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The Spirit of Cogs – Extract

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The Spirit of Cogs

John French

‘What dreams sleep in iron that by the turning wheel mankind has brought to waking?’

– from the Smith’s Address as spoken in the Penitent Cycles of Terra

‘There are ghosts in machines.’ Glavius-4-Rho looked up from the mirror of the blade in his hands as he spoke.

The former Sister of Battle sat on the floor of the armourium, legs crossed, armour replaced by a grey hessian smock. She had been sitting there ever since she had brought him the sword. It had been damaged, the edge notched and a tine sheared from the cross-guard. He had taken it from her and begun the repairs as soon as she had shown it to him. He had not grieved for the damage done to the sword – some things were created to be damaged.

‘Ghosts?’ said Severita at last. ‘Machines have spirits – that is what all of your priesthood say, isn’t it?’

He felt the servos in his frame twitch as a plasma flame lit on his workbench. Part of him wondered if starting this exchange had been wise. He was a magos after all, a high guardian of the truths and mysteries of the most sacred Machine-God…

No… he was not. That was factually incorrect. He had failed. He had lost the machines and knowledge entrusted to his care. He was a penitent, grey-robed, where once he had been clad in red. Without rank where once he had been most high. He served Inquisitor Covenant now – that was his function.

He looked again at Severita. Like him, she was an outcast from her own kind. She had been a warrior of the Adepta Sororitas but some transgression had seen her cast from her order, service to Covenant replacing the bonds to her sisters. He liked her, and she had made a habit of talking to him. She asked him questions, questions not about the function of things but about him, about what he had experienced, about what he believed. He did not understand why. A non-logical part of his mind thought that she was trying to redeem him.

He focused his attention on the sword for fifteen seconds while his servo-arms held it steady as he dipped its blade into the plasma flame on his workbench. Blue fire washed over its edge and sent light fizzing from its mirror finish. The beam cut off and he held the blade as it cooled.

Severita was still looking at him, head cocked, waiting for a reply to her question.

Glavius-4-Rho selected a mode of expression that he thought was correct. ‘All machines possess spirits. That is a fact and truth. I did not speak of spirits. I spoke of ghosts.’

The skin around Severita’s eyes creased further. Glavius-4-Rho turned back to the blade and focused the plasma flame to a narrow knife of fire.

‘There are no such things as ghosts,’ Severita said. ‘Daemons, yes, but not ghosts.’

‘Are you certain you wish to understand what I mean?’ he asked, staring down at the blade as it began to glow with heat.

‘I would have an answer if you would give it.’

He felt the seconds pass and the cogs in his chest tick over.

‘As you command,’ he said, and began to speak.

It was 401 days after my ascendancy to the rank of magos when I went to waken the machine in the underworld of Zhao-Arkkad.

Not all of those who serve the machine are made in the sight of its great forges. I was one such. My biological self began its life cycle on Mithras. The techno-clans of the second conurbation were my originators. I cannot remember my direct biological forebears. The first level of mental augmentation removed those memories when I was fourteen years. I do not miss them. I cannot remember what to miss.

I survived the early years of un-augmented life. I showed aptitude in assembly and logic application. I have memory residue from those times: a mental image of a drop of blood on fingers, geometric blocks of bronze alloy tumbling from their grasp, shouts of admonition, the flash of an electro-whip. I hear cries sometimes. I don’t know whose cries they are.

The representatives of the priesthood had already marked me as a potential subject for induction into their ranks. I was inducted into the orders of artisans. I assimilated the first levels of sacred maintenance and construction processes. I manifested the ability to replicate and memorise without error. I was blessed with machine creations to replace my hands.

At the passing of 21,233 years I was taken within the embrace of the Omnissiah. My sponsors were the Demi-flux Governors, a sanctioned branch concerned with the transference of electro-power and field parameters. There were other sects and branches who had marked me for their ranks. The high induction engines, though, calculated my characteristics being of most use to the Demi-flux Governors. If I had a preference on my path into the priesthood, I no longer store it in my memory – it was and is irrelevant.

