His vision was full of nothing but red runes, flashing intensely. The skull hovered up to peer at the censer attached to his pack. ‘The radiation shielding was indeed damaged. Well, that will clear up what infestation might remain.’ It looked to him. ‘A lethal dose even through your armour, skitarius. You will need to make haste. There is the smallest piece of work that awaits you at the bridge before my need for you is done.’
His systems were failing. An inescapable tremor racked his chassis now as damaged circuits misfired. He pulled himself up and followed the servo-skull once more. The journey passed as if in a dream. Nothing attacked, not even a breath of life stirred. Nothing save the ship itself, systems powering up and machines cycling back into activity. Occasionally he staggered to a halt. Once, the shaking overcame him and he collapsed. When his consciousness cleared, his mask was flooded with half-processed nutrient paste.
‘Up, skitarius. Hurry. Your lying about risks everything. I will not have it.’
Up. Slowly he struggled up and staggered on. At last they came to the bridge, but the fever-dream sensation did not end. A strange black obelisk sat in the centre, carved with sickly green runes and holding a crystalline shell with a shadowy figure inside. This irregularity was hybridised into the sacred technology around it, connected by cables and wires crudely interfaced with its surface.
The skull hovered in after him. ‘Now, reconnect the cogitator core to the command systems, and my work will be done. Or begin, truly. Once you have done that, make your way to an incinerator.’ Bodies were strewn about the bridge, several around the cogitator linkage itself, as though killed while disconnecting it.
‘What?’ he wheezed. ‘What is this?’
The skull turned to him as if surprised at the question. ‘This is transcendence.’ Cyclae stumbled over to the crystalline shell and stared inside. Through the cloudy surface he saw the remnants of a skeleton amidst implants and the once sumptuous robes of a high magos. ‘An end to the weakness of the flesh for all time. I have shed what I was to become something infinitely greater.’
He struggled to focus. The body. The cogitator core. This monstrous obsidian obelisk. ‘You… This is blasphemy. You have become Silica Animus. And worse, you have done it by… by…’
The skull sounded almost bored as it spoke. ‘By the works of the xenos? Blasphemy. What a weak word, used by fragile minds. How can apotheosis be blasphemy? You sound like those squirming rebel vermin. I have become the Machine. I have become eternal. I am the Omnissiah. I will decide what is blasphemy.’
His mind swam in circles in a deepening pool of agony. ‘Xenarite.’ The word was an accusation.
‘I have outgrown those skulking cultists as surely as the outdated strictures of the Mechanicus. Cawl sends us out searching for his precious blackstone as if we were his hounds, but finding it led me right to the means of his destruction. Then at the moment of my triumph, these scared worms dare to disable the ship and separate me from her controls, left with only what scraps of my code survived in servitors and servo-skulls.
‘Can you imagine how long it took to get that servo-skull past those useless savages? Let alone undo the seals I put on your bay. Yet it is done, I have won. The galaxy teeters on the edge of anarchy, but I will save it. As I have been freed, so shall Stygies Eight. Then Mars. In the end, all humanity preserved in the purity of eternal metal.’
‘This… I cannot…’
The voice became stern. ‘Enough, skitarius. You are a tool. Obey, and complete your mission.’
Cyclae looked down and choked a moment, blood trickling from his nose and lips. It pooled in his mask.
‘Obey.’
Duty was everything. Obedience was his watchword. It was by embracing the weight of responsibility that he rose to his current station. Service to the tech-priests was service to the Machine-God, and Cyclae was a dutiful servant. Yet this priest violated everything he knew to be right. He shaped a word that burned on his lips, a very real pain that took everything he had to ignore. Just one word. ‘No.’
‘No? No? You will obey! This instant!’
He stumbled over to the comms station and slumped into the chair, struggling to breathe. There was a pause, and the voice calmed to flatness once more.
‘I have misjudged you, skitarius. You are made of sterner stuff. My uses for you were clearly underestimated. Help me, and I can save you. The biotransference will work on you, too. We will find you a new body, a better body.’
