Chương 54: Book 8 - Chapter 50 - Duty

Urs finished speaking, his voice far different than what he'd spoken to me with. Regal, in command. The voice he'd used to command legions before. And knowing the engineer that had troubles making eye contact under it all, I could see him having a protocol running to generate words to use and how to speak them better. It was like he'd turned into a completely different person. I recognized a public facing mask when I saw one. And somehow, I could almost feel the toll it took on the old god.

"How… can we trust those words?" The captain spoke, and he sure sounded rattled this time from that prior unshakeable confidence.

"I created your armor." Urs said.

"They will confirm for you what you need to know. Keith Winterscar, please return the captain's helmet." Technically, they could be broken into by machines if someone was stupid enough to bypass all default security switches, such as the local user allowing the armor to move for them. But who in their right mind would allow that kind of permission? Besides me of course. All that went through my head as I grabbed the captain's removed helmet and gently put it back down on him.

I remembered when I helped Father that first time get his arm back. How even sending the override code with my new administrator account had only been one of two locks required. Father had to confirm himself manually to allow the override through and let his hand move. A hardwired safety feature. A smart one. Which I'd completely bypassed by giving Journey complete freedom. But my armor was an exception. Everyone else's armor was still bound to those same hardwired protections.

Which meant there had never been any armor in recent history that had ever been cybernetically attacked by even Feathers in a fight with the Deathless. And knowing how Feathers really acted on and cared about, there's no chance in hell they would have missed the chance to gloat in front of some poor Deathless's face after having turned their armors against them. To'Aacar had been compelled to stop and gloat in my face after he'd taken command of the armor. That's how deep that need for dramatics was.

He stabbed me right through the spine after, and I'd rather not remember all that, but the behavior was there. So no armors had ever been hacked. There wasn't anything worth hacking in the first place. Which meant a message from the armors themselves would go the distance. I had my own helmet hooked back over my head to see what Urs would be doing with his options. I heard the voice coming from my helmet. Journey's true voice.

"Receiving root administrator request login." Journey chimed in the helmet by my belt. I could hear that voice even here.

"Handshake confirmed. User: URS logged in." The pulse signal had come from him, the relic armor message repeating within every helmet in the area. It highlighted him, outlined him in green, and even had a subtitle listed. That got the imperials here to grow real quiet again. One even began to whisper out a short prayer.

"Think we can do that again with the rest of the imperials inside the fortress?" I asked.

"Would save us a bunch of time getting to the final edict terminal you squirreled away in there."

"It can be done with a strong enough signal." Urs said.

"My chassis has limits. And the terrain here equally hampers my efforts." I turned to the scouts next, a plan in motion.

"Have we provided enough evidence now for you lot, or do we need to do more?" The other four all turned their heads to the captain, and he seemed in deep thought.

"The cost of not allowing me to trigger the final edict is too great." Urs said over the comms.

"Doom humanity with certainty if I am who I say I am, or potentially doom a single fortress if I am not. The machine empire will not be stopped by the existence of a single fortress, regardless of how guarded it is. But it could be saved by the empire coming together. Your chapter was designed from the ground up to make those decisions. Do your duty, Captain." That got through to the captain. I could see the gears change almost instantly.

"You are correct. I do not know for certainty if you've fooled the armors or if you are the true emperor returned to us. But one fortress falling, even if it is my own home, is not worth humanity itself." His head snapped up.

"You need to transmit this message to all armors in this biome? We use relays to send messages back to the fortress. Would that function?" Urs's eyes flickered.

"It would. Lead us to it."

The message appeared across everyone all at once. Anyone who wore a relic armor. Repeated outwards, sinking through the walls of the distant fortress. Each armor that received it, passed it further downwards to those armors not in range of the original message. Dutifully following the exact instructions for the public service broadcast. Unaware and uncaring to the history that was in the making.

"To all who receive this message. I am Urs. Forgesmith. Seven hundred years prior, I was captured by Relinquished in the final moments of the empire. She has kept me trapped since, twelve miles below on the final strata. Today, I bring grave tidings. Relinquished has discovered the surface. And she will stop at nothing to see it destroyed, and humanity wiped off the world. I have come here to trigger the Final Edict, and to repel the army that will no doubt come after once the machines learn where I am.

Accompanying me on the task are nine Feathers who have turned on Relinquished, now out of time for any other plan. They have broken me free, and are carrying me to your fortress as I speak. We will attempt to defeat Relinquished with the same means we attempted seven hundred years prior. The empire will need to stand and protect humanity, to buy the time we need to make the final preparations. We will be arriving shortly. Prepare for the future. The next few days will be the crucible we undertake together."

