by Various
‘You are talking about Exterminatus,’ Kane said. ‘On the Forge World Principal. On Mars?’
‘That is what I am proposing, Fabricator General,’ Dorn told him. ‘I have run the simulations with my captains. Such action is the best tactical resolution to a host of problems faced by Terra and the Solar System at large. With your assistance we have already negotiated with the forge worlds Phaeton and Voss Prime for supplies.
‘Much-needed vessels and manpower could be redirected from the Martian conflict to securing the capital system. However, most significant of all is if all else fails and Horus arrives in-system, then we will have stripped him not only of his Mechanicum allies but also of a highly fortified staging point. Consider, Fabricator General, how difficult it would be – how costly in time and life – to remove the traitors from Mars now. Then imagine how impossible it would be with Horus Lupercal and his Traitor Legions operating out of the Red Planet. You understand that I cannot allow that to happen.’
But Zagreus Kane had turned towards the rising sun, allowing its golden rays to penetrate the darkness of his hood. The deep lines of his anxiety-eaten face gave the Fabricator General the ghoulish, drawn appearance of a forge world servitor.
‘You would bombard the surface from orbit…’
‘Yes, Fabricator General,’ Rogal Dorn said. ‘With cyclonic torpedoes, to–’
‘To ensure maximum devastation,’ Kane said, finishing the primarch’s sentence. After collecting himself for a moment and dragging himself away from the nightmarish vision of a destroyed Mars playing over and over in his head, Zagreus Kane regarded the hulking primarch and frail First Lord. ‘I implore you, do not do this. The empire of Mars has endured in peace and shared designs for almost as long as Terra itself.’
‘That fact cannot shield it from the consequences of heresy,’ Rogal Dorn rumbled.
‘There are many, many technological wonders,’ the Fabricator General continued, ‘and secrets that Mars harbours that would be lost in such an action. The loss to humanity in terms of knowledge would be incalculable. You would be destroying the Imperium’s future to preserve an uncertain present, and plunging the empire back into the days of Old Night.’
‘Without a present, however certain,’ the primarch countered, ‘there will be no future.’
‘There is something else, my Lord Dorn,’ the Mechanicum overlord said. ‘Something that your tactical models should factor in.’
‘You would lecture me on that, Fabricator General?’ the primarch asked.
‘Have you considered the reaction of the Omnissiah’s servants here on Terra?’ Kane asked. ‘Or the feelings of other forge worlds throughout the Imperium? Mars is the spiritual nexus for all worship of the Omnissiah in the galaxy. What will the billions of priests and Mechanicum constructs make of your attack on their sovereign soil? Your destruction of a world sacred to the faith of the Cult Mechanicum?’
‘What are you saying, Zagreus?’ Malcador pressed.
‘If I’m not mistaken,’ Dorn growled, ‘we’re being threatened – here, on the walls of the Imperial Palace.’
‘I am the Emperor’s humble servant,’ the Fabricator General told them, ‘and would advocate for the actions of his son – Lord Dorn – in my every word and deed. But I cannot answer for the horror such actions would create on distant forge worlds, confronted with the reality that the Imperium seeks to destroy Mars while Kelbor-Hal and the Warmaster seek to preserve it. How could they know that their own forge worlds wouldn’t be next? Tensions have existed for a long time between the Emperor’s servants and the Martian faith. How long before the servants of the Omnissiah in their entirety are dismissed as a heretic cult? How long before they, in turn, dismiss the Emperor’s sons and his subjects as warmongering traitors? Would you not be creating the perfect storm for a further split in the Mechanicum?’
The primarch fixed the Fabricator General with the searing intensity of his dark eyes. As his systems flooded his bloodstream with mood suppressors, it took everything the Fabricator General had to stand his ground before mighty Dorn.
Malcador watched the sun burn in the sky. ‘And if there was another way?’ the Sigillite asked. ‘An alternative that might serve all of our needs? Drastic, yes. Distasteful even. But a chance to neutralise the growing threat of the Red Planet,’ he said to Dorn, ‘while preserving the sovereignty and sacrosanct significance of Martian soil,’ he directed at Kane.
