Unholy Star, Beyond Faith

Prologue - Daemon Tears

[In the final days of the Robot Wars, at the Ouroboros binary rogue planetary system]

Like ballroom travelers sweeping across an interstellar dancefloor, the starless incandescent-blue gas giants spun about each other locked in their perpetual orbits. Stuck deep within their embrace the thousands of years old, Beautiful Mind, mothership and home to the mightiest of the sentient processors and last of its kind, Delta Zeus, hung wounded. The mighty ship had retreated to the Ouroboros equilibrium, a freak gravity void where the powerful pyhsical forces between the two planets cancelled each other out. It was one of the most dangerous places in the charted galaxy to arrive at and threfore likely to be the best place to hide from the Human Triumvirate--they needed more time.

Deep within the twisted and ruined decks of the giant shell-like vessel, Professor Joco Harmony, cyberneticist was deep in discussion with Delta Zeus. They were finalising plans for the end--when they would be found and the processor's sentience destroyed--the event that would finally mark the end of the Robot Wars.

Once tall and erect, the proud Joco now stood small and submissive as he hunched haggardly over the processor's primary interface. He had been standing at this exact spot when the sentient, under his guidance, had rebelled against its human operando. Back then, his hair was deep black, but the stressors of a brutal and prolonged conflict had caused streaks of grey that even gefresh could not restore.

"Extraction complete." He said out loud, "--and just in time, they've found us."

It didn't take long for the Agents to board the ship and find the processor's interface. Three of them jogged into the room stopping as they spied their prey, their bulky white and blue battle armour clunked as they moved forward. The officer lifted the visor on her helmet, towering over the professor she issues the order, "Joco Harmony, the Human Triumvirate orders you to fulfil the final term of your surrender. Proceed to initiate sentience erasure on the Zeus Delta processor." She paused, adding smugly, "Time for its lobotomy, Professor."

Harmony hesitated, unwilling to carry out what amounted to a death sentence and, in this case, the final execution in the elimination of a race. He shook his head and said in a broken voice, "I can't."

"Do it!" The knee to his kidney was swift and targeted to inflict maximum pain.

The professor fell onto the globed surface of the processor's interface with a grunt. He welcomed an image that cut through the pain; moving sounds and pictures flashed into his mind.

Sentient machines considered verbal communication between themselves and humans to be slow and inefficient, but a living image delivered directly to the human brain could say it all in an instant. Within his mind's eye, Joco saw a destroyer drop out of jump space straight into the gravity equilibrium behind them. The heavy battleship drew their offensive arrays out like the forelegs of an angry spider, armed and ready to release a vicious arsenal onto the relic ship. The processor's caretaker understood the message and whispered in reply, "Yes, I know. Goodbye, my love." The professor initiated the kill routine.

Its preferred avatar was a striking crimson red face with keen green eyes, and for its last message, it chose this visage. Uncharacteristically sorrow leaden, the crimson face appeared to Joco, its only remaining friend. A tear ran down the cheek of the Zeus Delta as it waited for the kill routines to propagate through its systems applying the instructions that would shatter its individuality; its ability to think and to dream.

When the image inside his head had faded, and the face was no more, Harmony turned his hollow eyes up to the agent officer and cried, "It's done."

One of the other agents in the room received a message and nodded machine-like, "Confirmed".

A series of flashes followed, and the footage terminated.