The World Engine

by Ben Counter

  Masayak turned to see Squad Gehesson emerging from the stairway. They had not come to assist him, for they all knew this was his fight. A Chaplain sometimes had to serve as his Chapter’s champion, and single out a notable enemy to be fought and defeated as a symbol of a Space Marine’s superiority.

  Gehesson had his hand on Brother Ghular’s shoulder, where he had held the huge Astral Knight back. Ghular had wanted to intervene. Gehesson had stopped him. The sergeant knew his role well.

  ‘Take up positions,’ said Masayak. ‘Heavy weapons north-east. The rest, cover the approaches.’ He switched to the command vox as the Astral Knights set up the bipods of their heavy weapons overlooking the tangle of generator buildings below. ‘Captain Khabyar,’ said Masayak, ‘we are in position. Send up the slave.’

  There had been a great reckoning among the slaves. It had been of little consequence to the Astral Knights, but for the slaves themselves it had been a time of terrible treachery and quick retribution. It quickly became apparent that those who had been reprogrammed by Heqiroth to serve as sleeper agents were missing important parts of their memories – their recollections of their childhoods, loved ones and home worlds were missing whole decades. Under intense questioning the sleeper agents had been discovered and killed. When there was doubt, the suspected were also killed, for there could be no repeat of the betrayal that had contributed to the failure of the assassination mission. Now barely half the slaves the Astral Knights had liberated remained. They followed the ad hoc strikeforces moving across Borsis to stay one step ahead of the necrons, acting as guides and advisors.

  The slave assigned to Masayak and Squad Gehesson was a woman named Razdia. She had the tanned skin and wind-sculpted features of a frontierswoman. The slave life had eroded her body and she walked stooped and with a limp as she ascended the tower to join the squad at the top. It was impossible to guess her age – she might have been twenty, she might have been fifty.

  ‘You worked in Heqiroth’s court,’ said Masayak as Razdia settled down against one of the steel pillars.

  ‘Sometimes,’ said Razdia. ‘I moved between masters. Mostly I worked maintenance on the honour guard. I was an agricultural engineer on my home world.’

  ‘And when the court moved?’

  ‘I attended on them a couple of times. We came through here, I remember it very well. I remember the lightning.’ Razdia looked down at the industrial sprawl below. ‘There,’ she said as she pointed, ‘running between those towers. It’s a twin row of pillars. They don’t look like much when they’re inactive.’

  Masayak followed the woman’s gaze and picked out the pillars. They were of uniform height and looked like lightning conductors or radio antennae, but they formed a snaking path around the generator towers and buildings. Razdia had been right. Masayak would have ignored them among the baffling sprawl of the district.

  ‘Take your targets,’ said Masayak to the brothers of Squad Gehesson.

  ‘Space them out!’ barked Gehesson. ‘Section north-east of us, every other pillar! Ghular, target free.’

  ‘Khabyar here,’ came the voice of the Ninth Company captain. ‘They’re approaching. Two minutes.’

  ‘How well armed are they?’ asked Masayak of Razdia.

  ‘When I saw them, the court travelled with an honour guard of immortals and lychguard. Twenty of each. And sometimes the Judicator was with them.’

  ‘The Judicator,’ said Masayak.

  ‘Metzoi, the leader of the triarch praetorians. They were… bodyguards to the overlord.’

  ‘You sound uncertain.’

  ‘More than bodyguards. I got the impression the triarchs were watching the overlord as much as they were guarding him. And Metzoi was an executioner, too. When a noble fell foul of the overlord, it was Metzoi who was sent to kill them.’

  The creature called the Judicator had been mentioned in the fractured vox-captures from Zahiros’s failed assassination. ‘Then Metzoi shall be destroyed too,’ said Masayak.

  ‘The Judicator has been there since long before the current overlord,’ said Radzia. ‘I don’t know if the necrons are really afraid of anything, but if they are, they’re afraid of Metzoi.’

  ‘If they do feel fear,’ said Masayak, ‘they are learning to fear us, as well.’

