Текст книги "Deliverance Lost"

Автор книги: Гэв Торп

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Текущая страница: 23 (всего у книги 27 страниц)

‘Stay keen,’ said Sergeant Dor. ‘They’re planning something. Be ready.’

IN THE HULL of the second Rhino in the column, Navar Hef sat on the narrow seat with his bolter across his lap. The transport rocked wildly from side to side as it sped over the uneven ground of the rad-fields, but his suit compensated for most of the movement so that he just swayed back and forth a little.

‘Rapid deployment, thirty seconds!’ snapped Sergeant Cald. ‘Weapons check.’

Navar went through a quick inspection of his bolter and grenades. He unhooked the fastener on the sheath of his combat knife and tested the magnetic grips on the spare magazines clamped to his belt and thighs. All was in order, as it had been when he had boarded the Rhino.

‘Stand ready!’

Cald and his nine Raptors stood up and turned towards the rear hatchway. The bumping of the Rhino was more pronounced, but the gyrostabilisers of the Mark VI armour kept Navar balanced. He took a step backwards as the Rhino trundled to a halt.

Drop-bolts exploded along the sides of the hatch, dropping down the access ramp. Navar was the fourth out, fanning to the right with three other squad members. He saw movement through the doorway of a collapsed building ahead and fired without hesitation. His bolt-round found its mark, an arm swathed in bandage-like cloth sent spinning into view.

‘Enemy, twenty-five metres, secondary arc,’ Navar reported breathlessly.

The squad reformed without any need for command, laying down a curtain of fire into the rubble of the ruined building, leaving contrails in the ruddy miasma and fist-sized holes in the rockcrete walls.

‘Cease,’ ordered Cald. ‘Section one, move up. Section two, flank protection.’

Navar was in section two, so he held his ground and kept watch to the right. The sergeant led his team of five men towards the ruins, their black armour almost disappearing in the haze.

They were nearly out of sight, no more than twenty metres from the closest broken wall, when light flared through the gloom. An arc of lightning erupted from a stairwell leading down to a basement level, earthing into the lead Raptor. His armour and body exploded, sending bloody fragments of bone and ceramite thudding into the legionaries around him. Navar had never heard mention of anything like it during the training exercises.

‘Emperor’s oath, that’s a stormcannon!’ yelled Cald. ‘Saturation fire! Level that building!’

Switching his bolter to full automatic, Navar emptied the remaining bolts from his magazine into the enemy position, the crackle of the detonations just a few flickers amongst the storm that engulfed the stairwell. Behind Navar, the remote cupola of the Rhino opened up, hammering away with combi-bolter fire. As he slapped home another magazine, the Raptor’s hearts kicked into high combat pulse, flooding his body with adrenal compounds, seeming to slow time as his nervous system surged in response.

His auto-senses blacked momentarily. When they returned, Navar saw the fiery trail of a plasma jet streaking through the mist. The Rhino’s point-defence missile had passed within a metre of him, causing the blackout. It detonated in an airburst just above the insurgents’ den, showering white-hot promethium across the stairs and wall.

‘Pull back to the Rhino,’ said Sergeant Cald, calm and authoritative. The lead team started to withdraw as the promethium melted through the rockcrete, turning it to a dwindling pile of burning slag. ‘Commander Branne, encountering guild-tech weapons. We might have a problem.’

As they returned, one of the surviving Raptors from the forward section stumbled. At first Navar thought he had just lost his footing, but as the Raptor pushed himself to his knees, he spasmed violently, his bolter flying from his grasp. Navar had not seen any weapons fire and his first thought was of some other unknown guild-tech the sergeant had not warned them about. Just as he thought this, Navar heard grunting over the squad vox-link and turned to see the Raptor to his right falling to one knee, his head rocking madly forwards and back.

Tightness gripped Navar’s chest. It reminded him of the sensation of fear he had used to feel before his transformation, though he felt no dread attached to the cramping. A sudden burning shot up his spine, causing Navar to gasp with pain. He tried to fight the urge to crouch, his legs and pelvis felt as if they had been shattered.

‘Hef? Lastar? Devor?’ He didn’t recognise the voice, but the panic it conveyed was something he had never expected to hear from a Raven Guard.

The Raptor realised he had fallen to his knees and looked up to see Sergeant Cald standing over him, looking rapidly to the left and right. Another surge of flaming agony roared across Navar’s chest, his muscles contorting, throwing him to his back. He couldn’t help the scream that erupted from him. He smelled and tasted blood inside his helm.

