Hammer and Anvil

by James Swallow

  They gave Sister Verity an illuminator rod and a portable narthecium pack, and ordered her to assemble with the Battle Sisters. She shared a wary greeting with Ananke and Cassandra, both of whom were armed for combat. Without explanation, Sister Imogen arrived with Miriya at her side and they entered the great donjon once again.

  This time their route took them around the circumference of the keep, presently to a chamber where the floor had collapsed into the lower level, becoming a series of broken ramps. Verity thought about the catastrophic moment of subsidence she had seen in the courtyard and tensed. The motion of earth and rock like the waves of an ocean brought back memories she wanted to forget, of the planet Neva and the close press of danger.

  They descended carefully into the crypt levels, where the convent’s honoured dead were interred, past murky storage spaces packed one atop the other. Up above, the damaged rooms of the keep seemed strange and ghostly. Down here, it was an altogether different shade of gloom.

  Verity had seen the plans of the convent before they arrived on the planet, and she recalled the shape of the underspaces; they were radial arms extending out from beneath the keep, corridors fanning off into clusters of cell-like antechambers.

  Several of the passageways were impassable, clogged by stone and sand. They encountered three of these, and at each occasion Verity observed a flicker of distress on the face of Sister Imogen. Each time, the Celestian gathered up the data-slate she carried and made a series of notations. Her grim features were reflected in the glow of the device’s screen.

  They divided into smaller parties of three and swept all points of the compass. Verity went with Miriya and Cassandra, keeping out of the way of the two warriors as they picked their way up the length of a dusty corridor. And at last, she could hold in the question no longer.

  ‘What are we looking for?’

  Miriya halted, her boltgun’s muzzle dropping, the beam from the lamp slung beneath the barrel hanging like a solid spar in the mote-filled air. ‘That has not been made clear by the honoured Celestian.’

  ‘I imagine we’ll know it when we see it,’ Cassandra added, sarcasm colouring her tone. ‘As if there are not enough uncertainties about this mission as it already stands.’

  Miriya opened her mouth to speak, then thought better of it and said nothing. Verity saw her do so and touched her arm. ‘You have more to say on this.’

  They exchanged a loaded look. The two women, as disparate as their disciplines were, had been through much together. The bond of shared past hardships overcame what reticence there was in the Battle Sister. ‘Sepherina is keeping something from us.’ The reply was low, almost a whisper. ‘Imogen knows. There is more to this mission than just the return of Sanctuary 101 to the God-Emperor’s Light.’

  ‘You believe Tegas’s unscheduled excursion is part of it?’ said Cassandra.

  ‘No.’ She frowned. ‘I saw the canoness’s face when she heard of that. Whatever the questor is doing, he has his own agenda.’

  Cassandra sighed. ‘You make the waters muddier, Sister. Clarity fades even more.’

  ‘Aye,’ agreed Miriya. ‘And I dislike it. This smacks of subterfuge, and that is not the way of our church.’

  ‘I am sure the canoness has her reasons,’ offered Verity, but the conviction of the words was absent.

  Then without warning, the corridor was suddenly echoing with the flat concussion of gunfire.

  Miriya did not think; she only reacted.

  Her combat cloak crackled as she spun and raced back down the stone corridor, back towards the junction where they had broken off from the rest of the group. She did not need to look over her shoulder to know that Cassandra was on her heels, and Verity a few steps behind. The hospitaller was sensible and would remain out of harm’s way, but Miriya knew her well enough that she wouldn’t run and hide at the first sound of battle. The winsome young woman was strong that way, in a manner that many did not see on first meeting her.

  She ran into the cries of her Sisters. The crash of low-gauge bolt-rounds rumbled around the stone walls and muzzle flashes blasted staccato shadows across her sightline. Miriya heard the hiss and whine of heavy ballistic rounds coming up the tunnels from the far shadows.

  She glimpsed a crumpled figure lying in the dust, shrouded by a snarl of crimson cloak and tabard. The face was turned away from her, but the woman’s chest still moved; alive then, for the moment.

