Titandeath

by Guy Haley

  The Tantamon was moored with the rest of the fleet in the lee of the moon. Sporadic firing flashed around Theta-Garmon V’s high orbital sphere, but the exchange of gunfire was unenthusiastic, predictable and ineffective. Tantamon’s defence weaponry rattled away ceaselessly, however. When it was not knocking torpedoes out of the void, it was vaporising the larger, more dangerous chunks of orbitals destroyed earlier in the war. Huge amounts of metal circled the gas giant. A fleck of paint would hole an unshielded vessel when travelling at forty thousand kilometres an hour. A piece a few metres across would bring down the void shields of a capital ship.

  The increased power draw of the guns changed the song of the ship’s systems to an irritating, insectile whine, and the metal vibrated to an inconstant pattern. By each trembling beat she recognised the various batteries firing. At times like that, she resented her empathy for machines.

  She really had spent too much time in that room.

  Her bed was a partly enclosed cot set into the wall that seemed designed for maximum claustrophobic effect, an accusation that could equally be levelled at the whole room. Her quarters were tiny. A little desk took up a third of the space. There was a small sink with a single tube tap in the wall opposite the bed, and a wardrobe opposite the desk near the foot of the bed. Between engagements, the room was her corner of the universe. It stank of her own stale odour layered over that of princeps of earlier days still clinging on. The void ship was old, and dirty. Standards had been allowed to slip as the civil war dragged on, and in any case too many agonised, wide-eyed nights had been endured in those quarters for any amount of cleaning to expunge the smell of desperation.

  The Tantamon maintained a steady temperature in its inhabited decks that was just the wrong side of comfortably warm. The cot’s single sheet was soaked with sweat and tangled in her bare legs. She knew already she wouldn’t sleep, but she was dogged, and chased after rest like a good huntress. She supposed she should close her eyes again, but that only made the throbbing around her MIU ports worse. She had the feeling they were being rejected by her flesh, pushed out of her body by her rebellious bones. After months of suffering, she’d finally gone to the magos medicae biologis. He had assured her such a thing was impossible. She wasn’t completely convinced. Beside the pains inflicted by her body, there were the tricks played by her mind. Recently, she had begun to feel small, as if the world of mortals her flesh body navigated was a ludicrous miniature, and she had been shrunk down from her rightful height to dwell there as a punishment.

  ‘Get it together, Esha,’ she whispered. Her lips were cracked and her breath was stale. ‘Much more of this and they’ll tank you.’

  She stared at the cot’s low ceiling. A previous occupant had scratched a representation of Pahkmetris into the metal. The felid-headed goddess was a tiny expression of individuality, but a dangerous one. The depiction of deities was against the Imperial Truth and the Cult Mechanicus, and would lead to demotion were it spotted. The image must have remained secret or it would have been repaired. By not reporting it herself, Esha joined her own minor defiance to that of whoever had carved the image and those others who had likewise not reported it. They were probably like her, thankful of something to look at while they lay in that cot in the depths of the night wrestling with withdrawal from their god-engine. Besides, the picture’s existence didn’t matter any more. The Imperial Truth was a shaky creed. All the old certainties were gone. The truth was out; there were other gods besides the holy trinity of knowledge, and none of them were kind.

  Her legs jiggled endlessly. She felt like they were swarming with small insects. Keeping them still was agony. She groaned and ran her hands over her face. It was slick. Her hair was greasy.

  ‘Restless legs were not on the list,’ she muttered to herself. She groaned again. ‘You’re not going to sleep, Esha. This is a waste of time.’

  She half expected a reply, as she sometimes received from the machines in the Titan. Nothing spoke. It was terribly lonely, she thought, out of the manifold. No touch of minds upon her own. That was the worst of all.

  Sweaty feet thudded onto the floor. She got up carefully to avoid catching her interfaces on the cot’s rim. The tap of the sink dispensed only lukewarm water that tasted of oil. She rinsed her mouth out with it and splashed some on her face. It made her feel marginally better.

