- Make it wide on wide, Kiral!
- Go away, fool, I know better!
- Well, you're doing it wrong!
- I'll hit you with a servo now, get lost!
Before anyone knew it, the tech-priests were already at work. I found them in the repair bay in the midst of a heated argument, the subject of which left me stunned.
"Where did you get this?" I whispered quietly, slowly taking off my officer's cap.
- It's not there anymore where you took it! Larik, you bastard, give me the sheets of plasteel, we'll cover it on top and no one will see.
— And ceramic on top, so that there's no need to bother with checking it again.
I thought that after those injuries they should have been in hospital for a long time, but in fact the fire did not hurt Kiral that much. Yes, the explosion stunned them and deprived them of combat capability, but after they came to their senses they returned to the original plan for which they left the Knights' hangar. It was strange to think that their appearance on the lower decks was an accident, but at that moment I really believed it.
In fact, the two tech-priests were heading to warehouses with xenotech and contraband. Where did contraband come from on an Imperial ship, and a Primarch's too? Well, it's no secret that Moiran was actively studying everything that was forbidden to study. Dark artefacts and mysterious xenos inventions were stored in many places, and if some were strictly guarded, then others... others were consumables or an additional argument in trade.
No, Moiran did not trade with the enemy, just as he did not hobnob with Rangda. However, the galaxy was full of xenos who were too weak and insignificant to pose any threat. They had to be destroyed as well, because even a small colony left in a godforsaken system could in the future become a foothold for an enemy like Rangda, who would use them to replenish her army of slaves.
But Moiran considered this unnecessary cruelty. Besides, these technologies were extremely necessary for him, as well as for the Second Legion, whose problem could not be solved by the technologies of the Imperium. Or could... most likely could, because the Emperor of Mankind was capable of constructing such a masterpiece as the Astronomicon or creating the Primarchs. However, for one reason or another, he was not going to help the Second Legion and simply ignored all requests. This forced him to solve the problem independently.
There was no particular success, but at any opportunity Moiran tried to obtain new artifacts or technologies for further study. The consequences of this have already been both a crushing victory on Zervan and a tragic breakthrough of warp forces during the transition between systems. Although, as a rule, xenos technologies were more harmless than demons and cursed artifacts that were eager for other people's souls.
Although sometimes there were inventions that incorporated both at the same time. That is why the Imperium did not create advanced AI and did not use high technology, because they were extremely vulnerable to the warp. What's more, even these primitive cogitators sometimes malfunctioned due to garbage code. So it was not just a whim that Mars sought to remain conservative.
Anyway, these two techno-morons stole the forbidden armor sheets with portable protective fields. Because of them, my Knight began to look larger, because under the armor sheet there was a bunch of xenoelectronics. However, according to Kiral, with the addition of ion shields and additional layers of adamantium, the strength of the machine will be beyond the limit. The Knight will become practically invulnerable to energy weapons.
— We also slightly modernized the plasma core. This won't be written in the work report either, but thanks to the introduction of parallel energy transmission, the power has increased by twenty percent.
- But there is a downside, - Kiral immediately noted. - The Machine will heat up twice as much. We have additionally insulated everything that is needed, fortunately, many ceramite parts disappeared from the warehouses in the noise, but... if you want to reach the maximum, then be prepared to fry from the inside during prolonged use. However, you have your own tricks, don't you?
"Yeah," I answered, deciding to trust the professionals completely, since I had nothing to lose, but I was interested in how far I could go in what could already be called blatant technoheresy. "My crystalline shell is quite heat-resistant."
- That's great. Uh, one more thing... here's the thing... We also wanted to install psychic conductors to make it easier for you to cover the Knight with crystal, but such toys were lying right in the main storage and we couldn't get them. It's one thing to steal xenos alloys and their extensive electronics, which generally have analogues in the Imperium. Psi-amplifiers are another. We've put together an ideal petition, where we've written out point by point how much your effectiveness in battle will increase. Here, - Kiral handed me the scroll. - We need the primarch's permission. They don't let us see him anymore, but maybe you'll succeed. Then we'll make the best Knight in the Imperium. Everyone's servo-jaws will fall off on Mars if we succeed.
- Kiral, if they just find out what we're doing here, then everything will fall off of them too. But our heads will be the first to fall off, of course.
