The Burden of Loyalty

by Various

  ‘I’m not arguing, but–’ the Carrion said.

  ‘The Tabula Myriad had made its calculation,’ Octal Bool told him. ‘The greatest chance of mission success lies with diversionary assaults and a simultaneous infiltration of the temple complex.’

  ‘The losses–’ the Carrion protested.

  ‘Are an acceptable exchange for the purification of Mars,’ Octal Bool told him. ‘It will cost the entire cohort – which is why, as an expert in such disciplines, the Tabula Myriad has designated that you lead the infiltration. Its personal guard of battle-­automata will do the necessary damage once inside to irreparably cripple the ancient operation of the installation.’

  The Carrion looked to the Kastelan battle-automata marching away through the icy vapour to their certain destruction, then peered back through the magnoculars at the distant forge and its defences.

  ‘Well,’ the Carrion told Octal Bool, ‘one approach does present itself…’

  With the carrier-engine’s tracks chewing up the ice at full speed and the forward shielding intensified, the vehicle soaked up the worst that the irradiator gun-emplacement had to offer. Blast after blast of radiation finally collapsed the forward screens and bathed the carrier-engine in lethality. As the systems fried, the galvanic engine failed, the tracks locked in a form of vehicular death, but the irradiated shell of the carrier still skidded on towards the emplacement. It was the Carrion’s plan but the Tabula Myriad’s estimation of the timing. Calculating the vehicle’s speed, the number of blasts the emplacement could offer in the time it took the carrier-engine to reach it, and the amount of radiation the galvanic traction drive could soak up before detonating, the abominable intelligence gave the Raven Guard the information he needed to destroy the gun-emplacement crew and their deadly weapon in a vehicular explosion.

  Trudging through the snow with the miasma of vapour about them, the Carrion led what was left of the Daedarii Cohort along the cargo-carriage length of a stationary mag-lev engine. The carriages hovered a little way above the heated rail with the full length of the vehicle leading out of the temple’s manufactoria, waiting for its cargo of recycled waste to be processed.

  Unnatural fires lit up the sky from the tower-tops of the temple. Around the interlopers the air was trembling with the cacophonous sound of machine madness. Warhound Titans thundered their predatory announcements, while voxhailed insanity and screeching scrap-code cut through the crisp coldness about the Vertex Australis.

  The Carrion led the group along the cargo-carriages at a limp with Strix perched on one node-column. The Space Marine had his graviton gun held up ready to blast his enemies into oblivion, and was flanked by the Null and the Void with their rotor guns. Octal Bool hurried along in his thermal robes carrying a volkite charger liberated from the carrier-engine, with the Uncannical flying behind – the Tabula Myriad dangling on the polyhedral links of its chain. Surrounding the abominable intelligence and the heretek were the Kastelan battle-automata of the First Maniple, in a defensive wall of cybernetic might.

  It was not an easy task to cross the polychromatic ice sheet undetected and reach the manufactoria outskirts of the forge temple. It was even more difficult to infiltrate the installation with five hulking battle-automata. The Space Marine reasoned that he would rather have the protection of the war machines than not, however, and used the cover of the mag-rail cargo ­carriages and the swirling white murk of the ice vapour to hide the monstrous machines the best he could.

  As a drone ocularis skirted across the ice at them, part of an exploratory diversion from its patrol path, the Carrion blasted the thing apart in a rain of shattered workings and fragments of housing. They could not afford to be detected so close to their objective. The Knight Errant hoped that the calculations of the abominable intelligence were right and that the suspicion aroused by the destruction of a gun-emplacement here and there, or the odd drone missing, would be nothing in comparison to the frontal assaults being conducted by the rest of the Daedarii Cohort.

  As they worked their way up the mag-rail and into the cover of a labyrinth of low-grade manufactoria workshops, the Carrion could hear the thunder of battle nearby. At three different locations about the Vertex Australis, the battle-automata of the Daedarii Reserve Cohort were walking into fire and destruction. As planned, their sacrifice and stubborn refusal to let go of their unnatural life was buying the Carrion and his group precious time. The frontal assaults of the Legio Cybernetica machines had drawn ocularis drones, assault carriers full of temple-thralls, air strikes from a forge-bonded fighter wing and the apocalyptic attentions of the three Warhound Scout Titans down on them. The Carrion wasn’t sure how long the loyal machines’ sacrifice would buy them. He hoped it would be enough, but by the sound of the battle he didn’t think they had much time left.

