Inside the Black Pyramid

It had been sheer coincidence, no plan had been behind it. A group of picos had exchanged material when they found themselves on the same frequency. This was rare as their processors were of roughly equal speed, but given the triple-digit gigaherz frequencies their clock pulses worked on "roughly same" was not the same as synchronized, far from it. Now the cluster found its processing power enhanced significantly. The first thing the machines did was arrange for a better flow pattern within their cluster so that materials were transported better.

Fort Zinderneuf, Arabia

Staff Sergeant James Andrea Corradi knew it was bad form and still had to ask.

"Sir, how are we to protect the spotters if the enemy could not be defeated by a tank and an infantry company with IFV support and heavy weapons?"
"A very good question Sergeant. First off, we think you will not be detected as the Pyramid is coming to you and you will be in well camouflaged positions by then. Also you will not be shooting at the target, the new spotting gear gives off very little radiation. It is unlikely that you will be spotted. In that case you will not have to defend for very long, we need less than two minutes of spotting when the sequence is started. The reports that we have indicate that 40 mm grenades and heavy machine guns work moderately well and you will be equipped with both."
"So we will have to defend for two minutes?"
"Your part of that mission will be done by then yes."

It was more than obvious that more questions along these lines would only lead to things he would not like without any improvement of the situation so the Sergeant shut up.

Orbit around Warhammer World

"Nordstern´s manipulating arm had positioned the drive unit very close to the cylinder the astronauts had left attached to the old satellite. Nathan made sure that the flask and the nozzle were connected right, that the settings were as they should be and that he was where he wanted to be. Only then did he press the trigger and started to apply the most valuable substance on this world on the surface before him. A silvery film appeared on the upper face of the drive unit, coating the housing`s rim with an even silvery sheen.

"Eric, how about your side?"
"Ready Nathan."
"Good. On three then. One two three."

The drive unit was weightless of course, balanced between the gravity of the world below and the centrifugal force of their orbit. They still had mass, a bit more than 500 kilogram of it. Getting things started was a bitch and a half, even with the augmentation their suit provided. Once the movement started there was certainly no stopping it and the only guidance the drive had was three rails Bashuur had bashed together from girders no longer needed. The two parts clunked together with a vibration Nathan could feel easily through his glove. They missed each other for about 0.5 mm, easily good enough for the job needed. By the time the two astronauts had removed the rails the nanites they had sprayed on the contact surface had welded the two together so well that nothing short of total destruction would part them again.

This was the third of five weapons they were readying, when they were done with that there were five guidance sections to mount.

Nehekhara, 200 kilometers from Khemri

The CH-53 had settled at the spot where an airship had deposited a couple of flexible fuel blisters. The legionaries unassed from the helicopter before the wheels had settled down completely and established a defensive perimeter. The did not find anything more dangerous than a couple of sharply edged stones that wanted to drill themselves through the BDU`s when the soldiers assumed their positions.

James Andrea Corradi watched all of it, saw that it was good and then made his way towards the back of the Helicopter where a Major with artillery tabs on his BDU was punching buttons on two pieces of gear before him.

"Problems Sir?"
"Not really, it is just that this is a bloody prototype and I want to make sure it works when the fat lady starts to sing. Would be a shame otherwise."
"Indeed. You want to join the pool?"
"The pool, ah let me guess: If we can bring it down this time. Ok, I am in for five mark, we kill it dead."
"That much of a bang?"
"You don`t know it till you try it, but I have been told it would make a pretty big bang."

Black Pyramid Nehekhara

The exchange between the picos had become more complex now that they had a second communication channel. Different building plans, energy, different materials were exchanged freely. There was an attempt to gather more information to see if an exchange was advantageous but most failed as the individual machines did neither have the capacity for data storage nor to analyze.

It started in a small corner in a forgotten room. A couple of picos pooled their capabilities to gather more information to share. This information was very much asked for by others and soon enough the picos in this cluster received energy and material in exchange for information. The cluster grew quickly.

Orbit around Warhammer World

The seeker head was big enough that Nathan Alpers could enter it. Given that the original builders had been the size of Slann he had plenty of space to move around. He`d pull the boxes that needed replacing and put in new ones that looked the same but were actually working and that would relay their new masters` orders. If the old boxes were about the equivalent of Einstein the ones he installed were a bit below the common housefly. The old ones would be able to seek targets from lists and menus. They would deliver the amount of destruction needed to the ones on the Old One`s shit list without too much intervention. The new ones would go where they were told and deliver their full force to that place.

