Vainglorious, page 9
I just wished that had come as more of a comfort.
The shrine we were heading for was almost exactly what I’d been expecting – a small satellite manufactory, several leagues from the main complex, which loomed up out of the desert like a misshapen outcrop of wind-eroded sandstone as we got closer to it. In actual fact, of course, it was composed of far more durable rockcrete, its irregular shape the result of decades of accretion rather than weathering – a fabricatory here, a chapel there, and the inevitable landing pad for the use of shuttles arriving with supplies and departing laden with lethal toys for the Reclaimers to play with. Vorspung and I had lost no time in bringing Morie up to speed about the crash of the aircar we should have been in, with the heartening result that the Thunderhawk, and its complement of Space Marines, had beaten us to it.[60] The heavily armed gunship was already settling onto the slab of ’crete next to the wide, high loading door set into the sloping side of the artificial escarpment as we began our approach, the localised sandstorm raised by its engines obscuring the highway connecting our destination to the shrine we’d just left. The few vehicles traversing it slowed, no doubt to the accompaniment of appropriate comments from the inconvenienced drivers, which we were mercifully spared by their absence from our comm-net. Even before the Thunderhawk’s engines had powered down, gradually revealing the familiar blocky fuselage through the settling cloud of dust enveloping it, towering figures in yellow-and-white power armour could be seen disembarking, fanning out to secure the pad and the surrounding area.
‘Commendably prompt,’ I commented, taking heart from their arrival; I knew their Chapter’s fighting spirit of old, and, even though it seemed to me to be untempered by much in the way of caution,[61] their presence would throw up an insurmountable barrier to anyone intending to take another crack at me. Unless the conspirators included a cabal of skitarii, of course, but even if that were so (and by now I was in no mood to take anything for granted), I doubted they’d be willing to show their hand quite so blatantly. That did raise a rather disquieting prospect, however, and I turned to Vorspung at once, hoping to discount it. ‘How much do you think we can trust Norgard?’
‘That would depend on how you quantify trust,’ he replied helpfully, steering our conveyance towards an opening portal in the side of the shrine, taking my question as literally as I suppose I should have expected from a tech-priest. ‘As a straight percentage, the variables–’
‘Would you feel comfortable confiding your suspicions to her?’ I asked, getting straight to the point. Vorspung hesitated for a moment before replying, apparently preoccupied with steering us inside the hangar, where a couple of similar vehicles and a rather battered-looking Aquila were parked, plugged in to servicing umbilicals of one sort or another. He swung us around, rotating the cargo hauler almost on the spot, and settled it down on the ’crete next to the spacecraft so smoothly I barely felt the movement stop. Unlike the hangar we’d departed from, there were no ground crews or servitors visible; nor, for that matter, could I see any cargo containers stacked against the walls. Bright as the luminators were, I found the lack of bustle I would normally have expected to find in a place like this more than a little disconcerting. In my experience, apparently deserted installations generally concealed an unpleasant surprise or two, like a lurking genestealer infestation or aeldari pirates intent on looting everything movable, including the inhabitants.[62] As the magos powered down the repulsors, and our vehicle settled firmly onto its undercarriage, he nodded judiciously.
‘More so than most,’ he conceded. ‘But I would rather not do so until absolutely necessary.’
‘And Sergeant Morie?’ I enquired, unfastening the seat restraints as I did so.
‘Like you, he is outside the Cult Mechanicus, and therefore unlikely to be a party to any conspiracy within it,’ Vorspung said.
‘Fair point,’ I agreed, scrambling out of the passenger door and rearranging my sidearms into a more comfortable position – by which, of course, I mean where I could draw them with the minimum of delay.
The clang of the rear door opening, and a sudden thickening of the air in my immediate vicinity, drew my attention to the reappearance of my aide, who regained the solid floor with an air of intense relief, looking even less healthy than usual. (Which, for a man who once walked through a sentry line of Nurgle cultists unchallenged, was something of an achievement.[63]) Morie followed, unfolding himself from the cramped conditions he’d travelled in like a particularly lethal deckchair. I nodded to him, and returned my attention to the tech-priest, who had finished ministering to our vehicle and joined us on the stained ’crete of the hangar floor. ‘Where are we, exactly?’
