We do nothing but the Emperor’s bidding. This is His will. This is what must be done. Varonika drew back her hood, baring her olive features. She had the dusky melange complexion of most Terran natives, and her eyes were a dark enough brown to be black. There was curiosity in her eyes, the expression not unkind. One thousand souls, Kaeria. Is that really so many? Is that such a sacrifice, weighed against the consequences of doing nothing?
Kaeria met the mistress’ eyes and felt a moment of shame. One thousand innocents, nervously awaiting the soulbinding they were falsely promised. One thousand men, women and children believing they go now to serve their Emperor.
Varonika’s clawed hands gestured a swift reply. And serve Him they will. Few souls in the entire empire can claim such purity of service. What is this resistance inside you, Sister? Have you become so enamoured of battle that you believe yourself above our true calling? You are a warden, Kaeria. Not a warrior.
For a time Kaeria watched the second ship descending, wreathed in atmospheric flame. Carrying its living cargo to their service within the Imperial Palace.
I am both now, she signed. Warden and warrior. The war has made us all both.
Varonika’s expression showed faint distaste. Perhaps so. I will leave you to your contemplation, Sister, and wish you well for your own planetfall.
Kaeria knew she should prepare herself soon. Her place was on the third ship. Wait.
Varonika waited, her eyes on Kaeria’s own.
One thousand souls, Kaeria signed. What do the calculations state? How long will they last?
The Mistress of the Black Fleet lifted her hood back into place, covering her silvering hair. They will burn for one day, she signed.
With that she turned and walked away, leaving Kaeria to watch the oculus alone.
One thousand souls today, Kaeria thought. And what of tomorrow?
Eighteen
Demigod of Mars / Evacuation / Let me not die unremembered
She was wounded. Hurting. Weary. But she was also a demigod, and demigods did not lament. They endured. They triumphed. They protected those who looked to them in worship.
<Home,> said a voice.
She would never see home again. She would never leave this city alive. She knew these things. Fire burned in her bones. The souls inside her shouted and cried out and fought the flames.
<Home,> said the voice again. The voice wasn’t speaking to the demigod, nor to the crew inside the demigod’s skull-cockpit. The voice was speaking to those who would live to fight another day.
She stood above the city, the equal of its wraithbone spires, and saw the war taking place between the faithful and the faithless at her feet. In true wars there was always dust from marching feet and falling buildings, great clouds of it that occluded vision and forced her to rely on the blind echolocation of her auspex or the hunting sense of her heat-maps. There was no dust here. The towers of alien bone fell in brittle shatterings. The lesser buildings gave way beneath her tread like flawed glass. No dust. No dust at all.
The mist, though. The mist was worse than the dust. It came and went without pattern or warning. Even when thin, it sent back false echoes of prey with low-power passive echolocation pulses. When thick, it masked the heat signatures of other engines, friend and foe alike, in a veneer of cold emptiness.
The golden mist was thick now. She couldn’t see those that hunted her.
She lit her void shields, her internal generators layering them the way a colony of spiders labours together to weave a web.
<Home,> said the voice.
Be silent, she told it. Ignatum marches.
The Scion of Vigilant Light strode through the mist, war-horning to those beneath her tread. Martian hoplites scattered in tactical dispersion as they had thousands of times before. They knew how to wage war in the demigod’s shadow.
The Titan streamed with smoke as she marched. Victory banners swayed beneath her gunlimbs, far above the heads of her loyal infantry. These pennants and standards of red and black marked the Scion as one of Legio Ignatum’s ducal engines, eminent in name and deed. The extinct wasp of Ignatum showed in scratched and battered pride upon her carapace.
When she had first joined this theatre of war, she had felt loose and unready. Her worshippers had reassembled her within this alien city and told her to guard them against ghosts and phantoms that scarcely registered on her sensors. Active auspex chimes were worthless; they reverberated throughout the wraithbone buildings, mis-echoing and false-bouncing until the Scion’s systems insisted the entire city was alive and moving.
The frustration of her human crew had bled through to the Scion’s spirit, infecting her with impatience. But she had learned, and so had they. She had learned to rely on low-grade auspex pulses and to fight via naked vision. She had learned to destroy enemies that barely seemed there at all. And, most recently of all, she learned the enemy had brought demigods of their own.
They had wounded her in these last days, wounded her badly. The demigod was hurting now. She was destined to die today, but not yet. Not yet.
Her brothers and sisters were less sanguine regarding her fate. The arguments had raged between crews until she had silenced them with her decision. To die here was an honour. She would not release her crew to flee with the others. She would stand until she could stand no longer, selling her life to buy time for those fated to fight another day.
<Home,> said the voice.
It was the newest voice among her pantheon of pilots and crew and worshipful servants. Home was the sanctum-forges on Sacred Mars, a world riven by civil war, where the foundry fires were now lifeless and cold. Home was the mountain fortress where traitorous souls had plundered the wealth and lore of Ignatum in the Legio’s absence. Home. The very word set the demigod’s heart-reactor seething with overburning plasma.
What was she to do? She couldn’t run with the others. She was to die here, selling her life to save theirs. Such sacrifice shouldn’t have to endure homesick keening in spurts of treacherous code.
<Home.> How relentless the voice was. The Archimandrite, it called itself, insisting that it was invested with the authority of Mars. That repetitive authority had been rattling against the insides of the Scion’s skull-cockpit for several days now.
<Home,> said the voice.
Be silent! She refused to die with such puling weakness whining in her senses. Onwards she strode. Street by street, lending indifferent rage from her district-killing cannons when a phalanx of tanks or a lone beast of considerable size presented itself as a ripe target.
Presently she halted in her hunt. Minutes later. Hours later. She did not know and it did not matter. She judged the passing of time only by the pain she suffered and the destruction she inflicted.
Her void shields rippled with the incidental fire of infantry shrieking around her feet. This, she ignored. The pain of the fires inside her had dulled to the ache of abused metal. This, she was grateful for.