The World Engine

by Ben Counter

  Valqash fired a close group of bolt pistol shots into its chest. Its torso was blown open and it fell back, but more were landing. Some of them lay where they fell but others self-repaired and rose stutteringly to their feet.

  Each group of Astral Knights gathered to form a firebase, a knot of battle-brothers covering all directions. Valqash slid down the steep slope to join Kypsalah’s squad. A warrior lurched at him – its gauss blaster was wrecked but the blade mounted on the end of the barrel was still keen. Valqash hacked at it with his force axe and let a sliver of his psychic power run through the blade to its edge. The enhanced blade sliced through the necron’s neck and its head came away cleanly.

  Necrons marched from every side. Kypsalah’s squad kept their discipline, firing short bursts of well-placed bolts of plasma to cut down the advancing constructs with efficiency and speed. Across the valley the other Astral Knights were doing the same, formed up to protect their heavy weapons as they blazed bolter fire in precise volleys to shred the necrons. The necrons, on the other hand, landed in twos and threes, unable to adopt a formation before being caught in the overlapping fire zones.

  The Astral Knights might just survive. And even as Valqash chastised himself for daring to have such a thought, the waters of the river heaved up and the fallen walker emerged from it right beside Kypsalah’s squad, silver streaking down its carapace. Although one leg was halfway buckled underneath it, it had clearly survived the fall fully mobile and combat-able. The gun mounted under its hull swivelled through the heat haze rolling off it. Its hull was covered in lenses and focusing arrays that cast rays of reddish light across Kypsalah’s veterans.

  Gunfire stuttered against it. The damage was nothing more than cosmetic. The metal of the walker’s hull flowed up into the bullet scars and filled in the wounds. The mounted gun took aim at the veteran squad and a bolt of pure heat ripped through the air, visible as a white-hot haze connecting the gun’s barrel with the closest of the squad.

  The Astral Knight caught in the heat beam simply dissolved. The ceramite of his armour reached melting point and evaporated, taking with it everything inside. The beam played through the squad, gouging a deep cherry-red furrow of molten steel into the ground as it did so. The hiss of the superheated air rose to a high scream. The squad scattered out of the way, but they were not all fast enough. One lost his trailing leg to the beam as he dived away from it. Another lost his gun arm and most of his shoulder. Kypsalah fired as he ran, spraying bolter fire at the targeting lenses that whirred as they sought out the next enemy.

  Valqash shouldered his force axe and holstered his pistol. They would not do him any good here.

  He held out both hands in front of him. It was not a necessary gesture but it helped him focus, the muscle memory aiding the pathways through his brain that opened up. He normally kept those parts of his brain locked in by the iron discipline taught by the Astral Knights Librarium, because there he kept the weapon.

  Crimson energy formed around his hands. He formed the image in his mind a moment before it became a reality – a stream of psychic power ripping from his palms into the walker. It was a constant and cohesive stream of energy that lanced deep into the living metal of the walker’s hull. Valqash fought to focus it, for the tighter the beam the deeper it penetrated. He felt the resistance of the walker’s inner structure and pushed on through, feeling his twin hearts hammering with the strain.

  Some Space Marine Librarians could banish their opponents to another dimension or quicken the metabolisms of their battle-brothers. Others could surround their fists with gauntlets of molten stone or fill their enemies’ minds with terrifying hallucinations. And some, like Valqash, were nothing more or less than living artillery.

  The walker reeled, trying to force its hull out of the beam. All it achieved was to let the beam play across its surface, carving a deep canyon in the living metal. Lenses popped and sparks spurted from the open wound in its hull like burning blood. The heat ray swung awry, catching a necron warrior in its path and vaporising the construct from the waist up.

  Valqash felt the tightness rising in his chest and the constriction of his lungs. He had learned the hard way during his apprenticeship as an Epistolary in the Librarium that his mind could channel power his body could not contain. He shut down the stream of psychic energy and felt the coldness of his mental pathways closing down again. He coughed out a lungful of smoke, and more smoke coiled from his palms. The paint on his gauntlets was bubbling and hissing.

