Priests of Mars

by Graham McNeill

  ‘Interrogative: was that a joke?’ asked Pavelka, her mechadendrites stiffening and her floodstream rising to the challenge levelled at her vessel.

  ‘It was,’ said Linya.

  ‘Do not insult our ship,’ said Pavelka. ‘You of all people ought to know better.’

  ‘Apologies, magos,’ said Linya with a cough of binary to emphasise her contrition. ‘A poor jest.’

  ‘What are those ships?’ asked Adara, pointing to a number of high-sided craft bathed in the light of the Jouran moon, ungainly vessels shaped like space-faring Capitol Imperialis. They rose into a cavernous hold on one of the rear embarkation blisters, and though each was surely enormous, even they were dwarfed by the Speranza. Emil twisted the brass dial of the auspex array to read the broadcast frequencies of the vessels, and winced as the names blasted into space like a challenge. He snatched the implant from his ear, dialing down the gain as howls of machine cant bellowed out identities and warnings with equal force.

  ‘Legio Sirius,’ said Emil, massaging the side of his head where the binaric screeching had overloaded a number of his implanted cognitive arrays. Roboute nodded, now seeing the canidae symbol on the flanks of the engine transports.

  ‘Titans, the god-machines...’ said Pavelka, almost to herself. ‘I once performed a maintenance ritual on a wounded engine of Legio Praetor. Only a Warhound, but still...’

  ‘The Legio are warning people away from their loading operations,’ said Magos Tychon.

  ‘For such big bastards, they’re coyer than an Ophelian Hospitaller on her wedding night,’ said Emil with a sly wink. ‘Trust me, I know what I’m talking about.’

  ‘You shouldn’t say things like that about the Sororitas,’ said Adara, blushing.

  It never ceased to amaze Roboute that a man so skilled in taking life and causing harm was so innocent in the ways of the fairer sex. Adara had honed his skills in one arena, while neglecting many others. Roboute could admire that trait, for he had seen others follow that path aboard Isha’s Needle, but that was a time in his life he had long ago learned to keep to himself.

  Emil’s fingers danced over the control console beside him as a panel of lights began blinking in sequence. Say what you wanted about Emil Nader, he was hell of a pilot. Roboute felt the deck shift beneath him as the Renard rolled and dipped her blunt nose to come in below the Speranza, awaiting final docking authority to be transferred to the Mechanicus controllers.

  Satisfied control had been transferred, Emil sat back in his chair.

  ‘Okay, if we crash and burn after this, it’s not my fault.’

  Roboute was about to answer when the hull shook and a groaning rumble travelled the length of Renard’s structure as they passed into the graviton envelope of the Ark Mechanicus. So colossal was the Speranza’s mass and density that it created a distorted gravity field equivalent to that of an unstable moon. To fly through such volatile space without an electromagnetic tether would be highly dangerous, though that hadn’t stopped Emil from wanting to try.

  Roboute watched the cavernous hold of the Speranza growing wider with every passing second as they juddered through the graviton interference. His heart rate was increasing with every kilometre they travelled, pulled in like struggling prey caught on a lure.

  The image wasn’t a reassuring one.

  Emil leaned over and whispered, ‘For the record, I still think this is a terrible idea.’

  ‘You’ve made that clear more than once.’

  ‘You know we don’t need to do this, Roboute,’ said Emil. ‘We’ve plenty of profitable routes, and more contracts than we can handle. If you ask me, which you almost never do, trying to fly beyond the Halo Scar is a risk we don’t need to take.’

  ‘It’ll be an adventure. Think of what might find out there.’

  ‘I am. That’s what’s giving me nightmares,’ said Emil, glancing over at the door to the captain’s stateroom. ‘And you’re sure that thing in the stasis chest is real? Because I don’t think these Martian priests are going to be too happy if it’s not.’

  ‘It’s real, I’m sure of it,’ said Roboute, as the Ark Mechanicus swallowed the Renard.

  ‘I’m glad one of us is,’ said Emil with a worried expression.

  Microcontent 03

  Little had improved for Abrehem and the men collared in the portside bar. Shipped with unseemly haste from one hard metal box to another, fed syrupy sugar-rich nutrient paste and forcibly injected with anti-ague shots, their lives had become long stretches of frustration followed by sharp bouts of terrifying activity.

