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0.01

It never rained on Mars, not any more. Once, when Mars had first known life, back in an age long unknown to man, mighty storms had torn across the landscape, gouging channels in the rock and carving sweeping coastlines from the towering cliffs of the great Mons. Then the world had endured its first death, and the planet had become a cratered red wasteland of empty dust bowls and parched deserts.

But the Red Planet lived to breathe again.

The terraforming of Mars had begun in the earliest days of the golden age of man’s expansion to the stars, bringing new life and hope, but in the end, this was a remission, not a cure. Within the span of a few centuries, the planet had died its second death, choking on the fumes of volcanic forge complexes, continent-sized refineries and the effluent of a million weapons shops.

It never rained on Mars.

That thought was uppermost in Brother Verticorda’s mind as he guided the battered bipedal form of Ares Lictor up the gentle slopes of Olympus Mons towards the colossal volcano’s caldera. Resembling a brutish, mechanical humanoid some nine metres tall, Ares Lictor was a Paladin-class Knight, a one-man war machine of deep blue armour plates with a fearsome array of weaponry beyond the power of even the strongest of the Terran Emperor’s Astartes to bear.

Ares Lictor walked with an awkward, loping gait, thanks to a stubborn knee joint that no amount of ministration from the tech-priests could restore to full working order. But Verticorda handled his mount with the practised ease of one born in the cockpit.

It never rained on Mars.

Except it was raining now.

The brushed orange skies above were weeping a thin drizzle of moisture, patterning Verticorda’s cockpit, and he felt the cold wetness through the hard-plugs in his spine and the haptic implants in his fingers.

He realised that he too was weeping, for he had never expected to witness such a sight, the heavens opening and precipitation falling to the surface of the Red Planet. Such a thing had not happened in living memory, and on Mars that was a long time.

Two other war machines followed Verticorda, his brothers-in-arms and fellow Knights of Taranis. He could hear their chatter over the Manifold, the synaptic congress that linked their minds, but had not the words to convey his own sense of wonder at the sight that greeted them on this day of days.

The sky above Olympus Mons raged.

Billowing storm clouds heaved as though ancient, forgotten gods battled within them, slamming their mighty hammers against wrought iron anvils and hurling forked bolts of lightning at one another. Mars’s largest moon, Phobos, was visible as a yellowed irregularity behind in the clouds, its cratered surface at its closest point to the surface of Mars in decades.

The mighty volcano, the largest mountain in the Tharsis region and indeed the Solar System, soared above the Martian landscape, the dizzyingly high escarpments of its cliffs rising to almost thirty kilometres above the surface of the planet. Verticorda knew this region of Tharsis intimately; he had marched Ares Lictor from the Fabricator General’s forge on the eastern flanks of the mighty volcano three decades ago, and he had led his brother warriors across its slopes uncounted times.

More lightning flashed and the thousands gathering at the base of the volcano gazed fearfully into the building tempest from towering hab-stacks and ironclad bulwarks of Kelbor-Hal’s domain. Abused skies cracked and roared, distorting under the overpressure of something unimaginably vast, and the atmospherics lit up the sky as far as any eye, fleshy or augmetic, could see.

Crowds in their thousands, their tens of thousands, were following the Knights up the slopes of Olympus Mons, but they had not the speed or manoeuvrability of the war machines. This wonder was for the Knights of Taranis and for them alone.

A shape moved in the clouds, and Verticorda halted his mount at the sheer edge of the caldera’s escarpment with a release of pressure on his right hand. The machine reacted instantly. The bond he had forged with it in years of battle was that of two comrades-in-arms who had shared blood and victory in equal measure.

Verticorda could feel the anticipation of this moment in every sizzling joint and weld within Ares Lictor, as though it – more than he – was anticipating the glory of this day. Golden light flashed above and the drizzle of rain became a downpour.

A zigzagging pathway had been cut into the cliff, leading to the base of the caldera, nearly two kilometres below. It was a treacherous path in ideal conditions, but in this deluge it was close to suicide.

‘What do you say, old friend?’ asked Verticorda. ‘Shall we greet these new arrivals?’

He could feel the machine straining beneath him and smiled, easing up the power and walking the Knight towards the edge of the cliff. The steps were designed for the long strides and wide treads of a Knight, but were slick and reflective with rain. It was a long way down and not even the armour or energy shields that protected a Knight in battle would save him from a fall from this height.

Verticorda guided Ares Lictor’s first step onto the cut path and felt the slipperiness beneath its feet as though he walked upon it himself. Each step was dangerous and he took care to ensure that each one was taken with the utmost reverence. Step by step, inch by inch, he walked Ares Lictor down the path to the cratered plain below.

Golden light suddenly burst from the clouds above, dazzling and brilliant, and bolts of scarlet lightning danced like crackling spider webs between the ground and sky. Verticorda almost lost his footing as he instinctively looked up.

A mighty floating city of gold was descending from the heavens.

Like a mountainous spire sheared from the side of some vast, continental landmass, the city was studded with light and colour, its dimensions enormous beyond imagining. A vast, eagle-winged prow of gold marked one end of the floating city, and colossal battlements, like the highest towers of the mightiest Martian spire, rose like gnarled stalagmites from the other.

Rippling engines flared with unimaginable power on the colossal edifice’s underside, and Verticorda stood amazed at the technology required to prevent such a monstrous creation from plummeting to the ground. Flocks of smaller craft attended the larger one, its dimensions only growing larger the more it emerged from its concealing clouds.

‘Blood of the Machine,’ hissed Yelsic, rider of the Knight at his back. ‘How can such a thing stay aloft?’

‘Concentrate on your descent,’ warned Verticorda. ‘I don’t want you losing your footing behind me.’

‘Understood.’

Verticorda returned his attention to the pathway, negotiating the last three hundred metres bathed in a cold sweat. He let out a long, shuddering breath as he took his first step onto the surface of the Olympus Mons caldera, enjoying the strange new sensation of mud sucking at his feet.

By the time the Knights reached the base of the cliff, the enormous craft had landed, its gargantuan bulk surely offset by some dampening field to prevent it from collapsing under its own weight, or sinking deep into the Martian surface. Roiling clouds of superheated steam and condensing gases billowed outwards from the ship and as they swept over Ares Lictor, Verticorda smelled the scents of another world: hard radiation, the ache of homelands long forgotten and thin, achingly cold, mountain air.

He told himself it was ludicrous to sense such things from a ship that had just made the fiery descent through a planet’s atmosphere, yet they were there as plain as day.

‘Spread out,’ said Verticorda. ‘Flank speed.’

The Knights loping alongside him moved into a combat spread as they strode through the hot, moist mists. Verticorda felt no threat from the unknown craft, yet decades of training and discipline would not allow him to approach it without taking precautions.

