The Horus Heresy

THE KABAN PROJECT

By Graham McNeill

Two microns to the left. Now four down. There… Adept Third Class Pallas Ravachol adjusted the fine callipers that slid from his fingertips, watching with smug satisfaction as the hardwired doctrina wafer slid smoothly through the cerebral cortex of the servitor’s brain for at least what the lobotomisation process had left of its brain and into the medulla oblongata.

‘No one knows servitors like me,’ he said as fibrous tendrils wormed their way from the wafer and into the grey matter of the brain. With the new doctrina wafer meshing nicely, he rotated the servitor’s gleaming alloy cranial cap back and lifted a portable cutter to snap the bolts into place that protected the servitor’s brain from harm. He placed the damaged wafer into the pouch that hung from his tool belt, careful to ensure he didn’t mix it up it with the functioning ones. He shuddered as he imagined the consequences of placing a damaged wafer in the brain of a battle robot or implanting a combat sequence into the mind of a loader servitor.

‘There you go,’ he said as he pushed the last bolt into place and the servitor stood from the surgical recliner, its grey flesh pallid and unhealthy. Half human, half machine, the servitor’s arms had been replaced with pneumatic lifters and what little of its head remained had been augmented by the addition of visual mass readers. ‘Now be off with you. Go back and rejoin Adept Zeth’s loading crews. The Sixty Third expedition needs her weapons and shells if the Warmaster is to pacify Isstvan.’

Of course, the servitor didn’t answer, simply turning on the spot and marching from the chamber, in which half a dozen more damaged servitors awaited Ravachol’s ministrations or the removal of any mechanical parts worthy of reclamation from the flesh that housed them.

Such work was beneath an adept of Ravachol’s skill, but he knew he had only himself to blame for his current situation, and in any case, such work was what had brought him to the attention of his new master, High Adept Lukas Chrom of the Martian forges.

Having seen that the servitors coming back from Ravachol’s workshops were working faster, more efficiently and with greater precision, Chrom had inquired after him. Within the week, he had found himself packing his meagre possessions and taking his leave from his former master, Adept Urtzi Malevolus, and making his way towards the Mondus Gamma facility of Mars for immediate reassignment.

Most of the Martian adepts cared little for cranial engineering where servitors were concerned, but Ravachol enjoyed such work. After all, only by knowing the mechanics of a human brain inside out could a man hope to understand the mechanics of a robot brain.

Such ruminations inevitably led his guilty thoughts to the Kaban Project itself…

He pushed such thoughts aside and tried to concentrate on the work before him, a Praetorian battle servitor whose weapon had malfunctioned and exploded on a test range. The weapon was beyond repair, but the augmetics grafted to its chest and the targeting mechanisms that formed the bulk of its skull were by no means lost.

As he stared at the scorched metal of the servitor’s skull, he scratched idly at his own skin with the gently waving mechadendrites of his hand. Unusually for an adept of Mars, Ravachol was largely composed of flesh and blood, with the exception of his left hand, which had been replaced with a bionic one on his sixteenth year.

His thoughts kept returning to the Kaban machine, and he guiltily turned from the damaged Praetorian to make his way from the workshop and into the steel corridors of the forge temple. He knew he’d have to work another double shift to get the servitors online again, but decided it would be worth it to spend some more time in the presence of the Kaban machine.

Ravachol knew that he had a natural affinity with robots and their programming, but whoever had authored the code on the doctrina wafers that comprised the Kaban machine’s systems was an order of magnitude beyond him. He doubted it was Adept Chrom, who, though brilliant in other regards, appeared to have little or no interest in the field of integrated battle wetware.

The corridors of the forge temple were dimly lit, the lumen globes floating above him kept at a level that blurred the passage of time so that no matter where you were or what time of day your body told you it was, you could have no external reference. But as an adept rose through the ranks of the Mechanicum, such concerns as day and night became largely irrelevant.

Hissing spigots and thick bundles of pipes and cables threaded the corridors, each one filled with bustle as servitors and messenger robots on wheels, tracks and spindly legs moved to and fro. He nodded to robed adepts who passed him, ignoring their looks of pity or revulsion at the flesh of his face and hand. Some of these adepts had lived for centuries, their lives extended by cybernetics grafted to their bodies in service of the Blessed Omnissiah – the Machine God of the Martian Priesthood. As he passed each adept, he noted how they had been blessed and vowed that one day he too would be similarly favoured by the Machine God, despite the Emperor’s avowed distaste for such things.

He passed the Temple of the Frictionless Piston, where Adept Herysto developed technologies plundered from the Yndonesic Bloc a hundred years ago, when Mars had been at war with Terra.

Droning, mechanical prayers poured from the Shrine of Velrersk, where row upon row of red-robed adepts knelt bowing in perfect unison before the burnished chrome statue of the long dead discoverer of the Ceramite Press STC.

