Lords of Mars

by Graham McNeill

  ‘I am the one that kept you alive,’ said Tanna.

  Five hours ago, the surface region chosen for Mechanicus landing fields had been nothing more than a vaguely flat plateau of retreating glacial ice and a dozen gradually vaporising lakes of exotically lethal chemistry. A host of servitor-crewed drones launched as the Speranza spiralled into its high-anchor position had provided three-dimensional pict-captures of the global topography, and deep-penetrating orbital augurs of the planet’s northern hemisphere had enabled Archmagos Kotov to select this particular landing site.

  The specific uniformity of the plateau’s underlying bedrock and its relative geological stability put it well within the terraforming capabilities of Fabricatus Turentek’s geoformer engines. Three colossal vessels detached from the underside of the Speranza, falling away like spalling portions of wreckage in the wake of catastrophic damage. Each was a ten-kilometre-square slab of barely understood machinery; titanic atmosphere processing plants, industrial-scale meltas and arcane technologies of geological manipulation. Like gothic factories cast adrift in space, the geoformer engines dropped through the atmosphere, their heat-shielded undersides glowing a fierce cherry red as they negotiated the turbulent storms of escaping gases.

  They halted their descent a hundred metres above the ground, bombarding the site with terrain-mapping augurs to verify their position. Manoeuvring jets fired corrective bursts as serried banks of planet-cracking cannons rotated outwards in their undersides. Precision ordnance strikes smashed the frozen ice of the surface into manageable chunks with thunderous barrages as the wide mouths of furnace-meltas irised open.

  A rippling haze of intense heat was expelled like the breath of mythical dragons, and painfully bright light flared from the meltas, filling the plateau with purple-edged fire. Hurricanes of superheated steam shrieked and hissed as the surface ice was boiled away or diverted into drainage channels blasted by terrain-modifying howitzers.

  Chemical mortars fired thousands of air-bursting saturation shells, seeding the local atmosphere with slow-decaying absorption matter that began a cascade of alchemical reactions to filter out its most toxic and corrosive elements. Wide-mouthed bays opened on the geoformer vessels and scores of heavy-grade earth-moving leviathans were dropped to the planet’s surface in impact-cushioning cradles.

  In a carefully orchestrated ballet, the earth-moving machines swiftly demarcated the area of the landing fields and set about their work with the efficiency of an army of iron-skinned and hazard-striped worker ants. Turentek had crafted hundreds of landing fields on worlds far more inimical to life and machines than Katen Venia and the priests under his command knew their trade well.

  Slowly the last of the ice was blasted clear and thousands of kilometres of cabling were laid to receive the telemetry gear required to tether the incoming vessels to their assigned landing zones. With the buried infrastructure in place and protected within hardened ductwork, the exposed rock was crushed and planed flat with tight-focus conversion beamers. Heat-shielding was laid over the buried technology as ten thousand atmosphere-capable tech-priests with implanted precision meltas and polishing limbs applied the final smoothing to the surface of the landing fields with ångström-level precision. Vacuum-suited servitors followed in the wake of the tech-priests, acid-etching the rock with Imperial eagles, cog-wreathed machine skulls and coded sequence numbers.

  Within four hours, a vast square of mirror-smooth rock, six kilometres on each side, had been carved into the planet’s surface. With the basic structure in place, entoptic generators and noospheric transmission arrays were installed, as well as numerous fully-equipped control bunkers to manage the intricate and necessarily complex scheduling of incoming and departing landing craft. Defence towers were raised at regular intervals around the landing fields, each one equipped with an array of weapons capable of engaging ships in low orbit or attacking ground forces.

  To enable non-Mechanicus drop ships to set down, contrasting guide lines were painted on the smoothed rock, together with conventional landing lights and active e-mag tethers. Five hours after the work had begun, it was complete, and Magos Turentek set his seal upon the work from his articulated fabrication hangar in the ventral manufactory districts of the Speranza.

  No sooner was Turentek’s seal inloaded to the Manifold, than the first craft were launched from the embarkation hangars of the Ark Mechanicus. A hundred fat-bellied landers began their descent to the surface carrying the mechanisms of planetary exploration: tech-priests and their monstrous land-cathedrals, skitarii battalions and their war machines, servitors and weaponised praetorians.

