The Burden of Loyalty

by Various

  Leaving the cell, the Carrion worked his way through a small sacrarium-complex of workshops, holotoria, librariax and technical hangars filled with vehicles and weapons in various states of disrepair and augmentation. Ordinarily their hangar would be a place of furious industry, plasma-­torching and ritual observance. With the five legionaries stationed on the floor having completed their training and waiting for word of their ceremonial covenance, the space was quiet. Only the raised vestibule was occupied, with the landing lamps of the hangar balcony-platform flashing in expectation of a grav-skiff or hump-shuttle. The legionaries were eager for word of their coming covenance and Legion transports to take them off-world and back to the Crusade and compliance.

  ‘Anything?’ the Carrion asked as he climbed the steps. Three of his Space Marine brothers were waiting in the vestibule. Like the Carrion, they had not yet earned the right to wear the machine opus of Mars on their plate. Some of them were tinkering. Some were monitoring equipment. All were marking time.

  Alcavarn Salvador of the Imperial Fists and the hulking Salamander Nem’ron Phylax were craftsmen. While the black scarring of spot burns in the ebony of Phylax’s face was evidence of time spent before the fires of the forge, Salvador was never without his combat blade. In the quiet moments of the day he would go to work with a whetstone, honing the blade to a constantly maintained standard of lethality – just as he was in the vestibule. Phylax’s great servo-arm whirred on its hydraulics and counterweights as he turned to greet the Carrion with a good-natured smile and perfect adamantium teeth.

  Like many of his Raven Guard brothers, the Carrion was reserved and quiet by nature – some might say even secretive. This had created tensions between the sons of Corax and Space Marines of other Legions. It had made the Night Lords perfect compliance partners on Farinatus, since they cared little for shared pleasantries and had no intention of forming brotherly bonds with the XIX Legion. Nem’ron Phylax had always tried hard with the Carrion, however, and forgave the cool urgency of the Raven Guard’s words – words that all too often came across as imperious and aloof. The Carrion wore his reticence like a noble savage and was not removed in the way of Fulgrim’s sons, who carried themselves with airs and graces, or like the legionaries of the XX, who always seemed audacious and evasive. But this grated on his preceptory brothers, with many finding the Carrion easy to ignore.

  Like a noble savage, the Carrion could be plainly insistent and unheeding of protocol and cult politesse. This had brought him into conflict not only with his brothers, but also the Martian priests, who themselves were not known for their good humour.

  ‘Anything at all?’ he pressed.

  ‘Nothing from the priesthood,’ the Salamander told him. ‘Nothing from the arkfreighters or the Ring of Iron. I’m beginning to think they’ve forgotten about us.’

  ‘Unlikely,’ Salvador muttered almost to himself as he scratched away with his knife.

  ‘Perhaps this is some kind of final trial,’ the Ultramarine Tibor Ventidian offered, reassembling a stripped-down Phobos-pattern boltgun. For Ventidian everything was some kind of test to be weighed, measured and impeccably passed. He studied the weapon with the searing blue lens of a replacement optic. With the sickle magazine on the work-slab beside him, the Ultramarine brought the boltgun up to his pauldron. He primed it and depressed the trigger but nothing happened. ‘Feed jam? Firing mechanism?’

  ‘Neither,’ the Carrion told him with no little impatience. He had been tinkering with the weapon himself the day before, same as Ventidian, to pass the time. ‘Did you look at the orbital imaging?’

  ‘This again?’ Ventidian asked.

  ‘Yes,’ the Carrion insisted coolly, ‘this again. I want your opinion.’

  Ventidian grunted. He knew the pale-faced Raven Guard wasn’t going to let up. Still cradling the boltgun, he turned and punched a sequence of thick buttons on the runebank behind him. A sequence of hazy orbital scans sizzled across a battered screen.

  ‘There’s a lot of interference on the pict-sat,’ Ventidian admitted. ‘Beyond the temple, the datastreams are a mess…’

  ‘I’ve got the same on the vox-net,’ Nem’ron Phylax added.

  ‘…but the aerial scans you directed me to do not show battle formations,’ the Ultramarine said. He turned to the Carrion and added, ‘In my opinion.’

  That got Salvador’s attention. He looked up from his blade and scraping whetstone. ‘Formations? You think Mars is under some kind of attack?’

  ‘None that I can see,’ Ventidian admitted.

