It was not the first time that I received an impact strong enough to force my systems to reboot.
In the Great Crusade, earth-shattering warfare was a common occurrence, and due to how I always stood at the forefront of my Legion, it was just a statistical fact that I was going to receive the impact of high caliber ordinance. Be it artillery or exotic weaponry, like the plasma weapons of long-forgotten advanced human civilizations, or the strange organic weapons of the Ullaraxi.
The point is that I am not strange to pain.
Pain and I are old friends.
A small consequence of being the Primarch of the IIº Legion of Adeptus Astartes of the Imperium of Mankind.
I lacked a name, I only had a serial code until I was found by my father, the Emperor of Mankind. He baptized me as Vladislav Tesla, the Man of Gold, the Son of the Omnissiah, the Primarch of the second Legion of the Adeptus Astartes, the Iron Guard.
There is no need to say that having a name filled me with pride, and I like the name.
On this occasion, I was on the wrong end of ork technology. Although, calling the orks demented contraptions technology will provoke strokes among the Masters of the Forge of my Legion and the rest of the Magos of the Mechanicus that I had with my Legion as Auxilia. Their frustration whenever we fought orks and their shenanigans amused me. In truth, I found the orks quite a fascinating race, never have I seen a race with such a collective purpose and willpower. They had no doubts, they lack anything resembling fear, doubts, nothing stops them from their objectives, that could be resume in bashing the skull of the enemy, be it themselves or whatever stands in their way.
The battle was part of the latest expansion of the Great Crusade on the northern part of the Galaxy, taking Terra as the epicenter of the universe and expanding the Segmentum solar charts from there. On the first weeks of the Crusade, we found several human enclaves that rejoined the Imperium gladly, as soon as we cleansed the hostile Xenos and Warp related fools that dwelt there.
The orks were some of the funniest and most interesting enemies that we have ever fought. Also, they never surrendered and they were always up for a fight. It was a welcome change after the twisted and cowardly way of the Aeldari, or the hit and run tactics of their lesser cousins of Comorragh. Even their brains taste rancid, those Drukhari, disgusting sweat goblins they are. Their females, on the other hand, were physically appealing but as charming as a frenzied Charcaradon.
Our battles with the so-called, Waaagh of Warboss Knuklehead, had taken the most of the last five years, as we have to sanitize each planet taken from them and purified the planet with promethium, if not directly Exterminatus, to prevent the spores of the species to hold on, and in the future, have a native population of savage orks roaming the lands.
In an impulsive act, out of the Fenrisian Mead that I love tremendously after my brother Leman hooked me up with the dastardly liquid, I commanded the Magos Bioligis of my expedition to see if it will be possible to quarantine surfaces of the liberated worlds for the ork spores to grow. In the future, those reserves will be the perfect place to test the new initiates of my Legion against real-life orks, instead of simulations and training bots.
Some of the Mechanicus on my expedition loved the idea, others almost had a system failure at the idea of corralling Xenos like cattle. My Legion Master Frodorik N Stein, huffed and slapped his armored hand against his face, my Forgemasters hummed in Techno Lingua, already planning the things and the apothecaries of my Legion stood very silent. I fear that I broke them.
It must be noted that I am hardly the archetype of Primarch. Much like my brother Leman, I project a carefully cultivated image. In Leman's case, he always tries to appear as a brutish barbarian, and in my case as a retarded savant. Due to my eccentricities, both the Mechanicus and my Legion had exasperatedly tried to convince me to act like the Primarch and Dominus that I am supposed to be, but I will be dammed, if I let anyone that is not me, determine my fate and my actions.
A strong belief that has brought me more than one headache in my interactions with my brothers. With such alpha personalities as we are, it was hardly a surprise that sibling rivalry will be a common thing among us. In my case, due to my upbringing in a very technological society with a penchant for warfare, I had several confrontations with Angron, Magnus, Corvus, Lion, Perturabo, and Horus.
Curiously enough, Rob said that my Legion and I were part of his Dauntless, the Legions that he believed that whenever they fought with his Ultramarines, there will be no enemy that will stop us. I felt kind of flattered, even if the rigid structure of the Ultramarines made me cringe from time to time. My Legion is a bit unorthodox in their organizations, we do respect the command structure, but we also had several "axillia Legio" that are our tricks of war.
For five years, I have put down the bloody Waaagh! and was now on route to another campaign on the edge borders of the Ghoul Stars, when a distress signal of an expeditionary route of the Mechanicus reached our vessels. As I am part of the Mechanicus, a big, iconic part, as the Man of Gold, the son of the Omnissiah, I felt compelled to react to the call and took a personal interest in the odd data stream that accompanied the call.
