False Gods Read online

  ‘Did I? Well… just… be more careful next time,’ said Jonah, already walking away.

  ‘Then watch where you’re going…’ hissed the man under his breath, before climbing back onto his gurney and driving off.

  ‘You be careful now!’ Jonah called after the driver, imagining the colourful insults the man would already be cooking up about ‘those damned Titan crewmen’ to tell his fellow ground staff.

  The hangar, though over two kilometres in length, felt cramped to Jonah as he made his way towards the Dies Irae, the scent of engine oil, grease and sweat not helping one whit with his hangover.

  A host of Battle Titans of the Legio Mortis stood ready for war: fast, mid-range Reavers, snarling Warhounds and the mighty Warlords – as well as some newer Night Gaunt-class Titans – but none could match the awesome splendour of an Imperator-class Titan. The Dies Irae dwarfed them all in size, power and magnificence, and Jonah knew there was nothing in the galaxy that could stand against such a terrifying war machine.

  Jonah adjusted his collar and fastened the brass buttons of his jacket, straightening it over his stocky frame before he reached the Titan’s wide feet. He ran his hands through his shoulder-length black hair, trying to give the impression, at least, that he hadn’t slept in his clothes. He could see the thin, angular form of Titus Cassar, his fellow moderati primus, working behind a monitoring terminal, and had no wish to endure another lecture on the ninety-nine virtues of the Emperor.

  Apparently, smartness of appearance was one of the most important.

  ‘Good morning, Titus,’ he said, keeping his tone light.

  Cassar’s head bobbed up in surprise and he quickly slid a folded pamphlet beneath a sheaf of readiness reports.

  ‘You’re late,’ he said, recovering quickly. ‘Reveille was an hour ago and punctuality is the hallmark of the pious man,’

  ‘Don’t start with me, Titus,’ said Jonah, reaching over and snatching the pamphlet that Cassar had been so quick to conceal. Cassar made to stop him, but Jonah was too quick, brandishing the pamphlet before him.

  ‘If Princeps Turnet catches you reading this, you’ll be a gunnery servitor before you know what’s hit you.’

  ‘Give it back, Jonah, please.’

  ‘I’m not in the mood for another sermon from this damned Lectitio Divinitatus chapbook.’

  ‘Fine, I’ll put it away, just give it back, alright?’

  Jonah nodded and held the well-thumbed paper out to Cassar, who snatched it back and quickly slid it inside his uniform jacket.

  Rubbing his temples with the heel of his palms, Jonah said, ‘Anyway, what’s the rush? It’s not as though the old girl’s even ready for the pre-deployment checks, is she?’

  ‘I pray you’ll stop referring to it as a she, Jonah, it smacks of pagan anthropomorphising,’ said Cassar. ‘A Titan is a war machine, nothing more: steel, adamantine and plasma with flesh and blood controlling it.’

  ‘How can you say that?’ asked Aruken, sauntering over to a steel plated leg section and climbing the steps to the arched gates that led within. He slapped his palm on the thick metal and said, ‘She’s obviously a she, Titus. Look at the shapely legs, the curve of the hips, and doesn’t she carry us within her like a mother protecting her unborn children?’

  ‘In mockery are the seeds of impiety sown,’ said Cassar without a trace of irony, ‘and I will not have it.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Titus,’ said Aruken, warming to his theme. ‘Don’t you feel it when you’re inside her? Don’t you hear the beat of her heart in the rumble of her reactor, or feel the fury of her wrath in the roar of her guns?’

  Cassar turned back to the monitoring panel and said, ‘No, I do not, and I do not wish to hear any more of your foolishness, we are already behind on our pre-deployment checks. Princeps Turnet will have our hides nailed to the hull if we are not ready.’

  ‘Where is the princeps?’ asked Jonah, suddenly serious.

  ‘With the War Council,’ said Cassar.

  Aruken nodded and descended the steps of the Titan’s foot, joining Cassar at the monitoring station and letting fly with one last jibe. ‘Just because you’ve never had the chance to enjoy a woman doesn’t mean I’m not right.’

  Cassar gave him a withering glare, and said, ‘Enough. The War Council will be done soon, and I’ll not have it said that the Legio Mortis wasn’t ready to do the Emperor’s bidding.’

