‘Ah, the esoteric philosophy of Gideon Ravenor,’ said Nemonix. ‘“Chaos claims the unwary or the incomplete. A true man may flinch away its embrace, if he is stalwart, and he girds his soul with the armour of contempt.”’
‘I take it you’ve read it.’
‘Of course,’ said Nemonix. ‘It’s required reading for someone in my profession. I have other examples of his work if you find his writings to your taste. Personally, I find Ravenor to be a touch overearnest. His former master, however, now there’s a man who knows how to pen a lurid tale or two.’
‘What is it you want, Adept Nemonix?’
He nodded and said, ‘Direct. I admire that.’
‘Then please extend me the same courtesy.’
‘Of course,’ said Nemonix. ‘Your husband, Sir Malcolm.’
‘What about him?’
‘He is a brave warrior, a natural leader. He would make a fine master of House Cadmus should Baron Roland ever decide to set down his relic blade.’
Cassia’s lip curled in a sneer.
‘You’ll have to prise it from his cold, dead fingers,’ said Cassia. ‘Roland isn’t about to hand over power, even to someone who deserves it. Did you know Malcolm was only three kills behind Roland this time?’
‘I did,’ said Nemonix. ‘I have studied the pict captures and bio-readers from this year’s Cull. And if I were being unkind, I might say that Roland has a distinct advantage in the Cull.’
‘What advantage?’
‘His Lancer armour.’
Cassia sighed, almost disappointed. ‘No, he doesn’t wear his Lancer armour during the Cull. He says it would give him an edge over the others.’
‘Indeed he doesn’t wear his Lancer armour during the Cull, but bonding with such a finely crafted piece of technology over a length of time changes the way a warrior’s mind processes inputs. Yes, Roland wears ordinary Errant armour on the Cull, but his mind and his link to his armour are far above that which any other Knight experiences.’
Cassia didn’t know if that were true, but it sounded plausible. How else could Roland have clung on to his position as Master of Cadmus for so long?
‘Do you think Roland is aware of that?’
Nemonix sat up straighter, as though backing away from such an implication. Every aspect of the adept’s body language conveyed a deep and genuine regret at being the bearer of this information.
‘I’m sure Roland doesn’t even know how evolved his cognitive link with his armour has become,’ he said. ‘Just as I have no doubt the good baron believes his continued success to be a result of superior skills. But…’
The unspoken accusation hung in the air between them.
‘Why are you telling me this?’ asked Cassia.
Nemonix hesitated before answering, as though unsure whether or not he was treading on dangerous ground. At last he appeared to reach a decision within himself.
‘Roland rides in search of a relic incalculably valuable to the Mechanicus, but he leaves his best Knight behind? Forgive me if I overstep my boundaries, Lady Cassia, but that does not sound like the decision of a competent leader. More like a petulant child who does not want his closest rival anywhere near his glory.’
Cassia nodded in agreement and said, ‘What are you suggesting?’
Nemonix leaned forward, as though afraid their conversation might be overheard, though they were completely alone.
‘I can help Malcolm,’ he said. ‘I can help him win the next Cull and give Cadmus the leader it deserves. I can arrange for his Knight to be upgraded with Mechanicus technologies without anyone knowing. Enhanced target acquisition protocols, weapon modifications and the like.’
‘Won’t the Sacristans know about something like that?’
Nemonix shook his head and even though his face was obscured, she sensed his amusement. ‘Sacristans, please. Who do you think trains them? They provide rote maintenance, following basic rituals of consecration, nothing more. None would even know what they were looking at, let alone its purpose.’
‘And you can arrange this now?’ asked Cassia, picturing Malcolm riding at the head of the Knights of Cadmus from the vaults beneath Golem Keep.
‘I can indeed,’ said Nemonix.
Verdus Ferrox was a collection of rusted and partially abandoned manufactoria on the southern edge of Vondrak Prime. Most of its functional machinery had been stripped out and moved to working forges, but here and there a hulking, cylindrical furnace or milling machine still thrummed with latent power in a hollowed out structure.
