by Ben Counter
But even though a day of introspection had been declared, there were corners of the forge world where work continued. There were those for whom the desire to deconstruct the most sacred secrets of the universe overrode everything. Five of them were gathered in the reverse-engineering laboratory of Sasia Koraloth.
Perched over a bench scattered with servitor parts was Kolo Vaien - a pale adolescent with a permanent sheen of sickly sweat, he had been found on the streets outside a Mechanicus lab-temple on a distant hive-city. An astonishing capacity to absorb and process reams of information at will had seen him taken in by the tech-priests and transferred to the forge world.
Beside Vaien, dwarfing him, was Tallin, once of the tech-guard Skitarii, who had been taken on as an apprentice engineer in the forge world heatsinks and had worked his way onto the fringes of the priesthood. He was scarred and scowling, his dextrous paws clenched with anticipation.
'You've seen it, Sasia? Come on, girl, show it!'
'It's not that simple, Tarrin. We never anticipated this kind of power.'
'There are ways.' said a dry, deathly voice.
They were the first words El'Hirn had spoken that day, and for many days before that. The only thing any of them really knew about El'Hirn was that he was old. He had joined the coven halfway through the study, without warning, and though they all suspected he had been watching them for several months before, none of them had asked how he had come to find out about them. 'Your laboratory is rigged with an electromagnetic field-cage, Tech-Priest Koraloth. There is very little that can escape.' El'Hirn gestured with a hand draped in the tattered strips of mottled fabric that covered him from head to toe.
'You are very observant.' said Koraloth, aware as ever that El'Hirn could be anything, including a spy for the tech-magi of Koden Tertius. 'But I am beginning to understand the magnitude of power we are dealing with, I have taken all the precautions I can, but it will never be enough if something goes wrong, or if this artefact is something other than we first believed.'
'What sort of power are we talking about?' asked Gelentian, the savant, loose-fleshed and ugly, who stood against the wall of the lab supported by a basic augmetic framework that took the place of his withered legs. 'Powerful like a bomb? Like a bullet? Something that could hurt us or something that could give us away to the priesthood? We have seen very few results, Koraloth, yet it has been almost a year. Time is running out.' As a savant Gelentian had been altered by the magi to increase his capacity for information gathering and storage, but while Vaien was raw, Gelentian was experienced and disciplined. He functioned as the coven's archivist, with all their findings sealed within his memory - it was too volatile a set of information to entrust to any mem-bank.
'Gelentian.' said Koraloth, 'have you ever seen a vortex grenade explode?'
The coven were silent for a moment. Vortex weapons had not been manufactured for thousands of years - there were theories that they had not been made since the mythic days of the Dark Age of Technology.
'He hasn't.' said Tallin. 'I have. A vortex missile on an Imperator Titan, back when we supported the Guard at Ichar IV. Just one, that was all it took. One of them great big tyranid bio-titans got hit - there was this huge black explosion and then nothing. Nothing where its head had been.'
'Seventeen thousand rounds of standard Titan battery ammunition to kill one Vermis-class tyranid bio-titan.' said Vaien with something approaching awe. 'Twelve hellstrike missiles. But only one vortex charge. Is that what we have, Priest Koraloth?'
Sasia Koraloth shook her head. 'A vortex grenade or missile creates a one-time reality-break effect, an area of null-space. Anything inside the effect is dislocated from this layer of reality and annihilated. This is all anyone really knows. You will also know that anything as short-lived and uncontrolled as an explosion is of strictly limited use.'
'Ah, Koraloth, we begin to understand.' hissed El'Hirn. 'It is not about power at all. It is about control.'
Koraloth stepped into the centre of the lab where the brass-banded cryochamber stood. She slid a finger across the clasp's print-reader and lid swung open, sighing out a fog of frozen air. The Soulspear had been measured emitting low levels of radiation, and it had to be kept completely inert to avoid detection. Koraloth slipped an elbow-length therrnoglove onto one hand and lifted the artefact from inside the cask - no matter how many times they saw it, the coven who had been studying its intricacies for almost a year still felt that thrill of power when they saw the Soulspear.
