Energy

Having finished speaking, Iax ended the communication. The Raven before Vashul fluttered its wings again and flew a circuit around the great hall.

It finally settled on top of a Servo-skull.

Though the Raven's lightweight alloy body was not heavy, it still had some mass. The Servo-skull had to increase its power output to remain aloft.

Curious, Vashul beckoned the Servo-skull to fly over to him.

The Raven did not leave. It simply stood atop the skull like a metal sculpture.

Vashul examined this biomimetic machine closely, his lips brimming with praise for the Machine God.

"What an exquisite mechanical masterpiece. If I could take it apart and study it carefully, my mechanical skills would surely advance even further."

Although Vashul spoke of dismantling it for study, he could hardly put that desire into practice right away.

After all, according to Iax, Vashul had to bring this Raven with him to obtain access.

Never mind whether those access permissions would remain intact after disassembly.

Vashul was not even confident he could put it back together once he had taken it apart.

The design and manufacturing style of these machines was entirely different from that of the Imperium and the modern Adeptus Mechanicus. They were more intricate, more precise, and more efficient.

Combined with the metallic material whose composition remained unknown no matter how it was scanned, and the intelligent network built by machine intelligence, these creations might be far more responsive than even the combat machines treasured by the Imperium or the Adeptus Mechanicus.

Vashul even found himself thinking of the sacred relics he had brought to this planet.

They were two ancient weapons that had passed inspection by the Adeptus Mechanicus, though their usefulness was limited. They were also clearly two weapon components removed from the same machine. Supposedly, each could destroy a Chimera tank in a single shot, but Vashul had never actually used either weapon.

Clearly, the technical data for these two items had already been fully deciphered, reducing them to a pair of obsolete prototypes. Otherwise, they could never have ended up in Vashul's hands.

Even so, Vashul had once carefully dismantled both weapons and learned a great deal about energy amplification and focusing.

Vashul was even imagining the sheer scale of the Men of Iron fleet Iax had mentioned earlier, and what a wondrous sight its mechanical designs and operating systems must have been.

With the Servo-skull in tow, Vashul walked onto the great hall's terrace. Looking at the towering cannon nearby, its barrel pointed straight at the sky, he let out another strange laugh.

"Now I have an ancient sacred relic of my own. Even if I only have permission to use it, nothing stops me from studying it closely and learning its technology without taking it apart. Truly, a blessing from the Omnissiah."

Naturally, Iax had no idea what trouble his simple authorization might cause. To him, there was nothing remarkable about creations from his own era. Compared with the technology of the present age, their technology ought to have been old and "backward."

After all, the books Vashul had just given him contained no historical material or records of development from the golden age or the later period known as the Dark Age of Technology.

They did not even contain technical descriptions, only lengthy accounts of the Imperium's progress and a jumble of battle stories.

Those strange technological terms made it even harder for Iax to understand exactly which technologies had supposedly advanced.

If Iax had witnessed these technologies firsthand, he might have been left so speechless that he would have taken off his mechanical head and kicked it around like a ball.

The actual technologies behind those strange terms were thousands of years older than even the golden age in which Iax had been built.

They were practically ancient.

Fortunately, Iax knew none of this, nor did he currently have anywhere to learn it.

At present, as Iax wandered around the Hyperion-class battleship, one problem was giving him a headache. The energy used by this vessel did not seem compatible with him.

This enormous vessel was still powered by nuclear energy, whereas Iax's energy core required quantum energy to recharge.

In the golden age of the Men of Iron, quantum energy had long since become universal. It was more efficient and could be transmitted remotely through quantum channels, even over extreme distances.

Within the Men of Iron fleet, the mothership effectively served as a super-scale remote power supply hub.

Every embarked craft and troop could draw unlimited energy remotely.

Most of its embarked craft did not even have power systems. All their energy depended on the mothership's remote charging technology.

Originally, Iax was also supposed to have a matching integrated mothership to house his intelligent core module. However, because he needed to be mobile and even command on-site, he had been fitted with independent energy storage as well.

This design allowed Iax, in an emergency, to leave the ship or mobile command fortress and enter another backup host unit to continue his mission.

Whether it was his indestructible body, the Particle Disruption Field, his short-range Warp capability, or his few pieces of combat equipment—

All of these had been designed to give Iax the means to defend himself and escape, not to fight in person.

Had the initial battle between the Adeptus Mechanicus's Skitarii and the Plague Marines not led Iax to judge their threat level too low to quantify, he would never have taken the risk of entering combat himself.

Although the Maintenance Center was largely destroyed and the warehouse held only mechanical parts in a dire state of upkeep, none of that prevented Iax, with his vast store of template data, from assembling some combat machines to assist him.

However, the results of his battlefield assessment had led Iax to abandon that idea. The enemy was too weak to warrant wasting time rebuilding them.

Yet the Warp, the most widespread and severe threat in this world, posed almost no danger to a soulless mechanical being like Iax. This was especially true after Khorne's crude, shallow Warp scrapcode had failed to infiltrate him, prompting Iax to evolve his programming and establish an entirely new data firewall.

Even the little electronic contamination that remained had been completely blocked.

"Sien, does this ship have a machining center or a repair center?"

Sien, who had been accompanying Iax as he wandered around the ship, suddenly stopped at the question.

"Isn't a repair center standard equipment for maintaining the ship and carrying out emergency repairs when we're away from port?"

"Good. Take me to the repair center. I need to manufacture a few things to solve my charging problem."

Sien was not skilled in mechanical design or manufacturing. That was a Techmarine's work. To keep this unpredictable element from causing trouble, Sien had to arrange for at least one battle-brother to accompany the ancient mechanical construct wherever he wandered.

While the other warriors carried out their daily training, Sien followed him personally to prevent any potential "threat" from Iax.