Baneblade Read online

  Warhammer 40,000

  It is the 41st millennium. For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the master of mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die.

  Yet even in his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor’s will. Vast armies give battle in his name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst His soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Imperial Guard and countless planetary defence forces, the ever-vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants - and worse.

  To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.

  Prologue

  Baneblade Manufactorum CCIV,

  Utopia Planitia, Holy Mars

  0033639.M39

  A thousand thousand triphammers rang out the birth of war’s child, the bringer of ruin, the mightiest battle tank in the galaxy: Baneblade, fifteen metres long, as tall as three men, a moving fortress, hammer of the God-Emperor, bearer of firepower to equal a squadron of lesser tanks.

  But not yet, not yet. This one was a shell, bereft of tooth and claw, gaping ports where guns should be, tracks limp. No energy flowed through its conduits, no fuel through its pipes. Not for long, for now began the ceremony of activation.

  The steady drone of five-score throats singing in chorus built to a crescendo. Mighty chains rattled as scores of men dragged hard, stripped to the waist in the heat, furnace-light glinting from their shaven skulls, shadowing the numerals branded into their foreheads. The work gangs pulled the machine through the final stages of the production line upon a mighty sled, towards the culmination of a year-long process in a forge that covered half a continent. Ruddy, incandescent light caught planes of armour as machines older than memory hammered in searing rivets. The grinding and roaring and hissing of automated systems competed with the chants of the tech-priests and the shouts of labouring tech-adepts. Libations sizzled on cooling plasteel, parchment prayers curled and blackened as they were affixed to the hull, wax ran on hot steel.

  A man, or what had once been a man, stood atop a baroque motor-carriage to the fore of the chorus and led the chant, lesser tech-adepts behind him, all robed in cloth the colour of old blood, mirroring his words in the twittering binary language of machines, its meanings the deepest of arcane secrets. Words dragged from aged throats and teased from vox boxes grafted to withered flesh rumbled a glorious litany to the cog and the gear.

  ‘The cowls of victory,’ shouted the magos, breaking into the tongue of High Gothic. ‘The housings of the weapons of righteousness! Blessed be, blessed be the children of the machine!’ The others echoed him, red hoods covering altered faces. Behind them, a choir of servitors droned praise. All were dwarfed by the machine.

  A vat-grown homunculus scattered sacred oils upon the hull and the dozens of cyborgs, workers and tech-adepts labouring upon it. Twisted cherubs swung censers, sacred smoke mixing with the stink of hot metal as machine-spirits guided giant arms to attach armoured cupolas to either side of the great tank. Servitors with bolt-drivers in place of limbs moved forwards. Bolts whirred home, the arms and the machine men retreated. Spider-like welders darted in from above, swinging with precision on long, cabled brachia suspended from the roof high above. They spat and shifted, closing gaps with terse arclight. Tech-priests and servitors connected cables amidst darting assembly drones, running auspex and chanting blessings as the Baneblade received the housings for its deadly instruments.

  The tank ground forwards upon its plasteel sled, runners squealing on the tracks of the line, work gangs chanting as they pulled it to the next stage of creation; one step closer to birth.

  ‘The teeth of victory!’ shouted the magos, his inhuman visage glinting deep within the shadowed folds of his robes. ‘The hammers of the Emperor’s foes! Heavy boltgun, pattern VI Lucian manufacture,’ intoned the magos. His implanted logic engines emanated fat datastreams bearing detailed specifications of all parts as he spoke, subsidiary augmitters studding the length of his mechadendrites chittered the same through the air in hasty binaric, those of his inferiors responded.

  ‘Blessed be he who uncovers the truth!’ groaned the cyborg choir. Screeching roars of aurally broadcast datastreams accompanied them.

