Forge of Mars - Graham McNeill

by Warhammer 40K

  Data-dense swathes of informational light rose from the silver deck plates like spectral veils and Blaylock parsed the most pertinent in seconds. His split consciousness divided between analysis of the rapidly stabilising column of static air linking the cold of space with the planet’s surface and the emissions rising from the planetary scale of its industry.

  ‘Archmagos Kotov,’ he began, but got no further before the vox erupted with a compressed data-blurt from Exnihlio. The grating sound blaring from the flanged mouths of the vox-grilles was just hashed static at first, too tightly packed to be understood.

  Without giving any command, complex algorithms began unpacking the compressed signal and the noise instantly transformed into the voice of Archmagos Kotov.

  ‘–lock, this is Kotov. You are to immediately break orbit and make best speed for the Imperium. Repeat, break orbit and get as far away from Exnihlio as possible. Do not attempt to reach the surface, do not try to reach us. Go! Go now, for the sake of the Omnissiah, leave now and never come back!’

  Blaylock listened to Kotov’s words with a growing sense of disbelief. The message was an exload of pre-recorded information. It had to be a mistake. A catastrophic disruption in the tight-beam transmission, perhaps? Despite the clear corridor linking them, residual pockets of localised distortion must be affecting the archmagos’s transmission.

  Even as he formed the thought, he knew it to be delusional.

  The signal was clean and uncorrupted, its every binaric particle stamped with Kotov’s noospheric signifiers, a more precise means of identification than even the most detailed genetic markers.

  ‘Blaylock?’ said Azuramagelli, similarly confused. ‘What does the archmagos mean?’

  ‘It’s a mistake,’ snapped Kryptaestrex, rounding on Azuramagelli. ‘Your damned servitor-relays have fouled the signal somehow. It’s the only explanation. It has to be, Tarkis.’

  ‘I do not know,’ replied Blaylock. ‘I–’

  The vox crackled as the pre-recorded exload ended and Kotov’s voice filled the bridge. This time the words were spoken aloud and were filled with terrible urgency.

  ‘Tarkis, if you can hear this, the cog is on the turn. Telok is not what I thought at all – he is a monster and the Breath of the Gods is an alien perversion of unthinkable horror. Telok seeks to tear down everything we hold dear. Mars, the Imperium, everything. Unless you act now he will take the Speranza back to Mars and–’

  Kotov’s words were abruptly cut off.

  Dead air hissed from the vox.

  Blaylock sat in stunned silence, trying to process his tumbling thoughts into some kind of rational order. Taken at face value, it turned his every certainty into a hideous joke. Had they come all this way just to find that the glittering promise at the end was in fact a trap as nightmarish as that which Galatea had set at the Valette Manifold station?

  He wanted to believe that this was a mistake, a cruel subterfuge, but the evidence against that was right there in Kotov’s words.

  ‘Archmagos?’ said Blaylock. ‘Archmagos Kotov? Respond. Archmagos, respond immediately. Archmagos? Azuramagelli, keep trying.’

  The Master of Astrogation returned to his data hub and began a broad-sweep vox-hail of the surface.

  ‘Are we even sure that was the archmagos?’ asked Kryptaestrex, approaching the throne.

  ‘Yes,’ said Blaylock. ‘I am sure.’

  ‘How can you be certain?’ demanded Kryptaestrex.

  ‘Because the cog is on the turn,’ said Blaylock. ‘Just as there are innocuous verbal cues to indicate a statement is being made under duress, there are codes to indicate that what is being said should be absolutely taken at face value. Archmagos Kotov’s use of the phrase, “the cog is on the turn” is of the latter persuasion.’

  ‘So what do we do?’

  Blaylock hesitated before replying.

  ‘We follow Archmagos Kotov’s last order,’ said Blaylock. ‘We break orbit and return to the Imperium as fast we can.’

  Another voice crackled over the vox.

  ‘I’m sorry, Tarkis, but I’m afraid I can’t let you do that,’ said Vettius Telok.

  And a shrieking spear of binaric fire stabbed up through Blaylock’s entire body. His haptic implants burned white hot as their connection seared his flesh to the throne. The Fabricatus Locum’s back arched with convulsive agonies, golden sparks erupting from his every point of connection. Synaptic pathways saturated with external communication inloads of hostile binary.

