Priests of Mars

by Graham McNeill

  Those machines were now part of the Speranza, and it was part of them; one sprawling tapestry of awesome cognition that had become something more incredible, more complex than any living organism in the galaxy. He sensed its unimaginable age, yet understood the sharp newness of its existence. The Speranza was a fiery colt in the body of a ageing stallion...

  Luth wondered if anyone else on this vessel truly understood that contradiction.

  Behind him walked the rest of his pack, much diminished since the losses suffered during the Fortanis campaign. Princeps Eryks Skálmöld – the Moonsorrow – followed in Canis Ulfrica, a battle-hungry Reaver with the heart of a ferocious and relentless hunter. Loping at its heels came Amarok and Vilka, Warhounds of vicious temperament and wild hunger. Gunnar Vintras, princeps of Amarok, whose pack name was Skinwalker, was the lone predator, always railing against the bonds of the pack. Vilka was the loyal hound that hunted where its master willed, and Princeps Elias Härkin, called Ironwoad, was as steady and unshakeable as they came.

  Lupa Capitalina was the glue at their heart, the alpha engine whose icy will bound them together as a fighting force. Luth felt Canis Ulfrica’s approach, drawing closer to his rear quarters than was necessary or wise. A calculated challenge to his authority, a declaration of Moonsorrow’s desire to lead the pack.

  Luth twisted in his suspension tank, baring his engine’s teeth and raising its hackles. In response the Capitalina’s shoulder mounts tensed and her warhorns growled a burst of coded war-cant. Amarok and Vilka scattered with their wolf-snout cockpits lowered, sending the Mechanicus adepts nearby diving from their path. Canis Ulfrica paused in its steady advance, letting its warhorn answer Luth’s challenge.

  Alarm sirens blared throughout the vast hangar deck as Luth moved his engine from its prescribed path. Warning lights flashed and a slew of interrogatives flickered to life behind his sightless eyes. He ignored them and clenched non-existent fists, raising his arms and cycling his auto-loaders. The weapons were disconnected from their colossal ammo-hoppers, but the symbolism of the gesture was clear and Canis Ulfrica took a backward step with its shoulders dipping in submission.

  ‘Moonsorrow is getting bold,’ said Moderati Koskinen, watching the auspex cascade as the Reaver returned to its assigned spacing.

  ‘If he thinks he’s ready to be alpha, then he’s a fool,’ replied Moderati Rosten.

  Luth knew he should rebuke Rosten for such a comment, but it was hard to argue with the truth of it. Lupa Capitalina knew it too. He shared its urge to strike out at this challenge to his authority, but would not allow such dissent within this holy place.

  ‘I’m getting heat build in the plasma destructor again,’ noted Moderati Koskinen. ‘Looks like the Capitalina wasn’t too happy with Moonsorrow either.’

  ‘Compensating,’ answered Magos Hyrdrith from her elevated position at the rear of the cockpit.

  Luth had felt the heat build, but ignored it, knowing it was simply the Capitalina’s anger that caused the temperature increase. He felt the soothing balm of coolant bathe his fist, uncurling phantom fingers that had long-since been amputated and replaced with a series of silver-tipped mechadendrites that drifted like cnidaria fronds.

  ‘The destructor’s heat-exchange coils have always been temperamental,’ said Rosten. ‘I knew those sunborn adepts on Joura wouldn’t be able to sort the problem.’

  ‘They were competent adepts,’ countered Hyrdrith. ‘The issue is not in the coil chamber.’

  ‘I have readings that say otherwise,’ replied Koskinen.

  ‘With all due respect, moderati, that gun’s spirit has always been over-eager to be loosed.’

  Luth felt the Capitalina’s ire build at the disparaging tone in the tech-priest’s voice. Hyrdrith felt it too, and hurriedly added, ‘Though I admit its rapid rate of recharge more than makes up for that.’

  Koskinen grinned. ‘Always a diplomat, eh, Hyrdrith?’ he said, returning his attention to the haptic display flickering before him.

  +When the pack hunts, a strong alpha is its heart and soul. The heart must always be the strongest organ in the body. I am still stronger than Moonsorrow and he knows it.+

  The interior of the cockpit was filled with Luth’s voice, a rasping thing that emerged from the shadows. When Luth spoke aloud, everyone listened.

