already moving, nimble hands working the quick-release catch to remove the Exitus’ barrel and stowing it in a loop on his leg, slinging the rifle body behind his back for easy movement.

He needed to get to the Alphus while it was stranded. Make up the mile of distance. Get close, though it had a rifle and he did not.

Dust plume to his left. The jackal pack, coming to aid its master.

‘Target has recalled outriders. Appears it has chosen threat elimination rather than escape. Likely calculates that if left alive I will pose continued danger, or has determined I am a military asset worth removing.’

Raithe clicked his ballistics cogitator over to its close-range tactical package.

‘Engaging.’

They came on him like the mythical hounds they were named after, whooping and baying, engines tearing the air. Dirtcycles wove evasive patterns back and forth, throwing fans of glass dust. A wolfquad vaulted a piece of hull scrap and slammed down, bouncing on its hydraulics, the pilot lights of its incinerator guttering. Its rider wore a full bubble helmet of the kind the promethium wildcatters used when the fumes got too bad.

They bore in, autopistols blinking. Ineffectual long-range fire spattered to Raithe’s left and well above his head. Clearly they shared none of their master’s skill, and the Alphus would take at least a minute to get anywhere near a proper firing position.

Raithe slowed, tracked them, put one foot forward in a firing stance. Mask optics painted them red, tagged targets and ordered firing priorities. Heavy weapons first. Then long-range.

There were fifteen of them. Far too many to kill them all before they closed.

Raithe made his plan. Picked his targets. Chose the movements he would use and the order in which they would die.

He dropped a hand to his holstered Exitus pistol. Waited until they entered a comfortable firing distance.

‘Engaging target’s security screen.’

Tags appeared above each approaching outrider, distance indicators counting down.

RANGE.

He drew the pistol and fired, the clap of the gun drumming out a soothingly rhythmic percussion.

Shot one drilled through the body of the wolfquad, the staggered melta detonations in the turbo-penetrator round boring a tunnel through the vehicle’s motorvator bloc before bursting the twin-canister promethium tank on its rear.

A two-stage detonation. The first flashover haloed the driver in a corona of flames. It had a moment to beat its arms against the inferno before the second tank chamber went up, blanketing the vehicle in fire that rolled and roiled as the quad careened forward.

Second and third shots: a pair of bikers right next to each other, good grouping.

Tap-tap.

One went down as a round pounded its ribcage in, mangled shoulder joints twisting the vehicle’s handlebars so it ate dirt and pitched over the front. The jackal slightly to its right simply let go and fell away, a fist-sized hole through its skull.

Fourth shot.

An arm holding a lit detonation charge spun away, severed by a shoulder hit. Blood fountained, adding a splash of ruby to the brown-orange dust cloud for a moment before the charge exploded and sent a cone of dark under-earth into the air.

Five. Deadly number five.

He swung the pistol around on an approaching jackal. But the rider saw the big pistol and slewed to the side, ploughing into its neighbour. Both fell in a tangle of twisted metal frames and shattered limbs.

No need to waste a bullet.

An autopistol slug passed two feet from Raithe’s body and he dropped to one knee, minimising his silhouette. Tracked a target for his fifth shot.

The Exitus bucked.

A jackal flew backwards, the rider behind wrestling with handlebars that no longer answered after the turbo-penetrator – still slick with its companion’s purple bile – snapped the driveshaft.

Raithe leapt sideways in a rolling dive as a jackal tore by, a mining pick cutting through the air where he’d just fired his last shot. A shotgun blast punched the air, and he felt the sting of buckshot tearing the armoured synskin on his right bicep. Only one penetration – he could tell by feel. His synskin tightened to staunch the blood flow.

The jackals zipped past him, firing, turning, circling him like he was prey. They were a cyclone of bullets and revving engines.

Raithe jinked and rolled. Dived and leapt. Enhanced senses, augmetics and surgical enhancements combined with a lifetime of training. Neatly stepping between the bullets. Shrugging off the pain as an autopistol slug creased his ribcage, glancing off his synskin and cracking a rib. Their encircling manoeuvre worked to his advantage – with his agility, they risked hitting each other every time they fired.

But even so, he wouldn’t survive more than a few seconds.

A hard round punched him in the back, making him stagger, and when he recovered he realised the data-map was gone from his vision. A hit on his ballistic cogitator unit, the armoured box in the centre of his back.

A kill shot, had he not been wearing it.

One last bullet before reloading. A single chance to break the ring of fire.

