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The Hunt for Vulkan – Extract

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One

Mars – Pavonis Mons

The Alcazar Remembered was at low anchor, in geostationary orbit over Pavonis Mons. Thane sat with his Fists Exemplar veterans in the troop hold of the Thunderhawk Honour’s Spear. The company was descending in a show of force, leading with multiple gunships and tanks. There had been no overt resistance from the Adeptus Mechanicus. So far.

The gunship shook. Thane tapped the vessel’s vox. ‘I trust that wasn’t hostile fire, Brother Preco,’ he said to the pilot.

‘Just turbulence, Chapter Master,’ Preco responded. ‘But I’m receiving another hail.’

‘More turbulence,’ said Abbas, sitting across from Thane.

‘More than likely,’ Thane said. ‘Patch it through, Brother Preco.’

The vox-speaker crackled, and the voice that emerged sounded like static shaped into syllables. ‘This is Artisan Trajectorae Augus Van Auken. Approaching vessels, you are not authorised to make landfall on sacred Mars. You must reverse course at once.’

‘I am Chapter Master Maximus Thane of the Fists Exemplar. My orders come from Chapter Master Koorland, Lord Commander of the Imperium. His authority supersedes any you might claim, and over the Adeptus Astartes you have none at all.’

‘You should not force a confrontation.’

‘I have no intention of doing so. Turn Magos Biologis Eldon Urquidex over to us, and we will depart upon the instant.’

There was a pause before Van Auken spoke again. Thane pictured gears realigning in the cold mind of the Mechanicus priest. ‘You must leave at once,’ he repeated, as if Thane had made no demand.

‘We shall speak once we have landed,’ Thane said pleasantly, ignoring Van Auken in turn. ‘Face-to-face conversations are more conducive to an understanding, don’t you think?’ He shut down the channel. To Preco, he said, ‘No further communications until we land.’

‘Understood.’

Thane became aware of a deep stillness to his right. He turned to look at Aloysian. The only sign of the Master of the Forge’s concern was the rhythmic opening and closing of the vice jaws of one of his servo-arms. The movement was slight, barely more than a vibration. It stood out against the absolute immobility of the rest of his form.

‘You are troubled, Master Aloysian,’ Thane said, speaking the obvious. How could the Techmarine not be? The mission was creating a conflict between his oaths of loyalty.

‘I am.’

‘We are not seeking war with Mars.’

‘But we may find it.’

And then what? Thane almost asked, but stopped himself. It would not do to imply a lack of trust. Instead, he said, ‘That would amuse the orks greatly. I don’t propose to give them that satisfaction. I will do everything in my power to avoid bloodshed. You have my word on that.’

Aloysian’s nod was slight. ‘I believe you, Chapter Master. But will the Mechanicus make the same effort?’

‘You are better placed to answer. What do you think?’

‘I don’t know,’ Aloysian said. ‘The greater the secret possessed by Urquidex, the more desperate the priests of Mars will be to keep it to themselves.’

‘And the more vital it becomes for us to learn that secret.’

‘Precisely. So where, Chapter Master, do you see the way to avoid war?’

Honour’s Spear shook harder, hammered by the Martian wind storms. Thane accepted the interruption gratefully. He had no answer for Aloysian.

The gunship broke through the smog-choked clouds of Mars. Thane looked through the viewing block and beheld the Pavonis Mons complex reaching up for him. Somewhere in that vastness, Urquidex was being held. The volcano was almost four hundred kilometres wide, and monolithic Mechanicus architecture covered its surface completely. The slope of Pavonis Mons was a gentle one, taking hundreds of kilometres to rise fourteen, but the colossal edifices and manufactoria turned it into a twisting, spiked, aggressive prominence. The fifty-kilometre caldera sprouted a cluster of gigantic chimneys, each the size of an Imperial Navy battle cruiser. They vomited the waste of Mechanicus industry into the sky, a more noxious and violent eruption than the volcano itself had ever produced.

