The Master of Mankind

by Aaron Dembski-Bowden

  Zephon moved slowly, reaching up to remove his own helm. He stood bareheaded before the two children as their mother reached them. The boy, resisting his mother’s attempts to herd him, tore free and stood before Diocletian once more.

  ‘Are you the Emperor?’

  Diocletian stood motionless. ‘Is that a jest?’ he asked, making the boy flinch at the tone.

  Zephon’s smile was bittersweet as he looked down upon the boy. He lowered himself slowly, his red war-plate grinding loudly through the motion, until he was on one knee before the child. Even then, he was still thrice the boy’s height.

  ‘No, child,’ the Blood Angel replied. ‘He is not the Emperor. Though he knows the Emperor very well.’

  Tears ran from the edges of the boy’s eyes. The immensity of the armoured giants before him filled his senses, from the assault of overwhelming red and gold to the thrum of active battleplate. Awe was writ plain across his young features. Awe and desperation and an expression of fearful need.

  Diocletian would have voxed his irritation had Zephon still been wearing his helm to hear it. Zephon was blind and deaf to the Custodian’s annoyance, or simply chose to ignore it.

  ‘What is your name, young one?’

  ‘Darak.’

  ‘Darak,’ the Blood Angel repeated. ‘My name is Zephon. And as grand as my companion appears, he is not the Emperor. What is wrong, child?’

  The boy stammered his words. ‘I… I want to ask the Emperor when we can go home. My parents are still there. We left them behind. We had to get to the evacuation ships.’

  Diocletian glanced to the woman protecting the little girl. Not their mother, then. Her facial structure bore the signs of familial resemblance, so there was some genetic linkage. An aunt or older cousin, perhaps. He removed the target lock playing over her filthy face, dismissing it along with his cursory interest.

  Zephon wasn’t as compelled to move on. ‘I see,’ the Blood Angel said. ‘And what world do you call home?’

  ‘Bleys. We’re from Bleys.’

  Zephon nodded as if he knew the world well. Diocletian doubted that any of the IX Legion had ever set foot upon it, useless backwater that it was. ‘Then you’ve travelled far,’ said the Blood Angel. ‘Welcome to Terra, Darak. You’re safe here.’

  Safe for now, Diocletian added silently.

  ‘What are your parents’ trades?’ Zephon asked the boy. ‘If they were fighting, they must be soldiers?’

  The boy nodded. ‘They were fighting the grey machine men from Mars.’

  ‘My parents are warriors, as well,’ said Zephon, neglecting to mention that they had died over a century ago on the radiation-choked deserts of Baal’s second moon. Their ashes would be nothing more than blight dust on the wasteland winds by now.

  The boy, Darak, turned his eyes up to Diocletian. ‘Are your parents soldiers?’

  ‘No,’ said Diocletian. ‘They are long dead. My mother was a slave who died of intestinal flux, and my father was a barbarian king executed by the Emperor’s own hand for opposing the principles of Unity.’

  ‘The… what?’

  ‘I’ve finished speaking with you,’ Diocletian told the boy.

  Darak narrowed his eyes at Diocletian before returning his gaze to Zephon. ‘I want to go back for my parents. I want to ask the Emperor to send the Space Marines,’ he vowed with painful conviction. ‘The Emperor could send you, couldn’t He?’

  ‘He could,’ Zephon agreed, ‘and perhaps He will. I will ask Him of His plans for Bleys the next time I stand before Him.’

  The hope in the boy’s eyes made Diocletian’s gorge rise. He was all too aware of the many eyes upon them at the heart of this ludicrous exchange.

  ‘Our duty awaits,’ he said, his tone terse.

  ‘Indeed,’ replied Zephon. ‘Now, Darak, I must do my duty to the Emperor. Thank you for taking the time to speak with me.’

  The boy nodded, mute. Zephon replaced his helm. His voice emerged through the harsh, drawling rasp of his vox-grille. ‘Look after your sister, Darak.’

  Darak moved to his aunt and sister, the latter weeping softly after the scare Diocletian had given her. Diocletian walked on with Zephon at his side. If the refugee herd’s stares had been an irritant before, they were practically boring through the Custodian’s armour now.

