*You should have let me kill them,' said Lord Caturix.

*Maybe,' agreed Zeth, *but I have a feeling you'll get another chance.'

*You think they'll be back?'

*I know they will, Lord Caturix, but next time they won't be so arrogant,' said Zeth. *I have to send word of this to Maximal and Kane. Kelbor-Hal might come for them next, and I need to pet.i.tion Legio Tempestus once more. I have a feeling we'll be needing some larger engines to defend the Magma City in the days ahead.'

*The support of Tempestus would be most welcome,' agreed Caturix. *In the meantime, we will continue to stand with you. What would you have us do?'

Zeth watched the blue-hot glow of the departing flyer's engines.

*Prepare for battle,' she said.

2.07.

THE MAG-LEV SPEARED into the tunnel and Dalia cried out in terror as the blackness swallowed them. She clung close to Caxton as the compartment lights flickered on and he put his arms around her, shrugging in puzzlement at her fright. Sickly fluorescence bathed the compartment, but the gla.s.s window was an unchanging black mirror. Dalia recoiled from its impenetrable depths, pushing away in terror from the wall with her sandaled feet.

Her breaths came in short panicked hikes and her muscles cramped painfully. She felt her flesh become cold and clammy as sweat filmed her skin. She could hear her heartbeat like the thunder of an industrial hammer and tears p.r.i.c.ked at the corners of her eyes.

*Dalia?' asked Caxton. *Dalia, what's the matter?'

*It's the darkness,' she gasped, burying her face in his shoulder. *Its all around me!'

*Dalia? What? I don't understand!'

*What's the matter with her?' cried Severine.

*I don't know,' said Caxton, helpless as Dalia sobbed into his robes, her struggles becoming more and more hysterical.

*She's having a panic attack,' said Rho-mu 31, moving from the door of their compartment to stand in front of Dalia. *I've seen it before in new arrivals to Mars. The red planet is so different, it sparks all kinds of reactions.'

*So what do we do?'

*There's nothing you can do,' replied Rho-mu 31. *But I've dealt with this before.'

The Protector knelt on the floor between the seats and placed a hand on Dalia's shoulder, prising her away from Caxton and holding her twitching limbs. Her face was pale and streaked with tears.

*The darkness,' wept Dalia. *I don't want to go into the darkness again. Not again!'

*What's she talking about?' said Severine. *Make her stop!'

*Shut up!' hissed Zouche. *Let the man work!'

*Dalia,' said Rho-mu 31, looking directly into her eyes. *You are having a panic attack, but there's nothing to worry about, we're perfectly safe. I know you don't feel like that right now, but trust me, it's true.'

Dalia looked up at him and shook her head. *No! No, we're not. I can't face it anymore. Please don't make me go back in there.'

*We'll be out of the tunnel soon enough, Dalia,' said Rho-mu 31, keeping his voice even and steady. She could feel his biometrics linking with hers, using his rigidly controlled metabolic mechanisms to try and stabilise hers.

*Breathe slowly,' advised Rho-mu 31. *You're taking in too much oxygen and you don't want to do that, do you?'

She shook her head and forced herself to take longer, slower breaths. With the help of Rho-mu 31's bodily control she felt her heart begin to slow and the flow of blood to her muscles lessen.

Rho-mu 31 read her calming internal functions and nodded. *Very good,' he said. *These are all just physical symptoms of anxiety. They're not dangerous. It's an evolutionary reaction from ancient times, when humans needed all their wits about them for a fight or flight reaction. Your body has tripped that reaction, but it's a false alarm, Dalia. Do you understand that?'

*Of course I do,' said Dalia, between breaths and tears. *I'm not stupid, but I can't help it!'

*Yes you can,' promised Rho-mu 31, and he knelt with her until the panic had pa.s.sed, holding her hands and talking in low, soothing tones. He reminded her that she was travelling on a Mechanic.u.m mag-lev, one of the safest means of transport on Mars, and that she was surrounded by her friends.

Eventually, his words and his gentle easing down of her metabolism calmed her to the point where her breathing rate was normalised and her heart rate, while still elevated, was less like the rattle of an automated nail gun.

*Thank you,' said Dalia, wiping her eyes on the sleeves of her robe. *I feel so stupid; I mean we're only going through a tunnel. I've never felt claustrophobic or scared of the dark before.'

*Only since the accident in Zeth's inner forge,' said Zouche.

*Yes, I suppose since then,' agreed Dalia.

*Maybe you're feeling its fear,' said Severine, and they all turned towards her.

*Feeling whose fear?' asked Caxton.

*Whatever it is that's buried beneath the Noctis Labyrinthus,' said Severine, suddenly awkward with the attention. *Look, she said she felt she linked with its mind, didn't she? I don't know about you, but if I'd been buried underground for that length of time and I got a brief glimpse of the world above, I wouldn't want to go back into the darkness either.'

*You may have something there, Severine,' said Caxton. *What do you think, Dalia?'

