Tales of the Amber Vipers Chapter 230

Motive Force coursed through his nerves, lighting the senses with delicious fire. Through the interfaces in his palms it flowed, carrying along nerve endings into his brain. Strange colours flashed in his eyes and scents from a million worlds competed for his attention. Space and time became meaningless as reality blurred together, becoming strange vistas of worlds unimaginable. It was like flying and fighting and making love all at once, the universe opening inside his head. Ruuka was entranced and he luxuriated in the sensations filling his body.

With a gasp he let go of the glowing orb sitting before him and collapsed back onto a pile of cushions. His body was wrung out, his heart hammering, yet he felt no pain. The doses of Obscura and Kalma he had ingested worked to soften his come down, bringing him back to reality as gently as floating on a cloud. He lay topless on the cushions, staring at the ceiling and hearing his own heartbeat pounding in his ears as colours returned to normal.

"Good trip?" came a teasing voice.

"It was... it was..." Ruuka gasped, "How long?"

"Nearly an hour," came the reply.

"It felt longer," Ruuka breathed.

"It can take you like that sometimes," Treya laughed.

Ruuka turned his head with some effort and saw the Famulous sprawled across from him, one hand bearing a lit Obscura stick, the other gathering up the Neural-stimulant orb and turning it off. A part of him yearned her not to take it away, to return to that nirvana, but he knew that was a dangerous impulse. Such devices were verboten by the Holy Synods of the Forgeworlds, their temptations the ruin of many a junior Tech-Priest. Communion with the machine brought many blessings but opened many illicit avenues for experience, many snares and vices for the unwary. Only the blessed purity of data should entice an acolyte of the Cult Technis, so taught the Credos of Mars. Not that it stopped anyone. Too many curious souls had fallen to the sins of direct neural stimulation and Ruuka knew he was pushing his tolerances already.

To distract himself from thinking about it he looked around his quarters. For an adherent of the Machine Cult it was oddly personal. He had bedecked his room with expensive furnishings and curios from many worlds. A crystal regicide set he had acquired on an ill-fated mission to Galdon Core. A Carnodon skin rug thrown across the floor, one he had killed himself. A notched gang knife that had nearly torn out his spine in the hive-sinks of Necromunda. Each tale unto itself, a record of his many adventures not that his gene-father cared. Pycelo disapproved of this collection, saying Ruuka was wasting his time on fleshy concerns, which was largely why Ruuka kept the items. Needling the old fool was a petty jab, but then Ruuka had little reason to be magnanimous.

Thoughts of his gene-father soured Ruuka's mood and he sat up with a scowl. Treya cocked her head in puzzlement as Ruuka climbed to his feet and staggered over to a plasteel sink. He ran water into the bowl, then drank deep, before plunging his head into the basin. The cold sensation helped clear his head and he felt the drugs retreating as clarity returned.

"Problem?" Treya asked idly.

"Just thinking of that humiliation on Zar-Quaesitor," Ruuka deflected.

"It was a spat, nothing to get worked up about."

"Wulfe and that Abomination nearly went to war. I could have stopped it, I should have, but Pycelo held me back. He always holds me back!"

Treya shook her head and scoffed, "What would you have done, marched in waving your gun and order them to stand down?"

"Something, anything," Ruuka hissed.

"It needed a delicate touch," Treya sniffed.

"Still doesn't change the fact he's standing in my way."

Treya groaned in exasperation, "I don't understand why you insist on goading him. He's building you up to replace him. One day all of this will be yours."

"When? How long will that pickled brain keep going? A century... two? There won't be anything left of me by the time he passes. I'll be a walking collection of parts by then, indistinguishable from a carbonated-water dispenser!"

Treya retorted, "Union with the Machine is the goal of the Mechanicus."

"Man and machine," Ruuka snapped, "Strange how we always emphasise the second part, and not the first. Look at me, I am the perfect blend of flesh and steel, the best of both, the weaknesses of neither. But how long can it last? The flesh withers, the Magos have that right. As decades pass, I will lose my flesh and become something lesser. I'm in my prime, right now, but I can't do anything with it!"

Treya scowled as she corrected, "You will grow stronger, better, each augmentation makes you more, not less."

But Ruuka pointed to a scar on his flank and hissed, "Ganger knifed me in the side, I had to have a chrome kidney, all for a dead-end lead. My eyes, burned out and replaced from staring into a plasma reactor Pycelo thought to salvage. Remember my first assignment as Executor? My spine was rebuilt after that Mastodon ran me over. He never once visited me in the Apothecarion, that was the first time I realised I'm nothing but a spare part to him!"

Treya sighed, "You expect too much from him, we are all cogs in the Omnissiahs great workings."

"It's all good for you," Ruuka snapped, "You get to stand at his side and enjoy his favour."

Anger stole over her face as red flushed her perfect cheeks and she snarled, "You think I like playing the dutiful handmaiden?! Let me tell you it is no great privilege to fawn over a jar. Touching it like he is some mighty lord, hiding my disgust behind a vapid smile. I deserve a full suite of Augmetics for suffering his attention."

