Knights of the Imperium

  ‘Tell me everything he said,’ said Cordelia.

  The side of the mountain blows out in a satisfying geyser of rubble and smoke. Daylight spears into the rail tunnel, and my auto-senses, so accustomed to the gloom, flicker momentarily as they shield my eyes from the brightness of the sun.

  Aktis Bardolf took the shot, a well-placed pair of battle cannon rounds blasting a hole through the demolished railhead opening. It is not yet large enough to permit a Knight egress, but Hawkshroud’s Knights are even now tearing it wider with their reaper blades.

  More light pours in, and Roderick steps to my side.

  ‘What do you think we’ll find outside?’ he asks.

  ‘With any luck, nothing,’ I say, but I am not hopeful.

  Neither is Anthonis. ‘If we’ve been followed into the tunnels, the swarms will know where we are. Be ready to fight, Sir Roderick.’

  ‘They will know we are beneath the mountains,’ I say, ‘but there are any number of places we might emerge.’

  ‘And they could be waiting outside every one of them,’ says Anthonis.

  ‘Then you’ll get to fight sooner than you imagined,’ I say, stepping forwards. Hawkshroud has torn the hole wide enough for us to breach, three abreast. Sensible. We are likely to be returning this way at speed, probably with a host of alien killers snapping at our heels. The sooner we can get underground with our prize the better.

  Aktis Bardolf waits for me at the entrance his Knights have opened in the mountainside. The rails beneath my Knight are buckled and bent upwards. I flatten them with my bulk; one less thing to trip a fast-moving Knight on the way back.

  Bardolf’s grainy image on the slate grins as he says, ‘After you, Magna Preceptor.’

  ‘You are too kind, Sir Bardolf,’ I reply, extending my auspex through the smoke-wreathed arch. I sense nothing, but the tyranids are nothing if not masters of ambush.

  ‘Do you really believe we were followed?’ I ask him.

  ‘I know it.’

  ‘None of my Knights saw anything.’

  ‘Would you expect to see a lictor?’

  ‘No, I suppose not,’ I concede.

  ‘We could go back,’ he says, giving voice to the treasonous thoughts that have been gnawing at my nerves ever since Bardolf told me we were being followed. ‘If you think an entire army’s waiting on the other side of that opening, say the word and I’ll blow it shut again.’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘We go on.’

  I march my Knight forward, stepping carefully over the rubble and broken blocks of archway the battle cannon shells have brought down. I emerge into the light and move away from the opening, stretching out every sense available to me. The former riders aid me in this, sweeping my surroundings in ways I cannot even begin to imagine. Everything confirms one thing.

  I am alone on the mountainside.

  I signal the rest of the Knights, and they emerge in pairs, hunched as low as they can get to the ground. Shadows on the rocks tell me it is late afternoon, the sun behind the mountains and keeping this flank in shadow.

  ‘Vikara,’ says Bardolf, moving forward to take cover behind a sheer slab of fire-blackened gneiss. He points down the mountainside with his reaper.

  At first, it is hard to make out anything amid the sprawling, overgrown forests of alien weeds choking the life from the landscape, but then I see the remains of the city.

  Its walls are tumbled wreckage, and its towers of steel are wrapped in alien foliage. Giant spines of organic matter jut from the city’s plazas and thoroughfares, belching a toxic miasma into the atmosphere.

  ‘It is like the ruin of a city left abandoned for centuries, not one that fell only recently,’ I say.

  Our Knights are still emerging from the tunnel, and I urge them to greater speed. We must be on the move. Every moment we remain static, the odds of our discovery grow exponentially.

  Beyond the city, more of the spires, titanic, star-scraping things, stand stark on the horizon. The sky is a striated fog of sickly yellow and bilious green.

  ‘It’s like it’s being terraformed.’

  ‘I suppose that is exactly what is happening.’

  There is movement in the city, but it is too far away to see what is making it. But one thing is certain.

  ‘The temple is still standing,’ I say.

