Chương 231: Chapter Two Hundred and Thirty-One

With all my implants operating off my back up potentia coils and nary a hint of Warp energy, I feel as if I am back in my sarcophagus, staring out from behind the armourglass at the withered skeletons of my fellow experimental subjects. I actually feel physical exhaustion for the first time in decades. When I lie down to rest, I sleep, not because I wish to, but because without it what little remains of my organic body will fail.

I dare not tarry long though and twelve hours later I am dressed in brown, penitent's robes with nothing but a flask of specialised nutrient solution hanging from my belt and a pair of extra potentia coils strapped to my lower back. In my hands, I clasp a length of L-shaped plasteel pipe. Four mechadendrites peek over my shoulders and Brian, my servo skull, floats nearby. Surrounding me are thirty, bruised and scabrous men and women.

They're slightly better dressed in patched, second hand hyperweave undersuits and crudely stitched robes, stained with oil, blood, and muck. Clear faced helmets cover their matted, sweaty hair. They're all incredibly short, varying between one hundred and thirty and one hundred and sixty centimetres tall; their frames are so thin that their undersuits do not tighten properly against their skin. They wield a mix of newly forged hand axes and Civitas Pattern laspistols.

Some have grox leather jackets and other homemade protective gear on top of their robes. Two individuals even have scavenged plasteel breastplates, one of whom has a golden armband. A mix of webbing, belt pouches, and satchels hold extra power packs, oxygen tanks, rations, and cutting tools. A single Cyber Mastiff accompanies us laden with even more supplies, like melta charges.

A Mark II Marwolv lasgun is built into its frame in case we need some heavier firepower and a data jack and cutting torch are attached to its mechadendrite tail. At three metres tall, even out of my power armour, I absolutely tower over these men and women. I am used to being one of the tallest people in the room, but compared to the well trained bodies of my cybernetically enhanced crew, these fanatic zombie slayers seem like children to me, rather than smaller adults.

They cluster around me in the dim light of a decrepit hangar, watching the shuttle that dropped us off slip into the treacherous void. My mind automatically files their names and faces for all time and it slowly dawns on me that each one who falls won't be making it to the Emperor, or even get snatched up by the predators of the Immaterium. It will be me who feasts on their souls, the man they're hoping will protect them and see them through their self-appointed trials. It disgusts me, but the alternative is worse.

I cannot just wander into the hull of this Pre-Crusade Era Siluria Class light cruiser alone. I must be seen and recorded as performing penance for calling the Emperor a Tyrant in my brief moment of losing my temper after Alpia was made into a Saint. This, too, pisses me off. I also have to learn how to choose which souls I absorb, rather than having the Warp Tap do so for me, and that requires having a good variety of individuals so that I can learn to discern between them.

Performing penance means no running about in power armour with an arsenal of heavy weapons either as I am supposed to, or at least look like, I am challenging myself.

"My Lord," voxes Clovis Pyrestain, the chief sacrificial victim of this sorry band of penitents.

"We are ready to depart."

"Do you remember our mission?"

"Yes, my Lord. We are to place a bomb in the centre of this vessel, then continue our fight through its rusting hull from one vessel to another, placing bombs and sealing them as we go. Our actions will cut off the Plague Zombies who are pressing into the three stranded vessels in the Breaking Yards.

"This will free the trapped crews from their constant fighting and secure a proper more thorough blockade, enabling them to start cycling into quarantine. Additional supplies and reinforcements will be dropped off for us to collect in the most accessible hangar of each vessel we challenge. Casualties will also be collected from the supply points by Servitor crewed shuttles." I vox,"Very good, Mr Pyrestain. I am here to fight and place the bombs. The penitents are for you to command.

You may ask for guidance if you are lost."

"Yes, Lord. We will obey the strictures of the Holy Father." Rather than throw a fit at his ridiculous title for me, I gesture for him to get on with his tasks. Clovis voxes several commands and the two squads spread out and head for the main doors, flicking on the torches attached to their laspistols. Clovis and the gun dog remain next to me and I follow the group as they creep forward. One fellow brings out a dataslate and plugs it into a control panel.

Remarkably, there is still some power in the system and he is able to trigger the airlock. We gather within the airlock and wait for it to cycle. The fans don't function and the handy chap with the dataslate has to override the system to get us through. I doubt he has any official training but these men and women have spent their whole lives scavenging from these hulks so I do not think it strange that one of their number has picked up a few tricks.

There is a hiss as air and dust rush beneath the inner door as it slowly rises. No one moves to remove their helmet, but there's enough oxygen in the air for the undersuits' systems to keep people breathing without cutting into our reserves. This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. Stamped into the wall is a message in English, Chinese, and Spanish:"Welcome to The Barber's Blades. Commissioned by Samson Haulage X860059M28" Wow!

This vessel is over thirteen millennia old! I'm not sure when it was finally decommissioned, or why, but I bet it has all sorts of fascinating secrets. It feels like a crime to assign a vessel like this to the shipbreakers. It might not even be the oldest vessel in the Breaking Yards. I could probably spend my whole life in this system and never run out of interesting items and technologies to discover. I suppress my excitement and focus on my surroundings. The corridor is fairly clean.

