by Thorpe, Gav
Exasas might as well have been left blinded and crippled, such was the curtailing of his abilities.
All logic urged her to one of two courses of action. To continue with the submission and await some future opportunity, or to submit fully and join with the cabal of which Olvatia was clearly an important part.
Was he right to assume their purpose was antagonistic to his own? Though he had never vied for exceptionalism, preference or patronage from his superiors, he had undoubtedly benefited as much as been hindered by the politics of the upper levels of the hierakos. By her own account Olvatia could have removed Exasas from the equation more forcefully and permanently. It was ego – the thought of being ousted and his antagonism with Gevren – that drove out any thought of cooperation. Was his unwillingness to adapt to this new situation the fault, rather than an objective wrong being perpetrated?
Yet Olvatia herself had mocked him for his lack of illogical assumption. It had been her presumption that Exasas would acquiesce without conflict. The very calculations at his disposal had been turned against her, and it was this more than anything else that irked Exasas.
Irked?
It was a very human response, but it was the truest. As much as probability suggested that it made little difference which power bloc within the Legio had control of the Imperator, it vexed Exasas on a personal level that they endangered the Casus Belli with their politicking. Though he had initially arrived as dominus to expand the scope and implement the practical application of his theorem, he had absorbed fully the culture of the Titan and was proud of the duty he had been called upon to perform.
Processors flared into rapid life at this revelation. It was not some organic instinct nor personal disagreement that agitated Exasas. The evidence to hand strongly suggested that Olvatia’s co-conspirators had been willing to risk the safety of the Casus Belli to achieve their aims. In itself this disqualified them from being entrusted with that guardianship.
They did not represent the best for the Imperator and that was reason enough to stop them. From this tiny kernel of contrariness, Exasas’ determination bloomed into full anger.
He had not felt – felt! – like this in many centuries. Even the Traitor Space Marines that had attempted to destroy the Casus Belli had not elicited hatred from the magos. He could not hate them, for they had simply fulfilled their purpose. On an intellectual level he had wished them destroyed, but had taken no personal affront at their existence.
Conversely, Gevren and the others had betrayed all of those to whom they had sworn oaths, and all of those under their protection also. Olvatia’s meandering arguments about harnessing warp power made even less sense now, but were indicative of a flawed ideology.
Above all, Exasas railed against the idea that they had not only expected his logic-induced passivity, but had depended upon it. Had they thought he would provide more of an obstacle it was unlikely they would have set their coup in motion.
Invigorated by this train of thought, the magos turned his efforts to the immediate predicament. How was he going to fight back from his current confinement?
Ahead, the knot of tech-priests turned at Harkas’ approach. Glinting lenses and multifaceted detector orbs coldly assayed him as they might an ancient circuit. A cloud of servo-skulls attempted to intercept the inquisitor but he pushed through them.
Ghelsa changed course, walking closer but not so directly, her instincts warning her not to get involved. She had done her part – now it was up to Harkas and the dominus to finish what had been started.
She stopped a short distance away. From this position she was not so near that she attracted attention, but close enough to hear the barked challenge from one of the tech-priests.
‘You are ignoring hierarchical protocol, skitarii.’ The tech-priest whipped a mechadendrite in admonition. ‘You do not have permission to approach the dominus.’
‘I have an important message for the dominus,’ replied Harkas. ‘Of grave importance to the Casus Belli and all aboard.’
‘Your concerns must be relayed through the appropriate communication channels, skitarii.’
‘I am not skitarii,’ declared Harkas, brandishing his sigil. ‘I am an inquisitor, and I will speak with the dominus now.’
Ghelsa could see nothing of the tech-priest’s face, but suspected there would be little enough left to betray any emotion even if she could. Despite that, she was able to read the body language easily enough – the sudden stiffening of limbs. She knew that an extension of secondary appendages was often a reaction to peril.
