Chapter 18

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The twelve-story white and gray building was a little apart from the main complex of the planetary spaceport. The building was typical of Beacon and stood out only for its restrained decor, laconic even by the standards of the poor world. No sacred symbols were adorning the walls, nor was the building itself a visible embodiment of the Faith in the ascetic style of some Forges who extolled the Omnissia revelations through geometry and proportions of linear size. Just a box of frost-whitened concrete, brick, and glass, only the many antennas of every caliber on the roof indicated that it was not a warehouse or an ordinary official's office building.

It was here that the headquarters of the Adeptus Mechanicus Expeditionary Corps was located. Magos, of course, approved of the visible images of the pillars of the God-Machine doctrines. But in this case, they decidedly chose practicality and inconspicuousness. A brick hangar with a corrugated metal roof and faded-painted gates safely sheltered the 'Warhound' that had become the receptacle of Doturov's consciousness. Simple automatons - essentially just autonomous tech-priests manipulators - ran communications and power cables through the ventilation ducts, placing controllers as well as primitive communicators where no human engineer could reach if they wanted to. The servitors, combining the two floors, assembled the core of a field cogitator whose operator terminals sprawled across the building like zygotes of orc mushrooms. Doturov needed neither holographic projectors nor even simple monitors to perceive the information received from the entire planet. The data was directly downloaded to the titan's onboard data banks, from where it was read by the Martian's virtual connectors. The image of the frozen planet in Lexik Arcanus' mind was surrounded by many branching graphs. Sliding through them, one could learn literally everything that had been recorded in one way or another by at least one sensor or controller. From the trajectories of any of the eight thousand two hundred and seventy satellites to the weekly fluctuations in the price of wild muffalo wool from the northern continent's PDF expeditionaries.

Such information was overwhelmingly ignored by Administratum officials, perceived as useless. The imperfection of the human brain, even enhanced with Mechanicus implants, did not allow for the evaluation and processing of such volumes of data. Many radicals saw this limitation as a symptom of a severe malady, a sign of the inherent flaw of the Imperium and its control mechanisms. Others pointed out that reasonable approximation of parameters coupled with the use of probabilistic models made it possible to manage enormous social structures quite effectively. Where the Mechanicus deliberately went for fragmentation and reduction in the size of its administrative units, the Administratum managed sectors of hundreds of thousands of star systems, with the ability to concentrate truly grandiose forces when necessary.

It was no mistake or miscalculation that this power might now be useless. Every tool has its limits of effectiveness and its applications. The truth about the hydraulic press and the quantum flaw detector, coming from the depths of millennia, was only proof of this. The strength of Mankind lay in its variability, in having the tools to solve any possible problem.

That was the true meaning of the Olympic Treaty.

Doturov's attention was divided into thousands of parallel processes, which in turn branched off - unpredictably and chaotically from the perspective of an outside observer. Not a single bit of useful data could slip past the Martian's keen attention. It occurred to Doturov that such efficiency, now available only to a few in the highest hierarchy of Mars, had once been commonplace for A.I. during the Dark Age of Technology. A major evolutionary advantage and, at the same time, a major vulnerability.

Those who strive only for machine perfection ignore the undeniable fact that artificial intelligence has lost in the global contest, despite its apparent superiority, noted the Martian. The desire to become completely similar to the losing side leads to inevitable defeat. For a mind without a soul is absolute heresy.

"The princepses are requesting schemes of moving," came a message from Logis Theta.

Doturov's consciousness slid up the logical chains, bringing the processed data into a coherent picture. The image of the planet was covered with additional markings, like the bloodsucking little insects that swarm around northern muffaloes in search of areas not covered by thick wool.

Certainly, additional analysis would have yielded even greater accuracy, and ultimately indicated unmistakably the single point in space where the Immaterial would (perhaps) merge with real space, but time... Decision time has always been as important a constraint as the resources available.

"The first maniple - 'Arbogast', 'Dughem', 'Conn', 'Lissajous' and 'Potenot' - remain to cover the spaceport. The reserve of maniple is 'Killing'. The second maniple - 'Bessel', 'Dirichle', 'Krell', 'Runge' and 'Zermelo' - move out to the Lerke district. The reserve of the second maniple is 'Kronover'. Legion 'Etwesh' is deployed to the supply bases along the specified perimeter. Geller drones are distributed to the centurions of the legion, in the operational subordination of the tribunes. The full readiness for the blockade of the capital and the port should be achieved within forty hours from the moment the signal is received."

