Forge of Mars - Graham McNeill

by Warhammer 40K

‘If the Black Templars have crash landed, we should go to their aid,’ said Dahan.

  Kotov was inclined to damn the Space Marines and let them suffer the consequences of their foolhardy zeal, but quelled so petty a notion. Dahan was right, if the Adeptus Astartes required assistance, he was duty-bound to offer it. He switched through his visual perception modes and multiple hues descended over the landscape as he saw in expanded wavelengths, sound vibrations, radiation decay and a host of other sensory inputs. Irritatingly, it seemed Surcouf was correct in deducing that the umbra did not reach ground level, as his augmetic senses had no trouble penetrating the umbra below fifty metres.

  Just as what he had first seen upon reaching the edge of the plateau made no sense, what he was seeing now made just as little sense. With a thought, he switched Dahan’s optics to match his own and exloaded the correct perceptual mode to Surcouf’s magnoculars.

  ‘Magos Dahan,’ said Kotov. ‘The Templars are under attack. Send in the skitarii.’

  Magos Dahan detested riding into battle within the hull of an armoured vehicle, equating its metallic confinement to the interior of a tomb. He had adopted the usage of the Iron Fist for just that reason, preferring to ride in an open-topped vehicle, like a barbarian king of Old Earth charging towards the enemy on his war-chariot.

  The image was an apt one, for he stood on the armoured topside of a crimson and black Rhino as it led his skitarii towards the beleaguered Black Templars. His clawed legs were braced on the side and rear holdbars, while his deactivated scarifiers clamped onto the cupola mount of the commander’s hatch. His upper arms were free, and he had slung his halberd in favour of deploying a pair of forearm-mounted rotary lasers.

  Denying the Cadian units permission to cross the partially completed pioneer bridge, Dahan had led his skitarii past the thousands of servitors and structural engineers buttressing its supports in readiness for the Tabularium’s crossing. Thirty Rhinos matched the speed of his own, heavily converted vehicles with upgraded auspex suites, additional weaponry and higher-grade command/control functionality. Each carried a squad of heavily-armed and highly-skilled warriors, men he had trained using his stochastic analysis of millions of inloaded combat doctrines which were then broken down into their component elements. It was a training regime he had believed faultless until Brother Yael of the Black Templars had – defying all statistical probability – bested him in a contest of arms. A mortal mind might have felt some affront or insult at such a defeat, but Dahan was above such petty concerns, and had incorporated the fighting styles of the Black Templars into his accumulated battle subroutines.

  Interspersed with the screen of armour came the columns of weaponised servitors, tracked praetorians, mobile weapon platforms and a quad-maniple of twelve battle robots: six Cataphracts, four Crusaders and two Conquerors. Each robot’s organo-cybernetic cortex was slaved to a partitioned thought-stream of battle-implants.

  No part of this battlefield was unknown to Dahan, the overclocked speed of his mental architecture plotting out a precise and constantly-updating picture of the combat arena. His threat optics – now incorporating Archmagos Kotov’s sensory inload – draped the plateau of icy rock in myriad cyan hues: strongly pigmented azures for organics, deeper cobalt shades for metallics and lighter teals for inorganic materials. Firing range bands, topographical vectors of assault and optimal engagement zones were overlaid in crisp red lines, giving Dahan the perfect datum points from which to conduct this assault.

  The Black Templars fought from the topside of their partially buried Thunderhawk, which at Dahan’s increased consciousness speed appeared to be in the process of being subsumed by the ground itself. A host of crystal-formed warriors, illumined and likely empowered by a bloom of exotic energy within their chest cavities, laid siege to the Thunderhawk. Bioform analysis took them to be Space Marines, but Dahan saw they were poor imitations of Adeptus Astartes perfection.

  Withering hails of bolter fire were blasting these monstrosities apart, but more were pulling themselves free from the ground with the sound of breaking glass. Perhaps two hundred or more surrounded the buried gunship, hurling themselves at the embattled Space Marines with a slow, relentless hunger. Some were equipped with crudely-shaped weaponry integral to their forms, and these fired streams of light that registered as painfully bright lances of sapphire.

