Towering pyramids stood across Ascraeus Planum. The Schiaparelli Repository was Mars's greatest treasury of knowledge, recording the wisdom of every age since the birth of science.
At the pyramid's summit, the Guardian Magos gazed at the bizarre machines appearing on the distant horizon.
They resembled enormous mechanical spiders, fashioned from grotesque metal, flesh, and something the Magos could not comprehend.
They were not Machine Spirits, nor anything resembling a program, not even Abomination Intelligence.
"Blasphemous creations!" the Guardian Magos shouted in disgust.
"Whatever they are, the Dusk Raiders will hold the line." Nathaniel Garro, former captain of the Death Guard's 7th Great Company, walked to his side.
"Just as we drove them back last time."
"You need only back up all the knowledge as quickly as possible."
"I reviewed the latest backup speed. It will take five days, twelve hours, and thirty-three minutes," the Guardian Magos replied.
"We will hold the position." With that, Nathaniel descended through the pyramid's narrow passageways.
His gaze swept over the fallen Adeptus Mechanicus army before locking onto the Kaelbor-Hal disciple clad in a heavy mesh robe.
Sota-Nul's optical organs detected Nathaniel's presence as well.
Within the shadow cast by her heavy hood, her head, wrapped in gilded circuitry, lifted.
The exposed, drooping human chin hung from the metal skull like an attachment. The muscles of her dead-flesh face had long since atrophied, sagging loosely from an abandoned visage.
Her crooked mouth connected to rippling pipes, and her metal lungs exhaled a cold, serpent-like hiss through the air grilles.
"Nathaniel Garro, your time—and this pyramid's—has come."
She immediately spat out seventy-two digits of Abominable Intelligence code. A new generation of War Engines forged from the crystallized ancient knowledge of the Moravec Vault began to move.
Massive Stalkers fired rows of laser beams into the Dusk