Lords of Mars Read online

  Vintras bent Amarok’s right knee and pistoned its mega-bolter arm straight down. A hurricane of explosive shells blasted the ground at point-blank range. The recoil was ferocious, and with the compensators offline it was just enough.

  Incredibly, the Titan righted itself, taking half a dozen lurching, unbalanced steps before fully regaining its balance. Linya was astonished. She had already revised her opinion of Vintras to a highly-skilled princeps, but now she realised he was extraordinarily skilled.

  But then the ground beneath the Titan split apart.

  Not even an extraordinarily skilled princeps could keep its leg from plunging into a crevasse of bubbling magma.

  ‘This is a mistake, Abe,’ said Hawke, rapidly sidestepping to keep up with Abrehem as he marched through the arched hallways of the Speranza. ‘Seriously. Think about it, you’re a wanted man, my friend. Putting your head over the parapet like this is a sure-fire way to get it shot off. I’ve spent a lifetime not sticking my neck out, it’s the best way to operate, trust me.’

  ‘Omnissiah save me, but for once I find myself in complete agreement with Bondsman Hawke,’ said Totha Mu-32. ‘This is not wise.’

  Abrehem rounded on Hawke, the fury in his heart like a slow-burning fire being fed incrementally-increasing amounts of oxygen. His fists were clenched at his side and behind him, Rasselas X-42 bared his metallic teeth.

  ‘Wasn’t it you that said: One day I’m going to make the bastard listen?’

  ‘Maybe, I don’t remember, but you don’t want to go listening to me, Abe,’ protested Hawke. ‘I shoot my mouth off, but I don’t do anything about it. You’re one of them dangerous types that actually means to do what he says he’s going to do.’

  Coyne and Ismael caught up to them, the latter looking solemn, the former like a frightened prey animal that knows there are apex predators nearby.

  ‘Thor’s beard, but you’ve got to listen to him, Abrehem,’ said Coyne. ‘You’ll get us all killed.’

  ‘If you’re scared, Vannen, go back,’ said Abrehem. ‘You don’t have to come. I’d rather have someone at my back who gives a damn than someone who’s just out for their own skin.’

  Coyne’s face fell, but Abrehem was in no mood for regret.

  ‘That’s not fair, Abe,’ said Coyne. ‘Haven’t I always been there, every step of the way?’

  ‘That’s true,’ said Abrehem, ‘but how much is your support worth when it’s simply the lesser of two evils? We’re doing this, and we’re doing it now. It’s time the Mechanicus learned that we’re not just numbers or resources. We’re human beings, and they can’t keep killing us because it suits them.’

  Ever since Ismael had forced him to feel the anguish of the Speranza’s servitors and its bondsmen in his soul, Abrehem had found himself unable to close his eyes without feeling gut-wrenching horror at the suffering throughout the Kotov fleet. He’d felt the deaths in the ventral dormitory deck when the power to the integrity fields had been cut. He’d wept as the already tortured armour plates had given way and an entire deck explosively vented into space.

  Two thousand three hundred and seven men, women and void-born children had died, not to mention the three hundred and eleven servitors who had flash-frozen or had their organic components disposed of in the aftermath.

  He could endure it no longer – and with Ismael’s help – he was going to show the Adeptus Mechanicus that their workers would stand for no more. After disengaging the arco-flagellant’s pacifier helm, he had marched from hiding, following a route he could never describe in detail. With Rasselas X-42 and Ismael at his side, he made his way back to the portions of the Speranza in which he had spent his days not, he now realised, as a bonded servant of the Mechanicus, but a slave.

  Totha Mu-32 tried a different tack.

  ‘You are Machine-touched, Bondsman Locke,’ he said, gripping Abrehem’s arm. ‘You are special, and you must not risk yourself like this. You are too valuable to be lost in an act of emotional spite.’

  ‘If I’m special, I need to earn that reverence,’ said Abrehem. ‘If I am Machine-touched, then I’m beholden to do something with that power, yes? After all, what’s the use of being someone important if you don’t use that power to make people’s lives better?’

  ‘The Mechanicus will kill you,’ said Totha Mu-32.

