Mechanicum

Dalia choked back a sob and said, 'Tell him… tell him I think I could have loved him. And tell him I'm sorry I never got the chance to find out.'

'I'll tell him that, right enough,' nodded Zouche, turning to Rho-mu 31. 'And you're staying too?'

'I am,' agreed Rho-mu 31. 'It seems every Guardian must have a protector.'

Zouche shook hands with Rho-mu 31 and looked over his shoulder at the lonely shape of the Cargo-5, which sat where they had left it beyond the cave mouth.

'Ah… a thought occurs,' he said. 'How are we supposed to get home? Wasn't the 5's battery dead?'

Dalia smiled and the golden energy passed to her by Adept Semyon flashed in her eyes.

'I think I can make sure it has enough power for you to get back to the Magma City.'

Zouche shrugged as they set off towards the abandoned Cargo-5. 'I'm not even sure I want to know how you'll manage that, but I'm never one to question my good fortune. Not that I've ever had any to question, you understand.'

The Cargo-5 exploded with a thunderous, booming detonation that echoed from the sheer sides of the Noctis Labyrinthus. The blast wave hurled them to the ground as twisted metal wreckage fell in a burning rain.

Dalia looked up, blinking away bright afterimages of the explosion.

'What happened?' gasped Zouche.

Dalia groaned as she saw their attacker rolling forward on its heavy-gauge track unit.

'Oh, no,' she said. 'Oh, Emperor protect us, no!'

It was the Kaban Machine.

High in the Chamber of Vesta, Adept Koriel Zeth watched the images playing out over the burnished screens of her forge with a sense of utter disbelief and honor.

The main screens displayed her own forge, a city on the verge of collapse. The outer hives and manufactories were in ruins and everything she had built over the centuries had been flattened by the savage, unrelenting bombardment of the Dark Mechanicum.

Ipluvien Maximal fared no better, his promised relief pulling back in the face of unbreakable resistance from Kelbor-Hal's freakish creations. Maximal's outer walls were breached in a dozen places and the fighting surged from weapon shop to ore refinery to librarium as the hordes of mutated servitors and abominable war machines poured in.

Both Mondus Occulum and Mondus Gamma were burning, vast swathes of machinery and manufacturing capacity destroyed in barely a few hours worth of fighting. The loss of such irreplaceable technology and knowledge was like a knife in the guts, but worse than that, far worse than that, was the image on the central glass panel.

Like comets launched from the surface of Mars, the Imperial ships were fleeing for the heavens. Astartes and Army vessels jostled in the sky in their haste to depart the red planet.

When her surveyor systems had first registered their launch, Zeth had assumed they would arc over and swoop south towards the Magma City, but their fiery ascent had continued until it was obvious they were accelerating to escape velocity.

Confirmation, if confirmation were needed, came in the form of a terse, encrypted data squirt from the Fabricator Locum, who, it seemed, was also leaving Mars.

+++Imperial forces withdrawing from Mars+++Save what you can+++Destroy the rest+++

The human part of her screamed at this betrayal, but the dominant, analytical, part of her brain could see the sense in this retreat. The Astartes had no doubt secured a great deal of the new marks of armour in preparation for the campaign against the Legions of Horus Lupercal, and to lose them all in a futile last stand made no logical sense.

Knowing that didn't make it any easier to swallow.

Zeth opened up her noospheric link to Ipluvien Maximal, Princeps Cavalerio of Legio Tempestus and Lords Caturix and Verticorda of the Knights of Taranis.

'I presume you have all seen this?' she said as their holographic images appeared on the glass panels above her.

'I have,' said Cavalerio, projecting the image of the man he had been before his interment in the amniotic casket.

'Yes,' confirmed Maximal. 'I cannot believe it. The knowledge that will be lost…'

Lord Caturix shook his head. 'That it should come to this, abandoned by Terra.'

Lord Verticorda shook his head. 'Never,' he said. 'The Emperor would never abandon us.'

'Maybe not,' said Zeth, 'but it appears we can expect no more help from the Legions.'

'So what are your orders, Adept Zeth?' asked Princeps Cavalerio.

'You heard Kane's transmission?'

Their grim silence was all the answer she needed.

'I won't let Kelbor-Hal have my reactors,' declared Maximal at last.

'Nor will he have the Akashic reader,' said Zeth sadly. 'I had such high hopes for Dalia being able to make it work, but maybe it's for the best. Perhaps no one should ever know everything. After all, when there is nothing left to discover, what is the point in life?'

'Then there is only one order left to give,' said Lord Verticorda.