The vox-transmission from KV-237 cut through the bridge's machine-spirit hymnal like a blade through flesh.
Blazkowicz received the acquired intelligence, and with it, the terrible weight of truth settled upon his shoulders.
The bridge of the Royal Majesty had known many silences, the pregnant quiet before orbital bombardments, the death-stillness after void battles. But this silence was different. It was the silence of revelation, heavy with the knowledge of horrors that dwelt beneath the veneer of civilization.
The Shapers' world maintained its precious equilibrium, a perfect 1:1 ratio of male to female across all demographic strata. Not through the blessed technologies of mankind, not through the careful genetic stewardship that marked truly civilized worlds, but through an obscenity that would have made even the most hardened Commissar reach for his bolt pistol.
The excess population, the inconvenient, the surplus, the unwanted, were fed into pipelines like corpse-starch into a reclamation facility, delivered screaming to xeno maws that waited in the darkness beneath their pristine cities.
Blazkowicz had suspected. The stench of corruption clung to even the most beautiful of the Shapers' delegation. But when the veil was finally torn aside, when truth stood naked in the light, even his warrior's soul recoiled from the magnitude of the deception.
"Continue intelligence acquisition protocols. Compile comprehensive data-streams for Imperial record." His voice cut through the bridge's atmosphere with authority. There was no rage in his tone, rage was a luxury he could not afford. Fury would cloud his judgment when precision was paramount.
Behind his expressionless facade, Blazkowicz felt the familiar weight of inevitability. Another xenos threat revealed. Another world that would burn. Another entry in the endless catalog of humanity's enemies.
He was waiting now, as warriors learned to wait. Waiting for the intelligence streams to converge. Waiting for the picture to become complete. Waiting for the reinforcement Legion that even now tore through the Immaterium's howling depths, their Geller fields straining against the denizens of the Warp as they rushed toward this accursed system.
A full Legion, ten thousand of the Emperor's finest. They would descend upon the Shapers' domain like the angels of death they were, bringing cleansing fire to the sewers and the horrors that dwelt within them.
---
In the depths beneath the city's gleaming spires, KV-237 waited with patience . Its augur arrays detected the subtle shift in air pressure that heralded movement. The nanobots it had deployed, microscopic servants of the Omnissiah's will, faithfully recorded every abomination.
The feeding had begun again.
The creature that emerged from the shadows was an affront to creation itself. This thing was a mockery of natural order. Its feeding apparatus, a nightmare of serrated edges and grinding surfaces, descended upon its human prey with the mechanical precision of a macro-cannon loading sequence.
The screaming stopped abruptly as bone splintered and flesh gave way. What had once been a human being, someone's child, parent, sibling, became nothing more than biological matter to be processed. The creature's midsection dilated obscenely as the masticated remains disappeared into its gullet, beginning the next phase of its feeding cycle.
KV-237's ocular sensors recorded every detail with clinical precision. The creature's body writhed with billions of constituent organisms, translucent worms, each one extending microscopic feeding appendages into the blood-rich slurry. In moments, the transparent parasites flushed crimson as they gorged themselves on human essence.
The assassin-construct's threat assessment protocols catalogued the creature's morphology. The individual worms possessed bilateral arrangements of filamentous appendages, structures finer than spider's silk yet possessing tensile strength that allowed them to bind together into a cohesive organism. A hive-mind made manifest in flesh.
The feeding cycle reached its culmination with disturbing efficiency. The creature's body lost its sanguine hue as nutrients were processed and distributed. Then came the transformation that marked these things as truly alien, the constituent worms began to regurgitate a golden-yellow secretion that congealed within the creature's core like some blasphemous sacrament.
The beast began its migration, a tide of writhing flesh flowing toward a cargo lift. Its maw dilated one final time, expelling the golden mass into the transport chamber. The automated system responded with cheerful efficiency, a discordant note of mundane function in the midst of such horror.
