The World Engine

by Ben Counter

  Metzoi’s blades lanced out and sliced through Valqash’s neck. The Codicier’s head tumbled free of his body and fell down past the walkway, lost in the darkness between the generators. Amhrad still felt a chill whenever a battle-brother died under his command. He had long learned to set it aside and ignore it until the battle was done, but it was still there, shining icily in his gut.

  He was running at Metzoi. The Judicator turned to face him. Gunfire stuttered up from below and Amhrad was aware of the ceiling of the generator hall rippling like black liquid, and more ornate warrior-constructs dropping down. Triarch praetorians, the custodians of Borsis and Heqiroth’s most feared elites. Amhrad and Metzoi clashed above the generator floor. Metzoi was fast but Amhrad could read every slash and arc as if it had been drawn out for him beforehand. They both fought with a similar style, with twin blades weighted to be used as a pair. Metzoi’s obsidian blades were so sharp that after the first few flurries, the Wolves’ edges were notched with the contact. The Wolves’ power fields burst and sparked to force Metzoi back a half-step each time he was about to lunge in for a killing blow.

  One Wolf, Jhozaan, named after the beast that had prowled the Syclade Forest on Obsidia, rang off Metzoi’s shoulder. When Amhrad drew it back a chunk of Metzoi’s pauldron rattled off a floor still slick with Valqash’s blood. The other wolf, named after Gestolo the scourge of the Port Exalt coast, parried one of Metzoi’s obsidian swords and turned the momentum into a swing that sent shards of broken carapace raining down from the Judicator’s chestplate.

  ‘You fight like one who has never faced his equal,’ said Amhrad as the two backed away from each other, their blades hovering waiting for an opening. ‘But I have fought a thousand as good as me and better, and none of them has ever laid me low. You know how to fight, alien. But I know how to win.’

  ‘Your kind has come far,’ said Metzoi. ‘I glimpsed you when you slept in caves and fought with clubs. You have risen to our notice in no more than a heartbeat. We will spare you slavery, human. You will be made extinct before you can become a threat.’

  They were words without meaning, no more than camouflage to mask the thoughts going on behind them. Each combatant was weighing up every potential thrust and counter-move, each possible chain of attack, parry and kill-stroke that would lead to victory or defeat. Metzoi was calculating them, a cogitator crunching through probabilities and measurements. Amhrad had nearly a century of experience on the battlefield, and the instincts of a man born to the duel.

  It was Metzoi who struck first. Amhrad was almost caught by surprise. He parried the obsidian blade hacking up at his waist and spun out of the arc of the follow-up blow slicing down towards his skull. He drew back his arm for a thrust into the necron’s midriff but Metzoi dropped to one knee and hooked an arm under Amhrad’s leg. Amhrad was suddenly tipped back and over the walkway railing. He caught the railing with his elbow before he fell but his legs were hanging out over nothing.

  Gauss fire and bolter shots echoed around the chamber. The other Astral Knights were fighting back against Metzoi’s praetorians. Amhrad had his own survival to worry about before he could help the battle-brothers he was supposed to lead.

  Metzoi drew his blade back. The thrust would take Amhrad in the throat. Even his armour, forged on the artificers’ anvils on Obsidia, would not hold against the supernatural sharpness of the obsidian. Amhrad threw out Jhozaan to knock the blow aside. To do so he had to let go of the railing. He let himself fall, and for a split second the profane certainty bloomed in his mind that he would fall between the generators and plummet right down to whatever lay at Borsis’s core.

  He slammed into the top of one of the generator stacks. His head rang against the steel and for a moment there was only blackness in front of his eyes. Amhrad had expected to die many times. Sometimes the odds had simply favoured defeat, as when a vastly larger enemy army attacked in full force or he found himself face to face with some alien monstrosity far stronger and tougher than himself. There had been times where his survival was a matter of chance with nothing to do with his skill, training or wargear – the crash of the Tempestus, for instance, could have claimed him as easily as it had any of the battle-brothers who died in the impact.

  Those were times he had accepted the likelihood of death. But Amhrad had only been certain he would die on two occasions. The latest was now, facing Judicator Metzoi, knowing he would never leave the Temple of Heretics alive. The first was Varvenkast.

  Those moments had been at the forefront of Amhrad’s memory ever since the formation of the Varv Deliverance Mission, when Amhrad had heard the name of that hive world spoken aloud for the first time in decades. The memories were of finery and beauty, for he had expected to die surrounded by the opulence of the Governor’s Residence in the spire of Hive Tertius.

