He understood, and had always understood, why she and other manuals felt the way they did. The conspirators – as they called themselves when feeling flippant – were a mix of social strands that would never have been tolerated in less straitened times: Guard officers, machinists, gangers, medicae, hive officials, transit operatives, all shoved cheek-by-jowl and in constant fear of discovery.
Khadi, however, seemed to have a personal grudge against anyone not raised in the grime-swilling depths of the lower levels with the gang-tattoos and limb deformities to prove it. She’d been there right at the start, back when the rumours started coming out of the Capitolis that things had gone wrong. She’d run agitprop through the manufactoria floors at huge risk and had recruited half a dozen new conspirators even before official admissions had come over the communal vids to announce that something had changed.
Marivo still didn’t know what had motivated her. His own ideals were simple – adoration of the Emperor, loathing of the heretic, the kind of thing he’d had drilled into him over seven years of active service in the local regiments. As for Khadi, a gutter-dwelling creature from the unlit bowels of Melamar Secundus, who knew what had provoked her into rebellion against the hive authority? Perhaps she’d always wanted to strike back against her betters. Perhaps, indeed, that was what motivated most of the lowlife that clustered around the conspirators like an airborne contagion.
Ever since Marivo had been pulled into the brotherhood he’d tried to work with her. He’d recognised her qualities immediately – the fierce, semi-savage expression that spoke of well-deep resolve, her physical toughness, her clear vision of what needed to be done. Khadi would have made a fine Guard recruit if things had been different. Maybe she knew that. Maybe, deep down, that knowledge was what made her so damned prickly.
He reached the end of the corridor, over where the last of the lumen-strips gave out and the walls became patchy with old, caked grease. The floor was sticky and smelled of fish.
A green light flickered across a narrow grille in the door in front of him. He held still, feeling a prickle across his skin as the security beam ran a facial scan.
‘Refectory’s closed,’ came a voice from behind the door.
‘It’s me, Relat,’ said Marivo impatiently. ‘Open the door.’
The door pulled back to reveal a large chamber beyond. The refectory’s benches had been pulled together into a rough semicircle. Forty men and women sat at them, though none of them were eating. Most were manual workers and wore pale blue tunics and overalls. A few military uniforms were visible. A single black-visored arbitrator sat at the back in silence. Marivo slipped along to a vacant spot and sat like the rest of them.
They all faced a single figure in shabby work fatigues. He stood, shoulders back and hands clasped loosely in front of him. His skin was grey like a rad-gen worker. His features were indefinably odd, possibly hermaphroditic, or simply effeminate. Despite his shabby appearance his posture indicated a wiry and capable physique. He carried himself with an unconscious, almost arrogant, poise.
Marivo looked at him carefully, wondering if any of the blood he had seen him drink remained on the man’s chin. It didn’t, and he almost regretted that it didn’t.
‘You do not need to know my name,’ the man said. His voice was as strange as everything else about him. ‘I serve the Emperor, though, and you, by your presence here, have demonstrated that you serve Him also. The masters of this world no longer serve the Emperor, and so have become our mutual enemy. You have the chance to become heroes of the Imperium, and so should consider yourselves blessed beyond measure – few mortals ever have such a chance to serve.’
Marivo knew the man’s name; or, at least the name he’d given when they’d stumbled across him. Valien. A codename, presumably, one that changed with every assignment. He served under the Commissariat, so he said, and was an assassin. Not a Temple assassin, but from a death cult – Talica, he called it.
Marivo didn’t know what a death cult was, but he certainly knew what the Commissariat was.
‘Perhaps you think you understand what has been happening on Shardenus,’ said Valien. ‘You do not. For months you have been fed lies by your masters. Let me tell you the truth. The whole Contqual subsector is in rebellion, and has been in rebellion for a long time. Even now the armies of the Immortal Emperor are spread out across whole star systems to combat the contagion. As you sit here listening to me, millions of men are fighting across a hundred battlefields. They are fighting and dying, just as you will soon be called to fight and to die.’
