By the Omnissiah, the true Omnissiah, the Man of Gold that started the Great Crusade, this universe is scrap code.
Accidental teleportation was a thing, I have experimented before, as part of the Auxilia Myrmidon of the Adeptus Mechanicus, I have used teleportation several times. Not always with the success that I would have liked, but when the flesh fails, the steel is more than happy to took over. That was one of the reasons why I was under heavy scrutiny, I was not one to commune with the creed of the rest of my peers at the Auxilia.
They believed steel should substitute flesh, I said that steel should protect flesh. Humanity, our living vessel, is the sacred gift of the Omnissiah, why destroy the vessel that provided so much knowledge?. In time, even the steel will rust, that's why a balance must be achieved, grow beyond our limitations and ascend.
Xenarite, they called me, Heretek, insulted me others, but I did not care. The sacred mission of the Omnissiah was clear for me, Glory to Humanity, Glory to the Omnissiah, the Emperor of Mankind.
Of course, that being said, I am more than happy to dismantle Tau tech and use it to blast those little arrogant blue skinned upstarts to the next millennia. The Greater Good, my shiny chromed ass.
Omnissiah protect me, I am rambling again, my internal cogitators are at disarray, my auspexs are having a stroke and my internal logs looks like fireworks.
Initiate reboot, reestablish systems, Glory to the Omnissiah, start canticle of harmony.
There we are.
With harmony comes stability, with the green core of the sacred machine comes purpose, with purpose come action, with action comes knowledge, with knowledge comes enlightenment.
Sentience is the price of Knowledge.
Rebooting my internal systems has been a kick, for a second I panicked and only my logic cogitator prevented my systems to be flooded with an avalanche of hormonal petitions and instructions. Fortunately, my cybernetic augmented neural cortex cut down the visceral reaction, flooded the system with the adequate chemicals and let the self-repairing protocols to take hold and fix whatever they can.
My accidental teleportation to a new galaxy was a very unforeseen circumstance of my experimentation with Necrontyr FTL travel. As a Tech-Priest of the Axilia Myrmidon of the Secutor Rank, I was tasked with war efforts all over the universe, from my original birth on Mars, to my training as Enginseer, to my ascendancy to War Savant, or Dominus, that would be the more adequate rank, all my existence was focused on the Quest for Knowledge in the form of war efforts.
The Necrontyr, know in the 37ยบ Millennia as Necrons, are the only known race that has managed to face in battle, and finally defeat, the Old Ones, the ancient Xeno species that ruled the Galaxy with an unsurpassed mastery of the ways of the Inmaterium. However, the Necrontyr despised the Warp, despised all psyker efforts, and they developed their entire technology outside of any warp related interference.
That's why I was obsessed with them. Supreme tech capable of reject the daemon blight and their cursed corruption. Alas, my eagerness become my fall, as I worked with tech that I did not understood and paid the price for it. However, landing in the deepest trenches of a Hive-World was not among my calculations.
The worst possible result was atomic decomposition. Yet, I have several contingencies planned for such a thing, and at the moment of my demise, a clone will be cultivated and implanted with a copy of all my augmentation, along a brain patter, and a copy of my latest databanks. It was a procedure that I was sure most of the higher branches of the Mechanicus had implemented for themselves, although, the cloning technology was not entirely approved, beyond its use to quickly craft legions of Skitarii for any conflict.
The original, aka me, was sent flying through dimensions into this madhouse, and a clone will continue my job. That was a relief, my job was too important for the Imperium to be lost, with a clone with a series of protocols in place to continue my legacy, I can rest assure that my work will continue on its intended schedule.
Now, the original, on the other hand, had an entire galaxy in front of him.
Originally, I spent an entire day resting into a melted hole into a wall. My translation had produced a tremendous spike of energy that had forced most of my systems to shut down, and only because I have reinforced my dermal armor and chasis with Necrometal, did I survive the displacement. My flesh was heavily damaged, only the vitals protected by armor survived without severe burning or entire chunks took out form my body. That forced me to stand, as my healing nano-bots took care of those damages.
