The Horus Heresy: Horus Rising Read online

  The Horus Heresy: Horus Rising

  Dan Abnett

  Dan Abnett

  The Horus Heresy: Horus Rising

  DRAMATIS PERSONAE

  The Primarchs

  HORUS First Primarch and Warmaster, Commander-in-Chief of the Luna Wolves

  ROGAL DORN Primarch of the Imperial Fists

  SANGUINIUS Primarch of the Blood Angels

  The Luna Wolves Legion

  EZEKYLE ABADDON First Captain

  TARIK TORGADDON Captain, 2nd Company

  IACTON QRUZE The Half-heard', Captain, 3rd Company

  HASTUR SEJANUS Captain, 4th Company

  HORUS AXIMAND 'Little Horus', Captain, 5th Company

  SERGHAR TARGOST Captain, 7th Company, Lodge Master

  GARVIEL LOKEN Captain, 10th Company

  Luc SEDIRAE Captain, 13th Company

  TYBALT MARR 'The Either', Captain, 18th Company

  VERULAM MOY 'The Or', Captain, 19th Company

  LEV GOSHEN Captain, 25th Company

  KALUS EKADDON Captain, Catulan Reaver Squad

  FALKUS KIBRE 'Widowmaker', Captain, Justaerin Terminator Squad

  NERO VIPUS Sergeant, Locasta Tactical Squad

  XAVYER JUBAL Sergeant, Hellebore Tactical Squad

  MALOGHURST 'The Twisted', Equerry to the Warmaster

  The 140th Imperial Expedition Fleet

  MATHANUAL AUGUST Master of the Fleet

  Imperial Personae

  KYRIL SINDERMANN Primary iterator

  IGNACE KARKASY Official remembrancer, poet

  MERSADIE OLITON Official remembrancer, documentarist

  EUPHRATI KEELER Official remembrancer, imagist

  PEETER EGON

  MOMUS Architect designate

  AENID RATHBONE High Administratrix

  Non Imperial Personae

  JEPHTA NAUD General Commander, the armies of the interex

  DIATH SHEHN Abbrocarius

  ASHEROT Indentured Kinebrach, Keeper of Devices

  MITHRAS TULL Subordinate Commander, the armies of the interex

  The Word Bearers Legion

  EREBUS First Chaplain

  The Imperial Fists Legion

  SIGISMUND First Captain

  The Emperor's Children Legion

  EIDOLON Lord Commander

  Lucius Captain

  SAUL TARVITZ Captain

  The Blood Angels Legion

  RALDORON Chapter Master

  The 63rd Imperial Expedition Fleet

  BOAS COMNENUS Master of the Fleet

  HEKTOR VARVARAS Lord Commander of the Army

  ING MAE SING Mistress of Astropaths

  ERFA HINE

  SWEQ CHOROGUS High Senior of the Navis Nobilite

  REGULUS Adept, Envoy of the Martian Mechanicum

  PART ONE. THE DECEIVED

  I was there, the day Horus slew the Emperor...

  'Myths grow like crystals, according to their own recurrent pattern; but there must be a suitable core to start their growth.'

  - attributed to the remembrancer Koestler (fl. M2)

  "The difference between gods and daemons largely depends upon where one is standing at the time.'

  - the Primarch Lorgar

  'The new light of science shines more brightly than the old light of sorcery. Why, then, do we not seem to see as far?'

  - the Sumaturan philosopher Sahlonum (fl. M29)

  ONE

  Blood from misunderstanding

  Our brethren in ignorance

  The Emperor dies

  'I WAS THERE.’ he would say afterwards, until afterwards became a time quite devoid of laughter. 'I was there, the day Horns slew the Emperor.' It was a delicious conceit, and his comrades would chuckle at the sheer treason of it.

  The story was a good one. Torgaddon would usually be the one to cajole him into telling it, for Torgaddon was the joker, a man of mighty laughter and idiot tricks. And Loken would tell it again, a tale rehearsed through so many retellings, it almost told itself.

  Loken was always careful to make sure his audience properly understood the irony in his story. It was likely that he felt some shame about his complicity in the matter itself, for it was a case of blood spilled from misunderstanding. There was a great tragedy implicit in the tale of the Emperor's murder, a tragedy that Loken always wanted his listeners to appreciate. But the death of Sejanus was usually all that fixed their attentions.

