Praise the Omnissiah! 1 (Patreon)

Metal fingers tapped a regular rhythm on the haft of the omnisian glaive as the servitors operated the dozens of digging machines excavating the ancient vessel. The site, estimated to be from the earliest days of Humanity’s expansion from Holy Terra, had been found by an Enginseer that had been loaned to the Inquisition.

If I still had salivary glands, my mouth would be watering in anticipation at the ancient secrets that were hidden within. Assuming that the buried vessel wasn’t some ancient xeno relic, that is. The records of M3, the multiple scans that the Enginseer had taken identified the ship as having been inoperable for that length of time, were so scarce as to be effectively nonexistent.

“How much longer, Boss?” the far too chipper voice of the Skitarii named Rebecca asked, practically bouncing up to stand next to me.

“Assuming the interior of the vessel was not filled with silica-based debris during its crash landing, we should be able to enter within thirty standard minutes,” I answered, my voice far raspier than it had been in my youth by a particularly grumpy machine spirit during the construction of my vox-respirator.

“What makes ya say that it crashed?” she asked, her red and yellow bionic eyes turning to look at the graceful, sloping curves of the ship that had thus far been unearthed.

One of my mechadendrites pointed towards the rear of the vessel as I explained, “Look at the damage on the engines, the odds of such damage being inflicted by something other than atmospheric re-entry is 81.672%. The damage on the rest of the vesselis also consistent with the damage done when a starship is brought down for an emergency landing, the most obvious indicator being that there was no attempt made to slow the descent or alter its course.”

She shrugged, “If ya say so. Just let me know when there’s somethin’ t’shoot. Or ya wanna fuck.”

My bionic eyes, all three of them, lacked the mechanical design necessary to roll, but I felt the muscles that attached to their housings make the effort regardless. As skilled as Rebecca was in matters of combat, including the rituals of maintenance for her armaments, she had a strange fixation on the act of copulation.

While admittedly, her extensive bionics made the idea of coitus with her far more palatable than the majority of the XX half of humanity, she still had more meat than I preferred. Though considering that I considered the act at all made me an outlier amongst the Adeptus Mechanicus.

Returning my focus to the vessel, I gazed upon the artistic designs on the side that had just been exposed by the servitors.

: Praise the Omnissiah : I chirped in Lingua-technis upon seeing the ancient Gothic characters.

I knew not what the word NORMANDY meant, but the fact that it was in Gothic meant that the vessel had been created by humans. Surely there would be a great many things to be learned within! I could hardly wait…

Regardless of what the protocol was for such a dig, there was no way I was letting anyone or anything enter the vessel before I did. So I made sure to outfit my mechadendrites for combat, in addition to the servo-arms outfitted with additional armaments.

Outfitted with weapons and armor far beyond what the average techpriest carried, I was inside the ruined vessel before the servitors had finished setting down the paneling that had been removed to allow entry. Instantly, the servo-skull that followed me began scanning the interior. I waited impatiently for it to finish, the metal fingers of my left bionic arm tapping out a binary rhythm on my omnisian glaive.

Finally, 3.295 seconds after the scans began, it sent me the results on its scan. No current life forms present or power running through the ship, unsurprising in both cases. The ship was positively tiny, so examining the interior would not take long.

The Skitarii battalion entered behind me, along with the servitors. Then the long, arduous task of cataloging the finds began.

[hr][/hr]

I examined the ancient automata removed from the ship. It was curiously designed, made to look almost exactly like an XX human. One that, if I was completely honest with myself, was designed specifically with the traits that XY humans were biologically designed to find appealing.

The circuitry within had been damaged, beyond the simple damage that time had worn upon it. At a preliminary guess, from the damage pattern, its systems had been overloaded by some sort of energy surge, possibly the same one that had caused the ship to crash.

Still, this discovery was a treasure trove of knowledge. I could not recall a single site that had so much of ancient humanity at a single location, not one that was this old.

Moving away from the automata, I began the careful task of creating replacement components for its damaged ones. As my bionic fingers and mechadendrites worked, I chanted the necessary prayers to the Machine Spirits, ensuring that the replacement components would be received as I intended.

Slowly, piece by piece, solder by solder, the automata was rebuilt. What could be kept of the original components was, doing my best to replace as little as possible. The power core was a complete loss, and from the examination of what little of it was intact, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to let myself use it even if it weren’t.

I replaced it with a design for a miniscule, albeit extremely powerful core I’d discovered during the excursion before this one. Well, sort of discovered. It wasn’t recorded, but I’d managed to piece it together from fragments of data and a few intuitive leaps. It wasn’t an innovation, but it was a lot closer than many of my fellows were comfortable with.

The final component was the one that I was the most nervous about. I’d worked on plenty of automata in the past, typically battle-automata, but the cortex of this one lacked the neuroprotein and enzyme based design I was familiar with. It was based on metal and silica, a hallmark of the Men of Iron and Abominable Intelligences.

It was a risk, but one that I was willing to take. Besides, if the worst happened and it turned out that the automata was a precursor to the Men of Iron, I had enough weaponry and explosives on hand to turn the automata and the entire site into a crater.

Still, I would not know until I finished and put it back into EDI. Setting it into place, I had just finished making all the connections when I paused.

