Vainglorious, p.23
Vainglorious, page 23
‘Time to find out where we are,’ I said. All I could see through the widening gap was a wall a handful of metres away, which, from the ambient acoustics and the abstract patterning adorning it, I thought was probably a corridor somewhere in the main complex.
My spirits rose. With any luck I’d be able to orientate myself now, and find a route out of here. If I’d been right about Tezler monitoring our conversation with Clode, the only sensible option would be to find a vehicle and make a run for it straight away, before anyone realised we’d found our way back to the upper levels.
I took a cautious step into the passageway, finding it curiously quiet – unlike the corridors I’d criss-crossed in my tour of inspection, hardly anyone was around, the few exceptions being russet-robed tech-priests hurrying along in ones and twos, too engrossed in their own affairs to pay us any heed. Or so it seemed; by this time I was unwilling to trust the appearance of anyone or anything around here.
‘Should we try one of these doors?’ Jurgen asked, indicating the nearest. There were several lining the walls, every dozen metres or so, and I shook my head – there was no telling who, or what, might be lurking behind them.
‘Best keep moving,’ I said, hoping to find some clue as to where we’d ended up. The doors all had neat little metal plaques attached to them, so I squinted at the nearest, finding it embossed with a sequence of fine lines of varying thickness, and a couple of words in plain Gothic. Magos Kathoed. With a sudden surge of relief I realised where we were, and why the corridor seemed so quiet. ‘We’re in the cogboys’ living quarters.’
‘If you call being a cogboy living,’ Jurgen added.
His cynicism notwithstanding, I felt a sudden surge of optimism. All at once the rare and unwelcome sense of disorientation which had been plaguing me ever since we stumbled across the necron tomb was lifted. I’d been paying, as was my habit, particular attention during my guided wanderings around Metallum Majoris to any potential lines of retreat in case I needed one in a hurry, and right now I most definitely did. There should be a loading area a few levels up, where vehicles were prepared for deliveries of raw materials to the nearest manufactories. If we could just make it there without further incident, we should be able to acquire one and be well away before anyone even realised we’d gone.
‘Commissar. What an agreeable surprise.’
I spun round, raising my laspistol, while Jurgen brought up the melta, recognising Tezler’s mellifluous tones before I even caught sight of them. The silver mannequin was standing a few strides behind us, next to an open door.
‘I thought you must still be grubbing about in the bowels of the earth. Or dead, of course, ha ha.’
‘Sorry to disappoint you,’ I said, reining in the impulse to pull the trigger with some considerable effort. The las-bolt would probably do relatively little damage to the treacherous tech-priest’s mechanical carcass, but Jurgen would follow my lead in an instant, and gratifying as it would be to see them reduced to a puddle of slag, there was still too much I didn’t know. If I was going to get out of here with my hide intact, the more information I had the better. And I could always kill Tezler later; Throne knew they deserved it.
‘Disappointed?’ the piping voice responded, while the body emitting it adopted an attitude indicative of polite surprise. ‘Quite the contrary.’ They stood aside, indicating the doorway behind them. ‘My guest was most impressed by your resourcefulness, and would like to make your closer acquaintance.’
I gestured towards the open door with the laspistol. ‘After you.’
‘By all means, ha ha.’ Tezler turned, and disappeared through it. Jurgen and I exchanged glances.
‘Are you sure about this, sir?’ Jurgen asked, and I shook my head.
‘Far from it. But if we’re going to find out exactly what that heretical boltbag’s been up to, I don’t see we have a choice.’ I glanced up and down the corridor. ‘Stay here and cover our line of retreat.’ I’d have preferred him to accompany me, of course, the melta being a reasonable assurance of Tezler’s good behaviour, not to mention that of whoever else might be lurking in their quarters, but leaving him on overwatch made better tactical sense. Besides, after some of the horrors I’d faced over the years, I felt confident of being able to hold my own against whatever Tezler and whoever they’d been conspiring with were capable of throwing at me.
