Chương 39: Chapter Thirty-Nine

The thunderhawk docks with the Distant Sun and I leap from the craft. Quaani is waiting for me, two adamantine tower shields resting against his lanky form and three companies of servitors at his back.

"Welcome back, Aldrich. Aruna has informed me of the situation." Quanni passes me a shield. If it wasn't for my power armour and implants there's no way I could lift this thing. I think Quanni was cheating with telekinesis.

"Thank you for the swift response, Quaani. Are the tech-priests still in the munitorum?"

"Yes." Quaani could likely kill them with a glare, but that means exposing him to enemy fire and they have a big gun. I don't want to space them or fire weapons in the munitorum either.

"Can you read their thoughts?"

"Only their intent: desperation and confusion. Mind reading is not a skill I've had reason to practise."

"Fair enough. Aruna, what are their intrusion countermeasures electronics like?" (ICE)"They've turned off their wireless noosphere connections and they haven't tried to hack any of Distant Sun's cogitators." Quaani frowns, "What was the point of teleporting aboard then?"

"I have no idea. Though if we leave them there long enough, the could assemble a big enough bomb to hold the vessel hostage. For now, we'll send the servitors in and keep our distance in case the munitorum goes up in flames."

"I have a better idea," Quaani presents a satchel full of cylinders.

"Rad grenades?"

"Yes, I was thinking that if they are shielded enough to go through the warp and are using electric weapons, they are likely heavily shielded against electric weaponry. Rad weapons, however, aren't that explosive and are highly effective against their squishy innards. What's left of them."

"Good idea. Hand them out to the servitors as we go. One per squad."

"Got it," Quaani grins. We thunder through the ship. Once we reach #M1Q2, Quaani and I halt and send the servitors forward alone to #M1Q1. Quaani pulls out his dataslate and brings up a pict feed. Once the servitors reach the munitorum entrance, I trigger the doors. The doors retract in a clang and the servitors charge.

Jund and Psi-Xi are waiting and their heavy arc rifle fires glowing, curling blasts of fulminating force that reap servitors by the score, burning their flesh to crumbling carbon and purging cybernetics of their motive force. While the vicious pair are distracted, three servitors hurl grenades towards them and all three are swatted by a camouflaged, pintle mounted storm bolter that intercepts the approaching grenades with bursts of explosive shells. The servitors continue their aggressive approach without success.

Unwilling to retreat, I order the servitors sheltering by the door frame to fire their lasguns at the storm bolter and heavy arc rifle. Unfortunately, the lasguns fail to damage the powerful weapons and a second later, all the servitors turn rigid and topple over.

"Sneaky bastards tacked a maintenance cycle command onto the back of my last order. No idea how they got through our encryption."

"Their noosphere connection must be back up if they're doing that."

"Aruna, hit them with some scrap code."

"No. Aruna will not unleash scrap code on this vessel. It spreads and Magos Issengrund does not have the requisite qualifications."

"E-SIM, can you help?" ++Engaging E-WAR suite... Noosphere connection established... ICE breakers sent... target compromised... enemy vehicle disabled... weapons disabled... reboot in seven... six... ++"Damn, we won't make it! Hit them again, E-SIM." ++Enemy connection severed. ++ I grab my hellgun and pick up my shield, "Typical. I'll have to do this myself." Quaani places his hand on my shoulder, "Hold up, Aldrich. I know you're annoyed, but you're looking at this wrong.

You can give orders to a new set of servitors, then set them to ignore all further directions for a specific set of time. Even if we lose a couple thousand servitors, it's far better than risking your life. They are recyclable. You are not. My suggestion is you swarm them. They do not have infinite power or ammo. You could even have each servitor chuck a practice grenade to overwhelm their swatter and mix rad grenades within."

Through the sensors of my frozen servitors, I see the arc cannon restart its barrage and Psi-Xi reloads his carbine and continues to slay servitors with precise bursts. I pat Quaani's hand and sigh, "Yeah, that's a much better idea. We'll do it your way. For all we know their whole vehicle is a bomb." Three companies of three hundred and thirty-six servitors each are mustered. Assembling the battle group takes twenty minutes.

Meanwhile, I am forced to watch Jund and Psi-Xi dispatch my frozen servitors, who then proceed to disassemble them with glee. Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

"I am so annoyed right now. They didn't even try to haggle and went straight for the guns. What a pair of twats."

"Worry about that later." The new companies advance down the corridor and flood the munitorum. Almost all of them chuck dud grenades, while five throw rad grenades. The storm bolter freezes for a few milliseconds, before picking out the rad grenades and firing, but the delay is just enough and one gets through. The grenade stuns the two tech-priests. Their fire lets up for half a second and the servitors overwhelm them, ripping out power cables and ammo feeds and hacking at mechanisms with plasma torches.

After a minute of carnage, the tech-priests are pulled from their mounting and pummelled with stun batons until they fall unconscious. As the servitors drag the pair towards us, one company is set to cleaning while another is tasked with moving the vehicle out of the munitorum. The much diminished assaulting force continues to oversee the prisoners. Jund and Psi-Xi are thrown before me and I detach as many of their implants as I can with my servo harness.

