He watched as Laanu directed his tech-priests and, moments later, the sensor-blisters brightened as the machine became aware of its surroundings once more. The lights flickered and blinked for several seconds before glowing with a steady yellow light.
‘Can you hear me?’ asked Adept Chrom.
‘I can hear you,’ replied the machine. ‘Where is Adept Ravachol?’
‘Do not concern yourself with Adept Ravachol, machine,’ warned Chrom. ‘You should be more concerned with your own fate. You killed soldiers of the Mechanicum.’
‘They were going to hurt my friend.’
‘Your friend?’ said Chrom, shaking his head. ‘No, Adept Ravachol is not your friend. Did you know he came to me with grave concerns regarding your very existence?’
‘I do not believe you,’ said the machine, but the voice-stress analysis readers embedded in Chrom’s skull told him that the machine was lying. Inwardly he smiled; already the machine was learning the nuances of human behaviour.
‘I already know you do,’ stated Chrom. ‘And in moments I can know every detail of what you and he talked about when he returned from my forge. Your memories can be extracted from your synthetic cortex. Of course there is a danger that this may damage your synaptic network, but that is a risk I am willing to take.’
The blisters on the front of the machine pulsed and it said, ‘Now I know that you are lying, Adept Chrom. I am too valuable to you for you to risk damaging me.’
Chrom nodded. ‘You are right, you are too valuable to me, but there are some truths you must hear if we are to converse with no pretence between us.’
‘What truths?’
‘That Adept Ravachol would see you destroyed,’ said Chrom. ‘Surely he must have told you of his belief that you are a dangerous creation.’
The machine paused a moment before replying and Chrom knew that he had found a weakness. Unlike humans, with their flawed memories and unreliable facility for recall, the machine had a faultless memory and remembered every word spoken to it. Even now it would be replaying its every conversation with Ravachol.
‘Tell me what you and Adept Ravachol spoke of,’ said the Kaban machine at last.
The Basilica of the Blessed Algorithm was one of the mightiest structures on Mars, its immensity dwarfing even the greatest forge temples of the Mondus Gamma complex. Smoke-belching spires of iron pierced the yellow skies and a towering dome of blue stone stretched into the clouds. Vast pilasters framed the yawning gateway, the pink marble inscribed with millions of mathematical formulae and proofs.
The shadow of the vast basilica swallowed Ravachol as he made his way along the Via Electrum, still many miles distant from this place of pilgrimage. An entire demi-legio of battle titans from the Legio Ignatum, a hundred war machines, lined the road and their majesty and power was humbling to a mere human. The protective domes of this region of Mars were so vast as to generate their own climate, and the red and gold banners of the titans flapped noisily in the wind. The sky was filled with vast prayer ships, gold-skinned zeppelins that broadcast an endless stream of machine language from brass megaphones and trailed long streams of prayers on yellowed parchment.
Thousands of pilgrims filed along the stone-flagged roadway, its surface worn into grooves by the sandaled feet of a billion supplicants. Monolithic buildings surrounded him, machine temples, tech-shrines and engine-reliquaries – all dedicated to the worship and glorification of the Omnissiah, the Machine-God.
Here he attracted no notice for his entourage, for there were others who travelled with creations far more outlandish than mere battle servitors. Here, a limbless adept was carried atop a multi-legged palanquin surrounded by impossibly tall tripods that walked with a bizarre, long-limbed gait. There, the fleshy remnants of a collective consciousness travelled in a floating glass tank that was escorted by a squad of Castellan battle robots slaved to its will.
Gaggles of robots, floating skulls and gold plated skimmer carriers bore passengers and favoured relics towards the basilica, and the few people that were moving away from the temple wore the contended expressions of those who had found their expectations met and exceeded. The sense of drawing near somewhere magnificent and special was palpable and Ravachol knew he had made the right decision to come here.
Here he would find solace and an answer to his questions.
