Perturabo: Hammer of Olympia

by Guy Haley

  He raised the cup and ostentatiously downed his wine. Perturabo gave him a level stare.

  ‘So then,’ said Dammekos with a triumphant smile, as Adophus’ unconscious warrior was dragged away. ‘Shall we discuss the terms of our alliance?’

  FIVE

  A QUESTION OF TIME

  999.M30

  THE IRON BLOOD, GUGANN ORBIT

  The command chamber was one of the few places on the Iron Blood possessing windows, though even these were small, narrow lancet slits trapped between the vaulting iron beamwork. Iron skulls were stamped into the surfaces of the beams and the panels of the walls, their edges reflecting the dull light of the Sak’tradan suns and the lurid yellow of Gugann. It was a place devoid of human softness. Birds housed in cages dangling from the apex of each of the beams’ arches brought a touch of the organic to the chamber’s hardness, but their presence was an afterthought, or perhaps a lingering residue of something that had once been and had not quite perished.

  Perturabo, primarch of the Iron Warriors, looked down upon the Mechanicum delegation framed before him by the three triarchs of his Trident. All members of the Mechanicum party had committed acts of gross self-mutilation upon their own bodies. They were a motley collection of machine parts and withered flesh, hideous chimerae draped in the black habits of the Odense forge masters, as if fine doth and neatly worked insignia could draw the eye away from what they had done to themselves.

  None of them would have passed for a human being upon Olympia. One was a hulking thing with six arms, another a brain in a glass blister surrounded by legs. What infuriated Perturabo most about their disfigurements was that they had all been undertaken to further their misguided quest for knowledge. Misguided not for its aims, which Perturabo had once pursued so avidly himself, but for its means. The Mechanicum was a cult, chanting praises to a deaf god, and Perturabo had no time for cults or gods, regardless of what the Emperor allowed the Martians to believe. They chased the fruits of reason by abandoning it.

  And they, like he, had wholly failed to find a solution to the problem of the hrud. They had made that clear enough.

  ‘The xenos warrens are too deep to bomb,’ Perturabo said. ‘The entropy fields projected by their bodies ruin the flesh of my warriors and destroy their wargear. My new path of action offers us a chance of success. I speak to you as your warleader, master of this fleet and primarch of the Iron Warriors, appointed by the Emperor himself to this position and entrusted with the prosecution of this war. And you are sure enough of your position to stand before me and tell me that you will not do what I ask?’

  Kilos The Unfettered - or ‘the Brain in a Jar’ as Triarch Forrix had dubbed him - clanked a step forwards. The disembodied organ drifted from side to side in the swirl of its nutrient fluids, and his limbs hissed as he resettled himself. If anything could be read from the positioning of the limbs of a cyborg pseudo-arachnid attached to a naked brain, Kilos was defiant. The Unfettered’s sensor package drifted up from the cowl of his armourglass jar, and three yellow eyes of varying sizes came level with the primarch’s own.

  ‘We will not do as you ask because it will not work,’ the magos said in a deep, disapproving voice. It was remarkably human-sounding for one so far gone from the path of flesh. ‘Your premise that a stasis device of sufficient power will counteract the entropic field generated by the temporaferrox xenos strain is overly simplistic.

  ‘We deem this theory inadequate and dangerous. It should not be acted upon.’

  ‘Indeed?’ said Perturabo darkly. Very few men dared tell him his ideas were too simple. He jutted out his chin, and the long cables plugged into his head like so many dreadlocks rattled against each other.

  ‘I have considered the same approach,’ continued Kilos the Unfettered, ‘but abandoned this path of reasoning because of my concerns about the interface between two violently opposing temporal loci. We see the effect the temporaferrox have upon the sun here, and the earthquakes we have endured on the planets the One Hundred and Twenty-Fifth Expeditionary Fleet has wrested from them. Application of stasis technology to the naturally occurring fields of the temporaferrox could exacerbate these effects by geometrically stepped orders of magnitude.’

  ‘It will not happen,’ said Perturabo. ‘I have performed the calculations myself.’

