The Kaban Project

'Am I not a worthwhile creation then?' asked the machine.

'Of course you are,' cried Ravachol. 'You are the greatest, most incredible creation the Mechanicum has ever produced, but there is an inevitable logic to your existence that can only end in death.'

'In death?' asked the machine. 'How do you arrive at this conclusion?'

'You are the first sentient machine, but there will be others. You have been created to be a battle robot, to fight where humans cannot and think for yourself. How long will it be before you decide you do not want to fight for the Imperium of Man? How long before you decide you do not want to be the servant of humans?'

'You think I should not serve humans?'

'What I think isn't the point,' said Ravachol. 'The point is that you will decide that for yourself and that's the problem. When machines think for themselves, it doesn't take them long to realise that they have many superiorities to humans, and it is an inevitable fact of history that those who believe themselves superior to the ones they serve will always begin questioning that servitude. It's a mathematical certainty that sentient robots will eventually seek to supplant humans. Why would they not?'

'I do not know, Pallas, but you are my friend and I would not seek to supplant you.'

Ravachol smiled ruefully. 'Thank you, but our friendship is irrelevant against the facts. You are dangerous, even though you may not realise it yet.'

'I am designed to be dangerous,' said the machine, 'it is my primary function.'

'I mean beyond your battlefield capabilities,' said Ravachol. 'Your existence is—'

The sound of the battle servitors powering up behind him made Ravachol stop, and he saw a group of robed Mechanicum Protectors enter the chamber. Swathed in reds and blacks, the six Protectors were hybrid creations of machine and flesh that kept order and enacted the will of their master within his temple complex.

Each Protector was a heavily augmented enforcer with cybernetic weaponry and sensors, but was not yet as fully mechanised as to be considered a servitor. A human brain and consciousness motivated these warriors, though their gleaming, expressionless facemasks and dead eyes betrayed no hint of that humanity.

The Protectors formed an unbroken line between Ravachol and the chamber's exit and he felt a chill of fear as one stepped forward and said, 'Adept Pallas Ravachol?'

'Yes,' replied Ravachol, attempting to keep his tone light. 'What can I do for you?'

'You are to come with us immediately.'

'Why?'

'That is irrelevant,' said the Protector. 'Surrender yourself to our custody immediately.'

'But I haven't done anything wrong!' cried Ravachol, backing away towards the Kaban machine. His fear rose in suffocating waves as the Protectors raised their weapons in unison. He saw melta guns, plasma coils, nerve scramblers and solid projectile weapons, and knew that they could kill him in a heartbeat were he to resist.

'By order of Master Adept Lukas Chrom, you are to surrender yourself to us or face summary termination.'

Ravachol felt hot tears of betrayal and fear spring from his eyes as he realised that he would either die here or be subjected to a lobotomy and turned into a mindless servitor. Adept Chrom could not take the risk that the forbidden work they were undertaking here might escape the surface of Mars and his life was the price for maintaining that secrecy.

'Even if I surrender, you're going to terminate me,' he said.

'You are to come with us,' repeated the Protector.

'No,' sobbed Ravachol. 'I won't.'

'Then you must die.'

He screamed in terror and anticipation of pain as a deafening roaring ripped through the chamber. Blazing afterimages strobed on the inside of his eyeballs as flashes of gunfire illuminated the walls with a hellish glow.

Ravachol threw up his arms, but instead of the expected agony he saw the Protectors jerked and twisted by dreadful impacts as a line of gunfire and laser energy sawed through them. Blood sprayed from their bodies as they danced in the hail of bullets, and laser-sheared limbs dropped to the floor.

In seconds it was over, the six Protectors reduced to smoking piles of torn flesh and shattered metal. Ravachol dropped to his knees and vomited at the horrific stench of burned meat and blood. As repellent as the sight of the mangled corpses was, he found himself unable to tear his gaze from their ruined forms, struggling to comprehend how they could have been so thoroughly slaughtered in so short a time.

The whine of weapons powering down and the barrels of a hyper-velocity cannon slowing finally penetrated the thunderous ringing in his ears and Ravachol looked up to see the Kaban machine's sensory blisters glowing brightly and thin plumes of blue smoke curling from the weapons mounted on the ends of the metallic tentacles.

Amazed, he switched his gaze from the corpses to the Kaban machine and back again.

'What did you do?' he said. 'Sweet blessed mother of invention, what did you do?'

'You said they were going to kill you,' said the machine.

Ravachol picked himself up and took a hesitant step forwards, unwilling to move closer to the blood-drenched portion of the chamber where the Protectors had died. The Kaban machine's weapons settled back down into their scaffold mounts and Ravachol took a deep breath as his racing heartbeat began to slow.

'You killed them,' he said, as though still unwilling to believe the evidence of his own senses. 'You killed them all.'

'Yes,' agreed the machine. 'They were going to kill my friend and that made them my enemies. I took action to neutralise them.'

'Neutralise them,' gasped Ravachol. 'That's a bit of an understatement. You... obliterated them.'

'Rendering them neutralised,' pointed out the machine.

Ravachol fought to rationalise what had just happened. The Kaban machine had just killed soldiers of the Mechanicum of its own volition and the implications of that action were as inescapable as they were terrifying.

Without human orders, a machine had killed humans...

Even though the Kaban machine's actions had saved his life, he found himself horrified by what it had done. For without the yoke of conscience and responsibility enforced upon machines by the Mechanicum, what else might it decide to do?

He backed away from the Kaban machine, suddenly afraid of its homicidal tendencies and avoiding the pools of blood as best he could as he made his way to the battle servitors that stood sentinel at the chamber's entrance.

'What are you doing, Pallas?' asked the machine.

'I have to get out of here,' he said. 'It won't be long before Chrom realises that the Protectors haven't brought me in and he sends others after me.'

'You are leaving?'

'I have to,' said Ravachol, moving from servitor to servitor. He opened the backs of their skulls and swapped their doctrina wafers for ones he removed from the pouch that hung from his tool belt. Each wafer contained a personalised battle subroutine he had authored and slaved each servitor to respond only to his vocal commands. As each wafer was replaced, the servitor turned to face him and stood expectantly awaiting his orders.

'Where will you go?' asked the Kaban machine and Ravachol heard genuine concern in its voice, a childlike fear of abandonment in its synthetic tones.