  ‘Lascannon, timeless, born of dark times, master of the lights of death, Mars created, Primus Standard Template Construct pattern,’ continued the magos in High Gothic. ‘Bolter, heavy, LXV Lucius type. Swift winged oblivion shalt thou spit, tungsten-capped, solid-fuelled…’ He slipped deep into an ecstatic trance as he called the names of the guns intended for the tank before him, blueprints flickering out through his augmitters to enlighten those around him.

  As their names were invoked, each of the lesser weapons was brought forth upon an ornate carriage attended by more droning tech-magi, veiled in sacred oilcloth inscribed with holy mysteries too terrible to contemplate, and arrayed about the vehicle. At various points in the last year, each weapon had been singly fitted, tested, retested, and removed. Today, the day of activation, all would be mounted together for the first and last time. For six weeks the tech-priests had been working in shifts, anointing catch and gimbal, praying as they smoothed away burrs of metal, raising praise to the Machine-God as each screw was driven home. Now, the flesh-bound servants of the Omnissiah worked quickly, fitting the fangs and claws of this most terrible of beasts, crooning sweet benedictions to the machine’s quiescent spirit, lest it awaken early and incomplete, and consume them all in a fury.

  The machine’s auxiliary weapons systems in place, many of the tech-adepts retreated, their cyborg slaves clanking dutifully after them, unaltered workers scurrying in their wake.

  ‘Battle cannon, Vulcan-named, death to the unclean!’ So spoke the magos. Down came a claw, its grasp seeming mighty enough to clasp a world in unyielding ceramite and shake it all to pieces. In a cradle of plasteel talons rested the main armament of the tank; following behind in the tender embrace of a second claw came the tank’s secondary weapon. ‘Battle cannon. Demolisher Cannon.’ The magos named them both and incanted their specifications. The barrel of the first was ten metres long, capable of hurling rocket-propelled shells over kilometres. The second was shorter, sturdier, wider-mouthed. Its munitions could shatter ferrocrete; the shockwaves alone would turn a man to paste.

  Carefully, the claws of the cathedral-factory lowered their deadly cargo. Gently, the tech-priests guided the weapons, directing teams of slack-mouthed servitors and branded workers to tug at chain and tackle, aligning the weapons carefully with their housings. When the work gangs were positioned, the magos nodded. Adepts at the heads of each crew dropped crimson flags. As one, the servitors heaved. The barrels slid into place, the slam of plasteel and clack of bolts engaging announcing their successful
situation.

  Within the Baneblade others worked, welding, riveting, anointing and praying. Electronic conduits were coupled and opened, the flow of electricity praised and coaxed, resistances tested, switches primed. Energy poured into still machinery, bringing it to life, found it worthy and was shut off, the adepts satisfied.

  Two days passed. Around the tank, activity built to a frenzy as the time of activation came near. Hundreds of sweating men pulled hard on hawser and chain, dragging pallets of components, armour plates and external systems towards the unfinished Baneblade. Graspers and claws wired to disembodied human brains attached cupola and hatch, periscope glass and handle. Tech-priests watched carefully through servo-skulls swarming like flies about the whole, checking and documenting the entirety of the process in case the unthinkable happen and the machine did not activate as it should, to lie there stillborn and cold, an affront to the Omnissiah. Reckoning must be made in such a circumstance.

  ‘Pattern, code and number!’ bellowed the magos. Soft squeals of ones and zeros announced the same. All eight of his additional articulated limbs rose heavenwards to wave in a serpentine dance as he slammed the base of his ceremonial cog-toothed axe rhythmically upon the floor, setting up a clanging in time with his words. The tech-priests and servitors took up the refrain with their tools and implants until the air vibrated with metallic thunder.

  From somewhere high up, far, far from the most holy factory floor, a bell began to sound, counting time to the roar and squeak of audible data-shouts. Fashioned from the melted armour of four thousand holy war machines, fallen in service to the Emperor, it tolled loud enough to alert the Lord of Terra himself, telling him that a new champion was born to him.

  Baneblade.

