Skitarius
Page 5
Code-streaming vox-hailers would have announced through the smog the arrival of the explorator arkcruiser and the unseen overhead passage of the barge. Forge-worlders in rubber and trunk-trailing gas masks would have stopped to observe the occasion on the freightways and up through the workshop-platforms. They would have done so in similar silence, no doubt enjoying a moment’s respite from their back-breaking duties.
Completing their brief tour, the flanking ornamental landers peeled away as the barge set its course for the Thunderfane. The vessel coursed between columns of flame that reached up from the stackscrapers of satellite strato-forges as the temple furnaces vented in its honour. The forge temple principal towered magnificently against the Satzican sunset, its colossal crown of node towers arcing with power. Coming in through the electrical storm, the ceremonial barge deposited its passengers on a lofty temple platform.
With Phrenos~361 hovering beside him with his helmet, Stroika led the way between the still forms of the security-automata. 10-Victro Tiberiax fell in line and the two skitarii officers stepped off the platform with their cloaks flowing behind them. Omnid Torquora followed with platform-shaking steps, trailing his diagnostiquorum and the itinerant ark, which itself was flanked by ranger sentinels and protector bodyguards.
The delegation from the Maestrale found it slow going through the outer halls of the strato-forge temple. As the capital forge on the planet, its halls were grand and swarming with a sea of tech-adepts: forge masters, arch-magi, tech-priests, magnates, logistae and cult retainers. Temple thralls stood guard in cages mounted on stilt-platforms, dotted throughout the chamber’s length. The smell of ceremonial ozone burned on the air.
Stroika and Tiberiax parted the crowds, but with so many wishing to congratulate the magos explorator and catch a glimpse of the trundling ark, negotiating the hall took time. Finding another hall and another, each boasting its own sub-strata of forge world society and significance, Stroika knew that Omnid Torquora would be detesting every wasted moment. They had both spent so much time away from their home, exploring and on legionary deployment, that they were not ready for the overwhelming welcome.
Stroika and Tiberiax exchanged a wry glance and a nod, the two skitarii officers surging on through the crowds. Through the great arch beyond, lined with choral servitors vox-blurting code-canticles of the Cult Mechanicus, Stroika found a ceremonial doorway guarded by another pair of relic security-automata.
Master-Manciple Proxis and Torquora’s delegation were admitted by armed temple thralls. The inner temple beyond was sparse in comparison to the entrance halls, with a few dozen forge masters, logistae and magi in attendance about the enthroned figure of the Fabricator General.
‘Magos Explorator Omnid Torquora,’ Master-Manciple Proxis announced. The call was echoed by vox-hailing servitors ornamentally embedded in the chamber pillars.
The huddle of tech-priests parted as Torquora stomped his augmented way across the chamber and up to the throne, flanked by Stroika and Tiberiax. The skitarii officers went down on one knee, as did the explorator in his hulking suit. He rose again, towering over the attendant magi and advisors. A swarm of winged cherubim scattered from where they had been perched around the throne and the scaffold about it. Machinelings scuttled away. The suddenness of the movement turned hoods and drew the sear of optics. The glowers – both organic and artificial – were palpable. While he was not the only imposing construct among them, Torquora’s size and offline weaponry were designed to intimidate.
Such displays did not stop a robed member of the Fabricator General’s retinue from venturing forth. The construct wore the black robes of a temple codescrubber, a magos catharc charged with the Fabricator General’s spiritual security.
A mekspider rappelled from the chamber ceiling on a tiny winch-wire, landing on Stroika’s shoulder. Extending a probe-interface, the mekspider momentarily explored a local flesh-plug in the skitarii officer’s ear before dropping onto the floor and crawling up a member of the diagnostiquorum. Mekspider drones of different sizes and designs skittered about the explorator delegation, criss-crossing the open space with their wire feeds. They were all conduit-connected to the magos catharc, who was checking Torquora and his attendants for any sign of technological deviance or xenological corruption. The magos catharc took readings from Omnid Torquora personally.
