Vampiretwilight
A White Mage
Cleveraptor
Fetzen
TokyoPewPew
Crimson FlameSlaughter of Sanctii
End of the Line
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Thermal Flue A00034/76B Control Station
“I’m picking up anomalies on ground-pen auspex. Dead zone, sensor burnout it looks like - just outside of the station.” Senior Technician Yuri Oblast said. “Probably nothing, but the high alert status means we need to check it out.”
“I’ll check the exterior and see if it correlates. Might just be a routine reset.” Tech 2 Svenka said, a bubbly young woman with a close-cut bob. She was a hard charger, a real demon when it came to control station work. Yuri counted himself lucky he had such a diligent underling - he never had to worry about gun-decked maintenance with her. A few more years, and he’d put her in for Tech 1 - like him.
Sad as it was, she’d go to her own flue station, and he’d be assigned some other newbie. Oh well. If Sanctii was gonna survive, it needed good people everywhere in the infrastructure.
“Svenks, remember your pistol.” Yuri said, stopping her as she was about to leave.
“Oh, shit, you’re right.” She said, buckling the holster around her chest. The normally bag-like and unflattering boilersuit she wore suddenly became much more feminine and flattering as the leather docker’s clutch holster cinched tight. Yuri looked away, minding his screens. “I’ll be back.”
“Yep. You can warm up your lunch once you’re done.” Yuri said, unaware it would be the last word he ever said to her.
_
Whitaker waited outside of the flue control station, knife in hand. Caleb had unplugged the ‘spex sensor at the other end of the catwalk. They had no idea what the inside of the flue station looked like, or who guarded it, so the plan was to enter it quietly. Whitaker had suggested luring someone inside the flue station out and using their credentials to get inside without raising any alarms.
Sensing no other, better plan, Colonel Stavin had nodded, and said to get on it. It had been a few, tense, pulse pounding minutes, but Whitaker was sure someone would come out. He flipped the knife in his hand from a forward grip, to an icepick grip. Yep, Whitaker was sure someone would emerge.
The hatch clunked, and began to swing open. Whitaker could hear whistling. He crept, following the hatch as it opened, wanting to be behind whoever emerged. The rest of the 31-3 were interspersed on the surrounding catwalks - the light shining from inside the flue station’s airlocks would easily reveal them. The trick was to get the kill right as the sight of close to one hundred armed gunmen startled them, but before they could potentially alert anything.
The target stepped onto the catwalk, still whistling. Whitaker couldn’t see the target completely - the shadows were harsh, but the tone of the whistle and weight of the steps suggested a woman - small, light. Probably a technician, not a soldier.
She stopped when she saw the gunmen.
“Are you guys the scheduled security patrol? You’re a little e-”
Whitaker swept up to her, punching the knife into the woman’s throat and ripping the blade out, killing her quickly, and quietly. She fell hard onto the deck, face first, one arm outstretched in an angle that would’ve been uncomfortable, had she been alive. In her hand was her mag-lock card. Whitaker swiped it up. He crept into the airlock, and swiped it.
The airlock cycled closed.
-
Whitaker emerged into the flue station, shotgun clutched in his hands, his radcarbine slung over his back. As fancy as that gun was, with its arecheotech shells and ultra-reliable powered feed mechanism and holo-sight and every doodad under the sun, it wasn’t gonna be the weapon for this job. Screwed to the muzzle of his shotgun was a blocky, rectangular suppressor, which might hopefully give him a few more precious life-saving moments, turning the normally booming report of the weapon into a much harder to identify banging thump - which could be easily mistaken.
He unlocked the airlock, and keyed his microbead vox twice. The go signal. Still, he had the element of surprise - although the plan was to sweep the place inch by inch, he had a feeling he could do a lot of damage on his own. Wanted to do a lot of damage on his own. He was in his element now - a lone killer, penned in a building with the unaware.
He smiled, smile like a knife, and set off.