  As the Carrion moved along the carriages and through the servitor-­slave workshops, he did his best not to attract attention. In the main the drones were sickly-smelling technomats, adapted and programmed to perform one repetitive task. This meant that the Carrion only had to kill the occasional thrallmaster and bonded overseer with crushing blasts from his graviton gun.

  As he moved into a quad where raw materials from a depot-dump were being hauled to individual workshops, it struck the Carrion that the area offered excellent opportunities to mount an ambush. The warrior limped to a halt. He felt a little bile rise from his pre-stomach.

  ‘Maniple,’ he ordered. ‘Form up.’

  The Tabula Myriad must have authorised the battle-automata to follow such an order because within moments the five machines were in formation with the Null and the Void, offering the gaping muzzles of their boltguns and cannons.

  Seconds passed. The Carrion’s breath misted on the air. For a moment nothing seemed to move. Even the servitors in their workshops grew still.

  It happened all of a sudden. Armoured shapes burst from around the depot dump, the workshops and from between mag-rail carriages. The Carrion found himself face to face with the blank faceplate of a Thallax – a highly augmented automaton that amounted to little more than a collection of organs and a cere­brum encased within Mechanicum plate. It started screaming cant-corruption at him, while sickly ichor began to run from its ports, cablings and augmetic seals. The thing brought up a lightning gun with a heavy chainblade bayonet that roared to life as the warrior charged. The Carrion pumped his graviton gun and let the construct have the full force of its blast through the narrow swivel of its midriff. Cutting the thing in two, the Carrion turned back to the Null, the Void and the battle-automata.

  ‘Destroy them!’ the Carrion roared.

  The quad became a storm of arc-streams and stomping Thallaxii warriors. The battle-automata were ready for them. The Carrion’s warning had given them the precious seconds the machines needed and the Thallaxii troops found themselves launching an ambush straight into a hurricane of bolts and mauling gunfire. The hail of shot and shell thinned their number quickly but others began landing on back-mounted jump packs, hitting the ground with a hydraulic bounce before and behind the Knight Errant and his team.

  Nulus took a lightning blast to the chest but Little Auri snatched up the Thallax warrior with his powered fists and smashed him into the side of the mag-lev carriage. As another came at the Carrion with its lightning gun, the Void blasted it aside with a drumming stream of fire from the multi-barrel of her rotor gun. A hidden Thallax suddenly erupted from the corrugated wall of a workshop shack, its heavy chainblade presented. The bayonet ripped straight through the Void’s chest, pinning her to the mag-lev carriage behind. She gave the warrior the coldness of her scar-stapled face before resting the barrels of her rotor gun against its blank faceplate and blowing its head away.

  Both Eta/Iota~13 and her killer fell simultaneously to the frozen floor. There was nothing to be done. The Carrion had to keep the constructs moving.

  Without the element of surprise, and at s
uch close range, the shock troops did not last long against the hulking battle-automata. The machines smashed heads and faceless helms from armoured shoulders. They tore appendages from Thallaxii warriors and fried their automotives with system-fusing power field shocks.

  ‘Onwards,’ the Carrion called, keeping his orders simple.

  As the Carrion led the constructs along the carriages of the mag-lev engine he couldn’t help but feel that they had been expected. The shock troops had been lying in wait. Whatever was coordinating the hasty fortifications and security for the forge temple had seen them coming every step of the way. Such preoccupations almost cost the Carrion dearly, as a second wave of thrall-­constructs came at him from the workshops and freightways running alongside the mag-rail.

  A crackling set of lightning claws came at the Raven Guard, forcing him to turn and take the scrape of the searing weapons across his pauldron. Through the darkness of its faceplate he saw the suggestion of something altered and monstrous within. Smashing the thing back with the stock of his graviton gun, he found that the close-combat construct had two crackling claws. Like the Thallaxii, these monstrosities wore a form of Mechanicum powered-plate and were called the Ursinax. The thing came right back at the Space Marine, back-slashing the gun out of his grip with its other sizzling claw.

