Forge of Mars - Graham McNeill

by Warhammer 40K

  Clearly deciding to take Linya’s advice, Rae turned and rested his folded arms on the iron balustrade, taking in the splendour of the vista before him. ‘Rain in a starship,’ he said, shaking his helmeted head. ‘Hell of a thing.’

  ‘Yes, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of such an occurrence,’ said Linya.

  ‘Makes you think though, eh?’

  ‘About what?’ asked Linya, when Rae didn’t continue.

  ‘About why you’d bring a ship all this way from the Emperor’s light just to crash it on a world that’s going to die,’ said Rae, making room for one of the rearguard squads to pass, ten soldiers with rifles pulled in tight to their shoulders.

  ‘So why do you think Telok did this?’ asked Linya.

  ‘You’re asking me?’ laughed Rae. ‘I’m just a gruff, incredibly handsome and virile lieutenant, what do I know about tech stuff like that?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Linya, gesturing to the misty cavern of the rotated chamber. ‘You tell me.’

  Rae grinned and tapped the side of his helmet.

  ‘Well, whoever did this had himself a plan, right?’ he asked. ‘I mean, you don’t go to all the effort of standing a starship on its arse for no reason. So I’m guessing this Telok fella, he knew Katen Venia was going to be destroyed sooner rather than later, yeah?’

  ‘That would be a safe assumption, Lieutenant Rae.’

  ‘Then it stands to reason that whatever he’s got planned is going to happen soon,’ said Rae, unlimbering his rifle. ‘And whatever that is, I get the feeling that being inside this ship won’t be the best place to be when it starts.’

  To those without noospheric adaptations, the command deck of the Speranza was a cold steel elliptical chamber that looked nothing like the bridges of Naval ships of war. Silver-steel nubs jutted from the floor like unfinished structural columns, and a number of otherwise unremarkable command thrones were placed at apparently random locations.

  But to the servitors hardwired into those gleaming nubs and the Mechanicus personnel manning each station, it was a far more dynamic place than the sterile steel and preserved timber compartments of starched Navy captains and their underlings. Thousands of shimmering veils of data light hung suspended in the air like theatrical curtains about to rise and spiralling arcs of information-rich light streamed from inload ports to be split by data prisms, diverted throughout the bridge and processed.

  Magos Tarkis Blaylock sat in the command throne lately vacated by Archmagos Kotov. His black robes were etched with divine circuitry and his chasuble of zinc alloy was a fractally-complex network of geometric designs and machine language. Green optics pulsed beneath his hood and streams of coolant vapour rose from him as though he were smouldering. His retinue of stunted dwarf-servitors fussed around him, rearranging his floodstream cables and regulating the flow of life-sustaining chemicals to his bio-mechanical body, a complex mix of proteins, amino acids, blessed oils and nutrient-dense lubricants.

  As Fabricatus Locum, the Speranza was his to command in the absence of the archmagos – it was a task he relished. The sheer power of the Ark Mechanicus was unimaginable, a vast repository of knowledge and history that would take the Martian priesthood a thousand lifetimes to process.

  Blaylock prided himself in his ability to assimilate enormous volumes of data, but just skimming his consciousness over the golden light of Speranza’s core spiritual mechanisms was enough to convince him that to descend into its neuromatrix would be to invite disaster. Necessity had forced the archmagos to enter the deep strata of the Speranza’s machine-spirit during the eldar attack, and Blaylock still did not know how he had managed to extricate himself from its impossibly complex lattice after securing its help.

  Together with Vitali Tychon, who occupied an adjacent sub-command throne, Blaylock was engaged in fleet-wide operations that would normally require substantial Mechanicus personnel to handle. Vitali’s floodstream betrayed his child-like wonderment at the data exloading from the surface, but Blaylock found something strangely familiar in its nature, as though he was somehow already aware of its content.

  He dismissed the thought and turned his attention to a last strand of partitioned consciousness that was currently engaged in hunting the bondsmen who had instigated the interruption of servitude among the Speranza’s cyborg servitor crew. Each of the indentured workers collared on Joura had been implanted with fealty designators and should, in theory, be easily found.

