Killing Code

Captain Ventanus had returned.

He had also brought a group of heavily modified Adeptus Mechanicus Secutarii, who looked more like machines than humans. They were assigned to a radiation-shielded collection room to prevent the intense radiation from harming the civilians sheltering there.

"I am Mir Eldvi Tauren." A female member of the Adeptus Mechanicus was the mind behind this group of Secutarii. "I am a Senior Tech-priest, serving as a servitor in the analytical departments of Calth and Numenas."

"We were also the ones who received the message you sent. Before my superior died, he relayed the information to Macragge's Honour and issued a warning."

It was difficult to discern changes in tone or any trace of human feeling in the way the Adeptus Mechanicus spoke, but Lox could sense the faint loss and pain. She was grieving.

"Still, it seems there is nothing left to analyze now." Ventanus made a joke, trying to lighten the atmosphere.

Tassa was giving him basic treatment. Ventanus was covered in bruises, which was only because his power armor had protected him.

There were minor fractures in the bones of his hands and legs. They did not require much treatment; an Astartes' superhuman physique could heal itself.

"It has been a terrible day. I have lost many friends. It feels like a nightmare," Tauren replied.

"Forgive me, my lady. I thought your kind no longer dreamed." Ventanus smiled.

The female tech-priest did not mind. More than half of her body had been replaced with intricate mechanical augmentations. "Everyone dreams."

"The Word Bearers have launched a shameless betrayal. The XIII Legion, the Five Hundred Worlds of Ultramar, and the Adeptus Mechanicus have all suffered grievous losses. Our warships are burning, and our people are dying."

She nodded. Not long ago, someone had died in her arms.

"What resources do you have? Armed forces or information assets you can deploy?" Ventanus asked.

These Adeptus Mechanicus people were not soldiers by trade, but that did not mean they could not fight.

Every one of these oil-stained relic-tech hoarders had a trump card of their own. Until their cybernetic modifications were truly revealed, no one could know how devastating they could be.

"Only around three hundred Secutarii, along with some portable mobile weapons and light armor." The number did not exceed Ventanus's expectations. "But as the signal spreads, that number will continue to grow."

"But Captain, I am very curious. Calth's noosphere was corrupted and destroyed by Chaos Scrapcode. Even the cogitators linked to the noosphere have been paralyzed. As far as I know, the Universal Museum's cogitators were also connected to it. What was the transmitter you used to send us the message?"

The tech-priest's face was full of curiosity. Through the signals it transmitted and received, she had noticed that the device was unusual, subtly different from those commonly used by the Imperium and even the Adeptus Mechanicus.

It gave her the faint scent of lost technology, or perhaps heretical technology.

To the oil-stained adepts of the Adeptus Mechanicus, any heretical technology not in their hands was subject to severe censure and punishment. But once it fell into their hands, it naturally became lawful, compliant lost technology.

Ventanus did not conceal anything. They would need to rely on these Adeptus Mechanicus allies to reclaim control of Calth's noosphere, and in any case, it was not a major matter.

"Our transmitter was brought by that comrade. You can ask him for the details." He pointed at Lox, who stood in the corner.

"An utterly ordinary-looking mortal." Tauren's electronic eyes scanned him, but reached no conclusion of value. No augmentations, no signs of life-extension procedures, no traces of surgical enhancement: a standard mortal.

"No, or rather, an overly standard mortal." Tauren's calculation modules considered the matter before reaching an inconclusive answer.

In this universe, humanity was scattered across the stars and shaped by all manner of environmental influences: gravity, radiation, psychic energy, unusual geographical conditions, and more. It was difficult to find an ordinary person who had received absolutely no genetic modification or surgery.

After all, even the most basic life-extension treatment was affordable to middle-class families in an ordinary hive city. Who would willingly die young?

As for the poor wretches who could not even afford life-extension surgery, they were overwhelmingly likely to live in the harsh conditions of the lower hives, the underhives, or the wilderness. Their food and living environments were atrocious.

