Skitarius

by Rob Sanders

  ‘Kn-kn-kn-know you not your place, magos?’ the forge master Eudoxus Zultra said, craning his lank frame over Omnid Torquora and jabbing the spindly toolage of a finger at him.

  ‘You address your betters here,’ the magos catharc hissed from the octopoid slithering of its hooded robes. ‘This is not the void or some backwater rock where you might feel the freedom of your lofty station. Take care, magos. You stand among giants here at the Thunderfane. Magi ordained by the Great Maker and charged with His authority decide what will and will not be done. All else goes against the Omnissiah’s grand design and is deemed heretekal.’

  ‘Your name and designations will forever be recorded in the discovery of this wondrous find, Omnid,’ the Fabricator General soothed. ‘You wish to be involved further in its development?’

  ‘I do, my Lord Fabricator,’ the magos explorator said.

  ‘Your encoded messages betrayed some reticence about being recalled to Satzica Secundus, Magos Torquora,’ the Fabricator Locum said. ‘It was expected that you would return to your work on Perborea and unearth further wonders for your forge world and Fabricator General.’

  ‘Would you not rather return, Omnid?’ Voricar Trega asked. ‘Construction. Deployment. These were never your calling, old friend. And this technological wonder must be tested. Data, my friend. The ongoing Quest for Knowledge supersedes petty notions of ownership. We must know the device’s capabilities. The discovery was yours but the find brings glory to all. Besides, the Omnissiah fashioned you for service amongst the stars.’

  ‘Where I would serve him, Lord Fabricator,’ Torquora insisted. ‘Testing the Geller Device.’

  ‘Absolutely out of the question,’ Engra Myrmidex said.

  ‘It sounds to me, Fabricator,’ Torquora seethed through the metallic hiss of each carefully chosen word, ‘that you speak not for your master but in his stead. You are not Fabricator General yet, Lord Myrmidex. As others gathered here have been swift to remind me, remember protocol. Remember your place in the mighty machine of our forge world collective.’

  Stroika’s equalisers could detect the strain in the modulated voice of the magos. He knew his master did indeed wish to leave the forge world and return to his duties. He would not, however, give up the prize of an STC template so easily to the scheming magi of the forge world priesthood. Even Haldron-44 Stroika, with his limited appreciation for temple politics, could see that the Fabricator Locum was attempting to claim the all but limitless power of the Geller Device for himself.

  The chamber was silent. Myrmidex did not want to repeat his mistake, nor Omnid Torquora overreach himself in the opinion of his Fabricator General. Voricar Trega seemed equally impressed and disappointed in them both.

  ‘The Fabricator Locum,’ the Fabricator General said finally, ‘his attendant magi and the forge masters under his purview will undertake the holy construction of this Geller Device for the testing of it on the nearest immaterial anomaly to Satzica Secundus – the Great Gyre, the warp storm that claimed our sister forge world Velchanos Magna, so long ago.’

  ‘Very wise,’ Argentae Nuvias said, the hololithic representation of the magos aethyricus crackling and warping.

  ‘V-v-v-v-velchanos Magna, yes, yes,’ Eudoxus Zultra agreed. Other forge masters and magi gave their modulated approval.

  ‘However,’ the Fabricator General said, hushing the gathering once more, ‘I do not wish my old friend Omnid Torquora to be separated from this undertaking. The Omnissiah chose him as I do now, to see this holy experiment through and usher in this new golden age of which we speak. He will attend on the Fabricator Locum as his executive second and aid him in securing the data required to deem this undertaking a success. This is part of the Great Maker’s design, and as such cannot be contravened or perverted. For as my magos catharc was right to indicate – that is a heretekal path. Lord Myrmidex?

  ‘Spoken like the Omnissiah himself, Fabricator General,’ Engra Myrmidex said stiffly.

  ‘Archmagos Torquora?’ Voricar Trega asked, elevating the explorator with a single word. Monitoring his master, Haldron-44 Stroika detected an almost imperceptible hesitation before Omnid Torquora spoke. When he did, his words cut with steely acceptance.

  ‘All praise the Omnissiah…’

  0011

  SELECTED: DENTRICA I OF II

  ENGAGE NEURAL CONGRESS – WIRELESS AUTOSHUNT ACQUIRED

  UPLOADING… +OPUS MACHINA+

  The lighter put down on the flight deck of the Ark Mechanicus vessel Opus Machina with all the slick urgency its cockpit-interfaced slave-servitor could manage. As the rear ramp descended, Haldron-44 Stroika strode out and across the hangar. His footsteps thudded into the deck plates with rhythmic insistence, forcing 10-Victro Tiberiax to hurry from the lighter to catch up.

