Quinntessential — Roleplayer Guild

She heard the calling and felt her gut twist.  Whatever was out there was trying to be human.  She climbed over the chair, sat in it, and prepared to open a communications channel to this ship.

"...oh my God..." she whispered, when she saw the scattered remnants of the ships it had 'aided' before.  She locked herself in the chair, opened up an internal radio, and spoke quickly.

"This is gonna be rough.  Hang onto something!"

With a flick, she kicked all of the ship's power into it's massive engines.  The ship lurched, twisting in the grip of the tractor beam.  Mischa was braced for full acceleration, and when the ship barely moved, she started sweating a cold sweat.  She wrenched the controls around, trying to twist free.  No avail.

"Fuck...fuck....FUCK." she cursed, releasing the flight stick to adjust some of the power outputs from the reactor.  The ship went dark, it's lights flickering and blinking as the engine's output pushed into the red lines.  Still, with all of her ship's considerable thrust, she wasn't moving.

Over the internal comms, she spoke to...whatever the thing was...that could teleport...and speak English.  "What the fuck am I supposed to do to get away from this thing?!"

Her answer caught her eye for a moment, but she realized that it was going to be a suicide option.  She froze, still pushing the throttle to it's bolts.  They weren't going to get away by simple thrust.  It would take something...much more risky.  Hyperspace drives didn't use thrust.  They dug a tunnel in real space and sent the ship into Subspace.  In subspace, time and distance didn't matter at all.  The drive would then follow its guidance systems until it reached a predetermined point, then open another hole and plop - you're back in Normal Space, or N-Space.  Of course, it was suicidal to use near another ship.  There was no telling what kinds of distortions in reality you'd cause.  It's so dangerous that the first two weeks of flight school are spent going over the First Hyperspace Jump, one of the worst tragedies in the history of interplanetary flight.  Out here, there was no planet to cause any real problems...but...still...she couldn't just jump.

Could she?

She killed the main engines, and felt the tractor beams working.  Quick fingers rerouted all power to the Hyperspace Cores.  Again the ship lights flickered and a static buzz filled the air.  She closed her eyes in silent prayer, hoping the short jump she just plotted would get them far and away from this thing.  It was obvious the alien couldn't get through the blast doors, so she wasn't as worried as she was becoming part of that boneyard on the deck of the alien vessel.

With a click, the Hyperspace Core energized.

Within a blink of an eye, Mischa looked up and out of the canopy.  There was nothing visible.  No stars, no ship, no asteroids.  Just Hyperspace.  She did a quick system check and saw that, while a few capacitors had blown, no major systems seemed to have failed as a result of her jump.

Within a minute, they reached their destination.  The world popped into reality around them...

...and Mischa saw that her course was headed directly for a large star.

"Nakera Kaas, Mechanicus Neophyte, come forward." spoke the monotone voice of the Magus Ivanor Drol, High Mechanoseer of Carstorum IV, and overseer of the Adeptus Mechanicus College.  He was a huge, unnaturally immobile man draped with reds, golds, whites, and metal.  His cowl was drawn up over his face, hiding any features from view.  Hoses poured out from the hood, however, telling her that there likely wasn't much left of his face beneath it.  The electronic crackle from his chest told her that his annunciator was located far lower than her previous instructor's had been.  His were folded across his midsection, sleeves meeting, with no sign of hands between them.  Around him was a dozen servo skulls and mechadendrite arms, all moving, observing, or operating simple tasks like reading over the scroll held by one the skulls, or working autoquills on a document that would serve as record for this conversation.

The young woman stood, still slightly off balance from her surgeries.  Her back burned still, where they had cut out a large section of her spine and replaced it with the True Flesh.  Her body was still getting used to the changes she'd endured recently, and that was the most invasive of them.  Her Cranial Circuitry at least FELT like it was a part of her.  So far, the Cyber Mantle was more painful than anything.  She pushed the pain away and moved forward, her white robes moving about her in the light wind.  Carstorum was a wealthy world that didn't know the blight of hive cities, or the stench of industry.  Instead, the Mechanicus Temple here focused on preserving the great artifacts and luxuries around the planet.  Here, deep within the Temple's depths, she could still smell the fresh air and fragrant smells of the surface being pumped down.  When she was before the Magus, she lowered herself to her knees, her robes pooling around her.

