Transacta-7Y1 made a fist, a symbol they’d agreed on at the beginning of their companionship. They both tensed, making ready to move. Surprise was on their side. Nothing else was, but they took what they could get. But Envaric had one more thing to say.
‘Tee. Tell me something before we die, yeah?’
She turned to regard him, gazing at his deteriorating form through her monovisor. She said nothing, but he had her attention. The look in his eyes was what she suspected to be amusement. This was it, then. One last joke.
‘Are you pretty under all that?’
It took her a moment to process this. She’d never been asked such a thing. Beneath her armour, she was an irradiated foot soldier of the Machine-God. Her skin, deep brown at birth and not unlike Envaric’s in that regard, was a starved and sunless grey. She’d been ritually delimbed, her extremities replaced with arms and legs of inexpensive cybernetic purity. Much to her honour, she had attained such a state of grace within her mechamorphosis that more of her body was now comprised of holy iron than what remained of her flawed birthflesh. Under her helmet, she was pockmarked with cryo-controlled radiation tumours. She possessed no eyelids, no hair, no teeth, and no nose – and what hadn’t been surgically removed had rotted off over the course of her years of sacred service.
In short, she was skitarii.
Transacta-7Y1 keyed in a symbol and tossed him the dataslug again. He caught it with weakening fingers and read the symbol there.
[affirmative]
He gave a bloodstained smile. ‘Yeah, I thought so.’
Though neither of them knew it for certain, they were the last of their combined platoons. When they attacked a few moments later, killing two of the Emperor’s Children from ambush, it was the final act of resistance in the defence of the Principa Collegiate.
- excerpt from Echoes of Eternity by Aaron Dembski-Bowden, chapter 9
I was curious and some quick research suggests the following:
Tyranids are almost certainly inedible if not outright poisonous. They are biological machines and may have features such as acidic blood, ingestion-based mutagens, etc
On the other hand, Orks may be tasty, they're mushroom based and anecdotally better than guard rations. Kind of like a slightly less ethical Impossible burger
On April 19, 2005, the town announced plans to scrap Heemeyer's bulldozer. The plan involved dispersing individual pieces to many separate scrap yards to prevent souvenir-taking.
---8<---
The property had a rudimentary sewage storage solution in the form of a buried cement mixer left by the previous owners.[8] The cost to update the sewer system would be nearly double the $42,000 Heemeyer paid for the property.
City officials told Heemeyer that putting in a septic tank was a less expensive alternative, but he rejected both options and said that the government not paying for the sewage line hookup was "extortion by government fiat".[8] Despite these setbacks, he did not withdraw his annexation request and subsequently became part of the sewer district.[8]
--->8---
Seriously the whole thing is stupid, the community had a problem with sewage, he decided that since his sewage wasn't his problem someone else should pay for it, they bent over backwards to accommodate him despite that. Giving him extensions and options and he decided rather than live in a society he'd rather spend time and money making a suicide bulldozer....
grimdank
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