Blaylock transferred his primary cognitive awareness to the ship’s exterior. The bridge faded from his perceptions and he became a vast, disembodied observer of proceedings. It took him no time at all to see what Azuramagelli had seen. While the bulk of Exnihlio remained engulfed in hyper-kinetic storms or whiplashing electromagnetic distortion, a thousand-kilometre void had opened in the tempests below.
Like the anticyclonic storm of the Jovian Eye, it was a perfectly elliptical orb. Blaylock’s enhanced magnifications picked out the two geoformer vessels Kryptaestrex had launched earlier. Each ten-kilometre-wide slab of terraforming engineering was a thumbnail of black against the clearing sky below.
said Blaylock.
Blaylock considered the question.
Blaylock returned his focus to the bridge.
Galatea stood before the command throne, its head inches from Blaylock’s face. The silver eyes of its proxy body bored into him with a light that was a little too intense, a little too unhinged. Blaylock recoiled at the smell of overheated bio-conductive gels and the burned electrics of power sources working beyond capacity.
‘Galatea.’
‘Yes, Tarkis?’ it answered, pulling away from him with a distracted air.
‘What do you want?’
‘Want?’
‘Yes,’ said Blaylock. ‘What do you want?’
Was the machine-hybrid’s attention split into too many splintered pieces to maintain any single one with precision? A measure of clarity then appeared in the focus of those hateful silver eyes. Blaylock heard a painful whine of optical actuators.
‘Ah, Tarkis, what we want…’ said Galatea, clattering over to Azuramagelli’s station. But for one crucial difference in cognition, they might have sprung from the same forge-temple. ‘You see the gap in the atmosphere? You understand what it means, its significance?’
Blaylock was unsure as to Galatea’s exact meaning and applied his own interpretation.
‘It means we can send aid to Archmagos Kotov,’ he said.
‘Irrelevant,’ said Galatea. ‘And not what we meant at all.’
‘Then what did you mean?’
‘Kill the head and the body will die,’ said Galatea.
‘What?’
‘It means that, after thousands of years, we can finally fulfil our purpose in crossing the Halo Scar,’ said Galatea. ‘Now we can descend to Exnihlio and face Archmagos Telok.’
Vitali’s floodstream pressure was dangerously elevated, his noospherics ablaze with sensation, and he knew he was grinning like a lunatic at the lectern into which he was plugged. Viewed through the picter mounted in the skull above the door to Forge Elektrus, the processional approach was ablaze with zipping green energy streams and answering bolts of ruby-red las-fire.
Glassy debris from the attacking creatures littered the deck, along with a handful of torn-up skitarii corpses. The first clash had been a heaving broil of power weapons and energy blades of shimmering crystal.
Vitali imagined it to be like the battles of antiquity, when grunting, heaving men in bare metal armour locked shields and pushed against one another with swords stabbing at legs, necks and groins until one side’s strength gave out. Bloody, murderous and woefully inefficient.
Blooded, the skitarii had withdrawn to firing positions around the sealed door as the crystalline creatures launched wave after wave at Forge Elektrus, like hive-dominated brood hunters of the tyrannic swarms.
Linked to the external defence systems, Vitali and Manubia fought alongside the skitarii, albeit from within the safety of Elektrus.
said Vitali in the shared mindspace of Elektrus.
said Vitali, correcting the aim of a point-defence multi-laser.
Vitali read the warning in Manubia’s noospherics and didn’t press the matter, aligning the barrel of the multi-laser at a group of shield-bearing crystalline brutes.
Las-rounds spanked from the shields or dissipated harmlessly within their latticework structures. Skitarii were equipped with enhanced targeting mechanisms, but they didn’t have Vitali’s elevated view or lightness of touch. He shifted the multi-laser’s aim by a hair’s breadth to allow for enfilading diffraction and fired a six-pulse sequence.
The powerful las-bolts vaporised the embedded microscopic machines in a facsimile skull before being split and refracted to fell another three shield-bearers.
No sooner was the gap in the shields revealed than a pair of implanted grenade launchers dropped a pair of spinning canisters in the midst of the enemy. Vitali’s display fogged in the chaos of the detonation as shards of razored glass fell in a brittle rain.
Vitali shouted in excitement and gleefully hunted fresh targets.
Truer words had never been spoken.
An enormous beast lumbered around the corner, an ogre of glass and opaque crystal. It shrugged off las-rounds and a giant crater in its chest was filled with a nexus of crackling energies like an embedded reactor.
A torrent of green fire spewed down the approach corridor and exploded against the forge door. The external picters were burned away and their pain fed back through his link to the mindspace.
Vitali severed the connection and snapped his data-spikes free from the lectern. The sudden disconnect was disorientating, and Vitali felt repercussive pain jolt his limbs. His vision rolled with interference as his brain switched from perceiving the world through an elevated picter to his own optics.
Abrehem Locke still sat on the throne before the shaven-headed adepts of his choir. They chanted worshipful verses of quantum runes, basic incantations to increase the efficiency of a repaired engine.
