Aaron Aaron Dembski-Bowden - Cadian Blood

“Alliance,” Darrick hissed through gritted teeth. “Broken.”

“Repeat,” Thade said. The signal was bad. Interference from the explosion that had raged through the choir chamber and destroyed a whole wall? Probably.

“I am having absolutely no fun today,” Darrick hissed, pulling out a chunk of shrapnel from his thigh. He looked up from where he lay. His men—those that still lived—were rousing. Too experienced to rise fully and face enemy fire, they crawled through the shredded furniture, finding cover wherever they could. Las-fire was already flashing at them from the Kathurite positions across the chamber.

“This is Alliance, captain.” Darrick reached out bleeding fingers to pull his fallen lasgun closer. He’d carried that weapon since he’d been a Whiteshield over twenty years ago. Not a chance in hell he’d leave it here, no matter how battered it was. His fingertips snagged the strap, and he dragged on it. The rifle bore a palette of fresh burns and new scratches, but otherwise looked fine. He guessed it would still fire. “Alliance: Broken,” he repeated.

“Acknowledged. Cruor inbound. Hold in the name of the Emperor,” was Thade’s curt reply before cutting the link.

Easier said than done, thought Darrick.

A gang-ramp slammed closed. Thrusters fired. A machine came to life, taking its cargo into the sky on screaming engines.

The Valkyrie tore through the air over the city. Its downswept wings carried racks of air-to-surface missiles the pilots could never fire, and the twin autocannons on the gunship’s cheeks remained silent even as the Valkyrie flew over tertiary threat targets already beginning to flood the streets cleared by the Guard earlier in the day. The cannons’ silence was not to save ammunition or, as in the case of the rockets, to prevent damage to the planet’s sacred architecture. At this speed, there was simply no way the pilots could expect to hit anything. Dead bodies wept at the sight of the troop transport as it shot overhead, en route to the Shrine of the Emperor’s Unending Majesty. The Valkyrie, crow-black and dragon-loud, roared onward.

On one side of the cockpit, which arched down like a sneering vulture’s face at the cityscape flashing below, were two words in Imperial Gothic lettering. The name of the gunship itself: His Holy Blade .

On the opposite side was a simple word in High Gothic. The name of the gunship’s cargo: Cruor.

As the 88th hunted within, Enginseer Osiron remained outside the monastery with the thirty Chimeras.

He was not alone, of course. The drivers, armed and ready, stood by their vehicles. A handful busied themselves with minor maintenance on engines or armour plating. Between the orderly rows of Chimeras, lobotomised tech-servitors moved here and there, using their augmetic hands and machine tool limbs to aid in the repairs. One of the servitors—formerly a deserter, now a half-machine slave without a mind—had its forearms replaced with industrial scrubbers. It crouched by the command Chimera, its whirring hands scrubbing and flushing out gore from the tank’s treads. Another servitor with a hammer for a left hand panel-beat another tank’s distorted front armour back into Standard Construct regulation shape.

Dead Man’s Hand stalked around the parked troop transports, their steps making a rhythmic drumbeat of blessed iron on stone. Perimeter defence duty.

Wreathed in a cloak of blood red, the hood pulled over his head and hiding his features, Enginseer Osiron nodded silently to one of the patrolling Sentinels as it passed. Vertain replied to the tech-priest’s nod with an acknowledgement blip over the vox.

None of the 88th knew Osiron’s age. He could have been thirty or two hundred and thirty. His face was forever concealed by the low-hanging crimson hood and a surgically attached rebreather mask covering his nose, mouth and chin. The only visible human features beyond the pale skin of his cheeks were his eyes of Cadian violet, glinting in the depths of the hood’s shadow.

His body—what there was to see of it beneath the traditional robe of the Machine Cult of Mars—was an armoured form of tarnished plating, whirring gears and hissing pistons. Ostensibly he was human, at least at the most basic level: two arms, two legs, and so on.

But everything visible was replaced or augmented with the holy alterations of his cult. His internal organs ticked and clicked loud enough to hear. His joints hummed as gears simulated bones moving in harmony. His voice was a toneless murmur emitted from the vox-speakers on the front of his rebreather. This last aspect betrayed his curious inhumanity most of all, turning every breath into an audible rise and fall of static. Krsssh, in. Krsssh, out.

Osiron leaned on the haft of his massive two-handed axe. The weapon was too heavy for an unaugmented man to lift, and sported the split-skull image of the Adeptus Mechanicus on its black iron blade. From a bulky backpack that thrummed with power, a multi-jointed mechanical arm rose and extended out, its clawed hand opening and closing as if stretching. A cutting torch on the arm’s wrist flared briefly as the power claw whirred closed. Drill bits and other tools folded back into the arm’s body. It coiled behind the tech-priest’s shoulder, reposed.

“Count the Seven,” Osiron’s internal vox said directly into his left ear. It had been doing that for an hour now and, unlike the squads engaged in the retaking of the monastery, Osiron had disobeyed orders, remaining tapped into the compromised frequency. It fascinated him.

“Curious,” he said in a murmur of vox-speakers. The servitor next to him turned slowly, unsure if it had misheard an order. Osiron tapped a button on the signum attached to his belt, hanging down his thigh like a metal pouch decorated with a hundred keys to press. The servitor cancelled its attention cycle, going back to staring mutely ahead, as dead in its own way as the poor wretches still staggering across this planet.

“Osiron to Vertain.”

“Honoured enginseer?”

“Monitor auspex for signs of jamming.”

“Yes, sir.”

Sir. The title always made Osiron smile. He held some minor authority in the 88th by dint of expertise, his ruthlessly logical mind and his close friendship with the captain—not from any formal rank.

“I’m not seeing evidence of jamming,” Vertain voxed back. “Confirmed by the rest of my team. Dead Man’s Hand reports no instrument glitches.”

“That, scout-lieutenant, is exactly my point. When have our scanners been so clear?”

“Maybe we’re just lucky.” Osiron was no expert at interpreting human emotion through tone of voice, but Vertain’s doubts were obvious as he spoke. He didn’t believe what he’d suggested. Neither did Osiron.

“Unlikely. Auspex has been clear for over an hour. I detect none of the interference we have come to associate as standard for Kathur Reclamation operations.”

“Acknowledged, honoured enginseer. I’ve already logged the clarity of auspex readings with High Command. Can you reach the captain?”

“A moment, please. Suspicions must be confirmed before the captain is alerted. Osiron to inbound Valkyrie His Holy Blade .”

The reply took several seconds. When it came, it hit in a mangled wave of savaged vox. Just noise.

“Enginseer Bylam Osiron to inbound Valkyrie His Holy Blade .” The tech-priest adjusted his internal vox by tweaking dials on his forearm.

“ His Holy Blade . Two minutes until arrival,” the pilot said. “Problems?”

“Count the Seven,” Osiron’s vox whispered again. “Count the Seven.”

The enginseer frowned. “Pilot, report auspex performance as you enter standard close-range scanning distance relative to our position.”