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mechagalaxy · 7 years ago

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Initiation

The god machines bestrode the worlds of mankind like avatars of humanities spirit. Towering the height of buildings, with power equal to that of a small city, or starship, they carried weapons capable of leveling city blocks, or extinguishing a company of conventional tanks, or wing of aerospace fighters at a single salvo of its weapons.

The mecha wore the shape of armoured men, or hunting beasts, the hundred spirits of mankinds inner demons or holy guardians, or just the eternal hunger for war that beat inside the breasts of the most civilized of men or demure of women. The god-machines were the highest expression of the machine cult of Cogwork, a divine blend of niode based AI and human pilots.

The days of looking at the Forerunners as the great masters of mecha were done. Humanity had surpassed the classical limits of ninety tons, and pushed beyond the limits the mecha-renegade Drocha established of one hundred tons. Humanity now produced the Charon, and Revenant.

Giaus Octavian had been a tech with the Spirit of Bunny, and his great work was the Revenant Antillar Maximus. The machine was the very epitome of the god-machines. Black armour plates housed a blazing machine spirit that lit if from within, a spirit of such raw power that only the greatest mind could merge with it. Five pilots attempted to bond the machine when it was new. Four pilots were consumed, attempting to master the storm of the machine spirits power. One hundred and five tons of niode driven rage were too much for most minds to bend to their will, the struggle for dominance was one that caused the first four pilots to burn into brain wrecked corpses. The fifth was a mistake. The pure discipline of the machine cult was not found in Max. He was a warrior of renown, a pilot of Dreadnoughts that had delighted in facing Reaper cannon for cannon, hunted Regis and Boreas with laughing unconcern. He bled a lot, drank a lot, and missed bed check (or was found unexpectedly in someone else’s) frequently. He was a disgrace to just about any standard of military protocol, or religious doctrine, especially the somewhat stodgy Cogwork cult. Giaus had watched Max join with the first Revenant, and watched him not attempt to bind the storm winds that raged within the god-machine, but ride the tempest laughing, master it not by suppressing it, but by leaping ahead of it, and daring it to follow. Antillar Maximus was born, the first Spirit of Bunny Revenant. Giaus had been his chief technician, and had watched the pairing of man and god machine, the Princeps Max and his god-machine becoming a pairing that moved with the grace a cat like Smilodon would envy, and struck with precision a Reaper would beg to possess.

Giaus Octavian had been building his skills piloting Max’s old Dreadnought, the prize mecha from Faction War 1. Through his training with the older god-machine he had begun to get not only a sense of how to control the powerful machines shields, sensors, weapons, and internal repair protocols, but a greater sense of how to work with the AI, rather than simply force it into obedience. A novice pilot in an experienced god-machine, he allowed the Dreadnought to teach him about his own flesh body instincts, about how the endless hours of real life combat training and martial arts prepared his meat body and primitive endocrine system to become the missing component in the god-machine’s battle persona. The AI running the great mecha were powerful beyond all belief, but they were lost in the sea of data, in the very fullness of their power they were helpless. Powered automatons had existed for centuries, and they were so much meat for the manned units that stalked the killing fields of war, as the finest of the machines lacked the ability to act without thinking, lacked the ability to ever beat the statistics. The Cogwork cult taught of the purity of the union of man and machine, the single spirit formed from two souls of the niode based AI and the animal fleshed pilot. Now Giaus understood why.

The Dreadnought filtered its data through Giaus, and instinctively he switched from feed awareness to impressions. No longer were targeting auspexes a data of emissions signatures/detection thresholds read in graphs flashing too fast for thought, but they were the instinctive threat that had his “body” responding, triggering response cascades from the god-machine that configured shields, powered shifts in the chassis, deployed ECM lures and active jamming. His animal brain allowed the establishment of machine AI reflexes that made the greatest machines more nimble than a hunting cat.

Today was the day he took the greatest challenge. The last war had won for the Spirit of Bunny a twin to Antillar Maximus, a second Revenant. This machine was already potentiated to fifty, far stronger while unbonded than Max had faced. This machine was stronger, more wilful than Antillar Maximus had been when Max joined it. Would he be ready? Would he be a Princeps? A mecha pilot, one half of a god machine pilot pair, or just another “electric chicken” dancing his last on the end of his cerebral jackplug as the powerful AI fried his meat brain with the fury of its rejection? Max had told him to wear some freaky underwear under his pilot jumpsuit so if he fried he would at least make the clean up crew freak out. Giaus had NO intention of asking Max what he had worn. He did however take the time in front of the mirror to paint his chest with “Still prettier than you”, and his ass cheeks with “Do not enter”. He supposed that would count for bold enough for any bunny pilot.

