Chương 48: Chapter Forty-Two - Gifts

"Query: Do you think we're amenable to bribery?" Red-C61734 asked. Alexis didn't say it, but she very much suspected that he, out of the two, was the most likely to accept some sort of bribe. She worked her jaw. She didn't know what to give them, really. Rations from Vyper, maybe? She knew that she could be won over by good food, but for a situation like this... She had to thread the needle here. Too good of a bribe, and they'd only be more suspicious.

So no blueprints, definitely nothing that even smelled like an STC, and nothing expensive. Obviously, anything that looked xeno was right out. On the other hand, anything too cheap would be too little to work as a bribe. So a really good ration bar was probably out too. She needed time to think, so she turned and walked over to CS-3-2/11 and then moved her mechadendrites out and continued to work.

"Ah, sorry, I... okay, so, do you remember yesterday?"

"Vividly," Alma-9 said.

"Right, of course," Alexis said.

"So, yesterday morning, Servitor Overseer Ash-Theta asked me to follow him. That was just minutes after the incident, before the genestealers showed up. One of the ship's nuclear reactors was damaged and to repair it, we needed to repair the servitors designed to function within the core room."

"Statement: I may have heard of this," Red-C61734 replied.

"Clarification: An adept mentioned the event on the Noosphere."

"I have not heard of this," Alma-9 said.

"Continue." Alexis nodded along, splitting her attention between the story and her work. She always thought better when her hands were busy.

"So, ah, I was volunteered. I was promised a promotion if I survived, but it was clear that the chances of that were low. The radiation levels within the core room were significantly higher than what an unaugmented person can survive, and I was very much unaugmented at the time." Alexis shivered. That had been... a lot, honestly. If the day hadn't continued on, with so many other things going on one after the other, she might have broken down afterwards.

"Anyway, I was pretty sure I was going to die, and it wasn't long that I wasn't feeling good. Then... uh, then I met a machine spirit."

"Query: Are you certain? Speculation: Near-death hallucinations are common."

"Debatable. She survived the event which, as you said, was recorded and witnessed by others of the Mechanicus." Alexis shrugged.

"I'm telling you the truth. Besides, I think we've all seen, or at least interacted with, a few weaker machine spirits, right? It happens." She knew that some of the bigger, older tools in the Servitorium had some relatively strong spirits. The worst was the Lobotomizer, in the far back. It was in its own little room, one that had incense burning by the entrance at all times to appease it. The machine was like a large chair, with straps on it and there was a small viewing chamber next to it.

The machine was rather complex, requiring Ash-Theta to function, and it was also rather temperamental. She didn't like servicing it. It always felt a little evil, and once she was pretty sure it had tried to grab her with one of the mechadendrites it used to hold prisoners in place.

"Anyway, this machine spirit, she said that--""She?" Alma-9 interrupted.

"Ah... well, I think she's a she?" Alexis said.

"I identify as female for the purpose of intra-species communication." Alexis shrugged again.

"She said that she wanted to help. And she did. She, ah, cured me of my radiation sickness. And I came out of the room unharmed."

"Contemplative: That does not sound like any action I have ever heard attributed to a machine spirit before. Though I have heard of some particularly irradiated machines only affecting the technicians that they dislike and sparing those that showed proper obedience." Alma-9 made a humming noise, distorted by her vox.

"There are devices that refuse to work for certain Tech Adepts within the Secondary communications array and astropathic relay station. But healing someone from an illness from afar seems far-fetched."

"That's what happened," Alexis said. It was true, even if it was skipping a step or two.

"Anyway, since then, the machine spirit has been in contact with me."

"Query: Why you?" Red-C61734 asked.

"Statement: You were the lowest ranked member of the ship, barring a menial. Appeasement: Not that you didn't deserve the rank of Acolyte, of course."

"I think she said something about helping those that would help others? I... think she has some strange criteria for who she helps?" Alma-9 tilted her head slightly to one side, a gesture that Alexis found very cute, but she didn't dare say so aloud.

"You're implying that she may have assisted others?"

"Uh," Alexis said. She glanced away, then subvocalized.

"Vyper! Help? Um... are Vanguard usually known?"

"In fact, yes. Most societies that have Vanguard quickly establish those Vanguard as either above the law, or beside it. They are also often heroic figures, or even mythical ones. I think the nearest Imperial equivalent would be a Saint, or a Primarch." Alexis paused.

"Nah," she said.

"Pardon?" Alma-9 asked.

"Uh, sorry, I meant to say, uh, yes, maybe? I don't want to betray anyone's trust. But the machine spirit is big, and strong, and probably very old?" Alma-9 suddenly straightened.

"What machine does this spirit inhabit?"

"Hm?" Alexis asked. The smaller tech priest reached into a bag, rooting around for a moment before removing a dataslate from within. She tapped the screen a few times, then looked between the other two.

"This information is classified. Classified. I expect it to remain here and within your minds only. If you have visual auspex, set them to read-only."

"Compliance: Understood." If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

"Ah, sure?" Alexis said. She left CS-3-2/11's side and came closer to see the screen.

