by Ben Counter
'Do you know which tech-priests she answers to?' asked Nyxos. 'Archmagos Saphentis is out of communication - is she acting of her own accord?'
'It is doubtful. She has frequent high-level encrypted communications. I believe they are with the subsector Adeptus Mechanicus command but she has not been forthcoming about the Mechanicus command structure here.'
'Well, I'll just have to convince her to be more open.'
Leung, Nyxos and the armsmen following them reached a cargo-sized elevator and Leung keyed a sequence into the keypad that controlled it. The elevator's platform ground upwards, rising through a deep square shaft as it passed many intermediate decks. Nyxos saw glimpses of the other decks as they passed - some looked like research labs, with endless benches of baffling equipment and robed tech-priests poring over crucibles or microscopes. Others housed massive banks of cogitators, cooled by freezing mist that clung to the floor like standing water. Tech-guard drilled on internal parade grounds of beaten bronze, ranks of servitors hung motionless on recharging racks, enormous tangles of complex machinery relayed the plasma generators' energy throughout the ship. Rust-red and brass were the dominant colours, a distant mechanical din the prominent sound, with the odd passage of rhythmic chanting filtering up from tech-ritual chambers and servitor-choirs.
The Exemplar was evidently a fine ship, the product of an immense amount of resources and fading technological knowledge. Whether she was as good a warship as she was a research centre was another matter, but it did occur to Nyxos that the Mechanicus was risking a very valuable ship and crew to investigate Chaeroneia.
The elevator reached the command deck level, where the walls were studded with niches containing elaborate shrines to the Omnissiah and the half-metal skull symbol of the Adeptus Mechanicus stared down from every column. The air was heavy with scented smoke from the braziers, where libations of machine-oil smouldered. The elevator stopped at the level of a wide corridor, carpeted in deep rust red with complex geometric patterns inscribed on the walls and ceiling, where several tech-priests walked followed by gaggles of menials, servitors and lower-ranked adepts. Several curious eyes, bionic and otherwise, turned to look at the interlopers as if Nyxos had no right to stray onto sacred Mechanicus ground.
Nyxos's thoughts were interrupted by a sudden blaring klaxon. Layered below it was a staccato blast of sound, an emergency broadcast in pure machine code.
'What is it?' shouted Nyxos over the din. Tech-priests and menials were already hurrying around.
'Battle stations, maybe.' said Leung. 'Or a proximity warning.'
'Damn it.' Nyxos flicked on his personal vox-unit. He was loath to use it except in an emergency, but he thought this counted. A very rare and antique unit contained in a lacquered red box Nyxos wore around his neck under his robes, it could tap into any local vox-frequency and let Nyxos hijack nearby communications. 'This is Inquisitor Nyxos of the Ordo Malleus.' he barked into the ship's command frequency. 'I demand to know what this emergency is.'
'State your business.' came a reply in the flat, female voice Nyxos recognised as belonging to Magos Korveylan.
'The Emperor's work, magos.' said Nyxos, 'and do not make me justify my actions further.'
There was a pause, slightly too long for comfort. 'Very well.' replied Korveylan. 'Our sensoria have detected torpedoes locked on to the Exemplar. Brace for impact.'
BELOW MANUFACTORIUM NOCTIS lay the remains of the old Chaeroneia, the last vestiges of a forge world loyal to Mars and the Emperor. The old architecture of the Adeptus Mechanicus survived, its industrial scale fused with the columns and vaults of religion and the powerful symbolism of the cog and skull. It lay in isolated pockets where the biomechanical mass of the tainted tech-priests had never reached, chapels and factoria, ritual chambers and sacred libraria.
Two hours after the heretic ambush, Alaric and his mall strike force arrived in one such chamber. The air vas old and stale, but free of the biomechanical stink decaying flesh and rancid machine-oil - that had accompanied the heretic tech-priests and their menials. Alaric stepped out into the cavernous space, storm bolter ready, still not knowing if he had found n ally on Chaeroneia or was just walking into another trap.
