Chapter 29

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"Original," said Schmettau, when he saw the tech-priestess with a servo skull taped to her head. Jennifer didn't dignify him with a response, or maybe she just didn't hear him.

Both outside inquisitors strapped carbines to the sides of the Chimera, Schmettau on the right, Essen on the left. The Priest with the acid cannon leaned up to his waist out of the gunner's hatch, and Crybaby with the flamethrower in the stern. Thus, the armored vehicle was bristling with weapons on all sides, and the interior was suddenly spacious. Demetrius quickly counted the remaining medical ammunition and hastily replenished the supply from the Chimera's medicine chest. Bertha wanted to raise the Squad's banner over the vehicle and cursed, realizing that improvising a flagpole would take too long.

"Let's go!" Jennifer proclaimed at the limit of the speaker's power.

The tech-priestess's specific way of driving could be called, with some convention, 'giddy'. The levers, which the Driver often moved with both hands, Wakrufmann tugged with seeming ease, almost with the tips of her steel fingers. The spirit of the machine, encased in the engine, sang energetically a hymn of rage, obeying the Martian as if she were her own. It must be assumed that the spirit also kept the caterpillars from rupturing the links because the rattle of the catches on the tracks and the shower of sparks accompanied the Chimera like the rattling of a tin can on a string. Wakrufmann was drifting the thirty-five-ton machine like a street racer. The crew caught on the outside didn't fly off the armor just because of the safety harness, and those inside were bobbing like marbles in a jar. Considering the contingent, the purificators did not hesitate to express their attitude to what was happening. However, the fierce swearing was not so much the expression of hatred to the driver, as venting the soul in general.

It was Luct and Kryptman who had the hardest time. The servitor held on the armor solely by the strength of his mechanized arms, and several times nearly went free-flying, clinging only by miracle and the goodwill of the Omnissia. A look of grim fatalism and willingness to endure lingered on the dead servant's face. Fidus had to restrain himself and protect Olga. The girl screamed nonstop, but, judging by her tone, not so much from horror as from an excess of emotion. There really was a lot to see.

The malevolent impact of the hostile force affected all residents in one way or another, but in different ways, depending on location, willpower, surroundings, and a host of other factors. Some part of the law enforcers, as well as ordinary citizens, retained enough reason and common sense to try to organize some kind of self-defense. They would still have been overwhelmed by a wave of madmen and mutants, but here the Martians came to the rescue. No one knows what the pot-heads wanted or why they had brought so many troops to Beacon, but every last bit of them came in handy. Only thanks to the army of the Machine God, City-22 has not yet fallen, crushed by the onslaught of the Immaterium.

There was indiscriminate fighting all over the city, and to the west, on the ocean side, something grand and massive continued to rumble. There the red bushes of mighty explosions were blowing incessantly, and the smoke threatened to pierce the gray-black sky. Apparently, the Martians were unloading airplane bomb bays and volume-blast cassettes there without interruption, but so far, it seemed, in vain. Unseen behind the buildings, the enemy was approaching.

"Please, keep it steady," Jennifer asked, and her steady voice sounded in the midst of the horrors, like the voice of an angel, indifferent to passions and sorrows. Fidus bit his already bitten lip and gripped Olga tighter in his arms. His lower ribs and pelvic bones, which bore the brunt of the hard metal, ached badly, and his boots were liable to slip off the wet braces.

"How the fuck am I going to shoot?!" The Holy Man cried frantically because there was no room left for him in the tower, and Fidus could either hold Olga or handle the cannon, just one of the two. Kryptman thought belatedly that it would probably be better to put their 'periscope' from the radio operator's seat next to Jennifer but immediately decided that no, here the higher the view, the better.

The Chimera rumbled and scraped through streets and intersections, sweeping away abandoned, burning cars, scattering sparks and crumbs of asphalt. Ordinary people scattered in front of the tank, and Jennifer crushed the changed ones mercilessly. Olga squinted, glad that she could not look, for the artificial eye reliably transmitted the picture to the Martian, regardless of whether the operator himself was looking.

