NOVEL WEB Chapter Three
I wake dirty and refreshed, then I remember where I am and all my joy flees, screaming bloody murder.
What I want to do is curl up and cry, the constant threat of imminent death, however, is a powerful incentive; instead, I pour a little water into a salvaged mop bucket, strip down, and try to get myself as clean as possible using my flannel and soap, then don the military fatigues as best I can.
Unfortunately, my belly and shoulders make this tricky, as I can’t button up my trousers or close the shirt. A rag rope solves the first problem. As for the second, I have to let my flabby stomach hang out, like a tropical island thug.
I skip breakfast.
Consulting my mental map, I plot a route to the armoury. I tie a couple calorie bars and a bottle of water to the pallet truck, grab my pipe, and push the pallet truck out the door, then head right. After a kilometre, the station deteriorates. Something has forced open a bulkhead and the floor is crumpled, the walls are full of holes, and in one spot, multiple compartments and corridors have been blown through and the only thing keeping the air in is a smooth, vanta-black surface that E-SIM informs me is a void shield.
I get the same feeling from the hole as I did from the window in the canteen, that beyond lies death, and it won’t come from rapid decompression.
E-SIMs constant narration is welcome and it tells me the Federation uses void shields for emergency damage control, and they have something much better for combat called a hyper-deceleration field. This is quite disconcerting, because as far as I know, void shields are the main protective energy screen used by the Imperium.
That’s not my main concern though, as the void shield is likely consuming all remaining power in this section as the artificial gravity fails. I receive another skill download and acquire zero-G manoeuvring. E-SIM explains the station would normally spin to get its gravity, saving considerable amounts of power; this failure, and the massive amounts of structural degradation I am seeing, suggests the station is more bust than the section I woke up in implied.
Clanging and shouting reverberate down the corridor. I float another two hundred metres. The curve limits how far I can see and, at the boundary of my line of sight, a mob of short green humanoids with crude cleavers, rusted pistols, and angular faces are being ripped apart by a pair of red demons flailing giant, serrated swords. Behind the mob is a bigger humanoid, with a bigger blade, bigger gun, and blunter face.
The Ork, for I can think of no other thing the big humanoid could be, exhorts his smaller brethren, Gretchin I assume, into a frothing, murderous swarm. As I approach, I spot the sneaky bastard is retreating as he shouts louder and louder, so the Gretchin don’t notice he’s leaving them all to die, and I can see why.
No matter how much the Gretchin flail and shoot, most of their bullets and blades fly wide, even at point blank range, and the wounds they do inflict, don’t stick to the demons but disappear between blinks.
A trio of Gretchin are up to something at the back of the mob; twenty seconds later, half the mob is dead and the other Gretchin scatter. As the red demons, bloodletters, I think, cut down fleeing Gretchin, the trio at the back lift their creation above their heads, swinging three stikkbombs tied together with their loin cloths into an improvised bola.
The biggest Gretchin yanks the bola away from the other two, then, hopping with glee, spins and hurls the explosives at the bloodletters. All the Gretchins’ eyes go wide, and the Ork Boy in the back gapes in wonder as, for a brief moment, the soiled cloth snags around a bloodletter’s horn, and swings to and fro. Combat freezes and the silence seems to stretch forever, before the three stikkbombs explode, splattering demonic flesh and Gretchin corpses over the corridor.
Demonic flesh turns to smoke and pours towards me, revealing my location to the stunned Orks, and charging my emergency energy reserves another zero point two percent.
The bola throwing Gretchin gets his head in order first and yells, “Piss off ‘umie, dis is our digs!”
I don’t want to tangle with Orks, especially close up, and what the hell am I supposed to say? I’m an M3 ‘umie meeting his first Xeno. It’s a right shock, so I float there, no doubt with a dumb look on my face.
The Ork Boy returns and slaps the mouthy Gretchin on the back of his noggin, “Shut it pipsqueak. I’z da boss ‘ere.” He eyes me up, his face scrunching real hard, his face wrinkling like the gills of a mushroom, before relaxing.
His deep voice thunders down the corridor, “Dis is our digs, piss off.”
The bola Gretchin stares at the Ork Boy, incredulous, then huffs and stomps off, muttering.
Unsure what to do, I leave. The Greenskins jeer at me, but I don’t care. I lack the tools and knowledge to do anything about them, and there is no guarantee the armoury I want hasn’t been looted. It’s better to think of something else, and return when I am better prepared.
A handful of Gretchin chase me, only to suddenly start floating and tumbling through the corridor. They yell and screech, the other Greenskins laugh at them, then I’m out of sight, and hopefully, out of mind too.
Returning to my room, I lie in my cot, going over the encounter in my head. There are both Orks and Demons waging an eternal war on this station. I’m probably living in demon territory, as it hasn’t been looted. A net plus, as I need to kill Demons, and I need resources.
I still can’t believe I’ve met murderhobo Xenos, or that I am alive.
