by Guy Haley
Cortein nodded distractedly. ‘As always. It calms me.’
‘After all these years, you need calming?’ Brasslock’s voice held the smile his face could no longer show. ‘You and I are old men, Cortein. Surely the battle fear has left you now?’
‘Never,’ said Cortein. ‘If it ever does, then I shall be dead. No man can ever conquer the fear of battle, and it is not wise to try. Standing here helps hold it at bay, turn it outwards, use it.’
‘To know the Machine-God and the Emperor watch over you, that is what calms you, and it should,’ said the other, certain in his pronouncement. ‘Many of your predecessors, the ones that I have known, have felt the same.’
‘No, it is not that.’ Cortein shook his head, checked himself, not wishing this one night to offend the seer, whose faith was somewhat stronger and deeper than his own. ‘Not entirely.’ He turned to the enginseer.
Brasslock stood easily within the narrow confines of the main gangway leading from the gunnery deck. Cortein had no idea how old he was. Despite his stealth he suspected Brasslock was ancient, as the followers of the Omnissiah often were. His flesh hand, the left, was wizened as centuried leather, blotched with spots and scars. It was impossible to tell what colour the man’s skin had originally been. Brasslock rested this hand on the open bulkhead door, idly stroking plasteel as a mother might soothe her child. Metal glinted in the hood where his mouth should be. A thin, articulated tendril snuck out from under his robes from time to time, tasted the air and wicked back within. His right arm ended in a heavy metal stump, a broad socket ready to accept tools, for the moment empty. To a normal man’s eyes he was a grotesque, but Cortein had long ceased to find Enginseer Brasslock disturbing.
‘What then do you find here in the heart of Mars Triumphant?’ said the enginseer.
‘Watching the march of the names through time makes me… confident. Near a thousand years of battle, and this machine still fights. So many battles, tomorrow is merely one more. That is why it calms me.’
‘The spirit of Mars Triumphant is strong,’ agreed the enginseer. They both fell silent, the close silence of the tank disturbed by the distant bombardment and the hiss-whirr of Brasslock’s mechanical lungs, the two sounding in time, a pair of impacts for every breath.
‘I wonder,’ said Cortein eventually. ‘I wonder who he was.’ He nodded at the first plaque, the brass shiny where it had been rubbed away, the edges deepened to a lustre richer than gold. Verdigris scaled the base of the rivets. ‘Who was this first man to stand here? Did he come to look at his own name affixed to this wall as I do now and wonder at those who would follow?’
‘I do not know,’ said Brasslock. ‘Men have forgotten as this metal has forgotten.’ He pointed with a skeletal finger. ‘But the Machine-God does not forget. The flesh is weak, the Omnissiah is not. He knows all.’
Cortein smiled tiredly. ‘Perhaps you can ask him for me some time, I would like to know.’
Brasslock took Cortein’s blasphemy with good grace. ‘Alas it is not my place to do so, Honoured Lieutenant Cortein, but the data is kept by crystal, pen and chisel in Mars’s archives. You can be assured that the Omnissiah remembers all the men who serve Him, as He will remember you.’
‘That is not as comforting as you might think it sounds.’
‘I did not mean it for comfort, honoured lieutenant.’
From deep within Mars Triumphant some subsystem or other grumbled, a pulsing thrum of interrupted energy flow, three beats in contretemps to the barrage outside.
‘Ah, see? She agrees.’
‘Mars Triumphant is inactive.’
‘They dream when they sleep, honoured lieutenant, as men do. Listen!’
The artificial thunder had ceased. The ground shuddered hard, once, as if in pain. The charms Brasslock and generations of enginseers before him had affixed to the Wall of Honour jangled in reply, a final shower of dust pattered onto the pitted floor of the tank, then the world became still.
‘The barrage, it is done.’ The enginseer’s shadowy face looked up within his hood, rheumy eyes glinting. ‘I must rouse the spirit of Mars Triumphant; the other machines of the company must also be propitiated,’ said the enginseer. ‘I have much work to do to ensure optimum functionality of all systems for the morrow.’
‘Of course.’
The enginseer inclined his head in a bow and departed, vanishing into the gloom to the aft of the tank.
Cortein reached out to the plaques on the wall and reverently touched the oldest as was his habit, wearing it away atoms at a time, an erosion born of respect. He put on his cap, lifted the mask of his rebreather from the case hanging on his front, a necessary evil. He didn’t want to end his career coughing up his own lungs thanks to the dust. He buckled the foul thing about his face and went up onto the command deck, up again into the turret, and then out into the freezing desert dawn.
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