by Various
In the vacuum I can hear nothing. The klaxons are silenced, but the emergency lighting still flashes, bathing us all in a bloody twilight. I can barely imagine the reaction on the bridge, and the data – or the lack of it – that must be greeting the strike commander’s Mechanicum opposite. Their great push to meet their enemy head to head and pin them down in gauntlets and bottle necks has rapidly evolved into a catastrophe. While the Alpha Legion contingents hold the safety of their reported positions, Abyssus Edax has decimated the Mechanicum forces despatched to hold them in check. Already stretched by the diversionary calamities unleashed by the sparatoi agents and then forced to repel a Legiones Astartes assault from within the very ship they were garrisoning, even the cold constructs of the Machine-God might be tempted to lose their nerve. Perhaps even their faith?
That is not enough. Not for the XX legion. Not for the strike commander.
The hydra’s heads must strike in unison. The mission cannot be declared accomplished until a disorientated enemy, hit from all sides simultaneously and bereft of hope, falls to the final bolt-round. As the howling evacuation becomes an eerie silence and the reverberating cacophony of titanic gunfire dies away in the void, Varix nods to a nearby legionnaire who closes the bulkhead behind them.
‘Report in,’ the strike commander calls.
One by one, legionnaires from across the ark freighter announce themselves. With air pressure re-establishing itself in the sealed section, Varix has one of his warriors check that the Thallaxii holding the stairwell are no more. This is swiftly confirmed. The floors above are a mangled mess of twisted metal and blasted bodies.
The strike commander nods, satisfied. ‘All units converge on the command decks,’ he voxes before turning to me. Then he makes an unusual request. ‘Find me prisoners. There must be something left alive on this wreck.’
Elapsid/betakhi-sampi-koppa-beta. Magos Dominus Oronti Praeda slumps into the command throne of the Omnissiax. Constructs stand around him in grim silence. The air is thick with expectation. The loss of so many servants of the Omnissiah and the turning of their own god-machines against them weighs heavily, even upon the more detached Mechanicum priests. But they are not done. Not yet.
‘The Dentilicon?’
‘As predicted, magos,’ Logista Minora Auxabel informs him. ‘Our sudden vox-silence and hull damage is drawing her to us. Her shipmaster probably assumes we have suffered some sort of accident or malfunction, and is offering support as a courtesy. We have no way of warning them otherwise. Steps must be taken, magos. Even Arkmaster Cruciam concurs. The Omnissiax and her deific cargo cannot be allowed to fall into the Archenemy’s hands.’
Praeda’s cogitator burns hot with the possibilities.
‘So ordered,’ he tells them, finally.
The logista nods to Praeda’s personal ward engines, who exit the bridge by the command deck elevators. For a while, no construct communicates on the bridge by any means that this unit can monitor.
Rune banks spark and smoke. Deck servitors go about their business with ghoulish obliviousness. Manus Cruciam says nothing. He fastidiously adjusts settings on nearby rune-screens. Collegium-Mandati Jerulian Hax is similarly silent. They are constructs without purpose. Hax’s Titan payload is already in the hands of the enemy, and the arkmaster now commands a floating wreck. They watch the lancet screens. The Omnissiax glides through the thin belt of colossal rubble and debris that encircles the Gnostica System like a belt. In the dull glow of the system’s star, Cruciam spots the tiny speck that is the contested world of Callistra Mundi, where Battle Group Astramax were to prove their worth. Instead, the god-machines are tainted with the blood of their loyal Mechanicum creators. He fancies he can see sparks of ship-to-ship combat about the world.
The light frigate Dentilicon has made its turn and is returning to the slowing ark freighter it escorts. The light cruiser runs alongside the Omnissiax in the hope of offering some kind of support.
At elapsid/gamma-khi-omicron-zeta, the command deck elevator announces its arrival. Deck thralls train their weapons on the opening doors, but it is only a group of horrifically damaged servitors. The constructs limp onto the command deck. They seem confused and agitated. A lexmechanic demands their identifiers.
