Machine Spirit

by Nick Kyme

  ‘Vulkan’s fire beats in my breast…’ Ar’gan uttered the mantra known and honoured by every fire-born son of Nocturne. With his death so imminent he found comfort in this small act of remembrance.

  ‘Ar’gan.’

  The comm-feed crackled in his ear. He didn’t risk a glance behind; his side of the gorge was filling up with xenos. Staccato bursts of heavy bolter-fire had turned into an unceasing salvo that would eventually reach its terminus. Ar’gan smiled. When that happened, he would turn to his blades.

  For now, he squatted on the gunship’s nose cone. He’d stripped off much of the armoured fuselage to gain access to the prow-mounted heavy bolter. The weapon was underslung, half-buried in the dirt but made for a good makeshift deterrent to ward off the attackers. As he fired, it spat out clods of calcite and mass-reactives. He kept up the punishment.

  ‘Ar’gan.’ The comm-feed sounded insistent.

  ‘Speak.’

  There was a short pause. Behind him, Ar’gan knew the Marine Malevolent was as hard pressed as he was.

  ‘Polino’s not getting back up.’

  Something large and hulking bullied its way through a crowd of lesser creatures. Kroot were crushed to paste and broken limbs. It didn’t seem to concern the beast.

  It was a little way off, tough to discern through the drifts and the swell of alien bodies. But definitely monstrous. It filled the end of the gorge, spined shoulders scraping rock, the suggestion of a tail lashing in irritation behind it… a beak, eye clusters hooded by sheathes of nictitating chitin. Ar’gan absorbed the details, his brain analysing them for potential weaknesses even as he listened to the chug-chank of the cannon and heard the tell-tale hollow report of a rapidly diminishing ammo supply.

  Vortan was speaking again. It sounded like he was moving.

  ‘We need to retreat.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘The gunship. We get inside, defend it.’

  ‘We’d be besieged.’ Though the Salamander acknowledged he’d considered the same tactic.

  A spray of shells cut down a cluster of kroot that had approached the twenty metre mark. Nothing breaches that line.

  That rule was about to be broken. The fire-ax practically hummed in its scabbard.

  Soon… It was like talking to an old friend.

  ‘Have you not noticed, Salamander?’ said Vortan, with an edge of irritation. ‘We already are.’

  Ar’gan could not disagree. He tried to see beyond the horde, for evidence of Zaeus’s coming.

  Vortan read his thoughts, ‘Techmarine’s dead. We’re on our own.’

  ‘Meet you inside,’ Ar’gan replied as the underslung mount ran dry.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  He was already up, leaping off the nose cone, twisting the fire-ax out of its scabbard.

  ‘To kill something.’

  The beast was struggling through the neck of the gorge. Everything around it was dead or dying. A landslide would make a poorer bung. A pity they had used up their grenades or he would’ve already collapsed the rock face to achieve just that.

  Instead, he had a beast, some fusion of one monster with another to create a fresh abomination more terrible than both.

  Ar’gan was running at it. The fire-ax came alive in his hand, bright as a sun-flare.

  Eight pairs of milk-white sclera alighted on the Salamander. Nasal pits opened in the monster’s neck, drinking in his scent but not finding prey.

  You are the hunted, Ar’gan told it, his mind cast back to gutting sa’hrk on the Scorian Plain when he was just a boy, when he was mortal.

  He had transformed, just as this beast had. The strength of the evolution of both was about to be tested in a bloody survival of the fittest.

  Recognising a threat, the monster opened its maw and a barbed proboscis lashed out like a whip. It caught Ar’gan’s shoulder, piercing the armour and sending a jolt of pain that his advanced nervous system rerouted so he felt it as a pinch, a slow spread of numbness through his upper arm.

  He whirled the fire-ax, severing the monster’s proboscis tongue. Left it flopping like a drowning fish in his wake. Ar’gan rolled, ducking under a thick flesh hook that would have impaled him like a sauroch on a Themian’s spear. He came up with an arc of fire clenched in his fist. It seared the monster’s beak, which snapped like a bird’s at the Salamander. Snarling, Ar’gan dug his blade into its snout. It jerked spasmodically, hurt, and wrenched the weapon from his grasp. In a nanosecond, he’d drawn the sa’hrk knife and proceeded to stab it into the creature’s neck and face. Acid-bile ruined the blade but Ar’gan kept going, knowing that sometimes frenzy was as valid as any finessed sword tactic.