  Fortunately for the Space Marines, their attackers displayed an appalling lack of marksmanship, but the sheer volume of fire was forcing the Templars to employ every square metre of cover afforded by the gunship’s tailfins, opened dorsal hatches and inactive topside turrets.

  A number of icons flashed onto his vision and Dahan wordlessly issued his orders.

  The Conquerors came to a halt, digging into the reflective surface of the plateau with bracing claws before cycling round their heavy bolters and lascannons. Blazing gouts of fire streamed overhead, ploughing through the crystalline creatures in a thunderous cacophony of shattered crystal and arcing electrical discharge. The data lodged in Dahan’s cognitive overview.

  Whatever else these creatures were, they were definitely not organic.

  The Crusaders increased speed, two moving around each flank as the skitarii Rhinos ground to a halt in a blizzard of glittering ice chips. Assault doors slammed back and squads of cybernetically-enhanced warriors debarked in perfect synchrony. Each squad-chief’s right eye was a battle-implant that received situational data straight from Dahan; they knew what he knew and his binaric orders were implemented virtually instantaneously.

  Like a grand-master’s regicide pieces on a tri-dimensional board, each squad moved in concert with those nearby, offering mutually supporting fields of fire and flank protection. Weaponised servitors swiftly caught up to the infantry, taking up overwatching positions to offer fire-support as and when it was required. The Cataphract robots moved alongside the infantry, their anti-personnel autocannons and power fists ready to support against any foe beyond the soldiers’ capability to engage.

  Dahan released his grip on the sides of his own Rhino and dropped to the ground, unlimbering his Cebrenian halberd and igniting his clawed scarifiers. His assigned squad hove into view, and he ran to join them with his peculiar loping gait.

  Skitarii gunfire smashed through the crystal creatures, blasting them apart with solid rounds or detonating them explosively with high-energy hotshots. Grenade launchers cleared space for praetorians to occupy and deny the enemy time to regroup. Dahan himself was not above getting his hands dirty, fighting with killing sweeps of his Cebrenian halberd. He assigned his own command squad, a mix of elite suzerain and experimental weapon-bearers, a path right into the heart of the fight.

  His accompanying skitarii unleashed a hail of plasma, graviton guns and micro-conversion beamers. Though the crystal creatures were manifestly inhuman they still obeyed the laws of physics and came apart like any other substance. Their advance was made over crunching debris of flickering crystal and cut-glass carcasses.

  Dahan allowed himself a moment of recklessness and surged ahead of his squad, vaulting into a group of the icy-looking crystal-forms with a burst of hostile binary. He swung his Cebrenian halberd, slamming its entropic capacitor into the chest of a slowly turning construct. A blast of hostile code stabbed into its heart and the green light was instantly extinguished. The impact of the halberd shattered the thing, and Dahan was already moving by the time its glassy remains fell to the ground. Just as they were poor shots, the crystal-forms were no more adept in the arts of close combat. Dahan slashed and stabbed with his halberd, reaping a grim tally of glassy enemies, and cutting shard-limbs from their bodies with his energy-wreathed scarifiers.

  Most battlefields were filled with the screams of frenzied warriors, the howls of the dying and the clash of blades, but in this arena the only sounds were booming gunfire and the brittle shattering of crystal-form bodies.

  The twin horns of the skitarii assault now pr
essed in on the crystal-form creatures, scything their numbers and pressing in towards the Space Marines atop the Barisan. Dahan’s calculations indicated that this engagement would be decisively ended in four minutes and thirty-five seconds.

  Dahan’s squad finally caught up with him, fighting with implanted weaponry to blast and cut a path through the heart of the enemy towards the Space Marines. Dahan instantly read the identity biometrics of each of the Black Templars, intrigued to note that not one of them displayed any elevated readings to indicate that they were engaged in a desperate firefight.

  He opened a vox-link, cycling through all known Space Marine frequencies until he heard a clipped, verbally-efficient battle-cant based on the northern Inwit tribal argot.

  ‘Sergeant Tanna, this is Magos Dahan,’ he said. ‘Now would seem a prudent time to withdraw.’

  Tanna’s voice sounded shocked to hear a non-Templar voice in his helmet. ‘This is a Templar vox-net,’ he said. ‘You do not speak upon it.’

