‘Live or die?’ asked the arco-flagellant.
Between sobs of agony, the rigman screamed, ‘Live!’
Rasselas X-42 leaned in close, his killer’s eyes and pulsing Cog Mechanicus bathing the man’s face in a blood red glow.
‘He’s not talking to you,’ said Abrehem. ‘He’s asking me if he should kill you.’
‘No, please!’ yelled the man, desperately trying not to struggle and tear the wounds in his shoulder wider. ‘Don’t kill me!’
The rest of Wulfse’s crew backed away from the arco-flagellant, terrified of its unnatural speed and power. Chem-shunts had elevated along its arms, sub-dermal adrenal boosters ready to kick the bio-mechanical killer into combat mode. Anyone unlucky enough to find themselves in the path of a rampaging arco-flagellant was almost certainly dead, and rumours of how thoroughly Rasselas X-42 had slaughtered the eldar boarders had spread through the under decks like a virus.
The shared aggression in Wulfse’s crew drained away like oil through a perforated sump. They dropped their makeshift weapons and backed away with their hands up.
‘Put him down, X-42,’ said Abrehem. ‘This one’s not going to cause any more problems, are you?’
The man shook his head, biting his lip to keep from screaming out.
The arco-flagellant’s flail claws snapped back into his gauntlets and the man dropped to the deck with a bellow of agony. His hand clamped down on his wounded shoulder and he scrambled away after his fellow rigmen, casting fearful glances back at the arco-flagellant as though he expected it to pounce on him once his back was turned.
Rasselas X-42 ignored him and pulled his hood up over his head.
Hawke whooped with glee, bent double with mirth.
‘Did you see the look on his face?’ he managed between laughs. ‘Thor’s balls, I though he was going to shit his britches!’
The arco-flagellant came to stand at Abrehem’s shoulder, and the stink of its chemically-stimulated physiology was a powerfully astringent reek. By now, a crowd had gathered to watch the altercation, but they backed off as the arco-flagellant’s dead-eyed stare swept over them like a butcher eyeing choice cuts of meat.
Abrehem saw that as many faces were lined in fear as were lit with adoration.
‘We should return X-42 to his dormis chamber so that I may attempt to re-engage the pacifier helm,’ said Totha Mu-32. ‘I should not have allowed him to remain at your side. That bondsman is fortunate to be alive.’
‘He wasn’t hurt too bad, and he’ll not bother us again,’ said Coyne.
‘You misunderstand,’ said Totha Mu-32. ‘Wulfse’s overseer will hear of this. As shall high-ranking magi who will not think it fit that a mere under-deck bondsman claims stewardship over an arco-flagellant. And when they discover I gave you an augmetic arm, we will both be in trouble.’
‘What do you think they’ll do?’ asked Abrehem.
‘They will come to remove X-42 from your presence. And your arm.’
‘I’d like to see them try,’ said Hawke, lifting a hand to lay a comradely slap on the arco-flagellant’s shoulder. Rasselas X-42’s head snapped around, sharpened iron teeth bared, and Hawke’s hand dropped back to his side.
‘Yes,’ said Abrehem, with grim relish. ‘Let them try.’
‘Open her up,’ said Roboute, and Pavelka unlaced the security systems keeping the atmosphere within the cargo bay breathable. The lights surrounding the tall rhomboidal outline of the embarkation ramp flared in a rotating display of amber warnings. A depressurisation alarm blared through the deck, in case they had suddenly been struck blind. Cable stays vibrated in the sudden evacuation of air from the deck, and Roboute felt his ears pop with the equalisation of pressure to the outside world.
Even through the heating elements woven into the fabric of his void-suit, he felt the stabbing chill of the world beyond. Amber light changed to red, though the unambiguous nature of the warning would have been wasted on anyone still in the cargo bay, as the lack of atmospheric pressure would already be killing them.
Metres-thick pistons either side of the embarkation door groaned and pushed the heavy slab of metal outwards, forming a ridged ramp down to the surface of the planet. The glaring brightness of reflected sunlight on ice made Roboute blink in shock until the polarisation filters in his helmet dimmed.
