Gods of Mars

by Graham McNeill

  That he was still functional at all was yet another miracle.

  ‘As you see, I have control of the Speranza and every aspect of its workings,’ said Telok, lifting his clawed hands to the image above him. ‘The Breath of the Gods will soon be aboard, and in under an hour we will break orbit en route to Mars.’

  Galatea moved to stand beside Telok, and Kotov was struck by the transformation he saw in the machine-hybrid. Its posture was that of a crippled baseline human, painful to look upon and every movement clearly causing monstrous amounts of pain.

  ‘But we have nothing further to discuss, Archmagos Kotov,’ said Telok, turning to Galatea. ‘Kill every one of them.’

  The machine-hybrid lifted itself up on its mismatched blade-limbs, like a broken automaton in a historical display. A child’s toy remade by a psychopath, all torn cables, leaking fluids and sparking wires.

  ‘Now I will watch you die,’ said Telok.

  Ever since it had entered the annals of Cadian history, the Battle for Vogen had been a byword for the no-win scenario. Given the forces involved in the actual battle, no Cadian commander had yet found a workable strategy to claim outright victory in any simulation fought over the war-torn city.

  Hawkins hoped he was about to change that.

  Dahan’s killing of the alpha-beast had literally stunned the crystalline attackers, and the Imperials had punished them hard. There wasn’t a crystal killer within three hundred metres of their position. The increasing volume of gunfire from across the plaza was telling Hawkins that was about to change.

  Lieutenant Karha Creed scooted over the rubble towards him. Her helmet had taken a hit and he could see right through to her blonde hair beneath. Blood caked her cheek below the impact.

  ‘Looks like you got lucky,’ said Hawkins.

  ‘I got careless,’ said Creed. ‘Too caught up watching Magos Dahan’s kill. A millimetre to the left and I’d be dead.’

  ‘I hear that,’ said Hawkins.

  Creed’s company were arrayed in deployment redoubts either side of Hawkins. Sergeants bellowed inspirational words from the Uplifting Primer, commissars doled out Imperial piety from memory and the bearers of the regiment’s colours had them ready to raise high for the first time since they’d come on this expedition.

  ‘Lieutenants Gerund and Valdor send their compliments,’ said Westin, the vox-caster’s headset tucked under the rim of his helmet. ‘Both companies are ready as per your orders.’

  ‘Gerund, she’s a tough one,’ said Hawkins. ‘Damn near loses an arm then has a whole building fall down around her ears. And she’s still able to salvage a working platoon to take into the fight.’

  ‘I trained with her at Kasr Holn,’ said Creed, ditching her damaged helm and rummaging for a fresh one. ‘You don’t know the half of it.’

  Hawkins nodded and tapped Westin on the shoulder. ‘Any more word from the colonel?’

  ‘Nothing, sir.’

  ‘He on his way here?’ asked Creed.

  ‘No, we get to finish this ourselves,’ grinned Hawkins. ‘We do it the way Hastur would have done it if he’d had superheavies and Titans. And speaking of which…’

  The deck rumbled and a lumbering iron behemoth emerged from the archway at the centre of the wall behind them. Less of a tank, more a fully-mobile battle fortress, the Baneblade was the vehicle of choice for the discerning Imperial Guard commander. Laden with battle cannons, lascannons and heavy bolters, it was a lead fist in an iron gauntlet. Two more came hard on its heels.

  Jahn Callins sat in the commander’s hatch atop the colossal turret, a pair of blast-goggles pulled up onto his forehead.

  ‘Is that for me?’ asked Hawkins, having to shout to be heard over the roar of the Baneblade’s power plant.

  ‘Mackan’s Vengeance,’ said Callins. ‘Kept her back specially for you, sir. I know she was lucky for you on Baktar III.’

  ‘Good man, Jahn. Appropriate too,’ said Hawkins, looking out over the plaza to where Dahan’s skitarii had their vehicles laagered up around their Secutor and the fallen statue of Sanguinius. He all but vaulted onto the crew ladder and scrambled over the tank’s topside. Callins dropped into the tank and Hawkins took his place in the commander’s hatch. He pulled on his ear-baffles and hooked himself up to the internal vox-net. The ogre-like spirit of the armoured vehicle was a grating burr in his ears as it strained against human control.

