With his third 40k Officio Assassinorum short story, Live Wire, Robert Rath returns to Callidus Assassin Sycorax (previously introduced in Divine Sanction) for a second instalment of stealthy, polymorphine-induced infiltration. At the frozen pole of Sanga Kappa, one of the twenty planets of the Meloc Worlds, the heretek Programmator Quavarian works to perfect a potentially deadly meme-virus. When engine-master Jezette Vaal is captured and brought to Quavarian’s base to be infected by the virus and ‘reformatted’ to serve the glory of Chaos, an unexpected chance to serve the Omnissiah one last time provides the cover that Sycorax needs to finally track down and deal with the heretek before he can do any more damage.
While this has the same essential premise as Divine Sanction – i.e. Sycorax uses her skills, wits and training to get close to and dispatch an enemy target in the name of the Emperor – it feels enjoyably different, not least because this time she’s up against the horrific forces of the Dark Mechanicus. Rath takes the time to brilliantly bring these techno-monstrosities to life, between them and the natural perils of the ice-bound setting giving Sycorax a task that genuinely stretches her abilities to the limit, in a tale that sees her forced onto the back foot despite all her careful planning. With lots of sticky situations requiring inventive (and occasionally disgusting) uses of polymorphine, an entertaining villain in the devious Quavarian, and an even stronger sense this time around of setting things up for something bigger still to come, it’s another excellent story from Rath, and a worthy addition to his growing 40k catalogue.
See also: my reviews of Robert Rath’s previous Officio Assassinorum stories Divine Sanction and Iron Sight.
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