Thanks to my augmentations, I hold a vast quantity of data, even the Fabricator-General of Mars balked at the amount of data that I can hold and control at the same time, giving a lot more empirical support to my claim to be the son of the Omnissiah. The fact that I am upgraded by Necrontyr Tech, must have something to do with it.
The Adeptus Mechanicus is an organization that has grown on a lie. A dangerous lie that will destroy them, unless someone stepped in and slowly, but surely, started to change the original creed of the Mechanicus and turned it into something more friendly to humanity and prevent the disaster that will surely befall upon the Imperium if the truth about who is the Omnissiah, ever came to the light.
On a side note, I laughed for an entire day after I commune with the true Omnissiah, with the buried Celestial God at the deepest trenches of Mars. Where it falls after my father, the Emperor of Mankind, stomped him for god and put him down in the red sands of Mars.
Curiously enough, the so-called Dragon of Mars, Mag'ladroth the Void Dragon, the most terrible of the C'tan, whom not even the Nightbringer dared to challenge, did not seem to hold any animosity towards my father. I am sure that among the Mechanicus, the Dragon sometimes offers insight to one young neophyte, or grants insight, or becomes a muse of sorts, for random tech-priest and initiates, and helps them grow into powerful figures of the Mechanicus.
For what purpose?. I have no idea, but I will take the blessing, triple-check that they are not poisoned, and twist the thing to a more human-friendly tech or advance. I may be one of the blessed by the Dragon, but in this universe, nothing comes without a high price attached, and I don't like to sign checks that my soul is not ready to cash.
More often than not, my prodigious understanding of tech and science; compared with somethings that the C'tan had on their pockets, it was parlor tricks; had served me well, to portrait myself as a retarded savant, unable to sum two plus two, but able to calculate astrophysics in a nano-seconds without a navigational computer.
Oh, and I do it to annoy the Navigators.
I lack the Third eye that allows them to navigate the warp, but I am completely immune to the Warp thanks to the C'tan upgrades. I am not one of those poor sods, the Pariah, and if one of the Four focuses their demonic attention on me, it is more than possible that I will be corrupted, but I can withstand the demonic presence and send them whimpering to the hellhole where they crawled from.
The point is that the data stream carried several packages of data attached, the numbers and reports, all locked under Mechanichus data-locks, had zero to no sense, as they could, potentially, prove that the orks had managed to access to a sub-stream of the universe and use it to teleport freely all over the planet, but collapsing in the most humorous ways as soon as they tried to exit the planet.
Slipstrem V was the official imperial denomination of the planet, but the orks seem to have taken a liking to calling it Surfamorka.
There is even an ork glyph carved into a nearby asteroid surrounding the planet, made with the wreckage formed by the attempt of an ork Mekboy to teleport several Gargants into an orbital defense platform of the Mechanicus in orbit.
With a thought, I delivered an axilia Myrmidon of two million Skiitarii to purge any possible surviving ork in the asteroid and to implant a burning protocol on all the salvage that they collect from the glyph. Once they have finished, I set up a series of protocols onto the nearby defense platform to dismantle the asteroid. If the readings were correct, there was a valuable core of metals inside, it will be a nice addendum to the salvage of the Gargants, and will prevent any future ork Waaagh!, to fight for whatever religious shenanigans they could think about the glyph on the asteroid.
According to my projections, in a couple of decades, it could be possible that an aspiring warboss would see the glyph and get in his head that it was a sign of Gork and Mork and try to turn the space hulk into his own Waaagh! Vessel for space conquest. In my databases there were several similar occurrences of similar events, so, I took the safe route and nip it in the bud before the orks could get ideas.
All of this by the time that I was having dinner with my command structure.
There are entire libraries, about how to rule an army, that spoke about how it was a good idea to be a physical part of your army. A leader that fought at the side of his men will grant the loyalty of its troops, and thanks to my infinite memory of sorts and my connection to the databases around, I was able to always kept the names and small tidbits about my Legionaries. I also have taken a liking to calling them my genetic sons, I found the idea of a family quite appealing. So far, and due to my particular genetics, I was unsure about how human females could carry my children.
Leaving apart that I am a three meters (10') behemoth of metal and flesh, with six arms, my genitals are big enough to make copulation with human females practically impossible, I will impale any possible lover, and even if I got laid with modified concubines and the such, I was padding in uncharted waters about how long would be the pregnancy, and how modified will be my children due to my genetics. My calculations indicated that the most favorable result of my progeny will be an upgraded Astartes of sorts.
That would be the best possible result.
Anyhow, the real deal was the dimensional breaches that the ork had managed to discover. It always flabbergasts everybody how the ape-like orks were capable of pulling impossible tech out of nothing, and violating all known laws of the universe in the process, in a method that even the Crypteks of the Necron Dynasties found impossible. The sheer possibilities of such a discovery intrigued me, it could be the answer to the failure of the human webbway, and how to stop depending on the warp for long-range transportation.