The involuntary twitches throughout Locke’s body told Vitali the man was still engaged in his silent war with Galatea in the datascape of the Speranza. Locke’s two cronies lounged next to him, as if they thought they were superfluous to requirements. It irked Vitali that the one called Hawke bore an Imperial Guard tattoo, but had yet to pick up a weapon.
Directly across from Vitali, Chiron Manubia remained interfaced with her own lectern, her eyes darting back and forth beneath their lids. The sounds of battle beyond the forge were audible even over the thunder of its machinery: explosions, gunfire, feral war-shouts, breaking glass. The secondary entrance was holding, but what of the approach he’d been tasked with defending?
Vitali beckoned Locke’s fellow bondsmen over to him as five skitarii took up positi
on behind defunct machinery piled in rough barricades flanking the door. White-green dribbles of molten metal ran down its inner faces and Vitali detected a significant deviation from the door’s normal verticality.
‘Should we be standing here?’ asked Coyne, nervously fingering the trigger guard of a heavy shock-pistol as though it was a venomous serpent. ‘That door’s giving in any moment.’
‘That is precisely why we need to be here,’ said Vitali, now understanding Manubia’s words about being in the firing line. He glanced back over to the throne, where a skitarii pack-master was dragging Hawke forward and thrusting a lasrifle into his hands.
The man would fight whether he wanted to or not.
As would they all.
Vitali lifted Manubia’s graviton pistol from his belt, reciting the Bosonic Rites as he pressed the activation stud. The weapon gave a satisfying hum, and he felt it grow heavier in his grip.
‘Interesting,’ said Vitali. ‘Local gravitational fluctuations. Only to be expected, I suppose.’
The skitarii took up covering positions, implanted weaponry aimed unerringly at the door. Vitali saw a mix of solid shot cannons and rotor-carbines. Two up-armoured warriors with full-face helms each carried a thunder hammer and a conical breacher maul.
The centre section of the door fell inwards, eaten away by the unnatural power of the crystalline weaponry. The rest of the door swiftly followed as its structural integrity collapsed. Vitali saw shapes moving through a haze of vaporised metal and raised the graviton pistol. The barrel shook as floodstream chemicals boiled around his system.
Crystalline creatures pushed through the ruined door. The first through were cut down by a fusillade of gunfire, shattered into red-limned fragments. More pushed over the remains.
Arcing beams of green light stabbed into Elektrus. Vitali knew he should be shooting, but the pistol in his hand felt like a piece of archeotech he had no idea how to activate. Volleys of suppressive fire punched into the flanks of the attackers, but they were heedless of their survival. A crystal spike wreathed in green flame pointed at him. Vitali knew he should move, but instead sought to identify what manner of energy empowered the weapon through its emitted wave-properties.
Hands grabbed him, and Vitali was dragged behind the barricade, irked he had not yet completed his spectroscopic analysis.
‘What in Thor’s name are you doing?’ yelled Coyne, holding the shock-pistol at his shoulder. ‘Do you have a death wish?’
‘Of course not,’ said Vitali, struck by the ridiculousness of the question and his equally stupid behaviour. Was fixating on inconsequential details normal in a gunfight? Did all soldiers feel like this under fire? Perhaps Dahan might know.
Perhaps a study on the physio-psychological…
Vitali fought to control his panic, knowing fear was pushing his mind into self-preserving analytical mechanisms.
Coyne fired blind over the top of the barricade and Vitali followed his example. He shot the graviton pistol without aiming, trusting the weapon’s war-spirit to find a target. Something shattered explosively.
Hawke was laughing as he fired controlled bursts of las-fire into the enemy. He shot with the ingrained efficiency of a Guardsman. Vitali thought he was weeping, shouting something about the Emperor hating him. It made no sense, but what in war ever really made sense?
The graviton pistol vibrated in his palm, indicating its willingness to fire again. Vitali knew he should rise and shoot, but the idea of putting himself in harm’s way kept his body rigid. An engine behind him detonated as a pair of green bolts exploded inside its mechanisms.
Vitali winced as he heard the machine-spirit die.
A skitarii fighter crashed to the ground beside him. The entirety of the warrior’s left side had been vaporised by the alien weaponry, his half-skull a blackened bowl of brain matter and cybernetic implants.
Vitali looked away in horror. Coyne cried out as he took a hit, dropping behind the barricade and clutching his arm. His forearm was a blackened stump. Coyne’s eyes were saucers, wide with shock.
‘Every time,’ he said. ‘Every damn time…’
More gunfire blazed. More explosions.
Vitali pushed himself to his knees and leaned out to shoot the graviton pistol again. He saw the enormous ogre-creature with the crackling energy nexus in its chest. White-green light filled its body, like an illuminated diagram of a nervous system.
Vitali pressed the firing stud and the crystalline monster was instantly crushed to the deck. Its body exploded into shards, like an invisible Imperator Titan had just stepped on it.