‘In the Rhino! Get in the Rhino!’ Cald was bellowing. The sergeant grabbed one of Navar’s arms and started dragging him to the transport.

‘I can… make it…’ Navar snarled, pushing himself to his feet. He stumbled a few steps and hurled himself onto the Rhino’s ramp. The impact sent another shuddering burst of pain through his body.

‘Command, command!’ Cald’s voice over the vox was almost lost under the pounding in Navar’s ears. ‘Urgent evacuation needed. All Raptors are down. I repeat, all of the Raptors non-combatant.’

‘I know,’ came Branne’s terse reply. ‘It’s happening across most of the squads. No assistance available. Get them back to Ravendelve as best you can.’

Navar felt himself lifted bodily into the Rhino, seeing the helm insignia of his sergeant through a crazy patterning of hyper-inflated blood vessels in his eyes. He was dumped onto the floor, landing on top of another Raptor; the marking on his shoulder pad rim marked him out as Devallia. Navar saw Devallia tearing at his helmet, trying to rip it free. After a few seconds, the seals snapped and the helm came off, tossed away by the frenzied Raptor.

He found himself looking into a pair of inhuman eyes, almost completely red with blood, save for pupils that had shrunk to dark pinpricks. Navar was gripped with horror as he saw veins and muscles pulsing beneath blackening skin. Devallia cried out, and in opening his mouth revealed another row of sharpened teeth erupting from his gums. Corrosive saliva dribbled onto his chestplate, hissing and spitting where it fell.

The Rhino jerked into motion, rolling Navar to his back. He stared up at Sergeant Cald, who was crouched at the open ramp, one hand held to the brow of his helm as he shook his head in disbelief.

‘Sergeant…’ The words were difficult to form, Navar’s tongue feeling swollen in his throat. He held a hand out towards Cald and noticed long claws had broken through the fingertips of his gauntlets. ‘Sergeant? What’s happening to me?’

Cald looked at him for several seconds, as if he had no answer to give. Then he stepped closer and stooped over Navar, clasping his deformed hand in his own.

‘Stay strong, legionary,’ said Cald. ‘Remember who you are. You are Raven Guard.’

PART THREE

MONSTERS AND MARTYRS

FIFTEEN

The Fortunate Ones

Divided Loyalties

The Legionnaires Revealed

HE HAD ONLY wanted to buy a little more time, but as he crouched next to the receiver beneath the bent girders of a toppled viaduct Omegon was delighted with the static-broken message passed on by the cryptoduct. The poor quality of the signal was due to a communications block being broadcast from the Ravenspire. It was the response Omegon had been depending on, though it meant his own transmissions would be severely hampered. The message was from Contact Three, who knew nothing of his fellow Alpha Legionnaire’s action.

Omegon played the recording again, his fingers adjusting the dials of the receiver to get the best possible signal. The report was still quiet and fragmentary, and only his experience and superhuman hearing allowed him to pick out words and phrases from amongst the white noise that was blanketing every frequency.

‘…widescale degradation throughout the latest batch… degenerate, bestial… more recent recruits are worst affected… Corax has ordered… nearly a thousand of the poor… suspects mutation due to some mistake in the gene replication for large scale implantation. Apothecary Sixx housing the… howls and roars like caged animals. Security has been tightened around the gene-tech, but access still possible. There seems… overall mission integrity intact. Awaiting…’

THE SACRIFICE OF Eloqi’s guild had been worthwhile, after all. In the grand scheme, their survival or success was irrelevant. The guild insurrection, and the Order of the Dragon who had instigated it, were simply the means to pry open Ravendelve.

The Betawould be moving into position, while the Order of the Dragon was ready to strike their final blow. It was time that his operatives knew their full part in the endgame. He shut down the receiver and packed it away, going over the final parts of the plan in his mind.

Tomorrow, twenty-nine Terran hours from now, the Alpha Legion would make their move.

THE PAIN HAD subsided for the last few hours, leaving Navar with a deep ache in his flesh and bones. He sat in the corner of the cell, not able to look at Marls, Kharvo, Dortaran, Benna and the other twenty Raptors who shared the room. They were amongst the fortunate ones, apparently, though Navar did not feel fortunate as he looked down at the jet-black talons jutting from his fingers.

He had seen a few of the worst-affected, as Sixx and his attendants had hurried them into the quarantine area that had been quickly established in the depths of Ravendelve. It was only temporary, the Apothecary had said, reversible if they could isolate the mutated strands in the gene-seed. Navar knew he had not experienced much of life, but he recognised a comforting lie when he heard one, even if Sixx had been lying to himself as much as the Raptors.

