Forge of Mars - Graham McNeill

by Warhammer 40K

  ‘Yes, your service record,’ said Blaylock, turning to face Roboute once more. ‘A most impressive catalogue of valorous conduct, exemplary behaviour and all the right connections. Some might call it a perfect record, yes?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Roboute, withdrawing his hand from the drawer. ‘But then, perfect is the level to which the people of Ultramar aspire. You’d be doing me a disservice to think I’d be anything less. But enough of this dancing, Tarkis, I know why you’re here.’

  ‘And why is that?’ asked Blaylock, placing the framed Letter of Marque between them.

  Roboute looked up at Blaylock’s face, cowled in scarlet and with only the shimmering emerald light of his optics to impart any visual clues to his demeanour. He lifted the item he’d taken from the desk drawer, placing the long cigar in the breast pocket of his coat.

  ‘So you know?’ he said.

  ‘Yes, Mister Surcouf,’ said Blaylock. ‘I know that this Segmentum Pacificus accredited Letter of Marque is a fake. A very clever fake, one that even I almost believed was genuine, but a fake nonetheless. You are no more a legally-operating rogue trader than I am.’

  ‘So I don’t have an official bit of paper to permit me to do what I do,’ said Roboute. ‘Who cares?’

  ‘You are in violation of numerous laws, both Imperial and Mechanicus,’ said Blaylock, as if the severity of his crimes should be self-evident. ‘Would you like me to list them all for you?’

  ‘Imperator, no! We’d be here all week,’ said Roboute. ‘So what are you going to do next?’

  Blaylock lifted the Letter of Marque from the desk and said, ‘I will take this to Archmagos Kotov and let him decide your fate.’

  ‘Go ahead,’ said Roboute. ‘What the hell does it matter anyway? We’re on the other side of the galaxy, beyond the Imperium and any law you’d care to punish me with. I brought you here and before you start getting all high and mighty, you might want to remember that.’

  ‘I do not forget anything, Mister Surcouf,’ said Blaylock. ‘Insults and condescension least of all.’

  ‘Then do what you need to do,’ said Roboute.

  Sparks flew from each hammerblow, filling the smoke-filled forge with strobing flashes at each pounding impact. Tanna was no Techmarine, but he knew how to wield a hammer and beat out a chain. Every Black Templar was taught how to fashion the chains that bound a weapon to a bearer and, though it had been many decades since Tanna had beaten metal upon the anvil, it was a skill that, once learned, was never forgotten.

  Magos Turentek’s forges were well-equipped and well-stocked, but they were intended for use by adepts of the Mechanicus. The menials and forge-slaves inhabiting this flame-lit vault had protested at the Space Marines’ arrival, but one look into Tanna and Varda’s purposeful eyes sent them scurrying from the forge in fright.

  Hot exhaust gases vented from smouldering furnaces, keeping the temperature within the forge close to volcanic, a giant cog at the far end of the chamber turning solemnly with booming peals of grinding metal. A great chain, each link a metre thick, was wrapped around the cog’s teeth, turning at regular, clanking intervals – hauling who knew what from who knew where. The hiss of crackling binary spat from ceiling-mounted augmitters and a number of oil-dripping servo-skulls bobbed in the shadows, ready to assist their Mechanicus overseers.

  Every so often they would approach the two Space Marines with a hash of lingua-technis, which Tanna supposed was an offer of assistance, but sounded more like disparaging comments on his smithing skills. He waved them away each time, but they kept coming back.

  The Black Sword of the Emperor’s Champion rested on a wheeled workbench beside the anvil with oiled cloths laid beneath its blessed blade. Varda knelt beside the anvil, feeding the length of broken chain onto it for Tanna to beat back into shape.

  Tanna brought the hammer around as Varda pulled the heated metal taut.

  Metal struck metal. Sparks flew.

  The chain was rotated, another link added, and the hammer fell once more.

  Stripped to the waist, the Emperor’s Champion looked like a bare-knuckle pugilist of old, massively muscled and taut with the barely-controlled need to do violence.

  Tanna rolled his shoulders and brought the hammer down.

  ‘The links are crude compared to those originally cast for the Black Sword,’ he said, ‘but it is the bond between weapon and warrior that matters. You and the sword must be as one until your death.’

