Priests of Mars

by Graham McNeill

  ‘My lord?’ asked Captain Remar. ‘The Thunderhawk will be unlikely to survive an attack run in such a hostile environment. I respectfully advise against such a course of action.’

  ‘Your concern is noted, captain,’ said Kul Gilad.

  He opened a vox-link to his battle squad and took a deep breath before speaking.

  ‘Varda, Tanna. You and every member of the squad, injured and battle-ready, are to make their way to the embarkation deck. Board the Barisan and await further orders.’

  The hesitation before Tanna answered showed that he too shared the captain’s concerns regarding the chances of the Thunderhawk’s survival beyond the Adytum’s armoured hull.

  ‘As you will it, Reclusiarch,’ said Tanna.

  The gunship’s lightweight hull would not last long without protection, but the idea of questioning his Reclusiarch’s order never so much as crossed the sergeant’s mind. The vox-link snapped off, and Kul Gilad moved to stand before the command lectern.

  ‘No pity, no remorse, no fear,’ whispered Kul Gilad.

  ‘Reclusiarch?’ said Captain Remar.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Permission to speak freely?’

  ‘Granted,’ said Kul Gilad. ‘You have more than earned that right, Captain Remar.’

  The captain bowed his shaven, cable-implanted skull in recognition of the honour Kul Gilad accorded him.

  ‘What is happening? You have the look of a man staring down at his own fresh-dug grave.’

  ‘The eldar ship will come for us next,’ said Kul Gilad. ‘And as gallant as the Adytum is, it cannot hope to fight off so powerful a vessel.’

  ‘Maybe we cannot win,’ said Remar. ‘But we will die fighting. No pity, no remorse, no fear.’

  Kul Gilad nodded. ‘Since Dantium they have been in my dreams, dogging my every step like an assassin. Now they are come, and they pick us off one by one like the cowards they are. I despise their weakness of spirit and their paucity of courage, captain. Where is the honour in striking from afar? Where is the glory in slaying your enemy without looking in his eyes as the last breath leaves his body?’

  Remar did not answer.

  What answer was there to give?

  ‘I think that was the Cardinal Boras,’ said Magos Azuramagelli, sifting through the electromagnetic spikes that cascaded through his station. The separated aspects of his brain and body matter flickered with dismay, and though it was often difficult to read the composite structure of the astrogation magos’s moods, Kotov had no trouble in reading the pain in his words.

  The command deck of the Speranza was alive with warnings, both visual and audible. Floods of damage reports flooded in from every deck as the mighty vessel twisted, bent and flexed in ways it should never have to endure. Binary screeches of systems in pain filled the space, though Kotov had grown adept at filtering out all but the most pressing. His ship was tearing itself apart, and there was nothing he could do to prevent its destruction.

  The death of the Blade of Voss had struck a note of grief through the magi on the Speranza’s command deck. The loss of so many machine-spirits and a vessel of undoubted pedigree was a calamitous blow, both to the expedition and the Mechanicus as a whole.

  And now they had lost their most powerful warship, a vessel with a grand legacy of victory and exploration. A true relic of the past that had fought in some of the greatest naval engagements of the last millennium and explored regions of space that now bore the cartographer’s ink instead of a blank screed of emptiness on a map.

  Anger touched Kotov and he directed his hurt at the machine hybrid thing that squatted on its malformed reticulated legs.

  ‘You said you could navigate us through the Halo Scar safely,’ said Kotov.

  Galatea rose up, its central palanquin rotating as it brought the mannequin body around to face Kotov. The robotic form of the tech-priest twitched and the silver optics glimmered with amusement.

  ‘We did,’ said Galatea. ‘But we also told you that you should expect to suffer great losses before we reach the other side.’

  ‘At this rate, we will be fortunate to reach the other side.’

  ‘You have already penetrated farther than any save Magos Telok,’ pointed out Galatea.

  ‘A fact that will only become relevant if we survive,’ countered Kotov.

  ‘True, but the demise of the Cardinal Boras was not at the hands of the Halo Scar,’ said Galatea.

  ‘Then what happened to it?’

  ‘We sense the presence of another vessel, one that Naval xeno-contact records archived in the Cypra Mundi repository have previously codified as the Starblade, an eldar ship of war.’

