Warlord: Fury of the God-Machine

by David Annandale

  The Banelord’s shielding flared with angry light. In the manifold, Syagrius and the Warlord’s machine-spirit recoiled from the auspex readings of the foe. The energy that surrounded the traitor was wrong. It defied spectrographic analysis, overpowering the sensors with nonsense. To the auspex, this was no recognisable power, though it bore some of the signatures of warp taint. Syagrius saw sorcery, not technology. The Titan’s behaviour was too much like a living thing. It was hard to imagine the actions of a crew within. The image came to Syagrius of no crew at all. The thought was repulsive. He wanted the Titan purged from existence.

  The Banelord’s shields collapsed entirely for a few instants. The Warhound Triumphum Cane’s turbolaser and mega-bolter shots converged on the same point on the Banelord’s right leg, in the gap where the two armour plates met at the knee. There was a burst of flame and smoke from the interior of the limb. The Banelord staggered. Its right leg seemed to lock rigid. It pivoted on the limb, leaning dangerously forwards. For a moment, Syagrius thought the Titan would topple. Instead, its grasped at its foes with its power claw. Its tail was straight out, giving balance to its huge mass. As it spun, the Banelord gained just enough reach. Triumphum Cane came within its grasp. The claw snapped over the Warhound’s turbolaser. It crushed the barrel. The weapon exploded. The Banelord dragged the Titan through the fireball. It straightened, and with its horn blaring, it lifted the Warhound into the air, then hurled it to the ground. It followed through with a blow from the claw. Eldritch fire bloomed as the claw punched through the midsection of the Warhound.

  Syagrius restrained the fire of Augustus Secutor during the seconds the traitor held Triumphum Cane close. The Reaver Aurea Exterminatore and the Warhound Sacra Canis kept up an assault on its rear and flank. They seemed to be causing damage. More smoke rose from the rents in the Banelord’s armour, but the focus of the machine, or the things that controlled it, was the victim at hand.

  When Syagrius saw the power claw slam through Triumphum Cane’s armour, he knew the crew of the Warhound was dead. ‘Cavellus,’ he voxed the princeps. There was no answer, and the reason for restraint vanished. ‘Firing,’ he warned the other two crews. They were a safe distance away, hundreds of yards from the Banelord. Still, they needed to be prepared. ‘Sunfury,’ Syagrius said, and Moderati Rekorus echoed. The gun hurled its annihilating blast at the Banelord. The rage of a sun struck it in the chest even as the rest of the maniple collapsed its shields yet again. Armour melted. Explosions rocked the entire body of the traitor.

  ‘Las,’ Syagrius said, and Moderati Trovalis said, ‘Las.’ And the las turret fired with the explosions of the Sunfury still bright. The glare had not yet faded from Syagrius’ eyes.

  The huge lascannon mounted on Augustus Secutor’s left arm hit the Banelord’s claw and chest with a long burst. The Banelord could not get its shields up against the onslaught. It fired back at Syagrius, and a shell of enormous magnitude slammed into the lower torso of the Warlord.

  ‘Marshal,’ Magos Prendivian voxed him a moment later, ‘we have serious damage in the–’

  ‘Not now,’ Syagrius snarled and cut him off.

  The turret hit the Banelord again and again. The traitor’s movements became erratic. The god-machine swerved as if drunk. Its fire went wild.

  Warlord, Reaver and Warhound continued to circle it. The beast lashed out, carving huge furrows through the earth. Coruscating energy beams struck the Imperial Hunters, but the monster was surrounded, wounded, doomed. Feral Titans closed in, their supporting fire against the Hunters too little and too late to aid their master. Augustus Secutor fired the Sunfury again. The plasma explosion disintegrated the power conduits running from the Banelord’s back and feeding into its skull. The protective cowling melted. The full force of the blast tore the monster’s skull loose from its moorings. The head dangled upside down, hanging on by half-molten shielding and shredding cables. The immense body spun again, its legs stamping craters open on the ground, uncontrolled energy arcing from the cowling. Guns misfired. The tail whipped back and forth, its cannon shooting at the sky. Abruptly, the energy vanished. The war-horn issued a long, mourning, hateful wail that cut off sharply. The huge figure of the Banelord was motionless, its limbs splayed. Then it fell, shaking the ground, crushing the remains of Triumphum Cane.

