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Enforcer – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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Chapter One

The machine-cultists of the Adeptus Mechanicus are not prone to strong emotions – the beautiful coldness of the Machine is held up as a model for admiration and emulation, even for those orders of the Mechanicus not directly concerned with physical mechanics and the gradual transfiguration of their own bodies into cybernetics. Genetor-Magos Cynez Sanja was of the Order Biologis, with a greater understanding of the emotions of the flesh than most, but this evening the ability to catalogue the exact neurotransmitters that flared inside his skull and how they reacted to and reinforced his thoughts and stimuli, let alone the Cult of the Machine’s scriptures and psalms in praise of pure reason, were small consolation. Here in his own domain, in the very shrine of the Adeptus Mechanicus in the Adeptus district in what was supposed to be the safest enclave of the capital hive of the fortress world of Hydraphur, Cynez Sanja had found himself under siege. He was displeased, he was frustrated and he was – to his own dismay – angry.

Noises from the turmoil outside were seeping through the walls as Sanja stood in the forechamber behind the shrine’s great adamantite doors, listening with his head bowed and his eyes closed. He had severed his link with the external opticons half an hour before, refusing to watch what was going on outside any longer, but now came a four-second burst of ultrasonic machine-code from the throat-mounted vocoder of his assistant, Brother-Postulant Chaim. Sanja reluctantly decompressed and scanned it; the reports and message transcripts unfolding neatly in his brain.

They were not pleasant. The avenues to the Administratum towers were blocked and the tally-house and the Ordinates’ dormitory were ringed in. The bridge over the water-gardens to the Scriptoria was cut off and a brave group of adepts from the procurator-general’s tower who had tried to force their way down the hopelessly-overrun Street of Quills had not been heard from again. The Adeptus Quarter, it seemed, belonged to the Adeptus no longer.

As if to underscore the point, there was a ringing thud that seemed to come through the walls and floor at once. Sanja glowered and cycled the tiny augmetic layers in his skull through a precise series of adjustments, but the walls still muffled the sounds to the point where he couldn’t pick out much more than a rhythmic, concussive hammering and the faintest traces of hoarse shouts. He wondered again why nobody had thought it necessary to raise the void shields.

He opened his eyes and looked around him, drawing what serenity he could from his surroundings. The forechamber was a shortened rectangle, its measurements calculated to within a millionth of a millimetre to mimic the proportions, if not the size, of the forechamber of the high genetor’s own shrine on the Mechanicus heartworld of Mars. The black steel of the floor was inlaid in gold and ruby with illuminated circuit patterns and alchemical forms. The friezes on the walls were burnished brass arrays of pistons and valves, their constant, silent hydraulic motion carrying binary-language catechisms of praise to the Machine-God back and forth. Setting his veiled hood back on his shoulders and tilting his head back, the genetor-magos contemplated the works above him: layers of interlocking cog wheels, the simplest but most sacred icons of the Mechanicus priesthood, hung weightless, slowly rotating in the air, obscuring the roof. Sanja murmured a prayer and felt the circuits tattooed around his eye-sockets tingle as he merged his sight with the opticon in the steel gargoyle on the wall ahead and examined himself through the machine-spirit’s eyes.

His own scarlet tech-priest’s finery seemed to shine even in the dim light of the forechamber. Behind him, framed by the second set of giant doors that led into the shrine’s central cloister, was his retinue, standing with dignity in ceremonial formation and waiting upon his order. Chaim stood two paces behind Sanja’s right shoulder. Behind them were four skitarii, the dedicated templar-soldiers of the Machine cult, their burnished carapace armour pierced with cybernetic cables and leads and their power-axes held at arms. Flanking each skitarius, two guardian servitors, mindless vat-grown automata hung about with mechanised implants of their own, weapon-muzzles pointed demurely down. His two luminant skulls, each half-plated with gold leaf and trailing clusters of perceptor vanes and mechadendrites, hung in the air over Sanja’s shoulders.

The forechamber was not wide, but its high-vaulted roof was lost in the shadows above the layers of free-hanging cogs. The retinue formation, small though it was, stretched almost the width of the room.