At last the mist thinned and Verticorda pulled up as the enormous golden cliff of the vessel’s flanks rose up before him like a mountain freshly deposited on the planet’s surface. Its scale was awe-inspiring, more so than even the fastnesses of the Titan Legions or the data mountains of the Temple of All Knowledge.

Even the mightiest forge temple of Mondus Gamma on the Syria Planum paled in comparison to the scale of this vessel, for it had been fashioned with deliberate artifice and not the combined forces of millions of years of geological interaction. Every plate and sheet of the enormous vessel was worked with the care of a craftsman, and Verticorda struggled to think of a reason why so many would labour for so long and with such devotion to ornament a vessel designed for travel between the stars.

The answer came a moment after the question.

This was no ordinary vessel, this was a craft built with love, a craft built for a being beloved by all. No ordinary man could inspire such devotion and Verticorda suddenly felt an overwhelming fear that he was in the presence of something far greater and far more terrifying than anything he could ever have imagined.

A shrieking blast of steam vented from the ship and a colossal hatchway was limned in golden light. Huge pneumatic pistons – larger than a Titan – slowly lowered a long ramp, easily wide enough for a regiment of gene-bulked skitarii to march down in line abreast. The ramp lowered with no sign of strain on the vessel, and the brightness within poured out, bathing the Martian landscape in a warm, welcome glow.

Verticorda twisted Ares Lictor around on its central axis, and felt a shiver travel the length of his spine as he saw the entire rim of the volcano’s crater lined with onlookers. With a thought, he increased the magnification through the viewscreen and saw thousands of robed adepts, menials, tech-priests, logi and workers gathered to watch the events unfolding below.

Crackling, voltaic viewing clouds coloured the sky behind the crowds and flocks of servo-skulls buzzed overhead, though none dared approach within the swirling electromagnetic field that surrounded the craft.

The huge ramp crunched down and Verticorda squinted into the light that blazed from within. A silhouette moved within the light, tall and powerful, glorious and magnificent.

The light seemed to move with him and as Verticorda watched the figure descend the ramp, a shadow fell across the surface of the plain on which the craft had landed. Though he was loath to tear his gaze from the magnificent figure, Verticorda looked up to see a convex ellipse of darkness bite into the glowing outline of the sun.

The light from the storm-wracked skies faded until the only illumination came from the figure as he stepped onto Martian soil for the first time. Verticorda knew immediately that the man was a warrior, for there could be no doubt that this sublime figure had been made mighty by battle.

Verticorda felt the collective gasp from the thousands of spectators in his bones, as though the very planet shuddered with pleasure to know this individual’s touch.

He looked back down and saw the warrior standing before him, tall and clad in golden armour, each plate wrought with the same skill and love as had been lavished upon his vessel. The warrior wore no helm and was fitted with no visible breathing augmetics, yet seemed untroubled by the chemical-laden air of Mars.

Verticorda found his gaze dwelling on the warrior’s face, beautiful and perfect as though able to see beyond the armoured exterior of Ares Lictor and into Verticorda’s soul. In his eyes, his so very ancient eyes, Verticorda saw the wisdom of all the ages and the burden of all the knowledge contained within them.

A crimson mantle flapped in the wind behind the giant warrior and he carried an eagle-topped sceptre clutched in one mighty gauntlet. The golden giant’s eyes scrutinised the blue-armoured form of Verticorda’s mount, from its conical glacis to the aventailed shoulder plates upon which the wheel and lightning bolt symbol of the Knights of Taranis was emblazoned.

The warrior reached out towards him. ‘Your machine is damaged, Taymon Verticorda,’ he said, his voice heavy and yet musical, like the most perfect sound imaginable. ‘May I?’

Verticorda found himself unable to form a reply, knowing that anything he might say would be trite in the face of such perfection. It didn’t occur to him to wonder how the sublime warrior knew his name. Without waiting for a reply, the warrior reached out, and Verticorda felt his touch upon the joints of Ares Lictor’s knee.

‘Machine, heal thyself,’ said the warrior, the purpose and self-belief in his voice passing into Verticorda as though infusing every molecule of his hybrid existence of flesh and steel with new-found purpose and vitality.

He felt the warmth of the warrior’s touch through the shell of his mount, and gasped as trembling vibrations spread through its armoured frame of plasteel and ceramite. He took an involuntary step back, feeling the movements of his mount flow as smoothly as ever they had. With one step, he could feel Ares Lictor move as though it had just come off the assembly lines, its stubborn knee joint flexing like new.

‘Who are you?’ he gasped, his voice sounding grating and pathetic next to the mighty timbre of the golden warrior’s voice.

‘I am the Emperor,’ said the warrior.

It was a simple answer, yet the weight of history and the potential of a glorious future were carried in every syllable.

Knowing he would never again hear words spoken with such meaning, Verticorda and Ares Lictor dropped to one knee, performing the manoeuvre with a grace that would have been impossible before the Emperor’s touch.

In that moment, Taymon Verticorda knew the truth of the being standing before him.

‘Welcome to Mars, my lord,’ he said. ‘All praise to the Omnissiah.’

1.01

Swathed in faded and tattered robes of rust red, the six Mechanicum Protectors stood unmoving before her, as still as the towering statues of the magi that had stared down upon the thousands of scribes within the great Hall of Transcription of the Librarium Technologica. Their iron-shod boots were locked tight into the ship’s deck restraints, while she had had to hold onto a metal stanchion just to avoid cracking her head on its fuselage or tumbling around the hold when it had taken off.

The interior of the ship was bare and unadorned, as functional as it was possible to be. No unnecessary decorations or aesthetic elements designed to ease the eye were included in its design, perfectly epitomising the organisation to which it belonged.

Dalia Cythera ran a hand through her cropped blonde hair, feeling the dirt and grease there and longing for one of her weekly rotations in the Windward sump’s ablutions block. She had a feeling, however, that her cleanliness was the furthest thing from the minds of the Protectors.

None of them had spoken to her other than to confirm her name when they had removed her from the cell beneath the Librarium in which Magos Ludd had locked her a week earlier. He’d discovered the enhancements she’d made to the inner workings of her cogitator and had hauled her from the work line in a rage, angry hashes of binaric static canting from his vocaliser.

Seven days alone in complete darkness had almost broken her. She remembered squeezing into a tiny ball when the cell door finally opened and she saw the bronze death masks of the Protectors, their gleaming weapon-staves and the unforgiving light of their eyes.

Ludd’s blurted protests at the Protectors’ intrusion soon ceased when they invited him to scan the biometric security encryptions carried within their staves. She was frightened of the Protectors, but then she guessed she was supposed to be. Their masters in the Mechanicum had designed them that way, with their enhanced bulk, weaponised limbs and glowing green eyes that shone, unblinking, behind bronze, skull-faced masks.

Within moments, she had been hauled from the cell and dragged through the cavernous, echoing scriptoria where she’d spent the last two years of her life, her limbs loose and weak.

