Priests of Mars

by Graham McNeill

  Abrehem could feel himself slipping away, and pressed a hand to the pocket he’d stitched in his overalls, where he kept the picture of Eli and Zera. The idea that he would soon be joining them was all that kept him going, and it would sustain him until the Emperor finally took him into His realm. Coyne was faring little better, spending his shifts in brooding silence and his downshifts curled in a foetal position on his hard metal bunk.

  But one man still had some fight in him.

  Hawke had proven to be more physically and mentally resilient than Abrehem had expected, faring better than many of the other men and women who’d come aboard with them. Abrehem had come to the conclusion that Hawke’s bitterness and spite nourished him when his reserves of strength were spent. When they worked side by side, a never-ending diatribe of profanity spewed from his lips, cursing everyone from the archmagos to his own personal nemesis, Overseer Vresh. Abrehem knew that soldiers were amongst the most inventive profaners, but Julius Hawke took that to another level entirely.

  On the downshifts, Hawke retold the tales of his life in the Guard, and if even half of what he said about monstrous Traitor Space Marines laying siege to an Adeptus Mechanicus fortress was true, then he could perhaps be excused a great deal to have lived through such a horrific experience. His stories evolved constantly as they were told over and over to an ever expanding and ever more appreciative audience. Hawke would rail against their Mechanicus overseers and speak openly of rebellion against Vresh or taking action to end their enforced slavery.

  Abrehem had laughed despairingly, but no one else had.

  Between bouts of seditious demagoguery, Hawke would often vanish into the twisting maze of companionways surrounding their dormitories to destinations unknown, only to reappear as Vresh engaged the klaxon to mark the start of the work shift. Whenever Abrehem asked where he went, Hawke would only tap the side of his nose with a conspiratorial wink.

  ‘All in good time, Abey, all in good time,’ was all Hawke would say.

  How Hawke found the energy for such mysterious excursions remained a mystery to Abrehem until he realised how skilful the man was at avoiding anything resembling work. Arguments with Vresh, forgotten tools, damaged equipment and feigned injuries all conspired to ensure that he did far less work than anyone else on shift. Far from making him hated as a shirker, it actually enhanced his status as a rebel and a champion of insidious insurrection.

  Today had seen Vresh despatch Hawke to the supply lockers numerous times, a task Hawke had been able to drag out for several hours beyond what it could possibly have required. By the end of shift, Abrehem was utterly drained and could think of nothing beyond crawling into his third tier bunk and closing his eyes until the hated klaxon roused him from his nightmares of endless slavery.

  Nightmares that were indistinguishable from reality.

  ‘Another day over, eh?’ said Hawke, sidling up to him and Coyne with a grin that Abrehem wanted to wipe off his face with his heavy shovel. Even in his exhausted, numbed state, he knew that would probably be a bad idea. Crusha followed Hawke like a loyal hound and Abrehem didn’t doubt that any attempt to lay a hand on Hawke would result in a face-mashing fist.

  ‘I just want to sleep, Hawke,’ said Abrehem.

  ‘Yeah, me too. Been a long day keeping this ship going,’ said Hawke. ‘We’re the most important people aboard this ship, you know?’

  ‘Is that right?’

  ‘Sure we are, stands to reason if you ask me,’ said Hawke with a sage nod. ‘We don’t do what we do, this whole machine breaks down. We might be the tiniest cogs in the machine, but we’re still important, right? Every cog has its role?’

  ‘Whatever you say,’ mumbled Coyne.

  ‘Just some cogs are more important than others, you get me?’

  ‘Not really.’

  Hawke shook his head. ‘Doesn’t matter, I’ll show you after.’

  ‘Show me what?’ asked Abrehem, though he couldn’t muster any enthusiasm for any activity beyond crashing in his bunk and grabbing a few hours of disturbed sleep.

  ‘You’ll see,’ said Hawke, pushing to the front of the line of trudging men with Crusha following at his heels.

  ‘What was that about?’ asked Coyne.

  ‘I don’t know,’ replied Abrehem. It was typical of Hawke to tease with promises of secrets and then back away like a capricious portside doxy. ‘And I don’t think I much care.’

