Forge of Mars - Graham McNeill Read online

  Yes, there were poets and artists amongst the crew, but this was a ship of warriors.

  Two aspect shrines occupied the ventral and dorsal domes of the ship, Striking Scorpions and Howling Banshees, with a shrine of Dire Avengers housed towards the prow. Three of the most warlike aspects of Khaine; the shadow hunters, the wailing death and the blade that severs. Bielanna let her spirit slide past the aspect shrines without pause, for she did not wish to attract undue attention from those who wore their war-mask so close to the surface when the power of the warp was in the ascendancy.

  The heart of the Starblade housed the shrine of the war-god itself, but its furnace heart was cold – the embers of its bellicose heart slumbering until the call to arms fanned them to raging life once more. Even without the imminence of battle, the raging echoes of the human fleet’s bludgeoning assault on barriers meant to keep them from the warp were making it restless.

  Guardians trained in the wing-mounted domes, citizen soldiers of Biel-Tan whose lives may have carried them from the path of the warrior, but who were duty-bound to heed its call when the need arose. Ever was the heart of Biel-Tan ready for war. The entire essence of the ship was primed for battle.

  She felt it in the tautness of the wraithbone, the urgency of the warp spiders and the howling war-masks of the Aspect Warriors.

  The presence of the captain merged with her own and she felt his question before it was asked.

  ‘No, I have not found it yet,’ she said. ‘But it is near. Allow me to guide the Starblade and I will see us through.’

  The captain wordlessly acquiesced and Bielanna felt the enormous weight of the starship settle upon her, its lance-shaped prows, its vast wingspan, its many weapons, its ventral fins and towering solar sail. The sense of commanding something so powerful was intoxicating, and she fought to hold on to her sense of identity as the vast, swarming spirit of the ship rushed to draw her into its glowing heart.

  Bielanna hurled her spirit from the pleasurable heat of the Starblade’s wraithbone limbs and out into space, feeling the storm winds of an alternate dimension buffet her and try to pry her loose from her course. What she sought was close, she could feel its nearness, but it was coy and loath to reveal itself, even to the heirs of those who had wrought it in a lost age of greatness.

  Removing herself from literal thought of physical locations, Bielanna freed her mind to the skein, letting the drifts of the future wash over her. The multiple strands of the future diverged before her, a densely-knotted rope weaving itself together from a billion times a billion slender threads. She flowed into the threads, following the blood-red strand that led to unsheathed blades, split veins and cloven flesh.

  The future opened up to her and she saw now what she sought.

  And as that future moved from potential to reality, the webway portal finally revealed itself, a shimmering starfield in the outline of Morai-Heg in her aspect of the Maiden – at once beautiful and seductive, yet also dangerously beguiling. More than one myth-cycle told of foolish eldar lured to their doom by trusting her wondrous countenance. The Starblade’s prow turned to the sun-wrought form of the goddess of fate, and golden light flared from the edges of the portal in welcome recognition.

  The stars beyond faded to obscurity as the amber depths of the webway were revealed, and Bielanna returned control of the starship to its captain. She felt a momentary pang of loss as its immense heart untangled from her own. Bielanna fought against the desire to mesh her spirit with the ship once again as its slipped effortlessly into the webway, travelling the vast gulfs of space without the terrible dangers faced by the human fleet.

  Bielanna opened her eyes, letting the weight of her physical body reassert itself as she moved from the realm of the spirit to the realm of the flesh.

  She sat in the centre of her empty quarters, cross-legged between two empty beds intended for newborn eldar children.

  They were empty and had always been empty.

  And unless she was able to unseat the human fleet from its blundering path into the unknown, they always would be.

  Despite his best efforts to achieve exacting punctuality, it was thirty seconds after seven bells before Roboute and his crew arrived at the entrance to the Cadian officers’ billets on Gamma deck. The part of him that was Ultramar through and through hated being less than punctilious, but the part of him that had seen him take up the life of a rogue trader relished such rebelliousness.

  Though even he had to admit that being half a minute late wasn’t much of a rebellion.

