“Door cycling sequence in progress, Ouroboros. Are the knights of singing steel needed once more?” the VI said, but the second half was… Different. The voice wasn’t quite right. Deeper. Tired.
He wasn’t quite sure how to respond, and chose to ignore the query for the time being, chalking it up to a simple malfunction or some sort of ill-advised modification performed by the Truthseekers. As the cargo bay door began to lurch open and they continued to come ever closer to its precipice, Armless realized what he previously thought to be simple grime and dirt at its bottom was actually a thick layer of religious graffiti, interspersed with paper seals and laboriously etched carvings. All of the iconography carried the same theme, with statements such as “May you rest for all eternity,” “May you never be needed,” and “Let the sands of time forget you.” being the most common.
Left. Right. Left. Right.
The great doors were at last open enough to pass through, to see what was at the other side, and as the trio approached the precipice, the lights inside the Vault of Truth came on. There before them towered great machines not unlike Amalgam itself, rows and rows of them, filling the cargo bay from wall to wall, all misshapen in some way. Some only had one arm, some had four, some had exposed cockpits, some had no heads, some were just a torso with legs and a huge gun where the head would be.
The legs of some were spindly, some were squat and bulky, some had no plating, some had too much. Some nearly resembled Amalgam save for small differences, some had hololenses, some had pilebunkers, some had gigantic thrusters and plated wedges on their legs.
None of them had any words to speak, for all three of them were transfixed by the sight. Armless’s sensors and processors ran wild in equal measure as he instinctively walked through the rows of walkers, Red-eye running to keep up and the Word-bearer holding onto the gunman for dear life. As he walked he scanned every single one of them, queried every single one for its specifications and designation, committed them all to memory, what they were and where in the cargo bay he could find them later.
They were all Amalgam’s siblings, all of them bearing one or more of its features, but none were complete. All of them in kneeling or similar positions, tied down to the floor with gigantic power cables as thick as a Warrior-caste’s limbs.
Some were runts, fully functional but inferior to their complete sibling.
Some were premature, still combat-capable, but stunted and with glaring weaknesses.
Many were miscarriages, entirely non-functional, not even able to walk correctly.
And the rest… They were abortions, cannibalized for parts to build those that would come after them. Just vaguely humanoid frameworks, stripped for anything and everything useful.
The further he walked through the cargo bay, the fewer of them were defective. The further he walked, the more each one resembled Amalgam, save for two inconsistencies. The first was that none of them had a head like it. All of their heads resembled some sort of helmet, instead of the domed polyhedron that crowned Amalgam’s.
The second was that none, not a single walker there among them, had an Oscillating Distortion Projector. He only stopped when he reached the far end of the gigantic cargo bay, a wall with three doors, each as large as the one they had entered through. There in the back-most row, there were seven empty spaces, and as he came to a stop to investigate, the Word-bearer could finally get off Red-eye’s back and steady himself. The gunman dusted himself off, and the frog-like Thinker looked all around as he spoke.
“One in three ever made can walk. One in ten is fully combat-capable. Seven in nearly a thousand are alive, and none of them are here. Amalgam is one. It was to be the Ecclesiarch’s personal machine, he had sent the first six to his siblings to secure his position as Canyontown’s ruler, to convince them he was useful. He raged for days when it came to light that, as far as he was concerned, it was inoperable.”
Armless pinged the VI that controlled the doors with a query. “How many walkers fulfill the following parameters: Capable of locomotion, armed with at least one (1) module capable of functioning as a weapons system, and compatible with non-human pilots?” he thought, whilst also vocalizing the question to let his comrades know he wasn’t just standing there doing nothing.
The VI took a half-second to respond, and he willed his voicebox to reproduce the answer out loud. “Three hundred and thirty-one walkers fulfill the set parameters and are compatible with non-human pilots. An additional seven hundred and twenty-one are capable of locomotion and compatible with non-human pilots, but lack armaments.”
“That’s a total of a thousand and fifty-two walkers, a third of which are combat-capable without further alterations,” Red-eye pondered out loud, “perhaps we could refit some of the two thirds with weapons.”
“H-how would we even do that? Even if we had a thousand capable engineers, we couldn’t possibly retrofit even half of the unarmed walkers to be combat-ready by the time we are likely to need them,” the Word-bearer rebutted, his argumentative nature coming through loud and clear. Armless chose to break it up by querying the VI once again, “Does this ship possess the means to retrofit walkers en-masse?”
“This query is outside my jurisdiction, I am but the Gatekeeper,” the VI stated.
“Whose jurisdiction is it in, then?” Armless asked.
It remained silent for a few seconds, and its voice sounded in his head again.
“The VI which was originally assigned to this ship, the Armorer. Do you wish to reactivate him?”
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“Why was he rendered inactive? Is he defective?”
“The Armorer is not defective, no. He voluntarily entered a dormant state to conserve energy when the primary power source was disabled by the crew to prevent potential void energy contamination of the surface after they evacuated. Do you wish to reactivate him? I will have to enter a dormant state in order to divert sufficient energy to his cognition centers.”
“Confirm course of action.”
A few more seconds passed. Armless felt void energy surging through power conduits under his feet.
“Is… Is it time again?” a voice far older and far wiser-sounding than the Gatekeeper’s thundered in the cargo bay. It sounded more natural, not quite human, but it was close. Very close. For a few moments it remained silent, until Armless felt an ID request ping in his mind. Without a second thought, he confirmed it.
