Surprise! Games Workshop decided to shake things up a bit this past week as a new eShort Subscription dropped out of nowhere. Unlike the last one, Heretic Astartes Week, there was no tease or foretaste of this one, which seems a bit of an opportunity missed. A little anticipation can go a long way!
All the same, I’ll happily take another week of short stories, and this time they are focusing on the Adeptus Mechanicus. Once again this is a great opportunity for new voices to shine, and no less than three of this week’s authors are showcasing their debut entries into the Black Library!
How did they fare? Let’s take a look!
Opportunity Cost, by Jonathan D. Beer
One of the best uses for short stories in the Warhammer universe is to revisit old friends, and that’s exactly what this story felt like. I had really enjoyed getting to know the crew of the Peregrinus that Beer introduced in Dominion Genesis (review here), and was delighted to spend some time with them again.
On that score, I was to be a bit disappointed- though that’s no fault of the author’s. Opportunity Cost, you see, is thoroughly an action story. Here Ductrix Talin Sherax and her crew chance upon a derelict ship, one that shows signs of trauma and lethal radiation exposure. Identifying it as a Leagues of Votann ship, they salivate at the prospect of the technology within just waiting to be claimed.
Small problem, however. Unbeknownst to Sherax and her security teams, not all of the Kin have the same vulnerability to radiation, and the uninhabited wreck they’ve chanced upon may not be as uninhabited as expected.
(Minor spoilers follow) If there’s one place the story wobbles for me, it’s in some of its logic. Beer does a terrific job setting up the ominous mystery and suspense of the crippled ship, but when it turns out not to be quite so crippled it begs some questions. Chief amongst these is, why didn’t the Kin simply try to hail the Peregrinus as it made its approach?
As we see in The High Kahl’s Oath, this isn’t unusual at all (it occurs twice in that book). Even Opportunity Cost goes into some detail about the proximity of the Kin to humanity. A simple, “hey guys, a little help here?” would have defused the entire situation. Or even, “Uh, had a slight weapons malfunction. But, uh, everything’s perfectly all right now. We’re fine. We’re all fine here, now, thank you. How are you?”
We know the Kin’s comms aren’t dead; it’s a distress signal from the Kin vessel that attracts the attention of our story’s heroes in the first place. While it hardly kills the story, it’s just enough to pull me out of the story mid-stride. Nixing the line about the distress signal would have fixed it- I’m perfectly happy to accept that Sherax and crew found the comms-dead vessel on their own.
But overall, the story for me highlighted how much I enjoy Beer writing the Adeptus Mechanicus. There’s a lot of promise in these characters, from the enthusiastic Rahn-Bo to the more taciturn foil Luren- as well as skitarius Phocon Xal, who played a larger role here.
Nightfall on Stygies, by Stark Holborn
The week’s second story comes to us by way of a new writer to the Black Library, Stark Holborn. Author of the serialized Western Nunslinger, Holborn’s introduction leans in on a familiar trope in Warhammer: the seduction of corruption.
When famed explorator Isonovere Holt returns to Stygies after a ten-year absence with a mysterious xenos artifact in tow, the promise of hidden knowledge is just enough to keep her out of trouble with the Mechanicum. But not, it seems, with the Inquisition.
Much of the story is laid out through the eyes of Thess 4/90, a tech adept tasked with keeping an eye on Thess, and Holborn does a fine job conveying the character of the Adeptus Mechanicus. Who needs butterflies in the stomach when we can have, she brought her head close, setting off a series of logic problems in my chest.Â
Nightfall on Stygies was a fun read and a welcome debut!
Dream of the Locust, by Tom R. Pike
Like Holborn, Pike is an established writer who is seeing their Black Library debut in this week’s subscription. In his debut story, we are introduced to a team of Adeptus Mechanicus led by Technoarcheologist Kem Okhotnik tasked with securing an artifact from a derelict voidship that has just emerged mysteriously from the warp after a long absence.
Given the premise, I could be forgiven for thinking something along the lines of Event Horizon, but it turns out I was in for something more like Futurama.
On his website, Pike has a few blurbs from reviews of his other work, one of which reads, “a charming story… that reminds us that not all SF has to be deadly serious.”
How right it was. Pike brings a bit of the silly into his story, from “involuntary lobotomies” to overliteral combat servitors to a Skitarius who carries his own severed head around his neck in a jar of preservative oil. And when it turns out that the protagonists must contend with a kroozer full of opportunistic Orks (the silliest of all Warhammer xenos), all bets are off.
Unfortunately, this one was a bit of a miss for me. There wasn’t quite enough levity to be a humorous story, while the silliness was just enough to break the tone of it being a serious one. As a result, it felt like it was stuck in the middle, held back from living up to its potential in either one by a writer who perhaps felt like he couldn’t quite go full gonzo for his debut.
