Ultramarines

by Graham McNeill

  ‘Absolutely. We’ll assume ingress positions by twenty-one hundred hours local in the foothills of the Maidens, a kilometre from the forge-temple.’

  Kaetan consulted his chronometer. ‘That doesn’t leave us much time.’

  ‘Then we’d best move fast,’ said Telion.

  Kaetan’s squad made their way from the armoured clash at battle pace, leaving Antaro Chronus and the vehicles of the defence auxilia to continue the fight without them. Kaetan was right, they didn’t have much time, so Telion drove the Scouts hard, setting a murderous pace that tested even his fully developed Adeptus Astartes physique.

  They did not stop to rest or rehydrate, but kept pushing up the craggy haunches of the mountains. As darkness drew in, the Scouts reached the end of a shadowed valley that cut a ragged path towards the Maidens of Nestor. And there, atop a vast shelf of rock that was all that remained of a mountain planed flat, was the forge-temple of Votheer Tark.

  The Maidens of Nestor were all that remained of Quintarn’s tallest mountain. Named for the thousand priestesses who had hurled themselves from its cliffs rather than be taken prisoner by greenskin reavers, it had been razed flat by an orbital barrage and the molten rock sculpted into a monument to their sacrifice. Around the circular plateau, a thousand toothed fangs of glassy basalt reared up like a sharpened fang, one for each of the lost maidens.

  In the centre of the vast stump of the mountain, a churning mechanical edifice thundered like the engine of the most colossal starship imaginable. More machine than structure, its chaotic assembly was a nightmare of thundering pistons, fire-belching stacks, geysering overflows and arcing electrical towers. Streaming banners flapped in the nightmare thermals billowing around the mountain, and hellish runes of blasphemous entities were stamped on every piece of blood-soaked iron that had gone into the forge’s construction.

  A constant stream of heavy mass-carriers bore thousands of tonnes of captured machinery into the blackened forge, feeding the dark adepts within the raw materials with which to craft the battle engines of the Bloodborn warlord. Acrid smoke hugged the ground, a ready-made smokescreen.

  Telion halted the squad in the shadow of one of the Maidens and reached up to touch the smooth stone.

  ‘Maidens of Nestor, grant me a measure of your courage,’ he whispered. He felt eyes upon him and turned to see Kaetan watching him.

  ‘For luck,’ he said.

  ‘I didn’t think the great Telion needed luck,’ said Kaetan.

  ‘The more I fight, the luckier I get, but it never hurts to have a little spare.’

  Telion attuned his senses to the myriad noise patterns among the clanking acoustic mess surrounding the forge-temple. Even amid so horrific a place, there was rhythm and pattern. This forge was the domain of the Dark Mechanicus, twisted machine priests who melded the power of the immaterium with that of their blasphemous mechanical creations. And such abominations worked to the beat of artificial hearts. Beneath the cacophony of sound echoing from the mountainsides, Telion heard the regular booming crash of giant forge hammers, working in time with heaving presses and ore furnaces.

  He scanned the side of the temple, seeking an entry point. He found what he was looking for fifteen metres above the plateau, an intake flue that drew great gulps of polluted air to feed the furnaces within. A web of pipework snaked across the flanks of the structure like corroded vines, and they would be easy to climb.

  ‘Be ready,’ said Telion. ‘Move when I move and keep low.’

  He counted along with the percussive sounds of the forge, waiting until the crash of metal hammers echoed over the mountains before breaking cover and sprinting through the reeking vapours. Almost instantly he was running blind as the temple spewed a poison­ous breath and screamed with every one of its exhaust vents. These were birth cries. The forge was howling its pleasure and pain at the monstrous by-blows taking shape within its mechanised guts.

  Telion heard revving engines and the heavy footfalls of ironclad machines. He saw blurred outlines of hideously altered servitors and brain-cut labour brutes, slave creatures formed from random machine parts and organic debris.

  They ignored the Scouts, and Telion returned the favour.

  The soaring iron cliff-face of the forge loomed out of the noxious yellow fog, and Telion leapt onto the pipework. Hand over hand, he climbed to the flue and peered within. A slowly rotating fan filled the circular pipe, around two metres in diameter. Telion swung around the edge of the pipe, ducking beneath the slowly rotating blades, and ran towards a grilled vent.