Their stumbling silence draws the attention of the bridge crew. The lexmechanic approaches. As she does so her optical relays inform her that the servitors have objects wedged between the gleaming white ceramic teeth of their mouths. Her auxiliary cogitator tells her that there is an eighty-two per cent chance that those objects are grenades.
She turns to warn the arkmaster and magos dominus, but she doesn’t get the chance. The servitors detonate in unison, tearing up the command deck and blasting the equipment and constructs on bridge with splintered frag.
Magos Dominus Oronti Praeda is knocked from the command throne. As he shakes the functionality back into his cogitator links, he hears the heavy metal thud of armoured enemies dropping down into the elevator carriage from the roof hatch. Space Marines in the colours of the Alpha Legion sweep forward through the smoke, their boltguns aimed and ready. The brief gunfire is precise and economical. Deck thralls that yet live are executed where they stand. Drone weaponry is blasted to uselessness and even Jerulian Hax’s armed cherubim escort is put down with a single shot to its angelic head.
Strike Commander Dartarion Varix and the veteran legionnaires of the First Hort, Third Harrow have taken control of the bridge and, by extension, the Mechanicum ark freighter Omnissiax. Varix removes his battle-helm to reveal the bronzed skin of his shaven head, the dark disdain of his primarch’s echoed features.
‘Report.’
Oronti Praeda goes to make a proud retort, but instead Logista Minora Auxabel replies.
‘All goes according to plan, my lord,’ she tells her strike commander. ‘The Dentilicon is pulling alongside and sending skiffs across to us.’
‘What are you doing?’ the magos dominus manages. Cruciam and Hax similarly stare on in disbelief at the logista.
‘But the magos dominus has despatched his ward engines to the engineering section, my lord,’ she continues. ‘Their orders are to detonate the plasma drive and destroy the ship.’
Dartarion Varix nods before raising his eyebrows at Oronti Praeda.
‘Nice try,’ Varix tells the magos dominus. Then to Auxabel, he says, ‘Have Phasal Scolton and his unit divert to intercept the ward engines.’
‘Very good, my lord.’
‘Our defensive capabilities?’ Varix asks with a thin, ironic smile.
‘Port and starboard short-batteries charged and run out as a precautionary measure,’ the logista tells him.
‘Have the bridge inform the masters of gunnery decks that we continue to be under attack. Use the magos dominus’s authorisation codes. The batteries are ordered to fire as they bear.’
‘As you command.’
‘Auxabel…’ Praeda says. He looks from the logista to Quorvon Krish and myself. From my thrall form he moves the disbelief of his optics on to the strike commander. ‘Please, have mercy–’
Varix raises one armoured finger to silence him.
‘There it is,’ Varix says, pointing at the magos dominus’s stricken face.
As the Alpha Legion strike commander and the Mechanicum magos regard one another, the meagre cannonry of the ark freighter fires. It is a ragged salvo, but it serves at point-blank range to blast the shieldless Dentilicon into fiery void-scrap.
As shattered sections of the escort fall away, floating before the viewscreens of her larger charge, Dartarion Varix tells Praeda, ‘The desperation. The overwhelming hopelessness. The pleading – perhaps not for your life, tech-priest, but for the lives of others. There is proof that our work is its own reward.’
Then the strike commander nods to his warriors, and the bridge flashes briefly with precision gunfire. At elapsid/gamma-khi-sigma-lamb
da-delta, the enemy commander, Oronti Praeda, dies. As do Manus Cruciam and Jerulian Hax.
Varix turns to Minora Auxabel. ‘So, you got my message.’
The sparatoi agent taps the implant in her tooth by way of a reply.
‘Good work,’ Dartarion Varix tells her. He nods also to me and Quorvon Krish. ‘Logista Auxabel,’ Varix calls, playfully using the agent’s assumed name. ‘Do we have steerage?’
‘Barely, my lord.’
‘Well, use what we have to get the Omnissiax system-bound. Has contact been established with the Alpha Legion commander?’
‘Legionary signatures have been traced,’ I inform him. ‘Harrowmaster Armillus Dynat in command.’
‘Armillus Dynat,’ Varix repeats. ‘The uprising?’