As Honour’s Spear descended, the details of the structures became clear. Towers that Thane had taken for manufactoria were single machines, thousands of metres high. Some rotated around each other in a slow, majestic dance. Others were the pistoning ribs of an inconceivably gigantic beast. They connected to the monstrous buttresses and vaults of the manufactoria proper, of the habs for tens of millions of servants of the Omnissiah, and of laboratoria the size of hives.

‘How will we find our quarry in that?’ Abbas asked.

‘The terrain is not unknown to me,’ Aloysian said quietly.

‘I hope we will not have to seek him,’ said Thane. ‘I hope he will be brought to us.’

‘A faint hope,’ said Aloysian.

Thane made no answer. Below, the immensity of the Pavonis Mons complex stretched its iron claws upwards.

The gunships and transports came down at the edge of the space port at the base of the south face of the mountain. Alarms wailed from the towers of the port and the spires of the complex spilling off the slope and onto the surrounding plain. The Thunderhawks disgorged troops and vehicles, then rose to fly overwatch for the company. Thane organised the deployment with an eye to a maximum display of power. The battle-brothers marched at the head of the column. The Rhinos, empty except for their drivers, brought up the rear. In between came the tanks: Land Raiders, Predators, Vindicators and Whirlwinds. There was the strength here to flatten a city, and there was more to come. But Pavonis Mons was more than a city. Thane hoped the initial threat would be enough. He would escalate it as required, though he hoped he would not have to do so.

But Aloysian’s logic was sound.

The column rumbled away from the space port. It followed the main transport avenue running from the space port to the Tharsis Gate. Embedded in the immense walls encircling the base of the volcano, the Tharsis Gate was the primary access point to the Pavonis Mons complex, both above and below the surface of Mars.

Cathedral warehouses and cloud-piercing manufactoria lined the avenue’s sides. Webs of monorail tubes ran overhead, forcing the Thunderhawks higher. Ochre dust blew down the canyons between the structures. A sea of Mechanicus serfs and monotasked servitors parted ahead of the Fists Exemplar, a thousand thousand pedestrians and transports funnelling into cavernous cargo and work bays, or melting into narrower streets held in perpetual night by the shadows of the towers. From the jutting rise of the complex came an angry red glow. Cataracts of molten ore fell hundreds of metres from spouts to receptacles. Thane gazed at what he had come to bend to his will: a great mechanism, too large for the eye to encompass, too powerful for even its operators to comprehend. A mountain of metal and stone rumbled and groaned.

And it cried out.

The sirens whooped, Mars warning of invaders, Mars preparing for war. At the other end of the avenue, where it opened up into the kilometres-wide Square of the Infinite Reach before the Tharsis Gate, Thane saw the Mechanicus forces gather, and then move.

‘Where did they come from?’ Raalega asked. The Tharsis Gate was shut fast.

Aloysian spread his servo-arms, taking in the industrial sprawl on all sides. ‘From everywhere,’ he said. ‘There are thousands of concealed access points just in this quadrant. The Mechanicus will reach what must be held, and provide no route for the enemy. So Mars will always be defended.’

The two forces came together in the Square of the Infinite Reach. Electro-priests and skitarii walked just ahead of Kastelan robots and their datasmiths. The robots were lumbering monsters, twice the height of their controllers. Their forms had a kinship to Space Marine power armour, but their heads were smooth eggs of metal, faces replaced with grey plates. Huge cannons rose over the metal skulls from the carapace: incendine combustors. Their power fists crackled with red and blue energy.

On the flanks rolled servitor tanks. The Kataphron Destroyers and Breachers were tracked behemoths, built up around things that had once been human. The only remnants were the shaved heads, snarling, bestial, pallid and blank-eyed, attached to machinic torsos wielding cannons and hydraulic claws.

Onager Dunecrawlers clanked up along the road at the rear of the column. Insectoid limbs carried reliquary hulls armed with eradication beamer cannons. The Dunecrawlers swivelled their weapons back and forth, aiming over the Mechanicus. Some were monitoring the Space Marine tanks. Others were tracking the movements of the gunships.

