The Voice of Mars

by David Guymer

  In anything approximating a stand-up fight, the Brutus had the firepower to see off three eldar vessels of its class. The eldar knew that too, of course, and Draevark begrudgingly respected them for acting accordingly.

  ‘They will attempt to flee,’ he said. ‘When challenged with overwhelming force an eldar will, in ninety-three per cent of recorded cases, attempt to flee.’

  ‘Agreed,’ said Artex.

  ‘I am glad you agree, brother. Does the interlink convey my gladness?’

  A pause. ‘No.’

  ‘I am glad.’

  The remains of Draevark’s face scrunched in pain as his system tethers drilled the command layers of the clan interlink for the locator signals of his claves. Ident-runes blistered his optical display. Thirty warriors of Clan Garrsak. All of them clustered around the embarkation decks except for Artex and his demi-clave on the bridge. With the absolute authority of a captain’s codes, he could cut into closed vox-links, hijack visual feeds, monitor his warriors’ vital signs and even shut them down if he so wished. On this occasion, he did not impose any further.

  The Alloyed carried a full third of the clan’s strength. And his was just one ship.

  His authority carried little weight with the propriety codewalls of the Clan Borrgos cruiser Brutus and her escort flotilla, but he knew that a further two full claves would be manning their embarkation decks.

  Of the strength carried aboard the Omnipotence, he had no notion at all, but it would be great. The spirit of an Ironbarque would slip anchor with nothing less.

  ‘Weapons to full charge. Align forward matrices. Load boarding pods, but hold launch for my command.’ Draevark flexed his claws. His gauntlet knuckles yielded with a string of arthritic pops. He looked down at them, a grossly unsubtle action in Terminator plate that caused metallic joints to squeal and servo-muscles to pull. ‘The body tires. It grows stiff with age.’

  No one answered.

  The handful of mortal slaves, the serially networked bridge servitors and even the warriors of Clave Artex; for all the vaunted collectivism of the Garrsak, they existed in separate worlds.

  ‘Do not forget Iron Father Kristos’ demands,’ he growled. ‘Obvious hull damage is to be minimised where possible.’

  ‘Aye lord,’ answered the ranking slave.

  ‘Instruct the Brutus to shadow our heading, escorts to adopt a holding formation. As though we mean it.’

  ‘Aye, lord.’

  Draevark’s gauntlet clenched. ‘Prepare for boarding.’

  II

  ‘The eldar retaliate,’ said First Sergeant Telarrch, observing the unfolding void action from nineteen simul-captures implanted throughout the Iron Hands flotilla and interpolated noospherically to his mind. He felt sufficiently qualified to tender the supplemental opinion: ‘Unexpected.’ As he watched, the Brutus manoeuvred to hold the alien ship at bay, the eldar vessel making full advantage of her mobility and speed to minimise her exposure. The escorts were drawing back into their holding formation while the Garrsak Clan cruiser Alloyed came in, drives running at one-tenth, taking no chances.

  ‘Their resistance only illustrates their illogic.’

  Magos Qarismi had assumed a meditative pose within a petalled arrangement of runebanks and displays. They showed a concatenated stream of infinite power series and regressive algorithms light years beyond Telarrch’s ability to comprehend. The magos’ face was an aluminium skull, decalled in precious ormolu with numeric sigils of rank and the blessings of the cog. Frost glitter highlighted the orbits of his eyes and the ridge of his cheekbones as he turned, offering Telarrch the unasked-for courtesy of eye contact.

  ‘Adherence to the calculus ensures that commitment to action is made only when victory is beyond statistical doubt. The eldar should recognise that defiance can only result in defeat.’

  Telarrch did not understand, but he did not need to.

  He had followed Kristos from the beginning. He had been first to submit to cerebro-reconditioning, had rejoiced as the Iron Father’s Librarians had burned his mind even of the memory of weakness. He recalled nothing of the time before Kristos. The names of the officers and Iron Fathers whose failures had preceded Kristos’ elevation were gone from his mind. His life began in the conditioning chambers of the Omnipotence. Kristos was Clan Raukaan. He was the Iron Hands.

