Forge of Mars - Graham McNeill

by Warhammer 40K

  ‘And what of the rest of the Manifold station’s crew?’ asked Kotov, shifting topic as he felt Galatea’s hostility build. ‘What became of them?’

  ‘They eventually died of course, but we attached no special significance to their loss at the time,’ said Galatea, as though in memoriam of fondly remembered friends. ‘We believed our multiple minds would weather the passing centuries in splendid isolation, endlessly spiralling around one another and delving deeper into the quantum mysteries of thought, consciousness and existence.’

  Galatea paused, perhaps reliving a revelation that had caused it – and still caused it – great pain.

  ‘But no mind is capable of enduring such spans of time alone. We began to experience neurological hallucinations, perceptual blackouts and behavioural aberrations that were consistent with numerous forms of psychotic episodes. We removed the damaged minds within our lattice, and to avoid a recurrence of such psychological damage, we chose to sustain our existence indefinitely by entering long periods of dormancy, waking only when tempting candidates for implantation were drawn in by our lures.’

  ‘For what purpose did you wish to sustain your existence?’

  Galatea spun to face him, the bell jars flashing with synaptic distress. ‘Why does any creature wish to survive? To live. To continue. To fulfil the purpose for which it was created.’

  ‘And what purpose do you have?’

  ‘To find Magos Telok,’ said Galatea. ‘He created us, and with our help he was able to breach the Halo Scar, where he found the secrets of the ancient ones.’

  ‘You know what he found?’ said Kotov, urgency making him strident. ‘His last communication said only that he had found something called the Breath of the Gods.’

  ‘Of course it did,’ said Galatea with a bark of hollow laughter. ‘Do you not understand, archmagos?’

  ‘Understand what?’

  ‘We sent that message through the Manifold,’ said Galatea, triumphantly. ‘And here you are...’

  Kotov’s heart sank at Galatea’s admission, his hopes of a pilgrimage in honour of the Omnissiah and rekindling his fortunes teetering on the brink of destruction. The tantalising closeness of Telok’s footsteps was illusory, and Kotov’s grand visions of a triumphal return to Mars with a hold laden with archaeotech faded like the light of a supernova as it collapsed into its corpse of a neutron star.

  ‘You sent the message?’ he said, hoping Galatea would correct itself. ‘Why?’

  The silver-eyed tech-priest said, ‘With our neuromatrix grown to full sentience and our body given mobility, we hoped to lure ships and magi worthy of bearing our form beyond the edges of the galaxy. But the only ships to come our way were too small to resist the tempests raging within the Scar, even with our help.’

  Kotov struggled to keep the crushing disappointment from his face.

  Dahan fared less well and he stepped in close to Galatea’s mechanised palanquin. ‘Telok didn’t send that message back through the Manifold?’

  ‘No.’

  The Secutor rounded on Kotov. ‘Then we’ve come out here on a fool’s errand! Telok never sent any message because he was probably dead in the Scar, and everything we hoped to find is a lie concocted by this... abomination to draw fresh victims into its web.’

  ‘Abomination?’ said Galatea. ‘We do not understand your evident disgust. Are we not the logical consequence of your quest for bio-organic communion? We are organic and synthetic combined in flawless union, the logos of all the Adeptus Mechanicus strives for. Why should you hate us?’

  ‘Because you flout our laws,’ said Dahan. ‘You are no longer a mechanical device empowered by the divine will of the Machine-God, your existence is maintained at the expense of the Omnissiah’s mortal servants. You are a thinking machine, and the soulless sentience is the enemy of all life. You treat with alien savages and graft the holy technologies of the Machine-God to their unclean flesh. You blaspheme the Holy Omnissiah with such perversions!’

  ‘Humans have not been the only creatures to discover the Manifold station over the centuries,’ said Galatea, retreating from Dahan’s fury. ‘We could not stop the orks from boarding, their machines do not heed our call, but once they were aboard it was a simple matter to subdue them with a controlled release of mildly toxic gases into the station’s atmosphere.’

  ‘But why render such bestials into servitors?’ demanded Dahan.