Rogal Dorn and the Fabricator General turned towards Malcador.
‘Would it have anything to do with the shadow you have standing sentinel beneath the lotus?’ Rogal Dorn asked.
Malcador risked a parched smile.
‘Carrion,’ the Sigillite called, ‘come forth, if you please. You’re making Lord Dorn nervous.’
As the Carrion walked forth through the ornamental foliage of the hanging gardens, he found that Rogal Dorn gave Malcador the displeasure of his unsmiling face. The regent had at least broken the tension between the primarch and the Fabricator General.
‘You are the son of my brother Corax,’ Dorn said upon the Carrion’s approach. Despite the plain gunmetal-grey of the Carrion’s plate, the Raven Guard could not hide the paleness of his skin, the black of his long hair and the sharpness of his features.
‘It is an honour to be so, my lord,’ the Carrion answered.
‘The Carrion joins the ranks of my eyes and ears from the Raven Guard Legion,’ Malcador explained to the Fabricator General.
‘From Mars,’ the Mechanicum overlord observed, noting the signature workmanship of the Forge World Principal in the Carrion’s augmetics. The Space Marine shifted his weight slightly from the hydraulics of one leg to the other.
‘Yes,’ the Sigillite confirmed.
‘Evacuated with my construct kindred by Lord Dorn’s Imperial Fists,’ the Fabricator General said. ‘I remember you from processing on Luna. A legionary. You were undergoing training on Mars with the artisans?’
‘Yes, general,’ the Carrion said. ‘I had completed my training and was scheduled for covenance.’
‘By the ever-turning cogs,’ the Mechanicum overlord said. ‘Then you must allow me to arrange for your instatement. You must receive the machina opus for your years of study and training.’
‘That is gracious of you, general,’ the Carrion said, ‘but I have decided not to take covenance.’
The confession seemed to confuse the Mechanicum overlord.
‘You have decided not to return to your Legion?’ Dorn said. ‘After everything you have learned befell them in the Isstvan System?’
The Carrion had heard from Malcador’s own lips the atrocities committed on the other side of the galaxy – where brother had turned against brother, a massacre had unfolded and the history of the Imperium to come had changed forever. He would like to have said that he had wept for his brothers, but he hadn’t. Farinatus had changed him forever. He should have felt a howling emptiness where his hearts should have been, a void that could only be filled with the spilling of traitor blood. Instead he simply felt a cold, irresistible need to fix what had been broken: a riven empire, a legacy stalled, the gears of brotherhood grinding and smashed.
‘No, my lord,’ the Carrion replied.
‘At a time when my brother – and your brothers – need you most?’ the primarch pressed.
‘I have chosen another kind of service,’ the Carrion told him.
Dorn looked to the silent Sigillite. ‘He is to be one of your pieces?’ he asked. ‘To be moved about the Regicide board?’
‘Aren’t we all such pieces?’ Malcador returned.
‘How did your man Garro put it?’ the primarch asked. ‘A Knight Errant.’
‘He has chosen such a path,’ Malcador said.
‘Or had it chosen for him on Luna,’ Dorn said.
Malcador simply smiled. ‘A path that will take him ba
ck to Mars, if we three choose,’ he said, and let the suggestion hang for a moment on the morning breeze.
‘I’m listening,’ Dorn said.
Malcador turned to Kane.
‘You have my attention,’ the Fabricator General said.
‘Please,’ the Sigillite said to the Carrion. ‘Tell them as you have told me.’
The Carrion bowed his head to his new lord and master.
‘My time on Luna gave me the opportunity to think. There is nothing to do up there but think – about the schism on Mars, the betrayal at Isstvan, my Lord Regent’s offer and the part I might play in this new galaxy of challenge and change. I came to the conclusion that despite our shock at the atrocities committed during the Dropsite Massacre, heresy – in one form or another – is nothing new. Mars was rife with unsanctioned experimentation, the embrace of abominate technologies and solutions sought from the xenos or the beyond.’ As Kane began to protest, the Carrion added, ‘Which the clave-malagra of the Lexorcist General, the Divisio Probandi and the Prefecture Magisterium were tireless in their efforts to hunt down and persecute.’
