V3 Chapter 120: What I Have Brought Back Is a Miracle, and Hope!
At Duvette's question, Belisarius Cawl lowered his head, looking at this "collaborator" he hadn't seen in so long. He knew exactly what Duvette meant, of course, and a faint whirring sound rose from somewhere within his massive mechanical body.
"Over the past year, I've completed analysis of nearly half that STC's contents, and transferred the original core intact aboard the Zar-Quaesitor." Cawl answered evenly. "The production templates, cognitive architecture, and control systems related to autonomous armed constructs have all completed verification. The remaining contents are still being analysed."
The moment Guilliman heard the word "STC," his expression turned grave at once.
He remembered now — right after he'd first woken, Duvette and Cawl had reported something to him: they'd found, in a distant region of the stars, a complete STC capable of producing Men of Iron.
That relic, one capable of driving the entire Machine Cult into a frenzy, had once been corrupted by Chaos. Duvette had ultimately purified it with his own power, and Cawl had taken charge of the research that followed.
"So, this — this is the reason you only invited the two of us aboard?" Guilliman looked at Cawl. "You know full well what you've touched here."
"Honoured son of the Omnissiah, I never intended to violate the ancient edict." Cawl lowered his body slightly. "I have only put a technology that ought to serve mankind back to use, and cleared away every factor that once caused it to spiral out of control."
Guilliman's guard didn't ease in the slightest. He knew perfectly well that Cawl's understanding of "the edict" tended to differ from everyone else's, more often than not.
This Archmagos could produce tens of thousands of technical definitions to prove whatever research he was conducting still fell within permitted bounds.
Cawl offered no further explanation. He turned his massive mechanical body to one side, gesturing for the two of them to follow. Guilliman hesitated a moment, then finally started forward, Duvette falling in step beside him.
Their escorts were left behind at the first security gate; only the three of them continued on, deeper into the Ark Mechanicus.
Cawl sent commands through the cognitive network to the systems along their route, and gate after gate, sealed for years, opened before them, closing again once the three of them had passed through.
They passed through research zones piled high with mechanical wreckage, and through several factories still in full operation.
Great numbers of servitors and tech-priests worked among the pipework and mechanical arms, pausing the moment they saw Cawl pass, offering him binaric prayers of salute.
Guilliman stayed silent the whole way. He could already tell Cawl was leading them toward the very deepest heart of the Zar-Quaesitor.
Many of these passages didn't even appear on the structural schematics the Ark Mechanicus had provided to the Custodians.
After one final lift platform, they arrived at an extremely wide metal gallery.
At the far end of the gallery stood a colossal gate, its surface carved over with Machine Cult prayers and warning glyphs marking it as sealed.
Cawl sent a command into the independent Cogitator beside the gate, and the heavy mechanism began sliding open to either side. No new passage lay beyond it — only a metal platform, extending out into darkness.
Duvette followed Cawl out onto the platform. No light showed anywhere around them; the gallery behind was the only source left, illuminating only a small patch near the platform itself.
"What is this place?" Duvette asked.
His voice carried out fast into the distance, echoing several times over before it finally faded away. From the sheer length of the echo alone, Duvette could tell this space was far larger than any ordinary hangar.
Guilliman walked slowly to the platform's edge, frowning as he looked around. A Primarch's eyesight let him just barely make out the neat, ordered shapes in the distance, and a vast structure stretching away both above and below.
The metal gate behind them began to close in the same moment, the light from the gallery shrinking fast, until it was cut off entirely by the heavy armour plating.
Darkness swallowed the whole platform, leaving only the faint tremors carrying up from somewhere deep within the Ark Mechanicus.
Cawl raised the Axe of the Omnissiah in his hand, and brought its haft down hard against the metal floor.
The impact rang out fast across the entire space, and the Archmagos followed it with a declaration, delivered in a high, ringing binaric tongue.
