by Guy Haley
‘Who told you this?’ said Yeha Yeha, her voice high with incredulity. They were all gloveless and helmless, waiting for a battle that might never come.
Jephenir shrugged. ‘Locals,’ she said, as if that explained it, though the opportunities to meet any of the world’s inhabitants were so limited as to be non-existent. ‘It’s the Carthega Telepathica. All those witches in one place – they wear the walls of reality thin. The warp is not far away.’ She glanced sidelong at the empty station of Mephani Ohana. There had been no replacement for her. What few crew the Legio had to spare came only from destroyed engines; there had been no new recruits for over a year, and the members of the Legio finding themselves bereft of a post had been sent to bolster the efforts on Beta-Garmon II.
Mephani Ohana’s communications bench had been cleaned, but it was impossible to get all the blood out under wartime conditions; the whole station needed disassembly, and there was no time for that. Bits of her clung to the machinery where she had spent so much of her life. The area around her console smelled of counterseptic that could not entirely hide the scent of blood.
Esha betrayed no sign of movement, but her attention followed Jephenir’s to the dead woman’s seat. Her own wounds ached as she looked upon the empty chair. Neither she nor Domine Ex Venari had fully recovered from the neuro-slave attack.
‘What do you know about the warp?’ said Yeha Yeha.
‘A lot more than I did when this war started. I thought…’
‘Don’t think,’ snapped Yeha Yeha. ‘Watch. Keep your eyes open and your mind closed.’
Jephenir looked sullen. ‘Yes, moderati primus,’ she said.
Esha stayed out of their argument. She breathed deeply of the stale air. Jephenir had a point. There was something odd about the location. When Esha was in the machine’s mind it barely affected her, but out of it she felt light-headed and hunted, as if she were being watched.
She pulled an irritated face. She was falling for the same insane superstitions ripping through the Imperial side, talk of ghosts and daemons and wicked things living on the other side of thought. Hers were wars of steel and fire, not magic. The things that swam in the empyrean were real, objectively so, but though nightmarish, they were also real enough to kill. They were just an exotic form of xeno-organism, that was all, and therefore worthy of contempt.
The wind blew hard in challenge of her thoughts, screaming outrage through the cabling of the Titan. The princeps shifted her eyes to one of the brightest points in the head, a bank of small notification lights that flickered lazily with each of the more powerful gusts. The storm’s rain was laden with corrosive salts blasted up from the dead plains. Omega-6 had modulated the void shields to keep the worst of it out, but voids were poor protection against so feeble a force as the wind. Most of it got through along with its caustic cargo, and the alkalis were slowly but surely eating their way into Domine Ex Venari’s body.
It would take centuries to compromise the Titan’s armour plating, but the cabling was vulnerable. Though hyper-plastek and banded plasteel protected the large pipes leading to the weapons and the major joints, they had large surface areas, and many joins whose seals would not hold up forever. The hydraulics would be all right for weeks, she thought, but maybe not the electrical cabling, fine as it was and so diffusely spread throughout the giant machine. The lights showed the status of the motive-force current through wires ranging from man-thick to hair-thin. Green for hale insulation. Amber for minor, intermittent shorts. Red for short-circuited. Of the dozens of little lumens, a handful were green. A lot flickered between green and amber. None, as yet, were red.
She squeezed the armrests of her command throne beside the never-used manual controls. There were little dimples from the many times she had done it before, always when waiting for battle. Years of her frustrations had left saggy areas in the leather, topped with white half-moon scars where her nails had pressed.
On an impulse, she depressed the vox switch by the motivator throttle on her left armrest.
‘Maniple, announce yourselves,’ she said. She was not linked into the machine. Domine Ex Venari slept through the storm, facing into the rain like an agricola bovid. Esha Ani Mohana relied purely on the vox to communicate, technology aeons old used by the humblest soldiers of the Imperium.
