by David Guymer
The sky was streaked with shooting stars, intensely radioactive trails of burning ochre billowing out behind a dozen black-armoured comets as they plummeted towards Locis Primus. Stronos’ hearts missed a beat.
They were drop pods.
Clan Raukaan drop pods.
VI
Ships crowded Thennos’ anchorages. Hundreds of sanctioned container vessels in the myriad colours of chartist and independent captains, as well as specially repurposed Departmento Munitorum hauliers, hung at anchor above the clouded worldlet, more cruising ignorantly towards the blockade by the hour. A dozen warships of Clans Vurgaan and Garrsak enforced their stay, the silence of the void bristling with their unsubtle threat. Vox silence was maintained on pain of immediate obliteration. Multiple overlapping augur fields, more powerful and accurate than anything in service outside of the Iron Hands clans, parsed the near-space region several times over. The possibility of passing a landing craft unnoticed through the detection net had been calculated to the nth degree and proclaimed impossible.
Duly, as the vessel slowed to approach velocity, the eyes of the blockade fleet looked straight through it.
To the extensive orbital customs and quarantine stations, never fully gripped by the enfolding insurrection on the surface and reinforced now with loyal Adeptus Mechanicus personnel, it was as if it wasn’t there.
To the more esoteric augur technologies aboard the chartist conveyancer Lady Grey, under the command of Inquisitor Talala Yazir, it appeared for a moment, a ghost, a sensor impossibility of tonnage equivalent to the mighty Garrsak flagship Commandment, only to be scrubbed before it ever reached human eyes.
It was only when the ghost burst into a blaze of shield flares, the heat of atmospheric entry shunted into the warp, that the hull of a vast, perfectly dark ship became clear to those same human eyes. By then, of course, it was already too late. The silvery paint of clan symbols blazed with the reflected purples and greens of the empyrean, sharing equivalent hullspace with the Cog Mechanicus. Dark nodules of unspecified design bulged from the gothic profusion of steeples and spires, hoary with void frost, deflecting scans and attempted hails alike. Even as the immense craft burned up atmosphere and disgorged its complement of drop pods, many of the warriors on the ground refused to acknowledge this gross invasion of accepted reality.
Through closed vox loops and one-to-one neural links, networks that none beyond the hermetic hierarchy of Clan Raukaan could have detected or heard, a single voice spoke with the force of a hundred. ‘By priority order of the one true warleader of the Iron Hands, Locis Primus is to be secured for the Adeptus of Mars. The compliance order has been given. Any force that remains in the designation area is to be considered traitor and engaged without hesitation. Ave Omnissiah.’
‘Ave Omnissiah,’ came the slavish orison of connected minds as they hurtled through Thennos’ scorched and embittered clouds. ‘We comply.’
VII
Wreckage scattered high into the air on a toxic plume as the enormous weight of the Clan Raukaan drop pod hammered through it and into the ground beneath. It disappeared from view behind the intervening wrecks, but Stronos could clearly hear the chatter of its bolters, the explosive clang as its assault hatches blew. And then screams, carried on the air like smoke. Another drop pod crashed into the thick of the fighting by the Primus entrance, and Stronos could well imagine the effect that its impact would have on several thousand tightly packed, lightly armoured mortal combatants. Had he not personally checked over Draevark’s calculus prior to a near-identical insertion over Port Amadeus? Watching the skyline turn red as pod after pod smote Locis Primus’ wreckage field, he remembered Ares’ rebuke, castigating the rote application of the tried and tested over the truly innovative, but he could not argue that the strategy was any less devastating for its prior usage.
‘Sergeant Stronos,’ came the voice of Iron Captain Draevark, looped to his helmet vox through the Rule of One’s booster sets and doubly warped for the roundabout transmission. ‘You are ordered to disarm and disengage. I firmly advise you to comply.’
‘Orders from whom?’ Stronos demanded. He looked up; a wing of Storm Talon gunships broke the cloud layer and swept towards the listing inferno of Pax Medusan, a formation of Avenger strike craft in Mechanicus red flying escort.
