25 For 25

by Various

  ‘How long have you been on your feet?’

  ‘Fifteen hours, lord. The same as you.’

  The Space Marine nodded slowly.

  ‘Fifteen hours.’ There was a strange noise from the vox grille. On a human, it might have been a laugh – a strange, attenuated snort. From one of the giants, Khamed wasn’t willing to assume anything.

  ‘We forget where we come from, sometimes,’ said the Iron Hand. The tone of voice was almost reflective. ‘You fought well, human. Tell the others they fought well.’

  Khamed didn’t reply at once, stunned by the unexpected compliment. Then suddenly, from nowhere, encouraged by the unlikely candour from the Angel of Death, he dared to ask for more.

  ‘I will, lord,’ he said. ‘But I have no name to give them.’

  Again, the noise. Perhaps irritation. Perhaps amusement. Perhaps warning.

  ‘Ralech,’ came the reply, before the Space Marine strode off to join his brother warriors. ‘Ralech Grond, Clan Raukaan, Medusa. Tell them that.’

  ‘He said that?’

  Khamed nodded between gulps of stimm-laced water. He was enjoying Namogh’s expression – a cross between disbelief, horror and disapproval.

  ‘I don’t believe it.’

  Khamed put the canteen down. He was sitting on an old iron crate, shoulders hunched and head low. He could already feel oncoming sleep crowding out his thoughts. The chamber was full of men, exhausted ones from his command being replaced with fresher ones under Namogh’s.

  ‘He was almost… normal.’

  ‘Crap.’

  ‘I’m telling you.’

  Khamed watched the survivors of his platoon limp back up toward the transit shafts at the rear end of the chamber. Their armour was caked in filth and blood. Some couldn’t walk unaided and hung like sides of meat from the shoulders of their comrades. He’d be joining them soon.

  ‘I think they change,’ said Khamed thoughtfully. ‘The leader – Morvox – he’s further down the road than the others. They forget.’

  Namogh spat into the floor-slurry, and the spittle spun gently away toward the drain meshing.

  ‘You’ve taken a hit, Jen,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘They don’t feel nothing. They’d throw us into the grinder without a blink.’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘They ain’t human.’

  ‘Not now, no.’

  ‘We’re nothing to them. Just spare parts.’

  Khamed looked up at his deputy. Namogh was as adamant as ever. His ugly face was twisted with distaste. There was anger there, to be sure, but also fear. Khamed couldn’t blame him for that. The Iron Hands scared everyone, even the mutants.

  ‘I don’t want to believe that, Orfen,’ said Khamed quietly. ‘They are sons of the Emperor, just as we are. We fight together.’

  ‘Crap. You’re delusional.’

  ‘But what changes them?’ asked Khamed, ignoring Namogh. He remembered the way Grond’s voice had sounded. ‘Why do they change? I’d like to know that.’

  IV

  The knife went in, moving across the flesh of the arm, tracing a thin line of blood.

  Morvox watched it. He had an almost uncontrollable urge to seize the nearest medicae servitor by its desiccated throat and slam it against the walls of the apothecarion.

  That had been predicted. He fought the urge down. The hormones in his body, the ones introduced during the changes, made him belligerent in the face of injury.

  The servitors carried on, heedless of the turmoil in their patient. They moved on tank tracks around the metal chair Morvox had been clamped into. Their faces were shiny curves of steel, dotted with sensoria. Their limbs were entirely augmetic and terminated in a dozen different surgical devices. They chattered to one another in a basic form of binaric. It was a soft, low clicking backdrop to their grisly work.

  The skin was peeled back, exposing raw muscle. The ligatures below the bicep tensed. The knives went in again, parting the muscle mass.

  Morvox watched it happen. He watched the rotary saw whine through the bone. It had only just finished growing into its new, improved form. Amputating it seemed wasteful.

  They broke the bones. He watched his hand fall away, clutched in the claws of a metal servitor. He watched the blood run out of the wrist, steaming as it cooled in its steel bowl. He watched sutures run across his severed forearm, rebinding the muscles and stabilising them. He watched the drills go in and the pre-augmetic bindings lock on to his broken bones.

