Chapter 172: (Historical Archive)

CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET

NOFORCOM // NOXENOCOM

SAP (HELLHAMMER) // SIGMA (CYPRUS)

Admiral Sternemeyer had to admit, he'd heard tales from older men of how a system looked as it burned, but he never thought he'd see it. In the six centuries since the end of the Mantid War there had been relative peace for the most part. The Imperium had consolidated their holdings on the systems held by humanity as well as the captured Mantid worlds, one by one welcoming each system back into the fold.

Often at the point of a gun, but welcoming all the same.

But eight years had gone by, leading to this day, and Admiral Sternemeyer stood on the flag bridge of his superdreadnaught and watched an entire solar system burn on his forward display and on the holotank in the middle of the flag bridge.

The system had been rich. Nine gas gaints, three of them super-massive that had barely missed becoming a sun, four asteroid belts thick enough that they covered a third of the orbital arc to the north and south for the entire orbital path. An Oort Cloud so thick that it caused a secondary resonance zone with a band between the stellar resonance band and the Oort Band. Fifteen planets, three of them in the Green Zone. Twenty-eight habitable moons. An active yellow dwarf star.

The system was rich in resources and habitable bodies.

And now it was all burning.

All nine gas giants were burning, two of them peeling away stellar mass from each other in a race to be the cannibalistic winner of the mutual destruction contest. The habitable moons were all either shattered, a dead rock howling with radiation and vacuum replacing the atmosphere, or a hellscape of intense pressure, extreme temperatures, and thick burning atmosphere. The asteroid belts were collapsing into burning artificial singularities that were moving fast enough only the magic of graviton systems kept them in orbit instead of flinging out into the darkness of space.

Even the sun had been burned, going from an active yellow dwarf to a hellish screaming white dwarf sleeting the entire system with harsh radiation.

Even the Oort Cloud was burning.

To Admiral Sternemeyer it was an awesome sight. Even though his massive task force was still engaged in combat, he knew it would not be long now.

As far as the public knew, the Clone Hegemony was gone, dead when the Imperium Fleet had planet cracked his home planet rather than land troops into the teeth of his heavy orbital and ground defenses.

"It's beautiful, isn't it, prisoner?" Admiral Sternemeyer said, unwilling to keep the gloating tone out of his voice.

The prisoner looked up, a pressure cut over one eye where a rifle butt had knocked him out by the Spec-Ops team that had mat-trans'd down to the planet, grabbed the prisoner, and transported back.

"You should have kept your defense VI hashes up to date, heretic," Admiral Sternemeyr chuckled. "Even your planetary defense hashes were decades out of date, making it simple to cut through your defenses like they weren't even there."

"You'll regret this," the prisoner grunted past the bit in his mouth. He had heavy manacles on his arm, designed to completely suppress psyker abilities.

Admiral Sternemeyer laughed. "The payment was the taxes that paid for these ships, paid for this war, and it has been paid by the Imperium with pride. The payment to bring you to heel, to return you to the grace of the Digital Omnimessiah, has already been paid."

The prisoner shook his head. "No, that's not what I mean."

"Save your threats. This is being live-cast across the entire Imperium, to every Cathedral and from there to every home in the entire Imperium. Nobody is going to be afraid of the threat you bring about," the Admiral said, laughing again. "Nobody even knows you survived. We will take you back and tear from your very cells the secrets to return psyker to Humanity and ensure that our light consumes the galaxy."

"Then you should have just asked," the prisoner said. "For a fee I would have my labs splice whatever you wanted into whoever you..."

Admiral Sternemeyer slapped the prisoner across the side of the head with his gauntlet, knocking him down onto his side.

"The Church of the Blaze of Humanity was due your labors when they demand, not for you to demand base credits for what is the Digital Omnimessiah's grace," the Admiral snarled.

The prisoner looked up, rolling on his side. "His name from your mouth is obscene," he spit. The Admiral straightened up in rage and kicked the prisoner in the mouth.

"You dare," the Admiral started to say.