Thousands upon thousands of robed scribes, ordinates, curators and form-stampers filled the scriptoria, and as she was carried towards the enormous arch that led to the world beyond, she realised she would be sad to leave the knowledge that passed through it.

She would not miss the people, for she had no friends here and no colleagues. None of the pallid-skinned adepts looked up from the monotony of their work, the sea-green glow of their cogitators and the flickering lumen globes floating in the dusty air leeching their wizened features of life and animation.

Such a state of being was foreign to Dalia and it never failed to amaze her that her fellow scribes were so blind to the honour of what they did.

The recovered knowledge of Terra and the new wonders sent back from across the galaxy by the thousands of remembrancers accompanying the expeditions of the Great Crusade passed through this chamber. Despite the glorious flood of information, carefully logged and filed within the great libraries of Terra, every one of the faceless minions ceaselessly, blindly, ground themselves into old age repeating the same bureaucratic and administrative tasks every waking hour of every day, oblivious or uncaring of the wealth of information to which they were privy.

Without the insight or even the will to question the task they had been given to perform, the scribes shuffled from their hab-stacks through the same kilometres of well-trodden corridors every day and performed their duties without question, thought or awe.

The rustle of paper was what Dalia imagined the ocean to sound like, the clatter of adding machines and the rattle of brass keys on the typesetters like the motion of uncounted pebbles on a beach. Of course, Dalia had never seen the things she imagined, for the seas of Terra had long since boiled away in forgotten wars, but the words she read as she copied text from the reams of paper and armfuls of data-slates carried in daily by muscled servitors had filled her mind with possibilities of worlds and ideas that existed far beyond the confines of Terra’s mightiest scriptorium.

Emerging from the musty darkness of the Librarium Technologica, she had been blinded by the brightness of the day, the sky a brilliant white and the sun a hazy orb peeking through scraps of clouds the colour of corrosion.

The air was cold and thin at this altitude. She could just make out the tips of the slate-coloured mountains that crowned the world over the teeming roofs and spires crammed together in this part of the Imperial Palace. She had longed to see the mountains in all their glory, but her escorts marched her through dark streets that sweated steam and oil and voices towards an unknown destination without pause.

That destination turned out to be a landing platform, upon which sat a vapour-wreathed starship, its hull still warm and groaning from the stresses of an atmospheric entry.

She was led into the cavernous hold and deposited on the floor while the Protectors took up their allocated positions and the mag-locks secured them to the deck. With a juddering roar and sudden lurch, the starship lifted off, and Dalia was thrown to her knees by the violence of the ascent. Fear gripped her and she clung to a protruding stanchion as the angle of incline increased sharply.

The thought that she was leaving the planet of her birth struck her forcefully, and she experienced terrible panic at the thought of venturing beyond her known horizons. No sooner had she chided herself for such timidity, than the panic subsided and she felt her stomach cramp as she realised how hungry she was.

The roaring of the starship and the vibrations on its hull grew louder and more violent until she was sure the craft was going to tear itself apart. Eventually, the noise changed in tone and the starship began to level out, powering through the void at unimaginable speeds.

She was travelling on a starship.

With a moment free to think, she now wondered where she was going and why the Mechanicum Protectors had plucked her from the Librarium’s cells and for what purpose. Curiously, she felt no fear of this strange voyage, but she attributed that lack to the mystery and interest of it being enough to overshadow any wariness she felt.

Over the next day or so, her escorts – she did not now think of them as captors – resisted her every attempt at communication, save to instruct her to eat and drink, which she did ravenously, despite the food’s chemical artificiality.

They did not move from their locked positions at all during the journey, standing as mute guardians and offering her no diversion save in the study of their forms.

Each one was tall and powerfully built, their physiques gene-bulked and augmented with implanted weaponry. Ribbed cables and coloured wires threaded their robes and penetrated their flesh through raw-looking plugs embedded in their skin. She had seen Protectors before, but she had never been so close to one.

They smelled unpleasantly of rotten meat, machine oil and stale sweat.

They were armed with giant pistols with flaring barrels, and tall staves of iron, topped with a bronze and silver cog, from which hung a scrap of parchment that fluttered in the gusting air within the cold compartment.

A set of numbers was written on the parchment, arranged in a four by four grid, and Dalia quickly worked out that each line added up to the same number, no matter which way they were combined – vertically, horizontally or diagonally. Not only that, but each of the quadrants, the four centre squares, the corner squares and many other combinations added up to the same figure.

‘Thirty-four,’ she said. ‘It’s always thirty-four.’

The design was familiar to her and Dalia knew she had seen it before. No sooner had she wondered where, than the answer came to her.

‘The Melancholia,’ said Dalia, nodding at the parchment.

‘What did you say?’ asked the Protector.

His voice was human, but echoed with a metallic rasp beneath his bronze mask, and Dalia was momentarily taken aback that he’d actually responded to something she said.

‘The symbol on your parchment,’ she said. ‘It’s from an engraving. I saw it in a book I transcribed two years ago.’

‘Two years ago? And you still remember it?’

‘Yes,’ nodded Dalia, hesitantly. ‘I kind of remember stuff I’ve read and don’t forget it.’

‘It is the symbol of our master,’ said the Protector.

‘It’s from an engraving of one of the old master prints,’ said Dalia, her eyes taking on a glazed look as she spoke, talking more to herself than the Protector. ‘It was so old, but then everything we transcribe in the great hall that’s not from the expedition fleets is old. It was a picture of a woman, but she looked frustrated, as if she was annoyed at not being able to invent something ingenious. She had all sorts of equipment around her, weights, an hourglass and a hammer, but she looked sad, as if she just couldn’t get the idea to take shape.’

The Protectors glanced at one another as Dalia spoke, each one gripping his stave tightly. Dalia caught the look and her words trailed off.

‘What?’ she asked.

The Protector disengaged the mag-lock clamps securing him to the deck and stepped towards her. The suddenness of his motion took her by surprise and she stumbled backwards, falling onto her backside as he loomed over her, the green glow of his eyes shining brightly within his tattered hood.

‘I begin to see why we were sent to fetch you,’ said the Protector.

‘You do?’ asked Dalia. ‘And you were sent for me? Me? Dalia Cythera?’

‘Yes, Dalia Cythera. Rho-mu 31 was sent to fetch you from Terra.’

‘Rho-mu 31?’

‘That is our designation,’ said the Protector.

‘What, all of you?’

‘All of us, each of us. It is all the same.’

‘All right, but why were you sent to fetch me?’ asked Dalia.

‘We were sent to fetch you before you were executed.’

‘Executed?’ exclaimed Dalia. ‘For what?’

‘Magos Ludd invoked the Law of the Divine Complexity,’ explained Rho-mu 31. ‘Individuals so accused attract the attention of our master.’

