Angels of Caliban

  BACKLIST

  Book 1 – HORUS RISING

  Book 2 – FALSE GODS

  Book 3 – GALAXY IN FLAMES

  Book 4 – THE FLIGHT OF THE EISENSTEIN

  Book 5 – FULGRIM

  Book 6 – DESCENT OF ANGELS

  Book 7 – LEGION

  Book 8 – BATTLE FOR THE ABYSS

  Book 9 – MECHANICUM

  Book 10 – TALES OF HERESY

  Book 11 – FALLEN ANGELS

  Book 12 – A THOUSAND SONS

  Book 13 – NEMESIS

  Book 14 – THE FIRST HERETIC

  Book 15 – PROSPERO BURNS

  Book 16 – AGE OF DARKNESS

  Book 17 – THE OUTCAST DEAD

  Book 18 – DELIVERANCE LOST

  Book 19 – KNOW NO FEAR

  Book 20 – THE PRIMARCHS

  Book 21 – FEAR TO TREAD

  Book 22 – SHADOWS OF TREACHERY

  Book 23 – ANGEL EXTERMINATUS

  Book 24 – BETRAYER

  Book 25 – MARK OF CALTH

  Book 26 – VULKAN LIVES

  Book 27 – THE UNREMEMBERED EMPIRE

  Book 28 – SCARS

  Book 29 – VENGEFUL SPIRIT

  Book 30 – THE DAMNATION OF PYTHOS

  Book 31 – LEGACIES OF BETRAYAL

  Book 32 – DEATHFIRE

  Book 33 – WAR WITHOUT END

  Book 34 – PHAROS

  Book 35 – EYE OF TERRA

  Book 36 – THE PATH OF HEAVEN

  Book 37 – THE SILENT WAR

  Novellas

  PROMETHEAN SUN

  AURELIAN

  BROTHERHOOD OF THE STORM

  THE CRIMSON FIST

  PRINCE OF CROWS

  DEATH AND DEFIANCE

  TALLARN: EXECUTIONER

  SCORCHED EARTH

  BLADES OF THE TRAITOR

  THE PURGE

  THE HONOURED

  THE UNBURDENED

  RAVENLORD

  Many of these titles are also available as abridged and unabridged audiobooks. Order the full range of Horus Heresy novels and audiobooks from blacklibrary.com

  Audio Dramas

  THE DARK KING & THE LIGHTNING TOWER

  RAVEN’S FLIGHT

  GARRO: OATH OF MOMENT

  GARRO: LEGION OF ONE

  BUTCHER’S NAILS

  GREY ANGEL

  GARRO: BURDEN OF DUTY

  GARRO: SWORD OF TRUTH

  THE SIGILLITE

  HONOUR TO THE DEAD

  CENSURE

  WOLF HUNT

  HUNTER’S MOON

  THIEF OF REVELATIONS

  TEMPLAR

  ECHOES OF RUIN

  MASTER OF THE FIRST & THE LONG NIGHT

  THE EAGLE’S TALON & IRON CORPSES

  RAPTOR

  Download the full range of Horus Heresy audio dramas from blacklibrary.com

  Also available

  MACRAGGE’S HONOUR

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Backlist

  Title Page

  The Horus Heresy

  Dramatis Personae

  Prologue

  The First

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Twain

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Triumvirate

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Go Forth

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Pentae

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Hex’d

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  About the Author

  An Extract from ‘Legacy of Caliban’

  A Black Library Publication

  eBook license

  THE HORUS HERESY

  It is a time of legend.

  The galaxy is in flames. The Emperor’s glorious vision for humanity is in ruins. His favoured son, Horus, has turned from his father’s light and embraced Chaos.

  His armies, the mighty and redoubtable Space Marines, are locked in a brutal civil war. Once, these ultimate warriors fought side by side as brothers, protecting the galaxy and bringing mankind back into the Emperor’s light. Now they are divided.

  Some remain loyal to the Emperor, whilst others have sided with the Warmaster. Pre-eminent amongst them, the leaders of their thousands-strong Legions are the primarchs. Magnificent, superhuman beings, they are the crowning achievement of the Emperor’s genetic science. Thrust into battle against one another, victory is uncertain for either side.

