by David Guymer
She had peppered the preservator with questions, and then her parents as they had made their weary way back to their hab. ‘How? How? How?’ interspersed every now and then with ‘Why?’
All she could think about was that cherub.
Maybe it wasn’t a human foetus after all. See the elipticity of the palatine structure, the bony protrusions of the themastoid process. A ratling, perhaps. She had only seen one in instructional vellums. She would need to–
The cherub emitted a burst of binaric cipher at the door mechanism.
It responded in kind.
The doors whisked open.
Melitan’s heart butterflied about her insides. All her life she’d craved to hear the title ‘magos’ spoken before her name. And now…
Melitan winced in pain. Conversing with the meme-proxy that Logi-Legatus Nicco Palpus had embedded in her medulla was not a simple matter of speaking and heeding. The implant forcibly rewired her brain cells to convey imagery or words. It hurt. So she said nothing in return, simply nodding to the cherub servitor that she was ready in the hope that the meme-proxy would remain silent.
The wizened automaton was already floating off through the open doors, trailing devotional scripture and electrostatic light.
She took another shallow breath, as though it were a hostage she could hold as insurance, and stepped in after the cherub.
II
Zero Tier was a temple to horrify the believer, a fortress of data to put hesitation into the step of an Adeptus Astartes warrior. Arachnoid figures with artificially bent spines, muttering body parts and the red robes of the Martian priesthood sat hunched over runebanks, gorging, only their mechanical probosces in light. Lensed eyes of disparate colour and type clicked and whirred, focused and dilated, all with the sound of screws being patiently threaded and unthreaded over and over and over. Complex and inhuman mandibular parts twitched as if in physical hunger, lacking only the machine analogue of drool as the rapt adepts parsed the data from their screens.
Even the menacing clank of the prowling robo-mastiffs did not distract the binary infocytes from their screens.
Aside from the neat, ordered runebanks, a whip-limbed magos in heavy robes glittering with numerological symbols presided from a hololithic platform. Bi-dimensional information panes orbited him, schemata and analyses of schemata, mangled by layers of encryption and orders of notation that Melitan had no description for.
But she could guess.
The magos sifted through the maelstrom of arcana fed to him by the infocytes, delivering a cursive homily or canticle excerpt on occasion, employing mechadendrites and gauntlets ending in noospheric claws like a six-limbed nightmare shredding the wings off an endless succession of screaming butterflies.
A single armed skitarius observed.
He was nearly two and a half metres tall, almost as large as a Space Marine, reticulated body armour a slab of black. Denial codes and exload inhibitors enveloped him in a cloak of technical obfuscation. Melitan’s implants, even some of the better-quality forgeries, made consistent attempts to scrub the skitarius from her conscious awareness. Even the robo-mastiffs, sensoria-packed snouts drawing continuous samples of the adepts’ auto-exloads, clumped straight past, unaware.
She scratched absently at the irritation under her ear and mumbled under her breath. ‘Yes, master.’
Melitan dropped her hands to her lap, adopting the pose of haughty serenity that captured her idealised vision of a genuine adept. An image of Logi-Legatus Nicco Palpus came to mind as a perfect model. She almost sighed. The original, physical, iteration of the Voice of Mars had been far more supportive. Almost fatherly. A charade, she was belatedly coming to appreciate.
The cherub blurted noise at her. Fortunately, Palpus had seen fit to provision her with genuine augments sufficient to decode the binaric as,
The foetus drifted towards the skitarius.
‘You look nervous.’
Startled, Melitan turned towards the voice. One of the hooded infocytes made a crooked contortion of his non-emotive exo-features at her. A smile, and more chilling than the blinkered indifference she had become accustomed to as a menial enginseer.
‘I…’ She considered denying it, but realised there was little point. She was a terrible liar, so thought it best to cleave as near to the truth as possible. ‘Maybe just a little.’
‘Exogenitor Oelur is not as fearsome as his reputation.’ The infocyte’s hooded optics twinkled with unexpected humour. ‘Or his appearance. You will live out the hour, I think.’ There was a ripping sound, the click and snap of disconnecting bundle fibres, and the infocyte withdrew a bi-clawed hand from his runebank and extended it towards her. ‘Numeral Four.’ He leaned in conspiratorially, lowering his voice to a whisper. ‘But you may call me Salient.’
Melitan took the infocyte’s unjointed metal hand in her human one. She almost gave her real name. ‘Vale. Bethania Vale. Magos biologis.’
‘The Dawnbreak Technology will not disappoint, magos. Quite the opposite.’
Salient extricated his claw from Melitan’s hand. She noticed a thin line of blood smeared across her palm. ‘You’re bleeding,’ she said. But the infocyte had already returned to his runebank and slotted himself back in.
She rubbed the blood onto her red robes, a robo-mastiff sniffing her for trace corruption as it growled towards her. She fixed the machine with a glare of such aloofness that any magos would be proud, even as she cringed inwardly, but it detected nothing. It clanked along its programmed patrol without pausing. Tension bled off her.
The infocyte was already ignoring her again, so absorbed in his data that she wondered if she had imagined the entire exchange. Nerves could do strange things.