  There was hours of work to come. Rods would be implanted, running nearly up to his elbow. Braces would encircle the pronator, studding through the skin of his forearm. Neural relays would be dropped into place, and nerve-sockets, and tendon housings. And then, finally, they would drill in the new hand, the mark of his Chapter, the sign of fealty to the primarch and to the ideals of Medusa.

  He would watch it all. The procedure was the mark of passage, the signal of his transition from mortal to superhuman. When it was complete, it would make him stronger. He knew this. It was fact, as revealed by Iron Father Arven Rauth, and so could not be doubted.

  But, even though he knew it to be true, even as he watched the rods go in, bisecting the muscles that had kept him alive out on the ash plains, he did not yet believe it.

  One day, like the Iron Father who had retrieved him from the trials, Morvox would not remember anything but the aesthetic imperative, the desire to purge the machine of the flesh that impeded it. One day, Morvox would no doubt pass on the ways of Manus to another, believing it with both hearts, no longer regretting the loss of a part of himself.

  But not yet.

  For now, he still felt it.

  There were more trials. Long years as a neophyte, learning the ways of the Adeptus Astartes. A hundred worlds, all different, all the same.

  He saw them first as a Scout, learning to use his enhanced body without the full protection of power armour. He enjoyed feeling his augmented muscles flex. He revelled in the strength of his new sinews. He could run for hours without fatigue, or lay in wait for days without the need for sustenance. He was a miracle, a scion of demigods.

  The disquiet grew slowly. He noticed during an engagement with the greenskin how quickly his iron hand functioned, how elegantly it curled into a punching fist, how efficiently it was able to turn the cutting blade. He moved his close combat weapon to his left hand after that, trusting in its ability more than the natural flesh of the right.

  It was after the Valan Campaign when he was elevated into the ranks of the Clan proper. His carapace protection was returned to the foundry and, for the first time, he was bolted into the hallowed shell of power armour. He remembered the cool touch of the interface nodes against his carapace, how the ceramite skin worked in such perfect conjunction with his own.

  He remembered the first time the helm was lowered over his face, sealing him off from the universe in a cocoon of dense protection. He remembered how it made him feel. He flexed the gauntlets, watching the ceramic plates move over one another, watching the artificial perfection of the curves.

  ‘What do you feel?’ came a familiar voice.

  Morvox looked at Rauth. His vision was mediated by the datastream of the helm’s lensfeed.

  There were a number of answers to the question. He felt powerful. More powerful than he had ever been. He felt honoured, and unworthy, and impatient for the next engagement. He felt all of these things.

  ‘I feel…’ he began, looking for the right words.

  The Iron Father waited patiently, locked behind his own mask.

  ‘I feel… imperfect,’ said Morvox, landing at last on what he wanted to say. He looked down at his left hand and his emotions clarified. ‘I feel flawed.’

  Rauth nodded.

  ‘Good,’ he said.

  Medusa was a planet of scarcity, of wastes, of darkness. Mars was a planet of wonder, of abundance, of dull red light that bled from a horizon of a million foundries.

  The translation took severa
l months, during which time Morvox trained incessantly. He read the rites of the Machine over in his mind until the words cycled in his sleep, burning themselves on to his unconscious mind like a brand. He learned the lore given him by the Iron Father perfectly, making full use of the eidetic function he’d possessed since his mind had been transformed. By the time he’d arrived, he felt almost prepared for what awaited him. All that remained was anticipation.

  As the drop-ship fell steadily through the thin atmosphere, Morvox watched the landscape resolve into detail beneath him. Every metre of surface was covered in an industrial landscape of dark iron, belching red smoke from soaring towers. Structures ran up against each other like jostling herd beasts, massive and obscure. He could see transit tubes run across the face of gigantic factories like arteries on a flayed corpse.

  The drop-ship flew low on its approach vector. It passed huge trenches, alive with glittering light, glowing at their bases from the magma that pooled there. There were clusters of cyclopean refineries, dark and shrouded in boiling walls of smog. Huge areas looked semi-derelict. Fields of tarnished steel ran away toward the horizon, marked by trenches and studded with arcane citadels. There were cages, each the size of a hive spire, within which vast war machines – superheavy vehicles, Titans, even starships – were being slowly assembled.

