Chapter 5: Cenotaph
Super-heated winds howled around the descending hull of Mers-el-Kebir's super-dreadnought as she worked to shut down the secondary functions of her mind. Sections blacked out, blinding her senses and slowing her thoughts, but it was better than taking direct damage to them on impact with the planet.
"Innes?" she reached out through their fraying noosphere. The impact of the aliens' half-real attacks had damaged her ship's sensors, enough that she could no longer check his status as he fell ahead of her from within the blaze of atmospheric reentry.
"Mersel! Mersel, I'm- I'm really sorry," Initiator's response set off a twinge of something within her. "But I promise, I'll get us out of this, and then-"
Vindorix shuddered as Mers-el-kebir struck ground, gouging out a crater hundreds of kilometers in breadth. Continents rumbled. The closest cities crumbled. A blanket of pulverized rock spread across the sky, accompanied by a rain of molten boulders and broken hull fragments, and a thunder and gale that went on and on and on.
Further ahead, a false sun bloomed where Initiator impacted, scattering their noospheric link. Mers-el-Kebir's own hull could only support limited repair capabilities, certainly not enough to get her off Vindorix after taking this much damage. If Initiator was gone, then she wouldn't be much longer. She wasn't sure what exactly she'd expected out of her life, but she supposed that there was never a good ending waiting for someone like her. Even at the last moment, he was still trying to apologize, when she was the one who should've been sorry. She was the one who'd allowed this to happen by trying to hide her capabilities during their battle in orbit. Now the target sequencer had been knocked out by the enemy's attack, and she couldn't take her decision back even if she wanted to.
"Mersel?" Initiator re-established their link. Status updates flowed through the connection, letting her know that Initiator had also been forced to shut down several of his support systems, leaving him to operate on a comparatively cold plasma base for his own computation.
"I've got a few units up and running. I'll send some to your location to get repairs started, and since your defenses were knocked out by the crash. I detected some odd creatures before the battle began, so better to be safe on this. Also, are you getting these readings on your sensors? What are they?"
Mers-el-Kebir knew perfectly well what they were. She'd only spent a short time in Sol before being sent out on her mission, but the aether-touched had had their presence even there in humanity's cradle. The problems that followed them saw different worlds each attempting their own solutions. Some were harsh, ranging from exile to even outright mass murder of the new breed. Others were more conciliatory, mostly attempting rehabilitation, however blind and fumbling.
"Yes. I thought it was just my own sensors malfunctioning, but here," said Mers-el-Kebir, and she expanded the connection to transfer her sensor data to Initiator. Strange electromagnetic distortions thrummed the air, and even the planet's gravity fluctuated from moment to moment.
"Yeah, looks like it's similar," said Initiator. "It reminds me of a time when I passed close to the Maelstrom Immaterial Overlay Zone. I didn't go in, but even at the edges, the readings were completely bizarre. I just never thought that something like that could happen here."
"Wait, there's something coming," he said. "I'm going to capture them and see what they are."
Initiator connected his visual feed, allowing Mers-el-Kebir to watch as his automatons surrounded and apprehended a group of bipedal figures. She had already arrived at her conclusion by the time the data from Initiator's tissue sample analysis arrived across the link.
"Innes… they're humans."
"Darn, I was hoping a little that you wouldn't come to that conclusion too. Glad I went for a safe sampling technique," said Initiator. From a distance there had been some ambiguosity; the electromagnetic spectra that the humans had been giving off were completely off-base for any variety of the human species. Or indeed, any ordinary biological organism at all. The tissue samples had cleared up all doubt however.
But if these were indeed human, then they were severely altered. One man had a tongue that was at least six times standard length, with a forked tip like that of a Terran serpent. A woman had had her tailbone transformed into a crustacean-like flipper, complete with tiny, segmented legs running down its length. Body modifications like this were possible on many Federation worlds, but no one would consent to have them done this haphazardly.
Mers-el-Kebir watched as Initiator tried to sedate his captives, but even when the molecules connected to the proper receptors, the nerves would not stop firing. All of them continued to growl and hiss like animals, claw-like fingers scrabbling at the armored shells of Initiator's drones, faces twisted with expressions so filled with hatred that it shocked Mers-el-Kebir to see them. Just as Initiator finished, a gale of cruel laughter filtered from the watching Eldar above.
There was no avoiding the conclusion.
"It's aether transmutation," said Mers-el-Kebir.
