by Thorpe, Gav
It all felt wrong.
Which, as an adherent of the Cult Mechanicus, was the worst possible reason for anything. Feelings – fleshy, subjective notions of emotion and belief – were no basis on which to make a decision. Even so, Ghelsa felt that Harkas was telling the truth. She couldn’t reckon the logic either way – her mind was not made to weigh the facts in that manner.
In the absence of orders or verifiable data, all she had was feeling.
‘Let’s assume you’re telling the truth about being an inquisitor,’ she said quietly. She scarcely believed the words were coming from her lips, dragging her deeper into the plot. ‘What’s your plan?’
‘I will reclaim my Inquisitorial sigil and use it to rouse the faithful tech-priests and oust the traitorous upper echelons.’ He said this as if it would be as straightforward as tightening a flange-nut or working the odds of a High Acolytist throw in Omnissekh.
‘And where is this sigil?’
Harkas’ eyes narrowed with anger. ‘The moderatus prime took it when I presented it.’
‘So it’s in the God-decks?’
‘The command centre, yes.’
‘How did you get in there the first time?’
‘Without enough guile. I had misjudged the plot, thinking the princeps senioris alone was corrupted. Now I must be more circumspect. There’s no telling who might be aiding the conspirators.’
She heard a change in the rattle of the elevator chains and held up a hand to silence him. They shrank back into the shadows as a handful of indistinct figures descended past, clinging to the links. Ghelsa recognised their work garb and a couple of faces.
‘Just tributai,’ she whispered, but she did not relax. Her subconscious interrogated every creak, moan and shudder from the surroundings, desperately seeking anything amiss. The Imperator Titan had always been her sanctuary, even in the midst of battle. Now it felt alien and hostile, the shadows concealing unidentified foes. ‘This sigil, that’s all you need?’
‘I am confident that the dominus of the skitarii garrison of the Casus Belli remains loyal. He will heed the warning of an inquisitor and relinquish the princeps senioris of command.’
‘We’re going into battle!’
Judging by his lack of reaction, Harkas didn’t fully understand the implications of this.
‘You want to remove the princeps in the middle of a battle,’ explained Ghelsa. ‘That has to be the worst idea I have ever heard.’
‘I see your point.’ The inquisitor paused, his jaw clenched. ‘I do not think the traitors intend to defect to the enemy while they are still with the rest of the battle group. Any treasonous activity would be met with immediate attack from the other Titans, and that is a battle even the Casus Belli cannot win. The princeps will need to engineer a situation in which her treachery can occur without witnesses. She will isolate the Titan and purge any loyal elements within the crew. That gives us a short time.’
Purge the loyal elements…
Ghelsa thought of Notasa and the other duluz, and tried to remain calm.
Harkas looked up, the sudden motion causing Ghelsa to flinch. His eyes glimmered in the darkness, and Ghelsa realised that his detached stare was due to implants, nothing more. He gazed through the decking, a silent snarl curling his lip.
‘More hyperezia are gathering above us. They have firearms. The search is beginning in earnest.’ His unnatural eyes dimmed when his gaze moved to her. ‘I cannot remain here any longer.’
Every time Ghelsa tried to think straight he put her thoughts into a spin. She searched Harkas’ face for any sign of deception, wondering if he was deliberately keeping her unsettled, but she was more skilled at reading pressure gauges than people. One thing was clear.
‘You need to get out of the downdecks as soon as possible,’ she said. ‘The hyperezia will be looking for you. If you can get into the akropoliz you can lose yourself among the skitarii and gunnery crews.’
‘I need your help.’ The inquisitor made the request without hesitation or shame. When he continued it was as if he were talking about another person rather than his own safety. ‘You recognised me as an impostor in an instant, and others will also. Without your assistance I will certainly be discovered and killed.’
And that was the truth of it.
Voices echoed down the conveyor shaft, harsh and inquiring, though Ghelsa could not hear the actual words. She caught the buzz of a crude vox-caster. Though she could not discern the meaning, she knew binaric cant when she heard it.
‘A tech-priest is leading them,’ she said with a shudder. ‘I know these decks well enough to run rings around the hyperezia, but a tech-priest…’
Ghelsa faced a simple decision. Either she helped Harkas, or she clubbed him to death here and now and hoped his corpse would buy her some clemency from the tech-priests.
