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Echoes of the Tomb

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Echoes of the Tomb

Sandy Mitchell

If there’s one basic principle I’ve learned in over a century of rattling around the galaxy fighting the Emperor’s enemies (whenever I couldn’t avoid it), it’s ‘leave well alone’. Three simple words which have stood me in good stead over the years; judiciously applied they’ve made my commissarial duties a great deal easier than they might have been. Unfortunately it’s a phrase the Adeptus Mechanicus seems incapable of grasping, a failing which almost cost me my life.

I suppose I’d better explain. By the end of 928 my undeserved reputation for heroism had grown to such a ridiculous level that I’d finally attracted the attention of the upper echelons of the commissariat, who had decided that a man of my obvious talents was wasted in the posting to an obscure artillery unit I had so carefully aranged for myself in the hope of being able to sit out my lifetime of service to the Emperor a long way away from any actual fighting. As it turned out, by sheer bad luck I’d managed to put myself in harm’s way an inordinate number of times, emerging on every occasion trailing clouds of undeserved glory, so that to the sector at large I seemed to be the very epitome of the swashbuckling hero that commissars are generally considered not to be. (Most regiments regard us as something akin to the engineseers in the transport pool; sometimes necessary, occasionally useful, generally best avoided.)

Accordingly I found myself transferred to a desk job at brigade headquarters, which at first seemed like a gift from the Emperor himself. I had a nice comfortable office, with an anteroom in which Jurgen, my aide, was able to lurk, deterring all but the most determined of visitors with his single-minded devotion to following orders as literally as possible and his paint-blistering body odour. For a while it seemed that my days of fleeing in terror from genestealers, chaos cultists, and blood-maddened orks were over. But of course it was all too good to be true. The staff officers were delighted to discover that they had a bona fide hero among them (at least, so they believed), which meant every time they needed an independent commissar to accompany some particularly dangerous or foolhardy mission, they sent for me.

Thanks to my finely-honed instinct for self-preservation I managed to make it back every time, though this which only encouraged them to think I was the greatest thing since Macharius, and just the man to send out on an even more dangerous assignment just as soon as they could think of something sufficiently lethal.

Enough was enough, I decided, and hearing that someone was needed to liaise with an Astartes company which was campaigning alongside the Guard in a routine action to clear some heretics off an agriworld on the spinward fringes of our sector decided to volunteer for the job. After my last little jaunt, rescuing some hostages from an eldar pirate base, I thought a bit of quiet diplomacy would be just the change of pace I needed.

‘You don’t think you’ll find this sort of thing a little... tame?’ General Lokris, a genial old buffer I’d probably quite like if he didn’t keep trying to get me killed, asked, raising a shaggy white eyebrow in my direction. We were dining together in his private chambers, the skill of his chef more than making up for the tedium of his company, and I had a shrewd suspicion that this demonstration of his regard was intended to sway me into changing my mind. I took another mouthful of the salma, which was poached to perfection, to give myself time to formulate an acceptable answer.

‘Well it’s got to be more interesting than shuffling datafiles,’ I said, smiling ruefully. That fitted his mental image of Cain the Man of Action quite nicely, and he nodded sympathetically. ‘Besides,’ I went on, seeing no harm in laying it on with a trowel, ‘how often am I going to get the chance to go into battle alongside the Astartes?’ Never, if I had anything to do with it, but Lokris didn’t need to know that. He nodded eagerly at the prospect, quite enthused on my behalf, and took an extravagant pull at his wineglass to restore his composure.

‘Quite right, my boy. What an experience that would be.’ He sipped at his drink again, growing quietly contemplative. ‘By the Emperor, if I were a hundred years younger I’d volunteer myself.’

‘It’s not as though there’s anything urgent I need to do here,’ I went on. ‘Jurgen can take care of the routine stuff while I’m gone.’ I would have preferred to take him with me, of course, but I was uncomfortably aware of the impression he was bound to make on the genetically-enhanced supermen of the Astartes, and had no wish to undermine my credibility before the assignment had even begun. Besides, while he was here he could watch my back, making sure I wasn’t earmarked for any more suicide missions. I knew something was in the wind, which was why I’d seized on this diplomatic assignment so eagerly. For once, whatever Lokris and his cronies were planning they could leave me out of it.

‘You should reach the Viridian system in about a month,’ the general said. ‘I don’t suppose the heretics will be able to hold out for much longer than that, but even if they do you ought to be back here by around two hundred next year at the latest.’

‘Emperor willing,’ I said, making a mental note to spin the assignment out for longer than that if I could. He might not have a specific reason for wanting me back by then, but you never know.

My first surprise was the transport ship I’d been assigned to. Instead of a troopship or a supply vessel, both of which I was intimately acquainted with after all my years of shuffling from one warzone to the next, I found my shuttle docking at a light freighter bearing the unmistakable sigil of the Adeptus Mechanicus. They seemed to be expecting me. There was an honour guard of their augmetically enhanced troopers lining the walls of the hanger bay, and a tech-priest with a wide smile and a couple of mechadendrites waving lazily over his shoulders was waiting at the bottom of the shuttle’s exit ramp. He stuck out a hand for me to shake as I descended, and on taking it I was surprised to find it was still unaugmented flesh.

‘Commissar Cain,’ he said. ‘Welcome aboard. I’m Magos Killian, leader of the expedition, and this really is a tremendous honour. We’ve heard all about you, of course, and I must say we’re thrilled to have you travelling with us.’