  Each collared individual was branded with a sub-dermal fealty identifier, which, according to the booming pronouncements that brayed regularly from the vox-grilles high on the containment facility’s steel walls, marked them as indentured bondsmen of Archmagos Lexell Kotov, impressed to serve aboard the Speranza until such time as their debt to the Imperium was repaid.

  ‘That means never,’ reflected Hawke sourly when Abrehem asked what that meant.

  They’d been blasted with water, doused in cleansing chemicals and so thoroughly deloused that Abrehem thanked the Emperor he harboured no desire for more children. Most of the captured souls – predominantly men, though a few women had been caught in the net – kept themselves to themselves, sullen and resigned to their fate. A few railed and shouted themselves hoarse at their confinement, but quickly gave up when they realised their words were falling on uncaring ears.

  Ismael, however, had refused to quit and demanded to speak to a senior magos with admirable – if pointless – persistence. Eventually, the door had opened and a pair of heavily built warriors in bulked-out carapace armour entered, their faces sheathed in metal and hard plastek implants. Threat oozed from them and Ismael backed away, realising he’d made a grave error of judgement. The two warriors dragged the overseer out, and they hadn’t seen him since. Abrehem hadn’t missed his noisy and irritating presence overmuch, though he didn’t like to dwell on what might be happening to his old supervisor.

  The ogryn enforcer from the bar sat alone, and Abrehem wondered if it even knew what was happening to it. Had it accepted its fate or was it just waiting for someone to tell it what to do? Hawke had immediately found a seat next to the hulking creature, ingratiating himself with quick words it probably didn’t understand. Abrehem couldn’t deny the logic of the man’s strategy; making friends with the biggest, meanest captive had a certain cunning to it. From what he was learning of Guardsman Hawke, low cunning and guile were two qualities he possessed in abundance. The man was a born survivor, and Abrehem knew that if he was going to get through this, he would do well to follow his lead.

  He stuck close to Hawke and the ogryn, dragging Coyne over in the spirit of the more people you know the better. The ogryn didn’t have a name, at least not one it could remember. The owner of the bar had called it Crusha, which seemed as good a name as any. Coyne spent most of his time weeping for a wife he’d likely never see again, but Abrehem had shed precious few tears for his own wife. His lack of regret had disgusted him at first, but after the introspection that confinement brings, he realised the only thing she would miss of him would be the credit stream from his work on the lifter rig.

  The loss of their children had driven a wedge between them and, beyond the everyday routines of existence, they now shared little in common except grief. Abrehem knew she blamed him for their deaths, and he was hard-pressed to deny the truth of that. It had been his desire to seek work in the Joura starport facilities that had brought them to the polluted hab-zones in the first place. Shared loss had turned to bitter rancour and everyday cruelty, but mutual need kept them together. She needed his credits, and he needed... he needed her to remind him that he had once been a father to two of the brightest stars in his world.

  After decontamination they had been allowed to retain one personal possession, and Abrehem had held onto the folded pict of his two children; Eli and Zera. It wasn’t a particularly good pict, Eli was looking away at hi
s mother, and Zera’s eyes were closed, but it was all he had left of them, so it would have to be enough. They were with the Emperor now, or so the fat preacher at the port Ministorum shrine told them. Abrehem suspected he would be joining them soon.

  Eventually they’d been loaded into the berth of a rumbling craft, and noospheric tags drifting up through the indentured men’s containers like coloured smoke told Abrehem they were aboard a sub-orbital trans-lifter designated Joura XV/UM33. Bulk carriers designed to go up and down on a fixed path, such craft were monstrously inefficient to run and prone to numerous delays if the pilot missed his narrow approach window.

  Abrehem’s lifter rig had loaded more than one such craft, and he wondered how many of the featureless containers he’d hooked up and crammed into their vast-bellied holds had contained desperate men and women bound for a life of virtual slavery aboard one of the fleet vessels in orbit. Their ascent had been violent and juddering, the friction heat of atmospheric breach swiftly replaced by the cold of the void. The container holds were uninsulated, and the brushed steel walls were soon crackling with frost.

