The forces of the Order of the Dragon had been bled dry, in the sludge rivers of the Iapygian Sink and the chaoses of eastern Valles Marineris. They had lost countless servitors, skitarii, and pieces of machinery. Now they charged into the canyons of Noctis Labyrinthus, barely outnumbering the Iron Hands, having given up nearly every other stronghold on Mars.
But Ferrus Manus knew that the war for Mars was far from won. For the Dragon was a lie, but not a fiction.
Column upon column of Titans and superheavy tanks were moving into the narrow valleys, bringing down much of the terrain as they walked or rode. There were other contraptions, too, bizarre and without known weaknesses. Such experimental designs were, of course, likely to have twice as many unknown ones.
Ferrus would leave the mop-up to his Legion, if Noctis Labyrinthus stood. The only potentially problematic fortress was the Magma City, defended by rebel Death Guard. There was a mystery there, some unknown method of interstellar transport, but it was unlikely to be retrievable, post-siege. Infiltrators would have a better chance; he'd discussed the possibility with the few loyal tech-priests, albeit they had in the main resisted, claiming infeasibility. But nothing in Magma City could compare to the Dragon's danger.
Semyon was next to incommunicado, but had at least assured Ferrus that he was still loyal, merely retreating again to the realm of far legend. It was quite suboptimal timing. The defense around the Dragon's tomb was under the command of Iron Father Sabik Wayland, with Iron Fathers Uninum and Dolgerigh taking up identical positions around two decoys. The rest of the Iron Hands were deployed around the Labyrinth, in positions that maximized mobility. It was an arrangement designed to take the Order's assault apart, and to capitalize on their single-mindedness, leaving no opportunity for retreat. Nothing would remain of the Order's army.
"But," Gabriel Santar said, "your chase for total victory will only open the door for a total loss."
Ferrus didn't even twitch at the hallucination. It had remained remarkably consistent, though it usually talked more about the incipient schism with Branthan's Ethereal Hands than the war itself. The schism, however, was no small problem in its own right. The Dragon – Ferrus was not genuinely sure, even, whether the Order was capable of releasing it. But then again, it was more likely, on past experience, that he was being insufficiently rather than excessively paranoid.
He could have set up a greater defensive perimeter, devoted more forces to preventing a breakthrough, but he had judged that possibility remote enough with the current setup. Now, standing on a rocky pinnacle towards the upper part of the Labyrinth and gazing upon the first shots, far below, Ferrus Manus wondered whether he should have been more cautious.
The distant sky, to a human eye, was simply the red of the pristine Martian soil. Ferrus saw in detail the fires rising from multicolored forge complexes, markings of battle. In reality, projectiles creating fire were only a small part of the destructive forces the sides were hurling at one another, albeit the most visible one.
A large detachment of Clan Avernii, the Morlocks, surrounded Ferrus's clifftop watch. They stood silent, but ever at the ready to follow him into the heat of war. Ranu Urgdosev, the leader of this detachment, handed his Primarch a data-slate, and Ferrus glanced at it. It described an experimental Mechanicum crawler, dubbed the Vanadium class by the Iron Hands, which the Order was using in large numbers. Ferrus assimilated the information in seconds and looked back at the horizon, where battle was drawing ever closer to him.
In fact, it was drawing closer too fast. The Order tanks' speed was impossible, especially given that many of their models had specifications already known to the Iron Hands. But, regardless, each tank was dashing through the maze at half again, or more, the speed it was designed for.
"The Order has redesigned their tanks for speed," Ferrus voxed to the relevant part of the Legion. "Assume all speeds to be approximately doubled." Many were more than that, some less, but without more of an inkling about the mechanism Ferrus could not know for sure.
The enemy front, dashing forward, was far from constant. Indeed, Ferrus saw that the tanks that had been most sped up were concentrated in a few spearheads. One was approaching his position, by now, and he ordered the Morlocks to begin descent. For himself, he gazed at the traitors' army for several more seconds before understanding. It was bizarre, by non-Warp physics, but not technically impossible even in that regime. The Vanadiums, somehow, were more than fast themselves. They sped up the tanks, and even the Titans, around them. It was almost a segregated fast-time field, albeit a mild one. The actual mechanism was not obvious, but Ferrus had to respect the invention. He appended those conclusions to the Vanadiums' dossier, recalling that this capability had never been shown before.
And then, as he began to contemplate redeployment, a Vanadium-led formation drove into the waiting Morlocks. Urgdosev's Astartes unleashed a minor firestorm, even as mines took out the two leading tanks; but the Vanadium itself was unharmed, having hung back.
Ferrus did not hesitate, as the Morlocks began to assault the tanks. In battle, there was no time for contemplation; and it was long since time for him to enter battle.
He leapt down from the cliff, diving directly into the Vanadium in a blast of shrapnel. He tore its central cogitator apart with his silver hands, servitors tiny compared to him firing uselessly and inaccurately. And then, and only then, he unlatched Fireblade from his side and pointed it at the servitors.
