Hammer and Anvil

by James Swallow

  Danae hesitated at the edge. ‘Do we follow?’ She shot a look at Imogen. ‘Sister Superior, your orders?’

  ‘Whatever that one is,’ said Kora, ‘human or xenos, she is of a broken mind. One look in those eyes makes that clear as daybreak.’

  Imogen made a terse gesture, leading with her hand. The Sisters followed the hooded woman off the platform and onto the dock.

  Verity gave an involuntary shiver. All around machines moved slowly, great turning armatures and floating modules going this way and that. It gave the impression of a massive engine of some sort, turning at a steady idle. She could not shake the sense that an intelligence was at work in this place, intent on alien schemes that would only bode ill for the Sisterhood.

  Imogen drew herself up. The hesitation, the moment of fear she had shown in the sandstone caverns, that was gone now, and she seemed determined to expunge the echo of it with decisive action. ‘I will not have our path determined by the whim of an unhinged stranger! We are the daughters of Saint Katherine, honour to her glory–’

  ‘Honour to her glory,’ repeated the Battle Sisters, in immediate rote chorus.

  ‘And we are not here to die!’ Imogen went on. ‘This day unfolds to our will.’ She glanced at Danae. ‘Take two Sisters… Miriya and the nursemaid…’

  The woman with the meltagun didn’t even attempt to hide her displeasure as she shot a look at Verity. ‘Aye, mistress.’

  The Sister Superior pointed to the horizontal spike tower. ‘Scout that construct. Look for something that resembles a command centre or a control nexus. Report in by vox, standard interval.’ She looked back at Cassandra and Kora. ‘You are with me.’

  ‘And the… The interloper?’ Cassandra asked, nodding in the direction the hooded woman had gone.

  ‘We track her,’ Imogen said. ‘She wants to show us something. We’ll find out what that is.’

  The group broke into two elements and Verity fell in step following Miriya as the Battle Sister took point in their formation. In turn, Danae walked a few metres behind her, panning her heavy gun back and forth, searching for a target. Within moments, Imogen and the other Sisters were gone, vanishing behind a forest of towering metal tubes and iron-stone supports.

  The hum and crackle of energy fizzed above their heads where power conduits channelled lazy streams of green lightning back and forth. Platforms like the one they had ridden on moved silently, impelled by invisible ribbons of force. Verity took each step carefully, measuring her path and trying to watch every angle of approach at once. She had no illusions that her rudimentary military training would be of any great use if an attack came, but she would not allow herself to be the one to falter in her vigilance. This was alien ground, there was no doubt about that. On Sanctuary 101, even though it was a desolate outpost world, Verity had always felt that the God-Emperor’s sight could reach her.

  But this place… Whatever or wherever it was… She had never known something so alien.

  ‘What is it all for?’ She asked the question preying on her mind.

  ‘Perhaps it is their home,’ offered Miriya, without looking back. ‘Perhaps the conduit we passed through has taken us to their point of origin.’

  Such a thought made Verity’s blood run cold, and she made the sign of the aquila. ‘I pray that is not so.’

  ‘Wherever we are,’ Miriya went on, ‘this is not a place for the likes of us.’ She nodded towards towering ramps and other crescent-consoles like the one they had seen destroyed earlier. The constructs were strangely out-of-scale to human dimensions. They were made for something taller, a breed of life form that would tower over Verity, and one with a radically different set of aesthetic senses. The repetition of dull chrome and black stone went on forever, broken only by glassy crystals sculpted into coffin-like geometries, or golden iconography made of circles and radial lines.

  The hospitaller cast her eye over the icons as they passed beneath arches detailed with them. It was a language, she decided. The configuration of it could mean nothing else. She could not help but wonder what it might have said if she could translate it into Imperial Gothic. Verity touched the auspex unit hanging at her belt. In a moment of clarity she had turned the device’s memory spools to an automatic recording state; there was no telling what they might find in here, and if they should make it back to safety, a log of what they encountered might prove invaluable as intelligence.

  If they made it back.

  The deck beneath them slowly became a ramp that curved up around a thick circular pillar, and with a nod from Danae, they ventured on. The underside of the spike-tower was above them now, throwing out dazzling shocks of white light. This close to it, Verity could see what appeared to be window slits in the flanks of the construction.