  ‘Emperor’s balls, it’s like a bloody icebox,’ complained Hawke. ‘Do they want us to freeze to death before they put us to work?’

  ‘I think they figure we don’t merit thermal shielding,’ said Coyne.

  ‘Where we’re going we’ll soon wish it was this cold again,’ said Abrehem.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean I think we’re heading to the engine compartments of the Speranza,’ he answered. ‘We’ve been loaded in one of the aft compartments of the engineering decks.’

  ‘How do you know that?’ asked Hawke. ‘You got a direct line to the Machine-God or something?’

  ‘No,’ said Abrehem, wishing he’d kept his mouth shut.

  ‘Come on,’ said Hawke. ‘Spill it. How do you know where we’re headed?’

  Leaning in, Abrehem tapped his cheek just below his eye and pulled the skin down a fraction, exposing the steel rim of his augmetic eye.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ hissed Hawke. Abrehem could see the man’s brain turning over, figuring out ways to turn this knowledge to his advantage. ‘There’s something you don’t see every day.’

  The crew of the Renard disembarked into a scene of ordered anarchy.

  Hundreds of cargo barques with vast bellies were berthed in the cavernous hold, arranged in precise ranks as unending lines of shipping containers were unloaded by servitor rigs that looked like ants devouring a carcass piece by piece. Roboute smelled oil, hot metal and chemical-rich sweat on the air, which was cold and sharp from the frosted hides of the barques. Thousands of men and machines moved in an intricate dance through the space, moving to an ordered, binary ballet along allotted routes. The scale of the space defied the idea of being indoors, that a vault of such dimensions could be constructed at all, let alone aboard a starship.

  ‘I’ll say this about the Mechanicus,’ said Roboute. ‘They know how to get things done.’

  ‘Was that ever in doubt?’ said Pavelka, standing just behind him.

  ‘No, but to see it in action is quite something.’

  Pavelka had demanded to accompany him, as had Kayrn Sylkwood, and both members of the Cult Mechanicus stood awed by the monumental industry and mechanical grandeur within Archmagos Kotov’s flagship. The Renard’s magos wore her ubiquitous red robe, with the sleeves ruffed up on her right arm to expose the limb’s bionics, and Roboute couldn’t help but notice the fresh gleam to her Icon Mechanicus amulet.

  In deference to her exalted surroundings, Sylkwood had changed from her sweat- and grease-stained coveralls into a durable set of canvas trousers and padded jacket. Her enginseer’s attire would never quite lose its sheen of oil and incense, but it had at least been given a clean. Sylkwood had the look of a grafter, with a shaven head gnarled with augmetics, and scars on the backs of her hands that spoke of a lifetime spent working in the living guts of engines.

  For his own attire, Roboute had chosen a deep blue-grey frock coat, edged in red piping and with the Surcouf coat of arms, a stylised Ultima with a golden wreath curled around each arm like a battle honour. His trousers were of the deepest black, and his patent boots gleamed like new.

  Emil had stifled a laugh at the sight of him, but Roboute knew better than any of them how much appearances, protocol and expectation mattered; especially to an organisation like the Adeptus Mechanicus. His first officer stood at his right, with Adara Siavash at his left, both clad in their best braided jackets and polished boots. Both men looked acutely uncomfortable dressed in clothes hauled from footlockers once in a blue moon, but Roboute had told them in no uncertain terms that they were going to meet their patron looking the part.

  Between them, Emil and Adara carried the stasis chest, a smooth-finished box of matt black with a uniquely crafted lock that could only be opened by Roboute himself. The lock had been crafted by Yrlandriar of Alaitoc, and its worth was beyond imagining. It had been Ithandriel’s gift to Roboute when he had left Isha’s Needle, a gift he still felt unworthy to possess.

  What lay within the chest could earn Roboute and his crew a fortune they couldn’t spend in ten lifetimes. He couldn’t speak for the others, but it wasn’t the desire for wealth that had led Roboute to Lexell Kotov. The artefact in the stasis chest held the solution to a mystery that had long vexed the priests of Mars, a mystery that spoke to Roboute’s romantic soul and made all the risks inherent in their latest venture worthwhile.

  ‘Shall we?’ asked Emil, when Roboute didn’t move.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, passing off his hesitation as wonderment. ‘Tide and time wait for no man, eh?’

