The tiny, fierce machine-spirit within the arc maul gave a static snarl of eagerness as she broke into a trot. It longed for war the way an adept longed for enhancements, ever-greedy. She knew that feeling well, and was happy to have the opportunity to indulge it. When metal met flesh, flesh failed. It was a lesson the hive mind had yet to learn, but Omnissiah willing, she would teach it today. She swung it in a tight circle, filling the air with the hum of arc generators as she moved to intercept the tyranid warrior.
The creature was already staggering, black froth dripping from its jaws. Even the alien horrors birthed by the hive fleets were not immune to the searing breath of Mars. To meet the vanguard in battle was to meet death, either by bullet or by simple proximity. But the quicker the synapse creature was put down, the quicker the rest would scatter, and the quicker she and her combat-maniple could complete their mission.
She ducked beneath its first sweeping blow with a bone-sword and brought the arc maul down on its exposed elbow joint. Electricity surged through the limb and the tyranid howled in agony as it rounded on her. She stepped back, narrowly avoiding the tip of a second blade. Her targeting array pinged as it focused in on a weak point in the creature’s armour and she smiled beneath her helm. The creature had overextended itself. She lunged forward and smashed her arc maul into its knee, elbow and then, finally, its jaw, pulverising each in turn in a burst of blue lightning. Bone blades skidded across her war-plate in a scatter of sparks, but failed to cut through the ancient artificer armour.
6-Friest stepped back as the tyranid slumped. The beast wheezed and tried to stand, but before it could do so, she pressed the barrel of her carbine to its wide skull and pulled the trigger. As the synapse creature slumped, a quiver went through the ranks of hormagaunts. Bestial instincts reasserted themselves in the absence of the guiding will of the hive mind, and the creatures began to retreat.
6-Friest knew it was only a temporary reprieve. Quickly, she signalled for her combat-maniple to head for the main doors of the facility. They did not wait for it to open. One melta-charge later, 6-Friest was stepping through a smoking, slag-lined hole and into the facility beyond. A ring of autoguns greeted her, and above them, pale, frightened faces. She let her carbine dangle from its strap and reached up to unlatch her helmet. The fear did not fade from the faces of the facility crew.
She did not blame them. Her features were as pale as theirs, but scarred by radiation and war. Her skin was peeling away in dry sheets and her teeth were few and far between. What hair she had was shorn close to the scalp, and as dry as the red sands. Her eyelids were gone and her eyes were covered by the goggle-like augmetics, filled with blessed salve, and constantly whirring and oscillating, recording information to be transmitted to her master in orbit. Thankfully, her gums no longer ached, and the old burns on her neck and cheeks had long since stopped hurting.
‘Rad-troopers,’ someone muttered.
‘Where is your adept?’ she croaked. She cleared her throat and asked again more clearly. It had been months since her last physical conversation. The neural link was more efficient, and easier on vocal cords seared by the rad-storms of Mars. She snapped her fingers. ‘Your adept,’ she said again.
‘Here! I am here,’ a voice said. A tall man clad in filthy Administratum robes shoved through the ring of guns. He was worm-pale and bald, with bloodshot eyes and a jaw coated in stubble. ‘Adept Sooj, at your service…?’ he said.
‘Alpha Vanguard 6-Friest,’ she said, clipping her helmet to her belt and turning. ‘9-Jud, 4-Hest, establish a perimeter. 12-Udo, take four others and come with me. 10-Dulak, take the rest and establish a defensive cordon around the loading bay. Chronometers set for departure schedule epsilon.’ She turned back to Sooj. ‘The cipher, adept. Is it safe?’
‘The–? Oh! Ah, yes,’ Sooj said hurriedly. He stared at her face with what she suspected was horrified fascination. Few outside of the skitarii barracks saw the warriors of the vanguard up close, and fewer still wanted to. Their very presence was death to the unaugmented or unprotected, their robes and war-plate tainted by the baleful energies of the weapons they wielded in the Omnissiah’s name. ‘Our tech-priest kept it in the examination nave.’
