Defenders of Mankind - David Annandale & Guy Haley

by Warhammer 40K

  He slipped his hand inside his hood and worked his fingers. His face, a mask, came away with a sucking noise. Underneath his skull was bare of flesh. His lower jaw was missing, a thick tube taking its place, sharp catches attached it to polished bone incised with machine runes. His lidless eyes gave him a look of surprise, or outrage.

  ‘You see? Some of the less developed human cultures are offended by my face.’ His voice had not changed, although it was obvious now that it was artificially generated. ‘They do not recognise the gifts of the Omnissiah for the blessings that they are, for they are unaware of how weak their flesh is, lord. But guile and subtlety bring my plans more quickly to fruition.’ Thin tubes on the side of his face squirted water into his eyes, irrigating them. His false face continued to squirm in his hands, forming a succession of idiot expressions.

  Nuministon removed his helmet and stood bareheaded like Plosk. His half-mechanical face wore an expression of bewilderment as he tasted air unadulterated by the scent of machines. He blinked in the light of the bridge. Galt suddenly felt the urge to smash in his grey, wizened flesh, followed by Plosk’s skull. In the clean light of the Spirit of Eternity they were revolting, blasphemous constructs that defiled the sanctity of both his birth-given flesh and the machines that had changed it.

  ‘Captain, do not despair,’ said Plosk. ‘Your warrior gave his life in the noblest cause of all. We are at the command deck, up this corridor is the bridge, within which should be the head of the main datastack. It extends all the way down through the ship. Think of the marvels that it contains! No longer will we fight our endless wars with fear in our hearts. With the weapons of the Dark Age to command again, we shall sweep the stars clean of mankind’s enemies.’

  Galt looked back through the energy field. The other Space Marines stood ready in case it should fail. The genestealers were pressed hard against it. Their eyes burned with malevolent intelligence. Their nostrils twitched. One lifted its head and scented the air, then they all did. They no longer moved quite as one, but even with their broodlord dead, the link between them was strong. They were parts of one creature, not many.

  They turned and left, skittering down the corridor with repulsive swiftness.

  Galt tried to contact Voldo to warn him. He was met by a wall of silence.

  ‘They are sure to find Voldo and his men,’ said Galt. ‘If they do before the reactor is stabilised, then you will have all eternity to enjoy the fruits of this expedition, but you will share them with no one.’

  There was an interruption in the smooth background hum of the ship’s power supply. The lights dimmed. When they brightened again, more came on. The sounds of esoteric machines coming online multiplied; those faint whines on the edge of hearing all machines make.

  ‘Come, my lords,’ said Nuministon. ‘To the bridge, and mankind’s prize.’

  Voldo approached another door. He knew it was a door now, although before he had come aboard the ship he would have assumed it to be a bulkhead. Seams appeared in it as he approached and it irised open. ‘This is unclean,’ said Voldo. ‘Sorcery. I do not care for this ship.’

  ‘It is not magic,’ scoffed Samin. ‘The Machine-God understands our purpose and aids us. He will be pleased if we deactivate the troubled reactor, and honour us with much data should we manage to repair it.’

  ‘You do not understand the workings of much of this vessel, magos. That much is clear to me. How do you propose to repair it?’

  ‘Repair is not simply a matter of the turn of the screw, or the oiling of pistons,’ said Samin haughtily. ‘The right prayer, the right sigils, the correct ritual striking of the side of an ailing mechanism with an appropriately sanctified mallet – all may prove efficacious.’

  ‘I see no cogs or pistons aboard this hell-vessel, boy,’ said Voldo.

  Samin had no answer to this. ‘Do not call me “boy”,’ he said petulantly. ‘I am an adept of Mars.’

  ‘You are barely out of your swaddling,’ muttered Voldo. Samin would never succeed at the aspirants’ challenge, and he thought little of him because of that.

  Brother Eskerio’s voice came over the vox. ‘Lord captain, we are not alone.’

  Voldo had to strain to hear him. The thrum of the reactor’s uneven output marred the vox broadcast with electric noise like the beat of a failing heart.

  ‘We see them too,’ said Voldo. ‘May the Emperor bring them to us, so that we may end their lives.’

