For now they needed to determine what the Most High had meant in promising salvation. Were the heavy weapons active? Were reinforcements inbound? Or was “salvation” a euphemism for their deaths? It was always so tedious dealing with them. A normal chain of command would issue orders, but noo, the Most High had to issue encoded messages only understandable by those with experience taking hard drugs. She supposed it was a more effective code than some decryptable cipher or another, but it was baffling to anyone not in the know, and Anya wasn’t sure even Raethor had any idea as to what they had meant.
Step one, however, was easy. If they had meant the heavy weapons would be activated, that was straightforward to verify. Anya had never seen them herself, but from the general comments she had heard in passing on the base…
“Holy mother of fuck.” Will said loudly. Raethor did not speak, perhaps saving himself for more important words. Anya didn’t object to Will’s description. There were four weapons in the room, if they and it could even be called that. Were they underground? It was unclear how such a massive space could possibly have fit inside a flat-topped base that wasn’t as high as a mountain otherwise.
Will had probably seen the largest of the four weapons first, even if it was relegated to some back corner. It was as tall as a fifteen or twenty-story building, and so ridiculously huge it was hard to even imagine how one or fifty or five-hundred people could pilot it. They had to plug themselves into that? Their whole body would be drained drier than a cup of water poured from space into a planet-sized desert. Their nerves would be utterly blown out. Their very sense of self would be… probably obliterated, and that was if the many selves plugged in didn’t immediately cancel each other out entirely. Their bodies would be rendered an empty husk, and she guessed that was what the countless skeletons that dotted the structure had originated from: hopeless souls in search of salvation that had bound themselves to the biggest weapon in the room— and possibly the whole world— knowing that if they could only activate it all their threats would be gone. The problem was that they weren’t strong enough to make that happen. The weapon in its mountainous size had consumed them as one more drop of water in a rainstorm. They didn’t matter to it. They probably hadn’t even given its nutrient vat 1/10th of 1% more content, and that was if it even had one.
It was hard to even understand what she was looking at. A thousand thousand billion wires of flesh and nerve and sinew all spun along like cables wound and taught against its lack of skin. The exposed muscle and bone themselves weren’t white or red, nor were any of the cable connections their proper colors either. She looked more closely at one of the exposed bones running along the many haphazard limbs of the creature and realized that every one of them was itself composed of nerve, bone, blood vessel, sinew, and muscle, and each of these was in turn composed of some oozing gray-white-brown material whose borders were so small they were hardly recognizable.
Yuna seemed to know what it was, and that led Anya to believe she in fact knew also. Lululu spoke first.
“Colossus.” Its name was Colossus. How apt. “We can’t use it, so don’t even think about it.”
“And just why not?” Dio asked instead of Will. Even Anya was excited by the prospect of a mountain-sized tentacle monster crushing her foes. Even in its collapsed state where it looked like nothing more than an amorphous mountain-sized hunk of flesh she knew it could kill everyone it came across without exception. It didn’t matter how many enemies they had if they all died. Even infinity itself would quiver in terror before this grand weapon’s destructive might. And that was if their enemy truly was infinite, which wasn’t certain yet.
“It needs at least fifty archons to turn on, and another fifty to take a single step. You can’t even think about firing its blood pulse without several hundred more to charge it up beforehand.”
“What you mean to say is that we’d need a few thousand sacrificial lambs.” The words of Chris echoed through space from nowhere into all ears.
“Usually you’d use enemy corpses.” Lululu corrected.
“I alone am worth at least a few hundred standard soldiers!” Dio boasted.
“Maybe if all but a few dozen were small children.” Alissa said from behind his back. He did not turn to face her, merely saying to add Alex in there for a few hundred more, and with Anya and Peter there… maybe they could do it.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
“No, we can’t.” Lulululululu countered. “Don’t even think about it. We’d be dead before it even started the launch sequence. If you’ll see, it's been cold for centuries. They didn’t even bring it out for the Great Tribulation before the necrosis bomb and autorepeater had been developed. If it wasn’t worth using then, it isn’t worth using now.”