Valien clearly enjoyed the sound of his own voice, and he placed a theatrical relish on each phrase.
‘The forces of treachery are being routed. Contqual is returning to the bosom of the Emperor, planet by planet, hive spire by hive spire. Shardenus is the last world to resist. Here, where the contagion began, the fighting will be fiercest. Some of your comrades will fight to resist the invader, believing themselves loyal. Others know the truth and will fight for the perversions they have carved out for themselves.’
A faint hiss from the back of the refectory announced the presence of a latecomer. Marivo glanced over to see Khadi entering, and looked away just as quickly.
‘The guilty will be punished,’ said Valien, looking as if he relished the prospect. ‘You will be acquainted with many of those destined to die. If so, harden your hearts. The fate of traitors is death, and the fate of assisting traitors is death. Very soon the Angels of Death will be here. When they come, all deception will be cast aside and the true nature of those whom you have been serving will become clear.’
The man’s voice lowered.
‘I will not say: do not be afraid, for to fear is to be human. But those who are coming have no fear.’
Marivo listened intently, waiting for the moment he knew was coming, the moment when he would discover what manner of celestial warrior had been unleashed to drag his world back into the ranks of the faithful.
‘We are fortunate indeed,’ said Valien, his grey mouth twisting into a smile. ‘Be joyful, faithful of Melamar Secundus, for it is the Iron Hands who have come to Shardenus.’
Chapter Three
Nethata looked up.
Nothing. The sky remained swilled with ash and engine fumes – endless clouds of filth and oily exhaust remnants. The smog blew in eddies driven by the hot wind.
He looked down. The huge landing site was ready, cleared of lesser vehicles and as pristine as anything else on the planet. Lights flickered along its edges – on, off, on, off. Around its margins, seven thousand troops stood to attention, arranged in regimental formation and in full dress uniform.
Nethata adjusted his cloak. With a squeeze of his ring finger he shot a miniscule dose of tranquilox into his bloodstream. He didn’t need a heavy slug, but every little helped – dealing with Rauth was enough to give any man headaches.
‘They’re late,’ said Heriat.
‘They’re never late,’ said Nethata.
The two men stood on a dais at the southern end of the landing site, twenty metres high with a shallow flight of stairs leading to the summit. A red carpet had been draped across the top level, already dirty from drifting ash.
‘I wonder how old that is?’ said Nethata, idly.
‘Sir?’
‘For how many thousands of years have men greeted visitors on red carpets? Why do we still do it? Do you know how difficult it is to source the stuff in a warzone?’
Heriat didn’t reply. He turned his dead-eyed gaze back to the landing stages.
Nethata rolled his shoulders. They felt tense, despite the tranquilox. He was having to gland more of it every day and the reliance had begun to bother him. Not that he could have told Heriat about that, of course.
The summit of the dais held twenty men and women. Six were senior regimental officers from the Ferik battalions, by far the largest cont
ingent of Imperial troops on Shardenus. They stood stiffly, ignoring the temptation to wipe flecks of ash from their faces. Among them were two company commanders from the Galamoth Armoured detachments, pale-skinned with black rebreathers over their mouths and nostrils. Yris Aikino of the Harakoni Warhawks stood well apart from the others, clad below the neck in carapace armour, his red hair in dreadlocks. The others – the Master of Navigators, the Psyker Primaris, Naval attachés, Administratum scribes, the usual roster – all held their hands to their mouths and tried not to breathe too deeply.
Only one member of Rauth’s contingent had deigned to attend. A lone Iron Hand stood at the back of the company, silent and brooding. Aside from the briefest of greetings to Nethata, the warrior had said nothing since arriving.
As he endured the wait, Nethata found himself musing on the possibility that the dais construction might fail to take the weight of the monster’s power armour and bring them all down in a tangled heap. Despite everything, that would amuse him.