The genetor-magos made a small sound of approval, feeling stronger for his moment of contemplation. He would not be cowed here, in his own temple. Whatever was going on out there, they would meet it as befitted their station.

‘It is time, magos.’ Chaim routed his speech through his own larynx this time, not the vocoder-plate. ‘You asked to be notified.’

Sanja did not respond, as was only proper with a functionary, but simply disengaged himself from the gargoyle, took a quick moment to readjust to his own eyes, then made a single pace forward and, through the transmitter above his right temple, commanded the doors to open.

An avalanche of noise was the first thing to pour in, and Sanja almost flinched before he had the time to cycle down his senses and put up filters. What had been soft thuds with the gates closed was now a bellow of drumming that felt like physical impacts, as though someone were tapping him rapidly in the chest and tugging at his clothes. Underneath that came shouts, screams, squeals, and every so often the sound of breaking glass or splintering plastic. The air was full of smoke and vapour, the swarms of figures milling around the foot of the steps indistinct at fifty metres and an invisible source of yells at a hundred.

How many were packed into the plaza Sanja did not try and guess, but he had seen it hold thousands when Adeptus processions had mustered on the half-kilometre circle of engraved flagstones. That was an inspiring sight, rank upon rank of the Emperor’s chosen servants in the rich golden Hydraphur sunlight, but this…

In fact, this almost seemed a deliberate mockery of those processions. Sanja could just make out the row of gaudy trucks and floats that they had apparently all followed here on their damned parade, covered in gaudy foil-and-plastic props to turn them into half-hearted versions of Astartes Land Raiders, Leviathan command juggernauts, Ecclesiarchal reliquary carts, whatever else, their cabs and beds decked with dancers and clowns scattering baubles and sweets. Sanja had no desire at all to recalibrate his cortical implants to see them more clearly: as he and his attendants moved forward in stately ceremonial gait, half-pace and all in step, he was seeing more than enough.

Two diamond-glass pillars stood at the foot of the ramp up to the shrine doors, and each pillar stood on a waist-high metal plinth. On the left plinth stood a pudgy young man with a blond ponytail, dressed in an imitation Imperial Commissar’s uniform with the cap sliding down over one ear. He was digging candied nuggets or some kind of stimulant chew out of his pockets and tossing them into the cheering crowd around him. Another equally corpulent boy in a poor attempt at an Ecclesiarchal prayer shawl was trying to scrabble onto the plinth and grab his ankles, but was too drunk to lift himself up. The right plinth was swarming with bodies in varying shades of green: mockeries of Navy uniforms or Scholastia Psykana robes. A woman wearing what she probably thought was an Imperial Legate’s uniform brandished a bottle, popped the top with her thumb, and scattered the contents all over her happily shrieking and now sticky companions as a burly man in an Administratum scribe’s robe grabbed her around the waist and clamped his mouth over hers.

Nothing in the sea of bodies was any more edifying: everywhere were hideous over-ornamented attempts at Sororitas surplices, arbitor helmets, military and Administratum uniforms of every design. Despite his determination to remain calm Sanja bristled at a brief glimpse of a sequinned, dandified version of his own scarlet Adeptus Mechanicus kimono, the seals and badges placed grotesquely at all the wrong points, before the crowd closed and hid it.

There was no sight of his visitor. It was time, was it? Chaim had miscalculated, and Sanja was not appreciative of having to stand out here watching over this display for a moment longer than he had to.

One or two people below them had noticed the doors opening. They weren’t yet drunk enough to think about coming up the ramp, but the whoops and cheers were starting. Sanja was about to march back inside when he caught sight of what had to be the person he was to meet: a wedge of a dozen black Adeptus Arbites uniforms, too stark to be props, forcing their way through the press of glitter and noise. At the bottom step, with only a few more paces to go, they ground to a halt – it took a moment for Sanja to focus his hearing on them and realise what the problem was.

‘Stand aside.’ It was the voice of the lead arbitrator, a head shorter than her squad and with honour icons on her armour that Sanja had no doubt were real.

‘Ooh! Yes, madam! Stand aside for the lady justice!’ Giggles. Another woman, much younger and considerably drunker. Sanja guessed it was the one with her back to him, with her hair fluffed and glow-dyed, wearing a lurid attempt at an Administratum Praefecta’s formal tunic that was a size too tight for her.

