Forge of Mars - Graham McNeill

by Warhammer 40K

  ‘To render the flesh of the xenos into a servitor is an abomination,’ hissed Kotov as he took in the full horror of the work being carried out by the transmogrification machines. ‘Only the idealised human form may be so blessed. It is unholy... No adept of the Mechanicus would ever dare sanction such techno-heresy.’

  ‘Then who did this?’ demanded Kul Gilad.

  ‘Something degenerate has taken control of this Manifold station, Reclusiarch. I desire to know exactly what that is as much as you.’

  ‘No,’ said Kul Gilad, directing his warriors forwards. ‘I care nothing for what has done this. I only want to kill it.’

  The Black Templars made their way methodically through the room, and the rotten plant-matter stink of ork blood filled the medicae as they killed the recumbent greenskins with swift thrusts of chainswords to throats. The data screens above each slab shrilled as each partially transmogrified ork was slain, and warning alarms chimed throughout the medicae. The servo-skulls descended to hover above each of the dead cybernetic hosts, a chattering stream of angry machine language burbling from the augmitters implanted in laser-cut fontanelles.

  Hawkins reached the softly swaying curtain and pulled it aside. The curtain was smooth and flexible, and even through the tough weave of his gloves Hawkins could feel a dreadfully familiar texture.

  ‘Throne of Terra,’ he said, backing away from the monstrous curtain, craning his neck to fully appreciate the nightmarish scale of it. ‘It’s skin... all of it, it’s human skin.’

  Kotov broke off from his remonstrations with Kul Gilad and approached the swaying curtain of skin, taking hold of it and rubbing it between his metallic fingers.

  ‘Vat-fresh synth-skin,’ he said. ‘Ideal for burn victims or those in need of reconstructive surgeries. It is not normally grown in such quantities, but the quality is excellent.’

  Hawkins suppressed an involuntary shudder at the thought of these disembodied acres of human skin. That it had been grown and not cut from living bodies didn’t make it easier to take that there was enough suspended skin to clothe hundreds more of these cybernetics. Why anyone would want to skin the hide from orks and replace it with human skin was a mystery to which Hawkins wasn’t sure he wanted an answer.

  ‘We need to get out of here,’ he said, nauseating fear uncoiling in his gut. ‘Now. Where’s the way out? There has to be a way to the command deck.’

  Kotov nodded and said, ‘Indeed there should.’

  ‘What do you mean, “should”?’ said Hawkins. ‘Is there or isn’t there?’

  ‘The station schemata indicate that there should be numerous dividing partitions on this level, together with an elevating platform to the upper deck, but as you can see much has been altered since those plans were drawn.’

  ‘Then we don’t have a way out?’

  ‘I shall endeavour to locate an alternate route to the upper deck,’ said Kotov.

  Hawkins took a deep breath, hearing fresh impacts below as the servitor host increased their pressure on the door. With the myriad cutting tools and bludgeoning weapons at their disposal, it wouldn’t take long for those unnatural monsters to get in.

  ‘Can’t we teleport back to the Speranza?’ he asked. ‘You have that technology, don’t you?’

  ‘If we could have done that, do you not think I might have suggested it before now, captain?’ said Kotov. ‘The same interference that is blocking the vox makes such a mode of transportation impossible. In the absence of such an escape route, might I suggest you join the Templars in rendering this location more defensible?’

  Hawkins nodded, ashamed he had let his disgust at the curtains of skin blind him to the current tactical environment. He quickly directed his men to assist the skitarii and Templars in shifting heavy gurneys and banks of medicae equipment, creating a number of barricades to provide interlocking fields of fire. Storage crates, chairs, tables and workbenches were thrown down the stairs to impede the servitors, while Archmagos Kotov worked to access the Manifold station’s systems in an attempt to gain a better understanding of this abnormal situation.

  A resounding clang of metal told them that the door to the medicae had been breached. The Templars took position at the top of the stairs, their bolters aimed downwards. Hawkins and his Cadians took position at the barricades to the left of the door, while the skitarii took the right. If the advance of the servitors proved unstoppable, the Templars would retreat to a barricade in the centre of the chamber, letting the enemy walk into a killing ground of enfilading fire.

