False Gods (2 page)

She sat back on her chair and placed the quill in the Lethe-well as a sudden, treacherous doubt gnawed at her. She was so critical of the other remembrancers, but had yet to test her own mettle amongst them.

Could she do any better? Could she meet with the greatest hero of the age – a god some called him, although that was a ridiculous, outmoded concept these days – and achieve what they had, in her opinion, singularly failed to do? Who was she to believe that her paltry skill could do justice to the mighty tales the Warmaster was forging, hot on the anvil of battle?

Then she remembered her lineage and her posture straightened. Was she not of House Carpinus, finest and most influential of the noble houses in Terran aristocracy? Had not House Carpinus chronicled the rise of the Emperor and his domain throughout the Wars of Unification, watching it grow from a planet-spanning empire to one that was even now reaching from one side of the galaxy to the other to reclaim mankind’s lost realm?

As though seeking further reassurance, Petronella opened a flat blotting folder with a monogrammed leather cover and slid a sheaf of papers from inside it. At the top of the pile was a pict image of a fair-haired Astartes in burnished plate, kneeling before a group of his peers as one of them presented a long, trailing parchment to him. Petronella knew that these were called oaths of moment, vows sworn by warriors before battle to pledge their skill and devotion to the coming fight. An intertwined ‘EK’ device in the corner of the pict identified it as one of Euphrati Keeler’s images, and though she was loath to give any of the remembrancers credit, this piece was simply wondrous.

Smiling, she slid the pict to one side, to reveal a piece of heavy grain cartridge paper beneath. The paper bore the familiar double-headed eagle watermark, representing the union of the Mechanicum of Mars and the Emperor, and the script was written in the short, angular strokes of the Sigillite’s hand, the quick pen strokes and half-finished letters speaking of a man writing in a hurry. The upward slant to the tails of the high letters indicated that he had a great deal on his mind, though why that should be so, now that the Emperor had returned to Terra, she did not know.

She smiled as she studied the letter for what must have been the hundredth time since she had left the port at Gyptus, knowing that it represented the highest honour accorded to her family.

A shiver of anticipation travelled along her spine as she heard far distant klaxons, and a distorted automated voice, coming from the gold-rimmed speakers in the corridor outside her suite, declared that her vessel had entered high anchor around the planet.

She had arrived.

Petronella pulled a silver sash beside the escritoire and, barely a moment later, the door chime rang and she smiled, knowing without turning that only Maggard would have answered her summons so quickly. Though he never uttered a word in her presence – nor ever would, thanks to the surgery she’d had the family chaperones administer – she always knew when he was near by the agitated jitter of her mnemo-quill as it reacted to the cold steel bite of his mind.

She spun around in her deeply cushioned chair and said, ‘Open,’

The door swung smoothly open and she let the moment hang as Maggard waited for permission to stand in her presence.

‘I give you leave to enter,’ she said and watched as her dour bodyguard of twenty years smoothly crossed the threshold into her frescoed suite of gold and scarlet. His every move was controlled and tight, as though his entire body – from the hard, sculpted muscles of his legs, to his wide, powerful shoulders – was in tension.

He moved to the side as the door shut behind him, his dancing, golden eyes sweeping the vaulted, filigreed ceiling and the adjacent anterooms in a variety of spectra for anything suspect. He kept one hand on the smooth grip of his pistol, the other on the grip of his gold-bladed Kirlian rapier. His bare arms bore the faint scars of augmetic surgery, pale lines across his dark skin, as did the tissue around his eyes where house chirurgeons had replaced them with expensive biometric spectral enhancers to enable him better to protect the scion of House Carpinus.

Clad in gold armour of flexing, ridged bands and silver mail, Maggard nodded in unsmiling acknowledgement that all was clear, though Petronella could have told him that without all his fussing. But since his life was forfeit should anything untoward befall her, she supposed she could understand his caution.

‘Where is Babeth?’ asked Petronella, slipping the Sigillite’s letter back into the blotter and lifting the mnemo-quill from the Lethe-well. She placed the nib on the dataslate and cleared her mind, allowing Maggard’s thoughts to shape the words his throat could not, frowning as she read what appeared.

