*Is that what you're really afraid of?'

*Perhaps,' whispered Dorn. *I do not yet know what I am afraid of. And that worries me.'

Malcador waved a hand along the length of the Himadri Precinct towards the grim, black portal at its end, their ultimate destination. *Mayhap the Master of the Astrotelepathica will have more news of the Legions.'

*He'd better,' said Dorn. *After the sacrifices we've made to pierce the storms in the warp, there had better be some news of Sanguinius and the Lion.'

*And Guilliman and Russ,' added Malcador.

*I'm not worried about them. They can look after themselves,' said Dorn. *But the others were heading into danger when last I knew of their plans, and it grieves me that I cannot reach them. I need to gather the Legions to strike at the heart of the traitor.'

*You still plan to take the fight to Horus Lupercal?'

*After what he did to Istvaan III it is the only way,' said Dorn, almost flinching at the sound of his former brother's name. *Kill the head and the body will die.'

*Maybe so, but we have problems closer to home to deal with first.'

*You speak of the uprisings on Mars?'

*I do,' confirmed Malcador. *High Adept Ipluvien Maximal contacts me daily with word of further atrocities and loss of knowledge. War has come to the red planet.'

*There is no word from the Fabricator General?'

*None that makes any kind of sense. I fear he is against us now.'

*This Maximal, how reliable is he?'

Malcador shrugged. *How reliable is anything these days? I know Maximal of old, and though he is p.r.o.ne to exaggeration, he is a staunch Emperor's man and I believe he speaks the truth. Mars burns with rebellion.'

*Then we need to secure the solar system before looking to make war in a far off system.'

*What do you propose?' asked Malcador.

*I shall send Sigismund and my four companies of Imperial Fists to secure the forges of Mars. Mondus Occulum and Mondus Gamma produce the bulk of the armour and weapons of the Astartes. We will strike there to capture those forges and when they are ours, we will push outwards and secure the others.'

*Sigismund? A trifle volatile is he not?' asked Malcador. *Might not a mission to Mars benefit from a cooler head than his?'

Dorn smiled, a rare sight in these bleak times. *My first captain is p.r.o.ne to bellicose talk, aye, but I will send Camba-Diaz with him. He will provide a steadying influence on Sigismund. Will that suffice to allay your concerns?'

Malcador nodded. *Of course. You are the commander of the Imperium's armed forces and you have my full confidence, but even a humble administrator such as I knows that you will need more warriors than four companies of Imperial Fists to pacify Mars.'

*We can bulk out the force with regiments of Imperial Army and Auxiliary units stationed on Terra and the moons of Saturn and Jupiter.'

*And perhaps Sor Talgron's Word Bearers?'

*No,' said Dorn. *I need his warriors for the a.s.sault on Istvaan V.'

Malcador paused and looked through one of the soaring windows as the sun began to set behind the tallest peak of the world.

*Who could have believed it would come to this?' he asked.

*No one could have foreseen this,' said Dorn. *Not even the Emperor.'

*If we cannot stop the Warmaster then everything we have built over the last three centuries will be lost, my friend. All our grand achievements and the great dream of unity will turn to ash if we fail. We will perish by our own hands or else be devoured by a tide of alien insurgents, unable to mount more than a token resistance against the ghoulish hordes.'

*Then we cannot afford to fail,' said Dorn.

Malcador turned to face Dorn and looked up into his handsome, weathered features. *Send your warriors to Mars, Rogal Dorn. Secure the Martian forges and then crush the life from Horus Lupercal on Istvaan V.'

Dorn bowed towards him. *It shall be done,' he promised.

3.02.

AS ADEPT ZETH had predicted, the forces of the Fabricator General did indeed return to the Magma City. The sun rose above the calderas of the Tharsis Montes on yet another day of bloodshed and chaos, and auspex lookouts raised the alarm that the inhabitants of her forge had feared.

Legio Mortis was on the march.

Southwards from Pavonis Mons, the engines of Mortis came around the western flanks of Arsia Mons, easily demolishing the high walls surrounding the container yards and runways that fed on the materiel produced by the Magma City. Led by the towering Imperator, Aquila Ignis, a total of thirteen war engines strode through the great breach torn by the guns of the Imperator.

The Imperator's pack moved slowly and ponderously, a mix of Warlords and Reavers, with four Warhounds leading the way like snarling wolves to flush out their prey. Armour of red and silver and black gleamed in the growing light, their hulls freshly daubed with the Eye of Horus. Thundering warhorns blared their warlike intentions and hideous blurts of sc.r.a.pcode screamed their corrupted names across the airwaves.

