Imperator: Wrath of the Omnissiah

by Thorpe, Gav

  Exasas lacked the equations to fully process that possibility, but as he attempted preliminary simulations he trawled through the datalogs scraped from Mithras-4’s archive. He filtered relevant information through to the tactical persona, hoping that some fresh initiative not present in the earlier simulations might be found.

  Exasas-tactical: [imperative]

  An intrusive data-spike interrupted their deliberations. Exasas-tactical fended off an inquiring data-spear from the noosphere, looping back Mithras-4’s own secularity protocols to assure the system that nothing had changed. It was a finite response – eventually the noospheric link would detect the anomaly – but Exasas estimated that they had at least thirty standard minutes before their intrusion would be detected.

  Previously, thirty minutes would have sounded like an age to Exasas. Now it sounded like a worryingly short time to save the Casus Belli.

  ‘What is your name, tributai?’

  ‘Ghelsa vin Jaint, your holiness,’ she replied with an automatic bow of her head.

  ‘You have done a great service to the Machine-God this day, Ghelsa vin Jaint.’ The premidius turned to face the crowd that had gathered about them. ‘Hereteks are attempting to take possession of the Casus Belli. That cannot be allowed. The augmentatii of the renegades will know what has happened here, and even now are preparing their response. We do not have much time. The Imperator must never fall into the hands of the traitors. To prevent this we will initiate a fatal error in the reactor systems.’

  The tech-priest turned towards one of the upper banks and snarled a stream of binaric at the servitors stationed there. The near-lifeless humachines roused into ponderous action, burbling command codes as their jolting fingers worked at the reactor controls.

  Ghelsa looked at the other downdeckers and saw their confusion and hesitation.

  ‘We don’t have a choice,’ she said. She fixed a stare on Adrina. ‘I…’

  What was she to say? That she had met an inquisitor of the Imperium, helped him clamber up the Imperator to the akropoliz, survived an invasion of Traitor Space Marines, made a pact with the Armageddon tunnel fighters, been escorted by a kastelan into the holy decks, survived near execution by the hyperezia and witnessed that same inquisitor slain by a renegade magos whose troops were now attempting to take over the downdecks?

  ‘Do you trust me?’ she asked instead.

  Adrina had no time to answer. A warning clamour screamed into life and alert lights bathed the battle with a scarlet hue. The reactor overload had begun.

  The raucous howl of the reactor alarms drowned out all other noise and threatened to shake the thoughts right out of Ghelsa’s head. The other downdeckers covered their ears, stumbling towards the exits, but she forged towards Sushus-Gan. The tech-priest was surveying the scene without any indication that it understood the pain the noise inflicted.

  ‘Shut it off!’ screeched Ghelsa, the effort of raising her voice sending jarring spasms through her jaw. ‘It’s deafening us!’

  The tech-priest looked at her with multi-lensed eyes, and a second later the wailing ceased. Ghelsa let out a gasp, almost choking on the comparative silence.

  Touch the tech-priest.

  Ghelsa thought she had heard a voice, but other than Sushus-Gan, there was nobody near her. She started to turn away, but the voice came again, halting her.

  Make physical contact with the tech-priest.

  Ghelsa felt a throbbing in her brow – not quite pain, more like a steady pressure that seeped between her eyes.

  Stay there.

  Not sure what else to do, Ghelsa remained where she was, looking around the plasma chamber for some indication of who was speaking. Near-mindless servitors laboured at their controls, and the downdeckers gathered around Adrina and the other surviving overseer were discussing what they were going to do.

  The tech-priest suddenly froze, mechadendrites in mid-undulation, then the body half-turned as the premidius took a step away from Ghelsa. The tech-priest twisted back, a clawed hand reaching up towards Ghelsa’s face. She stepped back but Sushus-Gan lunged after her, snaring her coverall. A glinting data-spike flashed upwards and Ghelsa flinched, sure that its tip would pierce her throat.

  The slender spike lightly touched her godplate. The contact was like being struck by a bolt of lightning.

  Nerves buzzing, Ghelsa stood transfixed, as if the data-spike had been driven into her brain. Her exo-skeleton twitched, juddering her body and limbs. Her fingers spasmed and the multi-tool dropped loudly to the deck. Immaterial fingers quested into her thoughts, numbing with their touch, paralysing any effort to speak or move.

  The fingers became wire-like probes that spread into her consciousness. There was no pain, but the fear of intrusion was very real. Tears rolled down Ghelsa’s cheeks as she felt the probes’ invasive presence pushing deeper and deeper.

