Dreadnought

Inspired by One by Metallica

A flash. Heat. Darkness.
I wake up. I am staring into the blank, expressionless face of an
Apothecary. He is studying me, like a surgeon studies a patient. I try to blink. Something seems wrong. It takes twenty seconds before I realize.
I have no eyelids.
Terrified, I try to touch my face, but I can't feel my arms. They're not there. Neither are my legs. Seeing me struggle, the Apothecary speaks in a hateful monotone.
"You destroyed the tank, brother. However, secondary explosions injured you grievously."
Grievously. As if a word like that could describe my death.
"The explosion amputated three of your limbs, and damaged your right arm so badly that it had to be removed as well. Fires melted the majority of your skin. The Emperor smiled on you, however, and your backpack prevented shrapnel from reaching your vital systems."
He smiled on me, yes. He smiled with irony as he welcomed me into the eternal darkness of a trapped warrior. I know what is in store for me.
"It appears that your brain and spinal cord are intact. You will be able to fight again, but as an Honoured Brother Dreadnought."
A Dreadnought. I can never kill an enemy with my bare hands again. I'll never be able to feel the foul blood of the Emperor's enemies on my face ever again. Glorious battle rendered to mere data.
The Apothecary speaks again in his hatefully flat voice.
"We will begin surgery within the hour. You will be entombed in a sacred sarcophagus, which we can place within a Dreadnought."
He must be trying to ignore my broken, crippled form, trying not to see my shame. I hate him for his pity, and it feels good. Hate is all I have left.

