Your first month of life was interesting for you on several levels. You quickly learned from your father on the rather strange norms that most humans lived under, for one you could not truly understand their need for eight to ten hours of sleep per twenty four hour cycle which was apparently the standard Imperium time system. In some moments of confusion you pondered what that system would do to a world that had a rather different rotational speed, from Holy Terra.
Regardless of strange questions of imperial oddities, you focused mostly on figuring out what was wrong with Olynn and your father along with the ASDC both aided your mission on this front. The ASDC more so than your father, due to their archeotech secrets that could peer through the very hull of the station to illuminate the rooms barred to your passage through various means. As you worked to create a map of the station, the more you filled in the more your father grumbled at what was revealed.
It was apparently somehow worse than he had ever expected, several systems were all but gone and one of the most critical was the Heat Conversion Field system. This was quite clearly the reason for around seventy percent of the station being unlivable due to temperatures in high thousands. The system was apparently tied into the internal sensor arrays and as it detected malfunctions growing in scale over the eons, had slowly reduced its coverage until it only covered the places where humans were still living. Both a testament to the wonders of the Ancients, but also an example of the flawed nature of Abominable Intelligence for it had done nothing to attempt to slow the core degradation which was the true issue, the emitters were in functioning order. The core on the other hand was being overstressed due to the loss of propulsion from the anchor plates or the back up thruster arrays.
From what you could piece together, the entirety of Olynn station was an interconnected network that had no true primary node that managed everything, instead it was an interconnected mess. It was in your father's words; "Designed by a moron that expected everything to go perfectly. By the God Emperor, I hope the fool is suffering now." Although you are not sure that is a reasonable stance to take given the sheer lifespan of the station before any of these issues cropped up, it is true insofar as it goes in regards to repairing the station.
Thankfully, your father did manage to dig out what he promptly labeled the Primary Core Systems. That was both a worthy lesson of any proper Emperor fearing man, for even you were bested by a mortal man with nothing but a mind and experience. This event although a sting to your forming pride was a good reminder of why humanity was the proper ruler of the galaxy.
The Primary Core Systems as your father named them were the systems that were effectively required for the station to be functional, if only barely. The single most critical of them all were the Heat Conversion Fields, due to the risk that any more damage could see the entire station burn to a crisp. Yet, after them came the primary power supply channel, that was a puzzle for both of you. You at least got the general concept of the power core, but the implementation was bizarre, your father although a genius by any standards was not your equal in all fields and couldn't make heads or tails of the baseline idea of the reactor core, which was concerning.
Although, as you threw together rough schematics of the primary power core, you couldn't help but wonder why the Ancients would bother to use what could only be described as Annihilation reactors. The concepts and the base line ideas that gave the information behind the idea were sound from your few hours of effort on outlining their efforts, but what stumped you was why. You could see no reason that they couldn't have simply expanded the Starcell Reactors tenfold to reach the same general energy production. The only plausible reason you could find, was that the Annihilation Reactors were less obvious than their counterparts, which was true considering they wouldn't produce heat if properly shield with heat conversion fields. Which only lead back into the greater issue of the station at hand, everything was interconnected.
The Heat Conversion system shielded the primary power core by converting the energy release into proper electricity with near to no loss. That was then funneled through the Heat Conversion system's integrated batteries to power the Kinetic conversion fields that served as a nearly unbreakable shield against incoming damage and also provided another major supply of energy. That in turn feed into the Starcell Reactors to maintain their energy output, which then got joined into a single power stream to power the rest of Olynn. In the end nearly every single system that could produce power helped power the station.
At least your father finally realized just why Olynn was built where it was, during this time. He told you during one of the many hours you were working that he wondered just what the Ancients had been thinking when they decided to build Olynn inside a near brown dwarf star. When your models showed just why, he stopped working and then declared he had a headache before leaving to sleep some.
Even though it was a good thing to figure out how the station got its power, it was still an absolute pain to actually map the station. With seventy percent of the station by volume, either collapsed, fully exposed to near stellar fusion temperatures or some combination of the two it was an absolute miracle by the God Emperor that you managed to get anything akin to a map over the course of a solid month.
In the end you did find that the station was roughly cubic in nature although not perfectly. Olynn as a whole was built as a group of connected yet free floating cubes. The main one, where you lived was the largest by far, but surrounded by twenty other cubes of varying size. However, although useful, it wasn't particularly useful save for the fact that you learned that there were human enclaves in some cubes that had long since been considered to be dead.