  ‘We’ll get as near as we can,’ said Sister Danae. ‘Search for a path inside. In the meantime, be wary.’

  But as they rose, they saw nothing, and the tension began to settle on Verity like a cloak of heavy mail. Finally, she voiced her concern. ‘Why have the xenos not come after us? They passed through the portals to attack the Mechanicus outpost, but now we are in the heart of their lair, they ignore our presence?’

  ‘A good question,’ grumbled Danae, clearly occupied by the same disquiet.

  ‘The ones in the caves,’ said Miriya. ‘Something must have summoned them.’

  Danae gave a sniff. ‘How can you know that?’

  ‘There was an energy effect before the portals opened. I think it was that tech-priest’s doing. We have no idea how long he and his explorators were down in the arroyo. The God-Emperor alone knows what they were doing there, and what they may have meddled with.’

  ‘Poking swords into a hornet’s nest, aye,’ said the other Battle Sister. ‘You have the truth there. If we return to the convent, there will be a hard reckoning for the works of the questor and his brethren.’

  ‘But the…’ Verity swallowed. ‘The necrons.’ Just saying the name made her stiffen. ‘They must know we are here, now. Why do they not come to kill us?’

  Miriya halted and glanced up. Above them, a wide frame of metal girders drifted along an inverted rail spur. A battalion’s worth of silent warrior mechanicals dangled from the frames like corpses on meat hooks. ‘They are quiescent,’ she said, her voice low as if she were afraid she might wake them. ‘We speak of them like hornets in a hive. So they are hibernating, as the hornets would be after a hard winter. They do not stir in number because nothing threatens them.’

  ‘Or perhaps it is because they are watching,’ said Danae grimly. ‘Perhaps our predicament amuses them.’

  ‘They have no soul, no mind as we know it,’ said Verity. ‘They are only automata.’

  Miriya shot her a look. ‘Are they? What does the Imperium really know of these things? What truths?’ She grimaced. ‘This is the root of the very reason the Ordo Xenos were so loathe to let us return to Sanctuary 101. They must have known we would find something here!’

  ‘You have it about-face, Sister,’ said Danae. ‘We did not find them. They found us.’

  ‘The hooded one?’ said Verity.

  Danae gave a nod. ‘We should have killed that creature when we had the chance.’

  Miriya’s lips thinned, but she said nothing more. Verity refused to remain silent, however. ‘It… She is not a thing.’

  ‘You saw the face!’ scoffed the Sororitas. ‘A mess of flesh and metal. Like one of those Mechanicus cogs, or worse! Pretending at being a woman.’

  ‘I saw her,’ Verity went on, her conviction growing. ‘But with different eyes to you, Sister Danae. I saw a lost soul. I saw…’ A kindred spirit. She could not bring herself to say the words. She frowned. ‘I know this,’ Verity began again. ‘If we survive to flee this nest of darkness, then she must come with us. In Saint Katherine’s name, I will not see the lost left to wander without the God-Emperor’s light.’

  ‘Have you forgotten your own words already, girl? You cannot save the soul of a thing that does not
possess one to begin with,’ Danae replied, her tone hardening. ‘Put such thoughts from your mind. That is an order.’

  Verity glanced at Miriya, but the Battle Sister said nothing.

  The black stone pyramids formed a long corridor, a grid of them arranged perfectly with each arrow-sharp corner a hand’s span from the construct to its side. The Sororitas moved in single file, casting wary glances up at the barrels of inert flux arc projectors that lay pointing into the darkness. Silent as they were now, the lines of Monoliths resembled arcane sculptures from the hand of some obsessive geometer, sinister and threatening even while at rest.

  ‘It is a manufactory,’ whispered Kora. ‘It must be so. We have found our way to some xenos equivalent of a forge-world.’

  Sister Imogen looked at the younger woman. ‘If that is so, then where are the workers, the helots? Where are the foundries and weapon shops?’ She shook her head. ‘This is more a reliquary than a place of creation.’ The Sororitas paused and ran her hand over the flank of a Monolith, making a mark in the thick patina of dust that coated it. ‘These devices have not seen power in thousands of years, I would warrant.’

  ‘Perhaps more than that,’ offered Cassandra.

