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Vengeance of the Immortal – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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Vengeance of the Immortal

Gav Thorpe

The air swirled with a thick purple smoke from a hundred censers as Sythika ascended the gantry to the head of Evocatus. Each tread of the princeps maximus on the metal steps was accompanied by the crash of metal drums on the loading deck below so that it seemed her footsteps were as mighty as those of the Warlord Titan she was about to board.

She looked over to the head of the giant war machine, staring ahead through the locking pins of the docking superstructure. It was fashioned like the helm of a knight of ancient Earth. The viewers of the main bridge had dark blue lenses in the eyes, rivets the size of fists lining the overlapping plates. She gave the silent engine a slight nod of respect inside the hood of her robe and continued up the steps to the bridge that linked the stair to the open access door in the carapace.

Behind Sythika came the moderati, Scanntor and Pharuis, left and right hands, then Dolco and Gasia, left and right carapace respectively. Their MIU cables trailed behind them like plaits, as did Sythika’s, carried by small servocherubs with thrumming wings.

Ten steps behind the piloting crew came the enginseers, four in total, headed by Kauath Sahsu, the enginseer dominatus. They broke away from the short procession to head into the bowels of Evocatus where they would finish the preparations to awaken the beast of war.

Chanting drifted up from the choir behind the line of censer-bearing tech-priests below, praising the history and victories of the Warlord. Battlefields and worlds dating back thousands of years, to conflicts that pre-dated even the Imperium by a millennium.

The names of the many princeps was not mentioned – the roll of honour of past commanders held in the archives was too long for such recital, numbering as it did seven hundred and twenty-eight individuals. Such fleeting individuals were unimportant in the schemes of the Cult Mechanicus, a necessary fleshy component required for the running of the god of war they had raised up for the glory of the Omnissiah.

Sythika knew her place well enough. Evocatus would, Machine-God willing, outlast her tenure even if she lived long enough to die of natural causes. Such was the drain on a princeps body and mind she could hope for at most three decades service in total, a blink in the timeless life of a Titan.

Even so, her rank accorded her some respect and she halted at the metal door before stepping into the ruddily lit interior. She looked down to acknowledge the banners of the Legio Praesagius raised by three companies of skitarii assembled in her honour, the standards of the True Messengers black and gold like the machines that made up their ranks.

Ducking inside, she moved from the heady, rarefied atmosphere of the docking temple to the unadorned, functional corridors and bulkheads of the Titan’s interior. Sythika could feel the gentle vibrations of the idling reactor, the sense of it causing a frisson of excitement to run through her.

She made her way quickly along the passages to the bridge, and took up position in the command throne at the centre of the Titan’s head. Below and in front of the princeps maximus, the moderati settled at their stations.

‘Requesting MIU interface,’ they chorused, having spent so much time in each other’s company that their thoughts ran to the same rhythm even before they were bound together with the spirit of Evocatus.

Together they slid their cables into the waiting circuitry, fingers hovering above the activation runes. Sythika did the same, plugging the wire hanging from the back of her neck into the neural socket in the arm of the command chair. She met the looks of each moderati in turn and nodded, as she had done forty-eight times before, the routine as much a ritual as the censer-swinging and chants that continued outside and were being carried out in the engine rooms.

‘Blessed Machine-God,’ she said quietly, intoning the prescribed the words of the Archaia Titanicus. ‘Grant us this day the grace of your favours. Gift us the boon of knowledge so that we might learn of your will. Hear our thoughts and carry them upon the beam of wire-light to the mind of our great protector.’

She took a breath, anticipation and expectation vying with anxiety for several seconds.

‘Let’s wake up the old beast,’ she told the others, and touched the Rune of Activation.

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A Black Library Publication

Published in Great Britain in 2017 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd,
Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.

Vengeance of the Immortal © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2017. Vengeance of the Immortal, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, The Horus Heresy, The Horus Heresy Eye logo, Space Marine, 40K, Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000, the ‘Aquila’ Double-headed Eagle logo, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.
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ISBN: 978-1-78572-567-8

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