The Eye of Medusa

by David Guymer

  A shuddering groan passed through the air, as if the sky were being bent. Stronos looked up, his optics slowly resetting and reasserting to take in the mountainous war machine, Pax Medusan. Hazard lights flashed ruddy amber from its turrets, arms moving stiffly as if to pull itself free of the cables and colossal steel brackets that held it in place. Yellowish steam gushed from the vents of its plasma annihilator, shrouding the god-machine in a dense radioactive fog.

  The discharge of the superheavy weapon alone had been enough to flatten Stronos and his brother Iron Hands. The miniature sun it had birthed about four kilometres away was turning white and dying, leaving a blasted void of vitrified ash and atomised metal in its place. The Hellstorm cannon on its other arm was making a choking noise, but smaller calibre ordnance rained down from its turrets. Stronos saw an Ordo Reductor Ordinatus struggling to find room to turn itself, only to be destroyed under a pounding of krak missiles and earthshaker shells.

  In a matter of moments, Velt’s assault had simply disintegrated.

  Stronos thumped his head to clear his helm of static, if only for a few seconds, and looked around. Jalenghaal was staring up at the stirring Titan, processing hard, even as its lighter lateral armaments, battlecannon and heavy bolters amongst others, ranged in. Other Iron Hands stumbled into cover.

  ‘Vand. Return fire, brother.’

  The Iron Hands ordnance specialist dropped to one knee, plasma cannon across one shoulder, and pointed his weapon upwards. There was hardly any need to aim, but he did so anyway. A wavering band of blue-white plasma briefly connected the weapon to the towering god-machine, followed by a powerful explosion about two thirds of the way up its height. It achieved little. Stronos wished he could have handled the weapon himself, though he knew the result would have been the same. Until the Adeptus Mechanicus forces could regroup they had nothing to contend with an Emperor-class Titan. Perhaps even then.

  ‘All claves converge on my location,’ he spoke, still calm, into his gorget vox-bead. Interference from the plasma wash had hashed up the interlink signal, and he resorted to physically directing the individual Space Marines he could see towards new positions.

  The Pax Medusan had no legs. Unnecessary for its new role, they would have been scrapped for parts millennia ago, and Stronos thanked the Omnissiah for that merciful act of foresight as his brother-sergeants found themselves pockets of cover outside the arcs of its primary weapons systems. He was about to shout further instructions when the Hellstorm cannon cleared its blockage.

  Without audial baffles the sound was godly, millions of las-bolts per second spraying from hyper-rotating firing cylinders and mowing through the wreckage field as if it were strimming grass. Small secondary explosions pockmarked the devastation as the energy rain clipped a minefield or took out a Centurio Ordinatus tank.

  ‘Ankaran!’ he yelled, his armour’s augmitters producing a whining feedback as they struggled to make him heard over the roar of the Titan. ‘Prepare your assault clave. Approach from the rear and cut your way inside.’

  Even the mightiest war machine needed a crew, and a crew could be killed, but even as he gave the orders he felt an insidious intuition that even if Ankaran could get near enough to breach the Titan’s hatches he would find nothing living inside. Its machine-spirit had been goaded to this act of violence, tortured, its malevolent instruction administered by the masters of Locis Primus through the overhead lines. He felt the nascent stirrings of an idea.

  He looked up and about. The pylons were built like miniature fortresses, designed to withstand a lot worse than what Stronos had to throw at them, and though the recoil from the plasma annihilator had bent them they did not look as though they would fail any time soon. The cables themselves could have been a weak point, but the sky was black with them, and they would have to cross the Imperator’s fire arcs as well as tens of kilometres of intensely difficult terrain to reach every last stretch of cabling. It could take hours.

  He turned around.

  The bunker.

  It was thoroughly integrated into the test bed by buried trunk lines, hooked into the overheads by scores of hardened cables, and the skitarii had made the effort to hold it even after the likelihood of success had shrunk to zero. And the skitarii were logical. Perhaps something could be done from there.

  ‘Devastators,’ he called, turning to face the wrathful god-machine and walking backwards to the bunker. ‘Target weapons systems and power inputs. Clave Stronos to secure the bunker. All others to submit to Sergeant Ankaran and commence ground assault on the Titan.’

