Behind Sharaq were his Legio brothers, each awaiting the Stormlord's decision.

Princeps Suzak, the grim-faced hunter who commanded the Warlord Tharsis Hastatus, watched with an impa.s.sive eye, while Princeps Mordant of the Reaver Arcadia Fortis strained like an attack dog on a leash.

The Warhound drivers a Basek of Vulpus Rex, Kasim of Raptoria and Lamnos of Astrus Lux a paced like caged wolves, and Cavalerio rejoiced in the fearful power he saw before him.

*Stormlord,' said Sharaq. *The princeps are gathered as you ordered.'

*Thank you, Kel,' said Cavalerio, before enhancing his augmitters to address the princeps of his Legio. *I know you're all waiting to see whether I give an order of execution, but before I tell you my decision we need to understand what might happen as a result. I've given great thought to this, because a wrong choice will have consequences none of us can imagine.

*The forges of Mars burn in the fires of schism, and factional violence is reaching epidemic proportions all across our home world. So far, that violence has been restricted to the Mechanic.u.m. None of the t.i.tan Legions have yet initiated any hostilities, but it's surely only a matter of time until that happens.'

He could see their hunger to be unleashed, proud of their courage yet saddened by their eagerness to fight their erstwhile brothers.

*Before you all rush to your engines, gentlemen, let's be clear on one thing. If the t.i.tan Legions march to war, there will be no coming back from it; we will have unleashed the fire of a civil war that will only be extinguished by the utter destruction of one side or the other.

*I have always sought to keep our Legio free from the insidious poison of politicking. I believe that the t.i.tan Legions should remain true to their warrior ideals and not be instruments of political will, save that of the Imperium itself. Mars faces the gravest crisis in its long and glorious history, and warriors of honour and courage do not stand idly by in such times, they act. They stand firm in the face of aggression and in the defence of their allies.'

Cavalerio paused, allowing his words to hit home before continuing. *The idea that one Legio would fight another is anathema to me, but I am not fool enough to believe that such a time is not coming.'

*It has already arrived,' said Princeps Mordant. *Mortis is spoiling for battle.'

*Indeed,' said Cavalerio. *The blatantly provocative walk on Ascraeus Mons by the Mortis engines was little more than an attempt to bait us into a shooting war we could not win.'

He stifled their denials with a harsh blurt of impatient code.

*I admire your bravery and faith in one another, but had we fought we would have died.'

*So what do we do, Stormlord?' demanded Princeps Suzak. *Do we swallow our pride and do nothing as Mars tears itself apart? We are a force for stability, use us!'

*No, Vlad, we do not swallow our pride,' said Cavalerio. *I will unleash the power of the Legio and we will rise to the defence of the ideals for which our world stands. The fury of Tempestus will fall upon the enemies of Mars and together we will scour them from the face of the red planet in a tide of fire and blood.'

*You walk with us?' asked Princeps Kasim. *How? The tech-priests say Victorix Magna is beyond their ability to restore.'

*I know that, Zafir, but still I will walk with you,' declared Cavalerio. *I will walk alongside you as I have always dreamed I would make my last walk, with the First G.o.d Machine of our Legio. I will become one with Deus Tempestus.'

Princeps Sharaq stepped forward. *Then is the word given?'

*The word is given,' said Cavalerio. *Tempestus goes to war.'

THE MACHINE PAUSED in its advance, Dalia could hear the throaty growl of its power plant and the hiss of its hydraulics, and could feel the fizzing heat of its electrical field. She could smell the smoky residue of hard-rounds fire and taste the ozone from the plasma discharges.

Her every sense was magnified and she fought the urge to cry as she saw the ground up flesh worked into the grooves of its tracks. Rho-mu 31 slid his hand towards his weapon stave, but Dalia knew it would be no protection against such a destructive machine.

Caxton, Severine and Zouche trembled in fear, too hurt to move, too afraid to breathe.

Blood dripped from Dalia's brow onto her arm and she blinked away another drop as it formed on her eyelid. Shards of gla.s.s wobbled in the window frame before her and splinters fell like diamonds spilled from a pouch, landing with a tink, tink, tink.

Dalia held her breath as her fear rendered her immobile. Her limbs were frozen, she couldn't think properly, and the idea that she was going to die here was as ridiculous as it was horrifying. She didn't want to die.

