Servants of the Machine-God, page 21
Power… Power is fleeting, and even gods have their limits.
The cabal of tech-priests huddled around the vox-servitor. The lobotomised serf’s mouth had been replaced by an ornate brass grille, its naked feet blackened where they had been fused to the chamber floor. The servitor was the priests’ only link to that which existed outside the slate-steel walls of the receiving chamber. The priests were Ausculitarie, guardians of the code, the binary source that carried all information in and out of Mars.
Information would unlock knowledge. Knowledge was power. Therefore, information had to be guarded, controlled. It was the singular truth of their order, and their entire reason for being.
‘Validus is dead?’ the First asked. All knowledge began with a question.
‘High probability.’ As was his function, the Second answered.
‘Despatch investigation team?’ The Third spoke last. Question, solution, action. The Three had always operated in such a manner. The sequence was sacrament. Like the indomitable stream of binary that fed the serried banks of cogitators, which stood chattering around them, it would never be broken.
‘Will that suffice?’
The Second tilted his head as he sifted the data flow. ‘Estimated arrival at world designated Armageddon in fifty-seven years.’
‘Acceptable,’ the Third confirmed.
‘The machine is infallible. Princeps Niall is mistaken.’ The First spoke now of truth, of the certainty derived from the information.
‘Suggest record deletion.’
‘Yes. Expunge Princeps Niall from history banks.’
‘Concur. He is only flesh.’ The Three spoke as one, muttering in singular affirmation. ‘The machine endures.’
HUNTING GROUND
IAN ST. MARTIN
Asander stood at the foot of a goddess.
A snarling, wolfish face peered out ahead of her hunched shoulders, leering out across the plain in her tireless hunger for prey. Her claws were colossal weapons, implements of destruction that had reaped quarry from a thousand worlds. The curving, sculpted plates of her carapace were lacquered in a deep tourmaline red, so dark it was nearly black.
A name, shining in brilliant silver, was etched into her armoured greaves, just below the bladed lioness icon of the Legio at the ankles of the goddess’ splayed feet. The artisans had placed the name there for a reason. All those who had deemed to raise arms against her, from mortal men to towering engines that could scour cities of life, had ended at her feet. All would spend their final moments learning the name of the one that had cast them into the waiting dark.
Her name was Ruber Captrix.
Asander’s heart raced. She was always the most beautiful in the first quiet moments after a hunt. Even at her feet, he felt their distance as if it were the space between stars. The pain of separation was worsening as the years passed, and even moments after disconnection, he yearned to return to her, to join his frail flesh with her divine spirit and sanctified machinery. Where she ran, he ran. When she hunted, he hunted. Turning his gaze from the Warhound’s countenance to the field around him, Asander smiled.
They had hunted well this day.
Everywhere the weak light of the planet’s star touched, fighting to pierce the caustic veil of burning smoke that swallowed the sky, the corpses of the Great Devourer lay. Mounds of twisted alien bodies were heaped beyond counting, an ocean of pale, bleeding flesh with its rolling tides frozen in place. Shattered chitin and jagged chips of horn glittered upon the ground, like bits of shell covering a beach. The field of tyranid dead stretched unbroken to the horizon, broken and destroyed by Asander to reach the true prey that slumped in death at its centre.
Bio-Titan. The memory sent a ripple of warmth over the princeps. Feeling the lesser Tyranid bioforms pop and rupture beneath the tread of Ruber Captrix, as surely as if it had been his own boots. The speed of circling the monstrosity’s flanks, tearing its legs from its worm-like form. Waiting until the moment was perfect, the goddess and her sister striking the killing blow as one.
A piercing war-horn cut through the silence, jarring Asander from his reverie. He looked beside his engine as her sister goddess, Domina Mortis, roared again, her carapace just as charred and slathered in ichor after their run through the battlefield.
No, Asander thought as he crouched down, scooping up a handful of the soil. Not a battlefield.
He allowed the dirt to slip from his grasp, as he had done across all the worlds he had walked upon in the Omnissiah’s name. This was a hunting ground, and Asander gave silent thanks for it. A sentimental ritual, perhaps, but Asander had seen enough engine deaths to understand each successful hunt was to be cherished.
