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The Harrowing – Rob Sanders

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The Harrowing

Rob Sanders

Let it be shown that at elapsid/nullus-beta, Dartarion Varix of the First Hort, Third Harrow and strike commander of the Alpha Legion, allowed his hearts once again to beat to the rhythm of war. Operative-unit 55/Phi-silon observes mission subsequence initiations, while maintaining full noospheric and haptic integration.

Gamma, delta, epsilon… commence.

New target: Mechanicum super-heavy ark freighter Omnissiax, registered out of the Heliodyne shipyards with charters for forge worlds on the Dextura shipping lanes. At the time of action-initiation, the Omnissiax is under the command of Arkmaster Manus Cruciam, with Magos Dominus Oronti Praeda assigned to security measures and Collegium-Mandati Jerulian Hax responsible for temple-freight transportation and ritual observance. Deific-cargo inspected at Heliodyne and logged as Titan Battle Group Astramax of the Legio Perennia, fresh from inception at the Gallileon temple-forge, Bronta-Median.

Worlds sundered in the name of the Machine-God: none.

Battlegroup confirmed kills: none.

Ranking Princeps Majoris Alvar Pallidon of the Warmonger-class Titan Abyssus Edax. Tribute destination recorded at Bronta-Median as the Solar System. Manifests list Ordo Reductor siege machines, two hundred battle tanks and armoured transports of various signification ready for force allocation, as well as five hundred suits of Mark IV Legiones Astartes battleplate, intended for the VII Legion. Newly-appointed Fabricator General Kane to personally receive cargo at Terra. Wayfarage estimated at two solar months.

Transit interrupted twenty-two days into voyage after reception of new orders and subroutines from Gaius Trasq, Fabricator Ancillaris – the Omnissiax and Mechanicum light cruiser escort Dentilicon ordered to break warp at the Gnostica System and report to the garrison world of Callistra Mundi.

I patrol the vaulted cargo-chamber of one of the ark freighter’s many sub-holds. My true name is long forgotten, but my designation is 55/Phi-silon. I am sparatoi, a ‘sown man’ and agent operative of the Alpha Legion. I adjust my disguise: ocular-mask, tattered cloak, battery-pack and las-lock rifle. I present as a Mechanicum tech-thrall, one of thousands throughout the vast ship, assigned to onboard security and the mind numbing patrol of the vessel’s holds.

My enhancements are real. My disguise. My sacrifice. My mind, however, is still my own. The Alpha Legion needs agents who can think for themselves. I was thrall to the XX Legion long before I went under the bladesaws of augurnauts and surgeo-cyberseers, volunteering for the adaptive surgeries that would make my disguise complete.

I kneel before the artistry and craftsmanship of Legiones Astartes battleplate. Rows and rows of paintless suits. Their systems await designation and the honour of Legion colours. They are blisteringly new. Spread throughout their number are suits that still sport their tarps from quality-control and sample testing at Bronta-Median. The fabric flaps in the perverse air currents that afflict a vessel of the ark freighter’s size.

The army of empty suits is indeed a wonder. A blessed expression of the Omnissiah’s divine will. To an observer, however, such reverence might appear odd or misplaced in a wretched thrall, which is why I phased the auspex and lonely pict-feed lenses monitoring the deck before re-routing the servitors scheduled to inventory the sub-hold.

‘Report,’ Dartarion Varix orders.

Like the fifty Alpha Legionnaires of his veteran demi-hort, he is hidden. They are all living weapons, concealed and deadly. Like the fang retracted within the serpent’s jaws, they are primed with death, ready to be revealed, waiting for the moment to strike.

That moment is now. One of the tarp-draped suits of powered plate moves.

Then another. Then another.

Not all of the suits are empty. Now that their strike commander has broken dissimulatus, the veteran Alpha Legionnaires of the First Hort, Third Harrow can reveal themselves. Auto-suggestion engages. The implanted sus-an membrane of the legionnaires’ trans-human physique responds. Their state of suspended animation breaks. Hearts are allowed to beat once more.

Punctuating the ranks of motionless suits, armoured Alpha Legionnaires begin to move. They tear the tarps from their armoured forms to reveal the indigo blue and cerulean blaze of their plate, the serpentine iconography that coils itself about their power-armoured limbs, and the infernal glow of optics burning to life.

‘You have been monitoring, my lord?’ this unit asks.

‘I have.’

‘Then you know that our warp translation is complete.’

‘I felt it.’

A legionnaire approaches, almost indistinguishable from his brothers.

‘Strike commander.’

‘Prime,’ Varix acknowledges him. ‘Your host is ready?’

‘Always, my lord. Permission to secure the sub-hold.’

‘Authorised.’

‘The Omnissiax is passing through a debris field of remnant rock and planetesimals approaching the edge of the Gnostica System,’ I report through the modulations of my skull-riveted mask. As I do, the Alpha Legionnaires break formation, spreading out across the sub-hold. Umbra-pattern boltguns and sickle-mags of various ammunitions are handed out from cargo crates, while bulkheads and blast doors are secured.

‘Is the system contested?’

‘Planet-wide mutiny on Callistra Mundi, the primary world of the system,’ I continue. ‘Imperial auxilia garrison world and fleet anchorage.’

‘Who leads the rebellion in the Warmaster’s name?’

‘You’re not going to like it.’

