The World Engine

by Ben Counter

  Sarakos ran a hand over the sarcophagus lid. He could find no seams in the metal that might indicate a way in. The inductor coils built into his servo-harness detected faint shimmers of energy passing through the sarcophagus, perhaps circuits carrying information. There was no external way into the sarcophagus, but it was certainly not empty.

  Sarakos’s servo-harness fitted over the backpack of his armour and housed the many tools a Techmarine might need in the field. Its servo-limb could, with the stabilising clamps built into his armour’s greaves, lift the side of a tank off the ground to allow repairs to its tracks. The flexible mechadendrite was not as strong but was capable of intricate repairs. Both were controlled by the mind-impulse unit built into the collar of Sarakos’s armour, and reacted to his thoughts.

  He unfolded the servo-arm. Its articulated length ended in a multi-tool that could be cycled through various tips. Sarakos selected a plasma cutter that employed a blade of white-hot energy.

  ‘Brothers, stand clear,’ said Sarakos, and plunged the plasma cutter’s blade into the sarcophagus.

  The cutter sliced a deep furrow in the metal. Sarakos’s environmental detectors analysed elements in the vaporised metal that his databanks could not identify. He carved a square slice out of the sarcophagus and once the final cut was made, extended his mechadendrite to slide the slice out and examine it.

  Movement glittered in the darkness. Sarakos drew his plasma pistol and raised the plasma blade for use as a weapon. A host of tiny machines scurried across the surface of the sarcophagus – they resembled the scarabs the necrons had employed in the fighting above, but smaller and without the weaponised mandibles. As Sarakos watched they swarmed around the damaged portion of the sarcophagus and began to weave a web of metallic fibres over the missing section.

  The necrons had some capacity to self-repair, poorly understood by Imperial scholars and known only from battlefield anecdotes. It seemed the structure of the World Engine had the same ability to know when it was damaged and deploy machines to repair itself.

  Sarakos streamed a vid-capture of the repair scarabs at work into his databanks. In the event he made it off the World Engine alive, it would provide valuable intelligence to the Ordo Xenos on necron technology.

  Sarakos picked up one of the scarabs to examine it more closely. His bionic eye switched to a microscope lens. The metallic insect squirmed in his grasp, six legs wiggling. Either the scarab was governed by a set of programmed behaviour, or it was controlled by a central system that detected damage and deployed scarab swarms accordingly.

  Perhaps the World Engine was in control of such machines. Perhaps it had a brain.

  Sarakos did not notice another scarab dropping to the floor and scurrying up his leg. When he spotted it in the corner of his eye it had reached the information ports set into the collar of his armour. The ports allowed him to interface his sensory augmentations with machinery to diagnose and repair it. He reached up to pull the scarab free but it had already extruded a proboscis, like a steel needle, to access the interface.

  More scarabs leapt off the tomb onto Sarakos. He threw away the one he had been examining and tore more off himself, throwing them down and stamping them to metal filings. But they had forced their way into the interfaces.

  It was not a voice that came to Sarakos then. It was not even a message dictated in machine code. It was more like a sudden rush of something utterly unfamiliar, an alien form of thought that forced his mind into a strange new configuration.

  He had felt something like it before. Long before, when he had not been Techmarine Sarakos but Elnah Sarakos Ban Deshurrah, son of Elnah Deshurrah Ban Velgahar, a son of the noble houses of Obsidia. He had been young and strong, a fine duellist, a brilliant scholar, the pride of his ancient family and a candidate for elevation to the ranks of the Astral Knights…

  Before he had become a Space Marine. Before Mars. Before he had been given so many enhancements to his body and mind, and had almost as much taken away…

  He felt a detached sense of revulsion as he realised he was being made to feel emotion again, for the first time in decades.

  The discipline of a Space Marine and the augmentations implanted during his Martian pilgrimage allowed him to compartmentalise his mind in the event of mental threats. He separated the part of himself, the human side that had the most in common with the son of House Elnah, that was being inundated with emotions. A rarely accessed set of data described human emotions in case he had to evaluate them, a difficult task without reference since he did not feel them anymore. He cross-referenced the data with what the quarantined mind was feeling, turning the scientific method of the tech-priests of Mars towards his own brain.