  The chair scraped on the floor as she pulled it out, but the cabin walls were thick and there was no danger she would disturb anyone. She wasn’t the only princeps who slept badly.

  Infrasound throbbed through the deck below the level of human hearing. She would be able to hear that properly, if she were joined to Domine Ex Venari, and learn what the ship was saying.

  Stop it, she thought.

  Devices made small noises in the spaces of the walls. She stopped herself before mentally attempting to bring up status information for them, another thing she could not do in this body of flesh. She was blind, powerless, weak.

  ‘Stop it!’ she said louder than she intended, slapping her hand hard on the desktop. Her vehemence surprised her.

  There was a single data-slate on the desk, next to her only personal possession: a framed pict of her first maniple. They’d convinced a remembrancer to take the shot on his picter and give them copies. A small indulgence from long ago. The chemicals in the pict were degrading, the image washed out, but the faces of her comrades were sharp enough to spark memories. Her younger self looked back at her shyly, but the belief in what she was doing was strong in her eyes, like she would stare the galaxy down. They were all like that, back then.

  ‘Before the war,’ she said.

  Three of the five women in the picture were dead. Only she and Durana remained from that group.

  She turned the pict face down, and activated the data-slate.

  ‘Access Legio war records.’

 

  ‘Pacification and compliance of Dendritica, 987M30.’

  the data-slate said. It had a pompous little voice.

  Esha snorted. ‘Really? Come on.’

 

  ‘Cog and skull,’ she muttered. ‘Mohana, Esha Ani, princeps majoris, Legio Solaria, Second Maniple, line of Mohana Mankata Vi, first generation. Ident code delta four-three-three-two. Now let me in – I’m the daughter of the Great Mother, recognise my pedigree or I’ll smash your screen in, you jumped-up data shunt.’

  said the machine.

  Stacked icons filled the screen. Everything about the campaign was there, from requisition orders to vid feed from guided missiles. She found what she wanted quickly enough.

  ‘Play back vid picter capture, Bestia Est, date 002987M30.’

  said the machine, in the same fussy tones.

  The vid played, and Esha remembered.

  Bestia Est was a Warhound Titan of Fifteenth Maniple and her first command. As a grandis scale class machine it was small at seventeen metres, a height not much greater than that of the larger Knight warsuits, but it was still a god-machine, and she was proud of it and her small crew. She experienced none of those positive feelings the day Legio Vulpa marched on Biphex.

  ‘Legio Vulpa are still not responding to our calls,’ Esha said. ‘They are still proceeding.’

  White spires and towers of glass gleamed in the sun. Legio Vulpa’s machines crept towards Biphex like murderers. She thought of the women in the city, the mothers in particular. What Vulpa intended was an outrage against humanity.

  Esha’s changing body shape made her uncomfortable. The straps had to be adapted to fit around her swelling belly. The worst of it was the pressure around her lower abdomen, most of which seemed to press into her bladder. Esha had never used the ablution pads built into her combat suit. She preferred to wait rather than soak herself in her own piss, but if this kept up she w
as going to have to use it. Almost as bad as the need to pee was the dull ache around her coccyx. No matter how she sat, it twinged. No position was comfortable for longer than ten minutes.

  Only another twelve weeks, she thought. Then it’ll be done.

  Leaning forwards in her command harness took some of the pressure off her back, but it put her at a strange angle that would have her legs cramping soon, and the restraint straps cut into her shoulders. She ignored it, trying to achieve a deeper bond with her Titan so she could block out the discomfort completely.

  Bestia Est responded to her agitation and picked up speed. This was not the best time for conflict to arise with their allies. The Titan was affected by Esha’s changing mental state, and the systems had become truculent. Bestia Est acted cautiously where ordinarily it was first into the fray. The manifold link was strained. Esha was too aware of her pregnant body, and when Bestia Est’s wild soul called for her guidance, her thoughts were on the city ahead.

