Zeth stood before them, tall and golden and radiant.
'Such a thing is a gift that will allow me to lift the Imperium into a golden age of scientific progress not seen since humanity set forth from its birth-rock.'
1.05
Fabricator Locum. It was a title that carried great honour, but also one that spoke of a substitute, of a man only good enough to take up the position when one more suited was unavailable. Kane struggled against these feelings, knowing that he was as dutiful and diligent a member of the Cult Mechanicum as any, but feeling that he was somehow outside the closed loop of power.
In years past, the duty of assisting the Fabricator General with the running of Mars, the meeting of production quotas and ensuring the correct devotions to the Machine-God were observed at all times had been a rewarding and fulfilling life. Now, he spent less and less time with his master, dealing instead with the representatives of the various Legion expeditions as they continually requested more.
More guns, more ammunition, more robots; more everything.
A conversation with Straken had been the final straw.
Straken was Astartes, a warrior of the Salamanders who represented his Legion's interests on Mars. The Mechanicum held Vulkan's Legion up as an example of how affairs between the two arms of the Imperium should be conducted, their reverence for finely crafted technology making them welcome visitors to Mars.
Such relations had become strained in recent days as Straken yet again delivered his primarch's displeasure to the adepts of the Mechanicum.
'The lack of armaments and materiel reaching my primarch's Legion is becoming critical,' Straken had said, when Kane had found time to grant him an audience within his forge, a mighty foundry buried deep beneath the domed hill of Ceraunius Tholus.
'This situation cannot be allowed to continue,' said Straken, without waiting for Kane to answer. 'We have no reserves of ammunition beyond that which the forge ships of the Mechanicum contingent attached to our expedition fleet produce. Do you have any idea how much ammunition is expended by a Legion on a war footing?'
Kane was all too aware of the staggering rate at which Astartes consumed ammunition, and to think that the Salamanders were eating into the reserves produced by their few forge ships was a damning indictment of the rate of supply.
These demands were not unexpected, but recently Kane had noticed a distinct pattern emerging in their nature and pattern, a pattern he now felt moved to report to the Fabricator General.
Kane moved through the bright halls of the Olympus Mons forge complex, the burnished metal walls lit gold by the fire from the Temple of All Knowledge. Accompanied by a gaggle of servitors and menials, Kane passed through the glittering boulevards of the forge, its majestic immensity a constructed monument to the power of the Mechanicum and of the Fabricator General. Only the Imperial Palace on Terra stood mightier.
The inner sanctum of Kelbor-Hal was housed within a towering spire that jutted from the northernmost tip of the enormous forge, a peak that almost rivalled the Temple of All Knowledge in height.
A host of Skitarii stood to attention at the base of the tower, hulking brutes in gleaming breastplates, cockaded helmets of bronze and fur-lined cloaks. Taller and broader than Kane, these warriors were designed to intimidate, their bearing that of men bred to kill and feel nothing beyond the need for combat. Strength enhancers, metabolic aggression spikes and pain-suppressers were worked into their flesh as augmetics or glanded into their nervous systems, and Kane felt a shiver of nervous anticipation as he approached, reading their spiking adrenal levels in the ambient electrical field.
The lead Skitarii, a muscular giant carrying a halberd decorated with all manner of bestial talismans, stepped forward and took Kane's hand. The gesture appeared friendly, but was simply protocol and Kane felt the man's dendrites mesh with the haptic circuitry within his hand. A green light flickered behind the warrior's eyes as he processed the information.
'Fabricator Locum Kane,' agreed the warrior, releasing Kane's hand and waving him past.
Kane nodded and stepped into the tower's only entrance, a simple portal that led to an apparently empty chamber sheathed in reflective silver metal with guard rails around its perimeter. As he took his position in the centre of the chamber, the floor rotated and began to rise.
He called up a gauge onto the inner surface of his eyes, reading the progress of his ascent in binaric numbers that flashed quickly past.
