They landed hard and rolled, dropping into a shallow trench cut by some ancient stream, as roaring sheets of whickering laser fire gouged glowing channels into the valley floor.
Zouche screamed as a sharp fragment of rock sliced his cheek.
Dalia wept bitter tears, expecting another barrage to finish them off at any second.
She flinched, curling into a tight ball of terror as a deafening, roaring blast of sawing gunfire echoed from the canyon walls. Another thunderous cascade of fire erupted and Dalia blinked in surprise as she realised the shots weren’t directed at them.
‘I don’t believe it,’ cried Rho-mu 31. Dalia looked over and saw that the glowing green of his eyes behind his bronze mask were alight with surprise.
Dalia propped herself up on one elbow and risked a glance over the torn, smoking lip of their fragile cover.
The Kaban Machine was still there, though its form was wreathed in flaring bursts of energy discharges as its voids screamed and fought to hold their integrity.
Riding towards it were two glorious war machines in midnight blue armour, bearing the symbol of a wheel and lightning bolt upon their shoulder guards.
‘The Knights of Taranis!’ shouted Rho-mu 31.
MAVEN’S HEART SURGED with savage, primal joy to see the enemy machine reel from the impacts of his weapons. Cronus had also struck true and Equitos Bellum’s Manifold shone with the knowledge that they had finally found their quarry. His autoloaders thundered as they fed more shells into the cannon mounted on his arm and he felt the heat build as he unsheathed the four-metre war blade in his right fist.
The machine was just as he remembered it, squat and unlovely, a rotund engine of death and destruction hiding behind a sleeting sheen of rippling voids. Through the shimmering fields of his auspex he could read its energy signatures, and was once again struck by the cold, alien intelligence that lurked behind the yellow orbs of its sensor blisters as it ceased fire and turned towards him.
A small group of people sheltered from the machine’s fire in a chewed up ditch, a red-cloaked Protector and three others. Maven didn’t know who they were, but that this machine wanted them dead was reason enough for him to defend them.
‘Go right,’ voxed Maven to Cronus. ‘Let’s take this thing like we planned.’
Cronus was already moving, Pax Mortis loping across the rough, step-like terrain of the rocky valley, his carapace low to the ground and his weapon arms thrust out before him. Maven hauled his mount left and unleashed another rippling salvo of cannon fire towards the machine.
Once more its voids sang with the impacts and Maven felt his mount’s exhilaration as a surge of adrenaline shot through his body. Equitos Bellum relished a fight, but the sense of striking back at their nemesis was above and beyond anything Maven had experienced.
He rode close to the ground, hard and fast for an outcrop of rock he had seen from further along the valley, feeling the heat of near misses as the enemy machine opened fire on him. His instinctual awareness of the battle was complete, his gut feel for the tactical situation flawless as he suddenly hauled back on the controls and skidded to a halt, one leg stretched out to the side at the sudden course change.
A barrage of shots hammered the outcrop, blasting it to splintered rubble and leaving a smoking crater in the aftermath of a thunderous explosion. Maven sidestepped and bounded forward, zigzagging at random across the ground, deliberately avoiding anything resembling a standard pattern evasion technique.
Whipping bursts of laser fire and sawing lines of shells sliced the air where the machine expected him to be.
Maven laughed, a wild roar of pleasure as Equitos Bellum responded to his touch, its healed limbs and wounded heart working with him against their enemy. Once again, Maven changed direction at random, urging his mount forward into the teeth of the machine’s weapons.
‘Old Stator would have my guts on a plate if he could see this,’ he hissed, fighting against decades of training to keep from using the very drills that had made him such a formidable warrior.
The machine opened fire, but once again Maven had outmanoeuvred it, his unpredictable motions and random jinks confusing whatever targeting wetware it employed. Maven watched it back away from him, its main guns swivelling in gimbal mounts as they tried to predict which way he would move.
The guns mounted on the thick dendrite tentacles swivelled, firing towards the remains of the burning Cargo-5. Cronus rode his Knight in a looping, jerking pattern of stops and starts, though Maven could see that his brother’s mount had taken several hits from the strength of his shield returns.