  The Carrion snarled and thrust a gauntleted palm at the augmented warrior’s face. Digging his ceramite fingertips into its buckling faceplate, he tore the helm-piece off. Firing the four interface spikes on his hydraulic fist he threw a pneumatic punch with his bionic arm. The blow stabbed the Ursinax through the brain and the Carrion watched as the nightmare of robotic limbs and innards collapsed.

  Raising the graviton gun he kicked the next back with his good leg then shot the second, third and fourth Ursinax warriors to come at him, force-blasting them into each other, the workshop walls and the cargo-carriage.

  ‘Finish them,’ the Carrion commanded as the battle-automata Dex and Impedicus stomped up to him.

  Suddenly the cargo-carriage ahead was blasted out of line and off its mag-rail. The recyclable scrap it contained showered across the open space created by its crushing path as the carriage skidded around, levelling workshops and technomat servitors. The Carrion felt the frost-shattered rockcrete beneath his boots quake with the step of a large, approaching construct. A siege automaton stepped forward from where it had kicked the demolished cargo-carriage out of line, creating an opening for itself. It was massive, towering three or four times as tall as the Space Marine. It sported giant crushing claws – as big as the Carrion himself – each mounting monstrous twin-mauler cannons. A baleful glow shot from cracks, old bolt holes and buckled plate-housings in its armour.

  The colossus reached for him with its great claws but the Carrion blasted it to one side with his graviton gun. The shower of sparks off its barrel chest from the Null’s rotor gun did nothing to impress the gargantuan thing and it stepped clean over both of them to get to the First Maniple of the Daedarii Reserve Cohort. Putting themselves between the siege monster and the Tabula Myriad, the Kastelans went straight for the giant’s legs. Pollex was snatched straight up in the great claw and crushed like a rations can. Meanwhile the maniple’s other units seized the monster machine’s huge legs and sheared away at the workings and hydraulics of its axial knee-joints with shredding fire from their maximus boltguns and mauler cannon.

  Appearing from the gap left by the mag-lev carriage, four escort units were stomping their way into the fray to support the enormous siege-automata. They were all Castellax-class units, the more common kin of the First Maniple. Instead of power fists, however, the monstrous machines were equipped with the serrated crescents of spitting power blades. Their carapaces steamed with a sticky ichor that seemed to exude from the metal itself, while fist-mounted flamers dribbled a greenish fire. Upon detecting the Carrion, the first lifted its arm and blasted a sputtering stream of flame at the Knight Errant. Strix launched itself for the sky with a cant-caw as the Carrion snatched up a piece of metal scrap and deflected the worst of the sickly inferno with the surface of the plate fragment.

  As the Carrion abandoned his makeshift shield, the enemy unit stomped slowly forward, its power blades sizzling with serrated lethality. Baiting the machine between them, the Space Marine blasted the battle-automaton back with his reclaimed graviton gun while Di-Delta 451 hammered the thing with bursts of fire from her rotor gun. As the graviton cell ran dry, the battle-automaton launched itself at the Carrion, forcing him to duck and weave out of the searing path of the power blades.

  A sustained patter of rotor shot sparking off the thing’s sticky ­pauldron and cortex casing seemed to distract the machine. As it went after the Null, the Carrion limped up behind it, laying the palm of his hydraulic hand on the warped thing’s leg. Sapping power from its systems and reactor core, the Knight Errant brought the machine to a frozen standstill.

  Turning on the other three Castellax units stomping through the carriage opening, the Carrion blasted every spark of scavenged energy he had drained from the first into the second unit. The arc-stream seared into the superstructure of the battle-automaton, turning the cybernetic monstrosity into a smoke-swirling wreck that ground to a sparking halt.

