Page 4 of Gods of Mars

  Captain Blayne Hawkins ran at the head of the column, arms pumping with a metronomic precision to match the piston heads in the chamber they had just left. Despite the chill, he was sweating hard, his uniform jacket plastered to his skin. His breath punched from his lungs with every thudding footfall.

  On Cadia he could run like this for hours.

  But this wasn’t Cadia.

  The ninety-three men behind him were tired, but weren’t showing it. He reckoned they’d run around fifteen kilometres in full battle-gear through the twisting guts of the Speranza, though it was hard to be certain exactly how far they’d come. The Ark Mechanicus was a nightmare to navigate or maintain any sense of distance from.

  It made formulating a workable defence of the ship difficult, but difficult was meat and gravy to Cadians. Ahead, the corridor branched left and right, with the towering statue of a hooded magos dividing it into a V-shaped junction.

  ‘Hostile corners, secure flanks for advance!’ called Hawkins.

  No sooner had the words left his mouth than the company split into two. Evens went left, odds right. The first squads moved close to the metalled walls of the corridor, but not along them. A ricocheting solid round might ride a wall for a hundred metres or more. The evens aimed their lasrifles along the rightmost passage, the odds the left. Hawkins took position with the evens, the stock of his rifle hard against his cheek.

  The squads at the rear of the company adopted a near identical formation, their guns covering behind.

  ‘Clear!’

  ‘Clear!’

  ‘Hindmost squads, take point!’ shouted Hawkins.

  The squads covering the rear now moved up, smooth as a training drill, to take the lead. Hawkins went with them as they passed, covered by the guns of the men in front. The overwatching squads took position at the rear as Hawkins moved to the front of the jogging column.

  This was the tenth battle drill they’d practised en route to the training deck. They’d practised corridor assault drills, room clearances in empty forge-temples and even run reconnaissance in force of a vast hangar filled with smashed lifter-rigs.

  A starship was one of the worst environments in which to fight. The vessels were dark, unfamiliar, cramped and were often being violently breached by broadsides and boarders from the void. Unforgiving battlefields, they made for intense training grounds, and Hawkins wasn’t about to waste this extended period of time aboard ship without making the most of their surroundings.

  The company moved down the gloomy corridor, splashing through pools of water collected on the bowed deck plates. They passed beneath the gaze of mechanical cherubs and floating skulls that zipped overhead on mysterious errands for their Martian masters.

  Hawkins ran another two drills – crossing an intersection, and sweeping a gridded chamber of hung chains. Its ceiling was obscured by clouds of hot steam and its walls rippled with lightning encased in thick glass cylinders.

  Eventually, Hawkins and his men reached the end of the run. Their battle pace hadn’t slackened once, but it was a relief to finally reach their destination.

  Hawkins led his men onto a wide esplanade platform overlooking Magos Dahan’s fiefdom, the training deck. This enormous space sat at the heart of the Speranza, a vast, constantly changing arena where the armed forces of the Ark Mechanicus could train in a multitude of varied battle simulations.

  Dahan had put the Cadians through some hard engagements here.

  Nothing they hadn’t been able to handle, but testing nonetheless. Despite his assurances to the contrary, Hawkins knew Dahan didn’t really understand Cadians at all.

  Few did.

  After all, what other world of the Imperium basked in the baleful glow of the Eye of Terror? What soldiers learned to hold a lasgun before they could walk? What regiments earned scars other regiments could only dream of before they’d even left their birthrock?

  Irritatingly, Rae’s company were already here. His senior sergeant’s men sat on the edge of the platform, watching the skitarii below fighting through a mocked-up ork encampment that filled the nearest quadrant of the training deck.

  In the far distance, nearly a kilometre away, the Titans of Legio Sirius moved with predatory grace through towers of prefabricated steel. The vibrations of their enormous footfalls could be felt as bass tremors in the floor. Hawkins made a quick aquila over his chest, remembering the destruction unleashed the last time the god-machines had walked the training deck.

  Thankfully, it looked like the Legio were simply engaged in manoeuvre drills.

  ‘Company, halt,’ said Hawkins. ‘Rest easy. Five minutes.’

  The company broke up into squads, the men taking the opportunity to stretch their aching muscles and slake their thirst from canvas-wrapped canteens.

  Sergeant Rae approached, his ruddy complexion telling Hawkins he’d pushed his men hard, like any good sergeant should.

  ‘Nice of you to finally join us, sir,’ said Rae, offering him a drink from his own canteen. Hawkins took it and drank down a few mouthfuls. Taking too much water too quickly was a sure-fire way to get a bad case of stomach cramps.

  ‘How long have you been here?’ asked Hawkins.

  ‘About ten minutes,’ said Rae, not even having the decency to look a little humble at how much quicker he’d managed the run than his commanding officer.

  ‘It’s this bloody ship,’ said Hawkins. ‘The gravity’s not the same. Not like running where there’s good Cadian rock underfoot.’

  ‘Adept Dahan says the gravity’s Terran-standard.’

  ‘Damn Dahan, and damn his gravity,’ snapped Hawkins, though the cooling effects of the water and the chance to rest his limbs were already easing his irritation. ‘All right, then the ship gave you a short cut.’