‘Let’s see what a world beyond the galaxy looks like,’ said Roboute, driving out of the shuttle and into a city of iron and noise, arcing lightning and mountains of beaten iron that were surely too large to have any hope of moving.
A starport metropolis.
That was Roboute’s first impression upon disembarking from the Renard’s shuttle. The grav-sled slid gracefully over hexagonal sheets of honeycomb plates, typical of every landing field in the Imperium, and came to an abrupt halt as he eased up on the power to the engines.
‘Why are we stopping?’ asked Magos Pavelka. ‘Is there a problem?’
Roboute twisted in the seat of the grav-sled, and his answer was stillborn as he saw how ashen the magos’s skin had become.
‘My dermal layer is being reinforced to withstand variant radiation levels, pressure and temperature,’ she said, pre-empting his inevitable question.
‘Ah, okay then,’ he said, marshalling his thoughts to answer Pavelka’s original question in a manner that wouldn’t sound churlish or disappointed. He gave up after a few moments, turning back around to watch scores of boxy containers being offloaded from Mechanicus cargo-barques by exo-armoured servitors. Tracked fuel tenders moved past crackling void-generators along precisely defined routes, while a host of lifter-rigs stacked the ever-growing mass of materiel in hardened supply depots. Sealed Cadian transports rolled from the vast bellies of Imperial Guard drop ships, their hull integrity checked by Mechanicus logisters before being allowed onwards.
No trace of Katen Venia’s surface could be seen beyond the encroachments of the Mechanicus, giving no clue that this was an unexplored world in the last moments of its existence.
‘It just looks like any other fleet muster centre,’ he said.
‘What did you expect it to look like?’ asked Pavelka. Roboute shrugged, no easy feat in a bulky void-suit. The exhilaration of discovering worlds and opening up uncharted regions of space had never left Roboute, no matter how many new skies and unspoiled vistas of distant worlds he saw. Though the landing fields were thronged with robed adepts, grey-skinned servitors and bustling activity, he saw nothing that resembled excitement, only the monotonous duty of routinely familiar tasks.
‘I thought this place would be different,’ said Roboute. ‘We’re exploring a new world, after all.’
‘An unfamiliar environment is all the more reason to work by established methodologies.’
Roboute knew it was pointless to try and convey that a singular moment of history was being trampled beneath the grinding, rote efficiency of the Mechanicus, but felt he had to try.
‘This is a world beyond the galaxy, Ilanna,’ said Roboute. ‘We’re the first human beings to come to this world in over three thousand years. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?’
‘This is a significant world in terms of what might be learned, I agree, but geologically it is just like any other: a metallic core, layers of rock and ice. No different to any planetary body within the arbitrary geographical boundaries of Imperial space. Soon the star’s expanding corona will envelop it. And then it will be gone.’
‘I can’t explain it in any way you’d grasp, Ilanna, but this is a moment that should be savoured and recorded. When mariners sailed the farthest oceans of Old Earth, there wasn’t a man among them who didn’t feel a sense of wonder at what they were seeing. If they returned alive, they were feted as heroes, intrepid explorers who’d seen people and places they couldn’t imagine when they set out.’
‘This moment is being recorded,’ said Pavelka. ‘In more ways than you can comprehend.’
‘That’s not what I mean.’
‘I am aware of that.
’
Roboute shook his head in exasperation at Pavelka’s literalness, but before he could say anything else to convince her she was missing the point, screaming engines split the air with deafening thunder like a sonic boom.
‘What the…?’ was all he managed before a host of emergency lights began flashing on the control towers of the landing fields and a host of vapour flares banged off into the sky to warn approaching aircraft of an unauthorised flight path.
‘What was that?’ asked Adara, shielding his visor with his gauntlet to get a better look at the black and ivory blur climbing over the glittering peaks of nitrogen glaciers.
The screaming aircraft vanished from sight, but Roboute knew exactly what it was.
‘That’s a Thunderhawk,’ he said. ‘The damn Templars are going in ahead of us!’
‘It seems their crusading zeal extends to voyages of exploration as well as campaigns of war,’ observed Pavelka.
