Rho-mu 31 placed his stave against the wall, and once more the side of the vessel became opaque. The hull began to vibrate and screech as they descended through the blistering thermals.
‘Do they ever have crashes here?’ asked Dalia, knowing that such accidents could have no survivors. ‘I mean, have any ships gone into the lava?’
‘Sometimes,’ said Rho-mu 31. ‘It is best not to think of it.’
‘Too late,’ muttered Dalia, as the noises of the ship’s engines changed in pitch from a low rumble to a high-pitched shriek, attitude thrusters firing to correct the rip tide air currents. The pilot was clearly having difficulty in lowering their ship to the landing platform, and Dalia closed her eyes, trying not to think of what would happen if they went into the lava.
She tried not to picture the lava searing the meat from her bones, the fumes choking her and the agonising pain of watching her body disintegrate in front of her. Of course she would not live long enough to experience these things, but her mind delighted in tormenting her with these dreadful visions of catastrophe.
Dalia took a deep breath and forced the images from her mind, fighting to keep them from overwhelming her. She felt a thump on the underside of the craft and her eyes flashed open.
‘What was that? Has something gone wrong?’
Rho-mu 31 looked at her strangely, and though the bronze mask concealed his features, Dalia could sense his amusement at her panic.
‘No,’ he said. ‘We have simply landed.’
Dalia let out a shuddering sigh of relief, pathetically grateful to be on terra firma once again… though should that more properly be mars firma? Having said that, how solid could the ground be considered when it was somehow supported on an ocean of liquid rock that could burn her to cinders in the blink of an eye?
A hiss of escaping gases drew her attention to the ramp at the rear of the vessel as it began to lower with a squeal of pistons. A wall of hot air rushed to fill the compartment and Dalia gasped at the sudden heat. Sweat immediately prickled on her brow and her mouth dried of saliva in an instant.
‘Throne alive, it’s hot!’ she said.
‘Be thankful for the heat exchangers and gas separators,’ said Rho-mu 31. ‘You would be overcome by the temperature and fumes of this place in moments without them.’
Dalia nodded, following Rho-mu 31 from the interior of the starship. The other members of his squad moved in behind her as she made her way down the ramp, shielding her eyes from the vivid glare of the lava lagoon and the brightness of the rust-coloured sky. After a day or so in the belly of a starship, she realised how starved of the sight of the sky she had been. Even as a scribe in the bowels of the Librarium Technologica, she had been able to see a sliver of sky through the high liturgical windows.
The sky here was low and threatening, the air thick and heavy with particulate matter billowing upwards from flame-wreathed refineries in the far distance. Though she knew the clouds gathering in the distance were not those of weather patterns, but pollution, she could not help but shiver to see them squatting on the horizon like a quiescent threat.
High railings surrounded the landing platform, and tall silver poles topped with buzzing, hissing machinery punctuated the barrier every few metres – the heat exchangers and gas separators Rho-mu 31 had spoken of, she presumed. A swirling cloud of steam surrounded each one, and dripping pipes ran the length of each pole, vanishing into the decking of the platform to dissipate their heat elsewhere.
‘It must take vast amounts of energy to disperse such huge quantities of heat,’ she said, pointing at the machines on the silver poles. ‘What method do you use to filter the harmful gases from the air? Synthetic membranes, adsorption, or cryogenic distillation?’
‘You know of such things?’ asked Rho-mu 31.
‘Well, I’ve read about them,’ explained Dalia. ‘A number of the old texts from the ruins in the Merican deserts mentioned them and, as with everything I read…’
‘It slotted home in the archive of your memory as a fact to be recovered at a later date.’
‘I guess so,’ said Dalia, faintly embarrassed by the reverent tone she heard in his voice.
She looked away from him as she saw an ochre-skinned vehicle emerge from the nearest structure, a tall tower of black metal, and make its way along the boom towards them. It moved on a number of thin, stilt-like legs, moving with a quirky, mechanical gait, like a stubby centipede. As it drew nearer, she saw the wide-bodied mass of a servitor fused and hard-wired into the front section where one might otherwise expect a driver to sit.
