Chapter 513: Awaiting the Command
Armageddon, Northern Wastes, Station of the Adeptus Mechanicus.
A spire of iron and brass was embedded into the frozen crust of the far north. Its apex brushed the edges of the upper atmosphere, while its foundations rested upon the subterranean magma of the mantle, a vertical expanse stretching tens of kilometers into the sky.
GONG.
Information manifested as structured energy, fired from the massive batteries of the orbiting battleships. It pierced the storm-clouds generated by the Mechanicus weather-engines and flooded the logic-stacks of the radiant tower. Magos Pascal, a son of Mars, received the descending data-stream. His ocular array—a cluster of multi-lens mechanical eyes—whirred as he scanned the data-surges.
Within his vision flickered the names of senior laborers of the Hallowed Manufactorums and their families. Names of those who had ascended to meet the Omnissiah. Names of families broken by death, disappearance, or the silence of the void.
Hiss—
A high-pressure vent released steam from beneath his copper mask.
"Terminate the census-log," the Martian Magos commanded.
the painful script vanished.
He shifted his focus to the strategic directives.
"May the Machine God grant me a target this day," he clicked, his synthesized voice thick with cold, clinical lethality.
The "Beast" within his logic-circuits—the lingering remnants of his original organic aggression—offered a sympathetic thrum of agreement.
Pity. No matter how much this Martian Magos desired to answer the enemy with the roar of macro-cannons, his classification in the New Era protocols was that of a Tech-Sage. He would only see the front line if every single War-Magos in the sector was liquidated.
Fortunately, the Tower of the Prime Motive remained operational. Between the lethal environment of the wastes and the electronic shroud of the weather-engines, few Orks had managed to breach the perimeter.
"Our counter-offensive clusters are driving toward the Prophet's battle-group. The Webway Anchor Protocol is authorized for initialization."
Standing beside him was another Magos. Draped in crimson and gold, his chassis was more upright and elegant than the hunched, multi-limbed forms common to those who over-augmented for the forge.
As overseers of the Tower, their mandate was clear: provide technical support to the Armageddon resistance, salvage STC fragments, and upload critical lore to the Dawnstar archives. Aside from that, they were spectators to the slaughter.
Click-clack.
The machine-spirit in his mind offered a pulse of data-empathy. Pascal, having synchronized the incoming orders, began to allocate the tower's processing power.
Pascal had come from Mars. Forty years ago, the Fabricator-General had dispatched a "Purge Fleet" to the systems outside the Dawnstar's influence under the banner of "Maintaining the Purity of the Omnissiah's Creed." It was an act of intimidation directed at the Forge Worlds—Agrippina, Incaladion, Lucius—who had turned to the Dawnstar as leverage against Martian dominance.
Pascal was part of that fleet.
His mission: to monitor and threaten the research cadres of Agrippina and Incaladion on Armageddon, and to ensure the "Secret of Ullanor"—the fact that Mars had defied the High Lords by relocating the Ork home-world rather than destroying it—remained buried.
The irony was palpable. Pascal, the designated spy, had been seduced by the academic fervor of the local Tech-Priests. Tempted by the raw pursuit of Knowledge, he had integrated into their collective with seamless ease.
Pascal preferred this life.
Here, a scholar's worth was measured by his intellect, not his army. He could secure research grants based on his findings and devote his logic-cycles to discovery.
In the old Martian Orthodoxy, a Magos had to raise a personal army of Skitarii just to secure his own laboratory. He had to guard his "papers" against the theft of rivals and the sabotage of superiors. One had to be a successful spy, merchant, politician, and warlord just to glimpse a single scrap of archeotech.
It was a cycle of stagnant rot.
The most vital technologies were often taken to the grave by Magi who refused to share them with a predatory hierarchy. To ask for "Open Source" collaboration was to test the very limits of human sociology.
But the Dawnbreakers had changed the variables.
As a member who benefited directly from the "Open-Knowledge" dividends of the Dawnstar, Pascal supported the restructuring of the Priesthood with both hands. The professional differentiation, the meritocratic audit, and the removal of the administrative grind provided a sanctuary for the mind.
Logically, such a system should have been rife with loopholes.
The Imperial administrative institutions were "Advanced" only on parchment. In practice, they were a mess of bickering and corruption.
