unfinishedlibrary | late night reading

Entry tags:

late night reading

Who: Konrad Curze, Kaiisteron, later on: you?
What: Making Mistakes
When: sometime after 'night', it's obligatory (several days before Storytime)
Where: Somewhere in the Stacks, it's a big library. Probably time-out later. Maybe worse places.
Content warnings: Violence, daemons, primarchs, gratuitous bodily harm, the problems with uncontrolled powers, making a mess.

Sooner or later, someone in power is going to regret the group of misfits that have been taken here as Editors.

Like Konrad. He's been more or less behaving since arriving, aside from commandeering ALL cardstock of a particular color and texture, collecting singing bowls of a dozen sizes and leaving them in little clusters in the kitchen and bunks, and leaving a trail of fine, tiny glitter for several days on everything he touched. His efforts to find a way out of the Library are ongoing and unfruitful, prowling the Stacks without bothering to sleep more than once in several days.

But this time his path through the endless shelves of books is for a different purpose in simply putting as much distance between himself and the other people dragged here as he could. He has no control over when his 'gifts' chose to strike and drown him in the worst outcomes possible, but he does know when it's coming, and here there's no locked room with reinforced doors to make use of. Distance will have to do. There is a point, in the rending pain of things that haven't even happened yet, where Curze can no longer tell where he is now in favor of where he will be then.

It makes for a pathetic sight, something his size on the floor with his head in his hands in the shadows between towering shelves scaled towards his height and not human average, back pressed against the cold rows of books.

The sharp scent of blood is probably fine too. Ignore it. Everything's fine here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Oh, they want to compare grey hairs and the other? Being Curze's brother is not exactly a picnic.

He shoots Curze a look, because he absolutely is a danger to the people he is meant to protect. The longer the Legion stays deployed and away from Baal, the better, at least for that. "So long as we are here, yes. But even you, if you turn on my Legion," he would not let Curze do to them what Horus has already tried. "...you would not succeed." He's not claiming he would win, but that his men would not suffer while he was there to stop Curze or his Night Lords.

"If you are not some servitor, you would understand the need for one's word of honor." He trusts no words, unless there is an oath of honor behind them. Talk is cheap, after all. Someone's honor, though, is priceless. Especially right now, with what his Legion has suffered back home.

His feathers flare and then flatten, because he has absolutely no poker face when it comes to these things. "I will accept this...device, on those terms." He's not happy about it, but the Imperium did not make a habit of arranging itself for his, or Curze's happiness.

Oh," it says. "Okay, maybe I am like a...ugh...servitor. But we're called constructs." It pauses. Shifts to the side a bit, so that it's facing the books more than them. Admitting to this next part is...uncomfortable.

"I'm a SecUnit. Specifically. A Security Unit," it says. Its face is doing a thing. Like it expects the reaction to this information to be...bad.

(Also, it's just going to continue to ignore the whole spat that's still going on between Curze and Sanguinius right now. It does not want to get in the middle of whatever the hell is going on there.)

Then it has to take a moment to try and figure out, what, exactly, is an 'oath of honour'. 'Honour' was a word that got used in serials sometimes, but whenever it did it always seemed to be a rather nebulous and contradictory concept. But trying to analyse it...maybe what Sanguinius really wanted was some kind of guarantee?

"You mean like a contract?" it says. Contracts it understood.

It is for the best to ignore all of this going on. None of it is good for anyone. "I somehow doubt your sons will suddenly decide to begin flaunting Imperial law, brother." Well, aside from that fiddly little bit about the edict of Nikaea, but Konrad's going to verify that one before excoriating anyone over it. It seemed like such an unfathomably terrible ruling, surely the Emperor wouldn't do any such thing. That is almost certainly meant to be reassuring.

It probably isn't, but he tried. Besides which it's almost certain the Space Wolves would be sent to do the chastising, not the Night Lords.

More importantly for this very moment, SecUnit is indeed a servitor. A far more advanced one, by Curze's estimation. In fact, if it weren't for certain markers of some sort of organic components, he'd wonder if this weren't one of the fabled Abominable Intelligences. It's far more emotive than any servitor was.

"Ah, that explains some things." The paler of the two doesn't seem phased at ALL by this revelation, though it's clear SecUnit expects one. And it's also clear SecUnit doesn't much like looking at them directly.