He could hear the muffled yells and screams of the most degenerate and could not push away the visions he had seen. Some of them had been bent almost double by elongated spines, others had been twisted by insane muscle growth, their limbs warped and engorged. Bony growths split their skin, fangs punctured their lips, and all had the same bloody eyes as Navar.

As a child, Navar had never suffered nightmares. Growing up in the shadow of the Ravenspire was more assurance than any mother’s words that there were no monsters that could harm him. Yet the sight of the degenerated Raptors was something from the darkest recesses of his imagination, causing a primal revulsion and fear that no amount of Legiones Astartes discipline and training could eradicate. That he was counted amongst the monstrosities only increased his unease.

His brain, his body, no longer produced the fear response of a normal human, but on that primitive level, in the core of his mind, Navar was distressed and unable to articulate his worry. It was if he could not form the thoughts, could not grasp the concepts required to voice his dread.

Navar stood up to ease the pressure on his lower back, where one of Sixx’s attendants had surgically removed a vestigial tail. The Raptor’s knees and hips ached, wound about with tight, overgrown ligaments and sinew. He started to walk, completing a circuit of the room, which was bare save for the thin training pads on the floor that had been provided as rudimentary bedding, the best the Legion could offer for the moment.

He neared the door, and heard voices. The door was not locked, not for them. Elsewhere, the most bestial sufferers had been taken to the cages that had once housed Sixx and Orlandriaz’s animal subjects. They could not be trusted to stay where they would be safe, though none had been violent towards their fellow Raven Guard.

The voices grew louder and Navar recognised the deep timbre of the primarch. He gestured to the others and they rose from their positions to crowd as close as they could get. The conversation seemed to be taking place a little further down the corridor beyond, near to the infirmary entrance.

‘…is an intrinsic problem with the gene template, I am sure of it,’ they heard Orlandriaz replying to something said by Corax. ‘There is no error in the replication process.’

‘Then why are the first five hundred Raptors unaffected?’ said Corax. ‘At some stage, we have made a mistake. The reduplication to this scale must be responsible.’

‘Unless there has been degeneration in the source material,’ replied Sixx.

‘It is kept in stasis, how could it change?’ countered Orlandriaz.

‘Incrementally,’ replied Corax. ‘It is removed from stasis for reprocessing new batches of gene-seed. Perhaps it has degraded a little during each removal, so slightly that we have not noticed it.’

‘That would suggest there is an inherent flaw,’ said Sixx. He cleared his throat before continuing, apparently uncomfortable with what he had to say. ‘The flaw is not in the Raven Guard gene-seed, it has been verified many times over since its creation.’

‘What are you suggesting?’ said Corax.

‘That there is something wrong with the primarch data,’ said Orlandriaz, as coolly as if he were discussing inclement weather.

‘Or our analysis of it,’ Sixx added quickly. ‘The traits we are seeing, the deformations, are consistent in their own way. Not entirely random.’

‘I fail to see that,’ said Orlandriaz.

‘I do not,’ said Corax. ‘We know that there are elements of non-human structures within the primarch data. Similar strands are encoded into every gene-seed. The Legiones Astartes make-up owes a small part to characteristics found in other species, introduced by the Emperor into the gene-seed. The scales, horns and other growths may be indicative of these traits being accelerated, out of step with the rest of the adaptation. Whatever was holding them in check, maintaining the balance, has deteriorated. Judging by the timing of the change, I would start by looking at those physical functions under greatest stimulation during combat. It seems that the something in their enhanced metabolism triggered this.’

‘An uncomfortable thought,’ said Sixx. ‘To think that all of us contain the potential for such transformation.’

‘Not all of us,’ said Corax.

‘Apologies, lord, I did no–’

‘I don’t mean my primarch heritage,’ Corax continued. ‘The standard Raven Guard gene-seed is stable, as you said before. We have done something to destabilise it. Isolate that cause, and perhaps we might find a means to reverse the errant genetic material.’

‘It is a possibility,’ said Orlandriaz. ‘I shall conduct more tests to compare the initial Raptors created with the most recent, to see if I can identify a consistent differential.’

‘I’ll concentrate on making them as comfortable as possible,’ said Sixx. ‘If we can’t…’

‘We will!’ said Corax. ‘They are Raven Guard and deserve our greatest effort. Keep me informed. I must return to Ravenspire to discuss the attack on Ravendelve with the command council.’