  Most Legios used their Warhounds as scouts, for they were swift, while their lower profiles and modest power output meant they were surprisingly easy to miss in the maelstrom of war. Legio Solaria used them for another purpose: as hunting dogs. Esha’s pack was four strong, as Legio doctrine demanded. Three other Warhounds loped in a widely spaced line alongside Bestia Est, the combined thunder of their feet kicking up a towering column of dust into the still summer air.

  The maniple’s command Reaver ran behind them, already outpaced. The princeps pushed their Warhounds hard. Legio Vulpa had a head start on them, and they were closing on their target.

  ‘Legio Vulpa respond,’ Esha said, fighting to keep the strain from her voice. ‘Please cease your march and engage communications via vox or by infospheric datalink. The course of action you are pursuing is illegal. Stand down, power down your weapons.’

  Legio Vulpa’s machines continued their steady pace.

  ‘They haven’t powered their weapons up, not yet,’ said Jehani Jehan, who was, in those distant days, Esha’s steerswoman aboard Bestia Est.

  ‘That means nothing. By Terra, I think they’re going to do it. They’re actually going to do it.’

  Orders pinged into the machine’s manifold.

  ‘About time,’ Esha said, absorbing them. ‘Full speed. Bring weapons online.’

  ‘We’re going to fire on them?’ her left weapons moderati said incredulously.

  ‘We’re going to threaten them,’ said Esha. She did not say that she would fire on the other Legio if commanded. The mind blend between the crew was already fragile; this information threatened to break it. She forgave them. Nothing like this had happened since the Crimson Accords and the Treaty of Mons Olympus had ended rivalry between the forges of Mars. No Legio had fired on another in two hundred years.

  The Warhound’s motors whined. The reactor thrummed through the Titan’s skeleton with building power. Machines all around Esha gave audible cues signifying readiness. Indicator lights switched from amber to green. Bestia Est and the rest were running flat out now, far ahead of the maniple Reaver.

  ‘Plasma blastgun online and ready,’ her left weapons moderati said.

  ‘Mega bolter ready,’ said the right.

  ‘Spool up power to the Vulcan. Begin rotation in preparation for firing,’ she ordered. Visual input from the Titan’s sensorium meshed queasily with her own sight and hearing. Anxiety ate into her concentration. She needed to remain dispassionate, but she could not in the face of Legio Vulpa’s determination to raze Biphex.

  There are fifty thousand people in that city, she thought. Fifty thousand innocents.

  As it ran faster, Bestia Est began to sway. Its splay-toed feet gouged deep prints into farmland despite the sun-baked hardness of the soil. Nearer Biphex were greener areas, orchards of fruit trees, flimsy plastek growing huts on stilts and ranks of vines lined up neatly. Bestia Est and her sisters kicked it all to ruin. The machine ran on, faster and faster, trailing irrigation drip pipes and fixing wires from its feet.

  ‘Harr­tek, answer me!’ she said.

  Still no reply.

  ‘Harr­tek!’

  Unprompted, Bestia Est let out a howl from its war-horns. Her sisters joined in. Polyphonic arrays gave each Titan a different voice. Together they made a mournful, desperate music.

  ‘They’re still not responding,’ said Jehani Jehan. ‘Emperor, how are we going to stop them? What do we do?’ She turned around in her seat. Through the glass of the faceplate she stared out wide-eyed. Rivulets of sweat coursed down her forehead.

  The desperation of Jehani’s words struck Esha. Emotion knifed her through the manifold. Jehani’s sense of complete powerlessness was a feeling that would stay with Esha forever.

  ‘Bring me around in front of them,’ said Esha. ‘Now!’

  Esha cut dead a query from the princeps majoris as Bestia Est swayed right, forcing its pack mate Gonfalon out of the way.

  ‘Faster!’ Esha said. The Legio Vulpa were approaching the city limits. The farmland stopped abruptly at a small, rockcrete boundary wall that curved back on itself in a graceful wave. It protected the streets against seasonal flooding that turned the farmland into a lake and Biphex into an island. In picts it looked beautiful. The Death Stalkers could ruin that in minutes.

