Priests of Mars

by Graham McNeill

  ‘You see?’ said Emil. ‘This is how you get around a ship this big. No teleporters required.’

  ‘The Speranza is fitted with numerous teleport chambers,’ said Blaylock. ‘Intended for both external and internal use, though to use them to travel within the bounds of the ship is considered wasteful and only ever employed in emergencies.’

  ‘Good to know,’ said Adara, turning to Sylkwood in the back. ‘Any chance we get something like this mag-lev fitted to the Renard?’

  Sylkwood laughed. ‘What would be the point? You can walk from one end to the other without breaking sweat.’

  ‘You can,’ said Adara. ‘You’ve got augmetic legs.’

  Sylkwood smiled and looked away, admiring the sheer scale of industrial architecture contained within the Speranza’s hull. They’d already passed fog-belching refineries, chemical silos, flame-lit Machine temples, skitarii barracks, laboratory decks, training arenas, vast power plants with skyscraper-sized generators that spat coils of azure lightning, and building-sized structures that Magos Blaylock informed them were voltaic capacitors capable of running the vessel’s mechanical functions for a month.

  A towering vehicle hangar was filled with numerous gargantuan cathedrals of industry mounted on track units the size of hab-blocks, construction engines that could raise a city in under a day and demolition machinery capable of levelling a moderately-sized hive in half that. Folded solar collectors filled bay after bay, concertinaed like corrugated fields of black glass entwined with intricate gear mechanisms and looping arcs of insulated power relays.

  One hangar was so vast it took them several seconds to traverse its length, but in that time, Roboute and his crew caught a glimpse of the mightiest war-engines of the Adeptus Mechanicus.

  The god-machines of Legio Sirius boarded the Speranza, hunched over like age-bowed giants as they emerged from their transports with wary footfalls. Each war-engine was a towering behemoth of destruction, an avatar of the Machine-God in his aspect of the Destroyer.

  ‘Titans!’ cried Adara, pressing himself to the glass at the sight of the colossal machines.

  One engine with squared shoulders and legs like hab-towers – a Warlord – dwarfed the others, the armoured segments of its grey and gold carapace shifting like time-lapsed continental plates as it took thunderous steps towards its transit cradle. Such a machine could conquer worlds single-handedly, it could lay waste to cities and entire armies. Such a machine was worthy of worship, and it had no shortage of devotees. Thousands of robed adepts supervised the embarkation of the Mechanicus battle-engines, each one an honoured servant and a genuflecting devotee of these mobile temples to destruction.

  Smaller engines followed the Warlord like a hunting pack, a Reaver and a pair of loping Warhounds. Their weapons snapped up to follow the passage of the mag-lev as howled threats brayed from their warhorns.

  The Titans were soon lost to sight as the mag-lev passed through a metres-thick bulkhead, but it wasn’t long before they caught sight of yet more of the Kotov Expedition’s armed might. An embarkation deck swarmed with armoured vehicles, caught in what looked like an almighty snarl-up. Super-heavies were locked in with main battle tanks, armoured fighting vehicles and lurching walkers that stopped and started as space opened up for them to move.

  ‘Good luck sorting that mess out,’ noted Emil, before twisting in his seat to grin at Pavelka. ‘Hey, Ilanna, I thought the Mechanicus didn’t allow for things like that.’

  Pavelka looked down at the hopelessly entangled armoured regiment.

  ‘They are not Mechanicus,’ she said. ‘Regimental markings identify them as the 71st Cadian Hellhounds. From the dispersal pattern of the gridlocked vehicles, it seems clear the Guard units have not followed Mechanicus loading protocols.’

  ‘Perceptive of you, Magos Pavelka,’ said Blaylock. ‘I have just compiled a statistical analysis of the trapped vehicles and exloaded it to the ranking logister. Would you care to peruse it?’

  Pavelka nodded and Roboute saw a flicker of light behind her eyes as the data packet passed invisibly between the two magi. Pavelka’s lips parted as she processed the inloaded schematics, smiling in appreciation of Blaylock’s calculations.

  ‘Masterful,’ she said. ‘The code-sequencing of the movement algorithms is a work of art.’

  Blaylock had no face Roboute could see, but the emerald light beneath his voluminous hood pulsed with a binaric acknowledgement of Pavelka’s high praise.

