Rho-mu 31 stood tall and planted his weapon stave in the ground. He knelt before Dalia and said, 'For as long as I remain functional I will protect you.'
'With the power I have now, that may be a very long time, my friend.'
'So be it,' said Rho-mu 31.
Zouche and Rho-mu 31 carried Caxton between them as they made their way back through the twisting maze of the Dragon's caves. Dalia led the way, guiding them unerringly along the path they had followed to get here. Their mood was subdued, for the death of Severine was heavy in their thoughts, and no one spoke as they passed through Semyon's abandoned laboratory. Once again they trudged through the glittering tunnels that led to the dark, shadow-cloaked grabens of the Noctis Labyrinthus, before finally emerging into the chill air.
'I think I hate this place,' said Zouche, as Rho-mu 31 took the unconscious Caxton from him. The Protector shrugged Caxton onto his shoulder.
'I wouldn't blame you,' said Dalia. 'It's a place of despair. It always has been and I think it's that more than the Dragon that's kept people away.'
'And you're sure you have to stay?' asked Zouche, his eyes brimming with tears.
'I'm sure,' said Dalia, leaning down to embrace him. He put his arms around her and held her tightly, letting the tears fall without shame.
'I'll never see you again, will I?' asked Zouche when she released him.
She shook her head. 'No, you won't. And you can't ever tell anyone about me or this place. If anyone asks, tell them I died when the Kaban Machine attacked us in the tunnel.'
'And what about Caxton?' asked Zouche, wiping his eyes with the sleeve of his robe.
Dalia choked back a sob and said, 'Tell him… tell him I think I could have loved him. And tell him I'm sorry I never got the chance to find out.'
'I'll tell him that, right enough,' nodded Zouche, turning to Rho-mu 31. 'And you're staying too?'
'I am,' agreed Rho-mu 31. 'It seems every Guardian must have a protector.'
Zouche shook hands with Rho-mu 31 and looked over his shoulder at the lonely shape of the Cargo-5, which sat where they had left it beyond the cave mouth.
'Ah… a thought occurs,' he said. 'How are we supposed to get home? Wasn't the 5's battery dead?'
Dalia smiled and the golden energy passed to her by Adept Semyon flashed in her eyes.
'I think I can make sure it has enough power for you to get back to the Magma City.'
Zouche shrugged as they set off towards the abandoned Cargo-5. 'I'm not even sure I want to know how you'll manage that, but I'm never one to question my good fortune. Not that I've ever had any to question, you understand.'
The Cargo-5 exploded with a thunderous, booming detonation that echoed from the sheer sides of the Noctis Labyrinthus. The blast wave hurled them to the ground as twisted metal wreckage fell in a burning rain.
Dalia looked up, blinking away bright afterimages of the explosion.
'What happened?' gasped Zouche.
Dalia groaned as she saw their attacker rolling forward on its heavy-gauge track unit.
'Oh, no,' she said. 'Oh, Emperor protect us, no!'
It was the Kaban Machine.
High in the Chamber of Vesta, Adept Koriel Zeth watched the images playing out over the burnished screens of her forge with a sense of utter disbelief and honor.
The main screens displayed her own forge, a city on the verge of collapse. The outer hives and manufactories were in ruins and everything she had built over the centuries had been flattened by the savage, unrelenting bombardment of the Dark Mechanicum.
Ipluvien Maximal fared no better, his promised relief pulling back in the face of unbreakable resistance from Kelbor-Hal's freakish creations. Maximal's outer walls were breached in a dozen places and the fighting surged from weapon shop to ore refinery to librarium as the hordes of mutated servitors and abominable war machines poured in.
Both Mondus Occulum and Mondus Gamma were burning, vast swathes of machinery and manufacturing capacity destroyed in barely a few hours worth of fighting. The loss of such irreplaceable technology and knowledge was like a knife in the guts, but worse than that, far worse than that, was the image on the central glass panel.
Like comets launched from the surface of Mars, the Imperial ships were fleeing for the heavens. Astartes and Army vessels jostled in the sky in their haste to depart the red planet.