  ‘Feel free to censure me when we are back on the Tabularium,’ Dahan said, ‘but I suggest you come with us before more of these crystal-forms appear.’

  Tanna did not respond and Dahan realised the sergeant had shut him off.

  ‘Foolish,’ said Dahan, amazed at the self-harm beings not defined by logic would wreak upon themselves for the sake of mortal pride and propriety. Dahan paused in his advance as he registered the destruction of two of his Rhinos. Nowhere in his wide net of sensory inputs had he registered a threat capable of destroying a vehicle. He pulled his awareness outwards as a rippling spiderweb of surging energy patterns converged on the battlefield, like a reversed pict-capture of a shattering pane of glass, the splintering traceries of cracks radiating back towards the point of impact.

  Moments later, the threat levels ramped up as fresh energy forms rapidly appeared without warning. All across the theatre of battle, the ground erupted with thousands of geysering blasts of prismatic shards as an entire army of the crystal-forms ripped up into the fight. The cycling counter of his battle-end calculation went into reverse before winking out and being replaced with a representation of how long his own forces could expect to remain viable.

  Inevitable victory had suddenly become certain annihilation.

  A trio of figures tore themselves from the ground before Dahan, two resembling crude anatomical representations of skitarii, while the third was a glassine mockery of his own form, complete with a tripod arrangement of legs and quad-armatures.

  A blast of fire stuck him on the shoulder, and his combat algorithms leapt in complexity by an order of magnitude. Dahan gasped at the hexamathic density of the required calculations and his shoulders erupted with thermal bloom as his cranial implants desperately vented excess heat. He staggered as his mind and body fought to maintain equilibrium between strategic overview and tactical necessity.

  Something had to give, and right now Dahan’s most pressing concern was the creature right in front of him threatening his life.

  He shut off his high-speed cognitive functions and veils of battlefield awareness fell away like wind-blown smoke. His doppelgänger came at him with its copied halberd slashing for his head. Dahan was still adjusting to his restricted world view and the blow took him full in the chest, hurling him back with a crack of splitting metal. Bolts of las-fire blasted chunks of its substance away, but its imitation body was clearly of greater density than its brethren.

  A crystal-clawed foot stamped down on a scarifier arm and sheared it from his body. Pain signals flared in Dahan’s brain. Nothing organic was left in that limb, but the hurt was no less real. Dahan’s recalibrating combat subroutines snapped back into focus and he parried a follow-up blow, rolling aside as the halberd slammed down where his head had been.

  ‘My turn,’ he snarled, driving his scarifier up into the thing’s body.

  Snapping electrical discharge blew out a vast chunk of crystalline material, and he kicked out with his third leg, snapping one of his attacker’s. The creature staggered, but didn’t fall until he pushed himself upright and brought his Cebrenian halberd down on its skull. The blow sheared the creature in two, its severed body collapsing like two halves of a cloven sculpture. More of the risen crystal-form creatures were surrounding him; the sheer quantity of enemy firepower had a quality all of its own.

  Four more came at him and he swayed back on his rear leg to avoid a thrusting spear-limb. A halberd strike destroyed the limb, and he sprang forwards to deliver a hammering electrical strike from his remaining scarifier. The creature exploded and he spun low on his reverse-jointed main limbs, scything his retracted rear leg around. Two crystal-forms went down. Dahan skewered one with his halberd, spinning the weapon around to deliver a thunderous strike with the entropic generator on the other. A crackling energy fist came at him and he lowered his head to take the blow on his armoured cowl. Crystal shattered against the adamantium hood; Dahan didn’t give the creature another chance.

  He surged upright, vaulting over the thing’s head and bringing his halberd around in three ultra-rapid slices before he landed. The crystal form slid apart into pieces, green light spewing from its ruptured chest cavity. On another day, Dahan would have dearly loved to study that energy source, but now was not the time.

  With a fractional space cleared around him, the skitarii rallied to his side.

  Dahan allowed himself a brief increase in cognition speed to access his strategic awareness protocols, skimming the blurts of real-time data-feeds from the warriors under his command.

  The information was not heartening.

  Dahan’s skitarii were dying, and instead of rescuing the Black Templars, he and his command squad were now as isolated as Tanna and his warriors.

