Forge of Mars - Graham McNeill

by Warhammer 40K

  The alpha-beast squatted in the shadow of the sagging iron carving of Sanguinius. Dahan’s vehicle crushed the splintered remains of the guard beasts under its tracks as the skitarii and crystal host came together with battering force in a storm of gunfire and blades. War cries both organic and binary echoed through the deck.

  The alpha-beast reared up before him and a searing blast of green fire spat from a spinning nexus of reforming glass in its toothed underside. It struck the Iron Fist at a downward angle, cutting through its glacis like a plasma-torch. The impact was stunning. It smashed the tank’s prow down into the deck. The quad guns blew out as the frontal section crumpled like foil paper. Its ammo hoppers detonated as the fire blew back inside.

  Dahan thrust himself from the tank’s open top. Emergency disconnect, trailing whipping cables from his spinal plugs. The Iron Fist lifted off the deck, its forward momentum flipping it up and over the alpha-beast.

  Dahan landed with a screech of metal, the claws of all three legs digging into the deck.

  The Iron Fist came down moments later, flat on its back, tracks churning air and spewing flames. Black smoke billowed from its ruptured hull.

  Dahan’s halberd came up in time to deflect a pair of clawed blade-arms extruding with obscene speed from the beast’s underbelly. Scorpion claws snapped for him. He planted the oval base of his halberd and flipped around the glassy blades.

  He rammed his crackling tine-bladed scarifiers into its flank. His internal capacitors discharged, sending forking bolts of purple energy through its body that left vitrified trails of opaque crystal in their wake.

  Green fire pulsed from the monster’s body, faster than Dahan could dodge. It struck him dead centre. His armour cracked and the impact jarred his floodstream pump offline for a few seconds.

  Dahan staggered, momentarily off-balance. The alpha-beast’s shape transformed, becoming taller, broader, growing more limbs. It slammed a vast, elephantine foot into his chest, hurling him back against the blazing wreck of the Iron Fist. It closed the gap between them, fast, and crab-like claws snapped shut on Dahan’s scarifiers. It tore them clean from his body. He loosed a binaric shout of pain, rolling aside from another stream of green bio-electricity. His cloak was ablaze, the steel-woven fabric burning magnesium bright.

  Dahan spun and rolled, rotating all three legs to avoid its attacks. It struck again and again, limbs like stingers slamming down with force enough to punch through the deck plates. Trailing scads of molten metal from his cloak, Dahan spun his halberd in a dizzyingly complex web of blocks, counters and thrusts. The speed of the beast was phenomenal. His every defence was made with only nano-seconds to spare. The entropic capacitor buzzed angrily as it built up charge for a strike.

  Sheared crystal and metal spun around them as they duelled in the shadow of the Blood Angels’ tragic primarch. Dahan was fully aware of the desperate fighting behind him as the crystal monsters swept past his own battle to engage the Cadians. In any normal engagement, Dahan would keep discrete partitions in his mind to keep track of every aspect of a battle, but this fight was requiring virtually all his processing power just to stay alive.

  The thing’s shape kept changing, almost as though it knew that to remain in one form would allow him an advantage. His wetware kept evolving, switching and resetting. He couldn’t get a fix on any one set of combat routines that would allow him to defeat the alpha-beast.

  Another thunderous blow sent Dahan flying backwards. He slammed into the ironwork pillar supporting Sanguinius, who finally toppled from his perch to land between the two combatants with a booming clang of iron. The alpha-beast took a crashing step towards him, the lower portions of its legs thickening as its upper body enlarged. Its mass was finite, and its limbs thinned in response, becoming whipping, lashing tendrils of razored glass.

  Combat-memes jostled for Dahan’s approval.

  Tyranicus chameleo.

  Teuthidian Myrmidrax.

  Cyberneticus Noctus (Kaban).

  Cephalaxia.

  Arachnismegana.

  The list went on, but in the split second it took him to scan through, Dahan understood nothing in his archives could match the alpha-beast’s ability to continuously evolve. He had nothing embedded that could counter the sheer variety of forms and combat strategies the alpha-beast could assume.

  Instead, he did the one thing that went against his every hard-wired logical instinct.

