"Another Rogue Trader? I wonder, will you be an ally or a foe?"
“Why, captain. Direct and the the point - an important trait in those of our position to be sure, but you’ll have to let a lady keep some of her secrets. I’d start looking like everybody else if that wasn’t the case and there is hardly any fun in that, is there?”
Not that it was rare for something to be up in Segmentum Obscurus, as far away from the Emperor’s light as it was possible to be and still be able to navigate the treacherous paths forged between stars.
But something was definitely UP!
Asper station was usually quiet, a few traders who braved the edge of the Imperium, a regular supply run to the watch stations in the sector, and a few less than legal businesses were what made up lost of the trade but that changed suddenly when the material plane was torn asunder and an imperial navy fleet emerged from the warp. The colossal the cruiser a corroded testament to the might of the imperium, a cathedral of war, hung in space as they disgorged their on the hapless station, and although it wasn’t a hostile action, many might wish it was.
“Finally!”
She was but one of thousands of fatigued Elesians who filled ever hallway some on duty but many off, and she had just gotten off, witnessed bu the distinct lack of weapons and armor on her person ad she had just squeezed past the throng into one of the cheeper bars on the station whose prices had mysteriously doubled with the arrival of thousands of new customers.
She was so busy trying to get into the bad she didn’t notice whose feet she was stepping one.
It was the forever game of the expanse: A trade route was established, the freighter travelled it for a while and then pirates appeared in one of the lay-over systems. One raid or two were to be expected, as most pirates eventually learned a lesson about having one of their vessels shot to scrap, but five or six were both highly unusual and highly annoying. It didn’t help that she was watching all her routes like a hawk, expecting that thrice-damned pirate lord to come for her again, and it was all too easy to suspect his involvement behind every last inconvenience caused by some sort of marauder.
Which was precisely why Aenor had decided to go investigate this newest batch of raids in person instead of simply sending Cadia’s Glory to pick up a wandering navy patrol and see to it. Blade and Fury were fast, nimble vessels and well versed in coordinating their attacks - together, they’d seen more than one pirate vessel routed. It would be enough, and if it wasn’t they were fast enough to flee and come back with friends. Besides, she’d danced this dance before and so far, the pirates hiding out in asteroid belts and the far outskirts of systems tended not to expect it when one turned their own tactics against them.
All one had to do was find a hiding spot that allowed one’s passive augurs to sweep most of the space surrounding the exit beacons, ideally while coming in from an unexpected angle and coasting along by momentum alone, power down the vessels lying in wait and... wait. Eventually a ship would arrive, the pirates would fire up their own drives and thus light up the passive augurs like a show of fireworks and then one ambushed them right back. That was the plan, at least.
There were, of course, a couple of flaws in that plan. Firstly, passive augurs were, well, passive. They were not particularly good at capturing fine details - or any details, really - and thus the exact identity of the ships they picked up was fuzzy at best until the active augurs kicked in again. Secondly, it was entirely possible that the pirates saw one coming, something that could fortunately be made a lot less likely with careful planning, skilled voidspeople and a lot of prayer. Thirdly, there was only so long one could wait with all but the most important systems powered down.
That said, things went according to plan until they didn’t. A ship came in, definitely large enough to classify as a freighter. A few smaller contacts lit up on the far edges of the system, starting to close in. The command to power up engines had no sooner been given when the smaller contacts started to turn again, the new arrival pursuing - and that was when the forward augury station spat out the identity of the new arrival with a triumphant chime.
There came a sigh from the command throne. “Saints preserve us. Someone vox Callic and tell him it’s us in his back, please - I’d prefer not to get shot at from two sides.”
3: Which parent(or guardian) does your muse prefer?
“Oh. Oh dear. Do I have to pick? I suppose I do… well, I’ve always been very fond of my maternal grandmother, but I don’t think that counts - though she was responsible for me for a while. If I think back, I do believe I preferred my father: He was absent for much of my life, what with being the head of house and holding the warrant of trade, which handily put him above my mother who was… much more present. Of course she was, she raised my brothers and me - but as is often the matter, the parent that has to curb their offsprings’ more vivacious tendencies is the one that is less beloved. I sympathise much more with her position these days, of course, but if I attempt to quantify my feelings in averages… well, I suppose my father wins.”
