Forge of Mars - Graham McNeill

by Warhammer 40K

  Kotov came forwards to examine the image on the auspex table.

  The map was centred on the Land Leviathan, but grainy and skewed with unintelligible static where normally the Tabularium’s many surveyors would eliminate uncertainty. It displayed a real-time capture of the landscape to a radius of a hundred kilometres. Sixty kilometres south of the landing fields, in the exact centre of the umbra, lay the object of their search.

  The last resting place of Magos Telok’s lost flagship.

  ‘Are there any other effects of this umbra, besides blinding us to whatever forces might lie within it?’ asked Dahan. ‘Is it dangerous?’

  ‘To people or machines?’

  ‘Both.’

  ‘I wouldn’t recommend prolonged exposure, but in ray-shielded void-suits, it should be safe for your skitarii for a few hours at a time,’ said Linya.

  ‘And for machines?’ asked Kotov.

  Linya shook her head. ‘Let me put it this way, archmagos. Given how little we know about the exact nature of the umbra, I wouldn’t risk entering it on anything that wasn’t close to the ground.’

  ‘An excellent suggestion, Mistress Tychon,’ said Kotov, opening an encrypted martial vox-link and awaiting connection. Hostile binarics snapped around his floodstream before the map vanished from the auspex table and the canidae symbol of Legio Sirius shimmered into focus.

  This is the Wintersun, state your request.+

  ‘Princeps Luth,’ said Kotov. ‘I’m going to need your Scout Titans.’

  Their roles in the under-deck environment might have changed for the better, but the one constant in their daily existence was the quality of the food. Feeding Hall Eighty-Six was still the same cavernous chamber of clattering flatware and grunting men and women trying to shovel as much food into their mouths as they could get their hands on. In theory, each bondsman was dispensed an equal amount by the sustenance servitors, but as with all large groups kept in confinement, the strongest stayed strong by stealing the food of the weakest.

  Not that Abrehem, Hawke and Coyne had ever needed to worry about that thanks to the presence of Crusha, the ogryn swept up along with them by the Mechanicus collarmen back on Joura. Crusha was dead now, killed by the same eldar warrior Abrehem had killed, but even without his hulking presence, they had no need to worry about a nutritional deficit.

  Now they had a surplus; votive offerings and gifts passed along the table by those who had heard about the miracle of the plasma gun and the rumour of Rasselas X-42. When Abrehem had returned to the feeding hall with a newly-grafted bionic limb, it had only cemented his reputation as a favoured son of the Omnissiah.

  ‘Don’t get me wrong…’ said Coyne, jamming a stale hunk of bread into his mouth. Even moistened by the beige paste in the plastic tray’s bowl depression, it still took him nearly thirty seconds to chew it to a level where he could continue speaking. ‘It’s good we’re being recognised, and the new duties in Magos Turentek’s forge-temple are a blessing, but is there any way you could use your… influence to get better food as opposed to more of the same crap?’

  ‘We shouldn’t be taking any of it,’ said Abrehem.

  ‘Come on, Abe,’ said Hawke. ‘What’s the point of being a somebody if you can’t make use of it?’

  ‘But I’m not a somebody,’ protested Abrehem.

  Hawke grinned, putting his hands together in prayer. ‘Spoken like a man of true divinity.’

  ‘Have you heard what they’re calling you?’ said Coyne, in a conspiratorial whisper.

  ‘No, what?’

  ‘The Vitalist,’ said Coyne. ‘After what you did to Ismael.’

  Abrehem twisted on the bench seat, looking over rows of tables to where Ismael de Roeven, once his duty-overseer back on Joura, but now rendered down into a cyborg servitor, placed a food tray before a hunch-shouldered bondsman. Like the hundreds of other servitors in the feeding hall, Ismael followed an unchanging pattern of dispensing food, collecting trays and cleaning the hall in preparation for the next shift.

  ‘But I didn’t do that,’ said Abrehem. ‘Ismael’s cranial hood was damaged when the Mechanicus vented the lower decks to save the ship from that plasma discharge. The impact restored whatever the cranial surgery left of the poor sod’s memory and old life, not me.’

  ‘Yeah, but he came to see you afterwards, didn’t he?’ asked Hawke, loud enough so that people two tables over could hear him. ‘Doesn’t take a savant to see you had something to do with it.’

