Note: There is a scene with detailed attention to how someone's body is heavily mutated and ripped apart to a certain extent. It starts at "What transpired next" and ends at "Something in my mind". I assume anyone reading is familiar with Warhammer's form of body horror, but the rules of this site suggest I should warn you in advance.
Shouts and high-pitched screams erupted from the rest of the room, but I barely paid them mind as I mutely retreated from that…that
thing which just sat up.
It was a smart move, because the slight sway of the upper body was more than enough for a loud
BANG to go off to my left. The underside of the pod's lid rocked slightly while the creature flinched.
The first shot had only been a drop, what followed was the deluge. Las shots burned and shotgun pellets tore through the air, striking a reasonably accurate cluster of shots…against the lid. Only in retrospect did I realize how quickly the pod toppled over, the lid tilting over enough to be irreversibly struck by the artificial gravity. With a loud crash, the pod hit the ground upside down, creating a small tent-like structure as the hinges were maximally strained.
This was enough to stop the shooting. Before I could tell, a rough pair of hands were pulling me back. The man who pulled me away then leapt towards the form of the medicae and dragged him towards the rest of us who were unarmed.
A tense situation settled in the air as everyone waited to see what would happen. One of the breachers barked at a pair to check between the small opening of the pod body and the lid. The woman knelt down and said she couldn't see anything. Then the four with shields were ordered to set up a barricade by lining their shields together while another pair were pushed forward to investigate.
Was it foolish? I certainly thought so at the time, but how else could you confirm if something was dead or not? Overkill probably wouldn't be acceptable here since risking that kind of damage right next to the ship's other patients and important medical facilities was unacceptable unless the situation was dire.
In any case, the two gingerly approached the downed pod. One of them kicked it, then said something quietly to the other. Taking up positions on both ends (the one at the head looked even more nervous, no doubt fearing a sudden hand grabbing his leg), they bent at the hip and hastily flipped the box over before swiftly stepping back.
"Fire!" ordered the breacher who had directed them just moments before. Another avalanche of shotgun pellets and las shots hit the revealed body.
An unpleasant smell began to fill the room. I assumed it was from the shot and singed body, but I couldn't be certain.
10 seconds passed before the order was given to halt and for the two grunts from before to check the body. One of them kicked it lightly a few times, then harder until his kick flipped the body over. He bent down and watched it closely, his eyes drawn continuously to the still hands which could easily pierce his jugular.
"Dead," he declared, not checking for a pulse.
"Get the body in the pod and seal it," the breacher leader ordered.
They placed the pod on the grav-trolley, then lifted the body carefully into it. As they went to close it, however, I finally found my voice. "Wait!"
"What is it?" one of them asked.
"Let me take a look at the body."
The two men silently obliged, taking one step back as I approached. A burnt, vomit-inducing smell wafted from the body as I leaned over just slightly to see something.
I had rarely appreciated what it meant to have the Celestial Forge, but I was forced to do so now as thoughts
raced through my head, condensing into two strains.
Excessive mutation. Should have impacted the ship? No, infection possible.
Counterpoint, possible daemonhost.
Unlikely, no harvestable parts.
Daemonic possession not guaranteed to produce such parts.
Much less likely, absence of such matter favors mutation explanation.
Daemonhost bindings possibly hidden beneath flesh.
A new thought emerged in my mind, simply pointing out that this person was doomed anyway. Therefore, why not see if I could get some use out of them? An eye might give me insight into the pathways of mutation, while the skin was probably tough enough to be worth grafting onto myself. Or I could take the horns and make them into an instrument, letting
you me control terraqueous beasts if they heard-
My left hand, somehow unburdened by my paralyzed mind, snapped forward and grabbed the wrist of its counterpart. Despite this, my right hand couldn't be budged so easily, straining to move forward to touch the mutated flesh.
The action broke the trance my other thoughts were in and they swiftly threw out the intruder. With my mind firmly under control, it was easy to retreat my right hand.
…Was that a conscious enticement? Or did being so close to Warp energy at this scale passively seduce people? I shuddered at the idea that something might have given me even a sliver of attention, but if it was the latter, then I wondered if I deserved to be killed for standing closer than reasonable at the Materium's edge with the branch of technology upon which I claimed to be a magos.
I set aside that thought as well as the notion that I might eventually be able to distinguish a mutant from someone or something being possessed by a daemon, focusing instead on how I could verify the safety of a crazy idea.