  As the two skitarii officers made their way through the hump-shuttles and landers being manoeuvred around the flight deck by tracked conveyers, the void beyond the hangar was obscured by the vessels of a Mechanicus fleet. Arkcruisers, explorator vessels. Mechanicus heavy frigates. Armed arkfreighters. Adamanticlads and forge tenders. The fleet was dominated, however, by troop carriers of the Legiones Skitarii, like the command carrier Basilika that Stroika and Tiberiax had just left.

  Tiberiax transmitted. Marching through the Ark Mechanicus was like traversing a small city. The vessel was bustling with tech-priests and underlings going about their staid business. Stroika strode through armies of servitors, deck menials, crew-constructs, enginseers and magi, taking crowded passages, stairwells and elevators up to the command deck. Skitarii were posted as sentries, members of the Rho-Micron 3-6-3 Hysparsii serving as cybernetic armsmen aboard the Opus Machina. The skitarii offered salutes in the form of noospheric blurts as the officers passed, acknowledging Haldron-44 Stroika’s rank and position as expeditionary commander.

  Stroika returned, as Tiberiax followed him through the labyrinthine interior of the Mechanicus capital ship.

  Tiberiax admitted.

  Stroika said.

  Tiberiax said, attempting to offer some kind of reassurance.

  Stroika sent back,

  10-Victro Tiberiax admitted.

  Haldron-44 Stroika told him as they arrived on the busy command deck.

  SELECTED: DENTRICA II OF II

  ENGAGE NEURAL CONGRESS – WIRELESS AUTOSHUNT ACQUIRED

  UPLOADING… +NISSIAH+

  The command deck of the Opus Machina was crowded. Omni-task servitors whose torsos were fused into deck podia lined runebanks and bridge consoles. Lexmechanics walked up and down the screens and data repositories, pointing out anomalies and advising adjustments. Climbing up to a mezzanine deck supporting the command throne and hololithic altar, Haldron-44 Stroika saw the spindly silhouettes of the vessel’s techno-magi against the sickly glare of the Great Gyre.

  The bridge’s great lancet screens were bleached with the warp storm�
�s amaranthine glow. A colossal phantasmic smear on the blackness of the void, the Great Gyre silently raged in a mind-numbing swirl. The riftspace across its vast border spumed and fluxed, not seeming to know what it was. With the Opus Machina and its Mechanicus fleet stationed above the angled plane of the warp storm, the screens also commanded a view of the reality-shredding maelstrom at the heart of the Great Gyre. Optics crackled and faded at such a sight, while Stroika’s filtered overlays sizzled and warped, offering nonsensical returns.

 

  The phylactic intrusion caught Stroika off guard and it took a moment for the skitarii officer to run permissions and identifications. He swiftly found that he was being addressed by Engra Myrmidex and that the Fabricator Locum unsurprisingly had phylactic access to all lower cybernetic operatives. The skitarii legions attached to the mission were not only his to command – each individual soldier was his to interrogate and know.

 

  Myrmidex transmitted.

  Stroika said, some base part of his emotional matrix finding the intrusion unwelcome. Stroika and Magos Torquora had a long standing relationship. Torquora was a tech-priest – a holy man and prophet, who read in the galaxy and its workings the presence of the Omnissiah. Engra Myrmidex, so Torquora had suggested, was part of a stratum of forge world society which saw, in politicking and seized chances to serve, the opportunity to speak for the Machine-God rather than be His mouthpiece.

  Torquora had warned Haldron-44 Stroika to take care around the Fabricator Locum; that the testing of the Geller Device was yet another of Myrmidex’s seized opportunities. That saddled with an all but immortal Fabricator General in Voricar Trega, Myrmidex desired power and promotion that Satzica Secundus could not offer him. With Myrmidex haunting his thoughts, Stroika tried to suppress such recollections.

  the Fabricator Locum urged playfully. Standing with Tiberiax, who seemed to be phylactically engaged by one of the tri-sentience’s other brains, the skitarii officer watched Myrmidex drift up from behind him and join the magi gathered about the hololithic altar. The Fabricator engaged the tech-priests with his vox-hailer, conducting a conversation with Tiberiax, his techno-magi and Stroika all at once.

  Stroika sent back.

  Engra Myrmidex told him. Stroika found that his optics were fixed once more on the mind-searing vision of the Great Gyre. The eye of the warp storm spewed forth a reality-curdling miasma that polluted the thought and tugged at the will.

  Stroika said.

 

 

  Myrmidex said.

 

 

  With his eyes and optics still fixed on the Great Gyre, Stroika’s signa-senses recorded returns of discomfort and pain, while the cogitators embedded within his skull grew warm.

  Stroika streamed back.

 

 

 

  Stroika had been trying to turn his head. When he was abruptly allowed to do so, the sudden movement almost unbalanced him. 10-Victro Tiberiax reached out with his inhuman reflexes to steady his Primus. Blurting his appreciation, Stroika made for the hololithic altar. He blinked his eyes and shutter-cycled his lenses, attempting to rid his vision of the Great Gyre’s ruinous glare.