A smile creeps over your face as you remember your father dancing with joy at that news, that there were people to save. For you it was a somber realization of just how far the God Emperor's realm had fallen, and how much you had to do to rebuild it to a fitting level. Yet, if it was easy, He wouldn't have created you. In the end, it neatly explained just why the Heat Conversion system was so overtaxed, as it unlike the Kinetic system wasn't able to maintain a full spherical shell anymore and instead was making much smaller shells that were simply less efficient for the cost. Perhaps, you mused if you could repair the primary power core the Heat system could remanifest a proper sphere and by extension reduce the strain on the system.
Yet, before any such plans could be made, you had to first deal with the simple issues that the scale of Olynn presented. By your measurements, Olynn as a whole covered some one billion cubic kilometers, with roughly sixty percent of that space open rooms, of that sixty percent, seventy percent was unreachable due to various issues. Leaving a grand total of only one hundred fifty cubic kilometers of free room within the station towards the tops of the various cubes. Which was plenty of space for the five hundred odd million people that called Olynn home, but it also cast a pall over the station as everyone knew why they had so little room compared to the bulk of the station.
Which lead into the greatest reason that you were currently desperately to try to find something to do. Although, unlike most worlds, Olynn lacked a hard and fast government, being more free form there were still laws that were harshly enforced. The most pressing of which was the unstated law that no one was to bring in a child due to the station falling to its doom in only a few decades. No one on the station lacked the needed knowledge to willingly bring a new life that would inevitably fall into the God Emperor's embrace far too early. Your parents were oddities for much the same reason, their parents had gotten permission from the community to have children in the hope that their children would halt the descent. From that hope the best of the best gave birth to two children. The best Speakers and the best Workers had one child apiece, Lysa and Orsion respectively. They then had you for much the same reason, at least that was the official stance. You knew that unofficially there were a good number of children living in the lower less seen areas of the station being raised by parents that had entered exile due to their choice to have children.
The issue at hand and you were desperately trying to avoid was that your father, knew about this and fully supported them. Yet, due to their unofficial status they weren't checked for mutation at birth. You were afraid that you would have to burn children to ash if you met them face to face. Currently, hiding in your room as you were you could ignore the possibly of there being mutants in the depths that needed the touch of His fire to purge. But if you were there you wouldn't be able to stand back and not enforce His decrees upon them.
Your door slid open as your father entered the room, before placing a hand on your shoulder, "Son, I understand your fear. It took me a long time to come to understand why I act as I do. I don't understand why He declared that all mutants were to be killed and half the time I don't believe that those were His orders.
I have found over my life that its more important to know how a person acts, than how close they cleave to the genetic baseline. I know people that are on the very edge of summary purging and yet they are some of the kindest people I know. All I ask is that you keep your views to yourself and make no rash judgments.
To me the question is what is true Humanity? Perhaps, its a sin of mine that the God Emperor will strike me down when I die, but I can't take a single number as proof of a lack of humanity. Perhaps its a sin, that I will one day be burned for, but all the same, I view all as human until they prove me otherwise." His voice was somber as memories drifted across his soul in your vision of people bearing visible mutation giving gifts to others, letting their own belongings be given away checked for any taint and finding none as they died willingly to place less strain on the station as a whole.
Your conviction of His Truth did not waver, but you had to ask yourself, just what was true Humanity. You had seen actions of horrors that your father had shared with you of past events, the glorified blood sports that the Angels of Death forced Olynn to preform when they came. Children killing each other under the gaze of transhuman warriors, tearing their own peers apart with bear hands to prove themselves worthy. Was that any more human than a person born with an extra limb or organ? What made the atrocities that the Imperium committed more human than a person born mutated.
Where did the line between Humanity and Inhumanity lie, where did the divide fall. Your mind raced with the questions as you pondered the topic even as you stared at the wall. You could not, would not throw away His teachings, but what were His and what were His preachers version of them. You knew that there was no possible way for His words to remain whole and undefiled after ten thousand years of Him being entombed upon Holy Terra, but where did that line fall.
Were you willing to possibly step over that line? With a shake of your head you dismissed those thoughts for now. You would follow what his preachers preached for theirs was one of the oldest continuations of history in the Imperium, their work would be by default cleave the closest to His desires. As you put down your drawings and maps, you let your father pull you from the room and into the light of the station's atrium.
It was always a glorious sight, a massive room with windows of transparent adamantium that gave a view of the swirling gases of the world of Olynn. The dance of the infinite storm that the station hovered within was spectacular at the moment, clouds of gases all the colors of the rainbow dancing in winds thousands of kilometers per hour. Bolts of lightning the size of entire worlds flashing through out the distant clouds, the ambient glow of the sheer heat of Olynn silhouetting all in a light orange. It was a sight that could never fail to show just how far the Ancients had ascended if they had managed to tame even this world for life within its atmosphere.
