The hololithic representation crackled and warped before fading. Moments later, the planets seared back to full resolution.
‘Have the High Enginseer report to section nineteen and reroute power through the generatoria,’ Altarius Phylax ordered. The algorithoria was situated forty-seven ice-crafted sub-levels below Incus Maximal’s frozen ammonia surface but that didn’t stop the resonant boom of detonations reverberating down through the structure.
Phylax processed the cold code-equivalent of incredulity. It was difficult to believe that the great ark ships of the Adeptus Mechanicus were shelling their own forge-world. His frost-bitten face might have still been his own, but the fibre bundles beneath were enhancements that required a moment to catch up with Phylax’s rapid train of thought and occasional feeling.
In the ice-carved chamber adepts and servitors fussed about him, slipping the multi-limbed fusion of metal and flesh that was his body into his new robes: the hallowed red robes of the Fabricator Locum of Incus Maximal, a position Phylax had inherited a mere fourteen minutes and thirty-two seconds before. Fabricator Torqsi had been lost to the Mechanicus when Vostox Mons unexpectedly and explosively erupted, blowing its cryo-magma stack and accompanying forge complex clean off the face of the planet. Mistress Celestika had believed in meeting the xenos invasion head to head. She had led her temple tech-guard from the front, out onto the spotless plains of Freon-Astroika, at the head of two thousand deep-freeze adapted Kataphron battle-servitors fresh off the assembly lines. Warrior specimens of Veridi giganticus arrived on the ammonia flows in incalculable number, however, and the beast-forms had smashed Mistress Celestika and her Kataphron columns to smouldering scrap on the plain. Phylax’s predecessor, Moritor Vulk, had simply locked himself away with a congressium of logi and calculus-engines while the alien invaders overwhelmed cryoforge after cryoforge across the ice world’s surface. Concluding their statistical analysis of the invasion and associated factors, the congressium disbanded. Moritor then returned to his forge temple, disabled his aegis protocols and voluntarily uploaded a nano-infection that reduced the magnificence of his augmented form to rust and steaming spoilage. As next in runic line, the young but brilliant Magos Altarius Phylax became Fabricator Locum of Incus Maximal.
Servo-skulls and technodrones swarmed and swooped through the crackling hololithic display.
‘Siege-Savant Entaurii,’ Phylax addressed the Master of the Auxilia Myrmidon. ‘Is it entirely necessary to have our own vessels execute an orbital bombardment right above our heads?’
‘Entirely necessary, my lord,’ Entaurii replied.
‘That is the Hyboriax Forge Temple up there,’ Phylax reminded him. ‘The Mons Primus and planetary capital. It honours the Omnissiah as a technological wonder and it is bare-faced blasphemy to demolish it with our own guns.’
Borz Entaurii was a squat, heavily augmented soldier — more pneumatic piston than man. His hydraulics and barrel chest were encased in bronze plate and buried in broad, hooded robes that were dyed an Omnissiah-pleasing crimson. He was a veteran, blunt and lacking in imagination.
‘Without the Contrivenant firing down on our position, my Lord Fabricator,’ Entaurii said, ‘there would be no position. The enemy xenos would already have breached our sub-levels.’
‘Could the great ark’s weaponry not find better purpose and employment in firing on the junker moon itself?’ Phylax pressed.
‘Both the Aetnox and the Melanchola were lost in such an experiment,’ Entaurii said. ‘The body’s defences are too thick: armour, shielding and presumed moon rock beneath. Even the greatest of the Machine God’s blessed weapons have failed to make an impression.’
‘And what of our ground troops?’ Phylax said.
A skitarii officer stepped forwards with his gas-masked head bowed. He was dressed in a mixture of ceremonial chainmail and white camouflage robes lined with fur. He had clearly seen recent action. Like Phylax himself, the skitarii officer’s promotion had also been an impromptu necessity.
‘Trib—’ the soldier began, before correcting himself. ‘Master Andromaq, of the Incunian Temple Praetoriax.’
‘Master Andromaq,’ Phylax acknowledged.
‘My lord,’ the master of skitarii said, ‘even allowing for strategic models and assembly line reinforcement, our losses are grievous. Many of our armoured and Kataphron contingents were lost during first contact at Freon-Astroika. Skitarii of the Phaedrik Tenth Denticle, and the artillery batteries of the Ballisteria Algistra, have been decimated at Hoarzengrad and the Novolaris trenchworks are overrun.’
‘Even the great war machine Ordinatus Incus lies in ruin on the Plain of Achromat,’ Siege-Savant Entaurii added.
‘Our numbers have been bolstered by the accelerated vat-production of gun-servitors,’ Master Andromaq admitted, ‘but the genetors are unhappy with the results. The demands of an expedited process have created a higher rate of failures and abominates. Beyond that, the munitiomats are barely configured and the enhanced infantry is fresh off the surgical slab.’
‘But we have veteran temple guard…’
‘The mainstay of our forces were garrisoned at each of the regional Mons-capitals,’ Master Andromaq told him. ‘Many of the forge temples crowning the cryovolcanoes were destroyed in the eruptions.’
‘Estimated operational capacity?’ the Fabricator Locum asked.
‘Twenty-two point six seven per cent,’ Andromaq said. ‘Estimated.’
‘With such a force, Master Andromaq, can you conceive of a defensive strategy or tactical advantage that might meet the demands of these extraordinary events?’
‘No, Fabricator Locum,’ Andromaq replied simply. ‘Complex tactics can be met with complex tactics. They create options. The Veridi giganticus restrict our responses with strategic simplicity. There are just more of them. Beyond a certain magnitude, the numbers will not be worked or contrived. In my opinion, we are beyond that point.’
‘Estimated planetary casualties?’ Phylax asked.
‘Eighty million,’ Phylax’s spindly high logist informed him, scuttling forwards. As calculus-principal of the congressium, he was best placed to make such an astronomical estimate. ‘And rising, Lord Fabricator.’
‘Has the congressium revised its statistical appraisal?’ Phylax queried.
‘Only downwards, my lord,’ the high logist replied. ‘As the full magnitude of the xenos invasion has been revealed to us, we have collated data and updated our recommendations. We submit for your consideration a revised estimation of zero point four per cent chance of victory.’
‘You are saying that we cannot repel this invasion.’
‘We’re saying that the Machine God’s servants on Incus Maximal cannot survive this invasion, my lord.’
Altarius Phylax allowed himself a moment to process what his high logist was saying.
‘And of our sister forge-world?’
‘By the vast majority of comparative measures, data from Malleus Mundi tells us they are faring worse than we are,’ the high logist informed him.
‘Siege-savant?’
‘They have the Legio Fornax,’ Borz Entaurii said. ‘And what I wouldn’t give for their god-machines right now on our hallowed ice.’
‘Ambassador Utherica,’ Phylax called.
‘Lord Fabricator?’ a silver-skinned crone in dark robes said as she presented herself before him. Her aged face was overlaid with circuitry that glittered with tiny synaptic sparks.
‘Do we have word or cant from the Lady of the Furnace?’ Phylax asked the ambassador from Malleus Mundi.