NationStates Jolt Archive

[From here (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=585655), intended for people from that thread.]

The cruiser Triumph Technis slid into orbit around the planet Alvara, a huge craft, its prow heavily built, mounting six huge torpedo tubes, and countless sensors, around a augmented skull-in-cogwheel symbol that seemed to stare down malevolently at the blighted planet below.

As it decelerated, the mid-section of the ship, banks of landing bays shed four large spherical objects each several hundred meters across, were released, like seeds from a pod. Each of these objects was a central hyper-nuclear cure, surrounded by a maze of thrusters and sensors, with a solitary hole in its outer casing, through which its blast would be directed – a bomb pumped laser of incredible power, capable of destroying a capital ship. These four marshalled together and began to form themselves in a polar orbit around the planet, where they were in pursuit and engagement range of any vessel that might lift off from the surface.

These were joined by sleek fighter-drones, several squadrons, that settled into geo-stationary orbit, in position to intercept and destroy smaller craft.

This planet was infected with an unknown plague. Security was the first concern. No infected persons could be permitted to leave. Of course, by all reports, the planet’s inhabitants had suffered some brain damage from their infection, meaning it was unlikely that they would break the blockade.

Despite this, the Technis and her two escorts spread out, taking up equidistant positions around the planet, able to see one another, and the entire surface, between them, and provide mutual fire support if required.

In the Technis’ command deck, Magos Militant Vanar Ukaryus, the ship’s senior military officer, watched through hundreds of drone eyes as the planet was scanned. He commanded the ship’s transmechanics to locate the areas on its surface where primary internal communications systems were located.

The magos nodded with satisfaction, a useful emotion, as they briefly prepared five guesses at most likely sites. Meanwhile, he issued another order. The fighters and mines were joined by a web of satellites that shot from smaller launchers on the underside of the ship, into lower orbits around the planet, observation systems.

All was happening with commendable speed. He in-loaded the planet’s language, and ordered the ships’ communications to send a message, directed down at all points on the planet’s surface.

ATTENTION
THIS IS A RESCUE MISSION. IF YOU RECEIVE THIS MESSAGE, PLEASE ATTEMPT TO SECURE YOURSELF IN THE BEST LOCATION WITH COMMUNICATIONS, AND WE WILL BE CONTACTING ALL ONLINE TERMINALS SHORTLY, WHICH WILL ALLOW US TO RESCUE YOU.

It was possible that all twenty two million of the mutants (somewhere, there was a mild distaste in his mind at that thought) were corrupted. But perhaps some would be uninfected. If so, they would provide valuable baselines for comparison.

Next, he ordered the landing craft to launch.


In the Techis’ hangar bay, Myrmidon Malkaris boarded one of several landing craft. She was clad in the most recent model of dragon-scale armour, further augmented by a hard, synthetic skin underneath, that left no part of her remaining flesh exposed; it would not do to be exposed to anything. She could not breathe – her augmented potentia coil, a sleek affair of crystal stacks buried where part of her lung used to be, would provide energy for both her flesh and superior mechanical parts. She carried a small armoury of weapons – plasma and laser weapons on long, flexible mechadendrite tentacles that branched from her shoulders, a pistol – made as an apprentice, as a test to advance as an armourer, a treasured and unique possession. Drawn from the ship’s stores, she held an Anabaris Shock Blaster pistol; a weapon that overloaded the neural system – ideal for incapacitating or killing organic creatures for study.

She had been charged with securing one of the main communications hubs in the main city, and for that, she was boarding – her footsteps heavy, her implants made her three times heavier than she looked – an automated transport, based on the venerable Valkyrie Airborne Assault Carrier. It was a primarily atmospheric vehicle, with space for ten soldiers – nine of them awaited her, Skitarii automatons, with shotguns and hellguns – a form of high-power laser.

She sat, locking herself into place, as the ramp sealed, and the carrier shot from the landing decks of the Triumph Technis toward Alvara.

No vessel could take off from the surface, not because of the still smoking carrier’s former gravity fields nor because of the lack of available vessels since the Union might have made them less than flight worthy with help from a carefully aimed burst of projectiles. No, there was simply no one on the world who could fly them, the machine’s worst fears were true, everyone still on world was no a slave to their own primitive urges and the overwhelming urge to keep invaders off their land. Despite the union’s so called conquest the landing zones, any zone they picked was a potential battle ground as the citizens took to hiding in every place they could hide, every house, basement, forest, farm house and crop field unless properly scanned was a potential hiding spot.

The message was ineffective as well, not because the C’tani language synthesizer didn’t work well on well on latin, as most translators didn’t, there was simply no one listening to the message. All the broadcast towers, transmission lines, televisions, holographic broadcast stations and any other form of modern communication had been reduced to a broken heap of circuts and scrap in the aftermath of the rage plague. The twenty two million inhabitants formed clans which they kept to and with no invaders to battle, battled each other for the greatest share of the planet’s abundant foodstuffs and to aquire the most still and fertile folk of the highest genetic stock.

