He left it at that. Frankly, he didn’t care.
War, to Arkhan Land, has always been a notion of excruciating boredom.
Land’s passion is for how the rediscovered secrets of the past may brighten the future, rather than the tedious brutalities of the present. Space Marines are tools and they fulfil their role with uninspired aplomb.
This one is nevertheless an impressive specimen of the battling art. He opens up with a tremendous crash of bolter-fire, every shot impacting against the Vorax’s armour plating, not a single shell going wide. All the while he backs away, keeping his bulk between the machine and its kill-target, twitching and buckling under the rattling slug-fire from its rotor cannons and yet refusing to fall.
Sparks fly from the Imperial Fist’s armour. Scraps of ceramite clatter in steaming shards to the walkway gantry. He is being drilled. No other words sum up the destruction inflicted upon the towering warrior. He is being drilled by gunfire.
Bullets whine and buzz past where Land cowers in the warrior’s shadow. They spank and clang off the walkway’s railings, inches from where he stands.
Still the boltgun booms.
‘Nicanor–’ Land says. It is the first and last time he will speak the Imperial Fist’s name.
Nicanor fires one-handed, grunting as his blood mists in the air. His free gauntlet reaches for the melta bomb bound to his back.
‘Run,’ the Space Marine orders, and pulls the device.
‘That will not–’
‘For the bridge.’ Nicanor keeps his armoured pauldron facing the advancing, reloading foe, with his helmet half-masked behind it. ‘Not for the machine. Run.’
He’s going to blow the br–
Land runs.
‘You are the technoarchaeologist Arkhan Land,’ says Nicanor.
It isn’t a question. The man he addresses is slight of build, sparse of hair, wears multilens wide-spectrum visualiser goggles lifted high up on his forehead, is clad in the layered robes of a senior adept over the more practical travelling bodysuit and rugged armour of a mendicant Martian, and is in the company of an artificimian – a psyber-monkey – that watches Nicanor with clicking picter-eyes.
Additionally, the man’s facial features exactly resemble the image files that Nicanor has stored in his retinal display. This is unquestionably Arkhan Land.
Nicanor can see that the man is afraid, betrayed by an accelerated heart rate and the sheen of fear-sweat on his brow. But there is pride here; Arkhan Land may be a non-combatant and in fear for his life – and, indeed, his entire way of life – but he stands tall and defiant even with a tremble in his limbs.
This is good, Nicanor thinks in his dispassionately amused way. It is good to admire someone that you may have to die for.
‘I am he,’ the sharp-eyed human replies. ‘And, dare I ask, which side you are on, Space Marine?’
Nicanor stiffens at the insult of the man’s words, though given the circumstances they are understandable enough. ‘I am Sergeant Nicanor Tullus of the Seventh Legion.’
Land sneers, rejecting the answer. ‘That tells me nothing but your name and your lineage, Space Marine.’
‘I am loyal to the Emperor.’
At that, the technoarchaeologist exhales something between a sigh of relief and a breath of irritation. ‘I trust you are here to “save” me, then. Well, I commend you for your efforts in locating me, but those efforts have been in vain. I am not leaving my home world. Sacred Mars is aflame with heathenism, true enough, but it is my home.’
Nicanor expected this. He commits precious seconds looking around the laboratory, seeking any sign of weaponry capable of causing him harm. There appears to be precious little in the way of threat amongst the near-preternatural degrees of clutter. Arkhan Land is hailed as a genius, but if his mind is as disordered as the space he inhabits, then it is a chaotic genius indeed that resides behind those unhappy features.
‘My brethren are assisting in the defence and evacuation of the Mondus Occulum forge. I was assigned–’
Land barks a laugh, speaking over Nicanor’s declaration. ‘Oh, noble legionaries! Come to save their precious armour-foundries and plunder what they can, before leaving the Forge World Principal to burn, eh?’
‘I refuse to argue with you, Technoarchaeologist Land. A ship waits, hidden on the Zetek tundra. Stealth and caution are advised, and thus you will take no skimmer craft. You will make your way to Zetek via the Mesatan gearworks complex, and you will board the transport. From there you will be taken to the Ring of Iron, and onward to Terra.’
Land bares his teeth. It isn’t a smile, this time. Not even a mocking one. ‘I cannot leave my work unattended, Space Marine.’
The psyber-monkey hangs from a series of bars set across the laboratory’s ceiling. They seem specifically constructed for the purpose. As the warrior and the scholar talk, the artificimian swings its way across the room and drops to land on its master’s shoulder.
‘If you remain here,’ Nicanor says, ‘there is a chance you will be executed by the foe. Assassins may already be on their way.’
‘The Omnissiah will protect me,’ Land replies, piously and sincerely making the Sign of the Cog with his linked knuckles.
‘The Emperor’s own Regent sent my Legion here, Arkhan Land. Perhaps we are the protection you speak of and pray for.’
‘Meta-spiritual philosophising from a ceramite-clad brute? As if the rebellion raging across this world wasn’t enough of a surprise for one lifetime! No, you Terran bastard, I am not leaving.’
Impassive to the man’s resistance, Nicanor tries one last time. ‘There is also a significant chance that if you are not executed by the Fabricator General’s traitorous forces, you will be captured by them.’
Something – some emotion that Nicanor is incapable of reading – flashes in the scholar’s eyes. ‘That is a distinct possibility,’ he agrees.
‘And you understand,’ the warrior presses on with inhuman calm, ‘that such an event cannot be allowed to transpire.’
‘Ah.’ Land snorts in simple disgust. ‘I know too much, eh? Can’t risk me defecting. Is that it?’
Nicanor says nothing. He draws his boltgun and levels it at Arkhan Land’s head.
‘He must live,’ says Sigismund.
Nicanor listens to the words, words that are really an order. His raised face – and the face of every warrior present – is bathed in the flickering light of the tactical hololith. The images revolve through the air above the projection table, locked in a slow ballet of rotating illumination.
They will make planetfall in an hour. They already know everything there is to know. All that remains is to allocate landing zones, to choose which warriors will go where.
One side of the briefing display is given over to data relating to Arkhan Land.
The Arkhan Land. The explorer and scholar responsible for so many expeditions into the ancient data-crypts of Mars’ crust and mantle. The man that brought back the beginnings of anti-grav technology to the nascent Imperium; the man responsible for unearthing and sharing the schematics that led to the mass-production of the Raiders and Speeders now seen in their thousands among the Legions.