by Ben Counter
Another servitor leapt from the churning mass of cogs and gears right at Lysander. It was a maintenance device, its torso low and mounted on wheels so its lower jaw dragged along the floor, with countless small manipulator limbs fused to its spine. Lysander met it with his chainsword and sawed it in half, from shoulder to hip, colourless blood spraying over him.
There were few combat servitors down among the engines – most were maintenance devices, which fought with tools and plasma cutters. Techmarine Kho wrestled one to the floor with the mechanical arms of his servo-harness and blasted it apart with his plasma pistol, while Brother Givenar tore the leg off another and shot it to pieces with a burst of bolter fire.
‘The tower’s defenders are still outside,’ said Kho as he threw the ragged remains of the last servitor aside. ‘But they may not remain so for long if they realise the tower is invaded. We must move quickly. Go lower.’
The engines were huge and in many ways crude in construction, but they had a solidity that explained how the tower had continued to function in the proving grounds on its own. A ruddy glow came from an open furnace door, and Lysander spotted charred bones in the maw of the furnace among heaps of black ashes.
‘It fuels itself with the dead,’ said Lysander.
‘No shortage of those on Malodrax,’ said Givenar.
‘Most insightful, Brother Givenar,’ said Antinas.
‘Are you two done?’ snapped Lysander. ‘You can batter one another bloody when we are done with this world. For now we have work to do.’
Beyond the furnace was a huge chunk of black rock, shot through with veins of silver. Radiation runes were flickering on Lysander’s retina as the Imperial Fists approached it. Metal fittings connected cables and pipes to the rock, which had a pitted, cratered appearance – Lysander guessed it was a meteorite, perhaps captured by Malodrax’s own gravity, perhaps brought from another world. Even lacking any psychic ability himself, Lysander could feel the malice coming off it, a moral sickness given form, the sense of it clinging to the inside of his skull like an uncleanness trying to seep into his soul.
The controller of the siege tower could have been one of two possibilities. The first was a machine-spirit, similar to those present in ancient cogitators helping command the most venerable starships and war engines of the Imperium, albeit corrupted and malevolent. The second possibility was a daemon, summoned and compelled to possess the siege tower by sacrifices made at the moment its engines were started. The air of malice surrounding the tower had suggested from the start that the latter was more likely.
Techmarine Kho stood before the meteorite, the end of one servo-arm cycling to present the nozzle of a plasma cutter to the stone. The cutter’s flame ignited, casting a harsh white light against the edges of the engines on either side. ‘You who have called this machine your home,’ said Kho calmly, ‘you are now to be evicted. Flee to the warp. Stand and fight. The outcome will be the same.’
Kho’s plasma cutter scored down through the stone, etching a glowing molten line down through the meteorite’s surface. The meteorite was hollow and it cracked in two, the sound like a gunshot.
A gnarl of burning light bled out from the broken meteorite. It took a form – a coiled snake, turning in on itself, forming dizzying patterns with the coils of its body. From the centre of the sinuous body emerged a head, something like a snake’s but with several pairs of human eyes. A long, glowing blue tongue flickered between its fangs.
Long slits opened up down its elongated body and vestigial arms reached out, the skin translucent, with malformed bones and fingers.
‘This is mine,’ hissed the daemon. ‘And it is glorious. You are filthy. Burn in my glory!’
The daemon’s form changed. A halo of burning gold surrounded it. Reflections of itself spread out behind it, filling the tower’s engine block with visions of tangled serpentine flesh. It was accompanied by a rising note, a clashing mix of atonal noise that raked through Lysander’s skeleton as it washed over him. He heard the awful daemonic music again, as played by the orchestra that had accompanied Captain Hexal during his destruction of the Shield of Valour.
Anger burned in Lysander. The daemon’s aura could not dampen it, and Lysander took a hold of it as surely as if it were the hilt of a sword. This daemon might addle his mind and overwhelm his senses, but the anger would see him through.
