Chapter 309: Ancient Relics

A long, slender tail.

There was no doubt about it, a purestrain Genestealer.

Pure to an extreme degree. So genetically refined that even its talons were sheathed in disruptive molecular fields, capable of breaking matter down at a fundamental level. A killing organism perfected across aeons of predation and adaptation.

Yoan continued to replay the story of everything that had happened after Khurai’s grandfather died.

“My grandfather is gone,” Khurai had said. “And everything he brought to the hive went with him. The tyrant returned. In District One Hundred, seven and a half million families were subjected to a lottery. From each family, only the one whose name was drawn was permitted to live. The priests who proclaimed that my grandfather had been chosen by the God-Emperor were seized by the Inquisition. The newly installed Ministorum clergy declared that all past matters would be ‘forgiven’.”

Khurai had paused then, grief briefly breaking through his composure.

“I was escorted by my grandfather’s sanctioned psyker and his Guard captain when I fled to District One Hundred. The people here… they did not hate us for the calamity my family had brought upon them. Instead, they chose to follow me. When we escaped the spire, the captain gave his life in exchange for mine, and for the ancient tomes my family had preserved for generations.”

That was where the story ended.

Yoan frowned, carefully turning the whole account over in his mind. The more he thought about it, the more something felt wrong.

“There’s something that doesn’t add up,” Yoan said at last. “Your grandfather was from the lower hive, wasn’t he? He wasn’t a fallen noble, and he wasn’t educated by the Ecclesiarchy.”

“Yes,” Khurai nodded.

“Then he should have been nothing more than a good man,” Yoan continued, his tone measured rather than accusatory. “Not someone trained in governance. Talent exists, but knowledge isn’t innate. Even a genius must learn. Without education, no one knows how to manage an entire hive, let alone improve one. And the lower hive offers no environment where such knowledge can be acquired.”

Faced with this question, Khurai lowered his head. His expression wasn’t one of being exposed, but of someone hesitating.

After a long silence, he seemed to reach a decision.

He rose from the bed and motioned for Yoan to follow him into the basement.

The sanctioned psyker withdrew from the building first, retreating beyond the perimeter. Only then did Yoan follow, satisfied they were alone.

The basement was vast, far larger than the structure above could have suggested. Its dimensions violated every known hab-block standard, implying deliberate concealment rather than accident.

Within it were gathered all the children of District One Hundred who had not yet reached adulthood. They slept in ordered rows, beneath flickering lumen-strips and recycled air vents that labored constantly against the hive’s choking atmosphere.

When Yoan had first arrived, he had noticed that within the residential zone there were buildings noticeably better than this one. If Khurai truly was the leader of District One Hundred, then he should have lived there.

There was only one reason he lived above this place.

If outsiders breached the walls and slaughtered their way inside, then before they could erase the future of District One Hundred, they would first have to kill Khurai and the psyker.

Khurai led Yoan through the rows of children until they reached a sealed adamantium-alloy door.

An electronic device beside it scanned Khurai’s iris.

With a deep, thunderous sound, the door opened.

Yoan found it oddly striking. On Beisu I, such electronic access systems were rare; most secure doors were guarded by wetware servitors or flesh-coded gene-locks.

His augmetic eyes completed their scan.

The locking mechanism was flagged as an Antique-Class Archaeotech Relic.

It possessed both self-repair and self-annihilation protocols.

The door was not opened mechanically. Instead, it generated an invisible energy membrane across its surface. If the device were compromised, the membrane would collapse, taking everything within a seventy-meter radius with it.

When they entered the chamber, the door sealed itself behind them.

A steel shelf stood against the far wall. Upon it rested two items.

An ancient book.

And a vial containing three remaining tablets.

“These are the relics my family has preserved for generations,” Khurai said quietly as he approached the shelf. “We were always poor. Even if we had to sell our respirators, we would never allow these to be lost.”

Yoan turned his gaze to the vial.

His augmetics identified it instantly.

It was a water purification compound.

