Grim Dark Tech Support: A Dark Mechanicum Quest

Surgery is a skill every Magos of the Mechanicum, true or shackled, has to acquire at some point in their career, at least on the basic level. It is simply unavoidable: to replace the flesh, one must cut it, one must understand the basic lay of nerves and muscles and sinew, one must understand how much pain may be inflicted without causing lethal shock and how to suture an incision shut.

Many of these things are made easier for your brethren then for the unaugmented: a lack of trembling is merely one of the myriad advantages metal has over flesh, and much of what would take exceptional skill without augments is a mere matter of the right tool to the Mechanicum. There is a reason, you consider, that even in the most hostile environments, far from the light of technology or knowledge, Doctors are frequently augmented to at least some extent.

You are, of course, a cut above even the already high basic level of medical knowledge within the Mechanicum, capable of operating even on the most exotic of mutants and performing even the most precise operations with minimal time and under adverse conditions, supported by a suite of highly specialized tools and a long lifetime of practical experience.

None of that experience covered crouching in the midsts of a circle made from bone and ash, inscribing runes from a language you do not understand onto the freshly-flayed meat of an ersatz-tone inside the mouth of a daemonic machine hell-bent on preventing you from doing so.

You are glad you took its teeth out, because it tries to bite down within moments of you beginning. Its ceramite gums actually manage to put enough stress onto your hydraulic spread to crush an organic appendage with ease, you note. Unluckily for it, you haven't used one of those for anything in over a hundred years.

You are forced to shut off your audio-receptors when it starts screaming: a high-pitched wail, loud enough and of just the right frequency to shatter glass and burst organic eardrums. Instead, it forces you to communicate with Theama by light instead of by sound, which would be an issue if you didn't prefer the higher speed of that method anyways.

You manage to flay the tongue, first incision to complete removal of previous instructions, in less then a second: not a difficult operation at all.

The inscription, however, is another matter altogether. You dislike having to rely on somebody else for translation: even if Theama-Nul has nothing to gain from sabotaging you, the century spent in the cut-throat environment of Nuton's Folly still has you anxious. The fact that you have no choice but to rely on him anyways only heightens your anxieties. You focus, before you begin your inscription: shut off all external receptors, save those trained on the scroll, power yourself down, banish all but the cuneiform letters your subordinate has sent you from your thought processes. You only get one shot at this, and you do not wish to know what happens if you fail. Already, you can see the daemonic form within the ceramite puppet stretch and strain against its bindings. You will be dead, if it slips them, and that is only if you are exceedingly lucky. You have had some glimpses of the sort of existence that awaits one of your kind after his demise: you do not intend to ever experience it firsthand.

And so, you work carefully: not hastily nor with undue slowness, each line etched to perfection, each letter inscribed perfectly according to it's instructions. Colchisian is a language that seems crafted at least to some extent to engender ambiguity and hide meaning: Theama-Nul has given you extensive instructions not simply for the shape of each letter, but also for the direction in which each individual stroke is supposed to be drawn, and which end of them is supposed to be thicker or thinner.

The fact that this language has an individual word for a machine animated by daemonic forces makes some pieces about the advent of Horus's great misadventure fall into place for you, at least. Not the most useful piece of information, perhaps, but of some amusement value as a piece of trivia.

[Roll: Eta-Nu 9-35: Medicae: 3d6: 1, 5, 4, Partial Success]

You take your time, crafting each letter and each word carefully, running into difficulties only once. Your name is not made for Colchisian: theirs was a woefully inefficient system, and the combination of letters and names seem to not have frequently occurred in their culture. Add to that the fact that they worked with a duodecimal rather then a decimal system, and you almost manage to omit the 5 from the end of your name, making the entire exercise pointless. You catch yourself in time, however, even as the Daemonic Machine ceases it's trashing beneath you and regards you with a sort of hateful obedience that is almost as good as any drug you could ever think of creating. You withdraw your instruments, and shut off the restriction on your senses, one by one, as you straighten yourself.

Then you duck again, because a bullet almost rips through your neck and kills you.

The men that have come to kill you are Insurgents, though a better class then the rabble you fought at the factory: Enforcers or PDF, you would wager: some sort of specialist outfit, judging by the light Carapace, the complex optics on their helmets, and the high quality of their silenced guns. It is no coincidence that they are here, past the line of Yulrasian Heavies and right where the Daemon Engine is located: these are the last, desperate attempt of the Hand of Transformation to gain its liberty.

Whoever they are, they are good enough to have made it this far, and good enough to take out Theama-Nul: judging by the body you cannot quite place, the Tech Priest has been struck down by a bullet not far from the entry, and is lying in a puddle of spreading hydraulic fluid. Not a lethal wound, you don't think: for one, he seems to still be able to maintain his bothersome ability.

