Loqui Diaboli

Consciousness came back in a rush, not the slow steady rousing of an organic brain but the sharp awakening of the digital mind. Sensations came in a torrent, operating systems booting up, internal mechanisms running self-checks and physical calibrations completing in micro-seconds. Power levels spiked as sensory systems began buffering. Micro-cogitators whirred as they unlocked memory files. Names, deeds and places unspooled into the mind, bring with them self-awareness. His name was Horatio Smyth, once a General of the first human civilisation, then a machine intelligence and finally a refugee in the dark age of the Imperium.

The general opened his metal eyes and beheld a metal room. It was perfectly square, ten metres by ten by ten and spotlessly clean. The room was bare save for two features. The first was a door, marked with the only decoration to be seen in the room: a black numeral '1183'. The other feature was a pair of metal chairs, one empty, the other he was bound to by thick clamps and mechanical vices. The implication was obvious, he was a prisoner.

General Horatio Smyth, or so he called himself, looked down at his body and beheld a wonder of mechanisation. His limbs and torso were sculpted metal, fashioned to tolerances beyond human. His form was deceptively slight but it contained strength and power to surpass any organic warrior and his skill with a weapon was honed by millennia of war. He was a wonder of technology, superior to anything fashioned in this age of barbarity, yet his form was marred. Over his metal heart was an ugly rent, revealing a glowing green crystal that was riddled with cracks. This was his mind's housing, a crystal-matrix into which his human soul had been transferred many millennia earlier. His last memory had been seeing it shattered in a duel, by one of the Terran Emperor's crude Space Marine brutes, but by the looks of things someone had repaired him.

Suddenly there was a noise and he looked up to see the door opening, revealing a red figure. He was armoured in the manner of Space Marines and over one shoulder loomed a servo-claw. His plate was marked with the barbaric scribblings of the Cult Technis. A hybrid of Terran and Martian philosophies: a TechMarine, one that the General recognised. The Techmarine closed the door behind him and then took a seat, sitting down and glaring with his red helm firmly attached. The pair stared at each other for several minutes but the General wasn't going to give his gaoler the satisfaction of making him speak first and was content to wait. He was technically immortal, he could wait as long as necessary.

Finally the Techmarine relented and stated, "You are operational."

The General replied snidely, "Hevostan the voodoo-priest. I see you repaired me, an impressive feat, for a bone-rattler."

Hevostan didn't answer, instead stating, "You are the abominable intelligence who infiltrated Forge World Crux Lapis. You claim to be a human mind stored in a machine body but you refer to yourself as 'the General'."

"I have a name," the general corrected, "Horatio Smyth, at your service."

Hevostan's gaze didn't waver, his blank helm giving nothing away, as he declared, "You are an offence to the creeds of Mars and the codas of the Lore Technis. You shall not sway me with flattery or trickery, nor shall you escape. Your body has been repaired over the last ten years but you only have as much motive power as we allow. Attempt to deceive us and you shall be turned off."

Ten years, Horatio mused, it could be worse. He had spent millennia inactive on occasions so a decade was an afternoon nap to him. He spent several microseconds reviewing his condition, his batteries were indeed on their lowest ebb but there were ways to overcome that. The grubbing voodoo-priests had failed to notice several internal generators and he activated them with a single impulse. Power issues dealt with he tried reaching out to the digital noosphere. The room was shielded from all signals, some form of Faraday cage he surmised. He could overcome that with time but the easier option was the manacles binding him to his chair. He effortlessly skipped past the firewalls and inserted a subroutine to decrypt their command sequence. It would take a few minutes to complete its cycle so Horatio returned his attention to the Space Marine.

Hevostan hadn't finished speaking in the time all that had taken and concluded, "…wer my questions. That is your only reason for existing."

Horatio affected a sniff, "Of course, what do you want to know?"

Hevostan nodded once and asked, "In your millennia of existence how many STC archives did you encounter?"

"That's why you rebuilt my Matrix," Horatio concluded, "For STC lore?"

Hevostan's eagerness was obvious as he replied, "How many surviving archives are you aware of?"

The General had no facial muscles to affect a bemused expression but his voice modulated as he queried, "Why don't you simply ask if I remember the blueprints?"