"This person…it might be possible to still save them," I said.
"What!? We put enough shots into that thing to kill any man ten times over!" the breacher to my left remarked.
"I suspect if we measured signs of life, you'd be right, but I think this appearance is a shell or skin over their true body. Damage to it does not mean they're also hurt."
"Well, we can fix that-"
"No!" I shouted, grabbing the barrel of the breacher's raised gun and pointing it away. "We don't need to kill them. There may be a chance we can undo whatever has happened to them."
"Forget it, martian. Once you go past a certain point, there's no way to turn back into a human," the breacher leader said further to my left. "You're wasting your time."
"I don't think I am, and we can take further precautions against this thing escaping if that's the concern." With a thought, my Valkyrie frame appeared around me, covering me in metal from head to toe. It gave me no feeling of security to slow down my heartbeat.
Pulling out my Warp scanner once more, I aimed it at the body directly and set the distance appropriately before activating it. I had added this functionality when I realized it would be useful to read shorter distances with greater precision.
I was greeted by a glowing figure. No, not glowing
per se, but very white, the same color one would see if a white light reflected off a blank piece of printing paper. The coating around the figure was hazy, enveloping it like a milky cloud.
The others watched as I brought one of my Warp sinks out and held it closer until it was in contact. I left it on the body's chest and scanned it once again. Interestingly, the cloud was rising up around the cube, though it couldn't rise to totally envelop it.
Given this, the simplest option was to simply wait. For good measure, I even put the few other sinks I was carrying next to the first one.
"What are those for? What are you doing?" someone asked from behind me. This voice was softer, it must have been one of the nurses.
"I'm absorbing the Warp energy coming off the body, that's always a good first step," I remarked. "Can anyone check on the medicae? Is he okay?"
"Yes, I'm…Yes, I'm alright
cough." a weak voice said from much further behind me, probably slumped near the wall by the door. "I just fainted at the sheer sight of that thing."
"I don't blame you, I feel like throwing up just looking at it." The impulse to empty my guts was weak, but it was climbing slowly up my throat until I would have no choice.
After a whole minute as the rest of the room watched and nervously paced or rocked on their heels, I scanned the body again and was stunned by the result.
No change. The energy was still just as strong. Had the sinks simply filled up fast and couldn't vent the energy away?
…No, it…it was the connection to the Warp! The human body was psychically hyperconductive compared to almost everything around it, even adamantium (though the latter could withstand side-effects much better). Combined with the sliver of an air layer between the sink and anything it would touch, and it wouldn't matter how many sinks I used.
"What is it?" one of the breachers asked.
"Sorry, what?" I replied.
"You just jerked your head like you were surprised, so I thought…"
"Ah, uh, yes. I thought something would have changed, but this is going to be trickier than I thought. I don't have the tools on-hand for something like this."
After my sinks were back in my possession, I closed the lid and went to use the panel before stopping. "Uh, you know how to unlock this if it locks, right?" I turned and asked the medicae.
"Yes, I can do that."
I locked it and stepped back. "Okay, we need to keep an eye on this thing until I come back. Uh, are you breachers willing to stay, or…"
The leader who had spoken before chimed in. "My squad will stay, but I think yours can go back." He directed the second half of that sentence to another breacher standing a few meters away.
"Understood. I'll report this and make sure they send some more guards down here."
++++
Hours before I planned to be there, I found myself in the Mechanicus Quarters.
My goal? Come up with some way to remove the Warp energy clinging to whoever (or possibly,
whatever) was in the pod in a reasonably swift manner.
The most intuitive idea was simply using a Warp sink with much higher pulling force, which had the benefit of requiring practically no rework of the existing design. I even started the fabricator and had two sinks in my hand before I realized it wouldn't work.
Thus, my solution had to be built from the ground up.
Portability was the first virtue to be removed. Instead of a sink you could hold, it would be a bed of the 70 standard sinks in two layers, similar to the box of sinks I had placed high-up inside the astropathic tower on Tarantulon. They would be placed inside a rectangular steel container which itself would sit on the bottom layer of a two-layer grav-trolley.
