The World Engine

by Ben Counter

  ‘Of course I would,’ said Sarakos. ‘I would gladly abandon my house and my planet to serve as an Astral Knight.’

  ‘So you have been taught to say since the day you could speak,’ said the Techmarine. ‘But I am not just an Astral Knight. And the sacrifices we make to serve as a Techmarine are not just of your family and planet. They cannot be demanded of anyone, for he who is forced to make them is denied the honour such sacrifice wins.’

  ‘What will I give up?’ asked Sarakos.

  The Techmarine removed his helmet. Beneath the faceplate his face was pocked and old, the skin as grey as a corpse’s. The flesh of his throat and lower jaw had been pared away and replaced with mechanical prosthetics. One eye was also gone and a bionic sat in the surgically scarred socket. The hairless scalp was punctured with data ports. ‘Everything,’ said the Techmarine, ‘that makes you human.’

  Sarakos had never seen the face of a Space Marine. They were supposed to be handsome. This one was ugly. He had never seen anyone so ugly, not even among the diseased and malnourished who lived outside Obsidia’s stratified society. The battles this Astral Knight had fought were written across his face.

  ‘Our order,’ continued the Techmarine, ‘maintains the wargear of our Chapter and sees to the technological needs of battle. It is an arduous burden we carry. The tech-lore that we must learn is too great to fit into an unaugmented mind. To make room, we must lose some of what we do not need. We do not need our capacity to feel misery or joy. We do not need the affection we hold for our families or the disdain we feel for the weak. You will be taken on a pilgrimage to Mars where you will receive the augmentations of a Techmarine, and where those useless parts of you are cut out. You will leave your humanity behind. We cannot demand this of you. It can only be offered willingly. Accept it and should you continue to make yourself noteworthy and survive your training, you will journey to Mars and return a Techmarine. That is why we have come to you today, son of Deshurrah, to offer you the chance to make this sacrifice.’

  ‘And if I refuse?’ asked Sarakos.

  ‘A Space Marine’s life is one of sacrifice,’ said the Chaplain. ‘If you will not make this one, we shall bear you no ill will. But you will not be an Astral Knight.’

  Sarakos had not spoken for a long time. He had looked about the grand hall, which was covered in the proud emblems of House Elnah. The mosaic of a ship, the principal symbol of the house, covered one wall. It was the ship that had carried Lord Elnah, the house’s founder, to the site of the future city of Eln’shah that the house had ruled for generations. The tales of those times, and of the naval aristocracies that followed, had filled Sarakos with pride. He had imagined himself fighting from the deck of Lord Elnah’s ship as he trained with the house duelling masters.

  That pride would be gone. He would never feel it again.

  His love for his sisters, for whose honour he had already duelled and killed seven men, would be gone. His respect for his father and mother. His admiration of his uncle, the general who marshalled the armies of Obsidia against the savage natives of the southern pole. All gone.

  And he would not be an Elnah any longer. He would return from the Martian pilgrimage a mutilated and scarred creature like the Techmarine. His sisters would run from him in fear if they saw him. His mother would swoon in shock. He would no longer be recognised as a son of House Elnah, either from within or without.

  But he would be an Astral Knight.

  ‘I will make any sacrifice for my planet, for my Emperor, and for my species,’ said Sarakos.

  ‘So you have been taught to say,’ said the Chaplain.

  ‘And if I was given the chance to make that sacrifice, and did not, I would not be worthy of my house. I would rather lose everything that makes me a son of Elnah, than live on as a disgrace to that name. Lead me to Mars and take my humanity, Techmarine. That is my answer.’

  The Astral Knights had not replied. They simply left. And when his family had entered the hall and asked him what had happened, he had not been able to answer them such were the tears that threatened to fall from his eyes.

  Did they cut all the human out of you on Mars?

  The answer was yes.

  ‘They call this world Borsis,’ said Levitanus. ‘The lords try to keep their dealings from us, but they could not make us completely ignorant. We humans are curious creatures.’

