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Cover

Imperfect Engines – Avalon Irons

About the Author

An Extract from ‘Genefather’

A Black Library Publication

eBook license

Imperfect Engines

Avalon Irons

The Adeptus Astartes knew no fear. It was an observable truth.

But the flesh was weak, and the Emperor’s Angels were still flesh.

If the Astartes knew no fear, then the mighty skitarii legions had the very concept expunged from their neuromatrices – or so Secutor Fidelia liked to proclaim in binharic cant so fervent in its conviction it would make an Ecclesiarchy preacher’s knees weak.

Five hundred and forty-seven days, twenty hours, and thirty-seven minutes ago, that same righteous sermon of lingua-technis had filled the five-chambered heart of Iota-11 with immense pride. But five hundred and forty-seven days, twenty hours, and thirty-seven minutes was a long time to find calculated errors in such a lofty idea.

Iota-11 shifted their weight back and forth on their augmetic legs nervously. Around them, dozens of skitarii arranged themselves in single-file lines, like datawafers waiting to be sorted. Their cog-tooth-trimmed black robes were a stark contrast against the sterile white tiles of the medicae hall. The waiting cyborgs only moved to approach the assorted repair stations, or depart for whatever tasks their marshals had assigned to them.

Have they all left pain behind with the weakness of their flesh? Iota-11 queried to themself, surveying their fellow skitarii, the bright blue ocular lenses of their rebreather mask finding those identical in form to their own all around them, but all utterly implacable. Rigid postures, perfectly measured footfalls, and noospheric activity entirely committed to function made things like individual sentiment impossible to determine.

After what would have been a highly efficient wait time for any Militarum medicae facility but which sat on Iota-11’s chest with the weight of all eternity, a green summoning signifier appeared in their noospheric datastream. They approached their assigned magos biologis and moved to sit on the metal examination bench with fluidity only achievable by augmentation.

The magos before them had long since transcended the frail human form, opting instead for a slender, insectoid chassis with hypermobile limbs. It nimbly weaved itself between medical machines and servitors. Intricately layered metal formed the millennia-old shape of the caduceus, with the staff implying a nose and the curling bodies of the snakes framing its cheekbones and oculars. It rotated its head on gyros with zero resistance, slanted green emitters projecting diagnostic tables and error reports. Its six legs tapped across the pristine floor with the sound of needles clattering on examination trays.

<Skitarii Ranger Iota-11.> The magos’ code contained the dispassion intrinsic to any long-toiling administrator. <This is your third service request this month.>

Iota-11 had long since had the memory of their birth name purged from their memory banks, and despite an admirable service record, silently chafed against their given designation.

Small.

Singular.

‘Magos Bashar, I continue to log–’

The magos coiled itself around Iota-11 like a constrictor, threatening and tense, levelling its flat, diamond head with theirs. <You speak to me in flesh-voice, Skitarii Ranger Iota-11?> it hissed angrily.

<Apologetic: I did not realise I had slipped out of binharic, magos. It will not happen again.>

<See that it does not.> Bashar unravelled itself slowly, its head remaining eerily unmoving even as its body untwisted. <Why are you here for the third time?>

<Informational: I continue to log errors in my right augmetic arm. I have uploaded the report–>

<I’ve read the report,> Bashar interrupted. <I’ve also become accustomed to the hyperbole common to the refugee-origin recruits to our skitarii legions.>

<Insisting: We only seek sanctuary from the enemies of the Omnissiah and to serve Him faithfully,> Iota-11 said. <Even Secutor Fidelia says that we cannot rely exclusively on menial elevation or flesh-vats to fill out Agripinaa’s forces, now that we fight without Cadia.>

Since the fall of their sister world, little stood between Agripinaa and the forces that would pick its surface clean like half-starved predators pulling every last calorie from a carcass. Magos Bashar must understand this, thought Iota-11. Every skitarius performs an essential function in Agripinaa’s survival.

But right now, Iota-11 could not hold a rifle. Not well, anyway.

Iota-11 remembered clutching the bleeding stump of their right arm and reciting the Vows of Integration on their knees in supplication before Secutor Fidelia. Trying to recall anything before that moment usually only yielded static. Whatever planet they and many other inductees had fled from had been decimated. Their arm had been lost somewhere in fleeing, fighting, or both, they assumed. That right arm was the first augmetic they ever received.

It started slowly after they recovered, and became more pronounced over time. The sensation of lagging behind, their perception struggling to keep pace with their body’s operations. However they moved their limbs, especially their right arm, an almost imperceptible afterimage would follow. The faintest blur the colour of flesh that no diagnostic of their ocular read-outs or augmetic limbs could detect or rationalise. Sensory feedback anomalies could be compensated for.

Pain could not.

<Regardless,> Bashar continued, <this report contains no new errors or malfunctions.>

<Imperative: But my arm… hurts.> Iota-11 almost pleaded, holding the limb by their wrist and lifting it, as if closer examination would prove their dilemma.

Bashar pushed the limb away with a mechadendrite. <It is an augmetic. This limb can receive auspex inputs, but it is not designed to feel. The flesh is weak, and your clinging to its weakness is as senseless as it is a waste of time.>

<Uncertain: Yet, it hurts.> Iota-11 pulled their arm to their chest, cradling it. <My finger will go numb, and my forearm burns. It feels like every pump of its actuators pulls and tears at flesh beneath.>

Bashar’s caduceus head swung back and forth like a pendulum unaffected by loss of kinetic energy. <Phantom limb syndrome. Low priority. Conduct the Daily Canticles of Defragmentation until symptoms cease. Dismissed.>

A golden completion signifier appeared in the noosphere beside the projection of Iota-11’s error report for the third time. Within moments, urgent red deployment runes surged into their datastream.

Iota-11 stood at attention but found their mind wandering from fatigue, Omnissiah forgive them. They and their maniple had returned from two weeks of gruelling firefights on the outer rim of Agripinaa’s territories, lunging out into the fray and repelling an onslaught of Blood Axe orks who had strangely all adorned themselves in forest-green camouflage despite assaulting a near-white sandy desert world.

All xenos were a blight upon the universe, especially a race so wanting in the Omnissiah’s sacred knowledge as the ork menace. Their vehicles, of which the troops of Agripinaa had dispatched many, belched great gouts of oily smoke and propelled themselves over the expansive sand dunes by primitive internal combustion. Those that found themselves on foot carried ramshackle melee weapons and crude imitations of boltguns.

<Query: Do the orks believe they are concealing themselves from us?> Iota-11 had asked, and received an immediate and exasperated response from the maniple’s marshal, Neius Lal.

<Agitation: Leave matters of alien psychology to the xenobiologists. Our purpose is their eradication.>

<Earnest: Confirmed and implemented, marshal.> Iota-11 had levelled their galvanic rifle against the wreckage of an unidentifiable ork vehicle they and the marshal had leveraged as a barricade.

Most skitarii of vat-born or menial-elevated origin in their cohort felt the augmented refugees to be of inferior make, serving the Omnissiah out of desperation rather than singularity of purpose. Despite the difference in their ranks, Neius Lal was one of the few vat-born skitarii to look past Iota-11’s upbringing. He might even be Iota-11’s friend, if they kept each other alive. Iota-11 had tilted the humming weapon twenty-seven degrees to the south-west and begun to track the three orks loping towards them with their targeting array.

Just before they could pull the trigger, white-hot pain carved through their wrist like a knife.

The metal wrist without any nerves, save for the neural links that allowed their brain to dictate its locomotion.

Wincing, Iota-11 snapped off three shots with cogitated precision. Each electrified bullet found its mark between the bulging eyes of three wretched xenos and misted the pearlescent sand with their grey brain matter. Iota-11 gritted their steel-plated teeth, isolating the pain and filing it away for defragmentation.

