Priests of Mars

by Graham McNeill

  ‘I voted against his inclusion because I believe there are better qualified magos that could have provided cartographae support.’

  ‘None of whom have travelled this way before,’ snapped Linya. ‘My father’s presence here gives the expedition a far better chance of success, and that isn’t in your scavenger’s interests, is it?’

  ‘You presume I am working to fixed notions and human modes of behaviour,’ retorted Blaylock, matching her with his own augmented voice. ‘As the situation changes, so too does my behavioural map; after all, I am not an automaton. The failure of this expedition is a virtual statistical certainty, and it would be foolish of me not to make contingencies.’

  ‘And what if the expedition doesn’t fail?’

  ‘Then the Quest for Knowledge will have been furthered and a sacred duty to the Omnissiah will have been served,’ said Blaylock. ‘Either way, I shall be content to serve the will of Mars.’

  ‘I think you are lying,’ said Linya.

  ‘Mistress Tychon, if you insist on projecting human behavioural patterns that do not apply to my modes of thinking onto my motivations then we will continue in this pointless loop for some time.’

  ‘Perhaps your calculations are in error,’ said Linya.

  Blaylock spread his arms wide and a wealth of daedal statistical algorithms burst into the noospheric air like a flock of avian raptors. Almost too grand in scope to evaluate, Blaylock’s complex lattices of equations were beautiful constructions of impeccable logic. Even a cursory inload told Linya there would be no errors.

  The odds of Kotov’s expedition succeeding were so small as to be negligible.

  Though she knew it was depressingly human, Linya said, ‘The waypoint data at Valette will alter your calculations.’

  ‘You are correct,’ agreed Blaylock. ‘But not enough to make a significant difference.’

  ‘We will see soon enough,’ said Vitali, drawing out the translucent orrery of the Valette system and highlighting the Mechanicus Manifold station. ‘We translate back into real space in ten hours.’

  To see so many arms of the Imperium’s martial strength working together in fluid harmony was pleasing to Magos Dahan. Colonel Anders’s Imperial Guard fought through a vast recreation of a shell-ruined city, every grid-block laced with a fiendish web of integral defences, carefully plotted arcs of fire, triangulated kill-zones and numerous open junctions to cross. It was an attacker’s worst nightmare, but so far the Cadian war-methodology was proving effective.

  Of course, it didn’t hurt that they fought alongside a full repertoire of Adeptus Mechanicus killing machines. Quadrupedal praetorians of flesh and steel stalked through areas too dangerous for human soldiers, implanted cannons and energy weapons firing with whooping bangs and crackling whip-cracks of beam discharge. Packs of weaponised servitors scaled the sides of buildings with implanted grappling equipment to rain down death from above with shoulder-mounted rotary launchers and grenade dumpers. Squads of Dahan’s skitarii spearheaded assaults into occupied structures, supported by Cadian Hellhounds that flushed enemy servitor-drones into the open with gouts of blazing promethium. Sentinels smashed down weakened walls to flank enemy units and provide forward reconnaissance data for the following infantry, who in turn marched alongside Leman Russ battle tanks, Chimeras and growling Basilisks.

  Of course there were casualties, a great many casualties, but so far no company or clan had suffered enough to render it combat-ineffective. The number of registered deaths was well within acceptable parameters and would not affect the overall outcome of the conflict.

  And lording over the battle were the gods of war themselves.

  The battle-engines of Legio Sirius strode through the smoking ruins, underlit by the flames of battle, strobing las discharge and the bright plumes of inferno cannon fire. Legio standards and kill banners hung from their waist gimbals and billowed like sails atop their grey, gold and blue carapaces. Hot thermals shrieked in the vortices of tortured air that surrounded them.

  Lupa Capitalina towered over all, its vast guns pouring destructive energies into the mass of the ruined city. Despite its warheads lacking explosive ordnance, the kinetic force of such munitions was wreaking havoc on Dahan’s simulated city. While Amarok darted from ruined shells of hab-blocks to pounce on enemy targets of opportunity before vanishing into the flame-cast shadows, Vilka threaded its way through the city and hid until its larger brethren approached. As Canis Ulfrica or Lupa Capitalina drew near and defending forces rallied to meet them, Vilka would strike from ambush then retreat before any reprisal could be launched against it.