The vehicle came to a halt beside them, the multitude of legs twisting it around on its central axis and lowering it to the deck plates.
Rho-mu 31 opened a door in the side of the vehicle and indicated that Dalia should climb aboard. She stepped onto the centipede vehicle and took a seat on the metal bench along its side, feeling a thrill travel through her at the thought of making a journey on such an outlandish mode of transport.
Rho-mu 31 joined her, but the remaining Mechanicum Protectors did not board.
‘Where are we going?’ asked Dalia, as the vehicle rose up onto its legs once again and set off with a scuttling, side-to-side motion towards the dark tower.
‘We are going to see Adept Zeth,’ said Rho-mu 31. ‘She is most anxious to meet you.’
‘Me? Why? I don’t understand, what does she want with me?’
‘Enough questions, Dalia Cythera,’ cautioned Rho-mu 31, not unkindly. ‘Adept Zeth does nothing without purpose and you are here to serve that purpose. What manner your service will take is for her to decide.’
The walking vehicle drew near the tower of black metal, and as Dalia looked back towards the gathering clouds, a sliver of fear wormed its way past her wonder at all the new and incredible sights.
She had been brought to Mars with a purpose in mind, but what might that purpose be and would she live to regret the journey?
The shadow of the tower swallowed her, and Dalia shivered despite the awful heat.
MAVEN’S FIRST WARNING was the transformer exploding in a cascade of flames and whipping electrical discharge. A hammering volley of laser fire, like a hundred lightning bolts ripping from the rocks, sawed through the looped coils of metal and liquefied them in an instant. His display dimmed to protect him from blindness, but before the transformer blew, he saw the outline of the aggressor.
Easily as huge as Equitos Bellum, it was spherical and heavily armoured, a pair of monstrous weapon arms at its sides and a myriad of flexible, metallic tentacles crouched over its shoulders like scorpions’ tails.
A trio of convex blisters glowed like baleful eyes on its front, a fiery yellow glow burning from them with a hateful, dead light. The white heat of the explosion obscured the unknown attacker, and by the time the glow had diminished and the Knight’s auto-senses had recovered, the war machine had vanished.
With a thought, Equitos Bellum was on a war footing, weapon generators firing from idle to active, and the high-energy cells that drove his Knight switching to battle mode. He immediately stepped his Knight to one side, crouching low as he saw scores of figures pouring from the rocks with weapons raised.
His eyes narrowed as he recognised them as Protector squads, servants of the adepts of Mars. Things were really getting out of hand.
‘Stator! Cronus! Are you getting this?’
‘Affirmative,’ barked Stator. ‘Engage enemy forces at will – We will be with you directly.’
‘Enemy forces?’ hissed Maven. ‘They’re Protectors!’
‘And they are attacking a facility we are duty bound to protect. Now fight!’
Maven cursed under his breath and shrugged, the huge bulk of Equitos Bellum attempting to match the gesture as he marched the machine into battle. He leaned forward in his command seat, lifting his arms and twisting his head as he sought out the enemy war machine.
What was it, he wondered? Some new form of battle robot or servitor-manned automaton?
Maven shivered as he remembered the dead light in the machine’s sensor blisters, feeling as though it had been looking at him, assessing him and then dismissing him. That thought alone angered him and he could feel the intemperate fury of Equitos Bellum meshing with him in a desire to do harm to the attackers.
The Protectors in grey cloaks were advancing with relentless pace through the reactor complex, gunning down unresisting servitors with quick bursts of laser fire, and engaging Maximal’s Protectors as they sought to defend their master’s holdings.
Maven unleashed a torrent of las-fire from his right arm and the ground erupted in a storm of metal and earth. The ruin of the enemy corpses geysered upwards, a knot of attackers reduced to puffs of exploding meat and boiled blood.