‘My primarch’s objectives have been compromised and my mission parameters expanded beyond the remit of the forces at my disposal. What is there to like?’

‘Long-range voxmissions and noospherics betray encrypted legionary signatures.’

‘Alpha Legion,’ Varix confirms.

The strike commander takes this revelation in his stride. Even to my cogitator-afflicted brain, this is a surprise. Have the heads of the hydra become tangled?

‘Perhaps they too are beyond their mission parameters,’ I offer, but Varix has moved on.

‘No,’ he says. ‘This is something else. Status?’

‘It’s a mess,’ I admit, ‘and perhaps as their commander intended. Forces on the ground, in the air and in the void are declaring for the Emperor or the Warmaster.’

‘The Legion?’

‘No sightings or pict captures reported,’ I tell him. ‘The Alpha Legion on Callistra Mundi have yet to reveal themselves.’

‘They will,’ Varix assures me. ‘The Omnissiax…’

‘Has been re-routed to deploy its god-machines,’ I inform the strike commander. ‘The battle group is to crush the rebellion.’

‘Well we can’t have that,’ Varix says. His words are laced with a dark humour. ‘We have to at least give my brother-commander a chance. He’s barely begun.’

‘Forgive me, lord,’ I venture, ‘But I am more concerned with our own disposition. The Omnissiax will be met and intercepted. Both traitors and loyalists will seek to harness its apocalyptic cargo.’

‘Well, quite,’ the strike commander says. He is already several steps ahead of me. ‘Is the Dentilicon still with us?’

‘Yes, my lord.’

‘Prime,’ Varix calls.

The Alpha Legion officer acknowledges his commander: ‘Ready, my lord.’

‘This cargo will never reach the Solar System as planned,’ Varix tells us both. ‘We shall not arrive at Terra, but need is great out here. The battle group will undoubtedly be sucked into the conflict. I’m authorising secondary objectives and initiating proprietary action pseudaspis from a range of forty-four tactically antiphonus responses.’

‘Yes, my lord.’

‘I’m enacting these contingent protocols and pursuing secondary objectives under my own recognisance. These supersede my primarch’s orders. I don’t need your concordance, but for the identic record I want it.’

‘Pseudaspis, aye,’ the prime agrees.

I nod also. ‘The Omnissiax carries a considerable force escort, my lord. We are not outfitted for this.’ Dartarion Varix nods his helm slowly. ‘Plus, loyalist forces have a void presence throughout the system. At least nine cruisers and assorted escorts.’

‘Duly noted, but that will not stop us. The order is given. The ark freighter is to be taken. Activate our agents. All legionnaires are authorised to enact kill-shot protocols. The Mechanicum is our enemy. We shall explain that fact to them with overwhelming force. In one hour, I want the Dentilicon neutralised and both the Omnissiax and her payload in the Alpha Legion’s hands. No one must ever know we were here. There can be no Mechanicum survivors. Is that understood?’

‘Yes, my lord,’ I reply.

His lieutenant salutes. ‘It will be done.’

‘Then let us begin.’

There are few who have experienced an Alpha Legion assault and have lived to report it. The XX Legion does not leave witnesses in its wake without good reason. A devastating combination of imagination, flawless coordination and calculated cruelty are the hallmarks of their particular brand of warfare. They dissemble. They disorientate. Then, with their foe’s resources and nerve stretched to breaking, they initiate a final attack so overwhelming in sheer force and tactical relentlessness, that their enemies’ efforts to resist collapse like a dying star.

Warfare becomes annihilation. Battle becomes slaughter. Like an algebraic equation that has to be resolved, the Alpha Legion end their opponents to the last man, unless they conceive of some nefarious usefulness for those at their cold mercy.

For the captured, these are often fates worse than a battlefield death.

At elapsid/rho-nu-alpha, for the Arkmaster Manus Cruciam and his Mechanicum forces, the assault begins. By tapping into the ship’s noospheric conduits, this unit deduces that sanctioned scribe Quorvon Krish has just completed echo-plasmic transcription of the astropath Herontius Vame’s latest message from the Fabricator Ancillaris when he feels the excruciating stab of pain in his jaw. As one of Dartarion Varix’s sparatoi agents, Quorvon Krish has suffered an implant in his tooth that receives signals and transmissions in code. Utilising primitive electromagnetic spectrums that have not been employed by the Mechanicum in thousands of years, the transmissions are unlikely to be traced or intercepted. Each jolt of electricity through the bone corresponds to letters of a coded alphabet, in terms of length and sequence. It is an effective, if agonising, method of coordinating Alpha Legion forces already in situ on board the Omnissiax. This allows for the flexibility required of an Alpha Legion action.

D-R-O-P T-H-E C-U-R-T-A-I-N

Elapsid/sigma-lambda-digamma observes Quorvon Kitrica pull a snub autopistol from his robes, attach a suppressor and riddle Herontius Vame with ragged holes. It must feel good. Kitrica might allow himself that. He is twice the telepath that the truculent Vame was or ever would be. Lady Gandrella – who is little better – is also met with the staccato of thudding shots, as is Tech-Acolyte Hadreon as he returns from work on the visual logs, and sanctioned scribes Ransistron and Ezrail.

B-R-I-N-G T-H-E S-I-L-E-N-C-E

At exactly the same time, Transmechanic Nedicto Orx receives his activation and orders. He strangles his locum with the shaft of a coghammer, and then brains his team of transmat servitors. By elapsid/sigma-pi-epsilon, the ark freighter’s long range communications array has been plasma-fused, and the vox-relay is a coghammer-mangled mess.

