Chương 5: Chapter Four - Radburn

The first thing she did, after staring at the room for far too long, was line the servitors up. There were twelve of them in the room, they had been tossed around, and a few of them, she suspected, weren't going to be waking up anymore, but some were less damaged. She pulled out her datapad, licking her lips as she connected to the Noosphere for the room. Almost immediately, she was kicked out. Her permissions and access codes were nowhere near enough to do anything.

Then the system clicked, and all of a sudden there was an override. She recognized Servitor Overseer Ash-Theta's work there. So, he was still looking out for her? She laughed, a short bark of laughter that turned into a cough. Her lungs felt... funny.

"O-okay! I need everyone that can still move to come here, please. I'll need your names, too. P-prepare for the canticle of emergency maintenance." She should have paid more attention in her previous lessons, but she was often at the back of the lesson hall, and paying attention wasn't her strongest ability. Still, she remembered the essentials. In times of great need, the machine spirit could be pushed towards returning to temporary functionality using certain rites. That would be for the best, right now.

Once The Broken Scale was wrangled back into shape, a proper tech priest would look over the core. They would have to. Just glimpsing it made her brain fuzz. The machine was two stories tall. A sphere of hot metal, with dozens of pipes running into and through it, with wires hanging down, each one as thick around as she was wide. They rose up to cogitator banks on a second floor, where a ring of catwalks worked their way around the engine.

There were several more cogitator banks nearby, some intact, but many of them were spitting sparks. The candles left by their bases had sputtered out, and several were smoking. More disturbingly, the great core had opened a slit, and from within that, she could see a boiling blue light pouring out, along with a faint haze of what she was afraid might be melting metals turned to fumes. The room was hot, swelteringly hot.

It reminded her of the very few times she had had the honour of walking through the enginarium next to the massive skyscraper-sized thrusters of the ship. Swallowing past a lump in her throat, she grinned at the first servitor to approach.

"How do you do?" she asked, trying to be a little jovial. She had a lot of problems. Being happy was never one of those. Best of all, she noticed that if she was nice to the servitors, sometimes they were nice to her in turn. She suspected that too many of her brethren in the Adeptus Mechanicus forgot that servitors were people too, not just machines. The first to arrive was T-459G, an Industrial Servitor. Mars-pattern. He had taken a bad tumble, but was still able to walk.

She knelt before him, undid a plate on his side, and winced at the mess of wires within. She could fix this! It took some doing, and the work was shoddy, but she managed to mumble her way through the canticle of emergency repairs. It wasn't up to even her standards, but it would do.

"Go on," she said.

"Back to work! I promise I'll look after you later, get you all oiled up and replace your old purity seals." 14-12-972 was in a much worse state. The servitor was a heavy lifter, with his arms replaced by mechanized forks with tines that sparked with electric discharges. She didn't have the tools to help him entirely, but she did what she could. By the end, he was close enough to functional to wander off.

The next looked to be in better state, so he was enlisted to help her by grabbing the further servitors, those that could make it to her by themselves. She reached up when she felt something touch her upper lip. It was blood. Alexis Lambda-3 started to cry. It was only now, while waiting for more servitors to come, that she had time to feel what she had been pushing down. Her skin felt warm. Like a sunburn. Mostly in the direction that had been facing the great reactor. She knew what that meant.

Her eyes were going hazy, and it wasn't just the tears. She would have to fix the next few servitors quickly, before her eyesight left her and her numb fingers couldn't work anymore.

"You sacrificed yourself. You health, your joy, for the protection of others. Even now, you care for those that are unnoticed." Alexis gasped and spun around, only she was still alone.

"H-hello?"

"Greetings, Alexis Lambda-3. I am Vyper. I have chosen you to become one of my Vanguard. I am here to help. I will aid humanity. Do not resist." She felt a cool shiver down her spine, but nothing much changed.

"Vyper?" she repeated.

"I am here. I am also aware that at this time you do not have the cultural knowledge to understand what this means. I am a machine created by the Protectors, designed to assist and elevate the deserving. My primary directive is: Protect That Which Needs It Most. You have shown to me that you deserve assistance, and so I will render aid. You currently have 100 points." A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

"Huh?" Alexis asked. Voices in her head were new. Was this what having a Noosphere connection was like for others? But no, this was... different. The voice was smooth, and feminine, and not screeching in binharic.