  Worlds are burning. At Isstvan V, Horus dealt a vicious blow and three loyal Legions were all but destroyed. War was begun, a conflict that will engulf all mankind in fire. Treachery and betrayal have usurped honour and nobility. Assassins lurk in every shadow. Armies are gathering. All must choose a side or die.

  Horus musters his armada, Terra itself the object of his wrath. Seated upon the Golden Throne, the Emperor waits for his wayward son to return. But his true enemy is Chaos, a primordial force that seeks to enslave mankind to its capricious whims.

  The screams of the innocent, the pleas of the righteous resound to the cruel laughter of Dark Gods. Suffering and damnation await all should the Emperor fail and the war be lost.

  The age of knowledge and enlightenment has ended.

  The Age of Darkness has begun.

  ~ DRAMATIS PERSONAE ~

  Caliban’s Saviours

  LUTHER, Grand Master of the Order

  LORD CYPHER, Guardian of the Order’s traditions

  MERIR ASTELAN, Master of the First Chapter

  GALEDAN, Chapter Master, Marshal of the Watch

  ZAHARIEL, Librarian, Master of the Mystai

  VASSAGO

  ASRADAEL

  TANDERION

  CARTHEUS

  ATHADRAEL

  VAEL, Lieutenant-commander

  VASTOBAL, Captain

  ADARTHIAN, Training master

  BETHALIN TYLAIN, Marchesa-colonel, Imperial Army auxilia

  SAULUS MAEGON, Mistress of the Angelicasta

  BELATH, Chapter Master

  ASMODEUS, Librarian

  GRIFFAYN, ‘The Spear-Cast’, sergeant-at-arms

  TAGRAIN, Deck-captain, transport division

  HASTER, Deck-lieutenant

  TUKON, Chapter Master, now captive beneath Aldurukh

  MELIAN, Captain, now captive beneath Aldurukh

  Distant Macragge, and Imperium Secundus

  SANGUINIUS, The Imperator Regis, beloved primarch of the Blood Angels

  ROBOUTE GUILLIMAN, Lord Warden, noble primarch of the Ultramarines

  LION EL’JONSON, Lord Protector, vengeful primarch , of the Dark Angels

  VALENTUS DOLOR, Tetrarch of Ultramar (Occluda)

  TITUS PRAYTO, Master of the Presiding Centuria, XIII Legion Librarius

  MYRDUN, Librarian of the First Legion

  DRAKUS GOROD, Fief commander of the Invictus bodyguard

  AZKAELLON, Commander of the Sanguinary Guard

  FAFFNR BLUDBRODER, Watch-pack master of the Space Wolves

  VODUN BADORUM, Captain of the Praecental Guard, household division
/>
  TARASHA EUTEN, Chamberlain Principal to Lord Guilliman

