‘True,’ said Thamatica. ‘But I find it therapeutic to get my hands dirty in the workshop now and again, don’t you? And if something were to go wrong, I’d not know which of the servitors to blame. This way, if something does go wrong, at least I’ll know it’s something I’ve done.’
‘You think it likely that something will go wrong?’
Thamatica shrugged. ‘Always possible. Adds a certain excitement to proceedings, I find.’
He finished connecting up the cable he held and wiped the back of his hand over his forehead, where two golden studs were embedded above a red one. Wayland also boasted a red stud above his right eye, a symbol of his tenure on Mars learning the credo of machines from the Mechanicum, yet he only boasted a single golden stud.
It was entirely possible that Frater Thamatica was now the longest-serving Iron Father left alive in the Legion.
‘I try to keep excitement out of my experiments,’ said Wayland.
Thamatica looked genuinely puzzled.
‘Frater Thamatica,’ said Wayland, extending his left hand. ‘Strength of Iron be yours.’
‘Frater Wayland,’ replied Thamatica, gripping Wayland’s polished gauntlet with his oil-stained one. ‘Fire of the Forge empower you.’
The mechanised fingers of their iron gauntlets wrapped around one another, intertwining and locking together in a complex Gordian knot of extruded probes and friction gears. Through that grip, their mechanised internal systems shared data freely, a meeting of minds as well as physical presence.
Thamatica freed his gauntlet and said, ‘So what brings you to my workshop today?’
‘Professional curiosity,’ said Wayland.
‘Another mission with our Raven Guard friend? I don’t know that I can work up any more stasis generators. Captain Branthan’s casket is intensive in its demands, and you already have my most reliable teleport homer.’
Wayland shook his head. ‘I’m not here to requisition. I wanted to see this thermic displacement beamer you were telling me about when we came to see Captain Branthan. If you have time?’
‘Time, young Sabik?’ boomed Thamatica. ‘I’m working on the thing right now. I could use your help too.’
‘I’d be honoured.’
Thamatica grinned and pointed to the other end of the cable he’d been hauling. ‘Plug that cable into the generator at the end of the row, and be careful not to bring it into contact with any of the collimated spirals, there’s enough charge in them to blow a hole in the side of the ship. In theory, at least.’
‘These are all live?’
‘Of course.’
‘Wouldn’t it be better to leave the generators off while you connect them all?’
‘And lose vital hours while I wait for them to power up? No, if I can get this to work, then we will have a powerful weapon to deploy against our enemies. Time and rebellion wait for no man, after all.’
Wayland sighed and dragged the dense cable along the floor towards the waiting generator, its magnetic whine of internal rotors and coil blades lifting micro-fragments of weapon impacts from his armour in a glittering mist. He hooked the cable into its socket with some effort – the interface was complex with multiple connectors – and locked it in place with a satisfying crunch of engaging clamps.
‘It is ready,’ he called over to Thamatica, who nodded from the centre of his nest of control consoles.
Wayland made his way back to Thamatica, careful to avoid the buzzing cables and the crackling arcs of spitting electricity that waved like strobing neon fronds. He took station at a spot indicated by Thamatica, and studied the readings cascading down the many archaic-looking screens. Most were framed in wood or soft metals, like something from the palace reliquary or the Shadow Repository on Medusa.
‘How will this work?’ asked Wayland.
Thamatica gestured down the length of the workshop, to where a pair of spheres, each ten metres across, hung from the ceiling in a series of concentric gimbals that allowed them to move in three dimensions. Thirty metres separated them, though they were linked by a braided mass of slender cables. One was bronze, the other cold iron, and carved measurement data lines were the only thing to mar their perfect smoothness, and the only visible clue to the fact that both spheres were slowly rotating.
‘We’re going to attempt a matter transference, linking two exact points on the quantum level of potentiality. Given enough charge, the electrons of any given object can become excited enough to shift to another orbit, and if I can modulate the vibrational frequency of a portion of both objects at the same time, I can attempt to force them into the same place at the same time.’