  The monster thrashed against the gorge, squirming and fighting. It managed to angle a shoulder in Ar’gan’s direction and released a cluster of dagger-thick spines. Three lodged in the Salamander’s vambrace but one struck his chest, went through battleplate, the epidermis of his bodyglove and scraped into flesh. He was wracked by convulsion, enhanced biology struggling to retard the sudden rush of poison.

  Fingertips brushed the hilt of the fire-ax as it came back within reach. Ar’gan lurched forwards and took it, ripping the blade free and swinging it two-handed against the monster’s neck. The head came off at an awkward angle, spilling gore and bile all over him. Kroot were crawling to get over the corpse. One had crested its back, clinging on despite the monster’s last shuddering motions.

  Ar’gan disengaged. Poison was turning his limbs to lead, stealing away his vitality and endurance, replacing it with agony. He took it. He was a son of Vulkan, fire-born. It would take more than alien venom to stop him.

  The edges of the gunship looked blurred as he turned. He could no longer run. It was a half-limp, half-stagger.

  Shrieking, avian noises behind him told Ar’gan he needed to be faster.

  ‘Vortan…’ His voice did not sound like his own as opened up the feed. A few minutes and his organs would counteract the poison, dilute it, neutralise it. He didn’t have one minute. ‘Vortan…’ They were almost upon him. Engaging them was suicide. His Lyman’s implant picked out eight distinct tonal arrangements. And that was just the first wave.

  The feed crackled in his ear.

  ‘Get down!’

  Three metres from the gunship, Ar’gan hit the dirt.

  Overhead, the air was lit by muzzle fire.

  Through a haze of slowly fading poison, Ar’gan saw the Marine Malevolent braced on the roof of the gunship. He carried an autocannon, one hand on the grip at the top of the stock, holding it like a scythe; the other on its trigger. He dampened the recoil by jamming the butt into his stomach. His armour’s servos did the rest, steadying his aim.

  Eight kroot vanished in the metal storm.

  Ar’gan was dragging himself up to his knees, thumbing the release clamp off a grenade from his weapon’s belt. He rolled it behind him, hard so it would travel, then pitched into the gunship.

  A few seconds later, Vortan swung in beside him. The autocannon was gone, empty and discarded on the roof. He had Polino’s bolter instead.

  The captain was lying in the hold along with Festaron. Both were of equal use now.

  ‘Holding out on us, brother?’ he asked as the tangle-web grenade exploded behind Ar’gan, filling a five metre-wide area with deadly razor-wire.

  ‘Only for emergency,’ the Salamander replied. ‘Didn’t think it was worth wasting on collapsing that chasm.’

  Vortan laughed. It sounded like metal scraping metal.

  ‘Got one of those for me?’ Ar’gan pointed to the bolter. Sensation was returning, his body’s advanced immune systems finally counteracting the poison.

  The Marine Malevolent shook his head. ‘Only half a clip, anyway. Not enough to kill all of them.’

  ‘Fortune I kept hold of this then.’ Ar’gan brandished the f
ire-ax.

  ‘You’ll have to tell me one day how you came upon that brutal weapon.’

  Outside, the horde had recovered from their blooding and was advancing. High pitched war cries echoed from several directions, colliding in a deafening welter of noise that told the Space Marines they were surrounded.

  ‘One day.’

  Ar’gan glanced at the various points of ingress around the gunship.

  ‘Hold has only three access points,’ he observed.

  ‘I can probably watch the roof and left side,’ said Vortan, racking the bolter’s slide.

  ‘Then the right side is mine.’ Ar’gan swung the fire-axe in a languid arc to relieve some of the stiffness in his shoulder from the proboscis wound. ‘Bet you’re wishing we’d have left the others now, eh?’

  ‘No,’ said Vortan. ‘I like it better that we’ll all die together.’ He smiled. It was like a dagger slit across his mouth. ‘Seems some of your compassion is rubbing off on me.’

