Shouts and screams surround me as demons assault both Heralds and Machine-Spirits.

  I hit the emergency purge button, hoping to shut down all the power and cut the ritual. The button does nothing and my mechadendrites rapidly disassemble the button to see what is wrong with it.

  Cursing, I realise that while the Machine-Spirits are reporting that the emergency button is functional, it isn’t actually connected to the control panel at all. All the dedicated electronics that are responsible for emergency procedures have been removed.

  It’s tricky to interact with the emergency systems when they’ve been gutted and it implies there is other sabotage our hasty checks have missed, so I am leery about wiring myself into the hacked off cables and directly interfacing with the controls.

  Instead I secure the access that I do have, extending my micro-gellar field away from my skin and over the emergency control panel, hoping to stop the demons flooding the genetorium and its systems from getting control of the fusion reactor. I’ve no idea if they want to blow it up, or stop me from shutting it down, but I absolutely have to keep them out of it.

  The Machine-Spirits are struggling against the demons and I realise I will have to enter the noosphere to fight them off myself if I want to keep control. The micro-gellar field is weakening them, but it’s not enough.

  With great reluctance, I plug myself directly into the control panel, bypassing most of my safeties against digital corruption so that I can actually fight against the demons without automatically being cut off.

  My wards flare and I slip into the system without any demons noticing, my repurposed Eldar ghost helm keeping me hidden for now.

  At the same time, I gaze into the Warp and examine the ritual. It’s an impressive piece of sorcery and it looks like the ritual has been set up so that if the nodes are destroyed, it will compromise the ritual’s containment. Once the containment is breached, the area of weakened Materium boundaries will spread. Demons will manifest in a much larger area, possibly as far as the Breaking Yards, but the sorcerer who set up the ritual will lose control over the demons, making them less coordinated and hopefully easier to fight. Neither option is ideal.

  Each rune mark is an ever changing puzzle that must be disentangled to shut down the ritual safely. Cutting the power would also work, but with the controls sabotaged, and who knows what else, we risk blowing up Dying Light with all of us on it should I forcefully cut off power to the ritual.

  I decide that letting the ritual spread is far worse than letting the sorcerer keep control of their summoned minions, but I can’t access the rune marks to disable them as I need to stay here and chase the demons out of the noosphere. Alpia and Red Knoll’s navigators will have to do it for me.

  We could disconnect power cables all over the vessel, rather than shut down all the power plants, but that will likely take far longer than unravelling the ritual as large parts of the void ship would have to be dismantled to find every connection, which isn’t as simple as it sounds. We have no access to Dying Light’s wiring diagrams as someone has burnt all the manuals in engineering and the cultists are squatting next to the prime cogitator. There’s no guarantee that the diagrams are correct either.

  A ship as old as this will have had tens of thousands of repairs done on it, by thousands of different people, all of whom may or may not have consulted the manual before running and splicing new cables. All sorts of sins can happen during temporary repairs too, especially during combat, that may end up being not so temporary.

  We just don’t have the labour for fixing that level of mess while fighting off Demons, Cultists, Tyranids, and engineered mutants.

  I reach out to Alpia telepathically with a series of codes then add, “Sweetpea, how are you doing?”

  Alpia responds with her own one time code, then transmits, “Dad! What’s going on? Something is battering at my mind and I don’t like it!”

  I reach out and envelop Alpia with my soul, chasing away the predators circling her mind. She relaxes a little but remains on guard.

  I send, “There was a ritual hidden in the power systems. I need you to gather my bodyguards and as many additional Heralds as you Bedwyr and Domhnall can spare, then head to each ritual node and disable it. You will likely need to solve each one by yourself as I am going to be occupied killing demons in the noosphere so we don’t all get blown up.”

  “OK?”

  “Don’t contact me unless you absolutely have to. You never know what might be listening or what might try to distort our messages. I’ll try and get the navigators to help you as well. Be confident and keep up your prayers!”

  “I will!”

  “Good. Now don’t be startled, I’m going to bless you.”

  I send a metaphorical bucket load of souls to the Emperor, then draw on his power, beseeching him to bless my daughter with the wit, courage, and fortitude to complete her task.

  The whole ship fills with hideous screeches as the Emperor’s power brushes up against the foul ritual, then condenses on Alpia, suffusing her with power. I withdraw my own protection and focus on slapping down any demon in the Warp that tries to manifest nearby or take a bite out of me.

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  I don’t have enough souls to ask the Emperor to destroy the ritual and seal the breach that would create. It would be a waste of power too as I can do far more with purchases from E-SIM than I can with miracles. As a last resort, we could keep killing demons until I have enough souls to pay for the miracle, but I don’t know how many that would be, and I don’t want to put so much faith in an unpredictable strategy.

  Bedwyr turns up with a War Forged, who connects me to Domhnall, Verlin, and Raphael. I fill them all in on what we are facing, how I am dealing with it, and the aid I will require.

  Domhnall agrees to secure each of the eighty-one rune marks and create a safe area for Alpia and the navigators to work in once they arrive.

  Verlin has reached the prime cogitator, but hasn’t breached the room yet. He was trying to wear them down while looking for another way in, hoping to minimise casualties, but now he is going to assault them and destroy everything he can. He agrees to have two of the four navigators assist. The other two navigators are too young to be of any use. In return, I reach out and bless them as well. Hopefully the navigators aren’t too shocked.

  Raphael says my specialists have arrived and that they hope to get the final bulkhead between him and the bridge open within the next six hours.

