The next obstacle in our path was the mountains themselves.
According to Dorogan, there were no enemies here, but the steep precipices and occasionally forgotten mines could present problems.
Of course, the giants knew the map of the safe route by heart, but no one is truly insured against the unexpected.
Fortunately, I had the least trouble of all thanks to my coordination and superior agility.
I handled the terrain so much faster than the others that I became the group’s unofficial scout, walking ahead and being the first to spot any threat.
I saw the mines, of course—tucked into rocky ridges or concealed under small mounds of dirt—but they didn’t hold my interest.
They utilized elementary pressure-plate technology that would only bring shame to a battlefield where truly great engines once thundered, tearing through space and time itself.
Given the level of technology once available to the humans of the distant past, I felt a certain pity.
Such crude measures were clearly only turned to when proper weapons were gone.
Along with the people capable of making them.
I had to suppress an unpleasant tightening in my chest at the thought.
This reflexive reaction of my body might have been a path to uncovering my past, but the machine before my eyes was more captivating.
A dented steel box covered in black snow could have passed for just another abandoned vehicle that had ceased functioning thousands of years ago.
However, it was still operational.
The antimatter converter hadn’t stopped working for a single second, even if many of its internal processes had stalled, rendering the machine less useful than intended.
But the sheer fact of it was astounding!
The stockpile of fantastically rare substance here would be enough to.
Even all the thousands of mines, gathered and piled together, couldn’t create a hundredth of the explosion that could be achieved with even a small amount of antimatter, used correctly.
And there was a great deal of it here.
It was even stranger to see it here, just lying around, unwanted by anyone*.
Of course, no one preserved all the blueprints and technologies after the end of the world, but to this extent?
I couldn’t take it now—we hadn’t secured all our necessary supplies yet—but I had no intention of leaving this vault to sit idle for another thousand years.
It was likely that in my journey I would find many more such relics, so I began to catalog in my mind exactly what I wished to acquire.
It was already obvious that this world could not be left in such a state.
Simply looking at the remnants of a once-great civilization made my heart ache.
So much lost, so much destroyed… My entire being wanted to revolt against it.
I loved creating the new and the perfect, which made these visions of such a fall particularly painful.
My every instinct demanded that I intervene and take the situation into my own hands.
And though the task seemed impossible given my resources, my mind quietly offered up particularly complex blueprints and ideas that might help me.
It would take years to realize them, but if it meant the rebirth of the greatness of the human race, I would stop at nothing.
.
.
.
The world beyond the mountains proved to be no less cruel and harsh.
Instead of wastes and deserts, we were met by a cold tundra where, once again, there was no hint of life.
No plants, bushes, or even the simplest grass.
I wondered how the atmospheric problem was even solved here?
A prehistoric water microorganism creating oxygen?
Though I wouldn’t be surprised if ancient atmospheric scrubbing machines were still running somewhere on this inhospitable planet.
After carefully descending from the mountains, we trekked for several more days across wastelands where only jagged metal and technological scraps broke the monotony.
We scavenged some particularly useful items, like micro-generators or devices fit for repair, but we abandoned the bulk of it.
Even I found nothing else of interest.
However, new sensations began to emerge.
The longer we walked, the more a distinct noise grew in my head.
It felt as if hundreds of machines were working in unison, creating a unique symphony of steel and ash.
Perfectly precise, rhythmic, and maddeningly synchronous.
Yet, it exuded only one emotion—boundless and insatiable hunger.
Naturally, I shared these sensations immediately.
In a place full of such bizarre dangers, such a feeling could cost us all our lives.
Judging by the way our leader frowned, it was indeed a bad omen.
“It means They are near,” he said grimly.
“We must move northwest to bypass the lands of the Subliminate. Their flesh-harvesters are constantly hunting for new ‘specimens,’ and they are unlikely to make an exception for us. Twenty years ago, we lost half a group in a battle with them.”
His gaze, directed toward me, spoke of potential threats better than any words.
Very well; if we had to move, so be it.
Without arguing with the leader, I headed in the indicated direction at an accelerated pace.
…But it was already too late.
No matter how far we moved away, the noise did not lowered; it only intensified.
The hissing of something fast, cold, and hungry grew louder and louder until we finally saw our enemies.
In a sense, they seemed like the next step in evolution compared to the usual techno-zombies.
These heavily augmented humans looked utterly repulsive.
Pieces of their flesh were held together by metal, preventing them from truly dying, yet the rot and mutations remained.
Aside from arms, two additional limbs tipped with laser weapons sprouted from their torsos.
Their eyes were covered by white masks, leaving only a hollow black maw as the final reminder that they had once been human.
Worse still was the fact that they were clearly sapient.
They arrived on a large tracked truck, and judging by the heavy armor and large mounted weapons on the vehicle, they had not come in peace.
The giants reacted first.
Acting with professional discipline, wasting not a second on talk, they didn’t direct their staves at the vehicle itself—realizing the futility of such an attack—but instead dispersed across the area.
They took cover behind particularly large chunks of steel, preparing to ambush the creatures as they disembarked.
I didn’t try to reinvent the wheel and did the same.
Vaulting behind the wreckage of a destroyed giant combat suit, I drew my laser rifle and prepared a grenade.