  He shut down his entire database of systemic combat routines.

  A void filled Dahan, a yawning abyss of uncertainty that felt hideously empty, yet strangely liberating. In this sublime instant, he had no idea what his opponent might do or what he should do to counter it. No idea how best to fight this foe, save the data presented in the very instant before attacking.

  The alpha-beast lumbered towards him, its razor whips cutting the air. Dahan took off towards it. He leapt onto the fallen statue of Sanguinius and pistoned all three of his legs out, launching himself through the air. Whip-thin razor arms slashed towards him. The Cebrenian halberd cut through the bulk of them, his rotating gimbal of a waist eluded others, but many more slashed deep into Dahan’s body.

  One of his legs fell from his body and the majority of one shoulder spun away. Another stroke opened the organic meat of his stomach as a rigid spine of crystal punched through his chest. Mechanisms failed and damage warnings flashed red in his vision.

  But his target was in sight.

  Dahan twisted as he fell, and the disruptor-sheathed blade of his Cebrenian halberd swept down. It clove through the alpha-beast’s leg at the joint between limb and pelvis.

  The alpha-beast staggered, its body shape rapidly fluctuating in a futile attempt to keep its balance. It crashed down, the shorn limb clouding and becoming opaque as the linked machines within died. Dahan hit hard, impaled through the shoulder where a rigid spine of glass was wedged. With his remaining two legs, he hauled himself upright, feeling every aspect of bio-mechanical efficiency degrade as chemicals, blood and charged ionic fluids poured from him.

  The alpha-beast was drawing its matter into itself, sluggish now that so great a number of its self-replicating machines were no longer a part of it. Its movements were awkward, like a newborn life form still unsure as to the correct means of standing upright.

  Dahan didn’t give it the chance to learn.

  The beast had taken his lower arms, but the bulbous entropic capacitor of the Cebrenian halberd now arced and fizzed with coruscating energy.

  Dahan slammed the oval pommel down in the centre of what might have been its chest. An explosion of bio-electrical energy arced through the alpha-beast’s body, fusing the crystal and shattering the areas around its path.

  The beast lurched and spasmed like a flatlining patient being defibrillated. A patchwork head of clouded glass and crystal extruded from the lumpen mass of its chest, cracking and forming a vast crocodilian skull mass. Dahan swept the Cebrenian halberd around in a decapitating strike.

  Its blade had been fashioned by artificers trained in the techniques of the first tech-priest assassins.

  The alpha-beast’s head fell away from its body, and its nervous system shorted out in a blaze of overload. Green fire spurted from the stump of its neck, a catastrophic wound from which it could not recover.

  Every crystalline warrior in the training deck began glitching, internal structures momentarily shorted by the abrupt severing of the connection to their command and control nexus. Dahan wasn’t naïve enough to believe the effect would leave the host powerless for long, in the manner of a tyrannic praefactor-level creature’s death.

  But perhaps it would be long enough.

  The bray of war-horns filled the training deck, and Dahan wearily lifted the notched blade of his Cebrenian halberd in salute.

  Legio Sirius had come, and they had not come alone.

  Rumbling in the shad
ow of Lupa Capitalina and Canis Ulfrica were squadron after squadron of Imperial Guard superheavies.

  Baneblades, Stormhammers and Shadowswords.

  ‘Omnissiah bless you, Captain Hawkins,’ said Dahan, as squads of his suzerain rushed to his side.

  ‘Ma-ta-leo! Ma-ta-leo! Ma-ta-leo!’

  By the time Roboute and Ilanna stepped from the sunset gate and into his private staterooms, Kotov and his skitarii were already gone. He heard the voice of the archmagos through the open doorway to the bridge. Speaking on the vox, by the sounds of it.

  The glow of Bielanna’s gateway filled the stateroom with honey-gold light. It imparted a homely warmth to the wood of his desk, but still managed to make the rest of the room feel melancholy.

  Its surface was the mirror-smooth surface of a glacial lake bathed in the last rays of autumn, but its edges were undulant, like the corona of a distant sun. Roboute looked away, discomfited by looking too long at its unnatural presence.

