Defenders of Mankind - David Annandale & Guy Haley

by Warhammer 40K

  All down the road, new doors had been cut and old ones wrenched open. An artery of thick black cables ran along one wall, held in place by welded staples. Into each opening some of these cables wormed to re-emerge depleted in number, and the swags of them hanging from the wall grew thinner the lower they went. Everywhere was a bustle. Servitors tramped up and down in endless lines, carrying pieces of machines or crates, or were hard-linked to grav-sleds and tracked litters bearing larger artefacts. Arc lights blazed from openings. Plasma cutters burned. The tech-priests were working fast to strip the hulk. Galt was somewhat taken aback. Excommentum Incursus was a giant vessel, but he had miscalculated how many tech-priests it carried.

  One by one, tech-adepts split from the column and went on their way to whatever mysterious tasks they had to perform, taking their servitors with them. The songs of the cyborgs lessened in power as their number reduced. By the time they reached the airlock only a score of them were left and their prayers were in contest with the incantations of the working tech-priests. The airlock was open, and they went into the cavern without the tedious business of repressurisation. The air had bled away completely after the battle, and there had not been time to re-establish an atmosphere. So it was they passed amid a frenzy of activity that, vox aside, was performed in total silence. The tech-priests had cut many holes into the sides of the large alien ship, from where they carried a great number of technological prizes. From the amount of praise being offered to the Omnissiah, Galt guessed that the artefacts were of high value.

  ‘Xenos technology,’ said Plosk disparagingly, ‘but valuable nonetheless.’

  Galt called a halt while he conferred with Captain Aresti, who was in command of the forces in the cavern. Captain Sorael had led the majority of the Blood Drinkers into the warrens of the hulk, chasing down the remaining genestealers, leaving the Novamarines to destroy the xenos dead and guard the labours of the tech-priests. Mastrik remained on board Novum in Honourum , in command of the fleet in Galt’s absence.

  Satisfied all was in order, Galt allowed the impatient Plosk to continue onwards. They headed out of the cavern via a new doorway cut into the alien ship, and from there through a crush of compacted metal and stone into a heavily damaged Imperial vessel of extreme vintage. Much work went on there; lights had been set up all along its corridors and savants were plugged into data outports, scouring systems for soft data hidden within cogitation systems. Two of the remaining tech-priests went to their colleagues here.

  Three more ships directly down and the streams of servitors porting technology to the surface dwindled to nothing. The final tech-priest went to his task, leaving only Plosk, Nuministon, Samin, nine armed servitors and three semi-aware data-savants with the Terminators.

  They went through this last ship and came to an old airlock set in a comparatively sound wall. A wide chasm opened up here between this ship and the next, and a prefabricated bridge had been laid across. As Galt crossed it he looked upwards. The chasm extended to the surface. The nearside lip was lit by the ungentle illumination of Jorso, above was a narrow strip of black space.

  On the other side of the bridge were two lamps. Beyond that, no signs at all of an Imperial presence.

  ‘I calculate that we will be able to salvage most of the material from the upper levels before the hulk disappears once more into the warp. These other ships here are of lesser interest, although it is regrettable that we will not be able to explore them fully. One never knows what one might uncover, but in my long experience as Explorator, I have learned to prioritise,’ said Plosk.

  ‘There is no Imperial presence from hereon in?’ said Sergeant Sandamael.

  ‘Aside from a few relay beacons so that we might communicate with the surface, and a few servitors patrolling and surveying the corridors in case there is something of use. No. We are all the Emperor’s bold explorers here, my lords, not just I,’ said Plosk.

  Tarael’s lightning claws activated, patterning the dark walls of the ship with blue light.

  ‘Then lead on, lord magos,’ said Galt. ‘Take us to this treasure you have found.’

  Chapter 20

  At the summit of Mount Calicium

  Holos emerged from the chambers of the astorgai, broken but unbowed. The light came suddenly after the darkness of the labyrinth in the mountain. At first the light of the setting suns hurt his eyes, and he lay on the warm rock of the volcano until the burning of the light passed. In his hearts and mind, the Thirst burned him also, and the combination of the two was too much to endure. He closed his eyes and gathered his strength. Astorgai wheeled on the thermals above him, calling out and wailing; their king was dead, and they would not approach his slayer.