"The vision option is sub-optimal calibrated," Jennifer's voice muttered. "It needs to be corrected."

They were hardly ever attacked, and if anyone who had gone completely insane or lost all normal instincts tried to attack them, they were quickly finished off with fire and acid. The tall and bald man's melta had a terrifying effect, making Crybaby's soul acutely envious. Schmettau's pistol was slightly less formidable, but Kalkroit's lack of killing power was balanced by his marksmanship.

"Olga, get ready," Jennifer's voice sounded strange now, not from outside her broken head, but as if it were born inside the bones of her skull, diverging from the iron bars inserted directly into her head.

"What?"

"Keep your head straight," Jennifer's voice asked. "I'm still depending on your view."

"What?" said Fidus tensely. "What's wrong."

Olga shook her head, trying to put into a sharp gesture all at once, like, don't be distracted and there's nothing to worry about. Strangely enough, the inquisitor understood or was distracted by something else.

"The fine-tuning of your augmentation allows side vibrations to affect the temporal bone, and from it, in turn, by induced frequency, the auditory membrane."

Olga had doubts about the correct understanding of the word 'augmentation' and generally misunderstood, so she chopped right off: "Do you read thoughts?!"

"No, it doesn't allow me to read your mind. But statistics show that ninety-six percent of recipients ask this question as soon as they learn about this type of communication. Sarcasm. Now get ready."

"Voices in your head?" Fidus asked loudly and anxiously, trying to shout out the noise. Right now the monk's acid cannon was hissing and the melta in Essen's hands was thundering. The plasma blast, itself the bright exhaust of a flamethrower, vaporized the upper half of the strange creature, which looked like a human-wood hybrid with branches of fractured, remodeled bones. The tank struck an abandoned, burning car, some sort of city service van, crushing it like a tin can. The Holy Man screamed his prayers so loudly that they could hear him even through the armor, the Savlar hysterically begging the Emperor to save him.

"It's Jennifer, it's nothing," the girl brushed Fidus off. "What's to get ready for?"

"Visual overload. Short-term. Try not to move your head, I'm still dependent on your view. Three, two..."

Olga thought that Jennifer's countdown was becoming a good tradition in their little squad, then managed to shout out, addressing Fidus: "Hold on tight!!!"

The world disappeared in a white-green flash. A black-light - no words to describe it in human language - filled everything. Then it disappeared, and Olga returned with her consciousness and vision to 'City-22,' which had changed unimaginably.

"What is it," she whispered, thinking she was barely moving her lips, but Jennifer somehow understood and responded nonchalantly:

"Effective functioning requires deep and multidimensional incorporation into the tactical network. Given the damage to the module you call my 'head', this procedure is difficult, but the partial transfer of the information load to your augmentations makes it easier."

"I don't understand."

"Now you see the world the way I see it. In a way. We see..." The ethereal voice of the techno-priestess seemed satisfied. And the girl suddenly realized that in her head it sounded not the usual speech, as all people do - with words, but... strange, inexpressible in human terms. Not speech, but a stream of knowledge, when in an instant under the lid of her skull it was as if an understanding of some concept was being unpacked. And now the girl saw it, too.

It was more like the way the cinema depicts the vision of terminators and other robots, but with the correction that in the cinema everything should be made clear to the viewer. And Olga saw the world as the Martians saw it, without any adjustments for an ordinary person

First of all, the color scheme changed. Like everything else on Beacon, 'City-22' was painted gray-black, and the street war added orange and red. Now the world was painted all the colors of the rainbow in hundreds of shades for every base color. Then Olga realized that basic geometry had disappeared. Each object had become a complex interweaving of lines and shapes that incomprehensibly but spectacularly marked its past, present, and several of its most likely future states. All this was combined into a dynamic picture of unimaginable complexity by vectors of motion and time, calculation of trajectories, and symbolism that combined concepts of higher mathematics with ordinary topography. All this could be called 'visualization,' but just as conventionally as a nuclear explosion is 'bright,' the Imperium 'big,' and the local hell 'unpleasant'.