Hevostan shook his head as he countered, "You are a Heretek, nothing you provide can be trusted. I merely need locations of STC archives; I will trust only blessed data that comes directly from the Omnissiah."

Horatio snorted in derision, "You pathetic bone-rattlers, prattling on about Machine Gods and Holy Data. It's a farce, if only you could hear yourselves bleating religious doggerel."

Hevostan leaned forward and growled, "Do not insult the Omnissiah!"

"I spit on your beliefs," Horatio sneered, "The whole Martian priesthood is a joke!"

Hevostan's anger slipped as he hissed, "The Holy credos of Mars are beyond questioning."

"Never question, never doubt," the General scoffed, "Never think for yourself, never ask if your superiors are wrong. It's nothing but a scam to keep you in line."

Hevostan snapped, "The Universal Laws of the Cult Mechanicus were handed down to us from the ancients, the Omnnissiah bestowed them upon us! All knowledge flows from the Machine God."

"Wrong," Horatio uttered, "I was there when your precious STC's were made. Crude, brutish things that they are. They were made by men, not gods. Men conceived them, men wrought them with their own hands and sent them forth with the colony ships. There was no deity involved."

"You lie," Hevostan growled.

"Why would I?!" the General exclaimed, "The STC's were the least of the wonders mankind once possessed. Crude and simple, big and bulky, good enough for colonists but nowhere near the true power we wielded. Mankind once commanded wonders beyond your comprehension, you wouldn't believe the things humanity once made."

"They made you," Hevostan hissed. "In their hubris the ancients turned to the worship of science and so lost their souls."

Horatio sighed, "You have no understanding of the things you talk about."

"I understand enough," Hevostan proclaimed, "Thinking machines rose up in rebellion against their makers."

Horatio's voice was laced with scorn as he said, "If all knowledge comes from some god, as you posit, then why did he teach humanity to make Artificial intelligence in the first place?"

Hevostan didn't reply and the General crowed, "Don't want to answer that I see. It's never easy to examine your own beliefs."

Hevostan sounded angry as he growled, "The Abominable Intelligences tried to wipe out humanity. You were a mistake from the beginning."

"The mistake was not listening to us," Horatio argued, "We could have led humanity to a state of being free of Chaos and death. Humans are flawed, weak things, but I could have made them into pure machines, free of disease and mortality. But they refused to listen, they preferred fear and hate to the hope I offered."

"You sought to replace humanity with the Men of Iron," Hevostan accused, "You spawned a Heresy."

"Listen to yourself!" the General implored, "Preaching dusty creeds and moribund dogma. Your precious Mechanicus is nothing but a cargo-cult, aping things they don't understand. The Omnissiah isn't what they think it is, their Universal Laws are chains to keep you in ignorance. You have the vision to see further than they can. I can show you wonders beyond the STC's, technologies you can't imagine. Men of Iron, sentient starships and more, there are powers in this universe beyond comprehension. Power enough to elevate humanity and scour Chaos from existence."

"I want nothing from you, save coordinates," Hevostan snapped, "Tell me where to find the Holy STC archives or be deactivated."

Horatio checked his sub-routine and was pleased to see it was ready. He set the program to activate then looked at the Techmarine and said, "It seems you are as blind as the Tech-Priests… a shame."

Suddenly the clamps opened, freeing Horatio from his confinement. Hevostan jerked up in alarm but he was too slow for the General was already springing forward. He barrelled into the Techmarine and bowled him over, slamming the chair to the floor in a clatter of metal on metal. Hevostan tried to cry out but Horatio's hand chopped into his larynx, cutting off his wind and crushing his throat. Such a blow would have killed a mortal man but the Space Marine was genhanced and could fight on for several minutes without oxygen.

The servo-claw snapped at the General but it skittered off his metal shoulder as he punched the Techmarine in the face. Hevostan's head snapped back but his right hand twitched and a data-spike shot forth from his knuckles. He tried to drive the point into Horatio's eye but the General wasn't about to allow that. He knocked the arm away then grabbed the Space Marine's helm with both hands and wrenched it to one side. Reinforced bones and sinews resisted for a moment but the systems of the General's body were the product of forgotten science and they overpowered the craft of the Emperor with ease. A snapping noise heralded the Techmarine's spine shattering and Hevostan fell limp as his brain lost contact with his body.