Dalia thought for a moment, her eyes fluttering beneath their lids as she recalled what that law concerned. ‘Let me think, that’s the belief that the structure and working of each machine has been set down by the Omnissiah and is therefore divine… and that to alter it is, oh…’

‘You see now why we came for you?’

‘Not really,’ admitted Dalia. ‘Anyway, who is your master, and what does he want with me? I’m just a transcriber of remembrance. I’m nobody.’

Rho-mu 31 shook his head, making a fist and placing it over the silver and bronze cog atop his staff.

‘You are more than you realise, Dalia Cythera,’ he said, ‘but that, and more, will become clear to you when you meet our master: High Adept Koriel Zeth, Mistress of the Magma City.’

‘The Magma City?’ asked Dalia. ‘Where is that?’

‘At the edge of the Daedalia Planum, on the southern flank of Arsia Mons,’ said Rho-mu 31, lifting his stave and touching it to an opaque panel on the vibrating hull of the starship. A flickering light crackled, and the panel began to change, slowly becoming more and more translucent until finally it was virtually transparent.

When this transformation was complete, Dalia gasped at the sight before her, her face bathed in a fiery red glow from the planet below. Its surface was clad in fire and metal, its atmosphere choked with striated clouds of pollution. Teeming with gargantuan sprawls of industry larger than the continents of Old Earth, the world seemed to throb with the heartbeat of monstrous hammers.

Plumes of fire and towering stacks of iron rose from its mountainous southern regions, and networks of gleaming steel spread out like cracks in the ground through which fractured light spilled into the sky.

‘Is that…?’

‘Mars,’ confirmed Rho-mu 31. ‘Domain of the Mechanicum.’

Supersonic shells tore through the gaggle of servitors feeding on the dead techno-mats, obliterating one instantly and blowing the limbs from another. Three others staggered back, chunks of flesh blasted from their emaciated frames. They refused to fall, however, their damaged brains unable to comprehend how grievously the guns of Cronus’s Knight had wounded them.

‘All yours, Maven,’ said Cronus, cutting off the stream of shells.

‘So glad you left me something to do,’ replied Maven.

Maven moved Equitos Bellum in behind the bloody servitors, the energised blade in his war machine’s right fist reaching down and slicing through the survivors in one sweep. Old Stator finished off the stragglers with a short, perfectly controlled burst of laser fire, their wasted bodies exploding in puffs of vaporised blood and scrap metal.

Standing five times the height of the feral creatures, the three Knights towered over the battlefield, though Maven knew that to call it such was to vastly overstate the nature of the deaths they had caused.

The Knights were armoured in thick plates of plasteel and ceramite, protected by layered banks of power fields strong enough to weather the impact of a much larger engine’s wrath, and armed with weapons that could kill scores at a time. The plates of their armour were a deep, midnight blue, the right shoulder of each one painted with the design of a wheel encircling a lightning bolt.

The same design was repeated on the long, cream-coloured banners hanging between the mechanised legs of all three war machines, the heraldry of the Knights of Taranis.

Maven rode in Equitos Bellum, an honourable mount with a host of battle honours earned in the earliest days of the Great Crusade. It had fought the enemies of the Imperium beneath a dozen different skies, and even marched alongside the Salamanders of Primarch Vulkan. The design of a firedrake carved into the skull-cockpit of the Knight recalled that campaign, and Maven never tired of telling the stories of that glorious ride into battle.

His studious brother-in-arms, Cronus, rode in Pax Mortis, and old Stator commanded the august majesty of Fortis Metallum. All three war machines had earned their share of glory on the battlefields of the Imperium, marching ahead of the Titan engines, the God-Machines.

The Knights of Taranis were feted among the warriors of Mars for their martial achievements, revered for their place in Martian history, and lauded for the wisdom of their commanders.

Even the mighty princeps of the Titan Legions were known to seek the wise counsel of the order’s masters, for Lords Verticorda and Caturix were known as leaders whose shared command blended the warrior’s heart with the diplomat’s cool.

‘So why, in the name of the Omnissiah are we stuck out in the arse end of nowhere culling feral servitors?’ he asked himself, before remembering that the Manifold-link between the Knights was still open.

‘We’re here because those are our orders, Maven,’ said Stator. ‘Do you have a problem with that?’

‘No, preceptor,’ replied Maven, his tone contrite. ‘I just meant that it seems like such a waste of our strength. Can’t Magos Maximal’s Protectors perform their own culls?’

‘Not as well as we can,’ said Cronus, his answer sounding like it came from a training manual. Maven felt his lip curl in a sneer at his brother’s sycophancy.

‘Exactly, Cronus,’ said Stator. ‘We’ve been given a duty to protect this reactor complex and there is honour in duty, no matter how far beneath us it might seem.’

Maven sensed an opening and said, ‘But the Knights of Taranis once marched with the Crusade. We fought alongside heroes of the Imperium, and now all we do is shoot feral servitors that come up out of the pallidus. There’s no glory in this work.’

‘These days the threats to the Warmaster’s campaigns require forces stronger than us,’ said Stator, but Maven could sense the bitterness beneath his words. ‘The Great Crusade is almost over.’

‘And what will be left for us?’ demanded Maven, emboldened by Stator’s words. ‘There must be expeditions that need the skills of our order.’

‘The expeditions do not ask for Knights,’ said Stator. ‘They ask for the God-Machines to walk with their armies. Our role is to protect Mars and maintain the traditions of our order, and part of that tradition is honouring our obligations. Is that understood, Maven?’

‘Yes, preceptor,’ said Maven.

‘Now let’s finish this sweep and make sure there are no more of them. Maximal needs this facility kept safe, and Lord Caturix swore that we would do so.’

Maven sighed and walked his Knight to where humming power cables jutted from the hard, orange earth and spat sparks where the servitors had dug at them to feed the machine parts of their ravaged bodies. The corpses of the techno-mats and artificers sent to fix the damage lay in pools of blood that were already congealing in the heat that bled from the fusion reactor further back in the gorge.

‘Check for more of them out there, Cronus,’ ordered Stator. ‘They usually hunt in bigger packs than this.’

‘Yes, preceptor,’ replied Cronus, marching his Knight past the dead servitors and through the gap torn in the barbed, chain-link fence that surrounded the reactor. Cronus guided his machine up the rocky slopes to check the ground behind an outcrop of boulders. To manoeuvre so large a machine as a Knight over such rough terrain was no mean feat, and Maven was forced to admire his brother’s skill as a pilot.

Fortis Metallum’s upper body swivelled around on its gimbal waist mount to face Maven, and though he couldn’t see his preceptor’s face through the red visor of the cockpit, he could feel the stern, unflinching gaze through the softly glowing slits.

‘Keep an eye on our rear in case any slipped past us,’ ordered Stator, his voice once again as grim and inflexible as the posture of his machine. ‘I’ll hold you responsible if they have.’