More forces were joining the Mechanicus column. Thane saw individual units emerge from manufactoria and hatches opening and closing in the surface of the roads and the square. Aloysian was correct. For the Adeptus Mechanicus, the terrain was porous, offering innumerable means of closing with an enemy. But to the foe, the ways would be shut or death traps. There was only one entrance that might conceivably be stormed and secured: the Gate.

The Tharsis Gate was a hundred metres high and wide, and at that it was half the height of the wall. An engraving of the divided skull of the Cult Mechanicus occupied the Gate’s entire surface. There was no seam, no sign of whether it parted down the centre or rose into the wall. Thane bore no illusions about opening it from the outside. The Fists Exemplar would have to pierce it.

The Mechanicus column grew as it advanced. It was a mechanised serpent of crimson robes, crimson plate, articulated metal limbs, pulsing energy and coiling mechadendrites. There was so little of the human in the display before Thane that war seemed not unthinkable, but inevitable. He thought of what Koorland had told him of Fabricator General Kubik: that the High Lord appeared to regard the ork attack on the Imperium with the detachment of an outside observer. He spoke as if Mars were not threatened, as if the orks were more fascinating than dangerous, and as if the Cult Mechanicus had an alliance of convenience with the Imperium, and nothing more.

At this moment, Koorland’s concerns had the ring of grim truth.

The Fists Exemplar and the Mechanicus stopped with less than fifty metres between them.

‘Point-blank range,’ Abbas voxed over a private channel.

‘Yes,’ said Thane. At this distance, the combined fire of the two armies could leave nothing but a huge crater. They were edging towards a catastrophe beyond war. ‘We must tread carefully.’ He switched to the command network. ‘We are not here for battle,’ he said. ‘Keep that foremost in your minds, brothers. There will be no weapons fire without my express command. The situation is fragile. We will not be the ones to engage first. But we will complete our mission.’

‘Chapter Master,’ Abbas said, ‘does the Mechanicus understand the concept of the bluff?’

‘Do you think that’s what we’re doing?’

‘No. But I hope our opponents are.’

At least Abbas had not used the word enemies.

From the towers of the manufactoria, and from the Martian war machines, vox-casters spoke from all sides. They surrounded the Fists Exemplar with the inhuman tones of Van Auken. They were the voice of a single priest, and that unity, amplified hundreds of times, gave the artisan the same authority as if he had been Mars itself.

‘In the name of the Omnissiah, go no further. Turn back now.’

If there was something Thane could count on in the present volatility, it was the precision of Van Auken’s words. He had never known an adept of the Mechanicus to use language carelessly. Van Auken had commanded, but he had not threatened. He was reserving a small space for manoeuvring.

Thane would have to make him back up. He used his vox-grille to speak, to broadcast his response to the Mechanicus warriors and to Van Auken. ‘We have our orders. They are the same as yours, from the Lord Commander of the Imperium, and in the name of the Emperor. Release Eldon Urquidex to our custody.’

‘In the name of the Omnissiah, go no further. Turn back now.’

The perfect, mechanical repetition. It might as well have been a recording. Thane knew it wasn’t. Perhaps all Van Auken had left was escalation. As did Thane.

‘Chapter Master,’ Aloysian voxed. ‘Is one magos worth the cost we are facing?’

‘Would you abandon our mission?’ Thane glanced to his left. The Master of the Forge was in the front line, a visible reminder to the Mechanicus of the fused alliance between Mars and Terra.

‘I am not suggesting dereliction,’ said Aloysian. ‘I am weighing the consequences. Which would cause more damage to the Imperium – the loss of Urquidex, or war on Mars?’

‘Your logic is faulty, Master Aloysian. The information Urquidex possesses may outweigh any disaster here.’

‘We don’t know.’

‘No. But we know our orders. We know our oaths of moment.’

Aloysian was silent.

‘I appreciate your situation,’ Thane said. ‘But…’ He trailed off and waited.

Aloysian grunted. It was a very human sound, a rare expression of emotion from the Techmarine. ‘I know what I am,’ he said. ‘I am Adeptus Astartes. I am an Exemplar. My duty is clear, Chapter Master.’