Controlling dimensions could solute a lot of problems, but even if the orks had managed to do it by accident, I will torch the entire place to the ground and eliminate the orks to the last spore, just in case their genetics spread and show to other warbands and the rest of the orks all over the universe suddenly discover how to move all around without any problem.
Fortunately, orks and daemons are like water and oil, they never mix. Unless the orks wanted to bash a demon skull in, and the Khorne bitches wanted a new fungi cranium for their skull thrones. Be it clear that I hold the biggest amount of contempt for the Chaos Gods. A trait that I already possessed, long before the Dragon of Mars and my father show me the truth of the Chaos Gods and how they are nothing but tumors of reality.
Not wanting to stop the advance of the expeditionary fleet, I diverged a quarter of my Legion with me, along three Auxilia Myrmidon vessels and a couple of Titan's Legio for a surgery strike at the Warboss and leaving enough Mechanicus presence to turn the place into a Forgeworld. It will act as a pitch-stop for the growing supply lines, another place to recruit Astartes from and to keep an eye on any possible ork uprising in the future.
I really should have known better than any plan never survives the contact with the enemy, especially if said enemy is the orks. They are living reality-altering machines, their Waagh! Was something that amazed me, and in a corner of my systems, I have to admit that I felt a nudge of envy.
More often than not, I have pondered about being a psyker.
Psykers are one of the proofs that the human race had the potential to become as great as the Old Ones. However, with the psyker powers, it also comes the risk of the Warp and the daemonic corruption, leeches all of them. Still, being witnessed what my more psyker oriented brothers and my Librarians are capable of doing, always left me with a nudge of envy. Something that has been used against me on several occasions by those under the heel of the Chaos Gods to tempt me.
Servitude Imperpetuis is their usual fate. I even kept the skull of one particularly clever individual, it was a nice Servoskull, but I lost it when a Drukhari succubus kicked it into dust.
Funny enough, I know, scientifically, that the so-called Dark Eldar are not psykers, and that they are not all that physically stronger than humans. Mind you, I saw how a five-foot slim girl dressed in leather, spikes, and drugs, kick the quickly floating skull, with enough force to shatter the reinforced bone into dust and the steel under it into scrap. I sometimes wondered if the Drukhari did not have their Waagh!.
Back to the topic of the psykers.
There was always the possibility of using the scientific progress of the Necrontyr to produce similar results, but I would need even greater modifications than the ones that I possess now. The acumen of the Necrontyr allowed their Crypteks to manipulate data at the global scale and beyond, producing esoteric effects through the manipulation of the fundamentals forces of the galaxy. I was still way too young to even start to emulate such scientific miracles.
In time, maybe I will accept a shard of the Dragon on Mars within myself to channel a sliver of his power. Only my father, at the peak of his power as psyker, was able to defeat the Void Dragon and seal a sliver of it on Mars, home of the Adeptus Mechanicus.
After how everything went pear-shaped with the orks, I was lamenting not having forced the hand of the Dragon of Mars and take a shard of it within me. That would have come quite handy when the universe becomes a chewed-up gum and spits me somewhere.
Like I have said before, I am not invulnerable, quite resilient, aye, but not invulnerable. Aye, I liked the word, I took it from Leman and his wolves. I have taken small things from my brothers, mannerism, and expressions to make me closer to them. So far, Leman, Rob, Sanguinus, Vulkan, and Ferrus were the closest of my brothers. Rob's Dauntless, as he called us.
Once my systems were up, I knew that I was no longer at Slipstrem V.
Something that confused all my systems and cogitators.
Oh, and the fact that I had a small vermin over one of my auspex that seemed determined to chew one of the auspex on my face. The small critter was something similar to an ork squig, but the initial analysis of the auspex cogitator that the small creature was trying to munch on, revealed a completely different chemical and biological structure than the ork's pets and versatile cattle.
Capturing the small vermin was an easy task. One of my hands grabbed it in a second before the thing could even process that I have moved. Firmly holding the small critter in my hand, I commanded one of the upgrades of my blessed cybernetic body to initiate the analysis. With a whirring sound and a small squelch, prelude of a soon silenced gurgling sound of the critter, my pseudogenetor vivisected the small thing.
Waving my hand, I left the bloody remnants to fall to the floor, as the analysis of the creature run inside the augmentation. I had to part several alerts and errors on my systems. Shutting down my large range communications at the failure to connect with an Imperial nod, I focus on the information that my physical and cybernetically augmented senses were delivering to my brain.
The first clue that I was no longer on the planet?. Slipstrem V is not a frozen world, and I am inside of an ice-covered cave, whose unique entrance was a three meters wall of ice that I seem to have melted and shattered on impact and heat.
