by Ben Counter
'We have to take power from the prow batteries,' said the female tech-priest, who was working a complicated system of interlocking pipes which covered one wall of the verispex lab and presumably governed how power was routed through the ship. She was holding a hand against a deep gash in her forehead, trying to keep the blood from getting in her eyes.
'Then do it!' replied Nyxos. Another explosion, the closest yet, threw everyone to the ground save for Nyxos. Sparks showered from somewhere. Nyxos heard a scream and smelled burning cloth, then burning flesh - one of the lab's tech-priests had been wreathed in flame and was now on the ground, fellow crewmen beating out the fire.
Nyxos looked around. The lab was in a bad state. Throne knew what the rest of the ship was like. And this was Nyxos's last chance. It had been extraordinary how quickly the tech-priests had worked, but it wouldn't count for anything if they failed now.
The clockwork cogitator was spitting streams of punchcards, the lead tech-priest hauling on the handle to get it calculating quicker. It wasn't fast enough.
Nyxos stumbled over to the cogitator. Something was wrong with the gravity on the Exemplar and it was like crossing the deck of a vessel at sea.
'Let me,' he growled, grabbing the handle. His servo-assisted limbs locked and the massive strength of his augmentations hauled the wheel round faster, so fast the surprised tech-priest had to let go. The cogitator howled as steam and sparks shot from inside its casing.
'It's working!' yelled the female tech-priest. The cogitator spat out a rippling ribbon of printout - the lead tech-priest grabbed it and quickly scanned it, his bizarrely magnified pupils skipping from side to side.
'They're receiving,' he said.
'Can the projectors transmit it?' asked Nyxos, his servos whining as he continued to work the handle.
'I don't...'
The explosion tore through the lab, sending white-hot shrapnel spinning everywhere, sparks falling like burning rain. The shriek of escaping air was deafening as Nyxos, the tech-priests and all the wreckage of the lab was sucked through the massive rent in the wall.
In the silence of the vacuum the cogitator exploded, sending fragments of its cogs, like sharp serrated crescents, spinning everywhere. But by then there were very few people alive on the deck to care.
Chapter Fifteen
'Death in service to the Emperor is its own reward. Life in failure to Him is its own condemnation.'
- Uriah Jacobus,
'Epistles' (Verse 93)
SCRAECOS WAS TRAVELLING up to the pinnacle of the command spire when he felt the call of the Castigator. The peristaltic motion of the biological elevator stopped as the unmistakable voice spoke, every particle of every atom shuddering with its voice. Not physical and yet not psychic, when the Castigator spoke it did so with all the wisdom of the Omnissiah and it was impossible not to listen and obey.
Scraecos had yet to join with the consciousness of the tech-priests. It had been a long, long time since he had heard the call of the Castigator as an individual being. It was just like the first time he had heard it, deep below the ground, realizing that he had finally looked upon the face of the Omnissiah.
The Castigator had spoken to Scraecos. Only to Scraecos. And it was doing so again.
The voice of the Castigator did not use anything so vulgar and fleshy as words. It spoke in pure concepts. The particles in Scraecos's still-biological brain vibrated in waves of absolute comprehension.
The Castigator spoke of how it was time to take the avatar of the Omnissiah and reveal its face to the galaxy. It was why Chaeroneia had been brought back into real space. It would be the first part of the great revelation, when all mankind would witness the true Machine-God - something living and aware, all-wise, separate from the corpse-Emperor and infinitely more powerful. All who looked on it would have no logical choice but to kneel and pledge their lives to the Omnissiah.
The orthodox Mechanicus, which had withered like a grape on the vine, would be winnowed out. The Adeptus Astartes would abandon their obscure ancestor-worship and be made whole, their flesh excised and replaced with the Machine to create an army in the image of the Machine-God. The Imperial Guard would serve the newly-enlightened Mechanicus. The collective consciousness of tech-priests would go to Terra and there establish their court, the pooled wisdom of the thousands who had first seen the light on Chaeroneia.
