Vainglorious, p.15
Vainglorious, page 15
‘We’ve been directed to pad seven,’ the pilot informed us, as the landing field started to slip sideways beneath our slowly settling gunship. ‘They’ll be making a hard seal with the starboard hatch.’
‘Good.’ Jurgen stopped rummaging in the kitbag between his knees, and resealed it with a palpable air of relief. ‘We won’t be needing the breather masks then.’
‘Works for me,’ I agreed, appreciating the contrast with my arrival at the Nexus. Being able to breathe while disembarking would be a welcome novelty here. Out of habit, and a faint sense of foreboding, I checked my weapons as well, ensuring that the power packs of my laspistol and chainsword were both fully charged, and sufficiently loose to draw with the minimum of time and effort. Not that another attempt on my life so soon, and so publicly, seemed particularly likely, but I hadn’t made it through to retirement by taking anything for granted. Come to think of it, I still hadn’t, not until I actually set foot on Perlia, and the irony of being dispatched by an assassin so close to my lifelong goal of getting out of harm’s way and staying there was one I was determined to cheat the universe out of.
‘We’re down,’ Jurgen said, his voice suffused with relief, as the constant howling of the engines died back to an idling roar, and the deck plates beneath our feet stabilised, sinking slightly as the Thunderhawk’s landing gear absorbed its weight. He adjusted his lasgun and melta across his shoulders, and bent to heft our kitbags, almost disappearing behind them – which was probably just as well as we were about to meet our new hosts. I hadn’t spoken to Magos Tezler in person yet, but Vorspung had assured me that they were fully prepared for our arrival. A choice of words, I’m bound to say, which didn’t exactly inspire me with confidence.
A loud clunk echoed through the passenger compartment, and the boarding hatch slid smoothly aside, to reveal a boarding tube clamped firmly to our outer hull. I led the way down it, our footsteps echoing from the metal mesh underfoot and the corrugated walls, faint puffs of gritty powder rising where our boots hit the deck plates. Evidently the ubiquitous dust being raised by the mine workings was sufficiently thick in the air around here for some small measure of it to have become scooped up by the corridor as it extended towards the Thunderhawk, and I found myself even more relieved not to have been exposed to the outside environment. A faint thrumming shook the whole structure, vibrations from the Thunderhawk’s engines, and I picked up my pace a little towards the thick metal door sealing off the far end of the passageway. The pilot’s eagerness to leave now his errand was over was obvious, and though I was sure he wouldn’t take off again until we were safely inside the shrine, I saw no point in lingering.
Unlike the pristine surface of the Nexus, which had perplexed me at first sight, the portal we were approaching was as grubby as anything I normally associated with a Mechanicus facility. The incised cogwheel motif was choked with dust in which browns and greys mingled uneasily, contrasting with the dull bronze surface that was itself scored and pitted by decades of exposure to the airborne abrasives. Some of those had worked their way into the mechanism, judging by the muffled grating sound which accompanied its opening.
A second door awaited us a few metres beyond it, sealing the end of a short corridor floored and ceilinged with metal mesh, the walls of which were decorated with ceramic tiles creating an abstract mosaic of interlinked angular forms of staggering ugliness.[99] Glancing down, I saw the usual tangle of cables and ducting beneath the walkway, an arrangement repeated above our heads, with the addition of luminators at regular intervals.
‘This looks cheerful,’ Jurgen opined, without much conviction, as the portal by which we’d entered ground closed again, cutting off the muted grumbling of the Thunderhawk’s idling power plant. Further clanks and clatterings announced the disengagement of the boarding tube, not quite masking the roar of the unleashed engine as the gunship took to the air again, effectively stranding us here. ‘Think they’ve forgotten we’re coming?’
‘I doubt it,’ I said, as the door ahead of us began to glide open, a lot more smoothly and silently than its outer counterpart, to reveal a wider, more open area, with a higher ceiling, a few seats around the walls and more of the jagged mosaic. Several corridors radiated off from it, although the lack of external windows in most of them made it pretty obvious that the majority were part of the tunnel system riddling the ground around the main excavation.