*Ding.*
The elevator sealed and departed, carrying its cargo of processed humanity toward some unknown destination deeper in the hive's bowels. Behind it, the creature had already begun binding fresh victims, its feeding appendages wrapping around struggling forms with the methodical efficiency of a slaughter-servitor.
KV-237's mission parameters were clear: observe, record, transmit. It recalled its nanobots with a sub-vox command and activated its displacement field. Within seconds, the assassin-construct had melted back into the shadows, leaving no trace of its presence save for the data-packets now racing through encrypted channels toward the Royal Majesty.
---
KV-230's infiltration of the residential district proceeded with fluid grace. The apartment building's exterior provided ample purchase points for its gecko-pad equipped appendages, and its movement dampers reduced even the slightest vibration to negligible levels. Auspex arrays sensitive enough to detect a mouse's heartbeat would find nothing to alarm them.
The window's security seal yielded to molecular bond disruptors, tools that would serve equally well for assassination or espionage. Inside the living quarters, KV-230 paused to assess the domestic environment. The space spoke of middle-class prosperity: clean surfaces, quality furnishings, the subtle signs of a family that had never known want or deprivation.
It was almost enough to make the construct's logic engines experience something analogous to irony. These people believed themselves blessed. They had no idea they were livestock.
The master bedroom door's lock mechanism was an antique, physical tumblers and springs that predated even the most basic cogitator-controlled systems. KV-230's digits reshaped themselves into precision tools, and within moments the barrier was breached.
The sleeping couple lay in peaceful repose beneath covers of what looked like silk. Their breathing was deep and regular, their features unmarked by the cares that plagued so many ordinary citizens. They were, by any reasonable measure, beautiful, examples of the Shapers' legendary aesthetic perfection.
KV-230's hand reconfigured itself once more, digital components flowing to form a hypodermic delivery system. The sedative was precisely calibrated, enough to ensure uninterrupted sleep until dawn, not enough to trigger the physiological alarms that might alert whatever parasites dwelt within their nervous systems.
Two quick applications to exposed neck flesh, and the couple's already deep sleep became profound unconsciousness. KV-230 withdrew as silently as it had entered, sealing the door behind it and leaving no evidence of its passage.
With potential complications neutralized, the construct proceeded to its primary objective. The boy's room lay at the corridor's end, a chamber decorated with the innocent detritus of childhood. Toy soldiers, data-slates loaded with adventure stories, models of Imperial vessels that the child doubtless dreamed of serving aboard one day.
KV-230 ascended to the ceiling with liquid grace, positioning itself directly above the sleeping form. Its sensor arrays powered to maximum sensitivity, every spectrum of electromagnetic radiation brought to bear on the target.
The child appeared to be suffering from nightmares. Sweat beaded on his brow despite the room's comfortable temperature, and his small hands clutched his covers with desperate intensity. His sleep was anything but peaceful, the rest of the innocent had been stolen from him by the horror that dwelt within his spine.
At the molecular level, the truth was laid bare.
A parasite of transparent, colorless flesh had taken residence in the boy's cerebrospinal column. It moved through the fluid, its boneless form perfectly adapted to the confined space. As KV-230 watched, the creature secreted numbing agents to dull its host's pain while simultaneously consuming the vertebral structures it was replacing.
The process was simultaneously elegant and horrifying. Where human bone had been devoured, alien flesh filled the void, taking on the biochemical signatures of the original tissue.
Genetic mimicry so perfect that even the Mechanicus's most sophisticated scanners would detect nothing amiss, the DNA samples would read as purely human because they were human, absorbed and replicated by the parasite's adaptive biology.
But the creature's ambitions extended beyond mere structural replacement. As KV-230's sensors tracked the parasite's progress, silken tendrils began extending from its primary mass, seeking out the boy's peripheral nervous system with predatory precision. Within hours, every nerve pathway in the child's body would be entwined with alien influence.
The final stage was the most insidious. The parasite began regulating hormone production, guiding the boy's development toward an aesthetic ideal that would make him more appealing to potential partners, more likely to reproduce, more valuable as breeding stock. Every excess calorie was consumed by the alien presence, every biological resource diverted to serve the invader's needs.
