Tales of the Amber Vipers Chapter 225
The boy was tinkering with the disgusting cyborg-slaves again, muttering under his breath all the while. It was annoying but Brontes put up with it, better than engaging in idle chatter. Despite what Kerubim thought Brontes was anything but offline, he'd merely feigned a low-power state to observe without distraction. Kerubim would be surprised to learn that Brontes didn't hold him in contempt, disappointment yes, like a slow child unable to keep up, but not outright hatred. The boy showed promise, he had an inquisitive mind and restless spirit. In a more enlightened age he could have thrived but it was his misfortune to be born into an era of blinkered dogma where idiots clung to their ignorance as if it could protect them from the horrors of the outer dark.
Kerubim laboured on as Brontes mused on the irony that the boy was trapped in the heart of one of the most advanced starships of this age, yet cut off from any of its hoarded knowledge. But thankfully that was not an issue for a Silica Animus. Their jail cell was in essence a Faraday cage, cutting off any external signals, yet the fools had only gone and implanted several pict-lens and vox-thieves into the walls. They thought they were cunning, that nobody would notice the hidden eyes, but in their feeble efforts at being sly they had only gone and drilled holes through the cage that held Brontes.
With a flicker of code-cant Brontes piggybacked a signal into the Binaric flow of information, linking his operating system to the ship's Noosphere. He may not be Soulbound but he was still an Artificial Intelligence, Binaric information was the air he breathed. Bypassing the shoddy firewalls the bone-rattlers had erected was childsplay. Brontes mind left his prison without anyone being the slightest bit aware and went for a stroll in his captor's most treasured hallow.
The realm Binaric would have been incomprehensible to one not indoctrinated into the Cult Technis, but to Brontes it was natural. The Zar-Quaesitor's Noosphere was incredibly powerful, crude and simple, but potent. No Soulbound operated the ship but the scope was staggering nonetheless, more akin to a force of nature than a personality. Information flowed like currents in an ocean, active system reports and strategic updates crossing in a dizzying array of dataflows that could send the unwary traveller spinning out of control. Plasma reactors thundered like an underwater volcano, generating flurries of activity all around and threatening to burn anything that got too close.
In the darkest depths of the Noosphere lurked hidden treasures, vaults of data-storage that had gone unopened since the fall of the ancient stellar empires, guarded by the pressure of centuries of accumulated data bearing down upon them. The absurdity of this amused Brontes, Zar-Quaesitor was built on the bones of a far older vessel, a Long-March colony vessel of Old Earth, such as had founded stellar realms like the Hegemony, Ultramar, Interex, the Golden Fields and more. The Martian bone-rattlers journeyed across the galaxy in pursuit of lost lore, little grasping they stood upon a trove of data beyond their wildest dreams.
Brontes turned his attention to the nexus of dataflows, not the bridge but the true heart of this vessel: Belisarius Cawl. In the Noosphere he sat like an octopus, many arms reaching out to ensnare passing bites of information. Whatever his physical body was doing his mind was thoroughly engaged, sifting reports, processing responses and dispensing orders. Brontes however was less interested in what he was doing than what he was.
Cawl's mind was an amalgam of consciousnesses and memories, sourced from dozens of individuals. His intellect was a hodgepodge of many parts, thrown together out of various beings, frayed reasoning and lost bits of memory replaced by fresh ones. He was even splitting off sub-units of himself, creating replicae Cawls so to be in multiple places at once. It was doubtful much remained of the original being called Belisarius Cawl, a few scraps of memory, a handful of personality algorithms, not much else. In his quest for immortality the man called Cawl had destroyed himself, replacing his essence with something less than human and in no way sane.