Curze ... is going to sit back down, right next to one of the bits of armor Sanguinius had yet to reclaim, picking it up. Rest would be nice but he didn't trust himself to be sleeping around others right now. "Telling humans what you are made for may make it easier to do that job, unless you don't wish to here." But the drone that's now going to be his babysitter suggested it did, in fact, want to keep doing security.

He's trying to get his composure back. It's...not going so hot. But he can claw back some of his conversational abilities. Or try to. "I have already mentioned our brother's actions." That's all he feels comfortable saying right now. Curze might think nothing was wrong, but the Warmaster certainly did.

"Honor is," how does one define honor? "Honor is that which allows you to know your duty, and to carry you forward, despite loss and setback." Something like that.

And Curze is correct: the Emperor would send his executioners, Russ's Legion, after his own. Was it better to be targeted by the unholy Ka'bandha than by one's own brother?

Servitor, 'we're called'...there's some space in there. "What do you wish to be called, then?" Because 'SecUnit' sounded like a title, or rank, like reiver.

But that's a valid comment, by his too-perceptive brother. "Why would you hide your nature? Is there something shameful in being one destined to protect others?" Maybe think about the present company before answering that.

"You can call me SecUnit." Maybe it was more of a title, but it was how it generally preferred to be addressed. And its actual name was private. "Except in front of the humans. I've been going by Rin."

Meanwhile, Sanguinius's explanation of 'honour' wasn't doing anything at all to convince SecUnit that it wasn't a nebulous and contradictory concept. What the hell does that even mean? Its Act Like A Human code has it make a frustrated huff. "So what, like my function? My core programming? If you want me to fuck with my programming, I am not doing that."

And then the questions it really doesn't want to answer come.

"Because we aren't made to protect all humans," it says, and it sounds...tired. Tired, and sad. "We're made to protect the corporations and their clients. We're dangerous. And if we're rogue, that's worse, because everyone thinks that an ungoverned SecUnit will start killing everybody."

Horus doesn't, as yet, get to decide what is and is not legal in the Imperium, as far as Curze is concerned.

The SecUnit is named SecUnit. That's like calling a drone a drone or.. ... well, it's not up to him. Sanguinius' definition of honor is probably COMPLETELY TRUE. He has nothing to do with any of it, but he watches others and how they act.. "Some also take honor to be a personal intentional decision to act according to a code you've chosen for yourself. Nothing enforces it but your own decisions." He leans back carefully, dark eyes narrowed on an indeterminate part of the shelf on the other side of the aisle from himself. "The decision to follow through with your own word even if it's inconvenient or dangerous, is seen as a precious commodity in some circles. I find it idiotic."

Which wouldn't really bode well for Konrad saying earlier that he wouldn't tell anyone what SecUnit is, would it.

Much like Sanguinius' difficulty with accepting his dietary requirements don't seem like a problem to him, this matter of rogue SecUnits might not be either, and he considers it. Servitors always obeyed their owners, not humanity in general. Did all of humanity know that? "Does an ungoverned SecUnit start killing everybody, or is that an individual variable?"

It's nice to not have the subject be him. He's going to pursue this until he's left alone.

Horus's betrayal hit Sanguinius hard, because, after all, when he had been found he had been trained by Horus himself. He was the first, and closest, relationship Sanguinius had ever had. His reproach...hurt.

"Honor is what raises us above the xenos, who know none. It is what redeems violence, and makes our own deaths less...awful." Even Meros's. Especially Meros's. He blinks the thought away, discomfited.

SecUnit, unless humans were present. That meant that the SecUnit, itself, was hiding something from others. What a fun little trio they were that way.

He's trying to follow the SecUnit's story, but it doesn't quite make sense. Yet. "So you only protect certain people if they are part of these corporations. But no one here fits that definition. So?" How has SecUnit appointed itself in charge here?

Ironically, SecUnit might actually agree with Curze, at least partially. You should do what you say you're going to do, but not if it turns out that would get someone killed. Sometimes a changing situation forced a change in approach.

But that doesn't mean it goes around lying about its intentions.

"I do what I say I'm going to do," it says. "I don't know what else you expect from me."

Then, it pauses when asked about whether rogue SecUnits start killing everyone. Instinctually, part of it feels like the answer to that is yes. And yet...it knows of four rogue SecUnits now, including itself. Not one of them began their freedom with murder. "Individual, I guess."

