I put my displeasure aside. Where would a normally ostentatious governor go that would draw little attention?
I pointed to a large chapel about a thousand metres away, just visible between soot-blackened hab blocks. ‘Let’s try there.’
Lanner grunted in the affirmative. We made our way down from the wall and through the choking traffic to the Chapel of the Martyrs Militant. The church was a good symbol of the decay of Hades Hive. Its architecture was grand, and the grime that covered its facade was no different from what was the case in the other hives. But the rose window had lost many of its panes of stained glass. Some had been bricked up, but there were gaps too. Inside, the pillars and vaults were rough with layers of dirt and acid erosion. The floor crunched beneath my boots, the rockcrete flaking. The tapestries and banners had grown threadbare. The grime was so thick it obscured their subjects, and they gleamed slightly, as if slimy to the touch. The foul wind of Hades blew in through the gaps in the window, filling the nave with the sulphur-and-diesel stink of the hive. The banners moved sluggishly.
The chapel was empty.
Lanner said, ‘Usually somebody here.’
I agreed. Even between services, it was very odd to see pews completely empty in any public place of worship. ‘Unless they’ve been made to leave,’ I said. I moved down the nave.
At the transept crossing, we heard the echo of footsteps on our right. We stopped and waited. The doors to the crypt were in the north transept. After a few moments, the lord governor of Hades Hive emerged through the doors, accompanied by a squad of his personal guards. They wore the deep blue Tritten livery. Their uniforms were stained, unkempt. They looked more like bored, hired guns than loyal servants of the family.
Matthias Tritten was a soft man. His contours lacked definition. Middle-aged, of average weight and height, his robes of office seemed too heavy for him. He hesitated when he saw us, then swept forward, doing his best to look imperious. He failed.
‘I ordered the sanctuary cleared,’ he said as he neared us.
Ignoring him, Lanner said, ‘Commissar Yarrick, Lord Tritten.’
‘We were looking for you,’ I said. ‘We understood you were inspecting the defences.’ I made a point of glancing around the space of the chapel. ‘How do you find them?’
I made no attempt to hide my contempt. Instead of trying to have me arrested, Tritten became defensive. His eyes jumped about the room, hunted prey. He had none of von Strab’s deftness in calculation. ‘I saw what I needed to,’ he said. ‘There are some aspects which Colonel Helm should see to, and I will bring them to his attention.’
‘He’ll be grateful, yes he will,’ Lanner said. I shot him a look and he took a step back.
Again, Tritten did not retaliate. Instead, he said, ‘Good.’ Clearly, he did not feel himself to be in a position of strength. For a governor, that was pathetic.
My estimation of the man fell even further.
Tritten went on. ‘I felt the need for prayer and reflection to prepare for the time of trial awaiting us.’
‘Quite,’ I said.
Tritten glared, and something cleared in his eyes. ‘Yarrick,’ he said. ‘Overlord von Strab sent me word about you.’ His master’s voice gave him courage. ‘I see you have already forgotten your place. We have nothing to say to each other.’ He turned away, drawing his robes closer. He stalked off. His guards followed. They looked less bored than before, but uninterested in throwing their weight around in the defence of their lord.
‘The roads are clogged with traffic,’ I called to Tritten.
He stopped. ‘And?’
‘Play your role, governor. The citizens need direction. They are as much a part of the campaign as we are. Whatever you may hope, the xenos threat is coming here. The Steel Legion will fight to the end. And so must every citizen of Hades. Do you understand? Or do you expect to hide and pray and expect the Astra Militarum to make the nightmare go away?’
‘I’ve heard enough.’ He started walking again.
‘Lead, and lead well,’ I warned him.
‘What makes you think you can give orders?’ he snapped.
‘What makes you think you can ignore them?’
He didn’t answer.
I waited until the chapel doors boomed shut behind him and his escort. I made straight for the crypt stairs. ‘We need to see what he wanted down there,’ I said.
