Mechanicum
Page 23
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Do not speak to her if you can avoid it.’
‘Have no worries about that,’ promised Polk. ‘Not if my life depended on it.’
‘Let us hope it does not come to that, Polk,’ said Zeth. ‘But her presence here cannot be a good thing.’
‘Surely the Fabricator General has merely despatched her as a guard for the ambassador after all the troubles we have had,’ said Polk, his tone begging for reassurance.
‘Perhaps, but I doubt it. To act merely as a bodyguard would be seen as beneath the skills of a tech-priest assassin.’
‘Then why is she here?’
Zeth felt her irritation at Polk’s questions grow, but forced it down. ‘I expect we shall find out soon enough,’ she said. This meeting with Kelbor-Hal’s lackey would need a clear head and Zeth could not afford to be distracted by Polk’s fear, even though it mirrored her own.
The tech-priest assassins were a body of mysterious and aloof killers who had existed since the settling of Mars in the distant past. A law unto themselves, they answered to no authority save that of unknown masters said to dwell in the shadows of the Cydonia Mensae.
Melgator and his accomplice reached the plinth beneath the great portico, and Zeth wondered if this was how she was going to die, struck down by an assassin’s blade, her vital fluids pouring down the steps of her forge.
Melgator smiled, though Zeth found nothing reassuring in its reptilian insincerity. The ambassador and his companion came towards her, passing into the splayed shadows of the piston columns and golden portico. Melgator moved with the clicking gait of one whose lower limbs were augmetic, while the assassin flowed across the milky white marble of the floor as though on ice.
Zeth saw that the assassin’s legs were long and multi-jointed, fused together just above the ankles by a spar of metal, below which her legs ended not in feet, but in a complex series of magno-gravitic thrusters that skimmed her along just off the ground. Her athletic form was beautifully deadly, honed to perfect physicality by a rigorous regime of physical exercise, gene-manipulation and surgical augmentation.
Melgator stopped before Zeth and bowed deeply, his arms spread wide.
‘Adept Zeth,’ he began. ‘It is a pleasure to once again visit your unique forge.’
‘You are welcome, Ambassador Melgator,’ said Zeth. ‘This is my magos-apprenta, Adept Polk.’
She left her words hanging and Melgator read the pause expertly. He turned towards his companion, who wore a facemask fashioned in the form of a grinning crimson skull with a horn of gleaming metal jutting from its chin.
‘This is my… associate, Remiare,’ said Melgator.
Zeth nodded towards Remiare and the assassin inclined her head a fraction in acknowledgement. Zeth took a second to study the hardwired targeting apparatus grafted to Remiare’s mask and the long snake-like sensor tendrils that swam in the air from the rear portion of her cranium.
‘And what brings you to my forge?’ asked Zeth, turning and leading Melgator towards the wall of bronze doors that led within. Polk dropped back to stand at her right shoulder, while Melgator and Remiare fell in smoothly to her left.
‘I come to you as a great shadow hangs over our beloved planet, Adept Zeth. Disaster strikes Mars at every turn and in times of such trouble friends should stand shoulder to shoulder.’
‘Indeed,’ replied Zeth as they passed into the forge and along its silver-skinned arterial halls. ‘We have suffered greatly and much has been lost that can never be recovered.’
‘Alas, you speak the truth,’ said Melgator, and Zeth could barely keep the contempt she felt for his false concern from her field auras. ‘Thus it is ever more imperative that friends should acknowledge one another and do whatever is necessary to aid one another.’
Zeth did not answer Melgator’s leading comment and turned into Aetna’s Processional, a passageway of ouslite walls and burning braziers that led into a high-ceilinged chamber at the heart of Adept Zeth’s forge.
Formed from the intertwining of twisted columns of silver and gold, the web-like walls rose to a tapered point above the centre of the chamber. Gracefully curved sheets of burnished steel and crystal rippled overhead, winding through the columns to form an impossibly beautiful latticework roof, like glittering shards of ice frozen in the moment of shattering. The toxic skies of Mars were visible through the gaps in the columns as angled slivers of cadmium, hazed by the void shielding that surrounded the highest peak of the forge.