"You have proven capable of bearing the True Flesh and the Omnissiah's Will is that you will become an Adept.  Shed the robes of the Neophyte and accept your calling."  One of his massive mechadendrites moved towards her.  She bowed her head, familiar with the ritual, and stood.  The dozens of other students watched, each waiting their own chance to be assigned into the order.  Easily fifty other members of the Cult Mechanicus stood in the stands beyond the students, familiar with the ceremony that they themselves went through at her age.

With a few buttons undone, she let the white robes fall from her shoulders and pool around her.  In any other setting, she'd be incredibly ashamed at being exposed completely to the amount of people here, but this was the Cult Mechanicus, not one of the courts she fancied joining when she was a child.  No one here cared about her flesh, only her faith.  Her black hair laid messily on her head with one side was shaved to the skin only this morning and the other being her exposed cranial implants.  From the back of her skull, where her cranial implants met her flesh, a thick band of dark copper ran beneath her skin.  It looked dull, almost black as it ran down the length of her spine, splitting off towards her arms and wrapping around her ribs.  The Cyber Mantle was visible, surrounded by the still red scar tissue that would eventually graft completely to it.  From just below her shoulder blades down to the tip of her tailbone, her spine had been removed, replaced, and reworked with cybernetics.  The chrome sheen of the metal gave motes of light to the floor as they reflected the lights overhead.  The copper bands continued, around her hips, down the fronts and backs of her thighs, like some strange garter belt and stocking.  On her arms, the bands moved across her biceps, down over her elbows, and zig zagged to her forearms before terminating in her palms.  The bands were called Electoos.  Strips of metal grafted under her skin.  They all connected to her Cyber Mantle, within which held a device called a Potentia Coil.  Since it's implantation, she was forced to quickly learn how to control the surges of power through her skin lest she deliver enough voltage to an appendage to cause burns.

She stepped forward and towards the four mechadendrites that were descending towards her.  Each one bore a different tool of her office.  The first was the final components of her Cyber Mantle.  She knew this wasn't going to be pleasant.

The external housing of the cybermantle looked like a barrel connected two six round ports.  On the body facing side was twelve inches of wicked looking needles, interface ports, and heavy duty bolts that would all serve to anchor the machine to it's host.  Nakera bent forwards, crossing her wrists and touching her knees.  The housing touched her implant and the sensation nearly made her jump.  It was like ice cold quicksilver was being poured up her spine as the various interfaces connected and mated with the spinal implant she had.  She braced herself for part two of the process.  The implant settled, clicking it's final bolts over their holes, and with a scant second, the machine immediately started drilling into her to finalize the connection.  She had subdermal mating points for the Mantle, but the time between them being put in and the mantle being installed meant that they would have healed over.  Blood ran down her back and bottom, down her thighs.  She did her best not to scream or cry - not that she was expected to keep silent - and held out as long as she could before the pain became too great.  Lastly, the implant sealed itself in place.  Chemicals reacted, quickly heating to the point of welding temperatures.  There was no holding the screaming while this happened.  The Magos's mechadendrites kept her from falling until the procedure was complete.  Even then, she could barely support her weight and quickly fell to her knees.  A medical servo skull applied antiseptic and cleaned her body of blood when she finally stood.  It was an odd sensation, feeling the servos and motors of the Cyber Mantle whirring to life at her command.  Currently, they had nothing to command, so it was fruitless.

That came next.

When she stood, she looked up at the Magos and spoke her part.  "I accept the gifts of the Omnissiah, and swear from now until the day my mind passes, to uphold the Truth of the Machine.  My flesh will fail, but the Omnissiah will guide me in all things, and I will guide those to the Omnissiah's wisdom."

Another Mechadendrite was lowered as she spoke.  It connected a small coil of tubing to one of the ports in her Cyber Mantle.  With a jolt, it unraveled and fell to the floor.  She collected her wits and recalled the litanies she needed to recall to control her new appendage.  The long tube, now much like a tentacle, lifted and coiled like a scorpion's tail.  It's end had no device on it, no feature, just a collection of interface ports.

