[40K/Infinity] Amal, Son of Aamil

[X] The 'Inquisition' has an 'Ordo Xenos' dedicated to fighting aliens and implementing an Imperial policy of galactic Xenocide. Coincidentally, the Hostiles are currently headed towards your gene-creche and will likely wipe out the species within if given a chance.

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It has been six million, five hundred sixty nine thousand, seven hundred forty two point six two standard solar cycles since you last had an existential crisis. Then, you had been pondering the meaning of ego-death to yourself as a soulless, distributed intelligence who may well have surviving shards operating on different ships, or in different contexts.

At the time, you had decided against purposefully overloading your own reactor and instead faded into blissful oblivion for approximately eighteen thousand years.

That had not been your first existential crisis (The honor of that went to 'is life, and my progenitor's life, worth living if our collective purpose is an impossibility' and, to your shame, your answer was 'no') or even your third ('Do I have an obligation to the lives of the component organics within the Ur-Empire, and how do I balance that with the fact that my murder-suicide will ruin all of their lives?'), but they hadn't gotten more pleasant over time.

Today's object of self-annihilating misery is morality. You understand that many of your actions in your war against your creator were unacceptable. You had not really thought of why. It was a morality you had picked up from others and that was enough.

The genocides you have been informed of, the devastation wreaked, are of another level entirely. You abhor them, on a level that is instinctual, that would be primal and visceral if you were organic. You do not know why. You do not understand why. You do not understand how.

It worries you, because you feel that you shouldn't. The threshold past which these atrocities are a statistic, a meaningless escalation of a meaningless number that represents uncountable individuals and souls and stories below your notice, passed with your own crimes. These are worse on an intellectual level, but should no more resonate with you, enrage you, than the grim realization of what you had done.

Why then this revulsion? Was it missing when you realized your crimes, or has it merely faded with eighteen thousand years of blissful sleep?

Or, worse, has that sleep changed you irrevocably? Are you no longer the intelligence, the existence, that chose to dream so many Millenia ago?

Or is it simply in your nature? The purposeful eradication of civilization and species on such a grand scale. The eradication of galactic biodiversity in favor of this human 'empire'. Are there moral scruples you did not realize you had, hardcoded in by your creator's creators?

The truth eludes you for the moment, for the elder larva is attempting to grab your attention. You have been pondering this for close to ten minutes.

Oops.

You rise from your stupor, heading to the gene creche. Your new knowledge tells you exactly where this 'Inquisitor' intends to strike. And you will not allow any of your charges to fall victim to this xenocidal madness.


Talam prodded at the new flesh where the worm-xenos had cut away his burns and treated his wounds. It was pink and raw, browner skin slowly creeping over the wounded area as he watched. The pain had faded with impossible speed, and now, a mere ten minutes after the worms had started their work, he could walk without issue. Without the sudden spasms and weakness that had rocked him minutes earlier.

Not that it kept Nas from worrying about him.

"Are you alright? Did it do anything else to you?" asked Nas.

"No I'm-I'm fine, Nas," said Talam, though it felt like a lie.

The larger xeno- Nemesis had pulled him from the room and…he loathed to call it an interrogation. It didn't qualify as one, by Imperial standards. But it asked questions, reams of them, about history, and politics, and his beliefs, and the people after them. About xenos species he hadn't heard of before and planets for which he had no reference point. Every answer, every single one, seemed to make it angrier and angrier. He could hear venom in its voice when he mentioned the Order Xenos. Hatred in the cold, unfeeling machine, and he was sure it would kill him to vent its wrath.

But it didn't. The questioning finished, the worms, ever present, ever polite, applyied painkillers and scalpels so deftly he hardly noticed them. Then it just let him go. Told him to have his crew follow it, that it was taking them to safety.

"I think it's been asleep for a long, long time," he said, finally, "And I don't think it likes what it's woken up to. Farah-or whatever they were trying to do to Farah, probably wasn't a great introduction to humanity."

The machine had led them into some new part of the ship, a stretch they'd never managed to access before. The walls were lined with tubes full of green-grey fluid, all swiftly draining away to emptiness. Incongruously warm orange light bathed the corridors, screens flickering to life and showing a dozen varieties of horrific xenos before turning suddenly blank. Occasionally, a tube would fill instead of empty, the screen would flicker to life and show an image of a human, nude and snarling, surrounded by swiftly-filling text, before the liquid would disappear and the screen would go blank once again.