  Abrehem jerked a thumb over his shoulder and said, ‘I’d like to see anyone try when I’ve got an arco-flagellant with me. I’ll use him if I have to, don’t think I won’t.’

  ‘X-42 is a powerful weapon,’ agreed Totha Mu-32. ‘But he is mortal like all of us. A bullet in the head will kill him, the same as any of us. Please reconsider this course of action, I beg you.’

  ‘No,’ said Abrehem. ‘It’s too late for that.’

  His footsteps had unerringly carried him back to Feeding Hall Eighty-Six, the site of a previous casual massacre of bondsmen, and Abrehem smiled to see that his timing was impeccable. One shift of thousands was just finishing its nutrient paste meal, while another stood waiting at the opposite entrance, pathetically hungry for the slops with which the Mechanicus saw fit to present them.

  A group of augmented overseers stood in the arched entryway, and Abrehem relished the looks of fear as they saw Rasselas X-42 and retreated into the feeding hall. He felt their calls for aid flow into the noosphere, knowing he could prevent them from reaching their intended destinations, but wanting the rest of the fleet to know he was here.

  ‘Let them go,’ he said, quelling X-42’s natural urge to murder the fleeing overseers.

  Though there were only six of them, what they represented was more of a terror to the Adeptus Mechanicus than any army of destructive greesnskins could ever be.

  Abrehem marched straight into the feeding hall, feeling every pair of eyes fasten upon him.

  Everyone here knew who he was. They had heard the stories, passed them around themselves and maybe even added a detail here and there. On some decks he was already being named as an avatar of the Machine-God. On others, his name had became synonymous with messianic figures from history: great liberators, firebrand revolutionaries or pacifist messengers of tolerance.

  Abrehem would be all of these and much more.

  Flanked by Rasselas X-42 and Ismael, Abrehem made his way to the centre of the vast chamber. By now, the desperate calls for armed assistance had reached the skitarii barracks, Cadian billets and armsmen stations. Hundreds of men and women with guns and the will to use them were even now converging on Feeding Hall Eighty-Six.

  None of them would arrive in time to stop what was about to happen.

  Abrehem climbed onto a table, turning a full circle so everyone could see him. He had come in a plain robe, red like the Mechanicus, but unadorned with the finery so favoured by the tech-priests, and roughly-fashioned like the overalls worn by the bondsmen. He had prepared no speech and had no words ready with which to sway men he already knew would applaud what he had to preach. His words had to come from the heart, or all he would soon represent would mean nothing at all.

  He nodded to Totha Mu-32, and the vox-grilles throughout the feeding hall crackled and hissed as the overseer took them over.

  ‘My fellow bondsmen,’ began Abrehem, his voice booming throughout the feeding hall and far beyond. ‘You all know who I am and why the Mechanicus fear me. I am Abrehem Locke and I am Machine-touched. And I am one of you. The overseers have told you that I am a madman, a lunatic with delusions of divinity. You know this to be a lie. I have toiled with you in the bowels of Archmagos Kotov’s slave machine, and I have been burned as you have been burned. I have bled and I have been sickened by what we have all experienced. You know I have suffered as you continue to suffer. I am here to tell you that your suffering is at an end!’

  Heads were nodding in agreement, and Abrehem saw the armsmen and overseers clustered together in nervous groups. Totha Mu-32 assured him that his words were being carried throughout the Speranza over the hijacked vox-system. Abrehem relished the uncerta
inty he saw in the overseers’ faces as they debated the wisdom of pushing into the feeding hall to seize him before this situation spiralled completely out of hand.

  Abrehem didn’t give them time to reach a conclusion.

  ‘Consider this, brothers. If the Speranza is a machine and Arch-magos Kotov is the cogitator at its heart, then the magi are the levers of control and the overseers are the gears. That makes us the raw material the machine devours! But we are raw materials that don’t intend to be devoured. We won’t be used and spat out or cast aside. We are not slaves to be bought and sold, traded like animal flesh at a meat market. No, Archmagos Kotov, we are human beings!’

