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urges. The condition is usually accompanied by myasthenia gravis, osteochondritis, osteoporosis, scoliosis and leukaemia,' Aemos

finished.

Kaleil widened his eyes. 'I thought you were a doctor of metals, doctor, not a medicae.'

'I am. But gravity, that invisible power, is a fundamental part of the life of all elements. So I take an interest in it.'

'Yeah, well… the predictions said Cinchare might become unviable due to gravity in ninety years. But the human body is softer than a

hunk of mineral ore. The Gravs first showed up about two years back. Workers getting sick. A few cases of violence and insanity.

Then we realised what was going on. Imperial Allied pulled out nine months ago. Ortog seven.'

'It's ironic,' Aemos said. 'Cinchare is mineral rich precisely because of the exotic gravities it has been subjected to in its billion year

life. Elements have been transmuted and rearranged here in ways that may be unique. Cinchare is a precious philosopher's stone, my

friends, an alchemist's dream! And now mankind cannot benefit from its gifts for precisely the same reason they exist in the first

place!'

'Yeah, doc, ironic is what it is,' said Bandelbi, knocking back his ale.

'That doesn't explain why you're still here,' I said.

'Skeleton crew,' said Kaleil in a tone that said it was none of my business. 'The Adeptus Mechanicus pulled out too, about three

months ago. But one of theirs stayed behind. Some sort of vital research that had to be finished. And we were ordered to stay behind

and keep Cinchare Minehead open until he finished.'

I moved round and looked out of the station windows. The plaza was empty of everything except trash. 'And how many is "we",

Enforcer?'

'Service crew of twenty. I'm in charge. All volunteers.'

'The techlords promised us triple pay!' Bandelbi told Medea, clearly trying to impress her.

'Gee whiz,' she smiled.

'Where are the others? The other eighteen?' I pressed.

Kaleil got up off his chair and tossed his empty bottle at an overflowing litter basket in the corner. It bounced off and broke on the

floor. 'Around about. This is a big place. What you see is just the tip. Like a… what's it called, those frozen lumps of water they have

in the sea on some planets?'

'Iceberg?' Medea suggested.

'Yeah, like one of those. Ninety per cent of Cinchare Minehead is subsoil. That's a crap of a lot of space to patrol, maintain and keep

ticking over.'

'You're in vox contact with the rest of the skeleton crew?'

'We keep in touch. Some I don't see for weeks.'

'This tech-priest, the one who remained?' Aemos said. 'Where is he?'

Kaleil shrugged. 'Gone rockside. Into the karsts and the mines. I've not seen him for two months.'

'When do you expect him back?' Aemos said, as if it didn't matter.

Kaleil shrugged again. 'Never.'

'What was his name?' I asked, turning to look directly into the enforcer's dark eyes.

'Bure,' he said. 'Why?'

'Well, this is all most perturbatory!' Aemos blurted, rising from his seat. 'The archduke will be very put out. It has cost a deal of time

and money to venture this mission. Mr Kaleil… since we've come this far, I'd like to do what little I can.'

'Like what, doctor?'

'Obtain some samples, inspect the phorydnum workings, study the mineralogy ledgers?'

'I don't know… Cinchare Minehead's meant to be closed up now. Officially.'

'Would it really be too much to ask? I'm sure the Lord Director of Imperial Allied would be pleased if you co-operated with me.

Pleased enough to proffer a bonus if I made a report to him.'

Kaleil frowned. 'Uh huh. What are we talking about?'

'A day to overview the ledgers and the mineralogy database, perhaps another day to examine the sample archives from the quarries.

And… well, how long would it take to arrange a visit to the phorydnum face? The latest one?'

'I call my staff in, maybe two days round trip.'

'So… excellent! Four days total and we'll be gone.'

'I dunno…'said Bandelbi.

'Don't you want me hanging around for a few days?' asked Medea, reading Bandelbi's body language as acutely as any trained

inquisitor, and revealing as much latent acting ability as Aemos.

'I shouldn't allow it,' said Kaleil. 'This place is off limits now. Company orders. You didn't ought to stay here.'

'You stay here,' I pointed out.

