Genesis - the Battle Within (Pillars of Creation Book 1) (8 page)

Heavy combat utilised a heavier suit with raised shoulder guards, and full heavy helm and body covering, employing a multitude of micro-nanoids – from within his body – to create the thicker covering. This mode was designed mainly for large battles and intense high-impact situations, protecting against even the larger more unconventional ballistics of his enemy. This required a defensive stance, however, and he used it rarely, with most missions being of quite a different nature, thanks to his unique talents.

The second mode, melee, required the most natural stance for Genesis. It had a lighter spread of nanoids, covering the body tightly for maximum speed, stealth and offensive dexterity. It allowed for more mobility and agility, giving him aptitude and enhancements to employ tactics and skills beyond the capability of any human, and which usually was displayed in his acrobatic manoeuvres and bouts of uncanny power, like he’d displayed earlier on the Skinks’ turret.

Genesis briefly glanced at his suit as he peered down the next junction, a sheer five-metre drop below him. He stepped into the hole, landing a little noisier than intended. Luck seemed to still be with him as nothing stirred or changed beneath the thin metal of the shaft.

He concentrated as he moved, taking his eyes from his armour and skirting a large intake fan with intermittent light flickering through it. He climbed into the final section and pried free a grate to gain entrance. He squeezed in and continued wriggling forward in the smaller confines, happy to move away from the pulsating brightness.

His all-black nano-swarms made for a low visibility suit in all modes, but its third mode – stealth – changed to the colour of his surroundings, which he did now as the shaft grew dark and the armour utilised its light-absorption capacity to make him appear transparent. It was a massive advantage over many types of enemy, but this mode did limit its user to a lower grade of armour overall and afforded very limited movement. For him, due to his affinity with stealth and shadow, this was not as big a deal as for others. Genesis glanced again at his inky covering. His entire body was the same dark colour as the shadows that he loved to play havoc with.

Yes … no wonder some call me the Shadow,
he brooded quietly.
All dark, dark as the night
, all except over his eyes, which gave off a light red glow, the only give-away to his presence when in hiding. Unfortunately, the light refraction process caused this area to glow slightly; the armour had to be transparent enough for the wearer to see through. Within the other modes, this red glow transformed into a low blue light, adjusting aptly for surroundings and mission types.

Genesis remembered seeing the glow for the first time, when he was sitting in the grafting room of his initial nano-infusion – the needle stabbing deep within his spine again and again, over and over, and then even more horrifically as the clamp held him in place and the needles pushed deep into his eyes. This process also allowed his religion to insert the chemicals directly through his optic nerves that would fracture his mind. The glow soon followed, as the religious conscience and entity merged and lashed him into submission as he needed to be. He squirmed now, even though he knew this was just a memory.

He remembered the process well; his whole body tightening at the thought of such pain. The religion had its new personality reshape him to help convert him fully. It was there to protect him, to instruct and guide him and ultimately shepherd him through the dark and nasty times – making him able to deal with his actions when his religion needed to act out its discipline on humanity to
lovingly
guide them. That is what they told him anyhow … in reality, it was there to protect
them
.

Genesis remembered a conversation he once had with his lost Master on this topic, and the doubt his Master had created “Is my religious personality really just for these reasons? Or is it to control me and ultimately the humans and stop their judiciary tools ever turning their backs on the one true religion and beliefs?”

The conversation flooded back to him without losing any of its clarity, causing Genesis to pause in mid crawl. Much had been done to make him this … this
heralded
being for humanity … but in the process hadn’t he lost his own humanity?

No … no matter, it was thanks to his Master’s strengthening and healing techniques, developed from his many years of injury and tutelage, that he’d come through the painful and excruciatingly long process of joining the Order. Despite Zeal’s many odd questions and teachings, the Genesis of today had finally been forged from the bleak quagmire of his past and become an Immortal Wielder of the faith. Tempered through meticulous and intense training into this deadly class of Immortal on the one hand, and the shepherd on the other, Genesis was aware that both personalities were one in this thinking.

As Zeal had foretold, a Wielder was what he was apparently destined to become and was where Zeal had said his talents had led him to be. If not for his religion, then for the honour of his Master, Genesis had vowed to keep his promise and allow his sculpting into this class, even after his original Master had gone.

Genesis remembered the first time he awoke and had to come good on this promise, almost two and a half decades later, when he was frozen for the final stages of his reconditioning process. He’d awoken from his procedure seemingly in the blink of an eye, but his Master was long gone, and he was alone as he’d looked down, head, muscles and eyes not feeling like they’d ever recover as he perceived the transformation. He wore the same suit now, which, as long as he survived, would forever remain with him. He also remembered screaming at the shock and pain of being frozen, in time and animation, for the better part of a natural human’s life.

As dictated by his Immortal Wielder class, his armour was much more advanced than when he was a mere mortal. It had been combined with his own natural talents, entwining itself into his own personality and adapting into the very core of his soul, his molecules, his DNA and the fabric of his mind, consciousness and eternal soul.

This armour was fundamentally the same as every other Immortal Wielder’s, but both unlike the others and strangely, like the others, it strengthened what was already strong and moulded around his talents to individualise itself and become unique to him. This gave each Wielder individual strengths. Zeal had also argued it gave each Immortal their own weaknesses, but this knowledge was of little use, he’d concluded at the time. And against the Elder’s teachings.

His mind peeled away as his second personality got back to shuffling him through the vents. But he continued his thinking.

