by Guy Haley
‘Some might die if they said so.’
‘Ah, so it makes you angry that I speak so. Do you see?’ she said. She drank more of her wine. ‘That is exactly what I am talking about. We are a synthesis, humanity and machine.’ She laced her fingers together around the glass and rocked her hands back and forth. ‘The human is essential to the wellbeing of the machine. It cannot be denied that mankind, as a part of the Machina Cosma, is holy in itself. The form of the engines mimics that of holy humanity. This,’ she swept her hand down her body, ‘trunk, head, limbs – it is the form ordained by the Machine-God. If the form were unimportant, the engines we make would be different. But by making them in our own image, we make them in his. If we deny our own humanity, we deny part of our god’s plan. We deny him.’
‘I could introduce you to a hundred tech-priests who would disagree with you.’
‘And I could find a hundred who would agree with me,’ she said. ‘There is room for every manner of worship in the cult, but some are closer to the Machine-God’s intent than others.’
He grunted aggressively. A member of his own Legio would have been silenced, but she challenged him.
‘That’s not to your liking?’ she said.
He laughed himself. Some of his annoyance boiled off with it. ‘Sometimes I wish for a little more clarity from our priests and magi,’ he said. ‘Battle is simple. Theology annoys me. If that offends you, we have little to talk about.’
‘Very little offends me,’ Esha said.
‘That is good.’ Despite her attitude, he was feeling more comfortable. He found her candour refreshing. ‘It is good to be above matters of little importance. All this chatter is of no consequence.’ He paused. ‘Might I show you what is?’
Her eyes gleamed. She guessed at what he offered, perhaps both parts of it. ‘You would allow me to see Legio Vulpa’s engines?’
‘There will be a formal display tomorrow, but you can see them now, if you like, without the distraction of the others.’
‘Isn’t there some sort of ceremony to come?’
‘The Blooding?’ said Harrtek. ‘A little vitae is spilled and drawn upon the oath plate of our Legio. Nothing you will regret missing. We’ll be back in time for the feast and the exchange of legends.’
‘Then I would like very much to see the engines,’ she said. She drained her glass and placed it on a table.
He looked around himself. He motioned to her, extending his hand around her back to shepherd her through the throng. He was surprised when she turned and took hold of it. Her hand was tiny in his, and cool, as if she had come in from a long spell outdoors.
‘This way,’ he said.
He led her through the crowd, behind long drapes filling the gaps between the pillars of the hall’s colonnade. In the closed-off corridor made by the curtains it was darker, and the rising chatter between the two Legios muffled. Electro flambeaux gave off dancing light but no heat, and it was cool away from the press of bodies. A duluz menial carrying a huge ewer of wine bustled past, his eyes averted from his betters. Harrtek paid him no more heed than he would a stone.
Through the curtained-off space he led her, past high windows of heat-shocked crystal looking out over the conquered world. The stone of the walls was freshly cut, and the minerals twinkled in the false firelight. Legio Vulpa had claimed the highest mountain for their lair, the home of gods in the world’s overthrown creed. A bold statement to imprint the Imperial Truth on the planet for all time. Gods of metal to banish those of make-believe.
A squat, circular steel door, newly made and still gleaming, filled the middle of the hall’s narrower wall. Harrtek spoke to Esha. He was reluctant to release her hand, but did so.
‘Look away, please.’
He half expected her to refuse, but she obliged. On the far side of the curtains the volume of chatter was rising, bragging and boasting, not all of it good-natured. Harrtek approached the door. Before he breathed upon its hidden gene-sensors, he checked the huntress was still looking away.
Locks clanked all around the door and it rolled aside.
‘You are careful,’ she said, turning back to face him.
‘You aren’t? I take you to the underworld. Such passages are never opened lightly.’
They passed into a long tubular corridor leading down into the mountain. Every part of its surface apart from the floor was lined with soft plastek pipes and bundled cables. There was no door at the far end. The corridor simply opened into a larger space. The quality of sound and movement of air suggested great volume.