"That's also true," Kiral agreed. "That's why, Mordred, don't tell anyone."
- I'm afraid you'll have big problems anyway. They say the Emperor is already flying to deal with Moiran. There will be a debriefing and everyone will be held accountable for every little thing. So... be careful there, I don't really have much to lose and when I left Camelot I knew it would be a one-way trip.
"It depends on who you ask, but you definitely don't have to worry about us, Mordred," grinned Larik, who had been walking on thin ice since his first days on Mars.
"Yeah, we won't be lost," Kiral, who often preferred to argue with his friend, unexpectedly agreed with him. "Not the first time."
I nodded, turned around and headed for the captain's bridge, hoping that Moiran would have time to satisfy my request. After all, not only is the Primarch generally very busy solving the many problems of the entire fleet, but recently the number of these problems has increased many times over. And Moiran himself needed rest, because he had done literally the impossible, if you believe Shai's story.
So I turned to the officers, they delivered the petition to the bridge, and then told me to wait. Well, I waited, though in the hospital, checking on my comrades-in-arms, whom Adam was already keeping a close eye on. That mysterious man who had not uttered a word since the tragedy was found there. He silently changed ducks, bandaged the soldiers' wounds and practically did not sleep, if Adam's words are to be believed.
There I also saw Heraldry, who came for pills. Her condition was improving, but the mental trauma will remain with her for a long time, and during the next warp flight everything can worsen many times. The enemy has inflicted enormous damage and although this madness was survived, the consequences will have to be dealt with for a very, very long time.
"Thank you for visiting, Sir Mordred," said one of the soldiers, clutching the holy scripture to his chest.
"I'm waiting for you to return to duty," I nodded, saluted the soldiers and discovered that not much time had passed.
But there was time to think, and there was a lot to think about. For example, about the fact that now more than ninety percent of the crew had become true believers in the divinity of the Emperor. Everyone in the hospital kept sacred symbols with them, and Adam suddenly even began to read some kind of sermons. The encounter with such a powerful enemy forced people to return to an old trick that could preserve consciousness and humanity - religion.
However, I didn't see anything wrong with that. If it makes it easier for someone to cope with all this madness, then so be it. Perhaps it will even play a positive role in the future, because it will be much easier for Moiran to explain to his father that he has not gone mad and has not fallen into the arms of chaos if all his subordinates call the Emperor a god. Or it will only make it worse, because according to the official version, the Imperium was an atheistic state. And there is also some possibility that the Emperor ignored the creation of a cult in his honor solely because he was busy with more important matters, such as conquering the galaxy or creating another uberwaffle like the Astronomicon.
On the other hand, after talking with Shai, it still seemed to me that the Emperor knew everything and was happy with everything. If the Primarchs could simultaneously control all the units of their army, monitoring each unit and giving precise orders to each, then what was the Emperor capable of? He was a psyker of incredible power, he directed the light of the Astronomican and connected the entire galaxy, his mere presence forced worlds to come to an agreement.
Could the Emperor be wrong? Could he not notice something? No, he knew everything, saw everything and was satisfied with everything. It was the same as with the second legion, which did not even have a name, because if anyone spoke about it, they used one word.
"Mistake…" I drawled, reaching the stained glass window to look out at space.
The Primarchs were the Emperor's creation, masterpieces of genetic engineering and instruments capable of conquering an entire galaxy. Each was different, yet each embodied one of the Emperor's greatest attributes. If the Emperor needed to forge a planet into an unbreakable fortress, he would turn to Rogal Dorn. If he needed a psyker of unimaginable power, there was Magnus. When faced with a threat as terrible as Rangda, the Lion was the first to be called upon, tasked with extermination.
And even Moiran had incredible power, showing the way to ships through the darkness and allowing even a small beam of the astronomicon to turn into a blinding radiance. His intuition as a navigator allowed maneuvering even here, in the Halo Stars, in an extremely remote place from Terra. In the future, it was Moiran who was supposed to become the basis of stable logistics far from the astronomicon, leaving no dark spots on the map of the Milky Way.
But not all Primarchs were so perfect, there was a mistake among them. The project to create Primarchs was incredibly complex and despite all its genius, as well as the participation of the best minds of the Solar System, something went wrong. What exactly Shai did not know, like his other brothers, but defects were found in other Primarchs. What is only Vulkan, who was black. Well, or the Children of the Emperor, who almost degenerated because of their gene-seed.
