Forge of Mars - Graham McNeill
Page 109
‘No pity,’ said Varda, hammering his fist to his chest.
‘No remorse,’ answered Issur, holding his broken sword out before him.
‘No fear,’ finished Tanna.
They circled again. Blocking, parrying and defending.
This was not the kind of fight for which they had been wrought. They were crusaders, warriors who sought out foes to kill, battles to win. Yet this was the fight they were given.
But it couldn’t go on, the enemy was too numerous, too relentless and unhindered by the need to protect those who could not defend themselves.
Varda was the first to die.
A glancing blow to the side of his helmet. A moment’s pause and they were on him. Stabbing, cutting and barging him. He grappled, unable to bring the Black Sword to bear. Blades punched up through his stomach and chest. Another lanced in under his shoulder guard.
This last blow spun him around, his sword still buried in the heart of a crystalith. The arc of a glass-edged blade flashed. Opened his throat. Cutting into the meat of his neck like a razor.
Blood fountained. The Black Sword wrenched clear.
Tanna shouted a denial as Varda’s knees buckled and the Black Sword tumbled from his grip.
Even as it fell, Issur was in motion.
The crystaliths surrounded Varda, cutting his body to pieces as if to defile him. Issur bludgeoned them aside, his body a battering ram. No thought for his own defence. A blade of crystal plunged into his back. Another opened the meat of his flank like a butcher dressing a carcass.
Issur kicked them away from the Emperor’s Champion, stabbing with the spar of his ruined blade and punching with his free hand.
He knelt by Varda’s corpse. His broken sword slashed down.
And when he rose, it was with the Black Sword held aloft.
‘A Champion may fall, but he never dies!’ shouted Issur, and his words were free of the impediments that had plagued him since Valette. The snapped blade hung from an unbroken length of chain at his wrist. With the Black Sword gripped in both hands, Issur was reborn in blood as the Emperor’s Champion he had always desired to be.
Tanna fought his way to Issur’s side, desperately blocking and parrying. The crystaliths sensed the end was near and pressed their attack. More of the eldar were dead. Apart from Bielanna, only two remained, the others hacked down in blood.
‘Castellan form,’ said Issur, his pain washed away in this last moment of apotheosis.
They came together in a back-to-back defensive style.
They fought like two halves of the same warrior, naturally complementing one another’s skills and strengths. They circled Bielanna, their swords a dazzling blur; one black, one silver.
Tanna took a blade to the chest. He snapped it off with a downward smash of his forearm. Another stabbed into his side. They jutted like glass spines. Blood poured down his breastplate, running through the fissures of its ivory eagle.
Tanna dropped to one knee, but Issur was there to haul him to his feet.
‘We don’t die on our knees, Tanna!’ shouted Issur, spinning the Black Sword around his head and cleaving it through half a dozen crystaliths in one mighty blow.
Even with the weapon of the Champion, Issur’s strength was failing, his movements slowing. His wounds were too deep and too wide, his armour sheeted in red from the waist down.
Tanna saw the thrust, tried to shout a warning.
Issur twisted his sword in a crosswise block.
An instant too slow.
A diamond-hard blade with glittering, knapped edges.
It caught the light of the blue sky, and the splintered blue edge turned vivid crimson as it buried itself in Issur’s heart.
Issur’s mouth went wide with pain.
His eyes locked with Tanna’s.
‘Until the end, brother,’ he said.
And hurled the Black Sword to Tanna as a flurry of stabbing glass blades cut him down.
The Black Sword spun through the air, a perfect throw. Tanna caught it with his free hand and brought it around in an equally perfect arc to slay Issur’s killer. With chainsword in one hand, Black Sword in the other, Tanna threw himself at the crystaliths with a roar of hatred for all they had taken from him.
Twin swords cut and thrust, striking with an exactitude he had never before possessed. Every blow found the precise gap in his foes’ defences, every parry arose at just the right moment to protect Bielanna from a cowardly thrust at her silent form.
A blade cut through the cuisse of his right leg. It clove to the bone, fragmented. Long shards of razored glass stabbed up and down through the meat of his thigh.
Tanna bit down against the agony. His mouth filled with blood.
The pain was ferocious, intense, blinding in its white heat.
He felt every piercing blade entering his flesh. In his back, side and chest. One in the neck, another punching up through his armpit and breaking off in his right lung. A last lancing thrust that split his heart.
Tanna fell onto his back, staring into the painfully blue sky. He pulled both swords onto his chest, like the carven lid of a sarcophagus within the candlelit sepulchres of the Eternal Crusader.
An apocalyptic quantity of blood was flooding from his body. Numbing cold enveloped him. His fight was done.
A hand brushed his face. Delicate, porcelain smooth, cold like glass.
And the pain went away.
‘Until the end,’ said Bielanna.
replied Linya, feeling a cold that had nothing to do with temperature seeping into her consciousness. The reality of what she had set in motion with her magi imprisoned within Galatea’s neuromatrix was now manifesting within her.
Anger at the machine-hybrid had sustained her, given her purpose, but now, for the first time, Linya felt real fear.
said Abrehem, and Linya could barely bring herself to look upon him.