‘Take me to it. Now,’ she said. Sooj nodded jerkily and hurried away. 6-Friest followed, 12-Udo and the others falling in behind her. She ignored the facility crew as they made way for her. They parted, giving her a wide berth as she swept through them. There were only a pitiful few left, a dozen at most, hollow-eyed and stinking of stale caff-rations and chemicals. They clutched their weapons with fervent devotion, however, and she did not doubt their willingness to fight. They slunk behind her skitarii, following at a distance.
‘I-I rather expected more of you, when you said you were coming,’ Sooj said. Contact had been established early on in the invasion. A ship had been dispatched as soon as word of the cipher’s recovery had reached those who recognized its importance. It was only by the will of the Omnissiah that they had reached Kotir-8 before it was fully enveloped in the coils of the hive fleet designated Leviathan.
‘How many crew were assigned to this facility, adept?’ she asked, as she followed Sooj. He glanced at her and gave a harsh caw of laughter.
‘One hundred and fifty-five,’ he said. ‘We have lost one hundred and forty-three personnel since the xenos made planetfall. As such, the continued operation of this facility has proven impossible.’ He didn’t look at her. ‘I have recorded each name, and the manner of their passing, as it occurred. Each of them did their duty, and to the last. May the Emperor bless and keep them.’
‘Your tech-priest was one of the casualties,’ 6-Friest said.
It wasn’t a question. Sooj nodded and hugged his sides as he led her down a corridor lined with rattling pipes and clattering gauges. Bundles of cable hung from the ceiling where they’d been rerouted to provide power, likely to the defences. It made her soul cringe to see such butchery of the Omnissiah’s own, but under the circumstances, she was sure the Machine-God would be forgiving. The living quarters for the crew occupied three honeycomb levels, one atop the next
‘Yes, old Rebos. He’s the one who identified the cipher. Something… took him, on the third day. It took others as well, but Rebos was a blow,’ Sooj said. He shook his head, and ran trembling fingers across his shaved pate. ‘Without him, I have had sole responsibility for the continued survival of this facility and its remaining crew.’ He glanced at her again. ‘I am glad you showed up when you did, Alpha 6-Friest.’
‘And I am glad you were able to hold out as long as you have,’ 6-Friest said.
‘All blessings be to Rebos and the God-Emperor,’ Sooj said. ‘It was he who insisted on the proper maintenance of the weapons systems, and the power reroutes.’ He gestured at the loose cabling. ‘I was more concerned with the day-to-day operations…’ He trailed off. Then, hesitantly, he asked, ‘Are… are we the last?’
‘You are. Kotir-8 is lost,’ 6-Friest said. ‘You have done the Emperor proud, and the Omnissiah’s blessings will be upon you, for your efforts here.’
‘I’m just happy to be leaving,’ Sooj said. There was an edge of hysteria to his voice. His bio-rhythms were erratic, and 6-Friest could only vaguely imagine the strain he’d been under. Administratum adepts were not conditioned for war or survival, merely for calculation and the proper keeping of records. But the Machine-God had seen fit to gift Adept Sooj with a modicum of utility, enabling him to persevere where others of his caste might have crumbled and become worse than useless. It had enabled him to keep safe that which she and her combat-mantiple had been sent to retrieve, in the face of the alien fury now consuming the world around them.
‘The cipher, adept,’ she said.
‘Here.’ Sooj led her into a chamber that she recognized as a Mechanicum nave – a laboratory, where Rebos would have studied, synthesized and recorded the materials discovered during the facility’s operat
ions. Bits of archeotech and other, older remnants cluttered examination tables or slowly cycled through automated scanners. A robed servitor stood in one corner, steadily recording the findings of the scanners, its servo-stylus scratching quietly across the parchment which emerged from the feeder unit built into its augmented chest cavity only to fall in rolls and tangles about the floor, unread and soon to be destroyed forever.
‘Kotir-8 was a historical junk-heap, or so Rebos claimed. A millennia of history, buried beneath the topsoil. There were colonies here well before the Great Crusade, and well after. They were lost to war, and worse things, but the infrastructure was still here. Whole hives, buried beneath the arid soil, lost to recorded history,’ Sooj said, looking around. ‘The ore-haulers recovered bulkheads, miles of cabling and deck plates. We never discovered whether it was a ship or something else.’ He looked at her. ‘And now I suppose we never will.’
