by Ben Counter
They would probably all die. But it wasn't about survival, not now. It was about dying the most destructive death they could, a death that would strike at the very heart of Chaeroneia.
THE MARINES AND the traitors who followed them were lit up like stars in the night sky, bright traces of infra-red against the cold rockcrete. Scraecos counted five Space Marines and almost thirty tech-priests. The infra-red traces coming from the tech-priests showed very little exposed flesh and old, ill-maintained augmetics bleeding plumes of heat and exhaust gases. Inefficient. Failing. A reminder of what they had given up when they fled the light of the Omnissiah's understanding like vermin.
Two were more normal humans. One was sickly, the other healthy. Another was a tech-priest with exceptional augmetics, finely efficient and showing traces across the light spectrum of devices that Scraecos could not decipher. Perhaps a new convert from the experimental tech-priest collectives elsewhere on the planet, more likely a member of the outside Mechanicus come to reclaim Chaeroneia. And finally there was a broken old servitor, bleeding its failing energy reserves as heat into the open air.
It wasn't much of an army. True, a squad of Space Marines, according to the historical archives of the old Imperium, was one of the most dangerous infantry units the Imperium could deploy. But Scraecos had more.
Scraecos flicked his augmetic eyes back to the visible spectrum with a thought. The intruders were heading for a fallen Titan. Based on the old Imperial Reaver-pattern Titan, the machine's birth had been flawed and it had been left where it fell, so the menials could scavenge it for parts and so maintain the cycle of cannibalistic efficiency that allowed the titan works to function.
Scraecos's vantage point on top of the fuelling bunker gave him an excellent view of the battlefield. The Titan was good cover, but that meant nothing. Scraecos turned to the army mustering behind him, drawn from the barracks dotted around the surface of the titan works and the bio-storage units below the surface.
The death servitors were the best soldiers on Chaeroneia. And they were soldiers - not machines, or normal servitors, but something else. The armoured, beweaponed shells had been constructed according to the oldest and most potent designs, adapted from labour and battle-servitors to fulfil an altogether different purpose. That purpose was to serve as the physical bodies for the hunter-programs, voracious, brutal programs born in Chaeroneia's data media, willed into being by the infinite understanding of the Omnissiah. The programs in the data-fortress had failed and those inhabiting the death servitors knew it - their bloodlust was tempered by anger and shame and they were pursuing a logical imperative to succeed where others of their kind had not.
Scraecos could feel the monstrous intelligence behind the metallic faces. The hunter-programs were deadly and the True Mechanicus had crafted them bodies to match. Twin repeating lasblasters were mounted on the shoulders of each death servitor, leaving the hands free for the lethal electrified claws that were the hunter-programs' preferred weapons. The three full maniples of death-servitors stood to attention on the thick, coiled segmented tails that, were so much more versatile than the tracks, legs or wheels that battle-servitors normally used.
Maniple Gamma was supported by a unit of hulking eviscerator engines, their photon thruster cannons cycling impatiently, their many hooked limbs squirming to tear into an enemy. Maniple Delta included a full Annihilator squad, deceptively humanoid warriors that had once been partially human tech-priests, but which had failed in their devotion to the Omnissiah and had been transformed into partially biological hosts for the most able of the hunter-programs. Maniple Epsilon was commanded by Scraecos personally and would protect him in battle from anything an enemy could throw at him.
'Maniple Gamma. Report.'
'Ready.' came the machine-code reply, spoken as one by the collective half-mind of the data-programs.
'Good. Maniple Delta?'
'Ready'
'Maniple Epsilon?'
'Ready to serve the archmagos veneratus.'
'Full assault protocols. Move out.'
As one the servitors advanced, slithering with wonderful menace towards the fallen Titan. The sound was like metal through flesh as they moved. Scraecos moved with them, safely surrounded by the death servitors of Maniple Epsilon.
The intruders would know they were under attack. The stomping of the eviscerator engines would give the attackers away before the gunfire started. But it didn't matter. They were dead anyway. And Scraecos had thought about what the Omnissiah had said to him in the sacred chamber underground. Scraecos was a killer and his holy duty to the Omnissiah was to kill - so Scraecos would see to it that when the killing began, he was in the thick of it.