‘Yes, preceptor,’ replied Maven. ‘I’m on it.’

It was a Martian truism that if a warrior and machine spent enough time linked together they would begin to take on aspects of the other’s character. Fortis Metallum was an old machine, cantankerous, flinty and utterly without mercy.

It was the perfect match for Stator.

Maven had met countless Titan drivers and it was easy to tell which machines they commanded within moments of talking to them.

Warhound drivers were belligerent, wolf-like dare-devils, whereas the men who fought from the towering Battle Titans were arrogant and ego-driven warriors, who often appeared to hold those around them in contempt.

Maven knew that such conceit was forgivable, for marching to war so high above the battlefield and unleashing such awesome destructive power would naturally swell a man’s ego, but it was also a necessary defence against the engine’s character overwhelming that of its commander.

Maven walked his machine backwards in a bravura display of skill, watching as Stator turned away to follow Cronus through the mangled remains of the security fencing.

A Knight was much smaller than a Titan, but the mechanics in its construction and operation were no less incredible. A Titan had a crew to maintain its systems: a servitor to man each weapon system, a steersman to drive it, a tech-priest to minister to its bellicose heart, a moderati to run the crew and a princeps to command it.

A Knight was the perfect meld of flesh and steel, a mighty war machine at the command of a single pilot, a warrior who had the confidence to wield its power and the humility to know that, despite that power, he was not invincible.

Maven strode back towards the reactor complex, spreading his auspex net wide to pick up any of the feral servitors that might have broken away from the main pack, though he suspected he would not find any. Even if he did, what threat did a few servitors represent?

Broken and irreparably damaged servitors or those whose cranial surgery had failed to take were often simply dumped in the pallidus, the name given to the toxic, ashen hinterlands that existed between the Martian forges. The vast majority died, but some survived, though to call their doomed existence life was overstating the reality of it.

Most simply attempted to carry out the task for which they had been created, marching back and forth through the wastelands with their fried brains unable to comprehend that they were no longer in service.

In some cases, the damage to their brains allowed them a fragile degree of autonomy and those unfortunate creatures survived by feasting on the dead. Drawn by warmth and power, many banded together in unthinking packs and infested Mechanicum facilities, attacking workers and draining current to sustain their wretched experience.

Such creatures required culling, which brought Maven’s thoughts full circle.

He lifted his head, the motion of the Knight’s cranial carapace following exactly. The crags around the reactor were empty and desolate, the red volcanic peaks scoured by dust clouds blown up by the high winds funnelled along the northern fossae.

The heart of the reactor facility sat six hundred metres back from the fencing that surrounded it, a collection of intricate buildings of pipes, cables and crackling antenna towers. A huge, domed structure sat in the middle of the complex, its surface studded with plugs and vents. The air rippled around the building and intense waves of heat and electromagnetism washed from it in tidal surges.

The trench of the Gigas Fossae was dotted with several fusion reactors, but the facility upon the rocky slopes surrounding the northern impact crater of Ulysses Patera was the largest, and had been built by Magos Ipluvien Maximal.

Adept Maximal was one of the most senior magi of Mars, and his fusion reactors supplied power to a great many vassal forges dotted around the Tharsis uplands. Such arrangements were common across the Red Planet, ancient treaties binding the clans and forges together in reciprocal pacts of protection and supply that allowed such varied groups with conflicting needs to coexist. As well as allied forges, Maximal had exchanged bonds of fealty and supply with a number of warrior orders, including many of the most revered Titan Legios.

‘So why aren’t they here?’ Maven muttered to himself. ‘Too busy arguing amongst themselves is why.’

Maven put thoughts of the increasing tensions on Mars from his mind and made his way forwards, swinging the auspex around by twisting his mount’s upper body, pulverising boulders as its enormous weight crushed them beneath its stride. He needed to cover every approach to the reactor complex, and threat or not, Stator would haul him over the coals were any feral servitors to get past him.

He felt the rocks break beneath Equitos Bellum’s feet, the sensation akin to having his body and senses magnified to the size of the Knight. Mechanicum Protector squads at the edge of the reactor complex saw him and bowed respectfully as his Knight shook the ground with its heavy strides.

Menials and servitors laboured to maintain the giant reactor functions, their movements slow and sluggish in heavily reinforced haz-mat suits. A huge transformer crackled with energy flares, metres-thick cabling and a lattice of conductor towers linking it to the reactor. Blue lightning sparked from the transformer, rippling along the length of ductwork that was visible before the cables delved beneath the regolith and bedrock towards destinations all across the quadrant of Tharsis.

Maven blinked as he felt a tremor through the auspex return, a fleeting impression of something moving on the far side of the reactor. He focused his attention on that part of the cockpit display, enhancing the imagery in an attempt to see what he was receiving.

‘Blood of the Machine,’ he swore as the auspex connected with something big, something throwing off a spider-like pattern of electromagnetic energy much larger than a servitor. For the briefest second it appeared as though a great many other signals accompanied it.

An instant later and it was gone, blinked out as though it had never existed.

More ghost returns faded in and out, and Maven was suddenly unsure as to whether he’d seen anything at all.

A Knight’s auspex was hardwired into the pilot’s senses via a spinal plug, and interpreting the incoming data streams was an art form in itself, a blend of intuition and hard fact. In any case, it was difficult to be sure of anything in this region, the flare-offs and radiation bleeds from the reactor playing havoc with the veracity of auspex returns.

Then the spider pattern flashed again and this time he was certain.

Something was out there, and it wasn’t squawking on any friendly channel.

‘Preceptor, I think I have something,’ said Maven.

‘Define “something”, came the voice of Preceptor Stator.

‘I’m not sure, but it’s coming from the opposite side of the reactor complex.’

‘More servitors?’ asked Cronus.

Maven chewed his bottom lip, willing the sensor return to come again so he could report something more concrete, but the portion of the Manifold dedicated to auspex returns remained steadfastly awash with background radiation.

Still, he was sure that whatever was out there was more than simply feral servitors.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Something bigger.’

The starship banked as its pilot adjusted the angle of attack to allow it to enter the atmosphere safely. The view through the panel that Rho-mu 31 had rendered transparent slid away and Dalia rapped her knuckles against it.

‘I’m assuming this isn’t glass,’ she said. ‘What is it?’

‘Photomalleable steel,’ said Rho-mu 31. ‘A burst of current from my stave alters the structure of the molecular bonds within the metal to allow certain forms of light waves to pass through it.’

‘I haven’t heard of anything like it,’ said Dalia, amazed at the potential for such a material.

‘Few beyond the Magma City have,’ said Rho-mu 31. ‘It is a creation of Adept Zeth.’

Dalia nodded and returned her attention to the view through the transparent metal. No sooner had she done so, than she found herself staring in wonder at an array of enormous structures, surely too large to have been created by the artifice of mere humans.

