Hellsreach - Aaron Dembski-Bowden [45]
They wandered down there for hours.
The underground complex was a silent – and initially lightless – series of labyrinthine corridors and deserted chambers. Jurisian brought the installation’s overhead lighting back online after several minutes at a wall console.
Cyria clicked her torch off. Grimaldus cancelled his helm’s vision intensifier settings. With flickering reluctance, dull yellow lighting illuminated their surroundings.
‘I have resuscitated the spirits of the illuminatory array,’ Jurisian said. ‘They are weak from slumber, but should hold.’
The bland greyness all around them soon grew uninspiring as they ventured deeper into the complex. Around corners, through silent chambers with inactive engines, motionless machinery and generators of unknowable purpose.
Jurisian would occasionally pause and examine some of the Mechanicus’s abandoned technology.
‘This is a magnetic field stabiliser housing,’ he said at one point, walking around what looked to Cyria like an oversized tank engine as big as a Chimera APC.
‘What does it do?’ she made the mistake of asking.
‘It houses the stabilisers for a magnetic field generator.’
Her fear of the Astartes had dimmed some way by this point. She fought the urge to sigh, but failed.
‘Do you mean,’ Jurisian enquired, ‘what application does this have in Imperial technology?’
‘That’s close to what I meant, yes. What is its purpose?’
‘Magnetic fields of significant size and intensity are difficult to create and a struggle to maintain. Many of these units would be required to work in synchronicity, stabilising a powerful field of magnetic force. Such standard constructs as this housing are used in anti-gravitational technology, much of which is kept sealed by Mechanicus secrecy. More commonly, the Imperial Navy would use these units in the construction and maintenance of starship-sized magnetic accelerator rings. Plasma weapon technology, on a grand scale.’
‘No,’ Cyria shook her head. ‘It can’t be.’
‘We shall see,’ Jurisian rumbled. ‘This is only the installation’s first level. From the angle of the buried roadway, I would conjecture that the complex proceeds beneath the earth for at least a kilometre. From my knowledge of template patterns used in Mechanicus facility construction, it is more likely to be two or three kilometres deep.’
Nine hours after Grimaldus, Jurisian and Cyria had entered the installation, they reached the fourth sublevel. The third level had taken almost six hours to traverse, with sealed doors requiring more and more intensive manipulation to coax open. At one point, Grimaldus had been certain they were thwarted. He hefted his crozius in both hands, triggering it live, ready to vent his anger on the unopening door.
‘Don’t,’ Jurisian said, without looking up from the controls.
‘Why not? You said this might be impossible, and time is not our ally down here.’
‘Do not apply force to the doors. These are, as you have seen, each no less than four metres thick. While you will eventually hammer through to the other side, it will not be a rapid endeavour, and such violence is likely to activate the installation’s significant defences.’
Grimaldus lowered his mace. ‘I see no defences.’
‘No. That is their strength, and the primary reason no living and augmetic guards are required.’
He still did not look away from his work as he spoke. Four of Jurisian’s six arms all worked at the console: hitting buttons, pulling clusters of wires and cables, tying them, fusing them together, replacing them, tuning dead screens. His lower servo-arms were now coiled close to his back-mounted power pack, carrying his bolter and power sword.
‘There are,’ Jurisian continued, ‘twelve hundred needle-thin holes in the walls, spaced ten centimetres apart, in this corridor alone.’
Grimaldus examined the walls. His visor locked onto one immediately, now he knew they were there.
‘And these are…?’
‘A defence. Part of one. The application of force, no matter how righteous, brother, will trigger the machinery behind these holes – and