Interlude 6
Ritual of Becoming
Kane's Legacy
10th October, 3024
Kamea Arano
I felt the fear and trepidation as I was escorted, with almost twenty other supplicants to what they called the Chamber of Echoes, spoken of in hushed whispers by several of the other aspirants who came from the ship. Spoken of as an honour without compare, but not without risk.
They spoke of how the experience would exaggerate dominant traits, and how one in ten perished in the attempt such was the intensity of the bonding to the Throne Mechanicum.
And I could see why there was such trepidation as we stepped into the chamber, a fear crossing all who had never beheld this hallowed place. The stone walls were actually real stone. I had to touch it to prove it to myself, but this was no simulacrum using resins or lightweight plastics, but actual substantial blocks of granite.
In alcoves sat unbound Thrones Mechanicum. Actual burning torches sat in sconces of bronze and iron. And at the centre of the chamber stood Trotter, the Sacristan that was entrusted with the sanctity of the ceremony. The temperature within the chamber was cold and I felt goosebumps rise across my skin.
"Welcome to the chamber of echoes." Trotters voice lacked any trace of the friendliness or the jocularity she had heard in Warden's presence. "You are here supplicants to be tried, and tested. Your bodies are ready, the implants necessary for connection with the machine spirit have been grafted into your very bodies and minds. But that is not enough."
I stood very still, fear creeping into my every pore.
"Now you must learn to bond with the machines, to suppress the spirit within and rise triumphant within yourself. This is an honour, a harrowing experience that you will never experience twice. These thrones do not have the storied history they may one day have, but all of them had pilots before you, perished in the fires of our homeworld."
His words cut like razors despite the fact almost half the supplicants were not from here, but were Raven Guard hired in the Inner Sphere, the message it contained had not been lost. These Thrones allegedly had a psychic residue of their previous pilots.
"You will take a seat in the Throne Mechanicum behind you." He pointed to the alcoves. "The Sacristans will make the connections and then the Torches will be doused and you will be left to the mercy of the Throne Mechanicum until morning comes. Once connected there is no out. No escape. No mercy switch. You will prove worthy. Or you will die."
"Be seated." He instructed as he moved towards me. I had never quite felt such terror before, but this jovial and friendly mechanic had seemed monstrous in the torchlight of the chamber, the way his voice echoed off of the chamber walls.
"Please Lady Kamea, be seated, I apologise if I have scared you much, but please take it all entirely seriously. These machines make a very literal connection with your mind, you will be remade by the experience into a much more formidable woman than you already are, but you must find the strength to overcome the visions and hallucinations that it induces, or your mind will be burned out by the experience." Trotter said beginning to make the more mild connections.
"You're being done a great honour. Warden has chosen to imprint on his Uncles Throne Mechanicum, as such he suggested that you deserve a Throne with true nobility behind it, and Kane was a Duke of our world."
He looked into her eyes a little sadly. "But my lady, i'm afraid, like the other Aspirants, it is time for you to meet the Ghost within the machine."
The last connections were made and I felt everything change. The Thrones mechanicum all began to power up and, as promised, the Sacristans extinguished the torches and left the chamber, sealing them in absolute darkness behind them.
There was a light chuckle from one of the other Inner Sphere born. "Well don't I feel right silly. Like when my sister tri..." His words trickled off and I understood why. Whispering in my mind trickling up from the implants in her brain. From the throne mechanicum.
I felt the stride of titanic feet, the flash of blinding weapons fire that tore across the world. Rage against the faithful. Fire, flame and death, the smell of burning corpses. I tasted the ash of a blazing forest and whimpered.
Across the chamber I heard sobbing from the man who spoke before. Someone else was muttering and I jumped in my skin as a piercing shriek came from a Combine woman. And then I was lost to the machine.
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Trotter looked at me with mild disapproval. "A nasty thing you've done, I understand you need to build allies, but not warning her of the mental side effects for loyalty is dangerous. But compounding it by giving her your Throne Mechanicum. Yours is the only mind that had ever bonded with that machine, she will experience every battle and emotional state you've had since you were first given the Templar."
"I know Trotter, but I am beyond desperate here, as much as I can use the influence it will give me over her, it was also the only way to guarantee the sanctity of the Legacy. If I have to nuke a planet to maintain its secrecy I damned well will, and i'd wager the missile battery has a store of atomic heads in the main magazine. " I said turning to the screen showing the chamber of Echoes, the pain and agony they were all going through as it rewrote their minds.
"I understand, but I can't accept it, if you pull a stunt like this again, you may have to find a new Sacristan, I can't consider this course of action honourable or condone it, now tell me about this Raju you're risking all of this to save?"
"My Mentor with the Aurigan people, he took me in and educated me about the Inner Sphere, taught me quite a bit, and encouraged not advertising my full capabilities, not until I had the power to project it." I sat down in a control chair as Trotter did the same opposite me.
"Did you find anything bonding with your uncles throne?"