Mutation was inevitable, and those unrecognized mutants were targets for Imperial extermination.

Still, this did not arouse much curiosity in the Senior Tech-priest. Before conducting experiments, many biotechnical priests created relatively pure specimens to reduce interference from mutations.

Tauren examined the transmitter Lox had printed at close range. Her electronic eyes and the indicator lights across her body flickered constantly. She realized that this was a lost technology from the distant Dark Age of Technology. The modern Imperium could no longer manufacture such a thing.

"You have information on an STC? Mortal, you must tell me. Every STC should be in the possession of the Adeptus Mechanicus, once this incident is over, if we are all still alive."

Tauren bent down. Her augmented body made her far taller than Lox, and the crimson lips formed by half-mechanical components nearly brushed his ear as she spoke softly.

Lox showed little reaction. Was he supposed to tell this woman covered in shoddy augmentations that his ship had been assembled from countless STCs?

That oil-stained adept would probably spray lubricant and die from excitement on the spot.

To people from Lox's era, augmentation was perfectly ordinary. But modifications that left augmented organs fully exposed and made a person look inhuman were something even the lowest-grade augmented would sneer at.

The more human one looked, the higher the level of augmentation technology. The Stone Men, who were almost indistinguishable from humans, represented the pinnacle of augmentation technology.

The Stone Men had been born from humanity, yet in some sense, they were more perfect than humans.

A perfect creation would inevitably surpass its creator.

"Both the surface and space are now war zones. We have learned that half the fleet has resumed operations and is striking hard at the enemy." Ventanus focused, analyzing the current battlefield situation. "The surface is also deadlocked. The Word Bearers cannot disengage from the various fronts. They are bogged down in the mire of war."

"So what is your plan?" Aruk, leader of the Secutarii, stared at him with red eyes, one of which was suffering from poor contact.

"Our Weapon Array has fallen into enemy hands amid the chaos. We need to purge the Chaos Scrapcode from the Weapon Array and reclaim it." The war had reached a stalemate, and recapturing the Weapon Array and low orbit was the fastest way to decide the outcome.

The Weapon Array held immense suppressive power against enemies in space and on the ground alike. Now it was paralyzed and being hacked and occupied by the enemy.

Faced with this situation, Lox had also tried to have the cogitator purge the Chaos Scrapcode from the Weapon Array, but that would take considerable time, and the physical hardware above would need to be cleared of interference.

That meant they had to annihilate the enemy forces guarding the Weapon Array. Only after physically taking control of the array could they control it.

"I can teleport you to the Orbital Platform, but your numbers are far too small. The enemy has deployed a large force to the Orbital Platform. You cannot retake the Weapon Array."

Lox regretfully admitted that he could do nothing more. Ventanus, meanwhile, believed that with the aid of the primarch and the Legion, they would certainly be able to crush the Word Bearers in orbit.

Yet when Ventanus attempted to contact Macragge's Honour, no matter how they requested communication, there was no response from the flagship. There was not even the routine reply of a communications servitor.

It gave them a bad feeling. It meant the flagship had likely been attacked, and the enemy's boarding actions had left the Ultramarines unable even to respond to communications.

Other than trusting in the primarch and the Legion's high command, Ventanus and the other ground forces had no better option.

"You need to retrieve the Killing Code my superior compiled in his final moments. At the end of his life, he put his genius and ingenuity to work. To prevent the Killing Code from being corrupted by Chaos Scrapcode beforehand, he hid it in an offline cogitator at the port."

Tauren snapped out of her daze before the transmitter's server. Using the cogitator within the machine, she had organized and reviewed a vast amount of information from after the outbreak of the incident, and found what her superior—Hurst—had left for her.

She understood the work her lover had completed at the final moment. It was a Killing Code designed against Chaos Scrapcode. After Hurst's brain death and data death, those lines of code were the final proof that he had once existed in this world.

She remembered the way Hurst had died in her arms.