Gods of Mars

by Graham McNeill

  Its head swung around, seeing more of the train carriages pulling loose from the maglev. In moments the cascade of derailing carriages would reach this one, but it had no intention of still being here when that happened.

  Neither did Tanna.

  He dived towards the Tindalosi and grabbed for the dangling sword with his remaining hand. His fingers closed on its wire-wound hilt. No way to free the chain, its links stuck fast in the beast’s jaw.

  But Tanna had no intention of freeing his sword.

  He rammed the blade down hard into the deck plate, twisting it deep into the mechanisms beneath. The Tindalosi wrenched its head, but the chains binding the blade to its jaw pulled taut. Like a beast in a snare it twisted and writhed as it sought to free itself from Tanna’s weapon.

  ‘We die together, monster,’ said Tanna.

  ‘No,’ said Varda, hooking his arms under Tanna’s shoulders and dragging him away. ‘It dies alone.’

  Tanna looked up in surprise.

  The Emperor’s Champion hauled Tanna back through the door to the driver’s compartment. Behind them, the Tindalosi pack leader finally ripped its fangs clear of Tanna’s embedded sword. It fixed them with its pitiless stare, already picturing their deaths.

  ‘Now, Kotov! Cut it loose!’ shouted Varda as the beast bounded towards them. The train lurched as the derailments finally reached the carriage. Tanna heard a clatter of disengaging locking pins.

  The Tindalosi leapt as the carriage tumbled from the maglev.

  It spun end over end and exploded as it hit the ground.

  The speed and ferocity of impact destroyed the carriage instantly, reducing its once graceful form to a hurricane of spinning fragments and billowing debris.

  Tanna let out a breath as the maglev engine streaked away from the devastation.

  ‘I told you to go,’ he said.

  ‘I’m not leaving anyone else behind,’ said Varda.

  The tanks were moving, just not fast enough.

  Jahn Callins stalked the ready lines of Magos Turentek’s forge-temple, keeping to clearly marked pedestrian routes. All too easy to get run down by a speeding ammo gurney or fuel tanker by straying into the working areas of the deck.

  The forge was working to capacity: lifter-rigs hauling tanks down from stowage bays, fuel trucks in constant filling rotations and weapon carts being hauled up on chains from hardened magazines below decks. Hundreds of tech-priests moved through the deck, using hi-vis wands to direct the flow of a regiment’s worth of armoured vehicles.

  Chimeras and Hellhounds were mustering by squadron, moving out to assembly areas where they were loaded with fuel and ammunition. Dozens of tech-priests moved through the hosts of armoured vehicles like warrior-priests of old, each with an aspergillium of holy oils in their right hand. Chanting servitors with smoking braziers and relics borne upon silken cushions followed them.

  Callins dearly wished they would hurry the hell up.

  At the far end of the hangar, the engines of Legio Sirius billowed steam and groaning bellows from their war-horns. Gigantic weapons swung overhead in the claws of vast lifter-rigs, trailing steam and drizzling a fine mist of sacred oils to the deck. Each weapon was accompanied by swarms of servo-skulls and binaric plainsong. Like everything to do with the Mechanicus, the Legio was taking its own sweet time to do anything.

  Only one Warhound had moved from its stowage cradle.

  ‘The fight’ll be over before they’re ready,’ he muttered as his data-slate pinged with another readiness icon.

  Chimera squadron. Lima Tao Secundus.

  ‘Superheavies,’ he grumbled to the junior officers trailing him like obedient hounds. ‘I need the damn superheavies.’

  The Baneblades and Stormhammers were yet to move, delayed by the Mechanicus need to do things in the proper order. The 71st were a Mechanised Infantry regiment and as such, Mechanicus protocols gave priority to the APCs.

  Trying to explain that Hawkins needed fighting vehicles to the tech-priests was like pulling teeth. No amount of shouting or talk about losing the ship had persuaded the deck commanders to alter their manifest procedures. As a logistics officer, Callins gave all due reverence to the power of lists and standard operating procedures, but this was taking that reverence to the extreme.

  Another icon flashed up on his slate. A retasking order, together with a location marker.

  ‘What the hell?’

  He tapped the icon and looked over to the location indicated.

  ‘You have got to be kidding me,’ he said, watching as a trio of Baneblades were swung back onto their reinforced storage rails and locked into place. ‘They’re putting them back?’