His body was fragmenting, literally fragmenting the nearer they drew to the bridge. As though the intensity of its light and the concentration of raw data was stripping his essence like ice from a comet approaching its perigee with a sun.
But that wasn’t it at all.
Abrehem’s diminishing had nothing to do with the searing luminosity of the bridge. He was dying, bleeding out in Forge Elektrus despite the desperate ministrations of her father and Chiron Manubia.
They hovered over the star-hot emissions of the bridge.
Abrehem followed her gaze and said,
She knew he would understand her cold logic and hated herself for using him like this. Here, in this place, there could be no secrets between them, and he nodded in understanding, knowing what it would cost him.
Abrehem swooped down and his fragmenting spirit form entered the door. The locking mechanism was cold and dead, murdered by a thing that claimed the same lineage.
Light poured from him, bathing the internal mechanics of the door in a furnace glow of molten gold. And as the dead machines of Forge Elektrus had responded to his touch, so too did the vast templum door at the terminus of the Path to Wisdom.
It opened.
It offended Kotov on every level to see Telok and Galatea on the bridge of the Speranza. Colonel Anders’s Cadians
swept out to either side of him, as though performing a room clearance in one of Dahan’s battle-sims. Kotov noted that Sergeant Rae stood apart from the formation, taking careful, unwavering aim at Galatea.
Yael and Roboute Surcouf marched at his right, his skitarii on his left. Telok turned to face them as the mighty door swung farther open, a look of weary irritation on his face.
‘Impossible,’ said Galatea, limping forwards with its proxy body almost severed from the palanquin. Kotov was gratified to see that someone had managed to grievously harm the machine-hybrid. ‘We extinguished the spirit within that door. How were you able to open it?’
‘I am an archmagos of the Adeptus Mechanicus,’ said Kotov, unwilling to admit that the door’s opening was a miracle he could not fathom. ‘You will find there is a great deal of which I am capable.’
Telok sighed and his entire body heaved, venting steam, and the crystalline structures engulfing his frame ran the gamut of hues.
‘On Exnihlio it was intriguing,’ he said, ‘but your refusal to die has now passed beyond any amusement.’
Kotov knew better than to bandy words with the Lost Magos, and gave the order he should have given a long time ago.
‘Kill Telok and his abomination,’ he said.
He had hoped for the sound of gunfire, the snap of las mixed with the crackle of a plasma gun. He had hoped for it, but he had not expected it. The Cadians were frantically checking their rifles, slamming in fresh powercells, but Kotov already knew none of them would fire.
‘A squad of Guardsmen and one Space Marine?’ said Telok, sliding the crystalline claws from his gnarled, crystal-grown gauntlet. ‘An entire vessel of skitarii and Guardsmen at war, and this is all you can muster? You must have seen the remains of your praetorians and skitarii. How could you possibly have believed I would allow your weapons to function in my presence?’
‘It was worth a try,’ said Kotov, as the Cadians fixed foot-long lengths of matte-black steel to their rifle muzzles. Yael and Surcouf both had swords drawn.
Kotov smiled at the apposite nature of the sight.
Clearly Telok saw it too. ‘You would fight for the most technologically advanced vessel mankind has ever built with knives?’ he said. ‘And when that fails, what then? Harsh language?’
‘Technology married to brute strength,’ said Kotov. ‘It is the Imperium in microcosm.’
‘There is truth in that,’ agreed Telok, stepping towards the centre of the bridge. The Breath of the Gods was no less nauseating on the viewing screen, its whirling flux of silver seeming to grow larger with every passing second. Two smears of light hung just behind it, geoformer vessels by the look of them.
Kotov followed Telok onto the raised area of the deck, seeing Tarkis Blaylock sprawled before the vacant command throne. Was he dead? Impossible to know; his body was giving off innumerable radiations, febrile interactions of staggering complexity and every indication of massive data inloads comparable to a scrapcode attack.
The command throne was empty, but just for a fleeting instant, a span of time so ephemeral it could hardly be said to have existed at all, Kotov was certain he saw the spectral apparition of a robed figure seated there.
Beckoning him with a look of desperate urgency.
Then it was gone, and Kotov saw what he at first took to be the shattered remains of an automated lifter machine scattered across the deck. Faint noospherics, like blood-trace at a murder, told him that this was no automated machine, but Magos Kryptaestrex.
He looked towards astrogation. Magos Azuramagelli was still functional, though his latticework frame was buckled and twisted. Portions of his exploded brain architecture lay askew in bell jars half emptied of their bio-sustaining gels.
That he was still functional at all was yet another miracle.
‘As you see, I have control of the Speranza and every aspect of its workings,’ said Telok, lifting his clawed hands to the image above him. ‘The Breath of the Gods will soon be aboard, and in under an hour we will break orbit en route to Mars.’
Galatea moved to stand beside Telok, and Kotov was struck by the transformation he saw in the machine-hybrid. Its posture was that of a crippled baseline human, painful to look upon and every movement clearly causing monstrous amounts of pain.
‘But we have nothing further to discuss, Archmagos Kotov,’ said Telok, turning to Galatea. ‘Kill every one of them.’