  The slaves had been gathered at the crossroads as Sarakos continued to remove the control collars. Two of the slaves had simply dropped dead, such was the shock of having control over their bodies again. Most had lived and were lucid enough to provide intelligence. Sufutar was interrogating them and Levitanus was proving to be the most useful. Before his capture by the necrons he had been a leader of his colony and he had sought to learn as much as he could about the enemy who had captured him, as a good Emperor-fearing citizen should. He had already provided information about the other slaves – thousands of them were on Borsis, conducting maintenance that was too dangerous or menial for the necrons themselves.

  ‘Who leads them?’ asked Sufutar.

  ‘They have their aristocracies,’ said Levitanus. ‘Powerful dynasties. I know not how machines can have a dynasty but that is how they think of themselves. Their leader is named Heqiroth, of the Nephrekh dynasty. He usurped the last ruler, Turakhin. There are other dynasties, some loyal, some not. The necrons wished us to remain ignorant of their conflicts but they could not hide them from us entirely. This game of power is all their leaders care about. The warriors are unfeeling machines, it seems, but their leaders have desires and plots of their own. I wish I could tell you more, Space Marine.’

  ‘As do I,’ said Sufutar.

  ‘Many of my people are on this world,’ said Levitanus. ‘They will look to me for answers, and I have none to give them. May I ask when we are to leave Borsis?’

  ‘We will not,’ said Sufutar.

  Levitanus was quiet after that. He looked down at the floor, and a hand went unconsciously to the deep layer of scar tissue around his neck.

  Sarakos accessed the command vox-channel. It was fragmented and obscured by static, for many of the Astral Knights were far below the surface of Borsis and the structures and power outputs were interfering with the signals. But there was enough to remain in communication, if only sporadically.

  ‘I hear you, Techmarine,’ came Chapter Master Amhrad’s voice in response to Sarakos’s vox-hail.

  ‘Lord Amhrad,’ said Sarakos. ‘We now possess critical intelligence on the necrons. They have a weakness.’

  Levitanus had begun to weep. For a moment Sarakos wondered why, before he focused his mind on more relevant matters.

  Orbital Supply Station Madrigal 12

  High Polar Orbit, Safehold

  Varv System

  Encryption Code Penance

  Inquisitorial Eyes Only. Ref. Lord Inquisitor Quilven Rhaye

  Scrivened: Medicae Obscurum Kalliam Helvetar

  Psychological impact resulting from the previous contact caused this functionary to replace further contact attempts with mental purification rites. These were prepared for and enacted with the assistance of servitor-orderlies and required seventy-two hours of fasting. As a result the scheduling of the autoseance programme was significantly revised.

  Emotive dampening had proven insufficient given the intensity of contacts involving both the death of one perceived subject and the psychological resonance of the experiences of another. When the purification rites were complete this functionary elected to retreat to the orbital station’s chapel for prayer and reflection.

  She prayed to the Emperor Most High in His aspect as Shield and Deliverer from Corruption, that her soul might withstand the assaults made upon it. She reflected that through fear, and through the abandonment of one’s duty caused by fear, the Great Enemy might enter the unguarded mind. This was followed with mortification of the flesh, and
a subsequent synskin graft to this functionary’s upper back and left thigh.

  The communication from Lord Inquisitor Rhaye was received in good order and decrypted with the use of the Inquisitorial rosette. Its instructions were carefully noted before the communication was data-shredded in accordance with information hygiene procedure.

  The autoseance recommenced. The subject body was drained of the preservative infusion used to store it during periods of inaction and the psychoconductive coil, semantic cogitator and holomat servitor reconnected. Tech-rites were enacted to please the machine-spirits of these devices. Protective measures were employed as before prior to contact being attempted.

  This functionary again received fragmentary sensory input upon initial contact.

  The rings of Obsidia drifting across the sky, marking out the dark band before which the game beasts fled. And so the horns sound and the hunt gallops in pursuit, the most blessed sons of this world with bow and spear echoing the panoply and skill of their forebears…

  The steel city hurtling by below, the cogitator’s runes dancing between thousands of targets as the ship weaves between the spires. Alarms sound as hostile weapons systems home in and the shriek of unfamiliar engines tears through the air…

  A terrible sadness, like an endless cry of abandonment, forced directly into the mind with the force of an invading army. It is as sudden and painful as the impact of a bullet. It fills the mind completely, a river of misery obliterating the rest of the senses, and a scream rising that forms a single word: Help.

