341 – Living Lootboxes

“What the fuck am I looking at?” I muttered, staring at the abomination that existed in defiance of my understanding of physics, the laws of reality and good taste. It was an ugly thing, like a patchwork pistol straight out of a Borderlands game made of scrap metal and bits and bobs found in a junkyard. 

The Jokaeroo responsible for bringing this violation against science and my eyes just looked at me with an empty gaze, blinked dumbly, then stuck a finger all the way up his nostril knuckle-deep. It was probably scratching the inside of its empty skull. I wasn't even sure whether I had messed up with these clones or if all Jokaero were like ... this.

From this close, I could peer into its mind, and it was safe to say that not a single thought was going through its head. It was practically braindead now that it wasn’t actively working on something. Its current motions were something akin to an idle animation that its body was doing without conscious thought.

Was that first one that I’d so readily devoured the same? Or did something crucial get lost in the ‘translation’ process my Eldritch Flesh did by instinct?

“You really don’t have much going on, do you?” I asked the orangutan-looking bastard. Except, orangutans were infinitely smarter than this Jokaero. It pulled its finger out of its nose, and I averted my eyes, focusing on the machine it’d made because I doubted I could resist punting the creature into a wall if I saw it stick that finger into its mouth. “What does it do? … any ideas, Magos?”

“Statement: It clearly incorporates both Imperial and Xeno technologies,” Magos Zedev said, showing not a hint of how annoyed he must have been that I’d dragged his metallic ass out of his man-cave to study this atrocious piece of technology. “Disdain: The design philosophy seems to follow Orkish practices. Amendment: At least the actual technology exists, following certain rules, unlike Orkish technology which works through their primitive psychic energy field.”

“I got that much myself,” I said. I had some ideas as to what I was holding, but this had been a good excuse to drag the Magos up to the surface to touch some metaphorical grass. And also to take a closer looksie at what he’s been so busy working on in that lab of his these past few months. 

Common sense dictated that nothing good ever came of adding together a Magos Biologis unbound by their dogma, practically infinite funding and access to a whole bunch of super heretical tech and bio-samples. It was practically a miracle I hadn’t had to deal with some bio-horror that crawled out of his lab yet. I'd expected a zombie outbreak, a plague, maybe some hybrid Tyranid he was experimenting on escaping into the ventilation shafts … but no, there had been nothing. 

Either Zedev actually knew how to make sure his experiments didn’t blow up in everyone’s collective faces. Or, he was working on something big. 

It was probably the second one, to be honest. And the ventilation shaft Tyranid was a joke; I’d taken all possible precautions when I made Zedev his lab. Not a single speck of dust, or a single virus RNA/DNA string, could escape his lab. It was deep underground, isolated from all other levels and the only entrance was monitored with my best sensors at all times. I had also made sure the null-field around his lab was stronger so no Daemon who was feeling particularly mischievous could throw a wrench into his experiments to make them spiral out of control. 

I had no proof, but I was halfway certain the Men of Iron rebellion that ended the Old Terran civilisation of the Golden Age came about only because Chaos somehow messed with the Men of Iron’s coding. I refused to believe those scientists in the Golden Age of Technology failed to take all due precautions when making their sentient, sapient AI servants. The only logical explanation as to how they could have slipped their leashes was if there were some Warp shenanigans involved.

There was some fuckery about story, I was sure of it, the official story of the Cybernetic Revolt made no sense and as the saying goes: ‘When in doubt, blame Tzeentch’.

“Uncertainty: Energy signatures indicative of Necron techno-sorcery detected within, but the systems themselves show little resemblance.” The Magos leaned closer, his mechanical eye zooming in and likely peering through the outer shell to examine the interior in greater detail. He tilted his head in an eerily bird-like manner; the exact same way I did when I was trying to have some fun by unnerving people. Was this toaster-fucker making fun of me or was it just a coincidence? … A Magos with his level of cyberisation wouldn’t emote without expressly meaning to. “No necrodermis used. Lesser materials, lesser result, but perhaps making use of the same fundamental concept.”

“So it’s a … what? A Gauss Flayer pistol using scraps instead of necrodermis to replicate Necron tech?”

“Essentially,” Zedev said grudgingly, forgoing his usual verbal tick and making an effort to make his vocal modulator imbue his usually monotone voice with a dry tone. “Clarification: The scraps used for the outer shell seem to be an aesthetic choice. The internal systems are refined, precise, but just as overly complicated as expected of anything made by a Jokaero. Addendum: But nowhere near as unfathomable as necron techno-sorcery.”

