The Harrowing - Rob Sanders

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  The Harrowing – Rob Sanders

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  The Harrowing

  Rob Sanders

  Let it be shown that at elapsid/nullus-beta, Dartarion Varix of the First Hort, Third Harrow and strike commander of the Alpha Legion, allowed his hearts once again to beat to the rhythm of war. Operative-unit 55/Phi-silon observes mission subsequence initiations, while maintaining full noospheric and haptic integration.

  Gamma, delta, epsilon… commence.

  New target: Mechanicum super-heavy ark freighter Omnissiax, registered out of the Heliodyne shipyards with charters for forge worlds on the Dextura shipping lanes. At the time of action-initiation, the Omnissiax is under the command of Arkmaster Manus Cruciam, with Magos Dominus Oronti Praeda assigned to security measures and Collegium-Mandati Jerulian Hax responsible for temple-freight transportation and ritual observance. Deific-cargo inspected at Heliodyne and logged as Titan Battle Group Astramax of the Legio Perennia, fresh from inception at the Gallileon temple-forge, Bronta-Median.

  Worlds sundered in the name of the Machine-God: none.

  Battlegroup confirmed kills: none.

  Ranking Princeps Majoris Alvar Pallidon of the Warmonger-class Titan Abyssus Edax. Tribute destination recorded at Bronta-Median as the Solar System. Manifests list Ordo Reductor siege machines, two hundred battle tanks and armoured transports of various signification ready for force allocation, as well as five hundred suits of Mark IV Legiones Astartes battleplate, intended for the VII Legion. Newly-appointed Fabricator General Kane to personally receive cargo at Terra. Wayfarage estimated at two solar months.

  Transit interrupted twenty-two days into voyage after reception of new orders and subroutines from Gaius Trasq, Fabricator Ancillaris – the Omnissiax and Mechanicum light cruiser escort Dentilicon ordered to break warp at the Gnostica System and report to the garrison world of Callistra Mundi.

  I patrol the vaulted cargo-chamber of one of the ark freighter’s many sub-holds. My true name is long forgotten, but my designation is 55/Phi-silon. I am sparatoi, a ‘sown man’ and agent operative of the Alpha Legion. I adjust my disguise: ocular-mask, tattered cloak, battery-pack and las-lock rifle. I present as a Mechanicum tech-thrall, one of thousands throughout the vast ship, assigned to onboard security and the mind numbing patrol of the vessel’s holds.

  My enhancements are real. My disguise. My sacrifice. My mind, however, is still my own. The Alpha Legion needs agents who can think for themselves. I was thrall to the XX Legion long before I went under the bladesaws of augurnauts and surgeo-cyberseers, volunteering for the adaptive surgeries that would make my disguise complete.

  I kneel before the artistry and craftsmanship of Legiones Astartes battleplate. Rows and rows of paintless suits. Their systems await designation and the honour of Legion colours. They are blisteringly new. Spread throughout their number are suits that still sport their tarps from quality-control and sample testing at Bronta-Median. The fabric flaps in the perverse air currents that afflict a vessel of the ark freighter’s size.

  The army of empty suits is indeed a wonder. A blessed expression of the Omnissiah’s divine will. To an observer, however, such reverence might appear odd or misplaced in a wretched thrall, which is why I phased the auspex and lonely pict-feed lenses monitoring the deck before re-routing the servitors scheduled to inventory the sub-hold.

  ‘Report,’ Dartarion Varix orders.

  Like the fifty Alpha Legionnaires of his veteran demi-hort, he is hidden. They are all living weapons, concealed and deadly. Like the fang retracted within the serpent’s jaws, they are primed with death, ready to be revealed, waiting for the moment to strike.

  That moment is now. One of the tarp-draped suits of powered plate moves.

  Then another. Then another.

  Not all of the suits are empty. Now that their strike commander has broken dissimulatus, the veteran Alpha Legionnaires of the First Hort, Third Harrow can reveal themselves. Auto-suggestion engages. The implanted sus-an membrane of the legionnaires’ trans-human physique responds. Their state of suspended animation breaks. Hearts are allowed to beat once more.

  Punctuating the ranks of motionless suits, armoured Alpha Legionnaires begin to move. They tear the tarps from their armoured forms to reveal the indigo blue and cerulean blaze of their plate, the serpentine iconography that coils itself about their power-armoured limbs, and the infernal glow of optics burning to life.

