‘I will not fall to that serpent.’ Zeck wrenched a piece of metal from the car and threw it at Krule’s head.
Krule dodged, put himself into a guard position and backed away as Zeck advanced.
‘Traitor!’ roared Zeck. ‘You would slay a High Lord?’
He charged at Krule. The Assassin sidestepped. Zeck’s fist punched a blow into the rockcrete road that would have shattered a man’s ribcage to mince.
‘I have been ordered to terminate you. My wishes don’t come into it.’
‘A man who obeys orders without thought is as much a traitor as one who thinks treason for himself. Your master would usurp the rule of the Imperium. You are as culpable as he.’
‘I’ve been given orders only to kill you,’ said Krule. He shouldn’t talk to his marks, but his misgivings were resurfacing.
Zeck swung again. Krule ducked the blow. A grinding sound came from Zeck’s left knee. The crash had done its damage.
‘Then surely you must care for your own life as much as you do for your duty,’ said Zeck. ‘Vangorich will end you once this is over.’
Krule paused. Zeck spoke Krule’s own thoughts aloud.
Zeck’s fist pounded into Krule’s chest. The metal in his ribs flexed, cracking the bone it was bonded to, and he was sent staggering back. Zeck laughed and drew back his fist. Krule caught it in his own hands, twisted, straightened the Grand Provost Marshal’s arm into a lock. Servo-motors whined as he pushed, but Krule’s musculature was as enhanced as his skeleton, and slowly he forced Zeck to the ground.
‘The problem with this model of augmetic is that although it is very strong, the shoulder attachments are quite weak in this one direction,’ said Krule, and slammed the heel of his hand hard into Zeck’s shoulder. Zeck roared in pain. He swatted at the Assassin with his free hand, but Krule took the blows, and he pushed harder and harder.
With a wrenching crack, Zeck’s left arm buckled around the joint. The plasteel ruptured. Wires fizzed and the arm fell limp. Krule released it. The Provost Marshal staggered to his feet, but Krule spun and kicked hard at his weakened knee joint, shattering it, and Zeck fell to the ground again.
‘When I put someone down, they stay down, Zeck.’ He lifted his metal-bonded fists and prepared to deliver the final blow.
‘Wait! Wait!’ cried Zeck. ‘You paused. You know he will kill you.’
‘We’ve all got to die sometime,’ said Krule.
‘But why like this, in dishonour? What of your oaths of loyalty?’
‘I owe my loyalty to the Grand Master, no other man.’
‘That is untrue! You owe your loyalty to the Emperor of Mankind, not to Drakan Vangorich. Think, Krule! Your Officio is a check on the others. But where is the check on the Assassins? Vangorich has gone rogue. Is this how you want to spend your life? Murdering those who disagree with Vangorich? He doesn’t need to do this. Thane appointed him Lord Protector. His only reason can be that he wishes to rule alone.’
Krule lowered his hands.
‘You see it!’ Zeck said, encouraged. He pulled himself up, resting on his good knee. ‘You’ve got to stop him, Krule. You’re the only one who can get close to him. The rest of us are finished. If he has sent you after me, the most loyal of the Emperor’s servants, then not one of the High Lords will see the week out.’
‘I think that’s why I’m here,’ said Krule. ‘He sent me away. He guessed I wouldn’t agree.’
‘And you discover this now?’
‘I am not as intelligent a man as Drakan Vangorich, do you think he’d have me around if I were?’ Anger rose up in him. He shook his head and began to pace. ‘It won’t work. I’m next on his list. I better disappear.’
‘You’ve got to try. If he takes over the Imperium, it will be a disaster. No one man can rule. Finish his reign before it begins and call back the Lord Guilliman. You will be a hero.’
‘Do you think I care about fame, heroism? Do you think I want a statue?’ Krule laughed. ‘I’m an Assassin!’
‘Then think about the future of the human race. If you don’t care about that, then what have you been killing for? You’re nothing but a monster.’
Krule stepped back. The ruined face of Zeck remained awkwardly upturned. Zeck looked like the monster, not he. But true monstrousness was worn on the inside, the way Horus and his brothers had hidden their treachery. Krule might get away and live a life on some backwater world, always looking over his shoulder. That would make him no better than Vangorich, complicit in his treachery by his refusal to act.
‘All right. All right. I can’t face going back to Tashkent anyway. I’ll act the loyal attack dog and then I’ll bite him hard. But I need proof I killed you. It’s the only way he’ll swallow the lie and let me get near to him.’
‘Take what you need,’ Zeck said. The relief in his voice was palpable.
‘You’re not going to like it.’ Krule pulled out a monofilament garrote from his utility belt.
‘Wait! Stop! There must be another way.’
‘I am sorry,’ said Krule, ‘but I’m going to need your head.’
Chapter Eleven
Red Haven
Saskine Haast walked into the great stores of the palace of the Fabricator General. Servitors clomped about, mindlessly performing whatever it was they were programmed to do. Whenever she saw an adept, she ducked out of sight until they had passed. They were no one of any consequence, but such low-ranking people tended to be insufferable busybodies, taking such pride in their inconsequential work that they would report the slightest thing out of place. They bemused Haast. She could understand it if they behaved so for favour, but she had spent some time now among the servants and bondsmen of the palace, and most of them appeared to lack any iota of ambition. They had been extremely hard to hide among, and she had come close to discovery. She checked her impatience. So close to being freed from the tedious role that had been forced upon her, she was in danger of making a mistake.
The palace’s store was immense, and stocked with all manner of things. There were those tech-priests who still ate, and so there was room after room of hyper-chilled larders. The machine as well as the flesh of such creatures needed sustenance, and so there were also kilometres of shelving taken up with chemical drums and vats of elixirs, spare parts and raw materials. These items for the maintenance of Kubik’s extensive household did not interest her. She needed the deeper stores. Kubik’s personal laboratory was incorporated into the palace and it was served by its own complex of receptaculae. Beyond them were the cavernous cellae, where treasures from all over the Martian empire were kept: rare technologies, organisms and resources. But what she needed was closer to hand.
She followed stairs down into the chemical stores of the palace, passing huge tanks full of liquids and silos of powder. She checked the location of the object on her data-slate and slowed. She was getting close.
She halted at a long row of identical cylinders, taller than two men and held in frames of yellow metal embellished with castings of the Machina Opus. She searched out the datastamps at the top of each one, the laser reader on her slate bipping as it scanned the patterns of binaric lines and dots. They were full of pressurised methalon, all but one.
‘001100011110,’ she said, and double-checked the number sent to her by Mariazet Isolde. This was it. The cylinder was sealed and must be cut open. If the information was wrong, she’d be doused in supercooled liquid and suffer an agonising death. She did not hesitate, and produced a lascutter from inside her stolen robes. It was then, lascutter in hand, that she was interrupted.
‘01-Devore, what by the Omnissiah are you doing down here?’
Saskine Haast tensed at the high, piping voice of Vorid Chume, Kubik’s steward.