‘One of the most sacred spaces on Eucopia,’ Morie cut in unexpectedly, his expansive gesture taking in the parked flyers, the shabby-looking Aquila, and a number of interestingly shaped stains on the walls and floor. Any impulse I might have had to laugh in response, though, was pre-emptively quelled by the resonance of his voice, and the way it echoed in the wide, high chamber. His face, too, was completely serious.
‘Then I’m honoured to be here,’ I said, more politely than accurately.
‘The honour is ours,’ Morie said, with a perfunctory genuflection in the direction of the icon of the Omnissiah dominating the far wall – the only feature of note in sight.
‘And ours,’ Vorspung agreed, echoing the gesture, and turning to lead the way out of the hangar. The exchange surprised me, I don’t mind admitting, but the reason for the Space Marine’s strangely proprietorial attitude towards what I’d assumed to be an Adeptus Mechanicus shrine became clear as soon as we’d gained the corridor beyond. Instead of the throng of tech-priests and servitors (not to mention scuttling CATs getting underfoot) I’d expected to find there, fully half the people I saw seemed to be relatively unmodified, the few augmetics I could see presumably the results of old injuries, like my right fore and middle fingers. They stood out among the russet-robed tech-priests sharing the space, the white and yellow trim of their robes and tunics identifying them instantly, even if their deferential attitude to Morie hadn’t marked them out at once.
‘Chapter-serfs,’ Jurgen said, his surprise clearly at least as great as mine. ‘Haven’t seen any of those in a while.’
‘Indeed not,’ I agreed,[64] nodding courteously to one of their number, who was evidently equally astonished by the sight of us.
‘This facility produces materiel entirely for the Reclaimers,’ Vorspung said. ‘Though fully integrated with the Eucopian infrastructure, by treaty it’s ceded to them as part of their Chapter demesne.’[65]
‘Which the Adeptus Mechanicus continues to operate for us,’ Morie concluded, which seemed fair enough to me. After all, the Cult Mechanicus guarded its holy lore jealously, and would undoubtedly be reluctant to leave its manufacturing processes in the hands of outsiders, however close the pact between them and the Reclaimers’ Techmarines might be; while, for their part, the Adeptus Astartes take little interest in anything which doesn’t involve slaughtering the Emperor’s enemies.
‘Though not, at the moment, as effectively as either of us might wish,’ Vorspung added, receiving a nod of confirmation from the brother-sergeant.
‘How badly are your production schedules being affected?’ I asked, feeling bold enough to speak a little more freely now. It was still possible that one or more of the tech-priests milling around us on errands of their own were party to the conspiracy Vorspung so strongly suspected, of course, but highly unlikely – only candidates of the highest calibre and probity would be trusted to even enter a Chapter holding, let alone work there, and the Reclaimers had centuries of experience in detecting the subtle signs of heresy.[66]
‘About as badly as yours, I suspect,’ Morie said, leading the way into a quieter side room. No stranger to the Reclaimers’ taste in interior decoration, after spending far more time than I’d been comfortable with as a guest on one of their battle-barges,[67] I recognised the briefing room for what it was the moment the door slid to behind us. It had plainly been prepared for us in advance, as a hololithic image was flickering and sputtering over the conference table in the middle of the room.