  But neither the senior magi nor constant sweeps of cyber-mastiffs and armsmen could locate Bondsmen Locke, Coyne and Hawke. Nor could they find any trace of the rogue overseer, Totha Mu-32, and the servitor said to have recovered its memories. Nor was their any evidence of the rumoured arco-flagellant Bondsman Locke was said to possess.

  It was as if they had simply vanished.

  Which, on a Mechanicus ship, was surely impossible.

  Blaylock left that portion of his consciousness to keep searching, and returned to the business of running the Speranza. Between them, he and Vitali were maintaining the ship’s position over Katen Venia’s turbulent polar region, processing the surveyor readings exloaded from the surface, communicating along Manifold links with the senior commanders on the surface, optimising shipboard operations of over three million tertiary grade systems and coordinating the fleet manoeuvres in expectation of a cataclysmic stellar event.

  The likelihood of Arcturus Ultra exploding in the immediate future was statistically remote, but the pace and fury of the reactions taking place in its nuclear heart were beyond measure; nothing could be taken for granted. As far as possible, Blaylock – with Magos Saiixek in Engineering’s assistance – was keeping Katen Venia between the fleet and the dying star. If this star did go nova, a planet wasn’t going to offer much in the way of protection, but it was better than nothing.

  So much information,+ said Vitali over their hardline link. +Wondrous, is it not? How often does one get to see the destruction of an entire planet this close?+

  I have overseen Exterminatus protocols on three worlds, Magos Tychon,+ said Blaylock. +I know what extinction level events comprise.+

  Ah, but this is a natural event, Tarkis. Completely different. Of course I have seen the after-effects of such events from the orbital galleries on Quatria, but to be here is something we won’t soon forget.+

  We will not forget it at all,+ said Blaylock, irritated at Vitali’s interruptions. +The data has already been recorded and the Mechanicus–+

  Never deletes anything,+ finished Vitali. +Yes, I am well aware of that tiresome truism, but to see an event like this first-hand is quite different, regardless of what you might be about to tell me about experiential bias.+

  Is there a point to this current discourse?+ asked Blaylock. +The surveyor emissions from the surface are complex enough to process without having to divert additional processing capability to interpersonal discourse.+

  Vitali nodded. +Yes, the sheer volume and complexity of what I am seeing is quite…+

  The venerable magos broke off as a simulation he had running in the background finally reached its conclusion, coalescing in a bright sphere of glittering information. His multi-digit hands splayed it outwards, but Blaylock did not bother to inload whatever spurious experiment the stellar cartographer was running.

  Tarkis, were you aware of the electromagnetic discharges emanating from the Tomioka and the dissonant area of geostationary dead space above it?’

  I registered both items earlier, yes.+

  And what did you believe them to be?+

  Blaylock brought up a cascade of discarded auspex junk, sifting through it with haptic sweeps of his hands, processing the information through a multitude of senses.

  Nothing more than irrelevant by-products of the chaotic systems within the atmosphere intersecting with rogue electromagnetic emissions from the planet’s core. It has likely already been subsume
d into the background radiation.+

  You are dead wrong, Tarkis,+ said Vitali.

  Blaylock’s floodstream surged with irritation he did not bother to modulate. +I am seldom wrong, Magos Tychon.+

  Seldom does not mean never, look again,+ said Vitali, sweeping a series of extrapolations and speculative interpretations of the surveyor inloads over to Blaylock’s throne.

  Blaylock digested the data, then brought up the backlogged surveyor data and ran it forward at speed to the present moment. As absurd as Vitali’s conclusions were, it was hard to dismiss their inevitable logic.

  Are you sure about this?+ he asked.

  Sure enough to know that we need to get everyone off that planet,+ said Vitali.

