'Old Stator would have my guts on a plate if he could see this,' he hissed, fighting against decades of training to keep from using the very drills that had made him such a formidable warrior.
The machine opened fire, but once again Maven had outmanoeuvred it, his unpredictable motions and random jinks confusing whatever targeting wetware it employed. Maven watched it back away from him, its main guns swivelling in gimbal mounts as they tried to predict which way he would move.
The guns mounted on the thick dendrite tentacles swivelled, firing towards the remains of the burning Cargo-5. Cronus rode his Knight in a looping, jerking pattern of stops and starts, though Maven could see that his brother's mount had taken several hits from the strength of his shield returns.
'Mix it up more, Cronus!' he yelled. 'Don't do anything it can predict!'
'Shut up!' snapped Cronus. 'You break the rules all the same. It's not so easy for me!'
Maven grinned, seeing the machine back away from him, spitting rock and gravel from beneath its tracks as it frantically reversed towards the wall of the canyon.
Maven let rip with another blast of cannon fire. Chunks of smashed rock fell from the cliff, as the machine swivelled on one track and his shots went wide.
'Hell,' said Maven. 'It's learning.'
Maven reversed the direction of his advance and, too late, realised his mistake.
A seething wall of laser fire hammered his frontal shields and the torso emitter blew out in a screaming wash of energy. He cried out as the discharge whiplashed through him in a howling gale of feedback.
Equitos Bellum faltered and Maven dropped his mount to one knee. Another blast struck the upper edges of his carapace armour and searing lances of pain shot through his shoulder. He tried to turn his mount to present a shielded section to the machine as more fire hammered him, and Maven felt his mount's pain as his armour tore apart under the concentrated volley.
The armoured glass of his cockpit shattered, exploding inwards and slicing his face with razor-sharp fragments.
'Cronus!' yelled Maven as another impact sent a bolt of agony through his body.
Pax Mortis smashed through the flaming wreckage of the Cargo-5, both its arm weapons sheathed in fire. The enemy machine vanished in a blinding cascade of void flares, its shields buckling under the impacts.
Whatever form of reactor sat at its heart was capable of soaking up the punishment and holding. It turned its guns on Pax Mortis, and let rip with a barking roar of cannon fire that tore through the shields and the plating of Cronus's waist mounting.
The Knight staggered, and Cronus bolted for the wall of obscuring smoke that billowed from the Cargo-5, but the machine had predicted such an obvious response, and a searing bolt of plasma slammed into the upper carapace of Pax Mortis, almost driving it to its knees.
Maven cried out as he saw his brother Knight stagger, but before the enemy machine could finish its work, Cronus surged forwards and darted into the smoke.
'Its voids are too tough!' shouted Cronus, his pain obvious even over the vox-link. 'Our weapons won't overload them!'
His comrade-in-arms had left himself dangerously exposed by coming to Maven's aid, but their two-pronged assault had forced the enemy to dance to their tune, and they would never get a better chance to take it down.
'Get ready!' he replied. 'We've got it where we want it!'
Faced with two enemies, the machine had backed against the cliffs of the valley, seeking to minimise the directions from which it could be attacked.
Just as Maven knew it would.
It was a standard, textbook manoeuvre.
'Maven disengaged the auto-targeters and said, 'You know the drills, but you don't have the skills,' and opened fire once more.
Instead of aiming for the machine, his gunfire tore into the rock walls above it, and a torrent of gigantic boulders fell in a thunderous avalanche from the cliffs, smashing into the upper vectors of the machine's shields. Blooming explosions of light rippled from the machine, its voids screaming in protest, but still, impossibly, holding.
'Now, Cronus!' shouted Maven, pushing his wounded mount to its feet and charging his foe with a feral cry of battle-lust He opened up with his cannon, hammering the machine's upper shields. Even through the tumbling, roaring avalanche of rock and dust, the machine saw him coming and turned its guns on Equitos Bellum, just as Pax Mortis loomed from the smoke and joined its fire with that of Maven's mount.
Already struggling to withstand the rain of debris falling from the cliff, the machine's shield-emitters finally gave way under the concentrated fire of the two Knights.
Its voids exploded outwards in a blinding blast wave, tearing the metallic weapon dendrites from its back and vaporising its left arm in a thunderous detonation. Smoke and sparks of jetting energy spewed from the machine's ruptured flanks and its sensor blisters flickered madly, as though unable to comprehend how it had been hurt.
It rocked back, stunned and screaming in garbled bursts of binary that sliced over the Manifold and blew several of the augmitters inside Maven's cockpit.
Maven rode through the billowing clouds of rock dust, seeing the spherical form of his long-sought-for enemy ahead of him. It was mortally wounded, but still had some fight left in it. Maven didn't give it a chance and drove the full four metres of his energised war blade through its frontal section.
Its death scream shrieked in a pitiful wail of agonised binary, but Maven twisted his blade in the wound until at last its cries ceased and the light of its sensor blisters was extinguished.
Letting out a pent-up breath of battle fury and pain, Maven stepped back from the destroyed machine, feeling an overwhelming sense of closure as he stood over the shell of his defeated enemy. The pain from his psychostigmatic wounds diminished and Maven smiled as he felt Equitos Bellum's satisfaction wash through him in a rush of approval.
The essence of what made a Knight such a fearsome war machine moved through his battered flesh to ease his suffering, filling his body and rushing along his aching limbs.
Too late, Maven felt the soul of his mount surge to the fore, the soothing balm that eased his pain wielding him as though he were the mount and it the rider. He felt the raw, ferocious heart of his machine, the terrifying power that lurked in the heart of the Manifold, take control of his limbs and turn Equitos Bellum towards the scar in the earth where the targets of the enemy machine had taken cover.
Through the blown-out cockpit glass, Maven saw a Mechanicum Protector, leading a slightly built woman with eyes that shone with a golden light towards him. A red cloak billowed at the shoulders of the Protector, who carried a weapon stave hung with the number grid symbol of Koriel Zeth. Behind them was a short, robed man who knelt beside the prone form of what looked like a tonsured menial.
Maven heard heavy footfalls as Pax Mortis moved alongside him and tried to speak to Cronus, but the elemental force of the Manifold held him tightly in its grip.
The woman approached the wounded Knight and before he knew what was happening, Equitos Bellum dropped to one knee and bowed its head to her. Without looking, he knew his battle-brother's Knight had done likewise.
She reached out and Maven felt warmth infuse every molecule of his hybrid existence of flesh and steel with newfound purpose and vitality. He felt the warmth of the woman's touch through the shell of his mount, and gasped as trembling vibrations spread through its armoured frame of plasteel and ceramite.
'Machine, heal thyself,' she said.