The Horus Heresy: Vengeful Spirit

‘Cayne, which way?’

‘As I said, straight on and up the stairs at the end.’

Severian was already moving, bolter pulled in tight. It looked as though his body was utterly still from the waist up. The barrel of his weapon never wavered, never so much as drifted a millimetre from his eyeline.

Moving silently in power armour was a trick only a few could manage, but Severian and Karayan elevated it to an art form. If anything, Rama Karayan moved with even less apparent effort than Severian, mirroring his path as they pushed ahead.

Loken felt clumsy in comparison, every echo of his footfalls sounding like the stomping tread of a Dreadnought. He could see that the others felt the same way.

The scrape of a blade behind him set Loken’s teeth on edge, like an Apothecary’s saw grinding through bone. In deference to Bror Tyrfingr’s displeasure, Severian left the marking of their path to the warrior of the Rout. It would be his gene-sire making this future assault, and the symmetry was pleasing.

Iron stairs were just where Cayne had said they would be, and the pathfinders climbed to one of the ventral gun decks. The top opened into a high-ceilinged chamber of acoustic baffles that sagged from the walls in wadded lumps and filled the air with drifting particulates. Another Eye of Horus on the wall. Loken reached out to touch it. The paint was still wet.

Shielded from the guns’ pressurised venting of superheated propellant by heavy mantlet shutters, the ammunition runnel-path was a sunken roadway ten metres wide behind the ranked-up guns. In battle, a constant stream of flatbed gurneys would ride the rails, distributing shells to the macro-cannon batteries and hauling discarded casings to the smelters.

The guns were silent, but chains rattled in enormous windlasses and the rumble of magazine elevators set the air vibrating. The sour smell Loken had tasted earlier returned, stronger this time. The voices scratching at the edge of hearing like animals left out in the rain became clearer.

‘What is that?’ said Zaven.

‘You hear it?’ asked Loken.

‘Of course, it’s like a part-tuned vox in another room,’ said Zaven. ‘It keeps saying the same thing over and over.’

‘What are you hearing?’ asked Rubio urgently.

‘I don’t know exactly,’ said Zaven. ‘It’s gibberish. Maelsha’eil Atherakhia, whatever that means.’

‘No, it’s not words at all,’ said Varren. ‘It’s screaming. Or maybe someone’s trying to chop a chainaxe through adamantium.’

‘That’s what you hear?’ said Tubal Cayne. ‘Getting hit on the head all those times must have damaged the aural comprehension centres of your brain.’

Rubio put himself between Cayne and Varren. His psychic hood flickered with light, though none of it was of his doing.

‘What do you hear?’ demanded Rubio.

‘The noise of a gun deck,’ said Cayne. ‘What else would I hear?’

Rubio nodded and said, ‘Be thankful you are a man of pure reason, Tubal Cayne.’

‘What’s going on, Rubio?’ said Loken.

The psyker turned around, addressing them all. ‘Whatever you think you’re hearing, it’s not real. Low-level psychic energy is simmering beneath the surface. It’s like background radiation, but within the mind.’

‘Is it dangerous?’ said Nohai. ‘I’m showing elevated adrenal levels and combat responses in every single one of you.’

‘Because he just told us we’re under the effect of maleficarum!’ hissed Bror Tyrfingr, baring his canines.

Macer Varren unhooked his axe, finger hovering over the activation stud. The noise of its chained teeth would be heard for hundreds of metres in all directions.

Rubio’s fists clenched and ghostlights danced in the crystalline matrix of his hood. The whispering in Loken’s helmet drifted away, as if carried on a stiff breeze. Soon it was gone, leaving only the percussive hammering of the gun deck. He let out a breath.

‘What are you doing?’ Tyrfingr asked Rubio.

‘Shielding you all from the psychic bleed-off that permeates this ship,’ said the psyker, and Loken heard the strain in his voice. ‘Everything you hear from now on will be the truth.’

The thought gave Loken no comfort.