Forges of mars, p.78
Forges Of Mars, page 78
Abrehem kept his mouth shut in case he said something truly stupid. He tapped the iron fingers of his augmetic arm against the edge of the lectern.
Manubia smiled. ‘I thought so. Forge Elektrus isn’t quite like the forges depicted in the devotional frescoes, is it?’
Since lying to Manubia clearly wasn’t an option, Abrehem opted for honesty. ‘No, it hardly looks like a forge at all.’
‘What did you think? That someone who almost got the Speranza destroyed was going to just walk into the most prestigious forge on the ship and begin his rise through the Cult Mechanicus?’
‘No, of course not, but…’
‘But you thought you’d be learning all our secrets from the minute you walked in,’ said Manubia. ‘Well, I’m afraid you have to earn that right, Abrehem Locke. Because, right now, you are the lowest of the low. You are the scrapings of millennial rust from a broken gear, the contaminated oil that’s on the verge of being too polluted to use on even the most mangled waste recycler. And the only reason I didn’t slam the door in Totha Mu-32’s face is that, Omnissiah preserve me, I think he might be right about you.’
‘That I’m Machine-touched?’
‘No, that you’re dangerous,’ said Manubia.
‘Dangerous?’
‘You think you know machines, that you can talk to them and that it’s a simple matter to coax them into doing what you want, but you’re like a child with the key to an armoury of loaded weapons,’ said Manubia, jabbing a finger at the book of quantum runes. ‘You have power, a power I don’t understand yet, but you don’t know how to use it safely. That’s why you’re here – not to become the saviour of the Adeptus Mechanicus, but to be controlled, to have whatever power you have made safe. That’s what I do, Abrehem Locke.’
‘What you do?’ said Abrehem, angry at being so casually dismissed. ‘It doesn’t look like you do anything here.’
Manubia turned and gestured to the cog-toothed entrance to her forge.
‘Then feel free to leave, but know that no priest of the Cult Mechanicus will ever let you inside their temple again.’
Abrehem slammed the open palm of his artificial arm on the book of quantum runes.
‘Then tell me, Adept Manubia,’ he said. ‘What do you do? What vital role in the operations of the Speranza are these poor wretches involved in?’
‘Nothing,’ said Manubia. ‘They’re too broken to be of any use.’
Abrehem shook his head. ‘Then I don’t see any point in me being here.’
‘You didn’t let me finish,’ said Manubia. ‘They’re here because they’re broken. But by the time they leave, they won’t be. I gather up the waifs and strays of the Cult Mechanicus – the damaged, the broken, the data-blind, the augment-crippled – and I give them purpose again. I rebuild and remake what’s broken inside them and I make them useful again. I give them purpose. And that’s what I can do for you, if you’ll let me.’
‘I’m not broken,’ said Abrehem.
‘Aren’t you?’ said Manubia, her face lit from below by a swiftly glowing illumination.
Abrehem looked down, his eyes widening as he saw the etched copper diagram of the Ohmic Evocation fill with liquid light that flowed from his iron fingers. The metalled surface of the book felt hot to the touch, the light penetrating deeper into its pages with each passing second.
‘Whatever you’re doing, stop it now,’ demanded Manubia. ‘Lift your augmetic from the book.’
Abrehem shook his head. ‘I can’t,’ he said.
Golden light poured from the book, following the corded cables plugged into the base of the lectern. It lit the forge in a radiance it had not known since its earliest days, passing through the archaic trunking system and into the crippled tech-priests.
They stiffened as the light flowed into them and through them, seeking new pathways to illuminate, new circuits to restore. Thousands of snaking threads of golden light moved through the machine-temple, racing along frayed and forgotten wires. The Icon Mechanicus shimmered with reflected radiance as ancient wiring within the throne that had not known the touch of electro-motive power in millennia pulsed with life.
‘How are you doing this?’ gasped Manubia. ‘What are you doing?’
Abrehem had no answer for her, watching as first one, then another of the dormant machines around the perimeter of Chiron Manubia’s forge flickered with its own internal light.