  ‘Thirty seconds!’ came the message over the vox. The battle-brothers squinted down the sights of their heavy weapons – Ghular’s heavy bolter, two lascannons and a plasma cannon, each one braced by a bipod and aimed down from the tower.

  Lightning siphoned down from the towers and earthed through the rows of pillars. Power sparked from one to the other until they marked out a pathway across the district, weaving between the pylons in two crackling rivers of energy. The high whine of a power source reached Masayak’s ears through the endless rumble of the lightning.

  The vehicle riding the energy rails approached rapidly. It was about two hundred metres long, composed of dozens of horseshoe-shaped sections. Some supported enormous energy cannons with gauss coils glowing green and blue. Others carried squads of necron warrior-constructs, folded up ready for deployment.

  Towards the rear of the train was a section shaped like a raised dais with a throne on which sat a single construct at the controls, with other necrons seated around controlling the various parts of the train. Behind the train was towed a great sphere of ribbed steel, crackling with power.

  Sergeant Gehesson held up an auspex scanner, measuring the range from the tower to the approaching train. ‘Range!’ he yelled. ‘Open fire!’

  The heavy weapons erupted. Lascannon bolts ripped into the pillars conducting the rails of energy. The plasma cannon spat a volley of liquid energy that bored through the steel rooftops and through another pillar, which toppled in a burst of sparks.

  Fire streaked down from the other towers overlooking the energy rails. The Ninth Company’s Devastator units had each captured a firing position minutes before, just in time to intercept the transport. The slaves had given the Astral Knights this route – the overlord would head for the place the slaves called the Cathedral of the Seven Moons, where the leaders of Borsis had weathered noble uprisings and coup attempts in ages past. A direct assault on the place would be futile. The Astral Knights had to intercept the overlord’s court before it got there.

  The timing had needed to be perfect, and it was. The real tests would soon follow.

  The lightning rails winked out of existence as a dozen pillars fell and the power was conducted away into the ground. The front of the train was suddenly unsupported and plunged downwards into the cleft between two of the massive generator buildings. Multicoloured flame burst from a ruptured power coil and segments of the train tumbled free, trailing sparks and flame. Necron bodies were crushed and shattered.

  The dais came free and the enthroned necron pilot was thrown clear, vanishing in the downpour of wreckage. The roof of the closest generatorium collapsed under the weight of the debris raining down. The rumble of the crash reached the tower, mingling with the roll of the thunder overhead.

  The armoured sphere crunched through into the generator building. It seemed to survive the crash intact, but before the heavy weapons could take aim at it the sphere was gone in a plume of smoke and dust.

  ‘Captain Ifriqi,’ voxed Masayak. ‘The first stage is achieved. Now the battle lies with you.’

  The Seventh Company had taken up their positions around the predicted wreck site, led by Captain Ifriqi in capturing the few areas around the generator building that had been held by necron constructs. Most of the resistance had been worker-constructs, strong but poorly armed for a battle against a company of Astral Knights. The slaves who had laboured in the generator district accompanied them in seizing positions overlooking the streets and canals beneath the energy rails.

  The train came down a few hundred metres west of the expected site, almost on top of Ifriqi’s o
wn position. Ifriqi’s men scattered into overhead cover as the front end of the train erupted through the wall of the generator building, sending a mass of burning wreckage pouring into the cable-choked canals that passed for streets.

  Ifriqi led the charge into the burning crash site in person. He was of the most ancient school of leadership, standing at the fore with his power sword raised and the banner of the Seventh Company flying beside him. He led his command squad along with three tactical squads up the slope into the generatorium, towards the immense turbines that were still spinning and pouring arcs of power from their shattered housings. War-prayers and passages from the Codex Astartes blared from the vox-casters carried by the standard bearer.