  Millions of random images poured through his mind, occluding his thought processes with their banality. Yet even within this, there was a pattern. Repeating over and over was the image of a giant feline creature. Orange and black, its fearful symmetry was burning bright in a forest lit by a leering moon.

  The feeder pipes connected to his shoulder-mounted canister tore free and noxious chem-nutrients sprayed the bridge. Still seated on the Speranza’s command throne, smoke from burned electricals curling from his augments, Blaylock grindingly shook his head.

  ‘No,’ he said, his voice filled with distortion as he fought the millions of errors triggering within the microcode of his body. ‘This is a sovereign vessel of the Adeptus Mechanicus, under the command of Archmagos Lexell Kotov. You have no right to take it.’

  Telok’s sigh was heard throughout the Speranza.

  ‘And I so hoped to do this without violence.’

  ‘What are they?’ said Surcouf.

  Tanna leaned over the railing at the edge of the gantry, wondering the same thing. Their speed and the tapered, bladed cast of their skulls told him they were predator creatures. That was enough for now.

  They sped up the curling ramp that spiralled the height of the tower, moving in bounding leaps like an Assault Marine on the hunt. Tanna saw the power in their limbs and knew that, but for the curve of the ramp, they would already be upon them.

  ‘Battle robots?’ he suggested.

  ‘Those are not robots,’ gasped Pavelka, making the Icon Mechanicus across her chest at the sight of the charging creatures. ‘They are something far worse.’

  ‘Give me something I can use to fight them,’ said Tanna.

  Pavelka shook her head, seeing the approaching machines in a way Tanna never could. ‘Their spirits are degenerate, ancient things. Mass-killers from a war millions of years ended. They scream their name in my head… Tindalosi! Tindalosi!’

  ‘Interesting, but irrelevant,’ said Tanna.

  ‘Can you stop them?’ asked Surcouf.

  ‘Only if I do not need to protect you and Kotov.’

  ‘Understood,’ said Surcouf, helping Magos Pavelka away.

  ‘Templars!’ yelled Tanna, drawing his sword and making his way swiftly to the head of the ramp. His warriors stood to either side, Varda and Issur with their swords drawn, Bracha and Yael with bolters locked and loaded.

  ‘Sigismund, chosen of Dorn, son of the Emperor, guide my blade in your name,’ said Varda, lifting the Black Sword so that its quillons framed the coal-red eye-lenses of his helm.

  The others mirrored Varda’s sentiment as Colonel Anders chivvied his Guardsmen to the edges of the gantry. Hellguns blazed as the Cadians opened up on the creatures. Tanna didn’t doubt that most of their shots would find a target.

  The jade-armoured warriors of the eldar took up position to either side of the Templars. Tanna bristled at the flanking xenos, but suppressed his natural combative instincts.

  ‘Their placement makes sense,’ said Bracha over the internal vox. ‘But I do not like it.’

  Tanna nodded and squared his stance. ‘When these things come at us, fight them with all your heart, but never forget there are aliens at our back as well.’

  The eldar in the form-fitting ivory plates and blood-red plumes sprinted to the edge of the gantry. They effortlessly vaulted the railing, swords in on
e hand, gripping the metal with the other. Like acrobats, they swung in graceful arcs and dropped to the level of the ramp above the speeding hunters.

  Tanna didn’t bother watching them.

  Even over the thunder of the tower’s machinery and the snap of gunfire, he heard the clash of swords amid the dying echo of the eldar battle scream.

  A shadow loomed and Tanna turned to see Uldanaish Ghostwalker. The wraith-warrior stood with the Black Templars at the head of the ramp as the clash of swords from below was silenced. Cadian las-fire resumed.

  Meaning the eldar below were dead.

  He rolled his shoulders in anticipation, loosening the muscles for the hard-burn of close-quarters battle. He risked a glance over the curve of his black and ivory shoulder guard.

  Kotov and his skitarii were already moving across the gantry to a radial bridge leading to the tower’s exterior. He didn’t know what lay beyond, but that it was away from here was good enough.