It had proven remarkably resilient, being composed of alloys and high density ceramo-plastics with properties they could not find on any database. They had managed to pry off some of the outer sections and attach data-thief lines which dangled like bloodless veins from the cylindrical shaft. The tiny apertures on the grip had lit up in red shortly after the study had began and were still winking brightly, as if protesting at the invasion.
'We thought these were gene-encoders.' said Koraloth, indicating the lit apertures. 'I suspected they were something else. I think now they're measuring not just genetic information but chemical balance, acidity, even temperature.'
'And you tried to bypass them?' said Tallin. 'Gene-coders are a piece of skrok to short-circuit. Our magos commander had a gene-lock on his liquor cabinet but it never stopped any of us.'
'I tried.' replied Koraloth. 'And it almost worked. But it doesn't like being messed around him. The circuitry structure changes when you so much as look at it. Every route I found around the encoders, the Soulspear closed it. I don't have the cogitator power here to keep one step ahead of it. I had it active for a couple of tenths of a second at most, not long enough for a full reading.'
'You sound like you think it's alive.' said Gelentian. He sounded unimpressed.
'I do, savant. If a machine can have a soul, and the Omnissiah teaches us it can, then the Soulspear has a cunning and powerful one.' Koraloth turned to Vaien, who was fidgeting nervously in the presence of such power. 'Vaien, we cannot crack this artefact with raw power. We must outthink it. That is why I brought you amongst us. Do you know what you have to do?'
Vaien silently rolled up a sleeve of his simple adept's tunic and removed the prosthetic left hand. It was merely cosmetic - beneath it was the real augmentation. Fused into the boy's elbow was a simple but elegant neuro-bionic attachment composed of two long, thin, blunt-ended metal tines. A knot of servos at the elbow chattered as the tines juddered and warmed up.
Koraloth unfolded a broad keypad from one of the lab benches, and connected its info-feeds to the data-thief lines running into the Soulspear. Immediately lines of glowing green text and numerals ran rapidly through the air above the pad's holoprojector. Vaien's eyes followed them, his pupils a blur, as the raw data generated by the sleeping Soulspear flowed into his prodigious brain.
'Ready?' asked Koraloth. Vaien nodded almost imperceptibly, the streams of numbers reflected in his glazed eyes.
'Very well.' Koraloth made a complex gesture with her free hand and the control studs wired into her fingertips activated the field-cage. A deep thrum opened up as the coils built into the lab's walls came to life and projected a web of electromagnetic lines to contain the power generated by the Soulspear. They all knew that if something really went wrong it wouldn't be enough.
Needle-like manipulators slid from Koralofh's fingertips and she began to work on the first encoder, bypassing the Soulspear's defences to force the activation signal deeper into the labyrinthine circuitry.
At once it fought back, the crypto-electronics squirming and shifting against Koraloth's invasion. Vaien's tine-hand typed information at an astonishing rate into the keypad, firing up a data-war against the Soulspear, immeasurably ancient archeotech against raw human brainpower.
The first encoder went down, then the second as the Soulspear was blindsided by the novelty of a worthy opponent. It rallied and Vaien fought it at the speed of thought, Koraloth's activation commands breaking past the third barr
ier. Silver sparks were dancing around the glowing ends of the Soulspear and the air was turning thick.
El'Hirn was backing off slowly. Gelentian scribbled notes onto die data-slate hung around his neck, and Tallin stood arms folded, daring the Soulspear to defy them.
The fourth took longer and the sheer volume of processing power coursing through the interface between Vaien and the
Soulspear robbed the local systems of power - the lab's lights dimmed further; attentive servo-arm arrays slumped powerless.
Then the fifth went down and the Soulspear was activated for the first time in a thousand years.
