Gods of Mars

by Graham McNeill

  It buckled the metal with its weight.

  Roboute blinked in shock.

  The giant’s slender limbs were graceful in a way no human machine could ever be. A long-bladed sword of milky white porcelain snapped from its wrist.

  In his time with the Alaitocii, Roboute had heard of the giant warrior-constructs known as wraithlords, but had never seen one.

  The sight before him made him wish that were still the case.

  The wraithlord’s enlarged gauntlet caught Telok’s descending fist and turned it from Kotov’s head. The claw tore through the wall in a squealing howl of tearing metallic cables. The wraithlord brought its other arm around and the white blade sliced cleanly through the hybrid crystalline structure of Telok’s arm.

  A barrage of green fire from the crystals growing from Telok’s chest staggered the wraithlord, crawling over its sinuously lethal form like living flames.

  Then other figures were landing amid the crystaliths.

  Lithe dancers with red-plumed helms and swords of bone. Hunched killers in segmented armour with crackling arcs of lightning wreathing their jaws. Inhumanly proportioned and unnaturally fast.

  They fell upon the paralysed crystaliths in a hurricane of blades and biting energy bolts, shattering scores to fragments in the time it took to draw breath.

  ‘Eldar,’ said Roboute. ‘They’re eldar…’

  ‘How in the name of the Eye did they get here?’ said Anders, running forwards to haul him to his feet.

  Roboute shook his head. ‘Does it matter? They’re helping us.’

  Anders shrugged, accepting the logic of it even as he kept firing into the crystaliths.

  Telok and the wraithlord rained titanic blows upon one another. Bolts tore loose from the rocky walls with the fury of their struggle. The gantry creaked and swayed.

  ‘Come on!’ shouted Anders.

  The Cadian was just as shocked at the appearance of the xenos, but wasn’t about to waste the chance to escape that their arrival had given them. He shouted at his Guardsmen to move.

  ‘Eldar…?’ said Roboute, as a nagging, insistent voice at the back of his mind told him that he knew exactly how they’d come to be here.

  But the memory wouldn’t cohere, wouldn’t make itself known.

  A sinuous figure landed in front of Telok with preternatural grace, one hand extended before her, the other clutching a heavily inscribed staff of entwined bone and silver. It rippled with coruscating light that burned into Roboute’s retinas.

  Obviously female, she wore a cloak of interlocking geometric forms over curved plates of armour inscribed with runic symbols that were at once familiar and strange to him.

  ‘Farseer,’ said Roboute, the memory of this woman growing clearer in his mind. He remembered a darkened vault in a forgotten deck of the Speranza, where dust lay thick and memories even thicker. Where he’d stood before the statue of Magos Vahihva of Pharses and vowed to remember him.

  And just as he remembered Magos Vahihva, so too did the memory of the farseer unlock within him.

  ‘Bielanna Faerelle of Biel-Tan,’ he said, as eldritch fire surged around her and Telok retreated from the psychic tempest. The wraithlord stepped away, the elemental fury of the farseer’s attack driving the two foes apart.

  The eldar psychic barrage had one other effect.

  Roboute saw the Black Templars and the two remaining skitarii finally throw off the effects of Telok’s code. He saw Tanna’s fervent desire to take the fight to the Lost Magos, to empty his bolter’s magazine into the enemy who plotted the death of the Emperor.

  But even the Black Templars were driven back by the howling gales of the psychic storm. With the air alive with immaterial energies, Roboute felt the hatred of the Templars for these aliens and what they had done. Varda drew his sword, his movements stiff and like those of a man recently awoken. The Emperor’s Champion looked to his sergeant, eager to avenge Kul Gilad’s death, but Tanna shook his head.

  Roboute had never witnessed such enormous restraint, and doubted he ever would again.

  The psyker’s horned helm turned to him, and he felt the white heat of her intent pin him in place.

  ‘Take him,’ she ordered, pushing the stricken form of Archmagos Kotov towards him. ‘Take your leader from this place. He must not die here!’

  Roboute and the skitarii took hold of Kotov, but the mass of the wounded archmagos threatened to drag them to the gantry.

  Then Bracha and Yael were at Roboute’s side, and even with their armour operating far below par, the Templars easily bore Kotov’s weight.

  ‘Take him where?’ said Roboute.

  ‘Through the sunset gate, Surcouf,’ said Bielanna.

  ‘The what?’

  The farseer thrust her staff forwards, and a spot of illumination appeared on the wall, like a welding torch burning through a thin sheet of metal. Too bright to look upon directly, it expanded rapidly into a brilliant ellipse of sunlight. Glittering breath gusted from the gateway, together with the sound of laughter and tears, the heat of the desert and the ice of polar wastelands.

  ‘Go!’ shouted the farseer, her voice taut with the effort of opening the portal. ‘All of you! I can hold the gate for moments only. You must trust me.’

  ‘Why should we?’ snarled Tanna. ‘You killed our Reclusiarch.’

  ‘What choice do you have, mon-keigh?’

