Mechanicum

  She returned her attention to the empath, watching as his eyelids fluttered and his consciousness began rising to the surface of his mind now that he was free of the drugs keeping him quiescent. In the time they had been working on the device, the empath had lost weight, and his once healthy physique now resembled the figures encapsulated in the coffers of the dome’s walls.

  Working beneath their sightless eyes it was easy to forget the psykers were human beings, albeit dangerous humans with powers beyond those of ordinary mortals. With the first full test of the enhanced Akashic reader upon them, Dalia felt an unexpected surge of protectiveness towards their silent audience.

  ‘Will this hurt them?’ asked Dalia, pointing towards the thousands of men and women above.

  ‘The experience will be draining for them I expect,’ said Zeth without looking up from her labours. ‘Some may not live.’

  The coldness with which Zeth spoke chilled Dalia and she felt a knot of anger settle in her belly. Her lips tightened as she looked into the serene face of the empath.

  ‘And what about him?’ she asked. ‘Is he going to die to make this machine work?’

  Zeth looked up from her work, her expression unreadable behind her studded mask. ‘Voice-stress analysis leads me to believe you are concerned for this individual’s wellbeing. Am I correct?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Dalia. ‘I don’t like to think that people are going to suffer for what we’re doing here.’

  ‘No? It is somewhat late in the process to be thinking of such things,’ said Zeth.

  ‘I know,’ said Dalia. ‘And I wish I’d thought more about it sooner, but I didn’t.’

  ‘Then the matter is closed,’ said Zeth.

  ‘But this will kill him, won’t it?’

  ‘Not if your design works as I believe it will,’ said Zeth. ‘The theta-wave enhancer should expand the empath’s capacity for learning at an exponentially greater rate than he will be receiving information.’

  Zeth gestured to the myriad of bulky vox-thieves and data carriers arranged around the dais. ‘In theory, the empath will simply be a conduit for information to pass from the aether to these recording devices.’

  ‘Good,’ said Dalia. ‘I don’t like the idea of him suffering.’

  ‘Nor I,’ said Mellicin in a rare show of emotion.

  ‘Your compassion is laudable, if misplaced,’ said Zeth, as a stream of flickering data arrived in her noosphere. ‘Now finish the empath’s revival process. Adept Maximal has arrived to observe and verify our results.’

  Zeth straightened and descended to the chamber’s floor, leaving Dalia and Mellicin alone with the empath on the dais.

  ‘Well, you heard what she said,’ nodded Mellicin. ‘Let’s get finished up here, eh?’

  ‘Aren’t you concerned at all?’ asked Dalia. ‘Do you care that he might suffer?’

  ‘Of course I care, but that doesn’t change anything does it? As the adept said, it is a little late to be having second thoughts. You designed this device after all.’

  ‘I know that, but when it was just theoretical it didn’t seem so… I don’t know… real.’

  ‘Well I assure you, this is very real, Dalia,’ said Mellicin. ‘We have built it and we can’t ignore the fact that this is potentially a very dangerous device. And not just to these poor unfortunates.’

  ‘Who else is it dangerous to?’ asked Dalia, puzzled.

  Mellicin smiled indulgently, the human half of her features softening in a way Dalia had never seen before. ‘Ah, Dalia, you are so clever in many ways, yet so innocent in others. Think of what we will learn from the Akashic reader. With access to the secrets of the aether we will be able to lift humanity to a new level of understanding of the universe.’

  ‘And that’s a bad thing?’

  ‘Of course not, but it is an inevitable fact that much of the information Zeth will glean from this device will be used to create weapons of war more powerful than anything we can imagine.’

  Dalia felt her entire body go cold, as though the temperature of the chamber had dropped to that of a glacial plain.

  ‘I see you begin to understand,’ continued Mellicin. ‘It is the ethical question all devotees of science must face. We research in service of the furtherance of knowledge, but we cannot ignore the uses to which our findings are put in the real world.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘But nothing, Dalia,’ interrupted Mellicin, taking her hand. ‘Adept Zeth is going ahead with this test whether you like it or not. So we’ll do all we can to make sure our empath comes through it alive and well, yes?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ agreed Dalia, bending to increase the flow of stimms to the empath’s brain. ‘But promise me that we’ll only use the Akashic reader to learn things that will benefit the Imperium.’