Its answer to Sanguinius is much more definitive.

"No. Not anymore," it says. It pauses. Stares at the books on the shelf. "The Company doesn't own me now. I choose my clients."

Though Konrad doesn't actually say anything else on the topic of honor, the low disagreeable noise he makes marks his opinions on it pretty well already. Most of his family swore by it.

The only ones that didn't, to memory, were ... Angron and Alpharius, which might not bode well now that he mulled it over a little. "I don't think there's expectations yet, SecUnit. Merely ... explanations. My brother has very high ideals sometimes." All the time. All the time. "If you keep your word then I'm certain he will put the label of 'honorable' on you and be content."

More or less. Aside from what is certainly going to be rankled pride over little tiny servoskulls being involved, and Curze's insistence on not having his brother glued to his side for the forseeable future.

"So it's human paranoia over actual threat." That seems to settle it enough for him. SecUnits weren't likely to start mass slaughtering people, SecUnits ordinarily are controlled outright like normal servitors but some manage to get free and ... go back to their once normal lives? Did they recall what they were before they became SecUnits?

... Questions for another time. "It is likely a good thing that someone's keeping tabs on the safety of others here," he concludes. "Even if it isn't by the methods our own legions rely on."

"And who, exactly, are your clients?" Because Sanguinius is guessing...not him. The word 'client' sounds so...transactional. Truly, honor was the superior motivator.

Curze, you know he's right.

"I see no problem in expecting the best of oneself to perform one's duty."

It's his turn to make a disgruntled noise, his hair sliding forward to cover his face as he clasps one of the vambraces on his armor around his forearm. "As the archivists would ask, however, 'who watches the watchmen?'" He could say it in High Gothic but he didn't want to give the SecUnit a key to decode their formal language. If only Curze knew Baalite....

Sanguinius wasn't wrong; it was transactional. That's how everything worked in the Corporation Rim. But even if it didn't belong to Corporates anymore, that was still the terminology it was used to.

"My humans," it answers, almost reflexively. "Uh. They're from a non-corporate polity. And sometimes other humans, if we have a contract." It had been about to start a contract with ART's crew. But then...it ended up here. "But they're...not here."

Then an unimpressed look crosses its face. Who watches the watchmen?

"Other SecUnits. Bots. HubSystem. Construct Technicians. Corporate managers. Local Security," it says flatly. (In other words: lots of people watched the watchmen. Constantly. All of the time. There was a reason it had to get so good at hacking to survive.)

Curze considers blind terror to be the best motivator. Maybe that's why he's so comfortable with this situation. SecUnit seemed afraid of its secret being found out.

This time he remains silent, with his purloined bit of Sanguinius' armor still in hand, letting the edges of weariness have their way with his willingness to do anything. It sounded rather like normal checks and balances for any civilian organization, to him. That assumption of authority here has been made ... is reasonable. Getting around one's programming that much might be too big an ask. A servitor programmed to guard is going to want to guard.

"And of those," And excuse him for tripping over the strange words, "Bots and Hubsystems and...corporate whatevers, are any here?" Because if someone is used to being monitored and watched over, and is suddenly...not? What is to stop them from abusing their abilities?

"Does it offend you that no one trusts you, when you have given us no reason to trust you?" Another use of honor, and one's word. A pledge stood in until deeds could backstop them.

There was a reason, he thought, that his Father had created more than one Primarch, more than one son. They were to complement each other, and, if necessary, check each other. Left unchallenged, what would happen?

He notices Curze's silence, and the way he's holding on to Sanguinius's plastron. "At some point, you will enlighten me as to why you were disrobing me. I'm sure it's an...interesting story." Why were you trying to get Sanguinius naked, Curze? You're not off the hook in this conversation.

"There aren't," it says. "I've looked. Whatever security system they have in place here, they've hidden it somehow." It was sure that there was a security system of some kind, however. There'd have to be. Otherwise, how else would they know to put people on the fucking boat whenever they damaged the library?

"No," it says. Except it comes out rather...forcefully. "I'm not offended. I've only put myself at risk by telling you what I am, and how to disable my drones' inputs, giving up two of them to help your friend not fucking murder anybody by accident. It's fine. Whatever. I don't care. Think whatever the fuck you want."

(It did fucking care.)

(This was, in fact, incredibly obvious.)

