‘Yet you speak like a man, not a machine. You know you do – now answer my question!’ demanded the primarch.
‘I am not a man. I cannot think for myself, Lord Imperial Regent, as well you know, because I have told you repeatedly. What sentience I appear to possess is solely an illusion. A data ghost. If I were anything else, I would go against the greatest ban of the Cult Mechanicus, enshrined in the Crimson Accords at the time of the advent of the Omnissiah upon Mars – “Thou shalt not craft a machine with the mind of a man.” Such work is for the Machine-God alone. To facilitate a conduit for the inhabitance of a machine by one of the Machine-God’s holy spirits is the acme of the Mars mechanica. To fashion an ersatz soul is blasphemy, for such a thing emanates not from the triple god’s divine grace but is a vileness of human make.’
‘If anyone is going to break that ban, it would be Belisarius Cawl,’ said Guilliman.
‘That is a calumny. He would do no such thing,’ insisted the Cawl Inferior. ‘We have had this debate before. I am sure you have had the same argument with the Archmagos Belisarius Cawl also.’
I have not, thought Guilliman, but I will most certainly be doing so next time he shows his face.
‘So, to answer your question,’ the Cawl Inferior continued, for it was as garrulous as its creator, ‘I cannot reply to your satisfaction. I simply do not know the answers to the questions you seek.’
‘I asked one question.’
‘There are always more. One question begets a host. That is the nature of the quest for knowledge. If there were but one question, mankind would already exist in a state of graceful wisdom. You ask me, “Will I survive the removal of the Armour of Fate?” If yes, the next question is, “How can this be accomplished?” The one after is, “Should I attempt it?” If my answer is no, then the next question would be, “Why not?” and so on and on. I do not know if you can safely remove the armour or not. For what it is worth, I am sorry.’
‘If what you say is true,’ said Guilliman wearily, ‘then you cannot feel sorrow.’
‘I cannot. But if I could, then I would, I assure you. I do not envy your quandary. Or would not, if I felt envy.’
Guilliman’s lips thinned.
‘Very well. We are done here.’
In the course of their usual conferences, the Cawl Inferior shut itself down. At Guilliman’s insistence, the actual Belisarius Cawl had installed a single master switch that Guilliman could use to turn off the device himself. He moved for this now.
‘Wait!’ said the Cawl Inferior, for despite its protestations of unlife, it seemed to enjoy its infrequent activations a great deal.
‘What?’ said Guilliman. He opened the steel front of the switch cabinet and rested his hand on the bar of the lever within. His armoured fingers barely fit on it.
‘There are others who might know this information.’
‘I know,’ said Guilliman. ‘I would have preferred an answer from you, but if I must, then I shall go to them. Until next time, machine.’
‘Your servant as always,’ said the Cawl Inferior, with enough of a tone of irony to make Guilliman doubt its sincerity completely.
Guilliman pulled the lever to the device. The lights went out behind the heads. The dead faces ceased to gurn. The doors slid closed. The heavy sense of psychic activity lessened, though it would never disperse in that room.
‘Losenti,’ called Guilliman. ‘Come forth.’
The triple-layered door to the astropath’s quarters opened. The astropath came out again.
‘My lord?’ he said.
‘I require a favour from you. A message.’
‘My lord. What do you wish to relay to the Archmagos?’ Losenti stood tall, a sign he was preparing himself to memorise the primarch’s words then consult the code board secreted in his rooms. Cawl had an identical Cawl Inferior upon his own vessel. Or so he said.
‘You will not need your codes. The message is not for Cawl,’ said Guilliman. ‘It is for another.’
Guilliman’s Overlord gunship set down upon a plain furred with fantastical, natural sculptures of frost. A cliff of ice, blue with age, soared steeply in front of the landing ground.
The Overlord gushed steam in prodigious amounts from its temperature regulators, the deep cold of the planet straining the machine’s thermal tolerances. The Overlord dwarfed the Thunderhawks escorting it with its broad twin hulls, but the ice wall was bigger than them all, an implacable mass of frozen atmosphere unaffected by the clouds of vapour billowing up around the ships. The ground emitted curls of gas melted by the heat the ships brought to the frigid world, but it was a brief warming. As the gas rolled upwards, it was already freezing, and it got no further than a few score yards before freezing out into fat flakes of carbon snow and falling back down again through the thin air. Metal clicked with rapid contraction. Within moments, frost ran spider-quick over freezing hulls. By the time the first boarding ramps were lowered, the gunships were growing beards of ice.
Captain Sicarius and six of the Victrix Guard emerged first: three Primaris Space Marines in modestly decorated armour, and three of the older sort, whose highly ornamented plate proclaimed them as veterans of centuried experience. Their boots crunched on the untrodden plain. Gold trim glinted under the light of the naked void. There was not enough of an atmospheric envelope to obscure the cosmos from the unnamed world, and the light of its distant sun barely competed with the stars. Black was the colour of the sky at morning, noon and night.
More Primaris Space Marines emerged from their gunships. They wore a variety of liveries, their badges crossed by a pale grey chevron, but they worked together in close-knit teams. They formed a wide perimeter around the ships, dark silhouettes upon the icy white. Wing- and hull-mounted heavy weapons rotated to cover every direction over the plain and the base of the cliff.
Sicarius made his checks. He took his time, waiting for void-scry and surface auspex soundings to be performed several times. Only when he was satisfied that the area was devoid of anything but ice did he open up his vox channel to the Imperial Regent and pronounce his verdict.
‘The landing zone is clear,’ he said.
Roboute Guilliman disembarked from the Overlord.
‘I can find no foes, my lord,’ said Sicarius, ‘but there is nothing here at all, only rock and frozen air. What did you expect to find?’
‘What I seek is here,’ said Guilliman. ‘A meeting place made known to me by an old friend long ago.’ He looked up at the cliff and ran his gaze across it. He raised the Hand of Dominion and pointed a single huge mechanical digit. ‘It is there.’
Sicarius called over his auspex specialist.
‘You will find nothing,’ said Guilliman. ‘There is a door buried in the ice. Bring up melta devices and burn your way in.’ He strode along the foot of the cliff. It was peculiarly regular, the ripples in its surface almost too well formed to be natural. There were no boulders at its foot. The plain stopped, and it rose up, as if the land been neatly folded. As the primarch passed the last of the sentries, a group of them broke free from the circle and fell in with him, the rest adjusting their positions so their perimeter was again perfectly spaced. The Victrix Guard broke into a run and ranged out ahead.
Roboute Guilliman stopped in front of a section of cliff that looked no different to any of the others. He spread his hand upon the ice. It was so old time and pressure had squeezed all impurities from it. Under the dark of the sky it was almost as blue as Ultramarine armour.
‘Here,’ he said. ‘Dig.’
Water ran as fluid across the unnamed world, perhaps for the first time in its history. Huge clouds of steam roared skywards from the touch of the melta beams, and then, when the surface was breached and the Space Marines had gouged out a smooth entrance, blasted from the growing tunnel with great force. The vapour froze on anything it touched, coating the Space Marines nearest to the excavation site in hoarfrost an inch thick.