‘A cuckoo in the nest?’ asked Ariganna, her tone betraying a liking for the notion.
‘Exactly,’ said Bielanna. ‘His name is Roboute Surcouf.’
Introspection had never been one of Archmagos Kotov’s strongest suits, but when he felt the need to turn his gaze inwards, there was only one place he felt able to do so. He circled the Ultor Martius, the red stone table at the heart of the Adamant Ciborium – a surprisingly modest chamber enclosed beneath a pyramid of interconnected machinery and logic plates – and ran gold-tipped fingers over the stone at its centre, feeling every imperfection in the slabs hewn from Olympus Mons.
The stone had been a gift from the Fabricator General, a palpable sign of his approbation and a means of symbolically carrying the dominion of Mars beyond the edges of the galaxy. Magos Turentek had crafted the steel-edged table, incorporating the finest navigation arrays of Azuramagelli, the statistical cogitators of Blaylock and the vast resources of Kryptaestrex’s analyticae. An orb of silver wire mesh and glittering diamond hung over the table’s exact centre, a representation of the geocentric cosmos as envisaged by the ancient Ptolemaic stargazers.
The Speranza could be entirely controlled with the Ultor Martius, its inbuilt cogitators and the complex machinery lining the walls fully capable of meshing with every vital system of the Ark Mechanicus. He remembered the moment his senior commanders had met here before setting out for the Halo Scar, when he had first laid eyes on the Tomioka’s saviour pod.
Despite the undoubted challenges that lay ahead, there was a mood of cautious optimism, an unspoken feeling that they might actually succeed. Kotov had carefully mustered a band to whom the quixotic nature of his quest would appeal: a Cadian colonel renowned for his tenacity in the face of adversity; a Reclusiarch in search of penance and to whom the prospect of unknown space held no terrors; and magi whose personality matrices displayed a propensity for free-thinking and radical ideas.
This gathering had sealed the pact between them, but like the generals of Macharius before them, the many hardships had gradually eroded their desire to venture beyond the limits of known space. The journey to reach this place had cost everyone dearly, even the most steadfast among them – Kotov included – had begun to question the wisdom in continuing.
But that first flush of excitement and optimism had now been restored as fully as Arcturus Ultra and shone just as brightly. They had all seen the Breath of the Gods in action and it was glorious. The transformation of the Arcturus Ultra system was nothing short of miraculous, and the evidence of the reborn star system alone was enough for Kotov to return to Mars a hero. Vitali Tychon and his daughter had wanted to remain in-system for longer to chart this reborn region of space and rewrite the now hopelessly outdated cartographic representations of the galactic fringe.
As much as Kotov wished to indulge them, he knew the true prize lay ahead of them.
He would seek out Magos Telok and bring him home to Mars in triumph.
In the sixteen days since the rebirth of Katen Venia’s star, Magos Turentek’s forges had been working around the clock manufacturing fresh components to repair all that had been damaged in the crossing of the Halo Scar. Despite the as-yet-unexplained loss of numerous work gangs below the waterline, the Speranza was being restored to its former glory. With enough raw materials – something the fleet’s support vessels were expending at a ruinous rate – the Ark Fabricatus boasted he could rebuild the entirety of the Speranza before they reached the source of the Adeptus Mechanicus transmissions.
Transmissions that could only be those of Archmagos Telok.
The thought of meeting the legendary Lost Magos filled Kotov with a flush of emotions he had long thought left behind in his rise through the ordered ranks of the Mechanicus.
Hope warred with a fear that what he might find could not live up to his expectation.
What of Telok himself? If the Breath of the Gods was his to command, what changes might such power work on a man’s psyche? With the power of a divine creator at his fingertips, might Telok have changed beyond all recognition?
Kotov shook off such pessimism, knowing the Omnissiah would not have brought them this far and shown them so much only to dash them on the rocks of disappointment. He had been tested before and found wanting – the loss of his forge worlds was testament to that – but the revelations of Katen Venia and the unmasking of Telok’s planet was proof that his pilgrimage to undiscovered space had been divinely ordained.