  Holos rolled onto his front, and pushed himself with great effort onto his knees. His armour was broken, its spirit he thought dead, for the support it ordinarily gave his body was gone. Joints ran freely without power assist, if they ran at all – his left knee was locked, the plates deformed from his fight with Lo-tan. His left arm was heavy and pained him when he tried to move it. He watched in thirst-gripped fascination as his blood dripped from the tears in the armour. His Larraman cells were only now causing it to clot. That it had bled for so long indicated that the wound was a grave one.

  Holos attempted to stand. His legs would not bear him, so he put his sword point to the ground, to push upon it and rise. It scraped white lines in the stone and fell twice before he had it steady. With a gasp, he stood erect, leaning his weight onto Encarmine Dread .

  Once he was on his feet he felt stronger, if only a little.

  Ahead, not two kilometres distant, was the peak of the mountain. It was not a true peak, but a higher part of the volcano’s rim raised like an animal’s tooth above the caldera of the volcano, the relic of one of the cone’s many periodic upthrustings and collapses. The cone’s broken rim ran up to it at first, but then the peak pulled up and away from the rest of the mountain with rapidity. The rock of it was multifaceted, and the stacked columns looked almost artificial in appearance. A strange spur arced out from it, a platform on the top some one hundred metres above the rim, tilted slightly towards where Holos stood.

  Through images of battles past and those yet to come, Holos saw the figure from his dream, a cowled, winged being standing before him. It raised a skeletal finger and pointed to the platform on the peak. Holos nodded and licked desiccated lips. He began to walk, and the figure faded. Each step sent pain shooting through his wounded arm. His armour dragged at him, pulling him back when it should have been carrying him forward. He had never had cause to walk in deactivated armour, not outside of his training. He was astonished at the weight of its betrayal.

  He sheathed Encarmine Dread clumsily, and pushed shaking fingers at the clasps on his pauldrons. The heavy shoulder plates disengaged and fell to the ground one after the other with dull clangs. He walked a little easier. He fumbled tools from his belt, and set to work on the rest of his battleplate as he walked.

  Soon the trail of his footsteps was punctuated by discarded pieces of armour.

  ‘There is much activity ahead, lord captain,’ said Eskerio. ‘Genestealers.’

  ‘We cannot delay,’ said Plosk. ‘We do not have much time.’

  ‘How many?’ asked Galt.

  ‘Twenty-nine, maybe more,’ said Eskerio. ‘They are in hiding, being cautious. I’ll warrant they know they are being hunted.’

  ‘That will play well for us, cousin,’ said Sandamael.

  ‘What do you propose to do?’ asked Plosk.

  ‘Fight our way through,’ said Galt. ‘That is what you would have us do, I think. Or would you relinquish your prize?’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Plosk brusquely. ‘Please, make use of my servitors.’

  ‘That will not be necessary. Have them guard you. Lord Reclusiarch Mazrael, what will you and yours do?’

  ‘We shall come with you, lord captain,’ said Mazrael.

  ‘Very well. Forgemaster Clastrin, remain here with the ma
gi. You may take Lord Magos Plosk up on his offer. Command his servitors. Establish fields of fire. Do not allow the genestealers through.’

  ‘Yes, brother-captain.’

  ‘My thanks!’ called out Plosk.

  Galt ignored him. He had the Terminators advance rapidly from the crossways they were in and into the corridor where Eskerio’s auspex had detected the movement. This ship, so close to the heart of the hulk, was in poor condition and immeasurably ancient. This deep into the agglomeration, many of the component vessels were crushed into impassibility, and this one differed only in that a clear way to the heart of the hulk existed through its crumpled halls. The corridor they entered was wide and tall, its metal heavily corroded. It had been the access way to the ship’s warp engines, but was now broken open along much of its length so that the compartments that had once lined it had become a part of the corridor. Consequently, the space was a deadly tangle of low walls, crumpled bulkheads and hanging catwalks.

  ‘If only the lights and gravity functioned here,’ said Militor. ‘It would make our lives a little easier, brothers.’

  ‘I do not think we will find any machine activity this deep into the hulk,’ said Eskerio. ‘These vessels are as old as the Imperium, if not older. Their spirits are broken and fled.’