‘I’m not joking, and I’m not in the mood. Stand the hell aside!’

Sanja tensed reflexively as his sensors picked up the hum of a power weapon charging.

‘Oh, is that real? Wherever did you get it? A real one of those arbitor things, what is it, a power-thing, I don’t know. I’m one of these Administr… Administratum thingies… Pref… perf… It’s a good touch, though.’ More giggles. Someone else was slurring, ‘Arrest her! Arrest her!’ over and over. The girl grabbed a vial.

‘Let’s drink to that Arbites thing, and to, to my new friend here, with a very dull costume, I have to say, you know… no, let me finish, you lot, you’re really doing the part.’

‘I am playing no “part”, woman. This is the seal of an arbitor senioris of Hydraphur. You will stand asi–’

‘See, now, arbitor seni-whatever, you’re starting to just get tiresome. You need to have a drink and–’

Crack. Sanja winced, despite himself.

Ignoring the wails of the partygoers behind her, the arbitor stamped up the ramp to where Sanja was waiting, her squad behind her, power-maul hissing in her hand. On the top step she thumbed its field off and relaxed with a visible effort before they stepped forward to greet each other. Sanja stretched one hand out of his sleeve and made the sign of the Great Engine while his guest clicked her heels and touched the maul to her forehead, then shuffled her right foot a half-pace back and made a slight bow: the short-form salute of the senior Adeptus.

‘In the name of the masterful and enduring Machine-God I welcome you to his temple and his benediction. May the miracle of the Machine watch over you.’ Sanja had to raise his voice over the din around them. ‘I welcome you also in my name, Cynez Sanja, magos and genetor of the great Mechanicus, and pledge my goodwill in the name of the Emperor Omnissiah.’

‘I receive and return your greeting and make my humble respects to the Mechanicus,’ his guest replied. ‘Shira Calpurnia Lucina, arbitor senioris of the Adeptus Arbites, extends her greeting in the service of the Lex Imperia and the God-Emperor of Earth. The Emperor protects.’

‘Thank you. I think we can agree that this is not the place for high ceremony. Will you accompany me?’

Sanja was itching to get the temple doors between himself and the crowd. The arbitor must have felt the same way: Sanja drew back politely as she gave some curt instructions to her squad, who fanned out into a half-circle with their backs to the door. They remained there in sentry positions as the Mechanicus retinue moved back into the shrine. The arbitor senioris herself fell in beside him as he swept back through the doors.

As the adamantite slabs began to swing shut Sanja risked his dignity long enough to glance over his shoulder: a dozen or so of the revellers were clustered around the glow-haired girl’s prone body, most of them gawping up at the temple or wringing their hands. Sanja haughtily turned his back on them and let the doors boom closed.

The Mechanicus ziggurat rose above them in precise geometrical ratios and burrowed into the side of the Bosporian Hive underneath them, but everything that Sanja would need to deal with his visitor was here in the chambers ahead. As they walked across the forechamber, the servitor-sentries built into the lintels of the inner doors singing a benediction in binary, Sanja saw that his guest had taken her helmet off and was looking wide-eyed at the tech-arcana around her. Sanja nodded with approval: she was impressed, and was paying him the compliment of letting it show. As the song finished and they moved up the steps into brighter light, he studied her a little more closely.

She was a head shorter than he, with an easy, confident way of moving. Her features were even and her green eyes chilly but bright with intelligence. Dark blonde hair fell to just below her ears, tousled from the helmet, and there were the first suggestions of lines around her mouth and eyes. Her expression was stern – when those lines came, Sanja thought, they would not be kind ones. Three parallel scars, long healed and barely more than pink lines, started in her left eyebrow and ran straight and neat up into her hair.

They passed through the inner doors into the broad cloister that ran to the heart of the tower and branched into stairs at each side. Here the walls and floor were stark grey rockcrete and the contrast with to the richly ornamented forechamber seemed to unsettle the woman somewhat; she fell a pace back as they walked up a long slope of stairs and turned into the passage to the genetors’ devotory. Her face was composed and dutiful and he realised she was unsure of whether she was allowed to speak. Deciding to be a courteous host, Sanja dropped back also and walked alongside her.