  ‘Surely we would know if the Forge World Principal was endangered.’

  The Carrion gave the legionary the blank silver of his eyes.

  ‘Something’s not right,’ he told his battle-brothers. ‘Code corruptions. Cult disruptions. Compromised networks. Archelon’s disappearance – and he’s not the only Artisan Astartes to go missing.’

  ‘The magi catharc are working on the code issues,’ Ventidian said. ‘Our mentors no doubt have cult business to attend to. Have some faith, brother.’

  ‘There’s a hell of a lot of materiel being moved across the surface of Mars,’ the Carrion said. ‘An unprecedented amount of activity: constructs, augmented infantry, battle-automata…’

  ‘Is this true?’ Salvador asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Ventidian said. ‘Even in the quadrangle, the Scopulan Phase-­Fusilatrix have crossed the Mare Erytraueum. Strike fighter wings of the Tenth Denticle have mobilised over the Sisyphi Montes. The engines of the Legio Mortis are on the move–’

  ‘The entire legio?’ Alcavarn Salvador said.

  ‘Manoeuvres,’ Ventidian assured him. ‘Between quadrants and forge temples. There are no fronts. No counter-invasion formations. These aren’t preparatory measures for some kind of xenos attack. Within the Solar System? That would be unthinkable.’

  ‘Agreed. Then some threat from within,’ the Carrion pressed them. His mind ran once more to hereteks like Octal Bool and the abominable intelligences they had developed.

  ‘Some border or patent dispute between temple masters, perhaps,’ the Ultramarine told him. ‘Forgejackers or feral servitors. That’s not what we are talking about here. Horus is taking the Crusade into a new phase. He needs the materiel and manpower languishing on Mars and is pushing Kelbor-Hal to send him all he can. The Fabricator General is trying to meet that expectation. And that is all. Your movements and manoeuvres here are simply the knock-on effect of that.’

  Nem’ron Phylax nodded slowly. ‘While monitoring the anchor station manifests and mooring logs for our Legion transports I saw that Regulus, the Warmaster’s Mechanicum emissary, arrived on Mars only days ago with missives for the Fabricator General. Sounds about right.’ He flashed the Carrion the kindness of a silver smile. ‘I’m sorry, Dravian.’

  The Carrion looked to Salvador but the Space Marine’s face was an unreadable mask.

  ‘What are you suggesting?’ Salvador asked finally.

  ‘If there is a problem,’ the Carrion said, ‘or some kind of threat, then I don’t think that we should just sit here waiting. The Mechanicum might benefit from our assistance.’

  ‘And if that is indeed the case, I’m sure the Fabricator General will be sure to ask,’ Nem’ron Phylax assured the Raven Guard. ‘But in truth I fear there are few threats in the galaxy that the might of Mars could not meet and defeat.’

  ‘Our last set of instructions were to repair to the preceptory-tower and await our Artisan Astartes,’ Salvador said.

  ‘That was three days ago,’ the Carrion reminded him. ‘Three days after a cancelled covenance and three days after our Artisan Astartes went missing. No identica-logs. No isometrics. No cant-intercepts. That’s not natural.’

  ‘We are guests here,’ Salvador told him. ‘Nothing else concerns us. We follow our instructions until we receive new ones.’

  ‘I know that we are
all eager to receive our covenance,’ Tibor Ventidian said, ‘to receive the machina opus on our plate and return to our Legions. We all have long journeys ahead of us.’ He looked to the Imperial Fist, Salvador, who raised a blond eyebrow. ‘Most of us have long journeys ahead of us, but let us not as a parting gesture offend our gracious Mechanicum lords or spend our final days on Mars in idle speculation.’

  ‘Our final days on Mars?’ a voice boomed from across the hangar. In pock-marked Mark III plate, the Iron Warrior Aulus Scaramanca made his heavy way across the grille floor. The Techmarine-in-training’s black robes were tied about his mag-belt like ceremonial skirts while thick mechadendrite appendages snaked over his head like reared tails. Scaramanca’s dun plate was a mosaic of chevrons and sodium arc stripes. The Iron Warrior wore a nest of cranial flesh-ports and cables like a crown, while his lips were contorted in one of his primarch’s well-known sneers. ‘You’re more right than you know, son of Ultramar.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Ventidian asked as the Iron Warrior approached.

