The Beast Arises

A new wave of tocsins sounded. The wailing was desperate, the tone final.

Standing at Thane’s shoulder, Aloysian said, ‘They will not let us profane Pavonis Mons. They will destroy the complex with us.’

‘I hope you’re wrong,’ Thane said. But as he spoke, immense turrets rose to the east and west, driven upwards by pistons thick as the limbs of Titans. They supported eradication beamer macro-cannons. With glacial majesty, barrels wider than Thunderhawks began to turn and angle downwards.

Aloysian was right. The Mechanicus was ready to atomise the invaded quadrants of the Pavonis Mons complex layer by layer.

The Predators and Whirlwinds unleashed salvoes of cannon fire and missile flights at the turrets. Void shields flared with the impacts.

Thane voxed Kale as he followed Aloysian down the melted tunnel through the Gate.

‘Shipmaster,’ he said, ‘I need an area-wide bombardment.’

Thane felt the mission goal recede into the mists of war. Closing in was only ever-more terrible destruction.

‘Duty,’ Kubik repeated. The Fabricator General spoke slowly, pausing between the syllables, as if anatomising the word. He stood.

‘I believe in the honour of the Adeptus Mechanicus,’ Koorland said. ‘I believe in its fidelity to the Emperor.’

Another silence. Not a total one. Koorland listened to the clicks and whirs and electronic humming of Kubik’s form. He imagined he was hearing the sounds of indecision, of logic circuits closing to form a pattern of choice.

Kubik said, ‘Your belief is not misplaced. I am cognisant of all my duties.’ His words were as free of human inflection as ever. There was no trace of the organic in their buzzing enunciation.

And they were filled with sudden resolution.

Kubik turned to the Mechanicus acolyte. ‘Priority extremis message: cease fire.’

Koorland tapped his vox-bead, connecting him to the master of the astropathic choir. It was no longer a question of stopping the war in time. The question was whether there was anything left to stop.

‘Target zone acquired,’ Shipmaster Kale voxed from the Alcazar Remembered. ‘Firing on your command.’

Beyond the Tharsis Gate, the Fists Exemplar found themselves in a vast structure that was both hall of worship to the Omnissiah and pathway nexus — the Grand Passage of the Fulcrumite. Galleries beyond number rose toward a vault a thousand metres away. A web of maglev tracks, dozens of levels deep, led away in all directions. The main corridor, wide enough for a phalanx of Baneblades to travel down, split in the far distance, with the right-hand branch sloping beneath the surface of Mars. The air was dark with black, oily smoke.

The rockcrete arches echoed with the bone-shaking heartbeat of machinery. The sharp, whistling crackle and thunder of energy discharges would have punctured mortal eardrums. The tocsins sounded here too, and yet the innumerable servants of the Omnissiah continued along their appointed tasks. They moved in their red robes on their insectile limbs, mechadendrites waving, travelling without panic, their goals unaltered by the fates decreed by their superiors.

The order to fire caught in Thane’s throat. He was about to lay waste to a vast region of Pavonis Mons, the explosive destruction easier for the Fists Exemplar to survive than the absolute, surgical scouring of the eradicator beams. And if the attack took out the turrets, the Mechanicus would come back with an even more devastating attack. The conflict was a firestorm. It was nothing he could stop. It had caught the Fists Exemplar and the Adeptus Mechanicus in its consuming winds, and there was nothing anyone on Mars could do to stop it. All they could do was feed it.

Fire, he thought. But he hesitated again. In the second he had delayed, the turrets had not fired. The towering walls of the Passage were intact. The region had not been stripped down to its component molecules.

Someone else was hesitating.

‘Chapter Master?’ Kale asked.

The Fists Exemplar pounded down the passage. They had no direction to pursue except down. The war had no direction except more.

But there was hesitation.

Thane had no choice. He had to seize the advantage before Van Auken did. Before the Mechanicus vessels overwhelmed the Alcazar Remembered.

‘Fire,’ he said.

But then Kale was shouting something. It took a few seconds for the words to register. ‘Astropathic communication, Chapter Master! Immediate ceasefire! Cease fire!’

The message Thane had abandoned hope of receiving. The message he wished for above all others. And for that reason, he had to distrust it.

‘Authenticate it,’ he said.

‘Authentication in progress.’

He must fight until he knew the order truly came from Koorland. That was his duty.

But Van Auken wasn’t firing either.

He placed his trust in hope. ‘Hold fire,’ he told Kale.

Three

Terra — The Imperial Palace