The three Knights smashed through the cordon of enemy warriors between them and Melgator’s retinue, their armour torn, trailing fire and spraying vital fluids. None would ever ride again, but with their final breath of life they would slay this last foe.
Verticorda shot down a dozen skitarii, and then felt the agony of sweeping beams of cutting light sawing through the armour of his right arm as though it was as insubstantial as smoke. He screamed in pain, his entire body spasming as the weapon arm was shorn from its mount.
Blood filled his throat and his vision greyed, but once again he felt the ghostly presences of his predecessors. Their ancient fury and fire was undimmed by the passage of years, and their will gave him the strength to carry on. Yet even with the sustaining power of the Manifold, Verticorda could feel his life slipping away from him.
Yelsic’s machine took the full brunt of a volley of flame lance fire, his carapace wreathed in crackling purple flames from a dozen hits. Concussive impacts of grenades blew out his torso section, and the shorn halves of his stricken Knight exploded as it skidded into the mass of skitarii.
‘Into them!’ cried Caturix, seeing the gap Yelsic’s death had created.
Acting on centuries of instinct, Verticorda followed Caturix into the scattered mob of skitarii, seeing the fur-robed form of Melgator whipping his shield bearers to carry him away from the rampaging Knights.
With the last of his energy, Verticorda shouted, ‘I cast the lightning of Taranis at thee!’ and together, he and Caturix opened fire. Thunderous impacts strafed the ground and blazed a devastating path through the skitarii towards Melgator.
A haze of shimmering blue light erupted around the ambassador, a personal void, but such a device was designed to protect its bearer for short periods of time and against the weapons of an assassin, not those carried by war machines as fearsome as Knights.
In seconds the capacity of Melgator’s voids was overloaded, and the resulting explosion hurled him through the air. The ambassador didn’t even have time to hit the ground before the sustained fire of the Knights obliterated his body in a fraction of a second.
With Melgator’s destruction, Verticorda felt the presence of his mount’s former riders fade back into the Manifold. The pain of his wounds returned tenfold and he cried out as he felt yet more impacts on his armour.
A missile exploded his knee, the one the Emperor had touched, and Ares Lictor fell. The carapace slammed into the ground and the glass of his cockpit shattered into fragments. Verticorda tasted blood, but felt no pain as he sensed the Manifold open up before him.
His last living memory was hearing Caturix’s voice shouting his defiance to the end.
As Verticorda died, he was smiling, and the spirit of Ares Lictor welcomed him.
3.06
BLOOD AND WARNINGS filled the liquid before Cavalerio, telling him of shield ignition failures, reactor bleeds and a hundred other signs that his engine was suffering. Red droplets flecked the amniotic jelly, oozing from psychostigmatic wounds on his shoulders and torso, and bleeding from his nose.
He registered the deaths of three of his engines, but forced himself to concentrate on his own fight. Ahead of him, three Warlords advanced before the might of the Imperator, Aquila Ignis. The soaring creation had not yet deigned to open fire.
‘My princeps?’ asked Kuyper, bleeding from the side of his head where a panel had blown out next to him, taking the secondary reactor monitors with it.
‘Nothing,’ said Cavalerio. ‘You have a solution to those Warlords on the right?’
‘Yes, Stormlord,’ confirmed Kuyper. ‘All missiles locked in.’
‘Then you may fire at your discretion, Moderati Kuyper,’ ordered Cavalerio, before addressing his sensori. ‘Where’s that Reaver on our right?’
‘In the silos a kilometre north of us,’ reported Palus. ‘It’s fighting Metallus Cebrenia, but it’s the one to our left we need to worry about. Vulpus Rex and Arcadia Fortis are gone.’
‘Sharaq can handle himself,’ said Cavalerio, ‘and Tharsis Hastatus will deal with the bastard on our left.’
‘Princeps Suzak also has a Warlord to deal with,’ Kuyper reminded him.
‘He’s come through tougher fights,’ insisted Cavalerio. ‘I shouldn’t need to remind you all that we are Legio Tempestus, we fear nothing!’
