Sons of the Forge

by Nick Kyme

  Reyne gave a wary affirmative but went about his duty. In moments the boosted plasma engines of the Chalice of Fire could be felt thrumming through the lower decks.

  ‘We’ll cross the void in our power armour, through the tear in the hull,’ Obek declared to the others.

  No one gainsaid him.

  Krask grinned ferally. ‘Eye to eye,’ he said.

  ‘As near as Reyne dares,’ Obek confirmed, and was heading from the secure dock, intent on the mission, when he found Xen in his path.

  ‘You are wounded, brother-captain. I can see it in the way you move… or don’t move.’

  ‘So are you, Vexillary.’

  Xen sharply drew both swords. Ignus and Drakos were either side of Obek’s neck before he had a hand on his blade’s hilt.

  ‘Not as badly as you. Besides,’ he said, politely sheathing his swords, ‘someone must remain behind if this fails. If T’kell does not return, you are custodian of the artefacts.’ And he looked down reverently at the drake-headed stave, a sense of wonderment in his eyes. ‘We should not abandon our mission.’

  ‘And here I was believing you in search of glory again,’ Obek replied, wryly.

  Xen smiled, ‘Who says I am not?’

  ‘I for one,’ said Obek, and laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘Bring back our Forgefather,’ he told him.

  ‘Vulkan lives,’ said Xen, as he, Krask and the Terminators moved out.

  ‘Vulkan lives,’ Obek replied as he watched them go.

  The blast doors parted, emitting clouds of white gas and the flashing spectrum of the Obstinate’s embarkation deck’s warning lamps. Through them stepped Ulok, who looked incredulously at the Immortal standing fifty feet away at the end of the access conduit. The lumens were dimmed and the Iron Father’s bionic eye shone almost malevolently in the darkness.

  Only when Ahrem Gallikus raised his power maul in salute did Ulok realise what was actually happening.

  Ulok’s face fell, as stern and cold as the metal that had colonised his body.

  ‘Flesh is weak,’ he said, disappointed, and ordered the Revenants to attack.

  The engine at the heart of the cryo-stasis vault was beyond byzantine. Constructed around a hexagonal core as large as a Contemptor, its cables and pipes extended throughout the hectare-sized chamber to feed every casket. Embedded deep and shrouded in cryogenic mist, it could not be seen from the threshold. Up close it took on a sinister aspect, like a metallic leviathan, its tentacles stretching off into the gloom.

  The sheer ranks of frozen legionaries standing in rows was staggering. Though the mist from the cryo-freezing process obscured much, it was obvious to T’kell that there must be hundreds, possibly more. An army, linked by tubes and pipes, their faces locked behind panes of ice. It was cold, and it was metal throughout, a laboratory and not a barracks. A keen mind, but one afflicted by hubris and driven by obsession had created this place. In its raising, T’kell saw everything his Martian masters had warned him about. He saw madness.

  Vulkan had taught his sons many things: metal forging, self-sacrifice and nobility. He had wrenched himself from the very brink of self-annihilation. He had also espoused his theology of the Circle of Fire, and though the primarch was now gone, it was this belief that brought hope to many and which T’kell now saw had been thoughtlessly subverted by Iron Father Ulok.

  ‘That which ends, ends, and so returns to the earth,’ he intoned, using his plasma cutter to shear open the outer housing of the engine. It took a few minutes, for its carapace was thick, but once through T’kell found the inload ports where he would gain access to the leviathan’s core.

  ‘To be born again in the Circle of Fire,’ he said, releasing his haptic mechadendrites. ‘To be renewed.’

  This was not renewal or rebirth; it was stagnation, a cruel and slow decay to oblivion. He could think of no worse fate.

  Bracing himself, T’kell used his mechadendrites to interface with the machine. Lancing pain filled his body at the moment of connection, demonstrating how weak he still was. Ulok had prepared defences to his beloved, horrific creation. Paranoid as he obviously was, he had considered another Techmarine or even an adept of the Mechanicum might attempt to destroy the leviathan from within.