ALARIC GLANCED OVER the massive leg plate of the fallen Titan. He could see them coming, his augmented vision cutting through Chaerdneia's permanent twilight and picking out the glint of metallic carapaces and wicked claws.
Servitors, probably, but they moved differently. And they felt different too - Alaric could feel dark sorcery spattering off his psychic shield like iron-hard rain.
'How many?' asked Magos Antigonus, his maintenance servitor clambering painfully over the fallen slab of carapace.
Alaric looked more closely. 'Several units. Maybe a hundred in total. Do you know what they are?'
The eyepieces of Antigonus's servitor head whirred as he focused harder. 'No. But... some of my tech-priests said the magi were developing something new. They were testing them out in the undercity hunting feral menials. Very quick, very dangerous. I don't think any of the tech-priests got a good look at one.'
'Well, we're about to get a very good look indeed. This section is quite secure, but we need men around the Titan's head and keep someone on the far side in case they surround us.'
Antigonus voxed instructions to his tech-priests to take up position around the fallen Titan. The Titan formed a position that was bounded on one side by the Titan's leg, a solid slab of ceramite armour two storeys high. There were enough mechanics and bracing on the rear side of the leg for defenders to climb up to the parapet and fire down. Beside that was the torso, equally massive but probably easier to scramble over. The third side consisted of one fallen arm mostly consisting of the immense multi-barrelled Vulcan gun and the Titan's head, staring with shattered eyes up at the polluted sky. The head and arm formed the weakest side - that was where the Dark Mechanicus attack would hit and that was also where the tech-priests and Grey Knights would have to fight the hardest.
They had less than forty troops. The enemy might have three times that - with the promise of a near-infinite number of reinforcements once more troops reached the titan works.
The enemy was less than a hundred metres away, moving through the shadows cast by the legs of the Titans that formed a forbidding backdrop. Massive, smoke-belching machines shuddered as if they were alive and ground along behind the slithering servitors. Alaric could feel it stronger now, the malice inside them, the black magic and ancient evil that powered them. Nothing human or artificial could feel like that.
Daemons. The servitors were possessed by daemons.
'Grey Knights, get to the arm! Saphentis, you too. That's where they'll break through.' Alaric watched as the enemy came closer and the first spatters of speculative gunfire rattled overhead from the huge war machines following the army.
Shots thudded into the ceramite, hissing as they ripped deep cores out of the Titan's armour. Alaric didn't recognize the weapon and he was familiar with just about every kind of weapon that might be fired in the Imperium.
Then the servitors hit the ground and sped up, sweeping along like snakes, faster than a man could sprint. The sound that came from them was awful, a hellish cacophony of machine-code amplified and mixed in with a wailing that seemed to come echoing directly from the warp.
It was a war-cry. And before Alaric could react, the Dark Mechanicus were upon them.
Rapid las-fire rained against the position, streaking o
ver the fallen arm and rattling off the Titan's armour so loudly that Alaric couldn't hear his own voice as he yelled to the tech-priests at the parapet to get down. He jumped down to the rockcrete and ran over to the rest of his squad at the arm.
'Lykkos! Now, do it!'
Brother Lykkos was the first to fire, pumping shots from his psycannon as fast as the weapon would let him and sending them streaking into the advancing mass of servitors. Up close they looked horrendous - their bodies ended in long serpentine tails that propelled them along with impossible speed. Their heads were masses of sensors and probes, each with several unblinking ocular lenses like the eyes of a spider. Twin rapid-firing las-weapons sprayed crimson fire and their arms ended in claws that spat sparks as they raked along the rockcrete.
Alaric ran through the ranges in his mind. How many times had he done the same thing on the firing range? In training sermons with his squad? In battle? It was like another sense kicking in.
'Fire!' he yelled, the moment the servitors crossed the line of storm bolter range.
