by Ben Counter
'Floor's clear.' voxed Brother Haulvarn.
Justicar glared at Saphentis, willing the archmagos to show some flicker of emotion. But Saphentis was completely inscrutable. 'Good.' he voxed. 'Let the tech-guard have a few minutes' rest. Then we're getting out of here.'
'Understood.'
Saphentis stalked away to continue examining the machinery. Alaric watched as Captain Tharkk's tech-guard sat down in a perfect circle on the floor, their heads bowed, letting a few minutes of rest chase away some of the fatigue. Their emotional repression surgery meant they wouldn't complain or despair, but they were still susceptible to exhaustion like any unaugmented human.
'You don't trust him.' said Hawkespur. She had sat down on the rusted-up conveyor belt next to Alaric.
'Do you?'
'An interrogator of the Ordo Malleus doesn't trust anybody, justicar.'
'I don't think Saphentis was sent down here just to find out what happened to this world.' continued Alaric. 'This is a forge world. There must be plenty of things here the Mechanicus would dearly want to get back. He's looking for something down here, something important enough to risk an archmagos for. Maybe it's even something to do with the tech-heresy that's taken hold here, he certainly seems interested enough in that.'
'Perhaps.' said Hawkespur, 'but Saphentis could still be useful. He could get us the information we're looking for, he knows the datasystems on this planet better than you or I. And your squad is the best chance he has of surviving down here. He's a tech-priest, justicar and they are logical people. He knows full well he can't cross you.'
Alaric peered across the room, to where Saphentis was calling Thalassa over to help him examine a complex piece of machinery. 'I could need Nyxos's authority to back me up if it comes to that. Down here that authority resides in you.'
'Of course. Saphentis will have to listen to reason in the end.' Hawkespur hacked out a rasping cough and held her throat again.
'You're ill.' said Alaric.
'Tumors.' replied Hawkespur. 'The air here is poison. Nyxos's medical staff will deal with it once we're off-planet. I'm more concerned about our immediate situation. Such as the date.'
'The date? Thalassa said that was just corrupt information.'
'Chaeroneia's systems seem to think the date is nine hundred years hence, correct? Well, that might not be an error. Time flows differently in the warp, justicar, and I think we both know where this planet must have been for the past century. But while it was a century from our point of view, in the warp a thousand years could have passed.'
'A thousand? Terra preserve us.'
'It would explain the comprehensive rebuilding that seems to have occurred. The corruption of the menial workforce. The pervasive nature of the tech-heresy.'
Alaric shook his head. 'A thousand years in the warp. No wonder this planet is sick. But it also begs the question, doesn't it? If the planet really is self-sufficient enough to survive for a thousand years completely cut off in the warp, then why return to real space now? Why return at all?'
'That's question number one.' said Hawkespur. 'Number two is, what pulled it into the warp in the first place?'
THE FORCE LEAVING the old flesh weaving spire was small. It made sense - only a tiny craft could have slipped past the asteroid field. The force consisted of six humans, one heavily augmented human (evidently a tech-priest, one of the unenlightened) and a squad of six Space Marines of the Adeptus Astartes. The livery on the Marines was unusual, with simple gunmetal grey as the Chapter colour and the twin symbols of a book pierced by a sword and the stylized 'I' of the Inquisition. There were no records of the Chapter in the historical files that remained from Chaeroneia's past as an outpost of the Imperium, but then many Chapters could come and go in a thousand years.
The cogitator-beasts that lived in the command spire of Manufactorium Noctis had lost the intruders soon after they arrived. The beasts, their brains massively swollen globes of pulsing fluid shimmering with cogitator circuits and calculator valves, had padded impatiently around their cells, scratching with metal claws at the walls in frustration. Then the intruders had been spotted again by one of the many flying biomechanical creatures that circled the city's upper spires. They roared in excitement, bounding around their cells in the pitch-black, bile-streaked menagerie floors of the command spire. Their brains, half-grown and half-built in the newer fleshweaving complexes elsewhere in the city, filtered the information into individual useful facts and assembled them into conclusions that they relayed in machine-code up to the very top of the command spire.