  Bestia Est ran around in front of a Legio Vulpa Reaver, causing it to stop gracelessly and blare out an angry warning.

  ‘They are locking their guns on us,’ said Esha’s moderati oratorius.

  ‘I am aware of that fact,’ she said. She tried not to see the vast god-weapons tracking her engine, but the Warhound’s oculus was large, and its machine senses too sharp to ignore.

  Legio Vulpa’s Maniple Seven came to a halt in a staggered line two hundred metres from the city. Bestia Est stopped on the scrubby ground between farm and flood wall. Three Warlords and two Reavers glared at her with unblinking machine eyes, their guns locked on to the head of the Titan. They could annihilate the Warhound in an instant.

  ‘Do we raise shields?’ asked Jehani.

  ‘No,’ said Esha.

  ‘Esha!’

  ‘Leave them down. Don’t provoke them.’

  She imagined what was happening in Biphex. The people in the windows stopping to stare and point. The questions: what are they doing? Why are they here? The growing panic.

  A chime in her ear announced inter-Legio vox communication.

  ‘I’ll say this once, Esha,’ said Terent Harr­tek. ‘Get out of my way.’

  ‘I will not,’ she said. ‘This world is hours from compliance. Negotiations are nearly concluded. Biphex does not need to be destroyed. The people within are innocent.’

  ‘They are not innocent,’ said Harr­tek. ‘The leaders of this city refused compliance. The population served as soldiers. They have denied the Emperor. They do not deserve to live.’

  ‘Their leaders are at the negotiating table.’

  ‘The negotiations have taken too long already. It is a ruse. The enemy are preparing for long-term guerrilla war.’

  ‘They are not our enemies,’ said Esha.

  ‘In razing this place to the ground,’ continued Harr­tek, ‘we shall ensure true compliance, today. Once they have witnessed the power of our god-engines, they will not dare to raise their arms against the Imperium.’

  ‘I will not allow you to murder fifty thousand people!’ Esha said.

  ‘This is not murder. It is war. Stand aside. Or do you wish to be remembered as the woman who provoked the first inter-collegium conflict since the Age of Strife?’

  ‘Now they’re powering their weapons,’ said Jehani Jehan.

  ‘Stand aside,’ repeated Harr­tek. The volcano cannon on Nuntio Dolores’ left arm mount dropped down until the barrel was pointing directly at Bestia Est’s face.

  A tense half minute passed by. It was the longest of her life.
>
  The voice of her princeps majoris came to her over the vox. ‘Stand down.’

  ‘What?’ Esha responded.

  ‘Stand down, princeps. The Legio Vulpa are operating according to the terms of our alliance, and within the precepts of crusade. If we stop them, we risk internal war.’

  ‘Is this your command, my princeps?’ she thought back. ‘You wished to stop them as much as I.’

  ‘I still do. This tears my heart. The Great Mother commands it.’

  ‘Mother,’ whispered Esha.

  ‘Politics,’ said the princeps majoris. ‘Stand aside, for the good of our Legio and the Imperium.’

  Esha shut her eyes. She imagined the people of the city more clearly. She imagined their fear.

  ‘Esha, withdraw!’ commanded the princeps majoris.

  She stared up into the volcano cannon barrel.

  ‘Power down all weapons,’ she said quietly. ‘Retreat. Rejoin the pack.’

  Bestia Est skulked off like a whipped dog to rejoin its sisters. Harr­tek chuckled drily.

  ‘Good girl,’ he said. ‘You are welcome to help us, if you wish.’

  ‘I will have no part of this,’ she replied.

  ‘You have already played your part, Esha,’ said Harr­tek. ‘You are deluded if you think the unification of mankind can be accomplished bloodlessly. I would say this gives me no pleasure, but that would be a lie. So must die all the enemies of Unity!’