‘Expedition?’ I said, trying to ignore the sudden lurching sensation in the pit of my stomach. ‘I was under the impression I’ve been assigned to liaise between the guard units and the Reclaimers task force in the Viridia system.’

‘Didn’t they tell you?’ Confusion, exasperation and amusement chased themselves across Killian’s face. ‘Well, that’s the munitorium for you, I suppose. We’re making a rendezvous with a Reclaimers battle barge in the Interitus system, so some clerical drone obviously thought it would save you a bit of time to hitch a lift with us and transfer across when we meet them.’ He fished a data-slate from some recess of his immaculate white robes, and fiddled with it for a moment. ‘The next scheduled departure for Viridia is in another three weeks. Allowing for the wait before the barge arrives in orbit around Interitus Prime, you should be there about...’ he consulted the slate again, making a couple of quick calculations as he did so, ‘about thirty-six hours ahead of them. If the warp currents are favourable, of course.’

‘Of course,’ I said. I wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or angry. On the one hand I’d be spending an extra three weeks on a roundabout voyage to Emperor-knew-where, but on the other that was three weeks I wouldn’t have to worry about Lokris and his friends trying to find some new and inventive way of getting me killed. On balance that was an acceptable trade-off, I felt. I smiled, and nodded with every appearance of polite interest I could summon up. ‘I’m looking forward to hearing all about this expedition of yours.’

A servitor scuttled past me and up the ramp of the shuttle to retrieve my kitbag, which from habit I’d left lying where it was on the subconscious assumption that Jurgen would deal with it. Killian nodded with every indication of eagerness as we strolled past the line of tech-guards, every one of them immaculate, hellguns at the port. They looked formidible enough on parade, I found myself thinking, but I was by no means sure their fighting prowess would be a match for real guardsmen.

As it turned out I was to see for myself how effective they were before very long, and if I’d realised that at the time, and against how terrible a foe, I would certainly have thanked the tech-priest politely for his offer and bolted for the shuttle without a second thought. But of course I didn’t, so I simply strolled along beside him, blithely unaware that we were all on a voyage to perdition.

Despite my forebodings the trip itself turned out to be remarkably pleasant. In striking contrast to the basic conditions aboard the troopships I was used to, the Omnissiah’s Blessing felt more like a luxury liner. I had a well-appointed stateroom assigned to me, with a couple of hovering cyber-skulls humming quietly in the corner with nothing better to do than scoot off to find anything I required, and the cuisine was first rate. A real surprise this, as in my experience tech-priests tend not to worry about that sort of thing, looking on the necessity of taking in regular nourishment as a distasteful reminder of their fleshly origins or some such nonsense. I’d been steeling myself to face a plateful of soylens viridiens or something equally unappetising the first time I wandered down to the mess hall, only to find a pleasantly appointed dining room which wouldn’t have looked out of place in a smart hotel, and was immediately assailed by the mouth-watering odour of sauteed grox.

I was still enjoying my first meal aboard when Killian ambled over, a plate of grox and fresh vegetables in one hand, a large bowl of ackenberry sorbet in the other, and a steaming mug of recaf waving precariously from a mechadendrite. I gestured for him to join me, and after a few preliminary pleasantries he began to chat about their voyage.

‘No reason you shouldn’t at least know where we’re going,’ he said cheerfully, the unoccupied mechadendrite diving into the recesses of his robe for the dataslate. He placed it on the table and continued to manipulate the controls with the mechanical limb, while his real ones plied knife and fork with evident enthusiasm. A star chart appeared, the Viridian system just at the fringes of the display, and a small, sullen stellar revenant centred in the screen.

‘Looks inviting,’ I said, with heavy irony. To my surprise Killian chuckled.

‘Does rather, doesn’t it?’ he said, zooming the display so that the target system filled the screen. A handful of dark and airless worlds orbited the decaying star, seared to cinders when it went nova millions of years before, taking whatever life had existed there into oblivion before sinking back into the sullen, cooling ember about which the few surviving rocks still drifted.

‘This is the Interitus system,’ he said. ‘Well named, I’m sure you’ll agree.’ I nodded.

‘I can’t for the life of me see what you’d want there,’ I admitted. ‘Let alone why an Astartes chapter would divert a battle barge from a warzone to meet you.’

Killian positively beamed, and pointed to the largest chunk of rock in the system.

‘This is Interitus Prime. The whole system was surveyed by explorators back in the twenty-eighth millennium. In the most cursory fashion I may add, if the surviving records are anything to go by.’

‘Your records go back that far?’ I couldn’t keep an edge of incredulity from my voice. That was the all but unimaginable golden age when the Emperor still walked among men and the Imperium was young and vigourous, its domination of the galaxy uncontested, instead of being riven by heresy and threatened on all sides by malevolent powers. Killian nodded.

‘Only in the most fragmentary form, of course. But there are still tantilising hints for those prepared to meditate for long enough upon them, and put their trust in the benevolence of the Omnissiah.’

‘And you think there’s something there worth going after,’ I said. There wasn’t much which would drag a ship full of cogboys halfway across the sector, and it wasn’t hard to guess which item on that very short list was the attraction here. ‘Some significant stash of archeotech perhaps?’

‘Perhaps,’ Killian nodded, evidently pleased at my perspicacity. ‘We won’t know for sure until we get there, will we?’

‘I suppose not,’ I conceded, turning my attention to the desserts.

