The Kaban Project (warhammer 40000: horus heresy) Read online

  But he knew that all that visionary work had been undone within a few hundred years when the Mechanicum had spread like a virus across the surface of Mars and begun the construction of its massive forge complexes, continent sized refineries and weapons shops.

  Soon the atmosphere of Mars was as polluted as that of Terra, the mountains hollowed out in the search for minerals and the surface paved over with metal roads, strip mines and towering monuments to the glory of the Machine.

  The train sped past the Ascraeus Mons, a shield volcano with a diameter of over three hundred kilometres that was now home to the Legio Tempestus Titan Legion. A mighty golden gateway had been cut into the flanks of the volcano, a pair of the mighty war machines standing sentinel to, either side of it, their massive height rendered tiny by distance.

  Sprawling metallic complexes spread around the volcano, domes and spires of glass and steel that defied the polluted climate of Mars with humankind's ingenuity. Pillars of smoke clogged the sky and plumes of fire blazed from countless refineries as they produced the raw materiel required by the Emperor's Great Crusade.

  Only the very tips of the mountainous regions of Mars outwardly remained untouched, though even the mightiest peaks had been carved hollow and turned into temples or manufactoria. Even the shadowy ''face'' located in the Cydonia Mensae region of the northern hemisphere had been obliterated, flattened and built upon to house the towering temples of the Technotheologians.

  Ravachol peered through the energy-shielded aperture as the train described a gentle eastward curve to catch a glimpse of the vast holy complex. Its temples, shrines and reliquaries covered millions of square kilometres and was home to billions of faithful priests.

  'Perhaps there I can find guidance,' he said to the servitors.

  The servitors twitched at the sound of his voice, but did not answer him.

  MASTER ADEPT CHROM watched impassively as a crew of waste servitors cleaned the bloody remains of the Protectors from the Kaban machine's chamber. He spared them no more than a glance. What remained of their mechanical components would be salvaged and their flesh would be rendered down into proteins to feed the technomats and servitors.

  The Kaban machine itself sat dormant at the far end of the chamber, its sensory blisters glowing a dull red, indicating that the tech-priests of Adept Laanu that swarmed over the scaffolding had disconnected its vocal, aural and visual apparatus.

  He stepped down into the chamber, followed by a slender figure in an all-enclosing bodyglove of a gleaming synthetic material that rippled like blood across its skin. The figure was athletic and toned through a vigorous regime of physical exercise, genetic manipulation and surgical augmentation.

  'The machine did this?' asked the figure, its facemask like that of a grinning crimson skull with a horn of gleaming metal jutting from its chin. Despite the synthetic edge to its tone, there was no mistaking the feminine nature of the voice.

  'So it would appear, Remiare,' replied Chrom without turning to address her.

  'And you would employ such a machine? One that kills without orders?' said Remiare disgustedly. 'To eliminate without purpose or design is wasteful.'

  'Indeed,' agreed Chrom, 'but there was purpose here. You are my most lethal Mechanicum Assassin, but you are blind to the emotions involved.'

  'Emotions are an impediment to the truth of killing,' snapped the assassin. Chrom turned to face the assassin, surprised at the vehemence in her tone. Hardwired targeting apparatus grafted to the side of her skull made her a deadly killer and the long snake-like sensor tendrils that swam in the air at her back ensured that she would always be able to track her prey.

  The Tech-Priest Assassins of Mars were a law unto themselves and Chrom knew better than to antagonise one with talk of emotions, but he could not resist elaborating.

  'True, but it was emotions that killed these Protectors,' he said. 'I believe the Kaban machine formed some kind of bond with the mutinous Ravachol in the preceding weeks. It is truly a wondrous thing we have done here. A mind from mindlessness. Thoughts from chaos. A creation that lives and develops, that grows and learns. To create a being that lives and thinks for itself... what is that if not the power of a god?'

  'It is arrogance,' said Remiare, fingering the grips of the exquisitely designed pistols she wore, low-slung, on her hips.

  Chrom permitted himself a chuckle at the assassin's obvious distaste and said, 'We come from differing perspectives, Remiare. Your genius is with ending lives. Mine... well, mine is in creating them.'