  Callins ran towards the rigs, ignoring the safety lines on the floor and setting off a dozen alarms as he crossed transit routes deemed unsafe for foot-traffic. Red-robed tech-priests waved directions to the crews of the lifter-rigs, assigning them to bulbous, spider-legged vehicles.

  Callins spotted a high-ranking magos directing operations.

  ‘Atrean,’ he said. ‘Might have known.’

  This particular tech-priest was a rules-lawyer of the worst sort, a man to whom common sense was a regretfully organic notion. They’d butted heads before, but this time promised to be their best yet.

  ‘Atrean!’ barked Callins. ‘Are you trying to lose the ship?’

  The magos turned and Callins wished there was some organic part of his face to punch.

  ‘Boarding protocols are in effect, Major Callins,’ said Atrean. ‘Skitarii vehicles take precedence over passenger vehicles.’

  Callins pointed to the Baneblades. ‘Captain Hawkins needs those tanks. He doesn’t get them, the training deck falls. The training deck falls, the ship falls. Do you understand that?’

  ‘I understand that I have orders to follow. As do you.’

  ‘Your orders make no damn sense,’ said Callins, staring at the scrolling lines of text on his slate. ‘These are going to the ventral decks, perimeter defence duties. I need superheavies in the battle line right now!’

  ‘Mechanicus forge-temples take precedence over lower-rated structures within the Speranza,’ said Atrean, turning away as though the matter were settled.

  Before Callins could reply, more alarms screeched through the deck as a fire-blackened Chimera came roaring into view. Its hull was scorched and pitted with impacts. It angled its course towards them, narrowly avoiding a pair of gurneys laden with promethium drums for a waiting squadron of Hellhounds.

  The driver threw the Chimera into a skid, halting it at the edge of the stowage bays. Its rear assault ramp slammed down moments later and two figures emerged, a woman with a gnarled knot of augmetics on her scalp in iron cornrows and a cocksure peacock who looked like he’d never spent a day in a firing line.

  The man took one look at the Legio Sirius engines and sprinted off towards them without a word. The woman carried a data-slate and wore a battered uniform jacket sewn with a Cadian enginseer’s patch.

  ‘You Callins?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, who are you?’

  ‘Kayrn Sylkwood, lately of the Renard,’ she said, tapping the patch. ‘But in a previous life I was with the Eighth.’

  Callins was impressed. Every Cadian knew the pedigree of the Eighth and its illustrious commander.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Captain Hawkins sent me,’ said Sylkwood, drawing a bulky hell-pistol, a Triplex-Phall hotshot variant with an overcharger wired to its powercell.

  She aimed her gun at Atrean’s head and said, ‘You in charge?’

  ‘I am,’ he said.

  Sylkwood looked down at her slate. ‘So you’re the one putting those Baneblades back in the stowage rails?’

  ‘Yes. Mechanicus protocols clearly dictate that–’

  Kayrn Sylkwood shot Magos Atrean in the chest and Jahn Callins fell a little bit in love with her. The wound was carefully placed not to be mortal, but Atrean would be out of commission for a while. She aimed her pistol a
t the gaggle of tech-priests carrying out Atrean’s orders.

  ‘Who’s in charge now?’ she asked, racking the recharge lever of the hotshot pack.

  One by one, they pointed at Jahn Callins.

  ‘Is the right answer,’ said Sylkwood.

  The maglev came to a halt at a raised way-station, pausing just long enough for the battered survivors of the landing expedition to debark on the edge of the open plaza where Telok had first led them below the planet’s surface.

  Kotov thought back to that moment, remembering the potential he had felt. The potential and the unease. And how he had smothered that unease with ambition and the need to believe in all that Telok represented.

  The silver dome that once filled the plaza with its immensity was gone. In its place was a gaping chasm that dropped into the heart of Exnihlio. The Breath of the Gods was a smear of light in the sky, a new and dreadful star.

  The plaza seemed empty without the silver dome, and the towering structures on all sides made Kotov feel like he was deep in a crater gouged in a vast glacier. After so long enclosed by the industry of Telok’s forge world, the echoing emptiness was unnerving. Gone was the omnipresent beat of machinery he associated with a forge world, the roar of furnaces and the electrical hum of a global infrastructure.