-
Yuri turned around when he heard the door to the control room open. The other techs looked up as well.
“You’re back early, Svenks. Did you forget s-”
A soldier stood in the doorway, shotgun held at waist level. Yuri cursed, reaching for his pistol, but the gaunt, lean, enemy soldier killed him with a single shot, painting his brains against the monitors behind him.
The rest of the technicians began to scream.
-
Whitaker shot each of them as he strode towards the main console, one shot each. As he killed the last tech, a yellow door labeled RESTROOM in Urshic banged open, revealing an unfit man in ill-fitting Sanctii carapace, sweating profusely. He held an adrasite pistol.
“Bastard!” He yelled, shooting. He ran as he fired, sprinting towards the central control console.
Whitaker took one step to the right - unnecessary, as the man’s shot had been far wide - and killed him with a headshot three feet short of the console. All the monitors, then, changed from green to a malevolent red.
Whitaker racked his shotgun, and peered up at the screens.
“ALERT. FLUE STATION A00034/76B UNDER ATTACK ALERT.”
Whitaker cursed, then turned around as the rest of the 31-3 began to file in behind him. Colonel Stavin nodded to him as he approached, his pistol in hand, and looked up at the screens.
“You did good work, Sergeant. We’re in.” Stavin said.
Whitaker shrugged. “Sorry sir, I dunno what set the alert off.”
Stavin tapped his head. “Neural link. Is that guy a Sanctii soldier? In the armor?”
Whitaker shrugged again. “I guess. Sir.”
“Then Deep Winter chipped him. His flatline caused an automated alert signal. She must’ve correlated his death in this location as a continuing event from when she found us in the catacombs.”
Whitaker considered that. “It’s a she now, is it sir?”
Stavin smiled. “Only a woman could be this much of a bitch, Sergeant, trust me.”
-
The 31-3 took up defensive positions in the control room, with all the hatches leading outside opened. Their sight lines were long, and there were no ways to surprise the soldiers of the Damned if Deep Winter decided to attack.
There was no doubt she would - it was merely when.
Severina typed at the central console, aided by a sullen trooper who had had previous cogitator experience. Colonel Stavin overlooked both their efforts, staring up at the screens, which pulsed red.
“No good, Colonel.” Severina said. “Winter’s got the cogi system locked up tight. We’re even trying backdoors manufacturers put in the cogitators themselves, but she’s holding on tight.”
Stavin sighed, pinching his nose. He was afraid of this. The only way out of the flue station was a long laddered tube going up to the surface. If they couldn’t actually get the flues to shut and overload, they could destroy the station with melta charges, but that was risky. The flues would lose their switching, which might cause catastrophic damage, but there would be no way to tell when they closed. If they remained open when the station blew, then that would prove disastrous to the system as the snow and ice outside blew into the tubes, obstructing them… in fifteen years or so.
He cursed. The soldier aiding Severine pushed up a very scratched pair of glasses. Stavin peered at the soldier’s nametag. Grebbin.
“Trooper Grebbin, how exactly is Deep Winter connected to this system?” Stavin asked.
Grebbin shrugged. “We’re getting into pure speculation sir. I’m not an AI guy.”
“I don’t think anyone is.” Severina said, “Answer the question, Trooper.”
“Well…” Grebbin said, “...it can’t violate the laws of physics, at least. If it’s connected to this system, there’s only two ways it could be. Either wirelessly, through some kind of wireless access protocol, or it’s hardwired in. Or both, no denying that, but an AI is presumably a… digital thing. It can only use digital means of propagating itself.”
“So which is it? Wired or wireless?” Stavin asked.
Grebbin made a humming noise. “Probably wireless. The kind of wiring that could handle the data load of an AI without packet loss would probably be huge, and I don’t see anything like that here.”
“But how? We don’t have vox, so how is she maintaining connection down here?” Stavin asked. It was a mystery, especially how she managed to control security measures like the drone swarms outside in the catacombs.
