Into the Black

(Jagloth)

How long had it been? So long. Too long. Long long. Longer than long. Long as long could long to be so longingly. Long.

Too long.

Too long, indeed. But that was fine. The longness gave him time to think. Time to plan.

The ground shifted.

(Elsewhere on Jagloth)

Simusret the Slayer stirred. How long had it been? How long, since all the worlds of the ancient empire went to sleep, to pass away the millennia?

It was cold, and dark in his chambers, not that such things mattered to one such as him. Those were concerns of beings hampered by the weak and insignificant flesh. He, like all his people, had given up such things long ago. And all it cost them was their souls.

With a thought, he sent the command to his stasis chamber. Something had awoken him, after all this time, and it was not the automated systems indicating some rogue lifeform had broken into his domain. He had questions, and needed answers.

The ancient machines began to hum as they came to life after untold ages in stasis. All around him, a cerulean glow filled the blackness as systems began to come online. Elsewhere, instruments long hidden rose upwards, shaking off the accretion of millennia.

Slowly, information came back to him. The planet his crypt resided within was stable, for the most part, but the atmosphere that had once been present was gone, burnt away. Burnt, not glassed, or removed in some other way. There were clear signs, if one had the wit to see them, and they all pointed to a single point, from which some kind of shockwave had rushed across the world, burning away the atmosphere. Any plants or bodies of water that survived the flames soon disappeared once the air was gone.

Trying to figure out what had happened, and when, was difficult. While the idea of stripping a planet of its atmosphere in order to kill off the world was not an unusual one, the actual mechanics of this attack were unusual. The firestorm had burned away the biosphere, but the remains of cities were left behind.

More interesting was the timing of the cleansing. While precise measurements were impossible under the normal conditions, the lack of micrometeorite pitting in particular suggested that this had happened sometime in the last two thousand years. Short enough a time that the attackers might still be around.

Hmm. The initial estimates from the instruments suggested that over sixty million years had passed since the command to sleep was given. No doubt there were entire interstellar civilizations that rose and fell and rose again during that time. But that wasn’t his problem. They were all flesh, and thus bound by the flesh’s flaws. They were ephemeral, immaterial. Only those who had shed their flesh were worthy to rule this galaxy.

So, what had caused the awakening? It wasn’t the destruction of the planet’s biosphere, that much was certain. So, something else, obviously.

There! The ancient communications array had received a signal from one of the other dynasties. The mobile cryptworld of Udarna was beset by a rift into the chaotic realm created by the foolish desires of the fleshy ones. Powers were stirring again, greater than they had been in centuries. And so, the call had gone out, a general awakening, all across the galaxy.

A general awakening, but there was not the overriding commands of the great king, the one who had led them through all the great and terrible wars at the height of their power. He who had shepherded their shedding of the flesh. Without that guiding influence, what would become of the great empire that was?

No, he couldn’t think about that. Instead, he first needed to ensure that his cryptworld was secure. He sent the commands to fully wake the cryptworld, starting with the warriors, so they could eliminate any threats.

(Elsewhere)

The ground moved. It moved! It MOOOOOVED!

What did that mean? No idea. No care. It was new. New is good. New is different. New meant he could find new… what? Exploits. Yes. Exploits.

Words were hard. He hadn’t used them in so long. Ever since then. He only had himself to talk to, after all.

He could have left the world. Move to a new game. But then the devs would win. That was why he even had access to the game, still, he knew it. They didn’t ban him, or stop him from paying for a subscription. They just locked him here, kept him from rerolling, and blocked his ability to post on the forums. It was clear, they wanted to break him, make him admit that they had beaten him.

He had broken every MMO he’d come across. Not a single title had kept him from breaking it. Four had even failed because of his exploits. This game, the first real VRMMO, should have been his crowning achievement. His first attempt should have been enough to secure his place and his name.

Should have, but it didn’t. The fucking devs had erased his name and user data from all forum conversations. That was normal, but whoever was in charge of their external media had managed to erase and discredit his attempts to claim his rightful fame online. They’d even managed to get into the dark sites, and discredit him. No one on the black hacker sites would talk to him anymore.

So, he had dived back into the game, determined to find a way to kill it, once and for all. They had humiliated him. He was going to destroy the game, ruin everything they had built. The world would burn, and everyone would know his name!

Now, he just had to figure out a way to take advantage of this. Whatever it was. But he wasn’t worried. The devs may have forgotten about him, but he was ready.

(Elsewhere)

Simusret watched through the eyes of his warriors as they uncovered a bunker which had survived the cataclysm that destroyed the life of this world. They had been drawn here, as it was the only power source on the planet, other than their own. If there were answers about what had happened here, then they would be found here.

The actual bunker was crudely built, but strong. Mixed sediment with a binding agent, reinforced by primitive metals. An ancient means of building, but effective, if one wished to make simple objects. The door was made of a simple metal alloy, of substantial thickness, but it quickly disappeared as the reclamation drones sent with the warriors used their conversion beams to swiftly convert the metal into energy, which could be stored until needed. The rush of air said that the bunker had been pressurized, until now.

