Eventually he turned onto the main thoroughfare that led towards the mighty gates of Malevolus's temple, remembering the way with the ease of someone who had worked there for a great many years. He felt a surge of sudden welcome as he passed through the crowds and smiled at the thought of setting foot in the temple that had once been his home.
With his purpose clarified by the machine priest, he felt as though his ordeal would soon be over.
Even as he drew up to the gates, mighty portals flanked by mighty, pumping pistons the size of a titan, he saw a red blur speed past him. A hot spray of oil and blood spattered his face and he cried out as a severed head landed in the passenger seat next to him.
Ravachol slammed on the brakes and spun in his seat. Behind him, one of his battle servitors lolled against the sides of the transporter, its knees buckling as its reduced nervous system decided it was dead. The servitor collapsed with a heavy, metallic clang, blood pumping energetically from the neat stump of its neck. The others ignored the death of their compatriot and stared glassily ahead as Ravachol searched frantically for the source of the attack.
He leapt from the driver's seat and dropped to a crouch as he saw the red blur flicker through the clouds above him. He squinted through the particulate air and saw a lithe figure in red zip towards the transporter, a long energy blade held extended before it. Though he had never seen such a being before, he knew enough to recognise that his attacker was a tech-priest assassin.
'Servitors!' shouted Ravachol, pointing to the red-clad figure. 'Defend me!'
The three remaining servitors jerked into action, their weapons powering up and combat protocols searching for the identified target. Ravachol hunkered down as a stream of heavy calibre gunfire ripped up the sky and a rain of brass shell casings tumbled musically to the ground. The sharp bark of rapid-firing laser bolts mingled with the booming reports of heavy bolter fire.
Thanks to his embedded wetware, both enhanced servitors would be working together to bracket the target and destroy it. The third surviving servitor clambered from the transporter to shelter him as the crowd of adepts scattered from the gunfire. The servitor's left arm was a powerful gauntlet sheathed in deadly energy, its right ending in a short-range plasma discharger. Its heavy boots and thick jumpsuit were a reassuringly solid presence between Ravachol and the assassin, but he knew from their reputation that mere servitors could not stop such a deadly killer for long.
'You, with me!' shouted Ravachol, risking a glance into the sky. The assassin spun from building to building by some unknown means, skimming from the walls and twisting through the air like a red slick, its legs bending in all kinds of impossible ways.
Puffs of shell impacts and the burning afterimages of las-fire followed its inhumanly quick flight, blasting chunks of stone and metal from the buildings, but leaving it unscathed.
Darts of fire spat from the assassin's pistol and bloody craters erupted on one of his servitors. It didn't go down, but dodged and kept firing until another shot struck its head and its lobotomised brain mushroomed from the back of its skull.
Ravachol set off towards the great gates of Adept Malevolus's forge, knowing that were he able to claim Sanctuary, then not even a tech-priest assassin would dare violate the sanctity of a Master Adept.
The servitor ran after him, its lumbering gait thumping on the metal roadway as it followed. Behind him, Ravachol could hear hissing barks of laser discharges and knew that one servitor was still fighting. Even with its enhanced combat routines, it wouldn't last long, but the entrance to the forge complex was just ahead.
Panicked people were running for the gates, desperate to escape the gunfire and the destruction being wrought behind them. He risked a glance over his shoulder and saw the assassin skim low across the roadway, using the now-wrecked transporter for cover as the battle servitor leapt from its back to get a clear shot.
Surprised by such an aggressive move, the assassin slid to the side as a flurry of lasblasts sawed towards her and left molten craters in the roadway. She flipped up into the air until she was upside down and passed over the servitor, her sword a blur of blue fire.
Lasblasts followed the assassin through the air, but they were wild and undirected as the servitor fell to the ground in two halves, its body severed at the waist.
He covered the last few yards towards the temple, where the two-headed eagle of the Emperor and Mechanicum were acid-etched onto each leaf of the great steel doors. A stoup of blessed engine oil was formed from the metalwork of the door's frame and Ravachol hurriedly dipped the fingers of both hands info the viscous substance as he heard a speeding bass hum drawing closer.
Ravachol cast the oil around himself and shouted, 'In the name of the Adept Malevolus, I claim the ancient right of Sanctuary within this temple! I claim this by right of past sponsorship by the Master of the Forge!'
No sooner had the words left his mouth than a pair of cone-shaped shield projectors mounted on the ceiling swivelled to face him. He looked up and saw a nimbus of green light build within the cones.
A shriek of blazing energy flashed towards him from the ceiling. He turned and cried out in terror as he heard a screeching yell from behind him. The razor edge of the assassin's energy sword exploded in a flare of brightly discharging energy as it impacted on the newly generated conversion field.
Ravachol fell to his knees, blinded by the dazzling light and blinked away the stuttering afterimages of the incandescent explosion. The assassin, a female he now saw, spiralled upwards into the darkness of the vestibule, tracked by a battery of quad-barrelled gun turrets.
Before they could open fire, she slid out of sight, skimming the walls and vanishing into the Martian night.
'Thank the Machine God,' he whispered, feeling as though his speeding heart-rate was about to choke him. He stayed on his knees as curious onlookers began to gather around him, wondering what fate had brought him to seek Sanctuary in this place and what manner of person would attract the attention of a tech-priest assassin.
He slumped to his haunches and put his head in his hands as a trio of Mechanicum Protectors marched towards him from the temple's interior. Each was armed with a bolter-topped spear stave and was augmented with a fearsome array of plate armour and enhanced battle gear.
His last servitor turned to engage the Protectors, but he said, 'No, stand down. These are the Protectors of Malevolus.'
'It's quite a mess you have left behind,' said Master Adept Urtzi Malevolus, his voice muffled behind the dark bronze of his facemask. A trio of green bionic eyes set into the pale remnants of his skull illuminated the interior surfaces of his red hood.
Though Malevolus's primary mode of locomotion was his human legs, they and his right arm were all that was left of his humanity. His red robes were fashioned from vulcanised rubber, thick and hard-wearing, and a monstrously large power pack was affixed to his back, its bulk held aloft by tiny suspensor fields. Remote probe robots darted back and forth from his body, kept in check by the coiled cables that connected them to the senior adept.