"Is a riot expected in the city?"

Doturov sent Logis an encrypted infodump with an extract of the transgressions of planetary governance. Illegal financial transactions, advertisements on closed channels, pornography, drugs, forbidden services - all the things that inevitably germinate in the shadows of any human community from its inception.

"This is the standard background of highly organized crime in a segmentary society with elements of polycracy," Logis allowed himself to object after reading the data. "However, there is not the slightest reason to believe that there is any meaningful opposition here, ready to challenge the legitimate authorities of the Imperium. Are you suggesting that the analytical systems of the Administratum have missed something significant?"

Forming his answer to the Logis, Doturov concurrently thought about the philosophical aspect of the problem of data analysis.

Cogitators of Abominable Intelligence was the unattainable pinnacle of computational development, but even then the intuition of people of a certain kind and the decisions they made often surpassed the capabilities of machine worlds. For in a crisis there is always a 'jumping off point' into a dark future that even artificial intelligence cannot adequately predict. Yes, based on past and present data, the cogitator models the future with a more or less acceptable probability. By making a decision based on the data presented by the cogitator, the operator changes the process of development of the situation and, consequently, the distribution of probabilities. A new calculation is made, a new forecast is made, which prompts a direction of a different choice. It is possible to determine this direction by the method of successive approximation in a zigzag manner, by the type of 'Brownian' motion

But in some cases, what people call 'intuition' detects the 'shortest path' more quickly and accurately. In this case, losses are usually minimized. Reality consists of countless large and small, different in amplitude and speed phenomena, which, mutually influencing each other, form a giant system of unimaginable complexity. No calculator will ever be able to contain all the possible and accounted for components of reality. And if it does happen, there will still be unpredictable dark regions of unaccountable excesses, as the 'Laplace demon' points out.

But not today.

Doturov sent Perseus the following infodump. Astropath data, paired with Arbitrator reports, reports from Inquisition investigators who have visited the system six times in the last two centuries, visual images of Navis Nobilite, and threat models of Adeptus Astra Telepathy.

"Pairing of Immaterium?"

"Correct."

"Unpredictable consequences?"

Predictable with the appropriate array of inputs, which at the moment we do not have. So we will limit ourselves to stating 'inevitably destructive'.

"Will the metropolis be evacuated?" Theta asked persistently.

"Only after the commencement of conjugation. There is ample reason to believe that the specific parameters of the event in question may have noticeable deviations due to the deliberate actions of the renegades. And, since the renegades can adapt their strategy based on anticipated opposition - the Mechanicus forces will be waiting. Invisible to possible infiltrators in the structures of the Administratum."

"Do we need to be prepared to confront the Dark Ones?"

"I have not met any techno-heretics capable of avoiding my attention. And I don't see them now."

"I'll give this task a medium priority," noted Perseus Theta. "Within one hundred and forty minutes the Kronover will be ready to move out."

Doturov was pleased. His protégé did not dismiss the unlikely danger on the basis of a high-ranking magos's assertion, but he did not devote too many resources to countering it, diverting them at the expense of the main tasks. Perhaps the results of the operation would show Theta to be effective enough that the benefits of his existence would outweigh the possible costs.

Magnos Omicron's majestic titans lined the main highway in a single wall. No war flags were hanging from the gun drives of the 'Warhound', as they were accustomed to from official Picts and ceremonial releases of the allowed imperial news. There was no symbolism to indicate the types of godlike machines, their arms, the triumphant banners of victorious campaigns, or the number of victories. The titans who landed on 140101-55524-R54024-52928P10 had not yet experienced the fury of battle and the thrill of battle. And what's more, they weren't even formally part of any Legio. The twelve 'Warhound' requisitioned by Doturov remained a nameless operational unit of the Collegium Titanica.

From a certain point of view, the decision of the Lexic Arcanus was defined as a blatant violation of protocols. The deployment of Collegiate manipuli without secturian foot cover was not allowed in peacetime and was categorically forbidden in war. Just as a giant beast can be stung by a swarm of individually insignificant insects, so sudden attacks by heavily-armed infantry at close range pose no small threat to titans. However, the formal nine-hundred-kilometer march of the second manipuli to Lerke was declared a 'cycle of field trials' in a neutral environment, and there was no one in the entire sector who could challenge Doturov's decision.

