how old this is. It might date back to pre-Strife times.”
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“Gruber, get the tech-priests up here,” snapped deViers. “We don’t have time to stand around
discussing it, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to lead us all down there before I know what we’re
looking at.”
The general’s adjutant put out a hurried call for the senior Martian priests to move up the
column.
Yes, thought Bergen, let’s see what the cogboys have to say about this. I’m sure this is where
they’ve been leading us the whole time. Whatever the Mechanicus wants, I’ll bet my boots it’s in
that tunnel somewhere, or on the other side of it, perhaps. One way or another, though, we’re going
in. Emperor protect us.
He knew that the men wouldn’t like it. He didn’t like it much himself. Alien things were
anathema. From the moment a child of the Imperium could understand Low Gothic, he or she was
drilled to hate all xenos and everything they stood for, and, from the moment they joined the Guard,
that hatred was fed and nurtured and beaten into them until, for many, it became a consuming
passion.
Suffer not the alien to live.
Wonder not at its works, thought Bergen, reciting from the Imperial Creed. For such things
weave their corruption into the minds of men and make us weak in the face of our foes.
Many a man with too much curiosity had been burned at the stake by commissars, members of
the Holy Inquisition, or even by outraged civilian mobs. Heresy carried a high price.
A monotone voice, like metal rasping on metal, sounded from behind Bergen. He turned to see
Magos Sennesdiar approach, face shadowed under his cowl, long red robes snapping at his ankles.
In his own way, he was even more alien than the grotesque stone twins. The metal tendrils that
sprouted from his back and his monstrous machine-bulk made the kneeling stone giants seem so
much more human. He was flanked, as usual, by the equally disturbing Adepts Xephous and
Armadron.
“Fortune favours us, general,” said Sennesdiar.
Bergen noted that, unlike the Cadians around him, the tech-priests did not wear goggles and
rebreathers. They didn’t need them.
How fragile we must seem to them sometimes, he thought to himself. Do they pity us, or do they
view us with contempt?
The officers had turned to greet the tech-magos, and he stopped in front of them. Raising his
dark, unblinking eye-lenses, he gestured with long metal fingers towards the ancient structure up
ahead. “Dar Laq lies open before us. Why do we not proceed? The ork legion will be upon us soon.”
“Dar Laq?” asked Killian. “Is that what you just called it?”
“May I assume, magos,” said deViers testily, “that this… this place is known to you?”
“In name only, general,” replied the magos. “Dar Laq was long rumoured to be somewhere in
this region, though it was never located and catalogued while Golgotha belonged to us. At this
altitude, the clouds render auspex scanners almost entirely useless, and, as you can see for yourself,
we are shrouded from view up here. There were tales of other ancient settlements, too, of course,
but, though my revered brothers searched, it seemed that time had hidden them too well. It is
remarkable that this gateway still stands, and it pleases me that our expedition has led to its
accidental discovery.”
“Gateway to what exactly?” asked Bergen.
The magos turned and looked straight at him. Bergen tried to read him, to search for some sign
of deceit, a twitch perhaps, some hint of conspiracy, but the magos’ body language was impossible
to read, for there simply was none. Bergen felt he might as well have tried to read the emotions of an
automatic sentry-gun.
“We do not know the name of the sentient race that occupied Golgotha before us, major
general,” Sennesdiar answered. “We found no remains of their dead, no written records. They were
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long gone when the Great Crusade came this way, and where they went remains a mystery. We of
the Mechanicus do not like to posit suppositions without adequate data.”
“Meaning you can’t really tell us what lies ahead, right?” said Rennkamp, cutting in. He shook
his head and turned to General deViers. “Could be walking into anything, sir.”
“I said they were long gone, major general,” said Sennesdiar, “and I meant it. I doubt we shall
find any cause for alarm within. If your concern is greenskins, on the other hand, perhaps I may
offer some reassurance. By their extremely superstitious nature there is a very high probability that
the orks will not pursue us. There is no sign that they have entered here. If they ever discovered it,
they did not deface it as they usually do. No glyphs. No spoor, unless your scouts have uncovered
some. I recognise that there may be some resistance to proceeding this way among the troopers. This
is a xenos place, but I project that the most we shall encounter is rubble and ruins.”
