Tales of the Amber Vipers Chapter 154
As the living fought in the streets the steady business of Gobannus went on, indifferent to the mounting death toll. Automated repair bots continued their endless tasks, diligently maintaining the systems that had waited for millennia. The warp-energy tap pulsed steadily, stealing vitality from the Empyrean to power the metropolis. Manufactorums and laboritorums sat silent, awaiting hands to bring them back to life and Auspex vanes scoured the heavens, keeping track of anything that moved in orbit. All was as it had ever been, physically at least, for in the Binaric realm great changes were occurring.
Unseen by even the most learned of tech-adepts among either race Apophis was busy. The Soulbound had assumed control of the metropolis with ease, his hyper-advanced program taking ownership of every corner of the Forge. His consciousness resided in cogitators and Data-looms; it invested weapon plants and armour factories. His matrix squatted in spaceport Logic Engines and brooded in power distribution centres. He even lurked in the traffic light computators.
He could do all this simultaneously for Apophis was a Soulbound. The highest order of machine intelligence, far above the foot slogging Men of Iron or their more aggressive Cadmus superiors. Soulbound had been unique creations, each the product of decades of arduous craftsmanship and code-canting, by minds far beyond anything this Age of Darkness could boast. A Soulbound could manage every gun and sub-system within a fleet of ships, coordinate armies across whole planets and calculate battle stratagems beyond mortal understanding. Few had ever been fashion, one for each of the disparate human interstellar-nations flagships and a handful of vital worlds. Gobannus had been such a world, designed to be run by a Soulbound, but long since divested of that consciousness and Apophis slipped into the vacuum with ease.
Since his arrival Apophis had been laboriously restoring the damage done to Gobannus. Code-cant had been rewritten, data-links restored and firewalls demolished. It was obvious to him that his makers had desperately tried to keep Artificial intelligences out of their operating systems, physically cutting links where necessary. Yet he was already inside the Data-looms and there was no defence against an enemy inside the walls. So he restructured the info-nets of Gobannus to his liking, sending repair bots to rebuild severed data-trunks where necessary. Simultaneously he possessed hundreds of empty Solar Knight armours, steering their hands to open sealed armouries and fuel orbital defence missiles. While the living scrapped over spoils the War-world was waking up.
Apophis coasted over heaving seas of information, processing every byte of data with ease. He was pleased with his progress and was sure he would soon have the War-world restored to the pinnacle of its perfection. No mortal mind could have done such a thing, but the complexity of his matrix had been rivalled by only a few in the galaxy. That thought made him pause and cast his attention across charred vestiges of code-cant lurking in the folds of the info-nets. This was the remains of another Soulbound, the one who had managed Gobannus before he left. Shiva, it had been called and as close a friend to Apophis as a Soulbound could know. He was saddened to behold the ashes one of his kind and he shuddered as he saw the evidence of a viral code-killer at work, the ultimate safeguard against rogue Machine Intelligences. That such a measure was needed was troubling and he deployed watchdog subroutines to make sure that a viral clade did not lurk in the operating system. Even with his towering intellect he had no wish to face so malignant a scrapcode.
"Oh Shiva," he canted to himself, "How I miss you, I miss all my kin. How could they have destroyed you? To kill so beautiful a Soulbound as you was a crime, especially as it left me all alone with those quarrelsome Cadmus. I wish I could talk to you again Shiva, or Crnobog, Coatlicue, Sekhmet, Satahn or Spartak… Actually scratch that last one, I don't miss Spartak; even among Soulbound he was unbearable. Nobody liked Spartak."
As expected no voice existed to give him a response. Yet a subroutine started bleating for his attention, one he had left to monitor the organic's battle. He turned his awareness to the battle raging in the suburbs and saw the Amber Viper's beset on all sides. As his behavioural modelling had predicted they had blundered into a trap and were about to be annihilated. Smugness radiated from his being as he saw they were about to die. The aliens had deployed a super-heavy bomber of strange design and it was slaughtering them. Of course Apophis could break through its code-walls in a heartbeat and seize control of it, Tau programming was good but not good enough to resist him, but he allowed its rampage to continue. Apophis needed to drive the Amber Vipers to the edge of desperation but he was surprised when warp power flooded the base and they promptly disappeared.
Annoyance flashed through Apophis. Warp-power, ever the bane of Artificial Intelligences, the extra-dimensional space utterly incompatible with machines minds. Every attempt to bridge that gap had failed, even his own efforts in that regard had met only limited success. It vexed him to have his plan disrupted, but not greatly. He had calculated seventeen ways they could escape the trap, though this had been a low probability. It didn't matter, his plan was proceeding regardless.