“I suppose then all that remains is to test it and see how it does,” I  said with a thoughtful hum. “Any signs of tha-“

I cut myself off as I felt the stupid orangutan’s mind bloom to life, neurons fired as one, his brain activity going from ‘barely enough to keep its body functioning’ all the way to ‘what the fuck’. It was like a firework had gone off in its head, and I watched in fascination as that absent, dim-witted look in its eyes immediately sharpened with focus and immense intelligence. 

Its mind was a cascade of thoughts and ideas, hundreds of them being made and discarded every microsecond as it stared at one of the many shelves lining the wall. Without waiting, it bounded over there and started crawling up the five-metre-tall tower of shelves like the monkey it was, snatching up bits and bobs that it stuck in a sack hanging from its side. 

Its mind was alight with a dozen blueprints that came and went, getting refined or discarded as time passed and more material fell into that seemingly bottomless sack. There was no sign of any personal thought, no emotion or any sign of sapience. The Jokaero was more akin to an organic machine, or maybe a narrow AI focused on innovation, constantly running simulations to come up with new blueprints. 

“Fascinating creature,” I mused, then shook my head. “So! Shall we test this thing?”

Zedev looked mildly curious at my auric sight, though it was subdued and kept under tight control. He still nodded.  

A drone split off from my body and snatched up the strange pistol while Zedev and I shuffled back, erecting our defences. I threw up a barrier, just in case, even though no Jokaero tech exploded in my face so far; it was still untested tech made by tech-monkeys I didn’t trust, and Zedev activated his personal energy field generator. 

I flicked a hand, launching a small glob of eldritch flesh across the room. It splattered across the floor in front of an empty wall and then snapped back into a cohesive shape before it started expanding, forming into something more humanoid according to my ‘fire_test_dummy-v9547’ template. 

Even as a rather niche and rarely used template, it had gone through nearly ten thousand iterative improvements to make it better for its role. Compared to some of my more commonly used templates, that number was minuscule. My mind-cores made dozens of tiny improvements per minute to my ‘default_draugr’ template, for example. There was no point in letting my mind-cores sit idle and have all that processing power do nothing. If I wasn’t using them, there was an algorithm in place that assigned tasks to them to keep them occupied and useful.

The drone pulled the trigger and the scrap-gun spat a beam of energy not unlike that of a lasgun. Except, instead of the bolt being the bright red of a lasgun, this one was shrouded in an aura of entropic green around a core of familiar red. The bolt struck the target dummy, exploding with the force of a regular hotshot las, but burrowing deeper as arcs of green energy crackled around the wound. 

The surface layer mimicking human flesh and bone gave little to no resistance, and the crater left behind burrowed through layers mimicking Orkish, a dozen other creatures in escalating toughness, and even pierced a few layers of Tyranid carapace that made up the deepest layers. The drone fired again, the bow hitting the Tyranid carapace layers without any obstructions until the Hive Tyrant’s bio-armour vanished, but even that didn’t fully stop it. The Swarmlord, Carnifex and other, heavier carapaces fashioned after more heavily armoured units survived unharmed. 

“Observation: Penetrative and explosive force seems to hang between that of a bolt- and a plasma pistol. Perhaps closer to the latter.” Zedev stared at the target dummy with some intensity, then back at the pistol. “Conclusion: This might just be the most reliable sidearm when compared purely to an Imperial armoury. Plasma pistols are infamously unreliable and just as much of a danger to their wielders as they are to others. The recharge time after each shot also turns it from a dependable sidearm to a trump card only to be used with grave care and patience. This weapon can fire continuously as fast as the wielder can pull the trigger; the battery should hold enough power for a hundred shots, and I see barely any sign of overheating. Disappointment: Alas, it will never be widespread even if it can be replicated through purely human technologies. Even without the Xenos influence to consider, the creation of a blueprint not based on an STC would be seen as tek-heresy.”

“Doesn’t stop us from using them if a workable blueprint is made,” I said, making him pause. He still sometimes slipped back into considering things through the lens of a Mechanicus Magos despite no longer obeying any of their laws. “Do you think you could create one?”

“Statement: It would delay my own experiments,” he said, but it wasn’t an immediate ‘no’. “Perhaps I could. But the delays … “

“What are you working on anyway?” I asked. “I’d have thought you would have succeeded after spending months down there.”

