The next second.
Malthus's body jolted.
His remaining human eye, only half intact, instantly widened like a saucer.
His bionic eye began flashing wildly, its red light blazing as though it were about to burn itself out.
The speaker he used to produce speech emitted a string of meaningless binary code, filled with overwhelming ecstasy and shock.
"01010111...01100001...01101110...01001010...01101001...!!!!!"
"Sacred... sacred... construction... template..." His dry voice, like metal scraping against metal, grew distorted and shrill with excitement. "A complete... complete STC!!!"
"Omnissiah above!!!"
Malthus, an old priest who had lived for more than three hundred years and had long since dismissed emotion as a flaw in logic, utterly lost his composure.
He dropped his staff and shoved aside the Skitarii beside him.
With a thud, he fell to his knees before Horus and prostrated himself.
He pressed his mechanical head hard against the cold ground, striking it with repeated clangs.
"A revelation... this is a revelation!!" With every ounce of strength he possessed, he let out a hysterical roar, raw with anguish. "The incarnation of the Omnissiah! The emissary of the Machine God! You... you have brought us... truth!!"
The Tech-Priests and Skitarii behind him were stunned to see the High Sage so utterly beside himself, so fervent, as though he had received a divine revelation. Then, as if his fervor were contagious, they knelt one after another.
"For the Machine God!"
"Truth has descended!"
Across the entire square, everyone from the Adeptus Mechanicus of Mars fell into a near-insane religious frenzy.
Oli stared blankly at it all.
If the appearance of the Adeptus Custodes had shaken his understanding of the world...
Then the collective "defection" of the Adeptus Mechanicus had utterly... destroyed it.
He knew he had lost.
Lost completely.
On this remote planet, forgotten by the Imperium, military power-the