  Hawkins took position with his Guardsmen, Ollert, Stennz, Paulan and Manos. Good soldiers all, who deserved better than this.

  ‘When those bastards get up here, and they will, pour everything you’ve got into them,’ he said.

  The Guardsmen nodded, and Hawkins rested his lasrifle on the lip of an upturned workbench. Kul Gilad stood at the top of the stairs, virtually filling the space there, with two of his warriors at either edge of the opening; one kneeling, one standing. Hawkins heard the clatter of servitors breaking through the furniture and debris they’d thrown down the stairs, and knew it wouldn’t be long before the dying started.

  The data screens above the corpses on the slabs flickered as they switched from displaying the whining straight lines of dead bodies to the loathsome tech-priest with the gleaming silver optics.

  ‘You are all going to die here,’ said a dozen representations of the tech-priest. ‘Your bodies will be harvested and used to replace those you have damaged.’

  ‘I’m going to shut that bastard up,’ snapped Hawkins, aiming his rifle at the nearest screen.

  The tech-priest on the screens turned to face him.

  ‘You should save your munitions,’ he advised. ‘You’re going to need them.’

  Kul Gilad took the first kill of this second wave of fighting. His storm bolter cratered the skull of the first servitor to emerge onto the stairs, sending it crashing back down and toppling the two behind it. Hawkins felt the colossal pressure of the bolter fire and smelled the biting stink of propellant as the gunsmoke accumulated in the medicae facility. The full weight of the Templars’ fire filled the stairwell with explosive death, mass-reactives detonating skulls and blowing open ribcages with every shot.

  Hawkins had no idea how many servitors were dead, but it only took a few minutes for the Templars to exhaust their ammunition to the point where they were forced to fall back. Without the continuous barrage keeping them at bay, the ork servitors easily pushed through the debris and bodies choking the stairs.

  Hawkins heard their heavy footfalls and pressed the stock of his rifle into his shoulder.

  ‘Head shots where you can,’ he said. ‘Hit them in the eyes or try and take out any cranial augmetics. Make every shot count.’

  The four Guardsmen nodded and Hawkins said, ‘For Cadia and for honour.’

  ‘Or the Eye take us,’ responded the Guardsmen.

  The first servitor reached the top of the stairs, and it was Archmagos Kotov who took the first kill. A pencil-thin beam of retina-searing white light speared from his pistol and burst the cybernetic’s head apart in a fountain of steaming blood. It toppled forwards, its augmetic legs still scrabbling at the floor as another came after it. The skitarii opened fire next, pummelling the creature with energy beams and solid rounds. Its perforated corpse fell beside the first servitor.

  Hawkins’s Guardsmen took their shots at the third cybernetic as it climbed over the bodies ahead of it. Hawkins’s shot blew out its lower jaw, while Manos removed the lid of its skull with a shot through its fleshy ear canal. Impact shock caused Paulan to miss, and Ollert’s shot took the servitor behind in the throat. Blood sheeted down its chest, but the creature kept coming. Two more pushed in behind it and a cybernetic with a hissing flame unit swept its weapon around with a whoosh of igniting fuel.

  ‘Down!’ cried Hawkins as a rollin
g blast wave of flaming promethium washed over them. He felt the heat scorch his armour and bit back a cry of pain as a red-hot metal fastening clip pressed against his undershirt and burned the skin. Paulan screamed as he was engulfed by the flames, the intense heat melting the skin from his bones and suffocating his cries as the air in his lungs was sucked out. He fell beside Stennz, who frantically tried to beat out the flames with her hands.

  ‘Leave him!’ shouted Hawkins. ‘He’s gone!’

  Ollert rolled upright and levelled his rifle at the flamer servitor, and was instantly hurled back as a high-velocity rivet blew out the back of his helmet. Stennz kept low as the chugging barrage hammered their cover, leaving scores of mushroom-shaped depressions on the underside of the workbench. Manos gathered up Ollert’s power cells and tossed one each to Hawkins and Stennz.