As he was conveyed up the length of the spire, Kane regarded his reflection in the rippling silver walls. Kane disliked the ostentation favoured by many senior magi and embraced a simpler aesthetic in his appearance. Some called it an affectation and he allowed that they were probably right.
Of average height, Kane carried his augmetics subtly, woven within his flesh or rendered into forms less obvious than was usual on Mars. He wore simple red robes with the Icon Mechanicum worked into the fabric in gold thread, and unlike many within the Mechanicum, his face was recognisably human.
His hair was cropped close to his skull, his cheekbones finely sculpted, and a hawk-like nose gave him a patrician air he did nothing to discourage. Only the lambent blue glow behind his eyes gave any indication of the many enhancements worked into his skull.
At last the ascent came to an end, and he ceased his vain contemplation of his appearance as the floor rotated ninety degrees until a portal as plain as the one he had recently passed through came into view. Coloured light spilled into the elevator shaft, and he saw the rust-coloured sky now that he was above the perpetual smog of the forge.
Taking a moment to compose himself, Kane stepped into the Fabricator General's upper viewing dome.
As the Fabricator Locum ascended above the noxious clouds of industry, Dalia and her colleagues were about to descend. The thrill of having pleased Adept Zeth was still potent in the air, and despite her fear, Dalia could feel the anticipation of what their mistress was about to show them fizzing between them all.
Caxton held her hand like a young scholam pupil on a field trip, and Severine could not help an irrepressible grin from splitting her features. Zouche was attempting an air of nonchalance, but Dalia could see that even the laconic machinist was eager to see what lay at the end of their journey.
Only Mellicin appeared unmoved, though she had conceded that she was interested in the promise of what Zeth had to show them.
The adept had said little since approving their design for the theta-wave enhancer, instructing them to follow her to her inner forge.
Dalia and the others had stood dumbfounded for many moments, unsure as to whether they had heard Zeth's instructions correctly.
To see the innermost workings of an adept's forge was to be granted access to their most private and personal works, their obsessions and their passions. Access to such places was notoriously difficult, and only those who had earned an adept's utmost favour would ever be allowed to see what lay within.
'What do you think this Akashic reader is?' asked Severine as they wound a twisting course through the gleaming halls of Zeth's forge. 'Didn't you tell me that Zeth wanted your help to build it?'
'That's what she told me when I first met her,' agreed Dalia, watching the sway of Zeth's golden shoulders and the sashay of her mail cloak as she led them. 'But she never told me what it was.'
'What do you think it is?' inquired Caxton with a boyish grin.
Dalia shrugged. 'Whatever it is, it's something that needs the device we made to work. Perhaps it's some new kind of thinking engine?'
That thought had silenced them all.
Their journey eventually led them to a high-ceilinged chamber with a barrel vaulted roof, bereft of ostentation, in the centre of which a silver cylinder, fifty metr
es wide, rose within the middle vault.
A dozen armed servitors gathered around the cylinder, their grey-skinned bodies fused to track units, and their arms replaced with monstrous weapons surely too large to be borne without suspensors.
Dalia shared anxious looks with the others as the weapons tracked them on their approach to the cylinder. An exchange of rippling binary passed between Zeth and the servitors, and for the briefest second Dalia thought she saw darts of light flit through the air towards the servitors.
'Do not be alarmed, the praetorians will not attack unless I order them to,' said Zeth.
'Is this your inner forge?' asked Mellicin, as the servitors drew back from a slowly opening door in the gleaming walls of the cylinder.
'One of them,' offered Zeth.
'Then why only servitors to protect it? Wouldn't it be better to have guards that can think for themselves?'
'A good question,' answered Zeth, stepping through the door, 'but what I am about to show you is something that benefits from protection by those who cannot gossip.'
Dalia felt the watchful eyes of the servitors upon her, the hairs on the back of her neck rising as she felt their cauterised minds assess her level of threat. She could visualise the simple logic paths of their battle wetware, tiny decision trees that would decide whether the weaponised servitors would ignore her or obliterate her.
