On the fringes of the Scarus Sector, the vast surface of the Arks of Omen became riddled with countless breaches.
Within the fused mass of space hulks that formed these behemoths, regular circular incisions appeared with clinical precision as the Iron Men legions began their inexorable advance into the depths.
The seals binding the Daemonic Machine Spirits were shattered. Warp-entities shrieked as they surged from the tortured hulls, seeking to vent their millenia of agony upon their captors. Yet, these soul-shaking howls meant nothing to the Iron Men. The searing arcs of warp-lightning, capable of reducing a mortal to ash, flickered harmlessly against the energy shields of the Automated Sentry-Troopers and Armored Wardens before dissipating into nothingness.
The mechanical host offered their own "sincerest" greetings in return. Under the saturated fire of concentrated energy beams, the daemonic essences were banished back to the Immaterium with virtually no resistance.
As the veil of the Warp parted once more, a full fleet of the Adeptus Mechanicus suddenly translated into realspace. Under the watchful eyes of the Imperial Navy, the Mechanicus vessels bypassed standard protocols and moved to moor themselves directly alongside the titanic Arks of Omen.
Swarms of boarding craft were unleashed from the bays, descending upon the Arks like a cloud of locusts.
The bewildered Imperial Navy commanders had initially intended to warn the newcomers of the strange, unknown automata stalking the wrecks. However, they watched in stunned silence as the red-robed boarding parties landed right alongside the silver machines without drawing a single shot in response.
The scene that followed was even more incomprehensible to the naval officers.
As the boarding ramps dropped, the figures emerging were neither the Legio Cybernetica nor the familiar cohorts of the Skitarii. Instead, they were mobs of Tech-Priests, their combat capabilities mediocre at best, their robes fluttering in the artificial gales. For a moment, the Navy wondered if the Priesthood of Mars had collectively succumbed to scrapcode-induced madness.
Yet, they soon realized that the silver automata were pointedly ignoring the Tech-Priests.
Segments of the Ark that had been scoured clean by the Iron Men were immediately "packaged" by the Tech-Priests on the spot. Xenos weaponry, ship components, esoteric gear, and even entire bulkheads bearing the architectural hallmarks of the early Imperium were dismantled and spirited away by the frantic priests.
The silver machines remained utterly indifferent.
It didn't take long for the Tech-Priests stationed aboard the Imperial Navy vessels to lose their composure. One by one, they demanded to be sent to the surface to conduct "reconnaissance."
To these knowledge-hungry servants of the Machine God, the fact that the Adeptus Mechanicus as an institution had secured a find did not mean the data would be shared with them individually. In the Cult Mechanicus, machinery and technology were more than sacred, they were the ultimate currency. To watch their colleagues strike a motherlode of archeotech while they remained idle was a torment no priest could endure.
The naval lords, usually haughty and superior, were forced to yield. The functioning of a voidship, from the maintenance of the engines and the production of servitors to the calming of the Machine Spirits, was entirely dependent on the Tech-Priests. If the Enginseers went on strike, the Navy and the Astra Militarum would be left with little more than a multi-kilometer tomb of cold iron.
Reluctantly, the Imperial Navy began ferrying their resident Tech-Priests to the Arks in bulk. To ensure their "assets" weren't lost or poached, the naval commanders assigned their embarked Adeptus Astartes to accompany the priests under the guise of protection.
A massive, multi-vector boarding operation commenced from all directions.
As the density of red robes increased upon the Arks' surfaces, Axion's mechanical forces seemed to accelerate their own exploration. It created the bizarre illusion that the more Tech-Priests appeared, the faster the silver machines moved to stay ahead of them.
While an Ark of Omen was not as large as a planet, its internal labyrinth was far more complex. Searching a space hulk was an endeavor of supreme difficulty, yet for Axion, it held the thrill of opening a "mystery reliquary."
Behind every bulkhead lay a different compartment, each potentially hiding anything from the Dark Age of Technology to xenos horrors. Space hulks were repositories of chaotic, disordered data, and it was this data that posed the true challenge to Axion.
Every second, thousands of "blind boxes" within the four Arks were cracked open. Axion had to meticulously sift through every scrap of information. To an Iron Man, data was not to be absorbed indiscriminately. Like the machine spirits of the Imperium, much of this data was "spoiled meat" in Axion's eyes; consuming it would lead to systemic corruption.
The data within these Arks was spoiled to the extreme. Yet, amidst the rot, there were occasional gems of pristine integrity. Axion had to purge the vast quantities of useless junk, isolate the valid packets, analyze their worth, and finally decide whether to write them into his permanent record. Anything deemed unsuitable was instantly scrubbed from his temporary buffers.
…
For the Tech-Priests, this operation was nothing short of a holy festival.
The key structural corridors of the space hulks had been blown wide open. The silver machines had neutralized every threat—dangerous xenos lifeforms, renegade warbands, heretic cults, splintered Ork Klans, and Genestealer infestations had all been purged. Automated defenses had been triggered and deactivated; leaking reactors had been dismantled. Aside from the vacuum and zero-gravity environments, the conditions were perfect.
Even the greatest danger of exploring a space hulk, becoming hopelessly lost, had been eliminated.
Stretched out before the priests were rows of Heavy Automated Defense Turrets, each pulsing with a clear serial number. They acted as glowing beacons extending into the dark heart of the hulk.
The priests explored the rooms cleared by the Iron Men with reckless abandon. If they lost their bearings, they simply found a line of turrets and followed them. The trail would either lead deeper into the next sub-level or back to the surface.
Lost? Impossible.
The turret sequences were deployed in a 3D fan-shaped array; no matter which direction a priest wandered, they would encounter a guide-string within a hundred meters.
More importantly, the turrets themselves were magnificent subjects of study. The Mechanicus had experimented with many exotic materials, but the sight of turrets constructed from Aeldari wraithbone sent them into a near-religious frenzy.
The nanite swarms did not care for the nature of the raw material. As long as the molecular structure could be stacked according to the blueprint and the material could withstand the stress, the machine would function.
Thus, the Tech-Priests trailed behind the Iron Men, "scavenging" the leftovers and practically swooning over the base-fixed automated cannons. The Iron Men wanted the data, not the physical shells. Axion duplicated the information and left the physical objects untouched, treasures left for those who followed.
"By the Omnissiah... an automated turret fashioned from wraithbone, yet chambered for solid-slug ballistics!"
"Look! An adamant turret! Machine God, such extravagance!"
"And this... Emperor preserve us, I have found a metal that defies all known spectral analysis!"
Gasps of awe and binary hymns of praise echoed incessantly across the vox-channels of the Priesthood.
——————
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)