u/Damaco

In the excerpt below, >!a group of Savlar Chem-Dogs tries to survive the ongoing war on Sertra, only to come accross the Headhunters squad of Qope Halver. Drass, one of the soldier, is in fact an undercover Adamus Assassin tasked to kill Harrowmaster Solomon Akurra. Solomon is aware of the plot and dispatched the Headhunters to find him.!<

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>Space Marines. Gavran was looking at Space Marines.

>Space Marines who had forsaken the Emperor, and who wanted to kill him. He swallowed.

>Drass pulled him down again, and leaned forward.

>‘You three stay here,’ he whispered, his voice barely audible. ‘Wait until I’m halfway to them, then open fire.’

>‘What?’ Sorry hissed, then clapped his hand over his mouth. ‘Sorry.’

>‘I won’t make it to them undetected,’ Drass whispered. ‘Let me get a head-start, then draw their attention. I need to thin their numbers, or I’ll never make it to my primary target. The plasma gun will make them notice you, at any rate,’ he continued, nodding to Morten. ‘They’ll advance. If they get to you, you’ll die. My plan is to jump them when they pass me. If I can get the drop on them, get in sword range, I can kill them.’

>For some reason, Gavran didn’t doubt him.

>‘Ready?’ Drass said, and Gavran found himself nodding alongside Morten and Sorry. ‘If this doesn’t work, know that you’ll die having done the Emperor’s work.’

>He loped away, fast and silent, another shadow in the night. Gavran watched him go, his heart in his throat. Beside him, Morten propped the plasma gun on the top of the wall, and flicked the power switch to maximal.

>‘You’re supposed to wait–’ Sorry began.

>Morten fired.

>The incandescent bolt of energy streaked out into the night. It seared into Gavran’s night vision, but not before it brought him the image of Drass falling, a hole blown right through his torso.

>‘What–’

>Sorry was gasping, bubbling, the sound of a man choking on his own blood. Gavran was still blinking away the spots, trying to make sense of what was happening, when he felt the touch of a wet blade against his own throat.

>‘Sorry, Gavran,’ Morten whispered. ‘But I did tell you that I weren’t always a Chem-Dog.’

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>‘Hydra Dominatus! Hydra Dominatus!’

>Qope Halver had raised his Stalker-pattern boltgun as soon as the plasma bolt flashed out into the night. His helmet’s night-vision setting registered the downed body, killed instantly, and he saw the distinctive pistol and mask hanging at the belt – the tools of the Assassin they’d been trailing, although he’d picked up some new clothes from somewhere.

>He hadn’t expected the short human in the uniform of the enemy, advancing down the middle of the street with her hands raised and repeating the war cry of his Legion.

>‘What in the primarch’s name is this?’ muttered Sokrate, beside him.

>‘No idea,’ Halver admitted. ‘Let’s find out.’

>He covered the human as she approached, then held up one hand when she got to thirty feet away.

>‘That’s far enough. Who are you?’

>‘Morten Shanell, lord,’ the human replied. She was sweating with nerves, but also, so far as Halver was any judge of mortal emotions, with excitement. ‘I was recruited into the Legion ten years ago, by an operative named Hojun Frale. He gave me a code word. I was waiting for activation, but when I learned that we were fighting the Legion…’ She shrugged. ‘I had to act. That man was an Imperial Assassin.’

>Halver grunted. ‘What was your code word?’

>‘Haplocke, my lord.’

>Halver looked at Sokrate. ‘Mean anything to you?’

>‘No.’

>‘Me neither.’ Halver pulled the trigger, and Morten’s head exploded. He activated his vox.

>‘Harrowmaster. Mission accomplished.’

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This is so good.

Mike Brooks did a amazing job at deconstructing the cliché "everyone in the legion knows everything about what's going on". This is anticlimactic as it comes, enhanced by the fact that earlier in the book, >!"Drass" managed to kill half a dozen Space Marines in mere seconds!<.

This was just pure luck. We had no idea that Morten was ganging up with the Alpha Legion in the book so far, she just decided to trust some dude from ten years ago. And trust that some random legionaires she faced would know anything about that. And was it not for that, Halver and his squad would have been in trouble.

You can't just shout Hydra Dominatus and expect Alpharius himself popping his head out of a window.