The Horus Heresy: Vengeful Spirit

‘We had ones like this on the Conqueror,’ said Varren, tapping a crude, electrode-spiked implant still attached to a scrap of skull and trailing numerous bare cables into the detritus of its brain.

‘Hardwired with motivational barbs. Deck guns don’t reload as quickly as they ought to? The pain centres of the brain get a jolt. A battery misses its target? Double jolt. Miss again and the brain’s flash-burned to vapour. Gets a warship’s gun-crews highly motivated.’

‘The Luna Wolves never needed such things,’ said Qruze, disgusted.

‘This isn’t a Luna Wolves vessel anymore.’

‘Did those servo-skulls send an alarm signal?’ asked Rubio.

‘That depends on whether Karayan’s shot broke the noospheric link before they could exload a warning,’ said Voitek.

‘Is there any way to know for certain?’ asked Loken, looking up into the silent stare of another painted Eye of Horus.

Voitek tapped the tech-priest’s ruined skull. ‘Not any more.’

‘His absence will soon be noted,’ said Tubal Cayne. ‘Regardless of whether the tech-priest or his skulls sent an alarm or not.’

Qruze shook his head. ‘By the time it’s noticed we’ll be long gone.’

‘Then let’s not waste the time in between,’ said Loken.

4

The deeper the pathfinders penetrated the Vengeful Spirit, the stronger the sensation of an invisible member of their team grew in Loken’s mind. He paused often, using the guise of checking corners and their back trail to see if he could see their phantom accomplice. He felt no threat from the presence, even as he understood it indicated a deeper malaise within his psyche.

Dark service stairwells brought them onto metal gantries and vaulted chambers hung with distant, flapping things that might have been banners but probably weren’t. Some bore stitched Eyes, and Loken tried not to look at them.

They avoided contact where possible, killing only when necessary. Severian’s combat blade and Karayan’s silenced bolter did most of the work, but Callion Zaven’s hewclaw blade was wetted, and Voitek’s servo-arms permanently closed the throats of many a laggardly deckhand. Those they killed were uniformly human or cyborgised menials. The deep regions of the ship were rarely visited by Legion warriors and the pathfinders made full use of that small advantage.

Time passed slowly, the diurnal cycle that provided the illusion of day and night aboard a starship no longer in place. Hours became days in Vengeful Spirit’s deep spaces. They measured time by the sourceless chants of unseen choirs and the machine noises of pipework and ducts. To Loken, it sounded like the distant parts of the ship whispering to one another, passing messages and exchanging frightful secrets.

Scattered lumen strips, furnace lights and isolated chambers where skeletal inhabitants of the lower decks gathered in islands of flare-light were all that illuminated the lower decks. Bells tolled constantly, klaxons blared, and screeching Mechanicum adepts in tattered black robes set the pace of work for their wretched charges with whips and crackling prods.

‘It’s time we breached the upper decks,’ said Bror Tyrfingr, as Tubal Cayne halted their progress to update his plotter with fresh measurements. ‘We’ve roamed below the waterline long enough.’

‘The higher we go, the more we risk exposure,’ said Qruze.

‘And encountering Legion forces,’ added Karayan.

‘Bring them on,’ said Varren. ‘It’s about time my axe split some traitor skulls.’

‘That axe of yours will be heard all the way to the strategium,’ said Altan Nohai. ‘As soon as the Sons of Horus are aware of our presence, this mission is over.’

‘We’re not here to fight,’ Loken reminded Varren. ‘We’re here to mark the way for the Sixth Legion to assault.’

‘Then it’s time to mark mission-critical targets,’ insisted Bror. ‘Main gun batteries, Legion arming chambers, reactor spaces, command and control nodes. And once we mark them, we move forward. The Wolf King isn’t above a bit of subtlety and misdirection, but he won’t come at the Warmaster from the shadows. He’ll come at him head on, fangs bared.’

After facing Leman Russ across the hnefatafl board, Loken was inclined to agree, but the thought of heading into more familiar spaces within the ship was an unappealing prospect.

‘You’re right, Bror,’ he said. ‘It’s time to show why we were chosen for this mission. We need to mark this vessel’s jugular, ready for the Wolf King to tear out. We’re going higher into the Vengeful Spirit.’

5

Another vox-interrupt tried to cut across Banelash’s sensorium, but the echoes of its former pilots dissipated it before it could reach him. Just like him, they did not care to hear Tyana Kourion’s demands for him to return to the battle-line.