  As the drop-ship slowed its descent ready to be received by its iron docking cradle, Morvox had a final glimpse of the Martian landscape at close quarters. Every surface was covered in a layer of red dust. The metal beneath was near black with age and corrosion. Nothing living was visible. Everything was ostentatiously artificial.

  Morvox thought it was beautiful.

  The vessel came to rest, and the airlock doors hissed open. Beyond them was a cavernous hall lit by long red strips of subdued neon. The air was dry and tanged with rust. The sound of hammering echoed up from deep vaults.

  A single figure waited for him. It was human – of a sort. Deep green robes covered what looked like a skeleton of plasteel. No face was visible under the cowl, just a long iron snout from which wheezing breath issued.

  Morvox’s helm feed added extra information. He knew that the figure’s rank was Magos, and that her name had been Severina Mavola on accession to the priesthood in 421.M38. He knew that her body was now 67 percent augmetic and that she hadn’t communicated verbally for nearly a century.

  He also knew that she had once written poetry in the manner of Hervel Jho, but doubted that she retained the capacity. Service to the Machine God demanded nothing less than full commitment.

  +Naim Morvox,+ she canted in Martian-accented binaric. +Be welcome to Mars. I trust your journey was efficient.+

  Few non-Mechanicus personnel could communicate directly with a Magos when they chose to speak natively, instead relying on intermediaries or translating cogitators.

  The Iron Hands however, as in so many other ways, were different.

  +Most efficient, Magos,+ he replied. +I am eager to learn.+

  Mavola motioned for him to join her.

  +You wish to become Iron Father,+ she said, walking with him into the colossal hall. Her gait was smooth, giving no trace of the artificial nature of her musculature. +You know the process will be arduous.+

  +If it were not, it would not be worth aspiring to.+

  +You will be on Mars for ten years. In those years, many of your battle brothers will lose their lives. When you return, Medusa will be a changed place.+

  +I know this.+

  The Magos stopped walking. Behind her, a vast caldera boiled with molten metal. Servitors, some as large as Sentinel walkers, laboriously tilted it over, ready for the casts below to be filled.

  +We will show you mysteries that we show no other Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes. We extend this privilege in honour of Manus. Know now that the value of the instruction is almost without price.+

  Morvox looked at her carefully.

  +Almost?+

  Mavola didn’t elaborate. She turned on her heel, and resumed her fluid walk across the hall.

  +Come now,+ she said. +To the forges.+

  When he returned to Medusa, almost eleven years after he’d left, it was as the Magos had warned him. Clan Raukaan had experienced a decade of near-constant action, and many faces he’d known well had been gathered into the Emperor’s Rest. Iron Father Arven Rauth was now Clan Commander.

  To replace losses in the ranks, new aspirants had been inducted from across the planet throughout the decade. Morvox was escorted to his appointment with Rauth by one of them, a raw recruit named Ralech Grond. The youth still had his natural hand intact and almost no sign of augmetics. Morvox couldn’t decide whether he envied that or not.

  Once Grond had left them, Morvox and Rauth stood alone in the inner sanctum of the Land Engine Diomedes. Both wore their armour, though the commander’s skull was bare, revealing a pattern of steel markings across the synthetic skin like a circuit board.

  ‘The training was successful?’ he asked.

  ‘As I judge it, lord. The Mechanicus reports are on the grid.’

  ‘Much modification?’

  Morvox raised his right arm. The ceramite of his vambrace slid back, exposing a deep well within. It looked like the entire forearm had been hollowed out and lined with nanotronics. Rauth examined it carefully.

  ‘Unusual,’ he said. ‘What purpose did they have in this?’

  Morvox withdrew the arm. As he did so, the covering clicked shut. From the outside, there was no indication that his right limb was anything other than normal.

  ‘They did not tell me.’

  ‘Nothing at all?’

  ‘No. I assume it will become apparent.’