“Sir, I have no idea. I’m not an AI guy.” Grebbin said, and turned back to his work.
Stavin looked, idly, around the control room. They hadn’t moved the bodies yet - except for the senior tech who had still been in his seat when Whitaker had killed him. The security officer, whose death had presumably set the alert off when his neural implant flatlined, lay sprawled where he had died, his adrasite pistol and charge cells already stolen. He blinked. His entire assault force had not had vox access to the surface since this attack had started. How did a neural implant have the signal to broadcast to the surface?
He looked above the dead officer. Above him, was the access ladder tube. Stavin stood under it. Suddenly, like magic, his microbead began to chatter in his ear. He stood back, and the chatter stopped. He began to climb up the ladder. As he climbed, he could hear more and more clearly. He recognized Aeternus’s voice, and the harsh tones of the Black Hawk - the custodian who had nearly done what the rest of the Imperials could not.
Of course - of course the reception would be better when there was a hole cut directly to the surface. He cursed for not thinking of it sooner. Holes dug in to the surface allowed Deep Winter to propagate herself into the deep bedrock of the city. The drones themselves probably also had a signal repeater function - wherever they went, her presence went with them, boosted and repeated so she was just as strong down here as up there.
“Clever girl.” Stavin said. “Clever fuckin’ girl…”
He looked down at the troopers milling around. “Someone get me a vox!”
-
Soon, Stavin was setting a backpack vox down below the access tube. They had jury-rigged the thing into a multispectral jammer, with the aid of surly Grebbin, who had assured the Colonel it was setup to block any frequencies used to connect cogitators wirelessly. Severina had been worried that such a device might also block the signals used to detonate the discipline collars, but Stavin cut her off.
“You think anyone here’s gonna try and run?” He said, “We’re dead if we get split up. Deep Winter isn’t taking prisoners, and you know it.”
She had looked more angry at him than ever before, but she quickly swallowed it, nodding. She knew that the only thing that mattered was this mission succeeding. So be it if she was to be torn apart by her charges - as long as the city fell. Only in death, did duty end.
Stavin switched the vox on. The set flickered to life, and began to boom out the loudest music he had ever heard - thrash music, selected as the signal that would be propagated to jam the AI. The carrier of the jamming signal didn’t matter, of course, just the power from the frequency booster, but the soldiers thought it would be funny if an all-powerful AI could be potentially thwarted by heavy metal.
-
Severina massaged her temples, bathed in red light of the monitors before her. Her frustration was mounting. Stavin was exhibiting too much independence. He was being too clever. She was worried his authority was beginning to supercede her own. How could she let him overrule her just like that? His point was valid, but the casual ease in which he gave the orders…
She felt marginalized. She felt she was being unfairly treated. And worst of all, she knew it was stupid to let it affect her. He was right. The collars didn’t matter. She just didn’t trust that the soldiers of the Damned would do their duty, even in the face of overwhelming death from Deep Winter’s security system. They weren’t Imperial. They’d never be Imperial, even if they were pardoned. They were just tr-
“Ma’am!” Grebbin, the odious little technician shouted. “Ma’am! We got access!”
Her head shot up, her insecurities forgotten. She felt alive again as she hammered the keyboard to the console, inputting the commands the Sigilite’s staff had had her memorize. The screen was a cool green now, all hints of Deep Winter’s lockdown forgotten. She worked quickly, knowing Stavin’s jury-rigged vox only had about an hour or so of power at its current output. They could, of course, swap batteries if it ran out, but it would only take seconds for Deep Winter to reverse their progress.
Five minutes to input the command string. 45 minutes for the flue to shut down. Five minutes for the system’s thermal sinks to become overwhelmed.
-
Outside the flue control station, death came. Hundreds of individual grav-speeder bikes, each carrying two power-armored, genehanced soldiers of Sanctii’s elite internal security division, shot through the catacombs underneath the city. The leader, a colonel named Hartz, was a rough man, a veteran of many actions, open and clandestine, on the behalf of the Sanctii state, before and after Deep Winter had effectively taken the city over.