---
Aboard the Royal Majesty, Blazkowicz observed the transmitted data. The fog of uncertainty that had clouded his understanding began to lift, revealing the true scope of the horror they faced.
The beautiful population of the Shapers' Union was nothing more than a carefully cultivated human herd, their aesthetic perfection the result of parasitic manipulation. What the locals called symbiosis was revealed as the most insidious form of slavery imaginable, bondage that began in the womb and ended only with death.
"Symbiosis." The word left Blazkowicz's lips like a curse. He had heard their Governor use the term, had endured hours of philosophical exposition on the "mutual benefits" of their society's unique evolution. Now he understood the terrible truth behind their flowery rhetoric.
True symbiosis required equality, mutual benefit, shared risk and reward. What these parasites practiced was husbandry, the careful breeding and management of livestock for optimal yield. The fact that the livestock happened to be human made it not symbiosis, but an abomination crying out for a flamer's cleansing fire.
"KV-230, mission parameters fulfilled. Maintain concealment protocols and await extraction orders." Blazkowicz's command carried across encrypted vox-channels to the infiltrator still crouched in the child's ceiling.
Two of his three assets had completed their objectives. When KV-117 finished its reconnaissance of the central hive complex, they would have a complete picture of the parasite species' life cycle. And then the cleansing could begin.
The response came immediately, filtered through layers of encryption and authentication: "Command acknowledged. Maintaining overwatch position."
KV-230 prepared to extract from the target zone, its sensors already mapping optimal egress routes through the building's ventilation systems. But as the construct reached the living area's main window, sounds of distress echoed from the master bedroom.
The sedative had caused an unexpected reaction.
The assassin-construct immediately shifted to combat-ready status, its limbs reconfiguring for rapid deployment while its displacement field activated. It ascended into the ceiling's maintenance space like a mechanical spider, every system optimized for concealment.
The sounds grew louder, not quite human, not quite animal. Something between a death rattle and a feeding growl.
Two figures emerged from the bedroom, and KV-230's threat assessment protocols immediately flagged them as hostile entities. The elegant man and beautiful woman who had slept so peacefully were gone. In their place came things that wore human skin but moved with the jerky, uncontrolled motions of marionettes operated by drunk puppeteers.
"Stress response detected," KV-230's analysis routines concluded. The sedative designed for human physiology had triggered a defensive reaction in the parasites. Their control over their host bodies had become unstable, revealing glimpses of the alien intelligences beneath.
"En…e-my…" The sound tore free in fractured syllables, dragged across vocal cords that flexed at impossible angles. His face spasmed, muscles jerking with insectile precision, pulling lips and cheeks into grotesque, shifting patterns no human anatomy should permit.
Viscous threads of saliva swung from his jaw, quivering as he convulsed. Each eye rotated with an unnerving independence, pupils darting in separate hunts, as though host to many watchers within. "En—nemy… in-vad-ing… pres-sssence…"
The parasite within him knew something was wrong. Human bodies under its control didn't experience the neurochemical cascades that had followed the injection. But it couldn't be certain whether this represented an actual threat or simply an allergic reaction to some mundane irritant.
The disturbance had awakened the rest of the household. Grandparents and children emerged from their sleeping chambers, drawn by the commotion. Six figures now stood in the living area, four surrounding two, all of them infected, all of them compromised.
"What's happened? What's wrong?" The grandfather's voice carried genuine concern, his parasite still maintaining the illusion of human emotion and familial bonds.
"Consume… the… livestock!" The compromised man's voice ripped out as a rasping snarl, thick with static, vibrating with frequencies that should not exist in a human throat. His body jerked and spasmed with every syllable, as if unseen strings pulled his tendons in random, convulsive patterns. "Quickly!"
The onlooker recoiled, breath shallow. "What are you—"
The grandfather's question died unfinished as his own parasite received emergency biological imperatives. His body stopped responding to his conscious will, moving instead with the coordination of a hive-mind collective. Not just him, all four of the newly awakened family members began to move with the same terrible unity.