  ‘You are a creature of pointless sentiment,’ Diocletian voxed to his new companion.

  He heard Zephon’s sigh as they walked onwards. ‘You said I disappointed you, Custodian. I assure you that the feeling is mutual. I had not imagined conversing with one of the Ten Thousand to be such an exercise in soulless discourse.’

  Diocletian didn’t believe that deserved a reply.

  He hoped Kaeria was having better luck with the Fabricator General.

  Intruder.

  That was Kane’s first thought. Not the intruder’s identity, nor how long it must have taken this defiler to reach his inner sanctum. He didn’t even consider the severity of any event that would drive an outsider to venture this far into the catacombs. The trespasser’s materialisation alone occupied his first, hostile thought. The audacity of her presence.

  Intruder.

  Intruders disrupted the music. They were flawed notes amidst the rhythm of crashing hammers and the breath of the forge flames. And this one was a disruption uglier than most.

  Zagreus Kane let himself drop from the harmony at the heart of the foundry’s song of iron and fire. It was a detachment that took place on three levels – spiritually, physically, cognitively. First he exloaded his conscious focus from the noospheric dataclusters that allowed him to oversee the administration and management of several thousand menials at once. The abrupt loss of infinite information was a hole in his soul, as the Voice of the Great Work was sucked into sudden silence.

  Then he physically removed himself from his command cradle, hauling himself along the overhanging steel beams using his four mechanical arms, and lowering himself into the waiting tank treads that comprised the lower half of his body. The lancing pressures of connection/reconnection stabbed dully through his nerve-numbed innards as the metal tendrils of union snaked their way into his augmented guts. The racked volkite and graviton weapons snaked their linkage feeds into his back, shoulders and spine. Each one of them powered up, folding close to his tracked thorax or aligning against his hunched back.

  Lastly, as the armoured tank treads ground their way along the gantry, bringing him on his juddering way closer to the visitor – the intruder – he readied himself for the tedium and inevitable inaccuracies that came with dealing with those unenlightened souls forced to communicate through the impurity of uncanted language.

  As the foundry hammered and roared and clanked and crashed around him, the overseer came to a shuddering halt before the slender figure of an Oblivion Knight. She wore the overlapping gold armour plating of her order over the traditional bronzed mail body­suit, which was to be expected. Her hair was crested into a warrior’s topknot, which also ran according to his expectations; similarly, her portcullised rebreather mask was entirely in keeping with the equipment customarily attributed to the Sisters of Silence. She had marked her face with designs of ink – an Imperial aquila tattooed in red upon her forehead – as if her allegiance were in some way not entirely obvious.

  What he found interesting, however, were the signs of wear and tear upon her wargear. The sensoria cluster in place of his left eye flickered a brief hololithic beam across the Oblivion Knight’s armour plating, recording signs of unfamiliar damage inflicted upon the various layers. Intriguing. Very much so.

  She greeted him with a series of hand gestures. He was impressed that she included all twelve of his long-form titles. That was a formality few outside the Martian Mechanicum would know to offer.

  Zagreus Kane looked down at her. His voice emerged from an augmitter in his neck, shaped from
human teeth mounted in a framework of black steel and polished bronze. It gave him a snarling grin in the middle of his throat.

  ‘State the necessity of your intrusion.’

  She made three brief gestures with a single hand.

  ‘I do not consider myself to have “changed” at all,’ said the Fabricator General of Sacred Mars. He adjusted his forge-blackened, ash-darkened red hood with one of his four hands. ‘Change implies the possibility of degeneration. My alterations are evolution, Oblivion Knight. Each one a step towards divinity. Now, I repeat, state the necessity of your intrusion.’

  She told him her name without saying a word. Her identity was an irrelevancy, but one that Kane let pass. Still, frustration burned. Had they been linked to the noospheric data array, this exchange – and every single nuance within it – would already be over, rather than lurking at the very beginning of the pleasantries.

  ‘I am overseeing the disposition, deployment and armament of several million troops and several hundred fleets, Kaeria. In addition, Fabricator Locum Trimejia is transbonded to me in accordance with the New Precepts of Mars. I am aware of all that took place at the hierarchs’ council and the loss of Adnector Primus Mendel. Your expositional formality is a drain on my time.’