  Set on the side of the city closest to us is what looks like an oasis of normality. Amid the rampant xenobiology stands a single trapezoidal structure. Alone among the city’s buildings, it remains untouched by the hideous alien flora.

  ‘What’s that surrounding it?’ asks Bardolf. ‘Void flare?’

  I am wondering the same thing. A haze of refractive energies wreathes the temple, making it seem as though I am looking through a series of continually altering lenses. I blink away the discomfort of staring too long.

  ‘My scanners can’t focus on the temple,’ says Bardolf, for the first time sounding unsure of himself. ‘It’s not registering on the auspex. If I wasn’t seeing it with my own eyes, I’d swear on the aquila there was nothing down there but xenoforms.’

  ‘Kyrano told me this Binary Saint was said to have developed specialised forms of shield technology,’ I answer. ‘Perhaps this is a side effect of some kind of barrier we’ve not seen.’

  The last of the Knights emerges onto the rocky flanks of the mountain.

  ‘Then let’s just hope there’s a way in for us,’ says Bardolf.

  ‘Only one way to find out,’ I say, heading down the mountain as fast as my armour will carry me.

  We are a kilometre and a half from Vikara when the threat warnings light up the auspex. There is no single source; the tyranids are all around us. Flocks of avian raptors take to the air behind the city, blackening the sky with ragged wings and whipping tails.

  At exactly the same moment, the dense foliage around us comes to life with organisms and flickering plant life that are native to no world of the Imperium.

  I wring every scrap of power from my armour, knowing that speed is our only ally here. We can fight, but to engage any of the creatures will only slow us down. To slow is to stop, and that will see us all dead.

  ‘On the left,’ shouts Bardolf.

  I spare a glance in that direction and see a hundreds-strong pack of leaping, bounding things. Gaunts of some variety. They are too obscured by the alien plants and we are moving too fast to properly identify them.

  ‘On the right too!’ warns Anthonis.

  ‘Stubbers only,’ I order. ‘Keep moving.’

  Shoulder-mounted guns rake to the sides, keeping the beasts at bay for now. I push harder, driving my armour beyond its extreme tolerances. Assembler Thexton will have some choice words for me when he sees the state of my power core.

  I switch the frequency of my vox to that of the forge-temple’s Manifold and broadcast the binaric codes given to me by Arch Magos Kyrano. He has assured me that whichever magos is in command will answer in kind.

  Long seconds pass without answer, and I fear Cordelia may be proved correct in her suspicions towards the arch magos.

  But then the vox bursts to life with an answering blurt of binary. I do not understand it, even connected to a living machine via my spinal plugs. But my armour understands it, and an approach vector appears on my slate.

  A way in.

  I crush the remains of a groundcar beneath my tread as I turn to follow the supplied course.

  We reach an arterial roadway. Our pace increases.

  The creatures parallel our course, each wing of pursuit slowly forcing its way closer. Others will be moving to cut off our route onwards. I shoot the closest beasts with my stubber. The dead are crushed in the stampede.

  And then I am over the ruins of the city wall and striding through its streets.

  Buildings ravaged by rapacious bio-organisms pass to eith
er side of us. Corrosive rain falls as arcing spores burst on the high walls either side. I lift my ion shield to catch the worst of it. Enough to keep me alive. Not enough to keep my upper carapace from becoming pitted and grooved by acid.

  We follow the approach vector, twisting through Vikara’s narrow streets. Always ahead of the swarms, but only just. They are fiendishly coordinated and we are running out of room. Fresh packs are being drawn in all around us, guided by a terrible gestalt intelligence.

  Then I see the warped-lens distortion reaching out to a junction ahead. I round a corner at full stride, and the air before me ripples in waves, like heat from a metalled roadway. I see the forge-temple ahead of us, standing proud in the middle of a heptagonal plaza.

  But there is something wrong with it.

  It is as if the temple is nothing more than a frozen projection on a Theatrica Imperialis backcloth. An unconvincing illusion I have trouble believing actually exists. Especially as my auspex denies there is anything in front of me. All it sees is empty space, and I almost slow as I marvel at how completely we have been betrayed.

