God machines, p.119
God-Machines, page 119
‘My hunt is not complete,’ he said. ‘My honour is stained until the day Alicia lies dead, and all she has wrought is unmade.’
Ekhaterina pulled a face, but Danial saw that, underneath her veneer of insouciance, Luk’s comrade was pleased at his answer.
‘Besides,’ chuckled Luk, ‘can you imagine telling Lady Maia that we were giving up the hunt to sit around drinking wine?’
‘She’d kill you herself,’ said Ekhaterina. ‘Probably with her teeth…’
‘What of Vo-Geiss?’ asked Luk. ‘Do you think he’ll follow us on this endeavour?’
‘Hard to say,’ said Ekhaterina. ‘He hates you, you know this. And I think he blames you for his injuries.’
‘Then he is a fool,’ said Luk. ‘Vo-Geiss will follow, or he won’t. It will be as the Emperor wills it.’
‘Where is Lady Jennika?’ asked Suset. ‘I would have expected the First Knight at such a gathering.’
‘She could not be found,’ said the hooded figure. ‘This matter can wait no longer.’ Inquisitor Massata pulled back his hood, and strode to the holotable in the middle of the chamber.
‘We’ll have to reweave this tapestry for the Lady Tan Draconis when she surfaces,’ said Markos. ‘She’s probably sharing a drink with her warriors, and who can blame her?’
‘To business, then,’ said Danial.
They gathered around the holoprojector, which Suset awoke with a flick of its control wand. An image of Adrastapol sprang up, revolving slowly. New orbital platforms could be seen hanging in the void, skeletal and half built.
‘Today, my friends,’ said Danial, ‘we officially toast victory over the ork menace.’ They raised their glasses, all except Massata, who had not taken one.
‘And today,’ said the inquisitor, ‘with the full authority granted to me by my office as an inquisitor of the Imperial Ordos, and speaking with the voice of the Emperor, I formally rescind the judgement placed upon Adrastapol and its Noble Houses. I find this world’s people to be faithful, pure and true servants of the Emperor of Mankind.’
As the inquisitor spoke, his servitor scribe scritched its auto-quills over sheaves of parchment that spilled from its mouth-slot, vestigial lower limbs gathering the writings up like a spider spooling silk. The Knights maintained mask-like composure as the inquisitor spoke, years of conditioning allowing them to keep their true feelings hidden.
Mostly.
‘Adrastapol and its Noble Houses thank you for this decree, and for your part in aiding the war effort to purge the invading xenos from our world,’ intoned Danial. ‘We ask that full honour be done to the hundreds of nobles who fell during the fighting, and the countless thousands of militia and serfs who lost their lives to the ork scourge.’
‘Any sacrifice is worthwhile in service to the Emperor,’ said Massata, his tone neutral.
‘Easier when it’s not your own people though, isn’t it?’ snapped Sire Garath, earning a stern glare from Danial. Massata showed no reaction to Garath’s words.
‘To the business at hand,’ said Luk, seeking to diffuse the moment of tension. ‘It is time, in this small and trusted company, that I reveal the location of Alicia Kar Manticos.’
‘The heretic who caused all of our ills, who destroyed Luk’s House and betrayed our people,’ said Danial.
‘The arch-priestess of the entity I have hunted for decades,’ rumbled Massata. ‘Our true enemy, against whom we all must stand united.’ The Knights of Adrastapol shifted uncomfortably at this, and exchanged pointedly neutral glances.
Luk opened a pouch on his belt and reverently drew from it the crumbling scroll he had acquired upon Kandakkha over a year earlier. It had not seen daylight in the days since, and now he unfurled it again with wonder and disquiet.
Accepting the control wand from Suset, Luk carefully entered a series of astrogation coordinates. On the hololith, Adrastapol receded, vanishing to a dot, and then to a rune that indicated the entire Majestis System. The image spun and reeled, sweeping across the sprawling starfields of the Emperor’s domain, further and further towards the galactic north-west.
Danial watched the image move, and as he did so, dread settled in his chest. He knew, even before the hololith stopped whirling, where it would settle.
‘The Eye of Terror,’ he said.
