The Horus Heresy: Vengeful Spirit

Warhounds: Kitsune and Kumiho of Legio Vulpa, Venataris Mori and Carnophage of Vulcanum.

And then the Warlords: Mask of Ruin, Talismanik, and Anger’s Reward, also of Vulcanum. Xestor’s Sword and Phantom Lord of Legio Mortis.

Data on the enemy engines flowed around Uta-Dagon, engagements fought, engine kills, maintenance profiles and damage records. In a straight up fight, such details could mean the difference between victory and defeat. Here they were unnecessary. The chance to perhaps do a little more damage before being destroyed.

said Utu-Lerna.

ordered Uta-Dagon, and his Mechanicum priests drove the reactor to a higher pitch. Red Vengeance increased its pace, thunderous footfalls cracking the ground and smashing maglevs where there wasn’t enough clearance to avoid them.

Uta-Dagon felt intense heat swell his phantom limbs as his weapon systems spooled up to fire. His right arm was the searing power of a volcano cannon, his left the clenched fist of a hellstorm cannon. He felt the passage of scores of missiles moving through his body of iron and sinew to the launchers at his carapace.

said Utu-Lerna, with what he could hear was a grin on her wraith-like face.

said Uta-Dagon.

5

It called itself the Teratus, though the Manifold of Red Vengeance had identified it as Pax Ascerbus, a Reaver of Legio Interfector. Blood was its new oil, the sentience of a million warp scraps its marrow and its corrupt machine-spirit was a howling, warp-stitched thing of murder-lust.

With four Warhounds at its feet, it strode with grim purpose towards Legio Fortidus. Talismanik and Phantom Lord marched at its back, and the Teratus dredged power from its every system to keep ahead of the larger engines. They howled at it to slow its advance, to let them dispatch the doomed Legio, but the Teratus ignored them.

The engines of Fortidus were running at barely half power, woken too soon and without the proper consecration. Too long at rest had reduced their reactor fires to embers. Void shields were still sparking from emergency ignition and their walk was the leaden shuffle of a condemned man en route to his execution.

The Warhounds circling the two Warlords were poor specimens. Wary, where they ought to be aggressive. Keeping close to the larger engines where they should be duelling with their opposite numbers.

it said, and the moderati flesh-things roosting in the weapon compartments flinched at the scrapcode-laced barbs in the cant.

He sent his own Warhounds out to engage the Fortidus Scout Titans with a pulsed order through the Manifold. Warhorns braying, the eager pups surged forward. They wove in and out of each other’s path, eager to claim the first kill.

The Teratus increased its stride, unconsciously trying to match the pace of the smaller engines. The gap between it and the following Warlords grew wider.

Ranging fire snapped between the Scout Titans. The Teratus ignored it. A baring of fangs, nothing more. Warnings shimmered at the edge of its perception. Power surges, fusion warnings. Emission flares. At first they made no sense.

Then, with a sudden pulse of awareness, he realised how it had been misled, its own sense of righteous superiority causing it to see what it wanted to see.

Neither of the Fortidus engines was as enfeebled as they first appeared. Their reactors surged to life with high-volume plasma injections. A terminally-risky manoeuvre that would end a reactor’s useful life in one final sunburst of searing brilliance. Weapon systems blazed with power and opened fire in the same instant.

Kitsune and Kumiho suffered first. Shrieking salvoes of Hellstorm fire stripped them of their void shields. Pinpoint volcano cannon shots incinerated their princeps’ compartments and left their thrashing limbs pawing the earth. Venataris Mori and Carnophage scattered at the first barrage of shots, but not fast enough. Venataris Mori fell with a leg blown off and Carnophage ploughed a hundred metre furrow with its canopy as its gyros overcompensated for its princeps’ desperate evasive manoeuvres.

<Engine kill!> blared the Manifold with open-vox transmission from Legio Fortidus. The Teratus screamed and its moderati-creatures howled in pain. It bled power from propulsion to the forward void shields. Too little, too late.