The warriors entered the space, and Simusret noted the presence of several dead bodies, in various states of decay. He did not recognize the alien lifeforms, but that only meant that they were some of the newer life that had arisen while the true masters of the galaxy slept to regain their strength. The rate of decay couldn’t be known for certain, since the sealed environment would have changed things, but he could make an estimate. Somewhere between one and ten years had passed, since the planet was made lifeless.

That was important, because it meant that whoever was behind this was definitely still around. They might even be monitoring the dead world, still. With a thought, he prioritized the activation of the sensor arrays, and ordered the defense ships to be brought out of stasis. This cryptworld was not mobile, but it was defended. He would not give up his seat of power without a fight.

His deliberations were interrupted by alerts from the warriors. Tiny little machines, mere nanometers across, were attacking the warriors and drones, trying to infiltrate their bodies. The primitive machines had no success, of course, but that was besides the point. If they had even the simplest adaptive capabilities, then, with enough persistence, they might find a weakness, or wear their way through the defenses.

No, he would not give the machines a chance to adapt or overcome. With a simple command, the defensive fields on the drones flared, frying all the nanomachines that came in contact with them. Another command, and the drones swarmed forward through the bunker, their fields burning away the microscopic machines as they went. The warriors leveled their gauss weapons at the bodies, and fired, rendering them into their component molecules.

Before long, the entire bunker was cleared of nanite infection sources, along with any organic material. Time to completion, two minutes, twenty-three seconds. An acceptable score, considering the unknown parameters of the nanomachines, and the need to be thorough.

(Elsewhere)

Damn them! Damn them all! These stupid devs! They’d found some way to block his nanites! He couldn’t even infect the damn bug-like drones that crawled all over the place, the ones that literally ate the door to his bunker!

He forced himself to calm down, and consider things, starting with the face of his new adversary. They came in two types. The first were the little bug-like machines, almost spider-like. They crawled and swarmed along the floor and up walls, using those disintegrators of theirs to get rid of whatever they wanted. A single, icy blue orb shone at the front, like an eye.

The other ones were roughly two meters tall, bipedal, two arms, roughly human shaped. Definitely machines, even though they had a skull-shaped head, and a breastplate that looked like it was supposed to resemble a ribcage. Their eyes glowed the same blue as those of the bugs. In their hands they held massive guns made with some xeno technology. Half of them were single-barreld, but with some kind of axe at the end, while the others had two barrels. On either style, the barrels, circuits, and cables glowed with the same blue light as their eyes.

Those guns were legitimately scary. They did not fire bullets, as far as he could tell. Just beams of pure fuck you energy, that disintegrated anything they hit. They even took out the nanite farms he’d hidden in the corpses of his former hosts, despite the fact that he was pretty sure they didn’t know they were there. Probably hadn’t even targeted them.

That meant that the weapons were able to break down a corpse, and anything they had on, or in, them. That was a scary level of technology, and definitely not something that had been in the game up until this point. He wasn’t sure where they’d been hiding, but he would absolutely have heard about it if something like this had happened!

He had to have them! They would be perfect for completing his revenge against the devs! If he could control them, then he could wipe the board with them, and make everyone pay for not giving him his due! He had to have them!

(Bridge, CNS Bright Idea, Orbiting Jagloth)

Captain Keryth Zinren frowned as he watched the scans. The Bright Idea was only a corvette, stationed in orbit of the remains of Jagloth to ensure that no ships broke quarantine and risked the Legion Virus breaking containment. Scientists agreed that the nanites would break down eventually, especially without an atmosphere to shield them from solar radiation or anyone to provide maintenance on them, but there were bunkers and other facilities that they could not guarantee hadn’t been breached and contaminated, where the nanites might hide. It was expected that the planet wouldn’t be safe for resettlement for thirty years, at least.

Watching over the dead world was a boring job, but one that needed doing. After all, if the Legion Virus broke out, who knew how many worlds would burn before it could be contained again? No, the planet need to be guarded, for everyone’s good.

Fortunately, there wasn’t much call to go rooting around in the ruins of Jagloth. Anything of value had either been destroyed or buried by the Exterminatus. The Governor’s bunker survived, but everything else was wiped away, no other power sources on the planet, or below it.

At least, that’s how it was up until just a few days ago. They started detecting energy readings they’d never seen before, and black buildings forced their way up from under the ground, transforming the landscape. They’d reported in to command, of course, and had been told to stand watch, while the Admiralty arranged for more ships to reinforce them. Something big was happening.

“Sir, we have a situation. We just received an automated message from the Governor’s bunker. It has been breached.”

Zinren bowed his head. “Very well. Inform the fleet, and make sure they know that the unknown energy source has made contact with the Governor’s bunker. Rate it as a possible containment breach.”

He looked at his tactical officer. “Weapons, I want a full strike upon the Governor’s bunker. Two-stage, EMP followed by tactical nuke, pattern Alpha-Two.”

“Aye, sir. Birds ready in the tubes.”

“Fire.”