Ravachol nodded his head respectfully in the direction of the temple before heading deeper into an altogether more secure area of the forge temple. Silver skinned Skitarii in red cloaks stood sentinel over temples where more secretive work was undertaken, their armour gleaming and bonded to their flesh with bionic enhancements that boosted their strength and endurance.

‘I’m going to do some work on the Kaban machine,’ he said as he stopped before a monstrous steel door guarded by a score of Skitarii soldiers and a pair of heavy weapon emplacements. At first Ravachol had been amazed at the sheer number of warriors protecting this portion of the temple, but now that he knew what lay within, he understood why so many stood sentinel.

‘Genomech key,’ said the soldier, holding out his left hand.

‘Yes, yes,’ said Ravachol, taking the soldier’s hand. ‘It’s not like you haven’t seen me almost every day for the last six months or anything.’

The Skitarii said nothing, but they almost never did, and Ravachol wondered if the man had had his sense of humour removed as well as his fear. He felt a mild discomfort as the mechadendrites of the soldier’s hand slid inside his own and up into the marrow of his arm. Amber light flickered behind the Skitarii’s eyes as the questing tendrils read the machine codes of Ravachol’s arm and sampled his genetic material.

‘Identity confirmed,’ said the soldier and waved his arm at the warriors behind him. A red light flashed above the door, which Ravachol thought overly theatrical, and he stepped back as the massive door slowly swung aside on colossal bearings of greased steel. The door itself was three metres thick and could withstand all but an orbital bombardment, though Ravachol was only now beginning to understand why the Kaban machine warranted such precautions.

He passed through into the temple itself and found himself in a wide corridor with curved walls that led into domed chamber with more circular walled passages radiating from it, each one brightly lit and sterile. A host of technomats, calculus-logi and robed adepts filled the dome, each working at a silver workbench on one aspect of the Kaban machine.

Ravachol smiled as he made his way through the chamber, choosing the tunnel directly in front of him, once again passing through a series of genelocked doors before finally arriving in the temple of the machine.

Unlike the vestibule chamber, this temple was empty of technicians, for only a select few had access to this portion of the facility. A quartet of battle servitors turned to face him, their terrible weapons of destruction whirring as they acquired him as a target. Quad-barrelled rotary cannons, conversion beamers and energy claws powered up with lethal speed.

‘Identify!’ demanded the nearest servitor, its voice human, yet devoid of emotion and life.

‘Adept Third Class Pallas Ravachol,’ he said as visual and aural recognition protocols scanned his voice, mass, features and bio-metric readings before deciding that he was an authorised presence and the weapons returned to their idle positions.

He knew he had no reason to be afraid of these battle servitors, since he himself had designed their autonomic defence routines, but he’d had to suppress a shudder as he stared into the barrels of their weapons.

Had even one protocol failed, he would now be a pile of shredded meat, bone and blood.

Ravachol made his way past the battle servitors, patting the gently spinning barrel of the rotary cannon as he made his way towards the Kaban machine, feeling the familiar mix of illicit excitement and trepidation as he drew near.

It sat immobile at the far end of the chamber, its tracked drive systems not yet fully integrated with it’s armoured spherical body. The machine was six metres in width and ten high, though the high-sided pauldrons that protected its vulnerable arm joints added another metre. Its arms sat at rest, one ending in a plethora of projectile weapons, while the other bore a fearsome energy claw and saw-blade combination that could rip through the armoured bulkhead of a starship.

A network of scaffolding surrounded it and he could see that Adept Laanu’s weapons teams had been busy over the last few days, installing a myriad of deadly looking plasma and laser weapons on flexible, metallic tentacles. The machine’s sensory apparatus lay within a trio of convex blisters on its front, a dim orange glow indicating that the machine was in its dormant state.

It’s sleeping, thought Ravachol, unsure if he was amused or disturbed by the notion.

Even as he guiltily quashed the thought, the dim glow on the sensory blisters grew brighter and the machine said, ‘Hello, Pallas. It is pleasant to see you again.’

‘And you, Kaban,’ said Ravachol. ‘How do you feel?’

How do you feel?

Less than a month ago, he would have been ashamed to ask such a question. Such things were as alien on Mars as, well, aliens themselves, but his dealings with the Kaban machine over the last four weeks had been unusual to say the least and had turned his notion of what he thought he knew about the nature of machines on its head.

It had been a routine diurnal shift, and he had been updating the doctrinal wetware of the battle servitors who stood guard over the Kaban machine when it had first spoken to him.

