novelhk Chapter 8 Last Words
Chapter 8 Last Words
Back at the pumping station, the grayish-yellow smog was thicker than usual. Liu En stored the all-terrain vehicle in the warehouse, slid down the shaft into the underground bunker, and the hydraulic ceramic steel cover closed overhead. The air circulation system operated quietly.
He sat at the workbench for a long time, then took the data core and nameplate out of his pocket and placed them on the table. The cool white light shone on the surface of the core, refracting a faint metallic sheen.
He slept for nearly twelve hours.
When he woke up, the data core on the workbench was still there. He cooked a pot of ant beef soup, ate it with synthetic starch cakes, washed his hands, sat down at the workbench, and began processing the data.
The data interface reconnected. The translator converted high-order binary into basic Low Gothic vocabulary. The dry, coded characters flowed onto the screen as text, appearing segment by segment. This wasn't a story, nor a confession, but a structured backup of personal data—standardized in format, clearly defined, and concisely written.
Marcus Ambrose. Mechanic, Tier 4. Belongs to the Voss Forging World.
Voss. Liu En had seen this name in his previous life's reading. Voss was one of the Empire's forging worlds, renowned for producing various military vehicles. Marcus mentioned that he had participated in the production line optimization project for the Voss-type Chimera armored vehicle, and the technical details in those data far exceeded Liu En's current level of understanding. He didn't quite understand it, but that didn't stop him from storing this information completely in the database, marking it as "Mechanical Guild · Voss System · Vehicle Related".
The data continues. Marcus records the duties of the outpost.
Outpost 86 was established 3,700 years ago. Mission: Long-term monitoring of the deep underground Necromancer burial grounds. Facility Scale: Small outpost node, incomplete burial world. Monitoring Range: Anomalous energy fluctuations, signs of living metal activity, and any electromagnetic signals that may indicate burial awakening, occurring between 2,000 and 8,000 meters below the Earth's crust.
Historical Background: The Mechanicus organized an exploration of the same tomb in the early M37 period. Participating Units: 340 members of the Guardians, 52 AI-controlled droids, and 7 Mechanic Priests. Result: Seventeen members retreated, all wounded; the AI-controlled droids were wiped out. Living metal began to seep from all surfaces after entering the tomb 400 meters inside, forming combat units with self-repair and coordinated combat capabilities. The exploration team failed to reach the tomb's core and obtained no valuable samples or data. Post-exploration Assessment: The tomb cannot be explored directly. Solution: Fill in the main entrance and establish a ring-shaped monitoring network around it. A total of 112 similar outposts were established throughout the Heng system.
Outpost 86 was one of them. Staff: One person. Head: Marcus Ambrose.
When Liu En finished reading this passage, his mind automatically calculated the timeline. Three thousand seven hundred years ago, in the early days of M37. Marcus has been guarding this place alone ever since.
He continued scrolling down.
The following section contains information about Marcus's identity. Source: Voss Foundry World, Servant Manufacturing Line, Batch 37. Total batch output: 385,000 embryos. After initial screening, 0.1% of individuals with pre-developed cognitive functions were retained for further cultivation. Marcus ranked third in the initial screening of this batch. Final selection number: 17. The remaining individuals were destroyed after completing the initial cognitive assessment, and the organic material was recycled for the next batch's culture medium.
Up to this point, the data presented is entirely factual. There are no complaints, no sentimentality, and no evaluation of one's own background. It is simply a record.
Next are the operational records regarding the Necropolis. This part of the data spans a vast period of time, covering hundreds of years.
Early records were routine monitoring logs. Signal stable. No anomalies. Monthly report sent. Annual calibration completed. Equipment maintenance cycle normal. All entries were written in the most concise language possible.
From the middle period onwards, some non-standard records appeared. These were not logs, but personal research notes. Marcus spent many years analyzing the limited data obtained from early exploration operations, calculating the possible structure of the tomb, and speculating on the conditions for awakening the living metal. He applied to reactivate the scanning array surrounding the tomb, but the communication line was interrupted at some point, and it is uncertain whether the application was received. He used the word "uncertain" in his records.
Then comes the crucial point: the timestamp shows it as 2,900 years ago.
