‘Do you think the Mechanicus are capable of that?’
‘They can learn,’ said Locke, leaning forwards. ‘After all, it’s in their best interest. Which would you rather lead into battle, a regiment of willing soldiers who know you’re going to do your damnedest to keep them alive, or a bunch of conscripts who couldn’t give a shit for your war or who won it?’
‘I’m Cadian, so you already know the answer to that, but rhetorical questions aren’t going to solve this,’ said Anders, nodding to the cyborg-killer at Abrehem’s shoulder. ‘Since you seem keen to point out hypocrisy, isn’t it a bit rich that you keep that arco-flagellant around? He’s bio-imprinted to you now, a slave to your every command. Do you want him to be freed too? The archmagos tells me there’s no file on who he was before his transmogrification, but he would have been a monster. A child murderer or rapist or a heretic. Or something even worse.’
Locke appeared genuinely disturbed at Anders’s words, as though the provenance of the arco-flagellant had never occurred to him; or he knew something of the arco-flagellant’s previous existence he wished he didn’t. Given what was rumoured of Abrehem Locke’s nature, the latter seemed a more likely explanation.
‘You’re right, of course,’ said Abrehem with a fixed expression. ‘But right now a little hypocrisy is a price I’m willing to pay to get what I want.’
‘A little evil in service of a greater good, is that it?’
‘That’s a negative way of putting it.’
‘I don’t see another,’ said Anders. ‘Listen, Abrehem, you can’t sit there on your high horse, demanding freedom and claiming to hold the moral high ground, then admit that you’re willing to accept a little bit of slavery if it achieves your aims.’
‘I don’t have a choice, colonel,’ said Locke, and once again Anders saw past the hectoring rebel to the desperately tired man whom circumstances had forced into the role of a leader; a role he was manifestly unsuited to filling. ‘This is the only way.’
Anders folded his arms and said, ‘You strike me as an intelligent man, Abrehem, not a suicidal one. You must have some level at which you’re willing to compromise. We could sit here and haggle and posture till we reach that level, but as I’m sure you know, we don’t have the luxury of time. With Saiixek’s death and servitors refusing to work, the Speranza’s going down. Very soon, we’ll all be dead unless you and I can agree.’
‘At least this way it will be by our hand instead of the Mechanicus.’
‘And what about everyone else?’ asked Anders, letting a measure of his anger show. ‘What about all my soldiers? The menials, the void-born, and all the other thousands of souls aboard this vessel? Are you willing to murder them all over a principle? I don’t think so.’
Locke’s eyes flashed defiance, but it was hollow bravado and the fire went out of him. He was angry, yes, but he wasn’t willing to murder an entire ship to achieve his goals.
Anders knew he’d won and felt the knot of tension in his gut relax.
Before he could take solace in Locke’s backing down, the sharp crack of a gunshot echoed from the other side of the laager of vehicles. Anders recognised the sound with a sinking heart.
M36 Kantrael-pattern lasrifle.
Cadian issue…
Of all the manoeuvres Emil Nader had attempted in his long years spent at the helm of a starship, this had to rank as one of the stupidest. He’d made emergency warp jumps before he’d reached the Mandeville point, run the gauntlet of greenskin roks and navigated the heart of an asteroid belt, but this was just insane.
The panel in front of him was lit with repeated calls for him to return to the ship, calls that only served to highlight the bone-headed literalness of the Mechanicus perfectly.
‘Demand: vessel Renard, your launch is unauthorised,’ said a grating mechanical voice over the vox. ‘You are to return to the Speranza immediately and shut down your engines.’
Emil didn’t waste breath in replying, knowing there would be no point.
‘Repeated demand: vessel Renard, your launch is unauthorised. You are to–’
Magos Pavelka interrupted. ‘While it is true that we do not have clearance to depart the forward embarkation deck, we are of the opinion that remaining aboard is not the safest option since the Speranza is in imminent danger of breaking up in the planet’s atmosphere.’
