The waters’ hunger, however, had not been quite sated.
As if they demanded some final sacrifice, the very last vehicle – the Exorcist at the rear of the Order – fell as it had almost reached safety. The edge of the road gave way beneath its tracks, the ferrocrete crumbling with a thundering splash. The rails themselves held, two thin lines of steel stretching out over the water, but the roadway between them had given its last.
Yards from safety, the vehicle had teetered, rocked backwards, and then splashed to its death.
Its commanding Sister had called one final prayer before the density of the water had cut off her vox.
Watching through the weapon-ports, hating her own enforced helplessness, Augusta had prayed for the drivers, and for the spirits of the tanks that they had lost. It would be a slow and horrifying end, the polluted sea steadily eating its way inwards, and inwards, but her fallen Sisters would show no fear, even in the face of such an ordeal. Each knew, as she did, that His light and blessing awaited her.
What awaited the company was something else entirely.
And Augusta held hard to her prayers, as their objective loomed ahead.
A very short time later, they reached the shoreline of the citadel.
The road and the tracks continued, now supported above a grey and ashen beach. Here, the wind-driven water frothed and hissed, dumping a tidemark of bubbles, dirt and rubbish, but that was not what pulled the Sister Superior’s attention.
Through the weapon-port, she could just about see the outskirts of Lycheate’s central citadel: rock and beach both curved slowly upwards and into the dark, harsh side of a huge and headless mountain.
And somewhere, in there, there waited the controls for the Emanatus force field.
Borne by His blessing and courage, the Order had reached its target. The canoness’ prayer of thanks came over the vox, and was repeated vehemently by the surviving Sisters.
‘Nos gratias ago nomen Eius!’
We give thanks to His name!
Repeating the stanzas, one after another, just as she had for so many years, Augusta shifted in her seat to scan the mountainside. Beside her, Mors and Rufus exchanged a glance – this was the place of their redemption, their final stand, and they both knew it.
Once they entered the citadel, neither of them would ever see the light again.
Augusta wondered if her own squad faced the same fate.
The black stone was disturbingly familiar, reminding her of the jungle-planet Lautis. It was porous and severe, glittering with dark stars of scattered obsidian…
…and, just like before, it concealed horrors within its depths.
One thing, however, was immediately apparent.
From the Kyrus’ orbital scans, Augusta knew that the main entranceway waited some half a mile ahead of them, a colossal cave mouth that swallowed the road, and that allowed the servohaulers, and the waiting machines, access to the factorum complex.
Looking at their situation, she felt the hairs on her neck prickle with tension.
Their route back was shattered, and they could only move ahead. And somewhere, behind that vast and unseen doorway, the heretek’s assembled forces would be waiting.
The canoness, however, did not so much as pause.
‘Sister Augusta,’ she said, over the vox. ‘I have a new mission for you. Report.’
Augusta’s briefing was short and to the point.
The rain had slackened, thinning to a misty drizzle. And Sister Superior Augusta, accompanied by her squad and by the two ex-Militarum, both doing their best not to shiver with the cold, had followed their new mission orders and disembarked from their Repressor. They were moving on foot, following the dirty ash beach around the long outside of the mountain.
The soft surface was shifting and treacherous, hard to walk upon, but they dared not slacken their pace.
They did not have time.
Behind them, the surviving vehicles were continuing along the road, ready to face whatever the citadel may spit forth at them – and to ensure that Rayos’ attention was fully occupied.
Augusta was following the mission brief that had come direct from the prioress herself. And, the Sister Superior was sure, this was what Sister Alcina was here to observe.
If Augusta got this wrong, like her blade in the Ironstrider’s foot…
What had she told Mors in the chapel?
To serve Holy Terra, and to die with honour.
Mors himself had pulled his face veil up over his nose, protecting his skin from the rain. He and Rufus both had been very quiet, their lasrifles never leaving their hands, their gazes always at the weapon-ports of the Repressor. Their deaths awaited them, but they still showed no fear, and they forged on as best they could through the clumps of infuriating sand.