This was a planet left to chaos and destruction that was clear to any that passed. Despite the still blue sky and the still fertile fields, and the still lush forests there was nothing but death and chaos here. Even as the shuttle approached two fur tribes, ironically lead by rival merchants watched and waited to see where their new prey would land.

Malkaris was sure she could see a few of the indigenous creatures here and there; but the mental equivalent of freeze-framing showed only scattered splashes of colour here and there. The denizens had seemingly gone to ground. The more disturbing thing was how quickly the city had degenerated. The place seemed to be systematically ruined. A part of her soul grieved to see such wanton destruction of machines, another part saw it as an opportunity to sweep away and build anew. And the third and greatest part simply saw it as a battlefield.

The landing craft halted at its destination, landing vertically, some of the buildings that backed onto what she guessed had once been a public square had obviously suffered fire damage. The Myrmidon disconnected from the external sensors, and sent the signal for the skitarii to prepare themselves as the vehicle landed. They began to humm, intermittantly, their tune strangely musical. This was an audio backup communication used in combat zones where stealth was not required. There was a distinctive tone they reached, when confirming an order to kill a target. It was a sound the Myrmidon was quite familiar with.

As the silver androids rose, they each stood at six feet exactly, heavy, polished armour clanking as they readied their weapons. Each had four black lens-eyes on its face, and several more upon its chest and back, as well as being linked by a cable to the sight on their weapons. Heavy black cables linked them to their weapons, too.

The three doors of the craft slammed open, and the Myrmidon led the skitarii maniple from the craft. They had disembarked in mere seconds, her heavy feet crushing rock under her.

She ordered the craft to return to the air. Regardless of her doubts of finding anything of value, she, checking the charge in the shock blaster, would carry out her orders and investigate the possibility.

The natives saw that their prey had landed where they expected, directly in the middle of their territorial lands outside the former City of Mialla. There was to be no quarter, no hiding, no mercy now. The warcry was given on both sides and soon over a hundred natives were around the landing zone, even before the landing craft fully left the scene. They would take their prey and ruin the other side at the same time. At least that’s what both clans were thinking; the two clans were mainly made up of predatory and no predatory species. The Kiiisa, formerly Kinsa business enterprise employees were the predatory side, making up much less of the horde but making up for it by being the strongest and well equipped of the two tribes.

They even had some former marines in their service; the three furs were nearly completely suited in powered armor as well. Meanwhile, the Niogo formerly Nirad food supplies were every non predatory species one could imagine. They also made up the bulk of the attacking forces but were the weakest and least armed. One would need to decide what to do in this situation with a small band of landing forces.

Malkaris was aware of the natives before she saw them – from hearing their approach and from other more esoteric senses. She checked her weapon’s charge, seven shots. Good enough. She could recharge it from her own body if she needed to.

As one, the Skitarii stopped, their humming tones becoming scratchy, staccato bursts of scratching sounds. Their programming was awaiting a confirmation to fire.

The natives came into sight. Her optical pieces detected their ill-kempt nature. She wondered if they had ancillary diseases from the breakdown of sanitation systems – it seemed obvious enough to her, but they showed no symptoms, doubtless the problem hadn’t hit yet. But it would, perhaps limited by vaccination, if they were lucky. Then, perhaps, these beasts would flee the cities as the smell became unhealthy.

They seemed to be in two groups, without intelligent ambush coordination; she would, in their position, have waited a little longer, taken them from some of the more intact buildings. Nonetheless, their timing and grouping – and use of tools, in some cases – seemed to denote a certain intelligence.

There was doubt, so she was bound to try and get some sense through to them. Holding up one hand, she cried out in Latin for them to cease or be fired upon. It didn’t seem to work.

She dropped her hand to her belt, and unhooked the other weapon, which she had assembled so many decades ago now. She fired from one of its dual cylinders of ammunition, a loud crack echoing from the weapon.

They were not deterred.

She told the machines to open fire, and they did, shotguns loaded with bio-acid-shells from internal hoppers, barked loudly. These held thousands of rounds of ammunition loading into the guns from the tubes attached to their owners. Nonetheless, the rate of fire would not be enough to make that ammunition count, here, as the enemy were closing fast.

The laser weapons were just as deadly, and more rapidly firing, and these, she ordered to engage the larger group. A blast from a hellgun could vapourise large parts of a target, as it was boiled along the path of the beam, blasting or charring. They were loud, too, the snap of enormous energies, and the roar of matter boiling as they struck blended to a hissing, crackling sound like some raging inferno.

Malkaris didn’t need internal calculation equipment to know that even this wasn’t enough, though. Precise weapons fire could kill hundreds, but there were enough here, close enough, to mean that they would, unless they broke and fled, get into close combat. She directed the guns on her metal tentacles to follow the pattern of the androids, the weaker, but faster firing weapon firing at the larger, less armoured group, while the plasma gun coughed a bust of retina-searing light at one of the more dangerous looking members. She raised her shock pistol, dropping the other to her belt, took up a steady stance, and drew a line on one of the armoured enemy.