An hour passes. I  am extracted from my tank of amniotic fluid. The air burns my skinless body. I am placed on a cold metal gurney. The room smells of chemicals, with the faint tang of old blood. The Apothecary is there, with a team of servitors, and a Techmarine. Damn them both, even augumetics are better than this! At least I can strangle the life out of my enemy with metal hands and synthskin. The Techmarine speaks,
"We will be drilling neural sockets into the base of cerebrum and down the length of your spine, so you can connect to the Dreadnought. You are greatly honored, brother."
Honored with imprisonment I can never escape. Damn you.
A servitor turns my body over. They begin drilling into my skull and spine, the servitors holding me down. Their touch is worse than any enemies, for I could never escape it and they expect me to even welcome. If I had arms I could kill them all. If I had legs I could run and die. If I could speak I would stop this madness and urge them to kill me.
They insert neural plugs into the holes in my body. They are as cold as implacable death. The Techmarine speaks again.
"Now that the neural plugs are in place, we will inter you into the sacred sarcophagus, from which we will place you in a Dreadnought."
I feel them pick me up and carry me to that hateful, revered prison. It stinks of engine oil, and incense. My skin burns as that damn techmarine anoints my body with sacred oils and rubs my neural plugs with machine oil. He then inserts the first neural jack into me. It locks into place with a click like the closing of a jail cell. He inserts the rest, chanting in binary. Curse him, and his damn servitors. The sarcophagus is closed, and I am once again in the dark. The sarcophagus front closes like the gates of Hell. I can hear rivets being drilled. They sound like the barking of the hound that was said to guard Hell's gates.
Suddenly, power floods through the sarcophagus, and I can see again. But it is not true sight. It is data being transferred to my brain by a sensor node outside the sarcophagus. I hear the techmarine speak once more. His voice is full of a disgusting reverence.
"You have ascended, honored brother."
He believes I have ascended? He envies my prison? I think words, but all my sensors pick up is harsh static. The techmarine speaks again, his voice still full of that idiot awe.
"If you wish to speak, honored brother, you must think external address before any sentence."
I want to cry out. I want to tear him apart for what he has done, for his sickening worship of this prison he had put me in. But I cannot. It was not he that injured me, and he could not help but worship my new form, slow and ungainly as it is. I cannot let them think I do not enjoy the ability to fight in a new form again.  External address. "I am glad to be empowered again, brother. " My voice is harsh and metallic, nothing like it was before. External address. "It is good to be able to speak again."
The Techmarine nods, lapping up my every word. The fool.
"This is good, honored brother. The machine spirit of the armor has accepted your neural signature. I will exercise you, to help you get used to moving in the sarcophagus. Now, will yourself towards me."
For the next hour, he trains me in moving in the Dreadnought body. It is clumsy and slow. I do not walk, but waddle on ungainly legs, feeling the stabilizers compensating or the huge weight of the sarcophagus. My arms are thick, ending in powered claws, useful only for tearing through walls ad tank hulls, none of the delicate work I was capable of. At last, I am presented to my Battle-brothers. They look upon me with awe and bow before me and call me "Honored-Brother." If only they knew what a Hell this prison is. I can see their faces, but not with my own eyes. I can hear their words, but not with my ears. I can feel the soft impacts as they touch my sarcophagus. I talk, and thank them for their praise, in my dead metal voice. It is all data transferred to me by the sensor array, not by my eyes, my ears, my mouth. Damn them all, can't they see the Hell this prison is?
I am taken back to the armory. I will myself into meditative half-slumber as they shut my systems down. I reflect that this is a taste of the God-Emperor's torment, trapped forever in a prison of his own making.
I am woken. We are deploying against the foul orks. Orks, the most foul and undeserving of life of all xenos. Perhaps their blood will cleanse me of my hatred of this prison. I am equipped with two clawed arms, one wit ha storm bolter, one with a flamer.
I am placed within a drop pod, and fired towards the planet. I feel nothing of the heady descent into the atmosphere. I barely feel the impact as my pod crashes into the ground. It is all beneath me now.
The pod opens, and I step out. I am in a plaza, full of orks, battling my brothers. I advance, and some of the beasts see me. They howl and charge me, crude weapons blazing. I can feel their shots pinging on my sarcophagus, and return fire with my storm bolter. They're bodies burst beneath my shots, and I feel some elation at my deaths, but it is nothing like before. Before, their deaths would have made my heart sing with joy. Now nothing but oil and hydraulic fluid cycles through this beast I am trapped in.
I wade into the mass of orks. They climb on me, trying to crudely batter themselves into my sarcophagus, but my brothers shoot them off, and soon all the orks are butchered. We advance down the street. My targeting reticules find a building full of orks, many already firing despite the extreme range. As we draw closer, their solid round spang off my sarcophagus and I fire back. Some of the orks are killed. More duck and survive. I continue to advance. I get closer. Weapons fire beats against my form in an almost constant rain, but I can't feel any of it, my sensors tell me this.
I advance into flamer range, and torch the second storey of the building. My sensor registers their bestial screams of pain as their skin sloughs off like mine did not so long ago. I continue walking forwards. My form meets the wall and I push against it. It resists for a moment and the collapses with a crash, crushing orks in debris. I wade through the rubble, burning orks that emerge with fiery promethium. Even when the second storey tumbles down on me I do not pause, pressing onwards.
Suddenly, I see a monstrosity turn the corner. It waddles like I do, with four chopping slicing, sawing arms waving in the air. An ork Dreadnought. The Emperor mocks me with this xenos monster. I must destroy it.
We advance on each other. I am firing my weapons, and briefly wonder if it feels the same horror at its prison that I do to mine. It is irrelevant. I grapple with it, but its four arms are more maneuverable and it cuts the hydraulic cabling to my right leg, and I topple. It slices open my sarcophagus with its sawblade, and briefly I hope it can kill me and give me peace. A shaft of light breaks into my prison, and I am nearly blinded, but it is welcome, even as its hideous, leering visage looks at me, surely gloating at my helpless form. I hear a shriek, with my real ears, not the shattered sensor array but my real ears, and rejoice in that even as I know it will rob me of peace. The krak missile slams into the disgusting face of the ork dreadnought and vaporizes it, saving and damning me in its death.
If I could sigh, I would. I am resigned to my fate.

I Dreadnought I am, and a Dreadnought I remain.