Vengeful Spirit

by Graham McNeill

  ‘I recall when I first met you aboard the Vengeful Spirit, Garviel Loken,’ said Dorn. ‘You and Tarik almost came to blows with Efried and… my First Captain.’

  Loken nodded, reluctant to be drawn into reminiscence, even with a being as godly as a primarch. He heard the pause where he expected to hear Sigismund’s name, and wondered what, if anything, it meant.

  Ares Voitek filled the silence by distributing tin cups around the table via his servo-arms and pouring a measure of clear liquid into each one.

  ‘What’s this you’re giving me, Ares?’ said Dorn, as Voitek handed him the first filled cup.

  ‘It’s called dzira, my lord,’ explained Voitek. ‘It’s what the clans of Medusa drink when there’s bridges to be mended between brothers.’

  ‘And you just happened to have some aboard?’

  Loken looked at the clear liquid in the cup, smelling all manner of strange mixtures in its chemical structure.

  ‘Not exactly,’ said Voitek. ‘But there’s enough alcohol-based fluids aboard the Tarnhelm for someone with a working knowledge of alchymical processes to knock up a viable substitute. Normally a Clan Chief would pass a piyala bowl around his warring sons, but I think we can break protocol on that just this once.’

  ‘Just this once,’ agreed Dorn and took a drink.

  The primarch’s eyebrow raised a fraction, which should have told Loken what to expect. He followed Lord Dorn’s example and swallowed a mouthful of Voitek’s spirit. Its heat was chemical and raw, like coolant drained from the core of a plasma reactor. Loken’s body could process almost any toxin and expel it as harmless waste product, but he doubted the Emperor had dzira in mind when conceiving the Legiones Astartes physiology.

  The others around the table, Qruze included, drank from their cups. All apart from Bror Tyrfingr and Altan Nohai reacted as though Voitek had tried to poison them, but kept their reactions to coughs and splutters.

  Dorn’s gaze swept the warriors at the table, and said, ‘I know little of Medusan customs, but if the drinking of this dzira has served its clans well, then let its purpose be echoed here.’

  Dorn leaned over the table, pressing both palms to its surface.

  ‘Your mission is too important to fail through internal division. Every one of you is here because you have strengths and virtues that have cleft you from your parent Legions. Malcador trusts you, though some of you have yet to earn such from me. I hold deeds, not faith, gut-feelings or the whispers of prognosticators as the sum of a warrior’s character. Let this mission be what earns you the boon of my trust. Find what the Wolf King needs, and you will have earned the Sigillite a measure of that trust too.’

  ‘Why were you and Qruze here, my lord?’ asked Macer Varren without embarrassment.

  Loken saw a conspiratorial glance pass between Rogal Dorn and Iacton Qruze. The Half-heard dropped his gaze, and Rogal Dorn let out a heavy sigh that made Varren wish he’d never asked.

  ‘To kill a man I once held in high esteem,’ said Dorn, ever unwilling to shirk from the truth. ‘A good man sent to his death by Horus to sap our resolve and unbind the mortar that holds the Imperium together.’

  Loken swallowed another mouthful of dzira, and the shame keeping him pinned to his seat receded enough for him to ask, ‘My lord, do you know where Euphrati Keeler and Kyril Sindermann are?’

  Dorn shook his head. ‘No, Loken, I do not, save that they are not on Terra. I am as ignorant of their whereabouts as Iacton, but if I had to guess, and I’m loath to guess, I’d say they were somewhere on Rodinia right now. They move from plate to plate, hidden by their followers and aided by deluded fools. There were reports she had been seen on Antillia, then Vaalbara and even around the globe on Lemurya. I hear reports of her sermonising all across the orbital ring, but I suspect a great deal of those are false dissemination to throw the hunters off the scent.’

  ‘Surely one woman isn’t worth that effort,’ said Cayne.

  ‘Mistress Keeler is more than just one woman,’ said Dorn. ‘This saint nonsense that’s sprung up around her is more dangerous than you know. Her words fill malleable hearts with false faith and the expectation of miraculous intervention. She imbues the Emperor with divine powers. And if He is a god, what need has He of His people to defend Him? No, the Lectio Divinitatus is just the sort of invented lunacy the Emperor sought to see ended with Unity.’

