Ferrus Manus: Gorgon of Medusa Page 7

  DuCaine grunted. 'I was a half-feral child in the Albian underhives, and even there we'd heard the legends of Sthenelus.' He held a clenched fist to his chest, the old Unification-era salute. 'Disappointment, your name is bloody Medusa.' He rolled his eyes, then frowned. 'You remember how it was on Terra?'

  Akurduana nodded.

  'It was a smaller Imperium then. Everyone knew everyone, always rubbing shoulders. It didn't matter what Legion's colours you wore. When the plate came off we were all the same. There was none of…' He waved towards the gathering and Akurduana saw what he meant: warriors divided by Legion, by clan, by culture. 'Of this. We're all a bit more alike than this lot care to admit.'

  'You sing for the choristers here.'

  DuCaine laughed, boisterously enough to draw the attention of a group of Army officers seated nearby. 'When I start singing you'll know about it.' He banged his fist on his chest-plate a second time. 'Victories to come, and all that.'

  In the busy area at the centre of the Hall was a huge fighting cage. Four pillar-like legs of iron-rebarred ferrocrete raised it off the ground. If it had been occupied then its combatants would have been visible from anywhere in the Hall. It looked big enough to host a bout between Dreadnoughts and had bars thick enough to suggest that that was indeed its purpose. Today it was bedecked with the Turkic banderol of Second Company.

  'Speaking of which,' said Akurduana. 'I have a toast to deliver.'

  'After you, captain.' DuCaine dragged his cloak out of the way with a flourish. Akurduana bowed in mock thanks.

  'Lords.' One of the Army officers that had looked their way a moment before called the two legionaries over as they walked past. There were four of them in total, all medicae, drinking from tin mugs under a heat lamp and listening to a tinned recording describing the outline of the perfect war to come.

  'If it isn't Tull Riordan,' DuCaine declared. 'And awake too!'

  The man winced. 'The primarch wasn't offended, I hope.'

  'Not in the least,' said DuCaine. 'I think he rather enjoyed it.'

  The other medicae officers gave Riordan enquiring looks, which he quietly stonewalled. Akurduana supposed that a man who could fall asleep in the presence of a primarch could shrug off almost anything.

  'I'm here on Lord Amar's orders. I tried to see Cicerus about getting out of it, but…' The mortal sighed. 'He's not left Executor's training grounds since his audience with the primarch. Point is, I've got men aboard Executor in pain for want of enough medication to go around, and about a million rad-shots to administer before morning. Amar isn't interested. But I was hoping I could have a word with the primarch about it.'

  DuCaine chuckled. 'Oh, he'll love that.'

  Riordan looked up at the Iron Hand for a moment, unsure if that counted as permission, then nodded to himself and scooped up his officer's cane. 'All… right?'

  The old medicae's limp slowed the passage of the two legionaries to a procession.

  Soldiers, menials and warriors alike saluted Akurduana with filled glasses and clenched fists or bowed as he passed. Solomon and Gaius cheered. Paliolinus and Vertanus pumped fists, encouraging some surly Iron Hands pilot that Akurduana did not recognise to do likewise. Santar glared at him over tightly folded arms. DuCaine acknowledged all, hands outstretched to the crowds to either side of him, exhorting his own legionaries to the spirit of an occasion they did not wholly appreciate or understand. The bars of the great cage rang like an upturned bell to the brazen cries of victories to come, and before it stood the primarch. He was awesome in his full panoply of war and thronged by lesser warriors, the very greatest of whom were but shadows of his mighty stature.

  Ferrus' eyes shimmered.

  With amusement? Indulgence, as a father might show a child? Or did Akurduana read too much into a mere reflection of the light?

  'Welcome,' Ferrus said, a narrow smile on his face, but nothing of the sort anywhere close to those eyes. He looked down to the mortal, Riordan. 'You are adequately rested?' The medicae coughed, suddenly finding himself lost for words. 'Your leg.' Ferrus frowned. 'I had assumed the cane an affectation.'

  Riordan looked at his legs as if unable to figure out which one the primarch referred to. 'Shot in the knee, lord. A live-fire exercise on Jove-Sat IV.' He cleared his throat, tightened his grip on the cane. 'Autogun at two metres. It's a wonder I didn't lose it.'