‘No,’ she said.
Sooj went to one of the tables and retrieved a cylindrical tube, inscribed with the sigils of the Adeptus Mechanicus. It was old. She could tell that even without the aid of diagnostic sensors. The brass tube had turn green with age, and hardened soil still clung to the teeth of the cogwheel symbol emblazoned on each end of the tube. He extended it towards her, and she accepted it reverentially.
She ran her fingers across the markings, wondering at the man who’d made them. Inside was a message of some kind, a recording or a coded transmission. The words of a forgotten age, thought lost but now returned, by the grace and mercy of the Machine-God. The final testament of Magos Zheng, explorator and saint of the sacred brotherhood of the eternal cog. He who had gone beyond the Ghoul Stars, and vanished into the firmament of heaven without a trace. Until now.
It was worth a world, she thought, to recover this. Perhaps that was why the Machine-God had drawn the explorator fleets to Kotir-8 in the first place. So that the cipher might be found, before it was lost forever.
She felt the touch of the Omnissiah’s will upon hers as she ran her fingers across the cylinder, and knew a moment of joy that the responsibility had fallen to her. She had ever served the Machine-God to the fullest of her capabilities, and this was her reward, to stand here, holding the legacy of Zheng, to return what had been lost to those who would care for it forevermore. ‘I serve, and gladly,’ she murmured.
‘He never said what it was. Only that it was of immense value,’ Sooj said.
6-Friest did not reply. Sooj would not understand, for his intellect was caged in meat, rather than at one with the choral nodes of the Great Work. Her eyepieces oscillated, summoning a digital overlay of the facility’s schematics. She gestured. ‘The loading bay, for the orbital haulers – it’s there? What is its status?’
‘Ah… uncompromised, as yet. Once we open the bay doors though, they’ll get in.’
‘They always get in,’ 6-Friest said. ‘It is what they are designed to do. Just as we are designed to reduce them to the protoplasm from which they are made. You and your men will accompany us to the bay. The extraction vessel is waiting for our signal.’ She turned and left the lab, the cipher cradled to her chest.
‘I – yes, of course,’ Sooj said. He nodded and gestured. His men followed without complaint as the adept led the vanguard to the bay. The cavernous structure occupied a third of the facility, and was dominated by clanking carrier-belts, manned by sorting servitors, who now bent, pushed and separated the empty air in lieu of the stream of ore, which had long since ceased to pour from the great feeder chutes that lined the inner wall.
Steam vented from cracked, untended pipes, and gauges rattled querulously in dark corners. The facility had its own crude form of spirit, as did all complex machinery, however large or small. And that spirit knew that it was dying. Alarms whooped and fell silent in mournful song, and melancholy power surges fried unsanctified circuit boards, filling the air with greasy smoke and the tang of scorched metal.
6-Friest made a silent prayer for forgiveness, hoping the facility would understand. They all had their function, and they must perform it as the Omnissiah willed. They made their way towards the pentagonal landing platform, where in better times suborbital haulers would have landed to collect the raw ore, to be turned into promethium at the massive refinery-cities that had once girded Kotir-8’s equatorial zone.
She heard the ping of the suborbital flyer’s approach warning, and signalled her skitarii to open the landing bay. The great skylight, made from fractal plates of rad-hardened plasteel, groaned and squealed as it slid open. A few opportunistic tyranids took the opportunity to drop into the bay, screeching with hunger. The skitarii opened fire, sweeping the xenos beasts from the landing platform within moments.
The outpost shuddered, and alarms began to blare with a consistency they had not had before. She heard the distinctive hiss-crack of a radium jezzail echo through the bay, and knew that the outer defences had been breached. 6-Friest turned. <9-Jud, report.>
Assault bio-forms – that meant something larger than hormagaunts or the synapse broods.
She cut the link without replying. As she did so, she saw 10-Dulak and the others falling back into the bay. Defender protocols had been engaged, and her skitarii knew what to do without being told. They closed the bay doors behind them and sealed them. 9-Jud and 4-Hest were not with them. Someone needed to slow down the enemy, while the extraction was completed.