  ‘Now!’ shouted Valqash, coughing again. ‘Strike!’

  Kypsalah’s squad turned and concentrated fire on the rent in the walker’s hull. Bolter fire pinged off sections of its hull armour, revealing the interweaving pipework and mechanical members inside. A blast from one of the squad’s plasma guns bored through a key piston and the walker sagged down as one of its legs was suddenly paralysed.

  Kypsalah ran forwards and vaulted up onto the walker. He rammed his chainsword into the tear in the hull and wrenched it back and forth. Sparks and components spat back at him. The walker bucked suddenly and Kypsalah was thrown into the metallic river. The quicksilver rushed over him, threatening to submerge him as the walker raised a functional leg over the first sergeant to stamp it down and impale him.

  Valqash called on his mental energy again but for the moment it was exhausted. In reality there was an infinite ocean of power in the warp, the parallel dimension where all psychic potential resided, but he had trained his body and mind to close the connection to the warp down when his body was still unable to channel it again. For the moment his mind was like a bolter without any shells, waiting to be reloaded.

  There was nothing he could do. Kypsalah would die.

  With a sound of tearing metal the necron hulk slammed into the side of the walker, barging it aside into the river. The paralysed leg crunched and folded underneath it. The hulk drew its fist back and pounded a massive blow into the walker, splitting its hull apart along the wound Valqash had opened. The walker’s remaining good leg waved like that of a pinned insect. One of the veteran squad waded into the quicksilver and levelled his plasma gun at the exposed metallic entrails of the walker. The plasma blast ripped a smoking black hole right through the vulnerable innards and the walker slumped to inaction. The quicksilver swamped it and began to drag it downstream as the hulk lumbered back to shore.

  Sergeant Kypsalah grabbed the hand of the veteran with the plasma gun, who pulled him out of the torrent and back to the shore. Valqash drew back to the squad as it regrouped and tried to take stock of the battle. It was chaotic, with no battle lines – isolated groups of necrons formed up and charged the Astral Knights, to be cut down with bolter fire. Valqash saw Captain Khabyar lead a counter-charge against a larger group of necron warriors, scattering the constructs as he laid about him with swingeing blows of his power fist.

  ‘Form up!’ ordered Khabyar. ‘To me, brothers, and form the line! We fight not like bands of brigands! We are Astral Knights! Obey your Codex and fight like Space Marines!’

  The Astral Knights had opened up enough manoeuvring room around them to form the semblance of a battle line, with the bulk of the fallen necrons on one side. Valqash joined the veteran squad as they took their place in the line between two Devastator squads.

  Necrons had fallen in their hundreds. When they self-repaired there was no shortage of bolters to shoot them down again. The shattered components mingled with the ancient discarded body parts that littered the canyon floor. Some of the fallen necrons vanished as if whisked away by some teleporter technology – others were carried away by the quicksilver river.

  With the river between the Astral Knights line and the bulk of the necrons, the necrons had to wade through it to get into range. Their command over the metal river had evidently been usurped by the appearance of the hulk. As they made their way towards the line the Devastator squads used the greater range of their missile launc
hers and heavy bolters to reap a terrible toll among the constructs. Some stood again to be shot down by bolter fire as they got nearer. Others vanished below the quicksilver and never re-emerged.

  Some of the necron leaders had made it down on their anti-grav thrones. The thrones were armed with mounted cannon and in a straight-up battle would have been a formidable addition to the necron firepower, but isolated and without the massed ranks of constructs beneath them the aristocrats riding them dared not approach within missile launcher range of the Astral Knights. One sought to form a wedge of warrior-constructs around it and forge across the river, gathering the remaining strength of numbers to strike the Astral Knights line. Valqash stepped forwards from the line and allowed his mind to open up the old channels, and let a beam of power leap from his hands to the necron enthroned on its chariot. He felt the power trying to break free from him and tightened his mind around it, keeping it from bucking and lashing out around him at random. It served him, it was his to control, and he commanded it to focus on his target.

