The Horus Heresy: Vengeful Spirit

SIXTEEN Flagship / Exogenesis / Infiltration

1

Even after everything that had happened, the betrayal, the massacre and all that came later, the sight of the Vengeful Spirit still had the power to take Loken’s breath away. She was monstrous and beautiful, a gilded engine whose only purpose was to destroy.

‘We should have known it would end this way,’ he whispered, as the image of his former flagship shimmered on the slate.

‘What do you mean?’ asked Rassuah.

‘We set out from Terra to make war,’ said Loken. ‘That’s all. Sigismund was right. The war will never be over, but what else should we have expected when we crossed the stars in ships like that?’

‘It was a crusade,’ said Rassuah. ‘And you don’t set out to reclaim the galaxy with kind words and good intentions.’

‘Ezekyle had a similar argument with Lupercal before we reached Xenobia. He wanted to make war with the Interex straight away. The Warmaster told him that the Great Crusade had evolved, that since the human race was no longer on the edge of extinction the nature of the Crusade had to change. We had to change.’

‘Change is hard,’ said Rassuah. ‘Especially for people like us.’

Loken nodded. ‘We were created to fight, to kill, and it’s hard to change what you were born to do. But we were capable of so much more.’

He sighed. ‘Whatever else we might have achieved, we’ll never get the chance. From now on there is only war for us.’

‘It’s all there is for any of us,’ said Rassuah.

2

They’d translated into Molech’s system space on the very inner edge of the Mandeville point. A risky manoeuvre, but with a ship as fine as Tarnhelm and a pilot of finesse, it was worth the risk.

The approach to Molech was made in near silence, with Tarnhelm’s systems running at their lowest ebb. A brief burst of powerful acceleration during a moment of sunspot activity hurled the stealth ship towards Molech. Momentum would do the rest.

In the three days since, the pathfinders had spent their time in solitary reflection, preparing their wargear and running through individual preparations. For Rubio that involved meditation, for Varren and Severian the obsessive dismantling and reassembly of weaponry. Voitek and Qruze played Regicide every hour, while Callion Zaven honed the monomolecular edge of his hewclaw blade. Alten Nohai spent his time teaching Rama Karayan a form of martial art that looked curiously peaceful. Only Bror Tyrfingr was restless, pacing the deck like a rutting stag in mating season.

Loken spent the time alone, trying to ignore the shadowed suggestion of a hooded figure in the corner of his bunk-alcove. He knew it wasn’t there, that it was just a memory given form, but that didn’t make it go away.

It spoke to him, though he knew the words were all in his mind.

Kill me. When you see me, kill me.

3

‘She’s been hurt,’ said Qruze, as the wallowing form of the Vengeful Spirit hovered over the table. He pointed to blackened portions of the hull, impact craters along the spinal fortresses and sagging buttresses made molten by concentrated laser fire. ‘Someone made her pay for victory.’

‘It was a scrappy fight,’ said Varren, pointing out the drifting wrecks of numerous light cruisers and orbital platforms. ‘They got up close and bloody.’

The image of the Warmaster’s flagship was being projected by the device Tubal Cayne had brought. A compact logic engine of some kind, around the size of a small ammo crate. Loken had watched the former Iron Warrior run a portion of the device over the Scyllan shipwrights’ plans in Yasu Nagasena’s villa.

Those schemata were now displayed in three-dimensional holographic form, every structural member and compartment rendered in the finest detail. The image flickered as inloads from Tarnhelm’s forward surveyors updated the ship’s appearance from what had been built to what was approaching.

Tubal Cayne made adjustments to the device, zooming in on various parts of the ship with an architect’s precision. Too quick for the rest of them to follow his working, the former Iron Warrior hunted out weaknesses in the structure, gaps in the defences for them to exploit.

‘Anything?’ asked Tyrfingr, tapping his fingers on the table.

‘Ventral spine on the portside looks good,’ said Severian.

‘If you want to die,’ replied Cayne.

‘What?’ said Severian, his voice low and threatening.

‘Look at the internal structure beyond,’ said Cayne, highlighting a section of transverse bracing. ‘The Vengeful Spirit is Gloriana-class, not Circe. We’d pass too close to a main transit arterial. There will be automated defences here, here and here, with warden-sentinels at these junctions.’

‘I could get past them.’

‘But you’re not doing this alone, are you?’

Severian shrugged and sat back. ‘Where would you suggest?’

‘As I told Loken, the lower decks are always the weakest point in most ships’ defences. Just as I suspected, it’s not presented to the planet below.’