Mechanicum

'Of course,' said Caxton. 'The mag-lev can't exactly go through the lava now can it?'

'No, I suppose not,' said Dalia, wishing she hadn't said anything.

Caxton pulled her on and she quelled her mounting panic as they began their journey downwards. Sizzling lumen strips that flickered and hurt Dalia's eyes illuminated their route along a tunnel thronged with workers making their way to and from their shifts. They marched like automatons - one side ascending, the other descending - all in perfect unison towards or from the metropolis above.

Zouche forged them a path downwards with his squat frame and robust language, and anyone who objected to either soon bit their tongue at the sight of his thunderous stare and bunched fists.

Eventually they reached the bottom, the transit station itself, a gigantic hangar with a colossal vaulted ceiling. There seemed to be no order to the movement of the packed mass of people, just heaving bodies that moved according to tidal patterns rather than with any purpose.

Robed Protectors bearing crackling weapon-staves and the four-by-four number grid symbol of Adept Zeth policed the energetic scrum of workers, and Dalia tried to avoid looking at them for fear of attracting their attention. Servo skulls bobbed overhead, and grating binaric code spilled from vox-plates set into the walls, announcing departures and arrivals and warning travellers to beware of the void between mag-lev and platform.

'Now where?' asked Dalia, unable to make sense of the overlaid binary instructions blaring from the vox.

'This way,' said Zouche pushing through the crowds. 'It looks harder than it is, but after you've ridden the mag-lev once it's easy to find your way around.'

'I'll take your word for it,' said Dalia, taking Caxton and Severine's hands like children on a scholam outing as they set off after him.

Zouche led the way through a confusing series of ceramic-tiled tunnels until they stood on a crowded platform with hundreds of tired-looking workers.

Distorted, wavering blurts of code fragments coughed from battered vox-amps set in wooden boxes mounted on the ceiling, and even Zouche shrugged when Dalia looked at him for an explanation.

'I didn't get a word of that,' said Zouche.

'It said the next mag-lev will be delayed by two hundred and seventy-five seconds,' said a powerful voice behind them.

Dalia flinched at the sound, recognising the harsh, metallic rasp of a human voice issuing from behind a bronze mask.

She turned and looked up into a pair of glowing green eyes.

'Greetings, Dalia Cythera,' said Rho-mu 31.

The enemy Reaver was burning, the top portion of its carapace blown away by Cavalerio's blastgun after a punishing barrage from the Vulcan had stripped it of its voids. He felt the heat build in his left arm as the weapon recharged, and a clatter in his right as the autoloader recycled the mega bolter to fire again.

The enemy engine toppled backwards, flattening an ore silo and sending up a blizzard of flame and smoke. Crushed rockcrete dust billowed from its demise and even as Cavalerio exulted in the kill, he knew the other Reaver was still out there, lurking behind the burning ruins of the refinery, using the smoke and heat to mask its reactor bloom.

'Moderati, get me a mass reading!' he ordered in a squirt of binary.

'Yes, princeps.'

Information flooded him through the Manifold, a hundred different stimuli collected from the mighty engine's myriad surveyors: heat, mass, motion, radiation, vibration and shield harmonics. Everything combined to paint a world more real to Cavalerio than reality itself.

He drank the liquid data down, swallowing and digesting it in a heartbeat. His awareness of his surroundings bloomed and he saw the enemy Reaver manoeuvring around the refinery, smashing its way through the walls and roof beams of the nearby steelworks.

A flicker of heat and mass tugged at his awareness and he felt the stealthy approach of the enemy Warhound before he saw it.

'Steersman, reverse pace, flank speed! Heading two-seven-zero!'

A Warlord Titan was not built for rapid course changes, but the steersman was good and the engine obeyed with commendable speed. The building beside Cavalerio exploded into a mass of shredded girders, torn concrete slabs and sheet metal roofing. Clouds of vaporised rockcrete billowed, but Cavalerio's engine-sight could penetrate it without difficulty.

He saw the Warhound, a graceful loping predator of red and silver, dart from the shadows of a collapsed forge-hangar, its turbos blitzing with hard light. Cavalerio felt the impacts on his shields, but its angle of fire was poor and most of the shots were void-skidding.

he canted.

'Yes, princeps.'

'Moderati, firing solution!'