‘Couldn’t have put it better myself,’ said Emil, shutting off the vox-feed from the Speranza’s deck magos. ‘We’ll make a scoundrel out of you yet, Ilanna.’
Pavelka sat across from him in the co-pilot’s seat, while Sylkwood was down in the engine spaces, trying to keep the Renard’s engines hot enough to make the manoeuvre possible without turning the flanks of the Speranza to molten slag.
‘I do not flout Mechanicus protocols lightly, Mister Nader,’ said Pavelka, feeding as much navigational data as she could to Emil’s station. ‘The deck magos will enforce proper chastisement upon our return to the Speranza.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Of course,’ said Pavelka. ‘As is only right and proper.’
‘Assuming we don’t die out here.’
‘Assuming we do not die,’ agreed Pavelka. ‘I calculate the odds of our success as–’
‘No, no, no…’ said Emil. ‘I don’t want to know, you’ll jinx me.’
Pavelka looked as though she was about to rise to that particular morsel, but simply nodded and carried on feeding him information on the gravimetric field enveloping the Ark Mechanicus. The ancient machinery generating the Speranza’s internal gravity, coupled with its sheer mass, created a squalling region of turbulence that made just flying in a straight line a daunting challenge.
This was where the e-mag tether had stranded the Renard’s shuttle.
‘You are aware, of course, that the last captain to attempt a manoeuvre such as this was killed and his ship lost with all hands?’ said Pavelka.
‘Yeah, I’m aware of that,’ he said. ‘In fact I saw it, but Rayner was crazy and he had dozens of tyranid bio-parasites clamped to his hull. Even if he’d pulled it off, everyone on that ship would have died. Trust me, compared to what he tried, this’ll be easy.’
‘Then you and I differ on the definition of easy.’
Emil grinned and thumbed the brass-topped switch connecting him to the engineering spaces below. ‘Sylkwood, you about ready?’
Even over the vox, the enginseer’s abrasive tones were clear.
‘Yeah, we’re ready, but don’t expect this to be a smooth ride.’
‘Just so long as it’s one we all survive.’
‘I’m not promising anything,’ said Sylkwood. ‘We’re going to lose some of the manoeuvring jets, and the structure’s not rated for this tight a turn.’
‘But the Renard’s a tough old bird, yeah? She’ll hold together, won’t she?’
‘Tell her you love her, then promise you’ll never make her fly like this again and she might.’
Emil nodded and flexed his fingers on the ship’s control mechanisms. Ordinarily, a ship the size of the Renard would rarely be flown manually, operating instead via a series of inputted commands, moving between pre-configured waypoints and automated flight profiles.
‘Is there anything I could say that would persuade you to let the onboard data-engine navigate us to the shuttle?’ asked Pavelka. ‘You cannot hope to process the sheer amount of variables in the Speranza’s gravitational envelope.’
‘If you’re not willing to trust your own skills over the onboard systems then you don’t deserve to call yourself a pilot,’ answered Emil. ‘I learned everything about starships in the atmosphere of Espandor, and I know how to fly the Renard better than any machine. I know her ticks and her every quirk. She and I have been through more scrapes than I care to remember. She knows me and I know her. I take care of her, and she’s looked after us all for years. She
’s not about to let us down now, not when Roboute’s in trouble.’
Pavelka reached over and laid a hand on Emil’s shoulder.
‘The Renard is a fine ship, one of the best I have known,’ she said. ‘And for all that I believe you to be needlessly antagonistic towards my order, you are a fine pilot. You might not wish to know the odds of this venture succeeding, but I am fully aware of the likelihood of success.’
‘Is that a good thing?’
‘Of all the baseline humans I know, I would have no other piloting this ship right now, Emil.’
Pavelka’s uncharacteristically human words touched him, as did her use of his given name.
‘Then let’s go get our captain,’ said Emil.
Captain Hawkins threw himself at Guardsman Manos, knocking him to the deck before he could fire again, but the damage had already been done. The first bondsman died with a neat las-burn drilled through the centre of his skull and his brains flash-burned to vapour. No sooner had he collapsed than Manos switched targets, killing another seven bondsmen on full-auto before Hawkins reached him.