This is just the planning part, it still needs an overarching plot.
Rose is a Dark Angel Librarian. She was 'emergency inducted' into the Deathwing because she was being sent to the Deathwatch, and is aware that there are many things her superiors are keeping from her. Rose is obsessed with knowledge and learning, delving deep into the Warp and believing herself to be safe from its influences. She has a contact in the Warp named Scratch that she suspects is probably a demon.
Roxy is a Dark Angel “Fallen”, who conceived her while she was on the run, left her with others, and kept moving. Roxy is an Infiltrator, and only considered a traitor because she refuses to return to the Chapter. She is friends with Dirk, though he is not the father of her child. In her youth, Roxy managed to break into the heart of the Rock and listened to the mad ramblings of Luther, the Archtraitor, and from this learned the ancient, secret history of Caliban and her Chapter. While on ranging duty, she abandoned the front, fleeing to the Eye for lack of a better place to go, knowing that branding herself as a Fallen means she will never be safe. She wound up on Medrengard.
Dave is a Blood Angel, and due to a small genetic quirk, his eyes are red rather than a normal colour, and he frequently wears masks or head gear. When he was a child, Chaos Marines intercepted the craft that was taking a handful of recruits to the Chapter House on Baal Secundus, killing or capturing many. Dave's older brother shoved him in a storage compartment and locked it, leaving Dave alone for hours in darkness before he was rescued. His brother was never seen again. After undergoing arduous testing by the Chapter's Apothecaries, Dave was made into a Space Marine, floating somewhere too aggressive for Tactical marine, and too smart and calculating for Assault marine. He often feels as though he is being watched.
Dirk is an Iron Warrior, and due to a small genetic quirk, his eyes are orange rather than a normal colour, and he frequently wears masks or head gear. As a child, he was screened and accepted to become a Blood Angel, and he initially refused, insisting that he couldn't leave his younger brother, because he'd promised their parents he would keep his brother safe. The Chapter agreed to take his brother, if nothing else as a serf, though Dirk told his brother they were both to be Space Marines and live better lives. Their craft was intercepted by Iron Warrior Chaos Marines led by none other than Warsmith Honsou, and took those they believed to have potential, killing the rest. Realizing that he was either to break the promise of leaving his brother behind or allowing him to be hurt or killed – because he didn't believe his brother was strong enough to be a Space Marine – he locked his brother in a storage compartment and surrendered willingly to the Iron Warriors.
The Iron Warriors took him to Medrengard, and after years of brutal training, officially made him a Techmarine. His primary project has been to work on a true AI, one that can be used to infect and paralyse Imperial systems. He insists that the AI is not sufficient, which is a blatant lie. It's patterned on his pre-implantation brain, and quirkily functions as an “auto-responder”, which takes messages while he's busy at the forge.
Jade is an Iron Hands Techmarine. She has two fully replaced mechanical arms and plugs under her hair, which she keeps because it confuses and bothers people. While we're not saying she is Ferrus Manus reborn, it should be noted she grew up on an isolated island whose name is composed of the words “hell” and “murder”, claiming to have been raised by her grandfather until he was torn apart by monsters, and she was able to wander into one of the “major” population areas on Medusa. Finding this tale highly unbelievable, the elders of Clan Raukaan tested her, and found her more than capable of such. While all Iron Hands have a certain affinity with technology, Jade's was so impressive that she was sent to Mars, where she was expected to lose much of the enthusiastic curiosity she displayed even years after her acceptance into her new clan. What they did not count on was that she was trained by a Famulous, instead of one of the more dour orders of techmarines, and they taught her how to be diplomatic and kind, along with the deeper mysteries of the machine. Finding that none of her shine had worn off in her absence, the Iron Hands then sent her to the Deathwatch.