  ‘Perhaps her words give people hope,’ said Loken.

  ‘Hope in lies,’ replied Dorn, folding his arms and stepping away from the table. His brief time with them was over. The primarch made his way to the boarding ramp, but turned and said one last thing before departing for Terra.

  ‘I own only the empirical clarity of Imperial Truth.’

  Loken knew those words well.

  He’d said them once in the water garden on Sixty-Three Nineteen and many times since in the dungeons of Terra. It could be no coincidence that Rogal Dorn repeated them here. The memory of them was a reminder of sundered confraternity, oaths broken and brothers murdered in cold blood.

  ‘As do I,’ said Loken, but Rogal Dorn was already gone.

  NINE

  Remember the moon

  Good hunting

  Provocateur

  A vast dome of coffered glass filled the frontal arc of the Vengeful Spirit’s high-vaulted strategium, through which could be seen the inky blackness of Molech’s inner planetary sphere. The few visible points of light were fragile reflections on the armoured hulls of starships of all description and displacement. An armada of conquest attended upon the Vengeful Spirit, surrounding Lupercal’s flagship like prowling pack hunters as they drew the noose on Molech.

  Recessed lumen globes bathed the domed chamber in light it had not known since before the war against the Auretian Technocracy. A grand ouslite dais was set at the heart of the strategium, a metre in height, ten in diameter. It had once been part of Lupercal’s Court, a meeting table, podium of address and, in times not so long ago, an altar of sacrifice.

  To Aximand, it felt like that phase of the Legion’s past was simply the first stage of its ongoing transformation; another change he had embraced as surely as he embraced his own autumnal aspect. The last blood spilled on its surface had been that of a supposed ally, an arch schemer and manipulator whose ambitions had finally overstepped his reach.

  Erebus the snake, the self-aggrandising, self-appointed prophet of rebellion. Mewling and stripped of flesh and power, the base plotter had fled the Vengeful Spirit for destinations unknown.

  Aximand was not sorry to see him go.

  The bloodied trophies and gory window-dressing that had attended his teachings were also gone, ripped into the void by the impact of a clade killer’s burning attack ship. Dark robed Mechanicum adepts and muttering, shadow-draped Thallaxii had restored the strategium to its former glory. Where Imperial eagles once glared down at the assembled warriors, now the Eye of Horus observed proceedings.

  The message was clear.

  The Vengeful Spirit was the Warmaster’s ship again, and he its commander. This was a new beginning, a fresh crusade to match the one that had taken them to the very edge of space on a bloodied road of compliant worlds. Lupercal had conquered those worlds once, and he would conquer them again as he forged an Imperium Novus from the ashes of the old.

  The Mournival stood with their master at the ouslite dais, lenses cunningly wrought into its upper surfaces projecting three-dimensional topography of Molech’s close-system space. Maloghurst tapped the surface of a data-slate and updated icons winked to life. More ships, more defence monitors, more minefields, more void-traps, more neutron snares, more orbital defence platforms.

  ‘It’s a mess,’ said Aximand.

  ‘Lots of ships,’ agreed Abaddon with relish.

  ‘You’re already thinking of how to get close enough to storm them, aren’t you?’ said Aximand.

  ‘I already know how,’ said the First Captain. ‘First we–’

  Horus held up a gauntleted h
and to forestall the First Captain’s stratagem.

  ‘Take pause, Ezekyle,’ said Horus. ‘You and Aximand are old hands at this, and breacher work barely tests your sword arms. Let’s assay the temper of the new blood you’ve added to the mix.’

  Noctua and Kibre straightened as Horus gestured towards the garlanded orb of Molech at the centre of the illumined display.

  ‘You’re no strangers to a broil of swords and bolters, but show me how you’d crack Molech’s girdle.’

  As Aximand expected, it was Kibre who spoke first.

  He leaned into the projection and swept a hand out to encompass the orbital weapon platforms with their racks of torpedoes and macro-cannons.

  ‘A speartip right through their fleet to the heart of the guns,’ said Kibre. ‘An overwhelming assault into the centre, hard and fast, with flanking waves to push their ships into the blade of our spear.’

  Aximand was pleased to see Grael Noctua shake his head.

