The Eye of Medusa

by David Guymer

  And then she moved.

  Ignoring the hands that grabbed after her robes and the cries of fear and concern that followed them, she struggled through the barbed wire, coughed blood into her mask, and ran.

  XI

  Rauth was not sure what he had been expecting to happen. He was no romantic; he knew that people, even Space Marines, did not tend to walk away from a bolt-round to the head, but Maarvuk had been a thing of such solidity and power. Rauth had genuinely believed him indestructible.

  As it transpired, nothing happened. Nothing unexpected. The mass-reactive detonated inside the veteran-sergeant’s thick iron skull and blew open his head from the inside.

  Khrysaar lowered his knife, panting, dripping with gore and neural adhesives. He stared at Rauth in shock, the uncanny spark of loathing that had inflamed him stunned back to wherever it had come from.

  ‘Now what?’

  Chapter Thirteen

  ‘Even the Cog Mechanicus is half human.’

  – i

  I

  ‘What do we do?’ Khrysaar asked the question more loudly than before, to be heard over the increasingly wet sounds of Sarrk’s forehead hitting the transparent plastek. The distant shriek of tocsins sang through the fractured window. Rauth had no reason, as yet, to think that Maarvuk’s noisy suicide had alerted the base garrison to their presence, but it was an urgent distraction he was finding difficult to ignore. He tried to think on his options, but whichever way his mind tried to go he found it – armed and fuelled, ready to go – in the exact same place.

  The objective was all-important. He said as much.

  ‘Agreed,’ said Khrysaar. They were both caked in their brothers’ flesh, but Rauth felt a hateful pride in the fact that they were both still Iron Hands. He stood a little stiffer. ‘But how?’ Khrysaar went on in a low voice. ‘Maarvuk’s last order was for us to breach the central authorisation nexus and assume control. We can’t do that with just two of us.’

  Rauth concurred. Never commit unless certain that defeat is impossible: that is the lesson Sergeant Tartrak drilled into me. He clenched his bionic shoulder, felt the absence of a beating heart. Literally. ‘Barricade the door. We need time to think.’

  The other Scout obeyed without question. Rauth was older, better, more completely mechanised, and Khrysaar recognised that implicitly. While Khrysaar squatted down by the diagnosticae table that Maarvuk had flipped over and attempted to drag it towards the door, Rauth went back to the window, bracing himself against whatever horror had overtaken the veteran-sergeant and his older brethren. After a few seconds in which nothing more malign than the steady slap of Sarrk’s bloody head on the plastek impinged on his senses, Rauth let go of the breath he had been holding.

  Red lights flashed over the auditorium below, along with an energetic discordance that someone sufficiently lacking in understanding of order might have classed as music. He could dimly hear it through the spider-web fractures that Sarrk had butted into the plastek, a base thrum, and he could see as well that the auditorium was emptying. Men and women surged towards the exits, civilian workers with ungainly augmentations and a jarringly low-tech armament of stubbers, autoguns and repurposed tools such as arc welders and diamantite drills. They were escorted by the similarly hyper-modified skitarii alphas. Despite their ‘improvements’ the civilian soldiers were repulsive but unimpressive, though a force anywhere near to Locis Primus’ estimated population of two million would overrun Stronos’ command easily, and Velt’s too, if the Legiones Skitarii were caught unprepared. He looked back to Khrysaar.

  The other Scout had given up the attempt to shift the table. The two of them together hadn’t a fifth of Maarvuk’s strength, and so Khrysaar instead dragged the veteran-sergeant himself in front of the swinging doors. Then he pried the bolt pistol from the sergeant’s grip and, in what struck Rauth as a grisly move in the circumstances, ejected the sickle magazine and jammed it through the loop handles, barring the doors from swinging inwards or out.

  Watching his brother work, Rauth attempted to raise Sergeant Stronos on the vox. He had no magos calculi with whom to confer, but it seemed to him that the benefits of vox silence were now outweighed by the costs. Denial static blanketed the open channel, the sermons of someone calling himself i, the prophet-alpha, on loop. Rauth closed the channel quickly. He had no idea if he could reach Stronos through the interference, but he suspected not.

