The World Engine

by Ben Counter

  By the time Masayak reached the maintenance levels below the generatorium, the gunfire had already started. Down here between the foundations of the pylons, the air was ferociously toxic and the filters of Masayak’s skull-faced helm could not cut out the stench. The darkness was almost complete and his visual augmentations edged the murk in dark greens and greys. Below the web of support beams and corroded walkways lay the trench of the drained river, a canal with sides encrusted with sticky masses of chemicals.

  ‘Brother Valqash,’ voxed Masayak. ‘Astral Knights are moving to your position. Report!’

  ‘It’s down here!’ came the reply, the Codicier’s voice mingling with the crackle of gunfire. ‘Amhrad was right, the transport was a feint!’

  ‘Then we have the enemy trapped,’ said Masayak. ‘Bring the Emperor’s fury, Brother-Codicier, and we will be at your side!’

  Masayak had Squad Gehesson with him. A Devastator squad was ill-suited to the close confines of the generatorium foundations and most had been forced to leave their heavy weapons above ground. Only Brother Ghular still carried his heavy bolter – the others had their boltguns to rely on. Other squads were making their way down but Masayak had taken the fore and he would be the first to link up with Valqash.

  That was as it should be. The presence of a Chaplain would give the embattled Astral Knights the greatest swell of confidence when battle-brothers arrived to reinforce them.

  Masayak dropped the last distance to the bed of the drained river. A knee-deep layer of corrosive sludge still oozed downstream, and Masayak felt himself slowed as it sucked at his armoured legs. The green glimmer of gauss fire flickered ahead. Masayak activated the power field of his crozius and held it aloft so it shone like a lantern in the darkness, casting the silhouettes of Squad Gehesson across the walls. Here and there corroded necron parts or pitted bones poked from the filth. Rusting scarabs picked through the debris, the mechanical equivalent of a natural world’s lowest scavengers.

  Masayak could see a structure straddling the river up ahead – a rusting mass of steel, the remains of a vessel that had sunk while plying the river and become lodged between its walls. Squad Kypsalah was sending out a furious wall of fire into the necrons advancing on them, and in reply volleys of gauss fire were stripping away the decaying matter of the wreck to expose more and more of the squad to the enemy.

  Codicier Valqash stood clear of the cover and held out both hands palm-first. A bolt of crimson power lanced into the necron ranks, illuminating for a second the lychguard struck square in the chest. The necron was bored right through and it dropped its power blade and shield as it fell.

  Masayak ran as fast as he could through the sucking filth into the cover of the wreck. Squad Gehesson were close behind him and heavy-bolter fire stuttered past him as Ghular fired from the hip.

  ‘Welcome, brother,’ said Valqash as he ducked back into cover. The armour around his hands and forearms was smoking and blistered with heat. ‘I am glad you could attend. The Overlord of Borsis does not travel light.’

  ‘Fury shall sweep it away,’ replied Masayak. ‘We have trapped it down here. The fight left in it is no more than its death throes.’

  Ahead, a rank of lychguard was approaching. Most advanced with shields held high – others behind them carried two-handed halberds with blades of crystallised power. Bolter fire burst against their shields as they advanced. The sludge underfoot slowed them down, but not as much as it had the Astral Knights. Though some had already fallen to Valqash and Squad Kypsalah, twenty or so of them would reach the Astral Knights position intact.

  Beyond the lychguard were the praetorians. They carried a mixture of necron wargear of ornate and ancient appearance, many of them with arm-mounted blasters or glowing staffs that fired glittering streams of gauss fire. Members of Squad Kypsalah displaced, rolling through the chemical swamp, as circular sections of the steel plating in front of them suddenly vanished. Soon, the Astral Knights would have no cover at all.

  And behind the praetorians, probably surrounded by a phalanx of yet more necron elites, would be Overlord Heqiroth. To Heqiroth, the truth of the situation was that he had the advantage of numbers and the battlefield, and an impregnable position from which the Astral Knights could not dislodge him. But Masayak rejected that truth. With the determination and skills of the Astral Knights available, there was no reason why Masayak’s truth could not become the new reality.

  It took a Chaplain to understand that. It took a Chaplain to fight on when even Space Marines might hesitate, and to show how mutable the truth of battle could be.

  ‘Feels a lot like we’re the ones who are trapped down here,’ voxed Sergeant Kypsalah.

