The living metal rapidly spread, encasing the figure in black armor. Golden flames surged forth, illuminating the dim, rocky world like a newborn sun.
Energy beams struck the golden blaze, only to make the fire burn even brighter.
Nareth had already mastered a portion of the C'tan fragment's power. The fire he wielded, though not as fierce as the flames within a burning star, far exceeded the molten fury of any planetary volcano.
The annihilating fire net of the Andrew automatons was swallowed by the golden inferno, their attacks only feeding its brilliance.
Nareth dove, golden fire intensifying around him.
He swung his chainsword, the flames lingering along the lower quarter of the blade near the hilt, infused with the C'tan's energy.
The roaring chainsword tore through an Andrew automaton's head.
Its crimson eyes flickered as binary streams flowed through the network linking the machines.
They raised their left arms in unison, blades of red energy extending as they charged.
"Intruder, die!"
Nareth didn't evade. The energy blades struck his flaming shield with deafening bursts.
In the midst of the detonations, Nareth spun his body swiftly, utilizing the Otsberg-Vaya Form Twelve.
Thunk. Thunk.
Metallic heads rolled to the ground one after another.
When all the automatons lay decapitated, Nareth turned to Arsena, who had just disembarked from the Stormbird.
"Tell Morsen, I want everything from the shoulders up," Nareth commanded.
To minimize damage to the heads, he demanded that their necks and upper sections be preserved.
The Primarch's aide relayed the order to the commander of the Eleventh Chapter.
Nareth's gaze swept across his Honor Guard and stopped on one.
"Andrea, you'll accompany the Magos with a techmarine. Make sure he overlooks the automatons; his focus must remain on finding the Standard Template Construct."
He wanted to harvest as many alchemical materials as possible without the Magos noticing.
"By your will, Father," the "Lawyer" replied.
The Magos, escorted by his skitarii and tech-priest, descended from the lander and faced the black-armored Shadows of Order.
"Honored Magos, Andrea of the Primarch's Honor Guard greets you," the warrior said, bowing slightly.
"My Father has sent me to aid you in the search for the Standard Template Construct."
'Nareth sends his offspring, perhaps to ensure I do not monopolize the holy template?'
flashed through Lian Ramilies's logic engine.
'More crucially, whether such a template truly exists here.'
"Let us proceed," Lian said aloud.
He turned his augmetic eye skyward, focusing on a golden silhouette far above.
[112 kilometers… 124 kilometers… Target identified: Gene-Primarch Nareth.]
Twenty-five minutes later, Lian halted before the ruins of a rocky fortress.
His augmetic gaze swept across broken metal limbs scattered across the ground. He crouched beside one, a metallic leg, and from under his robes, two mechadendrites extended, touching it.
Sparks flared as his tools scraped against the metal.
After twelve seconds, Lian moved to the next piece, then another, until he had examined a dozen.
Finally, he stopped before a polished, damaged metal head, its exposed cables flickering with power.
"Abominable Intelligence!" he roared.
Raising his Magos staff, lightning circuits glowed along his arm.
With a thunderous crack, he smashed the metal limb, reducing it to molten fragments.
The servo-skull at his shoulder turned, transmitting binary orders to his tech-guards.
From archived data, Lian learned that the Andrew automata possessed a limited capacity for independent thought.
They could assess threat levels using built-in identification runes, but unlike permitted servitors, they could alter tactics dynamically, running logical analyses through their own internal engines, sometimes iterating over a thousand times.
They even considered non-data factors such as shape and color when assessing a target.
To Lian, who viewed such behavior as heresy, this was intolerable. These machines defied the purity of logic and must be purged.
Especially so if they dared to think about aesthetics.
Andrea, though ignorant of binary, understood from Lian's tone and the servo-skull's flickering that he had ordered the extermination of the automata.
"Magos," Andrea interjected firmly, "our priority should be to locate the Standard Template Construct. If it is destroyed by the machines, the loss would be irreparable. The Shadows of Order, under my Father, will cleanse all abominable intelligences."
[Automata do not follow fixed code // 42.09% chance they damaged the STC, if it exists.
Presence of Abominable Intelligence // Ancient human outpost detected // Probability of STC presence: 95.64%.]
Lian's logic engine processed the conclusion. He nodded.
"You are correct. Inform your Father, every abominable intelligence on this world must be destroyed."
"As you wish, Magos," Andrea replied with satisfaction.
He transmitted the message. "Father, the Magos requests full extermination of all Abominable Intelligences."
Nareth, upon receiving it, knew the "Lawyer" had succeeded. Lian's attention was now fully on the search for the STC.
Nareth resumed his deadly rhythm of flight, dive, and strike.
For eleven hours, he hunted, then had his warriors deliver the collected heads of the Andrew automatons to Arsena, who had transported them back to the Throne of Shadow's Soveriegnity.
Nareth collected some and went to the Kingdom of Disorder and had the Jokaeros prepare the sequence 8 potion, the "Robot", then brought it back into the material world and handed it to John.
The gyrinx stirred from his half-dreaming state, sitting like a human child, and drank the liquid.
As the "Robot" potion's power stabilized within him, Nareth handed him a data crystal and a holo-projector.
"This contains Fra'al data on prophecy. Study it."
The "Robot" had his ability, High Spirituality, strengthened, now possessing divinatory and anti-divinatory skills, his heightened intuition verging on foresight.
Though its means differed from true psychic divination, it was a useful reference.
Following Nareth's telepathic instruction, John placed the crystal into the holo-projector. His dark eyes cleared as strange symbols and data shimmered before him.
His enhanced mind, far surpassing most mortals, began rapidly decoding the alien Fra'o script.
Soon, he could understand what he saw.
Leaving the "Robot" to study, Nareth soared into the skies toward the next battlefield.
When he arrived, the Dionysian Spear materialized in his hand. He hurled it with divine precision.
The cleansing of the Andrew automatons lasted fifty-eight solar days.
The following day, as the spear returned to his hand, a transmission came from Magos Lian:
"Lord Nareth, your information was accurate."
"I have discovered the Holy Template, the construction pattern for a Starfort. Its value is a far greater find than any battle tank."
Nareth knew the Magos did not exaggerate.
The Blyek battle tank was a powerful yet simple weapon of war.
But the Starfort was something far beyond.
A single starfort could alter the fate of a system or an entire sector.
It served as a repair, command, and supply base for Imperial fleets, removing the need for endless travel to dockyards or resupply stations.
And when deployed above a besieged world, it could act as a permanent orbital bombardment platform, or as a vital node in a system's planetary defense grid,
A weapon of empire-shaping power.
.....
If you enjoy the story, my p@treon is 30 chapters ahead.
[email protected]/DaoistJinzu