  Shouldering his bolter as he ran, Telion fired four shots, one to each corner of the vent, and kicked it free of its mountings without breaking step. Behind the vent was a bizarre machine, part sucking compressor, part pumping mechanism fashioned from the upper torsos of steel-clad creatures that might once have been men.

  Behind the machine was mesh grille through which spilled a hellish red light and the thundering sounds of heavy industry. As Telion crouched at the grille, the rest of the squad emerged into the pumping chamber, immediately taking up defensive positions.

  ‘Through there,’ said Telion, tapping the grille with the barrel of his gun.

  Using their combat blades, Telion and Kaetan removed it from its mountings and set it aside. The Scouts slipped through the hole in the wall, dropping onto a tangled mass of ductwork. Pushing forward on his belly, Telion eased his way onto a corroded junction box and peered down into the hellish workings of the forge-temple.

  Orange light filled the cavernous space, a fane to a ruinous parody of the Machine God. Glowing ore vats bubbled like volcanic pits along the edges of the colossal chamber, and giant cauldrons of brazen iron suspended on iron chains drooled blood into each pool of molten metal. Hundreds of chanting priests in dark robes consecrated it with scrapcode prayers of impossible binary, and the stench of burned metal and scorched flesh caught at the back of Telion’s throat.

  Streams of molten bloodmetal were drawn along grooved channels towards hellish forge machines that rolled, pressed and shaped weapons of war. Foremost amongst those machines was a vast furnace that growled and hammered with animal hunger. And tending to this black altar of hellish creation was a towering abomination of steel and fire.

  ‘Emperor’s teeth,’ said Telion. ‘What in Guilliman’s name is that?’

  It had once been a Warhound Titan, but it had been brutally augmented with so many loathsome additions that its original builders would have wept to see it so degraded. The battle engine towered over the attendants that surrounded it, though it was hunched over like a bent-backed scribe. A complex arrangement of mechanised arms that were an indivisible mix of weapons and machine tools depended from its carapace.

  ‘A high priest?’ suggested Kaetan.

  ‘I think you might be right,’ said Telion. ‘I need to get down there.’

  ‘I just knew you were going to say that…’ sighed Kaetan.

  The Scouts gathered around Telion, and he outlined his plan of action with succinct clarity. Ambiguity would see them all dead. Worse, it would see the mission fail. Satisfied everyone in the squad understood their role, Telion moved off, finding a trunk-line of cabling that led to the floor of the temple. Blasts of superheated steam gusted from brass-rimmed vents, and Telion waited for a particularly thick cloud to drift past before sliding over the edge of the ducting to shimmy down to the ground.

  The heat on the floor of the forge was like the hottest desert Telion had ever known. The fumes from the bloodmetal pits sucked the moisture from the air and made it painful to take a breath.

  A Scout was proficient at creating havoc behind enemy lines, but Torias Telion was the master of mayhem. He had already identified the most vulnerable parts of the forge from the ductwork above, and knew exactly where to place his melta bombs. He moved swiftly and carefully through the chamber, keeping to the shadows where possible and maki
ng the most of the industrial cover.

  None of the black-robed priests ever saw him as they made their ritual circuits of the bloodmetal pits. With calm surety of purpose, Telion picked his way through the chamber, planting his melta charges behind junction boxes, buried within cable nodes or on the reverse of pressure gauges.

  The battle engine moved through the chamber with booming footsteps, devotional squalls of scrapcode burbling from augmitters mounted upon its carapace. Each static outburst was greeted with answering spurts of faulty machine noise from the priests. Telion could understand nothing of the noise, but registered no hostility or sense that he’d been discovered in the tonality of the sound.

  With only two charges remaining to be set, Telion moved towards the giant machine at the end of the chamber. Even as he drew close to the seething, hammering, machine, he knew something was wrong. Seething vents pulsed with fiery light, like windows into some hellish inferno. Though he knew it was ridiculous, Telion felt as though the machine was watching him, regarding his intrusion with a mixture of amused curiosity and irritation.

