Helsreach

the code had outpaced him just as it had done to his servitors. In these moments of panicked intensity, he had resisted by silencing sections of his mind with clinical meditation, operating at a lessened capacity, but at least he was still awake.

Jurisian stared ahead at the vast doors.

- OBERON -

That word burned itself into his core, written in towering letters, more a warning than a tomb marker.

A last resonant machine-sound signalled the grinding rollback of the final interior lock. Pressurised coolant vapour flushed into the corridor as the door's seal systems vented it. It reeked of chlorine - not poisonous, but stale from being cold-cooked for so many years while the door remained silent and still. In a ballet of rumbling, shuddering technology, the portal began to open.

'Reclusiarch,' Jurisian voxed, horrified at the dull scratchiness of his voice. 'The defences are broken.

I

am in.'

CHAPTER XV Balance

T

he chamber offered

nothing at first. Nothing except a powerless darkness that was blacker than black, even to Jurisian's visor lenses. A whispered keyword cycled his vision filters through a thermal-seeking infrared, through to a crude echolocation that falsified an auspex scanner's silent chimes to detect movement. He had made these modifications himself, with the proper respect to the machine-spirit of his wargear.

It was this last sense that produced a response. A vague grey blur passed his vision, and with it, the whirring of internal mechanisms. Hinges. Cogs. Fibre muscles. The sound was as familiar to Jurisian as his own breathing, but brought with it an edge of disconcerting curiosity.

Joints. He was hearing joints.

Something was wrong. The suggestion of static interference at the edges of his vision display told a tale of interference, obfuscation, more than a darkness born from a lack of light. He was being jammed, and the manipulation was insidiously subtle.

Jurisian's bolter came up in steady hands, panning left and right in the darkness as his eye lenses continued to cycle through filters. At last, a targeting monocle slid over his right eye lens - the mechanical echo of a lizard's nictitating membrane.

Better. Not perfect, but better.

'I am Jurisian,' he said to the creature before him, as it resolved into focus. 'Master of the Forge for the

Eternal Crusader,

flagship of the Black Templars.'

The creature didn't answer immediately. The size of a man, it smelled of ancient machinery and sour breath.

It was likely the thing had once been human - or some part of it was organic, even if only the smallest aspect. Hunched, robed in a ruined cloak of woven fabric, misshapen lumps in its surface area suggested additional limbs or advanced modification. It remained faceless, either refusing to look up or unable to do so.

Jurisian lowered his bolter. The servo-arms extending from his back-mounted power generator still clutched a host of weaponry, aiming it at the robed being before him. He voiced his next words through his helm's vox-speakers, letting his armour's spirit twist the human language into a universal, bluntly simple machine code - a basic program for communication which he had acquired during his long years of tuition and training on Mars, home world of the Mechanicus.

'My identity is Jurisian,' the code pulsed, 'of the Astartes.'

The reply came in a burst of snarled code, the words and meanings bleeding into each other. It was akin to machine-slang evolved from the viral program that sealed the doors. This creature, whatever it was, had an accent born of hundreds of years of isolation here.

'Affirmative,' Jurisian responded in the foundation code. 'I can see you. Your interference should be aborted. It is no longer relevant.'

The creature raised itself higher, no longer lurking on all fours. It now reached Jurisian's chestplate, though it came no closer, remaining a dozen metres away. The weapons in the Forgemaster's servo-arms tracked the being's movements.

It pulsed another tangled mess of accented code.

'Affirmative,' Jurisian replied again. 'I destroyed the sealant program.'

This time, the creature's response was rendered through a more simple code. Jurisian narrowed his eyes at this development. Like the chamber's virus lock, the creature was adapting and working with new information at a faster rate than standard Mechanicus constructs.

'This is the sanctuary of

Oberon.'

'

I know.' The Forgemaster risked a panning glance left and right, seeking any resolution in the artificial darkness. His targeting monocle couldn't pierce the gloom more than a few metres ahead. Flickering static was beginning to crawl across his eye lenses. 'Deactivate the interference,' Jurisian raised his bolter again, 'or I will destroy you.'

Against his will, emotion coloured the code-spoken declaration. To be limited like this was an affront to his sense of honourable conduct - there was no glory or prudence in allowing oneself to be kept at an enemy's mercy.

'I am the guardian of

Oberon.

Your presence generates negligible threat to me.'

Jurisian tasted anger on his tongue, bitter and metallic. His finger tensed on the thick trigger of his bolter.

'Deactivate the interference. This is your final warning.' Static mottled his vision now, like a thousand insects clustering on his eye lenses. He could make out no more than the barest silhouette as the Mechanicus warden moved closer.

'Negative,' it said.

Jurisian's servo-arms, answering his mind's impulses a fraction of a second after his true limbs, had raised his axe and other weapons in a threatening display, almost akin to some feral world arachnid predator increasing its size to warn off prey.

The knight's final threat was spoken with conviction, the machine-cant laced with numerical equations indicating emphasis.

'Then die.'

T

heir saviour was

one of the black knights.

He charged the enemy from the sky with a whining howl of protesting thrusters. Fire streaked from his flight pack as he landed in the aliens' midst, a dark blur of movement outlined in flame.

Andrej immediately scrambled back, ordering his gang into the relative cover provided by an overturned cargo loader truck.