Lords of Mars Read online

  The more Bielanna saw of the humans aboard this ship, the less she thought of them as sentient beings at all. They were living grease in a grinding mechanical engine, corpuscles shunted from place to place in service of the great machine’s continuance. How they could not see that they were little better than microbes crawling within the body of a larger beast was beyond her.

  ‘They are not worshipping you,’ she whispered, pausing beneath one of the half-machine, half-human skulls stamped on a sheet steel wall. ‘You enslave them and they believe themselves blessed.’

  The skull belched a gout of flame and smoke from its empty eye socket, and Bielanna slid away into the darkness, following the threads of fate that had led her to risk moving into the occupied areas of the ship.

  The vision had come suddenly, staggering her with its potency.

  A gathering of humans in one of the vast chambers used to bring their ugly cargo ships aboard.

  The meeting of a warrior and a man reluctantly fated to be both a saviour and a destroyer.

  Most human lives were so ephemeral that their influence on the skein was microscopic, so infinitesimal that they were virtually an irrelevance, but whoever these two men were, they were worthy of notice, men whose actions could actually have an impact on the future.

  Ariganna’s impatience had made the meeting of these men inevitable, a fixed locus upon the skein around which a million times a billion possibilities revolved. The exarch had grown tired of skulking in the depths of the starship and given in to her war-mask’s urge to kill. Where she had previously confined her slayings to those mon-keigh that unwittingly entered their shadowy lair, now she actively hunted the upper decks as a lone predator of unparalleled savagery and limit-less cruelty. Bielanna had seen Ariganna kill the magos controlling the lethally volatile engine reactors, a bewilderingly complex web of infinite possibility exploded before her eyes.

  As Bielanna had hoped, her connection to the skein had become stronger with every passing day and every light year the ship travelled from the reborn star system. But instead of cohering her sight of the future, that strengthening had only made her interpretations more ambiguous. Entwined memories of the past and visions of the future’s infinite variety filled her every waking moment, and Bielanna found it almost impossible to distinguish between what was real and what was imagined.

  Yet the vision of these two men remained constant whenever she looked into the future.

  She came at last to the place where the thread of fate she had been following now branched out beyond her ability to trace with any certainty, a towering stained-glass window depicting a grey-steel temple atop a red mountain that churned out armoured vehicles and smoke in equal measure. One of the window’s lower panes was broken, and Bielanna eased herself through, emerging onto a stonework ledge overlooking a vast deck space with an enormous opening on its far wall that looked onto the void.

  Thousands of the mon-keigh were gathered below her, flickering embers of life and fleeting existence. Some embers burned brighter than others, and she flinched at the radiance coming from two black-armoured giants, kin to the warrior the avatar of Kaela Mensha Khaine had killed. She had seen the fate-lines of Space Marines before, and they burned with a directness that was almost pitiable, but the fates of these warriors felt somehow familiar, as though she had flown the futures they too would walk.

  Simmering aggression filled the deck like a sickness, and Bielanna needed no psychic sensitivity to feel the rippling undercurrents of fear and imminent violence oozing into the atmosphere.

  That was good.

  She could use one to provoke the other.

  Leering cherubs with rebreathers instead of faces had been carved on either side of the window, and as she knelt at the corner of the ledge, the metallic skull of the nearest rolled a mechanised eye in her direction. Bielanna ignored it, feeling her gaze drawn to the flickering energy field that kept the deck pressurised. She felt a momentary tremor of unease at the sight of unknown stars that should not exist.

  She shook off the sensation of being watched by these ghoulish stars and took a breath of polluted air as her senses eased into the flickering fate-lines of the mon-keigh. She sought the one whose fear was the greatest and most easily moulded, finding him easily among the mass of slave workers and shrouding his mind with emanations of his darkest nightmares.

  The future was bewilderingly complex and inconstant, but one thing was certain.

  The humans known as Anders and Locke could not be allowed to settle their differences.

  Anders sat on a shipping crate on the far side of the embarkation deck. He and Abrehem Locke sat opposite one another, ringed by a laager of tracked Mechanicus earth-moving machinery. Anders had to admit to feeling a little let down by the sight of the firebrand whose rhetoric of insurrection had echoed from one end of the Speranza to the other.