‘From me. I command Clan Garrsak, not Tenth Sergeant Stronos. You have exceeded your authority to a staggering degree. Ares’ command codes have now been rescinded on my order.’ A mechanised growl crackled through the looped feed. ‘I promise you this, Kardan, you will be tending meme-files in some Thennosian dungeon for a thousand years in penance for your actions here. You put the clan monastery itself in danger.’ The fury in the iron captain’s voice was palpable, and physical distance did little to diminish its effect.
‘You ordered the crawler to disengage.’
‘I did.’
‘But why?’
‘Why? Stronos asks why? Because Iron Father Kristos orders it and Clan Garrsak obeys. Disarm and disengage, sergeant,’ Draevark repeated. ‘Any forces within a three-kilometre perimeter of Locis Primus not transmitting Clan Raukaan or Adeptus Mechanicus identifiers are to be considered non-compliant and fired upon.’
A sudden, bursting anger grew in Stronos’ chest then, too violent by far for him to suppress. The destruction of Ancient Ares, Lydriik’s warnings, the whole secretive nature of this campaign, and now this, at the very end – it all pointed back to Iron Father Kristos and Columnus. No, before that. Dawnbreak. Rivalries between clans could often flare up into open conflict, Stronos knew; the stories told that the Father encouraged such competition between his sons, but this felt like something altogether darker.
His gauntlets creaked as they tightened their grip on his bolt pistol.
He hated to be played. The mortal Vurgaan of pre-history had forged their reputation in the crucible of ancient Medusa, turning their artisanal weaponscraft and mastery of ranged warfare to the extermination of monsters that no other dared to stalk.
He was still Vurgaan, and he did not fear Iron Father Kristos.
‘I am going nowhere,’ he said. ‘I have a clave of Scouts already inside Locis Primus, and enough warriors to make Kristos fight for the shard if he wants to take it by force.’
‘You have nothing. Your borrowed authorisations have been rescinded, new ones generated and transferred to Second Sergeant Artex. He now has command and follows the fortress-monastery in withdrawal. You have nothing but your own clave. Stand down, accept your punishment. Do not compound your sin by robbing your clan of more assets than one errant sergeant.’
‘Assets?’ Stronos glanced at Jalenghaal, who stood beside him, looking back at him impassively, at Burr, Morthol and Govall, all positioned with bolters ready in a defensive half-circle in the wreckage nearby. His men. His brothers. ‘I do not comply. And I do not believe that Verrox accepts this either.’
‘Verrox is far away and of no immediate consequence. Argue further if it pleases you, but you are out of time. Comply or perish, the choice is yours – make it quickly or Clan Raukaan will make it for you.’
With that, Draevark brusquely severed the connection. For a moment, Stronos felt unable to move, experiencing a perverse kinship with Pax Medusan in his towering fury.
‘What has happened?’ asked Jalenghaal.
Stronos turned to face his brother’s pitiless mask, wondering how to respond. To his shame, he considered simply ordering the clave to follow him, knew that they would, but rejected it out of hand. They deserved better than another Kristos.
As concisely as he could, he told Jalenghaal everything.
Jalenghaal remained silent, long after Stronos had finished. ‘There is nothing to be gained from fighting Clan Raukaan alone,’ he said, just as Stronos had begun to doubt he would receive an answer at all. ‘There is no honour in defeat and conflict would be a waste of both sides’ res
ources.’
‘I am not ordering you to fight with me,’ said Stronos, clasping his brother’s pauldron and drawing him close. ‘Not this time. Do as your conscience tells you.’
To Stronos’ surprise, Jalenghaal actually sighed. ‘I would secure the bunker, two warriors as rearguard – the rest would follow Sergeant Maarvuk into Locis Primus. They cannot be raised through the structure’s scatter field so they will not yet be aware of Iron Father Kristos’ new orders. We cannot fight Clan Raukaan so we should claim their objective before they can.’
Stronos smiled, unguarded. He liked it. ‘I was told that you were a supporter of Kristos’ teachings.’
Jalenghaal glowered. ‘I am Clave Stronos.’
A fleshy prickling, warm and pleasantly indistinct worked its way outward from Stronos’ primary heart.