  That, and the punchline.

  It had been, as far as the warp-dilated horologs could attest, the two hundred and third year of the Great Crusade. Loken always set his story in its proper time and place. The commander had been Warmaster for about a year, since the triumphant conclusion of the Ullanor campaign, and he was anxious to prove his new-found status, particularly in the eyes of his brothers.

  Warmaster. Such a tide. The fit was still new and unnatural, not yet worn in.

  It was a strange time to be abroad amongst stars. They had been doing what they had been doing for two centuries, but now it felt unfamiliar. It was a start of things. And an ending too.

  The ships of the 63rd Expedition came upon the Imperium by chance. A sudden etheric storm, later declared providential by Maloghurst, forced a route alteration, and they translated into the edges of a system comprising nine worlds.

  Nine worlds, circling a yellow sun.

  Detecting the shoal of rugged expedition warships on station at the out-system edges, the Emperor first demanded to know their occupation and agenda. Then he painstakingly corrected what he saw as the multifarious errors in their response.

  Then he demanded fealty.

  He was, he explained, the Emperor of Mankind. He had stoically shepherded his people through the miserable epoch of warp storms, through the Age of Strife, staunchly maintaining the rule and law of man. This had been expected of him, he declared. He had kept the flame of human culture alight through the aching isolation of Old Night. He had sustained this precious, vital fragment, and kept it intact, until such time as the scattered diaspora of humanity re-established contact. He rejoiced that such a time was now at hand. His soul leapt to see the orphan ships returning to the heart of

  the Imperium. Everything was ready and waiting. Everything had been preserved. The orphans would be embraced to his bosom, and then the Great Scheme of rebuilding would begin, and the Imperium of Mankind would stretch itself out again across the stars, as was its birthright.

  As soon as they showed him proper fealty. As Emperor. Of mankind.

  The commander, quite entertained by all accounts, sent Hastur Sejanus to meet with the Emperor and deliver greeting.

  Sejanus was the commander's favourite. Not as proud or irascible as Abaddon, nor as ruthless as Sedirae, nor even as solid and venerable as Iacton Qruze, Sejanus was the perfect captain, tempered evenly in all respects. A warrior and a diplomat in equal measure, Sejanus's martial record, second only to Abaddon's, was easily forgotten when in company with the man himself. A beautiful man, Loken would say, building his tale, a beautiful man adored by all. 'No finer figure in Mark IV plate than Hastur Sejanus. That he is remembered, and his deeds celebrated, even here amongst us, speaks of Sejanus's qualities. The noblest hero of the Great Crusade.’ That was how Loken would describe him to the eager listeners. 'In future times, he will be recalled with such fondness that men will name their sons after him.’

  Sejanus, with a squad of his finest warriors from the Fourth Company, travelled in-system in a gilded barge, and was received for audience by the Emperor at his palace on the third planet.

  And killed.

  Murdered. Hacked down on the onyx floor of the palace even as he stood before the Emperor's golden throne. Sejanus and his glory squad - Dymo
s, Malsan-dar, Gorthoi and the rest - all slaughtered by the Emperor's elite guard, the so-called Invisibles.

  Apparently, Sejanus had not offered the correct fealty. Indelicately, he had suggested there might actually be another Emperor.

  The commander's grief was absolute. He had loved Sejanus like a son. They had warred side by side to affect compliance on a hundred worlds. But the commander, always sanguine and wise in such matters, told his signal men to offer the Emperor another chance. The commander detested resorting to war, and always sought alternative paths away from violence, where such were workable. This was a mistake, he reasoned, a terrible, terrible mistake. Peace could be salvaged. This 'Emperor' could be made to understand.

  It was about then, Loken liked to add, that a suggestion of quote marks began to appear around the 'Emperor's' name.

  It was determined that a second embassy would be despatched. Maloghurst volunteered at once. The commander agreed, but ordered the speartip forwards into assault range. The intent was clear: one hand extended open, in peace, the other held ready as a fist. If the second embassy failed, or was similarly met with violence, then the fist would already be in position to strike. That sombre day, Loken said, the honour of the speartip had fallen, by the customary drawing of lots, to the strengths of Abaddon, Torgaddon, 'Little Horus' Aximand. And Loken himself.

