Forge of Mars - Graham McNeill

by Warhammer 40K

  All this Vitali had known with a surety in his bones that he now understood was simple vanity.

  Linya was his creation, and she was going to outlast him and exceed him in every way.

  How very biological of him.

  Sitting by his daughter’s side as she lay unmoving within a sterile containment field, Vitali now saw how foolish he had been. The treatment Linya had received was second to none, the very best the Speranza had to offer. Senior medicae and Medicus Biologis had spent the last thirteen days bending their every effort into restoring her body, managing her pain with precisely modulated synaptic diversions and reclothing her surviving limbs with synth-grown skin.

  They had done all that could be done. Winning the fight for life was now up to her.

  Linya’s future hung in the balance, and no one could predict on which side the coin of her life might turn.

  Vitali’s brain had been augmented, rewired and surgically conditioned in so many ways that its processes resembled those of a baseline human in only the most superficial ways. He thought faster and on multiple levels at once. His powers of lateral thinking and complex, multi-dimensional visualisation were beyond the abilities of even gifted human polymaths to comprehend.

  Yet he was as crushed by guilt and grief as any father at the sight of his child in pain.

  He knew he could have spared himself this pain had he not been too proud, too stubborn and too bloody-minded to listen to his peers and forego the siring of a successor. If he had been proper Mechanicus he could have neatly sidestepped this horror and simply chosen an apprentice from the most promising of his many acolytes.

  But then he would have denied himself the joy of Linya’s existence, the pleasure of her growth and learning, the wonder of her personality shining through, no matter how steeped in the ways of the Martian priesthood she became. Though Cult Mechanicus to her bones, Linya had a very rare, very bright spark of humanity that refused to be extinguished no matter what replacement cybernetics were implanted within her biological volume.

  Archmagos Kotov and every one of the senior magi had come to pay their respects to his daughter, each expressing a measure of regret that was surprising in some, downright miraculous in others. Magos Blaylock had visited Linya’s bedside on numerous occasions, each time displaying an empathy Vitali had hitherto not believed him capable of exhibiting.

  Roboute Surcouf had been a regular visitor, and his grief was a depthless well of regret that reminded Vitali of the time he had spent with the eldar. Clearly something of that xenos species’ capacity for extremes of emotion had been passed to the rogue trader during his time spent aboard their city-ship.

  Vitali had no capacity with which to shed tears, having long ago sacrificed even that tiny space within his skull for extra ocular-cybernetic hardware. Instead, he extended a sterile mechadendrite into the counterseptic field surrounding Linya and rested its callipers on her shoulder, hoping that some measure of his presence would somehow be translated to her sedated body.

  The augmented mind was a complex organ, and despite their lofty claims and interventions, not even the highest ranked genetors of the magi biologis truly understood the subtleties of its inner workings. Mechanicus records were replete with apocryphal accounts of the grievously wounded and those in supposedly vegetative comas being brought back from the brink of death by the words of a loved one. And right at this moment, Vitali was willing to clutch at any straw, no matter how slender or unsubstantiated.

  He read from one of Linya’s archaic books; a rare collection of poems from Old Earth, monographs on celestial mechanics and the biographies of many of the earliest astronomers ever to make the stars shine brighter by bringing them within reach of their earthbound brethren. The first stanzas he transmitted via the noosphere and binaric code blurts, but when he came to Linya’s favourite passage, he switched to his flesh-voice.

  ‘I am an instrument in the shape of a woman,

  trying to translate pulsations

  into images for the relief of the body

  and the reconstruction of the mind.’

  The poem was said to date from an epoch before the Age of Strife, though that seemed unlikely given the devastation wrought in that cataclysmic era; but it had not been its clear antiquity that Linya liked, rather the fact that it acknowledged the role of a woman in the earliest age of galactic exploration.

  Vitali had no real appreciation for poetry, but he knew beauty when he saw it.

  Space was a vast wonderland, a tapestry of universal magnificence that any with eyes to see could witness. It was the desire to breathe that wonder into others that had driven him to galactic telescopes, and that same wonder lay at the heart of Linya’s creation.

