Ghost legion, p.5
Ghost Legion, page 5
‘Very well, then,’ Solomon said. ‘We shall see how the adepts take to the introduction into their midst of an abominable intelligence.’
-186.02.06
Of all the faults of the Adeptus Mechanicus, and Chetta could think of many, perhaps the greatest was their sheer grox-headed obliviousness to anything that did not directly concern their precious machines.
Take Forge Mistress Zaefa Varaz, for example. She had, apparently, guided the scattered remnants of her forge world to find a new home – a tricky prospect, since the Mechanicus had understandably already colonised most places that were suitable for a forge world to be located – and that was all well and good. What she had not done, however, was pay enough attention to planetary communications to notice when a Throne-damned Alpha Legion fleet entered the Sertran System.
‘This is outrageous,’ Chetta muttered to herself, not for the first time, staring out of the window. Her guest quarters in the Mechanicus enclave of Lucretia Mons had clearly been hastily adapted, since it seemed her hosts had not been expecting visiting dignitaries, but they were comfortable enough in a purely physical sense. There had even been some effort made to furnish them with artwork, although that was less successful; Chetta wasn’t sure whether anyone ever truly understood art apart from its creator, but the Adeptus Mechanicus certainly did not.
No, the problem was a far more spiritual one, in that she was now trapped, and in hiding, on a planet under the heel of the Ruinous Powers. A surprisingly light and deceptively polite heel so far, it was true, but she knew better than to assume that state of affairs would continue.
The door opened and Chetta whipped around as well as her old bones allowed her to. It was only Evelyn Darke, if ‘only’ could really be used to apply to an inquisitor. Chetta still had to work to think of the witch in that way, but that was the objective reality of things as the Inquisition itself understood it, and that made it reality.
‘Where have you been?’ she demanded, not caring if she sounded grumpy. She’d said worse to inquisitors before.
‘It’s better if you don’t know,’ Darke replied. Chetta groaned.
‘No, Evelyn, nothing is better when I don’t know about it,’ she snapped. ‘That’s part of the reason we’re in this bloody mess.’
They had been engaged in a truly painful dinner when the news of the invasion, such as it was, came through. Chetta was playing her part for all it was worth, and in truth could see a genuine benefit for her house in the potential agreement. The Mechanicus enclave on Sertra was flourishing, definitely in ascendency again. If House Brobantis made a strong alliance with them now, then it would have another foothold in the sector, as well as making a partner that had the potential to become significantly more influential in the decades and centuries to come. However, Varaz, eager to make a good impression, insisted on conducting proceedings in the manner she imagined Imperial nobility would. That meant long, strained meals where the tech-priests self-consciously consumed nutrient paste, or just sat awkwardly, while Chetta and her household picked at supposed delicacies that had been both collected and prepared by beings for whom concepts like taste, texture, and, in some cases, food poisoning were but distant memories.
Tech-baffling had been in place to prevent eavesdropping on the negotiations – which struck Chetta as particularly paranoid, but wasn’t something she’d felt she needed to protest about – a side effect of which was that the Solarox had been unable to contact Chetta about the incoming invasion force. By the time Varaz acknowledged the internal alerts from her own underlings, it was too late: the Alpha Legion were approaching orbit, and the Sertrans had already capitulated in the face of the heretics’ force.
Escaping the surface had been out of the question, by that point. Chetta managed to get a message through to Anja, and the Solarox burned for the Mandeville point, getting out just ahead of the encircling blockade. Had it remained, someone in the invasion force might have decided that if the flagship of House Brobantis was present then its Novator must be as well, and that would have been inconvenient for all concerned. Chetta didn’t know how traitor fleets made their way through the warp, but she’d heard enough rumours about them snatching Navigators to want to avoid that if she could.
‘Fine,’ Darke said. ‘I’ve been communicating with the resistance.’
Chetta stared at her. ‘You’ve revealed yourself as an inquisitor?’
‘I already had,’ Darke replied. She spread her arms. ‘What did you expect, that I would simply sit and hide in my room?’
‘That would have been my ideal scenario, yes,’ Chetta muttered. She scowled, and thumped her cane on the floor. ‘Damn it all, Evelyn, you’ve simply given them another reason to betray us now!’
