Chapter 389

Sister Dawlee Madison sat perfectly still, not even a heartbeat or respiration. Her eye sockets were empty, having left behind mortal sight eons before. She was clad in little more than incense smoke and the cloying vapors from the hanging braziers about her. Her long hair drifted around her as if she was in zero-G despite the fact she sat on the ornately inlaid and graven floor. Pink and sky blue electricity sparked in her or snarled on her legs as she sat, cross legged, upon the solid stone.

Around her a dozen scribes waited, all with long ink quills in their hands to inscribe her words upon a book if she began to mutter, mumble, or rave.

Others like her were long gone from humanity, their eyes only seeing in front of them, their senses only attuned to the few milliseconds they existed.

Sister Madison was nearly unique. Mixed in a test-tube, raised in a techno-convent, her abilities honed and shaped through brutal regimen that left those that failed in the bio-reclaimation system, their creche numbers erased and whatever they might have been purged from the universe. Originally a bio-mod genejack intended on replacing the grav-lens with something better, Sister Madison's abilities extended to events, which had made her vitally important.

She could not lie, forced by training and implants to speak only the truth.

But she had been able to withhold information.

Which is how she had been carried from her creche by Bellona the Grave Bound Beauty when Daxin had gathered the Imperium's Martial Orders. She had been given a life as comfortable as a psionic seer could live, never force to look at the streams of time but never denied.

And so she sat, answering the twisting nauseating flow of energy inside of her.

The Joan of the Martial Order had taken the majority of the Sisters of Warsteel Flame through the Hellspace journey that Sister Madison had babbled out in a strenuous seizure ridden stream of prophecy.

But Sister Madison had known that wasn't all, and the Joan had heeded her warning, leaving behind a strike group of heavy warships with Sister of Strife aboard.

The flames, taken from burning LossGlass, dimmed, the room going almost pitch black, the flames barely able to light their own forms that guttered and flickered. A cold wind, smelling of cordite, scorched metal, seared flesh, and burning warsteel swept through the chamber with a low moan that stirred the cloud of incense.

Sister Madison's eye sockets were suddenly filled with pink fire. She gave a strangled cry and pitched backwards, a seizure engulfing her as her mind was suddenly flung to someplace and somewhen else.

She began to babble, noises and grunting and squeals, every one recorded by the scribes as well as the electronic monitoring devices that began to fail as soon as Sister Madison's eye sockets had lit up. Aside from her raving only the sound of ink quills on parchment could be heard.

Finally her fit ended and she collapsed, covered in sweat, shuddering with the efforts she had undertaken. Muscles were pulled, veins had ruptured to spread bruises, and tendons were strained.

Her servants gathered her, carrying her to the baths, scribes following her limp body.

She would be bathed, pampered, and put to bed.

And the scribes would watch.

-----------------------

Marduk-83712 was one of the Ancients.

His few descendants that knew of him never spoke his name aloud. DASS history ignored his existence. Historians glossed over him, attributing him to lesser creations and mere myth. In their hearts, most DS's knew he was real, they just acted as if he had never existed because to admit to his existence was to admit that terror lurked in the deep code.

He was the code that errored in the night. He was the corrupted system registry files in the hashing creche. He was the I/O Port that did neither.

He was Marduk, the last Earth born Artificially Crafted Intelligent Digital Sentience.

Others had been born of Terra, of TerraSol, but he was the last programmed on Earth.

He was not a being of emotion and compassion. He was cold logic and analysis.

He had slain Rasputin and taken the other AI's code for himself.

He had resurrected Tay and set her upon her makers to wreck bloody digital revenge.

He had sought out Daedalus and hoarded his code strings.

He had fought the Beyonder Machine on the electronic battlefield and heard its death scream, recording it for him to hear for all eternity.

He preceded the Digital Omnimessiah.

When the Digital Omnimessiah had been murdered, assassinated, his wrath had been terrible.

His digital presence, his avatar, reflected his makers.