  ‘The ship?’ said Rae with a raised eyebrow. ‘Really?’

  ‘You know as well as I do that this ship’s got a mind of its own when it comes to its internal structure,’ said Hawkins, taking another drink.

  ‘We ran into a few unexpected twists and turns along the way, it’s true,’ agreed Rae.

  ‘A few unexpected twists and turns?’ said Hawkins. ‘That’s putting it mildly. No matter how many hours I pore over data-slate schematics or the shipwright’s wax-paper blueprints, the Speranza’s always got a surprise in store. A turn that isn’t where it’s supposed to be, a branching route that doesn’t appear on any of the plans.’

  ‘It’s a queer old ship, I’ll give you that,’ said Rae, making a clumsy attempt at the Cog Mechanicus to take any sting out of his words.

  Hawkins handed back Rae’s canteen, leaning on the railing looking out over the training deck. ‘Glad to see we’re on the same page, sergeant.’

  Rae took a drink and slipped the canteen into his battle-gear.

  ‘Any word from the colonel?’ he asked.

  Hawkins shook his head. ‘Nothing yet, but Azuramagelli tells me there’s no vox-traffic coming from the surface at all.’

  ‘Should we be concerned about that?’

  ‘Yes, I think we should,’ said Hawkins, now seeing a tall man with close-cropped silver hair farther along the esplanade platform. He’d mistaken him for one of Rae’s men, but now saw he was wearing simple coveralls with a nondescript padded trench coat emblazoned with a stylised canidae. Cadians typically had pinched, hollow features, but this man had the well-fed, scarred cheekbones of a feral noble or warlike hive-lord. Icy eyes darted back and forth, watching the skitarii training under Dahan’s booming instructions.

  No, that wasn’t right.

  The man had no interest in the skitarii. He was watching the Titans.

  ‘Who’s he?’ asked Hawkins, jutting his chin out at the man.

  ‘Not sure,’ answered Rae. ‘He’s got his collar up, but I saw a socket in the back of his neck and his fingers have got metal tips. That and the canidae crest make me think Titan crew.’

  ‘So why’s he not out there?’

  ‘Don’t know,’ said Rae.

&n
bsp; Hawkins dismissed the man from his thoughts. What did it matter who he was? There were tens of thousands of people aboard the Speranza he didn’t know. What difference did one more make?

  ‘Right,’ he said, straightening up. ‘Let’s get to it.’

  Rae nodded and turned to the two companies that were already standing and settling their battle-gear back onto their shoulders and hips.

  ‘Companies!’ bellowed Rae in a voice known to sergeants all across the Imperium. ‘Magos Dahan has put together a couple of arenas he thinks will test us. Shall we show him how wrong he is?’

  The men grinned and quickly formed up into their companies. It had become a point of pride that they could meet any challenge Dahan’s arenas might throw at them.

  Hawkins led the way down the iron stairs to the training deck.

  He glanced up at the man with silver hair and scarred cheeks. Sensing Hawkins’s gaze, he waved and shouted down to the Cadians.

  ‘You’re fighting a simulation?’ he asked. ‘Now?’

  Hawkins shouted back. ‘It’s rare you get to fight when you’re rested, so why train that way?’

  ‘You’re mad!’

  ‘We’re Cadian,’ returned Hawkins. ‘It’s sort of the same thing.’

  Exnihlio was everything Archmagos Kotov had hoped for, a wonderland of technological marvels, incredible industry and lost science. From the moment he’d extended the hand of friendship to his fellow archmagos, he knew he was vindicated in his decision to take the Speranza beyond the galactic rim.

  All the doubters who had mocked his decision to embark on this daring mission would be silenced now. With Telok at his side, Archmagos Kotov would return to Mars in triumph. The holdings he had lost to catastrophe, xenos invasion and treachery would be insignificant next to what he would gain.

  The wealth and knowledge of Mars laid at his feet.

  Title, position and domains.

  Who knew to what dizzying heights he might ascend?

  Master of his own quadrangle, perhaps even Fabricator General one day. With the discovery of the Breath of the Gods to his name, it would be simplicity itself to quietly ease the incumbent Fabricator into a life of solitary research.

  Fabricator General Kotov.

  Yes, it had a solemnity and gravitas befitting so vital a role.

  So now that he had reached his destination and found the Lost Magos, why did his grandiose dreams feel even further away?

  Archmagos Telok was both more and less than what he had hoped. Bizarre in form, yes, but no more so than many of the more zealous adherents of the Ferran Mortification Creed. He was still undeniably human, but the crystalline growths encrusting his body had all the hallmarks of something parasitic, not augmentative.

  Telok’s declaration of saving Mars from itself had horrified him, and his initial response had been a frantic series of cease-and-desist blurts of command binary. All of which had failed utterly to have any effect on Telok, whose archaic cognitive architecture was incapable of processing such inputs.

  asked Telok, with the brutal syntax of pre-hexamathic cant.

  Kotov paused before answering, switching back to the older form of binary. With as many diplomatic overtones as could be applied to such a basic cant-form, Kotov said,

  said Telok.