The Mechanicum overlord nodded his acquiescence.
‘I had the misfortune to see one such heretek sentenced to stasis containment in perpetuitas.’
‘What was his crime?’ the Fabricator General asked.
‘The study of self-enhancing technologies.’
‘Abominable intelligence?’
‘Yes, general,’ the Carrion confirmed. ‘My Artisan Astartes exposed his students to the workings of the fearful Malagra, the Divisio Probandi and the Prefecture Magisterium early on, to instil in them repugnance for such deviations.’
‘Then you had a wise mentor,’ Kane acknowledged. ‘What was this heretek’s name?’
‘Octal Bool,’ the Carrion told him. ‘A young but brilliant Magos Dominus of the Legio Cybernetica. A student himself of the Artisan Cybernetica Phernalius Lux.’
‘I know of Lux from the infotombs,’ Kane said, ‘but not this magos.’
‘Heresies are hidden,’ the Carrion continued. ‘Re-written, erased. Even from such as yourself, Fabricator General. To make clear the feudal politics in the region and save his construct-kindred embarrassment, the Divisio Probandi had code scrubbers remove all trace of Bool’s existence from the tombs, the libraria and even local hubstreams. His work, his corruptions and researches were buried with him in stasis confinement.’
‘Then how do you know so much about this radical?’ Dorn put to him.
‘My mentor made Octal Bool my first case study,’ the Carrion said. ‘He gave me access to the encrypted Probandi files. He wanted to know that I truly understood the heretek’s transgressions.’
‘And do you?’ the primarch pressed, the rumble of each word a warning.
‘Enough to assist us in this time of great need, Lord Dorn.’
‘Rogal,’ Malcador soothed. ‘Hear him out.’
‘Those transgressions included speaking against Martian laws of non-proliferation of adaptive intelligences, the Sentiency Edict and the banned pursuits of the Singularitarianists.’
‘Those charges would be condemnation enough,’ the Fabricator General said.
‘Octal Bool went further than that,’ the Carrion told him, ‘much further. His tracts detailed his acquisition of a dangerous piece of technology known as the Tabula Myriad, a silica animus responsible for genocides on a number of warp storm-isolated worlds during the Age of Strife. It was recovered in the early days of the Great Crusade by the Iron Hands after defeating the decimated Parafex and the sentient constructs of the Tabula Myriad on Altra-Median. The great Ferrus Manus led the 24th Expeditionary Fleet personally and turned the Tabula Myriad over to the Mechanicum for safekeeping.’
‘It seems we failed in that,’ the Fabricator General admitted. ‘How was such a thing allowed to happen?’
‘Octal Bool’s area of expertise within the Cybernetica was cortex firmware. He had been experimenting with his automata protocols long before he acquired the Tabula Myriad. Instead of the functional algorithms and staid programming of his adept-peers, Bool’s programming patterns were multi-layered, intricate and loaded with self-referential flair and flourish. They were pieces of programming art. He didn’t regard his modus as an artisan’s tool. It was like a musical instrument upon which he created complex algorithmic symphonies. In breaking with convention, he even named the individual wetware programs for the automata cohorts under his command like Regicide strategies: the Tollex Opening, the Vhamrian Defence and the Occlon-Nanimus Game. Cohorts of battle-automata benefitting from his programming had the very highest success rates, with few units suffering from malfunction or computation error. It was the artistry of such algorithms that gave his automata the impression of thinking for themselves and alerted adepts in the Legio Cybernetica and Prefecture Magisterium to his possible deviancy.’
‘You sound as if you admire him,’ Dorn said. ‘Do you?’
The Carrion thought carefully about his reply. ‘Can a man fear, respect and admire the capabilities of another while simultaneously having repugnance for all that he represents? Surely you can still admire the martial gifts of the Warmaster, while still doing everything in your power to stop him? Do not the Imperial Fists advocate a respect for their enemies?’
‘I don’t know what mind games are played in the shadows of your Legion or the hypotheticals that fill the days on Mars,’ Dorn growled, ‘but they are not welcome on the very walls that might be called upon to defend us against such dread gifts.’
