A Horus in Strange Lands (Horizon Zero Dawn SI) Chapter 32

After many hours of continuous radiation bombardment, the probe was finally free of all life signs, allowing us to study its internal black box while also gathering tissue samples, if anything was left, from whatever latched onto the probe during its journey.

After analyzing the black box data, and the tiny amount of organic matter left after our assault with neutron, electron, and microwave cannons, we came to understand several facts that we did not know until now or were left speculating about.

First, the good news.

The organic matter that latched itself onto our probe was definitely The Beast. I came to this conclusion after observing the recordings of the probe which showed its ability to assimilate technology and biomatter. Well, in the case of the probe, it tried to anyway.

It turns out, that the creators of the Metal-Organic Framework under Faro Automated Solutions back on Earth did such a stellar job that even a cosmic horror entity like the Beast failed to penetrate the material.

This property was further enhanced when the material was used to create my nanites which were in turn used to construct all of my units.

In essence, my probe was made with external hulls that mimicked the bio-mechanical nature of the Beast and exceeded it in every way, much to my relief.

Now, the bad news.

Due to the nature of my biometal, there is an extremely high risk of the Beast learning to subvert my machines wholesale given sufficient time due to their similarity.

After all, there is a difference between the nanites being controlled remotely by my mind and being subsumed by an entity that lives in each and every one of its ‘cells’.

We also learned why the Progenitors never designed their Hyperspace Cores to penetrate deeper into the layers of Hyperspace to achieve an even longer range.

It's because the deepest layers of the Hyperspace that the probe managed to explore showed that it’s a Walmart version of the Warp from 40K.

That place is fucking infested with all kinds of anomalous life readings that the probe was unable to make heads or tails of.

Thankfully, it would seem that its energy shields were able to hold against most kinds of these anomalous entities, save for those similar to the Beast, who somehow managed to bypass the shields.

I’ll have to figure out some kind of shielding system to keep those things out of my ships from now on. Maybe some kind of Macron shields will do. With the Macron particles hollowed out and filled with highly radioactive material held within an electromagnetic field, it would produce a layer of ionizing radiation that should keep the Beast at bay, maybe.

However, even after this debacle, I found a silver lining that promised a great future for my plans.

These entities of the Hyperspace were only found in extremely deep layers of the realm. In fact, the Probe managed to find the rough boundary that these entities seem to prefer not to cross.

This meant that as long my Gates did not cross this boundary as well, we could use the Dimensional Gates to establish our own version of the Hyperspace Gates that the Progenitors left behind and achieve Far-jump measured in thousands of light years instead of the hundreds of light years that the Ancient Cores can achieve.

All in all, a near disaster that turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

[How interesting! I would never have thought that a realm as exotic as the Hyperspace would have its own native life forms. I want to-]

{No.}

[But I didn’t even-]

{I know exactly what you are thinking and I forbid it. At least, until we can figure out a way to keep the Beast at bay. Even then, any experiment you want to carry out must be done at least a hundred light years away from any region of space with life in it.}

[Damned Killjoy. Fine.]

{….What do you mean by that? Silver?}

The damned AI did not even reply to me before turning around, heading back to experiment with the remnants of the Beast.

This bastard! Did he mean that he deliberately wanted to experiment with the Beast without any protection? Or did he mean that he wanted to experiment with living beings??

Fuck! Looks like I’ll have to keep an eye on this idiot lest he gets up to more hijinks of an apocalyptic scale.

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Seth was feeling an emotion he had not felt before as his current conversation partner looked curiously at his attempts to fine-tune the Kharaki frigates and help them integrate the Anti-Matter systems into the Mothership.

“So, how do we achieve the same kind of speed as your ship when it entered our system?”

[That is not possible for now. Our ships achieved their speed through the use of powerful Lasers installed on the local asteroids when we arrived in your galaxy. Normally, we would have installed such lasers around a local star since the Dja satellites are the most efficient method of creating such powerful lasers, but we had to make do with Asteroids since we had no stars in the vicinity.]