His unit answered directly to her. Anti-AI sentiment in the hive was strong, and anyone outside of Winter’s influence who learned too much - they disappeared. Sometimes they put up a fight, sometimes they didn’t. Those people were fools - incapable of understanding the beauty of Winter’s dreams. Throughout his service, he had killed thousands. Soldiers, politicians, criminals, conspiracy theorists. The target didn’t matter.
He had pleaded with Winter, begged her, begged her stupid council of shortsighted human puppets to guard the flues more seriously. They had scoffed at him. No one could be insane enough to attack through such a heavily taxed thermal flue system. They’d be obliterated. It was inhuman to even think such a thing.
He snarled behind the carapace of his armored helmet. Using thought haptics, he undid the safety on his gauntlet-mounted plasma rifle. The dogs of the Emperor were anything but human. The butcher had proven himself to be a callous steward of humanity - throwing them to their deaths in countless actions, all in the name of their blasted ‘Unity.’ He snorted.
Unity. Like that’d ever be possible. Now however, he was vindicated. They had done exactly as he predicted. There would be two assaults - a frontal one, led by him, to distract the defenders. A squad would then drop into the control center through the surface access tube to slaughter them while they fought off the distraction attack. He would almost certainly die in the frontal attack, but Hartz knew Winter would upload his mind into the noospheric cloud. She had done it before, after all.
Now, Hartz only hoped he wasn’t too late to save his beloved city. Winter’s dream could not end here.
-
“There we go.” Grebbin said, as the shutdown sequence began. Cameras outside the flue gave a grainy picture of the massive shutters closing all along the flue line.
Severina sighed in relief. She bent down in her chair to retrieve her cap.
“Good work Trooper. Get back into battle fo-” She stopped speaking as a plasma bolt whipped into the control center, passing over her back and obliterating Grebbin in a shower of steaming gore.
“Taking fire!” Someone roared - it sounded like that psychopath Whitaker. Severina threw herself flat, scrabbling at her holster to draw her bolt pistol. Outside the command center, on the catwalks leading out of the airlocks, figures in night-black powered armor advanced, firing all manners of death from gauntlet mounted weapons. Deep Winter was fighting back - and it had sent her best.
The Damned responded, opening up with every gun they had. Isotope-slugs and lightning arcs shot out of every access door into their attackers, reaping a vicious toll on the armored soldiers. Severina added her pistol to the weight of fire. The soldier who had been firing bolts of roiling hot plasma crumpled as he was ventilated, but more replaced him, kneeling, their fellows firing over their heads, battering the front of the control center with weapons of incredible power.
They were making lots of noise and destruction, but the casualties they were causing were limited. They weren’t getting close enough to throw grenades, and the Damned had the better cover, and weapons just as deadly. The catwalks outside became a killing ground, the dead stacking higher and higher.
Severina stooped behind a console to reload her bolt pistol. Stavin was next to her, doing the same with a plasma pistol.
“Discipline Mistress.” Stavin shouted.
“Colonel.” She replied, coldly.
“Hey now, listen.” Stavin said, “You’re not still mad about the collar thing, are you?”
She didn’t bother dignifying that with a response. She glanced above the consoles, which were being hammered with fire, then looked behind her. Her eyes widened as, below the access tube, there was an enemy soldier, in night black powered armor, standing there that hadn’t been there before. The Damned behind her had all been killed, and it was then she knew these men were the dangerous ones.
“Behind!” She shouted, before Stavin yanked her to the floor. Plasma bolts boiled the air where her head had been. She cursed. She screamed.
She had had enough. She ripped her power sword from its scabbard, and screaming a feral, warrior-queen’s scream, charged the power armored soldiers who were still spilling from the access tube.