The rest of the voyage passed pleasantly enough, although apart from Killian I had little to do with the tech-priests on board. For company I gravitated naturally to the tech-guards, with whom I had a little more in common, finding that despite their augmetic enhancements and a devotion to the cult of the machine which I found a trifle disconcerting (I’ve little enough patience with Emperor-botherers at the best of times, let alone ones who seem to think he runs on clockwork), they were as disciplined and professional in their way as any of the warriors I’d served with. Moreover they’d heard of me, and believed every word of my reputation. Their only drawback from my point of view was that they didn’t seem to have any currency, being some sort of vassals of the adeptus, so there wasn’t much point in getting my tarot deck out. Their commanding officer, a Lieutenant Tarkus, was a keen regicide player however, and a hard opponent to beat, so I was able to keep my brain ticking over while the ship scuttled nervously through the warp towards whatever might be lurking at our destination.

It was Tarkus who finally put my mind at rest about the battle barge; it seemed that, despite my obvious concerns, its formidable firepower wasn’t to be deployed in our defence.

‘Omnissiah no!’ he said, casually dispatching one of my lancers with a sudden flanking movement I should have seen coming. ‘It’s on its way to clean out the rebel base on Viridia Secundus.’ I nodded gravely, pretending I’d read the briefing slate about the tactical situation in the Viridia system. It seemed the heretics had taken control of more than just the main world, then. ‘They’re only hooking up with us long enough to transfer a squad of Space Marines over. And to pick you up, of course.’

Well that was something, although a potential threat potent enough to require an Astartes squad to contain wasn’t to be taken all that lightly. I consoled myself with the reflection that it wasn’t my problem anyway, I’d be safe aboard one of the most powerful vessels in space and a long way away from Interitus Prime before anyone started to meddle with whatever chunk of archeotech the cogboys were after. I nodded judiciously, playing for time, and made a feint with a trooper hoping to draw his ecclesiarch out of position.

‘I’m sure you’ll feel safer having them around,’ I said blandly. ‘Can’t be too careful, after all.’ As I’d hoped, the half of his face which wasn’t made of metal coloured visibly as he considered the implied slur on his command, and he moved a little too hastily, creating an opening I should be able to exploit a couple of moves further on in the game.

‘I don’t see why that’d make a difference,’ he said, a little too levelly. ‘My boys can cope with anything the galaxy might throw at us.’

‘I don’t doubt it,’ I said. ‘From what I’ve seen we could do with a few more like them in the Guard.’ Tarkus nodded as I moved my portside citadel, setting up what I hoped would be a chance to win in another three turns. I waited until he was considering his response before adding: ‘But Magos Killian obviously doesn’t share my confidence.’

Tarkus almost knocked his ecclesiarch over as he picked it up and moved it, blowing his only chance of blocking my next attack. His jaw clenched.

‘It’s not a question of confidence,’ he said. ‘There are... longstanding obligations.’

I perked up at that, as you can imagine, although what sort of pact there might be between an Astartes chapter and the Adeptus Mechanicus I was at a loss to understand. I don’t doubt that I would have been able to worm a little more out of Tarkus given time, but I decided not to press him any further that evening (having just set myself up for a comfortable win despite his superior skill at the game, and wanting to savour it), and by the time we’d agreed on for our next joust across the board he was already dead.

Well, there it is.’ Killian waved an expansive hand at the armourcrys window which dominated the far end of the ship’s lounge. Beyond it the dying star guttered fitfully, casting a dim blue glow over us which reminded me of autumn twilight. A slice of darkness distorted the glowing sphere, the bulk of the planet we’d come so far to reach rising up to take a bite out of it.

The landscape below us was in darkness, but enough of the wan glow of the system’s primary leaked across the horizon for me to make out a blasted wasteland, cracked by heat almost impossible to imagine, and riven with impact craters. That alone was a testament to how old this place was, as it must have been left almost smooth by its fiery transformation; the pockmarking of its face would have been the work of aeons. Despite the awful bleakness of the prospect I couldn’t deny that it had a desolate grandeur to it, and a faint chill akin to awe touched my soul as I took it all in.

‘It’s certainly... impressive,’ I agreed. Nonetheless a vague sense of unease took hold of me, and I found myself grateful for the thought that I’d be transferring to the Reclaimers’ battle barge and leaving this system forever within a day or two.

‘We’ve already begun to establish our base camp,’ Killian continued. I strained my eyes in the direction he’d pointed, failing to see anything for a moment, then picked out a faint flash of light as one of our shuttles ignited its engine many kilometres below. ‘I think you’d be impressed.’

‘No doubt I would,’ I agreed, grateful for the secrecy he’d displayed up to now, which almost certainly meant I wouldn’t have to leave the security of the ship. ‘But I’m sure you don’t want me getting underfoot.’

‘Well...’ Killian hesitated, clearly torn between conflicting impulses, and not entirely sure whether he was doing the right thing. ‘Obviously we’re on a mission from the Omnissiah. Normally we wouldn’t dream of involving an outsider...’ Here it comes, I thought, with an ominous sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. That reputation for heroism is about to hit me over the back of the head again. The techpriest cleared his throat. ‘But given your extensive experience as a military man, do you think Lieutenant Tarkus would listen to your opinions at all?’

‘Lieutenant Tarkus strikes me as a man who doesn’t need much advice from anyone,’ I said smoothly, cursing myself for undermining his confidence the previous evening. ‘And if he does, I’m sure the Astartes contingent will have far more pertinent comments to make when they get here than anything I might have to say.’

