Herald of the Stars: Chapter Three Hundred and Five

This chapter did not go how I planned at all. Once again, I was struck with inspiration and I gleefully leapt into the abyss. It was going to be a brawl with Marabas. Now you have something different that I hope is far more interesting.

---------------------

I expected Warp fire and lightning to crash upon my army. What I get is one spell, a Static Fog that mutes sound, and cuts off all auspex and standard vox. A singular, malicious will fills the cloud and I realise that there a Chaos Sorcerer is using the Daemonic Hoard to act as a focus and power source for their magic.

The Traitor Guardsmen not only launch another volley of artillery, but also unveil over 500 Wyvern Suppression Tanks, a variant of the Hydra, from their light vehicle contingent. The Wyvern’s have two, twin-linked, 240mm Stormshard Mortars with 20 shells per magazine and they fire every shell in a single volley.

I’m not sure what they’ve done to their mortars to get a 20km range, as that would usually take expensive, laser guided, gliding shells, and from the way the shells are falling, I can tell that they’re not using those. Neither would they be much good when their targets are trapped in a sensor suppressing Warp cloud. I am sure I would like the answer to their extended capabilities as much as I appreciate over 41,800 explosives whistling down upon our heads, however.

This time, I get a timer for 60 seconds.

A conventional army would be absolutely cooked. As it is, we are in a pickle.

The Ruby Owls are using Neutrino Vox, even through the interference, they can still beam information to my shuttle. I also have my link to E-SIM, which remains as sturdy as ever. Even if both these were broken, there’s a Navigator power, Stacking the Deck, that lets me predict the path of incoming ordinance with reasonable accuracy.

What I can’t do is broadcast any of that data to my vehicles and troops via standard vox. Neither do my ground vehicles or infantry carry Neutrino Vox. No one is crashing into each other just yet, but my strike force is rapidly decelerating as poor sensor returns make our previous speed incredibly unwise.

Despite our rapid change in speed, all those shells are still on target, constantly adjusting to our movements. It matters not if it is divination, possession, or some other sorcery that guides them, we’re not getting away by scattering or braking a second time.

I consider feeding the targeting data to Alpia and have her use her technopathy to commandeer our vehicles, then have her shoot down the shells. That would get us 14,000 shells at minimum. Our best scenario would be 28,000 shells. Even then, it would be nowhere near enough. My infantry could swat some 60,000 shells in 30 seconds, and even more if I empty the transports. It’s the ideal solution. What I really need is a way to talk to them all.

My mind flickers over my Order of Battle and I turn to the Psy-Errants. I bought 30, soul bound psykers with me and there’s no reason I can’t pull the same trick as the enemy.

Marshalling my will, I breathe in the foul energy of the Warp. My thoughts race faster than ever and my ego swells, whispering to me that I am all powerful. My arcanotech body tingles as more systems come online. False simulations tease the edge of my thoughts, encouraging me to rip through the interference and portal right into the enemy lines and rip them apart.

Why does being a space warlock have to suck so much?

There’s two options here, the Librarian spell, Electroshield, could likely counteract the Static Fog that envelops us, pushing it back enough to make vox work again, assuming that the spell itself wouldn’t cause more interference. Instead, I chose an Imperial Psyker spell, one that all my Psykers are familiar with.

With a sigh, I scatter the intruding thoughts, then reach out to the Psykers spread through my army. I send them Telepathic Orders in Lingua-Technis, with different instructions for each psyker, who then cast Telepathic Order themselves, broadcasting telemetry data and firing orders, matched to Herald serial numbers, so that everyone knows what, and where, they’re supposed to shoot at in which order.

30 seconds before the shells hit us, my people open fire. A spectacular laser show devastates the incoming ordinance. I constantly update the targeting data and have my Heralds trigger their first of three Luminen Barriers as increasingly large quantities of hot debris threaten to fall upon my Strike Force.

At five seconds to target, meaning us, I realise that we’re not going to get everything. Random chance and the slight inaccuracy and delay caused by my Heralds having to manually input the firing solutions they receive from my Telepathic Orders has caused many lost shots.

E-SIM sends a data request and I comply. His tow trucks fire their ordinance swatters for the first time, taking out the last of the shells. Molten metal and shrapnel fall upon my Strike Force. Some is absorbed by void shields over my shuttle and E-SIM’s tow trucks, or bounces off my armoured vehicles. The rest scatters upon the Luminen Barriers of my troops.