The message was quick, calculated and done without a hitch in Urs's voice. He knew what he had to say and how to say it. Journey's HUD flickered, resetting as it announced Urs had logged off.

"... will it be enough?" I asked, looking over to the scout captain.

"It has to be." He simply answered.

"If it is not, we… we will handle the pyrite when we dig into it I suppose. There isn't room for much else. Realistically, high command is studying the message and digging into the archives to match up if the source is genuine or not. They will know far more than we do." Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings. The scout outpost was really just that, an outpost.

It had a single table, with a few computers prepared along with some satellite dishes pointed out the open directions on this rock. Some crates off to the side had provisions for food, but otherwise people just slept in their armor and remained on patrol here. They did move with some high familiarity of the terrain at least. Given how dangerous just walking around could be for anyone without jump jets or wings. Which was every regular relic armor.

The five scouts led the way out, advancing in quick sprints from rock to rock. They'd already calculated years prior which runs would work and which were too far away to get to. So travel to the fortress was relatively safe for our group.

"That fortress has more shiny trinkets and ancient history than anywhere else in the empire deary. Relax. I'm certain it'll work." Cathida said as we ran.

"The other chapters in the empire are all blowhards who waste time on posturing and gold candles. We're the ones that actually got stuff done down here. The empire will be ready to hear the call."

"But you don't know for certain if they have an authentication method or not?"

"Nobody knows anything for certain." She answered back, tutting.

"Faith and confidence gets you places. Stick with your plan."

"There could be any kind of reception." Father said, the voice of reason.

"Prepare for the worst first and leave hope for the rest." I have to say, for a fortress, it looked exactly the part. Not quite the same kind of bunker-city structure that Wrath's new city was being built around with sturdy ceilings and good protections. It had no ceilings. Because it was build directly into the wall itself. It appeared as a giant V, tunneling into the mite walls. There was a courtyard at the base of the V, quite a massive one even.

Probably filled with explosives or other traps to spring on anyone. The rest of the two walls were filled with levels, balconies, and turrets. Lots of turrets. Nothing else besides the solid armored front was exposed. The only reason the fortress wasn't larger is that after a certain point, digging out tunnels ended with the mites showing up to collapse it, as if they'd drawn an invisible boundary line.

It also meant tunneling from the other end would fail miserably before the enemy could tunnel halfway to their objective, leaving the fortress safe from any shenanigans. The front gates were the only way in. And boy was it a warm welcome to anything not made of metal.

"It'll be prepared to shoot every single rock in this biome at the first sign of the enemy. That removes all safezone spots, which means anything traveling through this biome runs into a stretch of land where they only have two minutes to navigate through. That's how it was three hundred years ago when I was alive deary, and they're probably got sharper teeth with that much time to uncover new weapons." It was clear that they saw us coming as the entire fortress was on high alert.

Spotlights were flooding the front area, including the three thin mite-made bridges that linked the lip of this wall to the rest of the biome madness beyond. We did have a plan if they started shooting us. It involved going through my quantum cape, and then sprinting the rest of the way into the fortress. Wrath would be able to make it in with the rest of us so long as she had a human soul connected.

Urs claimed the pillar hearts detect the unity fractal and zap anything with it - specifically through the unity fractal itself. Spreading outwards to shut down all parts of the machine in addition to the machine soul. Tsuya's thoughts were that Relinquished would never trust anything that didn't have a direct connection to herself so she could squash them at any time. And that included subordinates of subordinates, least someone start making an army of drones that don't have unity fractals on them.

So by having the pillar hearts specifically search for machine souls with the unity fractal, Relinquished and her armies were effectively barred from these cities. But it created an edge case: The unity fractal with both a human soul and a machine soul in connection. A configuration that wasn't recognized. That's how Wrath made it into her old city the first time. Father was there with her. And today, none of our captured Feathers still sported the unity fractal anywhere on their chassis.

The only one here who did was Wrath, again. But she now fell under a different edge case entirely: The unity fractal disconnected from the machine soul in isolation. Wrath didn't need Knight Highwind's soul hanging around in her soul-prison fractal. But we doubled up the chances just in case. Once we snuck inside the fortress, we'd climb back out of the higher dimension and try to trigger the edict within the fortress unnoticed. The imperial scouts led the way first, arriving out into the open in formation.

The spotlights turned on them, and comms signals went through.