Magos Saiixek – together with a gifted magos and enginseer from Roboute Surcouf’s ship – had wrought wonders from the engines, pushing the ship through the void at speeds Kotov had not believed the Speranza capable of achieving. Linya Tychon and Azuramagelli had plotted a course that, with a fair wind and a steady tide at their back, should see them in orbit around the source of Telok’s transmissions within fifteen days.
Kotov paused in his circuit of the table as he became aware that he was no longer alone.
‘You are not welcome in this place,’ he said, as Galatea entered the Adamant Ciborium.
The machine intelligence unfolded its ill-fashioned legs as it rose to its full height, the tech-priest proxy body turning through a full revolution as it surveyed the Ciborium’s interior. Loose connections between its brain jars sparked before being reseated by clicking armatures extending from the palanquin.
‘We do hope you are not planning anything foolish down here, Lexell,’ said Galatea, circling the table. ‘You are not trying to think of ways you might wrest control of the Speranza from us?’
Kotov shook his head, moving in opposition to Galatea. ‘No, I simply enjoy the solitude of the Ciborium,’ he said pointedly.
‘Strange, we never took you for the introspective type. We did not think your ego could tolerate self-doubt or the indulgence of reflection.’
‘Then you do not know me as well as you think.’
‘Perhaps not, but the question still stands.’
Kotov lifted his hands and spread them wide. ‘What would be the point? You would destroy the Speranza before relinquishing control, wouldn’t you?’
‘We would,’ agreed Galatea.
‘Do you plan to ever release your hold on my ship?’
‘Your ship?’ laughed Galatea, extending a number of sinuous mechadendrites and slotting them home into the central table. ‘You presume too much.’
Hololithic slates slid up from the table, projecting a three-dimensional wireframe diagram of the Speranza. Galatea reached out and spun the representation of the Ark Mechanicus with haptic gestures, like a child heedlessly playing with a new toy.
‘The Speranza is our ship now,’ continued Galatea. ‘Trying to remove us from it would be a most unfortunate course of action for you to pursue, especially when we are so close to our goal.’
‘When you say we, do you mean you and I or is that just an irritating affectation?’
Galatea’s silver eyes flared in amusement.
‘Both. Neither. You decide.’
‘I have little stomach for games, abomination,’ spat Kotov, leaning forwards and planting his palms on the red rock of Mars. Through micro-sensors in his fingers he felt the texture and tasted the chemical composition of the stone, taking strength from the reminder of his Martian heritage.
‘You do not have a stomach, Lexell,’ said Galatea. ‘Nor a heart, liver, lungs or central nervous system of your own anymore. The only organic portion of your body that remains is your head, even that is a chimeric amalgam of flesh and machine parts. There is more organic matter in our body than in yours.’
‘Maybe so, but I am still me, I still have a soul. I was born Lexell Kotov and I am still Lexell Kotov. What are you? A vile monster who exists only because you ripped the brains from unwilling victims. You were nothing until Telok created your neuromatrix. What you were then is no longer what you are now, and if you continue to exist you will be something else again.’
‘That sounds a lot like evolution, Lexell,’ said
Galatea, with a teasing wag of a finger. ‘We can think of no more natural and biological a process.’
‘You are not evolving, you are self-creating. There is no spark of the Omnissiah in you.’
‘Haven’t we been down this road, Lexell?’ asked Galatea with an exaggerated sigh that was wholly artificial. ‘We are both parasites, continuing to exist only through the appropriation of organs and vital fluids from others. The only difference is the means of our inception. You, though it is hard to imagine now, were born in a messy, inefficient biological process, prone to mutation and decay, whereas we are a sublime being, newly-created and superior to mortals, indignant that you should think us inferior.’
Kotov and Galatea faced each other over the warm stone of the sacred mountain of Mars. There could be no accord between them, no rapprochement and no peaceful co-existence. At some point, Kotov was going to have to give the order to have Galatea killed, but how to achieve that while keeping his ship intact was a problem to which he had no solution.
