The Beast Arises

‘No, Fabricator Locum,’ Andromaq replied simply. ‘Complex tactics can be met with complex tactics. They create options. The Veridi giganticus restrict our responses with strategic simplicity. There are just more of them. Beyond a certain magnitude, the numbers will not be worked or contrived. In my opinion, we are beyond that point.’

‘Estimated planetary casualties?’ Phylax asked.

‘Eighty million,’ Phylax’s spindly high logist informed him, scuttling forwards. As calculus-principal of the congressium, he was best placed to make such an astronomical estimate. ‘And rising, Lord Fabricator.’

‘Has the congressium revised its statistical appraisal?’ Phylax queried.

‘Only downwards, my lord,’ the high logist replied. ‘As the full magnitude of the xenos invasion has been revealed to us, we have collated data and updated our recommendations. We submit for your consideration a revised estimation of zero point four per cent chance of victory.’

‘You are saying that we cannot repel this invasion.’

‘We’re saying that the Machine God’s servants on Incus Maximal cannot survive this invasion, my lord.’

Altarius Phylax allowed himself a moment to process what his high logist was saying.

‘And of our sister forge-world?’

‘By the vast majority of comparative measures, data from Malleus Mundi tells us they are faring worse than we are,’ the high logist informed him.

‘Siege-savant?’

‘They have the Legio Fornax,’ Borz Entaurii said. ‘And what I wouldn’t give for their god-machines right now on our hallowed ice.’

‘Ambassador Utherica,’ Phylax called.

‘Lord Fabricator?’ a silver-skinned crone in dark robes said as she presented herself before him. Her aged face was overlaid with circuitry that glittered with tiny synaptic sparks.

‘Do we have word or cant from the Lady of the Furnace?’ Phylax asked the ambassador from Malleus Mundi.

The crone cackled code back at him before drifting absently into Gothic. ‘Only that she would have you know that the Titans of the Legio Fornax bring down the vengeance of the Omnissiah on the xenos vermin and, Machine God willing, shall burn them from the glacial surface of our world.’

‘I don’t mean to contradict the Ambassador…’ Savant Entaurii began.

‘Proceed,’ Phylax invited. The hololith magnified the Malleus Mundi forge-world. Even from orbit, the planetary damage was obvious and catastrophic. One-half of the planet had been torn up and reduced to berg-scattered slush. Mons temples and cryoforge clusters streamed black destruction and the glittering white surface of the ice world was clouded with the black murk of alien hordes, swallowing the world like a growing shadow.

‘They’re troop movements,’ Phylax said, understanding immediately what the siege-savant was attempting to communicate.

‘Yes, my lord.’

‘I suspect,’ the Fabricator Locum said, ‘that our own world appears similarly from orbit.’

‘I can bring up the…’

‘That won’t be necessary,’ Phylax told Entaurii.

Altarius Phylax tried to reach out beyond the cold logic of his directives and protocols. This was not without difficulty, and felt vague and unnatural. Feel he did, however, and he found his way to a part of his humanity all but forgotten — the part that ached without reason for those lost to him and those he was losing. He allowed fancies and visualisations to sear sharply to focus in his mind. He dwelled on the dead — their corpses hacked to meat and wiring on the ice. He hurt for the living, those blankly processing their last orders and impulses under the barbarian invaders’ blades. He experienced a connection — something that didn’t require cant or code but travelled broad and far. A connection not only between himself and all Incusians, but also between the billion victims of the twin forge-worlds. The feeling was incredible and unpleasant. He indulged its overwhelming power a moment more before allowing the prejudice of his protocols their former supremacy.

‘Ambassador — Legio Fornax or not, I think that the Lady of the Furnace has to accept her forge-world is lost,’ Phylax said finally. The crone said nothing. The attendant magi and forge masters stiffened. ‘As must I.’

‘What do you mean, Lord Fabricator?’ the high logist asked.

‘I mean, it is time to let Incus Maximal go.’

‘The Lords Diagnostica will not sanction such an action,’ the high logist informed Phylax with cautious force. ‘They will speak against it at the machine altars. They will claim Incus Maximal as the Omnissiah’s sovereign territory and the Machine God’s subjects as the ordained defenders of such rites — to the last man and machine.’

‘This is not a cult matter,’ Phylax said simply. ‘Besides — as Fabricator Locum do I not speak for the Omnissiah on Incus Maximal?’

‘Yes, my lord.’

‘Then it is decided. If I don’t act now — right now — there won’t be anyone left at the machine altars to preach to,’ Altarius Phylax said. He looked to Ambassador Utherica. ‘Perhaps our action might stir the Lady of the Furnace to similar mercies and to defy the will of her own Diagnosticians.’