Vengeful Spirit

by Graham McNeill

  ‘So what did it show you?’ asked Aximand.

  ‘All in good time,’ said Horus. ‘But, first, I have a question for you, my sons. Do any of you know how life began on Old Earth?’

  No one answered, but he hadn’t expected them to; the question too far beyond their usual sphere of interaction.

  ‘Sir?’ said Maloghurst. ‘What does that have to do with Molech?’

  ‘Everything,’ said Horus, enjoying this rare moment to be a teacher instead of a warrior. ‘Some of Earth’s scientists believed life began as an accidental chemical reaction deep in the oceans around hydrothermal vents. A chance energy gradient that facilitated the transformation of carbon dioxide and hydrogen into simple amino acids and proto-cells. Others believed life came to Earth by exogenesis, microorganisms entombed deep in the hearts of comets travelling the void.’

  Horus walked to the edge of the lake, his warriors parting before him. He knelt and scooped a handful of water in his palm. He turned to face his sons and let it spill between his fingers.

  ‘But that’s not where you and I came from,’ said Horus. ‘As it turns out, our dream didn’t begin on Earth at all.’

  This was a part of the ship Loken had never visited. But even if he had, he doubted he would have recognised it. The Tarnhelm sat canted at a shallow angle on a buckled plate exposed to the void. Landing claws held it tight to the deck, and Rassuah kept the engines at their lowest pitch.

  Loken led the pathfinders from the ship and into the cratered section of the Vengeful Spirit, his armour gusting puffs of exhaled breath. Feathers of vapour bled from the heat of his armour’s backpack. The sound of his breathing filled his helmet as he crossed the ruptured chamber.

  ‘Rassuah, once we’re inside, take Tarnhelm out and follow our progress via the armour locators as best you can,’ said Loken. ‘And keep close to the hull. If this goes bad, we’ll need a quick evacuation.’

  ‘You want me to keep my hunter’s eye in?’ asked the pilot.

  ‘As best you can.’

  ‘Count on it,’ said Rassuah, signing off.

  Infinite space stretched behind him, an unending black tapestry of emptiness and points of aeons-old light. Before him was the vessel where he’d known his greatest joys and deepest woes.

  He was back on the Vengeful Spirit and didn’t know how to feel.

  The best and worst of his memories had been shaped in its arming chambers and companionways. He’d known his greatest friends and seen them become his most terrible enemies. Loken felt like a murderer at the scene of his crime, or a tortured shade revisiting the place of his death.

  He’d known that returning here would be difficult, but actually being here was something else entirely.

  A hand pressed against his left shoulder guard. He’d proudly borne the heraldic icon of the Sons of Horus there. Now it was a blank space, burnished grey.

  ‘I know, lad,’ said Iacton Qruze. ‘Strange to return, eh?’

  ‘We called this ship home for the longest time,’ said Loken. ‘The memories I have…’

  Qruze tapped a finger to his temple.

  ‘Remember her as she was, not the beast they’ve turned her into. Everything began on this vessel and everything will end on it. Mark my words, lad.’

  ‘It’s just a ship,’ said Severian, moving over the crumpled deck. ‘Steel and stone, an engine and a crew.’

  Qruze shook his head and followed Severian.

  Loken felt old eyes upon him. He told himself it was just his imagination and set off after Qruze. He followed the rest of the team deeper into the cavern blown in the side of the ship.

  By the look of its walls it had once been a dormitory space. Now it was an empty void. Every loose piece of apparatus had been explosively vented into space by whatever weapon had torn through the ship’s hull.

  ‘Transverse impact,’ said Ares Voitek, pointing out tear lines and direction of blast shear. ‘This was a lucky hit, a torpedo brought down by point-defence guns and spiralling away.’

  ‘I wonder if it felt lucky to the people inside,’ said Altan Nohai. ‘Lucky or not, they still died.’

  ‘They were traitors,’ said Varren, pushing past. ‘How does it matter how they died? They died, that’s enough.’

  ‘They died screaming,’ said Rubio, a hand pressed to the side of his helmet. ‘And they’d been screaming for a very long time.’

  The pathfinders spread out, moving to where the nearest interior bulkhead was still intact. Voitek moved across the wall, his servo-arms tapping and clicking along the bulkhead as though searching for something.