<Humorous: I must admit, they do look ridiculous.>

Beside them, Neius Lal had stifled a laugh. <Agreement.>

Now, the whisper-hiss of a plunger depressing skitarii-issue stimulants brought Iota-11 back into a semblance of focus, realising they had remained upright only by force of will. Now that they had the stimms to lean on, they mag-clamped their feet to the metal floor for assured stability. Even with a chemically induced improvement in their vitality, the feeling of moving just out of sync with their body persisted. Their flesh was weak. For a nanosecond, they saw skin covering the fingers peeking out from their combat robes, frail and straining at how taut it was pulled.

Thought they saw.

They shook their head as if that would jostle things back into place like an amateur enginseer.

<Today, we shall prepare to undertake a most vital and sacred task,> Fidelia proclaimed from atop a rough iron dais before her macroclade of skitarii. There was no need for her to project her flesh-voice, as every skitarius could hear her cant with total clarity within the noosphere, but she applied force and intensity signifiers where a skilled iterator might have spoken from their diaphragm.

<The Omnissiah has blessed us with the opportunity to deliver hallowed machinery from peril. Six hours ago, our transmechanics intercepted the retrieval beacon of a uniformly rare Cerastus Knight.> She paused, knowing that even with machine-regulated inhalation intervals, she could make her audience wait with bated breath. <Atrapos pattern. Designation: Clarion Call.>

The noosphere immediately filled with murmuring binharic chatter. Iota-11 had a foundational knowledge of the Knight suits, and their capacity for blessed destruction in the Omnissiah’s name, but this pattern eluded their memory banks. Bolder alphas sent query signifiers through the noosphere, apparently also lacking sufficient data to understand this Knight’s significance. Neius Lal collated his maniple’s signals before the other marshals, and bowed his head deeply before beginning his cant.

<Interrogative: The Atrapos pattern has not been in service since the events of the Horus Heresy. Is this correct, secutor?>

<Correct, marshal.> Fidelia nodded, her perfectly machined head bobbing up and down on soundless pistons. The lower half of her skull was statuesque and beautiful, but her thirteen ocular implants of varying size and purpose rendered her completely unnerving to look upon. She turned all thirteen upon him. <And in those days, their machine spirits sought the complete destruction of heretek and xenos constructs. Imagine what a Knight suit of such a purpose could do for our forge world now that we face the enemies of the Omnissiah without Cadia’s protection.>

Marshal Neius Lal knelt before his secutor and raised his rifle in upturned palms, like a priest making an offering to their god and hoping they would find it pleasing.

<Reverence: We are indeed blessed with another avenue into the pursuit of knowledge and preservation, secutor. My maniple is at your disposal,> he proclaimed. <Interrogative: Do we have the precise location of the Knight-Atrapos?>

<Confirmed. The Knight-Atrapos Clarion Call is stranded on Cataegis-7, a dead mining planet that once held ties to the Knight world Hadrius.>

A rush of astrogation data punctuated the secutor’s statement. Iota-11, along with every skitarius present, suddenly found themself looking at a noospheric projection of grim portent. The secutor had said the world was dead, and this was true in a sense. Cataegis-7’s oceans had long since boiled away into its caustic atmosphere. Its settlers had abandoned the planet decades ago, the animal and plant life having died off well before then. Nothing lived on Cataegis-7, but it was not dead.

It was dying.

The planet was no longer a sphere hanging in the void. Massive fault lines and magma-filled fissures visible from space tore across its surface, as though the world had been mauled by some terrible beast with its claws sunk deep in the stars. Debris like viscera orbited Cataegis-7, great chunks of once-coveted earth smashing into each other and fragmenting further.

All at once, the noospheric chatter ceased entirely. Though no words had been audibly spoken, the silence was all the more palpable. Red runes appeared beside the world in its death throes, offering clarity to the obvious:

Time to total planetary destruction: three days, nineteen hours, and twenty-eight minutes.

Three days, nineteen hours, and twenty-seven minutes.

Three days, nineteen hours, and twenty-six minutes.

Iota-11 felt their chest grow cold. Something primally human snapped them into complete lucidity at the revelation of their coming orders. Skitarii lives were for the priesthood of Mars to spend in pursuit of the Omnissiah’s will, and Iota-11 held no delusions that the end of their life would be anything less than the violent manifestation of that will; but deploying the forces of Agripinaa into the bones of a planet all but succumbed to a celestial grave would be more costly and dangerous than any warzone. Even Neius Lal struggled to form a response.

<Request reconfirmation: A Cerastus Knight-Atrapos is awaiting retrieval… on Cataegis-7?> he queried, appending all manner of respect signifiers to his binharic cant.

<I did not misspeak, marshal. While Cataegis-7 itself is splitting across its tectonic plates, there is more than enough surface area for Clarion Call to be stranded on, awaiting retrieval.> Fidelia bent at the waist, cocking her head and leering over Neius Lal. <We will not squander this opportunity. Marshal Neius Lal will lead its maniple and the rest of this macroclade in a recovery mission on Cataegis-7 to bring the lost Cerastus Knight-Atrapos back into the arms of the Mechanicus. Be prepared to embark on the Emperor-class battleship Divine Sequence in ten hours.>

<Confirmed and implemented, secutor.> He saluted with his rifle and returned to the unerring black-and-red line of skitarii troopers. <By the Motive Force, may thy augmetics never falter. By the Omnissiah, may thy aim be wrathful and true. By the Machine God, may the Great Work ever turn the cogs of industry. Ave deus Mechanicus.>

<Ave deus Mechanicus.> Iota-11 droned in perfect, flat synchronicity with the other skitarii present. Upon dismissal, they rushed up to Neius Lal’s side as the marshal marched with uncomfortably forceful purpose towards the troop garrison.

<Query: Marshal, I know it is not our place to question our secutor, but do you believe that this mission can be accomplished?>

<Admonishment: You are correct – it is not our place to question.>

<Insistence: I mean on a physical level, marshal. There will be countless environmental hazards that we cannot compensate for – catastrophic seismic activity and electromagnetic storms alone will cause critical losses of sacred machine and skitarii forces. We may never even reach Clarion Call.> Iota-11 hastened their pace to match Neius Lal. Their augmetic legs easily kept the rapid stride without tiring, but somehow Iota-11 still felt the need to breathe quickly.

<Informative: We are augmented to endure the harshest battlegrounds, and our vehicles are designed to withstand the worst environments. It is, technically, within our thresholds of tolerance.> The marshal clenched his fists and sharply turned a corner.

The orders from Secutor Fidelia clearly troubled Neius Lal, despite his cleaving to the skitarii’s hallmark unyielding determination. Agripinaa may have had a history of flexibility when weighing decisive action against the number-crunching of sacred logic, but Iota-11 knew in the fibre bundles of their being that this mission was reckless.

<Imperative: ‘Technically’ is imprecise. We are Mechanicus – we are exacting. ‘Technically’ smacks of error, and error will get us killed. And for what?>

Suddenly, Neius Lal rounded on Iota-11 and pinned them against the grimy metal wall with a fierce swing of his forearm. The speed and force behind the blow sent their galvanic rifle clattering disgracefully to the ground. Iota-11 could hear the actuators in his arm hiss with the exertion.

<Severe: To question me is to question the secutor. To question her is to question the Machine God’s wisdom. Your compliance is mandated, Iota-11.> The rigid plasteel of his augmetic limb couldn’t harm Iota-11 through their skitarii war plate, but the pressure against the Icon Mechanicus emblazoned on their chest felt like heartache.

Are we not friends? Iota-11 wanted to say, but instead felt their jaw clench against a torrent of authority signifiers rushing over their noospheric presence. Secutor Fidelia clattered forward on multiple skittering legs, each carved into slender spikes.