"The pressure sensor behind the seventh sealing door below the landfill layer output a set of non-zero data today. It lasted for about four hours before returning to zero. Preliminary assessment: There is some kind of structure moving inside the tomb. It is not a large-scale activity and does not constitute an alarm condition. However, it is necessary to conduct close-range confirmation."
The records of the following decades show that Marcus repeatedly argued for the necessity and risks of close-range verification. He listed all possible risk factors, assessed the probability of each factor occurring, and calculated the expected value of successfully obtaining valid data. The final conclusion was that the risks were manageable and the benefits outweighed the costs.
He did not report this to his superiors. The communication lines were down, and it was unclear whether it was due to equipment failure or that the higher authorities had abandoned these outposts. His record stated: "No polling signals have been received on the external communication channels for four consecutive standard years. It is presumed that the higher authorities are no longer monitoring this network. According to standard operating procedures, in the event of a communication outage that cannot be restored, the person in charge at the field has the right to take necessary measures based on their own judgment."
He opened the landfill.
The first phase of the record was uneventful. Marcus entered the outer perimeter of the tomb alone, carrying scanning equipment and sample collection tools. In his record, he detailed the logic behind each step of the operation, the observed phenomena, and the data collected. He entered the area behind the seventh sealed door; the living metal did not react. He entered a deeper area, and the living metal still did not react. He concluded that the tomb was in a state of deep dormancy, and ordinary external disturbances would not activate the defense system.
This conclusion supported his decision to conduct further research.
The second phase. He organized a formal exploration team. The personnel came from the outpost's registered auxiliary staff—not just one person, but several dozen low-ranking technical priests and servants besides himself. He listed the numbers and roles of all participants in the records, as well as whether they had been informed of the risks. All were volunteers. The records made no emotional embellishment to the word "volunteer," simply stating the fact that he had explained the purpose and potential risks of the mission to them, and no one refused.
The exploration team entered the tomb in three echelons. The first echelon led the way, responsible for clearing the path and conducting initial scanning. The second echelon, personally led by Marcus, was responsible for detailed data collection. The third echelon guarded the entrance, responsible for support and logistics.
The timestamps of subsequent records became inconsistent. The translator skipped a large number of corrupted data segments, resulting in fragmented and disjointed content.
"After the first echelon entered Structure 9 inside the tomb, living metal began to seep out. Reaction time: 0.3 seconds. Number of combat units formed: at least three digits."
"The first echelon has lost contact. The second echelon is retreating. The third echelon has initiated evacuation procedures."
"During the evacuation, the third echelon took away movable equipment. According to records, they removed three Thinker Arrays, two energy regulators, and several spare parts from the upper-level facility. These actions did not violate emergency evacuation procedures."
"All lower-level personnel were lost. The first echelon. The front of the second echelon. In total: sixteen low-level technical priests and twenty-nine high-level machine servants. Some remains were recovered from the tomb."
"As assessed, the tomb's defense system has re-entered dormancy after the active attack. There are currently no signs of continued activity. However, the distribution pattern of living metal in the tomb's entrance area has changed, making re-entry impossible."
The final section of the record spans a considerable period. The upper levels of the outpost had been emptied by the evacuees, leaving only Marcus in the sealed room. In his record, he meticulously listed the remaining equipment and supplies, along with their estimated operational lifespan. The reactor's energy could sustain operations for several more years, and the life support system for even longer. He considered whether it was necessary to induce self-hibernation to extend its operational lifespan, ultimately deciding against it because "equipment maintenance in hibernation cannot be performed externally."
The last few dozen records were all very short.
"The reactor output has dropped to 17 percent of its rated power. Some equipment has automatically shut down."
"Life support systems are functioning normally. Organic components are stable. Estimated remaining operational time: four to six years."
"The backup core has been updated. It contains all monitoring data and operation logs for this reporting period."
"No communication signal has been received. It is presumed that the external communication network has been permanently interrupted."
"Om Messiah, the Emperor, God of Machines."
The last record had the worst storage quality, and the translator managed to recover only a portion of it.
"Outpost 86... Commander... Marcus Ambrose... Mission log closed."
Liu En finished reading the last line and sat in silence for a long time.
No repentance. No self-reproach. No lament. A mechanical priest, mass-produced on an assembly line, spends thousands of years guarding a forgotten outpost, hundreds of years researching, calculating, deciding, and then executing. Risks are manageable, benefits outweigh costs. The conclusion is wrong. Record the facts.