A handful of tech-priests were waiting for us, clad, for the most part, in the russet robes of their calling. The single exception wore nothing, their body composed entirely of metal: the first tech-priest I could ever recall meeting without even the most vestigial portion of their original flesh being visible. Also unusual was the lack of any external mechanisms, like the mechadendrites most of the group sported, or the vox-grilles visible in faces or throats. Instead, their face was a sculpted human one, androgynous and bland, fixed in an expression of detached curiosity. The body it surmounted mimicked human proportions too, as smooth and genderless as its face, although it was somewhat larger than average, presumably to accommodate the mechanisms within, which whirred and hummed with every movement; I barely came up to its shoulder, and I’m not normally considered particularly short. (Unless you count the opinion of a Catachan commissar I spent a memorable, not to say pleasantly strenuous, couple of months with after she took a shine to me on the otherwise uneventful voyage from Coronus to Keffia back in my time with the 12th Field Artillery.[100])
‘Welcome, commissar.’ The metal androgyne took a step forward, raising a hand in greeting. In contrast to the even monotone I was used to hearing from the vox-units of most acolytes of the Machine-God, their voice was soft and lilting, almost melodic. ‘Your arrival honours us all.’ Which neatly skirted around the fact that it was probably a pestilential nuisance, even if no one was up to anything. An operation of this magnitude would require a formidable degree of oversight; I was beginning to see why some of Tezler’s more conservative colleagues might have felt a bit happier with a more experienced hand on the tiller. Perhaps the shortfall in output really was down to nothing more sinister than administrative incompetence. But if that was the case, why would someone have spent so much time and effort trying to kill me, not to mention Vorspung, Norgard and Morie?
‘A pleasure to be here,’ I lied glibly, taking the proffered hand, and finding it just as unyielding as I’d expected. ‘The view on the way in was even more impressive than I’d been led to expect.’ Reminded of his presence by a barely stifled snort, I gestured to the ambulatory luggage pile behind me. ‘This is my aide and amanuensis, Gunner Feric Jurgen. He’ll be accompanying me on my tour of inspection.’
‘Feric? An auspicious name,’ the tech-priest piped, looking at Jurgen appraisingly over my shoulder. ‘Though you’ll find many of iron resolve at Metallum Majoris.’ Their entourage did their best to show sycophantic amusement, but, like most tech-priests, it didn’t come easily to them.
Jurgen’s brow furrowed, clearly not getting it, and equally clearly damned if he was going to admit the fact. ‘And yours is?’ he asked, remaining, to my quiet relief, on just the right side of pugnacious. His position as a de facto Commissariat functionary, albeit a lowly one, allowed him a fair degree of latitude in situations like this, and he was never slow to take advantage of the fact when it suited him.
‘Magos Hetrodyne Tezler, senior adept of Metallum Majoris,’ the ferrous tech-priest responded, apparently unperturbed. ‘My apologies for having neglected the formalities.’
‘No apology necessary,’ I reassured them, as diplomatically as I could. ‘I neglected to introduce myself as well.’
Tezler emitted a reasonable approximation of a polite laugh, if articulating ‘ha ha’ like actual words counted in that regard, and tilted their head a little to mime amusement. ‘That would have been something of a redundant courtesy,’ they said, the liquid cadence of their voice still disconcerting in the extreme, ‘given your unique position on Eucopia.’
‘Not quite unique,’ I said, keeping my voice casual. ‘I gather one of your own order has a similar commission.’
‘Young Clode, you mean?’ Tezler didn’t miss a beat, although their musical tones concealed any agitation they might be feeling just as effectively as the monotonous drone of the average Mechanicus voxcoder. ‘I would have expected him to have completed his enquiries by now.’ They turned to lead the way deeper into the complex, with a courteous wave to usher Jurgen and I ahead of them.
‘He was here, then?’ I asked.
Tezler’s internal servos whined as they shrugged in well-simulated indifference.
‘He was, although we didn’t converse much. His interest was more in the practicalities of mineral extraction than the administrative details.’