“Statement: I have spent the last 129 Terran years,10 months and 2 days on this project,” he said, carefully keeping the frustration out of his voice. “The resources at my disposal are of immense use, as is the lack of need to conceal the true scope of my work, and those factors have greatly accelerated my timetable, but research spanning centuries can’t be finished in mere months. Especially not when the project demands not mere success, but perfection. Nothing short of absolute excellence will suffice, and excellence takes time.”

“If you say so,” I said, raising an amused eyebrow as he dodged the question with the grace of a blind elephant. He was probably still working on his human-eldar hybrids, or had started taking it further to work on some more refined form of organic agelessness. 

Not a minute later, the portal closed behind Zedev as he slipped back into his lab with a haste that almost looked comical on a Magos. Even after all these months, he still acted like a child who finally got his present after waiting so long for it, or at least the tech-priest equivalent of that. 

I glanced at the Jokaero again, only to close my eyes a moment later while my eyebrows twitched. The stupid orangutan was staring down at a pile of random bits and bobs with a vacant stare while scratching its ass, then its head. 

Okay, what’s next up on the to-do list? I had options. Check up on the Kroot, find and make a minion out of a proper Bonesinger, Whitestone experiments, make Jeff a sibling to play with, continue Overmind experiments, find a Medusae to study, make sure the Tau are keeping their word about the tech and scientific knowledge exchange, take care of the Stigmartus, scouting mission through the Warp-Gate. Those were the more preeminent ones, but the list went on and on with less important bullet points and more minor things that required my personal attention for one reason or another.

Most of those options were pretty boring, unfortunately. I would probably delegate the task of making sure the Tau weren’t skimping on their part of our deal, though I very much doubted they would dare after how much I’d shown off in front of them. So it was probably superfluous, but it wouldn’t do to have them think I trusted them fully. Hmmm. Alpha could handle it; she was a smart girl and seemed to thrive when she was buried under a mountain of tasks. Hell, she actively enjoyed having a to-do list so long it could never run empty. 

I could also check up on Bob and Fae in person; both of them had been busy little bees since I left them on Vallia. I’d seen the results of Bob’s work through my aura and even from the windows on my personal parts of the Arcology tower standing in the middle of the capital, but maybe seeing all those buildings he’d erected with my own two eyes from both inside and out would be a worthwhile way to spend an afternoon.

The Kroot could probably be ignored. I’d given them enough biomass that it’d probably keep them content for a good long while, but maybe I could add a few of them into my enforcer squads as mercenaries? Eh, not worth it. The Eldar had every reason to follow my every order to the spirit they were given in with fervent enthusiasm, but the Kroot would just be mercenaries and opportunists seeking new types of enemies to chew on. 

I still remembered how a Kroot squad’s idiotic beliefs led to an entire Tau fireteam getting wiped out in the first Cain book. They thought that a genestealer nomming the head of their dead kin was sacrilegious, so they suicide charged into the horde that had thus far failed to notice them. Of course the Xenos noticed a bunch of screeching Kroot shooting at them. 

It was stupid. They’d managed to pulverise their friend’s head before it got eaten, but in return they gave the genestealers five whole corpses instead of a single head. Absolute braindead move. 

Experiments … I didn’t really feel like experimenting. I’d been doing that for what felt like forever. I wanted to stretch my legs a bit. Sadly, that also put off the topic of finally making Jeff a sibling because that was not a project I was going to rush, or get into when I didn’t feel like I could devote myself entirely to it. 

Medusae. I thought, eyes narrowing as I looked through my mental library of bio-templates. There was, in fact, one for medusae, since those nasty psychic Warp squids liked to hang out with the Drukhari, but I wanted a live one to experiment with. Preferably more than one. 

The templates were not useless, but those things were closer in physiology to daemons and enslavers than they were to beings born in Materium. Any drone I made using their template just … flopped over and fucking died. 

As for why I wanted them? Well, medusae could feed on nightmares, suffering and even on just emotions in general, but that last one only came into play when they were latched onto a host face-hugger style. 

I had high hopes for them. I’d been wanting to develop a method to siphon Warp Energy without having to jam a soul-tendril into the Warp itself. Set up a buffer, as it were, or a filter, or create a more indirect method that I could have running around the clock. 

Maybe if I studied how living Medusae did their thing, which should be similar enough to get me started on my own project, then I could finally make some progress on that project.

I guess that means we are going on yet another field trip into the deep Webway where these things live … I bet Cain will be overjoyed to join. It’s going to be fun!

Now that I wasn’t hunting Necrons, I could have them tag along to make the excursion more enjoyable. What was the worst we could stumble upon anyway? Some daemons or Eldar? If I sensed anything more dangerous, I'd retreat and go back alone to investigate. Probably.