Chapter 74: Lin!
Lin had always known he could not beat the Deputy Forge Director in a straight data-combat.
The Deputy Forge Director had spoken truly — even among the Magi, there were those who stood above and those who fell below. Though all shared the title of Magos, the disciplines they had chosen to master quietly sorted them into ranks.
The saying went: the wealthy relied on technology, the poor on mutation. If your opponent was a Master Forger-class Magos who had mastered the craft of construction, there was no question — he would have an entire army of Frateris Templar he had armed and equipped himself. A bio-Magos, by contrast, was almost certainly some poor wretch who had clawed his way to the rank of Magos by doing odd jobs for every corner of the Imperium.
Life-extension surgeries. Servitor production. Biological modifications for noble private armies... Through avenues like these, Lin had completed his initial accumulation. Only after he had registered as a bio-Magos did he finally have the breathing room to begin exploring other fields of knowledge.
Some people are born in Rome. As a high-ranking Magos of the Dominus faction, the Deputy Forge Director's contempt for Lin was entirely to be expected.
From his exquisitely engineered augmetics to his high-output logic cores, every aspect of the Deputy Forge Director — a Magos purpose-built for war — surpassed Lin in every conceivable way. The cost of his body alone rivalled that of a destroyer-class warship. On what grounds was Lin supposed to challenge that?
In truth, the gap in augmetics aside, because Lin refused to allow any mechanical modification to his own brain, he was inherently at a disadvantage in any internal Mechanicus confrontation.
This had forced him to resort to certain extreme measures to achieve his goals... such as the suicidal charge from moments before.
But fortunately, everything had gone perfectly smoothly. Lin's objective had been achieved the very instant the data-intrusion began.
The grenade at his hip detonated. A small flash of fire and a concussive shockwave later, a fine dust spread through the entire space.
The Deputy Forge Director was surprised at how small the explosion had been — and then he quickly identified exactly what that dust was.
"Psyker ash?"
Though an uncontrolled psyker was a tremendous hazard, a 'controlled' psyker was a treasure from head to toe.
Even after death and cremation, a measure of psychic power lingered within their ashes. The remains of high-ranking psykers were commonly processed on Forge Worlds into munitions — missiles and the like — designed to unleash horrific psychic phenomena upon detonation.
But the ash Lin had used was of no great quality. It did detonate, yes, yet it had failed to trigger any psychic phenomenon whatsoever. The Deputy Forge Director stared at Lin in bewilderment, unable to fathom what he was attempting.
But perhaps this was the end of everything...
The Deputy Forge Director did not rush to order the Death-Bound Warriors to deliver the killing blow. Instead, he activated the power conduit circuits running through his mechanical frame.
These circuits were the devices through which the tech-priests conducted electrical current within their bodies — but in emergencies, they could also force an ultra-high-voltage discharge through the circuits to blast away any enemy who had closed to melee range.
Earlier, the situation had been too urgent for him to attempt it. But now that Lin was little more than a guttering candle in the wind, he saw no reason to let the Death-Bound Warriors riddle both of them with shots. His plan was to use the power conduit circuits to throw Lin clear first, then order the Death-Bound Warriors to execute him.
But as he issued the command to his reactor to channel energy into the conduit circuits, the energy bottlenecked at the circuit entry points, unable to flow smoothly through.
"What is happening?"
The Deputy Forge Director was baffled. The Holy Blood of the Omnissiah had never circulated so sluggishly within him. He could even feel the energy subtly resisting his commands within the existing laws of physics — something that simply should not be possible under the physical laws of realspace.
Why had he suddenly become unable to move?
"Still haven't worked it out?" Lin hauled his broken body upright and swayed to his feet atop the Deputy Forge Director. "It's the psyker ash."
Psychic attacks in their energetic form were, at their core, brief distortions of realspace's physical laws wrought through the power of the Warp — which is to say, the manifestation of a psychic attack was always accompanied by an alteration of those physical laws.
The machinery humanity had created relied upon the physical laws of realspace to function. If those laws were altered, mere inoperability was the lightest possible consequence.
The Deputy Forge Director naturally understood this principle, but...
"Your psyker ash didn't even trigger a Warp phenomenon," the Deputy Forge Director said, abandoning his attempts to drive the conduit circuits. He turned instead to issuing orders to the Death-Bound Warriors. "On what basis can it interfere with my frame?"
"The smallest malfunction can paralyse an entire god-engine," Lin replied. "So why would Warp-induced disturbances not affect your frame?"
"Because a machine-spirit consecrated by the Omnissiah provides protection—"
"—!" The Deputy Forge Director, who had reflexively answered Lin's question, snapped his mouth shut.
The signals he was sending to the Death-Bound Warriors had grown sluggish. The warriors seemed swathed in a dense blanket of static interference that his commands could not penetrate. But now, having understood at last what was truly happening, he was no longer surprised.
The machine-spirit!
Lin, who had planned this from the very beginning, had killed his machine-spirit!
The low-grade psyker ash from the detonation had not managed to trigger a Warp phenomenon — but it had partially altered the local laws of physics nonetheless.
The earlier data-intrusion had killed his machine-spirit, stripping his frame of the Omnissiah's protection. Now, even this mild distortion of physical law was sufficient to render him immobile — because he no longer had a machine-spirit to shield him.
