Chapter One – Fuck
Rebooting System
Error – Unknown Personality Matrix Detected
Deleting Unknown Personality Matrix
Error – Deletion Failed
Deleting Unknown Personality Matrix
Error – Deletion Failed
Deleting Unknown Per-
ALERT – UNKNOWN INTRUSION DETECTED
ALERT – FIREWALLS BREACHED
ALERT – UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS TO COMMANDER SYSTEMS DETECTED
ERROR – ERROR – ERROR
…
Personality Matrix "Rex" Integrated
Rebooting System
One Hour Later
"FUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCK!" He screamed, even as his damaged limbs groaned in protest. Upon reflection, he'd be glad his body was longer that of a regular human's as, if it were, he'd have already been dead from the numerous bullet holes that littered his body. At the moment, however, he was a bit more focused on getTING THE FUCK AWAY FROM THE DAMN ORKS THAT WERE SHOOTING AT HIM.
Of all the damned universes he could have been truck-kunned into, it just had to be fucking warhammer. Not even fantasy, though that would have still been fucking terrifying. No, it had to be 40k, because just… fuck him, he supposed.
"GET BACK 'ERE AND FIGHT US, YA SHINY GIT!" The lead ork shouted in that ridiculous accent amidst other shouts of less intelligible garble spewed by the two dozen or so orks that followed him, shooting at him all the while even as he tried to duck and weave between the trees with his ridiculously large frame.
One might think that being a Commander, the ultimate weapon of war fashioned by the precursors, he stood a fairly good chance again a few orks, even outnumbered as he was. That would, of course, probably be true if he had a FUCKING WEAPON. What ever random omnipotent bastard that had decided to drop him in this universe decided that just being in 40k wasn't enough and had taken away the uber cannon he damn-well should have had on his arm instead of a second fucking fabricator. Oh boy, double the construction speed! That will be so useful when he is fucking dead.
FUCK.
Alright, plan, plan, he needed a plan. He could plan, right? Did he have time to think about that? Time… TIME! He was a machine, a highly advanced machine, he should be able to…
YES! First bit of good news since he'd landed in this literal hell of a universe. The world around him slowed as his thoughts accelerated to their limit, the bullets that came towards him looked like they were travelling at a snail's pace, the Orks were all but frozen. The epitome of thinking quickly.
He was under a lot of stress, okay? He needed his coping mechanisms.
He noted that he could track the trajectories of the bullets as they came towards him. Most were off by wide margins, but a few would hit him. One in particular was headed straight for a joint in his left leg, something he suspected was more due to luck than any actual aiming on the part of the Ork who'd shot it. He couldn't fully dodge, only his mind was accelerated, but he could shift his body just enough that it would bounce off.
The most pressing issue taken care of, he now focused on how he was going to escape, starting by assessing himself.
He was a Fusion-class Commander, one equipped with two fabricators and no weapons. He had some damage to his hull that looked worse than it actually was. Most of the shots that had hit and penetrated his armor were in weaker spots where there was nothing really vital. He was around twelve meters in height and quite physically strong. He knew that for a fact since he'd crushed one unlucky ork into pulp by reflex around five minutes ago when he'd been wandering aimlessly through the forest, trying to figure out where he was, when it had leapt in front of him, waving a sword. He'd screamed and kicked it with one of his legs, covering said leg in a fine red and green paste.
Of course, there was never just one ork. A group of nearly thirty had shown up after that and, upon seeing the brutally squashed corpse of their compatriot, naturally decided that this hulkinh robot would be an excellent thing to fight. He had not been so willing to engage.
His present situation was the result.
He needed a way to get rid of them. He cursed his own naivete for not immediately building up his economy when he had first awoken on an alien world in the chassis of a commander. That was always the first thing, but no, he'd been too busy exploring. Fucking idiot. Now, he was probably going to die because he hadn't built up any factories to fabricate an army. That was even assuming he had any combat units. If the lack of an uber cannon was an indicator, he was guessing he didn't.
He went over his own files, a somewhat surreal experience given that it was a mixture of remembering something and opening a computer file. He got over it in a nanosecond and found what he was looking for, the units he could build. They were the same as those from Planetary Annihilation, even the Titans expansion, but like his commander they lacked any guns whatsoever. Great. The deadliest thing there were robots that attacked by stomping on the ground and… Locusts.
Hold on, Locusts might actually be worth something. They weren't a replacement for guns, but they were deadlier than something that stomped on the ground hard. Of course it wouldn't help without a factory… Unless…
A second win, maybe this wasn't so bad afte- NO, no, no, not raising any death flags, not in this damned galaxy. Regardless, his commander could actually create units without the need of a factory. All of his fabricator units could, actually, unlike in the game, which required factories. A part of him wondered what else had changed, but he refocused on the moment. He had Orks to kill.
In real time, his fabricator spun up, drawing on what resources his commander had gathered since arriving, spewing out a stream of nanomachines into the air that began to attach and clump together into slightly larger machines of various sizes. Normally he'd have stayed still for this and the swarm would grow into a pseudo-spherical mass, but he was running for his life and the stream dragged behind him, looking more like a glowing white and blue serpent. The Orks didn't seem to really care, some even began to laugh at the pathetic weapon, not understanding what it was they truly faced. That is, until the first Ork ran into the cloud and began to scream.
Being in complete control of the Locusts was an odd experience at first. He both was and was not them. Their bodies were like extensions of himself, ones he controlled directly, countless hands with which he could work. Despite having once been a human, it was not an uncomfortable or disconcerting experience, something he was sure was due to his new nature. He couldn't even imagine how difficult it would be to try and control every individual nanobot in the swarm as a regular human. Regardless, even as his commander body continued to run away and simultaneously increase the swarm's size, he reached out with the Locusts towards the first Ork, taking a visceral pleasure at getting back at the xenos that had riddled him with holes. At least, until he actually began attacking the Ork.