When her surveyor systems had first registered their launch, Zeth had assumed they would arc over and swoop south towards the Magma City, but their fiery ascent had continued until it was obvious they were accelerating to escape velocity.
Confirmation, if confirmation were needed, came in the form of a terse, encrypted data squirt from the Fabricator Locum, who, it seemed, was also leaving Mars.
+++Imperial forces withdrawing from Mars+++Save what you can+++Destroy the rest+++
The human part of her screamed at this betrayal, but the dominant, analytical, part of her brain could see the sense in this retreat. The Astartes had no doubt secured a great deal of the new marks of armour in preparation for the campaign against the Legions of Horus Lupercal, and to lose them all in a futile last stand made no logical sense.
Knowing that didn't make it any easier to swallow.
Zeth opened up her noospheric link to Ipluvien Maximal, Princeps Cavalerio of Legio Tempestus and Lords Caturix and Verticorda of the Knights of Taranis.
'I presume you have all seen this?' she said as their holographic images appeared on the glass panels above her.
'I have,' said Cavalerio, projecting the image of the man he had been before his interment in the amniotic casket.
'Yes,' confirmed Maximal. 'I cannot believe it. The knowledge that will be lost…'
Lord Caturix shook his head. 'That it should come to this, abandoned by Terra.'
Lord Verticorda shook his head. 'Never,' he said. 'The Emperor would never abandon us.'
'Maybe not,' said Zeth, 'but it appears we can expect no more help from the Legions.'
'So what are your orders, Adept Zeth?' asked Princeps Cavalerio.
'You heard Kane's transmission?'
Their grim silence was all the answer she needed.
'I won't let Kelbor-Hal have my reactors,' declared Maximal at last.
'Nor will he have the Akashic reader,' said Zeth sadly. 'I had such high hopes for Dalia being able to make it work, but maybe it's for the best. Perhaps no one should ever know everything. After all, when there is nothing left to discover, what is the point in life?'
'Then there is only one order left to give,' said Lord Verticorda.
Dalia saw the lethal machine roll towards them, crashing boulders beneath its weight, its weapon arms locking up ready to shoot. The barrels on an enormous rotary cannon whirred as they spooled up to fire once more and hissing gases vented from the plasma cannon mounted at its shoulder.
She could feel its anger towards her in the seething yellow glow of its sensor orbs, and with a swift flick of her mind, Dalia knew she wouldn't be able to fool it again.
'How did it find us?' shouted Zouche.
'It must have read our biometrics in the tunnel,' she cried. 'It realised its mistake eventually and it followed us here.'
'Who cares how it found us?' shouted Rho-mu 31, firing up his weapon stave and hauling Dalia back the way they had come. 'Run! Get back to the cave! It won't be able to follow us in!'
Dalia nodded, taking Zouche's hand and sprinting for the cave mouth.
'Do what you did before!' cried Zouche. 'Make it think we're not here!'
'I can't,' gasped Dalia as they ran. 'It's learned what I did and its mental architecture has evolved to stop me doing it again.'
Dalia looked over her shoulder and saw the metallic tentacles on its back whip up.
'Get down!' yelled Rho-mu 31, dragging her and Zouche to the ground.
They landed hard and rolled, dropping into a shallow trench cut by some ancient stream, as roaring sheets of whickering laser fire gouged glowing channels into
the valley floor.
Zouche screamed as a sharp fragment of rock sliced his cheek.
Dalia wept bitter tears, expecting another barrage to finish them off at any second.
She flinched, curling into a tight ball of terror as a deafening, roaring blast of sawing gunfire echoed from the canyon walls. Another thunderous cascade of fire erupted and Dalia blinked in surprise as she realised the shots weren't directed at them.
'I don't believe it,' cried Rho-mu 31. Dalia looked over and saw that the glowing green of his eyes behind his bronze mask were alight with surprise.
Dalia propped herself up on one elbow and risked a glance over the torn, smoking lip of their fragile cover.
The Kaban Machine was still there, though its form was wreathed in flaring bursts of energy discharges as its voids screamed and fought to hold their integrity.
Riding towards it were two glorious war machines in midnight blue armour, bearing the symbol of a wheel and lightning bolt upon their shoulder guards.