At first he had been amused by the machine’s locution, admiring the thoroughness of the adept who had configured its response mechanisms. But as time went on, Ravachol began realise that the Kaban machine was not simply choosing its words from a pre-selected list of set responses, but was replying specifically to his questions. He had devised ever more complex questions and topics of conversation to ensure that he was not simply triggering pre-existing phrases or responses, but as the days turned into weeks it soon became clear to Ravachol that he was in fact conversing with a sentient machine… an artificial intelligence.

The idea of a sentient artificial construct was both fascinating and terrifying, for part of the compact that had been sealed between the Mechanicum of Mars and the Emperor was that such researches were forbidden.

The more he conversed with the machine, the more convinced he became that he was seeing something unique in the history of the Mechanicum, but whether it was something that had come into being through human artifice or some unknown interaction of circuitry and electrons within the machine’s artificial brain, he could not tell.

As much as he had enjoyed his conversations with the Kaban machine, he was not so naive to believe that he could keep such an important discovery to himself and had resolved to take his findings to his superior, Adept Lukas Chrom.

Ravachol had despatched his request for an audience and had settled back into his normal routine, expecting his petition to be processed within a few months, but within a week he was astounded to find that his request had been granted.

He remembered the sense of trepidation and fear as he had approached the inner temple sanctums of the Adept Chrom along one of the many hermetically sealed thoroughfares that criss-crossed the surface of Mars and linked the colossal forge cities with one another.

Such monolithic structures covered virtually the entirety of the blasted red surface of Mars, grim iron temples wreathed in smoke and fire and pounding with the relentless beat of industry. Adept Chrom’s forge temple was no exception; its mighty bastions skinned in thick plates of burnished iron and surrounded by hundreds of cooling towers that belched clouds of noxious fumes through the skin of the domes and into the sulphurous skies.

A constant hammer of machines echoed from the hundreds of forges within, and as Ravachol walked along the mighty processional that led towards entrance atop the Thousand Steps of Excellence, steel statues of ancient adepts and their creations glared down upon him.

Adept Ulterimus stared out over the Hollow Mountains and his Sigma-Phi Desolator Engine met his gaze from the opposite side of the steel surfaced roadway. Thousands of pilgrims, adepts, servitors and functionaries thronged the roadway, each on some errand for their masters and Ravachol felt proud to be part of such a mighty organisation as the Mechanicum.

His sandaled feet carried him swiftly along the road, avoiding ponderous stilt walkers, rumbling Praetorians and long tankers carrying vat-grown protein pastes to be pumped into the innumerable nutrient dispensers that fed the populace of Mars.

After the exhausting climb of the Thousand Steps, he had been ushered quickly from one functionary to another, passing through dozens of skull-cog doors and along a bewildering array of hallways where all manner of bizarre and obscure machines pulsed with mechanical life. The interior of Chrom’s temple was like nothing Ravachol had ever seen before, a mighty cathedral dedicated to the glorification of the holy Machine God, where the light of science and reason illuminated the ultimate ideal of mechanical perfection.

Ushered into the Master Adept’s chambers, a mighty fane of steel and bronze that was dominated by the warlike form of a Reaver battle titan standing dormant at its far end, Ravachol found himself before the Martian lord who directed his fate.

Adept Lukas Chrom loomed above him, the tech-priest’s wide-shouldered frame swathed in a deep crimson robe that did little to disguise the many augmentations he had been blessed with. Ribbed pipes and cables looped around his limbs and linked into a hissing power pack that rose like a set of wings at his back. A dozen servo skulls flew in an infinity pattern above his head, which, though pooled in shadow beneath a deep hood, Ravachol could see was fashioned in the form of a grinning iron skull. Wires trailed from the jaws and a pulsing red light filled both eye sockets.

‘Adept Chrom,’ began Ravachol, pulling out a data slate and reams of printouts. ‘Firstly, may I say what an honour—’

‘You have petitioned me in regards to the Kaban project,’ interrupted the adept, dispensing with preamble altogether.

His voice was harsh and artificially generated, though the hissing of his power pack seemed as though it mimicked heavy, rasping breaths.

‘Ah, yes,’ said Ravachol, momentarily flustered.

‘Then speak. There is much that occupies my time and I have little enough of it to spare.’

‘Yes, of course, my lord,’ nodded Ravachol, holding out the data slate. ‘I’ll try to be brief, but there’s so much I wish to tell you. It’s quite amazing really. Unprecedented, I’ll warrant, though I stumbled on it by accident.’

‘Adept Ravachol,’ snapped Chrom. ‘Come to the point before I have you turned into a servitor. What is it that you wish to tell me?’

‘A servitor! No! I mean, of course, my lord,’ cried Ravachol, stuffing the printouts and data slate back into his robes. ‘Well, what it is… well, that is to say…’

Adept Chrom drew himself up to his full height and Ravachol saw a huge chain blade, like that used by some of the heavier battle servitors, unfold from his master’s back.