The black cloak and hood of the Fabricator General’s codescrubber housed a rippling body made up almost exclusively of writhing, tentacular mechadendrites. The helmet-mask of its face and whirring telescoptics did little to offset the horrible suggestion of a body buried in a nest of strangling serpents. As it moved through the crowd, the tech-priests and forge masters instinctively withdrew. Some of them had clearly received the chief codescrubber’s invasive attentions. Haldron-44 Stroika shuddered to cogitate the lengths to which the magos catharc would go to purify a machine of code-corruptions or xenos infection.
‘Omnid, Omnid, Omnid…’
The metallic voice was everywhere. Like a whetstone along a blade – chill and grating.
‘My Fabricator General,’ Torquora said.
‘Approach, my friend,’ the metallic boom announced. ‘It is good to see you.’
At the Fabricator General’s suggestion, the magos catharc slithered aside and the mekspiders crawling about Torquora’s delegation rose towards the ceiling on their fibre-cables. Stroika watched his magos stomp up towards the throne, allowing the skitarii officer a better view. The throne was set upon a dais of colossal cogs. About it was a scaffold from which draped a semi-transparent foil. The material was shot through with engrammatic patterns and circuitry, forming the sigil of the Thunderfane forge temple and its planetary overlord. Through the foil Stroika could make out the enthroned figure of Voricar Trega, High Gnostarch of the Thunderfane and Fabricator General of Satzica Secundus.
The steel hiss of the Fabricator General’s voice proceeded from huge vox-hailers set in the throne. The throne itself was not only the figurative seat of power in the forge temple principal and the Mechanicus world beyond; it was an actual seat of power. The throne was made up of a quad of fusion towers from which electricity snapped and arced. The Fabricator General sat within – an almost permanent fixture. Little of the man that had been Voricar Trega remained, the ancient magos now being little more than a robed automaton, sitting in a nest of interfaced power cables and haptic feeds. It was said the very power produced by the forge world itself passed through the Fabricator General’s crackling form.
Omnid Torquora knelt once more and took up the foil with one of his auxiliary appendages. Drawing it to his hood, he kissed the Fabricator General’s sizzling sigil. Standing, the magos explorator drew back.
‘What has it been, Omnid?’ Trega said, his voice echoing through the floor and chamber. ‘A century?’
‘Two, my lord,’ Torquora told his master.
‘You have been busy, magos.’
‘The Great Maker wishes it so,’ Torquora said. ‘I see His blessing continues to burn bright in both Satzica Secundus and your resplendent self. This is your third incarnation?’
‘The Omnissiah favours me with His grand design,’ the Fabricator General affirmed. ‘Enough about me. This day looks to your accomplishments. So, the Stella-Xenithica…’
‘The Perborea system, my lord,’ Omnid Torquora said. ‘Out on the Nooneus Drift. Planetoid seven of sixteen.’
‘A Terran colony ship, out there?’ Trega boomed. ‘How did you come to find the vessel-artefact?’
‘Many years of research, data-salvage and dead ends, Fabricator General,’ the magos explorator told him.
‘But the defining piece of evidence,’ Voricar Trega said. ‘Come now, Omnid. Don’t be modest. Share your successes and receive, through us, the Machine-God’s thanks. The relevance is pressing.’
‘Merchant Charter records, my lord,’ the magos explorator told him. ‘Guild losses are reported by law to the Chartist Captains but can be acquired by interested parties for a price. I detected a pattern of disappearances in the vicinity of the Nooneus Drift. My Navigator and magi aethyricus isolated a tempestuous region of the warp nearby on a backwater trade route. It was my theory that the anomalous conditions pushed traversing vessels off course.’
‘That was your theory,’ Voricar Trega said, the node columns of his throne crackling with expectation. ‘But the Omnissiah demands of us data, does He not, Omnid? Hard data.’
‘Yes, my lord,’ Torquora said. ‘I took the arkcruiser Maestrale along the same route.’
