The Solar War
Cover
Backlist
Book 1 – THE SOLAR WAR
Book 2 - THE LOST AND THE DAMNED
(Autumn 2019)
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
Book 38 – ANGELS OF CALIBAN
Book 39 – PRAETORIAN OF DORN
Book 40 – CORAX
Book 41 – THE MASTER OF MANKIND
Book 42 – GARRO
Book 43 – SHATTERED LEGIONS
Book 44 – THE CRIMSON KING
Book 45 – TALLARN
Book 46 – RUINSTORM
Book 47 – OLD EARTH
Book 48 – THE BURDEN OF LOYALTY
Book 49 – WOLFSBANE
Book 50 – BORN OF FLAME
Book 51 – SLAVES TO DARKNESS
Book 52 – HERALDS OF THE SIEGE
Book 53 – TITANDEATH
Book 54 – THE BURIED DAGGER
More tales from the Horus Heresy...
PROMETHEAN SUN
AURELIAN
BROTHERHOOD OF THE STORM
THE CRIMSON FIST
CORAX: SOULFORGE
PRINCE OF CROWS
DEATH AND DEFIANCE
TALLARN: EXECUTIONER
SCORCHED EARTH
THE PURGE
THE HONOURED
THE UNBURDENED
BLADES OF THE TRAITOR
TALLARN: IRONCLAD
RAVENLORD
THE SEVENTH SERPENT
WOLF KING
CYBERNETICA
SONS OF THE FORGE
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
Also available
MACRAGGE’S HONOUR
Dan Abnett and Neil Roberts
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
GREY TALON
THE EITHER
THE HEART OF THE PHAROS / CHILDREN OF SICARUS
RED-MARKED
ECHOES OF IMPERIUM
ECHOES OF REVELATION
THE THIRTEENTH WOLF
VIRTUES OF THE SONS/SINS OF THE FATHER
THE BINARY SUCCESSION
DARK COMPLIANCE
BLACKSHIELDS: THE FALSE WAR
BLACKSHIELDS: THE RED FIEF
HUBRIS OF MONARCHIA
NIGHTFANE
Download the full range of Horus Heresy audio dramas from blacklibrary.com
The Horus Heresy: Siege of Terra
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 end is here. The skies darken, colossal armies gather. For the fate of the Throneworld, for the fate of mankind itself...
The Siege of Terra has begun.
Dramatis Personae
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
The Emperor, Master of Mankind, Last and First Lord of the Imperium
Horus, Warmaster, Primarch of the XVI Legion, Ascendant Vessel of Chaos
The Primarchs
Perturabo, ‘The Lord of Iron’, Primarch of the IV Legion
Jaghatai Khan, ‘The Warhawk’, Primarch of the V Legion
Rogal Dorn, Praetorian of Terra, Primarch of the VII Legion
Sanguinius, Archangel of Baal, Primarch of the IX Legion
The IV Legion ‘Iron Warriors’
Forrix, ‘The Breaker’, First Captain, Triarch
Vull Bronn, ‘The Stonewrought’, 45th Grand Battalion
The V Legion ‘White Scars’
Jubal Khan, ‘Lord of Summer Lightning’, Master of the Hunt
Changshi, Bladeward to Jubal Khan
The VII Legion ‘Imperial Fists’
Sigismund, Lord Castellan of the First Sphere, First Captain, Marshal of the Templars
Halbract, Lord Castellan of the Second Sphere, Fleet Master
Effried, Lord Castellan of the Third Sphere, Seneschal
Camba Diaz, Lord Castellan of the Fourth Sphere, Siege Master
Fafnir Rann, Lord Seneschal, Captain of the First Assault Cadre
Boreas, First Lieutenant of the Templars, First Company
Massak, Librarian
Archamus, Master of the Huscarls
The XVI Legion ‘Sons of Horus’
Ezekyle Abaddon, First Captain
Horus Aximand, ‘Little Horus’, Captain, Fifth Company
Falkus Kibre, ‘Widowmaker’, Captain, Justaerin Cohort
Saduran, Warrior of the 201st Assault Battalion
Ikrek, Warrior of the 201st Assault Battalion
Thonas, Justaerin
Gedephron, Justaerin
Tybar, Justaerin
Ralkor, Justaerin
Sycar, Justaerin
Urskar, Justaerin
The XV Legion ‘Thousand Sons’
Ahriman, Chief Librarian
Ignis, Master of the Order of Ruin
Menkaura, Blind Prophet of the Corvidae
The XVII Legion ‘Word Bearers’
Zardu Layak, ‘The Crimson Apostle’, Master of the Unspeaking
Kulnar, Slave of the Anakatis Blade
Hebek, Slave of the Anakatis Blade
The Apostle
The Chosen of Malcador
Loken, Knight Errant
The Mechanicum
Kazzim-Aleph-1, Magos-Emissary
Chi-32-Bet, Enginseer
The Dark Mechanicum
Sota-Nul, Emissary of Kelbor-Hal
The Neverborn
Samus, The End and the Death
Imperial Army
Niora Su-Kassen, Solar Command Staff, former Admiral of the Jovian Fleets
Imperial Personae
Malcador, Regent of the Imperium
Armina Fel, Senior Astropath
Heliosa-78, Cult Matriarch of the Selenar
Andromeda-17, Personified-scion of the Selenar
Mersadie Oliton, Prisoner of the Unnamed Fortress, former Remembrancer
Euphrati Keeler, The Saint, former Remembrancer
Nilus Yeshar, Navigator
Cadmus Vek, Celestial Mining Magnate
Zadia Koln, Sub-mistress of the system freighter Antius
Aksinya, Lifeward to Cadmus Vek
‘That is my home of love: if I have ranged,
Like him that travels I return again,
Just to the time, not with the time exchanged.’