Her Titans responded in order of hierarchy. Her maniple first, then the strays attached to her command. With each princeps she held a short conversation. Little was to be said beyond matters of lights blinking from green to amber, and voices on the wind. They were all as bored and tense as she was. As Esha held her brief conference, Jephenir whispered a request for permission to leave the czella to Yeha Yeha, who granted it. She came back before Esha’s roll call was finished, bearing mugs of scalding recaff for them all. They sat in silence, sipping the overheated liquid. A plasma reactor was useful for many things, but harnessing its exhaust to do something as simple as boil water for beverages required a certain level of skill. They were natural hunters all, but additional training was required for the crew before they were let loose on the atrium kettle.
Without access to Domine Ex Venari’s senses, and the small window over the augur lenses of the eyes shuttered against the storm, Esha relied on the czella’s internal screen for a view to the outside. When the last princeps voice clicked away, she stared at it. From where they were stationed they had a good view of the Carthega Telepathica’s base. The scale of the structure amplified the feelings of otherworldly power that surrounded it.
The Carthega Telepathica was rooted in the mountain’s top. However high the original peak was, it could not have compared with mankind’s improvement on geology. The needle speared the sky, the tallest manmade structure in the entire subsector. They could see only the lowest reaches of its smooth sides. Alkali clouds obscured the rest, but one had an impression of its size by the thickness of the shaft. The top was as slender as a blade, and cut into the airless void. At the base it was three miles thick, a monstrous, featureless grey, made of an exotic combination of various ’cretes, no window to break the smooth surface, nor any other mark besides.
In construction it was two tall triangles intersecting each other in a cruciform cross section, rising up as a hollow-sided pyramid. Its only other feature was the forests of hawsers, thicker than Titans were tall, that descended from the heavens. They were anchored to giant plugs driven far into Beta-Garmon III’s hide all around the mountain, but from the Legio’s perspective these anchor points were not visible, and the cables seemed like spears rammed home into the world. Every three hundred metres on the hawsers’ lengths, a warning beacon shone. Every hawser had dozens of them, so that a shoal of red lights thronged the sky, bright and unwavering, like predator’s eyes.
Esha let her gaze rise up the hawsers. Simple trigonometry gave her an idea of the needle’s height; the Carthega Telepathica was so high, and the anchor ring so far above the cloud layer, that the hawsers were virtually parallel to the shaft of the tower.
Somewhere dozens of kilometres up was the astropathic temple itself. Esha had observed it as they descended from orbit. Seemingly small atop the spire that supported it, the temple was in fact large enough to house a relay choir of a thousand astropaths, and all their attendants.
‘There are not many sights I have seen that made me feel small when in command of a Titan,’ Esha Ani Mohana said quietly. ‘That temple is one of them.’
‘Yeah, well, the bigger they come,’ Yeha Yeha said with a shrug.
Jephenir scowled at her. ‘Don’t say such ill-favoured things!’
‘Says the lady with the ghost fixation,’ said the moderati primus. ‘Anyway, I outrank you, so I can say what I like.’
A chime from the oratorius desk interrupted the argument before it could become heated. Being cooped up in the head without the harmony of the MIU was testing for them all.
Yeha Yeha leaned back from her chair and
glanced at Mephani Ohana’s station. She looked up at Esha.
‘Priority message, for you alone. Region command.’
‘I’ll take it in the atrium,’ she said. ‘Cease your arguments, both of you. Run weapons and systems checks with the moderati bellatus. If the enemy come I want to be ready.’ She looked out across the barren, rain-lashed mountainsides displayed upon the vidscreen. Yellow streams boiled down gullies. Toxic mist hurried over knife-edge ridges to wherever they were going. The terrain was poor ground for Titan conflict. ‘If they come,’ she said, and headed out into the atrium.
She sat herself at the chart desk, keyed in her ident code and set the device to hololithic communications. A light sculpture of Reesan Modano coalesced into being from a cloud of dancing motes. The transmission was restricted to a haughty face atop shoulders, so that he appeared like a bad holographic memorial bust of the kind sold to civilians on post-compliance words. He was princeps seniores of the Warp Runners who, by dint of having the most Titans on the mountain, was in overall command. Esha had fought with him at Hansu Hive several weeks before. She didn’t like him. She got the impression he didn’t like her.