This is all that Marcus Ambrose left to posterity.
He put the data core back in the drawer on his workbench.
They stayed in the bunker for almost a week.
That week, he did nothing but eat, sleep, and organize data. He spent several hours each day rummaging through Marcus's knowledge base in the database, selecting what he could understand to learn and archiving what he couldn't. He gained a general understanding of the internal structure of the Mechanicus, learned several key High Gothic technical terms, and learned the spatial relationship between the Voss Foundry World and Armageddon.
Amighiddon. He finally knew where he was.
This name was legendary, echoing in his memories of his past life's reading. Amegiddon, a hive world, an industrial hub in the Solar System, the site of three major wars. Now he knew that the undead race lurked deep beneath this planet. No, not just the undead; Marcus's data mentioned another name.
The Dark Mechanicus.
Makalian, a traitor, once established his own warlord territory on the surface of Amegiddon. His name was only mentioned briefly in the data, and Liu En didn't know what he had done. He only knew that Marcus had mentioned at some point the Dark Mechanicus's covetousness of the planet's underground resources, as well as those now-defunct tomb jammers.
This information isn't directly related to his current life. But he can keep it, just in case.
In his spare time, he began experimenting with using Marcus's knowledge to improve his equipment. The laser gun's energy conversion efficiency increased by several percentage points—he fine-tuned the doping ratio of the excitation medium and corrected the optical curvature of the resonant cavity. He further optimized the armor plates of his body armor, adding information about a certain alloy composition of the Voss-type power armor to the ceramic-steel composite layer, increasing its ballistic resistance by about 10% for the same thickness. He also added more living facilities to the underground bunker and upgraded the ventilation and insulation systems.
But he began to consider a problem.
One clear piece of information in Marcus Ambrose's data is that within the Mechanicus system, those who were chosen and survived from the servant-making assembly line were registered at birth, possessing legal Imperial citizenship and a priestly position within the Mechanicus. Marcus's identity imprint is a permanent, confidential record stored in Voss's data core, and cannot be easily erased unless he commits serious mechanical heresy.
Liu En stared at the message and read it over and over again.
If a person's digital identity can be verified, then he can register a new identity within the Mechanicus. That was beyond his capabilities, but Marcus's knowledge offered another possibility—there was a small group within the Mechanicus who were cut off from the outside world, and no one knew they were dead.
Liu En thought of the metal nameplate engraved with Marcus's name. He took it out of the drawer, placed it on the workbench, and looked at it. He had no intention of impersonating Marcus. A fourth-order mechano priest appearing in any branch of the Mechanic Order in Amighadont would be far removed from his image as a lowly scavenger.
But the system that Marcus Ambrose belongs to can help him leave the bottom nest.
He could disguise himself as a technical apprentice dispatched from afar, a field agent on the fringes of the Mechanicus. Marcus's data documented the Mechanicus's internal personnel movement patterns, common vulnerabilities in identity verification, and communication lines that had been abandoned for thousands of years.
No, that's too risky. Even as a lowly clerk, his abilities and knowledge wouldn't withstand any formal questioning. The Mechanicus aren't scavengers from the Underhive; they scrutinize their own members more rigorously than the Imperial Administration.
But this possibility allowed him to see another faint glimmer of light in the darkness—the world wasn't just the Underhive. The Underhive provided him with ample security and resources, but if he wanted to acquire more stable resources and learn more advanced technologies, he would eventually need to leave the Underhive. Leaving the Underhive required an identity, a verifiable origin.
Marcus Ambrose's memories are the closest he can find to these conditions.
He spent an entire day studying the sections on "Mechanical Order Identity System" and "Expatriate Management" in the Marcus data. The information was extremely dry, filled with lengthy clauses and cumbersome procedures; he didn't recognize many of the terms, and he couldn't understand much of the logic. But he drew a conclusion:
It's feasible, but not now.
His knowledge base is insufficient. His understanding of the Mechanical Repair Society is limited to data reading; he lacks firsthand practical experience. The material reserves he accumulated in the bottom nest are worthless on the surface; he needs to gain a deeper understanding of the upper and middle nests.
Liu En put the data core back in the drawer.
The next morning, as usual, he climbed out of the underground bunker from the shaft, put on his gear, and began to continue his scavenging.
But he paid more attention to one thing than usual: finding a way out of the bottom nest.