Mechanicum

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.'

'You can lift data from the noosphere? I didn't know that,' said Melgator, more than a little unnerved.

'Of course, the secrets of the noosphere are well known to the Sisters of Cydonia. As are the means to manipulate the mind structure beyond it.'

'What about his aegis barrier?'

'Simplicity itself to overcome.'

'Did he notice your presence?' asked Melgator.

'No, but I decided to fuse the portions of his mind that would have remembered anyway.'

'If he did not detect your intrusion, why the need to burn out his memory synapses?'

Remiare turned her deathly face towards him, and Melgator was reminded that the assassins of Cydonia did not take kindly to questions.

'Because I enjoy making living things suffer,' said Remiare. 'Zeth's apprenta will no longer be able to form memories that last. His usefulness as an individual is at an end.'

Melgator swallowed, warier than ever of the monstrous creature beside him.

At last he reached the bottom of the steps, where a skimmer palanquin of bronze and polished timber panels stood ready to carry him to the landing platform upon which his transport waited.

'So how did Zeth defeat the scrapcode attack?'

The black, soulless marbles of Remiare's eyes flickered as she retrieved and sorted the data. 'I do not know and nor does Zeth, not completely, though the apprenta was of the opinion that a female named Dalia Cythera was responsible.'

'The transcriber Zeth brought from Terra? She did it?'

'So it would seem.'

'Then we need to eliminate her as soon as possible,' said Melgator. 'Where is she?'

'Unknown. Her biometrics are not registered in the Martian database.'

'She was working in Zeth's forge and she's not even Cult Mechanicum?'

'Apparently not.'