It would not take long. The light of pure knowledge was too bright. There would be no shadows for the non-believers to hide amongst. The transition would be painful for a few, the mad and the corrupt, who would be rounded up and fed into the forges. But for the trillions of souls that laboured under the Imperial yoke, it would be a new Golden Age of Technology. The human race would achieve its full potential as the cogs that formed the machine. The greatest machine, the body of the Omnissiah Himself formed out of untold forges and factoria, machine-altars and cogitators, built and maintained by the whole human race who would sing His praises as they devoted their lives to holy labour.
It was beautiful. Archmagos Veneratus Scraecos could see the universe laid out according to the Omnissiah's plan, where the stars themselves were moved into perfect mathematical patterns, wrought into binary prayers thousands of light years across. How could the future be anything but that? Anything but a machine run according to sacred logic?
The voice faded. The Castigator had spoken.
The muscular motion around Scraecos continued, taking him up the long biological gullet that would disgorge him at the top of the command spire to take his place among the ruling consciousness.
He willed it to stop.
The Castigator knew all. It spoke rarely and when it did, everything it said was carefully calculated, including the timing.
Why had it waited until a time when Scraecos was alone, an individual, before doing so? The reason was clear. It wanted to speak directly to Scraecos as a discrete consciousness, just as it had done more than a thousand years before when Scraecos had first seen its face deep beneath the ash wastes.
The other tech-priests, their minds joined together and their personalities subsumed, would no doubt be calculating the tasks they would have to complete if the Castigator's vision were to become reality. They would have to get the Castigator off-planet perhaps, or maybe even re-enact a version of the great ritual that had plunged Chaeroneia into the warp in the first place. But not Scraecos. To Scraecos it had spoken directly.
Archmagos Veneratus Scraecos had been blind for so long. Now it was clear. He was the chosen of the Omnissiah. He was the vessel through which the work of the Omnissiah, as revealed through His avatar the Castigator, would be completed. Again, the timing of the Castigator's call could only mean one thing. Scraecos, until such time as he re-entered the collective consciousness, was on the same mission for which he had been made an individual again -hunt down the intruders and kill them all.
The Castigator wanted him to continue that mission. It was the only conclusion Scraecos could draw. Of all the tech-priests now searching for a way to make the vision come true, Scraecos's was the most sacred of all. There were heretics on Chaeroneia. New ones arrived from the Imperium outside and probably old ones who had been trapped on Chaeroneia from the start. For the Castigator to be presented to the galaxy, every single soul on Chaeroneia had to be working towards the same purpose. There was no room for heretics. Scraecos was the holy weapon of the Omnissiah, ancient and wise, strong and ruthless. Scraecos had always been uncompromising and strong - brutal, perhaps - even before he had found the Castigator. It was why he had been chosen. He had the body and mind of a killer and the soul of a pious servant. And so he would serve his god by killing.
Scraecos willed the elevator to reverse its swallowing mechanism, propelling him back down towards the base of the spire. The collective of tech-priests would have to work without him for the time being - he had sacred work to do in the shadows of Chaeroneia, work he had failed to complete at the data-fortress. He would
not fail now. Not with the will of the Omnissiah within him.
Failure was an anomaly of logic. Success was inevitable. Before the galaxy saw the Castigator revealed, everyone who opposed the will of the Machine-God on Chaeroneia would be dead.
THE BROKEN ASH wastes were corrosive and toxic. The hood of Hawkespur's voidsuit meant she could still breathe, but the ash was eating away at the suit's gloves and kneepads as she crawled along out of sight.
The tech-priests were well-practiced in staying hidden. The force avoided the occasional grav-platform, as it followed Magos Antigonus towards the bright silver boundary of the titan works.
'What is it?' asked Alaric as the silver became more visible.
'I don't know,' rasped Hawkespur. 'Perhaps another type of data medium. They're using it as a moat.'
'Then we have to cross it.'
'We could go round the works to find a crossing point. But it would take days.'
Alaric looked at her. Even through the ash-streaked faceplate of her hood he could see her skin was greenish and pale. 'You haven't got days.'
'No. And any crossing points will be guarded, anyway.'
'Then we'll swim if we have to.'
