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Assassinorum: Live Wire – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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Assassinorum: Live Wire

by Robert Rath

For nine days Jezette Vaal lived in darkness, unaware of anything but the smell of unwashed bodies and the heat of the thrumming reactors below her feet. On the fourth day, a small group tried to sabotage the prison hulk. These men and women were, after all, tech-thralls and data-menials. Servants of the blessed Machine-God. They’d lived decades – some their whole lives – on void-borne craft, and knew how to access maintenance ducts in even the most secure ship holds.

Vaal had been an engine-master on the Theorem of Castillus – a position of relative privilege in the mid-decks – and wasn’t brought into the plot. Even now, with the crew captured by tech-pirates and packed like livestock in a hold, the ship’s rigid class system held. All vessels are divided between two categories: those that hold the nine-tailed whip, and those that feel it. And to ordinary voidsmen, warrant officers like Vaal were not to be trusted.

The plotters had planned to reach the reactor and overload it. They didn’t make it more than ten feet into the duct.

In the vaults of the ship’s hold, hidden among the rafters, telescoping eyes watched the would-be saboteurs. Within a second, the watchers descended on the subjects, crashing down with the flutter of semi-organic wings, shattering spines and limbs with their iron feet. Flechette carbines painted the floor with the six prisoners’ gore – and then the attackers were gone. Back to the rafters. Once again watching.

No one tried to escape after that.

Now, five days later, the prisoners milled about restlessly. They’d felt the bone-numbing jolt of landing, felt the depressurisation of de-gassing after planetfall. Vaal fought to stay upright in the jostling crowd, nearly crushed as it surged towards the rear hatch.

‘Open!’ she shouted, her breath squeezed from her lungs. ‘For Omnissiah’s sake, open!’

Expectant murmurs turned to shrieks as the ramp dropped, blinding them with sunlight reflecting off the snow. Vaal’s ocular augmetics adjusted to the brightness, and she saw blue sparks leaping off taser goads at the back of the crowd. They were low-power blows, meant to herd rather than kill, and they splashed neon light across the tormented faces of the captives. Vaal saw the stampede coming and forced her way through a gap, towards the side of the hold.

‘Slowly!’ she shouted. ‘Go slowly or else–’

Screams. A flood of bodies like a dam breaking. Half a dozen tech-thralls went down under the feet of the rushing press of flesh. Then they were out, herded into the trenchway that funnelled them to the great dome. Bright reflections off the snowpack dazzled their eyes and instantly burned their pale skin. Quivering lungs, accustomed to a lifetime of thin shipboard atmosphere, ached at the touch of the freezing, oxygen-rich air. Vox-amplified throats howled in fear at the white ice flurries that blew down, settling on their robes and bare skin. Vaal had heard of precipitation in stories, but could not recall the word for it. A great ice shelf rose to her right, the wind-polished surfaces the same bright blue as the captors’ taser goads.

And ahead, the ice station awaited.

Vaal did not know why they were here. Why they had been spared by the heretek pirates, when the killers had slaughtered the rest of the crew aboard the Theorem of Castillus. They’d come from different decks, different departments. There seemed to be no commonality in rank or origin. But now that the crowd all faced the same way, it was obvious. Each one of the starveling mass had a connection port at the base of their skull – a hardwired data-jack.

Ahead, the gate of the ice station opened like a great jaw.

‘You are about to embark on a great awakening,’ said the thing on the vid-screen.

They were everywhere, those screens. Mounted on equipment and the inward curving walls of the dome. The half-face – for only its nose and lower jaw were visible – had sallow skin and blackened teeth. Nutrient hoses sprouted from both nostrils. The images blurred and rolled, the words desynchronised with the drawn lips.

‘Moisture damage,’ Vaal whispered, her engineer’s mind diagnosing the problem even as she was herded through the labyrinth of iron cages that forced the captives into single file. ‘Station interior is heated, causes condensate.’

The comforting train of thought distracted her from the fear.

‘You will be among us. You will belong. Cast aside the lies of your Omnissiah, for it is but a ghost conjured by superstition and number-prayers. We will unlock and reformat you to serve the Power of Eight. For the glory of the Upgrader, the Lord of Transmutation. Quavarian has come to grant you deliverance. Bow and accept the heart_wrym.’

Her stomach went acidic at the name. A minor algorithm in her visual augmetics crashed and restarted, rendering her blind for two point seven seconds. Makov Quavarian. The traitor.

They were truly lost.

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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 Akim Kaliberda.

Assassinorum: Live Wire © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2020. Assassinorum: Live Wire, 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.
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ISBN: 978-1-80026-332-1

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