  The crystaliths began moving with a creak of glass on glass, finally overcoming the disruption of the eldar battle howl.

  ‘None,’ said Roboute, plunging through the gate.

  The Machine-Spirit guards the knowledge of the Ancients.

  Blaylock was used to Kryptaestrex and Azuramagelli bickering, but now more than just time was at stake. The bulky, robotic form of Kryptaestrex was a product of western hemisphere learning, logical, analytical and objective by nature. Azuramagelli, with his subdivided brain-portions distributed through his latticework form, was pure eastern hemisphere: intuitive, thoughtful, and subjective.

  Blaylock knew that, like most such stereotypes, this notion was little more than a myth, yet time and time again it was borne out by those trained in different forges of Mars.

  The two senior bridge adepts stood before the Speranza’s command throne, where Blaylock had been trying in vain for hours to contact Archmagos Kotov. Mechanicus regulations required ship-to-surface vox to be maintained at regular intervals, but the atmospheric conditions of Archmagos Telok’s forge world made a mockery of such protocols.

  said Azuramagelli, the rightmost of his brain excisions flickering with synaptic activity.

  Kryptaestrex’s single, unblinking eye-lens flared in irritation.

 

  demanded Azuramagelli.

 

  said Azuramagelli.

  said Kryptaestrex.

 

  snapped Blaylock, his cant authoritative and final.

  replied Kryptaestrex, folding his heavy manipulator arms across the Icon Mechanicus bolted to his chest.

 

  bricatus Locum,> said Azuramagelli.

  Satisfied the squabbling magi understood the gravity of the situation, Blaylock said,

  Blaylock read the satisfaction in Azuramagelli’s noospheric aura that his suggestion had been acted upon, but the Fabricatus Locum wasn’t yet done.

  he said.

  Azuramagelli signified his assent, and the magi retreated to their stations, hurling binaric insults at one another the entire way.

  Blaylock ignored it and smoothed out his robes, black and etched with representations of the divine circuitry. The green optics pulsed beneath his hood and he waved his gaggle of dwarf-servitors forward to rearrange the floodstream cables that regulated the flow of blessed chemicals sustaining his delicately balanced bio-cybernetic form. With a thought, he introduced a blend of stimulants and synaptic enhancers. They would increase his cognitive processing power, but would render the biological components of his body sluggish for a time.

  A trade-off Blaylock was more than willing to accept.

  He sensed the presence of the loathsome machine-hybrid even before it spoke to him. After what it had done to Mistress Tychon, Blaylock could barely bring himself to look at it.

  ‘Your magi bicker like novices,’ said Galatea. ‘We would chasten them with data-purgatives and parameter-violating power overloads. We would not tolerate dissent.’

  ‘Properly mediated, a little rivalry between underlings is never a bad thing,’ replied Blaylock, not wishing to engage with the creature, but knowing he had little choice. Its virtual hijacking of the Speranza’s systems gave it unprecedented power over the ship’s supposed commander.

  ‘We see nothing but antagonism between Azuramagelli and Kryptaestrex,’ said Galatea. ‘We would have dispensed with one of them long before now.’

  ‘Adepts Kryptaestrex and Azuramagelli are vital components of this ship’s functionality,’ said Blaylock, finally turning to face Galatea. Its grossly asymmetrical body was an affront to his sense of order, almost as much as its artificially evolved machine intelligence was an affront to his faith.

  The brain jars supported on its palanquin body rippled in distorting fluids, each festooned with connective wires, implant spikes and biorhythm monitors.

  Which one belonged to Mistress Tychon?

  Galatea saw him looking and laughed, the sound a harsh bray of machine noise that scraped along Blaylock’s spine.

  ‘Archmagos Kotov has been grossly negligent to allow their continued mutual antipathy to impair the efficiency of his bridge crew,’ said Galatea.

  ‘Then I should thank the Omnissiah that, while you may hold us hostage aboard our own ship, this is not your bridge.’

  ‘True, it is not, and if Archmagos Kotov does not return, it might yet be yours. Do not pretend that the thought has not already crossed your mind.’

  Blaylock shook his head. ‘Kotov will return. The Omnissiah would not have shown him the signs and given us the grace to overcome so much to reach this place only for us to fail now.’

  ‘You think the Omnissiah brought you here?’ asked Galatea.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘You are wrong.’

  Despite his better judgement, Blaylock could not resist such obvious bait.

  ‘If not the Omnissiah, then who?’

  Galatea looked at Blaylock strangely, its hooded head cocked to one side and its silver eyes dimmed as though unsure as to his true meaning.

  ‘Archmagos Telok led you here,’ it said. ‘We thought you knew that.’

  Blaylock released a sigh of incense-filtered breath, relieved Galatea appeared to be talking in metaphysical riddles.

  ‘Archmagos Telok has been lost for thousands of years.’