– attributed to the dramaturge Shakespire (fl. M2)
PART ONE
The Warp
∞
‘Father…’
He is waiting. He has always been waiting. In this place there is no time, not truly, not unless the forces within its tides dream it into being. Here, eternity is truth.
‘Father…’
Slowly, with weariness and reluctance, He forms the idea of eyes, of a mouth, of limbs, of the chair beneath Him. Far off, there is another chair, and a thread of thought and will that tether Him back to a place of metal, and stone, and time.
‘Father…’
He opens His eyes.
Darkness lies before Him, extending through every dimension. Darkness, and Him alone. In that moment He feels the echo of every man or woman who has ever woken beside a guttering fire to see the night creeping closer as the flame-light fades.
The darkness becomes a black mirror. He looks into His reflection: a man on a stone chair, old, dark skin clinging to the hollows of His cheeks. Iron and snow streak His beard. The shoulders and limbs beneath His plain, black robes are thin. Dust marks the bare soles of His feet. His eyes are clear, and there is neither kindness nor pity in them.
The chair and the man sit on a narrow stone platform. Behind Him burns a wall of fire that curves up and away, blazing and flaring like the surface of a star.
The reflection changes. For an instant, a figure of iron and blades with coal-furnace eyes is looking back at Him from a throne of chrome. Then it is gone, and the reflection is a blur of images falling one atop another: a golden warrior standing with drawn sword before the gates of a towering fortress, a figure before the mouth of a mountain cave, a boy with a stick and fear in his eyes, a queen with a spear atop a cliff, an eagle with ten wings beating against a thunder-threaded sky – on and on, images tumbling over each other like the faces of cards tossed through the air.
‘Is there any truth in you?’ asks the voice that comes from the dark.
The images vanish and the darkness hangs before Him. It falls into the abyss beneath like a cascade of obsidian sand.
‘At the root of your lies, is there any truth, father?’
The darkness becomes a forest, dark trunks reaching to an untouchable sky, roots crawling out and down into the abyss beneath. The man on the chair is sitting on the snow-covered ground, a fire burning before Him. A shadow moves out of the dark between the trees. It is huge, sable-furred and silver-eyed. It drags its shadow with it as it comes forwards. It pauses on the edge of the light.
‘You claim to be a man,’ says the wolf, ‘but that is a lie revealed to any that can see you here. You deny you wish godhood, but you raise up an empire to praise you. You call yourself the Master of Mankind, and perhaps that is the only truth you ever spoke – that you wish to make your children slaves.’
The wolf tilts its head, and for a second it is not a wolf, but a bloated shadow, veined with lightning, its eyes holes punched into a red furnace.
‘But this son…’ growls the wolf, muscles coiling under black fur, lips peeling back over teeth, ‘…this son has returned to your cradle of lies.’
The wolf leaps. The forest blinks to a sheet of curdled black and migraine colour. The shadow of a man reaches across the dark with hands that are claws. The fire flares, roaring up to become a burning wall and the claws rake the blaze. Shadow burns to ash and cinders. The wolf recoils, howling. Lightning laces the dark of the forest. The wolf pads along the boundary of the firelight. Behind it, other eyes shine in the deeper shadows between the trees, bright and cold as the light of cruel stars.
The man turns His head. He is not looking at the wolf, but to the blackness beyond.