Colossal orbital constructions filled the heavens above Mars, a near contiguous array of gigantic shipyards and construction facilities. Dalia pressed her face to the cold panel, craning her neck to see how far the unbelievable conglomeration stretched. Try as she might, she could see no end to the gleaming docks, one end of the arc of steel rising up beyond sight above the ship she travelled in, the other vanishing around the curve of the Red Planet.

‘The Ring of Iron,’ said Rho-mu 31. ‘The original exploratory fleets were constructed here and much of the expeditionary fleets were built in these docks.’

‘It’s huge,’ said Dalia, cursing herself for stating something so obvious.

‘They are the largest space docks in the galaxy, though the shipwrights of Jupiter will soon lay claim to the largest ship ever constructed when they complete the Furious Abyss.’

Dalia heard wounded pride in Rho-mu 31’s remark and smiled at the notion that a servant of the Mechanicum would display envy. She returned her gaze to the sight beyond the starship’s hull, seeing firefly sparks dotting the Ring of Iron where new vessels were being constructed by armies of shipwrights.

‘What’s that?’ she asked, pointing towards what appeared to be a nebulous cloud of dust and reflective particles just over the horizon.

‘That is the remains of an active construction site,’ said Rho-mu 31. ‘The latest ships to be built here have but recently departed.’

‘Where have they gone?’ asked Dalia, eager to learn what far-off place the new vessels were bound for.

‘They were commissioned for Battlefleet Solar,’ explained Rho-mu 31, ‘but the Warmaster issued a new tasking order to have them despatched to take part in the Isstvan campaign.’

Dalia heard the note of disapproval in Rho-mu 31’s voice, as though it were the greatest sin imaginable to change procedure and alter previously issued orders.

‘Look, there is the fleet they were to join,’ said Rho-mu 31, indicating berths high above them, and Dalia’s mouth dropped open as the mighty warships of Battlefleet Solar came into view.

Distance rendered the fleet small, but to even recognise them and identify individual vessels from so far told Dalia that they were craft of unimaginable scale. From here they were sleek darts with sloping angular prows like ploughs and long, gothic bodies like great palaces hurled into the heavens and wrought into the forms of starships.

The ships were soon lost to sight as creeping fire slid along the length of the starship, the heat of passing through the atmosphere of Mars rippling along the shielded hull of the vessel. Dalia felt a steadying hand on her shoulder, a heavy, metallic hand that gripped her tightly as the starship continued its descent.

Flames and heat distortion soon obscured the view, but within the space of a few minutes it faded, and Dalia saw the surface of Mars in all its glory.

Vast cities of steel, larger and more magnificent than any of the hives of Terra, reared up from the surface, gargantuan behemoths that vomited fire and smoke into the sky. It was called the Red Planet, but precious little remained of the surface that could be identified as that hue. Mountains had been clad in metal and light, and cities and districts perched on the peaks and plateaux of the world named for a long forsaken god of war.

Glittering streams of light twisted and snaked through the few areas of cratered wilderness between the unimaginably vast conurbations, transit routes and mag-lev lines, and towering pyramids of glass and steel reared up like the tombs of forgotten kings.

‘I’ve read about Mars, but I never thought to see it,’ breathed Dalia. To see so many wondrous things in so short a time was nothing less than overwhelming.

‘The Martian priesthood does not encourage visitors,’ said Rho-mu 31. ‘They believe the soil of Mars to be sacred.’

‘Isn’t the idea of things being sacred, well… not allowed any more?’

‘In a manner of speaking, yes,’ agreed Rho-mu 31. ‘The Emperor advances the credo that belief in gods is a falsehood, but a condition of the Treaty of Olympus was that he swore not to interfere with our structures and society when Mars and Terra were joined.’

‘So the Mechanicum believes in a god?’

‘That is a question with no easy answer, Dalia Cythera. I do not believe in faith, but ask no more, for we are coming in to land and you will need to hold on tightly.’

Dalia nodded as the ship banked sharply, and she watched the world below tilt crazily as the pilot brought them around a shining pyramid bathed in light and topped with a great carving of an eye.

‘The Temple of All Knowledge,’ said Rho-mu 31, anticipating her question.

Dalia felt her stomach lurch as the ship dropped suddenly and a thick curtain of yellow smog obscured the view outside.

They flew through the smog for several hours until, as suddenly as it had appeared, it vanished, and Dalia cried out in terror as she saw that they were heading straight into the glassy black flanks of a towering mountain.

1.02

Once again, Dalia’s stomach lurched as the craft’s altitude altered rapidly, climbing at a sickeningly steep angle as the black cliff-face drew closer with terrifying rapidity. Sulphurous fumes wreathed the top of the mountain and the craft plunged into them. Dalia closed her eyes, expecting any moment to have her life ended as they smashed into the immovable mass of rock.

At last she opened her eyes when the feared impact didn’t come and peered breathlessly through the transparent panel in the side of the craft. A sea of glowing red lava heaved and swelled beneath her, the volcanic heart of the planet bubbling up within the giant mountain.

Her view of the volcano’s caldera shimmered and danced in the incredible heat radiating from the lava, and though she was insulated from the unimaginable temperatures, Dalia felt uncomfortably warm just looking at the molten rock.

‘Arsia Mons,’ said Rho-mu 31. ‘A dead volcano brought back to life to serve the Mechanicum.’

‘It’s incredible,’ breathed Dalia, looking over to the far side of the caldera, where a huge, industrial city-structure fashioned from what looked like blackened steel and stone rose from the lava like the broadside of a submerged starship. Enormous gates steamed in the lava, and mighty pistons of gleaming ceramite hissed and groaned as they rose and fell. Billowing clouds of superheated steam roared and vaporised like the breath of a host of great dragons, and Dalia saw that they were gaining height to fly over the bizarre structure.

Closer now, she could truly appreciate its enormous size and complexity, a precise series of sluices, overflow channels and pressure gates to keep the lava in motion and circulating through the system that fed the incredible sight on the far side of the volcano.

Guided down the flanks of the mountain in enormous chasms a hundred metres wide, the lava from the volcano fed a vast artificially constructed lagoon, an inland sea of glowing, hissing, bubbling molten rock.

Built upon this sea was the Magma City, and what a city it was...

Dalia’s breath was snatched from her throat as she saw the mighty forge, surely the domain of Rho-mu 31’s master, Adept Koriel Zeth.

All across the bubbling, flame-wracked surface of the lava, blackened cylinder towers soared from the magma beside giant structures in the shapes of flat-topped pyramids that belched fire and steam. Twisting roadways, boulevards, open squares, wide platforms and entire industrial complexes sat upon the raging heat of the lava in defiance of the awesome caged power of the planet’s molten fire.