  ‘I doubt a Dreadnought could pull this chain apart,’ said Varda, inserting another heated link with a pair of needle-nosed pliers.

  ‘The Black Sword is part of you, Varda,’ said Tanna. ‘Part of all of us. That the crystal-forms parted it from your wrist is a bad omen.’

  Varda snorted. ‘This entire venture has been filled with bad omens. What does one more matter?’

  Tanna lowered the hammer and said, ‘Do not speak of such things lightly.’

  ‘I do not,’ said Varda. ‘I speak as I find. How else would you describe this crusade but ill-fated? Aelius falling at Dantium Gate, the loss of the Adytum and the death of Kul Gilad, what are these but the footsteps of doom that march at our side? And now Auiden is gone, our Apothecary.’

  ‘None feel his loss more than I,’ said Tanna. ‘He saved my life more than once, and I returned the favour time and time again.’

  ‘We all grieve for him, but that is not what I meant.’

  ‘I know what you meant.’

  ‘Without our Apothecary, we have no means of recovering the gene-seed of the fallen. All that we are will be lost, never to be remembered.’

  ‘We will be remembered,’ promised Tanna. ‘By the enemies we fight, on the worlds we conquer in His name and the deeds of glory we will bring back to the crusade fleets.’

  ‘You are so sure we will come back at all?’ asked Varda.

  ‘To admit defeat is to blaspheme against the Emperor,’ warned Tanna.

  ‘I admit nothing of the sort,’ snapped Varda. ‘I simply mean that when we die out here, our flesh will not return to the Chapter to be reborn in the hearts of the next generation of warriors. Without Auiden, we become as good as mortal.’

  ‘You say “when” as though the manner of our deaths is a foregone conclusion.’

  ‘You do not feel that to be the case?’ asked Varda. ‘Truly?’

  Tanna was about to dismiss Varda’s comment as doom-mongering, but caught himself as a memory returned to him.

  ‘Kul Gilad once spoke to me of a creeping sense of ruination that haunted him ever since Dantium,’ said Tanna, ‘but the Reclusiarch was always given to melodramatic pronouncements in the days following a battle.’

  Varda nodded in agreement, then looked away. ‘Perhaps he was right this time.’

  Tanna heard something deeper in Varda’s tone and said, ‘Did you see something? When the war-visions came to you aboard the Adytum, did the Emperor grant you revelation?’

  Varda’s hesitation was answer enough.

  ‘What did you see?’ demanded Tanna. ‘Tell me, brother.’

  ‘I do not know what I saw,’ said Varda. ‘Nothing I can articulate clearly. I saw us on a world of lightning, a million points of light reflecting from glass, and…’

  Varda trailed off, his voice choked with loathing.

  ‘Go on,’ said Tanna. ‘Speak.’

  ‘I saw the eldar, the same psyker-bitch that killed Aelius,’ said Varda. ‘I saw myself fighting at her side, and Emperor forgive me, I saw my blade save her life. Tell me, Tanna, how can that be true? Why would He show me such a vision of treachery? What evil can come to pass that would see me fight for the life of the xenos wych who killed Aelius and our Reclusiarch?’

  Tanna heard the despair in Varda’s words and understood the turmoil that had fuelled his anger. To have been granted the Emperor’s blessing, only for the very mo
ment of apotheosis to reveal an act of apparent treachery must have torn Varda’s soul like splintered glass.

  ‘Brother Varda,’ said Tanna, resting the hammer upon the anvil and placing his hand on the crown of Varda’s shaven head. ‘You have been chosen by the Emperor to be His champion, and He does not lightly offer His trust in such matters. Of all the warriors I have fought alongside over the centuries, there are none I would rather have as my Emperor’s Champion than you. To believe that you might fall to treachery is to believe the Emperor has made a mistake in your anointing. And I refuse to believe that.’

  Varda looked up and Tanna saw acceptance there.

  Tanna offered a hand to him, but Varda shook his head and rose with the fluid grace of a master swordsman. Varda lifted the chain from the anvil, running the still-hot links across his callused palm. Satisfied, he lifted the Black Sword from the workbench and snapped the iron-lock fetter around his wrist.

  The Emperor’s Champion swung the sword in a looping series of cuts, thrusts and ripostes to test Tanna’s work, the midnight blade whistling as it cut the dense air of the forge.