  A dissenting voice was as much a tool of the Chaplain as a devoted follower. ‘Then we shall not remain so,’ said Masayak. ‘We shall advance. Our wrath is the match for their blades! Our steel is a match for their fire!’

  Masayak brandished his crozius again and the riverbed lit up in the silver light of its power field. He stood proud of the disintegrating cover, and gauss fire ripped through the air past him. Kypsalah and Gehesson both followed his example and suddenly the Astral Knights were advancing, hammering out chains of bolter fire even as the necrons hesitated in their advance.

  An enemy was supposed to cower and die when the lychguard reached them. The praetorians were supposed to stalk the battlefield picking off survivors or runners with gauss fire. The Astral Knights did not follow that script. They obeyed their own reality on this battlefield.

  Masayak broke into a run. The battle-brothers around him had no choice but to keep pace. Masayak leapt into combat with the closest lychguard, which raised its shield to block the crozius. Masayak aimed low and the crozius cracked into the lychguard’s knee joint. The necron buckled and sprawled on its back into the corrosive murk. Masayak left it there and rammed the head of the crozius at the midriff of the next lychguard as it brought its halberd down to parry it. The power field shattered the halberd and Masayak followed up with a boot to the chest, knocking the construct back.

  Masayak was on top of the lychguard now, bringing his crozius up again and smashing it into the necron’s skull even before the power field had recharged. The necron reeled and Masayak emptied his bolt pistol into the construct – its armour was solid but the point-blank fire cracked its chest open to reveal the glowing mass of components inside. Masayak drew back the crozius again as the power field leapt around it, and rammed the weapon into the necron’s chest cavity. The sudden burst of power blasted the lychguard open from the inside, throwing chunks of its carapace against the river walls as if a grenade had gone off inside it.

  ‘Nephrekh filth!’ boomed a metallic voice that seemed to fill the river channel to the brim. ‘Down here in your effluent you will suffer!’

  The massive crab-like torso of Turakhin crashed down through the supports overhead into the middle of the advancing necrons. One was crushed flat beneath the underside of Turakhin’s hull. Turakhin hurled another lychguard aside with a flick of an armoured leg. The upper hull brought its arm cannon to bear and blasted a fat bolt of gauss energy into the river wall, vaporising a huge bite mark out of it and sending tonnes of rubble pouring into the necrons.

  The cannon mounted on the upper body’s head spun its barrels with a high whine. Bolts of power sprayed from it, spiralling through the necron ranks. Another two lychguard were caught in the storm and blasted apart. The praetorians scattered, abandoning their customary economy of moment to seek cover among the trash and wreckage in the channel.

  ‘A million chances you had to kneel,’ blared Turakhin. ‘To defy the usurper and bow to the rightful Overlord of Borsis. But you chose treachery. You called this death upon yourselves the moment you abased yourselves before the dog Heqiroth!’

  Masayak charged through the bedlam, past Turakhin and the scattered lychguard. Past the praetorians would be Heqiroth, perhaps trying to
flee Turakhin’s assault. Masayak had to be there to partake in Heqiroth’s destruction. The Astral Knights had to have a hand in the toppling of the Overlord, and a Chaplain would be the most potent symbol of their victory.

  The shape of Heqiroth loomed past a scattering of sunken steel plating the praetorians were using for cover. Masayak recognised the fragmented description from Zahiros’s strikeforce and the recollections of the slaves – an oversized, armoured body, nowhere near as huge as Turakhin’s war engine but a walking fortress compared to other necrons, covered in gold and gemstones. Its four legs and the five eyes of its faceplate made the identification a certainty.

  A praetorian lurched out of cover, swinging its staff at Masayak’s head. Masayak ducked and parried as the staff was whipped back at him. The praetorian was skilled - it was an elite among elites, and the staff rippled with energy that would have shredded a mundane weapon. But Masayak carried with him the future of his Chapter and victory over Borsis. He could not be held back by this faceless enemy. Masayak charged a shoulder into the praetorian and knocked it back against the sheet of rotting steel it had been using as cover. He drew back his arm and thrust with the crozius like a rapier, smashing it through the praetorian’s faceplate. The back of its gilded skull burst open and Masayak had to use all his strength to pull his arm free again.

