A Fine Asset

The top floor of the Governor's Spire, Strategic Command Room.

The air purification system was running at full power, trying to draw out the smell of burning and blood that filled the room.

But the stench of Promethium Fuel mixed with charred viscera had already seeped into the luxurious velvet tapestries and the ancient Mahogany Conference Table.

Alicia van Valantius was not sitting on the Runic Throne, the symbol of supreme power, as she usually did.

She stood before the holographic strategic map, the Power Sword in her hand still unsheathed.

The energy field that disintegrated whatever the blade struck had been deactivated.

A faint blue glow remained, along with a few drops of black blood belonging to the Rebel assassins.

Half an hour earlier.

An ugly purge had just taken place here.

A few corpses were being dragged out by Servitors, like dead dogs.

They were infiltrators from a collateral branch of the family, planted in the guard, who had tried to seize the Governor's crown on this turbulent night.

"Clean it up," Alicia ordered.

Captain of the Guard Lilith silently handed her a pristine handkerchief.

Alicia took it and carefully wiped the ornate hilt of her sword.

But her gaze never left the despairing map before her.

Vast expanses of crimson spread across it like a plague.

They marked areas that had fallen or gone silent.

The markers for Granaries Four and Nine had already gone dark, fading into lifeless gray.

Yet amid this sea of gray and crimson, one stubborn green light remained.

It blinked at a steady frequency.

Granary Seven.

The Ministry of the Interior's automatic accounting Servitor clicked its gears and spat out a long strip of Parchment.

The figures on it were marked in bright red ink.

They were shocking, yet almost impossible to believe.

Lilith analyzed the data wearily.

"Without Granary Seven, our Imperial Tithe shortfall is forty-five percent. That means the Imperial Fleet won't come to help us. They'll only come to carry out a 'purge for Imperial Tithe default.'"

"Worse... the Ordo could rule that the Governor's family is incompetent and strip you of your rule outright."

Alicia took the strip of Parchment. Her gaze quickly landed on the figures for Granary Seven.

Output: 120% above quota.

Fuel reserves: Sufficient.

Refugees sheltered: 103,000 (with no large-scale riots).

"But with Granary Seven included, the shortfall will drop to ten percent." A glimmer flashed in Alicia's purple eyes.

"I can make up that amount with the 'Holy Terra Bonds' accumulated by generations of my family, along with a few antiques."

That little Scribe, Rovi Dann, had actually pulled it off.

He had not only withstood the tide of plague, but also conjured enough life-saving resources out of mud and corpses.

"He's no longer expendable." Alicia dropped the bloodstained handkerchief to the ground. "He's an asset. A fine asset."

"Governor, we have a problem." Lilith glanced at the red alarm flashing on the communications array.

"The Adeptus Mechanicus 'Tech-Reclaim Squad' from Mars has entered the atmosphere. Their Augur Array has locked onto Granary Seven. The energy readings there are... very bad."

Alicia knew exactly what those readings meant.

According to the Imperial Cult Codex, what Rovi had done there was enough to get him burned alive ten times over.

According to the Imperial Armoury Codex of the Adeptus Mechanicus, he could be made into a hundred Servitors.

"Those red-robed Mechanicus types have noses sharper than Mutant Rats." Alicia sneered and turned toward the communications console. "They want to burn down my Granary in the name of 'Tech-Heresy'? Burn down my Imperial Tithe?"

She pulled a seal bearing the emblem of a Rogue Trader from her collar and stamped it hard onto an electronic document she had prepared in advance.

"By the ancient privileges granted to House Valantius by Holy Terra, send a Class One notice to the Tech-Reclaim Squad."

Alicia's gaze sharpened like a blade.

"That is my 'Chartered Experimental Zone.' It is a 'Sacred Improvement' made for the Emperor's table."

"If the Magos in charge dares to blow up my Granary because a few screws don't conform to the doctrine, I'll file a complaint with the Ministry of the Interior and say the Adeptus Mechanicus caused the Imperial Tithe to go unpaid."

In this cold universe, only two things could make those stubborn mechanics back down:

A lost STC template;

Or political responsibility too great for them to bear.

The outer plaza of Granary Seven.

The sky was a sickly leaden gray.

Acid rain mixed with volcanic ash, pattering against the ground.

A roar tore through the clouds.

An Arx-class Heavy Transport painted Mars red, like a steel eagle,

descended slowly into the center of the plaza, its Anti-gravity Engine giving off a characteristic low-frequency tremor.

The blast from its engines sent the makeshift tents around it flying and knocked several frail laborers into the mud.

Rovi stood in the shadow of the Wall of Gluttony and straightened his rain-soaked collar.

He could feel the fragment of Nurgle's Amulet, kept close against his body as an early-warning device, growing slightly warm.

It wasn't because there was a plague nearby.

It was because the ship before him carried something extraordinarily dangerous, something capable of destroying everything.

"They're here," Rovi murmured.

Beside him stood Priest Alpha, his red robes drenched by the rain and making him look rather disheveled.

But his Cybernetic Eye was unusually bright, and several Mechanical Tentacles twitched uneasily in the air.

"Logical projection: survival probability, 34%." The Priest's synthetic voice crackled with a hint of static.

"The other party is Magos Magellan, a senior inspector from the Mars Forge Hall. His devotion to doctrine is matched only by his thirst for lubricating oil."