A flurry of gunfire rippled towards him, and he flinched as he felt a power field flash out of existence. Like a Titan, a Knight had a finite bank of energy shields to protect it, but where a Titan’s reactor could replenish its shield strength in time, the Knight’s battery could not. Equitos Bellum was effectively immune to most individual weapons, but the Protectors were combining their fire with accuracy of timing that spoke of a communal battle-link.
Another shield winked out of existence and Maven turned his war machine to face the new threat: a cadre of Protectors armed with long-barrelled high-energy weapons. Maven saw silver bands around each Protector’s skull, recognising the hard-wired component of a targeting web.
He stepped sideways as a blistering beam of light leapt from each of the Protectors’ weapons and achieved confluence where he had been standing not a moment before. He had seconds to act.
Maven’s weapons blazed in a hurricane of light, enveloping the Protectors in a firestorm that obliterated them in an instant and left virtually no remains. He pushed onwards, past the flaming wreckage of the transformer as it spat arcs of lightning and secondary explosions detonated within its ruined shape.
Where the hell had the war machine that had done this gone? And where in the name of Taranis were Stator and Cronus?
An explosion mushroomed skyward from deeper within the complex, and Maven turned Equitos Bellum towards it, the heavy, thudding strides of the Knight shaking the ground with the weight of its tread. Another explosion roared and Maven guided his Knight around the curve of the reactor dome to see his foe with its back to him, unleashing solid spears of plasma flame that ripped through the armoured skin of the fusion reactor’s dome.
The machine’s bulk was enormous, almost as wide as it was tall, and it was equipped with a fearsome array of weapons – some Maven recognised and some that were a mystery to him. Where a Knight’s mode of locomotion was its legs, this machine was mounted on a heavy track unit, blood and oil coating it where it had crushed unfortunate servitors beneath its bulk.
Sheets of molten armour cascaded like burnt paper from the flanks of the reactor dome, and Maven saw it wouldn’t be long before the shielding around the caged fury of the fusion reactions within would be breached. Screaming sirens and flashing emergency lights warned of impending doom.
Despite the heavy crash of his Knight’s footfalls, Maven didn’t think his foe knew he was there. Maven siphoned power from non-essential systems as he prepared to open fire.
One of the metallic weapon-tentacles swivelled around on its mounting, and Maven had the sick feeling that it was looking right at him. Instantly, the rest of the weapon arms not already reducing the armour plating on the reactor to vaporised slag whipped around to face him.
Maven opened fire at the same time as the attacking war machine, his lasers impacting on a number of power fields before tearing one of the weapon arms from its mounting. The return fire struck Equitos Bellum full in the chest, collapsing the last power field and ripping through its armour. Agony roared up through the Manifold and Maven screamed, his hands jerking towards his chest as though the wound had been done to his own flesh.
The Knight staggered, and Maven fought to control its motion through the mist of jarring pain that seared through his every nerve-ending. He wrenched his consciousness from the damage done to Equitos Bellum and felt his vision clear as he saw the enemy war machine preparing to fire again.
Maven sidestepped and lowered his shoulder as another rippling beam of light seared towards him, burning through the edge of his shoulder armour. He flinched, but the damage was superficial and he locked in with his weapon arm, unleashing a stream of laser fire at his enemy’s back.
‘Got you!’ he shouted as the impacts marched over the machine.
The shout died in his throat as he saw that his shots had done absolutely no damage.
A rippling sheath of invisible energy surrounded the machine where none had existed a moment before. Only one explanation presented itself.
The machine was void protected.
‘Damn it,’ he hissed and his hesitation almost killed him as the machine spun around on its axis and took time out from its unravelling of the reactor’s armour to fire on him.
Dazzling lasers sleeted past him and Maven desperately walked his Knight back out of the line of fire. Flames boomed to life around him as fuel stores exploded, and he felt the heat wash over his mount. A lucky shot grazed the pilot’s compartment and a sharp crack sliced down through his vision.