In the following five elapsids, the Omnissiax suffers a series of catastrophes the like of which its operational history has not known in a thousand years of service.

Radiation leaks erupt on deck four and sub-decks five through eight. Reserve coolant chambers for the ark freighter’s plasma drive are evacuated, cold-flooding parts of the engineering section and initiating a sequence of further malfunctions. For a moment the torsion coils, cooling after warp translation, register a Geller field spike so profound that the magos empyr initiates a code-vermillion shutdown of all associated systems and sections. An electromagnetic pulse in the open-core ionisation cell stack causes sporadic power and vox transmission loss throughout the ark freighter, while artificial gravity experiences an unexplained calibration flux and continues to do so, reducing or intensifying agency by as much as twenty-five per cent in different parts of the vessel. Several exterior voidlocks, situated both port and starboard, are blown, transforming access ways and chambers from a howling maelstrom to a labyrinth of closed emergency bulkheads. Rune banks relay false probabilities, indicating that the hull breach was likely caused by the Omnissiax passing through a particle storm, probably the tail-wake of a traversing comet.

By elapsid/tau-xi-alpha, the priests, enginseers and auto-savants rushing about the vessel are officially overreached by the myriad calamities now afflicting their ship.

Logista Minora Auxabel is not one of them. She is doing exactly what she is supposed to be doing under the circumstances – rapidly assimilating the data-storm from her cipher engines and drawing logical conclusions. At elapsid/tau-xi-theta, she transmits her assessment to Arkmaster Manus Cruciam and Magos Dominus Oronti Praeda.

Conclusion: the Omnissiax is under attack.

In such circumstances, overall command reverts to the magos dominus. There isn’t even need of a discussion.

In all likelihood the target of the attack is deemed to be the ark freighter’s precious cargo, rather than the ark freighter itself, rendering Manus Cruciam’s authority superfluous to command priorities. The arkmaster takes his place with Logista Auxubel. Their duty is to get the Omnissiax fully functional, as soon as possible. With the vox transmission and noospherics of all security thralls, gun servitors and roaming servo-skulls patched through the communications of Oronti Praeda’s ward force, the enemy’s movements are then fed straight back to the Alpha Legion through their planted sparatoi agents.

Agents like this unit, 55/Phi-silon.

As the strike commander predicts, the magos dominus does not waste time in following his own protocols and taking precautionary measures. Ordnamats are scrambled to the weapons short-decks, and the ark freighter’s meagre complement of defensive cannonry is charged and run out. Security on the bridge is tripled, and the ward force of Collegia temple-thralls, Thallaxii shock troops, Legio Cybernetica battle automata and tech-guard of the Seventh Cell-Sentinel Entropriad are directed with all despatch to the payload sections and the cargo bays. Seeing that they are led by the veteran skitarii Arch-Tribune Dynamus Koda and funnelled through the accessible sections and passageways, Dartarion Varix sends his Alpha Legionnaires to meet them.

Elapsid/omega-xi-zeta sees the first official exchange of gunfire between the Legiones Astartes aboard the Omnissiax and loyal Mechanicum forces. Psi-Sigma IV-of-XI loses his artificially augmented life to Legionnaire Phasal Scolton of the First Hort, Third Harrow. As a living auspex, Psi-Sigma IV-of-XI had been leading advance skitarii squads of the Seventh Cell-Sentinel Entropriad through the crew domiciles. Scolton had ordered flamers used on the quarters before having his legionaries withdraw. As the Mechanicum ward force advances, the intense heat and the flames renders main auspex frequencies useless. The Alpha Legion withdraw within the inferno, their battleplate offering more protection against the flames than their enemies can expect.

Slowly, calmly, Legionnaire Scolton leans around the passageway apex and brings his boltgun level with Psi-Sigma’s hooded, optic-bulbous head. By the time the construct is ready to confirm a lifesign, Scoltan’s finger is on the trigger.

The blast of bolt-fire cuts straight through the living auspex, before chewing up the Entropriad skitarii behind who shield their vulnerable organics from the flames. The Alpha Legion weave their way confidently through the domiciles in alternating columns, slamming their pauldrons into cover whilst watching over their opposite numbers as they advance. The choreographed tactical advance is a thing of serpentine beauty. Phased plasma fire and las-beams slice through the flames from the disciplined ranks of skitarii, but the Legion will not be denied. Their advance is murderously economical. Every blinding lick of flame and every obstructive piece of cover is their ally.

The Entropriad, undoubtedly veterans in their own class, do the only thing an enemy of the Alpha Legion can do.

They die.

By elapsid/khi-nullus-delta, Arch-Tribune Dynamus Koda has watched enough lifesigns fade on his intracranial display that he orders the Castallax battle automata of the 13th Maniple Proxim/Mephistra Cohort into the flames.

Several decks below and running parallel to the Phasal Scolton’s advance, Dartarion Varix and a squad of the veteran-hort legionnaires wade through coolant on the flooded sub-decks. I am with them. The syrupy darkness of the fluid cascades down through the levels as maintenance floor-hatch after maintenance floor-hatch is pops, and the Alpha Legion make their way down through the ship.

