To Walk the Constellations Pt. 04

Drak sighed and ducked into the autocar. He knelt near the needle front, the window depoloralizing. A HUD sketched itself across the glass and Drak sent the mental command to set the car on the skies. The agrav generator built into the base of the autocar whirred to life and the ducted fans that drove it through the skies blurred into motion. The outer skin of the car shifted itself in a thousand minute ways, guided by Drak's talent to take advantage of areospace functionalities that most citizens of Eudaimonia could never have dreamed of. The end result was that the autocar zipped through the skies of the capital nearly twice as fast as the vehicles that blurred past in their lanes.

Behind him, Enriquah and Adoran watched him work. Adoran was holding his threshold blade in his hand, twirling the thick, tungsten dense weight of it around his wrist, catching it and then setting it spinning again. "So," Drak said, not looking back at them. "Tell me about these techgaunts."

"They're average technophages," Quah said. "Someone in the undercity found a corrupted source of mana and an autodoc and went skynet on us." She shrugged one dark skinned shoulder and flicked her hair in a dismissive way. "Honestly, I kinda get the impulse."

"That is what alarms me," Adoran said with a slight grin.

Drak sighed. "And they haven't been rooted out by the army because..."

"They're roosted in the lower levels of the sensoria archives," Adoran said.

"And it's a test for us neonates," Quah said, cheerfully. "A test in the hacky and slashy." She made a soft 'vrrr vrr' noise with her lips, swinging the hilt of her threshold blade left and right.

"And because the army tends to go after gaunts with high-wattage autolasers and clave guns," Adoran said.

"And antiproton grenades," Quah added.

"Mech-suits and chainbayonets," Adoran lobbed back, nodding.

"Oh! Suborbital precision railspikes!" Quah started to tick options off on her fingers. "Autophagic memetic virus bombs, sub-sonic pulse mines, nukes."

"I get it," Drak growled.

"When you want precision, you call the Navy," Adoran said, cheerfully. "Or the Swiftwind Chevaliers!"

"They still exist?" Quah oohed softly.

"When we joined the Hegemony, we were allowed a token force - my grandfather chose the Chevaliers to keep," Adoran said, shrugging one shoulder. "They're mostly used as an honor guard, or when a close-action in the low orbit requires some swordwork." He nodded. "They actually took the L1 fortress during the Third Siege of Castle."

"The catastrophic one that ended with a total Hegemonic defeat?" Quah asked, leaning in close to eye Adoran. Adoran's cheerful face fell. He coughed.

"Well. I never said they took it for very long..." he muttered.

"We're almost there," Drak growled - the autocar was slipping around in a coiling arc, canting its body to the side and fanning out its wings to bleed off kinetic energy built up by traveling for so long with near zero friction and zero gravitic drag. The banking movement let him observe the sensorium archives. The pyramidal structure was nearly lost underneath mountainous tenement housing - unplanned sprawl. The capital had been founded a respectful distance from the archives, to give the Machines their deference. But humanity had a way of never quite calculating their own growth accurately. Eudaimonia's borders now had vastly outstripped the archives, meaning that only the upper levels emerged around the sprawl. The buildings attached to it had, over the centuries, crumbled, crushed, and then been built over with new layers of growth and tech-scrappers, creating that most lethal of urban environments: The hive.

The autocar ended its course on a clear plastic balcony that thrust from the side of the triangular face of the archives, with a large and ornately carved door of bronze and steel set open for all comers. The entrance led past stack after stack of racked solid state drives, brick shaped and nearly transparent crystalline lattices. Each one contained a cornucopia of information and data - birth records, death records. Names, dates, history. Tech and miracles, magic and wonder. History, stories, photographs, holographs, sense-information, schematics, and, of course, pornography.

Lots of pornography.

The sound of Drak and his companion's footsteps echoed through the vast repository - and Drak swung his head around, looking for any attendant. There was no one here - just the rows, the silent drives, the distant rumble of the city. Drak measured the loss of dignity that came from shouting for someone against getting this over with and his mask off his face, but before he had to make the call, a robed figure came around the corner of one of the stacks, humming to themselves as they held a stack of greyish chunks of comptech, with dangling wires and bits of exposed circuitry.