Cue in, the series of alarms about heat, damages, and system failures that I was receiving on my optical receptors.
Sitting in a more comfortable position on the trench of ice and rocks that I have left in my wake, I left my self-repairing systems to take control of the major functions of my body and start the repairs. My flesh is the flesh of a Primarch, I heal fast, very fast, small wounds and scratches vanish in the second after they appeared, and the vast majority of my cybernetic augmentations are made of an alloy based on the Necrometal of the C'tan.
That's one of the reasons I was called the Man of Gold, the son of the Omnissiah. My body armor, fused with my epidermis, was made of a unique alloy of auramite of necrometal, that looks as if my skin is made of old gold. Just to be on the cautious side, I always kept an inner container of the liquid alloy, safely stored inside of my cybernetic body, that served as an extra resort to heal any possible critical damages.
Thankfully, there were no major damages to any critical system. I had two broken legs, five organs ruptured, one of my hearts imploded, two lungs with fissures, the entire left of my chest with the ribs bent or broken in several places, a collapsed kidney, and a bunch of additional biological damages. Nothing to worry about, in five hours tops, I will be at peak operational performance again.
On the cybernetics, I was even less worried. Leaving apart the constant stream of errors about the lack of Imperial communications available, something that should be impossible, if I were on Slipstrem V, and the reports of my maintenance systems about esoteric damages to all the cogitators and auspex; the consequence of Waaagh! Raw energy, no doubt, the miracle of the alloy of necrometal will fix it even faster than my biological body.
There was a tenant of the Mechanicus that stated that flesh was weak, but steel was eternal. I made my best effort to convince the Mechanicus that flesh is weak, therefore steel shall protect it. There is a massive difference, between trying to substitute flesh with metal at the slightest opportunity and use steel to protect the flesh so it does not suffer harm. After all, even steel rusts with time.
Sadly, in this case, it seems that my steel was faster than my flesh. They are even if my recollection of the times where I have been seriously damaged were accurate. Those memories are subjected to data loss and corruption due to trauma and cognitive interference between my nervous systems and my mechadendrite connection, but I take they are accurate enough.
Distracting myself with the analysis of the vivisected critter, a very simple, yet very well adapted creature to this cold world, I let my Omophagea organ and the pseudogenetor probes to provide me with all the information possible from the small creature. If anything, it will allow me to learn the natural survival skill of the small vermin.
After the years that I have been fighting with the orks, long before I was revealed as a Primarch, I already have experienced the very unpleasant weapons that some of their Mekboyz called Tellyporta Blasta, basically, a weaponized teleportation device, as ridicule as it could sound, it worked for certain, insane enough orks.
Judging from the data that my auspex had taken from the, well, the explosion that has transported me here, I take that a catastrophic failure of the massive Tellyporta Blasta of the Gargant that my Legion and I took down, was the one behind my dimensional displacement. That was quite surprising.
Usually, whenever a teleport device fails, the unfortunate victim could end decomposed to its base atoms, re-materialized in very unpleasant, normally lethal, ways, or directly lost in the inmaterium, to the joy of the daemons around that will have the fresh soul of the poor sods as lunch. However, this was completely different. There was no residue of warp energy, in fact, not even the vague samples of Necrontyr shadow teleportation and banish like movement were similar to the energy readings presents in my internal cogitator logs.
How incredible curious, and very worrisome.
The more drastic, and ludicrous, theory that I formulated with the available data, was that the energy blast, has, somehow, making my head hurt by the sheer absurdity of it, managed to displace me outside of my home universe and into an alternate one. It was ridiculous, but a possibility. Parking such a possibility at the bottom of my deductions, I distracted myself by running a maintenance check on my body weapons.
The loss of my garments and wargear was something that saddened me greatly, as I was buck naked on the cave, with my extensively augmented cybernetic body on display for any observers.
Not that I was embarrassed by my augmented body, my metallic skin was burnished to perfection, my masculine form was carved into the transhuman peak and my complex augmentations were the pride of the Magus Dominus and the Forge Masters of my Legion. If I recall correctly, some of the remembrancers of my expeditionary fleet insisted on painting and sculpting my visage outside of my sacred armor and robes. I did share my father's black hair, but my eyes were cybernetic, practically since I have memory.
The human females of my fleet explained to me, that even if I was not astoundingly attractive, like Sanguinius or Fulgrim; vapid peacock the last one; who possess angelical and inhumanely beautiful appearances, I was physically carved into masculine perfection, and the metal of my body made me something akin to a living statue with a mature face of strong and noble features, and; they confessed after sharing several rounds of amasec and the wonderful fenrisian mead; my massive genitals helped.
That last part always left me dumbfounded, but the Magus Biologis of the expedition, Aphro D-TE, explained to me that it was a trait of certain females to be attracted to the male with the bigger genitals. It had something to do with orgasmic experiences and reaching deep within their wombs and all that.