Perhaps, Augusta thought, Alcina was here to ensure the ex-soldiers’ deaths. One way or the other…
As if Augusta herself could not be entirely trusted.
A last breath of rain gusted across the wind, and slowly the clouds began to clear.
Guided by the scans of the Kyrus, the squad continued to follow the long curve of the beach. It was desolate and cold, but nothing came out at them, and as the visibility increased, they began to pick up the pace.
And then, they found a miracle.
Following the base of a heavy spur, their route taking them back down almost to the waterline, they stopped.
A distance ahead of them, a great billow of steam blurred the air, a continuous gusting rise of long grey smoke like the exhalations of some vast machine-spirit. And, as they crested the spur, they saw it: a wide red run of lava that came sliding down the mountainside, a flaring river of fire sloughing through the dense black stone. And, where its front edge met the water, it slowly solidified into great static waves of cooling, hissing rock, one piling upon another.
Flames licked over the water’s surface – the lingering patches of oil ignited by the heat.
The squad paused. Their suits protected them, but the air shimmered with thermal currents. Augusta had never seen such a thing, never even imagined it – this meeting of fire and water. It seemed almost to contain a spirit all of its own.
But she dared not pause long.
Stepping forwards with her auspex, Rhea said, ‘We cannot pass here, the temperature is too great. To reach the fissure that the Kyrus has identified, we must ascend the slope.’
‘Mors?’ Augusta asked. ‘How do you fare?’
The ex-corporal had left his face veil in place. He was muttering back down the line at Rufus, ‘Damned air must be eighty per cent sulphur.’ At the Sister Superior’s words, though, he straightened his shoulders and replied, ‘We fare well, though the temperature is high. And we are fortunate that the rain has eased.’
‘Aye,’ she said. ‘Walk with courage, we will not be in the open for much longer.’
‘Yes, Sister.’ He paused. Then at a nudge from his squadmate, he said, ’Sister, before we enter this place, may I say something?’
Augusta stopped, indicated for the squad to do likewise. ‘Of course. But swiftly.’
‘I… we… would like you to take this.’ He held out one hand, something folded in his gloved fist. ‘It is true that we’re deserters, Sister, and we deserve only death. But we still hope to redeem ourselves, somewhere within this great citadel.’ He faltered, and Rufus stepped forwards.
‘It’s our insignia, Sister,’ he said. ‘I know we have no right to ask, but if you could take it back to our captain…’
He ran out of words, dropped his gaze, and stepped back.
Augusta held out her gauntlet, let Mors drop the insignia into her fist – the winged skull of the Militarum, a star upon its forehead.
She looked at it, and then back at the two young men, so weary and resolved.
‘Conduct yourselves with honour,’ she said, ‘and I will do so. Your tale will not go unremembered.’
The squad turned to head upwards, the mountainside treacherous and the going slippery. But here, too, a path had been laid out for them just as it had been over the water – the rocks had formed into a peculiar, regular pattern of hexagonal pillars, just as if He had been here, carving miraculous steps in the stone, and showing them the way.
‘Truly,’ Augusta muttered, ‘we are blessed. Twice now, He has left us a clear path.’
Red boots skidded, but the squad went on. Viola, her heavy bolter slung over her back, cursed as she heaved herself bodily upwards. Mors and Rufus ascended more easily, their kit a lighter load. And, as the squad climbed higher, they began to find holes in the slope – splits and cracks and fissures, places where the pressure of the volcano within had just proven too much, and had broken out through the ancient stone.
Following Rhea’s auspex, Augusta paused at the largest of these.
‘From this point,’ she said to her squad, ‘we will know little. We do not bear maps of this location, and the density of the stone will prevent communication with either the Kyrus, or with the canoness.’ She took a moment to look around at them. ‘I am proud of you, Sisters, every one of you. And you, Mors and Rufus both. This is a test of our faith and our resourcefulness, and one we will not fail. The entire Order is depending upon our success.’ The split in the stone was blacker than the mountainside, and wide enough for their armour – but only just. ‘Sister Rhea, Sister Viola. Let us proceed.’
‘Aye.’