  Tanna addressed Ghostwalker as the crash of metallic claws tearing up the ramp drew ever closer.

  ‘You are a little bigger than the warriors I usually fight alongside,’ said Tanna.

  ‘Are you concerned you might hit me?’

  ‘That does not concern me in the slightest,’ said Tanna.

  ‘Then perhaps you worry I may hit you in the chaotic mêlée?’

  ‘It crossed my mind.’

  Ghostwalker leaned down. ‘Know this, Templar. If I strike you, it will be entirely deliberate.’

  ‘As it will be when I strike you,’ said Tanna.

  The warrior-construct gave a booming laugh and straightened to its full height as the hellhounds bounded into sight.

  Silver creatures with wide, ursine shoulders. Narrow spines and the powerful legs of lean hunting hounds. Too-wide jaws, filled with tearing metal saw-fangs. Glittering, compound eye structures like scratches of light in a cave.

  Their howls were shrieks of thirsting need. Blades snapped erect on their every limb.

  Bolter fire and hails of whickering, razor-edged discs flensed them. Explosions blasted fragments of molten metal, and ribbons of steel pared back from every slicing impact of an eldar projectile.

  One volley was all they got.

  Uldanaish Ghostwalker took the first impact as two of the Tindalosi leapt at him. The wraith-warrior’s blade moved too fast for something so huge. A Tindalosi howled, impaled, its gut ripped open and spilling shredded metal. Ghostwalker hurled it aside. Hellgun fire battered the fallen beast’s gleaming flanks.

  The second bit down on his arm, and sickly green fire bled into the wound. The creature’s rear limbs curled to claw at the wraith-construct’s chest. Tanna stepped in and hammered his blade into its haunches, tearing through to its spine.

  It fell away, rolling clear of his follow-up.

  Ghostwalker’s gauntlet-mounted weapon swung to bear. Buzzing projectiles tore into the Tindalosi with a breaking-glass sound that was curiously musical. Three hounds snapped and clawed the ramp, poised to launch themselves at the Space Marines.

  Tanna spun his sword back up to his shoulder and stepped forwards to give himself room. He kept his bolt pistol low at his thigh. He turned just enough to invite attack and when it came he pulled back in an oblique turn. His sword deflected the leaping beast’s snapping jaw. He rolled his wrist and shoulder barged it, pushing the thing backwards and down. He dropped a knee to its ribs and jammed the muzzle of his pistol into its exposed throat.

  The mass-reactive punched through the metal and into the ramp.

  The Tindalosi bellowed, and pungent, viscous gel sprayed Tanna’s helm, necrotic oils of something long past its time to die.

  It rolled away, the torn metal of its neck knitting together in a slick of green light.

  Step back. Consolidate awareness.

  They still held the top of the ramp. Hellguns and bolters fired enfilading volleys. Kotov and his skitarii almost out. Surcouf and Ven Anders shouting at Pavelka, who had plugged herself back into the control hub. No time to wonder why. Cadians surrounded the three of them, bulky hellguns pulled in tight as they awaited the colonel’s order to withdraw.

  Varda’s sword flashed and the black blade plunged into a howling skull and tore it half away. Tanna swivelled and the pauldrons of the three Space Marines clashed together. Shoulder to shoulder in a circle of steel and adamantium they stood, ravaging all that came within reach.

  A slash of talons came at Tanna’s head and he parried with the body of his pistol. The weapon went off and he chopped his blade into a leg as hard as adamantium.

  The creature staggered and Tanna worked the roaring blade hard into its chest. He hauled it free and kicked the beast back. He blinked and shook his head.

  The monsters Ghostwalker had downed were up again. Shimmering green lightning played across their bodies. Opened guts were closed and buckled limbs straightened. Only once had Tanna fought creatures so difficult to kill, so unwilling to die.

  The Tindalosi charged, but just before the instant of contact, two leapt to the side. Their powerful legs easily carried them over the railings of the gantry. Not his concern. Something for the Cadians and eldar to deal with. Behind him, Yael and Bracha opened fire with their bolters. Mass-reactives plucked one from the air, twin impacts punching it out over the gantry. Its howl rang from the tower walls as it fell.

  ‘Into them!’ shouted Tanna.

