Gods of Mars

by Graham McNeill

  ‘It’s here,’ she said.

  ‘What is?’ asked Kotov.

  ‘All the pain of this world.’

  Ven Anders removed his helmet and dropped it at his feet. He closed his eyes and craned his neck to let the drizzling moisture wet his skin. He rubbed a hand over his face, clearing away the worst of the blood. Little of it was his, but he’d been standing next to Trooper Bailey when the Tindalosi eviscerated him.

  Cadian Guardsmen fought on the very worst battlefields of the Imperium, knew all the myriad ways there were to die in war, but Anders had seldom seen cruelty as perfectly honed as he had in the Tindalosi.

  Against the lids of his eyes he saw the hooking slashes of their claws, the bloody teeth and the phosphor scrawls of eyes that seemed to be looking at him even now. He shook off the sensation of being watched and hawked a mouthful of bitter spit over the edge of the platform.

  He tasted metal and felt a buzzing in his back teeth that told him a Space Marine was standing next to him. Power armour always had that effect on him.

  ‘For a big man, you step pretty light,’ he said.

  ‘Walk softly, but carry a big stick, isn’t that what they say?’

  Anders opened his eyes and ran his hands through his hair. Longer than he was used to. Time aboard the Speranza was making him lax in his personal grooming.

  ‘I didn’t know it was possible for a Space Marine to walk softly,’ said Anders, looking up into Tanna’s flat, open features.

  ‘We have Scouts within our ranks,’ said Tanna. ‘Or did you think that was an ironic title?’

  ‘I hadn’t thought of it like that,’ admitted Anders. ‘Then again, I’ve never seen Space Marine Scouts.’

  ‘Which is exactly the point,’ said Tanna, before falling silent.

  Anders understood that silence and said, ‘I grieve for the loss of Bracha. Was he a… friend?’

  ‘He was my brother,’ said Tanna. ‘Friend is too small a word.’

  ‘I understand,’ said Anders, and he knew Tanna would see the truth of that.

  ‘We were a small enough brotherhood when we joined the Kotov Fleet,’ said Tanna. ‘And when we are no more, the courage these warriors have shown will pass unremembered. I would not see it so, but know not how to carve our mark into history’s flesh.’

  Tanna’s words of introspection surprised Anders. He had encountered only a few Space Marines in his lifetime, but instinctively knew how rare this moment was.

  And so he returned Tanna’s honesty.

  ‘I’m no stranger to death,’ he said, pinching the bridge of his nose between his fingers. ‘Stared it down a hundred times on a thousand battlefields and never once flinched. That’s not bravado, it’s really not, because it’s not fear for my own life that keeps me pacing the halls at night…’

  ‘It is for the lives of those you command.’

  Anders nodded. ‘No officer wants to lose men under his command, but death walks in every Guardsman’s shadow. You go into battle knowing with complete certainty that you’re going to lose men and women along the way. You have to make peace with that or you can’t be an officer, not a Cadian officer anyway. But it was my job to keep those soldiers alive for as long as I could. I failed.’

  ‘It was your job to lead those soldiers in battle for the Emperor, just as it has fallen to me to lead mine,’ said Tanna, gripping Anders’s shoulder. ‘You did that. No commander can ever be sure of bringing all their warriors home, but so long as the foe is slain and the mission complete, their deaths serve the Emperor.’

  Tanna held out his gauntlet and Anders saw a handful of gleaming ident-tags. Each had been cleaned of blood, each one stamped with a name and Cadian bio-numeric identifier.

  ‘I retrieved these from the bodies of your honoured dead,’ said Tanna. ‘I thought you would be glad of their return.’

  Anders stared at the ident-tags. There hadn’t been time to gather them from the torn-up corpses. Or at least he’d assumed there hadn’t. That Tanna had risked his life and the lives of his warriors to retrieve them was an honour beyond repayment.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Anders, taking the tags and reading each name in turn. He pocketed them and held his hand out.

  ‘The Emperor watch over you, Sergeant Tanna.’

  ‘And you, Colonel Anders. It has been an honour to fight alongside you and your soldiers.’

  Anders grinned, a measure of his cocksure Cadian attitude reasserting itself, and said, ‘You say that like the fight’s over, but Cadians aren’t done until the Eye takes them. And we don’t flinch easy.’

