Show not what has been done, but what can be. How beautiful the world would be if there were a procedure for moving through labyrinths.
- Umberto Eco
*
It is a wretched thing to see the death of a magician.
When a priest of the Adeptus Mechanicus is alive, she might be anything. The imagination alights at the possibilities concealed within those crimson robes and the lights dancing within. Might she be a beautiful young maiden, soft and curved, body patterned with the hexagonal grafts of silica and nanofiber? Might she be a demon, body twisted and malformed, blinking lights the eerie gaze of wicked flies rather than electronics? Perhaps that limp concealed four legs, or three, perhaps there were two hands or eight, perhaps she had always been smiling like the Saints, or maybe the skin and fat of her face had been peeled back to a skull made of steel.
So many of these questions will never be answered. The mass-reactive bolt entered her face just below the left eye, penetrated, and then detonated. The skull ruptured, the interlaced mesh of brain matter and neural interface shattered, and that masterpiece of cybernetic design splashed across the altar of the Omnissiah before dripping down to pool on the wiry blue carpet. It was an incredible shot.
In death, all the tricks she had up her sleeves spilled out. Hidden pistols and digital weapons fired blindly, still performing their functions even as their body staggered and slumped. Scorch marks, bullet holes and tiny silver bladed discs scatter wildly around the shattered doorway the assailant had entered through. A displacement field belatedly fired, teleporting the headless and still-shooting body of the Archmagos five meters west, whereupon two additional bolt rounds to the armoured center mass and sent what was now just the incomplete and unremarkable body of a sedentary middle-age lady sprawled across the floor. Archmagos Toros, master of the Isohedron Factory-Cathedral, was now nothing more than a mess of broken metal and carbon.
Then the assassin had begun their work. They had approached the inwards-facing circle of archaic white cogitators the Magos had been working on. Some had been pushed aside, some had been smashed, and some had been taken, their absence marked only by lonely cables that drifted like an octopus carved by a blind itamae.
The room - archaic, with framed circuit boards and eerie gadgets upon white-painted walls. A singularly bland blue carpet. A small personal shrine to the Omnissiah upon the north wall, flanked to either side by huge arched windows with a spectacular view of the Hive rising like a mountain's nightmare. The west window's glass is shattered entirely, large enough for a giant to fit through, and the stink from the endlessly churning petrochemical smokestacks creeps into this ivory tower like a burglar.
You have initial assessment from the Skitarii marshal. The chain of events as far as she can determine goes like this:
- Assailant arrived at tower door, guarded by two Skitarii
- Assailant incapacitates both Skitarii with a Webber. This non-lethal takedown prevents their heartrate monitors from triggering an alarm.
- Assailant places a grenade on a timer by the two Skitarii. It soon detonates, killing both of them, but only after the danger of them alerting the Archmagos has passed.
- Assailant bypasses the security door.
- Assailant proceeds to the Archmagos' office.
- Assailant kicks open the reinforced metal door to the Archmagos' office
- Assailant kills the Archmagos with a single Bolt round to the head.
- Archmagos' Displacer Field activates, teleporting her five meters to the west.
- Archmagos' automated defense systems begin to fire blindly even as the corpse collapses
- Assailant responds with a burst of automatic gunfire. Some of these shots miss and shatter the glass window behind the Archmagos' new position.
- Archmagos ceases fire.
- Assailant proceeds to the cogitator station. Rips out multiple electronic devices and stores them in a heavy backpack.
- Assailant departs through the open window.
The Skitarii Marshal has drawn the conclusion that this was a smash and grab and is treating it like a robbery. She has left the Isohedron in order to start drawing a perimeter and co-ordinate with the Arbites about starting a dragnet search.
... but you cannot shake the feeling that does not feel right.
That is how they might have done it on Fenris. Maybe even on Caliban. But atop this cyclopean cathedral to the human intellect, surrounded by all of these relics of golden ages past, you cannot truly believe that anyone would send a man with a gun through the front door to make off with a computer. Something about that chain of events does not add up.
