The sun here was different, and he hated it. Charr had been to three different worlds now, aside from his home planet of Catachan, and he still wasn’t used to the concept. It threw off his sense of time and just generally irritated him. He could deal with the wicked heat it cast down upon the outpost-bastion, just like he could deal with the planet’s native fauna and flora, but the alien nature of the orange-red star never sat well with him.

Other things irritated Sergeant Charr Stag into his current hate-filled state, and much like Zyrantiel’s sun they weren’t things that could be easily dealt with by a shouted command, a cuffing to the back of an insubordinate’s head, or the application of his lasgun’s searing vermilion beam of fire. Among the things on his list of grievances were the raised welts and torn skin on his back from the lashes he and his squad received for not having their section of the Motornarium cleared and in presentable order when their commanding officer arrived for inspection. As with any Imperial authority, Warrant Officer Tolm was not a forgiving man, and the excuses given for their equipment’s state of disarray fell upon deaf ears. Stag wasn’t as upset as he would normally have been towards his men, given that they were, up until just before inspection, still awaiting the regiment’s techpriest to oversee the more intricate refitting rituals needed to supplicate their vehicle’s machine spirit.

The techpriest, yes, he was the most immediate and current source of the guardsman’s ire. The Sergeant hadn’t seen the machine cultist since their detachment of the 54th had shown up at this outpost, only once or twice catching a glimpse of a white-robed apprentice of some sort going about doing throne knew what. As he crossed the interior muster-point of the outpost-bastion, a sun-baked plaza of flat mud, he strode towards the Omnissiac chapel. It was far from the cathedrals of industry that the Adeptus Mechanicus had stationed at most command basilicas and indeed was lesser than any Ecclesiarchal chapel Stag had seen on the planet so far. Beyond its size it was alien to him also in its colouring. The sergeant had come to associate the priesthood of the machine god with rust orange with black trim, and the stylized rune of Ryza prominently displayed or otherwise the ever present crimson of Mars with their cog-encircled skull glyph.

The Omnissiac chapel before Stag was of a rather different variety than he was used to, and he regarded it with immediate suspicion. Outside of the inverted colour scheme its exterior alcoves, relays, and panels were in different spots entirely, and the emblem upon it, beneath the ever-unchanging symbol of the black and white skull and cog of the Mechanicus, was that of a stylized fist and clenched hammer in crimson paint. On top of this it’s metallic superstructure was made of a bright, shining titanium, indeed a step removed from the usual pseudo-gold or ochre rust the Catachan had oft encountered. In short Charr did not like it and he furrowed his brow in annoyance and strode into the building’s shadow. As he did so he became acutely aware that he was being watched.

One of the exterior alcoves had some form of graphing array that was being attended and as he made to ascend the chapel’s steps he realized that the figure working the array was not a servitor, as he first assumed, but rather it was the apprentice, who himself seemed quite surprised at Charr’s approach. He glared at the youth for a few moments before approaching him. As the burly, tanned Catachan approached the waifish tech-adept he realized that he may be terrifying someone who did not quite deserve his ire. Charr ran a hand through his sweaty, dark hair, rustling his high and tidy style before exhaling and crouching down to the tech-adept’s height.

“Please tell me yer not our detachment’s assigned techpriest, kid.”

Whether struck by muteness or being inherently dumb Sergeant Stag couldn’t tell, but, thankfully, the small machine cultist could still communicate. He shook his head, shaking his shoulder length brown locks and accidentally pushing back his white cowl to reveal an exceedingly pale face. The boy’s face was largely hidden by overly messy hair but the guardsman could make out a somewhat gaunt face and purposely blindered, though most likely augmented, eyes. Seemingly the tech-adept saw through the implanted optic mounted to one side of his head, along with the optic mechadendrite that sprouted from the lower end of the spinal powerpack mounted on his back. The mechadendrite seemed focused still on the graphing array while Stag addressed his face.

