The interference had almost gone, a quiet hum compared to the earlier crackle. But it was not entirely dissipated. The noosphere remained an unreachable aura just beyond his transmitters.
Exasas-tactical [request]: <Allow me access to our motivation circuits.>
Exasas complied with the sub-persona and climbed to the sill of the closest window. From here he stretched up again, extending every body part and limb in an effort to get as close as possible to the ceiling. Straining mechadendrites brushed the painted ferrocrete.
In that moment there was a flash of noospheric connection.
Ghelsa’s defiance was all the other tributai needed, the finger on the trigger of their building anger. First one mob and then the others surged towards the skitarii, some with tools as improvised weapons, most with bare hands outstretched.
The skitarii responded with crackling clubs and gleam-edged blades, battering and cutting at the first to fall upon them. Faced with two soldiers dashing across the lowest level directly at her, Ghelsa had no time to spare for those who fell.
Lacking any better ideas, she threw herself into a counter-charge, whirling the multi-tool in front of her. Its sweep knocked the maul from the hand of the first and she barrelled into the soldier without stopping, bearing both of them to the floor. She thrust exo-skeletally boosted fingers into the soldier’s facemask, crushing the metal and shattering the plastek lenses, burrowing fingers through bone into the brain within.
She expected to feel the thrust of a blade in her back or the impact of a maul, but nothing happened. Dragging her blood-coated fingers from the ruin of the skitarii’s face, she turned to see the other being hoisted up by the clawed mechadendrites of one of the plasma reactor overseers.
Red incense spumed from the tech-priest as a metallic roar reverberated through the chamber.
‘Spare none! Eliminate the hereteks!’
Exasas-secondary [imperative]: <Get us closer! We almost had a positive link.>
Exasas-tactical [rebuke]: <This form was not designed or constructed for its current employment. If I make an error we shall fall.>
Exasas had clambered fully into the window enclosure and gripped the top with a pair of manipulators while resting the very tip of his metallic tail on the sill. Legs splayed, he lay against the glass and wall, every articulate part stretched to maximum.
He made minute adjustments to his stance, trying to find the elusive connectivity they had encountered minutes before and then lost. Like a shadow on a wall, the noospheric presence of Mithras-4 projected into their senses but was not tangible. If Exasas could make a connection to the other tech-priest’s noospheric circuitry, he could communicate again.
Exasas-tactical [negative/imperative]: <You cannot reveal us to any of the other tech-priests. Without positive data on who is privy to the conspiracy we must assume that all others are the enemy.>
Exasas-primary: <Then our efforts are wasted.> [inquiry] <If not to communicate our predicament to the outside and seek assistance, to what purpose do we labour?>
Exasas-tactical: <Achievement of the connection is the primary goal. We can devise the next phase when it has been completed.>
Exasas-secondary: <I concur with Exasas-primary. Our thinking cannot become too short-term lest we follow a course of action that is ultimately without merit. Time is limited.>
Exasas-tactical [theory]: <You should devise a strategy while I focus on the immediate mission.>
Exasas-secondary [imperative]: <Do not attempt contact. Even if you think you have identified an ally, any precipitous attempt to enforce our freedom will endanger them. We must remember that the goal is not our escape – that is one possible means to the end. Our only purpose is to thwart the coup and restore control of the Imperator to those loyal to the battle group.>
Exasas-primary: <I am accumulating a list of injunctions but as yet have not rendered a positive outcome once connection is established.> [inquiry] <What are we trying to achieve?>
Exasas-tactical: <Establish a connection with the tech-priest and I will make it secure. Once we have noospheric data you can better establish the parameters of the next stage.>
Exasas-secondary: <I concur.>
Exasas-primary: <I was not aware that we had adopted democratic principles for this decision-making process.>
Exasas-tactical [rebuke]
Exasas-secondary [rebuke]
CHAPTER 12
ULTIMATE SACRIFICE
The alpha’s injunction against weapons fire lasted only a few more seconds before the crack of shots rang out. Lightning bolts leapt from arc rifles, searing through the nervous systems of the charging duluz. Bullets tore at coveralls and robes, pitching Ghelsa’s companions twitching to the deck.