I progressed through the levels of flux-savants. Further augmentation was made to my physical and mental architecture. At the point when I was raised to the rank of magos my physical self was 43.56 per cent of the machine. My cognition functioned between 35.45 and 37.23 per cent purity. In form my face was the blank mask of an aspirant, the nerves beneath the skin severed and expressive muscles paralysed. My hands and forearms were plasteel and black carbon. My primary organs had just been replaced, though my torso was still blood and bone. I recall that I was still adjusting to the rhythm of my new heart when I made my journey to Zhao-Arkkad.

Zhao-Arkkad was the first true forge world I had ever seen, and it was like nothing that I had expected. That may seem inconstant to you, but the sacred worlds of Omnissiah are few, our empire exists beside that of the Imperium, entwined with it, and my training had been in the priesthood’s enclaves on Mithras, Glaucon and in the void forges of Jeddev. Zhao-Arkkad was not an enclave world – it was a world given body and soul to iron, to the furnace and turning wheel, to the song of the blessed electro. But this soul hid beneath a skin of forests. It was a wonder and a paradox.

The fumes of engines were the clouds, and the rains that fell onto the green canopy were rich with radiation and minerals. Predator fauna thrived amongst the equally lethal flora. The Primary Forge Fane Complexes were buried beneath the ground, connected by tunnels and sealed against life on the surface. In these underground realms, the machine fanes and anvil districts stretched to the limits of the stone walls. Spires of data temples and the chimneys of fume vents rose to the stone ceilings and the thunder of forge hammers blended with the crackle of static leaping from wall to wall and spire to spire. Seeing that, hearing that, feeling that, was one of the most sacred experiences I have ever had.

That moment was brief.

I had thought that I would be installed in one of the electro-fanes; the divine flow of plasma and reactor rituals had been my calling since I had been raised to the cog. Instead I found that I was to be diverted to an isolated facility on the southern continent. No one could give me specific data on the purpose I was to fulfil there or even the name of the facility. I was to travel there by air, departing from an obscure landing pad set in a crater on the surface above the forge complex.

When I arrived at the landing pad, a shuttle was waiting. It bore no marks. That was an anomaly; everything I had seen since my arrival was stamped and marked with code and function. It took off as soon as I arrived.

There were two others with me. The first was a man of largely biological make-up, uniformed in the style of the Collegia Titanica, but without markings of Legion or rank. All of his noospheric data was also absent. He was a non-presence. A ghost. He offered me a curt sign of respect, but no further data.

‘What is your allocated personal identifier?’ I asked.

‘Zavius,’ he answered.

‘And your designated rank and organisational placement?’

He did not answer. Not even with a negatory.

<He will not comply with any other query,> linked the other individual in the shuttle. She was called Ishta-1-Gamma. She had greeted me formally when I had arrived and made a full data exchange. She was a hermetrix – an initiate into the higher mysteries of data transference, neural linking and communication interface. If information is to the machine as blood is to the biologic, then she was to the machine what a blood doctor is to a living being. Her robes of office were orange, woven with graphite thread. Her noospheric aura was multi-sphered, coloured and patterned with the canticles of data fidelity. Her data transmission was 99.999 per cent flawless. I had to acknowledge that I was impressed.

<He bears the signs of the Collegia Titanica,> I replied. Outside the grey-blue clouds were dragging past the shuttle’s portholes.

<He is a princeps,> sent Ishta-1-Gamma. The pause in my data reply must have communicated a query, because she continued. <He has mind-interface plugs and neural augmentation that is only gifted to those of that rank and position. He has refused all my greetings in all formats. Correction – his data links are shut down and he ignores audio greetings. Strange.>

<Strange?>

<Strange. Unusual or surprising. Difficult to understand or explain.>

<I apologise – I am aware of the word’s meaning. I did not follow your line of reasoning.>

Ishta-1-Gamma’s data aura rippled with symbol sets that denoted amusement in a number of language systems. <It was less of a deduction and more of a non-vital conversational opening,> she sent.

<Oh.>

I paused to parse that for several seconds.

The shuttle was gaining speed towards the southern continents now, weaving between columns of storm cloud. Its engines were singing at optimal output. I could feel the contentment of its spirit in the vibration of its skin. Through the portholes, you could see the waste rivers from the forge complexes’ outflows, a rainbow of reds, blues and oranges draining into green land.