There are encounters. Servo-drones hurtle up corridors, filling sections with flashing lamps and the wail of klaxons. Groups of gun-servitors march their way past with cybernetic indifference, all unsightly with enhancement and baggy flesh. While canopy formations are maintained and boltguns aimed, Varix has his legionnaires retract behind cover or sink back into the shadows. All constructs on board the Mechanicum vessel will die – the strike commander has so ordered – but the Alpha Legion are not given to moments of rash opportunism. The unplanned end of one enemy might put at risk the meticulously arranged end of a thousand more. There is no glory in the individual death, only the communal honour of a victorious action executed to perfection.

Once down in the bowels of the ship, the ancient sludge of the bilge smearing their armoured boots, I lead my Alpha Legion masters to what on bank schemata is labelled as the fore-keel trunk distribution nexus. On a diagram grid it is nothing more than a 90/120 peta-watt power drain associated with a malfunctioning flush drive that was 4,263rd of 16,457 in a rolling programme of maintenance repairs, and scheduled to be addressed post-voyage. Standing before it in the frosted sludge, with methalon gas drifting through their number like a moorland mist, the Alpha Legion find what they are looking for.

A jury-rigged iso-store of ten cryopods. A team of sparatoi agents that they have sown deep within the ship. I get to work immediately, initiating a rapid thaw. There is no standing on ceremony. Varix and his legionnaires also pitch in, disconnecting pipes and cables, bringing their very own Titan crew back from the brink of semi-death.

‘How long?’ Varix demands.

‘Once out of containment,’ I tell him, ‘Princeps Darrieux and his crew are scheduled to have two hours with Abyssus Edax for core cycles, interfacing and spiritual observance.’

‘How long to simply jack the god-machine?’ the strike commander puts to me.

‘What do you need, my lord?’

‘Automotive function and weapons systems only,’ Varix insists.

‘Forty-five…’ The dead-eyed optics of the strike commander’s helm turn on me. I hastily revise my estimate. ‘Twenty minutes, my lord.’

‘Time elapsed since mission start?’

‘Elapsid/khi-rho-iota-epsilon,’ a legionnaire tells him.

With the thaw cycle initiated, Varix and his veteran-hort begin to exit the chamber and push on through the ark freighter bilge.

‘Explain to Princeps Darrieux the new constraints of our situation,’ Varix tells me. ‘As per his original orders, he is to bring his crew up through the forge-temple sump ducts. My legionnaires will engage the temple guard and give him the distraction he needs to get to the Titan. I want Abyssus Edax operational and ready to enact firing sequences in twenty minutes. Understood?’

‘Yes, strike commander.’

‘When all this is done, bring me the telepath Quorvon Krish.’

With that, Dartarion Varix is gone.

Elapsid/khi-tau-kappa-delta. The Omnissiax is in a state of controlled chaos. Though neither the legionnaires of the XX nor the constructs of the Mechanicum are given to such descriptions, it remains an undeniable fact that the ark freighter is suffering a cascade of malfunctions while being ripped apart from the inside by firefights and explosions moving through the decks.

For Magos Dominus Oronti Praeda and Logista Minora Auxabel the surprise attack is a sudden influx of new data to be addressed within a cold and ongoing assessment. For Strike Commander Dartarion Varix it is satisfaction denied: the promise of victory in every boom and scream. It is the clunk-click perfection of a chambered round, the slick mechanical unity of all parts working together and acting as one. Death premeditated. The sickening realisation of the target in sight. The disorientation of the muzzle’s thunderous announcement. The shock. The pain. The rich futility of the moment in which an enemy knows that they are done. Then, the neatness and artistry of death. Only then does the killing come to an end and the Alpha Legion allow themselves the cool pride – and perhaps even pleasure? – of reporting a mission accomplished.

And so the relentless havoc unfolds. I have sent the Titan crew on with their orders. The telepath Quorvon Krish is by my side. Together we report to our strike commander.

At elapsid/khi-upsilon, tech-adepts of the 13th Maniple Proxim/Mephistra Cohort report unacceptable losses in the crew domiciles. Later analysis would attribute these losses to a winning combination of Banestrike ammunition, shredding its way through the automata plate and workings, and expert marksmanship. In particular, kill-shots targeted the constructs’ crania-canopy and the vulnerable neural cortex beneath. Arch-Tribune Dynamus Koda is forced to once again plug the gaps created by fallen Castallax automata with skitarii from the Seventh Cell-Sentinel Entropriad. The situation becomes so dire that the Arch-Tribune himself must take up arms. It has been six years, two hundred and fourteen days and twelve minutes Terran-standard since the skitarii commander has personally fired a cybernetic attachment.

He does not receive the honour of doing it again.

Legionnaire Phasal Scolton blows the back of his head out with an economical burst of fire from a concealed position in the dark recesses of a maintenance booth. Skull and fragments of intracranial tech shower the passage. By elapsid/khi-upsilon-kappa-theta, Koda’s own auspectral signature is confirmed lost and skitarii sentinel Inx Voltar is cursorily promoted to the rank of sub-tribune. At Magos Dominus Praeda’s insistence, Voltar’s first recorded act of leadership is to order the Entropriad to withdraw to the forward hold. It is not considered by the sub-tribune to be a decorous act, but he complies with his protocols regardless.