‘It is the privilege of cogs to be ground down that the machine may run,’ he whispered.
‘Useless platitudes will not save you. Think, skitarius. Think of what you are doing. The cargo. All that archeotech the ship has retrieved. And the blackstone! All lost. Without me, you will get nowhere.’
‘Some things are better left lost.’ His breathing was laboured, the respiratory augmetics failing as damage propagated.
The skull buzzed around him angrily. ‘This is madness! You consign us both to an eternity in the void.’
He shook his head slowly. ‘No, magos. You forget – I will be dead shortly. You, however, will drift for a very long time.’ He focused his eyes on the servo-skull with some difficulty. ‘Still, if these are my last moments, I will have peace.’ With a shaking hand he drew his pistol. The skull rushed him desperately, plasma torch ignited. His first shot missed and sizzled against the far wall, and then it was upon him. Heedless of the damage, he grabbed the torch with his other hand, metal running in thick, red-hot drops as it melted through his palm. The skull thrashed to get away as he unsteadily brought the pistol right up to it.
‘Wait. Skitarius, wait.’ He fired. The skull shattered into a dozen burning shards. His final shot destroyed the cogitator connection once and for all. Cyclae dropped the pistol with some regret. It had served well.
The world swam in and out of focus, and darkness called. Still, the magos had been right: there was one final task that had to be attended to. Data was everything, after all. There was no one left to report to here, but the Mechanicus would come looking, in time. Slowly he surveyed the comms terminal, and set up a distress beacon to record.
‘To any who hear this message, I am Alpha Primus Seven-Cyclae of the First Maniple, Surface Retrieval Cohort, Explorator Fleet Nine-V-Sigma. Do not approach this vessel. Our mission has failed, but I have learned a valuable truth – some things were never meant to be learned…’ And with the time that remained to him, he told his tale as best he could.
SERVANTS OF THE MACHINE GOD
by Various authors
The forces of the Adeptus Mechanicus –Titans, Imperial Knights, servitors and skitarii legions – march in a dozen tales showcasing how the servants of the Omnissiah wage war.
Find this title, and many others, on blacklibrary.com
FROM THE DEEP
Jaine Fenn
Award-winning fantasy and science fiction author Jaine Fenn plunges into the Mortal Realms for the first time in this intriguing depiction of the War of Life.
In the shallows of the Sea of Serpents, guardian of the kelp forest, Kelara, wages an unseen war upon the rot of Nurgle. Beset by bloated monstrosities, she marshals her Naereids in a fearsome defence. But as Nurgle’s taint spreads into the sea, the Naereids must decide whether to remain hidden or to take to the surface and join the brutal war that has brought the once great Ghyran to its knees.
Something was wrong. Kelara kicked back from the kelp strand, her wave-wings trailing. A host of tiny, glowing nektons puffed out from between the shadowed stalks, mirroring her unease. An unwelcome presence touched the shallows of the Sea of Serpents: a malevolence on the tide.
She sent a query to the Naereids tending the nearby kelp fronds.
I sense nothing, said one.
The nektons are restless, said another.
Invaders come from the shore! said a third, panic evident in her tone.<
br />
Kelara, more sensitive and powerful than her fellow custodians of the underwater forest, was sure now. We knew this day might come, my sisters, she called, silently but widely. Prepare yourselves!
Before the first acknowledgements came back, the wall of tawny green in front of her quivered, then burst asunder.
For a moment, Kelara thought she faced one of those who made their home in the green-above. But they had all fled or been killed long ago. Besides, this creature was huge – nearly as big as Kelara – and warped, its ragged furs bursting under the weight of its pallid, bloated body, limbs red with rashes and lesions. Its head was a great silvery sphere, encased in an open basketwork of woven rushes.
The apparition struck. A long, rust-pitted spear thrust straight for her heart.
She dodged, leaving a trail of bubbles.