‘A risk?’
‘Aye, but a necessary one,’ the magos explorator said. ‘For the Great Maker did not engineer us merely to exist but to push the boundaries of that existence. To become more – and that cannot be achieved without risk.’
‘Good, Omnid. Good…’
‘The tumultuous immeteorology of the route forced us to drop out of the warp on the edge of the Perborea System. Sixteen unremarkable planets orbiting an unremarkable star. The system was, however, crowded with debris, making exploration hazardous.’
‘But that did not stop you.’
‘No, my lord,’ Torquora said. ‘We made a systematic survey of the worlds, cataloguing many new species of xenos fauna and flora. We discovered several wrecks. Merchant vessels listed as losses in the Chartist records.’
‘And the Stella-Xenithica?’
‘Yes, my master,’ Torquora confirmed. ‘En route from Terra to Autrega, the colony ship had suffered the same fate – only thousands of years earlier. The crew perished in the extreme conditions and the artefact-vessel had suffered both the crash and the effects of time and environment. My skitarii forces purged the derelict of xenos infestation and secured the site for archeotechnological investigation. Cataloguing continues, but one of our first finds was of such magnitude that protocol dictated you should be informed, my master.’
‘Show us,’ the Fabricator General commanded with a gesture, his metallic digits slow and heavy with expectation.
Haldron-44 Stroika and 10-Victro Tiberiax advanced with the tracked ark, flanking the machine. A number of the magos explorator’s diagnostiquorum came forth to collapse the shielding, stasis fields and chrono-containment security systems of the armoured chest. Removing the heavy lid, several magi went to delicate work connecting cables and mumbling spirit-appeasing litanies of candescence over the technological wonder inside.
‘A Mark IV Martian hololithic projector,’ Omnid Torquora announced as his tech-priests made the sign of the Holy Cog and retreated before the Fabricator General. ‘A relic in its own right.’
Torquora nodded and one of his magi archeotechnis hauled down on a switch handle set within the itinerant ark’s side. The hoods and faces of the gathered tech-priests were illuminated by the hololithic static that fizzled in the space above the baroque projector. With a clunk, the projector cycled through a series of three-dimensional images. The air shimmered with intricate charts, blueprints and construction details. These were accompanied by columns of test data, material designations and litanies; a hololithic template containing all the sacred knowledge required to build the wonder of a technological artefact.
‘By the Motive Force…’ one of Trega’s forge masters uttered.
From the ripple of prayers and makings of the Holy Cog, Stroika assumed that many of the tech-priests had not believed the magos explorator’s reports. The Fabricator General knew Torquora of old, however, and had had no such lack of faith.
‘Praise the Omnissiah,’ Voricar Trega thundered, ‘for here before us are His missives, brought forth from the doom of our past and the darkness of ignorance.’
The forge masters and tech-priests watched as the blueprints of an ancient weapon flashed before them.
‘I present to you,’ Omnid Torquora announced, ‘the Standard Template Construct schematic for what these hololithic captures term a “Geller Device” or “Empyreal Bomb”.’
Stroika watched as optics intensified and a ripple of Omnissiah-honouring prayers passed through the gathering. There were no gasps or exclamations – only the drone of engaged cogitators and logic engines.
‘This is indeed a wonder,’ Voricar Trega said, ‘as you promised, Omnid. You have done well and honoured both your forge world and the Great Maker, whose ancient works grace our presence. What say you, my councillors?’
The gathered magi and forge masters turned in on themselves, gabbling code and cant as they unleashed their enthusiasm on each other. Stroika watched them in silence, the air alive with wireless feeds and identifications transmitted as badges of authority.
‘Phlegra Octaveen,’ the Fabricator General urged. ‘What say you?’
