The ork monster took a thundering step forwards. Then it stopped. Its weapon arms jerked. The colossal chainblade on the right stopped whirring. Smoke poured out of the shoulder. A few seconds later, the left cannon limb’s shots went wild, and then it too shut down. The machine rocked back and forth, vibrating with internal explosions. Its chest blew out with a massive gout of flame, sending huge slabs of metal flying hundreds of metres through the air. The interior of the walker was an inferno. The giant warrior emerged from the ragged gap in the chest. He leapt to the ground as the machine died behind him. It was immobile now, nothing more than a gigantic furnace.
The warrior turned once more towards Torrens and raised his hammer in salute. Then he pounded across the scree, heading north. He slammed through an ork phalanx that was coming up in the wake of the barrage.
Becker’s finger still squeezed the trigger, but he was barely aware of doing so. Jaw agape, he stared as one miracle succeeded another. The warrior could not have survived, but he had, and now he was single-handedly changing the course of the flood. The greenskins lost interest in Torrens. Engines ground, infantry howled and the horde altered its course. It rounded on the warrior. It pursued the being that had hurt it. Minor streams of orks still climbed the slope, but now the miners faced a war, not extermination.
‘What…’ Karla began, but could not finish.
Becker shook his head. He had no more words for an answer than she had for a question. He did not know what he had seen. But he felt the brush of legend.
And the awe born from a glimpse of eternity.
One
The Alcazar Remembered was at low anchor, in geostationary orbit over Pavonis Mons. Thane sat with his Fists Exemplar veterans in the troop hold of the Thunderhawk Honour’s Spear. The company was descending in a show of force, leading with multiple gunships and tanks. There had been no overt resistance from the Adeptus Mechanicus. So far.
The gunship shook. Thane tapped the vessel’s vox. ‘I trust that wasn’t hostile fire, Brother Preco,’ he said to the pilot.
‘Just turbulence, Chapter Master,’ Preco responded. ‘But I’m receiving another hail.’
‘More turbulence,’ said Abbas, sitting across from Thane.
‘More than likely,’ Thane said. ‘Patch it through, Brother Preco.’
The vox-speaker crackled, and the voice that emerged sounded like static shaped into syllables. ‘This is Artisan Trajectorae Augus Van Auken. Approaching vessels, you are not authorised to make landfall on sacred Mars. You must reverse course at once.’
‘I am Chapter Master Maximus Thane of the Fists Exemplar. My orders come from Chapter Master Koorland, Lord Commander of the Imperium. His authority supersedes any you might claim, and over the Adeptus Astartes you have none at all.’
‘You should not force a confrontation.’
‘I have no intention of doing so. Turn Magos Biologis Eldon Urquidex over to us, and we will depart upon the instant.’
There was a pause before Van Auken spoke again. Thane pictured gears realigning in the cold mind of the Mechanicus priest. ‘You must leave at once,’ he repeated, as if Thane had made no demand.
‘We shall speak once we have landed,’ Thane said pleasantly, ignoring Van Auken in turn. ‘Face-to-face conversations are more conducive to an understanding, don’t you think?’ He shut down the channel. To Preco, he said, ‘No further communications until we land.’
‘Understood.’
Thane became aware of a deep stillness to his right. He turned to look at Aloysian. The only sign of the Master of the Forge’s concern was the rhythmic opening and closing of the vice jaws of one of his servo-arms. The movement was slight, barely more than a vibration. It stood out against the absolute immobility of the rest of his form.
‘You are troubled, Master Aloysian,’ Thane said, speaking the obvious. How could the Techmarine not be? The mission was creating a conflict between his oaths of loyalty.
‘I am.’
‘We are not seeking war with Mars.’
‘But we may find it.’
And then what? Thane almost asked, but stopped himself. It would not do to imply a lack of trust. Instead, he said, ‘That would amuse the orks greatly. I don’t propose to give them that satisfaction. I will do everything in my power to avoid bloodshed. You have my word on that.’
Aloysian’s nod was slight. ‘I believe you, Chapter Master. But will the Mechanicus make the same effort?’
‘You are better placed to answer. What do you think?’
‘I don’t know,’ Aloysian said. ‘The greater the secret possessed by Urquidex, the more desperate the priests of Mars will be to keep it to themselves.’
‘And the more vital it becomes for us to learn that secret.’
‘Precisely. So where, Chapter Master, do you see the way to avoid war?’
Honour’s Spear shook harder, hammered by the Martian wind storms. Thane accepted the interruption gratefully. He had no answer for Aloysian.
The gunship broke through the smog-choked clouds of Mars. Thane looked through the viewing block and beheld the Pavonis Mons complex reaching up for him. Somewhere in that vastness, Urquidex was being held. The volcano was almost four hundred kilometres wide, and monolithic Mechanicus architecture covered its surface completely. The slope of Pavonis Mons was a gentle one, taking hundreds of kilometres to rise fourteen, but the colossal edifices and manufactoria turned it into a twisting, spiked, aggressive prominence. The fifty-kilometre caldera sprouted a cluster of gigantic chimneys, each the size of an Imperial Navy battle cruiser. They vomited the waste of Mechanicus industry into the sky, a more noxious and violent eruption than the volcano itself had ever produced.
As Honour’s Spear descended, the details of the structures became clear. Towers that Thane had taken for manufactoria were single machines, thousands of metres high. Some rotated around each other in a slow, majestic dance. Others were the pistoning ribs of an inconceivably gigantic beast. They connected to the monstrous buttresses and vaults of the manufactoria proper, of the habs for tens of millions of servants of the Omnissiah, and of laboratoria the size of hives.
‘How will we find our quarry in that?’ Abbas asked.
‘The terrain is not unknown to me,’ Aloysian said quietly.
‘I hope we will not have to seek him,’ said Thane. ‘I hope he will be brought to us.’
‘A faint hope,’ said Aloysian.
Thane made no answer. Below, the immensity of the Pavonis Mons complex stretched its iron claws upwards.
The gunships and transports came down at the edge of the space port at the base of the south face of the mountain. Alarms wailed from the towers of the port and the spires of the complex spilling off the slope and onto the surrounding plain. The Thunderhawks disgorged troops and vehicles, then rose to fly overwatch for the company. Thane organised the deployment with an eye to a maximum display of power. The battle-brothers marched at the head of the column. The Rhinos, empty except for their drivers, brought up the rear. In between came the tanks: Land Raiders, Predators, Vindicators and Whirlwinds. There was the strength here to flatten a city, and there was more to come. But Pavonis Mons was more than a city. Thane hoped the initial threat would be enough. He would escalate it as required, though he hoped he would not have to do so.
But Aloysian’s logic was sound.
The column rumbled away from the space port. It followed the main transport avenue running from the space port to the Tharsis Gate. Embedded in the immense walls encircling the base of the volcano, the Tharsis Gate was the primary access point to the Pavonis Mons complex, both above and below the surface of Mars.