Contents

Cover

Assassinorum: Iron Sight – Extract

A Black Library Publication

eBook license

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.

Click here to buy Assassinorum: Iron Sight.

A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2020.
This eBook edition published in 2020 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Derrick Chew.

Assassinorum: Iron Sight © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2020. Assassinorum: Iron Sight, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, The Horus Heresy, The Horus Heresy Eye logo, Space Marine, 40K, Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000, the ‘Aquila’ Double-headed Eagle logo, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.
All Rights Reserved.

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-80026-317-8

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

See Black Library on the internet at
blacklibrary.com

Find out more about Games Workshop’s world of Warhammer and the Warhammer 40,000 universe at
games-workshop.com

eBook license

This license is made between:

Games Workshop Limited t/a Black Library, Willow Road, Lenton, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, United Kingdom (“Black Library”); and

(2) the purchaser of an e-book product from Black Library website (“You/you/Your/your”)

(jointly, “the parties”)

These are the terms and conditions that apply when you purchase an e-book (“e-book”) from Black Library. The parties agree that in consideration of the fee paid by you, Black Library grants you a license to use the e-book on the following terms:

* 1. Black Library grants to you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, royalty-free license to use the e-book in the following ways:

o 1.1 to store the e-book on any number of electronic devices and/or storage media (including, by way of example only, personal computers, e-book readers, mobile phones, portable hard drives, USB flash drives, CDs or DVDs) which are personally owned by you;

o 1.2 to access the e-book using an appropriate electronic device and/or through any appropriate storage media; and

* 2. For the avoidance of doubt, you are ONLY licensed to use the e-book as described in paragraph 1 above. You may NOT use or store the e-book in any other way. If you do, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license.

* 3. Further to the general restriction at paragraph 2, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license in the event that you use or store the e-book (or any part of it) in any way not expressly licensed. This includes (but is by no means limited to) the following circumstances:

o 3.1 you provide the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.2 you make the e-book available on bit-torrent sites, or are otherwise complicit in ‘seeding’ or sharing the e-book with any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.3 you print and distribute hard copies of the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.4 you attempt to reverse engineer, bypass, alter, amend, remove or otherwise make any change to any copy protection technology which may be applied to the e-book.

* 4. By purchasing an e-book, you agree for the purposes of the Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000 that Black Library may commence the service (of provision of the e-book to you) prior to your ordinary cancellation period coming to an end, and that by purchasing an e-book, your cancellation rights shall end immediately upon receipt of the e-book.

* 5. You acknowledge that all copyright, trademark and other intellectual property rights in the e-book are, shall remain, the sole property of Black Library.

* 6. On termination of this license, howsoever effected, you shall immediately and permanently delete all copies of the e-book from your computers and storage media, and shall destroy all hard copies of the e-book which you have derived from the e-book.

* 7. Black Library shall be entitled to amend these terms and conditions from time to time by written notice to you.

* 8. These terms and conditions shall be governed by English law, and shall be subject only to the jurisdiction of the Courts in England and Wales.

* 9. If any part of this license is illegal, or becomes illegal as a result of any change in the law, then that part shall be deleted, and replaced with wording that is as close to the original meaning as possible without being illegal.

* 10. Any failure by Black Library to exercise its rights under this license for whatever reason shall not be in any way deemed to be a waiver of its rights, and in particular, Black Library reserves the right at all times to terminate this license in the event that you breach clause 2 or clause 3.