A tall, armaplas tank crawled forward on a quad of legs. The tank was filled with a murky liquid and a respirator rose and fell on its brass top. Lamps flickered on within, illuminating Phlegra Octaveen III, arch-calculus and cipher engine. There was little left of the old hag. Her threadbare cranium and toothless maw were strapped into an oxygen mask, while a wrinkled, saggy torso floated in the tank’s murky solution, supporting a single, skeletal arm. Pipes and nutri-lines ran up through the solution and into the logista’s diaphragm and the ragged stump of her other shoulder. The inside of the tank was covered in smears and numerals: the notations, mathematical enumeration and supra-calculi of the cipher engine.
‘Lord Fabricator,’ Octaveen said, bubbles rising from her mask as she spoke through a pair of vox-hailers. ‘Even the briefest of computations show the impact such a device might have on the galaxy. The Imperium and the Martian Empire are beset by warp storms in the void and immaterial storms within the aethyr itself that frustrate communication and physical expansion. This device would revolutionise warfare and travel. We could be looking at another golden age for both empires.’
‘A-a-and why would we want that?’ Eudoxus Zultra vox-stuttered, the gangling forge master looking around for agreement from the hooded tech-priests about him. ‘T-t-t-t-he Machine-God has seen fit to bestow this wonder on Satzica Secundus and its priesthood. W-w-w-w-why share such a gift with those of base flesh? T-t-t-t-he worlds of men would appropriate it as their own – as they do all the Omnissiah’s wonders.’
‘They honour not the Machine-God…’
‘Terra must be notified. Our accords have lasted thousands of years…’
‘The device belongs with Mars…’
‘Argentae,’ the Fabricator General said, the metallic hush of his voice descending upon the argument like a foil blanket on the flames of a fire, extinguishing it instantly. ‘Argentae Nuvias, my old friend. Your thoughts, magos aethyricus?’
Haldron-44 Stroika saw that the tech-priest could not attend personally and instead joined the retinue as a ghostly hololithic presence that bled from the gloom of the chamber. Nuvias’s hood and robes crackled, providing little evidence that anything existed within them.
‘As a weapon,’ the magos aethyricus said, ‘it would deny the pollutive entities of the warp purchase on the dimensional reality of worlds sacred to the Omnissiah. A powerful tool in our never-ending fight against the incorporeal threats that lay claim to our very plane of existence – the plane where flesh
and iron exist in harmony.’
‘Could it even be constructed?’ Engra Myrmidex said, drifting forward through the crowd. The Fabricator Locum was second in authority only to Voricar Trega himself, and had long upgraded beyond the restraints of humanoid form. His shell-hull was comprised of clinker brass plates, arched into a foetal curve. The head of the ancient was a nest of optical arrays, pictcorders and auspectra, and below these hung a delicate array of fine brass instruments and mechadendrites. His tail dribbled a length of interface cables and holding his frame in place were a pair of coaxial propellers – ducted fans that helped him to hover above the ground. Most grotesque of all was the techno-magos’s tri-sentience: three surgically intermeshed brains, carried beneath the shell like a bulbous, pulsing, precious cargo. Three minds that spoke as one. ‘Reproduced? Mass produced?’
‘Well, Argentae? Phlegra?’ the Fabricator General demanded. ‘Speak, as you would before the Great Maker himself.’
‘The template seems intact, my Lord Fabricator,’ the logista bubbled.
‘The Machine-God will provide the rest,’ Argentae Nuvias said with shimmering confidence. The tech-priest and tech-priestess had little intention of disappointing their machine master.
‘Then, my Fabricator General,’ Engra Myrmidex said, drifting his fans and form around to face the enthroned Trega, ‘I would consider it an honour only your greatness could bestow, to oversee the construction of this Geller device, this empyreal bomb, and test it.’
‘You will do no such thing,’ Omnid Torquora announced.
Stroika looked about the chamber. Silence had once more descended. The necks of magi and forge masters clicked around as they moved their hoods between the magos explorator, the Fabricator Locum and their Fabricator General. The skitarii officer detected the heat signatures of weapons held by temple thralls as they came online. He felt his aegis protocols stir and his own weapons engage. A stream of noospheric chatter passed silently between the Primus and 10-Victro Tiberiax.