by Thorpe, Gav
Dark brown eyes regarded them passively while a tentacle-like appendage fitted with a cluster of artificial lenses slid out from under the robe. A strobing fan of narrow red rays passed over Ghelsa’s face before moving to Harkas’, and then flicked off as the tendril withdrew.
The servo-skull floated over the tech-priest’s shoulder.
‘Wait!’ called Ghelsa, taking a step forward. A disturbingly animalistic growl from Delta 6-Terror stopped her taking another. The magos stopped but did not turn back. The servo-skull hovered in front of Ghelsa, uncomfortably close to her face. Unable to bear its scrutiny, she dropped to one knee, her gaze fixed on the floor.
‘A blessing, revered magos. For a faithful servant of the Machine-God.’
The magos’ claws clicked on the floor as it turned. Ghelsa dared look up, holding her breath. There was no expression on the face as it tilted down towards her on a telescoping neck, no less a mask than the artificial visages of the other tech-priests. She saw tiny reflections of herself in the dilated pupils, the multi-tool clenched tight in both hands, her own eyes wide with pleading.
The magos beckoned her to approach with a clawed hand. Ghelsa could not help but notice the similarity to her own, as though the tech-priest’s limbs were a version of her exo-skeleton purged of the unnecessary flesh within. She stood within arm’s reach, looking up into the tech-priest’s impassive stare. Dexterous sub-digits extended from the palm of the mechanical hand, flexing as they slithered free. Lubricant glistened on their tips. The magos bent forward, laying the worm-like appendages upon Ghelsa’s bald head, their touch cold but reassuring.
The tributai sighed, feeling relief wash through her as dribbles of oil rolled down her face and neck. This close, the scent of the magos’ incense was almost overpowering. It stung Ghelsa’s eyes and cloyed in her throat, both enriching and unwelcome. The tendril-fingers moved forward to the cog upon her brow and she felt a quiver of connection. Thought-packages fired across her synapses, leaving their message burned into her thoughts.
{The Will of the Machine-God moves within you. You are the Vessel, the Omnissiah is the Spark. Bear witness to true Faith and remain Pure within the Impurity of flesh.}
With the words came a vision, one of innumerable gears interlaced across the galaxy, some turning fast, others slow, all driven by the same purpose. Stars were cosmic furnaces driving the engine of the universe. Whirling planetary orbits described impossibly complex motions through time and space. Ghelsa was a tiny mote of existence in the infinite, yet despite her minuscule nature she felt like an essential part of the whole.
The cord-digits broke contact and whipped back into the magos’ hand. Ghelsa staggered back, trembling from head to foot. The magos turned away, limbs retracting within the robe. The image of the cosmic engine started to fade and Ghelsa tried desperately to sear it into her memory, to capture something of its eternal grandeur. The harder she tried, the more she fixed upon a detail, the more she forgot of the rest, until she was left with nothing but a vague sense of ceaseless motion.
The magos had gone, though the servo-skull remained, its dispassionate stare fixed upon her.
Ghelsa hung her head, her shoulders slumped, elated but exhausted, joyful yet empty.
‘Praise the Machine-God,’ she whispered, a tear rolling down her cheek.
CHAPTER 9
VICTORY AND DEFEAT
A few seconds later the sub-door wheezed open. Three men and two women stepped inside. They wore cloaks lined with red cloth over grubby coveralls and carried long mauls. Two of them had bulky laspistols hanging on simple holsters at their waists. Ghelsa didn’t recognise any of them as from the group that had attacked Harkas, but she could barely remember what had happened with everything that had taken place since. Perhaps they didn’t know she and Harkas were being hunted.
The glares they directed at Harkas and Ghelsa told a different story.
‘We’ve been looking for you,’ said one of the gun-wielders, tapping her club against the side of her leg. ‘Didn’t expect to find you up here on the holy decks.’
‘Hereteks,’ sneered another. He looked directly at Ghelsa. ‘The ingratitude makes me sick. To turn on the Legio like that?’