‘Varaz can’t give us away without damning herself for hiding us in the first place,’ Evelyn said, folding her arms and glaring. ‘She’s as much at risk as we are.’
‘Oh, by all the saints and stars,’ Chetta groaned. ‘You might have a rosette, but you don’t have in inquisitor’s mind, girl! You’re too straightforward by half!’ She sighed, and tried to arrange herself a little more comfortably on her chair, ignoring the twinge from her hip. ‘This Akurra is clever. Look how he manipulated the planet! He barely had to fight for it, because he offered most of it enough of what they already had that standing up to him didn’t feel worthwhile. I’m sure some warlords would have been hip-deep in blood by now. Akurra has a purpose for this place, and it involves it remaining more or less functional, rather than the entire populace being killed. Our hosts hate him, but they didn’t fight him, because he’s let them keep their forges for now.’
‘What’s your point?’ Darke demanded, trying not to sound sulky and, in Chetta’s opinion, failing.
‘My point is that with the planet under Chaos control, you and I offer Varaz very little except as bargaining chips,’ Chetta exclaimed, exasperated, ‘and Akurra has demonstrated that he’s prepared to bargain. If Varaz finds herself under pressure from Akurra or his minions, why not hand us over to buy a little more favour, or a bit more time before she’s kicked out and her precious machines get turned over to some tech-heretic?’
‘You underestimate her,’ Darke said, with infuriating certainty. ‘She’s stronger-willed than you think.’
Chetta grunted. ‘That’s another very un-Inquisitorial trait. Aren’t you supposed to assume that everyone is guilty?’
‘All I care about is bringing down as much of the Alpha Legion as possible,’ Darke replied. ‘I’ve no interest in the rest of it.’
Chetta grunted again, since that seemed to mostly be what this conversation merited. Then she froze, as a horrible thought occurred to her. ‘Have you tried to get access to the Pillar?’
The Pillar of Dreams, the reason they were here in the first place. When the Ghost Legion appeared, Chetta assumed that Solomon Akurra had found the object of his search. However, given he’d left the enclave largely unmolested, it seemed that was not the case. Of course, neither Chetta nor Evelyn yet knew if the damned thing was actually here; for some reason, their welcome had not included showing them the forge mistress’ private trove of forbidden xenos artefacts.
‘No,’ Evelyn said. ‘I’m not that foolish, Chetta. I can’t lean on Inquisitorial status while the Imperium doesn’t rule here, and I don’t want to spook Varaz by mentioning it until I’m ready.’ She sighed. ‘If there’s one good thing that’s come from this mess, it’s that it’s given us more time to ingratiate ourselves.’
‘Ingratiate,’ Chetta snorted. ‘We’re inconvenient house guests, nothing more and nothing less.’
‘At least I’m trying,’ Darke snapped. ‘How are you helping? You’ve simply been sat up here since the Ghost Legion turned up, barely speaking to anyone. You’re supposed to be some sort of political mastermind, so maybe try using that to do what we came here to do!’
Chetta was just opening her mouth to give another testy reply, when the door chimed. It slid open a moment later to reveal the robed and many-armed shape of Zaefa Varaz herself.
‘Forge mistress,’ Chetta said, inclining her head in greeting and to mask her surprise, and hoping that Varaz’s audio sensors hadn’t been picking up their argument. ‘A pleasure to–’
‘No time,’ Varaz buzzed, her tone distinctly agitated. ‘You and your staff must immediately move to a more sheltered section of the compound. I deliver this message myself to impress upon you the utmost urgency.’
Chetta exchanged a startled glance with Evelyn. ‘But why–’
‘The Ghost is coming,’ Varaz said, cutting Chetta off again. ‘An adept will be here to escort you in seventeen point three seconds.’ She didn’t wait for a reply, but backed out of the doorway and disappeared.
‘Akurra?’ Chetta said, looking at Evelyn again. ‘He’s coming here?’ She lowered her voice. ‘He must have learned about the Pillar!’
Evelyn bit her lip. ‘Not… necessarily.’
Chetta stared at her for a moment, then shut her eyes as her heart sank into the floor beneath her.
‘Oh, you stupid, stupid girl. What did you do?’