The cogitator-beasts had concluded the intruders were from the Adeptus Mechanicus with Astartes support, probably come to investigate Chaeroneia's re-entry into the physical universe. That meant the Imperium still existed, along with the old Adeptus Mechanicus whose beliefs would soon be replaced with the true revelations of the Omnissiah. For this information the cogitator-beasts were rewarded with gobbets of thick nutrient paste rendered from nonessential menials and piped into their cells where it was hungrily lapped from the filth-stained floor.
Far above in the isolated priests' chambers of the command spire, Archmagos Veneratus Scraecos reviewed this information. His thought processes had long ceased to resemble anything human and the cognitive functions of any human were insufficient to comprehend the revelations of the Omnissiah as revealed to Chaeroneia's tech-clergy a thousand years before. Streams of machine-code flowed through his mind, the images of the intruding enemies, their location relative to the other structures of Manufactorium Noctis, the many tech-priests, menial forces and combat-able servitors stationed nearby.
'We have regained contact with the intruders.' said the being called Scraecos, his words turned into packets of machine-code pulsed through the nerve endings that spun a data-network all over the command spire.
'Good.' came the reply, summarized from the thought impulses of the hundreds of tech-priests who resided in the spire. 'You, Scraecos, are responsible for the resolution of this event and are granted permission by the holy revelations of the Machine-God to assume individuality of consciousness for the duration of your task.'
'Praise be to the Omnissiah, I become one at His request.' replied Scraecos.
Suddenly the nerve endings around him were numbed into inaction by the will of the resident tech-priests and Scraecos was an individual creature again. His senses no longer comprehended the whole command spire, only the small womb-like cell where he lay, bathed in amniotic fluid in a large fleshy sac wound round with neuro-circuitry. The film of skin over his bionic eyes lifted and his vision swam back, showing him a world well beyond the visible spectrum. He felt his body now, too and it was heavy and crude around his mind. He flexed his mechadendrites and eased himself out of the fluid onto the slick, spongy floor.
He was no longer connected. He had to communicate with the other tech-priests by more mundane means. 'I have assumed individuality.' he said out loud, the nerve-endings in the walls absorbing the sound waves and turning them into data. His vox-unit was uncomfortable and unfamiliar. Memories - if they could be likened to something as human as memories - were coming back to him, the centuries in service to the Imperium, the dawn of his enlightenment when the Omnissiah's avatar had first been uncovered and the years of rebuilding in the warp as Chaeroneia was transformed into the Omnissiah's perfect vision.
'It is good.' came the reply. 'You possess the experience required to do the Machine-God's will. State your immediate intentions.'
'The standing declarations of the Omnissiah are clear.' said Scraecos. 'As given to me personally by the Castigator, there is one course of action compatible with the holiness of the planet's ground and the principles of the Adeptus.'
'State this course.'
'Kill them all.'
Scraecos let the weight of his physical form fall back onto him completely. He had been formidable in physical combat a long time ago and his body was still in efficient and uncorroded condit
ion, which meant he was still a capable killer. He remembered the feeling of blood spattering on his few remaining areas of biological flesh, its warmth, its smell and felt a flicker of human emotions like bloodlust and exultation. Eventually, such crude-ness would be gone from Scraecos and he would be a perfect being of logic in the sight of the Omnisiah.
Yes, Scraecos could kill. But there were far more effective murderers on Chaeroneia. Scraecos's first task, then, would be to summon those killers from the furthest corners of Chaeroneia's dataconstructs and give them the scent of their prey.
Chapter Nine
'Know the enemy not and the battle cannot be won. Know the enemy too much and the battle will be doubly lost.'
- Lord Admiral Ravensburg,
'Naval Maxims Vol. IX'
'ORDNANCE READY,' SAID the chief ordnance officer as Rear Admiral Horstgeld strode onto the bridge. 'We can fire at fifteen minutes' notice.'
'Excellent.' said Horstgeld. The bridge was buzzing. The Tribunicia had not fired a shot in anger for some time and Horstgeld had almost forgotten how it felt when danger was near. Now only the Emperor's guns and the Emperor's torpedoes stood between the good of the Imperium and the depredations of the Enemy.