  ‘Two questions,’ said Surcouf, standing before the battered funicular carriage with his arms folded. ‘Does it work and where do you think it goes?’

  ‘It appears to be fully operational, though the mechanisms are corroded almost beyond functionality,’ said Kotov, scraping rusted metal from the control levers. ‘As to a destination, I can see no topographical representations of where it might ultimately lead.’

  ‘Who cares where it ultimately leads?’ said Surcouf. ‘It goes away from here, that’s the most important thing, surely? At least it’ll give us a chance to regroup and figure out our next move.’

  ‘Our next move?’ said Kotov. ‘What moves do you think we have left to us? Magos Blaylock will already be sailing the Speranza away from this cursed world. We have done all we can, Surcouf. Either Telok has the Speranza or Blaylock has departed. Either way, our chance to affect the outcome of this situation is over.’

  Surcouf looked at him as though he hadn’t understood what he’d just said. Kotov reran his words to check they had not been couched in ambiguous terms. No. Low Gothic and clear in meaning.

  Clearly Surcouf did not agree with him.

  ‘Even if you’re sure Tarkis got the message, how can you be certain he managed to break orbit?’ said Surcouf. ‘Do you really think Telok went to all the trouble of ensnaring a ship like the Speranza just to let it sail away? No, we have to assume that Telok’s cleverer than that.’

  ‘What would you suggest, Master Surcouf?’ said Kotov. ‘How, with all the manifold resources at our disposal, would you propose we fight against the might of an entire world?’

  ‘One big problem is just a series of smaller problems,’ said Surcouf. ‘Small problems we can deal with.’

  Kotov sneered. ‘Optimistic Ultramarian platitudes will do us no good now.’

  ‘Neither will your Mechanicus defeatism,’ snapped Surcouf. ‘So our first priority is to get away from here. Ilanna’s bought us some time, so I suggest we don’t waste it.’

  Sergeant Tanna and Ven Anders entered the carriage, and the metal floor groaned alarmingly with their combined weight.

  ‘Can you get this carriage working, archmagos?’ asked Tanna.

  ‘I already informed Master Surcouf that it was functional.’

  ‘Then let’s get going,’ said Anders.

  The transit between the two decks was a wide processional ramp with an angled parapet to either side, where dust-shawled statues and machines hissed and chattered in streams of binary. Perhaps it meant something important, perhaps the Speranza was trying to tell him something, but what that might be, Hawkins didn’t know.

  A twin-lascannon turret rested on a gargoyle-wrapped corbel above him, but it looked so poorly maintained, Hawkins doubted it could even move let alone fire. Kneeling Guardsmen took cover in the shadow of the machines on either side of the ramp, lasguns aimed at the wide gateway below.

  Magos Blaylock had assured Hawkins that all the gates between main deck spaces would automatically seal, but that hadn’t happened here. Reports of those gates that stubbornly refused to close crackled over the vox-bead in his ear, together with word of enemy movements.

  Hawkins ran across the top of the ramp, where roll-out barricades were being hauled into place. Sergeant Rae issued orders to the seventy-six Cadian soldiers occupying this position in a voice familiar to Guardsmen across the galaxy. They prepared fire posts, bolted on ki
netic ablatives or layered sacks of annealing particulates over the barricade. Hawkins was more used to sandbags, but Dahan assured him these were far superior in absorbing impacts than mere dirt.

  And anyway, where could you get dirt on a starship?

  A black-coated commissar worked alongside a support platoon setting up their plasma cannons in a prepared bastion. Supply officers set caches of ammo in armoured containers as a team of enginseers directed a pair of Sentinels hauling quad-barrelled Rapiers. One of the automated weapons was fitted out with heavy bolters, the other with a laser destroyer. Just as he’d ordered.

  These powerful weapons would eventually seal this route, but until they were in place, it was grunts with lasrifles.

  Taking up position at the centre of the barricade, Hawkins reached up and tapped the vox-bead at his ear.

  ‘Company commanders, report.’

  ‘Valdor company, no contact.’

  ‘Sergeant Kastagir, Hotshot company, under moderate attack.’

  ‘Where’s Lieutenant Gerund, sergeant?’

  ‘Hit to the arm, sir. The medics think she might lose it.’

  ‘Do you need support?’ asked Hawkins.