  ‘Here,’ he said. ‘There is atmosphere on the other side. Cayne?’

  ‘Setting up now,’ said Cayne.

  He placed the same device he’d used to thread the maze of seeded defences surrounding the Vengeful Spirit at Voitek’s feet. A detachable wand connected via a coiled cable snapped out and he panned the wand up and down.

  ‘You are correct, Master Voitek,’ he said, consulting a softly glowing slate on his device. ‘A passageway, sealed at one end by debris. The shipwright’s plans indicate there is a way through in the other direction, a sub-transit that leads up to an ammunition runnel-path for a lower gun deck.’

  ‘Will it get us deeper into the ship?’ asked Loken.

  ‘I already said it would,’ said Cayne. ‘Aren’t you familiar with the layout of sub-decks on the gunnery levels?’

  ‘No, not particularly.’

  Cayne shook his head as he packed up his device and slotted the wand back home. ‘You Luna Wolves, it’s a wonder you were able to find your way around at all.’

  Severian drew his combat blade. ‘I can kill him if you want,’ he offered.

  ‘Maybe later,’ said Loken.

  Severian shrugged and leaned forward to scratch a symbol onto the wall, an angular rune of vertical and crosswise lines.

  ‘You know futharc?’ said Bror Tyrfingr, looking over Severian’s shoulder. ‘How do you know futharc?’

  ‘What’s futharc?’ asked Loken.

  ‘Battle sigils,’ said Severian. ‘Scouts of the Space Wolves – sorry, the Vlka Fenryka – use them to guide follow-on forces through void-hulks and the like. Each symbol gives the main host information about what’s ahead, the best routes to take. That sort of thing.’

  ‘You didn’t answer my question,’ said Bror Tyrfingr.

  ‘The Twenty-Fifth Company served with your lot more than once,’ said Severian, finishing his script. ‘A wolf named Svessl taught it to me.’

  ‘Something he’ll regret if I ever see him,’ grunted Bror.

  Qruze and Rama Karayan moved past Bror and Severian. They began unfolding a blocky series of struts and portable generators from a series of narrow crates that might once have contained rockets for a missile launcher.

  This was Karayan’s area of expertise, and he quickly set up what looked like a framed template of a door. With Voitek’s assistance, Karayan hooked his construction to a generator and wound a crank until a gem-light on its side turned green.

  Karayan pressed a snap-covered activation switch. A shimmer of liquid energy bloomed around the frame’s inner edges, spreading until it filled the enclosed space like the surface of a soap bubble. It rippled, filmy with rainbow colours.

  ‘Integrity field established,’ said Karayan. ‘Safe to breach.’

  Voitek nodded and his servo-arms reached through the field to grip projections on the bulkhead.

  ‘Breaching now,’ said Karayan as precision melta-cutters on the back of the frame burned with short-lived, but ferocious intensity. They sliced through the bulkhead instantaneously, and Ares Voitek yanked the cut slab of metal back through the integrity field.

  ‘We’re in,’ said Varren.

  Shock greeted the Warmaster’s pronouncement. Disbelief and confusion. Aximand felt the ground beneath him turn to shifting sand at the truth of the Warmaster’s words.

  ‘Don’t you feel it, my sons?’ continued Horus. ‘Don’
t you feel how special Molech is? How singular among all the worlds we have won it is?’

  Aximand found himself nodding, and saw he wasn’t the only one.

  Lupercal walked in a circle, jabbing a fist into his palm with every sentence.

  ‘At the dawn of the great diaspora, the Emperor travelled here in humble guise and found the gateway to a realm of immortal gods. He offered them things only a god-in-waiting could offer, and they trusted Him. They gave Him a measure of their power, and with that power He wrought the science to unlock the mysteries of creation.’

  Horus was radiant as he spoke, as though he had already ascended to a divine plane of reality.

  ‘But the Emperor had no intention of honouring His debt to the gods. He turned on them, taking their gifts and blending them with His genecraft to give birth to demigods. The Emperor condemns the warp as unnatural, but only so no other dares wield it. The blood of the immaterial realm flows in my veins. It flows in all our veins, for as I am the Emperor’s son, you are the Sons of Horus, and the secret of our genesis was unlocked upon Molech. The gateway to that power is in Lupercalia, far beneath the mountain rock. Sealed away from the light by a jealous god who knew that someday one of His sons would seek to surpass His deeds.’