  Half a jaw still opens and closes, though too little is left of the throat and tongue to form words. Half an eyeball rolls bloodily in half a socket. So much has been stripped away he cannot survive, but too much remains to let him die quickly. The battle rages. He cannot be saved. A hand grabs the fallen brother’s wrist and drags him on, more as a gesture than in any hope of saving him…

  This functionary remained partially conscious during the administering of cardiac and brainwave stabilisers. Shortly after life signs returned to within acceptable parameters, acquisition of contiguous sensory relay was again achieved.

  THREE

  Brother Ghazin

  ‘The battle turns,’ said Chapter Master Amhrad. ‘Not to victory, not yet. But now we can begin to fight it.’ Amhrad had led a portion of the Astral Knights to a building that was most likely a palace belonging to a necron dynasty now ill-favoured. Its finery was blotched with corrosion. The inlaid patterns on the walls had begun to peel and rust away. The mosaic of coloured alloys on the floor came apart under the boots of the Space Marines. It had a throne room, with a massive seat built from blocks of gold and iron and dozens of smaller seats for councillors or courtiers. One wall was cut into an enormous mask with three eyes above a hollow mouth.

  Brother Ghazin flicked through the communications log stored in the auspex scanner he carried. ‘Sufutar and the Third, what remains of the Fourth and individual units from across the Chapter are in the necropolis,’ said Ghazin. On his slate he had pieced together the reports from the various officers to work out where their greatest concentrations lay. ‘Zahiros and the Eighth, Pelisaar and the Second, and the gunship Damoclean are holding an apparent residential region. They are suffering intermittent attacks but they are holding well and they report a large body of human slaves at a prison building nearby. Khabyar’s Ninth and the surviving elements of the Sixth under First Sergeant Kypsalah are fighting a running battle through the city. They have yet to secure a defensible position.’

  ‘And we have the Seventh Company and the gunship Maxentius,’ said Amhrad. He stared down at the floor for a moment in thought. ‘My thanks, Brother Ghazin. This I can work with. What do you think of it?’

  ‘Me?’ asked Ghazin, looking up from his data-slate.

  ‘I need every opinion I can get,’ said Amhrad. ‘Librarian Hyalhi will offer me his counsel, as will the captains. But a battle-brother without high rank will not, so I must ask it. You are a member of Hyalhi’s honour guard, are you not? He would not have chosen you if you did not have a brain in your head.’

  Ghazin had never spoken with Chapter Master Amhrad except for the times required by ritual. Hyalhi had chosen Ghazin to prepare and present the intelligence on the Chapter’s situation, and Ghazin suspected it was one of the Chief Librarian’s tests. This was probably another.

  ‘We have lost most of the Fourth and Sixth Companies,’ said Ghazin. ‘In any other battle, that would be a tragedy to be met with weeks of mourning and a thousand oaths of revenge.’

  ‘But this is not any other battle.’

  ‘No, my lord.’

  ‘Do you mourn them, brother?’

  ‘Not yet,’ said Ghazin. ‘When Borsis has fallen, I shall honour their memories. But I am angry now.’

  ‘Good. And what would you do next?’

  ‘I would not presume to…’

  ‘You will presume,’ said the Chapter Master. ‘I know what my captains will tell me, for I hear it hourly. But I do not hear what every battle-brother would tell me, so it is a perspective I do not receive often enough.’

  Ghazin swallowed. He had never known fear on the battlefield, for a Space Marine was created to ignore that fear, master it and set it aside. But what he felt then, a tightness in his belly and an urge to flee scrabbling in the back of his mind, was perhaps something like the fear that normal men felt when the bullets began to fly.

  ‘We know nothing of this world,’ said Ghazin. ‘We only just learned its name. We cannot strike yet, for there is nothing to strike at. But two of our gunships survived the crash and can help find out more.’