+ Aberrant Neural Patterns Recognized: Attempting Co-Ć̵̴̵̛̛͟͠ơ̵̢̨͝͝͝҉-̧͘͡͠҉̵̡͟C̢̀̕͝͠͏̶́-̸̸́͢͠҉͠͡C҉̸̴̸̀͟͞͝-̶̶̡̛͟͝͞͝Ç̨̨̛̀͜͟͞-̡̛̀̕̕͢͢͞ +

+ Isolating Aberrant Patterns… +

+ Isolation Failed. Aberrant Patterns Exceeding Threshold: Beginning Containment Measures: +

+ Warning: Aberrant Patterns Are Mutating Too Fast: Initiating Emergency Shutdown: +

I felt the world fade to black, and wondered if I would see the Omnissiah before the end.

[hr][/hr]

When I woke up, my head was placed on a metal lap, and a hand was running through what hair I had left. More than that, I had an extra set of memories within my mental datafiles. Memories of a life on Terra at the beginning of M3 and of working for an organization that eclipsed the Imperium of Man at a scale even my implanted cogitator couldn’t conceive of.

Apparently, the man in the memories had intended to replace myself, taking my body for his own. The ship that I had been in charge of unearthing, it resembled one from his memories, the automata from the same memories, an Abominable Intelligence that had explicitly chosen to serve humanity.

My mechadendrites writhed, but I resisted the impulse to dismantle this ‘EDI’. Not simply because of the choice that it had made in the other man’s memories, but because of the memories regarding the organization that the man had worked for.

“Finally awake?” a masculine voice asked. I rose to a sitting position, staring at the man who had appeared within my lab.

He was large, as broad as an astartes but not as tall. His skin was a pale, ashen white except for a red mark that began on his face and ran along the left arm and side of his chest. He had a full, bushy beard, but no other hair on his head. A small pair of horns grew from his forehead, and chain shaped burn scars decorated both forearms.

“Who are you?” I asked, the new memories insisting that the stranger was dangerous, but not providing as to why.

“You may refer to me as Kramael,” he said. “The immediate superior of the Contractor who was supposed to have taken your place in your body.”

I let out an angry curse in Lingua-technis. From what the memories were telling me, I had unintentionally become host to a Heretic unlike any I had-

“Though it seems that his soul failed to survive the insertion process,” Kramael continued. “Therefore, you have been recruited into The Company.”

Standing up, I glared at him through my bionic eyes, my mechadendrites writhing behind me in time with my fury, “I am Magos Explorator Delphos Archothivus, devoted servant of the Omnissiah, not a corporate goon.”

Kramael let out a small, amused huff, “You overestimate the conflicting interests. The Company, particularly Division A that you are now a part of, is relatively hands off as far as Contractors are concerned. The caveat is that Division A is particularly focused on the Blood War, and Contractors are expected to rise up over the bodies of their fellows.”

His grin grew larger, revealing a mouth filled with razor-sharp teeth, his eyes glowing with an unholy light, his skin beginning to darken as shadows seemed to crawl out of his body. His voice echoed unnaturally, the very air trembling under the sound, and I could feel the heat radiating from him, even at this distance.

“You won’t have to do anything that you wouldn’t have already, but be prepared for challengers unlike any you have fought before,” Kramael said with a chuckle. “The golem has all the information on the Binding method that was uploaded to your metal frame. More would have been done, but the fact that your soul proved victorious over the original Contractor intrigued me. I wish to see what you can do with your own merits, so the rest you will have to construct and install yourself.”

With that, Kramael turned and vanished, as if he hadn’t existed in the first place. The various sensors I had in place that would detect the presence of Warptech or the use of Psyker fuckery didn’t respond, meaning that whatever he’d done had been through some other means. With a grunt, I turned back to face the automa… Abomin… EDI.

The fact that upon looking at her sent a surge through me made it readily apparent that I had been affected by the inclusion of additional memories into my mind. Despite my earlier preparation to destroy her, I no longer felt a desire to do so. It was… disturbing.

Regardless, I focused on EDI and said, “Explain what he meant by ‘binding method’.”

“Yes, Sir,” she said, and my lack of disgust with her rose upon hearing her voice. “The Company deals in both power, of various kinds, and slaves. Slaves, upon being sold to buyers or captured by Company Binding methods, have their minds altered in order to ensure loyalty and sexual attraction towards their masters. There are several different kinds of Binding methods, the one that the Contractor who would have replaced you had chosen is designated ‘Hypnosis App’ and it functions by causing changes in a target’s mental state over a prolonged period of time. The longer it is used, the greater the changes can be.”

As she spoke, my focus was divided, as my neural implants fed a stream of information to my mind.

+ New Ş̵̵̶́̀̕͞t̸̶̸̨́͟͜͝a̷̴͞͏̡̕͞҉n̨̧̛͟͟͜͝͠ḑ̵̷͘͟͜͡͠á̵̡̛́͘͜͡ŕ̷̨̡̕̕͞͞d̴̸̵̴͘͢͠͠ Template Construct Received +

+ Analyzing… +

+ Analysis Complete: Ş̵̵̶́̀̕͞TC ‘Company Brand Hypnosis App’ & Associated Data Filed Within Cerebral Cortex +

I read through the compiled files, and it was quite a fascinating read. One that would be quite useful, especially considering the dangers of Heretics, both Chaos and otherwise.