  For all intents and purposes, Exnihlio was deserted.

  Atticus Varda led them into the plaza, his Black Sword unsheathed. Tanna, Yael and Issur marched alongside their champion, while the Cadians and skitarii moved with Kotov. Roboute Surcouf and Magos Pavelka brought up the rear.

  Telok was waiting for them.

  The Lost Magos stood on a landing platform raised up from the plaza. His bulk was immense, hostile and insane. How could Kotov not have seen the lunacy at the heart of him?

  Telok’s expression was one of pleasant surprise at the sight of them – though he must surely have known of their approach.

  ‘Can you hit him from here?’ Tanna asked Yael.

  ‘I can, brother-sergeant,’ confirmed Yael, chambering a stalker-round.

  ‘Do not waste your shot,’ said Pavelka. ‘Telok is protected by layered energy shields. I cannot see him, but I can feel the presence of void flare.’

  ‘Is she right?’ asked Tanna.

  Kotov switched through his auto-senses and nodded.

  ‘It would take a macro-cannon to get to him,’ he said.

  ‘Archmagos Kotov,’ said Telok, his voice boosted and echoing from the buildings around them. ‘As irksome as you and your strange friends have become, I have to say I am pleased you yet live. History is in the making, and history must be observed to matter, otherwise what is the point? The Breath of the Gods draws near the Speranza and this world is spiralling to its doom. Have you any valediction?’

  Kotov knew there was no point in trying to sway Telok from his course, but tried anyway.

  ‘It doesn’t work, Vettius,’ he said. ‘Your machine. It won’t work when you leave this place. Not without the hrud to counterbalance the temporal side-effects. But you know that already, don’t you?’

  Telok grinned and it was the leer of a madman.

  ‘It only needs to work once,’ said Telok. ‘Then when Mars is mine and the Noctis Labyrinthus opens up to me I will have a new power source at its heart. I will have no need of filthy aliens.’

  ‘You would tear the galaxy apart for the sake of mortal ambition?’ asked Bielanna, her warriors spreading out around her.

  ‘Speaks the emissary of a race whose lusts destroyed their empire and birthed unimaginable horrors upon the galaxy,’ said Telok. ‘You are hardly best suited to speak of caution.’

  ‘I am the one most suited to speak of caution, I know the folly of what you attempt,’ said Bielanna. ‘Your machine was wrought for creatures who are anathema to life. Their servitor races built it to drain the life from stars and feed the monstrous appetites of their masters. It was never intended to be employed by a species with so linear a grasp of the temporal flow and with no sensory acuity to perceive deep time.’

  ‘And yet I now command the Breath of the Gods,’ snarled Telok.

  Bielanna laughed. ‘Is that what you truly believe? That such a terrible creation would allow a mere mortal to be its master? Your capacity for self-delusion is beyond anything suffered by those of my people who brought down the Fall.’

  Telok’s crystalline components pulsed a bruised crimson and the wrought iron portions of his Dreadnought-like frame vented superheated steam as debased floodstream boiled around his body.

  Telok pointed a clawed hand towards Bielanna. ‘Your arrogance is matched only by your species’s pathetic reluctance to accept its doom. I should take lessons on humility from you? A race that clings pathetically to a lost empire sliding inevitably to ruin? I think not.’

  ‘Then we are well matched after all,’ said Bielanna.

  Kotov looked up as another light appeared in the sky. This one was blue-hot and the shrill whine of boosters told him that this was an atmosphere-capable craft on an arc of descent.

  ‘What is that?’ asked Tanna.

  The corona wreathing its engine nacelles blotted out the descending craft’s profile, but there was no doubting its Imperial provenance. Kotov saw an electromagnetic residue that was as familiar to him as the composition of his own floodstream.

  ‘It’s from the Speranza,’ he said.

  ‘It’s the Renard’s shuttle!’ cried Roboute Surcouf. ‘Emil!’

  The shuttle’s engine noise growled and the main drives twisted against the airframe and deepened to a hard red as it flared out on its final approach.

  ‘Tarkis must have sent it,’ said Kotov.

  ‘Why would he send the rogue trader’s shuttle?’ said Tanna.

  ‘Does it matter?’ snapped Kotov. ‘We have help! Reinforcements!’

