I
"You have a commitment to your House, to the Red Planet. What the hell has gotten into your thick skull that makes you think you can turn your back on the people that have given you everything?" Princeps Akrapos Cant was shaking, his ancient and augmented flesh shaking with a swiftly rising desperation. He slammed his bionic fists into his steel throne; the crash of metal-on-metal soured through the lofty hall. The forged memorial-masks bolted to the rafters above stared downwards with long dead, disapproving eyes.
"I have come to you time and time again asking your permission, but every time you refused me. I am tired of your apathy father, of your willingness to let the entire Imperium crumble while we cater to a host of machine men." The last insult slipped like a dagger from the Knight's lips, and the blade was wet with venomous spite. "You have left me no other choice but to leave this planet in disgrace."
"Are you so blind, so drunk off that damnable Lord Commander's propaganda that you cannot see I only keep you here for your own good?" Akrapos leaned forward, his arms reaching out as if begging for understanding. His eyes, set deeply within dark sockets, were squeezed tight in anguish, "Only death waits for you beyond the House's gates, beyond the starport. The name of House Taranis cannot shield you out there!"
"I am a Knight. My place is out there," the Knight gestured to a tall window, where outside a stellar tether soared up and beyond the roiling smog banks, "where I can make a difference." Akrapos laughed: it was a hoarse, bitter laugh stained by centuries of experience.
"You can't make a difference. No one can! Old Night is returning, and the only thing we can do is take care of our own!"
"That is a coward's claim!" It was the Knights turn to raise his voice, "It is our duty, the very reason for our existence: to protect those who cannot protect themselves!"
Akrapos' heart ached: the boy sounded so much like his mother.
"You can't protect them all, son," Akrapos whispered. "Trying will only get you killed." The silence born from that statement grew. It swelled into a cankerous void that devoured the surroundings until all that existed between father and son was this moment. After an eternity, the Knight looked into his father's eyes for what could be the last time.
"We all die someday." The Knight turned, slowly, and beagn the long walk to the hall's adamantium gates. His eyes were fixed ever forward, never looking back; Akrapos saw nothing, his head buried in his shaking hands as his son- the last person he still cared for- marched to his doom.
II
The base klaxon blared over the clamor of NCOs as the command cadre of the Street Sweepers scrambled to organize a response to the sudden appearance of Chaos forces at the mouth of the valley. The poomf-poomf of heavy bolter fire climbed to a thunderous racket as pillboxes all around the perimeter opened fire; the sound of battle escalated as sequential detonations tore through the defensive line. Each explosion threw hundreds of kilos of gore-soaked dirt in the air.
From his vantage point high above the battlefield, adept Graves could see three squat vehicles pushing through the defensive line. The machine spirit of his dropship picked out the protrusion of massive short barreled cannons extending just beyond the dozer of each vehicle. Where they went, the Imperial strongpoints were obliterated.
Graves angled the craft into a steep downward spiral, phosphorous flares and scrambler drones warding away the AA fire that filled the air around it. "Get ready to disembark!" Graves shouted over the noosphere. The bottom cargo door opened, and just as the dropship's retro-thrusters brought it to a screaming halt above the ground an 11-meter-tall giant of plasteel and adamantium plummeted through the bay doors. It landed confidently, gyro stabilizers and hydraulic pistons whining with stress but far from failure.
"Omnissiah guide you sir Knight," Graves voxed as he gunned his vessels thrusters and vectored out of the combat zone. The man who now only bore the moniker of Knight scanned for the targets he had picked out with the ship's auspex arrays: over the rolling hills of brush and scrub he saw, with the eyes of his steed that were as much his as those he was born with, the gleaming hulls of traitor armor cresting a hill. Targeting psalms and cogitation-writ outlined the first approaching vehicle as Knight aimed his mount's rapid-fire battle cannon. Two shells fired from the barrel in quick succession. The first skipped off the top of the assault vehicle; the second penetrated the command cupula and detonated, cooking off the ammo within in an explosion that obscured the two remaining vehicles. Knight felt the noospheric itch of a vox contact and accepted it.
