Vainglorious, p.5
Vainglorious, page 5
Thus, the establishment of the new forge world of Eucopia was more than a simple colonisation project. Put simply, the military supplies it was primarily intended to produce could make all the difference between the maintenance or collapse of Imperial rule, both in the Damocles Gulf and, potentially, as far afield as the adjacent sectors. The importance of this enterprise can be judged by the fact that the Imperial Guard representative sent to liaise with the tech-priests in charge of Eucopia was none other than Ciaphas Cain, the celebrated commissar, whose fortitude and resolution in the face of the Emperor’s foes was legendary.[27]
As events turned out, Cain’s presence was to prove fortuitous indeed, as treachery, heresy and an unsuspected enemy threatened the future of not only the enterprise itself, but also the entire Eastern Arm.
FIVE
To my faint surprise, the quarters we’d been assigned turned out to be a great deal more comfortable than I’d expected, and I slept soundly throughout the night. They were pretty basic by most standards, of course, but laid out and furnished with the convenience of the non-augmented rather more in mind than I was used to finding in Adeptus Mechanicus facilities. The bed, which could easily have held two of me, and was so high I had to clamber up onto it, had a thin, firm mattress covering the slab of polished steel forming its base, and the adjoining balnearia boasted a bath large and deep enough for me to have submerged myself in it entirely had I felt so inclined.
The rooms themselves were airy and bright, the rising sun beyond the window which made up most of the wall of the living area imparting a warm glow to the burnished bronze walls and the scattered furnishings. The carpet was grey, inevitably, the weave incorporating a cogwheel motif echoing the one I’d noted adorning the exterior of the building, and though the furnishings were sparse, they were at least reassuringly solid.
‘Morning, sir,’ Jurgen said, glancing up from the rudimentary cooking facilities in one corner of the main living area, where he was pushing something which looked as much like food as anything we were likely to find in an Adeptus Mechanicus facility around a pan with a spatula. ‘Comfortable night?’
‘A lot more than some we’ve had,’ I said, with an appreciative sniff at the aroma of frying food, which was currently masking my aide’s more robust bouquet.
Jurgen nodded. ‘Haven’t we just,’ he agreed, mercifully without elaborating, since reliving some of the horrors of my past wasn’t exactly the best way of commencing a new day. He poked hopefully at the mush in front of him, and decanted it onto a plate. ‘I’ve done what I can with this, but I wouldn’t get your hopes up.’
‘I’m sure it’s fine,’ I said, realising for the first time how hungry I was, and seating myself at the dining table. The chair seemed both higher than usual and too low for the tabletop, but right then I was too focused on eating to think about that, simply bundling up my greatcoat to form a makeshift cushion on top of the seat. ‘Aren’t you having something?’
‘I’ve already eaten,’ Jurgen said, plonking the plate down in front of me, along with the utensils. ‘The first batch was a bit iffy, and I didn’t want to waste it.’ He placed a steaming, fragrant mug on the tabletop, beside the plateful of food. ‘At least we’ve got some tanna[28] to wash it down.’
‘Excellent,’ I said, my spirits rising with the first sip, as the aromatic liquid warmed its way down to my stomach. Thus fortified, I turned my attention to the plate, and began plying my fork. I chewed thoughtfully for a moment. ‘And this isn’t half bad.’
‘Thank you, sir. Luckily I found some seasoning before we left the ship.’ I let that go, knowing better than to ask where he’d found it, or who might still be looking for it. I knew the Mechanicus of old, and if we were going to have to subsist on soylens viridiens for the duration of our stay, any assistance in rendering it palatable would be more than welcome. So far as most tech-priests were concerned food was just an inconvenient way of refuelling their biological systems, although I had encountered a handful of them over the years with a healthier attitude to the ingestion of nutriment, even though their colleagues considered them eccentric at best.
I was just chasing the last remnants of foodoid substance around my plate, and wondering vaguely how best to begin tackling the commission I’d been given by Zyvan, when the decision was made for me. A small section of wall, which I’d taken for a decorative panel embossed with some arcane techno-theological rune, hinged aside, and a CAT[29] about the size of an obese sump rat trundled out into the centre of the room. There, it wandered around in circles for a moment before eventually working out where I was sitting and coming to a standstill facing me. After whirring and pinging to itself for a moment, a small pict screen rose jerkily from a slot in its back, like the galaxy’s most indigestible slice of toast.
‘Commissar.’ Vorspung’s face appeared, his voice sounding even tinnier than usual through the CAT’s tiny speaker. ‘I trust you slept well?’
‘Very comfortably,’ I assured him, tilting my neck a little awkwardly to look down at the device, and hoping the conversation would be a short one. ‘Just finishing breakfast.’
‘Commendably efficient,’ Vorspung said. ‘Then we may begin our tour of inspection forthwith. Unless you have any further biological requirements to attend to beforehand, of course.’
‘That might be prudent,’ I said diplomatically. In my experience Mechanicus shrines weren’t particularly well endowed with plumbing. ‘And I think I should get some trousers on. Don’t want to scandalise the workforce.’
