Forge of Mars - Graham McNeill

by Warhammer 40K

  He pushed the nagging sentiment aside, feeling a mounting excitement in his floodstream as the noospheric range counter streamed closer to high orbit. No matter how Kotov conditioned the biological responses of his brain, he couldn’t suppress the sense that fate had led him here. He remembered the darkest moments of his despair with shame, when the second of his forge worlds had been destroyed and he had cursed the Omnissiah for forsaking him. But out of that abject misery had come the discovery of the Speranza.

  From the ashes of his broken hubris, Kotov had recognised a last lifeline to serve the Machine-God, that everything he had suffered was a test. Despair became hope and a newfound devotion to the Omnissiah.

  This was where it had brought him, to impossible wonders beyond imagining, a reconnection with the past and a chance to rebuild the future.

  All that spoiled this perfect moment was the presence of Galatea.

  The hybrid machine intelligence prowled the bridge like a stalking arachnid, moving between the veils of light displaying the twelve worlds and studying each one. Each examination was cursory, saw Kotov, as though it was already aware of what was displayed. A tremor of unease passed through Kotov at the sight of Galatea’s studied nonchalance, seeing an echo of Blaylock’s peculiar behaviour in its perambulations.

  Galatea said it wanted to kill Archmagos Telok, but Kotov no longer believed that. For all its pretensions to humanity and Kotov’s increasing distance from his own, Galatea’s lie no longer carried any conviction. Some other motive was at the heart of the machine intelligence’s desire to be reunited with Telok, and that unknown variable gnawed at Kotov like pernicious scrapcode.

  Magos Blaylock concluded his wanderings through the other magi and returned to his station beside Kotov’s command throne. The gaggle of servitor dwarfs fussed around his train of pipework and hissing regulators.

  ‘Is it all you hoped for, archmagos?’ asked Blaylock.

  Putting aside thoughts of Galatea, Kotov said, ‘It is more than I could have hoped for, Tarkis.’

  Blaylock nodded slowly. ‘I must confess I doubted the wisdom of this quest. I believed your reasons for its undertaking to be motivated by pride and desperation, but now that we are here… I…’

  Kotov turned to face his Fabricatus Locum, surprised by his uncharacteristic loss for words and candid admissions. He had long known that Blaylock harboured doubts, but had thought them put to rest after their walk in the Processional Way. Blaylock’s features were no indicator of his mental status, having long since been submerged in mechanised implants, but the ripples in his noospheric aura were clear indicators of his conflicted status, like a machine stuck in an infinite loop attempting to reconcile two conflicting doctrina wafers.

  ‘Is something the matter, Tarkis?’

  Blaylock didn’t answer, and Kotov was about to repeat the question – though he knew full well Tarkis must have heard him – when he received an answer it was the last answer he might have expected.

  ‘I do not know,’ said Blaylock with disarming honesty.

  ‘You don’t know? Here we are, surrounded by wonders no priest of Mars has seen in thousands of years, on the verge of reaching the quest’s goal, and you don’t know if something is the matter? You surprise me, Tarkis.’

  ‘That is part of the problem,’ said Blaylock, shaking his head, as though clearing it of some irritant code. ‘No-one from Mars has been here in thousands of years, yet I feel that this arrangement of stars and planets is somehow familiar.’

  ‘You feel they are familiar?’ asked Kotov.

  ‘Apologies, archmagos, but there is no other word in my lexicon that fits the situation. I feel as though I have seen these stars before. And this is not the first time I have had this sensation.’

  ‘When did you have it before?’ said Vitali Tychon, approaching from the astrogation hub.

  ‘Just before the energy emission from this planet reached the Tomioka,’ answered Blaylock.

  ‘Interesting,’ said Vitali. ‘As I am reading a great deal of similarity in this arrangement of planets and celestial/temporal interactions to an archived monograph on idealised stellar geometry inloaded by Magos Alhazen of Sinus Sabeus. Your former mentor and, if I am not mistaken, something of an evangelical devotee of Archmagos Telok.’

  Blaylock paused as he accessed his internal database.