He mask-tagged a wolfquad, its pintle-mounted heavy stubber rotating on its auto-targeting servos, having a hard time tracking him. Raithe judged its speed and direction, sprinted an intercept course.

The driver, a purple-tinged monstrosity with a ridged brow, saw Raithe and steered towards him, hoping to ram the nimble assassin with its growling machine. He saw sunlight flash in the headlumens of the vehicle, the bars of its front grille leering.

Raithe levelled his pistol, saw the outrider flinch as he knew it would. Eyes closing against the shot and the moment of impact, hands instinctively squeezing the brakes.

And at that last jerk of deceleration Raithe wheeled, dancing aside, stabbing the magnetic grapnel he held in his left hand to the side of the servo-arm holding the malfunctioning stubber, and swung himself aboard.

An unaugmented human would have yanked their shoulder out of its socket, but Raithe’s physiology was as far from a normal man’s as the fabled Space Marines’ – though they were built for different purposes.

Raithe holstered his pistol and grabbed the manual firing grips of the stubber as he clambered up onto the wolfquad’s rear. He wrestled the uncooperative servos of the gun’s pintle mount as the auto-tracking system tried to resist him, then used his body weight to swing the big air-vented barrel out wide over the side of the quad.

Muzzle pointing at the horde of circling bikers.

He hit the firing stud.

Hard rounds tore out of the stubber’s barrel, muzzle flash sketching a fiery X across Raithe’s vision.

Bullets chopped into the swarming jackals. They tumbled from bike saddles and went skidding to the hardpan.

One twisted and let off a wild volley from its autopistol that spanged off the hijacked quad’s chassis in front of Raithe and blew the driver’s brainpan out. The hybrid slumped over the handlebars, putting the quad into a turn that threatened to pitch the little vehicle over.

Raithe ditched before the thing could roll, landing in a crouch, and fired his last shot.

The jackal who had fired at him crumbled, a hellfire round burning through its abdomen and severing the spine.

And Raithe was alone. The six remaining jackals revved away, becoming smaller in his unaugmented vision. The quad, its driver still slumped over the handlebars, trundled to a stop.

Raithe swore. They were headed towards the pilgrim. Towards the Alphus.

That was why the Alphus hadn’t fired on him during the fight. It had cut its losses and was preparing to run.

‘Nine outriders down. Six withdrawing. There are two options. Either they will provide a security screen for the target as it attempts to eliminate me from long range, or they are to help it evacuate.’

And if either happened, all these dead jackals would mean nothing. The measure of a Vindicare depended not on the number killed, but on whether the chosen target was killed.

Raithe could exterminate half the genestealer hybrids on Govii, and his masters at the Temple would still consider the mission a dishonour. His purpose was not to kill xenos – the Astra Militarum, the Astartes, even the golden-helmed Custodes could do that.

His purpose was to kill the Alphus.

He reloaded another six-round magazine into the Exitus pistol.

The wolfquad’s engine howled as he gunned it, sending grit fan-tailing from its rear tyres.

Raithe chose the quad because it would be big and noticeable. Fast and stable. Its stubber could be programmed to lay down fire as it drove forward, hopefully disordering the xenos abominations so they couldn’t draw a proper bead on him.

Drive it right at them. Trust to the Emperor. Hope the quad could get there before they evacuated.

When Lord Mezcalva, Most High Magus of the Burning Wyrm, had granted the Alphus her mission he’d made clear how she was expected to operate.

Kill the Imperial oppressors. Rove the wastelands and murder them. Kill leaders, cut communications and logistics lines, sow confusion and terror, then disappear.

Martyrdom was not her function. She would not be famous; indeed, her name would not even be remembered. Anonymity was the sacrifice she would provide to the star gods. To be felt by the enemy, rather than known to them.

Neither ego nor pride would have a part in it. Dying for the cause was a job for others. Her task was to kill, escape, and kill again. She was not to be eliminated or caught.

The terror must continue.

So when her jackals had failed to kill the marksman, she had recalled them. Cut her losses. They were mounted, and with no transport and a damaged rifle her adversary would soon be outdistanced.

She was scrambling down the pilgrim’s superstructure, rifle on her back.

Then, she heard the engine. A quad.

And stopped.

‘Jackal pack, report positions,’ she hissed into the vox. Her needle teeth had grown longer of late, and she found it hard to talk without drooling and slurring her S sounds, a fact that annoyed her even though she knew she should thank the wyrmfather for the blessing.

‘At the base of the extractor, packmother. Ready to ride.’

‘Report status on wolfquads.’