‘We have prepared the fundamentals of the ceremony while you were on your way to us, my lady justice, so we will be ready to begin at your word. However, your trip here was… somewhat less serene than this quarter normally is. If you wish to clear your mind and prepare yourself before we begin, my junior will show you to our chapel. It is small, but quiet.’

‘My thanks, master genetor, but I am prepared. That affair outside was irritating, but not fatal to the equilibrium, I think.’

‘Dignity and composure are admirable qualities. I commend you on them, Arbitor Lucina. This way.’

‘Calpurnia.’

‘Your pardon?’

‘Arbitor Calpurnia. My apologies, Master Sanja. An act of carelessness on my part. In formal greeting I use Ultramar protocol. The family name is second, the private third. Here I am Shira Calpurnia as you are Cynez Sanja.’ She gave a small, contrite smile. ‘Once again, I apologise. I intended no slight.’

‘No slight is taken, Arbitor Calpurnia.’ He saw her relax and then, to his private amusement, tense again as she followed him through the lacquered double doors of the Devotory. The narrow little chamber, its walls red-panelled and ceiling dancing with holo-sculptures of amino-acid molecules, had been prepared just as Sanja had said: two rows of servitors carrying medicae flasks formed an aisle to the little kneeler cushion before the shrine. The relics on the crimson altar-cloth – centrifuge, injector-glove, inscriptions of the gene-codes of Mechanicus saints etched into scrolls of paper-thin steel – reflected the mellow golden lamplight.

Calpurnia saluted the altar from the doorway and then walked to the kneeler without further hesitation, unclipping her half-carapace as Sanja faced her from the far side of the altar. Chaim took and held her armour as she unfastened the top of the uniform bodyglove, holding it against her chest but shrugging it down to leave her shoulders and back bare. Her composure was still good, but Sanja was looking at her now through the eyes of the luminants as well as his own, and in the mosaic of images being fed into his augmented cortex her apprehension showed in her breathing, her body temperature, the acidity of her skin, her brainwaves. The luminants moved down the row of servitors, dendrites clicking as they took and loaded the vials of biotic fluid and extended their injectors, then glided silently to station themselves behind Calpurnia’s shoulders, dendrites extending a glittering fan of needles.

Sanja murmured a brief High Gothic blessing, then switched to machine-code and guided the luminants down. Calpurnia’s breath caught for a moment as the hypodermics went home, and then the luminants rose into the air again and it was done.

‘Walk with me.’ Sanja was already stepping down from the altar-dais by the time Calpurnia had stood and fastened her bodyglove back into place. Chaim came forward with her carapace and she turned, shrugged into it and clipped it closed with barely a wince, then fell into step again as Sanja led the way back out through the antechamber, to the gallery that ran around the temple’s central hall.

‘We shall pace a while.’ he told her. ‘The movement will help the anointments to integrate faster. Chaim will have given you the tokens–’ She held them up. ‘Good. The Iron Wheel and the Caducal Helix are strong talismans of the Mechanicus. Grip them well and they will make your blessing a powerful one.’

They walked in silence for several minutes: out of the Devotory, past the stairs they had come up, around a circular chamber full of doors where the half-skull-half-cog crest of the Mechanicus gazed inscrutably down from one wall, back past the stairs to the Devotory doors and so through the circuit again. The skitarii and servitors followed them for the first circuit, then Sanja ordered them away. Calpurnia gave an occasional surreptitious half-shrug, trying to get the armour comfortable on her needle-tender shoulders; Chaim silently trailed them with her helmet. They were halfway through their third circuit before Sanja spoke.

‘I would venture to suggest, Arbitor Calpurnia, that this was not the first time that you have had a rite of vaccination performed. You seemed to know your part in it as well as I did.’ She smiled.

‘My career has taken me through postings across the Ultima Segmentum and now to here, magos. Most of those moves have been across sufficient distances for me to need fortifying for my new position, although the ceremonies were never this involved. They were usually done on board the Arbites ship by one of our own Medicae staff, with a junior genetor overseeing, and they did not involve these…’ she gestured behind them with her head.