  Hollow cheeked and shaven headed, with metallic glints at the corners of his eyes, Abrehem Locke did not look or sound like a revolutionary, and his augmetic arm wasn’t particularly impressive either without weapons or any form of combat attachments. He looked exactly like what he was; a Mechanicus bondsman on the verge of starvation, exhaustion and mental breakdown.

  Anders could almost sympathise.

  The arco-flagellant, however, was another matter. The cybernetic killer stared with an undisguised urge to kill him, but Anders dismissed it. If it attacked him, he would be dead before he even had a chance to react, so there was no point wasting time worrying about it.

  ‘You realise that if we fail to reach agreement, we all die,’ said Anders.

  ‘I’m aware of that,’ replied Locke.

  ‘Then tell me what I can do to end this.’

  ‘You can get Archmagos Kotov to release the bondsmen,’ said Locke. ‘I’d ask for the servitors to be reverse engineered if I didn’t think the iatrogenic shock would kill them.’

  Anders nodded. ‘You know he’s not going to agree to that. Especially after you had the Master of Engines killed.’

  Locke’s eyes narrowed and his shoulders squared in irritation. ‘Saiixek is dead?’

  ‘I believe that was his name, yes.’

  ‘Saiixek was the first magos I saw when I came aboard the Speranza,’ said Locke. ‘He worked a hundred men to death before we’d even broken Joura’s orbit, hundreds more just to reach the galactic edge. I won’t shed a single tear for that bastard, but we didn’t kill him. Unlike Magos Kotov, I don’t have blood on my hands.’

  ‘We all have blood on our hands, my friend,’ said Anders, surprised to find that he believed Abrehem. ‘All service to the Emperor requires sacrifice.’

  ‘I’d prefer my own sacrifice in the Emperor’s name to be a willing one,’ said Locke, lifting his bionic arm by way of example. ‘That’s what Kotov fails to understand. This ship is a machine to him, and all we are to him is human fuel to keep it going, to be spent and used up at will.’

  ‘You should try life in the Imperial Guard,’ said Anders.

  Locke shook his head. ‘No, you misunderstand me, Colonel Anders. I know the realities of life in the Imperium. Everyone serves, whether they want to or not. Sure, maybe we didn’t all sign up for this, but we’re here now and we have a job to do. Treat us like slaves and all he’ll get is resentment and revolt. Treat us like human beings worthy of respect and everything changes.’

  ‘Do you think the Mechanicus are capable of that?’

  ‘They can learn,’ said Locke, leaning forwards. ‘After all, it’s in their best interest. Which would you rather lead into battle, a regiment of willing soldiers who know you’re going to do your damnedest to keep them alive, or a bunch of conscripts who couldn’t give a shit for your war or who won it?’

  ‘I’m Cadian, so you already know the answer to that, but rhetorical questions aren’t going to solve this,’ said Anders, nodding to the cyborg-killer at Abrehem’s shoulder. ‘Since you seem keen to point out hypocrisy, isn’t it a bit rich that you keep that arco-flage
llant around? He’s bio-imprinted to you now, a slave to your every command. Do you want him to be freed too? The archmagos tells me there’s no file on who he was before his transmogrification, but he would have been a monster. A child murderer or rapist or a heretic. Or something even worse.’

  Locke appeared genuinely disturbed at Anders’s words, as though the provenance of the arco-flagellant had never occurred to him; or he knew something of the arco-flagellant’s previous existence he wished he didn’t. Given what was rumoured of Abrehem Locke’s nature, the latter seemed a more likely explanation.

  ‘You’re right, of course,’ said Abrehem with a fixed expression. ‘But right now a little hypocrisy is a price I’m willing to pay to get what I want.’

  ‘A little evil in service of a greater good, is that it?’

  ‘That’s a negative way of putting it.’

  ‘I don’t see another,’ said Anders. ‘Listen, Abrehem, you can’t sit there on your high horse, demanding freedom and claiming to hold the moral high ground, then admit that you’re willing to accept a little bit of slavery if it achieves your aims.’