Her opponent turned, stubby legs kicking. Like Kelara, its overall form was that of a shore-dweller. But the newcomer lacked the fronds, membranes and wave-wings that allowed Kelara and her Naereids to speed through the water. Its movements were clumsy and slow.
The invader brought its weapon round again. Kelara darted forward, under the probing spear. As the blow roiled the water over her head, she turned to swim face-up, towards the bright surface far above. When she passed beneath the interloper’s blubbery arm, she reached up and grasped the haft of its spear with both hands.
The creature was strong, but she had surprised it. Its grip on the weapon slackened, and Kelara pulled the spear free of its pudgy hands. Her palms stung at the spear’s touch. Ignoring the pain, she sped round in a wide arc, rolling through the water. The silvery head turned, tracking her movements. She whirled the spear round, turning it point-first towards the creature. Then she charged.
If her opponent saw the danger, it did not react. Instead of fleeing into the kelp or trying to defend itself, it turned its grotesque body, corpulent chest thrust forward.
The spear met flesh. The force of the blow jarred Kelara’s arms, but the resistance was momentary. The rusty tip pierced the creature’s taut skin, slid deep into the blubber–
–and all at once, her monstrous opponent came apart, skin splitting and peeling back, slack muscle and rotted organs erupting from its disintegrating carcass.
Kelara released the spear, kicking frantically up and away. She knew what this was now. This was a Rotbringer, a minion of Chaos. The corruption that was slowly but inescapably consuming the Realm of Life had finally reached her domain. She must evade the creature’s foul touch or risk succumbing to the taint it carried.
She swam clear, up into the light. When she turned to look back, little remained of the invader save an expanding cloud of brown and pink. A vile soul-stench permeated the disintegrating guts and blubber.
Where the filthy remnants touched the kelp, the fronds curled and writhed, then dissolved. In moments, the nearest strands collapsed, dissipating into stringy slime.
Most of her nektons had darted out of the creature’s way, but a few had been too slow. Caught in the noxious cloud, they burst. Each tiny death stung Kelara’s consciousness. A new scent entered the water – that of rot and decay.
No! Kelara’s cry was involuntary, but she had to watch. The corruption spread outwards, infecting the next strands along. Still the taint continued. Kelara let out a low, horrified moan. The neighbouring strands twitched and shrivelled at the edges, but they did not dissolve. The ball of blight was slowing, thank the Everqueen.
Knowing – fearing – such an attack might happen, Kelara had instructed her Naereids to hone their fighting skills. They tended the kelp forests in the shallows that edged the Sea of Serpents, quietly keeping to themselves while so many of Alarielle’s other children fell. They sometimes needed to see off slow creatures of the deep who, disturbed by the chthonian motions of the serpents far below, swam up to the shallows. Grouchy, confused and often hungry, the sea beasts saw the kelp forests as a source of food, and had to be discouraged. But the threat of Chaos was something else. They must be ready to meet it.
Kelara tuned into the voices of her sisters.
I cannot hold it off!
Help me!
There are too many!
Overlaying the fear and panic, Kelara sensed a furious determination to defend their forests to the death.
But what with?
Kelara had stashed an arsenal of sharpened serpents’ teeth in a cave to await such a day as this, but the attackers had used the cover of the kelp forests to sneak up on her people, and they had had no chance to arm themselves. She drew the only weapon she had to hand: the jagged-edged clamshell kept in a pouch at her waist, used to prune kelp stalks and scrape off parasites and encrustations.
Turning her attention back to her sisters, she focused on the nearest, Anela, and swam towards her, crying, I am coming!
Hurry!
Kelara slid between the green strands. Ahead, the kelp twisted and jerked. Kelara tensed in case Anela had dispatched her opponent and this was the sick by-product of its demise.
But Anela was still in combat with the tainted shore-dweller. The Naereid had one arm round its middle. This servant of Chaos showed a different form of corruption, being emaciated rather than bloated, and the skin on its scrawny limbs looked as if it had been scourged then left to fester. Its great silver head bobbed absurdly on its gaunt body.