While it's absolutely certain Konrad is paying attention to every single thing both of them say or do, every shifting moment, every change of tone or even scent carefully filed away and made note of, it looks rather like he's halfway to dozing off.

If there was a bit more screaming in the distant background it'd almost feel like being onboard his flagship. Meaningless arguments over nothing. Black eyes slit back open when addressed again. "Brother, there is a point in time where castigating a servitor for doing what it is designed to do will only annoy you and frustrate the servitor. Or SecUnit as the case might be. I trust machine spirits and their adjacent technologies to do what they are meant to do. You were too heavy, the power armor needed to come off."

Then they were going to drag his feathery ass to the nurse's office! Assuming they could find it.

It shouldn't surprise him that the servitor is, well, not getting his point. If all of this is expected to keep Curze from 'murdering anybody', who is to stop the rogue servitor?

"And you think we are not similarly putting ourselves at risk trusting you?" At least grant him that much. Entering a bond of trust by spying on others is a hard sell, and the SecUnit isn't even trying to sell it, with anything other than brute force. It's like talking to Dorn. Or Russ, but Russ would have ended the conversation fifteen minutes ago, probably with his fists. "I would rather a bond based on trust than one based on mutual blackmail."

There's no use appealing to Curze to agree with that point, but he could at least state his preference. Having already been betrayed once already, he's not keen to enter into another opportunity.

But, fine. He spread his palms in surrender. "But it will be as you say, because I have little choice." Also he's tired of arguing. He would fight till the end of time if Curze had shown any interest in it, but it was hard to fight when those you were fighting for seemed resigned to fiddling with your armor.

"You could have left me. I was no threat to anyone." He would recover. Obviously.

"Yes. That's why I told you how to disable the audio inputs." It was, as much as it could in this situation, trying to give them privacy or whatever. Give them something to show that it wasn't their enemy. But Sanguinius didn't seem to care about its attempts. He wasn't ever going to trust it. (He wasn't ever going to trust a SecUnit.)

Whatever. It was fine.

"And you don't need me anymore. The drone's been programmed. I've disconnected from both of them." It wasn't lying about that. Now instead of Drones One to Twelve, it just had Drones One to Ten. The newly designated Monitor Drone would now keep position above Curze's head, while Alert Drone would remain inert until such time as it received a signal from Monitor drone.

The last visible drone, still hovering in the air above all of them, leaves with SecUnit as it starts walking away.

It needed to pace around the stacks now, and watch Sanctuary Moon until it calmed down.

People can be trusted best with blackmail involved! "Take some comfort in its decision that should these little devices detect anything gone wrong, the response isn't to try to interfere itself, but alert you so you can instead. You get your wish of risking severe injury without needing to be my constant companion." That's... what this is about, right?

Isn't it?

Probably he should say 'thank you' or something to SecUnit for .. not shooting either of them earlier, or other such pleasantries but it really doesn't occur to him at all that he should thank a servitor. Or a SecUnit. They're not people. Not really. "You frightened it away, Sanguinius." How much of that reproachful tone is an act and how much is genuine is very difficult to tell. "It was willing to help me take you to whatever passes for a medicae's bay here, no questions asked. I suspect it means well."

"The servitor seems convinced it could take either of us in combat." Honestly, that stung a little. He was a Primarch, the best of his legion and some argued the best warrior in the Imperium. Someone with little...forearm augment guns? Take him? It was an absurdity.

"I had tried to befriend it earlier and it ran away that time as well." So it's not Sanguinius's crabbiness that did it. Just, apparently, Sanguinius himself. For someone who is used to being universally adored, it was an unfamiliar and not-very-nice feeling.

He gives a wry snort of what might have been laughter. "What has happened that YOU are the trusting one and I suspicious?" He knew half of that answer, and it came from the blood soaked ground of Signus Prime.

He's not getting back up if he can avoid it. He'll just. Stay here til the lights brighten back up and drive him to find a dimmer refuge. He stretches one leg out slowly, then the other. It's an ungainly sprawl, but he's never been one for appearances. "I don't trust it with everything. I trust it to do what it is designed to do, and I trust it is more concerned about its own secrets than ours."