Autoguns and lasguns opened up, spattering tiny silver explosions as they thudded into the servitors' carapaces. The Grey Knights fired over the blackened machinery of the fallen arm, storm bolter fire ripping into the servitors.
Some fell. Some had arms or heads blown off and kept coming. Alaric saw one of Antigonus's tech-priests fall, neck and chest punched through by las-bolts.
But it wasn't enough. The Grey Knights accounted for more than a few servitors in those moments, but the servitors weren't normal troops that would run away or take to ground. They were inhuman and unholy. They didn't feel fear or shock, or any of the other weapons that worked against normal troops.
When the servitors hit, it was like something massive and solid slamming into the position. The Grey Knights switched to their Nemesis weapons in the split second it took the servitors to reach them and in that time Alaric felt the pure rising bloodlust burning inside the servitors, the grim joy in death that only the most debased servants of Chaos could feel.
A servitor slammed into him. It was shrieking in machine-code, a staccato assault on the senses. Claws raked at his armour and electric pain jolted through him. The half-insect, half-machine face thrust close, unblinking eyes burning with malice. Alaric caught its weight and dropped to one knee, trapping the servitor's clawed hand and hauling it past him, slamming it into the ground. Sparks flew and its carapace cracked but it kept fighting, slashing up at him, gouging long furrows in the ceramite and carving deep red lines of pain through the skin of his face.
Alaric fought to bring his halberd to bear, slamming the butt end down into the servitor's chest. He could feel the daemon scrabbling at his soul, trying to find a way in to infect him with fear and confusion. The servitor writhed and broke away, slithering across the rockcrete, trying to get behind Alaric and rear up. Alaric spun and drove the halberd blade up, slicing the servitor in two at the waist. The tail end dropped spasming to the ground and the upper half held on, digging its claws into Alaric's armour as the face unfolded and a razor-sharp appendage, like a massive surgical needle, stabbed out at him.
Alaric caught the needle with his free hand and wrenched it out of the servitor's head. Black, foul-smelling oil sprayed out and the daemon screamed so loudly the sound cut out the roar of gunfire. Alaric punched the servitor to the ground and drove his halberd blade down, carving its head in two. The daemon's shriek became pure white noise for a moment and then the scrabbling in his mind ended as the daemon, its host finally destroyed, was wrenched out of real space and back to the warp.
The servitors were everywhere. For every one that died two or three more scrambled over the wreckage of the Titan. Alaric saw Tech-Priest Gallen as a servitor impaled his torso with its claws and lifted him off the ground. The probe folded out from its mechanical head and it punched the probe into Gallen's face, piercing through into the tech-priest's brain. Gallen's body convulsed as the flesh boiled away and Alaric knew the data-daemon inside the servitor was feasting on him, sucking away the substance of his soul and body.
The Grey Knights squad was the only thing holding the servitors back. Brother Dvorn shattered a servitor with a swing of his Nemesis hammer, completely ripping the thing's torso to scrap and sending the daemon shrieking back to the warp. Brother Haulvarn was duelling with another servitor, turning its claws away with his sword as he stuttered storm bolter fire into it, beating it back inch by inch. Brother Cardios kept the servitors away from Haulvarn by sending waves of flame from his Incinerator rippling over the wreckage - the flame would do comparatively little to the servitors' metal bodies but the Incinerator was loaded with thrice-blessed promethium which scorched the substance of the daemons like fire scorched flesh.
The tech-priests were faring badly. Many were already dead and the servitors were among them, inside the compound formed by the body of the fallen Titan, shrieking as they killed. Alaric spotted Hawkespur halfway up the charred bulk of the Titan's torso, snapping off shots with her autopistol. The tech-guard was beside her, ready to follow his final order to the death, calmly following her aim with volleys of hellgun fire.
'Fall back!' shouted Alaric 'Close the circle! They're surrounding us!'
The Grey Knights moved back from the barrier of the Titan's arm so they could help the tech-priests who were dying behind them. In close formation they could send out a weight of storm bolter fire enough to batter back the servitors as they moved in for the kill, buying the tech-priests enough time to add some fire of their own. Up close, the servitors were more inclined to kill with their claws instead of their multi-lasers and the tech-priests at least had a chance in a firefight that they didn't in hand-to-hand combat.