On the top of the box were nine evenly spaced rods in a three by three formation, each having a radius of four centimeters. Laid over the top layer of the trolley was a centimeter-thick steel plate that measured 2 meters long and a meter wide. Finally, a set of six curved rods extended out from the plate itself, welded in place and sanded afterwards. These rods came up in pairs and formed three near-complete arches that were spaced evenly along the plate's length.
Lastly, there was a switch near where the head would lay. It wasn't connected to any wiring, instead simply completing the main web of wards when in the "on" position. Technically, the whole thing would be constantly leeching some Warp energy even when "off", but it was an insignificant amount.
Now came the tedious part – inscribing the hexagrammatic wards along the plate and rods. This was not complicated, as 95% of the effort would be drawing conductive circuits that would channel the Warp energy from the curved rods into the plate and down into the bed of sinks. The remaining wards were for attracting the energy out of whatever was placed inside the arches and they would emanate from the exposed end downward along the curve like a spider-web.
The first time I'd made one of my sinks, my hand had cramped from needing to hold the engraving tool so precisely. This time, I had a hand-held version of the Warp sink laser which I held in an underhand grip. I still had to control its movement carefully, but there was no need to take breaks to avoid a hand cramp.
In just under an hour, I was finished. It took a few minutes to get the trolley into an elevator as most were a bit too full to use, but 20 minutes later I was let in by one of the breachers back into the chirurgy hall I'd left.
"Any issues?" I asked the medicae from before.
"None. Our patient is remarkably cooperative," he said with a smirk.
"Heh. Also, I don't think I got your name."
"Rubeus, I'm a medicae…though you can tell that by my uniform, I suppose. Ah, these are Nutrices Agatha and Emalia, they'll be helping us," he explained.
"Wasn't there a third one earlier?"
"Yes, Lioba was required elsewhere. But we should focus on what you've brought, I think…though I've never seen anything like it before."
With a start, I began pushing the trolley once more until it was next to the first trolley, atop which lay the vitae pod. "I'd be shocked if you had, I made this just for this occasion."
The breachers, scattered across the room, stood up and walked a bit closer, though still keeping their distance.
"Now, the way this works is that we move the body onto the bed and place it underneath these arched rods. Once I turn it on, if all goes well, we'll start draining the body of all its Warp energy. I have no idea how long it will take."
"...We
have to move the body?" Rubeus asked, looking at me quizzically.
"Yes, unfortunately."
He sighed. "Alright, how do we lower the rods?"
"E-excuse me?"
"The curved rods are in the way, right? We can't easily move the body onto this device with them in the way."
I…how the fuck did I miss something that
obvious? "That is…a good point. I wish I'd thought of that when making it. The rods are welded, we can't move them. Regardless, it's just moving it a bit more, it'll get easier when we have the weight resting on its bed."
"I…I don't think I'm strong enough for that."
Before I could say anything, the breacher leader walked up. "I'll take your place, if you'd like, medicae. Besides, we have armor on."
Rubeus looked far too relieved. "Oh, thank you! Here, let me unlock the pod."
After he pressed a few buttons on the pad on the side, it opened once more and he stepped back. I and the breacher leader stepped closer.
"Grab it under the armpits if you can, I'll try to get the legs," he said.
"Got it," I replied, then remembered to put on my Valkyrie frame.
Our hands moved closer, then reached into the pod's inner chamber. I looked away as much as possible, letting my sense of touch guide me towards where the armpits were before.
"Three…two…one!" he called out. We heaved and lifted the body. As swiftly as possible, we shuffled towards the tail end of my device, then practically
threw the body atop the figuratively enclosed plate.
A few minor adjustments and we were good to go. "Rubeus, we're ready," I said, my voice coming through pitch-lowering speakers.
"It's your device. Start it."
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the breacher leader take several steps back and get his gun, the rest bringing their own up to be easily aimed in my vicinity.
'Well, here goes nothing,' I told myself, flicking the switch on.
What transpired next would be lacking critical detail if you didn't know how grotesquely mutated the body actually was.
Firstly, the skin. It was much tougher than anything human, and rough like a slightly-eroded but still jagged rock. The whole color was sickly as well, a mix of pus yellow and blood red. The two shades were mixed like someone had flayed this person alive, painted the skin how they imagined the surface of Jupiter to be, and then reattached it.
Secondly, the weapons. While the hands just resembled deadly claws, this person's toenails had grown into thin, translucent, and
sharp protrusions that resembled wedges more than anything else. A pair of horns, made of some dark material, grew atop the head and curved out like a widened pair of growing ram's horns.