  Awaiting them at the base of the crew ramp was a detachment of dangerous looking men in vitreous black armour with heavy-gauge rifles held across their broad chests. Coiling power lines linked the tesla-chambers of their weapons with heavy backpacks that thrummed with electrical power, and each warrior’s face was an impassive mix of square jaws, uncaring eyes and plastek implants feeding them tactical information. Each breastplate was machine-stamped with the image of a skull and lightning bolt. A clan emblem or guild symbol?

  In the centre of the knot of skitarii, an adept of the Mechanicus awaited them, a tall figure in a voluminous surplice of red and gold, hooded and with only multiple spots of green light beneath his hood to give any hint of a face. The adept’s limbs were elongated and ribbed with hissing ochre cabling, and a barrel-like drum of iridescent liquid was fitted to his back. A number of gene-dwarfed lackeys swathed in vulcanised rubber smocks and red-tinted goggles attended to the pulsing tubes that distributed the fluid around his system.

  ‘Is that him?’ asked Emil, sotto voce.

  Roboute shook his head, trying not to show his irritation that they had not been met by Archmagos Kotov himself. Whoever this was, he was clearly an adept of some rank, but that he was not the leader of the Explorator Fleet was a none too subtle reminder of the expedition’s hierarchy.

  He marched towards the magos, and his practised eye caught the skitarii warriors tensing, their targeting augmetics following his every movement. He had no doubt that if he was stupid enough to make a move for the gold-chased ceremonial pistol holstered at his hip, they would gun him down without a second thought.

  ‘Ave Deus Mechanicus,’ said the magos as he reached the bottom of the ramp.

  ‘I am Roboute Surcouf,’ he said. ‘But you are not Archmagos Kotov.’

  ‘Situational update: Archmagos Kotov was detained by important fleet matters pertaining to our imminent break from high anchor,’ explained the tech-priest in a perfectly modulated recreation of a human voice that still managed to sound grating and false. ‘He sends his apologies, and requires that you accompany me to the Adamant Ciborium.’

  Roboute didn’t move when the magos indicated that he should follow him.

  ‘Is there a problem?’ asked the adept.

  ‘Who are you?’ asked Roboute. ‘I like to know the name of the person to
whom I am speaking.’

  ‘Yes, of course. Introductions. Familiarity brought about by recognition of identifiers,’ said the magos, drawing himself up straighter. ‘Identify: I am Tarkis Blaylock, High Magos of the Cebrenia Quadrangle, Fabricatus Locum of the Kotov Explorator Fleet and Restorati Ultimus of the Schiaparelli Sorrow. I have extensive titles, Captain Surcouf, do you require me to recite them all for you?’

  ‘No, that won’t be necessary,’ said Roboute, turning and walking back up the crew ramp of the Renard. He waved at Emil and the others. Knowing when to follow his lead, they reversed their course and returned to the ship with him.

  ‘Captain?’ said Magos Blaylock in confusion. ‘What are you doing? Archmagos Kotov requires your presence. The expedition’s departure cannot be delayed.’

  Roboute paused halfway up the ramp, relishing Pavelka’s look of horror at his breach of Mechanicus protocol. Enginseer Sylkwood had a roguish grin plastered across her face, and he gave her a sly wink before facing Blaylock once again.

  ‘I think you and Archmagos Kotov are forgetting that without me and my crew, there is no expedition,’ said Roboute, rapping his knuckles on the top of the chest. ‘Without this artefact, this expedition is over before it begins, so I’ll have a measure of recognition of that fact and a bit of damned respect. Your voice may be artificially rendered, Magos Blaylock, but I can still tell when someone who thinks he’s cleverer than I am is talking down to me.’

  Blaylock crossed his cabled arms in an approximation of an aquila, a gesture no doubt intended to mollify the captain, and bowed deeply.

  ‘Apologies, Captain Surcouf,’ said Blaylock. ‘No disrespect was intended, the failing is simply one of unfamiliarity. It has been thirty-five point seven three nine years since I last had dealings with an individual not of the Cult Mechanicus. I simply assumed you would have read my identity in the noosphere. Had we conversed in the binaric purity of lingua-technis, such ambiguity and misunderstanding could have been avoided.’