by Ben Counter
'Lord of Knowledge be praised.' whispered Antigonus instinctively, as it was appropriate to offer a prayer to the Omnissiah when confronted with such old and noble technology. But he couldn't stop and offer proper respects to the machine-spirits -there wasn't anyone to help him here and he had to get help or find safely.
He stumbled past a few of the data-engines, mechadendrites steadying him against the frost-cold metal. There didn't seem to be a way out other than the cargo elevator behind him. Such a facility would be well sealed against contaminants and the elevator itself had probably been protected originally, before its shielding was taken by menials and used somewhere else. At most he could hope for an access vent, but he wasn't confident about his ability to crawl through a small space with one leg missing and his head fuzzy with painkillers.
The data-engine closest to him shuddered. It coughed out a spray of super cooled air and some old mechanism inside it ticked over as it wound up to operate. Antigonus shrunk from the engine, reluctant even in his current state to disrespect a machine-spirit. More of the machines seemed to stir, lights flickering. The power coming into the room was fluctuating. Something was interfering with the power supply and Antigonus knew it wasn't a coincidence.
A sudden howling of metal tore from the far wall. Antigonus saw sparks showering and the readouts on the data-engines turned an angry red, their machine-spirits objecting to the rudeness of the intrusion. A whirring, screaming sound of tortured metal filled the floor. Antigonus took shelter behind the closest data-engine, wishing his bionic eye still worked so he could banish the shadows and see what was forcing itself into the room after him.
Had he really thought he could escape?
No escape.
'Shut up. You are no daemon.'
Lie to yourself. It makes me stronger.
A huge, dark form lumbered into view between the data-engines, sparks still spitting off the massive breacher drill that formed one of its forearms. It was a servitor, a heavy labour pattern designed for mining. One arm was a drill and the other was an enormous pneumatic ram. Its torso was broad and packed with synthetic muscle, controlled by the tiny shrunken head almost buried by the massive muscles of its shoulders. It was easily twice the height of a man. It blasted through the hole it had ripped in the wall on a track unit that belched greasy black smoke.
There were more figures behind it. Dark, robed. Tech-priests. Further back Antigonus could make out beams of torchlight - the gunlights of tech-guard, the standing armed forces of the Adeptus Mechanicus. No doubt these men and women were used as ignorant foot soldiers by the heretics.
Antigonus shrunk back, hoping to make it to the cargo elevator. His right knee servo locked and he fell backwards, hitting the freezing cold floor hard enough to send a bolt of pain punching through the painkillers. Antigonus yelled. The tech-priests would certainly have heard him.
Got you.
'Get out! Give me my body back! When I die, you die!'
Run, traveller! Run! My kind never dies, just moves on, always moving, always changing...
A deep, sibilant voice spoke a streak of zeroes and ones - pure Lingua Technis machine code. The huge breacher servitor paused, its drill still spinning, compressed air whistling from its ramming arm.
More Lingua Technis. Antigonus could have translated it instantly if his auto senses had been operating, but all auxiliary power was being diverted to his bionic heart to keep him alive. He was naked, ignorant, helpless and trapped by heretics in this holy place.
'Magos Antigonus.' said the voice again, this time in Low Gothic. 'You are a resourceful man. But a man is all you are. It is impressive that you found us at all and while there was never any chance of your doing us meaningful harm there was always the possibility that Mars would send someone more competent when you reported back to them of your failure. So this is the way it has to be.'
Antigonus gave up trying to get away. His body was half-paralyzed.
'They will.' he spat, determined to spend his last few moments defiant in the face of heresy as the Omnissiah would demand. 'When I don't return. They'll send a whole Diagnostic Coven. Blockade the planet. Switch the cities off one by one. Hunt you down.'
'Will they really now?' The lead tech-priest walked into view. His robes were deep grey, made of some superfine mesh that flowed around him like water. His hood was thrown back and Antigonus saw that the upper part of his face was pulled so tight that it was barely more than two gleaming silver eyes in a skull. The lower jaw had been removed entirely and replaced with a nest of slender mechadendrites that hung down to the floor, writhing like tentacles. In place of his hands the tech-priest had nests of long, metallic filaments that waved like the fronds of an underwater plant, fine and dextrous. He moved with a strange sinuous grace, more like some living, boneless thing than a machine, even though the tech-priest was undoubtedly more heavily augmented than almost anyone Antigonus had ever seen.
'Scraecos.' breathed Antigonus. The leader of the tech-heretics was the archmagos veneratus who commanded Chaeroneia's data-reserves. He had probably tracked Antigonus all the way through security pict-stealers and sensor-equipped servitors. He had just been waiting to see how much Antigonus knew and what he would do next before moving in. He had known all along exactly where Antigonus was and what he had been doing. Antigonus had never had a chance, not from the moment he had set foot on Chaeroneia.
'And that.' said Scraecos, his synthesized voice thick like syrup, 'is why you have to die. So curious. And often correct. A dangerous combination.'
Antigonus grimaced with effort and closed his natural hand around the stock of his autogun. With strength he didn't think he had he pulled it out from underneath him and fired.