  Masayak threw the broken necron aside. Fire from Turakhin’s cannon sprayed across the river, punching through cover and praetorian construct, stripping chunks of the river wall away around Heqiroth. Heqiroth aimed his staff at Turakhin and fired a glittering crimson whip of energy at the war machine, but it little more than blistered the surface of Turakhin’s armoured hull.

  The overlord had its back against the crumbling river wall, its lychguard destroyed and overrun and its praetorians scattered. There was nothing between it and destruction now. Masayak had ensured he would be there to strike a killing blow. His duty was done. His truth had become reality.

  Inside the cage of Heqiroth’s torso squirmed a glossy black mass of scarabs. Heqiroth spread his arms wide and the scarabs scuttled out of his chest, revealing inside not a mass of components but a core of liquid metal, like black mercury held in a rippling sphere.

  Masayak advanced, forcing his way through the deep sludge. The scarabs were a last resort but Masayak would not let them slow him down. He had seen how quickly they could disable a Space Marine and though they worked fast, they would not be fast enough.

  The liquid metal flowed out around Heqiroth’s gilded body, coating it in a caul of shimmering black. He dropped the staff and orb he carried and the four legs that supported his torso, like those of an armoured insect, fell away into the murk. The body rose up higher on a column of the liquid metal that stretched and reformed like something alive.

  ‘Yggra’nya’s necrodermis,’ came Turakhin’s voice, no longer triumphant but an insistent hiss. ‘Heqiroth has violated our sacred ground!’

  ‘What sacred ground can there be,’ replied Heqiroth in his haughty Low Gothic, ‘for the necrontyr? I wear the flesh of the gods, for I alone am holy! You were cast down because you were weak. But I am the god of the necrontyr, and I will rule as a god!’

  Heqiroth had risen almost to the ceiling of corroded foundations. Blades of the necrodermis lanced out and speared into the walls of the riverbed, then flexed and hurled Heqiroth towards Turakhin. Heqiroth crashed into Turakhin and the tendrils of living metal lashed around Turakhin’s pincer arm. Sparks flew and lubricant spurted as the armour plates around Turakhin’s shoulder were forced loose.

  Turakhin bellowed with a sound like tearing steel. He swung his upper body and the pincer arm came away, trailing cabling and hydraulic fluid. Heqiroth lost his grip on Turakhin and pitched into the murk, before rising up and crawling along the river wall as his tendrils conveyed him like spider’s legs.

  ‘What is this necrodermis?’ demanded Masayak.

  ‘The body of Yggra’nya,’ said Turakhin. ‘Heqiroth has despoiled our sacred places. He has profaned the resting place of the c’tan. It is madness.’

  ‘It is madness,’ said Heqiroth, again in Low Gothic so the Astral Knights could understand, ‘to lie in a tomb when the galaxy has yet to be won. Did we not slumber so we would wake and return to rule? Is that time not now?’

  Heqiroth lashed out with a tendril and batted aside a member of Squad Gehesson who was trying to move through the sludge into the cover of Turakhin’s fallen arm. The Astral Knight hit the opposite wall hard enough to bring a hefty slab of it down on top of him.

  ‘What do you fear, Turakhin?’ continued Heqiroth as the necrodermis carried him along the ceiling towards Turakhin and the Astral Knights. ‘The greenskins? The eldar? The humans and the corpse they worship? This is a galaxy of death and decay. It begs for a conqueror!’

  Turakhin’s head cannon sprayed fire into Heqiroth. Heqiroth’s necrodermis absorbed and flowed around the incoming fire. Brother Ghular ran beneath Heqiroth and poured heavy-bolter fire up into him, but Heqiroth threw the Astral Knight aside with a lash of a tendril.

  ‘Back!’ ordered Sergeant Kypsalah. ‘Regroup and form up! Gehesson, draw your men back!’

  The Astral Knights were retreating from Heqiroth, staying in good order and hammering bolter fire up at the overlord as they moved. Masayak, still in the shadow of Turakhin’s war machine body, was out in front. If Heqiroth wanted, he could have snatched the Chaplain up and dashed his brains out against the wall.

  Masayak slogged through the sludge and reached the crater in the river wall where Ghular had hit. The Astral Knight was down and moving groggily. His helmet was dented so severely there must have been barely room for his head inside – probably his skull was fractured. Masayak threw Ghular’s bulk over his shoulder and carried him out of the fire zone, where Heqiroth’s necrodermis blades were falling as rapidly as a silver rain and Turakhin’s return fire was sending cascades of rubble falling from the foundations above.

