A pair of metallic arms flailed about, claw like gripping arms and other attachments on their ends moving. Every member of the team drew weapons, half of them taking aim, the rest watching for anything that might be approaching from the other sides. The Commander and the android both advanced slowly upon the source of the commotion and found another dead human, this one with much of it's body rebuilt or covered over with mechanical components. After a few more seconds the movement died down and a light that had turned on in it's cybernetic eye winked out.
Backing away from the strange man-machine abomination the Commander bumped into a large bipedal walking tank of some sort.
"What is it with these people?! We've found normal human bodies but most of them seemed malnourished and then we find all of these... these THINGS!"
One of the techs, approached pulling out a scanner.
"Sir that tank, it's connected into the remaining ship's power supply. The weird stasis field is inside of it."
The commander backed up to get a better look.
"A stasis field inside a tank?"
"This is Commander Addison, I think we've found something sir."
"Go ahead commander." replied Parek
"It's a stasis unit contained within an old walking construct. We're affixing a power supply right now so that we can bring it back to the med bay."
"Is it small enough to teleport?" asked Parek.
"We'll have to remove some of the extra hardware but we could yes. It masses a fair bit though so we'll need team Two to bring in more gear for us."
"I'll make sure they get the message."
After he'd relayed that information Parek checked in on the other teams. All of them were reporting similar levels of low technology or technology that was just so inefficient that the builders had used up dozens of square meters for the most simple machinery. There was no doubt that it was still a powerful ship but these people could have done so much more with it.
With a sigh the Captain pulled out his dataslate and began updating the ships log.
Brother Lavidean Atar, a long serving Space Marine of the Ultramarines Chapter, awoke for the first time in centuries. What should have followed was becoming instantly aware of everything the sensors in his Dreadnought body could see and detect. However instead of issuing a powerful voice modulated 'I have awoken' he felt his breath wheeze past open lips. Trying to remember muscles not used in more than five hundred years he opened his eyes.
His eyes, he realised, not the eyes of the Dreadnought he had been entombed within. Light clouded his vision making it impossible to make out any details of his surroundings.
"Ah! Good you're awake at last." Echoed a voice that sounded like an old but still strong civilian.
After a few tries Brother Lavidean finally managed to speak a few words. "By... the... Emperor. What has... happened?!"
"Try to remain calm." The old man advised. "You're going to be alright. We found your ship destroyed and were hoping you could help us."
"We have our guest sedated at the moment but I don't want to keep him under too long."
The captain nodded absently in response to the doctor's conversation, not really paying attention. On the other side of the heavy crystal plate window was the main examination room where a rather ordinary looking human lay. The body on the morgue's examination table however was a different story. That one was covered from head to toe in thick armour and was far larger.
"Tell me what you found out about the armoured human."
"He'd had some sort of augmentative gene therapy done of a type I never encountered back in the old days. The brain is the least changed from what I can tell but the psychological trauma that would have been endured to reach that state are enormous. I can't imagine that all humans changed that way would survive the process, even if properly selected."
"So we find ourselves yet another abomination." sighed the captain. "We're going to have to come up with a new vocabulary at this rate to describe these things."
The Doctor frowned at that comment. "From what I can tell about our still living man in there, he was exposed to the same gene therapy. His body appears to have been mostly destroyed at some point, so they must have placed him inside that war machine. Much of it was filled with old but still somewhat sophisticated life support machinery."
"Why isn't he nine feet tall now?" asked Parek.
"I hadn't checked over the other soldier yet when I began treatment. In scanning his body I mistook the cells that had been mutated by the gene therapy for some sort of cancerous growth. In body he is now the same man he was before being remade into that soldier form. ...but the mind is a different story. He could be nothing but a purpose built killing machine. I'd be cautious about waking him."
"How strong is he?"
"At the moment? Not very strong at all. The newly constructed muscles and body structure will need some time to fully set. He should remain in a semi-atrophied state for a day or two."
"Restrain him anyways. I'm going to call a pair of soldiers up here. I get the feeling he may respond better to a show of force."
005
AUTHORS NOTE:
I'm happy to say I had more than a few people posting "ZOMG IT"S A GEANSTEALER! THEY"RE ALL GOING TO BE DEAD!" when I first posted what's become the ending of the page 4. Of course when nobody instantly died I stared getting a mix death threats and such, go figure.
Also, to all readers demanding longer chapters; I'm trying as best I can to mash multiple individual imageboard posts all into a semblance of a chapter structure. Even with the grammatical and paragraph repairs I've made to the original material there's bound to be some gaps.
