第 7 页

respect.

“What is your will, Brother Pyriel?” added Amadeus, stomping over to the Librarian. “I live to serve the

Chapter.” Pyriel bowed.

“Venerable Amadeus,” he uttered, before straightening again. “Your orders are to remain sentry here and

guard the Fire-wyvern. The Archimedes Rex is obviously damaged. There will likely be little room for one as

mighty as you, brother.”

“As you command, sire!” The Dreadnought clanked back towards the perimeter of the gunship, weapons

whirring into position as he adopted overwatch.

“Sergeants, form up your squads,” said Pyriel over the comm-feed, facing his battle-brothers, “and follow

me.” He was walking towards a pair of immense bulkhead doors at the far end of the hangar when he

intoned. “In the name of Vulkan.”

Twenty voices echoed back.

The hangar led into a smaller, but identically shaped, airlock. Emek, who had disengaged the bulkhead and

then sealed it back behind them, worked at the room’s only access terminal, setting the entry protocols in

motion. Oxygen flooded the chamber, amber warning beacons rotating whilst it was repressurised. The

Salamanders stood stock still and silent until the process had finished and the icon on the far bulkhead door

turned from red to green.

Upon interrogating the Archimedes Rex’s maintenance logs and ship schemata, Emek was able to discern

that much of the Mechanicus vessel’s structural integrity was still intact. Deck by deck scans revealed that

there was also still limited oxygen on board, the admittedly weak atmosphere perpetuated by reserve life

support systems.

Most of the damage the Salamanders had seen outside during their approach appeared to have only affected

the ship’s ablative armour. Internal puncturing of the hull was restricted to only a few locations, and those

areas had been sealed off.

With ponderous momentum, the vast bulkhead doors split and opened into the Archimedes Rex proper.

A wide and gloom-drenched hall stretched out before the Salamanders. The Space Marines switched on the

luminators attached to their battle-helms. Several grainy, white beams strafed outwards like lances to

alleviate the darkness. Scads of expelled gases clung to the deck plates in a roiling, artificial smog. Recessed

columns ran the entire length of the hall. They were linked by sepulchral arches that framed Stygian alcoves,

seeming to go on forever as they disappeared into the thickening shadows ahead.

Pyriel gave the order to advance, invoking a faint glow in the blade of his force sword.

“No life signs,” uttered Iagon through the comm-feed after a minute had elapsed. He glanced down

intermittently at the auspex clutched in his gauntlet, scanning for bio-signatures.

“It’s deserted,” rasped Tsu’gan, combi-bolter held at the ready, stalking along one side of the hall in front of

his dutiful brother.

“Like a tomb…” hissed Brother Ba’ken from the other side, adjusting the weighty multi-melta he held,

unknowingly echoing Tsu’gan’s earlier words on the flight deck.

“Let’s hope it stays that way,” Dak’ir muttered, taking point opposite Tsu’gan.

After several minutes, Brother Zo’tan articulated what they were all thinking. “Feels like we’re heading

down.”

“We’re in one of the ship’s entry conduits,” offered Emek, flamer low-slung as he panned it back and fort h

with smooth sweeps. He had been promoted to special weapons trooper after the campaign on Stratos. The

previous incumbent, Brother Ak’sor, had died during the engagement. He had been one of several Fire-born

lost on that world. “It leads into the bowels of the Archimedes Rex,” Emek continued, using the data he’d

accessed from the ship’s schematics and then stored in his eidetic memory to ascertain their exact location.

“At this pace we should reach the end of it in approximately eight minutes.”

Eerie silence resumed with only the dull thud of the Salamanders’ footfalls disturbing it.

The empty sockets of a Mechanicus skull glared at them when they reached the end of the conduit, another

massive bulkhead door impeding the way ahead.

“Brother Emek,” invited Pyriel, a brief flare erupting along the blade of his force sword as he readied his

power.

Emek allowed the flamer to loll against its strap as he went to the bulkhead’s control panel and prepared to

engage the access mechanism. Behind him, all nineteen of his battle-brothers took up battle positions.

“Disengaging locks,” he reported, and fell back quickly to join them.

A crack split the immense door, hermetically sealed from the outside, dividing it into two. Shrieking

mechanisms were immediately smothered by an intense clamour spilling out from the chamber beyond,

filling the conduit with raucous noise. After the silence they had just experienced, the din was like a physical

blow and the Salamanders reeled as one. Only Pyriel was unfazed.