‘I deny you,’ He says, and in this place that is more real than life, yet as unreal as a dream, His words shake the dark like thunder.
‘Will you not even talk to me, father? Now, as your empire of lies ends, will you not tell me the truth?’
‘You are shadows,’ says the man, ‘nothing more. You offer nothing. You are nothing. You come with a puppet child, but you did not tell him why you need him. You need him because you have nothing that is true, no sword that is not a falsehood, no strength that is not a lie. You need him because you are weak. You need him. You fear him. And he will fail.’
Laughter fills the night, beating like wings, rattling with the sound of the dying trying to breathe, coiling over and over in chuckling loops. The darkness billows forwards stretching, coiling, squeezing. The man on the stone chair flinches. The fire bends and shrinks. The image of the man flickers too, and for a second He looks like a corpse sitting on a throne, the bones of His hands gripping its arms in pain.
He closes His eyes.
The image begins to blur, as though seen through a dusty wind. The laughter rises higher and higher.
It has always been this way: again and again, in countless forms and metaphors, death and darkness wearing countless faces. On and on the cycle, repeating and growing in strength as the Night crowds hungrily in. And just as then, so now; there is only one answer to it.
Murder.
Blood and endings.
Sacrifice and death.
‘I am returned,’ comes the voice of the wolf in the dark.
‘I deny you,’ says the man, as the image fades to the echo of a dream and laughter that does not end.
One
Zero hour
Remembrance of wolves
Onslaught
Terra
On the first of Primus the sirens rang across Terra.
On the myriad worlds conquered and ruled by the Imperium of Man, they talked of year divisions, of time sliced into a thousand equal slivers. First division, second division, third, and so on, without variation or character, until the weight of counting reached a thousand, and one year tipped over into the next. On worlds of endless night or blinding days, a year was the same. In an empire spanning a galaxy, anything else would have been meaningless.
0000014.M31 was how surviving records would mark the first moment of that day, stamped and corrected for temporal accuracy, standardised and stripped of any meaning. But, here, on the world whose night and day and seasons had given mankind its concept of time, the old counting still meant something and so did the moment that one year died and another was born: the Feast of Two Faces, the Day of New Light, the Renewal – on and on went its names. But for longer than memory it had been the first of Primus, firstborn of the three hundred and sixty-five days that would follow, a day of hope and new beginnings.
The turning of that year began with snow on the northern battlements of the Imperial Palace, where three brother demigods watched the night skies above. It began with the dawn light and icy chill reaching into a tower-top chamber and stirring the painted cards dealt by a man who was older than any knew. It began with the sirens calling out, one at first, high on the Palace spires, before the cry was picked up by others, on and on across the turning globe. The sound echoed through the mountain-sized space ports and rasped from vox-horns in the deep strata of the Atlantean Hives.
On and on it went, stilling the hands of people as they ate and worked. They looked up. In caves beneath the earth, and hive vaults, and under the smog drifts, they looked up. Of those that could see the sky, a few thought they could make out new stars amongst the firmament and froze at the promise of each pinprick of light: a promise of fire and ash and an age of loss. And with the sound of sirens, fear spread, unnamed but still spoken.
‘He is here,’ they said.
Prison ship Aeacus, Uranus high orbit
‘I understand you have a story…’ she said. The wolf stood before her, the fur of its back silver beneath the moonlight. ‘A particularly entertaining one. I’d like to remember it, for posterity.’
The wolf turned, its teeth a smile of sorrow.
‘Which story?’
‘Horus killing the Emperor.’
Mersadie Oliton woke from the memory-dream with sweat on her face. She breathed, and pulled the blanket over her from where it had slipped onto the floor. The air was cool and dank in the cell, scented with the tang of air that had been exhaled too much. She blinked for a second. Something was different. She reached out a hand and touched the metal wall. Moisture clung to the rivets and rust scabs. The thrum of the ship’s engines had gone. Wherever they were, they were stationary in the void.
She let her hand drop and let out a breath. The tatters of the memory-dream still clung to her eyelids. She focused, trying to pull back the threads of the dream even as they slid into darkness.
‘I must remember…’ she said to herself.
‘The prisoner will stand and face the wall.’ The voice boomed out of the speaker set above the cell door.
She stood instinctively. She wore a grey jumpsuit, worn and faded. She put her hands on the wall, fingers splayed. The door unlocked with a clang, and footsteps sounded on the grated floor. The guard would be one just like the rest: crimson-clad and silver-masked, the humanity in its voice concealed by vox distortion. All the gaolers were the same, as constant as the ticking of a clock that never struck the hour.