Beneath the apex of the roof, a wide shaft descended into the depths of the forge and a fiery orange glow billowed upwards from the heart of the magma far below. Searing heat and waves of energising power rippled the air over the shaft as Melgator made appropriately impressed noises.
Receptors like thin, slitted gills opened in the folds of his neck as Melgator partook of the invisible currents of drifting electricity.
Remiare paid the hot majesty of the space no mind, her own energy receptors kept hidden beneath her body-glove, and Zeth felt as though the assassin’s attention was focused firmly on the cardinal weak points of her bronze armour. She shared a glance with Magos Polk, who assumed a deferential pose beside her with his hand tucked into the sleeves of his robe.
‘It has been too long since I stood within the Chamber of Vesta,’ said Melgator. ‘Your current is exquisite. I can almost feel the fire of the red planet within me.’
‘It has always been here,’ pointed out Zeth. ‘Those who are friends to the Magma City are always welcome to take sustenance within its walls.’
‘Then I should hope you count the Fabricator General amongst such friends.’
‘Why should I not?’ asked Zeth. ‘Kelbor-Hal has never expressed his displeasure with me. He continues the great work of the Mechanicum, does he not?’
‘Indeed he does,’ said Melgator quickly. ‘And he sends me to you in the spirit of peace in these dark days of loss and death to assure you of his continued goodwill.’
‘The spirit of peace,’ said Zeth, walking around the shaft in the centre of the chamber. Polk made to follow her, but she waved him away. The heat was intense and she could feel her organic portions begin to sweat. ‘Is that why you come to me in the company of one of the Sisters of Cydonia?’
‘These are troubled times, Adept Zeth,’ said Melgator.
‘You said that already.’
‘I am aware of that, but it is a point I cannot make strongly enough,’ replied Melgator. ‘An enemy strikes at us, weakens our forges, and only a fool dares to travel without precautions.’
‘An assassin is a precaution?’ asked Zeth, turning towards Remiare. ‘Has the Cydonian Sisterhood fallen so far that they are now mere bodyguards?’
The assassin cocked her head to one side, like a bird of prey regarding a helpless morsel, and though glistening fabric obscured her expression, Zeth felt an acute tremor along the adamantium curve of her spine.
‘I can taste your fear of me,’ said Remiare softly, her eyes like black marbles behind the horned death mask. ‘Yet still you bait me with barbed words. Why would you do this when you know I can kill you?’
Zeth controlled her breathing and metabolic rate with a measured release of glanded stimms as Melgator said, ‘There will be no killing, Remiare. This is a mission of renewed friendship in a time when allies are to be more prized than pure-streaming data.’
Melgator turned to Zeth, his hands held out before him. ‘Yes, I bring a warrior to your forge, but it is only because our very way of existence is threatened that I come so accompanied.’
‘Threatened by whom? Does the Fabricator General know who unleashed the corrupt code into the Martian systems.’
‘He does not know for certain, but he has strong suspicions,’ replied Melgator.
> ‘Any you would care to divulge?’
Melgator began circling the fire shaft towards Zeth, lacing his hands behind his back as he walked.
‘Perhaps,’ nodded Melgator. ‘But may I first ask how the Magma City escaped the devastation so many other, less fortunate, forges suffered?’
Zeth hesitated, unsure of how much Melgator knew and how much he only suspected. In truth, she wasn’t entirely sure why her forge had been spared, though she had her suspicions, none of which she was comfortable sharing with a minion of the Fabricator General.
In the end she decided on a partial truth. ‘I believe the singular nature of the noosphere prevented the debased code from entering my systems,’ she said.
‘And yet the forges of Ipluvien Maximal and Fabricator Locum Kane suffered in the attack. They have recently upgraded their information networks to the noosphere, have they not? So perhaps there is some other reason you were spared?
‘Then might it be the latest endeavour taking shape within your Inner Forge? It has not gone unnoticed that your newest creation, whatever it is, requires lowly transcribers sequestered from Terra and a great many psykers secretly brought down from the Black Ships.’