  Ar’gan met the Marine Malevolent’s gaze across the length of the hold. ‘I doubt that. Any last words, brother? A benediction perhaps, before we go before the Throne?’

  Vortan tapped the bolter’s stock, ‘This,’ he said, then nodded to the Salamander’s fire-ax. ‘That is the only word we need now. Kill as many as you can.’

  ‘Would you like to wager on the outcome?’ Ar’gan asked.

  More grating laughter from the Marine Malevolent cut through the cacophony from the kroot. ‘Bolter versus blade? Very well.’

  ‘Good hunting,’ said Ar’gan.

  Vortan didn’t respond, and went to guard the left side of the fuselage.

  Embracing the sheer fatality of it all, Ar’gan turned his back on him and took up a ready stance on the right. Through the side hatch a torrent of aliens were swarming towards the stricken gunship.

  The chrono on his vambrace was broken, damaged by the spine attack. It stood frozen but flickering, close to two hours.

  ‘Zaeus,’ the Salamander said to the air, ‘I hope you died well.’

  Thunder filled the gorge. It echoed off the walls, rebounded and amplified by the natural close confines. Lightning followed, rippling in flashes along the high, rocky flanks right at the summit.

  It wasn’t a storm, at least not any natural one. It was fire and it was fury, wrath distilled into an unremitting barrage that tore into the alien horde and savaged it. Missile strikes provided a different tone to the war chorus, dense fooms of exhalation ending in a crescendo of earth-trembling impacts and flame.

  Kroot bodies were thrown into the air like leaves.

  The larger beasts mewled like cattle as their bodies were ripped apart by incendiaries.

  ‘Vortan…’ Ar’gan said down the feed.

  ‘I see it! It’s on this side of the gorge too.’

  A broad smile split the Salamander’s lips apart. ‘Zaeus isn’t dead.’

  ‘If he is, I salute his undead corpse.’

  Gunfire rained down from either side of the gorge, angling into a kill box where the kroot were advancing. Ar’gan noticed it wasn’t accurate. As the xenos died they began to disperse, gaps appearing in their ranks that the massed fire from above failed to adapt to. Space Marines would not be so profligate.

  Straining, Ar’gan tried to ascertain the nature of their saviours, but all he caught were snatches of silhouettes through split-second breaks in the continuous muzzle flare.

  The kroot brayed and hooted at their unseen attackers. It took less than three minutes for their resolve to fail. Howling, they fled the gorge, spilling out in a tide in both directions.

  They still numbered in the hundreds but the herd was spooked and sought the safety of the desert where the harsh flashes couldn’t sting them any further.

  Slowly, the muzzle flashes faded one by one. Ar’gan detected the harsh clank of weapons on empty, the impotent clack of vented rocket tubes. Their saviours hadn’t stopped firing because the enemy was dead or running; they’d stopped because there was nothing left for them to fire at.

  ‘What is this?’ Ar’gan stepped out from the confines of the gunship.

  There was a morass of sundered alien corpses outside.

  Vortan joined him from the other side.

  ‘I approve of the massacre, but what just happened?’

  The Salamander shook his head. Craning his neck he saw a figure appear at the summit of one of the high walls of the gorge.

  Zaeus gave a clipped salute.

  ‘Thought you were dead,’ said Vortan through the feed, having followed Ar’gan’s gaze.

  ‘You sound disappointed,’ the Brazen Minotaur replied.

  ‘Where are the rest of our brothers? Why don’t they show themselves?’ asked Ar’gan.

  Zaeus stepped back from the edge as he manipulated something on his gauntlet the Salamander couldn’t see. ‘Because they are not exactly our brothers.’

  After a few seconds the grind of machine servos resonated throughout the now silent gorge as a host of pallid faces emerged from the shadows.

  Most were on tracks, but some stomped forwards on piston-like legs or tottered on reverse-jointed stilts. Others still were not like men at all, but merely automated weapon platforms slaved to the Techmarine’s will. They were servitors, dozens of them, armed with stubbers and autolaunchers, heavy bolters and shot cannons. Zaeus had found his reinforcements; he had recruited an entire force of dead-eyed cybernetics to his will.