‘Isn’t that incredibly dangerous?’
‘Monstrously so,’ agreed Thamatica with a gleeful grin. ‘If the two objects don’t behave as I believe they must, there could be an explosion that will utterly destroy the ship.’
Thamatica laughed at Wayland’s look of alarm and said, ‘Fear not, it should be impossible for the affected portions to coexist in the same nuclear sphere. With the right finesse, they should follow the path of least resistance and simply swap places. What was in one sphere should find itself inside the other.’
‘I can’t help but hear all the shoulds,’ said Wayland.
Thamatica grinned. ‘You sound like Ferrus did when he vetoed the geo-magnetic experiments I proposed to help fix Medusa’s landmasses in place.’
‘The same experiments that would have caused massive earthquakes all over the planet?’
‘It needed some fine tuning,’ admitted Thamatica, ‘but the principles were sound.’
Thamatica pulled a heavy brass lever, and the pulsing current from the generators flowed through the cabling with a rising hum of electrical current. The Iron Father adjusted a heavy dial and punched in a series of commands on a primitive physical keyboard.
Wayland watched him with wary admiration. Frater Thamatica’s experimental method was somewhat scattershot, but he had an intuitive gift for seeing the connections between disparate elements that allowed him to make leaps of logic that baffled his fellow Fraters. That some of his leaps carried him into dangerous waters was, Thamatica explained, a necessary evil and one the history books would probably not recall.
The current was building at a fearsome rate, and Wayland watched the jerking needles on each of the gauges flicker into the red across the board. The energy generated here could power the entire ship. Or blow half its superstructure into the void.
Both the bronze sphere and the iron sphere gathered speed, rotating on their confined orbits as the magnetic fields building around them increased in exponential steps. Wayland saw the field strength was building at a rate that would soon be too great for the concentric dampers to contain.
‘Frater?’ he said. ‘The magnetic fields are too strong.’
‘I see them, Sabik, but I need to take them right to the edge if this is going to work.’
Both spheres were spinning too fast to follow, the measurement lines etched into them blurred and meaningless. Whipping lines of electrical force burned themselves onto Wayland’s retinas and the whine of the generators was punctuated by booming discharge and coolant bursts. Every needle was jammed in the farthest extent of red, far beyond where any sane technician would wish them to rest for longer than a fraction of a second.
‘We have to shut this down,’ said Wayland.
‘Just a moment longer.’
‘No, shut off the power.’
‘Almost there.’
Wayland reached out to haul the power level back to the realms of sanity, but before he could pull it, a thunderclap of electro-magnetic force exploded from the first generator and a sheet of flame erupted from where the heavy cables were slotted home. An explosive magnetic wave punched outwards from the spheres and Wayland was hurled back against the bulkhead below the mezzanine as though he’d been backhanded by a Contemptor. The magnetic force held him pinned to the wall like a specimen until its power finally bled away to a level where h
e slid down towards the deck. Tools and loose components fell in an iron rain as their weight overcame the rapidly diminishing magnetic field.
Every mechanised portion of his armour was inert, and the full weight of every plate bore down on his body now that the fibre bundle muscles were not empowering him.
The workshop was in ruins; every electrical device dark and lifeless, every loose metallic object scattered in a radial pattern from the centre. Thamatica picked himself up and surveyed the devastation of his workshop as rogue magnetic waves bounced around the space, spinning loose metal around and transforming crackling electrical force into miniature whirlwinds of blue light.
Despite the damage to his workspace, the Iron Father looked absurdly pleased with himself, as though this had been the desired outcome of his experiment.
In the centre of the workshop, the two spheres had become one, a misshapen mass of iron and bronze in a lumpen mass of metal like a flattened figure of eight. Bronze ran into iron, iron into bronze, streaks of both metals spiralling into the other as though the two had been smelted and pressed into one another. Wayland had no doubt that had the generator not blown out, then the resultant explosion from the interface of the two spheres would have torn the ship apart.
‘I’m going to need bigger generators,’ said Thamatica.