In a curious bout of luck, one of the many vermin of the under-hive that I found myself in, come around to sniff, looking for an easy lunch, and thanks to my pseudogenetor artifact, the vermin become my lunch. The prime materials will be translated into nutrition and healing, and the DNA samples will be analyzed by the pseudogenetor and my cogitators, to grant me a better understanding of what kind of environment I found myself in.
After an entire day of self-repairs, I managed to climb out of the hole and into the dampen and rusted halls of the Under-hive. My red garments were practically destroyed, covering my frame as a ragged and torn red cape. Most of my augmentations were in the open, only about a thirty percent of my body being still of flesh and blood. I made be against substitutions, but on a war torn galaxy, catastrophic wounds are a statistical fact.
The under-hive halls were a bit different from what I expected. After a couple of seconds for my optical lenses to adjust to the lack of light, I found myself in the cleanest slums that I have ever seen on an under-hive. It was still an insult to any maintenance crew, but my auspexs indicated that the radiation, pollution, and toxicity of the place was nowhere near close to the undergrounds, of, lets say, Necromonda's spires lower levels.
The air was dense, and carried a lot of rust, chemicals, and several toxins, nothing to worry about, even the average civilian of a forge world would be breathing worse air on a daily basis without the need of a re-breather.
Most of the architecture was also completely unknown to me, quickly run a scan over the surfaces, it revealed that they were made of sturdy materials, very close to ferrocement, plasteel and others. Standard constructions materials that the Imperium used. However, the degradation was more than blatant, if this was a Forge World, and with the surface barely two hundred meters above my head, I will be claimed for the heads of the maintenance crew, reducing them to servitors to clean this mess.
Certain engineering principles seem the same no matter the universe. The unfold of a virtual map over my optics allowed me to see how human-friendly the architecture was, with a couple of devices that called my attention. My auspexs lacked the potency to run a deep scan of the deep of the halls and the underground behind me, but through a quick sonar burst, I was able to determine that the deep of the underhive was more than a kilometer down me. That, and the handhelds for climbing out of the level, a level that had all the traces of being the halls of a wiring systems, like the one that brought energy to the upper levels of any Hive on the Imperium.
The automatic scan and sample taking pseudogenetor mechandendrites, picked up samples from the air, the puddles, the rust and mold of the walls, any biological samples that they could find, dissecting the samples and producing quite the fascinating results. That kept me entertained as I ascended through the long set of handhelds, reaching an upper level, and with any luck, a terminal of any sort where I can get a basic idea of where on the Omnissiah I was.
My wish was granted, and by the Omnissiah, I am suffered a meltdown.
After a couple of hours of traverse through the halls and caves of the under-hive, I managed to found a maintenance room. The small hole in the wall has been abandoned for decades, judging from the dust cape over all the surfaces, and had the bare necessities for a worker to rest between turns. It was akin to the cubicles of the laborers of a Forge-World, but with more commodities. A private terminal, a work desk, a comfortable enough bed, a small lavatory of sorts, I believe that is a lavatory, an overseer of a fabrication line could have something like this.
My organic components have already recovered from the damages that I suffered during the transition, and the vermin had added a pound of nutrients, so I had covered that front. My steps guided me directly to the terminal, a very strange terminal that seem to have holographic displays. From my arms, several mechadendrites extended and fiddled with the terminal a bit. Plugging in was not all that easy, especially due to species differences, but thanks to my Necrometal, the tips of the mechadendrites managed to adapt and connect with the computational core of the terminal.
I had a stroke when I discovered the HoloNet, I had another stroke at the Silica aninum that provided user help to the terminal, I tethered on the brink of a meltdown at the droids that plagued the galaxy. And do not make me start of the Force.
Much to my shame, I stood still, for an unknown amount of time, in front of the terminal. My upper conscious was screeching in Techna-Lingua, meanwhile my cogitators were categorizing, downloading and indexing all the information that they could from the open databanks of the HoloNet.
Knowledge, good and bad, openly given to anyone. For everyone, no matter preparations, no matter effort, and pursuit of the Quest of Knowledge. That was enough to make a call for the Exterminatus of the entire universe, but when I discovered how there are thousands of Xenos gallivanting the galaxy, and entire corporations dedicated to fabricate and sell Silica Animus, aka droids. The economy of entire civilizations is based on droid workforce, the entire armies of entire races, are droids.
My self-repairing systems had to deal with an aneurysm at the revelation.
