by Thorpe, Gav
The conveyor screeched to a halt at the level she had selected – somewhere close to the atrium, she thought. Letting the shutter door roll up, arc rifle held awkwardly in one hand and multi-tool in the other, she stepped out and found herself on an open mesh gantry that ran across from the central tower of the akropoliz’s main battery to the secondary turrets. She looked down and saw fighting among the buildings where Olvatia’s augmentatii – she recalled the term from Exasas’ datalog – chased down groups of tributai and epilekhtoz.
The sky moved as the Imperator turned, and it was then that she laid eyes upon the Titan battle raging beyond the void shields. Blasts that could have levelled city blocks flared between the energy-wreathed god-machines. Salvos of shells and missiles the equal to a company of tanks spat and sparked from their energy defences.
The Casus Belli was turning towards them. It was ungainly and slow, the corrupting spirit introduced into the system not used to its immense metal body, perhaps having to fight against the Imperator’s incumbent soul. Even so, it would not be long before the plasma annihilator would be brought to bear, and then the weight of all the other guns atop the akropoliz.
She tore her eyes away, the sense of urgency that had sent her on this ridiculous mission renewed. She ran back into the conveyor, slammed down the shutter and hit the descent lever again. Armed with the view from outside, she had a better idea of where she was, and knew she had to move forward to reach the atrium.
The conveyor was only a few levels above the antae when she activated the brake and disembarked again. The noise of fighting was a lot closer – or seemed so, though the ring of bullets and crackle of flames was hard to pinpoint among the cross of passages ahead. She saw a flickering light against a wall and ran towards it.
She stopped at the junction and peered round – a squad of xenagia were staving off an augmentatii attack from one of the other conveyor halls. Ghelsa dashed across the corridor as stray shots hissed past her, spraying phosphor sparks as they thudded into the walls and ceiling.
She continued on past an empty weapons store and the magazine for a secondary turret, before coming out near the top of the atrium. She knew little of how to read a battle, but it appeared there was something of a standoff across the upper levels. Both sides had erected rough barricades across several access corridors and were sniping at each other.
Keeping low, Ghelsa hurried behind the groups of workers manning the improvised barriers, clutching the arc rifle to her chest to stop it tripping her. She reached the end of a line of empty munitions crates and crouched, stealing a look down into the depths of the atrium. As she had hoped, the large forms of several kastelans stood before the antae, their weapons trained up at the fighting above but silent. She wasn’t certain what prevented them from participating, but assumed that they simply could not cope with the thought of the faithful fighting the faithful and therefore could not separate legitimate targets from allies. Olvatia obviously had not been able to redirect their programming in the same way she had overridden the command hierarchy of the skitarii.
Getting down to them looked like a difficult and time-consuming run down the levels, until Ghelsa hit upon a better – at least swifter – means to negotiate the descent.
Exasas-tactical:
Exasas-primary:
Exasas-secondary:
Exasas-tactical [negative]:
Exasas-primary [negative]
Exasas-secondary [negative]
The magos tore apart the augmentatii gripped in two of his combat claws and studied the glutinous liquid that spilled from the two halves. The whirring teeth of a different attachment decapitated another, spilling more of the fluid onto the floor.
Exasas-primary:
Exasas-secondary:
A burst of fire from his phosphor launcher incinerated another augmentatii at the corner of the corridor ahead, the detonation fusing another nearby soldier with her arc rifle.
Accompanied by the xenagia, Exasas advanced to the junction, stopping just outside the gateway to the central battery access stairs. He motioned to the left with an appendage.
‘Major Dazi, seize as many battery turrets as possible to prevent the enemy from firing the Casus Belli’s guns.’ Exasas had united several scattered groups of duct fighters, including their commander. ‘Permanently disable them if absolutely necessary.’
‘We don’t have enough troopers to fight through to every gun, dominus,’ replied the officer. ‘We’re running out of time.’
Exasas-tactical:
Exasas-secondary [negative]:
Exasas-primary:
Exasas shut down extraneous systems to send out a broadcast through the noosphere, issuing a challenge to the rogue magos. He transmitted his locational data, the virtual equivalent of daring the other magos to face her, unconcerned by his physical wellbeing.
The other dominus reacted instantly, flooding the noosphere with rebuttal data asserting her position in command. Exasas reincorporated all routines, algorithms, antarithms and personas to meet the coming processing demand.