In her mind's eye, she began evolving that wetware, building in safeguards, null-loops and protection subsystems to avoid any paralysing logic paradoxes.
Lines of golden fire emerging from a fog…
'Planning on joining us, Dalia?'
She looked up, startled by the sound of Caxton's voice. Zeth, Rho-mu 31, Mellicin, Zouche and Severine had passed through the door, but the youthful Caxton awaited her and she smiled, faintly embarrassed to have fallen into one of her technical reveries once more.
'Of course,' she said. 'I was just thinking.'
'Anything as exciting as the theta-wave enhancer?' asked Caxton, holding out his hand.
She shook her head as she took his hand with a smile. 'No, just ways to improve the wetware of the servitors.'
'Really? You're a regular STC system, Dalia, you know that?'
'Don't tease,' said Dalia, stepping through the door with him and feeling a gust of frigid air wash over her.
The breath caught in her throat as she found herself standing on what appeared to be a funicular elevator carriage attached to the inner wall of the silver cylinder, which Dalia now saw was hollow and plummeted down into the darkness.
Dalia squeezed Caxton's hand as a sudden knot of vertigo settled in her stomach. The carriage rails spiralled downwards, and Dalia closed her eyes in fear as the doors she had just stepped through slid shut behind her.
'You are uncomfortable with this mode of transport?' asked Rho-mu 31.
'I don't like heights,' gasped Dalia. 'I never have.'
'Don't worry,' said Zouche. 'Can't see the bottom, so you can't tell how high we are.'
'That doesn't help,' snapped Dalia.
Zouche shrugged. 'Oh, I thought it might.'
'Well it doesn't, so keep thoughts like that to yourself!'
'Just trying to put your mind at ease,' grumbled Zouche.
Dalia yelped as the funicular car began its spiralling descent with a jolt, gaining speed as Zeth pushed out the throttle. Her breath came in short, hiking gulps, the analytical part of her brain processing that the air was cold, far colder than she might have expected, even allowing for the speed they travelled through the echoing empty space.
She kept her eyes shut as the carriage spiralled deeper and deeper into the bowels of Zeth's forge. The air was chill in her lungs and she opened her eyes to see a cloud of breath misting before her mouth.
Cracked white lines of ice were forming on the metal guard rails of the carriage.
'It's cold,' said Dalia. 'Look, there's frost on the metal.'
'So there is,' said Caxton, releasing her hand and wrapping his arm around her.
'Don't you think that's odd?'
'Odd how?'
'We're descending into the planet's surface or at least below a lagoon of lava, so I'd have thought it would be getting warmer.'
Caxton shrugged, giving her shoulder a reassuring squeeze. 'The wonders of the Mechanicum, I guess.'
Dalia forced a smile as the car continued on its interminable descent, once again screwing her eyes tightly shut.
It seemed they had been travelling for hours, though Dalia knew it could only have been ten minutes at the most. Other than the few words she had exchanged with Caxton, the journey was wordless, yet Dalia had the distinct impression that someone was speaking to her.
She looked over at her fellow travellers. Each was engrossed in the journey, either craning their necks upwards to the spot of light at the top of the cylinder, or leaning over the edges of the railings to penetrate the gloom below.
None, however, were speaking.
Dalia squinted in puzzlement as she stared at Adept Zeth and Rho-mu 31, seeing a ghostly nimbus of light floating above their heads that rippled like a sheet of luminous gauze. Flickering scraps of light darted between Zeth and her Protectors, as though they were communicating in some non-verbal manner.
Was she hearing echoes of that communication?
As though aware of the scrutiny, Adept Zeth turned to face her and Dalia guiltily turned away, closing her eyes and concentrating on the sounds she had heard. The rumbling of the carriage was loud, yet Dalia felt she could hear something beyond the squeal of the metal wheels along the rails.
Something soft, a whisper of far away… a chorus of commingled voices.
'Do you hear that?' she asked.