  ‘You mean Horus’s bidding,’ corrected Jonah.

  ‘We have been over this before, my friend,’ said Cassar. ‘Horus’s authority comes from the Emperor. We forget that at our peril.’

  ‘That’s as maybe, but it’s been many a dark and bloody day since we’ve fought with the Emperor beside us, hasn’t it? But hasn’t Horus always been there for us on every battlefield?’

  ‘Indeed he has, and for that I’d follow him into battle beyond the Halo stars,’ nodded Cassar. ‘But even the Warmaster has to answer to the God-Emperor.’

  ‘God-Emperor?’ hissed Jonah, leaning in close as he saw a number of the ground crew turn their heads towards them. ‘Listen, Titus, you have to stop this God-Emperor rubbish. One day you’re going to say that to the wrong person and you’ll get your skull cracked open. Besides, even the Emperor himself says he’s not a god.’

  ‘Only the truly divine deny their divinity,’ said Cassar, quoting from his book.

  Jonah raised his hands in surrender and said, ‘Alright, have it your way, Titus, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.’

  ‘The righteous have nothing to fear from the wicked, and—’

  ‘Spare me another lesson on ethics, Titus,’ sighed Jonah, turning away and watching as a detachment of Imperial Army soldiers marched into the hangar, lasrifles on canvas slings hanging from their shoulders.

  ‘Any word yet on what we’re going to be fighting on this rock?’ asked Jonah, changing the subject. ‘I hope it’s the greenskin. We still owe them for the destruction of Vulkas Tor on Ullanor. Do you think it will be the greenskin?’

  Cassar shrugged. ‘I don’t know, Jonah. Does it matter? We fight who we are ordered to fight.’

  ‘I just like to know.’

  ‘You will know when Princeps Turnet returns,’ said Cassar. ‘Speaking of which, hadn’t you better prepare the command deck for his return?’

  Jonah nodded, knowing that his fellow moderati was right and that he’d wasted enough time in baiting him.

  Senior Princeps Esau Turnet’s reputation as a feared, ruthless warrior was well deserved and he ran a tight ship on the Dies Irae. Titan crews might be permitted more leeway in their behaviour than the common soldiery, but Turnet brooked no such laxity in the crew of his Titan.

  ‘You’re right, Titus, I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be sorry,’ said Cassar, pointing to the gateway in the Titan’s leg. ‘Be ready.’

  Jonah sketched a quick salute and jogged up the steps, leaving Cassar to finish prepping the Titan for refuelling. He made his way past embarking soldiers who grumbled as he pushed them aside. Some raised their voices, but upon seeing his uniform, and knowing that their lives might soon depend on him, they quickly silenced their objections.

  Jonah halted at the entrance to the Titan, taking a second to savour the moment as he stood at the threshold. He tilted his head back and looked up the height of the soaring machine, taking a deep breath as he passed through the tall, eagle and lightning bolt wreathed gateway and entered the Titan.

  HE WAS BATHED in red light as he entered the cold, hard interior of the Titan and began threading his way through the low-ceilinged corridors with a familiarity borne of countless hours learning the position of every rivet and bolt that held the Dies Irae together. There wasn’t a corner of the Titan that Jonah didn’t know: every passageway, every hatch and every secret the old girl had in her belonged to him. Even Titus and Princeps Turnet didn’t know the Dies Irae as well as he did.

  Reaching the end of a narrow corridor, Jonah approached a thick, iron door guar
ded by two soldiers in burnished black breastplates over silver mail shirts. Each wore a mask fashioned in the shape of the Legio’s death’s head and was armed with a short jolt-stick and a holstered shock-pistol. They tensed as he came into view, but relaxed a fraction as they recognised him.

  Jonah nodded to the soldiers and said, ‘Moderati primus moving from lower levels to mid levels.’

  The nearest soldier nodded and indicated a glassy, black panel beside the door as the other drew his pistol. Its muzzle was slightly flared, and two silver steel prongs protruded threateningly, sparks of blue light flickering between them. Arcs of light could leap out and sear the flesh from a man’s bones in a burst of lightning, but wouldn’t dangerously ricochet in the cramped confines of a Titan’s interior.

