The fighting died down.
From the Astartes' perspective, the biggest, most Waaaaagh mechanical construct had been destroyed, and then all the other machines had stopped moving.
That had to have been the intelligence core!
So, after a quick search around the palace, they called in the postbattle cleanup crews.
The Techmarines and the sons of Ferrus Manus were beside themselves with excitement. This was technology they had never seen before, and they scraped the place clean, collecting every last scrap.
The mortal cleanup crews from Atris's scavenging teams stared, dumbfounded, as a bunch of the Emperor's angels shamelessly-scratch that-humbled themselves to "help" collect supplies.
There was absolutely no competing with them.
Several warriors even took a fancy to the same prize and agreed to settle ownership in a duel afterward.
Naturally, Enke was among the first to charge in. After being wounded earlier, he had gone back and changed into a "custom suit of armour" designed entirely for transport. He normally wore it when moving things from the warehouse to his little workshop.
What could he do? With Terminators deployed to a battlefield like this, the probability of finishing the fight within half an hour was 99.98%. Of course he had to be ready to grab things.
"STC, STC, where are you? Omnissiah, guide me." The Techmarines wandered about, muttering like mystics and mixing in incomprehensible binary speech.
When Enke wandered beneath the sign that had remained lit all this time, he frowned slightly. Something felt wrong.
He paced back and forth around the area, trying to identify what had caught his attention.
"Rogier, come over here."
"What's up, Brother Enke?" Rogier sauntered over, followed by a pack of young wolves he had berated into sullen silence.
"What's up, Brother Enke? I was teaching the pups a few things about