The Horus Heresy: Vengeful Spirit

Amid the raging fire-swept wasteland below, Alcade saw the enemy had not been spared the horror of the explosion either. Their numbers were just as devastated. Only the enemy Titans had survived the blast intact, though even they had suffered heinous damage.

They stalked as shadows through the wall of dust and smoke thrown up by the explosion. Giant killers with nothing to oppose them. Even if the Imperial commanders below could rally their troops, what weapon did they have remaining that could fight traitor war engines?

‘We need to go back to Lupercalia,’ said Theron.

‘And then what?’ demanded Kyro.

‘We leave Molech,’ said Theron.

‘How? We have no ship.’

‘Then we take one from the enemy by force,’ said Theron. ‘We find an isolated vessel and storm it. Then we blast out-system and get back to the Five Hundred Worlds.’

‘You already censured a dozen legionaries that dared to voice that sentiment, Theron,’ said Kyro. ‘I see a few red helmets among our pitiful survivors.’

‘That was before the war was ended at a single stroke,’ countered Theron, turning his attention back to Alcade. ‘Sir, we can’t stay here. Dying on Molech will achieve nothing. There’s no practical to it. We need to go home and fight in a battle we can actually win.’

‘We have a duty to Molech, Theron,’ said Kyro. ‘We’re oathed to its defence, bound by the word of the Emperor.’

Castor Alcade let his subordinate’s words wash over him, knowing both were right, and both dead wrong. He rubbed a hand over his face, wiping away the grit and blood of battle. He blinked at yet another black mark against his name, another failure to add to the tally of near-misses and also-rans.

‘Sir, what are your orders?’ asked Kyro.

Alcade turned and put one foot up on the running board of the scorched Rhino, sparing a last look at the hell unleashed below. On the horizon were the unmistakable dust clouds of advancing armour. Lots of armour.

‘Get us to Lupercalia,’ said Castor Alcade.

‘Sir–’ began Kyro, but Alcade held up his hand.

‘That is my order,’ said Alcade. ‘It’s to Lupercalia.’

20

Tyana Kourion crawled from the wreckage of her Stormhammer, half blinded and burned. Her dress greens were black with oil and stiff with blood pulsing steadily from her stomach. Some ribs were broken, and she doubted her left leg would ever bear her weight again. Her right hand was a fused mess of blackened stumps. It didn’t hurt yet. It would hurt later, assuming she lived long enough for there to be a later.

The superheavy lay on its side, one half black and folded in on itself like a plastek model left too close to the fire. The rubber of its joints and cupolas dribbled like wax and she saw the skeletal remains of her crew that had been flung from the explosion.

She didn’t know where they were.

Her ears were ringing with detonation and concussion. Sticky fluid leaked from each one. She could hear, but everything was muted and subdued, as though filtered through water. Dust gritted her eyes, but she saw flashes of the nightmare through lifting clouds of smoke, as though the rogue thermals knew enough not to haunt her with too many scenes of horror in too short a time.

She heard howls of wounded soldiers. Ammunition cooking off. Fuel tanks ablaze and thudding footfalls that could only be enemy war engines on the hunt. Bloodstained soldiers sometimes wandered through her blurred field of vision. Men and women with missing limbs and shattered, glazed looks on their faces. Some turned at the sight of her, but if they recognised their commanding officer, they gave no sign.

Her army was gone. Destroyed in a heartbeat of Devine treachery.

She’d heard the last snatches of vox-intercept from Paragon of Terra, but hadn’t understood them until she’d reversed the Stormhammer to face the Imperator. She’d only just turned away from the pict-slate when the explosion came.

How long ago had that been? Not long surely.

Her tank was nowhere near where it had been dug in, swatted hundreds of metres by the force of the blast. She should be dead, and didn’t like to think what horrendous forces had been exerted on the Stormhammer’s hull. The impact of landing had crushed pretty much everyone in her tank but her.

Right about now, it felt like she’d gotten the raw deal.

Kourion propped herself up against the underside of the Stormhammer. Blood pooled in her lap. She knew a mortal wound when she saw one. She fumbled for her pistol with her left hand. She’d never bothered to procure a fancy sidearm, and had no family heirlooms like some of the more stuck up regimental commanders. This was just a standard, Mars-pattern laspistol. Full charge, textured grip and iron sights. Functional, but without embellishment.

Just like her.

It would have to do. It was the only weapon she had left, and she’d read somewhere that it was good for a soldier to die holding a weapon.