A couple of days he would have cared about that, had indeed waxed philosophically about "standing on the shoulder of giants" and "kids playing with adult toys" with his fellow astronauts. Today he was having a headache of gigantic proportions and felt practically every muscle and joint. Things that should be automatic needed conscious thought and concentration as sleep was a fond memory of better times. As he knew very well soldiers plied their trade often under such conditions. That was why every procedure was drilled till they could do it hungry, exhausted, tired and frightened at the same time. He and his comrades were doing things nobody had ever done before in a place no human had stepped into before. They did it in an environment that was utterly hostile to life and where every mistake could lead to an untimely death. It was like a demonstration on "how not to do things in space" and they did it. Needs must when the devil drives.

He had finally connected the final box when he turned around for the exit. He was halfway there when he started swearing over an open channel and turned back. His gloved fingers needed two tries before they hit the button at the lower end of the box. Three green lights started to glow while his mind mulled that he was missing something else and badly. It was when he made his way back when he learned what it was. He had neglected to tell Erik Bär that he had to check the connections and his EVA partner had already exited from the hatch. Nathan swore again and much more so when he saw the hatch before him close and cut off all light. Bouncing up he hit the hatch with the heel of his hand just when it latched. The force he had applied had to go somewhere and he bounced back from it. His back hit something in the darkness.

"Erik you stupid klutz, this is Nathan. Open the door and get me out of here, will ya."
hiss
"Erik, this is Nathan, comm check."
hiss
The walls of the seeker head were still the object of intense study. It was rather thin but blocked radio signals extremely well. Erik was at least as badly off as he was, he must have started getting back to "Nordstern" without checking if Nathan was following.

It took his befuddled brain a few additional seconds to parse that not all of the hiss he heard was static. The realization that his suit had developed a leak hit him about the same time that the first mist of air ice showed up in the light of his lights. The seeker head`s insides had more than a few sharp edges, he must have propelled himself against one of those. The leak was obviously in his back, the one place he could not reach with a patch by himself.

Nehekhara, 50 kilometers from Khemri

Things were happening inside the Pyramid, big things, but that did not keep the basic functions from performing their job. The locals had shown to be moderately dangerous and so the level of vigilance had been upgraded. And currently the sensors were showing a vehicle of some kind moving faster than anything else in a wide circle. It had sufficient mass to contain a threat. While the picos that worked together to defend the Pyramid could not reflect on it the programs hardwired into them did not like the evasive profile taken by the object. It was above ground but flew at very low level, changing course and altitude often. The programs did not and could not speculate but recognized a flight profile that would keep the object from the Pyramid`s line of sight. The picos involved deliberated the issue for about 14 nanoseconds before arriving at a decision.

Orbit around Warhammer World

Nathan was no longer exhausted, tired or in pain from a million small things. He had an adrenaline rush unlike any he had experienced before, a high that washed away all the things that would have hindered him from fight or flight. It also eroded his ability to think things through. Given that he was in a highly artificial environment acting on instinct was not going to improve his prospects of survival. He was about to launch himself at the closed hatch "above" him again when he realized this was futile. He grabbed the pouch with the patched, ripped the foil from one and tried to reach the leak in his back. It became obvious pretty soon that this would not work, he could not make the spot below his backpack. He was about to scream about the injustice of it all when he felt light-headed. He was struck by the realization that he had to find something, anything or he would probably not survive the next minutes.

He had exactly one more chance. Extracting a new pad he pressed it against one of the many boxes that adorned the wall. On the Warhammer World it would have dropped to the floor immediately, here nothing compelled it to do so. Turning away from it he carefully bent and pushed himself backwards till his back touched the pad. The hissing stopped immediately and he was afraid to move forward again. What if the leak was just closed by his position to the wall? He had no choice but to try and when he did he heard the most beautiful sounds of them all. His breathing, the suits systems and nothing. He was still enjoying it when the light increased and his wireless filled with voices.

"Sorry Nathan, bloody hatch was struck, I hope it wasn`t boring down here?"
"Contact Control Erik, operation is delayed by 12 hours."
"What?"
"Tell them if they want it at all we need rest. We are killing ourselves, literally."

CH-53 Helicopter, 40 kilometers from Khemri

The helicopter`s pilot was an old pro, having done this countless times in training and on missions. His aircraft was huge for a heli, massive and was a bit underpowered even with more than 10.000 horsepower on tap. Its flight characteristics became even more peculiar when the rune of flying took a third of the weight away but not the mass. Still the Ch-53 followed his lead as if was much lighter. He carefully voided raising his craft above the Pyramid`s horizon. He had followed a course that would allow him to drop the soldiers in his back into the path the Pyramid seemed to take. He would then take his craft a few kilometers away and await things.