But the Dawnstar had something the old Imperium lacked: A God who answered the vox.
Even with the Orks at the gates and his laboratory stripped of its garrison, Pascal was calm.
If the worst came to the worst, he would simply report to the Omnissiah and become part of an Emperor-class Engine.
Purity is its own reward.
Naturally, the hierarchy of the Mechanicus remained strict. A Magos who survived the high-courts of Mars was never a novice. Even a "disgraced" exile like Pascal carried secrets and "lethal variables" in his robes.
Pascal looked like the smallest Magos in the room, dwarfed by the massive "Lords of Dawnstar." But the wooden box he clutched in his mechadendrites held devices—radiation-emitters and singularity-charges—that would make an Inquisitor pale.
GAAAZ—
The shriek of sensors and the strange, electric rasp of electromagnetic induction echoed through the hall. They sounded like human voices crying out in pain before falling back into a dead silence. It was a kaleidoscope of vox-interference, synthetic audio-loops, and the static of a thousand sensors.
Interspersed were fragments of scrap-code.
Pascal, adjusted to the discordance, remained unmoved. He watched as the data-box containing the system metrics was "vented" into the Warp-link.
[SENIOR ACCESS REQUEST DETECTED. INITIATING MANUAL AUDIT...]
A display manifested in the air.
The Spirit-Net.
A technology originating from the Dawnstar, now widely deployed across the special zones.
It was a platform for the total storage, download, and upload of Knowledge. It allowed for account registration, public filing, and provided scholars with academic exchange, remote processing power, and logistical coordination.
The user "sacrificed" the firmware through a ritual sequence into the Warp. The receiving cadres verified the data, sent it to the processing hub, and linked the user directly to a central logic-engine.
This spared the Magos from burning out his own neural-links. It was whispered that a Tech-Priest on a world allied with the Black Templars had attempted to jump-start an Ordinatus Engine through sheer willpower during a crisis, and his brain had liquefied in his skull.
The processing power for the net came from a planetary super-AI at the Dawnstar capital, governed by a "Sentient-Emotional logic" modeled after human consciousness (Ramesses/The Preserver).
[VERIFICATION COMPLETE. ID 106980. PASCAL. FELLOW OF THE ARMAGEDDON INSTITUTE OF ENGINEERING.]
A rift wreathed in golden light manifested in his palm. The blessing of the "Sires" from the other side of the galaxy flooded his mind. Boundless power descended, and for a heartbeat, Pascal felt omnipotent.
As his consciousness entered a state of perfect clarity, Pascal felt a surge of yearning.
Even as a high-ranking Magos, he knew that ten thousand years ago, before the "Iron Ban," Mars had permitted the use of sentient logic. The prototypes of the Castellax-pattern had been true machines.
Now, the ban on AI was a political absolute. "Ancestor-Law."
The high command rarely followed the ban themselves, but they used it as a hammer to crush any rival who attempted innovation.
Pascal shook off the alien power, refocusing on the tactical requirements of the battlefield.
Compared to the "Brute Force" generals of Terra, a professional Tech-Sage could make an AI sing.
With a few logical directives and precise data-packets, he allowed the AI to reconstruct a perfect model of the planetary surface. He then calculated the "Precision Descent" of the asteroids—utilizing gravity beams to restrict their kinetic impact while ensuring they landed exactly where needed.
The Imperium rarely did "Delicate."
When they wanted planetary-scale damage, they grabbed an asteroid with a gravity beam and used the ship's momentum to sling it like a stone.
It was effective against worlds without void-shields. It was economical. It even facilitated future industry—the crater left by the rock was the perfect foundation for a new Hive, solving both the industrial and geothermal power requirements in a single strike.
Perfection.
"I hope this era of clarity lasts," the Martian Magos muttered, reluctantly closing the rift and resuming control over the Aeronautica wings.
"I hope that one day, the true light of the Omnissiah walks among us once more."
He was referring to the AI.
Though he was no zealot, he understood the goal of his organization.
They were committed to ensuring the "Light of the Omnissiah" entered every household.
"I have a distinct feeling of impending doom."
The Emperor, currently enjoying a "retributive" feast of high-calorie snacks to make up for His millennia of starvation, looked up from his tray. He watched the two men huddled over the tactical hololith.