  The entangled vehicles were soon lost to sight as the mag-lev sped onwards, and Roboute noticed the cavernous halls they travelled were becoming more ornate, less functional. Bare steel and iron gave way to chrome and gold, clanking machinery to banks of humming cogitation processionals. Servitors became few and far between, replaced by robed Mechanicus adepts and gaggles of their retinues.

  If they had just passed through the guts of the Speranza, now they were drawing near its higher functions, the grand temples and the seats of sacred knowledge.

  ‘Cadians, eh?’ said Adara with an appreciative nod. ‘We’re travelling in esteemed company.’

  ‘Titans? Cadians? Makes me wonder what this Kotov is expecting to find beyond the Halo Scar,’ said Emil.

  ‘Archmagos Kotov also counts the Adeptus Astartes as part of his Complement of Explorators,’ added Magos Blaylock. ‘High Marshal Helbrecht himself sends a battle squad of his finest warriors to stand with Mars.’

  ‘Really?’ said Adara, wide-eyed and almost bursting with excitement.

  ‘Indeed. The compact between the Priesthood of Mars and the Adeptus Astartes is an ancient and respected bond,’ said Blaylock. ‘The High Marshal recognises that.’

  ‘Space Marines,’ said Sylkwood, leaning back and lighting a lho-stick with a solder-lance embedded in the metallic fingertip of her left hand. ‘I’ve fought alongside Space Marines. Good to have at your side, but best to keep out of their way, Adara.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked the youngster.

  Sylkwood leaned forwards, resting her elbows on her knees as she blew a cloud of blue smoke.

  ‘They’re not like us,’ she said. ‘They might look like us, sort of, but trust me, they’re not. Like as not, they’ll ignore you, but if you’re really unlucky you might accidentally offend one and end up on the wrong end of a mass-reactive.’

  ‘Kayrn’s right,’ said Roboute. ‘Stay away from Space Marines if you know what’s good for you.’

  ‘I thought you Ultramar types were all about how great and noble the Space Marines are?’

  ‘The Ultramarines, maybe,’ agreed Roboute. ‘But even they’re a step removed from us. They don’t think like us. When you can take pain and inflict harm like a Space Marine, you start to look at everything in terms of how you can kill it.’

  ‘When all you have is a bolter and chainsword, everything looks like a target,’ added Emil. ‘Roboute’s right, if there’s Space Marines here, keep out of their way.’

  ‘There is only one Adeptus Astartes aboard at present,’ said Magos Blaylock. ‘Reclusiarch Kul Gilad joins us while his warriors remain sequestered aboard the Adytum.’

  ‘The Adytum?’ asked Roboute.

  ‘Their vessel, a modified rapid strike cruiser, designed for smaller expeditionary forces.’

  ‘I didn’t recall seeing a Space Marine identifier on the orbital manifest,’ said Emil.

  ‘The Black Templars have chosen to keep their vessel noospherically dark,’ explained Blaylock, not even trying to conceal his distaste at such an action. ‘Archmagos Kotov has granted them a degree of... latitude in observing Mechanicus protocols.’

  ‘I believe their warrior expeditions are known as Crusades,’ said Linya.

  ‘Just so, Mistress Tychon,’ said Blaylock. ‘Though due to the overtly martial aspect such a term might confer upon our expedition, Archmagos Kotov is disinclined to employ it.’

  ‘Her title is Magos,’ said Vitali Tychon. ‘I suggest you use it.’

  ‘Of course,’ said
Blaylock, inclining his head in a gesture of respect. ‘I employed the feminine honorific simply to differentiate between two individuals bearing the title of Magos Tychon.’

  ‘Mistress Tychon is an acceptable form of address,’ said Linya, accepting Blaylock’s gesture.

  Roboute grinned and slapped a hand on Blaylock’s shoulder, all hard angles and clicking joints, as the mag-lev sped towards a great golden cliff face stamped with a vast Icon Mechanicus, embossed gears, cogs and reams of binary code in praise of the Omnissiah.

  ‘Seems like you’re going out of your way to offend people today, Tarkis,’ he said.

  ‘Not at all,’ said Blaylock. ‘Perhaps mortals need to learn more of our ways as much as I need to learn of theirs.’

  Roboute laughed. ‘I think you and I are going to get on famously.’

