The Astrophage

One of seventy-two weapons built by Mericanii artificial intelligences and housed aboard the Demiurge.

Greek root: astro- (star) + phage- (eat)

Black shapes hung in blackness, horrors without name. The machine shape of them stuck in my mind like splinters, hanging from the Demiurge’s massive skeleton like the fruit of some horrid vine. Like Kharn’s clone children in their gestation pods. I beheld them for only an instant, but I knew them at once, knew I stood upon the lowest level of the terrible armory. Fortress. Furnace. Font of Kharn’s power.

The Mericanii weapons.

The full scope of their terror and power I could only guess, not knowing then the nature of those dreadful titans or the dumb minds that moved them to their master’s whim.

I know now.

Suzuha’s words resounded in me. Weapons even Father does not understand. Seventy-two of the dreadful machines were there. Some smaller than the Mistral, some large as mountains. The dreadful Leviathans and Behemoths which dwarfed even the colossal war machines of the Imperium. Alien minds had built them, creatures strange and stranger than the dark Brethren of Vorgossos, beings whose intelligence exceeded man’s, perceiving creation with senses beyond my meager comprehension. They had their names, though I was ignorant of them. Kenotikon. Bleteira. Crymainecca.

The Astrophage.

The Astrophage chief of all.