  ‘You disagree?’ asked Maloghurst, also catching the gesture.

  ‘In principle, no,’ said Noctua.

  Horus laughed. ‘A politician’s way of saying yes. No wonder you like him so much, Mal.’

  ‘The plan is sound,’ said Abaddon. ‘It’s what I would do.’

  ‘Why doesn’t that surprise me?’ grinned Aximand.

  ‘Then let your little sergeant tell us what he would do,’ grunted Abaddon, his veneer of civility worn thin.

  Noctua’s face was a cold mask. ‘Ezekyle, I know I’m new in the Mournival, but call me that again and we’re going to have a problem.’

  Abaddon’s eyes bored into Noctua, but the First Captain was aware enough to know he’d crossed a line. With the Warmaster at his side, Abaddon could afford to be gracious without loss of face.

  ‘Apologies, brother,’ he said. ‘I’m too long in the company of the Justaerin to remember my manners. Go on, how would you improve the Widowmaker’s gambit?’

  Noctua inclined his head, satisfied his point had been made, but savvy enough to understand that he had strained the bounds of his new position. Aximand wondered when the Mournival had become so fraught that a warrior needed to watch words to his brothers.

  The answer readily presented itself.

  Since the two whose names could never be voiced had upset a balance so natural none of them even understood it existed.

  Noctua took the data-slate from Maloghurst and scanned its display. His eyes darted between its contents and the holographics. Aximand liked his thoroughness. It matched his own.

  ‘Well?’ said Horus. ‘Lev Goshen tells me you have a bold voice, Grael. Use it. Illuminate us.’

  ‘The moon,’ said Noctua with a feral wolf’s grin. ‘I’d remember the moon.’

  Molech’s Enlightenment was a fast ship, the fastest in the fleet, its captain liked to boast. Given the slightest encouragement, Captain Argaun would extol the virtues of his vessel; a Cobra-class destroyer with engines barely thirty years out of an overhaul and a highly trained and motivated crew.

  More importantly, the Enlightenment had tasted blood, which was more than could be said for most of Battlefleet Molech’s warships.

  Captain Argaun had fought xenos reavers and opportunistic pirate cutters operating out of the mid-system asteroid belt for years. He was the right blend of aggression and competence.

  And best of all, he was lucky.

  ‘How are they looking, Mister Cairu?’ said Argaun, reclining on his captain’s throne and tapping out updated command notes on an inset data-slate. Behind him, junior ratings tore off order-scrolls from chattering auto-writers and hurried to carry them out.

  ‘No change in bearing, speed or formation, captain,’ replied Lieutenant Cairu from his position overseeing the combat auspex teams. ‘Vanguard in force, seven vessels at least. The rest of the fleet is following in a gradually widening gun line with its bulk carriers and Titan landers tucked in behind. Looks like a rolling planetary englobement.’

  Argaun grunted and looked up at the viewing bay, a flattened, steel-rimmed ellipse fed positional data by banked rows of implanted servitors.

  ‘Standard Legion tactics then,’ he said, almost disappointed. ‘I expected more of the Warmaster.’

  The rotating sphere of the engagement volume filled the viewing bay, lit with identifier icons and scrolling data-streams. Some captains liked to see open space, but to Argaun’s way of thinking, that had always seemed utterly pointless. Given the distances involved in void war, the most a captain might see – if he was lucky – were flickering points of light that vanished almost as soon as they became visible.

  He magnified the representation of the battlescape. Signifier-runes had identified most of the vessels in the oncoming fleet.

  Death Guard and Sons of Horus.

  Neither Legion was noted for subtlety. Both were renowned for ferocity. It was upon this latter characteristic that Admiral Brython’s provocateur strategy hinged.

  The Enlightenment led a racing fleet of six fast-attack vessels, and it was their task to seduce the traitors into the teeth of the orbital platforms.

  ‘There you are,’ said Argaun, picking out the crimson sigil representing the Vengeful Spirit and feeling a thrill of anticipation travel the length of his augmetic spine. The Enlightenment and its accompanying ships were far beyond the reach of the orbital guns. They were exposed, but Argaun wasn’t worried. He’d heard Tyana Kourion say that to see the Legions at war was to witness gods of battle, but that was typical Army nonsense.

