by Andy Clark
‘Recompense,’ hissed the Dark Apostle. ‘Validation. A just reward for he who has, for so long, served as my last true tether to mortality.’
‘It is my right,’ replied Gothro’Gol, his tone heavy with menace.
‘It is,’ nodded Varakh’Lorr painfully. ‘But I am about to become a god, Gothro’Gol. And for that, even my final tether must be severed.’
Alarm flared within his servant, a swift blue flame that leapt through Gothro’Gol’s nerve endings and spurred him to swing up his heavy mace for a killing blow. Varakh’Lorr channelled the raw powers of change into his flesh and shaped it to his whims. His hand fused, transforming into an adamantium-tipped bone spike that drove through the Terminator’s gorget seal and into his throat.
Blood sprayed from the wound, thick, dark gore painting Varakh’Lorr’s armour and flesh. Gothro’Gol staggered, still struggling to raise his mace. Varakh’Lorr twisted the bone spike, ripping the wound wider, then pulled it back and drove it forward again, this time piercing Gothro’Gol’s breastplate where his mark had burned into the crimson metal. Three feet of metal and bone impaled his bodyguard’s primary heart. The organ burst, and Varakh’Lorr shuddered with pleasure as he felt more blood drench his unnatural form.
Gothro’Gol stumbled as the lifeblood poured from his body and the strength gave out in his legs. Motor-bundles in his armour whined as they attempted to compensate, and with a surge of desperate fury, he swung his mace with all his remaining strength. The Dark Apostle caught the weapon’s haft mid swing. Contemptuously, Varakh’Lorr ripped it from Gothro’Gol’s hand and flung it away into the gloom, then tore free the bone spike and let the Word Bearer’s blood shower him like hot, red rain. Divinity beckoned.
Gothro’Gol gurgled something, some angry sound of betrayal and hate. Varakh’Lorr just laughed.
‘The final anointing,’ he said through a mouth full of needle fangs. ‘The blood of the faithful slave, taken in sacrifice from his mortal form. Thank you, old friend. You have served loyally to the end.’
Varakh’Lorr raised one armoured boot and kicked the kneeling Terminator in the chest. Such was his unnatural strength that Gothro’Gol’s dying body was propelled backwards from the data-pulpit, crashing and rolling down the marble steps to sprawl in a ruined heap at their feet. The hulking bodyguard twitched once, and then was still.
Varakh’Lorr turned away from the corpse of his longest-serving, most loyal warrior, and stared deep into the soulfires of the Beacon of Ascendancy. All was in readiness. The last step was complete. The time was now. Raising both arms high, Varakh’Lorr began to chant in a tongue forbidden since the dawn of time. His hearts thundered as he felt the eye of the gods turn towards him and his sacrificial offering, and triumph filled him.
Now, he would ascend.
The Knights of Adrastapol advanced along parallel streets of the valle electrum in three oversized lances, dispersed to maximise fields of fire, protect the wounded and ensure that no angle was left unobserved. They passed towering data-shrines, slab-sided worker habs, and outlying servitor factories from which heretical pennants and hanged corpses dangled. Yet they saw no trace of the traitors themselves, barring the distant flare and rattle of gunfire further towards the city’s heart.
Danial Tan Draconis led the middle lance with Luk Kar Chimaeros and Sire Olric. Jennika had the lance on the left flank, supported by Lady Eleanat and Sire Percivane, while Markos Dar Draconis had the right with Sire Federich Dar Minotos and Sire Garath. The rest of the loyalist Knights were divided between their formations. In the midst of each lance came the nine remaining Sacristan Crawlers. The fuel, ammunition and spare parts the Crawlers carried were nearly exhausted, yet Polluxis and his acolytes could still make themselves useful. The Sacristans beseeched their machine-spirits for guidance, and their prayers were answered with a steady stream of triangulation data confirming that the Adrastapolians were closing upon the source of the hateful scrapcode.
Everywhere they saw evidence of infighting, from heaped cultist corpses and burned-out Donatosian tanks to fire-blackened Crawlers and, on several occasions, the shell of a fallen renegade Knight.
Jennika had been a surrogate mother to her younger sibling since they were both small, but where she was a warrior born, Danial always seemed infuriatingly bookish and unsure. Jennika had worried that her brother would never truly come into his own, never be worthy of his status as heir. Today, she was glad to be proved wrong.