Above them, the clouds parted. The wind changed direction, as if suddenly buffeted from above.
‘Ah,’ said Nethata. ‘Here we go.’
Heriat noticed the change as well, and whispered something into a comm-link embedded in his collar. Down at ground level, seven thousand troopers adjusted their stance and checked that they were in the correct position.
The clouds directly above the landing platform glowed like hot embers. A low growl broke out, distant at first, then stronger and more reverberating.
‘In all my years in service,’ said Nethata, ‘I have never seen one of them make planetfall.’
‘I have,’ said Heriat.
‘Is it worth the wait?’
Heriat shrugged.
‘You’ll be the judge of that.’
The clouds parted. A shaft of hot, red light lanced down, striking the landing site in the centre. The growl of massed engines grew to a roar. Even with aural dampeners operating, Nethata found the wall of sound impressive. For the troops down below, it must have been painfully loud.
The wind picked up, pulling at his cloak and ruffling its fur lining. A gale swirled around the dais, flinging ash in all directions. The shaft of light grew in size, turning into a column of thundering, trembling flame. Other shafts joined it, until five mighty pillars of fire streamed down from the heavens and on to the wide ferrocrete arena below.
Moving with stately precision, five gigantic mass conveyors broke through the tormented cloud cover and descended planetwards on a shimmering cushion of heat-wash. Five vast engines threw immense quantities of promethium-blaze into the atmosphere, and even from many hundreds of metres away Nethata could feel the raw heat of it against his skin. Above the roar of the engines the structure of the landers themselves rose up in bronze and gold and crimson. The skull and cog insignia of the Adeptus Mechanicus was engraved into the sides of each one – ten metres in diameter and surrounded by strobing banks of lights. Above each insignia was another device: a black sun ringed with a coronet of electrical brilliance.
In stark contrast to the drab, functional vehicles of the Imperial Guard, these vessels were majestic creations. Every surface was covered in baroque bronze imagery – angels, demigods, mythical beasts, arcane machinery of long-forgotten provenance.
The earth beneath Nethata’s feet vibrated like a drumskin. Huge waves of heat from the engine discharge rolled over the dais, prickling his skin. He could see soldiers in the front ranks down on the plain struggle to hold their positions, craning their necks to take in the massive vessels as they descended.
With a heavy, echoing crash, the lead conveyor touched down. It sat heavily on the landing site, rising up like some towering edifice from the ferrocrete. Flames from its colossal exhausts rippled away, and the throbbing roar from its engines slowly began to wind down.
Once on the tarmac, the lander’s shape and purpose could more clearly be discerned. The ship was nearly twice as tall as it was deep and wide. Almost all of its bulk seemed to be taken up with a single immense load-bay. Tiny lights flickered at the very summit of the mass conveyor where, presumably, the bridge and control functions were housed.
The forward-facing flank of the ship was wreathed in steam. Despite that, two words could be made out across its surface, graven in High Gothic letters five metres high.
‘Legio Astorum,’ said Nethata, reading out loud. ‘They enjoy advertising their presence, do they not?’
Heriat let slip a wry smile.
‘If I had such toys to play with,’ he said, ‘I would too.’
Nethata laughed.
Once all five vessels had touched down and the deafening engine noise had died away, nothing happened for a full seven minutes. The conveyors settled on their landing braces and the smoke and steam of the descent gradually drifted away. The honour guard of mortal troops waited patiently, none of them uttering a word.
Then, without warning, a long, jagged crack ran down the front of the lead vessel. It was followed by a series of echoing clangs from within, then the throaty sound of fresh machinery gearing up. Smoke poured from ducts along the vessel’s sides, and the crack slowly began to widen. Warning klaxons sounded from somewhere near ground level and a series of floodlights burst into life.
‘Here it comes…’ murmured Heriat, watching the spectacle as intently as everyone else.