  ‘An eldar ship?’ said Kotov. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Its energy signatures and mass displacement offer a ninety-eight point six per cent degree of accuracy in that assessment. From its movement patterns, it is reasonable to assume it destroyed the Cardinal Boras and now manoeuvres to attack the Adytum.’

  Kotov spun to face Blaylock. ‘Order all ships to close on the Speranza. Spread out we will be easy prey for such a vessel.’

  ‘As you say, archmagos,’ said Blaylock, blasting the vox with his urgent communication.

  Kotov turned his attention to astrogation.

  ‘Azuramagelli? Could this eldar ship have been the source of the emissions you detected before we entered the Scar?’

  The astrogation magos summoned his previous data readings in a bloom of light, and Kotov now saw the subtle hints that might have revealed the presence of an eldar ship had they but known what to look for.

  ‘Indeed it could, archmagos,’ said Azuramagelli. ‘I offer no excuses for my failure to recognise its presence. What penance shall I assign myself?’

  ‘Oh, shut up, Azuramagelli,’ snapped Kotov. ‘We don’t have any useful feeds from auspex, so find a way to shoot it down and we will discuss your punishment at a later date.’

  ‘You will not be able to shoot it down,’ said Galatea. ‘Even with our help.’

  ‘Then what? We let it pick the fleet apart, ship by ship?’

  ‘No,’ said Galatea, as though amused at Kotov’s seeming stupidity. ‘You cannot fight this vessel, but the Speranza can.’

  It began as a shimmering haze that formed on the proscenium at the far end of Adytum’s bridge.

  Kul Gilad clenched his fist, and an arc of destructive energy formed around the oversized fingers of his power fist. The ammo feeds of his gauntlet-mounted storm bolter ratcheted the heavy belt of shells into position, and he recited his Reclusiarch’s vow.

  ‘Lead us from death to victory, from falsehood to truth,’ he began as the half-formed alien gateway filled the bridge with an actinic crackle of strange light.

  ‘Lead us from despair to hope, from faith to slaughter.’

  The bridge crew unplugged themselves from their stations, unholstering pistols and drawing serrated combat blades from thigh sheaths. A wailing moan of deathly wind issued from the swirling mass of wych-light that grew in power with the sound of clashing blades, howling cries of loss and a crackle of distant fires.

  ‘Lead us to His strength and an eternity of war.’

  Captain Remar issued his last command to the Adytum, to take the ship in close to the Speranza, then disconnected himself from his command lectern and drew a long rapier that hung in a kidskin sheath from its side.

  ‘Let His wrath fill our hearts.’

  With the Reclusiarch at its centre, the bridge crew of the Adytum formed a battle line. Kul Gilad heard Sergeant Tanna’s voice in his helmet, but closed himself off to his warriors. Their crusade would go on without him, and he could not be distracted now.

  ‘Death, war and blood; in vengeance serve the Emperor in the name of Dorn!’

  The alien gateway on the bridge shimmered like the surface of a glacially smooth lake and a lithe warrior woman stepped onto the Adytum. Clad in rune-etched armour of emerald and a tall helmet of bone-white topped with a billowing plume of vivid scarlet and antle
r-like extrusions, Kul Gilad knew her well from the battle at Dantium Gate. A cloak of multiple hues of green and gold hung at her shoulders and the slender-bladed sword she carried was etched with shimmering filigree that writhed with loathsome movement.

  Behind her, a dozen warriors with bulbous helms and overlapping plates of scaled green stepped through the gateway. Crackling energies played between the toothlike mandibles attached to their helms, and each one – though slender – had the bulk of a powerful warrior.

  ‘You killed Aelius, the Emperor’s Champion,’ said Kul Gilad. ‘And now you come to kill me.’

  ‘I have,’ agreed the eldar witch. ‘I will not let you destroy their future.’

  ‘Is this all you have brought?’ said Kul Gilad. ‘I will kill them all.’

  The witch woman cocked her head to the side as though amused at his defiance.

  ‘You will not,’ she said. ‘I have travelled the skein and seen your thread cut a thousand times.’

  The gateway rippled one last time. Blazing light and heat like Kul Gilad had not felt since the Season of Fire on Armageddon blew out to fill the bridge of the Adytum.

