Hellforged, p.15
Hellforged, page 15
‘Now?’ asked Lygris behind him.
‘Now we kill it,’ said Sarpedon.
‘We are born naked and defenceless, save for a shield around our souls that all humans are honour-bound to maintain. That veneer of disgust, that armour of hate, is all that stands between us and the endless death of corruption.’
Daenyathos, The Artemesion Campaigns
CHAPTER TEN
Another ship of the Fleet Minor exploded, a brief nuclear flash sucked dead by the cold of the void. Glittering debris rained out from the place where the troop ship had been. Among the debris were the charred bodies of the tech-guard who had been stationed on the ship.
Asclepian Alpha was trailing ruined hull plates attached by blackened strings of vented plasma, one side of its hull stripped down to the personnel decks by the massive ordnance fired at it by one of the necron cruisers. Half its crew were dead, dissolved away in the blast, or thrown out into space when the decks decompressed. A skeleton crew and the escort ship’s machine-spirit were all that were keeping it going, and it shuddered along on a wayward course as if its mind was crumbling, along with its hull.
The Mechanicus fleet was down three major ships and a few dozen of the Fleet Minor. The only equipment salvaged from the Ferrous was that contained in Magos Vionel’s body, and, without the factory ship, the Mechanicus fleet lacked the capacity to refine fuel and produce spare parts in an emergency. With every auxiliary ship that died, the fleet became a little blinder to the space around it.
Magos Crystavayne, transferred by shuttle from the Defence of Caelano Minoris, entered the bridge of the Antithesis. The specimen vials hanging at his waist like a soldier’s grenades clinked as he walked, and the caduceus embroidered on the hem and cuffs of his robes designated his role as a magos biologis. The command throne at the pinnacle of the bridge was empty, so Crystavayne reported to the makeshift briefing area where Voar had presented what little intelligence he had on the necrons.
Several tech-priests and senior menials were working in the briefing area, poring over countless tactical maps with compasses and quills, or flicking the stones across abaci to perform long strings of calculations.
‘Where is the archmagos?’ asked Crystavayne.
One of the tech-priests looked up from his map, on which he had already inscribed a web of arcs and angles. ‘The archmagos has retired to his laboratory.’
‘His laboratory?’ retorted Crystavayne. ‘We are at battle stations!’
‘Nevertheless, magos, he has left fleet command with the bridge. He has requested the magi assist in maintaining evasive manoeuvres.’
‘This is intolerable.’ Crystavayne waved an impatient hand, its fingers tipped with syringes and the tip of a retracted bone-saw glinting in his palm. He was about to say more, but he bit back his words. A magos criticising a superior was on shaky ground as it was, and doing so in front of an inferior would certainly result in punishment. ‘Then I shall assist him in his laboratory.’
‘The archmagos has requested that he remain undisturbed, and has refused in advance any offers of assistance.’
Crystavayne, who was equipped to be the finest laboratory researcher in the fleet, fought down words of frustration again. ‘Then what am I to do?’
‘You have an enhanced logic centre,’ replied the tech-priest. ‘We lack computing power. We need your help.’
Crystavayne picked up the map the tech-priest had been working on. The locations and paths of the fleet’s ships were plotted out many hours in advance, and notes on possible enemy movements were scrawled in every available space.
‘What are the archmagos’s orders?’ he asked.
‘Full evasion,’ said the tech-priest.
‘Not to attack?’
‘No, magos.’
Crystavayne looked at some of the other routes being plotted by the tech-priests and menials. The machine-spirit of the Antithesis was working on it, too, as evidenced by the metres of printout being carried by menials.
Crystavayne visualised the position of the Mechanicus fleet, the formations of the remaining Asclepian escorts, the Defence and the Antithesis, the Constant and the swarm of the Fleet Minor.
Then he added the necron ships. They were faster and more agile than their size suggested, but the cruisers moved in a stilted, repetitive pattern, turning on exact axes and in unchanging increments of degrees. The biggest necron ship was slower and lumbering, with the huge turning sphere required to bring its main weapons to bear. The second part of the necron fleet, the one that had emerged from behind the planet’s moon, was faster, capable of sudden manoeuvres beyond any Imperial ship, but they were predictable, and in any mathematical system that predictability could only lead to one conclusion.