My only sexual experiences came from the modified concubines that were offered to me when I was merely a cybernetically enhanced warrior at my home planet, and those were little more than flesh sheaths for my penis. They lacked the spark, the genuine life that I felt with some females of the staff of my expeditionary fleet, however, I knew that those attractive females were not prepared to join me in bed, they lack the physical resistance and the elasticity of their sexual organs of the concubines.
A pity, but something that I was already planning to mend, as soon as the Great Crusade ended, until then, war efforts took precedence.
The loss of my war gear was not only on a practical level but at an emotional level as well. Perhaps due to my experience as a cybernetic warrior on the wars of my home planet, but I always walked around geared up to the full war. I was a Primarch after all, a genetically crafted demigod of war. Chief among all that gear, was my armor, made on Mars as proof of the end of my tutelage under the Dominus Priests of the Mechanicus, my red garments, a gift from Sanguinius, my Thunder Hammer, forged as a collaboration between me and Vulkan, and my cleaver, crafted as consequence from a challenge between Leman and me.
If by some disturbing chance, I am really on another dimension, the loss of the few things that reminded me of home and my family is going to annoy and sadden me greatly.
My pseudogenetor extended a couple of extra mechadendrites, taking samples of the ice and earth where I have landed. The composition of the vermin was curious and the genetic memories spoke of a frozen world. The sun was present but the temperatures were always on the subzero levels. There were also memories of metallic bases in the wilderness, along with a black and white symbol that I did not recognize.
There were only a couple of matches in my databases of similar symbols, they belong to the auxilia legions of Imperial Guards that accompany the Astartes Legions and took care of most of the aftermaths of the conquests. I tend to leave a very big maniple of Skiitari as soon as I could, even if they are agri-worlds or death-worlds. Due to my status as the almost highest title of the Mechanicus, only being naysayer by the Fabricator-General of Mars, oh, and my father, of course.
Well, they are the only clue about where I am, so I will pay a visit to these strange bases hidden in the snow. There are indexes in my databases about how Imperial Worlds like this had similar structures to keep an eye on the surface when the real population is underground to escape from the freezing temperatures.
The chemical composition of the ice did not reveal anything remotely worrying for my biology, and the earth seemed pretty average. Any poor farmer will have it hard to carve something out of these lands. Although there were traces of abundant chemicals, more proper of industries than primitive words, on the earth and water. That was enough for me to deduct that there was an advanced civilization on this planet, and if there is an advanced civilization, it is more than possible that the Mechanicus is involved, or, if it is an undiscovered planet, it will be easy to send a distress signal for any nearby expeditionary fleets to pick me up.
Entertaining myself with the genetic and chemical results of my pseudogenetor, the sudden appearance of a signal in the edges of my vision, surprised me. The integrated auspex on my senses had picked up a distant humming sound, something classic of a gravity device, along a series of primitive techno-lingua babble.
The translation could be read as "scan, scan, scan". Even the most basic of the servoskulls is not that bloody simple, but at least, the presence of such a device implicates that technology was advanced enough to my interests.
The repairs were at eighty percent, but I was functional enough to operate at an efficient enough level. In the case of hostiles, I still had my weaponized augmentations and my natural strength. Having six arms was a blessing sometimes, although, all of my arms are heavily augmented with internal tools and weapons. A small sacrifice for the tenants of the Adeptus Mechanicus, and something that already happened when I was a cybernetic warrior on my home planet.
Sending a couple of bursts of data to identify me as part of the Mechanicus, along with a petition of access to the ethernet of any possible Mechanicus branches here, I walked to intercept the drone that must be floating around ten or twelve meters beyond the cave that I have crashed in. My communication array was hardly at one hundred percent, and without access to the repeater nodes of an Imperial nod, my limit was at the fifty meters.
With a spare command, I deactivated the sensations on my skin and activated the extreme cold protocols on my augmentations. The temperature around me was cold, but outside of my cave, it was easily falling into the flesh freezing subzero temperatures that will kill an average human in seconds. My internal generators and batteries were more than enough to produce energy to kept me functional and protected from the hostile temperatures. Not to mention that my skin was made of an alloy that can endure the cold vacuum of space without breaking a sweat.
Quickly climbing outside of the hole, and tracing a simulation of how did I managed to broke down this place out of nowhere, I exited the cave to a tundra of white in every direction, with a rock formation at my back. Seem that I have crashed into an earth natural cave in the middle of a frozen lake. The zoom of my eyes picked up the distant mountains and rocky geological shapes in the distance. I have several matches in my databases about similar frozen worlds, but the air composition and the chemicals did not match, so I was in an unknown world.
A very humane shiver run through my reinforced spine, the possibility of another dimension was starting to get very real.