<I see this marshal is keeping its rangers well disciplined,> she said dispassionately, letting her ocular implants dance unpleasant shades of green across Iota-11’s rebreather. <Marshal Neius Lal informs me that the ranger designated Iota-11 disapproves of the Omnissiah’s ordained will for us to retrieve the stranded Knight-Atrapos. Its noospheric uplink indicates that its emotion partition is not active. Was the implant damaged?>

Iota-11 inhaled sharply through their rebreather’s intake tubes and bit their cheek. They had kept the veil between their emotions and their waking mind open, where many amongst the Mechanicus had cast off the shackles of hormones and electrical impulses. Giving up a limb for reliable, sanctified steel was one thing; quarantining off an essential part of the human mind was another, and Iota-11 had been hesitant to take the step off that precipice.

<Apologetic: The partition is not damaged, secutor. I am capable of managing my emotions, as is any other soldier of the Mechanicus.>

<Any other soldier of the Mechanicus ‘manages’ their emotions by way of the partition. Perhaps that is why this unit questions?> Fidelia pressed Iota-11’s head against the perfectly smooth metal corridor with a slithering mechadendrite. <I will reconcile this discrepancy myself.>

Three silvery petals parted at the tip of Fidelia’s mechadendrite, allowing an impossibly thin needle to extrude itself from its housing. In a fluid stabbing motion that would have rivalled an Astartes’ mercy stroke, Fidelia levelled the needle with the side seam of Iota-11’s rebreather, placed it against their temple, and struck hard. Pain, sharp and cold, filled Iota-11’s head as the needle pierced through the plates of their skull and into the implant beneath. One of their eyes began to turn red and haze their vision – a ruptured blood vessel, most likely. Pressure built inside their head, greater and greater, until the very skin of their scalp felt like it threatened to split open.

Then, as suddenly as the pain came, it was gone. Neius Lal removed his arm, and Iota-11 allowed their gyroscopically balanced legs to catch their weight. They looked up at the secutor, and knew logically they should feel upset – violated, even.

But the feeling never came.

Nothing did.

If Iota-11 had been able to feel unsettled, they surely would have. Instead, they stooped, retrieved their fallen galvanic rifle, and stood crisply as if controlled by a remote signal rather than a soul within.

<Iota-11.> Fidelia folded her hands gracefully in front of her abdomen. <You will follow this marshal’s commands and prepare for deployment onto Cataegis-7. Make all preparations necessary to ensure Clarion Call can be returned to us expediently.>

<Confirmed and implemented, secutor,> Iota-11 said without a hint of inflection in their voice.

They rotated ninety degrees at the hip and rigidly departed the presence of the secutor and the marshal. Every step felt wrong, unnatural. Their augmetic components moved steadily, unencumbered, but every blood vessel and nerve in their body thrummed with adrenaline. Despite clearly registering the biological fight-or-flight response activating in their body, their brain refused to register its urgency. Instead, footfalls dissociated from the feeling of their body moving carried them down a ramp to the embarkation deck’s armoury.

They were already receiving noospheric datapackets on shuttle transport to the Divine Sequence as they walked. A row of newly repaired black skitarii war plate suits hung in suspension, ordered by wearer designation and squad. Iota-11 had surrendered their war plate for mending upon returning from their last deployment. As always, the reliable armour had been hammered smooth and patched with a speed that other militant arms of the Imperium could only dream of. The dark orbits of the Icon Mechanicus, half skull and half cybernetic facsimile, stared into total nothingness.

Iota-11 reached out to take their war plate, and their wrist snapped back at a right angle. They immediately dropped to their knees, vision becoming patchy with black at the intrusion of an agony sharper and hotter than a melta torch. The shock absorbers in their legs failed to cushion their fall, sending blunt pain through their kneecaps and up through their spine. Their arm continued to convulse, rotating past its intended radius, fingers shuddering from hyperextension to a fist to mismatched, splayed extension.

Error codes flooded their datastream, were corrected and then undone in dizzying succession. The surety of steel folded in on itself in a cascade failure, shorting out every connection to their nerves. Iota-11’s flesh could not compensate for the failure of their augmetics, nor could the augmetics convince their flesh that the pain wasn’t real.

Iota-11’s cracked, dry lips parted behind their rebreather, and they screamed in their flesh-voice loud enough to be heard across the embarkation deck.

‘It… hurts…!’

Warpsmith Iakovos stared into the yawning depths of the warp storm outside the battle-barge Subjugator’s viewport and sighed with disappointment. Any mortal would have found the undulating oil-slick colours and violent cracks of energy unbearable to behold. To the Iron Warrior, this view had been one of the only reminders that he was alive. Now, even following the spiralling whirlpools of malevolent warp light as they plummeted vertiginously through the immaterium itself, the warpsmith felt only the same unremarkable numbness that had plagued him for… How long, now? Years, certainly. The ship’s chronometer had failed when the warp storm had consumed the Subjugator whole.

Iakovos turned from the viewport and shifted his gaze back down the dark corridors of the battle-barge towards the enginarium. They’d been operating on minimal power, and the reinforced steel paths were lit only by emergency lumens. The red light played with the shadows cast by Iakovos’ power armour. At the right angle, the warpsmith could scarcely tell where his armour ended and the metal of the ship’s body began.

Beneath his feet, two squadrons of Thunderhawks were mag-locked in their docks, and six daemon engines thrashed against their energy bindings, howling for blood to spill. He would often descend to the launch bay and meticulously attend to each death-dealing construct. They were pristine: every damaged panel replaced, every weapon calibrated, every system fully operational. They were wasted now.

At the end of the corridor, the enginarium’s door hissed open at his approach. The low hum of cogitators and a hundred different machines all working in unison to keep the Subjugator as operational as possible sounded more like a life-support system than a mighty ship.

‘Hail, warpsmith.’ A rough voice pierced the mechanical din. A voice worn down from decades of shouting orders over artillery bombardment now straining against infrequent use. ‘I’ve conducted the scan already. All biosignatures are normal.’

‘Ophion.’ Iakovos inclined his head, genuinely surprised to see his fellow legionary. To conserve oxygen, only one of the Grim Forge was to be awake at any time, keeping the ship operational and searching for any signs of the warp storm relenting.

‘I moved my awakening up before I entered suspended animation,’ Ophion said plainly. His mouth was a flat, taut line across his face, which looked permanently fixed in a stoic frown. The warband’s icon of a skull set atop an anvil glared out at the world from his wide shoulder guard. ‘I wanted to conduct repairs while another one of us was awake.’

Ophion had clearly been labouring at the central cogitator for some time, scowling at a list of red warning runes. Iakovos made his way to a diagnostic terminal, reading scans he already knew the results of.

‘The last man I spoke to was Lykidas,’ he said with no feeling in his voice. ‘Nothing noteworthy – changing the rotation and a status report before returning to suspended animation.’

‘And?’ Ophion didn’t look over his shoulder as he tapped out commands on the cogitator’s interface.

‘We have been long without brothers, without purpose.’ Iakovos let his vision go blurry as he spoke, staring absently into the scrolling data projected by the terminal’s hololith.

‘We’ve always carried the burdens that other Legions were too proud or too weak to bear,’ Ophion replied. His voice had a distant softness to it, like a great, dying beast. ‘Not that it matters now.’

‘Even when we were miserable, things made sense.’ Iakovos closed his eyes and furrowed his brow.

Suddenly, a bright green light began flashing rapidly on the cogitation centre. The Subjugator rapidly and violently pitched forward. Iakovos and Ophion barely managed to grasp support struts to keep themselves from being catapulted across the enginarium. Warning klaxons were blaring at deafening volume, and the cogitation centre began to smoke and spark. The ship careened through the kaleidoscopic energies of the warp and down through a rapidly widening inky-black tear in the immaterium.

The Subjugator abruptly levelled out and fell silent again. The cogitation centre’s display had burned out entirely, smouldering uselessly. Iakovos released Ophion and rushed to reroute auspex data to the diagnostic terminal’s hololithic projector. For the first time in years, he saw them.