Rather than constantly use Telepathic Order, I give my Psykers a chance to rest from constantly broadcasting frantic commands. Instead, I swap to Soul Sight. I share my view of every soul in the Strike Force so that my people have a far better idea of where everyone is, including the incoming Daemonic Hoard. Then, while maintaining Soul Sight, I cast Telepathic Order again, commanding my people to pick up the pace and resume mowing down the Daemons using their own judgement.

The whispers grow and frost forms upon the cockpit controls as I channel a large amount of Warp energy to share my sight directly with just over 3,500 people. I feel a small twinge as the scar upon my soul from my adventure threatens to rupture. I can even hear Alis yelling at me as the ocean that surrounds my soul is whipped into a frenzy of clashing icebergs and warring Daemons, testing the boundaries of my will.

The wards across my armour and body blaze with power as I crank them up to full, suppressing the growing phenomena around me and quieting the constant harassment clawing at my mind.

Our barrage of Warpsbane rounds, Lascannons, and Plasma Culverins is far less coordinated than before, with many Daemon’s being hit by multiple weapons, or shots going wide as whatever wards they have messes with my spellcraft.

In the end, it doesn’t matter. We have more ammo than there are Daemons, and once they start bunching up, my tanks return to using their main cannons without my direction and mop up the last of the Daemonic Hoard with their blessed, high explosive rounds.

With the Daemons dead, the Static Fog spell fades. Our communications return and, much to my relief, I drop Soul Sight.

We’re ten kilometres from enemy lines. 

The Traitor Guardsmen haven’t fired any more ordinance at us since we shot down their combined barrage of sorcerous artillery and mortar shells, but with the fog gone, we come under fire from their own heavy weapons and snipers.

This was the moment I was waiting for and my shuttle increases its altitude. There’s a short hitch in enemy fire rate as my shuttle rises and I order my infantry to take cover as best they can.

There are a lot of impressive dives and slides as Heralds go prone by the hundreds.

From beneath the wings of my shuttle, four high explosive torpedoes detach and accelerate towards the enemy.

For ten seconds, every gun they have fires upon the torpedoes. Any machine that manages to hit the torpedo gets blasted with a Turbo-Laser Destructor or Volkite Destructor.

It doesn’t matter either way, as these torpedoes are Data Structures. They’re the distilled idea of what an ideal, city slaying explosive should be, armoured with the same imaginary alloys as Enlightened Self-Interest and protected by black void shields last fielded over 15 thousand years ago. Still, I see no reason to give my enemy more time to react than I must, hence saving this for the last moment. Who knows what spells they could have pulled out of their feathered cloacas had I given them more time to prepare?

All four torpedoes explode over the 20 kilometre front, their positions calculated for optimum destruction.

Eight kilometres of ferrocrete bunkers, plasteel barriers, and flakweave sandbags cease to exist, then a monumental, overlapping pressure wave spreads outwards from the retina searing, ear shredding explosion.

Beyond the initial blast, tanks, artillery, and light vehicles are tossed into the air like models flipped over on a table top map with a cry of frustration and despair. Chests cave, heads pulp, and blood scatters in the wind, spraying the battlefield in gore. At the edges of the explosion, Traitor Guardsmen are thrown to the ground with skeleton shattering force, then hit with fast moving debris from the bones of their allies to armoured vehicles and secondary explosions.

My own people are just far enough away from the detonation that they suffer no ill effects.

A few pockets of enemy resistance remain, hiding behind the four towering behemoths. With little left to stop them, I send another squadron of strike-craft to mop them up. E-SIM shuttles the first batch of Battle Automata alongside the strike-craft, dropping my reinforcements ahead of my strike force to have them map and mop the battlefield.

As my shuttle flies to the top of the closest planetary defence tower, I rearrange my troops. The armoured vehicles form a long line as they advance, scanning for survivors. Their dozer blades pushing aside broken vehicles and their tracks grind what remains of the bones and flesh of my enemies to a fine paste.

My heavy infantry follow behind the vehicles, then disperse, hunting survivors in squads, as Cyber Mastiffs run before them, sniffing out Traitor Guardsmen with as much enthusiasm and proficiency as they do chasing each others’ tails.