  Microcontent 05

  An irising hatch, only fractionally larger than the diameter of the mag-lev, opened in the golden escarpment, and the speeding compartment punched through into a wide processional of polished steel and glittering chrome. Numerous induction rails terminated at an elevated rostrum, and several gently humming mag-levs were already berthed at the terminus.

  Arching beams soared overhead, absurdly slender to support such a grand ceiling. Vaulted and coffered with gold and adamantium, grand artworks in vivid pigments told the history of the Mechanicus with emotive artistry that was out of keeping with what Roboute thought he knew of the Martian priesthood. Between tessellated stained-glass windows, statues the equal of the god-machines in height flanked the hexagonal-tiled floor, and lines of power squirmed across its patterning.

  Electricity as blood, power as life-force.

  Three transports awaited. Two were elevated sedans, rising high on six articulated limbs, with narrow-backed chairs like thrones and an elaborately-artificed servitor with bronze skin hardwired to the rear. The third was a bulky armoured vehicle based on the ubiquitous Rhino chassis, but modified to be larger and bristing with weapon mounts, strange antennae and numerous blister pods of unknown function. The augmented Rhino’s hull was emblazoned with the same skull-and-lightning-bolt symbol that was stamped onto the skitarii’s breastplates.

  ‘Impressive,’ said Roboute, craning his neck to look up at the gilded mosaics and vividly rendered murals. ‘I didn’t think the Mechanicus went in for ornamentation.’

  ‘We recognise the need to occasionally display status,’ said Blaylock. ‘It never hurts to remind others that the Adeptus Mechanicus is an indispensable facet of the Imperium, one with a lengthy and honourable history. We are all cogs in the Great Machine, Captain Surcouf.’

  ‘But some cogs are bigger than others, eh?’

  ‘The builders of the Speranza were of a different age, one where such ostentation was the norm.’

  ‘It’s like I imagine the Emperor’s palace to look like,’ said Adara.

  ‘This entire vessel is a palace, a temple to the God of All Machines,’ said Blaylock, switching his attention to the younger man. ‘Its operation is an act of devotion, its existence a display of faith and belief. To serve aboard such a holy link to the past is to commune with the Omnissiah himself.’

  ‘It’s incredible,’ said Pavelka. ‘We’re honoured.’

  ‘I’ve seen grander,’ said Emil. ‘The Temple of Correction... now that’s architecture.’

  ‘Architecture? I’m not talking about physical structure,’ said Pavelka, entranced by what she saw.

  ‘Then what are you talking about?’ asked Emil.

  Pavelka shot him a puzzled glance, before remembering that neither Roboute nor Emil could discern noospheric data streams when disconnected from the Renard’s data engines.

  ‘The air is alive with knowledge,’ she said. ‘It’s all around us, streams of invention and cascades of sacred algebraic construction. History, quantum biology, galactic physics, black hole chemistry, monomolecular engineering, fractal algorithms, bio-mechanical cognisance... You could spend a dozen lifetimes and you’d only ever know a fraction of what’s contained here.’

  ‘I can calculate how long it would take to process it all if you like,’ offered Blaylock.

  ‘Thank you, but I’m happy for it to remain a wonderful mystery,’ said Roboute, climbing onto the elevated sedan and sitting on one of the thrones. ‘Shall we go? We don’t want to keep the archmagos waiting, now do we?’

  ‘Of course,’ agreed Blaylock, ascending to the sedan with a subtly altered gait that suggested that whatever form of locomotion he employed was no longer biological. Emil and Adara joined them, lugging the stasis chest between them, while Magos Tychon, Mistress Tychon, Pavelka and Sylkwood took the second. The skitarii warriors took the upgraded Rhino, and its weapon mounts swung smoothly up as the crew ramps slammed shut.

  With no audible command being given, the sedans rose to their full height and began walking down the length of the vaulted processional. Their movement was like that of an ocean-going vessel in a gentle tidal sway, and Roboute liked the grand nature of this mode of transport. They passed gilded statues of honoured magi, and Blaylock regaled them with their identities and achievements.

  Here was Magos Ozimandian, who had unlocked the STC engine fragment of Beta Umojas, which had led to the five per cent paradigm shift. Across from him – or her; it was often hard to tell – was Magos Latteir, whose archaeovations in the NeoAlexandrian atom-wastes had uncovered the binary records of the First Algorithmatrix. Latteir stood shoulder to shoulder with the stoic form of Magos Zimmen, originator of Hexamathic Geometry. Emil and Adara soon lost interest, but Roboute continued to feign attention as they rolled and swayed towards a sloping wall at the far end of the processional. Angled away from them like a portion of an enormous pyramid’s buried flank, a towering portal of brushed smoke-grey steel led within, easily able to accommodate the height of even the largest battle-engine and the width of a tank company.