  ‘You have been monitoring, my lord?’ this unit asks.

  ‘I have.’

  ‘Then you know that our warp translation is complete.’

  ‘I felt it.’

  A legionnaire approaches, almost indistinguishable from his brothers.

  ‘Strike commander.’

  ‘Prime,’ Varix acknowledges him. ‘Your host is ready?’

  ‘Always, my lord. Permission to secure the sub-hold.’

  ‘Authorised.’

  ‘The Omnissiax is passing through a debris field of remnant rock and planetesimals approaching the edge of the Gnostica System,’ I report through the modulations of my skull-riveted mask. As I do, the Alpha Legionnaires break formation, spreading out across the sub-hold. Umbra-pattern boltguns and sickle-mags of various ammunitions are handed out from cargo crates, while bulkheads and blast doors are secured.

  ‘Is the system contested?’

  ‘Planet-wide mutiny on Callistra Mundi, the primary world of the system,’ I continue. ‘Imperial auxilia garrison world and fleet anchorage.’

  ‘Who leads the rebellion in the Warmaster’s name?’

  ‘You’re not going to like it.’

  ‘My primarch’s objectives have been compromised and my mission parameters expanded beyond the remit of the forces at my disposal. What is there to like?’

  ‘Long-range voxmissions and noospherics betray encrypted legionary signatures.’

  ‘Alpha Legion,’ Varix confirms.

  The strike commander takes this revelation in his stride. Even to my cogitator-afflicted brain, this is a surprise. Have the heads of the hydra become tangled?

  ‘Perhaps they too are beyond their mission parameters,’ I offer, but Varix has moved on.

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘This is something else. Status?’

  ‘It’s a mess,’ I admit, ‘and perhaps as their commander intended. Forces on the ground, in the air and in the void are declaring for the Emperor or the Warmaster.’

  ‘The Legion?’

  ‘No sightings or pict captures reported,’ I tell him. ‘The Alpha Legion on Callistra Mundi have yet to reveal themselves.’

  ‘They will,’ Varix assures me. ‘The Omnissiax…’

  ‘Has been re-routed to deploy its god-machines,’ I inform the strike commander. ‘The battle group is to crush the rebellion.’

  ‘Well we can’t have that,’ Varix says. His words are laced with a dark humour. ‘We have to at least give my brother-commander a chance. He’s barely begun.’

  ‘Forgive me, lord,’ I venture, ‘But I am more concerned with our own disposition. The Omnissiax will be met and intercepted. Both traitors and loyalists will seek to harness its apocalyptic cargo.’

  ‘Well, quite,’ the strike commander says. He is already several steps ahead of me. ‘Is the Dentilicon still with us?’

  ‘Yes, my lord.’

  ‘Prime,’ Varix calls.

  The Alpha Legion officer acknowledges his commander: ‘Ready, my lord.’


  ‘This cargo will never reach the Solar System as planned,’ Varix tells us both. ‘We shall not arrive at Terra, but need is great out here. The battle group will undoubtedly be sucked into the conflict. I’m authorising secondary objectives and initiating proprietary action pseudaspis from a range of forty-four tactically antiphonus responses.’

  ‘Yes, my lord.’

  ‘I’m enacting these contingent protocols and pursuing secondary objectives under my own recognisance. These supersede my primarch’s orders. I don’t need your concordance, but for the identic record I want it.’

  ‘Pseudaspis, aye,’ the prime agrees.

  I nod also. ‘The Omnissiax carries a considerable force escort, my lord. We are not outfitted for this.’ Dartarion Varix nods his helm slowly. ‘Plus, loyalist forces have a void presence throughout the system. At least nine cruisers and assorted escorts.’

  ‘Duly noted, but that will not stop us. The order is given. The ark freighter is to be taken. Activate our agents. All legionnaires are authorised to enact kill-shot protocols. The Mechanicum is our enemy. We shall explain that fact to them with overwhelming force. In one hour, I want the Dentilicon neutralised and both the Omnissiax and her payload in the Alpha Legion’s hands. No one must ever know we were here. There can be no Mechanicum survivors. Is that understood?’

  ‘Yes, my lord,’ I reply.