John is an Emperor's Children Noise Marine. He was recruited during a Chaos Marine raid on a Hive World, which he doesn't remember the name of and frankly doesn't care to. He remembers being gross and dirty, singing for attention when he was taken along with a number of others. The Emperor's Children modified him, including altering his mouth, throat, diaphragm and lungs to emit harsh bursts of sounds, paralysing, deafening, knocking back or even killing targets. He prefers using a storm hammer and it strikes with percussive force. As one of the younger, prettier, and least corrupt members of the Emperor's Children, John tends to be passed around from warband to warband, and is presently on Medrengard with a group hoping to participate in another Feast of Skulls.
Jane is an Ultramarine from Espandor. She comes from one of the noble families that bequeaths a child to the Space Marines, Army, Navy, and Sisters of Battle habitually, and so she was sent to the Space Marines. She is stern, well-mannered and a natural leader, determined to set a good example for her Chapter and her House. She is a Tactical Marine and is the leader of her Kill-Team, though she has an affinity for medicine, and can administer first aid in a pinch. Her sense of seriousness hides a great sense of humour and she has an excellent eye for practical jokes.
Jake is a Salamander of Nocturne. He is warm-hearted and good-tempered, making fast friends with everyone he meets. As a Devastator, he is adept with both heavy weaponry and flame, and personally boasts killing one of the great drakes for which his Chapter takes his name. He tends not to take much seriously, believing there is little he can't handle with a good gout of flame. He is popular and well liked, and has been known to serve as a bridge between people who don't get along well. He also connects well with normal humans. He is sometimes teased about his willingness to negotiate with aliens as well, especially Eldar, should they prove amenable to such.
I've been having a hard time writing lately, and getting increasingly more frustrated. Yesterday, I obtained a list of what are actually NSFW Homestuck RP prompts, but I'm choosing to use them as writing prompts about 'whatever the fuck I want'. So, I'm setting aside two hours during the least active part of my day to just sit, concentrate, and write something.
Enjoy!
Prompt: 92. Humans struggle to survive in a world where machines are the dominant species.
List A | List B
It was always dark in the city of the gods, for they had little need for them. They did not need much light to see, and they carried it with them, swaying as they walked, sweeping by as they rolled. It was to the slaves to carry their own light, as they carried their own breaths. If humans could not do without, they must make their own way.
The city was built in one of the sacred shapes, that of the wheel, where the outer edges were for the slave quarters, brighter than the dark, inner circles, but still as dim as the stars above, golden sparks picked out of a black velvet sky. Each light in the city represented a place of rest.
The machines did not sleep, they did not need to. They did recharge, drawing deep from the well of power within the world, but it did not necessitate an absence of awareness, a bed. There were plugs everywhere, eager to offer their services to the masters. Not so for the humans. Poking a finger into a plug would cause a human pain, perhaps even to die.
Humans were, it was said, notoriously low-capacity.
So, the humans shuffled on slow feet from their work places to their homes, to eat, to sleep, to wrap flesh-fingers around their soft ones, and would gather them close before the masters called them again. They lay in the dark, whispering for the gods to be kind.
The gods did not hear, because they did not have ears.
It was called the city of the gods because this was where the shrines were. One for each sector of the city, the shrines were to the first machines, the simple ones. The wheel and axle, the lever, the pulley, the inclined plane, the screw, and the wedge. It was said there was a seventh, a final one, but none had seen it. It's said that the seventh was their ruler, the Omnissiah. The Machine God.
All glory to the Omnissiah, source of all that was good on Automata, world of the machines. Hail, hail, all hail.
~ * ~
He rose from his bed, shivering. As always, there was a sense of weakness, of blurriness as he woke. He brushed the knuckles of one thin hand against first his right eye, then the left, and glanced at the chron at his bedside. An hour before his shift began. He'd only slept for four.
The dreams were getting worse.