I set the shuttle down by the base of the kilometre-sized gun, then disembark alongside the Sorroritas and Barghests. Using the scans of the Ruby Owls, we scour the massive structure, checking out each possible entrance, only to find they’re all decoys. It doesn’t surprise me as this is a structure designed by AI, for AI. It doesn’t need maintenance hatches and access corridors when it can control its structure at will.

In the end, it is Alpia who gets us inside, using her Technopathy to force the structure to adjust itself to our needs. It was a risk, connecting to the structure, but we had little choice. Following guidance that only Alpia can hear, she leads us to a stadium-sized power node.

We wait in near silence as one of E-SIM’s tow trucks somehow motors up the side of the tower, then feeds its cable through the wide corridor to the power node, an obelisk shaped structure that connects to the ceiling fifty metres above us.

With a growing sense of doom, I feed the power node a small amount of Warp energy in a specific pattern that E-SIM suggests, forcing one of the obelisk’s original power cables to detach from the base of the structure, then replace it with E-SIM’s cable.

I send a prayer to the Emperor, and rather than a faint sense of acknowledgement or, as is more common, completely ignored, I feel the Emperor’s attention turn towards me. His gaze is the heaviest I have ever felt and my hands tremble as I plug the data cable from my armour into a port on the side of E-SIMs power cable. Alpia kneels next to me, then copies my actions.

I initiate the connection and, despite my best efforts, I immediately lose control. Both Alpia and I slump. Our armour locks into position, keeping us upright as our minds are drawn into the god machine, like leaves drawn across an infinite ocean of raw data.

Alpia and I cling to each other’s minds, gibbering in terror as my mind rushes through everything that I know of Data Structures. 

The Star Child appears behind us, following Alpia and I as we are swept into the god machine, unbothered by our fear or ineptitude. All I sense from him is patience and anticipation.

A moment later, the answer hits me like a Macro-Shell. A thought that I’d believed I understood without ever following it to its logical conclusion.

A Data Structure is an idea. Since when has Humanity ever managed to kill an idea?

With a sickening realisation of what we have done, I turn to the Star Child and he just smiles at us. He grabs Alpia and I by our necks and flies onwards until we come across a model of the gun we have connected to, placed upon the craggy top of an oceanic mountain.

We continue our flight up to the base of the gun and the Star Child puts us down. Alpia stares at him in shock.

“Take a closer look at the ocean,” says the Star Child.

Unable to resist the command, my eyes are drawn to the purple seas. At first I see nothing, then I look upon it with my third eye and I am greeted with endless images. 

The first flame.

Ancient hominids knapping stone tools.

Bronze, Iron, Steel.

Microchips. A telephone exchange. Rockets.

The images continue as I see snippets of Humanity through the ages. Slowly, it dawns upon me that I’m not watching history, I’m seeing progress. The research grade STC isn’t just an idea, it is the concept of Human progress distilled to its final conclusion.

In our arrogance, we placed no limits upon it.

Progress. At any cost.

Progress no matter how many species we crushed along the way, or the god machine that could create such miracles.

Even ourselves.

This STC would always have failed. Those nudges from other powers that E-SIM speculated about? The fear of AI and the corruption of the Warp? That wasn’t sabotage. That was rushing to the inevitable conclusion before the STC became too powerful and self destructed along with everything else in the galaxy.

Once the dust settled, and the five research grade STCs were crippled, we hadn’t averted a disaster, but rather sown the seeds of an even greater problem.

We’d crippled the very idea of Human progress at all. 

Those brief moments of brilliance were no longer fueled by the collective intellect of Humanity echoing through the Warp, but the idea of change, the hope that something different might lead to something better.

We had empowered Tzeentch. Tzeentch doesn’t care if change is good or bad, only that change occurs. It’s so much harder to make good changes than bad ones and thus the inevitable decay of Humanity is set in steel, empowering Nurgle. That, in turn, leads to violence and excess as we struggle against our fate.

I turn to the Star Child, “How do we fix this?”

He pats my armoured shoulder, “You can’t kill an idea Aldrich, but you can replace it with something new.”

The Star Child steps towards the gun and places his hand upon it. The weapon ignites in golden flames and my vision is swept away once again.