'Yes… the empath,' said Maximal. 'The use of a psyker disturbs me. If Dalia Cythera already has a connection to the aether, why not simply use her as the conduit?'

Zeth shook her head. 'Prolonged exposure to the aether eventually burns the conduit out. There are plenty of psykers to be had, but Dalia is one of a kind. I would not be so careless with such a valuable resource as to squander her.'

Her answer seemed to satisfy Maximal and he said, 'It is great work we do here, but there will be those who seek to stop us if they should learn of it.'

'Then we must ensure that they do not.'

'Of course,' nodded Maximal. 'But already I detect the interest of the Fabricator General and his cronies in the work carried out in your forge. Info-feeds gossip on the air and data packets are like bodies, they do not stay buried forever. You are a brilliant technologist, but you make few allies with your open scorn for Kelbor-Hal. Be careful you do not make too many enemies and attract undue attention. Such things may cost us dearly.'

'You speak of the attack on your reactor?'

'Amongst other things,' replied Maximal, watching the holographic image of Dalia as she organised her fellow workers in their tasks. 'At the Council of Tharsis, Princeps Camulos denied involvement in the attack, and, much as it surprises me, I believe him.'

'Really? From what I gather, Mortis are agitating for open warfare between the factions.'

'True, and the destruction of my prime reactor would be a logical first step in weakening their strongest opponent, Legio Tempestus, for they greatly depended on its output.'

'The Magma City will cover their shortfall.'

'I told Princeps Cavalerio that very thing,' said Maximal, 'but you and I both know that is only a temporary solution. Mortis and Tempestus are rivals of old, and with the reactor gone, the strength of those friendly to our cause grows weaker.'

'So why do you not suspect Legio Mortis involvement?'

Maximal sighed, another affectation since he had no lungs to speak of, and a mist of cold air billowed around him. 'Camulos's bluster was too confident. He knew we couldn't prove anything because there was nothing to prove. He may have helped plan the attack, but I do not believe any engines from Mortis took part.'

'Then who did?'

'I believe Chrom was behind the execution.'

'Chrom? Because you do not like him?'

'I find his manner insufferable, that is true, but there is more to it than that,' said Maximal with a precisely modulated conspiratorial tone of voice. 'There are rumours of the work he is pursuing in his forge, experiments on engines designed with artificial sentience.'

'Rumours? What rumours? I have heard nothing of this,' said Zeth.

'Few have,' said Maximal slyly, 'but few things escape my data miners. It is whispered that Chrom has even built such an engine. Supposedly, it matches the description given by the Knight pilot who saw the machine that attacked my reactor.'

Zeth shook her head. 'If Chrom has built an engine with artificial sentience, he would be a fool to let it be destroyed.'

'Perhaps it wasn't destroyed,' said Maximal. 'If it escaped into the pallidus we could search for a hundred years and not find it.'

Zeth sensed hesitancy in Maximal's manner, as though there were other facts he was aware of, but was unsure about sharing.

'Is there something else?' she asked.

Maximal nodded slowly. 'Perhaps. Each time a rumour of this machine surfaces, the data conduits whisper a name… Kaban.'

Zeth ran the name through her internal memory coils, but found no match for it.

Maximal read her lack of information in the streams of data floating in her infosphere and said, 'Even I can find only the most cryptic reference to Kaban in the vaults. Supposedly, he was an ancient potentate of the Gyptus who built the lost pyramid of Zawyet el'Aryan. Though in the few hieratic records that remain, his name is transliterated as Khaba, which may either imply dynastic problems or simply that the scribe was unable to fully decipher his name from a more ancient record.'

'And the relevance of this?'

'Purely academic,' admitted Maximal, 'but, interestingly, the records hint that Khaba may be the king's Horus name.'

'A Horus name? What is that?' asked Zeth, knowing that Maximal loved to show off the vast expanse of his archives in his knowledge of ancient times.

'The kings of Gyptus often chose names that symbolised their worldly power and spiritual might to act as a kind of mission statement for their rule,' said Maximal, and Zeth could hear the whir of data wheels as he called up more information. 'Usually the king's name was carved upon a representation of his palace with an image of the god Horus perched beside it.'

'The ''god'' Horus?'

'Indeed, the name is an ancient one,' said Maximal. 'A god of the sky, of the sun and, of course, war. The ancient Gyptians so enjoyed their war.'

'And what did this Horus name symbolise?' asked Zeth, intrigued despite herself.

'No one knows for sure, but it seems likely that it was to imply that Khaba was an earthly embodiment of Horus, an enactor of his will if you like.'

'So you are suggesting that this machine, whatever it is, was built for Horus Lupercal.'

'That would be a logical conclusion, especially as Chrom enjoys the favour of the Fabricator General, and we all know whose voice he listens to.'

'I have heard this before, but I cannot believe Kelbor-Hal values the counsel of the Warmaster over the Emperor.'

'No? I hear that Regulus has recently arrived in the solar system with missives from the 63rd Expedition. And his first port of call is Mars, not Terra.'

'That doesn't prove anything,' pointed out Zeth. 'Regulus is an adept of the Mechanicum, there is no reason to suspect any ulterior motive behind his coming to Mars first.'

'Perhaps not,' agreed Maximal, 'but when was the last time an emissary from the fleets reported to Mars before the Sigillite of Terra?'

If any of the tissue that caused the chemical and neurological reactions associated with awe were still part of what little organics remained of the Fabricator General's brain, he would no doubt have found the view through the polarised glass that topped the peak of his forge awesome.

But Kelbor-Hal - as his human name had once been - was capable of little in the way of emotional response these days save bitter anger and frustration.

Far below him, the vast forge complex of Olympus Mons stretched away beyond sight, the towering manufactorum, refineries, worker-habs, machine shops and assembly hangars covering thousands of square kilometres of Mars's surface.

The vast hive of manufacture was home to billions of faithful tech-priests of the Machine-God, the great and powerful deity that governed every aspect of life on Mars, from the lowliest tertiary reserve unit of the PDF to the mightiest forge master.

Greatest of the structures arrayed before him was the Temple of All Knowledge, a towering pyramid of pink and black marble, crowned with a dome of glittering blue stone and a forest of iron spires that pierced the sky and pumped toxic clouds into the atmosphere.

Vast pilasters framed a yawning gateway at its base, the marble inscribed with millions of mathematical formulae and proofs, many of which had been developed by Kelbor-Hal himself. Mightier, and home to more workers, priests and servitors than the Mondus Gamma complex of Urtzi Malevolus - where untold thousands of suits of battle plate and weapons were produced to supply the Astartes Legions of the Crusade - the Olympus Mons forge was less a building and more of a region.

The Fabricator General knew he should be proud of his accomplishments, for he had uncovered more technology than any before him and had overseen the longest reign of increasing production quotas in the Mechanicum's long history.