'Then why are you here?'
'You said you needed my help,' said the short machinist, and Dalia could have kissed him.
She took a breath and lifted her head. 'Zouche is right. We shouldn't look as though we've anything to hide. I mean, look around us, the place is as busy now as it is any other time of the day.'
Blue-tinted lumen globes sputtered and fizzed atop black poles, their glass reflecting the golden-orange glow from the clouds. Soaring above them, higher even than the silver pyramid of Zeth's forge, was the dark, mountainous shadow of Arsia Mons. The volcano's side had been quarried away five hundred years ago and replaced with the gargantuan structure of Aetna's Dam, its monstrous, cyclopean scale almost impossible to comprehend.
Dalia recognised the name it bore, which had belonged to a legendary fire goddess of a long dead volcano that rose from the Mediterranean dust bowl of Terra. It was fitting that the name should be appropriated for a rekindled volcano on Mars.
As it had been when Dalia had first arrived on Mars, the Magma City thrived and pulsed with activity, with its inhabitants making their way to and fro on foot and by any number of bizarre mechanical conveyances. Servo-skulls of gold, silver and bone darted through the air, each on an errand for its master, and Dalia wondered which of them served Adept Zeth.
'It may be busy,' said Caxton, 'but if any of the Protectors realise we shouldn't be on shift, we'll be in real trouble.'
'Then best we don't attract their attention by standing around yapping like stray dogs, eh?' said Zouche. 'Come on, the mag-lev transit hub is just ahead.'
They followed Zouche, trying to affect an air of nonchalance and give the impression that they had every reason to be there, though Dalia suspected they weren't succeeding too well. She could feel sweat running between her shoulder blades and fought the urge to scratch an itch on the back of her leg.
She felt great affection for her friends, knowing that she wouldn't have had the strength or courage to make the journey on her own. She had told them she needed them, which was true, but not for the reasons any of them might expect. Their technical skills would no doubt be useful along the way, but she needed them with her so the dark and terrifyingly lonely void that lurked behind her eyes every time she closed them wouldn't overwhelm her.
She knew Caxton was with her because he was in love with her, and Zouche had come because he was about as honest as a person could be. He had said he would come and he had. He lived his life by doing as he said he would do, which even Dalia knew was all too rare a trait in humanity.
Dalia didn't know why Severine had come, since the girl clearly didn't want to be there and was terrified of losing her status as a Mechanicum draughter. Guilt was what Dalia suspected drove Severine to make this journey, guilt for what they had allowed to happen to Jonas Milus. It was a reason Dalia was uncomfortably aware played no small part in her own determination to discover what lay beneath the Noctis Labyrinthus.
Only Mellicin had not come with them, and Dalia was sad not to have her logical presence with them right now, though that was, she supposed, exactly why she wasn't there. Caxton had gathered them all in Zouche's hab, a sterile and functional chamber that reflected the machinist's austere, no-nonsense character. The only concession to decoration was a small silver effigy of a lighthouse that sat in a corner with a slow-burning candle smouldering before it.
All of them had answered Caxton's summons: Severine looking rumpled and irritable, Zouche as though he had been awake all along and had simply been waiting for them, while Mellicin looked as calm as Dalia could ever remember seeing her.
With everyone gathered, Dalia had outlined the substance and unnatural regularity of her dreams, the imagery and the feeling that she was being summoned to the Labyrinth of Night.
'Summoned by what?' asked Zouche.
'I don't know,' admitted Dalia. 'This… Dragon, whatever it is.'
'Don't you remember the stories?' asked Severine. 'The dragons ate fair maidens.'
'Then you and Mellicin will be all right,' quipped Caxton, wishing he hadn't when Dalia stared at him in annoyance.
'I had the dream again tonight,' said Dalia. 'The same as before, but it felt stronger, more urgent. I think it's telling me that it's time to go.'
'Now?' asked Severine. 'It's the middle of the night.'
'Kind of appropriate then, eh?' said Zouche. 'We are going to the Labyrinth of Night after all.'
They all looked at each other then, and Dalia could sense their hesitation.