  'Why did you never replace it?'

  'I made my peace with it.'

  'You are a psychologi.'

  Riordan blinked, but it was not a question. The primarch would have been able to recite the name and record of every soldier in the 413th Expedition from memory.

  'I was. Once.'

  Ferrus lowered himself to one knee with a clank of armour, like a giant kneeling before a child. His enormous, dog-toothed shoulder rim was still higher than the regimental crest on Riordan's cap. He looked into the mortal's face, smile fixed and cold, silver eyes always distant. 'What do you imagine to see in my mind, psychologi?'

  Riordan's throat hitched, up and down, but he made no sound. Faltering from the primarch's never-blinking gaze, he looked away, coming, as all eyes did sooner or later, to Ferrus' hands.

  'Do you know the legend of how I got these hands?' Ferrus raised one and turned it so that it appeared to change colour under the light. 'Of how I slew the silver wyrm, Asirnoth, by plunging its body into the lava sea of Kiraal?'

  'I do, lord,' said Riordan, and swallowed the lump in his throat. 'With respect though, I'm not buying it.'

  Ferrus frowned, nonplussed, then laughed aloud, eyes sparkling with genuine pleasure. 'And why is that?'

  The medicae lifted his own hands to his face to demonstrate 'The lines. They're too straight. I've treated my share of liquid burns, and in a struggle you'd expect waves, splashes.' He shrugged. 'Unless you drowned the serpent in a puddle…'

  'A pity,' said Ferrus, rising. The smile was gone. 'That one was my favourite.'

  The calls from the crowd increased in volume. Akurduana managed to tear his attention from the primarch and the mortal as DuCaine emerged bearing a ewer and a long-stemmed glass. The latter he pressed into Akurduana's gauntlet as, with great pomp, he filled it with wine from the former. The scent dizzied his neuroglottis with floral remembrances, his head filled with the din of clapping hands, pounding feet, men shouting in time.

  Raising his glass high so as not to be jostled and risk spillage, Akurduana backed onto the first step towards the fighting cage. Then the next. And the next. Until his view was level with that of the primarch himself, his view that of a sea of upturned faces broken occasionally by fighting cages, lumen posts and greasy smoke He held out his glass and the volume diminished in anticipation of his words. 'Hold!'

  Santar emerged from the crowd, with the dulled edge of a training blade raised. He was clad in riveted half-armour that among the Medusans seemed to constitute casual attire, baring for the first time the huge augmusculature of a cybernetic left arm. 'You have shown us how the Third Legion prepares for war. Let me demonstrate how the Iron Tenth spends the eve of battle.'

  The Iron Hands roared their approval. The Emperor's Children shouted back good-naturedly. The mortals got lost in the noise.

  Akurduana held Santar's bullet stare. There was no malice, there or in his words, but a determination so fierce it could easily have been mistaken for hatred.

  'I understand you will be leading my Second Company,' he said. 'And you my First.' Santar practically spat it out.

  'My second, Demeter, is a solid officer. He will go far. You will learn a lot from him.' Santar hissed in through his teeth. Akurduana regarded him quizzically.

  What had he said?

  'You are an opponent worthy of these cages, captain.' Santar managed to command his voice into a growl. 'Face me. Let's see whose traditions hold up to the test.'

  Akurduana glanced towards Ferrus. The primarch's expression was typically obscure but he seemed amused by the confrontation. Officers of the Iron Hands, he knew,
were encouraged to settle such matters for themselves. He sighed.

  'Very well.'

  A space opened around Akurduana as Santar strode towards him, sword raised, only the primarch himself remaining where he was, as if he were somehow part of the bones of the ship and immovable. DuCaine selected a practice sword from one of the wire baskets at the foot of the cage and tossed it into the cleared ring. Catching it neatly in one hand, Akurduana butterflied the weapon through a few static routines to ease his muscles in and find a feel for the blade. Santar gave an appreciative grunt, but didn't move. Akurduana sized him up.

  This would be a different fight to that on Vesta. This time the Iron Hand would be the lighter of the two, an unpowered harness of iron and leather in exchange for his Cataphractii plate. And there would be no element of surprise.

  Ferrus Manus stepped back, clearing the stage.

  'What are you waiting for?'