  ‘You need not worry, brother-sergeant. Lord captain, Lord Reclusiarch, they head for your position,’ said Curzon.

  ‘We had best hurry, before they decide to come for us,’ said Voldo. ‘We will proceed as planned. Lord captain? Lord captain? Throne! I have lost them.’

  ‘The interference from the reactor grows stronger, cousin-sergeant,’ said Curzon. ‘I am losing the high energy motion detection capabilities of my auspex. Atmospheric perturbation is still functioning, but there are many ghost images. And I fear there is more to it.’ He was quiet for a moment. ‘Our signal has been cut.’

  Voldo ran his eyes over a graph in his visor display. ‘The ship is coming alive, the reactor is working to feed it,’ said Voldo. ‘This is unclean!’

  ‘Speak not of uncleanliness. The reactor is damaged, and this ship has been trapped here for thousands of years,’ said Samin, awe in his voice. ‘It is a marvel of a prior age. We are blessed to witness it!’

  ‘If the Dark Age of Technology was so blessed with marvels,’ said Voldo gruffly, ‘perhaps you could explain why it came to an end? Strife is the child of hubris, magos.’ He scanned the corridor, looking for possible points of ingress for the aliens. The ship appeared seamless, but on close inspection he could see the joins between the parts. It was far finer work than any he had seen in the Imperium.

  The ship widened as they passed the waist of the vessel. The corridor they trod ran past a number of cabins. As their auspex had become unreliable, Voldo and his men checked each one of these as they went by. All were luxurious and neat. How they stayed in this state they could not say, they saw no sign of any servitors that could have maintained them.

  ‘This is a ship of ghosts, buried in a cemetery of ships,’ said Militor.

  ‘Quiet, brother,’ said Voldo, but he too shared Militor’s disquiet.

  At first Voldo thought the cabins to be the accommodation for rich passengers, but he realised that this was probably not the case. There were few cabins, therefore he thought the crew complement low. As they went towards the stern the ship bellied out further, the centre divided into cargo chambers like the segments of an orange. The gravity switched, so that the floor became what had been the walls of the ship, allowing them to walk right the way around the clustered cargo bays. All these they checked. All were empty, bar one.

  Voldo passed his hand in front of the door. Air rushed past him, repressurising the compartment. It was dark within, frost sparkled on the walls in the beam of his suit light. Within were the husks of an Adeptus Mechanicus retrieval team. Three tech-priests, and four servitors. Their flesh was frozen black. Two of them had died clawing at the door. The other was frozen in a kneeling position, hands together in prayer.

  Their implants looked crude and ugly compared to the ship.

  ‘Magos, do you still believe this ship to be a marvel?’ he said.

  Samin made to move into the room. Militor grasped his arm, his power fist, field off, swallowing it to the elbow.

  ‘I must retrieve their memchips, we can learn what happened.’

  ‘We do not have the time,’ said Curzon. ‘This is one mystery that must remain unsolved.’

  ‘My cousin Blood Drinker is right,’ said Voldo. ‘If we delay here, we risk joining them.’

  They hurried on. The cargo holds were large, the lines of sight within clear, so they did not waste much time in checking them.

  The cargo section passed, and they came to the part housing the vessel’s reactors and plant rooms. The reactors were set in reverse sequence, with the
secondary before the primary. The suits’ systems buzzed and crackled in sympathy with its malfunction.

  ‘Cousin Voldo, I am getting a signal,’ said Curzon. ‘Movement, coming from the stern towards us. It is hard to tell.’

  ‘We will not take any chances. Brother Astomar, Cousin Curzon, Brother Militor, you will remain here. Brother Militor, cover the reactor corridor. Cousin Curzon, maintain a tight watch. Guard Astomar’s rear. Let his flamer do the work. Do not engage unless absolutely necessary. Let the Novamarines level the odds in your favour with flame and bolt.’

  ‘I think I can restrain myself,’ said Curzon, without a trace of irony.

  ‘I will accompany the tech-priest,’ said Voldo.

  Voldo and Samin walked around the corridor wall, so that their heads were above those of the other Space Marines, the gravity here allowing traversal of all surfaces. A radial corridor ran through the centre of the ship, a hundred and forty metres long. The lighting within it pulsed in time with the reactor. The skin of the vessel appeared sickly somehow.