  They stared, unthinking, unfeeling at the pair of warriors looking up at them.

  ‘I am sorry I was late,’ said Zaeus, ‘but as you can see, I was busy.’

  The Brazen Minotaur vaulted the edge of the gorge and slid down the sharp incline, grinding a furrow down the rock with his back and shoulders. In a few minutes he was standing with his brothers again.

  ‘Climbing up wouldn’t have been so easy,’ Vortan griped, but gave a nod of thanks.

  Ar’gan clasped the Brazen Minotaur’s forearm in a warrior’s grip, which Zaeus returned.

  ‘Your arrival was timely, brother.’

  Vortan eyed the servitors warily. ‘Still need to repair the ship. I assume they aren’t coming with us.’

  Zaeus gestured to the edges of the gorge where a small cadre of servitors had begun to encroach. Unlike the warrior caste above, these cybernetics were equipped with tools.

  ‘We can be airborne in under an hour.’

  ‘So there was no garrison, no Space Marine bastion,’ said Ar’gan, ‘the signal was fake?’

  ‘No,’ Zaeus replied, ‘just a little out of date. Our brothers were long gone but they left an army behind.’

  Above, the weapon servitors began to retreat from the edge of the gorge and were lost to the shadows again.

  ‘I thought they were hostile but most were simply dying out. I accessed the doctrina programming of the functional ones, inloaded some new imperatives and led them here.’

  ‘You did all that with ones and zeros, brother?’ asked Vortan.

  Zaeus snorted, pugnacious. ‘It was slightly more complicated than that. But now that the protocol I gave them is complete they will revert to their default settings and return to dormancy inside the bastion.’

  Vortan laughed again, he had never been so mirthful. ‘For the next beleaguered survivors to find.’

  Zaeus shook his head. ‘This world dies, brother. I have already contacted Inquisitor Vaskiel and provided my report. I am certain her response will be Exterminatus.’

  ‘How soon until we’re wings up?’ asked Vortan.

  ‘We have ample time. The chrono is no longer running.’

  ‘Do you think they know?’ asked Ar’gan, staring at the blank space above them at the edge of the gorge.

  ‘Know what?’ Zaeus was directing the remaining servitors in the repairing of the gunship.

>   ‘That they saved us but doomed a world.’

  ‘This world was already doomed, but I think perhaps a mote of cognitive recognition remains. A machine-spirit, if not in the literal sense.’

  Ar’gan nodded.

  ‘Well, praise the Omnissiah,’ said Vortan.

  ‘Praise the Omnissiah,’ echoed Ar’gan.

  Zaeus stayed silent. Polino would live, so too Vortan and Ar’gan. Carfax and Festaron would be returned to their Chapters with the highest honours, their legacies could live on.

  Though he would never forget his Tauron heritage, Zaeus knew he was of the Machine-God now. Flesh or machine, he would serve the Throne and his brothers until duty ended in death. Even in that bleak thought he took comfort as he looked to the horizon.

  A train of soldiers were marching. Their hearts still pumped, their limbs still moved, their lungs still drew air, but their minds were empty tombs only filled with what their masters put into them.

  Zaeus saluted them as they faded into the storm.

  It would rise higher and swallow the entire world in cyclonic death, a million souls consigned to the grave so a trillion more would live on. Then the Deathwatch would come to their worlds too, Zaeus had seen it happen countless times before, and the same thing would repeat.

  Without an iota of remorse, he turned his back on the servitors and went to the gunship.

  This world had only hours left to it, but there were thousands more in need of purgation. The task of the Deathwatch was endless, their victories unsung.

  As he watched his brothers return to the ship, he wondered where they would be bound for next and what they would have to kill.

  None of it really mattered. The mission could always be broken down to a single universal truth: suffer not the alien to live.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Nick Kyme is the author of the Tome of Fire trilogy featuring the Salamanders. He has also written for the Horus Heresy, Space Marine Battles and Time of Legends series with the novels Vulkan Lives, Fall of Damnos and The Great Betrayal. In addition, he has penned a host of short stories and several novellas, including ‘Feat of Iron’ which was a New York Times bestseller in the Horus Heresy collection The Primarchs. He lives and works in Nottingham.