  ‘By your word, Wintersun,’ said his moderati and tech-priest together, bowing their heads.

  +We walk in the belly of our greatest temple,+ said Luth, letting his hunter’s heart come through in the modulation of his feral growl. +Recognise the honour you have been granted just by being permitted to join this expedition.+

  He felt the contrition of his bridge crew and returned to his original course. He dismissed the blinking warning icons floating invisibly in the translucent liquid with an irritated growl and strode towards the inertia-cradle that a shimmering noospheric halo indicated had been assigned to the Capitalina. Floating guide-lifters and grav-cushions awaited him, and hissing inload ports, feed lines and restraint clamps spread wide to receive the god-machine.

  Luth felt the welcome of a thousand binary souls woven into one voice that spoke to him and him alone. He sensed the hunger for exploration at the heart of the Speranza, the burning desire to be away from this world of iron and these well-travelled routes through space. Like a callow princeps, the Speranza wanted nothing more than to charge out into the unknown, to sail by the light of suns that had never shone their face on the realm of Men.

  He recognised its kindred soul and heard the joyous howling at its core.

  +The Speranza has many wolves in its heart,+ he said.

  The space enclosed by the Adamant Ciborium was curiously modest, a vast structure surrounding a space no larger than the bridge of the Renard. Roboute guessed the walls must be at least a hundred metres thick or more, and he wondered what manner of revered technology had been worked within them.

  Once inside the portal, the passageway narrowed in geometric steps that Roboute recognised as corresponding to the ratios of the Golden Mean. Eventually they were obliged to disembark and continue on foot. Together with the armoured skitarii vehicle, their transports retreated to await them.

  At the heart of the Ciborium was an elliptical chamber like a grand hall of governance, with stepped tiers of hard metal benches rising to either side of a perfectly circular table. The table was easily ten metres wide, fashioned from wedge-shaped planes of segmented steel inset with panels of a smooth red rock that could only have come from one world of the galaxy. Gently humming data engines ran around the curve of the chamber’s walls, and a number of blank-faced servitors were plugged into several exload ports, holo-capture augmetics recording every angle of this gathering.

  A spherical orb of wire mesh and glittering gemstones hung suspended over the centre of the table, an archaic representation of the cosmos as envisaged by the ancient stargazers of Old Earth. Magos Blaylock indicated Roboute should stand at a vacant segment of the table before taking his own place with the stunted slaves arranging his network of tubing behind him. A clicking machine arm unfolded from Blaylock’s robes and slid home in a connection port on the table’s underside. The green lenses of his eyes flickered with data transfer.

  Magos Tychon took a position at an unoccupied segment to Roboute’s left, while Linya moved to stand by one of the data stations at the wall behind her father, plugging into the ship’s Manifold with a discreetly extruded data-spike.

  Arranged around the table’s circumference were the individuals representing the disparate elements of the Explorator Fleet and the senior magi of the Speranza. Roboute scanned the faces of these men and women to whom his fate would be linked for the duration of the expedition.

  The man nearest him wore the dress uniform of a Cadian colonel, a rugged ensemble that managed to look ceremonial and battle-ready in the same instant. Though his outfit was more restrained than plenty of other rogue traders he’d met, Roboute felt like a foppish dandy next to the colonel.
Aides-de-camp scratching at data-slates stood a respectful distance from their commanding officer, and Roboute gave the colonel a respectful nod as he took his place at the table.

  Opposite the colonel stood a monstrously tall figure encased in black Terminator armour, rendered beyond human in scale by the heavy plates of polished jet and ivory. The flared cross on his white shoulder guard told Roboute what he already knew. This was a Space Marine of the Black Templars, and the warrior filled the chamber with his colossal bulk. The oversized armour made him seem more like a bipedal tank instead of a man. Super-engineered beyond mortality, the warrior did not acknowledge Roboute’s arrival, save by a curt inclination of his skull-faced helm.

  Magi occupied the rest of the segments around the table, a collection of robed adepts who were at least as far removed from their original human template as the Space Marine. Some, like Blaylock, kept their hoods raised, with only the dim glow of augmetics to give any indication of sensory apparatus beneath. Others went bare-headed, though the majority had long since removed their human features in favour of machine replacements along the route of ascension through the Mechanicus ranks. One appeared to be little more than portions of brain matter spread between a number of fluid-filled bell jars and linked together by crackling copper wiring. The disparate parts of the magos – or was there more than one individual suspended in the jars? – were supported on a walking armature of armoured steel like a fleshless praetorian.

