The World Engine

by Ben Counter

  The orders went out across the vox to the surviving Astral Knights commanders. Khabyar and the force fighting its way out of the generatorium district, the stragglers making it out of the necropolis, the various knots of Astral Knights moving and fighting independently and the officers of Amhrad’s own strikeforce – they all knew what the orders signified. This was their last shot. They would return from this operation victorious, or they would not return at all. Amhrad had learned from the slaves who betrayed Zahiros’s mission. He kept the reasoning behind the operation to himself. Most of the Astral Knights guessed it, but they did not discuss it. There seemed no point. They had their orders, and they all knew what had to be done.

  They were to get to the closest lightning rail and ride it, with Sarakos controlling from afar, to the edge of the Labyrinth Wastes. They were to muster at the wastes under Khabyar’s command, and with Kodelos directing them from overhead march to the gates of the Cathedral of the Seven Moons.

  Then, they were to kill Overlord Heqiroth.

  Whether Heqiroth’s dying would deliver the destruction of Borsis or whether it was to be done for simple revenge, the Astral Knights did not question. Their Chapter Master had spoken. They had their orders.

  ‘Two red at four,’ said Brother Phaleron. He need not have said anything – the threat icons of the Maxentius were bathing the cockpit in flickering red and the runes projected onto Kodelos’s retina depicted twin flashing daggers approaching the gunship from the side.

  ‘Banking,’ said Kodelos. ‘Evading low. Get a lock, use missiles.’

  The Maxentius dropped out of the air, thrusters burning just long enough to arrest its fall above the surface of the Labyrinth Wastes. The Astral Knights directly below scattered and instinctively aimed their bolters at the sky. Kodelos got his first glimpse of the enemy as twin crescent-shaped shadows arrowing across the mazework, banking and peeling off as they streaked past the Maxentius.

  ‘The sky is yours no more, alien,’ said Kodelos. He gunned the main engines and the Maxentius leapt off, arcing around to bring the enemy fighters into visual range.

  The fighters were of similar design to the craft that had spiralled up at the Tempestus from the surface of Borsis, but smaller and more streamlined for agility in atmospheric flight. The middle sections swivelled freely between the curved wings, and around the central cluster were arrays of gauss blasters with their charged coils trailing lashing arcs of green energy.

  There were no viewscreens or cockpits. These fighters had no pilots. They were constructs, like the skeletal warriors who waited in their thousands on the battlements.

  Targeting runes flickered across Kodelos’s vision as Phaleron and the gunship’s cogitator locked onto the necron fighters. Kodelos felt the gunship shuddering around him as the missiles were shunted into the launchers. The launchers slid from the undersides of the Maxentius and the gunship tried to yaw out of control as the sudden air resistance dragged it back.

  Three missiles streaked out of the gunship, drawing glowing contrails across the sky. A volley of dense gauss fire hurtled back, ripping past the gunship as Kodelos wrenched the controls and the Maxentius tumbled down out of the line of fire.

  ‘I am Prince Kelvanah Kodelos Ban Rehannian,’ said Kodelos, a mantra that was as automatic to him as pulling a trigger or taking the yoke of the aircraft. ‘I am ready to die.’

  Kodelos directed Maxentius below the level of the ravine, flying the gunship down it as fast as he could drive it and still retain control. Gauss fire burst and hammered against the lip of the ravine and shards of fragmented metal pinged and boomed against the hull.

  ‘Pull up,’ said Phaleron. ‘We’re too low.’

  ‘They’ll shoot us down,’ said Kodelos. ‘We are one. They are two. Make them chase us.’

  More lights flashed and alarms chimed. ‘Two hits,’ said Phaleron.

  A moment later the broken shape of one necron fighter careened off the canyon wall just ahead. It flipped and spun as the power coils of its gauss weapons fractured and spilled a sudden wash of glowing liquid energy, eating through the steel ravine wall so quickly it had dissolved down to the canyon floor by the time the Maxentius hurtled past. The gunship shuddered with the secondary explosions that filled the canyon behind with blue-green fire.

