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The Sum of Its Parts – Extract

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THE SUM OF ITS PARTS

Rhuairidh James

Sebastian’s Lance is born almost at the very moment that the forge-fanes of Connaught V die. It is the last of some four hundred thousand Leman Russ battle tanks to come off the lines, its ident plates bearing the names of men, machines and creatures in between that are, without exception, dead or dying before it is even crewed. Sebastian’s Lance is named not for any particular battle or triumph and instead is granted its title by a scrap of concept-code running on some long-forgotten cogitator deep within the forge’s bowels.

There is something stately about the tank’s final procession along the assembly line. Once, this grand cathedral rang with sound: the tolling of pneumatic hammers upon armoured plates, the drone of assembly cant mingled with that of the fusion reactors, the low susurrus of countless servitors murmuring instructions to each other. Now, all that remains is the low hiss of the conveyor. Every servitor that can hold a weapon has been ripped from its cradle and placed on the front lines; as Sebastian’s Lance leads the solitary funerary march for its forge-fane, these industrial cyborgs are manning its walls, dully instructing fallen comrades to affix rivet three hundred and thirteen as they crush mutant skulls between huge mechanical claws.

It falls to the high priesthood of Connaught V to complete the assembly. These venerable magi have not served on the lines for centuries. Brecht-Delta-Nine protests at first, claiming that he cannot spare his attention for a single moment, that his full bandwidth is required to manage his skitarii clades on the surface. The others know the truth, but, realising that time is short, give Brecht the kindness of not sharing their own telemetry – Brecht’s clades are all long destroyed, now sinking into the dirt, all utterly irrecoverable.

Even in these dire straits, a conclave of tech-priests of such rank could have worked wonders unseen for centuries. Rivalries that have stymied cooperation for centuries give way to the easy camaraderie of the assembly line. They observe upon the pity of it all, of just what they could have made together had they only done this sooner. It is briefly mooted that Sebastian’s Lance could be modified and improved, that perhaps, properly upgraded, it could swing the tide of battle. Odds are calculated. Petabytes of fierce debate pass through the noosphere for a few pregnant seconds. Votes are cast, and a resolution is reached, five to zero. Brecht, consumed by a grief that he is attempting to convince himself is logical, abstains.

The magi decide that they will finish Sebastian’s Lance exactly as the servitors would, all along the lines laid down in the holy STC. This will be their final, deepest act of worship before the Omnissiah and their ancient compact with the Imperium – to do exactly as they promised. Sebastian’s Lance will be utterly indistinguishable from any of the vast armoured battalions of tanks built on Connaught V, save one thing. While each of those machines bore tiny flaws, errors of manufacture and minuscule modifications made for the sake of time, convenience or resource, Sebastian’s Lance will be perfect. The magi set about their work in silence, their electoos occasionally flickering with the transfer of data. None remark on the rapid decline of the forces above, of the ping ping ping of each battle-clade giving its final broadcast. They know this is their final act; they steel themselves against any human sentimentality. They fall at the very last hurdle, modifying the tank in a single way, inscribing a final message into an inner plate.

As agreed, Sebastian’s Lance is sent forth to join the ranks of the Astra Militarum. What was to be the first of a newly forged armoured battalion instead is the last vehicle to ever leave the forge-fane, the lone passenger on a servitor-driven train capable of transporting legions of skitarii across the planet. The starport is a little further from the fighting, but most of its crews are on the front or dead, and so the shipment is inspected by a servitor, who notes the following:

ARMOURED BATTALION

10,000 UNITS

>ORDER FULFILLED

>>ORDER NOTES

>SOME UNITS MISSING DUE TO UNFORESEEN CIRCUMSTANCES

The servitor furrows its brow. Something is itching at the scarred regions of its brain that once connected to emotional centres long since removed for deviancy. It looks again, and notices that words have been scratched into the inner-hull plates. They read: NO BOLD ACT IS TOO SMALL TO BE WITHOUT CONSEQUENCE.

The servitor processes this. It amends its report – >MINOR DAMAGE SUSTAINED DURING CONSTRUCTION – and proceeds to cover up the marred plate with a gout of enamel paint. Once the damage is repaired, Sebastian’s Lance is sent on its way, a lone passenger aboard a bulk hauler built to transport hundreds of armoured vehicles across the stars. Connaught V falls not two hours later, felled not by its invaders but by a barrage of orbital lance fire from Mechanicus battle group Kades-88, whose commanders, via consensus decision, have ruled the world an acceptable loss.