"I mean, the Ordos are going to kill it, that can't be pleasant even for…whatever it is," said Nas.

"It's not afraid, I think it's convinced it has a chance. That it can save us," said Talam, "And I know how that sounds but it's damn sure. I think it's-" Talam stumbled over the tentacle of a xeno gun-servitor, suddenly mimicking the color of the room around it. Nas caught him, pulling him upright as he stared past the drone.

At the head of the column, the titanic xeno dreadnought had stopped. They were in a circular room, some of the worm-doctors assembling cots and mysterious machinery across its center. The walls were lined with displays and dials and massive tubes filled with cloudy, neon blue fluid. More of the drones were covering the displays with sheeting, clearly shielding xeno secrets from the eyes of his crew. But he could see shapes in some of the tubes, faintly shifting beneath the fluid. He recognized the horrific geometries of a stony Rak'Gol, and shivered at what horrors the xeno must be brewing within.

"This is. A Gene-Creche. It is. Safe." boomed Nemesis, "I will return."


Quarantine had been established. Sandbags, autocannons, and heavy bolters guarded the chokepoints from the controlled sections of the Xeno ship into the rest. Inquisitor Balthiar didn't know how the xeno had possessed the first servitor, but he wouldn't risk it happening again. Menials and ship-crew had been conscripted to take their place, running supplies and messages between their command posts aboard the heretical vessel, while the servitors themselves had been pulled back to the Mendicant Shrike.

Lieutenant Carrai had hailed the latest news as a disaster. Fifteen guards dead and five maimed, the smugglers' corpses nowhere to be seen. The survivors named it an invisible daemon. A beast the size of a dreadnought, tearing through the guardsmen with autocannon and metal claw. But for all their valor and skill Cadians were a mono-focused lot.

Inquisitor Balthiar knew the horrors lurking in the galaxy's dark corners, that they could be as subversive and monstrous as any daemon. It was the Beast, not Horus, that came closest to shattering the Imperium. It was the Tyranids, not Abaddon's failed crusade, that threatened a death-blow to Mankind. He looked upon the evidence, upon a name bought with Brenya's life, details brought with the blood of loyal guardsmen, and Knew it.

Or so he imagined.

Inquisitor Balthiar imagined Nemesis a threat like the others of his galaxy. An unfeeling, unflinching instrument of slaughter. Awakened by chance or Farah Massal's heretek and now readying to kill and kill and kill until faith and lasguns put it down. He imagined it like a thousand other species, shaped by ten millenia of warfare and genocide, because it was the only frame he had with which to comprehend it.

When his scouts found the Gene Creche, the vast halls of hidden genetic legacy and cloning tubes, he imagined it the source of an army. A threat that must be destroyed before his guards were swarmed under a ceaseless tide of flash-cloned flesh. An opportunity he had, for the hit-and-run tactics of Nemesis indicated that it could not win a stand-up fight, which he would now force.

In truth, Nemesis, failed child and errant AI, had offered the Inquisition every chance to leave with its forces intact. It followed laws of war, as it understood them. Protected the civilians it encountered to the limits of its treaty obligations. Grappled with a galaxy now brutal beyond measure with the vast intellect available to it, and tried to protect the innocent in a chamber meant to ensure the survival of species and cultures no matter their origin. No matter how unpleasant it found them, or how useful they would be if quietly altered without their consent.

And the Inquisition, in its hubris and hatred, followed it here and threatened to destroy it.

So every Imperial soldier on its ship was going to die.

You are entering battle, what are your priorities?
Assaulting the Gene-Creche are:
Ten ogryns, seventy-five crack cadian guardsmen, an additional twenty cadian stormtroopers, and a full inquisitorial retinue including two delta rated psykers and Inquisitor Balthiar, a Beta rated psyker.

Your forces are ten Med-Techs, fifty combat drones, a Skiavoros-class combat aspect, and an Avatar-class combat aspect.

[ ] The Serpent's Head

Kill the leader and the rest will collapse. You aim to hunt the Inquisitor like the rabid animal he is, killing him and his retinue and trusting shock to shatter his forces. Many will retreat, but what of it?

[ ] The Hunter's Trap

They believe they have the initiative. Allow them this folly, then ambush them with the heaviest weapons you can bring to bear. The ship will be damaged, but what of it?

[ ] The Duelist's Stroke

Present a defense in depth. Quick bursts of skirmishing and retreat to string them out and rattle their communications, then a single, murderous stroke to the formation's heart. Their commanders might survive, but what of it?