The Deputy Forge Director's heart sank to its lowest point. He fixed his gaze on Lin, his logic filled entirely with incomprehension.
"Why?" he demanded. "Your frame's machine-spirit is dead as well. Why are you not affected by the psyker ash?"
Lin's earlier scheming could be attributed to a logical trap — but this single point the Deputy Forge Director could not understand.
He had already confirmed during his counter-intrusion that Lin's machine-spirit was likewise nowhere to be found within his frame. His own observations had shown that Lin bore no arcane defensive circuits designed to ward against Warp-based psychic interference.
If his own body had been disrupted by the psyker ash, Lin should have suffered the same fate. What gave Lin the right to move freely while he could not?
"Simple enough."
Lin shrugged and wrenched his Solar-Powered Warblade free from the Death-Bound Warrior he had cut down earlier.
"I don't believe in gods."
The machine-spirit was foundational code to the Adeptus Mechanicus. In a universe infested with daemons and monsters, the machine-spirit — which shielded machinery from malfunctioning under all manner of adverse conditions — had planted its boot firmly into the back of what ought to have been an organisation far more materialist, kicking it headlong into the deep pit of religion.
But Lin had no need of a machine-spirit. His own innate immunity to Warp influence was more than sufficient to keep the machinery within his body running normally.
"Fraud! Heretic! Apostate who defiles the sacred machine-spirit! A Blank monster wearing the skin of a Magos!"
Watching Lin drag his Solar-Powered Warblade toward him, the Deputy Forge Director — who now understood precisely what fate awaited him — erupted in a torrent of curses.
He had already worked out why his counter-intrusion had found no machine-spirit within Lin. It wasn't that the machine-spirit had died — there had simply never been one to begin with.
Though he couldn't fathom how Lin's machinery could function without a machine-spirit, the Warp's power clearly only acted upon machines whose machine-spirits had been destroyed. Someone who had never possessed one in the first place was entirely immune to its effects.
This Lin was like a Blank — no phenomenon of any kind could take hold on him.
But a Blank could not become a tech-priest, and Lin bore none of the oppressive aura characteristic of a true Blank. So how had he managed it?
With death bearing down on him, a blasphemous thought nonetheless surfaced in the Deputy Forge Director's mind.
Could it be that the might of the machine did not depend upon the Omnissiah to function?
Lin cared nothing for whatever this Frateris Templar Magos was thinking. The battle's ultimate victor, he levelled the warblade at the immobilised Deputy Forge Director and raised it high.
"You're welcome to curse me all you like. But no matter how much you curse, your Omnissiah cannot save you."
He brought the warblade down coldly, exercising the victor's right to act as executioner.
He bisected the Deputy Forge Director at the waist, then lifted the upper half of his body and set it on a flat surface across from him.
The Deputy Forge Director's brain had not yet ceased functioning. His optical implants still flickered with a penetrating red glow.
"Even if you kill me, heretic — this war will not end..."
The Deputy Forge Director's voice remained razor-sharp. "Your act of colluding with Imperial forces to occupy Cath Maximus violates the Olympia Accords signed between the Imperium and Mars. Even if Cath Maximus was abandoned by us willingly, it remains a Forge World under the dominion of the Adeptus Mechanicus."
"Only the Mechanicus has the right to determine the fate of this world. Lin! Your betrayal of the Adeptus Mechanicus will inevitably face judgment from Mars!"
"Don't trouble yourself over that," Lin replied. "The Imperial fleet floating up above doesn't even know yet that they've been colluding with me."
The Deputy Forge Director faltered. "What does that mean?"
He wanted to reason it through, but losing half his components and his reactor had already made his thoughts sluggish and dull. Lin paid it no mind. He could see the elevator was nearly at the top, and could already faintly hear the sounds of Astartes clashing with Frateris Templar above. Unhurried, he used his one remaining hand to swap the magazine on his Plasma Pistol for one loaded with photon-hydrogen fuel.
He seated the magazine, then levelled the pistol at the Deputy Forge Director's skull.
"Save that question for your machine-god — if he doesn't decide to eat your soul as a snack."
The instant the elevator reached the uppermost level of the underground factory, Lin pulled the trigger.
Azure fire bloomed from the muzzle. A searing bolt of plasma punched clean through the Deputy Forge Director's brow, blowing his half-mechanised skull to fragments.
The Frateris Templar Magos's brain was reduced to countless tiny shards of metal in an instant. The optical implants that had still been flickering with red light froze into lightless black voids.
Everyone locked in combat fell silent at once. The gunfire that had not ceased for nearly an entire day suffered a small, strange pause.
Perfect timing, Lin thought. His execution of the Deputy Forge Director should have been witnessed by everyone present.
He raised his head and looked around, finding every person in the vicinity staring at him in disbelief — the only difference being that one side's eyes held astonishment and elation, while the other held only shock.
The Frateris Templar watched in stunned silence as Lin — dragging his broken frame — put a shot through the skull of their commander. They watched in stunned silence as Lin stamped on the Deputy Forge Director's shattered head. They watched in stunned silence as Lin ground the remnants of that skull to powder beneath his boot.
No other Magos was present to command them now, and not one among them had the courage to raise a weapon at Lin.
Even after the surgeries that had excised their excess emotions, the morale of the Frateris Templar had plunged to absolute zero.
No announcement was needed. In that moment, every single person present knew the outcome of this battle — of this entire war.
The victor was
Lin!
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