  Ostensibly it was servos, circuits, processors, but what lay beyond those cold engineered components was something darker. As T’kell engaged with the machine, he encountered complex neuromorphic subroutines embedded within the leviathan’s standard operating protocols, placed there to resist his efforts to incite a catastrophic shutdown. An almost abominable intelligence possessed the machine, intent on the foreign invader’s expulsion and destruction.

  A slabbed road stretched before him, a part of the technoscape, but as real as stone or metal underfoot. He heard his boots echo as he traversed what he knew to be the datastream. The sound resonated, but oddly, hollowly, betraying the fact it was not sound at all but merely code his brain had begun to datasift as one footstep followed another.

  At the end of the road lay a gate, as tall as Olympus Mons and rendered in iridescent crystal. And beyond the gate, was the storm.

  T’kell could feel it repelling him with its hate and anger. He had breached its cordon and it would kill him for this transgression. As he closed on the gate, T’kell realised he was no longer clad in power armour, but in an archaic suit of tempered drake hide like a dragonknight of ages past. In his hand, he clutched a lance, seemingly plucked from the air that was not air.

  Two columns held the gate in place, and though there was no wall, no barrier either side, T’kell knew he must pass through this portal to confront the machine at the eye of the storm. He broke into a run, his lance held aloft and pointed forwards in the manner of a throwing spear, but as he closed on the gate itself the columns began to turn.

  On the sides that had faced directly away from T’kell were carved statues, on each a cyclops wrenched from the days of Terran myth. In a moment of terrifying synchronicity, both creatures opened their eye to behold the interloper.

  With a bellow, they stepped forward, leaving the columns behind and shaking the ground with the sheer weight of their tread.

  T’kell held firm, undaunted as he charged and felt the lance-tip pierce flesh…

  The cyclops roared, its muscular flank impaled by three feet of steel. It bucked and thrashed in its agony, shaking T’kell violently, but he clung on to the haft of his weapon. The second creature tried to grasp him in its meaty hands but, still hanging on to the lance one-handed in mid-air, T’kell drew a sword out of the datastream, its blade blazing with light.

  One stroke and the sword parted the cyclops’ hand from its wrist. Dark ooze flowed from the stump with a sound like machine static. Shrinking, it sank to its knees and T’kell released his grip on the lance still transfixed in the first creature. As he fell, he gripped his sword two-handed and struck off the head of the diminutive cyclops.

  As he turned, the first cyclops freed itself. It snapped the lance in two, and it discorporated into fragments of shattered code. But T’kell didn’t need it. He had the blade, and as the creature came for him, its eye alive with vengeance, the sword grew brighter still…

  It burned the creature, blinding it before searing the skin from its bones, and soon all that remained was a wire frame that capitulated under the weight of its own broken logic.

  The dust of the cyclops’ banishment lingered for a few seconds before being swept away, consumed by the voracious datastream feeding the storm.

  The gate yawned open as T’kell stood before it.

  All that remained was the storm and as he closed upon the threshold, he felt the presence of the machine and saw a lumbering shadow only partially concealed by the tempest.

  He stepped forwards and the storm took him.

  He saw the beast, the many-tentacled leviathan, and from its chasmal maw it spat lightning…


  Assailed by a barrage of power surges that sought to burn out his nervous system, T’kell held on. Amongst a screed of hostile scrapcode, he searched for the leviathan’s cortex and found a determined and hostile defender, a hunter-killer in all but name.

  He engaged it. The stench of his burning flesh was repellant, the pain almost unbearable but he held on. Even when his haptic implants fused to the inload ports, he held on.

  And when it became too much, he roared.

  ‘Vulkan!’

  Smoke was rising from his armour. Heat had seared the joints, but he held on.

  The storm beat against him and the lightning hammered his drake-hide armour until it was nothing but a sheath of blackened flesh. T’kell held the blade aloft, its light flickering against the darkness of the leviathan’s encroaching tentacles as it sought to smother him.

  He cried out, ‘Vulkan!’ but the word was emitted as a screed of code that fed the flame within the sword and saw it rekindled.