  Miriya dropped into cover behind a pillar and found Helena reloading her weapon. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Automata,’ snapped the other woman. ‘We came across a pair of them further down one of the radials. They failed to respond to voice commands, then opened up on us.’

  Chancing a look, Miriya bobbed her head out of cover and got shot at for her trouble. ‘Those are Sororitas issue gun-servitors. Our own machinery, trying to kill us?’ Even a glimpse had been enough to spot the familiar fleur-de-lys on the torsos of the war machines.

  ‘Malfunctioning,’ Helena corrected. ‘Their machine-spirits are unhinged.’

  ‘Return fire!’ Miriya turned at the sound of the shout and saw Imogen and a few of the other Sisters laying down an arc of shots, but the rounds did little but chip away at the layers of armour-plate of the mobile gun-slaves. Sat atop heavy tracks like miniature tanks, they were mobile turrets controlled by the remnants of human helots wired into metal bodies. But something had gone wrong here, and whatever defensive program they had been fed was still spooling through their broken minds. She wondered how long they had been down here, waiting since the convent’s fall for something new to shoot at. They were the first sign of life any of the Battle Sisters had seen on Sanctuary 101, and they were trying to kill them.

  ‘Rot these things,’ spat Imogen, her fire team pausing to reload. ‘We need a heavy cannon down here!’ She muttered something into the vox pick-up at her neck.

  Miriya’s lips thinned as she weighed their tactical options. The gun-servitors were making a slow but steady advance, and the women would be forced to fall back long before a Sister Retributor could reach them with a heavy bolter or a multi-melta; by then it would be too late for the injured Sororitas lying across the stone floor. The corridor was too enclosed to trust a flamer to do its work, and after seeing first-hand how fragile the stone walls here really were, grenades were out of the question. A close-in attack was the only option.

  ‘Hold this.’ Miriya glanced at Verity and thrust her bolter into the other woman’s hands.

  ‘Sister, what are you doing?’ asked Helena.

  Miriya reached over her shoulder and pulled at the grip of her combat blade. The long, blocky shape of her chainsword fell easily into her hands. The power rune on the hilt showed ready and she gave the throttle bar a quick squeeze. The tungsten-carbide teeth of the blade whirred, drawing Imogen’s attention from across the corridor.

  ‘Mistress,’ she told the Celestian, ‘if you will draw their fire…’ Miriya ended the sentence by hefting the sword.

  Sister Imogen was going to deny her request, she saw the emotion immediately in the other woman’s eyes. But then the Celestian paused, and nodded. ‘Show me,’ she told her.

  Miriya saluted with the chainsword and burst from her cover.

  Imogen’s orders were a cry of anger far behind her, and she was dimly aware of a hail of bolter-rounds shrieking through the dusty air as the Sisters opened fire. The closest of the automatons reacted sluggishly, soaking up the salvo as it dithered between targets, unsure if it should aim at her or at the ones pouring shots into its armour. Miriya ignored it and charged on towards the second gun-slave, which had no such doubts. Instead of human arms, it had gimballed frames that housed a pair of autocannons, each crested with an ornately machined drum magazine. The maws of the guns traversed to find her, stuttering as they went. The servitors stank of rust and decay. They had not been properly maintained in more than a decade, left to rot down here in the dry air, lubricants and unguents cooking off in their artificial veins.
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br />   The guns discharged at full power; one of them locked up almost immediately, a brass cartridge lodging to cause a stove-pipe jam. The dead cannon gave off a whining, grinding sound, and it made the gun-servitor shudder as if it were about to retch and vomit. The other gun worked flawlessly, however. It punched holes in the air where Miriya moved, lashing at the tips of her combat cloak as it tried to rebalance and strike the centre of her mass.

  The Battle Sister fell into a kick slide and rolled, faster than the helot could traverse. Putting her free hand at the guard along the backside of her chainsword, she rose back up and slammed the bare teeth of the weapon across the armoured plate of the fleshy thing inside the gun-servitor. Pulling the trigger bar, the chainsword’s throttle brayed and it bit deep. Miriya leaned in, pressing her full weight into the attack, and felt the sword cut into the ablative sheets, throwing out great streamers of sparks.

