Clicks came back to him over the vox.
The Fists Exemplar advanced. The space between the forces shrank.
Van Auken watched the vid-screens and hololith tables. He was in a command centre below the surface, near the core of Pavonis Mons. The screens covered the walls. Feeds updated themselves every second. Targeting data from the Dunecrawlers changed as they tracked gunships and tanks. An auspex-mechanic sat before each column of screens, summarising and condensing the slivers of situation into bursts of code, their signals running through the cogitators and into the Artisan Primus’ mechadendrites plugged into the master console. Moment to moment, he had a near-total awareness of the entire territory running from the space port to the Tharsis Gate.
‘They are advancing,’ transmitted Sicarian Princeps Tynora 7-Galliax.
‘I am aware of this development.’
‘Understood, Artisan Primus. The delay between the situational change and your orders prompted my erroneous conclusion.’
It was possible to discern a veiled insult in her explanation. Van Auken ignored it. ‘Do not allow them to pass.’
‘What means are authorised?’
‘The mass of our forces. Do not engage.’
‘Unpredictable contingencies raise the likelihood of combat to near-certainty.’
‘The Adeptus Astartes are highly disciplined. The possibilities of intemperate error are concomitantly reduced.’
‘Accepted without optimism. Query: is the risk an efficient use of resources?’
‘We have not yet ascertained the degree of the heretic Urquidex’s knowledge. Once the full extent of the damage has been ascertained, he will be mind-wiped. The Adeptus Astartes may claim him at that point. Until then, his threat outweighs all others. Premise: the Fists Exemplar are also fully conscious of the consequences of war. Their data is also incomplete. They can conceive of no escape for Terra from the orks. Theorem: conflict here while orks are over Terra will be avoided as an absolute evil.’
‘Counter-hypothesis,’ said 7-Galliax. ‘Lacking alternatives, they will stop at nothing.’
‘Possibility evaluated and dismissed,’ Van Auken said.
He watched the two forces come together. With all the variables clamouring for his attention, there was no room for doubt.
The Mechanicus closed ranks. There were only a few metres between Thane and the line of skitarii.
‘They don’t want to let us through,’ said Abbas.
‘We shall have to convince them otherwise,’ replied Thane
The solid wall of Fists Exemplar closed the gap. The Adeptus Astartes towered over the skitarii vanguard troops. The armour of these warriors was heavy by Mechanicus standards — they were more substantial and less insectoid than many of their comrades. They were still dwarfed by the Space Marines.
The Fists Exemplar did not pause. They pressed forwards, steady and inexorable as the tide. Thane kept his bolter against his chest, barrel angled up. He was not attacking, simply advancing. Skitarii rifles were pointed at him. He pushed into the barrel of the vanguard warrior before him. He took another step, forcing the other to choose between taking a step back, firing, or engaging in melee combat. The skitarius stepped back. So did the rest of the line. The Fists Exemplar moved forwards again.
Then a command must have been issued. The retreat halted, the Dunecrawlers, Breachers and Destroyers manoeuvring to form a wall of metal. The Fists Exemplar could overwhelm the skitarii physically, but they would not be able to push past the Mechanicus heavy armour without using their own.
The chances of avoiding war shrank still further.
Thane had no choice; the mission demanded he advance. He decided to take the risk of raising the stakes. He would make those augmetic eyes blink yet.
He raised Weylon Kale on the Alcazar Remembered. ‘Shipmaster,’ he said, ‘begin the drop.’
‘So ordered, Chapter Master.’
‘They have the physical mass to force us back,’ 7-Galliax reported.
‘Hold as long as possible,’ Van Auken said. ‘When the heavy armour comes into play, fire warning shots.’
7-Galliax’s reply was cut off by a binharic squeal from one of the auspex-mechanics.
Van Auken processed the data. He felt stirrings of something that went beyond concern. Auto-regulators sought to contain the disruptive effect of his nervous system’s injection of adrenaline. ‘Correction,’ he said to 7-Galliax. ‘We have detected launch flares from the Adeptus Astartes battle-barge. All units begin warning fire. Do not hit the Adeptus Astartes. Be prepared to fall back and establish barrage fire that they cannot cross.’
The Fists Exemplar slowed. They leaned into the skitarii, their block of strength edging closer and closer to outright combat, but they did not train their guns. The tanks rolled up behind them.
Aloysian said, ‘Stalemate is inevitable.’
‘It won’t last long,’ Thane answered.
‘That is the source of my concern.’
‘Patience, Master of the Forge. Look to the skies.’
The streaks of the drop pods appeared a few moments later. They cut through the Martian atmosphere like bloody claws. There were four of them, carrying the rest of the veteran company’s strength to the field.
In the next instant, the Mechanicus forces began to shoot.
‘Hold fire!’ Thane shouted over the vox. Trigger discipline held, long enough for the Space Marines to realise the energy beams were passing overhead. ‘The…’ He caught himself. He had almost said the enemy. ‘The Mechanicus seeks to intimidate. We are not at war.’ Broadcasting again, he called to the skitarii and tech-priests, and to Van Auken, wherever he was. ‘We are not at war,’ he repeated. ‘Do not force a battle none of us would choose. Be one with us. Be one with Terra and against the orks!’
The only response was continued fire. It turned into a canopy of devastating energy. Even perfect precision could not stop it from shearing the facades of buildings. Rockcrete disintegrated. No wreckage fell. The sheer volume of the destructive beams took everything they hit apart at the molecular level.
The strobing flash of the beams played havoc with Thane’s optics. He blinked off the filters and kept pushing, driving the skitarii vanguard back towards the wall of their heavy armour. He looked up to the sky, and through the interweaving beams he saw the drop pods hurtle to the ground, coming down behind the Mechanicus forces, between them and the Tharsis Gate, catching them in a vice. Thane heard the impacts, felt the shake in the pavement. He felt the pressure mount on Van Auken.
The disaster, when it happened, seemed inevitable, an event every soul on Mars should have predicted. Thane saw it unfold with sickened dread and helplessness. Two of the Dunecrawlers rotated their hulls to send their fire over the drop pods. They did so as the last of the entry vehicles came down a few seconds behind the others. What happened was chance, not error. The terrible alchemy of war.
Because this was war. It had been from the moment Koorland ordered the Alcazar Remembered to Mars.
An eradication beam struck the final drop pod. It vaporised the outer shielding. The drop pod’s retro thrusters exploded. Thane saw the flash, the billow of flame, and the pod tilt over. Off course, it fell to the east beyond his sight, behind the canyon walls of the manufactoria. The crash of its landing was deafening.
‘Hold fire!’ Thane ordered. ‘Hold fire!’ The company obeyed, but he didn’t know if the Fists Exemplar in the fallen pod were alive, and if they were receiving. The proximity and intensity of the energy beams was interfering with vox-traffic. The voices of his brothers were disappearing in storms of static and dropped audio. He heard nothing from the damaged pod.
And then there were more explosions. There was bolter fire. A rocket slammed into the hull of a Dunecrawler.