He watched her, studying her face intently, perhaps looking for some warning of her decision. The eyes were likely not his only enhancement, and Ghelsa wondered if he was quite as defenceless as he appeared.
She took a breath, realising that sometime in the last few seconds she had decided to help him. The inquisitor, she told herself. If she thought of it in those terms the situation didn’t feel quite so terrifying, though no more real either.
‘That way,’ she said, pointing to starboard with the multi-tool. ‘There’s a ladder we can use. You go first.’
Even if Harkas was an inquisitor, Ghelsa wasn’t fool enough to turn her back on him.
CHAPTER 3
SETBACKS
Iealona [datalog/concept/destruction]:
The anger was not Iealona’s, at least not hers alone. The rage that empowered the broadcast came from the depths of the MIU, a vocalisation of the Casus Belli’s inner roar at the loss of Steel Wolf. The transmission was accompanied by a burst of imagery from the extensive battle-archives of the Imperator. Pic- and vid-capture displays of burning cities and annihilated fortresses flashed through Exasas. The Titan’s channelled thoughts played out to recordings of shell detonations and the shriek of plasma discharge, the voice of a war god writ in the language of death.
Haili [exalt]:
Gevren [exalt]:
Exasas tasked a minute portion of cerebral architecture to briefly acknowledge the sentiment, but felt no urge to contribute directly. The humans’ posturing was unnecessary. The Machine-God – as embodied by the Casus Belli – already knew full well the requirements of the enemy’s destruction. It had, through the offices of the Departmento Munitorum and the Collegia Titanicus, delivered the means for vengeance. Any further exhortation was inefficient and, for lack of a more precise term, ungracious.
Exasas [local transmit]:
Gevren:
Exasas regretted his outburst immediately and avoided further humiliation by redirecting full attention to the ongoing battle. Although their artillery support had been mostly curtailed, the rallied traitors continued to hold their positions against the Titan onslaught. For some time they had exchanged long-range fire with the Battle Titans, lighting up void shields with their ordnance while the weaponry of the Warlords, Reavers and Warriors shredded ferrocrete defences and immolated battle tanks in response.
Exasas [direct trans/closed/Monderas]:
Monderas [direct trans/closed/Exasas]:
Exasas [direct trans/closed/Monderas]:
Monderas [direct trans/closed/Exasas]:
Exasas [direct trans/closed/Monderas/speculative]:
Monderas [direct trans/closed/Exasas/speculative]:
Exasas [direct trans/closed/Monderas/speculative]:
Monderas [direct trans/closed/Exasas]:
Exasas [direct trans/closed/Monderas]:
Monderas [direct trans/closed/Exasas/interrogative]:
Exasas [direct trans/closed/Monderas/gratitude]
The suggestion was precisely what Exasas had failed to identify. The staged retreat – masquerading as unintended rout – masked the adoption of the new positions across the hills around Az Khalak. He ran several topographical analyses of the routes to the citadel, but nothing significant drew his attention. If it was not the actual physical locations of the defenders, there had to be some other reason why they had pulled back one and half kilometres in the face of the Titan assault.
Exasas [analysis request/closed/lexmechanica datalogs]:
Lexmechanica datalogs [request response]:
Exasas had been immobile during his exchange with Monderas and the data-scrape, all energy directed towards systems monitoring and communication. Agitation stirred his mechanical form, causing the magos to extend his articulated limbs as an expression of disturbance.
The main displays contained a picture of ongoing devastation as the battle group’s advance across the hills continued. Despite the firepower levelled upon them, the rebels were far more stalwart in their defence than against the initial assault, further adding to Exasas’ suspicion that the first withdrawal had been a feint. He reiterated his concern in a blurt-transmit-repeat-stub to the princeps senioris, not wishing to distract her further during lethal engagement.
The distance-to-objective monitor, which had been calibrated for the central keep of Az Khalak, read fifteen point three kilometres. This placed the Imperator and its companions well within range of the city’s main guns. Even so, the quake cannons were a known quantity and it still made no sense to Exasas that the defenders would have laid their outer defensive line beyond the range of their most potent weapons.
He initiated another communication with Monderas but kept the transmission open for the other tech-priests, moderati and princeps senioris to intercede if they wished.
Exasas [direct trans/Monderas]:
Monderas:
The magos dominus broadened his transmission to ensure that the rest of the command crew received the following exchange. He sub-stranded a threat-potential-unease gradient to convey his growing anxiety with the situation.