  At the order, battle musters began. The ships of the speartip slipped forward, running under obscurement. On board, stormbirds were hauled onto their launch carriages. Weapons were issued and certified. Oaths of moment were sworn and witnessed. Armour was machined into place around the anointed bodies of the chosen.

  In silence, tensed and ready to be unleashed, the speartip watched as the shuttle convoy bearing Maloghurst and his envoys arced down towards the third

  planet. Surface batteries smashed them out of the heavens. As the burning scads of debris from Maloghurst's flotilla billowed away into the atmosphere, the 'Emperor's' fleet elements rose up out of the oceans, out of the high cloud, out of the gravity wells of nearby moons. Six hundred warships, revealed and armed for

  war.

  Abaddon broke obscurement and made a final, personal plea to the 'Emperor', beseeching him to see sense. The warships began to fire on Abaddon's speartip.

  'My commander.’ Abaddon relayed to the heart of the waiting fleet, 'there is no dealing here. This fool imposter will not listen.’

  And the commander replied, 'Illuminate him, my son, but spare all you can. That order not withstanding, avenge the blood of my noble Sejanus. Decimate this "Emperor's" elite murderers, and bring the imposter to me.’

  'And so.’ Loken would sigh, 'we made war upon our brethren, so lost in ignorance.’

  IT WAS LATE evening, but the sky was saturated with light. The phototropic towers of the High City, built to turn and follow the sun with their windows during the day, shifted uneasily at the pulsating radiance in the heavens. Spectral shapes swam high in the upper atmosphere: ships engaging in a swirling mass, charting brief, nonsensical zodiacs with the beams of their battery weapons.

  At ground level, around the wide, basalt platforms that formed the skirts of the palace, gunfire streamed through the air like horizontal rain, hosing coils of tracer fire that dipped and slithered heavily like snakes, die-straight zips of energy that vanished as fast as they appeared, and flurries of bolt shells like blizzarding

  hail. Downed stormbirds, many of them crippled and burning, littered twenty square kilometres of the landscape.

  Black, humanoid figures paced slowly in across the limits of the palace sprawl. They were shaped like armoured men, and they trudged like men, but they were giants, each one hundred and forty metres tall. The Mechanicum had deployed a half-dozen of its Titan war engines. Around the Titans' soot-black ankles, troops flooded forward in a breaking wave three kilometres wide.

  The Luna Wolves surged like the surf of the wave, thousands of gleaming white figures bobbing and running forward across the skirt platforms, detonations bursting amongst them, lifting rippling fireballs and trees of dark brown smoke. Each blast juddered the ground with a gritty thump, and showered down dirt as an after-curse. Assault craft swept in over their heads, low, between the shambling frames of the wide-spaced Titans, fanning the slowly lifting smoke clouds into sudden, energetic vortices.

  Every Astartes helmet was filled with vox-chatter: snapping voices, chopping back and forth, their tonal edges roughened by the transmission quality.

  It was Loken's first taste of mass war since Ullanor. Tenth Company's first taste too. There had been skirmishes and scraps, but nothing testing. Loken was glad to see that his cohort hadn't grown rusty. The unapolo-getic regimen of live drills and punishing exercises he'd maintained had kept them whetted as sharp and serious as the terms of the oaths of moment they had taken just hours before.

  Ullanor had been glorious, a hard, unstinting slog to dislodge and overthrow a bestial empire. The greenskin had been a pernicious and resilient foe, but they had broken his back and kicked over the embers of his revel

  fires. The commander had won the field through the employment of his favourite, practiced strategy: the speartip thrust to tear out the throat. Ignoring the green-skin masses, which had outnumbered the crusaders five to one, the commander had struck directly at the Overlord and his command coterie, leaving the enemy headless and without direction.

  The same philosophy operated here. Tear out the throat and let the body spasm and die. Loken and his men, and the war engines that supported them, were the edge of the blade unsheathed for that purpose.

  But this was not like Ullanor at all. No thickets of mud and clay-built ramparts, no ramshackle fortresses of bare metal and wire, no black powder air bursts or howling ogre-foes. This was not a barbaric brawl determined by blades and upper body strength.

