'Whatever He is,' said Friedisch. 'The transhumans. He has made are a means to an end, you'll see.'

'Do you really think so?'

Friedisch nodded earnestly. 'Above all things, the Emperor wishes to preserve humanity, not advance it into new forms. They are tools to be used to protect the baseline types. They are all sterile.'

'Not so,' said Cawl. 'They merely reproduce in a more efficient way.'

'A parasite's way. The engineered gene-code of the Legions requires a host. They cannot reproduce alone, but must be nurse-maided.'

'Then you do not see them as the refinement of the human genome?'

'They are not. If that were the case, why is the Council of Terra made up of baseline humans? If the Emperor is the Machine-God—'

'Or his Omnissiah,' said Cawl. He couldn't resist interrupting everything Friedisch said.

'Or his Omnissiah, why doesn't He embrace the machine as we do?' Friedisch leaned closer in. 'The storm is dying. Messages have started to come through from Terra. The Mechanicum has been disbanded. There is a new Fabricator General, on Earth, not on Mars. They are calling this new organisation the Adeptus Mechanicus. It is a coup by any other name that brings our people further into Terra's thrall.'

'And? Kelbor-Hal is a traitor. There should be consequences to his actions,' said Cawl with a shrug.

'He is the rightfully chosen emissary of the Machine-God, not the Emperor!' hissed Friedisch. 'He has done wrong, fine. Let him be tried by his peers and executed if that is judged appropriate. But no one outside the Martian hierarchy has the right to replace him.'

'The Omnissiah does.'

'If the Emperor is the Omnissiah.'

'If He is,' allowed Cawl.

'Which He is not,' said Friedisch.

There followed a brief, tense silence. Nearby energisers crackled. Sanctified oil dispensers chimed. A trio of higher-ranking adepts scuttled by, twittering at each other in binaric.

'Let us return to the debate in question,' Cawl said.

Friedisch wearily acquiesced.

'So, your standpoint is that the Emperor does not believe in improving the human race in toto. The creatures He has made are for a purpose, and are disposable.'

'It's obvious, Cawl!'

Cawl held up a silencing finger. 'Whereas I hold that we instead are over-reliant on the supplementation of the human body with these crude augmetics.' He gestured pointedly at Friedisch's own mistake. 'If you are correct, I can't say who has the better goal. Can you honestly say your additions have improved your life?'

'Well, I…' The question wrong-footed Friedisch. 'The implants were problematic. There is the low-band spectral sight. And the dark sight. I can see in the dark very well. The pict function carries data-rich imagery directly to my memcore without requiring it to pass along my optic nerve shunts, which frees up more bandwidth of my native neurology for—'