The Watchtower’s command deck is vast, and bustling with staff. Windows, their blast shutters raised, gaze out across the river and the city to one side, and out towards the lowlands on the other. Hesst can image the traffic at the starport, the dust raised by marshalling on the plains, the bright land and the storm-tinted sky, but he is not interested in the view.
The tower supports its own manifold field, and is inloading data to him and the other seniors at a rate equivalent to the noospheric broadcast of eight hundred Battle Titans. Sixty moderati of the highest quality, working in amniotic armourglas caskets set into the deck, help to cushion that flow and parse it for comprehension.
From this deck, from this summit, Hesst can issue – by means of a simple code command across his permanent MIU link – the order to commit the planet’s weapon grid. Two hundred and fifty thousand surface-based weapons stations, including silo launchers and automated plasma ordnance, plus tower and turret guns, field stations, polar weapon pits. He can activate the immense void shield systems that umbrella Calth’s principal habitation centres. He can bring on-line the nine hundred and sixty-two orbital platforms, which include outward-facing protection systems and surface-aiming interdiction networks. Furthermore, he can harness and coordinate any and all available forces on the ground, and any fleet composition assembling at high anchor or in the shipyards.
Which means that, today, because of the conjunction, Server Hesst has immediate personal control over more firepower than Warmaster Horus. Or, it’s conceivable, the Emperor himself.
This consideration does not impress Server Hesst, or fill him with anxiety. Hesst is aware, however, that Magos Meer Edv Tawren is reading his elevated adrenal levels.
Tawren is young and efficient, tall, fully modified. She has excelled in her advancement through the developmental levels of the Mechanicum, and is profoundly good at her work. She supervises the Analyticae. Hesst is fond of her. He seldom accesses his emotions, but on the rare occasions that he decides to use them, he always notices the warmth with which he perceives her. Her modifications are technically pleasing, and her base organics possess a certain aesthetic.
“You are running hot”, she blurts to him in binaric code, a microsecond transmission on the intimate direct mode. It is non-verbal, but the blurt contains code signifiers for Hesst, and for a Titan battle unit straining its drives.
“Not at all. Rumination: Today is simply demanding.”
Tawren nods. She is ghosting his overwatch. He is aware of her presence in the manifold at his shoulder, just as she is standing next to him on the deck in the fleshsphere. Her fingers are trembling, touching invisible keys, coordinating data via the subtle haptics. Today’s difficulty is not shooting at things.
With two fleets in conjunction, traffic density above Calth is singularly high. Virtually all of it is moving according to non-standard or adjusted traffic patterns, extraordinary situational shifts of movement, course and proximity that are not coded into the regular watch registers. This is a one-time thing, for one day only: their responsibility is the safe and assured orchestration of a vast armada.
Calth’s weapons grid has multiple redundancies and stratified forms of cross-check and authorisation. It cannot be abused or used in error by any single individuaclass="underline" not Hesst, not the forty other servers in the Watchtower, not the six thousand two hundred and seventy-eight magi and adepts stationed planet-wide, or the garrison commanders of the Army or the local divisions. Nothing can happen without his personal consent.
Every time a ship arrives, or moves, or passes another, or joins formation, or enters a yard, or docks, or begins to refuel, or begins a sunward circuit to certify its drives, an alarm sounds. Every non-standard motion or manoeuvre system-activates the grid, and Hesst has to reject a firing query.
It’s actually the most superb test and demonstration of Calth’s grid, but it is becoming tiresome. From the summit of the Watchtower, Server Hesst controls the effective firepower of a major fleet, that firepower distributed across the surface and orbit. The system is hyper-sensitive, so that nothing can take it by surprise and secure an advantage. Every non-standard movement triggers an automatic firing solution from the grid, which Hesst has to personally reject in discretionary mode. He’s currently getting between eighteen and twenty-five a second.
Tawren knows that standard Mechanicum operating practice under such conditions, as advised by both the forgemasters of Konor and the exalted elders of Mars, is to temporarily bypass the multi-nodal automatics of the grid‘s alert processors and, for the duration of the fleet manoeuvres, transfer approval control to the automatic stations. Let the sentient machines of the platforms shoulder the burden. Let them cross-check the constant inload of data. Let them verify the anchorage codes and the traffic registration marks.
She also knows that Hesst is a determined individual who takes great pride in his work, and in his duties as a server. Calth’s planetary grid is optimised to run on multi-nodal automatics with a server or servers supplying final approval of all operations. To switch out to automatics alone is to admit the weakness of the fleshbrain. It is to resort to machine alone rather than bioengine synthesis. It is to acknowledge the limits of man, and to submit to the clinical efficiency of cold code.
They have discussed this. They have even discussed it using fleshvoices and vocal chords, unplugged. Hesst has the purest vision of the Mechanicum’s dream, and she adores him for it. It is not, as so many of the unmodified in society believe, the adoration of the machine. It is the use of the machine to extend humanity. It is apotheosis through synthesis. To stand back and allow the machines to do the work is disgusting to Hesst. He probably finds the concept more abhorrent than an unmodified human would.
“It’s not an admission of failure, you know?” she blurts. She is resuming a conversation they were having two days before, as if no intervening time had elapsed.
He acknowledges the fact, recognising the conversational marker appended to her code that reopens his saved file of that exchange.
“It is, in fact, a practice recommended by Mars.”
Hesst nods.
”If we build systems we cannot run, what is the point of building them? Tell me where that leads, Magos Tawren? ”
”The annihilation of self. The abnegation of sentience. ”
‘Exactly,’ says Hesst. His use of fleshvoice surprises her, but she instantly realises that he has switched from binaric in order to make a symbolic point. This amuses her, and she shows him that she is amused by using a facial expression.
‘You think this is about my pride, don’t you, Meer?’ he asks.
She shrugs. Like him, she is still, simultaneously, making subtle haptic gestures and scouring the noosphere’s dataflow. ‘I think that no one, not even an adept of the rank server or above, has ever run an operation like this on discretionary mode alone. I think you’re attempting some kind of record. Or trying to win a medal. Or trying to rupture a major organ.’
Her voice is clean, as pure as code. He sometimes wishes she would use it more.
‘It is simply a question of security and efficiency,’ he says. ‘The grid is designed to be multi-nodal. That is its strength. It has no single heart, no single brain. It is global. Take out any point, even this Watchtower, even me, and any other ranking server or magos can take over. The grid will adjust and recognise the discretion of the next in line. This tower could topple, and a server on the far side of the planet would instantly take over. Multi-nodal redundancy is a perfect system. You cannot kill anything that has no centre. So I’d prefer not to weaken the integrity of this planet’s defence system even slightly by opting out of discretion and transferring approval oversight to the orbital engines.’