'Spread out.' he ordered. His squad fanned out round him, moving with speed and stealth that normal men would find impossible given the bulky power armour they wore. He glanced back at the sole surviving tech-guard. 'Stay here.' he said. 'Protect the interrogator.'
Interrogator Hawkespur didn't object to being assigned a bodyguard and crouched down by the tunnel entrance. Saphentis loitered there, too.
As he walked out into the space Alaric saw it was a cathedral-sized chapel to the Omnissiah. In the centre of its high domed ceiling had once been a circular hole looking up into Chaeroneia's sky but it was clogged with tons of rubble and wreckage, the weight of the city above warping the dome into a painful, biological shape. Trickles of foul water pattered down from cracks in the ceiling, which was covered in elaborate murals of tech-rituals now discoloured with age and damp. Columns stood around the edge of the circular space, each one carved into a statue of a tech-priest, presumably from Chaeroneia's distant Imperial past. The floor was covered in concentric circles or inscribed equations, long sequences of numbers and symbols that no doubt had massive significance for the intricate rituals of the Cult Mechanicus. Now the floor's bronze surface was pitted and green with corrosion. At one end of the room stood a massive altar, a single block of a greyish metallic substance Alaric guessed was pure carbon, with the remains of libation-bowls and hexagonal candelabra still corroding around it. 'Clear this side.' voxed Brother Dvorn.
'Clear here.' confirmed Haulvarn.
'There are no lifesigns on the auspex.' said Saphentis, who was consulting a dataslate that had unfolded from one of his blade-tipped arms.
Alaric walked, still wary, into the centre of the cathedral. It was silent, with not even the dull industrial background noise of the city above reaching this far down. The air was heavy with the meaning of the rituals that had been performed here before Chaeroneia fell, with generations of tech-priests exploring the deepest mysteries of the Omnissiah through ceremony and contemplation.
'Space Marines.' said a voice from the shadows on the far side of the room. 'No wonder they mobilized so quickly.'
Alaric ducked behind the closest column and aimed his storm bolter in the direction of the voice, finger on the firing stud. He heard the clatter of ceramite on stone as the rest of the squad did the same.
'Please, do not shoot. We are the ones who saved you.' A skinny, awkward figure emerged from the darkness behind the carbon altar, hands raised. It looked like a tech-adept, his body composed mostly of bionics. The metal of his artificial hands and face was deep orange-brown with rust and his robes were tattered and filthy.
'My apologies.' he said sheepishly. 'I have too little flesh to show up on your auspexes, I imagine. I did not intend to catch you by surprise.'
Alaric straightened up, still keeping his aim on the tech-priest. 'Who are you?' he demanded.
The tech-priest walked forward a little, still with his scrawny mechanical arms in the air. More shapes were emerging slowly from behind him. 'Iuscus Gallen.' he replied, 'Adept Minoris. These are my comrades.' He indicated the gaggle of tech-priests following him into the temple. They were in as poor repair as Gallen himself and hardly any of them had any flesh showing between the malfunctioning bionics.
'Did you lead us down from the data-fortress?'
'Us? Omnissiah forgive me, no, not us. We never could. That was the magos to whom we answer.'
Saphentis stepped forward, not bothering to stay in any cover. 'As an archmagos appointed by the office of the Fabricator General, I require the presence of this magos.'
Gallen looked at Saphentis with surprise in his one remaining human eye. 'An archmagos! Then have the true Mechanicus returned to Chaeroneia? And brought the Adeptus Astartes with them to cleanse this world at las
t?'
'No, they have not,' replied a new voice, deep and booming. There was a grinding sound from behind the altar and an old broken cargo-servitor lumbered into view. The voice issued from the vox-unit hanging from its neck. The once-human parts of the servitor had died long ago and were now just dried skeletal scraps sandwiched between the servitor's motive units and the massive lifter units of its shoulders. Ordinarily, without a human nervous system to control it, the servitor should not have been able to move at all. 'These we see are all they bring. There is no army to cleanse Chaeroneia. Is that not correct?'