His armour was mostly known for its uncanny stealth. Even in its regular melee mode it was blurred at its edges and hard to see. Genesis had noticed since he’d had his armour, that it had even seemed to
adopt
his talents; as the Elders had explained, the Rieft emanated from an Immortal’s energies, poured through the nano-infusion of their co-existence, and picked up on its host as the advanced living armour evolved, seeping the nuances into its core bio-organic programming.

Genesis knew his nanos – which made up the armour and were controlled through his Rieft talent – were imprinted with his own personality. During their union his armour had become fast like him, and adapted itself to his deadly strikes and unusual skill for warping into shadows and using deception as an ally – which it did scarily well.

His armour also, as was its primary function, allowed him to flirt with both gravity and time, and repair from almost any grievous harm; it was, all-in-all, a fitting husk for his inhuman body to reside within – his new sanction above humanity.

Genesis almost smiled as he gazed upon the black sleek covering again. This Apocalypse Mk 6 body armour was the height of engineering, physics, science and biology, and it was now completely at his beck and call, something that he’d worked hard to obtain. Many in his religion coveted the idea of one day wearing such a skin, so he guessed he should be grateful, even though the sacrifice was so high. He wondered though, if many would truly covet his place if they knew the truth behind the pain of infusion and loss of connection with his past humanity.

Beneath his fingertips he brushed over the scar on his chest. Genesis felt the absence of his regular heartbeat and, even though he was only half thinking about it, he was distantly aware of the difference and loss. His second skin, or exoskeleton as the faith explained it, was powered on a battery powerful enough to rival a tactical nuke if detonated and this was the source of their greatest sacrifice of all; Genesis absently dropped his hand as he simultaneously sprang up some facing columns of wiring.
I don’t even have a heart
anymore
; the most connected part of a human’s proof of life was missing from the Immortals. The massive power source of the ion battery replaced one of the most vital organs inside a man’s flesh, and ironically the key to his and all other Immortal’s immortality.

He paused as he parted his armour and ran a finger over the raised line of flesh, a permanent scar, a reminder of his lost connection and human life. The intense and dangerous procedure of infusing his heart with the ionised mitochondria – self-contained organelles which lived inside all human’s cells – was irreversible. They now housed the Immortal’s pre-programmed army of genomes and shield casings for the specialised and individual system of nanoids that replaced his heart’s biofeedback signature.

An Immortal’s heart was reshaped this way to fuse with their suit’s ion-core, giving them control over the Rieft and maintaining their life force. It tampered with DNA and relocated molecules, conducting them into a collision of electrons and atoms through an internal wellspring of ionic energy throughout the entire bloodstream – a power which enhanced not only physical bodies but their Rieft senses as well.
In extreme circumstances it can even saturate your physical exterior, capable of turning even the highest calibre bullets in the heat of battle
, his second personality added.

Genesis dropped his hand back to his side as he eased onto the next level, trying hard to forget the terrible procedure of the process, and slightly aggravated at his second personality’s input. Yet this attribute, he remembered, wasn’t the end of his suffering. The things the Immortals were forced to undergo went far further than just that.

Genesis felt his mind lingering, but was allowed no more time to dwell on it as he hoisted himself over a rise and slid along a longer section of the vent. Sensing his goal nearing, his second personality pushed him into submission, and Me’lina cut through his thoughts.

“Genesis we have arrived, we are now directly above the bridge.”

Genesis blinked, refocusing on the task at hand, surprised to have arrived so abruptly. Twenty-nine minutes had passed since he’d left Delta 1’s position. He’d made better time than he thought, and his reflections had made the lonely time feel shorter.

He eased around the final bend and looked for the ventilation grate that fed the precious oxygen into each room in Class 2 frigates. Just a few metres ahead he could see light filtering through the grate he was looking for. It was illuminated by bright flashing lights on the top of the ventilation shaft, signifying he was definitely above the bridge.

Good
,
I’ve made it without alerting anyone
, he thought, pleased. He mentally checked that his armour was in full stealth mode, and noticed the refracted light particles around him as he crept forward, careful not to make any sound at all. A barely audible voice floated up as he heard commotion coming through the grate.

Before he could get close enough to hear it he spotted a squad of Skinks sweeping the bridge, searching every shadow. He froze, waiting for them to pass. He slid his blade out, careful not to scrape it along the vent. A swarm of nanos, mentally controlled, reassembled into Katana, his Sacred blade. As the nanos making up his armour pushed her out from within his flesh it reminded him that these nanos were more than just religiously sanctioned machines within him. They could be retracted in and out, within his skin and organs, or manipulated into physical form, laying inside the housing units of his spine and back and throughout his entire body.

He forced them into his sixth sense, subconsciously forecasting into the future for a brief few seconds. This ability, activated only by adrenalin, allowed him to predict ahead in moments of intensity, aiding him and his brothers since forever – an evolution for the protection and enhancement of their kind. His vision showed him he was going to have to stay put as the Skinks ran scanners towards the vent’s opening and hovered there taking measurements. His AI masked his presence as he indulged his vision’s sense of danger, and he sat back on his haunches.

Genesis, unbecomingly, felt a pang of longing as he perceived this vision; it was not his strongest ability, so again he would be forced to rely on his cunning and raw physical ability. Zeal had made sure of this development also, to counter his weakness. His Master had set traps and training exercises that if not met with acutely minute observation and blinding speed, would have resulted in serious injury.

He flinched even now and gave another shiver as he remembered the more drastic of his Master’s designs; where ion blasts or laser-sealed blades came hurtling towards him from all angles. Genesis purposefully shifted his mind from the terrifying precision and art his Master had for such machinations.