Extinction by Aaron Dembski_Bowden

Author:Aaron Dembski_Bowden [Dembski_Bowden, Aaron]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

THE WARSHIP SITS silent in space, her reactor cold, her engines dead. Battlements line her spine in a protrusion of castles and spires, with thousands of powerless gun turrets aimed up into the void. She drifts alone at the heart of an asteroid field, suffering occasional impacts against her scarred armour, each slow crash adding to the asymmetry of her scars.

She once carved her name through the galaxy at the vanguard of humanity’s empire, a bloodthirsty herald of eminent domain. She once hung in the skies of Terra, laying waste to mankind’s cradle. Now she lies still, abandoned in hell, hidden from those who covet her.

Her spirit is a tight, tiny essence in her inactive core; the only iota of sentience and life within the immense hulk. This soul, as true as any human life despite its artificial genesis, slumbers in the infinite cold. She waits to be reawakened, but holds no hope it will ever happen. Her sons fled her decks, leaving her here to grow frigid and silver with ice crystals, so far from the light of the closest sun that the star is nothing but a pinprick in the night.

She dreams a warrior’s dreams: of fire, of pain, of blood soaking across steel while great guns roar. She dreams of the Many that once lived within her, and the warmth they took when they left.

She dreams of the times she broadcast her name to lesser vessels, shrieking Vengeful Spirit as she crippled and killed her enemies.

She dreams of the last words spoken in her presence, ordered in the low growl of the one who’d come to command her. She knew him, as she knew all of the Many. He’d stood before her machine-spirit heartcore, a massive clawed hand against the glass of her brain. Her mind filled the cavernous chamber, shielded and armoured in dense metal.

Liquids bubbled. Engines groaned. Pistons clanked. The sound of her thoughts.

Abaddon, she’d said to him. We can still hunt. We can still kill. You need me.

He couldn’t hear her. He wasn’t linked, so he could neither hear nor respond. She knew that had been intentional. He was deafening himself to her, to make the abandonment easier. He’d spoken the final three words, then. The last words she heard with the clarity of consciousness.

‘Shut her down.’

Abadd—

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