‘Bloody Tanna,’ swore Roboute. ‘Archmagos Kotov promised us the right of first passage.’
‘Doesn’t look like the Templars know that,’ said Adara.
Roboute slammed a fist on the control panel in frustration. To have come all this way only for someone else to reach their destination first was beyond galling, it was a bitter blow to everything he’d set out to achieve.
‘Corollary: I think any disappointment you are feeling will soon abate,’ said Pavelka, looking out over the landing fields.
‘What are you talking about?’
Pavelka pointed over his shoulder. ‘Because the Land Leviathans are coming out.’
It had been many years since Tanna had last taken control of a Thunderhawk, but the battlefield-learned knowledge returned to him as soon as he sat in the pilot’s seat. The view through the polarised armourglass of the canopy was impressive, a pyrotechnic sky of borealis brilliance against which were set towering glaciers of frozen nitrogen and billowing spumes of vapour storms that peeled from their flanks. Freezing fog banks surged in the unpredictable atmospherics and dazzling beams of light were thrown out from the waterfalls of gaseous transitions.
He kept the gunship’s speed high as he pulled out of the combat dive, throwing off the repeated demands from the Mechanicus control bunkers that he re-establish their e-mag tether. The Barisan’s machine-spirit rejected every such demand, and Tanna grinned as he pictured the frantic magi seated at their disrupted flight arrangements wondering what had just happened.
Adeptus Astartes did not submit to the control of others, not now and not ever. He had allowed the Barisan’s flight path to be dictated by the tether until atmospheric breach, then seized it back. That the Mechanicus believed they could enslave a proud vessel of the Black Templars was laughable.
‘How long since you flew a gunship, sergeant?’ asked Auiden, dropping into the co-pilot’s seat and resting his hands next to the auxiliary controls.
‘Sixty years, give or take,’ said Tanna.
‘Give or take?’ said Auiden. ‘Not like you to be so imprecise.’
‘Very well: sixty-eight years, five months, three days.’
‘Ah, then that makes me feel a lot better about flying nap-of-the-earth over a disintegrating world with little to no visibility,’ said Auiden, tapping the avionics panel, where almost every slate was lousy with squalling static and dissonant auspex returns. ‘Of course, you know where you’re going?’
‘Mechanicus data-feeds have given me an approximate location,’ said Tanna.
Auiden tapped the useless display slates. ‘Approximate?’
Tanna nodded and said, ‘How hard can it be to find something as big as a starship?’
He glanced over at Auiden, and despite his cautionary words, Tanna saw the Apothecary supported his decision to overrule Mechanicus command and be first to reach the Tomioka. To be a Black Templar meant continually pushing the Imperium’s boundaries and claiming whatever was revealed in the Emperor’s name. Auiden understood this, as did every warrior aboard the Barisan.
‘Surcouf will not be pleased,’ said Auiden.
‘Surcouf is mortal, we are Adeptus Astartes,’ said Tanna. ‘You tell me who has more right to be at the forefront of this crusade.’
Auiden nodded and said no more as Tanna increased power to the engines and gained altitude to avoid a ten-kilometres-high geyser of liquid nitrogen. Icy matter sprayed the canopy and Tanna kept a watchful eye on the engine temperatures. The Barisan’s responses were already growing sluggish as frozen gases iced onto the leading edges of its wings and control surfaces. He vented exhaust bleed over the wings, melting the ice away, but this environment was proving unforgiving.
‘How far to the Tomioka?’ asked Auiden.
‘Unknown, but it cannot be far,’ said Tanna, aiming for a gap between two soaring mountains of disintegrating ice. ‘Kotov’s initial data suggested Telok’s flagship was no more than sixty kilometres from the landing fields. The distance waypoints on the avionics are non-functional, but my estimate is that it should be just beyond this valley.’
Auiden rose from the co-pilot’s chair. ‘Then I will ready the warriors.’
Tanna risked looking away from the view through the canopy and said, ‘The Mechanicus will not be far behind us, Auiden. I want this site secure before they get here.’
‘Understood.’