They passed between a pair of guards hidden in sentry holes. The guards came alert as soon as the couple tripped their detection beams and emerged like figures in an elaborate clock.
Harrtek waved a hand. They read the ident marker embedded in his wrist, and retreated into their alcoves without a word. The challenge done, Esha and Harrtek stepped out into Legio Vulpa’s Hall of Armaments.
Seventy Titans stood in bays carved into the flesh of the mountain like forgotten deities unearthed from an underground tomb. They faced each other over a wide service road, arranged by size rather than maniple. Most had been refitted and repaired after the compliance, although half a dozen were cocooned by repair scaffolds. Limbs protruded from behind the sheeting covering the towers, so that they looked like giant patients in a medicae bay prepared for surgery.
The remainder stood proudly in full view. Their banners had been washed and repaired, and fresh honours stitched into them. The deep red and cream of their livery gleamed with polish. The metallic edgings of their armour plates were clean, buffed to a high shine. At the very far end of the hall, the gates were open and sunlight shone through their high arch, so distant and bright no detail of the outside was visible through the glare. The Titans looked like they were the guardians of a heavenly portal.
Harrtek stopped. ‘Look upon this hall and halt a while. What generations will come after, and see these fortresses we make and wonder, as we wonder at the ruins of xenos empires gone before, and say, “What giants once stood here?”’
‘Very poetic,’ she said. She took a few steps ahead of him, neck craned, eyes taking in every detail.
‘They are not my lines. I quote one of the remembrancers accompanying the fleet,’ said Harrtek. ‘He has written volumes of verse about the Legio, but that line sticks with me.’
‘You do not think the histories will tell those of the future exactly what they need to know?’ she asked.
‘No empire lasts forever. Everything is undone. Time fells even the gods. Poetry tells truths better than history.’
‘There are no gods but the one who is three,’ she said, looking back at him.
‘Figuratively speaking,’ he said, becoming irritated that she did not share his awe at the sight of his Legio’s engines, or his passion for the verse.
She turned to face him. ‘Then why do you fight, if our Imperium will one day fail?’
‘For honour,’ he said. ‘For glory. I was born to fight. It is my purpose to bring ruin to the Emperor’s enemies. Destruction has a beauty of its own. I follow the path of the Machina Cosma. The universe itself works relentlessly to render the complex simple in preparation for the great reforging. I am a holy agent of entropy.’
‘Glory and honour are fleeting,’ she said. ‘They die with the man who prizes them.’
‘That is the nature of entropy,’ he agreed.
‘Entropy is to be resisted,’ she said.
He moved his hand in a way that meant neither yes nor no. ‘Why do you fight?’ he asked.
She shrugged. ‘For the future, and the hope that perhaps our species might succeed where others have not. I do not believe in the tenets of the Entropic Creed.’
‘It is a sensible philosophy.’
‘It is a challenge set us by the Machine-God. What is technology but the c
reation of complexity from the decaying system of the universe?’
Moisture dripped from somewhere high overhead. A large puddle had gathered in the road. Each drip broke the reflections of the god-machines into rings, and sent a glittering spray of droplets dancing in the sunlight blazing from outside.
‘Why is it that you have only women in your Legio?’
Esha smiled. ‘You’ve been wanting to know that since you greeted me.’
‘I have.’
‘It is simply our custom.’
‘Then tell me where this custom comes from.’
‘It is just a custom.’
Harrtek struggled to maintain his humour. He was equally as irritated as he was attracted to this strange woman, and he desired to know.
‘Humour me,’ he said. ‘Please.’ Harrtek hardly ever said please. He tasted the word. It fit his mouth poorly.
‘Very well,’ she said. She put her hands behind her back in a way that suggested she took the stance habitually, and looked back over Vulpa’s Titans. ‘The founding mothers of our order were of the Knightly house of Vi, one of several found on the planet Procon.’
‘Never heard of it,’ said Harrtek.
‘You are hearing of it now,’ she said teasingly.
The conflict of desire and annoyance in Harrtek intensified.
