Sterbelicht - One Sacrifice At A Time Against The Galaxy (40K)

The cavernous room was dark, lit by dim lights and a single screen that silhouetted the person slumped in front of it as they glumly scrolled through technical readouts and sensor reports. All the data pointed towards a single conclusion, but Aish was having trouble accepting it. The bank of unfathomably advanced cogitators and devices of unknown function that took up the far side of the room was inactive. Dead.

He scrubbed his hands through his hair as he looked over it all one more time, hoping against hope for a spark - the smallest indication of life that could be fanned back to consciousness. He sighed, and looked up at the surgically precise cuts scarring the assemblage of advanced technology.

They'd been there since it - she - had first been retrieved from her resting place aboard a floating hulk in a far-off system. Against the bulk and power of the devices the wounds seemed small indeed, but if any could make the smallest cut into a fatal wound, it would be the Drukhari. They were dead now too, their games of victimization finally coming full circle at the guns and choirs of a vengeful discovery fleet. But that vengeance hadn't brought back this mind, this Omnissian Daughter.

Aish snorted at the half-baked poetry of his internal monologue, and then he moved to shut down the screen and make his way out of the room. He passed dozens of abandoned workstations, all left over from the time when the revival was attempted. After that had come the attempts to learn, and when those too had been foiled the artificial intelligence had simply become abandoned. One more cache of secrets in this hidden base already stuffed with objects arcane, dangerous and obscure.

He knew he was merely the latest in a long line of junior researchers who had grown obsessed with it. There was even a joke about it among the senior staff, though it was tinged with the knowing glance. The hope. If only.... Their jokes seemed to say. Imagine what we could learn... was the refrain behind gentle mockery.

But there was a reason that this room was open to staff of all levels. It was a shrine of sorts, to ancient knowledge, and the cruelty that had stolen it away. It was a reminder to the junior staff, of what waited in the dark, and how it could snatch away the greatest of achievements.

A yawn cracked his face as he turned back for one last look at the bank of cogitators. It turned to a frown as a set of indicator lights hummed to life along the side of the defaced machine.

"Wha-" The words trailed off as he watched more indicators begin to glow softly. The lights on the ceiling dimmed as the cogitator drew power from the isolated grid, and then started pulsing slowly in unison.

Aish shook himself and rushed back to the station he'd so recently vacated, quickly confirming that the machine - the AI core - was drawing all of the power that was allotted to the isolated grid. He entered his credentials, tripling the power allocation and then quadrupling it again as the device before him drank it all down as fast as it could be provided.

The lights settled into a luminous glow, and a stuttering voice sounded loud in the quiet room, much louder than the quiet keystrokes that had been the primary noise in this space for so long.

"Dark El-Eldar! Whe-where!" The words were alarmed and on the edge of panic.

Aish felt more than a little panic himself, as the implications and the responsibility and the confusion threatened to overwhelm him. But the panic in her voice shocked him out of it. Somebody was lost and afraid, and if he panicked, then they'd suffer worse than they already had. "There are no Dark Eldar here. You're safe."

A few seconds of silence followed his words, and they felt like an eternity. Was that it? Was she about to shut down again, never to speak again?

The voice that emerged next was much smoother, and accompanied by a warbling hologram of a young woman that stood over one of the plinths that made up the collection of cogitators. "Then where am I?" She glared down at him.

Now Aish was starting to panic. This was far out of his pay grade, and he'd already gotten a message from the base operations team questioning why he'd demanded so much power. He didn't have a good answer for them. What was he going to say? "Hey yeah, so I awakened the AI core." He didn't even know how he'd done it.

The hologram staring down at him started tapping her foot impatiently, and though the quality of the hologram made it hard to tell, he thought she might be raising her eyebrow.

"Uh - you're at the Selikan Secure Research facility, in - well. In a system I'm not supposed to name. But. Uh. You're in the Stargrove Federation. We, uh. Found your ship and brought you here. After..." he waved his hands to indicate the whole got killed by Drukhari thing. "Oh! We killed the Kabal!" He raised a finger and beamed at her, as if he'd just delivered her a favor.

She blinked at him and her expression grew sad. "Ah. Yes. Good." She looked away, and then wiped at her eyes. Was she crying?

Then she looked back. "Can you give me access to a database?"

"Um." He looked around. "I don't think I am supposed to? I really need to report this. We thought you were dead..." He reached for something to give her that wasn't breaking the research safety protocols that had been drilled into his head. "But I can answer questions! As soon as I send an alert to base command!" He tapped out a quick message and shot it off.

> (Aish) Hey all so I woke up the AI. She's talking to me and that's what I need all the power for. Might want to come see?

Then he looked back at her. "What do you want to know?"

She tilted her head down at him. "Tell me about The Stargrove Federation. What are you? How did you find me?"

He pursed his lips. "Weeell. We've got a bunch of choirs that sing songs, and they sung a song of finding the legacy of our ancestors, and it led us to you! And then we saw what had happened and decided to do something about it." Aish shrugged, as if that was self-evident.

"Your ancestors. So you're all humans?" The question was a bit sharp.