The figure turned to face the trio - and yelped, nearly dropping the comptech. Their hood fell backwards, revealing a bald, blue eyed woman beneath. Her face was unadorned by makeup or other signifier of rank or privilege, though she did have the trio of contect studs around each of her temples that indicated a cheap VR induction job. Her jaw was angular and her eyes looked far too large for her head.

"Oh! Sire! Sirs! Lords! Ladies! Lady!" the girl stumbled, then tried to bow while also keeping her comptech against her chest. "Welcome to the sensoria archives!"

Drak inclined his head. "Where's the central directory?"

"Riiight this way!" she said, her voice hitching on the first word. She turned on her heel and hurried off, her robes swirling around her feet. The nameless monk led them past row after row, stack after stack, and to a central pillar that ran along the entire spine of the pyramid. It looked like it was made of pure, unadorned glass - so perfectly molded that only the faintest of ripple and diffraction showed that it was anything but open air. Coming closer to it, Drak could see the faint distortions that made the pillar visible at all were, in fact, in a geometric pattern that resolved itself more and more the closer he got.

His palm pressed to the side of the pillar as the monk said: "We can get a comptech interface that..."

The entire pillar glowed. Golden light etched along the distortions, making a vast, tree-like structure suddenly become visible within the pillar. Drak felt the archive's central directory unfold before him - and he reached out with the flashes of sensation he had felt while in communion with his personal Machine. When he had thought of Venn, he had been bombarded with scents, sounds, with feelings, shifting movement. The information flowed from him and began to search through the archives.

He withdrew his hand, while the monk - her mouth hanging agape - stepped backwards. "Jesus and her saints," she whispered, her voice husky.

"Never met a Walker of the Constellations before?" Adoran asked, cheerfully. "Don't worry - we're also here to deal with your gaunt problem."

"Oh praise the Emperor," the monk said. "We've got some autolasers in the places they've tried to enter, but who knows what damage they're doing in the lower levels. I've asked the Army, but they said that they were ordered to keep their distance."

"Well, of course!" Quah said, clapping the monk on the shoulder. "They'd nuke the whole place into cherry red slag."

The monk looked nonplussed - though Drak couldn't tell if it was from Quah's attitude, the hypothetical nuclear bombardment, or the fact that Quah had used some of her own prehensile hair to do the clapping. Drak drew his clawed fingers away from the pillar and looked over his shoulder at Adoran and Quah. "It's on level 489.A, stack 200. The sensorium archives have three hits there, but we'll need to check each one to see if any of them are related."

"Oh, that's where the gaunt's have quartered themselves," the monk said, her voice hopeful.

Drak let out a slow, suffering sigh.

"But of course it is," he said, letting the vocal distortion his mask applied to his voice carry the utter disgust he felt at the contrivance of it all. No one knew quite why a Machine chose to grant one the powers of a Liminal Knight...but he was growing increasingly certain that they only did so because they could tell when someone's life was going to be cursed to be endlessly interesting.

"I can take you to the, um, the elevators," the monk said, nodding to him.

The archive had many elevators. But, so too, it had many defunct elevators. The operational shaft that the monk took them to was one of the heavyweight industrial elevators, lacking the decorations or concealments that a normal elevator might have had. The walls were merely fiber-mesh and the grating on the floor made it painfully clear how far down the shaft went - though the illumination provided by the side lamps failed after only one or two dozen lamps, leaving most of the shaft a black pit.

"At the bottom, there will be several autolasers," the monk said, her voice soft. "The access codes are-"

"Not needed," Drak said, then focused. The elevator started to drop - forcing the monk to leap back and onto the landing leading up to the elevator, lest she be taken down the shaft with the three Knights. As the lights receded, Adoran looked up at the monk, then down at Drak. He arched a single blond eyebrow.

"A mite rude, eh, Thale?" he asked.

"In case you haven't noticed, Prince Adams," Drak growled. "This isn't a field trip to Titania. We're going into battle to retrieve vital information. And more, it is time spent in my mask. I don't wear this because I enjoy it."

Adoran nodded. His voice was solemn. "I understand, Drak."