It did not take me much to intercept the drone, although, it was the drone, the one that ambushed me when I turned the corner and the drone clash against my groin and stumble back with wobbling movements. The device made me raise an eyebrow, it was so different from the sacred design of the Mechanicus that take me by surprise. The structure was pretty simple, a big disc with several lenses, four appendages to work, and a floating generator on the bottom to kept the thing afloat. Simple, of black stainless color.
The drone recovered the balance and twirled around, focusing its lenses on me. From the middle of the drone, a small auspex of sorts appeared and scanned me. The scan was superficial, the auspex had not penetrated the alloy of my skin, and at best has been able to compose an image of my person. I was pretty well known in the Imperium, I was one of the most approachable of my brothers, only Vulkan and Sanguinus were more popular, for what I am understood, alas, the more common visage of me, was my armored form, with my entire Mechanicus regalia.
When the drone whirled and emitted a series of menacing whistles and beeps, I deadpanned. The small thing was menacing me?. Was this a bloody joke?. The drone had two laser weapons, a twin blaster of sorts. Against flesh targets, that maybe be enough, but against an armored opponent like me, it could be like tossing flowers. The light emissions dispersed against my skin, they did not even activate my power field, as the threat cogitators of my augmentations decided that it was not even necessary.
Four of my arms ripped the appendages of the drone apart, another rip the top of the drone, and the last arm deploy mechadendrites and connect with the internal core of the drone. The cheap materials of the drone were adequate for low temperatures, but it was as physically as strong as iron. I can bent iron as if it was nothing but clay. Not to mention the slim connections of the manipulating appendages of the drone. Cheap manufacture this one.
However, when I found no organic components inside of the drone, and instead of a very advanced cogitate system, something that would fit nicely in the Legio Cybernetica, I feel a cold growing on my stomach that had nothing to do with the freezing temperatures around me. Either this was a civilization that used automata for their menial labors or I was in the presence of first, rudimentary nonetheless, Abominable Intelligence since the battle with the Olamic Quietude.
Taken the bull by the horns; an expression from Auxilia from a planet called Hyberia; I dig onto the systems and core of the small drone, slicing the data inside of it apart. Much to my horror, the techna lingua of the machine was simple and complex at the same time. It lacked sentience per se, but it was more than capable to act almost at an independent level with a matrix of conduct more than able to react to complex commands and orders.
Through the assimilation of the machine core, it was nothing more than an abominable intelligence of low level, I connected to a bigger aethernet that belonged to a private business called the Techno Union. A conglomerate that dwelt in the fabrication of all kinds of tech-related products, from Droids to starships.
The horror froze me.
Not even the coldest corners of this forsaken would have produced a bigger chill that the information that I was devouring and processing from this scout drone. Like him, millions all over the galaxy existed, entire armies, entire legions of Silica Animus gallivanted the galaxy.
A galaxy that was not my own. The databanks of the drone were already more than enough to make me certain of that, but the slicing; a common term for cybernetic intruding into databanks in this universe; onto the Techno Union small database at the local factory, was more than enough allow me to learn more than enough.
In the name of the Emperor, they even have a public Aethernet!. Something available for all bloody sentient beings in the galaxy, from drones to the living plants called the Neti.
Time becomes irrelevant, this must be investigated. Using the drone systems, I opened a datalink into the stream of the nearby base and granted me administrator privileges. Galactic Basic was pretty easy to decipher, it was created to be accessible to all living beings to communicate, something that I agree was a necessity with such diverse Xenos races gallivanting the universe.
Much to my horror, thousands of what I would have called xenos, are human, or near-human, divergences from the original genetic staple. Chiss and Zeltrons being an example. This was beyond insanity, this was contrary to everything that I know about xenobiology. Even the Old Ones will be making confused noises at this genetic soup of confusion.
The drone was barely holding the power of my intruding into the nearby databases, the thing was not designed to run such complex and diverse operations at the same time. Fortunately, I managed to retire from the systems before the responsible for the drone realized that someone has used the connection of the drone to their network to invade their systems and reach into the administrative files and the holonet beyond.
Tearing the drone in pieces, as if a wampa; a local, violent, and carnivore predator, has been the one responsible for its destruction, I tore the core of the drone and let some of the mechadendrites of my body to connect to it.
The core glued itself to my sides, connected by a maglock and the mechadendrites. My cogitators are already partaking into the operational systems of the drone, tearing apart its protocols, systems, and all the information that it could hold. Most of the information was related to its task as a scout drone, a viper model of scout drone, but video data and scrap code of repeated erasures and reuses remained on the databank and it will allow me to plan for an intrusion into the nearby drone factory of the Techno Union.