  And finally Aximand understood why they had come here, why they had expended such resources and defied all military logic to follow in the footsteps of a god.

  This would be the moment they rose to challenge the Emperor with the very weapons He had kept for Himself.

  This was to be the apotheosis of them all.

  Karayan and Severian led the way, moving into the tangled mess of the corridor beyond the integrity field. Loken and Qruze went next, followed by the others in quick succession. The corridor was dark and cluttered with smashed metal. Only the faint glow of helmet lenses and the occasional spark from fusing machinery lit the way. Debris littered the deck. Ruptured pipes drizzled the air with moisture and vapour.

  Loken’s auto-senses tasted it as the stagnant water in a bleak mountain tarn. He heard static like a rasp drawn over stone. Whispers lingered.

  The Seven Neverborn. The Whisperheads. Samus. Samus is here…

  Loken shook his head to clear the unbidden thought, but it was lodged like a splinter worming its way deeper into his flesh. He saw Rubio reach out a steadying hand to the wall, then flinch as though it were red hot.

  Loken focused on Callion Zaven’s back, imagining how it would look blown open with a mass-reactive or chewed up by a chainsword. He wondered if Zaven’s death scream would echo with perfect pitch as he died.

  ‘Loken?’ said Altan Nohai. ‘Is something wrong? Your heart-rate is elevated.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ said Loken, the image of murder lingering like the taste of blood. ‘This place, it’s hard being back.’

  If the Apothecary heard the lie, he gave no sign. Loken pressed on, hearing the soft breath at his shoulder that he couldn’t possibly be hearing.

  They moved down the corridor, reaching a junction of dripping echoes and tangled cabling hanging from the ceiling spaces. Blue sparks spat from a crumpled junction box. An Eye of Horus had been crudely painted on the wall in white. Drip lines made it look as though it was weeping milky tears.

  ‘Cayne, which way?’

  ‘As I said, straight on and up the stairs at the end.’

  Severian was already moving, bolter pulled in tight. It looked as though his body was utterly still from the waist up. The barrel of his weapon never wavered, never so much as drifted a millimetre from his eyeline.

  Moving silently in power armour was a trick only a few could manage, but Severian and Karayan elevated it to an art form. If anything, Rama Karayan moved with even less apparent effort than Severian, mirroring his path as they pushed ahead.

  Loken felt clumsy in comparison, every echo of his footfalls sounding like the stomping tread of a Dreadnought. He could see that the others felt the same way.

  The scrape of a blade behind him set Loken’s teeth on edge, like an Apothecary’s saw grinding through bone. In deference to Bror Tyrfingr’s displeasure, Severian left the marking of their path to the warrior of the Rout. It would be his gene-sire making this future assault, and the symmetry was pleasing.

  Iron stairs were just where Cayne had said they would be, and the pathfinders climbed to one of the ventral gun decks. The top opened into a high-ceilinged chamber of acoustic baffles that sagged from the walls in wadded lumps and filled the air with drifting particulates. Another Eye of Horus on the wall. Loken reached out to touch it. The paint was still wet.

  Shielded from the guns’ pressurised venting of superheated propellant by heavy mantlet shutters, the ammunition runnel-path was a sunken roadway ten metres wide behind the ranked-up guns. In battle, a constant stream of flatbed gurneys would ride the rails, distributing shells to the macro-cannon batteries and hauling discarded casings to the smelters.

  The guns were silent, but chains rattled in enormous windlasses and the rumble of magazine elevators set the air vibrating. The sour smell Loken had tasted earlier returned, stronger this time. The voices scratching at the edge of hearing like animals left out in the rain became clearer.

  ‘What is that?’ said Zaven.

  ‘You hear it?’ asked Loken.

  ‘Of course, it’s like a part-tuned vox in another room,’ said Zaven. ‘It keeps saying the same thing over and over.’

  ‘What are you hearing?’ asked Rubio urgently.

  ‘I don’t know exactly,’ said Zaven. ‘It’s gibberish. Maelsha’eil Atherakhia, whatever that means.’

  ‘No, it’s not words at all,’ said Varren. ‘It’s screaming. Or maybe someone’s trying to chop a chainaxe through adamantium.’