  The first few necrons out of the wreckage were broken and aflame. They were dispatched with a few volleys of bolter fire. A single lychguard led the next wave of a few intact warriors who followed its power blade and glowing shield. Ifriqi’s command squad charged at it, and though the standard bearer fell to the lychguard’s power blade another took up the standard before it hit the ground. Ifriqi duelled the necron and within moments its severed head was rolling down the slope and the other necrons were being shredded by the volleys of bolter fire streaking through the turbine hall.

  The Devastators lent their fire to the unfolding battle from their positions overlooking the generatorium, but as the Astral Knights charged inside their lines of sight were blocked. Masayak led Squad Gehesson down towards street level where they could back up Ifriqi’s charge.

  Ifriqi was the right man to lead the assault. On Obsidia he had been the finest jouster and most handsome son of the capital city’s leading families. It had been inevitable that he would become an Astral Knight, and he took to leadership as if he had been born to it – which, of course, he had. There had never been any question that he would lead his own company one day. When the Chapter Master had made him a captain, it had been the fulfilment of a promise more than an achievement of rank. No one would begrudge him this victory. It was the right of men like him to wear the laurels.

  Masayak reached ground level and led Gehesson to the wreck site. The necrons were assembling a resistance in the cover of the turbines and crashed train sections but Ifriqi hit them again and again, charging, falling back before the necrons could regroup and then hitting them again harder. A few wounded made their way back past Masayak, gauss burns scored deep through their armour, but they were few and the necron destroyed already numbered many more.

  From the threshold of turbine hall Masayak could see the armoured sphere that was the Astral Knights’ objective. The slaves had spoken of it, and what it contained. It was Overlord Heqiroth’s personal chariot, protection against the jealous nobles who might try to storm the transport. It carried the overlord himself and the elite lychguard and triarch praetorians attending him. It looked tough to crack, but not tough enough.

  ‘Set up!’ ordered Sergeant Gehesson. The Devastator squad mounted their heavy weapons on chunks of fallen wreckage and sighted at the sphere, across the battlefield where the necrons were being whittled away by Ifriqi’s fury. Other Devastator units had also made it to the battlefield and were doing the same, creating a firing line of lascannons and plasma weapons ready to launch a massive wall of fire into their target.

  Gehesson glanced at Masayak. ‘Where is Turakhin?’

  ‘Probably preparing to betray us,’ said Masayak. ‘The alien knew we would not need it. Turakhin will be destroyed next. Open fire, sergeant. End this war.’

  The Devastator units fired. Bolts of las streaked over the heads of the Astral Knights and necrons fighting in the turbine hall. Missiles followed on plumes of white smoke. Plasma bolts bored into the gilded surface of the sphere.

  Sections of the sphere fell away, burning. A crucial support gave way and one side collapsed inwards as if the sphere was suddenly deflated.

  ‘The target is breached!’ voxed Masayak.

  ‘I am advancing!’ came the reply from Captain Ifriqi. ‘He who takes Heqiroth’s head shall carry it through the streets of Obsidia! Onward, brethren, for the glory of the fallen!’

  The Astral Knights surged forwards. The Devastator units struck their weapons and moved up to support them, stepping over the crushed and scorched necron remains Ifriqi had left in his wake. Masayak could see the banner of the Seventh waving over Ifriqi’s position as his command squad led the charge through the depleted necron ranks towards the shattered sphere.

  Movement glittered through the tears in the sphere. Heqiroth’s last stand was about to begin, when his attendant elites would march out to meet the attackers. They would fail. The Astral Knights had hit too hard and too fast.

  A million glittering bodies poured from the sphere in a silver torrent. Suddenly the sphere looked like the egg sac of an enormous spider, giving birth to an uncountable tide of young. The mass of scarabs flowed like water, crashing up against the turbines and rushing through the front ranks of the Astral Knights.

  ‘Hold!’ yelled Ifriqi over the vox. ‘Back to back, brethren, and stand your ground!’