'I get danger money,' he said.

'And you could get more,' said Aemos. 'I promise you, I'll speak highly of your co-operation to the Lord Director of Imperial Allied…

and my old friends at the Adeptus. They would reward well anyone assisting a servant of the archduke.'

'Get me an ale,' Kaleil told Bandelbi. He looked at us, rolling his chin. 'I'll talk to my staff, see what they think.'

'Good, good,' said Aemos. 'I do hope we can reach an arrangement. In the meantime, we'll need quarters. Are there spare beds here?'

'Cinchare's been fulla empty beds since the workforce moved out,' Bandelbi told Medea through a nasty smile.

'Find them a hab,' Kaleil told the miner. 'I'll get on to the crew.'

'SOMETHING'S NOT RIGHT,' I said, pulling off my mask and tossing it onto the floor.

'These cots are really rather cosy,' Aemos replied, adjusting the tension of his exo-frame and reclining on the mattress.

We were in a dry, stuffy rec-room above the miners' welfare. The artificial lamplight from the plaza outside slanted in through sagging

blinds. Bandelbi had provided three metal cots with subsiding mattresses and sleeping bags that smelled like they had been used to

sieve motor fuel and cabbage.

'You always worry,' Medea said, uninhibitedly shrugging off her flight suit and kicking it into a corner. She was clad in nothing but

her vest and briefs, and her shoulder holster, which she was now unclasping.

Aemos rolled over and looked the other way.

'It's my job to worry. And stop getting undressed. We're not finished.'

Medea looked at me, and rebuckled her gun rig with a dark frown.

'Okay, my lord and master… what? What's not right?'

'I can't quite put my finger on it…' I began.

Medea tutted and flopped down on her cot.

'Yes, you can, Gregor,' Aemos said.

'Maybe I can.'

'Try.'

'This stuff about the Gravs. Even if the corporations were suckered, it's not like the Adeptus Mechanicus to fail in a prediction. Any

cosmologist would know if Cinchare was entering a gravitation wilderness that would be harmful to humans. They'd know it years in

advance. Emperor protect me, stellar objects move far slower and more predictably than human minds!'

'A good point,' said Aemos.

'And one that you'd already thought of, I'm sure,' I said.

'Yes,' he confirmed. 'Kaleil is clearly lying about something.'

'And you don't think anything's wrong?'

'Of course I do,' Aemos muttered. 'But I'm tired.'

'Get up,' I told him brusquely.

He sat up.

'At least we know Bure's still here,' I said.

'This is the guy we came to find?' Medea asked.

I nodded. 'Magos Bure.'

'So how do you two know him? A tech-priest magos?'

'Old story, my dear,' said Aemos.

'I've got time.'

'He was a loyal ally of my master, Inquisitor Hapshant, Aemos's old boss,' I said, cutting to the chase before Aemos could get going.

'A blast from the past, huh?' she grinned.

'Something like that.'

'Still, it's a lo-o-ong way to come just to catch up with an old friend,' she added.

'Enough, Medea!' I said. 'You don't need to know the particulars yet. Maybe better for you if you don't.'

She blew a raspberry at me and began to pull her flight suit back on.

'You tried to reach the Essene recently?' I asked.

'My vox hasn't got the range,' she sulked back, fiddling with the zipper. 'Gravity distortions are too much. We expected that. I could go

back to the cutter and use the main 'caster.'

'I need you here. We need to scare up some answers fast. I want you to sneak Aemos down to the Administratum archive, and see if

you can coax anything out of the data banks, if they're still functioning.'

'While you…'

'I'm going to the annex of the Adeptus Mechanicus. Meet back here in three hours. We're looking for any clues, but particularly any

traces of Bure's whereabouts.'

Aemos nodded. 'What if we're challenged?'

'You couldn't sleep, you went for a walk, and you got lost.'

'And if they don't believe me?'

'That's why Medea's going with you,' I said.

THE ANNEX OF the tech-priesthood lay in the western sector of Cinchare Mine-head's jumbled maze of pressurised habs and processing

sheds, about two kilometres from the plaza. At first, I hadn't known where I was going, but the tunnels and transit ways were marked

with numbered signs and symbol-coded notices, and after a while I found a large, etched-metal directory map screwed to a pillar

beside a bank of dusty public drinking fountains.

