Forges Of Mars, page 43
‘Except they’re not going into battle,’ said Magos Hirimau Dahan, Clan Secutor of the Speranza’s skitarii, pacing the deck like a sentry-robot with an infinite loop error in its doctrina wafer. ‘This is an explorator mission.’
‘Then we wonder if the Black Templars know something you do not,’ said a voice that was scratchy with interleaved tonal qualities, like audio-bleed on an overtaxed vox-caster.
Dahan turned his gaze on the abomination speaking to him, and his floodstream hazed with threat signifiers bleeding from his battle wetware. Kotov’s precision optics registered that the organic portions of Dahan’s physique were still bedding into Turentek’s superlative work to undo the damage done by the thermic shockwave of Lupa Capitalina’s plasma destructor. It was going to take time for Dahan to achieve full synchronisation with his array of lethal technologies and multiple weapon arms, but the Secutor was not a magos blessed with an abundance of patience.
‘I wonder if you know something we do not,’ snarled Dahan, his lower arms flexing into combat readiness postures. ‘Something you are not telling us about this world.’
The thing Dahan spoke to called itself Galatea, and it was a bio-mechanical perversion of every Universal Law of the Adeptus Mechanicus.
To outward appearances, it was hardly more outlandish than many chimeric adepts of the Cult Mechanicus; a heavily augmented body forming a low-slung palanquin of mismatched machine parts assembled to form something that was part arachnoid, part scorpion. The crimson-robed proxy of a silver-eyed Mechanicus adept sat at the heart of its mechanism, surrounded by seven brains suspended in bio-nutrient gel containers and conjoined by a series of pulsing conductive cables.
Galatea’s very existence was an affront to the Mechanicus; a heuristically capable machine that had murdered the adepts assigned to its Manifold station over a period of millennia. It had assimilated their disembodied brains into its neural architecture and undergone a rapid evolution towards a horrific and long-outlawed form of artificial intelligence. But as each stolen consciousness realised it was trapped forever within an artificial neuromatrix, it descended inexorably into abyssal madness.
When the machine decided a mind was of no more use, the brain was cut from the gestalt consciousness in readiness for another horrific implantation.
‘Well?’ demanded Dahan, his lower arms flexing and his shock-blades snapping out with a succession of snicks. ‘Do you know something of this world you are not telling us?’
In any situation to be resolved with violence, there were few members of the Cult Mechanicus Kotov would rather have next to him than Hirimau Dahan. But so deeply had Galatea enmeshed itself with the Speranza’s operating systems that any attempt to harm it could be catastrophic for the Ark Mechanicus. Kotov had no doubts of Dahan’s ability to kill Galatea, but no matter how quickly he might do so, the machine intelligence would have more than enough time to destroy the Speranza.
Flickering light passed between Galatea’s conjoined brains. ‘We sense you are troubled by more than the disappearance of the Adeptus Astartes gunship. Have you not adjusted your worldview to incorporate our existence?’
‘You already know the Mechanicus will never accept your existence,’ said Kotov, rising from his throne and stepping down to the auspex and surveyor feeds. ‘So why not simply answer the Secutor’s question? Do you know what has become of the Black Templars?’
‘We do not answer because Magos Dahan’s anger amuses us,’ said Galatea, ignoring Kotov’s question and clattering over the deck on its misaligned limbs. ‘When you have spent four thousand and sixty-seven years alone, you too will seek amusement wherever you find it.’
‘I will not live that long.’
‘You may,’ said Galatea. ‘Magos Telok has.’
‘How can you know that?’ asked Linya Tychon, looking up from the blue-limned glow of the auspex returns. ‘It has been thousands of years since he came here.’
Galatea waved an admonishing finger. ‘You of all people should know better, Mistress Tychon. Was it not the inconsistencies within the passage of time that led you and your father to accompany Magos Kotov in the first place? We have seen the data you have assembled from the Speranza’s surveyor feeds. You know the temporal flow of energies has been massively disrupted in this region of space. The few remaining suns beyond the galactic fringe are ageing far faster than they ought to, transforming from main sequence stars into red supergiants in the blink of a celestial eye. If that can happen, what might a man who knows how to harness such energies achieve? And a man who can transfigure the life cycles of the engines of existence, is surely a man who might learn to endure beyond his allotted span and manipulate that technology to other purposes.’