The din rushed at her like a living thing, drowning out her thoughts, each flash of muzzle flare or pulse of electricity sending a shock into her. Through a welter of conflicting responses Ghelsa forced herself to act. She pulled a stub carbine from the dead grip of the skitarii whose face she had crushed and turned it on a trio of soldiers firing at the tributai from a higher level.
Even with just a single hand, her reinforced grip made light work of the recoil. Her aim was poor but she kept the trigger pulled and walked the trail of bullet impacts across the coated figures above. White fabric turned red as the rounds found their targets, punching through the armour below the skitarii’s coats.
The repeated clicking of her weapon signalled an empty magazine. She had no idea how to reload and instead used her augmented strength to throw the carbine into the face of another soldier.
Others had wrestled weapons away from the skitarii, and erratic radium beams lit the spreading melee while artificial lightning chained across those who had been sent to occupy the downdecks.
A sudden fountain of red sparks cascaded from an energy conduit, showering onto the combatants below. A second later, a stub round pierced a coolant tube, the venting gas freezing an unfortunate tributai standing next to it.
The tech-priests called for their duluz to cease firing, but the enraged workers did not listen. Bullied and threatened, their fear had turned to rage against those who had betrayed them, exacting a bloody price for the abandonment of the unwritten covenant that had existed between skitarii and duluz. The one protected the other, and in return the tributai and epilekhtoz maintained the god-machine on which they all depended.
Ghelsa’s fury was born of a survival instinct. She had felt the greater machination at work, seen first-hand the carnage of the Traitor Space Marine assault that surely had to be connected to the plot. If they did not stop the conspiracy the Casus Belli would be irrevocably tainted, defiled by those who had been oathbound to serve it.
The closest skitarii were embroiled in a desperate hand-to-hand fight, cleaving at their tributai attackers with blades that left snaking trails of energy. Ghelsa threw herself into the tech-guard and brought the multi-tool down onto a hooded skull, gritting her teeth against the sensation of splitting bone. The soldier folded sideways with a strange, artificial squeal.
Ghelsa wrenched the multi-tool from the remnants of her dead foe, the metal slick with thick greenish liquid. More of the same pumped through the weave of the hood and flowed towards her bare feet, forcing her to step back.
Something continued to move within the folds of fabric. It looked more like a nest of waking serpents than anything human. Ghelsa bit back her disgust and dragged back the hood to reveal a mass of writhing tentacles where the skitarii’s brain should have been.
Revulsion threatened to empty Ghelsa’s stomach, had there been anything to expunge. This was no cybernetic augmentation – something inhuman had been inserted into the tech-guard’s body.
The other fighters overwhelmed the remaining pair of skitarii, battering at armoured bodies with their fists and torque bars, stabbing into masked faces with the tips of screwdrivers.
From above, more missed shots slashed trails through hanging wires, while control consoles exploded with sparks f
rom other impacts. Ill-judged arc blasts seared along monitoring circuits with emerald flashes. Several misplaced bursts cut down slaved servitors attached to the reactor monitoring panels.
Faces swam in and out of focus, but Ghelsa could not see Notasa among them. Pushing her way through the mob, she recognised Adrina – barely, for the overseer’s features were contorted in an unfamiliar rage. Blood spattered his face as he beat the claw-head of a long-handed mattokhai’s hammer repeatedly into the chest of a fallen skitarii.
She pushed through the other tributai and shouted for Adrina. He looked up, his eyes wide and wild. He swayed like a drunkard, his brow knotted in confusion.
‘Notasa? Have you seen Notasa?’ Ghelsa demanded, stepping closer to the overseer. ‘He went up into the akropoliz.’
A semblance of focus returned to Adrina’s eyes. He looked at Ghelsa, still frowning, and then to the bloodied hammer in his hands. Blinking red droplets from his eyelashes, he let the mattock drop from blood-slicked fingers and swallowed hard.
