The World Engine

by Ben Counter

  Kodelos could see through the torn hull of the Maxentius, where the gunship’s passenger compartment had been carved straight through by fire from the necron fighter craft. The warrior-constructs were firing to keep the Astral Knights’ heads down while the immortals advanced behind them, silently waiting for their chance to open fire and finish the fight.

  Kodelos sniped a couple of bolt pistol shots. One shot rang off the side of a warrior-construct’s skull and the construct fell, but a few seconds later it clambered back to its feet with one eyepiece burned out. More gauss fire stripped away the other side of the Maxentius, boring through cover that became less and less secure with every second.

  He had learned to shoot among his uncles, who considered the ability to hunt the true measure of a man and essential for anyone who would one day wear the Threefold Crown of Obsidia. They knew better than to try to stop him from flying, for he would one day have the power to promote or execute them at will, but they made sure he was well versed in the traditional pursuits of House Kelvanah. And the young Kodelos could shoot.

  Another couple of shots brought down the damaged necron, punching through its neck and severing its metallic skull from its shoulders. Kodelos heard Phaleron reloading his shotgun, replacing the close-ranged fragmentation shells with solid slugs, followed by a trio of shots that hammered into the chest of another construct and blew its torso open. It clattered to the ground and though it was not deactivated, some crucial component was shattered and it could only drag itself along the ground with one twitching arm.

  It was not like hunting. Then the prey fell and stayed still, and was picked up by a retriever hound or one of the house staff when the shooting was done. The constructs could take a bolter wound and get up again, and when one did stay still there was always another construct behind it ready to take its place.

  These were the doubts of a child, thought Kodelos as he took aim again and let the old warrior instincts depress the trigger. He had not felt this way since the Astral Knights had sent him out to bring back the head of a mutant from the equatorial jungles, armed only with a combat knife. Then he had been dizzied by the break from the court of House Kelvanah, and the suddenness with which he had been thrown into a world of danger and privation. He felt like that now, as if it were only yesterday he had been the centre of a prince’s world.

  No, it was not his life on Obsidia that had gone. It was his life in the cockpit of the Maxentius. That was what had been torn away so suddenly. He wasn’t a pilot any more, duelling in the sky. He was just like everyone else.

  The immortals were in range. Cannon fire shredded the side of the ruined gunship. In a few seconds half the wreck was gone and what remained was a crumbling mass of holes held together by strips of dissolving rust.

  The warriors reached the wreck. One clambered on top to fire down at the two Astral Knights. Phaleron blasted its central mass apart with two shotgun rounds. Another rounded the nose and Phaleron smacked it down with the butt of the shotgun. Kodelos shot the construct through the skull and pivoted to put another three bolt-shells into the body of another lurching past the gunship’s stern.

  There were too many. Even if every shot was a kill, the warrior-constructs would kill the Astral Knights before the immortals even got the chance.

  This was not the death the Astral Knights had promised Prince Kelvanah Kodelos Ban Rehannian. Not this pointless butchery. His duty was not done.

  And he was on the ground, dying for nothing in a skirmish that won no plaudits and contributed to no victory. This was not a Space Marine’s death.

  Brother Phaleron wrestled a warrior-construct to the ground but in doing so his back was exposed. Another construct levelled its gauss blaster and fired a bolt of green energy right through the backpack of Phaleron’s armour, stripping out a core of ceramite right down to the back of his ribcage. A second shot punched the rest of the way through and Phaleron slumped on top of the fallen construct. His hearts, lungs and spine had been obliterated. He was dead.

  Kodelos backed away from the wreck as the constructs marched forward. Gauss fire streaked past him. One bolt clipped his shoulder guard and he felt hot pain there where it stripped away a furrow of skin and muscle. Kodelos was firing but it was not a conscious decision to pull the trigger or swap out a new magazine when the hammer fell on an empty chamber.