‘Well, that’s the thing.’ Killian coughed delicately again. ‘Technically, they’ll be led by a sergeant, won’t they?’

Of course. And Tarkus would be too stubborn to ask the opinion of a lower ranking squad leader now his pride had been hurt. Notwithstanding the fact that the marine sergeant would probably have decades of combat experience, and refuse to take orders from anyone outside his chapter in any case. I had a sudden premonition of the administrative problems which would be awaiting me on Viridia, and wondered for a moment if I’d done the right thing in volunteering.

Oh well. I might as well get a little practice in now. I had nothing better to do until the barge arrived after all.

‘I’ll do my best to help, of course,’ I said. ‘Perhaps if I had a little chat with him?’

‘Would you?’ Killian snagged a plate of canapes from a passing servitor, and offered me one. ‘We’d be very grateful. He’s an admirable young man, of course, but rather headstrong.’

‘Where is he?’ I asked, biting into the delicacy. ‘Still in his quarters?’

‘Omnissiah no.’ Killian smiled, and gestured towards the planet below. ‘He’s down there.’

As it happened that was a stroke of luck which was to save my life, but I had no idea of that at the time, so spent the shuttle ride down to the surface of Interitus Prime feeling resentful at being dragged off on a pointless errand. Technically I had no authority over Tarkus in any case, since he wasn’t a member of the Imperial Guard, but Killian didn’t seem to think that would matter, sure that the young officer would be sufficiently impressed with my fraudulent reputation to listen to whatever advice I might have to offer. He was also very grateful for my assistance, as he kept telling me from the adjacent seat as we descended, and in the end I found myself feigning interest in the desolate landscape below just to shut him up for a minute or two.

Truth to tell, after a while my interest was becoming genuine, even if it remained somewhat muted. The closer we got to landing, the more forbidding that airless landscape became, smaller craters becoming visible as we got closer to them, and faint spiderwebs of shadow swelling into chasms deep beyond measure and wide enough to swallow a hive block. The shuttle continued to descend, and I began to wonder whether the pilot was paying attention to the altitude, despite knowing it to be a servitor which could by its very nature be nothing but vigilant. There was still the faint possibility of malfunction, of course, and I began to tense subconsciously, waiting for the retros to kick in, but they never did.

‘Aren’t we getting a little close to the ground now?’ I ventured after a while, and Killian smiled lazily.

‘I suppose we are,’ he said, showing no sign of concern. Well I wasn’t going to make a fool of myself in front of the magos, so I simply shrugged with the best expression of casual indifference I could summon up.

‘Thought so,’ I said. A few moments later the reason for his lack of concern became evident even to me. A grey haze in the distance, which I’d taken for the horizon, began to close in on us, looming over the slowly descending shuttle like a thunderhead, and I nodded in sudden understanding. We were sinking gently into one of those titanic rifts in the planet’s surface, already at least a couple of hundred metres below ground level. ‘How far down does this go?’

‘About eight hundred kilometres,’ Killian said casually. ‘It’s the deepest chasm on the planet.’ He produced a flask of something from the depths of his robe with his right hand, the mechadendrites pulling out a cup apiece. ‘So we’ve got time for a recaf before we land if you like.’ I did like; under the circumstances I thought I deserved one.

The dim illumination of the dying star above had dwindled to nothing by now, but the running lights of the shuttle were enough to let me pick out a few of the details of that incredible fissure. Layer after layer of different strata slipped past the porthole, subtle graduations of hue marking the ticks of some long wound-down geological clock, and a couple of times I thought I caught a glimpse of something white, fossils perhaps, of creatures already extinct for millions of years before their planet died in its turn. The thought was a morbid one, and I tried to turn my mind away from the contemplation of death and eternity with casual conversation.

‘I can see why you think this place is so special,’ I ventured after a while. ‘It’s quite...’ I tried in vain to think of a suitable adjective, before concluding somewhat lamely with ‘impressive.’ Killian chuckled throatily. I have to say that of all the tech-priests I’ve ever met he was by far the most likable, as well as the most untypical of his kind. Factors which were probably not unconnected, come to think of it.

‘I think we can still surprise you, commissar.’ At that point I rather doubted it, to be honest, although I have to concede that he was right.

My first presentiment that there was even more to this chasm than at first met the eye was a faint glow from below us, which soon resolved itself into the actinic glare of several gigantic luminators set on pylons around a makeshift landing pad. Our shuttle settled gently in what seemed to be the exact centre of the flattened area, and Killian bounced from his seat with every sign of eagerness to get outside; it was only as he hit the rune to lower the exit ramp that I remembered the world was airless.

‘Wait a minute!’ I called, struggling up from the deeply-padded seat which suddenly seemed a lot less comfortable now that I needed to stand in a hurry. He might have some augmetic enhancements that let him manage without air, but I most certainly didn’t. Killian smiled at me.

‘I told you you’d be surprised,’ he said as the seals broke with an audible hiss. But it was the sound of equalising pressure, I realised with a sudden surge of relief, having become all too familiar with the sound of explosive decompression when the Hand of Vengeance took a torpedo volley amidships at the seige of Perlia. Thin, cold air began to seep into the shuttle, leeching the warmth away with tendrils of mist. Having spent most of my career with Valhallan units, who like their air conditioning turned up to the maximum, I found the chill bearable, but oddly dispiriting.

‘I am,’ I admitted. ‘I didn’t think you’d been here long enough to create an atmosphere.’ I followed him down the ramp, my boots crunching gently on the gravel beneath, which had something of the texture of ash.