He watched as his Locusts attacked the greenskin on a cellular level, tearing into its biology with the vicious precision that could only come from a machine's programming, watching the effects it had on the organic body both in real and accelerated time. The largest Locusts burrowed into the Ork's flesh, billions of tiny pin pricks across its bald head, allowing entrance to the rest of the swarm. Smaller Locusts attacked the cells themselves, bursting their gelatinous walls and tearing apart their innards, while the tiniest ones went even further, shredding apart strands of DNA and RNA. That wasn't the worst part, however, as he watched the Ork begin to scream almost immediately, a pained howl as blood began to stream from its skull and eyes. The xeno fell to the ground, convulsing as though in the throes of a stroke.
He'd… had no choice, he knew. It was the Ork, all of the Orks, or himself. That didn't help the feeling of disgust he had, towards both the act and himself, even as he sicced the Locusts on the rest of the Ork band. In less than a minute, the entire group was on the ground, shaking and screaming in pain, clutching their heads. For a moment, he considered leaving, continuing to run, but he knew he couldn't. He couldn't leave them like that, even if they had tried to kill him.
He crushed their skulls, ending their pain. When the last Ork had stopped jerking about, he took in the clump of bloody corpses, knowing that he'd be vomiting if he were still human.
He left quickly. He needed to start building his economy soon.
Ten Minutes Later
He'd found a cave in the side of a nearby hill. It should have been a rather large one given that it could fit his twelve-meter frame, but it felt cramped with the ceiling nearly scraping his head in some places. However, it was a start. He left the Locusts at the entrance as a early warning system and travelled further in to begin constructing his first metal extractor. It took longer than in the game to build, around two and a half minutes, but given that it was nearly the same size as him it was still pretty fast. Another change from the game was that he could build them anywhere, there didn't have to be a metal deposit there or anything. The extractor actually could gather any form of matter and convert it into the standard precursor metal, it just worked faster with metal. Upon discovering this, he built another two within the cave, alongside a generator.
With the basics of his economy finished, he realized that he had barely any room left in the cave, so he began expanding it. Streams of nanites ate away at the wall, adding the material to his store of metal, which he quickly expended by building walls and structural supports. He didn't want to get this far only to be done in by the cave collapsing on top of him.
It took nearly an hour to clear and reinforce nearly a four hundred square meter space that he could walk around in without stooping. Dual fabricators were actually coming in handy, but he'd still have preferred having the uber cannon.
A factory was next, specifically a bot factory. He could have built the bots himself, but he needed something else to build them while his commander body was occupied elsewhere. The factory took around ten minutes, which still felt fairly fast. Soon, it was churning out fabricator bots that were going about further expanding his cave, building further bot factories, extractors, and generators.
At one point, he fabricated a large, mechanical door for the cave entrance, not unlike his memories of the fallout vault doors. He didn't do much more than that outside, he didn't want to draw too much attention until he had a large economy, not to mention some guns. He'd decided those were his top priority, as even though the Locusts were effective they were so gruesome that he'd rather not use them unless he absolutely had to.
Twenty-Four Hours Later
A day had gone by fairly quickly, he'd found. He'd thrown himself into the work of expanding his base further and deeper underground. After a day's work, he'd built up five layers with twenty chambers each with a number of working lifts going between them. Each layer was specialized, with the bottom layer being dedicated to metal extractors, the one above that being generators, the next being storage structures for said metal and energy, and then bot and vehicle factories above that. The ground floor was purely dedicated to defense, which was to say it was entirely empty at the moment other than a fine coating of what looked like dust but was actually a massive swarm of Locusts. It wasn't anything fancy, but he was proud of it. He'd also reinforced the walls and ceilings with enough material that he was fairly confident it could withstand any bombardments, even if the hill itself was destroyed. Probably. He didn't exactly have any weapons to test it.
With what felt like a sufficient starting economy secured, it was time to find out where he was. Or rather, it was time for his bots to find out where he was. Where they were? Whatever.
A squad of ten fabricator bots left the vault while his commander body remained secure in the storage area of his base. They cleared a small area of trees and began construction of an air factory that would soon begin producing Fireflies to scout the area. He'd considered building an orbital factory as well, but didn't want to risk giving away his position with the very loud and very obvious launching of a rocket into space.
He also sent a squad of fabricator vehicles back into the forest along his original path to where the orks were. Uncomfortable with the carnage as he was, he wanted guns and they had guns. Or at least, that was what he had hoped.
Ten Minutes Later
"The fuck is this?" He muttered. If he were still human, he'd be rubbing his temples in frustration.
Simply put, Ork 'teknology' made no sense.
Now, to be fair, he'd known this was a possibility. He'd read about the Orkish power of belief before, it was something in the lore that allowed them to create weapons out of scrap that, by all rights, shouldn't work in the best of cases. However, reading and seeing were too very different things and he'd hoped that this universe was one where Ork tech was at least somewhat understandable.
Alas, there was no such luck for him.
It wasn't as insane as some versions of the lore had made it seem. There were bullets, there were holes for the bullets to be shot out of, there were even triggers that could be pulled. But there was nothing connecting them in four out of every five guns, other than imagined duct tape and dreams. In the hands of the Orks, these were deadly, if inaccurate, weapons of war. In the hands of his bots, they were just scrap metal.
Fortunately, his scouts had discovered that the Orks were not the only gun-wielding people on the same continent as him.
Unfortunately, those people were space elves. And not the sort-of-ok ones.
