WH40K - The Horus Heresy 08a - Graham McNeill - The Kaban Project.pdf - WH40K - The Horus Heresy 08a - Graham McNeill - The Kaban Project - nightelf87

T HE H ORUS H ERESY

THE KABAN

PROJECT

By Graham McNeill

T WO MICRONS TO the left. Now four down. There… Adept Third

Class Pallas Ravachol adjusted the fine callipers that slid from his

fingertips, watching with smug satisfaction as the hardwired

doctrina wafer slid smoothly through the cerebral cortex of the

servitor’s brain for at least what the lobotomisation process had

left of its brain and into the medulla oblongata.

‘No one knows servitors like me,’ he said as fibrous tendrils

wormed their way from the wafer and into the grey matter of the

brain. With the new doctrina wafer meshing nicely, he rotated

the servitor’s gleaming alloy cranial cap back and lifted a porta-

ble cutter to snap the bolts into place that protected the servitor’s

brain from harm. He placed the damaged wafer into the pouch

that hung from his tool belt, careful to ensure he didn’t mix it up

it with the functioning ones. He shuddered as he imagined the

consequences of placing a damaged wafer in the brain of a battle

robot or implanting a combat sequence into the mind of a loader

servitor.

‘There you go,’ he said as he pushed the last bolt into place and

the servitor stood from the surgical recliner, its grey flesh pallid

and unhealthy. Half human, half machine, the servitor’s arms

The Kaban Project

had been replaced with pneumatic lifters and what little of its

head remained had been augmented by the addition of visual

mass readers. ‘Now be off with you. Go back and rejoin Adept

Zeth’s loading crews. The Sixty Third expedition needs her

weapons and shells if the Warmaster is to pacify Isstvan.’

Of course, the servitor didn’t answer, simply turning on the

spot and marching from the chamber, in which half a dozen

more damaged servitors awaited Ravachol’s ministrations or the

removal of any mechanical parts worthy of reclamation from the

flesh that housed them.

Such work was beneath an adept of Ravachol’s skill, but he

knew he had only himself to blame for his current situation, and

in any case, such work was what had brought him to the atten-

tion of his new master, High Adept Lukas Chrom of the Martian

forges.

Having seen that the servitors coming back from Ravachol’s

workshops were working faster, more efficiently and with great-

er precision, Chrom had inquired after him. Within the week, he

had found himself packing his meagre possessions and taking

his leave from his former master, Adept Urtzi Malevolus, and

making his way towards the Mondus Gamma facility of Mars for

immediate reassignment.

Most of the Martian adepts cared little for cranial engineering

where servitors were concerned, but Ravachol enjoyed such

work. After all, only by knowing the mechanics of a human brain

inside out could a man hope to understand the mechanics of a

robot brain.

Such ruminations inevitably led his guilty thoughts to the Ka-

ban Project itself…

He pushed such thoughts aside and tried to concentrate on the

work before him, a Praetorian battle servitor whose weapon had

malfunctioned and exploded on a test range. The weapon was

beyond repair, but the augmetics grafted to its chest and the tar-

geting mechanisms that formed the bulk of its skull were by no

means lost.

Graham McNeill

As he stared at the scorched metal of the servitor’s skull, he

scratched idly at his own skin with the gently waving

mechadendrites of his hand. Unusually for an adept of Mars,

Ravachol was largely composed of flesh and blood, with the ex-

ception of his left hand, which had been replaced with a bionic

one on his sixteenth year.

His thoughts kept returning to the Kaban machine, and he

guiltily turned from the damaged Praetorian to make his way

from the workshop and into the steel corridors of the forge tem-

ple. He knew he’d have to work another double shift to get the

servitors online again, but decided it would be worth it to spend

some more time in the presence of the Kaban machine.

Ravachol knew that he had a natural affinity with robots and

their programming, but whoever had authored the code on the

doctrina wafers that comprised the Kaban machine’s systems

was an order of magnitude beyond him. He doubted it was

Adept Chrom, who, though brilliant in other regards, appeared

to have little or no interest in the field of integrated battle

wetware.

The corridors of the forge temple were dimly lit, the lumen

globes floating above him kept at a level that blurred the passage

of time so that no matter where you were or what time of day

your body told you it was, you could have no external reference.

But as an adept rose through the ranks of the Mechanicum, such

concerns as day and night became largely irrelevant.

Hissing spigots and thick bundles of pipes and cables threaded

the corridors, each one filled with bustle as servitors and mes-

senger robots on wheels, tracks and spindly legs moved to and

fro. He nodded to robed adepts who passed him, ignoring their

looks of pity or revulsion at the flesh of his face and hand. Some

of these adepts had lived for centuries, their lives extended by

cybernetics grafted to their bodies in service of the Blessed Om-

nissiah – the Machine God of the Martian Priesthood. As he

passed each adept, he noted how they had been blessed and

vowed that one day he too would be similarly favoured by the

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