  He would not sacrifice the pain he was feeling now and forego the joy of having known his daughter and watched her grow.

  ‘Do you believe she can hear you?’

  Vitali turned, expecting to see another Mechanicus visitor, but his lip curled in contempt as he saw Galatea squatting at the arched entrance to the medicae chamber. Its squat body was lowered almost to floor level and is silver eyes were trained on Linya.

  Vitali felt his loathing for this… thing reach new heights.

  Why should this abomination get to exist while his daughter’s life hung in the balance?

  He forced back the venom in his throat and turned back to the bed.

  ‘I do not know,’ said Vitali. ‘I hope so. Perhaps if she hears that I am with her it will give her the strength to fight for her life.’

  ‘A very biological conceit,’ said Galatea. ‘We know of no empirical evidence to support the capacity for perception while in a medicated state.’

  ‘I do not care what you know or do not know,’ snapped Vitali. ‘I am reading to my daughter, and nothing you can say will convince me I am wrong to do so.’

  Galatea entered the medicae chamber, its mismatched limbs clattering on the tiled floor. The ozone stink of its body and the flickering light of its brain jars reflected from the brushed steel of the machinery keeping Linya alive.

  ‘We do not wish to do so,’ said Galatea, extending a manipulator arm and resting it on Vitali’s shoulder. ‘We come to offer you our sympathy, such as it can exist for a biological entity. We had grown fond of Mistress Tychon in the time we had known her.’

  ‘My daughter is not dead,’ said Vitali, fighting to hide his surprise at the machine’s unexpected sentiment. ‘She may yet recover. Linya is a fighter, and she will not let this finish her… I know it.’

  Vitali’s voice trailed off and Galatea moved to the other side of Linya’s bed.

  ‘We sincerely hope so,’ it said. ‘She is too precious to be taken away by such ill-fortune.’

  ‘I didn’t know you had interacted that much with Linya.’

  ‘Indeed, yes,’ said Galatea. ‘When we took over the exload from the Tomioka’s cogitators, we linked with her mind and saw just how exceptional a being she is.’

  ‘Exceptional,’ said Vitali with a hopeful smile. ‘Yes, that’s exactly what she is.’

  Abrehem sat on a metal-legged stool before Rasselas X-42 and folded his arms. The arco-flagellant reclined on its throne-gurney with the articulated arm and leg restraints splayed, rendering it like some ancient anatomical diagram. The wounds it had suffered at the hands of the Space Marines were extensive, enough to have slain a bondsman many times over. Only its superlative artificiality and accelerated metabolic augmentation had kept it alive, though those selfsame biological mechanisms had kept it in a state of regenerative dormancy since then.

  The aftermath of the abortive revolution on the embarkation deck had given Abrehem a great deal to consider, particularly his continued usage of the arco-flagellant. In the confused days after the Speranza had pulled out of her death dive over Hypatia, his time had been spent in secretive and noospherically-conducted negotiations with Archmagos
Kotov, hammering out a means by which the fleet could continue its mission of exploration and treat its workers with respect.

  It had been a protracted and often thorny maze to negotiate, but a peace of sorts had been achieved. The servitors and bondsmen went back to work and Abrehem had sent Hawke and Coyne with them. He too had been offered amnesty, but knowing how easily his capture might allow the archmagos to renege on his promises, Abrehem, Ismael and Totha Mu-32 had remained in hiding.

  The overseer had patched Rasselas X-42’s horrific injuries as best he could, but even with inloaded medicae databases to call upon, the sheer incomprehensibility and density of the biological hardware within X-42’s body rendered every attempt to restore function akin to little more than educated guesswork.

  The bolter wound in the arco-flagellant’s side had healed itself, forming a gauze of synthetic skin that over time had bonded with his hardened skin shell to leave a glossy carapace of scar tissue. Totha Mu-32 had removed over eighty-seven individual shards of bolt casing from the arco-flagellant’s back before packing that wound with synth-flesh and applying a counterseptic dressing.