A hiss in her bead. Not feedback – cold rage. ‘Both killed, mother. It is a skilled marksman, as you warned.’

She hissed through needle teeth at the thought. This assassin had taken much from her. A customised dirtcycle. The pride of a clean kill. Nine of her gene-bonded pack. When the Nexos had found the first bodies six weeks before – exploded with a bullet large as an autocannon shell – he had warned some new kind of Imperial agent was in the sector.

It had already pursued her for nearly a lunar cycle, and she’d hoped to slip away as she had before. But now, the fanatic was coming at her in a wolfquad.

The Alphus grabbed a cable from her webbing, hooked it through a strut on the pump jack and used the D-clip to fasten it to her webbing rig. She’d been climbing the exposed structure and was close to the bottom – just above the cycling counterweight that powered the pilgrim’s endless bow. Too low to see where the Imperial agent was.

Engine. Closer.

She slid her rifle out of the case and settled it on her right shoulder, letting the cable and her planted feet take the weight. She stared down her scope at the hill, mutant eyes taking perfect range. Alien ears triangulating the sound. Confident she could hit the vehicle just as it crested the hill.

It leapt the hillock and filled her scope. A tan wolfquad body marred with bullet holes, heavy stubber wheeling and firing. The impersonal flat glare of the spy mask looking right at her.

Her rifle kicked into her shoulder. She saw the assassin’s body twitch as the shot hit him between the ribs on the left side, saw a piece of bone protruding from his chest.

The man didn’t fall. He rocked backward but then drove on, stubber spraying the pump jack. A bullet flattened against the metal below her, making the structure ring.

Star gods, this agent was tough.

‘Jackals, open fire! Unleash the fury of the wyrmfather!’

She worked the rifle’s bolt, feeding another round. Settled on the spy mask.

Kill shot. The mask folded inward, shattering fragments of shrapnel into the man’s brainpan. Nearly taking his head clean off.

Autopistol and shotgun rounds whizzed by the quad, one lucky strike taking out a headlumen.

Still the wolfquad came, full speed, as if the corpse wanted to drive it straight into the pump…

‘It’s rigged!’ she screamed into the bead, working her rifle action. ‘Vehicle-borne explosives. Use everything. Stop that damn quad!’

Six jackals fired at once, the storm of metal stripping paint and pulverising the agent’s body as it hurdled towards the pump. Bullets shredded the tyres and slowed its manic charge to a fast walking speed, riding on rims.

The Alphus put the rifle scope to her eye, looked for the charge. Knew she’d be dead if she didn’t find it.

Her shooting hide was sitting on half a million gallons of extracted promethium.

There. A block, strip-taped to the cargo chamber in the rear. Black timing device, wire antenna.

She fired. Pulped a shot right into the brick, blasting a hole in the centre as if it were clay. Still enough to end her should the detonator…

She stopped thinking, let the hidden self take over. Sensed where the bullet needed to go. Opened her consciousness to a black, whirling place where time had no meaning, to a consciousness that was both deeply encoded into who she was and how she was made, yet also terrifyingly, imperceptibly outside.

He breath slowed. Time slowed. Her consciousness narrowed down to just the scope.

Her crosshair found the detonator. Steady, almost leisurely pressure on the trigger.

Her rifle bucked, the detonator shattered.

The quad rolled harmlessly against the pilgrim’s skirts – scratch one Imperial agent. Another hash mark on her rifle butt.

Which was when the Alphus realised that there was still shooting – and screaming.

‘Engaging target.’

Raithe broke from cover and hit them from the side. Killed two before they even knew he was there. Got in and among them as they blazed away at the quad with the dead cultist strapped to it – wincing when he saw his precious spy mask explode.

He would do gruelling penance training for its loss, and the damage to his sacred rifle.

Whatever fury he felt over the damage, he vented on the dismounted jackals. Broke one’s spine with a chop from his Exitus, the pistol butt coming down hard on the back of a hybrid’s neck. Another jackal wheeled on him with an autopistol and Raithe grabbed the twitching body of his victim, using it as a shield, feeling it spasm as the bullets struck it.

His suppressed Exitus barked, blowing out the attacker’s throat out with an inferno round.

Raithe had got up on them using a dry creek bed that ran past the pilgrim, sprinting down the pebble-strewn bottom so fast that even his enhanced musculature burned with lactic acid. He had fired his first shot just as they were dismantling the quad with a storm of bullets.