Oh Throne, she didn't want to die!

She looked over at Caxton and the others, feeling a terrible guilt that she had brought them to this. And for what? Some half-baked theory that an ancient creature was buried beneath the surface of Mars?

Dalia wanted to laugh at her foolishness, thinking back to all the things she had read and transcribed a what seemed, and might as well have been, a lifetime ago a that she'd never now have the chance to see: the oceans of Laeran, the great cliffs of Charo, the planet forests of Ae.

A million wonders and miracles yet to be known; wonders the Expedition fleets were seeing on a daily basis.

Neither would she ever learn more of the Carnival of Light on Sarosh, or vicariously live tales of battle like the Victory on Murder or the vanquishing of the Hexen Guild. Likewise, the future paintings of Leland Roget, the compositions of Jeacon Poul and the sculptures of Delafour were all lost to her. Nor would she read any more of the poems by Ignace Karkasy that she had grown fond of, despite their slightly pompous tone.

This was no way to die, and the injustice and unfairness of it railed against the cruel fate that had brought her to this moment.

She closed her eyes, her fear of the dark vanishing instantly in the face of this new, immediate threat. In the face of death, her desire to live surged and her connection to the aether pushed aside conscious thought. Dalia felt her mind reaching out beyond her body as it had when she had seen how to construct the throne of the Akashic reader, but this time it saw further and deeper than ever before.

This time she saw into the heart of the Kaban Machine.

The connection lasted the merest fraction of a moment, but in that moment she saw the very essence of its existence.

She saw golden lines, bound together in a glowing web, each strand an answer to a question she hadn't yet asked. In this realm of the senses, she saw the light that was the mind of the Kaban Machine, a filthy, corrupted world of artificially created synapses and neurons.

Its auspex crawled over the wreckage like an invisible host of hungry spiders, and her flesh crawled with goose b.u.mps as she felt the tread of a million legs across her skin. The machine's senses sniffed like a scavenger hunting out juicy morsels to devour.

Dalia's inner vision bored into the burning heart of the machine's consciousness, marvelling at the intricacy of the design, the complexity and magnificence of the work, and the infinite patience that had gone into crafting such a miraculous engine. A perfect meld of organics and artificial components had been used to fashion the Kaban Machine, and the genius of Lukas Chrom, the adept whose name and skill she could read in every aspect of the design, was a thing of beauty.

She saw the wonder of what Chrom had created and felt the horror of what it had been made to do, what its builders had done to it. They had made it kill a man it had called friend, and then exposed it to something so dark and so terrible that Dalia's floating consciousness recoiled from its warped malignancy.

Its memories were of feelings and emotions, the memories of a newly created intelligence too inexperienced to realise how such things could be manipulated by the unscrupulous. Corruption lay in the heart of its consciousness, like a bloated spider sitting at the centre of a web that spread its blood-hungry canker to everything it touched.

The folly of creating an artificial sentience, a forbidden science since a forgotten age of war, only to pervert it to the cause of murder struck Dalia as typical of mankind's skewed brilliance.

It was a machine that could think for itself and its first autonomous act was to kill.

Just what did that say about its makers?

For all its brilliance, however, it was still a machine and bound by the fundamental principles of machines. It still gathered information the way any other sentient being did, and such things could be fooled.

Though the infinitely dense strands of light that were its warped consciousness were corrupt beyond imagining, Dalia sought out the neural pathways and areas of the machine's brain that controlled its perceptions of the outside world. With a natural sense for such things, Dalia blocked the machine's ability to process the inputs coming from its auspex, and though she felt its sensory apparatus sweep over her body and those of her friends, the signals never reached the action centres of its consciousness.

As though sensing that something was wrong, the machine swept its auspex over the ruins of the corridor once more. She sensed its confusion.

It knows we're here, she thought. And it's going to keep looking until it finds us.

With another twist of its mind, Dalia created a tremor of life signs further down the mag-lev, and sensed its savage joy as its targeting systems acquired the false readings.

Thunderous, roaring, crashing gunfire erupted from its weapons, and Dalia felt the mag-lev shudder with the impacts. Las-fire and heavy, explosive rounds tore into the distant wreckage and obliterated the dead bodies within.

Its guns ceased fire and Dalia allowed the counterfeit life signs to blink out, feeling its feral glee as it revelled in the slaughter. The image of blood dripping from a bra.s.s throne onto a mountain of skulls filled its thoughts.

