Chương 84: Volume Two - Chapter Twenty - Upgrades for the Omnissiah

Orks, Alexis realized, were many things. Seeing as how she was a proper disciple of the Omnissiah, she decided that the best way to note this all down was a simple list. Notably orks were: - Not particularly intelligent. - Not capable ambushers - Very difficult to kill - Surprisingly crafty - Unsurprisingly suicidal The last was added to the list just a moment ago as she ducked behind K84-321 and winced as a wash of heat blasted past her.

An ork had just come around the corner, six bandoleers of explosives attached to his chest and a live krak grenade in each hand. He... had blown up, because the corner was far away and the pins had been pulled on his grenades already. She didn't even get points for that one! Tilting to the side, she looked ahead, squinting to see through the smoke.

"Cleared?" she called back. The lieutenant and the other twenty-odd people in her half of the strike group moved up. They were more than happy to let her 'gather data' by being the vanguard. And she was more than happy to reap the rewards of so many ork kills.

"We had three smaller groups come up behind us," the lieutenant said.

"Noted," she replied.

"Thank you for keeping them off of us." He nodded.

"They're tough, ma'am, but I've instructed my men to be liberal with their ammunition, rather than conserve as per standard protocol."

"We might be able to find more somewhere in this base," Alexis said. She glanced ahead again, then checked that against the wire-frame map she had in her visual overlay.

"The lighting room is just ahead. Let's move." The team did just that. The corridors were all dark in this part of the keep. The lumen strips above were dead, destroyed, or simply disconnected, so the only lighting came from the lights affixed to the ends of lasrifles and some on the helmets of a select few Voidsmen. The two techpriests had their own lights, but they were smaller, less directed. Still, it was enough, in aggregate, to see, though it was far from ideal.

The bobbing lights heralded their move into the next corridor where they discovered two orks hurriedly getting behind a large stationary gun that had obviously just been moved into place. CS-3-2/11 put an end to their plan with a volley of rapid-fire bullets, then they were at the entrance into the lighting room. The space was essentially a large room used to send power to different circuits across the keep. The walls were all large transformers and some cabinets with exposed wiring.

At the far end of the room was a space which was supposed to house a dozen plasma generators. At the moment, there was one left and eleven marks on the floor where the others had been. The discarded orkish tools and the marks on the wall told a rather simple story about what happened to the missing generators.

"Tsk," Alexis said.

"They're not the kinds of generators or reactors you'd want to use in any sort of vehicle, but I suppose no one told the orks that." She turned to two tech priests with her. They were both her seniors, and yet they hadn't raised a single binharic squawk of fuss when she took charge. She appreciated that.

"I am unfamiliar with the workings of these generators and of this facility. Can you inspect the systems and see if we can return them to function? Just the lights would be good. The elevators would be a great boon as well, but... let's see what we can do, first?" Both of them seemed happy enough to help. Out came the incense burners and the spare servo skulls, and the two members of the Mechanicus moved over to the generator at the rear and the nearest intact control section.

She watched them at work for a moment, then moved over to her servitor friends. There was an empty-enough room on the other side of the corridor, and she had points. Kills Confirmed: 42x Orks 28x Gretchin New Point Total: 2136 That was a good number of points to spend, and she had ideas.

"Okay, first, bribes..." She checked the room out. It was a small storage space with spare parts for the lighting room which... actually, could be useful, so she called the lieutenant over and had a few of his men cart them back to the other room. Once that was done, she said something vague about noticing something on her auspex through the wall and closed and locked the door. The bribes, as she said, came first.

"Vyper, I need... uh... let's see... can we start with like, a dataslate, two dataslates, of weapon schematics? Maybe maintenance rites and logs for a simple knight?"

"Certainly. I've downloaded information of that sort from local cogitators already." New Purchase: 2x Knight Information and Maintenance Logs Points Reduced to: 2156 A bit expensive, but what she got were two very nice dataslates which, once opened and decrypted with her limited rank, revealed production information and maintenance logs and even simple part schematics. She scrolled through the information for the production of a standard-issue Helverin Autocannon.

