by Guy Haley
Ardim Protos made his lair in the bowels of the Gardoman Hub, past the sectors set aside for his black-clad brethren, beyond the furthest reach of life support. When Protos refused his summons but offered instead an invitation, Harrtek set out prepared. One glance at the map printed on the flimsy told him he should be. Sections of the hub around the magos’ home were lacking air, gravity or warmth. The route passed through several ruinous halls, so on his back Harrtek bore an air flask, and under his arm he carried his war helm. Cuff seals proofed his uniform battlesuit against vacuum. A heated under-tunic would keep him alive. He looked as if he were planning a jaunt into open space, and to all intents he was, so he ignored the looks from the menials as he trudged down level after level. He took stairwells and spiral ways in preference to lifters.
‘This is a penance,’ he reminded himself, as he set foot upon the nineteenth stairway.
Many more were to come.
There was a particular beauty to be found in the deep places of the hub. Frozen falls of water and waste joined floors to ceilings. Collages of bodies decorated ruptured decks, glued together by atmosphere frost in blued artworks that evoked the suffering of man. Harrtek paused by many of these marvels only briefly, but one made him stop for several minutes.
A companionway led him through one lightless hall into another much the same. The walk had become separated from the wall in the second, and spiralled down in rickety loops towards the bottom where it was, incredibly, still attached. There was no air in that place. The wall was breached by a diagonal slash four hundred metres long, the legacy of a lance hit that had played mercilessly down the hub’s outer fabric. Through the blackened gap, crowded with spheres of boiled-off metal solidified again in the chill of the void, the atmosphere of Theta-Garmon V was visible.
The planet filled the gash from end to end with a jade landscape of shifting storms, grinding against each other in swirling, interlocked laminar bands, each one a different shade of brilliant green. What entranced Harrtek was not this natural wonder, but the effect of the war upon it. Brilliant splashes burst over the atmosphere as debris rained down from the shattered orbitals around the planet.
No artifice of man was mighty enough to truly entrap a world the size of Theta-Garmon V. A body like Iridium might be caged in industry, but the gas giant was too large to be shackled for long. For millennia, humanity had bled off its hydrogen and had made not the slightest impact upon its being. Men were ticks on worlds of that size. Now, the host had noticed them, and scratched. A bombardment of stupendous scale fell onto the world, dragged there by Theta-Garmon V’s massive gravity well. Orbitals, ships, stray munitions, clouds of ice, bodies, everything was sucked into the planetary body. It was relentless, merciless, a revenge beyond the comprehension of the little creatures who scurried so earnestly about the galaxy.
‘Beautiful,’ said Harrtek. His voice was breathy in his helm. It was not designed for extended void operations, and condensation fogged the armourglass, but he stayed there awhile, watching the patterns of golden circles form, link, and disappear, as all man’s art was swallowed by the indomitable might of the gas giant.
He resumed his journey only when the spin of the hub took away the vista, and presented him instead with the blankness of near-planetary space.
Protos was expecting him, of course. Harrtek emerged through jets of decontamination gases into the laboratory of a meticulous madman.
There were many models. He remembered that later. Small scale reproductions of Titans shot through with pulsing organic growths. They were no bigger than human babies, and not particularly finely made. He dismissed them and did not understand their significance, not until it was far too late.
A flicker of lights informed Harrtek it was safe to remove his helm. He did not trust the signals, but did so anyway. There was a difference in pressure. His air supply was of higher density and gushed out vigorously into Protos’ laboratory. Only when equalised did the hot stink of Protos’ lair rush in to take its place: metal heated by electricity, spoiling meat and a thousand chemical acridities.
Protos descended from the ceiling, mechadendrites spread behind his back like the additional arms of heathen gods, cloak billowing, blurting binharic cant that made Harrtek’s head thrum painfully.
‘Theatrical bastard,’ the princeps said. He spat on the floor only partly for effect; the taste of the air was coating his throat with an unpleasant film. ‘You didn’t make this easy for me.’