‘No.’ Vorspung looked faintly confused, no doubt thinking of the people who actually ran things as little more than integral components of the production line – which probably worked fine until they started getting ideas of their own and began pilfering, rioting or otherwise entertaining themselves. Not my problem, though, so no point thinking about it. ‘I’ll be waiting for you in the central command chapel when your preparations are complete.’
‘Fine,’ I said, before realising I had no idea where the central command chapel actually was – or anything else around here other than the landing pad we’d arrived at the previous evening, come to that. ‘How do I find it?’
‘Just follow Rolo,’ Vorspung said, and cut the link, before I had a chance to ask, ‘Who?’
‘Oh, I get it.’ Jurgen nodded, a faint half-smile flickering on his face for a moment before it returned to its habitual blankness. ‘Who knew cogboys had a sense of humour?’
‘A few of them do,’ I said, although in my experience it wasn’t likely to be the kind that thinks starting an anecdote with ‘An ork, a t’au and an inquisitor walk into a bar…’ automatically guarantees you a hilarious pay-off. I still couldn’t see what my aide was driving at, though, until I’d hopped off the oversized chair and skirted the patiently waiting mechanism on my way to the balnearia. At that point my eye was caught by the serial number R010 stencilled on its polished metal posterior. ‘And it seems Magos Vorspung has a whimsical streak, at least.’
The CAT was still sitting patiently where it could most conveniently create a trip hazard, awaiting my return, when I’d completed my ablutions and returned to the living area. Almost as soon as I reappeared it emitted a couple of rattles and clicks, and began trundling towards the door, which slid open at its approach.
‘Here we go then,’ Jurgen said, accurately but unnecessarily, and fell into place at my shoulder.
Whether by coincidence or design, the ambulatory mechanism trundled along the corridors at a comfortable walking pace, which enabled me to get a better feel for my surroundings than I’d managed the previous evening; given my condition at the time, of course, that was hardly surprising.
Some of my first impressions of the place turned out to be accurate: the gleaming metal walls and glass display cases were just as I remembered them from last night, and from previous visits to Adeptus Mechanicus facilities. The thing which struck me most forcefully, though, was the general sense of brightness and spaciousness I’d first noticed in our living quarters. As so much else of what I saw seemed to fit the standard Mechanicus template, however, I was initially nonplussed as to why this particular shrine should feel so different.
Only when I saw Jurgen squinting as we crossed a patch of sunlight, striking in through one of the many large windows set into the side of the corridor we were traversing, did it dawn on me that it was the first time I’d ever seen the interior of a major Mechanicus shrine illuminated entirely by natural means. Not all the others I’d visited had been underground, naturally, but the amount of effluvia in the atmosphere around their manufactories had plunged them into such stygian gloom that, for the most part, they might just as well have been. In fact, now I came to think about it, I could barely recall if I’d seen any windows at all on the forge worlds I’d previously visited.
For that reason alone I found the landscape beyond the vast sheets of armourcrys strangely compelling, slackening my pace a little to take it in as we crossed a high, enclosed bridge between two jutting outcrops of the main habitat. The sky was almost clear, a delicate translucent blue, smeared with faint wisps of high cloud, like the ones I’d noticed on our approach from orbit; indeed, one, a particularly long narrow streak, was probably not natural at all, but a shuttle either threading the same path back into the atmosphere or on the verge of shrugging its way free of it. Though much of the surrounding landscape was obscured by the bulk of the complex, I could still make out the slopes of the highlands enclosing it, and, through an occasional cleft in the rock formations, caught glimpses of a vast, featureless plain beyond, merging almost imperceptibly into the horizon.
The clear, bright sunlight revealed a bewildering number of colours and shades among the towering cliffs and tumbled rocks surrounding the site. These were muted browns and greys for the most part, with occasional streaks of more vibrant hues: reds, yellows and the odd greenish tinge, which, had I not known better, I might have mistaken for patches of vegetation. The overall effect was strangely peaceful, despite the throng of augmented humanity passing us in both directions, and the swarm of servitors and vehicles of one sort or another clambering[30] over the hillsides on errands I could barely guess at.
I didn’t have long to contemplate the view, however, as Vorspung and a handful of the hangers-on from last night were waiting for me on a wide, echoing mezzanine above a hall full of bustling functionaries and even more venerated ironmongery under glass[31] at the far end of the bridge.
‘Commissar.’ The magos greeted me with a stiff nod of the head, like someone for whom social interaction had previously been little more than a theoretical exercise.[32] Having delivered me safely to my destination, the guiding CAT veered away, disappearing through a flap which opened suddenly in a nearby wall, and which snapped to behind it so abruptly I half expected to hear a mechanical belch. ‘Ready to commence our inspection of the facility?’
‘By all means,’ I assured him, dismissing the fleeting impulse to proffer a hand to shake. Since we’d been sort of introduced the previous evening, it would probably only have confused him. ‘Where would you like to start?’