‘Mix it up more, Cronus!’ he yelled. ‘Don’t do anything it can predict!’
‘Shut up!’ snapped Cronus. ‘You break the rules all the same. It’s not so easy for me!’
Maven grinned, seeing the machine back away from him, spitting rock and gravel from beneath its tracks as it frantically reversed towards the wall of the canyon.
Maven let rip with another blast of cannon fire. Chunks of smashed rock fell from the cliff, as the machine swivelled on one track and his shots went wide.
‘Hell,’ said Maven. ‘It’s learning.’
Maven reversed the direction of his advance and, too late, realised his mistake.
A seething wall of laser fire hammered his frontal shields and the torso emitter blew out in a screaming wash of energy. He cried out as the discharge whiplashed through him in a howling gale of feedback.
Equitos Bellum faltered and Maven dropped his mount to one knee. Another blast struck the upper edges of his carapace armour and searing lances of pain shot through his shoulder. He tried to turn his mount to present a shielded section to the machine as more fire hammered him, and Maven felt his mount’s pain as his armour tore apart under the concentrated volley.
The armoured glass of his cockpit shattered, exploding inwards and slicing his face with razor-sharp fragments.
‘Cronus!’ yelled Maven as another impact sent a bolt of agony through his body.
Pax Mortis smashed through the flaming wreckage of the Cargo-5, both its arm weapons sheathed in fire. The enemy machine vanished in a blinding cascade of void flares, its shields buckling under the impacts.
Whatever form of reactor sat at its heart was capable of soaking up the punishment and holding. It turned its guns on Pax Mortis, and let rip with a barking roar of cannon fire that tore through the shields and the plating of Cronus’ waist mounting.
The Knight staggered, and Cronus bolted for the wall of obscuring smoke that billowed from the Cargo-5, but the machine had predicted such an obvious response, and a searing bolt of plasma slammed into the upper carapace of Pax Mortis, almost driving it to its knees.
Maven cried out as he saw his brother Knight stagger, but before the enemy machine could finish its work, Cronus surged forwards and darted into the smoke.
‘Its voids are too tough!’ shouted Cronus, his pain obvious even over the vox-link. ‘Our weapons won’t overload them!’
His comrade-in-arms had left himself dangerously exposed by coming to Maven’s aid, but their two-pronged assault had forced the enemy to dance to their tune, and they would never get a better chance to take it down.
‘Get ready!’ he replied. ‘We’ve got it where we want it!’
Faced with two enemies, the machine had backed against the cliffs of the valley, seeking to minimise the directions from which it could be attacked.
Just as Maven knew it would.
It was a standard, textbook manoeuvre.
Maven disengaged the auto-targeters and said, ‘You know the drills, but you don’t have the skills,’ and opened fire once more.
Instead of aiming for the machine, his gunfire tore into the rock walls above it, and a torrent of gigantic boulders fell in a thunderous avalanche from the cliffs, smashing into the upper vectors of the machine’s shields. Blooming explosions of light rippled from the machine, its voids screaming in protest, but still, impossibly, holding.
‘Now, Cronus!’ shouted Maven, pushing his wounded mount to its feet and charging his foe with a feral cry of battle-lust He opened up with his cannon, hammering the machine’s upper shields. Even through the tumbling, roaring avalanche of rock and dust, the machine saw him coming and turned its guns on Equitos Bellum, just as Pax Mortis loomed from the smoke and joined its fire with that of Maven’s mount.
Already struggling to withstand the rain of debris falling from the cliff, the machine’s shield-emitters finally gave way under the concentrated fire of the two Knights.
Its voids exploded outwards in a blinding blast wave, tearing the metallic weapon dendrites from its back and vaporising its left arm in a thunderous detonation. Smoke and sparks of jetting energy spewed from the machine’s ruptured flanks and its sensor blisters flickered madly, as though unable to comprehend how it had been hurt.
It rocked back, stunned and screaming in garbled bursts of binary that sliced over the Manifold and blew several of the augmitters inside Maven’s cockpit.
Maven rode through the billowing clouds of rock dust, seeing the spherical form of his long-sought-for enemy ahead of him. It was mortally wounded, but still had some fight left in it. Maven didn’t give it a chance and drove the full four metres of his energised war blade through its frontal section.