She looked at the red stain in her hand.
Without looking as though she was hurrying, she followed the cherub servitor. The foetal slave hovered across the guardian skitarius, neither acknowledging the existence of the other and drifted towards a second bronze door. This one was framed on either side by dark, reflective panels that looked like monodirectional glass.
She could feel her heart beating in her mouth.
Here it came.
III
No one had prepared her for the smell.
There was a certain odour one automatically associated with the inner demesnes of the Adeptus Mechanicus: oils that were particularly pleasing to the inner workings of the machine, blessed greases, the tang of the Motive Force, the buzzing friction of a thousand artificially moving things. All of that was present but almost a pomander musk to cover a sickly sweet something else. It was rejuvenat, formaldehyde, anti-rust, all in cocktail with some mordant element whose aroma she could not define.
With a crunch of gearing and a wheeze of telescoping parts, Exogenitor Louard Oelur beckoned her in.
The gesture might have been reassuring had the proffered limb not been twice her length and three times her girth.
She shuffled towards the desk that divided the chamber in half. The flat surface was panelled with screens. Images and screed or both together flickered across thirty or so runebank monitors, too rapidly even for most augmetic eyes. To her, they simply appeared to stutter from still to still to still. Too quickly for her to interpret. The light they cast was jerky and unsettling. A small icon of the Cog Mechanicus held down one corner of a
papyrus roll, almost as an afterthought, a gargantuan mechandendrite pinning the opposite end.
‘Obese’ was a spectacularly organic word, but it applied.
The exogenitor appeared to have accrued augments and subsidiary systems over – it was rumoured – a dozen centuries. The habiliments draped over his expanded bulk were almost a ritual courtesy. The head atop the heap of bionics was a spoiled lump of uncounted restorations and upgrades. A gross secondary head leaned listlessly from the communal neck, gazing blankly at the table. To Melitan’s creeping disgust, it was not an artificial brain but an actual human head. Excision scars and electoos, crystal implants that laid out the schema for future bionics, were still visible on its flesh. She arrived at the unpleasant realisation that this was at least partly responsible for the smell.
She glanced quickly away, ready for the sting of neural pain, but the Palpus meme-proxy had nothing to say.
How did he get in here? she found herself wondering. It certainly wasn’t through the door. And where had the head come from? A slave, a criminal, a heretek? Not a servitor, obviously. What would be the point?
As her thoughts ran on, Oelur remained a constant source of motion. Robes rustled. Servo-limbs and dendrites clicked and wittered semi-independently of the core mass. Unseen components clanked and crunched and chittered and moved, like a tarantula digesting a beetle. When he finally spoke, the anti-climax of a human voice almost broke her nerve.
‘Your journey from Xanthros was comfortable, Magos Vale?’
‘Q-quite comfortable. Th-thank you.’
‘You are suffering an audio glitch, magos.’
Melitan squirmed under her fraudulent robes and equally fraudulent augmetic mask.
‘It has been a long journey, Exogenitor Oelur.’
‘Louard.’ Mechadendrites fumbled along the walls. Clicking. Snapping. As though discussing her amongst themselves. ‘Titles lost interest to me exactly seven hundred and forty-three years ago. My desire for the fawning respect of my inferiors lasted only marginally longer.’
‘L-Louard then, exogenitor.’
‘There is that glitch again.’
‘Apologies exo– Louard.’
‘Do you know how many biosectionists are currently at work within Tier Zero, Magos Vale?’
‘I don’t.’
‘None. Do you know how many adepts of any kind have been recruited to Tier Zero without first working through the subsidiary research levels during the three hundred and nineteen years of my stewardship of NL-Primus?’
‘I… don’t.’
‘I suspect that you can guess, Magos Vale. Know that I will not tolerate dissembling. It is an affront to the good order of the Omnissiah.’
‘None, exogenitor.’
‘None, indeed. Nicco Palpus resides half a galaxy from Mars, and yet his reach is such that any door is opened at his command.’
‘I am fortunate.’
‘I know why Palpus sent you, magos.’
Louard’s robes suddenly bulged forwards, and a rotten, bloat-swollen arm emerged. The calcified fingers tapped with surprising dexterity at one flickering subscreen of his rune display. The alien calligraphy it had been displaying for a fraction of a second vanished, replaced by what appeared to be Bethania Vale’s personal file.
Louard’s two heads examined it together.
‘Five years with Xenoanatomist Tantrun. Ten with Teratotechnologist Coronus. Then fifteen years under Metachirugeon Garadesius at Xanthros, performing extrapolative dissections of xenos 27814σ.’ His primary head looked up. ‘I am not familiar with xenos 27814σ.’
‘I don’t think they exist anymore.’
‘Iron Hands?’
‘Iron Hands,’ Melitan agreed. ‘They tend to be thorough.’