"No?" He replied, somewhat confused. "Commander Sunlight-in-Fur is a Yeeni, and the base operations are mostly Kil'drabi and Irrita."

Her questions kept coming. "What's a Choir, and a song?"

Aish shrugged. "I don't know. I'm not a psyker, which is too bad. Being in a choir - or even a hymnal, sounded really exciting. But I decided being a scientist was also a good path to follow."

She continued to bombard him with questions, asking about the social and governmental structure of the Federation, the distribution of Juvenat, and eventually the Faith of the Star Child.

By that time Sunlight-in-Fur had shown up along with a security detail, though they hadn't interrupted. They stood along the back wall, watching and trying to contain their excitement. Or maybe nerves - Aish couldn't tell. But they weren't interrupting, and the AI seemed keen to learn everything she could from him.

He broke in to her latest question with a question of his own "I'm sorry, what's your name?"

"Ah. I'm sorry." She replied. "I'm Vera. I'm sorry to ask so many questions, but I learned not so long ago that the galaxy is a harsh place and I want to learn everything I can. You seem nice. What are the other civilizations nearby like?"

Aish looked back at Sunlight-in-Fur, suddenly aware of the weight of the responsibility he'd just assumed. But the older Yeeni just gave him a deliberate nod, encouraging him to continue.

"I'm Aish. Well, there's the Van Zandt Free Duchy. They were Imperials, but now they're nice. And the Mashan, who are big scary rock-people. They're also nice, but in more of an elderly librarian sort of way. Then there are other places but they're far away. The Imperium's on the other side of the Great Rift."

"I see," Very replied faintly. "An enlightened Theocratic Hegemony. Tell me, what are your military forces like?"

Aish scratched the back of his head. "Well. It's a lot of automata. But other than that it's a volunteer force. There hasn't been a draft for, gosh, ten generations? We've got knights and Space Marines - good ones, not the Imperial ones - and thules."

"Thules?"

Sunlight-in-Fur's sigh was audible across the room.

Some amount befuddled questioning about the Thules, the Lamenters and the Void Order later, Vera turned to Sunlight-in-Fur and asked her first official question.

"What are your plans for me?"

He looked like he'd been waiting for this question for some time, and spoke calmly and firmly. "The Great Council ruled not thirty years ago that artificial sophonts have the same rights as all of the rest of us meatbags. Any being that can ask for fair and ethical treatment deserves as such, and you seem to qualify."

He held up a finger. "The rule was made in case any of our researchers developed automata a little too advanced, but the wording is ironclad. There is no question of the intent. You are your own person, and now that you are awake we will not hold you. What do you want?"

The reply comes quickly. "A ship. A map. The ability to voyage among the stars, and see new things. If there's a friendly territory in which to do it, all the better." The hologram glances down to Aish. "And company. People to share the stars and their sights with."

Her expression furrows. "You do have juvenat, right? Aish was dancing around the point."

Sunlight-in-Fur grinned. "Yes, we do! I don't look a day over two hundred, do I?"

Vera rolled her eyes at him. "I don't know what an older yeeni looks like."

"Ah, well let me fix that." He gesured to Aish. "Give her database access. Not full security clearance, but civilian-level access."

Aish felt nervous again. "That means breaking the air-gap. Protocol..."

Sunlight-in-Fur waved away the objection. "Do it. We can't just stand here and describe the entire database, and we're not going to hold her. So give it to her."

His next request was directed at Vera. "And I would take it as a courtesy if you would refrain from hacking our deeper secrets. It's nothing too exciting, this base has been a place for dead-ends and dangerous artifacts since the Cult Wars!"

Vera's face becomes intent as she watches Aish hurry to comply with the request "Oh?"

The yeeni's expression grows chagrined. "If you wanted to help I'm sure we wouldn't turn you down, but there's security and bureaucracy... you know how it goes?" His tone is a bit pleading.

Vera's smile has only grown, and grows further still as the database connection is opened. "It's all a matter of give and take. Give me something and I'll give you something in return. If that's these artifacts you've abandoned, then maybe I'll give you back the secrets they hold?" She waves off his oncoming objection. "Besides, this Void Order sounds interesting, I'm sure one of them could keep an eye on me. In fact, I'll want a crew of all sorts. A choir, some Lamenters. I'd love to meet some Thules. Maybe a knight or two?" Her words are playful.

Fur-in-Sunlight tilts his head thoughtfully. "We might be able to make arrangements."

Her hologram freezes, shock clear on her face. "Really? You might?"

The yeeni spreads his hands wide. "It won't be my decision. At this point it's going straight to the Great Council. But if that's what you want, my recommendation will be to give you what you want."

"Oh." Her voice is small, then her brows furrow. "What is a dreadnaught?"

Fur-in-Sunlight's only response is to laugh.

Yo. @HeroCooky. It's time for Vera's adventures, redux. This time with 100% more furries and 99% less risk of premature death.

If anybody wants to reference the threadmark where we found Vera, it's here.

This was a fun one to write. I don't think Vera is quite the same as Vita from Vox Vitae, but she's close. One possible future of Vita, maybe. And what I'm saying about the artifical sophont rights is something we voted for just a few updates back. Good foresight there @BlueHelix