‘You’re fortunate,’ said the one who had spoken first – her cog-badge clasp identified her as the leader. She pulled something from a pocket, a slender silver chain from which hung a pale wooden box about the size of a thumb. An ‘I’ with two bars across it was branded into the front. ‘The Inquisition would do far worse for impersonating one of their order.’
Ghelsa looked at Harkas. ‘Is that it?’ she said, unimpressed. ‘That’s your sigil?’
‘It is the authority it conveys that has the power,’ he replied testily. He stared at the hyperezia with narrowed eyes. ‘If you comprehended the magnitude of your error you would beg now for forgiveness and swift release rather than face the torments that will surely follow this treachery.’
The one who had spoken first beckoned with her club. ‘Move your filth out of these sacred halls.’
‘Delta 6-Terror, what is the status of our faithfulness?’ asked Harkas, looking up at the warbot.
‘Stop talking to the holy warrior,’ snapped one of the hyperezia. ‘Your interaction defiles its spirit.’
Harkas stepped towards the door and motioned for Ghelsa to follow.
‘Hostile forces are still at large in the akropoliz,’ he said. ‘The faithful require protection.’
rumbled Delta 6-Terror, following with long, slow strides.
From the rear rampart of the akropoliz, Exasas looked back at the surrounds of Az Khalak. It was only from this vantage point that the light differential over the city and the surrounding hills could be so clearly seen. It reminded Exasas of a stellar eclipse, standing in darkness while viewing beams of light in the distance.
With augmented vision he could see the accompanying host of the tech-guard flowing into the city and through fortress walls. He was too distant to detect any noospheric activity, but the occasional spark of brightness betrayed a plasma shot or other high-powered discharge, indicating that the rebels had not yet been eradicated. While vanguard battalions and companies of rust-stalkers cleansed the ruins, squadrons of ironstrider-mounted dragoons and ballistarii pushed out into onto the slopes of the flanking mountains. Slower columns of quadruped dunecrawlers followed, providing escort to tracked bulk-carriers.
The smaller streets restricted the progress of the knights, so that the warrior-machines of House Raven were confined to a perimeter in the outskirts while their smaller suits patrolled along the main arterial routes. The flare of an activated ion shield here and there betrayed the last desperate counter-attacks of Az Khalak’s defenders.
Exasas watched the blur of six skyspears as they raced past the broken towers of the citadel, aptly named for their sleek but prow-heavy design. Their nose cones still glowed red hot from orbital entry. Exasas tracked their trajectories and calculated that they would arrive within the next forty-five seconds.
He had not been idle during the wait, and had accessed every datalog entry he could find concerning the new arrivals. There seemed very little about them, given that the Krysaorian League was one of the more powerful blocs of Metalica, an alliance of fourteen forge cities and a member of the inner council. Exasas had noted with some exasperation that they were not part of the tech-guard proper but had been attached as auxilia to the formation shortly before the Legio departed for Nicomedua. Most of their previous engagements were cipher-locked, and Exasas could not discern any reason why that might be s
o.
But it was not his position to judge the incoming magos; his position was to ensure a cooperative defence of the Casus Belli. As the princeps senioris had so curtly pointed out, all personal considerations were secondary to that duty.
Even so, negative fluctuations affected Exasas’ cogitations as he observed the skyspears slowing, their gravitic repellors gleaming purple in the heightened air static of the storm front. Descent jets cut out and the dropcraft slid towards the Casus Belli as though lifted by the glow of their repellors.
Four of the skyspears pitched towards landing points not far from the leg bastions while the remaining two halted their descent on a level with the akropoliz. Engines humming, they buzzed over the magos dominus, missing the upper towers of the akropoliz by a small margin, and slewed rapidly to a stop over the frontal apron.
Exasas hurried around the side of the akropoliz and came upon the main parapet as the skyspears touched down, the pulsing of their repellors pushing pools of still-wet blood into crimson rivulets across the ferrocrete. Attitude jets burned bright, keeping the two craft hovering just over the parapet while their bellies opened up, the bright glare from their interiors lighting the blood-spattered courtyard.