  Syagrius turned the las turret to the right, training its volleys on one of the approaching Ferals, driving it back. The remaining Warhound and Reaver of his maniple formed up on Augustus Secutor once more. The three Titans fired together on the Banelord’s escorts, pounding one to burning slag and sending the other’s reactor critical. Another nuclear fireball erupted over the battlefield, and its light was cleansing for Syagrius’ soul. The Feral had been quite close, and radiation warnings sounded through the decks of the Warlord, but he ignored them. He revelled in the enormous death of the foe, and in the fire that burned all traces of the unclean thing from Katara.

  The light was so bright and vast, it seemed that it should swallow all of the enemy in its embrace. It could not. The world-encompassing light was due solely to Syagrius’ relative proximity to the explosion. The battle for Therimachus unfolded over miles upon miles of landscape. But the spectacle of the Feral’s demise was a satisfying one. Syagrius’ heart swelled with the ecstasy of triumph.

  ‘See them fall!’ Syagrius voxed to the demi-legio. The fireball was still the only thing he could see. ‘Hold the line, Hunters! Hold the line!’

  ‘We cannot, marshal,’ Lukretus voxed from Primum Victor. ‘The line is broken.’

  The fireball faded with his triumph. His vision had narrowed to the immediacy of the fight with the Banelord. He looked at the wider scene now, and he absorbed the full influx of positioning and tactical data in the manifold. The line formation the Imperial Hunters had used to march towards the Iron Skulls was like a moving fortress wall. Each maniple was a strongpoint, and the distance between the maniples could be covered by interlocking fire of devastating intensity. The Iron Skulls showed little discipline in their formations. They could hardly be said to have formations at all. Syagrius intended to roll the wall over the enemy, cutting the traitors apart with a machine created from the collective strength of the demi-legio.

  The Iron Skulls attacked with numbers and with rage. The horde of corrupted Titans marched over the land, a monstrous battering ram smashing against the Imperial Hunters’ wall. The hills beyond Therimachus were turning into a cratered, smoking graveyard of god-machines. Imperial Hunters and Iron Skulls alike were destroyed. Some of the Titans were still upright. Too massive to fall, they were burning monuments of metal.

  And Lukretus was right. The Iron Skulls were breaking through the line. They kept coming, hurling mass and firepower at the maniples. The discipline of the Imperial Hunters was not enough. There were half again as many traitors as there were Hunters. Their attack was not unthinking, Syagrius realised. The Titans towered over the landscape, so there were no defensive positions, and there was no high ground. If ferocity was the soul of the Iron Skulls, it was also the strategy that used the relative strengths of the forces to their advantage. One of the Banelords and clusters of Ravagers had crossed the line. Then they turned back, attacking from a new front.

  The shape of the battlefield was changing. The Imperial Hunters were about to be surrounded.

  Change the strategy, Syagrius thought. Change it now before it’s too late. This is a mistake.

  ‘Tighten formations,’ he voxed. Make a fist, he thought. Batter the traitor with it. Concentration of force. That was what was needed now. ‘Lukretus,’ he said, ‘can you–’

  Light, again, the awful, obliterating flash of a Titan’s power plant going critical. A much bigger explosion, this time, from further away yet far more devastating. Primum Victor dead, the scream of its machine-spirit a brief but staggering wound through the manifolds of every Titan of the demi-legio. And the blast was so colossal that it killed t
wo more Titans of Lukretus’ maniple. The dying roars of the god-machines struck Syagrius’ consciousness in the manifold at the same time as their crews shouted their agony and despairing anger over the vox.

  A massive hole opened up in the line. The Iron Skulls marched through it and rounded on the other maniples. Syagrius saw what was happening. There was no time now to create the fist. Lukretus had held the centre point of the line. With Primum Victor gone, the other maniples were isolated. They were going to be surrounded and cut down one by one.

  Syagrius confronted the inevitability of defeat. He tried to deny it. He failed. The knowledge, certain and shameful, entered his heart and its cold flame withered his soul.

