Carcharadons: Void Exile, page 13
His consciousness computed problems, errors he had not anticipated and could not solve. He tried to override them, realising too late that the platform’s machine spirits were under attack. It was useless; he had already been locked out.
The realisation presented itself to him as an impossibility. Only the Fabricator General could have performed such a tech-rite! Volv was the master of ODP/01, and yet something else had wormed its way into control, some diabolical consciousness that was now torturing the precious, sacred systems.
The pain redoubled, and Volv screamed. He writhed in his cradle, helpless, his vision blurring as he felt the taint spread, transmitted from the machines encasing him into his own flesh and metal.
Scrapcode. Infection. Corruption. There was unknown, unsanctified data flowing freely through the systems of the platform, warping it, overloading protective wards and subverting programs.
Volv tried to fight back, but could not. He could barely even think for himself any more, stunned and broken by the agony ODP/01 was suffering. He was vaguely aware of the chaos beyond his cradle as his adepts clawed at their augmetics, howling in agony as they tried to rip out their once-blessed machine parts.
Dimly, he noted unauthorised flaring of the directional jets, done independent of any input commands from the crew. More impossibilities, and yet it was happening. He felt the deck creaking and shifting under him as ODP/01 began to move, ponderously turning on its orbital axis.
Volv’s own defence platform began shutting down his life vitals. His struggles grew weaker and more pathetic. In just a few moments more he had been reduced to nothing but a drooling, braindead sack of meat, lying limp and dull-eyed in his cradle.
Below, on the main battery deck, the macrocannon crews continued to load and fire, oblivious to what their actual targets were. They sent shells streaking out into the nothingness of space, and as the platform continued to turn slowly, their arcs of fire swung down across Megafactorum Primus.
The next salvo fell upon the city’s main habzone. Thousands of menials perished in seconds as the vast shells detonated amidst the packed habitation prefabs, levelling entire blocks and shaking the megafactorum to its core.
Platform ODP/01 was not the only one overwhelmed by the surge of tech-taint. Several other batteries turned their weapons on the world they were programmed to defend, their commanders’ sanity undone and their logic engrams fried. The sky above Megafactorum Primus rained with fire and the criss-crossing red beams of lance strikes.
Above the Pinnacle and the slopes of Mount Antikythera, void shields crackled into life, flaring as they absorbed the worst of the bombardment. The rest of the city was afforded no such protection.
Megafactorum Primus burned.
Several of the White Maw’s bridge crew began to scream.
‘Silence,’ Kino roared, disgusted at the disturbance of the flagship’s sacred quiet, but to his surprise, his command made no difference.
‘The ship’s systems are under attack,’ Techmarine Beta-one-three-Uthulu stated, drawing Kino’s attention away from the wailing serfs. He and Teko were both standing at the primary command console arrayed around the coral throne, viewscreen light playing over their broad, deathly features.
‘We’re losing control over systems, primary and secondary,’ Teko said, beginning to work at one of the runeboards as Uthulu interfaced directly with a cogitator stack using his servo-arm. The Techmarine had started to mutter in Lingua Technis.
More of the bridge’s serfs were screaming. Several rose from their benches and started trying to prise out the basic augmetic implants the human crew received to aid them in their duties. The bridge’s servitors had also started to babble in binary, and some appeared to be shutting down.
‘Strike Leader Rangon,’ Kino hissed. ‘Kill every serf not at their station.’
The Red Brethren descended into the control pits and began executing. They didn’t use their storm bolters or activate the devastating energies of their power fists – they did not want to risk damaging any of the bridge’s precious hardware, and besides, a quick grip from an inactive fist was enough to efficiently crush a skull or snap a neck.
Silence rapidly returned. Teko made no indication he disapproved of the murder of his ship’s serfs. He was too focused on the White Maw’s data outputs.
‘Is the ship under your control?’ Kino demanded as Teko continued to work at several runeboards side by side, the aged Carcharodons shipmaster communing with his vessel despite the fact that Kino had taken over his primary control point via the command throne.
‘I think so,’ he said. ‘But we will have to run diagnostics, and likely perform a full, multi-system purge. Our shields are down, the vox is suffering phantom feedback, and target lock appears to be constantly resetting. We are currently borderline inoperable.’
‘It was the hulk,’ Uthulu put in, his tone dark. ‘Look, shipmaster, here, and here.’
He indicated read-outs to Teko on the main oculus. Kino glowered, unable to follow exactly what the Techmarine had found.
‘The wards show scrapcode infection breaches, and remote subversion attacks,’ Teko said to Kino, tone dangerously close to condescending. ‘Brother Uthulu and I ensure the White Maw is well warded against such corruption, but this assault was exceptionally powerful. Tracing the attack’s coding pinpoints it to an anomaly emanating from Grim Destiny.’
‘What is the hulk’s location now?’ Kino snapped, eyes sweeping over the faltering displays before him as he tried to orient himself in the wake of the malfunction.
‘Sensorium returns are struggling to triangulate, but…’
Teko left the sentence unfinished and instead issued a string of orders to those serfs still living. The bridge’s primary viewing port began to rumble open.