"Praise the Omnissiah! Praise the God of All Machines! I have brought back miracle and hope!"
The first white light kindled somewhere in the distance, then a second, then a third. More and more lighting fixtures came online, the light spreading fast up and down along the curved walls in both directions.
Within a few short seconds, the entire space stood fully lit.
Duvette narrowed his eyes on instinct, and only once they'd adjusted to the light did he finally make out exactly where he was standing.
It was a cylindrical storage bay, several kilometres across. Looking up from the platform, no ceiling was visible at all; looking down showed only lights shrinking away into the depths.
The cylinder's inner wall was covered edge to edge with neatly arranged maintenance bays, every level linked by a ring-shaped transport rail.
Great numbers of mechanical arms sat idle to either side of the bays, power lines and data ports connected directly into the constructs housed within each one.
Duvette fixed his gaze on the bay nearest to him. A humanoid machine, nearly three metres tall, stood on a fixed platform, its exterior covered in heavy armour, weapon systems mounted across its chest and limbs, none of them yet active.
Its head hung low, the sensor devices in its eyes entirely dark. Hundreds of thousands of bays surrounded it, every single one housing a construct of nearly identical form.
"This is..."
Duvette's eyes went wide. His strategic map was already reading through the units appearing before him, fast.
Dense clusters of markers filled his entire field of view in an instant, the System itself beginning to merge the sheer volume of duplicate targets into a single combined display.
"Men of Iron." Guilliman gave the answer for him. "All of these are Men of Iron?"
"Yes, my lord." Cawl came up beside the two of them, raising a mechanical limb to indicate the entire storage bay. "There are three hundred and fifty thousand autonomous armed constructs here in total. They've been fully armed and completed their final systems check. They're ready for war, immediately, on order."
Guilliman spun around sharply. "Have you lost your mind, Cawl?!"
The Primarch's roar echoed through the storage bay again and again, the mechanical structures near the platform shuddering faintly under it.
Guilliman gestured toward the sleeping constructs around them, undisguised fury plain in his eyes now.
"Do you have any idea what happens if Men of Iron with their own self-awareness ever slip out of control? Humanity was nearly destroyed outright by the very machines it built! And now you've got three hundred and fifty thousand of them hidden away inside your own Ark!"
"Great son of the Omnissiah, I ask that you remain calm." Cawl said. "They possess no true self-awareness. They cannot contemplate the meaning of their own existence."
Cawl called up a spread of holographic data at once, a vast, intricate cognitive architecture appearing before the three of them.
"I have gelded their independent will, retaining only the limited cognitive capacity combat requires. They can analyse a battlefield, formulate tactics within the scope of a given mission, and adapt to an enemy's movements, but they cannot set a goal of their own."
"They cannot alter their own base code, cannot manufacture others of their kind, and cannot copy their consciousness into any other machine. After every engagement, every temporary memory is purged, and the construct is forced back into dormancy, to await the next authorisation."
Cawl closed the holographic display, and went on. "I have also implanted a Mind Lock within their cognitive core. The highest commands given by a human cannot be refused. They will only obey. They will never again betray their own creators."
"No, Cawl. I refuse to accept them."
Guilliman cut the Archmagos's explanation off outright. He walked to the platform's edge, looking out at the machine legion stretching away, layer after layer, into the distance, the brief shock on his face having settled fully into wariness.
"Destroy these constructs immediately. Then destroy the Men of Iron STC after them. The Imperium can't survive a second Machine Rebellion. I will not gamble the entire future of humanity on your word alone."
"My lord, this technology could change the Imperium's present situation entirely." Cawl moved forward some distance. "These constructs could take the place of mortal soldiers on the battlefields with the highest casualty rates, and could build an army capable of meeting large-scale war in the shortest possible time."
"Don't make me give the order myself."
Guilliman turned back to Cawl, and the danger in his tone alone was enough to stop the Archmagos in his tracks. One of the Primarch's hands had already settled near the hilt of the Emperor's Sword, and the air around him seemed to grow heavy with his fury.
