NationStates Jolt Archive

Curtis Pickett didn’t like Netu much. This was probably because he had been banished there. The penal colony was a large town of vice and corruption really, in an airtight dome that kept the hellworld’s toxic atmosphere out. It was the real reason he’d decided to opt for execution, a glorified suicide really – and far more pleasurable a suicide than most. It was really quite an odd way to go, he’d be taken into a small room, sterile, and fixed up to a bed. Then they’d drop an implant into his brain, and set off pleasure centres until he expired of heart failure from the resulting exertions.

It was actually better than spending the rest of his life here, among the scum of the nation, drug dealers, rapists, murders and so on. Not that he wasn’t guilty, he had killed a woman, his lover in fact. He’d been high on Knootian drugs at the time, and hadn’t been in control of himself, but the crime was sufficiently vile to result in his banishment here, the place they sent the irredeemable criminals.

The cell had no door, there was nowhere to go but out onto the streets, where order was imposed in the most basic and brutal of ways. He looked up with surprise as he heard a scream followed by a crash. Not an odd sound on Netu, admittedly, but this one had come with the distinctive sound of weapons fire, and not of the crude type traded quietly around the colony. Instead, this had been a kinetic pistol, by his reckoning at least. He lay back on his bunk, he had nothing to fear anyway, he died tomorrow.

It was with some surprise then that he saw a silhouette blocking the doorway to his cell. It was another man, tall, and outfitted in a smart black coat. He moved into the cell and Curtis moved back a little. The stranger smiled, invisibly, “Hello Mr Pickett,” he said, helping himself to the small chair in the cell, “I’m glad to see that you have elected to end this charade.

Curtis looked up with a trace of curiosity, “Charade?”

“Yes Mr Pickett, charade. An image of cowardice you portray to avoid the less savoury areas of this place.” The stranger put a small item on the little table, which hummed after a moment. “Good, now we can talk privately. I shall cut to the chase, you are Curtis Samuel Pickett, Ex Sergeant of the Order of Peace, former decorated police officer, and convicted criminal, correct?”

“I don’t see many non-convicted criminals here…” he said, still confused by this interloper

“Quite so. Tell me Mr Pickett, do you know why this place exists?”

“To punish the denizens?” he replied.

“Yes… and no. This place is deliberately far more brutal than it needs to be, its attrition rate particularly poor, discipline lax. Why?”

“Because no-one cares what we do to one another, as long as we’re here.”

“Not quite. We care, as does the Centre.”

“The Centre for Prevention of Terrorism. A rather secret agency that we work with from time to time.”

“We?”

“We work for the government.”

“Oh, I’m reassured,” Pickett sneered sarcastically, “and the reason for this particular visit?”

“You, Mr Pickett, meet several requirements that our agency have laid out. Specifically, you were sent here, with no chance of parole, no chance of release short of an imperial or senatorial pardon, and you have survived for over five years.”

“Seven.”

“Over five. And now, you have opted for release, showing that you are prepared to sacrifice your life to get out of here, to get what you want. And finally, your psychological profile shows that you are actually a gentleman with a high capacity for loyalty.”

“Oh, so you want to recruit me. What kind of shit is this, no one leaves Netu.”

The stranger smiled a little, “Oh but my friend, I know full well what most people believe, that the only way out is to step through an airlock or sign up for execution. They’re right. Our agency takes those who do the former.”

“Oh, right.”

“Mr Pickett, if you would like to follow me, I shall demonstrate this to you.”

The stranger stood, took his device from the table, and left quickly, “Come quickly Mr Pickett, or loose your chance…” Curtis stood, fascinated by this, and left. The dome above was dark, it was night, and he could see the near wall of the dome, un-fractured only by the sheer strength of its materials.

The airlock was near, unguarded as ever. No one went to the airlocks usually – there was always the fear that they would leak in the poisonous atmosphere beyond. The stranger hit a button – large and simple, the airlocks were – oddly enough, designed to be used by the inmates. He steeped inside, and gestured for Pickett to follow. Curtis paused, unsure of what to do. The stranger watched for a moment, “Come now man, you signed up to die, and I am offering you a chance to live. I offer you life Pickett…”

He followed, he didn’t know why, this man could pull on a breath mask and laugh as he died.

The stranger hit the button, one of two, a large green one, the size of a man’s palm, and the inner door closed, sealing them in the bromine smelling room. Curtis looked out of the window at the brown, poisonous atmosphere beyond. “Well?” he demanded, carefully placing himself between the stranger and the red button.