  Coyne nodded as they emerged into what was known, with typical Mechanicus functionality and unthinking disdain for their bondsmen’s humanity, as Feeding Hall Eighty-Six. Heavy iron girders supported a ceiling of peeling industrial grey paint that was hung with pulsating cables, heat-washed pipework and iron-cased lights that provided fitfully dim illumination.

  Trestle tables arranged in long lines ran the length of the chamber, and lead-footed servitors trudged along the gaps between them, doling out what was laughingly called food to the bondsmen. None of it was even vaguely palatable, but the only other option was starvation.

  Sometimes Abrehem thought that might be the better option.

  One shift was just leaving, heading to their next work detail, and the men that had just left the toxic environment of the reclamation halls filed in to take their place.

  ‘Throne of Terra,’ muttered Coyne as he found a place at the table, sat shoulder to shoulder between a man whose face was a mass of scabbed chem-blisters and another whose forearms were criss-crossed in a web of plasma flect scarring that looked entirely deliberate. Abrehem took a seat opposite Coyne and rested his head in his hands. Neither man spoke; exhaustion, the gritty texture in their throats and the pointlessness of conversation keeping them mute.

  A servitor appeared behind Coyne, a figure that superficially resembled a human male, albeit one with pallid, ashen skin, a cranial sheath replacing much of his brain matter and a series of crude augmentations that rendered it into a cyborg slave that would perform any task given to it without complaint. Perhaps he had once been a criminal or some other societal undesirable, but had he deserved to be so thoroughly stripped of his very humanity and turned into little more than an organic tool? Was there even much of a difference between the servitor and the men it was feeding?

  The servitor’s mouth had been sealed up with a thick breathing plug and chains encircled its head, securing it in place, which suggested the man might once have been a troublemaker or a seditious demagogue. A bark of white noise issued from its throat-set augmitter, and Coyne leaned to the side as it deposited a contoured plastic tray on the tabletop.

  Contained in its moulded depressions were a thick, tasteless nutrient paste with the consistency of tar, a handful of vitamin and stimulant pills, and a tin cup half-filled with electrolyte-laced water.

  Abrehem heard the heavy tread of a servitor at his back and smelled the reek of fresh bio-oil on newly cored connector ports. He leaned to the correct side and a pale arm placed an identical tray before him.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Abrehem.

  ‘Why do you do that?’ asked Coyne. ‘They don’t even register your words.’

  ‘Old habits,’ he said. ‘It reminds me we’re still human.’

  ‘Waste of time, if you ask me.’

  ‘Well I didn’t,’ snapped Abrehem, too tired to argue with Coyne.

  Coyne shrugged as the servitor withdrew its arm and moved on down the table, but not before Abrehem’s optic implants had registered a drift of light from a sub-dermal electoo on the underside of its forearm, a name written in curling gothic script. He blinked as he recognised the name and turned his own arm over to reveal an identical smear of electrically-inscribed lettering.

  Savickas.

  ‘Wait!’ said Abrehem, pushing himself up from the table and heading after the servitor.

  The servitor had its back to him and wore heavy canvas trousers of high-visibility orange. A curling armature was implanted along the length of its spine, and the left side of its skull was encased in a bronze headpiece. It pushed
a tracked dispensing unit ahead of it and moved with the sluggish gait of a sleepwalker.

  ‘Is that you?’ asked Abrehem, almost afraid the servitor would answer him.

  It didn’t answer, not that he had expected it to, and continued to dole out plastic trays to the seated bondsmen from the dispensing unit as though he hadn’t spoken.

  Abrehem moved to stand in front of the servitor, blocking its path and preventing it from moving on. Shouts of annoyance rose from farther down the table, but Abrehem ignored them, too shocked by what he saw to move.

  ‘Ismael?’ said Abrehem. ‘Is that you? Thor’s blood, what did they do to you?’

  Once again the servitor didn’t answer, but there was no mistaking the thin features of his former shift overseer. Ismael’s face was slack and expressionless, the augers and brain spikes driven into his skull destroying his sentience and replacing it with a series of program loops, obedience flow-paths and autonomic function regulators. One eye had been plucked out and replaced with a basic motion and heartbeat monitor, and Ismael’s right shoulder had been substituted for a simple, fixed-rotation gimbal that allowed him to move food trays between his dispenser unit and the feeding hall tables, but which had no other use.