"This is Major Sourgate of the Emperor's Street Sweepers to the metal motherfucker who just landed in my operating theatre. Thanks for the assist, but I need you to identify yourself." Knight guffawed despite himself: this was a commander who didn't bother with formalities, and that suited Knight perfectly.
"Major Sourgate, this is the Questoris Imperialis Sentinel, here to lend a battle cannon and chainsword to the valley's defense. Do your spotters have LoS on the two surviving Vindicators?"
"You have impeccable timing lad," growled the major over the vox link. "Our spotters should be lighting the targets up now." On cue the auspex of the Sentinel picked out and highlighted the bright beacons of laser designators deep in the plume of falling soil. The contacts were gunning it, and Knight was only able to pop off a poorly aimed Stormspear Missile from his carapace mount before he lost sight of them. Knight looked at the tactical map in the corner of his eye and grimaced.
"Sentinel to Major Sourgate, the Vindicators are rolling up your western flank. I am moving to intercept." Knight drove his steed into a bounding lope, the trunk-like legs of Sentinel kicking up great clods of soil as it powered over the terrain. Chimera APCs followed in his wake, their guns tracking the rolling hills on all sides in search of a target.
They found their mark: a four-hundred-pound bunker buster rocketed up from a copse of brush and slammed into the upper carapace of Sentinel. Memetic training paired with machine-heightened reflexes came to the fore, and Knight angled his steed's ion shield just in time to skip the round away like a stone off water. It detonated somewhere behind him, amidst the now scattering Chimera.
"You almost had me, traitor, but you won't get another chance!" Sentinel turned into the copse where the Vindicator had hidden, tossing up desiccated trees as if they were nothing more than twigs. He picked out the thermal flare of exhaust amidst the brambles and fired his battle-cannon at the source. The round exploded magnificently, exposing the traitor vehicle, a superficial dent in its dozer. It popped smoke as it fishtailed away from the metal goliath, but Knight loosed two Stormspear missiles from their cradles. They struck deep into the ass-end of the vehicle, gutting its engine block in a scream of shattered gears and fire.
Knight thundered towards the vehicle as its crew clambered frantically out of the side hatch. He gunned them down with Sentinel's chest-mounted heavy stubber and rammed his mount's massive chainsword straight into the heart of the vehicle. The traitorous machine spirit died in a shower of metal and slag, its betrayal paid in full. The pilot felt a wave of euphoria through the Throne Mechanicum: Sentinel was pleased. The machine had languished in the vaults of Mars for so long, and both steed and rider felt fulfilled to be out on the field of battle doing the Omnisiah's work.
That's when Knight's auspex pinged wildly. Sentinel swung about just in time to take the full force of a four-hundred-pound shell to its center mass.
The bio-feedback was too great, and Knight's mind whiplashed back into his body. His personal armor was intact, but the cabin was filled with steam and glowing alarm sigils; his tiny world began to turn, and with a groan he clung to his harness as his steed leaned back and crashed into the ground. Knight's vision was flooded with noosperic chatter from Sentinel's subsystems, each reporting a litany of damage; one diagnostic made his blood run cold: the reactor had been breached. He recited the Psalm of Plasma Ejection, but the machine spirit of Sentinel was in shock. A countdown began to tick in the corner of Knight's retinal display; he only had three minutes before the reactor went critical.
"Omnissiah damn it!" Knight slammed his fist into his sideways throne. He had only left the Mars a year ago, and this was how he was going to die? On an arid dust ball with not a single campaign to his name, felled by nothing more than a lucky shot?
For a second that stretched on forever, Knight wondered just how pathetic he would seem to his family back on Mars when they received news of his inglorious end. His mouth grew dry and his throat clenched tight as all the insecurities that had been festering since he left bubbled to the surface. His father was right: he could never hope to change anything out here. The Imperium was falling apart, and he was a fool for thinking he could do anything to stop it. He was worse than useless, having dragged the noble and ancient Sentinel from its home to die alongside him in a perfectly unfitting end.
