Dalia saw their inquisitive looks, knowing that they too were curious as to what had transpired within the chamber of the Akashic reader.
'She wanted to know everything that happened in the chamber and everything Jonas Milus said to me.'
'What did he say?' asked Caxton.
She squeezed Caxton's hand, glancing up at the pict-camera in the upper corner of the room.
'He just died,' said Dalia. 'He didn't say anything at all.'
The Medicae pronounced Dalia fit to resume her duties the following morning, and the next six rotations were spent in Zeth's inner forge rebuilding the Akashic reader, replacing those parts that had burned out and recalibrating those that had survived.
Zeth and Dalia had made assumptions and now they were paying for them. Dalia should have requested clarification on Zeth's figures, but she had been so focused on the minutiae of the project she had not thought to doubt the adept's numbers.
That wasn't going to happen again. Rigorous double testing and checking procedures were enforced and every servitor had its work reviewed by a living, breathing adept.
The silver wiring in the floor had melted through and whole sections were pulled up and replaced with slabs impregnated with a higher gauge of cable. Every aspect of the machine's parts was examined and re-evaluated to see if there were ways of improving its performance and ensuring that it did not fail again.
Scores of adepts and servitors laboured in the dome alongside Dalia and her friends, though there was none of the shared sense of wonder that had enthused them when previously working on the Akashic reader. Only the biting drills of the servitors broke the silence of the dome as they lifted floor slabs and carried them away.
The coffers in the dome were empty, and as unnerving as it had been working beneath the sightless eyes of the bound psykers, everyone felt their absence more acutely. The vacant berths were a grim reminder of the deaths caused by the machine they were working on, and the assembled workers kept their heads fixed firmly on the job at hand.
Zeth spoke little to Dalia, the adept forced to spend most of her time dealing with the fallout from their abortive experiment. The adept left her apprenta, a magos named Polk, in charge, and, under his and Rho-mu 31's supervision, work continued much as before.
Dalia had asked Rho-mu 31 once why Adept Zeth was absent from the dome, but all the robed Protector had said was, 'She has matters of greater importance to attend to.'
Dalia had thought the Akashic reader was Zeth's greatest work, so clearly there had been consequences that not even an adept of Zeth's stature could ignore. Those few times Dalia and Zeth had passed words, she simply reaffirmed that Jonas Milus had not spoken to her.
Zeth would nod in weary acceptance, but Dalia could read the adept's disbelief in her noospheric aura… as well as veiled fear that spoke to Dalia of events far more terrible than a failed test.
She wasn't exactly sure why she was unwilling to share the empath's words with Zeth, but the intuitive part of her mind, the part that had led her to the design of the Akashic reader, told her that to inform the adept of what she knew - which wasn't much anyway - could very well be dangerous.
Knowledge is power, guard it well, wasn't that one of the Mechanicum's aphorisms?
Dalia intended to guard this knowledge very well and there were only a few people she dared trust with it.
Adept Zeth was not one of them.
Work on the newly reconstructed Akashic reader was almost complete, the tolerances and capacity of the receptors altered to allow for the increased power expected to flow through the device upon its next activation.
Many months would need to pass before Mars and Terra would be in alignment once more, but for the next few rotations, the power of the Astronomican was still a vast resource of harvestable psychic energy.
Fresh psykers were already being installed within the coffers, though there had been no sign of another empath for the throne atop the dais, a fact for which Dalia was pathetically grateful.
As the activity in the dome neared completion, Dalia approached the workbench where Zouche and Caxton worked on the helmet assembly. Zouche was plugged into the lathe via extruded dendrites in his wrist, and the hissing of the laser lathe cutting through high-grade steel was a shrieking banshee howl.
Dalia winced as the sound bit into the meat of her brain.
Caxton saw her coming and smiled, lifting his hand in greeting. She smiled and returned the gesture as Zouche looked up from his labours and shut off the lathe.
'Dalia,' said Zouche, withdrawing his mechadendrites from the workbench and flipping up his protective goggles. 'How are you today?'
