The Beast Arises

‘You must learn to govern your sentimentality,’ Van Auken instructed. ‘Macromunda is no less a sacrifice than those genelings you experiment on in your laboratorium. These worlds would die anyway. We watch them die so that Mars might live. Now, enough of this. What observations can you add to the data packet? What is the secret of the xenos technology?’

Urquidex gave his superior the narrowing lenses of his telescopic eyes. Retracting the digit-scalpel into the toolage of his bionic hand, the magos produced a pencil beam from his cranial arrangement, the red dot of which hovered across the artisan trajectorae’s narrow forehead. Urquidex turned back to the xenos brain he had been working on.

‘This structure here,’ Urquidex said, indicating a bulbous feature at the brainstem that appeared like a bloom of fungus erupting from the base of a tree, ‘governs the problem-solving faculties of the species — at least that is my theory.’

‘Like you, I am a priest of Mars,’ Van Auken reassured him. ‘This is a xenos abomination — there are no certainties, only theories to be tested. Proceed, magos.’

‘In many alien space-faring species, as well as our own,’ Urquidex told him, ‘such structures — dealing with inspiration, experimentation and technological development — occur in the frontal lobes.’ Urquidex passed the dot across a comparatively redundant part of the creature’s brain. ‘Or the xenos equivalent thereof. In a race who have taken that crucial and technologically demanding step into a larger universe, you would expect this to be an area of recent evolutionary development.’

‘Agreed.’

‘Not so in Veridi giganticus,’ the magos biologis said. ‘It occurs in one of the most primitive parts of the organ.’

‘But what does that mean?’ Van Auken asked.

‘It means that their technological mastery, being what it is, proceeds not from evolutionary, intellectual development as it has in humans and many other races. It has been a feature of their race from very early in their existence.’

‘An accelerated development?’ Van Auken hoped so. Acceleration could be modelled. Acceleration could be predicted.

‘No,’ Urquidex told him. ‘Something primordial. A capability innate within their species. Their mastery of technology — including the gravitational and vector capabilities that you would wish to reproduce — is a natural ability. Not a product of some form of developed, higher order conception.’

‘These conclusions will not please the Fabricator General,’ Van Auken said.

‘It is only a theory,’ Urquidex said. ‘Other priests at other conquest-sites may reach other conclusions.’

‘Have you learned anything else?’ Van Auken asked.

Urquidex turned and snapped on a hololithic projector that enveloped the monstrous brain in a fluxing field representation.

‘What is that?’ the artisan asked.

‘Honestly?’ the magos said, ‘I don’t know. I happened upon the frequency by accident. This is the barest manifestation of it, I can tell you that. It has been fading since biological cessation.’

‘If you had to make an informed guess, magos?’

‘Some kind of field or emanation,’ Urquidex said. ‘It seems to be coming from deep within the brain structure — again, an evolutionarily ancient feature.’

‘Could it be psionic in nature?’ Van Auken asked cautiously.

‘Unknown,’ Urquidex said with equal reservation, ‘not my area of specialisation. However, watch this.’

Urquidex directed a pair of servitors into the foil tent. Between them they carried an alien weapon: some kind of barbaric chopping implement sporting a chain of revolving teeth like a chainsword. A brute motor was built into its ungainly shaft, the handle of which was scored with primitive glyphs and graffiti. The magos directed the drones to slip the savage weapon into the beast’s death-stiffened grip, and lay the great shaft of the weapon and its murderous headpiece across the greenskin’s open and organ-excavated chest.

‘What are you doing?’ Van Auken asked, as Urquidex directed a servomat to attach power couplings to the weapon’s monstrous motor. ‘Magos?’

‘Clear…’ Urquidex said, before instructing the servomat to supply power to the weapon from its own core.

The serrated chain of the chopper roared to life, the clunky machinery of its motor squealing and crunching, the gore of the Emperor’s Angels spraying Van Auken from the monstrous weapon’s thrashing teeth. The artisan stepped back and wiped the speckles of old blood from his face.

‘Turn it off,’ he commanded.

‘As you wish,’ Urquidex said, selecting an autopsy cleaver with a monomolecular edge from a rack of similarly macabre tools. Swinging the cleaver down with force, the magos chopped at the hulking wrist of the greenskin. It took a number of strikes, with the cleaver-blade biting through flesh and bone. With a final strike the claw-hand was separated from the meat of the arm — and the weapon chugged, bucked and died. Van Auken stepped back towards the creature with fresh interest.

‘It still has power?’