‘Spreading to the surrounding moons,’ Auxabel tells him. ‘It’s being reported as a rebellion, but the outbreaks are systematic and betray highly coordinated patterns. The precursor to a planet-wide annihilatory action, I suspect, my lord.’
‘The Legion reveals itself,’ the strike commander confirms. ‘If Armillus Dynat commands from the surface, then he is likely to have three to four battalions of legionnaires at his disposal, plus sparatoi support structures. There are likely more forces en route. Astropath?’
‘Three Alpha Legion heavy cruisers confirmed system inbound,’ Quorvan Krish offers. ‘And the battle-barge Omicron emerges from the Byssda-Escona Deeps, carrying further reinforcements.’
Varix nods with approval.
‘Master Krish,’ he tells the astropath, ‘I wish to send a message to Harrowmaster Dynat.’
‘The content, strike commander?’
‘Tell the Harrowmaster that the Mechanicum forces and Titan battle group re-routed to crush the rebellion on Callistra Mundi have been neutralised. The god-machines and their transport are in Alpha Legion hands. Inform him that his action has forced a deviation from our mission directives, but that secondary objectives have been met with… Elapsid?’
‘Elapsid/gamma-khi-sigma-omicron-zeta,’ this unit reports.
‘With five minutes to spare,’ Dartarion Varix finishes. ‘The Omnissiax is en route to assist him, and my veteran hort wait on his pleasure.’
‘We go to Callistra Mundi, my lord?’ I ask.
‘We do,’ Dartarion Varix confirms. ‘My brother-commander wishes there to be a Harrowing.’
‘My lord,’ I acknowledge.
A Harrowing.
It is more than just a word.
My internal data-banks mark it as a signifier. A stratagem.
It is an expression of the XX Legion’s art of war. An experience, as both prosecutor and victim. Confusion. Disorder. Betrayal. Panic. Horror. An enemy force chasing phantoms. Our foes at war with themselves. We watch as they expose their vulnerabilities. As they make their way from desperation to annihilation. We bring them to the boil. Then, when they can take no more, as they lie across the altar of our tactical perfection, we sacrifice them to inevitability. A storm of coordinated attacks. Alpha Legionnaires appearing from every corner, from every shadow, from behind the face of every seeming friend and ally, boltguns blazing.
It will be a decimate wonder to behold.
‘The Harrowmaster calls on the legionnaires of the Twentieth,’ Dartarion Varix tells us, ‘for he wishes to murder this world. My brothers, we are to be part of something very special indeed. The Harrowing of Callistra Mundi begins.’
The Alpha Legion comes to Callistra Mundi
The deck tilted under my feet until I was walking like a crab, one foot on what used to be the floor, the other on what was the starboard-side wall. Gravity had become unusual, and it spread itself in peculiar patterns throughout the ship’s corridors.
Some strange artefact of the malfunctions, perhaps? I didn’t know enough to tell. It’s not where my expertise lies, but I imagined that if I could have seen it, the gravity would pile like drifts of snow blown into odd corners. Snow like we had at home, on Nomeah, before the melts and the ending.
Flicking that thought away, I used the sconces in the walls as hand-holds, taking care to first beat out any flickering electro-candles with the butt of my lasrifle. The others kept pace behind me, and I could hear them all labouring their breaths in the cold, heavy air. I didn’t need to turn to see the aura-light around their heads. I knew it would be unchanged: anger-red and terror-black.
Without the ship’s internal illumination, the only way we could navigate was by the sullen glow from the chamber at the far end of the corridor. Long shadows reached toward us, inky and fathomless. I felt as if I were some parasitic thing crawling up the throat of a dead host animal, questing for the open, fanged mouth.
The noise of slow-twisting metals surrounded us as the ship was continually stressed and relaxed. I was no void-born, but I had ridden in starships on many occasions and I knew what sounded wrong. I knew the sound of something tested to breaking point. Something that was going to die.
The thought fatigued me and I stopped to rest. I felt heavy and damp, as if I had been dragged through ice water; uniform, war-cloak, pack and all. The lip of a jammed hatch served as a temporary halt, and the others accepted it readily.