‘Almost,’ said Luk. ‘A world upon its brink, not more than two hundred light years from Cadia herself.’
‘Hastour,’ said Markos as the image zoomed slowly in, settling on a cold white orb. ‘Looks like a blinded eye. What do we know of it?’
‘Very little,’ said Luk. ‘Former Adeptus Mechanicus Explorator outpost. Lost to traitor forces two centuries ago, which is when the last reliable information was garnered. A frozen hellscape from what I understand.’
‘Why in the Dracon’s name would the witch make her lair there?’ asked Garath. ‘Looks dead. Worthless.’
‘That is but one mystery we must answer if we wish to defeat the sorceress and the being she serves,’ said Massata. ‘But we must solve it soon. The longer Alicia Kar Manticos remains at liberty to further the desires of That Which Dwells in Darkness, the greater the peril to the Emperor’s realm.’
‘Agreed,’ said Danial. ‘But you are talking about a crusade, inquisitor. One that will take us to the very threshold of madness. I must speak to Lauret and Kurt, attempt to convince them that such an undertaking is viable. That will take time.’
‘It is the Emperor’s will and it must be done,’ said Massata.
‘We would be swifter, stronger, more easily convinced to fight, if we had not just endured a xenos invasion,’ said Markos angrily.
‘I understand,’ said Massata, and if he was troubled by Markos’ hostility he showed no sign of it. ‘The Emperor wills that sometimes we must ask, and achieve the impossible. I need time for careful study of the tome that I recovered, for until its heretical passages can be safely deciphered its worth as a weapon is nil. The swift step finds the pit, not the path. Besides, there are debts of loyalty I can call upon. Allegiances I can revive. When the Knights of Adrastapol set out to slay the witch, they will not do so unaided.’
‘There will be logistical matters to attend to,’ said Suset. ‘Forces to marshal, and defences to be completed before we can leave our world to fend for itself.’
‘Nothing we can’t get done,’ said Garath. ‘Especially now that even Grandmarshal Kurt has realised the value of a true alliance.’
‘In the meantime, there are prayers to be said for the dead, ceremonies of rememberance to be performed,’ said Percivane. ‘The cost of this war to Adrastapol’s people has been horrific, the damage to our newfound infrastructure barely less so. If we fail to acknowledge the losses, to enshrine the deeds of the dead and rebuild our fortifications to shield the living, this world may yet be lost.’
‘That will take months,’ said Massata. ‘Months we may not possess.’
‘It is absolutely necessary, inquisitor, and I will not be moved on that,’ said Danial. ‘It is my first duty as High King, and the Emperor would damn me if I failed in it. You will have your crusading force, if it is mine to give by any means, but not until I have seen to my people.’
The air in the chamber grew thick with tension as Danial and Massata locked eyes. Eventually, the inquisitor waved a hand airily.
‘As you say, High King Danial,’ he said.
‘I also intend to comb the libraries of the Draconspire for anything that may aid us further,’ said Danial. ‘If this conflict has taught me anything, it is that Adrastapol conceals more secrets than we know. We are people who venerate our past, yet to truly derive strength from it, and to defend ourselves from the secrets buried beneath our feet, we must understand it.’
Inquisitor Massata nodded.
‘We must prepare ourselves in whatever way we can,’ he said, his eyes growing hard. ‘When we depart this world again, it will be upon the most dangerous, and most holy quest that any of us has ever known.’
‘It will be the last hunt for the Witch of Adrastapol,’ said Luk. ‘And it will end in nothing but blood.’
Hundreds of miles distant, Jennika Tan Draconis padded silently through long grass, beneath the pale light of Adrastapol’s moons. Cradled in her arms was a cloth-wrapped bundle. Around her loomed tall shadows, dark edifices of stone and marble that radiated a sepulchral stillness. The wind soughed softly, a whisper through grass and stone.
Jennika slowed, her stablight picking out the structure she sought. She played her light upwards, over steps of black granite inlaid with theldrite moonsilver. Up over an engraved plinth until she illuminated the stern features of King Tolwyn Tan Draconis, graven in cold marble.
‘Father,’ she murmured. ‘I have something for you.’