He was stronger and more powerful than ever before, yet he could not feel the blood he spilled, nor relish the visceral force of the impacts. Berossus waded through a mass of bodies, striking left and right, bludgeoning a path through the combat servitors with every sweeping blow. Small-arms fire battered his armour, but he felt only a mass of indicators and icons that lit up his frontal carapace display.
He strode through the modular building shells like a savage metal god of war, bringing death and bloodletting to any who crossed his path. The training halls were mocked up into a recreation of a typical pre-compliance city, based on a conflation of architectural measurements taken by Iron Warriors expeditionary forces on conquered worlds.
Warriors from the 2nd Grand Battalion were spread through the false city, with orders to engage their warsmith and attempt to stop him from reaching its centre, a waypoint chosen by Galion Carron to best judge how Berossus was adapting to his new machine physiology.
Not well, was the warsmith’s first impression.
He felt no pain, but nor did he experience again the savage bloodlust he had felt upon the killing fields of Isstvan. A heavier impact rocked him back, but even that was simply a reaction and not a sensation. He spun on his waist gimbal to see a group of Iron Warriors emerge from cover, one carrying a smoking missile launcher he was reloading at speed. They moved with precision, as he would expect, but he swung his rotary autocannon up to kill them nonetheless. The heavy gun chugged out rapid-fire shots, punching three of his warriors from their feet. Blood misted the air as they fell, but the others kept coming.
Berossus snarled and stomped over the rubble of the training arena to meet them. His strides were short, his speed reduced and his charge robbed of the fury he had known in mortal flesh. Another missile slammed into his casket, but the armour dissipated the worst of the impact.
Then he was in amongst them.
A thundering blow from his hammer hurled two of them back, their armour cracked open. Another strike drove a third to his knees, but the fourth landed a blow that registered as causing damage, yet felt as meaningless as a readout on a data-slate. His threat perceptors registered more enemies closing behind him, and he rotated his upper body through one hundred and eighty degrees to bring his cannon to bear.
A heavy blow on his upper surfaces registered, but before he could do more than acknowledge it, a powerful impact crazed his internal display. A power fist or thunder hammer. Something incredibly dangerous and destructive. Berossus lurched to the side, spinning his body in an attempt to dislodge his attacker. More gunshots stitched across his flanks, but he ignored them. The booming clangs on his topside armour, each like the pealing of a sonorous bell, were all that mattered.
He could not bring his weapons to bear, and he slammed his metal body into the walls of the nearest structure. The force of the impact was tremendous, enough to cause numerous damage indicators to light up his display, but still his attacker held on, tenacious and determined. Berossus lurched like a drunk or one of the flesh-spare unfortunates whose neural pathways had degraded too far for them to survive the transfer from flesh to iron. Another impact, then another. Berossus roared, his augmitters howling in a dozen frequencies until he realised that he could use that energy to generate an electrical current through his body. With a thought he engaged his internal generators to spool up enough power, but a last blow to his topside registered terminal damage.
‘Cease hostilities,’ ordered Galion Carron on a vox channel heard by all members of the 2nd Grand Battalion.
The gunfire slackened and fell off altogether, and Berossus brought his body back around to its front facing as a warrior dropped from his upper carapace. His armour was dust-covered and battered, the yellow and black chevrons of his shoulder guards flaking and scuffed. A bolter was mag-locked to his thigh, and sure enough, he had a power fist, its upper faces still wreathed in a shimmering haze of disruptive energies.
Berossus leaned towards the warrior.
‘Who are you?’ he asked, hating the metallic rasp of his voice.
The warrior reached up and unclipped his helm, cradling it in the crook of his arm before answering.
‘Grendel,’ he said. ‘Cadaras Grendel, 16th Company.’
‘You are tenacious.’
‘I do what needs to be done,’ said Grendel, his face smooth and unremarkable, his black hair worn long and wound in elaborate braids across his scalp. ‘You’re vulnerable from above. The armour’s thinner there, and if an enemy can get up there, a Dreadnought’s helpless as a newborn.’