  Yes, of course,+ agreed Blaylock. +When will it reach us?+

  My most accurate projection says two hours and fifty-four minutes.+

  Ave Deus Mechanicus!+ said Blaylock, sending a stream of imperative binary through the noosphere, Manifold and vox-networks. +Contact Kryptaestrex and have him prep every landing craft for immediate lift-off. Get everyone off that planet. Now!+

  The space had once been the Tomioka’s enginarium, but that purpose had long since been sacrificed in service of another. The funicular transit elevator had carried them deep into the bedrock of the planet, their angle of descent taking them from walls of steel into regions stratified with aeons of geological change. When at last the elevator halted, it was immediately clear that the cathedrals of the engine spaces had been enlarged many times over by the simple expedient of drilling out the rock for kilometres in all directions.

  An enormous cavern had been created beneath the Tomioka that extended far beyond the boundaries of the starship, but just how far was impossible to tell, for only the dimmest green light illuminated the cavernous space. The heat down here was immense, the air hazed with steam and ferocious temperatures radiating from the vast quantities of towering machinery that lined the walls.

  Innumerable glowing green cables threaded the walls, coiled together like nests of snakes and pulsing with a hypnotic rhythm. Tens of thousands extended from the nearest machines, thousands more from others farther around the circumference of the immense cavern. Tangled masses of the cables all converged on a distant point where a dancing light glimmered in the half-darkness.

  ‘What is this place?’ asked Tanna.

  ‘I do not know,’ said Kotov, following the vanguard of skitarii towards the centre of the chamber. ‘But whatever plan Telok had for his ship, this is the heart of it.’

  ‘It has the look of the xenos to it,’ said Tanna, and Kotov was forced to agree.

  ‘It could be that Telok’s crystal technologies incorporate alien technology,’ suggested Dahan. ‘Might that be how he finally succeeded in getting it to work?’

  ‘That is certainly one possibility,’ conceded Kotov.

  Tanna raised a fist and his Space Marines dropped to their knees, each one with a weapon aimed.

  Dahan was at his side in an instant.

  ‘What is it, sergeant?’

  ‘Battle robots ahead,’ said Tanna. ‘They’re not moving, but look at the chests. There is something wrong with them.’

  The Mechanicus advanced behind the Black Templars and Kotov saw Tanna was quite correct.

  A maniple of immobile Conqueror battle robots in dusty armour of blue and red stood ranked up as though awaiting doctrina wafers. Their sunken heads stared unseeing at the floor and their weapon arms hung slack at their sides. Kotov counted five robots, each four metres tall, brutish and harshly-angled, with rusted plates of ablative shielding crumbling at their shoulders.

  In all respects but one, they appeared to be nothing more than relics of a long ago war.

  Each robot’s chest cavity, where Kotov would expect to find its power source, was filled with finely-woven crystalline filaments like the finest blown glass.

  ‘This is the same crystal-form we fought above,’ said Tanna, instantly bellicose.

  Kotov raised a delicately-machined hand. ‘Be at peace, sergeant. These machines have not been active in hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of years.’

  ‘That gives me no comfort,’ said Tanna, gesturing to his fellow warriors. ‘Destroy the crystals.’

  ‘Wait!’ cried Kotov. ‘I cannot allow you to simply destroy Martian property.’

  ‘And I cannot allow a potential threat to remain along our line of retreat.’

  ‘Sergeant Tanna,’ said Kotov, placing himself between the towering warrior and the battle robot. ‘We did not come all this way just to vandalise the first piece of technology we do not yet understand. The discovery of new things is what brings us out here, yes?’

  ‘It’s what brought you out here, archmagos,’ said Tanna. ‘We came to honour a debt. I thought you understood that.’

  Kotov shook his head and rested a hand on the nearest robot’s arm. Rust flaked away and fragments of corroded metal drifted to the ground. ‘These are Mechanicus artefacts, it would be a crime against the Omnissiah to defile them.’

  ‘That crystal isn’t Mechanicus,’ said Dahan, standing alongside Tanna. ‘That crystal is xenos technology, and the alien mechanism is a perversion of the True Path. That’s what you are destroying, are you not, sergeant?’

  The Space Marine nodded and an unheard order passed between him and his warriors.