Ancient cogs turned with grating squeals, rusted gears cranked into painful motion and long-stilled machine hearts began beating once more.
One by one, the titanic engines returned to life.
The approach to the bridge of the Speranza was a towering processional vault known as the Path to Wisdom, precisely one thousand metres long, with sixty equidistant archways to either side. Threaded columns wound with variant binary forms supported the latticework tangle of green iron girders and a cloud layer of lubricant incense clung to the corbels, where squatted fat mechanical cherubs. Long strips of votive binary chattered from their mouths, random praise to the Omnissiah that teams of tech-priests and lexmechanics studied intently for any divine messages.
Sheet metal banners hung within the arches, each venerating a different branch of Mechanicus theology, from shield technology to teleportation, from weapon design to engine maintenance. A great Icon Mechanicus stared down in judgement at those who approached.
None of the tech-priests surrounded by strips of ticker-tape around the base of each column paid any attention to the small, determined group making its way to the monolithic adamantium gates of the bridge.
Vitali Tychon led the way, with Kayrn Sylkwood, Emil Nader and Adara Siavash struggling to keep up with the venerable adept. The crew of the Renard were armed, which Emil wasn’t so sure was a good idea. But as soon as Vitali had managed to explain why he was covered in blood, Emil knew a confrontation was inevitable.
And if life in Ultramar had taught Emil anything, it was that it was always a good idea to be prepared for the worst.
The vast door to the bridge was protected by a demi-cohort of praetorians, clanking mechanised killers on tracks, articulated stalk legs or heavy Dreadnought chassis. Their armaments were a lethal array of plasma weaponry, rotor carbines and linked lascannons. Smaller than the praetorians were the weaponised servitors, grotesquely augmented humans with steroidal musculatures, sub-dermal armour plating and vicious arrays of implanted blades, drills and power fists.
Emil shared a glance with Kayrn Sylkwood. Neither was a stranger to mass warfare, but these cyborgs were something else entirely – metal-masked and dispassionate.
Their approach had been noted, and every one of the Mechanicus battle-servitors turned its targeting auspex upon them. Emil had never felt quite so vulnerable.
‘No sudden movements,’ said Vitali, his voice cold, where normally it was infectiously vibrant. ‘Let me take care of this.’
‘Don’t you worry about that,’ said Emil, keeping his hands well away from his hand cannon. The weapon had been his father’s, presented to him upon earning his captaincy in the Espandor Defence Auxilia. Emil had inherited it upon his father’s death a month later. Talassarian mother-of-pearl was embedded in the walnut grip in the shape of an ultima.
‘Do you actually know how to use that thing?’ asked Sylkwood.
He nodded. ‘I know every inch of this gun,’ said Emil. He’d maintained it with all the due diligence drummed into him since childhood. ‘It’s in as perfect working order as it was the day it left the craftsman’s workbench.’
‘You ever fired it?’
‘No, not once.’
‘Good to know,’ said Sylkwood.
‘Look, it’s not me you need to worry about,’ said Emil, nodding towards Adara Siavash. The youthfully handsome gunman had come aboard the Renard a number of years ago as a passenger, but after proving he had what it took to use his pistols and ubiquitous butterfly blade, Roboute had decided to keep him on as a member of the crew. For a man so intimate with ways of ending life, he wore his heart on his sleeve, and had been endearingly sweet in his hopeless infatuation with Mistress Linya.
Emil had seen Adara fight and kill, but until now, he’d never seen him angry. The cold, unflinching, razor-fine hostility he saw in the youth’s eyes was not something he’d ever expected to see.
‘Listening, Adara?’ said Sylkwood. ‘Let Vitali take the lead.’
The young gunman nodded, but didn’t reply.
Sylkwood shrugged with an I tried expression.
Vitali didn’t slow his pace as he approached the praetorians and weaponised servitors. Auspexes clicked and whirred as lenses extended, gathering information from Vitali’s noospheric aura. Satisfied it was addressing a being that didn’t qualify for immediate destruction, a towering praetorian armed with twin power fists extended a vox-unit from its throat.
