Chapter Text
Designation: Pentarch-3-87-1
Internal log: 135779
Status: heavily damaged. Noospheric connection offline. Default to internal record keeping. Data retrieval pending. Physical retrieval pending (unlikely). Entering energy conservation mode. Cognitive functions pared to necessary minima.
All knowledge must be preserved.
With the grace of the Omnissiah this record will be found. The sacred explorator outpost this unit was stationed at has been overrun by enemy forces. Short and long range communication systems scrambled, then use of hit and run tactics. No visual could be established on contact.
First contact resulted in loss of 75% of squad strength. Second contact resulted in presumed total loss. Personal damage is extensive. Mechanical failure in all limbs, communication suite, sensory suite. Tactile input remains, currently reporting ambient temperature of 268.15 Kelvin. Pressure sensors indicate mass of 300kg unevenly distributed over body (deceased Maniple).
–
Designation: Pentarch-3-87-1
Internal log: 135780
Status: heavily damaged. Noospheric connection offline. Default to internal record keeping. Data retrieval pending. Physical retrieval in progress. Persisting in energy conservation mode. Cognitive functions pared to necessary minima.
All knowledge must be preserved.
Unit appears to have been located and retrieved. Noospheric connection remains offline, likely internal damage. Gyroscopic sensory suite reports upwards and forward acceleration. Praised be the Machine God, for he looks after his servants! Preparing data for extraction via hardline connection.
—
Designation: Pentarch-3-87-1
Internal log: 135781
Status: heavily damaged. Noospheric connection offline. Default to internal record keeping. Data retrieval pending. Physical retrieval in progress. Energy source detected. Leaving energy conservation mode. All cognitive functions back online.
All knowledge must be preserved.
My sensory suite continues to be offline, save for tactile and gyroscopic input. Energy input matches common ship generated voltages and amplitudes. Mechanical components still gravely damaged but refueling. Organic components remain functional but are entering starvation mode. Communication isn’t possible yet, data extraction presumably hindered by damages. May the Omnissiah bless the Magos in charge of the retrieval.
—
Designation: Pentarch-3-87-1
Internal log: 135782
Status: heavily damaged. Noospheric connection offline. Default to internal record keeping.
I am not on a void ship of any explorator fleet I know. Noosphere continues to be offline. Data extraction has not been initiated. Instead, nutrient drips have been connected to my organic components and repairs are being made. The order of operations is wrong. The priorities do not align with the sacred precepts of any Archmagos not given to heresy.
Nociception remains unsteady, as does reflexive movement. The last time I twitched in response to electric stimuli, the hand holding me in place was too large and too warm to be a baseline human. Audio perception returns in starts and stops, enough to know that the tenets of ritual are not followed as they should be. There is no chanting, and the language snippets are alien to me. Where am I? Who has retrieved me, and stolen the property of Magos Coelisius?
—
Designation: Pentarch-3-87-1
Internal log: 135783
Status: heavily damaged. Noospheric connection offline. Data bank cleanse pending.
All knowledge must be preserved. Knowledge must not fall into the hands of the archenemy. I have put off purging my mechanical data banks. There is nothing I can do about the organically stored memories, but the important codes have not been entrusted to the fallible flesh. I should purge them. I am still praying to be wrong, that the incongruencies around me are merely the result of necessity not heresy. If I purge the data banks, they cannot be restored without re-implantation of the relevant data.
What if I am wrong and the resident Magi need what I know?
What if I’m right?
—
Designation: Pentarch-3-87-1
Internal log: 135784
Status: heavily damaged. Noospheric connection- HARDLINE CONNECTION FORCED.
Too late too late too- I should have purged my systems. I cannot anymore. There is a dataspike lodged into my cortex systems. It’s too large. The voltage isn’t right. It hurts. It hurts and I cannot stop it. I can feel the data being stripped from my system. I can feel the probes against the hardcoded protocols and I cannot shut them down, rendered mute and crippled by my injuries and indecisiveness.I cannot-
—-
Designation: Pentarch-3-87-1
Internal log: 135785
Status: heavily damaged. Noospheric conn[corrupted]
—
Designation: Pentarch-3-87-1
Internal log: 135787
Status: heavily da[corrupted]
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Designation: Pentarch-3-87-1
Internal log: 135788
Status: [corrupted]
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Designation: Pentarch-3-87-1
Internal log: [corrupted]
[corrupted] [corrupted][corrupted]
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Designation: Pent[corrupted]
[corrupted]
[corrupted][corrupted]
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[corrupted] [corrupted][corrupted][corrupted] [corrupted][corrupted][corrupted] [corrupted][corrupted]
—
Designation: Pe?t???
Internal log: ????1
Status: hardline connection established. Audio sensors: external. Visual sensors: offline. Mecha-organic vessel: damaged. Systems overloading.
Recording: In progress
Voice 1: Is it supposed to be seizing like that?