  Before I do, the haze around the temple is gone. It does not fade. It does not dissipate. It simply is no more. And instead of a static image of an undamaged temple, I see a ravaged structure on the verge of collapse. Coils of energy flare from its cracked flanks and smoke billows from its numerous vent stacks. On any other day, at any other time, I would put as much distance as humanly possible between my warriors and this critical mass waiting to happen.

  Standing beneath a semi-circular arch is a Knight, its armour a pale blue, chevroned with orange and jet. A banner depicting a rearing horse with a horn in the centre of its forehead streams from one shoulder.

  Its reaper blade beckons us within.

  I need no second invitation – packs of gaunts of all description are closing from every side. We are surrounded and there is nowhere left to run.

  My vox-slate bursts to life. No picture, just audio.

  The Knight’s desperate voice, pulled taut by strain and sounding impossibly distant.

  ‘Run!’ it pleads. ‘They can only realign the brane shield for a moment.’

  We run.

  Saints

  ‘You’ve been looking for me. Asking lots of questions.’

  Cordelia paused by the door to the chamber she shared with Roland. The voice wasn’t one she’d heard before, but she knew to whom it belonged and managed to hide her surprise.

  ‘How did you get in here?’ she asked. ‘We have security measures in place.’

  ‘Not in any meaningful way.’

  Cordelia turned to see a robed figure standing by the corner she had just turned. Black and without visible markings, only a hint of ceramic beneath his hood and the soft glow of a single ocular implant. Subtle, unlike most of his kind.

  ‘Adept Nemonix, I presume?’

  ‘Lady Cordelia,’ he said, and she didn’t miss that he hadn’t answered her question.

  ‘Adept Nemonix?’ she asked again, and she sensed his amusement.

  ‘Would it make you feel better if I said yes?’

  ‘It would.’

  ‘Then that is my current designation,’ said Nemonix, slippery as a Raisan tree-serpent.

  Cordelia opened the door and beckoned him within. ‘You’ll join me? I have just sent for some hot tisane.’

  ‘Thank you, Lady Cordelia, I will join you, but I’m afraid I’ll have to decline the drink,’ said Nemonix.

  Cordelia swept into her chambers, a modestly appointed suite of rooms with three receiving rooms, a sleeping area and an expansive dining space. She reached up and pressed a concealed stud on her bejewelled choker, activating the hidden picters and vox-thieves the house lifewards had installed.

  Whatever passed between her and Nemonix would be recorded.

  Cordelia took herself over to a seat beneath a long mural. Its colours had faded over the centuries since its creation, but it was still an impressive piece of work.

  ‘The earliest days of Vondrak,’ said Nemonix, taking the seat opposite Cordelia and framing himself nicely in the viewfinder of the picter concealed in the bust of a long-dead ancestor of Lord Ohden. ‘Typical of similar artworks you’ll find on any number of Imperial worlds – heavy on symbolism and idealism, light on details that likely match the moment.’

  ‘I notice the Mechanicus feature heavily in it,’ said Cordelia. ‘A case of history being written by the victors?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ agreed Nemonix.

  ‘Is that what you hope to do with House Cadmus? Rewrite our history?’

  ‘I don’t follow, Lady Cordelia.’

  ‘Of course you do,’ she said. ‘You are clearly not a foolish man, nor, I suspect, are you one given to wasting time, so I must presume you have come here to make me an offer like the one you made to Cassia.’

  ‘She told you of that?’

  ‘As you knew she would.’

  Nemonix chuckled. ‘Yes, it was a statistical certainty she would speak of our conversation. Call it a declaration of intent, if you will. But, no, I’m not here to make an offer.’

  ‘Then shall I tell you why I think you’re here?’

  Nemonix spread his arms wide. ‘Please do.’

  ‘The Mechanicus wants House Cadmus back in the bosom of the Red Planet, but if that’s not going to happen then you’ll happily see us destroyed.’

  Nemonix didn’t answer, but Cordelia didn’t indulge the fantasy that she’d outmanoeuvred him.