  They found her memories and in moments emptied her of everything she had been. She experienced her life in swift reverse, from the battle against the skitarii, through her encounter with Harkas and onwards, back into her Cult Metalica initiation and all the way through to her childhood and birth.

  Everything she had experienced, every moment that had led up to her being the person she was there and then, was pillaged, sifted and then thrust back into her memory.

  Teeth gritted, she waited for the exploratory influence to depart. She stared at the tech-priest thrusting the data-spike against her forehead, but Sushus-Gan was as immobile as Ghelsa.

  The tributai expected disconnection, but instead felt a build-up of pressure as an influx of information flowed from the other presence.

  As she had relived her own existence, now she lived another. The earliest memories were vague, time spent among the temples of Metalica with others of the upper hierarchy. Accepted into the ranks of the tech-priesthood, she started to study the paths of wisdom, replacing more and more of her body with cybernetic components until eventually her brain itself was removed, redundant alongside the miracle of the Machine-God’s artifice that she had become. Battles flashed past, an unending war fought in numbers and equations she could not possibly understand, and then she stood before the Casus Belli, filled with an all-too-human pride in her achievement.

  More war, now as a tech-priest aboard the Imperator. Skitarii came and went, each a fleeting life spent in the service of the Omnissiah. She endured. Until now.

  All that she had witnessed and been told now made sense. She learned of the moderatus prime and Magos Olvatia and the Dark Mechanicus that worshipped the warp as a living god. And the blaze of recollection finished with her imprisonment in the magazine structure within the akropoliz of the Casus Belli.

  The voice returned, but now with a sharp clarity as though the speaker were literally at her ear. Yet it was not sound, or even speech, but data being processed, swifter than any words.

  Exasas-tactical [apology]:

  Ghelsa-tributai [inquiry]:

  Exasas-tactical:

  For a moment Ghelsa wasn’t sure what a biological archive was, but then realised the other person meant her memories. That simple realisation unfolded the entirety of the data-packet that Magos Dominus Militaris Xaiozanus Skitara Xilliarkis Exasas had inserted into her brain. She did not experience it as she had during the inload, but remembered it as though she had perhaps learned its details from a tutor.

  Ghelsa-tributai: by the other one, Olvatia, and are trapped inside the akropoliz. You have temporarily taken over Sushus-Gan’s functions to initiate my noospheric link so that we can communicate.> [expletive]

  Exasas-tactical [rhetorical]:

  Ghelsa-tributai: [inquiry]

  Exasas-tactical:

  Ghelsa-tributai [inquiry]:

  Exasas-tactical: [imperative]

  Ghelsa-tributai [apology]:

  Exasas-tactical:

  The presence partially withdrew. In its absence Ghelsa realised that the entire exchange had lasted less than a second. Before she could think about this any further, she felt the re-emergence of the other mind.

  Exasas-primary:

  Ghelsa-tributai [inquiry]:

  Exasas-primary:

  Ghelsa-tributai:

  Exasas-primary: [imperative]

  Ghelsa-tributai [inquiry]:

  Exasas-primary:

  Ghelsa-tributai [rebuke]:

  Exasas-primary:

  Ghelsa-tributai [inquiry]:

  Exasas-primary:

  Ghelsa wasn’t sure she could do it. What did she know about leading an attack? Could she even convince the others to take part?

  Exasas-primary:

  Ghelsa-tributai [humour]:

  The silence that was forthcoming betrayed Exasas’ lack of understanding, but the joke had bought her the short amount of time she needed to come to a decision.

  Ghelsa-tributai [imperative]:

  The renewed wailing of the reactor leak sirens nearly drowned out the snap of weapons fire and the bellows of the downdeckers as they surged along gantries, pounded up stairwells and flowed like a wave from commandeered conveyors. Among them the tech-priests still loyal to the Omnissiah shouted instructions, but it was evident that they were no longer in control. The mob had a will of its own, stirred up by the augmentatii assaults and, after some impassioned pleas, set into motion by Ghelsa.

  She had no interest in personally leading the attack, and had kept Exasas’ predicament secret for the time being. First they had to break into the akropoliz, and when that was done she would work out how to rescue the magos.

  Before severing the connection, Exasas had activated a chronometer relay inside Ghelsa’s brain. It had been set to fourteen minutes and fifteen seconds, standard chronoscape, which was the amount of time the magos could continue to work through the noospheric systems of the tech-priest he had suborned to his purpose. After that, the traitors would know that he had managed to contact the outside and would reinforce the protection of the magazine or simply execute the former dominus as an unnecessary threat.

