The Master of Mankind
Page 26
‘You should have agreed without the need for such assurances,’ Diocletian replied, feeling the first stirrings of real anger. ‘I suggest you watch your words, priestess. Your Omnissiah has need of you. The covenant between Mars and Terra takes primacy over all else.’
One of the Archimandrite’s eye-lenses rotated, projecting the crisp, miniature hololithic image of Sister Kaeria. Diocletian knew at once what the image file was: an archived file from the internal picters of Fabricator General Zagreus Kane. The recorded voice overlaying the image confirmed it.
‘The Mechanicum will supply your war on this single condition – the Omnissiah Himself once spoke of a route within this alien webway that reaches back to Sacred Mars. Adnector Primus Mendel named it the Aresian Path. No matter the cost, no matter the effort, you will see it reinforced and held, ready for use once the Omnissiah’s Great Work is completed. Even if thousands of other routes and passages must fall, you will ensure that the way to Mars remains in Imperial control.’
The image of Kaeria signed her agreement, and blinked out of existence.
‘As evidenced,’ the Archimandrite said, ‘assurances were made.’
‘Made when holding Calastar was practically guaranteed, Martian. Now I say again, we will do all we can, but we all have a duty that stands above personal desire. Evacuating the Unifiers and their supplies takes priority. They are the Emperor’s own adepts and apprentices. We will begin a convoy but it will need defending at all times. The enemy is likely to infiltrate the Mechanicum’s tunnels through any number of capillaries.’
Several of the Mechanicum’s officers – skitarii, princeps, Unifier priests and priestess – looked at one another. The air fairly thrummed between them. Diocletian wondered just what noospheric communion was taking place that the unaugmented present weren’t privy to. It felt argumentative, though Diocletian only had the subtlest of body language reactions to judge by.
One of them snorted in weak amusement. Arkhan Land sat slouched in a corner, holding a ration pack’s fluid phial in shaking hands. He turned haunted eyes upon the others, scarcely noticing them, still seeing the madness he’d witnessed outside in the city.
‘I see now why the Omnissiah kept the Great Work bound in absolute secrecy. To avoid this – this pathetic conflict of mortal minds.’
The Archimandrite turned to stare at the hunched technoarchaeologist. The cyborg construct’s eye-lenses meted out cold accusation, but the man did nothing but snort again, looking away. His hands hadn’t stopped shaking for an hour. Even his irritating ape-creature was bizarrely solemn, sat at his side.
‘We’ll begin evacuation preparations,’ Diocletian said at last. ‘Holding the tunnels is what matters now. We will give them the city, and nothing more.’
Zhanmadao took a breath. ‘Dio, even holding the tunnels may be beyond us for more than a few weeks. The host besieging the city has every chance of driving us back to the Dungeon.’
‘Unacceptable,’ repeated the Archimandrite.
We’re wasting time. Diocletian was on the edge of unmannerly cursing when another hololith appeared at the table. This one wore damaged armour plating, spinning a spear in gloved hands. Weapons and talons slashed into view at the edges of the holo’s range, but the warrior weaved aside from every blow he didn’t block. Bladed replies lashed back, killing the wielders of those weapons. The warrior didn’t break stride. He was always moving.
‘Reload!’ the holo called out, laden with distortion. He drove his spear into the ground by his feet and immediately pulled his meridian swords, turning and whirling into another phase of his arcane battle-dance.
‘Compliance.’ A servitor’s voice, toneless and obedient. The warrior moved away from the spear, it vanished out of the holo’s range.
The swords rose and fell, twisted and parried, thrust and hacked. Blood rained past him in flickering sprays. Endlessly came the crash of energy fields ramming against ceramite, warping the reinforced metal, mangling it, shattering it. The figure of a colourless Space Marine staggered into the holo’s view, tumbling to the ground with a blade through his spine. The warrior severed the falling legionary’s head from his shoulders without looking, already turning to meet another foe.
‘Reloaded,’ came the augmitted, mechanical voice again. The warrior sheathed both blades in a smooth motion, weaved aside from a swinging flail, which missed him by a metre, and reached upwards. He caught the spear in the air, bringing it down in another parry. He disengaged with a roar of effort, throwing his unseen opponent back. The guardian spear banged three times, spitting three bolts in succession, only to spin with another frenzied howl of abused energy fields as the blade punched through another legionary’s chestplate. The spear tore viscera and shards of armour free in a wrenching burst as he yanked the blade back, one-handed. His other fist discharged a laser-spit of digital weaponry from his clenched knuckles, lascutting through the faceplate of a charging, crested Legion officer.
Another fighter joined him in the whirling dance. A cloaked female wielding a circuit-lit zweihander, guarding his back one moment, then guarded in kind a moment later. They couldn’t have looked more unalike – fighting with utterly different styles, at different speeds; male and female, gold and black; towering genhanced warrior in auramite and regal huntress in armour that honoured the most ancient eras of warfare. Yet they moved in savage harmony, never coming close to harming one another. They fought in the spaces created by each other’s fighting styles. She hacked overhead when the long spear whirled aside, killing the enemy that fought to slip within his guard. He thrust over her shoulder, slaughtering the foes that sought to move behind her.