  As grievous as the bolter wounds were, it was the Black Templar’s sword blow that was of greater concern. Numerous chem-shunts situated in the hollows between X-42’s shoulder and collarbone had ruptured, spreading a distilled cocktail of potent drugs designed to initiate combat reflexes, states of dormancy, healing and self-immolation. Mixed together, the effect had been to plunge X-42 into a delirious state of feverish nightmares that only the immediate engagement of high-level devotion protocols in its pacifier helm could quell.

  But even that was of lesser concern than the damage the powered blade had caused as it ripped up the side of X-42’s skull. The metallic cowl encasing the left side of its head had been cut away cleanly, exposing panels of circuitry that were beyond any living magi’s ability to restore. What their function might have been was a mystery, but that they were, on some level, still operative – albeit in an aberrant way – was obvious from the twitches and convulsions wracking X-42’s body.

  Abrehem thought back to Ven Anders’s words as they’d spoken in the moments before things turned bloody. He knew he had been manipulated by a man who could convince other men to walk into hails of gunfire and then thank him for the opportunity, but that didn’t alter the fundamental truth of what he had said regarding Rasselas X-42.

  Abrehem was as good as keeping a slave, just as Archmagos Kotov was keeping the bondsmen and servitors in bondage. How could he demand basic human rights for the enslaved workers throughout the Speranza if he wasn’t willing to live up to the same standard?

  That question had driven him to take this course of action, a course of action that Totha Mu-32 had roundly condemned as an act of illogical foolishness. Ismael had disagreed and both stood behind him ready to step in at a moment’s notice should something go hideously wrong.

  Ismael appeared at his side and took his organic hand.

  Abrehem hardly recognised his former shift overseer any more. The vain, arrogant, self-entitled shit who’d made his life hell on Joura had vanished utterly and been replaced by a figure of such serenity and peace that it was like looking into the face of one of the Emperor’s saints painted onto a templum fresco.

  ‘You will see terrible things within X-42’s mind, Abrehem,’ said Ismael, his metal-cowled head so like that of the arco-flagellant, and yet so different. ‘This is a very brave thing you are doing.’

  ‘It is a foolish act of self-indulgence,’ said Totha Mu-32. ‘You will find nothing within X-42’s mind but vileness. Do you think that upstanding citizens who love their children and worship the Emperor every day are turned into arco-flagellants?’

  Totha Mu-32 gestured towards the twitching arco-flagellant and said, ‘They are the worst scum imaginable; the dregs of society, the maladjusted, the insane and the irredeemable. That is who this was, and to think otherwise would be a terrible mistake. He is now a servant of the Emperor and the Omnissiah, and that is all he will ever be.’

  Abrehem nodded towards Ismael. ‘Just as a mindless servitor was all Ismael could ever be?’

  ‘That is very different,’ said Totha Mu-32. ‘What Ismael has become is a divine gift, but I cannot accept that the Omnissiah would work through a wretch like X-42.’

  ‘That’s pride speaking,’ said Abrehem. ‘Saiixek accused you of the same thing, remember? That you claimed to know the will of the Machine-God. You said it yourself, X-42 was a monster. Now he is a servant of the Emperor and the Omnissiah, and I need to know if there is any humanity left within him, any last shred of goodness we can salvage.’

  Totha Mu-32 said nothing, his half-human features unreadable beneath his crimson hood.

  ‘I’m doing this,’ said Abrehem. ‘So either help me or get out.’

  Ismael took a step forwards, keeping hold of Abrehem’s hand and reaching out to lift Rasselas X-42’s scarred and callused hand.

  ‘The moment of connection will be painful,’ said Ismael.

  ‘I remember the last time,’ nodded Abrehem. ‘I’m ready this time.’

  ‘No,’ said Ismael. ‘Not for this you are not.’

  Ismael was right. Abrehem wasn’t ready for the sudden, wrenching dislocation of having his every sense ripped from his body and rammed into the mind of another living being. It was like having the innards of his skull scooped out and flash-burned before being pieced together again, flake of ash by flake of ash. Abrehem felt his sense of identity slough from whatever form of consciousness he was experiencing, like a serpent shedding its skin and being reborn.