There may come a day when Ruber Captrix would fall, when she would no longer be able to run and hunt. But it was not this day. For Asander, as the last grains slipped from his fingers, that was enough.
The Adeptus Mechanicus ark transport Baiulus crouched at low anchor above the slowly turning sphere of Tophet VI, perched in the silence of the void. The crust of the world below was webbed with iron and machine cities, vast foundries and hive manufactories dedicated to fashioning the tools of Forge World Agripinaa. Raw materials were smelted, blessed machines were forged, and millions of men and women were reborn into the skitarii legions indentured to Agripinaa as the skies were lit with the flames of industry.
Now, its surface was lit by fire of a different kind. War had come to Tophet VI, and the cry of its destruction, screamed out across the stars by its astropathic choirs, had been answered by the Baiulus and the engines of the Legio Debellator she carried. She came to rest beside a slim needle of vivid emerald. It was known as the Asuncion, frigate of the Subjugators Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes. The Space Marines had come both to honour their oath to protect the Tophet System, and for the pleasure of confronting an enemy older than the history of their Chapter.
Twisted fragments of shorn hull plating danced around the vessels. It glittered with the silver of bare metal, chased in hazard striping of gold and jet. Each jagged shard was older than the Imperium itself, forged in a time when the ship they had belonged to took to the stars to build the interstellar empire its commanders now fought to destroy.
The ship itself was wounded, but far from dead. After it had loosed its storm of death down onto Tophet VI, it had entertained the Asuncion for a moment before slipping from range, lost in the dark corners of the system. The Subjugators had taken to the surface, and now, so would the Legio Debellator.
Asander’s heart raced in union with the plasma reactor of Ruber Captrix as she loped across the charred surface of Tophet VI. Her void shields shivered and flared with a hundred impacts as she charged a line of battle tanks, the princeps feeling their barrage as little more than the irritant buzzing of insects. The tanks bore ancient Olympian names upon their hulls of iron, war machines that had besieged the Throneworld itself, but to her, they were simply prey.
Dropping from the Baiulus beside the focus of the conflict around Tophet VI’s hive capital, the Legio had fielded its engines in prime position to exploit a flanking advance. Their enemy were veteran and numerous, battle tanks and cohorts of Dark Mechanicum infantry, but a charge from Ruber Captrix and Domina Mortis had forced them from their assault on the hive’s walls, fighting off the back foot to prevent the Titans from rolling up their lines at the flank.
Ruber Captrix roared, a booming report from her war-horns that sent jets of dust slashing over the enemy. She had driven past foes to rout it alone, but this was an opponent who would not wither from just her voice.
For them, it would take her claws.
Traitor tanks exploded in the Warhound’s wake. Ancient Space Marines in thrall to the Archenemy were crushed beneath her feet. Asander could smell them, the thickened corruption bleeding from their machines and their dead. Warp-ensorcelled alloys. Flesh and blood twisted through with promethium and tainted cybernetics. It coated his tongue like poison.
Asander leaned forward in his throne, moving instinctively from side to side in harmony with the Warhound’s swaying tread. Ahead of him, his moderati were silent in focus, their hands dancing over the pulsing light of their consoles.
‘Void shields holding,’ said Berowne, reaching up to snap a pair of goggles over his head. ‘Vulcan mega-bolter reloaded and primed.’
The report set Asander’s lips into a grim line of concentration. He pushed his right hand forward, making a fist. Ruber Captrix raised its arm in concert, the twin barrels of its weapon ticking as they began to spin.
‘I have the shot, my princeps,’ said Berowne, his eyes locked to the targeting matrix on his viewscreen. Reticles bracketed over a pair of Vindicator siege tanks rapidly turning to withdraw from the Warhound’s line of sight.
‘Fire.’
Twin tongues of flame leapt from the tips of the mega-
bolter’s barrels. The air filled with the tearing scream of hundreds of mass-reactive shells launching. Streams of empty casings poured from ejection ports beneath the weapon, smashing and clattering to the ground like a disjointed chorus of broken bells.
