Koryuzen ran. The ship lurched alarmingly under her feet, almost throwing her off balance. Powering forward with lengthy strides, she fought the dizzying feeling of inertia. Alarms blared frantically, and the corridor lighting had turned to a strobing, maddening frenzy of red lighting that bleached everything of colour under their crimson gaze.
Sweat beaded Koryuzen's organics, trickling from her and splashing down onto the floor as she ran. The ship was infernally hot; the exertion from running wasn't helping. The ship heaved sideways, and with a cry she stumbled, skidding across the floor, and out onto a four-way junction. In the middle of gathering herself up and hauling herself to her feet whilst cursing her bad fortune, she never thought to look up. As she finally cast her gaze upwards, she stopped dead in her tracks.
In front of her stood the most evil, twisted thing she had ever seen - Worse than the bloody, screaming nightmares of servitor conversion surgeries, or the curtains of synth-skin that hung disembodied and silent, or even the foul mess after a menial fell into the gears of a manufactory machine. No, this was far worse.
She could only describe it as a daemon.
It stood a good foot taller than even her augmented frame, with a hunched spine and reverse-jointed legs that gave it a horrific, predatory posture. It's arms terminated in clawed hands that looked all too able to pierce flesh, and the hide that covered it was gnarled and rough, like ancient leather. It gripped an obsidian longsword idly in a single hand, a cruelly sharpblade with a jagged, deliberately sharpened edge. The worst thing about it was it's face, though, she thought, processing every detail in an instant; Huge horns that sprouted from where it's temples should have been, curling over on themselves and framing it's monstrous visage in black, teeth that looked long enough and sharp enough to split steel, and shining eyes that almost seemed to glow in the low red gloom of the corridor.
Hyper-efficient, laboratory engineered blood or not; still, it seemed to run cold in Koryuzen's veins. Edging back towards the opening to the junction, she silently prayed to the Machine-God to spare her from the monstrosity before her. Only a few more feet, she thought hopefully, only a few more...
Then its head snapped to face her, eyes full of insane hunger. Koryuzen hadn't remembered how it felt to be genuinely afraid in a long time - but she remembered now. She screamed, and it was filled with binaric curses, warped twangs of scrap-code, and more; all at once, a million threat-signifiers, shutdown orders and overload mantras. Any machine in the way of her howling cry would have collapsed, irrevocably damaged. The daemon, however, cared not for such petty things as cant and code, and began a loping, low stride towards her. With a speed greater than could be expected of most Adepts, she leapt to her feet, turned, and ran.
***
A siren was shrieking somewhere.
It sounded distant, like it was under water, or being played back after endless distortion through vox-capture and playback.
But it was catalyst enough.
++Binaric protocols. Activation.++
***
Koryuzen's breath was ripe in her throat, and she swore she could almost smell her own fear. She'd barreled around the last corner, and almost run straight into an active combat servitor some fool had probably primed hoping it would be able to fight the... Things... That had got aboard.
It lasted a generous four seconds of actual combat, before the terrible blade of the creature hewed it into uneven halves. It bent to retrieve the servitor's head, and then carried on in its pursuit.
In her desperation, Koryuzen screamed.
***
++Adept Endangered. Status - Priming.++
***
Reaching a four way junction, Koryuzen paused. Her normally perfect memory had begun to falter, and for a moment she did not know which of the three paths ahead could offer her the best chance of survival. Exhaustion was beginning to set in, though it was sharpened by the fear of what might happen to her should she be caught.
"Now what?" she murmured to herself hoarsely, lost in thought.
She was snapped out of her reverie by the thumping, grating noise of clawed feet on the deck plating. With her hand forced, she wheeled right, and ran for her life.
***
Huge servo-driven arms re-gassed hydraulics, fitted belt feeds, and began testing systems for readiness. Stripped armour plating lay scattered, not yet repaired and still waiting to be refitted, but there was not enough time to wait. In fact, there was no time at all.
++Warning. System Primed.++
++Adept. Koryuzen.++
++Run.++
***
As Koryuzen ran, the ship beneath her shuddered again. She could feel its anger at the unnatural things aboard, and its furious, shuddering intent to repel them. She stopped suddenly, taken aback at where her feet had taken her.
"No, No, NO!" she pleaded to herself, as she span madly.
She had arrived in one of the smaller hangar bays on the transport - which had only a single entrance - and therefore a single exit. In the gloom, warning lights blinked and flashed, but the main power to the lumen strips above was disabled. Signal-traffic told her the room's connections to exterior power were limited, and that the lights were off as a power saving measure. Koryuzen knew her chance of survival was falling by the second, but it was either her best efforts, or a painful death. Rolling under a nearby shelving unit, she stayed quiet, and listened to the creature's approach. It drew nearer by the second, and she could almost taste its rancid breath.
In the gloom, its glowering eyes seemed to shine brightly, and she was sure it would see her - surely its alien, daemonic nature would give it the ability to see in the dark?
Then it opened its mouth, and began to speak with a tongue fouled by an aeon of misuse.
"I Smell you, human. I smell your fear!"
It shouldered aside another shelving unit, displaying a strength far beyond its size, and Koryuzen scrambled madly to escape. Ducking and weaving through empty space as quietly as possible, masked by the racket the creature was generating, she almost fell over a wrench left discarded on the floor. Biting her knuckles to contain the pain of her broken toes, she weighed her options. Grabbing for it quickly, her hands felt tiny as she hefted the tool. Hoping it would be enough, Koryuzen began to slowly make her way to the edge of the room. She could hear her own breath thundering in her head. She hoped it wouldn't notice her - But she wasn't quite quiet enough.
With a screech, the beastly creature shouldered aside a rack, and came running at her. Running was the only option left - so she did. Leaping over fallen crates, a route presented itself. Then came a sudden, bone-crunching jolt, and a looming, black shadow that seemed too menacing and enormous to be truly real.
YOU ARE READING
Surge - A Warhammer 40,000 Novel
Science Fiction//--Sentience is the basest form of Intellect--// The mechanicus forbids A.I. Such is permanent doctrine. It has been this way for 10,000 years, and so it shall remain. But what of those machines who strive to gain it anyway?