  ‘I can’t make that promise,’ said Mellicin. ‘No one can, but I have to believe that one day we will create a machine or force so fearful in its potentialities, so absolutely terrifying in its consequence, that even mankind, a race that was once hell-bent on its own destruction, will be so appalled that it will abandon war forever. What our minds can create, I hope our character can control.’

  ‘I hope you’re right,’ said Dalia.

  ‘Am… am I… dead?’ groaned the empath.

  Both women jumped, hands flying to their mouths and hearts as the empath’s eyes fluttered open and he looked up from his restraints.

  Mellicin recovered her wits first and bent down towards the empath. ‘No, you’re not dead, you’ve just come out of a state of drug-induced neural stasis. Stimulants are washing away the last residues of pentobarbital now, so your higher brain functions should be restored soon.’

  Dalia gave Mellicin an exasperated look and bent down over the empath.

  ‘She means you’ll be fine. You’ve been asleep, but you’re awake now. Do you know where you are?’

  The man blinked in the harsh brightness of the forge, and Dalia saw that his pupils were still massively dilated. She shielded his eyes from the light with her hand and he smiled in gratitude.

  ‘Sorry, the light in here’s a bit bright,’ she said.

  ‘Bright, yes,’ said the empath, his eyes flicking from side to side as they lost the glassy texture of the recently woken. ‘This is the Akashic reader, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. You know what it does?’

  ‘I do,’ said the man as Mellicin lowered the cranial assembly over his head. ‘Adept Zeth explained it to me when she chose me to be the conduit.’

  ‘My name’s Dalia, what’s yours?’

  ‘Jonas. Jonas Milus,’ said the man with a smile, and Dalia saw that Severine was right. He was handsome. ‘I’d shake your hand, but…’

  Dalia smiled. The humour was forced, but she appreciated the effort, though it struck her as perverse that Jonas was giving her reassurance while strapped into a device that had never been fully tested on a human being.

  ‘Are we about to begin?’ asked Jonas. ‘I assume you must be, what with me being awake.’

  ‘Adept Zeth is about to begin the first live test of the new device, yes,’ said Mellicin, fixing the last of the restraints in place.

  ‘Excellent,’ said Jonas, and Dalia was surprised at the relish she heard in his voice.

  ‘You’re not worried?’ she asked, ignoring the irritated look Mellicin flashed her.

  ‘No, should I be?’

  ‘No, no, of course not,’ said Dalia hurriedly. ‘I mean, I don’t think so. The machine’s passed every test and all our simulated results suggest that it should work perfectly.’

  ‘Did you have anything to do with it?’ asked Jonas. ‘Well, yes, I kind of helped design the throne you’re in.’

  ‘Then I’m not worried,’ said Jonas. ‘You’re not?’

  ‘No,’ said Jonas, ‘because I can feel your compassion and your concern for me. I know you’re worried for my life, but I can sense that you’ve done everything you can to make sure this machine works safely.’

&n
bsp; ‘How do you know all that?’

  ‘He’s an empath, Dalia,’ said Mellicin. ‘It’s what they do.’

  ‘Oh, of course,’ said Dalia, feeling foolish.

  ‘I’m looking forward to this, really,’ said Jonas. ‘To use my gift for the betterment of the Imperium? What better way is there for someone blessed with my talent to serve the Emperor? I’ll know everything soon, and I’ll be part of something that helps humanity achieve its destiny. I know that sounds a bit grand, but it’s what we’re doing here, isn’t it?’

  Dalia smiled, relieved beyond words that they were not pressing some unwilling victim into the service of Adept Zeth’s grand dream. ‘Yes, Jonas,’ she said. ‘That’s exactly what we’re doing here.’

  ‘ALL ENGINES FORM on Victorix Magna,’ ordered Princeps Indias Cavalerio, nodding towards his steersman. ‘Keep us level, Lacus.’

  ‘Yes, my princeps,’ said Lacus, expertly walking the god-machine through the treacherous straits surrounding the heavily cratered northern reaches of the Ulysses Patera.

  ‘And keep the auspex returns frequent, Palus, the ground here is weak.’