My aide nodded. ‘I’ll keep you covered from out here,’ he said, taking up a guard position opposite the door, where he could see into the room, and both ways up and down the corridor. He tapped the comm-bead in his ear meaningfully. ‘And I’ll listen in. First sign of trouble, I’ll be there.’
‘I don’t doubt it,’ I said, feeling reassured, as always, by his vigilance. So I followed our host into the room, checking each side of the doorway for potential lurking assailants as I entered, although I didn’t really expect them to try anything so crude or obvious.
‘Please, make yourself comfortable,’ Tezler said, gesturing to a well-padded couch in the centre of the room. I approached it, keeping the laspistol in my hand, taking in the rest of their quarters as I did so. I hadn’t visited many tech-priests in their own personal space before, but much of it was as I’d expected: the plain metal walls, embellished with abstract designs reminiscent of machinery and circuit boards; the utilitarian furnishings, and votive icons of the Cult Mechanicus scattered about on shelves and small tables. Pride of place was given to a large and competently executed painting of the Emperor in His aspect of the Omnissiah, a metallic figure enthroned on a pile of what looked like scrap to me, but which probably represented specific pieces of junk of particular theological significance to His acolytes. After what I’d seen in the last few hours, the gleaming humaniform figure seemed positively sinister to me, though Tezler must have liked it, because a statue of the same image, about half again as tall as I was, stood in one corner. ‘Some refreshment? I recall that you’re partial to these, although I’m sure you’ll forgive me for not joining you. I lack the requisite biological functions these days, ha ha.’
I regarded the tray on a small table next to the sofa dubiously; it held a pot of recaff, a finely wrought steel cup and a plate of florn cakes, still warm from the oven. The recaff was still hot, too, I noted, and glanced around for a door it could have been delivered through, though I failed to see any sign of one. Which didn’t mean there wasn’t a concealed entrance somewhere, of course; the guest they’d alluded to was nowhere to be seen, and they could hardly have evaporated, so they must have sneaked out some other way. As I sat, I angled myself to keep my back to the door Jurgen was covering, relieved to see his distorted reflection still on guard in the polished metal of the recaff pot as I lifted it to pour, alert for any sudden movement in the rest of the room.
‘You shouldn’t have gone to all this trouble,’ I said, determined to seem as much at my ease as possible. Tezler was impossible to read, but I wasn’t going to make things any easier for them than I could help either.
‘It was no trouble, I assure you,’ Tezler said. ‘If you survived your visit to the shrine below, your most probable point of emergence would be the one you took. I simply ordered the refreshments on the off-chance. And I’m pleased to see the effort wasn’t wasted.’
‘Quite,’ I said, taking a sip of the bitter liquid, and replacing the cup on the table to pick up a florn cake. I was prepared to play the game of good manners, but I wasn’t foolish enough to put my laspistol down while I was doing it. I took a bite, finding it considerably more palatable than most of the food I’d had since my arrival there; it did cross my mind that it might have been poisoned, but I couldn’t see why Tezler would have bothered, since they’d already had plenty of opportunities to kill me if they’d been so inclined. ‘That would have been an inefficient use of your resources.’
‘Precisely,’ Tezler said, inclining their head in agreement.
‘But I have to admit to some confusion,’ I said, having disposed of the cake and lifted the cup again. A strange sense of deja vu floated across my synapses for a moment, until I realised what the conversation reminded me of: the superficially civilised chat I’d had over the tea table many years before with Killian, the deranged renegade inquisitor who’d hoped to win me over to his cause.[137] That had ended in a bloodbath, of course, and I could scarcely hope for a better outcome on this occasion; but Tezler was evidently gripped by a similar compulsion to have someone admire their cleverness, which meant that by playing suitably impressed I could probably find out exactly what had been going on here. Whether I’d survive long enough to report it back to Zyvan, or Amberley, was a moot point, but I’d certainly give it my best shot. ‘I’ve never heard of anyone brokering a truce with the necrons before.’