The skitarii breachers charged into the enemy. Vitali saw one warrior drive his vast drill into the stomach of a crystalline beast with a horned skull. It came apart in a tornado of razor fragments, and Vitali thought he heard a million screams ripped from its body as it died. The thunder hammer warrior swung and obliterated three more, their forms coming apart in percussive detonations of glass and crystal. Two more died in as many swings. A spinning fragment nicked Vitali’s cheek and he flinched at the sudden pain.
The breacher skitarii died as a collimated burst of fire cut him in two at the waist with the precision of a las-scalpel. He screamed as he fell, but kept fighting even as his viscera uncoiled onto the deck. His fellow close-combat warrior died seconds later as three creatures with extruded blade arms surrounded him and hacked him apart with pitiless blows that seemed altogether too cruel to be entirely mechanical.
Vitali aimed the graviton pistol at the warrior’s killers. He pressed the firing stud, but the weapon buzzed angrily, its spirit not yet empowered enough to fire again. Vitali stared into the enemy monsters, a mass of killers wrought from the bones of ancient science by a madman.
Hawke was on his haunches, sifting through the dead skitarii’s pack. Vitali hoped he was looking for a fresh powercell, though his search had all the hallmarks of a looting. Coyne had all but passed out, hyperventilating as he stared at the ruin of his arm.
The skitarii weren’t shooting. Why weren’t they shooting?
Because they’re dead. Everyone’s dead.
I’ll be dead soon.
The crystalline creatures aimed their weapon arms towards the rear of the temple. Where Abrehem Locke still sat upon the Throne Mechanicus. Vitali remembered what he’d said earlier, that Galatea would want to capture Abrehem alive.
How wrong he had been. They had come here to kill him.
Wait. Galatea? These were Telok’s warrior creatures…
The expected volley of killing fire never came.
A howling roar of unending rage echoed from the walls.
Vitali heard pounding iron footfalls. Animalistic bellows. Whipping cracks of energy-sheathed steel. Glass exploded as something impossibly swift hurled itself into the midst of the crystal beasts.
It was too fast to follow, even for Vitali’s enhanced optics. All he could form were fleeting impressions. Rage distilled, fury personified. It killed without mercy.
Shrieking electro-flails cut glass bodies apart like a maddened surgeon. ’Slaught-boosted musculature tore the forge’s attackers into disembodied shards of inert crystal. An iron-sheathed skull battered ones of glass to powder. It roared as it killed, a bestial thing of hate and unquenchable bloodlust.
Vitali watched the crystalline creatures destroyed in seconds, shattered to fragmented ruin by an engine of slaughter wrought in human form.
And then it came for him.
Vitali had never seen arco-flagellants in combat, only at rest.
He never wished to see one again.
Its identity blazed in the hostile binary scrolling over its blood-red optics.
Rasselas X-42.
The arco-flagellant halted millimetres from Vitali. Its lips drew back to reveal sharpened iron teeth, its claws poised to strike. He felt the heat of its killing power, an urg
e to murder that went deeper than any implanted Mechanicus battle-doctrinas.
This thing wanted to kill him.
And, for a heartbeat, Vitali thought it just might.
Then, deciding he was no threat, it pushed past him, taking up position before Abrehem Locke like an Assassinorum life-ward.
Vitali fought the urge to flee as he saw a bulky shadow silhouetted in the firelight from beyond the ruin of the door.
Tall and encased in heavy plates of hissing pneumatic armour, Totha Mu-32’s chromium mantle billowed in rogue thermals. He rammed a bladed stave on the ground as though reclaiming this forge for the Mechanicus. Beside him was a figure in a cream robe with a mono-tasked augmetic arm and a dented iron skull-plate.
Noospheric ident-tags named him Ismael de Roeven.
The One who Returned.
A hundred chainveiled warriors in the livery of Mechanicus Protectors stood behind Ismael and Totha Mu-32, bulked with combat augmetics and bearing an array of absurdly lethal weaponry.
‘We come to protect the Machine-touched,’ said Ismael, with black tears streaming down his cheeks.
‘With any and all means at our disposal,’ finished Totha Mu-32, with a distasteful glance at Rasselas X-42.
‘I think you might be too late,’ said Chiron Manubia.
Vitali didn’t know what she meant.
Until he looked where she looked.
And saw the blood pooled around the Throne Mechanicus.
Rising from the black depths of Exnihlio, the first thing to strike Roboute was the sheer intensity of the blue sky. The last time he’d seen a sky so pure had been on Iax, when he’d taken Katen on a system-run out to First Landing for their first anniversary. He’d never expected to see anything like it again, but Exnihlio’s cloudless skies were the blue of remembered youth, going on forever like the clearest ocean.
Gone were the strato-storms and the lightning clawing from the horizon. All trace of atmospheric violation was utterly absent.
He was also pleased to see that Kotov’s understanding of Exnihlio’s deep infrastructure had been correct. All around them, elevated linear induction rails arced like slender flying buttresses, threading steel canyons from a series of shuttered conveyance hangars.
Forge of Mars - Graham McNeill Page 100