  The beam went wide by a metre, slicing off a chunk of the vehicle’s structure. It carved through one of the anti-grav units and the chariot dipped sideways into the river, the aristocrat on board clambering onto its upper side in a manner less than dignified. It must have given a silent order to the constructs around it for they backed away from the Astral Knights, surrounding the aristocrat and escorting it to the relative safety of the canyon’s far side.

  The Astral Knights kept up their fire, driving the necrons back. The column was utterly shattered by now, with the intact elements gathering at the top of the ridge to regroup and find another crossing. The necrons were shot down as they tried to withdraw, raked by Devastator fire as they marched up the winding paths back to the top.

  Valqash stepped back from the front line. The necrons were out of his power’s range for now. He walked past the Devastator squad beside him towards where the steel hulk crouched at one end of the Astral Knights line. It had lent its cannon fire to the Devastators and the barrel was glowing hot.

  ‘I asked you before,’ said Valqash, ‘and I will do so again. What are you?’

  The hulk turned its massive rusted head towards Valqash and a set of lenses deep inside its eye socket spun as they focused on him.

  ‘Turakhin,’ it said.

  In a once-grand forum the strikeforce paused for Captain Khabyar to confer with Chapter Master Amhrad, and for the Scouts to range ahead and find a path. The force had moved out of the band of rain and now a cold, sullen breeze whistled across the expanse of metal paving slabs and the columns of the temples and basilicae making up each side of the open ground.

  ‘I would not have chosen this body,’ said Turakhin as he settled into the doorway of a grand basilica, where he could not be seen by airborne necron eyes. ‘But we do not always have choice in such things. Before the traitor Heqiroth made his play for my throne, I anticipated a noble of Borsis would seek to rise up against me. I even entertained the possibility one of them would succeed. I placed host bodies across Borsis so my consciousness might enter one of them should my regal body be damaged or imprisoned. When I was freed, I waited until your kind came close enough to one such body for me to make contact. Alas, it was this body, this panoply of rusting corpses.’

  ‘What did Heqiroth do to you?’ asked Valqash. By silent agreement, Valqash had become the spokesman for the strikeforce when dealing with the creature that called itself Turakhin – a being that, if it told the truth, had once been the lord of all Borsis.

  ‘He severed my consciousness from my body,’ replied Turakhin, ‘and imprisoned it in his tesseract labyrinth. It is a dungeon reserved only for the most dangerous of entities. I did not know Heqiroth had access to such a thing. Perhaps I would have laid my plans differently if I had.’

  ‘You have no love for Heqiroth.’

  ‘I have nothing but hate,’ said Turakhin. ‘And all of it is directed towards the usurper Heqiroth and his dynasty.’

  ‘Then we have something in common,’ said Valqash.

  ‘So I surmised. And that is why I presented myself to you.’

  Valqash tried to read some expression or body language from Turakhin but the rusted shell gave away nothing. It was the first time he knew of that an Astral Knight had spoken with one of the necrons. He had not even been certain they could be communicated with, though the fragmented vox-messages from the failed assassination mission had suggested Heqiroth used the human tongue to control the mind-wiped slaves. Contact with the enemy, especially with the alien, was proscribed by all Imperial authorities, and the Codex Astartes made it clear that through their words the xenos sought to beguile and misinform. It was little wonder that no other Astral Knight had been eager to speak with Turakhin. None of them relished the risk of moral threat that came via the words of the alien.

  ‘Heqiroth will never negotiate,’ said Turakhin, ‘even unto his destruction. He is a fanatic. For what purpose he commands Borsis I do not know, but he will never give it up. He does not understand that the nature of rulership is compromise. I do understand that, for my dynasty had ruled Borsis since we first awoke in its vaults. I can negotiate. I will.’