There were several layers of decryption that she couldn't poke through but... yeah, this would keep anyone that was part of the Mechanicus occupied for a while. Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation. She gestured KYS closer.

"Let's start with you," she muttered. Initially, she had thought of turning KYS into something like a Sicarian Ruststalker, but... obviously, KYS liked being sneaky. That was obvious with how un-obvious KYS could be. So, why not lean into that a little? She discussed things with Vyper for a bit, then with KYS, who mostly communicated in vague feelings of approval or disgust. In the end, the upgrades were quick and simple.

New Purchase: Type G - Sensor helmet Points Reduced to: 2126 New Purchase: Type H12 - Injection Pistol Points Reduced to: 2086 New Purchase: Type 6485 Noise Cancellation Field Generator Points Reduced to: 2056 New Purchase: Psychological Warfare Sound Dispersal System Points Reduced to: 2046 New Purchase: Type 4D - Sonic Material Displacer Blade Points Reduced to: 2016 The end result was a KYS that looked... pretty much the same, actually. Her helmet was new.

It was a disk, with small sensors just under the armoured top. The front was molded down into a shape that looked like a very gaunt face, or maybe a skull? It somehow still came off as feminine even if the brim ran across the 'eye' level and made it look like the head was missing its topmost bits.

The new pistol was an injector gun, designed to fire needles filled with interesting concoctions, notably medicines and stimulants and maybe poisons, and the new blade was a long, humming thing with a power pack that shivered so quick that it blurred slightly in her vision. Alexis had considered a full stealth system, but that would be another catalogue and lots of points. Also, an invisible KYS might be... problematic. KYS flicked the blade around. Then she jumped on the spot a few times. It made no noise at all.

Then, finally, she tested her psychological warfare system, the only thing that KYS herself had insisted on. The room filled with the sound of baby giggles. Alexis shivered.

"O-okay, enough of that," she said.

"Uh... K84, want to be next?" The largest of her friends thumped forwards. She grinned. For him, the upgrades were easy. New Purchase: Type 98 - Rivet Gun and Saw Equipped Construction Hand Points Reduced to: 1946 The new arms required a bit of work to get on, but she managed with KYS and K84 helping her install them one at a time. They were a bit bulkier than his previous pneumatic hands, but those were... not in a great shape.

The new hands had a deployable saw within them, and above those, at the 'wrist' was a large rivet gun. It was, basically, a bolter. The next thing was more for her own safety. New Purchase: Type 825 - Ion Shield Caster Points Reduced to: 1746 A bit pricey, but... the small module, mounted on the shoulder opposite K84-321's heavy flamer could project a half-dome shield. The module had limited movement, to cast the shield in different directions.

Mostly, it would provide some much-needed cover and protection in the middle of any firefight, though enemies could still run through. Finally, it was CS-3-2/11's turn. She wanted more guns. Alexis sighed.

"Okay, sure, we'll get you more guns... but I also want you to be able to fly, because I like that idea." CS-3-2/11 reluctantly agreed that flight would be neat. New Purchase: Type J3654 Drone Flight System Points Reduced to: 1346 New Purchase: Type GDE4 Mining Laser Array Points Reduced to: 1306 The laser array was a flat, sleek gun that was mounted right on CS's back. It could spin around and fire in nearly every direction.

It used the standard powerpacks that lasrifles used, and honestly, it wasn't much stronger than well-tuned lasrifle, only with twin barrels and twice the rate of fire. The flight system was a little trickier to install, but it worked off of the same principles as a grav-tank. There were two heavy thrusters tucked in at the back of her chassis that could be deployed at will to create directional thrust. So really, it was less flight and more... flinging herself at extremely high speeds in a given direction.

Alexis couldn't wait to see it at work! Now... to sell all of these upgrades as just stuff she stumbled upon... or maybe she could just smile and never bring it up? That might work, right? Also... she had a lot of points left over. Maybe it was time to see about expanding her team a little? Then she wouldn't need so many voidsmen next time they went out.