'I'm fine, Zouche,' she said, her gaze shifting to the dais where the bronze armoured figure of Adept Zeth and Rho-mu 31 supervised the work of Mellicin and Severine. 'Please, can you turn the lathe back on?'
'Back on?' asked Zouche, glancing over at Caxton. 'Why?'
'Please, just do it.'
'What's the matter, Dalia?' asked Caxton. 'You sure you're allright?'
'I'm fine,' repeated Dalia. 'Please, turn the lathe back on, I need to talk to you both, but I don't want anyone to hear.'
Zouche shrugged and reconnected with the workbench to activate the laser. Once again, the hiss of cutting metal filled the air as the manip plate moved the steel around the spitting lathe. Both Zouche and Caxton leaned in as Dalia spoke.
'The damper we used in the reader, the part that blocks external interference from interfacing with the empath's helmet, can you make a portable version of it?'
Zouche frowned. 'A portable one. Why?'
'To block out vox-thieves and disrupt pict-feed,' said Caxton, guessing Dalia's meaning.
'Yes,' agreed Dalia. 'Exactly.'
'I'm not sure about this,' said Zouche. 'I don't like the notion of secrecy. Nothing good can come of it.'
'Look, can you make it or not?' asked Dalia.
'Of course, we can,' said Caxton, his boyish face alight at the prospect of mischief. 'It's simple, isn't it, Zouche?'
'Yes, it's simple, but why would you want such a device?' asked Zouche, 'What's so secret that you need to stop anyone hearing it?'
'I need to talk to you, Mellicin and Severine too, and I need to be sure we're the only one's listening.'
'Talk to us about what?'
'About what Jonas Milus said to me.'
'I thought you said he didn't say anything,' pointed out Caxton.
'I lied,' said Dalia.
They met at the end of shift in the refectoria hall, an echoing space filled with replenishing servitors and hungry labourers, menials and adepts. The hall was rife with rumour, the few information networks that were functional burbling with fragments of frightened talk of catastrophic accidents and unnatural incidents all across Mars.
Gathering like conspirators, they sat as far from any listening ears as it was possible to get, but with each clique muttering their suspicions about what was happening beyond the walls of Adept Zeth's forge, no one was paying them any mind anyway.
As they huddled around the smallest table that could accommodate them all, Dalia took a long, hard look at her friends, judging how they might react to what she was about to tell them.
Caxton seemed to be enjoying himself immensely, while Zouche looked nervous at their conspiratorial gathering. Mellicin's posture spoke of her unease, and Severine looked as expressionless and pale as she had since Jonas Milus's death.
'Zouche?' said Dalia. 'Did you bring it?'
'Aye, girl, I did,' nodded Zouche. 'It's working. No one can hear what we're saying.'
'What's this all about, Dalia?' asked Mellicin. 'Why did we have to meet like this?'
'I'm sorry, but I didn't know how else to do this.'
'Do what?' asked Zouche. 'I don't see why we need to skulk about like this just because the damned empath spoke to you.'
Severine's head snapped up and her eyes flashed. 'Jonas spoke to you?'
Dalia nodded. 'Yes, he did.'
'What did he say?'
'Not much,' admitted Dalia. 'And what he did say didn't make much sense then.'
'And now?' asked Mellicin, the wan light of the refectoria gleaming from the metallic half-mask of her face. 'Your words imply they make more sense now.'
'Well, sort of. I'm not sure, but maybe.'
'Clarity, Dalia,' said Mellicin. 'Remember clarity in all things. First of all, tell us what the empath said.'
'His name was Jonas,' snapped Severine. 'He had a name. All of you, he had a name and it was Jonas.'
'I am well aware of that,' said Mellicin, without pause. 'Dalia, if you please.'
Feeling everyone's eyes upon her, Dalia reddened and took a deep breath before speaking. The words came easily to her, each one seared onto her brain like an acid etching on glass.
'He said, ''I have seen it! All knowledge.'' And even though he was right in front of me it sounded like he was speaking from somewhere really far away, like the other side of Mars or somewhere far underground.'
'Is that it?' asked Severine, disappointment plain on her angular face.