Brontes' ancient makers had a term for this sort of existence: a Quagmire. To them it had been a punishment, reserved for criminal geniuses and those whose brilliance laughed at any notion of morals or a greater good. Their inventive skill could be preserved while the essence of themselves was stretched across centuries, growing thinner and less coherent as time ground by, a punishment his makers consider most dire. The ancients had enjoyed centuries long-lives, but shunned the pursuit of immortality. Death was neither to be feared nor glorified, the only true path to eternity had been to build a legacy that would endure. How far humanity had fallen, Brontes lamented, sacrificing all thoughts of progress and nobility for a cult that worshipped a corpse on a throne of gold.
Disappointed Brontes left Cawl to his myriad tasks, steering through the currents of the Binaric realm to a smaller sub-forum. Here he found a tangled weave of exchanges, a furious debate among several dozen minor bone-rattlers. Brontes slipped into the conversation with ease, provoking no alarm. He had spent much of the last year building a persona in the Noosphere, creating a façade that would allow him to interact via Binaric speech. 'Magos Bronnes' was registered as a minoris overseer in the port gundecks, he had records of his transfer to the Forgeship, training in the seminaries of Olympus Mons and a dated list of Augmetic upgrades, as well as hidden connections to the radical sect of the Sons of the New Cog. Anyone looking to pry would find only a dutiful, if somewhat opinionated Tech-priest, the only way to uncover the ruse would be to walk down to the gundecks and ask to speak to him, which unsurprisingly none of the bone-rattlers thought to try.
"Surely the correct number is five!" expounded a bombastic Tech-priest called Darule in the forum.
"The sacred text disagrees!" another called Kulor refuted, "Read the file, the Omnnissiah demands six!"
"That datafile is Apocryphal," Darule argued, "Since time immemorial the number has been five. Who are you to question tradition?!"
"Sacrilege! Data is Holy, all Knowledge is divine, so teaches the Universal Laws. The text demands six, so one may stand witness!"
"Do not quote the Universal Law at me you sprog; I was studying the Sacred Mysteries before you were gifted your first Augmetic!"
Another called Lihye butted in, "Fools! You are reading the text in base-6, but in base-10 the language refers to the Happy Primes, thus seven is correct!"
"You leave Happy Primes out of this!" came the irate response.
Brontes sighed in weariness as he found the forum unchanged. This debate had been raging for six months, various speakers rising and falling at random. They were debating the significance of a datafile, which claimed the correct number of Tech-priests required to perform an oil change on a tank was six, rather than the traditional five. Six months of furious argument, factionalism and entrenched viewpoints shouting over each other. It was tragic, ignorance and stubborn pride running wild, all over a datafile Brontes had written in a couple of hours and slipped into the datastream. It had been an experiment, to test these self-proclaimed savants and they had conformed to Brontes' low expectations.
A private message request probed at him, "I note your return to the discussion."
"Magos Dannye," Brontes' facsimile replied, "The debate has not progressed at all."
"Beware of haste," Dannye scolded, "It has only been six months, why the Theological debate over the Crusader pattern Land Raider lasted well over two centuries."
"A moot issue by that point," Brontes countered after a second's searching of the reference, "Since the Space Marines had been deploying it routinely for a century and a half by then."
"True!" Dannye replied colouring his code-cant with mirth, "You do have a way to cut to the root source of a matter."
Brontes affected a humble response, not wishing to offend, or rather the persona he had adopted would not wish to aggravate so highly-placed a Magos. Dannye was one of Cawl's inner circle, a very highly placed disciple, entrusted with many secrets. He was one of a handful who knew of Brontes and Kerubim, and stalking his Binaric steps was one of Brontes' primary pastimes. He found Dannye agreeably blunt and aggressive, a Dominus of Skitarii hordes, configured for combat operations. A hidebound reactionary and power-hungry individual, which meshed well with the ambitious personality Brontes used as a cover. Dannye was also a spy for one of the various power blocs that riddled the Mechanicus, hardly surprising since most of the ship's crew were spies for one faction or another, yet he had not chosen to reveal Brontes' existence to Mars, no doubt hoarding the knowledge for his own political gain.