  There was desperation there, a pain and dismay that suggested ongoing torment and a yearning for cessation and release. It was a powerful negative thought-mass that, in an undisciplined mind, could lead to dangerously wayward or self-destructive actions. Another note was less grim. This was one of hope, not that the despair would vanish, but that there was an ally who could help lift it.

  It was the contact with Sarakos that had engendered this hope. It was hope of an ally. The contact had been deliberate, to inform Sarakos of the misery and offer an alliance to fight it.

  Which begged the question, what was trying to communicate with him?

  As Sarakos turned the majority of his perception inwards, externally he was tearing the scarabs off himself, crushing them or dashing them to shards against the sarcophagus. He ripped the last of them free from his interface ports and the alien emotion drained away instantly.

  Sarakos monitored the quarantined section of his mind. There was no sign of infection or moral threat. Nevertheless, he would have to watch it carefully.

  On the lid of the sarcophagus the scarabs had stopped their repair work, leaving it half finished. Instead they formed a shape that resembled one of the glyphs that Sarakos had assumed formed the necron language. Whatever had communicated with him was trying to do so visually as well, this one symbol encompassing the mix of emotions they had forced into his mind.

  Help.

  It was the closest single concept to the cacophony the scarabs had dumped into Sarakos’s brain. Perhaps that was what the symbol meant, too. Help.

  Sarakos filed that information away too. A translation of the necron glyph-language would be valuable intelligence.

  ‘These tombs go on forever,’ came a vox from Sergeant Kelphanar. ‘They keep going down, too. This planet is one damned necropolis.’

  ‘Any visual on the other Astral Knights?’ asked Captain Sufutar.

  ‘Not yet. Wait… movement. Brothers, there’s something else down here. They’re between us and you, approaching your position. It’s not… they’re not ours.’

  ‘Necrons?’ voxed Sufutar.

  ‘Don’t think so, captain. They look like…’

  ‘Movement!’ came a cry from one of the Astral Knights at the crossroads. The battle-brother was manning a heavy bolter set up on one of the sarcophagi.

  ‘Open fire!’ ordered Sufutar. The heavy bolter stuttered and the crossroads was lit by the strobe of muzzle flash.

  Bolters hammered into the darkness. Sarakos caught a glimpse of pallid flesh and skinny limbs leaping through the shadows, fleeing from the sudden storm of gunfire into the guts of the necropolis.

  ‘Velishin! Zekrah! Pursue them!’ ordered Sufutar. ‘Brethren, hold to me!’

  The two squads from Third Company broke cover and pursued the fleeing enemy. ‘Sarakos,’ voxed Sufutar. ‘Go with them. Find out what we’re up against.’

  Sarakos followed the brothers under Sergeants Velishin and Zekrah through the necropolis. His internal cogitators filled in a vector map of the necropolis as it became more labyrinthine and split into multiple levels. Some tombs were simple inscribed slabs like the one he had examined, others were huge megaliths or had entrances s
uggesting the complexity of the structures inside. Whatever culture the necrons had, it lionised its dead and set them in dark finery as grand as anything Sarakos had seen above.

  ‘Blood,’ voxed one of the Astral Knights up ahead. Sarakos saw it too, a smear of crimson across the side of one sarcophagus. It spattered on the ground and then streaked on ahead, as if a bleeding creature had slumped against the sarcophagus, fallen, and been dragged away.

  The necrons themselves were tech-constructs, but whatever had waited for the Astral Knights down here was very much alive.

  ‘Squad Kelphanar on your flank,’ came another vox. ‘Watch your fire, brothers.’

  A semicircle of smooth black monoliths stood up ahead. The Astral Knights were spreading out around it, staying out of the open. More bloodstains led across the glowing glyphs carved into the floor.

  Sarakos’s targeting microcogitator picked out movement in the dark. Sarakos instinctively raised his plasma pistol and fired a bolt of energy. The bolt burst against a pale shape in the shadows, blasting charred limbs from a torso turned instantly to ash.

