Priests of Mars Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Warhammer 40,000

  Dramatis Personae

  First Principles

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  About The Author

  Legal

  eBook license

  Warhammer 40,000

  It is the 41st millennium. For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the master of mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die.

  Yet even in his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor’s will. Vast armies give battle in his name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst His soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Imperial Guard and countless planetary defence forces, the ever-vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants - and worse.

  To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.

  Dramatis Personae

  The Speranza

  Lexell Kotov – Archmagos of the Kotov Explorator Fleet

  Tarkis Blaylock – Fabricatus Locum, Magos of the Cebrenia Quadrangle

  Vitali Tychon – Stellar Cartographer of the Quatria Orbital Galleries

  Linya Tychon – Stellar Cartographer, daughter of Vitali Tychon

  Azuramagelli – Magos of Astrogation

  Kryptaestrex – Magos of Logistics

  Turentek – Ark Fabricatus

  Hirimau Dahan – Secutor/Guilder Suzerain

  Saiixek – Master of Engines

  Julius Hawke – Bondsman

  Abrehem Locke – Bondsman

  Vannen Coyne – Bondsman

  Ismael de Roeven – Bondsman

  Crusha – Bondsman

  The Renard

  Roboute Surcouf – Captain

  Emil Nader – First Mate

  Adara Siavash – Hired Gun

  Ilanna Pavelka – Tech-Priest

  Kayrn Sylkwood – Enginseer

  Gideon Teivel – Astropath

  Elior Roi – Navigator

  Adeptus Astartes Black Templars

  Kul Gilad – Reclusiarch

  Tanna – Brother-Sergeant

  Auiden – Apothecary

  Issur – Initiate

  Atticus Varda – Initiate

  Bracha – Initiate

  Yael – Initiate

  The Cadian 71st ‘The Hellhounds’

  Ven Anders – Colonel of the Cadian Detached Formation

  Blayne Hawkins – Captain of Blazer Company

  Taybard Rae – Lieutenant of Blazer Company

  Jahn Callins – Requisitional Support Officer, Blazer Company

  Legio Sirius

  Arlo Luth, ‘The Wintersun’ – Warlord Princeps, Lupa Capitalina

  Marko Koskinen – Moderati

  Lars Rosten – Moderati

  Magos Hyrdrith – Tech-Priest

  Eryks Skálmöld, ‘The Moonsorrow’ – Reaver Princeps, Canis Ulfrica

  Tobias Osara – Moderati

  Joakim Baldur – Moderati

  Magos Ohtar – Tech-Priest

  Gunnar Vintras, ‘The Skinwalker’ – Warhound Princeps, Amarok

  Elias Härkin, ‘The Ironwoad’ – Warhound Princeps, Vilka

  The Starblade

  Bielanna Faerelle – Farseer of Biel-Tan

  Ariganna – Striking Scorpion Exarch of Biel-Tan

  Tariquel – Striking Scorpion of Biel-Tan

  Vaynesh – Striking Scorpion of Biel-Tan

  Uldanaish Ghostwalker – Wraithlord of Biel-Tan

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  Binaric inscription on the Bell of Lost Souls.

  Tower of Heroes, Terra.

  The Telok Expedition: Declared lost with all knowledge: 383.M38

  Mechanicus metafile 487834857b/KOTOV

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  001

  Knowledge is power. It is the first credo. It is the only credo. To understand that fundamental concept is to possess power beyond measure. To harness fire, to shape the elements and bend them to your will. Such things as can now only be dreamed of by lunatics and the Machine-touched were commonplace in an age unremembered. What is now miraculous and divine, the preserve of the few, was once possessed by all. Yet understood by none.

  Woe to you, man who honour
s not the Omnissiah, for ignorance shall be your doom!

  The Great Machines of Old Earth were wondrous engines of creation whose power dwarfed that of any myth or legend. They shaped entire worlds, they drank the hearts of stars and brought light into the dark places of the universe. The techno-sorcerers who crafted them and wielded their power bestrode the world as gods.

  How far we have fallen.

  010

  Great void-born city of metal and stone, marvel of wonders never to be known again. You live in the depths of space, your sheet steel skin cold and unyielding. You are a living thing, a creature whose bones are adamantium, whose molten heart is that of a thousand caged stars. Oil is your sweat and the devotion of a million souls your succour. Creatures of flesh and blood empower you from within. They work the myriad wonders that drive your organs, feed your hunger and hurl you through the trackless wilderness between the stars.