  This was how it had been across the Bokrund Heights a hundred years ago. Kodelos had heard the tales from his grandfather. Men had taken to the skies in flimsy constructions of steel and silk, firing repeater railguns at their enemies among the clouds. They were doomed men who took the defence of their name and their homeland as a personal responsibility, and sought death and honour duelling in the sky. Kodelos had dreamed of it, and those dreams had become suspended in his blood and remade him as a knight of the sky. His bloodline was horrified at the idea of their first and best son taking flight and risking everything up there – but then, they had never been forced to watch him do it. The Astral Knights had come to the palace before then, and taken him to the fortress-monastery where they made him a prouder knight even than those fearless men of Obsidia’s past.

  This was how it had been. Battle at the speed of thought. Life and death, honour and failure, in less time than it took to blink. Pure conflict, distilled and raw. Kodelos’s hearts were filled with it. He had been born for many things, but above all, he had been born for this.

  Through the billows of flame the second fighter arrowed. Another glittering spray of gauss fire shimmered out from its central cluster, shooting past the Maxentius. Damage control warnings flashed.

  ‘Port control vanes gone,’ said Phaleron.

  The necron fighter hurtled overhead, rising up into the sky above the Labyrinth Wastes, hanging for a moment at the apex of its climb and dropping back down again for another pass.

  ‘He’s faster,’ said Kodelos. He felt his jaw tighten as he focused everything he had on keeping the Maxentius weaving through the narrow labyrinth canyons, yanking it into right-angle turns and slewing sideways around the tighter bends.

  The necron fighter was an interceptor craft. It was fast enough to keep pace with anything the Imperium had in a dogfight. But that meant it had to go fast – it couldn’t slow down or hover in place like the Maxentius could. It could not stay on the gunship’s tail in the confines of the labyrinth because its minimum speed forced it to overshoot the gunship after a few seconds.

  It cut down the necron’s opportunities of attack. Kodelos flew as fast as he could to keep the gunship as slippery as possible, jinking and sliding out of the necron’s sights, but it was still slow enough that the necron was restricted to second-long bursts of fire before it had to rise back up out of the canyon to loop down again for another pass.

  ‘We’re coming up on the target,’ said Phaleron. ‘Turn back.’

  Kodelos realised the Maxentius was almost at the threshold of the Cathedral of the Seven Moons. The structure probably bristled with anti-aircraft gauss weapons. He needed to keep well away from the mountainous structure.

  ‘Two hostiles, high,’ said Phaleron. More runes and warnings flashed up, too many for Kodelos to keep track of. A lifetime of training and sleep-doctrination took over and he entered a state where his mind instinctively noted what was important and abandoned everything else. Some of the data coming his way – the weaponry indicators, damage control, fuel, targeting – could be left to Phaleron. Much of it – altitude and attitude gauges, navigation – he could ignore completely. He flew entirely by eye and took in only the indicators of his enemies’ location.

  Two more necrons joined the first on their attack run. Kodelos threw the Maxentius into a sharp turn that took it down a narrow ravine over which ran a bridge of steel. The warrior-constructs on the bridge were marching to join the defence of the cathedral. They turned their gauss rifles towards the Maxentius as the gunship streaked under the bridge.

  Gauss cannon fire from the pursuing fight
ers hammered into the bridge and pocked the canyon walls. Maybe some of the warrior-constructs had even been caught in the blast. The necrons did not seem the kind of xenos that cared greatly about dissolving a few of their own to get at the enemy. The third fighter was more accurate and Kodelos felt the gunship buck underneath him and jump around at the controls, as if it was suddenly lighter.

  ‘Fuel breach,’ said Phaleron. ‘Full loss.’

  The damage control system activated pict screens on the console that showed the damage. A gauss shot had eaten clean through the side of the gunship and into the fuel tank that straddled the fuselage. The last drops of the viscous fuel were spraying from the tear.

  ‘Bring us down,’ said Phaleron.