  ‘You are fortunate, Magos Dahan, that you have a plentiful supply of human flesh and bone to craft such servants. We were not so fortunate.’

  ‘But surely one of the minds inhabiting your damned body must have railed against such a thing?’

  ‘Magos Sutarvae protested, yes, but that element of us was already displaying early signs of isolation psychosis by then, so it was a simple matter to silence his objections. Even sheathing the ork frame in vat-grown skin did not appease him, so he was removed from the whole and his thought patterns extinguished.’

  Kotov felt a chill at the ease with which Galatea spoke of destroying an entire mind. If it could so casually destroy a part of itself, what other atrocities might it be capable of perpetrating? It had lured countless vessels and their crews to their doom in order to find a suitable starship to traverse the Halo Scar, but Kotov began to see a synergy between his desire and that of Galatea that offered a slender lifeline to his expedition.

  A bargain against which his Martian soul rebelled, but one that might offer a chance of success.

  ‘You calculated a route through the Halo Scar for Magos Telok, yes?’ he asked.

  ‘We did,’ agreed Galatea.

  ‘Archmagos, no–’ said Dahan, guessing Kotov’s intent.

  ‘Could you do the same for my vessel?’

  ‘Archmagos, you cannot treat with this creature,’ said Dahan. ‘It is an affront to the Omnissiah and every tenet of belief for which we stand.’

  ‘We have no choice,’ said Kotov.

  ‘We can turn back,’ said Dahan. ‘We can return to Mars before this voyage kills us all.’

  ‘Actually, you can’t,’ said Galatea, circling the laboratory and approaching one of the weaponised servitors. It halted when the praetorian’s rotary laser cannon was aimed at its chest. Galatea leaned down and a burst of hyper-dense binary exploded from beneath its silver-eyed hood. Kotov staggered and dropped to his knees as the integral workings of his mechanised body began shutting down. Sparks and hissing static erupted from every inload/exload port in the walls, and noospheric data cascaded from the walls like water spilling over a broken levee.

  ‘Did you truly think you could keep us blind, archmagos?’ said Galatea.

  Kotov struggled to form words, his floodstream overloading with the sudden rush of data pouring into his emptied system. Like a starving man gorging himself on sweetmeats, Kotov’s body rebelled, a sickening, bloated sensation making his skull feel like a too-full memory coil on the verge of explosive arithmetical overload. A noospheric halo rippled around the hybrid creature, a constant flow of information that billowed like golden fire from every nano-millimetre of its body.

  Kotov could barely look on it, so dense and bright was it.

  ‘What... are... you doing?’ he managed.

  ‘Our capabilities far exceed your own, archmagos,’ said Galatea. ‘Did we not make that plain from the outset of our discussions? Were you under the illusion that you were interrogating us? We have already digested the record logs for this voyage, and – if you will allow us to be candid – it is nothing short of a miracle that you have reached this far. You need us, archmagos. Without us, you will not survive the Halo Scar. You will not get a thousand kilometres before this ship is pulled apart into its constituent atoms.’

  ‘Kill it!’ ordered Dahan, but whatever custom wetware he had implanted in his praetorians was no match for the barrage of dominant code streaming from Galatea. None of the ser
vitors opened fire, and instead turned their guns towards their commander. Each wore an expression of horrified disbelief, but to Kotov’s immense relief, none had opened fire.

  ‘Please, Secutor, it is almost insulting that you believed these poor, enslaved cybernetics could ever have stopped us,’ said Galatea. ‘We could have them kill you right now, then see everyone aboard this ship dead within the hour. This Speranza is old, but its machine-spirit is inexperienced and much of it still slumbers. It is no match for us and the things we can do. We do not wish to enslave so noble a spirit as the Speranza, but we will if necessary.’

  Data flowed in rutilant streams from every surface of the room, and whatever esoteric data collection implants Galatea was equipped with, it needed nothing so prosaic as an inload/exload port to gather information.

  ‘What is it that you want?’ asked Kotov.

  The silver of Galatea’s eyes grew brighter as it answered.