  ‘The first is Mars! Let that be thy pattern, as it is your home. The second is forty-seven-dash-nine three seven two. Let that be thy number! The third is 033639, millennium 39, Terran checksum 0. Let that be thy inception code!’

  Slowly, slowly, the tank moved forwards. Work gangs had come and gone, cycling through shifts, the men kept fresh so the machine would keep its speed precise through the last metres of the line. The final machines approached and caressed the tank, the final work teams took up their tasks.

  Then, it was done. The Baneblade, completed, passed under a festoon of oilcloths and parchments, of flimsies and blueprints, the blessings of the ages of ancient, holy knowledge, preserved by the Omnissiah for the Adeptus Mechanicus alone.

  ‘Let there be spoken the rites of activation! Shout forth the hymns of awakening! Supplicate the Machine-God!’ bellowed the magos, his voice, data-shouts, and augmits growing through cunning means to swallow the din around it. ‘I call the Magos Activator!’

  ‘Call the Magos Activator!’ echoed the choir, and ceased. The tolling of the making-bell and the clatter and bang of more distant manufactory processes took its place.

  The tank ticked as it cooled.

  The eyeless face of an autoscribe – part machine, part cadaver – looked on, metal fingers scratching pen on spooling parchments, recording every detail of the ceremony.

  A delegation of high-ranking tech-priests walked forwards, a wizened torso upon a spider-legged carriage at their head, the Magos Activator and his followers. Ten deeply cowled acolytes, hands and manipulators hidden in their sleeves, were borne to the side on a palanquin of carved zinc carried on heavy treads. With the faintest impact, the platform came to a rest against the top of the war machine’s track guards. One by one the adepts crossed the hull, ascended the turret, and went within, there to take the stations that would one day be filled by the warriors of the Imperial Guard, the ten men who would crew it to war.

  Clearly, the Magos Activator spoke the rites of activation, while runes and mysteries were painted upon the Baneblade’s motive parts in oils of utmost sanctity, and the ten within tested the machine’s controls, while four diagnosticians pored over a bank of ornate green screens outside, a bundle of cables snaking up and into the tank through its forward hull hatch. For an hour the prayers went on, the murmuring of the activation team growing into song, until gradually the servitors picked up the chant again. Tension built.

  Eventually, the Magos Activator and his coterie stepped back. He nodded once to the High Magos. It was done.

  ‘Awaken!’ called the High Magos. ‘Machine Spirit I call upon thee! To life, to life! Awaken!’ he bellowed. ‘Prime the pumps! Engage the generators! Start the engine!’

  Within, the adepts worked at the tank’s stations: First, Second and Third Gunner; First, Second and Third Loader; Driver, Tech-Adept Aspirant, Commander, Commsman, pressed buttons and pulled levers, sibilant prayers on their lips.

  The power plant of the Baneblade clicked as it turned over. Then it roared, higher and higher and higher as the diagnosticians outside tested its torque and fuel-to-energy conversion ratios. Armament whined as it rotated. The turret turned, battle cannon and coaxial autocannon rising to full elevation and back again. Its hull-mounted demolisher cannon swivelled this way and that, the twin-linked heavy bolter in the small turret to its right following its movements. The remote weapons banks in the cupolas on the tank’s sides whirred with activity; these sponsons were positioned midway down the vehicle on the outer track guards, twin-linked heavy bolters in each, single lascannons contained within miniature turrets atop both.

  Inside, mechanisms and screens sprang into life, bathing the interior of the tank in holy machine light. Tactical displays, targeting banks, comms equipment – all glowed and chattered, reeling off information. Wizened fingers caressed screens and buttons, purpose-built manipulators keyed into ports. One by one, the ten men within sang off the holy words of functionality, naming the machines and their intent.

  ‘Activated,’ each called, at the end of his litany, and so the next would begin his chant, and conclude ‘Activated,’ until all were done, and the High Magos Activator informed.

  ‘All systems engaged. Blessed be the Omnissiah,’ he intoned.