But it meant nothing more than a few more moments. A handful of seconds in which to hurt the Dark Mechanicus more.
Hard black beams of energy played across the bloodstained rockcrete of the makeshift compound, scoring deep gouges in the surface and cutting limbs from bodies where they touched the tech-priests. Alaric looked up to see more Dark Mechanicus troops on the parapet of the Titan's leg armour - they must have climbed up the sheer ceramite of the armour and were now using their vicious beam weapons to slice apart the few defenders on the parapet.
The new attackers looked like tech-priests but there was something wrong about them, even by the standards of the Dark Mechanicus priests Alaric had seen on Chaeroneia already. Tentacles waved from between the augmetic components that made up their bodies. Darkness bled from under their tattered bloodstained robes and the massive beam weapons they carried in two of their numerous augmetic arms seemed to burn with black flame, as if they were powered by sorcery. They were a fusion of tech-priest and daemonic sorcery, possessed like the servitors but with an intelligence the animalistic data-daemons lacked.
'Firing line!' ordered Alaric. 'Up there! Now!'
The Grey Knights opened fire and one or two of the daemonic priests fell, but there were more, suddenly drifting down the near side of the Titan's leg, apparently moving on some kind of anti-grav unit. Lines of black energy swung as the daemonic priests fired and Brother Cardios fell, his leg sliced through at the thigh.
'Cover!' shouted Alaric. The squad broke up as the daemonic priests concentrated their fire on the Grey Knights. Dvorn barely broke stride to grab the fallen Cardios and haul him into cover, still firing.
Alaric hit the ground behind a fallen slab of the Titan's torso armour. Magos Antigonus dropped down beside Alaric. His servitor body was barely able to move itself and it was covered in blood and laser scars.
'Photon thrusters.' said Antigonus, glancing past the cover to where the daemonic priests were wreaking carnage among the tech-priests caught out of cover. 'Portable particle accelerators. They'll go through anything. I didn't know they could make them any more.'
Alaric looked at Antigonus's wrecked body. 'Can you take over one of the servitors?'
'Not with a daemon inside.'
Alari
c stood up and fired over the ceramite slab. Thruster beams carved past him in response, slicing a chunk off the Titan armour. As he ducked back down Alaric saw another force of servitors approaching, this time with huge steam-spewing war engines lumbering along behind them. And there was someone leading them.
Antigonus saw it too. A tech-priest, surrounded by the death servitors. The lower part of his face was a nest of writhing mechadendrites and fronds of sensor-wires waved from where his hands should have been.
'Scraecos,' said Antigonus.
Alaric recognized him from the statue in the underground cathedral. 'We've got them scared. They sent their best to kill us.'
'Then let's return the favour. It is time, justicar.'
'Can you do it?'
'Probably not. But I always enjoyed a challenge. Cover me from those photon thrusters.'
Alaric nodded. 'Grey Knights, covering fire. Get close and keep them busy. With me!'
Alaric broke cover and ran, head down as he charged. Black beams of photons ripped past him and one nearly took his arm off but he kept going, hoping a moving target would be more difficult for the daemonic priests to hit. He fired as he went, spraying storm bolter fire almost at random.
He made it to the base of the Titan's leg. The closest daemonic priest's photon thruster changed configuration in his hands and the beam fragmented into dozens of black bolts. They spattered against Alaric's armour, boring smoking craters into his skin. Bursts of cold pain tore into him. Some of the bolts had gone right through his chest and out through the backpack of his armour, but Alaric had suffered worse and gone on fighting.
Alaric crashed into the priest. The daemon inside it roared and the priest's body reconfigured, its shoulder rotating to bring its combat-fitted augmetic arms to the fore. A sparking electro-whip lashed at him - Alaric caught the whip on the haft of his halberd and punched the priest in the face hard enough to shatter the desiccated face and expose the sparking electronics underneath.