Lords of Mars Read online

  Pavelka was cowled in the typical red robe of the Mechanicus, one that hid the majority of her augmetic qualities. Though Roboute had no idea of the full extent of her modification, he suspected it was a lot less than many of the Martian adepts aboard the Speranza. A number of feed-lines ran from a sparking power unit mounted on her back, and four concertinaing pipes expanded and contracted like bellows as they fed power into the sled’s batteries.

  ‘She ready?’ he asked, slapping an armoured hand against the grav-sled’s battered plates.

  Pavelka flinched at the impact and said, ‘Admonishment: Need I remind you, captain, that to ascribe gender to machines is needless anthropomorphism? Machines have no need of flesh labels.’

  ‘I don’t believe that,’ said Adara, winking at the captain through the polarised faceplate of his own void-suit. ‘You can tell this is a grand old girl. Trust me, I know about the fairer sex.’

  Sylkwood grinned and rubbed a metal palm on the thrumming fuselage as though it was her lover’s backside.

  ‘Gotta say, I agree with the lad,’ she said. ‘Not about him knowing anything about women. Trust me, he doesn’t know one interface port from another. But this machine’s reliable, right enough. She’s tough and won’t let you down in a tight spot. Sounds like a woman to me.’

  Adara turned away to hide his embarrassment as Pavelka shook her head. ‘What else should I expect from an enginseer?’ she said, disconnecting her feed lines from the sled.

  Sylkwood grinned and said, ‘Hard work, foul language and hangovers that’ll cripple an ork.’

  Roboute set a foot onto the iron rungs hanging down from the sled’s crew cab and awkwardly hauled himself up into the pilot’s seat. Sylkwood clambered up after him and ran through the connection checklist with the thoroughness of a Sororitas dorm-mistress ensuring her novices were all abed.

  Sylkwood was Cadian and thoroughness was her watchword.

  ‘Hey, how come you’re not checking my suit’s seals and tucking me in?’ said Adara, as he climbed onto the sled from the opposite side.

  Without looking up, Sylkwood said, ‘Because you’re not the captain and I don’t much care if you explosively depressurise in a toxic environment.’

  ‘You’re cleaning the suit of piss and blood if he does,’ said Roboute, making a last adjustment to the sled’s surveyor gear.

  ‘How much on Adara having missed a seal?’ asked Sylkwood, looking back down at Pavelka.

  ‘You sound just like Mister Nader,’ answered Pavelka.

  ‘We left him up on the Renard,’ said Sylkwood. ‘Someone’s got to play the role of annoying idiot.’

  ‘In any case, it would not be a wager to me,’ said Pavelka. ‘Atmospheric readings tell me that Mister Siavash has his void-suit sealed within acceptable parameters.’

  ‘Good to know,’ said Adara.

  The lad dropped into his bucket seat and strapped himself in next to Roboute. The boy had his ubiquitous butterfly blade tucked into one of his void-suit’s thigh pouches next to his holstered laspistol, and Roboute sighed.

  ‘Tell me you’re not so stupid as to carry an unsheathed knife in your suit,’ said Roboute.

  Adara at least had the decency to look guilty as he pulled the blade out and placed it in a stowage box mounted on the inner face of the door.

  ‘Yeah, sorry. I don’t go anywhere without it, I kind of forget it’s even there.’

  Magos Pavelka appeared at his side, filling the emergency oxygen tanks worked into the door’s structure. A coiling mechadendrite reached over her shoulder and opened the stowage box before a second articulated bronze limb capped with rotating callipers removed the offending blade.

  ‘Come on,’ said Adara. ‘What harm is there in leaving the knife there?’

  ‘Clarification: It is statistically probable that you will remove this weapon and carry it with you once you are beyond the hull of this vessel,’ said Pavelka, and even though much of her face had the porcelain quality of synth-skin and augmetic replacement, Roboute saw a glint of amusement in her clicking optics. ‘As Enginseer Sylkwood might say, “You have previous” and are not to be trusted.’

  ‘You cut me deep,’ said Adara.

  ‘You’d cut yourself deep,’ said Roboute, ‘and out there, that’d be a death sentence. Right, Ilanna?’