<It is strange…> I transmitted to Ishta-1-Gamma, and looked at her. Her face was an ellipsoid of red ceramic. A quartet of teal eye lenses sat in a band across the top half. A vertical slot sat in the location of a mouth. There were no other features. <Do you have data on where we are going, or our purpose when we arrive?> I asked.

<I do not have that data…> She paused, but the transmission did not close. <But I have some theories based on dispersed logic.>

<You mean what the unblessed would call guesses?>

<Correct.>

A moment of silence on the data link. The wheels in my newly installed cognition implants clicked over. I glanced at Zavius, but the princeps showed no sign of having heard what we were transmitting.

<There is no possibility of the princeps intercepting this exchange,> Ishta-1-Gamma noted.

<Why are you concerned by that?>

<For the same reason you are,> she replied, <because the absence of data is disturbing.>

<Conceded. What are your… guesses as to what is occurring?>

<Facts first – I am a devotee of the divine spark of data and transmission. You are a magos of dataetherica. Neither of us are from this forge world. You arrived 2.45 days ago. I arrived 3.34 days ago. We are outsiders to the structures of this world.>

<The high magi of Zhao-Arkkad may not have available resources in those specialities,> I replied. I could see the possible branches of inference forming from her assembly of facts. Negative emotions were building up in my mental buffers.

<Or they do and the need is for individuals whose absence will not be noted and who have no connections through which to share data with the wider priesthood on this world.>

<There are other possible reasons. Those you have outlined have no greater logical weighting than any other.>

<True.>

Another silence.

The cogs turned in my cranium and the shuttle flew on. The nearest entrance to a forge complex was now far behind us. This was the Nul Zone, a reach of Zhao-Arkkad that hid no machine-filled caverns beneath its green shroud, just a vast area of hostile bio-fauna feeding grounds. Grey and black clouds passed us, and black rain began to spatter the window ports and front canopy. Needle-like crags of black rock rose from the ground. Streams of water poured down their sides, bright green or blue with minerals leeched from below.

I admit that a disturbance had entered my thoughts. Perhaps it was Ishta-1-Gamma’s guesses. Perhaps it was something in the green desolation of the land before us, bare of the shapes of machines and buildings. Perhaps it was because, for the first time in my life, I felt a long way from the familiar.

<Landing approach protocols initiated,> transmitted the shuttle’s servitor pilot. A second later I detected a shift in the air pressure. I looked out of the portholes, expecting to see a landing pad rising from the jungle canopy, but there was nothing except a range of mountains. The light was fading.

The shuttle continued to lose altitude. I looked at Ishta-1-Gamma, but her noospheric aura was repeating a pattern of blank data values. I looked out again. The sides of the mountains were close enough now that they filled the view; a black-grey wall stretched before us. The shuttle began to shake.

Zavius was on his feet, face showing no emotional markers. He moved to the back of the crew space, balancing effortlessly with the vibration of the craft. I felt high-power auspex reach out and burrow into the shuttle.

<Submitting clearance codes,> the pilot servitor broadcast. <Standing by…>

Seconds decremented. The shuttle flew on towards the mountainside.

<Clearance granted. Landing protocol initiated. All praise to the vigilance of the machine.>

The whine of the shuttle’s engines was a scream. The mountainside was so close I could see the canopy lights reflecting off the wet rock. I felt a cold shutter fall across my thoughts as my emotional buffers activated.

Thrusters fired. The shuttle spun around and dropped vertically down. The fading light vanished. My eyes captured a brief image of the external view. We were plunging down a vertical shaft…

Melta-bored walls…

Diameter: 33.43 metres…

Gun platforms mounted at 50-metre intervals…

Multi-laser and plasma cannons…

Cabin temperature dropping at 1 degree per 50 metres…

The shuttle’s thrusters fired to the edge of tolerance. We settled to stillness, moisture running off the fuselage. Zavius still stood in front of the rear access ramp. Beyond the canopy I could see guide lights flashing in the dark. We rocked in place for a second, suspended in the freezing air, surrounded by the fog from our thruster jets. Then we settled onto the landing platform. The shuttle’s engines cycled down as the ramp at the back opened.

‘You will follow,’ said Zavius, looking back at us before stalking down the ramp himself. I glanced at Ishta-1-Gamma.

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A Black Library Publication

First published in Inferno! Volume 3 in Great Britain in 2019.
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