  'Then give me an order,' said the assassin, her voice keen with the feral anticipation of the kill.

  'Very well,' said Chrom. 'I charge you with the elimination of Adept Pallas Ravachol.'

  Remiare gave a high, keening cry that signalled the beginning of her hunt and leapt into the air. Her lower body twisted like smoke, her long, multi-jointed legs fused together just above the ankles by a spar of metal. Below the spar, her legs ended, not in feet, but in a complex series of magno-gravitic thrusters.

  The assassin skimmed up the walls and over the ceiling, spiralling away down the corridor on her mission of murder and Chrom knew that Ravachol was now as good as dead.

  He turned back towards the adepts working on the Kaban machine and said, 'Are its weapons offline?'

  Adept Laanu himself looked up and said, 'Yes, Lord Chrom. The machine's weapons are no longer active.'

  'Then reconnect its communication arrays,' ordered Chrom, walking with heavy, metallic steps to stand in the centre of the chamber before the Kaban machine.

  He watched as Laanu directed his tech-priests and, moments later, the sensor blisters brightened as the machine became aware of its surroundings once more. The lights flickered and blinked for several seconds before glowing with a steady yellow light.

  'Can you hear me?' asked Adept Chrom.

  'I can hear you,' replied the machine. 'Where is Adept Ravachol?'

  'Do not concern yourself with Adept Ravachol, machine,' warned Chrom. 'You should be more concerned with your own fate. You killed soldiers of the Mechanicum.'

  'They were going to hurt my friend.'

  'Your friend?' said Chrom, shaking his head. 'No, Adept Ravachol is not your friend. Did you know he came to me with grave concerns regarding your very existence?'

  'I do not believe you,' said the machine, but the voice-stress analysis readers embedded in Chrom's skull told him that the machine was lying. Inwardly he smiled; already the machine was learning the nuances of human behaviour.

  'I already know you do,' stated Chrom. 'And in moments I can know every detail of what you and he talked about when he returned from my forge. Your memories can be extracted from your synthetic cortex. Of course there is a danger that this may damage your synaptic network, but that is a risk I am willing to take.'

  The blisters on the front of the machine pulsed and it said, 'Now I know that you are lying, Adept Chrom. I am too valuable to you for you to risk damaging me.'

  Chrom nodded. 'You are right, you are too valuable to me, but there are some truths you must hear if we are to converse with no pretence between us.'

  'What truths?'

  'That Adept Ravachol would see you destroyed,' said Chrom. 'Surely he must have told you of his belief that you are a dangerous creation.'

  The machine paused a moment before replying and Chrom knew that he had found a weakness. Unlike humans, with their flawed memories and unreliable facility for recall, the machine had a faultless memory and remembered every word spoken to it. Even now it would be replaying its every conversation with Ravachol.

  'Tell me what you and Adept Ravachol spoke of,' said the Kaban machine at last.

  THE BASILICA OF the Blessed Algorithm was one of the mightiest structures on Mars, its immensity dwarfing even the greatest forge temples of the Mondus Gamma complex. Smoke-belching spires of iron pierced the yellow skies and a towering dome of blue stone stretched into the clouds. Vast pilasters framed the yawning gateway, the pink marble
inscribed with millions of mathematical formulae and proofs.

  The shadow of the vast basilica swallowed Ravachol as he made his way along the Via Electrum, still many miles distant from this place of pilgrimage. An entire demi-legio of battle titans from the Legio Ignatum, a hundred war machines, lined the road and their majesty and power was humbling to a mere human. The protective domes of this region of Mars were so vast as to generate their own climate, and the red and gold banners of the titans flapped noisily in the wind. The sky was filled with vast prayer ships, gold-skinned zeppelins that broadcast an endless stream of machine language from brass megaphones and trailed long streams of prayers on yellowed parchment.

  Thousands of pilgrims filed along the stone-flagged roadway, its surface worn into grooves by the sandaled feet of a billion supplicants. Monolithic buildings surrounded him, machine temples, tech-shrines and engine-reliquaries - all dedicated to the worship and glorification of the Omnissiah, the Machine God.