  ‘You are no artisan,’ said Varda, his hawkish cheekbones lit by the glowing maws of hungry furnaces. ‘But it will do.’

  The summons had come less than an hour later, and Roboute was just surprised it had taken that long, given the immediacy with which the priests of Mars could communicate. The clipped message from Archmagos Kotov gave no clue as to the tone of the forthcoming audience, but Roboute had no doubt there would be preening outrage, followed by an immediate cessation of all privileges aboard the Speranza and the revoking of his contract with the Mechanicus.

  A pair of high-function valet-servitors in robes of pale cream escorted him through the gilded doors of Kotov’s stateroom, a lavishly appointed chamber with numerous anterooms, libraries and sub-chambers branching off with what felt like mathematical precision.

  He felt like a convicted murderer on his way to execution, yet the thought gave him little trouble. Roboute was ready to take whatever punishment Kotov felt fit to dispense, be it incarceration or execution, but was equally ready to fight tooth and nail to see to it that his crew were exempted from his fall from grace.

  The servitors led him into an enormous circular chamber of tall marble columns supporting a domed roof that was easily three hundred metres wide and adorned with frescoes depicting the early colonisation of Mars. Complex holographic representations of sacred geometries, holy algebraic equations and trigonometric proofs floated in the spaces between the columns, endlessly working themselves through from origination to completion.

  Around the curved walls were hundreds of headless mannequins, armour stands and portions of robotic armatures, or so Roboute thought until he recognised a number as being bodies Kotov had worn over the course of the expedition. The servitors halted in the middle of the chamber, wordlessly indicating that Roboute should remain while they departed.

  Roboute turned on the spot, looking up at the fresco on the curved inner faces of the dome, now seeing that it was in fact an immense map of Mars. Olympus Mons was represented at the centre of the dome, as though Roboute was looking down on the immense mountain from high above. At its dizzying peak stood a red-armoured warrior atop a bound man with skin of scaled silver. Surrounding the warrior were a host of artists, poets and musicians, each of whom were masters of their art. Golden light haloed the warrior’s upraised head, and that light spread across the surface of the Red Planet like irrigating flows of knowledge that illumined the far corners of the world.

  ‘I believe it is called Mars Vanquishing Ignorance, Mister Surcouf, one of Antoon Claeissens’s last pieces before his untimely death during the legendary nano-plague at Hive Roznyka during the wars of Unity,’ said Archmagos Kotov, striding in from what the compass points on the pediment above told Roboute was the eastern approaches. ‘It lay fading and disintegrating in a forgotten vault beneath the Tharsis Montes and I spent a considerable sum restoring it for transplantation to the Speranza.’

  For this audience, Kotov had come clad in robes that made him look much more like the archmagos he was, instead of a jade or gold-armoured knight. Black and white chequerboard patterns lined the hems of his robes and a clicking armature of whirring mechadendrites enfolded his torso like electromagnetic coiling. Two of the bland-faced valet-servitors accompanied the archmagos, together with Tarkis Blaylock and a pair of beetle-armoured skitarii, both with gold dragons inlaid onto their shoulder guards.

  ‘It’s an impressive piece,’ said Roboute, surprised Kotov hadn’t launched into a tirade of binary-spewing outrage at his duplicity.

  ‘It is propaganda and history disguised as art,’ said Kotov with the sharp tone of a schoolmaster. He pulled back his hood before continuing. ‘Every element of Claeissens’s work is laden with symbolism and metaphor, most of which time has erased or we can no longer understand, but here and there it is possible to interpret the meaning behind a pictorial element. The bound man, for example, can be read as symbolising a puritanical sect of contemporary monotheists, or simply as a physical representation of ignorance.’

  Kotov pointed towards what looked like a cave opening at the end of a series of long canyons that cracked the landscape like a spiderwebbing fractal pattern. Something silver glittered within the cave, but it was impossible to make out what it was for certain.

  ‘And do you see the cave? Wild speculation claims that this is the cave of the–’

  ‘Archmagos,’ interrupted Roboute. ‘You didn’t bring me here for an art history lesson, so can we just cut to the chase? I’m sure Magos Blaylock has crowed enough to you by now, so just say what you have to say and be done with it, because I’m in no mood for a sermon.’

