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.
Dalia saw the lethal machine roll towards them, crashing boulders beneath its weight, its weapon arms locking up ready to shoot. The barrels on an enormous rotary cannon whirred as they spooled up to fire once more and hissing gases vented from the plasma cannon mounted at its shoulder.
She could feel its anger towards her in the seething yellow glow of its sensor orbs, and with a swift flick of her mind, Dalia knew she wouldn't be able to fool it again.
'How did it find us?' shouted Zouche.
'It must have read our biometrics in the tunnel,' she cried. 'It realised its mistake eventually and it followed us here.'
'Who cares how it found us?' shouted Rho-mu 31, firing up his weapon stave and hauling Dalia back the way they had come. 'Run! Get back to the cave! It won't be able to follow us in!'
Dalia nodded, taking Zouche's hand and sprinting for the cave mouth.
'Do what you did before!' cried Zouche. 'Make it think we're not here!'
'I can't,' gasped Dalia as they ran. 'It's learned what I did and its mental architecture has evolved to stop me doing it again.'
Dalia looked over her shoulder and saw the metallic tentacles on its back whip up.
'Get down!' yelled Rho-mu 31, dragging her and Zouche to the ground.
They landed hard and rolled, dropping into a shallow trench cut by some ancient stream, as roaring sheets of whickering laser fire gouged glowing channels into the valley floor.
Zouche screamed as a sharp fragment of rock sliced his cheek.
Dalia wept bitter tears, expecting another barrage to finish them off at any second.
She flinched, curling into a tight ball of terror as a deafening, roaring blast of sawing gunfire echoed from the canyon walls. Another thunderous cascade of fire erupted and Dalia blinked in surprise as she realised the shots weren't directed at them.
'I don't believe it,' cried Rho-mu 31. Dalia looked over and saw that the glowing green of his eyes behind his bronze mask were alight with surprise.
Dalia propped herself up on one elbow and risked a glance over the torn, smoking lip of their fragile cover.
The Kaban Machine was still there, though its form was wreathed in flaring bursts of energy discharges as its voids screamed and fought to hold their integrity.
Riding towards it were two glorious war machines in midnight blue armour, bearing the symbol of a wheel and lightning bolt upon their shoulder guards.
'The Knights of Taranis!' shouted Rho-mu 31.
Maven's heart surged with savage, primal joy to see the enemy machine reel from the impacts of his weapons. Cronus had also struck true and Equitos Bellum's Manifold shone with the knowledge that they had finally found their quarry. His autoloaders thundered as they fed more shells into the cannon mounted on his arm and he felt the heat build as he unsheathed the four-metre war blade in his right fist.
The machine was just as he remembered it, squat and unlovely, a rotund engine of death and destruction hiding behind a sleeting sheen of rippling voids. Through the shimmering fields of his auspex he could read its energy signatures, and was once again struck by the cold, alien intelligence that lurked behind the yellow orbs of its sensor blisters as it ceased fire and turned towards him.
A small group of people sheltered from the machine's fire in a chewed up ditch, a red-cloaked Protector and three others. Maven didn't know who they were, but that this machine wanted them dead was reason enough for him to defend them.
'Go right,' voxed Maven to Cronus. 'Let's take this thing like we planned.'
Cronus was already moving, Pax Mortis loping across the rough, step-like terrain of the rocky valley, his carapace low to the ground and his weapon arms thrust out before him. Maven hauled his mount left and unleashed another rippling salvo of cannon fire towards the machine.
Once more its voids sang with the impacts and Maven felt his mount's exhilaration as a surge of adrenaline shot through his body. Equitos Bellum relished a fight, but the sense of striking back at their nemesis was above and beyond anything Maven had experienced.
He rode close to the ground, hard and fast for an outcrop of rock he had seen from further along the valley, feeling the heat of near misses as the enemy machine opened fire on him. His instinctual awareness of the battle was complete, his gut feel for the tactical situation flawless as he suddenly hauled back on the controls and skidded to a halt, one leg stretched out to the side at the sudden course change.
A barrage of shots hammered the outcrop, blasting it to splintered rubble and leaving a smoking crater in the aftermath of a thunderous explosion. Maven sidestepped and bounded forward, zigzagging at random across the ground, deliberately avoiding anything resembling a standard pattern evasion technique.
Whipping bursts of laser fire and sawing lines of shells sliced the air where the machine expected him to be.
Maven laughed, a wild roar of pleasure as Equitos Bellum responded to his touch, its healed limbs and wounded heart working with him against their enemy. Once again, Maven changed direction at random, urging his mount forward into the teeth of the machine's weapons.