  ‘Yes, my princeps,’ came the response from the sensori blister atop the Warlord’s crew compartment. The tone of his sensori’s voice did not escape Cavalerio, and he knew he was being overcautious, needlessly telling the crew their jobs.

  Victorix Magna was an old machine, patched, repaired and refitted a thousand times in her long life of battle.

  Her fiery heart was proud, but it was old like his, and Cavalerio wondered how many more marches they would take together.

  In truth, the Victorix should still be in the care of the Legio artificers, but since the attack on Adept Maximal’s reactor, Legio Tempestus could ill-afford to take chances with the remaining reactors clustered on the slopes of the crater or positioned along the canyons of the Ulysses Fossae.

  Without those reactors, it would become increasingly difficult to keep the engines of his beloved Legio operational. Whoever had struck at Maximal had done so with great precision, destroying the reactor that provided the most power to the Tempestus fortress within Ascraeus Mons.

  Cavalerio reclined in a contoured couch, his arms and skull sheathed in cables and haptic implants that burrowed beneath his skin like silver worms. This arrangement of a physical connection was fast becoming obsolete, a means of command seen as archaic by some princeps of Mars. Many were already embracing full body immersion in an amniotic tank that allowed information to flow like liquid through a virtual world, but Cavalerio much preferred an actual connection with the engine he commanded.

  He knew the gradual atrophy of his body meant that he would soon have no choice but to accept emplacement within such a tank, for he could not endure the pain and stress, both mental and physical, of too many more separations.

  That day was not yet here, and Cavalerio pushed the thought from his mind as he concentrated on the mission at hand.

  Linked with the Manifold, Cavalerio saw the world around him as though the mighty structure of Victorix Magna were his own flesh and blood. The barren, cratered landscape of Mars stretched out all around him, the pale, ashen wastelands of the pallidus to the southwest and the tumbled rockfaces of the twin craters upon which Maximal’s forge hunched like a collection of blistered towers.

  Ahead, the tumbled, haphazard sprawl of the Gigas Sulci sub-hives filled the landscape, a wretched, sweltering collection of towers, habs and shanties that housed the millions of workers who toiled in the Fabricator General’s manufactorum upon the towering, lightning-wracked slopes of Olympus Mons.

  For days Kelbor-Hal’s domain had been wreathed in seething thunderheads, the slopes and forges hammered by crackling bolts of purple lightning. Cavalerio didn’t know what manner of experimental work the Fabricator General had going on, but it was creating some lousy atmospherics and interfering with vox-traffic for thousands of kilometres in all directions.

  Every channel was alive with scrappy blurts of code that sounded like a chorus of urgent voices crowded into a single frequency. Cavalerio had been forced to mute the volume on the vox, the chattering nonsense code giving him a splitting headache.

  Cavalerio put the Fabricator General from his mind and cast his augmented gaze far to the south, where thick clouds from the refinery fields of the Daedalia Planum smothered the landscape, smudging the horizon in permanent crepuscular gloom.

  The three cobalt blue engines in Cavalerio’s battle group marched at a steady pace along the borders between the territory of the Fabricator General and that of Ipluvien Maximal, striding like three great giants of legend.

  On Cavalerio’s left was the stately Warlord, Tharsis Hastatus, commanded by his comrade-in-arms, Princeps Suzak. Hastatus was a killing engine and Suzak a man who could be depended upon to deliver a lethal strike when it was needed most.

  To his right, the Reaver Arcadia Fortis marched with eager steps, pulling slightly ahead of the main group. Its princeps, Ian Mordant, was a fiery-hearted hunter, a warrior recently promoted from a Warhound princepture who hadn’t yet shed his preference for lone wolf operations.

  ‘Close it up, Mordant,’ said Cavalerio. ‘My sensori tells me the ground here is soft and that some of the sand has shifted over the chasms. I don’t want to have to call out a bulk lifter crew to lift your engine off its arse.’

  ‘Understood,’ came the terse reply, screeches and howls of interference scratching over Mordant’s voice. Mordant was still getting used to the quirks of his new command, he and his engine still gauging the measure of the other, and his responses were typically brusque. Cavalerio only tolerated such behaviour because Mordant was one of his best warriors, with a kill tally only exceeded by his own.