  A slate inset within the hatch ring displayed the relative positions of the other superheavy squadrons, the battle-engines and his various infantry platoons. All in the green. All ready to begin the counter-attack in the breath Dahan’s kill and the arrival of Legio Sirius had allowed them to take. Hawkins leaned out over the turret and shouted down to Creed.

  ‘Get moving as soon as we’re over the wall.’

  Creed nodded. ‘Understood, and good hunting,’ she shouted, before turning and running, bent over, to join her soldiers.

  Hawkins twisted the black plastic knob beside him that linked him to the driver’s compartment.

  ‘Take us out.’

  The Baneblade roared and its engine jetted a plume of blue oilsmoke. Tracks bit the deck and the lumbering vehicle powered up and over the barricade. Almost immediately, flurries of missiles arced from the ruins of the Law Courts and the railhead terminus. Mortars on the roof of the Palace of Peace dropped barrages of high explosives on the far end of the deck. Streams of rockets streaked from Deathstrike launchers farther back and a thunderous cascade of main guns mounted on the superheavy turrets opened fire.

  Half the plaza vanished in a fire-lit fogbank of destruction.

  To Hawkins’s right, three Hellhammers skirted the edges of the Law Courts, unleashing storms of shells from their multiple turrets, co-axials and fixed weapon mounts. Two pairs of Shadowswords came after them. Their volcano cannons tracked for targets while heavy bolters perforated the smoke with mass-reactives.

  Hawkins knew at least as many colossal tanks were crashing through the pulverised remains of the railhead terminus to his left. Next to the superheavies, the regiment’s Chimeras and Leman Russ looked absurdly small.

  Green fire hosed from the fog of detonations ahead, though how anything could still be alive in there to fight back was a mystery. Hawkins was bringing overwhelming fire and armour to the fight, but the enemy wasn’t yet beaten. Not by a long shot.

  A Baneblade was three hundred tonnes of awesome killing metal, and though the Hellhound was the signature tank of the 71st, Hawkins couldn’t deny the thrill of commanding this beast of a machine. Nothing the enemy could throw at it could even scratch its paint.

  The battle cannon thundered, and the Baneblade rocked back on its tracks. A section of the deck beyond Dahan’s position simply vanished. Artillery detonations obscured the far side of the plaza, but glittering reflections through the smoke told Hawkins the enemy were massing. He knew it was reckless to ride exposed in the command turret, but his men needed to see him.

  They needed to see how little he cared for the danger.

  The officers of Cadia had led their soldiers this way for thousands of years, and it was how they would always do it.

  Hundreds of las-bolts from scores of Chimeras speared into the fog, a storm of fire punching ahead of the Cadian advance. More than a thousand infantrymen raced across the plaza, company standards snapping in the raging thermals.

  This was how Cadians made war, unrelenting, furiously attacking in such overwhelming force that an enemy simply had no chance of survival. The Guard was not an extension of Imperial policy designed to drive an enemy to the negotiating table.

  It was a force of extermination.

  Hawkins looked up as a vast shadow fell across Mackan’s Vengeance. Arrayed in the colours of Sirius, fresh paint gleaming and new oil dripping from every joint, Amarok dipped its head in respect as it came alongside him. Vintras pulled his Warhound away before unleashing a torrent of bolter fire from its vulcan.

  Even through the ear-baffles, the no
ise was deafening.

  The really big engines kept to the rear of the formation, the majority of their guns simply too obscenely lethal to employ in so confined a space – as Hawkins knew only too well. Lupa Capitalina and Canis Ulfrica unleashed a hurricane of fire from their gatling blasters, and the firepower of so many heavy shells tore three-metre trenches in the deck. Both engines launched barrage after barrage of Apocalypse missiles from carapace launchers, turning the far end of the plaza into a hellstorm of shrapnel and fire.

  Those who’d seen such a barrage claimed that even one launcher could unleash the equivalent of an artillery company.

  Hawkins reckoned that to be a conservative estimate.

  Mackan’s Vengeance reached the laager of skitarii tanks and Hawkins saw Dahan in the hatch of a Leman Russ with a turret-mounted weapon he didn’t recognise. Something with spinning brass orbs and crackling tines enclosing a seething ball of purple-white plasma.

