Forge of Mars - Graham McNeill Read online

  ‘It is indeed,’ Kotov said.

  ‘And that’s the last place to have heard from Telok?’

  ‘I assumed you would already know such information.’

  ‘I’ve done my reading,’ said Surcouf. ‘I thought the Valette station was still functional.’

  ‘That is our current understanding.’

  Surcouf shook his head. ‘That thing doesn’t look like it’s been functional in a long time.’

  ‘You are correct,’ said Kotov. ‘All emanations indicate that the facility has gone into hibernation.’

  ‘Do you know why?’

  ‘Not yet, but we will soon.’

  ‘It looks like a space hulk,’ said Surcouf, making the sign of the aquila across his chest.

  ‘Superstition, captain?’

  ‘Common sense.’

  ‘I assure you, there is nothing untoward aboard the Manifold station.’

  ‘How can you be sure?’

  ‘Our surveyors are picking up nothing to suggest any source of threat.’

  Surcouf thought for a moment. ‘Did the station have a crew?’

  ‘No need for the past tense, captain,’ said Kotov. ‘The station is manned by a magos, five technomats, a troika of astropaths and a demi-cohort of servitors.’

  ‘When was the last time anyone came out here to check they were still alive?’

  ‘The last contact with the Valette station was eighty standard Terran years ago, when Magos Paracelsus was routed from forge world Graia to relieve Magos Haephaestus as part of the routine cycle of command. Paracelsus exloaded his docket of arrival as scheduled.’

  ‘I assume Haephaestus returned to Graia?’

  Kotov hesitated before replying, once again checking the parity of information in his own repository with that of the Speranza.

  ‘Unknown,’ he said at last, loath to make such an admission. ‘Records concerning the magi subsequent to their postings to Valette are incomplete.’

  ‘Incomplete?’ said Surcouf. ‘You mean you don’t know what happened to any of them?’

  ‘In a galactic-wide arena of information it is not unknown for some data to be... lost in transit.’

  ‘Emil would love to hear you say that,’ said Surcouf with a wide grin. ‘So, you don’t know what happened to Haephaestus or the previous incumbents, and you don’t know what’s been happening since Paracelsus got here.’

  ‘I begin to tire of your constant questioning of our data, Captain Surcouf,’ said Kotov.

  ‘And I’m beginning to tire of you keeping things from me,’ retorted Surcouf. ‘If there’s a crew on that station, why aren’t they responding? If everything’s fine over there, why are you moving your escorts into an attack formation? You didn’t think I’d notice that? Please...’

  ‘Simply basic precautions, captain,’ said Kotov.

  ‘Let me give you a free piece of advice, archmagos,’ said Surcouf. ‘Never play Emil Nader at Knights and Knaves.’

  ‘Clarification: I do not understand the relevance of your last remark.’

  ‘Because you’re a lousy liar, Lexell Kotov,’ said Surcouf. ‘You know as well as I do that something’s not right with that station. Something is very much out of the ordinary, and you don’t know what it is, do you?’

  ‘The situation aboard the Manifold station is unknown at present,’ agreed Kotov. ‘But when I explore the station I am confident that logical answers will present themselves.’

  ‘You’re going to board that thing?’ said Surcouf.

  ‘I am an explorator,’ said Kotov. ‘It is what I do.’

  ‘Rather you than me.’

  ‘I assure you there is no danger.’

  Surcouf looked back up at the screen, and the image of the patient arachnid returned to Kotov as the rogue trader made the sign of the aquila once again.

  ‘I’d take those Black Templars with you,’ said Surcouf. ‘Just in case you’re wrong.’

  Despite the wholesale murder of thousands of bondsmen, very little changed in the routine of the men and women below decks. Fresh meat was skimmed from the other shifts, and the numbers in Abrehem, Hawke and Coyne’s shift group were bulked out by cybernetics. Scores of heavily-muscled servitors joined their ranks, silent and glassy eyed as they carried out their orders without complaint and without thoughts of dissent.

  Rumours of what had happened in the lower decks spread around the various shifts like a dose of the pox, as did the miracle of their small group’s survival. Abrehem saw men and women looking at him strangely, and it took Hawke to point out to him that they were in awe of him. It had been his warning that had saved the four of them, and word had gone around that he was Machine-touched, a secret prophet of the Omnissiah who carried its blessing to the least of its servants.