ALL ACROSS KODEN Tertius, klaxons wailed in alarm. Monitoring stations were bathed in pulsing amber light and the menials manning them jumped into full alert mode. Any forge world was in constant danger of suffering a massive industrial disaster, such were the magnitudes of forces involved in the manufactoria and the sheer levels of power the planet had to manage, and vigilance was heightened during Koden Tertius's regular death-storms.
At first it was assumed by most that the shielding had somehow failed and acid rain had sheeted through some vital component in the power grid, or that lightning had been conducted away from the earthing towers and seared deep into some crucial control system. The first hurried diagnostic rituals showed an immense power spike at a point on the equator, in the research and theoretical engineering sector commanded by Archmagos Khobotov.
The closest tech-guard garrison was alerted and rescue/retribution teams scrambled. The history of Koden Tertius was punctuated by industrial catastrophes and occasional massive loss of life amongst the menials and even tech-priests, and it was not always entirely accidental. The sector was to be surrounded and the tech-guard were to move in around the source of the readings, letting nothing escape, and hold the position until some answers could be found. They hurried through the tunnel-streets and across the great gantries crossing chasms of generators, until four hundred men surrounded the laboratory of Tech-Priest Sasia Koraloth.
THE FIRST THING Sasia Koraloth saw when she regained consciousness was the closest lab bench sheared in two, the edges dripping and melted. The equipment bolted to its surface had overloaded and was belching acrid smoke. One wall was spattered with black coolant spray fountaining from a severed hydraulic line - it was mixing with the blood on the floor, seeping from the bodies of her tech-coven members that had been thrown around the room.
'Tallin? Anyone?' Koraloth hadn't been out for more than a couple of seconds, she was sure, but in that time her lab had been reduced to a ruin. She tried to haul herself to her feet but the pain was making her groggy. The bones of one hand had been pulped by the violent vibrations of the Soulspear as it tried to break free from the field-cage. She coughed and peered through the stinking smoke of burned plastic.
Gelentian must have died instantly - there was a clean, round wound right through his chest. Vaien had probably taken a moment longer, for one arm and shoulder had been sheared neatly off when the Soulspear had swung wildly in her grasp as the field-cage began to fail. All around the lab chunks had been sliced out of the lab benches, the equipment, the walls. The Soulspear itself lay on the floor, white smoke coiling off it.
'Here, girl.' said Tallin. Still a soldier at heart, he had hit the floor the instant the Soulspear had come on line and owed his life to it. 'I think it all worked a little too well.'
'Omnissiah preserve us...' gasped Koralotii with a shudder, staring at Vaien's lopsided corpse. 'Did you see it?'
It was... magnificent. Twin blades of pure blackness, two tears in reality, shearing out from either end of the Soulspear. It was as she had suspected - the Soulspear generated a vortex field just like a vortex missile or grenade, but it could maintain the integrity of that field instead of just unleashing it as an explosion. If they could unravel the inner working of the Soulspear, think of the wondrous tilings they could make...
'In time, perhaps.' came that sinister hissing voice. 'But for now, Tech-Priest Koraloth, our objectives are rather less lofty. We must flee.'
El'Hirn caught Koraloth's uninjured arm and pulled her to her feet with surprising strength. 'The tech-guard will be coming. If they find out you have not been working alone then Khobotov will find out our true purpose here. You understand that cannot happen.'
Tallin pulled himself upright. 'Where can we go? They'll have us surrounded.'
'There are places.' said El'Hirn. 'I have been on this planet some time. I know many of its dark corners where a fugitive might hide.'
'Not just hide.' said Koraloth, her face pale and sheened with sweat as she fought off the pain. 'We have to finish this. We know what the Soulspear can do. It is what we have been looking for all these years, it is why I gathered you and Vaien and Gelentian. We have heard the true word of the Omnissiah, and we must offer up a sacrifice in return.'