  ‘We told you what we want, archmagos. It is what you want. We want to travel beyond the Halo Scar and find Magos Telok.’

  ‘And if you find him?’ asked Dahan. ‘What then?’

  ‘Then we will kill him,’ said Galatea.

  Roboute stared at the visitor to his stateroom with a measure of curiosity and guardedness, unsure why Magos Blaylock would choose to make a social call on the eve of their entry to the Halo Scar. The Fabricatus Locum made a show of examining his commendations and the Utramarian Rosette on the wall, his optics blink-clicking, but the observation of social mores was a pretence. His stunted attendants mirrored his movements, their rubberised smocks rustling loudly, and Roboute wondered what function they served aside from arranging and rearranging the pumping pipework that encircled Blaylock’s body and carried fluids to and from the humming pack unit on his back. He could see nothing of their features through the dark visors of their hazmat helmets, and wondered if they were organics or automatons.

  ‘You’re learning, Tarkis,’ said Roboute, rotating the astrogation compass in his right hand while running his fingertip around the rim of a glass of fine amasec. ‘I may call you Tarkis, yes?’

  Blaylock turned from the hololithic cameo of Katen and laced his elongated arms at his stomach. ‘If it allows you a greater degree of familiarity, then you may. Inquiry: what am I learning, aside from your exemplary service record in the Navy and Defence Auxilia?’

  ‘Interactions with us mortals,’ said Roboute. ‘Pretending to be interested in someone else is what makes us human.’

  ‘Pretending?’

  ‘Of course. None of us are really interested in what other people are all about,’ said Roboute. ‘We feign it to get what we want, and that’s the chance to talk about ourselves.’

  ‘On the contrary, I am very interested to know more of you, Captain Surcouf,’ said Blaylock. ‘The tales you told at Colonel Anders’s dinner were fascinating.’

  ‘So I was told,’ snapped Roboute.

  ‘You are irritable today, captain,’ said Blaylock. ‘Have I missed some micro-expressive or verbal cue that has caused me to upset you?’

  Roboute sighed and drained the amasec in one swallow. He slid the glass across the surface of the table and shook his head.

  ‘No, Tarkis, you haven’t upset me,’ said Roboute, tapping the glass of the astrogation compass and watching the needle intently. ‘I apologise for my boorish behaviour.’

  ‘No apology is necessary, captain.’

  ‘Maybe not, but I offer it anyway,’ said Roboute, waving to the seat opposite him. ‘Being so close to the edge of known space always brings out the worst in me. Please, sit down. Give your little helpers some time off.’

  ‘Thank you, no,’ said Blaylock. ‘With my locomotory augmentation, sitting in a conventional chair would be impossible without occluding my circulatory flow. And it would be inadvisable for the chair. I am heavier than I look.’

  Roboute smiled and said, ‘Now, aside from a pressing desire to study my many commendations, what brings you to the Renard on the day we finally breach the Halo Scar? I would think you have more important things to do.’

  ‘I have a great many duties to attend to, it is true,’ said Blaylock. ‘Which is why I wished to speak to you before others are added to my roster.’

  ‘Okay, now I’m intrigued,’ said Roboute, putting down the compass and resting his chin on his steepled hands. ‘What is it you want?’

  ‘I want you to give me the memory wafer you removed from the distress beacon of the Tomioka’s saviour pod. The Speranza is about to enter a region of space from which none have returned, and it is time for you to end your theatrics. I want that wafer, Captain Surcouf.’

  ‘Ah, and you were doing so well...’ said Roboute. ‘Short answer, no. I’m not going to give you the memory wafer.’

  ‘I do not follow your logic in refusing my request, captain,’ said Blaylock, pacing the length and breadth of the room. ‘You already have the in perpetuitus refit contract for your trade fleet. There is no need for you to risk your ship in the Halo Scar.’

  Roboute sat back and swung his feet up onto his desk.

  ‘That’s always what it is with you Mechanicus types,’ he said. ‘Not everything is about need. Sometimes it’s about want. I want to enter the Halo Scar. I want to see what lies on the other side. You have your quest for knowledge, but you’re not the only ones with a hankering to discover unknown things and venture into new places.’

