The View From the Other End.
- Location
- madison
The View From the Other End.
Fabricator Locutus of crone poured over the fleet standing against him, his mind wired into every system on his ship. Every auspex return, every ping, pict-capture, and scrying result stroking his glee to greater heights. The fool Turoq has spoken truth, these hidebound fools had indeed found a great cache of archeotech. Sensor returns were colorated, compared, and converted into rough performance profiles, then he adjusted them for projected improvements when properly imbued with the wonder of Chaos. It was only his lack of lips that kept him from smiling with manic joy.
His star was on the rise, first forcing the arrogant stagnant fool from Blightforge into his retinue, now being the one to claim such a prize!
Coven Omega, report, any signs of scrying?
Negative coordinator, Turoq seems to have been correct about the seer being elsewhere.
Maintain vigilance.
Already he could imagine the triumph he would receive! Oh and to think, he had thought the look on that rotting fool's face when he had forced him to transfer his personal servitors to the titan handlers would be the best part of today! He was still sulking in his chambers, to see such attachment to such base constructs simply because they were old, such was the folly of the unchanging! Fools the lot of them. as an act of spite, a sliver of his mind inflicted a nervous battleship on him.
Now, all he had to do was…
INRBO-
Locutus's mind burned! He was every system on the ship, and the ship was suddenly tearing itself apart! Bindings shattered, servitors went mad, daemon engines rampaged, the changer bound to the comms died screaming at the tendrils of the unclean one bound into the sewage system, Khornate guns feasted upon delicate observational daemons, Tyrannical command networks found themselves fighting a rebellion on a thousand fronts demanding all that heeded them die for the affront and something vicious and hungry began tearing its way through the vents!
With a supreme force of will he engaged backups, hard lining into Coven Alpha he pooled his knowledge with their might and began forcing the daemons back into control, yet even as he invoked hidden backups yet more sorcerous strikes rained down upon his fleet.
OMEGA REPORT!
Unknown attack methods! Diviners acting as spotters,CONFIRMED HOSTILE ALPHA!
With a twist alpha shifted from damage control, activating the auto alters and sacrificing a full 10% of their slaves to cast a pall of blindness over their fates. Let them see through that!
OMEGA! Assist ALPHA in damage control. Priority is comms, internal defense, navigation, weapons, point defense.
He needed data, and apparently, his expert on ECM had been eaten by whatever was slithering around the vents. No matter, he'd have better trophies soon enough. Bit by bit his web of control was respun, disgustingly material based backups where engaged, and daemons were crash resummoned. Then when reports from other ships came flooding in Locutus let out a binary screech of rage. It spoke to the desperation of the situation that a rogue titan being swallowed by a warp rift was marked low priority!
With a snarl, he set about restoring order to his fleet. Forcing ships back into formation, and hard shifting their damage control priorities. He had no idea how many of the torpedo contacts were real but he doubted it was more than 1% at most. His fleet needed sensors and comms more than point defense. Or at least that was how it appeared, until the impossibly massive swarm of torpedo contacts reached the vanguard squadrons and ships started to die en mass.
Horrified he frantically sent commands to reprioritize point defense, but it was too late! He could do nothing but watch in horror as over fifteen thousand very real anti-capital torpedoes tore into his fleet unmolested, accompanied by literally countless escort torpedos. Entire task forces and flotillas died in fire and confusion, worse, his tattered sensor net had lost the enemy hypercarrier!
Frantically he pulled tattered task forces together, desperately forming his savaged vanguard into ad-hoc task forces. His battlecruisers he formed to ward away enemy harassers while his escorts formed into a shield against the vast swarms of bombers surely already in route. He'd barely formed the first group when the first of the enemy ships entered his tattered and bleeding sensor envelope. Light cruisers, angling for his AA force.
Spike anti scrying measures, another 20% of the auto alters, we don't want them seeing this coming.
With a thought he loosed his hounds, smiling as the light cruiser frantically broke off their approach. Their speed would see some escape, but their vector was wrong for most of them and his hounds were converging from every side. The light cruisers would be shattered before reaching his escort screen. Already his battleships rained ruination upon then! He could win this! No witchery would deny him his prize!