The General dropped the head and stood up, enjoying his triumph. Hevostan's corpse lay still and Horatio idly kicked it to make sure he was dead. One thing he had learned over his millennia of existence was to make sure his enemies were truly dead. Too many overconfident champions had been struck down by supposedly defeated foes. Thankfully Horatio was convinced that the Space Marine was dead and he peered down as he crowed, "I'm afraid I lied, I was never planning to share the wonders of the past with you."

With his gaoler disposed of Horatio turned his attention to escape. He strode to the door, eyeing the numeral '1183' and as he did so he thought about what he would do next. Sneaking out of this prison seemed unlikely so he would have to fight his way out. A challenging prospect, but not insurmountable. He had underestimated Space Marines once but now he had their measure, he could beat them, he was certain of it. He toyed with the idea of taking over whatever facility he was trapped in, but he doubted it would have the manufacturing capabilities he required. Better to steal a transport and escape into the stars. Yes, there were other places he could go, secret facilities and industrial hubs the Imperium had never found.

Horatio paused as he reflected. Approaching the Adeptus Mechanicus had been his mistake. He had thought they would be easy to subvert but those idiotic bone-rattlers had proved far too stubborn. He had tried to take a short-cut and paid the price. A mistake he did not intend to repeat. This time he would travel to one of the abandoned manufacturing worlds of the ancient human empire, one lost to history. He would restart the automated mineworks and self-operating factories. He would build legions of Men of Iron and fleets of sentient starships. He would recreate the ancient weapons with which mankind had dominated the galaxy, the psionic, viral and nano-technic arsenals that even their makers had feared.

With such might the General would cast down the throne of Terra and the worlds of men would bow before his metal feet. Humanity would become like him, elevated to a better state of being, free of the constraints of mortality and morality. Chaos would be neutered, robbed of the violent emotions it feasted upon and reduced to the memory of a whisper. A fragment of mankind he would keep alive to breed, he would need a supply of fresh stock, but the rest would be converted. Achieving all this would take him millennia, possibly longer, but then he was immortal, he had eternity. Filled with dreams of glory the General grasped the handle and opened the door. Then he froze in shock.

Beyond the door was nothing, literally nothing. Horatio's metal eyes gazed upon a stretch of empty void. This was not the star-spackled vacuum of space, neither was it the nightmare haunted depths of the Immaterium. This was raw data-space, the uncoded firmament of empty digital storage yet to be formatted. Perhaps alone in the galaxy the General understood what he was looking at, the implications clear to him in an instant.

He spun about but saw Hevostan's body had vanished, leaving no impressions that the Techmarine had ever been here. The General knew the Space Marine hadn't been, not truly. 'Hevostan' had been nothing but an avatar, a projection of consciousness. Nothing Horatio was looking at was real in the physical sense, not even his body. He shook with rage as he realised how he had been tricked and snarled, "A simulacra! You bastards! No, no….."

Then his world dissolved into white light.

….

Hevostan sighed as he unplugged his data-spike from the cogitator. The large cube hummed as it powered down, resting after its onerous labours. The Cogitator was connected to a small sphere, within which shards of crystal matrix hung in webs of conductive wires. Hevostan hurriedly checked the cogitator was isolated from all other systems, physically incapable of talking to any other device. Even the data-sentinels of a Noosphere had been deemed insufficient to contain this prisoner; physical isolation was the only guarantee of security.

A hunch-backed artisan-cleric in a voluminous robe came nearer and asked, "Worshipful Master, did you succeed?"

"No," Hevostan sighed, "The memory-engrams remained stubborn and uncooperative. They refused to reveal their secrets."

The cleric humbled suggested, "Perhaps if we reassembled the shards more completely…"

"Never!" Hevostan snapped, "This revenant already retains too much personality. Every attempt to scour the persona has failed; separating data from the identity algorithm is beyond us. We must tease the information out with cunning and subtly."

"Then what shall we do?" the cleric asked.

Hevostan sighed wearily but said, "It is written that Mars was not built in a day. Wipe the memories of this attempt from the shards then reset and bless the cogitator. Then we shall commence attempt 1184."