The distance to the vehicles was significant, but given my physical capabilities and my knack for calculating trajectories, it wasn’t a major problem.
Holding my breath, I watched the movement of the armored machine.
Several cybernetic monsters were visible on the roof, manned at something resembling machine guns.
After about a hundred seconds, they stopped and began to exit.
Exactly at the moment the rear ramp began to lower, I made a lightning-fast throw of a fragmentation grenade.
Immediately, I ducked back behind the steel barricade, dropping to the ground and readying my rifle.
I only looked back out when I heard the explosion.
This was my own creation, using synthesized powder and blades I had specially sharpened for maximum lethality.
Although these creatures were mostly metallic, their rare patches of flesh were unprotected and served as obvious weak points.
Surveying the scene again, I immediately began eliminating targets with my rifle.
I had a second or two while they were disoriented, during which I managed to pick off all the gunners.
Many enemies remained, but thanks to my infrared laser—which emitted beams invisible to the human eye—it wasn’t easy to pinpoint my position…
However, everyone makes mistakes.
When dozens of beams from the machines handheld weapons began to rake my position, it became clear I had overlooked a detail.
Perhaps, being so heavily augmented, they perceived the world differently?
A rather costly technology in these local conditions, but for specialized scout squads, an unknown “Assimilator” might be willing to pay the price.
Fortunately, my grenade had been effective enough in the enclosed space of their transport, taking out roughly half their force.
Still, more than forty cyborgs remained, already charging toward their mounted guns, but every millisecond matters on the battlefield.
And the giants joined the fray the moment the opportunity arose.
They attacked fiercely, sparing no stored charges.
A dozen white flashes momentarily illuminated the dark tundra as a literal hail of lightning struck the Subliminate squads.
They were not called Storm Giants for nothing.
The torrent of ions burned through the already wounded enemy without trouble, turning them into charred corpses and leaving only the truck and its crew intact.
They had a fair chance to retreat and flee, but I had no intention of losing such a good source of useful parts.
Leaving my cover, I scanned the vehicle once more and then sprinted toward it at full speed.
I felt distinctly that there was nothing explosive inside, let alone self-destruct systems.
Even the wealthiest local factions simply wouldn’t take such a risk, considering each such machine was irreplaceable and practically impossible to repair.
They wouldn’t start a total war over it, of course, but they wouldn’t be happy.
The locals rarely contact one another at all, making skirmishes like this the largest conflicts between sapient beings.
The wild nature, the remnants of ancient weapons scattered across the earth, and the monsters of the Old Night are an unbreakable barrier for any state or tribe wishing to shed a neighbor’s blood…
I moved with incredible speed.
Stowing my rifle and drawing my pistol in an instant, I covered several hundred meters in a couple of seconds and reached the truck, finishing off nearly all the survivors along the way.
They were already trying to close the interior hatch, but such a thing wouldn’t stop me.
Grabbing the edge of the rising platform and straining slightly, I halted it, even beginning to force it back down.
My muscles trembled with the effort, but my mind remained sharp.
So, when another mechanical humanoid appeared, devoid of any weapons, it took me less than a heartbeat to aim at its head.
However, instead of attacking, this creature spoke in a cold voice, stripped of any hint of life.
“Our mission has already ended in failure, Flesh. We do not need additional complications. Release these units, and we guarantee we will not touch you. The Overmind is already aware of what is happening and has calculated your danger level to be far higher than any profit obtainable through armed conflict.”
Straining my arm further until it began to quiver, I slowly forced the steel door down and pinned it with my foot.
The grey cyborg, no different from the others already dead, showed nothing remotely resembling emotion.
Its body stood perfectly still; its chest did not rise.
It was impossible to tell if it was lying.
So, I turned to something that had never lied to me.
Exhaling, I listened to what the machine itself was saying.
Its language had nothing in common with the usual words of mortals; it consisted entirely of images and ideas.
From the hum of the engine that had continued its work for millennia.
From the smell of oil mixed with the scent of sweat, blood, and rot.
I felt the tension of faint electrical discharges in the air, oracles of a great storm.
But most importantly, I heard Dorogan, tapping out a local cipher on stone used in combat situations.
He was sending me a message, explaining what to do in this situation.
And I had no intention of going against their will.
“The Overmind deemed you a worthy target for integration, yet the chances of such are sli. I advise you to reconsider, as the Swarm will one day consume all sapient life in the visible universe. We shall become the cosmos itself…”
The cyborg did not finish, as a bolt of superheated plasma incinerated its head.
Bursting inside at high speed, I quickly dealt with the three remaining cyborgs hiding within, waiting for the outcome of the talk.
They clearly intended to strike me when I turned away, but luck was not on their side.
Despite all their augmentation, I moved faster than they could process.
They didn’t even realize it when the plasma brought their pathetic existence to an end.
The first chapters of this fanfic are dedicated to the travels of a Primarch across Medusa and the horrors of a planet that everyone simply ignores.
This includes the local “Assimilators” that existed in the canon and wanted to make Ferrus part of them, as well as the piles of energy generators of all sorts scattered across the planet.
It also touches on the fact that Manus, even in canon, could “understand machines” long before he got his “shiny hands.” This was mentioned only once in a secondary Primarchs novella, but it is certainly enough for a whole fanfic