Again its auspex swept over the mag-lev. Dalia felt the machine's disappointment as she blocked its perceptions of them, and it concluded that it had killed everyone aboard.

Its task complete, the machine turned smoothly on its axis and moved off down the tunnel.

As it went, Dalia read an encrypted data squirt confirming the killings travel through the airwaves to its masters in Mondus Gamma and Olympus Mons.

Dalia kept her grip on its perception centres until it had travelled beyond the range of its targeting auspex before letting out a breath and opening her eyes.

The smashed interior of the mag-lev corridor came back into sickening focus and Dalia's stomach lurched as her brain struggled to adjust to the sudden transition from the domain of the mind to that of the physical.

The aftermath of the machine's attack a blood, burned plastic, seared flesh, and the sight of so many corpses a was overwhelming and she vomited copiously. Dalia coughed, retching and heaving until she felt her grip on reality solidifying.

She heard voices speaking in hushed and amazed tones that they were still alive, and she smiled, even though searing pain pounded inside her head.

*It's gone,' said a voice that Dalia recognised as Zouche's.

*I don't believe it,' said Caxton, his voice on the edge of hysteria.

*Thank Ares,' breathed Severine tearfully. *Please? Can anyone help me? I think my arm's broken.'

*Dalia?' said Rho-mu 31. *Are you all right?'

*Not especially,' she replied with forced levity, *but I'll live, which is more than I thought I'd be able to say a few minutes ago.'

*Can you move?'

*Yes, but give me a minute.'

*We don't have a minute,' said Rho-mu 31. *We have to move in case it comes back.'

*It won't come back,' said Dalia. *It thinks we're dead, or at least it will for a while.'

*Then let's get out of here before it realises its mistake,' said Rho-mu 31.

IN THE UPPER reaches of Olympus Mons, Kelbor-Hal inloaded the encrypted data blurt from the Kaban Machine. Looking out over the surface of Mars he took a moment to survey the landscape, knowing that soon it would be transformed into something wondrous and new.

The power that boiled from the depths of the Vaults of Moravec was intoxicating, and every day brought fresh miracles as he and his fellow Dark Mechanic.u.m a a term Melgator had coined a found new ways to bind it to the metal and gristle of their creations.

Weapons, servitors, praetorians and fighting vehicles were imbued with power, twisting them into new and terrifying forms that were divinely primordial in their savage beauty. Monstrous engines of destruction that would be the heralds of the new power rising in the galaxy were taking shape in Olympus Mons and the forges of those adepts and magi that had bound themselves to the cause of Horus Lupercal.

Billions toiled in the weapon shops and manufactorum to realise this grand dream of Mars resurgent, and none who touched the powers unleashed to roam throughout his forge remained unchanged.

Chants echoed from the darkened thoroughfares of Olympus Mons, mobs of hooded worshippers hunting down those who did not embrace the new way and feeding their blood to the hungry machines. Brazen bells tolled constantly and howling klaxons shrieked with the G.o.dlike power of the sc.r.a.pcode.

The transformation of his forge was a magnificent thing, and Kelbor-Hal knew that what they did here would echo through the ages as the moment the Mechanic.u.m was reborn.

He turned from the armoured gla.s.s of the viewing bay to face his followers.

Regulus, Melgator, Urtzi Malevolus, together with holographic images of Lukas Chrom and Princeps Camulos, stood attentively before him. He could see the cluttering lines of sc.r.a.pcode infesting their augmetics.

He nodded towards Lukas Chrom. *Dalia Cythera is dead. Once again, your a.s.sa.s.sin and thinking machine prove their worth.'

Chrom accepted the compliment with a short bow.

*Then it is time?' said Princeps Camulos. *My engines long to make ruin of the Magma City.'

The bear-like Princeps Senioris of Legio Mortis was clad in beetle-black armour and Kelbor-Hal read the warp-enhanced aggression flaring from him in waves.

*Yes,' he said. *It is time. Send word to the commanders of your allied Legios, Camulos. Tell their engines to walk and to crush our enemies beneath their mighty treads.'

*It shall be done,' promised Camulos.

Kelbor-Hal then addressed his fellow adepts of the Dark Mechanic.u.m.

