[Warhammer 40K - The Horus Heresy 23] - Angel Exterminatus by Graham McNeill

Author:Graham McNeill [Graham McNeill]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Military Fiction, Science Fiction, Warhammer 40K
Publisher: Black Library
Published: 2012-10-26T04:00:00+00:00

Perturabo watched the replay of what the prow auspex had recorded at the farthest extent of its range, a distorted inload of aberrant data and meaningless warp interference. Then, at precisely the same moment each time, the sudden brightness of an electromagnetic pulse. Frequencies, radiance and nuclear spectra cascaded from the brightness, and Perturabo let the data lodge in the deep seams of his cognitive strata.

‘It’s an enemy ship,’ said Forrix, his surprise evident.

‘Do we know whose?’ asked Kroeger.

‘It’s an Iron Hands vessel,’ said Perturabo, tracing a finger down the streams of data as the recording looped once more.

‘Tenth Legion?’ said Forrix. ‘The assassins on Hydra Cordatus were Iron Hands.’

‘One of them was,’ corrected Perturabo. ‘But this is the ship they came from, I know it.’

The primarch paused the expanding halo of energy flaring from the Iron Hands ship, wondering how the Medusan warriors could have been so careless as to allow such a visible sign of their presence.

‘Not like the Tenth to make a mistake like that,’ noted Kroeger.

‘My thoughts exactly,’ said Perturabo. ‘Under normal operational circumstances I might say it was too convenient for them to reveal themselves so blatantly, but I don’t think this is a trap, I think we’ve just been handed a golden opportunity.’

‘I have a fix on their last position,’ said Falk, standing beside Vort’s command altar. ‘We’re at the forefront of the fleet and we’ll be within range in a few minutes.’

Perturabo nodded, then bent to the console with the frozen image of the expanding electromagnetic pulse. His eyes narrowed as he parsed the data and tapped the screen thoughtfully. He looked up into the maddening squalls and tempests raging outside, seeing a cold logic and order in the seething nuclear heart of the storm, idiot sentience given rudimentary form by the very flecks of insignificance that plied its immaterial currents.

Voyaging within the Eye of Terror had only increased his feeling of being studied, as though the eternal chaos of the storm had folded in on itself to regard the interlopers within its forbidden heart.

None of his gene-sons could know the warp as he did: they had not heard its siren song since their earliest days. To them, the Eye of Terror was an impenetrable hellstorm, a strange and mysterious phenomenon. A spatial hazard to be avoided.

To Perturabo it was a remnant of the galaxy’s ancient symphony, the background noise to existence itself and the fading echoes of creation music from the dawn of time.

‘My lord?’ said Forrix. ‘Is something wrong?’

‘Something’s awry,’ said Perturabo, a fresh suspicion forming in his mind like a coy secret that would only reveal itself if properly coaxed. ‘What am I seeing here? There’s something…something that shouldn’t be…’

He looked past the obvious signs of a ship in distress and let his burgeoning suspicion grow and develop without conscious direction. The solution would come, this thought that tugged at his subconscious, but only when it was ready.

An ascending tritone from behind announced an incoming communication from the Emperor’s Children fleet.

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