  ‘Unquestionably,’ answered the magos. ‘The atmosphere on the planet below is a volatile mix of frozen nitrogen being released from the ice-caps in both gaseous and liquid form, ammonia and airborne heavy metal particulates. The thermocline is shifting unpredictably in the ultra-rapid atmospheric bleed-off, resulting in squalling pressure vortices that would cause your body to react in a number of extremely unpleasant ways without your void-suit’s equalisation.’

  ‘I don’t know what a lot of that means, but I get the gist,’ said Adara.

  ‘Right, now you’ve scared us both half to death, how long before the tether gets us down there?’ asked Roboute, trying not to let his discomfort at the Renard’s cargo shuttle being reeled down onto the planet’s surface by remote means show in his voice. ‘I want to get out there and see what a world beyond the galaxy’s edge looks like.’

  Pavelka cocked her head to the side, wordlessly communing with the Mechanicus controllers on the surface via the implants in her skull. Roboute’s brain had been augmented to view the invisible skeins of noospheric data, but only when interfacing with a spinal link system. The sled had no such array, and even if it did, he wouldn’t be able to connect with it through his void-suit.

  ‘Approximately ten minutes,’ said Pavelka. ‘Stratospheric disturbances and unexpected magnetic field storms are introducing chaotic variables into our ETA.’

  Sylkwood dropped from the grav-sled’s running boards and shouted, ‘Clear the deck!’ though there was no one else in the shuttle’s cavernous loading bay. The few servitor cadres Roboute owned were otherwise engaged in monitoring the shuttle’s automated flight path or back aboard the Renard, repairing damage suffered during the navigation of the Halo Scar. Sylkwood scrambled up the service ladder to the upper gangway as Pavelka climbed onto the grav-sled, sitting behind Adara and producing a data-slate, which she rested upon her knees.

  Roboute twisted awkwardly in his seat and said, ‘Everything set?’

  ‘Statement: yes,’ said Pavelka, extruding a mechanised auspex from a chest compartment.

  ‘You don’t have to come with us,’ said Roboute. ‘I know you don’t like leaving the Renard.’

  Pavelka shook her head. ‘I modified the memory coil circuitry of the Tomioka’s distress beacon. I can follow its telemetry better than anyone else. Besides, if this sled breaks down, you will need me to fix it.’

  ‘Good to know,’ said Roboute, quietly grateful to have Pavelka along for the ride.

  ‘Don’t you need a suit?’ asked Adara.

  Pavelka shook her head. ‘I have altered the filtration protocols of my lungs to exclude the toxic elements of the atmosphere, and am currently modifying my biochemistry to nullify the negative effects of hostile pressures. My body mass incorporates so little organic mass that requires oxygenation that I can store enough reserve within my mechanised volume.’

  ‘Good to know,’ said Adara in imitation of Roboute.

  Roboute looked up to the upper gantry of the cargo bay, seeing Sylkwood open one of the hold’s vacuum-sealed doors. She sketched a quick salute to him, but said nothing as she slammed the heavy door behind her.

  Clearly Kayrn Sylkwood felt no need to mark this moment with any significant words.

  But Roboute knew this particular moment was special.

  The three of them would soon pilot the sled onto the surface of an alien world that lay beyond the edges of the Milky Way, a world unclaimed by the Imperium. A world that had, until the coming of Telok’s fleet thousands of years ago, probably never known the tread of human feet. This was why Roboute had come this far and risked so much, to see alien skies and touch the earth of a planet so far from the u
nderstanding of the Imperium.

  An emerald light on the walnut and brass control panel winked with an incoming transmission, and Roboute flicked the ivory-tipped switch next to it into the receive position. The voice of the expedition’s leader, Archmagos Lexell Kotov, trilled from the speaker grille.

  ‘Mister Surcouf,’ said Kotov. ‘Are you planning on joining us aboard the Tabularium?’

  Roboute grinned, hearing the febrile edge of excitement in the archmagos’s voice. Though Kotov was the master of this explorator fleet, it had been Roboute’s retrieval of the locator beacon that had brought them this far.

  ‘I think we’d rather make our own way to the Tomioka,’ said Roboute. ‘But thank you for the invitation, it’s very thoughtful of you.’

  ‘Your tether shows significant margin for error in your arrival time,’ said Telok.