‘How can you think you know what goes on within my inner forge?’ asked Zeth, shaken to the core of her being that Melgator was aware of such things.
Melgator laughed. ‘Come now, Adept Zeth. You think the workings of any adept on Mars are truly hidden? Information is woven into every passage of electrons across the surface of the red planet and you know how the spirits of machines love to share their secrets.’
‘The workings of my forge are my own to know, Melgator,’ snapped Zeth. ‘As I said, I believe that it was my adoption of the noosphere that saved my forge from destruction.’
Melgator smiled ruefully. ‘Very well, I will accept that. Perhaps if you had freely shared the technology of the noosphere with your fellow adepts then Mars might have been spared the horror of the Death of Innocence.’
‘Perhaps if the Fabricator General had put more faith in the noosphere when I presented it to him, that might have been the case,’ countered Zeth.
Melgator smiled, conceding the point. ‘May I speak frankly, Adept Zeth?’
‘Of course, the Chamber of Vesta is a place of honest discourse.’
‘Then I will be blunt,’ said Melgator. ‘My master believes he knows the source of the attack on our infrastructure and he seeks to rally all true sons and daughters of Ares to the defence of Mars.’
‘The defence of Mars?’ asked Zeth, nonplussed. ‘Defence against whom?’
‘Against Terra.’
Zeth was stunned. Of all the answers she had expected Melgator to give, this had not been amongst them. She tried to cover her surprise, by turning and looking out over the Martian landscape. The sky was turning from blue to purple, heavy, toxin-laden clouds sparking with lightning over the distant forge of Mondus Gamma.
‘Terra,’ she said, slowly as though tasting the word for the first time.
‘Terra,’ repeated Melgator. ‘Now that the Great Crusade is almost at an end, the Emperor desires to end his union with Mars and take our world for his own.’
‘Kelbor-Hal thinks the Emperor attacked us?’ asked Zeth, spinning to face Melgator. ‘Do you realise how insane that sounds?’
Melgator approached her with a pleading look. ‘Is it insane to want to hold on to what we have built here over the millennia, Adept Zeth? Is it insanity to suspect that a man who has all but conquered the entire galaxy should allow one world among millions to remain aloof from his empire? No, the attack on our world’s information systems was but the first strike in breaking the Treaty of Olympus and bringing the Mechanicum to heel.’
Zeth laughed in his face. ‘I see now why you brought this assassin with you, Melgator – in case I should call you traitor and have you killed.’
Melgator’s stance changed from one of supplication to one of aggression in an instant and hands that had once been outstretched towards her now dropped to his sides.
‘You would do well to choose your next words carefully, Adept Zeth.’
‘Why would that be? Will you have Remiare here kill me if you don’t like them?’
‘No,’ said Melgator. ‘I would not be so foolish as to anger the Omnissiah by murdering an adept of Mars in her own forge.’
‘The Omnissiah?’ spat Zeth. ‘You speak of the Emperor breaking faith with the Mechanicum and in the next breath use him as a reason not to murder me?’
‘I speak of the Omnissiah as an aspect of the Machine-God yet to manifest, not the Emperor.’
‘Most believe them to be one and the same.’
‘But not you?’
‘You already know what I believe,’ said Zeth, angered beyond caution. ‘There is no Machine-God. Technology is science and reason, not superstition and blind faith. It’s what I’ve always believed and it’s what I still believe. Now if you’re not going to kill me, get out of my forge!’
‘Are you sure about this, Zeth?’ asked Melgator. ‘Turning your back on the Fabricator General will have dire consequences.’
‘Is that a threat?’
‘A threat? No, merely a reiteration that we live in dangerous times and that the friendship of powerful allies would be no bad thing in the days ahead.’
‘Friendship? Kelbor-Hal asks me to side with him against Terra!’ barked Zeth. ‘What manner of friend would ask such a thing?’
Melgator slid his hands into the sleeves of his robes. ‘The kind that knows what is best for Mars.’