  They met the charge of the hunting beasts head on. The impact was thunderous, like iron girders colliding. Legs braced, Tanna felt the curve of his pauldron crumple. Muscle mass deformed and blood dispersed within the meat of his shoulder. His sword punched up. Screaming teeth tore metal. More viscous gel sprayed him.

  A clawed arm slammed into his plastron, tearing loose the Templar’s cross and gouging finger-deep grooves through the ceramite. The force hammered him to the side.

  Tanna’s sword snapped back up to block a tearing blow from above that drove him to his knees.

  His armour thrummed with power. Tanna straightened his legs with a roar, hammering his sword’s crossed pommel into a bellowing metallic skull that was part wolf, part saurian. Noxious machine-blood flew.

  He lunged with the pistol, drove it into the belly of a beast. The shot exploded hard against armour and Tanna bit back a shout of sudden pain. His gauntlet filled with hot fluid, blood streaming down his forearm.

  The creature snapped at him again. He thrust his chainsword, teeth scraping on steel as it parted metal and split a spine. He twisted it out, kicking the flailing creature back down the ramp.

  Straighten up, breathe and blow, shake the pain. His chest was tight, his throat raw. Had he been screaming a battle shout?

  ‘Too… t… too far forward, Tanna!’ shouted Issur.

  Get back.

  The Tindalosi barged one another in their frenzy to break past the choke-point, their bladed limbs constricted, one machine-like killer obstructing another. He saw their confusion. They were not used to victims who could fight back like this.

  ‘Find the openings,’ yelled Tanna, to himself as much as everyone else. ‘Kill them, kill them all.’

  A blow glanced off his helm and hammered into his damaged shoulder guard. He grunted and punched a sword blow to the belly of a silver-skinned beast.

  ‘Step in again!’ he grunted. ‘Keep them at bay!’

  Tanna threw an upward sword cut to a thigh of hooked metal, a backstroke to the guts and a thrust to the chest. In deep and twist. Don’t stop moving. Movement to the right, a howling bovine skull with fangs like daggers. He slashed it in the eyes. It screamed.

  Move on. Face front, step back. Find another.

  Two came at him. No room to swing. Another pommel strike, stove in the first’s ribs. Stab the other in the belly, blade out.

  The beasts withdrew, torn up and weeping emerald light from thei
r ruptured bodies.

  ‘Tanna! For the Emperor’s sake stop pushing so far down the ramp!’ shouted a voice.

  Varda?

  Tanna stepped back until he drew level with Varda and Issur. Each was slathered from helm to greaves in blood. Vivid red theirs, tar black that of the foe. They stood abreast at the summit of the ramp with Uldanaish Ghostwalker behind them.

  The wraith-warrior’s armour was cracked and clawed. One leg tremored, as though ready to collapse, the other leaked a molten amber-like sap from its knee joint. Something glittered through a dreadful gash in his helm, a faintly luminous gemstone.

  The Tindalosi came at them again.

  ‘Back to back!’ roared Tanna.

  Blaylock slumped from the Speranza’s command throne, feeling like every cell within him had chosen this moment to attack its host body. His vision snapped to black as cerebral inhibitors shut down in an attempt to block the surging inloads of spurious data.

  His dwarf servitors squealed in distress as he shunted vast quantities of data to their overspill capacity. Two died instantly, their brains flash-burned by the immense overload. Another fell onto its side, spasming and losing control of every bodily function as rogue signals ripped through its body.

  Blaylock heard warning sirens, alarm klaxons and squalling wails of binaric pain. The machines of the Speranza were howling with animal distress. Blaylock struggled to regain his feet, but that was proving to be harder than he’d expected. With virtually every facet of sensory apparatus shut down, he had no spatial awareness, no sense of up or down.

  He pressed his hands to what he assumed was the deck and pushed, feeling it move away from him. Or was he moving away from it? Blaylock’s lower body was a mixture of piston-driven bracing limbs and callipered counterbalances. It made for an efficient means of locomotion for a being of his mass and density, but right now he would have happily traded them in for a pair of organic legs.

  Voices called his name with interrogative pulses of binary, complex logarithmic squirts of machine code and flesh-voices. None of it made sense.