by David Guymer
The Hall of Audiences was rounded like an ancient coliseum, ten-sided in actuality but with corners so smoothed by art and rust that the difference only existed if one knew it was there. A ring of iron columns towered into the darkness. They bore weapons in brackets, ornate, ceremonial, but functional too as all things had to be if they were to earn their continuance. The hall was quiet, as poorly lit as his cell had been. A draft caused the banners hung from the galleries to flap, their balconies deserted except for, in the case of one, a flesh-withered old servitor that hobbled with the aid of a broom as it eternally swept around the rust that fell from the ceiling.
The ironglass table was a thing of spartan beauty. Its elemental composition was so exact, the craft that had gone into its making of such perfection, that the surface had a reflective transparency, like looking into a still lake at dusk. Contributing to the pervading gloom, the hall’s washed-out light emerged entirely from lumen points set into the underside of the glass. There were no chairs. Around the table stood the Iron Council’s commitment to the crushing of the Thennos uprising, as quickly and as utterly as was possible.
Endless war ensured the clans were separated by thousands of light years of realspace, but the practicalities of conducting the Kristosian conclave, the unprecedented philosophical deconstruction that had tied the Iron Council in knots of mutually contradictive calculi for longer than Stronos had been alive, ensured that more warriors were rotated back to Medusa than would ordinarily be the case and biased the battle calculi in favour of warzones within shorter reach.
Verrox laid a weighty fist on the plain black pauldron piece of Raan, which the iron captain of Clan Borrgos ignored as if it were just another fleck of rust from the ceiling on his Terminator plate. Clans Vurgaan and Borrgos were, as seen by outsiders unfamiliar with the clan structures of the Iron Hands, reserves and so generally lent their strength to a large number of conflicts at any one time and almost always under the command of another. Like any clan, however, they guarded their independence fiercely. On the other side of the table, a purposeful act of separation that even Verrox had thought better of breaching, Veteran-Sergeant Drath of Clan Avernii stared into the ironglass as though the weight of his thoughts might shatter it. Hundreds of small loops of parchment fluttered from his power-armour, tightly rolled, pressed to the battle plate with black wax. Each one bore the secret record of an act of shame, ten thousand years of ignominy tracing a path to Clan Avernii’s first great failure when they had proven unable to prevent their primarch’s death. Five century cog-studs had been beaten into the inseparable fusion of helmet and bionics that by position alone remained a face. An Iron Hands Space Marine of Drath’s age and construction could no longer simply die.
The last two at the table Stronos recognised but had never met. Fabricator-Locum Hyproxius Velt, effective governor of Thennos under the proxy of the Voice of Mars, and his adjutant-spiritual, Technologian Theol Quoros.
The fabricator-locum was an etiolated aristocrat with a supercilious frown etched into his jawline with nanoscale augmetics. A triad of cherub servitors droned through the air above him, trailing parchment and emitting the occasional chirrup, cataloguing every word and gesture. He raised his hands and offered a slow clap for the arrival of Clan Garrsak. ‘Port Amadeus has been brought to compliance.’ He spoke in Reket as was customary in recognition of the esteemed Clan Garrsak machine that hosted this quorum, and bowed his head slightly in its honour. ‘The blessing and benediction of Mars for conducting so expeditious a campaign.’
‘The facility had a structural flaw,’ Draevark replied.
Velt’s flesh-mouth twitched. The cherubs burred as they made permanent record of his irritation. ‘An important first step, regardless. With Port Amadeus destroyed we now have complete orbital and tactical supremacy over the entire planet. Its purge can now commence in accordance with the prescription of the magos calculi.’
‘It has commenced,’ said Draevark. ‘There is a pile of rubble under your providence five kilometres hence that attests to that.’
‘That it should come to this,’ growled Raan.
‘Agreed,’ said Verrox, grinding out words as though they were iron shavings brought up from his throat. ‘What function do you still serve, fabricator-locum? Rebellion did not merely foment under your stewardship, it succeeded. You are as culpable as the dead of Port Amadeus.’
‘Agreed,’ said Raan.