  She replied in hand gestures, none of which were an apology. At last, they were cutting to the matter’s core. As her hands moved, Kane’s iron-sealed mouth – his true, human mouth – trickled oil-lubricated coolant saliva as he wheezed, briefly taking over from the auto-respiratory processes of his cyborged lungs. The gesture made the heavy graviton cannons wired into his spine cycle in a brazen sign of his speculation.

  ‘I understand,’ he said. ‘Supply me with the specifics.’

  Kaeria offered a data-slate, which Kane took by deploying one of his many secondary multi-segmented abdominal servo-arms. Three thin fingers snatched it from the Oblivion Knight’s grip and immediately drew it into the folds of his robe, slotting it into a data-inload cavity between his ribs.

  For the ghost of a second, information danced behind his eyes.

  And for the first time in many months, Fabricator General Zagreus Kane hesitated. ‘This is a significant order of requisition,’ he stated. He made no move to return the data-slate in the wake of his understatement. In a single requisition demand, she was requesting as much battle-iron and war-flesh as the Mechanicum had supplied to the Great Work in the last two years alone.

  Kaeria nodded, asking a question with her hands.

  ‘Yes,’ was the reply. ‘Ammunition is the easiest to provide, and it will be done. We can also harvest forge workers for the thralls and battle-servitors you require. A recall of Cybernetica cohorts will be issued at once from all unthreatened systems within Segmentum Solar, and a clarion call can be raised to attract Myrmidia cultists in nearby systems, in order to replace the significant drain you are proposing. But it is of immense import that you understand what you are requesting. This will severely and potentially gravely deplete the Mechanicum’s forces on Terra, as well as our involvement in the active spheres of conflict in the Solar War.’

  Kaeria signed her understanding, resolute in her motions.

  Kane paused, calculating, calculating…

  ‘The divine armours you request can also be provided, though not in the numbers you require. Those numbers simply do not exist on Terra. And they will be salvaged or otherwise remastered from war spoil, requiring reconsecration in the Omnissiah’s name. Even House Terryn has sent its divine armours into the stars to engage the Warmaster and the false Fabricator General.’

  Kaeria signed a reply.

  ‘Your acceptance is noted,’ said Kane. ‘And I return a question of my own – what of the Legio Ignatum forces already deployed to aid in the Great Work?’

  Kaeria’s reply was curt and simple. Kane felt the synthetic fluids in his veins heat briefly in reassuring warmth. The Fire Wasps yet functioned. Good, good.

  ‘So be it. I shall admit, then, that there are no Legio Titanicus elements remaining upon Terra at this time. As with the Knight Households, all are deployed and garrisoned off-world.’

  Kaeria hesitated, then signed her understanding.

  ‘Now,’ said Kane, ‘to the final element in your order of requisition. This is a request of particular magnitude.’

  The Sister’s hands moved in a graceful query.

  Kane mused over his answer. He didn’t like the effortless confidence in her eyes. Perhaps ordering Trimejia to raise the issue of Mars’ reconquest at the gathering of hierarchs had been an error of tact. The Fabricator General retreated into the shadows of his hood, thinking, considering, processing.

  It could be done. Of course it could be done. And with that hidebound fool Mendel dead, beautiful new possibilities were suddenly dawning.

  He turned in his socket, twisting his torso to look back over his shoulder at the seemingly endless production lines in the hellish amber light of dancing forge flames. He would need to retake his place in the omni-cradle to oversee the fulfilment of the requisition order, and he would need the genius of his trusted kindred to complete the list’s last element.

  Someone would have to submit to reforging. Someone would need to be reforged on a level so absolute and fundamental that it bordered on rebirth – if Kane agreed to arrange it.

  If.

  Such power in such a little word.

  Swivelling back to face the Oblivion Knight, Kane looked down upon the warrior, amusement shining in his remaining human eye. To outward appearances, it was all that was left of the man he’d been only five years before.

  ‘No.’

  Kaeria was under no similar compunction to hide her surprise. She signed another query.