  The Black Templars moved to battle pace, pulling ahead of Kotov and the Cadians. The eldar matched their speed, though Kotov saw they could easily outpace them. Telok’s platform was a hundred metres away, the shuttle from the Renard just touching down in an expanding cloud of propellant.

  Kotov increased his pace, eager to see what manner of aid Tarkis Blaylock had sent to Exnihlio. Tanna’s question was needlessly defeatist. This ship had to have come from Tarkis. What other explanation could there be?

  Kotov saw a human face in the shuttle’s armourglass canopy.

  Emil Nader. Facial mapping of micro-expressions revealing great stress and heightened levels of anxiety.

  The shuttle’s frontal ramp opened up and a figure emerged, wreathed in the fumes of its landing. Tall and black-robed, with a hood drawn up over his face.

  ‘Tarkis!’ cried Kotov. ‘Ave Deus Mechanicus! Thank the Omnissiah, you came.’

  The smoke of the shuttle’s landing cleared and Kotov’s floodstream ran cold as he saw the truth.

  Tarkis Blaylock had not come to Exnihlio.

  Galatea had.

  Galatea approached Telok with grim purpose in its clattering, mismatched limbs. The blasphemous machine intelligence had finally come to enact its murderous intent in crossing the Halo Scar and hope leapt in Kotov’s breast.

  ‘Galatea,’ he cried, extending a mechadendrite. ‘Telok stands before you. Kill him! Kill him now, just as you have dreamed of doing for thousands of years!’

  Telok’s laughter boomed out across the plaza.

  ‘Kill him?’ said Galatea. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. We are his herald, his shadow avatar in the Imperium. We brought you to him and we will stand at his right hand when he becomes the new Master of Mars!’

  The Omnissiah knows all, comprehends all.

  There were times for humility and there were times for brass balls. This was a moment for the latter. Gunnar Vintras stood at the foot of Amarok and hauled Magos Ohtar towards him by the folds of his robes.

  ‘You heard me,’ he said. ‘You’re going to put me back into Amarok or I’m going to shove this laspistol somewhere the Omnissiah doesn’t shine and empty the powercell
. Do we understand each other now?’

  ‘You waste your ire on me, Mister Vintras,’ said Ohtar. ‘Your reinstatement has nothing to do with me. It is for the Wintersun to decide when your penance is done. And he has given no indications as to his willingness to return you to the Pack.’

  Vintras nodded towards Amarok’s glaring canopy.

  ‘Who’ve you put in there anyway?’

  ‘Akelan Chassen was next in rotation.’

  He heard the pause and laughed. ‘Chassen? I’ve seen his aptitude tests. He barely made moderati grade, let alone princeps.’

  ‘But he made them,’ pointed out Ohtar. ‘Not many ever do.’

  ‘But who would you rather have in Amarok? Someone who barely made the grade or someone who rewrote the book on how Warhounds fight? And best answer quickly, this place is going to be knee-deep in crystal monsters soon.’

  Ohtar’s eyes rolled back in his sockets, and when they returned, they weren’t the ice-blue of augmetics, but amber flecked with opal, slitted with a slice of deepest black.

  Vintras knew those eyes, he’d seen them on the black and silver mountain in the depths of an ice storm. They’d pinned him to the rock of the Oldbloods’ fortress and judged him worthy. And when Ohtar spoke, it was not with his own voice, but one channelled from the mighty head of Lupa Capitalina.

  +You dare demand a place in my Pack?+

  Now was the time for humility.

  Vintras dropped to one knee and said, ‘I seek only to aid the Pack, Lord Wintersun. I am the Skinwalker, I belong in a Titan!’

  +I stripped you of that title,+ said Princeps Arlo Luth. ‘I named you Omega and cast you from the Pack.+

  ‘Packs can be rejoined,’ said Vintras.

  +If the Alpha deems the outcast worthy of redemption,+ said Luth. +Are you worthy of mercy?+

  ‘I am,’ said Vintras, angling his neck and displaying his throat as he had done at his ritual of censure. The scar Elias Härkin had given him was pale and healed, but the angle of the cut ensured it would always be visible.

  Princeps Luth regarded Vintras through the slitted eyes of an Oldblood. Crackling electrical fire was reflected there, fire that had no place in the eyes of a Mechanicus proxy.