Deus in Machina (a Warhammer 40K-setting inspired LitRPG)

Minutes Ago

Hidetada's consciousness slipped from the fighter's controls, flowing like quicksilver into the three drones nestled within the towed sled.

With a slight thought of intent, the comms clicked once, signaling Thryna and Harc it was time to move.

The fighter, a costly but necessary sacrifice, weapons blazing, hurtled toward the station's entrance, its expensive destruction needed to carve their path.

Debris scattered, and the drones carrying Harc's weight flew behind Thryna's blazing form, zipping around shards of metal and duracrete, entering through the large new wound in the station's hull, one of the drones dropping a signal extender.

A faint sensation stirred in his chest. He felt so little, it almost surprised him. He had long ago mastered his emotions.

It wasn't regret. It was the irritation of such waste. Fighters modified to act as one of his Machinilitis were not cheap, but the arithmetic of war demanded such expenditures.

He squashed the irritation. Controlling oneself was to control all outcomes. The old lesson all good leaders knew - festina lente, how to make haste slowly.

Patience was the internal conquering of emotions such as anger, desire, and fear, and states such as hunger, thirst, and fatigue, forging a mastery over the self, allowing true clarity.

Patience was the foundation of victory, just as lack of control was the foundation of defeat.

The trap had been set, bait laid with exquisite care, and the enemy had bitten. They hungered for his chapter's newest Knight, desiring him corrupted or dead.

Hidetada's lips curled faintly within his sanctum aboard the Zephuros, where his body lay. Let them think they set this trap. Let them believe they held the initiative. Their desires and plans were his levers.

He had acquired the boy to be bait. He had given Angar the choice, even informed him it was a trap, and felt no guilt.

He'd read the boy's responses at their first meeting. All Hidetada's assumptions had been correct.

If the blessed Mother hadn't spurned Angar, finding him lacking, almost certainly due to his unyielding stubbornness, Hidetada would've embraced him, protected him.

But the Messiah had revoked her patronage, abandoning the boy, making him and his Baptistry-warped hands only useful as bait. Very effective bait.

Kygon, Azgoth, or Gamosh, the prize in exchange. One of those three would be here, hopefully two, worthy of such trade. A second Tier Knight could not withstand a Nofelim's corruption. The arithmetic of war demanded such expenditures.

Hidetada's mind turned over the probabilities, each outcome a thread in his long-sown tapestry.

He knew he and Thryna, as they stood since Mara crippled them both, could not slay a Nofelim in open combat, separately or together. They could stand and give battle for a while, they could overwhelm for a short time, though not an extended period, and each paled against a fallen Seraph's infernal might.

But victory did not require the enemy to be defeated in open combat. As always, Hidetada dictated the field and terms.

A sudden, overwhelming assault of fire and fury at the sub-plane's mooring, leaving the cowardly Nofelims no choice but to flee, teleporting to their ship's mainstay instead merging with another sub-plane, and retreating into it.

And that would be their undoing. Their means of teleportation left a unique signature, traceable by the Zephuros' sensors to their ship's mainstay, lighting a path to their vessel.

Hidetada would take control of the Zephuros and strike, reducing their sanctuary to ash before they could flee the system.

Angar's fall was certain, but his death served Hidetada, and through him, the Holy Empire.

Hidetada was a man who kept his word, but he was also a man who knew when to break it. The boy's dreams for his planet aligned with Hidetada's own, a convenient harmony. He'd honor the agreement.

The station's main bay and its corridors unfolded before them. Hidetada's drones' sensors drank in every pulse of the environment as he blew through it.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Thryna led the charge with her boosters screaming, always brutal in her focus, flying through the bay's back exit.

Detaching from a drone, Harc drew a scanner and descended the ramp with measured steps. An old friend, but still a pawn moving precisely as intended.

Harc sought the secondary power source, the hidden heart ready to transfer the sub-plane to a second mooring, or merge it back with the planar mainstay, and sever it with relentless efficiency.

Nofelims were slippery, cowards cloaked in power, but Hidetada knew their ways.

Ever cautious, they buried such treasures below their sub-plane, guarded by powerful and trusted lieutenants. But their paranoia was accounted for.

Forced back to the ship and its planar mainstay, he'd burn it from the void, excising one or two of these fallen Seraphs from the board.

A few lives in exchange for one or two dead Nofelims. And Albion's rot would be exposed in the aftermath, its corrupt tendrils severed, brought under Hidetada's control, strengthening the Holy Empire, providing enough excuse to do the same to the sister planet, Ierne.

Nofelims had an infuriating knack for escape. Not this time. He had studied them too long, hounded them too relentlessly. He dropped another signal extender.