Even isolated from conventional mores of discourse, Berossus could hear the man’s arrogance and self-assuredness. He growled his displeasure at the comparison.
‘I am a warsmith of the Fourth Legion, I am anything but helpless.’
‘So you say, but I’d have torn what’s left of you out through your roof if Galion Carron hadn’t ended this.’
Berossus reached down and plucked Grendel from the ground on the end of his hammer, holding him up before him as though deciding how best to crush the life from him. He had expected the warrior to struggle, to fight back, but Cadaras Grendel just looked up at him with a blend of confidence and insouciance that appealed to Berossus.
‘He’s right, my lord,’ said Galion Carron. ‘You are vulnerable to attack from above.’
‘Perhaps so,’ said Berossus, dropping Grendel to the ground. ‘But only a madman would dare get close to me like that. I do not think it is a failing I need to be concerned with.’
Galion Carron approached Berossus, circling him and inspecting the damage done to his buckled plates of armour. His servo-arm tapped the metal, taking echo-readings of the internal structure and communing with the onboard systems of the incredibly complex mechanisms that allowed flesh and metal to merge and work as one.
‘You are still thinking and fighting like a mortal warrior,’ said Carron, coming round to stand before him. ‘But you are so much more than that now. You are a master of war, a god of iron and flesh that bestrides the battlefield like a colossus. All bow before your might, but still there are ways to bring down a god.’
‘Topside armour,’ said Grendel, making a clenched fist.
‘Is but one way,’ snapped Carron. ‘Crush infantry, tear their mortal flesh limb from limb. Despise them for the insects they are, but do not think yourself immune to their weapons. Kill them all, but always remember that they can hurt you.’
‘I will never let that happen,’ promised Berossus.
TEN
No Unkindness
The Most Complex Key
The Paths Below
He was a ghost. A black spectre moving through the silence.
An enemy of light, he sought only to move through the sepulchral gloom of the ship, a friend to darkness and kin of shadows. His silence and invisibility should have been an impossibility, his body too large and his armour too cumbersome to move with such stealth, but Nykona Sharrowkyn had been trained by the very best shadow masters of the Ravenspire.
He wraith-slipped.
Sharrowkyn moved from darkness to darkness and the shadows opened up to him, welcoming him like a brother. He anticipated the sway of lights as they advanced and retreated, bending into the deeper black. Few could wraith-slip like Sharrowkyn, for only the most innately gifted of Deliverance’s children could evade the light for long enough to attract the attention of the shadow masters. Along the corridors of the Sisypheum, through its vaulted chambers of arming, past groups of training warriors, and into the guts of its engine spaces he moved without detection.
His armour was a composite thing, an amalgam of plates taken from the dead, and the dead are the quietest of all. Since his earliest days in the labyrinths of the Ravenspire he had learned how to muffle noise, first with rags and packed earth, then with acoustic dampers and skill. Though the armour’s construction was a matter of improvisation and need, it fitted him better than any he had worn in his time with the XIX Legion.
Sabik Wayland had helped with its construction, but he had performed the secret rites of silence alone, as every Corrivane should upon being elevated to the winged ranks. Each warrior moved silently in his own way, and it was each warrior’s understanding of the empty spaces between sounds that allowed him to occupy them.
The interior of a starship was an easy place to become a ghost. Its sounds were manifold, loud and predictable; the creak and groan of its structure as it flexed in transit, the regular heartbeat of its engines, the chatter of its crew and the half-heard, half-imagined sounds of the hot neutron flow along the outer hull. Many sounds, many places to hide.
Almost too easy.
Every warrior of the shadows needed to be tested, for without true tests the ability to wraith-slip began to erode. Only by becoming the shadows could a warrior move through them without revealing himself. Only by being truly hunted could he reach that place inside himself that allowed the wraith-slip to become perfect camouflage. Such protection was not infallible, of course, no warrior was ever invisible, but such was Sharrowkyn’s affinity with the dark that he might as well have been.