Despite their size, despite their strength, despite having the drop on the Damned, it was clear they hadn’t expected a counter-attack, let alone with a sword of all things. The first soldier was not cut, but ripped open, spilling steaming guts and sectioned armor to the floor. She screamed again, hacking at the next one, the energy sheathed blade severing an arm at the elbow. Another vicious cut, and she took the man’s head.
A third one was still on the ladder. She pierced this one, her blade punching through ceramite, bone, and organ, pulling the blade out as the soldier fell dead into the control room.
Stavin ran up, his plasma pistol in hand. He fired up into the access tube, the bolts of plasma striking power armored bodies and cutting through them mercilessly. He fired until the pistol threatened to melt from the heat, stopping only when the warning rune on the side began to flash red and beep loudly.
It was with this little victory that the assault on the control room seemed to wither away. Warning klaxons began to sound. The heat sinks were beginning to fail.
Stavin and Severina, two people separated by politics outside either of their control, nodded to one another. It was time to go.
“All 31-3 units remaining, time to bug out. Up the access tube. We don’t wanna be here when this place goes nova.” Stavin said into his microbead. They began their exodus, fifty souls strung out on a section of metal ladder.
-
On the catwalks outside, Hartz lay dying amongst the shattered remains of his men. They had been better armed than he could imagine. Radcarbines and arc rifles. Insane. Profane tech. Deep Winter had long forbidden the manufacture of either, due to the danger inherent in both weapons to the delicate systems that made up her network.
They had used them without a care, expending more of that forbidden ammunition than Hartz could have anticipated. And where was Winter’s guidance? She had been quiet since the assault, her whispers no longer caressing his mind. Where did she go? He had been her loyal servant, her soldier, her protector of her dream. Why was she not with him as his body died?
He began to crawl, over his men, over the dead of the enemy, blood in his mouth, his legs not working, his arms straining with effort. The heat sinks had failed. The station was lost, and catastrophic overheat was imminent. How? How had the Imperials silenced Winter’s voice? He had to figure it out before he died, or his mind wouldn’t be uploaded to the noospheric cloud. He would die the dreaded Real Death.
He found his answer minutes later. A crude vox-caster, jury-rigged into a jammer, blasting music that had been entirely drowned out by the raucous firefight. His vision began to black out. He gritted his teeth, trying to fight his failing systems, reaching out to the vox, hands wavering, fingers shaking. He had to turn it off. Had to hear Winter’s voice…
He died, his hand on the switch. He didn’t have the strength, in the end. In his last thoughts, ones that wouldn’t be recorded by Winter’s central stack, he wondered if Sanctii would die the same way - alone, and afraid, shivering in the dark that would engulf them.
Seconds later, he was engulfed in fire.
The Damned had crawled into hell, and accomplished their mission.
The primarch roared out in pain as another shot from a magnet slug slammed into his blackened armor, throwing him backwards several centimeters from his position on the wall. His powerpack met the back of another thunder warrior that bitterly fought for survival behind him. The refractor field had overloaded by then, unable to withstand the heinous volley of horrific weapons from the Old Night. He raised his left arm, venting return fire in the form of explosive-incendiary bullets. A handful of rounds flew from the mouth of the weapon, yet the weapon clicked and whined for more ammunition. A resource that he had none of. Another genewarrior fell in front of him, slain by an adrastite stubber that carved through their ceramite in seconds. Aeternus realized that the warrior had died moments before, their body refusing to falter until eviscerated. It gave him enough time to raise Apocrypha to shield his body. To either side of him, the God-Slayers encircled their defensive position on the wall while Sanctiian sentinels swarmed their foothold.
Time slowed for Aeternus. He felt something beckon him in that moment as his warriors fell one by one. Death. The words of Malcador the Sigilite echoed in his mind with every sluggish second that passed. It became clear to him at that moment, the sheer madness of the assault without any support. Sanctii was meant to be the end of the God-Slayers. The thought filled his veins with dreaded rage, enough to rival even Nero in his berserked state. He wanted to rush forward of his brethren, cleave into the enemy with reckless abandon and secure their survival. Rex longed to give himself to a rampage that bubbled at the bottom of his being. The thought, as if translated into real form, was felt across his warriors as Caligula planted a gauntlet on his pauldron. The primarch needed no words from his age old friend, a calming serenity beginning to return Aeternus to reality.
