Severita was still looking at him, head cocked, waiting for a reply to her question.
Glavius-4-Rho selected a mode of expression that he thought was correct. ‘All machines possess spirits. That is a fact and truth. I did not speak of spirits. I spoke of ghosts.’
The skin around Severita’s eyes creased further. Glavius-4-Rho turned back to the blade and focused the plasma flame to a narrow knife of fire.
‘There are no such things as ghosts,’ Severita said. ‘Daemons, yes, but not ghosts.’
‘Are you certain you wish to understand what I mean?’ he asked, staring down at the blade as it began to glow with heat.
‘I would have an answer if you would give it.’
He felt the seconds pass and the cogs in his chest tick over.
‘As you command,’ he said, and began to speak.
It was 401 days after my ascendancy to the rank of magos when I went to waken the machine in the underworld of Zhao-Arkkad.
Not all of those who serve the machine are made in the sight of its great forges. I was one such. My biological self began its life cycle on Mithras. The techno-clans of the second conurbation were my originators. I cannot remember my direct biological forebears. The first level of mental augmentation removed those memories when I was fourteen years. I do not miss them. I cannot remember what to miss.
I survived the early years of un-augmented life. I showed aptitude in assembly and logic application. I have memory residue from those times: a mental image of a drop of blood on fingers, geometric blocks of bronze alloy tumbling from their grasp, shouts of admonition, the flash of an electro-whip. I hear cries sometimes. I don’t know whose cries they are.
The representatives of the priesthood had already marked me as a potential subject for induction into their ranks. I was inducted into the orders of artisans. I assimilated the first levels of sacred maintenance and construction processes. I manifested the ability to replicate and memorise without error. I was blessed with machine creations to replace my hands.
At the passing of 21,233 years I was taken within the embrace of the Omnissiah. My sponsors were the Demi-flux Governors, a sanctioned branch concerned with the transference of electro-power and field parameters. There were other sects and branches who had marked me for their ranks. The high induction engines, though, calculated my characteristics being of most use to the Demi-flux Governors. If I had a preference on my path into the priesthood, I no longer store it in my memory – it was and is irrelevant.
I progressed through the levels of flux-savants. Further augmentation was made to my physical and mental architecture. At the point when I was raised to the rank of magos my physical self was 43.56 per cent of the machine. My cognition functioned between 35.45 and 37.23 per cent purity. In form my face was the blank mask of an aspirant, the nerves beneath the skin severed and expressive muscles paralysed. My hands and forearms were plasteel and black carbon. My primary organs had just been replaced, though my torso was still blood and bone. I recall that I was still adjusting to the rhythm of my new heart when I made my journey to Zhao-Arkkad.
Zhao-Arkkad was the first true forge world I had ever seen, and it was like nothing that I had expected. That may seem inconstant to you, but the sacred worlds of Omnissiah are few, our empire exists beside that of the Imperium, entwined with it, and my training had been in the priesthood’s enclaves on Mithras, Glaucon and in the void forges of Jeddev. Zhao-Arkkad was not an enclave world – it was a world given body and soul to iron, to the furnace and turning wheel, to the song of the blessed electro. But this soul hid beneath a skin of forests. It was a wonder and a paradox.
The fumes of engines were the clouds, and the rains that fell onto the green canopy were rich with radiation and minerals. Predator fauna thrived amongst the equally lethal flora. The Primary Forge Fane Complexes were buried beneath the ground, connected by tunnels and sealed against life on the surface. In these underground realms, the machine fanes and anvil districts stretched to the limits of the stone walls. Spires of data temples and the chimneys of fume vents rose to the stone ceilings and the thunder of forge hammers blended with the crackle of static leaping from wall to wall and spire to spire. Seeing that, hearing that, feeling that, was one of the most sacred experiences I have ever had.
That moment was brief.