'The Knights of Taranis!' shouted Rho-mu 31.
Maven's heart surged with savage, primal joy to see the enemy machine reel from the impacts of his weapons. Cronus had also struck true and Equitos Bellum's Manifold shone with the knowledge that they had finally found their quarry. His autoloaders thundered as they fed more shells into the cannon mounted on his arm and he felt the heat build as he unsheathed the four-metre war blade in his right fist.
The machine was just as he remembered it, squat and unlovely, a rotund engine of death and destruction hiding behind a sleeting sheen of rippling voids. Through the shimmering fields of his auspex he could read its energy signatures, and was once again struck by the cold, alien intelligence that lurked behind the yellow orbs of its sensor blisters as it ceased fire and turned towards him.
A small group of people sheltered from the machine's fire in a chewed up ditch, a red-cloaked Protector and three others. Maven didn't know who they were, but that this machine wanted them dead was reason enough for him to defend them.
'Go right,' voxed Maven to Cronus. 'Let's take this thing like we planned.'
Cronus was already moving, Pax Mortis loping across the rough, step-like terrain of the rocky valley, his carapace low to the ground and his weapon arms thrust out before him. Maven hauled his mount left and unleashed another rippling salvo of cannon fire towards the machine.
Once more its voids sang with the impacts and Maven felt his mount's exhilaration as a surge of adrenaline shot through his body. Equitos Bellum relished a fight, but the sense of striking back at their nemesis was above and beyond anything Maven had experienced.
He rode close to the ground, hard and fast for an outcrop of rock he had seen from further along the valley, feeling the heat of near misses as the enemy machine opened fire on him. His instinctual awareness of the battle was complete, his gut feel for the tactical situation flawless as he suddenly hauled back on the controls and skidded to a halt, one leg stretched out to the side at the sudden course change.
A barrage of shots hammered the outcrop, blasting it to splintered rubble and leaving a smoking crater in the aftermath of a thunderous explosion. Maven sidestepped and bounded forward, zigzagging at random across the ground, deliberately avoiding anything resembling a standard pattern evasion technique.
Whipping bursts of laser fire and sawing lines of shells sliced the air where the machine expected him to be.
Maven laughed, a wild roar of pleasure as Equitos Bellum responded to his touch, its healed limbs and wounded heart working with him against their enemy. Once again, Maven changed direction at random, urging his mount forward into the teeth of the machine's weapons.
'Old Stator would have my guts on a plate if he could see this,' he hissed, fighting against decades of training to keep from using the very drills that had made him such a formidable warrior.
The machine opened fire, but once again Maven had outmanoeuvred it, his unpredictable motions and random jinks confusing whatever targeting wetware it employed. Maven watched it back away from him, its main guns swivelling in gimbal mounts as they tried to predict which way he would move.
The guns mounted on the thick dendrite tentacles swivelled, firing towards the remains of the burning Cargo-5. Cronus rode his Knight in a looping, jerking pattern of stops and starts, though Maven could see that his brother's mount had taken several hits from the strength of his shield returns.
'Mix it up more, Cronus!' he yelled. 'Don't do anything it can predict!'
'Shut up!' snapped Cronus. 'You break the rules all the same. It's not so easy for me!'
Maven grinned, seeing the machine back away from him, spitting rock and gravel from beneath its tracks as it frantically reversed towards the wall of the canyon.
Maven let rip with another blast of cannon fire. Chunks of smashed rock fell from the cliff, as the machine swivelled on one track and his shots went wide.
'Hell,' said Maven. 'It's learning.'
Maven reversed the direction of his advance and, too late, realised his mistake.
A seething wall of laser fire hammered his frontal shields and the torso emitter blew out in a screaming wash of energy. He cried out as the discharge whiplashed through him in a howling gale of feedback.
Equitos Bellum faltered and Maven dropped his mount to one knee. Another blast struck the upper edges of his carapace armour and searing lances of pain shot through his shoulder. He tried to turn his mount to present a shielded section to the machine as more fire hammered him, and Maven felt his mount's pain as his armour tore apart under the concentrated volley.
