“Life support is critical,” came the vox-click of Mender Korr, the ship’s enginseer. “Atmosphere will be breathable for another four point three standard hours. After that, nitrogen narcosis, then hypoxia.”
“Then we find one,” Valerius said.
The Astarte had been a rust-bucket even before it fell out of the warp. Now, it was a tomb. Captain Valerius pulled himself through the twisted access corridor, his mag-boots clanking on the hull plates that had become the floor. The emergency lights were the color of a bruise. stranded on santa astarta
An hour later, the Hauler screamed through Santa Astarta’s thin, cold atmosphere. Valerius gripped a jump-seat as the craft shook apart. Below, the ruin rushed up—not a city, but a canyon of black stone towers, each one carved with saints and angels whose faces had been scoured away by ten millennia of acidic wind.
Sub-optimal meant it had no inertial dampeners, no weapons, and a hull held together by prayer and welds. It was a metal box with thrusters. “Life support is critical,” came the vox-click of
“The ones who left me here. The Mechanicum of Mars, ten thousand years ago. They said they would return when the war was over. The war ended. They did not.”
Hanging in the center of the vault, suspended by a web of fibre-optic cables, was a single brain. It was enormous—the size of a servitor’s torso—kept alive in a bath of golden amniotic fluid. Its surface flickered with data-ghosts: schematics, litanies, battle-plans. The Astarte had been a rust-bucket even before
The brain’s optic lens pulsed. “I can build you a ship. I have the schematics. I have the forges. They are dormant, but I can wake them. In exchange, you will take me with you.”