  ‘Close in!’ ordered Sergeant Kelphanar. The squad closed from one side of the stone circle and bolters hammered, shooting down more shapes as they tried to scurry away.

  One of the targets broke and sprinted across the open ground. Bolters shredded it before Sarakos could get a proper look. He logged the last few seconds of data coming into his bionic eye and spooled it back through his datastacks, projecting the recording onto his retina slowed down several times.

  The shape was mostly unclothed save for a loincloth of segmented golden metal, inset with a glyph of red and turquoise lacquer. The instant before the bolter shells ripped into it, Sarakos could see what it had been.

  It was human. Shaven-headed and covered in angular scars, with the same glyph it wore cut into the top of its right arm like a brand of ownership. But definitely human.

  Sarakos fired again, this time the plasma bolt boring through the lower back of another human running from Squad Kelphanar’s assault. Another tried to run past Sarakos – Sarakos’s servo-arm lashed out and caught the runner in the throat. Sarakos saw the man’s physique, while lean, was muscular, well-worked and fit. He had a heavy steel collar around his neck. The skin of the neck and shoulders was scarred where the collar had rubbed.

  The servo-arm extended a spike that punched through the man’s temple and through his brain.

  ‘They’re human!’ voxed a familiar voice – Brother Adelphas of the Third Company, who had pulled Sarakos from the wreckage. ‘They have humans down here!’

  ‘They’re cornered,’ voxed Sergeant Zekrah. ‘They’re not armed. Hold fire?’

  ‘Hold fire,’ agreed Kelphanar. ‘Hold fire, brothers! But keep your wits!’

  Brother Adelphas ran across the stone circle to Sarakos. ‘You saw,’ he said. ‘You knew they were human. You killed him anyway.’

  Sarakos glanced down at the man who had been despatched by his servo-arm. It had barely required a thought, just a reflex action that needed the slightest moment of confirmation from Sarakos’s conscious mind.

  ‘We are to assume aggression from all contacts in a battle zone of which the parameters are unknown,’ said Sarakos. ‘As the Codex requires.’

  ‘Emperor’s teeth,’ swore Adelphas. ‘Did they cut all the human out of you on Mars?’

  The three squads closed in slowly, herding the surviving humans into the stone circle. In the open they all had the same lean, strong look, the same scars of ownership and the same metal collars. Most were men, a couple were women.

  Sergeant Kelphanar advanced on one of the humans, bolt pistol still levelled at the man’s chest. ‘Who are you?’ he demanded. ‘Why are you here?’

  The man did not reply. His eyes seemed unable to focus. His body twitched and his muscles spasmed faintly as if an electric current was being run through him.

  ‘They don’t speak Gothic,’ said Adelphas.

  ‘They don’t speak at all,’ said Kelphanar. ‘Techmarine, what are the collars they wear?’

  Sarakos approached the human and extended his mechadendrite. Its sensors reported low-level electrical activity. Sarakos activated the small cutting blade on the mechadendrite and sawed through the point where the two halves of the collar met – it was held by a locking mechanism that did not look like it was ever meant to be opened.

  The man did not resist. His eyes rolled back and his mouth lolled as if his nervous system was being overwhelmed. The collar split and both halves clunked to the floor.

  The man sank to his knees. He drew in a rattling, painful breath as if it was the first time he had ever done so. His hands went to his throat, which was dark with rings of old scar tissue. His eyes were in focus now, and his movements were his own.

  ‘What are you?’ he gasped in Low Gothic. His voice was hoarse.

  ‘I asked you first,’ said Kelphanar, still aiming his pistol at the man.

  ‘Levitanus,’ came the reply. ‘Selphin… Selphin Minoris. They came and killed the missionary, and took us all onto their ships… and then… we were slaves. Our minds were not our own. I was watching myself working down here, but it was someone else controlling me… controlling all of us.’

  ‘Selphin Minoris,’ repeated Kelphanar. ‘Techmarine?’

  Sarakos’s subroutines rifled through his datastacks. ‘Frontier world just past the sector border,’ he said. ‘Depopulated six years ago. Xenos or renegades speculated responsible.’