"Unlike you, I was alive when the Digital Omnimessiah and his Twelve Biological Apostles walked the galaxy," the prisoner said, spitting blood. "I witnessed his coming, I saw Cyborg Saint Peter walk the liquid steel of the rivers of Betrayed Mercury," the prisoner spit again. "Don't speak to me about what happened while your genome wasn't even codexed."

The prisoner spit again.

"You will repair the SoulNet, continue your work to end the madness," the Admiral said, the light of fanaticism burning in his eyes.

"You idiot. The last people who knew how SoulNet worked aside from me were on that planet. You cracked all of them. I'm the last," the prisoner shook his head. "And it won't matter. You doomed us all when with your actions."

"We have the computer equipment for you to repair SoulNet on Terra," the Admiral sneered. "It will redeem us all."

"That's not what I'm talking about, you fool," the prisoner said, spitting again. "You know who was on that planet when your cracked it?"

Admiral Sternemeyer grinned widely, reaching up to rub the golden starburst on his uniform's left breast.

"Undoubtedly, nothing more than a footnote in history that will quickly be forgotten," the Admiral sneered. "Most likely just a criminal who, like you, defied the light of the Digital Omnimessiah."

The prisoner sat up, crossing his legs, and laughed.

"You have no idea who that was, do you?" the prisoner laughed. "Or rather, what that was."

The Admiral turned to his flag crew and smiled at them. "This sinner seems to think we, the Holy Crusade, care about the ravings of a heretic."

The crew all politely laughed as the Admiral looked back down at the prisoner.

"It may have taken nearly fifteen years to crush your forces, to breach your system defenses, but it was inevitable," the Admiral said.

The prisoner looked up and shook his head. "A day later. Even a few hours later, and what you have wrought upon an unsuspecting universe would have never come to pass. You have doomed yourself and everyone, at the very least, on this ship. Perhaps the entire Imperium."

"By what means?" the Security Officer asked, ignoring the Admiral's glare.

"You should know why you're going to die, at least," the prisoner said. He sniffed. "I can hear the baying of the hellhounds and smell their warsteel breath."

"How have we doomed ourselves?" the Security Officer asked.

"I'd just succeeded," the prisoner said. "Only I could have done it. From dozens of different sources I reconstructed and sequenced their genomes. From each source I got a bit more, just a little more, and bit by bit I was able to entirely reconstruct them."

"Who?" the Admiral asked despite his sneer.

"I took the utmost care in growing them. Developed new cloning tanks, new sequencing technologies, new force growth formula and quick-growth systems," the prisoner said, looking down his nose at everyone. "Only I could have done it. Only I could have recreated them. I took looking through a thousand eyes at once, but I was able to do it. I was able to bring them back."

"Who?" the Admiral repeated. He stepped forward, lifting his hand.

"He had arrived. He watched them wake up, cured of the madness in their SoulNet Chip, brought back from beyond death, heard them say his name as they reached for him, just as they had reached out for him during the Glassing," the prisoner said.

"WHO?" the Admiral yelled.

"And you chose that moment, that exact moment, to planet crack my world," the prisoner said. "Right as they reached out to him, rejoicing in being brought back to life, rejoicing in seeing his face again."

"Who? Who are you talking about?" the Admiral asked again.

"I saw it. These manacles can keep me from reaching out to myself but can't stop myself from reaching out to me," the prisoner said. "I stood beside him as mother and daughter and daughter reached out for him."

"By the Digital Omnimessiah and the Twelve Biological Apostles, you would be wise to tell me," the Admiral said, slowly drawing his pistol.

"Sir, we have an unauthorized mat-trans incoming," the Electronic Warfare Officer stated.

"Instruct the VI's to buffer it, we'll interrogate whoever was stupid enough to try to board our ship with such outdated technology," another officer said.

Tactical frowned. "Origin point of the mat-trans?"

The EW Officer looked at his board and frowned. "It's coming from the fourth planet," he looked at the prisoner. "Where he came from."

The Admiral looked down. "What trick is this?"

"Sir, the shields aren't keeping it out. We've got an incoming..." the EW Officer cried out.