The cannon limbs of every second 'Warhound' lowered in synchrony. A long siren sounded over the frost-covered steppe, and the stunted shrubs seemed to tremble in terror, shaking their thorns. Six machines resembling wingless birds lifted on bending backward legs and stepped forward in unison, shaking the frozen ground, kicking up clouds of snow. The roar of the rapturous crowd from the city and port side seemed to fill the entire space. The divine machines of Mars were treading on the ground of Beacon, and that meant that the planet was safe.

The 'Warhounds' stepped forward, looking like ravenous lizards searching for their prey's trail, and then moved forward in giant strides, incredibly agile and fast for a machine of this size.

The six titans were rushing across the snow-covered steppe at about forty to fifty kilometers per hour. Of course, the word 'rushed' might seem inappropriate to describe the machines, each of which rises to a height of fifteen meters and weighs nearly five hundred tons. The power and majesty of Mars are undeniable, but the laws of physics rule even over its creations. And yet... From the outside, it seemed that the titans were not subject to the constraints of mass and inertia. The 'Warhounds' movements were characterized by a perfect precision, a smooth slowness that turned the movement into a dance, a rapturous hymn to dynamics and coordination.

The route was far from the main traffic arteries and settlements. It was here, on the empty plains, away from the eyes of outsiders and cameras, from the eyes of servitors and securities, that another miracle of the God-Machine was to take place.

The 'Krell' ahead, which kicked out tons of frozen dust with every step, suddenly turned its hull, aiming for the 'Kronover' chosen by Doturov. At the same time, the turbolaser barrel assembly turned, indicating readiness for an attack. The movements of the hull and undercarriage did not match, confusing the opponent.

However, Doturov, foreseeing this maneuver, reacted already at the moment when 'Krell' began an unmotivated U-turn. Continuing his stride, the 'Kronover' crouched deeply, bending his legs backward with his joints, and took a powerful leap to the side. Already in heavy flight, Doturov's megabolter found the enemy and struck it with thirty-eight projectiles in a vulnerable spot where the fields of the two void generators overlapped, forming an unstable overlapping zone.

Conditionally struck.

The Titans moved slowly from a human perspective, and incredibly precisely, gracefully for giants of their size and weight. The earth trembled under their iron gait. And even the air seemed to ring with the intensity of the radio exchange of the training battle. Doturov enjoyed every millisecond and was only saddened by the fact that hardly any of the crews were aware of the truth. The true birth of their titans was not in the shops and smelters of Magnos Omicron, but here and now.

The newborn Spirits of the 'Warhound,' who realized themselves incarnated in metal, ceramics, and the flames of material bodies, finally received the bits of real experience, the first at the beginning of a glorious life. The very one that would multiply with every battle, so that centuries later princeps and moderati would call it Shadow, an echo of its own desires of a godlike machine. Lexicus Arcanus perceived the body of 'Kronover' with crystal clarity, in fact, Doturov was now a titan. He could feel the weight of the ammunition in the megabolter's charging machines, the rustle of snow and sand on the hull inaudible to the human ear, even the pulse of Perseus Theta sitting in the cockpit of the moderati.

Doturov heard the mindless recitation of the gun servitors wired to the titan's 'arms' and the endless meditative vigil of the trusted tech-priest in the armored reactor control room. He felt the rhythmic pulsation of the power plant and the icy flow of the turbolaser cooling system. A running beam of the auspice illuminated the five other 'Warhound', and his own databank calculated their most likely maneuvers.

Somewhat like young predators, the divine machines were learning, learning what biological organisms call 'instincts. They emulated surprise attacks on each other, ambushes, solo and paired hunts, recording their own and others' successes as well as failures without the risk of permanently losing all recorded information. Doturov hadn't driven a combat vehicle in years, but the other crews lacked his experience and fusion with a titan, which allowed him to win one-on-one or two-on-one battles with ease. There was no narcissism or petty assertion in this; on the contrary, Lexic Arcanus generously shared information, demonstrating tactical schemes of high complexity.

The princepses of 'Bessel', 'Dirichlet', 'Krell', 'Runge' and 'Zermelo' quickly moved on to practice corralling the enemy with the entire manipuli, coordinating intense movement and mutual cover fire. The only great experience allowed Doturov to prevail over the combined enemy twice in twenty-one attempts. The unknown princeps, who supposedly was now controlling the Kronover, commanded the deepest respect of the other crews and the respectful attention of the spirits of the machines.