  Amid the host of iron descending to the planet’s surface, three coffin ships of the Legio Sirius were shepherded down through the atmosphere by supplicant vessels that howled binaric hymnals of praise and warning across multiple wavelengths.

  The Warlord Lupa Capitalina descended to Katen Venia, attended by Amarok and Vilka.

  Wintersun would have the honour of First Step, as was his right as Legio Alpha. Skinwalker and Ironwoad would share in this honour, and if either Warhound princeps felt any reservations at the exclusion of Moonsorrow and Canis Ulfrica, they kept such thoughts to themselves.

  An airborne armada of steel and gold descended to the planet on towering plumes of blue-limned fire, a billion tonnes of machinery and men.

  The Adeptus Mechanicus had come to Katen Venia.

  Apart from a near-miss with the traversing arm of lifter-rig Wulfse, the latest shift in the distribution hub of Magos Turentek’s forge-temple had gone well. Abrehem had kept up with the punishing schedule insisted on by the materiel-logisters, and even managed to work some contingency time into their schedule to start transferring the newly-built Cadian tanks down-ship.

  Abrehem unstrapped himself from Virtanen’s command throne and began the painful process of unplugging the dozens of cerebral-communion cables trailing from the command headpiece he wore. With each wincing disconnect, the crisp noospheric sensorium displaying the lifter-rig’s traverse lines, tension/compression ratios, load levels and spool length faded slowly from his field of vision.

  With the last connector unplugged, Abrehem gathered up a battered set of aural bafflers and pressed them over his ears before swinging out onto the iron-rung ladder bolted to the latticework tower of the lifter-rig. The commander’s cab was nearly a hundred and fifty metres above the deck, but Abrehem felt no sense of vertigo; he’d worked the rigs on Joura too long for any fear of heights to remain.

  The multiple arms of the lifter-rig splayed out from his control cab like the rigid steel tentacles of a high-viz squid. All ten of Virtanen’s two hundred metre arms were capable of ascending and descending, rotating through three hundred and sixty degrees or articulating in more convoluted ways as its operator desired. Each arm was equipped with a multitude of attachments: basic hooks, magnets, a variety of cutting and welding tools, as well as more specialised mechadendrite-enabled manipulator claws.

  Virtanen was a relatively small machine, but it was sturdy, reliable and had a hefty load capacity that belied its smaller stature compared to the titanic lifting rigs worked by Turentek himself. Its service history and structural integrity rating were both impressive and its machine-spirit appeared only too eager to accept a new controller.

  But it was no Savickas. That had been a lifter-rig without limits, an unrelenting workhorse of a machine that seemed to anticipate every command before it was issued and never, ever, failed to link with a shipping container first time.

  According to Totha Mu-32, the previous incumbent of Abrehem’s new command throne had been killed during the attack of the eldar pirates.

  ‘I think Virtanen was waiting for you,’ Totha Mu-32 had said when Abrehem first sat in the command throne. ‘Its name means “small river”, but even the smallest river can cut a mountain in half given time, yes? I think you will get along very well.’

  Abrehem had no answer to that, and merely shrugged, still uncomfortable at the notion
that people thought him Machine-touched. He certainly didn’t feel any intimate connection to the godhood of all machines. Totha Mu-32 had told him that such men as he were rare indeed, bringing a deeply implanted electoo up to the surface of his organics, a depiction of a coiled dragon with silver and bronze scales.

  When Abrehem asked the overseer what the tattoo represented, Totha Mu-32 told him it was the mark of a proscribed Martian sect that made it their business to seek out and worship Machine-touched individuals. Archmagos Telok, the object of this voyage of exploration, was said to be so blessed, and shipboard rumour had it that Magos Blaylock likewise had the eye of the Omnissiah upon him. To have a trinity of such individuals connected to this voyage was seen as a sign of great import by Totha Mu-32, a physical manifestation of the Originator, the Scion and the Motive Force.

  Abrehem listened to Totha Mu-32’s sermons in silence, finding the overseer’s zeal for his beatification misplaced and more than a little off-putting.

  He certainly had no sense that he was in any way special.

  The hard metal of a bionic arm grafted to his right shoulder seemed to mock that belief.