  STENIUS, Legionary captain, and master of the Invincible Reason

  THERALYN FIANA, Chief Navigator of the Invincible Reason, House Ne’iocene

  HOLGUIN, ‘Deathbringer’, voted lieutenant of the Deathwing

  MORPHAEL

  ATHORIS

  CAROLINGUS

  NEMERES

  FARITH REDLOSS, ‘Dreadbringer’, voted lieutenant of the Dreadwing

  DANAES, Voted successor, Dreadwing

  HALSWAIN

  XAVIS, Paladin of the 20th Order

  BARZAREON, Paladin of the 31st Order

  NERAELLIN, Lieutenant, commander of the Colgrevance

  HEXAGIA, Aide-de-militant to Neraellin

  SACATUS DEMOR, Sergeant of the Ultramarines

  THORAN, Sergeant of the Dark Angels

  CASOBOURN

  ASAMUND

  FARETAEL

  DOLMUN

  DAEVIOS, Master of Ordnance, XIII Legion

  HASTENRAL, Munitions provost

  PARESTOR, Whirlwind artillery commander

  METRITAL

  SARDEON

  KONRAD CURZE, The Night Haunter, renegade primarch of the Night Lords

  Champions of the Great Crusade

  HORUS LUPERCAL, Primarch of the Luna Wolves

  EZEKYLE ABADDON, First Captain, Mournival

  TARIK TORGADDON, Mournival

  LITUS, Mournival

  JANIPUR, Mournival

  GARVIEL LOKEN, Shield-lieutenant

  CALAS TYPHON, First Captain of the Death Guard, master of the Grave Wardens

  HADRABULUS VIOSS, Captain of the Grave Wardens

  HURKLAN, Sergeant

  ISRAFAEL, Chief Librarian of the Dark Angels

  EREBUS, First Chaplain of the Word Bearers

  DEBLESSENT, Lieutenant, Ayliet Phalanx auxilia, Imperial Army

  REGULUS, Envoy of the Martian Mechanicum

  ‘If a group of people feels that it has been humiliated and that its honour has been trampled underfoot, it will want to express its identity, and this expression of an identity will take different shapes and forms.’

  – Abdul-qarim Sereni, Remembrances of the Peaceful Compliance of Caliban

  ‘There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat. And we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures.’

  – attrib. the Emperor, to the Six Hosts at embarkation upon the Expeditionary Fields

  PROLOGUE

  Zaramund, 970.M30

  The two gigantic warships lay abreast of each other in orbit over the world, dwarfing all of the other nearby cruisers, frigates and destroyers like alpha bulls in a herd of metal-and-ferrocrete beasts. Beneath them dark plumes stained the violet clouds of Zaramund, spilled from entire cities on fire. Millions of tonnes of orbital wreckage paid further testament to the fury of the Zaramundian rebellion and the subsequent response by the Emperor’s Legiones Astartes.

  Two immense starships, each the pride of their respective fleet, each capable of laying waste to a world.

  The Vengeful Spirit. The Terminus Est.

  Names that resounded across the fledgling Imperium of Mankind alongside the Macragge’s Honour, the Invincible Reason, the Conqueror and a dozen others, many of them flagships that had led the fleets of the Emperor into the darkness and reclaimed the galaxy for humanity.

  Aboard the Vengeful Spirit, the commander of the Terminus Est stood in the massive avenue hall approaching the strategium, surrounded by a throng of attendees both human and transhuman. Some were clad in the white armour of Calas Typhon’s own XIV Legion. Others bore the equally pale livery of their Luna Wolves hosts.

  Huddled in groups around the giant warriors they attended was a sea of serfs, helots, servitors, strategos, orderlies, squires and many other titles beside, dependent upon role and Legion.

  A splash of red robes to the left marked the presence of the highest-ranking Mechanicum officials present in the fleet. Surrounded by a gaggle of flesh-spare adepts stood Regulus – less a man, more a mechanical skeleton clad in slivers of flesh that appeared almost decorative upon his gold and steel form. Two gigantic vat-bred servitors carried between them a huge cog wrought of dull white material, engraved with sapphire-like runes. Typhon had no idea what the icon was for, and cared less. The ways of the Mechanicum were best not explored in detail.

  A patch of gold just behind belonged to the Ayliet Phalanx, the Imperial Army auxilia regiment currently supporting the Luna Wolves. They were obscured from view as three immense warriors in the plate of the Luna Wolves moved between the auxilia commanders and Typhon.

  Calas Typhon, a lieutenant commander in the First Great Company of the Death Guard, veteran of decades of bloody war, felt a shudder of excitement and trepidation as he looked ahead to the short processional that would take them into the grand hall of the primarch.

  A twenty-metre colonnade of black stone decorated with a fretwork of silver wire flanked the great portal of the strategium. More of the Phalanxis lined the way, their weapons held in salute across their chests, company banners moving gently in the breeze of the artificial climate inside the battle-barge. In contrast to the bulky powered war-plate of the Space Marines, the Phalanxis wore long coats of golden mesh-scale, hemmed with thick banks of scarlet at wrist and ankle, broad belts studded with ceramite cinched around their waists. They carried jezzailli, long-barrelled lasguns more like spears with metre-long leaf-shaped bayonets affixed.

