A metre-thick wheel door separated the bullet lift from the diagnostiad. Disgengaging its complex security protocols calmed him. By the time the door rolled open again, he had begun to formulate a plan. He went into the great sphere, the door rumbling closed after him, and walked around the giant needle that housed the primary interface throne. The whispering voices of the hundreds of mind-linked tech-priests hissed on the air. Quiet. Safety. With a sigh, Kubik stooped. The weight of Mars was on him and he must know what occurred in the palace.
He attempted to open a datalink from his mind to the Martian noosphere. Nothing happened. Internal diagnostic checks indicated no malfunction in his augments. He went to a console embedded in the main gateway. He bent over it, and inserted a probe into an access socket. Immediately, he uncovered the problem.
There was but one conduit for the Motive Force and dataflow in and out of the chamber. Impossibly, somebody had put a block on it.
He retracted his mechadendrite from the console into his robe and made for the door. There was always a member of the Synod on duty there, watching over the machines.
‘I wouldn’t bother,’ said a voice behind him. ‘I got in here, don’t you think I would have taken the precaution of isolating you? He’s dead. It is a fine, fine place to hide, the diagnostiad. Only a couple of ways in, only one way out. And only one data line. A good idea of yours to come here, if only I hadn’t have been waiting.’
‘Drakan Vangorich,’ said Kubik. He turned to find the Grand Master of the Assassinorum behind him. ‘I am honoured. You came yourself.’
‘Well, you’re an important man, Fabricator General.’
Vangorich was wearing the robes of one of the muttering components of the diagnostiad. Kubik searched for an empty alcove. Sure enough, he found one. In Vangorich’s hand was a light needle pistol with an underslung plasma caster. It looked like something specifically devised to kill the master of Mars.
‘You knew I would do this,’ said Kubik. ‘That I would come here.’
‘Knew?’ said Vangorich. ‘I planned it! I am the Grand Master of Assassins, after all. One would hope such a person might be good at their job. But then, who can tell in these trying times? So few people seem to be fit for their office.’
‘You cannot kill me,’ said Kubik.
‘Can’t I? Your servants are distracted, and they are looking in the wrong place. We have plenty of time.’
‘Gloating before execution is the primary cause of failure of seven per cent of despots,’ said Kubik.
‘I’m not going to gloat,’ said Vangorich. ‘We’re going to talk. Actually, I’m going to talk, and you’re going to listen, but it’s not gloating.
‘You know, I was raised in Temple Venenum. We are a subtle Temple, not like the others with their guns and alien technology and psychotic super-warriors. Ours is more genteel, we follow the way of guile, of poison, though not exclusively so. Take Krule, I am sure you have heard of him. He is of my Temple. He prefers to use his fists, but I, I have always had an affection for poison. It is so discreet. Poison a man and he won’t even know he’s been murdered. You can change the course of a river with the careful removal of a stone. That is the Assassin’s task. With poison, nobody need ever know who moved it.’
‘How apt,’ said Kubik. He was using his emotionless machine voice. ‘You are poison, Vangorich, corrupting everything you touch.’
Vangorich smiled, pleased with the comparison. ‘I never had you for a dealer in metaphor, Fabricator General. I do like to think I am subtle, like poison, but I am no corrupter. I prefer to think of myself as a healer. Many poisons are medicine, only at too high a dose are they deadly.’
Kubik bleeped in indignation. ‘The removal of the Grand Master from the High Twelve was done for sound reasons. We were remiss to allow your reinstatement.’
‘You were right to bring me back. It should have been done sooner.’
‘So that you might install yourself as ruler?’
‘So that I might prevent the deaths of billions of Imperial citizens,’ said Vangorich. ‘I have not assassinated very many people myself for a long time, Kubik. I am going to make an exception for you. Of all the petty, self-serving, childish behaviour I have witnessed on the Senatorum Imperialis, yours has been the worst by far. I was willing to forget and forgive, move forward with the Senatorum and rule correctly according to the will of the Emperor, however hopelessly idealistic His plans were. But then you had to disobey Thane and move Ullanor. That is what set me on this course of action. In a way, you are responsible for the deaths of the High Lords. Before you made your last greedy error, I was planning on just bullying you all to work together, but you made me realise I’d be better off without the lot of you. I don’t know what I should have expected, I suppose. You did want to secede from the Imperium. I’m an optimist, that’s my problem.’
‘That which is not a part cannot secede.’
‘Semantics. Without the Imperium, the Empire of Mars is dead, and vice versa. We are one people, and that will not change no matter how many times you say otherwise. You are a High Lord of Terra, and you betrayed your office and your Emperor-Omnissiah many times over.’
‘You cannot kill me with impunity.’
‘I can,’ said Vangorich. ‘I’m going to give you a choice. Poison comes in many forms, and not all of it is deadly to living organisms. There are poisons for machines, too. When I sent Red Haven here, I had my infocyte Yendl secrete a dataphage in the Martian noosphere. Now, there are formidable defences in your data vaults, but we of Venenum are clever. The phage has had time to mature, to learn its enemy. It’s been there for months, gathering information to make itself as deadly as it possibly can be. The noosphere has become a home from home. Every lock and keyhole, window and door is known intimately to it.’
Kubik’s mechanical limbs twitched. ‘You will topple an empire to teach me a lesson. Vanity.’
‘Of course not,’ snorted Vangorich. ‘I’m outlining your options. The first is this. You do nothing, I shoot you in the head with this gun which carries a neurotoxin so potent it will burn out every last organic nerve remaining in your body, and then I release the phage into the world-core. It may result in the destruction of Mars as a functioning civilisation, or it may just destroy billions of terabytes of very valuable information. Either way, it is a circumstance you will want to avoid.’
‘And the other alternative?’
‘You voluntarily shut down. After giving me your intelligence core, of course. The thing is, I don’t want you around any more, Kubik, but I would rather that everyone else thinks you are still in charge. It’ll be easier for all concerned that way.’
‘You wish me to kill myself and acquiesce to a replacement who will take my identity?’
‘That’s it. You must ask yourself, what is more important to you — yourself, as an individual, or the continued existence of thousands of years of knowledge?’
Kubik made a strange sound, a flurry of bleeps and twittering. It took Vangorich a moment to realise that the Fabricator General was laughing.
‘You cannot succeed in this. Give yourself up, Vangorich. I assume you have succeeded in disposing of our colleagues on the Council. Stop here. You have rooted out the rot. My death will accomplish nothing.’
‘It will make me feel a lot better,’ said Vangorich. ‘I do so hate a traitor.’
He straightened his gun arm, levelling the pistol at Kubik, and held up a device in the other. ‘Give me your intelligence core, or I swear I will kill this world while you watch.’ Vangorich stared at Kubik, his thumb ready over a button that could wipe away the accumulated wisdom of millennia.