The Master of Mankind by Aaron Dembski-Bowden

Author:Aaron Dembski-Bowden
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Published: 2016-10-05T10:32:26+00:00

Twelve

Sacristan Apex

Starved of ammunition

Renewal

Weeks into the realignment process, Jaya was still struggling. She slid the last five metres down the ladder, tearing off her helmet and breathing in the crisp, hot metal tang of the hangar bay. Torolec, her Sacristan Apex, was waiting for her.

‘It’s the pressure valves in the left knee’s pneumatics,’ she said to the robed figure. ‘It’s affecting the turning circle.’

Torolec was tall and slender beneath his hooded robe, proud to wear the black and laurel-green and rearing pegasus of House Vyridion. He was beribboned at all times by devotional parchments, often fluttering in the heat wash of engine exhaust as he attended to his sacred work. As Sacristan Apex he was the house’s foremost machine-seer, and at three hundred years of age, he had known and served Jaya her entire life. He’d refused to return to Highrock with the rest of the fleet, and Jaya had respected the wishes of her family’s oldest retainer. Given the circumstances and how events had played out, she was doubly grateful for his presence.

‘I have re-attuned them twice now,’ the old man replied. Around his words, the breath of the ventilation systems roared on. Air filtration gargoyles breathed in the forge scent and exhaled recycled air, dragon-keen, doing little to diminish the sweltering heat. ‘And I say again, baroness – the flaw is with the Merging. You are blaming consecrated metal and obedient mechanisms when all evidence points to a disconnect between scion and Knight.’

Two servitors walked forwards to remove her breastplate and pauldrons, but Jaya warned them back. ‘I spent all of last night in meditative reflection,’ she argued. ‘I feel no such disconnect.’

Torolec moved away, heading towards the idle Knight, giving Jaya little choice but to follow. The sacristan held up two bionic hands extending from the same elbow, placing twin palms on the unpainted Knight’s armoured toe-plating.

‘You resist its noble spirit. It resists yours. Two stubborn souls locked in discord.’

Jaya pursed her lips. Only Torolec would be allowed to speak to her so. ‘My spirit is at ease,’ she lied.

‘Then I shan’t argue with you, baroness.’ Torolec looked up at the towering war machine in all its bleak glory. Where proud and bright house colours should show, only bare and scratched metal met the eye. Where war banners should hang, depicting the Knight’s own deeds and the honourable service of its scion pilot, there was nothing at all. Soon they would march to war in these cast-offs and jury-rigged exiles from still-living houses, and do battle for the first time without Vyridion’s pennants waving in the wind.

‘I find you in a mood of rare charity if you are unwilling to argue,’ said Jaya.

Torolec’s amusement showed on his wizened features, sparkling in his eyes. ‘You should reboard, baroness. Perhaps the next exercise will work towards merging you with your new armour. We are scheduled for weapons trials.’

‘I have dry-fired that decrepit thing’s guns a hundred times.’

‘Indeed! Today, however, you are to be loaded for live fire.’

Jaya stared at him.

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