The two were in a tight, macabre embrace, each trying to evade yet wound the other. The Rotbringer swung its double-headed axe down while Anela dodged, at the same time slashing upwards with her scraper. Intent only on their opponent, neither had seen Kelara.
She swam closer. Her fingertips brushed a strand of kelp, cut free during the fight. She grasped it; in such desperate times, anything might serve as a weapon.
The combatants turned side-on. Kelara ducked as the notched axe sliced through the water in front of her face. If she got behind Anela’s foe, perhaps she could strike with her scraper. But what if the blow triggered the Rotbringer’s grotesque self-destruction?
She swam back half a stroke and took hold of the other end of the kelp strand, doubling it up for extra strength. At a momentary pause in the frantic combat, she looped the kelp over the creature’s head, keeping a firm hold on both ends. The impromptu garrotte caught on the reeds around its silver forehead. The shiny surface rippled, and a gout of silver broke free and flew upwards.
The loop slipped down around its neck. Kelara pressed her knees into the scabby back, and pulled with all her might. The loathsome brute’s frantic movements slowed, becoming sluggish.
There was movement ahead, past the creature’s shoulder. Another Rotbringer pushed aside the kelp. Its spear was already out. Kelara shouted a silent warning to her sister.
Too late. The new invader wriggled forward through the water, kicking hard.
It stabbed sure and low. The Chaos spear found its mark.
The blow went in hard – straight through Anela and into her opponent’s gut.
Kelara felt her sister die. The loss tore at her soul.
She threw herself backwards as the vile creature dissolved into flesh and filth. Anela’s body arced away into the depths, impaled on the spear. Kelara looked away.
Anela’s murderer had lost its weapon. But how could she kill it without releasing its corruption?
Then she had an idea.
Rather than closing, she stayed above her opponent, turning an effortless somersault over its head. It followed her movement, tilting its disconcertingly blank face up.
As she passed over it, Kelara reached down. Her fingers curled around the reed cage encasing the giant silver head. She tugged hard, continuing her downwards sweep. The reed cage flexed and warped, ejecting bubbles, but didn’t move.
Cursing to herself, Kelara released her hold, coming down behind the Rotbringer.
Leather straps crossed the invader’s bac
k, holding the cage in place. She slashed at the leather with her scraper, even as her opponent struggled to turn and face her. The central knot parted. For a moment she feared she had cut too deep and broached the corrupted flesh. But the foul creature did not explode.
The Rotbringer flailed in the water, hands going to its head. Kelara kicked up again, grabbed the edge of the reed cage, and pulled as hard as she could. The invader briefly managed to hold on to the cage, then–
Plop! The cage ripped free of the scrawny neck. Gouts of bubbles burst forth. Kelara darted out of range of the rising storm of silver.
As she had hoped, there was a normal head under there. Normal by some values, anyway: this corrupted shore-dweller had patches of long, lank hair congealed with yellow pus from the weeping sores in the bald areas between. The hair moved like some vile parody of weed as the thing thrashed and gasped, hands raised to its throat. Deprived of the air in its bubble, it was drowning. Good: these were the first servants of Chaos she had met, and it appeared they were as helpless as any shore-dweller under water. Perhaps this explained why her realm had so far avoided the ravening despoliation she had distantly sensed in the green-above.
Kelara looked on, half watching the kelp around her for new threats. It took long, excruciating moments for the tainted shore-dweller to die but she had to be sure. Finally, its threshing spasms ceased. Kelara tensed, ready to scoot backwards out of range of any post-mortal ‘gift’ of corruption. But the body just flopped back and sank slowly into the depths.
Grinning in triumph, Kelara kicked upwards. From above she could see bare patches in the kelp all around. She called out to the dozens of other Naereids fighting their own battles nearby. Do not pierce them. Remove the contraptions on their heads to drown them!
Inferno Volume 2 - Guy Haley Page 8