‘I have no doubt it is. I will still spare us war if it is at all possible.’

Aloysian shook his head. ‘It will not be.’

Still, I will act as though it is, Thane thought. ‘This confrontation is senseless,’ he boomed to the Martian warriors. ‘We all serve the same Imperium. We all serve the Emperor. Will you turn your back on the Imperium in its moment of peril? I will not believe this of the priests of Mars. And now we will pass.’

He began to walk forwards. ‘A steady advance,’ he ordered the company. ‘Slow. Give them time to move back. Weapons at ready, but do not address targets. We go forwards, we do not stop, but we do not fire. Acknowledge.’

Clicks came back to him over the vox.

The Fists Exemplar advanced. The space between the forces shrank.

Van Auken watched the vid-screens and hololith tables. He was in a command centre below the surface, near the core of Pavonis Mons. The screens covered the walls. Feeds updated themselves every second. Targeting data from the Dunecrawlers changed as they tracked gunships and tanks. An auspex-mechanic sat before each column of screens, summarising and condensing the slivers of situation into bursts of code, their signals running through the cogitators and into the Artisan Primus’ mechadendrites plugged into the master console. Moment to moment, he had a near-total awareness of the entire territory running from the space port to the Tharsis Gate.

‘They are advancing,’ transmitted Sicarian Princeps Tynora 7-Galliax.

‘I am aware of this development.’

‘Understood, Artisan Primus. The delay between the situational change and your orders prompted my erroneous conclusion.’

It was possible to discern a veiled insult in her explanation. Van Auken ignored it. ‘Do not allow them to pass.’

‘What means are authorised?’

‘The mass of our forces. Do not engage.’

‘Unpredictable contingencies raise the likelihood of combat to near-certainty.’

‘The Adeptus Astartes are highly disciplined. The possibilities of intemperate error are concomitantly reduced.’

‘Accepted without optimism. Query: is the risk an efficient use of resources?’

‘We have not yet ascertained the degree of the heretic Urquidex’s knowledge. Once the full extent of the damage has been ascertained, he will be mind-wiped. The Adeptus Astartes may claim him at that point. Until then, his threat outweighs all others. Premise: the Fists Exemplar are also fully conscious of the consequences of war. Their data is also incomplete. They can conceive of no escape for Terra from the orks. Theorem: conflict here while orks are over Terra will be avoided as an absolute evil.’

‘Counter-hypothesis,’ said 7-Galliax. ‘Lacking alternatives, they will stop at nothing.’

‘Possibility evaluated and dismissed,’ Van Auken said.

He watched the two forces come together. With all the variables clamouring for his attention, there was no room for doubt.

The Mechanicus closed ranks. There were only a few metres between Thane and the line of skitarii.

‘They don’t want to let us through,’ said Abbas.

‘We shall have to convince them otherwise,’ replied Thane

The solid wall of Fists Exemplar closed the gap. The Adeptus Astartes towered over the skitarii vanguard troops. The armour of these warriors was heavy by Mechanicus standards – they were more substantial and less insectoid than many of their comrades. They were still dwarfed by the Space Marines.

The Fists Exemplar did not pause. They pressed forwards, steady and inexorable as the tide. Thane kept his bolter against his chest, barrel angled up. He was not attacking, simply advancing. Skitarii rifles were pointed at him. He pushed into the barrel of the vanguard warrior before him. He took another step, forcing the other to choose between taking a step back, firing, or engaging in melee combat. The skitarius stepped back. So did the rest of the line. The Fists Exemplar moved forwards again.

Then a command must have been issued. The retreat halted, the Dunecrawlers, Breachers and Destroyers manoeuvring to form a wall of metal. The Fists Exemplar could overwhelm the skitarii physically, but they would not be able to push past the Mechanicus heavy armour without using their own.

The chances of avoiding war shrank still further.

Thane had no choice; the mission demanded he advance. He decided to take the risk of raising the stakes. He would make those augmetic eyes blink yet.

He raised Weylon Kale on the Alcazar Remembered. ‘Shipmaster,’ he said, ‘begin the drop.’