A shotgunner turned towards him and he dodged into the squad to screen himself and break line of sight. Without his spy mask there was a slight hesitation before it fired, a brief moment of questioning whether he was friend or foe.

He saw that in the eyes of a jackal as he swept the legs out from under it and nailed it to the earth with a bullet. Kicked another in the back so it careened into the shotgunner then fired a turbo-penetrator round through both of them.

Dropped to one knee to put himself below the firing line of another jackal’s autopistol, blew the outrider’s guts out of its back.

Six dead in three seconds.

One bullet left.

One last target.

Raithe dived into the shadow of the pilgrim just as the Alphus’ shot slammed into the ground. He had judged the time and angle just right, had known the Alphus would have to reposition to get a line of sight on him.

And now he had it exposed.

He dodged out of cover, Exitus pointed up. Saw the alien hybrid lashed to the superstructure, pulling back the bolt action on a wickedly long rifle.

Long shot. Hard shot. No ballistic computer – he lined up the iron sights.

‘Firing on target,’ he said into the throat-vox.

Pulled the trigger.

Raithe felt the slide go back and the Exitus buck in his two-handed grip. Heard a scream of rage and pain from above.

Machinery rained down. Tubes and fragments. Rifle parts.

He had demolished the Alphus’ rifle.

‘No target kill,’ he murmured into the throat-vox. ‘Out of ammunition.’

Above, he saw the Alphus drop a hand to the small of its back. Sunlight glinted on metal.

Raithe dodged back into the cover of the pump-sculpture, machine-pistol bullets drumming the ground.

Then the firing stopped, and he heard the slap of skin on plasteel.

It was climbing.

‘Target ascending, in pursuit.’

Raithe pulled the spool of monofilament wire from his back rig and moved it to his front. Loaded one of the two magnetic grapnels he kept on him into the Exitus pistol barrel.

The rifle had better range, but needs must.

For five hundred years, the pilgrim pump had bowed and scraped, a holy machine extracting that most sacred of substances, promethium, from the crust of Govii. Atop it, the horizon moved as if one were standing on the deck of a ship.

The Alphus scrambled to the top, breathing hard. Muscles shaking.

Mauve blood seeped from her left hand, bound with a strip of cloth. Whatever chemical round had destroyed her rifle had also burned away two of her fingers and splashed caustic droplets into her face. When she’d put a hand to her forehead, one finger had touched exposed bone.

The fingers would grow back, in time. The star gods were generous.

That is, provided she kill the fanatic who was coming up after her.

One hand flew to the autopistol at her back. Pulled it. Trained it down the ladder she’d come up. Waiting for the pursuer to climb into her sights. Covering the platform belo–

A dart clanged into her autopistol and suddenly it was gone, ripped from her grip.

The Alphus wheeled to see the marksman at the far end of the bowing pilgrim, feet planted on the back of the pump-sculpture’s hooded head. A cable was wrapped around one hand, with the end attached to some kind of magnetic dart that was dragging her autopistol towards him.

She took a step forward and he flicked the cable to the side, sending the pistol into space. He let the cable go.

‘After the wolfquad decoy,’ she hissed, ‘I should’ve known you wouldn’t chase me directly.’

‘I learned the first time,’ said the fanatic, ‘that chasing you was deadly.’ He advanced towards her, feet steady despite the pendulum dip of the rig that made him climb uphill one moment, downhill the next. He stood in a low fighting stance, left arm forward in a guard. In his right hand was an eighteen-inch knife. Its matt-black blade shone dull in the beating sun, only the wire-thin edge reflecting the glare.

She laughed and drew her own blade. It was a foot long, its edge envenomed, sawtooth made for hacking out shooting nests or sawing trophies off targets should a kill need to be confirmed.

‘You were made,’ she said. ‘And you have come far for a constructed thing. But I am the stuff of the star gods. A child of heavenly beings. I am a killer born. You, little marksman, are nothing without your tools.’

‘No,’ the fanatic replied. ‘My tools are nothing without me. I am a killer trained.’

She dashed towards him, low and furious, using her free hand as if she were some kind of scuttling insect. Incredibly fast. Impossibly fast. Horizon blurring in her vision and world stretching as she clawed her way towards the black-clad foe, breath hissing hot through her needle teeth. Smelling him. Sensing his blood. Knowing what it would taste like on her long tongue as she lapped it from his open throat.

And then she was there, and saw her blow would land. She stabbed downward at the open space to sink her knife behind his collarbone. And in her beating hearts, she knew that this murder instinct could not be learned through training or practice. It was innate, granted through the gifts of gods and masters.