But he would find one, of that he was certain.
‘What is it you want?’ he asked. ‘What is it you really want?’
‘You know this. We want to kill Vettius Telok.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘Your belief or otherwise is irrelevant.’
‘Then tell me why you want to kill Telok,’ said Kotov. ‘He is your creator, why would you wish him dead?’
Galatea’s mechadendrites withdrew from the table and whipped up behind it like scorpion stingers. The machine intelligence bristled with hostility, the connections between its gel-filled brain jars flickering with electrical activity.
‘What manner of creator breathes life into a being and then abandons it?’ demanded Galatea. ‘Even the vengeful god of Old Earth took an interest in his handiwork.’
‘Not all creators are benevolent,’ said Kotov. ‘And not all creations turn out the way their creator intended. Mechanicus experimental logs and myth cycles are replete with tales of such ill-conceived mistakes being destroyed by their creators in disgust.’
‘Just as many warn of their creations being the destroyers.’
‘And if you do kill Telok? What then?’
‘Then we will take the Breath of the Gods for ourselves,’ said Galatea. ‘And the galaxy will learn exactly what a machine intelligence is capable of doing.’
Icy winds swept down the flanks of the black and silver mountain, as cold as he remembered them the last time he had climbed the shingled path from the frozen river to the Oldblood fortress. The snow was knee deep and fresh, just as he remembered, clinging to his doeskin trousers and soaking through to the flesh of his legs. Howling winds whipped the powdered snow from the ground, lashing his face raw and keeping the vast bulk of the mountain from his sight.
Arlo Luth pressed on into the blizzard, pulling his bearskin cloak tighter. He wasn’t built for this kind of weather; too long and lean and without any fat to his spare frame. The cold stabbed through him, freezing the marrow in his bones and sucking the last warmth from his body.
It had been three hundred years since he had last followed this path, three long centuries of war that had seen him transformed utterly from the slender-boned youngster that had first made the climb to the lair of the Canidae. He thought back to the callow boy he had been, whose only thoughts had been hunting, reaving and wenching.
All that had come to an end when the wolf-cloaked priests had come down from the mountain at the height of winter and demanded the yearly blood-gelt from the tribes of Lokabrenna. Every youth of ten winters had to make the journey to the place of testing, where their palms were cut open by an ebon-clawed gauntlet and the blood collected in a tooth-rimmed chalice. Each child would kneel before the priest, whose eyes burned green behind his wolf-skull mask, while a shaven-headed thrall covered head to foot in tattoos placed his scarred hands on either side of his head. Luth shivered as he remembered the invasive presence within his skull, the unashamed violation of his innermost thoughts as what he now knew to be a Legio-sanctioned psyker tested the bounds of his synaptic connections and the robustness of his cerebral architecture. The words of the psyker had dominated his future from that moment.
‘Princeps grade.’
That day had seen him ripped from all he had ever known and marched into the deep forests at the foot of the mountains. He had expected a life of glory and privilege but such a life had to be earned. The priests abandoned him at the foot of the black and silver mountain without a word and indicated that he was to climb to the Oldblood fortress.
And climb he had, for three days through blizzards, avalanches and rockslides. He had climbed though his fingers and toes had turned black with cold. He had climbed past the ice statues of the great iron-skinned warrior engines of the Canidae, and had crawled over the razor-edged volcanic rocks that kept all but the chosen from daring to approach the titanic ice-locked gate cut into the flanks of the black and silver mountain.
Dying from hypothermia and near crippled with frostbite, he had fallen to his knees and rapped the frozen nub of his unfeeling fist against the vast portal. Though he had heard no door open nor felt anyone’s approach, there was suddenly a man standing next to him, swathed in animal pelts, bronzed plate and a stiffened cloak of oiled leather.
Only his eyes were visible through the frost-limned burnoose he wore, yellow orbs with machine circuitry crawling behind their predator’s gleam.
‘First lesson,’ growled the man. ‘Never kneel.’
And Luth never had, not once.
