Chương 25: Interlude - Dracovos

Things were not going as intended. He was, at the moment, sheltering behind a steel barricade, two mechadendrites hovering above and clutching onto laspistols that he used to fire into the unwashed monstrosities pushing into his Array. High Transmechanic Dracovos had been relegated to his position two decades ago, and at the time, his greatest fear was that his promotion would be one that would lead only into a literal dead end. Now that was proving to be prophetically correct. He was liable to die here.

The Forward Communications Array was an important part of The Broken Scale. There was no doubt about that. It was just as important as the tertiary generator, or the secondary bridge. That was to say that it wasn't necessary for the vessel to function, but it was nonetheless a nice amenity for the ship to have. This array allowed them to beam vox and pict messages as well as other types of transmissions out of a forward arc far wider than that of the main array. The cost of that was the poor positioning.

It was no secret that being right under the prow was a poor place to be. If the ship ever engaged in a ramming manoeuvre, he and the lesser Tech Priests and menials under his care were dead. Now they were likely to die for a whole other reason.

"Where are our accursed reinforcements?" he called out. The voidsmen-at-arms, loaned to the position once its importance to the enemy became obvious, shrugged. Dracovos grunted, then shifted and turned around to better aim his laspistols. The room was built in tiers and layers, and the first of these, by the entrance, was lost. Even now, two voidsmen were engaged with a trio of genestealers in hand-to-hand combat.

The rest of the vile mutants were taking cover behind the very barricades he had ordered placed to protect the entrance. The only reason they hadn't been swarmed by a tide of unwashed mutants was the withering fire he and his fellows were putting out. A modification of one of the room's capacitors, a brilliant idea that had cost the life of one Tech Acolyte, had turned a section of the room into a hissing, spitting wall.

Sparks of motive force danced along the ground and up the sides of cogitators and barricades, cooking anyone that tried to run past. That wouldn't last. The capacitor was nearly drained. Once it dimmed, the enemy wouldn't have any reason to stall, and in that moment, they would come across and end Dracovos and his retinue of workers. He started to dig through his bag of tricks, only... Dracovos had been at peace for a long time. The last occurrence of an incident in the Warp was decades ago.

The Broken Scale flew safe routes between known worlds. He had never needed to be armed to the teeth or hide secretive weapons. Most of his greatest weapons were rumours and secrets. Having control of the secondary Communications Array meant that every Vox aboard the ship was just a tap against a cogitator away from his ears, and all too often, people forgot that others may be listening in on their conversations. Fat lot of good that would do now. The banks of blackmail might as well be flung paperweights.

Gritting his teeth, Dracovos rose to his full height, then lifted his omnissian axe. Its back was mounted with a powerful vox-caster, and the head had a speaker built into it that could project his voice loud and clear across even a battlefield.

"Mutants. Genestealers!" he hissed and his voice was elevated as the speakers across the room picked it up. The machine spirits of this room knew him well, and though he wished to one day be elevated beyond this place, they nonetheless respected him.

"The mysteries of this holy Communications Array will never be known to you!" The leader of the enemies, a pie-bald little man with madness in his eyes and a sneer that would better fit a dog, cackled.

"I care not for your mysteries, clanker! We will use this machine of yours, even if it means defiling its original purpose! It will pierce the veil and let us speak once more to the Congregation of the Many-Headed Emperor!"

"Heretic!" Dracovos shouted, and the noise was so powerful that it made the man wince back. Shots filled the air, but both men ignored them and the dying of their subordinates. Dracovos because he was carefully positioning himself and taking shots at any genestealer armed with a rifle that looked his way, and the mad genestealer because any stray lasfire splattered against a shimmering dome around him. Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings. A psyker, then?

Truly, this disgusting creature couldn't be purged rapidly enough. Dracovos gritted his teeth and shifted to the side, opening fire over and over again even if it merely splashed against the psyker's shield. Something would have to give. Then something did. The back of the genestealer group, those gathered by the destroyed door, was washed in white. Frost climbed the walls and the men there fled only for some of them to fall, howling as their legs snapped apart, the remains frozen to the deck.

Something rushed into the room, ramming aside frozen corpses. A servitor? It reached out, grabbing the back of the head of a genestealer still cowering behind a barricade, and with a pneumatic twist, ripped it off. The timing was perfect. The motive force keeping the two groups apart fizzled and faded, and the genestealers at the front, unaware of what was happening behind them, charged. Dracovos fell back, then rushed in to fight in close quarters.

His acolytes rendered assistance, and the space filled with lightning and lasfire then the meaty smacks of tools clashing together. His mechadendrites swerved around, dropping his pistols in favour of ripping necks apart and stabbing into the chests of his enemies. Soon his claws were covered in flesh. His secondary cogitator implant ran through simulations every second. The initial numbers were awful, but with the genestealers at the rear assaulted from the flank and their ranged support falling quiet...

The odds were slowly improving. He grunted as he flung a corpse aside, swung his axe around and let its transonic head bury into a large genestealer's chest, then fired the speaker-blaster on the end to turn the body stuck on the axehead to paste. That created enough space around him that he was able to see the entrance once more. The psyker was raving mad, lightning dancing off of his fingertips to spear into the floating body of a writhing voidsman.

Then the man spun around and glared towards the entrance where... Dracovos recognized her. It was that fool Tech Acolyte, the one he'd purposely sent off to her death. A part of him was incensed that his order hadn't been followed.

"You!" the psyker yelled.

"I'm back!" the girl shouted. Then she took off running towards him. The psyker raised a hand, lightning collecting on the end of it and-- The hand, and some of the man's arm, went flying up into the air in a beautiful bloody arc that sprayed blood behind it. Suddenly, there was a Sicarian Ruststalker next to the psyker, a saw-ended arm poised as though it had passed right where his arm had been.

The ruststalker jumped back, then fell into a group of genestealers, four arms snapping out with deadly precision that left corpses behind. The Tech Acolyte used that moment of distraction to reach the psyker. Her arm shot out with surprising speed, wrist twisting all the way around so that her fingers grabbed onto his face. Then those same fingers started to spin, and his scream only grew louder. For a moment, there was a surreal quality to it, and the genestealers across the room paused and turned to stare.

Dracovos beheaded one and shot another in the back of the head, encouraging his allies to not squander their enemy's moment of distraction. The girl... the Tech Acolyte, winced, but her black-steel arm held firm. Then a panel on her forearm opened and out came a long, sharp-tipped tool that stabbed into the psyker's face. It lit up, and Dracovos realized that it was a welding torch. He filed away the quality of that arm for further analysis later. The moment the torch lit up inside the psyker's skull it was over.

He squirmed, then collapsed, smoke pouring out of his eyehole. She let go, then glanced around. The ruststalker was killing some stragglers at the far end of the room, the other servitor had two heads in its vice-arms and was squeezing them both. Dracovos planted two shots into the body of one of the remaining genestealers, and then the room went deathly, strangely quiet.

"Ah... I'm back! Alma-9 said you needed reinforcements?" Her arm refolded itself and her wrist spun back into place. She scratched the side of her head.

"Do... we count?"