  The augmetic limb had been fitted after a contraband plasma pistol that shouldn’t have been able to fire had explosively overheated and melted the flesh and bone from his body after he’d used it to shoot dead an eldar warrior-chief. He didn’t like to think of that moment, the bowel-loosening terror of the xeno-killers descending upon them, only to be cut apart into bloody chunks by a cyborg death machine that had apparently adopted him as its new master. His plea to Sebastian Thor and his bloody handprint had opened the door to the arco-flagellant’s dormis chamber, which Totha-Mu 32 and a great many others were taking as a sign of his divine favour.

  Abrehem shook off thoughts of Totha Mu-32’s reverence, knowing that a moment’s inattention could cost him his life when he was hundreds of metres above a hard steel deck.

  He worked his way down the ladder, and even with the aural bafflers the noise in the forge-temple was almost deafening. Heavy machinery sprouted like the towering skeletal remains of vast-necked sauropods around the temple’s perimeter, and arch-backed rigs rumbled overhead on suspended rails, hauling containers weighing thousands of tonnes back and forth with no more effort than a Cadian might carry his kit-bag. Magos Turentek himself worked across the centre-line of the forge-temple, handling the largest and heaviest containers personally. His multiple loader arms depended from a central machine-hub where the organic components of his body were interred like the biological scraps of a god-machine’s princeps.

  Most of the containers being loaded onto the vast-hulled shipping rigs contained modular plates of adamantium and structural members intended for the lower decks. Kilometres of hull plating had been torn from the Speranza by the crossing of the Halo Scar and the guns of the eldar warship – rendering entire districts of the Ark Mechanicus uninhabitable. The prow forges were producing millions of metric tonnes of desperately-needed components for the ship’s repair crews, but Abrehem’s experienced eye saw the pace was slowing as the Speranza’s supply of raw materials was increasingly depleted.

  Abrehem reached one of the transit walkways on the cliff-like walls of the forge-temple and took a moment to catch his breath. The air here was bitter and electrical, with an acrid chemical tang that left the men working here with raspingly sore throats and increased breathing difficulties. This, combined with months spent below decks and working backbreaking shifts in the reclamation halls or plasma refuelling details with little sleep and only nutrient paste to sustain him, had robbed Abrehem of his once robust physique. Daily doses of Hawke’s shine didn’t help, but sometimes it was the only thing that knocked him out enough to sleep.

  He rubbed a hand over his shorn scalp, a decision he and his fellow bondsman had taken in a fit of righteous indignation to turn them into the drones the Mechanicus believed them to be. Though their actions during the eldar attack had improved their lot somewhat, Abrehem’s anger at the inhuman treatment of the below-deck bondsmen still smouldered like a banked fire. Kept as slaves and regarded simply as assets, numbers and mortal resources, the bondsmen existed in a nightmare that would only end with their death.

  The Mechanicus believed its bondsmen were honoured to serve the Omnissiah this way!

  Abrehem spat a wad of oily phlegm and climbed back onto the ladder. Below, he could see Coyne and Hawke clambering down towards the deck from their sub-control cabs, where they managed the articulation and linkage of the various connectors to whatever was being transported.

  Awaiting them on the deck were two hooded figures, one robed in the red and gold of a Mechanicus overseer, the other swathed in the black cloak of a death penitent. Both looked up at him with a measure of devotion. Abrehem relished speaking to neither of them, not that Rasselas X-42 ever spoke much.

  Eventually he reached the deck, and took another breath of chem-scented air.

  ‘A successful shift,’ said Totha Mu-32. ‘Virtanen has bonded well with you.’

  ‘It’s a good rig,’ replied Abrehem. ‘Smaller than we’re used to, but it’s got heart.’

  ‘It’s no Savickas,’ said Coyne, echoing Abrehem’s earlier sentiment.

  Hawke shrugged. ‘One lifter’s much like another,’ he said.

  ‘Shows how much you know rigs,’ said Abrehem. ‘What was it you did on Joura again?’

  ‘As little as possible would be my bet,’ quipped Coyne, rolling his shoulders to ease the itching of the synth-skin grafts on his back where he’d taken a razored fragment from a ricocheting eldar projectile.

  ‘Damn straight,’ said Hawke with a wink. ‘After the regiment tossed me out, I worked Cargo-8s mostly, driving the containers between the depots and the sub-orbitals. Though that was grunt work compared to being a moderati on a lifter-rig.’