Machines that no longer functioned, but which the Mechanicus no longer knew how to deactivate, burped streams of noxious fumes from louvred vents.
Numerous ore viaducts and waste chutes arched overhead, some running to barred culverts in the wall, others to shuttered evacuation chambers below ground. Most were empty. Some still drizzled toxic byproducts of failed industry in a corrosive smirr. Grainy particulates hung in the air like mist.
It was, Malcolm considered, a run-down crap-sink of a place, and Assembler Thexton’s Sacristans were taking their sweet time in making it battle-ready. It was, Thexton claimed, too neglected, too damaged and too disconnected to be easily restored.
‘It’s a glacier of crap,’ agreed Malcolm. ‘So I need you at it with a thermal lance or I’ll shove mine so far up your exload port you’ll be breathing fire until the end of time.’
That got Thexton and his men moving.
He stalked the crowded forge complex, circumventing monolithic stacks of flaking rebar cages and dunes of fossil fuels piled higher than his armour. He bellowed orders to the thousand or so Sacristans through his hunting horn.
Ammo stockpiles too close to fuel reserves? Move them. Rally points not far enough away from potential chokeways? Resite them. Servitors and indentured workers not moving fast enough? Motivate them with extreme prejudice.
Last night’s conversation with Cassia had unsettled him greatly, and he was taking out his indignation on the poor lot in his way.
Shouting and intimidation wasn’t the subtlest form of leadership, but it was getting results. Verdus Ferrox was starting to look like it might actually be able to service a knightly house at war.
Sir Garratt and the rest of the Cadmus Knights prowled the perimeter beneath the city walls. Malcolm knew his own reputation was fearsome, but young Jaime Garratt was something else entirely. A feral wildcat of a man who styled himself as a champion of the underdog.
Probably because he came from one of the lesser noble families of Raisa and he’d fought tooth and nail to win acceptance into the Knighthold of Golem Keep; Malcolm liked him, but knew better than to turn his back on him.
‘How goes it, Garratt?’ said Malcolm. ‘This place looks like it might not actually leak like a martyr on his way to meet the Emperor.’
Sir Garratt paused, and even through the crackle of the vox and the anonymity afforded by the carapace, Malcolm felt the younger man’s bitterness at being left in Vondrak Prime. The other Knights continued their circuit of the forge complex.
‘Ah, who the hell cares, anyway?’ snapped Garratt. ‘It’s not us that’ll be defending this place, is it? Bloody skitarii and Guard’ll be taking the brunt of any fighting.’
‘True enough,’ agreed Malcolm, turning towards the open gates of the forge complex behind him. ‘That’s if they ever decide to damn well turn up.’
‘Better be soon, I hear the southern front’s folded like a Raisan mutant with a reaper in its gut.’
‘So they tell me,’ said Malcolm. ‘And when the little people turn and run, who’s going to stop the beasts getting in?’
‘Cadmus all the way,’ said Garratt, punching out his reaper blade and revving its bladed teeth.
‘Cadmus all the way,’ repeated Malcolm, stepping in and slamming the flat of his own blade against Garratt’s. N
earby Sacristans jumped at the clash of the heavy reapers and backed away, fearing they were about to be caught up in an honour duel. A binaric admonition appeared on Malcolm’s slate from Thexton. He ignored it.
A flash of movement on one of the ore viaducts caught Malcolm’s eye. He glanced up. Something was up there. A flash of light on something wet. Smooth and glossy looking.
‘Jaime,’ he barked. ‘Get to the gates and shut them. Now.’
‘What? Why?’
‘Just bloody do it.’
Garratt heard the seriousness of Malcolm’s tone and his Knight turned to stride through a swathe of scattering Sacristans without another word. His horn blared the rising note of the Call to Arms. Answering brays echoed from all around Verdus Ferrox.
Malcolm dropped the threat auspex over his senses and felt the heat of aggression flood his limbs. Chem-shunts activated dopamine channels within his augmented brain to boost cognition speeds.