‘Probably because their potential partners fail to grasp the wonders to be gained by co-operation,’ Tezler said earnestly. Though they spoke in the same piping tones as always, I had no doubt that their original voice, had they still possessed it, would have been suffused with the same insane fervour that Killian’s had taken on at about this point in the conversation. ‘Not to mention their essential divinity.’
‘Divinity?’ I echoed, almost choking on the recaff.
‘Of course.’ Tezler gestured to the painting on the wall, which, now I came to observe it more closely, looked more like a necron dressed up with a few Imperial votive symbols than the Machine-God as an avatar of the Emperor. Though I’ve never been all that pious, finding the average Emperor-botherer tedious company at best, the sheer depth of the blasphemy that implied practically took my breath away. ‘Are they not the perfect embodiment of life purged of all organic imperfections, the very state the Omnissiah teaches us to aspire to?’
‘It’s a point of view,’ I conceded, as politely as I could, ‘although it’s one for the theologians as far as I’m concerned. I’m just a soldier, who’s only ever seen them as an enemy.’ The plain-speaking warrior was a persona I’d grown adept at hiding behind over the years, and it’s served me well. Tezler seemed to be buying it anyway, as they responded with another carefully modulated nod.
‘Only to be expected,’ they conceded. ‘But you do see what we’re hoping to achieve here by enlisting their aid?’
‘Not exactly,’ I said, meaning not in the slightest. Nothing good, though, of that I was certain, but I kept my voice as neutral as I could, with the ease of decades of practised dissembling.
‘Transcendence,’ Tezler said, as mellifluously as ever, though I thought I detected a tremor of eagerness beneath their even tones. ‘The uploading of human consciousness to perfect, imperishable bodies, formed in the very image of the Omnissiah!’ Their sculpted metal head tilted slightly in stylised ecstasy. ‘Can you even imagine it?’
‘Not easily,’ I admitted, concealing the sheer horror which coursed through me as the full import of their words sunk in. ‘And this would be all humans, would it?’
‘All those who desired it,’ Tezler said, with the complete tunnel vision of the fanatic. ‘The Cult Mechanicus would lead the way, of course, but who wouldn’t embrace immortal perfection given the chance?’
‘A good question,’ I said, meaning ‘practically everyone if immortality meant turning into a bloody necron’, although putting that thought into words would hardly be politic under the circumstances. I pretended to think about it for a moment. ‘But how can you be sure that it’s even possible?’
‘Because the necrons achieved it,’ Tezler said, with perfectly circular logic. ‘They must once have been mortal, vulnerable to all the frailties of the flesh, just as we are.’ I looked at their mechanical body with, I must admit, some degree of scepticism, though I suppose they must still have had a few squishy bits sealed away inside somewhere. ‘But they transcended. We can do the same.’
I considered this. In all my previous encounters with the necrons I’d thought of them as entirely mechanical constructs, like homicidal CATs, only bigger, simply following preprogrammed instructions to wipe out every living thing they encountered. The notion that they had once been living creatures, voluntarily discarding their humanity (or xenosity, or whatever their equivalent had been) was a profoundly disturbing one.
‘It’s a heady vision,’ I said, playing for time. ‘I take it Clode discovered what you were up to, and signed up on the spot?’
‘Indeed,’ Tezler said, inclining their head again. ‘It would, perhaps, have been better had he returned to Coronus to report all was well here, forestalling your intervention, but he was eager to remain, in order to transcend as soon as possible.’
‘So this is all happening soon, then?’ I asked. Tezler nodded, with a fair pantomime of eagerness.
‘So we are given to understand,’ they said. ‘The preparations are complex, and require prodigious amounts of materials. But our new bodies are being constructed even as we speak. Soon we will transcend. Then humanity will be safe forever from the depredations of Chaos and the xenos breeds.’