  Telarrch was privileged to be given this opportunity to obey.

  Kristos desired the alien. Telarrch did not know or care why. Kristos would have the alien.

  ‘Despatch overrides against the Alloyed’s and the Brutus’ code barriers. Assume direct control of the Garrsak and Borrgos targeting grids.’

  The subservient machine-spirits that inhabited the Omnipotence’s command deck chirped and whistled as they responded.

  The void-borne fortress-monastery of the Raukaan Clan was a behemoth from a prehistoric age, built with fading arts in the ember glow of the Horus Heresy. Only the main oculus and the handful of active consoles lit the ice that glazed the empty workstations. The labours of cogitators and thought engines were all that warmed its innards above the absolute chill of space. The grating chirrup of their operations echoed about the cathedral-like emptiness that the last mortal crewman had abandoned half a millennium before. At every third or fourth station, a servitor performed the manual operations that the Omnipotence could not. The lobotomised cadavers were bug-eyed and blue-veined with the thick antifreeze fluids that sludged through their circulatory systems, serially down-cycled husks of slow decay in a spider’s web of plug-in ports and trunk cabling. Despite the preservative, the deoxygenated atmosphere and the cold, the biological units reeked of formaldehyde and old neglect. Three Iron Hands stood sentry, stalagmites of plasteel and ceramite in the form of augmented post-transhuman warriors.

  With a groan of plasteel and a deluge of code the Omnipotence’s antediluvian spirit informed Telarrch that she had assumed command of the fleet’s weapons. She had no master. She had no crew. After five centuries under Kristos’ stewardship, she would tolerate neither now.

  ‘Launch gunships and lace them into the matrix,’ ordered Telarrch.

  The Omnipotence responded affirmative.

  With enough kilobrains bent to the task, the Omnipotence would be able to out-cogitate the eldar’s holo-defences. Such was the might the Omnissiah granted to those who would embrace it.

  ‘Alert all teams to launch the pods as soon as the xenos enter range.’

  ‘Without prior disablement of point defences, I calculate that one pod in five will be lost.’

  Telarrch absorbed the magos calculi’s update. Only with perfect foresight could the incidental be sifted from the providential, and logic dictated that Telarrch’s foresight was not perfect. He was not Kristos.

  ‘Acceptable.’

  III

  The launch rune painted the inside of Jalenghaal’s boarding pod red. It turned his warriors’ battleplate an insipid purple, as if there were not quite enough colour to spread between them. Only when the light found the silver of edge trims or clan sigils or the bare metal of bionics did it return the red in full. No one moved. They were weapons, waiting to be taken from their bracketed wall slots and used, as curious of their wielder’s intent as a power fist. They were Garrsak, and Garrsak obeyed.

  Of the nine of them, only one had even marked the optical alert at all.

  ‘Are you going to respond?’ asked Borrg.

  Some physical manifestation of the neophyte’s gross arrogance conspired to make the powered armour he wore appear even more immense than it was. Its high gorget was studded with metal rivets, hung with chainmail and swallowed his unhelmed head as high as his too-wide eyes. They made him look on edge, ready for anything, eager for it even. Just the sight of that much pale, naked flesh made Jalenghaal feel spoiled, as though a grain of dirt had found its way inside his armour. He looked pointedly awa
y, preferring to review the tactical inloads from Draevark and the other sergeants that cycled through his interlink tethers.

  The iron captain was expressing some angst over the responsiveness of the Alloyed’s weapons arrays.

  ‘The Brutus has already launched boarding craft,’ Borrg went on, seemingly harbouring the – for once – inaccurate impression that no one was listening.

  Jalenghaal knew that the neophyte had been owned by Clan Borr­gos and it would have cost Clan Garrsak dearly in recruiting rights and resource to claim him after the losses they had endured on Thennos.

  How Jalenghaal would have liked to have been privy to that cost-benefit calculus.

  ‘I see from the interlink that two demi-claves of Tartrak and Castan are already aboard and engaged,’ said Borrg.

  ‘Don’t let those implants go to your head, neophyte,’ grumbled Burr.