‘Tanna, sir?’ Jurgen asked, making straight for the samovar in the corner, from which the unmistakable aroma of the beverage was emanating, along with some mildly alarming hissing and bubbling sounds. More proof, if I needed it, that my presence here had been anticipated; my fondness for that particular drink had been known to the Reclaimers I’d served with, and they must have gone to some trouble to prepare it in advance of my arrival.[68]
‘Thank you, Jurgen,’ I said, dropping into a comfortably padded seat at the central table. It was the right size for me, Throne be praised, although the table surface was roughly level with my chin. Everyone else remained standing, which was precisely as I’d expected (I’d hardly ever seen a Space Marine sit down, apart from in a transport vehicle), and Vorspung made a beeline for the hololith projector, where he immediately began muttering incantations, flicking switches and hitting the casing with his fist. The ritual had its desired effect: the image stabilised, revealing a complex tangle of interconnected data lines which meant nothing to me, but were vaguely reminiscent of a disembowelled carnifex. Jurgen bustled over and handed me a tea bowl full of the fragrant liquid, the steam of which I inhaled appreciatively – partly because the scent put me in a more tranquil frame of mind, which I rather suspected wouldn’t last for very long, and partly because it masked the more earthy aroma of its bearer. ‘Better get one for yourself,’ I told him. ‘This could take some time.’
‘Very good, sir,’ my aide rejoined, and complied with alacrity, snagging a drink from the side table before placing himself firmly in front of the door, his lasgun slung where he could ready it for use in an instant. Not that we were likely to be interrupted by intruders in so secure a location, but we’d only reached the age we had by never taking anything for granted, and I must confess I felt distinctly cheered by his evident readiness for trouble. Punctuating his vigil by occasional slurping noises, he did his best to fade into the background, although his grubby fatigues and battered body armour didn’t exactly match the decor.
‘What exactly are we looking at?’ I asked, returning my attention to the image in the hololith, which continued to resemble nothing so much as abstract art in an abattoir.
‘A visual representation of the flow of resources through the Eucopian infrastructure,’ Vorspung told me, completely unhelpfully, ‘graded by colour for ease of interpretation. Puce, for instance, shows the distribution of fissionables, taupe data flow through the cogitator nodes, cyan the allocation of personnel, ultraviolet raw materials currently in transit, viridian those available for processing–’
‘Quite fascinating,’ I said, before he could run through the entire spectrum, including the parts invisible to my unaugmented eyes, ‘but a little too detailed for a layman like me to interpret. Can you just narrow it down to the most probable cause?’
Vorspung stopped speaking abruptly and turned back to us, glancing at Morie as if hoping for some show of support. ‘The variables are extremely complex–’ he began.
‘Evidently,’ Morie said. ‘But, like the commissar, I lack the expertise to interpret such a comprehensive analysis.’ Or the patience, if I was any judge. ‘Just the bolt points, please.’
‘But…’ Vorspung appeared to take several deep breaths, no mean feat for a man who I suspected had long ago dispensed with anything so inefficient as lungs. ‘Of course. It’s a gross oversimplification, but the proximate cause of the manufactories’ lack of output would appear to be a lack of raw materials. Why this should be remains puzzling, however, as Eucopia is unusually abundant in the required minerals.’
‘Which is why it was colonised in the first place,’ I put in, to show I wasn’t completely out of my depth. ‘So why’s no one digging them out?’
‘They are,’ Vorspung said. ‘But it appears the flow has diminished.’ He poked at the hololith’s controls again, and another diagram appeared, this one a good deal easier to follow, to my great relief. ‘As you can see, the actual yield from our mining operations are considerably below those projected for this stage of the colonisation process.’
‘Considerably,’ Morie agreed. Space Marines were notoriously hard to read, of course, although my months spent accompanying the Reclaimers had left me better equipped than most to interpret the subtle shifts of their normally impassive features, and if I was any judge he was as unimpressed as I was by the size of the gap between the two lines on the graph. ‘And the reason for this unfortunate shortfall?’
‘Is not entirely clear,’ Vorspung admitted, looking as unhappy about that as it was possible to for someone with so much metal in his face that expressions were generally something which only happened to other people. ‘The aggregated data is clear, but the choke points far harder to identify.’
‘And why would that be?’ I asked. ‘Could someone be falsifying the data?’
Vorspung was silent and motionless for so long after that, I began to wonder if he’d short-circuited something. I was just on the point of standing up and poking him to check, when he snapped out of whatever fugue state he’d been in, and nodded slowly.