Disembarkation ramps extended like unrolling tongues of metal, their corrugated lengths flattening against the rampart. Their angled portions hardened into steps and the first of the augmentatii descended into view.
Moving out of the antae, Ghelsa discovered that the atrium was thronged with skitarii soldiers. Mindless servitors dragged away the bodies of the dead while tech-priests performed inspections of broken automata, performing last rites where needed before salvaging the datacores. Ghelsa’s attention was drawn to a tech-priest with dozens of spindly limbs opening up the armoured shell of a battle-construct. A las-suture played over the pulsing cortex within, repairing input to the organic brainstem.
Surrounded by the hyperezia, they were led up the first flight of stairs and into the corridors towards the aft chambers of the akropoliz. The leader hastened them on, but Harkas hung back with the slower-moving battle-construct, much to her annoyance.
‘Delaying isn’t going to help you avoid what’s due,’ she said, jabbing her maul towards the inquisitor. ‘Justice is coming soon.’
‘And what form will this justice take?’ asked Harkas.
They turned into a smaller corridor. Bodies were piled high on one side, stripped of uniform and wargear. A door at the far end led into a chamber that glowed with flame light. Tracked servitors rumbled in and out, lifting up the bodies to take them inside.
‘The incineratorum,’ said Ghelsa. ‘That’s where you’re going to do it?’
‘Do what?’ asked Harkas, though it was obvious what he planned.
‘There’ll be no more heresy from you,’ one of the hyperezia said with a grin. ‘Just flesh-smoke and bone-ash.’
‘I think you should suffer first, but the moderatus prime said to get it done quickly,’ said the leader. ‘Nobody’s going to rescue you this time.’
They were halfway along the passage. Ghelsa clamped a hand over her mouth and nose to keep out the smell of blood and escaping bodily fluids, a stench even the incense-memory of the akropoliz could not mask.
‘What are you going to do to us?’ Harkas demanded loudly. He glanced at Ghelsa and tilted his head towards Delta 6-Terror.
‘No, that’s not what I meant,’ said Ghelsa, realising what the inquisitor intended. She looked at the leader of the hyperezia. ‘Don’t answer him. We’re under the protection of the kastelan!’
‘Save your breath,’ the leader replied. ‘You’re hereteks and you deserve to die.’
‘Are you going to do it?’ snapped Harkas. ‘How? What are you going to do?’
‘Don’t say anything!’ Ghelsa stopped and turned to Harkas. ‘We can warn them.’
‘We’ll do it quickly, like the moderatus prime told us to,’ said another of the hyperezia. He flicked greasy hair out of his face and patted his laspistol. ‘We’ll shoot you and dump the bodies in the incineratorum.’
Delta 6-Terror stopped and raised the phosphor blasters in its fist. The combustor over its shoulder twitched as it targeted the hyperezia.
‘Just go, say nothing,’ Ghelsa urged them.
Harkas tugged at her arm, pulling her back from the kastelan’s line of fire.
‘They are hereteks,’ said the hyperezia leader. ‘We are going to execute them.’
‘They are the hereteks,’ shouted the one with the laspistol, his empty hand moving to the weapon’s grip.
‘No!’ Ghelsa tried to step forward, but Harkas wrenched her back.
On first examination the new soldiery appeared little different from the other tech-guard of the Legio. They wore the signature white coats of Metalica and displayed an array of gunmetal bionics. There were small visible details, insignia and edgings of coats and robes, that marked them out from Exasas’ own warriors, but a far more telling difference was the noospheric aura that surrounded them.
It was a dense mass of continual exchange, as dark to Exasas’ probing as the thunderhead that covered the valley behind them. The crash of boots on steps and then ferrocrete was near perfect, as was their mustering in squads in lines facing their transports. A surge of noospheric activity preceded weapons simultaneously lifted in salute to the emerging magos.
