'Machine, heal thyself,' said the warrior, the purpose and self-belief in his voice passing into Verticorda as though infusing every molecule of his hybrid existence of flesh and steel with new-found purpose and vitality.
He felt the warmth of the warrior's touch through the shell of his mount, and gasped as trembling vibrations spread through its armoured frame of plasteel and ceramite. He took an involuntary step back, feeling the movements of his mount flow as smoothly as ever they had. With one step, he could feel Ares Lictor move as though it had just come off the assembly lines, its stubborn knee joint flexing like new.
'Who are you?' he gasped, his voice sounding grating and pathetic next to the mighty timbre of the golden warrior's voice.
'I am the Emperor,' said the warrior.
It was a simple answer, yet the weight of history and the potential of a glorious future were carried in every syllable.
Knowing he would never again hear words spoken with such meaning, Verticorda and Ares Lictor dropped to one knee, performing the manoeuvre with a grace that would have been impossible before the Emperor's touch.
In that moment, Taymon Verticorda knew the truth of the being standing before him.
'Welcome to Mars, my lord,' he said. 'All praise to the Omnissiah.'
PRINCIPIA MECHANICUM
1.01
Swathed in faded and tattered robes of rust red, the six Mechanicum Protectors stood unmoving before her, as still as the towering statues of the magi that had stared down upon the thousands of scribes within the great Hall of Transcription of the Librarium Technologica. Their iron-shod boots were locked tight into the ship's deck restraints, while she had had to hold onto a metal stanchion just to avoid cracking her head on its fuselage or tumbling around the hold when it had taken off.
The interior of the ship was bare and unadorned, as functional as it was possible to be. No unnecessary decorations or aesthetic elements designed to ease the eye were included in its design, perfectly epitomising the organisation to which it belonged.
Dalia Cythera ran a hand through her cropped blonde hair, feeling the dirt and grease there and longing for one of her weekly rotations in the Windward sump's ablutions block. She had a feeling, however, that her cleanliness was the furthest thing from the minds of the Protectors.
None of them had spoken to her other than to confirm her name when they had removed her from the cell beneath the Librarium in which Magos Ludd had locked her a week earlier. He'd discovered the enhancements she'd made to the inner workings of her cogitator and had hauled her from the work line in a rage, angry hashes of binaric static canting from his vocaliser.
Seven days alone in complete darkness had almost broken her. She remembered squeezing into a tiny ball when the cell door finally opened and she saw the bronze death masks of the Protectors, their gleaming weapon-staves and the unforgiving light of their eyes.
Ludd's blurted protests at the Protectors' intrusion soon ceased when they invited him to scan the biometric security encryptions carried within their staves. She was frightened of the Protectors, but then she guessed she was supposed to be. Their masters in the Mechanicum had designed them that way, with their enhanced bulk, weaponised limbs and glowing green eyes that shone, unblinking, behind bronze, skull-faced masks.
Within moments, she had been hauled from the cell and dragged through the cavernous, echoing scriptoria where she'd spent the last two years of her life, her limbs loose and weak.
Thousands upon thousands of robed scribes, ordinates, curators and form-stampers filled the scriptoria, and as she was carried towards the enormous arch that led to the world beyond, she realised she would be sad to leave the knowledge that passed through it.
She would not miss the people, for she had no friends here and no colleagues. None of the pallid-skinned adepts looked up from the monotony of their work, the sea-green glow of their cogitators and the flickering lumen globes floating in the dusty air leaching their wizened features of life and animation.
Such a state of being was foreign to Dalia and it never failed to amaze her that her fellow scribes were so blind to the honour of what they did.
The recovered knowledge of Terra and the new wonders sent back from across the galaxy by the thousands of remembrancers accompanying the expeditions of the Great Crusade passed through this chamber. Despite the glorious flood of information, carefully logged and filed within the great libraries of Terra, every one of the faceless minions ceaselessly, blindly, ground themselves into old age repeating the same bureaucratic and administrative tasks every waking hour of every day, oblivious or uncaring of the wealth of information to which they were privy.