From a distance they looked like hunched old men, moving with wheezing, stiff-legged gaits, but there was nothing infirm about these terrible war engines. These machines had been designed with the express purpose of destroying the enemies of humanity, but were now perverted to serve a darker purpose and far darker masters.

They paid the vast stacks of containers no mind, intent on pressing onwards to their goal of destruction. The container port was huge, but looming in the distance was the industrial sprawl of the Arsia Mons sub-hives, worker habs and outlying production hubs.

It was to this tangled ma.s.s of structures that Mortis walked, the only route, other than the heavily defended Typhon Causeway, by which their engines could cross the vast magma lagoon upon which Adept Zeth's city stood.

No route wide enough for the t.i.tans existed through the sub-hives, but Princeps Camulos had no need for one. The guns of his t.i.tans could easily blast a path, or simply crush a way through with the weight of his engines. Mortis cared nothing for the millions that dwelled within the sub-hives, only that the Magma City was brought to ruin and Adept Zeth humbled before the new masters of Mars.

Thousands of workers fled before the advancing t.i.tans, ants before a herd of charging bull grox, but like the containers around them, the Mortis engines ignored them, safe in the knowledge that the forces following behind them would mop up any lingering threats.

Flowing like a black-armoured tide of spiked nightmares made real, the warped cohorts of skitarii and horrifically altered battle-servitors poured into the container port, their l.u.s.tful war-shouts echoing weirdly from the metal skins of the stacked containers.

Explosions dotted the landing fields as fuel lines were crushed under the colossal feet of the t.i.tans and flames followed in their wake. Black smoke boiled upwards like dark scratches etched on the sky.

Artillery pieces fired from redoubts and fortifications around the base of the sub-hives, and the ground before the t.i.tans erupted in corrosive flames and deadly clouds of whickering shrapnel. Hundreds of enemy soldiers were cut down in the first instant, but it was nothing compared to the host pressing at their backs.

Voids flared and shimmered under the bombardment, but without the concentration of fire necessary to overload an engine's shields, the defensive fire was largely wasted. The four Warhounds bounded forward, low to the ground, weaving between the incoming fire as they opened up with their mega bolters.

One Warhound staggered as a particularly well-aimed salvo caught it full on and it shed its voids in a coruscating detonation. The explosion blew off one of its legs and it smashed, nose-first, into the ground, ploughing a thirty-metre furrow before finally coming to a halt. A cheer of elation erupted from the defenders, but observers further back in the Magma City knew the loss of a single Warhound would not slow the attackers.

The remaining Warhounds increased their speed, using their agility to better evade, and each engine's princeps displayed a healthy respect for the accuracy of the Magma City's gunners.

Blizzards of weapons fire strafed the defenders, a furious storm of high explosive sh.e.l.ls that tore through all but the heaviest fortifications, wreaking unimaginable havoc within the packed knots of Zeth's Protectors, skitarii and tech-guard. Artillery pieces exploded and ammo parks detonated explosively as the Warhounds' fire tore through them.

The elation that had gripped the defenders upon seeing a Warhound brought down evaporated instantly in the face of the destruction unleashed by its brothers. Terrified, insensate survivors staggered away from the shrieking, smoking, flaming h.e.l.l of explosions, some clutching severed limbs, others holding in spilling intestines or dragging the shredded carca.s.ses of their comrades away from the firestorm.

As a flood of panicked men and women fled the fortification lines, the adamantium blast doors of a hardened bunker slid aside and an Ordinatus machine rolled forwards on heavy gauge rails. A gargantuan artillery piece so large it needed a strengthened cha.s.sis, a crew of hundreds and specialised generators just to power its enormous gun, the Ordinatus was a weapon of such power that an adept counted himself lucky if he had even one such weapon in his a.r.s.enal.

Its crew locked in the targeting auspex, working on a firing solution on one of the larger war engines, an impetuous Reaver that had broken from the pack of marauding t.i.tans.

A searing beam of blinding, unwavering energy erupted from the Ordinatus and struck the careless Reaver square in the face. Instantly its shields screamed and blew out in a froth of sparks and whipping arcs of discharged energies that vaporised hundreds of mutant skitarii advancing in its shadow. The Ordinatus beam continued to play over the Reaver's body, obliterating armour plates and body shielding in a flurry of actinic explosions.