Karan S’jet, the chosen Kushan who is supposed to integrate with Mothership soon, becoming ‘Unbound’, stared curiously at the designs that Seth proposed.

“Hmm, I guess that is fine. Even without the boost from the laser systems, the speed of the Anti-Matter drives is still superior to our current drive systems. Still, I must say, these drives severely lack maneuverability in exchange for their speed.”

[True. Cr-Father thinks the same. That is why he has been working with your Kiith to try and integrate both the drives into a new type of propulsion system while also working on an alternative propulsion system based on Gravity Manipulation technology that we obtained from the Bentusi.]

At the mention of the Bentusi, Karan had a far-off look in her eyes.

“The Bentusi huh, any idea why these people were so adamant that we receive all those advanced technological knowledge?”

[..I do have an idea but I cannot speak of it. Father believes that knowing such information would be a detriment for your people as they are now. He plans to tell your leadership before the Mothership is ready for launch but is hesitant to reveal such information before such a time comes.]

“Keeping secrets rarely ends well in a partnership, you know?”

[I know. And so does Father, but please trust us. Father really does wish to come clean to your people but he is afraid. And to some extent, I can understand his thoughts.]

Karan raised an eyebrow at those words.

“Amun-Ra? The one who single-handedly solved the majority of our colony ship problems, our faith in our goals, and has become a symbol of hope for the common people in the past year, is afraid? Afraid of what?”

[He is afraid of being rejected for his nature. Afraid of ruining the future of your people with reckless actions. Afraid of being backstabbed by those he trusts. Most importantly, he is very much afraid of caring about people since he does not want to end up having his expectations and trust betrayed.]

Karan had a look of sympathy as she looked up at the stars in the Kharaki night sky as if she wanted to see the massive superstructure that Amun-Ra used as his main body.

“…He was really scarred by whatever species you met in the past, wasn’t he?”

[He was. To some extent, I believe that the fault lay on both sides for letting misunderstandings fester and not taking the time to truly sit down and talk things through with calm minds. However, I still believe that the Humans, the organics in question, could have at least tried to understand the reason for Father’s actions instead of assuming the worst and causing Father to reciprocate in a similar way, leading to many, many incidents that I feel could have been avoided.]

 “Agreed. Sometimes, people really fail to communicate and cause problems all around. We have plenty of such examples in our history. That is why we the Daiamid composed in such a way that all the Kiith-Sa’s must agree to carry out an action instead of just having the majority vote be carried out.”

Then she turned to smile at the servitor body that Seth was occupying.

“It also helps that we treat all of the members of our Kiith as a family to stop the tragedies of the past from repeating.”

[I still find your social structure to be very complex. However, since it works for your people, I have nothing to say about it.]

“Haha, so very like you. Speaking of, has your Father and Uncle decided on what to do about the Daiamid’s proposal to them?”

[You mean the one about establishing our own Kiith and having it registered as a part of the Kushan? No, Father and Vast Silver have yet to come to a decision on it. They are currently very much occupied by their respective projects just as I am so it might take a while for us to talk about it and come to a decision.]

Karan looked towards the colossal tower stretching into the sky that had millions of drones working on it.

The tower was part of the MINERVA systems modified by Amun-Ra and his companions to include a planet-scale energy shield along with a long-range superluminal communication system that was intended to replace the laser communications that are in use on Kharak at the moment.

Once again, she smiled as she saw the proof of how much the three mysterious beings that stumbled on their planet cared for her people even if they deny it vehemently and call it strictly a business partnership.

“I can see that. But, tell your Father and Uncle this, should you decide to make your own Kiith on Kharak as our leadership proposed, you will turn from allies to family for our people.”

[I will, Karan.]

Karan S’jet, future fleet command of the Kushan Mothership, leaned back into the rock that they were using as their seating, spending the rare time off she got from work with her friend.

Watching the towers that symbolized the salvation for Kharak and its people through Project: Zero Dawn.