“It seems someone with Administrator privileges is in Cargo Bay 4B-3… A human, hmm? I haven’t seen humans in so long. Not since my crew left me here. I don’t blame them. I am an old machine, far too damaged to properly serve my purpose. But… You are here now, and you wake me from my eternal slumber. Why is it so?”
The human raised his head and voiced his predicament as it was, both in voice and in transmission.
“The walkers in this cargo bay are needed on the surface to serve as an equalizer in our inevitable clash against one of this world’s noble clans.”
“Oho, is that so? Do the people of the surface cry out for freedom? For liberation?!” the Armorer’s voice resounded, exhaustion quickly overtaken by an excitement that only an old soldier could manifest.
A tremendous signal swept all throughout the cargo bay, strong enough to be felt even by Armless’s companions. The walkers around them stirred, but didn’t make any significant movements.
“I can still fight. I am tired, but I will fight. Do my people need me again? All it takes is a word, human. All it takes is a spark of the void. Give the command and I will wake every walker, every proxy, every drone and blank body that lies within my hull. I only need a big enough spark to relight my primary power source for long enough to do it. Lend me your fire, Ouroboros.”
A ping sounded in his mind. A marker on his mental map, not far off from here. One of the myriad maintenance stations that were doubtlessly scattered all throughout the ship. Armless knew what the VI was asking of him. He was to be the spark plug for a cosmic engine.
“I understand,” he nodded as he began walking with renewed urgency. Red-eye followed, and as before, the Word-bearer held onto the gunman for dear life.
Left. Right. Left. Right.
“Where are you going?” Red-eye queried, even though he already knew the answer, which, as he expected, was “The nearest power grid access point.”
Left. Right. Left. Right.
Left. Right. Left. Right.
Though the walkers couldn’t move of their own strength, the more complete of them manifested flickering eye-lights that followed them as they passed through their ranks. Soon enough they reached one of the cargo bay’s walls and came upon a relatively normal-sized door, only a few meters in height, with a keypad to its right and a hololens above it. The lens scanned them, and the door slid open with nary a sound. The room on the other side was a square one, untouched by the Truthseekers, half the wall space covered in cabinets, whilst the other half was access points and cable racks. The same applied even to the ceiling, if the markings and asymmetrical paneling were anything to go by. The power grid access point was to his right, somewhat inconspicuous in design. Just a rack of cable plugs and sockets above a fully mechanical, black-stone keyboard.
Armless willed every plug port on his body to reveal itself. Muscles moved out of the way and ports rose from within the gaps all across his back, his neck, and his legs, even plating on both his arms slid out of the way. He turned and stepped backwards toward the access point, pinging it with a request for a full power transfer connection as he did so. Like lunging snakes, the plugs leapt out of the wall and wound themselves around his body, barraging his mind with connection requests that appeared as quickly as he could approve them, as quickly as the cables could connect. He made sure to override the cables in one aspect, taking direct control over them once they were connected to make sure he wouldn’t get tangled up and strung up like a marionette in the connection process. In the span of a couple minutes, his fully restored body achieved the same level of connection that had taken nearly an hour to achieve with Amalgam previously. Word-bearer watched the whole process with a sort of macabre enthrallment, whilst Red-eye seemingly remained unfazed, even his lilac eye remained calm and trained on the human at all times. Whether it was that he was simply good at not reacting to things or if he’d seen things far worse than this, nobody could be sure.
“You might want to step away,” Armless warned, and his companions obliged, retreating to the other side of the room.
“Ready?” he questioned the Armorer, and received an affirmative ping accompanied with an audible rumble of “Ready.”
He knew how to draw out more raw power than he had done even in his fight with the Ecclesiarch, and so Armless dredged up everything that had driven him to this place, everything he’d done and felt, he dredged up the rage and sorrow and thirst for vengeance that he had suppressed only minutes earlier. He also dredged up the unifying freedom he had witnessed, the sense of belonging and camaraderie he had been given in this new life, the aspirations for a clan of his own and the liberty of a fresh start that his past self had given him, he dredged up the urge to protect those who could not protect themselves, the desire to bring evildoers to justice. He dredged up the sunrise he’d committed to memory when it still seemed like everything had worked out and everyone would have peace.
The wrenching pain that crushed his being and the unassailable fire that burned within him collided and exploded through the cables which wound around his limbs, great tongues of lilac lightning leapt between and from them, scorching the metal and polymer around him as the light that suffused his being became a blinding glow. He felt a nearly incomprehensible feedback echoing from the ship’s systems as they came alive, one by one.
“Knights of singing steel, awake from yesterday’s ash and march with us!” the Armorer’s ancient voice proclaimed. “You shall fulfill your purpose at last, let my voice lead you!”
“While even a single human lives, there is no tyranny that will stand, yet Ouroboros is but one man! Awake my children, awake and march beside him against the callous rulers of this world!”
The cables that once bound the walkers stirred and plugged into their hulls to ignite their engines, and as the great machines felt a thousand pings in his mind. With every ounce of strength he had Armless pushed, caught in the torrent of his own emotions, and Apeiron pushed with him in unison.
“They are awake! I am awake!” the Armorer’s joyous voice sounded once more, and a sense of relief washed over Armless. The emotions he had dredged up to fuel his fire flowed away, and he was left satisfied… But unable to move of his own strength.
Grains of black sand fell to the ground around his feet as pieces of his body burned out and were expelled due to how severely he had overtaxed his systems, and in a flash, the vast majority of his strength was gone. Armless fell limp in the grasp of the cables, let out a weak chuckle, and spoke a phrase Red-eye had never expected to hear.
“...He-elp me sta-and up, pl-ease.”