‘So you’re saying the umbra is, what, a side effect of what Magos Telok is doing?’ asked Linya.
‘We believe it is certainly an intriguing possibility,’ replied Galatea.
‘Is this umbra changing in any way?’ asked Kotov.
‘I am not detecting any discernible changes from the planet’s surface,’ answered Linya, calling up a representation of the geography ahead. ‘But my father’s readings on the Speranza show a high-energy source reaching into space with a point of origin that exactly matches what would be the edge of an umbral sphere centred on the Tomioka. We can’t read what’s inside the umbra, but there’s something within that’s geysering exotic radiations and particle waves unknown to any Mechanicus database that can be detected when they leave it. Magnetic anomalies and sleeting particles of indeterminate charge are billowing up from the planet’s core like an electromagnetic volcano with enough force to reach into the exosphere.’
Kotov came forwards to examine the image on the auspex table.
The map was centred on the Land Leviathan, but grainy and skewed with unintelligible static where normally the Tabularium’s many surveyors would eliminate uncertainty. It displayed a real-time capture of the landscape to a radius of a hundred kilometres. Sixty kilometres south of the landing fields, in the exact centre of the umbra, lay the object of their search.
The last resting place of Magos Telok’s lost flagship.
‘Are there any other effects of this umbra, besides blinding us to whatever forces might lie within it?’ asked Dahan. ‘Is it dangerous?’
‘To people or machines?’
‘Both.’
‘I wouldn’t recommend prolonged exposure, but in ray-shielded void-suits, it should be safe for your skitarii for a few hours at a time,’ said Linya.
‘And for machines?’ asked Kotov.
Linya shook her head. ‘Let me put it this way, archmagos. Given how little we know about the exact nature of the umbra, I wouldn’t risk entering it on anything that wasn’t close to the ground.’
‘An excellent suggestion, Mistress Tychon,’ said Kotov, opening an encrypted martial vox-link and awaiting connection. Hostile binarics snapped around his floodstream before the map vanished from the auspex table and the canidae symbol of Legio Sirius shimmered into focus.
This is the Wintersun, state your request.+
‘Princeps Luth,’ said Kotov. ‘I’m going to need your Scout Titans.’
Their roles in the under-deck environment might have changed for the better, but the one constant in their daily existence was the quality of the food. Feeding Hall Eighty-Six was still the same cavernous chamber of clattering flatware and grunting men and women trying to shovel as much food into their mouths as they could get their hands on. In theory, each bondsman was dispensed an equal amount by the sustenance servitors, but as with all large groups kept in confinement, the strongest stayed strong by stealing the food of the weakest.
Not that Abrehem, Hawke and Coyne had ever needed to worry about that thanks to the presence of Crusha, the ogryn swept up along with them by the Mechanicus collarmen back on Joura. Crusha was dead now, killed by the same eldar warrior Abrehem had killed, but even without his hulking presence, they had no need to worry about a nutritional deficit.
Now they had a surplus; votive offerings and gifts passed along the table by those who had heard about the miracle of the plasma gun and the rumour of Rasselas X-42. When Abrehem had returned to the feeding hall with a newly grafted bionic limb, it had only cemented his reputation as a favoured son of the Omnissiah.
‘Don’t get me wrong…’ said Coyne, jamming a stale hunk of bread into his mouth. Even moistened by the beige paste in the plastic tray’s bowl depression, it still took him nearly thirty seconds to chew it to a level where he could continue speaking. ‘It’s good we’re being recognised, and the new duties in Magos Turentek’s forge-temple are a blessing, but is there any way you could use your… influence to get better food as opposed to more of the same crap?’
‘We shouldn’t be taking any of it,’ said Abrehem.
‘Come on, Abe,’ said Hawke. ‘What’s the point of being a somebody if you can’t make use of it?’
‘But I’m not a somebody,’ protested Abrehem.
Hawke grinned, putting his hands together in prayer. ‘Spoken like a man of true divinity.’
‘Have you heard what they’re calling you?’ said Coyne, in a conspiratorial whisper.
