The hazy smoke about the clearing was almost overbearing, and unlikely to clear soon. The smog of the incinerated vegetation and fauna blocked out much of the sunlight that would otherwise reach the newly created glade, putting it into a hazy twilight, lit more so by the pockets of still burning promethium than Zyrantiel’s star. Adept Draykon was a bit overwhelmed by the smoke, but had gladly taken a respirator that was gruffly offered to him by one of the Catachan men. It was barely past noon, but he knew that the work required today, far from the comforts of the sensor bastion that himself and Rileigh operated out of, was going to be quite tiring and take some time.

The rites of activation for sensor arrays, such as the augur relay tower they were in the process of installing, were lengthy, as each possessed an exceedingly sensitive, and at times fickle, machine-spirit that governed its functions. Aside from the physical process of erecting the tower and awakening it’s machine spirit, the connection between the Mechanicum sensors at Outpost-Bastion Eta-181 and this distant relay had to then be created, a ritual in and of itself. Draykon knew little about anything that fell under the purview of Transmechanics, those techpriests who were masters of vox-comms, augur systems, and other invisible waveforms, but he had been gaining a grasp of the concepts over the course of his tutelage under Rileigh, especially given their current task.

Thankfully the majority of the hard labour of setting up the augur relay was undertaken by a squad of heavy-set labour servitors under Rileigh’s direct command. Draykon offered to guide the servitors as well, but as was often the case he was politely, but firmly, denied by the senior techpriest, as she had a quality of particularity about her that made her largely unhappy with others contributing to a work she intended to perfect. Draykon pondered if it was a trait she’d gained from her time as an Artisan, as those in such a station were often commissioned to singularly construct masterworks of weaponry or other equipment, and would often only be assisted by servitors under their direct control, at a secluded fabrication altar to ensure that the techno-arcane art of manufacturing works of such potency were uninterrupted.

Draykon fiddled with the rebreather’s straps, the fit of the device designed for a grown man being lacking in the case of his undeveloped frame. All the same he was very grateful for the device, as he would be quite bored if he had to stay in the transport that brought them here to avoid the irritating smoke. While some of the industrial zones on his home world of Metalica could have similarly polluted air he had never tarried in such places when he could help it, but all the same it did make him feel minorly home sick. The young adept and his master had travelled very, very far from their world of origin, halfway across the Ultima Segmentum, if his understanding was correct. Draykon had never even heard of this world “Zyrantiel” before, and everything about it was so utterly alien to him.

The amount and variety of living things on this world was staggering, and quite frightening for the young Mechanicum. The forge world of Metalica was quite the opposite of this, it’s synod having declared and successfully enacted the extinction of all non-human life upon the beautifully pristine world’s surface. The nearly pure-white dunes of titanium oxide, punctuated only by craggy cliffs, outcroppings, and mountains of rock and ore had not been sullied by any creature other than Man in millennia. Draykon himself had never seen any other living creatures aside from humans his whole life, and he wasn’t eager for that to change.

When the shuttle from the Mechanicus vessel in orbit had first landed at the outpost some months ago Draykon was far from prepared for what he experienced, the bizarre noises that emanated from the depths of the vegetation at night kept him up, the way the wind made the trees shake and shudder seemed unwholesome, and worst of all, the occasional invasive life form that would find itself in the confines of the bastion’s walls. Usually such creatures would scuttle or fly off once they spotted a person close by, but this fauna disappearing around a corner or flying off out of sight only heightened Draykon’s paranoia and dislike of it all. Once the Catachans became garrisoned at the outpost it became commonplace for errant creatures to meet a sudden end from a thrown knife or las shot. Creatures being dispatched like that put the adept’s mind much more at ease, as now there was one less living thing on this planet.

He had felt rather safe from the flora and fauna in the fastness of the machine cult sensor bastion and within the confines of the armoured transport, but even with charred ground of the clearing beneath his feet he still felt hesitant and wary of what layed beyond. The dark edges of the clearing were ominous, the vine-strewn tangles of branches and thick knots of roots forming unnaturally organic formations made Draykon a bit ill. He’d seen mold before, on an expired ration pack he’d mistakenly been given on the trip to Zyrantiel, and the rotting smell, along with the vulgar concept that something organic could devour another living thing was just wrong to him. Yet, here on this very world, possibly none too far from where he stood, such a thing could well be happening.