Dallos sat closest to me and immediately had his cards out, his spindly pink fingers going over them. He worked the careworn rectangles of plas-paper with the rote deftness of a gambling sharp. The cards glinted, the print across their faces worn away in places where he had dealt and re-dealt them a thousand times. I could make out the faint numerals and the abstract geometric shapes of the suits.
‘Four of Emeralds,’ he muttered, unaware of himself. ‘Two of Hammers.’
Dallos’s face was half-hidden under a mask of dirty bandages. A monster had burned him, so I’d learned. The nimbus of a bolt of spewed fire had passed close to his unit, enough to torch the rest of the men in his mortar crew but not enough to kill him. What I could see of Dallos’s face was pink like his hands, where he had beat out the backwash flames – as raw as his aura, and just as bright.
Not a one of us was what you could call able. I think even the most generous of observers would have considered us to be a sorry collection of souls. Six men, clad in uniforms of the great Imperial Army, a scooping of poor bloody infantry from half a dozen different battalions all across the front line of the insurrection. We were the canis-facies, the sons of worlds ground up into chum by the inexorable machine of this new war. I think we all had badges of differing rank and status, but the memory evades. On the ship, it never mattered. No one was in charge, there was no chain of command. We simply were. Any intentions to salute or to snap to orders seemed pointless. A lot of things seemed pointless after all the horrors we had witnessed.
But so we were. I had lost fingers on my right hand – my off-hand, and so somehow I interpreted that as lucky – and taken shrapnel in my torso and thigh. The pieces were still in me, needles pricking me with each step I took. The small pains made me tired as much as they kept me awake. Dallos, as I said, was the burned man. Breng, with his skin the deep ebon of varnished wood, he showed the puckering and scarification of a gas attack victim. It was agony for him to speak, the poor fool’s throat now a ruin, so he communicated as much through tilts of the head and hollow glares as he could. I think LoMund might have been an officer once, back when it mattered. That would explain the long white hair and the regal cut of his face, perhaps. That bit of him was broken, though. He had been belly-cut and spilled on the mud, saved only because blind panic and adrenaline had made him cup his own innards in his hands for long enough to stagger back to a safe zone. Then Chenec and Yao, each sallow of flesh with perpetually hooded eyes, both from the same world and both having been near-killed by claws and stubber fire.
We were a small pack of walking wounded. I had not seen an uninjured man – and we were all men, for there were no females on this vessel – since we had disembarked from the r
escue boat that bore me from Nomeah. The closest thing I had come across to the hale and whole were the lobotomised medicae servitors that prowled the ward decks, tending to the injured. If there were actual medics and chirurgeons on board this hulk, then they had not cared to turn their attention to us.
There were so few of us, but what took my pause was that the ship was still full. The holds carried children. Refugee boys out of ruined families or from bombed-out scholaria, war orphans by the dozen. Sometimes we heard them crying for their parents, for answers, for anything. It burned me, in a way, to admit that I was as lost as they were.
This was one ship among several, or so I thought. In truth, I hadn’t seen a porthole since we jumped into the screaming madness of the warp and fled the perfidy of the whoreson Warmaster. Whether or not the other craft were still out there, I didn’t know. A few gunboats protecting bulk carriers packed to the gunwales with injured, our pathetic little convoy stopped here and there to pick up other contingents of the similarly injured. I had heard that some of the other vessels carried wounded Space Marines; was such a thing possible, I wondered? It seemed fanciful that any of the Imperium’s immortal champions could ever suffer something so mundane as a mere wound.
And so, in time none of us had the first clue as to where we were or to which points of the aetheric compass we were headed. The only constant was the lamentation of the almost-dead echoing through the cavernous wards as they fought nightmares in their sleep. That, and the sound of the engines.
But after a time, I began to notice patterns. That’s what I’m good at.
I can see things.
I don’t speak of it much because it can frighten an unwary soul, and anger others into rash action. People don’t like what they cannot understand, and they tend to react with violence over all else. In the ranks of the Imperial Army, that violence can come by blade or las-bolt, so it is conducive to a man’s wellbeing not to go looking for it.