  ‘No, you are mistaken, Magos Tychon,’ he said. ‘I am familiar with every submission made by Magos Alhazen to the Martian Tabularium Mons. He submitted no such monograph.’

  Kotov shared Vitali’s surprised expression.

  As soon as Vitali mentioned the monograph, Kotov had retrieved it from the Speranza’s archives and instantly digested its contents. Sure enough, the postulations put forward by Alhazen were a close, and in some cases identical, match to the stellar data displayed on the command bridge.

  That Blaylock seemed unaware of it was as close to impossible as Kotov could imagine.

  Before he could pursue the matter, every single holographic display on the bridge flickered and was snuffed out by an incoming transmission from the planet below. The Speranza had been exloading generic hails and Mechanicus greeting protocols as soon as it had entered the system’s edge, but they had all been ignored until now.

  Each of the holographic hubs filled with a rotating icon of eight bodies seemingly issuing forth from molten bedrock or a swirling rush of what might represent flames. Kotov had never encountered the image, but he recognised a Mechanicus hand in its formation, the golden ratio tracing a line through each of the figures’ elbows and giving the whole a pleasingly ordered form.

  ‘Starship Speranza, this is forge world Exnihlio,’ said an automated vox. ‘Prepare for inload.’

  ‘From out of nothing,’ said Vitali, voicing the Low Gothic translation of the name.

  ‘Exnihlio,’ said Kotov, rising from his command throne. ‘This is Archmagos Kotov, High Lord of Mars and Explorator General of this expedition. Do I have the honour of addressing Archmagos Vettius Telok?’

  Kotov was about to repeat his question when the image of the writhing figures was replaced with complex navigational waypoints tracing a narrow transit corridor through the highly-charged atmosphere. Only a vessel of sufficiently low displacement would be able to fly such a passage, and even a cursory parsing of the data indicated that deviating from the prescribed pathway would be extremely hazardous.

  ‘Landing co-ordinates,’ said Azuramagelli. ‘An older format, but that is only to be expected from a world without hexamathic enhancements.’

  Kotov nodded, feeling a potent sense of anticipation at the thought of setting foot on Telok’s forge world. Travelling to the fiefdom of another magos was always a time of great importance, a chance to share data, pursue new directions in the interpretation of techno-arcana and barter services and information to further the Quest for Knowledge. What might he learn on the world of an archmagos unfettered from the censure of his peers and the restrictions of Universal Laws?

  ‘Archmagos?’ asked Blaylock. ‘What are your orders?’

  ‘Send word to Sergeant Tanna,’ said Kotov. ‘I am going to have need of the Barisan.’

  All evidence that human beings had once occupied this space had been removed and the chamber returned to its former state of abandonment. The remains of Hawke’s still had been removed, and its component parts placed in reclamation funnels. The lumen globes recessed in the coffers were dimmed and the images of the saintly figures wreathed in shadow. Ismael had taken Abrehem to a shrine below the waterline, leaving Totha Mu-32 to complete the internment of Rasselas X-42.

  ‘Abrehem should never have found you,’ he said, circling the slumbering killer.

  Clad head to foot in black, the arco-flagellant sat with its ironclad head bowed, a flickering light stuttering like a malfunctioning strobe beneath the smooth inner face of its pacifier helm. Images of Imperi
al holy men and divine visions of harmony played out before X-42, keeping it locked in a state of perpetual bliss.

  Given what Totha Mu-32 knew of the Impaler Cardinal’s reign of blood, it was a more merciful fate than any he had accorded his victims. The arco-flagellant’s muscles twitched as rogue synapses flared and sparked in its brain, the inevitable result of a sword to the skull.

  ‘I wonder what effects the damage is having on the visions within your skull?’ wondered Totha Mu-32. ‘Whatever the repercussions, I hope they hurt. You deserve to suffer for the things you have done. And once this chamber is sealed, you will suffer them until the Speranza finally ends its days.’

  Totha Mu-32 continued his circling of the arco-flagellant, checking that every restraint was as tight as it could be made and that every dormancy connector was firmly attached. He checked every spinal shunt, every cortical inhibitor and every neurological blocker.

