Axion looked at Calanthus. Calanthus stared at Faral. The Storm Troopers looked back and forth between the High Inquisitor and the Suzerain.
Silence descended upon the corridor, thick and heavy as the incense of a cathedral.
"We merely did what was required of us," Faral stated, offering no further defense.
Inquisition operations were invariably baptized in blood; it was simply that, this time, the red tithe had not been drawn from traitors, xenos, or daemons. The warm lifeblood and broken remains of the Emperor's faithful littered the passageway. The last time such a "misunderstanding" had occurred, an entire Inquisition fleet and its garrison had been nearly annihilated by an Astartes Legion.
For Faral, the situation had become exceptionally thorny. This ancient construct clearly possessed a pedigree far more complex than a standard renegade Chapter. It involved a Primarch, the Lord Regent himself. His mission, as originally conceived, was dead.
"You have no authority to act against an ancient construct," Calanthus said, his voice cold and ringing within his helm. "I shall report this reckless transgression to Lord Guilliman personally, along with the tally of the needless losses your hasty decision has inflicted upon the Imperium, Inquisitor."
Hearing Calanthus's ultimatum, Faral could only signal his men to stand down. He gestured for the survivors to bypass the target and continue their sweep. Calanthus's stance was immovable.
"Once this mission is concluded, I will submit myself to the proper Inquisitorial proceedings for review," Faral added, offering a diplomatic concession.
Recognizing the olive branch, Calanthus let the matter rest. To attempt to forcibly detain an Invictarus Suzerain aboard an Ultramarines cruiser was a folly Faral was not prepared to commit. Should the Ultramarines and the Inquisition open fire on one another here, the daemons and traitors within the Warp would howl with laughter.
"The matter of the Grey Knights is paramount," Faral said, regaining his composure. "Since you insist, the burden of monitoring this ancient construct falls entirely upon you."
With a sharp snap of his robes, Faral turned and led the remaining Storm Troopers away. The corpses of the faithful would be gathered by servitors later. For now, the High Inquisitor was already nursing a headache over the impending casualty reports and mission debriefings.
The two had not bothered to lower their voices in Axion's presence. Having overheard everything, Axion did not press Calanthus for further satisfaction.
"Perhaps we should accelerate our departure," Axion remarked. "Our operational efficiency is abysmal. In a state of total war, such sluggishness would yield catastrophic results. Only by meeting this 'Gene-father' of yours can I acquire the necessary data. I am curious to see what his objectives entail."
Calanthus remained silent. The situation was spiraling into a web of complexities. Proceeding by the book was becoming a liability; the sudden appearance of the Space Hulk earlier was far too convenient. It suggested that certain powers were already aware of Axion and sought to prevent his audience with the Great Primarch.
To ensure their mission's success, Calanthus exercised his authority to requisition a fresh, Imperial-standard cruiser from the Sector Munitorum. Their original vessel, battered and scarred from continuous combat, was ordered to remain at a nearby spaceport for a full refit, a process estimated to take at least six months.
In non-emergency cycles, the Tech-Priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus moved with glacial deliberation. It was not uncommon for a single sacred bolt to take three days to tighten.
When the replacement vessel arrived, a skeleton crew of mortals remained behind to oversee the repairs, while the rest of the complement was transferred to the new ship. It was a "ghost ship" in the literal sense; the Sector Munitorum had provided only the barest minimum of personnel required to keep the engines running. The Imperium possessed vast numbers of hulls, but the trained Navis Imperialis personnel to crew them were always in short supply.
The crew members, who had harbored fantasies of a long-overdue furlough, found themselves ushered onto the new deck with weary resignation. In the Imperial Navy, leave was a myth. Most who served spent four-fifths of their lives encased in iron hulls. Those who met with "accidents" simply returned their souls to the Golden Throne ahead of schedule. Whether there was rest to be found beside the Throne was a question for the Ecclesiarchy.
Fortunately, due to the logistics of transferring tons of munitions, equipment, and supplies, they were granted a two-day window at the local starport.
An Imperial cruiser was essentially a mini-Hive city in flight. Its facilities were comprehensive, and compared to the toxic atmosphere and grinding poverty of a Hive's lower levels, life aboard was a luxury, especially on a fresh ship. Everything was pristine, including the Machine Spirit.
Upon boarding, the Tech-Priests immediately commenced the activation rituals, chanting binharic prayers to soothe the vessel's spirit. The Machine Spirit hummed in response, much to the delight of the red-robed Magi.
Axion watched the "shamanic" Tech-Priests in their state of ritualized mania and decided to interface with the ship's master control system himself.
He was unimpressed.
This is a 'new' ship? he wondered. Where did all this redundant data come from?
He looked at the architecture of the Imperial control systems. It was as if the ship had left the forge with a massive hoard of cached digital refuse. As the lights across the ship flickered momentarily, the cruiser, newly christened the Mission, effectively lost its Machine Spirit.
To prevent the accumulation of future "garbage" that would degrade processing efficiency, Axion thoughtfully installed a small sub-routine to periodically scrub the cache of every cogitator on the vessel. In doing so, he effectively sterilized the ship, ensuring that no new "Machine Spirit" could ever spontaneously evolve within its systems again.
Within hours, the ship was filled with the shrill, panicked wails of Tech-Priests claiming the Machine Spirit had been murdered. They demanded the vessel be sent to the breakers immediately. Calanthus, however, had no time for the incomprehensible logic of the "Cog-heads." So long as the ship functioned, it was battle-ready. Astartes generally put little stock in Machine Spirits, save for the Techmarines.
The two-day window passed swiftly. The Inquisition Black Ship did not depart; Faral had decided to accompany Calanthus to the audience with the Lord Regent, intending to resolve the "Axion Problem" personally. It was a move that blended surveillance with assistance. Through his own channels, Faral had learned of the anomalies encountered on their journey. For the Ordo Malleus and the Grey Knights, hunting daemons was their holy mandate; if following Axion meant a higher probability of encountering the Warp's filth, they would gladly fight their way to Ultramar.
During the refit, the Primaris warriors and Hadrian, who had accompanied Calanthus in the ground assault, underwent memory-erasure with the aid of the Grey Knights and Inquisitorial psykers. Save for two unfortunate souls who forgot "slightly more" than intended, the process was a success.
Axion used the downtime to upgrade his Aegis Protector. The starport at Scintilla was a hub of industry, and materials were plentiful. He was able to use the shipyard's processing centers for smelting and purification, which was far more efficient than hand-fabricating components.
The Tech-Priests, having heard whispers of the Protector's lethality, spent the two days oscillating between mourning the "dead" Machine Spirit and hovering around Axion like vultures, hoping to glean some scrap of his forbidden lore. Axion ignored them. The Magi stared at his handiwork in utter bewilderment; their confusion was much like Axion's when watching an Ork "hand-weld" a shoota.
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