‘The luminants? They are relics as well as servants, perhaps not common on smaller worlds with less distinguished Mechanicus traditions. The honour of continued service to the Machine-God after one’s organic death is not earned every day.’ He gestured behind him. ‘That one is the skull of Clayd Menkis, the chief adept of this shrine just after the overthrow of the Apostate Cardinal. The other is Bahon Sulleya, my immediate predecessor and mentor. I had the great honour of preparing her skull for its mechanisation myself.’ Calpurnia shot the luminants another, slightly uneasier look.

‘They can act by themselves?’

‘I am appointed as their instructor as I am the instructor of my servitors. That privilege accompanies my rank here. The luminants assist me with my work and my studies. Their precision and senses are all that one would expect of idols of the Machine-God. Normally such a rite as yours would not require more than one, but for you to have come so far and to a world like Hydraphur, to which viral and bacterial strains from all across the segmentum are brought, you needed a far more rigorous treatment and I called both of my luminants accordingly.’

‘And they are also monitoring my chemical spoor and behaviour to make sure I am who I say I am and that I carry no psychic or hypnotic taint to cast doubt upon your safety in admitting me.’

Sanja snapped his head around to stare at her and she laughed aloud.

‘I said that the practices here were different, magos, not that I had never had dealings with your priesthood before. Admission to your shrine is a great honour, and humbling – but when I passed into this shrine with no searches, no weapon-checks or security vigils, I started to wonder how it was that you were making sure I was no danger to you. I’m Adeptus Arbites, remember. We enforce the Emperor’s law, pass the Emperor’s judgement and enforce the Emperor’s peace. We get into the habit of thinking about things like this. You don’t need to confirm it if you’d rather not.’

‘You are as sharp as my own luminants’ needles, lady justice,’ Sanja told her, not sure whether to be angry or amused. ‘I am sure the Arbitor Majore will not regret sending for you all the way from, Ultramar, was it? A long journey. It’s a compliment to you.’

‘I grew up on Ultramar. Iax. But my last post was at Ephaeda, north-west of there. But still across a lot of space. I’m a long way from home.’ A sombre note had crept into her voice and they walked in silence for a few minutes more. Every so often the bio-augurs on one of the luminants would buzz or click, recording some detail of how the arbitor’s metabolism was responding. It did not take long for Sanja to be satisfied, and he led the way to the doors back into the forechamber.

‘Am I done, then? Have the luminants given the word?’

‘They have, and I have confirmed it through their eyes and spirits. You have not reacted adversely to our anointments, and their eyes show that your body is accepting the inoculations. The preliminary rites and treatments you had before your arrival here laid the groundwork well. My arts are more sophisticated than those of the medicae, and the process will have completed itself within a day or two more. An envoy of mine will visit you tonight and instruct you in the correct prayers and readings to close the day and open the morning tomorrow to ensure this. There should be little problem, arbitor, in your taking your place at the Mass of Balronas and the Sanguinala.’

‘Good. I’m looking forward to them. I read Galimet’s Pilgrim’s Letters during my journey here and he describes the mass in spectacular terms. I’m certainly expecting it to be a little more edifying than that.’ She nodded toward the outer doors as they reached the forechamber again. ‘Galimet gave the impression that the period leading up to the mass was one of self-denial and penitence. The dossier I was sent said the same thing.’ As if on cue a quick syncopated bass thump came through the walls. ‘But I have to say, magos, that if that display outside is Hydraphur’s idea of penitent reflection, I’m further from home than I thought.’

Sanja smiled without humour.

‘Your first lesson in Hydraphurn behaviour, lady arbitor. Part of the ritual of the season nowadays is the Ministorum’s plaintive attempts to have the aristocracy conform to the more general ideal of pious behaviour, but when the nobility assemble and reach a certain critical mass, as they’ve done here, they obey rules of conduct all of their own. I am given to understand that among less rarefied circles the Ecclesiarchal dictates on behaviour are more strictly followed, if that brings you any consolation. This should blow itself out in another couple of hours.’