  THIRTEEN

  Captain Amhrad

  Governor Rheydolmar was required by his status to love art. Though he had no understanding of it, and by all accounts did not enjoy it, it was expected of an aristocrat of Varvenkast to maintain a collection of the sector’s finest art. So his palace was full of it – enormous paintings of elaborately costumed women, suits of archaic armour and busts of Imperial heroes filled every wall and niche. There were landscapes of an ancient pollution-free Varvenkast, hung as if in deliberate reminder of how beautiful this world had been before the needs of the hive cities had bleached it of all its colour. Priceless manuscripts of literary works and books of prayer were preserved behind glass. The ceilings were covered in multi-coloured frescoes of angel-filled skies, as if the building was embarrassed about Varvenkast’s own red-brown heavens.

  It was in this place, in the Petitioner’s Wing of the Governor’s Residence, that Amhrad had finally caught up with Chapter Master Derelhaan.

  Derelhaan’s bolter was still smoking in his hands. A few minutes before he had executed Governor Rheydolmar for his failure to comply with Imperial law in controlling the mutants of Hive Tertius.

  ‘Captain Amhrad, your post is in the manufactorum slums,’ said Derelhaan. ‘Why have you left it?’

  ‘Because I am not the only one to derelict his duty this day,’ replied Amhrad.

  Derelhaan’s expression did not change. He looked from Amhrad to Chaplain Masayak, who had accompanied Amhrad to the hive spire – indeed, it had been Masayak’s misgivings that had brought Amhrad here in the first place. Even Space Marines might wither under Derelhaan’s gaze, for he was as stern and hard-edged a man as had ever been born into the great houses of Obsidia. Even before he had become a Space Marine, people had been instinctively afraid of him. Now he wore the brilliant white armour of a Chapter Master, with the silver-scaled Mantle of Augustar over his shoulder guards and a host of honour studs in the skin of his forehead. Rheydolmar must have thought Death itself had visited him at his residence.

  ‘Explain yourself!’ barked Derelhaan. The sound of his raised voice brought the Astral Knights who had accompanied him to the residence. Amhrad recognised Librarian Hyalhi, an Astral Knight who had risen through the ranks alongside Amhrad and whom Amhrad considered a friend. The awful possibility of one set of battle-brothers turning their guns on another was a sickness in the back of his mind.

  ‘First, explain this,’ said Amhrad. He threw a small metal item onto the floor, one given to him by Chaplain Masayak as the blood was still drying from the massacre in the manufactorum district.

  It was the symbol of House Janiak. Every son of Obsidia knew it. Janiak the pariahs. The traitors. The banished.

  ‘I found it on a corpse in the manufactorum,’ said Chaplain Masayak. ‘It is not the only one.’

  Derelhaan looked down at the symbol. He picked it up off the floor, spat on it, and threw it into a corner of the room. ‘And for this you demand account from me?’ he said. ‘I restored the stained honour of all of Obsidia. You should raise me on your shoulders and give me thanks! The Janiak vermin are dea
d!’

  ‘Then why did you lie to us to bring us here?’ retorted Amhrad. He took a step forwards, dangerously close to Derelhaan. If this turned to violence, he had to keep it between him and the Chapter Master. No one else needed to die in Hive Tertius tonight. ‘You invented this tale of hidden mutants and the Inquisition’s orders. That is not the act of one who knows his battle-brothers will agree.’

  ‘You dare?’ Derelhaan was snarling at Amhrad, and spittle caught on his lips. ‘The filth of House Janiak murdered the patriarch of my people. They fled banishment to the equatorial jungles like whipped dogs. They fled here to this hive and lived like honest citizens of the Imperium, as if they were free of any crime! What is duty, if it is not to hunt them down and execute them?’

  ‘And how many innocents did we take with them?’ shouted Amhrad. He fought to keep his anger down but it rose up in spite. He could barely see Derelhaan through the faces of the men and women who had died in Hive Tertius that day, culled like animals, not a few of them to his own blade and bolter. ‘Thousands, Derelhaan! Tens of thousands!’

  ‘They came here to hide among the populace,’ said Derelhaan. ‘How else was I to ensure every Janiak was dead? We had to kill them all.’

  ‘And for what?’ said Amhrad.