  Shells hit Augustus Secutor from the front and the left flank. The second attack came from the direction of Primum Victor’s position. Ahead, another Banelord advanced, its tail cannon already firing again. Syagrius took his Warlord to the right. He struck out at the two foes, he and his moderati fighting as a single, raging, desperate entity. They launched a flight of Apocalypse missiles to the left, trying to hold back the other attacker long enough to deal with the closer one to the fore. The rest of the maniple took on the streams of fire coming from other Iron Skulls.

  Plasma annihilator and las turret blazed again. Fall, damn you, fall, Syagrius thought. He willed the Banelord to die under his first salvo.

  It did not.

  ‘I don’t like this symmetry,’ Rekorus said, his voice rasping with strain. Augustus Secutor had killed the first Banelord in a crossfire. Now the same trap closed around it.

  ‘Nor do I,’ Syagrius said. ‘So we’ll break it. Forwards, full speed.’ He would ram the foe if he had to.

  The enemy on the left emerged from the firestorm created by the destruction of Primum Victor. It was another Banelord. Tail and left arm cannons blazed. Flights of missiles blackened the air. They hit at the same time as the forward enemy’s salvo. The traitors walked through the counter fire of Magnificum Virum and Arma Dominus. The double barrage hit Augustus Secutor. Rockets slammed down on the Warlord’s cowling. Warp-tainted light erupted before Syagrius’ eyes. The void shields imploded. An enormous projectile hit the Warlord’s right leg. Worse than the damage data that rushed into the manifold was the awful sense of looseness that Syagrius felt when he had his god-machine take another step. It seemed his own right leg wanted to fall off. Augustus Secutor walked, but the grinding of the worsening injury sent vibrations through its entire hull. The Warlord’s gait was awkward. It listed to the right.

  How many more steps? Syagrius wondered. Let there be enough. Throne, let there be enough.

  ‘The shields…’ Magos Prendivian voxed.

  ‘I know,’ Syagrius snapped.

  ‘We might not get them back.’

  ‘Get them back. Do it now!’ The energy readings of the two Banelords were spiking. Another barrage was imminent.

  Augustus Secutor and the forward Banelord were only a few hundred yards apart. Black smoke billowed from the cracked armour plating of the traitor. It came on with the dark cloud of its wounds surrounding it. Infernal energy arced up and down its limbs and torso. The eyes in its horned head blazed the crimson of hate. Its power claw opened and closed like a hungry maw.

  Syagrius leaned forwards, pulling at the mechadendrites, as if he could reach the traitor faster. Fires were breaking out in the conduits and halls of the Titan. His second body was bleeding, but he would preserve its honour. He would smash the trap. He was an Imperial Hunter, and he would turn the Iron Skulls back into prey once more.

  The air outside the Warlord flickered as the void shields came back up. They were weak. They were enough for more time. ‘Every­thing,’ Syagrius breathed, and below his throne, and in their carapace compartments, the moderati echoed him. ‘Everything,’ they said, and Augustus Secutor blasted the Banelord with its entire arsenal. The Iron Skull unleashed its fury at the same time. The Titans walked into a maelstrom of energy, shells, las and missiles. Katara vanished from Syagrius’ senses, swallowed by the cataclysm. His jaw was rigid with his scream of defiance and pain. There was nothing except fire and blood. Augustus Secutor walked through a holocaust, and it was burning; its flesh was being flayed from its body. Armour plating buckled. Electrical surges exploded throughout its systems. The machine-spirit’s pain flashed down the mechadendrites. Rekorus went into a seizure. White agony burst in Syagrius’ head. His sense of the god-machine’s body receded. A fatal numbness crept into his limbs. He clung to consciousness and to his grip on the Warlord with the determination that came with a final act.

  The storm ended. Syagrius saw the world once more. Augustus Secutor and the Banelord were within a few steps of each other. The Iron Skull was wreathed in flames. The cannon of its left arm was a ruin, the barrel exploded by the Warlord’s plasma blast. It had to drag its right leg forwards. But its wrath was undiminished, and its power claw heaved back in preparation for the great blow.

  ‘Hit it again!’ Syagrius shouted. ‘Everything! Again!’ He tasted blood in his mouth. He was shouting at himself more than the moderati, and he was demanding the impossible. The Sunfury’s drain on the Warlord’s power plant was enormous. The las turret sustained its steady burst of fire. The other weapons could not fire again. Not just yet.

  But he needed them now.