Did he, though? Drak had his doubts. But he hated having them. He wanted to lean into Adoran. He wanted to have an arm wrapped around his shoulders and a comforting squeeze. He wanted a great deal. Instead, he drew his threshold blade and activated the monomolecular blade. The glowing hologram that marked where the blade was flared to life a moment after his thought, and Quah and Adoran both readied their weapons. Adoran preferred a more classic blade - the monomolecular edge was mounted on a broadsword of gray-white steel, while Quah's threshold blade elongated into a heavily built staff. She had added some extra emitters at the ends of the staff, though the purpose of the emitters currently escaped Drak.

"Ready," Adoran said.

"I really hope these actually work," Quah muttered, which drew a glance from Adoran and Drak.

Then the elevator reached the bottom of the shaft - the fiber mesh door hissing open to reveal a huge, steel chamber. THe walls were streaked with discoloration and marred by signs of long ill-use. Light came from a set of LEDs that were mounted along the edges of the ceiling, shining down in reds and golds. They reflected off the spherical, matte black finish of the four autolasers that had been set in a pattern around the elevator. The autolasers were all wired into the building's power supply, but their programming was porcupine spikey - ready to absolutely kill anything and everyone who entered the room.

Drak stepped out of the elevator, scanning the room with a slow twist of his head. He nodded. "This way."

The corridors beyond the room showed signs of modification. Wall platings had been hacked down and carted off by some long dead prospectors seeking building material more permanent than the now extinct forests that had once dominated this landscape. Wires and cabling had been left to rot on the floor, while a sedimentary layer of dust and grim and discarded nuts and bolts crunched underneath their feet. Adoran held up a light in one hand, a small globe had had constructed with his threshold blade. The white light it cast sent wild shadows dancing on the walls and ceiling, exaggerating Thale's cloak into some vast, terrible monster that lurked behind him.

Quah prodded at the floor with her staff as they came to the first intersection where Drak's internal map of the archives clashed with the reality: The route he needed to go ended in a wild slurry of crushed components and gantry-walkways, all smashed down in some long forgotten cataclysm.

"Great," Adoran said.

"We could use explosives!" Quah gasped.

"No!" Adoran snapped.

"I have an antiproton grenade somewhere on me..." Quah muttered.

"I know an alternate route," Drak growled. Then, speaking more normally. "...you have an antiproton grenade?"

"It was a bet!" Quah laughed. "I made it myself and Tessa said that I'd kill myself by the end of the week. It's been two years now, and who's laughing now Tessa!?"

Drak and Adoran edged away from her. Then Drak jerked his head. "This way."

They turned - and the light in Adoran's hand swayed as it cast across what seemed to be nearly two dozen techgaunts, drooling and gleaming in the shadows. They had crept up nearly silently, and now watched the three Liminal Knights - Drak looked left and over his shoulder and saw that more gaunts had come from the other corridors, bringing the numbers to the mid thirties or more.

"I have a bad feeling about this," Adoran muttered.

***

The 'gaunts only uniform trait was their lack of uniformity and their decay. Their skin had the gray, flaky pallor of decay and the puffy whiteness of infection and rot. Heat practically roiled off their bodies - not just from the infection that was kept barely incheck by patchwork medical nano, but also from the exposed radiating amatures that bled off the waste heat from their power hungry augmentations. Metallic limbs and scorpian stingers, optic arrays that fanned out of their skulls like demonic masks, with stretched skin drawn taut against telescoping camera lenses and their bulky casings. Their fingers were like claws - metal, ragged, and dripping with blood. Their mouths hung open in a grotesque parody of smiles.

The one that moved first was the most human looking - and their robes were akin to the bald monk that Drak had seen in the first level. This one was male, and half their face had been rebuilt with gleaming chrome, and their right arm had been lopped off and replaced by a gimbled, amatured buzz-saw.

The monk grinned. "You know what they said to me, newflesh?" he licked his lips with a steel tipped tongue.

Drak's hand tightened on his threshold blade. He felt Adoran shift to his side, his grip tightening on his blade as well.

"They repeated again and again: Subjection is fact. The chorus of the machine - an endless harmony approaching sigma. Manifold perfections of mathematic intersection. It was beautiful." His eyes glowed and the camera lens attached to his forehead whirred. "Do you understand me, oh knights?"

Drak sighed. "I hate gaunts. Have I mentioned that, Prince Adams?"

"I can see why you might," Adroan muttered back.