'I need your help. I can't do this alone,' she said, hating the pleading note in her voice.
'No need to ask twice, Dalia,' said Zouche, picking up the silver lighthouse figurine and tucking it into his robes. 'I'll come.'
'And me,' said Severine, though she didn't make eye contact.
'Mellicin?' asked Caxton. 'What about you? You in?'
The stern matronly woman who had held them together and made them work better in a team than they ever could have managed alone, shook her head. She gripped Dalia's hand and said, 'I can't go with you, Dalia, I have to stay. Someone has to finish what we've begun here. Believe me, I'd like nothing more than to go with you, but I'm too old and too set in my ways to go gallivanting around Mars chasing dreams and visions and mysteries. My place is here in the forge. I'm sorry.'
Dalia was disappointed, but she nodded. 'I understand, Mel. And don't worry about us. We'll be back soon, I promise.'
'I know you will. And don't call me Mel ever again,' said Mellicin.
They laughed and said their goodbyes before making their way towards a journey into the unknown and an uncertain future.
So lost was Dalia in her memory of saying goodbye to Mellicin that she bumped into a passing adept, who stared at her with amber eyes from behind a silver mask. He blurted a hash of irritated binary and Dalia shrank from the force of his utterance.
'Many apologies, Adept Lascu,' she said, reading his identity in the noospheric information swirling above him before remembering that she shouldn't be able to read such things without modification.
The adept either didn't notice or believed she already knew him, and passed on his way with a final canted burst of annoyance. Dalia let out a pent-up breath and turned as the sleeve of her robe was tugged.
'If you're quite finished?' said Caxton, looking in alarm at the adept's retreating back.
'Yes, sorry,' she said.
'The mag-lev hub is just ahead,' said Zouche, pointing to a bronze archway through which hundreds of people were passing back and forth. Dalia experienced a moment of sickening realisation when they reached the archway and she saw the wide steps descending hundreds of metres into the bedrock of Mars.
'They're going to have to go below the level of the magma?' she asked.
'Of course,' said Caxton. 'The mag-lev can't exactly go through the lava now can it?'
'No, I suppose not,' said Dalia, wishing she hadn't said anything.
Caxton pulled her on and she quelled her mounting panic as they began their journey downwards. Sizzling lumen strips that flickered and hurt Dalia's eyes illuminated their route along a tunnel thronged with workers making their way to and from their shifts. They marched like automatons - one side ascending, the other descending - all in perfect unison towards or from the metropolis above.
Zouche forged them a path downwards with his squat frame and robust language, and anyone who objected to either soon bit their tongue at the sight of his thunderous stare and bunched fists.
Eventually they reached the bottom, the transit station itself, a gigantic hangar with a colossal vaulted ceiling. There seemed to be no order to the movement of the packed mass of people, just heaving bodies that moved according to tidal patterns rather than with any purpose.
Robed Protectors bearing crackling weapon-staves and the four-by-four number grid symbol of Adept Zeth policed the energetic scrum of workers, and Dalia tried to avoid looking at them for fear of attracting their attention. Servo skulls bobbed overhea
d, and grating binaric code spilled from vox-plates set into the walls, announcing departures and arrivals and warning travellers to beware of the void between mag-lev and platform.
'Now where?' asked Dalia, unable to make sense of the overlaid binary instructions blaring from the vox.
'This way,' said Zouche pushing through the crowds. 'It looks harder than it is, but after you've ridden the mag-lev once it's easy to find your way around.'
'I'll take your word for it,' said Dalia, taking Caxton and Severine's hands like children on a scholam outing as they set off after him.
Zouche led the way through a confusing series of ceramic-tiled tunnels until they stood on a crowded platform with hundreds of tired-looking workers.
Distorted, wavering blurts of code fragments coughed from battered vox-amps set in wooden boxes mounted on the ceiling, and even Zouche shrugged when Dalia looked at him for an explanation.
'I didn't get a word of that,' said Zouche.
'It said the next mag-lev will be delayed by two hundred and seventy-five seconds,' said a powerful voice behind them.