A golden route traced a path towards a mighty structure of silver in the centre of the colossal metropolis, but it was quickly lost to sight as the craft descended. Thick retaining walls of dark stone surrounded the lagoon, such that it resembled a lava-filled crater, and a colossal plain of sub-hives, hab-zones, landing fields, runways, control towers and a vast container port filled the horizon behind it, abutting the cliff-like walls of the volcano.

Continents of steel-sided containers sprawled outwards from the Magma City, towering skyscrapers of materiel: weapons, ammunition and supplies manufactured in the factories of Mars for the Warmaster’s armies of conquest.

Fleets of enormous vessels filled the skies over the port, rising and descending to the surface of Mars in a veritable procession of steel and retro-fire. Each one was destined for worlds far distant from the Solar System and as valuable to the Great Crusade as any warrior or battleship.

A forest of lifter-cranes swung and groaned over the container port, their heavy, counterbalanced arms moving with leisurely speed in an intricate ballet as an army of servitors, loaders and container skiffs packed the holds of the enormous bulk conveyors with as much as could physically be contained.

Dalia held onto the stanchion as the ship banked, heading towards a landing platform within the city, a glowing cross of light sitting on a boom of metal that jutted out into the lava. The view through the photomalleable steel rippled in the heat, and Dalia found herself becoming nauseous with the disorientation.

Rho-mu 31 placed his stave against the wall, and once more the side of the vessel became opaque. The hull began to vibrate and screech as they descended through the blistering thermals.

‘Do they ever have crashes here?’ asked Dalia, knowing that such accidents could have no survivors. ‘I mean, have any ships gone into the lava?’

‘Sometimes,’ said Rho-mu 31. ‘It is best not to think of it.’

‘Too late,’ muttered Dalia, as the noises of the ship’s engines changed in pitch from a low rumble to a high-pitched shriek, attitude thrusters firing to correct the riptide air currents. The pilot was clearly having difficulty in lowering their ship to the landing platform, and Dalia closed her eyes, trying not to think of what would happen if they went into the lava.

She tried not to picture the lava searing the meat from her bones, the fumes choking her and the agonising pain of watching her body disintegrate in front of her. Of course she would not live long enough to experience these things, but her mind delighted in tormenting her with these dreadful visions of catastrophe.

Dalia took a deep breath and forced the images from her mind, fighting to keep them from overwhelming her. She felt a thump on the underside of the craft and her eyes flashed open.

‘What was that? Has something gone wrong?’

Rho-mu 31 looked at her strangely, and though the bronze mask concealed his features, Dalia could sense his amusement at her panic.

‘No,’ he said. ‘We have simply landed.’

Dalia let out a shuddering sigh of relief, pathetically grateful to be on terra firma once again… though should that more properly be mars firma? Having said that, how solid could the ground be considered when it was somehow supported on an ocean of liquid rock that could burn her to cinders in the blink of an eye?

A hiss of escaping gases drew her attention to the ramp at the rear of the vessel as it began to lower with a squeal of pistons. A wall of hot air rushed to fill the compartment and Dalia gasped at the sudden heat. Sweat immediately prickled on her brow and her mouth dried of saliva in an instant.

‘Throne alive, it’s hot!’ she said.

‘Be thankful for the heat exchangers and gas separators,’ said Rho-mu 31. ‘You would be overcome by the temperature and fumes of this place in moments without them.’

Dalia nodded, following Rho-mu 31 from the interior of the starship. The other members of his squad moved in behind her as she made her way down the ramp, shielding her eyes from the vivid glare of the lava lagoon and the brightness of the rust-coloured sky. After a day or so in the belly of a starship, she realised how starved of the sight of the sky she had been. Even as a scribe in the bowels of the Librarium Technologica, she had been able to see a sliver of sky through the high liturgical windows.

The sky here was low and threatening, the air thick and heavy with particulate matter billowing upwards from flame-wreathed refineries in the far distance. Though she knew the clouds gathering in the distance were not those of weather patterns, but pollution, she could not help but shiver to see them squatting on the horizon like a quiescent threat.

High railings surrounded the landing platform, and tall silver poles topped with buzzing, hissing machinery punctuated the barrier every few metres – the heat exchangers and gas separators Rho-mu 31 had spoken of, she presumed. A swirling cloud of steam surrounded each one, and dripping pipes ran the length of each pole, vanishing into the decking of the platform to dissipate their heat elsewhere.

‘It must take vast amounts of energy to disperse such huge quantities of heat,’ she said, pointing at the machines on the silver poles. ‘What method do you use to filter the harmful gases from the air? Synthetic membranes, adsorption, or cryogenic distillation?’

‘You know of such things?’ asked Rho-mu 31.

‘Well, I’ve read about them,’ explained Dalia. ‘A number of the old texts from the ruins in the Merican deserts mentioned them and, as with everything I read…’

‘It slotted home in the archive of your memory as a fact to be recovered at a later date.’

‘I guess so,’ said Dalia, faintly embarrassed by the reverent tone she heard in his voice.

She looked away from him as she saw an ochre-skinned vehicle emerge from the nearest structure, a tall tower of black metal, and make its way along the boom towards them. It moved on a number of thin, stilt-like legs, moving with a quirky, mechanical gait, like a stubby centipede. As it drew nearer, she saw the wide-bodied mass of a servitor fused and hard-wired into the front section where one might otherwise expect a driver to sit.

The vehicle came to a halt beside them, the multitude of legs twisting it around on its central axis and lowering it to the deck plates.

Rho-mu 31 opened a door in the side of the vehicle and indicated that Dalia should climb aboard. She stepped onto the centipede vehicle and took a seat on the metal bench along its side, feeling a thrill travel through her at the thought of making a journey on such an outlandish mode of transport.

Rho-mu 31 joined her, but the remaining Mechanicum Protectors did not board.

‘Where are we going?’ asked Dalia, as the vehicle rose up onto its legs once again and set off with a scuttling, side-to-side motion towards the dark tower.

‘We are going to see Adept Zeth,’ said Rho-mu 31. ‘She is most anxious to meet you.’

‘Me? Why? I don’t understand, what does she want with me?’

‘Enough questions, Dalia Cythera,’ cautioned Rho-mu 31, not unkindly. ‘Adept Zeth does nothing without purpose and you are here to serve that purpose. What manner your service will take is for her to decide.’

The walking vehicle drew near the tower of black metal, and as Dalia looked back towards the gathering clouds, a sliver of fear wormed its way past her wonder at all the new and incredible sights.

She had been brought to Mars with a purpose in mind, but what might that purpose be and would she live to regret the journey?

The shadow of the tower swallowed her, and Dalia shivered despite the awful heat.

Maven’s first warning was the transformer exploding in a cascade of flames and whipping electrical discharge. A hammering volley of laser fire, like a hundred lightning bolts ripping from the rocks, sawed through the looped coils of metal and liquefied them in an instant. His display dimmed to protect him from blindness, but before the transformer blew, he saw the outline of the aggressor.

