The Horus Heresy: Vengeful Spirit

Alivia captained a pilot tender in the harbour, guiding the cargo tankers from Ophir and Novamatia through the submerged defences of Larsa’s approaches. Like everyone else, she’d paused to watch the lights flickering in the night sky. They bloomed and faded like a distant fireworks display. Her first mate said it looked pretty until she snapped that every flash probably meant hundreds of people were dying in battle.

Abandoning the trans-loader she’d been guiding in to port, Alivia immediately put to shore over the protests of her crew. It wasn’t logical, but all she could think of was getting home, hoping Jeph had been smart and kept the girls indoors. He wasn’t the sharpest knife in the block, but he had a good heart.

Perhaps that was why she needed him.

She’d grabbed the first groundcar she could hotwire and driven like a maniac into the hills. She’d reached the mid-level commercia districts when the darkness was dispelled by the fiery descent of the downed starship. Dauntless-class, she had thought. Alivia didn’t bother to watch it hit and drove even harder, knowing what was coming.

The impact tsunami slammed a kilometre and a half into Larsa before the drawback dragged half the city’s inhabitants to their deaths. Caught at the farthest extent of the wave’s force, Alivia had been slammed around by the flood. Old reflexes honed over the years steered the car through the chaos until its motor eventually died.

Fortunately, she was less than a kilometre from the hab-tenement, so didn’t have far to go. Alivia sprinted uphill, the water level dropping the higher she went. The streets were thick with people, some looking down in horror at the drowned coastline, others sensibly packing their belongings.

Alivia pushed on, finally reaching her hab, a mid-level stack of bare plascrete and dirty glass on the edge of the walled starport.

‘Clever boy,’ she said, seeing the hab shutter pulled down over their ground-floor residency. She ran over and banged her fists on the bare metal.

‘Jeph, open up, it’s me!’ she yelled. ‘Hurry, we’ve got to get out of the city.’

Alivia hit the shutter again, and it rose with a clatter of turning gears and rattling chains. She ducked under as soon as there was enough room and took a quick inventory. Miska and little Vivyen clutched their father’s overalls, their sleepy faces lined with worry.

‘Liv, what’s going on?’ asked Jeph, doing a poor job of keeping the fear from his voice. She took his hand and steadied him with gentle stimulation of his pituitary gland to produce a burst of endorphins.

‘We’ve got to go. Now,’ she said. ‘Get the girls ready.’

Jeph knew her well enough to know not to argue.

‘Yeah, sure, Liv,’ he said, calm without knowing why. ‘Where are we going?’

‘South,’ said Alivia as Jeph began wrapping the girls in heavy outdoor coats before helping them pull on their boots.

‘The cargo-five ready to go?’ asked Alivia, bending to retrieve a burnished metal gun-case from a cavity she’d cut in the floor beneath their bed. There was a gun in it, yes, but that wasn’t what was most precious to her in there.

‘Yeah, Liv, just like always.’

‘Good,’ she said, stuffing the gun-case into her kit bag.

‘This why you always say we got to keep it fuelled?’ asked Jeph. ‘In case of trouble?’

She nodded and his shoulders sagged in relief.

‘You know, I always worried it was so you could get out quick if you ever decided you’d had enough of us.’

Alivia didn’t have the heart to tell him both reasons were true.

Miska started crying. Alivia fought the urge to pull her close. She didn’t have time for sentimentality. As one of Molech’s principal port facilities, Larsa was sure to come under attack from Legion forces. She couldn’t be here when that happened.

‘Liv, they’re saying half the city’s underwater.’

‘Maybe all of it soon,’ she said, her eyes sweeping the room to make sure there wasn’t anything else of use they might need on the journey south. ‘That’s why we need to go right now. Come on.’

‘Sure, Liv, sure,’ nodded Jeph, hugging the girls tight. ‘Where are we going again?’

‘We drive south until we hit the agri-belt arterials and hope they’ve not been bombed to oblivion by the time we get there.’

‘Then what?’

‘Then we go to Lupercalia,’ she said.

4

Far to the east of Lupercalia, the Knights of House Donar held the Preceptor Line, a grand name for a crumbling curtain-wall that marked the edge of civilisation. West were inhabited cities, east the unchecked jungles of Kush, and beyond that only black-gulfed Ophir.

Immense predator beasts stalked the jungle’s humid depths, beasts that had once roamed freely across the land. Centuries of hunting had driven them to the fringes of the world, to hidden mountain fissures, jungle lairs or the arid southern steppe.