‘Agreed,’ echoed Draevark.
Drath merely glowered, though it did not require a tech-savant to glean his thoughts.
Stronos observed them all, but contributed nothing. He was a sergeant here and a newly elevated one at that, nearly a hundred years Raan’s junior. He was unsure what function his presence served.
‘I propose immediate removal of the fabricator-locum,’ said Verrox. ‘Execution and replacement to be provisioned by the logi-legatus at his earliest convenience.’
‘Agreed,’ said Draevark.
‘Thennos is a sovereign world of the Empire of Mars. Its independence from Medusa is anointed by holy writ, and you have no authority to impose legislative decree.’ Theol Quoros’ heptapedal motive frame clacked on the metal floor in emphasis of his words. Stronos could taste the scent of machine-pleasing oils and silcaceous camphyrs as the technologian’s oddly cut robes rippled around his legs. ‘Nor is there any provision to allow for the suggestion of said decree to the logi-legatus, except via majority rule of the Iron Council.’ His face was a steel plate, flat and empty and partially hooded by his robes. How he saw or emitted sound was not immediately apparent. ‘Does the position of the fabricator-locum require further clarification?’
The Iron Hands answered with their silence.
‘Blessings and benedictions of Mars.’ Velt smiled graciously. ‘Your criticisms are noted and welcomed–’ the scratching of meme-quill on parchment recorded his contrition for the future historians ‘–and I will be improved for the recognition of my prior failings.’
‘See to it,’ Verrox grumbled.
‘I will, Iron Father. As you know, the Iron Council demands the uprising be crushed immediately and utterly. To the last soul. Word of the Iron Hands’ failure to prevent insurrection within their own system limits cannot be allowed to spread. It will draw unwelcome attention at a difficult time, when the conclave of Kristos continues to engender discord within.’
‘I do not care what others think.’
‘What you will not have heard in open council,’ Velt went on, ‘is that Warleader Kristos himself has demanded the Mechanicus resolve this insurrection.’
‘Former warleader,’ said Verrox. ‘The Iron Fathers have chosen not to elevate one of our number to lead. Not since the debacle on Columnus.’
‘Putative,’ Quorus reprimanded the Iron Father. ‘The morality of Iron Father Kristos’ methodology remains in dispute. That is the entire basis of the conclave. He would undoubtedly emphasise that the Weirdwaaagh was crushed with minimal losses.’
‘Kristos is a blunt tool,’ Verrox returned. Stronos knew from his century and a half with Clan Vurgaan that Verrox was the strongest voice of an otherwise divided opposition to the brutalist ideology espoused by Kristos and his adherents. Neither choice was pleasant. That Verrox drew genuine relish from his services to Emperor and Omnissiah must have been tremendous mitigation to the billions dead by that service. In truth, the death toll of his existence was no less than Kristos’. ‘He adheres to the letter of the Creed of Iron as any monotask ought, but he has no understanding of its meaning.’
‘By Thennos’ enduring spirit, enough!’ Iron captain Raan’s frustrations overcame him and he thumped his gauntlet on the table. ‘I will speak for Iron Fathers Siilvus and Breeka before the Eye of Medusa, but do not force me to continue the conclave here as well.’
While the two Iron Hands studied each other’s impassivity, Stronos noticed the grandiose doors at the far end of the
Hall of Audiences crack ajar.
This was not the functional entrance by which he and Draevark had entered. These were ten centimetre thick adamantine plates with chased gold bearing a diorama of Ferrus Manus locked in battle with the Elemental of Karaashi and set in diorite quarried from the Oraanus Rocks. The Iron Hands seldom commissioned pure ostentation, and despite its gilding it was both imposing and solid. A ribbon of orange light panned across the floor through the gap, running to a taper as it neared the head of the table. A shadow wavered across it, and Stronos felt the ironglass shiver, the way a puddle would ripple before the footfalls of a Titan.
Draevark clasped his shoulder with one cold lightning claw and whispered, ‘He is here.’
V
Melitan Yolanis slipped into the cramped moderatus suite, and eased the door shut behind her. She had been hoping to enter quietly enough so as not to distract the diagnosticians from their screens. In that she failed.