‘I thought perhaps the control chapel,’ Vorspung said, clearly pleased to be focusing on his specialist subject, and turned to lead the way through a wide, high set of double doors, inevitably embellished with interlocking cogwheels in burnished bronze. Jurgen and I followed, finding ourselves in a gallery overlooking a space which immediately put me in mind of the command centres we’d set up in commandeered warehouses back in my days with the Valhallan 597th,[33] though on a far larger and more complicated scale. The serried ranks of control lecterns, pict screens and hololithic displays – all of them manned by at least one russet-robed acolyte of the Machine-God – receded away beneath me, to a distant armourcrys wall, through which the vista of the surrounding landscape could be discerned once more. To my distinct lack of surprise, though, no one was bothering to admire the view, intent on the instruments they tended, or scurrying between them on arcane errands of their own. One or two even seemed to be physically connected to their consoles, although whether they were wrangling data directly or merely recharging their powerbanks I had no idea. (Nor, if I’m honest, interest.)
The main thing which struck me about the activity below, however, was the silence it was being carried out in. Had it been an Imperial Guard post, everything would have been marinaded in sound: the constant hum of voices exchanging information, demanding refills of tanna, or swearing about something someone else had done (or, troopers being troopers, something the swearer had done but hoped to deflect the blame for onto somebody else). Here, though, the hush was profound enough for the constant footfalls of the purposeful scurriers to echo around the vast space like surf on a distant beach, overlaid with the mechanical clickings, tweetings and hummings of the devices being ministered to.
‘Do you control the entire complex from here?’ I asked, and after a moment Vorspung remembered how to nod.
‘We do,’ he confirmed. ‘But not only that.’ He drew my attention to a bank of monitoring equipment almost immediately below us, in the centre of which a hololithic display was projecting an image of almost incomprehensible complexity. ‘We also collate the data flows from outlying installations, to create an immediate overview of resource management and expenditure. That node, for example, is observing the atmospheric engine to the south-east of here, and managing its energy flow as required.’
‘Impressive,’ I said, as I suspected I was supposed to. ‘And you do this for every installation on the planet?’
‘Precisely so,’ Vorspung agreed, the merest trace of smugness managing to insinuate itself into the even tones of his voxcoder.
‘So what if it all goes paps up?’ Jurgen asked, with his usual ingenuous directness. ‘Sounds like one accident down there and you’re frakked.’
‘Such an occurrence would be completely impossible,’ Vorspung assured him, while my aide and I exchanged glances of mutual disbelief – we’d heard similar sentiments expressed far too often in the past to put much credence in them. ‘But if it did, the backup systems would kick in at once.’
‘I’m pleased to hear it,’ I said, prepared to take the reassurance at face value, rather than run the risk of precipitating a long and tedious monologue by asking for more detail. Jurgen, however, ploughed on, oblivious to the imminent danger of extreme boredom.
‘But what if they didn’t?’ He gestured towards the transparent wall at the far end of the echoing chamber, where the streak in the sky I’d noticed before was further elongated, and beginning to curve in our general direction. ‘What if that shuttle missed the pad and crashed in here?’
‘It wouldn’t make any difference,’ Vorspung said, a hint of froideur injecting itself into his even monotone. ‘The data is shared with other shrines around the planet, and constantly updated.’
‘Very reassuring,’ I said hastily, before Jurgen could pursue the point. Once he had an idea in his head, rare as that was, he could chew on it like a kroot with a bone. ‘Though I imagine it would make a considerable difference to us.’
‘The probability of a mishap of that kind is vanishingly small,’ Vorspung said, before it dawned on him that I was joking. ‘The automatic guidance system is extremely reliable, and the pilot of that particular vessel exceptionally skilled. As one might expect.’
‘Indeed,’ I said, trying not to think of my eventful trip to meet Zyvan aboard the Ocean Orchestra. Though at least it sounded like they employed (mostly) flesh-and-blood pilots around here, which under the circumstances was fine by me.
Vorspung turned, leading the way towards the door by which we’d entered.
‘Perhaps you’d like to see the production facilities themselves next?’ he asked.
‘It sounds fascinating,’ I lied, trailing in his wake.
SIX
After leaving the control chapel we ambled along another of the enclosed bridges, exchanging remarks of little substance and no value, although years of sifting small talk for nuggets of information to pass on to Amberley kept me subliminally alert for anything which might prove of interest to Zyvan – or, for that matter, the magi back on Coronus, who seemed equally concerned about the situation here.
‘They all seem busy enough,’ Jurgen muttered to me, in a voce he seemed to imagine was sufficiently sotto to escape the attention of our hosts. ‘If anyone has been slacking off, they’re not making it obvious.’
‘Everything seems in order,’ I agreed, wary of the possibility that Vorspung, or any of his retinue, might have augmented hearing. I wasn’t entirely convinced that he wasn’t responsible for the problems we’d been sent to investigate, but I was prepared to keep an open mind, and if it turned out that he was, it wouldn’t hurt to let him think he’d got us fooled.
‘Everyone here is mindful of their duties and responsibilities,’ Vorspung assured us, thereby confirming that his hearing was indeed a great deal better than the human average. ‘To the Imperium, and the Machine-God alike.’