  There was a tsunami roar from the onlookers as Santar stepped in with a sword-thrust to the heart. Akurduana's sword reacted of its own instinct. A kiss of steel, and Santar's jilted blade swept across his shoulder as though it had never wished for a deeper taste.

  Akurduana had never had to think about fighting. Even as an adolescent he had embarrassed the old Thunder Warrior tasked with his instruction, Thariel Corinth, each and every time. He had never been beaten, never been so much as grazed. For him, combat had always been as natural as listening to music or watching a sunrise. As effortless and, after a time, as dull.

  Santar roared, furious, breaking a prolonged exchange in which Akurduana's attention had clearly been elsewhere with a cleaving stroke across the chest. His bionic left shoulder more than compensated for the lack of powered support, and blunted or not, it was a blow that would have cracked ceramite like an eggshell had it landed. Akurduana felt the vibrato in his breast-plate as the practice sword stroked across it like the bow of a viola, and eased onto his back foot. Then he flicked up the toes of his trailing boot and kicked Santar smartly under the armpit.

  The blow knocked the Iron Hand aside, jerked apart blocky metallic fingers, and clattered his blade to the deck. Someone in the first row laughed. Akurduana afforded them a sardonic bow.

  As if anything they had just witnessed had been hard.

  He heard a bellow and turned back, the air forced from his lungs as Santar's cybernetic shoulder hammered into his gut and drove him to the crowd. They crashed together into one of the ferrocrete bastions upholding the high cage. Santar drew back his bionic to punch. Akurduana threw out an open palm, guided the Iron Hand's knuckles up, over and through the corner of the hefty pillar in a shower of ferric dust. He kneed the warrior in the gut. Again. Again. Cushioned by girdle muscle and heavy augmetic work, Santar felt nothing, and slammed his forehead into Akurduana's. The back of his head cracked into the fixture. He cried out in pain. Santar's face came away bloody and Akurduana felt a flicker of something he had not taken from a fight in two hundred years.

  Pleasure.

  He threw his arms around Santar's neck, close enough to avoid another butting head, then pushed back against the pillar with his feet. Santar growled as he was bent back at the waist. Akurduana began to walk backwards up the pillar, Santar still holding him perpendicular as if they were an acrobat and a circus strongman performing a spectacle for the warriors of the combined legions. Santar roared, feeling himself being pushed off balance, and dropped onto Akurduana's arm like the blade of a guillotine. Akurduana's wrist crunched under the Iron Hand's augmetic shoulder, but his hardened bone density spared him anything more serious than a bruise. Both warriors rolled off each other, the shouts of their brothers pounding in their ears.

  Santar was on his feet first, only for a scissoring kick through the ankles from Akurduana to land him back on his face. Akurduana swept up his sword, still rolling, and slashed it down onto Santar's wrist as the Iron Hand reached for his.

  There was a tink of blunted steel touching augmetic iron and suddenly, but for two warriors' breathing, all was silent.

  Santar slumped to the deck in surrender. Akurduana held his sword over Santar's wrist, arm trembling from the after-effects of combat hormones, then blinked in overreaction to the drip of something warm, wet and red into his eye.

  Gravely, Ferrus Manus raised Akurduana's sword on his finger.

  He was powerless to resist.

  'At least he bled you,' said Ferrus.

  Akurduana touched his eyebrow, and almost laughed at the giddying sight of red on his lacquered gauntlet. The blood on Santar's face had been his.

  'A first?' Ferrus asked.

  'A first.'

  'Small victories, then,' said Ferrus, delivering the eve-of-battle toast with the grim humour of a born conqueror.

  'Men have always come to Gardinaal Prime to die, or so I was told. Why should we have considered ourselves so different…?'

  - The Remembrances of Akurduana, Vol. CCLXVII,

  The Fall of the Lords of Gardinaal

  SEVEN

  The Xiphon rumbled, its sleek armoured cowling trembling as powering systems drew from the engines as quickly as they could produce. The growl from its nacelles was that of an aroused beast, bones cold, belly empty, thick promethium fumes belching from its whirring fans into the chill artificial dawn.

  'War Beast?'