  ‘That’s what you hear?’ said Tubal Cayne. ‘Getting hit on the head all those times must have damaged the aural comprehension centres of your brain.’

  Rubio put himself between Cayne and Varren. His psychic hood flickered with light, though none of it was of his doing.

  ‘What do you hear?’ demanded Rubio.

  ‘The noise of a gun deck,’ said Cayne. ‘What else would I hear?’

  Rubio nodded and said, ‘Be thankful you are a man of pure reason, Tubal Cayne.’

  ‘What’s going on, Rubio?’ said Loken.

  The psyker turned around, addressing them all. ‘Whatever you think you’re hearing, it’s not real. Low-level psychic energy is simmering beneath the surface. It’s like background radiation, but within the mind.’

  ‘Is it dangerous?’ said Nohai. ‘I’m showing elevated adrenal levels and combat responses in every single one of you.’

  ‘Because he just told us we’re under the effect of maleficarum!’ hissed Bror Tyrfingr, baring his canines.

  Macer Varren unhooked his axe, finger hovering over the activation stud. The noise of its chained teeth would be heard for hundreds of metres in all directions.

  Rubio’s fists clenched and ghostlights danced in the crystalline matrix of his hood. The whispering in Loken’s helmet drifted away, as if carried on a stiff breeze. Soon it was gone, leaving only the percussive hammering of the gun deck. He let out a breath.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Tyrfingr asked Rubio.

  ‘Shielding you all from the psychic bleed-off that permeates this ship,’ said the psyker, and Loken heard the strain in his voice. ‘Everything you hear from now on will be the truth.’

  The thought gave Loken no comfort.

  SEVENTEEN

  Beasts of Molech

  Mission-critical

  No perfection without imperfection

  The horizon had been burning for days. Jungle fires were nothing new, but in all his life, Lord Balmorn Donar hadn’t seen anything to match the scale of this conflagration. Worse, the leading edge of the blazing jungle was no more than a day away at best.

  ‘Is it the Death Guard?’ asked Robard, marching his Knight onto the wall to join his father. The leg of Robard’s Knight had been repaired, but it was a p
atch-job by second-rate apprentices. With the main axis of enemy advance coming from the north, the Preceptor Line had been stripped of its Mechanicum adepts and most of its Sacristans. Every one of them had been seconded to Iron Fist Mountain to service the God-Machines of Legio Crucius.

  ‘It can’t be the Death Guard,’ he said. ‘It can’t be anyone. Even the most potent fire-throwers, chem-flayers or rad-bombs would take months or years to cut a viable path without destroying your own army.’

  ‘Then what is it?’

  Lord Donar took his time before answering. His sensorium rendered the sky as a flat black smudge, but sometimes – just for a fraction of a second – it broke apart into buzzing static, like an unimaginably vast swarm of flies.

  ‘I don’t know, boy,’ he said at last, ‘but I’m damn sure it isn’t a fire.’

  ‘My thermal auspex says otherwise,’ said Robard. ‘So do the wall guns.’

  ‘Aye, but the readings are spiking hard then dying away almost to nothing before repeating the cycle,’ pointed out Lord Donar. ‘I’m not a bloody expert, but even I know fires don’t behave like that. I don’t know anything that behaves like that.’

  ‘So what do we do?’

  ‘What we always do, boy,’ said Lord Donar. ‘We hold the Line.’

  The beast packs hit the wall an hour later.

  The azhdarchid came first. The fleetest of the great beasts, they raced ahead of the black tide engulfing the jungle. Their long necks were scaled and feathered, their crocodilian beaks stretched and snapping in animal panic.

  The wall guns opened up when they came within a thousand metres of the Preceptor Line. The noise was tremendous, even encased within the armour of a Knight. Lord Donar filtered out their cries and watched the flocks charge through a streaming hurricane of rotor cannon fire. Heedless of the carnage, the loping, flightless birds screamed as the shells cut them down without mercy.

  At six hundred metres, the seven Knights of House Donar opened fire. Battle cannon shells left five metre craters and flying, disassembled bodies in their wake. Stubber cannons carved bloody trenches through the horde. Scores fell, trampled to pulp by those behind them. The killing ground was a quagmire of blood-soaked earth and unrecognisable meat. The air misted red, tasted of metal shavings.