  It was not standard protocol. Ankaran was eighth sergeant, so by transferring authority to him Stronos was overlooking Artex once again, but experience of close assault struck him as more crucial qualification than long service.

  When he ducked inside the bunker he found a number of Scouts already there. They were spattered with blood and battery acids, grumbling like a clave of attack bikes run to fumes. Unidentifiable bits of skitarii were strewn over command consoles and chairs. Something made of wire and bone broke under Stronos’ boot as he walked in, struggling to control his disgust at the Scouts’ savagery. He doubted that Jalenghaal would be as satisfied with the new indoctrination regime once his brother had taken time to process what he had witnessed here. Stronos would certainly not consider any one of these warriors a fair exchange for Trellok or Kardaanus.

  Ignoring them for the time being, he turned to the control systems banked against one wall. Lights blinked amidst clusters of dials. Brass knobs and sliders glinted in the green-tinted illumination emitted by a hololith of the Cog Medusa, stuttering beneath the ceiling. The projection fluctuated as Stronos’ battered helmet passed through it, half a metre higher than the most massive skitarii construct. He flattened a command chair that had been bolted to the ferrocrete under one boot, and then swept radium casings from a terminal.

  He was beginning to understand what he was seeing.

  His finger traced a geometric ring that appeared to correspond to the power and transmission lines that surrounded Pax Medusan. Power usage nodes marked the eight points of the octagon with runes in lingua-technis, with which Stronos was passably fluent. The superheavy weapons platforms he had seen arrayed around the Titan test bed. They were weapons identifiers, though not all described systems he recognised. In fact, most did not. He held his finger over one that did look familiar, and the rune expanded into several blocks of informative screed. A cold smile moved the lower half of his face. Pulse ordnance multi-driver. The rune was a bastardised tau symbol.

  It was an errant thought, but he had always wanted to get his hands on one of those.

  The smile disappearing after its brief, illicit life, he looked over the wider set of controls. Everything was coded in lingua-technis or even binharic info-runes, but he thought he recognised the sliders involved in power regulation. The large dials, eight of them in sets of three, would be for targeting. The complicated-looking board of clasps and toggles in the centre of the operations wall could only have been for programming fire sequences.

  A near miss from what sounded like a battlecannon shell brought a shower of dust over the controls.

  He could do this.

  ‘Have you not accrued enough penance duties to keep you from disturbing technologies you do not know how to master?’ Jalenghaal had stepped in behind him. Taller than Stronos, he looked over his shoulder at the array and somehow understood what his sergeant was planning. Perhaps he was more empathetic than he realised, or did all of Ferrus Manus’ sons feel the same intuitive draw towards overkill?

  Another shake brought a squirt of blood from a body part caught in the ceiling rebars, which splashed over Stronos’ faceplate. He wiped it off on his arm. ‘Have you never acted simply as you thought right?’

  Jalenghaal stood silent.

  ‘I… feel… that you have,’ Stronos said.

  ‘We were all on
ce less than we now are. You are a sergeant of Clan Garrsak.’

  ‘Until Ares is recovered I am acting captain of Clan Garrsak.’ Stronos waited a moment but Jalenghaal offered nothing further, as if Stronos had just made his point for him. ‘But if it will salve your conscience, brother.’ He opened a vox-link to Adept Yolanis. The plasma distortions had faded quickly, but Stronos could still hear the surge and swell of energetic static interfering with the frequency. ‘Yolanis, Stronos.’

  ‘Yolanis here,’ crackled the fraught reply. ‘I have the Ancient in sight, lord. Our prayers go with him.’

  ‘This is not about the Iron Father. I require one of your adepts.’

  ‘Lord?’

  ‘One of your adepts. Urgently. Whomever you can spare.’ He severed the connection before she could query him further. Then he turned to the entrance. ‘Vand. Your skills are required.’

  After a few moments, the Iron Hands battle-brother entered, his plasma cannon hanging by one hand and a bundle of power cords at his side. The Dorrvok sergeant, Maarvuk, and the last of his Scouts entered with him. The young warriors carried a look of shell shock in their drawn faces and cracked half-visors, more at their own actions in the clearing of the bunker than the suddenly belligerent god-machine less than half a kilometre away. Stronos turned to his own brother.