Jennika picked her way up the steps to Tolwyn’s mausoleum, passing through the stone archway into the blackness beyond. There, her father’s crypt, in which nothing but echoes and memories lay entombed. The High King’s body, his crown, his throne, none of it had ever been found.
She halted, making the sign of the aquila and whispering a prayer for her father’s soul. Walking softly past the tomb, she made her way into the offering chamber behind it, and set her stablight upon a marble shelf.
Jennika drew her draconblade and slowly, carefully, worked loose one of the marble slabs that covered the floor. Setting her sword aside she dug into the cold soil below, working with steady tenacity, pulling out small rocks by hand and ignoring the dull ache that built in her fingers. At last, hands stained and fingernails bloody, she was satisfied.
Jennika took up the bundle. Surrounded by shadows, she laid it gently into the hole she had dug. She looked down at it, the silken banner shrouding the mysterious sword, and for a moment she believed again that she felt a faint warmth upon her skin. One hand moved slowly towards the wrapping, took hold of a corner as though to pull it back and look again upon the magnificent weapon.
Instead, Jennika pulled her hand back and shook her head.
‘Not until I know what you are,’ she said. ‘Father will stand guard over your secrets, as well as he stood guard over his own.’
Taking a deep breath, she started to push the soil back into the hole.
Minutes later it was done, and Jennika emerged back into the warm summer night. She let out a slow breath, feeling the goosebumps fade on her flesh, and looked out over the rows and rows of mausoleums that stretched away into the darkness. Hundreds of High Kings, thousands, stretching back over millennia into the dim shadows of the past.
Squaring her shoulders, Jennika set off through the grass, back to where Fire Defiant waited. Back to the Draconspire, to prepare for war.
DEFIANT
ANDY CLARK
Jennika Tan Draconis marched her Knight, Fire Defiant, along a rubble-strewn street. A lance of House Draconis Knights followed in tight formation. The flickering runes on her strategic overlay showed more Adrastapolian war engines striding down parallel roadways, guarding the flanks of her advance. In the wake of each lance came a Sacristan Crawler; the heavy vehicles crunched over debris and wreckage on their armoured balloon tyres.
Towering saints looked down upon the Knights as they passed, their sombre features wrought in marble, their hollow eyes doleful. Each statue stood taller than a Warlord Titan. They lined the primary roadways of Pyrodiah’s capital hive, Castigorum, in their hundreds. The cowled stone giants flanked every gothic hab-block and reliquary-manufactorum, palpable reminders that Imperial judgement was omnipresent.
Jennika found herself stiffening beneath their regard on several occasions, her jaw clenching. She wondered if it was because of Donatos, and the aftermath of all that had transpired there.
‘Status check, sires and ladies,’ she voxed on her lance’s closed channel.
‘Hale and ready, my lady,’ replied Sire Dyros and Lady Elayn Dar Draconis, almost in unison.
‘Bellicose, my lady,’ said Sire Jaekeb Dar Draconis with relish.
‘Rein in that draconsfire, Sire Jaekeb,’ said Jennika. ‘This is a live warzone, not a tilting field. You are one of my lance, now act like it.’
‘Yes, my lady,’ replied the young Knight, sounding unrepentant.
‘Necrons should not be underestimated, Jaekeb,’ said Sire Dyros. ‘They’re implacable, undying, and everything we’ve seen of them during this war suggests powers and weapons we cannot begin to comprehend.’
‘With respect, sire, they didn’t appear undying at Piety’s Mount,’ said Jaekeb. ‘They emerged from their tunnels and we crushed them underfoot like rock-roaches.’
‘Piety’s Mount was a skirmish, Jaekeb,’ said Jennika. ‘The Sacristans believe those necrons had just awakened. They were disorientated, unsupported. You weren’t at Furia Fields, or the defence of Daebyn’s Shrine.’
‘No, my lady. I was not,’ replied Jaekeb.
Jennika heard his resentment, but chose to ignore it. She understood his burning need for glory. She had felt it once herself. But a ruthless war like this wasn’t the time or place for a warrior who had just Become to begin weaving his tapestry.
