The Execution- Short Story

Lucia Valorous, Inquisitor of the Adeptus Hereticus, was as brilliant as she was dedicated. And towickedness, after ab bulge out five old age of dogged pursuit in which she had c aloneed on every asset in her considerable collection, both her limelight and dedication had finally paid off.

In ten seconds, the consternation heresiarch Malchloros Vandius, whose machinations had created civil war on cardinal worlds and brought a third to direct secession from the Imperium, would walk around that corner. He would be unarmed, and unsuspecting. He would be riven of his powers by the psi- suppresser gene that had cost two thirds of the covert wealth Lucia had amassed over half a century, by dint of investments and front corporations and outright extortion.

Malchloros Vandius was a genius by either measuring, and had sold his soul to the God of Change for insane magics and until now much unholy wit and wicked understanding. He was smarter than she was, and more wealthy, and more powerful... but tonight, further this once, she had outsmarted him. In ten seconds she would shew her gun, pull the trigger, and send his soul screeching into the warp, and there was perfectly nothing he could do about it.

Steam locomote from a vent in the alley floor, carrying with it the stench of chlorine. The night was cold. A feather of wind stirred leaves in imprint circles over the brick. The thin sickle of the moon gleamed down from in the midst of buildings and behind a wisp of cloud.

Vandius walked confidently around the corner, some gauze-wrapped bimbo on his arm. Lucia had just enough succession to savor the shock on her compositors case (Vandius, as incessantly, was masked) forrader she focus on the red dosage of her tar regulateing laser on the arch-heretics face and pulled the trigger.

rupture!Lucias mind snapped into exploit at the misfire, even as she dropped the gun and snatched her slim alleviation pistol from its holster. It wasnt worth racking the slide to chamber a second round; that boltgun would not misfire. Never. Not unless someone.... Interrogator Lereth had seen to her weapons for the conk out year and a half. Could he pick out exchanged her grease ones palms with bad ammunition, or removed the explosive primer from the bolts? only no; that was impossible. She had checked each shell herself, while video the pentagrams onto their tips in silver ink. She had taken no chances. Not tonight.

The heretic was rushing forward, decideing to cross the dozen meters that separated them before she shot him dead. His woman was cowering in the corner; she would deal with that cattiness later. Perhaps the bimbo had been innocent before tonight, though Lucia doubted it, but at any rate she had been too close to Malchloros Vandius, and could be his hock even without her sockledge.

Vandius himself didnt stand a chance. Her bolter hadnt even hit the cornerstone when Lucia reached the grip of her pistol, thumbing on the laser sight and tugging it from her pocket in one fluid motion.

Still, Lucia hadnt survived seventy years of service to the well-heeled Throne by not thinking. Someone had set her up, and her bolter hadnt dismissed for reasons she still did not know. In the half moment betwixt drawing and paper bag, her mind sped on:Lereth had purchased this batch of bolt shells from Carevon bespoke Crafters, a very reputable establishment that provided top passing weaponry to those who could afford the very best. That would be a step to the fore to start investigating, after she had neutralized anyone who might have betrayed her. If only she knew why the weapon hadnt fired....

The targeting laser flickered up the pavement and centered on Vandius? center of mass. She pulled the trigger.

Click!For a moment, Lucia was too strike to move. Those bullets had never failed, and they were part of the shipment she had bought almost foursome years ago, before she had taken Lereth onto her team. She racked the slide to clear the chamber, certain that this time it was just a simple instance of bad luck. Vandius was four meters away, now. Lucias heart pounded with sudden, irrational terror, but she forced her hands steady, aimed, and fired.

Click!The almost inaudible hiss of the concealed suppressor mechanism, superposable from traffic noise except to one who knew to listen for it, seemed all at once very annoying. What she wouldnt give for an enemy she could kill without spending billions of Imperials on a psi-suppressor she would only...

The psi-suppressor.

The psi-suppressor field could interact with and neutralize Vaelone-Cordine Compound 4, an pricy explosive similar to the ones used in most firing caps. It was the only explanation.

She dropped the gun, reaching in desperation for the dagger she unplowed in her jacket just for occasions like this. She was a knife fighter of considerable skill, and had ended many lives at the point of her blade?though of course there was always risk.

Yet despite her skill, she was terrified. Her usual anticipation of combat was replaced by a desire to flee for her life. She would have done it if trail would not have taken her out of the range of the suppressor field and made her easy prey for the heretic mage.



Vandius? eerie silver eyes, visible done his mask, chilled her to the marrow.

He drew a stiletto from a sheath within his cloak and darted at her, cobra-quick. She genus Columba to the side, rolling away from whatever his favored attack confederacy might be. The brickwork bruised her back and shoulder, but she came up in a sprinters crouch, weapon ready. She tensed and waited for the opening she knew would come.

Somehow, the Tzeentchian must have arranged for Vector to fit her pistol ammo with VC Compound 4, rather than the compound she specified. And he must have influenced Lereth?that traitor!?to get the bolt shells done the same way. When she finished with Vandius, Lucia would have Lereth crucified and quartered, and his corpse put to the cleansing flame.

Vandius turned quickly, with the grace of a expert fighter; he kept his center of balance low and his knife ready. His left hand was open, not fisted: he would try to grab her knife hand, if he could.

Two meters away. She lunged, twisting into an elegant, fatal strike that had only one counter in all the known arts of knifework. And the only person alive who knew it, early(a) than she, the only man who had ever seen it in action, was...

Lereth!Lucia had a individual moment of absolute, horrified certainty before the heretics dagger flashed through the air and slammed into her sternum. A subtle twist of the heretics hips at just the right moment brought his neck out of line with the appear point of her weapon; it hissed harmlessly over his shoulder. Lucia?s whim carried her up against Vandius body. She gasped for air, coughed. Blood spattered the heretics mask, centimeters from her face.

Vandius wrenched the knife out of her chest, shoved her back, and interred the blade in the soft flesh under her chin. She crumpled. He left the rune-inscribed hilt protruding from her neck, turned his back on her move involuntarily corpse, and walked away.

Some meters away, his woman had risen. Perplexed interest showed on her face where seconds before she had worn a look of tremulous fear.

?How did you know she was going to make that move?? she asked. Her voice, low and sultry, might have charmed an Arbites on parade duty right out of his armor.

Malchoros eyes crinkled behind the mask.

?I dont know, he smiled. lucky guess.?By Jake Radowski

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