  ‘There is a degree of risk to your calculations that is unacceptable,’ said the Unfettered. ‘You are a primarch, my lord, but enslaved to the flesh. I have retreated into realms of pure mathematics to test your theories. I found them… wanting.’

  Perturabo’s teeth ground. All his life he had suffered the same limited thinking from fools who thought themselves better than him. ‘They are not wanting. You simply do not understand.’

  ‘There are accounts from the Dark Age of Technology concerning the employment of temporal weaponry,’ said Kilos. ‘As far as it can be judged, the ancients shied from its usage.’

  ‘I have read these accounts,’ said Perturabo. ‘The ancients lacked the courage to use what they knew. I am no coward.’

  ‘They were cautious, not cowards,’ said Kilos.

  ‘You have read them, yes, I could have guessed,’ said another priest. Eagerly, he pushed his way through the delegation towards Perturabo’s throne, though his movement betrayed no motion of feet or other ordinary locomotion.

  ‘And you are?’ Perturabo demanded.

  ‘Magos-Temporis Tzurin Four,’ the speaker replied, metal hands opening wide as he bowed. He raised a hooded head, within which nothing could be seen but darkness.

  ‘Of course I have read them,’ said Perturabo in annoyance. ‘There are many things I have read and understood that you shall never know.’ His patience had been worn away by the Sak’trada Deeps campaign. He was tired of being underestimated. Never particularly tolerant of the Mechanicum, his dislike of their ways had transformed into fully fledged hostility.

  ‹Return to your place, or face disciplinary actions for Modus Unbecoming,› blurted the Unfettered in binharic speech.

  ‘Let him stay where he is!’ snarled Perturabo. The delegation tensed. They had all heard that the Lord of Iron understood their lightning-fast digital speech, but they could not believe it, and so it shocked them every time they were made aware of it again. ‘I am weary. Do not test my patience.’ He looked down at the magos. ‘Your specialisation is in matters temporal?’

  ‘Forgive me, my lord, for speaking out of turn,’ said Tzurin sycophantically, ‘but yes, I am an acolyte of time and its possible manipulation. Both are my area of expertise. The hrud fascinate me I believe that your plan might work.’

  ‘What makes you so sure?’ asked Perturabo. It was a simple mental exercise for him or any man of wit to switch viewpoints, and the only way to test all hypotheses correctly. The magi, with their blind obsession with dogma, were taken aback by the intensity of his question.

  Magos-Temporis Tzurin Four bowed his cowled head again. If he had any eyes, they were invisible beneath his high hood. His skirts squirmed with the motion of additional restless limbs.

  ‘Appropriate oil votives have been offered to the device you named. The machine is ancient, but functional. The portents are good. It will work.’

  Perturabo looked aside in distaste and thought a moment. ‘Is that all you can give me?’ he muttered. He looked through the windows. Windows were a vanity. War in space was uncompromising, mathematical, the relentless plotting of trajectories for munitions that could take hours to hit their targets. Viewports, windows and the rest only weakened the structural integrity of a vessel.

  One did not put windows in a castle wall.

  His view was restrictive, but he could imagine the whole of the scene beyond the ship’s hull as if he could see it. The 125th Expeditionary Fleet hung over the dun ball of the planet designated One Twenty-Five Twenty-Three - Gugann, as the ancients had dubbed it. The fleet appeared mighty, but the ships were emptying of men far too quickly. There were not enough recruits in the galaxy to reple
nish the losses he was suffering.

  The Gugann star writhed with temporal disturbance. When he consulted the hololiths and flatscreen displays to view them, Perturabo could not tell if the ships were where the instruments said they were, or if they had been there, or if they would be there in a few hours. The hrud’s effects on the normal run of cause and effect was impossible to model and wreaked havoc on his Legion and temper both. The Iron Warriors were the masters of logistics and abstract reasoning, but reasoning was no use when reason itself misbehaved. Coherent thought disintegrated into frustration as he stared at the sliver of the planet’s crescent visible through the lancet. Lightning flickered in repeating patterns through the sulphur clouds of the world. He lost himself in their play, trying without success to discern some useful pattern from it.

  ‘My lord primarch?’ prompted Tzurin.

