Mechanicum

The carriage began to slow, coming to a halt at the base of the cylinder with the smallest bump. The ground was floored with marble threaded with silver and gold wiring that glittered as though alive with current.

A number of unremarkable steel doors exited the chamber, but Dalia's eyes were drawn to a steady pulse of light that spilled through a low archway in one silver wall. She knew in the marrow of her bones that the source of the voices lay beyond it.

'All will become clear in time,' said Adept Zeth, 'but save your questions until I have shown you the wonders that lie within my forge.'

Kelbor-Hal stood at the very edge of the dome with his back to Kane and his hood drawn up over his elongated head. Waving manip arms were poised at his shoulders, and one turned as Kane approached. Beside the Fabricator General was the ebony-skinned automaton of Lukas Chrom, its smooth, featureless face turning towards him with apparent curiosity.

Kane disliked automatons, as he hated all attempts to mimic the perfection of the human form by mechanical means. As a mark of respect, Chrom had also gifted an automaton to Kane the previous year, but he had never activated it and it remained without power in one of the tech-vaults of Mondus Occulum.

No, the human condition could be enhanced and augmented with technology, but should never be replicated or replaced by technology.

Kane allowed himself a tight smile. The Technotheologians of Cydonia Mensae would have a field day with such apparent contradictions inherent in his thoughts. That a man so enhanced by the boons of technology should so resist the inevitable meld of human and machine.

He felt the automaton scan his biometrics, reading his identity in the organic portions of his flesh, and his electrical resonance field that was as much a unique signature - if not more so - as any gene-print.

The Fabricator General was an imposing individual, a figure rendered massively tall by the machine parts and bulky augmetics that had replaced eighty-seven point six per cent of his flesh. Mechadendrites, alive with blades, saws and myriad other attachments waved at his back, while innumerable data wheels pulsed within him. Kane wondered how much of a body could be replaced with technology and still be called human.

A green glow emanated from within Kelbor-Hal's hood, his machine face alive with flickering lights, and his internal structure whirring with activity. Kane knew better than to interrupt whatever cogitations his master was calculating, and cast his gaze through the thick glass over the glorious, sacred soil of Mars.

The entire eastern flank of Olympus Mons was laid out before him, layered with tier upon tier of engine houses, forges, docks, ore-smelteries and assembly shops that reached from the ground to the very summit of the long-dead volcano. Spires and smoke stacks clung to the mountain like a metallic fungus, hives of industry working day and night to provide for the Emperor's armies.

Millions toiled in the Fabricator General's domain, from adepts in the highest spires to oil-stained labourers in the lightless depths of the sweltering manufactorum.

Those privileged to serve the Fabricator General dwelt in the worker hives that sprawled eastwards for hundreds of kilometres like a slick out towards the corrugated landscape of the Gigas Sulci. A pall of smoke hung like a fog over the sub-hives of the worker districts, haphazard structures of steel and refuse bulked out with offcuts and unusable waste from the forges.

Beyond the domain of the Fabricator General, the volcanic plateau of Tharsis spread for thousands of kilometres, the landscape scarred by millennia of industry and exploitation. Far to the south-east, Kane could see the monstrous heat haze of Ipluvien Maximal's reactor chain and the dense cloud above his forge complex that occupied the ground between the twin craters of Biblis Patera and Ulysses Patera.

Kane switched to an enhanced vision mode, filtering out the distortion and increasing his magnification until he could see the Tharsis Montes chain of volcanoes beyond Maximal's forge.

The northernmost and largest of the gigantic mountains was Ascraeus Mons, a towering geological edifice that was home to Legio Tempestus. The middle mountain in the chain was Pavonis Mons, a brooding peak that aptly reflected the character of Legio Mortis, the Titan legion that made its fortress within its dour, ashen depths.

Furthest south was Arsia Mons, a perpetually smoke-wreathed volcano that had been brought back from dormancy by Adept Koriel Zeth to serve her Magma City, which lay on the southern flank of the mountain.

Far beyond the Tharsis Montes, the ground rose up sharply in a series of sheer escarpments before dropping down towards the vast expanse of the Syria Planum.