Then the lead battle cruiser exploded, then another, and another! Frantically he shifted the auspexes of the fleet, refocusing and narrowing them to better see what was killing his battlecruisers, creating gaping holes of blindness in his sight but revealing their attackers. What little flesh remained in Locutus's face paled as his sensors revealed a vast cloud of bombers vectoring in on his exposed battlecruisers! How! They must have been drifting, how could they…
ACTIVATE ALL AUTO ALTERS, I WANT THOSE SEERS BLINDED!
As his hounds died, the attacks they sought to ward off rounded! In desperation, he revectored his suddenly vulnerable escorts. The enemy would only get one pass, he'd still be able to save most of them. For scant minutes it seemed like it might work, the engagement envelopes dancing to limit the harm done to his desperately needed point defense, then a cataclysmic explosion tore at the heart of his formation. As guns more ancient than the Imperium of Man spoke their fury, the In Dying Light made its presence known.
How… HOW! How could they have known the vector.. Impossible, it was impossible… his last desperate bid to soften the enemy's strike fighters died under the guns of the carrier they sought to thwart, as it led its contingent of heavy ships through the hole he'd opened in his sensor net to try and save his battlecruisers. Helplessly he watched as the vast swarms of strike bombers materialized in the carrier's wake, striking his scattered forces, even as the concentrated formation of the enemy's fast assets themselves split up to cast a wider net.
It was all he could do to huddle the last of his forces together, sheltering under the bristling guns of his heaviest ships. Like an overwhelmed lord surrendering all but his castle to ancient marauders, and even then he'd been unable to do so fully, the vast vessel's guns forcing the vanguard to clump up dangerously far from the main fleet.
ALPHA! I thought I ordered you to counter their seers!
My lord, we did! The auto alters have bled our slaves dry, our fates should have been truly hidden.
OMEGA! Find me those seers!
My lord, we've been looking, we can taste no traces of divination!
How… the blind seer! Damn that fool Turoq! They should never have believed his claims about so cunning an oracle! Well, he was ready for him!
Activate fate burner protocol!
ALPHA here, confirm order.
Confirm ALPHA.
OMEGA here. Confirm order.
Confirm OMEGA. Final confirmation given. Commence now.
Once more Locutus could feel the web of daemons bound to his fleet burn as every daemon of the Architect of Fate found its essence forcefully drawn into hidden capacitors, capacitors inscribed with the runes of Nurgle. In a blinding flash the sacrifice was completed. For seven times seven days the Plague God would shield them from those who would twist or spy upon their fates. The Weaver would wreak terrible vengeance later, but victory would be favor enough to survive.
With a thought, Locutus ordered a new heading for his badly mauled and scattered fleet. He'd need to work quickly, reunite his two remaining fleet segments, and then punch through before the enemy's flagship returned. He passed his order onto the fleet, then prepared the second part of his plan. With a vicious act of will he reached out to the constellation of crippled or simply hopelessly out of position ships and forced them to initiate a haywire overload. For brief seconds a new constellation of stars blossomed into the void, blinding the enemy in the present even as his ritual had blinded them to the future.
His own battered and bleeding sensors were of course just as badly affected, but they had the advantage of knowing the rally point. By the time the interference cleared his fleet would be massed and ready to strike. There was no way they would see it coming.
Thousands of kilometers away, a man watches a hololith, he points at a location, gives a quiet order, and then smiles.
The first sign that something has gone wrong is a miss. A vast scintillating pillar of energy spearing past the main bulk of the fleet. Locutus feels his blood run cold. He allows himself to hope briefly that it was a fluke, a small skirmisher firing upon his vanguard. After all, it was only one lance, surely if there had been a battle there would have been more. For long hopefully seconds, he clings to his delusion, then the unseen weapons cycle and a half dozen more fly past, minutes later dozens, then hundreds of a dizzying array of sizes. The tale of a battle told by the flashes of what shots missed their target. Hours later when he reaches the rendezvous point, he is greeted not by a mighty force ready to do battle, but the pathetic and savaged survivors of an ambush. Telling a tale of how the enemy fell upon them unseen, coming out of the debris field just as they began to change course, catching them while they were slow and helpless.
The Fabricator Locutus does not rage, does not rant. He does not curse the fates. He simply counts up his remaining forces, assures himself the scrying protections are in place, and then flees the system as if pursued by the vilest of daemons. Whatever awaits him for this failures cannot be worse than the monsters guarding the Asgard system.