  How far will you travel?

  What miracles will you see?

  The light of uncounted suns will shine from the glitter-sheen of your hull, light that has travelled from the past, cast by stars that are dead and stars in the throes of their violent birth. A mariner in strange seas, swept out among the glittering nebulae, you will see sights that no man can know, no legend tell or history record.

  You are living history, for you will venture farther and longer than any other of your kind.

  No grim ship of war are you, no lowly workhorse yoked to dull purpose.

  You are Ark Mechanicus.

  You are Speranza.

  You are the bringer of hope in this hopeless age.

  011

  The spirit of the Omnissiah flows in bright traceries of golden energy. It moves in the heart of every machine. It brings motion and heat, energy and light. It feeds the forges, it drives the engines and is the alpha and omega of all that is and all that will ever be crafted by the hands of Man. The soul of the Great Machine lives in cogs and gears, it flows through every cable, it infuses every piston and the thrumming heart of every engine. Without it, the universe would be a benighted, sterile place, devoid of light and existence.

  The God of All Machines is eternal and unchanging.

  It is the First Power; the power at the heart of all things.

  To know it is to be one with it, and to feel its touch is to be changed forever.

  Flesh fails, but the machine endures.

  That which was once encoded in the very bones of the ancient Men of Gold has been lost, perhaps forever. But perhaps not. Much has been forgotten that will never again be remembered, and the hidden corners of this dying galaxy have secrets left to whisper. Those with eyes to see and the will to search may find scraps of what the titans who shaped the galaxy to their every desire left in the ruins of their doom.

  The lost realm of Man once claimed the galaxy as its own, with lustrous eyes turned to those stellar realms beyond its haloed fringes, but such was not to be our species’s destiny. We reached too far, too soon, too greedily and were almost destroyed.

  By hubris? Or worse, by ignorance?

  Who can know? None remember the truth of what brought our race to the edge of extinction. Some claim the machines rebelled against their enslavement and turned on their makers, others that an emergent strain of psykers unleashed a cataclysm. Whatever the cause, it wrought more harm than anyone living could ever have imagined.

  We plunged from a Golden Age of technology and reason into an Age of Darkness from which there is little hope of escape. Forget the promise of progress, they say. Forget the glories of the past. Cling to what little light remains and be satisfied with its feeble illumination.

  The Adeptus Mechanicus rejects that paradigm.

  We are crusaders in the darkness, ever seeking out that which will bring back the light of science and understanding. That is at the heart of what we have lost, the capacity to understand and question, the vision to determine what we do not know and seek out answers.

  We have become enslaved by dogma, ritual and blind superstitions that place fetters on our ability to even know there are questions to be asked.

  I will ask those questions.

  I will not be enslaved.

  I am Archmagos Lexell Kotov, and I will reclaim what was lost.

  This is my quest for knowledge.

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  Life is directed motion.

  Microcontent 01

  Low-orbit traffic above Joura was lousy with ships jostling for space. Queues of lifter-boats, heavy-duty bulk tenders and system monitors held station in the wash of augur-fogging electromagnetics and engine flare from the heavier vessels as system pilots manoeuvred them into position for refuelling, re-arming and supply. Musters like this happened only rarely, and for two of them to come at once wasn’t just rare, it was a complete pain in the backside.

  The Renard was a ship of respectable tonnage, but compared to the working vessels hauling their monstrously fat bodies between Joura and the fleets competing for docking space like squealing cudbear litters fighting for prime position at the teat, she was little more than an insignificant speck.

  Roboute Surcouf didn’t like thinking of his ship like that. No captain worthy of the rank did.

  The command bridge of the Renard was a warmly-lit chamber of chamfered wood, bronze and glass, embellished with bygone design flourishes more commonly found on the ancient ships sailing the oceans of Macragge. Every surface was polished to a mirror shine, and though Magos Pavelka called such labours a waste of her servitors’ resources, not even an adept of the Martian Priesthood would gainsay a rogue trader with a Letter of Marque stamped with Segmentum Pacificus accreditation.

