Forges of Mars (Warhammer 40,000) by Graham McNeill

Author:Graham McNeill [McNeill, Graham]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: Games Workshop
Published: 2017-03-10T16:00:00+00:00

Microcontent 13

The summons had come less than an hour later, and Roboute was just surprised it had taken that long, given the immediacy with which the priests of Mars could communicate. The clipped message from Archmagos Kotov gave no clue as to the tone of the forthcoming audience, but Roboute had no doubt there would be preening outrage, followed by an immediate cessation of all privileges aboard the Speranza and the revoking of his contract with the Mechanicus.

A pair of high-function valet-servitors in robes of pale cream escorted him through the gilded doors of Kotov’s stateroom, a lavishly appointed chamber with numerous anterooms, libraries and sub-chambers branching off with what felt like mathematical precision.

He felt like a convicted murderer on his way to execution, yet the thought gave him little trouble. Roboute was ready to take whatever punishment Kotov felt fit to dispense, be it incarceration or execution, but was equally ready to fight tooth and nail to see to it that his crew were exempted from his fall from grace.

The servitors led him into an enormous circular chamber of tall marble columns supporting a domed roof that was easily three hundred metres wide and adorned with frescoes depicting the early colonisation of Mars. Complex holographic representations of sacred geometries, holy algebraic equations and trigonometric proofs floated in the spaces between the columns, endlessly working themselves through from origination to completion.

Around the curved walls were hundreds of headless mannequins, armour stands and portions of robotic armatures, or so Roboute thought until he recognised a number as being bodies Kotov had worn over the course of the expedition. The servitors halted in the middle of the chamber, wordlessly indicating that Roboute should remain while they departed.

Roboute turned on the spot, looking up at the fresco on the curved inner faces of the dome, now seeing that it was in fact an immense map of Mars. Olympus Mons was represented at the centre of the dome, as though Roboute was looking down on the immense mountain from high above. At its dizzying peak stood a red-armoured warrior atop a bound man with skin of scaled silver. Surrounding the warrior were a host of artists, poets and musicians, each of whom were masters of their art. Golden light haloed the warrior’s upraised head, and that light spread across the surface of the Red Planet like irrigating flows of knowledge that illumined the far corners of the world.

‘I believe it is called Mars Vanquishing Ignorance, Mister Surcouf, one of Antoon Claeissens’s last pieces before his untimely death during the legendary nano-plague at Hive Roznyka during the wars of Unity,’ said Archmagos Kotov, striding in from what the compass points on the pediment above told Roboute was the eastern approaches. ‘It lay fading and disintegrating in a forgotten vault beneath the Tharsis Montes and I spent a considerable sum restoring it for transplantation to the Speranza.’

For this audience, Kotov had come clad in robes that made him look much more like the archmagos he was, instead of a jade or gold-armoured knight.

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