That’s a shame, because as grim and dark as this universe is, there’s a reason Ciaphas Cain is as beloved as he is. I’m perhaps pickier than many when it comes to appreciating the lighter tone of Warhammer, but when the stories work (such as Painboyz, by Mike Brooks) they really work.
And Pike has the chops to pull it off. For all I didn’t love this story, I absolutely adored Warboss Gekdug, the leader of the Orks. His confrontation in the bridge with Okhotnik has some real gems
‘You are wrong,’ gasped Okhotnik.Â
‘Not wrong. Not even dif’rent,’ said Gekdug, toying with the padlocks with a claw finger. ‘We are bof nickin’ gubbinz dat are not ours, breakin’ fings we don’t un’erstand.’
‘Old gubbinz,’ mused Gekdug, inserting his claw into the second padlock. ‘But humies, yooz like old fings. Why? Becuz da future, your future, is no good. Your kleverness, kunnin’, all in da past.’
Gekdug smirked. ‘What yoo are now, redboy? Nobo’y would want ta be dat. Nobo’y wants ta look at da future and fink, it’ll neva be as good. But dat’s da humies’ future. Dat’s why yooz try so hard, pretendin’ not ta be humies.’
Sublime. For just a moment I found myself longing for a Gekdug-Okhotnik buddy movie, but alas the story went in a different direction. All the same, I’ll be looking forward to reading Pike’s next story (and per his website, he’s got one more coming!)
Beneath the Ashes, by Mark Barber
From an Imperial Guard perspective, I’ve always found the Necrons to be the most terrifying enemies to face. The unflinching, unexpressive faces. The robotic precision. The disintegrating weaponry. At least Orks are having fun when they kill you, and Tyranids are just trying to feed their families- all things we can relate to. But Necrons? Inscrutable.
So it was with particular delight that I enjoyed Mark Barber’s entry into the Black Library’s pantheon of pens. A barren, ash-covered planet dotted with pyramidal structures holds deadly secrets for an Astra Militarum detachment assigned to help the Adeptus Mechanicus recover a missing expedition.
Barber’s prose is taut and economic, the tale never overstaying its welcome as the hapless Guardsmen discover the fate of the expedition- a fate they very quickly come to share.
It’s been said of Jordan Peele that underneath all of the comedy of Key & Peele, you could get a foretaste of the horror genre he was destined for. I had a similar feeling here. Barber has previously written military history and science fiction, but throughout Beneath the Ashes you get the sense that there’s a horror writer peeking through. The patrols where soldiers go missing. The corpses, their skin surgically removed. And then there’s that cinematic ending, where you can absolutely envision the camera panning back for.
Imperfect Engines, by Avalon Irons
By simple coincidence, Imperfect Engines shares a similar trajectory with the earlier Dream of the Locust, with Adeptus Mechanicus teams in a race for technology against a hostile enemy. There it was Orks, but here the skitarius Iota-11 and their cohort must content with an Iron Warrior warband as they chase a tantalizing prize: a rare Atropos-pattern Cerastus Knight, Clarion Call.
Avalon Irons had their debut in the previous eShort subscription week, themed around Heretic Astartes. In my review I noted two things that really stood out to me in The Only Way is Through (a tale that also featured Iron Warriors), one of which being the emotional depth Irons had imbued the story’s characters with. I’m pleased to note that they are now two-for-two.
The degree to which they are divorced from humanity is a central facet of the identity of the Adeptus Mechanicus. The flesh is weak, they’ll tell you, but their integration with machinery goes well beyond the merely physical. There’s a robotic tenor to their thinking, their feeling, their very way of being. Emotions are a hindrance and a weakness unless they are properly and deliberately managed, as we see here when a Secutor interrogates Iota-11 about the effectiveness of their emotion partition:
<Apologetic: The partition is not damaged, secutor. I am capable of managing my emotions, as is any other soldier of the Mechanicus.>
<Any other soldier of the Mechanicus ‘manages’ their emotions by way of the partition. Perhaps that is why this unit questions?> Fidelia pressed Iota-11’s head against the perfectly smooth metal corridor with a slithering mechadendrite. <I will reconcile this discrepancy myself.>
But as apparent by the title, something is a little off with Iota-11. Their augmetic right arm never quite seems to sit right, and more crucially the human spirit within them never quite ‘perfected’ to the AdMech ideal. The consequences of this become very poignant by tale’s end, and again I find myself having enjoyed a tale that’s going to stay with me.
Consequently, I’m awarding Imperfect Engines my ‘best in show’ for the week’s offerings. Your mileage may vary, of course, but likely in some proportion to your enjoyment of the Cult Mechanicus. All the same, this is a solid lineup this week, and a look at some of the Warhammer writers of the future!
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