‘Stand down!’ shouted Hawkins, fighting to pin Manos down. ‘That’s an order, soldier!’
Manos screamed and thrashed in terror, his face twisted in horror.
‘They’re monsters, captain!’ screamed Manos. ‘Let me up or they’ll kill us all!’
Hawkins locked his elbow around the struggling Guardsman’s neck as the cries of outrage from the bondsmen intensified. Any moment they were going to look for payback.
‘The monsters from the Eye!’ shouted Manos. ‘Can’t you see them? They’re going to kill us!’
‘Manos, shut the hell up,’ ordered Hawkins, tightening his grip. ‘You’re not making any sense.’
‘I saw them,’ sobbed Manos, his words slurring as Hawkins’s sleeper hold took effect. ‘They look like people, but their disguises slipped and I saw them… They’re beasts straight out of the Eye and we have to kill them all… please…’
The bondsmen were yelling for blood now and moving towards the Cadian line.
Manos’s struggles ceased as he slipped into unconsciousness, and Hawkins sprang to his feet as the man Colonel Anders had identified as Hawke supplied the final push over the cliff to this situation.
‘They came here to kill us, lads!’ shouted Hawke. ‘Get them before they get us!’
The bondsmen threw themselves at the Cadian line, brandishing power tools and heavy spars of metal. Hawkins didn’t fail to notice that Hawke wasn’t leading the charge, but hanging back behind some of the larger bondsmen.
‘No shooting!’ shouted Hawkins as the bondsmen slammed into the Cadian ranks.
A man with a full-facial tattoo of a spider came at him, swinging a heavy piece of iron pipework. Hawkins ducked the swing and slammed the heel of his palm into the man’s solar plexus. He stepped back as the man dropped with a whoosh of expelled air and brought his own rifle around to use as a cudgel. Three men in faded red coveralls attacked and Hawkins staggered as a clubbing fist smashed into the side of his head.
Instinctive training responses took over and he swung his rifle out in a sweeping arc that connected with his attacker’s stomach and doubled him over. He dropped the second man with a jab of the lasgun’s butt to the head and shook off the dizziness of his own hurt. He felt hands dragging his shoulders and spun around, slammed his rifle into the chest of his attacker.
His rifle butt split along its length against Sergeant Tanna’s breastplate.
The Space Marine didn’t so much as flinch at the impact.
Tanna hauled him back into the line of fighting, lifting him as though he weighed no more than a child. Tanna swept his arms out, knocking back half a dozen bondsmen with every blow.
Many of the men fell with broken bones, but Hawkins knew they were lucky to be alive. Anyone that attacked a warrior of the Adeptus Astartes was courting death, and the restraint in Tanna’s blows was clear.
‘Staying here is futile,’ said Tanna. ‘We must withdraw.’
‘We’re not leaving without the colonel,’ replied Hawkins.
‘Then lethal force is our only option.’
‘No, we’re not killing any more of these men!’
‘We may not have a choice,’ said Tanna.
The bondsmen had them surrounded, punching, kicking and screaming at them in fury. Hawkins’s Guardsmen had formed an impromptu shield wall, fighting to keep the bondsmen back with vicious blows of rifle butts. Dahan fought with the bulbous pod at the base of his halberd, which was thankfully deactivated. The battle robots were currently inactive, but it wouldn’t take this situation long to escalate to a level where Dahan felt he had no choice but to bring their terrifyingly destructive guns to bear.
The Space Marines fought without weapons, bludgeoning the bondsmen back with blows that were delivered with a finesse that was as precise as it was bone-crunching. Wherever Hawkins looked, he saw Cadians and bondsmen locked in vicious brawls. Discipline was paying off against anger, as the raw fury of the bondsmen was no match for Cadian training. Every man in Hawkins’s command was fighting as part of a unit, each defending their fellow soldiers’ backs and expecting the same in return. Living in the shadow of the Eye of Terror demanded a dedication to martial brotherhood that few other regiments could match.