  ‘Ankaran and the others make slow progress,’ Vand reported. ‘The cover is good but the fire is heavy, the emplacements too high and too well shielded to be efficiently targeted by Devastators on the ground. And both Velt and Quoros are dead. I overheard vox confirmation. The skitarii are not regrouping, brother, they are falling back, looking to withdraw from Pax Medusan’s weapons range and target it with Ordo Reductor artillery. We should withdraw. There will be nothing left of this site once they commence firing.’

  ‘No. We stay.’

  ‘We have nothing that can hurt an Imperator Titan.’

  ‘We do.’

  Stronos turned to Jalenghaal for support; his brother emitted a grunt and turned infinitesimally towards the operations wall. Vand looked it over in a few seconds.

  ‘The weapons’ test array,’ he surmised.

  ‘Can you assist me?’ Stronos asked him.

  ‘Perhaps.’ Vand crunched forward, his bulk scattering the ceiling hololith, and passed his fingers from control set to control set as if inloading some insight through direct contact with the metal. ‘The spirit sleeps. It will need to be awakened, and its wrath soothed when it does.’

  ‘Adept Yolanis sends one of her enginseers to assist.’

  Vand nodded. He bent to inspect the power usage nodes and their accompanying identification runes when a Scout in dust-bronzed carapace and rebreather mask burst in from one of the bunker complex’s adjoining compartments. The Scout scanned the hulking shapes of the gathered Iron Hands, before locating the bleak form of Sergeant Maarvuk. The others, he ignored.

  ‘There is a passageway. It appears to run towards Locis Primus but I only explored a short way. It is large enough to admit power armour, but barely.’

  ‘If it gets me under the Primus shard, then I will make space. Rauth.’

  The Scout whose face Stronos had needed to break to bring him back to his senses turned obediently towards his sergeant. His nose and mouth were badly bloodied, his face a mass of bruise, but his Larraman cells had staunched the bleeding. There were welts around his throat from a skitarius’ death grip and his visor was bleeding sparks. Beneath the sputtering device was a look of such embittered fury and aggression that Stronos momentarily felt pity for him.

  He still remembered what it had been like for him at that age, to be so recently human, the raw impulsiveness and rage of his gene-seed fuelling a body that was already stronger than he could understand or control. Minor disagreements amongst fellow neophytes quickly became brawls, often to the death, and indeed such outcomes were hardly discouraged, disobedience was rife and summary battlefield execution regrettably commonplace. By comparison the current intake were, for the past ten minutes at least, paragons of self-discipline.

  It was skin deep.

  Stronos could see the resentment bubbling up under the surface without outlet. The Scout, Rauth, may have been responding to his master with the obedience of a beaten animal, but the slightest push and he would have gladly savaged the sergeant’s hand. As he had the skitarii, and would Stronos too had he the strength to back up his fury.

  ‘Take point,’ Maarvuk told the Scout. ‘I will be slower so I will go last. Any that fail to better my pace I will not hesitate to crush and spare the clave your weakness.’ He turned to Stronos. ‘Father’s strength.’

  ‘Father’s strength,’ Stronos replied, crossed his arms, and waited for Yolanis.

  VII

  Rauth tore from the mouth of the tunnel and into a sparingly lit corridor, punching out a chunk of rockcrete and packed earth from the wall with his elbow as he went. He pumped his shotgun’s action, teeth bared, swung it one way, then the other. Nothing there. He swallowed his disappointment. After five hundred metres of cramped tunnels, having to widen the walls with his own shoulders at times, he could feel his choler rising. His explosive loss of control in the face of the deviant skitarii mortified him, and he was reassured to sense such emotion safely locked away behind doctrina blocks and implanted codewalls. And yet.

  And yet.

  He badly wanted something to hurt.

  Rasping on his rebreather he pushed down one arm of the corridor while Sarrk, behind him, went down the other, those coming after alternately peeling off to follow them.