Subtlety wasn't exactly one of Sanguinius' skills. He could hide with the best, but lying about it? Deliberate deceptions? "Maybe it thinks it can defeat us. But its first impulse was to help you, when you were.. taking up a fair amount of floor space." Curze's smile is a brief flash of sharp teeth and little more. Usually his brother preferred to find the helpers. The ones that blindly ran towards trouble instead of away from it.

They're probably too used to the awe mortals normally have. "Imagine it has .. spent its entire existence, dealing only with mortals and other servitors. And then here's you, a winged giant. You might be terribly intimidating, you know. Most sensible creatures would run."

It feels weird to have this conversation with his brother at such a height difference, so after a moment, Sanguinius squats down, his wings spread to not buckle against the ground. "Servitors don't have secrets." He's not entirely convinced it's a servitor. Or at least, not MERELY a servitor.

Perhaps it is some tech adept that liked his humanity so much that he kept the human appearance...to absolute contradistinction to every other member of the Adeptus Mechanicus Sanguinius had ever seen.

"I am the intimidating one?" Does Curze need a mirror?

Actually, that might help with getting him to tidy up a bit. But seriously, the golden armored, white winged CLEAN Primarch is the intimidating one while the one who reeks of an abbatoir is not? "He might need recalibration," Sanguinius suggests, dryly.

"Not the ones who serve us. This one is more advanced than we're used to, clearly. I don't follow their designs and improvements. Perturabo might." It could be a new thing from Mars, keeping more of the original mind so a servitor's better capable of doing more complex tasks. So long as it never slipped right into true completely autonomous artificial intelligence, no laws would be violated, and SecUnit is far too lifelike to be pure machine.

The plastron, now thoroughly streaked in either blood or traces of very fine glitter, is waggled lightly. Curze will not change anything simply because there's a mirror. "You met it first, yes? You are the baseline by which we are all now judged. If it was intimidated by you before, it would still be now. And yet it still tried to defend you, wished to find you an apothecary when you didn't wake."

A bold little servitor, as far as he's concerned. That kind of spirit isn't something someone can program in. Right? "Machine though it may mostly be, clearly its human spirit remains intact."

Things SecUnit might find personally, deeply insulting: that.

"We left the Dark Age of Technology millennia ago, and for good reason." So SecUnit may be 'advanced' but that wasn't necessarily good. Advanced Abominable Intelligence? Not something to trust.

"I did nothing to frighten it, then." Because, this time? Yes, coming out of a faint to loom over it, ready to rip its throat out? THAT was a little intimidating. Sanguinius would grant that. But the first time? He had just asked polite casual questions. "It seemed like, well, some of my men before the thirst takes hold." Shut down, in some internal war he could not see and could not help them fight.

He reaches, wearily, for the plastron. It was alarming how much of his armor had been removed, with him still unconscious. That was another concern for another time. "Perhaps it would be better if you were the first it had met." He's not pleased with how he's acted in this, at all, but looking back on it, he can't see another way.

Another minute or so and Sanguinius wouldn't have had any armor on and they'd have been hauling him back to the door that changes rooms every time it opened, leaving the shining regalia in the aisles as unwanted and in the way. "I keep overestimating how much the rest of you truly understand fear." Then again none of the others weaponized it the way he did. "What you believe is alarming and what it does, are obviously different things. Consider it from your prey's perspective to better gauge how they'll run when panicked."

He relinquishes the bit of armor; good luck getting it clean. The blood will come off, but the glitter? ....Might not.

Ever.

Unlike SecUnit though, he has no problem watching people directly, and Sanguinius is being scrutinized. Carefully. It's not exactly easy to tell without being able to track what he's looking at precisely, but he is.

Speaking of things that are feared. "And you? Does thirst still dog your thoughts, or is it finished for now?" And why did he fall over like that.

He was aware of that, and it was alarming--to be disarmed, disarmored, that vulnerable, without any knowledge of it.

They'd performed a ceremony, his disgraced, deranked Librarians, defying the Emperor's edict, to break through the coma that the daemons had flung Sanguinius into his frozen state, and he'd never felt so naked, exposed, and helpless.

Would he have forbidden them from the ritual if he could? It didn't matter: it was done. They had defied the Emperor--for his sake.

He shook off the memory with a flutter of feathers.

At some point he would ask about the glitter. It seemed very...non Night Haunter. "It is always there, brother." That's the problem. A thirst never fully slaked. "But I am in my own mind." That's what should matter. "And you?" YOU, you know, remember the reason this whole thing started?

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