-185.34.56
Lucretia Mons was in no way a rival to the mightiest Adeptus Mechanicus forge of all, housed within Olympus Mons. It was barely a mountain at all, more a trio of large hills into and around which the priesthood of Mars had delved their private workshops, and the surrounding area over which they had been granted dominion. It was impressive nonetheless – especially given the relatively short time in which they had constructed it – with mighty pumps and pistons thundering, and tame lightning leaping from coil to coil, while gigantic thermic plasma regulators glowed blue as they poured brilliant energy through reinforced pipes to power the tech-priests’ forges. The half-mechanical, half-bone skull icon of the Mechanicus was over every door, emblazoned on walls, staring with dead eyes from joints and seals, and worn prominently by the occupants on cloth and metal. Solomon had offered the tech-priests the same deal he had the Administratum: they were free to worship as they saw fit, and could continue unmolested in their work, so long as that work now benefitted the New Alliance rather than the Imperium.
Now it was time to see whether his tolerance had been an error.
The enormous gates of Lucretia Mons shut again behind his party with a whine of macro-servos, and the grinding noise of slabs of metal so vast that no amount of sacred unguents could completely ease their passage. The mighty edifice was undoubtedly intended to make it very clear to all who entered that such entry was a privilege, and that the tech-priests were the masters of the domain within. Solomon was normally content to indulge such fictions, but today he wished to make a point, which was why the Adeptus Mechanicus had not been the ones to open the gate.
‘Thank you,’ he said quietly to the hulking, multi-limbed figure standing beside him in the passenger bay of the Mastodon armoured transport. The vehicle had been a gift to him from the Shrouded Hand, and was practically a mobile fortress, far larger than a Land Raider. Solomon used it as his command station when he was planetside. It was a long way from a duskhorn chariot, but again, he was making a point.
‘It was my pleasure, Harrowmaster,’ replied the Diabolicus Secundus, through the artificial voice box of the ogryn combat servitor in which it was currently residing.
Kazadin Yallamagasa, the Biologis Diabolicus, was obsessed with life in all its forms, and how it could be changed and manipulated. That was what had got him exiled from the Adeptus Mechanicus in the first place, at least two millennia ago, when his experiments had gone beyond even what the Martian priesthood considered acceptable in pursuit of knowledge. However, although biological life was his main interest, once free from the constraints of Mars he had also spent several centuries developing artificial life. The Diabolicus Secundus was the upshot of that work – not simply a copy of Yallamagasa’s consciousness, although large parts of the Biologis Diabolicus’ personality were in there somewhere, but a separate entity altogether.
Where genetics and DNA were Yallamagasa’s playthings, the Diabolicus Secundus worked with code and circuitry. It too was not a part of the Alpha Legion as such, but Solomon counted it as much of an ally as any of his others – more so, in fact, than several of the warbands that made up the Ghost Legion. The Diabolicus Secundus had assisted him in recovering the rank of Harrowmaster following the Rustbloods’ betrayal, been instrumental in reconstructing the Pale Spear, and had assisted Tulava Dyne with repairing Solomon’s daemonic arm after it had been disabled by a psycannon bolt. Tulava did not like the machine – probably a lingering holdover from her time as an Imperial – but she grudgingly acknowledged its usefulness nonetheless.
‘The forge mistress is approaching,’ reported Nazos Zernas, a young legionnaire fresh into his armour, who was monitoring the auspex. Solomon remembered him; Tulava had pulled him from a raid they had conducted on a Schola Progenium, seeking new recruits, after which he had been subjected to the none-too-tender mercies of Yallamagasa and the arcane processes that turned mortal flesh into the genecrafted mass of a Space Marine. In an Imperial Chapter he would have been given the rank of Scout, but the Alpha Legion preferred to use veteran infiltrators and assassins for such roles, and termed them Headhunters instead. Zernas had been assigned to Second Fang, a team of legionnaires of the Serpent’s Teeth, and he would live or die with them.
‘Then let us disembark,’ Solomon declared, and the Mastodon’s assault doors opened.