Lysander charged on through the blaze of light and colour. He felt writhing flesh slamming against him. He drew his chainblade and plunged it in deep, hearing the chainteeth finding purchase in scale, muscle and bone. The daemon whipped its body into Lysander and threw him back, impacting against the side of an engine housing.
Chunks of machinery fell around Lysander. A huge cog rang against the floor. The snake-daemon reared up, its mouth yawing wide to reveal an endless tunnel of boiling fire down its gullet.
Lysander lunged with his chainblade and cut right into one of the snake’s fangs. The blade chewed through the fang and venom spurted. The daemon reeled backwards, the coiling of its bodies slamming into the remains of the meteorite that had housed it. Through its coils forged Techmarine Kho, tearing at it with his servo-arms, the plasma cutter carving slices from its body.
Antinas and Givenar charged into the opening made by Lysander in the daemon’s swirling coils. Antinas sprayed liquid fire up into the daemon’s face while Givenar laid about him with his chainblade. Gouts of multicoloured blood erupted everywhere. Givenar leapt up onto the daemon’s face, grabbing its remaining fang to haul himself up and ram his chainblade into the roof of its mouth.
Lysander unshouldered his bolter and rattled off the magazine into the daemon’s skull. Eyes rolled back and burst. Lysander felt the hammer fall on nothing and charged, driving his shoulder towards the daemon’s throat. Flesh parted under his feet as he threw his weight into it, ribs crunching in its neck as he impacted.
The daemon’s head crashed to the floor onto Lysander’s leg. Lysander kicked it away with his free foot and stood over the daemon. Its glory was gone now, its reflections dissolved, the only light coming off it bleeding out of its body along with its lifeblood.
‘I told your kind I would return,’ said Lysander. ‘When daemons have nightmares, I am what they see, and I always keep my word.’
The daemon hissed and coiled back as if to strike. Lysander grabbed it by an eye socket, sinking his fingers deep into the spongy mass inside its skull, and dragged its head forwards again. He rammed his chainblade down into the back of its skull, sawing left and right through the gristle of its spine.
Techmarine Kho appeared through the flailing coils. A servo-arm held the head down while his plasma cutter joined Lysander’s blade in its gory work.
The daemon’s head came away and a mass of iridescent sludge oozed from its severed neck onto the floor of the engine block.
‘The daemon is down,’ voxed Kho.
‘Report your situation!’ came Lycaon’s reply. From the sound of it his squad was still embattled outside the tower.
‘Looking for the controls,’ replied Kho. ‘Stand by.’ He turned to the other Imperial Fists, still smeared with gore from the daemon. ‘Locate the cockpit, or whatever passes for it.’
‘Well killed,’ said Brother Antinas, looking down at the daemon’s severed head. ‘Who shall claim it?’
‘Not you,’ said Givenar, ‘unless we grant the kill for flailing around on the floor.’
‘Split up,’ said Lysander. ‘Lycaon needs the tower opened up. We’re still fighting out there.’
The black heart of the siege tower churned between the engine blocks, with thundering pistons clashing overhead and exhaust pipes glowing dark-red with the heat. As Lysander clambered lower it got hotter and denser, with dust-dry bones flaking apart under his feet where they had fallen from sacrifices long before.
Down there in the tower’s depths was a cogitator of ancient ma
rk, with thousands of valves filling a contraption of glass and pitted steel. The glass was discoloured as if by disease and reams of punchcards lay around it like a snowdrift. It was Antinas who found it first, and Givenar expressed gratitude that Antinas had not flamed it at first sight.
While the two swapped insults Techmarine Kho reached the cogitator and levered its casing open, exposing the clacking mass of valves and levers inside.
Lysander stood guard, ready for any remaining servitors to scrabble out of hidden corners to defend the cogitator. Kho plunged a servo-arm into the cogitator and wiring slithered out, datajacks finding places to interface with the ancient machine.
‘It is insane,’ said Kho as the data probes worked their way deeper into the machine. ‘It was once proud and noble, but it was stolen by servants of the Dark Gods and implanted in here, under the command of the daemon. It has become corrupted and is beyond help, I fear.’