The servitors froze, their flesh unable to deny a Primarch's aura. It would only have been several seconds before their mechanical components would have pulled them into a lumber again, but with two strokes of the sword Fulgrim had forged him, all five of the mechanical homunculi died. Ferrus spared a glance for the strange add-ons on the engine, which he assumed were responsible for the speed increase, before sweeping his gaze around the battlefield. The Morlocks held, as he had known they would, and so Ferrus turned to face the Order's column once again.
That was when the next tank fired at him.
It was a close shot, not enough to completely destroy Ferrus's shoulder armor but enough to make him bleed. Ferrus skidded a few centimeters back, bracing, before the tank drove directly into the Primarch. Ferrus lowered his arms and, gunfire pitting his armor, raised the tank's front end and sending it into the air, flipping it into the following one. They collided, creating an adamantium plug that entirely blocked the passage.
Another tank, its speed still augmented by the remnants of the Vanadium's field, lost control and slammed into the roadblock. Further behind, the back half of the column crawled to a controlled stop. A number of them began firing into the rock, trying to excavate a tunnel around the charred metal in front of them; curiously, none tried to turn around. That was what Ferrus would have done, in their place, because the slower path would avoid engagement with a supported Primarch. Their road to victory was – but no, that was only a road to Ferrus's defeat. To actually win, they would need to attack the Primarch. Or, was this simply a matter of fanaticism, of thinking that the miniscule chance of getting through Ferrus was preferable to the certainty of arriving to the Dragon's lair late, if at all?
It was hard to tell, but as the Morlocks walked up behind him, Ferrus realized that it did not matter. His course was the same either way. He turned to face his sons.
"Squads Buahaan, Tadhesfaw – hold the slopes. Everyone else, with me! For the Emperor! The flesh is weak!"
"The flesh is weak!" the Morlocks echoed. Urgdosev himself was second onto the barricade, barely behind Ferrus himself. The Astartes breached the roadblock and leapt, from above, after their Primarch onto the tanks below. Bolter shots rang out, as did the sound of hammers meeting plate.
The Order's tanks had been trapped, and now the Iron Hands swept them away. Ferrus Manus tracked every Morlock's position as they fell onto the Order of the Dragon, but the majority of his focus remained in front of him. After wrenching a cannon off a modified Valdor, he sheathed his sword and used it as a massive club, gradually crumpling it as he continued forward, dodging regular shots. It created an illusion of savagery, which he was only happy to encourage. To distant observers, Astartes were often seen as techno-barbarians. Whether that was true depended on one's definition of barbarism.
Behind him, the din of battle continued. By now, despite their obsession, some of the rear tanks were beginning to calculate their doom. Only Urgdosev's squad had kept up with Ferrus, but that was quite enough. Ferrus liked them quite a bit – it was a peculiar combination of strength and weakness, and a young one, but every one of them held promise well above Morlock average.
"For the Emperor!" Urdgosev bellowed, as the squad charged after its Primarch, towards the column's back. Ferrus needed to win here, both the skirmish and the battle, in the most decisive fashion; and then, perhaps, his reputation, and more importantly pride, would somewhat recover. But in this valley, at least, the resistance seemed to be reasonably weak. He hoped that his temporary absence from command, having given over overall direction of the battle to Iron Father Wayland and Captain Sfacay, would not prove a mistake; but both those commanders, he trusted to be capable, and so he focused on the here and now.
Throwing away the cannon's remnants, Ferrus once more unsheathed Fireblade and carved into an unknown tank's engine. It sputtered, leading Ferrus to throw himself to the ground. The explosion duly came, washing over his back; it would have blackened his armor if that had not already been its color.
Several minutes of clashing metal followed, the Iron Hands by now massacring the tech-priests. It brought to mind the original massacre, the oil and blood turning the council room's floor slick. Perhaps that had been suboptimal. Ferrus had always lacked patience, but if the massacre had followed lengthy negotiations, perhaps the resulting rebellion would have been lesser. And while Kelbor-Hal would never have accepted the Emperor's terms, perchance Kane might have?
Most likely, however, it would only have shifted all these events back a few months. Ferrus Manus knew the Mechanicum's factional rivalries fairly well, and he doubted any of the major ideologies would have simply accepted Imperial Chaos. Of course, he'd have bet several planets that the Order of the Dragon would remain an insignificant sect, too. Counterfactuals were difficult like that.
As Urgdosev yanked the last tech-priest out of his tank, and fired several bolter shells into the probable locations of vital organs, Ferrus Manus turned away from the empty canyon and towards his massively armored Morlocks. They stood, black silhouettes in Terminator plate, somewhat scattered, waiting.
They would follow him into hell, or out of it. Most of his Legion would, even now – that much, he had deduced from discussing the situation, without excessive trouble. But an open civil war would still be disastrous. The Iron Hands would fall on their own blade, which – while better than fading into an iron landscape – was a disturbing possibility. And the Coalition they were fighting had Marines and Primarchs of its own, even if the details of which ones remained unclear.
No, he could control the dissent. And therefore he would control it, and keep unity strong. Orth had proven he was invaluable, after all, and motivated by loyalty as well as fear.