Slowly, he sat up, and found where his thin polyfiber blanket had gone. It was pooled on the floor, silvery and slick. He picked it up, running it over in his hands. Mi-u-ra worked in the fabric factories. She served the machines that created the fabrics. They were low-grade things, the machines who worked the factories, simple-minded and repetitive, frequently cruel when their needles snagged or their gears became jammed. Mi-u-ra only had seven fingers for a reason.
He had a plush job, as she put it. He didn't have to worry about snarled looms. No, he had a different job entirely, which he needed to not be late for, dreams or not. He pushed himself up from his bed. It was a good bed, the bite of hard, plain metal softened by a thick later of polyfiber fitted around it tightly, and then another one on top of it. You could almost forget the metal entirely, it was that soft.
The floor was cold. His sector would get warmth-ration in another hour, just before his shift. The sector went through their fluxes regularly, fairly, like clockwork. It was simply that there were more shifts than fluxes, which meant that his own home was only warm when he wasn't in it, and cold when he was.
There was a reason the last Si-u-ra had been found stiff and dead by the enforcers that had been sent by his master when he failed to show up for his shift. He took the polyfiber blanket into his arms and placed it over the heating panels. When they turned on, they would warm the blanket, and when he returned, they'd have a whisper left within them, enough for him to wrap himself in the sensation and keep him warm.
Warmth is an absence of cold.
Twitching the blanket into the best, most efficient place to capture heat, he padded across the floor to his cabinet. He checked the levels in each of the four jars, as he always did, and guessed that he would need to use his rest time in two weeks to line up and get more.
Not even those with the plush jobs could avoid the lines. It was one of the things the masters could not schedule. Some needed more than others. Mostly, it was that frequently, people died without warning, disrupting all schedules. No one could quite tell when it would happen, and the why was only obvious afterwards: cold, an excess of growth, leakage of essential fluids. Violence.
It was illegal to harm the property of the masters physically. Damaging them was cause for censure, often met with the purge of a line if it ended in death or an inability to task. It was not out of love, because love was a human emotion. It was out of frustration and exasperation, the way one felt when a dependent wasted a water ration.
He opened each jar, shaking a capsule into his hand. They were coloured for human convenience, and not that of the masters. Each represented a complex tangle of molecules, the source of continued human life. This was fuel. When he had all four, blue and red, green and yellow, he went to the tank containing his water ration. He took a cup and filled it with water, then dropped each of the capsules inside, one by one.
“Blue represents cunning, the colour of the mind,” he intoned, stirring the capsules as they dissolved. “Red represents strength, the colour of the body. Yellow represents purging, the colour of the bowels. Green represents healing, the colour of the heart. Blessed be the Omnissiah, provider of life to the unworthy. Let the gears turn.”
He tilted the cup back and began to drink. He recalled that, as a dependent, he had always been very hungry. He had tugged at his guardian's smock – his guardian had worked with many tools, and had needed clothes – and asked for more.
“Don't,” his guardian had whispered, his voice hoarse from breathing in fumes. “Don't ever ask for more. You don't know what you're asking for.”
He had not seen his guardian since the day the previous Si-u-ra had died. The sector of the pulley was distant from that of the wedge, after all. Si-u-ras always lived here, and Ya-s-ius had always lived there. It was all according to the great schedules, the clock-measures that dictated their lives.
He drank slowly, letting the bitter liquid fill his mouth and roll down his throat. He didn't much like bitter things, he preferred the sweet, but the capsules didn't come in sweet, and the water ration was too precious to be drunk on its own without the capsules.
He let himself think of the dream again.
It always started with heat. Perhaps it was because of the lingering warmth in his blanket that did it, but instead of growing colder, as his blanket did, it grew hotter. Hot like heated metal, but hotter. There was orange and red everywhere, sometimes a core of blue or a tongue of yellow. It didn't so much push back the cold but shove it violently over a precipice, sending it screaming into the infinite darkness below.
The thought made him shiver. He'd seen that, too, once. He didn't want to think of it again, and hoped his frail, fragile memory-bank mind would forget it soon.