  Perturabo’s head snapped around. He blinked, focusing on the magi. Their kind aspired to the flawless logic of machines, but they could never learn what the Lord of Iron had known instinctively since birth. They were weak like all men who needed faith. ‘Everybody but my Trident and Magos Tzurin out,’ he commanded. ‘My lord?’ said Kilos. ‘We have a number of tactical simulations we should like to present to demonstrate my concerns, and other solutions to the problem of the temporal fields that might—’

  ‘I said out!’ Perturabo bellowed in the Lingua Technis dialect of Odense ‘Tzurin, I will speak with you alone.’

  The delegation of priests stood around, looking at each other. They were almost certainly communicating on sub-vocal or electro-magnetic frequencies, the only way they could speak without Perturabo understanding, but their seeming indecision made them appear foolish. The primarch waited. Kilos’ limbs let out a long hiss that might have been interpreted as disapproval, and he turned ponderously around and clanked out. As one, the delegation departed the command chamber without further comment, taking their charts and devices with them.

  Tzurin was left alone before the throne.

  ‘Your religion is offensive to me,’ said the Lord of Iron without preamble ‘You proclaim your dedication to the pursuit of knowledge while babbling about spirits. There is a contradiction inherent to everything you do that pollutes whatever understanding you might wrest from your endeavours. Let me be clear before you speak again. I do not wish to know what signs in sacred oils suggest, or how the machines feel today, for whatever they tell you is a fantasy - at best the projection of your own optimism and convictions, at worst a wilful self-delusion.’

  ‘It is a shame you cannot be enjoined to share in the light of our creed, my lord,’ said Tzurin. ‘The Emperor himself welcomed us into the Imperium. The Omnissiah allows our religion when he bans all others because he sees its truth.’

  Perturabo snorted. ‘My father is not the messenger of your Machine God, no matter what you believe or what he allows you to think. His tolerance of your religion is expediency. You were too powerful to be subdued quickly, and your industry he desired intact,’ said Perturabo dismissively. ‘I am not interested in your hope, or your make-believe god, or any certitude other than that drawn from the application of fact and reason. I want you to justify why I should pursue this course of action with mathematics and logic, with no talk of the supernatural.’ He leaned forwards in his chair, his blue eyes intense. ‘And I want you to do it briefly.’

  Tzurin was as inscrutable as any high ranking magos. The Mechanicum techno-magi attached to Perturabo’s fleet learned quickly to tolerate his scorn.

  ‘We of the Cult Mechanicus feel sorrow that a mind such as yours, my lord, cannot be turned to the true light of the Omnissiah, for you are percipient beyond the measure of magi. We salute your ability.’

  ‘If you would bring a primarch into your church, why not try Ferrus, or Vulkan?’ said Perturabo with a sour laugh. ‘You will receive the same disdain from them. Stop your dissembling and answer my question. Concisely.’

  Tzurin bowed. ‘It would help if I were to fetch my hololithic demonstration. It alone describes the true effects of what you propose. With a few modifications—’

  ‘Words! Numbers!’ snapped Perturabo. ‘Are they so difficult a concept, or have you built prolixity into your mess of a body?’

  ‘Very well.’ Tzurin paused, rendering his complex prepared speech into the simplest form possible. ‘It will work. Your idea is sound. You are, however, if I may beg your indulgence, new to the esoteric field of temporal engineering. Your design requires some alteration to be successful.’

  ‘You can prove this?’ said Perturabo.

  Tzurin reached into his robes with a metal hand and pulled out a sheaf of papers marked, to Perturabo’s great relief, with nothing but numbers and algebraic symbols. ‘You propose the engagement of a stasis device suddenly, in the form of a bomb, if you will. If we are to take these planets intact as instructed, that cannot be so. You will appreciate that a gradual engagement of a stasis field will minimise the risks of disruption. The biofields of the temporaferrox are far weaker than our devices. They will be overwhelmed without risk to our army, but only if it is done the way I suggest. Your concept is sound, my lord - my own work is but a humble embellishment.’

  Perturabo waved the magos forward. Tzurin held out his notes to the primarch. Perturabo took them in his shovel-broad fingertips and leafed through them.