When the White Maw had cleared for action, the blast doors had rolled shut over the great sheet of armaglass. Opening it with the shields down was a risk, but Kino made no complaints as he caught sight of what lay beyond.
Grim Destiny was coming apart before the fury of Diamantus’ defences. It filled the port like a newly formed stellar body, silhouetted by the curvature of the planet as it broke into vast, blazing fragments. But it was too late to stop its collision with the world beneath it.
A few of the orbital defence platforms kept firing on the hulk until the very last moment. Others had fallen inexplicably silent, while others had turned their weapons on the planet below. The hulk crashed through them all, its spreading debris punching a great hole in the chain of plasteel and adamantine sheathing the forge world.
The broken and splintered weapon batteries joined Grim Destiny’s remains, plunging into the atmosphere, where they were sheathed in fire. A million fragments rained down upon the planet’s upper curve, an apocalyptic conflagration, annihilation in its purest form.
Like the hammer blow of a god, the burning heart of Grim Destiny struck Mount Antikythera.
PART TWO
+ + Initialising astropathic relay auto-séance transcript chain 372F/71G. Part 2 of 4. Record downloading + + +
+ + Cleansing transcript file + + +
+ + Transcript file cleansed. Sender verified as Interrogator Anton Fell, agent of Inquisitor >REDACTED< of the Ordo Hereticus + + +
+ + Opening Transcript + + +
I am uncertain if my missives are translating to the Lightbringer from the surface. I will send this one in triplicate, and pray to the God-Emperor that it reaches you.
Planetfall has been made, though it was a fraught experience. Captain Torrian was eventually able to pick a safe course through the debris choking Diamantus’ orbit, acquiring a low anchorage for a shuttle launch. I have identified parts of the wreckage as belonging to at least eight separate vessels. What I find strangest of all is their diversity. Some of them are in excess of six millennia old, others just a few centuries. There is no rhyme or reason to their class or build. Their only unifying feature is that all of them have been officially listed as missing at some point, ‘lost to the tides of the empyrean’. How in the God-Emperor’s name did they all end up drifting through the exosphere of a forge world?
We made planetfall amidst the ruination of a city that Garwell has positively identified as the planetary capital. Scans from the shuttle as we pierced the atmospheric dust indicate there are life forms within, though it could not compute numbers to any accurate degree, and we have yet to encounter any.
We have been here now for a little over one day-cycle, local time. The place is inimical. There is severe tectonic activity and the air is rotten with pollutants and dust, barely breathable. It is clear that Diamantus has been subjected to a planet-altering event of catastrophic proportions.
We have also found evidence of a brutal struggle waged against the forces of the Archenemy. The streets, or what remains of them, are choked with bodies. Upon landing I initially ordered that a number of the remains be examined. I immediately regretted the decision – though they are in an advanced stage of decay, and further eaten away by the high levels of pollution, it is clear that those who beset this world were of the most corrupt and depraved nature imaginable. Mutation and tech-heresy abound. The remains show the evidence not only of the physical taint of the Ruinous Powers, but of all sorts of deranged experimentation – limbs and body parts have been grafted and stapled and sutured together without any discernible pattern or reason, and the madness is further accentuated by illogical mechanical augmentation.
I ordered my retinue to cease examinations as soon as the scale of the corruption became clear. I only regret that we do not have enough promethium to torch every body we come across.
I planned on taking the shuttle from our first landing zone deeper into the city, but Garwell and my pilot, Alfaiq, have reported the transporter’s systems are malfunctioning. Garwell hypothesises it is due to damage sustained by the intakes during atmospheric entry, but I am left wondering if he is simply trying to placate me with tech-speak. They have at least both assured me that the craft is still capable of returning us to the Lightbringer. I can only hope that much is true, or we will find ourselves stranded here.
We are preparing to set out on foot for the eminence at the city’s heart, which Garwell calls Mount Antikythera. He assures me this is the seat of Diamantus’ governance. I believe such a place offers the best chance we have of piecing together exactly what happened to this place and, perhaps, finding answers to the questions you have sent me here to solve.
I have been attempting to document everything since making planetfall, not only with these updates but also with regular pict and vid-captures. I will submit them all to you once you translate in-system.
May the God-Emperor’s grace be with you, and us.
+ + Transcript file ends + + +
+ + Thought for the Day: Blessed is the mind too small for doubt + + +
CHAPTER XIII
According to the monitoring systems, it took four point seven six seconds before Mount Antikythera’s void shields were overwhelmed. The arcane defences had preserved the Pinnacle and the most precious manufactoria from the initial devastation, but they could not withstand the fall of Grim Destiny’s core. The shields overloaded and blazed from existence with a burst of multihued brilliance and a thunderclap of energy discharge.