‘It is possible,’ he said, about as enthusiastically as an ecclesiarch being asked to consider whether Horus might have been well intentioned but a trifle misguided. ‘But the idea of a tech-priest deliberately corrupting information…’
‘Is disconcerting in the extreme,’ Morie agreed. ‘But it would explain a great deal. And after what happened to the aircar, I would hardly rule it out.’
‘Neither would I,’ I said. I turned to the tech-priest, with all the sincerity I could counterfeit. ‘Especially after our conversation earlier. Perhaps…’ I let my voice tail away, confident that he’d take the hint.
‘You are, of course, correct.’ Vorspung nodded. ‘We should confide in Sergeant Morie. If our suspicions are correct, the Reclaimers will be invaluable allies.’
‘I was under the impression that we already were,’ Morie said, without much heat. He turned to me. ‘What is occurring here?’
‘Precisely what I was sent to Eucopia to find out,’ I said. ‘And if the magos is right, the corruption of data’s the least of it.’
TEN
Morie listened impassively as Vorspung set out his suspicions, in rather more detail than he’d done with me – but then a briefing room in a Space Marine facility was a lot more secure than a lift in a crowded Mechanicus shrine. The gist of it was still the same, though: that the lack of output from the manufactoria on Eucopia was most likely to be the result of the machinations of a shadowy cabal hell-bent on crippling the Imperium’s efforts to defend itself from the enemies surrounding us on all sides.
‘Who, though?’ Morie asked. ‘And, more to the point, why?’
‘Answer that,’ I said, ‘and you answer the first question too.’ I’d been on more than my fair share of heretic hunts with Amberley, and though I was a long way from being able to think like an inquisitor, I’d picked up a rough idea of how they go about things.[69] ‘Find the motive, and you’re well on the way to identifying the guilty.’
‘That’s the conundrum,’ Vorspung said. ‘The conspirators are evidently working against the efficient use of resources and the interests of the Machine-God, but only members of the Cult Mechanicus have the expertise required to do so while remaining undetected. That is a paradox which I find myself unable to resolve. Blasphemy against the Omnissiah by consecrated tech-priests is so unthinkable I must confess to doubting my own sanity on several occasions since I first began to suspect such a thing.’
‘Then they are deluded, misguided or corrupted,’ Morie said simply.
‘Or genuinely believe they’re serving the Omnissiah in some higher fashion,’ I said. I coughed delicately, aware I was about to tread on Vorspung’s iridium replacement toes. ‘Are there any, ah, doctrinal disputes in that area?’
Vorspung’s voxcoder emitted a short burst of static, which, had I believed him capable of such a thing, I might have taken for stifled amusement. ‘Techno-theology consists of practically nothing but doctrinal differences,’ he said. ‘But all concur that the true path is towards the perfectibility of humankind in the Omnissiah’s image.’ He paused, a little awkwardly. ‘And the name of the Emperor too, of course.’
‘Are they not one and the same?’ Morie asked, a trifle sharply it seemed to me.
‘Without a doubt,’ I put in hastily, although to be honest I had no idea, both in my experience tending to come to the aid of whoever had the biggest gun at the time. ‘Which rather begs the question, what kind of tech-priest would turn their back on so fundamental a principle?’
‘The traitor kind,’ Morie said, his face twisted with loathing. ‘Those who turn away from the light of the Omnissiah to throw in their lot with the Great Enemy.’
‘We do not speak of them,’ Vorspung said, the volume of his voxcoder suddenly seeming a good deal louder, ‘still less traffic with thrice-damned heretics.’
‘I’ve fought Traitor Space Marines,’ I said mildly to Morie, ‘as, I’m certain, have you. Their existence in no way tarnishes the glorious deeds of the Adeptus Astartes.’ I braced myself for a sharp rejoinder, if not worse, but to my carefully concealed relief, Morie was nodding.
‘A point well made,’ he said. ‘The Dark Mechanicum are equally abhorrent, but equally no true servants of the Omnissiah.’