  Imogen gave a grim nod and moved on. Presently, the floor dropped into a ramp that opened out to a long, low chamber dominated by rows of circular display screens.

  The hooded woman stood at the far end, kneading her hand, dressing the wound she had given herself. She glanced up as they approached.

  ‘Is this what you want to show us?’ asked Imogen.

  ‘You have not witnessed enough,’ came the husky reply. ‘Not yet.’

  Kora peered at one of the displays. It was filled with alien iconography, trailing down its span in cascades of unreadable text. ‘Not enough? An army of thousands, and you say it is not enough?’

  The revenant shook her head slowly, the hood exaggerating the motion. She pointed at one of the circle-screens. ‘Each of these represents a single cohort of combat forces. One group, like the Monolith brigade above.’

  Cassandra’s eyes widened as she took in the count of the screens. ‘But there are… There must be hundreds of displays here.’

  ‘And this is but one monitoring bay. There are many more.’

  Imogen’s jaw hardened. ‘I tire of your games, creature. You make your object lesson clear. Say it, then. The number, if you will. Tell us how many of these Light-Forsaken machines are sleeping here. A legion’s worth? More?’ She advanced, brandishing her boltgun. ‘Do you mean to terrify us?’

  ‘I mean to illuminate you,’ came the reply. The revenant backed away as Imogen approached. She opened her arms to take in the screens with the gesture. ‘The enemy waits out the march of time in this place.’

  ‘It is a tomb,’ said Kora.

  ‘No,’ Cassandra corrected. ‘It is an armoury.’

  The hood bobbed in agreement. ‘That one sees the truth of it. This complex is a staging area for invasion on a cosmic scale. A hub at the centre of the wheel, only one of many seeded in the deep past, left to wait out the aeons. Here they sleep, and they are maintained and prepared for eventual revivication. An army that numbers in the billions.’

  Silence fell as the weight of the words settled in on the women. Imogen’s face grew pale as she processed the import of what the revenant had said, her bravado slipping for a moment. ‘If what you say is so… With those portals, they could strike en masse in an instant. No force sent by lander or teleporatrium could hope to match such numbers…’

  ‘Is that what they did on Sanctuary?’ said Kora.

  ‘Aye,’ whispered the hooded woman, the word almost a sob.

  ‘We have seen enough xenos here to invade a dozen worlds.’ Cassandra shouldered her weapon. ‘And you tell us there are more? Where is this place? What cold hell have you dragged us to?’

  The revenant moved to a panel and raked a bony hand over it. The display changed, rippling as it did so. ‘I did not take you so far,’ she said. ‘Not so far at all. See.’ She pointed.

  Cassandra and Imogen studied the altered display. The rain of glyphs became a tactical display, orbital paths and system dynamics similar to something one might find on the bridge of a warship.

  ‘How did you do that?’ Kora demanded, but her question went unanswered.

  ‘You recognise this.’ The voice from deep inside the hood seemed distant.

  Imogen gave a slow nod. ‘I do. This is a visual of the planet… Of Sanctuary 101 and its lunar satellites.’

  ‘We came here,’ she went on, as the display centred on a dark orb of black rock spinning in a high orbit over the desert world, one of the planet’s captured asteroidal orbitals. ‘For what is stone is a lie, a falsehood hidden by alien guile.’

  ‘The Obsidian Moon.’ Cassandra gasped. ‘This complex exists… inside the Obsidian Moon?’

  ‘Impossible,’ snorted Imogen. ‘The Tybalt passed within a hundred kilometres of the surface of that satellite. A base of this magnitude would have been detected!’

  ‘Would it?’ came the question. ‘The machines alter space-time with their arcane technologies, they twist dimension and void. You felt that in the gateways. They do the same here, coring out the moon as their hibernaculum, building something of impossible aspect where it should not exist.’

  ‘And yet it does,’ added Cassandra. She shuddered. ‘It stretches the mind to contemplate such terrible science in the hands of aliens.’

  Imogen glared at the revenant, emotions warring across her face. Finally, inevitably, anger won through. ‘We have seen enough. We must return to the planet. A warning must be given!’

  But the hooded woman shook her head. ‘This is not what you must see.’ She beckoned with her bloodied hand. ‘Come with me.’