The war for Pyrodiah had been raging for months before they even arrived, and had only escalated after the drop keeps of Adrastapol rained down. Jennika’s Knights had succeeded in stemming the tide of android aliens that spilled up from below, and had rescued the planet’s defenders from annihilation. Yet despite their success, the fighting had been fierce and casualties were steep among the Pyrodiahn defence force and the Knights themselves.
As First Knight of Adrastapol, she had ensured the fiercest fighting fell to her more veteran warriors, rather than those recently Become. Logically, she knew this was in order to secure victory. Yet in her more introspective moments, she questioned whether it was also because she recognised elements of her younger brother Danial, as he had been on Donatos, in each of them.
Before the crown.
Before their father fell.
Scowling, Jennika expanded the vox to address her entire force, which comprised four lances – all the Knights that had been operating with her when the message was received that Governor Beatifica needed rescuing. With necron anti-aircraft weaponry rumbling up from the depths all over the city, aerial extraction was no longer an option. If Jennika’s Knights could not complete this mission, nobody would.
‘First Knight to all lances,’ said Jennika. ‘Maintain shield discipline and keep a weather eye on your auspexes. Stay alert for any sign of tectonic activity. Remember, this enemy can emerge from underground, or even from thin air, and their weapons will flay you and your steeds down to sparking metal and red flesh.’
‘Thank you, Lady Jennika,’ came Sire Olphrec’s blunt reply from the head of the westernmost lance. ‘Dracon knows we’ve all fought the necrons recently enough, eh? Needn’t coddle us, my lady.’
Jennika’s eyes narrowed. Olphrec had stayed just on the right side of propriety since the campaign began, but his every utterance seemed expertly calculated to test her authority.
‘A complacent pilot is a chink in his steed’s armour,’ said Jennika, the sharpness of her own tone irritating her. ‘Just keep your eyes open and your weapons ready.’
Maintain calm and dignity in all things, whispered a voice from her throne. That, or settle the matter on the duelling field, said another, fiercer ghost. Olphrec dishonours himself, came a third voice, a dry old echo. He is beneath you. Yet Jennika noted that even amongst the ghosts of her throne, some voices murmured quietly together beyond the range of her thoughts, and she couldn’t help but wonder if they sympathised with him. House Draconis had become more progressive under High King Danial’s rule, but Jennika’s appointment to First Knight was still unique for her gender.
There were those who did not approve.
Before Olphrec could engage in further barbs, a rune lit in Jennika’s peripheral vision. It signified a priority vox-hail from Deathwatch Captain Azkarael. She answered it with a blink-click, opening a hardened channel.
‘First Knight,’ said Azkarael.
‘Captain Azkarael,’ replied Jennika.
‘Status?’ asked the Dark Angel.
‘We are less than half a mile from the governor’s compound,’ said Jennika. ‘No direct resistance thus far, though strategic auspex suggests that the Mordian Iron Guard are being hammered from coordinates eight-one-four through five-five-one.’
‘Make haste,’ said Azkarael, and Jennika heard the thump and thunder of boltgun fire in the background. ‘We will penetrate the inner tomb complex within the next ten minutes. We will then plant and prime the purgator warheads. The governor must be clear of the primary engagement area before they detonate. Segmentum command require her to be fully debriefed in order to determine why this war had become such a debacle before your arrival. Beatifica has much to answer for.’
‘I am aware, captain. You already informed me that the entire hive will collapse into the resultant pit,’ said Jennika. ‘We are Knights of Adrastapol, oath-sworn to see our duty done. Rest assured, it will be done.’
‘Just so,’ said Azkarael. ‘Brother Shorrgath will transmit a three-minute alert prior to final detonation.’
‘Understood,’ said Jennika. ‘Good hunting, captain.’
‘Emperor go with you,’ replied Azkarael before breaking the vox-link.
Jennika’s eyes darted skywards as a pair of necron fighter craft screamed overhead, spiralling in a lethal dogfight with a trio of Imperial Thunderbolts. As she watched, one of the Imperial craft took a direct hit, green fire leaping from the necrons’ guns to tear away its tail assembly. The fighter hit a marble saint, decapitating the statue in a ball of flame. The remaining craft swept on, vanishing between crumbling hab-stacks. Jennika shook her head grimly and increased power to her steed’s motive actuators.