  Yet more cogs and gears were worked into its surface, but these were more than symbolic, and rotated with smooth precision as the doors swung slowly outwards. Gusts of oil-rich vapour gusted from within, together with a soft burr of binary hymnals. Roboute understood none of it, but the lilting machine language was strangely comforting.

  ‘The Adamant Ciborium,’ said Blaylock, revealing the identity of the structure in a blurt of binary as well as with his flesh voice. ‘Archmagos Kotov awaits.’

  The titanic strides of Lupa Capitalina were measured and precise, the mind at the controls one of cold-edged wisdom, hard-won in a hundred and thirteen engine engagements, including nineteen against multiple gross-displacement war-engines. Alpha Princeps Arlo Luth, the Wintersun, floated in milky-grey suspension, his foetal form pale as a spectre and withered like a premature infant. Looping implants trailed from his bisected torso, a silver wraith tail that plugged directly into the base of his spinal column and allowed him to control the drive mechanism of his Titan’s limbs.

  His eyes were sightless cataracts, sutured closed and linked via MIU to the surveyor and auspex suite embedded in the serrated crown of the Capitalina. She saw as a predator, a veteran of the hunt with scalding oil for blood and a keen eye for a prey’s weakness. Thousands of chanting tech-priests and robed acolytes surrounded her, together with enormous fuel tenders, ammunition haulers and the hundreds of vehicles required to keep the God-Machines in the field. The deck priests were his support crew and his worshippers, devotees come to welcome a living embodiment of their god aboard the Speranza.

  Canted binary hymns of greeting boomed from vox-trumpets in the vaulted ceiling, and gently swinging censers the size of battle tanks created a cloud-bank of aromatic oils that fell to the deck in a lubricating rain. Such a welcome was afforded to only the mightiest avatars of the Machine-God, and choral chants of the Legio’s battle honours and its heroic princeps echoed throughout the hangar on a repeating algorithmic cycle.

  Luth had no time to bask in their adulation, but he did not ignore it.

  Ferromort, the Red Ruination h
imself, Grand Master of Sinister, had said it best.

  Despise infantry if you must. Crush them underfoot, by all means. But do not ignore them. Battlefields are littered with the wreckage of Titans whose crews ignored infantry.

  Luth knew from bitter experience how easy it was to forget that these scurrying creatures could hurt him. His armoured pelt still bore the scars of the acids, bilious venoms and digestive juices of the tyranid swarms that had almost brought him to ruin amid the night-shrouded ice forests of Beta Fortanis. Lupa Capitalina rumbled beneath him, and he angrily shook off the memory as he felt its displeasure. No one liked to be reminded of their defeats, least of all a Warlord Titan of Legio Sirius.

  He followed the blinking lights on the deck, the transit corridor assigned to him by the Mechanicus devotional logisters that would lead the towering engine to its inertia-cradle. The Capitalina chafed at being so trammelled, but Luth pressed his will down upon her, cautioning against allowing her ire to manifest beyond a few reactor rumbles and a low growl from her warhorns.

  The embarkation deck was a titanic space, as befitted the god-machines of Legio Sirius, honoured engines whose enduring frames had been laid down in the polar temples of the Verica VII forge world. Ten inertia-cradles occupied the far wall of the deck, enormous restraints that would couple the Legio’s engines to the Speranza on the long journey between the stars, too many for the remaining engines of Sirius. That more than half of the cradles would remain empty was a knife in Luth’s guts.

  Just to set foot aboard a vessel as ancient as the Speranza was an honour. It should be Luth and the rest of Sirius singing praises to its unimaginable legacy. With every step the Lupa Capitalina took, he could feel the enormous power and unbreakable strength that lay at the heart of the Ark Mechanicus. Its age was immense, its machine-spirit like none other he had known.

  Only a princeps, a warrior so intimately conjoined with the Omnissiah, could truly understand the living soul of this vessel. Thousand of machines had become one with this craft, an incredible lineage of technology that stretched back through the mists of time to an age where entire fleets of such awesome vessels plied the stars in the name of exploration and progress.