‘But he seemed satisfied when he left?’ I asked, provoking another mosquito-like buzzing as Tezler shrugged again.
‘I believe so. I did not observe his departure.’
‘I’m sure you had far more pressing matters to deal with,’ I said, choosing my words carefully. Appearing too interested would either shut down the conversation if Tezler really had something to hide, or, worse still, make me even more of a target than I already felt. ‘Did he happen to mention where he was going next?’
‘Not that I recall,’ Tezler said blandly. ‘As you say, my attention was elsewhere. I couldn’t even tell you when he departed.’
‘I doubt that it matters,’ I said. ‘But if I’d been able to talk to him, or read his report, I’d have been able to get out from under your feet a great deal sooner.’
‘You overestimate the degree of disruption your presence will cause,’ Tezler said, with another polite ‘ha ha’, an affectation I began to suspect would soon become irritating in the extreme.
‘I sincerely hope so,’ I said, responding with automatic pleasantries while my conscious, and reliably paranoid, mind began sifting their words for any implied threat. ‘I have pressing business on Perlia, and the sooner I can get this little errand done and be on my way, the better.’ Which, as well as being true, was calculated to foster the impression that I wasn’t too keen to actually find any problems, hopefully lulling any conspirators within earshot into a false sense of security. On the other hand, if I was up to my ears in heretical conspiracies that’s precisely the kind of thing I’d expect an investigator to say, leading me to keep an even closer eye on them in the future.
Either way, I reminded myself forcefully, there was no point in trying to second-guess everything; that way lay nothing but reliably sleepless nights.
‘I trust you will find the accommodation to your liking,’ Tezler chirruped, after a few minutes of twisting and turning through a maze of corridors a more suspicious mind than mine might have suspected was intended to disorientate unwelcome visitors,[101] accompanied by more inane prattle from the pair of us. A doorway in the wall slid smoothly aside. ‘It was designed with the comfort of the non-augmented in mind. Not that we see many of those here, ha ha.’
Jurgen entered ahead of me, muttering something to the effect that he’d be the judge of whether the accommodation was fit for a commissar, thank you very much, which Tezler was tactful enough to pretend they hadn’t heard, if they actually did.
‘I’m sure it will suit us very well,’ I assured them, as my aide assessed the small suite beyond with a grudging nod of approval, and disappeared into the nearest bedroom with my kit, leaving his own to form a trip hazard in the middle of the living area. Tezler departed after a further exchange of platitudes, and the door hummed closed, leaving me with a profound sense of relief.
‘That was a creepy one,’ Jurgen said, emerging from the master bedroom again and picking up his kitbag. ‘Even for a cogboy.’ His forehead furrowed with mental effort. ‘There’s something about them I can’t quite put my finger on.’
‘I know what you mean,’ I agreed, a faint sense of unease worrying at the corners of my own mind. ‘But I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about.’
Which didn’t sound true even as I said it, let alone in the light of what we were shortly to discover.
SIXTEEN
If Tezler did have anything to hide, they were certainly not making it obvious. I spent the next couple of days being shepherded around the mine and its environs by tech-priests of sufficient seniority to maintain the polite fiction that I was a welcome and honoured guest, but without the authority to show me anything that hadn’t been placed on my itinerary by someone a great deal further up the food chain. It was a routine I was familiar enough with from decades of Imperial Guard inspections to let pass without comment, merely making a mental note of everywhere and everything my hosts seemed to be politely deflecting me from.
In truth, the operation here was so vast, and so densely populated, that I’d barely seen a tithe of it[102] before Tezler dropped by our quarters to ask how we were getting on. To my vague surprise they were unaccompanied, perhaps in an attempt to encourage me to speak candidly, although I, naturally, had no such intention – not least because of the high probability that anything I said was being recorded or transmitted elsewhere for later analysis.