It was a good feeling. It was why Horstgeld had been put in this galaxy.
'Preacher!' shouted Horstgeld heartily. 'What does the Emperor demand of us?'
'Obedience and zeal!' came the response from the raw throat of the confessor up on the pulpit. 'Defiance unto death!'
If the command crew disliked Horstgeld's habit of having the Confessor spouting prayers, they didn't show it. Navigation were assembling the rag-tag fleet into a battle line. Communications was relaying orders back and forth between the other ships under Horstgeld's command. Engineering was keeping the plasma reactors at full close orbit manoeuvring capacity and Ordnance was shepherding the ship's stock of torpedoes into the firing bays. The Tribunicia was old but she was tough, she had seen battle before and she was relishing it again.
But then, most of the crew hadn't seen what Horstgeld had seen - the full size of the approaching fleet.
Horstgeld paused briefly to kneel before the image of the Emperor that crowned the viewscreen. The screen was now showing a map of Chaeroneia's orbit, with the positions of the Imperial fleet and the complex maze of asteroids below. The Emperor's golden mask glowered down over the bridge as if admonishing the crew to work harder in His name - which of course He was, watching over them from the Golden Throne on Terra.
'Grant us the strength to forsake our weaknesses,' said Horstgeld. 'Our Emperor, preserve us.'
'Captain?' Stelkhanov stood over Horstgeld's shoulder. 'Ship's archive may have found a match.'
'So soon? I thought we'd have to ask Segmentum Command at Kar Duniash.'
'The archives found something in Ravensburg's histories of the Gothic War. The largest ship in the approaching fleet matches various energy signatures logged by the Ius Bellum at the Battle of Gethse-mane.' Stelkhanov handed Horstgeld a sheet of complicated sensorium readings. 'The chances of a false match are very low.'
'Throne deliver us.' said Horstgeld. 'It's the Hellforger.'
'Sir?'
'Comms! Get me Fleet Commissar Leung. And put our reinforcements on screen.'
The viewscreen shifted to show the details and schematics of the ships that had answered Horstgeld's call to join the fleet at Chaeroneia.
'What in the hells is this?' he demanded, rounding on the Communications section. Several officers occupied the pews of the section, relaying streams of vox-commands and scanning ship-to-ship channels. 'I asked for warships! Subsector Command was supposed to send us everything they had!'
'These are all that were available,' replied Chief Communications Officer Kelmawr, a squat and powerful woman who had earned her stripes in boarding actions during the Rhanna crisis.
Horstgeld turned back to the screen. 'The Pieta... that's... that's a pilgrim ship for the love of Earth. It's barely even armed. And the Epicurus is a bloody yacht!'
'It's refitted.' said Kelmawr. 'The Administratum confiscated it and turned it into an armed merchantman...'
'Contact Kar Duniash. Tell them we have a crisis here. If Segmentum Command there can't help us then we're on our own.'
Horstgeld sat down on his command pew, shaking his head. It wasn't enough. They might have been able to hold off a grand cruiser, since that's what the Hellforger was. But not a whole fleet. Especially since the Hellforger had last been seen during the Gothic War in the service of the Chaos lord, Abaddon.
Chaos. The Enemy. Horstgeld couldn't tell the crew but the very soul of corruption was represented by ships like the Hellforger. Chaeroneia itself wasn't the only moral threat any more.
'Not good news then, Rear Admiral?'
In all the hubbub, Horstgeld hadn't even noticed Inquisitor Nyxos sitting quietly on the pew, almost hidden under the hood of his robes.
'The fleet is in the service of Chaos.' said Horstgeld. 'The flagship is the Hellforger. At Gethsemane it launched a boarding raid that killed...'
'I have read my Ravensburg, Horstgeld. They teach us rather more history in the Inquisition than I suspect they do in the Navy.'
'And we do not have enough ships to hold them off.'
'You are ready to abandon Chaeroneia?'
Horstgeld looked into the old man's eyes. He didn't like what he saw. He didn't believe the most outlandish stories they told of inquisitors - burning good Imperial servants at the stake, destroying whole planets - but he did know that an inquisitor's authority stood above all others and they did not take kindly to those who gave up in the face of the Emperor's enemies. 'Of course not.' he said. 'But there is little we can do.'