  Dahan saw him and raised his Cebrenian halberd in salute. Hawkins didn’t have a signature weapon, so instead raised his fist – as good a symbol of Cadia as any.

  The Mechanicus vehicles – a mix of stalk tanks and up-armed Chimeras and Leman Russ – broke their laager and merged with the Cadian formations with complete precision.

  The barrage moving ahead of the Cadians ceased as the armoured charge reached the far end of the plaza. The smoke began to disperse as the deck’s recyc-units sucked wheezing breaths into the ventilation systems.

  Should have got Dahan to disengage them, thought Hawkins.

  Blocky shapes resolved in the smoke, artillery-smashed recreations of Vogen’s outer walls. Fortifications Colonel Hastur and his soldiers had attempted to escalade time and time again without success.

  Fortifications that were within touching distance.

  And Hawkins felt a hand take his heart in a clenched fist as a tsunami of crystalline creatures spilled over them. They came from every transverse entry hall to the training deck, from every gap in the walls and through the wide open gates.

  Thousands of sharp-edged beasts of glass and crystal.

  Some were the human-sized warriors, others the towering shield-bearing monsters. At least two dozen of the vast, centipede-like creatures he’d killed with the Rapier in the deck transit punched through the walls.

  An army of extermination, but he had one of his own.

  ‘Time to win the no-win scenario,’ said Hawkins.

  Even monstrously damaged, Galatea was fast. Its clattering, ungainly frame came at them with slashing forelimbs and whipping, blade-tipped mechadendrites. Two Cadians died instantly, speared through their chests by scything blades that rammed down like pistons.

  Kotov ducked back as another limb flicked at him. The tip caught the edge of his robes and cut the heavy metal-lined fabric like paper. Rough hands pulled him back.

  ‘Step away, archmagos,’ said Carna, the skitarii warrior placing himself between Kotov and Galatea’s slashing blades. ‘You gain nothing by taking part in this fight.’

  Kotov nodded as the Cadians surrounded Galatea. It spun and stamped like a warhorse of old as they darted in to stab it with their black bayonets. Kotov was reminded of the crude daubs made by ancient cave-dwellers, depicting hunts for vast, plains-dwelling mammoths.

  The pistol he’d taken to Exnihlio, but never fired, felt like something belonging to someone else. He holstered it, already knowing its firing mechanism would not activate.

  Galatea’s body lolled to the side, its silver eyes dull and lifeless, the brain jars on its palanquin crackling with interlinked activity. Each ferocious burst caused Galatea to jerk with rogue impulses.

  Angry static blared from its shattered augmitters.

  Surcouf, Anders and the Black Templar faced the machine-hybrid head on. The rogue trader moved like a fencer, attacking only when the opportunity for a strike presented itself and deflecting attacks rather than meeting them head on. Yael fought two-handed, genhanced power compensating for his lack of finesse. He blocked each thunderous blow with brute strength.

  Ven Anders ducked beneath a slashing limb, but fell to one knee with a grimace of pain, one hand pressed to his blood-soaked uniform. Galatea saw the Cadian colonel’s moment of weakness and slammed a limb down with hammering force.

  The blade punched through Anders’s spine, pinning him to the deck. The colonel’s back arched in agony, but his screams were cut off as Galatea twisted its limb with malicious relish.

  Surcouf shouted and swung his sword in a devastatingly accurate strike. The blade’s artifice was so sublime that even with its powercell non-functional it hacked the limb from Galatea’s body.

  The machine-hybrid staggered, and Yael roared with aggression as he slammed his shoulder into its palanquin. Galatea rocked back, unbalanced with a limb missing. The brains flared with activity and another burst of pained static squalled from its augmitters.

  Anders’s men hurled themselves at the creature with renewed fury. Galatea’s mechadendrites slashed in a wide arc, and three of the Cadians were cut down. Blood and entrails soaked the silver deck plates and Kotov could have wept to see this place of logic and understanding transformed into a place of bloodshed and horror.

  He looked past the fighting and once again saw the ghostly image of a figure on the command throne, like a crude composite superimposed on a badly synced picter.

  Kotov accelerated his thought processes, slowing the perceived passage of time as his mind instantly ramped to massively overclocked levels. Thermal vents along his spine bled the excess heat of his enhanced cognition.