‘So ordered, Chapter Master.’

‘They have the physical mass to force us back,’ 7-Galliax reported.

‘Hold as long as possible,’ Van Auken said. ‘When the heavy armour comes into play, fire warning shots.’

7-Galliax’s reply was cut off by a binharic squeal from one of the auspex-mechanics.

Van Auken processed the data. He felt stirrings of something that went beyond concern. Auto-regulators sought to contain the disruptive effect of his nervous system’s injection of adrenaline. ‘Correction,’ he said to 7-Galliax. ‘We have detected launch flares from the Adeptus Astartes battle-barge. All units begin warning fire. Do not hit the Adeptus Astartes. Be prepared to fall back and establish barrage fire that they cannot cross.’

The Fists Exemplar slowed. They leaned into the skitarii, their block of strength edging closer and closer to outright combat, but they did not train their guns. The tanks rolled up behind them.

Aloysian said, ‘Stalemate is inevitable.’

‘It won’t last long,’ Thane answered.

‘That is the source of my concern.’

‘Patience, Master of the Forge. Look to the skies.’

The streaks of the drop pods appeared a few moments later. They cut through the Martian atmosphere like bloody claws. There were four of them, carrying the rest of the veteran company’s strength to the field.

In the next instant, the Mechanicus forces began to shoot.

‘Hold fire!’ Thane shouted over the vox. Trigger discipline held, long enough for the Space Marines to realise the energy beams were passing overhead. ‘The...’ He caught himself. He had almost said the enemy. ‘The Mechanicus seeks to intimidate. We are not at war.’ Broadcasting again, he called to the skitarii and tech-priests, and to Van Auken, wherever he was. ‘We are not at war,’ he repeated. ‘Do not force a battle none of us would choose. Be one with us. Be one with Terra and against the orks!’

The only response was continued fire. It turned into a canopy of devastating energy. Even perfect precision could not stop it from shearing the facades of buildings. Rockcrete disintegrated. No wreckage fell. The sheer volume of the destructive beams took everything they hit apart at the molecular level.

The strobing flash of the beams played havoc with Thane’s optics. He blinked off the filters and kept pushing, driving the skitarii vanguard back towards the wall of their heavy armour. He looked up to the sky, and through the interweaving beams he saw the drop pods hurtle to the ground, coming down behind the Mechanicus forces, between them and the Tharsis Gate, catching them in a vice. Thane heard the impacts, felt the shake in the pavement. He felt the pressure mount on Van Auken.

The disaster, when it happened, seemed inevitable, an event every soul on Mars should have predicted. Thane saw it unfold with sickened dread and helplessness. Two of the Dunecrawlers rotated their hulls to send their fire over the drop pods. They did so as the last of the entry vehicles came down a few seconds behind the others. What happened was chance, not error. The terrible alchemy of war.

Because this was war. It had been from the moment Koorland ordered the Alcazar Remembered to Mars.

An eradication beam struck the final drop pod. It vaporised the outer shielding. The drop pod’s retro thrusters exploded. Thane saw the flash, the billow of flame, and the pod tilt over. Off course, it fell to the east beyond his sight, behind the canyon walls of the manufactoria. The crash of its landing was deafening.

‘Hold fire!’ Thane ordered. ‘Hold fire!’ The company obeyed, but he didn’t know if the Fists Exemplar in the fallen pod were alive, and if they were receiving. The proximity and intensity of the energy beams was interfering with vox-traffic. The voices of his brothers were disappearing in storms of static and dropped audio. He heard nothing from the damaged pod.

And then there were more explosions. There was bolter fire. A rocket slammed into the hull of a Dunecrawler.

No, Thane thought, despairing. The worst was unfolding. His wounded brothers thought they had come under attack and were responding.

The Mechanicus answered. The Dunecrawlers lowered their guns and fired towards the rear. Overhead, the canopy of destruction descended.

No room to manoeuvre now, no avoiding the worst. No more pretence. No more hope.

‘Open fire!’ Thane commanded.