  An answering stream of gunfire from across the medicae bay silenced the rivet gunner, and Hawkins, Stennz and Manos rose to firing positions. Flames still licked at the workbench, and runnels of black smoke fogged the air. Half a dozen ork cybernetics were in the medicae chamber now, advancing with mechanistic aggression. Hawkins and Manos concentrated their fire on the flamer servitor, and succeeded in putting it down with a concentrated burst of full auto that emptied both their power cells. Stennz fared better, her shots fusing the metal skullcap of another rivet gunner and causing it to lock up like a statue.

  More servitors pushed into the room, and even over the raucous clamour of gunfire, Hawkins could hear the grating metallic laughter of the silver-eyed tech-priest. He ducked back into cover to replace his spent power cell.

  ‘Last one,’ said Manos. ‘I said we should have brought grenades.’

  ‘Onto a pressurised space station?’ replied Hawkins, fishing out his last charge pack. ‘No thanks.’

  ‘One spare,’ said Stennz. ‘Who wants it?’

  ‘You keep it,’ said Hawkins. ‘You’re the best shot.’

  Stennz nodded and slapped the power cell home.

  All three Cadians took up firing positions, and prepared to make their last shots count.

  The skitarii were in full retreat, their makeshift barricade smashed to broken spars of twisted metal by the attentions of a pneumatic hammer in the hands of a brutish ork servitor a full head and shoulders taller than the others. Searing arcs of crackling energy chased them and only programmed self-sacrifice kept Archmagos Kotov alive as two of his warriors hurled themselves in the path of the killing whip of electro-fire. Their bodies burst into flames and were ashes in seconds as the hammer-wielding ork strode towards the survivors.

  ‘Put that one down,’ said Hawkins, but before he could fire, Kul Gilad charged the monstrous cybernetic creature. The ork swung the energised hammer at the Reclusiarch, who caught the weapon on its downward arc and jammed his storm bolter in the ork’s face. Before Kul Gilad could fire, a pulsing electrical beam struck him and he spasmed as his armour’s systems overloaded with the influx of rogue energies.

  The pneumatic hammer slammed into the Reclusiarch, knocking him back and tearing the heavy shoulder guard from his armour. Hawkins felt a moment of stomach-churning terror at the sight of a Terminator brought low, but before the ork’s huge weapon could swing again, the Emperor’s Champion’s black sword was there to intercept it. The warrior hacked through the haft of the enormous hammer before spinning on his heel and driving the point of the blade through the cybernetic’s chest. The blow seemed not to trouble the giant ork servitor and it slammed its fist into the Templar’s chest as he fought to free his weapon from its unyielding form.

  The other Black Templars charged into the fight as Kul Gilad rose to his feet like a heroic pugilist with one last reserve of energy to win the fight of his life. The hammerer turned to face him, as though bemused that something it had hit was getting back up again. Kul Gilad didn’t give it a chance to recover and slammed his energised fist into the ork’s face. The blow landed with the full might of the Reclusiarch’s fury and tore the ork’s head from its shoulders, leaving only a jetting stump and strips of loose skin flapping from its neck.

  Hawkins had never seen anything like it and wanted to cheer, but Cadian discipline quickly overcame the urge.

  ‘That one,’ said Hawkins, firing the last of his power cell at the servitor carrying the crackling electro-fire weapon. His shots tore portions of the device away, sending fountains of sparks and arcs of crackling power flailing from the generator unit on its back. Stennz and Manos finished the job, their last shots puncturing something vital and causing it to explode with a thunderous crack of earthing power that set the ork alight from head to foot in ozone-reeking flames.

  Smoke and fire filled the end of the medicae chamber and the flesh curtains were curling in the heat and scorching with a sickening stench of burning skin.

  ‘I’m out,’ said Manos.

  ‘Me too,’ answered Stennz.

  Hawkins nodded and slung his rifle, loath to discard it even without any cells to empower it. He drew his Executioner, the Cadian combat blade of the discerning knifeman, and said, ‘Cold steel and a strong right arm it is.’

  The others drew their blades and they vaulted the smouldering remains of what remained of their cover as Archmagos Kotov and the last of the skitarii joined forces with the Black Templars to face the growing number of cybernetics pushing into the chamber. Hawkins, Manos and Stennz picked their way through the piles of corpse, debris and smashed furniture.

  Kul Gilad turned to face him, and Hawkins was astounded the warrior was still able to stand, let alone fight.