‘You have the draconsfire in you, brother,’ she voxed to him on a private channel. ‘Even father might not have gotten us this far. He’d have been proud. I know I am.’
‘Thank you,’ said Danial. ‘He would have been proud of us both, Jen. But your approval means more to me than any echo of his. I couldn’t have done this without you, sister.’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘you could. You’re every bit as strong as our father was. Danial, he was a good king. I believe you’re going to be a great one.’
‘As the Emperor wills it,’ Danial replied. ‘Don’t praise me too soon though, eh? We’ve not met any resistance yet.’
‘True,’ she mused, riding out the sway of her cockpit as her Knight stepped over a crashed Arvus shuttle. ‘For an enemy stronghold, there’s an awful lot of wreck and ruin, but precious few foes.’
‘Seems the reports of infighting were true,’ replied Danial through a hiss of static. ‘I just can’t understand why they’d turn on one another when they were so close to victory.’
‘That’s because you have an honest heart and an earnest mind, brother,’ said Jennika, only half joking. ‘Don’t seek to comprehend those of the traitor or the heretic. I’m told it’s bad for the soul.’ Danial snorted in response, then broadened his vox channel.
‘Knights, be on your guard. The enemy are here, somewhere.’
‘Good!’ said Sire Markos irritably. ‘All this waiting is giving me ill humours. Give me a bloody enemy any day, over wondering where in the Emperor’s name they all are.’
‘And what about that unnatural light?’ said Sire Garath. ‘Chaos witchery, I’ll bet. Get too close, it’s liable to steal our souls.’
‘I’d wager the two are linked,’ said Sire Olric. ‘My guess is that the Word Bearers crossed a line even Tan Chimaeros wasn’t willing to. Probably why he turned on them.’
‘If that’s true, it’d be the first sensible thing he’s done in days,’ said Markos. ‘Just looking at that light’s making me feel ill.’
‘You may be correct, Sire Olric,’ said Danial. ‘High Sacristan, do we have any way of knowing what in Throne’s name that phenomenon is? Could it have turned our enemies against one another?’
‘We do not, my liege,’ replied Polluxis, his voice raised over the binharic chanting of his acolytes. ‘Our auspex can gather no cogent readings from the phenomenon, but there is nothing in our cogitator-pict-base that matches it.’
‘Is it linked to the scrapcode?’ asked Luk over the vox. ‘Is that what’s causing it?’
‘Again, impossible to say, Freeblade,’ came Polluxis’ response. ‘Malefic code-surge fortitude is increasing by a factor of three-point-one-four every five minutes sidereal. This suggests either an amplification of the code originator, or that we are closing on its position rapidly. This would seem to imply, in turn, that the source of the scrapcode and the location of the warp anomaly are comparatively close to one another.’
‘Will your wards hold, High Sacristan?’ asked Jennika.
‘Yes, Lady Tan Draconis. The machine-spirits of the Crawlers can continue to amplify and reapply their data-benedictions as required. The wards will hold.’
Jennika nodded to herself, feeding a little more power into her motive actuators as the Knights marched up a steep hill between fire-blackened Administratum offices.
‘Good,’ said Jennika. ‘Then all we need to know is where…’
‘Contact left, one hundred yards!’ cried Lady Suset across the vox. At the same moment, gun muzzles flared in
Jennika’s sensorium, followed a split second later by the rattling clang of multiple hull impacts.
‘Throne!’ she snarled, wrenching her ion shield around to intercept the stream of fire. Blue energy flashed as the shots continued to rain down upon her, and the Lady Tan Draconis ignored the warning runes flashing on her instruments as she hunted for a target.
‘Got you,’ she whispered, then, ‘Icarus battery, cathedrum rooftop, mark point-one-one.’ With deft twitches of her haptics, Jennika swung Fire Defiant’s battle cannon to bear, aiming at the twin-barrelled flak cannon spewing shells at her from on high. Two concussive thumps ran through her Knight’s hull as it fired, spent casings dropping from the battle cannon’s breach to clang down in the roadway and roll downhill. Her shots found their mark, obliterating the flak battery and the gothic architecture in which it nested. Rubble tumbled and shrapnel flew as the Icarus array was blasted apart.
