the slowly cooling embers of industry, whose toxic touch would suffocate or burn the unwary to death in a matter of moments. Offhand, I could think of few places I’d ever been which looked so singularly uninviting.
‘Regio Quinquaginta Unus,’ she replied. ‘One of our most sacred shrines. Few outside our order are even aware of its existence.’
‘Then I’m honoured to be made an exception,’ I said, in my most diplomatic tone.
‘What’s so special about it?’ Jurgen asked, roused from his silent suffering by the prospect of being back on the ground before long, and cutting directly to the heart of the matter as he so often did.
Kildhar seemed taken aback by the directness of the question, and pondered a moment before making a reply. ‘It’s a repository,’ she said at last. ‘Of knowledge so ancient its origins are lost to us. And a sanctuary, for those dedicated to its recovery and application.’
‘You’re talking about archeotech, aren’t you?’ I said, and the tech-priest nodded. She seemed to be getting better at it, I noted absently, unless it was just that she meant it this time.
‘Recovered from a dozen places across the sector,’ she told me reverently, ‘and brought here for preservation and study.’
‘I can appreciate why you would want to keep that confidential,’ I said, suppressing a shudder. I’d come across a few revenant artefacts myself over the decades, and the consequences had never been good. Memories of dodging genestealers in the bowels of a space hulk jostled with those of the lunatic fervour in Killian’s eyes as he tried to convince me that dragging the galaxy into damnation was the best way to save it, and of the relentless advance of the gleaming metal killers in the labyrinth of tunnels beneath Interitus Prime. ‘That kind of knowledge can attract the wrong kind of attention.’
‘Then we must rely on your discretion,’ she said.
‘I’m honoured that you think you can,’ I said, truthfully enough, already beginning to compose an urgently worded dispatch to Amberley in my head as I spoke[75]. For all I knew the Inquisition was already perfectly aware of this stockpile of primordial junk, but it never hurt to spread the word a little further, especially if one of the inquisitors in the know happened to be a dangerous loon[76], like the late and unlamented Killian.
There was little time for further conversation after that, as the Aquila banked sharply and the shrine itself came into view. A hexagonal block of rockcrete rose up out of the dark grey drifts beneath us, looking not unlike one of the thousands of defensive bunkers I’d observed, cowered in, or tried to avoid assaulting in the course of my long and inglorious career, until the profusion of vox antennae, heat sinks, and substructures encrusting its surface allowed me to get some sense of scale. It was at least two hundred metres high, and twice that across. As we rose above it, the outline of a blessed cogwheel became visible, inlaid into the roof, and encircling the centre of it, running just inside the narrowest portions of the hexagon. In the very centre the motif was repeated, enclosing a raised landing pad, which at the moment appeared to be unoccupied.
‘I can’t see any guards,’ Jurgen said, turning in his seat to get a better view, and almost throttling himself with the misaligned crash webbing.
‘I’m sure there must be some,’ I said, with a quizzical glance at our hostess. ‘Skitarii?’
‘Three contubernia are stationed here at all times,’ she told me, in a faintly evasive manner.
‘Three squads,’ I said thoughtfully, translating the term into its Imperial Guard equivalent[77]. ‘Should be enough for an installation this size.’
‘It’s proved adequate so far,’ Kildhar assured me. The Aquila was on its final approach now, its landing jets flaring, and I felt the sudden surge of acceleration against my spine as it rose a little to position itself above the centre of the pad. Then the engines powered down, and the landing skids ground against the rockcrete. ‘And, of course, we take other precautions.’ There was a hint of a smile hovering round her lips, despite her best efforts to retain the expressionless face expected of a tech-priest; clearly she was expecting me to ask what.
‘I’d expect nothing less,’ I said, as the whine of our engines died away, refusing to play the game. If I did ask, she’d just tell me I didn’t have the right clearance, subtly underlining who was really in charge here, whereas if I affected complete