  Ghelsa was simply aware of the passage of time – it wasn’t a ticking in her head or something she could see. She just knew, as she hauled herself up a narrow stair that curved around the hellstorm cannon mounting, that she only had eight minutes and four seconds remaining.

  She passed bodies, both white-coated soldiers and those of tributai and epilekhtoz. It took an effort to remember that they had been people once. It made her wonder if this was how Harkas had felt all the time. Did the humans he had striven to protect simply become statistics weighed against each other?

  Ghelsa and the others around her came upon the upper landing, the doors already broken down, a scattering of dead augmentatii in the corridor beyond. Las-fire ahead attracted her attention.

  ‘Those aren’t radium beams or arc rifle pulses…’

  ‘What would you know?’ asked Adrina, who had chosen to stay close to Ghelsa for reasons undisclosed. Perhaps it was simply because she was the only one with any sense of what was happening.

  ‘I spent most of the last day in or near a firefight, one way or the other. Lasguns mean the xenagia. They can help. I hope.’

  The corridor split at a junction ahead, serving another stairwell and one of the lower secondary gun turrets. Fighters clad in the dark grey of the Armageddon auxilia held the bottom of the stairs, firing up at targets out of Ghelsa’s line of vision.

  Two of them turned as the small mob dashed across the junction, their lasguns raised.

  ‘Wait!’ shouted Ghelsa. ‘Don’t shoot.’

  ‘Stay there,’ one of the duct-fighters bellowed back, stress etched into his features, his eyes roaming from one duluz to another. ‘Stay back!’

  ‘I need you to contact Aszad or Dazi,’ Ghelsa said, trying to sound in control. ‘Have you got a voxhailer?’

  ‘Don’t need one,’ said the other Armageddonite. She looked back up the stairs and shouted, ‘Lieutenant Aszad!’

  A fresh flurry of las-fire from unseen combatants above lit the stairwell. A few seconds later, the tunnel fighter who had saved Ghelsa from the traitor legionary came dashing down the steps.

  ‘What is it, Kuduza? They’re countering along the third level.’ He saw Ghelsa and stopped, his eyes narrowing. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I need your help,’ Ghelsa said hurriedly. She stepped closer and dropped her voice as much as she could and still be heard above the shouts and gunfire echoing down the stairs. ‘The rightful dominus has been taken prisoner by the hereteks.’

  Aszad looked at her with his head tilted. His gaze moved to the others from the downdecks.

  ‘Can you pull a trigger?’ he asked, and was answered with nods and calls of assent. He jabbed a finger towards th
e bodies close at hand and then to several corpses in the doorway of the gun tower. ‘Good. Get a weapon and follow me.’

  Some of the duluz were more eager than others. A few looked with distaste at the corpses and slunk away, the rush of blood that had carried them this far dissipating in the cold truth of battle.

  ‘Dazi is two levels up, but the enemy have split us. Where is the dominus being held?’

  ‘The main battery magazine,’ said Ghelsa. ‘I don’t even know if he was guarded – he was locked in.’

  Aszad puffed out his cheeks as he contemplated his options.

  ‘You and you’ – he nodded to the other duct-fighters – ‘take these new volunteers up to the fighting. Vox the major and tell her I’m coming another way. Get her to push towards shaft four. Ghelsa, you should come with me.’

  He headed under the lowest flight of steps while others pounded up the stairs with the auxilia. There was a hatch set into the wall, just about large enough for Ghelsa.

  ‘The hereteks have been sending armed servo-skulls into most of our ratways, but this one should be fine.’

  ‘Should be?’

  ‘There are no certainties in battle, Ghelsa.’ The ring lock creaked as he turned it, but the door opened almost silently on its heavy hinges, revealing a lightless round tube running vertically past the opening.

  ‘Where does it go?’ asked Ghelsa, leaning forward for a better look. She felt warm air rising, and the metal below them was lit with a faint ruddy glow. Above, she saw a paler light beyond a grille some distance away. Aszad pulled her back with a hand on her arm.

  ‘Down into the lower incineratum, from the forward maintenance temple.’ He twisted and stepped into the space, his legs braced across the drop. Ghelsa could barely see him as he started walking up, his back sliding against the wall of the chute.

  ‘I don’t expect anyone is going to be dropping rubbish down here during a battle, but best not dawdle.’

  Ghelsa slipped her multi-tool into its sheath and inspected the tube. There was no sign of handholds – she would have to ascend like the duct-fighter, though she was far bulkier.