Adapting quickly, the Salamanders filtered out the crashing wall of sound, just as Dak’ir had done aboard

the Fire-wyvern. Maintaining vigilance, they awaited the slow, inexorable process of the bulkhead opening.

Massive forge-engines loomed in the next chamber, banks and banks of pistons, foundries, kilns and

smelting vats filling an expansive machine floor. Conveyors chugged with monotonous motion, steam spat

in sporadic intervals from pipes and vents, unseen gears churned noisily.

It was a hive of industry, a slow-beating heart of metal and machines, oil and heat. Yet, for all its labours,

the forge-engines had achieved nothing. The vast machineries were merely turning over and over, going

through their production cycles bereft of raw materials. Spent bolts piled up on the floor beneath an array of

heavy-duty riveting guns, their ammunition long spent; hammers pounded the vulcanised rubber tract of a

running belt, their concussive force impotent without plating to beat; oil spilled across the deck and seeped

down through cross-hatched grilles, no joints for the empty needle-dispensers to lubricate.

With no independent servitors in sight, no adepts to instruct them, the many and multifarious apparatus

continued in their various indoctrinated routines uninterrupted. The only creatures in the forge were those

servitors attached physically to the machines, but they too merely worked by rote, implementing their

protocols like automatons. There was no evidence of crew or even skitarii armsmen or Martian praetorians,

either — wherever the inhabitants of the Ark-class vessel were situated, it was not here.

“Tiberon,” barked Tsu’gan into the comm-feed, “shut it down.”

The Salamander saluted and broke from formation, bolter held low and ready. He disappeared briefly amidst

the forge-machines. A few moments later the machines slowed and began to power down, the din receding

gradually into silence.

Brother Tiberon returned and rejoined his squad.

Dak’ir tested the reaction of a slaved servitor with the up of his chainsword, watching it slump back as if its

invisible strings had been cut by the weapon’s teeth.

“We must find out what happened here.” He looked to Pyriel for some guidance, but the Librarian was still

and appeared pensive.

Instead, Dak’ir looked around and noticed a console independent of the forge-machines.

“Emek, see if you can access the onboard maintenance logs. Perhaps it will provide some clue as to what

happened.”

Emek went to work again, using the surplus power available from the shut-down forge-engines to activate

the console. Dak’ir at his shoulder, the other Salamander brought up more ship schematics, this time with

maintenance logs appended alongside. He read quickly, assessing the information display and absorbing it

like a savant. Emek’s capacity for knowledge and aptitude at applying it was impressive, even for a Space

Marine.

“Records are incomplete, possibly as a result of the damage sustained to the ship,” he said, whilst reading.

Touch sensitive screens allowed Emek to call up specific decks and areas, digging deeper for answers as he

zeroed in on the salient information the vessel did still possess. “There’s an alert for a minor hull breach to

the aft, starboard side.”

“We entered via the port side,” muttered Dak’ir. “How close to our current position is it?”

“Several decks — potentially an hour’s travelling through the ship, assuming a clear route and walking

speed. It’s too small to be weapons damage.”

“An internal explosion?”

“It’s possible…”

“But you don’t think so, brother?”

“This ship has been drifting for a while, any incendiary reaction from inside would have occurred before

now,” Emek explained. “There is a fading heat trace associated with this breach, which suggests it’s recent.”

“What are you telling me, Emek?”

“That the breach was caused by external forces and that we are not the only ones exploring this ship.”

Dak’ir paused to consider this then slapped Emek’s pauldron.

“Good work, brother. Now find us a route through the ship that will take us to the bridge. We may need the

Archimedes Rex’s log to ascertain what tragedy befell them.”

Emek nodded and began examining the ship’s layout in detail relative to the Salamanders’ position in its

bowels and the bridge situated in the upper decks.

“Brother-Librarian,” Dak’ir said to get Pyriel’s attention after he left Emek to his task.

Pyriel faced him and his eyes crackled briefly with psychic power.

“So it seems we are not alone, after all,” he said.

Dak’ir shook his head. “No, my lord, we are not.”