I shook my head. "Hints only." Another scream turned my attention to the screen. Few of the Aspirants were deep in the trance yet, but Kamea appeared to be one of them. The thermal camera revealing them all. "What about pilots for the Armigers, this lot are not suited for that anymore, the implants aren't compatible with the Helm Mechanicum."
"Well, go and get some sleep my lord. I have a vigil to keep. What are we going to do with the failed aspirants?" Trotter asked as I stood up.
"Void burial. Morale is bad enough, we need to be careful with our people. They're in a fragile state." I left, the door closing behind me.
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Kamea Arano
The plunge into another battle was like a dousing of cold water, struggling to survive I fought to keep the scraps of myself together as I experienced the hells that the Warden had fought through. His triumphs and imprints of minor memory, concern for his people and a depthless ambition. I felt pieces of it snake their way into my own psyche as I imprinted on the Throne and fought for every scrap of self-identity I had.
I could never doubt that the machines had spirits ever again. I felt the rise and fall of the incendiary rage within it as it unleashed thermal cannon fire or a battery of missiles. The cold rage as he stomped through the battlefield like a god weapons fire capable of wrecking my Kintaro deflecting off of expertly rotated ion shield tracking before the offender was rendered unto molten metal.
I felt the music course through my soul as the Warden blared it through speakers during battle. I heard his speeches and saw his actions to take the Argo.
Hours upon hours upon what felt like days, one battle blending into another, emotion rising and falling like the tide, always, always prefaced by a depthless concern for his people, an ambition that would shatter mountains if it could be made manifest, and a simmering rage whenever he entered battle, a simmer that could rise to a conflagration with little notice. I fought and resisted as pieces of that settled into me, becoming part of me as I felt a connection to his house. Our people were alike. But there was time to help my people. To save the Aurigan people from the same fate his own had suffered.
With a primal scream I snarled out the declaration. "I AM LADY KAMEA ARANO AND I WILL NOT SUCCUMB. YOU WILL BEND TO MY WILL!" With that the machine spirits began to subside, the memories still there but almost flowing as if into a box. I sat in the dark, the memories bubbling under the surface until finally the sacristans returned, lighting the torches one after another.
The chamber was no less frightening now when the light returned but I had never been so relieved to see naked flame. Trotter walked to each of the alcoves in turn. Finally he came before me. "I am glad you endured Lady Kamea, it would have been less than ideal if you had failed the trial."
I saw what he meant when one of the sacristans brought one of the other supplicants from their alcove, burst blood vessels across the entire head. Burn marks where his implants joined his skull. "What happened?"
"Failure. If one isn't strong enough to suppress the machine spirit it takes hold and overloads the mind, flooding it with itself... burning them out. Nothing can cure that sort of wound." The Sacristan said with a worried look, checking her connections, implants and examining the display on the throne. With surprise I found I was now capable of understanding some of the text present, though its meaning was incomprehensible without the necessary context.
"May I see the machine I have paid this price to earn?" I asked and he nodded. "Please, come with me."
Halls and corridors twisted and I doubted I could find my way back to that chamber again without guidance. Other Sacristans took the remainder of the group for new trials. But after almost half an hour we found ourselves back on the deck where the Knights stood and I faced up at a Knight that was being painted in the colours of the Aurigan Coalition. One arm appeared to be a massive rotary cannon, the other looked like a massive AC/20. On its shoulders a turret-like mount stood with a pair of autocannons on it facing the ceiling. The chest weapon was completely alien to my eyes. "The Justified Redemption." He bowed to the machine. "It has a moderately mellow machine spirit."
"Moderately mellow?" I asked cocking my head.
"They are war machines. Their spirits will never be overly mellow. They are made for war and will never feel content at peace. Which is why I bring you other warnings, the process as you know has an effect on your psyche, but, the more you pilot the machine, the less you will ever feel complete separated from it. And bound to the Throne Mechanicum, even when physically disconnected there is a lingering noospheric bonding. You'll sense the call of the machine when it feels war is near," Trotter said handing me a datapad with information on it, "I've assigned a Sacristan to your staff with several Sacristan minor to maintain, repair and rearm your machine. We will of course keep you supplied as best as we are able. But I will be there to personally observe your first direct connections with the Redemption."
"How close did I come to dying like the others last night Trotter?" I asked, worried about the answer.
"You didn't. Which is also why I suspect that Kane gave you his old command throne. His was unimpressed before he was imprinted on it. Thus that Throne Mechanicum had never had a pilot die or experience grievous injury. Most who fail those trials do so because of impressed death-echoes on the machine spirit causing a psycho-somatic effect on the body. In experiencing the death, their brains lacked the strength of self to separate the events. So they die." Trotter clearly was having difficulty with something before sighing.
"Is there a problem?"
"No. Not yet. But we're going to take this ship into battle, and we can't afford anybody to know it exists." He said and I felt that moments doubt, "Circumstances may force us to murder uninvolved people for the simple crime of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. And the thought eats at me, as I know it does at Warden."
I knew that Trotter was both right and wrong at the same time. Warden had a strong belief in honour. But to protect his people he'd do anything, may even have done, and he'd feel no remorse over anything he had to walk over to do that service for them.
And neither would I.