by Danie Ware
Slowly, the passages grew wider… and the air grew steadily hotter.
And then, Rhea stopped.
‘We have reached the end of the fissure, Sister. This crack opens out onto a smooth-bore tunnel.’
‘Anything in motion? Any security?’
‘Not that I can detect.’
‘Be sure. Rayos’ attention will be on the tanks on her doorstep, but I do not wish to attract her notice.’
‘Yes, Sister.’
Over Viola’s shoulder, Augusta could see the opening that Rhea had found – the rough, ragged split of the tunnel-edge opening out onto smoothly worked stone, and then continuing on its other side. She thought she could see the walls, engraved with the same prayers that they had seen upon the metal of the Lycheate city.
She counted the awareness check in her head, Five seconds. Four… Three…
She reached zero. Nothing had moved.
‘Very well. We will proceed with caution.’
Still, they found nothing. Out in the corridors, the security scanners lay dormant, and not so much as a servo-skull hummed across their path. Strips of lumens worked erratically, sending flickering data-ghosts along the long-abandoned walkways of the departed Mechanicus’ citadel.
‘These are not mining tunnels,’ Augusta commented. ‘They must be for maintenance, for servitors or helots, perhaps.’
Maintenance or not, the corridors were precise; their angles exact. As the squad moved on, Augusta began to see old pict-screens, vents and data-banks, and cog-marks engraved in the walls. The corroded remains of pipes wove in and out of the stone, and between them lay prayers that she could not decipher.
The air grew warmer still.
A little further, and each turning began to carry markings, denominations in both binary and machine-code.
‘Akemi,’ Augusta said, over the vox.
‘The numbers are very clear, Sister,’ Akemi responded. ‘This is conservation and maintenance level four-point-zero-six-five, and the tunnels are worked to a routine hexagonal pattern. The progression of numbers does suggest a single central control point. I would guess that it’s an identical layout to that of the factoria themselves, just on a smaller scale.’ She paused, then added, almost amused, ‘We are blessed that the Mechanicus remain so predictable.’
‘We must offer our thanks, Sister Akemi,’ Augusta said. ‘Can we follow these numbers to the central location?’
‘Yes, Sister.’
‘Then you will join Sister Rhea, and we will continue. Viola, pull back.’
It grew hotter. The temperature readout in Augusta’s armour was climbing higher with every turning they made. Behind her, Mors was sweating profusely; he’d dropped the face veil and his dark skin shone in the suit-lights.
Soon, the air began to shimmer with the thickness of the heat.
Another turning, and another, Akemi counting as they went. A third, and they saw their first lava flow – a thin, sliding trickle that broke through the tunnel wall and oozed down towards the smoothly worked floor, cooling as it descended. It left a swelling growth like a tumour, rippling and bulbous, and slowly, slowly growing.
It also obscured the old Mechanicus wall markings.
‘So, these fissures are more recent than the tunnels themselves,’ Augusta commented. ‘It may explain why they are abandoned – and why the Mechanicus have been so reluctant to return to this world.’
‘There is no current evidence of seismic or volcanic activity,’ Rhea answered, from the front. ‘These fissures are old, and they read as stable. We are secure. Certainly for the moment.’
They continued, passing more and more of the tiny, fissured flows, some of them beginning to run together, others steadily eating through the floor. None of them were large – the Sisters could step across every one – but the temperature was still climbing.
Mors and Rufus were beginning to struggle with the relentlessness of the heat. Unspeaking, Augusta passed Mors back her water bottle.
And then Rhea told them to halt. ‘Sisters,’ she said. ‘There is a large space ahead of us. We have found the central factorum.’
The door was vast, and utterly impassable.
It was a rusted sheet of steel in the side of the mountain. It cut dead across the roadway, and across the gleaming servohauler tracks. A march of sagging pillars flanked its approach, all linked by aged steel chains; empty flame-bowls stood to either side. Turret emplacements had been long bereft of their weapons, and some huge ferrocrete statue had crumbled until only the last few feet remained.
Upon the door itself, the colossal cog-and-skull was leeringly familiar.
‘Incaladion,’ Caia said, without surprise.
Above the gate’s silent threat, the black wall of the volcano rose both faceless and headless, and the brown clouds seemed to rest upon its top. Tiny red flares shifted across its surface as Sister Nikaya and the Seraphim rose aloft to assess its defences.
‘The Emanatus force field covers only the very top of the volcano,’ Nikaya said. ‘There are multiple defence ports, but they’re sealed.’
‘Hold fast, my Sisters.’ The canoness’ tone was cautious, but contained no fear. Caia knew that they would be facing overwhelming numbers, as well as the point-defences of the citadel itself, but these things were of no consequence. Their task was to draw the fire of the enemy, while Augusta and her squad penetrated the depths of the mountain.
She prayed for them, for her fallen Sisters, for herself. Standing in the back of the Immolator, looking up at that huge and grinning skull, Caia wondered if Rayos had calculated every probability of their advance, of their every movement and choice. Wondered if the heretek had drawn them here, knowing that they would be defeated–
The auspex blipped movement.
