Hellforged

“ARCHMAGOS VOAR had kept the laboratory solely for his own use. Not even the other magi of the fleet had access to this part of the Antithesis. Sometimes, solitude was as essential to a tech-priest's studies as his knowledge of the Machine. Sometimes, the things he studied were best kept to his mind, the strongest and best trained, alone. The laboratory equipment dated back to the building of the Antithesis. Its surfaces were brushed steel glowing faintly over the low light. It was attended by a complement of servitors, silver-plated spidery creations with their once-human components hidden from view.
Archmagos Voar placed the wrecked necron warrior on the dissection slab in the centre of the laboratory.

An autosurgeon unit swung into place overhead, and a thin beam of white light fell onto the necron, illuminating it in all the fine detail that Voar's bionic eyes could discern.

A pair of mechadendrites uncoiled from Voar's shoulders. They were thin and delicate, quite unlike the crude articulated cables that lower-ranked tech-priests used as additional limbs. Voar's plucked a medical laser and power scalpel from their rack on the autosurgeon, a miniature field of disruptive energy flickering around the scalpel blade. Voar had been a commander of the Adeptus Mechanicus forces in the field for a long time, too long, perhaps. The purity of pursuing knowledge in this way, information for its own sake and not as a means to a military end, was like a drug that focused his mind. There was no limit to what a magos could achieve with that focus and the blessing of the Omnissiah upon him. He concentrated on the machine and slowly slit the necron's torso open, heating the alloy with the laser so that it could be slit open by the scalpel.
The vaporised metal did not smell right. It did not glow and deform in the way righteous metal should. Voar had to choke back the sense of disgust. The torso split open, and Voar carefully lifted the two halves apart. A power core lay beneath, still glowing with unholy radiation with solid black surfaces inscribed with complex patterns in place of wires and circuits. It was nothing at all like the Machine, like the perfection of form as taught by the Omnissiah. Studying it would be taxing on the soul as well as the mind. That was why Voar had to keep it here, in his sealed lab, where it could not infect less well-prepared minds.
'Archmagos,' said a vox from the bridge. It was Magos Hepsebah on board the Constant, which was flying in formation ahead of the Antithesis.
Voar withdrew the implements from the innards of the dead machine. 'I asked not to be disturbed.' 'They were waiting for us,' said Hepsebah.”

The sound of explosions, muffled by the hull, shuddered the walls of Voar's laboratory. Sample jars jangled on their shelves, and delicate components shifted across the dissection table at which Voar sat. Archmagos Voar regarded the noise with more annoyance than alarm.
The guns of the Antithesis were firing, counter-measures probably, sprays of chaff and electromagnetic pulse munitions to throw the xenos sensors off as they targeted the Mechanicus ships. If the xenos used sensors the Imperium understood, of course… if they needed to see the Mechanicus at all. Voar had laid out the components of the dissected necron warrior on the table. Arcane machines were hooked up to it by electrodes and probes. Winking lights lit the dim laboratory, and the only sounds, aside from the dull thuds of the ship's guns, were the hum of the machines and the clicking of Voar's implements as he worked. The necron's limbs had been broken apart into the many hundreds of struts and servo units that drove them, and lay in neat piles beside the torso. The torso had been carefully carved up, and split open to reveal the circuitry and components clustered around the power unit that still glowed faintly green. The warrior's head had been removed and placed to one side, but it was still connected to the torso by the articulated cable that served it like a spinal cord.
Voar was close. He knew it. The Necrons technology was a puzzle, completely unlike anything Imperial or even pre-Imperial that he had ever seen. It had required him to releam some of the most basic principles of science, of sacred cause and effect. It was unholy, for it breached the basic tenets of the Omnissiah's logic, but it was fascinating. A weaker mind than Voar's could have been seduced by it.
Voar opened up a small unit in the chest beside the power unit. He pared it open to reveal a silvery contact. With precision that a human hand could not match, Voar soldered the end of a wire to the contact. He plugged the other end of the wire into one of the laboratory machines. It was a highly sensitive scanner that could pick out all manner of exotic frequencies and radiation types. It was perhaps three thousand years old, which was how Voar knew it could be relied upon. Voar carefully watched the readout dials on the machine's brass casing as he cycled through frequencies. The necrons had to be connected to something, some central source of control or power, to account for their abilities and behaviour. When they phased out, they had to go somewhere. Their power units were not generators at all, but capacitors, taking energy from elsewhere and storing it. That power had to come from somewhere. Someone banged on the laboratory door. Voar looked up, scowling. He had left orders not to be disturbed, even if the Antithesis was about to explode. His work was more important than fighting a battle the Mechanicus could not win. It did not matter since the door was sealed with gene-locks that the crew could not access, but any distraction was unwelcome. The unwelcome guest hammered at the door again. Voar put it out of his mind and continued to search for signals going into or out of the necron. He expected it to be exotic, something the Mechanicus would never normally consider, something as alien as the rest of the heathen creature.