Raithe saw the blow come. Chopped his left hand upward to meet the Alphus’ descending knife. Heard the bones of the hybrid’s wrist shatter like kindling under the hard edge of his hand. Noted the fury in its alien eyes as the knife clattered harmlessly between their feet.

And in those mutant eyes, he got a hint of the enhanced senses of its alien biology and the sheer depth of its physical experience.

Because he saw the exquisite agony the Alphus experienced as his blade plunged into its thick neck.

For Absolom Raithe knew how to cut a throat.

About the Author

Robert Rath Robert Rath is a freelance writer from Honolulu who is currently based in Hong Kong. Though mostly known for writing the YouTube series Extra History, his credits also include numerous articles and a book for the U.S. State Department. ‘The Garden of Mortal Delights’ is his first story for Black Library.

An extract from Assassinorum: Execution Force.

The Changer’s symbol squirmed around the Black Legionnaire’s right eye. Severin Drask, sorcerer lord of the Crimson Slaughter, could not take his eyes from the god’s rune.

From the smile that Beraddon, sorcerer of the Black Legion, brutish and arrogant, offered to Drask, he knew it. Angular runes marred the man’s stone teeth. One eye shone a dirty, muddled brown, while the other was a chunk of marble emblazoned with the Pantheon star.

‘The Warmaster, praise be,’ began Beraddon, ‘will not see you. He will not indulge your request. His time is precious, now more than ever. Your request for assistance and consultation is denied.’

Drask made to protest, even as his hearts sank.

Beraddon’s smile grew wider, feral, hulking, infuriating. ‘I see the disappointment on your face, weakblood. Worry not. The Despoiler, honour to him, will not see you. But I will.’

‘The Temple of Shades must be opened, my lord.’ Gods of the watching warp, to call another lord was galling. ‘We can open a new front in this war. No longer will we be bound to the Eye of Terror. No longer will the glorious hosts of the True Crusaders batter themselves against Cadia’s walls. The Temple of Shades will give me the power to open a new warp rift, one large enough to vomit vast armies into the Imperium’s vulnerable core. This is a chance to end it. This is a chance to end the Long War.’

The pitch, rehearsed and recited so many times, flowed past Drask’s lips, an entreaty, and an exhortation to action. The words were etched on his hearts, beating through his blood. He knew how precious this chance was. He knew the favour he would earn with the Warmaster. His would be the name lifted in unending praise to the watching gods, as the one who had broken the bloody stalemate that had so far prevented the victory of the Long War.

The Black Legionnaire’s eyes narrowed. ‘What do you know of the Long War? We have been fighting this crusade for countless aeons. Prattle not to me about it. For you, it is short. The conflict you fight in is but a weak hint of the trials we have endured and overcome.’ His lip curled into a smirk, still mocking, but also thoughtful. Daemonic faces swam through the dirty silver of his mutated flesh. ‘How do you know this will work?’

‘I have seen it, lord. Much of the future is known and bestowed upon me through the glorious gifts of the patron we both serve.’

Beraddon paced, stomping through broken bodies. He snorted a laugh.

‘I doubt that,’ he said. ‘How did you come to know of the Temple of Shades?’

‘Certain daemons whispered of it. I followed the traces, the wisps of information across the Eye. In the great libraries of the Ahmen-Ahket, I found further proof. The Temple of Shades exists, I assure you. It exists and it will do all I have said.’

Darkness curled from Drask’s mouth as he spoke, the echoes of the souls he had consumed on his quest for this knowledge. They wailed in time with his words.

Beraddon’s ship, the Seventh Edict, was playing host to this meeting. Drask wished it had been otherwise. He wished to stalk the grand halls of his own ship, the Liar’s Gift, where he could posture and threaten this arrogant son of failed Horus. There Drask would have been surrounded by the reassuring presence of his own warband. Instead, Beraddon had called him here, shortly after Drask had sent his request for an audience with the Warmaster.

The twilight halls of the Seventh Edict glowered down at the pair, pressing in at Drask’s mind.

Here, Drask was forced to curry favour, to scurry beneath the notice of those who believed themselves better. The sneering princes of the Black Legion. He had killed many of them, proved the worth of his sorcery. And yet, Abaddon would not condescend to see him, to listen to his plan. He met with Beraddon, this loathsome creature, in some forgotten court tucked away beneath towering angular glyphs and broken, mummified corpses.

