'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 The machine's weapons are no longer active.'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.'