  ‘Still thinks he’s a Warhound driver, eh?’ said Kuyper, the Magna’s moderati.

  ‘Indeed,’ agreed Cavalerio. ‘The Arcadia will soon cure him of that, she’s a stern mistress that’s for sure. Any word from Basek?’

  ‘Nothing yet, my princeps,’ said Kuyper, consulting the vox-log.

  ‘Sensori, do you have a fix on Vulpus Rex?’

  ‘I think so, my princeps,’ answered Palus, ‘but these damned atmospherics are making it hard to keep a fix on their return. And our old girl’s vision’s not what it used to be.’

  ‘That’s not good enough, Palus,’ cautioned Cavalerio. ‘Find her. Now.’

  ‘Yes, my princeps,’ answered Palus.

  Cavalerio gave his sensori a few moments before asking, ‘Do you have her now?’

  ‘She’s further south,’ answered Palus with a measure of relief, ‘skulking around the edge of the Gigas sub-hives at the end of the Barium Highway.’

  ‘Good ambush site,’ noted Kuyper. ‘If anything’s going to come up on us, it’ll be from there.’

  ‘And they’ll find Basek waiting for them,’ added Lacus the steersman with relish.

  Cavalerio nodded. Princeps Basek commanded Vulpus Rex, the finest Warhound Titan of Legio Tempestus, a fleet killer of engines far larger than its hunched feral size would suggest.

  Pulling up the schematics of the surrounding landscape from the Manifold and meshing them with the topographical view afforded him through the Titan’s senses, Cavalerio saw that Kuyper’s assessment was correct. Only the Barium Highway was wide enough to allow an engine to pass without demolishing half the dwellings.

  The confused tangles of glowing outlines that depicted the edges of the sub-hives were, however, outdated and likely to be inaccurate, so it never paid to be complacent where the safety of an engine was concerned. So much was built or demolished that most maps of the sub-hives were rendered obsolete on a daily basis.

  ‘Bring us about on a heading of two-two-five,’ ordered Cavalerio, feeling his muscles twitch as the mighty form of Victorix Magna swung about and began a stately march along the edge of Maximal’s domain. ‘Magos Argyre, what’s our reactor status?’

  ‘Assessment: borderline,’ said Argyre, the Titan’s enginseer, who stood
immobile in his rear-mounted compartment behind the princeps’ dais. ‘We should not have marched, Princeps Cavalerio. The reactor’s spirit is troubled and it is dangerous to walk without having recited the full litany of calming prayers to soothe its troubled heart.’

  ‘So noted, Magos,’ said Cavalerio. ‘Bring us to slow march speed.’

  ‘Slow march speed,’ repeated Argyre.

  Cavalerio monitored their surroundings through the depths of the Manifold, drinking in data from pressure sensors, atmospheric samplers, infrared panels and microwave receptors. His understanding of the world around him was unparalleled, his awareness unmatched by any other entity on the plains of Mars.

  He tried to keep his attention focused on the ground before him, for the landscape around Maximal’s forge was treacherous, but he found his attention continually drawn to the ugly, bruised skies above Olympus Mons.

  ‘What are you up to, Kelbor-Hal?’ he muttered.

  ‘My princeps?’ asked Kuyper.

  ‘Hmmm? Oh, nothing, I was just wondering out loud,’ replied Cavalerio.

  Kuyper had caught his interest in Olympus Mons, their communal link to the Manifold allowing no secrets to exist between them.

  ‘It’s the Grand Mountain, isn’t it?’ asked Kuyper, using the Titan drivers’ old name for Olympus Mons. The moderati of Victorix Magna twisted in the reclined couch at the Warlord’s chin mount to face Cavalerio. ‘She frets about something.’

  ‘The Grand Mountain,’ agreed Cavalerio. ‘She speaks with the voice of Mars and something troubles her.’

  ‘My princeps!’ called Sensori Palus. ‘Vox contact from Ascraeus Mons. Princeps Sharaq urgently requests to speak with you.’

  ‘On the Manifold,’ ordered Cavalerio.

  A ghostly hash of green light swam into focus before the reclining princeps, a holographic image of Princeps Sharaq standing in the Chamber of the First. The image jittered like a jammed signal, the words fading in and out as though the code was somehow corrupt.