Armageddon

by Aaron Dembski-Bowden

She knew that there would come a day when her assistants unplugged her for the last time – when she would be denied a return to the machine’s soul, for fear its ingrained temperament and personality would swallow her weaker, too-human sense of identity.

  But that was not now. Not today.

  No, Zarha focused on her simulated regression to the womb, and it was all she ever needed to push aside the clinging insistency of Stormherald’s blunt and primal advances.

  Voices from the outside always reached her with a muffled dullness, despite the vox-receivers implanted where the cartilage of her inner ears once were, and the receptors built into the sides of her confinement tank.

  They spoke, those voices, of intrusion.

  Princeps Majoris Zarha did not share their appraisal of the situation. She turned in her milky fluid, as graceful as a sea-nymph from the tales of the impious Ancient Terra, though the augmented, wrinkled, hairless creature within the spacious coffin was anything but lovely. Her feet had been removed, for she would never need them again. Her bones were weak and soft, and her body curled and hunched.

  She replied to them, to her minions and brothers and sisters, with a stab of thought.

  I wish to speak with the intruders.

  ‘I wish to speak with the intruders,’ the vox-emitters on her coffin droned in a toneless echo of her silent words.

  One of them came closer to the clear walls of her amniotic chamber, looking in at the floating husk with great respect.

  ‘My princeps,’ it was Lonn speaking, and though she liked Lonn, he was not her favourite.

  Hello, Lonn. Where is Valian?

  ‘Hello, Lonn. Where is Valian?’

  ‘Moderati Carsomir is returning from the hive, my princeps. We thought you would still sleep for some time.’

  With all this noise? What was left of her face turned into a smile.

  ‘With all this noise?’

  ‘My princeps, Astartes are seeking to gain entrance.’

  I heard.

  ‘I heard.’

  I know.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Your orders, my princeps?’

  She twisted in the water again, in her own way as graceful as a seaborne mammal, despite the cables, wires and cords running from the coffin’s mechanical generators into her spine, skull and limbs. She was an ancient, withered marionette in the water, serene and smiling.

  Access granted.

  ‘Access granted.’

  —Access granted— said twelve voices at once.

  The crackling edge of the maul remained motionless, no more than a finger’s thickness above the lead skitarii’s skull. A small spark of electrical force snapped at the soldier’s face from the armed power weapon, forcing him to recoil.

  —Access granted— they all intoned a second time.

  Grimaldus deactivated his crozius hammer and shoved the augmented human soldiers aside.

  ‘That is what I thought you would say.’

  The journey was short and uneventful, through narrow corridors and ascending in elevator shafts, until they stood outside the sealed bulkhead doors of the bridge. The process of reaching the control deck involved a great deal of silently staring tech-adepts, their green-lens replacement eyes rotating and refocusing, either scanning or in some eerie mimicry of human facial expressions.

  The interior of the Titan was dark, too dark for unaugmented humans to work by, lit by the kind of emergency-red lighting the knights had only seen before in bunkers and ships at war. Their gene-enhanced eyes would have pierced the gloom with ease, even without the vision filters of their helm’s visors.

  No guards stood outside the large double bulkhead leading onto the command deck, and the doors themselves slid open on clunking rails as the knights waited.

  Artarion gripped Grimaldus’s scroll-draped pauldron.

  ‘Make this count, brother.’

  The Chaplain looked at the bearer of his war banner through the silver face of his slain master.

  ‘Trust me.’

  The command deck was a circular bay, with a raised dais in the centre surrounded by five ornate and heavily-cabled thrones. At the edges of the chamber, robed tech-adepts worked at consoles filled with a dizzying array of levers, dials and buttons.

  Two vast windows offered a grand view across the harsh landscape. With a shiver of realisation, Grimaldus knew he was looking out from the god-machine’s eyes.

  Upon the dais itself, a huge, clear-glass tank stood supported by humming machinery. Within its milky depths floated a naked crone, ravaged by her years and the bionics necessary to sustain her life under such conditions. She stared through bug-eyed augmetic replacements where her human eyes once were.

  ‘Greetings, Astartes,’ the vox-speakers built into her coffin spoke.