‘You fear it is the start of something more threatening, lord?’ asked Sixx.

‘We all but wiped out the insurgents, so the threat is debatable. That proscribed guild-tech weapons have surfaced cannot be ignored, though. We could do without further distraction while we resolve the issues with the gene-template.’

The noise of the conversation receded, followed by the clankof the infirmary door closing. Navar turned back to the others.

‘You heard Lord Corax?’ he said. ‘They’ll find a way to change us back.’

Some of the other Raptors smiled, a few sadly shook their heads. Navar headed back to his corner and sat down, ignoring the pain in his rump. The primarch believed that there was a way, and he had the most brilliant mind imaginable. Feeling a little happier, Navar leant back against the wall, closed his eyes and tried to sleep.

THE DISCUSSION BETWEEN the commanders and Corax had lasted for several hours. Branne was happy to leave the command chamber, the last of the council to do so, having been intensely questioned by Corax regarding the insurgent attack, and he was anxious to return to Ravendelve and oversee its defence. The primarch had been adamant that the timetable for the attack on Narsis was not changed. If the Raptors could not be included in the force, the Raven Guard would adjust their strategy. Branne definitely wanted as many legionaries as possible to take on the Perfect Fortress, and so his place was at Ravendelve to provide an encouraging presence for Sixx and Orlandriaz.

As he stalked towards the conveyor down to Alpha Dock, he was met by Controller Ephrenia. She held a data tablet in her hand, a sight that Branne did not find encouraging.

‘A moment of your time, please, commander,’ said Ephrenia.

‘Walk with me,’ Branne replied, continuing past.

‘We have found several odd signals, commander,’ she said. Branne stopped.

‘Commander Agapito’s channel?’ he asked quietly.

‘No, commander, not this time,’ said Ephrenia. She handed Branne the data-slate. ‘There have been several encrypted messages concealed within normal Legion traffic. Hidden amongst the data-pulse between Ravenspire and Ravendelve, riding the pulses to bypass the communications block. They appear to originate from several places on Kiavahr.’

‘So we’ve found out how the guilders are communicating? Good work. Can we stop it?’

‘I already have, commander,’ said Ephrenia, looking a little hurt by the implication. ‘One such transmission that was hijacked was a routine upload from the infirmary core in Ravendelve. In picking apart the entwined codes, it became apparent that the core log had been tampered with. The log was accessed and then the access was crudely wiped.’

‘There are only a handful of us with access to that log,’ said Branne. ‘Why would any of us try to hide such action?’

‘Digital markers indicate that it was Commander Agapito,’ Ephrenia said, her voice hushed. She stepped closer to Branne, though he could hear her lowered voice with ease. ‘I was about to tell Lord Corax, but as you are here I think that perhaps you should deal with the matter.’

‘Thank you, controller,’ said Branne. ‘I’ll handle this.’

Branne turned around and headed back towards the central transporter that ran the full height of Ravenspire. Whatever reason Agapito had for accessing the gene-tech datalogs, it could not excuse an attempt to conceal the act. The commander quietly fumed as he made his way up to the personal chambers of his brother. He did not knock, but threw open the door, ready to demand an explanation from Agapito.

The chambers were empty, and showed no sign that Agapito had returned here after the command council. Branne activated his vox.

‘Spire command, can you locate Commander Agapito?’

‘One moment, commander.’

Branne waited impatiently, pacing around Agapito’s main room. He spied a tablet on the arm of a couch and picked it up. Activating the slate, he brought up the last screen display. It seemed to be a duplicate of the files Branne had been given by Ephrenia no more than ten minutes before.

His communicator chimed.

‘Commander Agapito authorised a pilot and Stormbird for launch, commander,’ the Legion functionary in the command chamber told him. ‘Course logged was for Ravendelve.’

‘When?’ demanded Branne.

‘Two and a half hours ago, Terran standard, commander.’

Branne cut the link and threw both data-slates to the floor.

‘What are you doing, brother?’ he asked the empty room. Two hours was enough time for Agapito to already be at Ravendelve. Branne ran from the room, heading for the Thunderhawk waiting for him at Alpha Dock.

THE SCANNER TICKED monotonously, every pulse accompanied by an image on the screen in front of Alpharius. He turned his chair and checked the audio pick-ups, seeing nothing detected except for the wind. The gun towers had been constantly manned since the last attack, and Alpharius and the rest of the squad had been on watch since dawn. Nothing was happening, there had been no sign of any insurgent activity in the last twenty hours.