  ‘They’ll strafe us,’ said Kodelos. ‘We need something overhead.’

  The Maxentius could stay in the air for a minute or so. It had to be on the ground by then, but not somewhere the enemy fighters could swoop down on it at their leisure. A cave or an overhang where the Maxentius could skid to a halt without exposing itself to attack from overhead. There had to be something like that in the winding canyons of the Labyrinth Wastes.

  More fire. Kodelos spun the gunship down a ravine that zigzagged crazily. He felt the manoeuvring thrusters weakening under him as he jinked through each turn.

  They could not keep him moving for more than a few seconds, not like this.

  The gunship rounded a corner, juddering on failing columns of exhaust, and the massive front face of the cathedral loomed past the bend. This close Kodelos could see the hundreds of towers that made up the cathedral, increasing in height towards the centre to form a mountain of steel spears covered in lights and engraved hieroglyphs. An army of warrior-constructs clustered around the towering gatehouses in a carpet of glittering steel.

  The shadows of the orbiting moons passed over the gathered necrons. Kodelos could almost feel the thousands of xenos eyes turned towards the Maxentius. A shard of shadow broke off and rippled across the sea of metal skulls. Kodelos glanced up to see the necron fighters swooping down past the nearest moon, breaking off to come at the Maxentius from three directions.

  A leader – a true leader, not just one with the right bloodline and medals – made decisions quickly and stuck by them. He did not turn back on them. He did not weigh up all the possible answers until the crisis had grown past the point of solving. Kodelos had been taught that in the halls of his fathers and at the feet of the best tutors on Obsidia. And when the battle-lore of the Codex Astartes told him much the same thing, Kodelos knew it to be true. The decision he made then was to point the Maxentius downwards, into the maw of the closest canyon opening, and force every remaining drop of fuel through the main engines.

  There was no landing safely. There was no hovering in place and shooting back. Trying to do either – or worse, both – would invite the necrons to riddle the Maxentius with so much gauss fire there would likely be nothing left but scattered atoms. The only choice was to crash, and so Kodelos made that choice.

  Gauss fire punched through the body of the Maxentius. Part of the payload detonated and the rear of the gunship was blasted clean off. The cold, damp air of Borsis whistled through the cockpit. The engines sputtered and died.

  The canyon wall hurtled past. The control surfaces and thrusters were gone and Kodelos had no say over how the Maxentius fell. It slammed into the wall and bounced off, Kodelos’s head snapping from side to side with such force he thought his neck would break and he would be dead before he hit the ground.

  The Maxentius landed on its side. The cockpit was crushed against the ground and Phaleron vanished in a welter of crumpled metal. Fire and sparks spurted as the gunship skidded along the pitted steel ground. Kodelos could see nothing but random light and motion, feel nothing but his body being hammered from every direction, hear nothing but a deafening scream of steel on steel.

  The thought cut through everything, as if it was stamped onto his brain and all the bedlam of the crash could not drown it out:

  I am Prince Kelvanah Kodelos Ban Rehannian. I am ready to die.

  That was the question his grandfather had asked him when he was taken to the battlements of the palace for the ritual of his majority. Was he ready to die? He had said he was, of course. And he had meant it. The Astral Knights Chaplain had asked it of him when Kodelos was presented to him. His mother had pleaded with the Chaplain not to take their young prince – he was born to one day rule over half of Obsidia, not die fighting an alien war light years away. But his uncles had demanded her silence, and Kodelos had answered that he was ready to die that very moment if it was the will of the Emperor and the requirement of his duty.

  I am ready to die.

  If Kodelos had been knocked unconscious, it had not been for long. Perhaps he had been awake through the whole crash. Perhaps ten minutes had gone by, or maybe a few seconds. Kodelos could not tell.

  Again, the lessons of the duelling hall and the Codex took over. Without thinking about it Kodelos was clambering out of the ruined cockpit, through the shattered windshield and out across the nose. Smoke was pouring around him and heat was pulsing up from the hull underneath. Fire was already rushing up from the shattered stern of the gunship towards the front.