  ‘To do my duty by my forefathers,’ said Derelhaan. There was complete conviction in his face and voice. ‘I am Suulkeyar Derelhaan Ban Ven Targeris. I am the avenger of my murdered kin.’

  ‘We each leave our bloodlines behind when we become an Astral Knight,’ said Amhrad.

  ‘You believe that?’ said Derelhaan with a bitter laugh. ‘There is not one Astral Knight who ever abandoned loyalty to his family! Do not tell me you have, son of Rahizar. Do not insult me with that.’

  ‘I am not Firajar Amhrad Ban Rahizar,’ said Amhrad. It was an effort to keep his voice level. ‘I am Captain Amhrad of the Astral Knights. In the sight of my Emperor, I have never been anything else. And because you do not have the strength to say the same, you have compelled us to murder thousands of innocents. You are not fit to wear the colours of the Astral Knights, let alone the rank of our Chapter Master.’

  ‘And will you kill me, son of Rahizar?’ Derelhaan was feigning disbelief that Amhrad would dare try any such thing, and he feigned it well, but his hand hovered a little too close to the hilt of his power sword.

  ‘You have betrayed us all,’ said Amhrad. He, too, was keeping his voice calm and level – but his muscles, too, were tensed ready to fight. ‘There is no other punishment. So the Codex demands.’

  ‘And the honour of my fathers demands,’ replied Derelhaan, ‘that if you want my head, you will have to work for it.’

  Of course, Derelhaan was faster. He had decades more experience than his accuser. He had fought stronger and more skilled enemies than Amhrad. It was all Amhrad could do to bring his bolter around instinctively into the path of the power sword that Derelhaan drew, sliding it from its scabbard and aiming a slash at Amhrad’s throat with a single move as quick as thought. Amhrad’s bolter was sheared in two by the power blade. It was only a matter of a couple of centimetres that the same did not happen to his neck. Amhrad stumbled back against a massive hardwood dresser that must have cost more than a lifetime’s labour for one of Varvenkast’s hivers. The wood splintered under his weight and he blundered into the wall, almost falling to one knee.

  He expected his vision to be full of Derelhaan, attacking in a silver swirl to finish him off. But instead, it was Librarian Hyalhi who stood in front of him, between Amhrad and the Chapter Master.

  Hyalhi did not move any faster than Derelhaan, but with such economy and precision it seemed he had every spin and parry planned out in advance. Amhrad knew of Hyalhi’s skills but he had never seen them up close like this before, and they were mesmerising. Hyalhi ducked the thrust of Derelhaan’s power sword and drove an elbow into the Chapter Master’s face. Bone broke and skin tore. One of Derelhaan’s eye sockets was half-collapsed.

  Hyalhi knocked the power sword aside again with his force staff. A mundane weapon would have been shattered by the power field but the force staff held and Derelhaan was forced back a step.

  ‘I am surrounded by traitors!’ snarled the Chapter Master. ‘There will be a purge of the weak! There will–’

  The final words were cut off in a flash of purple-black energy. The spots died down from before Amhrad’s eyes and he saw Chaplain Masayak standing behind Derelhaan.

  The power sword fell from Derelhaan’s fingers. The field smoked and sputtered against the carpet.

  Masayak’s crozius arcanum was buried in the back of Chapter Master Derelhaan’s skull. The mace-like weapon’s head was in the shape of an eagle and its wings formed the cutting edges. One wing had disappeared into Derelhaan’s head, slicing deep into his brain. Derelhaan’s remaining good eye was rolled back and a droplet of blood ran from his nose.

  Masayak planted his foot in the small of Derelhaan’s back and used the leverage to pull the crozius back out. Derelhaan fell face-first onto the floor, his weight as dead and heavy as a felled tree. Amhrad got to his feet. Apart from Masayak, Hyalhi and himself, only a handful of Derelhaan’s squad had witnessed the accusation and the killing.

  ‘I am glad it was you,’ said Amhrad. ‘It was a Chaplain’s duty.’

  ‘One we are loath to shoulder,’ said Masayak. ‘But sometimes, it must be done.’

  ‘If word reaches the houses of Obsidia,’ said Hyalhi, ‘it will tear our world apart. Some would turn on us, some would support us. There would be war. Only we who saw it with our own eyes can know. We must be silent, brothers.’