‘What in name of Roland’s balls is going on here?’
His awareness of his surroundings became sharper, more encompassing. He saw everything around him. Structures greyed out, while Sacristans and servitors became textured colours, outlined in blue.
Flaring blooms of red appeared on his surveyors. Above, behind, and to the side. Mostly above. Malcolm pushed his Knight out, rolling his shoulders and activating his battle cannon with a thought.
A targeting reticule appeared before him. He centred it on the main arch of the ore viaduct.
‘Not on my watch, you little–’
The battle cannon thundered. Once, twice.
The arch exploded, torn apart by twin high-explosive shells. Smoking debris tumbled to the ground in an avalanche of shattered masonry and steel and dust. Amid the debris slamming down were bodies.
Xenos bodies.
They spilled from the ruined stubs of the viaduct in an endless tide. Hundreds of broken alien forms with elongated skulls, hunched over and oddly angled. Hook-bladed limbs thrashed the air as they fell.
Scores were dead, but hundreds more were still alive.
‘Get clear!’ yelled Malcolm as the heavy stubbers worked into his shoulder mounts raked the alien bodies falling from the swaying structure. ‘It’s coming down!’
Ironwork supports pulverised in the blast snapped like splitting timber, and the entire viaduct came down. Thousands of tonnes of steel and stone dropped with a deafening crash of tearing metal and alien howls.
Culverts in the walls exploded with screeching monsters, spindle-limbed things with swords for arms and fang-filled chasms for mouths.
‘Knights of Cadmus!’ yelled Malcolm. ‘Gaunts in the wire!’
Death chokes the darkness. All manner of groundcars, cargo haulers, bikes, mineworking machinery, agricultural vehicles, fuel tankers and ore-carriers pack the tunnel. I am isolated from the smell of rotting, burned flesh, but I imagine it to be horrendous.
Scorched bodies sit within burned out skeletons of groundcars, as though their drivers and passengers still wait patiently for rescue. Others sprawl over the rails or slump hopelessly against the melta-smoothed walls. I see fire damage everywhere. Hardly surprising given the flammable, ore-rich material that usually transits these tunnels.
A rock fall had blocked the tunnel, less than a kilometre from the black maw through which we descended into this lightless hell. Our battle cannons punched through it with ease, but these people had nothing. No way of reaching the transient safety on the other side of the cave-in. No way of escaping the fire that burned away their air and seared the meat from their bones.
‘Emperor have mercy upon them,’ said Anthonis, his armour’s lights sweeping over a packed cargo-8 with at least thirty people lying dead around it. Mostly women and children.
‘I’d say He’s all out of mercy for these poor souls,’ says Aktis Bardolf.
‘Have some damned respect,’ says William.
The sight of so many dead youngsters is unsettling for us all, but especially for William. He leaves a child behind in Vondrak Prime: a hearty-lunged son, from what Cordelia tells me. It takes a special kind of man to see dead children and not fear for the lives of his own.
‘I mean no disrespect, Sir William,’ said Bardolf.
‘Then speak no ill of the dead, nor disrespect for the Emperor,’ hisses William in response.
‘I did neither,’ returns Bardolf. ‘I spoke as I saw.’
I march my Knight between William and Bardolf.
‘These people are dead, and you two arguing about it will not change that,’ I say. ‘They’re dead, and we must move on.’
Sir Roderick marches alongside me, the carapace of his armour wet with drizzled moisture. Cracks in the ceiling drip with meltwater from the mountains above, and I am suddenly cold as I think of the millions of tonnes of rock just above us.
Pools of black water reflect the swaying, sweeping stablights of our armour as we move on. I pick a path through the debris of fleeing people and blackened vehicles, moving through gaps where I can, working with Roderick to create them where there are none.
It is slow going, and as the days pass our threat surveyors find it next to impossible to function. In so enclosed a space, with so much metal around, I am daily assailed by a soft burr of distortion and blips of sensor ghosts.
