Machine Spirit

by Nick Kyme

  ‘It was my fault,’ he said, surrendering to dismay. ‘The drum was jammed. I took too long to–’

  ‘Forget that!’ snapped the Marine Malevolent, wrenching off a chunk of Polino’s battleplate and noisily casting it aside. ‘Are we still under attack or not?’

  ‘No,’ Ar’gan said, regaining his composure. ‘The gorge is clear for now.’

  ‘They’ll be back.’ Vortan stepped back to regard the mess of Polino’s bodyglove beneath his armour. It was bloody and stank like a gretchin. ‘Knew we should have left him.’

  Ar’gan scowled, not at the stench but at the wound. ‘Putrefaction. It must have been like this for a while. There’s a narthecium in the hold,’ he said, meeting Vortan’s gaze.

  ‘Get it. Quickly.’

  Ar’gan returned a few seconds later with a small medical kit. It was rudimentary with gauss, unguents, oils and a small set of tools. It wasn’t exactly apothecarion standards but it was still a useable field kit. Vortan had some experience as a field medic and rummaged through the few phials and philtres, ampules and other medicines.

  They had resisted its usage until that point, not knowing when it would be most needed. The time had arrived.

  ‘Excise those flesh barbs,’ Vortan barked, taking a tube of briny-looking liquid.

  Ar’gan had left his shorter combat-blade in the kroot sniper’s neck, so took a scalpel from the kit instead and began removing the barbs.

  ‘These things…’ he swore, slicing the skin around the wounds carefully so as not to aggravate more of the poison and further envenom it. ‘Abominations.’

  Vortan’s reply was curt, ‘All xenos are abominations, fit for extermination and nothing else.’ He licked his finger, tasting a droplet of the liquid in the tube before spitting it out with a grimace. ‘Should bring him around.’ The Marine Malevolent waved the Salamander back, who was done with his improvised surgery anyway.

  Vortan had fitted a syringe to the tube and was squeezing out any air bubbles when he said, ‘This needs to go into his primary heart. Immediately.’

  Polino looked weak, murmuring incoherently, a pained expression gripping his face.

  Using a clean scalpel, Ar’gan cut away the section of bodyglove over the Imperial Fist’s primary heart to reveal skin. It looked pale and unhealthy.

  ‘How will you pierce the bone?’ asked the Salamander, glancing sidelong at either entrance to the ravine. Mercifully, a second wave wasn’t coming. Not yet.

  ‘With as much brute force as I can muster.’ Vortan rammed the syringe, two-handed, into Polino’s chest and depressed the trigger.

  Enhanced adrenaline surged into the captain’s arteries, flooding his heart with the equivalent of a chemical electro-shock. It was dangerous, especially for someone in the captain’s condition. But they were desperate. Polino’s eyes snapped open like shutters and he roared, smashing Vortan off his feet with a backhand and kicking Ar’gan in the chest, doubling the Salamander over. Bolt upright, he jerked to a standing position and then sagged, breathing heavily.

  ‘Sword of Dorn,’ he gasped, spitting blood, ‘what did you do to me?’ He looked up at Vortan, who was only just now rising, eyes wild.

  ‘I got you back in the fight, sir,’ he growled, removing his battered helmet. Polino had dented it and cracked one of the retinal lenses with his punch.

  The Imperial Fist looked around.

  ‘Where is Zaeus?’

  ‘Off fetching reinforcements.’ Ar’gan grimaced, clutching his bruised chest. Straightening up, he glared at the spent autocannon. Smoke was rising from the ammo feed where it had overheated. Part of the metal was fused and had seized the mechanism.

  ‘It’s scrap,’ he said, cursing inwardly. ‘Be more use as a club now.’

  ‘Do we have any other weapons?’ asked Polino, trying to get a handle on the tactical situation. Despite his enhanced strategic acumen, he was having trouble focusing.

  Vortan spread his arms to encompass the gunship and the makeshift defences.

  ‘This is it. Everything you see.’

  Ar’gan looked down at the chrono readout in his vambrace.

  ‘How long?’ asked Vortan.

  ‘Eighteen minutes.’