The adept closed his visual feed for a few moments to clear his head. The optics system anchored into the right-hand side of his head was his main visual sensor, and turning it off meant that he could see nothing at all. His natural sense of sight had been lost some years ago in an unfortunate accident in a manufactorum where he’d worked as an apprentice technomat. When his parents and the guildmaster made their case to the Cult Mechanicus the machine priests replaced his sight with the somewhat unorthodox bionic, but also took him into their service, coming to place him under Rileigh’s tutelage.

That was a while ago, he thought as he re-enabling his bionic sight and focused upon the more solid, purposely constructed forms of the augur relay’s frame and the attendant servitors. The presence of the Catachan platoon was also a great comfort, with the distinct whirr and ratcheting of the quad-gunned turret of the Hydra sweeping back and forth specifically assuaging Draykon’s fear of what lay in wait out there. However, he could not help but keep glancing at the depths of the jungle beyond. Surely the incendiary artillery had scorched and scared off the worst this world had to offer. Surely.

* * *

The clearing, as RIleigh had calculated, was ideal for the augur relay. What was less than ideal, however, was the artillery bombardment of incendiary charges to clear it. The placement was sloppy and undisciplined, compared to the precision she rather expected of professional soldiers. Still, incinerating what life had been here was both useful and gave her no small satisfaction. Watching the Catachans blast away any of the surviving organic matter when their convoy arrived, with lasfire and flamers, helped steel her certainty of purpose in being here.

These are no Skitarii Legionnaires, she admitted to herself, and we’re very far from Metalica. Expecting the proficiency of the machine cult’s soldiers from these men was in itself a miscalculation on her part. She knew her mission was something of a shot in the dark, and the minimal support she’d received was a part of the tenuous nature of it. Rileigh was no logis-prophesier, but she still felt a sting of bitter dissatisfaction as her attention drifted from the task at hand to look at the fallout of the bombardment. Her expectations of these guardsmen here would need to be recalibrated, she was working off of assumptions that they were simply a variation of Skitarii, which was just not true.

Aside from being soldiery they shared practically nothing with any Metalican Skitarius she had ever met. She watched the Catachan men patrol the perimeter of the clearing, noting that not many of them bore cybernetics, and from what she overheard from them they seemed to be rueful of being so blessed. Their outlook bothered her greatly, but the social friction they already experienced hardly needed exacerbation, so she held her tongue on the manner. Still, the fact that their Alpha- no, their Sergeant- was unaugmented somewhat perplexed Rileigh. Stag had a goodly amount of scars from various sources on his form, but had seemingly never suffered an injury that would require a cybernetic replacement of a limb or sensory organ. She was unsure as to whether this was a matter of competency or luck, as Rileigh had yet to survey any vis-feeds or post-action reports of the sergeant in particular.

RIleigh gazed surreptitiously over at the sergeant with her optical mechadendrite, making use of the limb’s telescopic functions to survey the man more thoroughly, as he was about thirty paces across the glade from her. Sergeant Stag was leaning against the side of the platoon’s main Hydra, his powerful arms crossed as his gaze swept the edge of the smouldering clearing and looked over his men. Stag was a broad man, and he carried himself confidently. Rileigh was somewhat bothered by how this often manifested as him being rather assertive with her, and over the past week she had ran through her usual repertoire of excuses and handwaving that she usually used to placate impertinent Imperials who impeded her progress. However this attitude did carry with it little laxity, a fact Rileigh appreciated greatly. He always seemed restless to her, like an ever-eager cyber-hound waiting to be given the command to pursue a target. Like now, as he got up from leaning against the armoured vehicle and stalked over to another side of the defoliated area to survey things there, all the while keeping his head on a swivel.

