*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 ships 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 township 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 township. 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 townships 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.'

With that, the strange unease that had settled on them at the sight of the deserted townships was dispelled, and they began chatting as animatedly as when they had built the first version of the Akashic reader.

The excitement of the journey into the unknown was rekindled and as the mag-lev made its way uphill, Zouche extended a discreet dendrite and plugged into the compartment's data port, projecting the view from the hull-mounted picter onto the gla.s.s of the window.

They eagerly watched the feed as Zouche panned the image around. They saw the desolate plains stretching away to the south and the black smudge on the horizon above the Magma City nearly two thousand kilometres away. At Caxton's request, Zouche returned the view to front-on and the image shimmered as it displayed the silver mag-line carrying them up into the mountains.

Dalia let out a tiny gasp of fear as she saw the mag-line vanish into a gaping, steel-lined cavern mouth that pierced the flanks of the cliffs and led through the rock towards Mondus Gamma.

She took Caxton's hand and gripped it tightly as the tunnel drew nearer, the yawning blackness of it suddenly terrifying.

*What's the matter?' he asked.

*I didn't realise we'd need to go through the darkness,' she said.

*It's just a tunnel,' said Caxton. *There's nothing to worry about.'

THE FORCES OF the Fabricator General came for Adept Zeth several hours before Dalia's mag-lev approached the tunnel connecting the Tharsis uplands with the Syria Planum. A Mechanic.u.m heavy flyer cruised in from the north-west and set down on the statue-lined Typhon Causeway before the Magma City, scorching a score of the marble worthies black with the heat of its enormous jets. The underside of the craft shone with golden light from the bubbling, steaming lava to either side of the wide causeway.

The ungainly aircraft was unarmed, but as it settled on its landing skids, a continuous loop of code streamed from its augmitters on a repeating cycle, demanding that Adept Koriel Zeth present herself by the order of the Fabricator General.

The summons was broadcast in the highest and most authoritative code tense, and as such could not be ignored. The flanks of the flyer gusted steam and folded outwards, providing debarkation ramps for the warriors carried within.

Three hundred modified Skitarii and Protectors marched from the flyer's hold onto the basalt causeway. Wretched by-blows of the Fabricator General's union with the power unlocked in the depths of the forgotten vaults beneath Olympus Mons, these were twisted perversions of their original martial glory. Hunched carapaces, spiked armour and horned helmets clad them and their limb weapons seethed with unnatural power.

The Protectors were no less modified, their bodies swollen and grotesque, their weapons blackened and reforged in new and hateful shapes, designed for pain as much as killing.

Under the watchful gaze of armoured turrets and missile emplacements cunningly worked into the walls of ceramite and adamantium of Zeth's forge, these abominable killers formed up in three separate cohorts and marched on the Vulkan Gate.

Behind them came a shield-palanquin borne by towering, brutish Skitarii with grey skin and barbed armour. These monstrous, ogre-like warriors had been raised to such stature by more than simple gene-bulking and augmetics. Their bodies glistened and their veins pulsed with ruddy light, as though with an internal electricity.

Amba.s.sador Melgator and Adept Regulus stood proudly atop the palanquin, clad in robes of midnight black with their hoods drawn up over their skulls. Melgator carried a staff of ebony topped with a snarling wolf s head and Regulus a staff of ivory topped with a skull of black obsidian.

The host of horrifically altered warriors parted to let them through, and Regulus halted the palanquin a hundred metres before the gate. The soaring adamantine glory of the Magma City's great portal was worked with silver cogs, golden eagles and lightning bolts, and it was opening.

As a widening bar of light split the two halves of the gate and the skitarii bristled with belligerent sc.r.a.pcode, Regulus raised his arms and a streaming hash of lingua-technis, irregular and arrhythmic, blurted from his internal augmitters. His skull-topped staff crackled with corposant in time with his utterances and, one by one, the turrets and weapons platforms on the wall shut down.

The light of the city spilled outwards in a growing fan of orange light, throwing the shadow of the slender figure that walked from the city out before her in a thin line of black.

Adept Koriel Zeth swept her gaze over the a.s.sembled cohorts before fixing a distasteful stare on the two figures borne upon the palanquin, as though they were pestilential plague carriers begging entry.

*By what authority do you dare come to my city and demand my presence?' she said.