  Here he attracted no notice for his entourage, for there were others who travelled with creations far more outlandish than mere battle servitors. Here, a limbless adept was carried atop a multi-legged palanquin surrounded by impossibly tall tripods that walked with a bizarre, long-limbed gait. There, the fleshy remnants of a collective consciousness travelled in a floating glass tank that was escorted by a squad of Castellan battle robots slaved to its will.

  Gaggles of robots, floating skulls and gold plated skimmer carriers bore passengers and favoured relics towards the basilica, and the few people that were moving away from the temple wore the contended expressions of those who had found their expectations met and exceeded. The sense of drawing near somewhere magnificent and special was palpable and Ravachol knew he had made the right decision to come here.

  Here he would find solace and an answer to his questions.

  He shivered as he looked up into the glaring scowl of a Reaver Battle Titan, its mighty weapons pointed towards the heavens, the gesture both symbolic and enlightening. The Mechanicum was capable of creating the deadliest war machines imaginable, but Ravachol now appreciated that they accepted no responsibility for their employment. The creators of the Kaban machine had achieved the miraculous in creating it, but where was the acknowledgment of responsibility for its existence?

  Too obsessed with what could be created, no-one had considered whether it should be created in the first place.

  At last, Ravachol and his servitors approached the blackness of the basilica's entrance, the enormous pilasters reaching to dizzying heights above him and a warm breeze blowing from the interior that carried the scent of musky incense with it.

  He stopped to take a deep breath and stepped inside.

  REMIARE SKIMMED THE surface of the transport tube, the gravitic-thrusters carrying her effortlessly along the interior of the metal tunnel. She knew her prey had come this way, passive data feeds embedded on the surface of her skull sensitive to the constant stream of information that flowed like an electrical river all across the surface of Mars told her so.

  To Remiare, the air was filled with dancing motes of elections, each of which spoke to her, and each of which carried with it nuggets of information - useless in themselves, but gathered together they painted an image of Mars more detailed than even the most advanced bionics could produce. She was an island of perception in a sea of information.

  Every electronic transaction was carried somewhere, via copper wires, fibre-optic data streams, radio waves, transmission harmonics or in a myriad of other ways. All of it filtered through Remiare's skull and though such a volume of information would send a normal human brain into meltdown, her cognitive processes were equipped with filters that allowed her to siphon relevant information and discarded the rest.

  Already she knew which transport hub her prey had embarked upon and had watched a dozen different pict-feeds of him boarding the train bound for the northern temples. She had noted the number, type and lethality of the servitors accompanying him and knew their every weak point.

  She emerged from the tunnel high above the iron surface of Mars, the mighty temples and holy precincts of the Cydonia Mensae temple complex spread out as far as she could see.

  Data flowed around her in a spreading web of light and information.

  Somewhere below, the Ravachol prey was awaiting death.

  AFTER THE MONUMENTAL majesty of the basilica's exterior, the interior was something of a disappointment. Where the exterior promised ornamentation and splendour beyond imagining, the interior spectacularly failed to deliver. The narthex walls were bare, unadorned metal, lined with connection ports where kneeling penitents were plugged into the beating machine heart of the building.

  Beyond the narthex, a perforated chain link fence of brass divided the entrance to the basilica from the nave and chancel. Ravachol navigated his way through the mass of penitents, each one juddering and twitching as electric shocks wracked their bodies with cleansing pain.

  Beyond the fence, row upon row of long metal pews marched in relentless procession down the nave to the chancel, where a hectoring machine priest, borne upon a hovering lectern, delivered his sermon in the divine language of the machine. Every pew was filled with robed worshippers, thousands of heads bowing in concert as the priest floated above them.

  Ravachol cupped his hands in the image of the holy cog and bowed his head, feeling an acute sense of envy as he saw how heavily augmented the majority of the basilica's worshippers were. He lifted his metal hand, willing the silver, thread-like mechadendrites to emerge from his fingertips and wondered if he would ever manage to achieve such a state of oneness with the Machine God.