They carried the compromised pair to the dining area. The grandmother produced medical scanning equipment from storage compartments, her movements precise despite the terror visible in her still-human eyes.
"Injection marks detected on neck and upper extremities. Preliminary analysis suggests arthropod delivery system." Her voice had lost all traces of warmth or personality, becoming a clinical report delivered by vocal cords that no longer served human will.
The granddaughter spoke next, her young voice carrying the same chilling detachment: "Most probable cause: mosquito envenomation. Recommend immediate countermeasures."
But behind her flat delivery, her eyes told a different story. They darted frantically from side to side, filled with the terror of a trapped animal. All four of the "rescuers" showed the same dissociation, their bodies moving with alien purpose while their consciousness screamed in helpless horror.
KV-230 catalogued every detail as the family continued their ministrations. The parasites were devouring their hosts' brains, consuming the neural tissue that housed human personality and replacing it with alien intelligence. Within hours, these people would cease to exist as individuals, becoming nothing more than biological puppets dancing to xenos will.
"Damned insects!" The father's voice carried a rumbling undertone that no human larynx could produce. "We fear nothing from the lower orders, why should such creatures affect us?"
"Perhaps they were more than arthropods," the son replied with disturbing calm, one finger pressed to his temple as if trying to dislodge uncomfortable thoughts. "This biological unit's memory banks indicate contact with Imperial representatives earlier today."
His next words carried the flat affect of a cogitator accessing stored data: "The tall human demonstrated suspicious behavioral patterns consistent with intelligence gathering operations."
"Analysis required," the child continued, his young voice now carrying the weight of alien intelligence. "This biological platform's cognitive capacity remains limited. Accessing inherited memory engrams proves... difficult."
The admission clearly frustrated the parasite. It was accustomed to claiming adult hosts whose brains could provide more processing power for complex strategic thinking. The child's developing neural structures were proving inadequate for the entity's needs.
The father considered the implications, drawing upon his host's memories and analytical capabilities. After several moments of silence, he reached what the collective considered a logical conclusion.
"Assessment: arthropod remains most probable. Imperial investigation unlikely to proceed with such rapidity. The entity designated 'Son of the Emperor' exhibits behavioral patterns consistent with prideful autonomy."
"Confirmed," another voice added. "Intelligence suggests preference for overt coercion rather than covert infiltration. Standard Imperial doctrine would favor compelling local authorities to provide cooperation rather than conducting unauthorized surveillance operations."
The parasites' analysis was thorough, logical, and entirely wrong. But their mistake worked in KV-230's favor. By mimicking natural injection sites rather than attempting completely traceless insertion, the construct had provided the aliens with a more comfortable explanation for the anomaly.
After additional discussion, the stress response began to subside. The parasites regained fuller control over their biological platforms, and the household returned to an approximation of normal domestic routine. The parents even engaged in physical intimacy, a display that would have been touching between humans but became obscene when performed by alien intelligences wearing stolen flesh.
Everything they did, every word they spoke, every gesture they made was recorded by KV-230's sensor arrays and transmitted to the Royal Majesty for analysis. The intelligence windfall was beyond the construct's mission parameters, they now had direct evidence of parasite communication protocols, behavioral patterns, and strategic thinking processes.
When the building finally returned to silence, KV-230 began its extraction sequence. The construct descended from the ceiling with feline grace, its displacement field rendering it invisible to biological and most electronic surveillance systems.
But its work here was not finished. The mission had evolved beyond simple reconnaissance, they now had an opportunity to place permanent monitoring assets in a compromised household.
KV-230 began deploying micro-surveillance devices throughout the living spaces, each one smaller than a dust mote and equipped with quantum encryption arrays that would make their transmissions undetectable to all but the most sophisticated Mechanicus equipment.
This was the true art of the assassin, to strike at the enemy's heart while remaining unseen, to gather intelligence while appearing absent, to set the stage for destruction while maintaining perfect operational security.