  ‘I don’t have a choice, colonel,’ said Locke, and once again Anders saw past the hectoring rebel to the desperately tired man whom circumstances had forced into the role of a leader; a role he was manifestly unsuited to filling. ‘This is the only way.’

  Anders folded his arms and said, ‘You strike me as an intelligent man, Abrehem, not a suicidal one. You must have some level at which you’re willing to compromise. We could sit here and haggle and posture till we reach that level, but as I’m sure you know, we don’t have the luxury of time. With Saiixek’s death and servitors refusing to work, the Speranza’s going down. Very soon, we’ll all be dead unless you and I can agree.’

  ‘At least this way it will be by our hand instead of the Mechanicus.’

  ‘And what about everyone else?’ asked Anders, letting a measure of his anger show. ‘What about all my soldiers? The menials, the void-born, and all the other thousands of souls aboard this vessel? Are you willing to murder them all over a principle? I don’t think so.’

  Locke’s eyes flashed defiance, but it was hollow bravado and the fire went out of him. He was angry, yes, but he wasn’t willing to murder an entire ship to achieve his goals.

  Anders knew he’d won and felt the knot of tension in his gut relax.

  Before he could take solace in Locke’s backing down, the sharp crack of a gunshot echoed from the other side of the laager of vehicles. Anders recognised the sound with a sinking heart.

  M36 Kantrael-pattern lasrifle.

  Cadian issue…

  Of all the manoeuvres Emil Nader had attempted in his long years spent at the helm of a starship, this had to rank as one of the stupidest. He’d made emergency warp jumps before he’d reached the Mandeville point, run the gauntlet of greenskin roks and navigated the heart of an asteroid belt, but this was just insane.

  The panel in front of him was lit with repeated calls for him to return to the ship, calls that only served to highlight the bone-headed literalness of the Mechanicus perfectly.

  ‘Demand: vessel Renard, your launch is unauthorised,’ said a grating mechanical voice over the vox. ‘You are to return to the Speranza immediately and shut down your engines.’

  Emil didn’t waste breath in replying, knowing there would be no point.

  ‘Repeated demand: vessel Renard, your launch is unauthorised. You are to–’

  Magos Pavelka interrupted. ‘While it is true that we do not have clearance to depart the forward embarkation deck, we are of the opinion that remaining aboard is not the safest option since the Speranza is in imminent danger of breaking up in the planet’s atmosphere.’

  ‘Couldn’t have put it better myself,’ said Emil, shutting off the vox-feed from the Speranza’s deck magos. ‘We’ll make a scoundrel out of you yet, Ilanna.’

  Pavelka sat across from him in the co-pilot’s seat, while Sylkwood was down in the engine spaces, trying to keep the Renard’s engines hot enough to make the manoeuvre possible without turning the flanks of the Speranza to molten slag.

  ‘I do not flout Mechanicus protocols lightly, Mister Nader,’ said Pavelka, feeding as much navigational data as she could to Emil’s station. ‘The deck magos will enforce proper chastisement upon our return to the Speranza.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Pavelka. ‘As is only right and proper.’

  ‘Assuming we don’t die out here.’

  ‘Assuming we do not die,’ agreed Pavelka. ‘I calculate the odds of our success as–’

  ‘No, no, no…’ said Emil. ‘I don’t want to know, you’ll jinx me.’

  Pavelka looked as though she was about to rise to that particular morsel, but simply nodded and carried on feeding him information on the gravimetric field enveloping the Ark Mechanicus. The ancient machinery generating the Speranza’s internal gravity, coupled with its sheer mass, created a squalling region of turbulence that made just flying in a straight line a daunting challenge.

  This was where the e-mag tether had stranded the Renard’s shuttle.

  ‘You are aware, of course, that the last captain to attempt a manoeuvre such as this was killed and his ship lost with all hands?’ said Pavelka.

  ‘Yeah, I’m aware of that,’ he said. ‘In fact I saw it, but Rayner was crazy and he had dozens of tyranid bio-parasites clamped to his hull. Even if he’d pulled it off, everyone on that ship would have died. Trust me, compared to what he tried, this’ll be easy.’

