NOVEL SIMPLE Chapter One Hundred and Forty-Four
Two months after Maeve’s meeting, I am slogging through the scientific papers of the ancient Terran Federation, trying, and failing, to understand how to integrate my third eye into my bionics.
Like any sensible person, I want to put my brain in my chest, firmly armoured in adamantium and as many different energy shields as I dare. Problem is, since I now have a third eye that needs to be exposed if I want to bathe my enemies in its ghastly glare.
I need to understand how to create artificial, warp energy baring nerves as well as a secondary sub-brain for my skull, that would link to the one in my chest, somewhat like an octopus. The goal is to not only link the two and better protect my main brain, but to increase my control of the eye’s baleful energy and, hopefully, increase its navigation capabilities too.
I also have some thoughts about creating decoy possession organs that I can purge or consume during a possession attempt, but that also involves soul manipulation, which is currently way beyond my skill. I don’t know how the Kin managed it, but the Ancestor Cores of those hairy biker space dwarfs are so advanced they’re actually magic. Sort of. They definitely know how to use it.
Sadako appears before me in a flurry of coloured glass and metal, origami shaped cranes.
++This one has detected an unauthorised use of an Imperial Knight by Cybersmith Paorach. The first warning has been ignored. Permission to terminate the dissident crew requested.++
“Are the weapons active?”
++Negative.++
“Permission denied. I will intervene.”
Following Sadako’s waypoints, I track down Róisín while watching on the sensor feed as she gleefully sprints in circles around a storage compartment in the outer hull ensconced within a colossal, nine metre gothic mecha.
Upon approaching the location, the noise becomes quite unbearable, hammering through the structure of Iron Crane, so I filter it out, though I can still feel the reverberation through my feet.
A mix of eighteen Tech-Adepts and Priests are crowded around the door to the storage area, all learning over each other in an awkward stack, eager to watch, but not to get in the way if Róisín loses control and tumbles through the open door. I really want to do ‘the boss clears his throat behind the misbehaving employees’ but it’s a bit too loud for that.
I can yell as loud a cargo ship’s fog horn though.
“Attention!” I yell, while also broadcasting on the local noosphere link.
My new eyes, combined with my auspex, let me visualise the waves of my voice churn through the air and pick up on the ripples in the crews’ voidskin as my voice washes over them. Many clutch their ears in pain.
They all whip round, straighten up, and bow, their hands held against their chests, making the sign of the cog. The Knight jitters, almost trips, then rapidly decelerates.
I clasp my hands behind my back and peer down at my crew, “I suggest you all make yourselves scarce.”
They immediately scatter down the corridors, hoping I won’t remember who they are. I’ll let them stew for a week then mess with their schedules for a month or two. They might all be Róisín’s subordinates, but they’re all equally responsible for not dissuading Róisín from engaging in reckless testing like a kid running around her bedroom with her first completed Gunpla.
I vox Róisín, “Well, are you coming down here or not.”
“Ah, Aldrich, I need to take the Knight back to the gantry.”
“You can jump.”
There is a short pause, “Right you are, Aldrich.” The hatch on the stop of the Knight thunks as the locks disengage. There is a small hiss as it opens as the cockpit equalises with the low pressure air common throughout most of the vessel.
Róisín pulls herself out using the handles, then descends, alternating between sliding and climbing until she has to make a brief, four metre drop to the floor. She rushes over, her skin flushed red with exhilaration or embarrassment. Once she is close enough I can pick up on her emotions and detect that it is shame. Shame of being caught that is.
“Róisín, there is a lot I want to say and ask right now, but first I want you to apologise to Sadako. Your unauthorised testing has irritated it and I had to dissuade the Machine Spirit from engaging the automated counter-boarding protocols. As it is, it will probably make every door open extra slowly for you, or something equally irritating, until it calculates the scales have been balanced.”
“Oh no!”
I see the electronic emissions as Róisín starts exchanging data with the Iron Crane as tiny streams of green numbers. I could read them if I wanted to, but that is unnecessary right now.
“Good,” I say. “Now, first are my congratulations for not only repairing the Knight, but for somehow managing to bond with it, without having your mind wiped by all the psychic implants of the previous pilots making your brain flow out of your ears. Second, what the hell were you thinking? Bonding has a ten percent chance of killing you if you’re from a Knight House that has been undergoing natural selection for the past fifteen millennia. I do not want to calculate what they were for you.”
“Zero! Well, pretty close to it anyway. I had some of the Eldar and Psy-Errants help me edit the imprints and turn them into a single gestalt intelligence that guides and teaches the user, rather than drown their consciousness with dreams of past glories and nightmarish battles. The new gestalt also functions as an extra buffer between the pilot and the machine-spirit so that one’s personality isn’t overwritten, or the pilot killed by any of the Machine-Spirits mental tests. It doesn’t understand how fleshy brains work, afterall.
“I don’t know how necessary all of that was given the quality of the MIUs used by the Fleet and the Custom Cortex Implant that you gave me, but I wasn’t willing to risk it. Before you start a lecture of why changing the process is a bad idea because knights are supposed to be tough, loyal, and hard to corrupt, let me just head you off with a few extra points.
“I reworked the armour with phase-iron, warded the cockpit, and installed the micro-gellar field design you gave me for research. Making the gellar field work without a warp based energy source is beyond me, but I did find a way to fuel it with wraithbone, thanks to a tip from Ylien. While the field is active, to most demons or psykers, the Knight will look like it has no pilot, so they can’t even target them. The field will also weaken any demons that get close, and the phase-iron will protect against sorcery. No need for rigid zealot mental programming required. Pretty neat right!”