Now Olga understood that Jennifer was not so much driving the machine as she was following a trajectory that was designed not by her, but for her. She drives the Chimera through a tunnel of the most optimal movements, which are calculated using gigantic computing power and taking into account thousands of parameters, down to a hundredth of a degree and the relative position of individual track segments at each turn.

And it became clear that the Chimera and its small but brave crew were being covered by a veritable army every second. The 'Potheads' were throwing out landing parties of skitarii, distracting hosts and transmuting human creatures, covering clusters of enemies with long-range artillery that could not be bypassed. Even in the battle with the monster from the sea that was crushing the western outskirts of 'City-22', the movements of the armored vehicles were now taken into account and only thanks to the fire support of titan scouts 'Chimera' successfully missed two threats of 'Gamma-3' type, whatever that might mean.

"They protect us," the girl whispered as if in a trance, but Kryptman was silent. Maybe he didn't hear, maybe he didn't understand.

The Martians gave the Squad a negligible amount of 'attention', that is, the distribution of the information network and computing resources, but without this helping hand, the tank would not have made it halfway. The markings of tactical units of combat and auxiliary equipment, drones, and Adeptus Mechanicus fighters danced in a musical and mathematical, perfectly calibrated rhythm with the same markings of 'other cataloged objects'.

"They've got cover for us!" repeated the girl. "The Martians are for us!"

"Well, of course," muttered Schmettau, softly, as if he were sitting in a comfortable orthopedic chair on a private ship rather than dangling aboard the Chimera at risk of being dragged down by a track. "It would have been strange if Mars had fought for the Chaos."

Most of the Martian armed forces were concentrated on something called a 'Glass Cat'. All the 'units' of 'Glasscatty't were marked with separate colors and badges in the form of a real cat with triangular ears and whiskers. Apparently, machine men were no strangers to a peculiar, but an almost human sense of humor. The 'Cat' units crushed the enemy with the efficiency of a meat grinder, but they were too few. However, the six markers had just been separated into a separate unit called the 'Divine Incarnation' and were now pushing hard toward the Squad's goal.

Olga had the carelessness of accidentally picking up and focusing on the tag 'Geller-drone 2143', after which she experienced a shock and a momentary, incredibly painful migraine shot. That's how her consciousness reacted to the unloading of an avalanche of information on the tactical position and technical condition of the robot-drone, right down to the information that the second joint of the left middle manipulator was registering a near-critical pressure loss in the main pneumatic actuator.

"I can't do!" Olga howled through her teeth. "It's too much! It hurts! My head is going to blow!"

Fidus wrapped his arms tighter around her and whispered, or rather shouted in her ear, which in the background noise was perceived as a whisper:

"If it gets too much for you, tear off your glasses and leave it at that."

And Jennifer spoke literally into her brain: "Now the discomfort will end. A dynamic attention map is forming. The process will take another thirty seconds, and then the information load will be optimized. The prosthesis will no longer be needed."

The car jerked again, the jerk made the girl think that her head was about to be torn off, and her gaze slipped to the sky. There, through the smoke and clouds, Olga saw the same graphics - hundreds of shades of the rainbow, gliding in a silent dance the marks of dozens of huge ships, communications satellites, shuttles, and things for which she could not even find a definition. Then it was as if a clean rag had been swept across the view, erasing the markings from the chalkboard. Everything disappeared, her vision returned to normal, and Olga gulped noisily, suppressing an attack of nausea. Her head spun sharply and violently, the girl hung on Fidus's arms.

"The noosphere signal is stable. They can see and hear us," Jennifer reported.

"Are these... yours?" Olga whispered though the answer was obvious.

"At the moment, the defense of the planet has been placed under the jurisdiction of Mars. But to inform our companions of this, I believe, would be untimely."

Up ahead a fifteen-story spire collapsed from the fire of several artillery gunners. Some of the debris blocked the gap in the overpass where the 'Chimera' was supposed to pass, the tank swerved and moved along a parallel road, skirting car-sized chunks of concrete.

We have a priority task on our hands because we are optimally close to what you called 'Baby'. However, if we are not successful, another unit will solve the problem, so there is no need to be nervous about a possible death.