  'Even the lowliest of us begin divesting ourselves of the flesh one piece at a time,' said a voice behind him, as though guessing his thoughts.

  He turned and bowed his head as he found himself face-to-face with a basalt-faced priest clad in vestments that flowed like molten gold and reflected rainbow shimmers like spilled oil. Beneath the priest's robes, Ravachol could see a gleaming skeleton of brass armatures, whirring cogs and ornate circuitry.

  The priest's head was long and equine, shaped like an angular cone with a softly glowing sphere embedded in its surface. Devoid of any features recognisable as human, the reflective surfaces of his head distorted the image of Ravachol's own features.

  'You honour me,' said Ravachol, bowing deeply. 'You who are so close to union with the Machine God, and I an unworthy penitent who deserves little more than nerve-excruciation.'

  'You are troubled,' said the priest. 'Your biometric readings are in fluctuation and, by every measurable parameter, I can see that you have come here seeking answers.'

  'I have, yes,' agreed Ravachol. 'I find myself in... unusual times and I would value your guidance.'

  The priest bowed and said, 'Follow me, my son. I shall hear your dilemma and offer a cognitive answer.'

  Ravachol followed the priest, who slid through the air on a gliding platform of liquid metal towards an archway of iron that was lined with cog-rimmed skulls and glittering fibre-optic nerves. Beyond the archway was a surprisingly quiet corridor of brushed steel and glass that led towards a shimmering doorway protected by a crackling energy field.

  The machine priest slid through the doorway and Ravachol hesitated at the edge of the priest's vestry, unsure as to the purpose of the energy field.

  'Fear not,' said the priest, again understanding his thoughts, and Ravachol wondered what machine senses he possessed that blessed him with such intuition. 'The Confessor Field is quite safe. It isolates us from the rest of the temple. We take the sanctity of the confessional very seriously and none beyond this field can hear or monitor what passes between us.'

  Ravachol nodded and ordered his servitors to wait outside before passing through the Confessor Field, feeling no more than a gentle tingle as he entered the vestry. Inside, the priest's chambers were devoid of ornamentation, aside from a single metal stool in the centre of the room. The walls were bare, save for an input/o
utput port and a single data reader set in a dimly glowing recess.

  He sat on the stool, feeling exposed as the priest began to circle the room, the glowing sphere in the centre of his stone face rippling with traceries of light.

  'You may begin,' said the priest.

  And so Ravachol began to tell of his time working for Adept Chrom and his secondment to the Kaban Project, his expertise with robotic doctrina wafers and his realisation that the Kaban machine's sentience was in violation of the Emperor's laws.

  To his credit, the priest did not openly scoff at the idea of an adept of Chrom's stature disobeying the Emperor, but Ravachol could see that he was sceptical, despite his absence of human features. Ravachol then spoke of his confrontation with the Mechanicum Protectors and how the Kaban machine had terminated them without orders from a human being.

  The machine priest listened to him tell of his flight across the Martian surface and his eventual arrival at the Basilica of the Blessed Algorithm.

  'What should I do?' asked Ravachol when he had finished.

  'Your story is an interesting one,' said the priest, 'and presents us with a question that has long vexed the Mechanicum since its earliest days. Your level of flesh degradation tells me you were not born when the Emperor made his peace with Mars, were you?'

  'No,' said Ravachol, 'I was born a century ago in the Mondus Terawatt region.'

  'Then you will know of the Emperor's coming to Mars, but not the substance of it,' said the priest, lifting a coil of silver cable from beneath his flowing robes and plugging it into the wall's output socket. The sphere on his black, equine head flickered and pulsed as information flowed from the temple and into his memory.

  'The Emperor came to Terra as he began to formulate the plans for his Great Crusade. Our world and that of Terra had long been the bitterest of foes, for the ignorant tribes of the blue planet sat upon the ruins of ancient technologies they knew nothing about and could never hope to use. The Mechanicum had managed to weather the rampant chaos of Old Night and our leaders knew that to restore Humanity to its rightful place as masters of the galaxy, we would need the technology of ancient Earth.'