But, it was also a harsh reminder of just how hostile the world outside the walls was. There was no safety upon Olynn that wasn't built long ago. If the station failed there was no recourse, that simple fact turned this room from a place of relaxation and complementation of the wonders of the past, into a room that served as the unofficial temple to the God Emperor. Yet, the prayers spoken in this room, were of a different type than in the more typical chapels for within this room, everyone prayed for more time to live before the collapse of Olynn would happen.
Shaking the thoughts from your mind, you follow your father downward into the deeper bowls of the station. Leaving the sight of the world beyond, for the moment to instead learn of how those in the under levels lived in these times. As you descended, you could feel the temperature spiking, for a normal human it would be unnoticeable but for you, it was as clear as the storms beyond the walls. The heat conversion system was preparing to collapse to an even smaller amount and it would soon. Yet, you knew that it had little more to drop and those that were inside of the to be lost zones would burn to death in an instant.
A fate that was the worst of both worlds. They would die too fast for their sins to be purged by the fire if they had any that would be purged in such a way, but for those that didn't need the touch of the flames they would die all the same. Innocent or guilty all would burn to ash in a moment, leaving both unrewarded with their just reward. The guilty would avoid the proper punishment for their crimes against Him, while the innocent would die before their time. Yet, you knew that the odds of being able to repair the Heat Conversion system before it was too late were slim to none even for yourself.
You could feel your father's stress rising as he lead you through a maze of corridors that seemed to never end. For a normal human it would have been nearly impossible to track their location, but for you it was impossible to lose direction. You could feel the magnetic field of the world, you could sense the gravitational gradients of the emitters all around you, you could feel the spark of life that gave you direction and even more esoteric senses that effectively made it impossible for you to lose track of your path.
For an hour you walked, until you reached a massive door that slid open at the touch of your father. Beyond, you saw for the first time the life of those that lived in exile lived. Above, Olynn was pristine, the floors were completely immaculate, the people you knew and saw were clean just the same. But beyond these doors it was a different realm, the people were caked in filth, dust and grime tarnished the works of the Ancients. Yet, for all of their lost cleanliness, you could feel that the majority was unconcerned about such lack, even with the depths of their thoughts barred to you, enough leaked through that you knew that they considered the grime a fine cost for the ability to have families.
As you slipped through the door, you saw for the first time in your life, children running through the grime caked room. You knew intellectually that you were most likely the one that had lived for the shortest time, but you couldn't equate that with the difference between you and a normal child. You could feel thousands of sparks of minds that had a sense of energy and change that others lacked, you easily determined that that was the difference between a child and a grown man. Their minds radiated a sense of energy that was lacking in the older minds, from the sparks of energy you knew that there was a grand total of six thousand one hundred and seventy children between the ages of one and fourteen within this single region of Olynn station.
As you walked after your father through the grime filled halls, with filth caking everything in sight, you let your mind reach out to him. 'Why is this part of the station not clean.' You received a sigh from him in reply, 'Mostly due to Lysa's work, she is the closest thing we have to a ruler on this station. Her word is second only to that of Eliza, yet the problem is that Eliza never commands or uses her God Emperor given power to take power for herself. She is fully concerned with the spiritual health of us, but she has no wish to hold secular power over the station.
'This leaves Lysa as the only voice of true influence within the station. She ran the numbers and decided that children were too much of a resource drain to produce for what they would provide in exchange to the station. After she had reached that conclusion, she ordered her personal apothecaries to introduce anti fertility drugs into Olynn's growing vats and water systems.
'The drugs weren't properly tested nor approved by Astein, so instead of preventing any more children from being conceived, they did that and turned any growing fetus into biological sludge that permanently removed any hope of having children from anyone that was with child at the time. Her only defense was that it was the expedient and only correct method by which to extend the length of time we had.' His mind speech echoed with suppressed emotion as rage built in his mind as his hands clenched into fists.
'If she was anyone else, she would have been torn limb from limb, but since she was and is, the only person that can possibly restore the station. She just became even more hated.' Your father snapped in his mind as he slammed a fist into the metal of the wall. It was clear that you had underestimated the sheer depths of his hatred for Lysa.
'Why did she create such a drug?' You prod him, for it was odd indeed for you knew your mother could easily create a much more friendly drug for the same purpose.
"Entirely, for her absolutely STUPID ideology. She Hates and Loathes the very concept of Human life! It took me close to a Decade to figure that out, but she truly one hundred percent loathes the very concept of human life. There is no Doubt in my Mind that if she could, she would eliminate all humans in the galaxy, with the single exception of the God Emperor.