  ‘And you honestly believe his reach does not extend from beyond the edge of the galaxy to the heart of the Imperium?’ chuckled Galatea. ‘Tell us, Magos Blaylock, how plausible is it that the string of astronomically unlikely events needed to bring the Speranza here might have occurred in so fortuitous a sequence? How likely is it that you would be brought here? The protégé of Magos Alhazen of Sinus Sabeus, an adept fanatically devoted to the continuance of Archmagos Telok’s philosophies? The very adept who sent Roboute Surcouf’s ships to the Arax system, where the saviour beacon of the Tomioka was miraculously found?’

  ‘The Fabricator General himself seconded me to the Speranza,’ said Blaylock, unwilling to concede anything to Galatea.

  ‘So the inloaded explorator-dockets testify,’ agreed Galatea. ‘But why would he assign someone who, on the face of things, was already predisposed to believe the mission a fool’s errand?’

  ‘To ensure Kotov’s desperation did not lose the Ark Mechanicus,’ snapped Blaylock. ‘To act as the eyes of Mars!’

  ‘By a Fabricator General who served his first three centuries in the Cult Mechanicus alongside Magos Alhazen. Coincidence? You know the statistical unlikelihood of such things, Tarkis. Think on that, and then tell us it was not Telok who brought you here.’

  Galatea turned away and clattered along the central nave of the bridge on its mismatched legs.

  Blaylock watched it go, feeling the solid adamantium upon which he had built his life crumble like the shifting red sands of the Tithonius Lacus.

  Rearing towers of insulated distribution pipework filled the vaulted chamber like looping coils of intestinal tract. Far beneath the surface of Exnihlio, they soared to its distant ceiling and plunged to shadowed depths an unknown distance below. Lightning arced between them and the air crackled with the barely caged force of titanic energies being wrought by subterranean generators and the unimaginable geological forces at work in the planet’s core.

  Thunderous engines pounded within each column, the sound filling the chamber with a booming mechanical heartbeat.

  And this was but one of tens of thousands of such chambers.

  On suspended walkways and floating control stations, near-blind servitors, wretched and wasted things, toiled to maintain the machines. Hairless and emaciated, few resembled the forms they had once known.

  The only light was the light flickering between the towers.

  Or at least it was until a golden radiance spilled over a cantilevered control platform overlooking the plunging canyons of power distribution. It illuminated the deck plates like the sunlight that could never reach this deep.

  First one, then more figures spilled from the light. Like soldiers pouring from the burning wreck of a transport vehicle, they cried out in terror and confusion, scrambling away from the scintillating light of the webway gate.

  Roboute Surcouf was the first onto the deck, quickly followed by Ilanna Pavelka. Their eyes were wide and fearful, horrified by the things they had seen, but would never fully remember, save in their nightmares. The wounded figure of Archmagos Kotov came next, held upright only by the strength of Yael and Bracha of the Black Templars. The two skitarii emerged, trailing a handful of stoic Cadians and their colonel.

  The eldar ghosted through without effort, quickly followed by the rest of the Black Templars.

  Both forces spread out, hostile and wary.

  Each expecting treachery from the other.

  Last to come through the portal was Bielanna, and no sooner had her feet touched the steel plating of the chamber’s floor than she collapsed, drained utterly by the cost of opening a path through the webway.

  The sunset gate winked out of existence with a bang of air rushing to fill its void. The golden light vanished, and Bielanna let out a shuddering breath of soul-deep wea
riness.

  Roboute picked himself up, dizzy from travelling in such a wondrous yet fearful way. The world around him felt somehow thin, as though it were simply a facade protecting him from deeper, more terrifyingly real perceptions. For once in his life, Roboute was thankful for his limited human senses.

  At least when humans travelled the warp, they were shielded from the worst of its effects by a Geller field.

  The webway afforded no such protection.

  Yael and Bracha gently lowered Kotov to the ground. The eyes of the archmagos were tightly closed. His head shook with pain and recriminatory binary spilled from his augmitters. Roboute didn’t know what bio-feedback technology Kotov possessed, but suspected the source of his pain was more to do with Telok’s treachery than any physical sensations.

  One skitarii warrior stood over the wounded archmagos, the other bent to his damaged shoulders. Dispensing tools from a cavity within his chest, the cybernetically enhanced warrior began to efficiently and wordlessly seal off the squirting floodstream pipes and isolate hopelessly damaged circuitry.

  Roboute knelt beside the skitarii, a brute of a warrior with metallic implants running the width of his shoulders, spine and upper arms. A shoulder-mounted cannon was locked on a rotating scapula mount, and his right arm was a heavily modified power claw with an integral lascarbine.

  ‘Is he going to die?’ asked Roboute.

  ‘Not if you shut up and let me work,’ growled the warrior without looking up.

  ‘We can help,’ said Roboute.

  The warrior lifted his ironclad head and bared sharpened steel teeth. Roboute flinched at the raw hostility in his eyes.

  The warrior saw Pavelka and said, ‘You can’t. Her. Just her.’

  Roboute waved Pavelka forwards and a crackling stream of binary passed between her and the skitarii. Roboute left them to it, seeing that Kotov’s living or dying might become a moot point in a second.

  With the farseer on her knees, helmet hung low with its visor pressed to the deck, the eldar warriors were acting on their own authority.