His bold words invigorated the crew, and he felt the delicious shudder of release as the missile pods on his carapace surged from their launchers. At the same time, a sustained barrage of turbo lasers hammered the Warlord on the right, while repeated blasts from his volcano cannon punched the Warlord in the centre.
His enemies were giving as good as they got, and each shot Deus Tempestus unleashed was answered with two in reply, but Cavalerio had an advantage the Mortis engines did not. He was linked through the amniotic suspension to the very heart of his machine, and though the immediacy of connection allowed him only a fractional advantage, for a princeps of the Stormlord’s skill, it was the only advantage he needed.
The engine drivers of Mortis were good, for no one ever ascended to the princeps chair of a Warlord who had not proved himself a hundred times or more, but they were as fledglings compared to the skill of Indias Cavalerio.
With precise evasions and instinctual anticipation of his enemies’ thoughts and tactics, Cavalerio had avoided a weight of fire that would have seen a lesser princeps destroyed thrice over. Deus Tempestus was wounded, but she strode through the storm of enemy fire without fear and with the banner of Legio Tempestus borne proudly aloft.
‘Target’s shield strength failing,’ reported Palus. ‘The turbos have got him!’
‘Multiple missile impacts scored!’ shouted Kuyper. ‘She’s burning!’
‘Bring us about, Lacus,’ cried Cavalerio. ‘Volcano cannon on rightmost Warlord. A three-pulse volley if you please.’
‘Yes, my princeps,’ replied his steersman, and Cavalerio felt the ancient machine respond, its vast and complex manoeuvring systems reacting with the speed of a brand new engine. Cavalerio felt the heat build as the monstrously powerful cannon on his left arm powered up.
He saw the stricken Warlord slow and relished the fear its princeps must be feeling to be so achingly vulnerable. With no shields and his engine burning, his fight was over.
‘No, that won’t do you any good,’ chuckled Cavalerio as the volcano cannon fired and struck the Warlord’s shields dead on, battering the last of its protection away. The first blast was immediately followed by two more, and the Warlord’s upper carapace vanished in a thermonuclear blast as its reactor detonated.
‘Centre Warlord’s shields failing!’ shouted Palus. ‘It was too close to the explosion!’
‘All stop,’ ordered Cavalerio. ‘Reverse left step and bring us back about, Lacus. Divert all shield power to volcano cannon, I want to make this shot count!’
His crew hastened to obey his commands, and Cavalerio felt the groaning strain of metal all around him as he pushed his engine to the limits of its endurance. A moment of doubt flickered across his mind as he remembered doing the same thing to Victorix Magna, but he pushed that thought aside.
A flurry of impacts struck his torso and carapace, and Cavalerio grunted in pain, his flesh convulsing in sympathy with his wounded engine. He felt the damage to Deus Tempestus, but shook off the pain. If his engine was paying the price for his tactics, then so too would he.
‘Gun charged, my princeps,’ reported Kuyper. ‘Solution locked.’
Cavalerio snatched control of the weapon from his engine’s gun-servitor. ‘Firing!’
Once again the volcano cannon unleashed its deadly fire, the searing bolt of destruction enhanced with all the power Cavalerio could give it.
The enemy Warlord’s shields absorbed the first microsecond of the impact, but collapsed with an explosive detonation that t
ore the upper tiers of its armour away like paper in a storm. Cavalerio kept his aim steady as the fire built in his arm to a raging, searing sensation, and the enemy Warlord vanished as his fire burned through its hull and sliced it almost in two.
The crew of Deus Tempestus cheered as the Warlord broke in two at the waist, its legs left standing as its torso and upper carapace crashed to the ground in a flaming arc of molten metal.
Cavalerio let out a shudder of release as he watched the Warlord die. It had been a terrible risk altering the shield strength to empower the volcano cannon, but it had paid off and now the odds were more even.
Then the Aquila Ignis opened fire.
ADEPT ZETH TRIED to remain standing, but the pain in her chest was too great. Her legs gave way beneath her and she slumped to her knees, blood streaming down her chest and back from where Remiare’s projectiles had pierced her armour and body.