‘An unexpected pleasure,’ I greeted them, while Jurgen, having ushered them in, faded into the decor as much as he ever could, an endeavour not exactly helped by the profusion of russet hues the tech-priests seemed to favour on most surfaces. Even the bed-linen was the colour of brick dust, which didn’t exactly make for a restful night’s sleep. ‘I trust we’re not proving to be too great a nuisance?’
‘Not at all, ha ha.’ Tezler inclined their head, and, to my vague surprise, seated themself in the geometric centre of the nearest sofa. ‘Our intermediaries speak most highly of your discretion and attention to detail.’
‘In my experience the detail’s where the daemon is,’ I said, dragging a chair round to face them, and sitting down on it with my best air of casual disinterest. ‘And, of course, I need to show a degree of diligence if my report’s to pass muster.’
‘Of course.’ Tezler inclined their head again. ‘And do you think it will? As I’ve already explained, our shortfall in output is merely a temporary setback, soon to be remedied.’
I shrugged. ‘It will if anyone actually bothers to read it. But I like to think it’ll appear thorough enough for you to avoid any further inconvenience once it’s been filed.’ Thus neatly implying that I wasn’t looking too hard for problems, and that if they were up to anything, their best chance of getting away with it would be to let me conclude my enquiries and depart without fuss – which would up my chances of survival considerably.
‘That would be to everyone’s advantage,’ Tezler agreed. ‘We’re opening several promising new seams, and hope to be making quota again by the end of the year.’ They held out a hand, the tip of their index finger peeling back to reveal a data key. ‘I can inload the relevant data to your slate, if you wish.’
‘That would be most helpful,’ I said, picking up Jurgen’s from the table and holding it out. I’d kiss an ork before I let anyone here gain unimpeded access to my own, although given how easily Vorspung had managed it on our arrival, I doubted Tezler would find it much of a challenge in any case. There was no point in making it any easier for them than it had to be, though, and if, as I suspected, their intention was to grab copies of whatever was already on the slate, then I wished them joy of my aide’s extensive collection of erotica – I strongly suspected that after such extensive augmetic enhancement it would leave them baffled at best, if not reminded of what they were missing.
Tezler inserted the data key, emitted a short binharic chirrup and withdrew the digit, which immediately resumed its former smooth exterior. If they had attempted to rifle through the files already on the slate, they gave no sign of surprise or disappointment, however, merely composing themself on the sofa in an attitude suggestive of relaxation. ‘There. I’ve placed it in the primary data node for ease of perusal.’
‘Much appreciated,’ I said, with a nod of acknowledgement. ‘I’ll be sure to read through it at the earliest opportunity.’ I paused for a moment, as though struck by an idle passing thought, before adding, ‘I don’t suppose a copy of Clode’s report has surfaced yet, by any chance? I don’t see much point in duplicating our efforts, especially as there’s so much of the installation here I still have to see.’
‘Alas, no,’ Tezler piped, looking about as forlorn as an ammunition box, despite their words. ‘But I gather he spent a good deal of time in the lower galleries. Despite repeated warnings of the dangers down there.’
‘Dangers?’ I caught the implied warning off, as I was clearly supposed to. ‘You mean rockfalls and the like?’
‘That sort of thing,’ Tezler agreed. ‘Also, firedamp, and a number of rockrat nests, not all of which have been found and eradicated.’
Jurgen caught my eye, behind the tech-priest’s back, and pulled a face of extreme scepticism; an attitude I’m bound to say I shared. If I knew one environment above all others it was underground warrens like the one Tezler was describing, and in which I’d spent my earliest years not merely surviving but thriving.[103] Nevertheless, letting them know they’d piqued my interest would hardly be helpful, so I merely nodded.
‘It sounds singularly unappealing. But if Clode’s already examined it, and seemed satisfied when he left, I doubt there’s anything down there worth the bother of another look. No doubt he’ll present his conclusions when he decides to show his face again.’
‘If he ever does,’ Jurgen muttered, too quietly to be audible, though I saw his lips moving clearly enough to have got the gist.
‘No doubt he will,’ Tezler agreed, showing no sign of having heard, although given their extensive augmentation I would have been extremely surprised if they hadn’t.