‘What did Braavos say?’ asked Callun, spinning his console chair towards her. The screen behind him profiled his eager expression in green. It was flooded with datascreed and source equations, a mathematised nonsense of glyphs and symbols that no one in the room, and certainly not Callun, knew what to call, never mind how to operate.
But she would learn. She promised the Omnissiah that she would learn.
‘Essentially, deal with it,’ she summarised.
Callun snorted good-naturedly. Wishing she could be so sanguine about her responsibilities, Melitan looked over the vast bank of screens that occupied one wall. Most showed more unruly curves and their alien notations, but a handful were live feeds from capture-units ensconced in the columns that surrounded the conference table, the different screens offering varying shots of the fabricator-locum and Technologian Theol Quoros, or of the five Iron Hands that stood across from them. There were speakers installed amidst the visual displays and they provided a grainy audio.
‘Kristos is a blunt tool. He adheres to the letter of the Creed of Iron as any monotask ought, but he has no understanding of its meaning.’
Melitan could override the servitors’ simple doctrines to remotely operate them and eavesdrop closer in, if she wished. She wondered if the Iron Hands realised that their conference was not private, but reasoned that they must and either didn’t care or edited their words accordingly. Someone pushed a mug of ridiculously strong recaff into her hand, but she barely noticed the brush of fingers over hers as she parsed her attention between the feeds while the great doors opened.
To her astonishment, the Iron Hands began to kneel.
She stifled a delighted laugh with her hand. On those rare instances when the Iron Hands’ disregard for their own lives led to injuries that even Apothecary Dumaar could not rebuild alone, Melitan might have seen two, perhaps even three of the warriors at one time, and now here before her were five of their direst lords and they were on their knees. She doubted that Dumaar would have bent the knee for the primarch himself. And the God-Emperor?
She doubted it very much.
She took a sip of recaff, her mouth suddenly dry, and sketched the cog one-handed across her chest. She eased out a slow breath.
‘Wake up everyone. Ancient Ares is here.’
VI
Kardan Stronos and his brothers lowered themselves to one knee. Awesome powered frames, ill-designed and ill-accustomed to that peculiar range of motion, whined in hardship as they clanked to the floor. The magi, Stronos noted, did not kneel.
The door was four metres high, half again as wide, but the ancient Dreadnought dominated it as he must have the battlefields of old. His sarcophagus was the perfect black of volcanic glass, edged in polished gunmetal iron fretwork. Every square millimetre down to the knuckles of his power fist bore exquisite reliefs of his workings, as though by the living glory of the Omnissiah the ancient’s armour had been rendered opalescent to reveal the priceless thing beneath: a living, working, breathtaking manifestation of His blessed machine. Platinum nameplates bore the lesson of the living avatar with the inscription ARES, and shone under the dull light from every angle. That the Iron Hands were loath to adorn objects they saw as purely functional was not to say that they did not know worth when they saw it.
And Stronos saw it in Iron Father Tubriik Ares.
‘Why do you kneel?’ the Dreadnought’s voice boomed. ‘Diminishing yourselves does no one honour.’
Ares passed between the two magi at the head of the table without any overt indication that he had spared consideration to their presence, and then thrust an arm over the ironglass table. The power fist radially opened, the flowering of a mechanism that caused some mirror-unit within the table itself to click in response.
A hum of power built within the table and the ironglass illuminated with a frosty white light. Vox-synth burrs of surprise passed through the Iron Hands as a riot of hololithic imagery flashed through the air above the table. Stronos gaped. For how many centuries had the lords of Clan Garrsak planned wars at this table without realising that it had possessed such a function? Even the two magi seemed taken aback though it was, as always, difficult to tell.
‘Nine hundred years we have been left to rest,’ Ares rumbled, his image vague behind the hololith blur. He paused, as if to confirm his tally. ‘Nine hundred years… years of sleeplessness and nightmare. Too long. We have absorbed simulus inload of the period and it is clear that the decision to leave us in state was an error. Iron Hands do not make errors. The source will be found and eliminated.’ The Dreadnought made no show of ire, but the Iron Hands stared in awe as though he had pounded on the table and roared. ‘An example will be made.’