‘We haven’t.’ Killian was rubbing his hands together, although whether for warmth or from enthusiasm I couldn’t tell. Probably both. ‘So the survey reports were right about that at least.’

‘So why haven’t the gasses frozen?’ I asked. Even if the feeble sun were warm enough to prevent them turning to ice it never penetrated this deep below the surface, and the world was too long dead to have any residual heat left in its core. My breath puffed the words into little clouds as I spoke, although Killian’s, I noticed absently, did not.

‘Exactly!’ Killian said, as though I were his favourite pupil, and led the way between the two nearest luminator gantries, following a clearly-defined trail in the brittle ground. Once we were beyond the glare my eyes adjusted, and I could make out a cluster of dimmer lights on the walls of the chasm. ‘There has to be something else down here emitting energy. It’s the only explanation.’

I was intrigued in spite of myself, I don’t mind admitting it. As we approached the lights I could see they were suspended in the mouth of a vast cavern, with servitors scuttling about reinforcing the makeshift ramp of broken shale leading up to it. I’ll never know if Killian’s enthusiasm would have led him to expound further on what he was after, or if he would have realised he was revealing adeptus secrets to an outsider and clammed up again, because at that point a young tech-priest appeared in the cave mouth gesticulating wildly.

‘Magos!’ he called, practically jigging up and down on the spot with excitement. ‘We’ve found something!’ Without even pausing to ask what it was, Killian picked up the pace and practically ran inside the gaping hole in the cliff face, which was large enough to have taken our shuttle with room to spare. Not wanting to lose my guide I trotted after him, more than a little intrigued.

Killian barely slowed at any of this, hurrying on into the darkness which surrounded that scene of activity. Red-uniformed tech guards were hovering deferentially at the fringes of the illuminated area, and I made a mental note to suggest to Tarkus that they be redeployed a little further out, where their eyes would be adjusted to the surrounding gloom and better able to distinguish any infllitrators moving in on the bustling researchers. Of course there didn’t seem the remotest chance of anyone else being here, and for all I knew they had augmetic eyes which could see perfectly well in the dark anyway, but by that stage in my career I was already beginning to acquire the healthy sense of paranoia which has probably done more than anything else to ensure my survival long enough to reach an honourable retirement.

Plunging into the gloom after him I found the way easy enough to negotiate despite the lack of illumination, as he was making more noise than an ork in a distillery. Another patch of light was visible in the distance and I hastened towards it, picking out a cluster of white robes and red uniforms without difficulty. More of the peculiar circle-and-stick markings were embossed on the far wall, and as I moved closer it became obvious that the surface here was worked to a glossy smoothness which somehow seemed to swallow the light falling on it.

‘These sigils are undoubtedly of necrontyr origin,’ a tall, cadaverous techpriest was saying as I entered the circle of brightness. He broke off to glare at me, until Killian gestured to him to continue. The name meant nothing to me at the time, of course, although when I finally reported back to Lokris he showed me some highly classified files which did nothing at all to make me feel better. I suppose he thought if something was going to try that hard to kill me without him instigating it, the least he could do was let me know what it was.

‘This is all very interesting, Brother Stadler,’ Killian said, with every sign of impatience. ‘But what about the artifact?’

‘It’s over here,’ Stadler said after a moment, during which I’d made it abundantly clear that I wasn’t moving. The circle of light surrounding us shifted a little, moved by some technosorcery I wasn’t privy to, revealing the mouth of a tunnel. Like the wall it penetrated the archway was perfectly smooth, composed of stone blocks of an eerie glossy blackness which only served to intensify the darkness beyond. ‘We started down the tunnel hoping to find more heiroglyphs, and stumbled over this.’ He permitted himself a wintery smile. ‘Quite literally, in the case of our escort.’

A couple of red-uniformed figures emerged from the gloom, the scowl on Tarkus’s face enough to tell me who the techpriest was referring to. The trooper with him was walking backwards, his hellgun aimed at something still in the darkness beyond, and a moment later a couple of techpriests appeared leading something metallic between them. It was big, I could tell that even before it came into the light, supported by a dozen cyber skulls which had managed to wedge themselves into the interstices of its body. A small, detatched part of my mind noted that the cogboys at least must be able to see in the dark, as there was no sign of illumination further back.

‘Remarkable!’ Killian looked like a juvie on Emperor’s Day morning who’s just seen the toy soldiers he always wanted at the top of his bowl. I could have thought of a number of other adjectives to describe the thing, starting with ‘hideous’ and growing steadily more pejorative.

It resembled nothing so much as a metallic sump spider, although even one of those would have seemed cuddly by comparison. Mechanisms protruded from its head, and six limbs dangled from its bloated body. Even inert it exuded a palpable malevolence which wrapped itself around me like a suffocating blanket.

‘What have we here?’ Killian bent over it, probing with the mechadendrites. ‘Looks like a power core. Completely inert, of course.’ He shrugged. ‘Pity, but there you go. It would have been interesting to see what it does.’ Interesting wasn’t quite the word I would have used, needless to say. The other techpriest nodded in agreement.

‘I dare say we could rig something up. Possibly a fusion bottle...’ He seemed to remember my presence all of a sudden, and subsided, glaring at me again.

‘Are you sure that’s wise?’ I asked. Everyone looked at me, and I shrugged, determined not to seem too concerned at their evident hostility. ‘I’m no expert, but –’

‘Quite right, you’re not,’ Stadler snapped. ‘So kindly leave theological matters to those who are.’