Stag did a double take and Rileigh froze. The sergeant had realized that the mechadendrite was tracking him, no doubt detecting its subtle but unwavering gaze on him, an instinct of his that was likely honed to a razor’s edge by his survival training on Catachan. The techpriest felt her all too unaugmented heart skip a beat as she pulled the hood of her robes further over her head to hide her expression of surprise. The guardsman stared down the offending machine-limb, with the usual stolid, if threatening, look he kept about himself. The eye-to-optic contact remained for a few seconds, and then a few more, as Stag crossed his arms once more and stared it down, practically daring the techpriest to cringe before his unwavering gaze.

The tense moment was broken, thankfully, as a labour-servitor clumsily fumbled with a bundle of support beams, dropping the lot of them at its feet, halting the progress of the augur relay in its tracks with a loud clattering. Both Rileigh and Stag’s attention went to the noise, and soon thereafter he stalked off to check on the squads at the clearing’s perimeter. Rileigh gave a sigh of mixed relief and frustration, her vocal emitter releasing a burst of static instead of her usual, obviously augmented voice. She swept back her long brown bangs and tucked them behind the unaugmented ear on the left side of her head. The smoke, the heat, and the generally unnerving nature of her environment were getting to her, and making her behaviour, and lack of decorum, much worse than normal.

Before helping the wayward servitor she clenched her hands into fists and pressed the titanium knuckles of her left hand against the pale flesh of her right, and bestilled her ever-busy thought sub-processes, praying for the serenity and clarity of mind found in the blessed machine, praying to the Machine God to provide her with purity of thought, removing from her mind the haranguing image of Charr Stag’s powerful gaze and form, and letting her simply focus on the work at hand. Rileigh swept away her immediate short term memory, sequestering it in her secondary databanks for further contemplation.

Releasing a second loud, static-y sigh on the completion of her prayer and mental processes, Techpriest Rileigh beckoned her apprentice over to the stuttering servitor and the mostly-constructed sensor tower. Now would be an ideal time to teach the young adept the proper form and application of the Rite of Percussive Maintenance.

* * *

The techpriests were hitting the servitor that dropped the beams over it’s skull plating with a ritual implement and Charr wasn’t exactly sure why. He knew that if he asked the techpriest he’d be met with the usual excuse of “the mysteries of the machine not being meant for the laity” or some other form of deflection that desperately made him want to roll his eyes. While he knew little in the way of machine-lore, he wasn’t a stranger to the concept of cuffing an insubordinate on the back of the head for not paying attention or messing up a perfectly simple task through incompetence.

It was getting to be early evening, and Charr wasn’t exactly relishing the opportunity to spend the night in the middle of an open clearing while cogheads battered a servitor over the head for its lack of competency. Charr, or indeed any Catachan, couldn’t rightly admit to anything like being “afraid” of the wildlife of a foreign planet, as their home world was among one of the worst in the galaxy. Rather, the mindset bred by a world so fraught with death and peril at every turn was one of wary mindfulness. Minding every footstep, minding every tree one walked under, minding every movement aside from your own in the jungle around you, and most importantly keeping yourself from focusing too much on any one of those things. As soon as someone forgot that mindfulness on Catachan they were dead.

As the sun began lowering in the sky it bothered Charr further. Less so the glare of its light, and more so that he was having to witness it out here. He’d offered the help of some of the more technologically attuned guardsmen in the platoon, a few times, but the techpriest had denied the help each time. The sergeant simply wasn’t sure what her deal was, in a similar position he’d have gladly accepted the help of some Mechanicum if it meant getting a laborious task done sooner. Ultimately it didn’t surprise him that she was so stuck up, given his previous interactions with her. She wouldn’t even allow her apprentice to help until a few moments ago, seemingly.

At the least the task of escorting the machine cultists while they set up their extension to the outpost’s augur network had been uneventful enough, so far. Still, the alien jungle had him on edge, and burning down a section of it, then standing around all day in this open terrain mad him even more so. The main warfronts of Zyrantiel were on the opposite side of a far off mountain range but that wouldn’t stop him from being on his toes. The native wildlife could prove to be far more dangerous than any of the vermin that managed to sneak into the outpost would ever be, and he somewhat relished the thought of driving cold steel into some alien monster’s neck, or watching something get blown apart by the Hydra’s guns. The stragglers and injured creatures weren’t really worthy prey, most of the shots the platoon loosed when first arriving were to mercy kill those left behind. Charr hoped something like a carno-rachnid would show up. He’d been told about them by guardsmen at the main planetary voidport, and he wanted to see if the stories about their size and ferocity were true or if it was facetious exaggeration.