  Abrehem held out his forearm, willing his own electoo to become visible, a cursively rendered word that matched the markings incised beneath the servitor’s own skin.

  ‘Savickas?’ said Abrehem. ‘Don’t tell me you don’t remember it? The strongest lifter rig in the Joura docks? You and me and Coyne, we ran a tight crew, remember? The Savickas? You must remember it. You’re Ismael de Roeven, shift overseer on the Savickas!’

  Abrehem gripped Ismael by the shoulders, one flesh and blood, the other steel and machine parts. He shook the servitor Ismael had become and if he could still have cried real tears he would have done so. Tears of blood would have to be enough.

  ‘Throne damn them,’ sobbed Abrehem. ‘Throne damn them all...’

  He didn’t even know why the sight of Ismael reduced to a lobotomised cyborg slave should upset him so deeply. Ismael was his superior and they weren’t exactly friends.

  Abrehem felt a hand on his shoulder, and he let himself be eased from servitor Ismael’s path.

  No sooner had Abrehem moved aside than Ismael continued his mono-tasked routine, moving along the length of the table to place tray after tray of repulsive, tasteless slop before the hungry bondsmen.

  Hawke stood at his side, and he quickly manoeuvred Abrehem back to his seat before the overseers intervened. Hawke eased into the seat next to him. Coyne sat where Abrehem had left him, spooning mouthfuls of paste into his mouth.

  ‘So that’s what happened to him,’ mused Hawke, watching as Ismael moved on.

  ‘They made him into a bloody servitor...’ said Abrehem in disgust.

  ‘I didn’t think you two were that close,’ said Hawke. ‘Or did I miss something?’

  Abrehem shook his head. ‘No, we weren’t close. I didn’t even really like him.’

  ‘He was an ass,’ snapped Coyne. ‘If it weren’t for you and him I wouldn’t have been in that damn bar. I’d still be back home with my Caella. To the warp with you and to the warp with Ismael de Roeven, I’m glad they drilled his brain out.’

  ‘You think he deserved that?’ said Abrehem.

  ‘Sure, why not? What do I care?’

  ‘Because it could be you next,’ hissed Abrehem, leaning over the table. ‘The Adeptus Mechanicus just fed him to their machines and spat out his humanity as something worthless. He’s a flesh chassis for their damned bionics. There’s nothing left of him now.’

  ‘Then maybe he’s the lucky one,’ said Coyne.

  ‘Your man has a point,’ said Hawke. ‘Ismael might be a slave, but at least he doesn’t know it.’

  ‘And that makes it all right?’

  ‘Of course not, but at least he’s not suffering.’

  ‘You don’t know that.’

  ‘True,’ agreed Hawke. ‘But you don’t know that he is. Listen, it’s been a long day and you’ve had a shock seeing a former co-worker with half his brain chopped out. That’s enough to make anyone feel a bit stressed, am I right or am I right?’

  ‘You’re right, Hawke,’ sighed Abrehem.

  ‘I’ll bet you could go a glass of shine?’ said Hawke amiably. ‘I know I could.’

  Abrehem almost laughed. He said, ‘Sure, yeah, I’d love a drink. I’ll ask Overseer Vresh if he can get a few drums rolled in. Emperor knows, I’d love to get drunk right now.’

  Hawke grinned his shark’s grin and said, ‘Then today, my good friend, is your lucky day.’

  Kotov turned his senses outwards, freeing his perceptions from golden-hued memory to the promise of the future. The fleet was making good time through the outer reaches of the Joura system, the course Mistress Tychon had plotted proving to be an exemplary display of stellar cartographical aptitude. Blaylock was still smarting at her interference, but Tarkis was ever given to emotional responses – especially ones triggered by a female who so openly disdained the accumulation of visible augmentation.