  ‘Primus,’ Engra Myrmidex announced through his vox-hailers. The Fabricator Locum turned on his duct fans, prompting the tech-priests and techno-magi gathered about the hololithic display to turn briefly also. ‘Thank you for coming across to the Opus Machina at such short notice. I trust your skitarii legions are ready for the coming action.’

  Stroika and Tiberiax exchanged a glance. The Fabricator Locum hadn’t summoned them, but was now appropriating their attendance as if he had. Stroika went to answer but he suddenly felt the anger warming his chest fade. His personal concern for Omnid Torquora, the absent vessels of the fleet and the other half of his skitarii force died in his throat. Myrmidex was phylactically dialling back his capacity to feel emotion and process his all too human anxieties. The Fabricator Locum needed Haldron-44 Stroika the weapon on the command deck – unquestioning and ready to be deployed. He did not need the sentiments of the flesh and the concerns of a mere skitarius clouding the judgements of his tech-priests about the altar.

  ‘I have completed my tour of inspection,’ Stroika informed his priestly master. ‘All troop carriers are ready for deployment. My skitarii legions await your orders, Lord Fabricator.’

  ‘Very good, Primus,’ Engra Myrmidex said. ‘And they shall receive them shortly. Come forth. You are about to witness history in the making.’

  Stroika obeyed. Striding across the mezzanine deck he turned to see Udexl Spontik, the tech-priest captain of the Opus Machina, hard-wired into the command throne. At the rail, Stroika saw Xyphon Rae, commander of the Rho-Micron 3-6-3 Hysparsii stationed on the vessel. Xyphon Rae saluted his Primus with a noospheric acknowledgement, which Stroika returned.

  A shaft of hololithic representation blazed up from the altar, and tech-priests, logi and Mechanicus artisans gathered about the sizzling display. There were several that Stroika recognised – magi that the Fabricator Locum had favoured with positions of responsibility on the project to create and test the Geller Device. Argentae Nuvias was no longer a hololithic representation. The magos aethyricus stood flesh and iron on the mezzanine bridge, consulting with the artisans who had constructed the device from the STC template. Standing silently behind, Stroika could see that the Fabricator General had given Myrmidex his magos catharc for the mission. The octopoid nest of mechadendrites glowered at the skitarii commander from the depths of his hood and rippling robes.

  Bridge alarms and some commotion from the busy rows of runebanks and consoles below prompted Engra Myrmidex to turn gently to his tech-priest captain.

  ‘Spontik?’

  The tech-priest captain’s quad-array of optics lit up within his hood.

  ‘Augur arrays have detected an object exiting the perimeter of the storm cloud,’ Udexl Spontik droned.

  ‘Bring it up,’ Engra Myrmidex commanded. The hololithic display became a three-dimensional diagrammatic overlay of the void space between the storm’s perimeter and the Adeptus Mechanicus fleet. The display tracked an object moving at speed towards the Opus Machina.

  ‘Speed and mass match the servo-probe of the arkfreighter Nissiah,’ a tech-priest called, moving between the altar and the rail for runebank confirmations from below.

  ‘Identification confirmed, Fabricator Locum. It is the Niss
iah’s servo-probe,’ another tech-priest chuntered in code.

  ‘General order,’ Engra Myrmidex said, his modulated voice echoing across the cavernous command deck. ‘Pass throughout the fleet. No vessel to open fire on that probe.’

  ‘Receiving a transmission, Lord Fabricator,’ a tinny voice called up from the lower command deck. It was a deck tech-priest, hovering over a lexmechanic and a pair of console-embedded bridge servitors.

  ‘Isolate,’ Myrmidex ordered. ‘Magos catharc. Have the transmission codescrubbed and band-filtered for corruptions. I don’t want anything getting through.’

  ‘Noospheric signal isolated and purified, my lord,’ the magos catharc announced as he slithered and coiled within his robes. ‘I have a single cleansed transmission. A pictolith, with auditory overlay and contextual codestream.’

  ‘Patch it through,’ the Fabricator Locum ordered.

  The hololithic display rising up from the bridge altar warped and crackled into a three-dimensional freeze-frame of some horrific, static-laced entity. A code-screech ripped through the altar vox-hailers, like some damned thing trying to be free of its own datastream. As the pictolithic capture proceeded, the warp entity disappeared to reveal a hangar of the arkfreighter Nissiah.

  The capture was shaky and degraded, as though the transmechanic charged with its recording were being thrown about the deck by quakes running through the vessel. The capture proceeded in silence for a moment before the cacophonous din of the Nissiah’s klaxons and alarms intruded. The monstrous boom of things trying to breach the thick hull of the arkfreighter could be heard, drowning out even the klaxons. Stroika’s equalisers isolated the sound of skitarii gunfire. Galvanic rifles firing at maximum wattage.

  A tech-priest appeared before the capture, delivering a mission-log entry.