Our stablights bend and twist with every kilometre we travel, and the shadows they throw on the walls are those of elongated monsters. I try not to let my mind form threatening shapes where there are none, but it is a primal survival mechanism from an earlier age when we were right to fear the shadows, and cannot easily be overridden.
The map on the slate before me ripples with interference. It is an inloaded data stream and should not be affected by our depth or the metallic composition of the mountains.
Something down here is making my armour jittery.
On the third day of travel, a private link between my armour and that of Aktis Bardolf clicks with connection.
‘Are you sure we’re still on the right route?’ asks Bardolf.
‘I am sure,’ I say, though I have had to take a number of turns where I was less than entirely certain.
‘My map says differently.’
I bring my Knight to a halt and turn to face the Master of House Hawkshroud.
‘If you have something to say, then say it, Sir Bardolf.’
‘I told you, I’m no lord.’
‘But you think we are going the wrong way?’
‘Not yet, but that map of yours is hopelessly out of date, and I know you’ve had to guess a few of these tunnels,’ replies Bardolf. ‘Sooner or later you’re going pick a wrong tunnel, and that’s going to get us all killed.’
I try to control my anger, but it is difficult when the Knights before me surge through the Throne Mechanicus. They have heard what they perceive to be disrespect in Bardolf’s tone and want me to punish him.
It is only Cordelia’s appreciation for the Hawkshroud mindset that keeps irritation from clouding my judgement.
Hawkshroud are intensely loyal to those who have earned their respect, and though our reputation precedes us, Cadmus has yet to prove our worth to Bardolf in deeds.
‘I am the Magna Preceptor,’ I say, hoping his reverence for that title will end this.
‘And I respect that,’ says Bardolf. ‘But you won’t be for much longer if you get us lost down here.’
‘Is that a threat?’
‘It’s a promise, because we’ll all be dead,’ he says. ‘How long do you think we’ll last if we can’t find a way out soon? Our Knights will need to refuel and charge when we get to Vikara, and I don’t fancy trying to find my way out of here on foot. Do you?’
Once more, the previous Knights of Cadmus surge with fury at his insolence, and part of me wants to join them in their outrage. I want to be angry at Bardolf. I want to dis
miss his concerns.
But he is right.
I take a breath and say, ‘You are correct, Sir Bardolf. I am so intent on showing the Mechanicus how House Cadmus can operate without them, that I have been reckless with the lives of our brave Knights.’
‘Making mistakes is easy,’ says Bardolf. ‘It’s admitting to them that’s hard. Let’s not make any more.’
‘Agreed,’ I say. ‘Shall we continue?’
‘We should,’ says Bardolf, turning his Knight back the way we came. ‘And quickly. We’re being followed.’
Blooding
The threat auspex was unable to cope with the sheer volume of targets, so Malcolm muted its screaming warnings. Targeting solutions filled his vision, but he didn’t need them.
It was impossible to miss.
His battle cannon tore teardrop-shaped craters in the concrete. Broken alien bodies and debris were flung skyward with every percussive detonation. Stubbers sawed through the swarms of gaunts. His ammo counters were depleting at a rate he’d not known since Gryphonne IV.
‘Keep them away from the gate,’ he ordered, walking backwards between a giant metal-shaping engine and the collapsed pier of the ruined viaduct. Dozens of beasts bounded towards him. Their hind legs were obscenely strong, powering them forward in a series of leaping, clawing bounds. They barged each other in their fury to reach him. He gunned them down, but at least a dozen survived to leap towards his head.
Malcolm brought his ion shield around and slammed half of them from the air. The rest met his howling chainblade and their bodies were churned to black matter.
Hundreds of fanged beasts poured from a culvert a hundred metres to Malcolm’s left. He turned and twin blasts from his battle cannon collapsed it on top of them.
Still they squirmed from the rubble.
He heard more screeching and turned, slamming his foot down on a pack of swarming raptor creatures.
The human element of Verdus Ferrox were falling beneath the claws of the xenos by the score. Half-human cyborgs and all-too-human Sacristans were being torn to shreds before they could even defend themselves.