Minutes later, KV-230 vanished into the city's shadows, leaving behind a household of aliens who believed themselves secure, never suspecting that Imperial justice was already reaching toward them.
---
KV-117's mission had proven the most challenging of the three-pronged reconnaissance operation. The Shapers' Great Hall was protected by security measures that would have impressed even the most paranoid Inquisitor Lord, overlapping sensor grids, psychic dampening fields, automated defensive systems that could reduce an intruder to component atoms in milliseconds.
The ironman had spent a full Terran week mapping the facility's defenses, learning the routines of the maintenance crews, identifying the microscopic gaps in their surveillance coverage. Its position atop the central vault's access portal provided optimal observation angles, but the protective barriers surrounding the inner sanctum had proven impervious to even the most advanced nanoprobe infiltration.
Seven days of patient waiting. Seven days of mechanical stillness while its power cells slowly drained and its mission parameters remained unfulfilled.
Patience had its reward: it finally appeared in the form of six maintenance technicians, their figures concealed beneath pristine white robes that covered every inch of exposed flesh. They approached the vault entrance with the measured pace of religious pilgrims approaching a shrine, their movements suggesting reverence rather than mere professional duty.
KV-117's tactical systems immediately began calculating intercept vectors and infiltration probabilities. The construct descended from its perch, its displacement field making it effectively invisible to biological senses while sophisticated signal-spoofing systems convinced the facility's electronic surveillance that nothing had changed.
The assassin took position directly behind the maintenance team, so close that it could have reached out and touched the trailing technician's robes. But in the guards' perception, only six authorized personnel stood before the vault entrance. The security scanners registered only six valid biological signatures, six authorized access codes, six individuals whose presence was expected and approved.
The massive gate dilated with a sound like tearing metal, revealing the chamber beyond. KV-117 followed the team inside, finally gaining access to the deepest secret of the Shapers' civilization.
The vault was vast, tens of thousands of square meters of clinical white surfaces and gleaming machinery. But despite its size, the space felt oppressive, heavy with the weight of unspeakable purpose. Transparent pipelines ran beneath the floor like arteries, carrying golden fluid in complex circulation patterns that fed into massive processing arrays.
KV-117's sensor suite immediately began analyzing the fluid's composition, cross-referencing the data against previously gathered intelligence. The results confirmed the construct's worst suspicions, this was the same golden substance produced by the feeding chambers in the city's depths. Human essence, processed and refined by alien digestive systems, now flowing through these pristine channels like sacred oil through temple conduits.
The ceiling above was a maze of collection ducts that converged into funnel-shaped dispensers. As the construct watched, clots of golden material began falling like blasphemous rain, each drop representing countless human lives reduced to their base components.
But the true horror lay at the chamber's heart.
It was twenty meters of translucent perfection, a creature that might have been beautiful if not for the obscenity of her purpose. Her body possessed an arthropod's segmented grace, but scaled to nightmare proportions. The Queen Mother of the parasite species, the apex predator around which their entire civilization revolved.
Her feeding was an exhibition of xeno savagery, twisted into the unspeakable. The golden substance fell before her like offerings to a queen ant, and she consumed it with an insatiable hunger. Her transparent flesh glowed with absorbed nutrients, and KV-117's scanners detected massive energy expenditures as her biological systems converted raw matter into the building blocks of her species' future.
The Queen's posterior segments extended beneath the floor, immersed in vast pools of the processed human essence. It was a grotesque parody of imperial birth-chambers, where human nobility brought forth heirs in sterile luxury. Here, an alien monster birthed horrors while bathing in the liquefied remains of her future victims.
"Hisssss..."
The sound that emerged from the Queen's feeding apparatus was almost musical, a harmony of satisfaction and anticipation. Her digestive processes reached their culmination, and her ovipositor dilated to release a stream of transparent capsules into the golden pools.
KV-117's magnification systems focused on the emerging spawn. Each egg was a perfect sphere, containing a larval parasite that would one day claim a human host. They dispersed through the circulation systems with efficiency, carried by automated systems toward distribution points throughout the hive.