Crystavayne drew a long quill from his robes. He grabbed a sheet of parchment and began to draw on it: tiny annotations in machine-code and ruler-straight lines intersected by perfect arcs. The solution was a ballet, something pure and beautiful. The necron fleet was more dangerous than the Mechanicus fleet, but its only objective was to destroy the Mechanicus. That forced it into certain manoeuvres, for it had to bring its weapons to bear. The Mechanicus fleet, meanwhile, had only to survive. That gave it far more options. It also had the Fleet Minor and the Asclepian escorts, which, in terms of cold mathematics, were expendable.
Crystavayne had plotted an impossibly complicated pattern in a few moments, his logic engine covering the parchment in geometric shorthand for a tight helix of movement. The Mechanicus fleet would present its least valuable ships to the enemy guns, and then turn in on itself, diving through its own wake before the necron gunners could respond. Any individual ship’s course would appear to be a series or random loops and twists. Taken as a whole, it was breathtaking. It only existed in the data medium of Crystavayne’s logic implant and in what remained of his human imagination, but it would work. That was certain. It would buy the Mechanicus more time than any Navy general or xenos pirate could squeeze from the approaching necrons.
‘Here,’ said Crystavayne. Sweat was running down his face, and, for a moment, he cursed the symptom of human weakness. ‘Get this to the fleet captains. Execute immediately.’
The tech-priest looked down at the dense geometry of Crystavayne’s plan.
‘Right away, magos,’ he said, and began barking orders to the other tech-priests and menials to turn the plan into a series of manoeuvres and transmit it to the rest of the fleet.
Crystavayne’s pride died down. Emotions were subsiding faster and faster since his last cortical implant. He wondered if he would miss them.
One remained: a faint anger, mixed with frustration, that the fleet’s commander had not attended to this crucial matter himself.
‘Whatever task takes so much attention, archmagos,’ muttered Crystavayne, ‘I pray only that the Omnissiah’s work is being done.’
Librarian Tyrendian furrowed his brow, and thrust a hand at the Undying advancing along the war engine’s main chamber. Caged lightning arced from his fingers. Shards of hot metal and shattered exoskeleton flew. Green crystal shattered, loosing more bolts of light, emerald this time.
Imprisoned bodies fell, torn from the walls by the discharged power. The walkways along the centre of the chamber buckled, spilling the Undying warriors into the machinery below.
Tyrendian leapt from the gantry above onto a remaining walkway. A squad of the Undying stood before him, bracing themselves as they levelled their cannon at him. Tyrendian yelled, and power crackled around him, blazing from his eyes and grounding off his fingers. He hurled lightning like a javelin, blowing the walkway apart. Undying bodies flew. One cracked against the wall, bringing down a few human captives with it. Another was impaled on the twisted guardrail, green sparks spitting from the wound.
An Undying clambered back onto the walkway behind Tyrendian, its ruptured torso self-repairing, green fire blazing in its eyes. With its free hand, it brought its double-barrelled gun up and aimed it at Tyrendian’s back.
The Undying bent backwards as its spine glowed dull red, and then bright cherry. The heat spread to its chest and neck, and then to its skull. Enormous heat glowed inside its head, and its skull split down the middle, exposing the circuitry of its xenos mind.
Tyrendian glanced back to see Scamander behind him, his armour caked in ice crystals, and his breath misting white. His gauntlets were glowing hot and hissing.
‘Good kill,’ said Tyrendian.
Soul Drinkers were leaping down to what remained of the walkways. Sarpedon scuttled along the wall, pausing to examine one of the prisoners. Its face was obscured by the alien mask, and tubes snaked into its veins and under its skin. It was a man, in clothes suggesting it was a farmer or a hunter.
Ahead of the main chamber was a section crammed with machines that sorted out whatever was swallowed by the harvester’s maw, and either added it to the prisoner racks with long articulated arms, or threw it into grinders to be spewed from the war engine’s vents. There was nothing that way.
