Note from the author: I apologize to any people versed in the physics of acoustics. The "science" featured in this story will probably horrify you more than the plot itself, but I believe this story fits in with the general 40K universe with its laser guns and aliens, and will thus ask the reader suspend disbelief, at least in regards to the science aspects.
The ceilings dripped with ooze, falling to the floor and resounding against the stone and puddles with dull plops. The intermittent sound reverberated throughout the dank room, adding to the eerie environment, and cutting through the blanketing silence like a knife.
A man awoke; he was garbed in drab green clothes, torn by war. Scars ran across his muscular frame; he was a man of war. He sprang up and quickly reached for his weapon in the dark. His hands grasped air; the weapon was gone.
A sudden moaning alerted his attention and he snapped his head in that direction, eyes alert, body tensed and ready to fight, even in the total dark of the room. He peered into the gloom through the think metal bars to see endless cells, cut occasionally by a twist of hallways. In most were broken bodies of men, women and things, some not quite either, nor human at all.
The groan echoed again and he grasped the bas nearest to the sound, his eyes quickly spied a man prostrate on the ground wounds streaming down his body, mixing the puddles with blood. The man in green dismissed the figure; he was lost.
No stranger to the cruelties of imprisonment, the man in green slumped to the ground after he had determined that his prison was solid and inescapable. He was ready to wait weeks, months if need be. He mentally prepared himself. He need not have bothered.
At that instant, a door somewhere ground open in the distance revealing a miniscule rectangle of yellow light. The disjointed grunting of men hit his ears, followed by the thunk of boots on wet stone. The sounds grew greater as the steps approached. Should he kill them? No. Not yet. Not enough was known about the surroundings, to run now would be folly; we waited in the dark.
A large man, equal in size, but not in intelligence, to the man in green entered the cell after using some sort of key. He was garbed in dull yellow brown. A hood hid his undoubtedly ugly face from the world.
"Master wants to see you, and you better not try anything funny. He's not in a good mood."
The man in green didn't respond but as the cultist turned, his hood slipped at bit, the metal of his face reflecting in the distant yellow light. He growled and masked his face, hood back in place. Tech-cultist then.
They wound through a maze of metal menageries while steadily growing closer to the yellow light. They were there; metal steps build into the stone of the room. They ascended, and the two men followed it.
The staircase went straight up, an impossible length of stairs, and each step reverberated as if the ceiling were cavernous instead of right above them. They emerge into the gloom of a forge.
Massive cranes moved cauldrons of superheated metal, conveyers were stamped with molds, forming the molten material into guns, tanks, munitions. This must be their manufacturing center. They have taken me 3 miles to the east. This is in deep enemy territory. Our push must have failed. I should gather information.
Servitors tended to the machines, and the lines and assemblies stretched into infinity. They must have centralized their manufacturing into one area. If only we had known.
At this point, the man in green became aware of a strange sound, an almost mosquito hum, which imbued the entire cyclopean manufactorium complex. He listened more intently, and immediately wished he hadn't. The sound was the whispers of the archenemy and they spoke dark truths. They should not be listened to; they should be ignored.
He closed his ears to the sound, but it was pervasive and seemed to grow in magnitude the more he tried to ignore it.
Finally, they met their destination, a tall building within the complex, grey and utilitarian like all of the surroundings. As they entered the room, the man in green noticed with satisfaction that the thuds of the machinery and the hum dissolved into silence. The room must be insulated.
The man in yellow turned on a light sconce, revealing a medium sized room, with a furnace in the center which had odd glass sides. It was large. A figure appeared out of somewhere, his air designating him the master that was spoken of before. He was a techpreist.
For the first time, the man in green spoke. "Who are you?"
His question lingered in the air before it received and answer. "I am Magos Sonorous, follower of the true emperor."
The man in green was shocked; the techpriest's voice was normal, even more than normal, it was layered and rich. Its tone was a blend of power and smoothness that was anathema to the voice boxes of most tech priests.
"I see you are surprised by my voice. Let it be said that faithful followers receive reward. In fact, that is why I have…called you here, saved you from death at the hands of my followers. You are a logical man; I noticed. I have had my scouts observe you for a while." He purred, his words a stream of cool connected syllables.
"What do you want of me?" The man in green asked, after a pause.
"Just you attentions, just your attention. I am a man of science, and was even before I was enlightened. I recently came across wondrous technology from my powerful patrons and thought I would fabricate a demonstration. Look here"
All the while, the man in green only half listened, searching for a weapon, an exit, a window, a door? Nothing and the way in was undoubtedly guarded. With no other option, he focused on the priest.
He was about as tall as the man in green, so very tall for a priest. He stood erect and wore the robes of the mechanicum, but he noticed that they were black with gold trim instead of the traditional dull red. His face was disrobed, revealing a face that could have been human, except for the metal integrated into the flesh.
He shot the man in green a look that betrayed some mindless anger. The man in green decided to listen to what he was saying.
"So as I was saying, after I came across an ancient tome in the library I found an amazing and almost unfathomable discovery. Our universe is, consists of, a series of pulses. I have already proved the fact with sound" he said gesturing to the furnace thing, "And I believe light acts in the same way."
He looked at the man in green, his excitement dissipating as he did so. "I see you don't understand the implications." He once again gestured to the furnace. "These pulses are intrinsic of matter also. Everything seems to have its own pulse." The man is crazy.
"Let me show you an example" he placed a small chronometer in the furnace. "This is a machine I built myself that amplifies and directs pulses of sound at objects. We observe these pulses as sound but they can travel through other mediums through vibration"
The man in green stayed silent, and allowed the madman to continue.
