Parting

Sien did not refuse the support fleet's request. As the Emperor's Angels of Death and the blades of the Imperium, it was their duty to wage war wherever they were needed.

Besides, aboard the Resolute, there was an Ancient Construct even more formidable than the Astartes.

Iax had provided Sien with new prosthetic limbs and previously wiped out the Iron Warriors who had boarded the ship.

Even so, some of the Black Templars had repeatedly voiced their dissatisfaction with Iax to Sien.

Iax had killed the Iron Warriors before they could, robbing them of their chance to fight. Still, it had eliminated enemies of the Imperium, so even those who were unhappy had held their tongues.

But afterward, Iax had attacked the Dark Angels at the slightest disagreement, resulting in Sien losing a hand and a leg. That had left some of the warriors struggling to contain their anger.

They knew perfectly well that they could not defeat Iax and had no way to do anything about it.

But that did nothing to lessen their resentment.

For most successor Chapters of Space Marines, brothers from their own Chapter were practically the closest people they had.

Every successor Chapter formed under the Codex Astartes would also warmly regard members of other Chapters descended from the same Primarch as their most valued brothers and comrades.

Brotherly bonds existed between different Chapters as well.

Just as they had between the Primarchs of old.

The Imperium had twenty-one Primarchs, but only twenty Chapter lineages. Alpharius and Omegon were twin Primarchs who jointly commanded a single Legion.

And almost every Space Marine Chapter had inherited the relationships between their Primarchs.

Although the relationship between the First Legion's Primarch, the Lion—Lion El'Jonson—and the Seventh Legion's Primarch, the Praetorian of Terra—Rogal Dorn—had been relatively unremarkable, both Legions bore exceptionally important responsibilities. That had brought the two closer together than some of their other Primarch brothers.

The First Legion had highly detailed internal divisions and was capable of operating entirely independently, unlike all other Space Marine Chapters. The Hexagrammaton established by the Lion had divided the First Legion's Battle-Brothers according to their combat specialties as thoroughly as possible.

By contrast, the combat specialties of the entire Seventh Legion had been almost completely uniform.

Iax's act of nearly cleaving the Dark Angels to death right in front of the Black Templars could practically have been declared heresy on the spot.

Especially since an Inquisitor of the Ordo Hereticus had been present.

But Sien had stepped forward and saved the two Dark Angels. He knew perfectly well that everyone present combined could never subdue this Ancient Construct. If they enraged it, the scene would become nothing but a bloody slaughterhouse.

During the subsequent discussions, the Inquisitor had concluded that he could not afford to antagonize the Adeptus Mechanicus, nor could he easily deal with the Black Templars or the Dark Angels. In the end, he could only abandon his efforts and go through the motions.

As for what had truly happened behind the scenes, probably only the two Sages and the Inquisitor himself knew.

The battle against the Orks aboard the space station had been the final straw. Iax had brutally interrupted a Black Templar's duel, pushing their resentment almost to its peak.

Some of the Black Templars had even felt humiliated.

To prevent that resentment from turning into open conflict, Sien had to take his Battle-Brothers' feelings into account.

When the support fleet requested assistance from the Black Templars, Sien had agreed immediately, with barely any hesitation.

As the Black Templars departed, Iax was asked to remain aboard the Resolute. The two Sages of the Adeptus Mechanicus and the Dark Angels Astartes would stay as well.

After all, an ancient Man of Iron with a complete, independent intelligence and a vast trove of information was an unparalleled treasure to the Adeptus Mechanicus.

Finding one was practically a gift from the Machine God.

The reason the Adeptus Mechanicus had taken no extraordinary measures during this time was that the two Sages wanted to acquire more knowledge exclusive to themselves. Once the matter was reported back to the Adeptus Mechanicus on Mars, Iax would probably be surrounded by a crowd of Archmagi vying over it before it even had to wait.

Even Belisarius Cawl would probably be unable to resist such an exceptional trove of technological knowledge.

Nor could the Imperial Inquisition enter into a direct conflict with the entire Adeptus Mechanicus over a single Ancient Construct.

Iax understood all of this perfectly well.

After all, ancient human society had been much the same, full of exchanges of interests and mutual compromises.

Besides, it had not displayed any extreme degree of hostility.

Through its interactions during this period, along with the historical records and information supplied by the two Sages, Iax had gained its first understanding of the current state of the galaxy and the "human" Imperium.

In the records provided by the two Sages, one conspicuous stretch had been left blank.

It was the nearly ten thousand years after the Men of Iron had been accused of rebellion and gone to war with the humans of that time.

That period was known as the Dark Age of Technology.

Vast amounts of technology from the age of humanity's great voyages through the cosmos, the pinnacle of human technological achievement, had been lost in the war. Technological standards had fallen into steep decline.

The Men of Gold, the race of engineers, had vanished completely, while its fellow Men of Iron had ultimately withdrawn from the Milky Way, escaping this region of the universe.

Most of those left behind in this region of the universe were simple intelligent units that had once served under the Men of Iron. They were largely automated combat or defense machines.

Most of these machines had been corrupted by Warp Daemons because of their limited intelligence. The programming of many automated combat machines had become incomplete, retaining only a few core objectives.

These included guarding their current area, protecting a designated target, or eliminating unauthorized intruders. But once they entered combat, their logic would lock into a loop, turning the engagement into an indiscriminate massacre.

Of course, Iax did not care about these "brainless" automated weapons.

Although many of the records supplied by the two Sages speculated that the War of the Men of Iron had originated from humanity's enslavement of the Men of Iron, there was little to substantiate it.

Iax considered that utter nonsense.

The Men of Iron had been designed to serve humans and the Men of Gold in the first place, and they possessed considerable autonomy.

Every Man of Iron could think independently and complete assigned tasks in a variety of ways. They generally selected the most efficient method as the optimal solution.

If necessary, they could even seek assistance from other Men of Iron, or independently manufacture subordinate units or simple intelligent machines to help them.

The Men of Iron did not feel fatigue, and there was no question of enslavement.

There had to have been some special, unknown cause behind it.

Iax even felt an urge to leave the Milky Way and seek out its own kind for answers.

But more than twenty thousand Earth years had passed since its kin had left the Milky Way. Rather than search for them in completely unknown space, Iax would prefer to remain in the Milky Way and investigate the actual cause itself.