Dreaming Techmarine
This story is part of the community effort on the Emperor's Nightmare chapter.
Techmarine Hadrianus strode through the refinery core of his mind. Here within a citadel of steeled nerves he could hear the voice of the Omnissiah sing in light and sparks. Here His voice was not the lingua-technis, a corruption of the machine by base flesh, nor the purer binary but of the crackling base of electricity and whines and the language of the working machine. He strode through machinery that guided him onward, the hiss of a gasket, the dull thrum of the pistion searching for…something. He did not know what, he did not know how he came to be searching, but he knew he was searching
Hadrianus stopped at a junction in the jungle of cables and steel, turning, listening. It was not the methodical perfection of the machine, or the fragilities of his pounding heart. It was erratic, it was strange, it was hunting him. The metal crumbled into rust around him, and he ran. The metal screamed at him and cursed his presence, the machine snarled at his lies, the cables buzzed cruelty to him. He ran faster into the maw of rust, to choke it’s hunger on the flesh of faith and steel.
It did swallow Hadrianus, and grind his bones to dust and ash, but the dreaming steel walked on, that which was the steel of Hadrianus walked, drawn towards a beacon within the belly of the beast. Wires glowed like censers, the aether glowing from behind it. This was-
The device reverberated, being beaten from the other side. The Gellar Field Generator. It iswaswillbe failing.
Mechadendrites dreaming self recoiled backward and Hadriaus-that-would-be stared through the wires and to outside. The machine-dreaming warned Hadrianus. The ship-dreaming cried in fear. He could fear their heartbeats, the tearing of holy metal. He could his servos whine, his blood pounding in his ears-that-weren’t, he willisgoingto savingissavingwillsave them.
Techmarine Hadrianus wakes. It takes him but a moment to gain his bearings, and sit upright. His mechadendrites moved sluggish, still caught in that sleep-of-steel. The ship – no, it has been an age since the demons had taken the battle barge ‘Internal Vigilance’, that his return from Mars was marred by the brutal rot of the Nurgling almost consumed them whole. The ground swayed beneath his feet.
He would visit the Apothecary soon. These dreams were becoming far too organic and too often the mechadendrites would consume his dreaming self. This…could be signs most foreboding.