Hawkins struggled to see if there was any way they could reach the circle of earth-moving machines where the colonel had gone to negotiate with Abrehem Locke. The deck was awash with bondsmen – there was no way they could make headway through so many men. At least not without using their weapons, and even then it was doubtful. Getting to the colonel looked hopeless, but then Hawkins saw the ex-Guardsman, Hawke. The man was doing his best to avoid the fighting, but the sheer press of bodies had forced him to the front.
‘You’re mine,’ said Hawkins, shouldering his way through the fighting.
Hawke saw him coming, but there was nowhere for him to go.
The two of them slammed together and Hawkins pistoned his fist into the man’s face.
Hawke hadn’t survived the Guard for years without learning how to take a punch, and he rolled with the blow, ducking and slamming his own fist up into Hawkins’s gut. The ex-Guardsman was a brawler, and a dirty fighter to boot. The two of them scrapped and grappled each other without finesse, clawing, gouging and hammering at one another like drunken pugilists at a punchbag.
Hawke fought with every foul trick in the gutter-fighter’s arsenal, but Cadians knew every below the belt trick. Hawkins saw the next blow coming, a knee to the groin, and lifted his own leg to block it. He dropped and swung his rifle around, slamming the cracked butt against the side of Hawke’s thigh. The man howled in pain, but Hawkins wasn’t about to let up his assault.
He slammed a right cross into Hawke’s cheek and followed that up with the opposite elbow to the temple. The man collapsed and Hawkins dropped onto his chest, pummelling him with right and left hooks until his face was a mask of blood.
He hauled the man upright and shouted in his face.
‘Stop this now before someone gets killed!’ he shouted.
Hawke spat a mouthful of blood and even through his mangled features, he was grinning.
‘You bastards started this,’ he coughed. ‘Your man shot one of ours.’
‘I don’t know what that was about, but if you don’t call your men off, people are going to die.’
‘Too late for that,’ said Hawke, as a figure clad in black and silver landed next to one of Dahan’s battle robots. Silver threshing limbs swept out and the robot’s right arm was severed cleanly from its chassis. Another whipping blow and its head spun away from its neck as though it had been punched off by an ogryn.
A second robot was felled as its left leg was sheared off at the hip, and it crashed to the deck with its motors screeching and its augmitters blaring in machin
e pain. Hawkins released Hawke and stared into the flickering red eyes of a cybernetic killer.
The arco-flagellant knelt in the ruin of the two Cataphracts, the gleaming silver electro-flails sparking with electrical discharge as the oily lifeblood of the robots burned away.
‘Kill. Maim. Destroy,’ it said.
The Renard’s keel measured just under three kilometres, which meant that its normal turning circle was correspondingly large. A starship’s hull and internal structure was designed to withstand the stresses of the void and vast forces of acceleration, but no human shipwright had ever designed a vessel of such displacement to be nimble.
But that was just what Emil Nader was asking of it now.
They were clear of the Speranza, and with a last nod towards Ilanna Pavelka, he hauled the controls around and fired a sequenced burn of manoeuvring rockets along the length of the hull. Vectored thrust from the starboard prow jets fired at maximum thrust, while the port-side jets on the ship’s rear and dorsal sections provided counter-thrust to complete the pivoting turn.
Emil felt himself pressed into his seat as local gravity within the Renard increased. The superstructure groaned as torsion forces tried to buckle structural ribs and twist the keel into unnatural shapes.
‘Lambda deck breached,’ said Pavelka. ‘Hull stresses thirty per cent past recommended tolerances. Engine containment field strength diminishing.’
Emil didn’t answer. What would be the point? He’d always known this manoeuvre wouldn’t be possible without suffering. He could feel the ship’s pain, but forced himself to ignore it. To halt their manoeuvre now would be just as dangerous. He fired another sequenced blast of thrust, rolling the Renard onto its back relative to the Speranza. He let the turn continue until the two vessels were facing one another, before firing the main engines with a corrective burn on the vectored thrusters to stabilise their yaw.
Forge of Mars - Graham McNeill Page 68