‘Fine.’ I tried to look as reasonable as I could. ‘But might I suggest you at least delay the attempt until the Astartes arrive?’ And I was a long way away from any potential danger, of course. ‘That should at least minimise any risk to the security of the expedition.’

‘The expedition is perfectly secure,’ Tarkus cut in, his voice tight, and I cursed myself for wounding his pride all over again. ‘I see no reason to delay the furtherance of the Omnissiah’s work.’

At that point it all became academic anyway. Killian muttered something under his breath, and a faint click came from somewhere in the bowels of the machine.

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘That looks like a power coupling...’

Without any warning at all, a thin metal probe shot from the depths of the arachnoid automaton and buried itself in one of the hovering cyber skulls. A blue arc of energy sparked between them and the servitor fell lifeless to the ground, bouncing off into a corner somewhere.

‘Remarkable!’ Killian said again, and stepped forward for a closer look. I did exactly the opposite, you can be sure, retreating just far enough to ensure that Tarkus and his trooper stood between me and the sinister device.

‘Stay back!’ I warned, drawing my las-pistol. Tarkus seemed to remember my reputation at that point, and clearly reasoning that if I was concerned he ought to be too, began to follow suit. The trooper raised his hellgun again.

‘Put those down!’ Killian was outraged. ‘Have you any idea of the importance of this artifact?’ Tarkus and the trooper began to obey, although I wasn’t about to holster my weapon under any circumstances. Before we could debate the point, however, a loud crack echoed through the cavern. The spider thing had teleported away, leaving air to rush into the void it had occupied like a miniature thunderclap.

We stared at one another in mutual incomprehension for a moment.

‘Where did it go?’ the trooper asked, an expression of bafflement on his face which was almost comic. I shook my head.

‘Emperor alone knows,’ I said.

‘It must be somewhere nearby,’ Killian said. ‘How far do these tunnels extend?’ Stadler shrugged.

‘Kilometres. We’ve barely begun to map them.’ Killian began to look as though his new soldiers had been trodden on by an adult before he got the chance to play with them.

‘We’ll establish a search pattern,’ he said. ‘We’re bound to find it eventually.’

‘If it doesn’t find you first,’ I added, before I could prevent the words from slipping out. Tarkus, to his credit, took my meaning at once.

‘You think it’s a guardian of some kind?’

‘I don’t know,’ I admitted. ‘But it’s a reasonable guess. Whatever it’s for it was built to last.’

‘I’ll double the sentries around the base camp,’ Tarkus said. But I already had an uncomfortable feeling that wasn’t going to be enough.

My first instinct, I might as well admit it, was to find some excuse to get back on the shuttle and return to the safety of the orbiting starship. This wasn’t as easy as it sounds, though; despite the fact that I was clearly unwelcome so far as the majority of the techpriests were concerned, and Tarkus remained as prickly as ever, he was sensible enough to realise that someone who’d survived as many clashes with the enemy as I had was someone whose advice he should listen to. So despite my impatience I spent most of the day reviewing his plans for the defence of the camp (which were pretty sound, I’m bound to admit, although I was able to plug a couple of holes that would only have been obvious to someone with field experience), and it was several hours before I had the chance to contact the Omnissiah’s Blessing and let them know I was on my way back.

I’d just finished talking to the officer of the watch, whose image was floating in the hololith display, when his expression changed.

‘Just a moment, commissar.’ He turned to confer with someone out of the hololith’s field of vision. When he turned back his expression was one of mild surprise. ‘We’re picking up a discharge of warp energy. It looks like the Astartes are here already.’ That was the best news I’d heard since boarding the freighter. I had no doubt they’d make short work of the metal spider, and anything else that might be lurking down here with us.

‘Good,’ I said. ‘If you can arrange to transfer my kit I’ll report aboard the barge directly from here.’ No point in taking any chances, after all, and I’d certainly be safer scrounging a ride in a Thunderhawk than an unarmed shuttle. The officer just had time to look mildly surprised before his expression turned to one of alarm.

‘Unknown contact, closing fast. They’re making an attack run!’

‘Download your sensor data!’ Killian ordered at my elbow. Someone on the bridge must have complied because the image in the hololith changed suddenly, showing us the pin-sharp starfield you only ever see from above an atmosphere. Something was moving across it, a crescent of darkness visible against the blackness of space only because of the flickering of the stars it briefly occulted.

‘What the hell...’ I began, then found myself stunned into silence. A burst of light blazed from somewhere within that sinister silhouette, branching and spreading as it came, until an instant later it enveloped our point of view. The hololith went blank.

‘They’ve gone!’ Stadler was standing at a nearby lectern, his face lined with shock.

‘They can’t be,’ I said, already feeling the truth of his words in the pit of my stomach. Killian nodded in confirmation.

‘I’m afraid he’s right. All we’re picking up is a cloud of debris.’

‘Then we’re just going to have to sit tight,’ I said, fighting to keep my voice calm. ‘The Astartes ship will be here soon, and it ought to be more than a match for these raiders.’ I wished I was as confident as I sounded. ‘So long as nobody panics we’ll be fine.’

But of course we weren’t.

The first attack came an hour or so later, while I was talking to Tarkus about the possibility of barricading the tunnel mouth we’d found. It would only have been a token gesture, of course, but one of the first things they teach you at the schola is that anything you can do to make the troops feel they’re taking the initiative is good for morale. And, needless to say, after the casual destruction of our ship, morale was pretty low. We’d been reviewing the available supplies, hoping to find something we could use, when Tarkus broke off in mid-conversation.