I had thought that I would be installed in one of the electro-fanes; the divine flow of plasma and reactor rituals had been my calling since I had been raised to the cog. Instead I found that I was to be diverted to an isolated facility on the southern continent. No one could give me specific data on the purpose I was to fulfil there or even the name of the facility. I was to travel there by air, departing from an obscure landing pad set in a crater on the surface above the forge complex.
When I arrived at the landing pad, a shuttle was waiting. It bore no marks. That was an anomaly; everything I had seen since my arrival was stamped and marked with code and function. It took off as soon as I arrived.
There were two others with me. The first was a man of largely biological make-up, uniformed in the style of the Collegia Titanica, but without markings of Legion or rank. All of his noospheric data was also absent. He was a non-presence. A ghost. He offered me a curt sign of respect, but no further data.
‘What is your allocated personal identifier?’ I asked.
‘Zavius,’ he answered.
‘And your designated rank and organisational placement?’
He did not answer. Not even with a negatory.
Ishta-1-Gamma’s data aura rippled with symbol sets that denoted amusement in a number of language systems.
I paused to parse that for several seconds.
The shuttle was gaining speed towards the southern continents now, weaving between columns of storm cloud. Its engines were singing at optimal output. I could feel the contentment of its spirit in the vibration of its skin. Through the portholes, you could see the waste rivers from the forge complexes’ outflows, a rainbow of reds, blues and oranges draining into green land.
She paused, but the transmission did not close.
A moment of silence on the data link. The wheels in my newly installed cognition implants clicked over. I glanced at Zavius, but the princeps showed no sign of having heard what we were transmitting.
Another silence.
The cogs turned in my cranium and the shuttle flew on. The nearest entrance to a forge complex was now far behind us. This was the Nul Zone, a reach of Zhao-Arkkad that hid no machine-filled caverns beneath its green shroud, just a vast area of hostile bio-fauna feeding grounds. Grey and black clouds passed us, and black rain began to spatter the window ports and front canopy. Needle-like crags of black rock rose from the ground. Streams of water poured down their sides, bright green or blue with minerals leeched from below.
I admit that a disturbance had entered my thoughts. Perhaps it was Ishta-1-Gamma’s guesses. Perhaps it was something in the green desolation of the land before us, bare of the shapes of machines and buildings. Perhaps it was because, for the first time in my life, I felt a long way from the familiar.
The shuttle continued to lose altitude. I looked at Ishta-1-Gamma, but her noospheric aura was repeating a pattern of blank data values. I looked out again. The sides of the mountains were close enough now that they filled the view; a black-grey wall stretched before us. The shuttle began to shake.
Zavius was on his feet, face showing no emotional markers. He moved to the back of the crew space, balancing effortlessly with the vibration of the craft. I felt high-power auspex reach out and burrow into the shuttle.
Seconds decremented. The shuttle flew on towards the mountainside.
The whine of the shuttle’s engines was a scream. The mountainside was so close I could see the canopy lights reflecting off the wet rock. I felt a cold shutter fall across my thoughts as my emotional buffers activated.
Thrusters fired. The shuttle spun around and dropped vertically down. The fading light vanished. My eyes captured a brief image of the external view. We were plunging down a vertical shaft…
Melta-bored walls…
Diameter: 33.43 metres…
Gun platforms mounted at 50-metre intervals…
Multi-laser and plasma cannons…
Cabin temperature dropping at 1 degree per 50 metres…
The shuttle’s thrusters fired to the edge of tolerance. We settled to stillness, moisture running off the fuselage. Zavius still stood in front of the rear access ramp. Beyond the canopy I could see guide lights flashing in the dark. We rocked in place for a second, suspended in the freezing air, surrounded by the fog from our thruster jets. Then we settled onto the landing platform. The shuttle’s engines cycled down as the ramp at the back opened.
‘You will follow,’ said Zavius, looking back at us before stalking down the ramp himself. I glanced at Ishta-1-Gamma.
‘You will follow,’ came the repeated imperative from beyond the hatch.
