Chương 20: Chapter Twenty

My heart accelerates as adrenaline pumps through me. How the hell am I supposed to win this!? The numbers are overwhelming, my defences are barely functioning, and my only support is an injured space marine.

"What's wrong with the turrets? The ones in the vents are apparently doing fine."

"Those aren't turrets, but a fine laser grid. They have no moving parts and require minimal maintenance. The automated turrets are different. Many were damaged or depleted during the mutiny. Firing the remaining turrets may destroy them." Might as well blow up the ship and call it a day. Wait. That might not be such a bad idea after all, "Could the environmental sustainer pump hydrazine into the atmosphere, or hypergolic compounds?

Are there other toxic and explosive chemicals already hooked up to the sustainer in case of boarders?"

"Toxic compounds are rarely used as most boarders equip protections against them, and could cause trouble if the sustainer was compromised. Similar principles apply to explosive compounds. The greatest threat to a void ship crew is fire, as such, the environmental sustainer is designed to prevent the build-up of such chemicals on a hardware level. It cannot permit them without physical modification as well as a complete removal of the machine spirit, which would render the device unusable."

"So that's a no."

"Not without more time than you have."

"Fine, but I could set up barrels of the stuff and attach it to an aerosolizer and pump it into the air and just turn off the sustainer in the area I am flooding. It won't matter if the turrets explode then, as that will work as the trigger for the trap."

"Aruna will allow and aid this course of action."

"Aren't I the captain? Do I not have the final word on everything that happens?"

"You are the captain. Your authority covers the crew and mission. I am the primary machine spirit. The purpose of my existence is to ensure the proper usage of Distant Sun. Aruna does not have to work if it thinks its crew are idiots. The continued function of the Distant Sun has a higher priority than the survival of the crew. Usually these are not at odds, but this is not always the case.

Distant Sun will be rendered non-functional or captured should the boarders succeed, hence minor self-inflicted damage is deemed acceptable by Aruna as standard options are non-functional."

"Ah, you did explain that before. Seeing and hearing it in practice is different."

"To preempt further confusion, some commands have an even higher priority, like defending imperial worlds or shipyards, so vessels do not automatically flee when worlds or space based industry are at risk. The highest is defending the Imperium, which sometimes means retreating to fight another day.

"Aruna makes these decisions based on available data. Therefore older machine spirits make better decisions. Some tech-priests, such as forge lords, or other imperial faction leaders such as inquisitors or a high admiral may have an override code, but this is rare. There is nothing to defend in the warp, so Aruna's preservation is currently the highest priority."

"Or," I raise an eyebrow.

"The captain can stick the ship in manual mode, with a physical lever the machine spirit cannot operate. It does not matter if you approve or not as long as I don't move that lever." Aruna is silent for ten seconds.

"Yes. However, it massively impacts the efficiency of the ship."

"Yes, you mentioned that before. By how much?"

"For example, an elite crew can load and fire a broadside of macro cannons every twenty minutes, an untrained one takes about an hour. Of those shells, fifty percent will hit at half-range or closer, maybe twenty percent at the maximum effective range. With the right hardware, Aruna can fire every five minutes and hit at least seventy-five percent of the time at long range and ninety percent at half-range and even more the closer the target gets. This is just one example.

Everything works better when it is automated or coordinating with Aruna."

"That's quite an opinion to have of yourself."

"Aruna has no opinions, only data."

"I don't quite believe that. Enough talk, Aruna. You've explained the advantages, and even with the training package from E-SIM, I still don't know enough to make an informed decision. We will worry about it another day.

"Please help me choose ambush points, then activate any of the turrets we won't be needing for the traps. We should be able to thin their numbers, even if only some of the defences work. Gather the required materials and components for the fuel-air explosives with servitors and take them to the trap points while avoiding detection. Last, put the main forces up on a screen alongside a map so I can see where they are and what they are doing. The hangar as well please."

"Aruna complies. It objects to your wait and see approach. Aruna will be trapped if you die during this assault."

"Then our best efforts better be good enough."

"Aruna always performs its best. It cannot do anything else."

"Another half-truth. You could do your best to help and hinder simultaneously. If you want me to trust you with the Distant Sun, it will take more than a few days. You lack data on me too, no need to be in such a hurry. Bring up the data please, Aruna." The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation. Four mechanical arms push large screens closer to me and light up.

The tyranids are milling about in front of a massive door, alternating between firing at it and scratching it with their destructive claws. #K1/+1/Q2; the tyranids are four-hundred and eighty metres from the bridge. The human mutants, or chaos cultists, are setting up a modified lascannon, which then outputs a continuous beam, slowly cutting through the next door. They're still in Q1 and a couple kilometres from the bridge. There are a couple dozen orks wandering about near the engines, bashing stuff.

Not quite sure how they got in, but they're still a problem. I request another screen, there's no external view, but I can look at the scans of the rok. A wireframe of the vessel outlines a hollowed asteroid with engines on the back and guns on every other surface, all facing forward. The guns flash and fire at the station, but are absorbed by the void shields.