Protos came to a halt a metre over the floor. He pressed his metal hands together in a mockery of prayer, their purely mechanical nature a clashing contrast with his smooth-skinned, old man’s face, which currently wore the singularly most patronising expression Harrtek had ever seen.
‘On the contrary, I made it very easy for you.’ Protos’ robe moved in a way suggestive of a shrug performed without shoulders. ‘I was rebuffed. It is now required that you prove yourself.’
‘You know why I came?’
‘Why else would you seek me out? You thought to summon me.’ Protos shook his head slowly, his smile avuncular as he admonished Harrtek. ‘I am not summoned. We, the eight magi of Sota Nul, go where we please. The likes of you make requests of me, princeps majoris.’ He hovered lower to the floor. ‘You want the power I offer? On your knees.’
Harrtek pulled a face, but knelt. ‘Oh great and powerful machine priest,’ he said sarcastically. ‘Grant me the power you offered to me before, and which I so rudely rejected.’
‘That is not good enough,’ said Protos.
‘You know what?’ said Harrtek, clambering back up to his feet. ‘I don’t care. You came to me for a reason. You did not simply select me at random. You wanted me in particular. I’m here. It is your turn to take it or leave it, adept.’
‘And why do you want what I have to offer?’ Protos hovered forwards, hands clasped now like a merchant about to close a favourable deal.
‘Because I want power. I fought with Atarus today, and they nearly won. I don’t want that to happen again, or this war will never end.’
Protos laughed. ‘If that were the only reason you were here, then you would have accepted before. I offered you the certainty of victory, and you rebuffed me.’
‘Then I seek the holy synthesis of man and machine you also offered,’ said Harrtek.
‘Wrong!’ said Ardim Protos with sudden anger. ‘Your control left you, didn’t it? Don’t lie to me. I reviewed your data capture after the battle. Nuntio Dolores nearly threw you out.’ He sniggered, a juvenile noise coming from one so old and supposedly wise. ‘This is the problem with your order’s creed. You are aware of the physical infirmities your quest for total union places upon you. Well, it is damaging to the MIU and the Titan too. You cannot have what you so desire by normal means, you foolish, vain creature. The attainment of total unity is like approaching the speed of light in the materium – the closer one is to one’s goal, the harder it becomes, until it is impossible.’
Harrtek looked up at the magos ruefully. ‘If I told you you were right?’
‘Then I would be pleased, because all of my kind like to be right. That satisfies me. I will do what you wish. Are you brave, and devoted to your gods, and sure of purpose?’
‘There are choice words I could use here, but I’ll refrain,’ said Harrtek. ‘You know I am all those things and more. Give me what I want. Give me mastery over my machine enjoyed by no man before. Give me back control.’
Protos smiled. ‘Oh, my dear princeps, I can give you far more than that.’
Twenty-Two
The Ritual
The door opened, banishing the dark and casting a painful blade of light across Harrtek’s face. He squinted against it. Once again, there was a figure silhouetted in the door. The princeps’ life had adopted a new rhythm.
‘It is time, princeps,’ the figure said.
The
man who came for him was not one Terent Harrtek recognised. He had the short stature of a lower-class man, and though his clothes were rich they had obviously been provided to him by someone of means.
He was cloaked from head to toe in dark red robes cinched about his waist by a belt of brass chain. Ridiculous cult affectations, Harrtek thought. The man was probably no higher than a duluz, one of the Legio peons. The lowly were always the first to tread easy roads to power. He would get none, of course. If he were lucky, he might not suffer too much as he was used to fulfil some greater man’s goals.
Harrtek wondered how many civilisations had been toppled at the hands of the unwitting poor. Naturally, it always happened for the benefit of powerful men. The poor were levers to be pulled, their sacrifices shifting the positions of influence about, but nothing really changed, not in the long run. The Emperor on Terra was living proof of that. Humanity was a race with a fatal addiction to tyrants.