"What is it, exactly?"

"My work at the Secondary communications array and astropathic relay station allows me access to some visuals into the warp. Not direct vision, of course, but sensor readouts that are sent to the astropaths and the ship's navigators. Obviously. Since we had an incident in the warp, the cause of this incident was investigated. This is what I captured." She played a video. It was grainy, with a small readout on the side showing that it was a six-minute-long pict recording of a monitor. The feed was of...

a strange landscape. Even rendered in such a grainy fashion, and even with the clear knowledge that what she was seeing was more like LIDAR readings than anything visual, the way space folded in on itself still made Alexis a little queasy. Alma-9 seemed entirely unbothered, however. The feed showed them shifting forwards at what looked like a slow speed, but Alexis knew was impossibly fast. The mountains and landscape was just that much larger. Then they entered a space where the strangeness just... stopped.

No more folding space, no strangeness. Just a landscape of cloudy nebulae and distant stars. They may as well have been in real-space. Only there was something right in their path. Alexis gasped as The Broken Scale shot forward and rammed into something, glancing off of it in a blink. The feed went blurry, then returned.

"One moment," Alma-9 said. She switched feeds to a new recording.

"This is the vessel we struck. Initially, we suspected it was a space hulk. But..." She didn't need to say why that idea was ditched. The item was round. A perfect circle. Only... some of the three-dimensionality did come through. A sphere, then.

"What's the scale of that?" Alexis asked, her voice a little weak. Alma-9 tapped a few keys. Two ship diagrams appeared on the screen, back to back, obviously meant to provide scale.

"Its diameter is akin to two Ark Mechanicus Class ships, back to back. Scans indicate an external density of several hundred feet of adamantium, or an equivalent metal. We cannot penetrate with any of our ship-based auspex."

"Holy machine," Alexis muttered.

"Query: That vessel's machine spirit is what contacted you?" Red-C61734 asked.

"Uh, no, I think... I don't think that's a vessel," Alexis said as she continued to watch the grainy image.

"I think that's the machine."

"Is it... human?" Alma-9 asked. Alexis shrugged.

"She makes human things? And she speaks Gothic. And if she wasn't friendly, then, uh..." She gestured at the screen.

"Conjecture: We would be dead."

"Yeah. She's been giving me things, as I do work for her. Uh. Mostly, she rewards us for saving people, and killing mutants, like Genestealers. She really doesn't like those. I don't know how she feels about a lot of things, but she's given me a lot, so I'm inclined to think that she's not bad, as far as machine spirits go?"

"Could she be an abominable intelligence?" Alma-9 asked.

"Query: Does it matter?" Alma-9 gasped and spun towards Red-C61734.

"Heresy."

"Rebuttal: Not heresy, common sense. Have you not noticed how certain strictures speak of the machine spirits with the same verbiage as they warn of abominable intelligences. I will forward you a reading of Arch Magos Alpha 99 Primus' text, the 'Interview with a Spirit Mechanicus.' It is very enlightening."

Alma-9 immediately launched back at him, quoting another text, and soon both of them were arguing the finer definitions of things and sniping at each other, especially with regards to vernacular choices and semantics. Alexis stepped back and simply returned to her work. She was used to seeing members of the cult mechanicus squabble. It was a shared hobby amongst many, though she tried not to partake too much. While they were busy, she asked her own question.

"Was that you?"

"It is. Though the auspex didn't catch me at my best angle."

"You're... big."

"I'll take that as the compliment it was meant to be. Though I'll have you know that amongst the Protectorate, I am considered a slim, youthful model."

"Ah, okay? And, uh, how old are you?"

"One does not ask a lady her age."

"Right, of course," Alexis said. The only people that replied that way were real old.

"Um... gift ideas!"

"Certainly. For two points, I think I can wrangle up a few nice things?" Alexis nodded. She was just happy that she didn't have to come up with the idea, she was terrible at choosing good gifts for her friends. New Purchase: Sonic Screwdriver Points Reduced to: 137 New Purchase: High-grade Mechadendrite Lubricant Gel Points Reduced to: 136 Two little boxes appeared on her workbench, just out of the line of sight of the other two. They were wrapped in nice, Martian-red paper, with a little brass bow on top.

"Ah, my bribes are here, if you're done arguing with each other," Alexis said. She plucked both up, then gave them to the confused tech priests. Red-C61734 opened his first, with his mechadendrites holding it far away. Then he inspected it and stared.

"Observation: This is an item I require. Query: How did you know this?"

"I didn't? But just because our auspex can't see into her, doesn't mean hers can't see into The Broken Scale."

"An astute observation," Alma-9 said as she opened her own box and revealed a small tool within.

"I... will choose not to observe the inside of the Serberys cybercanid's mouth at this time."

"Great! I'm happy to have more friends in the know! Keeping secrets really isn't my thing!" She was hoping to make a few more. Maybe at that strange meeting the message on the Noosphere had talked about? By then, her servitor friends would definitely be ready.