The first Vindicator vanished, shredded by the fusillade. The second threw its powerplant into overdrive, surging in reverse to escape. Bursts of thick black smoke popped across its hull as it threw up a smokescreen to cover its retreat. Berowne stared into his console as the Warhound snuffed the cloud of smog and crackling electromagnetic interference for heat traces and auspex returns. He found the target within the smoke and tracked the tank, leading the fire of Ruber Captrix back into the pall. Darts of fire slashed into the smokescreen, and the Titan’s crew was rewarded by a orange sphere of exploding flame that ripped out at its centre as the tank’s fuel cells ignited. Asander glimpsed the tiny figures of Iron Warriors leaping from the wreckage, still firing their boltguns as they withdrew into the thinning smoke.
Berowne chased the regrouping traitors with bursts from the anti-infantry bolters mounted in Ruber Captrix’s chin.
‘Forget them,’ murmured Asander. ‘Our focus is on the armour.’
‘Aye, princeps.’
‘Mistress Vyola,’ Asander looked to his second moderati.
‘Sir?’ she asked.
‘Bring us around behind their formation, running speed.’ Asander’s eyes narrowed. ‘Let us ensure the rest of those seeking to break free die beneath our feet. Berowne? This smoke does us no favours. Let us illuminate our path.’
The plasma blastgun that formed the majority of Ruber Captrix’s left arm thrummed. Its focusing coils shivered as energy was siphoned into them from the caged star of the Titan’s reactor core. Asander felt the building energy prickle the skin of his arm with gooseflesh.
‘Power transfer successful,’ came the calm crackling tones of Komnena, Ruber Captrix’s tech-priestess, from her station behind the cockpit. ‘Charge threshold achieved, and maintaining within tolerance parameters, Omnissiah be praised. The instrument is primed for discharge at your command.’
Berowne leveled the weapon on the centre of the enemy formation. ‘Target acquired.’ He hauled back a lever beside his throne. ‘Target locked.’
Asander lowered his head, feeling the hull of Ruber Captrix groan as she crouched to brace. His arm began to itch, sheened with sweat.
‘Fire.’
A blinding sphere of energy screamed from the left arm of the Warhound. It hurtled down into the line of enemy armour on a comet’s tail of hissing light. The smokescreen burned away to nothing as it tore past. Entire swathes of the invaders were obliterated, fused into molten smears of vitrified ruin. Hull plating was burned to slag in an eye-blink. Infantry were evaporated, leaving behind nothing save stark shadows scorched into the ground where they had stood an instant before.
Domina Mortis fired her own plasma blastgun from Ruber Captrix’s left, and under such a bombardment, the enemy lines fractured. Unlike traditional Titan maniples deployed by other Legios, fielding monstrous Warlord and Reaver Titans bristling with weaponry that would not be out of place on a small starship, the force under Asander’s command was composed entirely of Warhounds. The Scout Titans fought as a pack, harrying and surrounding larger prey and working in unison to bring it to its knees. The other two Warhounds of the depleted maniple, Regina Verum and Argentum Sororis, ran together on the opposing flank, sowing the same carnage amongst the enemy and driving them from the hive city’s gates.
Asander watched the columns of charred battle tanks throw up tails of dust and smoke in their wake as they retreated, and angled Ruber Captrix behind them. The Warhound’s bestial sentience slavered to run the routed enemy down, and the aging princeps was inclined to agree with her. His eyes scanned into the distance across the surface of Tophet VI, searching the land beyond the hive’s walls behind him. He was about to give the order for his engines to give chase, when his vox crackled.
‘Lord princeps.’
The voice was inhumanly deep, flawed by vox interference but unmistakably that of a transhuman.
‘I am Brother Garrido. On behalf of the Subjugators Chapter, Adeptus Astartes, I bid you welcome to Tophet Six and offer my thanks for your intervention. If you would dispatch a command delegation, we would have your council in coordinating our defence.’