The enigmatic stranger smiled, reached up, and turned one of the nozzles built into the ceiling. The side of the airlock yawned open, its stained white surface receding, and then sliding down. Beyond was a dark stairway, and the stranger smiled, “Welcome, Sergeant Curtis S Pickett, to the Agency, you have chosen wisely, and I’m certain that your… new life… will be satisfying.”

Curtis followed the man into the darkness, ready to see what lied beyond.

#tag#, nice! Buy Knootian.

The [tag] of doom is a registered trademark of the DA & puppets conglomerate

The tunnel went on for a great distance down many flights of stairs, often spiralled, and, in the end, it slowly ended, turning off from the pitch-black darkness and into a bright light. The door here was massive and imposing, a slab of blackened metal. The stranger approached, and this door soundlessly slid into the wall at his approach. Unlike Netu, the area beyond was actually gleamingly high tech.

Holographic displays illuminated the room, and tiny sentry guns could be seen concealed in the corners, ready to kill intruders – who would then doubtless be found outside the airlock later. The man led him past these displays, whose meaning was undecipherable, to Pickett, at least, and into a lift beyond. There were just two buttons in the lift, up and down. The stranger hit the ‘down’ button, and the doors closed, and the car descended deep into the bowels of the high gravity world.

He leaned against the inner surface of the lift, and relaxed a little. “Good, Mr Pickett, it is time I explained a little more about the Agency. This particular organisation is unlike the other arms of the government that you might be familiar with. The Agency doesn’t serve the C’tan, but the Emperor himself, in that he founded it and pays for its upkeep, and he is the only one outside the agency, or to give it its true name, The Order, who knows of our existence. The Agency is above the law, beyond the orders of any other but the Emperor.

“We have full autonomy, even our own ships. Already, you are officially dead, you died a few minutes ago, by stepping through that airlock, into the poisonous murk beyond. You are now a member of the Agency.”

“So, what does this Agency do exactly?”

“We protect against the horrors of the night.”

“So, what does this Agency do exactly?” Pickett said sarcastically.

“We are the watchers in the darkness, our task it to protect those who know nothing of our sacred mission.”

“Which is?”

“Best to show you,” he said, and extended his hand. Pickett stepped back, assailed by something. He saw the future, or something that could be the future. A cancerous plague of madness spreading across worlds, claiming millions, billions even, of innocent lives for its own sadistic whims and the perversions of those who summoned it. Fields of victims, crucified for years, but still living on, only to sing their agonised screaming to uncaring phantasmal lords of pain and pleasure, plagues that caused the dead to walk and infect the living, insane legions of genetically engineered warriors who lived only to wish to be transformed into some effigy of their perverted masters, all these things and many more he saw.

Pickett collapsed instantly, overwhelmed by the sheer tide of horror, and the stranger crouched down with him. “That is what we seek to prevent. Our numbers are insignificant, but there are few who can stand this mission. We have had you under observation since your childhood, as one of the few who can join the Order. The one in a hundred million with the talents, and the will. Many would have broke there, but you didn’t. I can feel it within you now, already growing, a determination to prevent this.”

“What can so few do against such a horror?” he asked, curious.

“Nothing, the Order does not stand against it. We intercede in advance, we prevent whenever possible, but if we cannot prevent, then we must destroy. That is our task, yours too,” he looked up at an indicator on the lift’s wall, “Ah, good, we have arrived.”

The doors slid open, and Pickett picked himself up hastily. Beyond was a room, filled with people, at least fifteen of them, gliding around in grey robes, swords and pistols – kinetic pistols, the predominant weapon throughout the empire – on their belts, concealed somewhat by the robes. They were strange. All human (an odd sight in the empire, famed for its diversity) but altered. Their muscles pulled in subtly strange ways. Also, he felt more than a little strange in their presence.

The stranger looked at him and smiled a little, “what you’re feeling is psychic feedback. You have had a latent ability since birth, that is why you made such an effective police officer, you had a feel for the job as it were. That’s also why we were interested in you, why we got you instead of the centre. Your talents qualify you for either, but we get the pick of the bunch.”

“You plan on altering me, to be like them?”

“Yes, Mr Pickett, we do. It is the only way. Bones, organs, muscles, all are usually replaced, The Order are far more machine than man. That’s not half of it though. We will train your mind, alter your body to be warded against the servants and doings of the enemy, and teach you to use your own powers purely, to find the enemy, to seek out their servants and those contaminated by them, and to destroy them.”