  ‘The necrons take slaves,’ said Adelphas.

  ‘We need to get them back to Sufutar,’ said Kelphanar. ‘We need to learn whatever they can tell us about this place. And Amhrad has to know.’

  ‘I will answer your questions,’ said the slave who had called himself Levitanus. ‘But answer one of mine. What are you?’

  ‘Space Marines of the Astral Knights Chapter,’ replied Sarakos.

  Levitanus smiled weakly. ‘I never thought I would see one with my own eyes…’

  The Astral Knights led the slaves back to the crossroads and Sufutar’s position. Sarakos continued to remove the collars, and each slave in turn was jolted painfully back to reality as whatever control the necrons had over them was severed.

  A strange sensation glimmered within Sarakos. It was an echo of the emotions forced into his mind earlier. Perhaps part of him had been left vulnerable. It was a rumination on something Adelphas had said, and the words ran around and around Sarakos’s mind.

  Did they cut all the human out of you on Mars?

  Memories were accessed, although Sarakos had not consciously requested them. They were from so long ago their recollection was grainy and incomplete. They were not the memories of Techmarine Sarakos at all, but of Elnah Sarakos Ban Deshurrah. They were first formed in the grand hall of House Elnah’s summer residence in Port Exalt, the capital of Obsidia, overlooked by the magnificent stone fortress of the Astral Knights.

  Two of those Astral Knights had come to House Elnah that day. One was a Chaplain in the skull helm of the Chapter Reclusiam, and the other wore armour painted in dark red instead of the Astral Knights white and blue. House Elnah had known for some time their son was a potential recruit to the Chapter, outstanding among the thousands of noble sons who hoped to ascend to the ranks of the Space Marines. His elders had regarded the visit with some fear, for it was rare for the Astral Knights to take a particular interest in a single recruit this early in the duelling season. Was Sarakos Ban Deshurrah to undergo an examination looking for some suspected taint or failing? Was there something wrong with him, or the family itself?

  Sarakos had stood in the grand hall alone, for the Astral Knights had insisted no family members be present. Sarakos refused to be cowed by the armoured giants who examined him through the eyepieces of their faceplates. The one in red circled him as if he was a thoroughbred being auctioned.
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  ‘You killed Lokinsae Farza Ban Farzala,’ said the Chaplain. Sarakos did not know the Chaplain’s name. There had been no introductions.

  ‘I did,’ said Sarakos. ‘But the Lord Examiner judged the duel to be right and proper, and the killing blow a necessary act. It was witnessed by many.’

  ‘We had been watching Farza,’ continued the Chaplain.

  ‘Then you wasted your time,’ said Sarakos.

  ‘I have judged you a potential recruit,’ said the Chaplain. ‘And my brother Techmarine has examined the statements gathered about you. It is possible you could join his order within the Astral Knights. Possible, I stress. Not certain. Not even likely.’

  Sarakos did not know what a Techmarine was. The Astral Knights kept the workings of their Chapter secret from the majority of Obsidia’s population, and the house elders who ruled the planet helped keep those secrets.

  ‘You have a brain in that skull,’ said the Astral Knight in red armour, who Sarakos assumed was the Techmarine. ‘Every Space Marine must. But yours is keener than most. Were it not for your high birth, you would have been apprenticed to the forge brethren in the Sprawl.’

  Sarakos felt a sense of disgust. The forge brethren of Obsidia learned their tech-lore from the Techmarines of the Astral Knights but went on to serve among the commoners. They maintained the power and manufactory systems of the lower cities. No son of a noble house would dream of sinking to such menial levels.

  ‘But,’ continued the Techmarine, ‘we also have need of such skills. If you prove yourself during the duelling season, and if you can show yourself to have the potential for learning that has been suggested of you, you could join us. We ask if you would take that step.’

  Sarakos was taken aback. Every boy on Obsidia dreamed of joining the Astral Knights. Even the children of the sub-enfranchised classes told fanciful tales of being raised somehow to aristocracy so they could be chosen. There was never any question of being asked, because there was never any question of refusing.