A twist of the faucet on one of the fountains produced nothing but a dry rasp.

Approaching the annex, the whitewashed tunnel walls were overpainted with dark red stripes, and there were numerous caution signs

and warnings that demanded correct papers and identities on pain of death.

Still, the whole place was bare and empty, and thick with dust and litter.

At the end of the red-striped access tunnel, the vast adamantite blast-gates to the annex stood open. There was an eerie silence.

The annex was a colossal tower of hewn rock dressed in red steel, filling a side chimney of the crater that housed Cinchare's

minehead. A sealed glass dome covered the paved yard between the blast-gates and the annex, and the building itself rose up beyond

the glass to the top of the crater rim. High above, I could see the blue rock and the starlit void beyond. Meteors streaked overhead.

The doorway of the annex was a giant portal taller than three men, framed by thick dork columns of black lucullite. Above it leered

the graven image of the Machine God, its eyes clearly carved in such a way that they would flare ominously with gas bum-offs piped

up from the mines. They were cold and dead now.

And the burnished metal doors of the portal were open.

I stepped inside. Fine sand covered the floor of the grand prothyron. Dust motes glittered in the bars of light spearing into the high

hallway through deadlights up near the ribbed roof. Both walls were entirely panelled with banks of codifiers and matriculators, all

dormant and powered down. Crescents of dust bearded every single switch and dial.

I knew at once this was a bad sign. The tech-priests treasured machines more than anything else. If they had evacuated as Kaleil

described, there was no way they would have left such a wealth of technology here… especially as each unit was clearly designed to

slot out of its alcove in the black marble walls.

The chamber beyond the prothyron was a veritable chapel, a cathedral dedicated to the God-Machine, the uber-Titan, the master of

Mars. The floor was creamy travertine slabs, so tightly laid not even a sheet of paper could be slipped between the stones. The chapel

itself was triapsidal with walls of smooth, cold lucullite and a roof thirty metres above my head. There was yet more precious

technology arranged in six concentric circles of intricate brass workstations around a central plinth. All of it was dead and unpowered.

I crossed the chamber towards the plinth, painfully aware of how loud my footsteps rang back from the emptiness. Chilly starlight

shone down through an opaion in the centre of the roof, directly above the massive grandiorite plinth. The huge, severed head of an

ancient Warlord Titan hung above the plinth where the starlight shafted down. I realised that nothing supported the head - no cables,

no platform, no scaffolding. It simply hung in the air.

As I got close to the plinth, gazing up at the Titan's face, my hair pricked. Static, or something like it, bristled the atmosphere. Some

invisible, harnessed force - perhaps gravity or magnetics, certainly something beyond my understanding - was at play here, suspending

the multiple tonnes of the machine-skull. It was a silent marvel, characteristic of the tech-priesthood. Even with the power shut down,

their miracles endured.

On one workstation console - a brass frame full of intermeshed iron cogs, silvered wires and glass valves - I saw a length of canvassleeved

neural hose, one end plugged into the display, the other frayed and severed. That was more than just a case of someone

leaving in a hurry.

Over the years, my dealings with the Adeptus Mechanicus had been few. They were a law unto themselves, like the Astartes, and only

a fool would meddle with their power. Bure - Magos Geard Bure - had been my closest contact with them. Without the Priesthood of

Mars, the technologies of the Imperium would wither and perish, and without their ceaseless endeavours, no new wonders would ever

be added to mankind's might.

Yet here I stood, unmolested and uninvited, in the middle of one of their inner sanctums.

My vox-link pipped. A voice, Medea's, badly distorted by gravity flux, said, 'Aegis wishes Thorn. By halflife d—'

It cut off.

'Thorn attends Aegis,' I said. Nothing.

'Thorn attends Aegis, the whisperless void.'

Still nothing. What little I had caught of Medea's brief message troubled me - ''halflife'' was a Glossia code word that could be used in

phrases to disclose an important discovery or indicate a grave predicament. But what troubled me far more was the fact she had cut