The tablets within possessed an extremely powerful cleansing effect, capable of neutralizing toxins, pathogens, and chemical pollutants.

An inscription ran along the vial, archaic and unfamiliar.

Yoan’s internal cogitator parsed it, cross-referencing ancient linguistic archives.

[Ancient Terran Language Detected]

[Translation Result: Emergency Water Purification Tablets: Produced by Fang Travel Consortium

After crash-landing of escape pod, introduce tablet into any available liquid source.
Use provided tester to ensure the liquid has not been over-purified into ultra-pure water.

Do not introduce more than half a tablet into any body of liquid smaller than an ocean.]

“So that’s why District One Hundred never lacks water,” Yoan said, gesturing toward the vial.

Khurai looked at him in surprise. He had not yet explained, but Yoan already understood.

That, however, was secondary.

He removed the ancient book from the shelf and opened it.

Only then did Yoan realize, it wasn’t a book at all.

It was a container, shaped like one.

Embedded within it, crudely, almost primitively, was a small sphere.

When Khurai began reciting a passage in a language Yoan did not recognize, neither High Gothic nor any known Low Gothic dialect, the sphere activated.

A solid holographic projection erupted outward, transforming the chamber into a classroom.

Two women appeared out of nothingness.

Both were stunningly beautiful, with black hair and glasses, books held in their hands.

They approached Yoan and Khurai, then reached behind their heads and withdrew neural interface cables, plugging them directly into the cranial augmetic ports of both men.

Yoan trusted his own augmetics to neutralize harmful intrusion, and so he did not resist.

Suddenly, Yoan realized he was sharing sensory input with the woman before him.

At first, he assumed this was a method of accelerated knowledge transfer, some kind of ancient teaching technique.

Then the woman leaned down...

“Wrong file,” Khurai said hurriedly, switching the projection.

The classroom remained, but the women disappeared.

This time, only one figure appeared.

A black-haired man in strange attire. His features were eerily similar to Anruida, to Khurai himself, and even to the Lord of Tal... No. To another figure Yoan had encountered before.

“I am Teacher Khan, as you all know,” the projected man said calmly. “We resume from the previous lesson. This is Lesson One Hundred and Twenty-One: Colonial Administration.”

He paused, as though ensuring his unseen audience could follow.

“As I said last time, if you cannot even afford a two-credit basic learning device, then you must have the patience to listen while I teach the old-fashioned way. In our previous lesson, we covered everything from the purchase of a colony ship to the first steps of establishing a settlement. Today, we will learn how to govern a colony. I have invited a distinguished professor of administrative sciences, renowned throughout the Federation, Professor Jain. Come, Jain. Say hello.”

A blond man appeared, smiling politely.

“Greetings. It is an honor to participate in the recordings of Yale University. Together with Teacher Khan, I will be teaching you how to manage a colony. From constructing a self-sustaining closed economic system, to organizing military forces for efficient clearance of hostile xenos, to the formulation of law.”

The two continued lecturing.

They taught everything, economics, logistics, population control, military doctrine, and legal systems.

Not as dogma, but as systems, interconnected, adaptable, and grounded in evidence.

The knowledge was… too advanced.

So advanced that it felt utterly out of place in a 41st Millennium hive world, where ignorance was doctrine and innovation heresy.

The recordings were clearly tens of thousands of years old, yet they were methodical, rational, almost offensively scientific, almost humane by Imperial standards. They even employed a linguistic framework designed to accelerate comprehension.

Only at the end did Yoan learn that these projections were never meant to be the primary teaching method.

Teacher Khan explained that this recording was merely an emergency continuity archive, used only when no standard learning devices were available, stored within a self-repairing, durable playback unit.

The device hidden inside the “book” contained only two recordings.

And the course itself was incomplete.

Only Lesson One Hundred and Twenty-One remained.

Yet those two videos were enough.

Enough to give an ambitious lowe hive dweller the two things he needed most.

Knowledge.

And hope.