Fabricator Locutus of crone poured over the fleet standing against him, his mind wired into every system on his ship. Every auspex return, every ping, pict-capture, and scrying result stroking his glee to greater heights. The fool Turoq has spoken truth, these hidebound fools had indeed found a great cache of archeotech. Sensor returns were colorated, compared, and converted into rough performance profiles, then he adjusted them for projected improvements when properly imbued with the wonder of Chaos. It was only his lack of lips that kept him from smiling with manic joy.
His star was on the rise, first forcing the arrogant stagnant fool from Blightforge into his retinue, now being the one to claim such a prize!
Coven Omega, report, any signs of scrying?
Negative coordinator, Turoq seems to have been correct about the seer being elsewhere.
Maintain vigilance.
Already he could imagine the triumph he would receive! Oh and to think, he had thought the look on that rotting fool's face when he had forced him to transfer his personal servitors to the titan handlers would be the best part of today! He was still sulking in his chambers, to see such attachment to such base constructs simply because they were old, such was the folly of the unchanging! Fools the lot of them. as an act of spite, a sliver of his mind inflicted a nervous battleship on him.
Now, all he had to do was…
INRBO-
Locutus's mind burned! He was every system on the ship, and the ship was suddenly tearing itself apart! Bindings shattered, servitors went mad, daemon engines rampaged, the changer bound to the comms died screaming at the tendrils of the unclean one bound into the sewage system, Khornate guns feasted upon delicate observational daemons, Tyrannical command networks found themselves fighting a rebellion on a thousand fronts demanding all that heeded them die for the affront and something vicious and hungry began tearing its way through the vents!
With a supreme force of will he engaged backups, hard lining into Coven Alpha he pooled his knowledge with their might and began forcing the daemons back into control, yet even as he invoked hidden backups yet more sorcerous strikes rained down upon his fleet.
OMEGA REPORT!
Unknown attack methods! Diviners acting as spotters,CONFIRMED HOSTILE ALPHA!
With a twist alpha shifted from damage control, activating the auto alters and sacrificing a full 10% of their slaves to cast a pall of blindness over their fates. Let them see through that!
OMEGA! Assist ALPHA in damage control. Priority is comms, internal defense, navigation, weapons, point defense.
He needed data, and apparently, his expert on ECM had been eaten by whatever was slithering around the vents. No matter, he'd have better trophies soon enough. Bit by bit his web of control was respun, disgustingly material based backups where engaged, and daemons were crash resummoned. Then when reports from other ships came flooding in Locutus let out a binary screech of rage. It spoke to the desperation of the situation that a rogue titan being swallowed by a warp rift was marked low priority!
With a snarl, he set about restoring order to his fleet. Forcing ships back into formation, and hard shifting their damage control priorities. He had no idea how many of the torpedo contacts were real but he doubted it was more than 1% at most. His fleet needed sensors and comms more than point defense. Or at least that was how it appeared, until the impossibly massive swarm of torpedo contacts reached the vanguard squadrons and ships started to die en mass.
Horrified he frantically sent commands to reprioritize point defense, but it was too late! He could do nothing but watch in horror as over fifteen thousand very real anti-capital torpedoes tore into his fleet unmolested, accompanied by literally countless escort torpedos. Entire task forces and flotillas died in fire and confusion, worse, his tattered sensor net had lost the enemy hypercarrier!
Frantically he pulled tattered task forces together, desperately forming his savaged vanguard into ad-hoc task forces. His battlecruisers he formed to ward away enemy harassers while his escorts formed into a shield against the vast swarms of bombers surely already in route. He'd barely formed the first group when the first of the enemy ships entered his tattered and bleeding sensor envelope. Light cruisers, angling for his AA force.
Spike anti scrying measures, another 20% of the auto alters, we don't want them seeing this coming.
With a thought he loosed his hounds, smiling as the light cruiser frantically broke off their approach. Their speed would see some escape, but their vector was wrong for most of them and his hounds were converging from every side. The light cruisers would be shattered before reaching his escort screen. Already his battleships rained ruination upon then! He could win this! No witchery would deny him his prize!
