Despite the catastrophic damage sustained by the Zar-Quaesitor, Archmagos Cawl had no intention of returning to Mars for a drydock refit.
Deep within the vessel's stasis-crypts and gestation strata, a vast legion of Unnumbered Sons, the Greyshield Primaris Astartes, lay awaiting their awakening. To transport these warriors separately would be a logistical nightmare, a hemorrhage of precious time the Imperium did not possess.
The state of the galaxy was dire. Though Roboute Guilliman was tirelessly mobilizing manpower and materium, the lack of sufficient frontline strength remained an inescapable reality. Had Segmentum Ultramar not been teetering on the brink of total collapse, the Lord Regent would never have tasked Cawl with forming Battle Group Hephaestus to augment their strategic reach.
The Adeptus Administratum's Departmento Munitorum simply had no more regiments to feed into the Nephilim Sector.
Across the stars, the Ultramarines were already stretched thin, acting as a rapid-response force to extinguish fires across a hundred war zones. The Orks were embroiled in a massive internal power struggle; Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka, the most infamous Greenskin Warlord in the galaxy, was currently being hunted by High Marshal Helbrecht and the Black Templars' crusader fleets.
Rumors of dubious origin had once claimed that the legendary Commissar Yarrick had perished, his soul returning to the Golden Throne following a treacherous ambush by Chaos Renegades during the pursuit of Thraka. However, even the Orks refused to believe such tales.
"I reckon dat red-eyed git wiv da powa-klaw ain't so easy ta krump," was the prevailing sentiment among the Greenskin hordes.
While the Imperium could not verify the source of these reports or pinpoint the exact location of the fleet that occasionally vanished and reappeared in fragmented sighting logs, the casualty lists returned to the Munitorum had yet to list Yarrick among the confirmed dead. Unless the Traitor Legions could instantaneously annihilate an entire pursuit fleet and shatter a Black Templar Crusade simultaneously, the truth would eventually reach the light of the Emperor's grace.
Yet, a grim reality loomed: once the Orks finished their internal butchery, a new Warboss, one capable of igniting a Great Waaagh!, would inevitably rise from the carnage, adding further misery to the Imperium's plight.
To provide Guilliman with the support he required, Cawl could not cease his cultivation of the Primaris Marines, nor could he afford to be absent from his Ark for long. During their previous expedition to the Imperium Nihilus, the Zar-Quaesitor had been boarded by the arch-traitor Fabius Bile. The "Spider" had managed to infiltrate the vessel and steal the gene-seed from Cawl's own "Alpha Primus", a prototype whose body still lay within a restoration vat, struggling to recover from the trauma of the theft.
Cawl was burdened by a mountain of responsibilities; he could only spare the occasional sub-routine to monitor the Alpha's cellular repair.
Although the current damage to the Ark was far more severe than that caused by Bile's intrusion, Cawl had another compelling reason to avoid Mars: the technological mysteries housed within the Zar-Quaesitor were his most guarded treasures. Even as an Archmagos, allowing a host of Tech-Priests from rival factions to board his ship for repairs was, in his mind, equivalent to hosting a "charity gala of tech-heresy."
The Zar-Quaesitor was a self-contained marvel. It possessed the manufacturing capacity to not only produce Primaris Astartes on demand but to fulfill every function of a small Forge World. The same massive workforce that had inadvertently caused such internal destruction during the Necron boarding was now an indispensable labor force for the ship's salvation.
However, as Cawl entered the Ark's factory strata to oversee the repairs, he found Axion, whom he had temporarily overlooked in the post-battle chaos.
The Aegis Protector beside Axion had already been field-repaired, its chassis appearing significantly reinforced with new plating. Furthermore, the Iron Man was now surrounded by several mechanical units that Cawl did not recognize.
Following Cawl's order to destroy the Blackstone pylons on the planet, Axion had immediately busied himself with his own objectives. The Aegis Protector stood holding its own severed head in one hand, while the other dragged the headless, mangled torso of a Necron Destroyer Lord.
Axion's understanding of the ship was nearly equal to Cawl's, thanks to the schematics the Archmagos had previously shared. While the gargantuan scale of the Ark might cause others to lose their way, Axion cross-referenced his position with the blueprints in real-time. For him, the concept of "getting lost" simply did not exist.
He had dragged the remains of the Destroyer Lord back because his data-banks contained ancient testing records regarding Necrodermis. This metal, possessing extreme self-repair capabilities, was essentially a cousin to nanomachinery. Though it lacked the innate ability for self-replication or fluid morphing, its external structure and numerous functions could be pre-programmed into its molecular matrix.
It functioned much like the Necrons' own phase-out protocols. Axion wanted to see if he could re-smelt this miraculous metal; if successful, he might be able to forge something... interesting.
The Destroyer Lord's chassis was not just raw material; it was currently serving as a makeshift sled for the Aegis Protector.
The Greyshields and Ultramarines who followed behind the pair were left in a state of stunned silence. Axion and his automaton had first retraced their steps toward the hangar bays. Aside from retrieving the two racks of spare parts left there, the path was littered with "bone-meal"—the shattered remnants of Necrons blown apart so thoroughly that their phase-out protocols had failed to trigger.
As they walked, Axion frequently knelt to gather these fragments. Battlefield salvage was a core component of his logistics sub-routines. Though this was his first time performing it in this era, he felt a strange sense of satisfaction.
Typically, the defeated do not get to scavenge the field; the losing side is usually too busy dying or retreating to engage in such time-consuming labor. While the Imperial fleet had technically executed a strategic withdrawal, Axion had his own interpretation of the event.
I retreated. I was outmatched. So, I took part of the battlefield with me.
This concept of "stealing the prize even in defeat" felt novel to Axion. In the wars of the Men of Iron, the conclusion of a battle was followed by massive recovery cohorts that recycled every shattered automaton. High-intelligence units were scanned for intact quantum memory cores; if the cores were salvageable, they were recovered; if damaged, data was harvested on-site. Eventually, everything was fed into deconstruction foundries to be recast as raw materials for the standard fabrication plants.
Axion gathered the Necron metal fragments with the diligent joy of a farmer bringing in a harvest. Meanwhile, the Astartes watched warily as the two machines picked through the xenos scrap, piling it onto the Destroyer Lord's chassis before hauling it through the corridors.
They reached the original hangar bay just as the fleet translated into the Warp, a transition that had zero effect on Axion's mechanical physiology.
Upon his return, Axion's first priority was attempting to reattach the Aegis Protector's head. However, the core skeletal frame serving as the unit's "spine" had been severed; it was not a simple fix. The most efficient method would be to put the unit into temporary stasis, extract the core frame, and re-smelt it entirely.
As Axion analyzed the Ark's schematics to find a suitable facility, he made a discovery that filled his processors with something akin to delight. Beyond the standard repair sanctums and workbenches found on lesser ships, the Zar-Quaesitor housed an entirely independent industrial zone.
It contained not only smelting furnaces but a standardized production line, one whose origin was shrouded in mystery.
——————
If you want to read ahead of everyone, go to my pat-reon: pat-re-on.c-om/magnor (remove the hyphen to access normally)
For more free additional chapters, throw some power stones!
100 PS = 1 Chapter.