He had a weak chin. She never trusted men with weak chins.
‘Ah,’ he said, as if surprised to see her. ‘I have a spot of bad news, I’m afraid.’
Esha’s heart clenched. She feared for her mother. ‘Beta-Garmon II? Nyrcon?’ she said.
Modano laughed lightly, a meaningless, practised aristocratic pleasantry that set her teeth on edge. ‘Oh well, no, not really. The battle proceeds there, as far as I’m aware. No, it’s here, Beta-Garmon III. It looks like we’ve been rather out-manoeuvred. The traitors have launched an attack on Caldera City. I wouldn’t be surprised if this whole thing at Nyrcon wasn’t a ruse. I did vote against it myself but–’
‘How many?’ Esha cut across him. Modano had a tendency to prattle on.
‘Steady on, old girl, I am in command here,’ he said, bristling. He recovered his mask of amiability quickly. ‘It’s a major attack a–’
His image broke up suddenly, disintegrating into a shower of firefly sparks. They whirled about in an abortive attempt to make some other picture that Esha had a sudden and sincere desire not to see. She adjusted the machine’s settings. Modano did not return.
‘I’ve lost you. I repeat, I’ve lost you. Please remodulate projection parameters for heavy interference.’
Nothing for a moment, then shortly Modano reappeared, as icily affable as ever.
‘Sorry about that. Hololiths, eh? Cast an image instantaneously across a planetary system, but get a bit of weather in the way…’
‘You were saying. Enemy strength.’
‘I was, wasn’t I? Major. Large elements of the Sons of Horus Traitor Legion. Several Titan Legios.’
‘All his Titans were supposed to be at Nyrcon.’
‘Well then, it rather appears we underestimated his strength. I’m ordering half of our Titans to make for Caldera at all speed. If they push their reactors, they’ll be there before nightfall tomorrow. This bloody weather will slow them down, but give them fine cover from the traitor fleet. It looks like we’ve been caught out. Horus wants Caldera.’
‘Why?’ said Esha. ‘What benefit is there to him in taking the planetary capital?’
‘Why? To stake claim to this whole system. If he takes Caldera, that leaves our boys at Beta-Garmon Three a touch out of luck. Once he has control over Caldera, Beta-Garmon Three will fall, and Nyrcon will most likely hold against our attack. We’ll be driven out of the system, and the traitors will have a clear run at the Throneworld. Needless to say, I’d prefer not to be the chap that lets that happen. History is always cruel to men who make mistakes. You’re staying here. Your little troop of hunters is perfect to hold this terrain, but I’m sending the heavy hitters over to Caldera immediately.’
‘I don’t think you should,’ said Esha. The wind blew louder. Domine Ex Venari shook. The voices whispered entreaties to her.
‘Why on earth not?’
‘What if it’s another feint?’
‘Another feint?’
‘To draw us away from here. The Diviner’s Needle is the chief link we have to Terra.’
Modano’s grainy features pulled in, and he shook his head. ‘Communications denial? I don’t think the needle is worth his time, not for that. Besides, since the warp storms blew out, we can get through without this relay. No, I believe he wants to consolidate his hold here, let his men have an easy passage. Nyrcon was a feint. Caldera Primus is the true target. Besides, he has no more Titans. This is it. He’s committed his reserves. What kind of leader indulges in a double feint for a target of low value?’
‘One who bears the title Warmaster,’ she said flatly.
‘With all due respect, huntress, you are wrong.’
‘At least contact the Primarch Sanguinius,’ she said.
‘Why? For this? Not every battle is a match of cunning. Sometimes, and especially in engine war, brute force is the key to victory. He has shown us his hand – we should respond with a fist. My orders stand. Modano out.’
The image collapsed, plunging the atrium back into gloom. She sat there while the hololith sang its drawn-out song of deactivation, a plunging note that took forever to die.