'No,' said Dalia. 'I told him I was sorry about what was happening to him and he said that he didn't want my pity. He said that he'd seen the truth and that he was free.'
'Free of what?' asked Zouche.
'I don't know,' said Dalia. 'He said, ' ''I have seen the truth and I am free. I know it all, the Emperor slaying the Dragon of Mars… the grand lie of the red planet and the truth that will shake the galaxy, all forgotten by man in the darkness of the labyrinth of night''. It was horrible, his mouth burning with fire and his voice fading away with every word.'
'The labyrinth of night?' asked Caxton. 'Are you sure that's what he said?'
'Yes, absolutely,' said Dalia. 'The labyrinth of night.'
'The Noctis Labyrinthus,' said Mellicin, and Caxton nodded.
Dalia looked at the pair of them. 'Noctis Labyrinthus… what's that?'
'The Labyrinth of Night, it's what Noctis Labyrinthus means,' replied Caxton.
'What kind of place is it?' asked Dalia, elated to have found some meaning in words that had previously been meaningless. 'Is it a mountain, a crater? What?'
Mellicin shook her head, a nictitating membrane flickering over her augmetic eye as she dredged information from her memory coils.
'Neither. The Noctis Labyrinthus is a broken region of land between the Tharsis uplands and the Valles Marineris,' said Mellicin, the words spoken with the tone of someone retrieving data from an internal memory coil. 'Notable for its maze-like system of deep, sheer-walled valleys, it is thought to have been formed by faulting in a previous age. Also, many of the canyons display typical features of grabens, with the upland plain surface clearly preserved on the valley floor.'
Dalia frowned, wondering what this desolate region of Mars had to do with what Jonas had said. 'Is it empty?'
'More or less,' said Caxton. 'Adept Lukas Chrom has his Mondus Gamma forge to the south of it, but apart from him, we're the nearest forge.'
'So there's no one there at all?'
'It's not a region of Mars anyone has any real interest in,' said Mellicin. 'I'm told a number of adepts attempted to found their forges there, but none lasted very long.'
'Why not?'
'I don't know, they just didn't. Supposedly the forges were plagued by technical problems. The adepts claimed the region was inimical to the machine-spirits and they abandoned their workings to set up elsewhere.'
'So nobody knows what's there?' said Dalia. 'Whatever Jonas was talking about is somewhere in the Noctis Labyrinthus, it's got to be. The grand lie and this great truth.'
'It's possible,' conceded Mellicin, 'but what do you think he was talking about? Have you any idea what this… Dragon is he speaks of the Emperor slaying?'
Dalia leaned in closer. 'I don't know exactly what it is, but I've been working through my remembrances of the texts I transcribed back on Terra and I've found out quite a bit.'
'Like what?' asked Severine.
'Well, Jonas spoke about the Emperor slaying the Dragon of Mars, so I looked into any references to dragons first.'
'Looked into how?'
'You know, in my memory,' said Dalia. 'I told you, I read stuff and I don't forget it.'
Mellicin smiled. 'That is a useful talent, Dalia. Continue.'
'Right, well, we all know about mythical dragons?'
'Of course,' said Zouche. 'Children's stories.'
Dalia shook her head. 'Maybe, but I think there's more to Jonas's words than that. Some of it, anyway. I mean, yes, I found lots of stories of heroic knights in shining armour slaying dragons and rescuing maidens in return for their hands in marriage.'
'Typical,' said Severine. 'You never read of a maiden rescuing a man from a dragon.'
'I guess not,' agreed Dalia. 'I suppose it didn't fit with the times when they were written.'
'Carry on, Dalia,' said Mellicin. 'What else did you learn?'
'There wasn't much that could be called fact, but I remember several tracts that purported to be historical works, but which I think were probably mythology, since they dealt with monsters like dragons and daemons as well as describing the rise of warlords and tyrants.'
'Do you remember the names of these books?' asked Zouche.
Dalia nodded. 'Yes. The main ones were The Chronicles of Ursh, Revelati Draconis and The Obyte Fortis. They all spoke of dragons, serpentine monsters that breathed fire and carried away fair maidens to devour.'