‘Can you hear that?’ he asked. I nodded. A faint scuttling sound had been tickling my eardrums for the last few moments, but until he mentioned it my subconscious had been editing it out. It was a sound I was so familiar with I could identify it without thinking.

‘It’s just vermin,’ I said. In my extensive experience of underground passageways it had been a constant background noise. Then I remembered how desolate this world was, and that we’d seen no sign of life since we got here. I drew my las-pistol slowly. Tarkus followed suit, picking up a nearby luminator with his other hand and pointing it into the surrounding darkness.

My first impression was that the floor was moving, the beam shining back from a rippling surface which reminded me of sunlight on ocean waves, and then with a cry of revulsion I began shooting. The metallic carpet which surged towards us was composed of miniature duplicates of the spider machine, thousands of them, and the las-bolts detonated in the middle of the swarm with about as much effect as if I’d been throwing stones. True, every shot was rewarded with a satisfying impact and a spray of metal, but there were so many that even with Tarkus’s help I couldn’t even hope to slow them down.

‘First squad to me!’ the lieutenant ordered, and within seconds we’d been joined by half a score of his redshirts, who directed a withering volley of hellgun fire at the scuttling swarm. They began to break, to my momentary relief, but only to part like the tide around a rock before rushing on towards the main bulk of the camp.

They hit it like a tsunami, swarming over the precious equipment and ripping it to pieces with their metallic mandibles. Guards and techpriests alike scattered in panic, but many were too slow, being pulled down and engulfed by that hideous carpet of scuttling death. Within seconds a few muffled screams, quickly silenced, were the only traces of their presence left.

‘Pull back!’ I ordered, taking command by reflex as I’d been trained to do. A few scattered survivors regrouped around us, Killian and Stadler among them. The cadaverous techpriest’s eyes were wide as he watched the swarm of automata demolishing the camp.

‘Merciful Omnissiah!’ he gasped. ‘What are those things?’

‘Beats me,’ I said. ‘I’m not qualified to comment on theological matters.’ It was a cheap shot, and I suppose I ought to be ashamed of myself, but I must admit to taking some quiet satisfaction in his venomous expression. I began edging the ragged group back towards the wall, hoping that with our backs to it at least the machines couldn’t get behind us.

‘Good thinking,’ Tarkus agreed, fanning his remaining subordinates out to form a skirmishing screen between us and the scuttling horrors. Stadler reached that obsidian surface first, and pressed his back against it as though hoping he could squeeze an extra couple of millimetres of space out of the cavern.

All at once his expression changed to one of astonishment, blood and lubricants fountaining from his augmented body as something invisible slashed him to pieces from behind. I whirled, seeking a target, and suddenly saw it looming over his shattered corpse. A ghastly skeletal visage hovered in the air on gently humming grav units, the razor-edged blades of its fingers stained crimson, its torso ending in a long, curved tail which looked like vertebrae. To add to the horror the apparition was constructed of the same gleaming metal as the spider and its miniature offspring.

‘It came through the wall!’ One of the troopers was gibbering in shock, his face white, at least the parts of it which were still composed of flesh. ‘It came through the wall!’ He raised his hellgun and ripped off a burst on full auto. The entity drifted forwards unhurriedly, the flurry of las-bolts detonating against the wall behind it, defacing the enigmatic symbols etched there. With a deepening sense of horror I realised that the volley had been on target, but the las-bolts had simply passed through the apparition, whatever it was. The trooper was still firing, his finger clamped on the trigger in a rictus of panic, as the drifting horror reached out casually and tore his face off. The man’s screams were abruptly terminated as the thing’s tail lashed up to transfix him; his spasming corpse hung there for a moment before dropping to the floor again.

The group disintegrated immediately, troopers and techpriests alike fleeing in panic whichever way their feet took them. I laid a restraining hand on Killian’s arm as the metallic ghoul accelerated after them, casually slashing down a couple of victims as it passed.

‘Stay put!’ I snapped. ‘These things are trying to panic you!’ The strategy was obvious: split everyone up and hunt us down one by one. If we stayed together we could watch one another’s backs, and greatly increase our chances of survival.

Tarkus had clearly realised this too.

‘Regroup!’ he was bellowing, despite the obvious disinclination of any of his men to follow orders. Hellguns spat almost at random, a few of the las bolts actually managing to hit the hovering ghoul as it solidified for long enough to eviscerate another unfortunate cogboy, but the vast majority of shots passed through it or missed altogether. ‘Reform at once, you sons of–’

His voice broke off abruptly, rising to a suddenly terminated scream, as a bolt of vivid green light enveloped him. For a moment I could see a bloody mess of internal organs as he seemed to fade away from the outside in, dwindling like candle wax, and then he was gone as though he’d never existed.

‘Emperor on Earth!’ I turned to see what fresh horrors this place had disgorged, and a sudden rush of terror hit me in the gut. Thin, skeletal automata were advancing across the cavern, casually blasting everything that still lived with those hideous beams. Wherever those messengers of death walked people died, dwindled to nothing by their hellish guns, or sliced apart by the combat blades attached to the barrels.

To give them their due the tech guards gave a good account of themselves in the main, their hellguns felling two or three of their assailants, but it seemed to take a lot of fire to down one. I even saw one with its chest blown open stir and rise to its feet again, the eldritch metal of which it was composed flowing like liquid to heal its wounds.