'You may not have to do all that much. Have you regained communications with Alaric and Hawkespur?'
Horstgeld shook his head. 'Comms are working on it but there is too much interference. At the best of times the pollution in the atmosphere is so thick it would be difficult to get any signal down. With the asteroid field it's all but impossible.'
'What about the Exemplar!'
'Magos Korveylan hasn't had any luck.'
'Hasn't she? I thought the Adeptus Mechanicus didn't believe in luck. I understand Commissar Leung is on the Exemplar.'
'He is.'
'Good. I am sure the combined efforts of Leung and myself will convince Korveylan to place contacting Alaric rather higher on their list of priorities. Can you live without me for a few hours?'
'Yes. But I might need your authority getting further reinforcements from Segmentum Command.'
'I will see what I can do on that account, but you must understand that my priority here is discovering what became of Chaeroneia. If we can get that information then you may not have to make a stand here at all.'
Horstgeld smiled bitterly. 'That won't happen, inquisitor. There's something on Chaeroneia the Enemy needs and they're going to go through us to get it. You're not going to just let them walk onto that planet.'
Nyxos stood up and smoothed down his robes. 'Quite right, of course. But I have my priorities. I shall require a fast shuttle and a couple of armsmen in case Korveylan proves recalcitrant.'
'Of course. And inquisitor... we can slow the enemy down. Perhaps force them out of formation and delay a landing, but not much more than that. I believe you represent the will of the Emperor and I will sacrifice this fleet if you feel it is necessary, but there is a limit to how much time we can buy for those men on the surface.'
'Unless I tell you otherwise, the Emperor requires you to reach that limit. There is nothing I will not do to seek out the foes of the Emperor and I will accept nothing less than the same from those under my authority. Now, if you please, my shuttle.'
Horstgeld stood and saluted - if this was the last time he would speak with Nyxos face-to-face, he wanted it to look formal. 'It will be ready by the time you get to the flight deck. Wish us all luck, inquisitor.'
'The Inq
uisition doesn't believe in luck either, Horstgeld. The Emperor protects.'
With that Nyxos swept off, looking imperious now rather than the hunched old man he normally appeared. Horstgeld knew then that Magos Korveylan would be on the same side as the rest of the fleet, whether she wanted it or not. That, at least, meant the Enemy would have to work a little harder to break through the fleet and reach Chaeroneia.
THERE WERE HUGE gliding things, like hollow-boned manta rays the size of fighter craft, that floated on industrial thermals in the lower reaches of the pollutant layer. Metallic snakes like animated cables, slithering through rainbow-sheened pools of caustic oil. Plumes of fungus made of living rust. Tiny bright insects made of metal, like intricate clockwork toys, scuttling like cockroaches looking for nuggets of iron to eat. Chaeroneia had once been typical of a forge world, with barely any indigenous flora or fauna able to survive the constant pollution - but the planet's thousand-year corruption had given rise to a unique biomechanical ecosystem where half-machine creatures flourished like living vermin.
Thalassa steered the strike force around the most obviously populated areas of the city. A dozen cities had been built on top of the original manufactorium and each one had seen areas fall into dereliction while others had prospered. The force moved through caverns formed from the fossilized remains of biomechanical factory-creatures, through twisting caves formed from their skulls and waist-deep seas of rancid coolant fluid that drizzled from some power plant far overhead. Aside from feral menials and wandering servitors they avoided the city's population successfully, though Alaric could feel a hundred artificial eyes on him and he knew that someone in the city knew exactly where they were. Gun platform patrols had been everywhere and Alaric had let his Marine's training take over his every movement, seeking out the best cover at every turn. His instinct had begun to rub off on the other troops, with even Archmagos Saphentis starting to move like a soldier.
And they had seen such things. Spires of glass. A slumbering monster with shiny grey skin that sweated a river of black blood. A creature like a corpulent tank-sized spider that writhed its way between the towers, exuding a stream of thick sticky strands which solidified into hardened bridges. Chaeroneia was becoming an exhausting parade of dark wonders, every turn bringing something new and terrible.