Exasas [imperative]:
A buzz of data flowed through her, whirling through algorithms like blood pumping along his vessels, powering exponential calculations rather than physical movement. Exasas matched the data with his archival stores regarding the defences of the Imperator and then each of the Titans in attendance.
Exasas [imperative]:
Iealona [inquiry]:
Monderas had already been plying the calculations through his own cogitators and answered immediately.
Monderas:
Gevren:
Exasas [theory]:
Monderas [inquiry]:
Iealona:
This idea intrigued Exasas and he archived the thought for later incorporation into his theorem. A more pressing matter attracted the attention of the entire command crew when proximity surveyors scrambled into life, detecting a growing number of the power sources that had left the citadel.
Monderas [request]:
Iealona [plasma chamber/imperative]:
Seconds later alarms flared across the noosphere as the guns on the walls of Az Khalak opened fire. Trajectory data and payload assessments seared across Exasas’ interlocution circuits. Again it was the logistari prime that responded sooner, interconnected with the main surveyor arrays rather than relying on secondary reporting as Exasas was forced to do by dint of his lesser role within the command crew.
Monderas:
The two Warlords halted as the shells arced towards them, diverting power to their void shields so that each was encased in a glimmering hemisphere of energy. Discordant reactions fluttered through Exasas as he realised that the gunners in the citadel had made an error.
Exasas [inquiry]:
Quake cannon rounds, each capable of levelling a building, slammed into the void shields of the two Warlord Titans. Arcs of power leapt as the energy fields shunted the explosive energy of the impacts into warp space. To Exasas’ visual senses a coruscation of green and blue flowed around the war engines, while in his metamathical analysis the conflicting energy waves collided in pleasing spiral patterns.
Flurries of anti-tank fire and smaller-calibre guns scratched across the remaining shields. None of them were powerful enough to land a debilitating blow, but in concert they gnawed at the Warlords’ defences.
Exasas felt the Casus Belli slow further as more power siphoned from the legs to the weapons, powering up the Imperator’s primary guns. The rest of the battle group thrust onwards, their weaponry of no use against the city at this range. They targeted their ire against the troops still manning foxholes and gunpits, wading into the criss-cross of defensive embrasures and trenchlines like skitarii soldiers picking their way across uneven ground.
The thrum of potential filled the noosphere as the plasma annihilator powered to full energy, the anticipation of Casus Belli’s spirit spilling out through its princeps. But even the Imperator’s greatest weapon c
ould not hope to reach a foe still many kilometres distant. The ravening star that roared forth seconds later crashed into a company of traitor Leman Russ tanks that had attempted to push around the flank of the battle group. Five disappeared in a flash of incandescent power and startling energy co-efficients, the ground where they had been replaced with a glass-sided crater and a rising cloud of vapour. Streaks of molten plasteel marked the crater edges, where cooling droplets of what had once been machines fell like rain.
The hellstorm added a wrathful stream of shells to tear a fresh canyon through the ridge of a high hill ahead of the Casus Belli. Whole platoons of traitor skitarii and rebelling defence troopers died in the initial hail; as many again were crushed when the remaining hillside slipped away, tumbling thousands of tonnes of earth and rocks on the fortifications built across the valley.
A kill-efficiency of 96.4 per cent sent a pleasurable quiver of appreciation through Exasas, but the momentary elation did not detract from the magos’ underlying pensiveness.
He sidelined an ongoing simulation to make more processing power available to assess the enemy’s potential objectives. Faster and faster he ran prognosticating algorithms, shutting down sensory inputs and redundancy systems to concentrate all available cogitation on the matter. Swathed in virtual and visual darkness, the magos let the equations dance through her, streaming together into a single conjoined extrapolation.
A brief lance of formative data broke the meta-silence when the city batteries opened fire again. Targeting predictions seemed amiss at first, locating the point of impact among the Reavers now spearheading the advance, rather than upon the Will of Iron and Indomitable Guardian, whose shields were already partially overcome.
Exasas took the data as truth, sparing nothing to re-evaluate the trajectories. Instead he paused all other calculations to hone the forecast antarithms – those parts of his program that attempted to emulate the enemy’s intent. One consequence pulsed through the findings, repeated again and again as he reran the data flow.