Getting Warhammered [WH 40k Fanfic]

“Unfortunately, this one seems to be a replica from around the early twenty-first millennium.” Trazyn lamented, staring up at a convincing remake of Michelangelo’s David.

“I suspected as much,” I said. “Humans bombed themselves back into the bronze age during the Age of Technology.”

“Such is the nature of those constrained to the present.”

“I suppose it is,” I said with a shrug. I wasn’t going to tell the space skeleton that living in the past wasn’t the best either. Especially since it resulted in him being quite possibly the most agreeable Necron in the galaxy. “I’m surprised it took them so long though. And even more surprised that they survived it at all.”

“How so?” he asked, suddenly curious, and the statue forgotten. “Many civilisations last many millennia before some cataclysm or another puts an end to them.”

“Humans could have wiped themselves out by the end of the 20th century,” I shrugged. “The fact they somehow only advanced and rose up until the twentieth millennium is a miracle greater than whatever the Emperor can call down.”

Trazyn hummed in agreement. “It is unfortunate how many civilisations disappear, destroyed by their very own actions, throughout the galaxy on a regular basis.”

“Do you have exhibits of some of those civilisations?” I asked curiously. “Those who just appeared and disappeared from the galaxy, unknown to the galaxy at large?”

“There are some,” he nodded. “Though I admit few were deemed worth the effort of immortalising in my Galleries.”

On one hand, being selective with what history should be remembered rubbed the 21st-century girl the wrong way, — almost as much as the idea of letting civilisations and their memories fade into obscurity — but I also knew how much of a hassle it would be to keep an eye out for every self-destructive little shithole in the galaxy and make sure to collect some artefacts from there before they inevitably faced oblivion.

Trazyn was still alert, his green gaze never leaving me for too long, and even if it did, I could hear small mechanical spiders scuttling around in each room watching me. He had nothing to fear from me personally; the bastard was probably almost as slippery as I was when it came down to it with his surrogate bodies.

He was basically a super lich, without the need for a phylactery and capable of possessing any Necron bodies whose mental cortexes he could easily overwhelm with his own mind.

I suspected the only thing he had to fear from me was to suddenly go on a rampage and damage his prized artefacts. Especially since he used that overpowered spear as a walking stick. The Empathic Obliterator, a weapon that could destroy armies with a swing, was reduced to a walking stick. The Old Ones would weep at the sight if they weren’t all too dead to care.

“I’d be interested in seeing some if you don’t mind?” I asked, feeling a bit stumped at how genuine I was being with a cranky, old space skeleton. Oh well, there was little I had to hide from Trazyn, and most of his sensibilities were things I agreed with — aside from whatever drove him to kidnap me. That was dumb, though welcome in hindsight.

“I suppose we could take a route in their direction,” he nodded, though his green burning gaze stared at me with a measure of suspicion. ‘What is in those exhibits you want, beautiful and unknowable stranger?’ was written on his … aura — since he lacked a facial expression. Though I doubted he used those exact same words in his mind.

From there, he led me through a slew of smaller and larger exhibits. We made our way through the few he had of ancient Terra, with me barely managing to hold back a snicker as he regaled me with the tale of how he got his hands on a piece of silver machinery from the Admech priests at great cost to himself.

How it must have had some religious importance to that subsect of the priesthood of Mars and some such. How hard they fought to keep it and how old the damned thing was.

In short, it was a toaster. An honest-to-god, old, soviet style toaster with its large bulkiness and simplicity. I wouldn’t have been surprised if the thing turned on the moment I plugged it in even after 40 thousand years.

From there we entered the weirder parts, with strange alien architecture taking the place of the previous Roman and early Gothic architecture. He had fossilised remains of strange aliens, plants, statues, and other knickknacks of dubious origin and functionality.

I took everything in like an overeager schoolgirl on her first school trip to the national museum. I was in a space museum the size of a planet, built with nanomachines by a cranky skeleton.

He’d be an ‘uploaded person’ in a regular sci-fi setting, wouldn’t he? Bio-transference is just basically creating an artificial mind based on your biological brain and then shoving it into a mechanical body. Hmmmm.

He had so much interesting stuff. I was pleasantly surprised that I could still appreciate art and historical artefacts even without them having something to give me. Sure, there was the occasional time-frozen animal with descriptions that made me tempted to just … take a little nibble.

I held myself back since I was enjoying this little excursion. I wasn’t going to ruin it by taking something I could get either way later. Plus, I had some ideas for Trazyn, and maybe a possibly mutually beneficial partnership.

… we didn’t find van Gogh’s Sunflowers in the end, didn we? Shame. It might be out there somewhere, but I didn’t hold out much hope. Which meant the last piece of art from my time was the Mona Lisa now hanging from Trazyn’s walls. I wasn’t sure how to feel about that, but it surely beat having it in some Governor’s collection.

“If you don’t mind me asking,” Trazyn interrupted my brooding. “While I myself know the value of remembering history and respecting its ancient artefacts, few share my view. Even among my own kind. I couldn’t help but be curious about what drove you to be.”

“I suppose culture?” I shrugged. “Where I grew up destroying ancient artefacts was seen as a deplorable act. To forget one’s — or other’s — history is to refuse to learn from the mistakes and triumphs of our ancestors. Anyone who vandalised historical artefacts was seen as a savage or a fanatic.”

“A culture trait I wish was more prevalent in our galaxy,” he gave an artificial sigh. “I was under the misconception though, that you do not know what you are?”