The other end of the chamber was the destination of the thick glowing power cables leading from the capacitors beneath the walkways.
‘There,’ said Lygris as Sarpedon climbed down the wall beside him. ‘Lots of power headed that way.’
Tyrendian looked around from the smouldering remains of the final Undying.
‘More Undying will be upon us soon,’ he said. ‘They know we are here.’
‘Can you bring this monstrosity down?’ Sarpedon asked the Techmarine.
‘If there’s a cogitator here,’ said Lygris, ‘I can interface with it and do what damage I can.’
‘And if there isn’t?’
‘I always have faith in explosives, commander.’
‘Commander!’ said Sergeant Salk’s voice over the vox. Salk was up on the hull of the harvester, guarding the makeshift entrances Scamander had opened. ‘The Undying are sending their quick ones, the climbers! They’re coming in fast!’
‘Hold until they’re close, and fall back inside,’ said Sarpedon. ‘You’re buying us time.’
‘Yes, commander!’ Bolter fire drummed away over the vox as Salk’s squad levelled another volley at the Undying.
‘On me!’ cried Sarpedon, and led the Soul Drinkers over the edge of the walkway onto the capacitors filling the lower half of the chamber. They thrummed with power, the note low enough to vibrate the breastplate of fused ribs in Sarpedon’s chest. A few chains of bolter fire rattled off as repairing Undying rose up from between the capacitors, and the ruined Undying phased out as they hit the chamber’s curved metallic floor.
Tyrendian was just behind Sarpedon.
‘You did admirably back there, Librarian,’ said Sarpedon.
‘My duty done is its own reward,’ replied Tyrendian. ‘The new boy is proving his worth.’
‘I just wish these damnable things had souls,’ said Sarpedon. He was the most powerful of the Chapter’s Librarians, probably the most powerful the Chapter had ever possessed, but his telepathic assaults were worthless against the alien machines.
‘I am grateful,’ said Tyrendian, ‘that they do not.’
Lygris forced open a hatchway guarding the way into the next chamber, towards the harvester’s tail. Thick power conduits curved around him, blinking with emerald pulses of energy. Beyond it, a powerful greyish light shone and the chamber was thrown into extremes of light and shadow.
Lygris, bathed in light, stepped forwards to stand before a huge cube of crystal suspended in a spherical chamber ahead of him. Light crackled off it, but the crystal itself was pure black, as if light could not escape its surface, creating a surreal silhouette in the centre of the glare.
‘This is the device that runs the war machine,’ said Lygris, ‘Its data medium. I can interface with this.
Sarpedon could see glints of silver behind Lyrgris as the fast-moving Undying skirmishers ran down the walls, leaping between the captives as bolter fire burst around them.
‘Firing lines!’ called Captain Luko. The Soul Drinkers knelt down in regimented firing lines alongside Sarpedon, ready to pour volley fire into approaching attackers.
‘Do it, Lygris,’ said Sarpedon, ‘and quickly, if you please.’
Lygris placed a hand on the surface of the black crystal. The darkness seemed to seep into him, covering him in shadow. A dataprobe in his palm pierced the crystal, and the techmarine’s body jerked as power and information ricocheted around his mind.
‘Keep talking to me, Lygris!’ shouted Sarpedon. ‘Stay with us!’
Luko yelled an order, and dozens of bolters opened up. Undying on the walls were blown apart. Some fell, phasing out before they hit the ground; others clung grimly to the caged prisoners, ducking down amongst them to self-repair. A terrible rain of body parts fell as the captives were struck by fire. A few whole bodies came loose and clattered down among the machinery.
The prisoners were dead, Sarpedon told himself, or as good as. Even if there was still some life left in their minds, they were better off with that spark extinguished.
Or, at least, he hoped so.
‘I’m in!’ came a cry from Lygris, strangled as if in fear.
Lygris fell limp as the black crystal pulsed. Tongues of black light licked off it.
‘Close order!’ shouted Sarpedon above the gunfire. ‘Rapid fire!’