Not much, barely a flicker – a single contact. It moved as if a sergeant walked along his ranks of troops, inspecting and commanding them, as if–
As if they were expected.
She was about to speak – some sort of warning – but the great door rattled, grumbled, and began to rise. The rasping noise of rust was teeth-gratingly painful.
Sister Caia stared forwards, and into the gaping dark.
‘How many?’ Augusta asked.
In Rhea’s hand, the glowing green screen of the auspex was still. ‘None.’
They had come to a balcony, a high viewpoint above an echoingly empty space – Vastum Factorum-01, and Rayos’ muster point.
And this one did not follow the layout of its fellows.
There were no hoppers here, no facilities for construction or creation. This was surely just a storage facility, yet it seemed endless, stretching away from them, further than they could see. It was floored with smooth black stone – the great basalt plug of the volcano. And within that stone were laid long parallel lines of gleaming steel, one after another after another, all of them vanishing into its cavernous limits. An identical series of upright supports, looming like gibbets in the half-light, rose from each one – lines and lines and lines of static mini-shrines, each one a prayer point where the stored machine-spirit could find its rest.
And every one of them stood empty.
‘The canoness’ plan has been successful.’ Augusta’s tone was quiet, and swallowed by the hugeness of the room. ‘The heretek’s force is distracted.’
Alcina answered, her voice grim, ‘Our Sisters will be paying for every moment we delay.’
‘Aye,’ Augusta said. ‘We must locate the central control node. Sister Rhea, does anything remain in this location?’
Rhea held her auspex, moving it slowly in an arc.
‘Nothing, Sister.’
‘Then we will proceed with our mission brief. We will follow the numerals to the central location, and there, we will disable the force field. And may the Emperor stand with our Sisters as they face R
ayos’ army.’
Chapter Eight
Somewhere in the darkness there moved weapons, and metal, and flesh.
Sister Caia had seen the Lycheate machines before – the Breacher that had assaulted them upon their arrival, the kastelans that had answered to Rayos, and to Scafidis Zale.
She had never seen anything like this.
These things were horror-spawned, from the corrupt mind of the heretek. They were wrong, somehow – their weapons lopsided or crudely built, their bodies twisted, their feet or tracks dragging sparks that flashed like the meetings of wires. She knew little about machine-spirits, but her heart understood: these were abominations.
The red lines of tanks had formed into an inverse arc, grouped before the now-open doorway. At the centre, now, the canoness stood in her Immolator with one hand aloft, holding back her troops’ desire to fire, and waiting for the enemy to fully reveal itself, sliding and grinding like corruption from the dark.
More sounds came from above them – the defence ports were sliding open. But Nikaya and the Seraphim were waiting, their jump packs holding them tight to the rock face and out of range of fire.
From the assembled Sisters, the unified words of the Litany were like the threatening rumble of an avalanche – as if, once these machines entered the doorway itself, the might of the God-Emperor would bring the entire side of the mountain down upon them…
But Rayos was not that foolish.
Her force stopped, pausing just inside the cave’s huge mouth. It waited in the semi-dark, ragged and misshapen, listing and slumping, just as if the Ruinous Powers themselves had taken a hand in its formation.
And a voice, so familiar to Sister Caia, echoed from the stone, from the metal, from the twitching, jerking skulls of the Breachers and Destroyers…
‘Sisters,’ Rayos’ voice said. It was logic-cold, yet it somehow seemed to hiss with that same thin, cold humour that Caia remembered from their previous meeting. ‘You have erred. There is an eighty-nine-point-eight per cent chance that you will lose this confrontation. You, with your faith, and your weak and human flesh.’
The canoness did not respond, except with the continuing thud and threat of the Litany, booming like military drums.
It echoed back from the mountainside.
Caia’s hand tightened on her bolter, though it was her auspex that she watched. She said, quietly, ‘There are more of them, waiting out of our line of sight.’
Ianthe gave a single, grave nod. ‘Estimation of total numbers, Sister Caia.’
Caia replied, ‘Maybe two hundred and fifty individual units.’
‘Their greatest concentration?’
‘At the very rear.’
‘Very well. Then let us finish this.’
Her shout came over the vox-coder, blasted through the pipes that still stood upon the top of her Immolator.
‘Immolators, Seraphim! Fire!’
And the Sisters’ wrath was loosed upon the enemy.
Deep in the mountain tunnels, that first rumble of gunfire echoed like the boom of some distant heartbeat.
Augusta felt Alcina, behind her, tense; heard Rhea catch her breath. Whatever happened down here, their Sisters were fighting and dying to give them time to achieve their goal.
And they dared not falter.
‘We must move,’ she said, a thrum of urgency to her tone. ‘This mission will not permit us to dawdle.’
Beside her, Mors nodded. His nose and cheeks had taken scattered burn damage from the acid drizzle, but he’d made no complaint, and they had not stopped.
Led only by Rhea’s scan and Akemi’s counting, they began to move more swiftly.
The distant thunder of weapons continued, and the crackling of the empty vox told the Sister Superior, more clearly than any shout of urgency, that they could not afford to delay.