  The light grew, as bright as a sun and burning. It earthed the lightning, and took the storm’s power and fury for its own. The beast was close – it was all that T’kell could see. A single, glassy eye reared up before him and T’kell saw his fire-ravaged face reflected in it. It was abyssal, abomi­nable, and now it must die.

  He forged the blade in his hand into a screed of purifying code and as he roared his defiance at the blackness of the abyss, he thrust…

  Gallikus backed up. He was bleeding. One of his retinal lenses had burst and a blood-shot eye stared out through the shattered aperture to regard his enemies.

  Enemies… I once called them brothers.

  Six of the Revenants were down. They needed to return to cryo-stasis. They needed the machine.

  ‘They’re getting slower…’ said Gallikus, slurring his words.

  Ulok did not answer. He watched from a short distance away, letting his deathless cohorts do the fighting.

  Gallikus smiled bitterly as he raised his battered shield. Four more Revenants came at him.

  Behind them, Ulok waited.

  T’kell fell to his knees. Thin wisps of vapour trailed upwards from the armour now fused to his stricken body where the heat had begun to melt and evaporate the layer of hoarfrost encasing him.

  The leviathan was dead. He had slain it.

  Managing to raise his head, T’kell looked upon the caskets and saw that it was done.

  The cold, dead eyes staring blankly through rimes of rapidly diminishing frost showed no awareness of their fate, or gratitude at their release, at least not those that T’kell could see.

  ‘That which ends, ends,’ he said, his voice no louder than a croak, and would have fallen but for the arm around his chest.

  ‘Brother Drake,’ said Saurian. ‘It seems my arrival is timely. We must get you off this ship.’

  With effort, the Apothecary managed to steady T’kell so he would not fall and then told him to turn aside as he severed the mechadendrites linking the Techmarine to the machine. A last stab of agony flared and then dulled as T’kell was released.

  ‘You have my gratitude…’ he said, breathless.

  ‘Don’t thank me until you are off the ship. And to that end, I’ll need to give you something so you can walk. The pain will only be momentary.’

  Saurian took a vial from his narthecium kit and injected T’kell in the neck. As he was helped to his feet, T’kell found his pain greatly lessened and the fog of his injuries clearing.

  ‘Stimulant,’ Saurian explained. ‘It will only last for a while. Come.’

  He led the Techmarine from the silent cryo-chamber, not sparing so much as a glance at the entombed legionaries, and brought him to an access hatch that was barely large enough to accommodate his armoured bulk.

  ‘I should let Gallikus know,’ said T’kell.

  ‘He’ll know,’ said Saurian, and gestured to the access hatch. ‘That conduit will take you all the way down to the launch bays. A ship is already prepared for you. It was done at the same time I sent your brothers.’

  T’kell nodded. ‘They are your brothers too, Saurian.’

  ‘No. I think not. The Legion died on Isstvan V. I saw it perish. I am a ghost, no different to the thawing bodies in that mausoleum we just left.’

  ‘Then well met, brother,’ T’kell replied. ‘If we make it back to Nocturne, I will see your name is remembered.’

  ‘I had a name once. I no longer carry it. I am content to be Saurian.’

  ‘So be it.’ T’kell and Saurian clasped forearms, before he entered the hatch and left the enigmatic Apothecary behind.

  The last of the Revenants fell. Gallikus wept with every blow, for it was with both grief and vindication that he ended their suffering.

  His shield hung from his arm in pieces and he shrugged it off. His power maul had become little more than a bludgeon.

  ‘Come then, Iron Father,’ he beckoned, drawing his gladius and extending it wearily in Ulok’s direction, ‘and let my betrayal be done.’

  Ulok regarded the defeated warrior and unslung his cog-toothed axe. An energy surge crackled cerulean along the blade’s edge.

  ‘You will make a worthy Revenant, Ahrem,’ he said coldly. ‘I have always thought so.’

  ‘Only if you take me alive, Iron Father.’

  ‘You will live,’ Ulok replied. ‘You will become your namesake and join the immortal ranks. You should feel honoured.’

  A host of silent warriors stood in ranks behind him, and Gallikus knew Ulok would not order them to attack. The Iron Father only needed for Gallikus to be worn down, not dead, before he committed him to an existence of eternal servitude.