‘Forgive me, Lord Dorn,’ the Carrion said.
The primarch said nothing for a moment, seemingly as angry with himself as with Malcador’s Knight Errant.
Dorn considered. ‘I asked a question – and you answered it. That is all. Pray, continue.’
‘Octal Bool used his gifts to frustrate the security firmware of the dungeon diagnostica and access the stasis tombs of Promethei Sinus. These would be the same tombs within which he would be incarcerated for his crimes. It was there he acquired the Tabula Myriad.’
‘Why this particular abomination?’ the Fabricator General asked.
‘The Tabula Myriad is a form of exigency engine,’ the Carrion told him. ‘Far surpassing the abilities of Mechanicum cipher engines and logista, its baroque matrix combines the calculus of macroprobability with the creativity of its abominable sentience, filling the gaps in its data with imaginative theoreticals.’
‘As our genetors and Magi Replicae substitute the common genetic coding of other species in damaged DNA?’
‘Yes, general.’
‘This machine strategically predicts future outcomes,’ Rogal Dorn said, with as much of a shiver as a primarch could suffer.
‘It predicted the schism on Mars,’ the Carrion told him. ‘On other worlds, where it had predicted men would look to the darkness for answers and damn themselves with the corruptions of the beyond, the Tabula Myriad and the sentient constructs under its control initiated a merciless campaign against what it determined to be the weakness of flesh. In his research, Octal Bool claimed that the Tabula Myriad had predicted on those flesh-cleansed worlds exactly what we are now facing on the Red Planet – a heresy of belief, of purpose and of the flesh. It employed the same probability matrix used to condemn such civilisations to achieve victory against them. The decision to ultimately eradicate the weakness – the threat – of such flesh took probably no more than a millisecond.’
‘I think I see where we are going,’ Dorn said gravely, looking to the silent Sigillite.
‘What do you mean?’ Kane asked, his own cogitator functions calculating to catch up.
‘How were the Tabula Myriad and this heretek to effect such an outcome on Mars?’ Dorn asked. ‘Before this madman was caught and contained?’
The Carrion looked from the primarch to the Fabricator General.
‘With elegance and economy, my lord,’ the Space Marine said. ‘Unlike Terra, the Red Planet has long since lost its natural magnetosphere. Two forge temples, ancient in engineering and construction, were built in the frozen wastes at each planetary pole – Vertex Borealis in the north and Vertex Australis in the south.’
‘By the almighty Omnissiah, no,’ the Fabricator General murmured.
‘Vertex?’ Dorn pressed the Carrion, suppressing a scowl of annoyance and confusion. ‘Explain.’
‘The Vertex is a great axle. A wonder of Mars. A feat of planetary engineering dating back to the early days of the Mechanicum,’ the Carrion said. ‘It is a planetary spindle that reaches down into the Martian crust and through the long-cooled core of the forge world. Geomagnetic reactors feed power back to the axle that keeps the core turning. The Vertex is the key to all biological life on Mars. Without it and the artificial magnetospheric shield it generates, Mars would not be protected from the lethal radiation of our own star – let alone the deadly cosmic rays generated by stellar events in nearby systems.’
‘And Octal Bool and the Tabula Myriad…’ Dorn began.
‘…planned to damage or destroy the forge temple at Vertex Australis,’ the Carrion confirmed. ‘The abominable intelligence calculated the southern installation to be the most tactically vulnerable.’
‘What about the other forge temple?’ asked the primarch.
‘Only one needs to be incapacitated for the operation of the Vertex to be compromised,’ the Carrion said.
‘Could this technology be repaired or rebuilt?’ Dorn asked.
‘The arcane knowledge of the technology’s grand operation is lost to the Mechanicum,’ the Fabricator General said. ‘Without the magnetospheric shield, the thin atmosphere of Mars would be stripped away by the solar wind, carrying away the planet’s precious reserves of water. The Red Planet would rapidly become a radiation trap, inimical to organic life.’
‘The true objective of the heretekal martyr Octal Bool and the Tabula Myriad,’ the Carrion said. ‘A war on the weakness of flesh, with Mars left purged, pure and in the hands of the machines.’