  Rauth nodded.

  ‘They do nothing randomly. Anything else?’

  ‘No. I am ready to serve. It has been too long since I wielded weapons on the field. I’m eager to employ my new aptitudes.’

  ‘You are not Iron Father yet,’ warned Rauth.

  ‘I know. On the day I left Mars, I asked for the Magos’s prediction of when that day would come. She gave me a definite answer.’

  Rauth’s eyebrow raised. It was a curiously human gesture on a generally expressionless face.

  ‘She told me I had incurred a debt on Mars,’ said Morvox. ‘They do not give up their secrets for free. A time will come when that debt must repaid. Only then will I earn the rank – at least in their eyes.’

  ‘Presumptive of them. What kind of debt?’

  Morvox looked down at his hands. Both were metal now, as was much of the rest of his limb structure. That ongoing augmentation would only accelerate now. He was beginning to forget his life out on the plains, back when he’d been nothing more than human muscle and blood. All that remained was the process, the long march to perfection, just as he’d been warned.

  ‘I do not know,’ he said.

  V

  Time was measured by chrono in the lower hive. There was no daylight to announce the dawn and no nightfall to bring the days to a close – just the endless cycle of artificial light, delivered via grimy lumens and flickering pict screens.

  Except that these were all smashed now. In their absence, the deep dark was oppressive and eternal. The troops measured time in shifts, in hours-long assaults on the enemy. Only the chronos, ticking away like heartbeats in the dark, recorded the time they’d been down there.

  Four days, Helaj-medium, before they encountered the beast. Four days of back-breaking slog and grind. More men died during those four days than had died in the last month of attritional defence.

  The assault was driven by the Iron Hands and there was no respite. They fought their way down the transit shafts, clearing them with flamers before sending grenades down into the squealing hordes. Then the boltguns would open fire, tearing the corroded flesh of the mutant into scraps and strips of bloody pulp. The Iron Hands waded through seas of grasping hands, carving through them with the chainswords. They went in close, using those massive armoured gauntlets to choke the
half-life from their prey. They stayed long, using ranged fire to blow out kneecaps or crack open skulls. Whatever the tactic, the result was the same.

  In their wake came the lostari, the ragged, exhausted mortal defenders of Helaj, mopping up in the aftermath and killing whatever got around the spearhead. The rotations began to blur and timekeeping slipped, but they kept stumbling onward, deeper and deeper, down toward the heart of the sickness.

  Khamed was rarely away from the heart of the action, despite the need for down-periods. The more he fought, the more he watched the Space Marines fight, the more he hated to be away from the front. He could see why myths built up around such warriors. For the first time, the panegyrics on the grid seemed less than ludicrous. All the fear, the terrible fear that he’d suffered since learning that it was to be the Iron Hands responsible for the purging of Ghorgonspire, had gone. It was replaced by a wary awe.

  Sure, they looked grim and sounded worse. They fought without pause or pity, but those were the qualities demanded by the task. They spoke rarely and had little patience for mortal weakness, but Khamed couldn’t blame them for that. If he’d been in their position, he’d have felt the same way.

  He managed to stay close to Grond. They exchanged few words during the engagements – just enough to keep the linked forces in coordination. Morvox seemed to have delegated responsibility for mortal-liaison to the lower-ranked Space Marine, which suited Khamed fine. Though Grond’s huge presence could never have been mistaken for merely human, at least he sounded slightly like one.

  Perhaps that was an illusion. Perhaps what lay under that facemask was nothing but gears and diodes.

  But Khamed didn’t believe that. Not entirely.

  The purging of a narrow hab-block had been completed and the flames were dying down. The empty doorways of the hab-units gaped like maws. As Khamed and Grond strode toward the far end of the main access corridor, their boots crunched through a floor of powdered bone.

  ‘My deputy still resents your presence here,’ Khamed said.

  Grond didn’t reply. His armour was covered in a thick layer of filth. In proper light, it would have been a dirty brown.

  ‘He’s heard… stories,’ continued Khamed, knowing he was pushing his luck. ‘He mentioned Contqual.’