Graham McNeill - Mechanicum

A shiver travelled the length of Dalia's spine as she felt the aching loneliness that had become part of her soul since her connection with the thing beneath the Noctis Labyrinthus. The desolate emptiness outside was so endless that Dalia could easily imagine Mars to be dead, a world utterly scoured of life and abandoned for all eternity.

She was tired, but couldn't sleep. The black emptiness behind her eyes lurked in the back of her mind like a hidden predator that would strike the instant she allowed the shadows to cloak it.

'Can't sleep, eh?' asked Zouche, and Dalia looked up. She had thought him to be asleep.

'No,' agreed Dalia, keeping her voice low. 'A lot on my mind.'

Zouche nodded and ran a hand over his shaven scalp. 'Understandable. We're out on a limb, Dalia. I just hope this journey turns out to be worth it.'

'I know it will, Zouche,' promised Dalia.

'What do you think we're going to find out there?'

'Honestly, I'm not sure. But whatever it is, I know it's in pain. It's been trapped in the darkness for such a long time and it's suffering. We have to find it.'

'And what happens when we do?'

'What do you mean?'

'When we find this thing, this… dragon. Are you thinking about freeing it?'

'I think we have to,' said Dalia. 'Nothing deserves to suffer like it's suffering.'

'I hope you're right,' said Zouche.

'You think I'm wrong to want to help?'

'Not necessarily,' said Zouche, 'but what if this thing is meant to suffer? After all, we don't know for sure who put it there, so perhaps they had a very good reason to do so? We don't know what it is, so maybe whatever it is should be left in the darkness forever.'

'I don't believe that,' said Dalia. 'Nothing deserves to suffer forever.'

'Some things do,' said Zouche, his voice little more than a hushed whisper.

'What, Zouche?' demanded Dalia. 'Tell me who or what deserves to suffer forever?'

Zouche met her stare. She could see that it was taking all his control to maintain his composure and she wondered what door she'd opened with her question. He sat in silence for a moment, then said, 'Back before people lived freely on Nusa Kambangan, it was once a prison, a hellish place where the worst of the worst were locked up - murderers, clone-surgeons, rapists, gene-thieves and serial killers. And tyrants.'

'Tyrants?'

'Oh, yes indeed,' said Zouche, and Dalia thought she detected more than a hint of bitter pride in his voice. 'Cardinal Tang himself was held there.'

'Tang? The Ethnarch?'

'The very same,' nodded Zouche. 'When his last bastion fell, he was taken in chains to Nusa Kambangan, though he was only there a few days. Word got out of who he was and another prisoner cut his throat. Though if you ask me, he got off lightly.'

'Having your throat cut is getting off lightly?' asked Dalia, horrified by Zouche's coldness.

'After what Tang did? Absolutely,' said Zouche. 'After all the bloody pogroms, death camps and genocides, you think his suffering should have ended swiftly? Tang deserved to rot in the deepest, darkest hole of Terra, condemned to suffer the same torments and agonies he inflicted on his victims. In the end, his suffering was much quicker than the millions he put to death during his reign. So, yes, I make no apology for thinking he got off lightly. Trust me, Dalia, there are some that deserve to be left in the darkness to pay for their crimes for all eternity.'

Tears rolled down Zouche's cheeks as he spoke, and Dalia felt a wave of sorrow as she felt a measure of his pain, even though she didn't fully understand it.

'My parents died in one of Tang's camps,' continued Zouche, wiping the tears away with the sleeve of his robe.

'For the crime of falling in love when they were genetically assigned to other partners. They kept their relationship a secret, but when I was born it was obvious to everyone they'd produced an inferior offspring and they were hauled off to Tang's death camp on Roon Island.'

'Oh, Zouche, that's terrible,' said Dalia. 'I'm so sorry. I didn't know.'

Zouche shrugged and stared beyond the glass of the compartment. 'How could you? But it doesn't matter. Tang's dead and the Emperor guides us now. People like Tang won't ever rise again now that the Imperium's in his hands.'

'You're not inferior,' said Dalia, cutting across his train of words.

'What?' he said, looking back at her.

'I said you're not inferior,' repeated Dalia. 'You might think you are because you look different to the rest of us, but you're not. You're a brilliant engineer and a loyal friend. I'm glad you're with me, Zouche. I really am.'

He smiled and nodded. 'I know you are and I'm grateful for that, but I know what I am. You're a good girl, Dalia, so I'd be obliged if you didn't mention this to anyone, you understand?'

'Of course,' said Dalia. 'I won't say a word. I think the rest are going to sleep all the way there, anyway.'

'Quite probably,' agreed Zouche, a discreetly extended mechadendrite linking with the port in the compartment's wall. Flickering light ghosted behind his eyelids as he linked with the mag-lev's onboard logic-engine. It was easy to forget that the Mechanicum had substantially modified Zouche, for most of his augmetics were subtle, and he was reticent about openly displaying them to one not of the Cult Mechanicum. 'It's going to take us two days to reach the point nearest the Noctis Labyrinthus, an outlying hub of Mondus Gamma in the northern Syrian sub-fabriks.'

'Two days? Why so long?'

'This is a supply train,' explained Zouche. 'We're going to pass through a lot of the borderland townships on the edge of the pallidus. According to the onboard timetable, we're about to reach Ash Border, then we'll pass through Dune Town, Crater Edge and Red Gorge before we begin the descent to the Syria Planum and Mondus Gamma.'

'Not big on originality when it comes to their settlement names, are they?' observed Dalia.

'Not really, I suppose they just name it as they see it,' said Zouche. 'When you live out on the edge of civilisation, there's a virtue in simplicity.'

'I think there's a virtue in that wherever you are,' said Dalia.

The hab was warm, but then it was always warm. Hot air rising from the magma lagoon rolled up the flanks of the volcano in dry, parching waves to leach the moisture from the air like a giant dehumidifier.

Mellicin lay on her bed, with one hand thrown over her forehead. Sweat gathered in the spoons of her collarbones and she felt uncomfortably sticky and hot. The atomiser was turned on, but might as well have been switched off for all the difference it was making. She rolled onto her side, unable to sleep and unable to stop thinking of what might be happening to Dalia and the others.

She told herself it wasn't guilt, but only half-believed it.

Zeth had placed her with Dalia with the express purpose of passing on her impressions and insights into the young transcriber's mind, and that was exactly what she had done. There had been no betrayal, no breach of trust and certainly no disloyalty.

The only betrayal would have been if she had failed in her duty to her mistress.

Why, then, did she feel so bad about telling Adept Zeth of Dalia's plans?

Mellicin knew exactly why she felt bad.

In the weeks she had worked with Dalia Cythera, Mellicin had rediscovered the joy of working on the frontiers of technology. Together they had discovered new and wondrous things, devices and theoretical science that they had gone on to prove valid. How long had it been since she, or indeed anyone in the Mechanicum, had done that? True, Adept Zeth was forever pushing the boundaries of what was known and accepted, but she was a tiny cog in a larger machine and there was only so much she dared risk.

The Mechanicum was old and unforgiving with those who disobeyed its strictures.