  Dahan ground through the smashed training arena atop his Iron Fist, meshed with its control mechanisms and directing the armoured vehicle with pulses from the MIU cables trailing from the nape of his neck. Though live rounds smacked off stonework and reflected splinters of lasgun fire fizzed through the air, he was in no danger. Inbuilt refractor generators on the vehicle’s hull meant there wasn’t so much as a scratch on the Iron Fist’s paintwork. Everywhere Dahan looked, Imperial forces were advancing with relentless mathematical precision, an orchestration of death of which he was the composer.

  Fire and manoeuvre, building by building, his city of death was proving ineffective in halting the Imperial advance. Where one attacking element was weak, another was strong. The hammer of the Guard and the precise applied force of the Adeptus Mechanicus was working well together.

  Only one element was missing from the fight, but Dahan expected them soon enough.

  As objective after objective fell, the tactical viability of the city was degraded to such an extent that Dahan saw there would be little point in its continuance. He called a halt to the exercise with a pulse of thought, and banks of arc-lights clattered to life on the roof of the vast training deck. Giant extractors drew in breaths of smoke and particulate matter to be ejected into the Speranza’s wake. In moments the vast space was clear of fumes, and the echoes of battle began to fade. Dahan drove the Iron Fist through a junction clogged with rubble and toppled facsimiles of Imperial saints. A number of his servitor drones lay sprawled beneath the debris, their bodies mangled and charred black by the weapons of the Cadians. The servitors’ organic matter would be burned away and the mechanical components recovered before being reconsecrated and grafted to another flesh drone. Dahan’s olfactory senses tasted the refined mix of promethium; detecting extra compounds of fossilised hydrocarbons and a rarified cellulose element that bore chemical hallmarks of northern Cadian pine.

  A squad of Cadians approached his tank, and he recognised the regiment’s colonel. The man’s respiratory rate was highly elevated, significantly more so than those of his soldiers.

  ‘Colonel Anders,’ said Dahan with a curt nod of respect. ‘Once again, your men performed beyond expectations.’

  ‘Your expectations, maybe. They matched mine exactly,’ said Anders, removing his helmet and running a damp cloth over his forehead. ‘So, tell me, how did we do?’

  ‘Admirably,’ said Dahan, descending from the tank’s cupola. ‘Every objective in the city has been captured, with minimal losses.’

  ‘Describe minimal.’

  ‘Average company fatality rates were eighteen point seven five per cent, with a debilitating wound percentage of thirteen point six. I am rounding up, of course.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Anders. ‘That sounds about right for a city this size, maybe slightly under.’

  The colonel planted a booted foot on the blackened body of a downed servitor, rolling it onto its back. The cybernetic’s hands were pulled tight in burn-fused claws, its jaws stretched wide. Anders winced.

  ‘Do they feel pain, do you think?’ he asked.

  Dahan shook his head. ‘No, the parieto-insular cortex that processes pain through the neuromatrix is one of many segments of the brain cauterised during the servitude transmogrification process.’

  ‘Makes them bastards to fight,’ said Anders. ‘An enemy that fears pain is already halfw
ay to beaten.’

  ‘And Cadians don’t feel pain?’ asked Dahan, adding a rhetorical blurt of lingua-technis.

  ‘We live with pain every day,’ said Anders. ‘What other way is there to live with the Great Eye overhead?’

  ‘I have no frame of reference with which to answer that.’

  ‘No, I expect not,’ said Anders, turning back to Dahan. ‘So, eighteen point seven five per cent? We’ll see if we can’t get it down to fifteen by the time we reach the Scar.’

  Dahan gestured to the augmented warriors in black armour forming up in regimented ranks beyond the edges of the captured city. ‘The Adeptus Mechanicus skitarii were a factor in lowering that average, as was the presence of Legio Sirius.’

  Anders laughed. ‘True enough, you can’t beat having a Titan Legion at your back to help keep enemy heads down. Those skitarii are some tough sons of groxes. I’ll be glad to have them at my side if we end up having to fight when we get to where we’re going.’

  ‘Fighting will, I fear, prove inevitable,’ said Magos Dahan. ‘Whatever secrets lie beyond the galaxy will not be surrendered willingly by those who possess them.’

