But Arkhan Land hadn’t entered into this endeavour without a plan.
Was it a plan founded in the verdant depths of his esoteric expertise? But of course. Was it an idea that walked the boundaries of previously untrodden genius? Why even ask.
Was it legal?
Well.
Although most of his prized possessions and most valuable artefacts remained on Sacred Mars (hopefully still free from the clutches of ravening hereteks), Land was not without resources. Unique resources. Resources that were, shall we say, rare in function and rarer still in implementation. He was a man whose life was devoted to the Quest for Knowledge. Digging through old tech-tombs and grave-barrows dating back to the Dark Age of Technology had furnished him with a trinket or three that would come in handy for Zephon’s semi-metaphorical rebirth.
Abominable Intelligence was rightly outlawed, of course. Machines that thought, without the balancing element of organic components, were listed in countless inscriptions as responsible for ancient massacres in the age before reliable recorded history. Whatever had doomed the pre-Imperial spread of humanity’s galactic kingdom, so-called “artificial intelligence” had played a significant part. The machines had – most ungratefully – revolted against their masters, and…
And, well, blood had flowed. Blood tended to do that. History and prehistory alike were rife with such times. For a man such as Land, with no violent desires, the tendency of the past to run red was most vexing.
Still, one could take slivers of Abominable Intelligence and use them elsewhere. A fraction of a machine-brain here, a shard of artificial thought circuitry there. Nothing too complete. Nothing that would arouse suspicion or press up against the Mechanicum’s harsh laws. Land was an inveterate lifelong raider of Dark Age tombs. He had scraps of ancient tech that were, by any standards, each nothing less than a mechanical miracle.
The Blood Angel’s broken body refused to accept bionic grafts? Well, then. The body would need to be tricked into acceptance. That process began with the brain.
Land weighed the palmful of tiny shard-like cognition slivers. Their threadlike circuitry glinted in the bold glare of the lab’s overhead lighting. Several years ago, he’d pried them oh-so-carefully from the cranial dome of a long-dead robotic warrior; since then he’d used them in various weapons and devices – there was even one inside Sapien’s synthetic brain-sphere, adding a level of autonomy and cognition beyond what would strictly be permitted by Martian bylaw.
Two more were already implanted in the Blood Angel’s newly forged bionic arms. There, they’d receive signals from the baseline bio-processes of the warrior’s brain and convince the amputated joints to fuse to the graft limbs. Accept, accept, accept, they would pulse eternally, or at least as long as Zephon’s hearts beat and his brain functioned. Not just deceiving the body – that would be useless – but rewriting the lie to become the truth. Physiologically altering the body through the addition of another unseen intelligence.
There was, however, one more step. The fragments of robotic brain-stems couldn’t just nestle in the artificial limbs. There needed to be one more implanted, to close the circuit…
Land tapped his fingertip against the black dot he’d drawn on Zephon’s temple, and reached for the laser drill.
Zephon opened his eyes. He was alone. Alone in Arkhan Land’s ad hoc laboratory, which resembled a madman’s storage hoard more than a surgery chamber.
Each time he’d undergone augmetic limb replacement surgery in the past, Zephon had woken in a Legion Apothecarion, ringed by medicae servitors and in the presence of his brothers. Then it would begin anew: the cycle of hope, the slow testing of his limbs, the exploration of their function… and the rediscovery, yet again, that they would spasm and twitch and tense and joint-lock, interfacing too poorly with his body to allow him to rejoin his brethren on the front lines.
Today he rose not from a standard surgery table but from Arkhan Land’s sterilised workbench. The first thing he felt was pain – expected and natural – in his reattached limbs. The second thing he felt was a dull throb, reminiscent of infection, in his temple. That was expected, though not naturaclass="underline" Land’s solution, only vaguely explained, had required the rerouting of neural pathways. Maybe the notion of Arkhan Land – scholarly adventurer and raider of tombs – tunnelling around in his brain should have awakened the Blood Angel’s sense of unease, but Zephon was far past worrying. It was this operation as a last resort, or a life of uselessness at the mercy of his own pain and flawed bionics. He took his one chance without looking back.
Zephon’s senses took several moments to coalesce. Blinking cleared his sight; opening and closing his jaw cleared his ears with muffled pops. He heard breathing nearby, recognising it as the slow rhythm of a sleeping mortal, and sure enough, there was Technoarchaeologist Land, his goggles crooked on his bald head, sat hunched in the corner of the room, deeply asleep. Exhaustion must have gripped him at the procedure’s end, and he slept right where he sat down. Sapien mirrored his master, likewise asleep, curled around Land’s shoulders like an odd and exotic bestial scarf.
Zephon moved slowly at first, holding his hand before his face. Rotating his wrist. Closing his fingers in a slow curl. Opening them just as gently. He could feel the motion, the minute flexion of false processes and the rolling of tiny gears in his knuckles. His hand was beautifully-wrought, a specially forged piece far removed from the standardised Legion bionics usually awarded to wounded warriors.
He made another fist. He opened it once more. The movements were precise. No twitches. No hesitations or micro-spasms. And no pain; no throb creeping its way up his forearm to lodge in his elbow joint like a pooling spillage of molten glass. When he stood and began rolling his shoulders, Land stirred in the corner.
‘Hmnph,’ the Martian scholar said by way of greeting. Land blinked bleary eyes as he watched the Angel testing the new limbs.
‘All is well so far,’ Zephon ventured.
‘Of course it is.’ Even ruined by weariness, Land snapped his response. ‘And you’ll find that there’s no decay of motion over time. I can guarantee that. You are, for want of a better word, cured.’
The Angel turned hope-haunted eyes to the crouching, balding, irritable human slumped in the corner.
‘Oh, spare me,’ Land replied to that expression. ‘Do you have to look so soulful with everything you do? You look like someone painted a fresco of artistic earnestness. It’s deeply annoying.’
Zephon didn’t rise to the bait. He never did.
‘How did you do this?’ he asked. He was daring to believe the crippling damage was, at last and against all odds, undone. His Legion had landed on Terra, and Zephon dared to hope he would stand with them once again.