  He tried again to think, finding himself wishing for a superior officer to issue an order that he could simply obey. Part of him actually envied Khrysaar. He pushed the yearning aside. There was still a good chance that they could exit the facility by the same route they had entered and bring warning of this new force to Stronos before it emerged. If they were to do that though, they would have to hurry. They had entered through one of Locis Primus’ own access tunnels and Rauth didn’t doubt that, several thousand skitarii and traitor militia would be on their way there right now. He turned to the viewing plastek as the last acolytes filed out. Only the prophet-alpha and one of his perverted Kastelan bodyguards remained behind, even his human-podium dismantled, pacing the auditorium and looking up at the surrounding windows as if waiting on a portent of victory.

  As if inloaded to his mind, an alternative course of action presented itself.

  The objective is all-important.

  ‘With me,’ he said, and remembering Khrysaar’s unintended altercation with Gorgorus, levelled his shotgun at Sarrk. A solid blast from both barrels blew out the older Scout’s softened skull and threw him out of the way. My first shot on Thennos. Ironic. But he’s not moving if he doesn’t want to. Khrysaar didn’t bat an eye. Then Rauth ran at the fractured plastek at its weakest point and hurled his body at it.

  II

  Stronos felt a moment of grief for the Ancient’s passing before the interlink to his brothers snuffed it out, as efficiently as the oxygen-poor atmosphere of Thennos snuffed out the explosion. He could appreciate the efficiency, if nothing else.

  ‘A Demolisher shell,’ Vand observed without emotion, passing under the bunker’s low entrance to stand by Stronos’ side. The battle-brother knew ordnance. But then so did Stronos. ‘A good hit. Well placed. Anyone in that area?’

  ‘Yes,’ Stronos replied.

  ‘Who?’

  Stronos hesitated. If it was noticed then it was not remarked upon. The clan’s compartmentalised command systems ensured that only he had access to every warrior’s position and status. He did not like to keep secrets – they felt like poison in his stomach that needed to be expelled – but despite all that secrets had brought on the Iron Hands, he could see the virtue in keeping this one. The efficiency. The destruction of a living relic like Tubriik Ares would destabilise a finely balanced situation. The clan interlink allowed him to even out emotional fluctuations by spreading the variations across his brothers; he had not tested the premise, but it would cease to be of benefit if all experienced the same discord.

  ‘Adept Yolanis has suffered some losses,’ he said.

  Vand accepted that without comment. He did not care about Yolanis or her adepts. He pointed to the enginseer that Stronos had earlier seen fleeing the target area, his red-robed body now in a tangle where he had flung himself. Vand turned to where Jalenghaal and the remainder of Clave Stronos stood sentry around the bunker. Despite the ranging fire that fell around them, they remained utterly still.

  ‘Go fetch him,’ Vand said.

  Jalenghaal gave Stronos a long look, then in a dull glint of optics moved off into the Titan’s killing field, noospherically calling up half the remaining brothers to cover him.

  Fire from the Titan stitched the landscape. It seemed undirected, as if the tactical withdrawal of any worthwhile targets had infuriated its injured spirit and led it simply to vandalise the terrain in which it was trapped. Toxic yellow fumes billowed from its waist where it was buried in the ground, cab
les drawn tight around its crenellated shoulders as, using its superheated plasma annihilator as a shovel, it managed to twist itself another few degrees towards the bunker complex. A blistering volley of las from a Hellstorm cannon at full stretch chopped up the ground barely a hundred metres from where Jalenghaal dragged the wailing tech-priest from his hiding place and swung him over one shoulder. It was as if Pax Medusan knew what they were planning. Superstition. Stronos shrugged it off.

  ‘We are losing,’ said Vand, as Jalenghaal strode measuredly back towards his brothers’ covering bolters. ‘I lack your privileged access to the manifold, but I can see it with my eyes. Even if Kardaanus were here or Ares’ Anvilarum could make it through the wreckage field we have nothing that can hurt that.’ In a great shriek of metal and a twang of ripping cables, the Titan dragged itself a little further around. ‘We need the Ordo Reductor, but I can see for myself that they are not coming. And as for Ankaran fighting his way inside, any novitiate to the calculus logi would say that is a slim chance.’