Without the insight or even the will to question the task they had been given to perform, the scribes shuffled from their hab-stacks through the same kilometres of well-trodden corridors every day and performed their duties without question, thought or awe.
The rustle of paper was what Dalia imagined the ocean to sound like, the clatter of adding machines and the rattle of brass keys on the typesetters like the motion of uncounted pebbles on a beach. Of course, Dalia had never seen the things she imagined, for the seas of Terra had long since boiled away in forgotten wars, but the words she read as she copied text from the reams of paper and armfuls of data-slates carried in daily by muscled servitors had filled her mind with possibilities of worlds and ideas that existed far beyond the confines of Terra's mightiest scriptorium.
Emerging from the musty darkness of the Librarium Technologica, she had been blinded by the brightness of the day, the sky a brilliant white and the sun a hazy orb peeking through scraps of clouds the colour of corrosion.
The air was cold and thin at this altitude. She could just make out the tips of the slate-coloured mountains that crowned the world over the teeming roofs and spires crammed together in this part of the Imperial Palace. She had longed to see the mountains in all their glory, but her escorts marched her through dark streets that sweated steam and oil and voices towards an unknown destination without pause.
That destination turned out to be a landing platform, upon which sat a vapour-wreathed starship, its hull still warm and groaning from the stresses of an atmospheric entry.
She was led into the cavernous hold and deposited on the floor while the Protectors took up their allocated positions and the mag-locks secured them to the deck. With a juddering roar and sudden lurch, the starship lifted off, and Dalia was thrown to her knees by the violence of the ascent. Fear gripped her and she clung to a protruding stanchion as the angle of incline increased sharply.
The thought that she was leaving the planet of her birth struck her forcefully, and she experienced terrible panic at the thought of venturing beyond her known horizons. No sooner had she chided herself for such timidity, than the panic subsided and she felt her stomach cramp as she realised how hungry she was.
The roaring of the starship and the vibrations on its hull grew louder and more violent until she was sure the craft was going to tear itself apart. Eventually, the noise changed in tone and the starship began to level out, powering through the void at unimaginable speeds.
She was travelling on a starship.
With a moment free to think, she now wondered where she was going and why the Mechanicum Protectors had plucked her from the Librarium's cells and for what purpose. Curiously, she felt no fear of this strange voyage, but she attributed that lack to the mystery and interest of it being enough to overshadow any wariness she felt.
Over the next day or so, her escorts - she did not now think of them as captors - resisted her every attempt at communication, save to instruct her to eat and drink, which she did ravenously, despite the food's chemical artificiality.
They did not move from their locked positions at all during the journey, standing as mute guardians and offering her no diversion save in the study of their forms.
Each one was tall and powerfully built, their physiques gene-bulked and augmented with implanted weaponry. Ribbed cables and col
oured wires threaded their robes and penetrated their flesh through raw-looking plugs embedded in their skin. She had seen Protectors before, but she had never been so close to one.
They smelled unpleasantly of rotten meat, machine oil and stale sweat.
They were armed with giant pistols with flaring barrels, and tall staves of iron, topped with a bronze and silver cog, from which hung a scrap of parchment that fluttered in the gusting air within the cold compartment.
A set of numbers was written on the parchment, arranged in a four by four grid, and Dalia quickly worked out that each line added up to the same number, no matter which way they were combined - vertically, horizontally or diagonally. Not only that, but each of the quadrants, the four centre squares, the corner squares and many other combinations added up to the same figure.
'Thirty-four,' she said. 'It's always thirty-four.'
The design was familiar to her and Dalia knew she had seen it before. No sooner had she wondered where, than the answer came to her.
'The Melancholia,' said Dalia, nodding at the parchment.
'What did you say?' asked the Protector.
His voice was human, but echoed with a metallic rasp beneath his bronze mask, and Dalia was momentarily taken aback that he'd actually responded to something she said.