Hawkespur looked at him with mild surprise, noting the massive bulk of his power armour. 'You can swim?'
'You'd be surprised.'
Archmagos Saphentis crawled towards them, his bionic limbs splayed like crab's legs, carrying him just above the ground as if he found abasing himself in the dirt distasteful.
'Interrogator Hawkespur.' he said. 'Perhaps you should look up.'
Hawkespur glanced upwards. For the first time in several days she smiled.
The blasphemous prayers were gone. In their place, projected onto the dense cloud layer, were letters hundreds of metres high.
++00100INTERROGATOR01110HAWKESPUR, they read. POSSIBLE+STC PRESENT ON CHAERO100A. 010PTUS MECHANICU1 AND HELLFORGER BOTH DESIRE IT. DENY+TO+THE E0EMY+AT ALL1COSTS. RECOVERY NOT A PRIO10TY. WATCH+YOUR+BACK. NYXOS+OUT011110.
'Nyxos...' breathed Hawkespur. 'He found a way.'
'It must be bad up there.' said Alaric. 'Throne knows what kind of risks he had to take to transmit it down here.'
'It certainly changes things.' Hawkespur looked back down at the titan works. 'If the tech-priests found a Standard Template Construct here... if that is what all this is based on...'
'If so.' said Saphentis, 'then we may have discovered the source of the Dark Mechanicus beliefs of the Horus Heresy. And it is unlikely a more dangerous store of knowledge could exist.'
'No.' said an unfamiliar voice. It was the last of the tech-guard, the one who had been assigned to guard Hawkespur. He lifted the reflective visor of his helmet to show a pale, almost completely nondescript face, with fine surgical scars around one temple. 'The Standard Template Constructs are perfect. We learned this as menials. They contain the wisdom of the Omnissiah uncorrupted. They cannot contain a word of heresy.'
Alaric looked round at the soldier in surprise. It was the first time he had heard him speak - almost the first time any of the tech-guard had spoken except for the late Captain Tharkk. 'What does the Mechanicus teach about them?'
'An STC is a complete technology, rendered down to pure information. There is no room for corruptive innovation or error. They are sacred.' The tech-guard's voice was fast and clipped - he sounded as if he were reeling off rote-taught scripture.
'The dogma of the Cult Mechanicus.' interrupted Saphentis. 'The religion of Mars is couched in simple terms for the lower ranks of soldiers and menials. The lowest ranks hear of the Omnissiah as an object of religious awe. The Standard Template Constructs are described to them as holy artefacts. The more senior tech-priests understand such things in pragmatic and philosophical terms, but their devotion is no less. Some, of course, harbour divergent beliefs, but careful control is maintained over such things.'
'Then an STC.' said Hawkespur, 'would be something very powerful and not just because of what you could make with it. A tech-priest who possessed one could set himself up as... well, as a god, within the Mechanicus. There could be another schism.'
'It is probable,' replied Saphentis. 'Compromising the loyalty of the lower ranks would give an individual great power within the Mechanicus.'
'Enough to threaten the rule of Mars?' Hawkespur's question was a bold one. More than almost any other Imperial organization, the Adeptus Mechanicus presented a resolutely united and inscrutable front to the rest of the Imperium.
'I shall not speak of such matters.' said Saphentis.
'Good.' said Alaric. 'Because we need to keep moving. Nyxos's signal will only confirm that we're still alive and still looking to hurt them down here.'
Nyxos's message was already gone. The painful, occult symbols were back. Whatever Nyxos had done to hijack control of the spire top projectors, it had worked, but Alaric knew that it had been Nyxos's last, desperate chance and he wouldn't able to pull it off again, no matter how the battle in orbit was going.
Nyxos's message might help them when the endgame was played out. It might be irrelevant. But nothing killed a soldier like ignorance about what he was fighting and every scrap of information helped. Alaric knew they needed all the help they could get.
THE TRIBUNICIA BURNED from stem to stern. Its overloading plasma reactors had filled most of the engineering decks with superheated fuel and it bled thick ribbons of cooling molten metal from hundreds of tears in its hull. The whole rearward section of the ship was a burning wreck, showering debris and crewmen's bodies out into Chaeroneia's orbit as it tumbled slowly, locked in a grim, slow dance of destruction with the Hellforger.