The hatch opened slowly with a hiss of escaping hydraulics.

Two columns of Faith Militant strode out, wearing heavy carapace armor and carrying lascarbines.

Their steps were perfectly synchronized.

Each footfall sank to the same depth in the mud.

Beneath their red cloaks were mechanical limbs, extensively modified.

Behind their emotionless visors lay only the stillness of death, poised to carry out a "purge" order at any moment.

Magos Magellan was the last to emerge.

He was barely recognizable as human.

Where his legs should have been, there was a floating anti-gravity chassis instead;

his torso bristled with data ports and auxiliary mechadendrites;

his face had no skin at all, only a cold metal mask set with optical sensors of various sizes.

Like the compound eyes of an insect, they glimmered a ghostly green.

Three Servo-skulls circled behind his head, letting out sharp buzzes.

The Magos ignored Rovi and Alpha, who had bowed in greeting.

All his sensors immediately locked onto the Wall of Gluttony stretching across the defensive line.

The metal wall, cobbled together from Harvester armor plates, was now undergoing some kind of horrifying "biological activity."

Its surface was coated in a layer of biomaterial resembling a cuticle.

Half of an Ogre's limb, not yet fully digested, dangled from one of the massive metal barbs.

A low, writhing sound came from inside the wall, as though countless mouths were chewing.

Highly acidic digestive fluids seeped from it and flowed along the base of the wall, sending up wisps of white smoke.

"Beep! Beep!"

The Servo-skulls behind Magos Magellan suddenly blared an alarm.

Red laser beams swept frantically over the wall.

"Non-standard biomechanical reaction detected!"

"Residual Warp heat detected!"

"Warning! Warning! Abominable Intelligence suspected! Tech-Heresy suspected!"

The atmosphere froze in an instant.

The Faith Militant raised their lasguns in perfect unison.

Their dark muzzles instantly locked onto Rovi and Alpha's brows.

The air filled with the acrid smell of accumulating ozone.

It was the telltale sign of las weapons charging.

Rovi's heartbeat remained fairly steady.

Or rather, he had forced it to stay steady.

He didn't move, didn't even blink.

He only tilted his head slightly and gave Alpha a look.

This was the "script" they had rehearsed countless times in the basement.

Priest Alpha glided one step forward.

He did not beg in the human Low Gothic tongue.

Instead, his vox grille burst into a rapid, shrill string of binary code, like a data machine dialing a number.

"01001000... Praise the Machine God... data upload... request connection..."

This was the "sacred language" of the Adeptus Mechanicus.

A form of communication that only Priests could understand.

Magos Magellan paused.

His many optical sensors focused on Alpha all at once.

Then a thick Data Probe extended from beneath his robes and plugged directly into the port in Alpha's chest.

The data exchange took place in milliseconds.

From Rovi's perspective, it was a mere instant of silence.

But in the minds of the two Priests, torrents of data surged wildly.

Alpha made no attempt to conceal the wall's "living properties."

There was no hiding them.

Too many witnesses had seen it.

Following Rovi's instructions, he explained it as an "ancient, sacred, specialized protocol designed to adapt to extreme environments."

"This is not mutation, Magos."

Once the data transfer was complete, Alpha spoke in a deep synthetic voice.

His tone brimmed with fervent academic reverence.

"We discovered a fragment of data while clearing the ancient archive beneath the Granary."

"It pointed to an STC variant designated 'S-99.'"

At the word "STC," the cold metal mask of Magos Magellan seemed to tremble.

For the Adeptus Mechanicus, the search for lost STC technology from the Golden Age was a sacred mission more important than life itself.

"Are you trying to tell me that this man-eating wall is a product of Golden Age human ingenuity?"

"It was designed to adapt to the extreme levels of biomatter contamination in the lower levels of the Hive City." Rovi spoke up at the opportune moment.

He held a Parchment blueprint in both hands. Its cover had yellowed with age.

He had spent the night forging it, combining his past life's knowledge of mechanical engineering with Alpha's reverse-engineering measurements.

He stepped forward respectfully, his eyes clear and devout.

There was no trace of the cold Advisor who, not long ago, had directed people to use corpses as fuel.

"Please take a look, Magos. This environment is riddled with corrosive plagues. Ordinary metal rusts away completely in three days."

"To keep the Harvesters running and prevent the Emperor's Granary from being contaminated, we had no choice but to put this ancient technology to use."

Rovi opened the blueprint.

He pointed to the intricate diagrams inside.

"This mechanical structure was designed to 'consume' surrounding organic matter and convert it into repair materials and anti-corrosion coatings."

"It is a sacred design that 'fights poison with poison,' the Machine Spirit's ultimate adaptation to harsh environments."

Rovi's expression was full of reverence for technology.

It was as if he were truly safeguarding a sacred legacy.

"We are merely humble Maintainers, serving the Machine Spirit in strict accordance with the blueprints."

"As for why it became so active, perhaps there are simply too many heretics here, and the Machine Spirit activated deeper defensive protocols to protect us."

His explanation was airtight, flawless in its logic.

It cleverly rebranded "Chaos corruption" as "adaptive biomatter repair."

In the forty-first millennium, an age when technology had been lost and superstition reigned,

many advanced technologies were already as difficult to explain as magic.