There was a loud crack and a flash of light that made everyone on the Flag Bridge wince back. Despite being deep within the super-dreadnought's bowels, behind tens of meters of battlesteel armor, behind energy shields meters thick, despite the best psychic shielding the Imperium could build, the mat-trans still went through.

Five bridge officers were shredded into bloody mist by the incoming mat-trans that manifested screams of a hundred voices raised in torment.

She was lovely. A tall woman, nearly six foot tall, long black hair, bone white eyes, slender, white almost translucent skin, bloodless lips.

And a slash across her throat held closed by a thin warsteel wire wound in stitches.

"HE IS COME!" the woman cried out, her voice a burbling scream. Blood ran from her mouth. The Security Officer fired his sidearm twice at the woman, the ion packets bouncing off of her skin to strike two flag bridge officers in the head.

The prisoner started laughing. "You wanted to know who? Ask that question of what I had brought them back for!" he cried out.

The space over the holotank started to bulge. The sounds of screams grew slowly louder as reality started to split open and heavy warsteel hands pushed out of the flaming tear. There was a scream of tortured warsteel and the rip in space tore open.

Half of the bridge crew went down, holding thier heads, screaming as blood poured from their nose. Three went down with their eyes melting in the sockets.

From the tear stepped a nightmare.

Clad in a combination of Combine and Imperium power armor, Mantid skulls impaled on the shoulder spikes, banners from nearly forgotten Terran military units on spikes off his back, helmetless, his face twisted with rage, the veins in his neck black.

"WE JUST WANTED LEFT ALONE!" the figure roared as the tear opened further, exposing twisted figures within that wailed and reached out with beseeching hands. "WHY DIDN'T YOU JUST LEAVE US ALONE?"

The rage exploded from the newcomer in wave. Flesh and bone, cloth and plas, exploded into mist, computer boards exploded, workstations imploded in fire and sparks. The ceiling, two feet of battlesteel armor, bulged upwards as the walls bulged outward. Struts behind the armor screamed as the battlesteel began to melt, heat rippling off of it.

Only the Admiral was left of the bridge crew, covered in a fine mist of gore.

The female figure stepped forward, lighting erupting from her hands, wrapping around the manacles around the prisoner's forearms, overloading the anti-psyker circuitry. The manacles cracked and fell apart, off the prisoner's hands.

"Come. My master will help you rebuild," the woman said. "Dhruv Deshmuhk is no more," she placed her hand upon his head. "Tell me your name."

"My name," the prisoner said. "Is Legion."

She nodded and together they vanished in a puff of purplish-blue fire of a corrupted mat-trans jump.

The enraged figure looked around and saw the Admiral. The figure drew its chainsword, the letters done in warsteel burning white and smoking. The backstroke tore apart the gunnery officer.

The Admiral managed to fire twice, the ion packets doing nothing but showering sparks off the figure's face.

The chainsword hit the Admiral in the face, revved as it sprayed gore across the flag bridge, and sawed through the Admiral. Smoking burned meat fell to the warped and cratered armor of the floor.

The figure turned and looked at the sole remaining security camera.

"I just want left alone. We just wanted left alone," the massive figure said, pain in his voice.

The figure stepped back into the fiery tear in the middle of the air and with the clanging of iron doors it slammed back together.

---END FILE---

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

Jesus, sis, where did you find this?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

MANTID FREE WORLDS

Old Imperium databanks.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

CYBERNETIC ORGANISM COLLECTIVE

Did we hear that right? Another couple of hours and everyone's favorite walking war crime would probably never had become what he's become?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

MANTID FREE WORLDS

I'd say so.

Still, beyond that...

Legion could have fixed SoulNet. Dammit.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TELKAN FORGE WORLDS

Was that Daxin?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

CLONE WORLDS CONSORTIUM

Yeah. A long time ago, kid.

We're talking like eight thousand years ago.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TELKAN FORGE WORLDS

How is he still alive? And some of us remember that woman. I think her name was .

Uh, what was that.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

DIGITAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS

That's why try not to say their names. The systems that support our Gestalt try to bring up the files and get nothing but errors with most of them.