‘Don’t think he was praying?’ Lanner asked, playing at innocence.
‘Not for a second.’ Tritten struck me as the sort who would plead to the God-Emperor with all his strength when all else had failed, but until then any expression of faith was a show. He was a coward, with a coward’s pragmatic corruption. Something he valued greatly was in the crypt.
It didn’t take us long to find his secret. One of his guards must have heard us enter the chapel, raised the alarm, and they had left quickly. There hadn’t been time for proper concealment and the attempt that had been made only served to draw my attention. The lumen strips at the far end of the crypt had been destroyed. The dim lighting gave way there to pitch black. One of Lanner’s troopers flicked on a torch. We walked down a narrow lane between the marble sarcophagi of ecclesiarchs. At the end was the largest and most ornate. It was the tomb of Saint Karafa. The details of the cardinal’s heroism were part of the hidden period of Armageddon’s history, but if it had been decreed that his deeds be forgotten, it had also been commanded that his name should be immortalised. The sides of the huge marble sarcophagus were carved into a tangle of shapes that suggested holy struggle without representing Saint Karafa’s foes. The cardinal stood tall in the centre, radiating sanctity and the Emperor’s light.
On the far side of the tomb was a door. Its outline was a rectangular seam cutting through the sculpture. I pushed. It swung open with the scrape of stone on stone. The tomb had been hollowed out. My jaw tightened at the sight of the desecration. In the glow of the torch, I could see the marks of tools and the damage done to the art. The work was not original to the tomb, yet it did not seem recent.
Inside the monument, a ladder descended a shaft. The beam of the torch could not reach the bottom. I crouched at the edge and peered down. No way to tell at a glance where someone starting down the ladder would end up, but the purpose of the shaft was clear.
Escape.
Lanner whistled. ‘Doesn’t do cowardice in half measures, does he?’
‘He does not.’ I straightened. ‘We need to know where this goes.’
Lanner nodded. ‘Gaden, Tetting, you’re volunteers. Off you go.’
The two troopers began the long climb. We watched until they were just the sparks of two torches far below.
‘What do you think, commissar?’ Lanner asked.
‘I think Lord Tritten was checking on a dynastic legacy.’
‘Aye to that. Generations of cowards. Well, they were never loved, that family.’
‘An escape route of this sort would have to be a last resort,’ I reasoned. ‘One to use when a shuttle flight away from Hades was impossible.’
‘Must go far, then. No point popping up in front of the gates.’
‘Yes. My guess is your men will find access to disused mining tunnels, and those won’t surface until well beyond the walls.’
‘As soon as they’re back, we’ll do some demolition.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘This could be useful. Post guards, though. If anyone with a title tries to use it, shoot him.’
2. Mannheim
Setheno returned to Infernus, and she bore tidings: the orks were crossing the jungle. Mannheim was there in the throne room when she presented the news to von Strab. He was there to see the overlord’s face when he heard what Setheno had seen from the lifter – the orks tearing through the natural barrier with fire and abandon, towering machines of war levelling trees, smashing a trail through for the rest of t
he army to follow. He finally saw terror etch its mark on von Strab’s face.
I have lived to see that, he thought. It was not despair that made him think he would not live to experience much more satisfaction. It was realism.
‘But the Equatorial Jungle is slowing them,’ von Strab said, as if stating his wish with enough force would make it a fact.
‘They were making good time,’ said Setheno. ‘The challenges of the terrain and the wildlife appeared to be inspiring them to greater efforts. They will arrive the stronger for their journey.’
‘How long…?’ Von Strab did not complete the question. Even now, he would not articulate what he had so vehemently declared was impossible.
Setheno finished the sentence for him. ‘Before they reach Armageddon Secundus? A few days. Maybe less.’
‘Well then,’ von Strab said. ‘Well then. I see.’
Meaningless words, Mannheim thought. Sounds made to buy some time, to save face, to pretend there was a simple solution to the catastrophe.