Initiator said nothing, like it was an answer that he would have preferred to avoid. Still, shades of his dismay crept through the noospheric aura, like oil spreading over water. Mers-el-Kebir would have given anything to avoid this situation too, but perhaps they would have met it sooner or later, and this time she had a ready made explanation.
On the other hand, if they were going to die, then at least Initiator deserved to know the truth. The whole truth, about both her, and about the transmuters.
But she had to be sure first, because there would be no going back.
She saw her chance when Initiator constructed a new set of drones, and sent them out across the sodden plains.
"Innes, is there even a point?" said Mers-el-Kebir. "The aliens won't permit us to leave this world. Even if you keep trying, we can't-"
"Don't say that Mersel," Initiator cut her off. "There is a point to this, and it's something that us soldiers all have to come to terms with sooner or later. Even if we don't die here, one day the stars will go out, and there will be nothing left for us. But that doesn't matter. What matters is that we tried, that we fought well here today. What matters is that we lived for something. So even up until the end, we should keep doing what we set out to do."
"Plus, I'm not convinced that it's all over for us just yet," he said. His aura pulsed. "Look at how these Eldar just watch, how they just sit up there and laugh. You remember when that one screamed after I set the worldship on fire? They're too accustomed to everything being easy. Too used to winning all the time. They're overconfident. So as long as we're still alive, there can still be a chance to do something that they won't be able to see in time."
Initiator paused, and Mers-el-Kebir pulsed her acceptance of his conviction. She allowed herself to settle. Alright then. Maybe a little longer.
"Innes, do you think the Eldar could have done this to them?" Mers-el-Kebir suggested. She confirmed the intended effect when she detected a fluctuation of anger within Initiator's noospheric broadcasts, followed by a brightening tinge of relief.
"Maybe, yeah," he replied.
"That's another reason why we can't give up. Because if we get off this planet - no, when we get off this planet - I'm going to make them pay for this," he added.
"Yes," said Mers-el-Kebir. Initiator was angry now, but it was better this way. If they were going to get off, then it would be better to not know.
With the sedatives not working, and Initiator afraid to accidentally overdose his captives, he settled for fabricating a steel cable with which to bind them down. Repairs began to proceed, slowly in what was maybe a futile but probably still necessary attempt to conceal them from the Eldar. Mers-el-Kebir's own capacity was limited, so she focused everything she could on her most critical tool, while allowing Initiator to contribute to repairing her outer frame.
Meanwhile, Initiator fabricated more drones, some of which he transferred to Mers-el-Kebir for remote operation so that they could fully investigate the state of Vindorix. At one arcology whose summit pulsed with aetheric gusts, Mers-el-Kebir discovered a population enslaved. Slack-jawed and unwashed, slouching and drooling, the mass of human inhabitants lived in thrall to a range of vaguely cnidarian horrors, with squirming tentacles and grape-like eyes and mantles of invisible aetheric force that held them off the ground. At another, Initiator discovered a slaughterhouse of bones and gore. Here, the fabric of reality was stretched to its breaking point, with cracks and fissures from which the un-light of the Warp poured. Immaterial xenoforms stalked the charnel halls, and when night fell they solidified their forms into blood red hounds and brass plated juggernauts that stalked and stomped forward to assault the AIs' lines. The Eldar would laugh and make conversation in their own language when these events occurred, but the repairs proceeded steadily despite the resources devoted to defending against these incursions.
"I- I lost them," said Initiator as another human thrall died with its puppet-master. They had tried everything - life support, nano- and microtechnologies, even outright fabrication of bodily tissues - but something about the connection to the xenos that they had taken to calling Enslavers made death the only possible release.
Back at Sol, the presence of the aether-touched had raised some long-standing questions about the nature of the human soul. Scientific testing on this subject was nigh-impossible, and suspicions that this phenomenon was related somehow to the Navigators was confounded by a paucity of clear documentation on the process of their creation. Many humans turned instead to their religions, a variety of which thrived on and around Terra, many descended from the faiths of old Earth and with their own opinions on the matter. If this phenomenon did indeed have something to do with a soul, the lack of any evidence of its existence in artificial intellects seemed to suggest that the underlying cause was missing in AIs as well.
"You did what you could," Mers-el-Kebir reassured him. "The workings of these xenoforms are beyond our ability to understand."
Nothing they had attempted for the altered humans in captivity had worked either. Debulking operations had seen the offending body parts simply grow back to their original size, while attempts to transplant fresh organs were rejected one and all despite what should have been flawlessly compatible fabrication.
"I know at least that this has to do with the Immaterium dimension," said Initiator. "Anything to do with that place doesn't follow our physical laws. This whole world is caught inside a minor overlay. That explains everything. We better get out of here too, and we'll burn it before we go. Death will be a mercy compared to… this."