"When the pulses of sound exactly line up with the inherent vibration of an object itself, the bonds that confine an object to a particular shape are broken; the pulses amplify themselves to a point of catastrophic failure. Observe."
He turned on the machine, which was obviously something infinitely more sinister than a furnace. The space marine sized machine hummed the same hum that the man in green had heard in the main manufactorium.
"It is all a matter of finding the right pulse and matching it." He said off handedly as he turned a dial, a smile starting to creep across his human or organic face. It was hideous, especially because only the human side changed; the mechanical side remained in the same state, creating a horrendous duality that would have unnerved even the staunchest of his friends.
The hum resonated inside the sound proof room, filling every crack forcing itself into the man in green's ears.
"There it is!" The servant of evil said, hardly able to contain its glee.
The chronometer vibrated and started to shake. "Witness the power of sound!" it yelled. The machine rose in intensity, the watch jumping by itself as its constituent pieces shifted under the onslaught. The chronometer convulsed and spun and deformed, all while the hum rose to crazy levels, madness appeared, lights flashed. With a shuddering crack it exploded, spraying its metallic contents into the plexiglass of the machine.
"YES!" The heretic yelled, venting its emotion wildly. "Yes Yes YES. And that's not the end!" It said, eyes wild as it turned to the man in green. The man in green backed away. This thing is crazy, I need to get out of here why is there no door. He scrambled away from the robed monster.
"No, no, you still don't see the implications. This device is just a prototype! I have designed another device; a portable one, that can direct its pulse of sound at objects. Imagine, an army, all carrying these instruments. Unstoppable!" It said, emphasizing its words with wild flails of its hands.
"NO, I won't let you do this, you twisted corrupted heathen!" The man sprang at the monster, knocking it to the ground. His hands wrapped their way around the cyborg's neck, but the half metal part made chocking it impossible.
"FOOL" The priest said with sudden anger, and with strength unforeseeable when compared to its frail body, it thrashed the man in green away from itself and into the wall. "I should have known, you brainwashed bastards are all the same, no intellect, no respect for science, no understanding of anything, and no curiosity of the unknown!"
"There are some things humans were not meant to know." The man spat.
"It is a good thing I am not human then." The priest countered. "But I'm afraid that you resist my ideas, and you revulsion to science is something that I cannot abide. My soldiers will make short work of you."
It started walking past the machine towards the door to alert the guards outside. He could not let it get there. He flung himself again at the monster.
However, this time it was ready. It had seen him coming and had anticipated the move. It had calculated the probabilities of each situation and had shifted its mass accordingly. It crackled with power as it drained emergency energy sources in seconds.
It caught the man in mid-leap and using his own momentum against him, flung him into the machine in the center of the room. The man slammed into the inner wall of the machine, his head snapping back on impact. This was a man of war though, and quickly got to his feet.
It was too late though. The servant of evil had already locked the door. He hammered frantically on the wall trying to escape, his hands slicing open against the parts of chronometer metal stuck in the glass.
Suddenly with a sick moment of realization, the man in green realized what was about to happen to him. He screamed and tripled his efforts, muscles bulging in a last frantic attempt to free himself of his prison. The cyborg leered at him from outside the glass, and for some reason its words could reach him inside the machine.
"No use, No use." He cackled. "Servants of the false emperor must DIE, and what a splendid way to die too!" He switched on the lever.
"By saints and apostles and all that is blessed, by the emperor ascendant himself holy be he, help me, help me, help" His words were cut off with the same hum that he had tried so hard to ignore before.
It would not be ignored now. It came at him from all directions, its tendrils forcing their way into his ears. The madness of the whispering words was understood by the man. Screaming, he clawed at his ears, anything to make the sound stop stop stop but it didn't, it got louder, more abrasive.
To his horror he found that his body responded to the cacophony, his hand jiggled and he twitched as the sound infused him. He couldn't help it at this point; the sound had him, twisting his body, deforming it. Bones snapped like dry twigs, but he was too enthralled to feel. Swept up in the current he could hear the pulse growing louder and louder, like an unstoppable wave approaching the shore.
He could feel it steadily coming closer, the moment that the intrinsic pulse and the unnatural void music met. He could feel blood coming from his eyes but couldn't move to wipe it away. He felt the same liquid running from his ears, burst by the melody of madness. Still the moment came closer, his body now jerking on the ground like a marionette controlled by an insane puppet master.
The pain became unbearable; it became more than pain, something horrible that humans don't even have a word for, when every receptor in the brain cries out at the sheer abomination at the signals it is receiving. And finally, when his body could stand it no more, he lost sanity completely. He flopped against the wall in tune to the sound, splattering blood along the glass, arms twitching in an epileptic fit of death.
There are no gods, there is no emperor only chaos chaos chaos chaos CHAOS and with a final pulse, his body finally could hold itself together no longer. Bones splattered and shattered with pure harmony; blood spattered against the wall like symphony of death; his organs burst apart in a synchronized chord of annihilation.
There was silence for a moment; no one moved.
The techpriest opened the door and peered inside, staring hungrily at the destruction, the man in yellow was with him. "This is amazing; this is fantastic; this is the true power of sound, and I just can't wait to try my new design!"
He looked around in the small machine's chamber, drawing his finger across the thick layer of blood that coated the inside of the machine. The yellow man stared dumbly at the immolation.
There was nothing left but chaos on the inside. "Prefect" The priest said with an evil grin and shut the door. I can hardly wait to see what I can come up with next!