  ‘It is surely the business of Forgemaster Clastrin to declare such as a fact, brother,’ said Astomar.

  ‘Quiet, all of you!’ said Voldo.

  ‘What is it, cousin?’ asked Tarael.

  ‘Sounds. Not of motion, but of power.’

  ‘Cousin Voldo is correct. I’m getting a reading, brothers,’ said Curzon.

  In the sensoriums of the suits, energy indicators jumped. A tortured groaning went up deep in the ship. A series of bangs accompanied a building whine.

  The Terminators sank into themselves suddenly as ancient grav plates under their feet activated. Lights flickered. Many burst in showers of sparks. Crackles of energy sputtered from power relays and severed cables. A grav plate imploded with a thunderous crack. Small fires leapt into being as ancient machinery failed, dying as quickly as they drank the small measure of oxygen in the stale air. A door shuddered into life. It shook as it attempted to close, stopped, then tried again.

  ‘What is this?’ hissed Galt.

  ‘A refutation of your words, from the Machine-God himself!’ said Plosk over the vox. ‘Tread carefully in these halls, oh captain. You walk nigh unto a tabernacle of the Omnissiah himself! Do not doubt me, lord captain! We are close to His presence.’

  The genestealers attacked. Scared out of their hiding places by the unexpected light, they leapt through holes in the rusted walls, dropped from their hiding places high in the ceiling, running at the Terminators from gaping doors.

  The Terminators reacted without delay, decades of training and experience guiding their arms. Genestealers died with raucous screeches as bolts cut through the air. The space was open, the genestealers disorganised, only a handful got through to the Terminators’ position, where they were rapidly slain by Tarael, Voldo and Galt.

  Plosk did not wait for Galt to give the all clear, but walked into the ruinous corridor as soon as the last bolt had been fired.

  ‘You see, Captain Galt, the Machine-God is with us here. We are close to the source of his power, the STC data core, so mighty is He incarnate that He answers even the prayers of the unbeliever!’

  ‘This is nonsense,’ said Mazrael, but there was uncertainty in his voice.

  ‘Come,’ said Plosk, ‘we are close.’ He walked arrogantly through the Terminators. Galt signalled them and they followed uncertainly, servitors clomping mindlessly behind them.

  ‘Be on your guard,’ said Galt.

  The engine walkway stopped. The hull that had bounded it was long gone. Plosk stepped through the gaping hole in the ancient ship, and out onto a shelf of rock. Galt came close behind, careful of his footing as the gravity abruptly ceased.

  The shelf of rock – the surface of a small asteroid – finished seventy metres away, rearing up to form one side of a small cave. A mangle of structures, ice and rubble made up the majority of the rest, but one component stood apart from this; a spacecraft of a kind totally unfamiliar to the Space Marines.

  The greater part of the spaceship was buried in the mass of debris, but the side of it presented to them was undamaged by time or the shifting crush of the agglomeration. His sensorium could not penetrate its gleaming hull, but Galt estimated it to be around three hundred metres long, small by Imperial standards. It was clean of line and unembellished, which made the craft appear strange to Galt’s eyes. No Mechanicus runes marked its outer surface, nor were there any statues or artistic flourishes of any kind, yet in its functionality there was a clean aestheticism. It did not appear like any ship crafted by men, but Galt knew instinctively that this vessel had been built by human hands.

  ‘This is what you hide from us?’ said Galt, wary and awed in equal part.

  ‘Hide? No, captain. You are here with me. I merely did not wish to burden you with excitable supposition,’ said Plosk.

  ‘Or alert his rivals,’ said Clastrin quietly.

  Plosk walked forward. Light erupted into life along the ship’s length, the glow coming directly from the hull itself.

  ‘Wait!’ shouted Galt.

  Plosk ignored his warning. ‘Long have I searched for this vessel, several lifetimes of lesser men,’ he said. ‘On Vardus Prime, far out in the Halo, did I find a mention of it, buried deep in the Liber Solentus , penned by men who never knew the light of the Emperor, and who were destroyed long before they could be saved. I have searched and searched and searched. There has only been one other of its kind reliably documented, the ill-omened doom-ship the Blade of Infinity . I surmised if there was one, there must be, have to be more.’ He was speaking to himself now more than the others, close to incoherence as human emotion overran his electro-mechanical faculties. He fell to his knees. ‘And it is real!’