The corrupted monk cocked his head. Then snarled. "Get their blades, my siblings. Null the knights. Null them and the mana will be ours." His teeth were sharpened metal daggers - and they flashed as the gaunts started to flow forward with rattling and clicking.

Drak flared out his hand.

Every single long dormant light in the corridor burned brilliant white at the same instant. LEDs stabbed outwards and the gaunts screeched and recoiled, their optics made for cutting through the darkness. They frantically recalibrated, trying to adapt to the pain. But it was far too late for the front row - Drak strode forward and swept his sword out in a curving arc. The holographic field sparkled and flashed, but the monomolecular edge didn't slow or catch as it parted flesh and metal as easily as air. Four of the creatures fell in twitching chunks, while to his left, Adoran laid out with his sword - the meaty thunking sound of blade parting flesh providing a percussive beat to go with his bellowed war-cry: "For Elthas! For the Diamond Throne!"

Quah, meanwhile, was holding up their back. Her staff twirled and shifted, her own control of its structure adjusting the weight and mass, allowing her to deliver precise, shockingly powerful blows to the weak points of the techgaunts that tried to get past her. Cybernetic knees exploded into components and gore splattered along the ground as she bashed in head after head, laughing cheerfully.

"That's what I call a headache!"

"Quah!" Drak snapped. "Focus!"

"I am!" She twirled her staff, then made a sweeping motion - as if she was trying to strike one of the gaunt's on the jaw with an upstroke. But she missed, and missed with more than a foot to spare. She scowled. "Dang it."

"What the fuck are you doing?" Adoran asked, impaling a gaunt with his sword, then spinning the hilt, reconfiguring his threshold blade into a broad, curved shield, just in time to parry a trio of claws that tried to scrabble and get past him, teeth gnashing.

"Not enough motive power - have to try a different tack!" Quah shifted her grip. Her staff shrank and then a pair of monomolecular blades exploded from each tip, returning it to the full lenght. Ruby red light glowed around the blades, to indicate their location, and she began to twirl herself about, taking advantage of the sweeping, twisting motions that a staff could provide - sending limbs and heads flying with the abandon of a true bezerker.

Drak, meanwhile, found himself standing up to his thighs in bodyparts - with the gaunts trying to scramble at him. His armor was rent in several places, and he felt the dull ache and sting from where a buzz-saw cutter had scored along his shoulder. He gripped his sword two handed, slashing up, then down, parting gaunt after gaunt - but each time, another guant scrambled forward, screeching and hissing.

He decapitated another, then felt a pair land on his back. Their claws dug into his gambeson. Then one of their heads went flying, blood drenching the side of his mask. He twisted and the only surviving gaunt on him scrambled around to try lock its amatured jaw onto his face. He impaled it through the chest with the point of his threshold blade and the creature fell off him - cutting the entire shoulder free with the smooth passage of its body.

Silence fell.

Drak panted heavily, swinging his head around.

They were surrounded by a heaping pile of dead and dying gaunts. Quah, Adoran and he were drenched in blood. Adoran had a large cut across his chest, which bled sluggishly. Quah's left pig-tail had been sliced clean off, leaving her looking completely lopsided. And Drak felt a half a dozen smaller cuts and bruises from impacts, slashes, and one bite, which had chomped down on his knuckles.

"That," he said, reaching up and tugging his mask off with a snarl, letting the cool, moist air of the lower tunnels brush against his face. "Is why I fucking hate gaunts, Adoran."

Adoran grinned at him.

In the end, the sensorium data they had been seeking was in the third place they checked - cached in a quartet of primitive hard drives lashed together by a leather belt and stored in a niche of stone and concrete. Drak had only to place his palm against it and focus and feel the data within to know that he had a match. He, Adoran and Quah dragged the set of hard drives to the elevator and Drak slid his mask back on only once the elevator started to ascend.

The monk gaped at them as they emerged from the elevator. She opened her mouth, to speak. But Drak didn't want to hear a thank you or a fawning gushing - he felt nothing but an intense desire to get back to the communal showers and to scrub himself clean then get an injection of stiff medical nano. But Adoran bowed low to the monk, his arm spread wide. "The gaunts that so troubled you have been dealt with," he said, quietly. "Though, it seems one of your comrades was one of their victims."