‘No, what?’
‘The Vitalist,’ said Coyne. ‘After what you did to Ismael.’
Abrehem twisted on the bench seat, looking over rows of tables to where Ismael de Roeven, once his duty-overseer back on Joura, but now rendered down into a cyborg servitor, placed a food tray before a hunch-shouldered bondsman. Like the hundreds of other servitors in the feeding hall, Ismael followed an unchanging pattern of dispensing food, collecting trays and cleaning the hall in preparation for the next shift.
‘But I didn’t do that,’ said Abrehem. ‘Ismael’s cranial hood was damaged when the Mechanicus vented the lower decks to save the ship from that plasma discharge. The impact restored whatever the cranial surgery left of the poor sod’s memory and old life, not me.’
‘Yeah, but he came to see you afterwards, didn’t he?’ asked Hawke, loud enough so that people two tables over could hear him. ‘Doesn’t take a savant to see you had something to do with it.’
‘But I didn’t,’ hissed Abrehem, looking up to see that Ismael had paused in his work to turn towards him, as though somehow aware they were talking about him. He gave Abrehem an almost imperceptible nod before carrying on with his work. Every bondsman he passed surreptitiously reached out to touch the servitor’s hands and arms as though he were a divine talisman.
‘If I had done it, don’t you think I’d have given him his whole memory back?’ continued Abrehem. ‘What kind of sick bastard would bring someone back halfway from virtual brain death? Thor’s light, can you imagine living like that? Knowing you were something more than a mindless drone, but only able to remember broken fragments of your old self… it’s monstrous.’
‘It’s better than what he was,’ said Coyne.
‘Is it? I’m not so sure,’ said Abrehem. ‘I reckon if he knew how much he’d lost, he’d want to go back to remembering nothing.’
‘Heads up,’ said Hawke. ‘Dragon boy’s coming.’
Abrehem didn’t have to look up to know that Totha Mu-32 was approaching, and wished he’d never told Hawke and Coyne what the overseer had told him about the sect that sought out those they believed were Machine-touched.
The overseer leaned over the table, and said, ‘You need to go. Now.’
Abrehem looked up and saw a look of genuine fear on the overseer’s face that his facial implants couldn’t mask.
‘What’s going on?’
‘I told you the senior magi would not tolerate you claiming stewardship of an arco-flagellant, remember?’
Abrehem nodded.
‘They are coming. Now. Saiixek is on his way and he will demand you surrender Rasselas X-42 over to his custody. Then he will kill you and cut off your augmetic arm.’
‘What do we do?’ asked Coyne, all thoughts of better quality food forgotten.
‘You leave. Now. Find somewhere hidden,’ said Totha Mu-32. ‘I know you now have several alcohol-producing stills hidden below the waterline, Bondsman Hawke. Take Abrehem to one of them, do not tell me which. You understand?’
Hawke looked about to protest his innocence, but simply nodded.
‘Yeah, sure. Okay, let’s go.’
‘Too late,’ said Abrehem, as Magos Saiixek and a troop of twenty skitarii marched into Feeding Hall Eighty-Six via the port archway. Abrehem rose from the table and looked for another way out, but twenty more skitarii appeared at the opposite entrance.
‘No way out,’ he said, turning to his companions. ‘Get away from me or they’ll take you too.’
‘Way ahead of you,’ said Hawke, already backing away into the crowds of bondsmen. Coyne was right there with him, and Abrehem wasn’t surprised. His fellow rigman had always been more interested in himself than any notions of solidarity, but Abrehem couldn’t bring himself to be angry. If the Mechanicus were really going to kill him, or even if they would only take him for some kind of interrogation trawl or punishment detail, then better it was only him they collared.
‘Too bad you took X-42 back to his sleep chamber,’ said Hawke as a parting shot. ‘Looks like you could really use him right about now.’
The skitarii closed in on Abrehem and Totha Mu-32, until the two of them stood within a circle of warriors. Armoured in glossy plates of black decorated with glitter-scaled scorpions, snakes and spiders, the Mechanicus troops looked like they’d give the Black Templars a run for their money. Shot-cannons, web-casters and shock mauls told Abrehem they wanted him alive, but didn’t care too much about how bruised he got.