Volley after volley of bolter fire poured into the shadows between the capacitors. Undying fell and rose up again, some struck down three or four times before they phased out. Sarpedon snapped shots upwards, shooting down the skirmishing Undying skittering along the walls. One dropped into the midst of the Soul Drinkers, and Tyrendian drew his power sword, spinning into a reverse thrust to drive the blade through the alien’s chest. Another, one of its blade-arms blown off, clattered to the ground. Sarpedon reared up over it, and stabbed the talon of his bionic front leg through its skull.
‘Lygris!’ voxed Sarpedon. ‘Talk to me, brother!’
The only sound from Lygris’s vox was rapid breathing.
Squad Salk was fighting its way down through the ruined walkways. Salk himself cracked an Undying in the jaw with the butt of his bolter, jabbed the barrel into the alien’s midriff, and blew its spine out of its back with a burst of fire. He threw the remains off the walkway, and jumped down after it, the rest of his squad following him.
‘Commander!’ voxed Salk. ‘We cannot stay long. The aliens are converging on us. They’re diverting their main force to protect this machine.’
‘Then the plan is working,’ replied Sarpedon. ‘Brother Lygris! We have no time. Whatever you are doing, do it quickly!’
Sarpedon risked a glance back to the chamber. Lygris lay at the foot of the crystal, one hand attached to its surface by the dataprobe. He was convulsing. Blood was running down his chin.
‘Brother Lygris! Techmarine, answer me!’ There was still no answer. Sparks burst around the dataprobe in Lygris’s finger, and power flashed behind his eyelids.
‘Damnation!’ Sarpedon switched to the vox. ‘Salk! Melta-bombs on the capacitors, long fuse! We will bring the fire to them!’
‘Yes, commander!’ came Salk’s reply.
‘Captain Luko!’ ordered Sarpedon. ‘Hold the line!’
‘A pleasure!’ said Luko, his voice distorted by the hammering of gunfire over the vox.
Sarpedon turned away from the gun-line and ran into the crystal chamber. Lygris was still shuddering. Blood was bubbling between his lips and the skin around his eyes, and the collar of his armour was burning. Sarpedon grabbed Lygris’s wrist and yanked the dataprobe out of the crystal.
Lygris gurgled an incoherent cry, blood slopping down the front of his breastplate.
‘Apothecary!’ voxed Sarpedon. ‘Where are you?’
‘Still outside,’ came the crackling reply from Apothecary Pallas. ‘There was no way onto the machine. I’m towards its rear. The Undying are everywhere.’
‘We’re getting off this machine,’ said Sarpedon. ‘I need your assistance as soon as we are out. Brother Lygris is wounded.’
‘How badly?’ asked Pallas.
‘He’s bitten off his tongue.’ Sarpedon hefted Lygris onto his shoulder. ‘We have encountered a moral threat. I fear the worst wounds are to his soul.’
‘Commander! Melta-bombs set!’ came Salk’s vox from behind Sarpedon. ‘Three minutes before the capacitors go up!’
‘Luko! Fall back to me and prepare to breach!’
Scamander scrambled into the crystal chamber. His gauntlets were smoking, and ice flaked off the rest of his armour as he moved.
‘Allow me,’ he said. He planted his hands against the rear wall of the crystal chamber.
Sarpedon noticed the crystal. The previously flawless surface was mottled and dull, as if some disease had taken control of it and spread milky stains like cataracts across its surface. Whatever Lygris had done, the war machine had suffered.
Luko led the Soul Drinkers into a tight line in front of the entrance to the crystal chamber. Beyond them, more Undying were converging. The Soul Drinkers were dragging a couple of wounded battle-brothers; even power armour was vulnerable to being ripped away by the bursts of green fire raining down from the Undying. Many other Astartes around Luko were missing chunks of armour, cores bored from shoulder pads, or greaves stripped down to bloody flesh.
Wires shorted around Scamander as the rear wall melted.
‘Novitiate!’ shouted Tyrendian. ‘Stay your power! You will kill yourself!’
Scamander stumbled backwards. Tyrendian ran forwards and caught Scamander before he fell, lowering him to the floor.