  ‘And if there is no casket for me,’ said Gallikus, his feet unsteady, ‘what then?’

  Ulok’s eye narrowed, as he realised he had been deceived.

  ‘What have you done, brother?’

  ‘It’s not what I have done,’ Gallikus replied, before Ulok charged and struck him down.

  T’kell emerged onto one of the Obstinate’s embarkation decks. Relatively small for such a large vessel, the deck had launch bays and maintenance pits for six gunships, all but one of which were empty. A reserve launch bay for use in extremis, he reasoned.

  A lone vessel rested on its landing stanchions, facing one of the aft launch bays. The gate was closed but not sealed. A skeleton deck crew was in attendance, engaged in maintenance. Shrouded lumens gave off little light and T’kell kept to the shadows as he crossed the threshold, but the crewmen paid him no heed and he realised they were all servitors.

  Saurian had been as good as his word, and despite his injuries T’kell began to move confidently towards his salvation.

  Halfway to the waiting gunship the launch gate icon went from green to red. A door from an upper deck opened and a cohort of twenty Iron Hands legionaries stepped out from a conveyer with bolters trained on the Techmarine.

  T’kell stopped, and heard the crackle of the ship’s vox emitting from somewhere in the vaults of the hangar.

  A voice he did not recognise echoed mechanically.

  ‘Forgemaster T’kell… They have orders to kill you if you attempt to escape,’ it said. ‘I am Iron Father Ulok and the Obstinate is my ship. Legionary Gallikus is dead. I assume it was he that asked you to sabotage the cryo-genesis chamber. I did not wish to kill him, but he left me no choice.’ The voice paused, as if debating the next words. ‘I am honoured to have you aboard, but I will kill you too if you force my hand.’

  The Iron Hands legionaries advanced in lockstep, and T’kell knew by the way they moved that they were Ulok’s creatures, just like those he had seen frozen and entombed.

  ‘Am I to be your prisoner?’ T’kell asked.

  A moment of silence lapsed that seemed to stretch.

  ‘Yes. You will assist me in repairing the machine you trie
d to destroy.’

  ‘I cannot,’ said T’kell. ‘I will not.’

  ‘You say that,’ said Ulok, ‘as if you think you have a choice.’

  The vox-feed cut off abruptly and T’kell was left alone facing the Iron Hands. They weren’t here to kill him. They would have done so already. Ulok had lied about that. They were here to apprehend him. A cryo-chamber must have survived, kept somewhere else aboard the ship and known only to the Iron Father. It was the only reason Ulok would need him to repair the machine.

  The vox crackled again, and for a moment T’kell thought Ulok had returned to gloat, but the feed emanated from his gorget.

  ‘Forgefather…’

  It was Ak’nun Xen. He was running. In the background, T’kell heard the sound of a blast door being released and the slow churn of its mechanism.

  ‘Vexillary.’

  Still T’kell did not move, still the Iron Hands legionaries advanced. They would be upon him soon.

  ‘We are coming for you, we–’

  ‘No.’

  ‘T’kell we are about to–’

  ‘No, brother. It’s too late. Tell Obek to fire upon this ship. I have disengaged its shields but I don’t know for how long.’

  ‘We are at the launch bay now.’

  ‘It’s too late, Xen. Destroy the ship.’

  A few moments passed. Xen would be raising Obek or conferring with Krask, if he yet lived. The Iron Hands legionaries reached him now and T’kell sank to his knees before them, head bowed in submission.

  The urgency in Xen’s voice had faded when he replied, turned to resignation. ‘Forgefather, I…’

  ‘Vulkan lives, brother,’ said T’kell, severing the feed.

  A gauntleted hand grasped his shoulder, and he closed his eyes.

  He was dragged to his feet and marched from the embarkation deck into the conveyor. A few seconds into their ascent, the deck erupted in fire.

  T’kell smiled as the flames consumed him, as the Iron Hands burned and the Obstinate broke apart.

  The Eye of Vulkan had torn a mortal wound that without its shields the Obstinate was unable to survive.