Haltingly the young adept found his voice, speaking Low Gothic as though he had little practice in its use. “The techpriest is...quite busy…”

Charr sighed in frustration, techpriests were always “busy.” Thankfully, over the years, Charr had learned how to focus a techpriest’s “busy” mind onto things important to him and his men.

“Tell him that a machine-spirit is in desperate need of his ministrations, and none of the men in the motornarium are initiated as he is in the mysteries of the engine.”

A mixture of forlorn appeal and admittance of ignorance almost always worked, along with adding a bit of self-flagellation if the need was great enough to require expediting. In truth even the most competent technomat on his crew, Private Andarr, barely understood the inner workings of their Hydra’s mechanisms, but reminding their detachment’s enginseer that that was the case was more often than not enough prodding to remind a techpriest of his duties. It seemed that the tactic worked once more, as the tech-adept turned to look at the graphing array for a moment before speaking to a handheld vox device in the tongue of the machine cult.

Satisfied, Sergeant Stag stood straight up, stretching before adjusting his flak vest and dusting off his fatigues.

“Out in a few moments, huh?” he asked the adept.

The boy nodded, probably only half-listening as he typed on the graphing array with the spidery digits of his bionic arm. The Catachan was only half paying attention to him as well, as he internally mulled over how far he could go with chewing out the coghead before it would cross the threshold of sacrilege against the Mechanicus. Ultimately Stag resumed his glowering composure as he heard the door servos engage and watched the titanium slabs of its armoured entrance slide apart.

A breeze of chill air swept over Charr, making his arm hairs stand on end. Must be nice being the Omnissiah’s chosen, he remarked internally as he looked at his own sweat-stained fatigues. Far from giving him any reprieve from the heat of the tropical world it only ratcheted up the standoffish attitude he was ready to unload onto the techpriest.

The semi-regular clank of metal on metal roused him from his anger-filled thoughts with a sudden hope that this techpriest was at least slightly less arachniform than the one at the command-basilica his detachment had been deployed from. Sergeant Stag almost shuddered thinking about the thoroughly unnatural movements of Magos Autokrator Seltis’ servo-limbs as he surveyed the faulty motor casings on his comrade’s Hydra. As this techpriest came into view, however, it seemed blessedly human looking, though fairly tall.

Before Stag could make out more of the techpriest’s looks he caught a strong draft of pungent incense, one he was unfamiliar with but must surely be coming from some form of censer on the priest’s person. The source of the irregularity in the machine cultist’s footsteps became apparent, he was walking with a techpriest’s staff of office held in his delicate, surprisingly non-bionic hand. The staff was a two meter long, metallic pole topped with an axe head and Omnissiac icon, declaring for all to see that the holder was a chosen disciple of the machine god.

The techpriest approached the entrance of the chapel, seemingly surveying the guardsman as he approached, glowing green optics staring at Charr from under his white and red-hemmed hood. One long, silvery, mechanical tentacle slid over to look the sergeant over more closely with its optics while the other held the techpriests robes to assure that his graceful and slender bionic limbs wouldn’t tread upon them as he moved forth.

Charr gritted his teeth and glared into the priest’s optical mechadendrite. Aside from invading Stag’s personal space with his surveying device the techpriest seemed to hardly acknowledge him. Turning to the adept still focused on attending the graphing array the techpriest spoke in hushed tones to him for a few moments. Seemingly satisfied the white-robed priest finally approached the guardsman while his apprentice gathered up a few stacks of data-reels and carried them into the shadowy temple’s inner depths.

“How may this servant of the Omnissiah assist you, Sergeant Stag?” the techpriest asked in a disarmingly feminine voice.

The sergeant kept his glowering expression as rigid as he could. The coghead knew his name and it was female. As he quickly brought his mind back into gear he watched the techpriest stretch from her hunched posture, revealing a much more obviously feminine figure as she stood up straight, no longer leaning heavily on her axe-staff. He didn’t like being disarmed, but this double strike was rapidly making him lose the momentum he was going to use to push himself into a furious tirade. As the techpriest yawned Stag realized that it was well past noon, this layabout had slept in through most of the day!