"I guess I'm a big coward," the girl muttered, thinking that this was a good consolation, very appropriate, like, don't worry, the task will be done in any case. No, really, Martians, of course, strong and all, but 'pot-heads' is the most accurate definition for them.

"A coward would run away not completing a task. Sarcasm. But I have an idea of how to increase the motivation of purifiers. Thanks for the tip."

From the Chimera's internal loudspeakers she heard sounds - static mixed up with electronic notes, which added up to a strange rhythm. Something subtly familiar, something as if it came from Olga's past life. The melody sounded indeed cheerful and inspiring like a march played on a synthesizer. Olga screamed because the musical insertion coincided with another series of complicated maneuvers.

"Music to inspire and boost morale," Jennifer informed the passengers just in case as if she wasn't the one zigzagging around on the tank at the time. "This is not the machinations of the Ruinous Power."

"Aaaaah!!!" Olga screamed as the Chimera made such a U-turn that it nearly flipped as it went around a barricade that suddenly appeared around the corner of a tall building. This barricade was solid and looked like a real engineering barrier, Jennifer calculated in a split second that ramming it was useless, at that speed you could at least get stuck, and with bad luck screw up a vigorous, but the worn-out engine.

The vehicle spun out onto an avenue, or rather, a wide multi-lane thoroughfare designed for extensive freight traffic. Kryptman felt his short hair stand up on end. To his left, something enormous, gray, and shapeless was crawling in the smoke and bright flashes. Right now two titans were firing at the creature almost at point-blank range, the multi-laser fire so bright it burned his retinas. And in front of 'Chimera' raged a crowd of possessed, who like a muddy river flowed to the battlefield to lie down under the fire of skitarii and armored machines.

Jennifer didn't hesitate for a second, the gearbox screeched, the diesel engine revved up, and the tank rammed into the crowd. Olga's thin visage drowned in the roar of the crowd, through which the 'Chimera' literally chewed its way. The Priest hastily emptied the cylinder of the chemical cannon, the Inquisitors' melta weapon wreaking havoc. Surgically accurate strikes with guided projectiles from Martian armored vehicles cleared the way for the squads, but there were too many enemies.

It rumbled as if a sledgehammer the size of a house had struck an appropriately sized bell. A powerful echo hung in a thick veil that was almost physically perceptible, and a moment later a broken titan with a mangled hull landed on the left side of the road. Apparently, it had been struck with such force that the machine, weighing more than four hundred tons, flew away like a broken doll.

Olga thought that now she was going to lose her mind completely. Only the absurd redundancy of what was happening saved the girl from true madness. A lot of blood is terrible, but if it spurts literally in fountains, and pieces of bodies fly around like minced meat from a faulty meat grinder, the horror turns into a black comedy, filmed by a tasteless director. Olga closed her eyes and clutched at Fidus's hands. Her thin fingers cramped so tightly that the inquisitor himself could barely keep from crying out in pain. Neither of them saw or heard the sound of the Khaosites lunging for the armor behind the tower, trying to drag the servitor and the flamethrower down with them. Pieces of metal and flesh were being torn away from Luct. The servitor was now holding on with one hand, fighting back with the other, tossing back distorted figures. Crying with both excitement and terror, Crybaby pushed the flamethrower lever all the way down, surrounding the tank with a semicircle of smoky smoke and burning bodies.

Olga heard the eerie roar of many throats, like the howling of the zombies in Romer's 'Dawn of the Dead'. She could feel the terrifying rhythm of the blows that rained hundreds of fists on the armor. She knew that just a little longer and a wave of fearful mutants would flood the 'Chimera,' despite the murderous fire. Someone screamed, thin and scary, in the crackle of tearing matter. Fidus's submachine gun rang out just above his ear. The car jerked, like a snowplow almost stuck in a particularly dense and high snowdrift.

"They're going to flip us over!"

I think it was Demetrius, but maybe Savlar. Another jerk followed, and another, and the diesel was no longer growling, but rather squealing like a turbine at the limit of its speed.

"Hold on!"