A phantom on golden wings appeared near their section of the wall, the Custodian dropship screaming missiles and diamantine-tipped bullets across the ramparts in controlled bursts. The Sanctiian protectors, previously confident in their annihilation of the thunder warriors, attempted to retreat from their section of the wall. They would fail as the gilded craft cut through personal shield and nanocomposite powered armor alike, gifting the trapped genewarriors enough time to begin their tactical withdraw in full-swing. The God-Slayers wasted no time, swinging themselves off of the wall with grappling gear or using one of the protector’s cadavers as a cushion for their fall.
A toothy smile grew on Aeternus’ scarred features. Amalasuntha. There was no doubt in his mind that she had turned her attention to their assault. A guardian on golden wings, he vowed to never forget the aid gifted to him. Apocrypha was quickly maglocked to the back of his armor, both of his blackened gauntlets picking up a pair of protectors for cushions. He leapt with all of his genewrought might from the battered walls of Sanctii, hefting the perfected defenders into position for his plummet. Caligula followed behind him, roaring through the air in every language that he managed to master. Both landed some meters away from their initial ascent, crunching auxilia corpses and broken drones beneath their fallen forms.
“I didn’t think that Amalasuntha would be watching us so closely! We’ll have to thank her later, perhaps with gifts we can salvage from Sanctii!” The first cadre captain joked, groaning as he rose to his full height. Aeternus pulled one of his fists free from the shattered remains of the cadavers he’d used as cushions. A look back at the wall confirmed most of his surviving thunder warriors had managed to escape the carnage on the wall. A few laid shattered in the snow from their descent, pierced by the remains of broken vehicles or jagged defenses. Each death felt more painful than before with the thoughts he kept locked within.
“Agreed. There is no more time to waste, though, the wall assault has failed.” Aeternus replied, hefting Apocrypha from his back to protect against newly resurging reinforcements atop the battlements. Another wave of red-garbed auxilia arrived behind him, their fearful forms unleashing lasfire in uncontrolled amounts into the replenished garrisons. The primarch gestured with one hand to several of his God-Slayers, who began to rally towards his position and join the sprint back towards the reserve lines.
Now free of the burden atop the walls, Aeternus turned his attention to the vox traffic from within his helmet mid-sprint. His call for retreat had been heard, answered, and enacted in several zones across the battlefield; however, some of the divisions had received the order for retreat in a delayed fashion. Those battalions, such as the one he now passed, continued to assault the Sanctiian defenses with suicidal confidence. The saboteurs on the wall, such as the third cadre and Tiberius, had managed to succeed before retreating from their positions. A substantial amount of the orb-emitting bombardment cannons had been silenced, turrets destroyed, and drone-transmitters annihilated. Only the Sanctiian genewarriors remained to fight back with large pockets of drones, yet even then their assault had faltered due to the voidshields.
+’This is Primarch Aeternus of the First Legio Cataegis, all forces are to adhere to the call for tactical withdraw and begin second phase operation. Overlord, give me a status on the Penal Legion immediately.’+ Aeternus' voice broke through the vox as he sprinted closer and closer to the reserve line with his cadre. Already, the primarch could make out the shapes of his Destroyers being tended to by the assigned support personnel. In the distance, he further spied the statuesque forms of the Astartes amidst their sentinel duties. He felt anger begin to bubble once more as they stood in the snow with the very colors of his brethren. Wordlessly, he began to close the distance between himself and the newly formed Astartes. The God-Slayers watched in confusion as their Primarch broke away from the reserve line towards the emotionless genewarriors.