Charr growled but covered it as him clearing his throat. “If you would come to the motornarium there are matters that require your presence. Ma’am.”

They descended the titanium steps of the Omnissiac chapel and she followed behind him, out of the shadow of the alabaster and silver building and into the glaring red-orange sun. As the sun more clearly illuminated the techpriest he realized she may be the most human looking techpriest he’d ever seen. While she seemingly only had one fully intact flesh and blood limb, one quarter of her face replaced with optics and titanium plating, a power pack roughly the size of a fully loaded rucksack with an incense burner, extensive data-vault with connecting cranial circuitry, and two mechadendrites extending from it, she was still recognizably human, and at that, obviously a human female.

After a moment Charr realized that the techpriest had stopped following behind him. He turned about and saw her headed in the opposite direction, back towards the temple.

“I will attend to the machine-spirits once I have had my ration of recaf.” she called back at the disbelieving guardsman.

Sergeant Stag exhaled loudly before following her back to the chapel, he was finding yet more reasons to hate this planet.

* * *

As the last few tech-psalms were chanted by Adept Draykon from the Manual Reparatum the Hydra crewman finished the rhythmic tightening of the screws on the traverse mounting, sealing the inner workings of the machine. The short tech-adept solemnly closed the repair tome carried by the motornarium’s ledger servitor and awaited the final rituals of repair. Having observed an adequate moment of silence the tall techpriest officiating the repairs strode towards the hull of the Hydra, laying her bionic hand on its surface before speaking aloud in Techna Lingua.

“Machine-spirit, we beg forgiveness for our invasive hands, but now you are mended. Awaken and grace us with your furious might once more.”

Rileigh closed her eyes and focused on the noosphere about her, comprehending the realm of the machine-spirits with her mind’s eye. She saw the simple warrior machine-spirit of the Hydra before her, and it’s brethren in the other wards of the motornarium, the tiny, guttering lights of the lasguns of the guardsmen before her, and then, the overarching, ponderous, and spread out aura of the outpost bastion and it’s myriad electrical systems, vox-network, and defense systems. Even on this hideously overgrown world there were still signs of the Machine God’s presence.

Returning her mind to the task at hand she observed the Hydra’s machine spirit. It’s turret motivation system no longer seemed bothered by the faulty disk that grieved it so before. Satisfied, she raised her head and declared the tech-ritual complete. The Catachans revved up the vehicle’s engine and tested it’s traverse with baited breath. A collective sigh of relief went about as the array of autocannons finally moved smoothly and swiftly along it’s regular vectors.

The guardsmen began cleaning up their anointed tools and enjoying some lho sticks, and Rileigh noticed each of the soldiers watching her as he lit up, hoping that they weren’t breaking some unknown scripture by celebrating a job well done. For her part she pretended not to notice, it would not affect the Hydra’s machine spirit now that the ritual was complete, and it kept their morale incrementally higher, so it was unimportant.

Another thing she pretended not to notice was the squad leader staring daggers at her. While the rest of the guardsmen seemed subservient enough to fall in line with her demands to get the repairs done he’d stayed at a distance and was mostly just looking angrily in her direction or otherwise in the general vicinity of the repairs.

It didn’t bother Rileigh that he didn’t get involved, only 3 or so people could reasonably be expected to work on the Hydra at a time, and as the most senior of their squad she wouldn’t expect him to get involved. But still he loomed by the entryway, leaning against the rockrete walls with his muscular arms crossed and his brow furrowed as though he was trying to stare down a particularly belligerent machine-spirit. She couldn’t conceive of what might be bothering the squad’s Alpha so-

No that’s not right, she thought to herself, the Astra Militarum calls their infantry squad leaders something else.