‘I’d like to have it cleared out before then,’ said Calpurnia with a scowl. ‘I got caught in the middle of the damn thing when they all started pouring into the area and it was too late to double back to fetch a transport, but I’m sure riot squads will have mobilised from the Wall by now… What?’ Sanja was regarding her. ‘I mean, apologies, magos. Did I speak out of turn?’ He shook his head.

‘To speak candidly, Arbitor Calpurnia, although I am part of an order known for its detachment from the day-to-day affairs of the Imperium, I can’t help the thought that the workings of Hydraphur are just a little less straightforward than you perhaps perceive them to be.’ Before she had the chance to ask him what he meant, the doors swung wide and once again the din of the party piled in.

The fog was thicker now. The still, warm evening air filled with a soup of coloured ornamental smokes and perfumes and some kind of refractor mist that made lights and colours sparkle unnaturally; Calpurnia hastily took her helmet back as Sanja lifted a filter-veil over his face. There was no sign of the girl Calpurnia had struck, and the other revellers were only visible now as a boil of movement through the mist. By the sounds, the party’s momentum had not been dented.

‘Any further trouble, Bannon?’

‘None.’ Calpurnia and her deputy had to shout over the noise. Somewhere out beyond the ramp, pyrotechnics were starting to flash through the fog: showers of glowing confetti and miniature starshells flashed and cracked over the heads of the crowd, leaving hazy trails and puffs of hot smoke. Calpurnia fell in with her squad, then turned to salute Sanja in farewell.

The first bullet hit her shoulder at a bad angle, whirred off her carapace and struck a spark off the temple wall, a single tiny chip of black ceramite stinging the chin of the arbitor next to her.

Her reflexes had taken charge before she realised what was happening, sending her darting down the ramp and to one side. The second bullet struck her helmet over the right eye, not penetrating but cracking the armour and staggering her backward in a daze. The third whipped past her ear as her squad pelted down the steps after her, unlimbering shotguns and shields and firing loud bursts over the heads of the crowd.

The movement began like a ripple in grass as a strong wind springs up. The nearest partiers shrieked and ploughed into those further away, until the crowd thickened too much for anyone to force their way through. The mob rebounded off itself, swayed and broke in three directions at once as the Arbites split into two squads and closed around Calpurnia. As she lurched to her feet, groggy and shaking her head, their shields juddered under two more shots and one pitched over backward as a third shattered the cheek-guard of his helmet against his jaw.

Calpurnia tried to will the ringing in her ears away as things seemed to swim around her. It took an age for her to goad her legs into action and another to get into formation behind her guards’ shields. They held the foot of the ramp in a textbook Arbites firing line: one row kneeling, shotguns locked through the gunports in their shields to pump out a steady, suppressing fire; the second line standing behind them firing more carefully, aiming shots over their heads. They were aiming high for the moment, trying just to drive the crowd back, but the answering bullets kept coming.

‘Bannon! What can you see? Place the shots!’ The beat over the vox-horns had fallen silent, and the tumult of the crowd was something the Arbites were more used to shouting over.

‘Nothing! We can’t spot any shooters, no weapons, no sounds, no flashes!’ Bannon’s voice had an edge of fear in it. A partygoer, leering with terror, stumbled toward them and two of the squad sent him sprawling with expert shoves of their shields. As that movement parted them for a split-second a third bullet whipped between their shields and scraped Calpurnia’s carapace with an impact she felt all down her ribs. She swore and backpedalled. The shots were coming in flat, somewhere at ground level, not a sniper up high. No one she could see had been anywhere near the angle to make that shot. They–

There was a crash from off to her left, a perfume-brazier going over. She glanced at it, registered only a couple of frightened partiers running away, no guns with them. She hung low and kept moving, sideways across the ramp to the left-hand pillar-plinth. The arbitrators broke their shield-wall into a more fluid line for a mobile firefight, some covering Calpurnia and two on guard over the man who’d fallen. A bullet cracked into the armour on her shoulder and she staggered and cursed; the bastards were all around her. She ran the last couple of paces to the plinth and–

But there was nobody in that direction. This was small-calibre ammo, handgun slugs. And there was no one remotely in handgun range.