  ‘Then you and I differ on the definition of easy.’

  Emil grinned and thumbed the brass-topped switch connecting him to the engineering spaces below. ‘Sylkwood, you about ready?’

  Even over the vox, the enginseer’s abrasive tones were clear.

  ‘Yeah, we’re ready, but don’t expect this to be a smooth ride.’

  ‘Just so long as it’s one we all survive.’

  ‘I’m not promising anything,’ said Sylkwood. ‘We’re going to lose some of the manoeuvring jets, and the structure’s not rated for this tight a turn.’

  ‘But the Renard’s a tough old bird, yeah? She’ll hold together, won’t she?’

  ‘Tell her you love her, then promise you’ll never make her fly like this again and she might.’

  Emil nodded and flexed his fingers on the ship’s control mechanisms. Ordinarily, a ship the size of the Renard would rarely be flown manually, operating instead via a series of inputted commands, moving between pre-configured waypoints and automated flight profiles.

  ‘Is there anything I could say that would persuade you to let the onboard data-engine navigate us to the shuttle?’ asked Pavelka. ‘You cannot hope to process the sheer amount of variables in the Speranza’s gravitational envelope.’

  ‘If you’re not willing to trust your own skills over the onboard systems then you don’t deserve to call yourself a pilot,’ answered Emil. ‘I learned everything about starships in the atmosphere of Espandor, and I know how to fly the Renard better than any machine. I know her ticks and her every quirk. She and I have been through more scrapes than I care to remember. She knows me and I know her. I take care of her, and she’s looked after us all for years. She’s not about to let us down now, not when Roboute’s in trouble.’

  Pavelka reached over and laid a hand on Emil’s shoulder.

  ‘The Renard is a fine ship, one of the best I have known,’ she said. ‘And for all that I believe you to be needlessly antagonistic towards my order, you are a fine pilot. You might not wish to know the odds of this venture succeeding, but I am fully aware of the likelihood of success.’

  ‘Is that a good thing?’

  ‘Of all the baseline humans I know, I would have no other piloting this ship right now, Emil.’

  Pavelka’s uncharacteristically human words touched him, as did her use of his given name.

  ‘Then let’s go get our captain,’ said Emil.

  Captain Hawkins threw
himself at Guardsman Manos, knocking him to the deck before he could fire again, but the damage had already been done. The first bondsman died with a neat las-burn drilled through the centre of his skull and his brains flash-burned to vapour. No sooner had he collapsed than Manos switched targets, killing another seven bondsmen on full-auto before Hawkins reached him.

  ‘Stand down!’ shouted Hawkins, fighting to pin Manos down. ‘That’s an order, soldier!’

  Manos screamed and thrashed in terror, his face twisted in horror.

  ‘They’re monsters, captain!’ screamed Manos. ‘Let me up or they’ll kill us all!’

  Hawkins locked his elbow around the struggling Guardsman’s neck as the cries of outrage from the bondsmen intensified. Any moment they were going to look for payback.

  ‘The monsters from the Eye!’ shouted Manos. ‘Can’t you see them? They’re going to kill us!’

  ‘Manos, shut the hell up,’ ordered Hawkins, tightening his grip. ‘You’re not making any sense.’

  ‘I saw them,’ sobbed Manos, his words slurring as Hawkins’s sleeper hold took effect. ‘They look like people, but their disguises slipped and I saw them… They’re beasts straight out of the Eye and we have to kill them all… please…’

  The bondsmen were yelling for blood now and moving towards the Cadian line.

  Manos’s struggles ceased as he slipped into unconsciousness, and Hawkins sprang to his feet as the man Colonel Anders had identified as Hawke supplied the final push over the cliff to this situation.

  ‘They came here to kill us, lads!’ shouted Hawke. ‘Get them before they get us!’

  The bondsmen threw themselves at the Cadian line, brandishing power tools and heavy spars of metal. Hawkins didn’t fail to notice that Hawke wasn’t leading the charge, but hanging back behind some of the larger bondsmen.