‘Lord Ares,’ said Fabricator-Locum Hyproxius Velt, bowing low, the scratch of his scrivener cherubs recording the precise angle of declination for the archives. ‘I would not wish to speak for the master of the forge, but your value to the Chapter is too great to risk to any mere skirmish. The revivification rituals themselves carry a small but not insignificant probability of irreparable system damage. Your restoration to command of this mission was an oversight of the deployment orders from Medusa.’
‘Iron Hands do not make that kind of mistake,’ Ares thundered, dismissively. ‘The Emperor built us to fight. With the blessing of the Omnissiah our brothers preserve us to fight. Left to dream we have no value. The function of servants is to obey. I will crush this uprising.’
Under Ares’ digital manipulation, the stream of machine consciousness that swirled above the hololith table settled into a cartolith of a stellar system. It was Sthenelus. The star was a bloated purple-red, a giant heading towards its end years. Three rocky worlds of varying sizes and inhospitable aspects circled it before the eye came to Medusa IV; or just Medusa, as most knew it. The timeframe of the planets’ orbits, the rotation of the sun was one-to-one, but even in realtime Stronos could see the black world spin. The detail was sufficient for Stronos to pick out the individual slipyards of the Telesterax, the partially collapsed iron collar of orbital manufactories that had once encircled the planet. From there to the system’s Mandeville point, the cartolith passed three gas giants, another rocky, ice-caked spheroid, a dust belt, and then, at the cold extremity where sunlight came a distant second to the radiation of space, there was Thennos.
‘Conflict there has always been between the clans,’ said Ares as the eyes of all around him were drawn to the clockwork dance of worlds he had conjured. ‘Such competition was encouraged by our Father. We remember. No.’ Quoros and Velt shared an anxious look. Stronos caught it. ‘Yes. We saw. Saw through others’ memories. We…’ The Dreadnought emitted a stalled noise. ‘Regardless. For one of our worlds to fall because of disunity. This goes beyond. We will end this uprising with the iron of our own fists, and after that the Eye of Medusa and the Kristosian Conclave will answer to our ire.’
Stronos found himself stunned to speechlessness by the Iron Father’s absolute moral convicti
on. Even the autonomic binharic chatter of his machine systems seemed muted in the ancient’s presence. If Ares had at that moment commanded the galaxy to reverse its spin or the speed of light to alter then Stronos was sure that the Omnissiah Himself would have bent every Universal Law to appease him.
For several long seconds, counted off, blessedly, by Stronos’ temporal implant – for he was in no mental state to keep track of time – no one spoke.
Theol Quoros rapped the floor-plate apologetically, the percussive equivalent of a nervously cleared throat. ‘Your urgency is gloriously received and approved, Iron Father, excepting one factual inaccuracy. This world belongs to the Adeptus Mechanicus, not Medusa.’
Ares pivoted, a minor readjustment in facing rendered massive by his own scale. The magos clung to the ground like a brass spider at his feet.
‘Incorrect.’
‘Your pardon, lord?’
‘Incorrect. This is a Medusan world, a ward of Mars for a period of nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine years. We were there. Thennos, in exchange for the ten ironbarques that now serve the clan companies as fortress monasteries and flagships. We witnessed…’ The ancient faded for a moment. ‘Yes. We witnessed. And we remember. Thennos will be returned to direct rule on 062099.M43.’
Again the two magi shared an uncomfortable look, then Quoros turned back to Ares and bobbed his head-part in acquiescence. ‘The details of the matter, I am sure, will be extant in the Thennosian archives, along with the proper backups in the Temple of All Knowledge on Mars. However, as to the present sit–’
‘The truth of the matter is settled. My word is inviolate.’
‘Agreed,’ spoke Draevark, Verrox, Raan and even the sombre Drath in unison. Stronos nodded, though he doubted his contribution was required. Quoros hesitated as if he meant to argue the point before bowing in stiff accord.