  He’d come with Emil, Adara and Enginseer Sylkwood, who’d jumped at the chance to spend time with some soldiers of the Guard. Roboute wasn’t surprised she’d joined him; Karyn was no stranger to the sharp end of mass battle, and she’d fought on Cadia before. The desire to speak to professional soldiers was a hard habit to break, it seemed. Magos Pavelka had not accompanied them, professing no desire to engage in meaningless social ritual when there were dozens of emergent faults manifesting in the data engines after the trauma of translation.

  The entrance from the starboard esplanade was a surprisingly ornate doorway of black-enamelled wood chased with gold wiring and embellished with repeated motifs of the Icon Mechanius worked into the stonework portico. A brushed steel plaque at eye-level listed the personnel residing here with machine-cut precision. Roboute suspected the Cadians would have preferred something less ornate, but supposed that Guard units took what they were given when they boarded a starship. This was just a little more elaborate than he figured they’d be used to.

  Lieutenant Felspar met them at the doorway with an escort of spit-shined and barrel-chested storm troopers in bulky body armour and heavy charge-packs. Though clearly intended as an honour guard for the guests, it was plain to see that these were serious men who were more than ready to wreak harm on any potential threat.

  ‘Captain Surcouf, good evening. The colonel will be glad you were able to attend,’ said Felspar.

  ‘Yes, sorry, took us longer to get here than we expected,’ he said. ‘Turns out those mag-levs aren’t as fast as they look.’

  Felspar gave him a look that suggested he wasn’t in the mood for humour and consulted the data-slate he produced from behind his back.

  ‘And these individuals would be your crew?’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Roboute, introducing Emil, Adara and Sylkwood. Felspar confirmed their identities with a sweep of a data wand that compared their biometrics with those that had been recorded the moment they’d first stepped aboard the Speranza.

  ‘You’ll need to surrender your weapons, of course,’ said Felspar.

  ‘We’re not armed,’ said Roboute.

  ‘I beg to differ.’

  Irritation touched Roboute at the adjutant’s smug tone, and he was about to remonstrate when Felspar held up the wand. A red line flashed along its length, indicating the presence of a weapon.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Adara, removing his butterfly blade from his shirt pocket. ‘Force of habit.’

  ‘Didn’t I say not to bring any weapons?’

  ‘I hardly even think of it as a weapon now,’ said Adara with a bemused shrug. ‘It’s not like I’m planning to stab anyone with it.’

  ‘I’m sure that makes Lieutenant Felspar very happy,’ said Roboute. ‘Now hand it over.’

  ‘I’ll get it back won’t I?’ asked Adara, folding the blade and placing it in Felspar’s outstretched hand. ‘My da gave me that knife, said it saved his life back when–’

  ‘The lieutenant doesn’t need to hear your life story,’ said Sylkwood, pushing Adara out of the way. ‘Say, you want to wave your wand at me, soldier? I think I might have a concealed weapon or two secreted somewhere about my person. I forget, but it’s probably best you make sure.’

  Felspar shook his head. ‘That won’t be necessary, ma’am,’ he said, flushing a deep red.

  Sylkwood gave
a filthy laugh and moved past Felspar, pausing to give each of the storm troopers an appreciative inspection. Emil followed her and Adara hurried to catch up.

  ‘Is she always so forward?’ asked Felspar.

  ‘Trust me, that was her being reserved,’ said Roboute. ‘Oh, and by the way, the Renard is in docking berth Jovus-Tertiary Nine Zero, takes fifteen minutes exactly to get here.’

  ‘I’m not sure I follow,’ said Felspar.

  ‘So you know where you are when you wake up in the morning,’ said Roboute, giving the lieutenant a comradely slap on the shoulder. ‘You know, just in case.’

  Before Felspar could answer, Roboute moved off into the officers’ quarters, following the sound of conversation, clinking glasses and a stirring martial tune that sounded like a colours band at a grand triumphal march.

  The anteroom beyond the entrance resembled a wide banqueting chamber that wouldn’t have seemed out of place in a hive noble’s palace. Clearly the Adeptus Mechanicus had differing ideas of what constituted soldiers’ accommodation to the Departmento Munitorum.

