The Horus Heresy: Vengeful Spirit

Their guns were firing. Explosive rounds slaughtered the tank crews who’d survived the initial shelling, pulping them to shredded meat mass. Another pod slammed down behind the first wave. Then another, and another. They fell in pairs, one after the other, each reverberating impact bearing more Death Guard.

The Reaper tried to turn towards Mortarion, but with a snapped track, that wasn’t happening any time soon. Skander engaged his commander’s override, slewing the twin battle cannon turret around. Men were screaming over the fires and continuous sound of falling masonry.

The primarch of the Death Guard saw him, and Skander almost let go of the controls as he stared into the face of his executioner – pale skinned, with the coldest eyes he had ever seen.

He heard the familiar double reverberation of shells ramming home in the breech. A hiss of locking mechanisms and the whine of accelerator drives.

‘Throne, yes,’ he hissed, mashing the firing trigger.

All three hundred and twenty tonnes of The Reaper’s armoured might rocked under the enormous recoil. The twin muzzle flashes all but blinded him. The conjoined pressure waves punched the air from his lungs and the thunder of discharge blew out his eardrums.

Skander fought to take a breath, concussed by the simultaneous detonations of point-blank battle cannon shells. He blinked away after-images as a rain of plascrete dust rained down. Acrid smoke fogged the air, slashed by cherry red fyceline fires.

He dragged in hot, metallic breath and shouted for a reload, though he knew no one would hear and they’d not get another shot off. Skander ducked down into the Stormhammer, cupping his hands over his mouth.

‘Reload! Reload! Throne, give me one more shot at that bastard!’

He repeated his order. He had no idea who was still alive inside The Reaper. Until the main gun was loaded, all Skander could directly control was the cupola’s point-defence gun. It wasn’t a twin battle cannon turret, but it would have to do.

Skander rose up and saw the cloaked figure of the Death Lord standing on his tank. Mortarion’s armour looked to have been tenderised by a forge hammer and his cloak was a ragged scrap. The primarch was a grotesque waxwork, a flesh-slick deathmask.

‘One shot’s all you get,’ gurgled Mortarion, swinging Silence and carving Skander and his Stormhammer apart.

6

Similar stories played out all across Molech.

The air defence batteries were completely overwhelmed. Two Legion fleets in close orbit were an impossible force to defeat, and the punishing broadsides turned entire regions of Molech into glassy deserts.

Mount Torger was targeted by a mass impact of bunker penetrators, and not even its many point defences could keep the holdfast of the Ordo Reductor from being gutted by an inferno. Fires raged beneath the mountain, fires that would burn for another seventy years before finally bringing it down.

Goshen, Imperatum and the twin fortress cities of Leosta and Luthre were bombed, as were the coastal cities of Desqua and Hvitha. Known as the City of Winds due to its location at the farthest extreme of the Aenatep peninsula, Hvitha all but fell into the ocean as the rock upon which it was built crumbled under the weight of the barrage.

A red rain fell on Khanis, molten iron and micro-debris falling from the fighting in orbit like burning bullets.

People out in the open went up like vent flares, instantly ablaze. They screamed until the heat sucked the air from their lungs. They ran for shelter, but the molten rain soon ate through the canvas awnings and corrugated roofs.

With the bombardment finished for now, the fleets opened their embarkation decks and wave after wave of the Warmaster’s invasion force launched into the upper atmosphere.

They arced down like grains of sand running through a philosopher’s fingers; Stormbirds and Thunderhawks, Fire Raptors and Storm Eagles. Coffin ships and bulk landers. Shoals of matte-black Army transports. Armoured trans-loaders and munitions carriers.

Alert horns howled in every city.

Molech was screaming.

TWELVE Breakout / Decapitation / Twin Flames

1

A tidal wave of ocean green crashed onto the beaches at Avadon, but this one didn’t recede, it just kept pushing higher. An armoured fist of firepower and transhuman endurance, this was to be a breakout achieved at maximum speed.

Two hundred Sons of Horus Land Raiders led the speartip’s thrust.

No grace, no finesse, just a thunderous hammer blow to the heart.

Edoraki Hakon, Marshal of the Northern Oceanic, awaited Lupercal’s army with a line of strongpoints, deep trenches, six full regiments of Army and a company of dug-in superheavies. Her defences lined the coastal cliffs and encircled the landward end of the causeway. If the Sons of Horus wanted to reach the mainland, they were going to have to fight their way off Damesek.