Voice 2: No. But that’s fixable. I just need to cycle the systems one more time. You might want to step back, I’ll shock it flat again, and Skitarii are very conductive.
Voice 1: ….so you just turn it off and on again? That works?
Voice 2: I cycle the system via targetted energy influx. Now get back. 3, 2, 1-
System overload. Emergency shutdown of all mechanic systems. Reboot. Reboot. Re[corrupted]
—
Designation: Pentarch-3-87-1
Internal log: 135788
Status: damaged. Noospheric connection online. Energy supply connection stable. Organic components stable. Mechanical components stable (partially disconnected). Visual sensors stable, online, calibrated to highest light sensitivity.
I am awake. In pain. My head hurts worse than any hypnoimplantation I can recall. But I can see. It’s dark, but the lenses and apertures of my eyes are tuned to make the most of what little light there is. I can see pipes and ceiling panels, wiring. It is old, but well maintained. The corrupt touch of the Warp is absent, or at least not obvious.
It should soothe me. It does not. I know now. I know the name of the vessel. I am aboard the Eternal Eclipse, light Cruiser. Her machine spirit stays in the dark of the barely inhabited noosphere. She doesn’t speak to me. I don’t think she can.
The servitors (2667 active, 318 in storage) are walled off from me.
There is only one bright ping in the noosphere. He has walled me off from everyone else. His designation burns in my mind.
Eylen-Master. Night Lord. Heretek.
I want to tear the blessed augmetics from his traitor’s flesh. I cannot. Not because my augmetics do not obey me, but because the very thought triggers punishment protocols in my neural pathways.
“Ah, finally awake.”
This is my Master. I must obey him. I hate him even as the punishment protocol leaves me shivering on the table, but I cannot ignore him.
He doesn’t look like a heretek. The robe he wears doesn’t hide the augmentations. I categorize them like my own augments: left arm replaced from the shoulder down. Energy source in the shoulder, shining through the fabric of the robe. Jaw replaced, sharpened to bite. Data and energy cables fall from his head and shoulders. Three mechadendrites arch over his organic shoulder, movement fluid. All the parts look well maintained and made.
On any Magos I know, the modifications would be expected. But I know what he is, and I hate it. I hate him. I hate him as I bow my head to him, the only movement i am capable of.
If he can see it in the noosphere, he doesn’t acknowledge it.
“State your designation and rank.”
I reply in exacting Binharic: Pentarch-3-87-1. First Ranger of Skitarius Maniple Alpha.11-4, first War Cohort, Macroclade 3.
This appears to be insufficient, even if no punishment follows.
“State your designation and rank, in Low Gothic.”
I try. The Binharic rolls through my cortexes but it doesn’t translate. The Low Gothic is there, I know it is, Eylen-Master is speaking it and I understand him.
But the words don’t come. The words don’t come for so long that the punishment protocol triggers again, agony rolling through my body as I gasp through my rebreather until he manually cancels it. He has direct system access.
I shudder in disgust, and hope he thinks it’s only cramping from the pain.
This is repeated twice more. I can reply in Binharic. I cannot stop myself from doing so, no matter the demand made of me. But if Eylen-Master demands my reply in Low Gothic, it doesn’t come. I want to reply. I have to reply. I cannot. The words are there but I cannot speak them, no matter the punishment
He works his way through other languages. High Gothic (negative), Skit-Code (positive, terrifying. He should not have this knowledge), Lingua Technis (positive), Nostraman (negative, a language I have never spoken and which must have been implanted into my data banks), a number of human languages barely related to Gothic (negative, all. I only recognize one as a trade cant.)
When finally, his examination ends, my rebreather is sparking, coolant liquid is dripping out of every cranial opening I have. For a moment, my visual feed flickers wildly.
By the time it is online again, Eylen-Master is bent over me, both his mechanic and organic hands tilting my head to let him examine me. I don’t even know what he is looking for. I don’t know what he finds.
But he does find it.
“Very well. Let’s file that under acquisition damages. Your standing orders are to rest, while I make the necessary repairs. Unless ordered otherwise, you will reply to questions in Binharic. Understood?”
“Affirmative. System shutdown in progress.”
—
Designation: Pentarch-3-87-1
Internal log: 135789
Status: Noospheric connection established. Repairs in progress (evaluation pending)
My systems are recovering. The only noospheric contact remains Eylen-Master. I suspect there are no other sentient systems capable of interfacing with it.
My augmentations are still disconnected. It feels… helpless, even though those augmentations were gravely damaged and likely needed to be disconnected for repairs.
If he was a true Magos, a tech priest of any rank, I would accept my fate. But he is not.
He’s a traitor, a heretek.
Right now, he is brushing synth skin onto my back. It hurts. It doesn’t hurt as much as the removal of my organic skin has. I would expunge the record of it, but all knowledge must be preserved. Even this. He took his blade and peeled the weak, mortal skin from my body to replace it with something better.