While the mechanical tendrils work I examine my scans of their bodies. Their bionics are limited. They have a MIU, autosanguine, and subdermal armour. The shrapnel has burned and pulped their organs and if it wasn't for the autosanguine, they would have bled out. They'll still die within the hour without treatment. The tech-priests start to shift and groan.

"What will you do with them?"

"That depends on their answers and what I find in their cogitator banks." E-SIM growls in my head, ++Intrusion successful, research log access granted. ++"Good timing E-SIM." My many minds dash through the data, "Quaani, make sure you examine them with all your senses. These two were engaged in dangerous teleportation experiments and were attempting to open a portal hundreds of light years to the closest civilised world, Solace Encarmine, a pleasure world owned by House Winterscale."

"That's madness! Only the greatest chaos sorcerers have such power and they require a massive sacrifice and the assistance of their false gods. There's no way they could achieve such a thing with xeno-servitors and an old teleporter."

"You'd think that, wouldn't you? You're half right. They have successfully conducted trials and can move freely within the Marwolv system. Unfortunately for them, they do not have the power to travel further and the amount of gravitational distortion you get from opening such a powerful portal would crack the planet they were trying to reach.

"The other problem is the eldar warp spider. It doesn't have enough resilience to channel that much psychic might and would pop trying to open the portal, nor can they replicate the wraithbone technology the eldar use or understand enough to solve the mathematics of what the wraithbone is doing so they can substitute it.

"If one could replace the xenotech, it would be a magnificent achievement. I'm sure you've noticed the big problem by now though." Quaani flips the small gem on his forehead and a violent streak of ethereal destruction scours the deck clean, turning the tech-priests to ash. He repositions the protective gem over his third eye and the rainbow light recedes. Rainbow smoke drifts towards me.

"Yeah, they were dead the moment they walked through their first portal." Quaani shakes his head.

"Possessed by demons. Demons who didn't even know that's what they were. That was a nice bit of stalling there, Aldrich. I almost didn't catch on." I smile, "Good job, Quaani. I didn't want to say anything directly as I was unsure if they were really unconscious. Now, I need to spend a few months going over the data and blessing the Distant Sun.

I've closed the portal safely and purged all the servitors that walked through it, but I want to be as sure as I possibly can that nothing snuck into our ship through the servitor connections."

"What about you?"

"I pity the demon that tries to possess me."

"Your archeotech?"

"Yes. It's good, Quaani, really good."

"I really wish you'd tell me more, but you always tell me it's not a secret if two people know."

"If I ever manage to replicate it, you're the first person I'll give one to."

"It's OK, Aldrich. I understand your caution," Quaani pauses, "but I wouldn't say no to shiny tech."

"You got it, Quaani." I give him two thumbs up. Looking down at the soot on the floor, I sigh.

"I wonder what drove them to such a solution." The servitors disassembling Jund and Psi-Xi's vehicle send me an alert and I groan, "Why couldn't it be puppies, or a fluffy cat? Quaani shrugs, "What have you found?"

"They were definitely lying about some of their story. I doubt they were the only survivors of the eldar raid. There's no way they could have harvested so many tech-priest brains and wired them into their vehicle without objections. I think they were using them to boost their intelligence and computing power, much like how their own heads were linked."

"More heresy?"

"At this point, does it really matter?"

"You are taking their research."

"Absolutely! It is valuable experimental data. No matter how convenient, I won't be making portals, but I do want to know how they punched through our shield. We're also looting the place to the bedrock."

"Don't you want to use the fortress?"

"I do, but I don't know what's hidden in there, or the condition of the manufactories. I'd much rather salvage everything and replace it with my own stuff."

"Even the planetary cannon?"

"How else do I find out how it works so I can build new ones? Planetary cannons are relics in the imperium. This is likely the only chance I'll ever get to take one apart. I really want to know how you fire such a big lance through an atmosphere without melting the fort or setting the countryside on fire." Quaani adopts a whining, arrogant tone, "My dear barbarian, it's obviously space magic."

"Quaani, if you're right, I'm going to be really annoyed."

"Well, to you it might as well be, but to the rest of us, it's science."

"Hilarious. I could do with something to calm me after all that noise. Care to hit up the N. O. M.?" Quaanii glances at the images on his dataslate, "Yeah, I think I'll have vegetarian. Lots of ice cream too."

"Good idea." After lunch, I spin down my concurrent conscious cascade and return to Marwolv and spend the day walking the mountains and breathing fresh air. It's no Earth, but it brings me peace. I've been stuck in a metal box so long I'd forgotten how good being outside is. Learning new technologies has been thrilling. Being a cyborg is awesome. Commanding a voidship is the deepest level of cool one can sink to.

I would not say, I am over the loss of my family, but that was almost a decade ago for me now and the pain has faded, though I have no doubt the loss will remain with me forever. I have Quaani to keep me grounded. I can't say that I am happy. Not yet. I'll get there though. Work waits for no cyborg, no matter how shiny they are, and the alerts and notifications continue to flood in. I ignore them until I reach the top of a mountain, then spend another fifteen minutes gazing into the darkness.

Even with my night vision, I can't make out much of the terrain below. The stars are nice though. I think they look better from down here than they do up there. A mechadendrite passes me a hip flask and I stand. Taking a swig, I then hold the flask to the sky and yell, "I live!"