Thirdly, the head. This was the most obvious area of change, with numerous eyes of various sizes and direction growing with no symmetry all around the original eyes. In fact, I couldn't even make out which eyes were the "real" ones anymore, they were all so terribly mutated and repulsive. As for their teeth, the mouth could no longer even close without them biting into flesh. Each tooth resembled an incisor, but for a mouth much bigger than the one they currently inhabited.
Bizarrely, the hair appeared pristine, still lusciously blonde and flowing like silk with nary a knot or unstraightened follicle.
It was as if the universe had created an elegant frame of hair, only to make the display piece, the face, a testament to its brand of body horror…one which I was intent on destroying.
For three seconds after I turned the bed on, nothing happened. Then, we all tensed as it twitched once, twice, three times. On the fourth, it stayed stuck in that position.
The disgusting smell coming off it was pervading the room now, and I felt somehow that it was-
Like a pitching machine launching a baseball, a slight squelching echoed in the room as an orb no larger than a ping-pong ball raced through the air. It smashed into the closest of the curved absorption rods, partly caving in as it stuck to the metal. Then came a small white thing, no larger than a thumb. It collided with the rod as well, though it made a notable
ping sound as it did so.
These two, in retrospect, were the warning signs. I should have heeded them and backed away more. More squelching noises could be heard, some so close together it was nearly impossible to tell them apart. Interspersed between them were pings, just like the one from before.
I felt something hit my robes and splatter against the armor underneath. Looking down revealed part of a giant eye, easily as wide as the top of a soda can, messily falling to the ground as it left a bloody smear.
This time, I heeded the warning in time. The body twitched further, practically heaving and thrashing against the draining metal until-
SHRR-SHRIP-SHRRRRIP
I watched in disgust as the skin itself began tearing off. Not in bits and chunks, but large pieces and strips. Even the skin at the bottom was yanked away when the flailing exposed that skin. Within seconds, skin clung to every rod, wrapping around it like an invisible hand was wrapping cloth around a stick.
Morbidly, I thought the whole thing looked like someone taking the melted cheese off a pizza. But marinara sauce didn't spurt, gush, and ooze everywhere like this did. A pool of blood began forming on the metal plate, dripping down and staining the floor as well.
Something in my mind urged me to look at the scene differently though. 'What do you want!? The body is bleeding-oh shit!' I jumped forward and shut the machine off. At once, the movement stopped, the body only twitching slightly as it lay in its own thick blood.
The
distinctly human body.
"Rubeus, they're bleeding out!"
As if he had been waiting for the moment, the medicae pushed me aside and began issuing orders into a comm-bead I didn't know he had. He quickly took a sample of the blood and handed it to one of the nutrices, then instructed the other to help him remove the biowaste. I was confused what he was referring to until I saw her grab the skin from the nearest rod, which was sagging in its hold.
Another jolt in my head prompted me to examine the body with my scanner. Pulling it out, I waited impatiently for it to finish before it gave me the result.
No more glowing. Instead, the body barely appeared, save for two points near the head. When I looked back at it, I was surprised to see the still-attached bases of the horns, their tops jagged where the break had been.
"Rubeus, I think it worked!"
"Hmm."
"But the horns, their bases are still-"
"I know! Let me work!"
"Oh, sorry…" I mumbled, backing away further even though he had plenty of space. Looking to the breachers, I saw them watching the scene with confusion and disgust etched on their faces with an undertone of wariness. They too thought it was over, but it would be some time before the tension in their bodies faded.
In that moment, I felt horribly out of place, even more so than the breachers now guarding a body which I believed would not trouble us anymore. Gone was the mutant, in their place the at-risk form of the person they had been before. Reinforcing that was the slew of medicae and nutrices sprinting into the room with various machines rolling behind them, each supporting or outright replacing some critical bodily function.
Awkwardly, I made my exit from the room and went back to the Mechanicus Quarter to destroy my robes in the incinerator as a precaution. Then I returned to my room and crashed into the bed, my interrupted sleep coming back almost immediately.
Today, however, was not a day for sleep, because I was awoken a bit more than an hour after I shut my eyes by a notification on my tablet. I didn't have the right to complain, however, because I was being called back to the Medicae Quarter.