Zephon’s pale eyes narrowed, his concentration absolute, taking in the ballet of violence unfolding before him. He had seen the warriors of the Ten Thousand fight before, albeit only in grainy pict footage. He had heard the countless unpoetic comparisons describing their uniqueness as the perfect exemplar of a process that became diluted and rushed to mass-produce the Legiones Astartes. Yet he had never seen them in battle against Space Marines. This warrior reaved through them – reaved through Zephon’s cousins from the rebellious Legions – cutting them down, butchering them the way Zephon himself had massacred his way across human and alien battlefields.
How easy, all of a sudden, to see how Constantin Valdor, the Captain-General of the Custodian Guard, was considered an equal of the primarchs themselves in matters of blade-work, when any Custodian could be as skilled as this.
Had the Emperor foreseen this? His thoughts curdled, growing gravid with treason. Is this what they were made for? This annihilation? This slaughter of legionaries?
‘We’re here, Dio,’ came the Custodian’s words between panted breaths.
Diocletian inclined his head to the embattled holo. ‘Salutations, Ra. And greetings as well, Commander Krole.’
Kaeria watched the first ship descend through the atmosphere. Black even before the scorching of its heat shielding, its hull was unchanged by the shroud of fire that wrapped it.
The command deck of the Magadan Orbital was never quiet. Servitors limped and murmured and bleated code at one another. Robed adepts spoke in austere tones, avoiding all eye contact as they worked the controls, the buttons, the levers that kept the station in a geostationary orbit above the Imperial Palace. Vox-stations rasped. Doors whirred open and ground closed.
Kaeria was the silence at the storm’s heart. She watched through the great oculus as another of the Black Fleet made planetfall. There was something beautifully dramatic in how a vessel born within the void caught fire when it sought to land for the very first time. The flames of atmospheric entry served as Terra’s welcoming embrace.
Another figure joined her upon the viewing platform. Kaeria didn’t need to turn to see who it was.
The Mistress of the Black Fleet greeted her with clicking talons.
Your melancholic gazing is unb
ecoming, signed the older woman.
Kaeria rejected the rebuke, her hands weaving a response. Melancholy has no place within me. You mistake dread for discomfort.
Dread?
Yes. Dread. That it should come to this.
We have always known the drama may unfold in this manner. The preparations have been in place since the very first of us forswore the use of her tongue.
Kaeria met the other woman’s stare for a moment, seeking some semblance of emotion, of perspective, beneath the assured facade. She saw no evidence of either.
How resolute you are, she signed, and then gestured to the descending ships. How can you look upon this without fearing what it portends? The Imperium will never be the same with what we do here today.
The Mistress of the Black Fleet stroked her metal talons along the guardrail, eliciting a whispery whine of iron against iron. She replied after lifting the claws from the cold metal.
We are not the engineers of the Imperium’s change, Sister. We merely react to it. The Imperium changed when Horus set his blinded eyes upon a throne he does not deserve.
Kaeria’s eyes burned with sick amusement. You absolve yourself of the malice we are willingly undertaking.
We do nothing but the Emperor’s bidding. This is His will. This is what must be done. Varonika drew back her hood, baring her olive features. She had the dusky melange complexion of most Terran natives, and her eyes were a dark enough brown to be black. There was curiosity in her eyes, the expression not unkind. One thousand souls, Kaeria. Is that really so many? Is that such a sacrifice, weighed against the consequences of doing nothing?
Kaeria met the mistress’ eyes and felt a moment of shame. One thousand innocents, nervously awaiting the soulbinding they were falsely promised. One thousand men, women and children believing they go now to serve their Emperor.
Varonika’s clawed hands gestured a swift reply. And serve Him they will. Few souls in the entire empire can claim such purity of service. What is this resistance inside you, Sister? Have you become so enamoured of battle that you believe yourself above our true calling? You are a warden, Kaeria. Not a warrior.
For a time Kaeria watched the second ship descending, wreathed in atmospheric flame. Carrying its living cargo to their service within the Imperial Palace.
I am both now, she signed. Warden and warrior. The war has made us all both.
Varonika’s expression showed faint distaste. Perhaps so. I will leave you to your contemplation, Sister, and wish you well for your own planetfall.
Kaeria knew she should prepare herself soon. Her place was on the third ship. Wait.
Varonika waited, her eyes on Kaeria’s own.
One thousand souls, Kaeria signed. What do the calculations state? How long will they last?
The Mistress of the Black Fleet lifted her hood back into place, covering her silvering hair. They will burn for one day, she signed.
With that she turned and walked away, leaving Kaeria to watch the oculus alone.
One thousand souls today, Kaeria thought. And what of tomorrow?
Kaeria and Varonika Sulath converse in thoughtmark
Eighteen
Demigod of Mars
Evacuation
Let me not die unremembered
She was wounded. Hurting. Weary. But she was also a demigod, and demigods did not lament. They endured. They triumphed. They protected those who looked to them in worship.