‘Measures must be taken,’ von Strab said, managing more than a two-word sentence. Then he looked at Mannheim. The next sentence he spoke was fully developed. It was articulate. It was full of meaning. And it was completely mad.
Now, walking across the vast pavement of the Iron Skulls’ staging ground, Mannheim found he could not remember von Strab’s precise words. Though he had expected them, the scale of their folly was so vast the rational mind refused to preserve them. He had to live the insanity of their meaning, though.
The stretch of rockcrete covered many square kilometres. It was beyond the outer wall of Infernus. The hive’s density was too great for a flat, open space this vast. And it was home to colossi that towered over the battlements. Humans moving on foot were insects, their existence rendered trivial by the immense figures of war. The God Machines were motionless, statues of destruction rising to the sky. They were not silent, though. On all sides, Mannheim heard the powering up of reactors.
A wind of fire was coming into being.
Setheno and Brenken accompanied Mannheim on the journey to Steel Hammer. The Imperator’s shadow fell over them, the twin cathedral spires rising from its shoulders pointing accusatory fingers back towards the heart of Infernus.
Brenken was swearing under her breath. ‘Sending the Iron Skulls out with no support,’ she said. ‘He must know he’s repeating the mistake that lost Primus.’
‘He doesn’t believe that was a mistake,’ Setheno told her. ‘It failed because of your incompetence. You did not carry out his orders as required. But now he uses his great weapon.’ She spread her arms to take in the Legio Metalica.
‘His,’ Mannheim spat the word’s bitter taste from his mouth.
‘Your pardon, princeps,’ said Setheno. ‘That is how he views you, and all of us. Every soul on Armageddon exists for his benefit.’ The cold, gold eyes looked at something beyond the horizon. ‘Our tragedy is to have the truth of our debt to the Emperor so distorted. Its correct application would be our salvation.’
‘What are your plans?’ Brenken asked Mannheim.
‘My orders don’t give me much room to manoeuvre. We are to march to meet the orks. So we march.’
‘But without any support…’
‘I know.’ His Titans would smash the crude ork machines. That was a firm article of faith. But the Legio Metalica represented one particular form of warfare. The God Machines were not designed to combat the mobs of smaller foes. They would inflict terrible losses on infantry and fast vehicles, but they could no more block their advance than a pillar could stop a tide. While they fought the ork gargants and stompas, they would be vulnerable to the waves of ork tanks.
‘The orders are without merit,’ Setheno said. ‘They are given by a creature even more worthless.’
‘But he is overlord, and I am no mutineer. I have given my oath of service, and I will keep it. If I break it, I am guilty of treachery and heresy.’
‘Von Strab’s command has no legitimacy,’ Brenken said.
‘On the contrary,’ Setheno replied. ‘Legitimacy is all it has. And there is a mechanism to remove that.’
Brenken picked up on the hint. ‘Lord Commissar Seroff hasn’t shown any interest in exercising that sanction.’
‘I doubt he could even if he had the inclination,’ Mannheim said. ‘Von Strab is a miserable supreme commander, but he is very good at personal survival. His personal guard is good. His security precautions are strong. Seroff would have to be willing to die in the attempt.’
Brenken sighed. ‘I’ll try speaking with General Andechs, but he’s beholden to von Strab.’
‘I will pray for your success,’ Mannheim said. They had reached the feet of Steel Hammer. Valth and Dammann, his moderati, stood at attention by the entrance to the right leg, waiting for him. ‘I will pray for us all,’ he said. ‘The Emperor protects.’
‘The Emperor protects,’ Brenken and Setheno returned. They left him then, and he turned to Steel Hammer.
The elevator carried Mannheim and the moderati up through the leg and into the Titan’s pelvis. There they walked through the corridor of vaulted metal, past rushing steersmen and tech-priests, to the core, and another elevator took them to the height of Steel Hammer’s head. As they rose higher, Mannheim felt the clammy grasp of Armageddon’s politics slip from his spirit. He and his troops were about to live consequences of those foetid intrigues, but they would do so with honour and in the certainties of battle. If von Strab’s lunacy was leading Mannheim to death and defeat, he would encounter both with honour. He would confront the inevitable, and do all in his power to send it fleeing.