She reviewed her new mission orders: once they had eliminated the force field, they were to retreat. The Kyrus would be beginning her countdown the moment she had a clear line of fire.
The citadel was large enough that the massed tanks of the Order would survive…
But Augusta’s squad were on foot.
Offer your lives to the Emperor.
She silenced the flicker of doubt with a flare of annoyance. Neither Mors nor Rufus had flinched, had shown the slightest fear. And she was Sororitas – if she were to perish in the line of her duty, then it would be with courage. Despite Istrix’s death, she would face the Golden Throne knowing she had died with her honour intact.
If it were possible, however, she would uphold her responsibilities. Her squad were blameless, following her orders, and she would allow her Sisters to retreat, survive…
Spare them Your wrath, she prayed. They have done nothing wrong.
She would face her fate alone.
Alone, or with these two young soldiers that had come so far.
Akemi paused by another marker, and told them to turn left.
They seemed to be moving in an arc, heading inwards, and still down. It was a long haul, but the corridors were steadily widening and the Sisters were beginning to watch for servitors, for skitarii, or for wherever Rayos may have left here to guard her main force.
Yet still, there was nothing. If there were foot-troops, then perhaps they, too, had been mustered outside to face the canoness.
And Ianthe would show them no mercy.
Then Sister Rhea said, ‘Wait.’
In the silence of the corridor, they paused.
The tunnels were still. Brass pipes ran like veins along their ceilings; wires clung to the stone, now bereft of information or power. The pict-screens flickered with vestiges of life, their half-formed data-ghosts striving to manifest. They sent odd, eerie lighting down the empty stone.
Mors said, his deep voice quiet, ‘It’s still getting warmer–’
‘The temperature has significantly risen,’ Sister Rhea confirmed, cutting him off. ‘I suspect there will be another lava flow ahead – a large one.’
‘We are very close now,’ Akemi said. ‘The central forge temple lies ahead.’
In the distance, the boom and rattle of gunfire continued.
‘Do not pause,’ Sister Alcina said sternly. ‘Our Sisters fight for our time, and we must achieve our target.’
Alcina’s repetition was unnecessary, but Augusta said nothing. Her new second was not wrong, and the Sister Superior was beginning to suspect that there might be another reason why there were no defences down there.
Rayos had no need of them.
‘Head right, then left, then right again,’ Akemi said.
‘Sister Rhea,’ Augusta commented. ‘You are familiar with the device that we seek?’
‘Yes, Sister,’ Rhea said. ‘I do not possess Sister Akemi’s literacy, but I have seen such things before, on Mete, and the Mechanicus remain obsessively consistent. I will be able to shut down the force field.’
‘We will proceed,’ Augusta said. ‘Walk swiftly, but with caution.’
‘Aye.’
They moved onwards. Augusta could not read the machine dialect that was now flickering on the half-dead pict-screens, but she could see that the strings of binary were becoming shorter.
Akemi was surely right – they were closing in on the central facility.
Mors had pulled his face veil back up over his nose – the air was becoming more sulphurous. And Augusta was beginning to see it: the light was changing. Amid the flickers of the pict-screens, there was a deeper, steadier illumination, a soft red glow that was gradually growing stronger.
The Sisters had seen this glow before.
The ruddy colour of bare lava, somewhere ahead of them.
Weapons roared alongside the vocal thunder of unified prayer. The air was thick with smoke and debris, with the flow and spark of living data, with the g
roaning and grinding of the strange, lopsided machines.
Surrounded by the rage of battle, the Sisters’ tanks held their position. Their stationary formation was intended to pull Rayos’ forces out of the mountain, and then bring the stone down upon them, but Rayos was too wily, and her lines did not advance.
Instead, her front rank opened fire.
Caia, still standing behind the canoness in the lead Immolator, wondered why she did not deign to duck back inside the vehicle – but the moment Ianthe raised her pistol and opened fire herself, Caia understood. A streak of yellow light hit the end Breacher and its chest simply exploded, spattering its tracked base with gore. In the remaining mess, its exposed cogs spun for a startled second, and then were still.
Caia opened her bolter to a full suppression, her rounds chewing holes in the next Breacher along. Its twisted human face showed no pain, no emotion, nothing – but it raised its shoulder and the weapon attached, and Caia knew that it would shoot straight at them.
Ianthe sang the Litany like a call of trumpets, and dared it to even consider the action.
To either side of them, the surviving two Immolators were shooting with their heavy bolters, the weapons turning in suppression arcs. The two Repressors had remained still, waiting for the moment that the Order would roll forwards and into the cave mouth, but, for now, Ianthe was still holding them where they were. At the rear, the Exorcists were loaded and ready, but Rayos had been too clever. Calculating exactly the amount to raise the door, the arcing missiles did not have the necessary clearance, and their bolters could not shoot past the vehicles in the front.
Above her, Caia was aware of the Seraphim, flitting across the rock face. With her focus on the enemy, she caught them from the corners of her vision, each one holding her place below a shielded gun port, then jumping upwards to shoot clean through the slit and eliminate the servitor, or gunner, that had been about to fire. Four of the Seraphim defeated their static targets with almost perfect flying manoeuvres; the fifth was less blessed.