  ‘So I gather, but Magos Pavelka reckons we’ll be planet side in around ten minutes.’

  ‘How imprecise. Kotov out,’ replied the archmagos.

  Of all the many ways to be carried into battle, Brother-Sergeant Tanna relished the sudden fury of a Thunderhawk assault the most. Nothing stirred his heart more than the violent thrust of howling engines, the jolting motion of evasive manoeuvres and the sudden, screaming deceleration as the pilot flared the wings and slammed down into the crucible of combat. Being thrown around the inside of a Rhino or Land Raider just couldn’t compare, and Tanna didn’t know any Techmarine that could drive worth a damn anyway.

  Yes, a gunship assault every time.

  Even if this particular descent was – for now – being controlled by a Mechanicus e-mag tether.

  The crew compartment of the Barisan was as cold as a meat locker, and a fine mist of condensing vapours slowly beaded the curved plates of Tanna’s midnight-black armour with droplets of moisture. A cross of purest jet gleamed on one ivory shoulder guard and an eagle carved from the same material stood proud on the other. An embossed red skull was set in the centre of the eagle’s breast, its eyes glinting shards of deeper garnet. Liquid streaks coated the angular planes of his helmet like tears, but Tanna had not wept in over two hundred years.

  Alone in his makeshift arming chamber aboard the Speranza he had come close.

  The Thunderhawk lurched, slammed sideways by rogue vortices of surging gases being stripped from the planet’s surface. The atmospherics of Katen Venia were growing increasingly turbulent and toxic; a mix of intolerably high nitrogen levels and vaporous metals utterly lethal to mortals. Tanna’s post-human physiology had been engineered to survive hostile environments, but even he would struggle to survive in Katen Venia’s atmosphere for more than a few hours.

  The Barisan wasn’t flying an assault run, but its descent was scarcely less steep and juddering than any combat drop Tanna had previously made in its belly. The gunship’s frame had been struck in the Tyrrhenus Mons forge-complex on Mars, and bore the seal of the Fabricator General himself. Its machine-spirit was a tempestuous thing, part unbroken colt, part wounded grox – aggression and wildness combined. Such qualities had served the Fighting Company well in past crusades, but the gunship still grieved the loss of its carrier and had yet to settle in its new home aboard the Speranza.

  Much like the rest of us, thought Tanna, casting a quick glance down the length of the fuselage.

  A Thunderhawk was built to carry three Codex-strength squads into the heart of battle, but most of the Barisan’s grav-restraints were empty. Only six of the thirty seats were occupied. Tanna sat on the commander’s bench next to the gunship’s assault ramp, his helmet fixed in place and his chained bolter held rigid at his side.

  Brother Yael sat two seats down from him, cradling his boltgun close to his chest. The youngest of their number, Yael had only recently been raised to the ranks of the Fighting Company, chosen by Helbrecht himself to take part in the Scar Crusade. The bout the young warrior had fought on the Speranza’s training deck against Magos Dahan was one Tanna would never forget. Not least for the fact that the Mechanicus Secutor had conceded defeat.

  The ivory-armoured form of Apothecary Auiden was a splash of white in the darkness, and he looked up at Tanna with a grim nod as he slotted home bronze-lined phials into the mechanism of his narthecium gauntlet. This was not a combat drop, but when descending to an unknown world Auiden took the view that it was better to expect the worst than face it unprepared.

  A pessimistic outlook, but one that had yet to be proven wrong on this ill-fated crusade.

  The solemn-hearted Bracha sat with his head bowed and his hands laced together as if in prayer. First on the field and the last to leave, Kul Gilad’s death had hit Bracha hardest of all. He had known the Reclusiarch the longest, having fought six crusades to victory at his side. Many had believed he would follow Kul Gilad’s example and take the rosarius.

  One of Bracha’s hands was flesh and blood, the other fashioned from chrome-plated steel. A flesh-clad cybork on the Valette Manifold station had cut Bracha’s arm from him, but he had taken the loss without complaint. The life of a Space Marine was one of extreme violence, and no Black Templar expected to live out his days without suffering some terrible injury along the way. Magos Dahan had crafted Bracha a replacement arm, a skitarii-pattern combat limb with an implanted plasma gun in the forearm.