  Amongst them were sergeants with bared power swords and presented volkite serpentae, here and there an officer with a high plume on his helm. Their weapons doubled as badges of office, metre-long rods that contained powerful shockfield generators that could pierce the hull of a tank or turn an unarmoured man to bloody slush with a touch. The glittering scale of majors and captains and lieutenants – and even one full war marshal with an ebon cloak held by a ruby starburst clasp – was covered by cuirasses of laminated black adorned with a white strike of lightning between moulded pectorals.

  The flared helms of all had silver visors that covered their eyes, and their visible features were set with grim determination, but Typhon could see quivering lips and the smallest droplets of tears as the assembled veterans struggled to maintain their composure amidst such grand spectacle.

  It was typical of Horus’ touch, his recognition of the efforts of others. Of all the grand and noble warriors who had fought for Zaramund he had chosen a hundred heroes from the unaugmented human regiment to act as honour guard to his act of commemoration.

  Typhon glanced at his second-in-command, Hadrabulus Vioss, and smiled.

  ‘Remind me to convey congratulations to the Luna Wolves commander for a brief campaign perfectly executed. We are, of course, honoured to attend his ceremony of recompliance.’

  ‘Recompliance?’ Vioss raised an eyebrow. His handsome features took on a roguish look as he smiled back. ‘Have you just invented a new type of campaign?’

  ‘What else would you call it?’ Typhon asked. He kept his eye moving across the quiet, organised crowds that went about their duties with a cold, deliberate air. ‘Zaramund broke from compliance. Now it is compliant again. Recompliance.’

  Vioss’ humour dissipated. ‘Who would have thought Zaramund would turn? One of the oldest reclaimed systems, essential to the first expeditions. How could the authorities of such an important world allow it to fall into such dissent? It was good that the primarch responded so swiftly and decisively.’

  There was admiration in his voice. Admiration that Typhon shared. Horus had drawn together a considerable strike force in an astoundingly short time, and wielded it with brutal but effective command.

  ‘Essential,’ replied Typhon. ‘The disruption to warships and supplies bound to the expedition fleets would have been grave enough for such a reaction. The
threat to Terra if a conduit system, a major shipyard at that, was ever to turn back from service to the Emperor…’

  Typhon considered what might have occurred had Horus not responded so dramatically to the interruption of his supply ships. Several dozen starships of different classes all poised within an easy warp jump of the Throneworld. They both fell silent at the thought, though for different reasons. A seed of an idea, barely formed, settled in the back of Typhon’s thoughts.

  ‘Serious mischief, rightly curtailed,’ Vioss said eventually, breaking Typhon’s nascent chain of thought. ‘A stroke of luck that the Luna Wolves returned when they did.’

  ‘No luck was involved, I’m sure. The primarch is canny like that. Some might see a few missing transports as just one of those irritating things that happens on campaign. A primarch, a commander like him, knows that nothing short of alien attack or rebellion would keep those ships from his fleet.’

  Vioss accepted this without comment and they waited in silence for a few minutes until a lone figure appeared at the end of the colonnade. He was silhouetted in the light from the strategium, a giant compared to the soldiers of the Phalanxis, clad in Terminator armour even bigger than the war-plate of Typhon and his companion.

  The figure approached purposefully and what little chatter there had been amongst the waiting crowd fell to silence. The Phalanxis presented their arms as the warrior advanced. The light of the colonnade revealed an impassive face, unyielding and weathered. His head was shaven but for a topknot, his cheeks and chin clean of all hair.

  Ezekyle Abaddon, First Captain of the Luna Wolves, almost as feted as his primarch. He stopped five metres away. When he spoke, the deep growl was projected far into the avenue hall by the address systems of the Vengeful Spirit.

  ‘You may attend the commander now.’

  With that simple statement, Abaddon turned and strode back towards his master. The delegates looked at each other, knowing that no formal order of entrance had been agreed or decreed but none wishing to rush forward in an undignified scrum.

  A quintet of warriors broke from the throng to the left, stirring a murmur of conversation. Four were Space Marines, with the build of such, but the fifth, though wearing armour similar to the Legiones Astartes, was clearly shorter and slighter. They were clad in black battleplate, a winged sword symbol upon their shoulders. What was confusing to most was that the lesser of the warriors walked slightly ahead, the Space Marines clearly deferential to him a pace behind.