There is Only War
Posted on Sat 5th Jun, 2021 @ 3:05am by
361 words; about a 2 minute read
Mission:
Waging Peace
Location: Dreamscape
Timeline: MD 2, 04:00
Machine intellegences were an abomination before The Lord, so the mechanoservitor which sealed her in had an organic brain. Not the brain of a Human convict, this one. It was too simple, its purpose too simple, too repetitive. A dog's brain, perhaps, or a monkey's. Sealed within, she recited the litany: "In mourning, I wait for morning. Waiting is a coffin that confines me; defines me."
The coffin bumped along the conveyor belt. Hers was occupied. Those on either side of hers were not. Each one was picked up by another mechanoservitor, fed into the breach of a holy cannon. There was a pause, and the cathedral's broadside lit up, ejecting the coffins with a heavy push. They fell faster than the attraction of gravity, toward a world held by unholy xenos. Inside the coffin, in the blackness of space, in the blankness of mind, she waited. The heat came as her coffin hit atmosphere. Its sides sprang apart and pulled up, twisting the coffin like a seedpod... a suicidal seedpod germinated in the hot plasma breath of air pushing against it. The empty coffins spread their rotors as well, but they were filled with gel that burned away slowly in the plasma, flaking away as ash which bounced radar, bounced thermal targetting, bounced the murderous rage of the waiting xenos.
Planners, briefing officers, called the next maneuver "lithobraking," but the Sisters of Battle, the grunts like her, called it "rocking out." The coffin hit the ground and shattered, leaving her standing in her armor, amniotic fluid pouring away from her as the cat's brain in her armor awakened, projecting auspices before her, highlighting the trenches of the xenos. She ran, singing a glorious Hymn of Battle, the holy cannon mounted on her shoulders opening fire, targeting the enemy, firing at her affirmations. Today was theirs, for the Glory of the Lords of Terra!
Aiko MacBeth woke, her bladder telling her why. She shook the remnants of the dream away. She needed, she thought as she carefully climbed out of bed, to stop playing shooters with Yucholl in the evenings. It always gave her such messed-up dreams!
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