  His mind was full of the futility of his death. Phaleron was gone, but Space Marines fell in battle. He was not the first on Borsis and he would definitely not be the last. But Kodelos had been marked out for a greater purpose. Was that not why the Emperor had seen him born into the line of House Kelvanah’s princes? Why he had been endowed with the skill and willpower required by an Astral Knight? How could all that be a coincidence, if he was just to die here in this cave like a rat instead of in the sky in a glorious fireball, his sacrifice the keystone of victory?

  He had never let those thoughts take full form within his mind before. He had never dared. But now he could not hold them back. He was better than this. It was not supposed to end this way.

  An immortal stalked through the crumbling remains of the Maxentius. The gunship was now nothing more than a spider’s web of crumbling steel and it fell apart as the immortal brushed aside the wisps of its hull. The immortal levelled the twin barrels of its gauss cannon at Kodelos. Kodelos fired but the bolter shots pinged uselessly off the construct’s armoured chestplate. The power coils of the gauss cannon glowed as it made ready to fire.

  A volley of bolter shots ripped into the immortal from the side. Its head was blown half away and its leg was severed. It toppled to the side and the fat bolt of energy from its gauss cannon flew wide, dissolving a patch of the cavern wall behind Kodelos. Warrior-constructs turned to face the assault but more bolter fire hammered into them and they were swept away as if by a sudden hurricane wind, shredded and dashed against the ravine wall.

  A squad of Astral Knights jumped down into view. Kodelos recognised the livery of the Third Company. Their sergeant’s armour had the white flashes of a veteran, the first sergeant of his company.

  Ridiculously, Kodelos found himself searching his memory for the man’s name, as if that was important here.

  ‘Sergeant Kypsalah,’ said Kodelos stupidly.

  ‘My prince lives!’ exclaimed the sergeant. ‘The peasants rejoice! We saw you come down here, we didn’t think anyone could have survived.’

  ‘My co-pilot fell,’ said Kodelos, his thoughts still so muddled it felt like someone else was speaking with his voice.

  ‘Then he will be mourned,’ said Kypsalah. ‘But not yet. We are making the final push. Khabyar’s bringing most of us down the middle, we’re moving around to flank. Will you join us, Prince Kodelos? The royal seal is just what this operation needs.’

  Without waiting for an answer, one of First Sergeant Kypsalah’s squad threw Kodelos a bolter – a customised model, with twin ammunition hoppers instead of a magazine slot and a scope with three cycling lenses.

  ‘Look after her,’ said the brother who had thrown it to him. He carried a meltagun as his main weapon, the perfect tool for cutting through warrior-construct bodies at close range.

  Kypsalah led a strikeforce of several units from different companies, fast-moving tactical units not slowed down by heavy weapons. They followed the ravine towards the cathedral – more construct units were moving towards the crash site, only to walk into a wall of bolter fire the Astral Knights threw out without breaking stride. Kodelos stayed beside Kypsalah’s squad and could already hear the sound of heavy bolters and missile launchers firing from the direction of the cathedral, and of gauss fire streaking out in response. He looked up to see one of the seven moons passing overhead, the electronic eye set into the sphere swivelling downwards to watch them.

  Heqiroth knew they were coming. He had probably known as soon as he reached the Cathedral of the Seven Moons that the Astral Knights would have t
o face him there. It was the only way to finish the fight on Borsis and the overlord knew it.

  Was this a better way to die, in the shadow of the cathedral facing thousands of warrior-constructs? Kodelos did not know. He could not fish out coherent thoughts from his mind. Everything had changed so suddenly in the last few minutes. He felt like Prince Kodelos was gone and a new man had appeared in his place, experiencing Borsis for the first time.

  ‘Spread out!’ ordered Kypsalah over the vox. ‘Keep moving! Hit hard!’

  Squad Kypsalah led the way around the ravine corner which still smouldered from the fiery descent of the Maxentius. The Cathedral of the Seven Moons loomed into sight.

  From ground level, it was impossible to imagine such a place ever falling to an enemy force. The cathedral was like a confluence of everything that made Borsis the appalling, impossible place it was. The soaring pinnacles drew the eye upwards towards the zenith, where the topmost spires were lost among the clouds. The place seethed like a hive of insects, with warrior-constructs along the walls and millions of scarabs flowing from the archways. The upper levels were dominated by enormous hangar openings from which the fighter craft must have emerged. Every surface was carved and undulating as if turned on a lathe. The seven moons had turned their eyes downwards, seven huge telescope arrays peering down at Heqiroth’s doorstep.