*This is a great day, my acolytes, remember it always,' said the Fabricator General. *This is the day Mars and her forge worlds cast off the yoke of the Emperor's tyranny. Unleash your armies and stain the sands of our planet red with blood!'

ORIGENS MECHANICUS.

3.01.

LATER HISTORIES WOULD record that the first blow of the Martian civil war was struck against Magos Mattias Kefra, whose forge in the Sinus Sabaeus region was housed within the Madler crater. t.i.tans of the Magna Legion marched from the southern Noachis region and within minutes had smashed down the gates of his forge. Howling engines daubed in red, orange, yellow and black, and decorated with flaming horned skull devices, ran amok within the high walls of the crater, crushing everything living beneath them and destroying thousands of years of acc.u.mulated wisdom in a fury of fire.

Vast libraries burned and weapon shops that served the Solar Guard were reduced to molten slag as the indiscriminate slaughter continued long into the night, the Magna Legion's trumpeting warhorns sounding like the atavistic screams of primitive savages.

Further north in the Arabian region, the great engine yards of High Magos Ahotep in the Ca.s.sini crater were struck by a hundred missiles launched from the atomic silos secreted within the isolated peaks and mesas of Nilo Syrtis. The explosions of the forbidden weapons filled the four hundred and fifteen kilometre diameter of the crater with seething nuclear fire, and sent conjoined magma-streaked mushroom clouds soaring nearly seventy kilometres into the sky.

Along the borders of the Lunae Palus and Arcadia regions, what had previously been confined to heated debate erupted into outright warfare as Princeps Ulriche of the Death Stalkers unleashed his engines upon the fortress of Maxen Vledig's Deathbolts.

Caught by surprise, the Deathbolts lost nineteen engines in the first hour of battle, before withdrawing into the frozen wastes of the Mare Boreum and seeking refuge in the dune fields of Olympia Undae. Their calls for reinforcement went unanswered, for all of Mars was tearing itself apart as the plague of war spread across the planet in a raging firestorm.

Amid the Athabasca Valles, war machines of Legio Ignatum and the Burning Stars fought in b.l.o.o.d.y close quarters through the teardrop landforms caused by catastrophic flooding in an earlier, ancient age of the red planet. Neither force could gain the advantage, nor could either claim victory, so after a night's undignified sc.r.a.pping, both withdrew to lick their wounds.

A snapping, howling host of twisted skitarii and hideously altered weaponised servitors surged from the Gigas Sulci sub-hives of Olympus Mons to attack the crater forges of Ipluvien Maximal. Alert to the danger of attack, Maximal's forces repelled the first waves of attackers, but within hours, his forge was surrounded and under siege by unholy Ordinatus engines and warped machines given hideous life in the depths of the Fabricator General's darkest and bloodiest weapon shops.

The greatest single loss of life took place in the Ismenius Lacus region of Mars, where the glacial forges of Adept Rueon Villnarus were attacked by airbursting rockets carrying a mutated strain of the Life Eater. The rapacious viral organism leapt from victim to victim with malicious glee, seeming to travel via every possible vector. Via direct contact, it killed the tens of thousands directly exposed to the detonation in minutes. Airborne, it depopulated the millions-strong worker-habs of Deuteronilus Mensae within three hours, and through some diabolical warp-mutation, it spread through the haptic networks to infect even those who thought themselves safe behind vac-sealed barriers. When the gleeful virus finally burned itself out, some seven hours later, every living soul within Ismenius Lacus was dead, the remains of fourteen million liquefied corpses freezing solid where they lay.

Within the Herschel impact basin of the Mare Tyrrhenum, nine hundred thousand skitarii and Protectors clashed in a swirling, b.l.o.o.d.y melee that continued unabated until almost all were dead. No victor emerged from the senseless slaughter and no purpose was served by the destruction, yet still both factions poured their forces into the meat grinder for fear of what might be lost should they withdraw.

Nor was the fighting merely confined to the surface of Mars. The Ring of Iron, that great halo shipyard that surrounded the red planet like a glittering silver belt, shuddered as explosions and conflict spread along its length. Factions loyal to the Throne, and those sworn to Olympus Mons and Horus Lupercal, clashed with the fury of fanatics. The vessels of Battlefleet Solar pulled away from the fighting as Mechanic.u.m ships duelled in the shadow of the Ring of Iron, pounding one another with devastating broadsides and no thought of strategy or survival.