‘Ghelsa? Where did you come from?’
‘Have you seen Notasa?’
He shook his head and then looked around as though he might see him present. His gaze fell upon the tributai whose skull had been crushed.
‘They killed Rhiassa…’ He looked so lost, utterly unlike the Adrina she had known for many years. Ghelsa laid a hand on his shoulder and he turned his attention back to her, regaining a semblance of his former confidence. ‘There were others, I think, that started it. The skitarii came for the starboard shift. Orasni’s team. A fight broke out in the secondary stairwell.’
Ghelsa noticed that the chamber had quietened, the din of violent struggle replaced with the growl of the reactor purging and the murmur of the surviving duluz.
The bodies of skitarii and duluz littered the stairs and decks, finally equal in death. Groups of survivors picked through the fallen soldiers, some driving lifting spikes into their chests to finish them off, others relieving them of weapons and ammunition.
The tech-priest that had roused the fight – Ghelsa recognised the brass-effect faceplate beneath the hood as belonging to Premidius Sushus-Gan – pushed through the throng, parting them with questing prods of her mechadendrites.
‘You!’ Sushus-Gan barked, pointing a metal claw at Ghelsa. She stiffened and adjusted her grip on the multi-tool.
Exasas powered down as much motive energy as he dared, and also reduced the life-support mechanisms for his few organic components to a slower cycle. Cell degradation would increase, but it was a sensible sacrifice in exchange for the ability to boost the range of his noospheric interface.
Like a person feeling their way forward through a thick fog, trying to find another without them being aware of it, Exasas projected his noospheric field through the ceiling of the magazine, searching for Mithras-4. If the other tech-priest was not at his post, even by a short distance, the entire enterprise would fail.
The static became a haze through which Exasas could make out the vague electromagnetic signatures of the systems above. The blocky machine of the autoloader dominated everything, but next to it was a smaller but more intense locus of data. Snaking an info-tendril towards the apparition, Exasas identified the source wave of Mithras-4’s noospheric hub. If he made connection with it at the wrong frequency it would instantly alert the ballisticus to Exasas’ presence.
Exasas-tactical primed herself to act, reconfiguring several data-broadcast processes while Exasas-primary concentrated on matching their target’s data waveform. Confident that he had a confluent signal, Exasas eased even more power into his noospheric projector, like a fallen climber straining every muscle to lay a fingertip upon a dangling rope.
With a last surge that blanked out several data archives, Exasas thrust his projection into Mithras-4’s waveform. At the instant of contact Exasas-tactical asserted full functional control, sidelining the primary persona.
Exasas-primary was a partial spectator, partial actor as the two noospheric signals overlapped. Exasas-tactical pounced like a predatory feline, unlocking battle-algorithms usually reserved for manoeuvring bodies of troops and prioritising enemy targets.
The magos’ personal wavelength slipped into the circuitry of the ballisticus without a tremor, spreading from the noospheric nodes into Mithras-4’s secondary communication and motor centres, while a third assault diverted to the failsafe module each of the Casus Belli’s tech-priests possessed to alert the Imperator to their demise.
Defensive systems swarmed like wasps defending their nest, but Exasas-tactical was battle-shielded against enemy interrogation and pulsed through them without concern. Descending persona shields were broken or wedged open by the spreading data-surge, Exasas-tactical’s abilities growing in potency with each system that was taken over, while Mithras-4’s were diminished. With an infoblade cutting off every connection he encountered, Exasas multiplied out into the other tech-priest’s datawork.
A core-protocol – one might think of it as a death throe – tried to eject Mithras-4’s archive coil contents into the noosphere, both as a preservation technique and an alarm. Exasas-tactical had been expecting the response and latched onto the broadcast at the moment of its emission, using the millisecond-long window of transmission to swallow the data-blurt and concurrently burrow into the ballisticus’ cortex via the archival vessels.