  The main strikeforce had rolled right up towards the front door of the cathedral, a gatehouse with a set of double doors three storeys high. Khabyar had sent in the Devastator units of his Ninth Company, anchoring a firing line with tactical units on the flanks. Half a Chapter’s worth of Space Marines formed an armoured wedge grinding forward under the Devastators’ fire, so dense it looked like they were marching under a sky of las-blasts and missile contrails.

  Opposing them was a phalanx of thousands of warrior-constructs, marching in perfect formation. They formed a rectangle fifty constructs deep, the front ranks firing a constant sizzling curtain of gauss fire. The constructs were being gunned down in their scores, the fire eating through the front ranks and deep into the centre of the formation, but the necrons did not care. There were more of them coming, and they had warriors to spare.

  ‘Onward!’ came Khabyar’s voice over the vox. Kodelos spotted Khabyar leading the advance. The banner of the Ninth Company was unfurled now, riddled with smoking gauss blasts, carried over the foremost point of the advance. Khabyar was beneath it, already surrounded by a heap of shattered constructs.

  From gateways opening up in the ground floor of the cathedral came more necrons, kept in reserve until the Astral Knights made their play. Massive three-legged war constructs – the walkers, as the slaves had called them – stepped over the rear ranks of warriors, spraying lashing whips of incandescent particles into the Astral Knights. Canoptek spyders floated behind the phalanx taking up fallen constructs and shredding them, regurgitating the reclaimed metal as swarms of voracious scarabs.

  From another port emerged an anti-grav throne piloted by a pair of warrior-constructs plated in gold and purple lacquer. Carried on the throne was a necron noble, its headdress like a pair of gilded horns curving down over its shoulders, its decorated torso and shoulder guards inlaid with the colours of the Nephrekh dynasty. It pointed as vox-casters mounted on the throne blared orders in a grating machine-tongue. Ranks of immortals followed its throne, and its movements were shadowed by a close-knit formation of triarch praetorians and lychguard.

  ‘There,’ ordered Khabyar. ‘Hit the noble.’

  He barely needed to give the order at all. Khabyar’s force, almost forty Astral Knights of veteran and assault units, scrambled to charge across the wreckage-littered ground. A wing of the phalanx turned to bring their gauss blasters to bear on the flanking force but the return fire ripped through them as the Astral Knights fired on the run. Kodelos let the bolter in his hands fight its own battle – it was well-balanced and the action was so smooth he barely felt the recoil.

  Battle-brothers from one of the assault squads charged past Kodelos into the phalanx, chainblades spraying sparks as they carved into the bodies of the warrior-constructs. Kypsalah broke through the phalanx and the noble’s anti-grav throne lay ahead, pivoting to bring its mounted gauss cannon to bear. A stalker walked into Kypsalah’s path and his squad scattered, the particle whip lashing across the ground between them.

  Kodelos fired up at the glinting red eyes mounted on the stalker’s low-slung head. It turned and took a step towards him. Kodelos ran past its leg and rolled under it as the particle whip gouged a deep scar into the ground behind him.

  Bolter fire hammered up into the stalker. A lascannon shot from across the battlefield bored through its hull and it slumped down onto one of its knees. The strikeforce kept moving and shooting even as the throne’s gauss fire shot down one of Squad Kypsalah and sliced through the leg of one of the assault brethren.

  Kodelos followed Kypsalah to the throne. Kypsalah grabbed a handhold and swung himself up. One of the construct pilots wrestled with him as Kodelos followed the sergeant up onto the throne. The borrowed bolter in his hands blew the second pilot-construct apart as the necron noble descended from its seat, the staff in its hands crackling with power. The mouth-slit of its face was a grille worked into a permanent snarl. It had one eye, a red orb set into the middle of its forehead.