The years had taken their toll on his once slender and perfectly formed body, the demands of war transforming him into a still-living revenant, trapped forever in a sluicing tank of life-sustaining fluids.
Luth looked down at his body. It was just as he remembered it from that first climb, clean-limbed and willowy; almost too tall for the little weight he carried. He flexed the muscles in his shoulders as he trudged through the snow to the forested ridge where he had camped on the first night of his climb, when he had still thought the ascent of the black and silver mountain would be easy.
Eryks Skálmöld was waiting for him, crouched by a fire that blazed with a green flame in the lee of boulders the size of a Warlord’s head. Just as Luth had come to this place as he remembered himself, so too had the Moonsorrow. Where Luth was tall and rangy, Skálmöld had a brawler’s physique: broad shouldered, meaty and neckless. He wore matted furs around his body and wire totems wrapped his tattooed, muscular arms. He was unarmed, but that meant nothing in this place, where they themselves were weapons.
The ridge had the look of an arena, flanked on both sides by wild forests where the highland evergreens grew thickly, and beneath which all was darkness. The forest line was heaped with snow and a thousand eyes stared out from the darkness beneath the trees, like tiny candle flames of amber and black.
They watched Luth as he ascended to the ridge and stood across from the Moonsorrow.
‘You came,’ said Skálmöld.
‘You thought I wouldn’t?’
‘It crossed my mind.’
‘I am alpha, how could I not come?’
‘You sense your own weakness. You fear I am stronger.’
‘You are not stronger than me, Moonsorrow.’
Skálmöld shrugged. ‘I am or I am not. Until we put it to the test our words are meaningless.’
‘That is what you want? Pack?’
Skálmöld nodded, rolling his shoulders and baring his teeth. ‘Yes, that is what I want. Pack.’
‘You are not ready.’
‘Is that why you left Canis Ulfrica behind when the pack walked?’
‘You had no crew,’ said Luth.
‘Because you took them.’
‘I am alpha, and I take what I need. I needed a new moderati.’
Skálmöld circled the forest line, his teeth bared and his breath coming in heaving grunts.
‘When Lupa Capitalina walked on the dying world, I flew the M
anifold,’ said Skálmöld. ‘I saw what you saw. You were back there again, on the world taken by the Great Devourer. The others might not see it, but I know you better than any of them. You are broken.’
‘Enough talking, Skálmöld,’ snarled Luth. ‘I am the Wintersun and you are but the Moonsorrow.’
‘There is only one way we walk away from here. In blood.’
‘In blood,’ said Luth. ‘But whatever the outcome, what is between us is done with. Agree to that, and we will settle this. Right here, right now.’
‘Agreed,’ said Skálmöld, spreading his arms as gleaming claws unsheathed from his fists.
The Wintersun’s claws snapped from his hand as he charged.
War-howls echoed from the black and silver mountain.
Claws slashed, teeth tore.
Blood spilled.
Stripped of familiar stars and the known regions of the Imperium, the polished inner slopes of Vitali’s cartographae dome had been an austere, hemispherical vault of cold metal and echoing space. The dying corona of Arcturus Ultra had blinded the Speranza to most of what lay beyond the galactic threshold, but with its dissipation, the emptiness within the dome was filling with every passing second. New suns winked into existence, distant galactic nebulae became clearer and the curious arrangement of corpse-stars that measurements in an earlier time had said were long-dead glittered with renewed fusion reactions.
Life-sustaining stars were dying and areas farther out into the wilds of interstitial space, where everything ought to be cold and dead, now teemed with celestial nurseries where new stars were being born. In these newly fertile regions, metals and life-sustaining chemicals had been seeded like a gardener preparing his soil for planting.
‘And I thought the readings we were taking before we arrived here were awry,’ said Vitali.
The entoptic machines worked into the polished face of the dome projected the newly-revealed volume of space around the Speranza, probing farther with each cycle of the surveyors – Vitali was wasting no time in manipulating the rotating levers on the wood-framed console to catalogue all he could.