Skorgulian
Neutral forge world
The tectonic frag-drills squatting above the Acrux mines had seen better days, and so had the control tower overlooking them. The mineworks had become unproductive eight months ago, and were in the process of being re-flooded and converted into a geothermal energy source. Most of the machinery from the adjoining refinery had been removed, though the gutted shells of plant buildings and worker habs still stood, and some of the oldest and most cantankerous machine spirits were due for further ritual blessings before it would be safe to remove them from the earth.
A landing craft rumbled distantly, and as if in answer a cold breeze came knifing in through the tower’s glassless windows, scattering dust across brass instrumentation panels that were already green with verdigris. The enginseers who would once have manned the consoles were gone, though one had left his Cog necklace hanging around the shutdown levers. It twisted slowly as the wind caught it.
The restless machines who had not yet abandoned the mine shifted in answer. Grinning avatar skulls tethered to the ceiling by long, ribbed power lines twitched into life, dead bone reanimated by live steel and electrogheist force. Cones of light swept out from their eye sockets, catching the motes of dust that drifted through the air, and playing across the single figure who stood motionless in the centre of the room. They swept across a red cloak, clenched mechanical fists, a signature T-visored helmet.
+No moves just yet, secutor.+ a hissing voice cautioned, canting in holy Tech from behind Vizkop’s left shoulder. +Let us test their mettle.+
The chrome skull hanging from the ceiling by its bundle of steel-jacketed cables served as the archmagos’ eyes and voice, but he was not here - any more than the other senior magi whose avatars slithered and shifted around the room behind Vizkop. If any parts of the archmagi still existed at all, they were no doubt held in a bubbling nutrient vat somewhere deep beneath the forge cities, while their formidable minds were free to flit across Skorgulian’s noosphere as their duties and whims dictated.
Today it was their whim to steer both the Imperial and Republic delegations into this abandoned ore refinery, where they would inevitably come to blood. Vizkop had been to many forge worlds, but he had never found one as riven with bureaucracy and petty factionalism as Skorgulian. The forge masters here behaved more like the scheming noble houses of the Imperium, where a symbolic statement was equal or better than actual material gain.
Nevertheless, the Skorgulian magi’s plan was not entirely bereft of logic. No doubt both Imperials and Patriots would be here with extensive bodyguards, primed for threats and power posturing. The Skorgulians would get to see what logical arguments the two embassies could articulate
after an intense, bloody brawl.
+ + + + + +
Patriot objectives: Negotiate an alliance with the forge world’s ruling magi
The skyshield where they had touched down was abandoned; the mining complex around it silent. The stairwell down to ground level was disfigured by weeping streaks of rust and faded menial graffiti.
+Are they insulting us?+ one of Delzharian’s acolytes pulsed across the short-range communion link. +Envoys are usually received in a data temple, not an industrial husk.+
Blue lights flickered in the trenches that divided Delzharian’s synthskin face above his ears and along his jawline. “Flesh voice only.” he vocalised, curtly. “There will be passive scanners nearby, tuned to noospheric frequencies.”
The Perinetine magos cast glowing eyes across the group. Enki Volkner knew that his fellow ambassador was appraising their combat readiness. He made his own account. Two electro-priests: one Enki’s own faithful Zahir, the other a last-minute addition by the name of Burakgazi. Enki didn’t know much about that, other than that the sub-governor’s chancellor had directly requested his inclusion. Burakgazi did not appear to be armed, although it was possible that his weapons were merely hidden.
And one blessed with voltagheists is never truly unarmed.
The rest of their retinue was quite the collection of disparate instruments. Three of Delzharian’s acolytes, including Enki’s recent acquaintance Freylis. Five enginseers of lesser Knowledge. Eighteen skitarii and seven servitors of Delzharian’s own cadre. Three skull probes. Twenty baseline Adrantean soldiers, representing governor Tierce.
Together they advanced through the ruins and slag heaps, following the soft beep of Enki’s directional auspex.
The menial shacks and storage sheds were red with rust, and some had been stripped down to skeletons of girder work. The buildings where their tech-priest masters had worked - the conveyor houses and grinder plants, the hydrogen furnaces and slag separators - were all brutal-lined and loomingly oppressive, as if designed to break the spirits of the menials scurrying below. Even deserted, the overseer towers rising to either side evoked an ominous sense of being watched. Between the buildings, narrow alleyways jutted off into soot-shrouded gloom.
Following their cartographic auspex to the meeting point took them down the spine of a roofless conveyor house. The belts that had once shifted thousands of tonnes of ore from mine to blast furnace had long been removed, but the shell of the machine still remained. Serene angels and shrieking gargoyles looked down on them from the walls, hooded by wings of binary-etched iron. Enki noticed the baseline soldiers looking around. To them, the mechanicus hall was a temple to a foreign god.
He could sense the unease in them, a nervous tension that came dangerously close to fear. The red priests were silent, but no less wary. Even Freylis was subdued; notable, Enki thought, for someone who usually revolved in the opposite direction to the planet she was standing on. She crept through the ruins clad in a quietly buzzing armoured suit, exo-braced to accommodate the double autogun mounted to her right forearm. Her helmet visor reflected the light from Delzharian’s bionics as she looked at him, and then at Enki.
They were, after all, the most important two. Enki and Delzharian were their emissaries here, and it was the job of the rest to see them safe to the meeting point.
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