  ‘If you want to know where the bolts will be flying and where the bodies will lie, you look to the skies brothers. You look for the signs.’ As he climbed the steps of the raised vestibule he pointed at the Carrion. ‘You look for the flocks that feast on flesh, for they have an eye for the coming of death and its makings.’ The Iron Warrior threw a collection of data-slates at the legionaries, each Techmarine-in-training snatching one out of the air with their trans­human reflexes. ‘Gnaeus Archelon… Valvadus Spurcia… Algernon Krypke – all Artisan Astartes assigned to the tower-preceptory. All summoned to the Olympus Mons forge temple three days ago, no doubt with many others besides.’

  ‘So what?’ Ventidian said, consulting the data-slate. ‘They are probably in audience with the Fabricator General or in some kind of locked session.’

  ‘It would certainly explain their absence from the networks,’ Aulus Scaramanca said with a crooked smile.

  Unlike some of his Olympian-born kindred the Carrion did not find Scaramanca truculent, nor solemn to the point of bitterness. Of the Techmarines-in-training on the thirtieth floor, Aulus Scaramanca was the Artisan Astartes’ finest work. The Carrion had developed undoubted skill during his secondment to Mars and Tibor Ventidian had achieved some of the highest and most consistent astrotechnical appraisals in the history of his Legion. As a weaponsmith, Phylax was unrivalled, and the Imperial Fist Salvador possessed an almost innate ability to feel the pain suffered by the damaged and failing machine – aided by auto-systems and the spirits of such machines, this enabled him to effect the swiftest repairs and the most superior of solutions, even under simulated battlefield situations.

  Scaramanca, however, was master of all the disciplines he had studied.

  He was a cult master of liturgical lore and runecraft. A master of cybernetic enhancement, having even worked to improve the Carrion’s own augmentations. He was a master architect with gifts for design and engineering. A craftsman of destructive weaponry, enjoying success with ancient plasma and conversion technologies that even the artisans of the Mechanicum had deemed could not be improved upon. He was a master of the arcane sciences and a living rite of blessed activation, maintaining, repairing and returning to machine-life even the most battle-damaged of the Omnissiah’s honoured constructions.

  Although a runebank cogitator or fortress generatorium offered Aulus Scaramanca no problems, his real talents lay with the machines of war, from the razored edge of the simplest blade to the ancient behemoths of void and fleet – and every conceivable weapon, vehicle and instrument of battle in between. He was a master of the forge in the making, sure to come to the primarch Perturabo’s attention even amidst the ranks of so many warsmiths and technically-blessed sons. Similar to his combat training and the tactical demands of legionary leadership, such gifts came naturally to Aulus Scaramanca, much like his smile that proceeded from the swagger in his heavy step and the playful scorn he reserved for others.

  ‘What it does not explain,’ the Iron Warrior continued, ‘is how the scanned serial designations of bionic augmentations registered to Archelon, Spurcia and Krypke found their way to the Phaethontis smelting plants, off-world salvage consignments and depots-recyclatrix across the Terra Cimmeria… Bionics from Alger­non Krypke are now part of at least seven other constructs…’

  The legionary stared at the data-slate in dumbfounded silence.

  ‘How did you get this information?’ Tibor Ventidian asked.

  ‘Not from the data-net,’ Scaramanca said. ‘I can tell you that.’

  ‘You disobeyed the Artisan Astartes’ orders?’ Phylax put to him. ‘You left the tower-preceptory without codes and authorisations?’

  ‘The artisans and mentors who gave those orders are dead,’ the Carrion told the Salamander.

  The Raven Guard looked to Scaramanca, who shook his head slowly. ‘Archelon?’

  ‘It wasn’t easy,’ the Iron Warrior admitted, ‘but I found him. Gene-coding confirms that what was left of him was rendered and flesh-reassigned for servitude imperpetuis.’

  ‘He’s… been turned into a servitor?’

  ‘Working the Memnonia deep core mining fields.’

  ‘Buried,’ the Carrion said. He nodded at Scaramanca. ‘They never meant him to be found.’

  ‘They?’ Salvador said, getting to his feet. ‘Who’s they?’

  ‘Rival priests. Hostile factions. There’s always been a great deal of competition in the Mechanicum ranks. Some conservative groups regard the Artisan Astartes and frater astrotechnicus as hereteks, who pervert the Omnissiah’s intentions and violate the sanctity of the machine-spirit in order to wage war.’