“And an exit that will get us out on the other side,” said Bergen. “Or what’s the point in going
down there at all?”
“I’m not leading this expedition into a dead end, magos,” growled General deViers. “We’ve got
a critical mission to complete, by Terra. Tell me what this place has to do with The Fortress of
Arrogance. And your answer had better satisfy me.”
Sennesdiar turned his hooded head from Bergen to deViers and back again. The threat inherent
in the general’s words seemed not to register at all, either that or he judged it entirely beneath his
attention.
“We can be sure there is a way out,” he said, “because the machine-spirit is our guide. Even
were it not so, an exit must exist, for it would be illogical not to create one. Animals of the lowest
forms know better than to build a lair with only a single exit. And we are not talking about a lowborn
animal species here. We are talking about an intelligent, technological race that dominated
Golgotha for many ages. The scant evidence we have indexed tells us that much.”
Then the magos turned to deViers and added, “I calculate an extremely high probability, general,
that this tunnel will lead us safely to the far side of the Ishawar range. For the sake of your grand
quest, and for all our lives, that is exactly where we must go. You see, as my adepts and I learned
from our communion with the machine-spirit, that is where The Fortress of Arrogance awaits us.”
The column was moving again.
About bloody time, too, thought Wulfe. Reports from the spotters at the very rear put the ork
forces almost within striking range, and the scar on his throat had begun to itch like crazy in the last
few minutes. That was never a happy sign.
It was good to be moving again, but, from his position in the rearguard, it was difficult to work
out exactly what was going on. As Wulfe sat high in his cupola guiding Metzger around another
bend in the trail, he listened carefully to the regimental vox-channel, trying to learn as much as he
could. All he could really draw from the broken chatter was that scouts had found a way forward,
and that, inexplicably, a good many of the troopers didn’t seem to like it much.
That doesn’t make sense, he told himself. Everyone with half a brain knows we’ve got to keep
moving if we’re going to stay ahead of those bastards. What’s got everyone so damned twitchy all
of a sudden?
Soon enough, he found out first-hand.
“By the bloody Golden Throne,” he gasped as Metzger followed the tank in front between two
eerily symmetrical columns of red stone. Beyond the weathered pillars, the ancient alcove with its
kneeling gods was revealed in all its glory. “We’re going inside that?”
There was a crackle on the vox.
“Company Command to all tanks. Keep your pace up. I’m talking to you, Holtz. Keep your crate
in line. Why have you stopped? Get moving.”
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Wulfe heard Holtz growling back, “Sorry, lieutenant. Just caught us a bit off-guard. I mean, it’s
alien, isn’t it? I don’t like it, sir. We shouldn’t be going in there. Throne knows, we shouldn’t. We
could be walking right into a xenos trap, sir.”
The link spat a harsh burst of static in Wulfe’s ear for a few seconds before he heard van Droi’s
answer. “It’s not exactly my first choice either, corporal, but we’re out of options. If you’d rather
stay here and face the orks on your own, I can petition Captain Immrich for you. Of course, the
commissars have already made it very clear that they’ll execute anyone who refuses to enter on
charges of cowardice.”
Holtz managed to sound angry and chastised at the same time. “I’m no frakking coward, sir. Of
course, I’m going in. I just don’t like xenos abominations, that’s all.”
Van Droi’s voice, on the other hand, had a hint of humour in it as he replied, “That’s all I
thought it was, corporal. That’s all I thought it was.”
As Wulfe was listening to this, he watched more and more of the vehicles in front being
swallowed up by the gaping black maw of the ancient tunnel. As soon as each vehicle went in, its
driver hit the headlights, but, from Wulfe’s vantage point, it didn’t seem as though the lights were
doing much to illuminate the path ahead.
Last Rites II rolled nearer and nearer the tunnel mouth. Wulfe looked from side to side at the
huge stone guardians as he passed them. What in the warp were they supposed to be? He might have
said ogryn, but they were too misshapen even for that. They didn’t look like orks, either. In fact,
they didn’t match the appearance of any xenos race that Wulfe had ever encountered or read about.