All things considered Charr was happy to be out of the barracks and get out into the field. He took a deep breath of the smoky air and almost coughed from it tickling his throat, the potent, chemical smell of promethium smoke, mixed with the burnt plant matter and flesh, was still a bit strong. The opportunity to make the God Emperor proud, and satisfy his own violent urges, had him in higher spirits than he’d been while milling around the outpost bastion. Aside from the smoke, which was clearing out even more as the wind picked up, and the lack of dense cover, the main thing that was bothering Charr was the techpriest.

The staring contest he’d held with her optic was only partially serious on his end. While he did feel like he was asserting his authority on some level, it was more so him testing his own ability to stare down something that wouldn’t blink, and a gut reaction to something staring at him. He hoped it was just the techpriest’s mechanical gaze, at any rate, and not something more sinister lurking in the depths of the forest beyond her.

Charr could always feel when he was being looked at intensely, and it was an instinct that had saved his life more than once. As he made his way over to the second squad he ran a finger along one of the more impressive scars on his forearm. The sabre-beast that had caused that would have been a worthy trophy if the body hadn’t been so mangled by the time he and his squad were finished with it. Some creatures couldn’t tell when they were already dead, and required some excessively brutal mutilating to make them realize it.

“Anything of note, boys?”, Stag asked briskly, giving the leader of the squad an acknowledgement via a brief upwards nod which was returned with a respectful downwards nod. It was a rare Catachan who had much respect or want for the ceremony more widely observed in the Imperial Guard.

“Some spooked or hurt critters lookin’ ‘round but that’s really it. Just small stuff, mostly.”, Corporeal Vengur gave a dismissive point of his thumb towards a foot long, centipedal creature that had had its front half crushed by the boot of the guardsman holding a gently pinging auspex in his hands. The sound indicating a reoccurring “all clear” result.

“Well make sure you use your eyes more than the scanner…”, he trailed off, wanting to make a point about trusting instinct and strength of arms far more than any technology. It was a lesson that he hardly needed to drill into his own men, but one he found himself reminiscing on more frequently as of late.

The sergeant looked at the miniscule, mangled insectoid carcass before turning his eyes to the dense jungle that he was scant yards away from. The bombardment had scared off much of the wildlife, and it seemed their activity, along with the smell of smoke in the air, had made anything that was not quite sapient reticent to approach the smouldering site, but by the same token probably made their position all too obvious to anything with half a brain. Stag wished that they could have set up in the thick of the jungle, but the techpriest called the shots on setting up the augur array and apparently a proper clearing was needed to set it up in, and if they strayed too far into the surrounding vegetation they’d be leaving the machine cultists exceedingly exposed and alone. Apparently the techpriest had also somehow roped in an artillery battery from another outpost that was nearby enough to defoliate the area they were now standing in.

Beyond the ashen, burned out glade the dense forest seemed to go on forever, and that, along with the vivacity of life on Zyrantiel, made Stag feel a bit more at home. Being “at home”, however, put him in the mindset of surviving out in the death world wilderness of Catachan, telling his survival instincts to function at the highest readiness possible.

If it weren’t for this state of complete readiness it is doubtful that Stag would have seen the forms moving furtively among the far undergrowth, just outside of the range of the scanner the squad’s guardsman held in his hand. Their movements were measured, and they had even gone so far as to cover themselves in the native soil and attach sprigs of the local flora to their garb, but the hulking size of their figures belied their true nature. With a single, well-practiced, swift move Charr’s Ryza-pattern lasgun was already in his hands, firing beams of crimson light into the deep forest, after the shadowed figures, startling the other guardsmen before him into similar action. Having fired a good volley, and trusting the squad before him to continue the outpour of lasfire, he inhaled and bellowed a single word to stir the rest of the platoon into readiness:

“ORKS!!”