  Heqiroth dropped onto Turakhin again and this time got a good grip on the war machine’s hull. Tentacles of necrodermis slithered around the lower hull, anchoring the overlord as he punched a spear of living metal through the upper body’s chest. An atonal note blared from Turakhin’s vox-casters, the braying of a wounded machine. Punctured fuel cells spurted burning fluid, like incandescent blood from Turakhin’s wounds.

  ‘Do you think you are the master of Borsis?’ demanded Turakhin. ‘This world rules you. It cannot be turned from its path. It will carry you to the end and then what will become of you? Do you think what lies on Mars will welcome you as a liberator? It will tear you apart, Heqiroth of Nephrekh! You who have not worshipped it, you who continue to betray its kind, it will destroy you!’

  Heqiroth sent out another volley of blades from the necrodermis rippling across his chest. They sheared through the mechanisms of Turakhin’s shoulder and his remaining arm fell clear, thudding wetly into the sludge. With a scream of servos, Turakhin’s legs buckled under him and he slumped onto the river bed.

  ‘Do you hear, humans?’ blared Turakhin. ‘Borsis will finish its journey! Your red world will fall! Your blue world will fall! Your race will wither away when my dynasty wakes the Dra–’

  Heqiroth formed the necrodermis around his arm into a single huge blade and rammed its point into Turakhin’s throat. The head was completely severed, the vox-casters destroyed with it. The head fell into the sludge and sank beneath the surface.

  The necrodermis slithered off Heqiroth’s body and surrounded the wreck of Turakhin. The war machine struggled, but its motive systems had been ruined and it could do no more than shudder as the silver-black skin completely encased it. The necrodermis contracted, and with a snap of stanchions and a growl of distorted steel Turakhin’s body was crushed inside it.

  Heqiroth was vulnerable. Masayak turned, ready to drop Ghular and sprint towards the overlord. A good strike with his crozius, and perhaps
the skull or the ribcage could be sundered and some vulnerable component revealed. There was still a chance. The overlord could fall. Borsis could fall.

  Scarabs leapt from Heqiroth’s chest cavity. Three landed on Masayak. He tore one from his face and threw it aside. Another gorged itself on a shoulder pad and the third scuttled up his forearm to chew through the fingers holding his crozius. Masayak let Ghular slide off his shoulder and tore away the scarab on his arm, crushing the wriggling body in his left hand.

  The necrodermis had squeezed Turakhin’s body to a half of its original size. The shrinking necrodermis provided cover for Heqiroth from the guns of the regrouping Astral Knights, and the remains of his lychguard and praetorian court were advancing past him to re-engage the two depleted squads. There was not long now. Another few moments, and the Chaplain’s truth would be proven wrong.

  Masayak approached striking distance of Heqiroth. The overlord’s construct-body was sturdy enough to make bolt pistol fire irrelevant – Masayak had to use his crozius, and that meant fighting the overlord face to face, as a Chaplain should.

  Heqiroth’s faceplate split open. Each of his five eyes was revealed to be a gemstone, like a cut ruby. Each one sparked out a flash of light that gathered in front of the overlord’s face and coalesced into a single bolt of red fire.

  The bolt hit Masayak in the left side of the chest. His armour held but he was picked off his feet and slammed against the wall behind him. His head spun and white fireworks burst across his eyes. Numbness rippled through him. Darkness crawled into the periphery of his vision and he fought instinctively against unconsciousness.

  Masayak closed his hand around his crozius. He had suffered blows like this before. He would live – but only if he got away from Heqiroth.

  The necrodermis slithered back over Heqiroth’s construct-body. What remained of Turakhin had been crushed to a knot of compressed metal no larger than a man.

  A sub-limb unfolded from Heqiroth’s forearm. In its gilded fingers was held a small cube of polished metal which unfolded like a silver flower. Hieroglyphics glowed on its petals as blue-white streaks of information were dragged from Turakhin’s remains and into the cube. Everything that constituted the being named Turakhin was crushed into wreckage or imprisoned as the petals folded back up, and Masayak thought he could hear a distant scream shivering through the immense structure of Borsis.