Part 25 (1/2)

*We caught the first spurts of it, I think,' said Sharaq. *It was fragmentary and dispersed, and Zeth's noospheric upgrades saved us from getting hit as hard as some others, but Legio Fortidus and Legio Agravides are gone. Their reactors went critical and took their entire fortress and a good chunk of the Erebus Montes with them.'

Cavalerio digested the information without comment, though it grieved him to think of two allied Legios lost to so ignominious a fate. He reviewed the data he'd been fed impa.s.sively, sifting through the mora.s.s of contradictory communiques, orders, requests, pet.i.tions, demands and propaganda flying between the forges. Factions were already forming, fragile alliances drawn along the lines of the tired old Omnissiah schism.

Blurts of cant circled the planet, some demanding an end to the union of Mars and Terra, while others urged all Mars to cleave more tightly to the bosom of humanity's birth rock. Worse, much of it had gone off-world, spreading like a plague on departing s.h.i.+ps or within astropathic visions cast across the void to the Mechanic.u.m contingents accompanying the Expedition Fleets throughout the galaxy.

*What's all this talk of Horus Lupercal?' asked Cavalerio, reading the binary version of the first primarch's name time and time again. *What does the Warmaster have to do with any of this?'

*We're not sure, my princeps,' said Sharaq. *The factions advocating the split from Terra seem to be championing the Warmaster as their deliverer from the Emperor. It's hard to make much sense of it, their code is so corrupt it's little more than binary screams of the Warmaster's name.'

*Has word of this reached Terra?'

*The inter-system vox is erratic, but Adept Maximal has apparently made intermittent contact with the Council of Terra.'

*And what do they make of all this?'

*It sounds like they're as confused as us, my princeps,' said Sharaq, taking a deep breath before continuing. *Something bad has happened in the Istvaan system, something to do with the Astartes, but we can't get any hard facts.'

*But what of Mars?' pressed Cavalerio, *what do they say about Mars?'

*The Mechanic.u.m is told to quell the unrest or the Legions will do it for them.'

THE MAG-LEV MADE good time through the southern reaches of the Tharsis uplands, skirting the edge of the pallidus and pa.s.sing through a number of storms of wind-blown particulate on its journey eastwards. Dalia found the sight of the billowing ash strangely uplifting, and spent hours watching the spiralling vortices streaming down the length of the carriages.

She watched the dust rolling on and on throughout the landscape and envied its freedom to roam, blown hither and thither without direction by the winds. Increasingly she felt as though her life was just like the mag-lev, travelling upon a fixed track, guided inexorably forward to an inevitable destination. The notion of free will and choice seemed alien and strange to her, as though her brain was merely responding to external stimuli and she had no choice but to obey.

They saw little of their fellow pa.s.sengers during the journey, save for the occasional awkward pa.s.sing in the corridors to and from the ablutions cubicles or food dispensers. Dalia recognised most of them as low-level adepts on errands for their masters, servitors on automatic rea.s.signment or migrant labourers moving to another forge in the hope of securing work. Perhaps three hundred souls travelled with them, but no one paid them any mind, a fact for which Dalia was absurdly grateful.

The thrill of venturing beyond the boundaries of the forge had worn thin for their little group after a few hours, and they had fallen into the strange silence of travellers on a long journey with nothing to help pa.s.s the time. The prospect of seeing one of the otherworldly pallidus border towns had excited them, but even that had proven something of a letdown.

As the mag-lev had approached Ash Border, they all roused themselves to see what one of these frontier towns looked like, for none of them had ventured beyond the hives of Mars' more populated regions.

Though Rho-mu 31 claimed not to be expecting any trouble, Dalia read his threat auspex switch to active as they came within range of the settlement's network antenna. She didn't mention that fact to the others.

Ash Border had proved to be both exotic and slightly dull at the same time, with dusty ore silos, rusted salvage barns and tall drilling machinery dominating the skyline. But with the memory of a Mechanic.u.m forge still bright in their minds, the minor industrial complex of Ash Border seemed small and underwhelming.

The inhabitants were sullen-faced men and women with weather-beaten faces and clothes scoured identical by coa.r.s.e ash. They offered no welcome and disappeared back to their ramshackle dwellings as soon as their cargo was unloaded by a handful of archaic lifter-servitors.