Concurrent with the unstoppable slaughter rolling through the crew domicilia, Logista Minora Auxabel receives a data-confluence of further hostilities. Limited surveillance coverage identifies enemy contingents wearing Mark IV battleplate. Fragmented reports bear witness to rank, insignia and Legion colours. Auxubel calculates for the magos dominus only a thirty-seven point six per cent chance that the enemy belong to the XX Legion. This estimate is based on incomplete capture-testimony, and what little information the Mechanicum runebanks hold on the Legion’s operational histories during the recent movements of the Great Crusade. Nonetheless, it is the greatest likelihood at her disposal.

Oronti Praeda demands further enhancement and tactical options but the logista has little to give him. Having fought alongside the Alpha Legion at Cypra Chasmis, the magos dominus knows that the XX favour the long game and calculates that the best chance for the beleaguered Omnissiax is to hit the Legiones Astartes with everything they have in one devastating push.

At Praeda’s command, any construct with a martial rating of any description is ordered into battle. They are directed to the emerging hostilities near the temple forge section of the forward hold, and to the starboard auxiliary gun decks where enemy targets have been observed entering through malfunctioning voidlocks from outside the ship. They are also directed to the portside flight decks where security thralls are being decimated among the skiffs and freight ambulatories, and to the sub-levels where gun servitors and electro-priests of the Battle Group Astramax-attendant ’Grex Anbarica’ hold their ground against targets emerging from maintenance decks. As the firefight rages several levels below their boots, Praeda considers it prudent to despatch a Thallaxii cohort of cyborg shock troops to crush the rising advance.

‘What of our own security?’ Arkmaster Manus Cruciam asks across the bridge, his voice clearly audible to me through the noospheric link. It is not an unreasonable question. Beyond auspex-drone weaponry, only deck thralls and Praeda’s personal ward engines remain.

‘Our security,’ the magos dominus tells him, ‘nay, our survival, depends upon the Omnissiax reaching Callistra Mundi as soon as possible.’ Logista Auxubel nods her slow agreement. ‘Preoccupy yourself with that, arkmaster.’

Like a ceramite gauntlet, the Alpha Legion have the ark freighter in their grasp. With every bolt-smashed construct and every scoured section, Dartarion Varix tightens his grip. Alpha Legionnaires of the First Hort, Third Harrow weave their way through the expanse of the ark freighter like serpents through the undergrowth. Little stops their advance – not the vessel’s souless thralls, not the battle-automata with their lumbering movements and limited protocols and not the battle-hardened skitarii. Elapsid/khi-phi becomes elapsid/khi-omega. Elapsid/khi-omega becomes elapsid/betakhi-rho. With each passing second, Mechanicum constructs die. Some are blasted apart in showers of hydraulic fluid and shattered components, while others simply thud to their knees as Alpha Legionnaires put single bolt-rounds through skulls and central cogitators alike.

Veterans of First Hort, after exiting the vessel and climbing along the exterior hull, now re-enter through blasted voidlocks. As they progress through the side of the ship like a burrowing worm, they open bulkheads before them and evacuate entire sections of Mechanicum warrior-constructs, who are dragged and dashed along the trail of howling corridors that the Alpha Legion left in their wake. For these unfortunate servants of the Omnissiah, only the frozen void beckons.

Gradually, moment by moment, even with staid reports of rapid successes pouring in over the vox-channels, this unit deduces that Dartarion Varix begins to feels denied. He misses the screams. The begging seems strangely absent. The blood-soaked intensity, the futility and the desperation that the Alpha Legion creates in enemy forces is found to be lacking in the cold, calculating servants of the Machine-God. Even as Varix and his legionnaires put bolt-rounds through the dead, oil-black eyes of servitors and the iron masks of tech-thralls, the constructs make no sound but the crash of their augmented bodies on the deck. Bolt-blasted battle automata grind to a statuesque halt, while even the psycho-indoctrinated skitarii merely give a grunt as the air of their last breath escapes their artificial lungs. The strike commander is no fear-hungry Nostroman monster, nor one of Fulgrim’s deviant Children. The howls and anguish of the fallen are not a perversity to be savoured. For the Alpha Legion, executing the enemy, their mission directives and their duty with peerless skill, the screams of the dying are simply a professional courtesy.

At elapsid/betakhi-rho-gamma-digamma, Alpha Legionnaire Duceus Ladon dies right next to his strike commander. Thrall soldiers on the stairwell part to admit the Thallaxii – cyborg shock troops, armoured from head to foot in powered plate. The crackling arcs of their lightning guns sear down through the stairwell to cook Ladon right there in his armour. Varix snarls. It is a waste. Ladon was an excellent legionary, and had served with him on his last five actions. Varix hears the heavy clunk of the Thallaxii’s ambulatory systems as they lock down their position.

It is the first in a succession of losses for the strike commander.

Elapsid/betakhi-rho-omicron-delta sees Legionnaire Argan reported dead in the forward hold, the victim of a skitarii grenade clutch. Elapsid/betakhi-sigma-mu-theta witnesses the passing of Orman Zalco, torn apart by the vice-claws of a Castallax battle automaton. Seconds later, Squad Sergeant Xantina is gunned down by a ceiling-mounted rotary cannon, its auspectral wetware returning unexpectedly to life as enginseers in some distant part of the ship begin to repair some of the damage done to the ark freighter’s systems.