Fists Exemplar and skitarii struck at each other in the same instant. The close quarters worked in favour of the Space Marines – their armour was stronger than that of the skitarii. Their mass-reactive bolt-shells shattered breastplates and helmets, blowing up the circuitry and flesh within, and the first ranks of the vanguard went down. Radium carbine bullets hammered against Thane’s armour, but his plate held against the poisonous rounds. His auto-senses warned of a massive increase in airborne radiation; if he had not been wearing his helm, his skin would already have begun to cook.

The Fists Exemplar had the momentum of the first seconds, but the Mechanicus had the overwhelming numbers. The temptation was to drive forwards while they could, but Thane knew better. The Space Marines could not depend on their power armour to see them through the enemy cohort before the heavy guns came to bear. The wrong push now would be disastrous.

Or more disastrous. He pushed the thought away, focusing on the need to survive the next few seconds, and to fight for the completion of the mission. He could not afford to consider the wider consequences of what was unfolding.

‘Fall back,’ he ordered the company. ‘Tanks, take the lead. Punch our way through.’ He swept his bolter back and forth as he started to walk backwards. The Fists Exemplar’s hail shattered Mechanicus warriors. Clouds of metal shrapnel erupted. The tanks drew level with the Space Marines. Their cannons roared simultaneously with the shriek of the enemy’s energy blasts. The Predator Roma’s Cry blew a hole through the centre of a Kataphron Breacher with its autocannon, and the servitor’s head jerked backwards in a memory of mortal agony. It was avenged a moment later when Roma’s Cry was hit by a Destroyer’s plasma culverin and a Dunecrawler’s eradicator. Energy crackled. Metal melted and evaporated. Roma’s Cry surged forwards, its fate and that of the battle-brothers within already determined. It crushed skitarii beneath its treads before it exploded. The fireball was huge, power plant and munitions destroyed in the same instant. Thane used the wall of flame as cover and moved to the right side of the avenue.

‘On me,’ he called to his brothers. ‘Flank them.’

The tank battle became a firestorm of shells and energy blasts. The explosions were continuous, filling the street. Behemoths of war hurled destruction at each other from ranges no greater than a few dozen metres. The Fists Exemplar moved through a storm of flame, smoke, convulsing energy and whirling shrapnel. The foot soldiers of both forces made way for the tanks, and the vehicles picked up speed. Even at such close range, some shots went wide, devastating the manufactoria on both sides of the avenue. Thane led his company towards a structure that was more avalanche than shelter.

‘Thamarius,’ Thane voxed to the sergeant leading the drop pod landing. ‘What is your situation?’ He called twice more before Thamarius answered, barely audible over the raging interference.

‘The Gate is holding strong, Chapter Master. We’re trying to break through with melta bombs, but it will take time. Our position is vulnerable.’

‘Hold fast, brother-sergeant. We will approach from the eastern flank.’

‘We may need more desperate means to defeat this barrier.’

‘Understood. But we are not there yet.’

If Thamarius answered, his words were lost in the static.

A Kastelan robot loomed out of the smoke. It fired its incendine combustor and a flood of ignited promethium washed over Thane’s company. Raalega took the brunt, the high-powered stream burning through the seams of his armour. It filled his helmet. Flesh and metal turned molten. As he fell, he hurled a krak grenade at the robot, slagging the behemoth’s left foot. The robot staggered, the sudden swing of its gait almost crushing the datasmith at its side. The priest died by bolter fire a moment later but the robot still advanced. Deprived of the guidance of its datasmith, it was governed by the last instructions programmed into it. It would walk and burn all before it until it was destroyed or ran out of fuel.

Bolter fire pummelled the robot. The impacts made it jerk as it walked, but its attack was untroubled. Thane ran through the flame, his heat and rad sensors shrieking red. He stepped around the robot’s heavy tread, wiping burning promethium to clear his vision, and trained his bolter on the barrel of the combustor. The gun burst. Its fuel ignited at once, shot skywards, and blew up the robot’s power pack. Thane jumped back, away from the worst of the incinerating flood. The robot burned in its own life force, stopped walking and slumped forwards, arms hanging limply. Immobilised, it became a metal silhouette in a lake of fire.