  ‘Princeps Majoris,’ Grimaldus nodded to the swimming husk. ‘An honour to stand in your presence.’

  There was a distinct pause before she replied, though her gaze never left him. ‘You are keen to speak with me. Waste no time on pleasantries. Stormherald wakes, and soon I must walk. Speak.’

  ‘I am told by one of this Titan’s pilots, as an ambassador to Helsreach, that Invigilata may not walk in our defence.’

  Again, the pause.

  ‘This is so. I command one-third of this Legio. The rest already walks in defence of the Hemlock region, many with your brothers, the Salamanders. Do you come to petition me for my portion of mighty Invigilata?’

  ‘I do not beg, princeps. I came to see you with my own eyes and ask you, face to face, to fight and die with us.’

  The withered woman smiled, the expression both maternal and amused.

  ‘But you have not yet completed your intended duty, Astartes.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  This time, the pause was longer. The old woman laughed within her bubbling tank. ‘We are not face to face.’

  The knight reached up to his armoured collar, disengaging the seals there.

  Without my helm, the scent of sacred oils and the chemical-rich tang of her amniotic tank are much stronger. The first thing she says to me is something I am not sure how to respond to.

  ‘You have very kind eyes.’

  Her own eyes are long-removed from her skull, the sockets covered by these bulbous lenses that twist as she watches me. I cannot return the comment she made, and I do not know what else I could say.

  So I say nothing.

  ‘What is your name?’

  ‘Grimaldus of the Black Templars.’

  ‘Now we are face to face, Grimaldus of the Black Templars. You have been bold enough to come here, and honour me with your face. I am no fool. I know how rare it is for a Chaplain to reveal his human features to one not of his brotherhood. Ask what you came to ask, and I will answer.’

  I step closer and press my palm against the casket’s surface. The vibration is twinned with that of my armour. I can feel the eyes of the Mechanicus minions upon me, upon my dark ceramite, their reverent gazes showing their longing to touch the perfection of the machinesmith’s craft represented by Astartes war-plate.

  And I look into the mechanical eyes of the princeps as she floats in the milky waters.

  ‘Princeps Zarha. Helsreach calls for you. Will you walk?’

  She smiles again, a blind grandmother with rotten teeth, as she presses her own palm against mine. Only the reinforced glass separates us.

  ‘Invigilata will walk.’

  Seven hours later, the people of the city heard a distant mechanical howl from the wastelands, eclipsing the cries of the lesser Titans. It echoed through the streets and around the spiretops, chilling the blood of every soul in the hive. Street dogs barked in response, as if sensing a larger predator nearby.

  Colonel Sarren shivered, though he smiled at the others in his command meeting. Through bloodshot eyes, heavy with sleeplessness, he regarded them all.

  ‘Stormherald has awoken,’ he said.

  Three days, just as promised, and the city shook with the tread
of the god-machines.

  Invigilata’s engines walked, and the great gates in the northern wall rumbled open to welcome them. Grimaldus and the hive’s command staff watched from atop the viewing platform. The knight blink-clicked a rune on his retinal display, accessing a coded channel.

  ‘Good morning, princeps,’ he said softly. ‘Welcome to Helsreach.’

  In the distance, a walking cathedral-fortress pounded its slow, stately way through the first city blocks.

  ‘Hail, Chaplain.’ The crone’s voice was laden with barely-contained energy. ‘I was born in a hive like this, you know.’

  ‘It is fitting then, that you’ll be dying here, Zarha.’

  ‘Do you say so, sir knight? Have you seen me today?’

  Grimaldus watched the distant form of Stormherald, as tall as the towers surrounding it.

  ‘It is impossible not to see you, princeps.’

  ‘It’s impossible to kill me, as well. Remember that, Grimaldus.’

  No human had ever dared use his name so informally before. The knight smiled for the first time in days.

  The city was finally sealed. Helsreach was ready.

  And as night fell, the sky caught fire.

  Chapter V

  Fire in the Sky

  Its name had been, in nobler years, The Purest Intent.

