Two further skitarii rounded the rear of the container. The first’s visor met her elbow, driving shattered glass and metal into its brain. The second got a bullet from the gun of its comrade when Yendl pivoted on the spot and yanked hard, mashing the trapped skitarius’ finger against the trigger. Only that one remained. She wrenched the gun away, threw the skitarius aside and shot it three times, in the chest, head and reactor unit.
She made sure they were all dead and their datacores shattered, then she was away.
Alarms rang. Before anyone could respond, Yendl had gone.
A steady procession of foot traffic flowed along the Trans-Tharsis Highway’s pedestrian strip. The lights of giant vehicles blurred past in a roar of colour and sound.
Clementina Yendl arranged her new disguise, a robe taken from a menial now dead and never to be found. She adjusted her posture, becoming once again the low-ranking adept, her augmetics adopting the twisted pose of bionics more hindrance than help. Transformed, she slipped from a side door in an unassuming block and joined the crowds. She had gone less than three kilometres before she became aware of the servo-skull following her some metres behind. Yendl was too well practised to reveal she had noticed. She picked up speed. The skull did likewise, a constant presence amid the confusing whirl of aerial constructs going about their duty.
She selected an ambush site. A one-man lift ascended to a gallery hanging from the lower floors of a kilometre-long hab complex. A covered walkway led off into the building there. She ascended the lift, and went down the alley. Sure enough, the skull followed. A junction beckoned, and she took an abrupt left.
When the skull came, she was waiting with her cloak, whirling it out like a net and catching the device mid-flight. She hauled it to earth, her strength overcoming its anti-gravity field and bouncing it from the floor. She wrestled it into submission, and freed it from the cloak. A standard model, bronze-plated ancient bone, long tendrils of interface cabling hanging from its rear. By the standards of Mars, wholly unremarkable, and unarmed. It stopped struggling.
‘Message, message, message,’ gargled the skull, its glass eyes flashing.
‘Speak,’ said Yendl.
A click sounded as a vox-feed engaged. ‘I have been searching for you everywhere.’
‘My well-placed friend.’
‘The very same,’ said Urquidex. He sounded agitated.
‘I hope for your sake this feed is encrypted.’
‘Of course!’ he snapped. ‘But we must be brief. The privacy of this channel cannot be guaranteed for long. One of your colleagues has met with an unfortunate end and the secrecy of your cell is compromised. It will take the diagnostic covens a little time to retrieve the information from the cortex — organics are so much less forgiving than mechanisms — but they will.’
‘She is dead? I had guessed,’ said Yendl.
‘Yes. I am sorry.’
‘Sorrow helps nobody.’
‘I have other news,’ said Urquidex. ‘The Fabricator General has embarked on new work. I do not know what. I am attempting to find out.’
‘Orks,’ said Yendl.
‘What?’
‘Thousands of ork corpses are being delivered—’
‘To the laboratoria of Pavonis Mons?’
‘Yes,’ said Yendl. ‘I have come from there. I was seen.’
‘Disaster!’ said Urquidex.
Yendl let the servo-skull free. It bobbed level with her eyes.
‘Tell me something I am unaware of,’ she said. ‘Tell me what they want with so many dead orks.’
‘I do not know,’ said Urquidex. ‘Kubik told me himself, Magos Van Auken heads a work as important as the Grand Experiment.’ He paused. ‘I delay all I can, but cannot do so indefinitely. I cannot stop the Grand Experiment.’ A faint crackle sounded on the connection. ‘Danger comes. I must go. Stay alive. I will attempt contact soon.’
The skull flew away, becoming one among hundreds hurrying through the tunnel. Yendl lost sight of it quickly. She was not so naive as to believe she could disappear so easily.
Fifteen
Lord Guilliman’s decree
The day after the attack on the ork moon, the Space Marines of the Last Wall prepared to receive Lord Guilliman Udin Macht Udo with as much ceremony and pomp as if he had in truth been the primarch himself.
They waited on the embarkation deck of the Abhorrence in full wargear. Udo’s magnificently decorated shuttle pierced the integrity field of the portal majoris and came in to land upon the golden aquila painted specially for the purpose at the centre of the deck. The landing ramp descended, disgorging fifty Lucifer Blacks in gleaming wargear. They jogged down an avenue of Space Marines made up from members of every company of every Chapter in the Last Wall. Fists Exemplar stood with Black Templars beside Iron Knights. Crimson Fists waited proudly alongside Excoriators. With these representatives of each Chapter, there were nigh-on one thousand Space Marines present on the deck.
At the end of this aisle lined by ceramite stood the commanders of the Chapters: the captains and Chaplains of every company, headed by their leaders High Marshal Bohemond of the Black Templars, Chapter Master Issachar of the Excoriators, Chapter Master Quesadra of the Crimson Fists, Chapter Master Thane of the Fists Exemplar, First Captain Verpall of the Iron Knights, and Koorland, Chapter Master and last member of the Imperial Fists.
The Lucifer Blacks stamped shining boots in thunderous march down the ranks of Space Marines. They spread themselves out along the length of the way from Udo’s ship to the Chapter Masters until they formed a cordon one man wide. Then they rotated ninety degrees to face into the avenue, their final stamp echoing away into the empty spaces of the embarkation deck. For all the Lucifer Blacks’ stern martial polish, there was something faintly ridiculous about this show of defence, as if all of them together could possibly hope to halt even ten of the transhuman warriors, should they decide to kill the Lord Guilliman.
Koorland pushed the implied insult to the back of his mind. More politics. Udo was making a show of his authority.
To a fanfare of silver clarions, Udin Macht Udo came down the ramp of his ship, surrounded by attendants and high-ranking officials of the Adeptus Terra. The train of his cloak was held from the ground by six blind auto-praisers whispering ceaseless prayers to the Emperor. Udo wore all the panoply of his office, a rich uniform stiff with brocade and frogging, a chest full of honours and medallions. Servo-skulls buzzed out in a cloud over his entourage, and swooped off in every direction. Cyber-cherubs came after, four spreading out to hold a cloth of gold two metres over the Lord Guilliman, two more swinging censers which billowed oily blue, perfumed smoke.
This parade came to a halt before the Chapter Masters. The sons of Dorn got down on one knee, and bowed their heads.
Udo clapped his hands and smiled.
‘Rise, rise, loyal servants of the Imperium! You, the mighty sons of the Emperor, return to your Father in the time of need, and you have not disappointed Him.’