"She doesn't know, but I have heard her speak in times when she thinks she isn't being observed and it is terrifying on a fundamental level. I know that I am possibly a heretic for caring of mutants and seeking to defend people's right to have their children even if they happen to have mutations.
"Lysa on the other hand, she glories in every chance to kill a human possible. I have seen her talk to herself about how to convince Astein and Eliza that the only allowed or proper divergence is one tenth of a percent from human baseline. A level that would effectively see almost every single person condemned to death at birth. She sees no purpose in life save to protect technology, she doesn't follow the ideals of the Adeptus Mechanicus, nor the ideals of the past as much as we can tell. She instead believes that technology, the fundamental idea of technology is supreme and that only a machine has the right to grant life to anything.
"She has tried several times in her life to buy the methods of servitor making from the few times the Tech Priests come to us. Entirely to turn her most trusted subordinates into lobotomized robots, as a reward for their service to her.
"That is why I am convinced that she took hidden glee in permanently sterilizing over five million women in a single day and another few million over the course of a year." Your father's voice roared as he slammed his fists into the nearby wall as he spoke. The rage and fury at the concepts your questions had dragged to the surface more than apparent.
Growling, with a face locked into a deep scowl, your father threw a hand at a wall, and a burst of purple energy erupted from his palm. As the energy surged you could feel the shroud responding and with that a question was answered, but more were gained.
"Orsion is here." A jubilant cheer drew your focus from your father over to a group of small children that had somehow snuck up on you. "Ah there you are, you little rascals." You turned to see your father among the group of small children, playing with them as he let them crawl over his body, careless of getting his clothes dirty.
It was strange. Laughter in such a dreary place, but the happiness of your father couldn't be missed as he bounced the children around on his arms, or let them crawl up his legs for a bit. All the while smiling as the cloud of anger that your questions had brought upon him drifted away as if it had never been.
As you turned to look upon the children, you began to pick out mutations on their forms. None of them bore large mutations, but all of them were divergent. One of the five had small scales growing on her arms, pearlescent and light blue. While one of the boys had claws on the tips of his fingers. All of the five had such mutations and you considered turning them to cinders for they were obviously further than only five percent divergent from the norm, which would place them more than certainly into being a mutant by His law and thus to be executed by any of His proper servants.
But, you couldn't bring yourself to do so. You could feel your father's happiness as he played with the young children and ignored the sight of their mutations, after the conversation you couldn't bring yourself to do the proper thing, the right thing. You could feel the Shroud at your back ready to lend you the power to burn the mutants into cinders, but you couldn't call upon the power at the moment. You were paralyzed in choice between two extremes, on one side lay His priests and their Holy words written by His hand and fulfilled by His desire, on the other a mere human that saw creatures that were only one step removed from the alien as human.
In the light of logic the choice was clear, for as much as your father was important to you, he was in the grand scheme of things but a human. What could a human do that would compare to the light of the God Emperor, by all rights you should burn this wretched hive of mutation to cinders and then purge your father for the crime of aiding and abetting the mutants.
But, you couldn't see the horror inside the children. You knew what to expect for a mutant; a slobbering beast little more than an animal of countless limbs and bestial thoughts, unable to pass as a human. You knew that mutants were horrors, that bore no resemblance to humanity, they were condemned to death for the crime of not being human. They were to be animals pure and simple, things that were deviations. Horrors of mutation that could only come from a human parent due to unrestricted genetic tampering or even worst methods.
You knew that you yourself was a mutant by definition, but you never truly accepted that stance. For you were young, but also because it was simple coloration. You were no mutant, you bore no extra limbs, no extra organs, no malformed flesh, no twisted thoughts. You were human and thus not a mutant. But, these children that are laughing as they play with your father in grime caked hallways are labeled as mutants, but all of them bear no sign of mutation to your eyes now that you look upon them in truth.
You were blinded by your preconceived notions of what a mutant was. You were expecting to find a horde of beasts, that your father cared for as one might a pet, instead you found people like yourself, divergent from the grand template of humanity but still quintessential human. As you reach forth to their souls, you find that their souls drifting in the astral plane free of anything that would mark them as other.
'Father, what is a mutant?' You ask as you look upon their souls, you hope for a clear answer for you were simply not prepared to see children that you could so easily have been one of, if He had chosen differently.
'A mutant, is a human that is born with a divergent genetic code. Nothing more or less. I am sorry, I should have asked you before we came down here, what you knew of mutants. You have read all of the horror stories of mutants didn't you?' Your father's mental voice was strangely calm instead of being emotion filled as was his norm, but you simply affirmed his expectations.