The planet was a frozen corner of the so-called Outer Rim, the corners of the galaxy, one of the places where the Techno Union can build a battle drone factory, more specifically, a Droideka factory, without having to give any explanations to the Republic Council. The Commercial Union was amassing an army of droids, with what purpose?. If it is not war, I ate my cogitator.
Anyhow, I was even worse than an ignorant toddler in this snowball, my augmented systems had already downloaded a basic Binary language to spoke with the droids around and a package of Galactic Basic and Outer Rim Basic, which were the languages that most of the populations around used.
Shame on me, I was enjoying the absorption of new and diverse knowledge, and I had the inkling sensation that the Magos Biologis of my fleet will have a collective stroke of joy at the discovery of this galaxy. Aphro D-TE will even modify herself to have sex with me at the discovery, she was always one odd duckling among the Biologis bunch of the Mechanicus.
Walking to the factory was an easy task, even in the middle of a blizzard. I have zero alert threats of climatic threat, my systems have already recovered to the ninety percent, and I have a clear purpose. Reach the factory, exterminate any opposition and claim the building for the Imperium and the Mechanicus. The dozen or so workers, all of the xenos of some kind; not near-human but a reptile bases species; would be spared if they present no opposition, otherwise, I will eliminate them.
The factory was not of an impressive complex. A big main square with the production lines, three side warehouses where to store the finished products, two front buildings to do quality tests and to store prime materials, and a small spaceport at the southern corner of the factory for any aerial cargo or space-faring vessel that could need to dock here.
Standing over a hill at the edge of the factory, with my thermal signature hidden by the dense blizzard around, I cleaned the interference of the snow of my optical receptors and focus on the opening of a garage near the quality testing building. According to the schematics that I have stolen from the droid, that was the place where the main control was located, with a secondary control room at the fabrication lines to keep the production rolling.
From the garage, a floating vehicle, a speeder was called, a hovercraft vehicle of sorts, akin to the speeders that we use at the Imperium, but with a more civilian oriented mentality. It was an old X-34 model, an outdated model, but adequate for a backwater planet that is supposedly out of the Republic's eyes.
Two occupants, two skakoan xenos, according to the slicing that I have done on the factory, those are part of the staff, middle-level engineers that were on a supply run. Those speeders are fast, so much, I concede. Even if it is an outdated model, the X-34 was a nice vehicle. It only needed a lot more practicality and weaponry.
Climbing down the hill, covering the distance between me and the factory in quick strides, I reached one of the side doors and put my cybernetic hand over the control panel. From my cybernetic hand, a mechadendrite pierced the screen of the control panel and established a connection with the factory network. My previous intrusion had already cleared me as an administrator, along with a ghost protocol that will never inform any other watchers of my presence on the network of the factory.
The door opened and I walked inside of the metallic and plastic corridors of the droideka factory. For a second, I almost feel at home, a bit more aseptic than the factories of the Mechanicus, but the place was adequate. More than one Tech-priest will be happy to work in such a clean environment.
As I walked into the building, I lookout for a terminal. The terminal at the room where I have entered was nothing more than the equivalent of the janitor room, the place where people exited the main building to deal with any possible damages on the walls, damages to the pipes and wires outside, and the such. But it will serve my purpose to latch my combat auspex into the network of the factory, allowing me to know how many organics and droids are in the compound.
Eight skakoans, twelve active battle droids, and about a hundred industrial droids, all organics accounted at the main control room, on the main fabrication lines. That was pretty convenient. With my auspex creating a map of the facility and adding the moving droids that are connected to the network, it was a matter of seconds to plan a route into the main buildings that dodge all the droids.
My presence will be obviated by the cameras and sensors of the facility, the ghost protocols that I have implemented will ensure that I will be ignored, but the abominable intelligence patrolling the factory will react at my physical presence as their grade of intelligence was considered grade 2.
There are five classes of droids, according to the holonet, battle droids like this are considered Second Class, intelligent, but hardly genius, and not quick thinkers. Still, they are a menace for the average joe. Out of pure curiosity, I ambush one of the droids, crushing it apart in a second thanks to my six arms, and taking the blaster rifle that they carried. It was a good weapon, basic, and maybe crude, but solid, reliable, cheap, and versatile. It was a design that I would have accepted, if any Myrmidon Tech-Priest presented it to me, to add to the arsenal of the Skiitarri Legions.
My hand was bigger than the handle of the blaster, so I let the mechadendrites of one of my arms to connect with the weapon and magno-lock it to the arm. Now, I had another arm to my arsenal. Like I have said, I am fond of carrying a lot of weapons on my person, from the close combat weapons that my brothers gifted to me, to the blades implanted on my arms, to the Volkite Blaster on my upper right arm, to the laser guns at my lower arms, to the tools implanted in all of them. A plasma cutter can be devastating at short range and had the punch of a plasma pistol even at twenty meters.