  Jalenghaal turned slowly.

  His second was built like a drop pod, all shielded pistons, belt plating and bracing struts. He had been rebuilt after Thennos, as so many of them had, stronger than he had been before. But if Burr realised he had made a joke, then he did not show it. Jalenghaal let his disapproval fade into the shared system link.

  ‘Let the Brutus strike first,’ he said, dismissive. ‘It will increase our chances of success. And survival.’

  Borrg’s brow furrowed. It was possible he claimed some remote mortal loyalty to his intended clan, but he was Garrsak now, and Garrsak obeyed. He nodded, his face almost vanishing behind his studded gorget.

  ‘If it is glory or honour you crave then you should have died mortal.’ Jalenghaal wondered if he had ever blood so hot, before he had drained it, replaced it with synthetic carrier fluids and encased it in iron. His memory told him no, but it would not be the first omission it had made in two hundred years. ‘War is binary. Success or failure.’ He looked over his clave, motionless still, aside from the occasional muscular twitch from Borrg. Jalenghaal’s armour spirit demanded status reports from theirs and they complied, runes splayed across his display in a scrolling hierarchy of long service and rank. He asked the question, nevertheless. ‘Is everyone prepared?’

  ‘Prepared,’ said Burr.

  ‘Eighteen months of inaction is not ideal preparation,’ said Strontius.

  ‘A long time to wait on one eldar ship,’ Borrg complained.

  ‘Does your flesh ache?’ said Deimion.

  ‘My flesh hungers for battle’s knife,’ the neophyte spat back.

  Thorrn, a bulky warrior with a vaned helm that resembled a robotic aquila and the broken outline of a rare Mk VIII powered suit, gave a grumbling sigh. As with Borrg he had been bought by Clan Garrsak at a price, but there the similarities ended. The last augmetic vertebra in a lengthy forgechain was the acid-etched adamantium of the Avernii. He had not taken ‘demotion’ from the veteran company well.

  ‘Activate the rune already.’

  Ignoring the implied challenge in the veteran’s tone, Jalenghaal reached out to punch the launch rune.

  ‘Wait.’ Lurrgol had been staring at the floor as though determined to catch it in a lie. He looked up, swaying side to side with the mounting urgency of the boarding pod’s spirit as he scanned his brothers’ faces. ‘Where is Kardaanus?’

  Jalenghaal stiffened. ‘Kardaanus is dead, brother.’ Lurrgol appeared to accept that and fell quiet again.

  Was it grief, this pain that came every time he had to reprise this conversation?

  It felt like a broken rib used to feel, a dull throb somewhere between his secondary heart and pared-back digestive organs. Part of him wanted nothing more than to carve that section out and replace it with something inert, but another part, the part that felt grief for his brother, could not. The feeling was not for Kardaanus, for he had died on Thennos in battle with the traitor skitarii. His components had been distributed amongst the clave. His progenoids had been harvested to transform the next generation of neophytes to follow Borrg and his peers.

  Kardaanus would live forever.

  His grief was for Lurrgol.

  ‘How can he be dead if I can still hear him?’ Lurrgol whispered to the deck plates beneath his boots. ‘He is still exloading. Can you not hear it? Is it only me?’

  The clave shared a look between them.

  ‘Kardaanus is dead, brother.’

  With that, Jalenghaal punched the launch command.

  The boarding pod shook like a beast unchained. The noise intensified as its rocket turbofans built to full burn. He heard what sounded like a snatch of a hymn through his helmet vox, or perhaps two overlain, Iron Chaplain Braavos girding the faith of man and machine both, before his audial implants enabled auto-lockdown routines. He was left with a strangled whine that lasted for a few seconds. Then nothing at all. Just the steady tick of his cybernetics at work, echoing in the sealed confines of his helm.

  Odd. How discomforting the reminder of one’s own cyborganic functions could be with mortality so near.

  The rocket turbofans unleashed their full fury in an apocalyptic blast that shook the Alloyed to her spine. At the same time, the magnetic clamps holding the pod in place switched polarity and launched it into the void.