‘I see.’ I nodded. The psychotic boltbag may not have had any of the subtle tells I was used to reading in the course of more human interaction (and which I’m so adept at suppressing in myself), but I can tell when someone wants to believe something so much they’ll wilfully ignore any and all evidence to the contrary. The necrons were stringing them along, I was certain of that. ‘And the skitarii you suborned? I take it they were all for this transcendence lark too?’ That was pure speculation on my part, of course, but it seemed plausible, and I’d jolted enough admissions of infractions out of defaulters over the years by pretending to know what they’d been up to already, so it seemed worth a try.
‘Regrettably not,’ Tezler said, with another carefully modulated shake of their head. ‘Although you are correct in your inference that a few of the security details assigned here have stumbled across evidence of the shrine below from time to time. Unfortunately their loyalty to their commanders was hardwired into them, which made them immune to all attempts at persuasion. And that left us with only one option.’
‘Killing them?’ I suggested, pretending to be slower on the uptake than I actually was. Doing that would have attracted far more attention to Metallum Majoris, and dead skitarii wouldn’t have been able to turn on us at the proving grounds. As I’d hoped, however, my apparent obtuseness provoked Tezler into explaining in more detail.
‘Of course not. We merely modified their cortical programming to remove the memories. And took advantage of the situation to install a few datanomes of our own, ha ha.’
‘Forcing them to turn on their own comrades,’ I said, failing to keep all of the anger I felt at that entirely suppressed. Skitarii were hardly like the normal human soldiers I habitually served alongside, but I knew they must still feel loyalty to their comrades and the causes they fought for; a forced betrayal like that struck at everything that made them who they were.
‘Exactly,’ Tezler confirmed, as though expecting to be congratulated on their cleverness. ‘The behavioural modifications were activated by a simple signal.’ Perhaps they belatedly read something of the tenor of my thoughts, because they produced a prolonged musical note I suspected I was supposed to interpret as a sigh. ‘Quite regrettable, but by that point you had already survived three attempts to prevent your interference, and seemed to be forming an alliance with an alarmingly high probability of disrupting our plans. We had hoped to foment distrust between Praetor Norgard and yourself. Not to mention the Space Marines, of course. An escalating confrontation with them would have covered our tracks until the transcendence was fully under way. And once that happened, naturally all true followers of the Omnissiah would have joined us, including Norgard and her skitarii.’
Well, if they truly thought that, they had a very tenuous grasp of both the woman herself and the troops she led. But I nodded anyway, as though they’d scored a substantial debating point.
‘A clever stratagem,’ I said, and Throne help me if Tezler didn’t nod in evident satisfaction, as though I’d just paid them a compliment. ‘Which I assume you’ve applied to the current security detail?’
Tezler shook their head. ‘Not as yet. It seemed unnecessary, given that they remain ignorant of our true purpose.’
‘Very wise. Why take the risk of attracting Norgard’s attention now that she’s wasting her time investigating her own men?’
‘Precisely,’ Tezler said. ‘I can see that you understand all of the essentials.’
‘Not entirely,’ I said, coming to the nub of the matter at last. ‘I can see what you’re hoping to gain from this alliance, but I don’t really grasp what the necrons are getting out of it.’
‘My success and elevation,’ a new voice said, in impeccable Gothic, though delivered in an echoing monotone which set my teeth and inner ear on edge. I sprang to my feet, bringing my laspistol up and drawing my chainsword in one smooth motion, as the statue in the corner took a leisurely pace forward.
TWENTY-SIX
If I’m honest, I expected to die before I even pulled the trigger, but I fired anyway, placing two rounds squarely in the middle of the thing’s chest. Instead of retaliating, though, the towering figure simply stopped moving, and raised a finger in what, in a human, would have been a gesture of mild reproof.
‘Really?’ it said, in the same sepulchral voice as before. It turned to Tezler. ‘You said this one was intelligent.’
The tech-priest shuffled their feet in what I took to be an indication of embarrassment. ‘He has a reputation for considerable acuity,’ they said. ‘And he’s already demonstrated his resourcefulness by infiltrating the tomb.’
‘The disruption he inflicted is of no consequence.’