The Mechanicum are unleashing everything they have in an effort to stop the Legiones Astartes in their tracks. Dartarion Varix expected as much of their commander. Indeed, the he is relying on such a strategic response. Warrior-victims of Alpha Legion assaults were like traditionally tormented, wild beasts – wounded and disoriented, they were most dangerous when they were near their end. Varix allows a thin smile to find its way across his face. Actions speak louder than words. He can suddenly see the suppressed emotion of the Omnissiah’s servants in their tactical responses. They are losing their ship and becoming increasingly desperate. They are no longer safe in their data and equations. They entrust their survival to gambles and risks – even if they are calculated ones.

‘Armoured targets,’ Varix announces over the vox.

Immediately, sickle clips are exchanged in boltguns; Banestrike bolts will make short work of the armoured Thallaxii. In the bloodshot gloom of the stairwell with klaxons blasting and emergency lamps flickering on and off, Varix takes cover as streams of lightning blast down past him. The Thallaxii are not moving.

The cohort’s orders are clear: hold the Alpha Legion on the sub-levels. The same is being reported across the Omnissiax. Alpha Legionnaires held at choke points and gauntlets. Mechanicum forces are bedding in, establishing heavily defended positions. It would take more than a demi-hort to work their way through such a nightmare, especially upholding the kill ratio that the Alpha Legion had come to expect. Like a regicide player, Varix has always thought little of sacrificing individual pieces as part of a strategy to win the game. This, however, would be wasteful slaughter. The Mechanicum are no longer intent on destroying their attackers. Such a strategy has cost them. They had been caught up in the slick machinery of the Alpha Legion’s relentless onslaught. Now their intention seems to be to jam that machinery and hold out for the reinforcements that they are sure to find at Callistra Mundi.

Dartarion Variux cannot allow that. Besides, the assault is about to enter its final stage.

By elapsid/betakhi-upsilon-gamma the decision is made, the order given.

‘All legionnaires,’ he calls across the encrypted channel, ‘call in the location of sighted enemy contingents and then hold your own position.’ As the lightning rages about him like the judgement of an angry god, the Alpha Legion strike commander listens to the squads and coordinates coming in. Varix retracts a gauntlet as crackling impact energies reach out for him across the grille of the stairwell. ‘Darrieux, tell me you have that.’

He does. The data has been relayed. His voice reaches through the chaos, almost drowned out by the relentless storm of anabaric streams coursing down through the stairwell.

‘Abyssus Edax online,’ I tell him from the command deck of the colossal Warmonger Titan. ‘Moderati Tessera has a hololithic fix on received coordinates. Confirm – request for fire support received. Stand by, ten seconds.’

‘Be accurate,’ Varix orders. ‘Be devastating.’

With bolt blasts and lightning streams exchanged about him, Varix pauses. He undoubtedly enjoys the promise of what is to come, the power of the god-machine at his command. It is elapsid/betakhi-upsilon-xi exactly – the assault about to reach its climax.

Dartarion Varix switches back to the open channel. ‘Incoming…’

The Titan opens fire from its berthing clamps and the ship’s torment can be felt immediately. The Omnissiax trembles with the devastation unleashed within it. The sound is excruciating. Decking. Superstructure. Hull. Metal blasted to shrapnel. Ancient architecture twists and warps before the onslaught. Gaping holes and paths of destruction cut through the ark freighter’s interior. Even at a distance, the sound of the god-machine’s weaponry is a horrific boom. Through passageways, chambers and sections, the rhythmic thunder of the Titan’s colossal gatling blaster reaches the Alpha Legion. The rate of fire is staggering – literally. The decks shudder beneath their boots. Huge calibre shells rip up through the ship, decimating entire compartments and the Mechanicum constructs holding position within them. Skitarii soldiers, thralls and automata are blasted into oblivion as the wrath of the god-machine chews through the ark freighter.

Around Dartarion Varix, the ship feels like it is dying, like some great, mortally wounded beast.

Then he hears the Titan’s quake cannon.

The deck bucks and even the strike commander almost loses his footing. Like a gargantuan gut-punch delivered amidships, the ordnance rockets through the vessel, destroying everything in its path. Again and again it fires, punctuating the almost constant roar of the gatling blaster.

‘Boots,’ Varix calls as one of the quake cannon shells blasts a path out through the ark freighter’s hull. Engaging the mag-lock anchors on their armoured boots, the Alpha Legionnaires hold positions as air, debris and the ragdoll bodies of thralls and servitors howl past them, sucked through the labyrinth of passageways and out into space. Dartarion Varix slams my thrall-form into the wall and anchors me there. Quorvon Krish receives similar treatment.

In the vacuum I can hear nothing. The klaxons are silenced, but the emergency lighting still flashes, bathing us all in a bloody twilight. I can barely imagine the reaction on the bridge, and the data – or the lack of it – that must be greeting the strike commander’s Mechanicum opposite. Their great push to meet their enemy head to head and pin them down in gauntlets and bottle necks has rapidly evolved into a catastrophe. While the Alpha Legion contingents hold the safety of their reported positions, Abyssus Edax has decimated the Mechanicum forces despatched to hold them in check. Already stretched by the diversionary calamities unleashed by the sparatoi agents and then forced to repel a Legiones Astartes assault from within the very ship they were garrisoning, even the cold constructs of the Machine-God might be tempted to lose their nerve. Perhaps even their faith?

That is not enough. Not for the XX legion. Not for the strike commander.