It seemed a needlessly inefficient display, and Exasas was unsure whether the benefit was meant to be his or the accompanying dominus’. It hinted at unresolved issues of ego. To Exasas authority was self-evident and required no such ostentatious behaviour.
A strange thought distracted her. He wished that he had donned his warskin for the encounter. He had decided against that course of action on the grounds that Exasas-tactical would not be best placed to integrate the strategic needs of both skitarii forces, and the warskin was still undergoing repair. Looking at the newcomers’ gleaming arc rifles and unsullied uniforms, Exasas concluded that a greater physical presence might have been of benefit in the exchange that was to follow.
Chastising herself for such nervous meandering, Exasas wondered why the other magos delayed their arrival. Were they receiving instruction or simply testing Exasas’ patience in order to exert some greater authority? The magos dominus was tempted to depart as a signal of contempt for the unnecessary hesitation, but opted to remain on the grounds that it might be interpreted as ceding command.
A blue tint touched the light from the closest skyspear and a second later the augmentatii’s magos dominus slid into view.
The cerulean glow came from the circle of suspensor units that splayed from the magos’ circumference like a planetary ring. The greater part of Magos Dominus Exceptis Keterina-Ga Skitara Syntamatarkias Olvatia was a horizontally segmented sphere held inside the suspensor toroid, with a mane of long, slender sensor tendrils undulating across the upper hemisphere. Exasas was surprised that his fellow magos had travelled outside of a warskin, as it was immediately obvious that Olvatia’s form had even less combat potential than Exasas’.
The noosphere throbbed like a heartbeat at the approach of the other dominus, the magos exceptis’ presence bending it like a mass on a space-time gradient, absorbing the dataflow just by existing. An audible hum accompanied Olvatia’s progress while a forced binaric shout issued from the grilled mouths of the attendant alphas. The noosphere contorted with the exhortation, signalling the dominus’ arrival to the tech-priests within the Casus Belli.
Five more Krysaorian tech-priests emerged from the command transport a few seconds after their magos, as diffuse in form as any
Exasas had encountered – two hunched humanoids, the other three far less easy to categorise with their many-jointed limbs and articulated mechadendrites, swathed in white-and-red robes.
Exasas interposed herself between Olvatia and the antae of the akropoliz. The other magos drifted to a halt just out of reach and the segments of the upper hemisphere of the main body slid backwards a quarter-arc, revealing Olvatia’s pinched, bionically grafted face. A swift analysis of the underlying bone structure confirmed a female-origin humanoid, though Exasas new better than to make identity assumptions based on such transitory physical details. Only the skull, brain and nervous system tissue remained. A waxy fakeskin covered the remains of Olvatia’s head and face, embedded crystal orbs glimmering from the sockets. The fakeskin folded awkwardly as partially inflated lips approximated a smile.
‘Pleased to make your acquaintance, Magos Dominus Militaris Xaiozanus Skitara Xilliarkis Exasas.’
A noospheric datapoint tagged Exasas’ processors to exchange security and identity protocols. Among the swift burst of traffic was a standard persona construct package.
#she/her/her/hers/herself#chronoglacial#binaric#olvatia#noospherent2918721#
Exasas noted that Olvatia still identified with her female origins despite the almost complete lack of physical resemblance to the person she had been. Occasionally a high-ranking tech-priest would shed such identifiers, but it was striking how lasting such early self-views persisted beyond the flesh. His own genderless identity was extant from his first cogent thoughts, a part of his self-determination even before any abstraction of his physical form. He responded in kind as he extended an appendage in greeting.
‘Welcome to the Casus Belli, Magos Dominus Exceptis Keterina-Ga Skitara Syntamatarkias Olvatia.’
#he/her/his/his/herself/#chronotangent#binaric#exasas#noospherent4458947-e#xilliarkis#
They regarded each other with a full suite of pseudo-physical and digital senses, the noosphere purring between them with assessment vibrations. Exasas was determined that he would extend no further invitation unless a formal request was made, and it seemed that Olvatia was equally adamant the current magos dominus should cede command directly.
