Evan stood before the two warships, a faint sadness lingering in his eyes.
The normally bustling spaceport was now under complete lockdown. The Astartes stood in orderly ranks across the empty plaza, silent and disciplined.
Except for two big shots, supposedly above worldly concerns, who were still arguing.
Annos and Situval had been arguing for years. Annos produced several mechanical arms of different designs and insisted that Evan replace his arm with one of them. Each bore the markings of the Shadow Blades and his own personal insignia. Situval, meanwhile, had properly grown an arm using biotechnology.
It was not that such an arm could not be made, but that it took a long time to adapt. Evan's entire body had been strengthened for two hundred years by hormones secreted by his hymn gland, while this one arm belonged to a neophyte.
It was like replacing one arm of a suit of Cataphractii Terminator Armour with a Mark VII Power Armour arm. Awkward.
The two big shots had agonized over it for five years, and so had Evan.
More precisely, the two had already begun an arms race.
When Evan had brought his severed arm back, no one had dared reattach it because a Chaos Relic had cut it off. They had cremated it on the spot.
Later, however, after consulting with Annos, the Techmarine traveling with the Trade Fleet had been certain that it was Necron technology.
The Trade Fleet's Techmarine was genuinely well traveled and knowledgeable. Apart from their most closely guarded technologies, he had seen practically everything the various branches of the Adeptus Mechanicus possessed.
Annos had then begun relentlessly promoting his mechanical arms, constantly introducing new designs. What had started as a serviceable standard mechanical arm had evolved into a blade pattern with lightning-fast slashes, a