Andy stood on the footboard of the half-track, not in a hurry to press the accelerator.
Although the other party had opened the gates and shown great sincerity—even tempering the gazes that looked ready to devour him whole—sincerity in the Underhive usually had a shelf life of only five minutes. One second someone is calling you brother, and the next, they're stabbing you in the back for your gear.
Andy turned around and waved a heavy metal arm toward a seemingly deserted pile of rubble.
Clatter.
The sound of rolling stones echoed as a dozen figures, previously blended perfectly with the ruins, stood up. It was Gamma-9 and the guard detail he had brought out. Though they looked disheveled in their tattered robes, their grip on their rifles was steady. Gamma-9, in particular, kept his Andy-repaired autogun locked dead-on to the deputy named Ben on the wall.
Seeing this, Roger's brain—heated by the taste of the starch sphere—instantly cooled down. A layer of cold sweat broke out across his back, making his semi-mechanical spine itch.
That was close.
Thankfully, he hadn't listened to Ben's suggestion to pull a double-cross. The man below wasn't just a powerhouse capable of soloing Skinners; he was a tactical commander. Using himself as bait while hiding his main force in a blind spot was the move of a veteran. Had the gates stayed shut or had someone's finger slipped on a trigger, they wouldn't be receiving food right now—they'd be facing a violent crossfire.
Roger took a deep breath, once again thankful that his intuition had saved them.
"Raise your muzzles!" Roger barked to his men. "Don't let our guests misunderstand!"
At Andy's signal, Gamma-9 led his men out from behind cover. Though their formation was ragged, they walked with the unshakeable confidence of people who knew they had backup.
Only then did Andy sit back in the driver's seat.
Vroom...
The modified engine roared lowly, carrying a truckload of white hope as it slowly rolled into the Brotherhood of Rust's stronghold. As the wheels crushed the gravel, the dust kicked up carried the faint scent of starch.
The moment he entered, Andy's STC vision activated automatically. From the scans, the situation was worse than he had imagined. Despite the name "Fission Plant," the area was a chaotic mess of illegal shacks surrounding the main reactor building, which emitted a faint blue glow. Exposed cables tangled like matted hair everywhere.
As for the "Brotherhood members," most were physically maimed. Their prosthetics were a motley collection—some used hydraulic rods, some had steel pipes welded on, and one person even used a salvaged Servo-skull as a knee joint. To the orthodox Mechanicus, these people were a supreme profanation of the Machine Spirit.
But to Andy, the fact that these people could piece themselves together from industrial trash and survive without standard parts or sacred oils made them ten thousand times better than the Priests who did nothing but kowtow to components.
The truck came to a halt. Andy jumped down as Roger and Ben approached. Roger walked with a hitch; his mechanical leg seemed to have a faulty connection, clicking with every step.
"I am Roger, the... one in charge here." Roger extended a relatively intact right hand, stained with machine oil and white powder from the starch sphere.
Andy shook it with his metal hand. "Andy."
The cold touch of the memory alloy made Roger flinch slightly, but he quickly steadied himself.
"This cargo..." Roger couldn't take his eyes off the truck. "Is it really all for us?"
"As long as the grid is connected, this load serves as the first deposit," Andy replied bluntly. "If you can provide extra technical support—processing parts or providing manpower—I can increase the payment."
At the mention of "increasing payment," the red light in Roger's eyes brightened. "No problem! Absolutely no problem! If there's a blueprint, there's nothing we can't build... well, precision might vary, but it'll definitely work!"
By then, Gamma-9 and his group had caught up. Under the halo of Andy's presence, these two opposing technical factions—the orthodox Priest and the heretical wandering mechanic—coexisted in a bizarre harmony. Gamma-9 looked at Roger's haphazard modifications with disdain, but kept his mouth shut out of respect for the melta pistol at Roger's hip.
Andy ignored their silent exchange and cut to the chase. "There's something I don't understand."
He pointed at the decent fortifications and the melta pistol. "You have guns, electricity, and skilled people. In the Underhive, this makes you a mid-sized power. How did you end up starving to the point of eating toxic radiation moss?"
It was a valid question. With electricity as hard currency, they should have lived comfortably through trade alone.
Roger's excitement vanished instantly, replaced by a bitterness that spread across the human half of his face. "Andy, you don't understand." He sighed, pulling a crumpled cigarette from his pocket. He tried to light it, but his lighter was out of gas.
Andy extended a finger, and a blue electric arc jumped from the tip, lighting the cigarette. Roger nodded gratefully and took a deep drag of the harsh smoke.
"We were choked out by other factions. This place is a prime cut of meat; everyone wants a bite. The Skinners block the outskirts; if our scavengers go out, they clash with them. But that isn't the worst part."
Roger exhaled a smoke ring into the irradiated air. "The worst part is our fungal farm died. Just last week, all the cultivation vats turned black overnight. Everything that grew was toxic black mold."
Andy nodded. Fungal farms in the Underhive utilized organic matter from sewage. These ecosystems were fragile; a slight change in water or a leak of chemical waste could collapse the entire colony. Maintaining the biochemical balance in sewage filled with heavy metals and corpse residue was a high-tech threshold.
If an Upper-spire factory dumped untreated coolant to save money, it was a disaster for the Underhive. Roger was powerless against the whims of the lords above who didn't even know he existed.
"Without food, we had to look further out," Roger's voice lowered, trembling slightly. "Three days ago, we couldn't hold on anymore. I found coordinates in an old archive for Sector 39—an underground ecological park. I figured, even if it was abandoned, there had to be plants and nutrients left, right?"
At the mention of the "underground ecological park," Andy's cybernetic eye flickered, but he remained silent.
Roger, lost in the painful memory, didn't notice. "I sent my lieutenant, Maxim—my best brother—with our twelve most elite men. They took the best scout vehicle and our last two crates of bolts." Roger crushed the cigarette butt under his metal boot. "Result... all gone. Not even a distress signal. That place isn't a park."
Roger looked up, his red optic filled with terror. "It's a forbidden zone of death. Some say it's full of man-eating monsters; others say the plants move and crush bones. My brothers... they must have become fertilizer for that hellhole."
Beside him, Ben lowered his head, his knuckles white against his gun. It was clearly a crippling loss for the Brotherhood.
The atmosphere became oppressive. The fear of the unknown and the powerlessness of death hung over everyone. Even Gamma-9 traced a gear symbol over his chest, whispering prayers for the Machine Spirit.
In that suffocating silence, Andy spoke:
"That place is indeed a bit messy, but your judgment was correct."
Andy turned and gestured toward the mountain of white starch spheres in the truck. "As you can see, these things are what I got from there."
Roger's head snapped up. His mouth fell open, and he didn't even react when the falling ash from his cigarette burned his chin.
"Wha... what?" Roger doubted his auditory sensors. "You're saying these... all came from that underground ecological park?!"
"Yeah." Andy nodded casually. "The plants there were a bit overgrown and needed pruning. There were some unfriendly flowers, too. It made the trip a bit difficult."
Andy patted the chainsword at his waist, which still had bits of green plant matter stuck in the teeth. "So I used my guns and the chainsword to do a bit of... weeding."
Roger stared at Andy, then at the chainsword. Not just Roger, but every Brotherhood member watching felt their brains thundering.
The entire stronghold fell into a deathly silence.
Abandoned Mine Sector 39—the forbidden zone where twelve elite, fully-armed warriors vanished without a sound—was, in the mouth of this mechanical freak, just a small garden that needed "a bit of weeding"?
Was this some kind of new interstellar joke?
The most critical point was: he actually brought the food out! And not just a little, but a whole truckload!!