  This time the image stabilised, becoming recognisable.

  Linya Tychon.

  You and Speranza must be one.

  Vitali’s hands were sticky with blood. Abrehem Locke’s wound simply wasn’t closing. The bondsman’s coveralls were soaked in crimson from midriff to ankles. He gripped the armrests of the Throne Mechanicus, trembling and white with effort.

  Vitali’s digits were splayed with numerous hair-fine filaments as he attempted to suture the wound. Thus far without success. He had access to every medicae tract ever written, but knowing a thing was entirely different from putting it into practice.

  ‘Can’t you stop the bleeding?’ said Coyne, propped up against the base of the throne. The cauterised stump of the man’s wrist was wrapped in oil-stained rags, held tight to his chest. He’d be lucky not to get an infection and lose the arm.

  ‘Don’t you think I’m trying?’ snapped Vitali, flinching as another burst of gunfire from the breached gate to Forge Elektrus ricocheted inside. ‘The effect of these crystalline weapons is pernicious. It makes the flesh around the injury site weak and prone to rapid necrosis. Each suture I make tears within seconds of being closed up.’

  ‘Then keep more pressure on it, damn you!’ said Hawke, seated on a crate on the other side of the throne. ‘Don’t you know anything about battlefield triage? If you can’t stop it, at least slow it down. Abe’s not the only one losing blood here.’

  A transfusion line connected the two bondsmen, and right now that was all that was keeping Abrehem Locke alive. Julius Hawke had volunteered his blood to save Abrehem, and a quick scan of the barcode on his cheek had revealed him to be a universal donor. The gesture had seemed noble until Vitali realised Hawke simply wanted out of the firing line.

  Vitali had not been gentle with the needle.

  Standing behind the throne, Ismael de Roeven had the fingertips of his hand of flesh and blood pressed to Abrehem’s temple. The former servitor disturbed Vitali on every level; not just for what he was, but what he represented and implied about every other servitor. Ismael’s skin was ashen and grey. He was taking Abrehem’s pain onto himself, and Vitali knew all too well how terrible a burden that was.

  ‘His pulse is slowing,’ said Ismael. ‘Blood pressure dropping to dangerous levels.’

  Connected via a sub-dermal bio-monitor to Abrehem’s vital signs, Vitali already knew that. And right now, every vital s
ign suggested a patient in terminal decline. Without trained medicae, Abrehem Locke was going to die. This fight had to be won, and won quickly.

  Vitali broke the link to Abrehem and pushed himself to his feet. The sounds of battle swelled as his senses aligned more fully to his surroundings.

  ‘Don’t you dare let him die,’ said Vitali to all three of the men clustered at the throne. None of them answered, wrapped up in their own personal miseries.

  Vitali hurried back along the nave, past the chanting acolytes seated on the wooden benches towards the nexus of the forge-temple. The shaven-headed adepts were linked to the Throne Mechanicus, but what benefit they might be providing was unclear.

  He ducked behind the barricade erected at the entrance he’d been tasked with remotely defending. The forge door was no more, and the approaches to Elektrus were now held by Rasselas X-42 and a handful of Mechanicus Protectors. Arcing forks of lightning from shock-staves and green fire lit the wide processional, painting the combatants in a shimmering, stroboscopic glow.

  Like the Spartans of old, the Protectors fought with brutal economy of force, each warrior working in perfect synchrony with his fellows. They fought the crystal creatures in an unbreakable line, advancing and retreating as logic dictated.

  The arco-flagellant had none of that logic, an insane berserker who had once been an exalted cardinal of the Imperium whose murder lust had overcome his piety. Intellectually, Vitali understood it was only right and proper that heretics and the damned be made to shrive their souls through pain and renewed service. But to see such a punishment enacted in the flesh was still horrifying.

  The thing bled from scores of wounds, its swollen, pumped body a reticulated mass of bloodied gouges. Its flesh glittered with embedded fragments of glass debris and blackened scorch marks. One arm hung loose and inert, the other a slashing killing blade. Its body radiated heat and bled vast quantities of chemical haze. At this rate of physical attrition, it wouldn’t last another hour.

  At this rate of assault, none of them would.