  His lieutenant salutes. ‘It will be done.’

  ‘Then let us begin.’

  There are few who have experienced an Alpha Legion assault and have lived to report it. The XX Legion does not leave witnesses in its wake without good reason. A devastating combination of imagination, flawless coordination and calculated cruelty are the hallmarks of their particular brand of warfare. They dissemble. They disorientate. Then, with their foe’s resources and nerve stretched to breaking, they initiate a final attack so overwhelming in sheer force and tactical relentlessness, that their enemies’ efforts to resist collapse like a dying star.

  Warfare becomes annihilation. Battle becomes slaughter. Like an algebraic equation that has to be resolved, the Alpha Legion end their opponents to the last man, unless they conceive of some nefarious usefulness for those at their cold mercy.

  For the captured, these are often fates worse than a battlefield death.

  At elapsid/rho-nu-alpha, for the Arkmaster Manus Cruciam and his Mechanicum forces, the assault begins. By tapping into the ship’s noospheric conduits, this unit deduces that sanctioned scribe Quorvon Krish has just completed echo-plasmic transcription of the astropath Herontius Vame’s latest message from the Fabricator Ancillaris when he feels the excruciating stab of pain in his jaw. As one of Dartarion Varix’s sparatoi agents, Quorvon Krish has suffered an implant in his tooth that receives signals and transmissions in code. Utilising primitive electromagnetic spectrums that have not been employed by the Mechanicum in thousands of years, the transmissions are unlikely to be traced or intercepted. Each jolt of electricity through the bone corresponds to letters of a coded alphabet, in terms of length and sequence. It is an effective, if agonising, method of coordinating Alpha Legion forces already in situ on board the Omnissiax. This allows for the flexibility required of an Alpha Legion action.

  D-R-O-P T-H-E C-U-R-T-A-I-N

  Elapsid/sigma-lambda-digamma observes Quorvon Kitrica pull a snub autopistol from his robes, attach a suppressor and riddle Herontius Vame with ragged holes. It must feel good. Kitrica might allow himself that. He is twice the telepath that the truculent Vame was or ever would be. Lady Gandrella – who is little better – is also met with the staccato of thudding shots, as is Tech-Acolyte Hadreon as he returns from work on the visual logs, and sanctioned scribes Ransistron and Ezrail.

  B-R-I-N-G T-H-E S-I-L-E-N-C-E

  At exactly the same time, Transmechanic Nedicto Orx receives his activation and orders. He strangles his locum with the shaft of a coghammer, and then brains his team of transmat servitors. By elapsid/sigma-pi-epsilon, the ark freighter’s long range communications array has been plasma-fused, and the vox-relay is a coghammer-mangled mess.

  In the following five elapsids, the Omnissiax suffers a series of catastrophes the like of which its operational history has not known in a thousand years of service.

  Radiation leaks erupt on deck four and sub-decks five through eight. Reserve coolant chambers for the ark freighter’s plasma drive are evacuated, cold-flooding parts of the engineering section and initiating a sequence of further malfunctions. For a moment the torsion coils, cooling after warp translation, register a Geller field spike so profound that the magos empyr initiates a code-vermillion shutdown of all associated systems and sections. An electromagnetic pulse in the open-core ionisation cell stack causes sporadic power and vox transmission loss throughout the ark freighter, while artificial gravity experiences an unexplained calibration flux and continues to do so, reducing or intensifying agency by as much as twenty-five per cent in different parts of the vessel. Several exterior voidlocks, situated both port and starboard, are blown, transforming access ways and chambers from a howling maelstrom to a labyrinth of closed emergency bulkheads. Rune banks relay false probabilities, indicating that the hull breach was likely caused by the Omnissiax passing through a particle storm, probably the tail-wake of a traversing comet.

  By elapsid/tau-xi-alpha, the priests, enginseers and auto-savants rushing about the vessel are officially overreached by the myriad calamities now afflicting their ship.

  Logista Minora Auxabel is not one of them. She is doing exactly what she is supposed to be doing under the circumstances – rapidly assimilating the data-storm from her cipher engines and drawing logical conclusions. At elapsid/tau-xi-theta, she transmits her assessment to Arkmaster Manus Cruciam and Magos Dominus Oronti Praeda.

