Part 17 (1/2)

Severine had taken Jonas' death particularly hard, and Dalia reached out to take her hand. The severity she had first seen in her face had melted away over the last few weeks and Dalia's heart ached to see the sadness in her friend's eyes.

Not a single trace of Jonas had been found in the chamber, not so much as an atom of his body to prove that he had existed at all. Likewise, none of the psykers encased in the coffered dome had survived the t.i.tanic energies of the Astronomican, their desiccated corpses withered and contracted into foetal b.a.l.l.s.

All told, the death toll was two thousand and thirty-seven, and that figure was like an adamantium chain of grief around all their necks. They did not yet know of the night of devastation that had been so recently unleashed and how slight a loss this was compared to that suffered by the rest of Mars.

Dalia had since been told that she had been languis.h.i.+ng in the grip of an unchanging coma for over seven days, watched over by Caxton, a host of bio-monitors and a pict-camera linked to the nearby medical station.

She learned that Caxton had refused to leave her bedside, despite repeated a.s.surances from the others that they would take s.h.i.+fts in watching her. It had been five hours since Dalia had woken, though the bulk of that time had been spent being questioned by Adept Zeth. Her friends had only just been granted access to her.

*What's Adept Zeth saying about what happened?' asked Severine after they had exchanged hugs and shed tears together. *She must be disappointed the machine didn't work.'

*Didn't it?' asked Zouche, narrowing his eyes. *It overloaded, but the machine functioned as it should have, just not for very long.'

*What did Adept Zeth ask you, Dalia?' asked Mellicin, cutting to the heart of the matter.

Dalia saw their inquisitive looks, knowing that they too were curious as to what had transpired within the chamber of the Akas.h.i.+c reader.

*She wanted to know everything that happened in the chamber and everything Jonas Milus said to me.'

*What did he say?' asked Caxton.

She squeezed Caxton's hand, glancing up at the pict-camera in the upper corner of the room.

*He just died,' said Dalia. *He didn't say anything at all.'

THE MEDICAE p.r.o.nOUNCED Dalia fit to resume her duties the following morning, and the next six rotations were spent in Zeth's inner forge rebuilding the Akas.h.i.+c reader, replacing those parts that had burned out and recalibrating those that had survived.

Zeth and Dalia had made a.s.sumptions and now they were paying for them. Dalia should have requested clarification on Zeth's figures, but she had been so focused on the minutiae of the project she had not thought to doubt the adept's numbers.

That wasn't going to happen again. Rigorous double testing and checking procedures were enforced and every servitor had its work reviewed by a living, breathing adept.

The silver wiring in the floor had melted through and whole sections were pulled up and replaced with slabs impregnated with a higher gauge of cable. Every aspect of the machine's parts was examined and re-evaluated to see if there were ways of improving its performance and ensuring that it did not fail again.

Scores of adepts and servitors laboured in the dome alongside Dalia and her friends, though there was none of the shared sense of wonder that had enthused them when previously working on the Akas.h.i.+c reader. Only the biting drills of the servitors broke the silence of the dome as they lifted floor slabs and carried them away.

The coffers in the dome were empty, and as unnerving as it had been working beneath the sightless eyes of the bound psykers, everyone felt their absence more acutely. The vacant berths were a grim reminder of the deaths caused by the machine they were working on, and the a.s.sembled workers kept their heads fixed firmly on the job at hand.

Zeth spoke little to Dalia, the adept forced to spend most of her time dealing with the fallout from their abortive experiment. The adept left her apprenta, a magos named Polk, in charge, and, under his and Rho-mu 31's supervision, work continued much as before.

Dalia had asked Rho-mu 31 once why Adept Zeth was absent from the dome, but all the robed Protector had said was, *She has matters of greater importance to attend to.'

Dalia had thought the Akas.h.i.+c reader was Zeth's greatest work, so clearly there had been consequences that not even an adept of Zeth's stature could ignore. Those few times Dalia and Zeth had pa.s.sed words, she simply reaffirmed that Jonas Milus had not spoken to her.

Zeth would nod in weary acceptance, but Dalia could read the adept's disbelief in her noospheric aura... as well as veiled fear that spoke to Dalia of events far more terrible than a failed test.

She wasn't exactly sure why she was unwilling to share the empath's words with Zeth, but the intuitive part of her mind, the part that had led her to the design of the Akas.h.i.+c reader, told her that to inform the adept of what she knew a which wasn't much anyway a could very well be dangerous.

Knowledge is power, guard it well, wasn't that one of the Mechanic.u.m's aphorisms?

Dalia intended to guard this knowledge very well and there were only a few people she dared trust with it.

Adept Zeth was not one of them.

WORK ON THE newly reconstructed Akas.h.i.+c reader was almost complete, the tolerances and capacity of the receptors altered to allow for the increased power expected to flow through the device upon its next activation.

Many months would need to pa.s.s before Mars and Terra would be in alignment once more, but for the next few rotations, the power of the Astronomican was still a vast resource of harvestable psychic energy.

Fresh psykers were already being installed within the coffers, though there had been no sign of another empath for the throne atop the dais, a fact for which Dalia was pathetically grateful.

As the activity in the dome neared completion, Dalia approached the workbench where Zouche and Caxton worked on the helmet a.s.sembly. Zouche was plugged into the lathe via extruded dendrites in his wrist, and the hissing of the laser lathe cutting through high-grade steel was a shrieking banshee howl.

Dalia winced as the sound bit into the meat of her brain.

Caxton saw her coming and smiled, lifting his hand in greeting. She smiled and returned the gesture as Zouche looked up from his labours and shut off the lathe.

*Dalia,' said Zouche, withdrawing his mechadendrites from the workbench and flipping up his protective goggles. *How are you today?'

*I'm fine, Zouche,' she said, her gaze s.h.i.+fting to the dais where the bronze armoured figure of Adept Zeth and Rho-mu 31 supervised the work of Mellicin and Severine. *Please, can you turn the lathe back on?'

*Back on?' asked Zouche, glancing over at Caxton. *Why?'

*Please, just do it.'

*What's the matter, Dalia?' asked Caxton. *You sure you're allright?'

*I'm fine,' repeated Dalia. *Please, turn the lathe back on, I need to talk to you both, but I don't want anyone to hear.'

Zouche shrugged and reconnected with the workbench to activate the laser. Once again, the hiss of cutting metal filled the air as the manip plate moved the steel around the spitting lathe. Both Zouche and Caxton leaned in as Dalia spoke.

*The damper we used in the reader, the part that blocks external interference from interfacing with the empath's helmet, can you make a portable version of it?'

Zouche frowned. *A portable one. Why?'

*To block out vox-thieves and disrupt pict-feed,' said Caxton, guessing Dalia's meaning.

*Yes,' agreed Dalia. *Exactly.'

*I'm not sure about this,' said Zouche. *I don't like the notion of secrecy. Nothing good can come of it.'

*Look, can you make it or not?' asked Dalia.

*Of course, we can,' said Caxton, his boyish face alight at the prospect of mischief. *It's simple, isn't it, Zouche?'

*Yes, it's simple, but why would you want such a device?' asked Zouche, *What's so secret that you need to stop anyone hearing it?'

*I need to talk to you, Mellicin and Severine too, and I need to be sure we're the only one's listening.'

*Talk to us about what?'

*About what Jonas Milus said to me.'