‘Magos Vitali Tychon, stellar cartographer, AM4543/1001011.’
‘Stand down,’ said Vitali.
An internal cogitator whirred within its cranium and a chattering stream of tape emerged from the back of its skull.
‘Your presence has not been requested.’
‘I’m aware of that, but I’m going onto the bridge and you are not going to stop me.’
‘Without current authorised access privileges, entry to the bridge is impossible,’ said the praetorian.
‘I am a high magos of the Adeptus Mechanicus,’ snapped Vitali. ‘Are you going to stop me?’
‘Updated bridge security protocols authorise the use of force up to and including, but not limited to, lethal levels.’
Emil felt a layer of sweat form all over his body. The cyborg was talking about killing them with as much thought as he might give to stepping on a ship louse.
He leaned over to whisper to Kayrn. ‘If I’m going to die here, I’d rather it was at the hands of something that gave a damn about killing me.’
‘Yeah, because that makes dying so much better,’ she said.
‘Are you denying me access to the bridge?’ said Vitali.
‘Affirmative, Magos Tychon,’ confirmed the praetorian. ‘Do you wish me to submit a priority access request to Magos Blaylock?’
‘No, I want you to open the damn door.’
‘Your request cannot be completed at this time.’
Vitali turned to Emil and the others.
‘Master Nader, Master Siavash, I’d cover my ears if I were you. And, Mistress Sylkwood, please mute any noospheric-capable communion receptors if you please. I apologise in advance for what will, I’m sure, be most unpleasant.’
Emil knew better than to ask why and pressed his hands hard over his ears as Vitali turned back to the intransigent praetorian. Adara followed his example as Kayrn thumped the heel of one palm to the side of her head.
Vitali squared his shoulders and addressed the praetorian again. ‘I didn’t want to have to do this, but you’ve left me no choice.’
Before the servitor could answer, Vitali unleashed a shriek of violent binary from his chest augmitters. Even with his hands clamped over his ears, Emil felt it like someone had just detonated a bomb in the centre of his skull. Sylkwood dropped to one knee, her face twisted in pain.
As painful as Vitali’s binaric shriek was for them, the effect on the praetorians and weaponised servitors was far more spectacular. Relays within iron skulls exploded and implanted doctrina wafers melted upon receipt of self-immolation protocols. Every synaptic connection within the servitors’ heads blew instantaneously. Orange flames licked from their eye sockets and fatty smoke curled from those whose mouths were not already sealed shut. The stalk-limbed praetorian crashed to the ground, its weapon arms falling limply to its sides. Bipedal combat servitors fell where they stood, like remotely piloted automatons whose operators had been abruptly yanked from their immersion rigs.
The grating, screeching wail rose and fell, like a novice vox-operator trying to find an active channel. Blood dripped from Sylkwood’s nose, and veins like power couplings stood out on the side of her neck.
Then, mercifully, it ended.
‘What did you do?’ asked Emil, gingerly taking his hands from the side of his head.
‘To many aboard the Speranza, I may be the eccentric stellar cartographer Archmagos Kotov dragged from obscurity,’ said Vitali, ‘but I am also a high magos of the Adeptus Mechanicus. There isn’t a cyborg aboard this ship I don’t know how to destroy.’
Vitali stepped over the smouldering corpses of the combat cyborgs. Their limbs twitched with rogue impulses as the molten remnants of their brains disintegrated in the wake of Vitali’s binaric holocaust.
The towering bridge doors began to open.
‘And now I’m going to kill the abomination that murdered my daughter,’ said Vitali.
Microcontent 04
Flickering lights and arcs of energy were nothing unusual on Exnihlio, but the amber shimmer dancing in a steelwork canyon between two soaring coolant towers had nothing to do with the designs of Archmagos Telok.
Everything on Exnihlio was angular and harsh, but this light grew steadily from a graceful ellipse to a wide oval, some five metres in height. Where it touched the ground, it flattened to form a harmoniously proportioned, leaf-shaped archway.
The sounds that issued from the light were laments from an ancient age, a time before the rise of mankind, and spoke of the profound sorrow of a dying race that could never be articulated in mere words.