Several stress protocols flooded my system with chemicals, easing the absorption of knowledge, and the emotional reaction to such data. There are teraflops of data to index and learn, even with my cogitators dedicated only to the task, it will take time to filter and add that data to my databanks and memories. Due to such diversity, it was hardly a surprise that existed something called protocol droids. Automatas with all the known languages on their databases along cultural rituals and custom of all the sapient species of the galaxy. That had an iota of sense, if one allowed the proliferation of hostile xenos at the level of this galaxy.
Hours passed, as I partake in the open knowledge of the HoloNet, growing restless and wary by the minute, unable to understand how, by the Omnissiah, has not this entire galaxy burn to cinders. Invoking the statistic daemon Mur-Phey, I get my answer when I discovered the diverse wars that have almost razed the galaxy to the ground, in part with the help of the Jedi, the Sith, and several other fools.
Being a Secutor, being War Savant of the Auxilia Myrmidon, my purpose was war. War to a savant level, from weapons, to tactics, to warfare through any possible methods. When I took in the status of the Galaxy, I prayed, I prayed with all my augmented hearts, for a Crusade to appear over the skies of Coruscant and tore this joke to the ground.
Coruscant, the name of the planet where I stood, somewhere on the level 1075, a thousand levels over surface level. At the other continental side of the Imperial senate buildings. According to the logs that I read on the HoloNet, the Coruscant Underworld was surprisingly similar to the usual gang wars of Necromunda, and similar City-Hives all over the Galaxy. But with a scrap ton of xenos added to the equation, and technology being eviscerated by hereteks and turned into Silica Animus or Force-sensitives looking as sorcerers and witches beyond the hands of the Jedi and their temple in this very planet.
Curiosity is possibly my biggest flaw. That could be the main reason why I have ended in this situation, I recognize that I am quite the odd welder on the tool box. I have been called Heretek in more than one occasion, not to mention that I am part of the Xenarite faction of the Mechanicus. Necrontyr tech may be the answer against the Chaos, but at the same time, humanity has to dodge the plasma shot of the final fate of the Necrontyr, becoming the abomination called the Necrons.
After invading enough Tomb-Worlds and put the Necrons there to their final rest, I was more than familiar enough with the fate of the Necrontyr to do all we could to prevent such an event for humanity.
My curiosity made me break through the code walls of several computers, trying to get the most accurate information possible about the droids, the xenos, and the Jedi order that seemed to be the main enforcers of this Republic, the ruling core of the majority of the universe, with the Hutt Empires, the thousands of Kingdoms, xeno systems, etc, all over the galaxy. Not even my logic cogitators, and the anti-stress chemicals prevented the migraine that was growing all over my augmented brain matter.
The juicy data that I devoured on those protected nodes of the HoloNet were fascinating, but I alerted the authorities of the respective business behind of the nodes, and an alert came through the connection, indicating that someone was trying to trace me back and to access to my cogitators. That was an insult, but I recognize the effort and how cunning the trackers were, however, they lacked the true connection with the machine that I hold, and their retarded Silica animus lacked the true sentience of an Abominable Intelligence.
Unplugging the mechadendrites, I walked out of the room and upload the map of the level. The map had more than three decades of antiquity, meaning that it can be very inexact, due to the constant alterations that the Lower Coruscant gangs, vermin, etc did to the environment for their turf wars and shady business. Still, I hoped, it would be enough for me to reach a populated level and lost any possible trackers on the lawless urban zones of Coruscant's Underworld.
To think that I was gallivanting an under-hive like any other ganger of Necromunda or the Chemical Hounds, irked me greatly. Someone was going to be used for extreme violent cathartic stress relief exercises, I swear to the Omnissiah.
Speaking of violence and the methods and tools to inflict it, I lamented the loss of my revered Red Axe and my personal plasma pistol. The transition had taken those from me, my servo-harness was still up and operative, with two servo-arms armed with laser cutters and pinzers, a flamethrower, and a plasma cutter, not mention my pseudogenetor artifact, my own augmented strength; easily at the level of an Astartes; and the blades that I hold on my arms.