The chair creaked as he leaned back, laying his hands in his lap. Behind him in the control room, Sergeant Dor was cleaning his bolter, cloth and tools laid out on an instrumentation panel. Marko was also there, monitoring the communications station.

‘Time for another visual sweep,’ said Dor, not looking up from his work.

Alpharius said nothing as he stood up and moved to the reinforced door. He keyed in the security code and the door extended out and slid to one side. Stepping into the airlock, he sealed the door behind him. He took his helmet from his belt and fitted it before opening the outer seal. Wind rushed in, bringing the acrid taint of pollution.

Stepping out onto the rampart, Alpharius glanced down at Ravendelve. Searchlights from the towers and walls scoured the surrounding ground, their beams lost in the hazy air no more than a hundred metres out. He could see armoured figures patrolling the walls beneath him, their eye lenses bright yellow dots in the gloom. Unslinging his bolter, he walked around the rampart, passing under the shadow of the huge twin-barrelled cannon in the emplacement atop the tower.

He performed a point check, using the magnification of his auto-senses to inspect the gatehouse, armourium doors and other points of entry. All he saw were Raven Guard, patrolling tirelessly or standing sentry. One thousand Talons had been sent down from Ravenspire to reinforce the garrison, taking the place of the Raptors who had succumbed to the genetic corruption.

It had pained Alpharius to see the tainted legionaries, some of them wracked with agony, all of them a perversion of the Legiones Astartes. It would be a mercy to kill them, and when the time came, the Alpha Legion would surely grant them swift release from their torment. The Raven Guard were enemies, but Alpharius had a great deal of respect for the warriors of Deliverance, having shared in their tribulations.

He continued on his circuit, moving to the outside of the tower to look out over the rad-wastes. He already knew from the sensor reports that there was nothing out there, but the Raven Guard were highly suspicious of guild-tech and left nothing to chance. It was possible that the insurgents possessed something that might mask them from the scanner sweeps.

There was nothing to see, only a tortured landscape of flattened buildings and cratered rock.

He started towards the door to complete one loop around the tower, but stopped at the corner to look into the far distance. To the north-east, five kilometres away, the outskirts of Nabrik jutted from the bank of red fog like the fingers of a drowning man breaking the surface of the water. Lights blinked from their rooftops and the lamps of armoured airships passed sedately between them.

Alpharius was about to turn away when he noticed a flickering in the gloom, close to the base of one of the towers. A series of flashes illuminated the fog. Moments later, a dirigible erupted into flames, the mangled remains of its gondola sent plummeting into the city. A second or two later, the Alpha Legionnaire heard the muffled but distinct rap of heavy cannons drifting over Ravendelve, followed by the crackof the airship’s detonation.

Astounded, he watched tracer fire erupting from several of the cloudscrapers at the heart of the city, and more explosions billowed into life further into Nabrik. He thought it to be just another insurgent attack at first, targeting the Mechanicum following recent defeats against the Raven Guard, but then several things happened at once.

Two huge detonations rocked one of the soaring towers, almost cutting it in half. The upper storeys crumbled and toppled, crashing into the streets below in a huge cloud of flame and smoke. Alpharius’s first thought was that it was a bomb, but his amazement grew as a gigantic figure appeared silhouetted against the growing column of fire. It was at least ninety metres tall, its right arm a massive multi-barrelled cannon, the left another immense weapon that gleamed with the blue sheen of plasma generators. Its armoured carapace was packed with turrets that streaked laser and shell fire into the city: an Imperator-class Titan!

As he watched the Imperator unleash a ball of ravening blue energy from its plasma annihilator, Alpharius heard Marko shouting over the vox.

‘Full alert, man stations! Threat imminent.’

‘Powering up defence cannons,’ announced Dor.

The words had barely sunk in when the macro-cannon above Alpharius opened fire. The shockwave from its twin muzzles hit the Alpha Legionnaire, his suit warning icons flashing amber and red as the concussive blast enveloped him. Two shells the size of battle tanks screamed into the distance, exploding kilometres away.

Just as the noise of the shell detonations reached Alpharius, a ticking started in his skull, a double pulse different from the one he had felt before. He knew immediately what it meant: Omegon had remotely activated the tracking function. The implant was now homing in on the devices of the other Alpha Legionnaires.

It’s started, Alpharius thought, his hearts racing. The Alpha Legion were making their move. He had to get into position and meet with the others.