  Roboute recognised none of them save the magos directly across from him.

  Taller than every other adept in the chamber, Archmagos Explorator Lexell Kotov’s robes were a shimmering weave of crimson mail and contoured plates moulded in the form of human musculature. Roboute took his time in studying the magos who would be leading them beyond the edges of the known galaxy into wilderness space that had swallowed entire fleets. He realised that no part of the magos below the neck was organic; that his body was entirely artificial.

  Kotov’s mechanised body put Roboute in mind of the gladiatorial warriors of the Romanii empire from Old Earth’s ancient history, an impression further cemented by the long electro-bladed sword loosely belted at his hip. Roboute’s eyes were drawn to the black iron gorget at Kotov’s neck, where the last of his original body ended and joined with the automaton’s shoulders. Cold wisps of air sighed from the gorget, and green indicator lights winked with rhythmic precision. A cloak of many hues hung from his shoulders, and a black steel collar rose up at the back of his shaven skull, crackling with a dancing nimbus of power that fed into a trio of bare metal cryo-cylinders harnessed to his back.

  Unusually for one so elevated in the ranks of the Adeptus Mechanicus, Kotov’s face was still recognisably human, albeit starved of sunlight and cyanotic. Eyes that were a disconcerting shade of violet regarded Roboute with amusement and Kotov smiled in welcome as Emil and Adara deposited the stasis chest at his side.

  ‘Ave Deus Mechanicus,’ said Kotov with a nod towards Blaylock and the Tychons, who returned the salutation with great solemnity. Finally, the archmagos turned to Roboute.

  ‘Captain Surcouf,’ said Kotov. ‘With your arrival, the components of our fleet enterprise are finally assembled. Take your place at the Ultor Martius, our link to the sacred stone of Mars.’

  ‘Archmagos Kotov,’ said Roboute, with a formal bow. ‘It gives me great pleasure to finally meet you in person. Communication over the Manifold waystations is all well and good, but it’s no substitute for speaking face to face.’

  ‘I fail to see the difference,’ said Kotov. ‘Manifold communication is equally as efficient. In any case, with your arrival we can begin. Do you have the device?’

  Knowing that to continually rail against the blunt ways of the Mechanicus would be wasted effort, Roboute held his temper in check at the lack of formal niceties. But it would do no harm to remind the assembled tech-priests that this was a joint expedition.

  Ignoring Kotov’s question, Roboute turned to the Cadian colonel and held out his hand.

  ‘Roboute Surcouf, captain of the rogue trader vessel Renard.’

  ‘Ven Anders,’ said the Guard officer. ‘Colonel of the 71st Cadians, good to have you aboard.’

  Roboute saw the wry amusement in Anders’s eyes and recognised the man’s obvious pleasure at having another individual of flesh and blood amongst the expeditionary command staff.

  ‘Captain Surcouf?’ asked Kotov. ‘Did you not hear my interrogative?’

  ‘I heard it,’ said Roboute, ‘but as I already explained to Magos Blaylock here, I prefer to know who I’m dealing with before I begin any endeavour. Silly, I know, but there you go.’

  ‘Yes, he informed me of your obsession with identifiers,’ sighed Kotov. ‘Very well, arranged around the Ultor Martius in cogwise rotation are the senior magi of the Speranza, together with the command ranks of our adjunct elements. You have already met Magos Blaylock, my Fabricatus Locum. Next is Magos Saiixek, Master of Engineering, Magos Azuramagelli of Astrogation, Magos Kryptaestrex of Logistics, Magos Dahan of Armaments and Secutor of the Skitarii Clans.’

  Kotov turned to the enormous Space Marine. ‘And this is–’

  ‘I make my own introductions, Archmagos Kotov,’ said the Space Marine. ‘I am Reclusiarch Kul Gilad of the Black Templars.’

  ‘An honour to know you, Reclusiarch,’ said Roboute.

  ‘You bear an honourable name,’ said the Reclusiarch. ‘You are of Ultramar?’