  The Devastator weapons opened fire on the mass of scarabs, but the wave of tiny constructs absorbed the fire with no apparent effect. Ifriqi had led the charge in person, as ever, and he and his command squad were right in the path of the scarab tide. The battle-brother holding the Seventh Company’s standard raised the banner high as the squad drew into a tight knot of bodies, ready to fight at all angles. Bolter fire stuttered into the advancing horde but again, the shells were just absorbed by the mass. An individual bolter shell might shatter two or three scarabs – and there might have been millions pouring through the turbine hall.

  The tide swept around Ifriqi. Masayak saw the captain slashing around him with his sword, and great wedges of scarabs were vaporised by the flare of the power field. The brothers of his command squad were submerged and swallowed, only Ifriqi himself left to forge upwards and keep his head above the surface. Then he, too, was gone.

  There was no vox-communication from Ifriqi’s squad now, save for rumbling static and the sound of thousands of mandibles chewing through ceramite.

  ‘Astral Knights, the enemy resorts to perfidy!’ called out Masayak over the all-squads channel. ‘We shall fall back in good order, and deny them the bedlam they wish to sow among us! Think to the Codex, brothers, and how the primarch wrote of the battle gone awry! We shall meet it with discipline and honour. The foe will know despair that his gambit has failed.’

  Masayak headed across the battlefield towards the retreating squads of the Seventh Company. They needed him there, they needed to see him. While a Chaplain still stood, Space Marines would not fall to disarray. As the brothers of the Seventh Company passed him towards the line of Devastator squads, he saw many of them with scarabs clinging to their armour – they were larger compared to the scarabs elsewhere on Borsis, with longer limbs and oversized mandibles like steel pincers, as if created or evolved specifically to chew through a Space Marine’s armour. Many battle-brothers were wounded, with chunks of their armour sawn through and their flesh and bone laid bloodily open. One was carried by two squadmates, both legs devoured below the knee. Another had a bloody spindle of bone in place of a left arm.

  It had taken seconds for the trap to be sprung, and for the Astral Knights to be thrown back.

  ‘Heqiroth knew we were coming,’ voxed Captain Khabyar.

  ‘So he did,’ replied Masayak. ‘And so we know where he is.’

  Codicier Valqash had been selected to lead the mission. The slaves could not know about it. The rest of the company could not know. Only Masayak, the company captains and the chosen brothers were told of it.

  The slaves who had worked in the generatorium district had been separated off and questioned about the route Heqiroth was to take. Life in the district was harsh and short for the slaves who laboured there. Since Borsis had arrived at the Vidar sector those slaves had been
human, but the humans liberated by the Astral Knights had described the remains of past slave generations and the strange xenos skeletons they left behind. The human slaves were skinny and weakened by the lightless conditions, and proximity to the turbines meant few had the full complement of fingers and toes.

  The slaves had described an underground river below the generatorium district, where industrial effluent was drawn off from the turbine buildings towards a sump deep below the surface of Borsis. The most unfortunate of them had worked down there clearing blockages or dredging lost worker-constructs from the chemical filth. It ran the length of the district, fed by hundreds of channels from every structure.

  Sometimes, the river was drained. One old slave remembered it being done to allow a force of lychguard through unseen, to ambush the noble who lorded over the generatorium district during the chaos after the fall of Turakhin. The dry riverbed, pitch-dark and crusted with chemical residue, had allowed the force to emerge from below ground in the heart of the noble’s stronghold, and dismantle every warrior-construct within. The slaves had seen it happen but as always, the necrons barely noticed they were there. The necrons forgot the slaves knew.

  The principal thrust of the plan to destroy Heqiroth and his court was the derailing of the transport and Ifriqi’s assault on the wreck site. But the Codex Astartes explained at great length how no one plan ever encompassed every possibility on any given battlefield. A commander had to have, even if only in the back of his mind, the choices he would make if the reality of the battlefield suddenly changed. Amhrad had communicated that to Masayak when the Chaplain was assigned to the mission, and Masayak had employed Valqash and the veterans of Squad Kypsalah to ensure the Astral Knights would not be completely helpless if Heqiroth had got wind of the ambush.

  So it was that Valqash had descended towards the chemical river, and that Turakhin had gone with him.