Alaric stepped out from behind the column. 'That is correct.' he said. 'This is an investigative mission under the authority of the Holy Orders of the Emperor's Inquisition. The archmagos is here in an advisory capacity.'
'That is a shame,' said the servitor. 'But you will have to do.'
'Explain yourself.' said Saphentis bluntly.
'Of course. I am being rather rude. I would introduce myself formally but we have already met at the data-fortress and before at the manufactorium spire although you probably do not realize it. I am Magos Antigonus and it seems we have the same mission. Follow me and I will explain.'
Chapter Twelve
'The difference between glory and heresy is so often no more than time!
- Inquisitor Quixos
(source suppressed)
ANTIGONUS'S REALM SPANNED several factory floors and religious buildings that had survived the crushing weight of the city above being built over the centuries. Alaric followed the monstrous servitor through armouries of stolen weaponry and captured battle-servitors, and barracks where fugitive tech-priests fought a losing battle against time to repair their bionics and replace their dying flesh. He saw a giant underground water cistern transformed into a series of hydroponic pools where slimy green algae was grown and turned into a barely edible food to keep the tiny community alive, and the entrances to labyrinthine tunnels above rigged with enough explosive traps and sentry guns to keep attackers away for months. It was a cramped, stifling world, redolent with decay and desperation. But at least it was not corrupt like the planet above. And as they walked, Alaric and Antigonus talked.
'So.' said Alaric at length. 'You are dead?'
'That depends on how you look at it.' said Antigonus. He was trundling through a hangar where various decrepit tanks and APCs were being refitted and reassembled to form a makeshift motor pool for the tiny force of tech-priests. 'I have not had a living body for more than a thousand years.'
'In real space, only a hundred have passed.' said Alaric.
'Well, in any case, it is a long time to be without a physical form. I think it has had quite an effect on me. No doubt your archmagos would be outraged at how we flout the dogma of the Cult Mechanicus down here.'
'But how are you still here?'
'That, justicar, is a complicated question. Chaeroneia is a very old planet and it is riddled with the type of technology the Mechanicus could not replicate in my day and I trust that has not changed in yours. That includes cogitators and data media with a far greater capacity than anything the Mechanicus can make in the current age. So advanced, in fact, that they can contain all the data required to reconstruct a human mind, give or take a few personality quirks. I was sent here by Mars to investigate rumours of tech-heresy and when I discovered they were true, the heretics hunted me down. They thought me dead, but as I died I was able to shift my consciousness into an ancient form of cogitator engine.'
'Just your mind?'
'Just, as you say, my mind. I do not know how long I was in there before I was able reconstruct myself. I was nothing, justicar. I did not exist. It is impossible to describe it. I was just a collection of ideas that used to form Magos Antigonus. I think it took me hundreds of years, but gradually I put myself together again. I found I could move through machines as long as a particular machine's spirit was not strong enough to oppose me. It was through various stores of historical data that I discovered what had happened to Chaeroneia while I was dead. It did not make for enjoyable reading. So I learnt what I could and could not do, explored, investigated. Then I came down here and gathered the few loyal tech-priests who remained and founded this resistance movement.'
'If I may say so, magos, it does not look like you have had much success.'
The lurching servitor shrugged its massive pneumatic shoulders. 'By most standards you are correct. But we know more about Chaeroneia and its tech-priests that you do, justicar, and you are better at bringing the fight to the enemy than we are. Moreover, if Chaeroneria has re-entered real space then the tech-priests have made it happen for a reason. Whatever they are doing, I doubt very much that it will benefit the Imperium. All this means that we need each other.'
Alaric and Antigonus's servitor walked through the hangar into a long corridor lined with crumbling statues of past Archmagi, who had ruled Chaeroneia in the days before the tech-heresies had taken root.
'Here' said Antigonus, pointing a rusting cargo lifter arm at one of the statues. It depicted a tech-priest in archaic Mechanicus robes. Only his face was visible, the features blurred in the decaying stone. Its eyes were tiny discs set into the sockets of his cranium and from the lower half of his face hung a bunch of long tentacles - mechadendrites, the prehensile serpentine limbs that many tech-priests used to perform delicate work. The faded letters chiselled into the statue's base read: ARCH-MAGOS VENERATUS SCRAECOS.