  ‘It was Rheydolmar,’ said Masayak. ‘He knew we were coming and set traps in his residence. Derelhaan was killed by one in the act of executing the governor. We will bear our fallen brother with all honours to the fortress-monastery, as one who died in battle with his duty fulfilled. If any do not agree, now is the time to speak up.’

  No one did. There were fewer than ten Astral Knights in the Governor’s Residence. If they could keep silent, if they saw Derelhaan’s betrayal of their Chapter for what it was, then perhaps Obsidia and the Astral Knights might survive this.

  ‘We have to make it right,’ said Amhrad. ‘I killed many people today who should not have died. The wound we have dealt to this world will never heal. Derelhaan told the lie but we pulled the trigger. We have to make it right.’

  ‘We will,’ said Masayak. ‘But not now. We will find a way, brother-captain, but for now we must leave this world. A new Chapter Master must be appointed. The Astral Knights must fight on.’

  ‘It should be one of us,’ said Hyalhi. ‘We can head off any consequences much more readily from the Chapter Master’s throne.’

  ‘The Reclusiam can ensure that happens,’ replied Masayak. ‘It cannot be a Chaplain, and while a Librarian Chapter Master is not unheard of it runs contrary to the Codex. Captain Amhrad?’

  For a moment Amhrad was not certain what Masayak was asking. When it hit him, he fought the urge to point a finger at his chest and say, ‘Me?’ Amhrad stared down at Derelhaan’s corpse. The back of his skull was a caved-in ruin and a clotted mass of blood surrounded his head. There was blood and brain matter spattered down the back of the Mantle of Augustar.

  ‘I am not ready,’ said Amhrad. ‘I do not think I will ever be.’

  ‘And yet it must be you,’ said Chaplain Masayak.

  ‘Then I will bear this weight,’ said Amhrad, and even as he said the word it felt like a literal weight were crushing him down. Every battle-brother lost would be his responsibility – not just in his own company, which was a grave enough burden, but through the whole Chapter. Every defeat would be his alone.

  ‘Derelhaan wanted to be Chapter Master,’ said Hyalhi. ‘He fought for it. He made it his life’s work. Perhaps it is time the Astral Knights gave such power to one who does not seek it.’ Amhrad
looked away from Derelhaan’s corpse and switched to the command vox-channel.

  ‘All squads,’ he voxed, his words transmitted to every Astral Knight on Varvenkast. ‘This is Captain Amhrad. Chapter Master Derelhaan has fallen. Our mission is complete and further losses are unacceptable. All squads, move to extraction points and make ready for pickup. We will mourn our lord upon our return. For now, move out immediately.’

  ‘Pick him up,’ said Chaplain Masayak. ‘Bear him like a hero.’

  The Astral Knights picked up Derelhaan’s body between them. Amhrad took the lead. They carried him through the grotesque opulence of the Governor’s Residence out into the hive spire, where the polluted wind of Varvenkast whipped around the towers that overlooked the seemingly infinite hive sprawl. Already gunships and armoured shuttles were descending through the hive’s uppermost reaches to pick up the Astral Knights and take them back to their transports waiting in orbit.

  ‘I will be glad to leave this world,’ said Hyalhi as the Astral Knights carried Derelhaan’s body towards a landing pad adjoining the residence, where a gunship would shortly land to pick them up.

  ‘Do not take too much comfort in leaving,’ said Amhrad. ‘One day, we will return.’

  FOURTEEN

  Chapter Master Amhrad

  Amhrad dragged himself on his stomach across the gap to the next generator. Through the gaps in the housing the blades of the turbine roared past, fast enough to shred ceramite and bone.

  Across the chamber, the praetorians were dropping from the distortion overhead. Some fell into the gaps between the generators, others were chewed up by the spinning blades. But most were surviving to engage the Astral Knights, and the Astral Knights were losing. Amhrad clambered to his feet, his head swimming from the impact. He saw Scout-Sergeant Faraji, hopelessly outclassed by the trio of necrons surrounding him. Faraji fired bursts from his bolter into the approaching necrons but the fire drew little more than sparks from their armoured torsos. Faraji switched to his combat knife and went for the eyepieces of the nearest construct, trying to blind it before it could gut him with its blade. The sword was surrounded by a halo of black energy, and the other two praetorians wielded tall staffs topped with axe-like blades. Faraji grabbed the back of the sword-wielding construct’s skull and tried to drive his knife home, but the praetorian threw him to the floor and rammed its weapon down towards him.