A terrible roar of torn metal filled the lab. The door was ripped clean off its mounts, spilling the remnants of the gene-lock onto the laboratory floor.
Magos Crystavayne and Magos Vionel walked in, Vionel's iron-shod feet stomping on the laboratory floor. The remains of the door were held in Vionel's huge metal paws.
'Archmagos,' said Crystavayne, 'we would speak with you.'
'What logic compels you to defy my orders?' blared Voar.
'Destruction!' bellowed Vionel, throwing the door to the floor. 'The removal of our knowledge from the Omnissiah's work! All we have done, all we ever will do, will be undone at the hands
of the alien, and you hide here in the dark!'

'And what do you know of it?' retorted Voar. 'What cares the xenos whether I command or not? What string of logic will bring us victory against a foe that exceeds us in every way?'

'Your duty,' said Crystavayne, 'is to lead us in the pursuit of knowledge, whatever form it may take and whatever obstacle may stand in our way, even to the point of destruction.'

'But that destruction,' said Voar, 'has not reached us. There has been no suggestion to me that we will be die here.'

'We cannot win this battle, archmagos! You said so yourself!'

'The battle, magos, not the war.'

Vionel stomped forwards, and a floodlight emerged from one shoulder cowling, which was still scarred from the necron fire. The acid yellow light glared off the machines and dissected parts on the laboratory table. 'And this will win us that war?'
'The chances are small,' said Voar, 'but they exist. And they exceed any increase in the likelihood of our survival with me at the helm.'
'Where is your sense of duty?' asked Crystavayne. 'Vionel nearly died on the Ferrous. Hepsebah is directing the fire of the Constant as we speak. Khrul gave his life!'
'Duty,' said Voar, 'is secondary to logic. Understanding that is the difference between my rank and yours.'
Crystavayne emitted a curse in clicking binary. 'You are a disgrace to the Adeptus Mechanicus,' he said.
Voar's hand went to the ornate pistol he wore at his waist beneath his robes. 'If you intend to challenge me for command, magos, then out with it and let us settle this.'

Vionel stepped between Voar and Crystavayne. His rivet gun cycled, lumps of metal thunking into its chambers. 'Archmagos or not,' he said, 'if you abandon us in this battle, we will take over your office. And if you resist, then I shall balance your equation myself.'
One of the machines chirped shrilly. Vionel turned his floodlight on it. A green light was winking in its brass casing.
'It's found the frequency,' said Voar.
“The frequency?' asked Crystavayne.
'The necron warriors are acting on remote orders. They are only semi-autonomous, and the commands must come from elsewhere. They need a signal to give them coordinates so they can teleport out when deactivated, too. My studies have suggested that both functions originate at the same location.' 'Where?' asked Vionel, his rivet gun still trained on Voar. Voar took the power scalpel and activated the tiny power field around its blade. He fiddled with a couple of the controls on the machine and read off the numbers from its various dials and readouts. Then he moved aside one of the necron's dissected arms and scratched a pair of intersecting lines into the surface of the table. He carved a few figures beside it, frequencies and wavelengths, as he read them off.

'It can be triangulated,' said Voar. 'It's barely perceptible. Either this unit is too damaged to pick it up properly or their technology is far more sensitive than ours. It is a miracle we can hear it at all.'

Vionel's rivet gun dropped. 'Where?' he repeated. 'Where is it coming from?'
Voar took a data-slate and keyed in the coordinates he had just generated. 'Take this to navigation,' he said, 'and find out. I must finish up here.' For a moment, the two magi did not move. Then Vionel took the data-slate from Voar, and they turned to leave the laboratory.
Voar unplugged the probe from the necron's innards and picked up its skull. He turned it over in his hands, looking into its eyes. 'Let us see how you fight,' he said, 'when you are blind.'