  The black-robed adept nodded. ‘If, for the moment, we assume you are correct, then what possible benefit does Cadmus gain by resisting a renewal of its ties with Mars?’

  ‘The knightly houses have always been free,’ said Cordelia, fighting to keep her anger in check at the adept’s bland confidence. ‘Since before there even was an Imperium or Mechanicus, the knightly houses have stood proud and autonomous.’

  Nemonix laughed. ‘Really? Is that what you think?’

  ‘Free of the Mechanicus, at least.’

  ‘You’re forgetting the debt each knightly house owes to the servants of the Machine-God,’ said Nemonix, wagging a scolding finger. ‘Without their support, your precious machines would have turned to rust and scrap thousands of years ago.’

  ‘We have the Sacristans.’

  ‘Whom the Mechanicus train,’ pointed out Nemonix. ‘And you almost lost them at Verdus Ferrox.’

  ‘No thanks to you,’ spat Cordelia.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘Of course you do.’

  ‘Pray enlighten me.’

  ‘You let the tyranids in,’ said Cordelia, her fingers curling to fists on the arms of her chair. ‘Assembler Thexton personally checked every way in and out of that forge complex, yet suddenly culverts, waste viaducts and effluent channels open for no reason. Come on, how stupid do you think we are?’

  ‘Clearly stupid enough to accuse the Mechanicus of wilful sabotage when there is no data footprint to back up such a wild and unsubstantiated claim,’ said Nemonix.

  Cordelia’s eyes narrowed. ‘That’s what you do, isn’t it? You erase any data the Mechanicus doesn’t want revealed. You do the dark, manipulative things they can’t be seen to do. And then you make it all go away. Well, I’ll tell you this now, House Cadmus is not something you can make go away.’

  Nemonix leaned forward in his chair, his hands laced before him. Cordelia tried to hide her revulsion at the smooth, doll-like nature of his fingers.

  ‘I can make anything go away,’ he said. ‘That picter you have hidden in the bust of Lord Ohden? You’ll find its data stream has, unfortunately, become irrevocably corrupted.’

  Nemonix circled a finger above his head, like a squad sergeant indicating a regroup. ‘And the vox-thieves? Such a shame they were inadvertently tuned to a Guard vox-net and reco
rded an hour of chatter between two supremely unprofessional sentries on the eastern ramparts.’

  Nemonix rose to his feet and smoothed out his robes, brushing non-existent specks of lint from his shoulders.

  ‘And I’d put another order in for that hot tisane if I were you. I think your request was accidentally deleted from the service cogitators.’

  The pettiness of this last gesture seemed needless.

  ‘I didn’t want us to be disturbed,’ said Nemonix, reading the confusion on her face. ‘Not while I informed you that no matter what you do, House Cadmus will be part of the Mechanicus again. It would be best for everyone if Baron Roland understood that simple fact.’

  Cordelia stood and took a long, shuddering breath. She counted to ten in her head to keep a lid on her fury.

  ‘Tell me one thing, at least,’ she said at last.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘This Binary Apostle Roland was petitioned to retrieve? Does it even exist, or has the Mechanicus sent our men off to die?’

  Nemonix nodded. ‘The Saint exists, and the mission is genuine. Kyrano and the tech-synod displaced from Gryphonne Four are desperate to have his essence, or at least what remains of it, returned.’

  Nemonix turned and made his way to the chamber door.

  ‘Really, Lady Cordelia, you underestimate me,’ he said. ‘No one profits from the destruction of House Cadmus, but such blatant secession cannot be allowed. It’s the thin end of the wedge, you see.’

  ‘Get out,’ snapped Cordelia. ‘Get out now.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Nemonix. ‘But please believe me when I say that I hope your husband’s mission meets with success. I also trust he will make the right decision upon his safe return to Vondrak Prime.’

  Cordelia’s anger turned to amusement.

  ‘Then you don’t know Roland at all.’

  ‘You’d be surprised how much I know,’ said Nemonix. ‘Goodbye, Lady Cordelia. We will not meet again, and you should not look for me. It would be… inadvisable.’

  ‘Are you threatening me?’