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Ghosts of Iron – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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Ghosts of Iron

by Marc Collins

The dream of Mars was dead.

The thought haunted Calliope as they fled across the desert, clawing at her as they braved the storm. The wind and oxide grit could scour her implants and sully her robes, but the thought lingered. It harried her as surely as the hereteks. She did not know, as it cycled with memetic frequency, whether it was truly hers or not. The sky had birthed horror, misrule and unreason before. Why should this be any different?

She attempted to still her mind, looking instead to the storm that surrounded them. Dust plumes leapt and broke apart in impossible patterns of crimson and ochre, tinted through with the hell-light of the Rift. Her entire life she had been spared the indignity of choking in dried chemical effluent, sheltered beneath the great void shields of Forge Avarna. Those shields no longer burned in their silent majesty, and now swathes of forge-complexes were steadily being reclaimed by the caustic tides of the dying world.

Focus, she thought. The mission demands it.

The crackle of binharic communion broke her from her mournful reverie, and she turned to see her companions stumble out of the haze. Their normally sure-footed passage was marred by battle damage, their crimson raiment torn and dirtied. She offered a canted prayer, but knew the comfort was cold.

<Be at peace in the service of the Omnissiah, for you serve the great design in your every forward step.>

Tyr 4-2 nodded curtly as he finally matched Calliope’s pace. His right arm was a shredded ruin, silvered circuitry alive with erratic discharge. The crackle of electricity lit the pale green bionics that replaced his eyes, and the respirator sutured to his lower face.

<You honour us, Magos Vartothex. Mission parameters hold. We yet serve the true course of the Omnissiah.>

For how long? The poison data circled in her mind through feedback loops of doubt and strife. She had pared away much in her own Quest for Knowledge, ridding herself of her flesh weakness. With the sky torn open she felt frail in ways she had long since thought consigned to memory. She stretched, her internal reactor whining as her four legs braced against the storm. Her trifold occularis rotated, clicked and realigned, till she could see Kappa-Ix drawing closer through the gale. The last skitarius of their number stumbled through the dunes, dragging the heavy bulk of his radium carbine. He stopped periodically, jerking and spasming, before continuing his tortured march.

As a magos domina, in more civilised times, she would have rendered him down for parts and protein. In this desecrated epoch she was loath to part with any advantage or protection. They were the last now, after all. The last of her cell, perhaps the last loyal souls upon Sareme. Her hand brushed the data-repository that hung from her robes, iron against silver, and past philtres of oils and unguents. That they lived meant that their allies had not died in vain. They yet had purpose.

<Do you endure, Kappa-Ix?> Tyr 4-2 canted, watching as his fellow drew nearer.

<I. ENDURE.> The binharic was coarse, forced through stuttering relays. <AWAITING. ORDERS.>

This war will break us. Yet we still fight. We still resist. Iron, in the service of the Machine-God.

Their destination leered out of the gloom, like some ancient pagan fane. There was defiance in its grim countenance, a Warlord unbroken by the storm winds. Static discharge whipped and cracked like lightning, framing the cyclopean monolith of its being, picking out the kill-marks upon its fluttering banners. FURORE MARTIS, it proclaimed, Fury of Mars.

<Omnissiah’s bounty.> The utterance slid from her as a prayer and a curse, her head bowed reverently. She cross-referenced her own inloaded data with the markings of the Titan. Confirmation runes flickered green. <We have found it. But a little further – the Machine-God provides.>

There was no motion from the machine, no signs of life. She looked down as they passed, her feet nudging at debris that the dust had coated. They were bodies. The lifeless bodies of secutarii, blanketing the ground around the stationary Titan. Dead eyes stared up, transfixed upon the roiling heavens, and Calliope did not allow herself to share their morbid sight.

They pushed on haltingly, uncertain, into the shadow of the great engine until they found an access hatch. Calliope hunched over, sheltering the panels from the wind and dust as she began to interface with the Titan’s subsystems, mechadendrites coiling as they extruded into the waiting ports. Chill crept along her iron spine as her reactor bled power and awakened the mechanisms. Her life was being siphoned, moment by moment, essence sacrificed that their mission might yet be fulfilled. Her prayers were low and soft, soothing the machine-spirits as they woke from pain and dormancy.

The door hissed open, creaking with hydraulic effort as they forced their way into the gloom. Around them the bastion fane was still and silent, dust slowly being displaced by the creeping dirt they had trailed in with them. Even the lumens were dead.

<Let there be illumination,> her binary whispered out, and the shoulder-mounted stablights of the skitarii flickered on in answer.

The base of the leg was as much temple as fortress, gateway and guardhouse. The walls were inscribed, laser-etched with the binary rotes of victories. When the crew marched into Fury of Mars, they looked upon these walls, dwelt upon its history and basked in its glory; but for their small band the weight of the place felt curdled, their own failings an insult to the vaunted past.

<Area secure, magos.> Tyr 4-2 had moved up and ahead of her, hoisting his sword in his working hand as he scanned the room. Kappa-Ix lumbered further back, a glacial presence of whining feedback. Their lights split the darkness in crisscrossing arcs, picking out the disarray of the once pristine chamber. Oily runoff streaked the walls, tarnishing the recorded battles with the wear and the rot of the abandoned. There were burn marks, faded, yet speaking of the urgency of battle. She imbibed the air, atmosphere processors hissing in her chest as they analysed.

Rust. Rot. Burnt flesh. Stagnation and death.

It is a refuge. She allowed herself the thought. The Machine-God works by strange circumlocution, but it yet orders the universe. There was opportunity here, to tend their wounds and to consecrate anew the spirit of the great engine.

<We are safe, for the moment. Our trials have been many, but necessary for the fulfilment of our mission. We failed at Avarna. Archmagos Groal, Magos Vaznek, so many others dead that we might live. That we may still make a difference. We push on, so purity might endure, even here. Even now.>

Behind her, Kappa-Ix pushed the door back into place, dislodging the piling sand as he heaved it shut. Darkness closed in around their islands of light. The dream of Mars might be dead, she thought, but we are not.

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A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2019.
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ISBN: 978-1-78999-794-1

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