‘She has no business being asleep,’ said Petronella. ‘Wake her. I am to be presented to the mightiest hero of the Great Crusade and I’m not going before him looking as though I’ve just come from some stupid pilgrim riot on Terra. Fetch her and have her bring the velveteen gown, the crimson one with the high collars. I’ll expect her within five minutes.’

Maggard nodded and withdrew from her presence, but not before she felt the delicious thrill of excitement as the mnemo-quill twitched in her grip and scratched a last few words on the dataslate.

…ing bitch…

I
N
ONE
OF
the ancient tongues of Terra its name meant ‘Day of Wrath’ and Jonah Aruken knew that the name was well deserved. Rearing up before him like some ancient god of a forgotten time, the
Dies Irae
stood as a vast monument to war and destruction, its armoured head staring proudly over the assembled ground crew that milled around it like worshippers.

The Imperator-class Titan represented the pinnacle of the Mechanicum’s skill and knowledge, the culmination of millennia of war and military technology. The Titan had no purpose other than to destroy, and had been designed with all the natural affinity for the business of killing that mankind possessed. Like some colossal armoured giant of steel, the Titan stood forty-three metres tall on crenellated bastion legs, each one capable of mounting a full company of soldiers and their associated supporting troops.

Jonah watched as a long banner of gold and black was unfurled between the Titan’s legs, like the loincloth of some feral savage, emblazoned with the death’s head symbol of the Legio Mortis. Scores of curling scrolls, each bearing the name of a glorious victory won by the Warmaster, were stitched to the honour banner and Jonah knew that there would be many more added before the Great Crusade was over.

Thick, ribbed cables snaked from the shielded power cores in the hangar’s ceiling towards the Titan’s armoured torso, where the mighty war engine’s plasma reactor was fed with the power of a caged star.

Its adamantine hull was scarred and pitted with the residue of battle, the tech-adepts still patching it up after the fight against the megarachnid. Nevertheless, it was a magnificent and humbling sight, though not one that could dull the ache in his head and the churning in his belly from too much amasec the night before.

Giant, rumbling cranes suspended from the ceiling lifted massive hoppers of shells and long, snub-nosed missiles into the launch bays of the Titan’s weapon mounts. Each gun was the size of a hab-block, massive rotary cannons, long-range howitzers and a monstrous plasma cannon with the power to level cities. He watched the ordnance crews prep the weapons, feeling the familiar flush of pride and excitement as he made his way towards the Titan, and smiled at the obvious masculine symbolism of a Titan being made ready for war.

He jumped as a gurney laden with Vulkan bolter shells sped past him, just barely avoiding him as it negotiated its way at speed through the organised chaos of ground personnel, Titan crews and deck hands. It squealed to a halt and the driver’s head snapped around.

‘Watch where the hell you’re going, you damn fool!’ shouted the driver, rising from his seat and striding angrily towards him. ‘You Titan crewmen think you can swan about like pirates, well this is my—’

The words died in the man’s throat and he snapped to attention as he saw the garnet studs and the winged skull emblem on the shoulder boards of Jonah’s uniform jacket that marked him as a moderati primus of the
Dies Irae
.

‘Sorry,’ smiled Jonah, spreading his arms in a gesture of amused apology as he watched the man fight the urge to say more. ‘Didn’t see you there, chief, got a hell of a hangover. Anyway, what the devil are you doing driving so fast? You could have killed me.’

‘You just walked out in front of me, sir,’ said the man, staring fixedly at a point just over Jonah’s shoulder.

‘Did I? Well… just… be more careful next time,’ said Jonah, already walking away.

‘Then watch where you’re going…’ hissed the man under his breath, before climbing back onto his gurney and driving off.

‘You be careful now!’ Jonah called after the driver, imagining the colourful insults the man would already be cooking up about ‘those damned Titan crewmen’ to tell his fellow ground staff.

The hangar, though over two kilometres in length, felt cramped to Jonah as he made his way towards the
Dies Irae
, the scent of engine oil, grease and sweat not helping one whit with his hangover.

A host of Battle Titans of the Legio Mortis stood ready for war: fast, mid-range Reavers, snarling Warhounds and the mighty Warlords – as well as some newer Night Gaunt-class Titans – but none could match the awesome splendour of an Imperator-class Titan. The
Dies Irae
dwarfed them all in size, power and magnificence, and Jonah knew there was nothing in the galaxy that could stand against such a terrifying war machine.