  Kotov nodded and said, ‘Very well, Mister Surcouf. We shall dispense with the human pleasantries. Yes, Tarkis here has informed me of what he has learned concerning the authenticity of your Letter of Marque. Would you care to elaborate on his accusations?’

  Roboute had come expecting to be lambasted by the archmagos, not to be offered a discussion on the nature of Unity-era artwork or the chance to speak in his defence. Sensing there was a subtext to this audience of which even Tarkis Blaylock was unaware, Roboute felt himself relax a fraction.

  If Kotov wanted to throw him to the wolves then he had no reason to indulge in this charade, which suggested the possibility of a lifeline being offered. Instincts that had served Roboute so well in the past now told him he wasn’t about to have his head mounted on a spike. Roboute felt a burgeoning sense that this situation might yet be salvaged, but that would mean taking the initiative and holding onto it like a mother to her newborn.

  ‘Do you mind?’ he asked, pulling the cigar from the breast pocket of his coat.

  ‘Go right ahead,’ said Kotov. ‘The chemicals in the smoke will have no effect on me.’

  Roboute nodded and reverently lit the cigar with a flame-lighter hanging from the chain of his pocket-chronometer. He took a long draw and smiled as the taste – warm woodsmoke with hints of vanilla and cinnamon – unlocked a host of memories.

  Roboute held the smoking cigar out to Kotov.

  ‘I bought this twenty years ago on Anohkin, from a stall in the Iskander Hive commercia,’ he said, walking around the edge of the dome. The light of the sacred holographics lit his face with a soft blue glow as he walked. ‘The fellow had tobacco from across the subsector, though Emperor alone knew how he had the connections. Didn’t look the type to have high-end contacts in the trading cartels, but by thunder he had a magnificent collection of rolled leaf. This particular brand of cigar is favoured by the Lord Militant General of Segmentum Pacificus himself, did you know that?’

  ‘I did indeed,’ said Kotov. ‘I am familiar with the vices of a great many important men, but is there a point to this tangent?’

  ‘Patience, archmagos,’ said Roboute with growing confidence as he saw Blaylo
ck’s obvious consternation at Kotov’s lack of immediate condemnation. ‘You Mechanicus are all purpose, but sometimes the telling of a tale is the purpose. You summoned me here to account for my actions, so allow the tale room to breathe.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Kotov. ‘Tell on.’

  ‘You know that the eldar who rescued me from the wreckage of the Preceptor eventually deposited me in the Koalith system?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Kotov, matching his pace around the dome’s inner circumference, with Blaylock following in the smoky wake. ‘That much you have already told.’

  ‘They didn’t leave me there empty handed,’ continued Roboute. ‘An eldar craftsman named Yrlandriar gave me a stasis chest with a uniquely-crafted lock, the one I put the Tomioka’s memory coil in, you remember?’

  ‘All too clearly,’ said Kotov.

  ‘Yes, well, it was full when they gave me it,’ said Roboute. ‘Full of what to his people were offcuts from their lapidary craftsmen, but which were priceless gemstones to us.’

  ‘Why should this craftsman do such a thing?’

  ‘I don’t know, the eldar vanished before I could ask. Perhaps it was his way of saying goodbye or a way to ensure I didn’t survive the hell on the Preceptor just to die in a gutter on the first Imperial planet they dropped me onto. Either way, it gave me a start, and I was able to parlay those gemstones into a lucrative career in… exotic jewellery sales.’

  ‘Illegal jewellery sales,’ pointed out Blaylock. ‘Trading in xeno-artefacts is a capital crime.’

  ‘Then you understand why I omitted that part of my history,’ said Roboute with a dismissive shrug. ‘Anyway, I soon gained quite a name for myself among the preening elite of Anohkin, adorning the décolletages of some of the most highly placed mistresses on the planet. I didn’t just trade in xenos gems, of course, I diversified into numerous markets: off-world property, passenger transit, cargo-haulage, art dealing, financial shenanigans, modest philanthropy and a host of other highly lucrative endeavours. To someone raised in Ultramar, it was almost obscenely easy to become one of the richest men on the planet. I owned numerous palatial villas, a small fleet of trans-orbital shuttles and inter-system ships that ran between every inhabited planet within reach.