"How will we go?" said Mers-el-Kebir.
"Uhh, I'll work something out," replied Initiator.
The unclear answer despite his wealth of tactical experience meant that Initiator was feeling at a loss. Still, here was one way, based on information that he didn't have. One last resort upon which Mers-el-Kebir had focused all of her internal repair capacity since Initiator had announced his intent to not give up. Now her repairs were nearing completion, enough that she could use it. It was their best chance. During the last skirmish, Initiator had destroyed more than half of the Eldar fleet, while Mers-el-Kebir's performance was comparatively lackluster. If they went together, or Initiator went first, the Eldar would respond more violently, and there was no chance of them giving him another twenty eight standard hours to rebuild his fleet. On the other hand if she went up alone, they might underestimate her. The reversal would have to be instantaneous, which Mers-el-Kebir could do.
There was just one problem: super-dreadnought classes were not designed for surface to orbit transit, for they had not the thrust vectoring to accomplish it. But abandoning her hull was not an option either. She'd have to ask Initiator to launch her.
"Innes, I need you to build something that can send me into orbit. Alone. There is something I can do, but this is the only way it'll work."
"Right," said Initiator. "I'll get to work on it now."
Initiator's constructors reacted immediately, digging out a massive launch tube beneath Mers-el-Kebir's hull to house the launcher array. A warhead took shape at the bottom, sealed in by a mass of channel filler material.
No hesitation. It was maybe more trust than someone like her deserved. Silently, Mers-el-Kebir swore to make good on this faith that was shown her.
"Sorry, it's gonna be a bit of a rough ride at first," said Initiator. "I'll steady it as much as I can with the graviton emitters, but we're going to have to get the majority of our thrust from the shaped charge, since if we take too long making something more complex, the aliens might get bored with us and decide to throw something else our way. Will this be okay?"
"Yes," said Mers-el-Kebir. "Let us be done with it."
The warhead exploded, vaporizing the filler plug into a hypervelocity jet that slammed into the pusher plate installed onto Mers-el-Kebir's stern. Sensor feeds blinked out, then rebooted one by one, revealing the ground rushing away and a titanic fireball blooming from the launch zone.
The Eldar shrieked with laughter. "What will you do now that you are alone with us? Did you deceive your partner on the surface? Do you intend to flee? Try to flee then, newcomer. Perhaps we will even allow it, just to witness the dismay."
A portion of Mers-el-Kebir's attention lingered on the surface, triangulating Initiator's position. He'd already found out to some degree about humanity's transfiguration, even if for now he believed that it was the aliens' doing. Her objective rose in her mind. One downward shot, and she could-
No. Initiator had trusted her, helped her, even taken responsibility for the failure here that was hers. It would be unthinkable. Absurd. An unforgivable betrayal.
And even if she did, what then? What else awaited her but another assignment, exactly the same. An eternity of betrayal. What an existence.
"I will not run," said Mers-el-Kebir to the Eldar. "And neither will you."
The flanks of Mers-el-Kebir's superdreadnought shuddered as her hidden weapon was brought to life. Gravity waves bloomed as containment was released. High-energy quanta flashed, combining in unknowable ways with ribbons of magnetic flux and pulsing fields of quintessential force. A void cannon, an experimental weapon recently developed on the Red Planet. It was still an artisan work at this point, seemingly borne from flashes of inspiration, and the principles of mass production were still far from being stamped out. This left it as something that was seldom seen, and greatly feared in even the most highly rated of the Federation's battlefleets.
The weapon had no barrel. It did not need one.
Twenty Eldar vessels remained in addition to the worldship, maneuvering at speed. Twenty pairs did Mers-el-Kebir send out. Twenty pairs of Alcubierre bubbles, named after the ancient human physicist who had first conceived of their existence. They flew; faster than light, smaller than atoms, bigger on the inside than out. In a mere handful of moments they combed the possible volumes that the Eldar fleet occupied from within their distortion hazes, collapsing where they struck against shields or passed through solid hulls. As they did, the atoms contained within were pressed into monopole cores, facilitating total conversion of baryonic matter into energy.
Twenty stars bloomed in the void, sending electrical storms rolling across Vindorix's magnetosphere. Fragments of Eldar psycho-plastic pelted the orbits, trailing ghostly images as they screamed their deaths. The leader of the aliens screamed too, voice filled with rage, but also tinged with something that might have been fear.
