The Horus Heresy: Vengeful Spirit

A flurry of topographical images bloomed at her senior moderati’s station. Maps, threat vectors, combat prognoses. Paragon of Terra’s preferred targets jostled for his attention, but Sular suppressed them in favour of answering his princeps.

‘The Warmaster has fatally underestimated the resistance he would face, ma’am,’ said Sular, a torso with mechanised arms fused with the battle-logister. ‘The Imperial line has collapsed in a number of places, but not enough for a breakthrough. A good defence in depth and numerous flanking sallies have allowed General Kourion’s reserve forces to meet each breakthrough and contain it.’

said Kalonice.

‘With respect to General Kourion, the destruction of Iron Fist Mountain was unthinkable.’

she said, feeling the spike of the Imperator’s desire for revenge through her spine like a shank.

The Legio Crucius fortress was gone, reduced to a seething, volcanic ruin by orbital fury. All their history, all their connections to their sister Legios gone. In one fell swoop, the Warmaster had brought Legio Crucius to the edge of extinction.

‘And we’ll make them pay for that,’ said Carthal Ashur, pacing the deck like a man on a crowded stage with no role to play.

‘Apologies ma’am,’ said Ashur, forcing himself onto a vacant supplicant’s bench.

She’d met Carthal Ashur many years ago, had even once bedded him when there was still enough of her to make such a prospect tenable. He’d been a disappointment, but his talent with words and mortals had persuaded her to keep him around as Calator Martialis.

‘Multiple targets inbound,’ reported Moderati Sular. ‘Two dozen main battle tanks. Six superheavies. Supporting infantry, battalion strength.’

‘Any Titan killers?’ asked Ashur.

Kalonice could taste his sweat over the scented oils of the bridge, a mix of eagerness and unfamiliarity. He’d been part of Legio Crucius for decades, but this was only his third time aboard a Battle Titan. His first in battle.

Moderati Sular looked to Kalonice, and she nodded her assent for him to answer Ashur’s question.

‘Shadowswords, aye,’ said Sular, sweeping the data over to the strategium. ‘Some traitor Mechanicum elements too. Highlighting.’

The local area around the Imperator was rendered in cascades of binary, illuminating forces both friendly and enemy. Tanks, infantry, Knights, artillery.

Each of the enemy icons already had a target solution plotted, the Mechanicum elements and superheavies assigned kill-priority.

Paragon of Terra was anticipating her, and Kalonice let it.

Ten Shadowswords with volcano cannons. Unidentified Mechanicum battle-engines – a mix of Ordinatus and Titan, each armed with weapons capable of wreaking great harm on her.

If they could be brought to bear.

she ordered.

‘Information – five seconds,’ answered Magos Surann from the raised gallery behind her, where plugged Mechanicum adepts sat in rows like a binary choir.

said Kalonice, bunching a fist at her side as readiness icons flashed up from the multiple weapon systems atop the battlements at the Titan’s shoulders. Her Thallax body was limber and agile, but the sensory weight of the Imperator was immense. At times like this, she could accept there were some benefits to being held weightless within amniotic gels.

She felt stabbing prickles all across her body. Her void shields were taking hits, scrappy and uncoordinated, but hits nonetheless. The infantry she’d stepped over had heavy weapons. Nothing individually capable of harming her or taking out a void shield, but irritating nonetheless.

The Shadowswords were firing, the bright spears of their volcano cannons bursting shields and overloading the pylons.

‘The voids are taking hits,’ said Ashur, as though she wouldn’t already know that.

said Kalonice, issuing an engagement order to every weapon section.

Kalonice let each of her weapons systems have its head, allowing the moderati and techs to wreak their own devastation. They all deserved a measure of the spoils of vengeance. The recoil from so many vast weapon systems was dampened by multiple suspensor webs and pneumatic compensators, but still shook the command bridge with the force of so many discharges.

Enemy icons vanished from the Manifold, dozens at a time.