The attackers screamed and howled as they were attacked, the herbivores’ the machines were firing on snarled like their predatory enemies as each round felled one of their number. If one wasn’t killed instantly by the acid or laser round piercing them then the parts that weren’t destroyed would crawl and fight to get to their objective, the insanity of their condition driving them on. The acid and laser fire made short work of the lesser non predatory creatures, burning through their tattered clothes as they advanced undeterred by the noise or the yelping cries of their fallen brethren. The shots getting more and more effective as they got closer though the predators moved quickly trying to close the gap to get to their prey. There were more than enough non predatory creatures to sustain the assault by the machines and the predators were close enough that it didn’t matter if they were fired upon, a few would make it to their prize.


The marine in the leader’s sights wouldn’t be deterred either, her unarmored hand thoroughly gripping her short slender power sword, or rather powered machete that was GPI standard issue. The faceless grunt hustling, growling and screaming in her helmet as did all the soldiers after their prey undeterred by the woman pointing a pistol right at her. The ones that made it to their prizes struck hard, aiming for whatever they could dig out, pull, break and tear from the machines. Soon the enemy clans noticed each other and rather than the machines that had been their enemy, they turned on each other, fighting for the scraps they might have torn from the still active and still combat able machines.

Information was being gathered. The fight was going on, but the information was useful, nonetheless.

For a start, the denizens were still primarily organic – not some kind of spiritually animated undead. They bled and died like normal creatures. That was an important matter.

Another piece of valuable information was that there was a deficiency in Skitarii combat programming. Malkaris watched one flip its hellgun around to crush a windpipe, and then use its target as cover from others, firing at close range. The body fell into the cables linking the gun to its body, and it took precious seconds to realise the problem before it fell under a concerted attack by the creatures, head being wrenched free along the detach-line.

Meanwhile most of her mind was paying attention to the combat; the enemy charging at her, for instance; several partitions within her augmented brain were dealing with that. She dropped to one knee, firing the shock blaster at the foe’s head, from close range, while the plasma mechadendrite shot at the unarmored hand holding the enemy’s sword as it was raised, and another coiled around the other hand, hefting backward with considerable force. The Myrmidon was not limited to mere flesh-power, either, after all.


Elsewhere, the fight did not go well – here, a skitarus fell under a furball, weapon wrenched away from it, teeth and fangs struggling to gain purchase. Another turned to shoot the enemy off its companion, and found itself dragged in, hewing about it with its shotgun, bulky metal swinging from side to side in its arms.

A little way away, one of the ferals bit through a hellgun’s power leads, and dropped, smoking, to the floor, cooked instantly by the energies flowing through it. The Skitarus it belonged to looked down, and was felled itself…

The predators were now taking casualties as they combated the robots and their enemies. Though the marine in question wasn’t dead, she wasn’t awake, conscious and in possession of her right hand or sword but she was alive, just barely though if she did not have years of combat training and experience or her powered armor a shot to the head from such a range could have easily fixed that condition. Though now the female had three other contenders to deal with, two wolves that had just finished slaughtering six of their non predatory brethren were coming, for the prize their comrade had missed and another marine was coming to avenge the fallen. Charging as his sister had, meanwhile the predators were winning the conflict. Slaughtering or simply wounding their former citizens, taking all of what they had for themselves as nature might have dictated.

The Myrmidon decided that things were, on balance, not going her way. This resulted in a very limited set of options. She kicked away the the fallen enemy’s hilt-less power blade, wedging its keen edge, deep into the ground, and sent the recall signal for the circling aircraft. If this agression was anything to go by, the sound of the battle would actually attract more of these feral creatures as time went on.

Signals flashed back and forth from the tech-priest and the aircraft, and she ducked down, as she ordered it to deploy one of its smaller bombs into the more heavily armoured enemy as it landed, and to only open one side hatch, and only at her approach, as it did so; she didn’t want to bring more than she had to back.

With a few more feral grunts and sounds related to flesh parting from it’s original position the battle was over. The trio now turned quartet going after the leader of the metal tribe scattered when the marine in front was blown completely apart before them by the flying devil appearing out of nowhere. All the rest of the metal warriors were dead, and were being taken apart by the victors, hands, arms, legs were distributed among the victorious warriors as well as one other prize. The prize that kept the small group of predators waiting in this area in the first place, relatively unwounded female herbivores were being ‘assigned’ to each male clansman and each female got her pick of a male. That’s it. No grand scheme, no plot by a hitherto unseen vizier, no urging by an unseen general, just the right to reproduce with one of one’s choosing.

If one would go back to the predator’s lair they would find that food and water were plentiful, perhaps with the bodies of the dead enemies they’d have enough to start roaming the planet, looking for more tribes that they could conquer or that would join them for fear of such or because they shared the Kiisa’s dream of a never ending supply of food and a never ending supply of fertile members of the opposite sex. The leader in this case was a massive fox creature, his body muscular, and showing through the rags of his miner’s uniform. He was adorned with many tattoos, things burned into his flesh, possibly because he overran one of the few ‘cataloging’ stations on the planet. His prize was three females, two doe’s and a rabbit, his interest focused on all three as he roared in victory, the metal warriors were scattering, let them run. They got what they came for and more. The fighting would resume however if the lone metal warrior was interested in the dead as they needed to be properly shown to mother, to bask in the full glory of her light.