The shot thunked into Scraecos's midriff. Scraecos barely moved - he just parted his mechadendrites and glanced down at the small smoking hole in his robe. He shook his head slightly, as if with disappointment.
'Azaulathis.' he said. 'Master. Kill him.'
The world went white and Antigonus's body spasmed with pain, as if there was an electric current running through him. His augmetics glowed white-hot, charring his skin, burning muscle. He couldn't see, couldn't hear, couldn't feel anything but the pain.
Sparks spat as Antigonus's bionic arm was forced out of the flesh of his shoulder, servos winding so tight the metal splintered. His mechadendrites stood on end, his bionic heart thudded arhythmically sending more bolts of pain through him. The remains of his bionic eye unscrewed from his face and shattered on the floor, leaving a fist-sized gap in his skull. The machine-curse was infecting all his augmetics, forcing them to self-destruct and when it got to his bionic heart it would kill him.
Antigonus prayed. Pain was a design weakness of the human body. All he had to do was fix it and he could move. He put every drop of strength into forcing his internal augmetics into obedience, keeping the machine-curse in check for a few split seconds more. He ordered one mechadendrite to work. Linked directly to his central nervous system, he had more precise control over the mechadendrites than any of his other bionics. And he only needed one.
Antigonus screamed and jabbed the tip of one mechadendrite into the closest data-engine, forcing its interface probe to stab into the ancient machine. Then, he let go.
The machine-curse, like electricity, flowed through the points of least resistance. It rippled through Antigonus's body, leaving trails of internal burning as it went, spiralling up into the mechadendrite and on into the data-engine.
Before it could turn back, Antigonus withdrew the mechadendrite. The data-engine shuddered, its lights winking blood-red as the machine-curse thrashed around inside its systems. The curse was trapped in the data-engine. Antigonus had bought himself a few more seconds.
Antigonus had committed a terrible sin by infecting the noble old machinery with such a foul thing. No matter what happened now, the Omnissiah would never forgive the machinery deep inside his soul. But Antigonus hadn't just committed the sin
to stay alive - to a tech-priest life itself had no intrinsic value, only service to the Machine-God. Antigonus still had his duty to fulfil. The heretics still had to suffer.
A massive force ripped through him - the servitor's breacher drill, grinding through his body into the floor. Loops of organs were thrown about the room as the drill bored through Antigonus's abdomen. He didn't feel pain - he couldn't feel anything any more. He guessed his nervous system must be on the edge of shutting down. He was cold and numb. Helpless. He was probably physically dead already.
The servitor lifted Antigonus and threw him clean across the room. Antigonus's ruined body smacked into one of the data-engines, scattering bionic fragments and spatters of blood.
He compelled his mechadendrites to act. One last time, in the service of the Omnissiah. Once last chance to repent of all his sins - because he had failed and he was as bad as a sinner could be. The metallic tentacles reached behind him into the body of the data-engine. He felt old, grim technology, lorded over by a melancholy machine-spirit, indignant at the destruction and angered by the machine-curse that had infected its brother. Antigonus begged the machine-spirit for forgiveness. He never got an answer.
The servitor's ram arm thudded down onto Antigonus's head and chest, crushing him instantly into the machinery of the data-engine, blood and bone driven deep into the machine's core. Antigonus's mechadendrites dropped limp.
THE CREATURE ANTIGONUS had referred to as Archmagos Veneratus Scraecos drifted back towards the other tech-priests, similarly deformed and augmented figures who were nevertheless clearly subservient to him.
The breacher-servitor stood at rest over the hapless remains of Antigonus, which no longer resembled anything that might have once been human. The tech-guard, in their rust-red environmental suits wielding brass cased lasguns, fanned out into the room. But there was no one else.
Antigonus had been the only one who had known.
He had probably been right. There would be more from Mars, probably many more, an armed mission with the authority of the archmagos ultima, perhaps even of the Fabricator General. But by the time such a mission got through the warp to Chaeroneia it would be too late for anyone, even the Fabricator General, to do anything.
'Good.' said Scraecos. He turned to the tech-priests who had followed him, loyal to the Omnissiah as revealed to them through His avatar. 'Brothers. The loyal. The true. We have seen the face of the Machine-God. Everything he has told us has come to pass. So the time has come for us to begin at last.'
Chapter Three
'.. And so fear you the Unknown, for every foe was once but a mystery.'
- ‘A History of the Ultima Segmentum’,
Lord Solar Macharius
'Emperor's down.'
'Frag you it is.'
Suruss pointed to the corner of the regicide board, where a single lone templar piece stood. 'The templar has it in check. He's got nowhere to go.'
Argel peered at the board. The young Suruss looked so pleased with himself he might just be right. 'You little groxwiper.' growled Argel. 'It scroffing has and all.' Argel frustratedly knocked his emperor piece on its side, signifying the end of the game and another victory for Suruss.
'Another game?' asked Suruss.