  Along from Bracha, Issur the Bladesman ran his hands along the crimson sheath of his power sword as he always did when locked into a harness within an assault craft. Its texture was patterned with a recurring crusader chain motif, and as Tanna watched, Issur’s head twitched and the fingers stroking the scabbard spasmed suddenly. Issur clenched his fist in anger and slammed his helmeted head back against the gunship’s fuselage.

  Like Bracha, Issur had been wounded in the fight against the cyborks, his body shocked to the brink of death by a weaponised electromagnetic generator. The swordsman was lucky to be alive, but he had come back from the brink of death with misfiring synapses and a nervous system that was no longer entirely reliable. His career as a duellist was over, and Tanna couldn’t help but notice the envious glances Issur threw out in the direction of Atticus Varda.

  The Emperor’s Champion sat unmoving in his grav-restraint, the Black Sword resting across his knees. Sheathed in a scabbard of unbreakable Martian alloys, only its leather-wrapped hilt and crusader cross pommel were visible. The blade was a midnight razor, filigreed with Gothic scriptwork.

  Issur had fully expected to wield the Black Sword, for he had once been the best among them with a blade. But which Templar was called to serve as Emperor’s Champion depended on more than just skill at arms, and the war-visions had not come to him. The Master of Mankind had chosen Atticus Varda to be His Champion, and no Black Templar would dream of gainsaying such authority.

  Varda sat across from Tanna, clad in armour the colour of darkest night, handcrafted in the forges of the Eternal Crusader by Techmarine Lexne and an army of thralls nearly three thousand years ago. Its plates were moulded in the form of an idealised physique, the eagle at its chest golden and proud. The Chapter’s icon was rendered in pearlescent stone quarried from the dark side of Luna. Just to be in its presence was an honour.

  Tanna had seen many fine suits of armour in his centuries of service, but he had seen no finer examples of the artificer’s art than this. Aelius had worn it well, but it fitted Varda like a second skin.

  The Emperor’s Champion was the heart of a Crusade, and Varda’s had been broken by the death of Kul Gilad, a brave warrior slain without his brothers at his side. Sensing Tanna’s scrutiny, he looked up and the ember-red eye lenses of their battle-helms met across the juddering fuselage.

  ‘Something on your mind, Tanna?’ asked Varda.

  The words sounded in Tanna’s helmet on a closed channel; none of the others would hear what passed between them.

  ‘The Champion carries the soul of us all,’ said Tanna. ‘That’s what Kul Gilad used to say.’

  ‘Repeating his words does not make you him,’ said Varda, gripp
ing the Black Sword tightly.

  ‘No,’ agreed Tanna. ‘Nor would I have it so.’

  ‘Then why speak them?’

  ‘To show you that I grieve for him also.’

  ‘Not enough,’ hissed Varda. ‘His blood is on our hands.’

  Anger touched Tanna. ‘If we had gone to him, we would all be dead.’

  ‘Better to fall in battle than to run from it.’

  ‘Kul Gilad ordered us from the ship,’ said Tanna. ‘You heard him. We all did.’

  ‘We should have fought alongside our Reclusiarch.’

  Tanna nodded and said, ‘Aye, and our deaths would have been glorious.’

  Varda made a fist on the scabbard of the Black Sword. ‘Then why did you not give the order?’

  ‘Because I was following the Reclusiarch’s last order,’ snapped Tanna, lifting his right arm to show the metallic links binding his boltgun to his wrist. ‘Our command structure exists for a reason, Varda, and the moment we start picking and choosing which orders we obey, we might as well tear the Chapter symbol from our shoulders and set a course for the Maelstrom. We are Black Templars, and we willingly bind ourselves with chains of duty, chains of honour and chains of death. You are the Emperor’s Champion, Varda. You know this better than anyone.’

  Varda’s head sank, and Tanna saw the fire of his anger had dimmed. It was not, Tanna knew, truly anger that fuelled his words, but guilt.

  A guilt they all shared, whether it was deserved or not.

  Tanna heard Varda’s soul-weary sigh over the vox. ‘I know you are right, Tanna, but Kul Gilad anointed me,’ he said, looking up. ‘And you will always be the one who kept me from his death.’