  Then there was blood and organic matter, and the chugging fire from the active cannon became more sporadic. Acting quickly, she hurdled the dying machine and shoved it across the corridor with all her might, spinning it as it went. The autocannon blew fist-sized holes across the stone walls in a line of peaks and troughs. Miriya brought it to rest on the torso of its armour-plated companion and watched the dying helot blow the other gun-slave off its treads. The Battle Sister drew back her chainsword and drove it point-first into the entry wound she had made. A mixture of gore and oil bubbled up and frothed. The servitor fell dead.

  Across the corridor, Sister Imogen strode to the fallen machine and placed her boltgun to its braincase, executing the slave with a single point-blank shot. Cordite smoke wreathed the air, the acrid smell souring.

  ‘They were protecting something,’ said Helena, stepping up as Imogen advanced past the destroyed cyborgs.

  Miriya went to the fallen Sororitas and found her still breathing, although her torso was a red ruin. ‘Sister Thalassa, do you hear me?’ That earned her a weak nod. ‘Emperor’s Blood, she lives still. Verity! We have need of you!’

  The hospitaller raced to the injured woman’s side and set to work without hesitation. Miriya looked up and watched Imogen ignore the moment, proceeding instead to the mouth of the radial corridor that the gun-servitors had been guarding.

  She rose to her feet, a grimace etching her features. ‘Is this what you brought us down here to find, Celestian?’

  Cassandra pointed her torch-light at the doorway; like the others, it was filled with fallen stone. ‘There is evidence of explosives use there.’

  ‘They sealed the corridor deliberately,’ said Imogen, but the words were more her thoughts voiced aloud than an answer to any question. ‘This was the entrance to an egress tunnel. They didn’t want anyone to follow.’

  ‘Follow what?’ Miriya demanded.

  When the Battle Sister turned back to face her, her gaze was icy. ‘Gather up the casualty and fall back. There’s nothing here.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Human eyes would have seen nothing.

  The tide of the sands, endlessly roaring across the ranges of the landscape, reduced visibility down to less than an arm’s length. Crude organic optics would only have perceived the wall of razored dust, filling everything, and if an unprotected human had dared to stand here, their skin would be scoured from their bones, their lungs clogged with gales of particle matter forced down their throats.

  To be in this storm and to be of flesh was death, but Tegas and his party were not so weak. Even the least mechanoid of them possessed little more than forty percent crude organic content, and all that lay beneath thick lamellar hoods or metal implants. To the servants of the Mechanicus, the lowing maelstrom of dust did not stop them from viewing the contours of the landscape in terms of thermal change, magnetic texture and radiation level. These modes of sight made the journey across the desert as clear to them as if it were a cloudless day. Electrostatic discharges presented the only real hazard of note, the frequent flashes of stuttering micro-lightning arcing through the haze or buzzing against the hull of the Venator scout. At one point, Adept Lumik had taken a discharge to the skull and zeroed out for a few seconds; an issue that would have been easily manageable if not for the fact that Lumik had been driving the vehicle at the time. Fortunately for Tegas and the others, the sand had slowed them to a halt before they could veer off the dune-tops and into the ravine below. Lumik seemed to be functioning adequately now, but the questor had already filed a notation in the communal data pool to have her placed at the head of the next maintenance rotation.

  The Venator bounced over a rocky rise and began to descend a shallow ramp of orange sandstone. Tegas gave a portion of his thoughts to the digital map, drawn from the sealed data-files implanted in his brain back on Paramar. They were close now, and even as the realisation formed, a long, slow pulse of ultraviolet laser light flashed across his vision quadrant. Judging by the attenuation and frequency shift, the beam had been fired from an emitter less than a kilometre distant. The questor snaked one of his mechadendrites – the one with a lasing diode in the tip – up through the scout car’s canopy and flashed back a response pulse. If Tegas had still possessed a mouth, he would have smiled.