  They went onwards cautiously, Voldo checking his sensorium display to ensure his men were in good positions.

  ‘I see a door!’ said Samin eagerly, when they had reached the halfway point. Voldo saw it, a bulge in the wall with a smooth, illuminated touchpad that also seemed to be of one part with the wall, the hallmark of all the portals on the vessel.

  ‘Wait!’ said Voldo. ‘Movement.’ He pointed with his sword.

  Samin screamed as a genestealer rushed down the reactor corridor. Voldo’s gun was up and firing before it had covered more than a couple of metres. More were coming.

  ‘Quickly now, young magos,’ said Voldo. ‘When I say run, you run into the reactor.’

  ‘Towards them?’ said Samin. ‘I…’

  Two more genestealers came into the corridor, running along the walls and ceilings on all six legs.

  ‘Run!’ shouted Voldo. He shoved at the magos, and charged at the genestealers. His bolter claimed the life of one, his power sword that of the second.

  ‘Brother Militor, fill this corridor with your wrath once I have departed!’ he shouted.

  The sounds of fighting came over the vox. Seventy metres behind Voldo, the others were being engaged. The genestealers had attacked both groups simultaneously. Bolter fire cracked the air, followed by the whump of igniting promethium.

  Voldo growled. He lifted his storm bolter and fired. Every round found a target, but more and more genestealers were closing. He raised his sword and prepared to sell himself dearly. Samin had made it to the reactor doorway, at least.

  Through the static on the vox, he could hear the others shouting, singing, and uttering prayers as they fought. Astomar let off another burst of fire. The screams of burning genestealers echoed down the corridor. He could expect no aid from that quarter.

  His own foes shrieked with triumph as they came at him.

  ‘And so it comes to this. May the Emperor judge me fairly by the marks upon my skin, and choose me to join his legion of warriors for the final war.’ He pressed the flat of his blade to his forehead in salute and adopted a guard position. ‘Come to me, xenos, and learn a little early the ultimate fate of all your kind!’

  Help came unexpectedly. Two blisters formed in one side of the corridor, splitting to extrude shining chrome objects that could only be weapons.

  The guns rose from the blisters and levelled themselves. They swivelled around, and tracked the genestealers for a split second before opening fire. Streams of high energy las-fire streaked the air, blasting genestealers apart. The guns moved with ruthless efficiency, killing first a dozen, and then another.

  As was their way, the genestealers did not care for their own casualties. They charged forward relentlessly. In ten seconds they would reach the guns.

  Voldo went for the door. He glanced up the corridor. Framed in the circular mouth, he saw Azmael gut a xenos. The others were all still alive, at least.

  The door opened, and he stepped inside. It closed itself behind him, the seams between its segments melting away.

  The floor sloped, carrying him to a new floor at ninety degrees to that of the corridor, so that the stern of the ship was beneath his feet. He stood on a catwalk of elegant design, the reactor below him, a column of thrumming blue energy oriented in line with the vessel’s spine in the centre of a room one hundred metres in diameter. The core was as thin as an arm, but powerful, and the heat from it was intense. Containment rings were spaced equally up and down its length, but white lightning sprang up from the reactor core to earth itself periodically in them and the walls. The blue light pulsed loudly, the interference it generated causing Voldo’s ears to hurt.

  ‘Sergeant!’ Samin called to him from another catwalk halfway down the length of the reactor tube. He stood by a wall of instruments. ‘I need your aid!’

  Voldo glanced back at the door. He could not hear anything from the other side, but the genestealers would be tearing at the stuff of the ship. How long could it repair itself for, he wondered.

  He went to a drop tube, then floated down to the same level as the young adept. The gravity field in it was operating badly, and jarred him twice as he descended.

  The priest was deep in prayer when Voldo reached him. He had retrieved jars of holy oil and a small, ritual hammer from his pack, and was alternately anointing and striking the instrumentation panel.

  ‘Perhaps you could hurry your prayers,’ said Voldo. ‘There must be a few less essential elements of your ceremony you can omit.’