Exasas [imperative]:
Olvatia [negative]:
Exasas:
Olvatia [negative]:
Exasas [simulacrum datalog]
Exasas:
Olvatia [negative]:
Exasas extended the strength of contact, awakening the security protocols he had shared with the other magos upon the occasion of his earlier capitulation. Although he was unable to pierce the other dominus’ battle-shielding, the proximity of the persona-shard allowed Exasas to violently inload the entirety of his theorem and accompanying data. The effect was devastating, overwhelming Olvatia’s far cruder simulation circuits with more information than they were destined to process.
#killefficiency95%#
Exasas:
Arc rifle slung across her back, Ghelsa clamped her fingers around the closest rail and vaulted over, hanging by one hand. Expecting to be hit by a stubber bullet or phosphor round at any second, she let go.
The clang of her outstretched arms hitting the next rail down was just one noise among many in the din of battle. Ghelsa clung to the rail for a second, steadying herself before she let herself drop again.
It was the hook of her multi-tool that caught this time, swinging her hard into the ferrocrete of the walkway. She winced, tasting
blood where her lips had been split, but kept her grip locked about the haft of the tool. Wedging a foot beneath the bottom rail, she unhooked herself and reviewed her progress.
Two levels to go.
Taking a deep breath, Ghelsa fell again. And again.
Dropping to the bottom level of the atrium, she knelt for a few seconds with her head bowed, glad to be on solid floor again. A shadow fell across her, and she looked up into the featureless dome of a kastelan looming over her.
‘Praise the Omnissiah, hail the Machine-God,’ said Ghelsa.
‘Ghelsa vin Jain, tributai,’ she replied, standing up. She glanced over her shoulder, up at the firefight raging above. The fire from the duluz side of the atrium was definitely waning compared to the fusillade from the other. ‘Contact Delta 6-Terror. Verify my status.’
One of the other kastelans stepped forward.
‘What are your current orders in my regard?’
‘Can you transmit that order to your maniple?’
The kastelan stood immobile for a few seconds, and then the other four robots stepped up beside it.
‘I hope this works,’ muttered Ghelsa, and set off up the ramp with her six-strong cybernetic bodyguard.
It did not take long for the augmentatii to spy her ascent. Ghelsa made no attempt to hide herself, striding in plain view of the enemy just ahead of the kastelans. She deliberately made herself a target, pointing her multi-tool threateningly at the renegades.
Please don’t be coy, she thought. If Olvatia’s soldiers realised what was happening, they would not open fire and the whole plan would fail.
There was also the significant chance that the first shot at Ghelsa would kill her. She did not want her victory to be posthumous, but if it took her death…
A phosphor round screamed down, hitting Ghelsa in the leg. It struck her exo-skeleton first and sprayed white-hot fire across her calf and knee. She toppled with a shriek.
She took no comfort from the boom of the kastelans’ return fire as phosphor ate into the protective weave of her coveralls and started melting skin and flesh. Ghelsa scrabbled away between Delta 6-Terror’s legs as more phosphor shells exploded across the cybernoids’ armoured bodies and radium beams sliced down. She dragged herself into a side corridor and flopped against the wall to examine her leg.
The exo-skeleton and coverall had taken the brunt, but a scorched trail from knee to ankle marred the side of her leg, almost down to the bone in places.
She didn’t register any pain. At first she thought it was simply shock, but the more she stared at her leg the more she realised it was something else. The injury should have been crippling, but the surgery that had implanted much of the interior support for her exo-skeleton had rendered the nerve endings numb. But that was not enough to explain the lack of excruciating agony.
It had to be the noospheric circuit, she realised. It was literally overriding the signals from her ravaged limb to her brain, intercepting them before they reached her synapses.
Extending the multi-tool, she was able to use it as a crutch and get to her feet. She tentatively put some weight on her foot, and felt nothing. Fear of pain rather than actual sensation made her limp back towards the atrium, where the kastelans had advanced to the next level behind a pounding volley of fire. The barricades erected by the augmentatii had been pulverised and set on fire by the robots’ barrage, clearing out the next level.
More importantly, the lowest level was free of enemies – the way to the antae was clear. If only she had some way to contact Magos Exasas.
It was then, through the cacophony of phosphor blasters and arc rifles, that she felt rather than heard the rumble of the upper batteries opening fire. The Casus Belli had turned its guns on the other god-machines of the Legio Metalica.