Solomon strode out, making no effort not to look like a warlord. He had the Pale Spear in his hand, of course, but he was flanked not only by Tulava Dyne and the ominous presence of the Secundus, but also by a selection of elite warriors. Second Fang remained in the Mastodon – they crewed it, demonstrating the adaptability on which Solomon insisted for the legionnaires under his command – but he was joined by the towering forms of the five Lernean Terminators known as the Harrowguard. In addition, there were eight Headhunters in their darkened war plate, Stalker-pattern boltguns in hand, led by Qope Halver. The Headhunter Prime was himself now reliant on bionics meshed with his flesh to stay alive, after half his insides had been burned out by a plasma incinerator, but he still directed his team with the same crisp laconicism as ever. Solomon had offered him a suit of valuable Tactical Dreadnought armour and a place in the Harrowguard, but Halver refused. He was a creature of stealth and shadow by nature, and the best scout and infiltrator in the Legion.
Behind them, other vehicles began disgorging their own passengers, and neither these vehicles nor their passengers were so uniform. When Solomon had come here before, he had been accompanied by warriors of his own warband: renegades in the eyes of the Imperium, yes, but well ordered and well presented, with little in the way of the divergence from the norm that was frequently so disturbing to those same eyes. The same was not true today.
The tattered, lasgun-clutching militias of the Guns of Freedom disembarked from fetish-bedecked Chimeras, obeying snarled orders from officers with sharpened teeth in leather greatcoats fashioned from human skin, the vehicles and soldiers alike displaying the eight-pointed star of Chaos amongst innumerable other, more specific sacred markings. Two mighty Leman Russ battle tanks traversed their battle cannons, flakes of rust shaken loose into the wind as they jerkily covered potential threats; but while one of them retained the tracks with which it had originally been fitted on some long-forgotten forge world, the other now moved on eight mechanical legs. A trio of Sentinel walkers came to a halt, one of which had no pilot, some other entity having assumed command of the chassis. In and amongst them all, dropping down from handholds on the side of vehicles or emerging from assault ramps reshaped to look like jawbones on hovering transports that vented sickly-sweet incense from exhaust ports, came the servants of the New Mechanicum.
Negavolt cultists, faces masked and heads haloed by anarcho-electro fields crackling between the wavering dendrites emerging from their skulls; renegade skitarii, guns glowing with the light of baleful ammunition; corrupted servitors, bristling with weapons and other, stranger devices, altered far beyond even what the Adeptus Mechanicus would consider to be an acceptable perversion of the human form; and, clad in robes stained with oil and blood, members of the priesthood itself, casting envious oculars over their surroundings. All an obscene presence on the hallowed ground of the priesthood of Mars, and every one of them an affront to the Machine God.
Forge Mistress Zaefa Varaz was hurrying towards them, her red-and-green robes streaming out behind her mechanically enhanced frame as she did so. A conglomeration of lesser priests were strung out in her wake, like the tail of a comet. Solomon would never have considered himself to be an expert on the minutiae of tech-priest body language, but even he was relatively certain that what he was seeing was distress, bordering on panic.
Good.
‘Lord Akurra!’ Varaz buzzed through the vocoder that had long since replaced her biological vocal cords. ‘Lord Akurra!’
‘Forge mistress,’ Solomon said calmly, but without a smile. The last time he was here, he had offered a steel hand within a velvet glove. This time, he wanted the steel to be seen with no disguise.
‘Lord Akurra,’ Varaz said for the third time, coming to what was, under the circumstances, a relatively dignified halt a little way away. That did not stop Solomon’s escort from raising their boltguns, which was only a sensible precaution, since a forge mistress of the Adeptus Mechanicus undoubtedly had many potent weapons of her own within her frame.
‘Your arrangement with us declared that we would continue to be masters of our own premises!’ Varaz continued. ‘The manner of your arrival and nature of your companions is a statistically significant indicator that you have failed to recall this information.’
‘Our agreement was based on your work being satisfactory, and that you did not conspire against me,’ Solomon agreed. ‘I am aware that there have been issues with productivity in some of your facilities, but I am prepared to overlook those.’ Tulava had not believed the Adeptus Mechanicus would continue to operate their forges for the benefit of the New Alliance, but Solomon had pointed out that if the alternative was to leave them in the hands of the New Mechanicum, then at least the priests of Mars were preventing more corrupted technology from being unleashed upon the galaxy. True success usually lay in persuading your adversary that they had achieved the best outcome available to them.