  The vox crackled and the sounds of angry voices came down the line. ‘Don’t you dare, sir,’ said Lieutenant Gerund. ‘We’ve got this one. Just took an unlucky ricochet, that’s all.’

  ‘Understood,’ said Hawkins. He had complete faith in each of his lieutenants, and if Gerund said she didn’t need help, Hawkins believed her. He continued down his leaders.

  ‘Creed company engaging now!’

  ‘Squads Artema and Pious under fire. No significant losses.’

  The rest of his forces provided a mix of contact/no-contact reports. Within four minutes of the boarding alarm going out, the Cadians had deployed to pre-assigned defence points, and a picture of the boarders’ attack pattern – or rather, their lack of one – formed in Hawkins’s mind.

  A good defence rested on anticipating where an enemy would attack. Armouries, power plants, life-support, main arterials, inter-deck transits, vital junctions, connecting thoroughfares and the like. These were all vital targets, but the invaders were teleporting in at random. Some appeared in threatening positions, while others materialised in sealed-off portions of the ship or places of negligible importance.

  ‘Callins,’ said Hawkins, connecting to the prow forges where Jahn Callins was lighting a fire under Magos Turentek’s adepts to get the armoured vehicles moving.

  ‘A little busy here, sir,’ replied Callins.

  ‘We’re not exactly sipping dammassine and playing cards down here, Jahn,’ he said. ‘Where’s my armoured support?’

  ‘Tricky, sir,’ said Callins. ‘These Mechanicus imbeciles have got half our inventory chained up in the damn air or hitched onto lifter-rigs. I’m trying to sort it, but it’s taking time.’

  ‘How long? There’s more of these crystal things appearing every minute.’

  ‘Soon as I can, sir,’ promised Callins. ‘You’ll know we’re ready when we roll past you.’

  Hawkins grinned and signed off, turning his attention to this position. A pair of arguing magi with shaven skulls worked in the guts of a control hatch beside the gateway, but whatever they were doing, it wasn’t working.

  ‘Bloody Mechanicus,’ said Hawkins, pausing as he passed a cogged skull icon stamped onto the wall next to him. He reached out and touched it, feeling the ever-present vibration passing through the starship.

  A little self-conscious, Hawkins said, ‘Speranza, if you can hear me, we could really use some cooperation. We’re trying to defend you, but you’re not making it easy for us.’

  ‘Since when have Cadian soldiers ever taken the easy fight?’ said Rae, appearing with his rifle held loosely at his hip. ‘We’re born under the Eye and know hardship from birth. Why should life be any easier?’

  Hawkins was about to answer when he heard a series of quick taps over the vox. Scout-cant. Three taps on the repeat.

  Enemy inbound.

  Rae heard it too and shouted, ‘Stand to!’ as a squad of cloaked scouts ran back through the gateway. The squad sergeant, a mohawked soldier with black and steel camo-paint slashed across his face, made a fist above his head. He made a crosswise motion across his chest and thumped his shoulder harness twice.

  Two hundred or more.

  The scouts sprinted up the ramp, keeping low and seeming to move only from the waist down. The adepts at the gate bleated in terror. One remained hooked into the gate’s mechanisms, the other jerked free and hitched up his robes to run after the scouts.

  ‘Spry for a tech-priest,’ observed Rae.

  ‘You be fast if you had two hundred enemy at your arse.’

  ‘True,’ said Rae as the scouts vaulted over the barricade and the first crystalline creatures, like the ones they’d faced on Katen Venia, poured through the gate.

  ‘By squads, open fire!’ shouted Hawkins.

  A storm of las-fire blazed down the ramp and over fifty glittering enemies broke apart into splintered shards. Heavy bolters flayed the creatures, chugging reports echoing from the enclosing walls of the transit. Grenades burst amongst them and blue-white bolts of plasma heat-fused more where they stood.

  Hawkins slotted the skull of a jagged-looking thing of crystal between his iron sights and pulled the trigger. It exploded like a glass sculpture dropped from a great height. He picked another and dropped it, then another, methodically racking up kills with every shot.

  Crackling bolts of green energy sliced up the ramp, but the Cadians were well dug in and the annealing properties of the particulate bags were living up to Magos Dahan’s boast. The twin lascannons on the gargoyle-wrapped corbel opened fire, and blew a dozen creatures to shards.