He released his brother and turned towards the bunker, squinting momentarily in the burst of thruster flare that ignited the sky above as a drop pod swerved mid-descent towards the exact same destination. He cursed, throwing himself and Jalenghaal flat to the ground as the entire triplet complex was simply demolished, the roof collapsing as though flattened under the ceramite boot of a giant, the walls exploding into rubble. The runes for Vand and Ruuvax winked out instantly; Lurrgol’s guttered in view, a warning amber. ‘Lurrgol.’ He coughed, a broken seal letting dust into his respirator. ‘Brother, respond.’ Rockcrete powder ran off Stronos’ back in sheets as he pushed himself up, armour whining, mingling with a ringing tinnitus as he saw the drop pod’s hatches explosively blown. He blinked his eye, drawing himself up to his knees as the heavy tramp of Terminator armour bowed the assault ramps under its weight.
The figure was exceptionally bulky, three times Stronos’ size, old and rune-encrusted augmetics plugged into an assault cannon in the left arm and a heavy flamer in the right, a cyclone missile launcher mounted across the solid breadth of its shoulders. Even an ordinary Terminator could not have supported such an array of firepower, but this was no mere Terminator. His armour was black, without trim; no clan sigil or clave number marked it. Tremendous age had turned his extensive suite of bionics black. He strode through the yellow haze, the empty flicker of his lenses finding Stronos where he knelt and delivering in that instant of eye contact such an abhorrent chill that Stronos was certain he had been struck by some optical weapon.
The Helfather stood inanimate.
‘I understand that you have penance outstanding, Sergeant Stronos.’
In a beetling whir of rancorous machine-spirits, Iron Father Kristos crunched through the demolished bunker. The reddish light of Pax Medusan’s burning gun decks glinted from his weapons harness. His lenses shone like void ice.
‘Brother Ares has been remiss. Permit me to rectify his final error.’
Chapter Fourteen
‘I am flawed.’
– Iron Father Kristos
I
Anger burned in Stronos’ breast. He felt his lungs awash with it, his hearts pushing molten fire through his muscles to bathe their appended bionics with smoke. The interlink had rejected him, and this time his wrath was all his, his own to keep. His was the wrath of his birthworld, everything he had been bred to be, everything he had been painstakingly re-engineered to be not, as by some mimesis of ungodly pressure his pistol rose, his hand attached. There was nothing he had to say to Iron Father Kristos.
Nothing at all.
Bolts exploded against the rosarius field of the Iron Father’s Mechanicus protective, the ruby embedded in his pectoral plate lashing out with every fiery rebuttal. Shrapnel from eviscerated bolt-rounds pattered harmlessly off Kristos’ heavy armour as he strode pitilessly through them. Stronos scrambled back. Kristos’ servo-arm punched the ground where he had been kneeling, ripper-claw drilling to the arm’s first articulation, and ripped up a clot of rusty earth. It showered Stronos as he crawled away, hand over hand, propped himself up on his elbow and slotted a clip of vengeance rounds into his pistol’s magazine. Communing with his armour’s spirit, he summoned the status runes of Jalenghaal and his surviving brothers and squirted a code-command through the clave interlink.
Jalenghaal and the others opened up in unison. Bolter fire banged off the Iron Father’s Terminator plate and blossomed spectacularly against his energy field.
‘Your dishonourable conduct does you credit,’ Kristos said. ‘But it would have been better for you to have faced me alone.’
At an unspoken command, the Helfather whirred to life.
Lights flickered on within the Terminator’s ancient bionics. His armour hummed. Promethium gurgled through intake hoses as he turned towards the warriors of Clave Stronos, then jetted from the nozzle of his heavy flamer, igniting, dousing the overhead power lines with flame. Burning cables lit the fighters on the ground like an aerial flare, casting the hellishly one-sided contest in guttering yellows and reds as the Helfather’s assault cannon shrieked, shredding Morthol and Govall like paper dolls. Burr rolled for cover, cannon rounds striking sparks from the crumpled moulding he found shelter behind. Even as the Helfather turned ponderously after Burr, missiles whistled from his cyclone shoulder launcher. Several corkscrewed into the wreckage field, detonating seemingly at random. One took out the ammo hopper of the nearest test derrick, some manner of ork railgun, blasting it apart and burying Burr under an avalanche of twisted metal. Another took Jalenghaal through the chest plastron, lifting him off his feet and driving him several metres into the haze before exploding. His rune in Stronos’ overlay turned red.