  Conclusion: the Omnissiax is under attack.

  In such circumstances, overall command reverts to the magos dominus. There isn’t even need of a discussion.

  In all likelihood the target of the attack is deemed to be the ark freighter’s precious cargo, rather than the ark freighter itself, rendering Manus Cruciam’s authority superfluous to command priorities. The arkmaster takes his place with Logista Auxubel. Their duty is to get the Omnissiax fully functional, as soon as possible. With the vox transmission and noospherics of all security thralls, gun servitors and roaming servo-skulls patched through the communications of Oronti Praeda’s ward force, the enemy’s movements are then fed straight back to the Alpha Legion through their planted sparatoi agents.

  Agents like this unit, 55/Phi-silon.

  As the strike commander predicts, the magos dominus does not waste time in following his own protocols and taking precautionary measures. Ordnamats are scrambled to the weapons short-decks, and the ark freighter’s meagre complement of defensive cannonry is charged and run out. Security on the bridge is tripled, and the ward force of Collegia temple-thralls, Thallaxii shock troops, Legio Cybernetica battle automata and tech-guard of the Seventh Cell-Sentinel Entropriad are directed with all despatch to the payload sections and the cargo bays. Seeing that they are led by the veteran skitarii Arch-Tribune Dynamus Koda and funnelled through the accessible sections and passageways, Dartarion Varix sends his Alpha Legionnaires to meet them.

  Elapsid/omega-xi-zeta sees the first official exchange of gunfire between the Legiones Astartes aboard the Omnissiax and loyal Mechanicum forces. Psi-Sigma IV-of-XI loses his artificially augmented life to Legionnaire Phasal Scolton of the First Hort, Third Harrow. As a living auspex, Psi-Sigma IV-of-XI had been leading advance skitarii squads of the Seventh Cell-Sentinel Entropriad through the crew domiciles. Scolton had ordered flamers used on the quarters before having his legionaries withdraw. As the Mechanicum ward force advances, the intense heat and the flames renders main auspex frequencies useless. The Alpha Legion withdraw within the inferno, their battleplate offering more protection against the flames than their enemies can expect.

&
nbsp; Slowly, calmly, Legionnaire Scolton leans around the passageway apex and brings his boltgun level with Psi-Sigma’s hooded, optic-bulbous head. By the time the construct is ready to confirm a lifesign, Scoltan’s finger is on the trigger.

  The blast of bolt-fire cuts straight through the living auspex, before chewing up the Entropriad skitarii behind who shield their vulnerable organics from the flames. The Alpha Legion weave their way confidently through the domiciles in alternating columns, slamming their pauldrons into cover whilst watching over their opposite numbers as they advance. The choreographed tactical advance is a thing of serpentine beauty. Phased plasma fire and las-beams slice through the flames from the disciplined ranks of skitarii, but the Legion will not be denied. Their advance is murderously economical. Every blinding lick of flame and every obstructive piece of cover is their ally.

  The Entropriad, undoubtedly veterans in their own class, do the only thing an enemy of the Alpha Legion can do.

  They die.

  By elapsid/khi-nullus-delta, Arch-Tribune Dynamus Koda has watched enough lifesigns fade on his intracranial display that he orders the Castallax battle automata of the 13th Maniple Proxim/Mephistra Cohort into the flames.

  Several decks below and running parallel to the Phasal Scolton’s advance, Dartarion Varix and a squad of the veteran-hort legionnaires wade through coolant on the flooded sub-decks. I am with them. The syrupy darkness of the fluid cascades down through the levels as maintenance floor-hatch after maintenance floor-hatch is pops, and the Alpha Legion make their way down through the ship.

  There are encounters. Servo-drones hurtle up corridors, filling sections with flashing lamps and the wail of klaxons. Groups of gun-servitors march their way past with cybernetic indifference, all unsightly with enhancement and baggy flesh. While canopy formations are maintained and boltguns aimed, Varix has his legionnaires retract behind cover or sink back into the shadows. All constructs on board the Mechanicum vessel will die – the strike commander has so ordered – but the Alpha Legion are not given to moments of rash opportunism. The unplanned end of one enemy might put at risk the meticulously arranged end of a thousand more. There is no glory in the individual death, only the communal honour of a victorious action executed to perfection.