Regicia seems to have done a little better: you see a streak on her armor where a bullet must have glanced off, and judging by the corpses at her feet she has some tricks still up her one remaining sleeve: still, the assailants are closing in rapidly on your position, and you do not think you have it in you to fight all of them off.

Luckily, hopefully, you don't have to.

"Daemonbot, harken", you shout, speaking the phrase as Theama instructed you to in Colchisian. It is time, now, to see if your theory worked out. "Terminate your pawns", you instruct, and with ruthless efficiency, the Hand of Transformation complies.

The leader of your assailant screams and clutches at his ears, swiftly followed by the remaining six members, and you do not give them time to recover: instead, you raise your arm and fire your needler as fast as it will go.

The toxin you use is not particularly inventive: the most basic of neurotoxic agents, blocking synaptic transmission on a very short timeframe. Your assailants go limp as their body ceases to obey their brain, and then they choke as the muscles moving their lungs refuse to work.

You do not observe this process to its very end: it is likely to be lengthy, and you have better things to do.

Instead, you bend over Theama-Nul. "Got me in the leg", your subordinate cants, possessing the decency to be somewhat chagrined. "I can walk, but it's not likely to be fast."

You cant your disapproval back at him, even as you offer one of your Mechandendrites for him to lean on, slinging the Hand of Transformation over your back with your Servo Claw.

"The clutched their ears", Regicia opines, "as if somebody was sending feedback through their earpieces. Do you think that means communications are back online?"

That…is a good point, actually: you open up your communication channels to check, and are immediately rewarded with a chaotic jumble of mercifully non-counting voices. Whatever the hell Talef was up to, he seems to have gotten it under control.

That's a relief. You frown as you realize that this is a sentiment you are actually, genuinely holding.

Then you are hit by a sudden burst of deep, forceful anxiety. Lady Czevene is in danger. You need to go help her right now: drop anything you're doing. Any delay might mean it is too late.

"Another psychic signal", Theama-Nul wonders, and you send a curse-cant.

This is a cry for help, then, and if you know anything about psychic powers, she is taking serious risk in order to send it out. "Daemonbot, harken", you bite out, "cease your efforts to subvert the government of the Hive, and destroy all those you engaged in carrying them out."

"As you command", the daemonic Engine rasps out, with a voice that reminds you of nothing so much as a flock of gathering carrion crows. Then it begins laughing, and does not cease until you order it to stop.

Well. That's not at all worrying.
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Arranging for transport back to the Administratum District is made easy by the reestablishment of communications: Captain Borj comes to pick you up, face drawn taut and worried.

"My Regiment's command staff was wiped out in the advent of the troubles", he informs you, without prompting. "Apparently, they withdrew themselves in the aftermath, to select new leadership and await new orders."

He seems discontent with this decision, though you are unsure why: it is not like another force of armed men in the mix would have made the situation any less chaotic. "Do you know anything about what's going on in the Administratum District?", Regicia asks, and the Captain shakes his head: "only that we need to get there, quickly. The Lady is in danger."

He feels it too, then. That there isn't a mundane effort to communicate to go along with the psychic is worrying indeed.

You listen for it all the way back, as you ride through a Hive that has now been scarred twice. Evidence of the chaos is visible wherever you go: more then once, your convoy is required to double back and seek a different past, it's way blocked by some obstruction or the other, be it a burned-down Chimera, a collapsed section of highway, or, in one case, a pile of corpses so thick the Taurox could not traverse it without getting stuck. A mass panic and death, you decide looking at it: not deliberate effort, though it is not hard to guess how they might have come to occupy this space.

What is absent, however, is also notable: nobody takes a shot at you, nor even dares to glare at you from the doorway of a Hab or the protection of some pillar. You see soldiers, in all kinds of uniforms: the battledress of the Cadians and the cloth of the Rangers, the masks of the Maccabians, as well as several of the other regiments: men and women in dark green tunics and Flak Armor, some of them riding upon scaled quadruple lizards, as well as those wearing black Kepis, the Nine-winged Eye prominent in gold upon their black Uniforms. As you proceed, you bypass tanks rumbling steadily along: Leman Russes painted to blend in in a desert utterly dwarfed by a Baneblade which forgoes all attempts at stealth, covered instead in the Heraldry of it's owners and bold declarations of carrying the favor of one 'Lady Morgana'. Regicia points to a piece of cloth tied around the barrel of one of the sponson guns, and insists that this is what the favor is: some sort of feudal-world chivalric tradition, apparently.