It was going to bother her until she acquired the answer, so the techpriest took it upon herself to get it. She recalled the important points she had memorized within her auxiliary memory vaults, recalling the wisdoms of Archmagos Factor Alexeirius Azmonn as laid out in his treatise On the Retrieval of Data from Organic Vessels. As Rileigh reminisced and accessed the appropriate chapters stored in her digital databanks the scowly squad leader guardsman approached her.

While accessing such vast sums of lore she was practically unable to do anything else, most of her augmented mental power focused on searching for specific passages. Very slowly Rileigh realized he was already there and was addressing her, and equally slowly she turned to face him, feeling as though she were on a high gravity world. The slow shuffling of her form must have tipped off the guardsman, as he trailed off from whatever he was saying and she tried to break the cycle of intensive mental processes.

Rileigh partially succeeded in stopping the intensive functions, and instead of sitting idle and finishing the thorough digital search blurted out a jumbled mess of lookup queries and results, saying multiple things at once through her vocal implant, barraging the witless man in front of her with a verbal assault.

“Find: On interpersonal relations-

Find: Negotiating with the gentry-

Find: On those who serve the Emperor on the field of battle-

With excessive force in the verbal arena if necessary-

And thus is the measure of one’s peers determined.”

For once since she had met the Catachan squad leader his face wasn’t taken up by an intense scowl. It was now thoroughly replaced by bafflement and the quizzical raise of an eyebrow. While Techpriest Artisan Rileigh was definitely far more augmented than an average human she was not so far gone as some of her peers were, and was in fact quite capable of feeling the palpable awkwardness of the situation. Adding to this a few of the Catachan Hydra crew were idling around as they were hoping to watch their commanding officer tear a proverbial strip out of someone besides them for once.

The silence was broken by Draykon tugging at her robe’s sleeve to get her attention.

“With your permission, ma’am, I will go and check the augur graph.” he said, already leaving the motornarium.

As the young tech-adept left the repair bay the man before Rileigh regained most of his aggressive composure.

“I don’t think I know about any of that…” Stag trailed off, even more unsure of what to make of the cyborg woman before him. While she had been more than capable of leading the repairs to the Hydra he was starting to get the impression that she was a few bullets short of a magazine.

“You interrupted my thoughts, guardsman. I was deep in mental reverie.” she asserted, failing to impress the guardsman with her bluster. “At any rate what is your name and rank, soldier?”

Charr really wanted to roll his eyes, but he quashed the urge and stood proud. “I am Sergeant Charr Stag of the 54th Catachan Sky Reapers.”

The other Catachans in earshot gave a half-hearted rallying cry before going back to their business.

“Very well, you shall be my regimental liason for the time being, Sergeant Stag. Ask Tech-Adept Draykon for my presence if it is once more needed.”

With that the techpriest moved past Stag and started for the repair bay door. Rileigh pulled her cowl lower to cover more of her face, not to protect it from the sun but rather to hide her intense blush she had gained in the face of her processing error. As she made her way across the repair bay the sergeant caught up with her, putting a meaty hand on her shoulder to get the techpriest’s attention. Rileigh froze up and her fine manipulation mechadendrite clasped the wrist of the soldier’s arm, gripping it tightly while firmly pulling it off of her robes. She turned about and faced the guardsman, who looked quite ready to lose his temper on her.

Stag grabbed the mechadendrite back, using it to pull the techpriest in close so that she would understand what he was saying, and make sure that he didn’t need to repeat it. She stumbled closer, her face hidden by the deep cowl, with only her duo of glowing green optics on the right side of her face along with a shock of brunette hair being visible beneath it’s heavy material.

“Look, lady,” he growled through gritted teeth, “I ain’t even the commanding officer of this outfit, and you have some damned nerve sleeping in past morning summons and making me and my men look like groxarses. For the love of Him on Terra we’ve been here for three blasted days and this is the first time anyone’s been able to drag you out of your hole, and as soon as you’ve finished up the repairs you go scurrying back. I don’t even know your name, or if you’re even part of the damned Mechanicus! I’ve never seen a techpriest dressed up like you are, and I’m starting to hope I don’t ever have to again.”