‘More of them,’ voxed Danial, and Jennika’s strategic display lit with crimson contact runes. ‘I’m not reading any bio-signatures.’
Reports filled the vox, Knights confirming contact with servitor-crewed sentry guns located amidst the spires and rooftops all along the ridge line. Fire flashed in Jennika’s peripheral vision, and ion shields flared and spat.
‘Hypothetical,’ said Polluxis. ‘We have triggered the city’s automated defence grid by entering its auspex radius.’
‘Sires and ladies, fire discipline,’ barked Markos over the vox. ‘Defend the Crawlers, and watch the rooftops.’
‘Sires Federich, Olric and Percivane,’ said Danial, ‘eyes on the ground approaches while we clear a path through the turrets. I don’t want any heretics creeping up on us while we deal with these guns. Lady Suset, good eyes. Keep them on your auspex please, my lady, and call out if you see incoming threats.’
‘Yes, my liege,’ voxed Suset, her voice determined.
‘All lances, maintain advance one quarter pace,’ continued Danial. ‘Eliminate those turrets and don’t blunder into any fire corridors, but don’t stop moving either. We’re in dense urban terrain, and the Word Bearers are out there somewhere.’
Jennika’s targeting reticules flicked from one crenulated rooftop to the next, picking out anti-aircraft batteries and lascannon emplacements amongst the spires and gargoyles. As each was pinpointed, she blasted it apart. For several minutes, the crest of the ridge was lit with explosions as the Knights paced steadily between the buildings, trading fire with the automated weapon-emplacements. Several warriors spat curses or cried out as shots pierced their shields to buckle armour and damage systems, yet thanks to their tight formations and coordinated fire patterns, none fell. Finally, after what felt like an hour of thundering gunfire but was, in truth, more like five minutes, the last of the turrets exploded into leaping flames.
Jennika cycled her steed’s autoloaders and checked her damage display. Armour integrity still held at over ninety per cent across the majority of Fire Defiant’s body, though her steed’s chest plating had taken several deep craters, and two of her sixteen thermo-sanctifiers read as black and dead on her display. Ammunition was resting at just over two-thirds capacity. It wasn’t perfect, she thought, but what on this Emperor-forsaken world was? It would have to do.
‘Seems we’ve crossed into their defence lines then,’ commented Sire Garath across the vox.
‘Only automated turrets, though,’ responded Danial. ‘If all this gunfire didn’t bring any enemies down upon us then there is a good chance the infighting is severe, and our foes’ attention elsewhere. Let’s not waste the element of surprise. Onward.’
The Knights advanced, encountering further nests of rooftop servitor-guns arrayed in complex defensive patterns through the city’s streets and rooftops. The Adrastapolians knocked out each emplacement as they found it, marking a clear corridor in runes upon their strategic overlay that could be transmitted to the Imperial Navy command the moment the scrapcode stopped. Danial had promised the bombers a clear corridor for their bombing run, and he intended to deliver it.
The deeper Danial and his followers pushed into the city, the more evidence they found of recent conflict. They crossed a junction, its exits strewn with wrecked rebel armour, its statue of the Emperor bullet-riddled and cast down in rubble. In the streets beyond they found the smoking carcass of a House Chimaeros Knight, leaning against a hab-stack like a drunk attempting to gather his wits. Shortly afterwards a flight of winged daemon engines swept overhead, and the few Knights with Icarus arrays swivelled their carapace-mounted cannons skywards. Yet the drakes ignored them, wholly intent upon something deeper within the city.
‘It is far too quiet,’ voxed Luk. ‘And this is far too easy.’
‘Uncomfortably reminiscent of the Arbites fortress, isn’t it?’ said Markos. ‘I pray to the Emperor himself that we’re not walking into another trap.’
‘Even if we are,’ said Danial. ‘We can’t ignore that heresy at the city’s heart. Its growing by the minute.’
‘You’re right, my liege,’ said Lady Suset. ‘Whatever the enemy are doing, we have to stop it.’
The scrapcode source grew nearer, and the unnatural column of light loomed overhead. The impossible thunderhead at its apex billowed ever larger, roiling with sick organic colours and the shimmering suggestion of eyes, mouths and screaming faces. More than one Knight muttered prayers across the vox as they looked upon the hideous sight, or cried out as they witnessed some horror churning in its depths. And all the while, Danial couldn’t shake the suspicion that their time was running out.
