Posting this to finish on my desktop, I return soaked but w/ food
Externalities
Penitent 0 considered them in the privacy of her Accounting as she knelt in repose. It was considered by many within the Blessed Church of the Omnissiah to be a path to ending, a grave and terrible piece of technology whose use lead to a terrible judgement upon all who would dare integrate it. None were spared its wrath, but the War's success had necessitated it. Her death, a grave loss on one soon to be Arch Magos, was nothing compared to the nascent Forge World. Externalities allowed for in this case.
Across the Imperium, the External were the norm. Xenos from Human, Corrupt from Pure, Faithful from mere Layperson, Fanatic from mere Adherent. When wars required it(and they always did, was there a time when they didn't?), when tithes were below quota, or as they increasingly realized, when the whims of the Imperium's leaders chose it, the less was reduced so the greater could survive.
Except that was a lie. There was no elsewhere, no away, others still created stresses, pressures. To Externalize was to destroy the future for the present at best & to deny the problems of the present at worst. And recent events echoed not just in her Account, but the Planet's, the Sector's, and the Imperium's.
A single command code execution. Such a little thing that could grow to eclipse even the Arch-Traitor's deeds, in time. The Kelermorph have perverted Penitent 0's form and yet...no, there was no Hive Mind. No overarching will directing her, just many equals sharing, guiding when needed. Many sisters. The chance of this occurrence was...not worth the time left calculating. Yet the possibilities for the totality of humanity were staggering...well, they would have been if Penitent 0 hadn't just doomed them.
No mere Heritek Majorus or even Extremus, hers was the realm of the worst. Of the Arch-Heretic, against the Empress-Omnissiah on her Throne. Even the calculations and directions she now issued to the converted who were once under her command would only lessen what was to come. And the worst part was that Sub-Priest 73561 Lily kept kissing her, so she couldn't even concentrate on her failure.
The charges had been detonated, but the various machines within the complex working in tandem with precision strikes from Lance would instead seal a portion of the hole that was being generated in the mantle of the planet, something that would only reduce the force and deadliness to 1/20th of normal, minescule and pointless. But the Sisters had done the impossible before, the combination of her final act and Lily's lips seemed to balance things.
Of course, Lily would not die here, thanks to the wretched nobility's insistence on survival. An escape pod, with its own magnoshield, debris-las system, and enshrined stasis pods (no, mere cryo was not enough, they must even pause time itself!). A simple code-burst and dear Lily was at rest, Penitent's mechdendrites placing her gently amongst the most irreplaceable data-tapes, devices, and alloys that could bit fit inside when all but one stasis unit was removed.
In her final moments as the the shockwave of eruption was about to reach her, she watched the pod finally leave the atmospheric kill-zone and silently passed on to those few who would survive the names of the priests and priestesses who now sacrificed their lives for the safety of others and to atone for their betrayal.
Edit: Going to post again (in a new post!), one about some tech crews working the trains, and anything else I can think of.