It was only the beginning of the devastation. Megalithic industrial complexes and forge temples that had stood for thousands of years were hammered into rubble by the space hulk’s falling wreckage. Tens of thousands of tech-priests and adepts were crushed and buried along with many times their number of labourers and menials. One of the two major skitarii data garrisons to the north and the south of the Pinnacle was obliterated by a direct strike. Vents and alchomite stacks toppled, and more buildings were brought down in an avalanche of stone, steel, and plascrete as the remains of structures that had fallen higher up the slope collapsed upon them. For the first time, it was not the smoke and ash of hyper-industry that choked the air, but the dust of Megafactorum Primus’ death.
The city wailed as it perished, the shrieking of factory alarms, raid sirens and sector-wide alert systems. Yet an even more terrible noise began to eclipse it, a rising shriek that presaged the dawn of damnation on Diamantus.
From the hundreds of fragments that formed Grim Destiny’s carcass, the servants of the Arkifane arose. Millions had perished in the hulk’s death, but enough remained to do the bidding of their masters. They fell upon the stunned survivors around the impact craters, a tide of ravenous patchwork horrors and skittering machine monstrosities, desperate to feast on the organic and the mechanical.
At long last, Voldire had returned home, and with him he had brought enlightenment through ruination.
Red Tane felt the weight of the promethium extraction plant bearing down on him.
It had been unavoidable. The sky had filled with fire, the vox had started screaming, and devastation had descended and touched Diamantus, and the Third Company.
After leaving Mount Antikythera, the command squad had taken up a new position in a promethium extraction plant at the base of the slope. The last communication they had received from the Company Master was an automatic update stating that the White Maw and the rest of the fleet had engaged the space hulk as it made its final approach. The orbital barrage had been visible from the surface, but it had been nothing compared to the fury that followed.
Grim Destiny had broken through, and broken apart, and now it had broken Diamantus.
Red Tane could barely move. The extraction plant had been hit by blazing debris, and collapsed. First Squad had been outside, amongst the blackened chute stacks of the plant’s yard, but the building was tall and its walls had fallen haphazardly, and Red Tane was now buried beneath them, great mounds of splintered rockcrete and ferrocast pinning him and doing their best to crush him.
He was uninjured – his armour and a split-second activation of the Coral Shield’s refractor field had preserved him from harm where a normal mortal would have been pulverised. The same could not be said of the battle plate itself. Most of his markers and signifiers seemed to be offline, rendering the fate of the rest of the squad a mystery, and several servos were refusing to respond. The vox was also full of the same terrible wailing that had filled it as Grim Destiny had loomed in the sky. It refused to turn off.
He put the noise from his mind and focused on extricating himself. There was no fear at the prospect of being buried alive, only cold analysis. His greatest concern was that, during the collapse, the relic wargear he bore had been damaged, and he was unable to check on it properly until he was free.
He was wedged in at an angle, semi-upright, with a slab of rockcrete pressed against his upper body. Movement was heavily impeded – his left arm, with the Coral Shield, was wedged fast amidst the rubble. He could get a little leverage with his right, though. That would be enough.
He pushed against the slab, not yet using all his strength, not wishing to risk dislodging it only to cause a further collapse that might wedge him even more firmly. He was only testing it, trying to get a feel for its weight and what might be on top of it.
There was little movement in the rest of the debris surrounding him, which was encouraging. It seemed stable. He applied more force, tensing his genhanced musculature as he pushed on the slab.
It had no noticeable effect. Ordinarily he had no doubt he would have been able to move it, but he was hampered by how little leverage he had – with his left arm and torso locked in place along with much of his right, he was pushing using only the strength below the elbow on his right arm.
He paused, resisting the urge to keep trying, to fall back on the brute force he knew he was capable of. There was no point in wasting energy when there were other stratagems he could employ.
He began to deliver short, hard punches with his gauntlet, right into the centre of the slab.
That had a more noticeable impact. After just a few hits there was a cracking sound, and those auto-senses that still functioned detected a split appearing in the slab’s centre.
It was a risk. It might trigger a further collapse. But if he could break it, he could more easily push part of it, then find greater leverage. One small victory that would lead to greater ones.
That was when his armour seized up.
Suddenly, he was truly trapped. He assessed the remnants of his visor display, and saw that his reactor pack appeared to have simply shut down.
There was no more serious a malfunction Adeptus Astartes battle plate could suffer, and it made no sense. The armour had been damaged in the collapse, but his reactor pack had been showing as undamaged and fully functional. Yet now it was gone, its output reading zero.
It pinned him more assuredly than the rockcrete had.
The vox intruded on his thoughts. It was no longer just screaming, he realised. It was laughing. A voice, filled with sick, mocking mirth.
Red Tane’s anger stirred. He gritted his teeth, his body struggling to bear the weight of the equipment that had served him so well for over a century. To be rendered immobile and helpless was anathema to him, stoking the desire to fight back. To roar and struggle.
The Blindness was calling to him.
He bit back on his rage, swallowing unworthy sounds before they were made. Untrammelled fury was not the Chapter’s way. Red Tane had learned that lesson over many years and only with great difficulty. The Blindness called to him more often than most, but every time he defeated it, drove it down, silenced it. Silence was the key. In the void he was nothing, and when he became nothing he found he could control everything.