  A strike cruiser, constructed on the minor forge world Shevilar and granted to the Shadow Wolves Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes. It had been lost with all hands, captured by xenos raiders, thirty-two years before the Third War for Armageddon.

  When a huge and shapeless amalgamation of scrap and flame came burning through the cloud cover above the fortified city, warning sirens sounded once more across the hive. The squadron of fighters in the air – commanded by Korten Barasath – voxed their inability to engage. The hulk was burning up already, and far out of their capability to damage with their Lightnings’ lascannons and long-barrelled autocannons.

  The wing of fighters broke away as the hulk burned through the sky.

  Thousands of soldiers manning the immense walls watched as the wreckage blazed its way overhead. The air itself shook with its passage, a palpable tremor from the thrum of overworked, dying engines.

  Exactly eighteen seconds after it cleared the city walls, The Purest Intent ended its spaceborne life as it ploughed a new scar into Armageddon’s war-torn face. All of Helsreach shook to its foundations as the massive cruiser hammered into the ground and carved a blackened canyon in its wake.

  It took a further two minutes for the crippling damage inflicted by the impact to kill the immense, howling engines. Several booster rings still roared gaseous plasma and fire as they tried to propel the vessel through the stars, unaware it was half-buried in the stinging sulphuric sands that would be its grave.

  But the engines failed.

  The flames cooled.

  At last, there was silence.

  The Purest Intent was dead, its bones strewn across the wastelands of Armageddon.

  ‘The ship registers as The Purest Intent,’ Colonel Sarren read out from the data-slate to the crowded war room. ‘An Astartes vessel, strike cruiser-class, belonging to the–’

  ‘Shadow Wolves,’ Grimaldus cut him off. The knight’s vox-voice was harsh and mechanical, betraying no emotion. ‘The Black Templars were with them at the end.’

  ‘The end?’ asked Cyria Tyro.

  ‘They fell at the Battle of Varadon eleven years ago. Their last companies were annihilated by the tyranid-breed xenos.’

  Grimaldus closed his eyes and relished the momentary drift of focus into memory. Varadon. Blood of Dorn, it had been beautiful. No purer war had ever been fought. The enemy was endless, soulless, merciless… utterly alien, utterly hated, utterly without right to exist.

  The knights had tried to fight their way to join up with the last of their brother Chapter, but the enemy tide was unrelenting in its ferocity. The aliens were viciously cunning, their swarming tides of claws and flesh-hooked appendages smashing into the two Astartes forces and keeping them isolated from each other. The Wolves were there in full force. Varadon was their home world. Distress calls had been screamed into the warp by astropaths weeks before, when their fortress-monastery fell to the enemy.

  Grimaldus had been there at the very end. The last handful of Wolves, their blades broken and their bolters empty, had intoned the Litanies of Hate into the vox-channel they shared with the Black Templars. Such a death! They chanted their bitter fury at the foes even as they were slain. Grimaldus would never, could never, forget the Chapter’s final moment. A lone warrior, a mere battle-brother, horrendously wounded and on his knees beneath the Chapter’s standard, keeping the banner proud and upright even as the xenos creatures tore into him.

  The war banner would never be allowed to fall while one of the Wolves yet lived.

  Such a moment. Such honour. Such glory, to inspire warriors to remember your deeds for the rest of their own lives, and to fight harder in the hopes of matching such a beautiful death.

  Grimaldus breathed out, restoring his senses to the present with irritated reluctance. How filthy this war would be by comparison.

  Sarren continued. ‘The latest report from the fleet lists thirty-seven enemy ships have breached the blockade. Thirty-one were annihilated by the orbital defence array. Six have crashed onto the surface.’

  ‘What is the status of Battlefleet Armageddon?’ the knight asked.

  ‘Holding. But we have a greater comprehension of enemy numbers now. The four to nine day estimate has been abandoned, as of thirty minutes ago. This is the greatest greenskin fleet ever to face the Imperium. The fleet’s casualties are approaching a million souls. One or two more days, at best.’

  ‘Throne of the Emperor,’ one of the militia colonels swore in a whisper.

  ‘Focus,’ Grimaldus warned. ‘The crashed ship.’