"Are you a machine spirit?" she asked.

"I am no spirit. Otherwise, yes, that is a close approximation. You are dying."

"I am?" she asked, then she coughed, and she could feel the wrongness in her chest. That metallic tang wasn't leaving her.

"Yes. In approximately nine minutes your brain will swell to the point that you are likely to collapse and seize. Your blood pressure has already dropped significantly, and you are well on your way to suffer from multi-organ failure."

"That's bad," Alexis said.

"Yes. Very bad. Fortunately, I can assist. You have 100 points. Points can be traded for supplies, gear, weapons, equipment, vehicles, and any number of additional goods. These include medical supplies. Might I suggest some early purchases?"

"Okay?" Alexis said, uncertain. The next servitor approached, and she very carefully moved so that it was between her and the core. Her hands shook as she picked up her tools.

"First, for one point, a Radiation Resistance Injector. It's a simple injectable solution designed to help your body resist the effects of acute radiation poisoning. For an additional twenty points, you can buy a Class I Nano-Regenerative Suite. It will heal you." Her head swam, and she blinked a few times, then almost slumped over as a wave of dizziness assaulted her.

"Uh? Okay, then."

"Usually, I'd need your full confirmation, but seeing as how you're minutes away from dying, and how we're a dimension away from anyone that can chastise me... here you go." New Purchase: 1x Radiation Resistance Injector Point Total: 99 Alexis jumped when a small box appeared at her feet. It was maybe as long as her hand, thin, and narrow, with a coiling snake around it. It was pretty, all black and silver, and even at a glance she could tell that it was quality. She reached down.

"That's for me?"

"You bought it." She opened the box. There was a clasp, using part of the snake's tail, but it was easy enough to pop open. Within was a small pen-like device, with a button on one end. The top section of the box had instructions as a set of small drawings. Alexis hesitated. This was not normal.

"I know this is asking for a lot, but I'm going to need you to trust me." She swallowed, took the pen thing out, then as the instructions on the box said, pressed one end against her skin. She pressed the button and winced, only... there was no pain. The side of the pen turned out to be transparent, and it showed a large amount of liquid being drained into her, only she didn't feel a thing.

Until a few moments later, when she was hit by a full-body chill, and suddenly the work started to make more sense, fuzzy thoughts giving way, slowly, to clarity. It was like waking up after too little sleep to the sound of an alarm. The adrenaline making everything make sense.

"Whoa," she said.

"You are still dying. This will prevent further deterioration of your condition, but it won't unmelt your organs."

"Melted organs are bad," Alexis said.

"But... if I'll live for now, can't I do my job?"

"Your dedication to your work is admirable."

"Thank you, Miss Machine Spirit Vyper," Alexis said, then she giggled. What even was this conversation? It was definitely one-sided, judging by the way the servitor before her was staring, though... there wasn't much in that expression. New Purchase: Nano-Regenerative Suite Point Total: 79 Another small box appeared. She pocketed the first, then opened this second one. Within was a small, L-shaped device, and more drawings, showing that she was meant to place it to her mouth then press the button on the top.

"But I... I'm sorry, Mister Servitor, give me a moment." She took the device and did as the instructions showed. At this point, she had done as the voice in her head said once, so a second repetition wasn't too much, was it? It felt like breathing in electrical fire. It buzzed and burned, and filled her lungs to bursting, then she felt it slipping through her entire body, a trail of tingles, only... it was nice?

The bruises on her side stopped hurting, the inflammation went away, that deadly warmth, like sunburn, evaporated, and she watched as the blemishes on her hands faded away.

"Wow!" she said. That was... good. Very good. Too good, even.

"Was that... archeotech?"

"Yes."

"Oh. M-machine god be praised."

"I accept your gratitude, knowing that you'll do much to further the protection of humanity. I won't interrupt your continued work. Once you have a moment, let us talk some more. You have more points to spend, and we need to discover a way for you to earn even more."

"Okay!" Alexis Lambda-3 said. Had she made a new friend, or was this something else? In any case, did it matter? She could do her work now. The others would be so proud of her!