Chapter 407: Repairing the Knight Suits
Magos Ferrocore stepped out of the elevator and stood at the overlook, gazing up at the Reaver Titan. Dozens of mechanical arms extended slowly toward it, as if trying to caress its armour from a distance.
Kian watched from further off and caught something genuinely gentle in that gesture, the way a person might touch something they truly loved. This terrifying mass of mechanical worm-flesh, in this one moment before the Reaver Titan, transformed into the single gentlest thing in the room.
Kian would've bet anything that if the Titan could speak and told the Magos to throw himself into the molten river, he'd do it without a second's hesitation.
After a moment spent caressing the air near the Titan's hull, Ferrocore turned and walked off, all twelve mechanical legs clicking against the deck plating as he headed toward some inner chamber.
"I must now preside over the litanies to the divine machine. No one is to disturb me. Tech-priest Boothe, all coordination with the Inquisitor's retainer is now your full responsibility. I've elevated your clearance to acting Magos rank. You may draw on any resources or authority a Magos would hold."
Kian hadn't even gotten a full sentence in before the mechanical worm-mass vanished into the depths of the mechanical corridors.
Boothe turned to Kian. "My apologies, Count. Ever since the Titan arrived on our world, Magos Ferrocore has not gone a single day without conducting the litanies. The glory the war engine brings is simply too great. For fifty years now, he's wished he could dissolve himself into components and fuse with it directly. I now hold temporary Magos authority and can oversee your Knight suit repairs personally. Please, follow me, we'll discuss the details in private."
Boothe led Kian into a room filled with large display screens. He connected his mechadendrite to one of them and projected the damage assessment Kian had given him earlier across the wall.
"My lord, you currently have one Cerastus, one Preceptor, three additional Cerastus-class units, and eight squire-suits in your possession. My recommendation is to begin with the eight squire-suits and outfit them with additional weaponry. They're smaller, just over six meters, and relatively straightforward to repair. This Temple also operates extensive heavy weapons manufacturing, allowing us to fit them with the maximum permissible weapons loadout. Most importantly, finding pilots for squire-suits is far less demanding than for the larger Knights. Once repaired, we could field them almost immediately and start building up combat capacity right away."
Kian nodded in agreement and told him to continue.
"Once all eight squire-suits are complete, we'll move to the Cerastus first. Its damage is the lightest of the larger Knights, and its command throne is intact, so it should take the least time to restore. After that, we'll attempt the Preceptor. It's your strongest combat asset by far, and repairing it would give you a genuine strategic-level force multiplier. Finally, we'll focus our remaining resources on the other three Cerastus units."
With the repair plan laid out, Boothe turned to another question.
"Now, my lord, regarding the refit for the eight squire-suits, what's your preference? Melee-focused, defense-focused, or ranged firepower?"
Kian said, "Keep the bare minimum melee capability. Everything else goes into ranged firepower."
Boothe nodded. "Then we'll retain the Hellstrike chainsword in the right hand, add a twin-linked plasma cannon to the left, mount a heavy bolter on the chest, and fit two large-caliber rotary las-cannons to the head."
That was a fairly standard, well-rounded loadout. The two head-mounted las-cannons could lay down a sweeping field of laser fire, ideal for wiping out enemy infantry formations. The heavy bolter on the chest offered excellent armour penetration for taking down light vehicles. The twin plasma cannon on the left arm handled heavier armoured targets. Together, that covered everything from light infantry through heavy armour, a genuinely solid refit.
Kian gave the go-ahead and prepared to call in his people to bring the Knight suits down. Before that, though, he wanted to nail down the terms one more time.
"Once this world's greenskin crisis is over, I'm taking my Knight suits and leaving. I'll need enough ammunition and spare parts from you to keep them running for thirty years."
Magos Boothe nodded. "We provide maintenance, you provide protection. A fair and reasonable arrangement."
Kian went on. "My Knight suits don't take orders from the militant chain of command, and they won't be committed to any suicide missions. You bring me a task, I'll evaluate it. If it's a death sentence, I'm turning it down."
A flicker of hesitation crossed Boothe's eyes, then he nodded. "Acceptable. But I have one additional condition. Your Knight suits must live or die alongside the Titan Temple itself. You may refuse any suicide task we assign, but you must hold this Temple. If the Temple is ever on the verge of falling, you and your Knights must stand at its gates and fight to the very last."
That gave Kian pause. But then he thought about it, all these Knight suits getting repaired, outfitted with heavy ranged weaponry, this was an enormous amount of wealth being poured his way. Investment always carried risk. Nobody got to walk away with a guaranteed profit and zero exposure, that just wasn't how it worked. The Temple was pouring out this many resources to secure his firepower. If he wouldn't give them command authority and wouldn't even commit to defending the place in a real crisis, that started to look like he was just here to freeload, and that wasn't a good look.
Besides, the whole reason he'd come to this planet with Trasolh in the first place was to help clear out the greenskin infestation entirely, and that goal wasn't in conflict with defending the Titan Temple anyway. If the Temple fell, the world itself was more or less finished regardless.
"Fine. If it truly comes down to a crisis, I'll stand my Knights at the Temple gates and hold the line until the very end."
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