'You shall know as soon as I do,' said Russ. 'My jarls, we return to Fenris soon! Prepare yourselves. Prepare your Great Companies. Rejoice that you shall see home again, but be mindful that we shall be there but a while, for once the truth is revealed to me, we strike for Horus without delay. Fenrys hjolda!' he proclaimed.

'Fenrys hjolda!' they replied.

Three

Three

Question Not, Learn Not

Among the multitudes of the Mechanicum's cults were many who despised the human form. Whether they were a modest proportion of an outpost's small crew, or the entire populace of metal-clad forge worlds, or if they openly expounded their loathing of flesh or hid it, they were legion. Their opponents argued that a biological machine honed by millions of years of evolution was difficult to better. The tinkerers, cyber-surgeons and gene-hackers paid them no heed.

In sustenance hall 46 in the Septa station of the Heptaligon, the chief facility of the Trisolian System, two natives of Mars were debating the relative merits of the pro and anti forma naturalis positions. It was the week the Warmaster came, though at the time of their conversation that was several days away.

The interlocutors were low-ranking tech adepts, elevated from the mass of the Mechanicum's slice of servile humanity, but not far along in their careers. They were natives of Mars and of a similar age, having taken installation of their intelligence cores only a couple of decades before, though they did not know each other then. Upon posting to the Trisolian System, their paths had crossed Finding common ground - a few old haunts they both knew a smattering of shared colleagues - they had struck up a fragile friendship.

Their names were Friedisch Adum Silip Qvo, and Belisarius Cawl. They did not agree on much, it was true, but it was equally true that they enjoyed the friction of their differences as much as the ease of their similarities.

When their shifts coincided they would take sustenance together. They often lingered in the hall for a while to debate with one another, as they did that day. Surrounded by the clatter of nutrient cubes delivered to metal trays and the constant hum of plasma cell recharging coils, their often contentious discussions were as safely held there as anywhere else.

A good thing too, for their debate had taken them into dangerous territory. The subject the racket of the hall shrouded was their shared mistress, Domina Magos Hester Aspertia Sigma-Sigma. The line of conversation worried Friedisch. For the same reasons, it energised Cawl.

Somewhere inside Domina Magos Hester Aspertia Sigma-Sigma was a woman, though most people would not see that, because what covered the woman over was so alien as to obscure her human origins completely.