El'Hirn headed towards the lab's entrance. 'Indeed we have, tech-priest. The Omnissiah appeared to me, too, in his guise as the Engineer of Time, and told me all those things that you believe. And I know that he demanded you prove your worthiness to receive that truth. We will offer up to him the Soulspear, but first, we must ensure that we survive.'
El'Hirn took up the Soulspear in one hand and led the survivors of Koraloth's coven out of the lab. Glancing around at the sound of approaching tech-guard, he levered a panel away from the wall with his fingers to reveal the rusting hollow of a humidity shaft. Wordlessly, he dropped into the darkness. Tallin followed and, faint with pain but determined not to fall when she had got so far, Koraloth was last.
If they could find a place to hide, if they could survive, then they could complete the task that had been planted in the heart of Tech-priest Sasia Koraloth when the Engineer of Time had appeared in her dreams and begun to tell her the truth. She believed all his whisperings of how mindless and hidebound the Adeptus Mechanicus had become, of how an entire universe of arcane technology was gleaming beneath the surface of reality, begging for an open mind to uncover it. Since she had been given the Soulspear to study the certainly inside her had hardened until she knew what she must to.
She would offer the Soulspear to the Engineer of Time, and see the truth for herself.
AT FIRST, ALL the sensors could come up with was a web of contradictions. The unnamed planet was in far orbit around a near-dead star, and yet it was warm and teeming with life that showed brightly on the carbon scans even from the range limit. The atmosphere was theoretically human-breathable but, in all probability, practically near-toxic. That there was oxygen at all was an anomaly for the planet's surface was almost entirely ocean, broken only by scattered archipelagoes and island chains, and there were no forests or jungles to act as the planet's lungs. The closer the Brokenback got the more it seemed that there was a prosperous civilization on the planet, but that the swarms of life were not a part of it - there were negligible artificial energy signatures, no communications net, and the one or two orbital installations were cold, ancient and corroded.
Now the Brokenback was the closest an unexpected craft could get and not run a severe risk of detection. The Soul Drinkers had turned to their Chapter Master for a decision.
'Even if we could be sure of landing the Brokenback safely, there is no land mass down there isolated or stable enough to serve as a landing zone.' Varuk, the Tech-Marine who had been supervising the scans from the multitude of sensorium spines that stabbed from the Brokenback's hulls, was pointing out the few islands of any size on the giant holo of the unnamed planet. 'The sensors had some luck penetrating the freakishly dense cloud layers and could generate an image of the surface stripped of its pale shroud. We know that these are volcanic and active, they'd collapse under the hulk's weight.'
The Chapter's most able combat leaders were assembled in the audience hall of the noble's yacht that had evolved into Sarpedon's quarters and the centre of his command. Most of them, like the glowering Graevus or the ever-present Givrillian, were fro
m the force that had been alongside Sarpedon since the star fort. They had earned his trust directly and he knew their strengths. Some others were from the rest of the Chapter who had acclaimed him Chapter Master after the victory over Gorgoleon, and were all Marines who Sarpedon had fought alongside before.
Sarpedon sat back in the throne that had once belonged to the noble whose chambers he had adopted. 'Landing the Brokenback was never an attractive option.' he said. 'Could we use the Thunderhawks? Or the drop-pods?'
'Not to strike directly at the enemy, commander.' replied Varuk. A section of the globe lifted off the image and was magnified. It showed an archipelago, a chain of volcanic islands strewn across the ocean. The image was misted by clouds of interference. 'The librarium believe this is the origin point of the psychic emanations.' said Varuk. 'If we are to defeat the force that holds this planet, this is where we will find it.'
Sarpedon knew even before Varuk had pointed it out - that was where the black flame burned.
'But it is also the point where the atmosphere is the most volatile.' continued Varuk. 'You can see, the scans can hardly get through it. It is thick and stormy and completely impassable from the troposphere down. There's a layer that is effectively semi-liquid. It would be like trying to fly a Thunderhawk underwater.'