  They had lasted only eighteen minutes thus far, and already they were down one autocannon – Polino was unlikely to last the duration of the next engagement.

  ‘And the estimated arrival of Zaeus with our reinforcements?’ asked Polino.

  Shadows were gathering at the edges of the ravine again, heralded by the tell-tale cries of the kroot. A deeper strain joined the shrilling chorus this time, as something larger at the periphery of the kill-team’s defences lumbered into view.

  Vortan was already on his way back to the autocannon, ‘Not soon enough.’

  At the edge of the crash site, the kroot had been waiting for him. Zaeus had barely left the ravine when the creatures attacked. He killed them quickly, using up the last of his kraken and hellfire rounds to leave a mess of destroyed carcasses in his wake. The ambush was predictable, Zaeus reasoning that the kroot would have drawn a loose perimeter around the gunship and were using it to bait a trap. It was one the kill-team had gladly fallen into. If nothing else, the Thunderhawk was the only defensible position in the desert and their only means of exfiltration, but only if Zaeus could repair the damage done to the gunship, and then only if they could defeat the horde pursuing them to enable the Techmarine to do it.

  Kilometres clicked by in the Brazen Minotaur’s retinal lens display, as did data describing fault lines, contours, temperature fluctuations and calcite density in the air. Beyond the ravine where he had left his brothers, the storm had not fully abated. It carved shallow grooves into his armour and wore at his Deathwatch black.

  He remembered the day he had repurposed it, painted over the colours of his Chapter and taken the sacred oaths of moment of the xenos hunters. Back then, he had barely known the other warriors in his kill-team.

  Carfax, so full of choler, his blood always up had seemed ill-suited as a pilot; the quiet depths of Ar’gan hid a deadly bladesman; Vortan, the bitter and moribund priest, who cradled a heavy bolter like a favoured pet; Polino, the Fist, was as rigid as any son of Dorn but a strong captain; but Festaron, gifted as a field medic, was more open than any Star Phantom Zaeus had known or heard of. Their cultures and ways of war were strange, even anathema to the son of Tauron at first. Giving up the black lion pelt had been hard during that time, but the bond with his new-found brothers made it a worthy sacrifice. Respect and synchronicity had grown between them, and their differences became as boons that strengthened and united rather than weakened the group.

  Now they were one, but they were dying and Zaeus raged at the fates that had brought them to this mortal place. He could not fail them.

  A chrono counted down in his other retinal lens. It was over twenty-six minutes old already, the harsh terrain adding precious minutes to his arrival at the bastion or whatever was broadcasting the signal. It looped in his helmet vox, repeating the same message over and over. Recently, it had become a taunt rather than a promise of reinforcement.

  Zaeus fed more power into the half-track, ignoring the whine of its sand-clogged engine as he pushed the servitor unit to its limit.

  ‘Emperor, make me swift…’

  Slowly a bulky structure began to resolve through the storm. Cycling through the optical spectra of his bionic eye, Zaeus discovered it was indeed a fastness, isolated but ironbound with thick buttresses and high, sloping walls.

  He resisted the natural urge to charge straight at it, demand audience and bring back warriors to help save his beleaguered brothers.

  Common sense tempered his Tauron desires and he eased his speed.

  The bastion was dark green, much of its militaristic stencilling eroded by the desert, so he could only guess at its provenance. There w
as no mistaking the Adeptus Astartes ident-code of the signal. Zaeus switched to a corresponding frequency and spat a blurt of simple binaric that even the most rudimentary codifier could interpret.

  I am an ally in need of aid. Cycle down your defences.

  The half-track growled the last few kilometres to the installation, slowing as Zaeus approached the shadow of its defence towers.

  No answer came from his hails, but the tell-tale muzzles of heavy bolters jutting from lofty firing slits looked threatening. The gun nests sat in a pair of watchtowers that flanked an open gate. A quick biometric analysis suggested they were unmanned but could be auto-slaved.

  Zaeus decided on the direct approach.

  ‘Archeval Zaeus, of the Emperor’s Adeptus Astartes,’ he declared, letting the engine idle. If there was a data-corder or pict-feeder located in the gate somewhere it would have logged his presence.

  Silence.

