Nicanor no longer disguises his limp. Fluid leaks from where the robot’s withering storm of solid slug gunfire savaged his armour plating. It’s worst in several medial and inferolateral locations that he doesn’t need his retinal display to describe. He can feel the grind of abused metal against – and inside – injured flesh, without the aggressive chime of warnings across his visor display.
He can smell his own wounds, smell their coppery openness from a refusal to heal with the expected speed. That isn’t a good sign.
‘You said there was a ship,’ Arkhan Land says without looking back at the warrior.
‘A sub-orbital,’ Nicanor confirms.
‘Already it sounds like some grotesque last gasp for refugees.’
That is exactly what it is, Nicanor thinks. ‘The arrangements were made with whatever resources were available.’
‘Arranged by whom?’ The technoarchaeologist, a wheezing shape of rippling crimson robes, radiates an aura of disapproval. ‘By you?’
‘First Captain Sigsimund,’ Nicanor replies, ‘and Fabricator Locum Zagreus Kane.’
Still he doesn’t turn, yet Nicanor hears the smirk in Land’s tone. ‘Fabricator General Zagreus Kane now, I’ll wager? Omnissiah preserve us from that punishingly dull creature and his limited vision.’
Nicanor casts back a sweat-stinging gaze into the flickering depths of the corridor behind. He sees nothing. No new warning chimes pulse on his retinal feed beyond the ones screaming of his injuries. His auspex scanner remains silent.
Corridor by corridor, they rise through the complex. Nicanor feels his limbs growing leaden as his body assimilates the adrenal sting of the medicae narcotics flooding his system. The strength they granted over the last hours deserts him by increments, inviting back the weary burn of his wounds.
‘I’ve never encountered one of those automata before,’ Nicanor says.
Arkhan Land turns his sharp features back upon his armoured companion. Amusement gleams in the scholar’s half-lidded eyes. ‘A Space Marine with a passion for idle chatter? My, my, my. The surprises never cease.’
Nicanor bridles. ‘I seek answers, not conversation.’
Land gives an unpleasant smile before turning to the tunnel ahead. The psyber-monkey on his shoulder noisily crunches on a steel ingot.
‘It is a Vorax,’ the technoarchaeologist says in an arch tone. ‘This one has been modified by a forge-noble to suit his or her own purposes, I’ve no doubt, but the chassis is that of a Vorax automaton. They rarely see use in the hosts of the Great Crusade anymore. We release them into the forge cities when overpopulation becomes a concern. They are,’ he adds with a refined air, ‘occasionally tasked for assassination protocols. But only against targets of sufficiently high priority.’
Nicanor reads the pride in the scholar’s voice. The man’s arrogance knows no bounds.
‘Who would want you dead, Technoarchaeologist Land? The men and women you were keen to remain and face alone?’
The robed man scratches his hairless crown – for no reason Nicanor can discern the psyber-monkey mimics the gesture, scratching its own head. ‘There you’ve asked a question of staggering ignorance, Space Marine. A great many of my contemporaries would enjoy the notion of me breathing my last. Not all, of course. But enough. On both sides of this new war.’
Nicanor grunts at the pain in his side. Land takes it as a question.
‘And why, you ask?’ the technoarchaeologist carries on, though Nicanor has asked no such thing. ‘Because I am Arkhan Land. Jealousy motivates them. Jealousy forged in their own insecurities. I suspect that says it all.’
The Imperial Fist says nothing. He’s seen unmodified humans do this before – the propensity that even overconfident souls have for fear-babble in times of duress.
When they emerge at last into the dubious light of the Martian dawn, the Zetek alkali plains stretch out before them.
Nicanor gestures to a rise in the landscape. ‘The ship waits over that ridge.’
It’s difficult not to be insulted, really. A single Space Marine.
The Mesatan Complex unlocks and unfolds before them via a series of grinding, whirring doors resembling void-sealed bulkheads – a design choice that Arkhan Land attributes to radiation shielding and disaster containment rather than a consideration of security. Given what’s happening across Mars – the insanity so poorly draped in the rags of revolution – he’s unsurprised that the complex has been automatically locked down.
‘We are being followed,’ the Space Marine says at one point.
Land, who has heard nothing at all, gives a tired grunt. The pace is punishing. He has no augmentations. His throat is raw. His legs are burning.
The technoarchaeologist and his companion move swiftly, their boots striking echoes through the empty colonnades. It’s a disappointment, to be sure. Despite using the deserted complex as nothing more than a subterranean avenue for the sake of convenience, Land can’t help but feel an irritated melancholy at what he’s seeing. The emptiness reminds him of the underground mantle-cities he so keenly explores, where his only companions in the Search for Knowledge are the dungeon-slaved defence systems of a forgotten age, and the serenity of his own thoughts.
Will he ever know that peace again?
And how long will the power last here in Mesatan? Without the complex’s thrall workers, the air filtration gargoyles mounted within each chamber will cease to breathe sooner rather than later. Anyone still down here within a few days will likely expire from asphyxiation.
And this, Land reflects, would be a truly pointless place to die.
On the run from his own contemporaries, no less. Omnissiah have mercy, it is almost maddening enough to be amusing.
The Imperial Fist leads the way across a bridge stretching over a storage repository, where thousands of crates and containers make up a township below.
A single Space Marine…
Land draws breath to ask why the Imperial Fist is alone, why it was deemed appropriate for a mere lone warrior to defend and escort him… when their pursuer makes itself known.
The Vorax strikes when they’re halfway across the span with nowhere to go, its nasty and near-feral cognition aware that they can hardly leap from the high bridge to safety.
The first sign of its presence is when the walkway judders on its support beams, and both Land and the Fist break into a run. Land’s frantic stride takes him forward in flight – not for a deluded second does he believe that the machine is here to save him – and the legionary immediately turns back the way they came.
The Imperial Fist is a blur of grinding armour as he passes Land, while the technoarchaeologist is a flapping silhouette of austere robes and simian howling, the latter from Sapien rather than Land himself. Even as he’s fleeing for his life, Land feels a tickle of embarrassed dread for believing that they had lost their pursuer for good.
‘Get behind me,’ the Fist demands.
Land obeys without thinking. The Vorax leans into its awkwardly graceful sprint, its bulbous sensoria-domes locked in a cold, animal glare. Its rotor cannons cycle to life, spear-limbs retracting in something akin to bestial eagerness, ready to launch forth.
The Imperial Fist stands between Land and the automaton. The Space Marine fires first.
Land has never seen the Legiones Astartes fight before. Not outside of visual recordings, with his own eyes. Despite all the ways in which his work has aided – revolutionised may not be too strong a word, really – the armouries of the Legions, the warriors themselves and their various capabilities have never particularly interested him, beyond the extent of the Omnissiah’s genius in creating them. He studied their physiology insofar as he was able, but a great deal of it was sealed away behind Imperial edict, and much of what he could access was bland propaganda.