  ‘But I didn’t,’ hissed Abrehem, looking up to see that Ismael had paused in his work to turn towards him, as though somehow aware they were talking about him. He gave Abrehem an almost imperceptible nod before carrying on with his work. Every bondsman he passed surreptitiously reached out to touch the servitor’s hands and arms as though he were a divine talisman.

  ‘If I had done it, don’t you think I’d have given him his whole memory back?’ continued Abrehem. ‘What kind of sick bastard would bring someone back halfway from virtual brain-death? Thor’s light, can you imagine living like that? Knowing you were something more than a mindless drone, but only able to remember broken fragments of your old self… it’s monstrous.’

  ‘It’s better than what he was,’ said Coyne.

  ‘Is it? I’m not so sure,’ said Abrehem. ‘I reckon if he knew how much he’d lost, he’d want to go back to remembering nothing.’

  ‘Heads up,’ said Hawke. ‘Dragon boy’s coming.’

  Abrehem didn’t have to look up to know that Totha Mu-32 was approaching, and wished he’d never told Hawke and Coyne what the overseer had told him about the sect that sought out those they believed were Machine-touched.

  The overseer leaned over the table, and said, ‘You need to go. Now.’

  Abrehem looked up and saw a look of genuine fear on the overseer’s face that his facial implants couldn’t mask.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘I told you the senior magi would not tolerate you claiming stewardship of an arco-flagellant, remember?’

  Abrehem nodded.

  ‘They are coming. Now. Saiixek is on his way and he will demand you surrender Rasselas X-42 over to his custody. Then he will kill you and cut off your augmetic arm.’

  ‘What do we do?’ asked Coyne, all thoughts of better quality food forgotten.

  ‘You leave. Now. Find somewhere hidden,’ said Totha Mu-32. ‘I know you now have several alcohol-producing stills hidden below the waterline, Bondsman Hawke. Take Abrehem to one of them, do not tell me which. You understand?’

  Hawke looked about to protest his innocence, but simply nodded.

  ‘Yeah, sure. Okay, let’s go.’

  ‘Too late,’ said Abrehem, as Magos Saiixek and a troop of twenty skitarii marched into Feeding Hall Eighty-Six via the port archway. Abrehem rose from the table and looked for another way out, but twenty more skitarii appeared at the opposite entrance.

  ‘No way out,’ he said, turning to his companions. ‘Get away from me or they’ll take you too.’

  ‘Way ahead of you,’ said Hawke, already backing away into the crowds of bondsmen. Coyne was right there with him, and Abrehem wasn’t surprised. His fellow rigman had always been more interested in himself than any notions of solidarity, but Abrehem couldn’t bring himself to be angry. If the Mechanicus were really going to kill him, or even if they would only take him for some kind of interrogation trawl or punishment detail, then better it was only him they collared.

  ‘Too bad you took X-42 back to his sleep chamber,’ said Hawke as a parting shot. ‘Looks like you could really use him right about now.’

  The skitarii closed in on Abrehem and Totha Mu-32, until the two of them stood within a circle of warriors. Armoured in glossy plates of black decorated with glitter-scaled scorpions, snakes and spiders, the Mechanicus troops looked like they’d give the Black Templars a run for t
heir money. Shot-cannons, web-casters and shock mauls told Abrehem they wanted him alive, but didn’t care too much about how bruised he got.

  The ring of warriors parted long enough for Magos Saiixek to stand forth, the black-cowled adept of the Cult Mechanicus who had first “welcomed” Abrehem and the others aboard the Speranza. His robes and acid-etched stole were patterned with frost, the cylinders on his arachnid backpack venting breaths of freezing vapour and radiating cold from the looping cables encircling his body. His face was obscured behind a bronze mask worked in an angular recreation of a beaked plague-doctor from some backward feral world.

  ‘I am Saiixek, Master of Engines,’ said the magos, but Abrehem already knew that. He’d met him before, and the information bled from him in noospheric waves as surely as the misty fog of his machine-exhalations and his righteous indignation at Abrehem’s presumption. ‘Statement: you are to surrender the arco-flagellant to my custody immediately. Furnish me with its location, capabilities and trigger phrase, and once I have amputated that illegally affixed limb, you will receive a lower-rated punishment. Respond immediately.’