  Time lapsed so loudly Zaeus could almost hear the seconds ticking over on the chrono in his retinal lens. The lion within him stirred, demanding action.

  Zaeus looked through the gate but could find no evidence of habitation. The cannons were still, not even auto-tracking.

  He snorted, a deep nasal exhalation that speckled the inside of his battle-helm with sputum. Caution was not a trait his Chapter held in much regard. He risked approaching the entryway. Like the walls it was thickly armoured, but gaped wide enough to fit the half-track. Easing down further on the speed to preserve the engine for the return journey, Zaeus passed through but met no resistance.

  He met no signs of life or occupation at all.

  Stretched in front of him was a large square plaza delineated by what he assumed were barracks or stores. Zaeus examined the signal data again and determined it was emanating from a large blocky structure at the end of the plaza.

  Flurries of calcite were drifting across the ground, scuffing the Brazen Minotaur’s boots after he had ditched the half-track at the gate to rest its protesting mechanics. He crossed the square of metal plates quickly, trying to banish the itch that the back of his head was in crosshairs, but reached the blocky structure without incident.

  Up close, he realised it was some kind of workshop or forge. Perhaps the Chapter here had a Techmarine as part of its garrison. Zaeus prayed to the Omnissiah he was right. It would make repairing the gunship much easier if there were a second pair of mechadendrites devoted to the task.

  A heavy door barred access but a simple chain and pulley would open it. Taking the partially corroded links in both hands, Zaeus grunted and heaved. After some initial resistance the chain spilled through his fingers, but the gate was obviously broken and only slid aside halfway to partially reveal the darkness of the workshop within.

  He muttered, ‘No time for this…’ Taking a back step, Zaeus barged the gate using his head and shoulder like a battering ram. It crumpled inwards with a squeal of wrenched metal, and he snarled at his achievement, some of the old Tauron warrior emerging through his Martian conditioning. He could have torn it off its hinges with his servo-arm but old habits were tough to break, and he was feeling pugnacious.

  Zaeus ventured into the darkness, his hand on the grip of his bolter.

  ‘Hail, brothers.’

  The machine growl of his voice echoed back at him.

  Such a large installation, it was possible the warriors who had sent the message were deeper in its confines. It was also possible that a single Space Marine acted as its garrison as warden, such postings were not uncommon. Perhaps their alarums were malfunctioning too, as the Brazen Minotaur’s violent entry would certainly have tripped more than one warning klaxon. He penetrated further, but still nothing. From the condition of the ragged machines in the workshop it certainly appeared as if the bastion had suffered from several years of neglect. He found a heavy switch and threw it, igniting a bank of flickering halogen strips above – the dim light revealed little else but more mechanised decrepitude.

  Zaeus’s bionic eye added little to that analysis. There were no heat traces, biological or otherwise, but he did detect the hidden Icon Mechanicus inlaid into the back wall. It was only revealed through specific data-interrogation, the likes of which only an adept of the Mechanicus could perform. Whoever had hidden this chamber did not want it found by a casual inspection.

  A glance at his bolter confirmed his low ammo count. Zaeus mentally shrugged – hand-to-hand would do just as well if it came to that. Already, he could feel his enhanced physiology priming him for the eventually of close combat, fuelling his body, heightening his senses and reactions, incrementally increasing his strength and adrenaline levels with every step. For now, Zaeus kept himself in check. Closer inspection of the Icon Mechanicus suggested it might occlude a second gate leading further into the compound.

  A quick glance at the chrono showed almost forty-eight minutes had lapsed. Almost half his time had passed. He needed to move faster.

  A patina of age and a veil of gossamer thin cobwebs enshrouded ranks and ranks of ancient welders, rivet-punchers, machine lathes and furnaces. As he walked through the graveyard of extinct machines a theory formed. Much of the desert was overrun by the kroot-hybrids. Whilst the high walls of the bastion would keep most casual predators at bay, they might not be proof against a hardier, more adaptive strain of xenos. From his research of the kroot carnivore, Zaeus knew they were a race that had the ability to absorb the traits and characteristics of creatures through ingestion of biological matter. He balked at what species of xenos would evolve through a fusion of kroot and tyranid. So far, the kill-team had seen little of its potential but perhaps in the deeper desert the old garrison of the bastion knew more of such horrors.