The thing about the oppressed, thought Harrtek, is that they remain oppressed no matter what they do. It is their role in life. Far better, he thought, if they accepted their allotted station and did not struggle against it.
Terent Harrtek was a powerful man. He would still be powerful after this ritual. This pompous fellow, enjoying a few crumbs of influence with his theatrics and his silly costume, would gain precisely nothing from it except a sense of misguided self-importance.
All things have their place and time, he reminded himself. Rituals required certain elements, jumped-up peasants in smocks included. Harrtek kept his thoughts to himself, and tried to banish contempt from his voice when he got up from his bed and spoke the words he had been told to speak. He just about managed the tone of seriousness expected.
‘I am ready.’
The man bowed low and gestured with a velvet-gloved hand. The material was black, his middle finger ringed with a piece of cheap jewellery displaying the rune of the war god. Harrtek rolled his eyes towards the ceiling.
‘Show respect, my lord,’ said the man in a hissing whisper. Harrtek frowned. The man had been looking at the floor. How had he seen?
‘I am nervous. I am sorry.’
‘You should be nervous,’ said the man. There was a gloating edge to what he said that Harrtek did not care for.
‘Lead on,’ Harrtek said.
The man bobbed his head again, then turned. Harrtek followed.
He had been told to go bare-chested and barefoot, so he had. His combat fatigues were a jumpsuit, so he wore his dress uniform trousers instead, leaving him feeling simultaneously over– and underdressed. The deck was cold under his feet. Draughts of recycled air stirred the hair on his chest. He hadn’t truly appreciated how cold it was on the station. It should have been warmer. Often, over-heating was a problem in void installations, with vacuum being a fine insulator, but the place was frigid. He tried to think if it was always that cold, but somehow, he couldn’t. He experienced the first shiver of unease deep in his gut.
‘Is it just me, or has it got colder?’ he asked.
‘Silence,’ said the man with a backwards glance. ‘If you must be distracted, meditate on the might of the god of war.’
The experience was preposterous, but it appeared the whole hub had bought into the performance. The station corridors were deserted but brightly lit. The ever-present machine song of life support systems hummed away in the background. He did not feel like he was about to undertake a sacred ceremony. Rather he was reminded of the childish initiation rituals he had been forced to undergo at the Legio scholastica at the hands of the other pupils.
On the route he saw no other people. They went a way Harrtek had never been before, and soon he was lost, though he prided himself on his sense of direction. A heaviness overcame his thoughts, and he heard again the far-off blare of brazen horns. The sound had come to him many times, although never so clearly as then. It was distant as always, but for the first time he was sure he heard it, rather than imagined it. He stopped and looked about.
‘Did you hear that?’ he asked.
The man chuckled. There was something not quite right about his voice, Harrtek decided. It was too… wet.
‘He is calling to you. Khorne, the lord of skulls.’
Harrtek’s stomach clenched. In the Legio they rarely said the god’s name. He was not superstitious, but hearing it aloud frightened him, and he did not scare easily.
‘You heard it too?’ he said agitatedly.
‘Come,’ said the man. ‘We have a way to go.’
He was led into service conduits so crammed with piping there was hardly room for a man to pass. Smooth plating gave way to grillwork that bit into his feet. It got colder all the time, and his misgivings grew.
The sense of unreality only increased. Hidden in the humming workings of the hub, Harrtek heard the blasts of horns seven more times, though these subsequent soundings teased him, staying right on the edge of hearing. The man began to mutter to himself, nasty words with sharp edges and wounding sounds. It got colder yet. Harrtek’s feet became numb. His blood flowed sluggishly, each heartbeat a congested thump in his sinuses.
Presently they came to a door so mundane in appearance Harrtek almost laughed with relief when the man stopped beside it, and with exaggerated solemnity gestured at its chipped, hazard-striped metal.
‘The portal to a new life,’ he said portentously. ‘Are you ready?’
