Horus Rising Read Free Page B

the area, Loken saw a heap of empty shell cases, glittering brass, that had spilled out from behind a bulkhead across from him. Was that where the killer was hiding?
    Loken bent down and picked up a chunk of fallen plasterwork. He lobbed it into the open. There was a click, and then a hammering deluge of autofire raked across the junction. It lasted five seconds, and in that time over a thousand rounds were expended. Loken saw the fuming shell cases spitting out from behind the bulkhead as they were ejected.
    The firing stopped. Fycelene vapour fogged the junction. The gunfire had scored a mottled gouge across the stone floor, pummelling Zakias’s corpse in the process. Spots of blood and scraps of tissue had been spattered out.
    Loken waited. He heard a whine and the metallic clunk of an autoloader system. He read weapon heat, fading, but no body warmth.
    ‘Won a medal yet?’ Vipus asked, approaching.
    ‘It’s just an automatic sentry gun,’ Loken replied.
    ‘Well, that’s a small relief at least’ Vipus said. ‘After the grenades we’ve pitched in that direction, I was beginning to wonder if these vaunted Invisibles might be “Invulnerables” too. I’ll call up Devastator support to—’
    ‘Just give me a light flare,’ Loken said.
    Vipus stripped one off his leg plate and handed it to his captain. Loken ignited it with a twist of his hand, and threw it down the hallway opposite. It bounced, fizzling, glaring white hot, past the hidden killer.
    There was a grind of servos. The implacable gunfire began to roar down the corridor at the flare, kicking it and bouncing it, ripping into the floor.
    ‘Garvi—’ Vipus began.
    Loken was running. He crossed the junction, thumped his back against the bulkhead. The gun was still blazing. He wheeled round the bulkhead and saw the sentry gun, built into an alcove. A squat machine, set on four pad feet and heavily plated, it had turned its short, fat, pumping cannons away from him to fire on the distant, flickering flare.
    Loken reached over and tore out a handful of its servo flexes. The guns stuttered and died.
    ‘We’re clear!’ Loken called out. Locasta moved up.
    ‘That’s generally called showing off,’ Vipus remarked.
    Loken led Locasta up the corridor, and they entered a fine state apartment. Other apartment chambers, similarly regal, beckoned beyond. It was oddly still and quiet.
    ‘Which way now?’ Vipus asked.
    ‘We go find this “Emperor”,’ Loken said.
    Vipus snorted. ‘Just like that?’
    ‘The first captain bet me I couldn’t reach him first.’
    ‘The first captain, eh? Since when was Garviel Loken on pally terms with him?’
    ‘Since Tenth breached the palace ahead of First. Don’t worry, Nero, I’ll remember you little people when I’m famous.’
    Nero Vipus laughed, the sound snuffling out of his helmet mask like the cough of a consumptive bull.
    What happened next didn’t make either of them laugh at all.

TWO
    Meeting the Invisibles
    At the foot of a Golden Throne
    Lupercal
    ‘C APTAIN L OKEN ?’ H E looked up from his work. ‘That’s me.’ ‘Forgive me for interrupting,’ she said. ‘You’re busy.’ Loken set aside the segment of armour he had been polishing and rose to his feet. He was almost a metre taller than her, and naked but for a loin cloth. She sighed inwardly at the splendour of his physique. The knotted muscles, the old ridge-scars. He was handsome too, this one, fair hair almost silver, cut short, his pale skin slightly freckled, his eyes grey like rain. What a waste, she thought.
    Though there was no disguising his inhumanity, especially in this bared form. Apart from the sheer mass of him, there was the overgrown gigantism of the face, that particular characteristic of the Astartes, almost equine, plus the hard, taut shell of his ribless torso, like stretched canvas.
    ‘I don’t know who you are,’ he said, dropping a nub of polishing fibre into a little pot, and wiping his fingers.
    She held out her