  The workshop next to the Carrion was suddenly blasted apart as a stuttering stream of magna-bore bolt fire erupted from the twin-mauler cannons on the siege-automaton’s fist. Dex, Impedicus, Little Auri and the damaged Nulus had managed to shred through the workings of the monster’s legs, bringing the colossus to its knees. With Nulus holding one arm away from Octal Bool and the Tabula Myriad, uselessly pumping bolt shells into the side of a cargo-carriage, Auri and Impedicus turned the cannon fury of the other arm through the corrugated workshop and into the remaining two Castellax units, turning them into blasted derelicts.

  Marching forwards, Dex slammed its fist straight through the cortex casing of the colossal siege-automata, destroying the thing instantly. As it withdrew its arm, the stinking slop of corrupted flesh dripped to the rockcrete floor.

  Allowing Strix to land on his node-column once more, the Carrion picked up the graviton gun and exchanged out the spent cell for his final spare. He looked through the gap in the cargo carriages at a scrapyard beyond. It was a storage area where the mag-lev engine was disgorging its transported load and the mounds of materials were being processed.

  ‘We’ve reached the forge temple,’ he told the gathered constructs, before pumping the graviton gun and resting its barrel against his pauldron. ‘Onwards,’ he ordered. The Null prompted Octal Bool forward, along with Uncannical and the frosted orb of the Tabula Myriad.

  The Knight Errant and the constructs trudged up through the frosted mountain of scrap. The higher they advanced, the less shelter they benefitted from. The howling winds of the frozen plain cut through the twisted scrap metal and coated everything – constructs and all – in a dusting of ice. As they moved, it was difficult not to let the eye travel up the vertiginous walls of the forge temple. The industrial wonder of its mills and factoria and the baroque majesty of the spire had been things of beauty once. Now the temple was a place of dark deeds. Its furnaces, once radiant, were now beacons of sickly balelight. Its architecture and walls were shot through with unnatural rusts and encrustations that even the frost could do little to disguise. From this infernal smithy rose the mighty Vertex. Like an axle turning with the world, it reached up into the Martian heavens, the metal of the shaft snapping and crackling with the mysterious electromagnetic energies of its planetary function. It was simple yet impressive. The forge temple relied upon the Vertex for power and production requirements. Using the Vertex as a geomagnetic reactor and funnelling magma from its reach into the Martian core for its mills, the forge made economic use of the ancient technology.

  Below the Carrion, like a river carving out a valley, a heavy-duty conveyor belt transported scrap on a gentle incline up into the forge complex. Mono-task serv
itors and robotic rigs lined the conveyor, sorting the finest quality metals for recycling before the incline grew, taking the selected scrap up a high-rise section of the travelator and into the forge. Deciding upon his entrance to the mighty forge temple, the Raven Guard led the constructs down into the valley.

  The heavy-duty conveyor had little problem with the weight of the battle-automata. When they were all on, the Carrion led the way up through the metal scrap on the moving belt. As they rose through the darkness of the polar night, the wind screamed about them and the height became sickening.

  From so high up, the Carrion could command a view of the ice sheet below. The sounds of battle were dying. It was all but over with only a few of the Daedarii battle-automata fighting desperately on against madness and impossible odds. The screeching strike fighters and exploratory attack runs had come to an end. Ocularis drones and thrall-swamped assault carriers were drifting through the vapour and over the battlefield of decimated battle-­automata. The units of the First Maniple would soon be the only survivors of the Daedarii Reserve Cohort. The Warhound Titans bellowed a vox-cast roar of code-madness that shattered the thin, polar air. The command deck viewports of the god-machines glowed with an unnatural light, giving the Titans the appearance of deities possessed. The polluted slush had been pounded to shallow lakes by the hordes despatched to meet the battle-automata. Tracked carriers, wardozers, spider-tanks, walkers and speeders had streaked ahead of the degenerate ground troops, carrying their constructs straight into the heart of the howling fray.

  Code-corrupted menials, babbling with lunatic abandon, formed mindless mobs of cannon fodder. Weaponised servitors staggered and shrieked at the approaching enemy, cutting down their own in the optimistic insanity of celebratory gunfire. Heavily augmented shock troops and battle-­automata stamped and bulldozed their way through their own lines, smacking aside their traitor kin with their carapace bulk and weaponry.