'Hear what?' asked Caxton.
'Those voices.'
'Voices? No, I don't, but then I can't hear anything much beyond the noise of this elevator,' said Caxton. 'I wonder when its last maintenance check was?'
Dalia fought the urge to snap at him for that remark. 'I swore I could hear somebody whispering. Do any of the rest of you hear it?'
'I hear nothing,' said Zouche, 'except that the bearings on this carriage need replacing.'
'Thanks for that,' said Dalia. 'Severine? Mellicin?'
Both women shook their heads, and Dalia risked a glance over the railings, seeing a change in the texture of darkness below and realising that the carriage was approaching the bottom of the shaft.
Dalia caught a glance pass between Rho-mu 31 and Adept Zeth. Though their faces were covered, she could tell from their body language that they knew what she was asking about.
'You hear them, don't you?' asked Dalia. 'Your hearing is augmented. You must hear it. It's like a thousand voices all whispering at once, but as though they're really far away or behind a thick wall or something.'
Adept Zeth shook her head. 'No, Dalia. I don't hear them, but I know they are there. The reason you hear them is one of the reasons you are so special to me.'
'What do you mean?'
'You mean she's right?' asked Zouche. 'There really are voices here?'
'In a manner of speaking,' said Zeth with a nod. 'But most people will never hear them.'
'Why not?' asked Dalia, hearing the voices grow louder, like the sound she imagined the waves made on a shoreline, though without any sense of the words they spoke. 'Why can I hear them and no one else here can?'
The carriage began to slow, coming to a halt at the base of the cylinder with the smallest bump. The ground was floored with marble threaded with silver and gold wiring that glittered as though alive with current.
A number of unremarkable steel doors exited the chamber, but Dalia's eyes were drawn to a steady pulse of light that spilled through a low archway in one silver wall. She knew in the marrow of her bones that the source of the voices lay beyond it.
'All will become clear in time,' said Adept Zeth, 'but save your questions until I have shown you the wonders that lie within my forge.'
Kelbor-Hal sto
od at the very edge of the dome with his back to Kane and his hood drawn up over his elongated head. Waving manip arms were poised at his shoulders, and one turned as Kane approached. Beside the Fabricator General was the ebony-skinned automaton of Lukas Chrom, its smooth, featureless face turning towards him with apparent curiosity.
Kane disliked automatons, as he hated all attempts to mimic the perfection of the human form by mechanical means. As a mark of respect, Chrom had also gifted an automaton to Kane the previous year, but he had never activated it and it remained without power in one of the tech-vaults of Mondus Occulum.
No, the human condition could be enhanced and augmented with technology, but should never be replicated or replaced by technology.
Kane allowed himself a tight smile. The Technotheologians of Cydonia Mensae would have a field day with such apparent contradictions inherent in his thoughts. That a man so enhanced by the boons of technology should so resist the inevitable meld of human and machine.
He felt the automaton scan his biometrics, reading his identity in the organic portions of his flesh, and his electrical resonance field that was as much a unique signature - if not more so - as any gene-print.
The Fabricator General was an imposing individual, a figure rendered massively tall by the machine parts and bulky augmetics that had replaced eighty-seven point six per cent of his flesh. Mechadendrites, alive with blades, saws and myriad other attachments waved at his back, while innumerable data wheels pulsed within him. Kane wondered how much of a body could be replaced with technology and still be called human.
A green glow emanated from within Kelbor-Hal's hood, his machine face alive with flickering lights, and his internal structure whirring with activity. Kane knew better than to interrupt whatever cogitations his master was calculating, and cast his gaze through the thick glass over the glorious, sacred soil of Mars.
The entire eastern flank of Olympus Mons was laid out before him, layered with tier upon tier of engine houses, forges, docks, ore-smelteries and assembly shops that reached from the ground to the very summit of the long-dead volcano. Spires and smoke stacks clung to the mountain like a metallic fungus, hives of industry working day and night to provide for the Emperor's armies.
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