Secret War: Warhammer 40,000, Ben Agar [list of ebook readers .txt] 📗

way or another, and you will keep that in mind, understood?"

I swallowed noisily, "y-yes, mamzel."

"Oh, and young one, stop interrupting me mid-sentence; you are not doing yourself any favours."

"Y-yes, mamzel."

"Good, now leave before I make you leave."

I did as ordered and quite hurriedly indeed.

"We are here," growled a voice knocking me from my reverie. Darrance glared over the driver's seat at me as the car was coming to a stop. The senior assassin's face foul.

I grinned. "Yes, thank you, good driver," I said in my best up hive accent. "We must really be getting to the party chant us, dear?"

It was Elandria's turn to glare at me. "What are you doing?"

"Why getting into character, my dear."

"Well, if you call me 'dear' one more time, you will find yourself sorely lacking a head."

I grinned even wider. "Well, good luck with that endeavour, my dear. Since you lack the proper appliances to pull through with said threat."

Elandria started in remembrance. Both of us were unarmed so that we could go through the bar's detectors. Then she smiled. "I have not tried it with my bare hands yet, 'dear.' But then there is always a first time for everything. Isn't there?"

"Shut up, you two and get moving!" snarled Darrance. "I have yet to get into position, and I will not have this mission ruined by your unresolved sexual tension!"

I flinched in embarrassment and moved quickly, opening my door of the old limousine, swiftly got out, walked around and like a gentleman of old, opened the door for my 'date.' All the while; I fought the urge to cover my eyes from the blaring lights.

Elandria clumsily climbed out, she was still unused to wearing Stilettos, and I frowned as I wondered if it was wise sending her instead of Castella. I offered her my hand, which she reluctantly took.

Gently pulling her out, I placed my arm over her shoulders, pulling her close and steadying her walk as we moved down the street. Almost immediately, the old Hesuitor violently drove off, leaving a cloud of exhaust in its wake.

"W-What are you doing?" she said, though only slightly struggling.

"Making sure that you don't fall on your face, my dear," I answered and then cried out theatrically and so loud that many a passing pedestrian look my way in bemusement: "Oh Emperor forbid! That my lovely date would slip and break her nose on our very first engagement, I would never hear the end of it from father! Oh, Emperor forbid!"

"Lovely?" she said wide-eyed, and we started to approach the bar.

 

 

When I saw the long line of potential patrons waiting for entrance into the Twilight bar, I barely stifled a curse. I hated waiting in lines; it was my anathema. Well, one on a long list with many more.

I sighed. Then Elandria, my arm still over her shoulders, glared at me.

"What's wrong now?" she growled.

"Nothing, nothing," I said lightly. "I am just so entranced by your-."

"Shut it!" she snarled. "Your 'character' is even more annoying than you are."

I smiled patiently. Elandria's constant grumpiness was beginning to get on my nerves. "May I ask you a question, my dear?"

"No," she pouted, "but I know you will, anyway."

I grinned. "Now that you have said that, I will. Have you ever done undercover operations like this? You have always sat out our earlier missions as reserved reinforcement."

"No."

I frowned; it was evident from the start that Elandria's skill set seemed more militaristic than the other assassins of our organisation. Seemingly the cult that trained her neglected to teach the complexities of civilian infiltration in favour of the battlefield and stealth specialisation. Hence why she could barely place one foot in front of the other while wearing high heels or act like a high-class hive citizen for more than three seconds.

I sighed. "I guess that answers a few questions, yes. But could you, at least try, to be in character when we line up?"

"But I thought we were to make them suspect us as being undercover?"

My jaw set. Why was she so insistent on antagonising me so? Actually, I suspected she wasn't doing it on purpose at all.

"That is true, but it does not mean we can't be professional. We are gambling on them knowing our faces, and even if they don't, the fight we start will hopefully suffice for the distraction even without the extra attention. Perhaps acting convincingly may cement any suspicion of our position in Taryst's private investigatory force."

"Whatever," was her reply, causing my anger to rise, but before I could reply, we arrived at the end of the line. It was depressingly long. I did a quick headcount of the crowd of young, ostentatiously dressed pretty people and found that approximately sixty locals in total waited for the huge hammer acting as the bouncer to let them in.

Inside the bar, the music blared, and the boom of the bass line tingled my teeth.

Despite it being called a 'bar', the Twilight Bar resembled a club first and foremost. Prior booking was a must to gain access, and thanks to Hayden Tresch's hacking expertise, we were on the list. Under aliases, of course.

That made me wonder, how long had mamzel Glaitis actually known about this club and its connection to Brutis Bones? Just judging at how long this line is alone that a booking needed to be at least a week prior to guarantee entrance.