  A shaven-headed servitor in a cream coloured robe approached him, its physique less augmented than was the norm for such cybernetics. Its skin was powdered white, and its hair had been slicked back with a pungent oil. It carried a beaten metal tray upon which were a number of thin-stemmed glasses filled with a golden liquid that sparkled with tiny bubbles.

  ‘Dammassine?’ inquired the servitor.

  ‘Don’t mind if I do,’ said Roboute, taking a glass.

  He took a small sip and was rewarded with a sweet herbal taste over a hint of almond.

  Emil and the others had already availed themselves of the servitor’s hospitality and stood at the edge of the room, taking in a measure of their hosts and their guests. Perhaps thirty Cadian officers, dressed in fresh uniform jackets and boots, mingled with the bluff good humour of men who trusted one another implicitly. A number of Adeptus Mechanicus magi were scattered through the assembly of fighting men, looking acutely uncomfortable at being thrust into a situation they were ill-equipped to handle.

  ‘No sign of Kotov,’ he murmured.

  ‘Did you really expect to see him?’ asked Emil.

  ‘Not really,’ said Roboute, scanning the faces before him for ones he knew.

  His gaze fell upon Colonel Ven Anders chatting amiably with Linya Tychon and her father.

  Magos Blaylock stood to one side, and an officer with the shoulder boards of a supply corps officer was explaining something to him that involved extravagant hand gestures. A gaggle of junior officers were clustered around the enormous figure of Kul Gilad, who in deference to the occasion had divested himself of his armour and wore a plain black and white surplice over his matt-black bodyglove. Even without the mass of plate and armaplas, the man was enormous and built like the chrono-gladiator Roboute had once seen in the fighting pits of the Bakkan sumps.

  ‘How come he gets to keep his weapon?’ said Adara, nodding towards the chunky, eagle-winged maul slung over the Reclusiarch’s shoulder.

  ‘Would you try and take it from him?’ asked Emil.

  ‘I guess not,’ said Adara, snagging another drink from a passing servitor.

  Kul Gilad had not come alone; a bearded warrior with a severe widow’s peak and a line of hammered service studs in his forehead stood to his right. Where Kul Gilad could at least partially conceal his discomfort at being included in a social environment, his companion wore no such mask.

  ‘Who’s his dour friend?’ wondered Emil.

  ‘A sergeant,’ said Roboute. ‘The white wreath on the shoulder tells you that.’

  ‘It does?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Roboute. ‘The Black Templars might be descendants of Rogal Dorn, but it looks like their rank markings and the like still owe a great deal to the Ultramarines.’

  The sergeant looked up sharply, though Roboute would have been surprised if the man had heard what he’d just said. Then again, who really knew exactly how supra-engineered the Space Marines’ gene-structure really was?

  Ven Anders glanced away from his conversation and caught Roboute’s eye, beckoning them over with a friendly wave. Roboute made his way through the press of officers until he reached the colonel. He shook the man’s hand, the skin callused and rough from decades spent in trenches and on countless battlefields. A brass-scaled automaton – fashioned from clockwork in the shape of a small, tree-climbing lizard – clung to his shoulder, its irising eye regarding him with dumb machine implacability.

  Roboute introduced his crew, and the colonel shook each one by the hand with convincing sincerity. The lizard scuttled around to his other shoulder, its brass limbs clicking like a clock ticking too fast.

  ‘A pleasure to meet you all,’ said Anders. ‘I’m very glad you could attend.’

  ‘Wouldn’t have missed it,’ said Roboute.

  ‘He’s right,’ added Emil. ‘We never pass up a free meal.’

  ‘Free?’ said Magos Tychon, leaning forwards in a musky cloud of sweet-smelling incense. ‘This evening isn’t free. The cost of the food and dammassine will be deducted from your finder’s fee and the value of refit schedules you negotiated with the archmagos.’

