The Horus Heresy: The Master of Mankind

‘Golden One,’ she said again. ‘I wish you to note the honour I take in being appointed to your service.’ The vox-bleating that passed for her voice was entirely starved of emotion. Diocletian stood still as her black iron fingertips circled a ragged puncture in his breastplate. Machinery clicked in her sloping, elongated skull as she calculated the necessary repairs down to levels of exactitude far beyond the human eye. The scratching and scraping of her meticulous inspection made the Custodian’s teeth ache.

‘Such incredible brutality,’ said Iosos, ‘inflicted upon such fine work. Such distinctive signatures in the ruination. Each wound in the auramite is something singular, something unique.’

A murmured hum filled the air around her augmented skull as its internal cogitators struggled to process the impossible findings.

‘Incredible,’ the archwright said at several intervals. And then once, ‘Do you see, here? These lacerations in the auramite layers are quite literally impossible. The carved segments at the manubrium bracing could only have been caused by something that violates the laws of physics. Something that moves in and out of corporeal reality, appearing inside the metal, dissipating matter rather than breaking it.’

‘Fascinating,’ Diocletian replied, his tone dead.

The archwright’s bestial allotment of eye-lenses cycled and refocused. ‘It is, isn’t it? And this, here, the metal itself is diseased. This isn’t damage, it’s infection. A contagion at the clavicle supports, taking root in the auramite layering as though it were flesh.’

‘How much longer will your inspection take?’

‘Impossible to calculate.’ Three of Iosos’ many hands reached for a particularly savage rent in Diocletian’s shoulder layering, their fingers quivering in fascination. She caressed the ripped plating with the sound of knives scraping over stone. ‘I understand you are forbidden to speak of what transpires in the Imperial Dungeon. But may I ask of the Omnissiah? How does the Machine-God fare since He exiled Himself to His sacred laboratory? What works of genius will He bring back to the surface when He once again deigns us worthy of His presence?’

Diocletian and Kaeria shared another glance. ‘The Emperor is well,’ the Custodian replied.

Iosos froze, her fingertips resting at the edges of the wound she’d been examining. The cogitators in her elongated skull whined as they struggled with what she had just heard. Before she could speak, she blurted a screed of mangled machine code.

‘Your voice patterns,’ she said, muted and low, ‘suggest you are deceiving me.’

Diocletian bared his teeth in an expression that wasn’t a smile, nor a grimace; it was a flash of fangs, the expression a lion might wear as it was backed into a corner.

‘The Emperor lives and works on,’ the Custodian said. ‘Does that reassure you?’

‘It does.’

When Diocletian picked up the war spoil from the battlements, three of Iosos’ many hands reached for the relic, the tech-priest’s inhuman fingers quivering in all-too-human awe. Diocletian pulled it back, refusing to let her steal it.

‘Where are your manners, Martian?’

The archwright was respiring heavily. ‘Where did you come by this?’

‘I am forbidden from answering.’

Kaeria interrupted with a curt hand gesture. Diocletian turned, as did Iosos.

‘You look exhausted unto death,’ came a cold voice from the arched door.

Constantin Valdor, First of the Ten Thousand, strode towards them. The bitter Terran wind breathed against the side of his nationless features, carrying the scents of distant forges and the chemical tang of the great cannons lining the battlements. The Throneworld had always borne the alkali scent of history, from the dust of a million cultures waging war upon one another down the many millennia. The cycle was now mercilessly set to begin anew. For the first time in its long history, mankind’s cradle had known peace. The Emperor had conquered all, and the Pax Imperialis rose from the rubble. Rather than do battle upon the already-wasted soil, humanity had sent its greatest, mightiest armies into the void, to wage war far from their home world.

And yet war was coming, against all reason. Terra’s peace had been nothing but an illusion, born of false and foolish hope.

Kaeria greeted the Captain-General with a brief series of hand gestures. Diocletian saluted with the symbol of Unity, fist against his heart, a salute that Valdor returned.

‘Where is Jasaric?’ Valdor asked at once.

‘Dead.’

‘Kadai?’

‘Dead. He died with Adnector Primus Mendel.’

Valdor hesitated. ‘Ra?’

‘Ra lives. He is overseeing the defences in the wake of Magnus’ ignorance,’ said Diocletian. ‘I am here in the tribune’s place.’

‘Ra, then,’ Valdor said at last, as if weighing the name and the consequences that came with it. ‘So be it.’