‘All my kind hail from there ultimately,’ said Esha. She walked on through the silence of the hall, looking over at the gigantic shapes of the war engines as if she were appraising beasts of burden in a back-world market. Harrtek followed. Their echoing footsteps set up an uneasy syncopation, always threatening to fall out of rhythm. ‘The Mechanicum came to Procon not long after the first iterators visited. The promises of the Imperium were vague. Those of the Martians more concrete, shall we say.’
‘The Mechanicum bargain of fealty. Weapons, technology, materiel, knowledge and aid,’ he said. ‘That I know well.’
Esha nodded. ‘Procon’s Knights were old. Its lords had lost most of the secrets needed to keep their mounts running. Steam took the place of plasma. Explosive lances and steel swords were wielded instead of energy weapons. From what I know, I don’t think the Knight suits would have survived longer than a few more generations had the priests not come.’
‘Poor incentive for the priests.’
She smiled. ‘Ah, there were other devices on Procon that the Mechanicum coveted.’
‘Aren’t there always? The priests are rapacious.’ Harrtek moved to Esha’s side. She matched her footsteps to his, but they immediately began to drift out of time again. ‘I’ll bet they paraded the finest examples of Knightly tech they could and asked for only a few, small favours in return.’
‘Naturally,’ she said. ‘In fact, I think they brought a lance of House Taranis with them for that very purpose. The Knights of Procon must have looked like beggars in their battered engines. They probably meant to look proud, but felt like fools.’
Harrtek grunted a laugh. ‘So what did these foolish beggars sell for their shining new guns and warsuits?’
‘Well, therein lies the tale,’ said Esha. Harrtek was very close. He was a large man, physically imposing, and he loomed over her. They stopped and turned to face each other. She flashed a smile and laid a hand on his chest, not to push away, but to invite him in. ‘There was a contest,’ she said. ‘To snatch a favour of the machine and take it to the representatives of Mars visiting the planet. The Knights were supposed to fight for it, but the Great Mother took it instead. House Vi cheated, they say. The women of that world were not permitted to ride within the Knights as they are elsewhere. Procon is a stratified place.’
‘Is that so?’ said Harrtek. ‘Then how did she come to take it?’
‘There is a goddess they used to follow on Procon, Pahkmetris of the hunt. Popular with women. The Great Mother was a devotee. She rode a horse through a melee of Knights and stole the prize.’
‘A horse?’ he said. He moved closer.
‘You know. An equid. An ancient beast of Terra. They’re common on some worlds. I saw one once. They are quite beautiful. The point is, her mount was flesh and blood – she could have died. She broke the rules of the contest but the Mechanicum exploited the situation and said her house had won. Her father – who was the king, by the way – Rahajanan, thought he could exploit them in return. Part of the exchange was to be a tithe of young nobles to go to Tigris. Rahajanan saw the opportunity to save his warriors, and so offered the daughters of his house instead. He thought he was being clever. His daughter was troublesome. His Knights were valuable. But,’ she whispered. They were close enough to one another that they shared breath. ‘Rahajanan was deceived. He could think only as a beggar king. He did not know what the Mechanicum required his warriors for. He thought he had tricked the red priests and saved his best warriors for himself, selling off his house’s daughters in their stead to who knew what fate. He did not care. He kept his Knights. They gained the technologies of the outland men. What did it matter to him if it cost him a few women?’
‘Sounds like a good deal to me,’ said Harrtek.
Esha shook her head. ‘Like most lords of the Knightly houses, Rahajanan’s view was fatally constrained. He had no conception of the power of Terra or Mars. He could not guess at the might wielded by the Mechanicum. He did not know that, only weeks’ travel away, war engines far mightier than those he had bartered his children for stood sentinel over a new world of industry, the forge world Tigris. He did not know of the Titans. So, our Great Mother was sent away from the plains and forests, away from her brothers, away from her beloved mount. Her, and one hundred and fifty other bartered daughters of House Vi.’ The smile she gave him now was less mocking, more of pleasure. ‘It did not matter to the Mechanicum of Tigris whether the Knightly houses provided males or females. They required good gene stock with proven compatibility with mind impulse units from a politically neutral source, that is all, and so the Great Mother’s bitterness at her exile turned to a grim delight as she and her sisters were trained as the mistresses of a new Legio of god-machines.
