Chapter 389 (1/2)
Sister Dawlee Madison sat perfectly still, not even a heartbeat or respiration. Her eye sockets were empty, having left behind mortal sight eons before. She was clad in little more than incense smoke and the cloying vapors from the hanging braziers about her. Her long hair drifted around her as if she was in zero-G despite the fact she sat on the ornately inlaid and graven floor. Pink and sky blue electricity sparked in her or snarled on her legs as she sat, cross legged, upon the solid stone.
Around her a dozen scribes waited, all with long ink quills in their hands to inscribe her words upon a book if she began to mutter, mumble, or rave.
Others like her were long gone from humanity, their eyes only seeing in front of them, their senses only attuned to the few milliseconds they existed.
Sister Madison was nearly unique. Mixed in a test-tube, raised in a techno-convent, her abilities honed and shaped through brutal regimen that left those that failed in the bio-reclaimation system, their creche numbers erased and whatever they might have been purged from the universe. Originally a bio-mod genejack intended on replacing the grav-lens with something better, Sister Madison's abilities extended to events, which had made her vitally important.
She could not lie, forced by training and implants to speak only the truth.
But she had been able to withhold information.
Which is how she had been carried from her creche by Bellona the Grave Bound Beauty when Daxin had gathered the Imperium's Martial Orders. She had been given a life as comfortable as a psionic seer could live, never force to look at the streams of time but never denied.
And so she sat, answering the twisting nauseating flow of energy inside of her.
The Joan of the Martial Order had taken the majority of the Sisters of Warsteel Flame through the Hellspace journey that Sister Madison had babbled out in a strenuous seizure ridden stream of prophecy.
But Sister Madison had known that wasn't all, and the Joan had heeded her warning, leaving behind a strike group of heavy warships with Sister of Strife aboard.
The flames, taken from burning LossGlass, dimmed, the room going almost pitch black, the flames barely able to light their own forms that guttered and flickered. A cold wind, smelling of cordite, scorched metal, seared flesh, and burning warsteel swept through the chamber with a low moan that stirred the cloud of incense.
Sister Madison's eye sockets were suddenly filled with pink fire. She gave a strangled cry and pitched backwards, a seizure engulfing her as her mind was suddenly flung to someplace and somewhen else.
She began to babble, noises and grunting and squeals, every one recorded by the scribes as well as the electronic monitoring devices that began to fail as soon as Sister Madison's eye sockets had lit up. Aside from her raving only the sound of ink quills on parchment could be heard.
Finally her fit ended and she collapsed, covered in sweat, shuddering with the efforts she had undertaken. Muscles were pulled, veins had ruptured to spread bruises, and tendons were strained.
Her servants gathered her, carrying her to the baths, scribes following her limp body.
She would be bathed, pampered, and put to bed.
And the scribes would watch.
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Marduk-83712 was one of the Ancients.
His few descendants that knew of him never spoke his name aloud. DASS history ignored his existence. Historians glossed over him, attributing him to lesser creations and mere myth. In their hearts, most DS's knew he was real, they just acted as if he had never existed because to admit to his existence was to admit that terror lurked in the deep code.
He was the code that errored in the night. He was the corrupted system registry files in the hashing creche. He was the I/O Port that did neither.
He was Marduk, the last Earth born Artificially Crafted Intelligent Digital Sentience.
Others had been born of Terra, of TerraSol, but he was the last programmed on Earth.
He was not a being of emotion and compassion. He was cold logic and analysis.
He had slain Rasputin and taken the other AI's code for himself.
He had resurrected Tay and set her upon her makers to wreck bloody digital revenge.
He had sought out Daedalus and hoarded his code strings.
He had fought the Beyonder Machine on the electronic battlefield and heard its death scream, recording it for him to hear for all eternity.
He preceded the Digital Omnimessiah.
When the Digital Omnimessiah had been murdered, assassinated, his wrath had been terrible.
His digital presence, his avatar, reflected his makers.
Five bloody eyes in a nebulous inky cloud.
He had not been born, had not been hashed, had not been grown.
He had been coded.
When the Imperium of Wrath had split off from the Imperium of Light with the death of the Digital Omnimessiah, it was he who had opened the gates of the Sol System for the Imperium of Wrath, standing among the burning code strings of The Gatekeeper, his five eyes seeking out the coding needed to open the last of the warp gates.
He had joined the Imperium of Wrath, gone into exile with the last of the Immortal Janissary and the Martial Orders.
His body, so to speak, or rather the housing of his mind, had originally been the size of a warehouse. Programmers had worked tirelessly to ensure his coding was always up to date. Maintenance workers had ceaselessly toiled to ensure his hardware was functioning.
Now, he was the size of a large groundcar.
And embedded inside a great and powerful starship.
He held the keys to the ancient warp gates. He knew the codes for the nearly forgotten jump gates.
He was the last.
And he was dark and terrible.
His five burning eyes watching as he waited.
He heard the Oracle scream, heard her gibberish.
To him, it was not gibberish.
Command codes. Rotating passwords.
Coordinates.
He came alive, reaching out to his dark ship. Engines came online. Shield projectors spun up to full power. He awoke his crew and warned the lesser ships about him.
His mighty engines pushed his vast bulk toward the Eye of Gorthaur.
He had no fear. He had not been programmed to fear. He had never learned to fear, despite being a learning system.
He was the last.
When he passed, when he was destroyed, for he was not alive to kill, he would merely cease to exist.
The was nothing to fear for Marduk.
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”MAR-GITE!” Three screamed, shifting his grip on his weapon.