With the auspex and the heavy bolter at their head, they left the brown Lycheate sun behind them.
From here, they would be walking blind.
But He had shown them the way, and the light they carried was illumination enough.
The tunnels were tight, and treacherous.
Augusta’s feet slipped on the cold stone. It was irregular and it tripped her constantly – it seemed that she skidded with every fourth step. In places, outcrops snagged at her shoulders or elbows, or on the tip of her chainsword. The claustrophobic sensation was uncomfortable, and the crackling in the vox reminded her, very clearly, of the hard black density of the rock.
The faint light of the tunnel mouth soon faded to a line, and then vanished completely. She had a shuddering memory of the Lautis daemon – curse it for still being able to haunt her!
This was no place to harbour such thoughts.
Their suit-lights flared hope on the rock face, and they moved on.
With the vox now quiet, Augusta began to hear the constant drip-drip of water, the noise distant and oddly hollow, and then, from somewhere else, the heavy rattle of something distinctly metallic.
Like a gate, or an overhead door.
They moved on, the green glint of Rhea’s auspex at their head. The tunnels seemed natural, jagged and angled – they looked as if some great force had struck the stone, sending splintering cracks in every direction. The spaces were narrow and irregular, unsupported by scaffolding, and yet they steadily ate their way downwards, deeper and deeper into the mountain’s heart.
Slowly, the passages grew wider… and the air grew steadily hotter.
And then, Rhea stopped.
‘We have reached the end of the fissure, Sister. This crack opens out onto a smooth-bore tunnel.’
‘Anything in motion? Any security?’
‘Not that I can detect.’
‘Be sure. Rayos’ attention will be on the tanks on her doorstep, but I do not wish to attract her notice.’
‘Yes, Sister.’
Over Viola’s shoulder, Augusta could see the opening that Rhea had found – the rough, ragged split of the tunnel-edge opening out onto smoothly worked stone, and then continuing on its other side. She thought she could see the walls, engraved with the same prayers that they had seen upon the metal of the Lycheate city.
She counted the awareness check in her head, Five seconds. Four… Three…
She reached zero. Nothing had moved.
‘Very well. We will proceed with caution.’
Still, they found nothing. Out in the corridors, the security scanners lay dormant, and not so much as a servo-skull hummed across their path. Strips of lumens worked erratically, sending flickering data-ghosts along the long-abandoned walkways of the departed Mechanicus’ citadel.
‘These are not mining tunnels,’ Augusta commented. ‘They must be for maintenance, for servitors or helots, perhaps.’
Maintenance or not, the corridors were precise; their angles exact. As the squad moved on, Augusta began to see old pict-screens, vents and data-banks, and cog-marks engraved in the walls. The corroded remains of pipes wove in and out of the stone, and between them lay prayers that she could not decipher.
The air grew warmer still.
A little further, and each turning began to carry markings, denominations in both binary and machine-code.
‘Akemi,’ Augusta said, over the vox.
‘The numbers are very clear, Sister,’ Akemi responded. ‘This is conservation and maintenance level four-point-zero-six-five, and the tunnels are worked to a routine hexagonal pattern. The progression of numbers does suggest a single central control point. I would guess that it’s an identical layout to that of the factoria themselves, just on a smaller scale.’ She paused, then added, almost amused, ‘We are blessed that the Mechanicus remain so predictable.’
‘We must offer our thanks, Sister Akemi,’ Augusta said. ‘Can we follow these numbers to the central location?’
‘Yes, Sister.’
‘Then you will join Sister Rhea, and we will continue. Viola, pull back.’
It grew hotter. The temperature readout in Augusta’s armour was climbing higher with every turning they made. Behind her, Mors was sweating profusely; he’d dropped the face veil and his dark skin shone in the suit-lights.
Soon, the air began to shimmer with the thickness of the heat.
Another turning, and another, Akemi counting as they went. A third, and they saw their first lava flow – a thin, sliding trickle that broke through the tunnel wall and oozed down towards the smoothly worked floor, cooling as it descended. It left a swelling growth like a tumour, rippling and bulbous, and slowly, slowly growing.