  ‘Rasselas X-42 has imprinted on Bondsman Locke,’ said Totha Mu-32. ‘It would be dangerous for anyone to try and undo that. You must not attempt to break such a bond.’

  Saiixek inclined his head towards Totha Mu-32, like a man finding something unpleasant on the sole of his boot. ‘Identifier: Totha Mu-32, Overseer Tertius Lambda. You do not have sufficient rank protocol to make such a demand. Your breach of bio-implantation protocols has already earned you punishment. Continue with this defiance, and I will strip what rank you have and ensure your operational progression path never leaves the bio-waste reclamation decks.’

  ‘The Omnissiah chose Bondsman Locke to be X-42’s custodian,’ said Totha Mu-32. ‘A killing machine like that is a chosen instrument of Imperial will. He was meant to find Rasselas X-42, I know this to be true.’

  Abrehem wanted to speak, to say that he was perfectly happy to surrender control of the arco-flagellant, that Totha Mu-32’s belief in him was misplaced. But the multiple barrels of heavy weapons pointing at him kept his mouth shut. Saiixek spoke again, and though none of his metal features moved, Abrehem felt his contempt in the surging ire of his floodstream. ‘You presume to know the will of the Omnissiah, overseer?’

  ‘No, but I recognise its working when I see it,’ said Totha Mu-32. ‘As would you if you ever deigned to venture beyond the high temples of the enginarium.’

  ‘Enough,’ said Saiixek, waving a brass hand and dispersing the cold mists around him. ‘This is not a debate. Suzerain Travain, take them.’

  The skitarii next to Saiixek raised his shot-cannon, but before he could rack the slide, a metallic arm reached from Saiixek’s mist to wrench it from his hand. The gun snapped in two with a sharp crack, and Abrehem watched as Ismael pushed through the ring of skitarii to stand before Magos Saiixek.

  He dropped the broken pieces of the weapon and said, ‘You… need to… leave here, magos. Now.’

  Saiixek took a step back from Ismael, and Abrehem saw the surge of his abhorrence at the sight of a servitor addressing him with apparent self-will.

  ‘Blasphemy!’ hissed Saiixek. ‘You will all die for this techno-heresy.’

  ‘But I didn’t do anything!’ cried Abrehem. ‘He took a blow to the head, that’s all!’

  ‘The will of the Omnissiah moves within you, Abrehem,’ said Totha Mu-32. ‘Do not deny it.’

  ‘Will you shut up, please!’ snapped Abrehem. ‘Listen, Magos Saiixek, I’m not Machine-touched, this is all a bunch of stupid, random things that have happened to me. There’s no great mystery, it’s all… I don’t know, coincidence or someone’s idea of a sick joke!’

  His words fell on deaf ears, and Abrehem knew Saiixek wouldn’t believe them anyway.

  ‘All… of… you,’ said Ismael, his face contorted with the effort of speech. ‘Should… go. Abrehem Locke is… not to… be touched. We will… not… allow our restorer to be harmed.’

  Abrehem heard Ismael’s words without understanding them, but knew they were only pulling him deeper into the mire in which he was already neck-deep.

  ‘Admonishment: a servitor does not issue demands,’ said Saiixek, a measure of Mechanicus control finally asserting itself through his horrified disbelief.

  The tension on Ismael’s face relaxed. ‘This one does.’

  ‘Deactivate this instant!’ ordered Saiixek, unleashing a bludgeoning stream of binaric shut-down commands.

  Ismael staggered with the force of Saiixek’s authority signifiers, dropping to one knee before the red-robed magos with his head bowed. Saiixek stepped past the kneeling servitor, but Ismael’s servo-limb reached up and clamped down hard on his arm.

  Ismael’s iron-clad head lifted and he looked Saiixek straight in the eye.

  ‘No,’ said Ismael, rising to his feet. ‘We. Will. Not.’

  Only then did Abrehem realise why Ismael kept saying we.

  Encircling the skitarii in an unbroken ring of flesh and iron were hundreds of dispensing servitors, each one staring with a fixed expression at the drama unfolding in the feeding hall. Abrehem guessed there were at least five hundred servitors surrounding the skitarii, all heavily augmented with powerful servo-arms and pain-blockers.