The plaza roared with the riot the party had become as they surged back and forth trying to find a safe way away from the shooting. But there was nobody to her left, nobody around where the brazier had been knock–

Bannon leaned out from the plinth for a quick glance beyond it and a bullet smacked into the edge of his shield and ricocheted past Calpurnia’s ear so that even through her helmet’s padded earpiece she could hear the whine. She grabbed Bannon’s shoulder and yanked him back in as a second bullet clipped the rim of his shield.

No. Not possible. Nobody could plan a ricochet shot like that. Could they?

She had to move.

‘Go. Fan out towards that overturned brazier. Cover every single side. Assume concealment by the enemy. Now!’

They rounded the plinth and raced forward. The space in front of them was empty, the crowd shoving away to the sides.

‘Nothing here!’ She was whirling on the spot, trying to–

Was that movement?

She ducked to one side instead of standing to shoot and it saved her life. The bullet gouged the side of her helmet and knocked it askew – a second earlier and it would have punched through her top lip. She wrenched off the helmet and scampered crabwise away from the others. Whatever it was, a moving target seemed to give it a little trouble.

With no polarising filters over her eyes the refractor-fog set every light to glittering and sparkling. She narrowed her eyes and almost saw–

She sprinted two steps to the side and vaulted an upended table as two more shots skewered the air behind her. A third smacked into the heavy wood and she put three booming stub-shots through the space where she thought she might have heard firing. She had been careless about placing her feet and the recoils slammed her through almost a quarter-turn; as she turned it into a backward jog to regain her balance there was a roar as three shotguns opened up to support her.

Nothing. Mist and light, echoes and sobs from partiers sprawled on the ground. Her head was throbbing – one of those head shots had hurt, even through the helmet, and it was catching up with her. She willed herself to stay on her feet.

An eddy in the mists. She put a bullet through it as her squad caught up with her, kept her gun high and moving back and forth in front of her face, wanting a shotgun but painfully aware of the momentary lapse in her guard that a weapon-swap with one of the arbitrators would mean. The giant-bore stub pistol she had been issued with was a commander’s weapon, a shock-and-terror weapon, something for a senior arbitor to use for great, ruinous shots at high-profile targets to terrify a crowd of rioters, showing Imperial authority in brutal terms while other arbitrators and sharpshooters did the actual combat shooting. Calpurnia was becoming bitterly aware of its limitations in a straight firefight. She kept moving, dodging, reversing her direction. The lack of a helmet made her almost nauseous with nerves.

A woman lying on her back nearby gasped and twitched, and Calpurnia came within a hairsbreadth of shooting her on reflex. It took her a moment to realise that it had been not panic but physical shock, as though someone had stepped on her. She tucked her body down towards her boots, crouching into a foetal ball and sending two shots over the prone woman, aiming high in a last-moment hope that the rounds would pass over any bystanders beyond and letting the recoil roll her over and put her back on her feet. Bannon sent a shot-burst through the same space a split-second later and the little dark-haired party-girl seemed to decide her time was up. She shrieked and scrambled to her feet, frightening the people around her into doing the same, and suddenly a score of people were rising up out of the smoke and running for their lives. The mist between them roiled as if…

As if there were another person there, a shape pushing its way through the crowd, displacing air and bodies.

Calpurnia skittered to one side. The ringing in her ears was turning into a yammering that fought against the screams of the crowd. There was a distant crash as one of the parade-floats went over. She hunted for signs, half-saw them. Smoke moving the wrong way here, there a tremor and backflow in the mob as the moving crowd snagged on nothing she could see. It was moving around the edge of the retreating mob, and she could almost feel its gunsights crawling over her.

Her squad was frantic, desperate for a target. There was no time to instruct them – by the time she explained she’d be dead. She’d have to rely on them to follow her fire when she spotted something. It could be moving into position now, or…

She knew what she was looking for now, and had her pistol ready to bear. The stampede in front of her was wavering, the crowd parted and one man stumbled against something unseen. Now. Running on nerves and reflex alone, with barely a conscious moment to aim, Shira Calpurnia put a slug through the clear space and straight through the assassin’s heart.

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Crossfire first published in 2003.
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This eBook edition published in 2018 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Marek Okon.
Map by Nuala Kinrade.

Enforcer © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2018. Enforcer, 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: 978-1-78572-997-3

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.

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