The platform lowered itself to ground level, and Ferrus silently stepped onto it, beckoning Urgdosev's squad to ride with him. Then they were rising, the opposite wall drawing away centimeter by centimeter. Dust, gray and red and green, swirled in vortices behind them, glimmering in the cold starlight.
Cables ground their way upward, accelerating, leaving a floor of death and dust and iron far behind. Not, of course, that there was any place on Mars one could escape from those factors.
Not, of course, that Ferrus Manus felt any desire to.
When they were at the command post again, Ferrus glanced around, taking in the physical view before looking at the data. That was sufficient for him to realize things had gone very, very wrong.
The mobile squadrons were successfully hunting the Order, tearing the traitorous tech-priests to shreds. Throughout Noctis Labyrinthus, the Iron Hands were winning by a wide margin.
The only exception to that was the region surrounding the Dragon's lair.
Wayland's guns stood silent, having been trampled by the Order's Titans. Wayland himself, Ferrus saw on a display, had been incinerated by the god-machines' guns. And, within minutes, the Order of the Dragon would roll into their dark god's tomb, unopposed by anyone but Semyon, whose defenses – last Ferrus had seen them – were frankly mediocre.
"Sfacay," Ferrus said, with a solar-temperature voice. "What happened?"
"Wayland fell," Sfacay responded by the same private channel. "I redeployed forces to emphasize, as you commanded, the psychological devastation of the Order."
"I commanded they be prevented from reaching the tomb!"
"But my lord, you said to ignore the lie of the Dragon, so… why does it matter?"
Ferrus Manus turned off the vox and let loose a cry of frustration and fear into the night sky. The only question, now, was whether it would be Ferrus or the Dragon that would end Sfacay. At this point, Ferrus suspected the latter.
"And you can do nothing, by this point," Gabriel Santar said. "A brilliant strategist indeed."
Ferrus turned to the waiting Urgdosev. "Get Numen's section of the Avernii to reinforce Semyon. If the Guardian survives several minutes, we'll stop the Order."
Urgdosev relayed the order, then turned back to his father. "My lord," he asked through a private channel, "is… is the Dragon real?"
"No," Ferrus lied. "But there are horrors, in those vaults, and they must be contained."
Urgdosev, more reassured than he should have been, signaled affirmation, and Ferrus turned to look at the battle once more. The Order's last battalion marched and rode towards Semyon's fortress, Titans and tanks and infantry united in desperate faith – indeed, in the worst of desperate faiths. They were close, now, on the brink of weapons range.
And then the night was green.
Viridian beams impacted the Order's forces from all sides, a trap of turrets snapping shut. They did not push the heavy machinery away, but rather somehow pulled it towards itself. Squinting, Ferrus considered how the effect may be achieved. It seemed to be a deconstructor beam, pulling materials apart layer by layer; but such weaponry was believed to be effectively impossible, and had never been seen even in xenotech.
Except Semyon, it seemed, had somehow cracked the problem, and with insane efficiency too; and now he stood, personally, ten-armed, on the rocky walls, directing servitors armed with more conventional weaponry into the Order. The turrets continued to fill the canyon with green light, flesh and iron being disassembled identically. The Order focused its fire on the turrets and Semyon himself, but the Guardian of the Dragon had already, singlehandedly, brought down three Titans, and most turrets were still firing.
Semyon was silhouetted against the green glow, and in those moments, Ferrus Manus felt almost as if he was looking at his own father, in early days, or perhaps at the Omnissiah of Mechanicum myth. His gestures, transhuman, were occasionally interrupted by exploding shells, and Ferrus intellectually knew that the Guardian was unlikely to survive. But it did not matter, at this moment.
Titans fell into each other, crucial circuits missing; tank guns misfired, damaged by the deconstructor beams; individual skitarii shot each other in trying to get to Semyon. The Guardian danced on the cliff's edge, a ruinous shadow between stormdrops.
And then Numen's Morlocks charged in, from a side canyon, even as the turrets slowed their fire. The Order was surrounded, now, but asking for no quarter, because they were well aware it was months too late. Black Astartes, against green light, Semyon's turrets avoiding the sons of Medusa; Mechanicum forces painted a thousand shades, mostly blue and silver; and the canyon walls, crimson and gray, rusted both as primordial Mars and as dilapidated industry. Ferrus could no longer see Semyon – had the Guardian fallen? – and the turrets had altogether stopped.
"Turrets have self-destructed," Numen explained by vox. Ferrus nodded; it appeared that Semyon did not want to share his technology. In the aftermath, Ferrus would consider letting him get away with it. If not for the Guardian, they might all have been doomed by now.
And now? Now, from a distant clifftop, Ferrus Manus watched the Order of the Dragon die. They died, trying to unleash a horrendous apocalypse that they, in their eternal quest for knowledge, had embraced in an entirely false way. They died, as fanatical devotees to unreality, while thinking they were princes of rationalism. They died, pathetically, and weakly despite all of their metal. Indeed, they provided an excellent example of why metal was not necessarily any stronger than flesh.
But – and this Ferrus Manus had to accept, with, perhaps, a twinge of jealousy – they died standing, without doubt, and having after choosing their path never knelt again, to anyone.