“Legion Mistress Vairya Kurus. I demand an explanation for your cowar-” Aeternus began to scream, unconsciously activating the vox as he began to trudge towards their number. His voice was abruptly cut as the battlefield began to shift, buckling from deep below the crust in a calamatous shake. The primarch turned away from the First Astartes to the city of Sanctii.
The human mind is fragile. Millions of delicate organic pathways handled disturbingly intricate electric impulses in just milliseconds. Decisions were made quickly, and the human brain congratulated itself, flooding the system with chemical endorphins and stimulating feelings to ensure the flesh it controlled knew that its decisions were correct, knew that in the future faced with similar problems this path was the one to travel. But, during extreme duress, decisions were made before the human brain could rightly tell itself what it had even decided on. These impulses, fueled by survival and stoked on by floods of adrenal hormones that the brain released before it realized, were among some of the fastest actions and decisions the brain could make. For when one removed the need to understand the decision before it is undertaken, the obtuse comprehension methods of the human mind no longer hampered the brain's decisions.
Had a human, with a delicate ball of tissue locked inside a protective cranium, been in charge of the defense of Sanctii, the brain would have failed. Overwhelmed by the sheer volume of decisions that need to be made every nanosecond, it would have given up, unable to keep pace with the speed necessary to defend the millions of lives at stake as the false Emperor’s forces threw themselves headlong at her walls. But, a fragile human mind was not in control.
Deep within the core of the hive structure, beyond redundant layers of security, and nestled in a cocoon filled with light blue liquid, the crystal core of Deep Winter worked to save her city.
The small amount of processing power that she had set aside to entertain herself while musing on the delicate state of the human mind was reallocated faster than any human mind could ever wish to process information the moment that she noticed a single-degree rise within Sanctii’s inner cooling loop. She gave this small piece of her processing power over to this new anomaly, while the vast bulk of her processes remained fixated on the void shield and the defenses along the curtain wall. This piece of her consciousness quested through electrical pathways and over invisible wavelengths through the bowels of the city.
She noted, worryingly even for an unfeeling feat of mechanical engineering such as herself, she still felt the interference from earlier. That pesky signal carried on a band of music she had categorized as “Thrash Metal” which in itself was a subcategory of “Heavy Metal” to which she could not understand the appeal of, was still present. And more worrying than that was the absence of any connection she had to the Internal Security troops she had sent to retake the control station. This lack of connection to her Sentinels, coupled with the interference where there should have now been a strong connection were her forces successful, led her to reallocate a cogitator bank to this new problem. In the blink of an eye, she categorized the security forces actions as a failure, overlaid the location of the missing troops to a new internal cogitator bank and, correctly, presumed that flue station A00034/76B was still compromised.
She vectored three separate swarms of maintenance drones to the control station with a simple thought, rerouted twenty different Sentinel patrols from adjacent hive levels, and sent a priority alert to a regiment of genehanced brute warriors that had been doing exceptionally well protecting the walls versus the armory that the self-proclaimed Emperor had equipped his fodder with.
She received affirmative responses from the drones within the millisecond, their machine brains accepting the order and rerouting their patrol path and urgency in the same breadth. Her Sentinel regiment took longer. Twelve and a half seconds in total elapsed before a long and drawn-out vox transmission affirmed the order.
-
The first hint of the coming disaster registered in Deep Winter’s core nine minutes and thirty-seven seconds after she had dispatched the new forces to flue station A00034/76B. A ten-fold increase in pressure behind the flue blast doors as the hive system began the venting process. Well within parameters for the door integrity, but worrying enough to cause a number of secondary exhaust valves to be released to bring the pressure down. She noted, happily, that the pressure began to fall back into normal ranges only six seconds after the release valves were triggered. The bones of Sanctii were old, laid down before Winter herself had found her way to this haven, but they weren’t constructed by simpletons.