All too soon, the tunnel swallowed him. Black walls cut off his view and he was plunged into
darkness. The air that moved around him was immediately cooler. He noted this as a breeze played
over the hairs on his forearms and on the back of his neck. He noted, too, that the featureless black
floor of the tunnel was sloping downwards.
The tanks on either side lit their headlamps, and cones of light shot forward, striking the clouds
of oily exhaust fumes put out by the machines in front. There didn’t seem much else to see, at least
for now, just featureless tunnel walls, blue-grey clouds of exhaust smoke and the backs of the
machines in front.
“Metzger,” said Wulfe over the intercom, “hit the lights.”
“Aye, sir,” said Metzger, and Last Rites II added her own illumination to the darkness. It didn’t
make much difference.
On the vox, van Droi’s voice sounded again. “Are we all in?”
Wulfe turned and looked over his shoulder at the shrinking square of red daylight behind him.
Silhouetted against it were the dark hulls of the last machines in the column. “Looks like it, sir,” he
reported to van Droi. “I see the last of the Conquerors coming in now.”
“Good,” voxed van Droi. “Then I want all of you to move in to the sides of the tunnel, nice and
slow. We don’t need any accidents. There’ll be a Chimera coming back through here in a couple of
minutes, heading up towards the entrance.”
“What the devil for, sir?” voxed Sergeant Viess. “We can’t send men back out there.”
Wulfe noted the hesitation in van Droi’s voice, and the weariness when he said at last, “It’s a
demolitions team, sergeant. General deViers has ordered the entrance sealed behind us.”
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CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The Cadian column moved slowly and carefully through the dark, for the best part of three hours,
guided by Sentinel walkers with searchlights fitted. They discovered a plethora of side tunnels as
they went, smaller passageways that branched from the broad one they were following. Each of
these was given a cursory inspection, but they twisted away in countless directions and were far too
small to accommodate the tanks. With little choice, the expedition force found itself committed to a
single path that led ever downwards, deeper into the darkness.
DeViers marked the passing of time on the antique pocket-chronometer his grandfather, for
whom he had been named, had bequeathed him over eighty years before. It was an exquisite piece
of Agripinaan craftsmanship, inlaid with emeralds and white diamonds, finished in platinum, and
decorated across the face with a filigree of the most delicate gold. It had been with him a long, long
time. Looking at its pristine face always brought feelings of peace and comfort. He had been turning
to it more and more often since his arrival on this accursed planet.
Did they think he didn’t know what was going on, those damned Mechanicus? Did they think he
was so easily used? Warp blast and damn them, he was Mohamar Antoninus deViers, Saviour of
Thessaly IX, Protector of Chedon Secundus, decorated with the Iron Star for his overwhelming
victory at Rystok, awarded the Platinum Skull 1st Class for exemplary leadership at Dionysus. Then
there were Modessa Prime, Phaegos II, and a host of other glories. Age hadn’t addled his mind that
much. He knew all too well that they had an agenda. He knew they were guiding him along the path
that best suited their purposes, but what could he do? He needed them to help find Yarrick’s tank.
Their Machine-God didn’t speak to normal men, even men as worthy as him.
He hadn’t missed the looks his senior officers had been giving each other, either. They were
losing confidence in him. That much was evident. Even Gerard Bergen seemed ready to question
him these days. That stung deViers particularly sharply. Prior to that mess on Palmeros, he had
started to consider the handsome officer something of a protégé.
Well, they’d all see the error of their ways in the end. This wasn’t over, not by a long shot. The
Fortress of Arrogance was still out there somewhere. It couldn’t be far. Orks had taken it, and it was
his job to get it back. The Imperium depended on him. Whether the Mechanicus had initiated this
expedition or not, it was a Munitorum operation now, and he was in charge. Not one man, not one
ounce of Guard materiel would leave this blasted world until he had his prize. There was still
everything to play for. His place in the history books was still within reach. He would join the list
alongside Yarrick, Macaroth and Harazahn. He would be forever remembered as one of the great
men of his age.
He looked down at the chronometer’s ticking hands. There was still time enough for that.
“Caffeine, sir?” asked Gruber from the other side of the Chimera’s passenger compartment. “It’s
hot.”
“No thank you, Gruber. I’m wound up enough already.”
Gruber looked at the chronometer in the general’s hand and let out a snort of laughter. “Good