‘Bridge ahead, sire,’ voxed Suset Dar Draconis. ‘A big one. It merges several arterial routes and loops over the primary works of the manufactorum omnissi. It’s our most direct route to the heart of the city.’
Danial brought Oath of Flame to a thumping halt. They were in amongst a belt of blackened ruins, buildings so skeletal and burned that it was impossible to determine their original nature. The High King was mindful of his own advice that they should keep moving, but according to his auspex the bridge was only a few hundred yards ahead, and he needed a moment to think. The hateful column of fire loomed above him, its squirming light a yellowing bruise. It felt unclean, even through his machine’s hull.
‘What are our options here?’ he asked. ‘The bridge will surely be an exposed route, and it’ll funnel us no matter how big it is. Can we go through the manufactorum omnissi?’
‘No,’ said Suset, ‘I don’t think so, my liege. Not easily anyway. I’m reading a huge concentration of metalwork, and a great deal of heat blooming. Pipes and forges would be my guess.’
‘The Lady Suset reads her auspex with commendable clarity,’ voxed Polluxis, the High Sacristan’s uninflected voice giving nothing away. Danial felt a twinge of guilt as he remembered that Lady Suset’s adjustments to her steed’s senses were meant to remain a secret. Polluxis was a firm and loyal servant of House Draconis, but if he believed Suset guilty of tech-heresy then he would be merciless in his censure. After all the lives forfeit, Danial would not allow another valuable Knight to be lost in such a senseless way; he resolved to intercede personally if Polluxis pushed the matter.
‘She does,’ said Danial firmly. ‘Do you concur with her assessment, High Sacristan?’
‘I do, your highness,’ replied Polluxis. ‘I can further append that the entire complex, which stretches lateral to our current path for a distance of eight-point-four miles, is set within a one-hundred-foot-deep ferrocrete trench for the protection of the municipal structures around it. Hence the necessity for a bridge.’
‘Sounds like we’re going over then, eh, your highness?’ came Sire Markos’ voice over the vox. ‘The sooner we get to the heart of the city the sooner we can end this.’
‘For once I must concur with your herald, sire,’ said Lady Eleanat Dar Pegasson coolly. ‘We have no other practicable route of advance without wasting a great deal of time. Though it is incumbent upon me to point out that, were I setting a trap for my
enemies, this would be the place I would choose.’
Danial was half listening to his Knights and half to the whispers of his throne. He liked nothing about this situation, but even his murmuring ancestors had nothing helpful to offer him. ‘We take the bridge. But if we’re about to ride into a trap, we must be ready to break out of it as quickly as we blunder in.’
They advanced swiftly now, Danial’s lance surging to the front of the formation while Markos’ slowed and took rear-guard. Jennika’s warriors watched over Polluxis’ Crawlers. The Knights’ footfalls rolled like thunder as they burst from amidst the ruins and approached the bridge before them.
It was a huge structure, a vast arch of ferrocrete and iron wide enough for five Knights to walk abreast, stretching away into the middle distance. Through his sensorium, Danial could just see the bridge’s far end, partially lost amidst a haze of oily black smoke. Those fumes rose from the massive trench beneath the bridge. Down in this man-made valley, the manufactorum omnissi was burning. A vast tangle of pipelines, boiler-isles, macro furnaces, smelteries and forge-temples, it appeared to be slowly consuming itself as its fires raged out of control and its overflowing crucibalia spilled rivers of molten metal.
The Knights poured power into their motive actuators and guided their steeds out onto the bridge. Danial easily rode the shudder and sway of the bridge, blinking through layered optic filters, attempting to clear his field of vision and see past the boiling smoke that rose around him. Rusted groundcars crunched underfoot like rock-roaches as he advanced, and the roar of flames from below filled his audio-pickups.
Steady vox reports filtered to Danial’s ear. There was no sign of danger to the rear or hint of enemy aircraft in the skies. As Oath of Flame crossed the halfway point, Danial dared to hope they might pass this obstacle uncontested. He could see the generatorums looming one mile beyond the bridge’s end, the hellish light rising from their midst.
Danger!
The sudden, dry hiss from Danial’s throne made him jump. Reacting on instinct, he angled his ion shield to the fore.