The application cannot be faulted. Eylen-Master is thorough, and careful. But from where I am lying on his table, I can see my own skin pinned and stretched to the wall of his workshop, still dripping.
—-
Designation: Pentarch-3-87-1
Internal log: 135793
Status: Noospheric connection established. Repairs in progress (evaluation pending)
Today, Eylen-Master is taking measurements. My augmentations have been repaired, but he clearly aims for more permanent solutions than the makeshift welds that render me mobile and moderately useful.
I stand on glitching struts and hold still as he tilts my body this way or that, inspects my head, my hands, the blessed machinery as much as the mortal flesh. He marks me, little notes in foreign runic script, lines and crosses that sprawl across my body.
I cannot read the scripts, but I don’t need to. These are the marks for future enhancements, replacements yet to come. I don’t want them. The blessed machinery I have is just that: blessed, sanctified by the priests of the Machine God, according to the will of the Omnissiah.
These… these new additions…
The stomach I no longer have turns at the thought of carrying such tech-heresy on my body. I don’t know why I feel so much now. My body reacts in ways alien to me. My mind does too. What else has been broken inside me to cause this?
I know I will have no choice, I know I cannot disobey or rebel, and yet my disgust persists. It persists so openly that Eylen-Master catches it.
He is close enough that I can see the aperture of his eye spiral wide when his head comes up. His ocular augmetics are not the collection of lenses and external apparatus I know. They’re internal, his eyeballs replaced so neatly there are no surgery scars obvious among the marks of combat.
He scans me over. I have a moment of doubt, of insecurity, then one of his mechadendrites lances into the neural access port under my jaw.
My body locks. It doesn’t hurt, but I cannot move. My fingers don’t twitch. My oculars don’t refocus, leaving me staring into the darkness. Worst of all, I cannot breathe, the bellows inside my chest frozen half-inflated.
The only thing still moving is the organic heart in my chest, racing as my body eats through the oxygen it has stored. I try not to panic. My body is not so organic. I can endure toxins, hypoxia, even near-vacuum for a time, strengthened by the machine.
This panic that wants to claim my brain is but an organic remnant.
I fight it down, feel my pulse calm, but I still cannot move. I still cannot breathe. The data spike of Eyle-Master is buried deep in my system, keeping me motionless.
Time ticks by. My internal timekeeping is slaved to an atomic clock, accurate beyond all doubt, and yet it feels like it cannot be right. Long-buried instincts scream and thrash as the hypoxia reaches critical thresholds.
I cannot breathe.
Damage-risk alerts are starting to flash in my system, canceled by the will of Eylen-Master before I can do more than read them .
I cannot breathe.
One by one, my system wink out, trying to preserve critical function. Every time my protocols reach for my consciousness, he cancels them again. I am denied the blessing of unconsciousness.
I cannot breathe.
He draws more markings on my skull as I feel myself asphyxiate, my vision greying and swimming, my auditory sensors already fully offline. I can no longer feel my cybernetic limbs. My heart races, shudders. Stops. Starts again. Stops. Starts. Stops. Stops.
The bellows in my chest fill so hard and fast they dent the metal curve of a rib. My heart jolts, my insides lurch. I breathe. Half a dozen deep breaths. The rest of me is still frozen.
Eylen-Master steps around to mark my back. I exhale, and my bellows lock again. The mechadendrite is still tucked under my jaw, locked into my system. I cannot breathe.
It repeats five more times, before Eylen-Master is done with his assessment, and punishment. He ends it as suddenly as he began. The mechadendrite wrenches back and I collapse, gulping down air like any mortal mongrel.
—-
Designation: Pentarch-3-87-1
Internal log: 135800
Status: Noospheric connection stable. Repairs in progress. Upgrades in progress.
Eylen-Master has set me a task while the new systems integrate into my body. It is good to be useful. I wish I could be useful to someone else, but even this is better than sitting idle. I do not wish to aid these heretics, but my cortical matrixes have been eating away at themselves in idleness. Skitarii are meant to be used, or stored. I have been neither.
Now I am used, even if I am only set to the menial task of cleaning components. There is not much more I could do. My spinal plating has been reinforced, and until everything is healed and integrated, inflicting even the recoil of a galvanic rifle would be… unwise.
So I clean delicate little cogs, bolted stiffly to the chair so I cannot bend my spine the wrong way. A nutrient drip feeds into me to ensure optimal function..
Ever so often, Eylen-Master requests progress reports. I send them each time, accurate accounts of my work and my estimates. He seems pleased by my progress, sending affirmative data bursts in return. For some reason, the data bursts are calming. Perhaps it is just because the affirmative feedback means no punishment.
There hasn’t been another punishment since internal log #135793. I have taken care to conceal my disgust as much as possible, yet I am sure Eylen-Master knows of it. I don’t know what he chooses to act on and what he chooses to ignore. Perhaps it is just the mercurial state of heretek taint on him. I don’t know. I don’t want to know.
I focus on the next set of cogs to clean instead.