The fire-blackened corpses coruscated with ghostly flames, their bodies shrouded and locked in foetal agony. Beraddon ignored them, but Drask could sense the memories of the fire that burned from his hands, the phantom echoes of dying warriors and the Black Legionnaire’s laughter. The voices of the dead whispered at the edge of Drask’s hearing.

‘Why did you leave your brothers, weakblood?’ Beraddon asked, idly stripping the flesh from a woman’s shrivelled corpse. The Changer’s sigil squirmed along his face again, dancing along the rugged contours of the Black Legionnaire’s features. ‘Kranon has been to the Warmaster’s court. Your Chapter Master,’ he sneered the title, ‘has met with the Despoiler.’

‘Liar,’ whispered a dry voice in Drask’s mind. It was one of the slain who dogged his steps, killed in ages past, whispering secrets. His Chapter’s curse and its first steps on the path to damnation manifested most often when his choler rose. ‘Ignorant worm. Strike him down. I never liked him. He is useless.’

Drask felt his face flush with anger. Flames danced in his vision. The Crimson Slaughter sorcerer lord considered immolating Beraddon. He pictured the Black Legionnaire’s flesh running like molten metal. His hands curled into fists, and tiny daemons, anger bright, skittered over the wrought iron.

‘I have Abaddon’s favour. He will not listen to your plan. He has no time for such things,’ Beraddon continued. The chunk of marble in his left eye socket glowed with flickering witchlight.

Liar, Drask thought. This man was nothing, merely a veteran of a conflict that no longer held relevance. A son of the things that the Despoiler disavowed, Beraddon could only claim importance due to the quirks of fate. Warriors of Horus’s Legion no longer mattered, not to Abaddon the Despoiler or the empire he was supposedly interested in building.

‘The Warmaster will not see you. He will not grant his assent to this endeavor. But,’ the Black Legionnaire said, ‘do it anyway. Accomplish this thing and I will ensure that the Warmaster is made aware. We will both rise in glory. Forget the Ezekarion and the ruling power structure of the Warmaster’s court. If we do this thing – if we break the deadlock of the Long War – our names will echo through eternity. The gods themselves will grant us unimaginable power. I will ensure that the right ears know of the Temple of Shades and what we did there.’

We, the Black Legionnaire had said. We, as if he would do anything to assist Drask. No, Drask thought. He will merely add his name to the glory I will write upon the stars. We shall see when the balance of power shifts.

‘As you say, my lord,’ Drask acquiesced. The words tasted sour on his tongue; the contempt, the anger, barely held in check.

Beraddon nodded. ‘Good. Succeed or die, weakblood. I look forward to seeing our results.’

The audience ended. Drask left the room, fire sprites dripping from the cracks in his armour, his rage nearly incarnated as weak daemon-things.

The halls of the Seventh Edict were empty, nearly derelict, full of burned corpses.

Shadows pooled as he passed a recessed alcove marked with sharp runes. A horror manifested, armour wrought in bone and darkness. A horned helmet lowered in greeting.

‘Akkarnol,’ Drask said.

‘My lord,’ the shadow acknowledged. When the Crimson Slaughter warrior spoke, it was with a daemon’s whickering snarl. His voice had been warped, along with his body, by their journeys within the Eye. ‘What does the Black Legionnaire have to say?’

‘What they always do. They will watch and claim the glory.’

Akkarnol laughed, the sound deep and rasping.

‘It was ever thus,’ the warrior said. ‘They do not care for the achievements of us “weakbloods” until we accomplish something of note that they can claim for their own aggrandisement. We should just kill him and be done with it.’

‘Your words are wise, brother,’ Drask acknowledged. Where many of his broken Chapter had fallen to the mad blessings of the Blood God, Drask and others like him had sought a different master. Akkarnol’s horns creaked as they twisted into the Changer’s rune.

Their swift strides brought them to the bustling port of the embarkation bay. Servitors trundled past the cowled figures of the Dark Mechanicum. The burned corpses that filled the halls of the Seventh Edict were also present here, lying where they had fallen against the brushed steel.

‘But we need Beraddon’s support, however little he offers. If there is a chance he will bring this to the Warmaster’s attention, we must seize it. I will not return to the Lost Hope. I will not bow to Kranon’s madness again and call it wisdom.’

As they boarded the Thunderhawk Akkarnol asked, ‘What do we do? What are your orders, lord?’

The gunship rumbled around them as they left the Seventh Edict behind. Drask ignored the voices of the slain that whispered in his ears, taunting and threatening him.

‘We open the Temple of Shades. We end the Long War.’

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A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2020.
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Cover illustration by Derrick Chew.

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