Then the lead battle cruiser exploded, then another, and another! Frantically he shifted the auspexes of the fleet, refocusing and narrowing them to better see what was killing his battlecruisers, creating gaping holes of blindness in his sight but revealing their attackers. What little flesh remained in Locutus's face paled as his sensors revealed a vast cloud of bombers vectoring in on his exposed battlecruisers! How! They must have been drifting, how could they…
ACTIVATE ALL AUTO ALTERS, I WANT THOSE SEERS BLINDED!
As his hounds died, the attacks they sought to ward off rounded! In desperation, he revectored his suddenly vulnerable escorts. The enemy would only get one pass, he'd still be able to save most of them. For scant minutes it seemed like it might work, the engagement envelopes dancing to limit the harm done to his desperately needed point defense, then a cataclysmic explosion tore at the heart of his formation. As guns more ancient than the Imperium of Man spoke their fury, the In Dying Light made its presence known.
How… HOW! How could they have known the vector.. Impossible, it was impossible… his last desperate bid to soften the enemy's strike fighters died under the guns of the carrier they sought to thwart, as it led its contingent of heavy ships through the hole he'd opened in his sensor net to try and save his battlecruisers. Helplessly he watched as the vast swarms of strike bombers materialized in the carrier's wake, striking his scattered forces, even as the concentrated formation of the enemy's fast assets themselves split up to cast a wider net.
It was all he could do to huddle the last of his forces together, sheltering under the bristling guns of his heaviest ships. Like an overwhelmed lord surrendering all but his castle to ancient marauders, and even then he'd been unable to do so fully, the vast vessel's guns forcing the vanguard to clump up dangerously far from the main fleet.
ALPHA! I thought I ordered you to counter their seers!
My lord, we did! The auto alters have bled our slaves dry, our fates should have been truly hidden.
OMEGA! Find me those seers!
My lord, we've been looking, we can taste no traces of divination!
How… the blind seer! Damn that fool Turoq! They should never have believed his claims about so cunning an oracle! Well, he was ready for him!
Activate fate burner protocol!
ALPHA here, confirm order.
Confirm ALPHA.
OMEGA here. Confirm order.
Confirm OMEGA. Final confirmation given. Commence now.
Once more Locutus could feel the web of daemons bound to his fleet burn as every daemon of the Architect of Fate found its essence forcefully drawn into hidden capacitors, capacitors inscribed with the runes of Nurgle. In a blinding flash the sacrifice was completed. For seven times seven days the Plague God would shield them from those who would twist or spy upon their fates. The Weaver would wreak terrible vengeance later, but victory would be favor enough to survive.
With a thought, Locutus ordered a new heading for his badly mauled and scattered fleet. He'd need to work quickly, reunite his two remaining fleet segments, and then punch through before the enemy's flagship returned. He passed his order onto the fleet, then prepared the second part of his plan. With a vicious act of will he reached out to the constellation of crippled or simply hopelessly out of position ships and forced them to initiate a haywire overload. For brief seconds a new constellation of stars blossomed into the void, blinding the enemy in the present even as his ritual had blinded them to the future.
His own battered and bleeding sensors were of course just as badly affected, but they had the advantage of knowing the rally point. By the time the interference cleared his fleet would be massed and ready to strike. There was no way they would see it coming.
Thousands of kilometers away, a man watches a hololith, he points at a location, gives a quiet order, and then smiles.
The first sign that something has gone wrong is a miss. A vast scintillating pillar of energy spearing past the main bulk of the fleet. Locutus feels his blood run cold. He allows himself to hope briefly that it was a fluke, a small skirmisher firing upon his vanguard. After all, it was only one lance, surely if there had been a battle there would have been more. For long hopefully seconds, he clings to his delusion, then the unseen weapons cycle and a half dozen more fly past, minutes later dozens, then hundreds of a dizzying array of sizes. The tale of a battle told by the flashes of what shots missed their target. Hours later when he reaches the rendezvous point, he is greeted not by a mighty force ready to do battle, but the pathetic and savaged survivors of an ambush. Telling a tale of how the enemy fell upon them unseen, coming out of the debris field just as they began to change course, catching them while they were slow and helpless.
The Fabricator Locutus does not rage, does not rant. He does not curse the fates. He simply counts up his remaining forces, assures himself the scrying protections are in place, and then flees the system as if pursued by the vilest of daemons. Whatever awaits him for this failures cannot be worse than the monsters guarding the Asgard system.
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