Tanna returned his attention to their flight path as he guided the Thunderhawk into the narrow valley. Away from the freezing fog clouds and blinding brightness of the nitrogen glaciers, he saw the valley was filled with glittering crystal towers arranged like vast columns in some ruined temple structure of Old Earth. Flickering traceries of emerald-hued lightning danced in the mist between the crystal spires, none of which were less than twenty metres thick, and fronds of poisonous light licked from their tapered tips like the sputtering flames of damaged electro-candles.
Whipping bolts arced between the columns and reached up to the gunship. Tanna pulled away from the flares of electrical energy and cursed as he felt power bleed away from the engines.
‘Something wrong?’ said Auiden, pausing at the cockpit hatch.
‘I do not know,’ asked Tanna, fighting for altitude as yet more of the arcing green bolts snapped between the crystal columns and the Barisan. An auspex-slate blew out in a shower of sparks, and Tanna felt the gunship’s airframe shudder like a wounded grox. Another surveyor panel exploded and smoke billowed from the ruined mechanism within.
Auiden was thrown back into the transport compartment as the gunship lurched as though swatted from above. Tanna’s head snapped forwards as the engines died, their fire snuffed out by a surging electrical overload. Smoke billowed around the wings and he fought to keep the Barisan’s nose up as it transitioned from a highly manoeuvrable assault craft into a hundred-and-thirty-tonne hunk of metal falling from the sky.
Black rock flashed past either side of the canopy, barely three metres from the Barisan’s wingtips. The gunship burst from the valley of crystal columns like a bullet from a gun, flying over a vast plateau enclosed by a ring of sharp-toothed peaks. The plateau resembled the surface of a turbulent lake that had instantly frozen in some far distant epoch, capturing every wavelet and ripple on its surface.
At the centre of the plateau was a sight that beggared belief, something so improbable that Tanna struggled to comprehend what he was actually seeing.
‘Brace, brace, brace!’ he shouted, hauling back on the control columns as the ground rushed towards the plummeting gunship. ‘We’re going down!’
Before he could say more, the Barisan ploughed into the glassy surface of the plateau with the sound of a million windows breaking all at once.
With typical Mechanicus functionality of language, the nine machines emerging from the towering cliffs of the bulk landers were known as Land Leviathans. Straight away, Roboute saw the term was insufficiently grand for such colossal machines. Not one was less than fifty metres tall, and one was at least twice that. Most moved on caterpillar tracks tens of me
tres wide, some on enormous, ultra-dense wheels the size of moderately-sized habitats, while others moved on vast, pounding machine legs.
No two were alike, for they had been constructed on many different forge worlds, over countless centuries by builders with differing technological resources, materials and aesthetic sensibilities. Here and there, it was possible to see that most shared the same basic chassis, but battle damage, centuries of attrition, addition and amendments had taken their subsequent evolution in many different directions. Above whatever form of traction gave it mobility, each Land Leviathan was a moving mountain upon which were grafted haphazard confusions of jutting towers, fragile-looking scaffolding and extrusions to which Roboute could ascribe no purpose.
Each bore a proud name, and each was emblazoned with heraldry belonging to its forge world of origin alongside binaric informationals denoting allegiances to various Mechanicus power blocs. Plumes of waste gases streamed from hundreds of exhaust apertures and electrical discharge flickered around their crenellated topsides.
Mightiest of all was the Tabularium.
Archmagos Kotov’s Land Leviathan walked on fifty vast trapezoidal feet, arranged in parallel rows of twenty-five, each row three hundred metres long. The main structure’s mass was connected to the feet by huge telescoping columns; complex, brutishly mechanical arrangements of muscular pistons and cog-toothed joints. Each was veined by dozens of ribbed cables and power lines, which were in turn connected to threshing coupling rods that thundered in and out of the propulsion decks. Each monstrous foot elevated five metres, cycled forwards, then slammed back down with earth-cracking force and thunderous echoes.
Like the Speranza, it was old, but where the Ark Mechanicus had taken to the stars comparatively recently, the Tabularium was said to have pounded its way across worlds conquered during the Great Crusade. Its vast hull bore the evidence of those long years in layers of stratified scar tissue – some earned in battle, others in no less brutal fits of redesign and expansion.