  ‘Until the end,’ said Kul Gilad.

  Hawkins didn’t know exactly what that meant, but understood the finality of it.

  ‘For the Emperor,’ he said by way of reply.

  ‘In His name,’ replied the Reclusiarch.

  The ork cybernetic hybrids advanced on the beleaguered Imperials, under the watchful gaze of the silver-eyed tech-priest. There were too many to fight, even for the Black Templars, and Hawkins picked the enemy he would kill first; an ork with a gleaming bronze plate wired into its skull and stevedore’s hooks instead of arms.

  ‘Tell me, archmagos,’ said Hawkins. ‘Did you think your quest for Magos Telok’s lost fleet would end like this?’

  The servitors flinched at his words, and their advance halted, as though he had just said some esoteric command word.

  ‘No,’ said Kotov grimly. ‘This scenario played no part in my expectations.’

  ‘Thought not,’ said Hawkins, reversing his grip on his Executioner blade.

  The cybernetics lowered their weapons and stood immobile, as though awaiting orders.

  ‘Wait, what’s happening?’ said Hawkins, when the servitors still didn’t advance. ‘Why aren’t they attacking?’

  The data screens above the surgical slabs crackled with interference for a moment and the image of the silver-eyed tech-priest was replaced by the hooded form of Magos Tarkis Blaylock. His voice was overlaid with static, but eventually the words resolved themselves.

  ‘-chmagos? Please respond,’ said Blaylock. ‘This is the Speranza, can you hear us?’

  ‘Yes, we can hear you,’ said Kotov.

  ‘Ave Deus Mechanicus!’ said Blaylock, and Hawkins was surprised to hear what sounded like genuine relief at the archmagos’s survival. ‘Did you encounter difficulties?’

  ‘It’s fair to say we encountered great difficulties,’ said Kotov.

  ‘The Manifold station activated a cyclical frequency vox-damper and I have only just succeeded in re-establishing contact after your signal was lost,’ said Blaylock.

  Hawkins placed the vox-bead dangling over his collar back in his ear as he heard Lieutenant Rae’s voice shouting on the other end. He shut out Blaylock and Kotov’s words as he cut across Rae’s insistent demands for an update.

  ‘Calm down, Rae,’ said Hawkins, touching the sub-voca
l transmitter at his neck. ‘What’s your situation? Did you come under attack?’

  ‘Aye, sir, we did, but we held them off,’ said Rae. ‘Truth be told, they weren’t trying very hard. I think they just wanted to keep us from getting through to you.’

  ‘That sounds about right,’ nodded Hawkins. ‘Any losses?’

  ‘None, sir,’ said Rae, and Hawkins could hear the man’s pride even over the vox. ‘You?’

  ‘We’ve men down and a few cuts and scrapes at this end, so send a medic up.’

  ‘I’ll come with him myself,’ promised Rae, and cut the link.

  Hawkins took a moment to regain his equilibrium. It had been a hard fight, and had looked like it was going to be one he didn’t walk away from. Strangely, the thought didn’t concern him overmuch. On Cadia, children were taught to live with thoughts of their own mortality from an early age, which made for bleak childhoods but fearless soldiers. He kept a wary eye on the servitors, just in case they suddenly resumed hostilities.

  ‘Blaylock, did you shut down the Manifold station’s servitors?’ asked Kotov.

  ‘Negative, archmagos,’ said Blaylock. ‘I had no knowledge of there being any to shut down.’

  ‘He didn’t shut them down, we did,’ said a blended gestalt voice that emanated from the rear of the medicae chamber. Hawkins spun around and raised his rifle, even though there was no charge in the power cell.

  A previously invisible heptagonal slice of the ceiling had detached from the deck above and was descending to the floor of the medicae chamber on a column of variegated light. Hawkins’s teeth itched, telling him that the column was a constrained repulsor field, like those used in skimmer reconnaissance vehicles. Squatting on the slice of ceiling was what looked like a bulky mechanical scorpion the size of a Leman Russ. Its body was metallic and fashioned as if from the leftover parts at the end of a manufactory shift; the mechanised legs were mismatched, with some reverse jointed and others displaying a more conventional mammalian orientation.