‘Can you control it?’ asked Lysander.
‘I can,’ said Kho. ‘But for how long I cannot say. And its machine-spirit has become an abominable thing now, and must be destroyed when it is no longer useful.’
‘I doubt that will be a problem,’ said Lysander. ‘What about the servitors?’
‘I can cut the connection,’ said Kho. ‘They will revert to their simplest behaviour routines. I cannot control them directly or shut them down, not without a great deal of work.’
‘That will have to do. Can you open us up?’
‘I can lower the drawbridge.’
‘Lycaon!’ voxed Lysander. ‘Get to high ground. The drawbridge is opening up.’
Far above the jaw of the daemon’s face ground open, revealing the upper levels where the tower’s complement of troops was to wait to reach the enemy battlements. Lysander listened over the vox as Lycaon’s squad made for the upper levels of the surrounding ruins.
Lysander met Lycaon’s men and the rest of Squad Gorvetz halfway up the siege tower, among the bones and dried-out hides of the tower’s countless sacrifices.
‘Excellent work,’ said Lycaon.
‘What losses?’ asked Lysander.
‘Wounds received,’ said Lycaon. ‘None dead, and all can fight.’
‘Then we have been fortunate.’
‘Kho!’ voxed Lycaon. ‘Can you move us?’
‘I have full control over our motivator functions,’ came Kho’s reply. ‘I hope to have weapons online soon. The machine-spirit is not cooperative but I am working to subdue it.’
Already the siege engine was changing direction, its engine blocks complaining as they turned the huge front wheels. The sound of falling rubble thudded against the exterior as the siege tower took on its new course, crushing the remains of the dismantled servitors that had served it a few minutes before.
‘Your plan worked, Captain Lysander,’ said Lycaon.
‘So far,’ said Lysander. ‘And I imagine that was the easy part.’
15
‘It is not for me to say whether my heresy was the correct path. I can say only that for me, there could have been no other. Is it for one man, even an inquisitor, to say what the universal truth of our species is, the one road that all humanity must walk? Some of us no doubt think it is, but I have not yet scaled those heights of arrogance. I chose to wield the knowledge and weapons of the enemy against him. Others say that makes me the enemy. When all history is played out and we look back from the end of time, perhaps we will know who is right.’
– Inquisitor Corvin Golrukhan
The journey from the outskirts of Kulgarde’s hinterland to the city of Shalhadar had seemed to take Lysander forever, struggling through the storms of that broken wasteland. Now, on the way back in the great procession Shalhadar’s court had assembled, the landscape of Malodrax seemed to slide by almost without effort. It felt as if Malodrax was letting this silken, many-coloured monstrosity wind across its surface, eager to see what chaos would ensue when it reached its destination.
A hundred carriages were pulled by dozens of citizens each. They had lined up in the streets for the right to be yoked to the carriages, and they had scrambled over one another to be shackled to the one carrying Lysander – for he was the Executioner, one of the lead roles in The Chant of the Changing Ones. Their joy at serving Shalhadar had not dimmed even as they had dropped from heatstroke and exhaustion, to be dragged away by the outriders from Shalhadar’s army who ranged ahead of the caravan on their strange bipedal mounts. Each carriage carried performers for the play – the principal actors, the dancers and singers of the chorus, the musicians who were to accompany the performance on stage, the dressers and the stagehands. Valienne had a carriage to herself, covered against the sun, from which she had not emerged throughout the whole journey. Talaya had another, and Lysander wondered if she would take on a role herself or was just there to help ensure Shalhadar’s grand plan went off smoothly.