Unlike the flickering green displays common to the Imperium, this holographic sand-table was a masterpiece of clarity. Fed by Ramesses' Warp-link and the Azure AI system, it was rich in detail and broad in scope.
It utilized adaptive color-coding and infinite-zoom data-streams. It captured every major event occurring across the galaxy in real-time.
It reminded the Emperor of the systems aboard his flagship, the Bucephalus.
Back then, He had used His supreme psionic power to link every fleet into a singular model, allowing Him to apply His strategic genius to a whole theater of war. It was the reason He had become invincible once He reached the stars.
Is it an AI? the Emperor wondered.
The Omnissiah's works are beyond such mundane labels.
"Interlocking protocols. Fascinating," Ramesses noted, tapping the hololith.
"And you aren't giving them a Webway gate? Isn't that applying a bit too much survival pressure?"
"If he cannot open it, he dies," Arthur replied.
"That simple?"
"That simple."
"Cruel."
"It is a necessary variable," Arthur emphasized.
If Ghazghkull couldn't withstand a punch from Yarrick, he was unworthy of the Prophet's mantle. And if the Orks couldn't adapt to the Labyrinthine Dimension under threat of extinction, they were useless for the Webway project.
As the coordination of the Webway nodes approached its conclusion, Arthur finally withdrew his focus from the galactic macro-events. He looked back at Armageddon.
Life was on the line. If they couldn't breach the Webway, they would be liquidated.
Arthur engaged the vox-link.
The greenskins had best prove they could evolve.
"Because we truly are prepared to crush them."
"My Lord," Yarrick's voice crackled through the link. "The target is fifteen kilometers out. We are closing."
The jagged silhouette of the Ork fortress was visible on the horizon. After paying a staggering price in blood, the vanguard had left the ash of millions behind them to reach their objective.
The Commissar remained a beacon of vitality, standing in sharp contrast to the exhausted officers surrounding him.
"Understood, Sebastian," Arthur said, his eyes scanning the command group.
Tu'Shan glanced at Ragnar.
Both were drenched in gore.
As Chapter-tier warriors—predators who had won their station through a thousand "Waaaghs!" of their own—they had spent the campaign hunting the high-tier Nobz, neutralizing the greatest threats to the mortal lines.
"No sacrifice has been in vain," Tu'Shan rumbled.
The officers nodded, their morale surging.
Despite the Orks' insane counter-attacks, they had reached the throat of the enemy. The war was entering its final phase.
"We await Your word, My Lord," Yarrick said.
Arthur smiled.
Facing Arthur's gaze, Tu'Shan—ever the humble bridge-builder among brothers—spoke with a low rumble:
"The Space Wolves should hold the honor of leading the breach."
"Actually," Ragnar shrugged, his grin revealing his fangs.
"Our good Commissar Yarrick holds that honor. I am merely here to swing my axe at his command."
The Wolves always knew where to strike the heart.
The three giants turned their gaze upon Yarrick.
The sudden weight of their attention made the Commissar adjust his collar. It felt uncomfortably tight.
"It is my honor, My Lords. My brothers."
Yarrick straightened his coat and looked at his weary staff. "No offense intended, but I would rather strip to the waist and charge those bastards alone than issue orders to men of your stature."
Ragnar's eyebrows shot up before he erupted in a boisterous laugh. Arthur allowed a smile to reach his eyes. Even the stoic Tu'Shan looked away, failing to hide a small, honest grin.
The mortal officers laughed with them, a wave of high-spirits washing through the bunker.
"You're a good lad, Sebastian! I'm inviting you to Fenris after this is done," Ragnar barked.
"Now and for the future, we are brothers-in-arms. A decapitation strike? That's Astartes work. We're still fresh. Is your army ready?"
"They stand on the line, My Lord," Yarrick replied. "The Steel Legion, the Valkyrie wings, the Armageddon Auxilia, the Legio Asmondeus. All generals report ready. Admiral Watkins and Magos Pascal have marked the targets. The armored wedges are formed."
"We stand at one point three million effectives. Whole. Unbroken. Fueled by vengeance."
"WE WAIT ONLY FOR THE WORD!"
Arthur looked at Ragnar and Tu'Shan, then at the mortals gathered before him.
He wore a flat, calm expression that radiated a total sense of security.
"Then let us proceed."
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