Dalia flinched at the sound, recognising the harsh, metallic rasp of a human voice issuing from behind a bronze mask.
She turned and looked up into a pair of glowing green eyes.
'Greetings, Dalia Cythera,' said Rho-mu 31.
The enemy Reaver was burning, the top portion of its carapace blown away by Cavalerio's blastgun after a punishing barrage from the Vulcan had stripped it of its voids. He felt the heat build in his left arm as the weapon recharged, and a clatter in his right as the autoloader recycled the mega bolter to fire again.
The enemy engine toppled backwards, flattening an ore silo and sending up a blizzard of flame and smoke. Crushed rockcrete dust billowed from its demise and even as Cavalerio exulted in the kill, he knew the other Reaver was still out there, lurking behind the burning ruins of the refinery, using the smoke and heat to mask its reactor bloom.
'Moderati, get me a mass reading!' he ordered in a squirt of binary.
'Yes, princeps.'
Information flooded him through the Manifold, a hundred different stimuli collected from the mighty engine's myriad surveyors: heat, mass, motion, radiation, vibration and shield harmonics. Everything combined to paint a world more real to Cavalerio than reality itself.
He drank the liquid data down, swallowing and digesting it in a heartbeat. His awareness of his surroundings bloomed and he saw the enemy Reaver manoeuvring around the refinery, smashing its way through the walls and roof beams of the nearby steelworks.
A flicker of heat and mass tugged at his awareness and he felt the stealthy approach of the enemy Warhound before he saw it.
'Steersman, reverse pace, flank speed! Heading two-seven-zero!'
A Warlord Titan was not built for rapid course changes, but the steersman was good and the engine obeyed with commendable speed. The building beside Cavalerio exploded into a mass of shredded girders, torn concrete slabs and sheet metal roofing. Clouds of vaporised rockcrete billowed, but Cavalerio's engine-sight could penetrate it without difficulty.
He saw the Warhound, a graceful loping predator of red and silver, dart from the shadows of a collapsed forge-hangar, its turbos blitzing with hard light. Cavalerio felt the impacts on his shields, but its angle of fire was poor and most of the shots were void-skidding.
'Yes, princeps.'
'Moderati, firing solution!'
The Warhound was nimble, but it had struck too soon, and without the shock value of its turbo lasers impacting on its target's shields it was vulnerable. Data inloaded from the moderati's station, and Cavalerio saw the vectors of fire slide into his mind at the speed of thought. He felt the wordless bray of the gun-servitor's acknowledgement and opened fire.
A sheeting storm of explosive rounds roared from Cavalerio's mega bolter, obscuring the Warhound in a blizzard of detonations and flaring shreds of discharging voids. The Warhound staggered, pushed back against the brick walls of a weapon shop. Stone and steel tumbled to the ground, but Cavalerio knew the enemy engine wasn't out of the fight yet.
'Steersman, move in! Moderati, arm missiles. Sensori, where's that Reaver?'
'Moving in, aye!'
'Missiles arming!'
'Reaver still closing, princeps. Six hundred metres, bearing zero-six-three.'
Cavalerio's engine closed the gap between it and the Warhound. He had to kill it before the Reaver was in a position to help. Individually, neither of the enemy machines were a match for his Warlord, but working together, they could potentially bring him down if he were not careful.
The Warhound swayed as it picked itself up, its weapon limbs shaking like a dog climbing from the water. Its shields burbled and sparked, and Cavalerio read a flaring convergence of energy gaps clustered around the engine's hip.
Information updates sluiced around him and he updated his situational awareness, feeling the danger of the closing Reaver and knowing he didn't have much time.
'Moderati! As soon as that Reaver comes into view, hit its upper carapace with a barrage from the carapace launcher. Three missile spread, five second intervals.'
'Yes, princeps.'
'Gun-servitor Hellas-88, slave weapon to my command.'
The implanted servitor wordlessly acknowledged his order, and Cavalerio felt the reassuring weight and industrial motion of the mega bolter as though it were part of his flesh. It was reckless to take command of the weapon from the servitor, who could fire it far more effectively than he could, but to make this kill, he wanted to feel the thunder.