Rileigh pushed the servos on her manipulator mechadendrite to crush the insolent Catachan’s hand, but to her surprise Stag held his own against the mechanism, tensing and flexing while in turn beginning to crush the outer casing of her extra limb. She cried out, more in surprise than pain, and released the guardsman’s arm, withdrawing the mechadendrite into her flowing robes.

“I...my name is Rileigh. And I’ll have you know that I have business that concerns only the Cult Mechanicus that I must attend to, so I’m sorry that I can’t tend to the every whim of your glorified tractor.” To emphasize her point Rileigh activated the power field on her axe, it’s crackling azure tendrils of energy mirroring the dangerous quality apparent in her tone.

“Now, as the sole representative of Forge World Metalica present,” she intoned, tilting the axe sideways so that she could grasp it with her titanium left arm as well, “I am entrusting you, Sergeant, as my main liaison. You will report to me tomorrow morning at 700, and we will discuss the intricacies of your new role. Understood?”

Charr was itching to vent his frustrations on this uppity woman and give a taste of Catachan steel right to her neck. For a brief moment he really considered it, but after realizing how lucky he was that Officer Tolm wasn’t around to observe what had already occurred he decided to cut his losses short. He gave a stiff “Yes ma’am” and watched the techpriest leave the motornarium before finally relaxing and leaning against the Hydra and pulling out a lho stick to smoke away the stress. He knew he was lucky that Rileigh only had more delicate mechadendrites and not a proper servo-arm or else he might not have a wrist to speak of anymore.

He mulled over what exactly being a “Mechanicus liaison” would entail. The sergeant only had an entry level of understanding of the machine cult, and he was rather unsure why she had chosen him.

* * *

Ultimately, Rileigh had chosen the Sergeant as her liaison because he was the most high ranking authority immediately available to her and she truly did not want to be bothered with the minutiae of such administration. The techpriest had far more important things to do, and simple rites of maintenance would not be allowed to bother her more than necessary.

She sorted through the stacks of data-reels brought to the hololith chamber by Draykon. The augur sweep was taking forever, and the adept had already had to reset the array a dozen times since they’d arrived three weeks ago. Rileigh had desperately hoped that the presence of the guardsman at the remote station wouldn’t disrupt her research but it seemed more and more likely that they definitely would. She began spooling the first data-reel onto the hololith’s receptor tray, gently pulling it out and looping it around the extractor. With only herself and the tech-adept being stationed here, and servitors being far too clumsy and slow to handle data-reels the process of scanning a grid coordinate with the chapel’s augur array, recording it on a data reel, and reviewing it manually was all that was really available to them. Over the past twenty days they had only been able to scan 15 percent of the array’s maximum range, and they were lucky that most days so far were clear ones. If one of the world’s infamous sudden tropical storms cropped up it could delay the techpriest’s search almost indefinitely.

Clicking through different layers of material-resonance filtration Rileigh made notes of the differing mineral densities throughout the jungle basins and tall grass plains. Zyrantiel was a bafflingly verdant world, and it made Rileigh’s skin crawl. The idea of biological life covering every surface around her was hideous in the extreme compared to the sterile purity of Metalica. She paused the augur readout and let herself focus on the noise generator in the center of the Omnissiac chapel. The rhythmic clang of the striking hammer and piston pumping brought her mind back to the clamorous industry of her home world. It reminded her of how Metalica was very far away now, and how the Holy Synod of Metalica had invested a great amount of influence in her efforts here.

She unpaused the hololithic readout and plugged her flesh replenishment array into the nearby power relay with a soft psalm. Recaf could only do so much, and she needed to get through this lot of data-reels before Draykon brought in another load. It was going to be a long evening.