Hellsreach - Aaron Dembski-Bowden [22]
Voices from the outside always reached her with a muffled dullness, despite the vox-receivers implanted where the cartilage of her inner ears once were, and the receptors built into the sides of her confinement tank.
They spoke, those voices, of intrusion.
Princeps Majoris Zarha did not share their appraisal of the situation. She turned in her milky fluid, as graceful as a sea-nymph from the tales of the impious Ancient Terra, though the augmented, wrinkled, hairless creature within the spacious coffin was anything but lovely. Her feet had been removed, for she would never need them again. Her bones were weak and soft, and her body curled and hunched.
She replied to them, to her minions and brothers and sisters, with a stab of thought.
I wish to speak with the intruders.
‘I wish to speak with the intruders,’ the vox-emitters on her coffin droned in a toneless echo of her silent words.
One of them came closer to the clear walls of her amniotic chamber, looking in at the floating husk with great respect.
‘My princeps,’ it was Lonn speaking, and though she liked Lonn, he was not her favourite.
Hello, Lonn. Where is Valian?
‘Hello, Lonn. Where is Valian?’
‘Moderati Carsomir is returning from the hive, my princeps. We thought you would still sleep for some time.’
With all this noise? What was left of her face turned into a smile.
‘With all this noise?’
‘My princeps, Astartes are seeking to gain entrance.’
I heard.
‘I heard.’
I know.
‘I know.’
‘Your orders, my princeps?’
She twisted in the water again, in her own way as graceful as a seaborne mammal, despite the cables, wires and cords running from the coffin’s mechanical generators into her spine, skull and limbs. She was an ancient, withered marionette in the water, serene and smiling.
Access granted.
‘Access granted.’
—Access granted— said twelve voices at once.
The crackling edge of the maul remained motionless, no more than a finger’s thickness above the lead skitarii’s skull. A small spark of electrical force snapped at the soldier’s face from the armed power weapon, forcing him to recoil.
—Access granted— they all intoned a second time.
Grimaldus deactivated his crozius hammer and shoved the augmented human soldiers aside.
‘That is what I thought you would say.’
The journey was short and uneventful, through narrow corridors and ascending in elevator shafts, until they stood outside the sealed bulkhead doors of the bridge. The process of reaching the control deck involved a great deal of silently staring tech-adepts, their green-lens replacement eyes rotating and refocusing, either scanning or in some eerie mimicry of human facial expressions.
The interior of the Titan was dark, too dark for unaugmented humans to work by, lit by the kind of emergency-red lighting the knights had only seen before in bunkers and ships at war. Their gene-enhanced eyes would have pierced the gloom with ease, even without the vision filters of their helm’s visors.
No guards stood outside the large double bulkhead leading onto the command deck, and the doors themselves slid open on clunking rails as the knights waited.
Artarion gripped Grimaldus’s scroll-draped pauldron.
‘Make this count, brother.’
The Chaplain looked at the bearer of his war banner through the silver face of his slain master.
‘Trust me.’
The command deck was a circular bay, with a raised dais in the centre surrounded by five ornate and heavily-cabled thrones. At the edges of the chamber, robed tech-adepts worked at consoles filled with a dizzying array of levers, dials and buttons.
Two vast windows offered a grand view across the harsh landscape. With a shiver of realisation, Grimaldus knew he was looking out from the god-machine’s eyes.
Upon the dais itself, a huge, clear-glass tank stood supported by humming machinery. Within its milky depths floated a naked crone, ravaged by her years and the bionics necessary to sustain her life under such conditions. She stared through bug-eyed augmetic replacements where her human eyes once were.
‘Greetings, Astartes,’ the