Perhaps Tresch had not hacked into the system at all? Perhaps they had made the booking legitimately? But if that was the case, why act now?

I could hazard a myriad amount of guesses. But the most obvious was, once again, that Glaitis was testing me, and whether it was a test of my abilities or if I betrayed her was another question, entirely.

Or perhaps, I just needed to get it through my thick head that the universe didn't revolve around me and my idiocy.

"Attelus Kaltos, stop it," Elandria's voice abruptly ended my revere. "Stop leaning on me."

With a start, I let off my weight, feeling my face flush in embarrassment. "S-sorry about that."

"Lost in your little world once more were we, dear?" she said with a contemptuous sneer that seemed to exclaim my idiocy and hypocrisy at once.

The corner of my mouth twitched. I needed to learn to keep myself from being lost in my thoughts. I shrugged.

"Oh, I do apologise, my dear, oh how my idiocy knows no bounds, please forgive me! Please do!"

Elandria gritted her teeth then turned away. I grinned, which made her shut up, and again, I took another comprehensive look across the crowd.

I flinched midway through as I saw through the crowd two young, gorgeous women eyeing me with enthusiastically flirtatious gazes.

I felt my face turn bright red. Then tore my attention away, up toward the three surveillance cameras watching us from above. Castella had informed me of their positions during her in-depth briefing earlier, but I wanted to see for myself. Just in case.

When I looked back, the two women were still looking at me luridly. I tried to avoid their eyes by looking down at my wrist Chron. In all my research into Omnartus' culture, I could not recall reading about the local women being so obvious about their attraction despite the guy of interest having another woman already under his arm. Perhaps they had a sixth sense? They could just tell by instinct that Elandria and I were not a real couple?

I looked sidelong at Elandria, who still had her attention away. My jaw set, or perhaps she was just making it so frigging obvious it wasn't funny.

I sighed and reached into my pocket for my lhos. It had been a while since my last smoke, and the cravings were getting to me.

I lit the Lho clenched in my teeth, using the activity to try averting my attention from the two women, who were still looking even now. The line then finally made a step forward, and I began to tap the tip of my shoe on the rockcrete sidewalk.

I am not a partier; I am an assassin who kills people for a living. And being the dangerous job it is and that I would quite like to live past my twenties, I spend every waking hour for training. Making sure I have the necessary skills to live to see the next day.

The line was speeding up. Already, we had made another step. I glanced over my shoulder and, to no surprise, saw that five more had lined up behind us, and as I did this, I accidentally caught the eyes of another young woman.

I flinched, turned and sighed, hunching animatedly; then Elandria looked to me.

"You're strange," she said.

I looked at her sidelong, exhaled smoke and slipped my ceramic Lho casing back into my pocket. I was used to Elandria's extreme lack of subtlety, but it took a hell of a long time to acclimatise to.

"Yeah, well. Tell me something I don't know."

"There are many things I do not understand, like how, after so long training in martial arts and weaponry that your posture could still be so terrible."

I immediately straightened; Elandria had a point. If I were to act as an upper-class hive citizen, I had to stand like an upper-class hive citizen who were stereotypically straight-backed and refined. Both traits I sorely lacked. Perhaps that was the real reason those two young women were looking at me so intently, they must find my bad posture entertaining, and at that, I inwardly cursed. That had to be it; no other reason could explain it.

"There, is that better?" I growled.

"Now you are just overdoing it."

I sighed and went back to being hunched again.

Chapter 4

According to my wrist chron, the wait in the line lasted only fifteen minutes, but for me, it felt like a whole frigging hour. Did I say I hated waiting in lines? I did? Good, so now it's doubly emphasised.

When we stood in between slight steps, I tapped the tip of my shoe on the rockcrete and the whole way; I smoked Lho as my attention darted around like quicksilver. About halfway through the line, Elandria hissed at me, "really could you stand still for more than three seconds?"

I blew out smoke and replied simplistically, "no."

She kept quiet after that; perhaps Elandria was smarter than I gave her credit for perhaps she was aware it was an intended ironic echo of her catchphrase, and then I made a mental note that I should make use of her 'whatever' more often.

Once we had finally made it to the end of the line, I whispered in Elandria's ear, "let me do the talking."

"Whatever," she hissed back. "Just be careful not to knock out the Moody Hammer with one of your nervous twitches."

I pursed my lips; that actually wasn't a bad idea. I had yet to come up with a decent plan for starting this brawl. Just looking over the line alone, I decided that this task would be easier said than done; sure, I could easily pick a fight with one patron, but initialising the needed chaos would be a challenge. The majority of the patrons were upper-class dandies who I doubted had ever taken part in a full-on bar brawl in their pampered lives. If it was a lower hive bar,