Despite the physical destruction of their culture many things about the initiative survived in this time. Their religion being one of them, sure there were those who thought they could take advantage of this, or just didn’t know mother’s edicts well enough to practice them on their own, or those who just didn’t agree with their version of the bible and started to make one up as they went along. Though this tribe would have some of the more accurate followers of the mother goddess, if one was clever and noticed this maybe they could be united under this banner… Perhaps one could use this to spread a cure for the genuine disease they were afflicted with.

Speaking of things useful for a cure, the downed female was still alive, and let out a soft moan as she tried to cope with three opposing forces. One was her own sanity trying desperately to surface under all the new chemicals which were in turn trying to bury it, the other was the desire for death, the fact that despite her physical and genetic conditioning her body was approaching it’s limit, the other was the virus, urging more violence, more hatred, more death, more destruction, more, more, more!!!

As a last act to ameliorate the losses of materiel incurred in the mission, Malkaris had the one responding android gather the wounded enemy who had attacked her onto the aircraft; waste-not-want not. Myrmidon Malkaris found the whole affair distressing, if she were honest. With a thought, she activated the purgition-cores in the Skitarii left behind, melting circuitry into twisted blackened plastic shapes, foul smoke trailing from ventilation pores.

The aircraft circled up away from the city, and she lay back inside it, continuing to respire anaerobically, sprawled for a moment between the seats where she had jumped into the craft, and holding onto the furniture within it, as it circled. She stood, hauling herself into one of the chairs, and locking herself in before the craft began its hard boost out of orbit, shattering the sound barrier with ease, compact rocket boosters giving it the power to leave the atmosphere, and ultimately, forsake the gravitational pull of the planet completely.


The designated retrieval bay was on the port side of the Triumph Techis and was set up using a simple but effective system; the three adjacent landing bays were evacuated of air, and the retrieval bay had been filled with air in case captives were brought back.

Malkaris disembarked from the vehicle’s side hatch, and strode past the pair of Skitarii in the landing bay, who guarded the only accessible door that had not been welded shut. The next chamber was an intensive bout of surface cleansing, and had been selected as a sealed companionway led from it to an area that had been set up for analysis. It was down this route that the wounded individual was taken.

She removed her armour and peeled the syn-skin from her flesh in the next room, and boarded a lift to report her failure.


The wide circular screen covering its forward wall, displaying the planet below them lighted the ship’s bridge in a dark green. Each surface was covered in screens and controls, or in elaborate representations of important discoveries in a neo-representative style.

Malkaris approached the Archmagos Veneratus and bowed, “Archmagos,” she said, in the high speed language of the machine cult, “I have failed.”

“It is of no matter. I have reviewed your suggestions,” Vadun replied, “I see merit in your analysis. I have ordered the workshops to produce modified model T-2 virus bomb warheads for saturation targeting of urban areas as you suggest. The first test models should be completed within the hour.”

“This pleases me, Archmagos.”

“Good. I have another task for you. We may, in light of the general infrastructure destruction you and other parties have reported, assume that we cannot feasibly contact survivors. Now we require samples of the feral population. I am giving you another squad, you will return to the planet and collect test subjects…”


BIO-SAMPLE-ALVARA-00000000-00000001 as she was labeled, meanwhile, could not realistically make any claim to enjoying her treatment – armour was cut off, taken elsewhere, while she was placed in a two meter per side chamber of absolutely white walls. She would not, presumably, recognize the covered black spheres on the ceiling, bolted into it, as cameras. The floor was a grating that allowed fluids to be drained and pumped in

The ceiling of the chamber rose like a vaulted roof toward a circular aperture.

What she would doubtless understand was that the silver androids that held her – now increased in number to four – had taken her armour, and then sliced, with some kind of laser, her arm off at the elbow, before placing her in this chamber. Of course, the reasoning was sound enough – the wounds inflicted by the plasma weapon had essentially pulverized flesh below that point, it was dead, and the bones shattered.

Then, she would also surely have understood that she was drowning. This was not in fact true – but the fluid that bubbled up from beneath was clear, like water. It was denser than water, though, the denisity of flesh, most biological organisms would float in it until they had to breathe in. It was also loaded with powerful sedatives, but more importantly, breathable. Indeed, it was edible, too; so long as it was supported with the right power and pumping machines, it could keep a creature alive indefinately.

How long she would last before being forced to inhale the substance, and then how long until she would succumb to its sedation, with the strangely compatible fluid in her lungs, was part of the analysis. Thus, the cameras would watch her.

When she finally succumbed (if she did) the top of the room would iris open, and she would be sucked, fluid and all, up into a narrow chamber about two feet wide, one of its sides made of armour-glass, a transparent compound stronger than steel. The bottom was sealed, and the cylinder taken away, attached to its own pump, and transferred to an analysis lab elsewhere on the ship.


A little over an hour later, the same – thoroughly irradiated and decontaminated – landing craft swung low over the fields seventeen miles outside Mialla. The disembarkation procedure was almost identical, though the observant would notice some kind of sword on the Myrmidon’s belt as she landed, and let the re-stocked aircraft resume circling overhead.