The last Mechadendrite lowered to her a red robe.  The fabric was heavy, warm, and smelled of sacred unguents and the forge.  She let it fall over her shoulders and concentrated on making the mechadendrite maneuver through the fabric and out the overlaying square of cloth cut specifically for the device now apart of her.  Clothed once more, she bowed again, feeling a bit more confident with the movement of her clothing.  From the left, a cart was brought out.  On it were a number of technical tools, devices, and parts.

"Now begins your trials.  Use what you have learned here, and apply the knowledge practically.  Take these tools.  Follow Adept Kormath into the libraries and prove your worth to the Cult Mechanicus.

She nodded, grabbing the assortment of tools.  She could remember so much from her training.  The Biologis rites, the Incantations of Sacred Ignition, the Cognitos Veritas, all of it was in her head...and now she had a chance to prove her worth.

******

Nakera awoke from her dream - a familiar one - with a slow realization that she was no where near home, or a member of the Cult Mechanicus.  She looked at her wrists.  Still chained.  Tried to move her mechadendrite.  Still bound.  She still smelled of filth and mildew.  It had been nearly a month they'd kept her in this cell.  Throne-Forsaken pirates.

She remembered back to her trails and laughed at her hopefulness to make an impression on the Cult.  Instead, she became a Lexmechanic, assigned to collate and organize data, transmissions, communications, and records.  No great adventure, no heroic technologies recovered from long forgotten colonies.  No grand mystery...just a life of data analysis and entry.  When they told her, she felt...crushed.  She left a life of nobility, of importance, of beautiful dresses and handsome husbands behind so that she could do something meaningful with the Adeptus Mechanicus.  Her family refused to talk with her after she took her vows.  She remembered crying, as a teenager in the College, after reading how her Father insisted that she never speak to them again, and must choose a new name to have her flights of fancy with.  Now it all seemed so petty.

She'd been on this world - a frontier world set to receive nearly five hundred thousand occupants in less than a year - barely a week when the first raid came.  Her office, literally six adepts and a Vox Caster, was asked to organize the defenses while the Militia was formed against the heathens that were coming.  She'd fired a lasgun before, but overseeing defenses was not something she had any skill at.  The three hundred people living in this colony stood no chance against an organized strike.

Which is how she ended up here.  She did what she could from the Communications Office - even managed to scramble the raider's own Vox system.  When they kicked down the door, she was shot almost instantly.  To everyone's amazement, she lived.  One of the raiders patched her up and they decided a pet Mechanicus Adept would be far more valuable than another corpse.

That was a month ago.  She was exactly that, too.  A pet.  She was brought out to impress other pirates, or to fix minor issues.  Even now, on the fringes of space, away from all that could be considered law...guess what her job was.

That's right.  Data processing.

She rolled over and tried to go back to sleep.  Who knows, maybe tomorrow a Vox Caster would need to be re-calibrated.

Nakera Kaas is a young Lexmechanic who was once assigned to work as a Communications Officer for Frontier World XT-0009345:132.  The place had a small colony, maybe three hundred people.  It's not around anymore.  Pirates came and killed most of the Colonists, captured and enslaved the rest.  Nakera avoided sale by being useful.  She survived the initial fight and decided that living was better than dying.  She's been a prisoner for roughly a month, forced to fix minor things and track certain bits of information for the pirate captain who owns her and can decide her fate.

She has the ability to manipulate magnetic fields, which manifests most commonly as levitating objects around the room for easy work.  Some of them can even be quiet heavy, reaching nearly 8 kilograms in mass.  She can also power objects with her strange and unique implants.  Her captors don't yet know, but she can also use that power to discharge as a weapon.  Of course, doing that now would only get her killed.

I made a character sheet for Nakera.  This only matters as a guideline for me to scale her abilities when writing and will not effect anything beyond that.  Fun to look at though! :D

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@Jbcool - Let me know if you want me to change anything.

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Entirely too excited.

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