  Kodelos tried to blast at it from close range but the power staff batted his bolter aside. The necron grabbed Kodelos by the throat and he could feel the pincer grip of its steel hand buckling the armoured seal protecting his neck.

  Kypsalah blasted the necron’s other arm off at point-blank range. A chainsword lanced in from behind Kodelos and chewed through the ruin of its shoulder. The noble reared back and Kodelos forced himself out of its grip. He rattled bolter fire into it before two more Astral Knights fell on it and ripped it apart with chainblades.

  The throne tilted and Kodelos slid back down to the ground. The orders blared from the throne’s vox-casters had become a metallic scream.

  ‘It fears us!’ Captain Khabyar was yelling over the vox. Kodelos could just see the banner of the Ninth Company flying in tatters at the heart of the battle line. ‘It sends everything it has, but it will not be enough! The Overlord of Borsis fears us! We have taught the machine to know dread!’

  The inside of Kodelos’s head was still a whirl. The constant din of gauss blasts and bolter fire hammered at him. To a Space Marine they should have been no more disruptive than a light breeze, but again it seemed Kodelos was inside someone else’s body, hearing their thoughts from somewhere else.

  Everything he knew had gone. He had not died a knight of the sky. He had not died a prince.

  The air above the battlefield shimmered and tore, as if reality had been struck a blow and a purple-black bruise of abnormality was spreading. From the disruption emerged three huge blocky shapes, hanging impossibly in the air. Each was a roughly rectangular block several metres high, topped by a glowing green crystal with arcs of power playing off it. Each corner of the floating machines had a particle whip weapon that fired down at the advancing Astral Knights, but that was not the real threat.

  The slaves called them monoliths, the sentinel-constructs of the necrons. Heqiroth had only a few to call on, and was loath to deploy them. They were deadly war machines, but they were far more valuable to him as conduits through the information architecture of Borsis.

  In unison, one side of each monolith slid aside revealing a zone of rippling space, like a surface of water held vertically. It seemed to Kodelos that each such zone led to a half-glimpsed interior far more extensive than the monolith’s size could allow for. From this indistinct space marched the distorted shapes of more warrior-constructs.

  When the first constructs emerged from the monoliths, Kodelos saw they were much more ornate than the regular warrior-constructs, and walked upright instead of hunched. Their manner of decoration was different to the lychgu
ard and praetorians. They did not wear the colours of any dynasty. Their bodies were plated with bronze. Each carried a halberd with a green crystal blade.

  The new constructs dropped down into the middle of the battlefield and set about carving into Khabyar’s advance. Bolter fire rattled off them and their blades cut through power armour, slicing heads from bodies. The monoliths did not stop disgorging their cargo – hundreds of the bronze necrons dropped down onto the battlefield. Thousands. The torrent seemed as if it would never end. A throne drifted from one monolith, then another, carrying nobles in the same bronze livery.

  ‘The temple troops,’ said Kypsalah in amazement.

  Kodelos realised why the Astral Knights had made their assault on the Cathedral of the Seven Moons – their desperate, futile assault that could never possibly succeed. He knew why his Chapter Master had decided to give Heqiroth the pitched battle the overlord had been seeking ever since the Astral Knights had arrived on Borsis. It all made perfect, awful sense.

  And his death meant something after all.

  ‘I am Prince Kelvanah Kodelos Ban Rehannian!’ yelled Kodelos. ‘Who will follow me?’

  The mission he had completed before joining Khabyar’s assault made sense. The choice of the cathedral as the target made sense. It all did. Kodelos could not help but smile as he ran at the newly reinforced necron phalanx, bolter blazing. The Astral Knights nearby joined him, because for all they might claim to renounce their family obligations when they joined the Astral Knights they were still sons of Obsidia and he was still their prince.

  Kodelos leapt into the fray. A bronze temple-construct turned to face him. Kodelos slammed into it with all his weight, wrenching its halberd around and blasting half its skull away with his bolter.

  There were still more reinforcements pouring from the monoliths. But it did not matter. His duty was clear at last. Fight here and die.