Jonah adjusted his collar and fastened the brass buttons of his jacket, straightening it over his stocky frame before he reached the Titan’s wide feet. He ran his hands through his shoulder-length black hair, trying to give the impression, at least, that he hadn’t slept in his clothes. He could see the thin, angular form of Titus Cassar, his fellow moderati primus, working behind a monitoring terminal, and had no wish to endure another lecture on the ninety-nine virtues of the Emperor.

Apparently, smartness of appearance was one of the most important.

‘Good morning, Titus,’ he said, keeping his tone light.

Cassar’s head bobbed up in surprise and he quickly slid a folded pamphlet beneath a sheaf of readiness reports.

‘You’re late,’ he said, recovering quickly. ‘Reveille was an hour ago and punctuality is the hallmark of the pious man,’

‘Don’t start with me, Titus,’ said Jonah, reaching over and snatching the pamphlet that Cassar had been so quick to conceal. Cassar made to stop him, but Jonah was too quick, brandishing the pamphlet before him.

‘If Princeps Turnet catches you reading this, you’ll be a gunnery servitor before you know what’s hit you.’

‘Give it back, Jonah, please.’

‘I’m not in the mood for another sermon from this damned
Lectitio Divinitatus
chapbook.’

‘Fine, I’ll put it away, just give it back, alright?’

Jonah nodded and held the well-thumbed paper out to Cassar, who snatched it back and quickly slid it inside his uniform jacket.

Rubbing his temples with the heel of his palms, Jonah said, ‘Anyway, what’s the rush? It’s not as though the old girl’s even ready for the pre-deployment checks, is she?’

‘I pray you’ll stop referring to it as a she, Jonah, it smacks of pagan anthropomorphising,’ said Cassar. ‘A Titan is a war machine, nothing more: steel, adamantine and plasma with flesh and blood controlling it.’

‘How can you say that?’ asked Aruken, sauntering over to a steel plated leg section and climbing the steps to the arched gates that led within. He slapped his palm on the thick metal and said, ‘She’s obviously a she, Titus. Look at the shapely legs, the curve of the hips, and doesn’t she carry us within her like a mother protecting her unborn children?’

‘In mockery are the seeds of impiety sown,’ said Cassar without a trace of irony, ‘and I will not have it.’

‘Oh, come on, Titus,’ said Aruken, warming to his theme. ‘Don’t you feel it when you’re inside her? Don’t you hear the beat of her heart in the rumble of her reactor, or feel the fury of her wrath in the roar of her guns?’

Cassar turned back to the monitoring panel and said, ‘No, I do not, and I do not wish to hear any more of your foolishness, we are already behind on our pre-deployment checks. Princeps Turnet will have our hides nailed to the hull if we are not ready.’

‘Where is the princeps?’ asked Jonah, suddenly serious.

‘With the War Council,’ said Cassar.

Aruken nodded and descended the steps of the Titan’s foot, joining Cassar at the monitoring station and letting fly with one last jibe. ‘Just because you’ve never had the chance to enjoy a woman doesn’t mean I’m not right.’

Cassar gave him a withering glare, and said, ‘Enough. The War Council will be done soon, and I’ll not have it said that the Legio Mortis wasn’t ready to do the Emperor’s bidding.’

‘You mean Horus’s bidding,’ corrected Jonah.

‘We have been over this before, my friend,’ said Cassar. ‘Horus’s authority comes from the Emperor. We forget that at our peril.’

‘That’s as maybe, but it’s been many a dark and bloody day since we’ve fought with the Emperor beside us, hasn’t it? But hasn’t Horus always been there for us on every battlefield?’

‘Indeed he has, and for that I’d follow him into battle beyond the Halo stars,’ nodded Cassar. ‘But even the Warmaster has to answer to the God-Emperor.’

‘God-Emperor?’ hissed Jonah, leaning in close as he saw a number of the ground crew turn their heads towards them. ‘Listen, Titus, you have to stop this God-Emperor rubbish. One day you’re going to say that to the wrong person and you’ll get your skull cracked open. Besides, even the Emperor himself says he’s not a god.’

‘Only the truly divine deny their divinity,’ said Cassar, quoting from his book.

Jonah raised his hands in surrender and said, ‘Alright, have it your way, Titus, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.’