Small spaces, locked doors, questions and suspicions – such had been her world for the seven years since she had come back to the Solar System. That was the price for what she had seen, for what she remembered. She had been a remembrancer, one of the thousands of artists, writers and scholars sent out to witness the Great Crusade as it brought the light of reason to a reunited humanity. That had been her purpose: to see, to remember. Like many clear purposes and shining futures, it had not worked out that way.
She heard the footsteps stop behind her, and knew the guard would be placing a bowl of water and a fresh jumpsuit on the floor.
‘Where are we?’ she asked, hearing the question come from her mouth before she could stop it.
Silence.
She waited. There would not be a punishment for her asking, no beatings, no withdrawal of food or humiliation – that was not how this imprisonment worked. The punishment was silence. She had no doubt that other, more visceral methods were used on other prisoners – she had heard the screams. But for her there had only been silence. Seven years of silence. They did not need to ask her questions, after all. They had taken the memory spools out of her skull, and those recordings would have told them everything they wanted and more.
‘We are still in the void, aren’t we,’ she said, still facing the wall. ‘The engine vibrations have stopped, you see. No way of missing it if you have spent any time on ships… I spent time on a warship once. You never lose the sense of it.’ She paused, waiting for a response, even if it was just the sound of retreating footsteps and the door shutting.
Silence again.
That was strange. She had tried talking to guards in the early years, and their response had been to leave her without reply. After a while, that had felt worse than if they had struck a whip across her back. They had never beaten her, though, or even touched her. Even when they opened her skull to remove the memory spools, they had sedated her, as though that made the violation that followed more acceptable.
She supposed that such small mercies had to do with Qruze or Loken. The former Luna Wolves had watched over her as much as they could. But that had still left her a prisoner of the greatest and darkest prison in the Imperium. Loken had said that he would free her, but she had refused. Even while it pained her, she understood why she had to remain locked up. How could she not? After all, had she not seen the true face of the enemy? Four years of life on the Vengeful Spirit amongst the Sons of Horus, in the shadow of their father, who now had set the galaxy alight with civil war. What other reward could there be for remembering those days? A galaxy shrunk to silence and plasteel walls, with only dreams and memories to speak to her.
She had begun to dream memories after a few months, dreams of her home on Terra, of the sunlight shattering across the edge of the Arcus orbital plate, her mother laughing and calling after her as she ran through the hydro-gardens. And she had dreamed of her time amongst the Luna Wolves, and the Sons of Horus, of people now long dead. She had asked for parchment and pen, but none had been given to her. She had gone back to the old games her mind-nurse had taught her, ways of tucking memories away when she woke from sleep, ways of remembering the past even as it fled into the distance. In the silence, she had found that memories and dreams were all she had, all she was.
‘Are we still somewhere in the Solar System?’ she asked, and twitched her neck to look behind her. Why was she still talking? But then why had the guard not left? ‘The ship doesn’t feel like it’s preparing for translation. Where are we?’
They had come for her in her cell on the Nameless Fortress three nights ago. They had loaded her into a box barely big enough to stand upright in. She had felt the box judder and sway as machines had lifted it and her. They had let her out into this cell, and she had recognised the vibration of a void-ship under power. It had been comforting at first, but her dreams had not been, and now the silence of this moment was feeling stranger with each elongating second.
‘Why was I taken away from the fortress?’ she asked. ‘Where am I going?’
‘Where we all wish we could go, Mistress Oliton,’ said Garviel Loken. She whirled, and the end of her cell was gone and a wolf was rising from a pool of dark water beneath the moon. Its eyes were black spheres, and its bared-teeth grin was wide as it spoke. ‘You are going home.’
In the dark of her cell, Mersadie Oliton woke to silence and lay still, waiting for the dream to fade or for herself to wake again.
Strike Frigate Lachrymae, Trans-Plutonian Gulf
The first ship of the onslaught died as it breached the veil of reality. Streams of plasma reached out from gun platforms. White fire smashed into the ship’s prow. Lightning and glowing ectoplasm streamed behind its hull. Macro shells detonated amongst the molten wounds already cut into its skin. Turrets and spires sheared from its bulk. Towers broke from its spine. It kept coming even as its bows were torn apart. The burning wreck struck the first of the mines scattered across the dark. Explosions burst around it. The front portion of the ship sheared from the back. Prow and gun decks hinged down. Atmosphere vented from the exposed interior. Debris scattered, burning for an eye-blink before the flames ate the air trapped in the wreckage.
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