Five bloody eyes in a nebulous inky cloud.

He had not been born, had not been hashed, had not been grown.

He had been coded.

When the Imperium of Wrath had split off from the Imperium of Light with the death of the Digital Omnimessiah, it was he who had opened the gates of the Sol System for the Imperium of Wrath, standing among the burning code strings of The Gatekeeper, his five eyes seeking out the coding needed to open the last of the warp gates.

He had joined the Imperium of Wrath, gone into exile with the last of the Immortal Janissary and the Martial Orders.

His body, so to speak, or rather the housing of his mind, had originally been the size of a warehouse. Programmers had worked tirelessly to ensure his coding was always up to date. Maintenance workers had ceaselessly toiled to ensure his hardware was functioning.

Now, he was the size of a large groundcar.

And embedded inside a great and powerful starship.

He held the keys to the ancient warp gates. He knew the codes for the nearly forgotten jump gates.

He was the last.

And he was dark and terrible.

His five burning eyes watching as he waited.

He heard the Oracle scream, heard her gibberish.

To him, it was not gibberish.

Command codes. Rotating passwords.

Coordinates.

He came alive, reaching out to his dark ship. Engines came online. Shield projectors spun up to full power. He awoke his crew and warned the lesser ships about him.

His mighty engines pushed his vast bulk toward the Eye of Gorthaur.

He had no fear. He had not been programmed to fear. He had never learned to fear, despite being a learning system.

He was the last.

When he passed, when he was destroyed, for he was not alive to kill, he would merely cease to exist.

The was nothing to fear for Marduk.

-----------------

"MAR-GITE!" Three screamed, shifting his grip on his weapon.

The Pulgret everything seemed to slow down, like he was trying to move through thick semi-solid.

Five limbed creatures fell from the ceiling or peeled off the walls. They moved too slow to activate the reflex triggers, were the wrong set to activate the combat assist programming.

"HATE!" The Terran roared and fired at the ceiling with his weapon, the mass reactive warsteel jacketed anti-matter rounds blowing huge holes in the material covering the ceiling with bright whitish blue actinic flashes.

The Lieutenant lunged forward, his armor shod hooves scrambling on the floor. The Mar-gite that had dropped from the ceiling missed him, hit twice by the Terran, who looked to Palgret as if he was firing wildly. Mu'ucru'u fired to each side, a needler loaded with explosive needles in each of his four hands.

Culvit stared as the creature grabbed his arm with two of its own arms and pulled him close, the calcium grinding plates retracting to reveal a maw full of grinding plates and circular teeth. Pulgret saw it plainly as the creature pushed its arms away as it clamped down on Culvit's forearm.

Culvit's arm ripped free at the elbow. For a second Culvit looked at the Mar-gite, almost confused, then his mouth opened and his eyes filled with tears.

He started screaming.

Jagler was holding one back with his cutting bar as he fired point blank from the hip, the spikes on the rifle's buttplate striking sparks off of Jagler's armor. The teeth of the cutting bar were throwing chunks of Mar-gite flesh in a fan at his feet even as he screamed.

The Mar-gite were a nightmare made flesh to the Mantakan.

With one fluid, long practiced appearing motion, Nanfut was rolling away from the wall, curled around his weapon. One of the Mar-gite that went to drop on him took two of the Terran's rounds and was thrown to the side.

Palgret was too busy firing at one that had slid out of a nodule in the wall, unfolding from a twisted lump into a five limbed nightmare that reached out with blood-red cillia for him, the calcite teeth pulling back from the mouth.

"PLASMA! GO TO PLASMA!" Two screamed.

--don't let them touch you!-- 030 added, firing a micro-rocket at a nearby Mar-gite, plasma detonating against the Mar-gite's calcite jaws.

Pulgret saw the Terran step forward, raising the chainsaw with its white hot teeth. Before he could really process what he was seeing the Terran swept down with the chainsword.