Melgator rapped his staff on the shield-palanquin, and its monstrous bearers carried it forward until it was less than twenty metres from Zeth.

canted Regulus in an all-channel squirt of binary.Zeth winced. *That's dirty code you're using, Regulus,' she answered, reading his ident.i.ty from his fizzing electric field.*On the contrary,' replied Regulus. *It is pure code, as it was meant to exist before it was tamed and shackled to the will of flesh.'*If you can't see the flaw in that line of reasoning then you are beyond the reach of my logic,' said Zeth. *Now speak your piece and begone, I have work to do.'*That will not be possible, Zeth,' said Melgator. *We are here to escort you to Olympus Mons, where you will submit to the judgement of the Fabricator General.'*My t.i.tle is Adept Zeth, I believe I have earned it,' snapped the Mistress of the Magma City. *And on what grounds do you dare arrest me?' canted Melgator. Zeth said nothing for a moment, letting the weight of the accusation settle on her.Then she laughed, the sound echoing from the mountainside, carried far and wide across the length and breadth of the causeway.*You mock these accusations?' snapped Regulus. *Is there no end to your wickedness?'*Oh, I absolutely mock them,' sneered Zeth. *They are laughable, and if you weren't so blinded by what Kelbor-Hal has turned you into, you would see that.'She swept an arm out, her gesture encompa.s.sing the gathered skitarii and Protectors. *These monstrous things you bring to my forge... they are abominations of flesh and machine, freakish hybrids worse than the feral sc.r.a.pshunt rejects that wander the pallidus. You have turned all that is beautiful of the Mechanic.u.m into something dark, and it horrifies me that you cannot see it. So, yes, I mock your accusations, and more, I refuse to recognise your right to accuse me!'*Then you refuse the summons of the Fabricator General?' asked Regulus, his code laced with eagerness to unleash the skitarii. *You understand the severity of this action?'*I do,' confirmed Zeth.*Then we will take you by force,' said Melgator. *You can try,' said Zeth.Melgator aimed his staff at the walls and said, *You will either come with us or you will be destroyed, Zeth. Link with your wall defences and you will see they are shut down. We control the code now.'The three cohorts of skitarii began to march forward, flame lances, energy halberds and limb weapons arming in a flurry of crackling activations and clattering autoloaders.*Not all of it you don't,' said Zeth as a pair of enormous mechanical forms marched into the gateway behind her.Nine metres tall, the two Knights dwarfed the slight form of Adept Zeth, and the deep blue of their armoured plates shimmered with the reflected glow of the magma lake. The proud heraldry of a wheel encircling a lightning bolt was emblazoned on their shoulder guards, and they rode from the gateway to stand behind Adept Zeth with their energy lances and gatling cannons trained on the approaching skitarii.Behind them, a dozen more Knights took position in line abreast to block entry to the Magma City with their majestic forms.The march of the altered skitarii faltered and they milled in confusion in the face of the war machines, their pack-masters squalling for orders. Regulus emitted a panicked burst of code, the same mutant algorithms he had used to shut down the wall guns, but the Knights ignored him, their systems shut off to incoming code.*This is Lord Caturix of the Order of Taranis,' said Zeth indicating the Knight on her left, its aggressive posture making no secret of its desire to wreak harm. *And this is Preceptor Stator. Their order is an ally of this forge and if that flyer is not off my causeway in five minutes, they are going to ride out with their warriors and destroy you. Do you understand the severity of this action?'*You dare threaten an emissary of the Fabricator General!' cried Melgator. *You are a disgrace to the Mechanic.u.m, Zeth!'*Your a.s.sa.s.sin destroys the mind of my apprenta and then murders one of my acolytes, and you dare call me a disgrace to the Mechanic.u.m?' snarled Zeth. She consulted her internal chronometer and said, *Four minutes and forty seconds, Melgator. I suggest you get moving.'*You will regret this,' promised Regulus. *We will see your city in ruins and your legacy expunged from all records.'The Knights took a step forwards, the hiss and clank of their metal limbs sounding dreadfully loud.Melgator rapped his staff on the shield palanquin and, without another word, he and Regulus withdrew. A hurried code squeal recalled the skitarii and they marched with bitter disappointment back onto the heavy flyer.As its flanks folded up and it took to the air, the lead Knight turned its c.o.c.kpit towards Zeth and a noospheric link opened between them.