She looked down at her breastplate, seeing the void projector still intact on her chest, then looked up in surprise. Remiare smiled and spun the pistols to face her, relishing Zeth’s look of confusion.
‘I suppose you’re wondering why your personal void didn’t save you,’ said the assassin as she skimmed over the ground, circling the ring of steel columns that surrounded Zeth. ‘These rounds are hand-crafted in the null-shielded forges of Adept Prenzlaur, and utilise technology similar to that found in the warp missiles used by Titans.’
‘Actually,’ said Zeth, coughing a wad of blood into her mask, ‘I was wondering how long it would take for the noospheric trip-code I’ve been broadcasting to affect you.’
Zeth saw Remiare’s surprise in her biometrics and laughed. ‘You think you are so clever, assassin, but I am a high adept of the Mechanicum! Nobody’s cleverer than me.’
Remiare cocked her head to one side, analysing the connection between her and Zeth on the noosphere.
‘No!’ she cried, seeing the exquisitely elegant code worked into the data packets passing into her augmetics, which was even now silently and secretly shutting them down.
‘Too late,’ hissed Zeth as Remiare’s magno-gravitic thrusters cut out and the assassin dropped to the floor of the chamber with a heavy thump. Remiare’s knees buckled as she landed, unused to feeling herself on the ground with such a weight of useless dead metal on the ends of her legs.
‘Right now your enhanced metabolism is trying to reboot your systems, but it won’t do you any good,’ said Zeth, using the extruded mechadendrites that were still hooked into the steel columns to haul herself to her feet. ‘It’s already too late for you.’
Zeth fought to control her breathing as her augmented nervous system assessed the damage to her body. One of Remiare’s bullets had severed her spinal cord and she could feel nothing below the waist, but her metallic limbs were more than capable of supporting her for long enough to finish what she had begun. Pain-balms and stimulant drugs flooded her body to keep her conscious and she smiled as the agony of her chest wounds faded.
It was temporary, she knew, and her body was dying even as it eased her pain.
‘I’ll kill you!’ hissed Remiare, fighting unsuccessfully to raise her pistols.
‘No you won’t,’ said Zeth, before turning to address the primitive-looking servitor. ‘Polk.’
The servitor moved to stand before the assassin, and Remiare let out a gasp of recognition as it drew back its hood.
‘You remember Polk, don’t you?’ asked Zeth. ‘You made sure my apprenta’s mind was damaged beyond repair, but even a damaged mind can be rendered into something useful. Oh, he’s a crude and ugly thing, I know, but his very crudity is what’s protecting him from the trip-code that’s affecting you.’
The servitor that had once been Kantor Polk bent down and lifted the limp form of the assassin from the ground, her struggles feeble as she tried to fight off Zeth’s debilitating code streams. Polk’s crude, piston-augmented muscles held Remiare immobile, and Zeth read her terror and incomprehension of the situation in the flaring spikes of her bio-electric field.
‘Dispose of her,’ ordered Zeth, pointing with a free hand to the shaft in the centre of the chamber that dropped through the forge to the magma beneath. ‘And hold her tight all the way down.’
Zeth turned away, focusing her attentions on the steel control columns that linked her to the vast and complex structure of the Magma City’s core systems. She looked up at the glowing schematic of her forge and with heavy heart issued the last of her macroinstructions.
THARSIS HASTATUS, AN engine that had marched to victory on a hundred worlds, was obliterated in a single salvo. A punishing volley from Aquila Ignis’ hellstorm cannon stripped her of her shields in an instant, and a devastating impact from its plasma annihilator reduced it to smoking, white-hot debris.
Cavalerio felt the death of his friend and comrade, Princeps Suzak, like a knife to the heart, and fought to control his anger and grief as they threatened to swamp him. The Manifold held him in its grip and his attention was firmly dragged back to the battle.
‘Situation report!’ he barked. ‘Who’s still standing?’
Palus sent out an active pulse of auspex energy to burn through the interference caused by so much powerful weapon discharge and reactor explosions. ‘I’m only getting returns from Metallus Cebrenia and Raptoria,’ he said, his voice heavy with disbelief. ‘Aeschman’s skitarii are still fighting, but they’re almost gone.’