Stars.

They were in realspace.

Ophion was already in motion, calling up hololithic astrogation charts. Iakovos slowly traced the light representing stars and planets with an armoured finger.

‘We appear to be in the Segmentum Obscurus.’ Iakovos’ eyes darted across the projection. ‘There’s a handful of star systems within reach of the last of our fuel. The closest is a mining world, if our original data is accurate. Designation Cataegis-7.’

Ophion enlarged the hololithic image to focus on the lone planet and tilted his head to the side in the slightest indication of confusion. ‘According to a vox- and sensor sweep, there’s a signal coming from Cataegis-7. There’s some interference, but the transmission seems simple and repeating.’

‘It’s a retrieval beacon… for a Cerastus Knight-Atrapos,’ Iakovos said as he examined the signal and showed teeth in something too fearsome to be a smile. ‘Ophion, bring the Grim Forge out of suspended animation. I will set our course for Cataegis-7.’

‘By your command, warpsmith,’ Ophion said over his shoulder as he hurried out of the enginarium with renewed energy.

Iakovos made haste for the bridge. He’d seen a Knight-Atrapos in action in the early years of the Long War, how they tore through Legion war machines with horrifying malice.

Imagine the daemon engine that could be made out of one, he thought to himself as he stepped into the mag-lift.

Perhaps the universe did not spite him just yet.

The near-free-fall descent onto the husk of Cataegis-7 barely registered to Iota-11. Their vision, even with enhancements and overlays, was foggy, almost purple, and refused to come into focus. Every few seconds, they’d slip out of awareness and find themself dragged back by the shudder of the heavy lander against the atmosphere.

They remembered pain. It began in their right arm, and suddenly, it had consumed their entire being. Everything was pain, agonising and unquantifiable.

Magos Bashar had been there. It had held them down while they convulsed, repeating something in binharic that Iota-11’s memory banks couldn’t recall with any clarity. Its mechadendrites were working rapidly on something they couldn’t see.

Iota-11 shifted in their jump seat’s harness, finally registering the throbbing ache in the back of their neck. They felt dried blood rub against the collar of their combat robe, and a sequence of events started to form in their mind.

Magos Bashar.

Unknown cascade failure.

Authoritative code override.

Full reset and system purge.

<Shock to biological components within acceptable damage threshold,> the magos had said upon hauling Iota-11 to their feet and reattaching their war plate. Rangers whose designations they hadn’t logged dragged them across the embarkation deck of the skitarii complex on Agripinaa. They managed to call up fuzzy images of the infantry hold and launch bay of the Divine Sequence, but little else seemed to be retained.

Despite this, their system statuses were all beginning to show green in the corner of their vision. They ran a brief diagnostic on their augmetics, and accepted with the placidity of relief but without the sensation that no errors or anomalies had been logged. However invasive, the magos’ actions had successfully ensured that their service to the Machine God would continue.

<Informative: Four minutes and thirty seconds remain until touchdown on the surface of Cataegis-7. Prepare for rapid deployment.> Marshal Neius Lal’s unmistakable binharic carried clearly through the entire lander. All around Iota-11, skitarii ranger heads snapped to face him with complete focus. They lagged a fraction of a second behind their counterparts, and could almost see the edge of their hood trailing behind their movement.

<Elaboration: The most feasible landing site with the greatest possible proximity to the recovery beacon is losing structural integrity. Once we land, the electromagnetic storms will severely limit our vox-casters and auspex feeds. Haste is imperative for our mission’s success.>

The marshal’s commands were always direct, but the severity of his cant made Iota-11’s remaining organic muscles tense. The vestiges of their flesh could still hold anxiety, but the tension ended where their augmetics began. Patchwork parts of themself recoiled from the orders they knew were coming while the implacable steel and plastek upgrades were eerily still within them.

<Informative: The Divine Sequence’s auspex is not detecting any ships in the area or xenos activity, but contact with resistance is not an impossibility,> he continued. <We will secure the Cerastus Knight-Atrapos designated Clarion Call and the surrounding area, signal the Divine Sequence to deploy the super-heavy recovery rig, and return to our landers for immediate take-off. Ave deus Mechanicus.>

<Ave deus Mechanicus,> Iota-11 and the rest of the skitarii rangers responded in unison.

As the lander’s deceleration thrusters softened their impact on the dying world, they felt the mental seal of their emotion partition beginning to slip.

All around Iota-11, ‘haste’ had taken hold of the forces of Agripinaa like a virus to a cogitator mainframe. The towering, nimble Ironstrider Ballistarii paced impatient circles around the deployment zone, the walkers’ gunners slaves to the perpetual motion of their ancient walkers. A group of Onager Dunecrawlers scuttled from their heavy lander, their searchlights flaring to pierce the thick ochre dust swirling violently around the macroclade. Iota-11 and their fellow skitarii rangers marched double time to load into their designated Skorpius Duneriders. They took their place at the rear cognis heavy stubber and briefly scanned the organised chaos for the marshal. ‘Friends’ were something the Cult Mechanicus considered non-essential, and their conflict back on Agripinaa had likely ended any positive affiliation with Neius Lal. They could see the afterimage of a flesh shoulder as they turned, but looked for him regardless, putting the visual anomaly aside for defragmentation.

They saw Neius Lal standing with his hands folded behind his back, facing three mounted squads of Serberys Raiders. Iota-11 had heard of the honourable Serberys corps before, but seeing them lined up in perfect formation was striking. The quadrupedal constructs, cybercanids, Iota-11 recalled, carried their riders with complete and tireless ease. The constructs’ faces resembled canine skulls with fiery blue orbital sensors in place of eyes, and teeth that were too sharp to be purely ornamental. A rider with a thick black cowl and a tall data-tether protruding from her hood coaxed her cybercanid forward towards the marshal. Both bowed their heads and straightened simultaneously.

<Interrogative: What is your report, Serberys Alpha Rho-37?> Neius Lal questioned with a respectful nod made more pronounced by the tall half-cog mounted atop his helmet.

<Informative: Clarion Call retrieval beacon appears to be coming from the base of a mountain thirty miles from our current location. We have determined an acceptable route through the remains of the mining complex ahead. This will avoid the worst of the tectonic fissures and gravitational hazards, but will not be without considerable risk. Auspex suites are only operable at five per cent.> The alpha’s cant was smooth and cool. She seemed utterly unfazed by the dangers she and her riders would assuredly meet head-on.

<Authorising: You may proceed. Signal the Ironstrider Ballistarii to follow you closely. My rangers and the Onager Dunecrawlers will not be far behind.>

<Confirmed and implemented, marshal.> Rho-37 and her cybercanid bowed their heads again before making an about-turn and taking off with the rest of the Serberys Raiders at a shocking pace. In the distance, the tangled skeleton of a long-abandoned city crept through the billowing orange clouds and cracks of lightning.

<Command: All units depart at eighty per cent speed and maintain,> the marshal ordered through the noosphere.

The driver of Iota-11’s Dunerider complied upon immediate receipt, opening the transport vehicle’s throttle and all but biting at the heels of the bounding Ironstriders. Iota-11 gripped the side of the vehicle hard enough to feel their fingers lose circulation. They shuddered, and the sensation vanished, the augmetic hand holding fast and without strain.

I only have to make it through this mission, they assured themself, keeping their unblinking eyes on the twisted buildings rapidly growing in size. Then, I can submit myself for repairs. The Omnissiah will guide me to optimal functionality.

It didn’t take long for the macroclade to cross the ruined landing field and begin to pick its way through the derelict mining complex. All around them, hell had come to Cataegis-7. Open mining pits had split into ever-widening chasms filled with lava bubbling up from the planet’s ruined mantle. Heat haze made every building appear to undulate dangerously, despite Iota-11’s enhanced vision. Huge, jagged pillars of volcanic rock had shunted themselves up from the deteriorating planet, impaling remnants of buildings and vehicles alike. Iota-11’s rebreather filtered out the noxious compounds in the air, but it still left them with a bitter, sulphurous taste in their mouth.