The hydra’s heads must strike in unison. The mission cannot be declared accomplished until a disorientated enemy, hit from all sides simultaneously and bereft of hope, falls to the final bolt-round. As the howling evacuation becomes an eerie silence and the reverberating cacophony of titanic gunfire dies away in the void, Varix nods to a nearby legionnaire who closes the bulkhead behind them.

‘Report in,’ the strike commander calls.

One by one, legionnaires from across the ark freighter announce themselves. With air pressure re-establishing itself in the sealed section, Varix has one of his warriors check that the Thallaxii holding the stairwell are no more. This is swiftly confirmed. The floors above are a mangled mess of twisted metal and blasted bodies.

The strike commander nods, satisfied. ‘All units converge on the command decks,’ he voxes before turning to me. Then he makes an unusual request. ‘Find me prisoners. There must be something left alive on this wreck.’

Elapsid/betakhi-sampi-koppa-beta. Magos Dominus Oronti Praeda slumps into the command throne of the Omnissiax. Constructs stand around him in grim silence. The air is thick with expectation. The loss of so many servants of the Omnissiah and the turning of their own god-machines against them weighs heavily, even upon the more detached Mechanicum priests. But they are not done. Not yet.

‘The Dentilicon?’

‘As predicted, magos,’ Logista Minora Auxabel informs him. ‘Our sudden vox-silence and hull damage is drawing her to us. Her shipmaster probably assumes we have suffered some sort of accident or malfunction, and is offering support as a courtesy. We have no way of warning them otherwise. Steps must be taken, magos. Even Arkmaster Cruciam concurs. The Omnissiax and her deific cargo cannot be allowed to fall into the Archenemy’s hands.’

Praeda’s cogitator burns hot with the possibilities.

‘So ordered,’ he tells them, finally.

The logista nods to Praeda’s personal ward engines, who exit the bridge by the command deck elevators. For a while, no construct communicates on the bridge by any means that this unit can monitor.

Rune banks spark and smoke. Deck servitors go about their business with ghoulish obliviousness. Manus Cruciam says nothing. He fastidiously adjusts settings on nearby rune-screens. Collegium-Mandati Jerulian Hax is similarly silent. They are constructs without purpose. Hax’s Titan payload is already in the hands of the enemy, and the arkmaster now commands a floating wreck. They watch the lancet screens. The Omnissiax glides through the thin belt of colossal rubble and debris that encircles the Gnostica System like a belt. In the dull glow of the system’s star, Cruciam spots the tiny speck that is the contested world of Callistra Mundi, where Battle Group Astramax were to prove their worth. Instead, the god-machines are tainted with the blood of their loyal Mechanicum creators. He fancies he can see sparks of ship-to-ship combat about the world.

The light frigate Dentilicon has made its turn and is returning to the slowing ark freighter it escorts. The light cruiser runs alongside the Omnissiax in the hope of offering some kind of support.

At elapsid/gamma-khi-omicron-zeta, the command deck elevator announces its arrival. Deck thralls train their weapons on the opening doors, but it is only a group of horrifically damaged servitors. The constructs limp onto the command deck. They seem confused and agitated. A lexmechanic demands their identifiers.

Their stumbling silence draws the attention of the bridge crew. The lexmechanic approaches. As she does so her optical relays inform her that the servitors have objects wedged between the gleaming white ceramic teeth of their mouths. Her auxiliary cogitator tells her that there is an eighty-two per cent chance that those objects are grenades.

She turns to warn the arkmaster and magos dominus, but she doesn’t get the chance. The servitors detonate in unison, tearing up the command deck and blasting the equipment and constructs on bridge with splintered frag.

Magos Dominus Oronti Praeda is knocked from the command throne. As he shakes the functionality back into his cogitator links, he hears the heavy metal thud of armoured enemies dropping down into the elevator carriage from the roof hatch. Space Marines in the colours of the Alpha Legion sweep forward through the smoke, their boltguns aimed and ready. The brief gunfire is precise and economical. Deck thralls that yet live are executed where they stand. Drone weaponry is blasted to uselessness and even Jerulian Hax’s armed cherubim escort is put down with a single shot to its angelic head.

Strike Commander Dartarion Varix and the veteran legionnaires of the First Hort, Third Harrow have taken control of the bridge and, by extension, the Mechanicum ark freighter Omnissiax. Varix removes his battle-helm to reveal the bronzed skin of his shaven head, the dark disdain of his primarch’s echoed features.

‘Report.’

Oronti Praeda goes to make a proud retort, but instead Logista Minora Auxabel replies.

‘All goes according to plan, my lord,’ she tells her strike commander. ‘The Dentilicon is pulling alongside and sending skiffs across to us.’

‘What are you doing?’ the magos dominus manages. Cruciam and Hax similarly stare on in disbelief at the logista.

‘But the magos dominus has despatched his ward engines to the engineering section, my lord,’ she continues. ‘Their orders are to detonate the plasma drive and destroy the ship.’

Dartarion Varix nods before raising his eyebrows at Oronti Praeda.

‘Nice try,’ Varix tells the magos dominus. Then to Auxabel, he says, ‘Have Phasal Scolton and his unit divert to intercept the ward engines.’

‘Very good, my lord.’

‘Our defensive capabilities?’ Varix asks with a thin, ironic smile.

‘Port and starboard short-batteries charged and run out as a precautionary measure,’ the logista tells him.