Incense burned and holy oils anointed the joints of the Revenant as he approached. Chanting of the techs as he went to initiate the first union with the Revenant calmed him as he approached. When the god machine awoke for the first time, it was intensely traumatic for the AI, and the first pilot to join with it would forever mark the machine’s interaction with humanity. A first rejection made the machines into pilot killers, and each subsequent rejection raised the odds against succeeding pilots. It was rather less than one in a million who could be a fifth pilot after four failures, so Giaus had no intention of doing the dance of the electric chicken today. Max was smirking as he leaned against the cockpit ledge. He had in his pocket what Giaus had requested.

“Are you sure about this little brother?” Max had joked that if Giaus pulled this off, they would be brothers of the Mecha, twins joined by their twinned machines. He tapped the flask in his pocket, the forbidden, but frequently found alcohol had no place on any sane initiation day, but the Bunnies were not wedded to sanity. Giaus nodded, and accepted the flask. He unscrewed the cap, and breathed in the heady aroma of the amasec. Stronger than the general preference for mead, it couldn’t quite take the bluing off a breach block, but it could remove carbon build up from power shunts, and clear burned coolant off jammed valves. Go big or go home, and with a hundred and five ton mecha, he was planning to go big. Filling his mouth with the burn of amasec, he leaned forward for Max to jack the mecha’s control cable into Giaus’s pilot implant.

CONNECTION

FURY/CONFUSION/RAGE

The AI was powerful beyond anything the Dreadnought had prepared him for, the feedback through his body was more than he could take. Reflexively he swallowed, and the burn of Amasec filled his stomach. Eternity screaming in pain as white fire burned down his synapses as unfiltered and unbuffered imput blasted his systems. He felt the powering up of his pseudomyomer musculature, the powerful piston augmentors and magnetics filling the machine with movement potential, even as its fury and confusion paralyzed it. Years of screaming agony passed in seconds.

A warm wash of alcohol flooded his brain as the high test Amasec hit his frying wet ware like a computer reset subroutine.

[WHAT WAS THAT] screamed the panicking AI

{that was the good stuff, please, a little less power on the feed. If I die, I swear by the machine gods that I will pee all over your cockpit, and the smell will be with you forever}

The panic of the Revenant’s AI lessened as the awareness of OTHER filled it. Seeking now it opened its awareness to the second intelligence joined to it. As the channels opened, Giaus instinctively suppressed the confusion as his own brain took over balance, body awareness, situational awareness, external communication, and threat analysis.

The AI no longer drowning in information overload, its own processors began to work on refining the data stream, focusing sensors and providing the matchless computational power of the Revenant to anything the pilots intelligence focused on for even a microsecond.

Giaus took a second sip of Amasec, and the alcohol washed through him, cleansing the last of the panic from his system. He let his simple uncomplicated joy fill his mind, and he felt the machine drink it deep.

Sending the command to rise, he let the god-machine see how his meat reflexes could allow the machine to borrow his meat body’s own reflexes to turn the ten thousand commands involved in bringing one hundred and five tons of killing machine from sitting to standing into a single thoughtless and effortless action. New protocols flowered within the machine AI as he drank deep of his pilots knowledge. New engrams began chemically burning themselves into the pilots brain as he learned the ways of his new self.

Moving forward, the god-machine stalked out of the bay, sensors drinking in the rich electronic spoor of the range. Threat/Detection icons flashed, and powerful weapons powered up as a battery of Man Of War rays preheated on the weapon arms and torso of the god/machine.

{will you join with me, will you go to war with me, from the fire of battle to the dark of death, will you be with me?} Giaus asked, because the best pairing were partnerships, not slave/master relationships.

[YES!] This time the roar caused glorious pain in Giaus, and he answered with his own snarling roar.

{who are we?}

[I/WE ARE ANTILLUS CRASSUS]

A scream of primal joy sounded as the next god-machine of the Spirit of Bunny finished its initiation. The flash of a blue Man of War Ray burned brighter than the sunlight, and struck harder than lighting. The combat drone exploded as thousands of points of damage hammered past its shields and shattered its carapace like a hammer on a tea cup.

A new mecha and pilot strode the fields of Mecha Galaxy, ready to join in the wars that gave both men and machines a purpose.

John T Mainer 28840

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