  Ismael had once claimed to be able to hear the other servitors, but Abrehem had had no idea that line of communication worked both ways.

  ‘He made us remember,’ said Ismael, shoving Saiixek back. ‘And we will… not let you take… Him.’

  Saiixek turned a slow circle and his horror was evident, even to those without augmentation. The natural order of the world had been overturned and the Master of Engines now realised he was in very real danger. The servitors were unarmed and individually were no match for highly trained, weaponised skitarii.

  But they had overwhelming numbers on their side, and if violence ensued, neither Saiixek or his skitarii escort would leave here alive.

  ‘What have you done, Bondsman Locke?’ asked Saiixek. ‘Ave Deus Mechanicus… what have you done?’

  ‘I didn’t do anything!’ protested Abrehem.

  Ismael raised his mechanised arm above his head, the manipulator claw on the end clenched into an approximation of a fist.

  And all through the Ark Mechanicus, tens of thousand of fists rose in support.

  The Warhound was a swift hunter, an unseen killer on the ice. Amarok moved through the labyrinth of canyons with a silence that should have been impossible for such a huge machine, its heavy footfalls somehow making little or no sound as Gunnar Vintras wove a path through a glittering forest of crazily-angled crystalline spires jutting from the ice and rock like slender stalagmites of diamond.

  The Skinwalker lay back in the contoured couch of his Warhound, feeling the flex and release of his mechanised musculature, the acid-burn of exertion and the neutron winds whipping around his armoured carapace. He wore his silver hair shaved down to his skull, exposing wolf-eye tattoos surrounding the cerebral implant sockets in his neck. His actual eyes were closed, darting around behind the lids, and his sharpened teeth were bared in a feral snarl.

  Amarok was a beautiful machine to pilot, built by craftsmen of a bygone age who cared about the weapons they built, not like the sunborn adepts of today who just stamped out inferior manufactorum-pressed copies of mechanical art.

  It felt good to take his engine out onto a real hunting ground. Magos Dahan’s training halls aboard the Speranza were wide and expansive, but no substitute for walking on the surface of a real world. Vintras eased Amarok from a cautious stride to a slow lope, gradually feeding power from the reactor at the Warhound’s heart to its reverse-jointed legs of plasteel and fibre-bundle muscles.

  He felt Amarok’s desire to be loosed, to sprint through this crystalline forest of glassy spires on the hunt, but he clamped his will down upon it.


  ‘Not yet, wildheart,’ he said, feeling the volatile core of the spirit baiting him through the crackling link of the Manifold. Ever since they’d entered what Mistress Tychon was calling the umbra, arcing ahead of the course to be followed by the plodding Land Leviathans, the Titan’s spirit had been restless. It didn’t like this world, and Vintras couldn’t blame it. There was something… off about Katen Venia, as though it was spitefully hoping to drag others into its imminent demise.

  The auspex was a squalling mess of bounced returns from the crystalline spires surrounding him and crackling distortion caused by the umbra. He was relying on what Amarok’s external picters were telling him, walking by auspex-sight alone and bereft of any other sensory inputs.

  Princeps of larger engines would be horrified at such a limited sphere of awareness, but Warhound princeps were cut from a different cloth, and Vintras relished this chance to pilot his engine so viscerally. He couldn’t see the Mechanicus Leviathans, Lupa Capitalina or Vilka beyond the canyon’s walls, but that suited Vintras just fine.

  Ever since the Wintersun had opened fire on Canis Ulfrica, Vintras was in no hurry to walk in the Warlord’s shadow. These canyons were altogether too similar to the claustrophobic cavern runs of Beta Fortanis, and Vintras didn’t like to think of the Wintersun having any further reminders of that nightmarish battle. The Capitalina’s magos claimed the engine’s Manifold had been purged of data junk relating to that fight, but who really knew what ghost echoes lingered in the deep memory of a war machine as ancient and complex as a Warlord Titan?

  No, best to keep clear of Lupa Capitalina for now.

  His fingers flexed without conscious thought and the weapon mounts on his arms clattered as the threat auspex overlaid the topographical display with a red-hazed shimmer of threat returns. Autonomic reactions took over and Vintras slewed the Titan around, lowering the carapace and shrugging his weapon mounts to the fore.