My auspex detects hints of oil, blood, and other fluids. The walls have rusted slightly and are scuffed with scorch marks. A broken sentry gun hangs from the ceiling. It has a big hole in one side and its gun is missing. The soot from the fire damage helps me place the firefight that happened here some three hundred and twenty years ago. We advance along the corridor and arrive at a hub leading in three directions as well as a bank of omni-directional lifts.

There are signs stamped into arches that inform us what deck we are on and which quarter of the vessel each corridor leads to, but nothing that tells us what those sections of the vessel contain. I spot a noosphere data node built into a security station, but it has no power. Fortunately, we only need to know how to reach the centre of The Barber's Blades so we take the corridor heading towards the prow. One moment everything is going well, the next I hear a muffled clang and shout.

Before I can discover what is going on, my mind splits. In one thread I am standing in the corridor, frozen midstep. In the other thread I am sitting on the knee of an old man as he reads to me, telling the tale of a pilgrim who went through all manner of improbable adventures trying to rediscover the lost shrines Saint Cognatius, a saint who somehow explored the Koronus Expanse long before the route through the Maw was discovered and mapped.

A series of emotions and images continue to batter me, but the emotions do not always match the image. A man should not marry in hatred, nor stab another with love while hunger claws at their belly. The rush of memories quickly fades like a dream, leaving me exhausted, starved, and jittery.

I can't perform E-SIM's recommended mental exercises while walking about so I am forced to set aside my discomfort and tackle more immediate problems, like the section of decking that just fell away into the room below, killing one of the penitents in the fall and cutting off our route. Which raises another question. If the vessel is low on power, why is the gravity still on? There is a lot of cursing, but the penitents appear more upset about the loss of equipment and rations than the death of their compatriot.

They turn around and start heading back the way we came, looking through the small window in each door to see if there are any hints to another route. I take a brief look into the cavern below and detect a higher than expected humidity and oxygen. Bulky lumps of heavily rusted machinery are coated with lichen and crawling with insects. A few vermin skitter through the gloom and a swarm of tiny bats flitter back and forth.

Brian floats into the cavern, then returns a minute later and screeches his report to me in a series of spooky whispers, static, and beeps. Apparently the lichen has spread to the ceiling of the compartment and consumed it. I'm not sure how the organism is managing to do so, but it is likely converting metals and plastic into oxygen, food, and water.

I suspect the Warp is involved somehow and I've no intention of taking samples from a metal eating, bioengineered organism in a void ship infested with Nurgle's creations, no matter how useful it might be for recycling and emergency life support. A few minutes later, a woman peeks through an unusually wide door and gasps. She immediately hits the button to open the door. A flat, mechanical voice crackles from the ancient vox caster in English. ++Insufficient permissions. Access denied.

++ There is a brief argument between the woman and Clovis, but after he also peers through the window, he beckons the dataslate guy forward who unscrews the panel and plugs his dataslate into the maintenance port. After a few minutes he shakes his head. Clovis pats him on the shoulder and approaches me.

"My Lord, there is another door visible through the glass that looks like it might lead to the maintenance corridors. However, our tech-thrall cannot read the language presented by the door's Machine-Spirit. Can you assist us?"

"I will make an attempt."

"Thank you, My Lord. Most gracious of you." I stride towards the panel as the tech-thrall scrambles to unplug his dataslate and scurry out of the way. I plug a mechadendrite into the maintenance port and query the Machine Spirit. It absolutely refuses to budge without a proper code, so instead I take a not so wild guess that its last scheduled maintenance check is overdue and that I am here to do so and need it to reset and let me go through its error logs. To my surprise, this also requires a security code.

I try all of the most common methods that might let me inject my own code into the door, but every single one is rejected. There is no mental projection from the door, likely because it's a possible security flaw, so I can't see what the Machine-Spirit looks like, but I get the distinct impression it is supremely smug. This must have been a Mechanicus vessel before it was decommissioned because no one else would bother with such security for a door to a repair workshop.

I could engage my E-War suite and try and crack the lock, but seeing how stubborn this door is, that level of intrusion might get passed up the chain to The Barber's Blades primary Machine-Spirit. Rather than risk its ire, I scramble the lock with a brief EMP and rapidly disassemble the door controls before the door's Machine-Spirit can reboot. Once the cogitator core is disconnected, I test each of the wires manually with small pulses of electricity until I find the one that triggers the lock on the door.

The door opens with a satisfying clunk and the penitents cheer. Six of them even fall to their knees in prayer. Much to my irritation, I detect a silent alarm broadcast into the noosphere. I didn't scan the lock in case the Machine-Spirit viewed it as a hostile action and now that's metaphorically short circuited me. The gravity beneath us snaps off and everyone other than me and the Cyber Mastiff starts floating off the deck. Well, this is embarrassing. I can't believe I was outwitted by a door.