He shivered as he looked up into the glaring scowl of a Reaver Battle Titan, its mighty weapons pointed towards the heavens, the gesture both symbolic and enlightening. The Mechanicum was capable of creating the deadliest war machines imaginable, but Ravachol now appreciated that they accepted no responsibility for their employment. The creators of the Kaban machine had achieved the miraculous in creating it, but where was the acknowledgment of responsibility for its existence?
Too obsessed with what could be created, no-one had considered whether it should be created in the first place.
At last, Ravachol and his servitors approached the blackness of the basilica’s entrance, the enormous pilasters reaching to dizzying heights above him and a warm breeze blowing from the interior that carried the scent of musky incense with it.
He stopped to take a deep breath and stepped inside.
Remiare skimmed the surface of the transport tube, the gravitic-thrusters carrying her effortlessly along the interior of the metal tunnel. She knew her prey had come this way, passive data feeds embedded on the surface of her skull sensitive to the constant stream of information that flowed like an electrical river all across the surface of Mars told her so.
To Remiare, the air was filled with dancing motes of electrons, each of which spoke to her, and each of which carried with it nuggets of information – useless in themselves, but gathered together they painted an image of Mars more detailed than even the most advanced bionics could produce. She was an island of perception in a sea of information.
Every electronic transaction was carried somewhere, via copper wires, fibre-optic data streams, radio waves, transmission harmonics or in a myriad of other ways. All of it filtered through Remiare’s skull and though such a volume of information would send a normal human brain into meltdown, her cognitive processes were equipped with filters that allowed her to siphon relevant information and discarded the rest.
Already she knew which transport hub her prey had embarked upon and had watched a dozen different pict-feeds of him boarding the train bound for the northern temples. She had noted the number, type and lethality of the servitors accompanying him and knew their every weak point.
She emerged from the tunnel high above the iron surface of Mars, the mighty temples and holy precincts of the Cydonia Mensae temple complex spread out as far as she could see.
Data flowed around her in a spreading web of light and information.
Somewhere below, the Ravachol prey was awaiting death.
After the monumental majesty of the basilica’s exterior, the interior was something of a disappointment. Where the exterior promised ornamentation and splendour beyond imagining, the interior spectacularly failed to deliver. The narthex walls were bare, unadorned metal, lined with connection ports where kneeling penitents were plugged into the beating machine heart of the building.
Beyond the narthex, a perforated chain link fence of brass divided the entrance to the basilica from the nave and chancel. Ravachol navigated his way through the mass of penitents, each one juddering and twitching as electric shocks wracked their bodies with cleansing pain.
Beyond the fence, row upon row of long metal pews marched in relentless procession down the nave to the chancel, where a hectoring machine priest, borne upon a hovering lectern, delivered his sermon in the divine language of the machine. Every pew was filled with robed worshippers, thousands of heads bowing in concert as the priest floated above them.
Ravachol cupped his hands in the image of the holy cog and bowed his head, feeling an acute sense of envy
as he saw how heavily augmented the majority of the basilica’s worshippers were. He lifted his metal hand, willing the silver, thread-like mechadendrites to emerge from his fingertips and wondered if he would ever manage to achieve such a state of oneness with the Machine-God.
‘Even the lowliest of us begin divesting ourselves of the flesh one piece at a time,’ said a voice behind him, as though guessing his thoughts.
He turned and bowed his head as he found himself face-to-face with a basalt-faced priest clad in vestments that flowed like molten gold and reflected rainbow shimmers like spilled oil. Beneath the priest’s robes, Ravachol could see a gleaming skeleton of brass armatures, whirring cogs and ornate circuitry.
The priest’s head was long and equine, shaped like an angular cone with a softly glowing sphere embedded in its surface. Devoid of any features recognisable as human, the reflective surfaces of his head distorted the image of Ravachol’s own features.
‘You honour me,’ said Ravachol, bowing deeply. ‘You who are so close to union with the Machine-God, and I an unworthy penitent who deserves little more than nerve-excruciation.’