  He dismissed the thought, but the nagging suspicion that something was amiss would not leave him. Telion paused. He had not lived this long without trusting his instincts, and right now they were screaming at him that something was very wrong.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ said Kaetan’s voice over the vox-bead in his ear.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ said Telion. ‘Any change in the enemy?’

  ‘None I can see,’ replied Kaetan. ‘Wait… Telion! Get out of there!’

  Though he could see no obvious threat, Telion obeyed Kaetan’s warning without hesitation. He turned away from the great furnace and swiftly retraced his path through the forge-temple as a towering bellow of machine noise filled the temple, like a million vox-servitors screaming in unison. The bloodmetal pits spurted geysers of blazing ore in a raucous bellow of volcanic anger.

  Stealth would avail him nothing now, and Telion sprinted through the temple with his bolter pulled tight to his shoulder, the muzzle moving to match each motion of his eyes. Three of the robed priests appeared before him, wielding jagged trident-like weapons that buzzed with electrical fire. Telion put a bolt-round through the chests of the first and second as a sniper round from above pulped the skull of the third. He didn’t break stride and vaulted the corpses before they’d even hit the ground.

  ‘Go right,’ ordered Zeno in his ear.

  Telion obeyed and darted around a tangled webwork of pipes. Three more of the machine priests came toward him, but a missile impact blew them from their feet, leaving a searing afterimage on Telion’s retinas. Draco’s aim was as sharp as ever. Even over the howling, mechanical rage of the forge-temple, Telion heard the distinctive snap of sniper fire, punctuated by the deeper report of Agathon and Kaetan’s bolter fire.

  ‘Start blowing the charges!’ ordered Telion, shooting down another dark machine priest.

  ‘You’re still in the kill box,’ Kaetan pointed out.

  ‘Blow them or I’ll never leave it,’ snapped Telion.

  A pulse from Kaetan’s vox triggered the first of the melta charges, and a section of the metal plating surrounding one of the bloodmetal pits vanished in a searing column of incandescent fire. The pool of liquid metal poured out, like tidal flood through a disintegrating levee. Moving with viscous slowness, it oozed onto the floor of the forge-temple, spreading further with each passing second. Another charge detonated and yet more magma-hot metal surged from its confinement. A third and a fourth blew, and fires erupted all through the temple as pipes melted in the heat and sprayed flammable liquids and gasses in blazing arcs. Telion blasted a path through the disintegrating temple, ducking behind a rising nexus of cables and pipes as a rattling hail of bullets sprayed the ground before him.

  The machine priests had triangulated his position, and were closing the net on him. He rose from cover and sent a snap shot through the face of a robed priest that clattered through the temple on multiple legs like a mechanised spider.

  Twin bursts of fire drove him back to cover, and a ricocheting fragment of metal scored his cheek. Blood welled in the cut, then clotted almost instantly.

  ‘Clear me a path!’ ordered Telion.

  ‘We don’t have a shot,’ replied Kaetan.

  ‘Why not?’ demanded Telion, but the answer was soon revealed.

  Emerging from a rising wall of flames and smoke was the battle engine, its hideous bulk silhouetted in the glare of the temple’s dissolution. The towering machine’s carapace was daubed with dripping runes of blood, its head worked in the image of a grinning daemon. Its armour was studded with bladed spikes and corpses hung from its trophy racks.

  The cockpit glass shone red, and its weapon arms clattered as autoloaders slotted home magazine hoppers capable of holding thousands of heavy calibre rounds. Telion threw himself flat as the battle engine’s weapons unleashed their fury and a blitzing hurricane of shells tore a metre-deep trench in the metal floor of the temple.

  Telion sprinted through the furious storm of the battle engine’s wrath, hearing the booming thunder of its footfalls behind him. He fired without aiming, hearing the shots impact the titan’s voids with a bray of electrical discharge. The engine let out a keening screech as it came for him through the smoke. Telion knew he couldn’t outrun the machine and made the only choice he had left to him.

  He turned and ran towards it, firing as he went. Every shot struck the titan with sparks of void flare, but did nothing more. Its weapon arms depressed, the barrels shrieking as they spooled up to fire.