All in all, I had to admit that I felt a bit naked. My core chasis was the one reinforced with necrometal, not my armor, so I was naked under my ragged red robes. Around eighty percent of my body was augmented with sacred technology, and the organic twenty percent left was genetically augmented as much as I could. My purpose as the weapon of the Adeptus Mechanicus demanded no less.
Unfortunately, I found myself on a situation that was very unusual for someone like me.
Subterfuge, infiltration, I know how to plan such actions, but my augmentations were not suited for that task. My protocols would have called for the connection with a maniple of Sicarian Infiltrators, maybe even a Killclade, taking control of the Princeps of the maniple and leading the squad for a real life data-feed into my strategicarum cogitators.
Physically, I am a very imposing figure, seven feet tall, with a body that looks as if a human had a steel skin, except for my upper left torso, half of my left arm, head, stomach, and crotch, along the form of my servo-harness,, with the tools of my trade compacted on it.
Why those part of my body are still of flesh?; genetically enhanced flesh, mind you; is a funny and odd tale. War is a constant in my home universe, there is no friendly xenos on my universe, all of them are hostile to Humanity, that had forced me to work with all the factions of the Mechanicus at one point or the other.
The branch of the Mechanicus that I worked more closely by, will, of course, be the Skitarii Legions, the Collegio Titanica, and the other military oriented branches, however, for almost three centuries, I was part of the Deathwatch, as part of the retinue of an Inquisitor that was as interested as me on the xeno technologies and methods to survive the Chaos, or any other of the infinite threats of a grim universe. I was not the only Tech-priest on the retinue, I had to work closely with an unusual Tech-Priest called Is T-AR.
During our partnership, Is grow interested in the topic of genetics, parentage, genetic crafting, augmenting, and the such, and out of curiosity, we develop a several century long genetic program on where our natural descendants will be motorized to see if natural genetics can surpass the artificially crafted genetic traits of most of the Tech-Priest of worlds like Ryza, Metalica, or several others.
In order to be part of the experiment, I had to kept my reproductive organs, so I used as many genetic mods as possible to be able to perform reproductive duties, whenever I found a candidate that will work well with my natural genetics. Before my accident, I was the prideful father of nearby three hundred very promising aspirants, five of them, the natural sons of Is and I.
Of course, such project made more than one eyebrow raise in the Mechanicus, but our respective status as the top rank of our factions, Secutor and Magus Biologies, and the protection of the Inquisitor that we worked for, prevented any possible drawbacks. It also helped that our project was nothing like the disastrous Afriel strain experiment.
In this new universe, I would be categorized as a cyborg, an artificially augmented individual through technology. According to the open databases of the HoloNet, I was hardly the most augmented individuals, there are entire open logs and holo-archives about extensive cyber modifications. In all races of the universe, I know more than I would have liked of the biology of the Mon Calamari or the Hutts. The latter were basically humongous intelligent and cruel worms. They disgust me on a core level.
Anyhow, my sacred augmentations, even my necrometal, was distinctive enough to call the attention of the locals. Maybe on the Imperial Senate or the higher spires of Coruscant, I could pass as another expensive cybernetics, but on the Underworld, such quality is rare, except on the more successful gangs, or those that have extensive contacts with the more technologically oriented corporations. Without the support of the Mechanicus, I found myself alone for the first time since forever. Not even when I was a mere initiate did I felt such an absence. It was very jarring.
Activating several tracking countermeasures to lost my possible chasers, I followed the safest route to the nearest inhabitant level of the Underworld. With a hum of my power core, all of the most common of the packages of infiltration went online on the right side of my optics. They were pretty basic, but it will suffice to move around, and I will not react to any possible energy scanner. Nothing on the maps or the information on the HoloNet, spoke about such a devices in this levels, but just in case a paranoid criminal become clever, I kept my energy levels on a stealth mode.
For a couple of days, I explored the tunnels, halls, and pathways of this underground level, familiarizing myself with the local flora and fauna. It was quite the interesting experience, my pseudogenetor was exultant at the abundance of samples, and I thought about Is, she would have been static at the variety of experiments to made in this universe. She would have vivisected all of the xenos of this galaxy, just to see what made them thick. On that scholastic front, I am going to have a field day with the technologies of this galaxy.