Following their squad’s alpha’s orders, Iota-11 and the ranger opposite them began firing the cognis heavy stubbers at large pieces of debris blocking the Dunerider’s path. High-speed winds hurled fragments at the exposed skitarii rangers like projectiles, but most just weathered the impacts. Speed took precedence over minor injury. Iota-11 used their inbuilt targeting systems to account for the speed of the Dunerider and fire with speed and precision unattainable by an unaugmented human.

Suddenly, a warning from Neius Lal blared across the entire macroclade’s noospheric connection. <Imperative: Sudden severe seismic activity is imminent. Increase to maximum speed.>

Before the Dunerider’s driver could accelerate, the thunderous roar of rock scraping metal overtook Iota-11’s senses. The Ironstrider Ballistarius that had moments before been leading them on was tossed like the broken toy of some indifferent giant into the air before collapsing in a fiery heap. Even though the Skorpius Duneriders were hovercraft, they still needed to repel off the ground beneath them to stay in motion. As the ground shuddered more and more violently, the troop transports struggled to stay on course. The Duneriders skidded to and fro, one of them colliding with an Onager Dunecrawler fighting to find purchase on the rapidly shattering ground and exploding on impact. Iota-11’s own Dunecrawler was sent spinning, only barely recovering to avoid smashing into the remains of an overturned excavator.

The surface of Cataegis-7 continued to thrash and writhe like a wounded beast. A terrible metallic groan pierced the din as one of the massive refinery towers succumbed to the violent quaking. The huge mass of rockcrete and rebar fell like a great tree grown from a forest of industry. Iota-11 emptied an entire belt of heavy stubber rounds into the collapsing building, but they may as well have tried to stop an oncoming tide with a sieve. Helpless, they and the other rangers held on to the Dunerider and crouched low. The vehicle’s engines burned white-hot with punishing demand, and the rangers began to offer fervent prayers in binharic.

The ruined refinery tower hit the ground with a deafening impact. The sheer force of its mass crashing down threw the Dunerider forward, its stabilising propulsors just barely able to keep it from being tossed end over end. A fire erupted from its carcass and began to pick up speed and volume without impediment. The Dunerider rocketed its way to the end of the city with an avalanche of fiery industrial wreckage hot on its tail. As the troop transport escaped the perimeter of the major complex, the violent tremors had slowed to a stop, but the Dunerider kept following the trail laid by the Serberys Raiders.

Iota-11 desperately checked the status of the macroclade through the noosphere. The Raiders had been nimble enough to minimise casualties, losing only three constructs and riders. An Onager Dunecrawler and another Dunerider had been taken to an early grave on the dying planet.

May their memory be stored, Iota-11 said, repeating the common mourning rite to themself. The macroclade kept moving at breakneck speed. New estimations were coming in through the noosphere that more seismic activity was anticipated, and each tremor posed an enormous risk to retrieving Clarion Call in one piece.

Then, Iota-11 heard it. An unmistakable, resonant engine roar and sharp wings cutting through tormented air. They knew what it was before another noospheric warning from Neius Lal confirmed the worst had befallen them:

<Warning: Incoming enemy Thunderhawks. Affiliation: Iron Warriors, Traitor Legion. All units, prepare for immediate combat engagement.>

Years ago, when the Grim Forge had tolerated the company of a warrior of the Emperor’s Children on a mutually beneficial operation, the ever-prideful legionary of the III had spun an impressive yarn about always being the first off the Thunderhawk’s ramp and the ecstasy it brought him. Now, as Warpsmith Iakovos took great, bounding steps down the metal slope and out into the sickly yellow light of Cataegis-7, he could concede that the purple-armoured madman had been onto something.

Behind and all around him, two companies of Iron Warriors disembarked from their transports like a steel tide. He knew better than to take his helmet off in either an active warzone or hazardous conditions, let alone both at the same time, but he almost let his judgement falter to feel something other than stale air on his face. There would be plenty of time for that after the Subjugator had secured the needed compounds to replenish its fuel stores, he told himself.

After they managed to secure the Knight-Atrapos.

Their auspex had already detected the battered Adeptus Mechanicus forces making their best attempt towards the mountain base from where the beacon signal was being broadcast. The Grim Forge had landed on the top of a hill away from the Mechanicus forces, and he looked down upon them with disdain through his helmet’s targeting array. The black-and-red troopers were fleeing pitifully from the collapsing remains of a mining complex in a huge plume of dust and dirt. He hadn’t turned a man into paste in some time, and he was quite looking forward to making the foolhardy machine worshippers suffer. The Iron Warriors didn’t pray to their machines or invoke fickle gods for their thrice-cursed blessings. They took what they wanted by force, and built the rest with brutal skill.

He raised his hand, held it aloft briefly, and let his voice carry over his warband’s helmet-to-helmet vox. ‘Warriors of the Grim Forge – let none survive.’

All across the vox-link, he heard them answer with the enthusiasm of men who knew their true purpose could finally be unleashed upon an unsuspecting foe: ‘Iron within, iron without! Iron within, iron without!’

Iakovos’ hand fell in a swift chop, and the Grim Forge moved like a battering ram cut loose. Their enormous march strides brought them rapidly into optimal firing range. The muzzles of their bolters began to flare, sending a hail of mass-reactive shells into the unsuspecting Mechanicus forces beneath them. One of their troop transports, a type of oversized speeder by his measure, took the brunt of the volley and immediately burst into flames. The troopers had enough sense to throw themselves from the burning vehicle before it crashed against a pillar of volcanic rock.

Pathetic.

He thumbed the activation rune on his power maul, and thrust it into the sky, sending a pulse of energy out from the spiked head of the menacing weapon like a beacon. Instantly, six indomitable daemon engines burst forward from six Thunderhawks: three slavering Maulerfiends and three bellowing Forgefiends launched themselves out of their transports, almost knocking the gunships off their landing gear. Iakovos did not envy the punishment these terrible constructs would deal to the close-minded tech zealots – but he would relish it.

Iota-11 had hit the ground hard after leaping from the ruined Dunerider. Augmented reflexes moved their body before they consciously did, making them feel dragged behind the combat roll that brought them to rest beside a half-melted quarry conveyor.

The rest of their squad had reacted swiftly enough to avoid the explosion, and were signalling to regroup. The cacophony of bolter fire and daemonic roars was deafening, and shook the ground with enough force to rival the sundering of the planet itself. Iota-11 dampened their auditory receptors and kept a low profile, sprinting to rejoin their squad. They were all exposed in this debris field, with little to use as cover. They hastily glanced over their shoulder.

Death had come for them, marching onward with the inevitable certainty of time running out.

Death came clad in power armour.

Rows and rows of Heretic Astartes advanced over the hill and trampled the complex’s detritus with ease. Iota-11 could see their red helmet lenses flashing with the light of each bolt-round fired. One of those rounds whizzed past them, missing by inches, and struck their squad’s alpha square in the back. The alpha’s data-tether backpack crumpled on impact, and the force of the explosive round dragged the machine’s shrapnel through their back and burst out through their chest in a spray of sparks and gore.

Iota-11 could only leap over their corpse and keep running with the rest of their squad.

Marshal Neius Lal’s voice pierced the noosphere, jerking Iota-11’s attention away from the dead alpha.

<Command: All units, make all haste to the base of the mountain. Our speed and mobility are superior to that of the Archenemy. We must reach Clarion Call and secure a fortified position.>

In perfect synchronicity, Iota-11 and their squad pushed their augmetic legs hard to a pace that would leave a Guardsman long behind and winded. They joined with four other skitarii squads, and watched more ahead of them, either still on their Duneriders or on foot, begin to close the distance between the macroclade and their ultimate destination. Two Ironstrider Ballistarii began to follow them, laying down covering fire into the oncoming wall of traitors with their cognis lascannons. The white-hot beams effortlessly punched through ceramite and bone, taking down a legionary with each shot. Every time an armoured body fell, another more vital and furious stepped forward to replace him and continue firing.