  Regardless of any possible danger, it was too late now to do anything other than press on. Zaeus had reached the concealed gate and shone a beam of binaric-filled decoding light onto the Icon Mechanicus. It responded instantly, illuminating, the light spreading to a data wire that ran up to the top of the gate describing a hexagonal portal limned in magnesium white.

  Gears and motors, extant servos and half-forgotten engines grumbled into life from somewhere below. Zaeus felt the great machine beneath kilometres of rockcrete stirring like a leviathan awakened in an ocean trench. The gate cracked, split into four, each fissure running to a nodal point in the exact centre of the Icon Mechanicus. Monolithic in sheer size, the portal dwarfed Zaeus and he had to crane his neck just to see how far up it would open.

  A vast hangar was revealed beyond the gate, immense and echoing. Dust motes thronged the air, which was musty and dryer than the desert. Zaeus’s helmet sensorium detected mould spores and the activity of dormant insect life disturbed by his sudden entrance.

  But there was no life beyond that, and no death either. He had feared there would be bodies, the empty carcasses of slain battle-brothers and the genetic soup of dead xeno-forms. Neither greeted him, but something else did. Something he did not expect.

  As the gloom within was lit up like a firmament of a thousand crimson stars, Zaeus raised his bolter.

  He’d been wrong, so wrong about everything. The kroot-hybrids had not come here. Something else had happened to the bastion. Possibly, something even worse…

  ‘Omnissiah…’ he breathed, taking up a firing stance.

  The gorge was almost overrun. For over an hour and a half they had held the line with just the weapons salvaged from the gunship and inhuman determination. But after ninety-seven minutes of near relentless assault, ammunition was low and hope with it. Only wrath remained and the fervent desire to sell their lives at the cost of those of their enemies.

  For Vortan, the price could not be high enough.

  He roared, a righteous expression of anger and defiance that merged with the ballistic shout of the cannon punching solid shot into the kroot beast’s torso. The Marine Malevolent could hardly miss such a gargantuan creature. Slab-snouted, with
two bulky forelimbs that were more simian than avian, it was broad-backed with much shorter rear legs and loped towards Vortan in the manner of an ape. Underneath its ribbed torso were paired rending claws, jutting forwards like tusks.

  It snorted and snarled, its chitinous body wracked by cannon-fire, then bleated as Vortan found more tender flesh.

  ‘Hate is the surest weapon!’ the Marine Malevolent raged, chanting his Chapter’s battle cry as zealous indignation washed over him. ‘Suffer not the alien to live!’

  The beast was slowing. Blood oozed from its nostrils, foaming with its heavy breath. But it wasn’t done, not even close. A half glance at Polino during the barrage revealed the Imperial Fist was in worse shape. He sagged at the gun emplacement, the adrenaline fuelling his system almost spent, his finger locked against the trigger through sheer force of will. He strafed the gorge but his fire was only seventy per cent effective.

  ‘Keep them off me,’ Vortan spat down the comm-feed.

  A horde of the lesser kroot were scurrying through the narrow aperture of the gorge, abandoning rifles in favour of the deadly gifts granted them through their hybridisation with the tyranid. A swarm of champing tooth and claw was descending on the survivors of the kill-team and only Captain Polino could stop it.

  The Imperial Fist barely nodded.

  ‘By Dorn’s blood…’ It came out as a rasp, strained by fatigue.

  ‘I’ll kill them all if I have to,’ Vortan snarled through clenched teeth, putting a three-round burst through the kroot beast’s skull. It grunted once, spitting up more blood and acid-bile, before slewing to a halt. Momentum carried it forwards, its bulk carving a deep furrow in the calcite.

  Polino was down. Hoping to share in his triumph, Vortan only saw the Imperial Fist’s gauntleted fingers slipping off the gun before he disappeared behind the barricade. He opened up the feed to Ar’gan.

  They needed to retrench, head back towards the gunship and try to mount some kind of defence. Hold and repel. Victory through attrition – that was the Salamanders way.