The armoured glass of his cockpit shattered, exploding inwards and slicing his face with razor-sharp fragments.
'Cronus!' yelled Maven as another impact sent a bolt of agony through his body.
Pax Mortis smashed through the flaming wreckage of the Cargo-5, both its arm weapons sheathed in fire. The enemy machine vanished in a blinding cascade of void flares, its shields buckling under the impacts.
Whatever form of reactor sat at its heart was capable of soaking up the punishment and holding. It turned its guns on Pax Mortis, and let rip with a barking roar of cannon fire that tore through the shields and the plating of Cronus's waist mounting.
The Knight staggered, and Cronus bolted for the wall of obscuring smoke that billowed from the Cargo-5, but the machine had predicted such an obvious response, and a searing bolt of plasma slammed into the upper carapace of Pax Mortis, almost driving it to its knees.
Maven cried out as he saw his brother Knight stagger, but before the enemy machine could finish its work, Cronus surged forwards and darted into the smoke.
'Its voids are too tough!' shouted Cronus, his pain obvious even over the vox-link. 'Our weapons won't overload them!'
His comrade-in-arms had left himself dangerously exposed by coming to Maven's aid, but their two-pronged assault had forced the enemy to dance to their tune, and they would never get a better chance to take it down.
'Get ready!' he replied. 'We've got it where we want it!'
Faced with two enemies, the machine had backed against the cliffs of the valley, seeking to minimise the directions from which it could be attacked.
Just as Maven knew it would.
It was a standard, textbook manoeuvre.
'Maven disengaged the auto-targeters and said, 'You know the drills, but you don't have the skills,' and opened fire once more.
Instead of aiming for the machine, his gunfire tore into the rock walls above it, and a torrent of gigantic boulders fell in a thunderous avalanche from the cliffs, smashing into the upper vectors of the machine's shields. Blooming explosions of light rippled from the machine, its voids screaming in protest, but still, impossibly, holding.
'Now, Cronus!' shouted Maven, pushing his wounded mount to its feet and charging his foe with a feral cry of battle-lust He opened up with his cannon, hammering the machine's upper shields. Even through the tumbling, roaring avalanche of rock and dust, the machine saw him coming
and turned its guns on Equitos Bellum, just as Pax Mortis loomed from the smoke and joined its fire with that of Maven's mount.
Already struggling to withstand the rain of debris falling from the cliff, the machine's shield-emitters finally gave way under the concentrated fire of the two Knights.
Its voids exploded outwards in a blinding blast wave, tearing the metallic weapon dendrites from its back and vaporising its left arm in a thunderous detonation. Smoke and sparks of jetting energy spewed from the machine's ruptured flanks and its sensor blisters flickered madly, as though unable to comprehend how it had been hurt.
It rocked back, stunned and screaming in garbled bursts of binary that sliced over the Manifold and blew several of the augmitters inside Maven's cockpit.
Maven rode through the billowing clouds of rock dust, seeing the spherical form of his long-sought-for enemy ahead of him. It was mortally wounded, but still had some fight left in it. Maven didn't give it a chance and drove the full four metres of his energised war blade through its frontal section.
Its death scream shrieked in a pitiful wail of agonised binary, but Maven twisted his blade in the wound until at last its cries ceased and the light of its sensor blisters was extinguished.
Letting out a pent-up breath of battle fury and pain, Maven stepped back from the destroyed machine, feeling an overwhelming sense of closure as he stood over the shell of his defeated enemy. The pain from his psychostigmatic wounds diminished and Maven smiled as he felt Equitos Bellum's satisfaction wash through him in a rush of approval.
The essence of what made a Knight such a fearsome war machine moved through his battered flesh to ease his suffering, filling his body and rushing along his aching limbs.
Too late, Maven felt the soul of his mount surge to the fore, the soothing balm that eased his pain wielding him as though he were the mount and it the rider. He felt the raw, ferocious heart of his machine, the terrifying power that lurked in the heart of the Manifold, take control of his limbs and turn Equitos Bellum towards the scar in the earth where the targets of the enemy machine had taken cover.
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