I sat on the bus, pulled out my phone and wanted to write a non canon snippet of Zeraya being Youjo Senki's Tanya but ended with this instead...
First Encounter
Vherrand-Delta-1 was experiencing a distracting amount of delight to be allowed to lead the first boarding party to reclaim the first abandoned ship floating over Adumbria.
Following the example of her mentor Basileus-Zeta in replacing most of her augmetics with freshly cloned organic equivalents. That may have saved her life all things considered but she also noted an increase in emotional responses to almost all situations.
She reminded herself that feeling human was a good thing, it was not a weakness. The Liberator was a human and he was anything but weak and if she failed to master her emotions and thoughts like He did, that was a personal flaw.
Her philosophical thoughts were interrupted by the floor shaking as her transported docked to the Dawntalon, and her excitement returned with a vengeance.
Dawntalon, a fine name for one of the few combat vessels still in one piece, it may even keep it if things went right.
It was just a Lunar Class Cruiser but even such a ship would increase the might of Liberation Forces by several orders of magnitude. And it was hers to play with!
Basileus-Zeta could enjoy working on an actual Space Marine and the secret assignment the Liberator gave him that totally is not related to the baby rescued from the crazy Nurgle's cultist, Vherrand-Delta-1 has always been more interested in the Machine Spirits of the noble ships that travelled the void.
...
Once the doors opened into the cargo bay Vherrand-Delta-1 has to restrain herself and allow the squad of USA's soldiers to take the lead and board the Dawntalon first, after all who knew what possible dangers hid in the abandoned ship.
The soldiers sweep the immediate area with what auspex their armors were equipped and only after finding nothing to shoot at they allowed Vherrand-Delta-1 to step into the ship proper.
The moment she did her excitement was replaced by a vague sense of danger and without knowing how she knew it she was sure something was watching her.
While many of her augmetics had been removed she still had more than most and hers were designed to work in tandem with her personalized power armor so it took her but a thought to send a warning to every soldier and to her satisfaction the squad formed a circle around her and her two colleagues.
After a moment it was obvious that the mysterious observer would not make a move in the open space of the docks, probably an ambush in one of the more confined parts of the ships.
"No time like the present wouldn't you agree?"
And without even looking at the other two tech priestes they started towards a passage that would lead them to the engines.
Other boarders will come shortly and they would be in charge of securing the bridge and other essential parts of the ships.
Her team had been walking in silence for a few minutes through a corridor, which only allowed two people to walk side by side, when she sent a wordless signal for eveyone to stop.
Vherrand-Delta-1 was never sure what tiny hiccup of sound or what flicker of motion in the gloom gave the ambush away. Her instincts simply screamed that danger was at hand, and he drew her weapons, a laspistol and of the three mechadendrites attached to her armor's back, the one ending in a saw readied itself in a liquid whisper steel. Beside her, she felt as much as heard her team do the same, and then something, some thing, shrieked in the dark and a cannonball of howling hot agony hurtled into her chest.
Vherrand-Delta-1 had a dual experience of panicking while at the same time logically analysing the creatures attacking them.
They were the size of a child, worm-like and they spit some form of acid that damaged their armors at an alarming rate. All this she noted in the time her agitated heart took to beat a couple of times.
Then her mechadendrite lashed out with it's saw and the thing jumped away from her, leaving a dangerously large part of her chestplate melted but luckily the integrity of her armor was not yet compromised.
While a part of her attention was on evaluating the damage to her and her team, another was already bringing her gun to bear and with the armor's help she easily shot the strange creature until it stopped moving.
Looking around she first noted the state of her team's equipment before she reminded herself to check if anyone had been injured.
It seemed that the worst was one trooper who had his weapon melted almost entirely so he switched to his side arm.
And as she crouched to examine the weird worm-creatures Vherrand-Delta-1 couldn't suppress a smile as the weird feeling of being observed only grew in intensity.
"Oh, things are going to get interesting!"