“I do not,” I smiled. “But I know what I was.”

We walked side by side now, walking down a strange tunnel that slowly transformed from some natural design that appeared like vines were grown to cover the walls like wallpaper to normal dirt. If I didn’t know where we were, I would have mistaken the place to be the entrance to the burrow of some large creature.

“You want to know what I was?” I asked with a smirk.

“I do,” he admitted. “Though I was more wondering about the implications of your current state being artificial.”

“I doubt it's replicable,” I shrugged. “The ones that did it are quite dead, the materials to do it are either unavailable or exhausted and the catalyst even isn’t likely to repeat itself ever again.”

“If you are capable of what you claimed, one of you could be calamitous enough to most civilisations.”

“True,” I shrugged. “I don’t intend to make more of me, either. I quite like being a singularity.”

“Let us backtrack,” he said. “You mentioned having been part of a larger culture before?”

“I did,” I said. “Though I’m afraid my kind and whatever culture we had has been warped into something unrecognisable and repugnant over the millennia.”

He just hummed and somehow managed to throw me a side-eye with those glowing green orbs of his.

“I was a human,” I shrugged, deciding I had little to lose by admitting it. “Back in the 21st century.”

That made him stumble and whirl around to stare at me, which was quite creepy, with the metallic death-mask wearing that annoying smirk and sporting two unblinking eyes. There was a hunger in those unliving eyes, a hunger for knowledge that couldn’t be satisfied even if one lived till the stars went dark.

“A human,” he murmured, tilting his head as if trying to verify my claims. “A human?”

“Yes,” I shrugged. “Your culture might be the same as it had been millions of years ago, but mine is not. I do not find anything familiar in today’s humanity and nor do I particularly identify with anything they stand for.”

“Understandably so,” he nodded, recollecting himself and straightening up. “That was quite the shock … The earliest humans I interacted with were already in the 31st millennium. I would be very interested in early human history.”

“I’m sure we can come to an agreement,” I said. “You have quite a few things I would very much love to get my hands on.”

“Do I now?” he tapped his chin thoughtfully while staring at me. “Am I right in presuming you are somehow aware of what I have in this Gallery?”

“I just know one or two unfortunate fellows who found themselves frozen in time and might be in here somewhere,” I shrugged. “Fellows, who I would very much love to … sample.”

“Sample, is it?” he hummed. “Not take? Free? Kill?”

“Not at all,” I shrugged. “Though if you have multiple and ones you would be willing to part with entirely, having the full body would be better, but it's not a must. I can gain the same thing from a single drop of blood.”

“Do you fancy yourself a genealogist?” he asked.

“Not quite,” I smirked. “I like variety in my diet, and I am something of a collector myself.”

“If it really is just a drop of blood you need, that is hardly an issue on my part,” he said, eyes narrowed as he seemed to be thinking deeply. I would have loved to know what he was thinking, what he thought I would do with some blood and such. “Do you have anything in mind?”

“I have quite a number of them,” I smiled. “Any alien biological sample from species or individuals with strange or interesting abilities is welcome, but I have a few specific ones in mind too.”

“Do tell,” he said, just as we entered the next room. It really looked like what I thought the insides of an anthill looked like. But instead of ants, horrendously ugly human-sized bug-things dotted the exhibit here and there.

I recognized them and grinned. “Something like these, for example. I always wondered how their strange time-manipulation worked.”

He hummed. “The Hrud. I doubt it's biological in nature.”

“Worth a try,” I shrugged.

“Worth a try?”

“It would be better to show it,” I said. “But we would need to take the sample back to my avatar and you would have to let it … eat the sample.”

He seemed to be deep in thought. Counting the pros and cons of risking letting my avatar do some weird alien bullshit, no doubt. I had made creating this drone look like I just spat it out like a hairball. Which seemed to confuse the archivist to no end.

“I have refrained from asking about your more unique capabilities up until now for proprieties’ sake,” he said. “But I would like to ask why would you like to ‘eat’ those samples and what would happen if you did so.”

“Nothing would happen, outwardly at least,” I shrugged. “Not if I didn’t want anything to happen. I am capable of perfectly understanding the genetic makeup of creatures I can sample.”

“An intriguing ability,” he said. “Would it be similar to what the ‘Kroot’ are capable of, or would you liken it to the Tyranids’ capability to reverse engineer genes?”

“The latter,” I said. “It’s controlled and instinctual. Kroot eat whatever they stumble upon and hope for the best outcome. Tyranids experiment with clear goals in mind.”

“I suppose it couldn’t hurt,” he said after a few seconds. “You would like a Hrud ‘sample’?”

“Now that you mention it …” I trailed off, glancing at the repulsive humanoid worm-things. They had fist-sized pure black eyes on a chitinous head devoid of a nose or an ear with the mouth of a lamprey stuck in the middle.

They had long worm-like legs and arms even longer, almost brushing the ground as they stood hunched over.

These were the sort of things that would give nightmares not only to children but seasoned guardsmen. Not that most survived long enough to have nightmares about them, the disgusting things had an aura-like ability that aged everything around them to death.

Weapons short-circuited, rusted, and decomposed while the humans wielding them turned to thousand-year-old ash in the blink of an eye.

“Yes, I think these would do perfectly.” I grinned. Ugly as they were, they had a broken ability which I really wanted to get my hands on.

Maybe this would be the breakthrough I needed to understand how Mephiston manipulated time.