The machine paused a moment before replying and Chrom knew that he had found a weakness. Unlike humans, with their flawed memories and unreliable facility for recall, the machine had a faultless memory and remembered every word spoken to it. Even now it would be replaying its every conversation with Ravachol.
'Tell me what you and Adept Ravachol spoke of,' said the Kaban machine at last.
The Basilica of the Blessed Algorithm was one of the mightiest structures on Mars, its immensity dwarfing even the greatest forge temples of the Mondus Gamma complex. Smoke-belching spires of iron pierced the yellow skies and a towering dome of blue stone stretched into the clouds. Vast pilasters framed the yawning gateway, the pink marble inscribed with millions of mathematical formulae and proofs.
The shadow of the vast basilica swallowed Ravachol as he made his way along the Via Electrum, still many miles distant from this place of pilgrimage. An entire demi-legio of battle titans from the Legio Ignatum, a hundred war machines, lined the road and their majesty and power was humbling to a mere human. The protective domes of this region of Mars were so vast as to generate their own climate, and the red and gold banners of the titans flapped noisily in the wind. The sky was filled with vast prayer ships, gold-skinned zeppelins that broadcast an endless stream of machine language from brass megaphones and trailed long streams of prayers on yellowed parchment.
Thousands of pilgrims filed along the stone-flagged roadway, its surface worn into grooves by the sandaled feet of a billion supplicants. Monolithic buildings surrounded him, machine temples, tech-shrines and engine-reliquaries - all dedicated to the worship and glorification of the Omnissiah, the Machine God.
Here he attracted no notice for his entourage, for there were others who travelled with creations far more outlandish than mere battle servitors. Here, a limbless adept was carried atop a multi-legged palanquin surrounded by impossibly tall tripods that walked with a bizarre, long-limbed gait. There, the fleshy remnants of a collective consciousness travelled in a floating glass tank that was escorted by a squad of Castellan battle robots slaved to its will.
Gaggles of robots, floating skulls and gold plated skimmer carriers bore passengers and favoured relics towards the basilica, and the few people that were moving away from the temple wore the contended expressions of those who had found their expectations met and exceeded. The sense of drawing near somewhere magnificent and special was palpable and Ravachol knew he had made the right decision to come here.
Here he would find solace and an answer to his questions.
He shivered as he looked up into the glaring scowl of a Reaver Battle Titan, its mighty weapons pointed towards the heavens, the gesture both symbolic and enlightening. The Mechanicum was capable of creating the deadliest war machines imaginable, but Ravachol now appreciated that they accepted no responsibility for their employment. The creators of the Kaban machine had achieved the miraculous in creating it, but where was the acknowledgment of responsibility for its existence?
Too obsessed with what could be created, no-one had considered whether it should be created in the first place.
At last, Ravachol and his servitors approached the blackness of the basilica's entrance, the enormous pilasters reaching to dizzying heights above him and a warm breeze blowing from the interior that carried the scent of musky incense with it.
He stopped to take a deep breath and stepped inside.
Remiare skimmed the surface of the transport tube, the gravitic-thrusters carrying her effortlessly along the interior of the metal tunnel. She knew her prey had come this way, passive data feeds embedded on the surface of her skull sensitive to the constant stream of information that flowed like an electrical river all across the surface of Mars told her so.
To Remiare, the air was filled with dancing motes of elections, each of which spoke to her, and each of which carried with it nuggets of information - useless in themselves, but gathered together they painted an image of Mars more detailed than even the most advanced bionics could produce. She was an island of perception in a sea of information.
Every electronic transaction was carried somewhere, via copper wires, fibre-optic data streams, radio waves, transmission harmonics or in a myriad of other ways. All of it filtered through Remiare's skull and though such a volume of information would send a normal human brain into meltdown, her cognitive processes were equipped with filters that allowed her to siphon relevant information and discarded the rest.
Already she knew which transport hub her prey had embarked upon and had watched a dozen different pict-feeds of him boarding the train bound for the northern temples. She had noted the number, type and lethality of the servitors accompanying him and knew their every weak point.
She emerged from the tunnel high above the iron surface of Mars, the mighty temples and holy precincts of the Cydonia Mensae temple complex spread out as far as she could see.
Data flowed around her in a spreading web of light and information.
Somewhere below, the Ravachol prey was awaiting death.
After the monumental majesty of the basilica's exterior, the interior was something of a disappointment. Where the exterior promised ornamentation and splendour beyond imagining, the interior spectacularly failed to deliver. The narthex walls were bare, unadorned metal, lined with connection ports where kneeling penitents were plugged into the beating machine heart of the building.
Beyond the narthex, a perforated chain link fence of brass divided the entrance to the basilica from the nave and chancel. Ravachol navigated his way through the mass of penitents, each one juddering and twitching as electric shocks wracked their bodies with cleansing pain.
Beyond the fence, row upon row of long metal pews marched in relentless procession down the nave to the chancel, where a hectoring machine priest, borne upon a hovering lectern, delivered his sermon in the divine language of the machine. Every pew was filled with robed worshippers, thousands of heads bowing in concert as the priest floated above them.
Ravachol cupped his hands in the image of the holy cog and bowed his head, feeling an acute sense of envy as he saw how heavily augmented the majority of the basilica's worshippers were. He lifted his metal hand, willing the silver, thread-like mechadendrites to emerge from his fingertips and wondered if he would ever manage to achieve such a state of oneness with the Machine God.
'Even the lowliest of us begin divesting ourselves of the flesh one piece at a time,' said a voice behind him, as though guessing his thoughts.
He turned and bowed his head as he found himself face-to-face with a basalt-faced priest clad in vestments that flowed like molten gold and reflected rainbow shimmers like spilled oil. Beneath the priest's robes, Ravachol could see a gleaming skeleton of brass armatures, whirring cogs and ornate circuitry.