'The symbol on your parchment,' she said. 'It's from an engraving. I saw it in a book I transcribed two years ago.'
'Two years ago? And you still remember it?'
'Yes,' nodded Dalia, hesitantly. 'I kind of remember stuff I've read and don't forget it.'
'It is the symbol of our master,' said the Protector.
'It's from an engraving of one of the old master prints,' said Dalia, her eyes taking on a glazed look as she spoke, talking more to herself than the Protector. 'It was so old, but then everything we transcribe in the great hall that's not from the expedition fleets is old. It was a picture of a woman, but she looked frustrated, as if she was annoyed at not being able to invent something ingenious. She had all sorts of equipment around her, weights, an hourglass and a hammer, but she looked sad, as if she just couldn't get the idea to take shape.'
The Protectors glanced at one another as Dalia spoke, each one gripping his stave tightly. Dalia caught the look and her words trailed off.
'What?' she asked.
The Protector disengaged the mag-lock clamps securing him to the deck and stepped towards her. The suddenness of his motion took her by surprise and she stumbled backwards, falling onto her backside as he loomed over her, the green glow of his eyes shining brightly within his tattered hood.
'I begin to see why we were sent to fetch you,' said the Protector.
'You do?' asked Dalia. 'And you were sent for me? Me? Dalia Cythera?'
'Yes, Dalia Cythera. Rho-mu 31 was sent to fetch you from Terra.'
'Rho-mu 31?'
'That is our designation,' said the Protector.
'What, all of you?'
'All of us, each of us. It is all the same.'
'All right, but why were you sent to fetch me?' asked Dalia.
'We were sent to fetch you before you were executed.'
'Executed?' exclaimed Dalia. 'For what?'
'Magos Ludd invoked the Law of the Divine Complexity,' explained Rho-mu 31. 'Individuals so accused attract the attention of our master.'
Dalia thought for a moment, her eyes fluttering beneath their lids as she recalled what that law concerned. 'Let me think, that's the belief that the structure and working of each machine has been set down by the Omnissiah and is therefore divine… and that to alter it is, oh…'
'You see now why we came for you?'
'Not really,' admitted Dalia. 'Anyway, who is your master, and what does he want with me? I'm just a transcriber of remembrance. I'm nobody.'
Rho-mu 31 shook his head, making a fist and placing it over the silver and bronze cog atop his staff.
'You are more than you realise, Dalia Cythera,' he said, 'but that, and more, will become clear to you when you meet our master: High Adept Koriel Zeth, Mistress of the Magma City.'
'The Magma City?' asked Dalia. 'Where is that?'
'At the edge of the Daedalia Planum, on the southern flank of Arsia Mons,' said Rho-mu 31, lifting his stave and touching it to an opaque panel on the vibrating hull of the starship. A flickering light crackled, and the panel began to change, slowly becoming more and more translucent until finally it was virtually transparent.
When this transformation was complete, Dalia gasped at the sight before her, her face bathed in a fiery red glow from the planet below. Its surface was clad in fire and metal, its atmosphere choked with striated clouds of pollution. Teeming with gargantuan sprawls of industry larger than the continents of Old Earth, the world seemed to throb with the heartbeat of monstrous hammers.
Plumes of fire and towering stacks of iron rose from its mountainous southern regions, and networks of gleaming steel spread out like cracks in the ground through which fractured light spilled into the sky.
'Is that…?'
'Mars,' confirmed Rho-mu 31. 'Domain of the Mechanicum.'
Supersonic shells tore through the gaggle of servitors feeding on the dead techno-mats, obliterating one instantly and blowing the limbs from another. Three others staggered back, chunks of flesh blasted from their emaciated frames. They refused to fall, however, their damaged brains unable to comprehend how grievously the guns of Cronus's Knight had wounded them.
'All yours, Maven,' said Cronus, cutting off the stream of shells.
'So glad you left me something to do,' replied Maven.