Asander paused. He frowned, looking back at the savaged battlements of the hive. The Legio had arrived not a moment too soon. Whole sections of the walls had been torn down into mounds of rubble. Demolished Imperial tanks and defence batteries lay twisted and broken like a child’s toys, strewn amongst the wreckage in a sea of hundreds of dead skitarii and planetary defence auxiliaries.
Tapping a series of keys on his armrest, Asander opened a vox-channel to the other Legio engines.
‘Hold.’
The strategium was a small, cramped room, cold and filled with the soft chatter of cogitators and vox-stations. The council of commanders was to be conducted without binharic cant, though the majority of the chamber’s occupants were capable of the Mechanicus’ chosen method of communication. This was done in deference to the pair of warrior-giants dominating one corner of the room.
Brothers Garrido and Ayolas of the Subjugators stood in silence at the edge of the central table. Their armour showed signs of the intense siege, rent with deep gouges and bearing patches of flat grey ceramite where the bright green lacquer had been scorched bare. The jet fist of Dorn stood unbowed upon their pauldrons.
They had made planetfall numbering ten battle-brothers, a force capable of turning the tide of any engagement. Now they stood at six. Garrido had arrived bare-headed, displaying the blunt, oversized features that came with ascension to the Space Marines, and cold eyes that offered nothing in the way of mercy or rest. Ayolas remained helmed, his face hidden behind a snarling, grilled visor.
An assembly of Mechanicus leadership was present, including the skitarii commander and various high-ranking adepts wearing the black and scarlet-edged colours of Agripinaa, the hues of sacred Mars reversed. Asander represented the legio, along with Cynna, princeps of Domina Mortis. Berowne and Vyola tended to Ruber Captrix’s rearming and repair, while Argentum Sororis and Regina Verum stood watch over the walls.
‘The enemy has been driven back,’ began Garrido, stepping forward to place his gauntleted fists upon the central table. ‘But not beaten. These cursed ones are dogged in their sieges. If they withdraw, it is only to reorganise and marshal greater forces to the fore.’
The Space Marine nodded to a tech-adept, who activated a hololithic projector. A grainy image leapt over the assembled commanders. An enormous hunched figure, a walking cathedral of twisted metal and spiked carapace, dominated a valley landing zone, ringed in battalions of traitor armour and Dark Mechanicum battle servitors.
‘This was the last transmission from our Thunderhawk,’ continued Garrido. ‘Performing reconnaissance on the hostile staging ground prior to our losing contact. It is confirmed as a Warlord-class Battle Titan.’
‘Is this the only image you have?’ asked Asander. ‘What else is known of the disposition of this engine?’
The Subjugator tapped a command into the projector. A section of the image expanded to fill the frame, centring over the pixelated image of a defiled icon on the Titan’s torso. Though twitching and blurry with distortion, the image of a lioness could not be mistaken.
‘Perhaps we might dispense with the notion of any present party’s stupidity and cut to the matter at hand.’ Garrido leveled his gaze at Asander. ‘I believe you know exactly what its disposition is. Tell me why this traitor Titan bears the mark of your legio. Now.’
The strategium went silent. Asander met the Subjugator’s glowering stare with a practised calm he forced into his words.
‘As you are undoubtedly aware, the forge world Agripinaa lies in the vicinity of the warp anomaly colloquially designated as the “Eye of Terror”. Consequently, it is frequently the target of Archenemy invasions. To counter this, the forge periodically deploys expeditionary advances into the anomaly, to disrupt potential incursions and compel the enemy to adopt a more defensive posture.
‘Legio Debellator has participated in such expeditions. My maniple was slated to deploy. However, after a prolonged engagement with engines of the eldar xenos, we were replaced in the rotation by another maniple. When contact with the expedition failed and was never re-established, we believed the engines lost.’
‘Until now,’ growled Garrido.
‘If the Archenemy has corrupted our engines,’ replied Asander, ‘they must be destroyed, and our fallen avenged.’
‘The cursed Fourth Legion will renew their assault,’ said Garrido. ‘And your fallen Titan will walk with them, there can be no mistake.’