  The aircraft's labyrinthine intakes gurgled and spluttered, causing various intermix choke alerts to light up the cockpit dashboard. Moses quickly rejected the name. 'I know. It does not fit.' He patted the dashboard soothingly as servitors and deck clerks wearing muffler sets and void suits drew fuel hoses from the aircraft's tanks. The gargling subsided, but the upset lingered in its spirit.

  Waves of thunder filled the flight deck as Primaris-Lightnings and Stormhawk and Storm Talon gunships were launched by squadron, hundreds of aircraft scattered like chaff through the blue-fielded void doors. The Xiphons and their larger sisters, the Wrath Pattern Starfighters, had more delicate fuelling requirements, a combustible combination of a promethium-based fuel for atmosphere flight and an anoxic chemical plasma for operation in the void that should never, ever mix. It took longer. Moses watched the departure of the heavier strike fighters and gunships from his own violently shaking machine with mounting impatience.

  'Breathe, brother.'

  Moses glanced over the starboard rim of his cockpit to the Xiphon in the neighbouring launch rack. Vertanus waved. He was clad in dark purple armour, unhelmed, but with an attached headset, a vox-bead extended across his mouth. Their wingtips were practically touching, but it would have been impossible even for a Space Marine to have shouted over the shriek of their engines and been heard.

  'Fulgrim has always encouraged us to pursue mastery of the weapons of our foes and rivals, that we might surpass them in the use of their chosen arms.' He reached out of his cockpit and massaged the sleek cowling of his machine. 'Paliolinus is not the only one to have checked your record. Three hundred and nine combat kills. Impressive. I have no doubt that you will master our favoured weapon, Moses.'

  Uncertain how to answer, Moses simply didn't, turning instead to look over his shoulder as deck overseers in reflective silver tabards cleared the area around the launch racks. He checked his gauges, then hit the switch to bring the armourglass canopy juddering down over his head. It locked and pressurised with a hiss.

  'Lord Commander Cicerus reported a large air defence force of capable atmospheric fighters.' Paliolinus crackled through the dashboard vox. 'But they are not us. We will carve them open with enough to spare to embarrass our Tenth Legion brothers before the watching primarch.'

  'Why do you think we give them a head start?' chuckled Vertanus.

  The build-up of current in the mag-slings situated behind the interceptors' launch racks caused the powerful magnetic coils to glow yellow. The air around them would be groaning, but Moses could not hear it. He gave his restraint harness a trial tug, then felt the rapid inversion of forces as the polarity of the magnets switch
ed. The repulsive force slammed into the back of the aircraft, squeezed Moses between it and his own mass' resistance to the sudden acceleration, and fired it down the launch rack towards the bay doors.

  There was a blizzard of sidereal static as he passed through the atmospheric coherence field and then the nothing of the void, just the roar of his nacelles and the hiss of his vox scanner.

  Taking a deep breath, hearts slowing down, he made the routine checks and corrections for the brief void flight. Myriad systems and subsystems sprayed his subconscious with status runes. He brushed the interface shunt in the back of his neck with his fingers before manually triple-locking the atmosphere engines, establishing secondary environment seals, heat shields and coolant systems.

  He looked up from his post-launch routines as his Xiphon tumbled towards the planet.

  Gardinaal Prime.

  It was a cold orb, iron-grey and granite. Mountainous imperfections and folds in the surface of the sphere gave rise to fortifications and industrial stacks, every ciliated crease of the anthropocentric world a hab-layer for the domicile of millions. There was no sign of liquid oceans, or of clouds, or of any phenomena at all that had not been yoked to human will. The remains of a pair of moons formed a lightly irradiated asteroid belt in the planet's orbit, greying out the web of orbital graving docks, heavy manufactories and material harvesters that threaded through it. Counterweighted orbital elevators tethered the grid to the planet's artificial crust, running continually back and forth. A sprinkle of lights filled in the emptiness of the planetary dark side. It was as though a geoformer with primitive materials and grand visions had constructed a divine sphere, set it in the orbit of a star at the edge of Imperial space and named it Gardinaal Prime.

  Moses thought of the endless, dust-scoured plains of home. Medusa was pitiless, some would say wilfully harsh, but he would sooner live out the remainder of his functional immortality on her sunless deserts than contemplate a day on this world. Shaking off his disquiet, he glanced over his shoulder.