The ring of warriors parted long enough for Magos Saiixek to stand forth, the black-cowled adept of the Cult Mechanicus who had first ‘welcomed’ Abrehem and the others aboard the Speranza. His robes and acid-etched stole were patterned with frost, the cylinders on his arachnid backpack venting breaths of freezing vapour and radiating cold from the looping cables encircling his body. His face was obscured behind a bronze mask worked in an angular recreation of a beaked plague-doctor from some backward feral world.
‘I am Saiixek, Master of Engines,’ said the magos, but Abrehem already knew that. He’d met him before, and the information bled from him in noospheric waves as surely as the misty fog of his machine-exhalations and his righteous indignation at Abrehem’s presumption. ‘Statement: you are to surrender the arco-flagellant to my custody immediately. Furnish me with its location, capabilities and trigger phrase, and once I have amputated that illegally affixed limb, you will receive a lower-rated punishment. Respond immediately.’
‘Rasselas X-42 has imprinted on Bondsman Locke,’ said Totha Mu-32. ‘It would be dangerous for anyone to try and undo that. You must not attempt to break such a bond.’
Saiixek inclined his head towards Totha Mu-32, like a man finding something unpleasant on the sole of his boot. ‘Identifier: Totha Mu-32, Overseer Tertius Lambda. You do not have sufficient rank protocol to make such a demand. Your breach of bio-implantation protocols has already earned you punishment. Continue with this defiance, and I will strip what rank you have and ensure your operational progression path never leaves the bio-waste reclamation decks.’
‘The Omnissiah chose Bondsman Locke to be X-42’s custodian,’ said Totha Mu-32. ‘A killing machine like that is a chosen instrument of Imperial will. He was meant to find Rasselas X-42, I know this to be true.’
Abrehem wanted to speak, to say that he was perfectly happy to surrender control of the arco-flagellant, that Totha Mu-32’s belief in him was misplaced. But the multiple barrels of heavy weapons pointing at him kept his mouth shut. Saiixek spoke again, and though none of his metal features moved, Abrehem felt his contempt in the surging ire of his floodstream. ‘You presume to know the will of the Omnissiah, overseer?’
‘No, but I recognise its working when I see it,’ said Totha Mu-32. ‘As would you if you ever deigned to venture beyond the high temples of the enginarium.’
‘Enough,’ said Saiixek, waving a brass hand and dispersing the cold mists around him. ‘This is not a debate. Suzerain Travain, take them.’
The skitarii next to Saiixek raised his shot-cannon, but before he could rack the slide, a metallic arm reached from Saiixek’s mist to wrench it from his hand. The gun snapped in two with a sharp crack, and Abrehem watched as Ismael pushed through the ring of skitarii to stand before Magos Saiixek.
He dropped the broken pieces of the weapon and said, ‘You… need to… leave here, magos. Now.’
Saiixek took a step back from Ismael, and Abrehem saw the surge of his abhorrence at the sight of a servitor addressing him with apparent self-will.
‘Blasphemy!’ hissed Saiixek. ‘You will all die for this techno-heresy.’
‘But I didn’t do anything!’ cried Abrehem. ‘He took a blow to the head, that’s all!’
‘The will of the Omnissiah moves within you, Abrehem,’ said Totha Mu-32. ‘Do not deny it.’
‘Will you shut up, please!’ snapped Abrehem. ‘Listen, Magos Saiixek, I’m not Machine-touched, this is all a bunch of stupid, random things that have happened to me. There’s no great mystery, it’s all… I don’t know, coincidence or someone’s idea of a sick joke!’
His words fell on deaf ears, and Abrehem knew Saiixek wouldn’t believe them anyway.
‘All… of… you,’ said Ismael, his face contorted with the effort of speech. ‘Should… go. Abrehem Locke is… not to… be touched. We will… not… allow our restorer to be harmed.’
Abrehem heard Ismael’s words without understanding them, but knew they were only pulling him deeper into the mire in which he was already neck-deep.
‘Admonishment: a servitor does not issue demands,’ said Saiixek, a measure of Mechanicus control finally asserting itself through his horrified disbelief.