But the construct's sensors detected something beyond mere biological reproduction. The Queen Mother was emitting psychic emanations, complex data streams that encoded instructions directly into her offspring's developing consciousness. This was not random spawning but precision programming, each larva receiving specific behavioral imperatives before it even left the breeding chamber.
The maintenance team had begun their inspection routines, but their leader approached the Queen Mother with the reverence of a Tech-Priest approaching the Omnissiah's altar. He knelt before her massive form, his hidden features presumably showing the same fanatical devotion that colored his voice.
"Oh Great Mother!" The words carried religious ecstasy that made KV-117's threat assessment protocols spike into high alert. This was the complete surrender of human consciousness to alien will. "The negotiations with the Imperial representatives near completion! Our species stands at the threshold of true expansion!"
He continued his blasphemous prayers, speaking of conquest and expansion with the enthusiasm of a missionary describing holy crusade: "When the Ganass swarms spread throughout Imperial space, your power will dwarf that of their strongest champions! We shall shed these crude biological shells and share in your glorious dominion!"
As he spoke, the technician removed his facial covering to reveal features that might once have been human. Now they bore the subtle alterations that marked full parasitic integration, skin with an unnatural translucent quality, eyes that reflected light like an insect's compound organs, bone structure subtly altered to accommodate alien neural architecture.
He pressed his lips to the Queen Mother's feeding tentacles in a display of devotion that transcended species barriers. The alien flesh responded with visible pleasure, secreting substances that the hybrid absorbed with visible rapture.
KV-117's recording systems captured every detail, but the construct's mission was far from complete. Even as it documented this blasphemous communion, another presence began to make itself known. The Queen Mother's tentacles, entwined with the chamber's communication arrays, began carrying signals from an intelligence that dwarfed even her considerable consciousness.
When the voice finally emerged from the facility's vox-grilles, it carried a tone of such compassionate authority that even KV-117's emotion-dampening protocols struggled to process it. This was not the harsh command of a tyrant but the loving guidance of a parent addressing beloved children.
"My offspring," the entity spoke, its words carrying psychic harmonics that resonated through the chamber's very structure, "for a thousand years we have prepared for this moment. The careful cultivation of our human herds, the patient infiltration of their societies, the slow corruption of their leadership, all building toward this singular opportunity."
The technician's ecstatic response bordered on religious frenzy: "Yes, Great Father! We have done as you commanded! The humans suspect nothing of our true nature! They will be lambs for the slaughter!"
"Our species will ride the Imperium's expansion like a plague carried on favorable winds," the Father-entity continued, its tone remaining serenely confident. "Our agents will spread to every world they touch, claiming every strong body, absorbing every useful mind. The galaxy's wisdom will become our wisdom, its strength our strength."
"They welcome us as allies," the technician laughed with manic glee, "never suspecting that their 'partners' are the instruments of their own extinction!"
"Your Mother and I have planned this moment across millennia," the Father's voice carried notes of divine satisfaction. "Soon, the Imperium of Man will become the Imperium of Ganass, built upon the bones of a species too naive to recognize their predators."
KV-117 remained motionless in the chamber's shadows, its sensor arrays working at maximum efficiency to record every word, every gesture, every detail of this blasphemous revelation.
The intelligence value of this material would be beyond calculation, complete strategic intelligence on an alien infiltration operation that threatened the very heart of Imperial civilization.
But even as the construct fulfilled its mission parameters, deeper tactical analysis routines were already formulating preliminary response scenarios. The Queen Mother's position, the chamber's defensive systems, the facility's structural weaknesses, all catalogued and prioritized for the inevitable cleansing operation that would follow.
The Ganass believed themselves on the verge of ultimate victory, their thousand-year plan approaching fruition. They had no idea that the hammer of the Imperium was already moving against them.
Soon, very soon, they would learn the price of threatening humanity. And in that learning, they would find not symbiosis, but extinction.
The galaxy was vast enough for many species to thrive. But there was no room in it for those who would make livestock of mankind.