  Abrehem sent an amused glance at Coyne, and his fellow rigman hid a grin at Hawke’s boyish enthusiasm for working the lifter-rigs. Give it a month of monotony and he’d soon think twice about rating his job in the sub-cab as being anything close to a Titan moderati’s role.

  ‘May I?’ asked Totha Mu-32, reaching up to examine the raw flesh at Abrehem’s temples and forehead. Abrehem nodded and Rasselas X-42 bristled at the overseer’s familiar touch. He waved the arco-flagellant to submission. It didn’t matter how many times Abrehem reinforced that certain people weren’t to be considered threats, Rasselas X-42 still viewed everyone who came near him as a potential assassin.

  Though now clad in baggy fatigues, heavy work boots and a kevlar vest machined to his impossibly muscular form, Rasselas X-42 could never be mistaken for anything other than the slaughterman he was. Though currently obscured by the wide sleeves of his penitent’s robe, his gauntlet-hands were silver-sheened electro-flails capable of tearing through steel and bone with equal ease. The back and crown of his skull were sheathed in metal and a circular Cog Mechanicus of blood-red iron stood proud on his forehead. Sharpened metal teeth glinted in the shadows beneath his hood and flickering combat-optics shimmered with a faint cherry red glow.

  ‘You know there is no need for you to wear the command headset,’ said Totha Mu-32. ‘If you concentrate more fully, the augmetic eyes you inherited from your father can display the datasphere more efficiently.’

  Abrehem nodded. ‘I know, but I’m not confident enough in my control over the noospheric inloads to feel comfortable commanding Virtanen by them alone.’

  ‘You are Machine-touched,’ asked Totha Mu-32. ‘Trust in the Omnissiah and it will come.’

  ‘If that bastard’s bloody Machine-touched, then how come he damn near smashed into our rig’s arm?’ said a rasping voice.

  Abrehem turned as a gang of six men appeared around the corner of Virtanen’s wide baseplate. All six wore bondsmen coveralls and had the same gaunt-faced meanness common to the Speranza’s below-deck crew. Three men sported augmetics on their arms and craniums, while the rest were ornamented with rig-tattoos, mohawks and ritual brow piercin
gs. They carried heavy power wrenches and other, similarly brutal-looking tools.

  Pulsing just beneath the skin of the man who’d spoken was a wolf-head electoo, crudely applied and fuzzed with bio-electric static. He carried a buzzing mag-hammer in his piston-boosted arms and looked like he knew how to use it in a tight spot.

  ‘Wulfse,’ said Abrehem.

  ‘You’re the sons of bitches that almost hit us!’ snapped Hawke. ‘What in the name of Thor’s backside are blind idiots like you doing running a lifter-rig?’

  Hawke’s vehemence caught the men by surprise, but for all his bluster, their newest rigman was right. The near miss had been the fault of Wulfse’s crew, but it didn’t look like they were in the mood to hear that.

  ‘Listen,’ said Abrehem. ‘Nothing happened, right? Nobody got hurt and we’ll all be a bit more careful next time, right?’

  ‘There ain’t going to be a next time,’ snarled the lead rigman of the Wulfse. ‘Only thing you’ll be driving is a medicae gurney.’

  Totha Mu-32’s floodstream surged with binaric authority signifiers.

  ‘You men are to return to your posts immediately,’ he said. ‘If there has been an infraction of rig safety protocols, I assure you those responsible will be assigned the required punishment.’

  ‘Stay out of this, overseer,’ warned the man, hefting the mag-hammer onto his shoulder. ‘Rigmen sort out their own discipline.’

  That at least was true, reflected Abrehem, but right now he wished it wasn’t.

  The man launched himself at Abrehem, bringing the mag-hammer around in a brutal arc.

  Abrehem felt a rush of movement and a black blur shot past him. He flinched as a whipcrack of electrical discharge snapped the air. When he looked up, the lead rigman of Wulfse was pinned to the side of Virtanen’s baseplate.

  Rasselas X-42’s left arm was extended ramrod straight, his stiffened electro-flails impaling the man through his shoulder and holding him a metre off the deck. The rigman’s coveralls were soaked with blood and his face was bleached of colour by pain and shock. Rasselas X-42 drew back his right arm, the flails whipping out to form slicing claws of crackling metal.