  ‘According to this, my plan would work with small numbers of the hrud. I see from your calculations that the dislocation effects increase dramatically with the number of hrud present.’ He read further. ‘I have miscalculated this.’ He shook his head at his own folly.

  ‘To one hexadecimal place, that is all.’

  ‘It is an error. You were right to bring this to my attention.’

  ‘Your idea will work, my lord. You will need to precisely calculate the distortion effect of the hrud, or you risk trapping your Legion in a null time field or blowing the entire planet to pieces. I have devised a machine to measure the cumulative effects of the xenos biofields. On page five, my lord, are the calculations behind its operation.’

  Perturabo turned to the page. He nodded in appreciation. ‘I see the field must be engaged during combat,’ he said.

  ‘Regrettably so.’

  The primarch read the pages again. Tzurin’s mathematics were cleanly beautiful. Only the skull-and-cog stamp of the machina opus at the bottom of every page spoiled his enjoyment of them.

  He had a thought. ‘Do not deceive me, magos. It will put my warriors at great risk to bring this device into the centre of the hrud.

  ‘If you intend to capture these things at the cost of my warriors’ lives, you will suffer. I will not put my men at risk for your gain.’

  Perturabo suspected this was the truth. Always men said one thing and meant another. Always they had one eye on their own gain. Never take a man’s first expressed intention as his genuine desire.

  ‘A live specimen would be a fortunate bonus - not my goal, my lord,’ wheedled Tzurin. ‘Though knowledge gained from such a capture would be of great interest to the Emperor, I am sure. We might unlock the secrets of chronaxic weaponry, or devise locus tempora to minimise the time distortions of warp travel.’

  ‘I am not concerned with your personal goals!’ shouted Perturabo. His voice rang around the command chamber. He lowered his tone.

  ‘I will take these worlds as the Emperor commanded, although I can see no good reason why,’ he added in a rare moment of candour. A long silence ensued.

  ‘I greatly desire specimens,’ said the magos. ‘I shall do as you ask, and the outcome of the mission will forever be at the forefront of my mind while I work, but I must insist that my collection of examples be allowed.’

  Perturabo’s features crowded in on themselves like thunderheads. Then, abruptly, he laughed. ‘I should reward those who refuse to bend. Why do you desire them so? It cannot purely be for the weaponry you might develop.’

  ‘Knowledge is my only desire, my lord!’ Tzurin said passionately. ‘I w
ish to know whence these creatures come.’ He paused. His long metal fingers twined and untwined. ‘My theories are considered improbable, heretical by some.’

  ‘There can be no heresy where the truth is concerned,’ said Perturabo.

  ‘Wisely said, my lord, though not all agree.’ Tzurin spoke quickly. ‘What are the temporaferrox, truly? It is my supposition that they do not experience time as we do, but live a-linearily.’

  ‘Explain,’ said Perturabo, intrigued in spite of himself.

  Encouraged, Tzurin went on. ‘My lord, it is my hypothesis that when the hrud migrate it is not through space that they travel, but through time. Consider this - previous contact with the species has always been in low numbers, until now. Perhaps they are gathering for some reason, but now, at this specific place in time, rather than here. Space may not be important for them.’

  ‘They fight fiercely for creatures to whom space means little,’ said Perturabo.

  ‘The position in time could be the reason, rather than the territory. Most likely it is both.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Perturabo, unconvinced.

  ‘Many of my brothers see them as xenos… But there is another possibility, one I would dearly like to test.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘That the hrud are not aliens at all,’ said Tzurin, ‘but some strain of humanity, perhaps from the far distant future, maybe the end of time itself.’

  Perturabo scowled. ‘That is madness. If that were so, why would they come here?’

  ‘Who can tell?’ said Tzurin. ‘Who knows what horrors await in the long, dark reaches ahead? Perhaps they see peace coming in our time, and gather here to enjoy the stability that the Imperium shall bring to the galaxy.’

  ‘Then they are fools. I see no peace,’ the primarch muttered. ‘Very well, Tzurin. The pursuit of knowledge is dear to my heart also. You may proceed and gather your samples. But if I believe the battle to be in any way jeopardised by your interests, I will kill you myself.’