  They entered the tower and found it made almost entirely of the black stone. Every face of it was polished to a sheen, and sculpted in sharp angles harsh enough to cut flesh if one were to press upon them. Miriya cast an eye over the walls in passing. Only a beam, a laser device of some impressive power, would have been able to forge such mathematically intricate designs. There were no blemishes, nothing to mar the cold perfection of the architecture; only a repeating shield-shaped motif etched into the walls. The design resembled an oval buckler, or the carapace of a beetle.

  ‘The dust…’ Verity said it before either Miriya or Danae had formed the thought. ‘On the lower levels, the dust of ages was everywhere. But here… Nothing.’ She looked at the Battle Sister. ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It means that this place may be…’ Miriya struggled to find the right word. ‘Active.’

  ‘Weapons,’ reminded Danae, as she progressed down the black corridor. ‘If the enemy is revealed, we must be ready.’ The command was more for the hospitaller’s sake than Miriya’s, but still she dutifully re-checked her bolter’s fire select switch once again.

  The beams from the underbarrel torches on their boltguns probed the darkness, finding a hexagonal metal door. A soft green glow emitted from a circular panel in the wall nearby.

  ‘An operational system there,’ noted Verity.

  Danae nodded, and using silent battlesign gestures, ordered Miriya to take up a ready position on the far side of the hatch. When she was ready, the veteran slapped at the control and the hex-hatch opened, splitting apart into triangles that retreated into the stone. A draught of stale air wafted out, and Miriya caught the cloying taste of old decay upon it. The sensation collected at the back of her throat, but she resisted the reflex to cough and spit.

  Leading with her meltagun, Danae entered the chamber beyond and Miriya fell in with her, aware of Verity taking nervous, careful steps behind her.

  ‘Do you smell that?’ said the hospitaller, grim-faced.

  ‘Something… rotting?’ Danae ventured.

  The chamber was dark, and the light following them in through the doorway was weak. The torches picked out only pockets of imagery – a steel platform there, a cluster of viri
dian tubes here – and nothing that made sense to Miriya.

  ‘On Tsan Domus,’ Verity continued. ‘I came to know that smell.’ She spoke in a dead, distant voice. ‘The air reeked of it.’

  Danae halted, half turning. ‘That world was a war grave,’ she began. ‘It–’

  Miriya saw the other woman’s boot cross a line of dark metal in the floor, and some invisible switch was tripped. Rippling out around them like a cascade of silent lightning, illuminators snapped into life and enveloped the chamber in a stark, antiseptic glow.

  Danae spun back on her heel and what she saw made her recoil. She made a small noise of alarm, a faint cry, something she was probably not even aware of. Miriya’s reaction had no voice, but she felt it in the blood draining from her face and the sudden chilly sweat beading her neck. For her part, Verity seemed only sorrowful. If the hospitaller had walked the fields of Tsan Domus – the site of Ultima Segmentum’s worst witch-cult uprising in four hundred years, where an entire Order Militant Minoris had been murdered and defiled – then what they saw now was the echo of that horror.

  In orbs made of cloudy, metallic glass there were corpses opened with all the detail of an anatomist’s textbook. Miriya’s knowledge of flesh and blood, human or otherwise, was limited to the knowledge of how to do harm to it and the most basic field medicine. About her, she saw layers of skin and bone, nerve and sinew flayed away, and suspended by unseen means. Museum-perfect displays that were part art-work, part experiment. The Battle Sister was reminded of the exploded technical diagrams of gun components she had memorised as a Novice Cantus. But instead of frame, coil and lever, these things were aorta, marrow and organ meat.

  There were dozens of the spheres, many of them containing exhibits so finely dismantled that it was impossible to know what species they might have originally come from. She saw what could have been parts of a greenskin, the dull blue hue of a tau, or perhaps they were all human remains, the last of the women who had died defending Sanctuary 101.

  That last thought rose slowly in Miriya’s mind, making her sickened and angry, becoming firm as she saw other objects in among the meat-diagrams. Here, a scrap of red combat cloak stained with dried blood, a Sabbat-pattern helmet stove in by a mammoth blow; there, a shattered plasma pistol lying near a grey, dust-caked metal drum etched with a fleur-de-lys. These things seemed like discards, trinkets to whatever mind had arranged the shape of this obscene gallery.