  Kane emitted a crackle of code. ‘The Mechanicum’s ability to comply is not the question, Oblivion Knight. Its willingness is. Am I able to fulfil this last element of requisition? Yes. Am I willing to do so? No.’

  She was more cautious now, her hands moving slower, her eyes locked to his shadowed features.

  Kane’s spinal-linked weapons deactivated in sympathy with his rising confidence. ‘Then it is my pleasure to enlighten you, Sister. The Priesthood of Mars has been instrumental in the webway’s reconstruction. The Omnissiah has shared many of its details with those of us wearing the Holy Red, whom He took into His service within those tunnels. But He is silent now. He has been silent for some time. So much has gone unspoken. You ask a great deal of the Martian Mechanicum, and we give. We provide. We supply. We feed our iron and toil into the webway. Now the time for answers has come.’

  Kaeria’s caution crystallised. Her signed reply was lengthy, her glare laden with accusation.

  ‘So we have been told,’ Kane replied. ‘And none of my priesthood doubts that the Omnissiah’s Great Work will be the salvation of the species. I am not holding the Great Work to ransom. I am making known my desire for enlightenment.’

  Kaeria signed nothing. After a long moment, she gave a curt nod. Kane continued, sensing how close he was coming to the truth.

  ‘These orders of requisition come from the Ten Thousand and the Sisterhood of Silence, not the Master of Mankind. Not even from the Sigillite, who speaks with the Omnissiah’s voice. You desire the final, most vital element on this list for your war. I will grant it, at the price of a single answer.’

  Another nod. The Oblivion Knight could have been carved from sandstone for all the emotion she showed on her dusky features.

  Kane leaned down. His tank treads grumbled as they turned him slightly. ‘The webway is a resource beyond value. Tactically. Logistically. It is recorded in my predecessor’s archives that the Omnissiah Himself spoke of its passages being used to return to Mars. Will this avenue of return be made available to us in the near future?’ Kane heard the too-human emotion in his vocalisation. He didn’t care. A momentary weakness was permissible. The answer meant everythi
ng.

  Kaeria’s reply was both blunt and brief. Unknown.

  Kane had expected no less – but unknown was not forbidden, and he would take every shred of hope he could salvage from the situation. He’d recorded Kaeria’s ocular and respiratory response to pore over later, whereupon he would run the dilation of her pupils and the sound of her breathing through myriad filters to determine even the slightest determinant.

  ‘Mars must be retaken,’ he said softly, slowly, as if hypnotised into sounding human. ‘The alternatives are unacceptable.’

  Kaeria said nothing, did nothing, merely looked up at him. Kane felt an all-too-familiar frustration tighten its clutch around his innards. The Sigillite had refused many times to launch a full reclamation of Sacred Mars. The Seventh Primarch mirrored that refusal. But Kane was no longer a Locum trailing at Kelbor-Hal’s heels in the dark forges of the Red Planet. He was Fabricator General in his own right, the rightful lord of humanity’s twin capital Mars, and his rank matched theirs in influence and authority.

  It was time he was respected and heeded in accordance with his position.

  ‘The Mechanicum will supply your war on this single condition – the Omnissiah Himself once spoke of a route within this alien webway that reaches back to Sacred Mars. Adnector Primus Mendel named it the Aresian Path. No matter the cost, no matter the effort, you will see it reinforced and held, ready for use once the Omnissiah’s Great Work is completed. Even if thousands of other routes and passages must fall, you will ensure that the way to Mars remains in Imperial control.’

  To his surprise Kaeria replied at once, signing a simple affirmation. She signed a question of her own.

  ‘Yes,’ Kane replied, feeling the prickling creep of suspicion. ‘That is all I require. For now.’

  Kaeria nodded, signing her thanks.

  ‘How easily you give your word,’ Kane vocalised with an emission of crackling background code.

  Her reply was far longer this time, her hands weaving for several seconds.

  Kane watched, seeing her assurances, allowing himself to be appeased by them. He did not know whether to believe her – or indeed if her kind could lie at all – but it was of no consequence. The first and most crucial step had been taken. Opportunity had at last presented itself and been firmly seized.