'I know those stories,' said Caxton. 'I read them as a child. Bloody stuff, but stirring.'
'I know them too,' cut in Zouche. 'But for my people they're more than just stories, Caxton. The Scholars of Nusa Kambangan taught that they were allegorical representations of the coming of the Emperor, symbolic representations of the forces of light overcoming darkness.'
'That's right,' said Dalia, excitedly. 'The slayer represents some all-powerful godhead and the dragon represents dangerous forces of chaos and disorder. The dragon-slaying hero was a symbol of increasing consciousness and individuation - the journey into maturity.'
'Can't they just be stories?' asked Caxton. 'Why does everything have to mean something?'
Dalia ignored him and pressed on. 'The one thing a lot of these stories have in common is that the dragon, even though it's beaten, isn't destroyed, but is somehow sublimated into a form where goodness and sentient life can flow into the world from its defeat.'
'What does that even mean?' asked Severine.
'All right, put it this way,' said Dalia, using her hands as much as her words to communicate her increasing passions. 'In Revelati Draconis, the writer describes a dragon slain by a sky god with a thunder weapon to free the waters needed to nourish the world. Another tale speaks of a murdered serpent goddess who held mysterious tablets and whose body was used to create the heavens and earth.'
'Yes,' said Caxton. 'That's right. And there was a story in The Chronicles of Ursh about these creatures… the Unkerhi I think they were called, who were destroyed by the ''Thunder Warrior''. Supposedly their remains became a range of mountains somewhere on the Merican continent.'
'Exactly,' said Dalia. 'There's a footnote towards the end of the Chronicles where the writer describes a race of creatures known as Fomorians that were said to control the fertility of the earth.'
'Let me guess,' said Zouche. 'They were defeated, but not destroyed, because their continued existence was necessary for the good of the world.'
'Got it in one,' said Dalia.
'So what does all this mean?' asked Severine. 'It's all very interesting, but why does talking about dragons need a vox-blocker?'
'Isn't it obvious?' asked Dalia, before remembering that her friends didn't possess the innate faculties for data recall that she did. 'It's clear that these defeated forces, these dragons, were still considered valuable, and it follows that these early writers understood that the conflict between dragon and dragonslayer wasn't a contest of geno
cide for one or the other, but an eternal struggle. For the good of the world, both sides needed to have their powers expressed and the balance maintained. Even these ancient enemies needed one another.'
'Your logic being that it is the struggle, not the victory, that supplies the needful conditions for the world,' said Mellicin.
Dalia beamed at Mellicin. 'Yes, it's like summer and winter,' she said. 'Eternal summer would burn the world up, but eternal winter would freeze it to death. It's the fact that they alternate that allows life to grow and flourish.'
'So I ask again, what's the point of all this?' said Severine.
Dalia looked into the faces of her friends, unsure of how to phrase the next part of her confession. Would they believe her or would they think her proximity to the flaring energies of the Astronomican had unhinged her? She took a deep breath and decided she had come too far to back out now.
'When I was in the coma after the accident I think… I think I became part of something, some other, much larger, consciousness. It felt like my mind had detached from my body.'
'An out of body hallucination,' said Zouche. 'Quite common in near death experiences.'
'No,' said Dalia. 'It was more than that. I don't know how else to explain it, but it was as if the Akashic reader had allowed my mind to… link with something old. I mean, really old, older than this planet or anything else we can possibly imagine.'
'What do you think it was?' asked Mellicin.
'I think it was the dragon that Jonas was talking about.'
'The dragon he said the Emperor slew.'
'That's just it,' said Dalia. 'I don't think it's dead at all. I think that's what Jonas was trying to tell me. The Dragon of Mars is still alive beneath the Noctis Labyrinthus… and I need your help to find it.'
He opened his eyes and tried to scream, feeling the heartsick spike of agonising pain in his chest once more. He thrashed his limbs, palms beating on slick glass surfaces, his movements glutinous. His world was a blur of pink, and he blinked in an effort to clear his vision. He reached up to wipe his eyes clean, the sensation of movement like swimming through thick, gluey water.
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