Gods of Mars by Graham McNeill

Author:Graham McNeill
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Publisher: Black Library
Published: 2014-09-22T16:00:00+00:00

Thanks to the empty window frames, the reek of stale air and turned earth had been growing stronger in the funicular with every kilometre travelled. By the time it reached the end of its long journey through the planet’s crust, the graveyard stench was almost overpowering.

Even distanced from olfactory input by augmented sensory limiters, Kotov still registered the smell as unpleasant. From the looks of disgust on the faces of those without his advantages, it must be unbearable to baseline senses.

The carriage doors squealed open, revealing the funicular’s final destination: a buckled terminus platform of bare iron within an ancient cave of gnarled rock. The ceiling was jagged with grotesquely organic stalactites of rotted matter, and pools of foetid liquid gathered beneath them in sticky pools.

Tanna and the Black Templars debarked first, moving to the filth-encrusted walls and covering the only other exit, a cave mouth fringed with cloudy crystalline growths. The Cadians went next, following their colonel with rifles jammed in tight to their shoulders.

‘So do you think this is a better place, Master Surcouf?’ asked Kotov, taking a moment to enjoy the sight of the rogue trader pressing a wadded kerchief over his mouth and nose.

‘Well, we’re not being attacked by bloodthirsty mech-hunters, so I’d say it’s a step up from the universal assembler.’

Kotov stepped from the funicular and almost immediately, his chronometer began glitching, the numerals speeding up, reversing and flickering in and out of sync with his implanted organs. The effect was disorientating, and he stumbled. His skitarii held him upright.

‘Archmagos?’ asked one, whose noospheric tags identified him as Carna. ‘Is something the matter?’

Kotov disabled the chronometer and restored his equilibrium with a surge of internal purgatives. The unpleasant sensation passed and he nodded to his protectors.

‘I am fine,’ he said.

Surcouf followed him onto the platform, with Magos Pavelka clinging to his arm. Surcouf was almost dragged to the ground when Pavelka was seized by the same nauseous sense of mechanical dislocation that had almost felled him.

‘Turn off your chronometer,’ Kotov advised her, though given Pavelka’s transgressions, he was inclined to let her suffer.

As unpleasant as the effects of the cave were to Kotov and Pavelka, it was nothing to how the eldar witch reacted. Bielanna screamed and fell to her knees as soon as she stepped from the carriage. Her skin, which even to a Martian priest appeared unnaturally pale, grew ever more ashen. Her face contorted in grief, more so than when her piercing shriek on the carriage had almost deafened them all. Her face contorted as though invisible hands were pushing each muscle in different directions at once. Tears streamed down her face.

‘I told you…’ she said. ‘All the pain of this world is here. This is it, this is the locus of splintering time. This is where the fraying of every thread begins and ends. The flaw that tears the weave apart…’

Her words made no sense to Kotov and he turned away.

‘You led us to this,’ spat Bielanna. ‘Your mon-keigh stupidity!’

Carna growled, baring steel-plated teeth, but Bielanna ignored him.

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