Librarium

Hate! Hate! Hate!

The catechumen and probationers leaned forward over their balconies and boxes to hear the learned Zachary Santiago lecture. It was quite an honour to have a full Genetor Secundus arrive – and from another Divisio, no less!

Only a few seconds into his canted diatribe on the soullessness of xeno-tech, the Genetor had been interrupted by the arrival of a number of Protectors, who blurt-canted a quick directive to the Magos. Appearing rather taken aback, the Magos nodded and turned back to the lecture theatre.

+Yoke has been invaded+

The cant was devoid of intonation or tone, but nevertheless sent a thrill through the spine of each of the catechumen. Each was conversant with the drill, and knew that basic military training would be a required inloading for them, in case they were drafted. High Mark, though an important satellite, had a comparitively small population, and everyone was eligible for the draft. +With this information in our hands, all praise to the Omnissiah, I invite you all to join me in communion and vital datasurge+

So saying, the Magos removed his hood, revealing a puckered mass of scar tissue and tufted hair dotted with winking iron and brass. He raised a high-input cable and slipped it into a hard-inload port beneath his chin. The probationers, selected in fetu as having high potential for learning and obedience, had been raised from the laity for induction into the priesthood. They had been told that service was required, but were comforted by the knowledge they could return to their beloved study of the cybernetica once the war was win. Obediently, and with reverence, they repeated the movements, and felt a calm fall across them as they were linked temporarily with the vast knowledge at Santiago's command. Several swooned in ecstasy, or began to drool as their jaws went slack.

The datasurge began – a potted history of Braun's military glories, suggested common strategies and a hypnosuggestive to increase the production of adrenaline and repress feelings of pity. Each blurted phrase was overlaid with Mystery 09 – a repeated pulse of 'The Alien Mechanism Is A Perversion Of The True Path', raising the ire of each of the probationers.

After an hour of intensive training, the probationers and catechumen were frothing at the mouth, twitching and violent, their prejudices and hatred of Xenos raised to a fever pitch under the auspices of Genetor Secundus Santiago. Briefly, as the inload continued, and the probationers grew visibly angrier and less controlled, the Genetor considered that these students would be quite unfit for anything once the campaign was over.

He shook his head. Such musings were a break in ritual, and a break in ritual was a break in faith. Such things had happened for over ten thousand years, and they would doubtless continue. In any case, the tau were personally distasteful to Santiago – his fervent wish was to see the soulless blasphemy of their machines made extinct, their records stricken from history, and their false knowledge destroyed.

The blurt-inload carried on, taking surface dreams and feelings from the Genetor to the probationers, overlaying and rewriting their knowledge, turning their brains from datasponges to blank slates, and then to barely-controlled murderers. The final stages of the inload saw the Genetor blurt his customary Hate-image, which would irreversibly imprint over the students' original love of human knowledge their hatred of tau 'science'.

Despite himself, Zachary found his lip curling. The word itself was distasteful! He suppressed the emotion, pushing it to the back of his mind.

His final blurt was sent with terrifying intensity, scouring the student's synaptic bridges and forcing their will to subsume to his own.
+Victory in Hatred! Victory in Hatred! Death to the Tau!+