Thryna paused at the stairwell's edge where the air thickened with the reek of the unholy, of the corrupt. Below her, the closed sub-plane pulsed, the encapsulating flesh now sealed from the world.

"Ready?" she asked, her voice filled with excitement and anticipation. She never could control her emotions, making her easily controlled in turn.

"Of course," Hidetada replied.

Thryna raised the large plane-ripper, a device far more expensive than a Machinilitis-modified fighter, high over her head, then drove it into the fleshy barrier.

Blood and gore erupted in a crimson baptism, and they plunged through the breach, into the sub-plane's veiled sanctum.

Deeper in, a stone door blocked access to the chamber the mooring and Fallen would be in. This was new, an unexpected barrier.

Hidetada dropped another signal extender, and his mind adjusted instantly, plans reshaping like water flowing around a stone. Surprise was their blade, so the door must fall in a single blow.

Two drones carried explosive packages meant for the mooring, but adaptability was the soul of victory. He released both, their payloads shattering the stone in a storm of shards. The chamber beyond, and its terrors, was laid bare.

Two Nofelims stood within – Azgoth and Gamosh, causing Hidetada's lips to curl, at least mentally, once more.

Angar lay broken, his chest a ruin of horror, but his soul's defiance lingered, a faint ember Hidetada's sensors caught.

Impossible.

The boy was certainly a curiosity, a variable providing surprises to Hidetada, a rare thing.

The chest injury meant he, a second Tier, somehow resisted a Nofelim's corruption, at least before that deadly wound was inflicted.

But Azgoth was a powerful Psychic with other ways to ensnare the righteous.

Improbabilities mounted.

If the boy survived, maybe he'd prove to be useful beyond bait.

The drones streaked forward. As they passed Angar, Hidetada sent a scan dart, a medical dart, and a swarm of healing-nanos at the boy.

"Goshawk lives, assume uncorrupted," he told Thryna. He doubted the dart and nanos would help much, but they couldn't hurt.

Then he focused on his goal. Without victory, he sacrificed this boy in vain.

And not just this boy. Four others of his crew too. They mattered little, but the failure stung, the deaths unnecessary. He had spent great wealth strengthening them, and felt no guilt, but their deaths meant he had failed.

He loathed being wrong. He hated failing. The slightest miscalculation led to unnecessary waste and the unravelling of carefully laid plans.

Azgoth and Gamosh were not just slippery, they were cunning and intelligent, yet their forces still struck insignificant Laymen outside the station, knowing they wouldn't enter, knowing they could safely be ignored.

He had dismissed that outcome as too improbable.

It was just a senseless slaughter, devoid of any tactical sense, lacking any strategic purpose. Some powerful abominations had been included in the attacker's ranks. The only sound move would have been bolstering the secondary power source's defense.

These weren't spawns of Hell. These were once Seraphs.

Hidetada had long fought the unholy. He knew the mind of both these Nofelims, before and after their fall. Both had proven their intelligence and strategic acumen on many occasions. They wanted to win the battle, they wanted their plans to succeed.

But, obviously, in the many, many decades since their last run-ins, their lust for destruction, their desire to revel in wanton slaughter, purposeless, just for the sake of it, with no motive beyond that, had grown and festered, now dominating their reasoning.

And Hidetada's miscalculation caused four senseless deaths among his crew.

The lower Orders were like seeds. The harder pressed, the more oil was extracted. But pressed too hard, and they'd be crushed. It was best to keep them toiling, distracted, their minds never reflecting on that they had no hope of freedom, as that bred rebellion.

If the Laymen in his employ came to believe he didn't value their lives, seeing them only as tools, they'd become harder to control, hesitant, less effective.

He'd hold a nice service for the deceased, showing these deaths had made him distraught, and caused him pain, their shared grief binding the crew to him, further securing their loyalty.

Hidetada's mind traced the paths ahead. He could see most moves, most counters.

He and Thryna would force the Nofelims to teleport. Barring something unforeseen, their ship would burn, they would die.

Another victory few in the Holy Empire, in the galaxy, would know of.

That was fine.

Hidetada played the long game, sacrificing pawns for better pieces and position, his heart a fortress of resolve, tilting the board in his favor.

And his favor was the Holy Empire's favor. That, above all else, was what mattered.

Officially, he was no longer Duke Imperator of the Sol Dominion. Saint Ash, the Star of Fate, had been dead and gone for long centuries.

Saint Hidetada was just a cripple, an eccentric fool. He had no real power anymore. He was of no consequence.

But still, his favor was the Holy Empire's favor.