MELGATOR SLOWLY DESCENDED the steps of Zeth’s forge, savouring the memory of Adept Zeth’s admission of her disbelief in the Machine-God. It was all the excuse the Fabricator General needed to seize the Magma City and learn all the secrets of her forge, and Zeth had handed it to them on a plate.
He wiped a hand across his brow. Sweat beaded on his forehead in the intolerably dry heat that wrapped the city like a shroud. Melgator had travelled far and wide in his role as ambassador, but this place had to rank as one of the most inhospitable on Mars.
The sooner it was plundered and laid to waste the better.
Beside him, Remiare hovered effortlessly above the steps, her masked face unreadable in the orange-lit gloom.
‘Zeth knows why she escaped the scrapcode’s attack,’ said Melgator. ‘Or at least she suspects she knows.’
‘Of course,’ answered Remiare. ‘Her apprenta was bleeding fear and information from his noospheric aura. I have stored everything I could access from his files on Zeth’s work in my memory coils, and I will exload them to the Fabricator General’s logic engines upon our return to Olympus Mons.’
‘You can lift data from the noosphere? I didn’t know that,’ said Melgator, more than a little unnerved.
‘Of course, the secrets of the noosphere are well known to the Sisters of Cydonia. As are the means to manipulate the mind structure beyond it.’
‘What about his aegis barrier?’
‘Simplicity itself to overcome.’
‘Did he notice your presence?’ asked Melgator.
‘No, but I decided to fuse the portions of his mind that would have remembered anyway.’
‘If he did not detect your intrusion, why the need to burn out his memory synapses?’
Remiare turned her deathly face towards him, and Melgator was reminded that the assassins of Cydonia did not take kindly to questions.
‘Because I enjoy making living things suffer,’ said Remiare. ‘Zeth’s apprenta will no longer be able to form memories that last. His usefulness as an individual is at an end.’
Melgator swallowed, warier than ever of the monstrous creature beside him.
At last he reached the bottom of the steps, where a skimmer palanquin of
bronze and polished timber panels stood ready to carry him to the landing platform upon which his transport waited.
‘So how did Zeth defeat the scrapcode attack?’
The black, soulless marbles of Remiare’s eyes flickered as she retrieved and sorted the data. ‘I do not know and nor does Zeth, not completely, though the apprenta was of the opinion that a female named Dalia Cythera was responsible.’
‘The transcriber Zeth brought from Terra? She did it?’
‘So it would seem.’
‘Then we need to eliminate her as soon as possible,’ said Melgator. ‘Where is she?’
‘Unknown. Her biometrics are not registered in the Martian database.’
‘She was working in Zeth’s forge and she’s not even Cult Mechanicum?’
‘Apparently not.’
‘Ah, Zeth, you’re almost making it too easy for us,’ chuckled Melgator. ‘Can you track this Dalia Cythera?’
‘I can, but it will be easier just to take the information from the people she knows,’ said Remiare. ‘Archived work dockets list her as being assigned to a team of four individuals: Zouche Chahaya, Severine Delmer, Mellicin Oster and Caxton Torgau. Only Mellicin Oster is still within the Magma City.’
‘Where?’
‘Within Arsia Mons sub-hive Epsilon-Aleph-Ultima,’ said Remiare. ‘Fiftieth floor, shutter seventeen. Off shift until 07:46 tomorrow morning.’
‘Find her,’ hissed Melgator. ‘Learn everything she knows.’
THE MAG-LEV WAS full, every seat taken, but the threatening presence of Rho-mu 31 assured them a private cabin, though it was still cramped with the five of them wedged in tight. Rho-mu 31 stood at the door to their cabin, his weapon stave held tight across his chest, leaving the four seats for Zouche, Dalia, Severine and Caxton.
Zouche and Severine sat across from her, and Caxton lay with his head on her shoulder, snoring softly. The pale, artificial light from the window gleamed from his tonsure’s scalp, and Dalia smiled as she leaned back against the faux leather chair. She looked out over the Martian landscape as the rest of her companions slept. Even Rho-mu 31 was resting, the glow of his eyes dimmed as he conserved power, though his internal auspex was still vigilant.