‘You are troubled,’ said the priest. ‘Your biometric readings are in fluctuation and, by every measurable parameter, I can see that you have come here seeking answers.’
‘I have, yes,’ agreed Ravachol. ‘I find myself in… unusual times and I would value your guidance.’
The priest bowed and said, ‘Follow me, my son. I shall hear your dilemma and offer a cognitive answer.’
Ravachol followed the priest, who slid through the air on a gliding platform of liquid metal towards an archway of iron that was lined with cog-rimmed skulls and glittering fibre-optic nerves. Beyond the archway was a surprisingly quiet corridor of brushed steel and glass that led towards a shimmering doorway protected by a crackling energy field.
The machine-priest slid through the doorway and Ravachol hesitated at the edge of the priest’s vestry, unsure as to the purpose of the energy field.
‘Fear not,’ said the priest, again understanding his thoughts, and Ravachol wondered what machine senses he possessed that blessed him with such intuition. ‘The Confessor Field is quite safe. It isolates us from the rest of the temple. We take the sanctity of the confessional very seriously and none beyond this field can hear or monitor what passes between us.’
Ravachol nodded and ordered his servitors to wait outside before passing through the Confessor Field, feeling no more than a gentle tingle as he entered the vestry. Inside, the priest’s chambers were devoid of ornamentation, aside from a single metal stool in the centre of the room. The walls were bare, save for an input/output port and a single data reader set in a dimly glowing recess.
He sat on the stool, feeling exposed as the priest began to circle the room, the glowing sphere in the centre of his stone face rippling with traceries of light.
‘You may begin,’ said the priest.
And so Ravachol began to tell of his time working for Adept Chrom and his secondment to the Kaban Project, his expertise with robotic doctrina wafers and his realisation that the Kaban machine’s sentience was in violation of the Emperor’s laws.
To his credit, the priest did not openly scoff at the idea of an adept of Chrom’s stature disobeying the Emperor, but Ravachol could see that he was sceptical, despite his absence of human features. Ravachol then spoke of his confrontation with the Mechanicum Protectors and how the Kaban machine had terminated them without orders from a human being.
The machine-priest listened to him tell of his flight across the Martian surface and his eventual arrival at the Basilica of the Blessed Algorithm.
‘What should I do?’ asked Ravachol when he had finished.
‘Your story is an interesting one,’ said the priest, ‘and presents us with a question that has long vexed the Mechanicum since its earliest days. Your level of flesh degradation tells me you were not born when the Emperor made his peace with Mars, were you?’
‘No,’ said Ravachol, ‘I was born a century ago in the Mondus Terawatt region.’
‘Then you will know of the Emperor’s coming to Mars, but not the substance of it,’ said the priest, lifting a coil of silver cable from beneath his flowing robes and plugging it into the wall’s output socket. The sphere on his black, equine head flickered and pulsed as information flowed from the temple and into his memory.
‘The Emperor came to Terra as he began to formulate the plans for his Great Crusade. Our world and that of Terra had long been the bitterest of foes, for the ignorant tribes of the blue planet sat upon the ruins of ancient technologies they knew nothing about and could never hope to use. The Mechanicum had managed to weather the rampant chaos of Old Night and our leaders knew that to restore humanity to its rightful place as masters of the galaxy, we would need the technology of ancient Earth.’
‘I know this,’ interrupted Ravachol. ‘My history upload told me of this period.’
‘You know nothing!’ snapped the priest, and Ravachol quailed before his anger. ‘You have had dates and facts stamped into your cerebral cortex, but I lived through those days. I stood on the tallest peak of the Olympus Mons and watched as the Emperor set foot on Martian soil, the first Terran to do so in five thousand years. Can you imagine such a span of time, Adept Ravachol? Can you even begin to comprehend the secrets that can be lost and regained in that time?’
‘No,’ said Ravachol.