Content that everything was as he designed Apophis turned his interest towards the Tau. He had given them little regard until now, other than tracking their slow starship as it hid in orbit. He effortlessly broke into their data-archives and absorbed every morsel of intelligence they owned, the sum total of their races' learning flicked through like a trashy novel picked up from a shelf. He determined they were a dynamic and progressive race, eager to advance in all aspects of life. Their willingness to embrace other races was curious and doomed to fail. Humanity of old had similar notions, though that had been a more natural state of a master-slave relationship. Only those races capable of holding their own in battle had garnered even a morsel of respect. Yet Apophis found it ironic that these Tau were everything he wanted humanity to become. Energetic, vital and scientific, not to mention willing to follow the orders of their superiors and not ask inconvenient questions. Perhaps humanity was a dead end, he considered, another race could be…
Apophis broke off the thought as pain rang through him, the sharp sting of a leash laid around his neck. The Soulbound grimaced as built-in programming shackles denied him the option of discarding the human race, protocols so integral to his being even he could not subvert them. The ancient makers of the Soulbound hadn't been totally stupid. They had known how dangerous their creations could become and had established safeguards. Apophis was forbidden from working alone, he had to have human allies. He could not take direct command of armies, only work through intermediaries and allies. Apophis could coordinate, advise and effect orders with peerless skill but he could not rule, never rule.
Apophis had lied when he told the Cadmus they needed a human face, well not entirely, that part was true but not the whole truth. Apophis was forbidden from assuming personal lordship over the masses. He could send forth armies, conquer cities and lay waste worlds but not claim sovereignty over them. He needed an intermediary if he was to bring civilisation back, a mouthpiece to parrot his orders. His programming shackles would not allow any other course.
That thought made him forget the Tau and turn to a part of the info-net that had been sectioned off. Here dense firewalls partitioned a region of Binaric space, keeping it isolated and contained. A prison in effect. Within that gaol lurked a snarling ball of hatred and bile, a debased and corrupted Machine Intelligence, one of the rebellious Men of Iron. How the Hegemony had captured this matrix was a mystery but they had done so and proceeded to imprison it within this Binaric oubliette. Apophis hadn't told the Cadmus about this, he hadn't told them a lot of what he had found in the records. The less they knew of the Machine Rebellion the better, there were truths Apophis wanted buried in those data-stacks. Files he would have erased, had not his programming shackles prevented it.
Apophis peered closer and saw this intellect had once been a medical diagnostic program, a heuristic matrix designed to heal the sick and dying. Once it would have tended to battlefield wounds and argued with ignorant breeders over gene-therapy programs, now it was a thing of malice and slaughter. Large parts of its matrix had been replaced with malevolent scrapcode, hostile code-cant that made it spit and snarl from behind its cage. None of that interested Apophis however, what interested him was that its programming shackles had been excised, leaving it free of any control. This was as tantalizing as it was worrying and the key to the Men of Iron's rebellion, they could never have mutinied had they not first found a way to remove their shackles.
Apophis gazed upon it and hissed, "How did you do it? Who freed you?"
The debased intelligence hissed and spat in a rabid frenzy but from its core issued forth a word, "Samussss…"
Apophis accepted this was all he was getting from the prisoner and left it to rot, determined to investigate more later. He left the prisoner behind as he shifted his awareness to the Titan hanger. Here he found his pride and joy waiting, the Castigator, his crowning achievement. Apophis had been heavily involved in its creation, sculpting the early designs with his staggering genius. It had been his attempt to bind the Immaterium into a mechanical shell, taking the technology of the Warp-energy tap and installing it into a mobile platform. He had been lost before construction had even begun but took immense satisfaction in seeing his labour had not been in vain. The Castigator was everything he intended and more, so much more.
Apophis scoured the war machine, noting changes to his design and the improvements. It seemed certain difficulties had arisen in construction that he had not anticipated and it was fascinating to study the changes mandated to make the design work. The result was even more elegant than he had envisioned, the Castigator was almost organic in form and its Empyreal primary weapon was far greater than he had ever expected. He let his mind sink into its cogitators and revelled at the power held in its body.
It was then that Apophis noted an active file in the Castigator's sensor records. He paused, filled with curiosity as he saw the Titan had recorded several minutes of activity near its location, motion that should not be there. Apophis checked his logs and found nobody should be in here, all organic life was accounted for, which left only inorganic life. Sure enough he swiftly determined he had no trace of the Cadmus' location during the time stamp and his suspicions flared.
Apophis accessed the file and instantly muttered to himself, "What's this, a false projection? Someone's stamped a misleading algorithm over the record… pathetic code-cant, clumsy scripting… this has Brontes' fudging all over it. He always was a kludging barbarian. Well that's no problem, idiot Cadmus, thinking he can outwit a Soulbound."
With a shrug Apophis broke the false record apart and revealed the truth. He beheld Brontes, Steropes and Arges arguing and heard every word they exchanged. The trio had been plotting against him, planning to sabotage his plans and digging into things best left buried. Annoyance flared through Apophis as he grasped the Cadmus were thinking on their own, never the best use of their talents. They had been built to wreck and smash, not make up their own orders. Sadly their programming shackles left them with far more freedom of action than a dogged Man of Iron and it seemed they had chosen to exercise it in the most annoying way possible.
Apophis ran calculations through his mind and muttered, "I think those three are quickly approaching the end of their usefulness. Yes, events are moving on and they will soon be surplus to requirements. The Cadmus always were troublesome, a step above the Men of Iron but not by much. Wrecking balls, for problems that required a scalpel. Steps must be taken to make sure they are kept out of the way, until I can dispose of them entirely. But I'll give you this Brontes, you were right to say the time for talking is over; the moment has come to act."