<Imperative: All units, maintain course towards the retrieval beacon in the mountain.> The smooth voice of Rho-37 rang clearly in the noosphere. <The Serberys Raiders and Onager Dunecrawlers AGP-38 through AGP-44 have a path to a frontal assault. Objective: We will hold them as long as we can.>

Just as she had said, the Serberys Raiders and Onager Dunecrawlers swept across the right side of the battlefield like a scythe. Iota-11 watched with horror bubbling beneath the surface of their emotion partition as the Dunecrawlers’ eradication beamers rained devastating fire down upon the Chaos warband. The Raiders were metallic blurs dipping and dodging in and around the Iron Warriors, firing their galvanic carbines at equal speed. Iota-11 saw confirmed-kill signifiers begin to populate in the noosphere. The charge may have been suicidal, but it was working.

Briefly.

Three lumbering monstrosities vaulted clear over the heads of the Iron Warriors and landed their full bulk on three of the Onager Dunecrawlers, crushing them instantly. Massive, razor-sharp claws shredded cybercanids and riders alike with an ease and ferocity that could not be attributed to machine superiority alone.

Daemon engines… Iota-11 gasped internally, maintaining their pace but fighting to look back.

They turned their gaze behind them in time to watch the largest of the Maulerfiends ignore the rounds the Serberys Raiders were pumping into it, open its colossal jaws, and snap Rho-37’s head off her shoulders. Blood geysered from the pulpy stump. Her cybercanid launched itself at the horrific daemon engine, Rho-37’s lifeless body still sitting upright in her saddle. It met its end between the Maulerfiend’s paw and the broken earth, flattened into a hunk of crumpled, bloody metal.

One by one, unit signifiers began to disappear from the noosphere. By the time Iota-11 and the remains of the macroclade made it to the mountain vault, the Onager Dunecrawlers and Serberys Raiders had been thoroughly decimated. Despite their sacrifice and the enemies they had felled, the implacable march of the Iron Warriors continued, drawing closer with each dreadful second. Iota-11’s enhanced vision could pick out a distinct figure amongst the horrifying mass: the Heretic Astartes still bore the colours and iconography of the Iron Warriors, but carried a mace wreathed in malevolent energy. Lashing mechadendrites snaked around him like steel vipers.

<Informative: They appear to be led by a warpsmith,> Marshal Neius Lal said as he connected himself to the towering metal blast doors built into the mountain, tall enough to accommodate fifty feet of cranes and drills – or forty feet of Knight-Atrapos. The device’s machine spirit must have been weak or dead, the doors sliding open without resistance.

<Command: We hold our ground here. Skitarii squads R4 and R5, proceed further in and locate Clarion Call. Once it is free from its storage or constraints, signal the Divine Sequence to drop the retrieval rig. You should be able to punch a simple vox-cast through the electromagnetic interference.>

As he looked across the forces before him, Neius Lal lingered for a nanosecond in Iota-11’s direction. Most skitarii had never seen each other’s faces. Iota-11 remembered what it felt like to move their facial muscles in response to an emotion. Though the marshal’s face was obscured by the half-cog helmet of his station, Iota-11 felt that he would have looked sad.

<Command: Remaining skitarii and Ironstrider Ballistarii, we afford the retrieval squads as much time as we are able.>

<Confirmed and implemented, marshal,> sounded the remaining forces of Agripinaa.

Iota-11 reached out to Neius Lal privately through the noosphere against their better judgement as they dashed through the opening doors.

<Query: Do you intend to confront the warpsmith yourself?>

<Forceful: I intend to execute the Omnissiah’s will. Continue to your assignment.>

<Request: Be careful.>

There was a pause, and then a quiet response, almost a binharic whisper. <Request: You too.>

It didn’t take Iota-11 and the two skitarii squads long to find Clarion Call. The war machine was gargantuan and impossible to hide. The mountain vault appeared to have been a storage facility for the oversized mining equipment used by the crews of Cataegis-7. The Knight-Atrapos had been cradled and mag-locked into place as if it were nothing more than another tool in a hab-block-tall toolbox. Did the miners even know what they possessed, or did they pass it off as some strange engine they had no use for? Many questions burned in Iota-11’s cortex, but they knew the answers would be impossible to determine.

Clarion Call had not escaped the planet’s death throes. A deep fissure had split the mountain vault’s flooring, and the Knight had partially fallen into it. Its right arm and leg were completely out of sight, its shoulder carapace wedged firmly into the silt and stone broken apart by repeated tortuous earthquakes. Its head could just barely be seen pressed against the sundered rock. A pale blue light flashed from somewhere on the great machine’s chest, obscured but casting menacing shadows on Clarion Call’s face.

The retrieval squads stared at the Knight suit, half consumed by the earth, and fell still. They stood at attention, as if waiting for orders they knew wouldn’t come. Error codes and confused code bursts flitted across the noosphere. With no alphas left in either squad, the skitarii rangers were paralysed, lacking rank and initiative to make decisions for themselves. Something had to be done.

<Declarative: We must manoeuvre Clarion Call into a more favourable position. Then, the retrieval rig should be able to help secure it for our return to Agripinaa.> They put all of their might into their binharic, and found it cut across the rest of the chatter. The other rangers turned their rebreather-covered heads and wide blue oculars simultaneously to look at Iota-11. They were listening.

<Suggestion: Squad R4 should begin removing debris from Clarion Call’s body. Squad R5 should locate any equipment we can use to haul it from the fissure. I will contact the marshal and request the assistance of one of the Ironstriders.>

<Confirmed and implemented.> Black-hooded heads bobbed in agreement and scattered to perform their functions.

The mountain shuddered, and more dirt began to fall loosely from the dizzyingly high ceiling. An artillery bombardment or another earthquake could easily render their efforts wholly impossible. Haste is key to our mission’s success, Iota-11 repeated to themself, and reached out again to Neius Lal in the noosphere.

<Request: Marshal, the Knight-Atrapos is stuck in a fissure. We need additional support to free it.>

Nothing. His signal remained, but no reply followed.

<Query: Are you receiving me?>

Nothing.

Iota-11 bolted back out through the mountain vault doors, laying down covering fire with their galvanic rifle as they moved. They swept their vision across the battlefield, and were met by dozens of mangled skitarii bodies, and toppled Ironstriders. Those that still remained in the fight were rapidly losing ground, surrounded by the seemingly endless supply of immovable Iron Warriors.

Then, they saw him. Neius Lal was locked in combat with the warpsmith, desperately blocking bone-shattering strikes from the hulking traitor’s power maul with his control stave and firing his pistol in bursts. He nimbly vaulted around the warpsmith, but his foe did not need to waste energy dodging. Try as he might, Neius Lal was barely putting smoking dents in the warpsmith’s astonishingly thick power armour.

Iota-11 knelt, lined up their sights with the warpsmith’s eye-lenses, and fired.

The electrified round cracked a lens, but didn’t so much as slow their enemy.

The power maul came down hard on Neius Lal’s neck, snapping it so hard that his spine exploded out through his throat and his upper chest caved in completely. He died as instantly as his noospheric signifier disappeared. The marshal’s body fell limply at the feet of the warpsmith, who kicked the corpse out of the way and continued his march forward.

Iota-11 watched helplessly as their friend’s body skidded across the dirt, and their emotion partition could no longer hold. Their eyelids had long since been removed, their augmented eyeballs permanently submerged in balms so their visual data could always be accessed by a tech-priest. Still, tears flowed and mingled with the gel, leaking down their gaunt cheeks hidden by their rebreather. Their rifle slid from their trembling hands and clattered uselessly on the ground.