"Fight on." Knight jumped with a start. Had that been a voice just now…
"Get on your feet." There it was again. It was coming from a single undamaged vox speaker set into the wall. The young man took off his helmet and pressed his ear against the device, the noise of alarms and the deadly countdown absent from his perception.
"Stand up," the voice was quiet and indistinct, like static within static, but sure enough it was there.
"People are counting on you," came the voice again.
"People are counting on me," Knight repeated. The words were simple, but they held so much power. Suddenly his mind was clear, and in-synchrony Sentinel's machine spirit awoke a long dormant system deep within its core. From an innocuous Cog Mechanicum attached to the fiery heart of the machine sprouted a host of mechadendrites. They sought out damage and eased the machine's pain, mending armor and repairing shattered systems. In a mere minute the rent in the forward armor had been sealed and the plasma reactor had been stabilized. The repair hub continued its arduous work, its presence and function hazily entering Knight's consciousness.
"Sentinel, you bear the Mark of the Omnisiah himself," Knight breathed. His blood thundered in his ears as the undying will of the machine flowed into his mind, suffusing his soul. It stoked his pride and zeal into a mighty pyre, burning doubt and fear to ash as Knight and steed became one again.
III
Autocannon rounds ricocheted off the hull of Major Sourgate's command Chimera, the turret gunner giving as good as he got with the vehicle's own multilaser. The knight had stalled the traitor's advance, and eleven of the regiments mechanized infantry squads had mobilized and reversed the flow of the battle. Sourgate had seen the knight laying in a ruin with a gaping, smoke filled hole in its front armor. He doubted it would be getting back up, but every battle demanded sacrifice, and better the knight than his own men.
"Carson, what's the ETA on our artillery support?" Sourgate yelled over the ringing of enemy rounds slamming into the vehicles hull.
"Fifty seconds!" Carson was cradling a broken arm, his one good hand flicking through vox channels on the transmitter. Sourgate grunted in acknowledgement before crawling into the driver section. The driver, Alexander, gave him a nod before handing his co-pilot a hopper filled with heavy bolter cartridges. Sourgate pressed his eyes to the telescopic sight and blinked away the brightness.
Three hundred meters from the bend in the river where the Chimera was hulled down in, at the crest of a line of hills, traitor light armor was putting out a fusillade. The counter-attack group had lost two of the eleven Chimera they had started with and were now forced to exchange pot-shots with the superior enemy position.
"Lieutenant Decius says he is pulling back with his men," Carson yelled, his eyes distant as he tried to hear whoever was on the other half of the line. "Wait," he said as Major Sourgate crawled towards him, a pissed off look on his face. "I just lost contact with Decius' group, Major," Carson said. A shadow passed over his face. "The last thing I heard was this… this…"
"Spit it out boy, what did you hear!" Sourgate snapped, the hair on the back of his neck standing on end as they always did when he had a bad feeling about something. Right now, he had a very bad feeling indeed.
"It sounded like something was chewing its way through the hull, sir. Vox-man Irius, the last thing I heard was him screaming." The color in Carson's face had gone out, and then the racket outside was joined by the bass section of artillery ordinance.
"Try and raise the other vehicles in the Lieutenant's section Carson." Major Sourgate punched his Vox-man lightly in the shoulder, pulling the boy out of whatever horror he was imagining happened to the other section. "Stay with me Carson," he said. Carson nodded and got back to work.
"Alexander!" Sourgate yelled into the driver's compartment. "put the pedal to the metal and get us within spitting distance of those heretic fucks!" The Chimera accelerated from its shelter, followed quickly by the other vehicles in the task force as they pulled out of their positions.
Obscuring clouds of chem-smoke burst into being all along the offensive line, while a harrying barrage of Basilisk shells fell atop the enemy. Timing was crucial, and from his seat Sourgate watched his chronometer intently as the seconds ticked by. Thirty…twenty-nine…twenty-eight…By the time the line of Imperial APCs breached the last smoke bank they had run out of time, and the artillery barrage lifted. The Imperials had played their gambit, and now, a mere fifty meters from the stunned enemy armor, they struck.
