Severine shook her head, biting her lip as the pain of her broken arm flared. 'No, it was something Dalia did, I know it. What did you do?'

'I don't understand it myself, to be honest,' said Dalia, leaning her head back on the cold stone of the tunnel wall. 'It was as if I could see the mechanisms of its mind and I just knew how it worked. I saw what Chrom had done to it and I… kind of blinded it to the fact we were right in front of it.'

'Chrom?' said Severine. 'Lukas Chrom? He built that machine? A thinking machine?'

'Yes,' said Dalia. 'I could see his handiwork all over its mind.'

'Why would an adept like Chrom want to kill us?'

'Not us,' said Caxton. 'Dalia.'

Severine looked at Dalia as though she had personally broken her arm. 'What haven't you told us, Dalia? Why does Lukas Chrom want you dead?'

Dalia knew nothing she said would convince Severine that she didn't know for sure, but she shrugged and said, 'I'm guessing here, but I think maybe it's something to do with Adept Zeth's Akashic reader. Some people don't want it built, and I think they're afraid of what's going to happen when we know everything it can show us. Think about it, if anyone can know everything, then what happens to the keepers of knowledge? Knowledge is power, right? So what happens when everyone can access that knowledge?'

'They'd lose their power,' said Caxton.

'Exactly,' said Dalia. 'And I'm surer than ever that whatever the creature beneath the Noctis Labyrinthus is, it's the key to making the Akashic reader work. People are frightened of what we'll be able to achieve when we unlock its potential and they're desperate to hang on to what they've got.'

'So what's all that got to do with what's happening all over Mars?'

'I don't know,' said Dalia. 'I really don't, but whatever it is, it's bigger than all of us.'

At that moment Rho-mu 31 and Zouche had returned laden with a veritable treasure trove of useful items recovered from the unclaimed supplies earmarked for Crater Edge and Red Gorge: medicae packs, ration cartons, water recyclers and breathing apparatus. The medicae packs were opened and wounds cleaned and treated with counterseptic before being bound with gauze and bandages.

Best of all, Zouche had discovered an overturned Cargo-5 all-terrain hauler, an unreliable and cantankerous vehicle common in the frontier towns and less affluent forges, but one which offered them a chance of survival. Rho-mu 31 easily righted the vehicle, but upon doing so, they discovered that the indiscriminate fire of their attacker had severed the track unit and holed the mechanics of the driver's controls.

Undaunted, Zouche set to work repairing the damaged track unit with Rho-mu 31's help, while Caxton dismanded the control panel and set to work with Dalia, trying to jury-rig the controls back to life. Using spars of metal from the wrecked mag-lev, Rho-mu 31 groaned with effort as he lifted the Cargo-5 enough for the others to pull the repaired track links through, and they had cheered and embraced when Caxton finally ignited the drive plant and the engine turned over with a belligerent growl.

Stocking up the rear compartments of the Cargo-5 with their supplies, they had driven along the darkness of the tunnel and emerged into a freshly broken morning. Dalia had never been happier to see open sky, though the scarlet hue of the dawn and the cascades of fire she saw in the distance spoke of deeper troubles to come.

As Rho-mu 31 negotiated the Cargo-5 down the rugged slope leading to the Syria Planum, Dalia and the others had their first glimpse of Mondus Gamma forge complex. Like a dark slick, it spread south and east across the landscape in a vast swathe of smoking, flaming industry. Hive manufactories, vast weapon hangars and blazing foundries pounded and throbbed with the labour of production. One of the largest forges on Mars, its furthest extremities were beyond sight, a black pall of shrouding smoke clinging to the fabrication plants and sub-hives as though unwilling to let outsiders view what lay beneath.

The sight was profoundly disturbing, for Dalia knew this was the domain of Adept Lukas Chrom, the builder of the machine that had just tried to kill them.

Despite that, a newfound vigour filled Dalia, though whether this was in response to their brush with death or some other reason, she couldn't tell. All she knew was that she was alive and all the things she had feared losing were still there, just waiting to be experienced.

The same mood seemed to suffuse them all, and over the next few hours of their journey, as the ground levelled out and they made good time across the plain, each of her fellow companions relaxed into this new stage of their journey. Even Severine, whose arm was still painful despite Rho-mu 31's ministrations and the effects of a couple of painkillers, seemed in better spirits.

The air in the vehicle was clammy, yet it was better than the hot dust that billowed around them outside. This far from the pallidus the atmosphere outside wasn't actually poisonous, but it wasn't exactly pleasant. Dalia felt a growing sense of optimism that they were going to reach their goal after all as the hours blurred into days and the unending dust clouds enveloped them.

The days passed mostly in silence, though occasionally one of them would point out a particularly interesting formation or unusual sight and they would talk about it until it was obscured in the dust of their wake. Rho-mu 31 kept one eye on the distant forge, and Dalia felt a growing excitement as the ground became rockier.

At length, Rho-mu 31 slowed the Cargo-5 and pointed to a dark scar in the earth that dropped sharply into the ground between two descending cliffs of rock.

'The western entrance to the Noctis Labyrinthus,' said Rho-mu 31.

'Well, we made it here,' said Severine. 'What now?'

Dalia looked at the tense faces of her friends. They had come this far, but looking into the tomb-like darkness of the Noctis Labyrinthus, she could see their fear and hesitation at war with their desire to stand by her.

'We go in, what else is there to do?' asked Caxton. 'We've come all this way and we can't turn back. Right, Dalia?'

'Right,' said Dalia, grateful for his support.

'Fine by me,' said Zouche. 'Pointless journey if we don't go in.'

Severine nodded slowly, and Rho-mu 31 guided their vehicle down the sloping entrance to the canyon system.

The ground dropped away sharply, swallowing them whole as the light faded and left them travelling in a twilight wilderness of shadows and thin bars of diffuse light that filtered down from high above.

Sheer cliffs of layered rock soared above them, and Dalia felt like they were plunging deeper and deeper into the heart of the planet through some dreadful, unhealed wound.

Maven could barely contain his anger at the sight of so many bodies. The tunnel was choked with them, lying scattered in pieces or crushed amid the twisted wreckage of a mag-lev that had been blasted from the track. He rode Equitos Bellum through the darkness, his twin stab-lights illuminating the tunnel and the dusty armoured carapace of Pax Mortis.

'You still think we're following dead spoor?' he voxed to Cronus.

His battle-brother didn't answer for a moment and Maven sensed his friend's fury at what he was seeing. The mag-lev hadn't just been attacked, it had been obliterated. Weapons of tremendous power had torn it open from end to end and slaughtered every living soul within.

'With all that's happening across Mars and even after what we found in the pallidus, I'll admit I was beginning to regret my decision to follow you,' said Cronus. 'But no more, brother. Whatever that machine is, it has to be destroyed. This will not stand.'

Maven nodded in agreement, though, truth to tell, even he had begun to doubt the instincts of his mount as it led them deeper and deeper into the pallidus. Then, after days of fruitless searching, his auspex had fizzed and hissed with the familiar spider-like pattern of electromagnetic energy that was their prey's signature.