Chapter 68: Receiving the Tithe
The stolen gunship landed with a heavy thud in the open lot outside the manufactorum. Before the dust it kicked up had even settled, the heavy bay door hissed open.
Maine and his crew began to unload the salvage in silence. The air was thick with a grim, unspoken tension. The mission had been a brutal, near-run thing, and the impossible, divine-level reversal at the end had left every one of them shaken. Their understanding of the entity dwelling in the sanctum's depths had just been recalibrated, transformed into a new, profound, and terrifying awe.
Joric's tall, dark-red form appeared in the entryway, the clank of his metal pes on the concrete a steady, rhythmic beat.
His crimson optical lenses swept over the crew as they hauled the wrecked weapons and electronic components, finally settling on the unconscious form of the 'Scalpel' soldier, slung over Dorio's shoulder like a sack of grain.
"A reckless operation, executed without sufficient intelligence-gathering, resulting in the avoidable attrition of sanctified assets." Joric's synthesized voice was flat, devoid of emotion, yet the words themselves were a cold, sharp reprimand. "This engagement demonstrates a critical flaw in your tactical decision-making protocols and risk-assessment abilities.
"During your service to me, future failures of this magnitude will be logged as a severe and unacceptable waste of valuable resources."
His censure was not born of anger—emotion was an inefficient, biological redundancy—but of a cold, logical judgment of their performance. For Joric, emotions were a distant and inefficient liability; he cared only for the operational result and the cost-to-benefit ratio.
Maine took a deep breath, not bothering with excuses. He just nodded grimly. "Our failure, Boss. We'll learn from it." He knew that, in the face of the losses incurred, any explanation was meaningless.
Joric did not pursue the topic. His attention was already, entirely, on the "harvest" from the operation.
He moved to Dorio's side. A single, lithe mechadendrite snaked from his crimson robes, its multi-faceted tip coiling precisely around the gorget of the captive soldier's armor. It lifted her effortlessly, as if her heavy, military-grade cybernetic body weighed nothing at all.
"Process the rest of the salvaged materiel," he commanded Maine simply, then turned and carried his prize back into the sanctum's depths.
As he passed the two wrecked 'Minotaur' mechs they had also salvaged—machines that should have been inert scrap—a strange thing happened.
A faint whine of awakening power came from within their chassis. Their systems booted. They shuddered, and then, stood up. Their movements were stiff, lacking their original combat-fluidity, but they were impossibly steady. Like puppets pulled by invisible strings, they silently fell into step behind him, following their new master into the designated salvage bay.
The core sanctum was bathed in a constant, cold light.
Joric placed the captive on a specialized, metallic analysis-slab. Restraints hissed and locked over her limbs and torso.
Several mechadendrites, tipped with different, glowing diagnostic sensors, descended from the ceiling array, beginning a full, non-invasive, deep-layer scan of the body. Optical augurs, spectrum analyzers, deep-tissue bio-signal probes... multiple scan-litanies ran in parallel. A torrent of data flooded the holographic display at the side of Joric's vision.
++[Identity Confirmed: Lieutenant Moiré, Militech Special Projects Division.]++ Joric murmured, reading the data he had already plucked directly from her still-intact military data-chip.
His consciousness, an invisible probe, had slipped past Militech's vaunted ICE and into her chaotic memory-files with insulting ease. Fragments of brutal training, bloody mission-logs, and the nerve-searing agony of her implants running hot flashed past his sensors.
Joric browsed these fragments with absolute, cold detachment, filtering for valuable technical parameters and combat-logs. All data related to her "personal" emotional fluctuations and experiences of suffering were tagged as irrelevant bio-static and purged.
The scan quickly built a detailed 3D schematic of Moiré's body, every implant, its exact model number, and its real-time energy pathways clearly marked.
The analysis revealed she was running an experimental "Sandevistan"-pattern neural-driver, version 5.4b. At maximum acceleration, her neural-signal latency could be suppressed to below 0.08 seconds, but its cooldown cycle was inefficient, and it inflicted critical, cumulative load on her central nervous system.
The 'Monowire' implanted in her left forearm was a crude deployment mechanism, resulting in sub-standard effective range and accuracy.
Her current myomer-sinews and endoskeletal-frame, while providing a baseline enhancement, were inefficient, exhibiting a 17.3% energy-loss through systemic waste-heat.
And her "Nightcrow"-pattern Mantis Blades, while their high-frequency vibration was adequate, were forged from a flawed material composite. They were brittle, prone to metal fatigue.
++[Overall Assessment:]++ Joric's synthesized voice was a final, damning judgment. ++[This is a crude assemblage of experimental components, forcibly stacked upon one another. System integration is poor. The design philosophy is short-sighted, utilitarian, and has inflicted irreversible, continuous damage on the host-chassis. Its actual combat efficacy is far below its theoretical potential.]++
In his cognitive framework, the technology of the Adeptus Mechanicus, while appearing crude or even primitive to the uninitiated, was based on a profound, sacred understanding of materiel-science and the fundamental laws of the universe—an understanding this world's technology could not even begin to grasp.
This cyberpunk cybernetics... it was the product of blind, heretical groping, of short-sighted, crude application. It was riddled with technical flaws.
His gaze focused on Lieutenant Moiré's nervous system, which was already on the verge of collapse from her augmetics. The deep scan clearly showed her neurotransmitter levels were in a state of critical-aberration. Her limbic system was already exhibiting signs of organic-lesion risk. These were the classic, early physiological markers of cyberpsychosis.
++[Prognosis: At current load-levels, subject's neural network will suffer catastrophic collapse within 12 to 24 standard months. Probability: >92%.]++ Joric's conclusion was cold and final.
In Militech's eyes, this soldier was a priceless experimental asset. In his, she was a defective, short-lived, poorly designed tool.
However... she was not without value.
Her foundational qualities—systematic military combat-doctrine, a body already adapted to a Sandevistan-equivalent system, and a (relatively) resilient biological chassis—made her an excellent... experimental host.
A new, clear design-protocol began to form and solidify in Joric's logic-engine: to completely reforge her, to elevate her to the holy standard of a Sicarian Ruststalker.
In the vast and complex militant orders of the Cult Mechanicus, Sicarian Ruststalkers were the hyper-efficient, lethal, semi-mechanical assassins of the Skitarii. Equipped with specialized Sicarian-pattern augmetics and unique, spherical-jointed limbs, powered by the surging, divine energy of micro-fission reactors, they were capable of unleashing logic-defying bursts of extreme speed and agility. Their movements were a blur, their velocity capable of outpacing even the transhuman Space Marines of the Astartes, approaching the ghostly fluidity of the alien Eldar. They were the masters of high-speed pursuit and precision-assassination.
This Lieutenant Moiré, in Joric's assessment, was a crude, beggar's version of that holy design. She had speed, and she had melee weapons, but she completely lacked the perfectly integrated, divinely efficient, and systemically lethal design of a true Sicarian.
(End of Chapter)