'This was the one. Perhaps the leader. He was either the origin of the tech-heresy on this planet or he was their most senior convert. He was the one who killed me. I'd wager he led the effort to bring Chaeroneia into the warp, too. He commanded the machine-curse he used to infect me and probably all the hunter-programs that protect his data centres.'
Alaric looked up at the statue. It looked as strange as any tech-priest he had seen. He knew that archmagos veneratus was one of the highest tech-priest ranks that might be found on a forge world - the tech-heresy had spread quickly on Chaeroneia and straight to the top. 'They weren't hunter-programs.' said Alaric. 'They were daemons. An unusual kind, true, since they compose their bodies of information instead of sorcery. But daemons nonetheless. That was how we could defeat them.'
Antigonus looked at Alaric and his desiccated face managed to appear surprised. 'Daemons? I thought that was just a lie of the machine-curse.'
Alaric shook his head. 'It was probably telling the truth. Daemons will only speak the truth when they know it will not be believed.'
'And you defeated them, you say? At the data-fortress?'
'Yes. I and my battle-brothers.'
'Were you able to access the information in there? We have been trying to get at it for decades.'
Alaric sighed. 'You will have to ask Archmagos Saphentis about that. He is not always willing to share information with me. Perhaps as a fellow tech-priest you will have more luck.'
'We tech-priests are not known for our social perception, justicar, but still I think I detect some tension between the two of you.'
'Saphentis represents the interests of the Mechanicus. They do not always coincide with the objectives of the Inquisition.'
'You are suspicious of him?'
'He was accompanied by another tech-priest. She has disappeared and Saphentis does not seem particularly concerned about losing her. And I think he has some admiration for what has happened to Chaeroneia.'
Antigonus led the way down the corridor, which looped back round towards the makeshift barracks where Alaric's squad, Saphentis and Hawkespur were being seen to by the medically-trained tech-priests. 'Your suspicions may be well-founded, justicar. It was a high-ranking tech-priest who first brought this heresy to Chaeroneia. But nevertheless I shall do as you suggest and talk to him. It may be he found something at the data-fortress we can use to strike back at this planet's leaders at last.'
'With Chaeroneia back in real space.' said Alaric, 'it might be the only chance we get. But there is something els
e we need. Can you communicate with craft in orbit?'
Antigonus seemed to think for a second, the skull of his servitor body tilting to one side. 'Perhaps. But not with any certainty.'
'It will have to do. Hawkespur will need to contact Inquisitor Nyxos in orbit, tell him what is happening down here.'
'And yourself?'
'Me?'
'You are doubtless tired and injured, justicar. I expect you have not rested for any length of time since you arrived on the surface.'
Alaric held up the storm bolter mounted on the back of his power armour's left gauntlet. The barrel was charred black with muzzle flash. 'I could use some more ammunition.' he said.
'I will see what we can do. Meanwhile, I shall speak with Saphentis. Whether he is on our side or not he could know more about Chaeroneia than I do.'
The corridor led into the barracks, where rusting metal bunks were lined up in niches and tiny personal shrines to the Omnissiah filled the room with the smell of scented machine-oil. Alaric's squad were attending to their wargear rites, murmuring their own benedictions of preparedness as they cleaned their storm bolters and nemesis weapons. Brother Dvorn had removed the upper half of his armour and was repairing the many bullet scars and gouges in the surface of the ceramite. Dvorn was impressively muscled even for a Marine and he had been at the front of every hand-to-hand action as always. Cardios, meanwhile, had been seriously battered at the hands of the data-daemon and his fractured ribcage had been set and bandaged by Antigonus's tech-priests. One of his arms had been broken, too and the crude operation to re-set the bone had left a vivid red scar down Cardios's bicep. The damage to his breastplate of fused ribs was worse, though - shards of bone had probably slashed at his organs, meaning he would be slightly slower and weaker than his brother Marines and would only get worse until he got to a proper apothecarion.