  This time, Abrehem’s words brought wild cheers and pumping fists. He felt them echoing through the farthest corners of the Ark Mechanicus, from its command deck all the way to the deepest, darkest sumps below the waterline. An angry undercurrent that had been bubbling just under the surface, with no way to express itself, suddenly found an outlet in Abrehem. Bondsmen threw plastic food trays to the floor and climbed onto the tables. They roared hatred at their overseers and shouted words of support and devotion.

  Abrehem threw his fists into the air, one of flesh and one of metal, like a victorious prizefighter.

  ‘The Speranza is a great machine, and the operation of that machine has become so odious, made us so sick at heart, that we can no longer take part! We cannot even passively take part! So we will put our bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers and upon all the apparatus! We will make the machine stop! And together we will show Archmagos Kotov that unless we are free, his great machine will be prevented from working at all!’

  The feeding hall was in uproar now, and Abrehem could no longer see any armsmen or overseers. They had retreated from the growing unrest of the thousands of bondsmen, pulling back to regroup with the armed forces closing in on the feeding hall from all directions. Abrehem dismissed them from his thoughts. They were irrelevant now.

  He had an ace in the hole that would make all the guns on the ship meaningless.

  Abrehem lowered his arms and turned to Ismael.

  ‘Are you sure you can do this?’ he asked.

  Ismael nodded. ‘I can. They are ready to listen.’

  ‘Then do it,’ said Abrehem.

  Ismael nodded and closed his eyes.

  One by one, on deck after deck, tens of thousands of cybernetic servitor slaves simply stopped what they were doing. They stepped away from their stations, unplugged from their machines and refused to work another minute.

  The Speranza ceased to function.

  Consciousness returned slowly, Linya’s implants inducing an artificial coma-like state while running diagnostics on her entire neuromatrix. Satisfied the damage to her skull would not impair her cognitive functions, they stimulated the active cerebral functions, effectively jump-starting her consciousness as intravenous reservoirs flooded her body with stimms.

  Linya’s eyes snapped open and she drew in a vast, sucking breath of hot, electrically tainted air. The compartment was filled with acrid smoke from the shattered slates and flames burned the sacred machinery behind them to a tangled mass of dripping plastek and molten copper. The one functioning gyroscope told her the entire war-engine was canted over at an angle of fifty-seven degrees.

  The heat was intolerable, her skin slick with sweat.

  Her head hurt, and blood coated her left temple and cheek. She blinked away tears of pain as she heard her voice being called. She twisted in the entangling restriction of the impact harness, struggling to free her arms as she realised she was trapped. Her internal augmentations were registering dangerously high temperatures that were steadily rising.

  Dimly she remembered the fury of the earthquake, the buildings crashing down like sculptures of ash in a rainstorm, the deafening noise… the…

  ‘We fell,’ she whispered. ‘Ave Deus Mechanicus, we fell…’

  Linya struggled against her restraints, pulling and tugging at the leather before forcing herself to calm. She took a breath of hot air, feeling it burn her throat. She heard her name called again, and this time recognised her father’s voice echoing in her skull.

  +Linya! Linya, are you there!+

  ‘I’m here,’ she said, before realising the communication was in the Manifold.

  Something nearby creaked and popped, and her compartment lurched suddenly, her angle from the vertical widening to sixty-three degrees.

  +Linya!+

  +I’m here,+ she said. +I’m all right. What happened? We fell?+

  +We did,+ replied her father. +But you have to get out of there. Right now. The leg is sinking. Right now, your compartment is sunk into the crevasse, and enveloped by hot magma.+

  +Magma?+

  +Yes, technically it’s still underground, so I’m calling it magma and not lava, but that’s beside the point. Now, can you move? Can you climb up through the femoral companionway?+

  Linya twisted her neck up and saw the metal around the narrow hatch above her was shimmering in a heat haze. She nodded and reached down to unsnap the locking mechanism of the impact harness. The metal was hot to the touch, burning her skin as she unbuckled herself, but she forced herself to ignore the pain and remove each neural connection. Where the regular servitor crewman would have required a full suite, she had only the bare minimum thanks to her body’s greater sophistication.

  +I’m out of the harness,+ she said.