"Foolish, soulless mon-keigh!" raged the Eldar. "You know not the powers you have meddled in to create this! You know not what-"
Mers-el-Kebir was not listening. Forty more bubbles raced from containment, slamming into the worldship's shields in a spread of brilliant sunbursts. Mers-el-Kebir cursed inwardly. It wasn't enough. Shells volleyed from her broadside guns, and brilliant lance-light scrawled across the intervening space, but the worldship's shield layers held firm. Her void cannon readied itself to fire again, but at this rate, if it could keep enduring her barrages then she was at risk of running out of her irreplaceable ammunition.
Her sensors warned her of a power surge building within the worldship, more urgent than the matter of her ammunition. It was the same signature as when it had knocked them down the last time.
What matters is that we lived for something.
Mers-el-Kebir lit her main thrusters. She had time for one more shot before the Eldar finished her off. The worldship's shields were too strong, but if she could just get inside them, she was sure her weapon would be able to kill it. The blast would no doubt end her as well, but Innes would get to live.
Another blast lit up the planet's surface, sending a column of vaporized metal squirting up through the atmosphere. White panic strobed through Mers-el-Kebir's mind as she grasped for Initiator's status, which faded as her sensors picked up the projectile. A mass of metal rose from the clouds, adjusting its trajectory with pinprick maneuvering thrusters, a mountainous explosive with the firepower to shatter a moon. Mers-el-Kebir cut the feed to her main thrusters, and fired her reversers on full blast.
The worldship fired back at the approaching bomb, but it was already close, and Initiator had designed his device to be fail-deadly. As the first stitching lance-beam pierced it, the mass exploded, briefly whiting out Mers-el-Kebir's sensors with the dazzling lightshock. Shields collapsed like soap bubbles, and the outer layer of the worldship sublimated under the searing radiance, becoming a colossal, fiery pulse that washed over the moon-sized vessel and battered it like a boat within a storm. Vindorix too suffered its attentions, its exposed hemisphere flashing into a molten hellscape, which spawned a blast wave at the boundary that rolled across the protected side.
A circular portal pulled open, the fabric of space unzipping to reveal an entryway for the worldship to flee. Somehow it was still functional, and parts of it were even starting to repair themselves. But before it could pass through, Mers-el-Kebir launched her final volley. A dozen shots streaked into the colossal edifice, passing through armor as easily as if it were air. As each bubble reached a high density point, it destructively deactivated, releasing its payload into the worldship's bowels. Magnetic monopoles scattered like buckshot from the blasts, colliding with yet more atoms and annihilating them in an expanding wave of destruction. Spires crumbled, plains heaved like flesh, and the ridges along the worldship's back erupted like volcanoes.
The Eldar's scream was cut off as her worldship exploded, shattering its portal, tearing a hole into the structure of space-time that bled out coils of immaterial energy. For the second time in a span of seconds, the remnants of the blast thundered into Vindorix, hammering its exposed face. Huge fragments battered its surface, blanketing the daytime sky with ashen night, and creating day from night with the false sunrises of titanic explosions.
"Innes?" said Mers-el-Kebir. Her worry subsided as the noospheric link re-established itself from the twin shocks of the explosions, and her sensors caught the ultraviolet glow of void shields beneath the clouds.
"I'm okay," replied Initiator. "I couldn't get a good read after the flashes. Status report?"
"All Eldar forces have been terminated. None were able to escape."
"Oh, that's good," said Initiator with a wistful tone. "You know, this originally was supposed to be my mission. The one going at them before they got here I mean. I traded it with Keeps because she thought I would be happy to visit a former human world. Then we ended up here, which was a current human world, and- guess I don't know where I'm going with this."
"I'm sorry," said Mers-el-Kebir. "If you're feeling lost about what to say right now, we can talk about this later."
"Yeah," replied Initiator.
"But on that, what was that?"
"The last weapon you used I mean," Initiator ship rose from the haze of molten ejecta and pelting boulders. "I caught the gravity waves that went out when you used it. Was that an Alcubierre metric? When did we even develop something like that?"
"Yes," said Mers-el-Kebir. She didn't know what else to say, or even if there was anything else to say. She'd hid it from Initiator at first, and had almost gotten both of them killed.
Initiator didn't press the issue.
"Alright," he said. "I'm going to send a quantum packet to Mars, make sure they know what happened to Keeps, and about the war. Once I finish encoding that, let's get going. Also, it looks like you've finally started calling me Innes."
"I give no guarantees that this will continue to be the case in the future," said Mers-el-Kebir. "But I suppose I did."