Odani Jehan pulled herself out of the right-hand weapons deck, yawning widely and scratching at her head.
‘I woke you,’ said Esha. She regretted it. She did not foresee much rest in their future.
‘It doesn’t matter.’ Odani leaned on the worktop by the Titan’s tiny galley kitchen opposite Esha. ‘What was all that about?’
‘The end of the world, maybe,’ she said. She got up. ‘Eat. Prepare yourself.’ She checked her wrist chrono. ‘We enter the manifold in twenty-five minutes. The enemy are attacking Caldera Primus. If I’m right, it won’t be long before they’re here too.’
Twenty-Six
The Titandeath
Hours became days became a week. The Titans continued their war against each other to the point of exhaustion and beyond. Luxor Invictoria’s czella grew rank with human waste. There was no time for the moderati to leave their stations. A minimum of sustenance was automatically pumped into their bodies via nasal tubes and arterial shunts. Without them, the crew would have starved to death, if they did not die of dehydration first. They were bonded to machine at the deepest level, hardly aware of their mortal bodies. The need for human speech dwindled. They reacted together, fighting as one entity of a single mind. They shared their thoughts through the manifold, and though they still shouted out ranges and warnings, or gave orders, they did so mechanically, like the reflexes of a lowly servitor. Their voices lost humanity. Often they said the same thing at the same time.
Only the Great Mother retained a sense of self, for she was Luxor Invictoria.
Together, the Great Mother and Luxor Invictoria killed their kin. Earth-shattering weapons slew metal giants. The plains around Nyrcon were littered with the burning corpses of fallen mechanical gods. Such slaughter she had never seen. She wished it had remained that way.
Over the days the borders between her mind and the Titan’s thinned to nothing. She remembered the first binding, the touch of the machine through the mind impulse unit. She remembered its soul, raw and powerful, yet skittish as any horse, new born and defiant of a world it did not yet understand.
She remembered taming it.
She remembered the events as the Titan too, his inchoate thoughts, images of things he had no names for and therefore no true concept of, ideas that would never have form until a human mind touched and shaped them.
The first time the Great Mother had come into Luxor Invictoria’s being, the faint traces of the other machines she had mastered clung to her soul like outdoor scents brought indoors. They frightened and calmed the machine at the same time. To the Titan’s simple mi
nd, it was as if a god descended through the fuzzy murk of incomprehensible data and ignited his soul with a touch.
Through Mohana’s humour, the Titan found the recollection amusing. Possessed by the Titan’s detachment, Mohana found the memory irrelevant to the ongoing situation. Where one being began and the other ended no theolog or deimechanic would be able to discern. This heightened union was the acme of the princep’s art. Time and experience were the only way to reach full enlightenment, and then only for a select few.
Mohana Mankata Vi was the first of the first of her Legio, the founding master, the mother of machines. Now she was the last of the first. Her companions had died in battle or from age as the Great Crusade went on, until only she remained to witness this new, terrible era of civil war. In its fires, her daughters died. A fear that she would be left alone kindled in her breast. Luxor Invictoria wailed at the sharing.
In her infologs were kept the deaths of all members of her Legio. Plotted against time, the numbers formed a graph line that revealed the Legio’s wars. It went up with each conflict and dropped with every short period of peace. Sometimes one or two god-engines would be lost, sometimes more, but never had so many been lost so quickly. The numbers rose from the beginning of Horus’ betrayal, the line losing its smooth progress, climbing in jagged steps through Paramar, and Edessa, Jantamer and Elp. Then onto this campaign, where it rose ever more steeply, through Theta-Garmon, Beta-Garmon III and other engagements, until it soared high during the Third Battle of Nyrcon, this death of Titans. Hers was not the only Legio to suffer. She saw the corpses of many noble orders and the same count of traitors besides, though in all the wrecks she saw not one engine of the Legio Mortis, the Warmaster’s favoured. This would have given her pause were she not numbed with grief.
Tangled in the wreckage of Titans from forty Legios were the majority of Mohana Mankata Vi’s kin.