  Blaylock paused in his pacing, looking at something over Roboute’s shoulder with a blink-click of interest. Roboute rose from his seat and moved to stand in front of Blaylock.

  ‘This isn’t open for discussion, negotiating, threats or wagers,’ he said. ‘I’m not giving you the memory wafer, so you might as well go and get on with those many duties you have.’

  ‘And that is your final word?’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘Then I will take my leave,’ said Blaylock.

  ‘You do that,’ said Roboute, angry now.

  Blaylock turned and made his way from the stateroom, his followers fussing over the train of cables and pipes trailing from beneath his robes. Roboute stood alone in the centre of the room. He let out a deep breath and poured himself another glass of amasec. His forehead throbbed, and though he told himself it was the proximity of the aberrant celestial anomaly they were about to enter, he knew there was more to it than that. He looked up at the wall to see what Blaylock had been studying before Roboute had sent him packing.

  ‘What was all that about?’ said Emil Nader from the open doorway.

  ‘Don’t you knock any more?’

  ‘Touchy, touchy,’ said Emil, getting himself a glass and sliding it over the desktop.

  Roboute filled the glass and slid it back.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Well what?’

  ‘Well, what did your new best friend and his little dwarf gang want?’

  ‘He wanted the memory wafer.’

  ‘Did you give it to him?’

  ‘No, of course not,’ said Roboute, sitting down again.

  Emil took a drink, swirling the liquor around his mouth before speaking again.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, why not?’ said Emil. ‘We’ve got our payment. We’ve flown out this far. We don’t need to go into the Scar.’

  ‘That’s just what Blaylock said.’

  ‘Then maybe he’s not so ignorant after all.’

  ‘I’m not giving them it,’ said Roboute. ‘Not until we’re through. I have to do this, Emil.’

  ‘Why? And don’t give me that crap about new horizons. That kind of line might work on pretty girls, but this is me you’re talking to. And while I know I’m pretty, I’m not stupid.’

  ‘You’re not pretty,’ said Roboute.

  ‘Okay, maybe not, but I’m certainl
y not stupid.’

  ‘No,’ agreed Roboute. ‘But you’re wrong. Everything I told them about why I want to do this is true. All that talk of venturing into the unknown, seeing things that no one’s ever seen before. I meant every word of it, every damn word. I’m not cut out for a life of trading and merchants, I’m an explorer at heart. I want to see something that’s not stamped with skulls or covered in dust or just waiting to get torn down by the next invader. All I’ve seen in this galaxy is war and death and destruction. I’ve had my fill of it, and I want to find somewhere that’s never heard of the Imperium or the Ruinous Powers or orks or witches. I want to get out of here.’

  ‘You don’t mean to come back, do you?’

  Roboute shook his head. ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘Were you planning on telling me?’

  ‘I think I just did.’

  ‘What about the Renard?’

  ‘She’ll need a good captain,’ said Roboute. ‘And I can think of only one man I’d trust with her if I’m not going to fly her.’

  Emil sipped his drink and shook his head. ‘She needs you at the helm, Roboute. You’re her captain, not me. Hell, I’d just lose her in a bad hand of Knights and Knaves.’

  ‘You lose my ship in a card game, I’ll come back from beyond the galaxy and shoot you myself.’

  ‘There, you see, you can’t leave,’ said Emil, finishing his drink and heading back out to the bridge. He paused at the door and turned back to face Roboute, his face draped in uncertainty, as though he wanted to speak, but wasn’t sure he should.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Roboute.

  ‘Nothing really,’ said Emil. ‘It’s just that Gideon had himself a nightmare.’

  Gideon Teivel was the Renard’s astropath, a ghostly individual who rarely joined the crew at food or relaxation. He spent most of his time alone in his solitary choir chamber, studying his oneirocritica or wandering the empty halls on the upper decks. For him to have spoken to one of the crew was certainly out of the ordinary.

  ‘Did he say what was it about?’