Hellsreach - Aaron Dembski-Bowden [102]
It was, bluntly speaking, the sawn-off shotgun of nova cannon technology. The notion brought a smile to Jurisian’s mirthless lips.
It took a further three hours of investigation, feed-checks and generator testing to ascertain whether the Ordinatus Armageddon could be reactivated, and how such a feat could be achieved.
The result at the close of the investigations was a bittersweet one.
This weapon of war should have been crewed by dozens of specialist skitarii, magi and tech-adepts, born and raised for this purpose above all others. It should have been ritually blessed by the Lord of the Centurio Ordinatus and its newest duty inscribed upon its hull alongside the ninety-three prayers of reawakening.
Instead of the chanting and worship due to the spirit of such a war engine, the soul of Oberon awoke in silence and darkness. Its vague, reforming consciousness did not detect a gestalt host of abased Centurio Ordinatus minds supplicating themselves for its attention, but a single other soul in union with its own.
This soul was strong: ironclad and dominant.
It identified itself as Jurisian.
In the drive module, his brain, spine and body armour linked via telemetry cables to the interface feeds in the princeps throne, the Master of the Forge closed his eyes. Around him, the systems flared into life. Scanners chimed as they began to see again. Overhead lights flickered and held at low illumination settings.
With a great shudder and the accompanying thrumming of power generators coming back to life, all three modules shook once, twice, and jolted hard.
In the drive section, Jurisian lurched in his seat. He hadn’t jolted forward, but up.
Five metres up.
There the modules remained, cradled on a pulsing anti-grav field that distorted the ground below with something that was, and was not, a heat-shimmer.
‘Activation Phase One,’ the war machine’s voice issued from vox-speakers around the command module.
Beneath the mechanical tone seethed a roiling, uncoiling hatred. Jurisian bowed his head in respect, but did not cease his work.
‘My brothers call me to Helsreach,’ he spoke into the cold control pod, expecting no answer and receiving none. ‘And though that may mean nothing, I know that war calls to you.’
Through the interface connection, the spirit of Oberon growled, the sound inhuman and untranslatable.
Jurisian nodded. ‘I thought so.’
Asavan Tortellius lingered over a single phrase.
He had no idea how to describe just how cold he was.
Around him, the deserted cathedral still bore more than its share of wall scars and battle damage. On a fallen block of masonry, the acolyte composed his memoirs of the Helsreach war, while the great Titan pitched slowly forward and back in the rough rhythm of walking. Occasionally, air pressure and gravity would exert themselves on his left or right side, as Stormherald rounded a corner. As he had done for years, Asavan ignored these things.
The ruined cathedral around him was altogether harder to ignore. It still appeared much as it had over thirty days ago, when the alien brutes had brought the god-machine to its knees. The statues still lay as alabaster corpses in broken, facedown repose, limbs cracked off to lie several metres distant. The walls were still decorated by gunfire holes and ugly cracks that cobwebbed outwards from impact points. The stained glass windows – his only succour from the irritation of the Shield above – were still gaping holes in the war-blackened architecture, as unpleasant to look upon as missing teeth in the smile of a saint.
Day in, day out, Asavan sat in the lonely, contemplative quiet of the cathedral, and composed what he knew full well were poorly-worded poems commemorating the coming victory in Hive Helsreach. He would destroy well over half of what he wrote, sometimes