Their mission now: to capture more samples of the population – a rural area was much more likely to be productive, in this regard, of course.

The marine, a minkette revealed only by genetic testing and if they could see her scarred face. It wasn’t a massive scar just a cosmetic one across her left cheek going down to her chin. All marines in the Kiisa had them, a symbol of a warrior, one who was only interested in giving death and taking death. The mink fell unconscious only after thirty minutes. She struggled against the laser cutting what was left of her arm off before falling into unconsciousness. Dreaming of the evacuation, the only clear event in her mind, she was running back through the crowd getting to the evacuation ship, brushing aside the masses of guards escorting children and pregnant womenfolk. She was looking for someone, what was his name… it was a he… A boy… what was his name… the rage chemical building up because of the fact she forgot. Her eyes opened again to see what had transpired within the last few hours, the sedative’s effects being counteracted by the chemical effect.

Speaking of those infected, the rural area wasn’t the absolute best place to find them since of course since mialla was still full of food and the sewer and other maintenance systems hadn’t broken down just yet so it was still a pretty nice place to live. Considering if you were a tribal, though there were some out here, some herbavores out from the defeated Kioro tribe, most of them trying to feed from the land and avoid any hunting parties that might be around trying to see what they could find outside the city.

The Mechanicus title of Magos originally came from Magister Mechancium, an equivalent of Doctor (academic) in other societies. The Mechanicus didn’t use the title Doctor to reffer to anything but medical professionals of similar advancement.

Magos Biologis Neuralis Kearman did, therefore, qualify for the title ‘Doctor’ but he preferred the scientific term for it. He was the one who had been placed in charge of the experiments on the first sample to be brought in, and had stepped into a sealed laboratory, a small octagonal room with space for three of the sample cylinders on its walls

He didn’t actually notice the subject overcoming the sedatives, because by that time, he had triple-sealed the chamber and began draining her cylinder. This done, he had an internal electrical shock pattern force the sample to expel the fluids from her lungs, before he removed her, or more precisely, had the automaton assisting him do so.

The table that dominated the center of the room was surrounded by six arms, and otherwise consisted of a layer of flat metal that could tilt at several angles. The automaton clamped all of the mink’s limbs into place, with horse-shoe shaped devices, powerful electromagnets, eleven in all, including one around the waist, one around the truncated arm, one around the neck, and two for the tail.

Among the precautions taken, this table then projected a power field around it, configured to atomize organic flesh and material – even the protiens of viruses – that passed through it. Its own metal arms would pass through with minimal incident, as could the tech-priest’s arms, but any attempt to escape would result in immolation.

Kearman reached through the field, its blue shimmer crackling around the augmetic right arm he used, embedded with dozens of electrical and chemical probes, needles retracted under silvery fingernails. He extended one of these, drawing back his hood with the other, to reveal an entirely human face, and injected a counter-agent to the sedative into one of the captive’s corotid arteries.

Waiting a moment for it to reach the brain, he spoke, “Do you understand me?” he asked, in latin, a language he’d inloaded into his memory-circuits just prior to this, as it was apparently their lingua-franca.



Afrin Malkaris couldn’t smell the warm country air, so did she feel she could? It was subconscious she decided, a reaction to the wonderfully unspoiled sight of the fields all around.

Near her, the Skitarii clicked and hummed their reports back and forth as they spread out in a wide line, walking through the fields, towards the nearest buildings indicative of settlement. Here and there, small animals moved, and the Skitarii wasted no time in shooting anything that came too close, even dialed-down shells blasting any field mice that came too close into cooked flecks of meat. If she didn’t know better, she might have described her charges as ‘twitchy.’

She absentmindedly scooped some of the plants up, sealing them in steel boxes, and did the same with a couple of insects – the ones the skitarii spared. It would be interesting to see what the flora and fauna might have become.

One of the Skitarii clicked an alert, and she switched to infra-red vision again, forgoing the sentimentality of the view. There was at least one large life form ahead…

The mink’s eyes focused on the one beyond the chair as he spoke. Mikilos… Mikilos was his name… The boy that she had to find, she had to find him she had to give him back to his mother. She promised she would, she never broke a promise. A marine never broke their promises. She cautiously watched the cyborg doctor as he restrained her and put the field over her head. She growled at him as he addressed her, showing she understood him fully. The sedative and the counter agent made cohearant thought possible but it was still hard to tell reality from illusion, she hoped this was real however as that would give her new question meaning.

“Where is he!? What did you do to him?! Answer me! Where’s Mikilos?”

If this was an illusion then all of this would fade into black, white or whatever color her madness chose however she might get an answer if what she suspected had happened. The evacuation was waylaid by some sort of mechanical creatures and they were busy dissecting or worse adding the ones they saw fit to their ranks because that’s what these sort of creatures did. She made no serious attempt to fight her bonds as she attempted to interrogate the cyborg as she was going to be interrogated. Even though if one were to give her suit some close examination, they might figure the action to be pointless as this marine was a mere seaman second class. Not anything worth the bother of interrogation.