As I hurried there in a fresh set of robes, I found myself worrying if the whole situation had gone wrong. Had the person returned to their mutated form? Were they rampaging through the ship as people desperately tried to kill them? The latter was less likely, I felt, as the breachers had the weapons to probably kill it even if they took casualties. But it would still be a disaster if I promised a cure and it had failed to the point that people were injured or killed when we could simply have destroyed the pod and its inhabitant.
Minutes later, I was ushered into the Medicae Quarter, but not to the same chirurgy hall. Instead, I was escorted by a pair of the ship's guards to a room deeper within. Waiting inside was First Lieutenant Ramirez and a few more guards, three medicae and several nutrices.
"Sir!" one of my escorts barked, then saluted. "Magos Acerak."
"Thank you," Ramirez replied. "Magos," he said in acknowledgement.
"Sir, what can I do for you?"
"Can you help us with him?"
It was when he pointed that my brain actually processed the fact the medical personnel were crowding and murmuring around a bed. I approached and walked around them to the right side.
When I saw what lay before me, my breath was stolen away.
Closest to me were the bottoms of two armored boots, each so large that they stretched in both length and width to the same dimensions as my own upper torso. They were connected to armored greaves whose knee guards hid the underlying articulation points. Above those were the leg plates made of overlapping ceramite, made thick to endure the strain of transhuman combat and also to provide room for the servos within which augmented the wearer's strength and speed further still. Above the leg plates came the codpiece and belt where I could make out magnetic clamps, made for holding onto magazines or grenades.
The parts of the armor's top half distinguished the wearer's kind. First and foremost, the giant pauldrons, so large and heavy that I wasn't entirely certain if I could carry one even with my Valkyrie frame. Under the comically large pauldrons were less comically large arms, covered again in thick armor. The chest was similarly armored, only being that large and well-armored to accommodate the wearer's bigger torso. I could make out a rectangular object beneath it, which I quickly realized was the backpack which powered the whole thing.
But the most decisive piece of that identity came from the distinct helmet, a kind I had never seen anywhere else. It was smooth metal with two large dish-like pieces on the sides, either vox-grills or audio receptors. Narrowed red lenses marked the eyes. Lastly, a metal beak with a rounded top protruded up over the nose and mouth.
The decorations on this armor were all black and white, alternating to make the figure more distinct. The thigh guards and most of the pauldrons were painted white, the rest were black. Taking up most of the front of the right greave was a painted bird with three stylized feathers on each wing and its tail, the two talon-ended legs drawn down towards the boot. It was not the two-headed eagle of the Imperium, this bird only had one head that faced leftward. Along the chest plate was the most obvious clue, the lettered "XIX" drawn on the bottom left if you were looking straight at it.
I had seen them in so many different mediums: pieces of art, high-quality videos, and even games, but to see an Astartes, fully covered in power armor, in the flesh raked my nerves to create sensations I had no hope of understanding.
Beta'd by sarf
Perks Earned:
Alchemy Workshop (Endless Legend): Built into a wagon, this full scale workshop allows for scientific research in the field, and provides all the tools the aspiring researcher needs to learn about the world they are in. Just don't blow yourself up or blind anyone, ok? Not that many workshops are mobile.
Inexhaustible QE Comm Link (Eclipse Phase): Two fingernail-sized Quantum Entanglement communication arrays. If each is installed in a separate device, those two devices can communicate instantaneously no matter the distance. Unlike standard QE comms in the setting, the qubits are not expended when information is transmitted. It has the bandwidth of a high-speed fiber optic connection.
Her Majesty's Majesty (Fate/Legends - Empire of Antiquity): They say that every hero of these times was a marvel to look upon. The statues that remain from these years in modern times would seem to give that impression and should you eventually have one made of you, it won't fall short. Whether it's being beautiful or handsome, you stand out like a shining jewel even among heroes. Many can't help but gasp once they see your visage and it'll smooth out plenty of problems for you, not the least of which is finding a suitable partner. Your beauty will also affect the things that you make and rule over, even something as large as Rome itself, but this effect slowly takes hold over time. While a sword you wield may slowly become more ornate and fine over days of use, an empire might need years to be fully affected, but it and all it's people will be shining by the end. You can have this stop at a certain level if you like, whether that's to keep some parts of your empire ugly or just to stop everyone from maybe becoming self-obsessed snobs that never stop looking in mirrors.