‘Have the bridge inform the masters of gunnery decks that we continue to be under attack. Use the magos dominus’s authorisation codes. The batteries are ordered to fire as they bear.’

‘As you command.’

‘Auxabel…’ Praeda says. He looks from the logista to Quorvon Krish and myself. From my thrall form he moves the disbelief of his optics on to the strike commander. ‘Please, have mercy–’

Varix raises one armoured finger to silence him.

‘There it is,’ Varix says, pointing at the magos dominus’s stricken face.

As the Alpha Legion strike commander and the Mechanicum magos regard one another, the meagre cannonry of the ark freighter fires. It is a ragged salvo, but it serves at point-blank range to blast the shieldless Dentilicon into fiery void-scrap.

As shattered sections of the escort fall away, floating before the viewscreens of her larger charge, Dartarion Varix tells Praeda, ‘The desperation. The overwhelming hopelessness. The pleading – perhaps not for your life, tech-priest, but for the lives of others. There is proof that our work is its own reward.’

Then the strike commander nods to his warriors, and the bridge flashes briefly with precision gunfire. At elapsid/gamma-khi-sigma-lambda-delta, the enemy commander, Oronti Praeda, dies. As do Manus Cruciam and Jerulian Hax.

Varix turns to Minora Auxabel. ‘So, you got my message.’

The sparatoi agent taps the implant in her tooth by way of a reply.

‘Good work,’ Dartarion Varix tells her. He nods also to me and Quorvon Krish. ‘Logista Auxabel,’ Varix calls, playfully using the agent’s assumed name. ‘Do we have steerage?’

‘Barely, my lord.’

‘Well, use what we have to get the Omnissiax system-bound. Has contact been established with the Alpha Legion commander?’

‘Legionary signatures have been traced,’ I inform him. ‘Harrowmaster Armillus Dynat in command.’

‘Armillus Dynat,’ Varix repeats. ‘The uprising?’

‘Spreading to the surrounding moons,’ Auxabel tells him. ‘It’s being reported as a rebellion, but the outbreaks are systematic and betray highly coordinated patterns. The precursor to a planet-wide annihilatory action, I suspect, my lord.’

‘The Legion reveals itself,’ the strike commander confirms. ‘If Armillus Dynat commands from the surface, then he is likely to have three to four battalions of legionnaires at his disposal, plus sparatoi support structures. There are likely more forces en route. Astropath?’

‘Three Alpha Legion heavy cruisers confirmed system inbound,’ Quorvan Krish offers. ‘And the battle-barge Omicron emerges from the Byssda-Escona Deeps, carrying further reinforcements.’

Varix nods with approval.

‘Master Krish,’ he tells the astropath, ‘I wish to send a message to Harrowmaster Dynat.’

‘The content, strike commander?’

‘Tell the Harrowmaster that the Mechanicum forces and Titan battle group re-routed to crush the rebellion on Callistra Mundi have been neutralised. The god-machines and their transport are in Alpha Legion hands. Inform him that his action has forced a deviation from our mission directives, but that secondary objectives have been met with… Elapsid?’

‘Elapsid/gamma-khi-sigma-omicron-zeta,’ this unit reports.

‘With five minutes to spare,’ Dartarion Varix finishes. ‘The Omnissiax is en route to assist him, and my veteran hort wait on his pleasure.’

‘We go to Callistra Mundi, my lord?’ I ask.

‘We do,’ Dartarion Varix confirms. ‘My brother-commander wishes there to be a Harrowing.’

‘My lord,’ I acknowledge.

A Harrowing.

It is more than just a word.

My internal data-banks mark it as a signifier. A stratagem.

It is an expression of the XX Legion’s art of war. An experience, as both prosecutor and victim. Confusion. Disorder. Betrayal. Panic. Horror. An enemy force chasing phantoms. Our foes at war with themselves. We watch as they expose their vulnerabilities. As they make their way from desperation to annihilation. We bring them to the boil. Then, when they can take no more, as they lie across the altar of our tactical perfection, we sacrifice them to inevitability. A storm of coordinated attacks. Alpha Legionnaires appearing from every corner, from every shadow, from behind the face of every seeming friend and ally, boltguns blazing.

It will be a decimate wonder to behold.

‘The Harrowmaster calls on the legionnaires of the Twentieth,’ Dartarion Varix tells us, ‘for he wishes to murder this world. My brothers, we are to be part of something very special indeed. The Harrowing of Callistra Mundi begins.’

About the Author

Rob Sanders is the author of The Serpent Beneath, a novella that appeared in the New York Times bestselling Horus Heresy anthology The Primarchs. His other Black Library credits include the The Beast Arises novels Predator, Prey and Shadow of Ullanor, the Warhammer 40,000 titles Adeptus Mechanicus: Skitarius and Tech-Priest, Legion of the Damned, Atlas Infernal and Redemption Corps and the audio drama The Path Forsaken. He has also written the Warhammer Archaon duology, Everchosen and Lord of Chaos along with many Quick Reads for the Horus Heresy and Warhammer 40,000. He lives in the city of Lincoln, UK.

The Shattered Legions gather for a dangerous mission at the behest of Shadrak Meduson. But would their greatest hero rather make such a bold move, or is something else at work?

A Black Library Publication

First published in Sedition’s Gate in 2014
This eBook edition published in 2016 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd,
Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Neil Roberts.

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ISBN: 978-1-78572-065-9

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