A figure stepped from the fluid light, monstrously tall, but slender-limbed, fleshless and formed from a gleaming material that had the appearance of the most flawless ceramic. Its emerald skull was an elongated teardrop, its shoulders vaned with sweeping spines like wings. Its arms looked too thin to be dangerous, but each had the power to crush steel and stone and flesh.
Uldanaish Ghostwalker was a wraithlord, and he had fought in the armies of Craftworld Biel-tan for seven centuries. Two of those centuries had been as a disembodied spirit, bound to this wraithbone warrior-construct by unbreakable bonds of duty.
Ghostwalker rose to his full height, and spread both arms out to either side, the weapons extruded from his fists ready to destroy any target that presented itself.
None did, and the armoured giant took a step to the side as more figures followed it from the honeyed light. First to follow the wraithlord onto the surface of Exnihlio was Ariganna Icefang, exarch of the Twilight Blade Aspect Shrine. Clad in plates of emerald and gold that overlapped like drake-scale and sinuously adapted to her form as though more flesh than armour, she was the perfect warrior in every way. One hand was a bladed claw, while her other held an enormous chainsabre.
A pack of hunched warriors followed her, bulkily armoured in jade and with helms of ivory. Stinger-like mandibles flickered at their cheek-plates, and each had a pistol and sword at the ready.
Following the Striking Scorpions came the Howling Banshees, warrior women clad in form-fitting flex-armour and gracefully sculpted plates of ivory and crimson. Like their more heavily armoured cousins, the Banshees carried swords and pistols, but had an altogether faster, lighter appearance that belied their exquisite lethality.
Last to step through the sunset gate was a lithe figure in rune-etched armour of gold, green and cream. An iridescent cloak of subtly interwoven gold and emerald billowed from Bielanna’s shoulders, and a scarlet plume flew from her antlered helm. Alone of the eldar, she did not have a weapon drawn, her filigreed sword still belted at her waist.
No sooner had Bielanna set foot on Exnihlio than a cry of pain escaped her lips. She staggered as though struck and dropped to her knees. The sunset gate faded like a forgotten dream.
The eldar warriors formed a circle around their farseer, weapons at the ready. Bielanna climbed unsteadily to her feet, looking around her as though unsure of what she was seeing. Imperial worlds tasted of rancid meat and burned metal, ripe with the overwhelming reek of mon-keigh desires, a maelstrom of fleeting, venal emotions, but the voice of this world was utterly singular in its ambition.
The force of it almost drove her to her knees once more.
‘Farseer?’ said Ariganna Icefang, looming over Bielanna.
Bielanna struggled to master the sensations roiling within her. Her psychic senses were being assailed by a push and pull of fates, interwoven destinies of the warriors around her and… and what?
‘I see it all…’ she whispered, shutting her eyes to keep the assault on her senses from overwhelming her.
‘What do you see?’ said Ariganna Icefang.
‘Conflicting futures and unwritten histories,’ gasped Bielanna.
Farseers trained their entire lives to read the twisting weave of the future within the skein, and as much discipline was required to keep the innumerable possibilities that would never come to pass at bay.
But no amount of training and devotion could keep this confluence of past and future from swamping her.
‘The futures grind against one another,’ said Bielanna. ‘Each strains to move from potential to reality, and their struggle to exist will destroy them all.’
‘Speak plainly,’ said the exarch. ‘Can you find the mon-keigh?’
Bielanna tried to answer, but the words stuck in her throat as she looked up into the Striking Scorpion exarch’s war-mask.
Ariganna’s helm was hung with knotted cords of woven wraithbone and psycho-conductive crystal, but Bielanna saw beyond the smooth faceplate to the exarch’s cruelly beautiful features. The Aspect Warrior’s eyes were gateways to madness, filled with the monomaniacal fury of inescapable devotion to death.
Bielanna saw not one face, but three. Each true in its own way.
A youthful face, flush with the newly awakened promise of femininity. The face of seasoned womanhood, freighted with wisdom. And lastly, a crone, burdened and ravaged by life’s savagery.