  +Linya, please hurry,+ said her father. +The Titan won’t be upright for much longer.+

  As if to underscore her father’s words, the compartment was slowly illuminated by a hot metal glow of orange light. Linya looked down to see the floor shimmering in a haze as it began to melt in the ferocious heat. The hem of her robes was smoking, and it wouldn’t take long before it burst into flames. The thought of being cooked alive in this cramped, coffin-like space spurred her to haste, and she swiftly shrugged off the last of the straps and snapped out the final connection.

  Linya wriggled out of the impact harness and reached up to grab the metal rungs on the compartment walls.

  She screamed as the skin was burned from her palms, and fell back into the harness-seat.

  Fighting back tears of pain, Linya wrapped the fabric of her robe around her burned hand and tried again. She gritted her teeth and forced herself upwards, squeezing her body up through the compartment and feeling the onset of a sudden and almost overwhelming claustrophobia.

  The hatch was numerically-locked and in a single, terrifying second, Linya realised she had no idea of the code. As soon as the thought occurred, Linya gasped as the correct digits rammed into her mind, as forcefully as though they had been blasted into her cerebral cortex by a cranial shunt.

  +Thank you, father,+ she said. +But you could have just spoken the code.+

  +Don’t thank me,+ said Vitali. +That was Amarok.+

  Blinking away inload trauma, she tapped the code into the panel and the hatch’s lock disengaged with a thudding series of ratcheting clangs.

  ‘Thank you, great one,’ she said, pressing a cloth-wrapped hand to the Mechanicus icon stamped into the metal collar of the hatch. Linya pushed up and slid the hatch aside, climbing into a space barely wide enough for a malnourished adolescent. Ribbed with bracing struts and complex nests of gyroscopic mechanisms, power relays and repercussive filters, the femoral companionway linked the Warhound’s leg with the pilot’s compartment, but she wouldn’t have to climb that far.

  Ruddy daylight poured in through an emergency hatch just below the complex arrangement of gears and gimbals at the Titan’s pelvic joint. The air reeked of burning machinery, cooking lubricants and steaming oils. Linya squeezed through the tube, twisting her shoulders and forcing her body into all manner of strange contortions to push past protruding mechanisms and jutting outcrops of reinforcement spars.

  Below her, the temperature gradient suddenly spiked and she knew the magma in the crevasse had melted through the floor of the compartment in which she ha
d sat. The Titan sagged as its leg sank deeper, and Linya pulled in desperate fear as she felt the lower reaches of her robe burst into flames. Her shoulders were too wide, and she couldn’t shift her body upwards.

  +Linya!+ yelled Vitali.

  ‘I can’t get out!’ she screamed, reaching blindly for the achingly close oblong of daylight just above her. Her feet were burning, the meat seared from her bones and sloughing from her legs like molten wax. Linya’s cranial implants registered her pain and did their best to block the worst of it while still allowing her to function, but the sheer awful, intolerable, overwhelming force of it was too hideous for anything designed by the Mechanicus to overcome.

  ‘I can’t get out!’ screamed Linya, before the heat scorched the words from her lungs.

  Archmagos Kotov heard the words echoing throughout the Speranza from Feeding Chamber Eighty-Six, but couldn’t believe they were real. Bondsmen did not speak out against their rightful masters, they accepted their role within the machine and were honoured to be part of such an interconnected hierarchy. So had it always been before, so would it be now.

  ‘…We will make the machine stop!’ shouted the voice that had been positively identified as Bondsman Abrehem Locke. ‘And together we will show Archmagos Kotov that unless we are free, his great machine will be prevented from working at all!’

  As outraged as he had been by such presumption, it was nothing to the horror that followed as the bridge servitors sat bolt upright in unison and, in perfect synchrony, unplugged themselves from their duty stations. Those that could stand, rose from their bench seats and turned to face his command throne, and though he must surely be imagining it, Kotov felt the heat of their accusation.

  ‘Ave Deus Mechanicus,’ he said, stepping forwards and turning around to see that same look in every servitor’s face.

  The noospheric network surged with alarms and warning icons as previously maintained systems began to falter or shut down altogether. Forge control, engine stability, reactor core protocols, life-support… everything was shutting down or already lost. Only the most basic autonomous functions were still active, and even they would soon degrade without intervention.