It was eight hundred and thirty kilometers to Lerke's district, and the manipula had finished the first act of combat training and regrouped in marching formation, in two columns with the guards moved forward. Doturov thought that technical stagnation had its own beauty and undeniable benefit - the skills acquired thousands of years ago do not become obsolete, but only get better, like well-seasoned alcohol. After a hundred kilometers of rapid marching, the drill resumed, simulating a surprise attack. The Kronover again 'attacked', shooting the enemy literally at point-blank range.

"There is one aspect of the plan in progress, the available justification for which, in my opinion, is insufficient," Logis Theta reported. "In order to perform the tasks assigned to me more effectively, I would like to obtain additional information."

"Accepted."

"My confusion concerns the removal of the novice of the Purification Service known as 'Olga'."

Had Doturov now had a body and a face with the ability to display facial expressions, he would have smiled at Theta's subtlety. Logis used wording that formally displayed incomprehension and doubt, but elegantly emphasized the priority of the lack of information. A sort of 'I could have done better if you had...' but without even a hint of reproach.

"Certainly she has shown the highest efficiency with the cogitator," Theta continued. "But everything she did was recorded and thoroughly researched. Isn't it enough to translate the data into communication patterns and improve overall efficiency?"

"Enough."

Doturov paused for nearly five seconds - very, very long for the information exchange through which the 'conversation' was conducted. If this were ordinary human communication, the analogy would be something like `keep silence, stand up, walk around the table, pour a glass, and look thoughtfully out the window'. But Theta stoically withstood the pause, showing commendable patience, and Doturov continued:

"Parliament is inclined to believe that Olga's value lies not only and not so much in her demonstrated skills. With a very high level of cognitive ability and flexible thinking, she is capable of giving Mars new aspects of understanding the Omnissiah."

"I'm afraid this kind of reasoning... is, in my opinion, not sustainable enough."

"I have come to the conclusion that for a true understanding of my motives, as accepted and approved by Parliament, you must learn a few facts from the past. To gain indirect experience, which for the last thousand years many, in their pride, have chosen to ignore."

"I will do my best not to repeat their mistakes," Theta's Perseus was absolutely serious.

"I did not witness the time of the Heresy of Horus, which destroyed the Imperium, nor the birth of the Great Schism," Doturov said. "But I saw the Schism itself. I saw the light of my home star eighty years after the Legions of the Apostates were expelled from the Solar System. I was born among those whose Forge had been razed to the ground and whose good name had been turned to ash. By and large, we had become a feral tribe that had forgotten the past and had no aspirations for the future."

"Did you live in the ruins of Forge? But if the reactors were destroyed, how did the hydroponic complexes, desalination plants, and thermal control systems work?"

"Isn't the Path of the Machine binary?" Doturov's counter-question was riddled with benevolent irony. "Doesn't the Omnissiah teach us that without destruction there is no perfection and that everything destroyed can be restored and improved for His glory?"

Theta was ashamedly silent, listening.

"Our stronghold was an old shelter," explained Lexic Arcanus. "It was more like a small warehouse, once built to supply reconnaissance parties. To reach it from the ruins of the Forge, you had to follow the stream bed that wound its way through the mountain."

Consciousness, which existed only in the form of quantum entanglements that filled the titanium's calculators, allowed conversations to take place in parallel with the solution of the main tasks. Just now 'Krell' and 'Zermelo' were trying to conditionally disable the undercarriage of 'Kronover'.

"My main task was to deliver construction materials. Three hundred and sixteen meters from the tunnel entrance were the ruins of the Magos Biologis research block. The equipment had long since been looted or destroyed, but the walls, composed of chemogenic limestone, lent themselves well to ultrasonic cutting. The servitors sliced the blocks, which were loaded onto pallets, and I guided them down the creek. Monotonous and monotonous labor that left a lot of marks. But these blocks went to repair, insulate, and reinforce the walls so that the shelter could be kept at an acceptable temperature and survive a serious bombardment if necessary. Sometimes we found large metal structures in the ruins and had to dismantle them with plasma torches, but as a result, we had enough metal."

"At some moment the raiders tracked us down. Of course, the crawler couldn't make it across the creek, so the renegades walked light. They appeared extremely confident, believing that combat implants, built-in auspices, and long-range weapons would ensure victory. But in narrow, icy passageways, a simple vibro cutter becomes just as dangerous as a bio-coded stabber. In addition, when we managed to get some batteries from the sand crawler renegade, we placed two blocks of self-contained bolters in the tunnel."

