The Horus Heresy: Vengeful Spirit

The transit was thick with bolter shells. They spanked from projecting stanchions and blasted portions of the walls away. Across from Loken, Qruze ducked back into cover and ejected the magazine from his weapon. The barrel drooled smoke and heat.

Qruze slapped a fresh load into the weapon. He shouted to Loken.

‘Get in the damn fight!’

Loken shook his head. This was all wrong.

More shots filled the corridor leading to the armoury. A security detail of Sons of Horus – together with a number of Mechanicum adepts – were inside, hunkered behind a bulwark designed to prevent an enemy from seizing the stockpile of ammunition, weapons and explosives.

A grenade detonated nearby. Fragments of hot iron pinged from his armour. A few embedded. None penetrated.

‘Loken, for Cthonia’s sake, shoot!’ shouted Qruze.

The bolter in his hands felt like a relic dug up by the Conservatory. Something fascinating to look at, but whose purpose was alien and unknown. He could no more bring the gun to bear than he could understand the mechanisms of the machine that crafted it.

‘Loken!’

2

The pathfinders had encountered the Sons of Horus en route to mark the armoury for a tertiary torpedo strike. Guiding futharc sigils had been scraped into the wall, warning assault teams away, and they’d paused for Tubal Cayne to divine a path towards a nearby ordnance signum array.

Severian and Karayan were scouting potential routes when the Sons of Horus had marched straight into the radial hub.

The watch sector had been Loken’s, but he’d missed them.

He hadn’t heard them or even been aware of their approach.

Lost in contemplation of a painted Eye of Horus on the opposite bulkhead and trying not to listen to the scratch of voices at the periphery of hearing.

The first he’d known of the enemy was when their sergeant called out, demanding identification. Stupid, he should have shot first.

Mutual surprise was all that saved the pathfinders.

Neither force had expected to encounter the other. The fleeting shock was just enough time for Loken to raise the alarm.

The Sons of Horus regrouped down the radial corridor towards the armoury as Altan Nohai and Bror Tyrfingr had opened fire.

‘Contact!’ reported Cayne.

3

Qruze leaned out and fired a short burst.

‘Come on, Loken,’ he shouted between bursts. ‘I need you with me to go forward!’

The hard bangs of bolter fire and the chugging beat of an emplaced autocannon filled the transit with a storm of solid rounds. Ricochets bounced madly from the walls. A shell fragment deformed the metal beside Loken’s helmet.

He gripped his bolter, his grip threatening to crush the stock.

This isn’t right.

The Sons of Horus were traitors, the Warmaster the Arch-traitor.

But these are your brothers. You accepted their brotherhood, and swore to return it as a brother.

‘No,’ he hissed, slamming the bolter against the faceplate of his helmet. ‘No, they’re traitors and they deserve to die.’

You are a Son of Horus. So is Iacton. So is Severian. Kill them and kill yourself if you would damn all of Lupercal’s lineage!

Loken fought to keep the voice out.

The vox crackled.

‘Go when you hear us,’ said Severian.

4

Assaulting an armoury was a sure-fire way to end up facing some extremely potent ordnance, but what choice did they have?

‘Tubal? Only two ways in or out?’ shouted Qruze.

Cayne nodded, sweeping through layers of deck schematics. ‘Yes, according to the extant plans.’

‘Both covered?’

‘Voitek and Rubio are blocking the other one,’ said Varren, not shooting, but ready with his chainaxe.

‘So they’re not getting out,’ said Qruze. ‘But they’ll be voxing for help right now.’

‘Voitek is employing a vox-jammer,’ said Cayne, zooming in on the image of their current location.

‘How long before the adepts burn though it?’ asked Zaven, firing down the transit to the armoury. ‘And is anyone else even slightly concerned that we’re shooting into an armoury?’

‘Eighteen seconds till burn through,’ answered Cayne. ‘So long as you don’t hit anything sensitive in there we should be fine.’

‘Sensitive?’ said Bror. ‘Hjolda! It’s a bloody armoury, everything’s sensitive!’

‘On the contrary, I think you’ll find–’ began Cayne, but Qruze shut him up.

‘Stow it,’ said Qruze, glancing over at Loken. ‘Everyone keep shooting and be ready.’

‘You said the armoury has only two exits?’ said Zaven.

‘Yes,’ confirmed Cayne.

‘So how’s Severian getting in?’

5

‘Ready?’ said Severian.

Karayan nodded and Severian set the timer for two seconds.

They rolled aside as the graviton grenade detonated with a pulse of energy that made him sick to his stomach. An orb of anomalous gravitational energy swelled to a diameter of exactly a metre and increased the local mass of steel girders and air-circulation units within the reinforced ceiling void a thousand-fold.