Maven moved Equitos Bellum in behind the bloody servitors, the energised blade in his war machine's right fist reaching down and slicing through the survivors in one sweep. Old Stator finished off the stragglers with a short, perfectly controlled burst of laser fire, their wasted bodies exploding in puffs of vaporised blood and scrap metal.
Standing five times the height of the feral creatures, the three Knights towered over the battlefield, though Maven knew that to call it such was to vastly overstate the nature of the deaths they had caused.
The Knights were armoured in thick plates of plasteel and ceramite, protected by layered banks of power fields strong enough to weather the impact of a much larger engine's wrath, and armed with weapons that could kill scores at a time. The plates of their armour were a deep, midnight blue, the right shoulder of each one painted with the design of a wheel encircling a lightning bolt.
The same design was repeated on the long, cream-coloured banners hanging between the mechanised legs of all three war machines, the heraldry of the Knights of Taranis.
Maven rode in Equitos Bellum, an honourable mount with a host of battle honours earned in the earliest days of the Great Crusade. It had fought the enemies of the Imperium beneath a dozen different skies, and even marched alongside the Salamanders of Primarch Vulkan. The design of a firedrake carved into the skull-cockpit of the Knight recalled that campaign, and Maven never tired of telling the stories of that glorious ride into battle.
His studious brother-in-arms, Cronus, rode in Pax Mortis, and Old Stator commanded the august majesty of Fortis Metallum. All three war machines had earned their share of glory on the battlefields of the Imperium, marching ahead of the Titan engines, the god-machines.
The Knights of Taranis were feted among the warriors of Mars for their martial achievements, revered for their place in Martian history, and lauded for the wisdom of their commanders.
Even the mighty princeps of the Titan legions were known to seek the wise counsel of the order's masters, for Lords Verticorda and Caturix were known as leaders whose shared command blended the warrior's heart with the diplomat's cool.
'So why, in the name of the Omnissiah are we stuck out in the arse end of nowhere culling feral servitors?' he asked himself, before remembering that the Manifold-link between the Knights was still open.
'We're here because those are our orders, Maven,' said Stator. 'Do you have a problem
with that?'
'No, preceptor,' replied Maven, his tone contrite. 'I just meant that it seems like such a waste of our strength. Can't Magos Maximal's Protectors perform their own culls?'
'Not as well as we can,' said Cronus, his answer sounding like it came from a training manual. Maven felt his lip curl in a sneer at his brother's sycophancy.
'Exactly, Cronus,' said Stator. 'We've been given a duty to protect this reactor complex and there is honour in duty, no matter how far beneath us it might seem.'
Maven sensed an opening and said, 'But the Knights of Taranis once marched with the Crusade. We fought alongside heroes of the Imperium, and now all we do is shoot feral servitors that come up out of the pallidus. There's no glory in this work.'
'These days the threats to the Warmaster's campaigns require forces stronger than us,' said Stator, but Maven could sense the bitterness beneath his words. 'The Great Crusade is almost over.'
'And what will be left for us?' demanded Maven, emboldened by Stator's words. 'There must be expeditions that need the skills of our order.'
'The expeditions do not ask for Knights,' said Stator. 'They ask for the god-machines to walk with their armies. Our role is to protect Mars and maintain the traditions of our order, and part of that tradition is honouring our obligations. Is that understood, Maven?'
'Yes, preceptor,' said Maven.
'Now let's finish this sweep and make sure there are no more of them. Maximal needs this facility kept safe, and Lord Caturix swore that we would do so.'
Maven sighed and walked his Knight to where humming power cables jutted from the hard, orange earth and spat sparks where the servitors had dug at them to feed the machine parts of their ravaged bodies. The corpses of the techno-mats and artificers sent to fix the damage lay in pools of blood that were already congealing in the heat that bled from the fusion reactor further back in the gorge.
'Check for more of them out there, Cronus,' ordered Stator. 'They usually hunt in bigger packs than this.'
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