He went to the edge of the shattered flooring and looked out. He could see people beneath him, the tiny dots of figures running in the avenues. Kell kicked aside a piece of fallen masonry and recovered his descent gear.
The vox link in his spy mask crackled as the seldom-used general channel was keyed.
Kell froze. Only the members of the team knew the frequency, and all of them knew that the channel was a mechanism of last resort. Even though it was heavily encrypted, it lacked the untraceable facility of the burst transmitters; the fact that one of the team was using it now meant something had gone very, very wrong.
The next sound he heard was the voice of the Callidus. Every word said was being simultaneously transmitted to Tariel and the Garantine. ‘Mission fail,’ said Koyne, panting with the exertion of running. He could hear bolter shots and screaming in the background. ‘Confirming mission fail.’
Kell was shaking his head. That could not be true; the last thing he had seen through the Exitus’s scope was the flash of radiation as the Lance ended the target’s life. Horus Lupercal was dead…
‘Broken Mirror,’ said Koyne. ‘I repeat, Broken Mirror.’
The code phrase hit Kell like a physical blow and he sagged against the crumbling wall. The words had only one meaning – a surrogate, a sacrificial proxy had replaced their target.
A storm of questions rushed through his thoughts; how could Horus have known they would be waiting for them? Had the mission been compromised from the very start? Had they been betrayed?
The warrior Kell had placed between his crosshairs could only have been the Warmaster! Only Horus, the liberator of Dagonet clad in his mantle, would have made his grand gesture of the single shot into the sky… It could not be true! It could not be…
The moment of doubt and uncertainty flared bright, and then faded. Now was not the time to dwell on this turn of events. The first, most important directive was to exfiltrate the strike zone and regroup. To re-evaluate. Kell nodded to himself. He would do that, he decided. He would extract his team from this mess and then determine a new course of action. As long as a single Officio Assassinorum operative was still alive, the mission could still be completed.
And if along the way, a traitor came to light… He shrugged off the thought. First things first. The Vindicare keyed the general channel. ‘Acknowledged,’ he said. ‘Extraction sites are now to be considered compromised. Proceed to city perimeter and await contact.’
Kell secured the longrifle and fixed his descent pack to his back. ‘Go dark,’ he ordered, ending the final command with the tap of a switch that deactivated his vox gear.
An explosion made his head snap up and his spy mask’s optics located the thermal bloom in the corner of his vision, surrounding it with indicator icons. A vehicle had apparently been blown up by an exchange of gunfire. He wondered who would be foolish enough to shoot back at an Astartes just as a roar of engine noise swept over his head. Kell shrank into the cover of a partly-collapsed wall as a heavy, slate-coloured aircraft thundered around the habitat tower on bright rods of thruster flame – a Stormbird in the livery of the Sons of Horus.
For a moment, he feared the Astartes had detected his firing hide; but the Stormbird swept on and down into the city, passing him by unnoticed. Kell looked up into the early morning sky and saw more raptor-shapes falling from the high clouds, trailing streamers of vapour from atmospheric re-entry. Whoever it was that Kell’s kill-shot had executed, the Warmaster’s warriors were coming in force to avenge him.
When he was sure the Stormbird was gone, Kell backed off and then ran at the hole in the wall. He threw himself into the air and felt the rush of the wind as gravity claimed his body. For agonising seconds, the streets below rose up towards him; then there was a sharp jerk across his shoulders as the sensors in the descent pack triggered the release of the parafoil across his back. The iridescent curve of ballistic cloth billowed open and his fall slowed.
Kell dropped into the sounds of terror and violence, searching for an escape.
Every deck of the Vengeful Spirit shook with barely-restrained violence as drop-ship after drop-ship rocketed off the launch decks. They streamed away from the battleship in a long, unbroken chain, lethal carrion birds wheeling and turning in towards the surface of Dagonet, carrying fury with them.
Nearby, system boats in service to the PDF’s space division were either turning to flee from the ships of the Warmaster’s fleet, or else they were already sinking into their home world’s gravity well as flames crawled down the length of them. The Vengeful Spirit’s gunnery crews had been sparing with the use of their megalaser batteries, striking the ships hard enough to cripple them but not enough to obliterate them. Now the PDF cruisers would burn up in the atmosphere, and the fires of their deaths would be seen the whole planet over. It was a most effective way to begin a punishment.
The Vengeful Spirit and the rest of her flotilla encroached slowly on Dagonet’s orbital space, approaching the staging point where Luc Sedirae’s vessel, the Thanato, was waiting for them. Most of the Thanato’s complement of drop-ships had already been deployed, the men of the 13th Company falling onto the capital city in a tide of unfettered rage. The handsome and ruthless master of the 13th was beloved of his warriors; and they would avenge him with nothing less than rivers of blood.
The tall viewing windows of the Lupercal’s Court looked out over the bow of the Vengeful Spirit, the curve of Dagonet and the lone Thanato laid out before it. Maloghurst left the Warmaster where he stood at the windows and crossed the strategium towards the corridor outside. As he walked, he spoke in low tones to the troupe of chapter serfs who followed him everywhere he went. The equerry parsed Horus’s commands to his underlings and they in turn moved away to carry those orders about the fleet.
Beyond the doorway there was a shadow. ‘Equerry,’ it said.
‘First Chaplain,’ Maloghurst replied. His disfigured face turned its perpetual scowl at the Word Bearer, dismissing the rest of the serfs with a flick of his clawed hand. ‘Do you wish to speak with me, Erebus? I had been told you were engaged in your… meditations.’
Erebus did not appear to notice the mocking tone Maloghurst placed on his question. ‘I was disturbed.’
‘By what?’
The Word Bearer’s face split in a thin smile. ‘A voice in the darkness.’ Before Maloghurst could demand a less obtuse answer, Erebus nodded towards the far end of the chamber, where Horus stood observing the motions of his fleet.
The lord of the Legion was magnificent in his full battle gear, his armour striped with shining gold and dark brass, hides of great beasts lying off his shoulder in a half-cloak. His face was hidden in the gloom, highlights made barely visible by the cold glow of the data consoles before him.
‘I would ask a question of the Warmaster,’ said the other Astartes.
Maloghurst did not move. ‘You may ask me.’
‘As you wish.’ Erebus’s lip curled slightly. ‘We are suddenly at battle alert status. It was my understanding we were coming to this world to show the flag in passing, and little more.’
‘You haven’t heard?’ Maloghurst feigned surprise, amused that for a change he knew something the Word Bearer did not. ‘Brother-Captain Sedirae was given the honour of standing as the Warmaster’s proxy on Dagonet. But there was an… incident. A trap, I believe. Sedirae was killed.’