Guns rotated on wall mounts to greet us, tracking our steps as we descended to the landing platform. Multi-spectrum targeting and scanning systems locked on to us. An iris hatch had closed off the shaft above us. As we reached the bottom of the ramp, the guide lights shut down across the landing platform. My sight shifted into the infra-red portion of the spectrum. The air was 8.72 degrees below zero. The heat from the engines was already dissipating. Above ground it was an average of 34 degrees above freezing, but here the moisture in the air, vented from the shuttle’s cabin, fell as frost.
A tall figure, wrapped in a cloak of graphite and carbon thread, waited for us. It had four upper limbs. Each one rested its digits on the top of a chrome cane. Its head sat high on its hunched shoulders. The portion of its anatomy that would be a face on an unblessed human was an arrangement of turning cogs. A single violet eye lens sat on the left of its face. From these augmentations alone I assessed this to be a senior member of the machine priesthood. That being the case, I should have offered supplication, made formal greeting. I did not. Like Zavius, this magos gave out no noospheric data and offered no connection hail. Still, I might have bowed anyway, but Ishta-1-Gamma had remained unmoved and so I did the same.
‘Ishta-1-Gamma…’ the waiting figure intoned. It breathed and hissed from its voice speaker. ‘Glavius-4-Rho… You will both submit to the rites of data assessment. Failure to grant access to your data reservoirs and instrumentation will result in immediate life termination and reclamation of the blessed machine components of your forms.’
‘You have not identified yourself,’ said Ishta-1-Gamma. Her physical voice echoed loud in the cold dark. The hunched magos rotated its head to look at Zavius and then back to us.
‘My identification is not required,’ it said. ‘You shall comply or the stated consequences shall occur.’
‘But after we comply,’ she said, ‘you shall tell us who you are.’
A pause. Seconds counted down in the edge of my sight. I was aware of the wall-mounted weapons trained on me. I could feel the tingle of the power held in their charge coils.
‘Your compliance,’ said the hunched magos. ‘Now.’
transmitted Ishta-1-Gamma, and then spoke aloud. ‘Compliance.’
Her noospheric aura unfolded, and 0.67 seconds later I felt data-interrogators push into my own systems. It took only 0.33 seconds but left me with a sensation of needles and sharp edges.
‘All is as it is designated,’ said the grey magos and began to move away across the platform. I could see the flash of hundreds of bladed feet moving beneath the hem of its robes as it glided away from us. Lights outlined a door set into the wall, and a section of rock slid back to reveal a passage beyond. I began to follow, but Ishta-1-Gamma still had not moved.
‘Who are you?’
she asked. The hunched magos paused, and rotated its head backwards without turning around.
‘You may use the designation Atropos,’ said the magos, then continued to glide towards the waiting doors.
I looked at Ishta-1-Gamma. She transmitted an unresolvable code blurt that would be interpreted organically as a shrug, and we followed Atropos through the door.
It was another 3.67 hours until we saw the reason for our being brought to the underworld of Zhao-Arkkad. I use the term underworld advisedly and in full knowledge of its non-literal meaning and symbolic resonance. The caverns beneath the mountains were a world apart. Silence filled their spaces and unseen watchfulness crowded their shadows. We met few other initiates of the priesthood. Those that we did see offered no greeting and passed without pause. The servitors that we saw moved in their own locked rhythms, their joints so maintained and blessed by oil that they made no sound. I observed signal and interface code locks on every device; there would be no communing with their machine-spirits or workings without the keys to unlock them.
The light in all the passages we passed through was increasingly dim the further we went. The lumen globes and strips faded from clear white blue to stuttering dimness. It became colder. My sensors detected that it was not only heat that was leaching from the air – so was radiation of a number of other types. Power was slowly decrementing from my capacitors. It was as though something beyond the passage walls was drawing in every scrap of energy, a mouth breathing in warmth and light.
Divination - John French Page 12