Increasing the magnification of his sight, Alpharius saw four columns of vehicles and infantry snaking through the ruins where the cannon had fired, passing between flames and rising smoke from the double impact. There were transports and tanks, flanked by three armoured walkers, each twenty metres tall. One of the Warhounds – the walkers were clearly scout-class Titans – was enveloped by a shimmering dome of purple and black as its void shields collapsed from the initial macro-cannon bombardment. The other two Warhounds raised their weapons and returned fire as shots from Turret Two shrieked across Ravendelve to pound into the metal body of the compromised Titan.

Alpharius hurled himself to the rockcrete a moment before the cannonade erupted around him, showering him with stone-like shards and fragments of the plasteel reinforcing rods within the tower wall. Two white beams lanced out of the shifting fog, punching through the armoured casement of the macro-cannon.

Propelling himself towards the door, Alpharius was engulfed by a storm of sparks and fiery debris from above, spitting and clattering on his armour. He hauled open the outer door and threw himself inside, slamming the armoured portal as another volley of shells hammered into the rampart where he had been only two seconds before.

‘Nord and Falko are down,’ Sergeant Dor reported. ‘Cannon is non-operational. Withdrawing to central structure, there’s nothing we can do from here.’

The tower shuddered again from more impacts as the airlock cycled through the filtering process. Alpharius paced back and forth for a few seconds, waiting for the inner door to open. The interior of the tower had been plunged into darkness, lit only by sparks bursting from fractured consoles. Dor and Marko were waiting by the stairwell that linked the tower levels.

‘What about the others?’ asked Alpharius, glancing up to the landing above. Automatic fire suppression systems had flooded the gun casement, filling it with white, dusty smoke.

‘Done for. Let’s get moving,’ said Dor, setting off down the steps. ‘Muster at station four.’

Alpharius could not afford to be drawn into the general muster. His instructions from his primarch were to get to the main gate.

‘Go on,’ said Alpharius, waving Marko to follow Dor.

The Raven Guard turned his back on Alpharius as the Alpha Legionnaire unsheathed his combat knife. Alpharius drove his boot into the back of Marko’s knee, forcing him down even as he plunged the blade towards the side of the legionary’s neck. He sawed the serrated edge through Marko’s flesh, almost decapitating him.

‘What’s the delay?’ Dor shouted back up from the landing below.

Alpharius dropped Marko’s corpse to the floor, readied a grenade from his belt, and moved to the rail above the steps.

‘Take this!’ he called out, dropping the primed grenade.

Dor caught it out of instinct. A slow second passed as he realised what he had done, the grenade falling from his fingers, but too late. The grenade exploded, hurling the sergeant from his feet, razor-edged shrapnel cracking against his armour. Alpharius knew that a single grenade would not be enough to take down a legionary and vaulted over the rail, bolter in one hand.

He thudded onto the landing as Dor was pushing himself to one knee, chainsword already drawn. Gas hissed from split piping and oily fibre-bundle lubricant mixed with the blood leaking from the sergeant’s midsection. Alpharius’s first bolt hit Dor in the left side of his helm, where the communication pick-up was located, silencing any warning he might broadcast.

Dor roared and leapt at Alpharius, who dodged back a moment before the spinning teeth of the chainsword would have taken off his arm. He fired blind, hammering bolts into the sergeant’s chest, the cascade of detonations sending Dor sprawling again. Alpharius followed up quickly, placing his next shot through the eye lens of Dor’s crumpled helmet. The already damaged helm split apart as the bolt detonated inside, spraying blood and brain matter across the metal floor.

Stopping only to prise the chainsword from Dor’s dead grip, Alpharius headed down the tower.

LOOKING UP AT the colossal form of the Magnus Caseias the Imperator Titan unleashed another miniature star into the heart of the city, Omegon felt a little trepidation. He had known that the Order of the Dragon had extensive resources, but had not appreciated just how much influence they had extended into the Mechanicum of Kiavahr. He had expected a distraction, infighting amongst the different temples. What the Order of the Dragon had delivered was all-out civil war.

The streets were packed with tech-priests and Mechanicum functionaries fleeing the carnage. Slack-faced servitors wandered around, unable to process what was happening, staring vacantly at the explosions and flames. Here and there, soldiers in reflective bodysuits herded the crowd away from the fighting, urging them out of their lines of fire with their rifles. Praetorian servitors – half-human war machines even larger than Omegon – watched over the exodus with chainguns, lascannons and sonic disruptors.