  Jonah pressed his palm against the panel and waited as the yellow beam scanned his hand. A light above the door flashed green and the nearest soldier reached over and turned a hatch wheel that opened the door.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Jonah and passed through, finding himself in one of the screw-stairs that climbed the inside of the Titan’s leg. The narrow iron mesh stairs curled around thick, fibre-bundle muscles and throbbing power cables wreathed in a shimmering energy field, but Jonah paid them no mind, too intent on his roiling stomach as he climbed the hot, stuffy stairs. He had to pause to catch his breath halfway up, and wiped a hand across his sweaty brow before reaching the next level.

  This high up, the air was cooler as powerful recyc-units dispersed the heat generated by the venting of plasma gasses from the reactor. Hooded adepts of the Mechanicum tended to flickering control panels as they carefully built up the plasma levels in the reactor. Crewmen passed him along the cramped confines of the Titan’s interior, saluting as they passed him. Good men crewed the Dies Irae; they had to be good – Princeps Turnet would never have picked them otherwise. All the men and women onboard the Titan had been chosen personally for their expertise and dedication.

  Eventually, Jonah reached the Moderati Chambers in the heart of the Titan and slid his authenticator into the slot beside the door.

  ‘Moderati Primus Jonah Aruken,’ he said.

  The lock mechanism clicked and, with a chime, the door slid open. Inside was a brilliant domed chamber with curving walls of shining metal and half a dozen openings spaced evenly throughout the ceiling.

  Jonah stood in the centre of the room and said, ‘Command Bridge, Moderati Primus Jonah Aruken.’

  The floor beneath him shimmered and rippled like mercury, a perfectly circular disc of mirror-like metal forming beneath his feet and lifting him from the ground. The thin disc climbed into the air and Jonah rose through a hole in the ceiling, passing along the transport tube towards the summit of the Titan. The walls of the tube glowed with their own inner light, and Jonah stifled a yawn as the silver disc came to a halt and he emerged onto the command deck.

  The interior of the Dies Irae’s head section was wide and flat, with recessed bays in the floor to either side of the main gangway, where hooded adepts and servitors interfaced directly with the deep core functions of the colossal machine.

  ‘And how is everyone this fine morning?’ he asked no one in particular. ‘Ready to take the fight to the heathens once more?’

  As usual, no one answered him and Jonah shook his head with a smile as he made his way to the front of the bridge, already feeling his hangover receding at the thought of meshing with the command interface. Three padded chairs occupied a raised dais before the glowing green tactical viewer, each with thick bundles of insulated cables trailing from the arms and headrests.

  He slid past the central chair, that of Princeps Turnet, and sat in the chair to the right, sliding into the comfortable groove he’d worn in the creaking leather over the years.

  ‘Adepts,’ he said. ‘Link me.’

  Red-robed adepts of the Mechanicum appeared, one on either side of him, their movements slow and in perfect concert with one another, and slotted fine micro-cellular gauntlets over his hands, the inner, mnemonic surfaces meshing with his skin and registering his vital signs. Another adept lowered a silver lattice of encephalographic sensors onto his head, and the touch of the cool metal against his skin was a welcome sensation.

  ‘Hold still, moderati,’ said the adept behind him, his voice dull and lifeless. ‘The cortical-dendrites are ready to deploy.’

  Jonah heard the hiss of the neck clamps as they slid from the side of the headrest, and, from the corners of his eyes, he could see slithering slivers of metal emerging from the clamps. He braced himself for the momentary pain of connection as they slid across his cheek like silver worms reaching towards his eyes.

  Then he could see them fully: incredibly fine silver wires, each no thicker than a human hair, yet capable of carrying vast amounts of information.

  The clamps gripped his head firmly as the silver wires descended and penetrated the corners of his eyes, worming down past his optic nerve and into his brain, where they finally interfaced directly with his cerebral cortex.

  He grunted as the momentary, icy pain of connection passed through his brain, but relaxed as he felt the body of the Titan become one with his own. Information flooded through him, the cortical-dendrites filtering it through portions of his brain that normally went unused, allowing him to feel every part of the gigantic machine as though it were an extension of his own flesh.