"Those ork attacks must be depleting the power reserves even faster. I doubt the station has long now." Odhran is working on his armour in the thunderhawk. He is half naked and his body is a mass of stitches and bruises. Mr Cygnus is tapping the armour with his beak and flapping his wings a lot. He looks outraged at how the armour is being treated, but Odhran can't see him. Probably for the best. I was hoping I'd be able to direct my enemies into each other, but the tyranids are just too close.

Sending a command with my implants, I open a vox channel to Odhran, "Sergeant Odhran, tyranids are nearing the bridge. I plan to burn them out, but I need you for back up please. I'll send the ambush location to your armour. Preparations should take at least a couple hours, I'll update you again if I'm almost finished and you're not there." Odhran turns around and looks up at the camera, "Acceptable, Magos. I will be there." He turns around and resumes his work.

I pick six different ambush points and rush to the first one, a titan hold. The manifest had it labelled as empty, but when I arrive, empty means it doesn't have a titan, it doesn't mean it's not used for the storage of other things. Like tanks and three damaged and partially disassembled bipedal armoured walkers called knights.

"All that planning and fretting when I have a room full of tanks? Which idiot wrote the manifest? Aruna? Aruna!" A score of servitors and a pair of small, tracked vehicles with a large crane on the back of each of them rumble through the door behind me, pulling trailers full of armoured containers covered with hazard symbols. I still don't get a reply, so I walk out of the room.

"Aruna. Why is there a room full of tanks and busted knights?" Aruna's projection appears in my mind scratching its claws against the doorframe to the room.

"Someone tampered with the sensors in this room. Aruna suspects skulduggery. The objects within were possibly provided by a backhand investment deal in this voyage, perhaps a failed knight house? It does not matter. Sitting in a tank surrounded by tyranids is a bad way to go." Aruna slaps the doorframe hard then waltzes in, "There, anomaly purged."

"Couldn't I just drive over the tyranids?"

"You'd get about half of them before their bodies and acidic blood disabled the tracks and the guns cannot target them once they swarm the hull."

"One day, I'm going to design a tank of my own with an electrocution field. That'll learn 'em good an' proppah." Aruna dashes around the room, examining the tanks and ignores me. I direct the servitors to unload the armoured containers in a spot between three haphazardly parked leman russ tanks. The tanks are covered in guns, gizmos and additional armoured plates, especially on their flat sides.

They're seven point zero eight metres long, four point eight six metres wide and four point four two metres tall, making them a metre shorter than the Challenger two I saw at the British Tank Museum on a family day out. They're also a metre wider, and two metres taller, approximately. Unlike the tanks of my day, the tracks go around the entire side, rather than just the bottom, similar to the earliest world war one tanks.

They don't sound that different in size, but when I run the numbers, I realise an imperial tank is more than twice the size of a twenty first century tank at one hundred and fifty-two cubic metres compared to seventy-two point three cubic metres, while also being slightly lighter at sixty tonnes rather than sixty four tonnes, well at least before you load them both down with extra armour, fuel, and munitions.

I'm not so sure about the armour thickness, as that varies on different points of both tanks, but on average, my scans show an unmodified leman russ's armour is half the thickness of a challenger two, which, even with superior materials like plasteel and ceramite, sounds utterly inadequate to me, and the modifications done to these models suggests I'm not the only one who thinks it is far too thin. Despite their flaws the leman russ tanks look overbearing and powerful. I really, really want to drive one.

Maybe just a peek? I take a few deep breaths and cast the temptation from my mind. I don't believe the Mechanicus are dumb enough to store their tanks fuelled and loaded, or know if they even work, neither do I have the time to find out. Rubbing my hands, I grin. I'll save the tanks for the cultists, if possible. Let's hope my explosives don't damage them too much. Returning to my work, I connect pumps, aerosolizers, and containers full of hydrazine, with rubber tubing.

The tubing would be a problem if I needed it to last, but it will take months, not hours, for the hydrazine to cause failures, unless it's some super rubber. I've no idea what sort of rubber cog boys and girls like to play with. A stash of charged power packs are hooked up to the pumps without trouble and my creations are complete. I test everything, fix a few loose bits, then tie everything into six different setups with duct tape.

I direct the tracked cranes, galvanic servo haulers their little plaques call them, to distribute my bombs, then check the turrets. There are dozens of them, unsurprising considering the value of the giant war machine that this room is designed to hold. Miraculously, ninety percent of them deploy. They run through test cycles and of that ninety percent, forty-three percent come back green, seventeen percent with various faults, and forty percent as non-functional.

At this point, I'm not even sure I need my traps, but I just can't afford for this to go wrong, so I power them up and skedaddle to the next area. I wish the tyranids hadn't split up, but that's like hoping a massive hive intelligence with thousands of brains is dumber than oneself. It's just not going to happen. For the next two hours I continue to set traps, running between decks as fast as I can. All my traps are deployed without a hitch and the cold environment keeps the hydrazine from exploding willy-nilly.

Inside a long corridor, Aruna goes from strutting around the top of a barrel to sitting upright in a single frame, like a glitched recording.

"The tyranids have changed their movements."

"Where are they going now?"

"They're coming here. All of them."