  Telion dived forward as the guns opened up, but he was within their minimum range and the weapons tore collimated trenches behind him. The machine halted, as though confused as to why its target was not destroyed. Telion rolled to his feet and slung his bolter as he leapt for the titan’s right leg. A blade sliced the armour at his shoulder as he gripped the leprously oily body of the battle engine, taking hold of its rivets, bolts and lubricant pipes to haul himself up.

  The engine spun, sensing the insect crawling over its body and Telion hung on for dear life as the machine crashed back and forth. Choking clouds of toxic smoke billowed around the engine as it thrashed to dislodge him. Shapes moved in the smoke, and Telion caught flashes of the robed priests crushed beneath the engine’s stomping feet.

  By the time he’d climbed halfway up the titan’s leg, Telion’s hands were bloody and torn, his armour battered and pierced. The engine slammed into an iron column, sending an arcing blaze of energy skyward as its voids buckled and blew out on its right side. The flash of its collapsing voids almost blinded Telion and the thunderclap of energy scorched his armour black. The underside of the princep’s compartment was almost within reach and Telion wrapped his arm around a hissing coolant feed line that throbbed with a repulsive peristaltic motion. He wedged his foot in a gap between armoured plates and drew his combat blade.

  Telion sliced along the length of the feed line and a disgusting, viscous substance spurted from the wound. Oily and reeking of rancid meat, it drenched Telion’s armour and he gagged, tasting the loathsome biological make-up of the fluid as it spilled down his face. The machine howled and swung around with such violence that Telion’s grip slipped and his blade spun away into the smoke.

  With his free hand, Telion reached down and plucked one of his last melta charges from his belt and rammed it into the ruptured feed line. A second followed, but before he could arm them, the battle engine smashed its body on the edge of a bloodmetal pool with a last, desperate heave.

  This time Telion couldn’t hold on, and he tumbled through the air to land with a bone-crunching impact on the lip of the pool. Lava heat burned his armour and burned the skin beneath the canvas of his fatigues. He fell away from the molten metal and kept rolling until he was clear of the madly thrashing battle engine. Its foot slammed down on the spot where he had landed, cracking t
he ground, and he rose to his feet with a grimace of pain.

  ‘Go forward ten metres!’ shouted Kaetan. The vox was lousy with static, but Telion obeyed as he heard the machine’s auto-loaders once again. Telion saw the cable run he’d climbed down and leapt onto it, shimmying up like a vine-creeping cudbear until he’d reached the level of the twisting ductwork.

  Kaetan’s Scouts were spread throughout the structural members, firing down into the gathered masses of machine priests. Bullet impacts on the wall behind them, and scorched patches where electro-throwers had struck testified to the ferocity of the overwatching battle they had fought.

  Telion jerked his thumb at Draco and shouted, ‘The voids on its right flank are down! I jammed two charges on its underside. The junction of its legs and princep’s compartment.’

  Draco understood immediately, and worked another missile into his weapon’s loading breech. With the missile launcher slung over his back, he slid down the pipes towards the ground. The battle engine let out a triumphant roar as its infernal detection gear finally pinpointed its prey. Its footsteps shook the temple as it loped toward them, and the whine of its guns cut through the air like a bloody knife.

  ‘Spread out!’ ordered Telion.

  He pulled his bolter tight into his shoulder and fired three quick bursts of fire at the titan’s unshielded flank, each shot exploding against the armoured carapace without effect. Sniper rounds blew off trophies and bulbous extrusions that might have been sensor arrays, but did little else.

  The machine’s upper body swivelled, its guns ratcheting up as they prepared to obliterate them in a hellstorm of shells. Time slowed to a crawl. Telion saw the firing arms pumping shell after shell into the spinning barrels. Before any of those shells were fired, Telion heard the whoosh of a missile launch, followed an instant later by a deafening bang of superheated air as two melta bombs exploded.

  Spun around by the force of the blast, the battle engine’s guns tore an arc of white-hot fire through the central columns of the temple. The machine lurched backwards like a punch-drunk fist-fighter, and gobbets of molten metal dribbled from its underside, like wax from the candles in the company chapel. Spurts of flaming oil and engine fluid sprayed in jetting arcs. The titan took a broken step forward. Metal squealed, and the machine stumbled as its wounded leg finally gave way. Off balance, the battle engine crashed to the ground with a thunderous howl of buckled metal and mechanised anger.