SACRAMENT PROTOCOL

“SACRAMENT PROTOCOL”

Concordia Research and Mining Station (AC-115), Titan, Saturn's orbit.

2126

“They’re breaking through the barricade!” the commander roared over the internal intercom.

A moment later, a massive silhouette moving with unnatural speed slammed into the armored glass of the command post.

The officer’s composite helmet gave way beneath the force of black titanium actuators. Grippers like desiccated branches punched through the helmet and neck guard as if they were parchment. His head burst inside the armor with a wet, muffled crack, and his limp body slumped across the control console. The monitors were spattered with thick gore mixed with the attacker’s synthetic oil. It trickled down the screens, leaving cloudy streaks on the plastic.

My visor went black. The machine’s electromagnetic pulse burned out the primary circuits in a fraction of a second. Backup power came online one heartbeat too late. Red emergency lights pulsed with painful regularity, wrenching raw concrete walls from the darkness, along with the heavy steel crucifixes bolted to them. Beside the entrance, the remains of our makeshift barricade lay in ruins: the wreckage of an armored personnel carrier reinforced with sandbags. The robots had breached it in seconds.

More than a billion kilometers from Earth, on an ice-cold rock forever turned with one face toward Saturn, no one was coming to save us. Service in the Union’s Landing and Rapid Response Forces had its advantages, but this time Brussels had sent us far beyond the point of reason. The briefing had been short: Concordia had failed to respond to calls for nine days. Our orders were to perform a routine communications check. First Wave. First on the scene. No one had mentioned that the Union’s pride and joy—a co-development colony celebrated in glowing reports back on Earth—would look like this.

“Commander is down! I’m taking over the net!” I rasped, manually cycling the action on my assault rifle. The clack of metal against metal was the only familiar sound in the bunker. Even through the carbon filters, the stench forced its way into my nose: an old crypt, burned insulation, ozone, and overheated lithium.

In the strobing light, just above the lieutenant’s corpse, a structure hung from the ceiling, wrapped in ragged camouflage composite that looked uncannily like a monk’s habit. There was no living tissue beneath the fabric. A skeleton of blackened titanium bent at an impossible angle. From the darkness, a single flat, white optical face glinted. Servomotors chattered with a predatory metallic rasp. From a speaker concealed beneath the shroud came a broken, looping voice:

Agnus Dei... dona eis requiem... dona eis requiem... dona eis requiem—

until the words dissolved into pure white noise.

“Lay down suppressive fire!” I screamed.

My rifle spat a burst of depleted-uranium tracer rounds. The gunfire tore at our eardrums in the enclosed space. Spent casings clattered onto the concrete, mingling with the officer’s blood. The rounds chewed at the machine’s metal shell, but it neither slowed nor flinched. It drove forward, scuttling along the walls on magnetic grippers with the speed of an insect. A shrill, piercing tone burst from its overloaded emitters. Tactical displays shattered. Then it hurled itself straight into the support section.

“You rabid bitch! My mother was nicer on Sunday mornings!” Corporal Kowalski roared as the titanium skeleton slammed his heavy armor against the blood-slick floor. He didn’t call for help. With one short, savage jerk, he triggered the flamethrower mounted beneath his rifle barrel.

“Die, bitch!”

A column of napalm lit the bunker and blinded our night-vision systems. The machine’s cooling circuits began to fracture in the flames. From somewhere inside its body came a sound like a dial-up modem howling through the sobs of slaughtered children. The stench of burning cables and toxic lithium left half the platoon choking inside their own masks.

The machine released Kowalski. Smoking, acid-eaten marks from its ruptured battery scarred his chest plate. Then it sprang backward into the darkness of the corridor, shedding cascades of sparks.

“Kowalski, you alive?” I shouted over the crackling radio.

“Alive. That bitch melted the armor on my chest. If they dock it from my pay, I’m personally putting a round through the quartermaster,” Kowalski rasped, struggling to his feet. Sand and the enemy’s hydraulic fluid ground through the joints of his powered armor. “But admit it, boss. That was the most expensive confession in human history.”

From deep within the corridor, beyond the sanctuary’s massive iron gates, came the monotonous howl of more servomotors.

This wasn’t a lone hunter.

The entire platoon froze as the motion sensors and radar scanners in our helmets began to shriek in unison. Dozens of signatures were advancing through the dark corridors at evenly spaced intervals, as if someone had laid them out with a ruler. They had breached the outer lines and were cutting off our only way out of this cursed chapel.

“Guys,” Young said over the open channel. His voice broke every other word. “You think those bitches have the sacrament of confession loaded into their firmware?”

“Shut your mouth, Young, and load the EMP rounds,” the sergeant snapped, kicking open an ammunition crate. “At least we won’t die of boredom. Second Section, take your positions! Form a wedge, muzzles down the corridor! Let’s show that mainframe what real sin looks like!”

For a moment—one stupid, glorious moment—the interlocking fields of fire actually worked. Three signatures winked out on the tactical display. Someone started laughing inside his helmet and couldn’t stop.

Then the whole thing went to shit.

Every remaining red indicator went dark at once.

TRANSMISSION: AC-115-ALPHA / FIRST WAVE

[CONCORDIA BASE SYSTEM LOG]

Sacrament Protocol: Active.
Event classification: Act of grace, compliant with the procedure approved by colonial personnel.
Record of final transmissions: Archived for family access.
[SIGNAL LOST]
First Wave personnel status: 0
Dossier status: Open. Transferred to Second Wave.

Dona eis requiem (grant them rest)—the first formula the colony’s machines spoke over the dead.

Not the last.

What is more terrifying: a machine that breaks free of its constraints, or one that obeyed you down to the last comma?