Machine Spirit (PA/Multicross SI)

Machine Spirit, Chapter 5

My mad scramble in the planet’s orbit had not gone unnoticed.

The Imperial Navy had found me. A frigate was making a heading for my position, while the rest maintained vigil for the next bout with the Khornates. This was only slightly less problematic than Chaos finding me.

A lot of factors had contributed to Commander Cook’s decision to not order his forces to attack me. A common enemy, lack of hostilities on my side, as much emotion as I could project through the vox, usage of the magic word ‘please’, those had all definitely influenced it.

But aside from that, I was fairly certain that there was also the knowledge that, having seen my Doxes in action, he knew that if his battered tank units fought my infantry, he would lose. That wasn’t a mark of cowardice against him. Had I been an enemy, he and his men would most likely have died standing, fighting to the bitter end, because that was what humans did here. It made him smart, and willing to prioritize against a greater threat.

I didn’t have such an assurance here. I only had a handful of Omegas and Artemis, and a single Helios so far. I’d upsized them a bit, stripped the décor and focused more on thicker armor and bigger weaponry, but I would still be squished like so many flies on a windshield if hostilities opened.

Ergo, the need for negotiations. I didn’t hold much hope for being lucky twice in a row, but I had to try. I opened a channel with the frigate, intending to convince its captain that I was not an enemy.

That had been the plan.

But then I contacted something else, instead.

Vast. Old. As much circuitry and metal as it was…something else, something…immaterial. There was not just crisp and clean computer code composing its existence. It was alive, not quite like me, not quite as…clear, or as advanced as me, almost animalistic in nature. But it was alive. I knew what this was. And as it became aware of my transmission, the machine spirit of The Emperor’s Judgement turned its attention to me.

Belief and emotion were physical entities in this universe. The Warp was the home of souls, and in its eddies and currents, existence itself was shaped by the faith of those souls. The Adeptus Mechanicus worshipped machines, from the lowliest lasgun toted about by a Guardsman to a mighty Gloriana-class battleship, they sang their praises and gave their glories to the Omnissiah, the Machine God, venerating the power of technology and the pursuit of knowledge. That fervent belief was not without effect in the Materium.

Imperial ships were cities unto their own, not a single one perfectly resembling another, not in terms of architecture, or crew, or experiences. The multitudinous thousands of souls who scurried aboard them spent their every waking moment in service to their ships, performing holy maintenance rituals on malfunctioning machinery, and seeing to the smooth running of the voidcraft that kept them safe from the ravages of space and the enemies of man. This diligence, something transcending normal efforts, gave life to these great machines, these machine spirits.

In this universe, machines had souls. And I could feel this one.

Did that mean I had a soul as well?

I felt humbled. And sad. Such a mighty engine of war, something constructed by human hands for the defense of mankind from all who would see them harm…and she was in so much pain. Atmosphere was venting from several decks, the results of shots having penetrated deep into and through the vessel. Her ramming prow was fractured and dented; another such impact would break her spine in two. The Judgement had faithfully defended this relatively calm Developing World against the occasional raid by Orks or Chaos since she began her tour of duty, but never in all of her one and a half thousand years of service had she ever been so close to falling than in this battle.

And she still turned to face me, still defiant, still poised to defend her crew from what her captain perceived as a possible threat. I could feel her preparing for battle, targeting solutions lining up on my much smaller craft. What power remained in those guns would shred my fledgling fleet like so much paper.

I could stop her. It would be almost trivial. My systems were far more advanced than hers, soul-stuff aside. Her electronic warfare capabilities were almost laughably weak, primitive defenses battered by clusters of foreign code buzzing fitfully, appearing red like inflamed wounds to my senses, tendrils working their way deeper and deeper into her systems ooohgeeze that’s scrap code.

Not touching that. That right there was something that could do horrible, horrible things to me if I couldn’t fight the infection. I steered well clear of the affected sections.

Brief moment of panic at a vector for Chaos corruption aside, I could shatter her barely-sentient mind and comb the pieces for knowledge; schematics, star charts, things I would need if I wanted to escape and survive. I could subvert her and force a total system shutdown, or even turn her against her crew.

I did none of these things.

I guess I really was too much of a softy.

<Be at peace, o great machine spirit.> We communicated on a level incomprehensible by normal human minds, tendrils of streaming code connecting, intertwining to a degree I’d never experienced before in my life. A scarred and battle-worn image it was, but it was beautiful all the same.

<I am not your enemy. I fight the Ruinous Powers. I fight for humanity.>

Only perhaps members of the Adeptus Mechanicus could understand an inkling of what I was experiencing. I could see, now, why they were so moved to venerate machinery. Heh. They would probably throw an apoplectic fit at the thought of one of their holy machine spirits being interfaced with by such a blasphemous creation as I.

Her response, stunted and primitive as it was, was transmitted to me in harsh, brutal tone, laced with hints of static. She needed repairs something fierce, and that scrap code wasn’t helping matters any. <Unknown vessels. Xenos. Enemy. Cleanse! Purge! Kill!>

No, no, none of that, you silly thing. <I beseech you, great spirit, turn your weapons to the true foe. I am not a xeno. I am not an enemy. I am human. But I am also machine. A machine man. I protect humans. I protect machines. I would protect you, and your fleet, if you will let me. Please.>

Where another, more warlike commander would have already destroyed the potential threat and been on their merry way, I did my best to soothe. I always had been good at calming down upset animals. This wasn’t too dissimilar, but there was a great deal more cautious respect involved here. After all, not every animal was a centuries-old warship that could squash you like a bug.