Its death scream shrieked in a pitiful wail of agonised binary, but Maven twisted his blade in the wound until at last its cries ceased and the light of its sensor blisters was extinguished.
Letting out a pent-up breath of battle fury and pain, Maven stepped back from the destroyed machine, feeling an overwhelming sense of closure as he stood over the shell of his defeated enemy. The pain from his psychostigmatic wounds diminished and Maven smiled as he felt Equitos Bellum’s satisfaction wash through him in a rush of approval.
The essence of what made a Knight such a fearsome war machine moved through his battered flesh to ease his suffering, filling his body and rushing along his aching limbs.
Too late, Maven felt the soul of his mount surge to the fore, the soothing balm that eased his pain wielding him as though he were the mount and it the rider. He felt the raw, ferocious heart of his machine, the terrifying power that lurked in the heart of the Manifold, take control of his limbs and turn Equitos Bellum towards the scar in the earth where the targets of the enemy machine had taken cover.
Through the blown-out cockpit glass, Maven saw a Mechanicum Protector, leading a slightly built woman with eyes that shone with a golden light towards him. A red cloak billowed at the shoulders of the Protector, who carried a weapon stave hung with the number grid symbol of Koriel Zeth. Behind them was a short, robed man who knelt beside the prone form of what looked like a tonsured menial.
Maven heard heavy footfalls as Pax Mortis moved alongside him and tried to speak to Cronus, but the elemental force of the Manifold held him tightly in its grip.
The woman approached the wounded Knight and before he knew what was happening, Equitos Bellum dropped to one knee and bowed its head to her. Without looking, he knew his battle-brother’s Knight had done likewise.
She reached out and Maven felt warmth infuse every molecule of his hybrid existence of flesh and steel with newfound purpose and vitality. He felt the warmth of the woman’s touch through the shell of his mount, and gasped as trembling vibrations spread through its armoured frame of plasteel and ceramite.
‘Machine, heal thyself,’ she said.
3.05
NIGHT WAS FALLING across the Magma City, though darkness never really came to the glowing, orange-lit metropolis. Like a scene from the ancients’ visions of the underworld, Adept Zeth’s forge was bathed in the fires of battle as the forces of the Dark Mechanicum pounded her walls with vortex missiles and collapsed the outer bastions with graviton cannons.
The city was being torn apart with mechanistic precision and, within hours, the forces under the command of Ambassador Melgator – who watched the unfolding destruction from beneath his dark pavilion at the end of the Typhon Causeway – would have seized their prize for the Fabricator General.
The city was doomed and there was only one order left to give.
Deus Tempestus strode through the twisted, blackened remains of what had once been an armaments factory. Fires and small explosions still popped and flamed beneath the Warlord’s mighty tread, but Princeps Cavalerio paid them no mind. Such things were irrelevant to a being of his stature. Only Aeschman’s host of Tempestus skitarii following behind his battlegroups needed to concern themselves with such matters.
The full strength of Tempestus marched from the shelter of the Magma City, the cobalt blue of their armour and the fluttering honour banners gloriously bright against the brooding skies and fire-blackened rubble they marched through.
Leading from the centre, Deus Tempestus took up position behind a tangle of twisted iron columns and girders that had once been the structure of the largest sheet metal fabrication plant in Tharsis, but which now resembled a mass of razorwire.
On Cavalerio’s right was Princeps Sharaq’s battle group, Metallus Cebrenia leading the Warhounds Astrus Lux and Raptoria into battle. Princeps Lamnos and Kasim marched their smaller engines to either side of the larger Reaver, and Cavalerio raised his volcano cannon in salute of his brave warriors.
To his immediate left towered the mighty Warlord Tharsis Hastatus, under Princeps Suzak, while further out was Princeps Mordant’s Reaver, Arcadia Fortis, with the dashing Princeps Basek’s Warhound, Vulpus Rex, in support.
Once again, Cavalerio acknowledged his warriors as they took up position in the ruins of the outer sub-hives.
‘All princeps, Manifold conference,’ he said.