So caught up in the furious combat was he, Cavalerio had quite forgotten that an equally bloody conflict had been raging beneath him on the ground. In an engine war of such ferocity, infantry was virtually an irrelevance, but it never paid to forget the courage of those who fought beneath the battling leviathans.
Before his engine’s horrifying destruction, Suzak had fought like the killer he was, dispatching a Reaver and a Warlord before the Imperator had slain him. On the right flank, Princeps Sharaq and Metallus Cebrenia had, together with Princeps Kasim and Raptoria, taken down the last Reaver, which left only the Imperator, Aquila Ignis.
The Mortis engines had come expecting an easy victory, and no matter what happened next they would leave the bulk of their force burning on the Martian sands. Tempestus had earned themselves a legendary place in the history of Mars.
‘It’s firing!’ shouted Kuyper.
Cavalerio opened a Manifold link to his surviving warriors. ‘All Tempestus engines, this is the Stormlord—’
Princeps Cavalerio never got a chance to finish his order as a thunderous series of impacts smashed into his engine. Searing pain, worse than the death of his beloved Victorix Magna, surged through his body as the weakened shields collapsed under the barrage of missiles from the Imperator’s upper bastions.
Deus Tempestus’ shield emitters blew out in a cascading series of explosions, and the Stormlord’s body spasmed in its tank as the feedback blitzed through his mind, fusing his synapses with those of the Manifold.
In his last seconds of life, he saw the heroic march of Metallus Cebrenia and Raptoria as they advanced upon the red and silver monster. Their weapons arms were wreathed in fire as they advanced, heedless of the impossibility of ever hurting the Imperator, though to call it such now that its masters had turned to the cause of treachery seemed perverse.
Metallus Cebrenia was the first to die, her right leg blown off, and an almost scornful barrage of rockets finishing her off as she lay helpless in the ruins of a giant loading bay. Raptoria lasted only moments longer. Her shields were torn away by a sweeping blast of gatling cannon fire, and her speed was no protection from a volley of Apocalypse missiles that flattened an area a kilometre square.
Cavalerio felt their deaths and watched through the Manifold as Deus Tempestus sensed them too. Blood poured from his ravaged flesh and the liquid in his casket was almost opa
que with it. He pushed himself to the front of the tank, feeling the fluids pouring from cracks in the glass and seeing the smoking ruin that was all that was left of his cockpit section.
Kuyper was dead, his body slumped and on fire in his moderati’s chair, while across from him, the steersman, Lacus, was little more than a mangled lump of torn flesh. Cavalerio couldn’t see his sensori, now realising that the entire upper section of the cockpit was open to the sky. The enginseer who had replaced Magos Argyre, an adept named Thunert, was still alive, only his lack of flesh saving him from the fires that swept the cockpit.
Cavalerio fought down his anguish as he saw the triumphant Aquila Ignis stride towards him, its colossal tread shaking the ground.
Its guns were silent and Cavalerio knew why, feeling the spiking pain of skitarii breaching charges detonating against his engine’s leg armour.
‘Mortis wants to capture us,’ he said. ‘I can feel them crawling inside us already.’
With what remained of his connection to the Manifold, the Stormlord linked with the enginseer’s station.
‘I do,’ agreed Thunert. ‘Though it goes against all my teachings, the alternative is worse.’
‘Then do it,’ ordered Cavalerio. ‘Disengage all reactor safeties.’
‘It is already done, Stormlord.’
‘May the Omnissiah forgive us,’ whispered Indias Cavalerio.
Seconds later, Deus Tempestus was utterly annihilated as her plasma reactor went critical with the force of a miniature supernova.
The death of Deus Tempestus was almost the last act in the battle of the Magma City.
Almost, but not quite.
That honour was saved for the city itself.
With the destruction of Legio Tempestus and the death of the Knights of Taranis, the last real opposition to the forces of the Dark Mechanicum were gone. Legio Mortis skitarii poured into the city through the smashed ruins of the sub-hives and landing fields, killing any soldiers they came across and capturing as many of the city’s adepts as was possible at such a frantic, bloody time.
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