  Another wail of butchered adamantine and Stronos found himself staring up into the barrels of a Hellstorm cannon. They took on a low amber glow as the mega-weapon built to charge. Stronos heard a rumble, like thunder.

  ‘Get inside,’ he said.

  Vand did not move. ‘The structure will not withstand a direct strike from a weapon of that grade. Defensive action is pointless.’

  ‘That is my judgement to make,’ Stronos snapped. ‘Inside the bunker. Obey!’

  A muted umber flash from the direction of the Titan nullified all prior argument. Stronos turned to face and log his instant of death, shocked instead to see the dying flares of a massive explosion that had knocked back the Imperator’s fortress head. The rumble grew louder, apocalyptically so, rattling the debris underneath Stronos’ boots, culminating in a great avalanche of metal falling from the path of something massive that crashed through the wreckage field on the Titan’s far side.

  ‘What is that?’ asked Vand.

  Stronos felt himself smile.

  ‘Reinforcement.’

  III

  The wall of wreckage that surrounded Locis Primus was several metres high and centuries deep. It had stymied the efforts of Clan Garrsak’s armour to approach and had driven even the superheavy siege engines of the Ordo Reductor to seek clearer avenues of approach, but the fortress-monastery Rule of One had not stopped in over ten thousand years. It would not be stopped now.

  Tanks tumbled through the thin air and rained down from the sky as the plough-fronted, uncompromisingly armoured forward drive module smashed through the outer ring of wrecks. Closer towards the Primus shard the vehicles became more ancient, more tightly packed, the layering of ages thicker, but the drive module wasn’t blocked. Instead it mounted the wall of vehicles and drove on without slowing, crushing it further, the weight and power of the scores of rattling adamanticlad modules running behind forcing it through. The crawler’s arsenal traversed to lock onto their target as it cut across its back.

  The Rule of One was primarily a support installation, albeit a mobile one, its armament principally defensive. Never before in recorded history had it been employed to spearhead an assault, but given enough time even a once-in-a-trillion event went from infinitesimal to a certainty.

  In other words: there was a first time for everything.

  With a thunderous boom and a rocking of the crawler’s connected midsections onto their left-side tracks, the quake cannon that protruded from a blister of similarly extreme-range artillery guns on the centre module hurled a block of molten rock several kilometres over ashen waste to explode under the Imperator’s fortress jaw ridge. Its defensive armament was formidable, more than a match for anything that walked or crawled under the auspices of the Omnissiah, and as serried scores of battlecannon, boltcannon, plasmic blastguns, missiles of every colour contrail and warhead, and immense triple-barrelled turbo-laser destructors roared into range, Pax Medusan screamed under her namesake world’s wrath.

  IV

  The window shattered.

  Rauth plunged through a blizzard of plastek daggers, and then began to fall. The distance to the ground was staggering, but he had been aware of that before he jumped, calculated for it. This was a small world. He could take it.

  He hit the electrum-chased flagstones like a quarter tonne weight dropped from a great height onto a very, very small world, plastek rain clattering around him.

  Semi-transparent shards splintered and popped under his stomach, ground plastek dust sprinkling from the creases in his chest carapace as, ignoring the flash tear of pain in his ribs, he eased himself off the ground. His rebreather hung from his face on one frayed strap. He choked for a moment before the asphyxiation markers in his blood signalled his multi-lung to kick in, hard rhythmic draws flooding his bloodstream with oxygen.

  The prophet-alpha turned towards him with a languid swing, an exaggerated sway of its golden hips, the upper body counterpoised on an abdominal gimbal of perfectly spherical diamantite, and its elaborate masque-face dipped to acknowledge his arrival. Plastek tinkled to the ground. The light threw a patina across its features, the photons themselves ecstatic at voyaging to the system’s outermost reaches to fall on something so transcendent. Coloured lenses shuffled over its optics, a concertina of yellows, pinks, greens and sapphire blues, neither eye even remotely alike to the other. Its stare was both repellent and hypnotic, as though he were being dissected alive, and not for any relatable purpose other than to marvel at the colours he bled.

