Angron Slave of Nuceria by Ian St Martin

Author:Ian St Martin
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781780307862
Published: 2019-03-14T14:39:39+00:00

FOURTEEN

In a contemplative silence, Mago walked the depths of the Con-queror. He found the warship still in upheaval after the events in the Triumphal Hall, dealing with the aftershocks of Angron’s rampage and subsequent collapse. Khârn had locked their father away in his darkened hall, admitting only Gahlan Surlak, Vel-Kheredar and a select few of their Apothecary and Mechanicum adept cohorts. Other than leaving to duel Mago on the Hound’s Tooth, the primarch’s equerry had never left his side. None knew with any certainty when or in what state the primarch would rise from his psychically induced coma, nor what he would do when he did.

Arriving by shuttle craft, Mago had not announced his arrival on the World Eaters flagship, not even to Khârn. While there was no law barring any member of the Legion from coming or going between any of the ships in the fleet as they pleased, the purpose of the centurion’s visit was one he had preferred to keep discreet.

Moving in solitude, an hour passed as Mago walked through wide crowded thoroughfares and claustrophobic passages. The rumbling of the battleship’s core slipped into the background, replaced by the pounding of forge hammers. He saw fewer and fewer souls the further down he went, down into the deep, cold corners of the Conqueror, where the legends of the Legion’s past rested.

He came to a halt before the great iron gateway, submitting to the programmed suspicion of the maniple of combat servitors that guarded the entrance. The hulking praetorians played beams of crimson light over Mago, their heavy back-mounted cannons whirring with menace until the centurion’s identity was validated and they clanked aside to let him pass.

The sounds of the flagship were low, distant things in the shadowed expanse of the chamber. Great machines filled it, cold and still in deactivation. The walls were ringed with platforms upon which they slumbered, great iron plinths that held the dark, hulking shapes of the Legion’s deathless heroes.

Robed adepts appeared from the shadows to stand before Mago. The centurion spoke to them, telling them what he would have them do, and they glided away from him without a word. The robed figures gathered around the central platform, burbling in binaric cant as they roused the banks of machinery surrounding it into life.

The temperature rose as the machines activated, blurring the air with steam and heat haze. Gears ground and cogitators chattered. Hazy lumens blinked on over the platform, bathing Mago in wan light. He waited while the tech-priests worked, moving in unison as they executed the needed rituals and chanted the Rites of Awakening.

‘Is it done?’ Mago asked. The nearest of the adepts nodded his cowled head.

‘Then leave us, and disable anything recording this space until I depart.’

The robed half-men filed out of the chamber, leaving Mago standing alone before an iron-wrought god of war. Scarlet eye-lenses flickered then blazed to life as power reached every part of the Contemptor-pattern Dreadnought. The walker’s sensor cluster, formed in the shape of a Space Marine’s helm, panned down with a grind of servos to glare at the captain of the Unbroken.

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