  A towering daemon of fire and boiling blood stepped though the howling gateway, its glowing body formed from brazen plates of red-hot iron that dripped glowing gobbets of molten metal to the deck. Its powerful body creaked and bled the light of wounded stars and the vast spear it carried wailed with the lament of a lost empire and the self-inflicted genocide of a million souls. Smoke from the bloodiest furnace coiled from its limbs, and a mist of glowing cinders seethed and raged like a dark crown about its horned head.

  An avatar of unending war, it roared with the unquenchable anger of a warrior god, and the blood of its slaughters oozed between its fingers, running in thick rivulets down the haft of its monstrous spear.

  ‘Abhor the witch,’ snarled Kul Gilad. ‘Destroy the witch!’

  They heard the warning bells, but paid them no mind. Since the vox-horns had announced their entry to the Halo Scar ten hours ago, there had been a steady stream of warning klaxons, alarm bells and binary announcements. Abrehem, Coyne, Ismael, Hawke and Crusha made their way through the vaulted tunnels of the engineering deck towards the feeding hall. Their next shift refuelling the plasma engines was due to start in two bells, and the high-calorie gruel was just about all that would sustain them over the length of a backbreaking shift hauling the volatile cylinders of fuel on long chains along the delivery rails to the combustion chambers. Having so many muscle-augmented servitors on shift had made life easier, but the work was still punishing in its intensity. Burned skin, caustic fumes and torn muscles were the norm after only a couple of hours.

  ‘I’ll be glad when you can get us these cushy shifts,’ said Coyne.

  ‘You and me both, lad,’ said Hawke.

  ‘You hardly do any work anyway,’ said Abrehem. ‘Crusha does all your work and you get the servitors to haul most of the loads.’

  The ogryn grinned at the sound of its name, still carrying the gunny sacks of contraband. The plasma pistol Hawke had finagled from the skitarii was in one of those sacks and Abrehem tried not to think of how much trouble they would be in if it was ever discovered.

  Hawke shrugged, completely unashamed at his evasion of work. ‘I see myself as more of an delegator, Abe,’ he said. ‘A man who gets things done without needing to dirty his own hands.’

  ‘No, your hands are dirty enough already,’ said Abrehem.

  Another siren went off, an insistent blare that sounded like the ship itself was screaming. Abrehem jumped at the sound, sensing on a marrow-deep level that this was no ordinary, everyday sound, that this was a warning only ever deployed in the worst emergencies.

  ‘I’ve not heard that one before,’ said Coyne. ‘I wonder what it means.’

  ‘Probably nothing,’ said Hawke. ‘Maybe a pipe in the archmagos’s toilet’s sprung a leak.’

  The others laughed nervously, but they all knew there was something more to it than the normal run of warnings that sounded for reasons no one could quite fathom. This siren had a strident note of real danger to it, like it was modulated at a pitch that circumvented all rational thought and went straight for the mind’s fear response.

  ‘No,’ said Abrehem. ‘Something’s really wrong this time.’

  Alarms sounded throughout the Speranza, high-pitched screams of violation that roused Cadians from their barracks, skitarii from their guild halls and Mechanicus armsmen from their rapid-response hubs. Throughout the ship, armed men and women snapped shells into shotcannons, clicked power cells into lasrifles and engaged the energy coils of implanted weaponry.

  Tech-guard squads formed defensive cordons at the entrances to the great engineering halls where the legion of Ark Fabricati workers laboured on the downed Canis Ulfrica. Ven Anders dispersed the companies of the 71st to prearranged defensive choke points as Magos Dahan routed his skitarii through the corridors and chambers of the ship like leukocytes racing through a living body to destroy an infection.

  The alarm that echoed through the Speranza was one that had never been sounded before, one whose frequency had been carefully chosen by the mighty ship’s lost builders for its precise atonal qualities that caused the most discomfort in those who heard it.

  It represented one thing and one thing only.

  Enemy boarders.

  Microcontent 20

  Screams and the whickering sound of alien gunfire echoed from the soaring walls of the plasma containment chambers. Cylinders of lethally volatile plasmic fuel swayed overhead, ratcheting along delivery rails like uncontrolled rolling stock heading for a collision at a busy terminus. Shimmering wychfire from half a dozen bright portals cast impossible shadows and brought a hallucinatory form of daylight to an area of the Speranza that had not known natural light since its construction.

