Aaron Dembski-Bowden - The First Heretic

They fell back again. No, they fled.

Behind his faceplate, Sythran smiled. The bolter on his spear juddered with its release, punching explosive shells into the spines of all who were cowardly enough to turn their backs on him. The rhythmic pound of detonation after detonation made an abattoir of the hallway. Sythran went prone behind a mound of the dead, spinning his spear to hold the blade end. A clunk, a click, and the weapon was reloaded. Sythran rose again, already cutting the air with grand sweeps, batting aside the streaking laser fire.

‘Syth,’ crackled Aquillon’s voice. ‘We move.’

Sythran returned an acknowledgement blip by blinking at the affirmation rune on his retinal display. More Euchar, so very proud in their dull orange fatigues, came charging down the corridor. Sythran leapt his cadaver barricade and met them head on. They fell in pieces, and beyond a las-burn along his shoulder guard, the blood on his blade was the only evidence he’d even been fighting. The corridor was clear for now, populated by dead fools who’d believed they could bayonet him where their fellows had failed. Sythran looked over his shoulder in time to see his brothers emerge from the witch’s cell. But only two. Nirallus and Aquillon, their armour pitted and cracked by incendiary fire.

Perhaps they detected his questioning glance without seeing his face, for Aquillon said ‘Kalhin is dead. We must hurry.’

Well did he mark the blood shining on Aquillon’s sword point.

Xi-Nu 73 sighed. It vocalised from his rebreather mask as an insect’s buzzing. The sensory inhibitors lining his nerves like insulating cable around wire were doing all they could, but they failed to entirely mute the pain of shutting down. Shutting down? Dying. In his final mortal moments, he couldn’t resist the biological descriptor. Such resonance. Dying... Death... So dramatic.

He laughed, and made more static-laden buzzing. It became a cough that tasted of spoiled oil.

With his one remaining hand, the adept started the laborious task of dragging himself across the floor. A potential subroutine to this task presented itself as he moved. Could he not stop halfway and examine the corpse of the human female?

A cost/benefit analysis flickered in his thought-core. Yes. He could. But he would not. The subroutine was discarded. His hand clawed at the smooth deck, and he dragged himself another half-metre with the squeal of his metal body along the floor. All the while, functionality statistics formed charts behind his eyes. He realised there was a chance, though small, that he would terminate before he reached his objective. It spurred him on, while the bionic nodules attached to his few remaining mortal organs stimulated the fading flesh with jolts of electrical energy and injections of emergency chemicals.

The tech-adept was blind by the time he reached his destination. His visual receptors had failed, as blank as a monitor with no power. He felt his hand clank against his intended target, and used the motionless bulk to pull himself closer. The fallen robot was a toppled statue, a fallen avatar of the Machine-God, and Xi-Nu 73 embraced it as one would a beloved son.

‘There,’ he murmured, barely hearing his voice as his aural receptors failed next. ‘Duty done. Honoured. Name inscribed. In. Archive of. Visionary. Merit.’ His throat vocaliser failed at the last word, leaving him mute for the remainder of his existence.

Xi-Nu 73 expired twenty-three seconds later as his augmetic organs powered down without hope of restarting. He would have taken no pleasure at all in the irony that his withered organs of meat strove on for half a minute more, still trying to feed life through a body that couldn’t process it.

The chamber remained still and quiet for only a short while. Booted footfalls soon drummed down the hallway, heralding the arrival of more inhumans.

The figure in crimson armour stood in the doorway, framed against the bloodstained wall behind. He waited there without moving, unable to accept what lay before his eyes.

‘Let me through,’ said Xaphen.

Argel Tal stopped him with a glare, and went inside himself.

Xi-Nu 73 lay in embryonic repose, curled foetally beside Incarnadine’s cracked and broken shell. The robot was in complete ruin, its armour riven into a hundred chopped canyons inflicted by hacking blades. The war machine’s banner-cloak and oath scrolls were likewise ravaged, reduced to shredded rags. The walls and floor had fared no better. Holes showed through the sides of the armoured chamber into adjacent rooms, and where the walls still stood whole, they were cratered by punishing bolter fire.

Argel Tal noted all of these details in the time it took to blink, and paid no heed thereafter. He knelt by Cyrene’s slack form. Blood deepened the red of her gown – the same crimson as his own armour – and painted the floor beneath her. Liquid red flecked her neck and hair. The wound was a blatant one: a great split in her chest where the sword-tip had rammed into her. One blow, a heart strike, had been enough to pierce her precious mortality.

Blood. The presence was still thick and slow, but Argel Tal’s despondent anger was rousing the daemon to wakefulness. Blood soon. Hunt.

The change was taking hold again. The daemon sensed battle, and the flesh they shared began to warp in reaction. Argel Tal breathed a bestial rumble, but the sound died in his throat when Cyrene shuddered.

She lived. How had he not seen? The faintest, barest rise of her chest betrayed the life that still beat beneath.

‘Cyrene,’ he growled, as much Raum now as Argel Tal.

‘This...’ Her voice was a child’s whisper, so breathless that it barely made a sound. ‘This was my nightmare.’ Blind eyes found his with unwavering ease. ‘To be in the dark. To hear a monster breathe.’

Claws closed around her frail form with possessive, protective strength, but the damage had long since been done. Her blood stung his fingers where it dripped onto them.

‘What have they done to you?’ Cyrene asked with a smile.

She died in his arms before he could answer.

He heard the voices, but had no reason to pay heed to them. The Other, yes, he heeded such chattering. The bleating of humanity: fleshy tongues flopping in moist mouths, and the gusting of lung-breath over meat to make a sound in the throat. Yes, the Other listened to the voices and replied in kind.

Raum did not. He barked a word of hate, drawn from the Old Tongue, hoping it would silence their nasal noises. It did not. Hngh . Ignore them. Yes.

He had sensed the need for the blood-hunt, and risen to the fore in a rush of release. The Other’s body – no, the body they shared – assumed the hunting skin with ease now.

He ran, aching with need, pained by the pursuit of prey without catching it. Humans in his way were dashed aside. Raum did not look back. He smelled them die, scenting their lifeblood and brainmeat spilling out onto walls and floors.

Frail things.

You are killing the crew.

The Other was returning? This was good. They were stronger together. The Other’s silence had been a cause for fear. As he returned, Raum felt his instincts shifting, adapting, made sharper by reason and the concept of past and future. Intellect, not mere cunning. Sentience. Better. He charged down the corridor, roaring at the humans to frighten them aside. As he passed, he did not slay them.

They are allies.

They slowed the hunt. He felt an itching reluctance to confess to his weakness of reason and forethought. We will kill no more. We are whole.

I... I am back.

Argel Tal drew in a breath, tasting the ship’s recycled air with its stale-skin tang. Like a thread to be pulled loose, he scented something snagging at the edge of his perception. His friend. Aquillon. That ozone smell of charged weapons. The oils used to maintain the golden armour.