  Within microseconds, the post-hypnotic implants in the subconscious portions of his brain were already running the pre-deployment checks, and the insides of his eyeballs lit up with telemetry data, weapon readiness status, fuel levels and a million other nuggets of information that would allow him to command this beautiful, wonderful Titan.

  ‘How do you feel?’ asked the adept, and Jonah laughed.

  ‘It’s good to be the king,’ he said.

  AS THE FIRST pinpricks of light flared in the sky, Akshub knew that history had come to her world. She gripped her fetish-hung staff tightly in her clawed hand, knowing that a moment in time had dawned that mankind would never forget, heralding a day when the gods themselves would step from myth and legend to hammer out the future in blood and fire.

  She had waited for this day since the great warriors from the sky had brought word of the sacred task appointed to her when she was little more than a babe in arms. As the great red orb of the sun rose in the north, hot, dry winds brought the sour fragrance of bitter blossoms from the tomb-littered valleys of long-dead emperors.

  Standing high in the mountains, she watched this day of days unfold below her, tears of rapture spilling down her wrinkled cheeks from her black, oval eyes, as the pinpricks of light became fiery trails streaking across the clouds towards the ground.

  Below her, great herds of horned beasts trekked across the verdant savannah, sweeping towards their watering holes in the south before the day grew too hot for them to move and the swift, razor-fanged predators emerged from their rocky burrows. Flocks of wide-pinioned birds wheeled over the highest peaks of the mountains above her, their cries raucous, yet musical, as this momentous day grew older.

  All the multitudinous varieties of life carried on in their usual ways, oblivious to the fact that events that would change the fate of the galaxy were soon to unfold on this unremarkable world.

  On this day of days, only she truly appreciated it.

  THE FIRST WAVE of drop-pods landed around the central massif at exactly 16:04 zulu time, the screaming jets of their retros bringing them in on fiery pillars as they breached the lower atmosphere. Stormbirds followed, like dangerously graceful birds of prey swooping in on some hapless victim.

  Black and scorched by the heat of re-entry, the thirty drop-pods sent up great clouds of dust and earth from their impacts, their wide doors opening with percussive booms and clanging down on the steppe.

  Three hundred warriors in thick, plate armour swiftly disembarked from the drop-pods and fanned out with mechanical precision, quickly linking up with other squads, and forming a defensive perimeter arou
nd an unremarkable patch of ground in the centre of their landing pattern. Stormbirds circled above in overlapping racetrack patterns, as though daring anything to approach.

  At some unseen signal, the Stormbirds broke formation and rose into the sky as the boxy form of a Thunderhawk descended from the clouds, its belly blackened and trailing blue-white contrails. The larger craft surrounded the smaller one, like mother hens protecting a chick, escorting it to the surface, where it landed in a billowing cloud of red dust.

  The Stormbirds screamed away on prescribed patrol circuits as the forward ramp of the Thunderhawk groaned open, the hiss of pressurised air gusting from within. Ten warriors clad in the comb-crested helms and shimmering plate armour of the Sons of Horus marched from the gunship, cloaks of many colours billowing at their shoulders.

  Each carried a golden bolter across his chest, and their heads turned from left to right as they searched for threats.

  Behind them came a living god, his armour gleaming gold and ocean green, with a cloak of regal purple framing him perfectly A single, carved red eye stared out from his breastplate and a wreath of laurels sat upon his perfect brow.

  ‘Davin,’ sighed Horus. ‘I never thought I’d see this place again.’

  TWO

  You bleed

  A good war

  Until the galaxy burns

  A time to listen

  MERSADIE OLITON FORCED herself to watch the blade stab towards Loken, knowing that this strike must surely end his life. But, as always, he swayed aside from the lethal sweep with a speed that belied his massive Astartes frame, and raised his sword in time to block yet another stabbing cut. A heavy cudgel looped down at his head, but he had obviously anticipated the blow and ducked as it slashed over him.

  The armatures of the practice cage clattered as the weapons swung, stabbed and slashed through the air, mindlessly seeking to dismember the massive Astartes warrior who fought within. Loken grunted, his hard-muscled body shining with a gleaming layer of sweat as a blade scored his upper arm, and Mersadie winced as a thin line of blood ran from his bicep.