  The Mandeville point was close, and Kotov could sense the ship’s burning desire to be pressing on through the veil of the immaterium once more. Its labouring plasma engines were running close to maximum tolerance, and the risk of drive chamber burnouts was exponentially higher. Kotov detached a sliver of his consciousness and sent it through the noosphere to calm the eagerness of the engines. His augmented brain could function with full cognitive awareness while numerous portions were split from the whole attending to lesser functions. A hundred or more elements of his consciousness were seconded to the ship’s various systems, yet he locked enough of his mind within his cerebral cortex to maintain his sense of self.

  His attention shifted into that portion of the brain linked to the auspex arrays and surveyor banks, reading the witch’s brew of electromagnetic radiation in the space around the vast hull. He felt the structure of the Speranza flex as though it was his own body, the cold of space making the few areas of skin remaining on his body pucker with goosebumps.

  Farthest ahead was the Renard, and Kotov took a moment to fully study Captain Surcouf’s vessel. It was a fine ship, heavily modified with Adeptus Mechanicus sanctioned refits and upgrades to render it faster, more agile and more heavily armed than its size would suggest. Such modifications would not have been acquired cheaply from a forge world, and gave the lie to the notion that Surcouf had joined this expedition for purely financial reasons.

  Kotov’s perceptions flitted from the Renard to the Adytum.

  Where the rogue trader vessel fairly bristled with streams of data, the stripped-down Templars vessel was as dark as the heart of a black hole, a void of information whose machine-spirits were closed off to him. It felt galling and vaguely insulting for a high-ranking member of the Martian Priesthood to be so thoroughly rebuffed, but the machines of the Adeptus Astartes were always quick to assume the attributes of the Chapter they served.

  The remainder of the fleet was on station around the Speranza, clustered around its majesty like flunkies at a royal court. Independent shards of his sentience issued corrective orders to a number of ships’ captains without his primary focus having to do so consciously; manoeuvre orders to those that had drawn too near, internal system modifications to those whose data-networks were accumulating micro-errors in their workings.

  Surcouf’s vessel was a hound leading the hunters and despite the man’s earlier irreverence, Kotov was forced to admire his courage in defying the will of an archmagos with the force of a Reclusiarch to back him up. He understood Surcouf’s motivation better than any of the others aboard the Speranza. They thought the man a vain popinjay, a rogue trader who sought only riches and renown, but Kotov had the truth of it. He knew of Surcouf’s past, his upbringing in Ultramar, his time as executive officer aboard the ill-fated Preceptor and his consequent misadventures.

  In many ways he and Roboute Surcouf were very much alike. />
  Many in the Martian Priesthood believed that risking the Ark Mechanicus on this quest was a fool’s errand, a last, hopeless gambit by a magos whose holdings and influence had fallen spectacularly within the space of a decade. Perhaps it was foolish, but Kotov found it impossible to believe that his discovery of the Speranza and Surcouf’s appearance with a relic of Telok’s lost fleet could not be the will of the Omnissiah.

  Together, they were glimmers of hope when his faith had been sorely tested by loss.

  Arcetri had been the first of Kotov’s forge worlds to fall, attacked and consumed by a questing tendril of Hive Fleet Harbinger. In his ignorance of the biological subtleties of the tyranid race, Kotov had assumed worlds of steel and industry would hold little interest for these rapacious aliens. That had proven to be a costly assumption, for the swarm hosts had invaded with a hunger that was as unstoppable as it was thorough. Though many sacred machines and adepts were evacuated before the first spores blotted out the skies, many more had been devoured in oceans of digestive acid.

  Uraniborg 1572 was lost to the machinations of the Arch-Enemy, a sudden and shocking rebellion against his lawfully appointed overseers that had seen the resources of an entire forge world seized by the mechanised warhost of the techno-heretic Votheer Tark. The embedded skitarii and tech-priests fought to the last to deny the planet’s assets to the enemy, but base treachery within the Legio Serpentes had ended their resistance within days. Uraniborg 1572 was now a corrupt hell-forge of the Dark Mechanicus, a world of bloodstained iron where glorious industry that had once served the Golden Throne was now perverted to supply the bloodthirsty rampages of a mechanised daemon abomination who cared nothing for the machine-spirits it violated.