  Bedwyr will leave a squad of power armoured Heralds with me, then take everyone that he can to protect Alpia and the two navigators as they move between each rune mark.

  As we strategise, a part of my mind is in the noosphere. My avatar manifests in a twisting maze of endless brick tunnels. Junk data floats over my feet: a mix of dead rats, styrofoam cups, and plastic bags made up of tiny ones and zeros, in every conceivable colour within the electromagnetic spectrum is suspended within an oily slick. Jagged bolts of lightning flashing through it rippling outwards with every step I take as my presence interacts with the motive force of the blessed machine.

  All around me, Machine-Spirits dash to and fro, from tiny moths and majestic butterflies to mechanical monkeys and brass grox.

  The bricks are covered in bright blue arcane script, an almost endless number of equations that hint at long lost technologies and powerful spells. The symbols squirm while under observation, as if to glimpse upon them will unravel the universe to naught but void and dust.

  My depth of knowledge is great enough for me to notice that each equation is subtly distorted and designed to mislead the reader enough to think that they have arrived at the only answer that matters, yet setting themselves up for destruction should they make use of the knowledge.

  A viscous fog, filled with churning, monstrous faces and twisted creatures roils and bubbles through the tunnels, striking at the Machine-Spirits, corroding their gold and silver auras with rusty knives and sticky flames.

  I turn my volkite incinerator, or rather its digital representation, upon the insidious demons. Blue-white light flashes along the tunnel, flowing around the Machine-Spirits like water and burning away the demonic vapours like the morning sun.

  The tunnel thunders with the discharge of the weapon and for a brief moment the tunnel is free of flashing numbers and ominous whispers.

  I cannot be everywhere at once so I spool up my Advanced E-War Suite and unleash the greatest cultural blight upon the demons that the English have ever conceived.

  Garden Gnomes.

  Thousands of red capped, black eyed, stumpy porcelain figures appear all around me, hanging off the joints between the bricks. Polkadot dungarees cover their flabby, wrinkled bodies and their tiny fists grip bronze and obsidian knives. Each lumpy face is contorted with fury and hate. The gnomes flash their needle-like teeth as they bay and cry, then charge down the pipes, golden pentagrammic wards swirling around them.

  Everytime a demon attacks a gnome, it freezes, turning into an imobile statue with a friendly smile and a small shovel. The myriad demons smash and hurl the little figures. The gnomes’ wards flare but they don’t move, forcing the demons to ignore them and defend themselves from the gnomes that are still animated. The moment a demon’s attention wavers, the frozen gnomes activate again and hurl themselves and the ever changing clouds, stabbing the Tzeentch aspect Chaos Spawn in the back and pulling them out of the clouds, hacking them apart.

  I created the gnomes to chase off any excessively nosey Tech-Priests who try to grab knowledge above their authority. They are immensely disturbing and few test themselves against my defences twice. Even so, the gnomes are the least of my digital soldiers. It might seem odd, but they’re part of my suite of pre-prepared programs and I don’t want to create something on the fly and risk untested designs when the stakes are so high unless I have no choice.

  Following the gnomes, I run along the tunnels, sending out sensor pings, searching for corrupted gateways and functions.

  The noosphere is similar to the Warp in that everyone interprets it differently, their subconscious creating images to assist the mind in navigating the great sea of data and connections. With a bit of programming, one can control the interpretation layer before presenting it to the user, allowing for custom environments for work and entertainment.

  Right now though, someone is messing with me, someone who knows my secret, forcing me to run through the sewer tunnels that killed me. I try channelling a small amount of the Emperor’s power, hoping to wash away the corruption in the interpretation layer, but my control is not good enough and many components are immediately burnt out, forcing me to back track and reroute.

  Barely a second has passed since I entered the noosphere and I have just started my conversation with Alpia.

  The Machine-Spirits cluster around me and I touch up their code, reinforcing their firewalls, increasing the brightness of their aura. Many though are already damaged and I cut away the bad sectors with slices of my mechadendrites. I rebuild the Machine-Spirits into smaller forms that may, one day, grow into something more mighty and resilient. Once recovered, the Machine-Spirits strike back at the intruders.

  Others are less fortunate, their loyalty twisted and turned, their forms a stuttering, mangled mockery that flail and grow within the tunnels. Their bloated forms block my path and I burn them away. Some are set upon by the gnomes with shovels and knives, their remains chucked into the stagnant flow of data to be churned and eroded by the constant streams of lightning shooting through the bottom of the tunnel.

  Soon I come across a great shaft of bone. Thousands of other tunnels empty into it. Machine-Spirits pour from the tunnels into the shafts and fight with the twisted birds and manta ray-like demons. The winged demons dive and swoop, striking and screeching. Their attacks twist and shatter many Machine-Spirits, turning their broken code against their companions.

  Millions of gnomes spawn around me, their dungarees morphing into squirrel suits. The gnomes whizz across the open expanse of the shaft. They struggle against these larger demons, but with E-SIM backing me up I have no shortage of processing power, and for now, my tiny programs hack apart everything they come across.

  Leaning on my Rapid Decision Engine I calculate the most likely path to ports connecting the control panel to the genatorium and the rest of the ship, then step into the air, letting the current of data flowing through the shaft hide me as a zoom upwards, rainbow smoke swarming all around me.

  Warhammer 40k Lexicanum, , and . I've also enjoyed opinion pieces such as: , The via Gamespot, and . While not strictly 40k, they are good for inspiration and IRL explanations.