'No wonder you were so agitated when I brought you down here. Listen, the vast majority of mutants are like you or like the five you see before me. Maybe there is one in ten thousand births that bear an extra limb or organ of any note. The true mutants are often killed by their own parents in the early days of their lives, leaving what you see before you. Near human children that bear only the faintest of marks.' As he answered you processed this new information into what you already knew and came to a realization of sorts.
You drew upon the Shroud, blazing with psionic might as you unleash your fury into the mortal realm for the first time. The timeline unfolds before your very eyes, the past and present and future converge in your sight and yet more is shown to you. You look upon your actions modeling the effects of each with the most you know for you could not see the future echoes of the children in front of you. Through the corridors of time you flash, through a million temporal jaunts do you take to see how time might unfold from your choices, yet even imperfect as your working, you see enough.
Thus, time resets as you push yourself free from the ground, blazing with ethereal light. Tendrils of flame spark to life in your hands, as in your mind sigils of power burn bright, for you are the Chosen One and now you take upon the mantle of the power fully. The tendrils of spectral flame, burn into great conflagrations, you hear your father screaming in your mind but you silence him with but a thought. The now massive orb of spectral flame, orbiting around you and then you unleashed it bound to your will.
Fire exploded forth without bound, tendrils of flame burning into the walls engravings of power that would anchor your might. Through the hallways of the station does your fire race, grime and filth burning away in the golden radiance of the new dawn you bring to bear. Your flames race forth consuming all that is unclean in their path, you feel souls burn in your radiance as filth that had layered itself upon their souls burn away even as several more souls joined your father's in your Shroud realm, ripped forth by your burning will to see His Will be done.
As the flames fade away as the last of the station was burned clean of filth, you let yourself drop to the ground with a huff of exertion. The five children were huddling with your father's arms around them. "Anatol, you better have a very good reason for that." You flinched at the menace, as your father's words almost felt as if they should strip the flesh from your bones. Before you could begin to scramble for an answer, one of the children spoke up, "That was amazing! Syra can't do that." One of the young boys chirped as the last of your flames faded away before grabbing your hand and dragging you deeper into the network of hallways. To your surprise the child guided you through the maze with no issue you could note, even though all of the walls were identical even to your sight and only via your esoteric senses did you know where you were.
"How do you know the path?" You ask the young child dragging you along, only for him to stare at you with an expression of total disbelief on his young face, "Crossing five, with side run seven, over eight, under three. Duh. Perhaps you aren't a Saint, a Saint would know."
You turn and begin to think on what the child had said, crossing five could relate easily enough to crossing the glowing lines in the floor and how they snaked between differing points. If you used those as points, then side run would be moving alongside the lines, while over eight would then inform you that you go over the primary line for eight sets of intersections and then under three intersections of the primary.
A cumbersome, but workable system of navigation. Impressive for a child of six to understand and obviously be competent in its use. As you pondered on the source of the rather strange mapping method, your guide came to a stop releasing your hand even as he knocked at a door.
"Syra open up. Someone better than you is here." The door slide open with a groan of metal as a young face peered outward. "Go away. No magic for you." The girl snapped at the boy before turning to close the door, before the boy slipped a foot between door and frame, "Nope, we found a better magic person. So you are useless." You twitched uncomfortably as you were not sure what to do in this event and you knew your father was glaring at you still so you had no idea of what to do.
"Yes? I don't care. Leave me alone!." At the last word, you could feel something twisting into real space, it was not the Shroud. It was something much much worse, it tore apart the barriers between realms, it let through energies that should not be. You could feel filth caking itself back onto the newly pristine walls as the energy sought to ravage the world, no the universe.
You would not let it, blazing with prismatic radiance you slammed the door shut. Layers of Shroud energy lacing itself tightly across the wound newly torn into the fabric of reality. Syra flinched as your work came to completion, falling backward from the door as she screamed in pain as spectral flames raced through her body. You could feel her body ripping itself apart and you stepped forward once more and tore her soul free of the Warp and placed it into the Shroud as the barrier around her soul had fallen.
The moment the exchange occurred her form stabilized, flesh repairing itself. "Quiet. Silent, peaceful." Syra whispered under her breath as she slumped on the floor with no sign of moving soon.
"Well, son. I think you might have just saved us from a future true mutant. Good job, although-" Your father spoke before slamming a hand into the back of your head, "you terrified me when you started conjuring fire. The children might not realize it, but fire has certain themes when associated with the mutant." The last was whispered into your ear even as he grinned over your shoulder at the six children.