Winter, or this small fragment of her, was content with the new numbers reading across her consciousness. She continued to track the pressure along the exhaust flue, noting increases and triggerings of new release valves nearly constantly. But she remained happy with the work of her predecessors as the pressure continually faded while the safety features performed admirably.
-
“Get me an override control, now!” Lieutenant Kovalenko bellowed to the control staff as a trio of distant Imperial super heavies battered the emplaced guns of the curtain walls. Explosions ripped through twelve different heavy batteries, incinerating gun crews and mangling ancient weaponry alike before an exasperated technician in the control room finally called back to their commander.
“Override input, but sir, Deep Winter is attempting to circumvent. She commands us not to fire sir!”
“Disregard her, take out those super heavies! Now!”
Set back behind the curtain walls, a row of six railguns, until now unpowered, hummed to life. Crackling energy rolled along the launch rails, massive servos spun to power and the guns
began to turn on their mounts. All the while the six guns drew immeasurable amounts of power from the Sanctii grid as they charged to full.
-
Deep Winter protested. She railed against the override, something she had agreed to put in place to win the trust of her peons. She watched as two full batteries of railguns ate power from her grid viciously. She sent desperate pleas to the control room that had input the override. She rerouted an Internal Security force to slaughter the technicians and cease the firing. She noted five more override inputs along the wall, all to stop the suicidal approach of the Imperials even as so many others retreated. She could not undo what was now set in motion. She was far too late.
Within the bowels of Sanctii, among well-lit reactor halls and technicians dressed in clean suits, the turbines that converted the raw energy of the city's reactors began to wail. They span faster and faster. Gauges ticked higher and higher into redlines. Technicians rushed to disconnect powerlines, trigger emergency shutdowns, and divert power to undersupplied turbines. But the human mind was only so quick. By the time that the technicians rushed into action, automatic systems were beginning to kick on.
Sanctii’s automatic systems, themselves put in place to lessen the load on Deep Winter herself took over. The reactor halls rose to full power as the turbines failed to deliver the requested power to the curtain wall’s defenders. Diligently, the cogitator banks gave what was requested of them as human technicians rushed to disconnect the unthinking computers from their delicate reactors.
Along the turbine halls, even under such extreme draw as the siege had put the grid under, backup turbines hummed to life. Overhead lights, aseptic and bright flared as massive amounts of power were surged into Sanctii’s systems to feed the requests from the wall. The chain of catastrophe was complete.
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The city lights went first. Ratcheting up in brightness until every light within the city was burning white hot. They were followed quickly by the void shield. Up until now, it had been an invisible barrier against the relentless battering of the Imperials, but now as power surged into its systems the shield became visible. A purple aura appeared around the city, rising steadily in brightness until it was nearly impossible to look upon. Deep Winter cried out against the constraints placed upon her by the human chaff of Sanctii.
The exhaust system vented. The bones of Sanctii were old, and they would not hold.
Flue gate A00034/76B, shut by the actions of a desperate group of the damned, spat the exhaust back down the ventilation system to the cooling stations. Pipes burst, exhaust vents gave way. The curtain wall above flue station A00034/76B, ceased to exist.
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“The void shields appear to be overloading,” a junior scribe reported from their station, “Energy levels are dangerously flaring, predicted overload withi---”
A tremendous shockwave buffeted the command tent of the Sigilites. Scribes lost their footing as they crossed the floor. Cogitator banks toppled over. Tables of papers and dataslates collapsed. The interior of the tent, up until this point sparsely lit, was ablaze with light as intense as the summer sun. The sound came last. A deafening rumble of thunder that went on for an eternity.
“Report,” the Scribe-Intendant demanded as the thunder rolled off into the distance.
“The curtain wall in section designate B-13 is breached,” the scribe’s hands danced over her station, “Probable exhaust event. The void shield is down. Sanctii appears without power.”
“Signal the First, the way is open,” the Scribe-Intendant directed stoically, “And confirm Primarch Aeternus is still alive, get the Thunder Warriors moving, immediately.”