The music continued to play, and Olga forbade herself to think about anything but it. There was nothing else in the world, only the electronic rhythm, the only barrier between the girl's mind and madness.

I can't go on... I have done enough and even more. I can't save the world, I can't even save myself, let someone else save everyone now. There's none of that.

And yet, why does the tune seem so familiar?

A wave of heat swept over the armor, the heat twisted the hairs on the skin, instantly drying up the blood, tears, and dirt that stained their faces. The 'Chimera' rolled on with unexpected ease, like a sailboat catching the wind. The howls and roars were left behind.

A steam train from hell, only on tracks, thought Olga and laughed, feeling the madness coming closer and closer...

How long the tank was still moving, the girl would not say even under fear of immediate death, but the journey was finally over.

"That's it," Fidus rumbled. "We're through."

The vehicle rolled for a few more meters and then stopped, with one last loud thud of the engine. In the passenger compartment, Savlar cursed thinly and pitifully. Essen Palet prayed loudly, nonchalantly, and on one note, like a machine.

"May I look?" Olga asked quietly into the void, at least, she hoped that there was some void ahead. Opening her eyes was beyond frightening, in case there was a scary grinning face just waiting to be seen.

"You may," Kryptman and Jennifer answered together, respectively over the ear and in the head.

Olga, after all, did not dare to separate her tear-streaked eyelids. She was tugged, lifted, dragged out of the hatch somewhere, then more or less carefully placed on a hard surface. The girl covered her face with her hands, looked just a little, literally through a micron slit, and almost fainted at the sight of the side of the 'Chimera'. The tank looked as if it had been painted with brown paint, very diligently, not missing an inch. Crybaby's safety strap was dangling in a miserable scrap, empty and bloody - the only thing left of the little flamethrower. Olga wanted to cry again, but there were no more tears. Only the realization that this was not the last Squadmate she would have to mourn at another time and place when it was over. If it is over.

"Here we are," the Priest exhaled, looking up at the tall city theater building, the geometric center of the 'City-22. Shepherd pressed the locking tab with effort, unlocking the harness. The weapon dropped with a clang onto the tank's armor and rolled onto the asphalt, rattling the empty cylinder.

"Peace be upon him," the Priest sighed, staring at Crybaby's belt. "May he rest in the Emperor's golden glow."

The techno-priestess climbed out of a nearby hatch, quickly, with spider-like dexterity, and went to fetch Olga's miraculous glasses. Luct was leaning against the board, awkwardly turning the remains of his right arm, it was torn at the elbow, and his legs were also badly injured, some torn overalls and gray flesh showed bloodless wounds with exposed bones. If it hadn't been for the hydraulics and electric actuators, the servitor wouldn't have been able to walk. The Saularian fell out of the side hatch and immediately began vomiting directly on the track, while the convict disciplined held the head of the techno-priestess.

Pacing, a skitarii in a tattered red robe approached the tank, with a four-legged automaton, one of the 'Geller drones,' literally shifting from foot to foot behind him.

"We've been waiting for you," the Martian warrior reported in a suddenly clear, almost human voice, simultaneously and very quickly exchanging data with Jennifer. "The perimeter is secure and under control, but we can't go any further."

The words of the half-robot sounded surreal, apparently because of the contrast between the voice and the metal face, which was shattered, with one of the five optical lenses intact. The barrel of the rifle, assembled from several thin tubes, was still smoking in his artificial hands.

"They can do it. With a high degree of probability," Wakrufmann replied, more to the companions of the Squad, because she had already discussed with the skitarii both the route and the probability of success and actions in case of failure.

"Do you see...?" Olga raised her trembling hand and pointed with spread fingers to the wide staircase that led to the front door.

"Do you see!?"

She looked around at her companions, hoping that they, too, could see the ghostly purple glow that literally oozed through the concrete walls and wide windows. The light was both material and ghostly, pulsing in a rhythm similar to a heartbeat. As the girl pointed, the velvet glow trembled, flashed like a strobe light. The Holy Man's radio in 'Chimera' squealed and roared angrily, and the big red-robed half-robot twitched oddly and bowed its iron head, pressing its six-fingered, symmetrical palm to where the human should have had an ear.