Meanwhile on the planet, the figure was a smallish male raccoon diligently harvesting the fruit from a berry tree. The ‘safety’ of the berries was in question as if one scanned them would see that they had a chemical mix comparable to alcohol. Not good booze but it was still there. The young squad leader would hear something in her mind if she was primarily organic however.

~”Are you sure that’s a good idea? The herbivores are more intelligent than their brothers… Some still know how to use rifles and there are a lot more of them out here than there are of you…”~

The voice would disappear soon after it’s introduction but it proved something if the agent heard it. Their scanners were wrong. Not everyone was infected, there was someone, someone with psyonic abilities out there and he felt like giving advice.

Malkaris’ brain was indeed mostly meat, though she was considering replacing that – given that, it seemed, she was hearing things. She debated the possibility of some kind of psychic interference, and logged the contact. It didn’t matter yet.

She ordered the Skitarii to crouch as they approached now – they were designed more for guard duty and other visible tasks than for sneaking about. Fortunately, they were at least capable of being quiet, as she ordered them to go into a silent movement mode, their customary humming and clicking shutting down.

She approached a little way ahead of them, keeping to cover as much as possible, too, until she was within the maximum range of her pistol weapon – some twenty meters – before firing on the male creature before her, attenuated electrical fields shorting across his brain. It was not actually painful, but debilitating, as normal brain functions (such as might be there) were hijacked and short-circuited.


Kearman was surprised by the cogency of the bound subject before him’s reply. He had already laid a hand against the controls of the table she was bound to, having one of the mechanical arms inject her intact right arm, drawing blood into a cylinder which it then pumped through a tube into a sample processing chamber. That was important – it would scan for physical contaminating agents, viruses, bacteria, nanomachines. It would also scan her blood cells for recent changes to her genetic structure, and monitor the level of her various hormones. Unfortunately, without a healthy baseline, it would be difficult to work with.

“I do not know that name. You are the first person we have found. Do you know what happened to you?” he asked.

The coon went down with a harsh yip but the message from beyond might have had some ring of truth as a series of confused yips. Confused yips in the distance that soon turned into enraged growls and grunts as the herbivore tribes went to investigate what was going on with berry collection. There was a slow trickle of furs coming towards the noises which were mostly mistaken for predators shooting or slashing unworthy prey. Now it was unmistakable, they had to rally to protect their food supply. There were several more clans uniting this time as well as the Niogo. The Niogo were simply the most numerous and ill equipped of their brethren but brave enough to try and stake a claim on the bountiful resources the city had to offer.

The Niata, and Nifaia were sub clans absorbed into the main Niogo clan, both sects weren’t particularly numerous but they were well armed as the Niata were experimenting with forging, crafting and repairing the various technologies that were lost when the virus hit. As a result they constructed crude armor plating from buildings, tanks, vehicles, and other unfortunate machinations that were left to their care. The Nifaia were what most clans on the planet lacked, riflemen, feral creatures intelligent enough to not only know which end of the barrel the plasma bolt came out of but some things about what it should do in flight as well. Scanners would show thirty furs coming this way some armed some armed and wearing crude ill fashioned armor.

~’Well that did it now they think there’s an invasion force on their turf… And there is… You… Great job… Just run up and get Kail and then leave. Really. There’s no reason to repeat this afternoon’s defeat. Even though I know you’ll stand your ground… Maybe you just need to get captured. Just to see that your interesting blasphemies can’t save you under four tons of earth…’~

The voice would say in a condescending mocking tone to Malkaris. Going from helpful to unhelpful in a single stroke but then again that’s what most mysterious voices or help did when one did go against their advice.

Meanwhile on the ship the minkette eyed the machine she was observing. She let out a low pained growl as the machine took her blood. The blood was laden with virus the virus that was trying to adapt to the new chemicals floating through. The rage virus having to match it’s host exactly in order to work it’s magic.

“You lying machine… He’s twelve…”

She sighed softly closing her eyes for a moment to meditate on the question. She didn’t know, she didn’t know, she didn’t remember. She closes her eyes trying to remember back as far as she could. She remembered a spaceport, a space port that no longer stood teeming with furs clamoring to get out. She remembered guarding the gate to the evacuation elevator… An order… Open fire… Hostiles at the gate… Red light… Open fire…

“Aaarrrrgh… Let him go he’s only twelve!… He’s no good to you!”

The mink screamed out fighting against her bonds. Her head hurt now, it really, really hurt now… Oh god that hurt but she couldn’t let this machine see it. She couldn’t let this ‘thing’ see that it might actually be winning.

Mymidon Malkaris frowned, her lips tugged downward under their protective layer of syn-skin, and the obscuring helmet over it. She didn’t particularly want the ‘voice’s’ aid, but she had it. That was certainly her plan anyway, and she slunk through the bushes with considerable speed, augmetic legs leaving. The interesting thing was that this voice had clearly been observing them before, and yet seemed personally familiar with the entity before her, which she grabbed by the scruff of the neck, slinging over her back in one smooth motion, coiling the embrace of a metal tentacle around it.