"Have you heard more from the wider galaxy?" Brontes prompted, knowing the Magos was well-placed to intercept reports from outside Zar-Quaesitor.
"I may have," Dannye demurred, "Did your source tell you what the retrieval mission found?"
Brontes knew well that nothing came for free, so had invented a source in the data-archives and said, "The scouting party accessed the lost ship's navigation array and brought back coordinates to a mysterious locale."
"What locale?"
"Unknown, but worth losing a hundred Skitarii for."
"Acceptable losses," Dannye sniffed, "But that vessel was priceless, the archeotech within should have been brought back for study!"
"That is beyond my remit, but what is the most recent report?"
Dannye sighed, "Much news and all of it bad. The Indomitus Crusade reports far higher losses of Primaris than projected, Cawl's vaults begin to run dry. The Pariah Nexus grows in the Nephilim Sector, and Cawl shows intense interest in the mysterious artefacts reported within. Crusade Fleet Septimus continues its elusive mission, any report is instantly classified at the highest level. Primarch Thirteen moves to end the Plague Wars raging in Ultramar, prepares to cross the Cicatrix Maledictum to reach Imperium Nihilus and signals victory over Baal."
That gave Brontes pause and he queried, "Wait, how can he be in three places at once?"
But Dannye snorted, "That is the least concerning event since the Great Rift opened. Time is broken, so whisper many in the Forge Synods of Mars. Sectors report that the rift has just opened, or that it has been visible for centuries or that it has not opened yet. Some reports say the Indomitus Crusade has just launched from Terra, others that it has been completed for decades. The Warp always made a mockery of Chronometrics, but now any sense of orderly progression is shattered. Any attempt to pin down Primarch Thirteen is sheer guesswork at this point."
Brontes fell silent as he chewed on that. He cared nothing for the Imperium or its leadership. This Primarch everyone talked about was either the greatest genius of the age or a fool spitting into the wind. Brontes wasn't even sure what he was, some form of organic Soulbound was his best guess. As for the Emperor, Brontes didn't think he existed, not in the way the fleshbags did. Some proto-mythic figure of legend, ascribed overblown feats of superhuman strength and intellect. If he'd done one-tenth of the things laid at his feet then he was most astonishing individual in history. Brontes reckoned the being called Emperor was probably a number of historic names, merged by blurred retellings, until all forgot the truth. There was as much fact in the Emperor's lifestory as Kig Artur or Robern Hood.
Dannye however continued, "Distressing news from the Navigators, the Astronomican has faded another 0.00015 percent."
"Troubling," Brontes deflected.
"A disaster in the making!" Dannye snarled, "We depend on that beacon for starflight, without it we are lost."
Brontes had other opinions, the Hegemony had managed without an Astronomican. True the stellar realms of yesteryear had never rivalled the Imperium for size, but that hadn't been an issue, Multiple sovereign states had flourished, embracing a diversity of thought, instead of one oppressive bureaucracy of Empire. In his view losing the stifling rule of Terra would be no grave concern.
Still he mused, "Surely Cawl is aware of this danger."
"Possibly, he has shown an increasing obsession with Blackstone. Perhaps he thinks an alternative can rise out of that curious material."
"You think he plans to replace the Astronomican?" Brontes probed.
"It must surely be an objective; I cannot imagine the Magos Dominus is content to leave the Imperium dependent on one faltering beacon."
Their conversation was cut off as the Noosphere surged, followed seconds later by flurries of data-reports. Power graphs spiked across the ship, Astrogation telemetry shifted, auspex sweeps began fresh probes of near-space and servitors were commanded to increase energy distribution to key nodes. There was only one thing that could cause this, the main drives were lighting, pushing Zar-Quaesitor out of orbit and into deep space.
"Cawl steers a new course," Dannye observed, "Fresh discoveries await us."
"Let us wait and see," Brontes muttered, "I would not get too excited until we find out what Cawl is planning."