Neius Lal was dead.

The macroclade was nearly wiped out.

The Knight-Atrapos was trapped.

The Iron Warriors and their daemon engines were nearly upon them.

‘Help…’ Iota-11 whispered in their flesh-voice, their vision still transfixed on the marshal’s body. ‘We… need help…’

A plasma blast fired from one of the Forgefiends in the distance struck the side of the mountain, showering Iota-11 in stone shrapnel. Their trance was broken as the explosion rang in their auditory array, and a wave of desperation struck them as though they had been shot. They scrambled away, leaving their galvanic rifle behind and sprinting back to the Knight-Atrapos. Panic took full hold of them when they saw the ranger squads trying and failing to move the Knight even a fraction of an inch. Augmented and improved as they were, eighteen skitarii rangers and plasteel chains were simply not enough.

Their right arm began to burn, and then ache deep in the bones it no longer had. If Clarion Call was going to move, it was going to have to move itself. Everyone in the Adeptus Mechanicus knew that an individual must undergo the Ritual of Becoming to fully integrate with their Knight and pilot it to its fullest potential. Iota-11 didn’t need Clarion Call’s fullest potential. They just needed it to walk outside.

They moved like a person possessed, wordless and ignoring the noospheric queries from the rest of the skitarii rangers. Iota-11 climbed over the back carapace of the Knight-Atrapos, located the emergency cockpit release, and pulled it hard. The hiss of millennia-old air escaped the seal. It was dark inside the cockpit, the space cavernous and covered in twisting wires like overgrown vines. The Throne Mechanicum itself resembled a deep-seated chair in form, but one dedicated wholly to function rather than comfort. Iota-11 pressed the activation stud on the vox-caster in their backpack, alerting the Divine Sequence to drop the retrieval rig. Then, they lowered themself into Clarion Call’s Throne Mechanicum and closed the hatch behind them.

The moment their body sank into the throne, its interface ports reflexively came to life and connected with Iota-11’s augmetics. It hurt, sending spikes of electrified pain through their limbs. Abruptly, the pain vanished along with Iota-11’s vision, shunting them into total darkness.

Knight pilots see what their Knights see. If Clarion Call sees nothing, neither can I, they tried futilely to soothe themself. The Knight was supposed to activate once the human component was connected, was it not?

But you are not a human component, are you? came an unknown voice in the depthless dark, seething with barely contained fury. Neither are you of House Hadrius, yet you presume to sit upon our throne.

Who is there? Iota-11 said in their mind. They could no longer feel their connection to the noosphere, but something – or multiple somethings – was still communicating with them. They still couldn’t see anything, yet they had the distinct impression of human presences, ancient and disembodied. Then, it came to them: dataghosts, the last vestiges of all of the pilots who came before.

Look at you, all hacked to pieces, another voice chastised. What does your order say again? ‘The weakness of flesh disgusts us,’ or some such drivel?

We seek to improve ourselves in the Machine God’s image, Iota-11 replied, but their words sounded small and weak, even to them.

What was wrong with your own image? a third voice sneered. Is your humanity so useless to you?

The Cult Mechanicus teaches us to rise above our humanity, to transcend it in pursuit of knowledge and the purity of steel. The ache in Iota-11’s arm grew to a stabbing pain that raked across their fingertips and spread through their shoulder.

You speak of your creed, your order. What about you? the first voice questioned.

I… do not understand. Iota-11 pushed themself against the back of the Throne Mechanicum as if to put futile distance between them and the dataghosts.

What about you? the second voice asked contemptuously. What strength of character can even be measured in someone, nay, something like you?

You haven’t been remade in the image of your god, the third voice said solemnly. You have been boiled down to your base parts, made smaller in order to fit into some greater mechanism. A pilot would never allow themself to be made less, but you? You did so willingly. What footholds are even left for your soul in that wretched body?

We are beset by the Archenemy. The Iron Warriors are slaughtering our macroclade. They are led by a warpsmith who brings with him daemon engines. It logically follows that they would seek to defile Clarion Call. You criticise me for remaking myself, but would you suffer Clarion Call being remade in the image of Chaos? Iota-11 begged, their body beginning to seize. The lagging feeling was back, but significantly worse, making their thrashing simultaneously dangerously violent and nauseatingly slow. I beseech you, please allow me to operate Clarion Call but briefly.

That is for Clarion Call to decide, the first voice boomed, and suddenly, all three of the voices were silent.

Iota-11 still couldn’t see anything in the inky pitch, but they couldn’t shake the sensation of being watched by some ancient and powerful predator. The machine spirit was old and scarred. Even in the total darkness, it felt like a black hole pulling everything else into it by the sheer force of its presence. It knew its purpose, and its armaments were stained with the blood and oil of a thousand heretic machines. Iota-11 felt the presence lunge for them and they screamed, gripping the controls of the Throne Mechanicum reflexively.

They should have felt nothing. Their augmetic hands lacked the capacity to simulate touch. Even accounting for the error in their right arm, cold metal would have made sense.

Instead, they felt rough tree bark and grass warmed by sunlight. They blinked with eyelids they used to have and opened their eyes. The sky was teal blue, streaked with grey smoke from processing plants. They smelled citrus and machine oil, and watched as a group of farmers harvested crops from orchards that stretched to the horizon and loaded the fresh food into awaiting tithe ships. Their muscles ached from hard labour and lack of sleep. They looked down at their hands. They were callused and bandaged, but they were real.

Maybe they had lived here once, before they were Iota-11, before fire and xenos terrors had ravaged this place, before they had to flee to Agripinaa. Maybe they too had tilled the land and never thought of picking up a rifle. They grasped their right wrist in their hand and held it to their chest. When they lost their arm, they wanted nothing more than to replace it with steel. Now, they would have given up every augmentation for the flesh of who they had been. Though they could not see it, they felt the presence of Clarion Call’s machine spirit at the edges of their perception. It was waiting.

Iota-11, or whatever they might have been called, turned their eyes back to the teal sky. The Adeptus Mechanicus had demanded much of them, and taken from them freely. They had even tried to take this memory, but somehow, some part of them held fast to it. They were still a person, unique in their experiences and hopes for the future, even if the body that held those hopes had been cut away and rebuilt for the present wars.

They felt their eyelids grow heavy, grey and teal blurring into black. When their vision came again, they were looking at a rock fissure overlaid with a complex targeting display and systems information.

They moved their right arm again, and Clarion Call swept its own arm up to the edge of the fissure. Skitarius and Knight-Atrapos hauled themselves clear of the jaws of the earth and stood upright, free and defiant.

Clarion Call’s yards-long strides quickly brought Iota-11 face to face with the ruin of their macroclade. R4 and R5 squads had been called out to fight, and they too lay in pools of their own blood and hydraulic fluid. Everyone was gone.

The Iron Warriors had suffered not insignificant losses, but they had come out of the fight standing, even holding on to two of their daemon engines.

Daemon engines.

The warpsmith.

Iota-11 directed power to the Atrapos lascutter on Clarion Call’s right arm and the graviton singularity cannon in its left. The two remaining daemon engines, a Maulerfiend and a Forgefiend, flanked the bloodstained warpsmith and his warband. They felt Clarion Call’s machine spirit rage at the sight of the malevolent constructs, and its eagerness to annihilate them. Iota-11 abided.

They drove Clarion Call forward, picking up speed and cycling their weapons. The Maulerfiend threw itself forward, slavering at the mouth and slashing with its claws. Iota-11 caught the Maulerfiend mid-air on the barrel of the lascutter and fired it point-blank. The corrupted machine was bisected with enough force to catapult its separate halves off the end of the gigantic weapon. Viscera and oil rained down upon the Iron Warriors, and a handful were crushed by each ruined half of the daemon engine. Iota-11 kept firing the Atrapos lascutter, ripping through Heretic Space Marines, casting dismembered and melted bodies to the four winds.