  Satisfied everything was in order, he ran a final diagnostic on the pacifier mechanisms, ensuring that the machinery was functioning within acceptable operating parameters. Hooked directly into the Speranza’s power grid and with multiple redundancies, the mechanism could keep an army of arco-flagellants sedated for longer than the Ark Mechanicus was likely to survive.

  Totha Mu-32 backed out of the chamber, still, despite every precaution and check he had just made, unwilling to turn his back on the cyborg killer. He paused by the shutter to the dormis chamber as a cold wind sighed from within, like the last exhalation of a slumbering predator who is just waiting out the winter before emerging to hunt once more.

  Rasselas X-42 remained unmoving, a hunched statue of caged murder and horror. Even dormant, it exuded dreadful danger. Though it should be impossible for the arco-flagellant to break the psycho-conditioning holding it fast, Totha Mu-32 half expected the creature to raise its head one last time.

  The arco-flagellant twitched and the light beneath its helm flickered on.

  Totha Mu-32 swept a hand over the hidden door mechanism and the heavy bulkhead shutter slammed down into the floor with a percussive boom of engaging locks. A handprint of dried blood was smeared in the centre of the door and Totha Mu-32 placed his own hand over the impression of what he knew was Abrehem’s hand.

  This, coupled with a trigger word, had caused the locks to disengage and begun X-42’s reactivation sequence. Totha Mu-32 spat on the bloodstain and rubbed the sleeve of his robe over the flaked blood until nothing remained of it.

  Taking a last look around the empty chamber, Totha Mu-32’s gaze was met by the hundreds of iron black skulls set into the walls. Part temple, part prison, part sepulchre; each interpretation was apt for the monster entombed within.

  A flicker of code squirmed through the walls, fragmentary binary debris from whatever conduits had once passed through this chamber en route to unknown destinations. Much of it was degraded to the point of simply becoming squalling gibberish, and soon it would be entirely reabsorbed back into the noosphere.

  Totha Mu-32 turned and strode from the chamber, leaving the lumens to gutter and die as the code encircling the chamber finally faded out. The empty sockets of the grinning skulls set in the bleak walls glimmered with the dying code, as though they alone were custodians of a secret they wished to tell, but were forever sworn to keep.

  Like Totha Mu-32, they knew that some doors were best left unopened.

  But they also knew that some doors can never be shut entirely.

  Like the phoenix of myth, the Barisan had emerged from the flames of its rebirth stronger than ever. The damage it had suffered on Katen Venia had been almost entirely erased by the ritual ministrations of Magos Turentek and his army of artificers. The compression fractures in its hull plates were repaired, the impact trauma to its superstructure was undone and the torsion stresses in its spine had been unkinked.

  For all intents and purposes, the craft was as good as new, as fine as the day its frame had been struck in the Tyrrhenus Mons forge-complex. Turentek had seen the seal of the Fabricator General and had bent his every effort into restoring the work of Mars’s pre-eminent worker of metals and spirit. The Barisan had suffered greatly in the crash, and its machine-spirit was a vicious, cornered beast of a thing, but Turentek had eventually earned its trust with the quality of his workmanship and the devotion of his servants.

  Tanna felt the gunship respond to his every command as though they had been flying together for centuries. It wasn’t exactly compliant per se, and could still shrug him off like a tiny biological irritant, but at least there was a measure of respect between them now.

  ‘The gunship has healed well,’ said Archmagos Kotov, seated beside Tanna in the co-pilot’s seat.

  Tanna nodded tersely and said, ‘Magos Turentek has my thanks.’

  The view through the canopy was a tempestuous melange of lightning-shot cloud banks and flickering geomagnetic storms that clashed, burst and roared and blazed with tortured energies. Streamers of plasma and forking traceries of vertical lightning shot up from the surface, making it feel as though the Barisan was evading a thunderous barrage of anti-aircraft fire.

  ‘It is like flying through a hundred thunderstorms at once,’ said Tanna as a booming pressure wave slammed into the gunship’s fuselage.