Flames bloomed from inside the enemy machine and as the reactor core was breached, the Reaver vanished as a newborn sun flared into life. Voids sc.r.a.ped and howled as the Reaver's accomplices felt the violence of its death, but none were damaged beyond shrapnel scars.

Its work done, the Ordinatus machine began to roll back into its protective bunker to recharge its main gun. It never got the chance.

The towering, dreadful form of Aquila Ignis opened fire with its monstrous annihilator cannon and the giant Ordinatus vanished in an expanding mushroom cloud of nuclear plasma.

Shock at the death of such a magnificent machine rendered the defenders immobile for a heartbeat, but that was all the Mortis engines needed. As the Ordinatus was consumed in a sea of roiling plasma, the opportunistic Warhounds darted forward and smashed through the crumbled remains of the defensive line.

Amongst the defenders, the Warhounds barked their triumph from carapace-mounted augmitters and began the killing. Mega bolters blitzed and chewed up exposed soldiers in a furious storm of explosive rounds through which nothing could survive. Turbo lasers incinerated flesh and melted armoured units as the cackling beasts crashed the tiny figures that stood before them.

Drank with slaughter, the Warhounds raced onwards, crashing the few pitifully burned or shredded survivors as their slower pack members stomped over the walls between the worker habs and outerworks of Adept Zeth's mighty forge, as easily as a child might step over a fallen branch.

In the close-packed confines of the sub-hives, the Warhounds snapped and killed like hunting raptors, guns rippling with fire and their horns screaming with the elation of the kill.

One engine worked in solitude, methodically reducing block after block of habs and forge temples to ruin with its weapons and bulk. Walls broke apart, smelteries collapsed and great coolant towers were brought down in tumbling cascades of rockcrete and steel.

Two others worked as a pair, one demolishing buildings with concentrated blasts of fire, while the other raked the rubble to slay any survivors. Together, they left a wake of destruction such as had never been seen in the Magma City's history.

Dust billowed in vast clouds and the sound of collapsing structures overpowered even the cackling glee of the Warhounds as they cleared a path for the larger engines.

The solitary Warhound was the first to die.

Its crew never saw its killer, but its sensori felt the auspex lock a fraction of a second before its voids were blown out in a devastating volley of las-fire and it was obliterated in a rippling series of missile impacts.

The other two Warhounds felt its demise and furiously surged into the ruins in search of its destroyer. Darting forwards in a series of loping bounds, they came upon its smouldering carca.s.s and swept the area with aggressive bursts of their targeting auspex.

The lead engine caught a return from behind a shattered steelworks and opened fire without waiting for a lock, hoping to drive its quarry into the open where its twin could finish it off.

The ironworks dissolved into a mist of pulverised rock fragments and shattered steel, but instead of forcing the engine behind it to run, it had the opposite effect.

Lunging though the fiery debris, a towering monster in cobalt blue armour came at the Warhounds, its fists blazing and a heroic challenge issuing from its warhorn.

Deus Tempestus crashed into the astonished Warhound, smashing it to the ground and stamping down hard with one enormous foot. The smaller engine was crushed like a tin can beneath the mighty Warlord, the First G.o.d Machine of Legio Tempestus.

*Engine kill,' said Princeps Cavalerio high up in the liquid depths of his amniotic tank.

The second Warhound fled at the sight of the larger engine, turning and sprinting for the support of its fellows like a bully confronted by a gang of his former victims.

It ran straight into the guns of Metallus Cebrenia and Arcadia Fortis, who caught it in a lethal crossfire that ripped away its voids and gutted it in a furious hurricane of turbos.

Behind the two jubilant engines, the Tempestus Warhounds, Vulpus Rex, Raptoria, Astrus Lux and the Warlord Tharsis Hastatus moved into position within the hab-blocks, ready to defend the Magma City against the might of Legio Mortis.