Easily as huge as Equitos Bellum, it was spherical and heavily armoured, a pair of monstrous weapon arms at its sides and a myriad of flexible, metallic tentacles crouched over its shoulders like scorpions’ tails.

A trio of convex blisters glowed like baleful eyes on its front, a fiery yellow glow burning from them with a hateful, dead light. The white heat of the explosion obscured the unknown attacker, and by the time the glow had diminished and the Knight’s auto-senses had recovered, the war machine had vanished.

With a thought, Equitos Bellum was on a war footing, weapon generators firing from idle to active, and the high-energy cells that drove his Knight switching to battle mode. He immediately stepped his Knight to one side, crouching low as he saw scores of figures pouring from the rocks with weapons raised.

His eyes narrowed as he recognised them as Protector squads, servants of the adepts of Mars. Things were really getting out of hand.

‘Stator! Cronus! Are you getting this?’

‘Affirmative,’ barked Stator. ‘Engage enemy forces at will. We will be with you directly.’

‘Enemy forces?’ hissed Maven. ‘They’re Protectors!’

‘And they are attacking a facility we are duty bound to protect. Now fight!’

Maven cursed under his breath and shrugged, the huge bulk of Equitos Bellum attempting to match the gesture as he marched the machine into battle. He leaned forward in his command seat, lifting his arms and twisting his head as he sought out the enemy war machine.

What was it, he wondered? Some new form of battle robot or servitor-manned automaton?

Maven shivered as he remembered the dead light in the machine’s sensor blisters, feeling as though it had been looking at him, assessing him and then dismissing him. That thought alone angered him and he could feel the intemperate fury of Equitos Bellum meshing with him in a desire to do harm to the attackers.

The Protectors in grey cloaks were advancing with relentless pace through the reactor complex, gunning down unresisting servitors with quick bursts of laser fire, and engaging Maximal’s Protectors as they sought to defend their master’s holdings.

Maven unleashed a torrent of las-fire from his right arm and the ground erupted in a storm of metal and earth. The ruin of the enemy corpses geysered upwards, a knot of attackers reduced to puffs of exploding meat and boiled blood.

A flurry of gunfire rippled towards him, and he flinched as he felt a power field flash out of existence. Like a Titan, a Knight had a finite bank of energy shields to protect it, but where a Titan’s reactor could replenish its shield strength in time, the Knight’s battery could not. Equitos Bellum was effectively immune to most individual weapons, but the Protectors were combining their fire with accuracy of timing that spoke of a communal battle-link.

Another shield winked out of existence and Maven turned his war machine to face the new threat: a cadre of Protectors armed with long-barrelled high-energy weapons. Maven saw silver bands around each Protector’s skull, recognising the hard-wired component of a targeting web.

He stepped sideways as a blistering beam of light leapt from each of the Protectors’ weapons and achieved confluence where he had been standing not a moment before. He had seconds to act.

Maven’s weapons blazed in a hurricane of light, enveloping the Protectors in a firestorm that obliterated them in an instant and left virtually no remains. He pushed onwards, past the flaming wreckage of the transformer as it spat arcs of lightning and secondary explosions detonated within its ruined shape.

Where the hell had the war machine that had done this gone? And where in the name of Taranis were Stator and Cronus?

An explosion mushroomed skyward from deeper within the complex, and Maven turned Equitos Bellum towards it, the heavy, thudding strides of the Knight shaking the ground with the weight of its tread. Another explosion roared and Maven guided his Knight around the curve of the reactor dome to see his foe with its back to him, unleashing solid spears of plasma flame that ripped through the armoured skin of the fusion reactor’s dome.

The machine’s bulk was enormous, almost as wide as it was tall, and it was equipped with a fearsome array of weapons – some Maven recognised and some that were a mystery to him. Where a Knight’s mode of locomotion was its legs, this machine was mounted on a heavy track unit, blood and oil coating it where it had crushed unfortunate servitors beneath its bulk.

Sheets of molten armour cascaded like burnt paper from the flanks of the reactor dome, and Maven saw it wouldn’t be long before the shielding around the caged fury of the fusion reactions within would be breached. Screaming sirens and flashing emergency lights warned of impending doom.

Despite the heavy crash of his Knight’s footfalls, Maven didn’t think his foe knew he was there. Maven siphoned power from non-essential systems as he prepared to open fire.

One of the metallic weapon-tentacles swivelled around on its mounting, and Maven had the sick feeling that it was looking right at him. Instantly, the rest of the weapon arms not already reducing the armour plating on the reactor to vaporised slag whipped around to face him.

Maven opened fire at the same time as the attacking war machine, his lasers impacting on a number of power fields before tearing one of the weapon arms from its mounting. The return fire struck Equitos Bellum full in the chest, collapsing the last power field and ripping through its armour. Agony roared up through the Manifold and Maven screamed, his hands jerking towards his chest as though the wound had been done to his own flesh.

The Knight staggered, and Maven fought to control its motion through the mist of jarring pain that seared through his every nerve-ending. He wrenched his consciousness from the damage done to Equitos Bellum and felt his vision clear as he saw the enemy war machine preparing to fire again.

Maven sidestepped and lowered his shoulder as another rippling beam of light seared towards him, burning through the edge of his shoulder armour. He flinched, but the damage was superficial and he locked in with his weapon arm, unleashing a stream of laser fire at his enemy’s back.

‘Got you!’ he shouted as the impacts marched over the machine.

The shout died in his throat as he saw that his shots had done absolutely no damage.

A rippling sheath of invisible energy surrounded the machine where none had existed a moment before. Only one explanation presented itself.

The machine was void-shielded.

‘Damn it,’ he hissed and his hesitation almost killed him as the machine spun around on its axis and took time out from its unravelling of the reactor’s armour to fire on him.

Dazzling lasers sleeted past him and Maven desperately walked his Knight back out of the line of fire. Flames boomed to life around him as fuel stores exploded, and he felt the heat wash over his mount. A lucky shot grazed the pilot’s compartment and a sharp crack sliced down through his vision.

Maven screamed in pain, his hand reaching up to his eyes where it felt as though a hot needle had been shoved through to the back of his skull. His vision blurred, but he kept moving, backwards and from side to side, to throw off his assailant’s aim.

Fresh streams of laser fire seared the air around him, but none touched him, and as the pain of Equitos Bellum’s wounding diminished, he dodged the machine’s incoming shots, its fire patterns following textbook sweeps.

But Raf Maven was anything but textbook.

He swung his Knight around the corner of the reactor, sweat streaming down his face and a thin trickle of blood dripping from his nose.

‘Stator! Cronus!’ he yelled. ‘Where in Ares’s name are you?’

Then the reactor exploded.

Click here to buy Mechanicum now

To the staff at Lee Rosy’s, for keeping my creative juices
flowing with a regular supply of tea and cookies.

A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

Paperback edition first published in Great Britain in 2008.

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* 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.