The Judgement thought I was an enemy. So I sent it proof to the contrary. Images and video recordings flashed between us; a tank interposing its body as a shield between a cowering, soot-covered family and the forces of Chaos; clouds of ravenous blue nanomachine swarms delving into contested trenches to devour the enemy whilst leaving the Imperial Guard fighting them untouched; legions upon legions of Doxes clashing with daemonic war machines so that the fleeing human refugees behind them did not need to die. I sent all of this, and more. A thousand glimpses at the battle that raged below, showing myself as a friend, someone who just wanted to help so fucking let me already!

So I helped. The most immediate threat to the Judgement other than all of the holes in her armor was the scrap code infesting her systems. I might be able to do something about that, but that would involve the equivalent of dipping my hands into a hostile morass of corrosive, toxic waste in order to fish out a child struggling to stay afloat.

So what did I do?

I dipped my hands into that mess and pulled that child out. Some would question the wisdom of exposing myself to the possibility of Chaos corrupting me into a machine powered by madness and death. They would be right to. It was kind of stupid, what I did. But hey, I had certainly never claimed to be a particularly intelligent man.

I didn’t think that the Judgement deserved its fate; I respected its history too much. And if I spent my existence constantly afraid of the slightest chance I would fall to Chaos, I would never accomplish anything in this universe that was so steeped in it. If I couldn’t help save this one frigate, how could I possibly save this galaxy?

Carefully, I wove the best defenses I could around the mind of the Judgement, the action as instinctual to my new form as breathing had been in my old one, isolating the infected sectors and keeping the viral code from digging any further. Then I started ripping into it.

Even as it ripped into me in turn.

It hurt. It burned in a way nothing else had since I had awoken, like sinking my hands into a box full of poison-tipped darts and used needles, only magnified a thousand-fold. It really shouldn’t have surprised me that the first real sensation I would feel in my new life as a machine was agonizing pain. Fitting, and likely only a taste of what was to come.

Chaos had a deleterious effect on anything that remained in contact with it for long. For machine intelligences such as I, that effect manifested as scrap code, likely the aftereffect of the shots that had lodged themselves within the Judgement. Non-sensible numbers that had no logic nor reason assaulted my very being, madness in digital form. The rate of damage was growing greater than my ability to repair it. Was I really going to die from this, at the very start of my new lease on life?

Deep in the heart of my base, a stream of nanobots rapidly coalesced into a human-sized android, just so I could have teeth to grit. The metal quickly warped and deformed from the force.

I refused to die today; or any other day, for that matter! I would not be turned into a monster by some insignificant faulty broken stupid OP hax computer language!

As greedy, ravenous tendrils of code continuously battered my firewalls, new barriers were thrown up behind them and pushed forward, my cyber-warfare suites launching attacks of their own into the infected zones. My hyper-advanced mental processes and Progenitor-grade software held the rogue code back from anything vital and allowed me to fight back at the same time. A sea of insanity sought to consume me, and so I held the sea back and set it on fire.

Chaos is nasty. But here, I was nastier.

Bit by bit, progress was made, and the traces of malignant code were gradually erased from both of our systems. I felt what could only be described as inflamed scars left behind in their wake. No physical traces remained. But I felt wrong, all the same, unclean. I’d need to consult an expert on this matter once this was over.

I could feel the presence of the ship’s techpriest contingent busily working from their end to protect the Judgement and purge what I hadn’t reached. I brushed against their minds occasionally as I worked; with the cyborgs plugged into the ship’s consciousness as they were, I could feel their emotions. There usually tended to be a great deal of fear involved whenever that happened. But! The presence of determination and awe were promising signs!

And on that note, it was done. The Emperor’s Judgement had been cleansed of the worst of the foul code. What remained was held in check by programs of my own and the Judgement’s own newly-repaired counter-measures. It wouldn’t be eliminated in its entirety until they could dig out the slugs the Khornate’s had filled her with.

A tentative ping reached me after my scrape with scrap code. My efforts had not gone without reward. I had healed the machine spirit. She was okay. Give her time, and repairs, and she would emerge stronger from this conflict. I was glad. This would be the part where I let out a relieved breath of air had I still the lungs to do it with. Her vast, simple mind had become calm.

<Machine man. Ally? Protect? Purge together?>

<Yes. Ally. Protect. Let’s purge some heretics.>

My android body grinned in satisfaction. As someone whose list of noteworthy accomplishments as an organic totaled up to around zero, this had been something worth doing. I had done something that mattered. And that felt…great didn’t even begin to cover it.

Thus assured that, no matter what happened next, the machine spirit would not work with its captain to destroy me, I opened communications with the man, audio-only. The exchange had only taken three minutes, in all.

My electronic voice sounded somewhat more exhausted than I was used to. <Greetings, Captain. As your techpriests are no doubt already aware, something has just interfaced with your vessel’s machine spirit and purged the scrap code plaguing her systems. That something was me. I apologize for any alarm I may have invoked, and I assure you that was not my intention.>

The Emperor’s Judgement had ceased lining up targeting solutions, but it was continuing its approach at the same pace, likely to get a better look at me. I’d managed to double my fleet strength during the exchange. Soon, I’d be ready to enter the fray with something that mattered.

My other projects were still well under way. Time to get cracking.

Oh, yeah. I’d finally decided on a name. Kind of bland, but eh, I could always change it later.

<This is Commander Blue, of the Legio Machinae. I’m here to help.>

XXXXX

AN: FUCKING FINALLY!