"They are corroborating our story." Wrath said, being a perfect eavesdropper.

"So they really are on our side." I gave a slight sigh of relief.

"I was worried they were just playing along." Father shook his head at that.

"We can tell lies outright from voice patterns. Urs's words about the finality of the situation sunk through to them."

"This is a war of extinction." Urs said.

"A single fortress will not make a difference against the forces of Relinquished and this chapter will understand that lesson more than any other chapter in the empire. It will do." It took all of five minutes before we got an answer back, and the entire time was the most tense I've ever been. Weapons of all kinds were aimed at our group and Journey's HUD was highlighting each one that had a target lock on me.

"The scouts are getting a message back. Imperial high command confirms Urs's signal has gone through and was independently studied using seven different relics. All seven confirmed his identity as the second emperor. They believe us." I could feel the entire group here give a sigh of relief. The scouts equally turned back to where we remained behind. And as one, stood aside from the path and knelt down, sword or daggers out in a salute.

It was an eerie silence that our group jogged forward, crossing the single bridge connecting the wall-side fortress to the center courtyard. And i realized a moment later why: The entire fortress had halted. Imperial crusaders were lined up across the levels, next to the guns, all knelt down. In the same display of loyalty that the scouts had taken. The doorways to the center cathedral opened up, and out came a small legion of imperial warriors, escorting seven central figures.

I knew better than to greet these people, that wasn't my job. So instead, I exited my jog into a light walk, unhooked Urs from my back, turned him around and brought him forward while the rest of the Winterscar knights and Feathers took position around me. Even now, Journey's HUD outlined the husk as Urs. Which meant every other HUD looking down would see the same. Despite him looking like a withered body recently dug out of a grave, head still unmoving, spine somewhat exposed out.

But the eyes were clearly alive and moving. Watching. The seven figures all slowly knelt down. One came forward.

"O, great forgesmith Urs." The center one spoke, head bowed.

"We, the high imperial council and with independent action from the Imperial warlocks, and the historians of the Veritatis Quaesitor chapter, all corroborate your account as the truth. Emperor Urs, I am the grand Chaptermaster of the Indagator Mortis. In your absence, we have held the empire together as best we could, and strove to prepare it for this moment. We are at your command." The entire fortress was a hushed silence. Waiting on Urs.

"I would offer a speech at this moment." Urs said, eyes looking down at the kneeling Chaptermasters.

"However, I am not gifted with speechcraft as my predecessor. I have come here to serve in triggering the Final Edict, and then my skills are needed in eliminating Relinquished once and for all. The empire needs to protect humanity as a whole and give me enough time to prepare my strike for Relinquished." The man slowly stood back up, nodding.

"Domine mi, do you wish for me to deliver the speech in your name?"

"If you would so kindly, Chaptermaster." Urs said.

"I understand I must galvanize the warriors here. It is not a skill I have confidence in. You are called." The man gave a quick bow of his head.

"Your will be done." Then he pulled his head up, arms stretched out wide. This next part I could tell wasn't for us. It was for every single imperial crusader, squire and worker that had snuck out to the balcony levels, all looking down. Thousands of them.

"Soldiers of Perseverance!" He called out, voice loud.

"Deathless, Paladins, Inquisitors, Imperators, Truthseekers and Crusaders the Indagator Mortis! All yee who have served and hear my voice now, know this: Today, the great mission that founded our Chapter has come to it's true moment! The final war is upon us all! And with it, the lost emperor has returned to lead us once more! Today, the Empire will be restored! Today the world must be united once again! Indagator Mortis! Stand proud! Our final duty to mankind is at hand! We will not falter. We cannot falter.

We are the instrument of his might! We are his sword and shield! We are the forged spear that will be driven into the heart of the machines and shatter them forevermore! They will come, and they will break against us!" He pulled out an imperial longsword from his scabbard, turning it on in a flourish, then gave a single salute. I recognized it. The same salute Cathida had done accepting her final mission, which had been to search for Urs with the miteseeker.

A salute that meant her work would be done until her dying breath. And it wasn't simply him holding that salute. Every imperial in eyesight had equally drawn their knives, blades, rifles, or even a mop if that was all they had to their name.

"Tremble all ye who tread upon the sun, and break before our will!" The chaptermaster bellowed. Weapon high over his head now.

"So do we swear, and take upon this mantle! Glory to the Empire! Glory to humanity! Solaris Imperium!" The return cry was so loud, even the helmets everyone wore didn't quite insulate enough.