  ‘Here,’ he said, turning away and lowering Pavelka into the chair behind the desk. ‘Sit. Don’t try to move. Stay here on the Renard until this is all over, yes?’

  Ilanna nodded and Roboute sat at the corner of his desk. It felt unreal being here, with his commendations and rosettes on the wall. So normal after the insanity of Exnihlio. Roboute smiled as he saw the hololithic cameo of Katen, knowing on some gut level that she was at least part of what had allowed Bielanna to fix this location so precisely. He couldn’t quite bring himself to accept that it was all real, that they’d escaped certain death at the blades of the crystaliths.

  ‘What are you waiting for?’ said Pavelka. ‘Go.’

  ‘Just give me a minute,’ said Roboute, still breathless from another journey that left a bilious taste in his mouth and a savage pounding at his temples. ‘At least until I’m sure I can walk without feeling like I’m about to throw up.’

  They sat in silence, Ilanna with her hands clasped in her lap, Roboute fixating on tiny details. As if by focusing on them he could force his mind to accept them as real. Gradually the sensation of the world being a veneer spread over a darker reality began to fade and his breathing began to even out.

  A sudden sense of premonition caused him to back away from the rippling outline of the sunset gate. Roboute’s breathing hiked sharply as Ven Anders emerged, still clutching his bloodied side. He gave the room a quick once over as three Cadian troopers came after him, making the room feel suddenly small.

  ‘Less ostentatious than I’d have expected,’ he said.

  ‘That’s Ultramar for you,’ answered Roboute.

  ‘Where’s Kotov?’

  ‘Already on the bridge. I’ll be with you shortly.’

  Anders nodded and led his men from Roboute’s stateroom.

  His timing was fortuitous, as the towering figure of a Black Templar emerged moments later, and the stateroom now felt positively cramped. Yael’s armour was limned in glittering motes of light. Behind him, the sunset gate faded like a dream.

  ‘Brother Yael?’ said Roboute. ‘Where are others? Why is the gate closed?’

  Yael shook off the portal’s effects with a shake of his head.

  ‘They are not coming,’ he said. ‘The witch claims that, with time, she can undo the damage Telok has done. My brothers are giving their lives to grant her that time.’

  ‘They’re staying on Exnihlio?’

  ‘Did I not just say that?’ snapped Yael, turning away and leaving the stateroom.

  Roboute understood. Tanna had sent Yael back to the Speranza as the Templars’ legacy. A necessary order, but that wouldn’t make it any easier to bear for a warrior denied a glorious death alongside his comrades.

  ‘You have to go,’ said Ilanna. ‘Stop Telok.’

  Roboute nodded and bent to kiss her forehead before turning and following Yael onto the bridge. Kotov was already there, plugged into what was normally Pavelka’s station on the portside array. Low-level crackles of binaric communication burbled and squawked from the speaker grilles.

  As Roboute entered, Kotov stood and disconnected. Anders was on the vox, his face a picture of concentration.

  ‘The Speranza is under attack,’ said Kotov.

  Roboute nodded. ‘Makes sense. How else was Telok going to get back to Mars? Is it crystaliths?’

  Kotov nodded. ‘An army of them, attacking throughout my ship.’

  He spoke like a man who had just woken to find his clothes infested with parasites and had no idea how to remove them. Kotov nodded towards Ven Anders and said, ‘Captain Hawkins and Magos Dahan are coordinating the defence, but much of the ship has already fallen.’

  ‘Where is Telok?’ demanded Yael.

  ‘Unknown, but it must be assumed he will head for the bridge.’

  ‘Then so will we,’ said Roboute, heading to the weapons rack at the rear of the bridge. He unlocked it with a key hanging next to it, which wasn’t exactly secure, but it meant he could get to his weapons quickly. Roboute unsnapped a drum-fed combat shotgun and slung it over one shoulder then gathered a host of fresh powercells for his pistol. Finally, he lifted out a worn leather sword belt and buckled it around his waist.

  The blade was a Calthan vorpal with a solid-state energy core worked into the handle. Anything he cut with this blade wouldn’t be getting back up.