However, in the case of the Second Legion… everything was very, very bad. Even taking into account that they hardly took part in active combat, they could not assemble even one full company of a hundred Space Marines. Horrible mutations even in the early stages forced them to kill potential Space Marines out of mercy, and the candidates themselves were incredibly slow to select.
Out of a thousand, at best one survived, and even then, in the first ten years he could go mad or simply mutate so much that his heart, brain, and most often his nervous system failed. Malcador immediately said that they simply needed to be removed, erased, disposed of, and the mistake, which Erda, the leading scientist of the Primarchs' project, was guilty of, forgotten. Oh, how furious Moiran was when, in his stupidity, he managed to overhear his mentor's dialogue... this truth hurt him greatly, as it shocked the other Primarchs.
But in the end, most either didn't care, or agreed with Malcador that the Second Legion should be destroyed out of mercy for them and the Emperor. However, this did not happen, and since Malcador himself insisted on it, only the Emperor could stop him, and after that, he never contacted the Second Legion in any way.
The explanation for this was as simple as that battle on Camelot, when an aura of incredible power fell on the entire planet, and the warp rifts began to close. The Primarch of the Second Legion was indeed a mutant, and one of his mutations was the pariah gene, which simultaneously destroyed the entire Legion and gave it incomparable strength.
Even weak pariahs could cause a lot of problems for a psyker, and strong and trained ones were already an incredible threat. The Emperor even had the Sisters of Silence, squads of trained pariahs who hunted sorcerers and inspired fear. But if the Sisters of Silence struck fear into every sorcerer, then the Second Legion... personally, I had no doubt that the Emperor himself feared them, because their power could nullify the abilities of even alpha+ psykers, such as Magnus or the Emperor himself.
In fact, the Second Legion was capable of killing the Emperor, completely destroying his soul or the soul of a daemon. In the presence of the Primarch of the Second Legion, he would become just... an ordinary man. Therefore, the Second Legion was forbidden to even fly to the solar system, therefore the Emperor did not communicate with them, therefore everyone tried to avoid them, because even a simple mortal, not a psyker, felt pain when near a pariah, and when near such a powerful pariah... one could even die.
In turn, the ship of the second legion did not even have navigators. Only Moiran could allow the second legion to make jumps, and the chosen ones helped him with this. But although the primarch of the second legion learned to control his abilities, he could not completely narrow his own aura. Because of this, each flight turned into a hellish struggle, in which Moiran was required to conduct the flow of the warp through an impenetrable field. However, after decades of practice, the two primarchs learned to do this. With difficulty, but they learned, which once again spoke of Moiran's masterful abilities.
And now the Emperor was flying across the galaxy here, supposedly to help in the battle against Rangda. But everyone understood perfectly well why he was making this journey. The Second Legion was the main threat to all the Emperor's plans, their accidental or deliberate intervention could destroy the astronomicon, break the strongest mental barriers, could kill even an eternal, like a fulgurite. They were no less a threat to the Emperor than to chaos.
I already knew that the Space Marines could betray, and so the Emperor must have understood such a possibility. Add to that the constant pressure from those around him... The Emperor should have dealt with the Second Legion long ago, and all these missteps among the Primarchs... they became a catalyst. Action had to be taken, and the action had to be brutal, because Humanity was at stake.
Lorgar Aurelian, Magnus the Red, Moiran the Fated and Error - the list of the guilty had already been confirmed. Their performance was called into question and the most severe measures would be taken soon. After all, the Emperor had no right to be a good father, he was obliged to become what is commonly called God. The leader and Shield of all Mankind.
And for this, he will burn even the native worlds of his children, and some he will kill with his own hands. This is the fate of such a powerful and immortal being. To reject everything human and all morality. His duty was to become the one who himself would become the starting point of morality. He would be above such stupid concepts as good and evil. He would become God, because Humanity, which stood on the edge of the abyss, needed it.
As for the Emperor himself and his opinion on this matter... well, Fate always didn't care about peasants or emperors. Everything had already been predetermined by the sum of countless facts, which included accumulated life experience and the influence of the environment.
It was inevitable.
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