  ‘This is not a thunderstorm,’ said Kotov as Tanna corrected their flight path.

  ‘Then what is it?’

  ‘The inevitable consequence of planet-wide power generation,’ said Kotov, gesturing through the streaked canopy to where a vast dirigible-like device hung motionless in the sky. The billowing hull of the object was englobed in arcs of purple and amber lightning that coruscated down a thick length of metallic cabling hung from its underside and vanished into the roiling banks of charged vapour like a trailing arrestor hook.

  ‘What was that?’ asked Tanna as the floating contraption was swallowed by the clouds and disappeared from sight.

  ‘Some sort of energy collector I imagine,’ said Kotov admiringly. ‘It seems virtually every machine and temple on the surface of this world is given over to power generation, and that amount of power creates all manner of distortion in the upper atmosphere. I suspect Telok has unlocked a means to harness what would normally be classified as waste by-products.’

  ‘The Breath of the Gods requires such power?’

  Kotov hesitated before answering. ‘It is impossible to know the energy demands of something so far beyond our comprehension,’ he said. ‘In fact, it amazes me that one world can provide the power for something capable of such incredible reorganisation of matter and energy.’

  Another energy discharge rocked the Barisan, and Tanna swung the prow back around as a pair of the giant dirigibles hove into view through the vapour-slick clouds. This time, the view was clearer, and Tanna saw they were little more than vast bladders of a rippling metallic fibre constrained by mesh netting and hung with copper and brass mechanisms that spun and crackled with activity.

  Tanna brought the gunship lower, the altitude spiralling down as he followed the convoluted route to the surface. Had he not seen the atmospheric effects for himself, he would have believed they were being led down a deliberately circuitous flight path.

  ‘There has to be an easier way to the surface,’ he said, more to himself than Kotov.

  ‘Are you following the waypoint coordinates correctly?’

  Tanna didn’t even spare him a withering glance. ‘You would already know if I was not, because you would be screaming.’

  ‘Point taken, brother-sergeant.’

  ‘The waypoints are accurate, but it’s what we will find at the end of this flight that worries me.’

  ‘You suspect danger?’

  ‘I always suspect danger, archmagos,’ said Tanna. ‘That’s why I am still alive.’

  ‘Had Telok wanted us dead, he could have found an easier method than guiding us into a thunderstorm.’

&nb
sp; ‘Perhaps he has reasons to wish us alive when we reach the surface.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘I do not know,’ said Tanna. ‘You are the Mechanicus here. This is your expedition.’

  ‘We are fellow crusaders, brother-sergeant, I thought you understood that,’ Kotov said. ‘Do you not think that I could have taken any number of Mechanicus transports down to the surface? I could have preloaded the route Telok sent us, but I chose you to fly me down to this historic meeting because I value what you represent. You are the Emperor, and I am the Mechanicus. Two facets of the Imperium working together. Our unity stands as testament to our sacred purpose in coming to this world.’

  ‘And it is never a bad idea to have a squad of Black Templars at your back when venturing into the unknown.’

  ‘That too,’ agreed Kotov, and Tanna could almost share the master of the expedition’s excitement.

  Despite everything they had suffered, they had actually reached their destination alive.

  The atmosphere grew thinner, and blocky shapes loomed from the clouds, vast cooling towers belching toxic fumes from the planet’s surface and squat funnels that shot plumes of green fire into the sky. Arcing static crackled in the air like fireworks at a triumphal parade and virtually every auspex panel fizzed with distortion. More of the dirigibles drifted past the Barisan, hundreds of them floating like blooms of jellyfish in a turgid ocean. The gunship flew lower still, and more of the titanic buildings – if buildings they were – emerged from the banks of cloud.

  Tanna saw towering steel structures wrapped in coils of energy, crackling pylons hundreds of metres in diameter and exosphere-scraping pyramids whose bases were thousand of miles wide. It was like flying over a gathering of hive-cities that had forsaken their individuality and simply merged into one continuous planetary crust of steel and caged fire. Tens of thousands of metres below the Barisan, tesla-coil skyscrapers jostled for space amid vast power domes and immense capacitor stacks.