Vindicare CC

Scout-Sergeant Orfos dived at the Assassin, his combat knife in one hand and bolt pistol in another, forcing his eyes to focus on the barely visible shadow that was his opponent.
He hit the Assassin shoulder-first. But the Assassin was ready, wrapping an arm around Orfos’s waist and throwing him over his body to slam back-first onto the rock.
The Assassin’s camouflage flickered and Orfos saw him properly for the first time. He was dressed in a complete covering of black synskin, ribbed and panelled to protect the vital organs. The synskin covered his scalp, and his face was concealed by a mask with an opaque eyepiece and breathing grille. His sniper rifle was as long as he was tall, with a pistol in a holster as a backup. Orfos recognised the technology of the synskin from the Assassinorum facility, but had no time to register anything else before the Assassin’s pistol was in his hand.
Orfos knocked the gun aside with his knife. The Assassin kicked Orfos’s own bolt pistol out of his hand. Orfos kicked up into the Assassin’s midriff but the Assassin was suddenly not there.
He had moved faster than anything Orfos had fought before. The cold against the back of his skull was surely the barrel of the Assassin’s pistol, and he had a split second to live.
‘Cease fire, brothers!’ came Lysander’s voice over the vox. ‘Cease fire!’
The pistol did not fire. Orfos did not die.


“Seventh Retribution”