It also obscured the old Mechanicus wall markings.
‘So, these fissures are more recent than the tunnels themselves,’ Augusta commented. ‘It may explain why they are abandoned – and why the Mechanicus have been so reluctant to return to this world.’
‘There is no current evidence of seismic or volcanic activity,’ Rhea answered, from the front. ‘These fissures are old, and they read as stable. We are secure. Certainly for the moment.’
They continued, passing more and more of the tiny, fissured flows, some of them beginning to run together, others steadily eating through the floor. None of them were large – the Sisters could step across every one – but the temperature was still climbing.
Mors and Rufus were beginning to struggle with the relentlessness of the heat. Unspeaking, Augusta passed Mors back her water bottle.
And then Rhea told them to halt. ‘Sisters,’ she said. ‘There is a large space ahead of us. We have found the central factorum.’
The door was vast, and utterly impassable.
It was a rusted sheet of steel in the side of the mountain. It cut dead across the roadway, and across the gleaming servohauler tracks. A march of sagging pillars flanked its approach, all linked by aged steel chains; empty flame-bowls stood to either side. Turret emplacements had been long bereft of their weapons, and some huge ferrocrete statue had crumbled until only the last few feet remained.
Upon the door itself, the colossal cog-and-skull was leeringly familiar.
‘Incaladion,’ Caia said, without surprise.
Above the gate’s silent threat, the black wall of the volcano rose both faceless and headless, and the brown clouds seemed to rest upon its top. Tiny red flares shifted across its surface as Sister Nikaya and the Seraphim rose aloft to assess its defences.
‘The Emanatus force field covers only the very top of the volcano,’ Nikaya said. ‘There are multiple defence ports, but they’re sealed.’
‘Hold fast, my Sisters.’ The canoness’ tone was cautious, but contained no fear. Caia knew that they would be facing overwhelming numbers, as well as the point-defences of the citadel itself, but these things were of no consequence. Their task was to draw the fire of the enemy, while Augusta and her squad penetrated the depths of the mountain.
She prayed for them, for her fallen Sisters, for herself. Standing in the back of the Immolator, looking up at that huge and grinning skull, Caia wondered if Rayos had calculated every probability of their advance, of their every movement and choice. Wondered if the heretek had drawn them here, knowing that they would be defeated–
The auspex blipped movement.
Not much, barely a flicker – a single contact. It moved as if a sergeant walked along his ranks of troops, inspecting and commanding them, as if–
As if they were expected.
She was about to speak – some sort of warning – but the great door rattled, grumbled, and began to rise. The rasping noise of rust was teeth-gratingly painful.
Sister Caia stared forwards, and into the gaping dark.
‘How many?’ Augusta asked.
In Rhea’s hand, the glowing green screen of the auspex was still. ‘None.’
They had come to a balcony, a high viewpoint above an echoingly empty space – Vastum Factorum-01, and Rayos’ muster point.
And this one did not follow the layout of its fellows.
There were no hoppers here, no facilities for construction or creation. This was surely just a storage facility, yet it seemed endless, stretching away from them, further than they could see. It was floored with smooth black stone – the great basalt plug of the volcano. And within that stone were laid long parallel lines of gleaming steel, one after another after another, all of them vanishing into its cavernous limits. An identical series of upright supports, looming like gibbets in the half-light, rose from each one – lines and lines and lines of static mini-shrines, each one a prayer point where the stored machine-spirit could find its rest.
And every one of them stood empty.
‘The canoness’ plan has been successful.’ Augusta’s tone was quiet, and swallowed by the hugeness of the room. ‘The heretek’s force is distracted.’
Alcina answered, her voice grim, ‘Our Sisters will be paying for every moment we delay.’
‘Aye,’ Augusta said. ‘We must locate the central control node. Sister Rhea, does anything remain in this location?’
Rhea held her auspex, moving it slowly in an arc.
‘Nothing, Sister.’
‘Then we will proceed with our mission brief. We will follow the numerals to the central location, and there, we will disable the force field. And may the Emperor stand with our Sisters as they face Rayos’ army.’