The sound of liquids moving through the pipes, the humming of poor-quality lumen globes in the light fittings, the grumbled and short-lived whines and bangs of lifter mechanisms, all conspired to undermine the moment. Some of Harrtek’s self-assuredness returned. And yet, the worm of fear continued to thread its way around his guts.
‘I am,’ said Harrtek.
‘Then enter.’
A solitary green lumen above the door switched on. The chipped door moved aside very slowly. Harrtek’s breath caught in expectation of what he might see beyond.
When the room was revealed, Harrtek nearly laughed again. The chamber beyond was a simple, octagonal robing room for duluz working in hazardous environs. A second door faced the one Harrtek stood in, and a single bench ran round every facet save those pierced by the doors. Hooks were attached to the walls in sets of four above the bench, and from them hung heavy plasticised suits with integral gauntlets and boots. They hung like deflated men, their cylindrical head pieces bowed by the weight of the visors each sported. Seven of his fellow princeps stood within, all naked to the waist and bootless like himself, all shivering. They were each accompanied by an attendant like Harrtek’s. The only thing out of the ordinary in this scene was a large brass pot heating over a portable coil in the dead centre of the room. Vapours rose from it, carrying with them the scent of blood.
‘What are we doing?’ Harrtek said. The others looked at him. They displayed a variety of emotions. They were princeps, so none exhibited fear, though one or two certainly felt trepidation. The others were scornful of his lack of respect, all save Peshin Clenn of Maniple Five, who shared Harrtek’s uneasy contempt.
‘We can begin,’ said one of the other attendants. Harrtek knew that voice.
‘Casson?’ said Harrtek.
Harrtek’s own guide pushed him against the sole vacant facet of the room.
‘Unhand me!’ he growled, catching the fellow about the wrist. His arm was thin, weak.
‘You are to do as we command,’ said the man who was almost certainly Casson. ‘You will stand where I say.’
Harrtek looked to his fellows. He was the only princeps majoris in the room, and by extension the one voted most often to serve as princeps seniores within the group. He was their leader. They watched him carefully to see what he would do.
He gave a smile that was mostly false bravado, and cast the man’s hand aside roughly. ‘Very well!’ he said, holding up his a
rms. ‘Very well! Have at it, Casson – perform your task. Though if I had known you were involved in this foolishness you would not have remained in my employ. This is a version of the blooding, yes? A ritual I have undergone many times. Get on with it.’
Casson faced him. Black bandages around his face provided the sense of depthless shadow within the hood; it was a cheap trick, but even so there was something inhuman about his eyes. ‘This one shows bravery when he is scared,’ Casson said to his fellows. ‘They are all scared, these mighty warriors.’ He gloated now. ‘Do not listen to them. They shame themselves in the eyes of the Blood God. We have work ahead to make them worthy.’
‘How dare–’
‘Silence!’ said Casson. ‘I have done much to prepare you for this moment, though you did not see. I will not have you spoil it. Mark them. Make them ready.’
There was an undertone to Casson’s words that killed Harrtek’s outrage dead. He lowered his hands. Paintbrushes were lifted from the pot and moved to the princeps’ skin, dripping red upon the floor. The warm marks they drew over Harrtek’s body did nothing to dispel the cold. He watched his servant, the leader of the cultists. Though he was dressed identically to the others, he assuredly was in charge, the princeps to this gaggle of moderati. His influence on them was subtle. Casson hardly spoke to the others, but he exuded an air of ready violence, and they shied from him when he came near.
I never knew he had it in him, thought Harrtek.
Warm blood ran over Harrtek’s body from the sigils they painted. It dried quickly, pulling his skin taut, until his entire body was covered with patterns of itching tightness. The acolytes worked in silence. The delicate movement of the brush relaxed him, and he was lulled into a meditative state. Beneath the calm a fury stirred, reminiscent of the machine-spirit of Nuntio Dolores, although far bigger, an infinity of endless, bloodthirsty rage. It called to him with wordless roars and the blaring of brass horns.