  The Iron Hands shook in their brackets. Lighting blinked, while weapons and kit rattled in stowage, in hands, across knees. Jalenghaal’s secondary heart started to beat, a squelch-squelch thumping in his iron breast. He hardened his grip on his bolter, pressing its brick muzzle to his thigh plate with the other hand. He could not remember the last time he had possessed a sebaceous gland, or felt true anxiety during an insertion, but old habits died harder than flesh. Harder even than old warriors.

  The telemetry that the Alloyed fed to his helmet stuttered, pixelating, then vanishing altogether as the boarding pod sped violently from its cage. One isolated scroll of numeric symbols stood out from the mess.

  Six thousand kilometres –

  Four thousand –

  Two –

  canted Thornn.

  ‘Ave Omnissiah!’ Jalenghaal replied, and loudly, not with feeling but because forward proximity sensors had just activated the pod’s magna-meltas and he had to shout to be heard over the roar.

  Then ninety-five tonnes of metal propelled at two thousand kilometres per hour struck liquefied alien plastek.

  Warriors slammed sideways into their brackets as the boarding pod tore into the eldar’s lightweight hull and did not stop there. Squealing, shuddering, it crashed through the alien superstructure until, with a furious lunge, it pitched to a halt. Jalenghaal’s helm chrono clocked a half-second respite as the warriors were flung back the opposite way and the brackets disengaged clamps.

  The forward hatch blasted off. Bent sections of it clanged into the alien ship.

  Jalenghaal rose.

  In a whir of motorised joints his clave followed suit, a rattle of scrapes and clicks as sickle magazines were slotted into bolters and pistols, the tooth-throbbing hum of Kardaanus’ – Strontius’ now – lascannon hooking in and drinking power. Eyes wide and vitally hungry, Borrg ignited his flamer, something feral about the play of flame over his gorget and of shadow over his scarred face. He had left his helmet in its slot.

  ‘Wait,’ said Lurrgol, last in line at the back of the troop aisle, bolter hanging in one gauntlet as he surveyed the row of apparently unfamiliar faces between him and his sergeant. ‘Where is Kardaanus?’

  Jalenghaal raised his bolter to his chest plate and, without a word of instruction, charged down the open ramp.

  Hostile xenos, at least, he knew how to deal with.

  IV

  Rage filled Elrusiad as the carved geawood doors to the central nexus sundered before a terrible blow. The panelling split up the centre, the diorama of Hoec Charting the Outer Heavens splintering like so much worthless kindling. The hardwood beneath was spli
ntered and frayed, ultimately coming apart itself under the armoured boot of a towering barbarian.

  His armour was matt-black, struck with grey where shuriken and blade had savaged the primitive paintwork. His lensed eyes were shot through with silver light, his helm grilled like a muzzled beast. It issued bestial machine snorts as he stamped through the wreckage of the door. Coils of ribbed cabling wound his barrelled chest, the armour there thickened on one side by the addition of iron bands that doubled as attachment sites for the immensity of a mechanical left arm. Every movement was preceded by a torturous whine of powered assistance. Monosyllabic iconographs of iron skulls and toothed wheels adorned his brutality in silver, glittering like casting runes as the enfilade of scatter lasers and shuriken cannons lit him up from above.

  The Space Marine strode through the heavy fire, unperturbed, the black heart of a ricochet storm that tore out what remained of the door and the mosaic floor, yet failed to induce so much as a misstep in the heavily armoured warrior.

  Then he raised his gun.

  Explosive shells shredded the light cover offered by the balustrades ringing the galleries, defacing the heroic statues that looked on in helpless dismay. More warriors crunched through the shattered door frame. Five in all.

  Eldar guardians returned fire from behind the wraithbone carvings that lined the way, the pace of their retreat set precisely by that of the intruders’ advance. The staccato burst of primitive firearms was an operatic score, the screams, explosions and the shredding dismantlement of works of art the crescendos to its dramatic movements. It enraged Elrusiad’s warrior spirit, virtually lifting his feet from the floor as he delivered a challenge he could scarce hear for the pounding of blood through his ears.