floor.
These cots are really rather cosy/ Aemos replied, adjusting the tension of his exo-frame and reclining on the mattress.
We were in a dry, stuffy rec-room above the miners' welfare. The artificial lamplight from the plaza outside slanted in through sagging blinds. Bandelbi had provided three metal cots with subsiding mattresses and sleeping bags that smelled like they had been used to sieve motor fuel and cabbage.
'You always worry/ Medea said, uninhibitedly shrugging off her flight suit and kicking it into a corner. She was clad in nothing but her vest and briefs, and her shoulder holster, which she was now unclasping.
Aemos rolled over and looked the other way.
'It's my job to worry. And stop getting undressed. We're not finished/
Medea looked at me, and rebuckled her gun rig with a dark frown.
'Okay, my lord and master… what? What's not right?'
'I can't quite put my finger on it…' I began.
Medea tutted and flopped down on her cot.
Yes, you can, Gregor/ Aemos said.
'Maybe I can/
Try/
This stuff about the Gravs. Even if the corporations were suckered, it's not like the Adeptus Mechanicus to fail in a prediction. Any cosmologist would know if Cinchare was entering a gravitation wilderness that would be harmful to humans. They'd know it years in advance. Emperor protect me, stellar objects move far slower and more predictably than human minds!'
'A good point/ said Aemos.
'And one that you'd already thought of, I'm sure/ I said.
'Yes/ he confirmed. 'Kaleil is clearly lying about something/
'And you don't think anything's wrong?'
'Of course I do/ Aemos muttered. 'But I'm tired/
'Get up/ I told him brusquely.
He sat up.
'At least we know Bure's still here/ I said.
This is the guy we came to find?' Medea asked.
I nodded. 'Magos Bure.'
'So how do you two know him? A tech-priest magos?'
'Old story, my dear/ said Aemos.
'I've got time.'
'He was a loyal ally of my master, Inquisitor Hapshant, Aemos's old boss,' I said, cutting to the chase before Aemos could get going.
'A blast from the past, huh?' she grinned.
'Something like that.'
'Still, it's a lo-o-ong way to come just to catch up with an old friend/ she added.
'Enough, Medea!' I said. 'You don't need to know the particulars yet. Maybe better for you if you don't/
She blew a raspberry at me and began to pull her flight suit back on.
'You tried to reach the
'My vox hasn't got the range/ she sulked back, fiddling with the zipper. 'Gravity distortions are too much. We expected that. I could go back to the cutter and use the main 'caster/
'I need you here. We need to scare up some answers fast. I want you to sneak Aemos down to the Administratum archive, and see if you can coax anything out of the data banks, if they're still functioning/
'While you…'
'I'm going to the annex of the Adeptus Mechanicus. Meet back here in three hours. We're looking for any clues, but particularly any traces of Bure's whereabouts/
Aemos nodded. 'What if we're challenged?'
You couldn't sleep, you went for a walk, and you got lost/
And if they don't believe me?'
'That's why Medea's going with you/ I said.
The annex of the tech-priesthood lay in the western sector of Cinchare Mine- head's jumbled maze of pressurised habs and processing sheds, about two kilometres from the plaza. At first, I hadn't known where I was going, but the tunnels and transit ways were marked with numbered signs and symbol-coded notices, and after a while I found a large, etched-metal directory map screwed to a pillar beside a bank of dusty public drinking fountains.
A twist of the faucet on one of the fountains produced nothing but a dry rasp.
Approaching the annex, the whitewashed tunnel walls were overpainted with dark red stripes, and there were numerous caution signs and warnings that demanded correct papers and identities on pain of death.
Still, the whole place was bare and empty, and thick with dust and litter.
At the end of the red-striped access tunnel, the vast adamantite blast-gates to the annex stood open. There was an eerie silence.
The annex was a colossal tower of hewn rock dressed in red steel, filling a side chimney of the crater that housed Cinchare's minehead. A sealed
glass dome covered the paved yard between the blast-gates and the annex, and the building itself rose up beyond the glass to the top of the crater rim. High above, I could see the blue rock and the starlit void beyond. Meteors streaked overhead
The doorway of the annex was a giant portal taller than three men, framed by thick dork columns of black lucullite. Above it leered the graven image of the Machine God, its eyes clearly carved in such a way that they would flare ominously with gas bum-offs piped up from the mines. They were cold and dead now.
And the burnished metal doors of the portal were open.
I stepped inside. Fine sand covered the floor of the grand prothyron. Dust motes glittered in the bars of light spearing into the high hallway through deadlights up near the ribbed roof. Both walls were entirely panelled with banks of codifiers and matriculators, all dormant and powered down. Crescents of dust bearded every single switch and dial.
I knew at once this was a bad sign. The tech-priests treasured machines more than anything else. If they had evacuated as Kaleil described, there was no way they would have left such a wealth of technology here… especially as each unit was clearly designed to slot out of its alcove in the black marble walls.
The chamber beyond the prothyron was a veritable chapel, a cathedral dedicated to the God-Machine, the uber-Titan, the master of Mars. The floor was creamy travertine slabs, so tightly laid not even a sheet of paper could be slipped between the stones. The chapel itself was triapsidal with walls of smooth, cold lucullite and a roof thirty metres above my head. There was yet more precious technology arranged in six concentric circles of intricate brass workstations around a central plinth. All of it was dead and unpowered.
I crossed the chamber towards the plinth, painfully aware of how loud my footsteps rang back from the emptiness. Chilly starlight shone down through an opaion in the centre of the roof, directly above the massive grandiorite plinth. The huge, severed head of an ancient Warlord Titan hung above the plinth where the starlight shafted down. I realised that nothing supported the head – no cables, no platform, no scaffolding. It simply hung in the air.