  ‘I am,’ agreed Roboute. ‘I was born on Iax, one of the cardinal worlds.’

  ‘It surprises me to see a citizen of Ultramar as a rogue trader.’

  ‘It’s a long story,’ said Roboute. ‘Maybe I’ll tell you it over the course of our journey together.’

  ‘Captain Surcouf, the device if you please,’ said Kotov, cutting across any response Kul Gilad might have made.

  ‘Of course,’ said Roboute. ‘Emil, Adara?’

  The two crewmen lifted the stasis chest onto the table and backed away when he gave them a nod of thanks. He saw the admiration for the workmanship that had gone into the crafting of the stasis chest, and more than one magos blink-clicked images at the sight of it.

  ‘An unusual design,’ said the disembodied voice of Magos Azuramagelli, his steel armature flexing and his multiple brain jars leaning over the tabe. ‘It has an aesthetic reminiscent of eldar workmanship.’

  ‘That’s because it was made by an eldar bonesinger,’ said Roboute.

  ‘And how comes it into your possession?’ asked Magos Dahan. ‘An act of piracy or trade?’

  ‘Neither, actually,’ said Roboute. ‘It was a gift.’

  ‘A gift?’ said Kul Gilad, leaning forwards and placing two enormous fists on the table. ‘Am I given to understand you willingly consort with xenos species?’

  ‘I am a rogue trader, Reclusiarch,’ said Surcouf. ‘I deal with xenos species as a matter of course.’

  Kul Gilad turned to Kotov. ‘You said nothing of us employing xeno-tech.’

  ‘Don’t worry, it’s just the chest that’s eldar,’ said Roboute, placing his hand on the locking mechanism. Little more than a sliver of wraithbone Yrlandriar had sung into shape using Roboute’s name as his keynote, the plate pulsed warmly as it recognised his touch. The wraithbone responded to his sincere desire for it to release, and the lock disengaged with a soft click.

  Roboute opened the chest and lifted out what had cost him the better part of three years’ worth of earnings from his cobalt routes to procure. In appearance, the catalyst for this expedition was disappointing to look at, a bronze cylinder like an artillery shell with a flattened head and crimped centre section. A number of trailing wires hung limply from a tear in the outer casing, and the metal was heavily pitted with rust and corrosion. Crystal growths encircled the cylinder, and it didn’t need a Mechanicus metallurgist to know it was obviously of great age.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Ven Anders. ‘A beacon of some kind?’

  ‘That’s exactly what it is, colo
nel,’ said Roboute. ‘It’s a synchronised distress beacon taken from a saviour pod ejected from the Tomioka, the lost flagship of Magos Telok.’

  Though Kotov must surely have told the assembled magi the nature of what he had brought to them, they still reacted with scattered barks of binary. Code blurts crossed the table, and every augmetic eye brightened at the prospect that this was indeed a relic from the legendary fleet lost beyond the Halo Scar. Roboute placed the beacon on the stone of the table before him and the central portion of the table irised open. Snaking mechadendrites emerged like a writhing nest of snakes with clicking clamp heads. They eased through the air and a number of the mechanised probes clamped onto the body of the beacon.

  Every magos around the table, if they had not yet done so, connected to the inload ports of the Ultor Martius as information flowed into the cogitator at its heart. The lights of the Adamant Ciborium dimmed and a breath of oil-scented air gusted from unseen vents, as though the Speranza itself was tasting the knowledge being transferred from the beacon.

  Kotov frowned and said, ‘The beacon bears genuine Mechanicus assembly codes that match those of Telok’s fleet, but there are sectors of the beacon’s data-coils missing.’

  ‘There are,’ agreed Roboute.

  ‘The astrogation logs and datum references have been removed,’ noted Magos Tychon. ‘There is no way to locate where the saviour pod was ejected. As it is presented, the beacon is useless.’

  ‘Not exactly,’ said Roboute, removing a wafer of pressed brass from his coat pocket, its surface etched with angular code impressions. ‘I have that information right here.’

  ‘You have desecrated a holy artefact,’ said Kotov. ‘I could have you executed on the spot for such blasphemy. Only those privy to the mysteries of the Cult Mechanicus are permitted to touch the inner workings of a blessed machine.’