- Umberto Eco
*
THE NAMESPACE OF THE ROSE
A game of Night's Black Agents
A game of Night's Black Agents
It is a wretched thing to see the death of a magician.
When a priest of the Adeptus Mechanicus is alive, she might be anything. The imagination alights at the possibilities concealed within those crimson robes and the lights dancing within. Might she be a beautiful young maiden, soft and curved, body patterned with the hexagonal grafts of silica and nanofiber? Might she be a demon, body twisted and malformed, blinking lights the eerie gaze of wicked flies rather than electronics? Perhaps that limp concealed four legs, or three, perhaps there were two hands or eight, perhaps she had always been smiling like the Saints, or maybe the skin and fat of her face had been peeled back to a skull made of steel.
So many of these questions will never be answered. The mass-reactive bolt entered her face just below the left eye, penetrated, and then detonated. The skull ruptured, the interlaced mesh of brain matter and neural interface shattered, and that masterpiece of cybernetic design splashed across the altar of the Omnissiah before dripping down to pool on the wiry blue carpet. It was an incredible shot.
In death, all the tricks she had up her sleeves spilled out. Hidden pistols and digital weapons fired blindly, still performing their functions even as their body staggered and slumped. Scorch marks, bullet holes and tiny silver bladed discs scatter wildly around the shattered doorway the assailant had entered through. A displacement field belatedly fired, teleporting the headless and still-shooting body of the Archmagos five meters west, whereupon two additional bolt rounds to the armoured center mass and sent what was now just the incomplete and unremarkable body of a sedentary middle-age lady sprawled across the floor. Archmagos Toros, master of the Isohedron Factory-Cathedral, was now nothing more than a mess of broken metal and carbon.
Then the assassin had begun their work. They had approached the inwards-facing circle of archaic white cogitators the Magos had been working on. Some had been pushed aside, some had been smashed, and some had been taken, their absence marked only by lonely cables that drifted like an octopus carved by a blind itamae.
The room - archaic, with framed circuit boards and eerie gadgets upon white-painted walls. A singularly bland blue carpet. A small personal shrine to the Omnissiah upon the north wall, flanked to either side by huge arched windows with a spectacular view of the Hive rising like a mountain's nightmare. The west window's glass is shattered entirely, large enough for a giant to fit through, and the stink from the endlessly churning petrochemical smokestacks creeps into this ivory tower like a burglar.
You have initial assessment from the Skitarii marshal. The chain of events as far as she can determine goes like this:
- Assailant arrived at tower door, guarded by two Skitarii
- Assailant incapacitates both Skitarii with a Webber. This non-lethal takedown prevents their heartrate monitors from triggering an alarm.
- Assailant places a grenade on a timer by the two Skitarii. It soon detonates, killing both of them, but only after the danger of them alerting the Archmagos has passed.
- Assailant bypasses the security door.
- Assailant proceeds to the Archmagos' office.
- Assailant kicks open the reinforced metal door to the Archmagos' office
- Assailant kills the Archmagos with a single Bolt round to the head.
- Archmagos' Displacer Field activates, teleporting her five meters to the west.
- Archmagos' automated defense systems begin to fire blindly even as the corpse collapses
- Assailant responds with a burst of automatic gunfire. Some of these shots miss and shatter the glass window behind the Archmagos' new position.
- Archmagos ceases fire.
- Assailant proceeds to the cogitator station. Rips out multiple electronic devices and stores them in a heavy backpack.
- Assailant departs through the open window.
The Skitarii Marshal has drawn the conclusion that this was a smash and grab and is treating it like a robbery. She has left the Isohedron in order to start drawing a perimeter and co-ordinate with the Arbites about starting a dragnet search.
... but you cannot shake the feeling that does not feel right.
That is how they might have done it on Fenris. Maybe even on Caliban. But atop this cyclopean cathedral to the human intellect, surrounded by all of these relics of golden ages past, you cannot truly believe that anyone would send a man with a gun through the front door to make off with a computer. Something about that chain of events does not add up.
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