  Another light came on, its radiance undimmed by time or corruption. It lit a message on the side of the hull in a strange script Galt could barely read. As alien as the straight lines of the font seemed, they were human letters, a plain form of the Gothic script. The words, however, were meaningless to him.

  Plosk pointed to it. ‘See! The Machine-God shows us the truth of it. Here, my lords, as I predicted, rests a pre-Imperial starship.’ His voice shook with triumph as he read the ancient script aloud. ‘The Spirit of Eternity .’

  Plosk collapsed into fevered prayer. Nuministon and Samin joined him in supplication, bowing before the ancient vessel. Clastrin hesitated, stayed by Galt’s suspicions, but overwhelmed he fell to one knee. Their servitors looked mutely on.

  ‘Look, lord captain,’ said Voldo. He pointed at an object upon the floor close by the Spirit of Eternity .

  Mazrael walked past them, right up to the skin of the ship. He bent down and picked the object up.

  ‘A vambrace. It is Lord Caedis’s,’ he said.

  ‘He is alive?’ said Metrion. He took a hopeful step forwards.

  ‘He was recently,’ said Mazrael. If Galt was expecting some sign of joy from Mazrael at the news, he was disappointed.

  ‘He is inside the ship then,’ said Voldo.

  Mazrael examined the ship before him. The ship was clean, as if newly made. ‘I cannot tell. I see no doorway.’

  ‘Stay back, lord,’ warned Voldo. ‘Who knows what evils it has carried through time.’

  ‘No!’ said Plosk joyfully. ‘The ways of the ancients are beyond your ken, my lord. There is no harm here, only knowledge. The doorway will not be obvious to the likes of you, I, however, can see it.’

  ‘Then how do we gain entry to the archeotech you seek, magos?’ said Voldo. ‘Do we have time for you to cut your way in?’

  Plosk started to answer, but a great rumbling interrupted him as the hulk underwent a tremor. They watched nervously as the component vessels of the cave’s walls moved past one another, like fish i
n a net struggling to be free from the fisherman. Hull skins crumpled. The chamber was airless, yet the group heard the shifting of the tortured agglomeration through their feet, a roaring and grinding of overwhelming volume. They struggled to keep their footing in the near zero-gravity. Those of the Terminators that could, mag-locked themselves to the wall. Others shot out their safety grapnels. One of the servitors and a data-savant, their butchered brains not quick enough to respond to the rapid movement, were cast from their feet and were sent hurtling into the cave walls. There they died, broken by the impact.

  The magi remained unmoving, bent in serene worship throughout the quake.

  The tremors lessened. The magi stood.

  ‘Lord Plosk has searched the length and breadth of this galaxy for four hundred years, gathering the lore that led us to this momentous point in time,’ said Samin scornfully. ‘Do you think he would not also gather the information unto him required to access such a craft?’

  ‘Quickly, Lord Plosk,’ said Nuministon. ‘I am reading data commensurate with warp field generation.’

  ‘Warp field generation from where?’ said Galt incredulously. ‘From the ship?’

  The mage priests ignored him, and dropped into a rapid conversation of screeching binaric.

  ‘It cannot be active, surely, lord captain,’ said Brother Militor. ‘It is at the heart of this hulk. It must have been here for thousands of years.’

  ‘And the lights, cousin, and the energy emanating from the vessel?’ said Sandamael. ‘I do not like this, lord captain, it has the stink of corruption to it.’

  ‘It is a vessel from the Dark Age of Technology,’ said Plosk. ‘From a time blessed by the Omnissiah himself, before those who wielded His powers were adjudged unworthy and had His light withdrawn from them. It functions, oh it functions!’

  ‘And the warp engines, do they function too? Damn you, mage priest, what more are you concealing from me?’ shouted Galt.

  ‘The warp fields are generated by the space hulk, not this vessel. Once an agglomeration has sailed the tides of the warp, its fabric develops a sympathy for it. Any perturbation in the veil between real space and the empyrean can drag it back.’