"The dangers that can come from complex biological organisms should not be neglected," Perseus agreed. "Katachan's bioforms are a vivid proof of that."

"That's right. Thus, having a formal superiority, the renegades lost their advantage, and then their lives. Our group received nuclear batteries, cogitators, some serviceable servos, and spare parts. It was these that enabled us, six years later, to locate and reactivate the cryo-lab, the last that remained functional in the ruins of the destroyed Forge. One of the magos we retrieved from the sarcophagi was frozen before the Olympic Treaty. His knowledge proved truly invaluable and allowed us to be restored. And for me, to see the true path. For the human mind, though formed outside the confines of the Cult of the Machine, is capable of great exploits in the search for Knowledge."

Theta pondered the phrase 'allowed us to be restored'. It was very complicated and allowed for many interpretations.

"But weren't you already privy to the Omnissiah cause?" he asked, after all.

"I am referring to the career of Biologis. For many centuries I specialized in the study of higher nervous activity."

It took Logis a long time to comprehend the information he received.

"I assumed that your path began differently. The infosmith-programmer... It seems more natural for someone who has ascended to existence as pure consciousness."

"And, accordingly, did my attitude toward the citizens of the Imperium deprived of the blessing of God-Machine appear to you to be a mistake, a deviation in the formation of consciousness?"

"The unconventional way of deep behavioral analysis," Theta replied diplomatically.

"Binarity," Doturov repeated admonishingly. "What people call the 'unity of opposites,' the union of darkness and light that exists only in a relationship, giving rise to one another. It was my deep understanding of humans, the processes of biological constructs, this rather crude but incredibly effective self-adapting and self-adjusting structures that allowed me to lead the project that resulted in the technology of full transfer of consciousness to machine carriers. That is, to take another step in the service of the Omnissiah."

"In essence, you are both the service of Mechanicus and the embodiment of it," Theta stated. "This is also an interesting aspect of binarity."

"Right. Mathematics was once thought to negate philosophy, but that was a mistake. From the height of my ministry, I see that the Truths' prescribed tendency to simplify, to segment the constituent structures of knowledge, leads many of us down the erroneous path of primitivization, to ignore whole areas of knowledge!"

"And as a result, to techno-heresy?" Theta dared to guess.

"Exactly. When magos begins to discard those facts that do not fit his convenient theory, he distorts the teachings of Omnissiah. Distortion leads to deviation, deviation pushes to heresy. This is the fundamental difference between the Omnissiah way and the primitive religions. They are forced to appeal to mystical entities, deny logic and demand blind acceptance of dogmas. We, on the other hand, deny unexamined knowledge; only strict and balanced truth brings us closer to God-Machine."

Perseus thought about it. The knowledge he gained should be analyzed in detail and taken into account for further work.

"Am I right in assuming we're talking about what people would call an 'influx of fresh blood?" Theta asked cautiously. "The multiplication of genetic diversity to avoid stagnation and degeneration in closed biosystems? Olga's value is not only that she is favored by the sacred cogitator, but that she is different? Her way of knowing the world and analyzing it, for all its apparent naivety, is shaped in other conditions, it goes beyond our patterns of information processing. By scrutinizing her pattern of behavior and thinking, will we thereby discover a new aspect of knowing the world and serving the Omnissiah?"

"I'll leave it to you to find the answer yourself," Doturov said with the same irony, at the same time performing a tricky maneuver with a sideways step, a forty-five-degree turn, and a crouch. The Kronover missed a conditional burst of bolter shells over its flattened hull like a turtle shell and simultaneously stood up so that the nearest 'enemy' titan was now blocking its line of fire. Simultaneously with the action, Doturov sent a data packet to the general manipuli network, which deciphered as a predatory admonition 'always pick and hit a straggler from the main group, cover by his hull' plus a set of instructions on how to do it in the best way.

"And, getting back to the original question, the reasons for extracting the girl," Lexic continued. "Give an assessment of the fact that selected techno-adept Jennifer Wackrufmann is currently reviewing episodes of 'Knights of the Zuen world'?"

"I suppose general familiarity with entertainment content would be a better subject for conversation with Olga than discussing aspects of tensor analysis," Theta gave his verdict almost without hesitation.

Doturov thought again about how pure consciousness lacks a face. Alas, no digital emulation can capture the richness of such a seemingly primitive act as a human smile.

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