The Horus Heresy: Vengeful Spirit

Squadrons of tankers were assembled, filled with precious fuel for the fleets of Land Raiders, Rhinos and battle tanks rumbling on cracked permacrete aprons. Ten thousand Legion warriors stood ready to march westward to the fields of battle, but there was a problem.

Nine thousand kilometres of dense jungle.

Nine thousand kilometres of rocky crags, undulant hills, ridged spines and plunging river basins. Like the Arduenna Silva of Old Earth, Molech’s generals believed the jungles of Kush to be utterly impenetrable and thus only an ancient curtain-wall warded against assault from that axis. Its local name was the Preceptor Line. Orbital augurs revealed negligible Imperial presence upon it.

But where the generals of Old Earth had been proved wrong, those of Molech were right to believe the jungles an impassable barrier. The terrain was bad enough, but killer beasts dwelled in its steamy interior; roving azhdarchid flocks, territorial mallahgra or predator packs of xenosmilus.

And those were the least of the great monsters rumoured to dwell in the jungle’s dark heart.

2

A solitary Rhino drove out from the hundreds of Death Guard vehicles rumbling at the jungle’s edge. Unremarkable in appearance, its hull was old and scarred with damage. Its cupola-mounted bolters were missing, and the heraldry of the Death Guard looked to have been burned off in the fighting to seize Ophir. It passed between the high towers raised to keep watch on the jungle and vanished from sight.

The lone vehicle followed the line of an old hunting trail once used by House Nurthen until the last of that line had been slain when a bull mallahgra tore his Knight apart during mating season. Overgrown and unfavourable to anything other than a tracked vehicle, the trail was just about practicable.

The sound and vibration of its engine couldn’t help but attract attention. A pack of spine-backed xenosmilus stalked the Rhino, a muscular blend of sabre-tooth and crocodile, with chameleonic fur and a voracious appetite for flesh.

The pack leader was a monstrous beast with spines like spears and fangs like swords. It matched the Rhino in bulk, and its hide rippled with dappled shadows of the jungle and fleeting shafts of sunlight. As the Rhino followed the trail along the edge of a rocky slope, the pack sprang its trap. Three beasts ran in from the side. They shoulder-barged the Rhino, clawing its hull and gouging the metal with yellowed claws.

The pack leader leapt from hiding and paws like sledgehammers bludgeoned the vehicle from the trail. It tipped onto its side and rolled down the slope into what had once been a river basin.

Now it was a killing floor.

The rest of the pack charged in, tearing at the upturned Rhino and peeling its armour back like paper. Before they could completely wreck the vehicle, an enlarged hatch slammed open in its side and a bulky figure stepped onto the dry basin.

Encased in a fully-sealed exo-suit intended for the internal maintenance of plasma reactors – and which had been the precursor to Terminator armour – the figure was snapped up in the pack leader’s jaws.

Hook-like teeth deep in the beast’s jaws sawed into the layered adamantium and ceramite. Heavy plates groaned, but the monster didn’t taste flesh. Roaring in anger, the xenosmilus swung its head and threw the figure at a tumble of boulders. Rock split, but the armour held firm.

The Rhino’s occupant rose smoothly to his feet as if being flung around like a rag doll by enormous predators was of no consequence to him. The pack abandoned the Rhino and formed a circle. Caustic saliva dripped from their jaws.

The armoured warrior reached up and snapped open a complex series of locking bolts and vacuum seals. He removed his helmet and dropped it to the ground. The revealed face was in constant flux between life and death, the skin rotting to carrion meat and restoring itself between breaths.

‘Pack hunters?’ said Ignatius Grulgor. ‘Disappointing. I was hoping for some of the bigger beasts.’

The xenosmilus didn’t attack. Their spines stood erect as they smelled the corruption on this prey-thing. Bad meat even the scavengers wouldn’t touch.

The tall reeds surrounding Grulgor died first, a spreading wave of death that turned the ground black with rotted vegetation. He exhaled toxins, plagues, bacteria and viral strands once banned in an earlier age, but which man’s greed had allowed to endure.

His every breath turned the air into a lethal weapon.

The pack leader collapsed, coughing necrotic wads of dissolving lung matter. The flesh melted from its bones in an instant, a time-lapsed pict-feed of decay run in fast forward. The pack died with it as Grulgor extended the reach of the Life-Eater, growing exponentially stronger with his every breath that wasn’t breath.

The jungle was dying around him. Trees collapsed into decaying mulch in a heartbeat. Rivers curdled to dust and vegetation to gaseous ooze.

He was ground zero, patient zero and every vector imaginable.