Dalia nodded, unwilling to confront such thoughts head on after her panic attack. *Maybe.'

*No, no, I really think Severine's onto something here,' said Caxton. *I mean if-'

*Enough!' said Rho-mu 31. *Save it until we're out of the tunnel. Zouche, how long until we reach the other side?'

Zouche hurriedly reconnected with the mag-lev's...o...b..ard cogitator and streams of data light cascaded behind his eyes.

Rho-mu 31 turned his attention back to Dalia and she smiled at him. *Thank you,' she said.

He bowed his head, and though she couldn't see his face, she knew he was smiling back at her.

*Well?' asked Dalia in as relaxed a manner as she could muster. *How long until we're clear of the tunnel, Zouche?'

Zouche frowned and moved his hands in the air, haptically shifting through holographic data plates only he could see.

*I'm not sure,' he said. *According to the onboard driver-servitor we're slowing down.'

*Slowing down? Why?' demanded Rho-mu 31, and Dalia felt his threat auspex light up.

*Here, look for yourself,' replied Zouche, projecting the view of the tunnel from the hull-mounted picter onto the window once more. *There's something ahead of us.'

They looked, and there was.

Rumbling along the floor of the tunnel towards the decelerating mag-lev was what looked like a tall robot of roughly spherical proportions mounted on a heavy gauge track unit. A pair of heavy arms were held vertically at its sides and a set of malleable weapon-dendrites flexed in the air above its shoulder guards.

Three glowing yellow orbs shone like baleful eyes in the centre of its ma.s.s, and, as they watched, its main arms locked into the upright position. As the mag-lev stopped, no one in the compartment failed to notice that each arm was equipped with an enormous weapon.

Even through the poor quality of the picter's image, Dalia could feel the strangeness and uniqueness of this machine's electrical field. Opening herself to the part of her mind that Zeth had called her innate connection to the aether, she reached out towards the machine, reading the heat of its internal reactor and the sticky web of dark, malicious sentience at its core.

Kaban... that was its name.

In the fleeting moment of connection, she read the memory of its creation and the killing of its former friend, an adept named Pallas Ravachol. With that death, the machine's murderous nature had been unleashed, and the primordial evil with which its masters had tainted its artificial intelligence now consumed it with dreadful, killing l.u.s.t.

*Is that a battle robot?' asked Caxton.

*It's much more than a robot,' said Dalia, her eyes snapping open. *It's something far worse.'

*What?'

*A sentient machine,' gasped Dalia, still reeling from the moment of connection to its grossly warped consciousness and the awful clarity of its purpose. *It's an artificial intelligence and it's been corrupted with something vile, something evil.'

*Evil? That's nonsense,' said Zouche. *What do machines know of evil?'

*What does it want?' asked Severine.

Dalia looked over at Rho-mu 31 in uncomprehending terror. *It's here to kill me.'

The Kaban Machine opened fire and the driver-servitor's compartment disintegrated in a blitzing storm of las-fire and plasma bolts. Flames boomed from the ruptured energy cells and the darkness of the tunnel was suddenly dispelled.

Rho-mu 31 grabbed Dalia and hauled her from her seat as the machine rumbled down the tunnel, its weapon arms wreathed in halos of white fire as it systematically obliterated carriage after carriage. Designed to penetrate the hulls of battle tanks and overload the void shields of t.i.tans, its sustained fire easily sliced through the sheet metal of the mag-lev's sides.

Caxton, Severine and Zouche needed no encouragement to follow Rho-mu 31 and blundered into the corridor beyond their compartment in terror. The noise from outside the mag-lev was deafening, thudding pressure waves of explosions laced with the squeal and hiss of impacting lasers. The bark of solid rounds and the whine of ricochets echoed from the tunnel walls. The mag-lev shuddered like a wounded beast, flames and smoke erupting along its length as it was systematically riddled with gunfire.

Dalia heard screams from further along the mag-lev as pa.s.sengers were chewed up in the fusillade. The corridor was a ma.s.s of terrified people, its length choked with panicked bodies. Men and women screamed and clawed at one another as they fought to escape the approaching slaughter. Rho-mu 31 gathered Dalia into his arms and forced a path through the heaving, jammed ma.s.s of people fleeing towards the rear of the mag-lev.

