Priests of Mars by Graham McNeill

Author:Graham McNeill
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Publisher: Black Library
Published: 2012-07-24T16:00:00+00:00

Microcontent 12

Wracking thuds of impact cracked the glass of the princeps tank, and howls of angry code blurts filled the command compartment of Lupa Capitalina. Pulsing icons flashed and warbled insistently as the Titan made itself ready for the fight of its life. Bellowing armaments clamoured for shells, void generators throbbed with accumulating power and the mindless questioning of distant gun servitors clogged the internal vox.

And at the centre of it all was Princeps Arlo Luth.

The amniotic tank was frothed with his convulsions, the milky grey liquid streaked with blood like patterns in polished marble. His limbless, truncated body twisted like a fish caught on a lure that fought for freedom. Phantom limbs that had long ago been sacrificed to the Omnissiah writhed in agony, and a wordless scream of horror bled from his tank’s augmitters.

It had begun only moments ago.

Lupa Capitalina had been coming about from a successful prosecution of the outer defence districts, pulverising them with turbolasers then filling the ruins with simulated plasma fire. Canis Ulfrica completed the devastation with its barrage missiles, while Amarok and Vilka stalked the ruins to eliminate any last pockets of resistance in storms of vulcan bolter fire.

Moderati Rosten had been working through the post-firing checklist to power down the guns when Canis Ulfrica had moved into the Capitalina’s field of view. Skálmöld had raised his guns in salute to his princeps, and every single alarm had burst into life.

Princeps Luth screamed as a violent grand mal ripped through his ravaged flesh. Violent feedback slammed up through the consoles, killing Rosten in a heartbeat, flashburning his brain to vapour and setting him alight from the inside. Magos Hyrdrith was luckier, her inbuilt failsafes cutting off the Manifold just before the feedback hit, but such sudden disconnection brought its own perils. She spasmed on the floor, black fluids leaking from her implants and a froth of oily matter issuing from every machined orifice in her body.

Koskinen also felt the sympathetic pain of Luth’s seizure, but he had been disconnected from the Manifold at the time. His distress came from seeing his princeps in extremis and his fellow moderati dead. He ran back to his station, flinging his arms up to ward off streams of sparks and hissing blasts of vapour escaping from pressure-equalising conduits. He slid into his contoured couch seat, taking in the readings at a glance. The hololiths surrounding him were alive with threat responders, warning of enemies approaching.

‘This doesn’t make any sense,’ he said, alternating between reading the threats his panels insisted were drawing nearer with every second, and the ruined city they had just pulverised. Luth was screaming, a sub-vocal shriek of machine language that still managed to convey the terrible agonies he was suffering.

Koskinen scrolled through the tactical display. According to the readouts, they were surrounded by thousands of enemies, monstrous swarms of fast-movers with hostile intent. They only told a fraction of the story, but without plugging back into the Manifold there was no way to be sure of what the engine thought it was seeing.

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