Horus Rising Read Free Page A

with him before. He felt blessed, elevated. To be a chosen man was enough, but to be in with the favoured elite, that was every captain’s dream.
    Reloading, Loken entered the palace through the induction gate, stepping over the tangled corpses of the enemy dead. The plaster facings of the inner walls had been cracked and blown down, and loose crumbs, like dry sand, crunched under his feet. The air was full of smoke, and his visor display kept jumping from one register to another as it attempted to compensate and get a clean reading.
    He moved down the inner hall, hearing the echo of gunfire from deeper in the palace compound. The body of a brother lay slumped in a doorway to his left, the large, white-armoured corpse odd and out of place amongst the smaller enemy bodies. Marjex, one of the Legion’s apothecaries, was bending over him. He glanced up as Loken approached, and shook his head.
    ‘Who is it?’ Loken asked.
    ‘Tibor, of Second Squad,’ Marjex replied. Loken frowned as he saw the devastating head wound that had stopped Tibor.
    ‘The Emperor knows his name,’ Loken said.
    Marjex nodded, and reached into his narthecium to get the reductor tool. He was about to remove Tibor’s precious gene-seed, so that it might be returned to the Legion banks.
    Loken left the apothecary to his work, and pushed on down the hall. In a wide colonnade ahead, the towering walls were decorated with frescoes, showing familiar scenes of a haloed Emperor upon a golden throne. How blind these people are, Loken thought, how sad this is. One day, one single day with the iterators, and they would understand. We are not the enemy. We are the same, and we bring with us a glorious message of redemption. Old Night is done. Man walks the stars again, and the might of the Astartes walks at his side to keep him safe.
    In a broad, sloping tunnel of etched silver, Loken caught up with elements of Third Squad. Of all the units in his company, Third Squad – Locasta Tactical Squad – was his favourite and his favoured. Its commander, Brother-sergeant Nero Vipus, was his oldest and truest friend.
    ‘How’s your humour, captain?’ Vipus asked. His pearl-white plate was smudged with soot and streaked with blood.
    ‘Phlegmatic, Nero. You?’
    ‘Choleric. Red-raged, in fact. I’ve just lost a man, and two more of mine are injured. There’s something covering the junction ahead. Something heavy. Rate of fire like you wouldn’t believe.’
    ‘Tried fragging it?’
    ‘Two or three grenades. No effect. And there’s nothing to see. Garvi, we’ve all heard about these so-called Invisibles. The ones that butchered Sejanus. I was wondering—’
    ‘Leave the wondering to me,’ Loken said. ‘Who’s down?’
    Vipus shrugged. He was a little taller than Loken, and his shrug made the heavy ribbing and plates of his armour clunk together. ‘Zakias.’
    ‘Zakias? No…’
    ‘Torn into shreds before my very eyes. Oh, I feel the hand of the ship on me, Garvi.’
    The hand of the ship. An old saying. The commander’s flagship was called the Vengeful Spirit, and in times of duress or loss, the Wolves liked to draw upon all that implied as a charm, a totem of retribution.
    ‘In Zakias’s name,’ Vipus growled, ‘I’ll find this bastard Invisible and—’
    ‘Sooth your choler, brother. I’ve no use for it,’ Loken said. ‘See to your wounded while I take a look.’
    Vipus nodded and redirected his men. Loken pushed up past them to the disputed junction.
    It was a vault-roofed crossways where four hallways met. The area read cold and still to his imaging. Fading smoke wisped up into the rafters. The ouslite floor had been chewed and peppered with thousands of impact craters. Brother Zakias, his body as yet unretrieved, lay in pieces at the centre of the crossway, a steaming pile of shattered white plasteel and bloody meat.
    Vipus had been right. There was no sign of an enemy present. No heat-trace, not even a flicker of movement. But studying