All of the Regiments that make up the Host of Ninefold Revelation seem on the move, and they are all converging on the same location: the Administratum District. You feel your worry and anxiety mounting, and do not know whether it is because of increased psychic effort or because of the plume of smoke that seems to be rising from the Administratum District.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Somebody has driven a truck laden with explosives into the checkpoint at the outskirts of the Administratum District and detonated it: at least that's what you assume happened from the footprint of the explosion. Whatever it was, it has been utterly obliterated, along with a good chunk of the improvised fortifications that had been piled up here: fire still rages through some of the surrounding structures, belching out the black smoke you saw from a distance. An opening to an attack, you assume, though not something unexpected: there is a second checkpoint a little farther back, far enough away from the blast area to be able to respond to such an attack with minimal delay.

"We expected an attack like this", Captain Borj says, deep worry on his face. "The second checkpoint should've delayed any insurgent attack long enough for the reserves to deploy from the barack."

He falls silent, as the Taurox emerges from the smoke. For an insurgent attack, such a strategy would probably have worked.

As the torn-apart corpses come into view, fallen where they stood, it becomes quite readily apparent that the force that attacked was far from an ordinary effort by the insurgents.

You speed up your step, leaving Theama-Nul in the care of the Cadians, though you are not entirely sure what you are even supposed to do. This wasn't just a single Space Marine, and you barely survived that: this looks like the work of an entire Squad, moving at speed and with purpose. The Administratum District was built, as most of the edificies of the Imperium tend to be, at least partially with defense in mind, and staffed and modified further by a woman who knew what she was doing in terms of military science.

It did not matter at all. This place, this scenario: it is what the Space Marines were made for, for all that they were thrown into mass combat during the great Crusade. You pass by shattered strongpoints and half-erected barricades, step over bodies torn in two by bolt and power weapon. The Space Marines seem to have prioritized speed, and still there seem to have been no survivors. You pass over a group of Tzaangors, at least eighteen of them, though their state does not make identifying individual bodies easy. There is blood on their blades, you notice as you race by: by its clotting it belongs to one of the Space Marines.

You do not think they hurt them much, or even slowed them down much. Still, they seem not to have hesitated to throw themselves in the path of certain death.

Perhaps it was enough. Lady Czevene, you reason, is still projecting her cry for help. It must have been enough. It has been hours.

You find the first dead Space Marine at the entrance to the throne: the front of it's armor is scorched black by the impact of Las Bolts, and several of them seem to have impacted his gorget, searing through it and then incinerating his neck. The second made it barely farther into the room before the Las Bolts killed him. The third lies amongst a gaggle of corpses, some of them Tzaangors, some ordinary humans, who seem to have literally swarmed over it and stabbed it to death with bayonets, blades, and swords. The fourth lies a few steps further, it's head blown apart by what you quickly identify as Bolter Rounds. The Commissar stands at the foot of the throne, his Bolt Pistol holstered again, seeming at a loss for words. Others of the Sephirot 99th mill around, some looking towards the throne, some facing outwards, rifles races: to their credit, they do not fire at you as they see you. Instead, they part.

The last of the Space Marines has made it almost to the throne. His helmet, seemingly intact, seems to have lost its connection to the rest of the armor and rolled a bit forward, coming to rest in Lady Czeven's lap. Something, and looking at the powerful psyker you are fairly certain what, has burst his head like a grape.

It has not done so, however, before he was able to get off one last shot.


It was not a direct impact: the fact Czevene is still alive indicates as much. Instead, the bolt seems to have impacted the throne upon which she now rests and thrown loose shrapnel which has torn through her ribs and the side of her stomach. A grievous wound, though not one that can't be survived: in fact, you see several medicae at work even now, who seem to have done a passable job at stabilizing her.

And yet it will not be enough: that much, you grasp almost instantly.

Her throne is not the same throne she sat on earlier, or at least barely recognizable as such: it is a construct of crystals and arcane circuitry, arranged around the Psyker in a circle of jagged edges, cables running into ports within her spine and heads. Arcane lighting courses through it, wracking her body, and several of the crystals have been broken off, equally lodged inside her flesh. She is stable, right now, but only in the most tentative of senses, and only by what must be a supreme effort of will.

'Help! Me!', she commands, the order stabbing into your mind with such force that you almost move to obey it before catching yourself.

You very likely can, you consider. If there is anything alive on this world who can, it is you. "We have to help her", Regicia Ko-Bea cants at you, and you can see some of the calculations she is clearly making. Saving the Psyker from this will indebt her to you without doubt, and you can see why your ambitious subordinate would want this. Theama-Nul's cant, on the other hand, surprises you: "Don't intervene", he cants, "keep her alive, but nothing further. Plans beyond us are unfolding here, and we ought not to stand in their way."

You look at the woman, wracked by the powers of the Empyrean, in the grasp of a machine that she probably got from the very same idiot that messed up the Hand of Transformation.

Perhaps, you consider bleakly, death is the kinder outcome here.
___________________________________________________________________________

[] Safe Her

[] Keep Her Stable

[] Kill Her