  Soon he began finding trinkets fashioned from scavenged junk, gifts of food or water and bac-sticks left by his bunk. At first he tried to refuse such offerings, but his every attempt to play down what he’d done in the reclamation chamber only seemed to enhance his reputation.

  ‘But I’m not Machine-touched,’ he complained to his companions one night as they sat in the crowded feeding hall and spooned yet more tasteless gruel into their soft-gummed mouths. Where before the only sounds in the giant chamber had been the slop of nutrient broth and the clatter of plastic spoons, now a low hubbub of reverent whispering bubbled just below the surface.

  ‘How do you know?’ asked Hawke. ‘Only the truly divine deny their divinity. Isn’t that what the Book of Thor says?’

  Both Coyne and Abrehem gave Hawke a sidelong look. Even Crusha looked surprised.

  ‘I didn’t take you for a religious man, Hawke,’ said Abrehem.

  Hawke shrugged. ‘I’m not normally one for prayers and the like, but it’s always good to know who I need to holler for when I’m in trouble. You know, just in case they’re listening. And I always liked the story of Sebastian Thor. He stood up to rich bully boys and started a landslide that toppled a High Lord. I got a soft spot for those kinds of stories.’

  ‘It’s more than a story,’ said Coyne. ‘It’s scripture. It’s got to be true.’

  ‘Why? Because you read it in a book or some fat preacher told it to you when you were a little boy? Even if it did really happen, it was so long ago that it might as well be made up. You know, I used to love hearing the stories in the templum about the Emperor’s armies conquering the galaxy and fighting their enemies with flaming boltguns and raw courage. I used to pretend I was a hero, and I’d run all over the scholam grounds with a wooden sword conquering it like I was Macharius or something.’

  ‘I’ve seen him,’ said Abrehem. ‘In the processional at the Founding Fields there’s a statue of Macharius and Lysander. No offence, Hawke, but you’re too damn ugly to be a warmaster.’

  ‘And you’re no beautiful Sejanus,’ grinned Hawke.

  Abrehem forced a smile in agreement. Between them, they’d lost numerous teeth and their skin had a gritty, parchment-yellow texture to it. Abrehem’s hair, his youthful pride and joy, had begun to fall out in lumps, so as a group they’d taken the decision to shave their scalps bare. If the Mechanicus wanted them to be identical drones, then that’s what they would get.

  ‘But that was when I was a boy,’ continued Hawke. ‘I used to think the Emperor and His sons were watching over us, but then I grew up and realised that there weren’t nobody looking out for me. The only person that looks out for Hawke is Hawke.’

  ‘Come on,’ said Abrehem, pushing away his tray. ‘Let’s get a drink.’

  ‘Best idea I’ve heard all day,’ said Coyne, and the four of them rose from the table, heading for the cramped passageways that led to Hawke’s concealed still. The decompression of the lower decks hadn’t touched the strange chamber, and Hawke claimed it was a sign that the Omnissiah was happy for him to keep up productio
n and make a tidy profit along the way.

  Heads bowed, and Abrehem heard muttered prayers as they passed. Emaciated hands reached out to brush his coveralls as he went by and he tried not to look at the men and women who stared at him with something he’d long ago forsaken.

  Hope.

  Thankfully, they passed out of the feeding hall and into the passageways that threaded the heavy bulkheads and myriad work-chambers of the engineering deck. Walls of black iron that dripped with hot oil and hissed with moist exhalations enfolded them. The gloom was a welcome respite from the stark glare of their work spaces. Hawke led the way, though he professed never to know the route to the still. Abrehem had long ago given up trying to memorise their route. It seemed to change every day, but no matter how many twists and turns they made, their steps always unerringly carried them to the arched chamber that looked more like a tomb the more they visited it.

  ‘What the...?’ said Hawke as he rounded the last corner.

  They weren’t the first to come here tonight.

  Ismael de Roeven stood at the end of the hexagonal-tiled pathway that ended at the blocked-off wall covered with the obscured stencilling. The servitor had his arm extended and his palm rested on the wall. Abrehem’s optics registered a fleeting glimpse of hissing code from behind the wall, a whispering binary source that retreated the instant it became aware of Abrehem’s scrutiny.