"No," Bertha said cautiously. "We can't see. What's in there?"

"I understand," the girl exhaled.

The rapid and frequent throbbing reached its peak and shuddered like dragonfly wings, spreading out in a long flash. Olga waited to be struck by auditory hallucinations again, but her head was silent. The other squadmates looked at each other in silence, showing few symptoms other than intense fatigue. But it seemed to be affecting the mechanicus - whatever it was - very badly.

"Interesting. Time travel is woefully understudied and poorly researched," Schmettau said with academic interest. "I wonder if the effect of total immunity is permanent, or will it weaken as the girl adapts to a world where Warp emanations are omnipresent?"

Pale didn't say anything but just grabbed the melta more comfortably. Several metal blobs hung from the Inquisitor's suit, looking like blotches - bullets that had flattened against the armor plating. The flickering glow subsided and returned to its former rhythm, surprisingly consistent with the beating of the tiny heart.

"He's afraid," Olga said quietly. "He feels very bad. We have to go."

"Well," said the Priest, sighing heavily, trying to disguise the natural and understandable fear under the exhalation. "Then let's go. For if He has gathered us here and now, there is a reason and a meaning and a place in His providence."

"The Emperor protects," all the people exhaled in unison as they folded their aquiles, even Olga.

"Omnissiah is with you," Wakrufmann took the head from Savlar. "According to our data, there is no direct threat inside. The heretics are dead, the hosts and other demonic manifestations are absent. It's a clear spot of calm amid the storm. But what awaits you on the spot is impossible to predict."

"And you?" Kryptman clarified. "We could use the Skitarii. And automatons are very good."

"Perhaps you could be of use to the Skitarii," Jennifer clarified without too much diplomacy. "However, the concentrated radiation near the epicenter causes degradation of the local area of the microcircuits, metallization, and breakdown of the dielectric cores. The effectiveness of our combat units will be reduced. As for automatons, they are themselves a source of irritation for this entity. The probability of survival is higher if the source of irritation is not with us."

As if to illustrate her words, the robot incongruously flicked its paws, gleaming in the morning sun, clattered against the lantern, and turned a hundred and eighty degrees, trotting finely.

"Spirit and flesh bring victory," the Priest couldn't resist a quip. "Not cold iron."

"Cold and hot iron brought you here, protected you, defeated your enemies, and opened the way to the completion of the mission," Wakrufmann was not indebted. "So be gracious, step forward and prove yourself worthy of the efforts that have been made to cover and save you."

The Priest wanted to say something angry in response, but Bertha touched him on the shoulder with unexpected restraint.

"Indeed, let's go," she said. "There's not much left."

The monk moved his jaw, then grinned unexpectedly and indicated a short bow toward the mechanics.

"Verily the Scripture says, It is not lawful for the left hand and the right hand to act thoughtlessly and apart, for the right hand and the left hand serves equally to one body," he quoted.

"Those are wise words," the skitarii approved, flashing his single lens. "We won't be able to escort you, but we guarantee no one will stab you in the back."

He was silent for a few moments and then added:

"As long as we're in line."

To illustrate his intention, armed Martians surrounded the theater building. The chain of figures in red was, to tell you the truth, thin and not trustworthy, the skitarii were almost non-existent, the automatons looked beaten and generally sad. The support for the mechanics looked especially pathetic against the approaching scuffle with the bullshit that was throwing titans around like toys. But it was better than nothing.

"You know, my friends..." The Priest took the first step and stepped onto a wide step covered with a scarlet-colored carpet. The cloth was now partly burned, partly soaked in blood and prometheus, but it still gave the impression of pompous, monumental, and official luxury.

The pastor turned around and finished his thought, looking down from above at the companions who had gathered at the tank.

"Even though there are no demons inside, it seems to me that that's where the main test awaits us."

The Ecclesiarchy is always looking for a test of spirit where it just needs more promethium," Kalkroit grumpily muttered as he stepped next.

And a small squad began to move up, while all around died in the convulsions of a messy battle 'City-22'.

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