The Tribunicia had the fearsome guns that any cruiser of the Imperial Navy could boast. But the Hellforger's crew had endless centuries of experience and the ancient, malevolent creatures that lurked inside it. It had daemonically possessed broadside guns and cruel gun-deck masters who had been sending ships burning into the endless grave of space for a thousand years. The Hellforger pumped salvo after salvo of heavy gun shells into the hull of the Tribunicia, slowly spiralling to keep the broadside a single, rolling bombardment.
The Hellforger was hurt, too. It was bleeding from thousands of craters and thick hull plates of scab had broken away to reveal hot living flesh beneath, which blackened and died in the vacuum. But it was nothing that the ship's crew could not repair, given time.
Portals opened, like eyeless sockets, in the underside of the Hellforger. The ship spat dozens of thick tendons from them, tipped with huge bony hooks. Those that hit the Tribunicia caught in the ruptured hull plates and slowly, painfully, the Hellforger started to reel the enemy ship in.
THE BRIDGE OF the Hellforger was hot and dark and stank of stagnant daemons' blood. Urkrathos watched the tormenting of the Tribunicia on the bridge holo and grunted his approval as another reactor blew somewhere in the rearward section of the Imperial ship. Even the daemons were watching - as much as they hated Urkrathos and the way he had enslaved them, they still loved death and destruction, especially when it was visited on the worshippers of the corpse-emperor.
The battle was a good one. It was up close and brutal, where the superior strength of the Hellforger counted for more than the discipline of the Imperial Navy. Even someone as rigidly disciplined as a Chosen of the Black Legion, such as Urkrathos himself, had to let the blood-lust take over from time to time. Sometimes battle wasn't just the work of the Dark Gods - it was an end in itself, beautiful and brutal.
'Are the grappling hooks sound?' asked Urkrathos.
'Fast and holding' came the reply from the grappling gang leader, deep in the guts of the Hellforger, his voice relayed by the communications daemon fused with the ceiling of the bridge.
'Good. Stand by for contact.'
Urkrathos flicked to another channel, sending his voice booming throughout the whole ship. 'Master of Weapons, bring me my sword from the armoury. The rest of you, prepare for boarding.'
BY SPACE TRAV
EL standards, the orbit above Manufactorium Noctis was a horrendously cramped labyrinth. Wreckage from shattered shuttles and transports glittered like crimson sparks in the sick, reddening light of the star Borosis. Streaks of yellow fire spat across the void from broadside shells, mixed in with the deep red las-blasts from lance turrets.
The Hellforger and the Tribunicia closed in a terminal death spiral, fire spattering between them like a swarm of fireflies. The Exemplar was holding out against the Desikratis, but the bloated old cruiser was launching volleys of gunfire into it with complete impunity, the daemon that controlled it grinning evilly as it poured more and more suffering into the Mechanicus ship.
Rear Admiral Horstgeld's orders had been to protect the troop transports. The transports were the target of the Vulture Wing, a force of elite fighter craft launching from the carrier platform Cadaver. Ptolemy Alpha and Ptolemy Beta were frantically trying to protect the troop transport Calydon, the Ptolemy Gamma having been reduced to a guttering wreck of a ship by coordinated attack runs from Vulture Wing.
The Imperial Guard, who had been brought to the Borosis system to land on the mystery planet and raise the flags of the Imperium over it, were instead dying in orbit. Men from the Mortressan Highlanders and a dozen other smaller units from other regiments were dying for their Emperor with no way to fight back and no understanding of what was happening to the Imperial ships.
Most of the smaller transports were crowding around the armed yacht Epicurus, almost pleading with the grand old pleasure-ship to protect them with its hastily fitted deck guns and defensive turrets.
The Vulture Wing had only just deigned to attack the Epicurus and it was going down quickly, most of its bridge crew dead from a torpedo strike, most of its engine crew dying in a massive plasma-fed fire that was burning out the ship's systems one by one.