On occasion she had met with those outside the Cult Metalica – Imperial Guardsmen, Imperial Navy personnel and the like. They always laboured under the misapprehension that tech-priests were only machines, incapable of emotion. Ghelsa knew well enough from her own experience that having cybernetics didn’t change her brain chemistry or nervous system. The same was true for a tech-priest. It was impossible to wholly eliminate the thousands of continual signals that made love or hate, compassion or derision. The teachings of the Cult Metalica were not to remove these human factors through mechanical replacement, but to adopt a philosophy of higher understanding so that one recognised and controlled them. Unfeeling machines were easy to construct. Machines with humanity, no matter how repressed, were the perfect expression of the Omnissiah’s genius.
So she knew what she saw when the tech-priest recoiled from Harkas’ Inquisitorial sigil. She had seen it in the downdecks when a tech-priest was close to a direct hit or a dangerously malfunctioning system. It was fear.
Which was understandable. Few ever knowingly crossed the path of an inquisitor in their life, and there was little affection for the other institutions of the Imperium, but that did not explain the tech-priest’s very personal reaction. The momentary response betrayed an intimate, physical threat, not a general and intellectual one.
Unthinking, she stepped closer, fuelled by curiosity. As before, her desire to call out died at the moment of its conception, buried under a sudden need to remain unnoticed. She continued to watch in mute impotency.
The magos dominus swept aside the gaggle of subordinates with a flurry of hair-fronds, looming over Harkas as two undulating manipulators extended from beneath the segmented globe. Undulating sensor-vines tasted the air around the inquisitor, cutting lines through the bluish vapour that puffed from incense vents as metal plates opened and closed like gills.
‘You are an inquisitor?’ The voice was almost song-like, each word carried on a rising cadence.
‘I am Ossissiru Harkas of the Most Holy Orders of the Emperor’s Inquisition. I have discovered a techno-heresy that imperils the Casus Belli.’
‘You are most persistent, Harkas,’ the dominus said. ‘Moderatus Prime Gevren informed me that you had been apprehended and slain. Twice. It seems that you have a gift for survival that is equal to your penchant for heresy.’
Harkas retreated several steps and swept up one of the laspistols. He darted a look at the other tech-priests forming a semi-circle behind their commander.
‘I am an inquisitor of the Emperor!’ he shouted, looking around the atrium. He lifted up the Inquisitorial sigil for all to see. His next words were directed at the magos. ‘If you kill me, my order will visit vengeance a thousandfold upon you and your companions. Better to submit to your swift execution now.’
‘You overestimate your reach, Harkas. We are not intimidated by your claims to represent the Holy Order.’
Harkas again raised his voice, lifting the sigil high and turning to address the skitarii stationed around the atrium.
‘I am an inquisitor of the Emperor, and by my absolute authority I command you to execute these hereteks!’
Ghelsa withdrew as the soldiers turned their attention on the raving man standing before their commander. Silence greeted his proclamation. A buzzing sound broke the stillness. The magos was laughing.
‘That is an interesting badge you brandish,’ said the dominus. ‘A simple thing, yet you
claim it possesses the power to command armies and condemn worlds. Such is granted to only the most brilliant minds, the most determined champions of humanity. You are neither, Harkas. Your delusions have betrayed you.’
Ghelsa shook her head, scrutinising Harkas’ face. He looked as confident as he had the first time she laid eyes upon him, but the magos’ words anchored deep into Ghelsa’s own doubts.
‘It is my authority incarnate,’ said Harkas. His glance roamed the atrium once more, seeking an ally. Any ally. His eyes passed over Ghelsa and she flinched, stifling any sound, fearing he would call upon her to intervene. He did not, his gaze moving on without pause. The opposite, in fact, if she understood his next words correctly. ‘You can strike me down, but the strength of this symbol is that it is the strength of all. There are others that answer the same call. Someone else will do what I cannot, and your heresy will be punished.’
‘Nobody is listening.’ A hint of discordant frustration crept into the magos’ voice. ‘You have nothing, Harkas, but a piece of wood. You have no authority here. Your badge is worthless. A greater power holds our allegiance.’