The Forgefiend fired its twisted cannons, pumping out devastating ordnance. Clarion Call’s heavily reinforced armour held fast, shrugging off the impacts and continuing its righteous advance. Cataegis-7 began to tremble with another seismic event, but neither Clarion Call nor Iota-11 would be stopped, not even for a dying planet. The graviton singularity cannon reached its maximum charge, and the skitarius and Knight-Atrapos fired.

A terrifying beam of roiling purple energy sliced through the air and condensed into a near-black ball before expanding and crushing everything around it. The Forgefiend was sucked into it first, its limbs breaking in ghastly directions and its body folding in on itself, sandwiching meat with metal. Many of the Iron Warriors tried to retreat to their Thunderhawks, but were overpowered by the singularity’s devastating gravitational force. Suits of ceramite power armour crumpled like ration cans, and the traitors within them died in agony. Even the ground beneath the singularity was shattered and absorbed into its mass.

In the corner of their shared vision, Iota-11 saw that the warpsmith had just barely managed to escape the singularity’s gravity field, albeit with a leg shattered so badly that they could tell there weren’t any bones left to hold the limb together under the power armour. He would not be permitted to flee. Iota-11 and Clarion Call took a single step forward to tower over him, looking down upon their most hated enemy with mechanical eyes brimming with contempt. They raised their foot and brought it down as hard as they could on top of the warpsmith. The impact and pressure caused his armour to rupture and his body to burst, turning muscle, organs, and bone into mist. There wasn’t even a corpse left to kick.

When the singularity lost its stability and dissipated, all was quiet. Iota-11 and Clarion Call stood totally alone on a planet breathing its last. Iota-11 turned the Knight back towards the mountain. They were breathing harder, but their oxygen levels still displayed at dangerously low levels. They could feel parts of their insides slowly losing vitality and shutting down. The disjointedness from their body made them feel as though they had already begun to hover over their own corpse.

They knew they were dying, and that Clarion Call’s great machine spirit would soon overwhelm them. Their spirit was being pulled from their body, the last threads ready to snap.

Iota-11 lifted the Knight’s head and saw that the retrieval rig was completing its descent through the atmosphere. Agripinaa would have its Machine God-given boon. Yet they felt no pride in this.

Instead they continued back across the battlefield, and lowered the great war machine to a kneeling position. Ever so delicately, they scooped the body of Neius Lal up onto the barrel of the Atrapos lascutter and raised him to Clarion Call’s face. Were it not for the horrific damage done to him, he could have been sleeping on a silver bed.

He was a person too, Iota-11 thought to themself sadly. And he was my friend.

They felt their limbs grow weary, and eventually, they stopped feeling them altogether. Their heart rate plummeted. Blackness crept over their vision until they could no longer see the body of Neius Lal.

Iota-11 had been afraid to die. They weren’t sure what it would be like. When would the transition complete itself? When would their thoughts cease and oblivion take over? Would they even know it had happened?

All skitarii died. It was proof that they had served the Omnissiah faithfully until their systems finally shut down.

All humans died. It was proof that they had lived.

When their breathing stopped and their body gave out, Iota-11 felt a profound sense of comfort, as though great steel arms cradled them and carried them softly into the dark.

About the Author

Avalon Irons is a game writer and editor who likes their fiction spooky. Their journey with Warhammer 40,000 began with building their first original Exorcist tank, and has grown exponentially as they’ve branched into writing for Black Library, which includes the short stories ‘The Only Way Is Through’ and ‘Imperfect Engines’. They live in Southern California with their partner and a little grey cat.

An extract from Genefather.

In a room of scant comforts, Alpha Primus slept.

He appeared peaceful in his sleep; a giant slab of machine-made muscle laid so still, so unmoving, that were it not for the slow rise and fall of his enormous chest, it would have been possible to think him dead.

His quarters were stark as a mortuary, and bare of adornment. The sole features were his bed, a stand for his bolter, pistol and chainsword, and a glass-fronted case built into the wall where his enormous armour hung on a frame, the dead eyes of the helm glowering disapprovingly on the sleeping giant, as if it resented being set aside.

Cold blue light from the armour case cast a frosty sheen on the room’s unpainted metal. Primus’ bed was a single block of steel risen up out of the floor, enormous in dimension. For a pillow, there was a smaller block moulded to the contours of his neck and head. The sole concession to human softness was a coverlet of fur, threadbare now with many years of use, but that was crumpled, wrapped about one leg tightly; discarded in his sleep as a weakness, perhaps, though Primus, stiff and solemn as a sarcophagus sculpture, did not appear to have moved.

The room was freezing, but Primus slept naked, and his body was a strange winter landscape in the glow of the armorium. The input sockets for his power armour were scattered fortifications, his muscles grim and unconquerable hills, his scars cold roads dividing the patchwork textures of his skin into fallow fields. He was not beautiful, Alpha Primus, yet nor was he truly ugly, for there was a sort of glory to the roughness of his features. He had the look of something suited to its purpose. There was artistry in his creation, and love if not of the form, then at least of utility.

Belisarius Cawl had crafted him well.

Calm: the calm of death, the calm of duty ended. That was the atmosphere within this sepulchre, yet Primus was no monument, he was a living man, and his chest rose, and it fell, and his breath steamed on each exhalation. Peace and quiet, where beyond the walls of his cell was the industrial clamour of Cawl’s kingdom-ship, and beyond that the endless wars of the Imperium.

His calmness was deceptive. Behind serene features, the giant was dreaming, and his dreams were not gentle.

Primus was in the eye of the storm.

The restless energies of the warp battered at him, loud as hurricane winds. His soul flared and guttered under their strength, teasing out streamers of corposant from the glowing form he possessed in that insane and impossible place. Despite the soul-searing pain he experienced, he held his position, seeking enlightenment. Flashes of presentiment coursed through his being and he saw a complex dancing of stars. A flat world. War.

Far off, great and terrible intelligences were becoming aware of him. He felt the shift in the sea of dreams, as of leviathans stirring the water as they rose from the deeps.

Something enfolded him. A presence, or many presences, he could not tell. Golden light. A great eagle leapt up from nowhere, twin heads screaming. One head stared at him, the other was blind. The eagle erupted into a cloud of sparks that whirled away upon the psychic tempest. Beyond, he glimpsed the great beacon of the Astronomican, and a figure, or figures, writhing within its light, then it was gone.

Primus.

A voice.

Primus.

It was broken, cracked, a used-up voice long past the peak of its powers. Fragmentary, almost a chorus of itself, so broken into pieces it was.

Primus. Cawl.

He felt a regard with that voice. There was a concern in it verging on disgust, and something else… Curiosity? Hope? Those two emotions, certainly; others too, he thought.

Primus. A rival to your maker.

A spear of gold hurtled towards his head, piercing it before he had time to move. The churning landscape of the empyrean vanished, and he saw instead a pair of eyes, a striking violet. Beautiful eyes, but set in an old face full of a hateful cunning.

The spider comes.

He saw the whole of the figure, a Space Marine of the old Legions. Who, he did not know. Their kind were sadly numerous, each of their forms a reflection of their unique depravities. It was impossible to know them all.

The Spider Comes.

Primus came awake suddenly, flailing at invisible enemies. He was half off his bed before he remembered where he was. He lowered himself back onto the metal, head drooping, letting the cold certainties of reality banish the dream. But it was not just a dream. Purple foxfires clung to the corners of the room, fading now, leaving a tart stink; the aftermath of manifest psykana.

He took in a breath. It shuddered. Not like him to feel fear. The pains that dogged him always seemed especially harsh on waking, like frigid knives sliding between his muscles.

He gripped the bed’s unforgiving edge and pushed himself up. He dressed himself in his armour undersuit, and put a hooded robe over the top.

He must speak with Cawl.

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