  Here, the colonel paused and gestured to Grimaldus. ‘I suggest we hold, Reclusiarch. A handful of greenskin survivors cannot hope to survive an assault against the walls. They would be insane – even for orks – to try.’

  ‘We are comfortable letting these survivors add their numbers to their brethren when the enemy’s main forces make planetfall?’ This, from Cyria Tyro.

  ‘A handful of additional foes will make no difference,’ Sarren pointed out. ‘We all saw the Intent hit. Not many of its crew are walking away from that.’

  ‘I have fought the greenskins before, sir,’ Major Ryken put in. ‘They’re tougher than a marsh lizard’s hide. Almost unbreakable. There’ll be plenty who survived that crash, I promise you.’

  ‘Send a Titan,’ Commissar Falkov smiled without any humour whatsoever, and the room fell quiet. ‘I am not making a jest. Send a Titan to obliterate the wreckage. Inspire the men. Give them an overwhelming victory before the true battle is even joined. Morale among the Steel Legion is mediocre at best. It is lower still among the volunteer militia, and barely existent among the conscripts. So send a Titan. We need first blood in this war.’

  ‘At least get Barasath’s fighters to scan for life readings,’ Tyro added, ‘before we commit to sending any troops outside the city.’

  Throughout all of this, Grimaldus had remained silent. It was his silence that eventually killed all talk, and had faces turning towards him.

  The knight rose to his feet. Despite the slowness of his movement, his armour’s joints emitted a low snarl.

  ‘The commissar is correct,’ he said. ‘Helsreach needs an overwhelming victory. The benefit to morale among the human forces would be considerable.’

  Sarren swallowed. No one around the table enjoyed Grimaldus pointing out the difference in species between the humans and the genetically-forged Astartes.

  ‘It is time my knights took to the field,’ the Reclusiarch said, his deep, soft voice coming out from his skull helm as a machine-growl. ‘The humans may need first blood, but my knights hunger for it. We will give you your victory.’

  ‘How many of y
our Astartes will you take?’ Sarren asked after a moment’s thought.

  ‘All of them.’

  The colonel paled. ‘But surely you don’t need–’

  ‘Of course not. But this is for appearances. You wanted an overwhelming display of Imperial force. I am giving you that.’

  ‘We can make this even better,’ Cyria said. ‘If you can have your men stand in formation before they move out of the city, long enough for us to arrange live pict-feeds to all visual terminals across Helsreach…’ She trailed off, a pleased smile brightening her features.

  Falkov slammed a fist on the table. ‘Let’s get started. The first charge of the black knights!’ He smiled a thin, nasty grin. ‘If that doesn’t light a fire in the heart of every man breathing, nothing will.’

  Priamus twisted the blade, widening the wound before wrenching the sword clear. Stinking blood gushed from the creature’s chest, and the alien died with its filthy claws scratching at the knight’s armour.

  Within the crashed ship, stalking from room to room, corridor by corridor, the Templars hunted mongrels in the name of purification.

  ‘This is bad comedy,’ he breathed into the vox.

  The reply he received was punctuated by the dull clang of weapons clashing together. Artarion, some way behind.

  ‘Fall back, damn it.’

  Priamus sensed another lecture about vainglory in his future. He walked on, his precious blade held at the ready, moving deeper into the darkness that his red visor pierced with consummate ease.

  Like vermin, the orks scrambled through the tunnels of the wrecked ship, springing ambushes with their crude weapons and snorting their piggish war cries. Priamus’s contempt burned hot on his tongue. They were above this. They were Black Templars, and the morale of the puling humans was none of their concern.

  Grimaldus was spending too much time among the mortals. The Reclusiarch was beginning to think like them. It had galled Priamus to stand in ranked formation for the pict-drones to hover around and capture the knights’ images, just as it galled him now to hunt the scarce survivors of this wreck. It was beneath him, beneath them all. This was work for the Imperial Guard. Perhaps even the militia.

  ‘We will draw first blood,’ Grimaldus had said to them all, as if it were something to care about – as if it would affect the final battle in any way at all. ‘Join me, brothers. Join me as I shake off this disgust at the stasis gripping my bones, and slake my bloodthirst in holy slaughter.’