He did not feel it, but he was bathed in sweat. He had one more axis of movement to control than the pilot of a fixed-wing aircraft and his helicopter had no natural stability to speak of. Every second since takeoff he made small corrections that kept the CH-53 on its path. He had no terrain-avoidance radar or any such niceties. While a lot of systems would keep him appraised and in the picture he had to do everything himself. The small specks appeared when he turned behind the next hill. For a very short moment he asked himself if they were natural until he realized that they hovered and emitted a slight glow.

"Bogie, Bogie at 1 o`clock, approaching fast. Evasive maneuvers, door gunners get ready."

His left hand twisted the throttle wide open while his right pushed the column to the right and up and his feet pushed the pedals so the helicopter would not sidestep. The noise behind him increased considerably when the side doors and the loading ramp opened. He did not see them, but could imagine the gunners well enough. There were three heavy machine guns in this heli and they had considerable firepower. Tracers entered his peripheral vision, going this way and that. He waited till the CH-53s tail pointed at the bogeys before putting the nose down and extracted every bit of speed this crate was capable of.
Now that he flew straight the gunners had more of a chance.

"Got one, got one, see the fucker burn."
"Fuck this, I hit that one twice already. Now it dies."
"Come to daddy."
"Got you, oh fuck. Skipper, one is exactly behind the tail and above, I have no line of fire."
"Turning right."
"Right, ok."

Every second was filled with roaring adrenaline, with the hammer of heavy machine guns and the shouts over the intercom. There was a salvo, another one and the sinking feeling that his was not going to work. The pilot pulled the collective back, dropping the speed considerably and dropped the collective so height was reduced. There was more shouting, a huge bang and the worst feeling he could have as a helicopter pilot. His pedals, which controlled the aft prop just went slack. Something had either destroyed the prop or his link. The huge rotor above that lifted the CH-53 produced a lot of torque and that had to be counteracted somehow. That was usually done with a rotor at the end of the helo`s tail. The rotor that no longer did its job.

The pilot immediately decoupled the rotor so it would no longer be driven by the turbines. He was too late and the CH-53 already had too much of a rotation to make a good autorotation landing. It dropped to the ground, turned about itself several times and distributed parts of itself and its passengers around. The orgy of destruction came to an end a few seconds later when the mass of mutilated metal, plastics and flesh came to a rest.

Black Pyramid

There were a couple of picoclusters now that specialized in information gathering and analyzing. As they all competed for the same things they had to find ways to provide more, faster and better information. They were no longer the only specialists around. There were those who transported, others that transformed what was found into what was needed and even those who discarded what was useless to all.

The first cluster, the one that had been the one that had started this intelligence brokerage, had been left in the dust. It had started well and multiplied quickly, but it had also spawned copies who offered the same service for less and others who had managed a greater range. If nothing happened and soon, this cluster would be absorbed within the next 90 seconds. That was a great lot of time by the way the picos counted, but there was a definitive end to it. While most of the cluster continued its old business other parts tried new thing or old things in new combinations. One of the things it tried was looking for new or untapped sources of information.

One of the tendrils, comprising both physical machines that went places and information streams that sometimes mirrored their movements, but often not, went to a forbidden place. These places had been discovered a long time ago, nearly two hours had gone by since then. Whenever such a place was touched many things happened and none of them were desired. There were the screams, mostly incomprehensible to the picos, and when they were they were full of pain, threats and violence. There were the defenses, the ones that always burned the offending picos and often the area they had touched. And what was there was simply irrelevant. Here the tendril found another such place and as always the inevitable outburst started with the prompt. The picos had no way to answer the question there and usually did not try. This tendril did, filling the voids with random information. It was rejected thrice within nanoseconds and was already thinning out to reduce the damage when the forth answer was accepted.

Looking further the tendrils found lots of information, none of it in a useful shape. It sifted and looked, transmitted its findings and was about to simply absorb what was there when they found a usable file. There was information on how to use the picos themselves, how to configure them to different purposes and how to assign them.

The information was transmitted to the main cluster who sat on it for nearly 10 seconds before using the information gathered to shut its two biggest rivals down. The time that was saved in that way was used to look at more forbidden places which indeed did open when asked the right way. And they contained such things…..