  Fiddling with the side controls of his damaged visor he attempted to match their position to a schematic of the base. Emergency lighting from greasy lumen sources cast the smooth, metallic walls in a weak red light. Pink, almost. The walls trembled with a soft hum, separate from the faraway rumour of bombardment. Listening intently, he thought he could hear a voice speaking but could not pinpoint a direction. He touched the walls and his carapace gloves came away damp. His expression soured. Even through his mask’s filters he was getting a repulsive odour, muggy and thick, like a blend of animal musk and oils.

  A spray of fat sparks rewarded Rauth’s attempts to bully his visor back online, and shocked his fingers even through their protective carapace and undermesh. He swore at it and snapped it from his face at the arm. Then he crushed it underfoot.

  Better.

  ‘Quiet,’ whispered Khrysaar, directly behind him.

  Anger swelled in Rauth, swiftly recognised, blocked and buried, there to boil away unregarded. He’s right. ‘I acted rashly. It will not happen again.’

  ‘See that it does not.’

  ‘Is the air breathable?’ Rauth asked. Khrysaar’s visor remained operative.

  ‘From the state we left the tunnel in, I would guess not.’

  ‘And the odour is offensive,’ added Suforr.

  ‘Rebreathers stay on,’ ordered Gorgorus, and the masked Scouts spread out along the corridor to make room for the last of their number.

  Maarvuk walked through in an explosion of rockcrete dust. He looked left, then right, powdered stone pouring off his massively bulked-out frame. Finally, he looked up. There was a small black globe set into the ceiling, an angular slit in the casing blinking red whenever one of the Scouts moved. Apparently satisfied, Maarvuk holstered his pistol, reached up to that black globe, and calmly ripped it out of the ceiling in a shower of sparks and severed wiring.

  ‘A picter device,’ he said, sparks running down his adamantine-scaled features like raindrops. ‘Next time I will not correct your error.’

  ‘Which way?’ asked Rauth.

  Maarvuk responded by turning motionless and unspeaking for several seconds; runes and schemata flowed rapidly across his helmet display. ‘Location verified and locked. The central authorisation nexus is not far from here. It will be well defended, even i
f the rene­gades are as yet unalerted to our incursion, and that risk increases with every second we are here. You will seize it or perish for your failure.’ You don’t say ‘we’. ‘From there you will override the primary entrance and sever the Titan’s power supply.’

  The veteran sergeant recognised no if or maybe.

  He pointed in Rauth’s direction.

  ‘Go.’

  With barely a passing concern for discretion, Rauth charged down the corridor. In truth he was little more adept in stealth than Maarvuk, for all that he benefitted from a lighter frame, but what he had was speed, power and a determination to prevail. Something oozed from the knife wound in his belly with every pound of his feet and slurped through the gash in his carapace. He ignored the pain and ran. Complete the mission and I will be remade. Better than I was before. Although he cared little for those left behind on the surface, the urgency of the situation was not lost on him. If the Titan were left to obliterate Fabricator-Locum Velt’s and Captain Stronos’ commands then the eradication of Thennos might be delayed. Iron Father Verrox might be forced to beg the other clans for reinforcement. And that, he thought with vehemence, cannot be.

  The corridor carried a notable curve towards the right and Rauth realised that it was a circuit pathway, running the outer edge of the entire Primus shard. Strange that there are no guards. He heard the voice again.

  Signalling back that he could see a light ahead, he slowed down to approach an open door, for the first time since he had entered the facility taking care to muffle his steps. It was a set of swinging double doors on the right hand side of the corridor, the inside of the curve, slightly ajar. The crackly artificial voice was coming from inside. He slammed through it, shotgun to his shoulder.

  Men and women in red Mechanicus robes screamed, falling off workstation chairs or scrambling from positions of prayer as they sought cover under the sturdy diagnosticae tables that filled most of the room. Like the skitarii outside, the adepts were clad in oddly beguiling augments, sympathetic to the flesh in both colour and contour. Flowing electoos covered what remained of their skin, tracing the outlines of future implants, scabbed and burned as if imprinted in great haste. He wanted to look away, but forced himself to face them. They were far more highly cyborgised than any mere enginseer or mechanician should be, and the writhing, organic form those augments took was like a knot in his bleeding gut.