  Kodelos jumped down onto the ground as the fire flowed through the cockpit and over the nose. He ran to the relative safety of an overhang he was vaguely aware reached out above him. He passed out of the zone of heat around the crashed gunship and, as if recognising the immediate threat was gone, his mind returned to him the responsibility for making decisions along with the full range of his senses.

  Kodelos realised his twin hearts were hammering. He ordered them to be calm. He forced his breathing to do the same. His armour was scorched and dented, especially his left shoulder guard which had been almost turned inside out, but he could feel no broken bones or ruptured organs. What pain he felt was the good kind. The bruised and wrenched joints that told him everything was still working.

  The Maxentius had come to rest in a shallow cave in the canyon wall that looked like it had occurred naturally through centuries of corrosion. The steel was pitted and crumbling underfoot and gritty metal stalactites hung down overhead. The wreck was still burning, but with its fuel and payload gone there was nothing to explode. Beyond the cave there was one bend in the canyon before the area immediately around the Cathedral of the Seven Moons. And, of course, the thousands of necron warriors who had seen him crash.

  A shape stumbled towards Kodelos, silhouetted in the flame. Kodelos recognised the shape of power armour even as his hand went to the bolt pistol at his side.

  ‘Phaleron!’ shouted Kodelos. ‘I was sure I had seen you die!’

  ‘I was thrown clear, Brother Kodelos,’ said Phaleron. Phaleron was one of the few Astral Knights who had never sarcastically addressed him as ‘prince’.

  ‘Here we fight,’ said Kodelos. His bolt pistol was already in his hand – Phaleron’s sidearm was an Adeptus Astartes-pattern shotgun of the type carried by the Chapter’s Scout units. Phaleron had done well to keep it on him during the crash. ‘The xenos will have seen us come down here. They will be after us.’

  ‘Then our duty is to make them pay dearly for our deaths,’ said Phaleron.

  It could have been a quote from the Codex Astartes. Maybe it was – Phaleron had much of it memorised.

  Power coils sizzled and flames licked from the torn wreck. ‘Brother,’ said Kodelos as he watched the gunship burn. ‘Our steed is slain. We are disarmed. How can our duty be done now?’

  He was surprised to hear the words himself. They had come without him willing them. But they were true. Kodelos’s duty was to fight the Astral Knights’ battles in the air, dogfighting with enemy interceptors, strafing hostile troops, relaying information. Since he had earned his power armour, that was how he had fought – from above, in the cockpit of the Maxentius. Now the Maxentius was go
ne.

  ‘We do our duty as the Codex demands,’ said Phaleron. There was no inflection in his voice.

  ‘How do I fight?’ said Kodelos. ‘I was ready for my duty to kill me, brother. I would not be an Astral Knight if I was not. But I was supposed to die in the air! I should have died in a fireball above us or in the crash. Not on the ground, naked like this.’

  ‘We take the deaths we are given,’ said Phaleron. ‘We must make do with the galaxy’s choice of fate. Maybe a prince of Obsidia is not used to making do.’

  Kodelos stared at Phaleron. It was the first time his battle-brother had even mentioned Kodelos’s status back on their home world. He was not sure if it was Phaleron’s words that had taken him aback, or the fact they might be true.

  The sounds of steel footsteps on steel reached Kodelos and he snapped out of his thoughts. Necron constructs were rounding the corner in the ravine outside the cave. Most were the basic warrior-constructs, but they were backed up by immortals toting their double-barrelled gauss cannon.

  ‘They did not take long,’ said Phaleron. ‘Now is not the time for doubt, Brother Kodelos. Give yourself to your anger. Fight and die. Give thanks our task is so simple.’

  Kodelos did not have time for a reply. Gauss fire streaked past the wreck and burst against the rear wall of the cavern. Stalactites were sheared from the ceiling. Kodelos slid into the cover of the wreck, the heat from the burning steel hammering against him. Phaleron took cover at the cockpit end, glancing over the crumpled nose at the advancing constructs.