Dune Town lived up to its name and proved to be no less prosaic, with even more outmoded servitors unloading the allocated inventory before the mag-lev set off towards Crater Edge.

By now they had been travelling for a day and a half. Tiredness was beginning to tell and sleep was hard to come by. Though the ride was smooth, the compartment's seats had been designed with functional practicality in mind rather than comfort.

None of them had been able to muster much enthusiasm to watch Zouche's projection of the view from the driver's compartment as they approached Crater Edge, but when the mag-lev halted at the raised dock, it was quickly evident that something was different.

The place was abandoned. The dwellings were empty and the streets deserted, but it was impossible to tell whether the inhabitants had been driven away or left of their own volition.

The mag-lev was on an automated schedule, so the mystery went unexplained, and the mining supplies allocated for the towns.h.i.+p remained in the snaking transport's holds as it pulled away.

No sooner had Crater Edge vanished into the dust and haze than Dalia felt a weight she hadn't even been aware of lift from her shoulders, as though some creeping sickness lingered around the towns.h.i.+p. The place had just felt... wrong.

Not the wrongness of disease or death, but a gurgling hiss of wet code-laughter she caught drifting on the airwaves.

Red Gorge was similarly deserted, the strange whispering code ghosting around it as well. Dalia caught Rho-mu 31 twitching as he heard it too: an insistent scratching that irritated the corners of the mind like an embedded flea.

She caught his eye as the mag-lev pulled away and they saw each other's awareness of the bad code on the air.

Rho-mu 31 shook his head and she took his meaning clearly enough. Say nothing.

At last the mag-lev began the approach to the jagged line of peaks that separated the Tharsis uplands from the magnificent expanse of the Syria Planum. After a long, looping journey southwards, the mag-lev turned north to begin the slow climb over the upthrust spires of rock pushed up and over one another in an ongoing geological collision. The skies beyond the escarpment were dark and shot through with scarlet lightning, as though a great firestorm was brewing.

It had been a long journey and the sight of the two deserted towns.h.i.+ps had unsettled everyone. They had all heard tales of settlements abandoned when the ore or whatever had originally drawn the settlers there had dried up, but Red Gorge and Crater Edge hadn't felt abandoned, they had felt empty, as though the people there had just vanished. Gone in a heartbeat.

*Perhaps they were pressganged?' suggested Severine. *I've heard of that. A forge master isn't going to meet his quota and sends his Protectors out into the wastelands to capture more people to work in their forges.'

*Don't be ridiculous,' said Caxton. *That's just scare stories.'

*Is it?' challenged Severine. *How do you know?'

*I just do, all right?'

*Oh, well I feel better already.'

*What do you say, Rho-mu 31?' asked Zouche in a tone of doom-laden theatrics. *Has Adept Zeth ever sent you off to procure slaves to toil in her volcanic forge?'

*From time to time,' admitted the Protector.

That shut them all up.

*You're joking, right?' said Caxton. *Tell me you're joking.'

*I am Mechanic.u.m,' said Rho-mu 31. *We never joke.'

Dalia looked into the green orbs of Rho-mu 31's eyes, and though they were devoid of anything resembling humanity, she saw the wry amus.e.m.e.nt written in his electrical field. She smiled at the horrified expressions on her friends' faces and turned away so as not to spoil Rho-mu 31's fun.

*That's... that's terrible,' said Severine. *The Mechanic.u.m uses slaves?' was Caxton's disgusted comment.

*I thought more of you, Rho-mu 31,' said Zouche. *I thought more of Adept Zeth.'

When he judged the silence had gone on long enough, Rho-mu 31 leaned menacingly towards them and said, *Got you.'

A moment's stunned silence followed Rho-mu 31's words, and then the tension in the compartment was suddenly, explosively, relieved by hysterical laughter.

*That wasn't funny,' said Caxton, between laughing and wiping tears from his eyes.

*No,' agreed Severine. *You shouldn't say things like that.'

*What? Can't I make a joke?' asked Rho-mu 31.

*I think they're just surprised you made one at all,' put in Dalia, looking back into the compartment. *I don't think they're used to the Mechanic.u.m trying to be funny.'

Rho-mu 31 nodded and said, *I may be Mechanic.u.m, but I am still human.'