Cavalerio surrendered to the engine's killing lust, guiding it with his own need to defeat their foe. With a thought, the mega bolter engaged and sawed off a furious hurricane of shells at the staggering Warhound's wounded hip.
At the same time, he felt the juddering shoom, shoom, shoom of the missiles mounted high on his carapace leap from the launcher. The Reaver had joined the fight and he had to finish the Warhound quickly.
'Multiple impacts on enemy Reaver, princeps!'
Cavalerio noted the update, but concentrated his attention on the Warhound. Its voids had collapsed under his barrage, detonating with a blinding thunderclap. The explosion atomised one weapon arm and cracked its carapace open. Flames billowed from its rear quarter.
Still it stood, defiant as a whipped wolf.
'Arming blastgun,' intoned the Moderati. 'Plotting solution.'
'Belay that order!' cried Cavalerio, 'we'll need it for the Reaver! We close and kill it with hard rounds!'
'Incoming!' shouted the Moderati, and Cavalerio felt the blistering pain of impacts on the voids. Missiles streaked from the enemy Reaver, fired from an under-slung rocket pod, and the relentless impacts staggered his engine. Shield energy ripped away from his Warlord, and Cavalerio heard the frantic cants of the Magos as he fought to rebuild them.
The limping Warhound stood its ground before him, silhouetted in the ruins of the collapsed building, and Cavalerio was forced to admire its pilot's courage. It was doomed, yet still it fought. Its remaining gun opened fire, punishing his already weakened shields.
'Shield failure on lower quadrant!' warned the Magos. 'Critical collapse imminent!'
'Reaver closing, princeps!'
Cavalerio ignored the warnings, letting rip once more with the mega bolter. A storm of shells and pulverised rock erupted around the Warhound, driving it to its knees with the force of the impacts. Its carapace cracked open and flames sheeted upwards as the remains of the building tumbled down around it. Cavalerio kept hammering the smaller engine until it was a ruin of splintered metal and fire.
Sudden, agonising pain speared into him, and he screamed as it felt like his leg was bathed in liquid fire. His awareness snapped back into wide-spread, and he saw the looming form of the Reaver closing with him, its immense bulk smashing through the high walls of the refinery in its hunger to rea
ch him. Its warhorn blared in triumph and its plasma blastgun was smoking from a sustained salvo. Cavalerio read the situation in a heartbeat.
It was on his exposed flank and had him dead to rights.
His shields were almost gone, the metal beneath buckled and molten.
A volley of screaming rockets slammed into him and he convulsed with psychostigmatic pain. The Manifold erupted with warnings and damage indicators.
The chin station exploded, immolating the Moderati and steersman in a hellish firestorm. The cockpit shook as more missile impacts slammed into the Warlord's mighty torso.
'Missiles!' he yelled, knowing it was too late. 'Full spread, safeties off!'
Streaking rockets and laser fire pounded the air between the two engines as they unleashed the last of their arsenal at one another at point-blank range. Cavalerio screamed as his shields failed, feeling awful, intolerable pain as the enemy engine tore the guts from him with an unending series of missile strikes.
Bright explosions of void failure flared around him, and at last both war machines were stripped of their shields, naked and steel to steel.
Cavalerio grinned through the pain.
'Now I have you!' he roared.
With his last breath, Cavalerio unleashed the full power of the blastgun into his enemy's face and the world exploded in fire and light.
Agathe watched the last moments of the unfolding battle on the hololithic projection table, admiring the skill of the Stormlord even as his engine was destroyed. Watching the miniature holograms of the engines stomping around the artificial landscape had been thrilling, but the tension in the warriors gathered around the table was contagious.
'He's doing much better now, isn't he?' she asked.
Princeps Sharaq looked over at her, his kind eyes and cropped, salt and pepper hair at odds with the killer she knew him to be. His eyes darted to the other side of the projection table where two fellow princeps, Vlad Suzak and Jan Mordant, stood watching the simulated battle. Suzak stood ramrod straight, as if on parade, while Mordant eagerly leaned forwards with his elbow resting on the edge of the table.
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