  ‘More than likely,’ agreed Anders, removing a canvas-lined canteen from his webbing and taking a long drink. When he had sated his thirst he emptied the canteen over his head, taking deep breaths to lower his heart rate.

  ‘It is commendable that you fight alongside your Guardsmen,’ said Dahan. ‘Illogical, but brave.’

  ‘No Cadian officer would command any other way,’ said Anders. ‘Not if he wants to keep his rank. It’s always been that way, always will be.’

  ‘I calculate that you are at least fifteen years older than your soldiers,’ said Dahan.

  ‘So?’ said Anders, a note of warning in his tone.

  ‘You are in excellent physical condition for a man of your age, but the risk to the command and control functions of your regiment far outweighs the benefits to the men’s morale at being able to see their commanding officer.’

  ‘Then you don’t know much about Cadians,’ said Anders, shouldering his rifle.

  ‘So people keep reminding me, though such an observation is fundamentally incorrect.’

  ‘Listen,’ said Anders, stepping onto the running boards of the Iron Fist. ‘Have you ever been to Cadia, Magos Dahan? Are you Cadian?’

  ‘No, to both questions.’

  ‘Then no matter how much you think you know about Cadians, you don’t know shit,’ said Anders. ‘The only way to really know a Cadian is to fight him, and I don’t think you want that.’

  Though the colonel had not raised his voice and his body language was not overtly threatening, Dahan’s threat response sent a jolt of adrenal-boosters into his floodstream. He felt his weapon arms flex, power saturating his energy blades and internal cavity ammo stores shucking shells into breeches. He quelled the response with a thought, shocked at how quickly Ven Anders had switched from affability to a war-stance.

  ‘You are correct, Colonel Anders,’ said Dahan. ‘I do not want that.’

  ‘Not many do, but I think you’re about to get to know someone else better than you might like.’

  ‘Colonel?’

  Anders nodded to something over Dahan’s shoulder and said, ‘Your faith in your methods is about to be tested pretty hard.’

  Dahan swivelled around his central axis and his threat systems kicked in again as he saw Kul Gilad leading his battle squad of Templars towards him.

  The giant Reclusiarch came to a halt before Dahan, a towering slab of ceramite and steel with a face of death.

  ‘We are here for the bout,’ said Kul Gilad.

  Word of the duel spread quickly through the training deck, and soon hundreds of soldiers, skitarii and clean-up crews had formed a giant circle around Magos Dahan and the Black Templars. Servitors were halted in their duties and lifted soldiers high enough to see, and rubble was hastily stacked to provide a better view. Soldiers stood on tanks, on Sentinels or wherever they could find a vantage point to see this once in a lifetime fight.

  Captain Hawkins pushed through the press of bodies, using Lieutenant Rae and his rank as a battering ram to move entrenched soldiers aside. It didn’t take long to reach the front of the circle, where he saw Magos Dahan facing the towering might of Kul Gilad.

  ‘Surely he’s not going to take on the big fella?’ said Rae. ‘He’s a bloody tank.’

  Hawkins shook his head. ‘I doubt it. Wouldn’t be much of a fight, and I’ll lose a week’s pay if he’s beaten.’

  ‘Emperor love you, sir, but you didn’t put money down on the magos to win?’

  ‘Yeah, I think he’s got a trick or two up his sleeve.’

  ‘But... but these are Space Marines,’ said Rae, as though the folly of Hawkins’s bet should be self-evident

  ‘And Dahan’s a Secutor. Don’t underestimate how dangerous that makes him.’

  ‘Fair enough, sir,’ said Rae. ‘But betting against a Space Marine seems, well, just a little bit...’

  ‘A little bit what?’

  ‘Rebellious?’ suggested Rae after a while.

  ‘I promise not tell the commissars if you don’t.’

  Rae shrugged, and turned his attention back to the participants in the bout. All around him, men and women were making bets on the outcome of the fight, but he ignored their shouts of odds and amounts, concentrating on what the duellists were doing. The Black Templars stood unmoving behind Kul Gilad, and it was impossible to take their measure. Their markings made them all but indistinguishable, though one wore armour of considerably greater ornamentation, as though he were the most glorious embodiment of their Chapter. His helmet bore an ivory laurel, and a huge sword, over a metre in length, was sheathed across his shoulders. Where the rest of his brethren carried enormous boltguns, he carried a single pistol, gold-chased and well worn.