  Vitali Tychon’s face was impossible to read. Superficially, it resembled what he must have looked like as a creature of flesh and blood, but malleable sub-dermal plasteks had been injected in the dead meat of his face, making him look like an up-hive mannequin. His eyes were multifaceted chips of green in eye sockets that were just a little too wide to be entirely natural looking, and there were altogether too many metallic fingers holding the thin stem of his glass.

  ‘Really?’ said Emil. ‘And this stuff tastes expensive.’

  ‘Oh, it is, Mister Nader,’ said Vitali. ‘Ruinously so.’

  Roboute almost laughed at the shock on Emil’s face as he looked for a servitor to take his untouched glass away.

  ‘Damn, I wish they’d told us that when we came in.’

  Roboute saw a mischievous twinkle in Tychon’s emerald optics and smiled as Linya Tychon placed a reassuring hand on Emil’s elbow. Roboute caught the flash of brass-rimmed augmetics at her ear beneath strands of blonde hair, and the telltale glassiness of artificial eyes. Subtly done and implanted with the intent of retaining her humanity.

  ‘I believe my father is making a joke, Mister Nader,’ said Linya. ‘It’s a bad habit of his, because he has a woeful sense of humour.’

  ‘A joke?’ said Emil.

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Tychon delightedly. ‘A verbal construct said aloud to cause amusement or laughter, either in the form of a story with an unexpected punchline or a play on word expectation.’

  ‘I thought the Mechanicus didn’t tell jokes,’ said Adara.

  ‘We don’t usually,’ said Linya, ‘because the humour gland is one of the first things surgically removed when one takes the Archimedean Oath.’

  ‘I didn’t know that,’ said Adara. ‘Did you know that, captain?’

  ‘Don’t be an idiot all your life, lad,’ said Sylkwood, giving him a clip round the ear. ‘Now go get me another drink and try not to do anything too monumentally stupid along the way.’

  Adara nodded and wandered off in search of another servitor, rubbing the back of his head where the hard metal of Sylkwood’s hand had likely bruised him.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Roboute. ‘We’re not all that naïve.’

  ‘Ah, to be so young and foolish, captain,’ said Anders.

  ‘I doubt you were ever as foolish as Adara, colonel,’ said Roboute.

  ‘My father might disagree with you, though it’s kind of you to say so.’

  Roboute raised his glass and said, ‘We were admiring the quarters you’ve been allocated. More luxurious than I imagine you’re used to.’

  ‘Most people might think so, but just because we come from Cadia
doesn’t mean we don’t enjoy a bit of soft living now and again.’

  ‘Don’t tell me any more,’ said Roboute. ‘You’ll spoil all my illusions.’

  Roboute turned to acknowledge Magos and Mistress Tychon. ‘You are settling in well aboard Archmagos Kotov’s ship?’

  ‘Very well, Captain Surcouf,’ said Vitali Tychon. ‘The ship is a wonder, is it not?’

  ‘I confess I haven’t seen too much of it,’ he admitted.

  ‘Ah, you must, dear boy,’ said Vitali. ‘It is not every day that one is permitted to explore so incredible a vessel. A spacefarer like you ought to appreciate that. It would be my very real pleasure to act as your guide should you decide to learn more of its heritage. In fact, Magos Saiixek of engineering over there was just telling me of the complex arrangements of the drive chambers and–’

  Colonel Anders intervened before Vitali could expound further, saying, ‘Captain; Mistress Linya was just telling me of what brought her and her father along on this voyage. Fascinating stuff, much more interesting than the usual things I hear at functions like this.’

  ‘What do you normally hear?’

  ‘Mostly it’s some local dignitary who’s too scared of whatever’s invaded his world to do anything but babble about how thankful he is that we’re here, or some defence force martinet who’s scared of being shown up by the professionals. Embarrassing, really.’

  ‘Captain, I think I’ll go make sure Adara doesn’t get himself into trouble,’ said Emil, with a casual salute to Colonel Anders and the Tychons.

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ said Sylkwood, setting off in the direction of the engineering magos Tychon had pointed out. Perhaps Felspar might have a lucky escape from Sylkwood’s attentions after all.

  Roboute turned his attention to Linya Tychon, who took an appreciative sip of her dammassine.