  ‘This is not a cult thing,’ Scaramanca told them. Interfacing with the runebank using one of his mechadendrite appendages, the Iron Warrior patched through to allow the jabbercant of the main datastream through to the vox-casters. The hangar rang with the screeching insanity of dark code. ‘It’s bigger than that,’ Scaramanca insisted over the cacophony. He held up an armoured gauntlet. ‘All Mars is involved in this in one way or another – and so are we.’

  ‘When were these orbital scans taken?’ the Carrion asked, examining one of the data-slates.

  Reaching forward with the silvered workings of his bionic arm, he formed a fist. Four haptic spikes shot out of his knuckle-ports with a pneumatic thud. Like keys, each sported a distinctively crafted needle-interfacia housed within the spike, which could double as a weapon. As three of the spikes slowly retracted, the Carrion inserted the fourth into a runebank socket. A hololithic representation crackled to life about them. It was an aerial capture of Novus Mons and the surrounding quadrangle.

  ‘An hour ago,’ Scaramanca told him.

  The Carrion cast a black gauntlet through the sizzling hololith. He looked to Tibor Ventidian. ‘Manoeuvres, you say?’

  The Ultramarine stood, peering at the hazy representation with his searing blue optic. He looked from the representation to the Carrion and back to the orbital capture.

  ‘Martian Autokrator assault carriers inbound,’ Ventidian said grimly. ‘Skitarii tech-guard. The Scopulan Phase-Fusilatrix.’

  ‘Target?’ Salvador asked, but the Imperial Fist knew the answer.

  ‘The tower-preceptory,’ the Ultramarine told him, snatching up the boltgun and sickle magazine from the runebank.

  ‘How many?’ Nem’ron Phylax asked.

  ‘All of them,’ Ventidian answered.

  ‘Like the Artisan Astartes,’ Aulus Scaramanca said, ‘we are to be taken apart.’

  The Carrion’s silver-glazed eyes fixed on the Iron Warrior’s face. Scaramanca had been away from his Legion and the brutality of compliance for so long that the simple prospect of battle had put a mad smile on the Olympian’s crooked lips.

  Phylax, Salvador, Ventidian and the Carrion could not find in themselves the same glee. The imp
ossible was happening – betrayal, murder, war on Mars – and the Space Marines were caught in the middle of the chaos and confusion.

  Scaramanca looked to the Carrion. ‘So what now?’

  Formulate

  The Carrion turned to Phylax. ‘Alert our brothers on the lower floors.’

  ‘They are unlikely to believe us,’ the Salamander told him and reached for a nearby vox-caster.

  ‘I wouldn’t,’ Salvador admitted.

  ‘They’ll believe it when airborne assault carriers start dropping out of the sky,’ Scaramanca said.

  ‘Forewarned is forearmed,’ the Carrion said, retracting his spike-interface from the socket.

  ‘Which raises another problem,’ the Iron Warrior said. He slipped the oily straps of a pair of Umbra-pattern boltguns off his pauldron. ‘The good news – from maintenance,’ he told the legionaries as he threw one weapon to Alcavarn Salvador and the other to Nem’ron Phylax. As a sign of respect, every Space Marine was expected to surrender his legionary boltgun upon arrival at Mars. The only weapons available in the tower-preceptory were those in the workshops.

  ‘Ammunition?’ Salvador asked.

  ‘The bad news,’ the Iron Warrior admitted. ‘From the test-range. A half-mag each.’

  The Carrion found himself looking in wonder at Aulus Scaramanca. He had no doubt that under his primarch’s command once more the Iron Warrior would be destined for greatness. Beyond his technical skill, all the hallmarks of exemplary leadership were there: clarity of thought and composure; an appetite – perhaps even an enthusiasm – for battle. Modesty in issuing the only legionary weapons available to fellow battle-brothers while looking to others for insight and guidance.

  Scaramanca felt the Raven Guard’s infra-augmented gaze on him. ‘Well, Carrion,’ the Iron Warrior asked, ‘where will we find the bodies?’

  The Carrion turned to take in the technical hangar. An assortment of vehicles, weaponry and bulk equipment in various states of assembly and disrepair was scattered across the floor space; bulkheads led off to the workshops and cell-block, and the balcony-­platform projected out from the hangar, flashing with landing lamps. The Carrion gestured across the hangar.