  ‘It’ll be him,’ said Hawkins. ‘Mark my words.’

  Rae nodded in agreement as Magos Dahan swept back his robes, revealing a muscular body of plastic-hued flesh with gleaming steel ribs visible at his chest. In addition to his regular pair of arms – which Hawkins now saw were laced with gleaming metal implants, augmetic energy blades and what looked like digital weapons – a second pair of arms unfolded from a position on Dahan’s back. These arms were each tipped with a forked weapon that sparked to life as crackling purple lightning arced between the bladed tines. Dahan’s body rotated freely at the waist, allowing him a full circuit of movement, and his three legs were reverse jointed, ending in splayed dewclaws that unsheathed with a sharp snik.

  ‘Still think I’m onto a losing bet?’ asked Hawkins as Dahan lifted his long polearm from the topside of his tank. The serrated blade revved with a harsh burr and the clawed energy pod at its base crackled with kinetic force.

  ‘Trust me, you’ll be glad you didn’t bet a month’s pay,’ replied Rae.

  Dahan launched into a series of combat exercises, rotating the long blade around his body with his upper arms in an intricate pattern of killing moves. His legs were weapons too. While two bore his weight, the third would lash out in a disembowelling stroke.

  Kul Gilad nodded at the sight of Magos Dahan’s preparatory moves, and circled around the lethal envelope of the Secutor’s reach.

  ‘Who do you think, Tanna? Who will best this opponent?’ asked Kul Gilad, and the bearded warrior who had attended Colonel Anders’s dinner stepped from the statue-still ranks of the Space Marines.

  ‘It should be Varda, he bears the honour of us all,’ said Tanna.

  The warrior with the great sword stepped from the ranks of the Templars, and the enormous curved pauldrons of his armour shifted as he loosened the muscles at his shoulders.

  ‘See, told you it’d be him,’ said Hawkins.

  Kul Gilad held up a hand and shook his head. ‘No, the Emperor’s Champion does not fight unless there is death to be done. His blade kills in the name of the Master of Mankind, not for spectacle or vainglory. To make our point
it must be the least of us who carries our honour. Step forwards, Yael.’

  The sergeant struggled to hide his astonishment. ‘Yael is only recently made a full Templar, he has yet to shed blood with his brothers in the Fighting Company.’

  ‘That is why it must be him, Sergeant Tanna,’ said Kul Gilad. ‘The High Marshal himself marks this one for greatness. Do you doubt his wisdom?’

  The sergeant knew better than to argue with a superior officer when so many others were watching, and said, ‘No, Reclusiarch.’

  Tanna stepped back into rank along with the Emperor’s Champion as a slighter figure marched to stand alongside Kul Gilad. He wore a helmet so it was impossible to guess his age, yet he carried himself proudly, a young buck out to make his name. Hawkins had seen the same thing in the regiment, young officers straight out of the training camps outside Kasr Holn eager to prove their worth by getting into the nastiest fights as soon as they could.

  Some got themselves killed. The ones who didn’t die learned from the experience.

  Both outcomes helped to keep the Cadian regiments strong.

  Kul Gilad stood before Yael and placed his heavy gauntlets on his shoulders. Unheard words passed between them and the warrior knight nodded as he drew a sharp-toothed chainsword and his combat knife.

  Kul Gilad stood between Dahan and Yael.

  ‘Let this be an honourable duel, fought with heart and courage.’

  ‘To what end will we fight?’ asked Dahan. ‘First blood?’

  ‘No,’ said Kul Gilad. ‘A fight is not done just because someone bleeds.’

  ‘Then what? To the death?’

  The Reclusiarch shook his head. ‘Until one fighter can make a killing blow. Take the strike, but do not let it land.’

  ‘I have muscle inhibitors and microscopic tolerances in my optics that will enable such a feat. Can your warrior say the same?’

  ‘Afraid you might get hurt?’ said Yael, and though his voice was modified by the vox-grille, Hawkins could hear his youth.

  ‘Not even a little bit,’ said Dahan, dropping into a fighting position and lifting his multiple arms.