  This was modern warfare in a civilised place. This was man against man, inside the monolithic precincts of a cultured people. The enemy possessed ordnance and firearms every bit the technological match of the Legio forces, and the skill and training to use them. Through the green imaging of his visor, Loken saw armoured men with energy weapons ranged against them in the lower courses of the palace. He saw tracked weapon carriages, automated artillery; nests of four or even eight automatic cannons shackled together on cart platforms that lumbered forward on hydraulic legs.

  Not like Ullanor at all. That had been an ordeal. This would be a test. Equal against equal. Like against like.

  Except that for all its martial technologies, the enemy lacked one essential quality, and that quality was locked within each and every case of Mark IV power armour: the genetically enhanced flesh and blood of the Imperial Astartes. Modified, refined, post-human, the Astartes were superior to anything they had met or would ever meet. No fighting force in the galaxy could ever hope to

  match the Legions, unless the stars went out, and madness ruled, and lawful sense turned upside down. For, as Sedirae had once said, The only thing that can beat an Astartes is another Astartes', and they had all laughed at that. The impossible was nothing to be scared of.

  The enemy - their armour a polished magenta trimmed in silver, as Loken later discovered when he viewed mem with his helmet off - firmly held the induction gates into the inner palace. They were big men, tall, thick through the chest and shoulders, and at the peak of fitness. Not one of them, not even the tallest, came up to the chin of one of the Luna Wolves. It was like fighting children.

  Well-armed children, it had to be said.

  Through the billowing smoke and the jarring detonations, Loken led the veteran First Squad up the steps at a run, the plasteel soles of their boots grating on the stone: First Squad, Tenth Company, Hellebore Tactical Squad, gleaming giants in pearl-white armour, the wolf head insignia stark black on their auto-responsive shoulder plates. Crossfire zig-zagged around them from the defended gates ahead. The night air shimmered with the heat distortion of weapons discharge. Some kind of upright, automated mortar was casting a sluggis
h, flaccid stream of fat munition charges over their heads.

  'Kill it!' Loken heard Brother-sergeant Jubal instruct over the link. Jubal's order was given in the curt argot of Cthonia, their derivation world, a language that the Luna Wolves had preserved as their battle-tongue.

  The battle-brother carrying the squad's plasma cannon obeyed without hesitation. For a dazzling half-second, a twenty-metre ribbon of light linked the muzzle of his weapon to the auto-mortar, and then the device engulfed the facade of the palace in a roasting wash of yellow flame.

  Dozens of enemy soldiers were cast down by the blast. Several were thrown up into the air, landing crumpled and boneless on the flight of steps.

  'Into them!' Jubal barked.

  Wildfire chipped and pattered off their armour. Loken felt the distant sting of it. Brother Calends stumbled and fell, but righted himself again, almost at once.

  Loken saw the enemy scatter away from their charge. He swung his bolter up. His weapon had a gash in the metal of the foregrip, the legacy of a greenskin's axe during Ullanor, a cosmetic mark Loken had told the armourers not to finish out. He began to fire, not on burst, but on single shot, feeling the weapon buck and kick against his palms. Bolter rounds were explosive penetrators. The men he hit popped like blisters, or shredded like bursting fruit. Pink mist fumed off every ruptured figure as it fell.

  Tenth Company!' Loken shouted. 'For the Warmas-ter!'

  The warcry was still unfamiliar, just another aspect of the newness. It was the first time Loken had declaimed it in war, the first chance he'd had since the honour had been bestowed by the Emperor after Ullanor.

  By the Emperor. The true Emperor.

  'Lupercal! Lupercal!' the Wolves yelled back as they streamed in, choosing to answer with the old cry, the Legion's pet-name for their beloved commander. The warhorns of the Titans boomed.

  They stormed the palace. Loken paused by one of the induction gates, urging his frontrunners in, carefully reviewing the advance of his company main force. Hellish fire continued to rake them from the upper balconies and towers. In the far distance, a brilliant dome of light suddenly lifted into the sky, astonishingly bright and vivid. Loken's visor automatically dimmed. The ground trembled and a noise like a thunderclap