The company passed through an archway and into the manufactorium. Two of its huge chimneys had fallen, crushing the upper storeys of the central structure. The Fists Exemplar entered a ruin of iron and rockcrete, the ground level a shattered jumble. Some columns still held up the vaults for a few metres, while others had snapped like bone, and the space between the floor and thousands of tonnes of rubble was less than two metres. Shattered pipes sprayed superheated steam and burning gases through the space. Torn electrical cables as thick as Thane’s arm sparked and twisted like agonised snakes. Forges thirty metres high, cracked open, spilled molten slag across the floor. The manufactorium was a death planet in miniature, and it offered the best route to break through to Thamarius and the interior of Pavonis Mons. The heavy weapons of the Mechanicus could not enter here.

‘This complex is highly unstable,’ Aloysian said.

‘I don’t plan on staying,’ said Thane.

‘And Van Auken could decide to bring it all down on our heads.’

‘More reason for speed. And to keep him distracted.’ Thane voxed the gunship pilots. ‘We must escalate, brothers. Keep the focus of the Mechanicus on the street.’

‘Acknowledged,’ said Preco, from among the answer clicks.

The Thunderhawks screamed over the avenue, unleashing streams of heavy bolter and lascannon fire, and flights of hellstrike missiles. The tank battle raged on. The roar of destruction was unending, the curtain of flame from the explosions impenetrable. Thane led the way through the burning and the wreckage of the manufactorium. The Fists Exemplar climbed over and under rubble, battering their way through iron doors knocked askew in their frames and through walls crumbling under strain. Behind them, collapses multiplied. A mountain was settling over their heads.

They advanced well beyond the level of the Mechanicus’ front lines in the avenue. Thane estimated less than a hundred metres separated them from the final approach to the Tharsis Gate.

There was no resistance.

As they reached an open space whose floor was covered in congealing metal, Aloysian said, ‘Chapter Master, where are the skitarii?’

It was too much to expect all the infantry to be caught up in the struggle in the road. ‘Auspex?’ Thane called.

‘Nothing…’ Kahagnis voxed from midway down the phalanx.

Thane did not like the hesitation. ‘Why are you uncertain?’

‘The readings are erratic. The interference is severe. When we–’

And then nothing descended. Nothing was white noise on the vox, white noise on the optics, and a shrieking howl. Blood filled Thane’s mouth and ears. Pain stabbed into his eyes with the thousand shards of a broken mirror.

Somewhere, there was a hum. It vibrated beneath hearing. It was sharper than a blade.

And then the smell of blood. The smell of butchery.

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o 3.4 you attempt to reverse engineer, bypass, alter, amend, remove or otherwise make any change to any copy protection technology which may be applied to the e-book.

* 4. By purchasing an e-book, you agree for the purposes of the Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000 that Black Library may commence the service (of provision of the e-book to you) prior to your ordinary cancellation period coming to an end, and that by purchasing an e-book, your cancellation rights shall end immediately upon receipt of the e-book.

* 5. You acknowledge that all copyright, trademark and other intellectual property rights in the e-book are, shall remain, the sole property of Black Library.

* 6. On termination of this license, howsoever effected, you shall immediately and permanently delete all copies of the e-book from your computers and storage media, and shall destroy all hard copies of the e-book which you have derived from the e-book.

* 7. Black Library shall be entitled to amend these terms and conditions from time to time by written notice to you.

* 8. These terms and conditions shall be governed by English law, and shall be subject only to the jurisdiction of the Courts in England and Wales.

* 9. If any part of this license is illegal, or becomes illegal as a result of any change in the law, then that part shall be deleted, and replaced with wording that is as close to the original meaning as possible without being illegal.

* 10. Any failure by Black Library to exercise its rights under this license for whatever reason shall not be in any way deemed to be a waiver of its rights, and in particular, Black Library reserves the right at all times to terminate this license in the event that you breach clause 2 or clause 3.