Adeptus Mechanicus by Rob Sanders

Author:Rob Sanders
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-05-25T10:06:33+00:00

1101

Omnid Torquora disconnected from phylactic communion. From the data-tethered screams and the suffering.

The archmagos explorator sat in his interface throne aboard the Maestrale, surrounded by the tech-priests of the diagnostiquorum. The throne accommodated the bulk of Torquora’s augmented frame and weaponry, and was set in a nest of cables that ran between the archmagos, his tech-priests and everything else in the Mechanicus fleet.

A fleet that had arrived before Engra Myrmidex. That had remained hidden and on station, just outside of the Velchanos system. Observing. Recording. Monitoring. Phylactically experiencing the doom of the Mechanicus mission – the Fabricator Locum’s part of the mission.

Omnid Torquora had not revealed himself as Engra Myrmidex tested the Geller Device or pressed on predictably with his assault on Velchanos Magna. He had not intervened when Myrmidex sent his skitarii legions into a battle they could not hope to win. He stayed silent as thousands of skitarii soldiers fought and died on the forge world’s surface for the greed of a single construct. He remained unmoved as the Fabricator Locum’s fleet was caught between the Dark Mechanicum and the arriving Iron Warriors. As the Ark Mechanicus Opus Machina plummeted to its doom.

Hard data. Torquora had watched and waited as the data he required to succeed in his mission flooded in. The corrupt magi and servants of ruin thought that they prevailed. That they had beaten the Machine God’s servants. That they had won – but they had not. The battle had barely begun. Omnid Torquora had come to understand – through Engra Myrmidex’s lust for power and the sacrifice of thousands of the Machine God’s skitarii soldiers – the true nature of his enemy. He had learned, through the loss of others, how to win. It was cold but it was necessary.

<Phylactic streams from the surface?> Omnid Torquora put to the tech-priests of his diagnostiquorum.

<Dead, my lord.>

<Have we catalogued the data from all test-engagements?> Torquora asked.

<Including the effects of enemy weaponry, their favoured tactics and the success ratios of strategies employed by our skitarii soldiers against them. Yes, my lord. All data-locked.>

<What about astrotelepathic returns from Satzica Secundus?> Torquora asked.

<None, archmagos. All contact with the forge world is lost.>

<Summon my Lords Militant,> the archmagos explorator ordered. <The ranking skitarii alpha. Tech-priests of the Ordo Reductor and Auxilia Myrmidon. The magi cybernetica. My lords of the Centurio Ordinatus. The Legio Grand Master of our Collegia Titanicus detachments. The tech-priest captain of the Maestrale. Have them all assemble in the tactical oratorium.>

<Yes, archmagos. Is it time?>

<The time for gathering data is at an end,> Omnid Torquora told the diagnostiquorum. <Now is the time for war.>

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