  In the void, a warrior’s prowess counted for nothing.

  A lance strike or a torpedo detonation would kill a legionary just as easily as a deck menial, and any captain careless enough to let a Space Marine ship get close enough to launch a boarding action deserved everything they got.

  ‘Time to firing range?’

  ‘Eight minutes.’

  ‘Eight minutes, aye,’ said Argaun, opening a vox-link to the rest of the provocateur force.

  ‘All captains, my compliments,’ said Argaun. ‘Begin your launch sequences for prow torpedoes. Full spread, and good hunting.’

  ‘Torpedoes in the void,’ said Maloghurst, watching as holographic salvoes crawled across the plinth’s display.

  ‘Time to impact?’ asked Horus.

  ‘Do you really need me to tell you, sir?’

  ‘No, but do it anyway,’ said Horus. ‘They’re playing their role, so let’s allow them to think we’re playing ours.’

  Maloghurst nodded and estimated the travel time of the enemy torpedoes. ‘I make it ninety-seven minutes.’

  ‘Actually it’s ninety-five,’ said Horus, steepling his fingers and watching the inexorable unfolding of the battle before him.

  ‘Ninety-five, aye,’ said Maloghurst as the battle cogitators confirmed the Warmaster’s calculation. ‘Forgive me, sir, it’s been a while since I’ve needed to work deck duty. It’s not a task for which I have any enthusiasm.’

  Horus waved away Maloghurst’s apology and nodded in agreement.

  ‘Yes, I’ve always hated void war over other forms of battle.’

  ‘And yet, as in all forms of war, you excel at it.’

  ‘A commander shouldn’t be so far removed from the surging ebb and flow of combat,’ said Horus, as if Maloghurst hadn’t spoken. ‘I am a being wrought for war on a visceral scale, where force and mass and courage are death’s currency.’

  ‘I almost miss it sometimes,’ replied Maloghurst. ‘The simplicity of an open battlefield, a loaded boltgun in my hand and an enemy in front of me to kill.’

  ‘It’s been a long time since anything was that simple, Mal.’

  ‘If it ever was.’

  ‘There’s truth in that,’ agreed Horus. ‘There’s truth in that indeed.’

  Another truth of void war was that until warships came together in murderous congress, there was very little to do but wait. The closure speeds of the opposing vanguards were enormous, but so too were the distances between them.r />
  But when the dying began, it began quickly.

  Multiple salvoes of ordnance erupted from both vanguard fleets, each torpedo fifty metres in length and little more than a huge rocket booster capped with an extraordinarily lethal warhead. As scores of torpedoes surged from their launch tubes, barrages of armour penetrating shells blasted from prow batteries.

  Each volley was silent in the void, but brutalising echoes reverberated through every gun deck like the pounding drumbeats of titanic slave overseers, deafening those not already insensate to the unending clamour.

  Glimmering plasma trails intersected between the fleets, then split apart as they hunted for targets.

  First blood went to the Enlightenment. A spiralling torpedo, launched from its starboard launch tubes by Master Gunner Vordheen and his seventy-strong munition crew, smashed through the armour plating of the Sons of Horus frigate, Raksha.

  The impact triggered a secondary engine within the torpedo that hurled the main payload deeper into the guts of its target. Like an arena killer whose blade finds a crack in his opponent’s armour, the torpedo ripped through dozens of bulkheads before its primary warhead exploded in the heart of the starship.

  Raksha’s keel snapped in two and over a quarter of its seven hundred crew members were immolated in a storm of atomic fire. Sheets of armour plating blew out like billowing sailcloth in a storm. Pressurised oxygen burned with brief intensity as compartment after compartment was vented to the void. The debris of the frigate’s demise continued moving forward in an expanding cone of tumbling iron, like buckshot from an armsman’s shotcannon.

  The Imperial destroyer, Implacable Resolve, took the next hits, a torpedo to its rear quarter and a lance strike that sheared off its command tower. The vessel broke formation in a veering yaw, spewing a comet’s tail of debris and vented plasmic fumes. Without captain or command deck to correct her course, the ship fell from the vanguard until the raging hull fires finally reached the ventral magazines and blew it apart in a seething fireball.