Maven screamed in pain, his hand reaching up to his eyes where it felt as though a hot needle had been shoved through to the back of his skull. His vision blurred, but he kept moving, backwards and from side to side, to throw off his assailant’s aim.
Fresh streams of laser fire seared the air around him, but none touched him, and as the pain of Equitos Bellum s wounding diminished, he dodged the machine’s incoming shots, its fire patterns following textbook sweeps.
But Raf Maven was anything but textbook.
He swung his Knight around the corner of the reactor, sweat streaming down his face and a thin trickle of blood dripping from his nose.
‘Stator! Cronus!’ he yelled. ‘Where in Ares’ name are you?’
Then the reactor exploded.
THE STILT-WALKING vehicle moved through a city of wonders and miracles.
Everywhere Dalia looked she saw something new and incredible. Once lost in the midst of the towers and forges, she realised she had never seen anything like the domain of Koriel Zeth, its design and scale quite beyond anything she had imagined before. Though the Imperial Palace on Terra was much, much larger, she appreciated that the Emperor’s fastness was not so much a piece of architecture, but rather a handcrafted land mass built upon the world’s tallest mountains.
Even on the rare moments she had been permitted to venture beyond the confines of the Librarium, she had only ever seen a fragment of the palace’s majesty, but this place she had seen in its entirety.
Even then, she suspected that what she had seen from the air wasn’t the whole story.
Rho-mu 31 kept his counsel throughout the journey, content to watch the spires and smoke-belching furnaces pass without comment. Nor was this a city without an organic component, for thousands paraded through its razor-straight thoroughfares and shining boulevards.
Hooded menials, grey-skinned servitors and glittering, holo-wreathed calculi mingled on the metal streets of the Magma City. Robed tech-adepts moved like royalty through the crowds, carried on floating palanquins or wheeled chariots of golden metal, or borne aloft on what looked like gilded theatre boxes with slender stilt legs. All of them bore the number grid symbol of Adept Zeth somewhere about their person.
How any of them didn’t collide was a mystery to Dalia, though she presumed that each one would have some kind of onboard navigational system, which linked to a central network that monitored speeds, trajectories and potential collisions.
She shook her head free of the thought and forced herself to concentrate on enjoying the journey. Too often she was being distracted when she saw something new and incredible. Her thoughts would seize on this unknown factor, searching her memory for something similar before sending the c
reative part of her mind into a freewheeling spin as she attempted to account for the technological explanation of this new phenomenon.
They were heading for the centre of the Magma City, that much was obvious, the unmoving, unblinking servitor fused with the vehicle’s control mechanisms conveying them unerringly through the heaving mass of bodies.
Their course took them onto the golden boulevard she had seen from the air, its sides lined with statues and thronged with robed acolytes. At the far end, Dalia saw a towering structure of what looked like bright silver or chrome.
As if fashioned from precisely machined blocks of silver steel, the forge was etched with geometric patterns like those of a circuit diagram, though Dalia had no idea what manner of circuit was described in its design. The servitor increased the speed of their vehicle and the enormous building soon grew in stature until Dalia’s neck hurt with craning to look up at its blocky enormity.
A portion of the wall at the base of the forge slid apart and sections of the building seemed to retreat within its structure, forming a gleaming ramp that led up to a vast portico halfway up the building’s side.
Dalia gripped the handrail as their vehicle began the ascent, looking behind her as the ramp disappeared as soon as they passed. The portico loomed large above them and now she truly appreciated how enormous it was, each column fashioned in the shape of an enormous piston and capped with cog-shaped capitals.
The entire building was designed as if it were a moving machine, and for all Dalia knew, perhaps it was.
At last the vehicle levelled out and the clacking of its many legs ceased as it came to a halt on the portico’s wide plinth. The floor was milky white marble with dark veins running through it, and the columns towered above her. The underside of the pediment was decorated with unknown equations and diagrams picked out in glittering mosaics of gold. The sheer visual splendour was overwhelming.