In the skull, Mannheim stood beside the command throne for a few moments before beginning the linking ritual. He looked out of the armourglass eyes. Before him was the crimson and gold might of the Iron Skulls. The Titans stood in a wedge with Steel Hammer at its point. Three Warlords. Behind them, eight Reavers. Then a row of a dozen Warhounds. A respectful distance behind, but ready to race ahead if given the order, were the ranks of the Skitarii Rhinos. Valkyries sat on landing pads to the left and right. All the great engines of war faced the Imperator as if awaiting its inspection.
Everywhere the banners of the Legion flapped in the smoky wind of Hades. The winged skull on a field of red and the black aquila on yellow, side by side, the fury of the Iron Skulls fused to the cause of the Imperium.
The fury that could smash civilisations was ready to be unleashed.
The control of that power was still a new sensation. Mannheim was acting commander of the Iron Skulls. A new Grand Master had yet to be formally named. The previous one’s sudden death gnawed at Mannheim. He had questions, all unanswered. He had speculations, all unsupported. Had the old man been assassinated? Had he defied von Strab in some way? Was Mannheim betraying his memory by remaining true to his oath? He couldn’t know. He had no evidence, only hunches and a distrust of coincidences.
And he had his oath, his honour, and the unity he had preserved in the Legio Metalica.
‘Let us begin,’ he said to Valth and Dammann. He sat in the throne. Its mechadendrites uncoiled. They reached for the implants in his skull, his neck, his spine. Clamps held his arms and legs in place. In the last moment before the contacts were made, he bid farewell to the weak meat of his human self. He opened himself to the embrace of Steel Hammer.
He felt the wrench, a disorientation so great it was a perfect agony as his perception became that of a god. His body was in the cockpit, and it was also a hundred and fifty metres tall. His arms were human, and they were the instruments of final judgement. He was motionless in the throne, and he bore a cathedral on his shoulders. He was mortal, and he was the eternal embodiment of Crusade.
Steel Hammer’s machine-spirit fused with his consciousness. He and the Titan were both one and distinct. The rage of war became his passion, his one desire to str
ike the enemy with all the terrible force contained within his body. His reason was still Mannheim, and he checked Steel Hammer. He channelled its rage.
The actions of the crew were the circulation of blood through the great body. And in the cathedral, the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus prayed to the Omnissiah, and the work to preserve the soul of the machine began.
He opened a channel to the vox-network and the vox-casters that lined the spires. When he spoke, his voice was heard by every member of the Legion, and it became a thunder that rolled over the streets of Hades.
‘Iron Skulls,’ Mannheim said, ‘the xenos threat hurries towards Armageddon Secundus. It is our sacred task to punish their transgression. We march alone, but who shall stand before us? We march alone, but the Emperor marches with us. So let us march, and shake the sky itself.’
The war horns of every Titan sounded, and the sky did tremble, blasted by a long, drawn-out fanfare of the end of worlds.
Then Steel Hammer moved. It turned. With each step a great blow upon a divine drum, the Imperator began the march.
1. Yarrick
In the late afternoon of my second day in Hades, Helm sent for me. I expected to meet him in the command tent, and was surprised when Lanner brought me to one of the bunkers atop the outer wall. It was a hardened communications centre next to an artillery turret. Helm was alone once again, and he sent Lanner away. The bunker’s slit looked out over the eastern approach to the hive. Inside, there was a stone bench built into the rear wall. A ledge, also stone, projected out of the right corner. The vox mic sat on the ledge.
Helm looked grim.
‘What is it?’ I asked.
‘The overlord has sent out the Legio Metalica to take on the orks.’
Yarrick: The Pyres of Armageddon Page 22