The machine-hybrid lifted itself up on its mismatched blade-limbs, like a broken automaton in a historical display. A child’s toy remade by a psychopath, all torn cables, leaking fluids and sparking wires.
‘Now I will watch you die,’ said Telok.
Ever since it had entered the annals of Cadian history, the Battle for Vogen had been a byword for the no-win scenario. Given the forces involved in the actual battle, no Cadian commander had yet found a workable strategy to claim outright victory in any simulation fought over the war-torn city.
Hawkins hoped he was about to change that.
Dahan’s killing of the alpha-beast had literally stunned the crystalline attackers, and the Imperials had punished them hard. There wasn’t a crystal killer within three hundred metres of their position. The increasing volume of gunfire from across the plaza was telling Hawkins that was about to change.
Lieutenant Karha Creed scooted over the rubble towards him. Her helmet had taken a hit and he could see right through to her blonde hair beneath. Blood caked her cheek below the impact.
‘Looks like you got lucky,’ said Hawkins.
‘I got careless,’ said Creed. ‘Too caught up watching Magos Dahan’s kill. A millimetre to the left and I’d be dead.’
‘I hear that,’ said Hawkins.
Creed’s company were arrayed in deployment redoubts either side of Hawkins. Sergeants bellowed inspirational words from the Uplifting Primer, commissars doled out Imperial piety from memory and the bearers of the regiment’s colours had them ready to raise high for the first time since they’d come on this expedition.
‘Lieutenants Gerund and Valdor send their compliments,’ said Westin, the vox-caster’s headset tucked under the rim of his helmet. ‘Both companies are ready as per your orders.’
‘Gerund, she’s a tough one,’ said Hawkins. ‘Damn near loses an arm then has a whole building fall down around her ears. And she’s still able to salvage a working platoon to take into the fight.’
‘I trained with her at Kasr Holn,’ said Creed, ditching her damaged helm and rummaging for a fresh one. ‘You don’t know the half of it.’
Hawkins nodded and tapped Westin on the shoulder. ‘Any more word from the colonel?’
‘Nothing, sir.’
‘He on his way here?’ asked Creed.
‘No, we get to finish this ourselves,’ grinned Hawkins. ‘We do it the way Hastur would have done it if he’d had superheavies and Titans. And speaking of which…’
The deck rumbled and a lumbering iron behemoth emerged from the archway at the centre of the wall behind them. Less of a tank, more a fully-mobile battle fortress, the Baneblade was the vehicle of choice for the discerning Imperial Guard commander. Laden with battle cannons, lascannons and heavy bolters, it was a lead fist in an iron gauntlet. Two more came hard on its heels.
Jahn Callins sat in the commander’s hatch atop the colossal turret, a pair of blast-goggles pulled up onto his forehead.
‘Is that for me?’ asked Hawkins, having to shout to be heard over the roar of the Baneblade’s power plant.
‘Mackan’s Vengeance,’ said Callins. ‘Kept her back specially for you, sir. I know she was lucky for you on Baktar III.’
‘Good man, Jahn. Appropriate too,’ said Hawkins, looking out over the plaza to where Dahan’s skitarii had their vehicles laagered up around their Secutor and the fallen statue of Sanguinius. He all but vaulted onto the crew ladder and scrambled over the tank’s to
pside. Callins dropped into the tank and Hawkins took his place in the commander’s hatch. He pulled on his ear-baffles and hooked himself up to the internal vox-net. The ogre-like spirit of the armoured vehicle was a grating burr in his ears as it strained against human control.
A slate inset within the hatch ring displayed the relative positions of the other superheavy squadrons, the battle-engines and his various infantry platoons. All in the green. All ready to begin the counter-attack in the breath Dahan’s kill and the arrival of Legio Sirius had allowed them to take. Hawkins leaned out over the turret and shouted down to Creed.
‘Get moving as soon as we’re over the wall.’
Creed nodded. ‘Understood, and good hunting,’ she shouted, before turning and running, bent over, to join her soldiers.
Hawkins twisted the black plastic knob beside him that linked him to the driver’s compartment.
‘Take us out.’
The Baneblade roared and its engine jetted a plume of blue oilsmoke. Tracks bit the deck and the lumbering vehicle powered up and over the barricade. Almost immediately, flurries of missiles arced from the ruins of the Law Courts and the railhead terminus. Mortars on the roof of the Palace of Peace dropped barrages of high explosives on the far end of the deck. Streams of rockets streaked from Deathstrike launchers farther back and a thunderous cascade of main guns mounted on the superheavy turrets opened fire.
Half the plaza vanished in a fire-lit fogbank of destruction.
To Hawkins’s right, three Hellhammers skirted the edges of the Law Courts, unleashing storms of shells from their multiple turrets, co-axials and fixed weapon mounts. Two pairs of Shadowswords came after them. Their volcano cannons tracked for targets while heavy bolters perforated the smoke with mass-reactives.
Hawkins knew at least as many colossal tanks were crashing through the pulverised remains of the railhead terminus to his left. Next to the superheavies, the regiment’s Chimeras and Leman Russ looked absurdly small.