'Sure. Frag all else to do.' Argel was right. They were on Deep Orbit Monitoring Station Trinary Ninety-One, Borosis system, Gaugamela subsector, Ultima Segmentum. It was a corroded metal sphere about five hundred metres across, most of which was engineering and maintenance space and such stations were rarely equipped with entertainment facilities. Suruss and Argel were lucky they even had space to set up the regicide board. Three months into a nine month shift, Argel had come to the conclusion that Suruss was better at the game than he was, but he didn't have much choice but to play on and hope he got better.
The alternatives numbered two. Stare at the walls, or go and talk to Lachryma. Unfortunately Lachryma was an astropath, a tremendously powerful telepath who relayed psychic messages from one end of the Imperium to the other. Astropaths were all creepy, morose creatures who kept their shrivelled, blinded selves to themselves. Lachryma was worse than most.
So regicide it was. Something blared on one of the upper levels, loud and braying. 'Throne of Earth.' said Argel, 'that's the proximity warning.'
'Must be broken.' said Suruss, who was laying out the regicide pieces for another game. 'There's nothing out here.'
'Every time those things go off it's a mountain of bloody paperwork. I'll go and have a look.' Argel stood, careful not to scrape his head on the low ceiling of the station's cramped living compartment. He scratched the bad skin on his neck and shrugged the enviro-suit over his shoulders. They didn't heat the outer maintenance layers of the station and it was cold enough to kill you.
Another alarm went off, closer this time.
'Gravitational alarm.' said Suruss. 'Looks like they're all on the blink.'
'You gonna help?'
Suruss gestured at the regicide board, half set up for the next game. 'Can't you see I'm busy?'
Argel grumbled obscenities as he struggled through the narrow opening into the primary maintenance shaft. The alarms were blaring and there were more of them - meaning radiation or outer hull integrity, other ones he didn't recognise. Suruss was probably right. It was just the station's machine-spirit getting uppity again. Argel would have to delve into the thick book of tech-prayers and minister to the station's inner workings until the spirit was placated. The station needed a tech-priest of its own, but the Adeptus Astra Telepathica didn't think Deep Orbital Station Trinary Ninety-One was important enough so it was up to Argel and Suruss to keep it working.
Argel was about to start the climb up the primary shaft when he saw something moving down the corridor connecting the living space to the astropath's quarters. It was Lachryma, the astropath herself, shambling forward. Her hands were reaching blindly in front of her and the hood of her robes had fallen back, revealing her wrinkled, shaven head and the white band she wore across her eyes.
'Lachryma! It's nothing, Lachryma, just a glitch in the spirit.'
'No! No, I can see them... I can hear them, all around...' The astropath's voice was shrill and piercing, cutting through the sound of the alarms. She stumbled forward and Argel had to catch her. She was shivering and sweaty and smelled of incense.
'I... I sent a message.' she gasped. 'I don't know if they heard. We have to get out, now...'
It wasn't a fault. It was real. Astropaths were always the first to know when anything really, really bad was about to happen, every spacer knew that. 'What is it?'
Lachryma reached up and pulled the bandage down from her eyes. Except there weren't any eyes -just empty bone, the insides of the sockets inscribed with prayer-symbols that burned a faint orange as if a great heat was trying to escape from behind them. 'Chaos,' she said, voice quavering. 'The Castigator.' The station shook as if something had hit it. The floor tilted as the gravity generator's gyroscope was knocked out of line and half the lights failed.
'We can get you to the saviour pod.' said Argel. 'Just... just stay calm. And put that thing back on.'
Argel dragged Lachryma back into the living quarters, where Suruss was frantically working the sensorium display among the wreckage of the regicide table.
'It's an asteroid hit!' shouted Suruss above the din of the alarms and further impacts. 'Never saw it coming!' 'We're getting out of here.' said Argel. Suruss shook his head. 'Not yet we're not. The auxiliary power has to be warmed up. Get the generator ticking over and we can launch the saviour pod.'
'Why me?'
'Because you know what you're doing!'
Another hit, the biggest yet, slammed into the station. Gouts of steam shot through the living compartment and part of the ceiling fell in, spilling broken pipe work everywhere. Suruss fell forward and cracked his head against the sensorium console. The knock sparked one pict-screen back into life and it flickered on.
Suruss
held his head and tried to sit up. Argel knelt down and pulled the fallen Lachyrma into a seating position - blood was running down her face from a long cut in her scalp. She was muttering darkly and the orange glow was bright enough to seep through the bandage over her eyes. Argel didn't know what they did to astropaths on their long pilgrimage to Terra, but it seriously messed them up.
Argel looked around the destruction in the room. The outer decks would be even more of a mess. It would be murder getting the auxiliary power up, but the saviour pod was their only chance. And Suruss was right - the only person Argel trusted to do it was Argel.
Argel saw the image on the pict-screen next to Sumss. It had finally switched itself on and was showing a view of space outside the station, relayed from pict-stealers in the station's sensorium array.
'What the frag is that?' he asked.
Sumss looked round. The pict-screen was showing a point of red light gathering in space a short distance away from the station. The stars around it seemed to smear as the light from them was bent around the anomaly and it was growing flaring out a white-hot corona as it forced its way into real space.
Suruss looked at Lachryma. 'Tell me someone knows about this.'