These are not the sacred designs of the Omnissiah, they are, more often than I would like to count, the product of the xeno investigations, sold to the universe as if they were the trinkets of a merchant on a primitive market. I have no problems in butcher such designs apart, and made something worthy of the Omnissiah from them.
Between the Hawk-bat, and the trogodlytes that tried to ambush me on the darkness, I was entertained enough to climb a hundred levels, and reach something that can be called civilization. Well, let's say ork level of civilization. If the encampment of crude primitive warriors would have been on open space, more than one ork would have nodded approvingly of the metallic shacks, the crude spikes over a badly mounted walls, and the bastardized blaster weapons mounted on the walls.
A single Sicaran Infiltrator would have butchered the entire camp to the ground in a single night. I only need an hour.
The first xeno that feel under the extensible blade of my arm was a Duros, a big headed, green skinned xeno. The next was a Chiss, a blue skinned, red eyes, Near-human categorized race, whose neck broke easily, stealing his crude sword to chop another bunch of xenos into pieces. One of the xenos managed to raise a blaster and shot me with it before I sent her head flying outside of the walls with a side swept of the stolen piece of metal with a leather badly bandage. Channeling a lot of electricity from my Electograft circuits, I stabbed the chest of the fat joke of an orc that dueled me for a bit with a wide axe, and fried his body from the inside, melting the blade that I have taken from the Chiss, all over the burning wound and the gamorrean insides.
Cleaning up the place only took me an hour. Fifty six minutes of that time was invested in the works of collecting the corpses, pick up any possibly resources from them, taking samples from their genetics for my pseudogenetor, and finally torch the corpses into a big pyre to prevent any local vermin or predator to come looking for dinner.
Siting into the main shack of the camp, I feed myself with the stew that they were cooking for dinner. It was bland, if not rancid, but it contained nutrients that will kept me at peak performance. I drained a power cell that they had around, as a secondary source of energy outside of the speeder battery that they have rigged somehow, to refill my electrografts and see if my internal power core was compatible with such power sources.
It worked like a charm, much to my inner amazement.
Thanks to the necrometal and my extensive use of xeno tech, I have grafted exotic power generators into my core battery, not to mention the perpetual electrograft under my skin, that generates massive amounts of electricity, both for battle and for maintenance of my augmented systems. The possibility of interact with the energy systems of this galaxy was a welcome surprise, although, I doubt that any of my core batteries would need of it.
The loot of the camp was nothing to call Mars for. A handful of blasters, five knives, one battle axe, crude weaponry from scraps, and a maze made with an iron bar and the broken chasis of the speeder that they have rigged for energy.
Slowly eating the stew, the first "meal" that I have since I arrived at this bloody universe, I calculated how to refit the speeder and use it to cover bigger distances. The machine was as fast as one of the sacred Landspeeders back home, but it lacked any armor, any weaponry, and it was barely able to raise ten meters from the ground. After some quick mathematics, it was clear that it will not fit through the hallways and pathways of the underworld. Several former streets were nothing but rubble now, or filled with the wreckage of unknown wars between local dwellers or the local predators nestling.
Dismantling all the blasters, I managed to scrounge an adequate enough blaster. The weapon will have the equivalent power of a heavy blaster rifle, but only ten shots before needing recharge. I plugged one of the mechadendrites of my arms into the weapon, and magnolocked it to my servo-harness. From now on, I would like to use only weapons for this universe, as I have not managed to discern if plasma weaponry was as common as it was in my own universe. It was good to know that blades were still a universal value.
None of the xenos that I have killed were big enough, except the pig-like ork joke, and the pig only carried a leather harness and a fur skirt, but I managed to scrounge some pants, and a big overcoat made of the cloth that they have used to cover some of the supplies they have scavenged around.
There was nothing of worth mixed in all that crap, so I left it there. The blaster and the badly patched up clothes, along the food and the biological samples, are the only things worth of the battle. Not really a surprise, these are the lowest of the low, survivors that acted like vermin.
Without a second glance, I left he camp behind me, following the route that my tactical cogitator has developed on the map over my optical senses. It was the best that could be done with the amount of information available.
I really wanted to reach an upper strata, somewhere with a more stable and deep connection to the HoloNet so I can introduce myself in the systems of the planet and start to explore upside down this galaxy.
For the Omnissiah's sake, this place was in some serious need of a Crusade.