  ‘What’s he doing here?’ wondered Coyne.

  ‘Damned if I know,’ answered Hawke. ‘But I don’t like it.’

  ‘Ismael?’ said Abrehem, approaching the servitor created from their former overseer. Over a third of their shift was now made up of cybernetics, and Abrehem had been absurdly relieved to find that Ismael had not perished in the venting of the lower decks. For another piece of home to have survived along with the four of them felt like an omen, but of what he wasn’t so sure.

  Coyne snapped his fingers in front of Ismael’s eyes, but the servitor didn’t react. Fat droplets fell from the pipework above and pattered in a drizzle from the top of his gleaming skull.

  ‘It’s like he’s crying,’ said Abrehem, wincing as he saw the concave impact damage in the plating covering the left side of the servitor’s head. Ismael might have survived the trauma of explosive decompression, but he hadn’t escaped it without injury.

  ‘Servitors don’t cry,’ said Hawke, angry now. ‘Come on, get him out of here.’

  ‘He’s not doing any harm,’ said Abrehem.

  ‘Yeah, but if someone notices he’s missing and comes looking for him, they’ll find all this.’

  Abrehem nodded, accepting Hawke’s logic. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘I’ll get him back to the feeding hall.’

  He reached up to lower the servitor’s arm.

  Ismael turned his head towards Abrehem.

  His face was lined with black streaks of oil and lubricant, and Abrehem drew in a shocked breath as he saw an expression of confusion and despair etched there.

  Ismael held out his arm, and the sub-dermal electoo shimmered to the surface of the skin.

  ‘Savickas...?’ he said.

  Something clanged against the fuselage of the Barisan and Hawkins tried not to imagine a piece of space-borne debris smashing through and killing them all. He’d heard the horror stories of fast moving trans-atmospheric craft striking pieces of orbital debris and being torn apart in a heartbeat, and tried to push them from crowding his thoughts. It was all right for the Templars, locked in restraint harnesses and sealed in their heavy, self-sufficient plate armour. They’d survive decompression, but the sixteen men of the 71st wouldn’t be so lucky.

  Even in bulky hostile environment suits, the Cadian Guardsmen were too slight to be secured in the Thunderhawk’s crew seats, and were forced to endure the flight holding onto heavy bulkheads, support stanchions and vacant harness buckles to keep from being thrown around the crew compartment. Penetrating the Speranza’s neutron envelope made for a bumpy ride, and Hawkins felt his teeth rattling around his jaw as another rogue gravity wave slammed them to the side.

  The riptide graviometric fields that surrounded the Speranza made it impossible to dock directly with the Valette Manifold station, so here they were riding the Barisan through the buffeting turbulence with Kul Gilad’s Space Marines, Archmagos Kotov and his praetorian squad of five skitarii. Though Cadian officers were used to leading from the front, it surprised Hawkins that such a command ethic should be part of the Mechanicus mindset.

  Metal clanging bounced along the Thunderhawk’s topside and Hawkins instinctively ducked, as though expecting the roof to peel back like the top of a ration can.

  ‘You all right, captain?’ asked Lieutenant Rae, who seemed to be enjoying himself immensely.

  ‘Damn, I hate aerial insertions,’ he said. ‘Leave that kind of stupidity to the Elysians. Give me a bouncing Chimera any day.’

  ‘Aye, sir,’ said Rae. ‘I’ll remind you of that next time we’re charging into enemy fire in the back of Zura’s Lance. I don’t reckon there’s any good way to put yourself in harm’s way.’

  ‘I suppose not,’ said Hawkins, watching the battered display at the front of the compartment. The crackling screen relayed the pict-feed from the cockpit, and Hawkins saw the glossy, ice-slick bulge of the Manifold station drawing nearer, its multiple extended spars of metal reaching up and past the picter’s field of view. Hawkins held tight to his stanchion as the pilot banked to avoid a particularly large panel of scorched metal. Starlight glinted from its surfaces, and Hawkins saw some kind of painted glyph; a grinning maw with two enormous tusks, but it spun away before he could be sure of what it was.