A mechanical tendril reached out, its three claws revealed to be a portable holo-projector as a wavering image appeared before the magos. It was dark blue, slowly rotating, shaped like a cog in the same style as the symbol of the Adeptus Mechanicus. Ghelsa recognised the difference as the dominus continued speaking – eight lugs, not twelve.
‘Behold the eightfold gear of Knowledge Infinite. I possess the cardinal and the anti-cardinal, power beyond the imagining of the Machine-God.’ The magos drifted low, the segments peeling back to reveal a hideously contorted face, almost within arm’s reach of the inquisitor. The fakeskin barely moved as she continued. ‘Most importantly, these are my soldiers, Harkas. They have all been trusted with the Eight Rituals of Truth. Shout! Shout as loud as you can. Not even the corpse of the Omnissiah can hear you today.’
CHAPTER 11
A SPARK IN THE DARKNESS
Harkas raised the pistol but a tendril snaked out, snatching it easily from his grasp. A second tentacle smashed into his face, knocking him to the floor. With a whine of suspensors, the dominus rose up, her shadow eclipsing Harkas as a circular opening appeared in her underside. From this issued a servo-skull, the muzzle of a gleaming armament protruding from its jaw. Strange light glinted from the coils along its length, reflected on the tubes, plates and cables of the magos’ artificial body.
Ghelsa clamped her mouth shut, holding in a panicked scream. It threatened to rip free all the same.
A cone of green energy burst from the weapon, bathing Harkas. Atoms danced crazily, their connective forces eradicated by the strange beam. It took just a heartbeat. One moment Ghelsa stared in horror at Harkas’ face – defiant even at the instant of his demise – the next she saw only a glowing miasma that swiftly dimmed and then vanished. Not a tatter of flesh or fragment of cloth remained.
It was as though Ossissiru Harkas had never existed.
Except for her. She knew. She remembered.
‘He may have had accomplices. Root out all treachery from every part of the god-machine,’ announced the magos, closing her metal shell before turning away.
Had Inquisitor Harkas ever existed? Ghelsa stared at the empty space where the man had stood, unsure of everything he had said. What had seemed possible suddenly became implausible. After her initial acceptance of his assertion Ghelsa had been too swept up in evasion and survival to question what he had said. It stretched credulity that the entire command crew of an Imperator Titan could be swayed to tech-heresy. Not only that, but how he had come upon the plot now appeared as an unlikely series of coincidences. None of it made much sense unless he had been lying.
One fact remained. She had been his accomplice and was as hunted now as she had been minutes earlier. Soon they would uncover the missing hyperezia and then it would take very little time to unearth documentation of their custody in the antae and pict-records of her face.
Ghelsa stepped back a few strides, avoiding the gaze of any other person. Then she turned with her head down, walking as quickly as she dared until she found herself in the comparative shelter of one of the atrium archways. She reached a hand to the wall to steady herself, her fingers finding the head of a mechanised griffin sculpted into the frieze, its wings fanned like a halo. The detail drew her in, fascinating and distracting her with minutiae. It was easier to get lost in the sensation of it beneath her fingers than to think about what had happened.
She bit her lip. Sudden pain brought clarity amid a storm of fear and confusion and desperation. All was turned against her.
Without a backwards glance, not sure where she was going, Ghelsa ran.
Movement in the sky ahead drew Exasas’ attention back to the outside. Several blurs descended from the back-lit clouds. At first they looked like meteors, but when Exasas adjusted his perspective for scale he saw that they were larger. Much larger.
Retro-thrusters burned into life, their light like sparks at this distance, but in reality they were pulsing jets of plasma fired to slow the descent of thousands of tonnes. He counted four drop pods – for such they had to be – and watched with growing anxiety as they slammed into the parched ground not far from the battle group. Dust clouds plumed from their impact, swathing any telltale livery that might have identified the occupants.