Reeling from the inload, Olvatia’s defence protocols initiated, conceding the superiority of Exasas’ simulations to avoid data-paralysis. The logic cascade that flowed from this concession inevitably led to the zero-success conclusion contained within the data. The self-same assumption that had precipitated her overthrow of Exasas – that he had to accept the logicality of her victory – now worked in reverse.
Faced with the proof that she would be defeated, her only course of action was to minimise the injurious consequences of defeat. Given that she was unable to physically withdraw from the Imperator, the logic loop that Exasas had begun by offering clemency at the outset was now complete.
Olvatia [capitulation]
To avoid any possibility of Exasas reneging on his promise to end Olvatia swiftly, the other magos initiated a full self-purge of all sensory and personality systems.
#olvatiaextinctioncommence#
Across the noosphere, Exasas felt Olvatia’s spirit depart. It was not a pleasant experience, and it gave her no sense of triumph to share the momentary sensation of utter oblivion of a fellow tech-priest. Olvatia had been heretek, and her fate deserved, but Exasas knew from his archival delving that she had once also been a student of the Higher Wisdoms. Now she was lost from the cosmic machine.
In the antae outside the command module Olvatia’s spherical form crashed to the floor, sensor flexes drooping across her lifeless remains.
Exasas performed a quick persona sweep to ensure that annihilation was complete and, contented that no subterfuge was involved, severed the connection. He calved off the other personas he had created.
Exasas-tactical:
Exasas-secondary:
Exasas-primary [positive]:
Exasas-secondary [inquiry]:
Exasas-primary:
Exasas-tactical:
Exasas-primary:
‘Major!’ In the Armageddon officer’s perception, barely two seconds had passed since Exasas had last spoken. She turned, startled at the vocalisation. ‘All forces will observe immediate ceasefire.’
‘We’ve won, dominus?’ She looked around as though she might see physical evidence of what had changed.
‘I have resumed rightful command, and all locations external to the command deck will be within our control. Unfortunately, that is of little benefit in the current situation, as the Imperator’s systems are being operated directly from within the czella. Secure the batteries as swiftly as possible and attempt to physically disable them to prevent further firing.’
The magos had no time for further embellishment and stalked away, already diverting his attention to the problem of how to access the command module without the security protocols.
The command echoed mechanically through the atrium and its environs, passing from one kastelan maniple to the next. Ghelsa wept as she followed them, sobbing at the carnage wrought by the automatons. They trampled heedlessly over the bodies of the slain, crushing the corpses under their weight. Ghelsa picked her way past more carefully, bile burning her th
roat at the sight.
Harkas’ ruse to have the kastelans kill the hyperezia had sickened her, but now she had used the exact same ploy to arrange the deaths of dozens of augmentatii. Not knowing why the warbots attacked their companions, Olvatia’s warriors targeted the kastelans and instantly earned themselves an unfaithful categorisation. As the kastelans advanced, the effect spread with them.
Retreat or passivity in the face of the seeming aggression were impossible. The augmentatii were created to fight as much as the kastelans, and so two forces whose only logic was the destruction of each other raged through the passages and halls of the akropoliz.
Ghelsa wasn’t sure how to stop what she had begun, even if it was possible. The kastelans’ own battle-program fed their rampage and no command from a tributai would change that.
She dared not leave her mechanical bodyguards, but remaining in their presence was to stay near the constant barrage of noise and light from their guns, to hear the constant cries of the dying and witness the deaths of scores of the Machine-God’s servants.
It was hard to focus on the higher goal of saving the Casus Belli. Ghelsa knew nothing of the intricacies of Olvatia’s plotting with the officer cadre, but was pretty sure that the augmentatii that fought for the magos had not voluntarily become hereteks.
She wondered why Olvatia had felt the need to send her warriors into the downdecks. Had she not broken the compact between the holy decks and the workers, the duluz would most likely have continued to labour in the depths of the Titan without any idea that they had changed sides. Perhaps tech-heresy always brought paranoia? Or maybe when one harboured their own machinations they always imagined others had similar ambitions.
There was something wrong about the corpses she picked her way past. Like the soldier whose face she had crushed, they all had remnants of a strange substance inside their systems. It reeked of rotten meat, gelatinous and cold under her bare feet. The sight of it increased her nausea, but it seemed like an age since she had eaten and instead of emptying her stomach she suffered bouts of dry retching.