  Tanna had long since expended his supply of bolter ammunition and the powercell of his chainsword was dangerously close to running empty. His armour was scorched from dozens of impacts and he was among the least wounded of his warriors. Auiden had already brought Bracha back into the fight, sealing a neatly cauterised blast through his thigh.

  Now Bracha knelt propped up by the Barisan’s tailfin, picking shots with his implanted plasma gun and fending off close range attackers with his combat blade. Issur met the foe blade to blade, hacking the crystalline mockeries of Space Marines apart with graceful blows of his shrieking power sword. Only his nerve-damage induced muscle spasms allowed the creatures anywhere near him. Shards of his armour hung from him where their energised claws had torn it from him.

  Issur fought back to back with Varda, who alone of them all appeared untouchable. The Black Sword cut through the translucent glass bodies of their attackers with ease, and his gold-chased pistol had a seemingly unending supply of killing bolts.

  Yael fought from behind a turret that Tanna dearly wished was firing, snapping off carefully aimed shots with his bolter and driving the enemy back with his sword when that wasn’t enough. Auiden fought at Tanna’s side, a warrior first, Apothecary second. His pistol was empty, but his sword and narthecium blades were just as efficient at killing.

  ‘Not how I imagined this would end,’ said Auiden.

  ‘Nor I,’ replied Tanna, sweeping his sword through the faceplate of a crystal-form imitation of a Space Marine. He kicked its broken remains from the gunship, all too aware that the encroaching ice of the plateau was at least a metre higher than when they had first crashed. At this rate, its structure would be completely absorbed by the plateau within the next ten minutes.

  Not that Tanna expected to live that long.

  He ducked as he saw a crystal-form take aim and felt the heat of the shot’s passing. Two more creatures clawed their way up the Barisan’s fuselage. He kicked the first one back down and plunged his blade into the green-lit chest of the second. Three more came up behind them, and sawing blasts of fire tore over his back as he threw himself flat. He rolled and found himself sliding towards the edge of the gunship,
where a host of climbing enemy awaited him.

  ‘Tanna!’ shouted Auiden, diving over the topside to grab the edge of his armour.

  The Apothecary’s grip gave Tanna the chance to swing his sword around and hook it behind a protruding intake vent. With Auiden’s help, he finally found purchase and pushed himself away from the drop. He rolled as numerous crystalline claws appeared at the edge.

  ‘My thanks,’ said Tanna, scrambling to his feet and stamping down on the besieging hands.

  As far as he could see, the plateau was squirming with motion as more and more of the crystalline creatures burst from geysers of crystal shards, cracking and splitting the ground with their arrival. Magos Dahan’s assault now looked like a last stand as they too were surrounded by the emergent beasts.

  ‘Galling to be killed while we’re in spitting distance of a god-machine,’ cried Auiden, backhanding his chainsword across the neck of an enemy warrior.

  ‘If they’re so… nggh… close, why aren’t they… hnng… here?’ spat Issur.

  ‘It wouldn’t make any difference,’ shouted Bracha. ‘Would you trust a war machine that almost blew your ship out from under you?’

  ‘Kotov would never authorise Lupa Capitalina to fire on the Tomioka,’ said Tanna. ‘He has crossed the galaxy to find this ship and isn’t about to risk it being damaged by Titan fire.’

  ‘Then the next few moments are going to be interesting,’ said Auiden.

  ‘You have a strange idea of interesting, Apothecary,’ said Varda as he put a bolt through an enemy’s chest.

  ‘That’s only because you think purely in terms of killing.’

  ‘What other… gnnah… way is there to think?’ said Issur, cutting the legs out from two enemy warriors with one blow.

  ‘I have to think of killing and keeping all of you alive,’ said the Apothecary, adjusting the settings on his narthecium gauntlet. ‘Now that’s interesting.’

  No sooner were the words out of Auiden’s mouth than a hideously unlucky volley of shots punched through his plastron, gorget and helmet. Blood fountained, and even without Apothecary training, Tanna knew the wounds were mortal. He caught Auiden as he fell, wrenching his helmet off before blood from his arteries filled his helmet and drowned him.