  ‘We’re pretty close to the bridge, but if there are crystaliths aboard, then it’s likely we’ll have to fight our way there,’ he said. ‘We could use some more men to help get us there.’

  ‘I’ve detached some men from Captain Hawkins’s forces in the training deck,’ said Anders, setting down the vox and slapping a fresh powercell into the hilt of his sword. ‘They’ll link with us in the Path to Wisdom.’

  ‘Then let’s go,’ said Roboute.

  They took a transit elevator to the forward loading ramp, and Yael ducked down and dropped to the deck before it was even half lowered. Roboute heard a voice cry out in alarm and slid off the edge of the ramp as he realised it was one he knew.

  Yael held Emil Nader by the neck.

  ‘That’s my pilot,’ said Roboute as the Cadians fanned out from the ramp to surround Emil. Kotov and the skitarii followed as the Space Marine lowered Emil to the deck.

  Emil Nader was ashen and looked like he’d just run from one end of the Speranza to the other. Behind him, still trailing scads of icy vapour from its recent arrival, was the Renard’s shuttle.

  ‘Roboute?’ he said. ‘How the hell did you get on board?’

  ‘Long story,’ said Roboute. ‘Are you all right? I saw you on the shuttle with Galatea.’

  Emil massaged his bruised neck and glared angrily at Yael.

  ‘Yeah, I’m fine,’ he said. ‘I thought they were going to kill me after I got them on board, but they couldn’t have cared less about me. It was like I was an insect to them.’

  ‘How long have they been gone?’ demanded Kotov.

  Emil took a step back from the archmagos, staring in horror at his ruined shoulders.

  ‘Twenty minutes, give or take.’

  ‘Can you not be more precise, Mister Nader?’ said Kotov.

  ‘Not really, I was trying not to puke in terror at the time,’ snapped Emil.

  Roboute hid a grin and said, ‘Emil, I need you to head to my staterooms. Ilanna’s there, and she’s hurt. Badly. Look after her.’

  Emil nodded, grateful not to have been asked to accompany the war party. ‘Of course, Roboute. I’ll take good care of her.’

  ‘Where’s Adara?’ asked Roboute, moving past Emil. ‘If there was ever a time for him to earn his keep, it’s now.’

  Emil grabbed his arm, and Roboute didn’t like the look he saw in his pilot’s eyes one bit.

  ‘Roboute, Adara’s dead,’ said Emil. ‘Galatea killed him.’

  The news hit Roboute like a sledgehammer to the
gut. The air was pulled from his lungs.

  ‘And that’s not all you need to know.’

  ‘What…?’

  ‘It’s about Mistress Tychon,’ said Emil.

  When the door to the bridge swung open to the sound of shouting skitarii protection details, Blaylock checked the feed from his various cognitive streams. Had he missed the fall of a transit deck or a sudden assault he’d not known was coming?

  No, Hawkins and Dahan still had the main thrust of the enemy assault contained on the training deck. The attackers were spread throughout the ship like an infection, and Blaylock even saw a measure of confused inaction in their movements.

  Blaylock turned his head as far as the MIU connections of the command throne allowed. He couldn’t see the entrance to the bridge and was too enmeshed with the Speranza to easily disconnect.

  The fact that he wasn’t hearing any gunfire reassured him that nothing untoward was happening. The skitarii were behaving aggressively because that was how they were trained to be.

  Then he heard the clash of blades, screams of pain and the wet meat sound of cleaving flesh. The sound was short-lived, and Blaylock felt a crushing presence of grating, archaic code as a hideous amalgam of iron and flesh, crystal and glass entered his field of vision.

  As broad as a Dreadnought and just as bulky, the monster climbed to the raised mezzanine level of the bridge with the awkward gait of a load-lifter with degraded functionality in its locomotive limbs.

  It turned to face Blaylock and even though the face at the centre of its torso mass was rendered in artificial plasflesh, there was no mistaking its features.

  said Blaylock.

  The Lost Magos took a crashing step towards him, and the reek of dead flesh and chemicals was almost overpowering. Telok extended a fused gauntlet of steel and crystal, and placed a clawed finger the size of a sword on Blaylock’s chest.