Xenos Template

It shifted, this time showing a fighter deck on a spacecraft. Huge blast doors sealed off the deck from the vacuum. The viewer, presumably a servitor recording proceedings, stood aside and an airlock door was slammed shut. The viewer continued to watch as several dozen figures ran for the airlock door. The first to reach it wore the rust-red uniform of the Adeptus Mechanicus. Through the porthole in the airlock Lysander could see it was a woman, one arm replaced with a bulky servo-lifter, her shaved cranium plated with circuitry.
‘If I must die,’ she cried, her voice muffled through the door, ‘then let me know! I must know! Knowledge is why I am, it means more than life! Give me this, at least, before I die!’
Warning lights flashed around the blast doors behind the tech-priest. Others, some tech-priests, some menials in simple labourers’ uniforms, were rushing in every direction, looking for a way out.
‘Tell me!’ the tech-priest cried. ‘The samples! The first templates! They were xenos, weren’t they? Tell me! Before I die, tell me!’
A black-gloved hand slammed down on a control stud. The blast doors boomed open and sudden silence flooded the fighter deck. The tech-priest was yanked backwards as the air rushed out and her body was lost in the blackness of the void revealed beyond the blast doors. If she had time to scream, the sound was lost in the vacuum.

K-Day +17 Days