The Salamanders proceeded with caution, following the route established by Brother Emek and inloaded to

Brother Iagon’s auspex. They passed through cargo zones, abandoned crew quarters and vast assembly yards

fed by the forge-engines from below decks. The further into the ship they travelled, the more frequent the

discovery of servitors became. Unlike those on the foundry floor in the bowels of the Archimedes Rex, these

automatons were independent of engines or other machineries. Some lay slumped against bulkheads, others

hung slack like wretched cybernetic dolls over benches or cargo crates, many were simply frozen stiff,

locked in whatever perfunctory task they had been performing when the ship had been attacked. Whatever

had crippled the Ark-class cruiser had acted swiftly and to devastating effect.

Despite its disrepair, the iron majesty of the Mechanicus still came through and intensified the deeper the

Salamanders went in the ship. Symbols of the Machine-God were wrought into the walls, the holy cog of the

Martian brotherhood prevalent throughout the upper echelons of the Archimedes Rex. Alcoves recessed int o

the walls punctuated regimental lines of bulkheads and were minor chapels of devotion to the Omnissiah.

Incense burners hung from chains looped under the vaulted ceilings, emanating strange aromas reminiscent

of oil and metal. Designed to appease and mollify the machine-spirits, these lightly smoking braziers were

ubiquitous throughout the Archimedes Rex’s many upper halls, chambers and galleries.

Skulls set into the walls were mistaken as some form of reliquary at first, but the circuitry and antennae

jutting from bleached bone exposed them as cyber-skulls, the sanctified craniums of pious and devoted

servants of the Imperium. The entire ship was a monolith of religio-metallurgic fusion, the spiritual alloyed

with the mechanised.

Tsu’gan stooped over the collapsed body of a servitor. There appeared to be no external damage, and yet it

was lifeless and unmoving. Its staring eyes, milky orbs of glass, were bereft of animus.

“No putrefaction, no decay of any kind,” he reported from the head of the group. Brother Honorious watched

the dingy route ahead of his sergeant, flamer at the ready.

The ship’s corridors had narrowed, becoming almost labyrinthine, devolving into a myriad of tunnels,

conduits and passageways like the multitudinous neural pathways of a vast mechanised brain. Only Emek’s

route to the bridge had kept them on course. The Salamanders had to advance in pairs, one squad at the fore,

the other guarding the rear. Tsu’gan had been quick to establish his dominance, eager for action, and taken

the lead. Librarian Pyriel had seemed content to let him, occupying a position at the centre of the two

squads. The longer they spent on the ship, the more seldom Pyriel spoke. He interrogated his psionics

constantly, trying to ascertain some thread of existence of the other intruders on the vessel, but the machine

presence on board, though slumbering or inert, was hindering his efforts.

“These creatures are not dead.” Tsu’gan got back to his feet. Though the majority of their bodies were

mechanised, even servitors required biological systems to maintain the integrity of their human flesh parts

and organs. Without them they would not be able to function. “It’s like some kind of deep hibernation,” the

brother-sergeant added.

“A defence mechanism, perhaps?” offered Emek, alongside Dak’ir who was just behind Pyriel.

Tsu’gan didn’t have time to answer before Iagon spoke up.

“I have a life form reading, two hundred metres east.”

Looking in that direction, Tsu’gan grunted. “Weapons ready.”

Together, the Salamanders followed the quietly flashing signal on Iagon’s auspex.

Two hundred metres east led the Salamanders to a large Mechanicus temple. Octagonal in shape and with an

archway leading off from each of its eight sides, here the blending of machine and religiosity was even more

prevalent. There were iron altars, burning brazier pans and devotional statues; cyber-skulls wound around

the temple’s ambit like eternal sentinels. An inscrutable sequence of ones and zeros, doubtless some esoteric

equation relating to Mechanicus science, filled the plated floor. Huge, bulb-headed battery units spat arcs of

electricity across flanged conductor fins fixed to a thin torso of metal. The ephemeral sparks filled the

chamber sporadically, illuminating it in a harsh white glare.

In the centre of the room, encircled by the cog symbol itself, a robed figure knelt in supplication.

Tsu’gan was the first to enter, Honorious and Iagon at his back with weapons drawn. The figure seemed still

to the brother-sergeant, though after he’d stared at it long enough he detected the slightest tremor of

movement as it rocked back and forth. As it faced away from them, hooded by a heavy cowl, Tsu’gan was

unable to discern its features or physical disposition. Combi-bolter readied cautiously, he battle-signed for

his fellow squad members to fan out around him. In a few short seconds, the entire complement of