“Hey, E-SIM. Do Ork kills count towards gaining permission for more modules.”
++They do, though if you wish to syphon Waaagh! psychic energy to power your implants, it will require a specialist module. The same solution is required for other immaterium based energies you may encounter.++
“Alright, thanks.”
I need armour.
I need weapons.
I need knowledge and skills.
Most of all, I want to live. Not, as in, my heart keeps beating, my mind thrumming with thoughts, but to really live. I want friends, good food, great entertainment, and a proper cup of builders’ tea with a chocolate biscuit. A workshop to tinker in. A garden. Maybe a library. All the things that make life worth living. I don’t want to think about family.
For all that to happen, I need to get off this station with all the loot I can manage, and if I want any semblance of freedom and choice in this blighted galaxy, a Writ of Trade, and big fucking spaceship.
Bigger goals can wait.
Ambition sprouts in my chest and a small smile sweeps across my haggard face.
Step one? Cardio.
Like all fat bastards, I immediately look for a shortcut, only this time, it isn’t dubious slimming pills, but hyper-advanced nanites and a terrifying machine intelligence from humanity’s zenith that I turn to.
Within the data for my life support module, I uncover quite how extensive my “free” unlock is. The life-support’s core piece is a secondary, bionic heart, that not only pumps blood, but manufactures an array of specialist nanites. This pattern repeats for other replacement organs I’ve received. Their original functions are many times more efficient, self-repairing, and more resilient, and the extra space they free allows for additional functions.
My liver is ludicrously robust, and can produce combat stims and other drugs, and my spine is lined with data storage.
My stomach is a specialist standard template constructor for E-SIM nanites, and a material recycling unit. There is nothing I cannot eat, my only limitation being what I’m willing to spit or swallow.
My intestines are a fraction of their previous length, creating space for nutrient and resource bladders, as well as an emergency blood reserve and flexible energy storage.
Last, my coccyx has been replaced with an extra-dimensional spike, a Warp Tap, that can harvest psychic energy. It also contains a micro-gellar field. This addition confuses me, as I thought gellar fields required boxing up psykers and locking them in an eternal dream, but it is no surprise Federation tech breaks the rules in some way.
The gellar field, a device that deters corruption and maintains and protects material objects in immaterial space, covers my whole body. The gellar field clearly isn’t great at blocking direct demonic attacks, and is, according to the data, tuned towards hiding me. It’s nothing like the gellar fields that protect the Imperium’s great ships during warp travel.
That, however, is the least scary thing about the Warp Tap, E-SIM’s core module. The really terrifying part about the Warp Tap, is that it permanently slays demons. If anything discovers this, I am well and truly fucked.
I can literally smother a chaos god to death with my ass, or snack on Eldar infinity circuits.
In theory.
Amid the myriad options and my choking fear is Body Tuning, and because it is a function of life-support, it has fewer requirements: the STC, which I have stored along my spine, and the power to run it.
Body Tuning: Maintains the body in peak physical condition. Extends the working life of organic components by 100%. Consumes 0.1% of emergency reserves per hour. Increases baseline calorie requirements to at least 6,000 per day.
Power is going to be a problem, but I enable Body Tuning anyway, and as long as I don’t disable life support, I only need food and water to replace or add mass. Energy requirements, like calories, almost all come from the warp, with E-SIM using it's nanites to reconstruct the food I consume into substances I can use over and over again. Mad tech for sure.
Probably healthier than my usual diet of takeaways and snickers.
“E-SIM. What does working life mean?”
++Baseline humans, with a good diet and proper protective equipment, are capable of approximately forty years of hard labour before function loss renders such work inefficient. Body Tuning does not increase total lifespan, only the length of time an individual can contribute to society.++
I nod, “Which makes it a core part of enlightened self-interest, and therefore free.”
++Correct.++
Nothing seems to be happening.
“Hey, E-SIM?”
++Yes, Operator?++
“How long will Body Tuning take to optimise my body?”
++Two weeks.++
“How many hours of energy remain at my current rate?”
++About 30 hours, less if you use your power field.++
“So, I have 30 hours or less to gear up enough so I can survive the onslaught of demons that will descend when I have to deploy the power tap, or I can go without E-SIM guidance, life-support, and run my bionics in low power mode, i.e., without their extra features.”
++Affirmative.++
“No time to waste then.”
I consult my map, looking for inspiration, letting the implanted memories flow through my head. This floor is mostly storage, labs, and accommodation. I notice a small alert on my hud that states I need more resources and snap off a chunk of ration bar then chew on the metallic food with great distaste.
There are minor utilities, like workshops, power distribution, and environmental sustainers. As a plumber, I really want to see how they handle this stuff, future style, but it isn’t a priority, neither is the call for a proper bed or rummaging through rooms looking for how the people here lived, or why they died. I’m about to head for a workshop to see if I can at least fashion some protective gear, when I spot an airlock and a suit locker on the map.
“That might do the trick,” I mutter.