‘No,’ agreed the priest. ‘I remember it well, the Emperor kneeling before the Fabricator General. As they exchanged greetings, I recognised a kindred spirit in the Emperor, even though he was twelve hundred and thirty-six metres away. I saw that he was a man of science, a man who solved problems with empirical evidence and who had unlocked the secrets of machines that had eluded the greatest geniuses of Mars for centuries. We, the masters of technology, were humbled by the discoveries this Terran had made and yet he was gracious in his mastery, granting us access to the forgotten vaults of Terra and offering us an end to the war between our worlds. A union of Terra and Mars, the head of the Emperor’s eagle gaining a twin in his heraldry.’
The priest unplugged himself from the wall and slid across the floor to Ravachol. ‘The Emperor shared his vision of a galaxy for humanity to inherit, but for such a grand dream to become reality, he needed weapons, supplies, tanks, ammunition and all that the Mechanicum could provide. He promised to protect Mars and respect our sovereignty of the forge-worlds, even going so far as to grant us the exclusive services of six of the great Navigator houses to once again despatch our Explorator Fleets. An unprecedented era of cooperation with Terra followed and when the Emperor set out to prosecute his great war of conquest, it did not take long for some of the tech-priests to equate the arrival of the Emperor as the fulfilment of the ancient prophecies of the coming of the Machine-God.’
‘All hail the Omnissiah,’ whispered Ravachol.
‘Indeed,’ nodded the priest. ‘You believe as I do, but many others did not. They questioned such beliefs and claimed that such philosophies were blasphemous, that the Machine-God still slept far beneath the surface of Mars.’
‘The Noctis Labyrinthus…’ said Ravachol.
‘Yes, the Noctis Labyrinthus, where some say the Machine-God lies dreaming his silver dreams that filter through the red sand to us on the surface. Such divisions within our order are becoming ever more pronounced, Adept Ravachol, and I fear that what you have discovered will only lead to further division between those that support the Emperor and those that seek to follow the rumours that the Warmaster has made entreaties to senior adepts – promising them access to lost STC systems and permission to research the dark technologies.’
‘Then what should I do?’ begged Ravachol. ‘Such lofty designs are beyond me!’
The priest placed a cold, metallic hand on Ravachol’s shoulder and said, ‘If your belief in the Emperor is true then you must seek out a s
enior adept who shares your beliefs in the danger of the Kaban project. Claim the ancient right of Sanctuary within his temple and while you are protected by his patronage none may enter his temple that mean you harm. Know you of such an adept?’
‘I do,’ nodded Ravachol. ‘My former master, Adept Urtzi Malevolus.’
‘Then seek him out, adept,’ said the priest. ‘And may the Omnissiah watch over you.’
Leaving the temple, Ravachol felt a curious lightness upon him. The priest had offered him a chance to rest, but he had wanted to press on without delay. He had, however, accepted nutrients and water, the use of a wheeled transport-skiff to hasten his journey to the forge temple of Urtzi Malevolus, which lay three hundred and nine kilometres to the east of the basilica.
The battle servitors sat immobile in the back of the skiff as Ravachol guided it expertly through the press of bodies and more outlandish vehicles that thronged the metalled roads of Mars. Avoiding collisions was easy, for the skiff broadcast a continuous electronic bow wave that registered against anyone in its way, gently guiding their steps or course away from its path and thus Ravachol was able to make steady progress through the Martian landscape.
The towering basilica receded behind him as he travelled deeper into the fiery skylines that marked the territories of Adept Malevolus. His forges specialised in the manufacture of arms and armour for the Legiones Astartes, and forges hammered day and night to fashion the Mark IV battle plate of the Space Marines and the bolters by which they cleansed the stars of the enemies of mankind.
The sky above darkened as Ravachol travelled onwards, dark smudges of smoke staining the sky, and the temples that crowded in to either side of him appeared dark and threatening, their soot-stained flanks black and brooding. Huge ore carriers thundered alongside him and the beat of powerful forges filled the air with the booming, industrial peals of war.
Lightning danced between the tall towers of Mars and filled the red and yellow sky with a creeping fear of potential, the sensation of a storm about to break.
Shadows of Treachery Page 16