  Pavelka claimed it was the fragment of the Omnissiah that lived in the heart of a starship that every captain had to appease, but Roboute disagreed with Ilanna’s slavish devotion to her Martian dogma when it came to ships. Roboute knew you had to love a ship, love her more than anything else in the world. Flying sub-atmospheric cutters on Iax as a youth had taught him that every ship had a soul that needed to be loved. And the ships who knew they weren’t loved would be cantankerous mares; feisty at best, dangerous at worst.

  Ilanna Pavelka was about the only member of his crew who hadn’t objected to this venture. In fact she’d gotten almost giddy at the prospect of joining Archmagos Kotov’s Explorator Fleet and working with fellow Mechanicus adepts once more. Perhaps giddy wasn’t the right word, but she’d voiced calm approval, which was about as close to excitement as a priest of Mars ever got in Roboute’s experience.

  ‘Update: berthing docket inloading from the Speranza,’ Pavelka informed him, speaking from her sunken, steel-panelled command station in the forward arc of the bridge. Holographic streams of binaric data cascaded before her, manipulated by the waving mechadendrites that sprang from her shoulders like a host of snakes. ‘One hundred minutes until our allotted berth is available.’

  ‘How much margin for error in that?’ asked Emil Nader, the Renard’s first officer, seated in a contoured inertial-harness to Roboute’s left as he kept them within their assigned approach corridor with deft touches of manoeuvring jets. Pavelka could bring them in with an electromagnetic tether, but Roboute liked to give Emil a bit of freedom in the upper atmosphere. The Renard was going to be slaved to the Speranza’s course for the foreseeable future, and his cocksure first officer would appreciate this free flight time. Like most natives of Espandor, he had a wild, feral streak that made him averse to unthinking obedience to machinery.

  ‘Clarification: none,’ said Pavelka. ‘The cogitators of the Speranza are first generation Martian logic-engines, they do not allow for error.’

  ‘Yeah, but the pilots ahead of us aren’t,’ pointed out Emil. ‘Factor in their presence.’

  ‘All vessels ahead of us are tethered; as we will need to be before we enter the Speranza’s gravity envelope. There will be no error margin.’

  ‘Care to wager on that?’ asked Emil
with a sly grin.

  A soft exhalation of chemical breath escaped Pavelka’s red cowl, and Roboute hid a smile at her exasperation. Emil Nader never missed a chance to pick at Mechanicus infallibility, and would never resort to automation if there was an option for human control.

  ‘I do not wager, Mister Nader,’ said Pavelka. ‘You own nothing I desire, and none of my possessions would be of any use to you without extensive redesign of your ventral anatomy.’

  ‘Leave it alone, Emil,’ said Roboute, as he saw Nader about to answer Pavelka’s statement with something inflammatory. ‘Just concentrate on getting us up there in one piece. If we stray so much as a kilometre from our assigned path, it’ll put a snarl in the orbital traffic worse than that time over Cadia when that officer on the Gathalamor shot up his bridge, remember?’

  Emil shook his head. ‘I try not to. But what did they expect, giving a ship a name like that? You might as well call it the Horus and be done with it.’

  ‘Don’t say that name!’ hissed Adara Siavash, lounging in Gideon Teivel’s vacant astropath station with a las-lock pistol spinning in one hand and a butterfly blade in the other. ‘It’s bad luck.’

  Roboute wasn’t exactly sure what rank or position Adara Siavash held on the Renard. He’d come aboard on a cargo run between Joura and Lodan, and never left. He was lethal with a blade and could fire a rifle with a skill that would have earned him a marksman’s lanyard in the Iax Defence Auxilia. He’d saved Roboute’s life on that run, putting down a passenger who’d turned out to be an unsanctioned psyker and who’d almost killed everyone aboard when they’d translated. Yet for all that, Roboute couldn’t help but think of him as a young boy, such was his childlike innocence and constant wonder at the galaxy’s strangeness.

  Sometimes Roboute almost envied him.

  ‘The lad’s right,’ he said, as he sensed a kink in the ship’s systems. ‘Don’t say that name.’

  His first mate shrugged, but Roboute saw that Emil knew he’d crossed a line.

  The crew carried on with their assigned tasks and Roboute brought the current shipboard operations up onto the inner surfaces of his retina. A mass of gold-cored cables trailed from the base of his neck to the command throne upon which he sat, feeding him real-time data from the various active bridge stations. Trajectories, approach vectors, fuel consumption and closure speeds scrolled past, together with noospheric identity tags for the hundreds of vessels in orbit.