Nethata felt his heart-rate pick up. Having served on so many campaigns, he was used to the sight of war machines in action. It was something else, however, to see the mysteries the adepts of the Machine-God employed in order to bring their divine engines to war.
The crack widened further. The flank of the conveyor parted to become two doors, each propelled outwards by banks of enormous pistons.
Two gigantic treads were revealed at ground level, each one many metres across and clad in thick blast armour. Nethata’s eyes moved upwards, scanning across two colossal leg columns, corded with pistons and segmented into huge panels. Above those massive legs was an armoured torso, angular and multi-faceted. Atop it all was a skull-like head, crowned with a dim row of cockpit lights protruding from under hunched, sloping shoulders.
It was vast – almost indescribably vast. Enormous weapons – multi-barrelled and snub-nosed – hung from housings on either side of its flattened torso. Two more were mounted atop its armoured back like the dorsal spines of an animal. Steam cascaded down its flanks like cataracts down a mountainside.
Warlord, thought Nethata. By the Throne, it’s big.
With a grind and shriek of metal, the doors settled into their open position. Clouds of smog and smoke subsided across the landing site.
Nethata watched, and waited.
The warning klaxons died out. Lights flickered into life along the machine’s cockpit, and the acrid stink of void shield generators bled out into the air.
It didn’t move. Nethata knew that the god-machine would not take a single step for several hours; not while the machine-spirit within was sluggish from the orbital drop. Days might pass before it would be ready to deploy on the battlefront.
But it was alive. Nethata could feel it, as could every other soul lined up to greet the lead Titan of Battlegroup Praxes. The Warlord-class engine Terribilis Vindicta had come to Shardenus, ready to march alongside four other Titans of the fabled Legio Astorum.
A sharp snap ran through the air, followed by the hiss and boom of vox-projectors powering up.
‘Lord General Raji Nethata,’ came a broadcast voice from the Titan, so loud that it made the men on ground level visibly shudder. ‘Battlegroup Praxes, of Legio Astorum, the Collegia Titanica. Permission requested to deploy.’
Nethata smiled. The formality was unusual and the courtesy unexpected. Rauth had summoned the engines to Shardenus, and if any permissions were required then they should have been directed to him. Perhaps the princeps – whoever he or she was – was signa
lling a desire to respect the sensitive divisions of power within the Imperial forces. Or perhaps, as Rauth had not been able to attend, they merely addressed the most senior officer in front of them.
When he replied, his voice was similarly augmented, sent to a hundred relays placed across the landing site and audible from every corner of it.
‘Welcome to Shardenus, princeps,’ he said. ‘No permission is necessary; we are honoured to have you marching with us.’
At that, a wave of cheering broke out from the troops assembled on the fringes of the landing site. The demonstration of enthusiasm was hardly spontaneous – Heriat had made it quite clear to the company captains what kind of reception he expected for the Legio – but it was genuine all the same. Guardsmen were reassured by the presence of Titans. Unlike Space Marines, whose actions seemed to have little to do with their safety or protection, Titans were always visible, looming over the battlefield ready to unleash a hurricane of destructive hellfire at the enemy.
Nethata turned to Heriat, a satisfied smile on his lips. As he did so, the regimental commanders on the dais around him broke into shouts of acclamation.
‘Yes, I think it was,’ he said. ‘Definitely worth the wait.’
‘I wish to ask you a question,’ voxed Brother-Sergeant Naim Morvox over a private channel.
‘Now?’ replied Iron Father Hervel Khatir.
‘Apologies. I am aware this is not a good time.’
‘Quickly, then.’
Morvox took a quick look around him. The other members of Clave Arx were hunkered down, just as he and Khatir were, beneath the jagged lip of a blast crater. Even at such close proximity to one another their black armour made them almost invisible against the rutted surface of the Gorgas Maleon. The warriors of his clave remained perfectly immobile, like discarded machines left to rust in the wind.
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