“We destroy the innocent?”

“Yes, the ends justify the means here I’m afraid. Those touched by the enemy must either be purified or destroyed. Often the latter,” he replied sadly, “there is no other way.”

“I see,” replied Pickett, strengthened in resolve by all this, and he began to trust this stranger implicitly. He had seen, and he knew that his life was a small price to pay in exchange for the prevention of that future.

Three Months Later

Curtis Samuel Pickett, or rather, Brother Nominate Orsini, as he was known within the order, had trained most effectively. It was almost unheard of for a Nominate to become a full Adept so quickly. He had taken to the intensive mental training that was needed to become an Adept of the Order like a duck to water. He could barely remember what it was like before joining the Order now. Indeed, it was essential that recruits forget their previous lives, to remember them was to remember a time when they doubted.

This could not be tolerated. The heart of the mind of an Adept was absolute conviction that their mission was sacred, holy, and right. It was the only way to ensure that no adept could fall to the enemy, betray their companions, or be bribed, corrupted or intimidated. No coercion had ever worked against them. It was essential to train the mind as much as the cybernetic body, to ensure that every Adept was able to look the horrors of the universe in the eye and kill them or die trying.

This was the reason so few could be recruited. The strength of will even before the mind alteration of a candidate they must be unnatural in their will. If he had broken under what was really, a barely concealed mental assault, the stranger would have snapped Orsini’s neck instantly. He was of no use to them if before enhancement he couldn’t handle that.

Now he lay on a slab, ready to be cut apart, to have most of his body destroyed – already a large trough lay at the side of the slab to receive all the parts of his body he would no longer need. Reproduction, digestion, growth, it was all irrelevant now. His life was one of service, and all those things would be sacrificed to that life. Adepts were nominally male or female, but such details didn’t interest them, love – of an individual at least – was pointless in their eyes. In the grand scheme of things, such things were mere distractions from the fight against Chaos.

He had also become something of a fanatic – utterly ruthless and dedicated. Honour was a characteristic the Order claimed to have, but there was often no place for it. They did fit the mould of fanatical religious knights however. They had a strange, almost cult-ish faith in the Emperor, and they even wore plate armour – with numerous powered systems – when it was needed, and wielded swords and other bladed weapons.

Orsini had been given a force halberd early in his training. It was a wonderous weapon really, and few like it existed. They were made from the most arcane of materials, psychically responsive – to their wielder – crystalline blades, inscribed with prayers of fanatical devotion to the Emperor, and half a dozen other gods and demigods, Jehovah, Ilúvatar, and any number of other creatures worshipped by the inhabitants of the universe. Made of crystalline layers, each layer, as well as prayers, was consecrated with sacred oils and ungents, and inscribed with arcane symbols inimical to the chaotic, pentagrammatic and hexagrammatic wards, magical sigils, and icons of devotion and duty.

When the weapons were used, they sang through the air, choruses of death and destruction, of merciless smiting and just retribution. His body would become something similar, he thought, as the machinery of the room went to work, dreadful surgical procedures of the same sheer level of callous disregard for organic sentiment were hard to find anywhere else. The machine stabbed into his neck, and began connecting, painlessly, arteries and veins to artificial systems that would sustain his mind and head for as long as possible. Then, with an obscene sound of cutting, the machine began to methodically take the human body apart from the neck down, slicing away great portions of it.

Shortly later, two adepts – medical adepts – brought the new skeleton in. It was much like the halberd in its design, layers of psyco-active plastic and crystal covered the bones, inscribed with the same wards. Across its surface ran a network of lines and sockets. These he knew would carry his nerve impulses to the fibrous new muscles that would cover the skeleton. Carefully, a large socket was placed below the ninth vertebrae, and connected to the organic – weak, mutable – spinal cord. A moment later, Brother Orsini’s semi cauterised head and neck were lowered and slotted into place against the skeleton, and the sockets joined. The medical adepts bolted the two sockets together, inseparably, and moved the delicate life support systems that would sustain him into the skeletal chest. Over this skeleton they began to layer the artificial bundles of necron living metal that replaced muscles.

Eventually, he would grow new skin and fatty, fleshy layers over this new form – supported by a nutrient web – that would allow him to walk among humans relatively unseen, but for now he consigned himself to this, the first and most intrusive of his changes. The others would come later, but were mostly to alter his senses to better perform his duties.

#tagged