  Outside the tank, the Prelate Master of Diagnostics, a bloated mass of flesh married to a mess of cables, rose up from his bank of logic engines arrayed about him in stepped ranks like the boards of an organ. ‘All systems operate within normal parameters, oh high one. Engine function optimal. Systems nominal and ready for command. Weapons primed.’

  A leathery tongue licked thin lips. ‘Does it live?’ asked the High Magos.

  ‘It lives,’ replied the prelate, and bowed his head in affirmation.

  ‘Holy life! Cog and Gear!’ sang the High Magos. ‘Blessed be the Omnissiah!’

  ‘Blessed be the Omnissiah!’ echoed the servitors.

  ‘Your Pattern, Code and Number shall be entered into the Liber Armorum Magnus,’ chanted the High Magos, now directly addressing the new-born engine of war. ‘As shall your name!’ He paused. He bent low to a scroll borne by a blue-skinned vat child, a roll a metre thick, bearing the names of tens of thousands of Baneblades, born from this forge down innumerable centuries. ‘I name thee Mars Victorius, Mars Triumphant!’

  The choir reached a crescendo. The bell tolled. The autoscribe scratched the name into its annals beside the names of its forebears.

  And so Mars Triumphant was born. Its engine roared approval of its name. Its turrets tracked across the room, as if its augur-eyes were already keen to seek the enemies of mankind. The children of the Machine-God gave thanks to their all-knowing master in thunderous reply.

  Inside the belly of the beast, a low-ranking tech-adept, young and yet to receive his datacore, carefully placed a brass plaque against a decorated panel the size of a tombstone, and with slow, reverent twists of his screwdriver, attached it to the wall.

  The plaque would remain blank until Mars Triumphant’s field trials were completed and it was deployed to one of the Imperium’s battlefronts. It awaited the name of Mars Triumphant’s first commander, the being of flesh who would guide
this being of plasteel to protect the worlds of humanity. Metal and flesh, tank and crew, Machine-God and Emperor; together in the greater service of mankind, as was right.

  Thus had it always been in the Imperium of Man.

  The final work gang led the tank away, chains slack, tracks turning under their own power. The magos turned his palanquin upon its mechanical legs and, acolytes and work gangs trudging behind, headed back to the beginning of the activation run, where another unfinished machine awaited completion. Behind it, another, and behind that, another still, and then another and another, stretching back further than the eye could see on a factory floor that followed the curve of the planet. Truly, the holy work of the Omnissiah was never done, and the High Magos’s mechanical heart sang with the joy of that.

  INTERSTITIAL

  APPENDED NOTATION: THE KALIDAR WAR,

  WAAAGH! GRATZDAKKA, M41

  ++ADEPTUS TERRA SYSTEM CLASSIFICATION+++

  Kalidar System

  Segmentum Tempestus

  Chiros Sector

  Kalidar Subsector, e 3.000.2.003

  STELLAR BODY: ‘Kalidar’. Single Type A main sequence blue-white star. Anomalous elemental composition sequencing and stellar instability suggests manipulation in the distant past equating to grade F [X-T Scale].

  ORBITING BODIES: Kalidar I, II, III – Planetary husks. Equidistant placing at orbital distance 3 AU, non-natural orbital pattern [ref. SUPPRESSED BY INQUISITORIAL ORDER CLASS EPSILON///ADEPTUS MECHANICUS DATA ORDINATOR 4///SEQUESTRATION ENTIRE].

  Kalidar IV [ref. Kalidar IV]

  Kalidar V; Orbital Distance: 5.33 AU. Ringed Gas Giant; 328 Terramass. Moons: None.

  Kalidar VI; Orbital Distance: 7.25 AU. Gas Giant; 426 Terramass. Moons: 12. Population 12,137. Orbital mining platform/ lunar mining personnel. [ref. Lax, grade XIV habitable moon. Agriworld.]

  Kalidar VII; Orbital Distance 12.9 AU.