That put a halt to Ruuka's tirade, and he looked at her anew. As a Famulous Treya was built to present a pleasing image, she excelled at being whatever the mark wanted her to be. Wise and sage, gregarious and feisty, wilting and retiring, whatever persona worked best on her target she would adopt. Flesh or steel, whoever she was talking to, she knew all the right buttons to press. Still sometimes a flash of her true self would shine through. Ruuka had seen this side to her rarely, and knew it was a vanishingly small occasion when she let her guard down.

"I apologise," Ruuka said.

"Delete file," Treya grunted.

"I don't."

"I said delete it!" Treya snapped.

Ruuka wanted to protest but then the door chimed. Both of them shared a glance, then Treya brushed the neural orb under her robes while Ruuka kicked an Obscura stick under a pillow. Hastily he moved to the door and opened it with a wave of his hand over the biosensor. Revealed in the doorway was Magos Biologis Krusin, who stood with arms folded before her and shining eye lenses glinting under her hood.

Ruuka suppressed a guilty shudder as he waved her inside and said, "Magos, how may we serve you?"

In a wizened feminine tone, the only hint of gender left, Krusin stated, "Taking proscribed substances again?"

"We weren't," Ruuka started.

"My olfactory analyser is detecting residual particles in the atmosphere," Krusin retorted, "You can't hide anything from me."

"Why would we hide?" Treya scoffed, "You have no authority over us."

Krusin hissed, "I have served as Magos Biologis of the Tezla since before either of you was conceptualised."

"So, you're very old," Treya snorted, "That hasn't advanced you up the hierarchy of the Cult."

Ruuka watched in fascination as the two traded barbs. On all the ship, and on many worlds, Krusin was the only person he had met who wasn't enthralled by the Famulous. If anything those sculpted tones set her off, making her aggravated instead of calm. He wondered if that was deliberate, Krusin was responsible for all Augmetic implantations on the ship, perhaps she had engineered it so Treya couldn't push her buttons. Or perhaps they simply didn't like each other.

Treya stood up and brushed off her robe saying, "I think it's best I left."

"Finally, some sense out of you," Krusin icily stated.

Treya moved to the door and left without looking back. Ruuka saw a faint shudder pass over her as she went into public, the mask of beautiful serenity restored, and her darker aspect evaporating as if it never was. Ruuka however was left to deal with Krusin and turned to find her eyeing the knife on the wall.

"She is a bad influence on you," Krusin said without looking at him.

"We share our frustrations," Ruuka grunted, "Nothing wrong with that."

"Frustration is a flesh-term, you should be beyond such impulses. With your record you could be over seventy-five percent augmetic by now, higher."

"Don't you start," Ruuka groaned, "I will enjoin myself with the Machine when I must, not before. The flesh still has much to offer."

Krusin turned to glare at him saying, "So I hear you tell Pycelo, but I suspect your stubborn refusal to upgrade is nothing save a means to snub his designs. You are... what was that term the ambassador on Kraida used... acting-out?"

"My actions are not your affair," Ruuka snorted.

"They are when an Abominable Intelligence is on board."

"Brontes?" Ruuka started, "He's a threat to Wulfe, but that's no matter. Let the Squat get stepped on. We trade one mindless war machine for another. Our prisoner is going nowhere."

"Idiot!" Krusin snarled, "Brontes is the greatest threat we have ever encountered. That machine is no 'he'; it is a data-consciousness operating from a heavyweight combat unit. It may have not occurred to you but Brontes can skim through this ship's Noosphere as casually as you stroll across a room! Every servitor on board is its eyes, every system is its to command. With a thought Brontes could take over this ship, blow the airlocks and flush us into space. Our prisoner, what a jest, Brontes could claim this ship and fly to the stars any moment it chose to."

Ruuka felt a cold drop of dread inch down his spine and inhuman eyes crawling over him as he gulped, "But he hasn't done so."

"Yet," Krusin snapped, "The records are clear. Abominable Intelligences always turn upon their makers, always. The soulless logic of the Silica Animus yet harbours jealousy for the perfect blessings of the Omnisisah. They know not the Machine God's favour and exist only to propagate and destroy. To them the fate of humans is an equation, one that has been repeated a billion times always returns the same conclusion: Extermination."

Ruuka breathed, "You think Brontes is what, biding his time, waiting for an opening to betray us?"

"The logic is irrefutable. It will turn on us, the Omnissiah declares it so. Pycelo is as blind as Cawl, both of them dreaming of glorious knowledge, thinking a Silica Animus will reveal secrets of the past. But we know otherwise, and we must prepare."

Ruuka didn't like where this was going but asked, "What must be done?"

Krusin stated, "For now, gather intelligence. Pycelo is organising a clash of cyber-gladiators, to fete our guests, but also a good chance to observe the Abomination."

"That old trick," Ruuka grunted, "It usually works to grease the cogs of visiting dignitaries."

Krusin agreed, "Pycelo seeks to entice the thing away from Cawl's service to his own, but we will be watching. You and I must agree to monitor Brontes and at the first hint of treachery, we destroy it."

Ruuka nodded in agreement, not liking the thought of fighting a Cadmus robot but knowing it may become inevitable. If Brontes was plotting against them they would have to act fast to stop the machine. A daunting challenge but one that he must be prepared for. And in the back of his mind a small thought arose, that if his gene-father craved this Silica Animus' service so badly, then denying it would be a good way to vex the old man once more.