“If you can’t perform a clean shut-off, the mass of humanity would become sentient.” Chris’s words hummed like bees from all directions.
“The same is true if you can’t sustain its required input.” Lululululu continued. “And after that it wouldn’t differentiate friend from foe because all had failed to sate it.”
“Has anyone ever used Colossus?” Jessica asked, legitimately curious.
“The First Emperor used it to conquer the original empire’s borders, but the weapon grew restless and ran through a quarter of our continent before it was finally stopped by a global coalition of archontic power. It's what created the Imperial Wastes, and the other powers were so frightened by it they began preparing for what would become the First Tribulation.”
“But by that time,” Peter interrupted, “three other weapons had been developed that rendered Colossus obsolete: autorepeaters,” he gestured to his back, “Synarchy,” he said, pointing to a large humanoid object, “and Judgement,” which on the other end of his finger was a small box with a single button atop its mirror-sheened surface.
Synarchy wasn’t a mountain of flesh. It was scarcely even inhuman. Peter gave context that the empire had begun learning how to forge the new flesh, but its structure wasn’t particularly interesting— just a large body with open bones (alongside a few dotted patches of rot), no skin or head, and an open ribcage covered in metal for the single user to enter and pilot. Atop it and in place of a head was the thing responsible for its operative mechanism: a nearly-flat bone and metal dish rendered yellow and with holes by time. Through this receptor it would channel the empire’s might into a single beam designated by the autocannon in place of its right arm (there was no left). Anyone unfortunate enough to find themselves on the other end of this cannon would find themselves melting. Not because their tissues would boil or anything so dramatic, but rather because their bones would liquify. This would have the effect of rendering them noncombatants, and would leave them in more or less living state to achieve the added benefit of becoming fuel for the machine such that it did not require an army of fifty just to start. All it needed was a single operator and a stream of hostile combatants. Everything else was taken care of by magic.
Judgement was similar, but didn’t require the large mechanism. Peter gave a short explanation. “By this time the new flesh had become something of a known science and its machining became almost routine to the flesh workers tasked with forging useful objects out of it. Around this same time we began creating prosthetics from it.” He gestured to Yuna’s pants-covered leg, but didn’t comment on it further.
“Judgement is the logical end of a weapon created to kill the enemy. There is one button, and one user. With the push of this button everyone nearby is judged worthy or unworthy of life; with or against this one user. If they believe the same archontic fabric of reality and magic power that the user does, they are judged worthy. Otherwise they are found wanting.”
“And what happens to the “wanting”?” Will asked. It was hard to imagine a single button could do this.
“Reality collapses on them.” Lululu explained. “Their corpses are so thoroughly destroyed there’s no bodies left to collect. Some have speculated the enemy is turned directly into pure magic energy, but I wasn’t able to confirm that personally.”
“Personally?” Anya’s voice was quite loud for a person so recently collapsed to her knees with exhaustion.
“Yes, personally. You didn’t think we had this gear for show did you?”
Anya was left wondering again why she or Jessica or any of the other more normal and/or stupid soldiers were possibly here.
Then Peter gestured to the final weapon.
“Pleroma: God-Killing Sword of the Heavenly Emperor”
It was a normal-length sabre with no special qualities, save for the fact it was bone-white. So white, in fact, Anya didn’t think it looked real. Every passing second she stared it grew whiter, like it was piercing a hole in her soul through the eyes it gazed into. So white, in fact, it looked like a hole had been punctured in space where a sword should be.
“Why is it here? Shouldn’t the Emperor have it?” Anya asked softly, recovering from the strain of a loud voice.
“He can’t use it.” Lululululu answered.
“What?” Anya asked again.
“He can’t use it.” Peter affirmed.
“Can anyone?” Yuna asked, almost softer than Anya had.
“No.” Peter and Lululu spoke in unison.
“Then why is it here? Why was it made in the first place?” Yuna continued.
This time Raethor seemed to know, but he was so quiet Anya had to move closer to hear him. So close, in fact, her feet were stained with the blood of his earlier cough.
“For the promised day we’re granted salvation.”