One by one, the flickering images of his brother princeps appeared before Cavalerio and he was gratified to see only the hunger for battle in their faces. Each was eager to take the fight to Mortis, despite there only being one possible outcome to the battle. For a moment he wished he still fought as they did. Then, he smiled at the foolishness of such a desire, for who could not wish to be as connected to such a mighty engine as Deus Tempestus in such a complete and total manner as he was.
‘Brothers, this is the most dreadful and most glorious moment of our lives,’ he said. ‘I’m not normally given to sentiment, but if the day of our deaths doesn’t warrant a little melodrama, then I don’t know what does.’
Cavalerio saw a few wry smiles and said, ‘The credo of Tempestus is that the manner of our deaths is at least as important as the manner of our lives. Today we will show these Mortis dogs what it means to feel the wrath of our Legio. It has been an honour to fight alongside you all over the years, and it is a privilege to lead you in this last march. May the light of the Omnissiah guide you.’
His brothers solemnly acknowledged his words with binaric glows of pride, but it was left to Princeps Kasim to give fleshvoice to the feelings of the Legio.
‘The honour is ours, Stormlord,’ said Kasim.
Cavalerio smiled as he saw the gleam of the gold skull and cog medallion he had given the man after the Epsiloid Binary Cluster wars.
‘Good hunting, everyone,’ said Cavalerio, and closed the link.
Despite their blooding in the initial fighting around the Magma City, Princeps Camulos could not ignore such a blatant challenge, and Cavalerio’s auspex filled with returns as Legio Mortis marched through the smoke and fire to meet them. Swarming around each engine were thousands of Mortis skitarii, fearsome, skull-visaged warriors of terrible reputation.
The Tempestus skitarii, led by the indomitable Zem Aeschman, the scarred hero of Nemzal Reach, marched out to meet them, outnumbered at least four to one. To go into an engine fight required great courage, but to march into battle beneath such a titanic conflict demanded fearlessness only such enhanced warriors could boast.
‘Multiple engine signatures,’ said Sensori Palus, and Cavalerio acknowledged the inload, putting Aeschman’s skitarii from his mind. The gargantuan form of Aquila Ignis led the Mortis engines,
a row of three twisted Warlords marching in front of it like a skirmish screen. On both flanks, two Reavers circled wide.
‘They only outnumber us by one engine,’ said Cavalerio. ‘That’s not so bad, eh?’
‘Yes, my princeps,’ said Moderati Kuyper. ‘It’s just a shame they outgun us so heavily.’
Watching the Mortis deployment, Cavalerio said, ‘They’re being cautious. None of them dare stray too far from their big brother.’
‘And who can blame them?’
‘They’re afraid of us,’ said Cavalerio. ‘They’re still thinking of what we did to them in the opening ambush and they’re scared we’ve got another trick like that up our sleeves.’
‘I wish we did, Stormlord,’ muttered Kuyper.
Cavalerio smiled in his amniotic tank, a stream of bubbles rising from his mouth.
‘Who says I haven’t?’ he asked. ‘All princeps, marching speed.’
On the far side of the Magma City, where screaming mobs of skitarii and altered Protectors threw themselves at the Vulkan Gate, a blizzard of gunfire and artillery laid waste to the attackers closest to the entrance. Before Melgator’s forces could regroup and resume their attack, the Vulkan Gate opened and beneath their azure lightning wheel standard, the Knights of Taranis rode out.
Lord Verticorda led his Knights, the noble form of Ares Lictor resplendent, the wound in its chest repaired in time for this last ride to glory. Alongside Verticorda, Lord Caturix rode the majestic Gladius Fulmen, his war engine proudly bearing the scars and ravages of battle on its burnished plates.
Behind them came the last nine Knights of the order, their armour polished and repaired such that they shone like new. This was to be their final charge and the Magma City’s artificers had ensured that they would make a fine sight as they rode out.
The Knights formed a wedge, with Verticorda and Caturix as the tip of the spear, and plunged into the mass of enemy warriors, their guns spitting death with every shot. The combined shock of the artillery strike followed by the assault of the Knights broke the front of the Dark Mechanicum line, and the Knights smashed through the reeling survivors like giants scattering children before them.
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