  ‘I was wondering when you would come.’ The prophet-alpha, i, spoke in contrived tones, the voice of one struggling to hold back its excitement. ‘What did you think of my message?’

  It was waiting for me.

  A sudden hatred of this twisted profanity gripped him, overriding any attempt to buffer or deny it. It was at the level of the codewalls themselves that it worked. He could feel his bionics seize, recursive illogic loops of resentment and loathing causing them to tense, untense, tense again, and if not for Medusan fire coursing through his living veins he knew he would be bleeding smoke out of his ears right now, just like Suforr.

  ‘What happened to you?’

  The skitarius spread its elongated limbs, a gurgling semi-synthetic laugh. ‘Perfection happened.’

  The ground shook. Rauth reluctantly tore his gaze from i’s as the Kastelan strode towards him.

  It was as massive as a Dreadnought, but more graceful, less single-minded in its construction. Its flesh coat rippled as it swallowed up the ground at an alarming rate. Its painted features stared through him, the depiction childishly disproportionate, and yet as piercing and disturbing as any work of ironglass. The crackle-hum of disruption sheaths enveloping its power fists shocked Rauth from his fugue in a way the defiled robot itself had not. He rolled clear, the robot’s foot splitting the flagstone he had been lying on, then used his momentum to roll to his feet.

  Soundlessly, the Kastelan rotated on the spot. Rauth could feel those swirly, badly rendered eyes seeking him out as it clenched its power fists and came again.

  He looked for cover, any kind of defensible position, but found none. The walls were high and smooth, rockcrete ribbed with metal, the hanging cables that were in profusion higher up disappearing closer to the floor in favour of clean scoured austerity. There were alcoves between the metallic braces but they were far too small to be useful. Rauth assumed they had once housed Thennos’ relics; some still did, many now smeared with old blood, displaying severed heads that implanted electrodes bade leer, wink and gape as Rauth’s retreat crossed their glassy stares.

  He pumped his shotgun, spitting out a pair of spent casings, then fired at next-to-point-blank into the Kastelan’s bulb helmet. The shot scattered on the robot’s refractor field and burned up.

  Rauth cursed.

  A double explosive report and silvery gases and sparks sudde
nly sizzled from a rupture in the Kastelan’s elbow joint. Rauth saw Khrysaar standing amidst the scattered plastek pieces in the middle of the auditorium, braced against his bolter’s recoil, in broad-shouldered silhouette behind the vapours streaming from the robot’s arm. The battle robot pivoted towards whatever abhorrent doctrinals it was running perceived as the greater threat.

  With me, I said. Rauth swallowed an insult. He could see that his brother already had a magazine of armour-piercing vengeance rounds slotted into his bolter. ‘You have the Kastelan. I will take the traitor.’

  ‘You are too good to me, brother,’ Khrysaar spat back, muzzle flare painting his face with a snarl of bolter shadow as he backed off from the robot. Bolt-rounds occasionally elicited wildfire surges of energy as the refractor field soaked up the kinetic impact, every so often breaking through to rip out great chunks of hyperdense ceramic to ultimately similar effect. After all, there’s nothing in there to kill. Taking advantage of Khrysaar’s distraction, he sought out the prophet-alpha.

  It was a brief search.

  The transformed skitarius was in his face the second the Kastelan’s back was turned, a red-shifted band of gold plate and glittering melee augments. A flurry of blows he could barely even see carved his carapace like diorite under a sculpting laser. A transuranic saw whined shrilly in place of the prophet-alpha’s left hand. A spring-locked monofilament blade snapped from the wrist of the right. Rauth wove between them, always back, his mind already placing him into a protective battle-trance, buying him every nanometer between a lost limb and another slash across his body armour with blood, sweat, and precious oxygen that Thennos could ill afford to replace. His shotgun was ribboned from blocking the hyper-tech weaponry before he even managed to draw his knife. He hurled the shorn-off stock at the gyrating alpha, watched it disintegrate under a clean hit from the skitarius’ transuranic sawblade.