Lysander had to swallow down his disgust, like bile in his throat. Somehow the luxury of it seemed the worst. He had a carriage to himself and it was large enough for a dozen to live in comfortably, upholstered in silk and velvet, with hardwood chests of narcotics and peculiar devices of leather and steel he did not try to guess the use of. It was obscene that he should be feted by the people of Shalhadar’s city, and granted such luxury when they were literally dying of exhaustion outside. If he had the option he would have torn it all down and laid waste to the caravan, ripping its painted foulness apart. But he did not have that option. Not yet. As pleasing as it would be to him to see the trappings of Shalhadar’s arrogance tattered and burning, Kraegon Thul would still be alive and Malodrax would have won.
He had a copy of Valienne’s play, too, which he had memorised. He did not pretend to understand the intricacies of drama, but fortunately the role of the Executioner required little more than a commanding physical presence which a Space Marine had no trouble mustering. Shalhadar’s plan was simple in essence, and it played off the need of creatures like Thul to be worshipped and obeyed, and to have their enemies offer them supplication. Shalhadar was disgusting in every way, but he was clever. The plan would work, up until Lysander himself was required to play his part. Then, so much would be in the hands of chance.
‘There!’ came a cry from up front. Lysander pulled a curtain aside and looked out across the wasteland. ‘Upon the horizon!’
Lysander saw it too. The battlements of Kulgarde, dark grey, fluttering with banners in the yellow and black of the Iron Warriors. There were so many emotions sparked in him by seeing the fortress again that he could pick none out. He recognised the blooms of filthy smoke from the forges behind the walls, and the scars covering the hinterlands from the battles of war engines let loose to prove themselves while Thul watched from the battlements. He saw, as clear as if they were in front of him, the bodies of his captive battle-brothers paraded and then cut down to be dragged to the Isle of the Bone Sculptors.
And yet he could not purify himself with battle. He could not lay about him and exterminate the filth that fawned at the altars of the warp, and burn the uncleanness away. Not yet.
‘Send the call!’ cried out one of the gang leaders who commanded the citizens hauling the carriages. ‘Bring the riders in close! We enter the Warsmith’s realm!’
Talaya stalked along the top of one carriage, watching the battlements. ‘Send the heralds!’ she commanded.
One carriage broke away from the column. Its occupants pulled down the coverings and revealed dozens of men and women there, each carrying a musical instrument. Another carriage followed, this one carrying a choir, to provide the fanfare that would accompany Shalhadar’s offering through the gates of Kulgarde.
How many armies had tried to breach Kulgarde? The ground below its walls showed the scars of plenty of battles, and the skeletons choking the spiked rollers of the fortifications had come from somewhere. How many thousands had died trying to climb o
r breach those walls? And now it turned out that all it took to open the gates of Kulgarde was a song and a dance.
The gates indeed opened, enormous blast doors stained with blood and machine oil. A squad of Iron Warriors stood on the battlements above the gate, carrying enough heavy weapons to turn the caravan’s carriages into splinters. The choir and the musicians had gone ahead and played swooning, hypnotic music to accompany the entrance of Shalhadar’s gift into Kulgarde. Evidently the Iron Warriors were willing to take his token of supplication, for they did not open fire and instead the caravan passed into the fortress.
Lysander was back among the brutal killing architecture of the fortress, every block and step designed to make the place impossible to take by force. An army might make it onto the walls but would find itself facing a sheer drop on the other side, with only a single-file stairway giving access to the lower levels. Passages barely wide enough for a single Space Marine allowed one Iron Warrior to fend off dozens of attackers alone. The wide, high-ceilinged passageway through which the caravan entered was itself a trap, for when the gates were breached and an enemy force swarmed in they would be covered on all sides by murder-holes and gun emplacements. They would be herded into the wide space which ended suddenly at a second gate protected by barricades and heavy weapons bunkers. The second gate itself consisted of several single-file doors, portcullised with bars so defenders could shoot through them.
Captain Hexal greeted the convoy at the second gate. His squad was with him, the same Iron Warriors who had attacked the Shield of Valour and taken Lysander’s squad.
Talaya approached the gate, flanked by heralds playing a fanfare. She dismissed them with a gesture and let her mechanical limbs lower her delicately to the floor, where she bowed low.