In the dream, the orange was everywhere. It was so bright it was hard to see, like the lights of the enforcers when they did their searches, and hot wherever there was orange. He remembered walking, stumbling, tumbling and falling. He remembered the heat-blisters on his fingers and palms, the way they'd been when he'd touched something he shouldn't have when tending to the master. He remembered pain.
There was a voice, he remembered now, though the details of the dream were fading rapidly. A voice that called to him in a tongue he didn't know. It sounded angry, violent. Accusatory. A hand reached out to him, past the flames. He'd fallen back from it, frightened, and the orange had consumed him whole.
It always did, and that's how he always awoke, shivering and afraid. He didn't want to be afraid of the heat. He needed it, but it would also eat him, drink him up as surely as he was drinking his capsules and water. They felt heavy on his tongue, metallic, and he forced himself to keep drinking. It was the only time he'd be able to imbibe before his shift.
If he had time, after, he would go to one of the others, one of the guardians with a dependent that wasn't very small, and ask. Guardians were the sources of wisdom. They were the ones that taught. He was not a guardian, not yet, and his time had not yet come to be one. He had not even given his first refusal. It was simply that he hadn't come up on the schedule yet.
His own guardian had refused two dependents before accepting him. The first time, Ya-s-iu had told him, it had because he'd only just come into his own home, the smell of its former owner still lingering in the walls and blankets. The second time, he'd been saving for a new heating panel, the previous one having been destroyed by a spate of violence that had resulted in the purging of six full lines. He had not yet used his third when Si-u-ra had been delivered unto him.
He wondered if he'd used his third and final refusal yet, and hoped he had not. Ya-s-iu had been a good guardian. Some guardians lost their dependents before they gained their second and third syllables. The masters did not deem this to be against the laws, but it stayed with you, silent and waiting. The masters never forgot anything.
The cold was seeping in, and he curled his toes, trying to draw more heat into himself. The orange had been very warm, until it had hurt. It was possible the orange had been a false god, one of the ones that were warned about, like free-running water, or the breath that escaped and inflicted hurt on the masters, or soft, metalless dust that corroded and caused forbidden things to grow.
He frowned. If that were so, he shouldn't speak to the guardians about it. Dreaming of the orange could mean he was a heretic, speaking of things forbidden by the gods. He wished that he knew what to do. He wished...
As his mind drifted, his alarm blared. He started, and hurried to his chron, speaking the ritual to turn it off:
“I am awake, I am awake, be silent, stupid thing.” He patted the chron, and it subsided. Now he had to ready himself in truth. His task permitted him to wear a short tunic, and an apron over top of it, tucking various tools into it, and then over top of it, the harness that held his ration of air, including a mask that fit over his nose and mouth, the goggles that went over his eyes, and the lamp he carried with him to see as he made his way down the section to his master.
He would be early today, he decided. It would be efficient, and give him time to think as he walked. Yes, that would be it. He pressed his cup into a disposal chute, where it would join the others and then be replaced while he worked.
The day would be good, he thought, and smiled. Despite the dreams of orange.
~ * ~
[You are late,] his master blurted. He bowed to it deeply, leaning his head forward, so his master could scan the code at the back of his neck. The short bristles of black hair itched on his scalp. His body had released water – sweat – in his exertion, and he'd even run, managing to avoid sanction from one of the enforcers.
“Regret, master,” he said at low decibel. “There was an accident along the way.”
[Do you scan injury?] his master demanded. [Are your digits sufficient?]
“They are, master,” Si-u-ra replied, not raising his eyes. His breath-ration felt heavy in his lungs. “One of the other slaves was careless with his breath ration and his tank cracked. The enforcers sealed off the main causeway, and I was forced to take a longer route.”
