The assembled population of the Heptaligon waited in Tria Station, otherwise called the Orb of Conveyance. Tria was given entirely over to docking facilities, being the main port of the Heptaligon. Metal skies encompassed a volume to rival a small moon. Grav-plating made the interior of the orb an inverted world, where the ground curved overhead in an unbroken sphere. The sight was a breathtaking display of the Machine-God's artistry. There was no up or down in the Orb of Conveyance. A forest of graceful docking spars extended towards the centre, tipped with floating wharfs. Giant lumen panels adorned the interior in binary patterns that spelled out the might of the Machine-God for all to see until distance squeezed them together into a pale yellow glow.

The structure that faced the moon gave into the giant funicular highway that ran down the centre's tether-tube. Opposite the funicular were a profusion of apertures that opened into the void, the stars beyond tinted a subtle blue by the glimmer of atmospheric fields.

Upon Aspertia's grav-dais Cawl attended his mistress. He was thus higher than the common herd, and so had a fine view of the crowds and the sphere. The throng blurred into a mass of red and gunmetal-grey with distance until, between the docked void craft locked to the orb's numerous piers, the people on the upper interior surfaces blended into a rose sea so distant no enhancement of vision could tease it apart into individuals. They were the assembled might of Mars in the Trisolian System. Cawl clicked through his machine senses. The infosphere vibrated with anticipation. The faces of the entire host pointed towards the central point of the Orb of Con veyance, where a single landing platform had been placed, plated in gold and draped with rich red cloth. Hololithic banners scrolled around it in broad bands and were periodically shattered into swirling motes by the passage of hundreds of servo-skulls. Laudatory anthems played over a constant screeching of binaric and grand pronouncements in Gothic. Holoscreens the size of light cruisers displayed the platform for the crowds.

The blood of the betrayed had not yet dried as the Warmaster came to claim his new domain.

Data transfer packets whisked across the space at frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum invisible to eyes of flesh. To those who could not see this additional layer of reality, the architecture of the sphere may have seemed brutal, a mess of metal, cables, and poorly considered embellishment. In the higher realms of data transfer a profound beauty was revealed. Cawl looked with near religious awe at the synchronicity of thought on display. It was rare indeed to see such a huge crowd engaged in singular communion.

But though beautiful, the pattern of data transmission was dark in tone. Dread suffused it. None of the adepts within dared transmit their concerns openly, but to the practised eye of Belisarius Cawl, it was visible in the brevity of the communication bursts.