  ‘Many brothers,’ said Amhrad, ‘would simply have said they would do whatever I decided. Some would have said to show caution, some would have said attack with reckless fury. I can see now why Hyalhi chose you for his honour guard.’

  Ghazin saw the comms-rune flickering against his retina. He opened up his squad’s vox-channel.

  ‘Gather in the observatory,’ was the curt vox-burst he received.

  ‘The Chief Librarian requests me,’ said Ghazin.

  ‘Then go to him, brother,’ said Amhrad.

  Ghazin left the throne room, unable to quell his sense of relief.

  The Astral Knights had dubbed one tower of the palace the ‘observatory’ because of its domed roof and the patterns of gemstones that resembled alien constellations on the walls. Ghazin stepped over the tiny scarab-like robots on their way to repair the damage done to the front of the palace when the Astral Knights had taken it. Borsis seemed willing to let the palace decay, but not to fall.

  Chief Librarian Hyalhi was there with the other eight brothers of his honour guard, all marked out with the horned skull symbol of the Chapter’s Librarium on one knee pad. Hyalhi himself wore armour in dark blue instead of the Astral Knights’ normal livery, with the collar extended into the aegis hood arching over his head. His face was deep brown-black, oddly scarless for a Space Marine, with sunken eyes and high cheekbones. His forehead bore six long-service studs. He carried a force staff of carved white wood topped with a silver eagle.

  ‘Brethren,’ said Hyalhi, ‘there can be no rest here.’ He voice was a low rumble that seemed to echo around in his aegis hood. ‘We must keep moving lest the necrons surround us and force us to battles we cannot win. But it is not enough just to run. The Chapter Master has requested that I act on intelligence our brother Techmarine Sarakos has brought from the necropolis beneath the crash site. Borsis is not a natural world, it is a machine, and we must seek out how it is controlled and by whom.’

  ‘The ruling caste of the necrons, then?’ asked Brother Burhan, whose blunt bullet-shaped head was well scorched from fighting with the squad’s heavy flamer.

  ‘If so, our task is to find out who they are so our brethren can cut the head off the serpent,’ said Hyalhi. ‘Again, it is upon the chosen brethren that
the onerous task has fallen. Do you accept it?’

  ‘We do,’ said the battle-brothers in unison.

  ‘Then follow,’ said Hyalhi. ‘We go down.’

  No Astral Knight, save perhaps Amhrad alone, could say with complete certainty what psychic powers Hyalhi possessed.

  As Chief Librarian of the Astral Knights, his most important role was as advisor to the Chapter Master. But he also had to be a living weapon on the battlefield, a terror of the Emperor’s enemies who wreaked bloodshed with his mind greater than any Space Marine could with bolter or chainsword. Some Librarians fired bolts of psychic power or overwhelmed the senses of their enemies, or enhanced their fellow Space Marines with improved reaction time, strength or resistance to harm. But Hyalhi did not seem to fit any of those moulds.

  His honour guard was in a position to see Hyalhi’s powers in action more than most. Ghazin had concluded that Hyalhi possessed a form of short-term precognition, the ability to see the flight of a bullet before it was fired or the arc of a blade before it fell, giving him a half-second advantage in battle that his Space Marine prowess turned into the foundations of victory. But he had also witnessed strange coincidences that benefited Hyalhi or impeded his enemies. A blast door falling to cut off pursuers during the boarding of the space hulk Killing Spree. Explosive booby-traps failing to detonate during the fighting on the jungle world of Mogron. An eldar pirate’s cutlass snapping off in the joint of Hyalhi’s armour instead of impaling him through the chest. Too many to count.

  Sometimes an Astral Knight would forgo the protocols of respect and rank, and outright ask Ghazin what powers Hyalhi possessed. Ghazin always replied that he did not know, which was the truth.

  Brother Felhidar joined Ghazin on point as they descended through the levels beneath the palace. Borsis seemed to be machinery all the way down – if it had a rocky core like a natural world, it was far below the layers of necron structures.