‘When she returned to Procon several years later, her father had to kneel before her. I imagine she laughed to see that. His vaunted warsuit was a child before the machine she ruled. He had played the cunning king, and unwittingly elevated his daughter to godhood.’
‘A foolish king,’ Harrtek agreed. ‘But why do you remain only women? This was years ago, surely. What about loss replacement, new recruits?’
‘How do you recruit?’
‘Stringent testing of all children of our Legio for the desired attributes. Courage, ferocity and intelligence.’
‘The rest?’
He smiled humourlessly. ‘You know what happens to the rest. We are well provided with servitors. Every child of our Legio knows the price if they are found wanting. It encourages the ruthlessness we require.’
‘Well, we are different.’ She laid her other hand on his chest.
Harrtek shrugged. ‘Every Legio has its ways. Some are better than others.’
‘Yours are the best?’
He grinned savagely. ‘Your own ways are always the best.’
‘The exiled daughters made a pact within their new Legio, that no man would ever command them, that they would take their own counsel, and that although they were forbidden from worshipping her, they would honour the principles of the sacred huntress alongside the Machine-God. Since the day of our founding, every single one of our Legio Titan crew has been female.’
‘What do you do with the males?’
‘You know what happens to the rest,’ she said, echoing his words.
‘Really? Servitors?’
She laughed. ‘No! Most of us are vat born, selected to be female at conception. The few natural males we give birth to are given to the priesthood. Many end up serving the Legio as tech-priests.�
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‘But some are servitors?’
‘Yes, some are,’ she admitted.
He moved in closer to her. Their cheeks brushed.
‘For someone who was ashamed of his desires, you seem very practised.’
‘I said I was imperfect – I never said I did not indulge myself,’ he said. ‘Tell me, where do these male children come from?’ he breathed into her ear. ‘You allow no pair bonding, and you are all female anyway. Do the tech-priests open up their gene vaults for you to choose?’
‘Oh no,’ Esha whispered back. ‘We don’t make them all like that.’
Harrtek kissed her with a ferocity she welcomed.
The god-machines stared across the aisle at one another, unconcerned by the doings of the mortals at their feet.
And that was how Terent Harrtek met Esha Ani Mohana.
Eleven
Sleepless
Inactivity was the worst of all situations for a Titan princeps. They longed for battle, and their desire was not solely the product of bloodthirstiness. Many warriors sought glory in war, and that included many princeps, but for the Titan lords their desire for the field was of a deeper sort. Once a princeps had bonded with their Titan a score or more times, then glory, duty, victory, all the finer qualities of war became secondary to a deep, physical need. A princeps wished for battle because they sought escape from their frail bodies. No man or woman could become a god for a while and not yearn for the sensation when it was done. A princeps in peace was an angel cast out of heaven, and like those mythical beings, they suffered when they walked the impure lands of mortals. Symptoms included chills, aching in the bones like ice wrapped in fire, nausea, ennui and crippling migraines. Esha mentally ticked off the list of agonies that, long ago, the instructors of the Legio scholastica had told her to expect when away from her machine.
As a list, they were an abstract. Experienced, they were beyond description.
She often thought of that list as she tried to sleep and failed while a thousand discomforts played havoc with her nerves, an occurrence that happened more often than not now. She and Second Maniple had seen no action for six weeks. The Legio held the Iridium yards and the moon. Mohana Mankata Vi showed no desire to expand their holdings. They were too strong to challenge in their stronghold, and so an uneasy truce fell between the Legios Fureans, Vulpa and Solaria. But at least the other maniples were sent out on patrol. Hers was not. She wondered if she had offended the Great Mother in some way, or if, conversely, she was being protected. She was the last daughter of Mohana Mankata Vi. Maybe there was something symbolic in her person the Great Mother dared not risk. Maybe it was sentimentality.