‘Right then!’ The commander keeps his voice bright and brusque. The children – he can’t think of the Whiteshields as anything else, they’re so green, so painfully clean – need the reassurance. Millennia of industrial war have shaped the human psyche by degrees. An infant born in this age will know to duck in open ground, to zigzag when sprinting towards an enemy position, to cringe at the hiss of a mortar shell above. However, the children – the Whiteshields – still fear the tank. They cast longing, scared looks at the other soldiers, who march out into the open boulevards of the occupation zone with the sky blissfully above their heads. Logically, the Whiteshields know that the tank is a bulwark of safety, that in a couple of hours, most of the infantry will be raw and bloody from street fighting, while the tank crews will be safe in their metal shells. However, there is something cave-like and unseemly about the tank. There is the feeling of no return to slipping through the turret hatch and into its churning bowels.

The commander, a hive-rat through and through, knows the feeling. This is not the overwhelming crush of the deep habs, the homely claustrophobia of the starch line. To enter an armoured vehicle is to concede one’s personal space, comfort and humanity to a machine. The hive-born joke – ‘Like duct running, eh?’ – to mask their fear, while those who grew up under open skies wear their horror openly. Servitors and skitarii are, at least, cut down to fit, physically and mentally. In an armoured vehicle one is horribly aware of the gangliness of one’s form, of how poorly the human body fits in the modern conception of warfare, of how fragile flesh would be if the armour was to buckle. The commander knows the fear. He dispels it again with a clap of his hands, and again, the clarion prayer: ‘Right then!’

There is a comfort to serving in a tank crew not present in other units. You live together or you die together. This crew will likely be with him for the rest of his military career, short or long. So, he drills them hard, having them perform pointless yet complex tasks which will teach them to work together. He is just cruel enough to plant a seed of hate in the heart of each recruit, just enough for them to love each other and to share secret looks of disdain at his barked orders. He picks one would-be tanker at random for insubordination and has them thrown off the crew and sent into the ranks of the infantry, gasping with indignation and waving his commission like a battle standard. Everyone knows the boy has just been sentenced to death. In the end, everyone gets in the tank.

The commander taps the dials, pulls on tabs and checks under seats. He signals the enginseer and suggests that the machine-man perform his routine checks somewhere else. The enginseer has served with the common soldiery enough to know it is wise to ignore what is about to happen and obliges. The commander gathers his crew in a huddle, and together, they begin tweaking and modifying Sebastian’s Lance in dozens of tiny, essential ways. The commander has made these modifications in every vehicle he has served in since his promotion; he has learned each one from commanders before him. One of the children risks citing regulations: ‘It’s off book, sir!’ The commander is as imperious and benevolent as Solar Macharius himself: ‘Sometimes, one must innovate to succeed in the noble art of battle.’ This is almost enough to silence the new tank crew, but one remains obstinate. ‘You could be flogged for this, sir.’ The commander grins mirthlessly. ‘And you’ll be punished worse for watching and letting me do this than I will be for doing it. So no lip.’ This, at last, has the desired effect. The rest of the modifications occur without a hitch.

The enginseer comes back. Somewhere in the remaining flesh on his face, muscles that may have once connected to an eyebrow twitch. The commander slips him a ration chit. The enginseer is a child of both Mars and Cadia, and recognises this ritual offering as sacred in its own way. He signals the battalion leader that he has completed thorough initial checks of Sebastian’s Lance and it is ready to leave.

Before they roll out of the depot and into the compliance action outside, the commander orders one of the recruits to remove his helmet.

‘Why, sir?’ The recruit has been told, in no uncertain terms, that voluntary removal of one’s helmet from one’s head in a combat zone will result in a commissar suddenly and violently testing the integrity of said head.

‘So I can box your ears when you question my orders. Off.’

The recruit takes his helmet off. The commander ruffles his hair.

Sebastian’s Lance goes on to fight in every single major engagement of the compliance action. At Tevaster, it covers the withdrawal of some one thousand men. At San Leor, it forms part of an ambush that sees an entire rebel supply column captured. At Calas Mons, Sebastian’s Lance breaks the rebel lines and is the first into the trenches. The crew dedicate the success to their fallen commander. The old bastard is canonised, his skull sent to adorn a sconce millions of light years from his home. The crew are reassigned, and all meet more or less heroic deaths in time. Sebastian’s Lance is sent into the churning maze of the Munitorum, after a refit where most of the commander’s modifications are reverted. The assessors miss the laspistol under the commander’s seat and the note with it: For anyone caught behind the lines with a commander braver or crueller than ours – you’ll need this.

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