A Rose Watered with Blood (Siege of Terra) (The Horus Heresy) by Aaron Dembski-Bowden

Author:Aaron Dembski-Bowden [Dembski-Bowden, Aaron]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Published: 2018-12-23T16:00:00+00:00

III

‘…with gun-shattered steel

Sundering

Thundering

Drumbeats across a dance floor

Spreading across the heavens

A ballroom among the stars

Bathing its hostess in a million lights of pinprick fusion.’

The Conqueror roared its way back into real space. The warp drives whined into abeyance and the plasma drives shouldered the burden of propulsion alone, as smoky trails of dissipating soul-mist raked at the re-emerging warship. She trailed several of her brutal Ursus Claws, the ship-killing harpoons torn loose from their moorings in previous battles and now dragged behind her as she sailed.

All souls aboard felt the translation from the Sea of Souls back into the cold void; the ship juddered around them with a momentary flicker of switching gravities – and something in the Conqueror’s guts, which had once been the Emperor’s son, sent its rage vibrating through the vessel’s bones.

‘I think the warp eases its pain,’ Guhuj remarked, gazing at nothing with shadowed eyes.

‘His,’ Lotara corrected him.

‘Ma’am?’

‘His pain. It’s still Angron.’

Guhuj looked dubious. More than that, he looked at her with pity. ‘As you say, captain.’

Lotara let it slide. She was keying commands into the armrests of her throne, sending data-spurts across the length of the warship. Her will, to be carried out at once. Signals, in some cases, to awaken the cell to action.

Ahead of them, around them, there was nothing but star-studded blackness. For now, the Conqueror sat alone in space.

Lotara kept typing. Legitimate duty rosters had been arranged ahead of time, allowing the mutineers to be where they needed to be. Others had been falsified as necessary, to achieve the same goal. Sections of the ship were pre-sealed or unlocked as required, with repair crews and Legion squads diverted elsewhere. At her keyed commands, ship-to-ship hauler shuttles were being fuelled in the portside hangar bays – five in total, enough to carry the refugees from the mad ship across to their destination.

She watched an auspex readout of World Eaters squad leaders moving throughout the ship. The reading was almost hysterically unreliable given the degradation of the Legion’s wargear and discipline, but Lotara Sarrin worked with what she had. It was no different from organising a battle; the manoeuvring in three dimensions, arranging the pieces to move hither and thither, for some to cross paths and others to never meet at all. She played a game with squad disposition, ostensibly diverting those loyal to the escapees’ cause to where they’d be needed most.

Several World Eaters officers and three of her own subcommanders worked with her in unspeaking unity, directing the flow of personnel aboard the ship. Weeks of coordination, unfolding in a stream of quiet effort.

So far, so good.

‘Khârn.’ She spoke over a personal link, bound straight to Khârn’s helm vox. ‘Khârn? Respond, please.’

Nothing.

That was… less good.

Guhuj was watching her. She pointedly ignored him, trying a second time to raise Khârn.

Eighteen minutes later, the XII Legion frigate Bestiarius tore back into real space within the same astronavigational span, dropping anchor only an hour’s flight coreward. That was as close as any of the World Eaters fleet would come to the flagship, these days.

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