  ‘Everything,’ Syagrius gasped, and then the other Banelord hit Augustus Secutor’s flank with another barrage. There were no shields this time to mitigate the damage at all. The left half of Syagrius’ body felt as if it were on fire. The plasma annihilator died before it could recharge. Syagrius tried to move the Warlord forwards. He could not. The right leg moved, still loose, still grinding. But the left was immobile.

  ‘Magos,’ he yelled for Prendivian.

  There was no answer.

  The Banelord took one more step. Its war-horn sounded a call of blood triumph. It brought the power claw down. The blow was savage and devastating. The claw flashed as it struck. It punched through the upper left torso of Augustus Secutor. The Banelord thrust upwards with the claw, and it came out the top of the cowling, ruptured hydraulics trailing from its grip. It ripped the Apocalypse launcher from the carapace, and hurled it into the distance. The Warlord’s left flank was motionless. Syagrius went numb on that side of his body. He could not lift his arm from its rest on the throne. He felt half his face sag.

  ‘We are not dead yet!’ he shouted. The defiance felt empty. His lips could not form the words properly. There was smoke in the compartment. Rekorus was unresponsive. Trovalis grunted in acknowledgement, and that was all.

  Syagrius saw the lie at the centre of his words. He could still control the las turret, and he fired point-blank at the Banelord.

  There were voices on the vox. They came to Syagrius from a great distance, echoes from the other Titans of the Imperial Hunters. There were still two Warlords, weren’t there? Did he hear their princeps calling to him? Or did the scratching sounds come from Aurea Exterminator and Sacra Canis? Where were the Reaver and the Warhound? His senses in the manifold were confused. His awareness was swamped by the anguish of the machine-spirit. Augustus Secutor demanded satisfaction for its injuries. Its pride required the utter destruction of its foe. But it could barely move. Its strength had been taken from it. It howled at the edge of madness.

  The las turret fired, and the burst lasted less than a second. The second Banelord reached Augustus Secutor. It hammered the back of the Warlord with its power claw. Once, twice, the tolling of a terminal bell, and with the third blow it drove through plating and into the heart of the god-machine. Syagrius’ chest exploded with pain. Augustus Secutor’s war-horn blasted one more time. It sounded across the battlefield and the roofs of Therimachus. It was a call for vengeance, a roar against fate, and it was a cry of final despair. Then the Warlord’s power shut down. The manifold blinked out of existence. The sudden blankness threw him fully into the flesh worl
d. The mechadendrites, inert, became chains imprisoning him upon the throne. Trovalis was screaming. His eyes had rolled back, and blood poured from his ears.

  Syagrius flailed in his throne. His right fist pounded against the rest. He managed to jerk free of the mechadendrites and fell, bloody, to the deck. He looked up through the eyes of the Titan for the last time. He wanted to speak, to spit at the foe, to die unbowed. The sounds that came from his lips were not words. They were unformed moans.

  He saw the Banelord reach out with its claw once again. It stabbed into Augustus Secutor below the skull. Sawing vibrations shook the deck beneath him. Metal shrieked until he shrieked too, in a futile attempt to blot out the noise. Then there was movement. He was rising, and the skull of the Warlord was tilting forwards.

  The Banelord had decapitated its foe. It held the skull aloft in its power claw. Syagrius rolled forwards and fell against the armourglass window. He stared down into the boiling red of the Banelord’s eyes.

  The power claw began to close. The walls pushed in on Syagrius. In his last moments, when all pride was gone and he had nothing left except his helpless anger and despair, words crept in on his consciousness. They were as lethal as the tonnes of metal coming to crush his body, and more terrible yet because they came to devour his soul. They were fiery as brass.

  Skulls for the skull throne.

  Chapter 11

  The Klivanos Crossing

  Vansaak descended from Gloria Vastator and approached Krezoc while she was starting to outline how the demi-legio would approach Theri­machus. Krezoc saw her waiting to one side and acknowledged her with a nod. ‘You have something to report, moderati?’ she asked.

  ‘Grave news from Therimachus,’ said Vansaak. She stepped forwards. ‘Augustus Secutor has fallen. Marshal Syagrius is dead.’

  No one said anything at first. Krezoc waited, letting the implications sink in, giving all present the chance to process what had happened for themselves. ‘Any word of the battle?’