Surveying the smashed wreckage of the slain war machines, Princeps Cavalerio smiled.

he canted to his warriors. FROM THE CHAMBER of Vesta, high atop the silver pyramid in the centre of the Magma City, Adept Zeth read the inloaded data of the four destroyed Warhounds. The arrival of Tempestus two nights ago might have prompted her to believe in the providence of the Machine-G.o.d, but she knew she owed her city's continued survival to Princeps Cavalerio's honourable heart.Even without the terrible threat of the Mortis Imperator, the Tempestus engines were dreadfully outnumbered and outgunned, yet still Cavalerio had come. Had he not been interred within an amniotic tank, she would have hugged him in a rare outburst of emotion.The first blow had to be struck from ambush in an attempt to even the odds, and though Zeth keenly felt the loss of so many soldiers and artillery, their sacrifice had been necessary to lure the engines of Mortis in with the promise of easy kills. Four Warhounds and a Reaver was an impressive tally, but gun for gun and engine to engine, Tempestus was still grossly outmatched.The gracefully curved sheets of burnished steel and crystal of the roof structure displayed images of the fighting around the landing fields and container port, and as much as she relished the killing of her enemies' t.i.tans, she lamented the loss of such precious technology. No adept of Mars could fail to be moved by the destruction of so perfect a mechanism that combined the best of steel and flesh.As deadly a threat as Mortis represented, they were not the only foes ranged against the Magma City. The cohorts of the Fabricator General had returned in full, swarming like an army of roaches on the far sh.o.r.es of the magma lagoon in preparation for an all-out a.s.sault. An attempt had already been made along the Typhon Causeway, a host of armoured units and hideously altered infantry storming the Vulkan Gate with gravity rams and conversion beamers.A sally from the Knights of Taranis had broken the a.s.sault, but three of their precious Knights had been torn down to win the fight. Though they had killed well over a thousand enemy soldiers and destroyed a brigade's worth of armour, it was but a tiny dent in the vast force arrayed before them.Other screens displayed similar scenes of war.The equatorial refinery belt burned as running battles between engines and thousands of skitarii clashed in the blazing ruins. A ring of fire encircled Mars in imitation of the iron ring in orbit.The hive a.s.sembly yards of Elysium, once the domain of Magos G.o.dolph, were a silent tomb, the tens of thousands of skilled adepts having committed ma.s.s suicide in some awful ceremony to honour unknown G.o.ds.Eridania, once the home of the most ancient and revered orders of Archivists, the Brotherhood of the All Seeing Eye, bore witness to scenes of unimaginable slaughter as the skitarii of Magos Chevain clawed their way into the kilometres-deep repository only to unleash the pestilential sc.r.a.pcode. Data wheels, memory crystals and realbooks all died as the sc.r.a.pcode infected every system and flooded the sunken library with corrosive gases.*So much history and knowledge lost,' said a voice from above her, and Zeth lifted her head to look at the roof panels where her noospheric guests observed the fighting.One panel projected the flickering image of Adept Maximal's helmet, another the handsome features of Fabricator Loc.u.m Kane.*Some knowledge is best forgotten, Maximal,' she said.*Don't say such things,' replied Maximal. *Knowledge is power and no price is too high to pay to preserve it. The acc.u.mulation of knowledge should be our one and only goal, Zeth. You of all people should appreciate that. Was the Akashic reader not built for that very purpose, the acc.u.mulation of all knowledge?'*It was,' conceded Zeth, using haptic motions to zoom in on the lumbering brutes of Legio Mortis. The carapaces and hulls of these once glorious engines were hung with black banners depicting vile, unthinkable arts of butchery. The head sections, once fashioned as stalwart warrior helms, were now leering, twisted and b.e.s.t.i.a.l things. *But any knowledge that creates something like this is best deleted without hope of recovery.'Maximal sniffed, a petulant affectation to show his disagreement.*Enough,' said Kane. *Save such discussions for when this crisis is over. We need to focus our attentions on how we plan to survive before we lament the loss of knowledge. Lord Dorn of the Imperial Fists sends word of an expeditionary force en route to Mars to fight our enemies. We must hold on until they reach us.'*What else do you know?' asked Zeth. *When will they get here? Tempestus and the Knights of Taranis have given my forge a chance to hold out for a time, but Mortis will attack again and we may not turn them back this time.'*And my forge suffers daily attacks,' said Maximal. *My skitarii units and war engines continue to hold, but the hordes pouring from the darkened hives of Olympus Mons are without end. I fear for what will be lost when we are overwhelmed.'Kane nodded. *I am aware of your tactical situation and have apprised Lord Dorn. Elements of the Imperial Army and the Saturn Regiments have been tasked with the relief of your forges.'*And the Astartes?' demanded Zeth. *What of them?'Kane hesitated before answering, and even over the noospheric link, Zeth sensed his reluctance to speak. *Captain Sigismund will make planetfall at my forge of Mondus Occulum and Captain Camba-Diaz will a.s.sault Lukas Chrom's Mondus Gamma facility.'