She would never see home again. She would never leave this city alive. She knew these things. Fire burned in her bones. The souls inside her shouted and cried out and fought the flames.
She stood above the city, the equal of its wraithbone spires, and saw the war taking place between the faithful and the faithless at her feet. In true wars there was always dust from marching feet and falling buildings, great clouds of it that occluded vision and forced her to rely on the blind echolocation of her auspex or the hunting sense of her heat-maps. There was no dust here. The towers of alien bone fell in brittle shatterings. The lesser buildings gave way beneath her tread like flawed glass. No dust. No dust at all.
The mist, though. The mist was worse than the dust. It came and went without pattern or warning. Even when thin, it sent back false echoes of prey with low-power passive echolocation pulses. When thick, it masked the heat signatures of other engines, friend and foe alike, in a veneer of cold emptiness.
The golden mist was thick now. She couldn’t see those that hunted her.
She lit her void shields, her internal generators layering them the way a colony of spiders labours together to weave a web.
Be silent, she told it. Ignatum marches.
The Scion of Vigilant Light strode through the mist, war-horning to those beneath her tread. Martian hoplites scattered in tactical dispersion as they had thousands of times before. They knew how to wage war in the demigod’s shadow.
The Titan streamed with smoke as she marched. Victory banners swayed beneath her gunlimbs, far above the heads of her loyal infantry. These pennants and standards of red and black marked the Scion as one of Legio Ignatum’s ducal engines, eminent in name and deed. The extinct wasp of Ignatum showed in scratched and battered pride upon her carapace.
When she had first joined this theatre of war, she had felt loose and unready. Her worshippers had reassembled her within this alien city and told her to guard them against ghosts and phantoms that scarcely registered on her sensors. Active auspex chimes were worthless; they reverberated throughout the wraithbone buildings, mis-echoing and false-bouncing until the Scion’s systems insisted the entire city was alive and moving.
The frustration of her human crew had bled through to the Scion’s spirit, infecting her with impatience. But she had learned, and so had they. She had learned to rely on low-grade auspex pulses and to fight via naked vision. She had learned to destroy enemies that barely seemed there at all. And, most recently of all, she learned the enemy had brought demigods of their own.
They had wounded her in these last days, wounded her badly. The demigod was hurting now. She was destined to die today, but not yet. Not yet.
Her brothers and sisters were less sanguine regarding her fate. The arguments had raged between crews until she had silenced them with her decision. To die here was an honour. She would not release her crew to flee with the others. She would stand until she could stand no longer, selling her life to buy time for those fated to fight another day.
It was the newest voice among her pantheon of pilots and crew and worshipful servants. Home was the sanctum-forges on Sacred Mars, a world riven by civil war, where the foundry fires were now lifeless and cold. Home was the mountain fortress where traitorous souls had plundered the wealth and lore of Ignatum in the Legio’s absence. Home. The very word set the demigod’s heart-reactor seething with overburning plasma.
What was she to do? She couldn’t run with the others. She was to die here, selling her life to save theirs. Such sacrifice shouldn’t have to endure homesick keening in spurts of treacherous code.
Be silent! She refused to die with such puling weakness whining in her senses. Onwards she strode. Street by street, lending indifferent rage from her district-killing cannons when a phalanx of tanks or a lone beast of considerable size presented itself as a ripe target.
Presently she halted in her hunt. Minutes later. Hours later. She did not know and it did not matter. She judged the passing of time only by the pain she suffered and the destruction she inflicted.
Her void shields rippled with the incidental fire of infantry shrieking around her feet. This, she ignored. The pain of the fires inside her had dulled to the ache of abused metal. This, she was grateful for.
A low-grade auspex ping rippled outwards, bleakly blind. Her heat-maps showed cold. The Scion panned along her waist axis, staring into the golden mist.
Her pilots worked the controls, not only watching but listening to the calls and cries of their kindred in the skull-cockpits of the Scion’s brothers and sisters.
At her ankles, her hoplites engaged the phantasms, laying in with spears and shields and brief eruptions of volkite anger. The Scion sounded her war-horn once more and moved on. She followed the calls of her siblings.
Onwards. Onwards. Onwards.
She felt her brother die. His agony and fury vented across the communion-link that existed outside any general vox-web. By the time she reached him, he was gone.
Ilmarius Novus lay dead in the street, the Warhound’s shattered form driven face-forwards into the ground with a supreme lack of dignity. The thousand punctures of overwhelming bolt penetration/detonation told the tale of how he had fallen.
His core was still lit; that a critical detonative event hadn’t occurred was something of a grim miracle. Not that it mattered to Ilmarius Novus one way or the other. His armour plating was a blackened ruin. His gunlimbs were reduced to bent wreckage. The last and truest indignity had come after his killer had left; his head had been cracked open with power weapons and hand-held meltas, in order for enemy infantry to drag the soft and vulnerable crew away from their hardplugged thrones.
They hadn’t gone far. Their bodies lay like spilled tears by the Warhound’s cheek, their own cranial wounds showing the manner of their execution. She knew this because her crew knew this. Hardplugged together, they were her and she was them.