  They dropped into the sheer-sided vault of an arroyo cut from dark, streaked basalt. The wind and the ceaseless storm faded a little, becoming irregular twisters of dust dotted here and there instead of constant humming sandblasts. Shapes made themselves better defined as the rover closed in on its target waypoint. Among the wind-carved rock that reached out with sharp-edged, blade-like layers, there were other things that seemed foreign among the smooth, rounded surfaces. Nothing in the rocks of this planet appeared with straight lines, all of it was turned or curved. One could think of it as chaotic and unchangeably natural, if one were so inclined. Thus, when shapes made of harsh geometric angles appeared, it was almost shocking.

  Stone, or something like it, of a viridian hue so deep it was almost black. It resembled slate or some variety of great metallic crystal, huge vaults of it growing storeys high. In a way, Tegas mused, it seemed invasive, almost like a cancer that had metastasized inside the planet’s crust. What was most curious was the manner in which the sandstone seemed to have grown around it, as if attempting to absorb a foreign object.

  He glimpsed flickers of dull light and adjusted the range of his optics. There were figures up on one of the flat surfaces, a trio of worker helots in the red tunics of the Adeptus Mechanicus, scrambling about a platform that appeared to be affixed to the dark stone face by blobs of thick adhesive. He measured the radiant index from the muzzle of a meson cutter. They were taking samples of the material, or at least making the attempt. Tegas looked away. He knew from experience that the helots were wasting their time. Nothing could cut that stone; Omnissiah knows, he had tried to do the same at other times, on other worlds.

  Presently the rocky ramp flattened out and they approached the encampment. Fences made of cutwire ringed a perfect formation of laboratoria modules, generator units and habitat pods. The camp backed onto a sheer wall of dun-coloured rock that went up to the desert surface, and picked out across its face were vents cut into the plane of it. Strings of lamps were visible, disappearing into the tunnels beyond.

  The fence rolled back to give the Venator entrance and Lumik brought the scout car to a juddering halt.

  On the ultrasonic, Tegas heard a scalar tensor of greeting codes being broadcast as he stepped from the rover and let his robes flutter in the breeze. He bowed slightly to announce his arrival.

  The camp looked busy, and that pleased him. He had half expected to find it as dead as the Sororitas outpost, but instead the place seemed the model of efficient Adeptus Mechanicus operations. He turned in place, a slow three-hundred-sixty degree rotation, making a recording of all he could see. As he turned back to his starting place, he heard a familiar series of interrogative codes.

  ‘Tech-priest Ferren.’ There was something impressively formal about using words to make the greeting, and Tegas sa
w no reason to do otherwise.

  Ferren bowed, the hisses of his leg-pistons breathy and wet. ‘Lord questor. When we detected the ship in orbit, we knew you had come at last. It has been too long.’ Like Tegas, the priest was a near-humanoid shape beneath red robes, although he lacked the runic trimming of his superior’s garb and the signifier plates bearing the sacred equations of rank. Beneath the robes, Ferren resembled a collection of cables and thin piping that had been tied together to form the shape of a man, in the manner of a rustic corn-dolly. Multiple eye-clusters moved back and forth across his head, circling the equator of his scalp at different scan rates. He had once been a trusted adjutant to the questor like Lumik and the others, but Ferren’s cleverness had made it clear he could better serve the Lords of Mars elsewhere. Tegas felt a moment of pride in the fact that his protégé had flourished in what others might have thought was a makeweight assignment.

  ‘This site hides you well,’ Tegas replied. ‘Even the Tybalt could not detect you from orbit.’

  ‘We went dark,’ Ferren demurred. ‘And the composition of the stone and the… the artefacts here do much to cloak us. It is quite remarkable.’

  ‘I have no doubt.’ Tegas sensed Lumik approaching; she had developed a limp, doubtless from the shock-effect.

  ‘There are… many here…’ she clicked.

  ‘Fifty-two servants to the Omnissiah’s glory,’ Ferren replied.

  Tegas cocked his head. His records showed that sixty-four souls had set out on this clandestine endeavour. Ferren anticipated his question and transmitted a tight-beam data packet to him, within which was an updated crew complement document. Those listed as missing or deceased had only the most cursory of loss reports. Tegas filed this away for later address.

  ‘We have made much progress since our last communiqué,’ continued the tech-priest, allowing marker-echoes of satisfaction to filter into his vocoder’s speech patterns. ‘You will be pleased, my lord.’