Considering how I was not in a hurry, I lost a couple of seconds to investigate all of the terminals that I found, downloading all data that I could, and looking for a language package in the programming of the droids that this factory was built. The core at the fabricator lines had the program packages, but these terminals show me several additional vids of the droidekas, and the test that they were submitted to.
The droidekas were a pretty clever design, their round form allow them a lot of mobility, and their shields and laser repeaters were a deadly combination, especially in small places like corridors, ship halls, etc, however, in open battle, they are more skirmishers and prosecutors more than open field warriors. Their weapons and shield can only be deployed out of their sphere form, and they are expensive enough to do not have them rolling around an open battlefield where artillery could blast them before they even reached their objective.
On the other hand, the battle droids, and the augmented version of them, was the perfect army, and much to my dismay and horror, there are lots of private conglomerates and individuals that possess droid armies. From corporations to crime lords, to private armies, to entire planets depending on such forces for their defense.
That was...stupid to say the least.
If I have been able to slice through the network of this factory, that also means that a team of Skiitarii infiltrators will be more than capable to reach the control hub of a droid army and either deactivate them or introduce new targeting parameters, effectively turning the droids into the enemy of everything.
The Men of Iron was a bitter lesson for humanity.
Sighing, I log out of the terminal and moved onto the fabricator building, at this point, I did not care about stealth, and when a couple of droids appeared in the corridor, I blasted them to scraps with my new blaster rifle and the lasers of my lower arms. Cheap construction these droids, even an old chemical gunpowder weapon would be able to pierce through their slim armor. Well, the price of deploying them on the thousands, I suppose. Skiitari is the same but they are way, way better than these jokes of automata. Even their silica animus was silly, they are at the intelligence level of smart dogs capable of speaking and filling a specific role on the field.
The main lines of fabrication of the buildings were designed to create twenty chasis of droidekas per day. The installation of the weapons, the programming, the testing, etc, will take most of a week, so the factory had an effective production of twenty battle capable droidekas within a standard Coruscant week.
The standard time measure was through the rotations of Coruscant, the capital world of the Republic, a standard Terran 7-day rotation, it was something familiar, but I was starting to realize why the population of the galaxy had so many dependencies of service droids. Millions of droids, customs, time measures, metric measures, it was an obligation to have someone or something, that will keep an eye on all of it and inform of the subtle differences, especially when a serious trade was about to happen. I don't want to know how many suckers had fallen for money ratio changes, all over the galaxy.
The worst of my infiltration on the factory was that I was forced to almost walk crouched, as I am a three-meter tall individual and the ceilings of the factory were barely two meters tall. I had to alter the cybernetics of my legs to a more compact shape, something that made me look like a two meters tall golden squat, much to the internal amusement of my inner council at my fleet.
Crossing the main lines, and taking mental note of the process and welding of the metal and internal gears of the droideka for further analysis and replication for the glory of the Omnissiha, I stepped into the stairs that led to the main control room of the building. As I got closer to the room, the eight organics present on the buildings seem to be having a discussion, my understanding of the Galactic Basic was enough to understand what they were saying, but unfortunately, two of them spoke in their native skakoan, and I lacked time to decipher that language.
"Is this a bloody joke, suuuka?". Rambled one of the xenos. "You lost the scout and the last transmission is an image of a golden human dick?".
Oh, really?. Now that is embarrassing. I may have to kill all of these xenos just to prevent the embarrassment, but now that I thought about it, it was mostly my fault. I was the one that bumped into the drone stark naked.
"Look for yourself", grumbled back another xeno through the odd vox-speakers on their mouths. "Someone ambush the thing, hack it to pieces, and sent us a scan of his tucku".
"This better not be a joke", replied the original skakoan.
"I am afraid is not", my voice interrupted, as I opened the door of the room and walked in. "Please do not react violently, and I will not be…".
Twelve seconds later, I was the only living organic body in the room. The skakoans tried to push the alarm, a couple of droids present in the room opened fire, the skakoans opened fire for five seconds, then I raise my weapons and killed the ten of them in seven seconds. Quite the wasteful occurrence honestly.
Sighing, I took the always ungrateful task of dealing with the aftermath of combat action, but at the same time, I have fresh dinner for my Omophagea to work on and an entire factory to work on, along with a solid connection to the universe local aethernet.
Easily crushing the skulls of the first skakoan, I partake in his brain, my pseudogenetor was already vivisecting the xeno, and my mechadendrite jumped at the connections of the main core of the factory, having a couple of difficulties to adapt to the odd connector at the beginning.
So, I am in a galaxy, far, far away, naked, and alone. Well, this place seems as good as any other else to continue the Great Crusade, just a bit sparer on resources.
Ah, speaking of resources, set up a reminder for some pants, conquering the galaxy with my genitals in the open will be very rude.