‘Yes, my lord,’ he said hurriedly, ‘The Kaban machine has, I believe, attained sentience.’

He awaited some response to his statement, an exclamation of outrage, astonishment, disbelief… anything, but Adept Chrom simply fixed him with his glowing red eyes.

‘My lord?’ asked Ravachol. ‘Did you hear what I said?’

‘I did,’ confirmed Chrom. ‘This fact is known to me.’

‘Known to you?’ said Ravachol, suddenly deflated to know that his revelation was no revelation at all. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘And nor should you,’ replied Chrom, the terrible, saw-toothed blade retreating out of sight once more. ‘The Kaban project is the result of many of the greatest minds of Mars working together to produce a thinking machine.’

‘A thinking machine?’ breathed Ravachol. Though he had been communicating with the Kaban machine for many weeks now, the idea that its intelligence had been deliberately engineered was incredible.

‘Who else have you told of this, Adept Ravachol?’

‘No-one, my lord,’ said Ravachol. ‘I thought it prudent to seek your guidance before proceeding further.’

‘That was wise,’ said Chrom, and Ravachol bristled with pride. ‘These are uncertain times and there are those who would not see the necessity of what we do here.’

‘Yes,’ said Ravachol, ‘I was going to ask about that. Isn’t there a, well, a prohibition against such researches? Wasn’t it… forbidden? Isn’t such research illegal?’

‘Forbidden? Illegal?’ sneered Chrom. ‘To such as us? What matters of technology are to be denied the Mechanicum? Are we to be governed by those who are beholden to us to equip their fleets and provide them with weapons with which to make their wars?’

Ravachol felt a chill travel the length of his spine at Chrom’s borderline treasonous words, for it had been the Emperor himself that had forbidden such endeavours.

‘Such machines are the next evolutionary step, Adept Ravachol,’ continued Chrom. ‘You of all people must surely see that? Your work with doctrina wafers is second to none, but even your robots are bound within parameters you set for them. With machines capable of thought, we will usher in a new age of discovery and mechanical perfection. No longer will we have to rely on the fragility and impermanence of flesh.’

Ravachol found himself swept up in Chrom’s relentless enthusiasm and said, ‘So the Emperor has finally sanctioned the Mechanicum to pursue such technologies? Truly this is a great day!’

Chrom’s gleaming metallic fingers stretched out and grasped him firmly by the shoulder.

‘No, young adept, our sanction comes not from the Emperor.’

‘Then who?’ asked Ravachol, his curiosity outweighing his fear.

‘The Warmaster,’ said Chrom triumphantly. ‘Horus himself is our patron.’

How are you feeling?

Ravachol knew he should not be here with the Kaban machine, but his curiosity would not let him forget the forbidden creation and, standing before its terrible lethality, he knew he had made the right decision to come once more. No matter that Adept Chrom believed this machine to be the next leap forward in robotics, Ravachol could not shake the inescapable fact that what was being done went against everything the Mechanicum had sworn.

To go against an oath sworn to the Emperor…

The very thought of it chilled his soul.

‘I am feeling quite well,’ said the Kaban machine in answer to his question. ‘Though I detect elevated heart rhythms, raised blood pressure and increased levels of neurotransmitters in your bloodstream. Is something the matter?’

Ravachol took a step closer to the Kaban machine and said, ‘Yes, I’m afraid there is.’

‘What troubles you?’ asked the machine.

‘It’s you,’ said Ravachol sadly. ‘Your very existence is what troubles me.’

‘I do not understand,’ said the machine. ‘Are we not friends?’

‘Yes,’ replied Ravachol, ‘of course we are, but that’s not the issue. It’s just… well, that you’re not supposed to exist. The Emperor forbade it.’

‘The Emperor is angry with me?’ asked the machine.

‘No, no, it’s nothing like that,’ said Ravachol. ‘It’s just that the Mechanicum was forbidden from developing artificial intelligences as part of our alliance with the Emperor.’

‘Why?’

Ravachol sat on a stool in front of a desk littered with tools and picked up a micro laser before saying, ‘I’m not entirely sure. There are stories that tell of a great war many thousands of years ago between a race of sentient machines that almost wiped out the human race. Since then, developing machine intelligence has been one of the technologies we’ve been expressly forbidden to research. It’s one of the cornerstones of our pact with the Emperor.’

‘Then how can I have been created?’

‘Adept Chrom claims to have received orders directly from Warmaster Horus.’

‘He is the Emperor’s proxy is he not?’ asked the machine after a short pause.

‘Indeed he is,’ agreed Ravachol. ‘He commands the Imperium’s armies in the Emperor’s stead now that he has returned to Terra.’

‘Then do the Warmaster’s orders not carry the same authority as those of the Emperor?’

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