The Horus Heresy: Vengeful Spirit

‘The gene-vault?’ he said. ‘It’s void-hardened and energy shielded. It’s a wonder the damn Apothecaries can get in.’

‘Do you doubt me, Caipha?’ whispered Mortarion.

‘Never, my lord.’

‘And have you ever known me to be wrong in such matters?’

‘No, my lord.’

‘Then trust me when I say there’s something in there.’

‘Something?’

Mortarion nodded, and he canted his head to one side, as though listening to sounds only he could hear. The muscles in his face twitched, but with the gorget obscuring his jaw, it was impossible to be certain what expression he made.

‘Open the door,’ he ordered, and a gaggle of hazard-suited Legions serfs ran to it with pneumatic key-drivers and one-time cipher code wands. They inserted the power-keys, but before any were engaged, a green-cloaked Apothecary approached Mortarion under the watchful gaze of the Deathshroud.

‘My lord,’ said the Apothecary. ‘I beg you to reconsider.’

‘What is your name?’ asked Mortarion.

‘Koray Burcu, my lord.’

‘We have just breached Molech’s system edge, Apothecary Burcu, and there is an intruder aboard the Endurance,’ said Mortarion. ‘It is behind that door. I require you to open it. Now.’

Koray Burcu wilted under Mortarion’s gaze, but to his credit, the Apothecary stood his ground.

‘My lord, please,’ said Burcu. ‘I implore you to withdraw from the apothecarion. The gene-vault must be kept sterile and at positive pressure. This entire stock of gene-seed is at risk of contamination if the door is opened even a fraction.’

‘Nevertheless, you will do as I order,’ said Mortarion. ‘I can do it without you, Apothecary, but it will take time. And in that time, what do you think an intruder might be doing in there?’

Burcu considered the primarch’s words and made his way to the gleaming vault door. Numerous key-drivers turned simultaneously under Burcu’s direction as he wanded a helix-code unique to this moment and which would change immediately upon the door’s opening.

The door split at its junction with the wall and a blast of frozen, sharp-edged air escaped from within. Mortarion felt it cut the skin of his face, relishing the needle-like jab of cold. The door swung wider and the hazard-suited thralls withdrew as the reek of preserving chemicals and frost-resistant power cells tainted the air with bio-mechanical flavours. Mortarion tasted something else on the air, a fetor of something so lethal that only one such as he could authorise its release.

But such things were stored in the deepest magazines, locked away in vaults even more secure than this.

‘Touch nothing,’ warned Burcu, moving ahead of the Deathshroud as they stepped over the high threshold of the gene-vault.

Mortarion turned to Morarg and said, ‘Seal the door behind me, and only open it again on my express order.’

‘My lord?’ said Morarg. ‘After Dwell, my place is at your side!’

‘Not this time,’ said Mortarion and his meaning was ironclad.

Devotion to duty clamped down on Morarg’s next words and he nodded stiffly as Mortarion turned and followed Koray Burcu into the vault. No sooner was Mortarion inside than the heavy adamantium door swung closed.

The space within was a hundred metre square vault of frost-white and gleaming silver. Shielded banks of gurgling cryo-tubes lined the walls, and rows of centrifuge drums formed a central aisle.

Illuminated sigils and runic inscriptions of genetic purity flickered on brass-rimmed data-slates, and Mortarion extrapolated mental maps of the gene-code fragments. Here was a collection of mucranoids, there a chemical bath of zygotes that would one day be a Betcher’s Gland. Behind them, bubbling cylinders of eyeballs.

Half-formed organs floated in gestation tanks and puffs of vapour from humming condensers filled the air with chill moisture that crunched underfoot in microscopic ice crystals. Koray Burcu claimed the atmosphere within the vault was sterile, but such was not the case. The air vibrated with potential, a thing pressing itself upon the fabric of reality like a newborn in a rupturing birth sac.

Only he could feel it. Only he knew what it was.

The Deathshroud advanced cautiously, and Mortarion sensed their confusion. To them, the vault was empty, no sign of the intruder their primarch said they would find. That they believed their gene-father might be mistaken amused him. What must it be like for a warrior of the Legions to think such a thing?

Much as it was for a primarch, he supposed.

But they could not sense what he could sense.

Mortarion had spent a lifetime on a world where the monstrous creations of rogue geneticists and spirit channelling corpse-whisperers had haunted the fogbound crags of Barbarus. Where monsters truly worthy of the name were wrought into being every day. Had even fashioned a few of his own.

Mortarion knew the spoor of such beasts, but more than that, he recognised the scent of one of his own.

‘You see, my lord,’ said Apothecary Burcu. ‘It’s plain to see there’s nothing here, so can we all please vacate the gene-labs?’