"Fire at will!" The order went down the line, and suddenly the Imperials were amongst the enemy. Las fire strobed wildly from firing ports and the barrels of multilasers, lashing out at the cowering enemy weapon teams that had been caught in the barrage. One of the Imperial vehicles had its track shot to pieces by a las-cannon, only for the AFV that had fired at it to be cored out by an enfilade of heavy bolter fire. One Chimera sprayed a retreating medical halftrack with promethium, setting its wounded passengers ablaze. Elsewhere, Major Sourgate's Chimera circled a traitor Chimera that had been immobilized by a lucky artillery shell. The traitors put up a valiant fight, but once their rear armor was exposed the vehicle fell silent as its insides were lased with high-intensity las-fire.
The enemy fell into a full retreat, its forward elements overwhelmed by the insanely dangerous Imperial charge.
The remaining traitors were being chased back to the mouth of the valley when a pack of loping metallic beasts exploded from the brush on the Imperial's left flank. Their hunched backs went well above the roof of a Chimera, and fire belched from their hellish maws as they roared their hunting call into the air. They slammed into the flanks of the racing Chimera, tearing armor off with their motorized teeth while their massive claws dug into the metal hide of the Chimera.
"Task force, pull ba-"
That was all Major Sourgate could get out before something tackled the side of the Chimera. He was thrown to the floor as his world went topsy-turvy. When his senses came to him, he was lying face down on the ceiling of the troop compartment. His command squad were firing frantically out the fire ports as something very big and very angry pried open a hole in the side armor. Suddenly the gigantic, gold and black muzzle of a mechanical monster tore through the metal and began biting wildly at the men inside. Veteran Kirsk had his entire left side bitten off in a spray of crimson, while las fire flashed harmlessly off the beast's unnatural snout. The thing pulled itself out of the cabin, dragging the entrails of Kirsk with it, when the earth began to shake. Beyond the hollow safety of the cabin, a brazen war horn could be heard. There was a hiss of surprise from the unseen beast, then a scream of metal on metal accompanied by a far more horrific howl of daemonic anguish. From his spot on the floor, Sourgate could see a massive chainsword many times the length of a man dive into the flaming heart of the monster. The beast thrashed uselessly until a column of pistons and adamantium came down and crushed its head.
"Someone get me eyes on what's out there!" the Major ordered, climbing to his feet when it was clear no one was willing to risk their neck by going outside. He slammed an opening sigil and the rear ramp rose up and away. The commander crawled clambered out and looked up to behold his savior.
It was the crimson and white knight from before; Sourgate blinked when he saw that the massive rent in its armor that had felled it was now gone, replaced with an unpainted blotch of armor. The major ducked instinctively as the avatar of destruction swung its massive battle-cannon towards him. Training kicked in and Sourgate breathed out. Two overwhelming explosions rolled over him as the cannon fired. If the major had not been temporarily deafened, he would have heard the death scream of a daemon engine. A shadow passed overhead, and the knight was driven back as the last animalistic machine leaped onto his upper carapace. The two titans of metal plodded away from the derelict Chimera, and Sourgate saw the daemon engine lose its grip on the knight's rounded armor plates and fall to the ground. It came to the earth in two separate pieces, bisected mid-fall by a titanic chainsword.
The late sun reflecting off its gleaming plate, Knight and Sentinel gazed out onto the field of battle. Traitor armor littered the field, and the abominable marriage of machine and the warp had been annihilated. The enemy was running, and their days were numbered. Knight tilted his mount's head to look directly at the wiry, chestnut haired officer that had crawled out of the injured Chimera.
There was nothing to be said now, nothing that would not spoil the victorious moment, so Knight simply nodded Sentinel's head to the commander. Major Sourgate stood there for a second before returning the gesture.
Both men knew that whatever respite they had won was temporary, but for the moment both were content to gaze out over the land they had defended and breathe a sigh of relief to still be alive.