bellowed Rho-mu 31 in the most belligerent form of cant, and such was the ingrained reverence for a Mechanic.u.m Protector that the majority of people did exactly that. With his weapon stave extended before him, he pushed along the corridor towards an emergency exit.Dalia looked over Rho-mu 31's shoulder, seeing terrified faces pressing against the wall of the corridor as they slammed fists, fire extinguishers or anything else they could get their hands on to smash the gla.s.s. Through the window on the door at the end of the corridor, Dalia could see bright flames and black smoke.*Hurry!' shouted Severine. *For the love of the Omnissiah, hurry up!'A searing white lance of plasma cut into the carriage, sawing through the metal and gla.s.s like a laser saw. The beam instantly sliced two-dozen people in half and Dalia wept as she smelled boiled blood and scorched meat.*Down!' shouted Rho-mu 31, bearing Dalia and Caxton to the floor of the corridor. Severine was quick to follow and Zouche had already been borne to his knees by the stampede. The incandescent beam zipped along the corridor, killing as it went, and Dalia watched in mute horror as severed limbs, cleaved bodies and disembodied heads fell to the floor.She rolled onto her side as the deadly beam pa.s.sed overhead and droplets of molten metal splashed the floor beside her. She cried out as one scorched a thin line down her arm.*Sacred Fathers,' hissed Zouche, rolling onto his front as an explosion further back whipped the mag-lev like a sine wave. Everyone screamed as it was lifted from the rails with a screech of torn metal and a crackling burst of arcing electrics.Dalia scrambled on her knees towards Rho-mu 31 as the carriage tipped from the track and her world spun crazily. It crashed to the tunnel floor and the windows blew out with the force of the impact. A blizzard of crystalline fragments rained down.The breath was knocked from her and Dalia felt blood dripping into her eyes. A heavy weight pinned her and she blinked away red tears as she heard more deafening blasts of gunfire. She couldn't tell how close it was, but the stuttering, strobing flash of weapons fire felt as though it were coming from right outside their carriage.Dalia fought to free herself from the weight pinning her to... the ceiling? Which way was up and which was down? She couldn't hear any screams. Had the Kaban machine killed everyone?A man's body lay sprawled across her, or at least half of him, and she cried as she pushed his bifurcated body from her. The metal beneath her a the ceiling, she was sure of it now a was sticky with warm blood, and she whimpered in terror at the sight of heaped mounds of corpses filling the corridor. The iron stink of blood was thick in her nostrils and Dalia couldn't remember a more awful smell.She retched dryly at the sight of so many dead, terrified and numbed by the horror of how quickly their grand adventure had come to such a b.l.o.o.d.y end. Despite the stink of death, she took a deep breath and looked for her friends amid the wreckage and carnage.Dalia saw Rho-mu 31 lying further along the buckled corridor with a jagged spar of metal impaling his shoulder. The Protector's biometrics were fluctuating, but he was alive.Zouche lay in a heap of bodies, his face a mask of blood, but she couldn't tell whether it was his or belonged to someone else. Caxton was just behind her, pinned to the floor by a metal door in the midst of a spray of gla.s.s fragments. His eyes were open and pleading, a low moaning issuing from between bloodied lips.Severine lay beneath a nutrient dispensing machine that had torn loose from the wall, her arm thrown out before her and twisted at an unnatural angle. Her eyes were closed, but her pained expression and rapid, shallow breaths told Dalia she was alive.The carriage was still, no straining bodies or panicked shoving, and the only light came from smashed lumen globes that sparked and stuttered in the half-light.After such a tremendous cacophony of violence and noise, the silence that enveloped her was as welcome as it was terrifying.Dalia began to crawl towards Rho-mu 31. He saw her coming and shook his head, placing a finger to the grilled mouthpiece of his helmet.At first Dalia didn't understand.Then she heard it.Over the creaking wreckage and tinkle of falling gla.s.s, she felt the vibration of the heavy machine through the ground as it crashed metal and ruptured bodies beneath its tracks. Dalia craned her neck to look through the shattered window into the sputtering darkness of the tunnel, and fought down the urge to cry out as she saw the monstrous form of the sentient machine rambling towards where they lay.She felt the crawling pressure of its corrupted mind as it swept the carriage for life signs, and heard the rattle of its autoloaders feeding its weapons fresh ammunition.It drew nearer with every breath and in moments its auspex would register their presence. Then it would kill them.PRINCEPS CAVALERIO FINISHED processing the feeds inloading into his casket at a rate of over six thousand data packets per second. The Martian networks had slowly returned to normal after the sc.r.a.pcode plague, the diligence of the code-scrubbers and magos probandi all across the red planet finally re-establishing communications and information exchanges.Fresh reports, pet.i.tions and pleas for aid from forges far and wide were streaming into Ascraeus Mons through the vox, across the noosphere and via optic feeds.It was a bleak picture they painted of the Mechanic.u.m's future.Cavalerio let his mind swim up through the reams of liquid information that flowed around and through him. He saw Agathe's face before him, and set the biometrics of his casket from processing to consciousness.His famulous nodded as she read the information on the slate fixed to the side of the casket and retreated to a subordinate position behind him.Cavalerio's Manifold senses processed his surroundings. His casket sat in the position of honour in the Chamber of the First, raised on a plinth before the mighty, towering form of Deus Tempestus, the First G.o.d Machine of the Legio.Princeps Sharaq stood before him, waiting to hear whether he would give an order of execution. Though Sharaq had correctly appointed himself the acting Princeps Senioris of the Tempestus forces on Mars, he knew and welcomed the fact that any order to walk should come from the Stormlord.