6-Friest felt no guilt at the thought. It was a necessity, and one that the warriors of the vanguard were ever-prepared to make. They lived and breathed the very stuff of death, and it was their constant companion. Some parts wear out quicker than others, but all are necessary, all serve, for however short a time, she thought. 9-Jud knew that. Cogs did not complain. She hefted her carbine and checked her ammunition.
The lander appeared over the platform, thrusters humming as it descended on columns of super-heated air and promethium. Its anti-personnel weapons hissed as it sank down, and chunks of burning tyranid pattered down onto the platform around it. It was small, as such flyers went. Barely large enough to carry a few passengers and the crew of specially-designed servitors that manned it.
Sooj stared at it in incomprehension. ‘It’s… is there a larger ship coming?’
‘No,’ 6-Friest said. She didn’t look at him.
‘But you said – we were to be extracted!’ Sooj’s voice rose, and his men began to murmur amongst themselves. The hope of survival, of escape, had ensured that they held on. If that hope were taken away, there was no telling how they might react. Nonetheless, 6-Friest did not have it in her to lie. Deception was the way of meat. The machine provided only clarity, painful and bright.
‘One may die, yet still endure if his work enters the greater work,’ 6-Friest said, still not looking at Sooj. The adept shook his head.
‘I don’t…’
‘We must endure the present, that those who come after may continue the great work,’ 6-Friest continued. She looked at the adept now. ‘The words of Technomagos Mojaro, on the eve of the Xenarite Schism. We are not flesh, adept. We are but cogs in the God Machine, turning as the Omnissiah wills.’ Almost gently, she added, ‘Sometimes those cogs must be stripped out, for the good of the machine.’
Sooj looked at her blankly. Then, his eyes widened. ‘This isn’t a rescue,’ he said hoarsely. 6-Friest cocked her head.
‘It is,’ she said. She gestured with the cipher. ‘But not for you.’
Sooj turned pale. It was an impressive feat, given his pallid appearance. 6-Friest’s sensors registered a drop in blood pressure, and
she moved to steady the adept. He attempted to slap her hand away, but only succeeded in bruising his own. Cradling it, he backed away from her.
‘You’re going to let them kill us,’ he hissed, in a strangled voice.
‘No. You may fight, if you wish. Survival is unlikely, but the option is available,’ 6-Friest said. Her sensors registered a spike in adrenaline. She glanced at his face, noting the increased respiration, the dilation of pupils, and the subcutaneous twitch of the muscles in his hand. Sooj lunged for her weapon a half-second after she extended her hand to intercept his. She caught his wrist and squeezed.
Bone cracked, and the adept shrieked. 6-Friest felt a moment of pity, as the other survivors reacted with predictable hostility. Autoguns bobbed up, even as their wielders were cut down by the carbines of the rad-troopers. In moments, the last survivors of Kotir-8 were so much inert matter. All save Sooj. She looked down at the adept.
He’d fallen to his knees, his wrist still trapped by her grip. He cursed her, even as he flailed at her with his free hand. She looked down at him. ‘You would not have survived exposure to us, adept,’ she said. ‘Your moment has come, whether at the claws of the tyranids, or from the slow dissolution that come with the radiation that is our blessing and burden. Be at peace, and know that your name will be remembered, in the record of this event.’ She reached down and caught hold of his head. ‘The machine will endure.’
Then, with a single, sharp motion, she snapped his neck. It was a small mercy, but one she was only too happy to provide. Sooj had served faithfully, and well, after all.
The alarms fell silent. She looked towards the doors and shivered as the neural strand connecting her to her combat-maniple shuddered. 6-Friest felt 9-Jud’s death through its quivering filaments. She felt the heat that washed over him, consuming his organic components and cooking his brain within its shell of bone and metal. His last thought pulsed across the surface of her mind before flickering into static. ‘Like the breath of Mars,’ she murmured. He’d always been a bit of a poet, she thought, as she turned towards the heavy bay doors. Something slammed against the metal, causing it to distend and bulge.
The Omnissiah's Chosen - Peter Fehervari Page 8