The vox was a ringing howl. Communication was impossible. Defence and retaliation were not. Thane fired, sweeping his bolter in a wide parabola before him. He stepped backwards. He could not trust his agonised senses. He could trust his brothers.
Through the static came the heavy pounding of bolters. Thane’s shoulders locked with his brothers’. The Fists Exemplar formed a circle, striking back with a devastating volley. Shells punched into the walls of the manufactorium, chewing through the shadows and the advancing foe. Rockets hit the line. The Space Marines struck back at stealth with overwhelming brute force.
The white noise began to break down as the beings generating it were annihilated. Thane’s vision cleared. He saw the broken line of the Sicarian infiltrators. With their hemispherical skulls atop bodies whose limbs were narrow articulations long since absent of flesh, they were scarabs of war. They still came forwards, firing stubcarbines, broadcasting neurostatic waves, but the cumulative strength of the neurostatic assault was no longer enough. The genhanced senses of the Adeptus Astartes magnified the damage of the wave. They also adapted faster.
The lethal shadows, too, now had shape. Ruststalkers. The skitarii assassins had the same slender build as the infiltrators. They moved like razors. At close quarters, their transonic blades sliced through ceramite as easily as flesh. Unlike the infiltrators, the hum they broadcast rode up and down the frequencies, finding the vibrations to slip through the molecules of armour and bone.
But they had to get close. The Fists Exemplar pushed the skitarii back with a mass-reactive storm. Enemy bodies burst into shrapnel. Mechanicus warriors disintegrated. Shapes fell to the ground: shapes that looked like warped, metallic ruin, and yet they bled.
‘Through them now!’ Thane yelled.
He jogged forwards again, still shoulder-to-shoulder with his brothers. The Fists Exemplar became their name incarnate: a massive ceramite fist rushing into the foe, shattering the advance. Infiltrator rounds cracked Thane’s breastplate. He was running through hammer blows, but his own blows were harder. His force was unstoppable.
Half-molten slag cracked and shifted and gave way beneath his heavy steps and his boots sank into viscous heat, but he kept his footing. He kept his momentum. The Exemplars were a single entity, a battering ram come to shatter the enemy line.
More infiltrators fell. The stiletto jab to Thane’s forehead and the subaural sapping of his spirit itself faded. The vox sputtered back to life with the roar of the Space Marines’ anger. The ruststalkers closed with them, needling in like filaments to a magnet. Some of them danced between the shells. Some of them struck home with their blades. Thane heard brothers’ snarls cut short. He also heard high-pitched bursts of squealing binharic as the assassins were taken apart by retaliatory fire.
Thane hurled a frag grenade. The skitarii had little flesh for the shrapnel to pierce, but the blast fountained metal over them, melting joints and incinerating circuits. A ruststalker leaped in front of him, slashing at his helmet with its chordclaw. He jerked his head back. The claws scraped across his grille. With his right arm, he swung his chainsword diagonally down through the assassin’s neck, cutting through cables. It severed a cybernetic spine. The ruststalker’s head flew off, and Thane trampled over the body.
The Fists Exemplar collided with the infiltrators. They attacked with fury and with sheer mass, turning the Sicarians into scrap metal. The remaining ruststalkers retreated, vanishing back into the shadows.
‘Are you still holding, Thamarius?’ Thane voxed.
‘Barely,’ the sergeant answered. He sounded winded. ‘Still not through the Gate.’
‘We are almost with you.’ There was a doorway ahead. Beyond it, a narrow corridor, and the Martian daylight. The end of the manufactorium and a short run to the rear of the Mechanicus lines and the Tharsis gate.
The huge fist kept moving.
‘Our losses—’ 7-Galliax began.
‘Are known and registered,’ Van Auken interrupted.
‘We have been unable to stop the Adeptus Astartes advance through the Dolentes complex.’
‘We are fully aware.’ Van Auken’s optics skipped from vid-screen to vid-screen, processing the unfolding disaster. Extrapolated results were even grimmer. He had to shut the conflict down and do it quickly. The long-term consequences were as uncertain as the near-future ones were definite. They were also coming no matter what steps he took to stop the Fists Exemplar. There was no peace to preserve now. The political ramifications were beyond his concern. He was sending constant updates to Terra, for the use of the Fabricator General, but whatever Kubik decided had no bearing on the immediate situation. ‘Reinforcements are arriving,’ Van Auken told 7-Galliax. ‘Expect significant structural and personnel impacts.’
‘Acknowledged. We are the Machine. Let it be inevitable and manifest.’
Short-term collateral losses to the Mechanicus were regrettable. They were also ongoing. The war had to be stopped by a massive concentration of force. Sufficient escalation would stop uncontrollable escalation.
There was pure certainty in the move he had to make. Its success was less certain.
He watched the vid-screens, processing the data of the war he was trying to stop.
He realised he was experiencing desperation.
‘Your query’s answer is self-evident,’ Kubik said. ‘If I were not a High Lord, I would not be present. We would not be having this conversation.’
The Fabricator General’s answer was somewhere between being literal in the most mechanistic sense and an equivocation. Koorland hoped Kubik’s cold evasion was a sign of uncertainty. You still have nerves in there, Koorland thought. I think I struck one.
He pressed harder. ‘Your actions force my question. You have every right and duty to act in the defence of Mars, but not at the expense of the Imperium. We are not two powers. We are one. Or are you really contemplating secession?’
‘The speculation is absurd,’ Kubik said.
Koorland did not expect emotion in Kubik’s voice, so he was not surprised by the flat absence of outrage or passion. What surprised him was the momentary pause. A single metallic finger tapped once against the right arm of the throne. Something Koorland had said had jolted the Fabricator General. He had hit too close to home.
Secession? The Mechanicus wouldn’t be that mad.
And if they were?
Koorland leaned closer to Kubik. ‘What do you think is happening on Mars?’ he asked. ‘What do you think will be the consequences of the path you have chosen?’
‘The Mechanicus does not walk this path alone, Lord Commander. You are the one who sent an armed force to Mars.’
‘You forced my choice. Fabricator General Kubik, there is war on Mars as we have this debate. Even now the damage must be considerable. It will be worse. If there is no ceasefire, the struggle will continue until there is victory. Think of the cost. Think how far the consequences will reach. Perhaps this will not be civil war.’ He shot a glance at Veritus, who glowered but kept silent. ‘But Mars will be weakened. The Imperium will be weakened. Is that your desire? How much destruction will you embrace?’
No answer from Kubik, except in the tapping of his finger. It marked time, each click of metal on metal the passing of another second, another moment lost to the cascading destruction.
Messengers burst into the Great Chamber from separate doors. One ran straight for Koorland. The other was a Mechanicus acolyte.
Kubik’s finger stopped tapping. His telescoping optics flicked from the approaching acolyte and back to Koorland.
They waited in silence for the news.
More moments lost.
A few metres from the exit of the corridor, Thane halted. At the same instant, Thamarius voxed, ‘Chapter Master! Mechanicus reinforcements!’