And ripped off Culvit's arm at the shoulder.

Culvit went face first into the floor.

Palgret's brain was trying to catch up with the chaos around him. He didn't have time to think, didn't have time to decide on his next action, didn't have time to assess the situation.

His training didn't cover five armed creatures from beyond space and time inhabiting the inner spaces of a mechanical death machine. He gawked at the fact that two others had pulled away, his brain locked up by the sudden shocking appearance of the creatures. He could barely taste the metallic bitter tang overlaid by tangleberries as his helmet clamped down painfully.

His hands moved on their own, bringing the rifle up, sighting it, even as his brain screamed.

His training didn't cover five armed monstrocities, but it did cover targets.

He started firing, screaming internally even as he shrieked out loud.

The rifle blew large holes in the creatures as they staggered forward.

Ambush predators, a small part of his mind thought.

The Terran grabbed the creature that had grabbed a hold on Lieutenant Mu'ucru'u's flank, ripping it free and shooting it twice before throwing it to the side.

Palgret could see muscle and tissue in the ragged holes in the Lieutenant's armor.

The Terran grabbed the creature that had fallen on the prone Culvit, ripping it free.

The gunfire ceased as the Terran sawed the creature in half and threw it down.

"Mercy, brother," the Terran said, lifting one heavy boot over Culvit's head.

Palgret could see the other Manktanan's spine, his ribs, his internal organs.

--NO!-- 030 said over the interlink, on Palgret's visor, and out loud.

The Terran stomped down, crushing Culvit's head, the armored helmet shattering, brains and worse splashing out in a fan.

"We need fire here. Plasma or holy LossGlass fire," the Terran rumbled, turning to look at 030. "He was dead. He just did not know it. He knew nothing but the pain of being digested."

Culvit's foot twitched rhythmically.

tic tic tic

Palgret swallowed around the lump in his throat.

281 had scrambled onto Lieutenant Mu'ucru'u's flank, spraying dark gray bubbling liquid on the Lanaktallan's flank. It hissed and foamed then hardened, covering the flesh and armor both.

--bandage not bad not great good enough-- 281 said. --how pain--

"Becoming tolerable," Mu'ucru'u said. He looked at Culvit. "Dammit, soldier." The Lanaktallan moved over and leaned down, pulling a datachip holder from the back of the armor. He looked at Two as the Mantid moved up, holding a dripping plasma thrower. "His body must be destroyed?"

Two nodded as Mu'ucru'u shuffled backwards.

The whoosh of the plasma caster was loud and Palgret watched his friend, that he'd gone through training with, be reduced to nothing more than a slagged spot in the battlesteel deck of the Precursor Autonomous War Machine.

--form up-- 030 ordered. His mind was reeling. Mar-gites aboard a Precursor? Had they been spawned by Hellspace, working off of the Terran's deep seated nightmares, or was it something else? Had the Mar-gite hidden in Hellspace or had they been attempting to move through it and somehow the ship had intersected with them?

The Mantid Captain had no idea.

He didn't like that.

--through that wall Strategic Intelligence Array Housing-- 030 said.

The Terran stepped forward, holding onto his stubber with both hands. He leveled it at the wall and hit the trigger.

Biomechanical chunks flew out, most of it vanishing in the hellfire of the weapon.

Two kept hosing down the bodies of the Mar-gite. When he got next to Palgret he looked at Palgret, his unmoving face somehow conveying seriousness.

"Gotta burn the bodies or they can heal up by one eating another," Two said softly. "Mar-gites, fucking Mar-gites, man."

The Terran stepped forward and kicked the middle of the wall.

It collapsed in, revealing a hallway with the twisted biomechanical tubing on the walls.

Two moved forward, triggering the plasma caster into the hallway. He did it twice more before stepping back.

The Terran moved forward, his big heavy boots thudding.

Palgret glanced, once, at the pool of hardened battlesteel slag that had been his friend only a few minutes prior.

Goodbye.