  Abrehem crouched behind a slab-sided mega-dozer, its iron track unit taller than ten men, and watched in horror as the invaders slaughtered the men and women of the engineering decks. Bodies lay strewn around the chamber, torn up like they’d been caught in an agricultural threshing machine. Their killers were aliens; but not the brutish, clumsy savages the daily devotionals ridiculed, but sculpturally beautiful alabaster and jade figures with their own graceful animation. They moved like spinning dancers, their strides smooth and their bodies always completely in balance. They carried flattened weaponry with elongated barrels that buzzed as they fired hails of deadly projectiles.

  ‘Are they eldar?’ said Coyne. ‘Pirates?’

  ‘I think so,’ answered Abrehem. ‘But they don’t look much like pirates.’

  The token force of skitarii assigned to the engineering space were still fighting, filling the chamber with booming blasts of shot-cannon and hot streaks of las-fire. A dozen or more were already dead, picked off by cloaked shapes that moved through the shadows like ghosts, or cut down by darting figures in brilliant blue war-armour and guns that shrieked as they slew.

  Abrehem ducked as a spinning fragment embedded itself in the track unit beside him, a perfectly smooth disc of a material that looked like polished ceramic. Its edges thrummed with magnetic force and the edge was clearly sharper than any blade Abrehem had ever seen. They hadn’t wanted to come here, but a series of irising doors, dropping containment shutters and skitarii barricades had forced their path through the bowels of the ship and brought them into the middle of a firefight.

  ‘Bloody stupid this,’ said Hawke. ‘You don’t go to battles. You avoid them.’

  ‘I don’t think we had much choice,’ said Abrehem. ‘It was either this or get stuck out in the tunnels.’

  ‘At least there we wouldn’t get shot at.’

  ‘And maybe we’d have been stuck there for days and starved to death.’

  Hawke glared at him, unwilling to concede the point, but Abrehem knew he was right; it was stupid to have come here. Hawke knelt beside Crusha and rummaged through the gunny sacks, as Coyne peered through the cogs, wheels and
gears of the tracks with his mouth open in shock. Like Abrehem, Coyne had never seen an alien creature, and the sheer strangeness of these invaders was keeping the worst of their fear at bay for now.

  ‘Kill them?’ said Crusha, and they all looked over at the ogryn. It was the first thing Crusha had said since Joura.

  ‘Thor’s teeth, what’s with him?’ asked Hawke as the ogryn stood and balled his hands into fists.

  ‘Pycho-conditioned responses are kicking in,’ said Abrehem, seeing Crusha’s primitive augmetics come alive with activity. ‘He’s conditioned to react to the smell of blood and the sound of battle.’

  The ogryn’s body visibly swelled as intra-vascular chem-shunts pumped combat-stimms into his powerful physiology, and muscular boosters juiced his strength with enough adrenaline to cause instantaneous heart failure in an ordinary man.

  Once, Abrehem would have been terrified at being next to a battle-ready abhuman, but right now it probably wasn’t a bad idea to have an angry ogryn nearby.

  ‘Get down, you big lummox!’ snarled Hawke, as Crusha took a step into the open. ‘They’ll see you!’

  Hawke’s words were prophetic, and through the guts of the mega-dozer’s track unit, Abrehem saw a group of the killer aliens in form-fitting ablative weave the colour of ancient bone turn the burning red eye-lenses of their jade helms towards them.

  ‘Shitting hell,’ he swore as the aliens bounded towards them behind a hail of the screaming discs.

  ‘Run for it!’ shouted Hawke, dragging one of the gunny sacks behind him as he fled.

  Abrehem didn’t need telling twice, though he had no idea to where they would run. But where they were running to seemed less important than what they were running from.

  A sound like breaking glass exploded around them as the discs tore through the tracks of the mega-dozer, ripping hydraulic lines and shattering vital components that rendered the vast machine useless in the blink of an eye. A tumbling fragment took Coyne in the back, tearing a bloody line from shoulder blade to shoulder blade. He stumbled, shocked rigid by the sudden pain, and fell to his knees. Abrehem saw a fragment of a sharpened ceramic disc embedded in the meat of his back and bent to remove it. The edges cut his hand as he pulled it out, and blood welled from a deep gash on his palm.