“So you bypassed the Ritual of Becoming and the requirements for a Chamber of Echoes to be built. Not only that, but you added additional protections against the Ruinous Powers and other psychic attacks. That is remarkable, Róisín, well done.
“Now, the mix of your privileges and your unauthorised testing skirts Fleet regulations so finely that technically I can’t punish you for it. The real clincher is that the Knight has had all of its weapons removed before you tested it. A deliberate act. You will return the Knight to its service bay then not sit yourself upon its Throne Mechanicum for a whole year. Any objections, Cybersmith Paorach?”
“No, Magos. No objections.”
“You may work on getting the other two running in your spare time, if you wish. It hasn’t interfered with your assigned work before, but don’t start now.”
“Yes, Magos.”
“Additionally, for your superb work you may ask for one custom work from me, and I will provide ten hours tutoring in any subject that I am able to teach for each of your team members who assisted in this project.” I glare at her, “While I love your enthusiasm, a fist pump is not an appropriate gesture when you are being reprimanded. Your ban is now eighteen months.”
Róisín’s emotions waft off her poorly guarded mind, she is genuinely upset now.
I sigh, “Róisín, you are a brilliant woman, but almost anyone else would be asteroid mining for what you just did, even my own kids. You endangered your own life and that of the crew. You’ve even taken your own teams to task before for the same reason. That machine could have sent you into a frothing, incoherent rage and sent you rampaging through the ship. It is not a toy.
“I can see you took some precautions, and you really have worked a miracle here, but you're as bad as Sergeant Odhran with your ill thought choices.” I loom over her, “You have also stolen from me. A Knight only has one pilot until that pilot’s death. Not only that, we just had a whole discussion about why sending our best minds on high casualty missions is a shitty idea and now I am going to have to put you at risk every time I need to deploy that Knight. I am incredibly disappointed with your choices here.”
“Oh.”
“Now you see it.”
“Yeah, sorry Aldrich.”
“Apology accepted. Now don’t dally and put that Knight away.”
“Yes, Magos.”
Róisín scurries away and clambers up the side of the Knight with great difficulty. She restarts the Knight and I step out of the way so she can get through the door. Taking slow, careful steps, Róisín pilots the Knight. I follow her the whole way to show my immeasurable disappointment at her life choices, despite me inwardly dancing with glee at her achievements, then turn around and walk away without another word once she arrives at her private labs.
I will tell the rest of Fleet Command how pleased I am with Róisín’s work, then, when Róisín is feeling depressed about getting told off and goes to one of them for consolation, they’ll hopefully drop a hint that will take away the sting and restore her passion for her work. I can’t afford to have her moping because she can’t sit on a Throne Mechanicum.
There are no more incidents for the next few weeks until the appointment of Rieinmelth Y Gododin to Fleet Command as a representative of the Psy-Errants and all psykers within the Fleet.
The Psy-Errants have recently replaced the Twist Catchers as the Fleet’s Warp corruption hunters, recovering a part of their role that they used to undertake on Marwolv. Psyker births have dropped to one in ten thousand, rather than one in a hundred. When combined with the ones that we took from Marwolv, we currently have eighty-two in the Fleet and two thousand brain dead ones in stasis ready for conversion to psychic servitors.
At first, I was representing the psykers, but I decided that, as their numbers grew, I could no longer do so as it was creating a conflict of interest; I am not supposed to favour one department over another.
Ever since Róisín showed me the heavily warded Knight I’ve been thinking about making the Psy-Errants proper Questor Imperialis if I can get enough Knight frames, or at least give them Vanguard Armour, as it would make them much more effective at their jobs and work well with all the extra wards on the machines.
On Marwolv, Psykers were deliberately not given combat roles in national armies to prevent an arms race and keep as many of them as far as possible from stressful situations that might force them to overdraw on the Warp. It was a good system for their isolated planet, but there is no peace among the stars, so I’d rather put them in a mobile warded cage where they can use their esoteric senses and spells to maximum effect.
Logis Banba Aneurin is appointed as the new Overseer for Iron Crane’s shipyard. She has a real knack for accurate estimations, but it will take at least a year for her to settle into her role before she can make any changes or improvements.
Two more years pass and Alpia starts her lessons with Ylien, though I sit in on all of them. I install a copy of my micro-gellar field behind Alpia’s sternum so that she will be better hidden from Warp entities. She doesn’t have a warp tap like me, so she must periodically draw on the warp and feed it into the battery installed alongside the device.
Drawing on the Warp is tiring, and puts a psyker at risk, so having to do it manually requires discipline and effort, two things my ten year old daughter is terribly lacking in. Thanks to her intelligence upgrades, she’s just too used to everything coming easy to her that anything that requires even a modicum of effort is avoided like the plague. My boys are a bit better, mostly because they can’t resist competing with each other, but not by much.
This is the first time I’ve tried to give someone else a full copy of one of my mechanical implants, and so far, it is serving Alpia well. It will be a long time, if ever, that I can give her another of my implants though because her soul is much smaller than mine, nor does it grow as easily, so unlike the boys, she might have to skip the Rejuvenat Gland.
After Alpia’s first few lessons, my boys confront me about not getting an awesome implant too. It’s too early to give them a Rejuvenat Gland, so I make them something I’ve been considering for years, but never had a reason to do.
After a week of manufacturing and testing, I hand them their new toys and put the issue out of my mind.