The skitarii sent radio-coded requests to open fire on the approaching enemy, which Malkaris denied. There was nothing so crude as actually hearing it, or a heads up display – she was simply aware of it, operating them like a remote sense that had no easily translated analogue.

She sent another encoded radio burst out, an instruction to the circling landing vehicle to come in a little way away. She had another objective in mind, now, as she ran, sunlight glinting off her soldiers as she ran. She sent another signal, this one would be picked up by the satellites in orbit and relayed to the cruiser – a brief report on the psychic contact.

She was measuring its apparent strength with each contact, and that was her objective here. She ran in a faintly parabolic course along the grasslands, zig-zagging. If the signal dropped off appreciably in strength, then it would be a useful measurement.

Talk to me she thought, inwardly, or rather, outwardly, sending it, for good measure, on an un-encrypted radio-frequency in the local language Who are you? What do you know about the infection?


Far above, Kearman frowned a little, as the analysis of the blood test filtered into his consciousness. They would have to remove some of this for further analysis as to how it spread – the chamber was already testing the air the subject breathed out, of course, but that would take longer to provide results. In the mean time, he was studying the changes to the subject’s brain.

This was made difficult by the lack of an adequate control; but the elements of the brain were mostly shared with humans; a little smaller; of course, due to a less generous skull shape. He suspected, given the general composition of the brain, that even in optimal form, it would have inferior intelligence on average, but that was conjectural, and with a margin for error. He recognized the subject as designed to imitate a terran Mink, most closely, the sea-mink, a species found in several coastlines. He had no experience in dealing with those animals’ brains, but he suspected there were some similarities in the instinctual areas.

This was a necessary precursor to the next stage of interrogation. He reached through the field – there was nothing organic on his arm; his robes were made of spun-metal fabric and so it was unharmed but sterilised – and reached toward her restrained skull, slivers of metal, like needles, extending from the tips of two fingers. They were almost invisible, finer than human hairs, protected in stasis fields to even allow them to exist in an atmosphere without breaking in the slightest breeze.

He pushed them effortlessly through skin, muscle, and bone, precisely delivering a charge, and then widening them to capillaries, adding synthetic chemicals to her brain. The process was painful, of course, somewhat more than the previous injection, but the tiny size of the injection, and the lack of nerves in the brain itself, made it quite bearable.

He drew his hand out, the fields around the needles were lax outside the subject’s skin, now, to allow him to move his hand without breaking them. He knew this would harm his analysis of the virus, but would be useful for interrogation. The effect of the temporary changes to her brain was to briefly give her a mental disability that should, assuming that part of the brain was relatively human normal, for the next hour or so, render her incapable of perceiving a lie (or telling one). She would, for a time, become incapable of understanding that there were such things as hidden motivations, or unsaid information.

“We have taken no one but you,” he said, “we want to help you. Tell me your name, and what happened…”

The voice sighed softly in mymidon’s mind opting to cause a malfunction in her optic nerves. More like a hallucination of one location, just one location extremely south west of the city. A location which appeared to be deep, deep in the planet’s few hillsides.

~’Come there if you want to speak in person, that is if you survive. Oh. Don’t bother getting ‘daddy’s’ permission. I won’t be there if you actually wait to get his blessing. I despise talking to drones after all…’~

That was all from the unseen adviser. Though there were more pressing issues, such as the clansmen realizing that you weren’t going to fire at them charged at full speed. Aiming to crush this invasion with brutal efficiency, after all the preds could be moving in, could be looking to establish a base there and then wipe them out like they did in the city.

Meanwhile the mink entered a pained daze, her eyes looking all around as though this place were completely alien to her. Her fearful expression calming down when the doctor told her he was here to help her.

“I don’t know who I am… I don’t know what happened. I’m cold. Why is it so bright here?”

Malkaris ran toward the landed vehicle ahead, enemy hot on her heels; the squad was assembled shoulder-to-shoulder behind her to protect her and her captive from enemy fire. They were running backward, turned one hundred and eighty degrees at the waist, heavier chest armour facing backward, chest lights shining back at their attackers in a stacatto dazzling burst with each pace to distract, heads turned right about facing forwards. Where the enemy shot them, smoking holes appeared in their armour, occasionally a joint would be shot away and the skitarii would link arms to carry one another. The group leapt into the landing craft, Malkaris and her latest prisoner, locking herself into the rack in the middle of the chamber, watching the angular, sleek robots jump in with her.

You may not want to deal with drones, but you shan’t have the luxury of dealing with fools either, she said, plugging into the shuttle and closing her eyes, meditating on her experience. Not noticeable enough; she would have to keep the individual talking.

Our interest here, I assure you, is your interest. Our only goal is to cure this infection, she thought again, as the reheat propelled the ship up with a loud sonic boom toward orbit. She concentrated on framing words within her mind, If you have any information that is of use, you would be wise to share it!