‘Frak this!’ I said, dragging the magos towards the mouth of the tunnel. If we stayed where we were we’d be killed with the others, but there was a remote chance that we might find some kind of refuge if we slipped away while these ghastly automata were slaughtering our companions. All we had to do, I kept telling myself, was hold on until the Astartes arrived. How we’d know they were here, or let them know we’d survived, was a problem for later which I resolutely refused to consider right now.

To my astonishment we made it to the tunnels without further mishap, and I hurried Killian along as rapidly as I could, the sounds of carnage diminishing in our ears. The slick black stone seemed to absorb sound as well as light, silence descending around us like a shroud. My old hive boy’s senses were sufficently acute for me to be able to tell from the subtle change in the echoes around us when we passed the openings of cross corridors, but on several occasions I was grateful for my companion’s apparent ability to see in the dark.

At least the metallic warriors were easy to evade, their hellish weapons giving off an eerie green glow which forewarned us of their presence in plenty of time to dive for cover.

It was after we’d been wandering for some time that I noticed the darkness around me was beginning to attenuate, a diffuse green refulgence becoming visible from up ahead. At first I thought it was merely another patrol but after lurking cautiously for a moment and finding that it remained unchanged in its intensity, we pressed on. Killian was curious to discover the source, still hoping to bag a piece of archeotech probably, and if I was going to have to fight again I preferred to do it where I could see what was trying to kill me.

As the glow grew brighter I began to hear something too, a faint buzzing sound which resonated in my skull and set my teeth on edge. The palms of my hands began to tingle as we reached a chamber bathed in that sick, green glow, and a faint sense of nausea rose within me.

Killian, on the other hand, seemed enraptured. The cavern was vast, even larger, if that were possible, than the one we’d first discovered, but rather than being empty was stuffed with strange devices beyond my ability to comprehend. Most were emitting that strange, necrotic light, however, and I began to apprehend that it was somehow connected to their power source.

‘Fascinating.’ The techpriest wandered into the centre of the room, his eyes darting everywhere, trying to take in every detail of his surroundings. Mine, on the other hand, were concerned only with making sure we were alone. At least we appeared to be safe in that assumption...

Abruptly the light flared, and a sudden thundercrack of displaced air echoed across that unholy room. A dozen of the skeletal warriors were suddenly standing on a raised dais before a curtain of rippling green light, and turning their expressionless heads towards us.

‘A warp portal!’ Killian seemed transfixed. ‘We’ve known it’s a theoretical possibility of course, but...’

‘Fight now, talk later!’ I screamed, certain we were staring death in the face and determined to defy it for as long as possible. As I unleashed a flurry of las-bolts at the nearest figure I could see that its torso was already damaged, a couple of holes punched through it by what looked like armour piercing rounds. I hadn’t noticed any bolters among the tech guards’ armoury, but I was glad of somebody’s foresight as one of my rounds entered the gap and blew the automaton apart from the inside. The others all lifted their greenly-glowing weapons as one, and aimed them at me; for an instant the conviction of my own immanent death left me paralysed.

‘Get down!’ Killian cannoned into me the instant they fired, knocking me to one side, and taking the full force of the barrage himself. He flashed into vapour in an instant, leaving me rolling across the floor towards those murderous statues. I raised my right hand to aim the las-pistol and found it was gone, along with two of my fingers, but there was no time to worry about that now. My survival instinct had kicked in like never before and I lunged desperately past the dreadful automata, a direction they never expected me to take, diving headfirst into the curtain of energy behind them.

You might be wondering how anyone could be so foolish, but consider: remaining where I was would be certain death, there was absolutely no doubt about that, whereas taking my chances with the portal meant death was only virtually assured. And it was that narrow difference which preserved me for long enough to record this account.

The actual passage was a timeless instant: one moment I was in the chamber below the bowels of Interitus Prime, the next I found myself surrounded by the noise of combat. The light, wherever I was, was the same bilious hue, but the chamber I was now in was far smaller, and, as I was subsequently to discover, my immediate guess that I was aboard the starship which had attacked our freighter was an accurate one.

Staccato explosions echoed from the sloping walls surrounding me and I rolled to my feet, dazed, as another of the metal warriors came at me. I tried to draw my chainsword, but stumbled, weak from the loss of blood, and would surely have fallen had not a vast forearm encased in ceramite swung out of nowhere to bear me up. A storm bolter barked about a metre away, deafening me for a moment, and tearing the gleaming assassin to shreds.

‘Brother-captain. I’ve found a survivor,’ a voice louder than any I’d previously heard boomed, and I turned to find myself in the grasp of a giant, encased in a suit of terminator armour.

‘Bring him,’ a second giant said, looming into view from behind another of the incomprehensible alien devices. ‘The demolition charges are set.’

Despite everything, I found a smile beginning to force its way onto my face.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sandy Mitchell is a pseudonym of Alex Stewart, who has been writing successfully under both names since the mid 1980s. As Sandy, he’s best known for his work for the Black Library, particularly the Ciaphas Cain series. He’s recently completed an MA in Screenwriting at the London College of Communication, which left far less time than usual for having fun in the 41st Millennium, and is looking forward to spending more time in the Emperor’s service now that it has concluded.

A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

Published in 2004 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK

Cover illustration by Clint Langley

© Games Workshop Limited 2004, 2011. All rights reserved.

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ISBN 978-0-85787-521-1

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