‘You would have made an exceptional sergeant,’ said Kristos, crunching through the rubble towards him, his pace unvarying. Like the second hand of a ticking chrono, his power-axe came up above his helmet. It was not the mighty Axe of Medusa with which the Iron Father was more commonly paired in the etchings, but it was a fearsomely constructed weapon nonetheless, double-bladed, crowned by a spitting disruption field. ‘A future Reclusiarch, Verrox once said to me. And Verrox is not always wrong.’
The axe came down.
It was a perfect stroke, straight to Stronos’ centreline, negating any possibility there might have been of avoiding it. Stronos’ own axe was flat against his chest. Wedging the ferrule against his breastplate, he levered the double-edged blade to trap Kristos’ mid-stroke.
The energy fields nullified one another with ceramite-splitting force, fracturing Stronos’ plastron and flaring off against Kristos’ Mechanicus protective, leaving only Kristos’ awesome strength to hammer Stronos’ axe butt into his breastplate like a nail into a coffin. Stronos grunted. The two axes locked. Stronos twisted his, tried to turn the Iron Father’s aside, but the power in Kristos’ torso was immense. Kristos bore down, grinding the iron ferrule through ceramite and armaplas until it dug through the armourflex underlayer and bled Stronos’ chest. Stronos rammed his heel into Kristos’ shins. It was like kicking a tank.
A flurry of ruby discharge from the Iron Father’s rosarius field distracted Kristos for the split second Stronos needed to crawl back and recover his feet. He kept on backing off, pulled up his bolt pistol, explored the hole that had been drilled into his plastron with his little finger and scowled. The Iron Father’s armour continued to bathe him intermittently in red light, and Stronos looked around to see Jalenghaal approach the tangle of spurs, pumping the Iron Father’s battleplate with rounds. Stronos smiled to see him and struck his helm with a flat palm. Red and amber runes re-assorted themselves.
His brother was not so easily dispatched.
‘Eyes on the Helfather,’ Stronos called, trying to keep Jalenghaal’s amber-red status rune in his eye as Iron Father Kristos forced him to focus on his own battle.
Powered blades kicked sparks off each other as blow met parry, but Stronos did not trick himself into thinking of this as an even contest. Kristos was no mere Space Marine. He was not just a warrior in Terminator armour, fear
some a prospect as even that would be; he was Terminator armour, and with it brought a durability and power that Stronos could not hope to rival. It was as much a duel of the warriors’ on-board battle cogitators as it was of their blades, every parry a ringing censure for being improperly positioned to evade or failing to predict the giant’s move as he should have.
With each exchange Stronos’ combat algorithms worked to cancel out his opponent’s, as Kristos’ did his, and Stronos came quickly to the conclusion that the Iron Father’s systems were superior.
Stronos leapt back as Kristos’ boot sank into a gravelly patch of ground and caught on a root of buried cabling. With raw power the Iron Father tore his foot free, but the momentary loss of balance was enough for Stronos to swing around Kristos’ back and hack at the fibre bundles that ran behind the Terminator suit’s underarms.
With a series of wrenching clunks, the Iron Father’s joints reversed, and Stronos’ axe met a parry that numbed his gauntlet servos. For a sickeningly brief sequence of exchanges Stronos traded blows with Kristos’ back, until a wide horizontal sweep of the Iron Father’s axe forced him to leap clear. His joints cracking back into position, the Iron Father turned slowly around. To Stronos’ awe, the Iron Father’s helmet did not turn with the rest of him. It remained locked in place, lenses as evenly spaced and bitterly cold as those to the front, as the rest of his battleplate rotated under it. With a horrified realisation, Stronos saw that Kristos did not even possess a face. His head did not have a ‘front’ and ‘back’.