  ‘No, I cannot, lord sergeant,’ said the magos. He sounded frustrated.

  ‘You do understand this machine?’ Voldo glanced at the ceiling, where the door was.

  ‘Yes, yes, I think so. I have seen this kind of device several times before, there are many non-functional ones still extant, and several that provide power still. But I cannot deactivate it or, rather, it will not allow itself to be deactivated.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The spirit of the machine demands that I repair it.’ He drew in a deep breath. ‘We should consider leaving, something is not right about this situation. Is this the will of the Machine-God, or of something else entirely?’ he paused, vacillating.

  ‘In the corridor outside, weapons emerged from the wall and aided me,’ said Voldo. ‘Our comms have been jammed. There is a power at work here that unsettles me. I do not think it has anything to do with your god. Can you repair it or not?’

  Samin hesitated. ‘I think, I think I can. But if I do…’ He trailed off.

  ‘What, boy?’

  He looked Voldo straight in the eye, helmet lens to helmet lens. ‘If I do, the increase in power output could kill us both.’

  So here was his doom, thought Voldo, burned by a machine. No glorious death in combat for him. He could head back out and fight, but for what? The others would be trapped aboard the hulk when it departed. He doubted the warp fields gathering outside were naturally generated as Plosk had said.

  ‘I will help you,’ he said, and sheathed his sword. ‘Tell me what to do. We had better be quick, boy,’ Voldo nodded to the blast door. ‘They’ll be through in minutes.’

  Chapter 22

  The Spirit of Eternity

  The bridge of the Spirit of Eternity opened itself to them, broad doors made of multiple leaves clicking backwards welcomingly.

  Plosk was through first, his breath an excited sucking noise. Galt followed, then the others.

  The bridge was a tiered affair, and for all the vessel’s strangeness, of familiar layout. The captain’s chair was central, helmsmen’s posts before him, operations stations arrayed behind it in an arc. All was pristine. Again it was of cleaner lines than an Imperial ship, while the chairs were slight and decadently well-padded. There was no visible window at the front, and a column of complicated machinery rose behind and slightly to the left of the captain’s chair, a single lens halfway up it. Some form of glass made up most of the instrumentation panel
s. This was dark, until they stepped fully into the room. Displays flicked on, highly detailed holographs glittering above them. The front wall changed, revealing a view of mangled vessels and boulders. For a second Galt thought the wall had actually vanished. The Space Marines raised their weapons.

  ‘Hold!’ ordered Mazrael.

  ‘A pict screen?’

  ‘Just so,’ said Plosk, distracted.

  ‘We have twenty-five minutes, Lord Magos Explorator,’ said Nuministon, his grinding voice made harsher still in juxtaposition to the bridge’s elegance.

  ‘Yes, yes, plenty of time, plenty of time! Here, this is the central data column,’ he pointed to the cylinder behind the captain’s chair. ‘We will be able to access the ship’s cogitator core and its STC database from here. Lords, I will require total silence.’ He and Nuministon prayed and anointed the column, their savants chattering technical detail that made no sense to the Space Marines. When they were done, Plosk unclipped a panel in the back of his skull and drew out a fine wire. This he placed onto the machine, to which it adhered.

  ‘Prepare the savants to store the data. Should the reactor stabilise or be shut down, begin transmission immediately back to the Excommentum Incursus via the relay network.’

  ‘Yes, lord,’ said Nuministon.

  Plosk closed his eyes, and went away from the mortal world.

  Plosk fell into a realm of brilliance. Access codes and soft data programming culled from across the galaxy over three human lifetimes unwound themselves from heavily protected memplants within his augmented brain, guiding his intelligence core into perfect synchronicity with the machine. His soul thrilled with joy as he passed through the primary, secondary, and tertiary veils of security cloaking the machine’s soul.

  He was inside the ship’s mind.

  This was what he had been seeking for so long! Data blazed in bright strings. His mind touched secrets unguessed at by his peers. He was astonished at the cohesion of the craft’s network. He was prepared for the ship, he had studied everything he could find concerning such things, which was not much if truth be told, and much effort had been expended in the finding. Had he found a thousand times more than he had, he would still have been unprepared for what he found.