'An assassin is a precaution?' asked Zeth, turning towards Remiare. 'Has the Cydonian Sisterhood fallen so far that they are now mere bodyguards?'

The assassin cocked her head to one side, like a bird of prey regarding a helpless morsel, and though glistening fabric obscured her expression, Zeth felt an acute tremor along the adamantium curve of her spine.

'I can taste your fear of me,' said Remiare softly, her eyes like black marbles behind the horned death mask. 'Yet still you bait me with barbed words. Why would you do this when you know I can kill you?'

Zeth controlled her breathing and metabolic rate with a measured release of glanded stimms as Melgator said, 'There will be no killing, Remiare. This is a mission of renewed friendship in a time when allies are to be more prized than pure-streaming data.'

Melgator turned to Zeth, his hands held out before him. 'Yes, I bring a warrior to your forge, but it is only because our very way of existence is threatened that I come so accompanied.'

'Threatened by whom? Does the Fabricator General know who unleashed the corrupt code into the Martian systems.'

'He does not know for certain, but he has strong suspicions,' replied Melgator.

'Any you would care to divulge?'

Melgator began circling the fire shaft towards Zeth, lacing his hands behind his back as he walked.

'Perhaps,' nodded Melgator. 'But may I first ask how the Magma City escaped the devastation so many other, less fortunate, forges suffered?'

Zeth hesitated, unsure of how much Melgator knew and how much he only suspected. In truth, she wasn't entirely sure why her forge had been spared, though she had her suspicions, none of which she was comfortable sharing with a minion of the Fabricator General.

In the end she decided on a partial truth. 'I believe the singular nature of the noosphere prevented the debased code from entering my systems,' she said.

'And yet the forges of Ipluvien Maximal and Fabricator Locum Kane suffered in the attack. They have recently upgraded their information networks to the noosphere, have they not? So perhaps there is some other reason you were spared?

said Zeth, hoping Melgator would read the honesty in her cant and not the evasion of her words. She prayed that Polk's aegis barriers in his noospheric aura were in place.

'Then might it be the latest endeavour taking shape within your Inner Forge? It has not gone unnoticed that your newest creation, whatever it is, requires lowly transcribers sequestered from Terra and a great many psykers secretly brought down from the Black Ships.'

'How can you think you know what goes on within my inner forge?' asked Zeth, shaken to the core of her being that Melgator was aware of such things.

Melgator laughed. 'Come now, Adept Zeth. You think the workings of any adept on Mars are truly hidden? Information is woven into every passage of electrons across the surface of the red planet and you know how the spirits of machines love to share their secrets.'

'The workings of my forge are my own to know, Melgator,' snapped Zeth. 'As I said, I believe that it was my adoption of the noosphere that saved my forge from destruction.'

Melgator smiled ruefully. 'Very well, I will accept that. Perhaps if you had freely shared the technology of the noosphere with your fellow adepts then Mars might have been spared the horror of the Death of Innocence.'

'Perhaps if the Fabricator General had put more faith in the noosphere when I presented it to him, that might have been the case,' countered Zeth.

Melgator smiled, conceding the point. 'May I speak frankly, Adept Zeth?'

'Of course, the Chamber of Vesta is a place of honest discourse.'

'Then I will be blunt,' said Melgator. 'My master believes he knows the source of the attack on our infrastructure and he seeks to rally all true sons and daughters of Ares to the defence of Mars.'

'The defence of Mars?' asked Zeth, nonplussed. 'Defence against whom?'

'Against Terra.'

Zeth was stunned. Of all the answers she had expected Melgator to give, this had not been amongst them. She tried to cover her surprise, by turning and looking out over the Martian landscape. The sky was turning from blue to purple, heavy, toxin-laden clouds sparking with lightning over the distant forge of Mondus Gamma.

'Terra,' she said, slowly as though tasting the word for the first time.

'Terra,' repeated Melgator. 'Now that the Great Crusade is almost at an end, the Emperor desires to end his union with Mars and take our world for his own.'

'Kelbor-Hal thinks the Emperor attacked us?' asked Zeth, spinning to face Melgator. 'Do you realise how insane that sounds?'

Melgator approached her with a pleading look. 'Is it insane to want to hold on to what we have built here over the millennia, Adept Zeth? Is it insanity to suspect that a man who has all but conquered the entire galaxy should allow one world among millions to remain aloof from his empire? No, the attack on our world's information systems was but the first strike in breaking the Treaty of Olympus and bringing the Mechanicum to heel.'

Zeth laughed in his face. 'I see now why you brought this assassin with you, Melgator - in case I should call you traitor and have you killed.'

Melgator's stance changed from one of supplication to one of aggression in an instant and hands that had once been outstretched towards her now dropped to his sides.

'You would do well to choose your next words carefully, Adept Zeth.'

'Why would that be? Will you have Remiare here kill me if you don't like them?'

'No,' said Melgator. 'I would not be so foolish as to anger the Omnissiah by murdering an adept of Mars in her own forge.'

'The Omnissiah?' spat Zeth. 'You speak of the Emperor breaking faith with the Mechanicum and in the next breath use him as a reason not to murder me?'

'I speak of the Omnissiah as an aspect of the Machine-God yet to manifest, not the Emperor.'

'Most believe them to be one and the same.'

'But not you?'

'You already know what I believe,' said Zeth, angered beyond caution. 'There is no Machine-God. Technology is science and reason, not superstition and blind faith. It's what I've always believed and it's what I still believe. Now if you're not going to kill me, get out of my forge!'

'Are you sure about this, Zeth?' asked Melgator. 'Turning your back on the Fabricator General will have dire consequences.'

'Is that a threat?'

'A threat? No, merely a reiteration that we live in dangerous times and that the friendship of powerful allies would be no bad thing in the days ahead.'

'Friendship? Kelbor-Hal asks me to side with him against Terra!' barked Zeth. 'What manner of friend would ask such a thing?'

Melgator slid his hands into the sleeves of his robes. 'The kind that knows what is best for Mars.'

Melgator slowly descended the steps of Zeth's forge, savouring the memory of Adept Zeth's admission of her disbelief in the Machine-God. It was all the excuse the Fabricator General needed to seize the Magma City and learn all the secrets of her forge, and Zeth had handed it to them on a plate.

He wiped a hand across his brow. Sweat beaded on his forehead in the intolerably dry heat that wrapped the city like a shroud. Melgator had travelled far and wide in his role as ambassador, but this place had to rank as one of the most inhospitable on Mars.

The sooner it was plundered and laid to waste the better.

Beside him, Remiare hovered effortlessly above the steps, her masked face unreadable in the orange-lit gloom.

'Zeth knows why she escaped the scrapcode's attack,' said Melgator. 'Or at least she suspects she knows.'

'Of course,' answered Remiare. 'Her apprenta was bleeding fear and information from his noospheric aura. I have stored everything I could access from his files on Zeth's work in my memory coils, and I will exload them to the Fabricator General's logic engines upon our return to Olympus Mons.'