Full magnification still did not reveal much detail, but Exasas saw dusklight glinting on the edges of the drop pods as the sides of the huge structures opened outwards. He had briefly entertained a differential conclusion that had suggested the arrivals were reinforcements from the Legio Metalica. It evaporated the moment he caught the glimmer of orange and black, not the red and silver of his Legio.
Even through the poor focus of direct oculation, and without access to data from the noosphere, Exasas could see that the attacking war engines had made a serious error. Although their drop placement put them in an ideal position to attack the rear of the two Warhounds and the Warlord, they were directly in front of the Casus Belli. It seemed like a suicidal decision.
Hazy purple hemispheres engulfed the Will of Iron, the arriving Titans opening fire even as they disembarked from their drop pods. Dozens of rocket trails from a carapace launcher arced across the intervening distance, covering the Warlord in detonations. The pulsing green beams of a lasblaster accompanied the attack from a Titan to the right – a half-seen smudge that Exasas judged was a Reaver or equivalent class.
The Warhounds accelerated and turned even as the Will of Iron lumbered in an arc, trying to bring at least one of its weapons to bear. Another of its void shields overloaded with a burst of bluish sparks. Exasas was not sure, but he thought the Warlord had two more left.
With the main battery directly above and secondary turrets all around her, Exasas should have been engulfed by the booming of their anger. He did not even detect the moan of hydraulics that would have marked the great gun above her taking aim, and the autoloader remained silent.
Visual lens tubes pressed against the armourplas, the magos watched with deepening despair as two more void shields detonated around the Warlord. The Woundwalker and Sabreclaw peeled apart and started to return fire, but divided, the Scout-class machines were outmatched by the pair of Battle Titans they faced.
A volcano cannon from an enemy Warlord – Exasas could make out its silhouette more clearly against the actinic destruction of its target’s final shield – struck the Will of Iron across the carapace, punching through the armour to erupt from the opposite flank. Flexing its power fist impotently, the Metalican Warlord swivelled a gatling blaster towards its attackers, but the other carapace weapon hung limply, its mounting damaged by the strike moments before.
Still the Casus Belli had not opened fire.
A cold, human dread gripped Exasas when he realised that it was not going to.
It was easier than Ghelsa had expected to get back to the downdecks. In the wake of the Traitor Space Marine assault
there were tributai and tech-priests coming and going through the portalways to repair the damage that had been inflicted. Squads of the new skitarii herded the workers along routes away from the atrium. It was clear that they did not want anyone close to the antae of the god-deck, though for what purpose Ghelsa could only guess.
She stood a short distance away from the starboard gallery entrance. A trio of skitarii waited by the gilded gateway. The glimmer of their radium carbines stippled the metal-lined chamber with azure light. How could anyone not know they were hereteks? The knowledge was acid in her chest, burning with its presence, as if it would corrode her from the inside if she did not share it.
She said nothing and waited until there was nobody entering or leaving the hallway. As she neared the skitarii she became hyper aware of her own body language. Were her shoulders hunched? Should she meet their stares or keep her gaze on the floor – which would look less suspicious? She tried to walk at a casual pace, but not so slowly that it looked like she was reluctant.
She held up the multi-tool like a badge of office as she entered the hallway. ‘I’m off to recharge this,’ she said, but they did not give her a second glance. Breath held, she hurried through the archway to the steps that spiralled down into the innards of the Casus Belli’s torso.
She took the steps two at a time, the occasional clash of her exo-skeleton on the rail throwing up sparks in the increasing gloom. On a twinned set of steps running alongside, a tech-priest led a party of duluz up into the akropoliz.
‘Ghelsa!’
Instinct warred between freezing and running. Paralysis won. Barely turning her head, she sought the source of her name. Notasa’s delicate features were visible in the dim light.
‘Where in all the realm of the Omnissiah have you been hiding?’ he demanded. His expression swiftly changed from relief to anger. ‘I thought you were dead!’
Ghelsa dared not speak. She could not trust herself to speak – anything she said might get her killed – and worse, condemn Notasa too. She simply stood in shocked stillness, staring at the other tributai.