  ‘Was that...?’ said Rae.

  ‘I think it was,’ said Hawkins.

  The hulking mass of the Manifold station slid to one side as the pilot brought them in side-on.

  ‘Here we go,’ said Hawkins as the sound of metal scraping on metal came through the fuselage, the groping of an automated docking clamp as it sought purchase on the side of the Barisan. The interior of the gunship changed in an instant. One minute the Space Marines were immobile, seated statues, the next they were up and arranged for deployment. Hawkins hadn’t even noticed it happen. Their armour was big and bulky, even more so when you were crammed next to it in a fully laden gunship. The plates gave off a muted hum of power and there was a faint suggestion of ozone and lapping powder.

  One of the Space Marines looked down at him, the bulky warrior with a white laurel carved around the brow of his helm. Hawkins sketched him a quick salute. The Templar hesitated, then gave him a curt nod.

  ‘Fight well, Guardsman,’ said the warrior with clumsy camaraderie.

  ‘That’s the only way Cadians fight,’ he replied as the light above the Thunderhawk’s side door began flashing a warning amber. ‘Wait, are you expecting to fight?’

  ‘The Emperor’s Champion always expects to fight,’ said the warrior, loosening the straps holding his enormous sword fast to his shoulder.

  Hissing plumes of equalising gases ribboned from the door seals, and Hawkins felt his ears pop and the metal pins in his repaired shoulder tingle. The armoured panel slid back to reveal an umbilical with a steel decking floor and a ribbed, plasflex corridor. At the end of the corridor was a frost-rimed door that dripped water that had last been liquid millions of years ago. The Space Marines moved along the umbilical in single file, though it was easily wide enough for three of them to stand abreast. They moved with short, economical strides, bolters held loosely at their hips.

  Hawkins chopped his hand left and right, and dropped down into the umbilical, feeling it sway alarmingly underfoot. It had looked utterly steady when the Space Marines traversed it. With his rifle pulled in tight to his shoulder, Hawkins advanced along the umbilical with a squad of soldiers strung out behind him to either side.

  He moved to the front of the umbilical, feeling the cold radiating f
rom the bare black structure of the Manifold station. The ironwork was pocked with micro-impacts, and condensing air ghosted from the metal. A broad airlock barred entry to the station and a shielded housing concealed an oversized keypad and a number of input ports. Kul Gilad looked ready to tear the door from its housing, but Archmagos Kotov had decreed a less forceful entry.

  The archmagos swept along the umbilical with his red cloak of interleaved scales billowing behind him. His automaton body was perfectly sculpted in crimson, like a templum statue come to life, and his steel hand gripped the hilt of his sheathed sword tightly. Behind a shimmering energy field, his soft features were sagging and jowly, like an old general who has spent too much time from the front line. Yet his eyes were those of a virgin Whiteshield when the las-rounds start flying.

  ‘You can affect an entry?’ asked Kul Gilad.

  ‘I can,’ said the archmagos, reaching out to touch the cold metal with his smooth black hand. Unprotected skin would have been stripped from his flesh, but Kotov gave a sigh of pleasure, as if he were touching the smooth curves of a loved one. Long seconds passed and a recessed panel slid up beside the door. Instantly, the Space Marines had their bolters levelled, and Hawkins was gratified to find that his own men’s weapons weren’t far behind them.

  ‘This is the Valette Manifold station, sovereign property of the Adeptus Mechanicus,’ said an artificially modulated voice. ‘Present valid entry credentials or withdraw and await censure.’

  The image on the pict screen was badly degraded and chopped with static, but was clearly a hooded tech-priest with a quartet of silver-lit optics.

  ‘Is that a real person?’ asked Hawkins, his finger tightening on the trigger housing of his lasrifle.

  ‘Once,’ said Kotov. ‘It is a recording made a long time ago. An automated response to an unexpected attempt at entry.’

  ‘Does that mean the station is aware of us now?’ said Kul Gilad.

  A light flickered behind Kotov’s eyes. ‘No, this is just a perimeter system, not the central data engine. The schemata for this station indicate that its core administrative functions were controlled by a heuristic bio-organic cybernetic intelligence.’