  Hawkins laughed. ‘Well, what do you know?’

  ‘Sir?’ said Rae, a wide grin plastered across his face.

  ‘Never mind,’ replied Hawkins, ducking down to replace his rifle’s powercell.

  Then a section of the barricade exploded in a mushrooming detonation of sick green fire. A pulsing shock wave rolled over the Cadians as burning bodies rained down. Hawkins rolled and coughed a bitter wad of bloody spit.

  ‘Creed save us, what was that?’ grunted Rae, wiping grit from his eyes.

  Hawkins dragged himself upright, pushing aside pieces of wrecked barricade and body parts as he blinked away spotty after-images of light. A ten-metre-wide gap had been blown in the barricade. At least thirty wounded Guardsmen lay scattered in disarray, little more than limbless, screaming half-bodies. Corpsmen were moving through the firestorm to reach them. They called out triage instructions as medicae servitors dragged the most seriously injured soldiers out of the line of fire.

  Both Sentinels were down. One was on its knees, its armoured canopy torn open like foil paper and inner surfaces dripping red. The other sprawled on its back, the stumps of its mechanised legs thrashing uselessly beneath it. A burning Rapier lay on its side, the enginseers smeared to bloody paste. The other weapon platform sat in splendid isolation, looking miraculously undamaged.

  Crunching over the shattered remains of the first wave of enemies, a gigantic creature of broken glass reflections pushed onto the base of the ramp.

  Easily the size of three superheavies in a column, it was a hideous amalgam of rippling centipede and draconic beetle. Its head was a brutal orifice of concentric jaws that spun like the earth-crushing drills of a Hellbore. Spikes of weaponry blazed from the upper surfaces of its glossy carapace.

  ‘War machine!’ shouted Hawkins.

  Bielanna listened to the mon-keigh speak as though their actions mattered, as though they were the agents of change in a universe that cared nothing for their mayfly existences.

  And yet…

  Hadn’t she been drawn here by their actions? Hadn’t she seen their actions deforming the skein, denying her a future where she was a mother to twin eldar girls? Hadn’t she followed their threads to give her unborn daughters a ch
ance to exist?

  ‘You are lost, farseer,’ said Ariganna Icefang, hissing in pain as the carriage began picking up speed and rumbled over a section of buckled rails. ‘Restore your focus.’

  Bielanna nodded and tried to smile at the gravely wounded exarch, but the despair was too heavy in her heart to convince. Ariganna’s helm was cracked and her breath rasped heavily beneath the splintered wraithbone.

  ‘Lost?’ she said. ‘Perhaps, but not the way you think.’

  ‘I do not believe you,’ said Ariganna. ‘You were dwelling on what brought us to this place.’

  ‘You are perceptive,’ said Bielanna.

  ‘For a warrior, you mean?’

  Bielanna didn’t answer. That was exactly what she’d thought.

  ‘Death’s shadow imparts a clarity denied to me in life,’ said Ariganna, and Bielanna looked down at the blood pooling in the exarch’s lap. So much blood and nothing she could do to stop it.

  She swallowed. ‘I was merely thinking that you were right.’

  ‘I usually am,’ said Ariganna, ‘but about what specifically?’

  ‘That I would lead us all to our doom. I have been a poor seer not to have seen this gathering fate.’

  ‘Believe that when we are all dead,’ said Ariganna.

  ‘Too many of us are dead already,’ said Bielanna. ‘Torai, Yelena, Irenia, Khorada, Lighthand… And Uldanaish Ghostwalker is no longer among us.’

  A shadow passed over the exarch’s face and her eyes closed. Bielanna’s heart sank into an abyss of grief, but it was simply the carriage entering the tunnel at the base of the rocky slope.

  It had taken Kotov some time to restore the funicular to life, a process that seemed to require a considerable amount of cursing and repeated blows from his mechanised arms. Once moving, it had descended nearly a thousand metres before the fitful beams of its running lights illuminated a yawning tunnel mouth. Crystalline machinery that had the appearance of great age ringed the opening, its internal structure cloudy and cracked.

  Ariganna’s eyes opened and she said, ‘I know, I felt the Ghostwalker’s passing.’

  ‘She Who Thirsts has him now,’ said Bielanna, guilty tears flowing freely. ‘I have damned him forever. I have damned us all.’