  ‘What can you offer us?’ asked Valqash.

  ‘I will speak of that directly with your Chapter Master,’ said Turakhin. ‘This one named Amhrad. I have monitored your communications and I know only he has the authority to deal. But I can give you an end to the threat Borsis presents to your Imperium. That is what you seek and it is within your grasp. I ask for little in return, and certainly nothing you will be unwilling to grant. But this I will discuss further with Amhrad.’

  ‘We can gain you an audience with him,’ said Valqash. ‘It must be by vox, for Amhrad is halfway across this planet fighting his own battles. But you will have your chance to parley. There is one question I would have answered, though, before you do so.’

  ‘Then ask it.’

  ‘The temple in the canyon,’ said Valqash. ‘The one beside the place you stored your body. It was guarded by an army of necrons, and though we forced back the army pursuing us the temple guardians did not emerge to help them. What are they guarding that is so important they watched us inflict a great defeat on their own kind, rather than leave their post?’

  ‘An ancient religion,’ said Turakhin, ‘from before the time we killed our gods. The guardians are cursed to live on in that time. They do not see what lies before them, only the universe as it was when they took up their vigil. They are a relic of our distant history. What they guard has been gone for so long, none can say for sure what it ever was.’

  Valqash’s psychic abilities did not extend to the reading of minds. Perhaps even if they had, he would have been unable to glean anything from the alien, technological mind of Turakhin. There was no way of knowing how much of what the necron said was the truth. Perhaps it did not matter. If Turakhin offered the only possibility of victory left on Borsis, there was no choice for the Astral Knights but to take it.

  ‘Lord Turakhin,’ said Valqash, ‘again I must ask a direct question. Can you deliver us Borsis? You alone, and with no more than the martial strength of the Astral Knights who remain?’

  ‘That depends,’ said Turakhin.

  ‘On what?’

  Valqash had the impression that if Turakhin could have smiled, he would have. ‘On what you are willing to sacrifice.’

  His Imperial Majesty’s ship Needlefang

  Varv Deliverance Mission

  Command clearance only

  From the Scrivener Choir of Lord Inquisitor Rhaye

  Thought For The Day: The True Battle Never Ends. The True Peace Never Begins.

  Moral Hygiene With Regards To Compromised Survivors

  Brethren in service,

  The elimination of the potential for moral threats is the most crucial duty a crewman of the Varv Deliverance Mission can fulfil. Our minds are the g
ateway through which the Enemy will enter our midst. Guard your mind, and guard the minds of those unable to do so themselves.

  Sometimes we must take on tasks that, to the benighted and ignorant, are repugnant. Some would use words such as ‘evil’ or ‘cruel’. This is the vocabulary of the damned. It is crueller by far, and infinitely more evil, to allow those ill-favoured by fate to continue to exist as threats to all. This is the principle by which the Holy Ordos of the Inquisition have functioned for thousands of years, and the principle that must be accepted by all who wish to do their duty to the Emperor and His Imperium of Man.

  All contacts with survivors of the engagements of the Varv Deliverance Mission must be reported to the relevant command authority. Sufficient authorities are a shipmaster, commissar, regimental commander or a representative of the Holy Ordos.

  Survivors are to be considered moral threats until demonstrated otherwise. Communication is not to be engaged in without orders from a command authority.

  Independent action by a survivor is to be met with containment. If containment is not possible, neutralisation is to be considered authorised and required.

  All ships and military units are to maintain a detail of able and armed men, sanctioned as morally competent by a command authority, to execute the neutralisation of survivors who are demonstrated to be a moral threat or who cannot be demonstrated as otherwise.

  All ships and military units are to maintain a detail of able men to dispose of the corpses of individuals neutralised as potential moral threats. This duty must be performed expediently, efficiently and with minimum impact on morale. Incineration is deemed acceptable. Voiding remains from an airlock without prior dismemberment is not sufficient.