  Though Kotov was unhappy about such wanton destruction, he knew he had little choice but to accede to the Black Templars’ tactical decision. Tanna put a fist through the lattice in the nearest robot’s chest, the crystalline web shattering into powdered fragments. Within seconds the battle robot had its chest cavity emptied of crystal, and this act of destruction was a knife to Kotov’s heart.

  Dahan knelt beside one of the robots, where a scrap of loose cloth lay under its foot. He lifted it with the inactive prongs of his scarifiers, dust trickling from the folds like the ash of an ancient revenant.

  ‘What is that?’ asked Kotov.

  ‘Some sort of robe,’ said Dahan.

  ‘Mechanicus?’

  Dahan shook his head as the threads began to fray and the cloth fell apart. ‘Too small.’

  The scrap of cloth fell to the floor, now little more than coarse-woven threads that unravelled and rotted away even as they watched.

  ‘There’s more of them,’ said Tanna, moving behind the robots. The Space Marine knelt beside another of the robes, this one with a semblance of a shape beneath it. No larger than a small child, it was swathed in identical rags, but as Tanna touched it, the robe lost its shape and puffs of dust sighed from its edges as whatever it concealed disintegrated.

  Something gleamed beneath the rags, and Tanna sifted through the dust to retrieve it.

  ‘What do you have there, sergeant?’ asked Kotov.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ said Tanna. ‘A mechanism of some sort.’

  Tanna stood and held his discovery out to Kotov. A bent piece of metal, corroded and pitted with age, it had the look of a flint-lock belonging to some primitive black powder weapon. Tanna held the shaped metal on the palm of his hand, but before Kotov could give it a closer examination, it crumbled to powder.

  ‘Accelerated decay, perhaps a side-effect of this world’s dissolution,’ said Dahan.

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Kotov, pushing deeper into the chamber. ‘But a mystery for later on, I think.’

  Leaving the ancient robots and rotted fabric forms behind, Kotov pushed deeper into the chamber, seeing yet more isolated groups of rusted battle robots deeper in the shadows either side of their route of march. Soon it became clear that the centre of the chamber was directly beneath the Tomioka, as the chamber’s roof changed from bare rock to the cross-section of a gutted starship.

  Structural hull members, tens of metres thick, stood like vast pillars at the entrance to a templum; once beyond this permeable barrier, K
otov saw a vast circular chasm had been excavated at the base of the starship. At least five hundred metres in diameter, its edge was delineated by hundreds of thousands of the faintly glowing cables that plunged into its depths. What looked like a vast data prism hung down from the ceiling formed by the Tomioka, resembling an enormous spear-point fashioned from a single block of ice.

  But it was the flickering globe suspended over the exact centre of the shaft that commanded Kotov’s full attention.

  A ball of greenish fire hung in the air like an emerald sun caught in an invisible force field. Its surface rippled with coruscating lines of force, as though formed from viscous fluids stirred by internal tides. No part of Kotov’s sensorium could measure its dimensions, mass or density, and had he relied on any input beyond his optics, he would never know the object was there at all.

  ‘What is that?’ asked Tanna.

  ‘Some kind of reactor?’ ventured Dahan.

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Kotov, rechecking the passive augurs worked into the armoured body he wore. Whatever the object was, it was beyond his ability to measure, and what readings he was getting were fluctuating meaninglessly, as though the object was transitioning from one state of being to another at any given moment. His chronometric readings flatlined, as though caught within the temporal null of a stasis bubble.

  Kotov tore his gaze from the nuclear green fire and stared down into a bottomless black abyss as Dahan manoeuvred his skitarii around this segment of the shaft. Kotov saw no obvious means of descending into the chasm, but counted that as fortunate, feeling a strange sense of observation rising from its depths.

  ‘Whatever this place is, it is clear that Telok never intended this ship to fly again,’ said Kotov, perching precariously at the chasm’s edge. ‘The engines have been completely dismantled.’

  ‘Why would Telok have done that?’ asked Tanna.