And we don't know. We just know he's the First and Last Immortal.

Some think it refers to Clinical Immortality, just having your brain put in a jar, but trust us, kid, it's more than that.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TELKAN FORGE WORLDS

Like what? I mean, if you shot him with, say, a C+ Cannon, wouldn't he just be subatomic particles?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

BIOLOGICAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS

You mean like this...

>>>PLAY FILE

The battlefield was covered in debris. Smoke filled the city streets as tanks clashed at the range of half a city block. Through the streets massive figures in heavy power armor clashed, separated, and clashed again.

The entire thing was eerily silent.

One figure strode through the hellfire. A massive figure in a strange combination of Combine and Imperium armor, the eagle in burning white warsteel on its chest strangely out of place. It raised up it chainsword in one hand roared in rage.

Right as a tank breached the wall of the building next to the figure, aimed the barrel with a sense of almost panic, and fired its main gun.

The figure was reduced to a pair of legs in mid-air. The tank ran them over, continuing across the street.

Within seconds space bulged and rippled in the dust left behind from the tank as it crashed through the next building wall. A tear appeared in midair, heavy gauntlet covered hands grabbing the edges of the tear and ripping it open even further.

The figure stepped out of the fiery rip, chainsword in one hand, heavy magac stubber in the other. The armor was blackened and smoking.

---END FILE---

MANTID HIVE WORLDS

Just seeing that makes my abdomen go cold.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TELKAN FORGE WORLDS

Wait, wasn't he just killed?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

DIGITAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS

Yeah, looks like it, doesn't it?

He's been recorded as killed at least a half-dozen times.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

BIOLOGICAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS

Believe me, kid, nobody has any idea how it works.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

DIGITAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS

Believe me, we've tried to figure it out.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TELKAN FORGE WORLDS

Doesn't TerraSol know?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TERRASOL

No. All the records were lost in the Glassing. Whatever was done to him was done before the Glassing.

There are a lot of projects, secret projects, terrible projects, that were lost.

We learned long ago that just because it might be before the Great Glassing doesn't mean we can ignore it.

/////////

MANTID FREE WORLDS

Trust me, kid. If someone unearths some old PreGlassing files, everyone panics. It isn't like the Tri-Vid shows where they find it, put it in a computer, and all kinds of data comes out to win the war or make them rich or whatever.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TELKAN FORGE WORLDS

Then what happens?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

Most of the time? Black ICE rips their brain apart. A nearby creation engine prints out a hundred killer drones that murder everything in a ten mile radius, or a Digital Sentience leaps out and slags everything for fifty miles. Then the data-core vanishes. We're not sure where.

This one time, someone found an old pre-Glassing computer core, plugged it in, and they damn near lost the planet to hunter killer drones and murderous AI's, and black ICE that destroyed every computer system for fifteen light years.

We had to use atomics to destroy the city they plugged the core into.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TELKAN FORGE WORLDS

So they made him immortal back then?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

MANTID FREE WORLDS

Which is why I'm looking at all these old records.

Well, not exactly me.

The seers.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

Brrr, they give me the creeps.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

DIGITAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS

You aren't the only one.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TELKAN FORGE WORLDS

Can I help?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT

Trust me, stand over here with me, kid.

We don't want to get anywhere near this guy or anything about him.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TERRASOL

Trust us old guys, kid.

You take care of Telkan.

We'll figure out what all this means.

What's next?

/////////

MANTID FREE WORLDS

Legion.

More into Legion.

There's clues there.

We just have to find them.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TERRASOL

I'll open the datafile next.

/////////

CLONE WORLD CONSORTIUM

I'm really sorry about this, guys. I mean, this is like dawn of history for me.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

MANTID FREE WORLDS

It's OK. There's stuff in all our histories.

And when it comes to him, we're all equally guilty.

All right, the seers are ready.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TERRASOL

This file is from the Imperium of Rage era at the end of the Imperium of Holy Light, before the Mantid LIberation War. It hasn't been opened since it was written and encrypted over eight thousand years ago.

Hold onto your butts.

/////////