“Reduce lighting fifty percent,” Kearman said, aloud, and the lights dropped obediently. “You were infected with a virus, I believe it is blocking your long term memory. We should be able to cure it,” he said, sounding confident; he didn’t know, but she didn’t need to know that – if there was no cure, she would be frozen or euthanased anyway – “but it would help us treat you if you could describe exactly what you’re feeling now…”

The lights spewed at the tribals resulted in a set of howls and startled yips, this crowd was more easily swayed by psychological warfare than their predator predecessors. Some of the attackers went and hid from the ‘sun men’ that they perceived. The ones that were too bloodthirsty to actually break and run were also undeterred by the fire from the robots. Though they weren’t too accurate at long ranges, though one practice remained, a few specially painted furs ran to the wounded waving their hands over their wounds. The wounds healed somewhat as they carried the wounded away to meet a proper doctor as the herbivores had a staff of doctors.

~’And why should I? I’m perfectly happy in my little bunker blasphemer. Or did you have some intriquite little device that could detect me even when I’m surrounded by rock and metals specifically built to reflect waves produced by scanners? I wonder, I wonder how you were planning to catch me if I didn’t reveal myself to you and offer my help which you refused. Oh and tell your pilot to watch out the winds up here are quite nasty.~

With that the psychic shut up entirely leaving one with only the flashed location to go on.

Meanwhile the mink onboard let out another pained moan, her head moving back and forth.

“I have a headache… I’m a little woozy. I’m hungry, and everything is sore, though I’m mostly… Tired. Thank you for the lights.”

The mink moaned, shifting back and forth, showing her uncomfortability. She rolled her eyes, trying to think, trying to remember who and what she was.

Malkaris frowned. Not enough. Well, she could do something, anyway. Her black-layered hands manipulated the fluffy creature she’d shot. She found it interesting: as much as the pskyer found her to be a blasphemer, she found this – no, not blasphemy. She found it to be misguided. Relying on the flesh instead of the machine… Such was the philosophy of barbarians and the uneducated. These people were neither.

She could only imagine that it was an act of their leaders, to keep the population under control – most of the religion of the Mechanicum was just such a thing too, a means to keep control.

***

Kearman frowned, watching the reactions as the subject’s brain chemistry began to change, as if supressed chemistry was building up a tolerance. Interesting. Very interesting.

It appeared that the virus, whatever it was, was supressed, at least temporarily, by the effects of sedation. However, the Mink’s responses were already subnormal – though that could simply be the stress of amnesia and intimidation.

Soon, she would regress to the full-on feral state, which would be just as interesting.

“Do you remember your name?” he asked.

***

Malkaris offloaded the herbivorous creature to the Skiatarii, and frowned as she once more headed through the decontamination routine, trapped in a vacuum, layers of radiation-emitting fields passing over her body, cooking the robes off her, and incinerating syn-skin. She passed into a pressurised chamber, and stripped the false-flesh from herself. She breathed long and deep from the ship’s clean, purified air.

Nonetheless, she didn’t feel clean, despite all that, the impure touch of the unsanctioned telepathy made her feel sick. Disgusting creature.

***

BIO-SAMPLE-ALVARA-00000000-00000010 was processed much more swiftly than his predecessor. Already unconscious, he was simply stripped and processed – faux-drowning in the sedative loaded oxygenation fluid and being loaded into another slim cylinder, duly whisked to Magos Kearman’s laboratory, loaded into place like some bizzare water cooler, plugged into place, the naked coon floating in the gelatinous substance.

***

Kearman didn’t look up from his work, turning a single tendril equipped with an optical suite to look upon it instead, as he waited for subject #1’s answer.

***

“What are we dealing with?” Archmagos Vadun asked, sitting in the map room, an annexe of the bridge filled with paper charts bought and found in a hundred places by the ship on the quest for knowledge. The chamber was filled with argon, to stop all decay.

“A psyker of unknown power, I was unable to locate it. It certainly has me zeroed in, but I have had no contact since I returned to orbit. It gave me meeting coordinates, but I doubt it will come now.”

“You could be compromised anyway. I would rather trust machines against psykers,” Magos Militant Vanar Ukaryus said, “I am giving an order for a dispatch of a squad of light praetorians to that locations, with subdue or destroy programs.”

“We have time yet,” Vadun said. “Subdue only. This could be valuable information.”

***

In another of the launching decks, a transport identical to the one Malkaris had travelled in was prepared to launch. It moved into position, coasting along on a rail, lowering its rear ramp. From a door in the side of the landing bay, a group of robots, two wide, four deep, marched in lock-step onto it. These were a little bigger than the previous robots, each had a hemispherical head with a black slit for its vision equipment, and a heavy weapon on its shoulder, variously multi-lasers, a kind of rapid-fire high power laser. On the right arm of each, below the elbow, was a gun, a conventional weapon, sickle shaped magazines containing ordinary bullets.

They lowered these arm-guns the long bayonets attached trailing just a centimeter above the floor, and trooped into the carrier – this one without chairs, locking their feet in place magnetically. They reached up, taking hold of handles on the ceiling, and the door closed behind them.

No one saw this, all completely automated without any sapient being thinking of it. Like simple ballistic missiles, all the machines had been loaded with ‘targeting packages’ which told them in broad terms, what their goals were, and they would execute this according to their own little idiosyncrasies.