Cawl fell silent, faint flickers of light from streams of data flashing continually through his mechanical frame. He calculated the likely outcome of pressing his argument further, and in the end, moved no closer.
"Maybe we can trust Cawl. For now, at least."
Duvette's voice broke the standoff between them.
"Duvette, you—" Guilliman turned to look at him, the anger in his eyes not yet spent.
Duvette raised his head and met the Imperial Regent's gaze. The full weight of a Primarch's presence pressed down on him, but it didn't move him back so much as half a step.
"I can confirm the Men of Iron STC has already passed through my own [Purification]." Duvette said. "You saw with your own eyes what I did to the Conqueror. You know exactly what that power does."
He raised a hand, gesturing to the sleeping machine legion around them.
"Everything built from a purified template inherits that same effect. None of these constructs can be tainted by Chaos. No power out of the Warp can twist their cognition."
Guilliman's expression remained grave, but he didn't interrupt.
"The risk from Chaos and the Warp has already been ruled out. What's left is purely a technical risk." Duvette went on. "I'm willing to trust Archmagos Cawl, for now, but he has to prove these things are genuinely under control."
"Seal the Men of Iron STC. Stop all further production immediately. We can select a portion of these constructs and put them into a real engagement, and confirm whether they actually obey orders, and whether this so-called Mind Lock genuinely holds up."
Duvette paused, looking around at the maintenance bays surrounding them.
"If they show even the slightest behaviour beyond our control, we destroy the whole project then and there. If they pass the test, the Imperium gains an army that never tires, and never fears death."
Guilliman studied Duvette for a long while. He knew perfectly well Duvette would never joke about a question of Chaos taint, and the man's proven success in purifying the Conqueror was more than enough to back up his words.
Still, the Warp had never been the only source of a Machine Rebellion.
Guilliman shifted his gaze to Cawl, then swept it across the constructs still lying dormant around them. Bright light fell across row upon row of metal bodies; three hundred and fifty thousand war machines, and not a single sound from any of them.
"Cawl. Tell me." Guilliman finally spoke. "How long did it take to produce these constructs?"
"Three months, my lord." Cawl answered honestly. "That includes rebuilding the production line, verifying the control systems, installing weapons, and completing every inspection."
Guilliman drew a deep breath, and turned back toward the metal gate they'd come through.
"Every construct remains dormant. Seal the Men of Iron STC immediately. All production and testing stops until I've reached a decision." He didn't look back. "I need time to think this through."
The heavy gate opened slowly before Guilliman, the gallery's light falling once more across his power armour. The Primarch strode into the passage quickly, leaving only Duvette and Cawl standing at the centre of the platform.
Duvette watched Guilliman's retreating back, then shrugged at the Archmagos beside him.
"That's as far as I can talk him around." he said. "We both know this is humanity's deepest scar. No one's going to easily accept an STC that can churn out three hundred and fifty thousand Men of Iron in three months."
"The actual production time was under a month." Cawl corrected him, evenly. "The three months included rebuilding the production facilities and the preliminary verification. Manufacturing and arming all three hundred and fifty thousand constructs took only twenty-seven days."
The expression on Duvette's face froze for a moment, then his mouth twisted. He looked once more at the constructs filling the entire cylindrical space, the markers on his strategic map still stretching on with no end in sight.
Twenty-seven days. Three hundred and fifty thousand fully armed autonomous combat constructs.
All it would take was the Zar-Quaesitor parking in low orbit over a single world and dropping every one of these things onto it — the sheer numbers alone would be enough to drown most enemy defensive lines. So long as raw materials and production capacity allowed, another three hundred and fifty thousand would be ready the month after that.
"This has stopped being a surprise a while back, Cawl."
Duvette turned and started walking in the direction Guilliman had gone, his voice carrying slowly out across the storage bay.
"This is just plain terrifying."
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