  One minute he was Abrehem Locke, bondsman aboard the Ark Mechanicus, Speranza, the next he was…

  He was…

  He had no idea who he was.

  He was Abrehem Locke.

  No, he was… no, he was not. He was. He was someone else.

  He was someone whose thoughts were like a rabid dog in a cage of its own making, the physical manifestation of an unending scream that was only kept silent by the complex alchemy of numerous pharmacological inhibitors. He sat in the centre of a soulless room of bare stone, coffered steel and bottle-green ceramic tiles, facing a heavy cog-shaped doorway of bronzed steel. Leather restraints at wrists, ankles and torso secured him to a cold steel throne-gurney.

  Incense fogged the air and heavy machinery, more suited to the interior of a shipwright’s assembly-hangar, sat idle to either side of the throne. Feed lines pulsed like arteries, venting tiny puffs of oil-rich vapour that tasted of bile and hypocrisy.

  He tried to move his head, but clamps drilled into the bone of his skull and jaw prevented any lateral rotation. In his peripheral vision, he could see twin icons stamped on opposite walls; one a steel-toothed cog of black and white with an iron skull at its centre, the other a two-headed eagle with one eye hooded and blind and the other ever-watchful.

  Both icons stared at him with impassive and unforgiving eyes.

  He – no, the mind he squatted within – felt nothing but contempt for everything they now represented to him.

  Chem-shunts buried into the meat of his forearms pumped honeyed muscle relaxants through his bloodstream, and neuro-synaptic blockers had been introduced to his spinal fluid. He knew this because the trembling adepts who’d strapped his drugged body into the throne-gurney had spared no detail in their descriptions of what was about to happen.

  The door irised open and a chanting group of robed figures marched through.

  Their leader read from a heavy book, its weight too enormous for any mortal man to bear. Instead, it was borne upon the back of a stunted figure with an exactingly contoured hunch to its spine. He saw this arrangement of bones had been surgically crafted simply to bear the book. The figure’s legs were foreshortened stumps of ossified bone and muscle, and he had no doubt its brain had been reconditioned to occlude any thought but the bearing of the
book. Every moment spent in so awkward a posture must have brought constant pain, but it believed it was honoured to be allowed to bear the book, which he saw with grim amusement was the Scriptures of Sebastian Thor.

  He knew the volume on its back could not be the original, of course. That sat in a stasis-sealed vault on Ophelia VII, guarded by millions of Sororitas warriors and Ecclesiarchy troops, the likes of which he had once led into the fires of battle.

  This was, at best, a tenth-generation copy, which still made it an insanely precious artefact.

  The man reading from the book was dressed in a white and red chimere, with a cincture of tasselled gold securing it at his waist. He wore a Pallium Pontifex around his neck, and the silver skulls stitched along its draped length winked in the half-light. A porcelain skull mask of pure white veiled his face, its cheekbones exaggerated and its eyes bulging monstrously. The jaw was distended, the teeth gleaming in the half-light as though Death wished to savour the mortal fear of the condemned man. He recognised the lexiconi devotatus the priest spoke; an ornate and complex argot of piety unknown beyond the higher echelons of the Adeptus Ministorum.

  Behind the pontifex came three priests of the Machine-God, cowled in red and black. The outlines of their bodies were misshapen, rendered post-human by hulking augmetics and artificial limbs. They walked with unnatural, disjointed movements, each one having transcended humanity to become something more and less at the same time. They had achieved a form of mechanical apotheosis, meaning that their bodies were more metal than meat, yet that was considered an honour.

  Finally, a warrior of flesh and bone entered, and where the pontifex’s face was hidden and the Martians were objective in their hatred, this man made no secret of his loathing. A man of violence, he was clad in form-fitting black armour, glossy and well cared for, but old and hard-worn. A reflection of the man inside, he knew. Alone of the new arrivals, his face went unmasked. Its deep-cut lines and flinty eyes were without compromise, without remorse and utterly without pity.