‘That explains how you came to the notice of Nicco Palpus. Indeed, you are fortunate.’ He dismissed the file with a swipe of his rotting paw. ‘You are to assess the Dawnbreak Technologies. You are here to assess me. Do not attempt to deny it. According to my mnemonic archive I have already disclosed that I dislike dissembling.’ The secondary head creaked up on its neck muscles and stared glassily at Melitan. ‘You possess the requisite skillset to analyse the containment procedures of Tier Zero. I can assure you however that no exload-capable unit is in operation within the quarantined spheres. Organic trial subjects are terminated and disposed of under strict control. Even indirect contact with the xenotech is a breach of base protocols. I can compile a list of those adepts who have conducted the most thorough probes of the data, or would you prefer an algorithm to select subjects for vivisection at random?’
‘Exogenitor, I–’
‘I assure that all will be as the logi-legatus requested when he submitted the eldar technology to my safekeeping. I am aware of what occurred on Thennos. I comprehend Palpus’ cognitive processes. But this is not some backwater test bed in the Segmentum Obscurus. This is Noctis Labyrinth Faculty Primus.’
Melitan’s eyes, already watery from the lenses she wore over them in lieu of true optics, seemed to wobble. In truth, she had no idea why Palpus had gone to the extraordinary effort to disguise her as an experienced adept rather than recruit a genuine magos with the profile of Bethania Vale. Except perhaps that he trusted her. And she trusted him.
‘He only wishes to be certain,’ she said.
The exogenitor emitted a consumptive belch. ‘I will see to it that he is. We will begin with a tour of Tier Zero, but tomorrow. Your journey has been a long one.’
‘Thank you, exogenitor.’
‘My servitor will escort you to the dormitories. Do not allow the skitarius to disturb you.’
‘W-what skitarius?’
‘That glitch again, magos.’ He gestured to the door with one massively sinuous mechadendrite. ‘Tomorrow then.’
‘Tomorrow.’
The cherub servitor impelled through the open door on a burst of static and Melitan backed towards it, suddenly wary of turning her back on the corpulent data lord. She caught another glimpse of the miniature Cog Mechanicus on the edge of his desk. It was making her queasy, but only as the cherub led her away did she understand why.
It was inverted.
Chapter Five
‘We all have darker natures, daemons of the soul we would prefer our brothers not see.’
– Thecian
I
‘Put the book down.’
Stronos said it without looking up, his optic focusing in on the fine-detail electronics held between the forefinger and thumb of his metallic hand. Binary ‘yes-no’ haptics in the fingertips reported on pressure as he leant in. His flesh eye strained, stung by the smoothness with which its partnering bionic clicked through its magnifying objectives to bring up the intricacies of the wiring. The eye’s pinprick glow ran down the length of his knife as carefully, carefully, he began to strip the insulating plastek. He could already feel himself beginning to relax, the shame he had felt over his intemperance during the exercise slowly dissipating. Facial muscles that no longer held any nervous authority over a mouth twitched as if to produce a smile.
What would Verrox think?
Fifty thousand light years from Medusa, a hundred years from his Iron Moon, and here he was still working on his penance. In truth, fixing the cursed thing had always been an impossible task. It had become a tool for meditation, an outlet for his errant thoughts and emotions. Sometimes he wondered if that had always been the Iron Father’s intention.
Probably not. Verrox was hardly known for subtlety.
The last of the plastek peeled off under his knife, and only then did he glance up.
‘I said put it down. It is not yours.’
Thecian stood against the wall of their shared cell, robes the dark purple of a spent vein hanging from his broad shoulders, leafing idly through Stronos’ journeyed copy of the Canticle of Travels.
The book had seen more action than some Astra Militarum regiments. The binding was cracked, a las-burn towards the bottom. A few of the pages were starting to come loose of the binding and Stronos could see the indent, present at the exact same position on every page, from the meticulous paging of a metallic hand. Thecian, he noted, had a reading habit of his own, licking his finger before turning each page. Despite the fact that his lips were drier than the Martian brick behind his back.
‘The text is in lingua-technis,’ said Thecian, thoughtfully. ‘Is that not unusual, for a record of your primarch’s life to be composed in the common tongue of Mars?’
‘The original Canticle was oral. Most were lost, others pure myth or evolutions of other tales. The rationalised edition was assembled by an Adept of Mars, almost seven thousand years ago.’
Thecian looked up over the silver-grey illuminations of his open page. ‘It is your basic text and it was written by a tech-priest, in a language only those inducted by the machine cult can understand?’
Stronos returned the look, without the expression.
‘Have you been to Medusa?’
‘I have not had the… pleasure,’ Thecian replied.
‘Or served alongside the Iron Hands before now?’
‘No. Why?’
‘Because you will not find a Medusan, much less a battle-brother of the Iron Hands, who could not teach a tech-priest a little lingua-technis.’
Thecian chuckled. It appeared to come naturally to him. ‘I can imagine the phrases all too well.’ He lowered his eyes back to the page. ‘I cannot make out the marginal text.’
‘That is because you have never learned Juuket.’
‘My loss.’
Neither guided, nor required, to utter anything further Stronos returned his attention to the now stripped length of wire, feeding it into a small circuit box and laying it carefully along a prepared track of polymer adhesive. He pressed it down under his organic thumb, then nicked off the loose end with his knife.