Such was the speed of the attack that tertiary defences had not even activated. There was no sensory shut down, no datalog erasure, not even an organic reaction to betray Exasas’ intrusion.
Lurking inside Mithras-4’s persona strands, Exasas spent several seconds analysing the ballisticus’ thought routines. Much of it was standard, although he still possessed the organic matter of the brain, something Exasas had not experienced for over a century. It took several more seconds of adjustment to calibrate his processes in line with the firing of neurons.
Thus ensconced, Exasas started to decode the dataflow, parsing away sensory, noospheric and datalog strands for separate analysis. He focused his attention on the ten minutes since he had departed from the control module.
The first thing that became clear was the identity of the Titans that had landed. Their orange-and-black livery flowed in crystal-sharp focus from the Casus Belli’s sensors.
The Legio Fureans, colloquially known as the Tiger Eyes.
A rapid exchange of consternation between Exasas’ personas threatened to destabilise their link with Mithras-4, and it took an effort to regain equilibrium. The presence of the Fureans changed everything.
Exasas-primary: <The Tiger Eyes have been recognised as renegade since the Great Schism. These are not sympathisers from a fellow Legion but adherents to the rites of the Dark Mechanicus.>
Exasas-secondary: <We have laboured under the misapprehension that the conflict was between two factions loyal to the Machine-God.> [reinterpretation] <Olvatia spoke not of a sect within the Cult Metalica but of the tenets of the Dark Mechanicus. She and the others have become corrupted.>
As he analysed the import of this, Exasas noted that one of the Warhounds had so far escaped destruction, drawing two of the Furean Reavers deeper into the mountains. That left a pair of Warlords standing ready to attack whichever Titans of the Legio Metalica emerged next from the storm.
Exasas-secondary: <What we interpreted as opportunism following the erratic behaviour of the Az Khalak defenders was in fact a meticulously planned and executed plot to destroy the battle group.>
Exasas-primary: <Analysis has shown that they were presented with more effective means to destroy the Casus Belli prior to this point.>
Exasas-tactical [imperative]: <Your analysis is inverted because you have proceeded from the basis of destruction.>
Exasas-primary [inquiry]
Exasas-tactical [theory]: <The conspirators plan
to deliver the Casus Belli into the service of the Eightwards Conduit.>
Exasas-secondary [theory]: <The traitors do not wish to destroy the Casus Belli – they wish to subvert it to their cause. Every act carried out has been arranged in such a manner as to lead towards the isolation of the Imperator for that end. Had they merely turned their guns upon the battle group they would have been outmatched. By this means they have been able to alter the balance of power within the battle group so that the Imperator is the deciding factor, not the minority.>
Exasas-tactical: <Unless the rest of the battle group arrive individually – a small probability – two Warlord Titans are insufficient to match them for kill potential.> [theory] <The Casus Belli must become directly involved in the destruction of the Legio battle group.> [imperative] <We must prevent that.>
Exasas-secondary: <I have just recalled a routine I archived earlier. I suggested that the attack on the akropoliz was doomed to failure but perhaps aimed at drawing troops away from the defence of the bastions from another force on the ground. No such second wave transpired, and so I idled the simulation. I was right, however, but not in determining the final purpose.> [theory] <The fighting was indeed intended to empty the bastions, not for a direct enemy assault but to predicate the necessity of bringing aboard Olvatia and her augmentatii.>
Exasas-primary: <If one follows the logic you have established, then our skitarii were deemed a threat to the successful completion of their treachery. The strength of the battle group is uncertain. We are still best placed to disrupt their plans.>
Exasas-tactical: <Positioning is important but of no value if one does not have the troops to exploit it. I have analysed the simulations you ran when confronted by Olvatia’s ultimatum. While improvements could be made, the conclusion was correct. The skitarii under your command are insufficient to defeat the League forces.>
Exasas-secondary [conjecture]: <The fate of everyone aboard the Casus Belli is at stake. Is it possible to reach outside the established military structure to create a new auxilia?>