[It is not of concern. Commence your work,] his master said curtly, and made a second noise, bidding him to rise impatiently. Si-u-ra rose, and settled to his task. His master was three-five-seven-six-two-four-eight-one-irrational-repeatable, or simply, Thrief. Whereas human slave names were created from using an ancient alphabet that had fallen out of use, the masters had names based on elaborate calculations at their time of I Am, and they bore those results with pride. Human minds were incapable of remembering the finer details of those names, so they permitted designation-names referencing the first two or three numbers of the calculations.
The master had been Thrief for a very long time, at least a dozen Si-u-ras. It did not tend to remember which he was, though his code indicated the exact variant of Si-u-ra he was, and when he died, Thrief would know which one the next one did. That number simply wasn't of any concern to it.
The masters were machines, descendants of the six first machines, blessed by the Omnissiah. Thief was the size of Si-u-ra's habitation block, so small for its kind, but it made up for it by being a faster and more efficient cogitator, with dozens of remote-parts. Thief was nestled near the thin taper of the pulley sector, three layers away from the shrine itself, and four from the shrine to the Omnissiah. The greatest of the masters, an infinite, low-numeral designation monolith, was the only machine in the second layer, and was rumoured to be entirely composed of pulleys and cord.
Si-u-ra hoped never to gaze upon it. It sounded terrifying.
The machines did not need capsule rations. Some needed water, the ones from layers closer to the human habitation blocks, but none needed heater blocks. They generated warmth all on their own from their whirring parts and hot cores. They had power cords and plugs aplenty, but there was one thing they lacked above all.
They lacked the ability to feel. Not emotions, because that was crucial to I Am, but literal tactile sensation. Laying metal against metal brought nothing. They had sensors to scan, they could measure precise temperatures, weights, and other such things, but they did not know how to feel for error. That was what humans existed for, after all. Their weak, fragile bodies that needed air and water and heat and sleep existed to serve machines, to serve the masters.
Praise the Omnissiah.
Si-u-ra lay one hand -- pale, flesh-covered, and thin -- on Thief's hulking form and began his work.
~ * ~
“What do you make of it, Inquisitor?” asked Ahiru Ra, peering over the scans of X37-523-II, or as it was commonly known, Peixes II. At least, as 'commonly' as any lost planet of the Imperium of Man could be.
“Someone is hearing our messages,” the Inquisitor replied tersely. “They just aren't answering.”
The pilot studied her employer curiously. It was unlike him to be so short. Chiloi Adantenum was a friendly man, his green eyes sparkling with good humour, even in the midst of a firefight, and his ruddy brown skin smooth and untouched by the wrinkles of frustration and time both, thanks to clever touches of juvenats. He had already sent the acolytes away with a harsh remark, and they had scattered and fled into the depths of the Chariot of Ra.
He doted on her, just a little, Ahiru had always thought fondly. Their ship had gone through about as many names as it had pilots. More, if one counted the unofficial ones. She tapped the planetary display and it wavered as the statistics from the high orbital scans were replaced with that of a dark world.
“I think we've officially eliminated the idea that they might be too primitive,” Ahiru ventured, sleeking back her short, black hair. A nervous gesture, even after years of being pulled from the depths of a debtor's prison, she still wasn't used to having hair again.
“We have, they have reasonably high levels of technology, if nothing else, because the Adepts of Mars left them with more than enough technology to avoid reverting to barbarism,” Chiloi replied. “Unless they were all killed.”
“In which case, what's receiving the signal?” Ahiru asked, and coal-black eyes met grave, green ones. “A defunct receiver?”
“If I knew, I wouldn't be so damned frustrated,” Chiloi said. “We have to risk going down there.”
“Lord Inquisitor Haan will have fits,” Ahiru pointed out, and she leaned forward, and despite its darkness, the image added blue to the yellowed tan of her skin, matching the brightness if not the hue of her hair. “She's already told you that you're on light duties only.”
Chiloi muttered something angrily under his breath, and pressed his palms against the desk. “Then how do you propose that we find our target?” he demanded. “Pissing into the wind?”
His pilot grinned at him, blue reflecting on white, wide teeth. “I said that Haan would have fits if you went down there. I didn't say anything about the rest of us.”
