Generally speaking, if a politician fulfills even twenty percent of their promises, they are considered highly ethical.
Most simply paint a grand picture to secure support, only to toss those promises aside once they have what they want.
But Russell was different; he genuinely intended to fully realize his promises.
By the time the tripartite meeting concluded, it was nearly midnight.
The bishop of the Ecclesiarchy hurriedly left the governor’s mansion to organize propaganda efforts with his flock, while Gauss, the representative of the Cult Mechanicus, was in no rush to depart.
He sat opposite Russell.
Even across the span of the round table, Russell could feel the crimson glow emanating from the bionic eye on the left side of his face.
He knew this ravenous seeker of knowledge would not leave empty-handed.
Russell was well-prepared.
He lightly clapped his hands, and the doors to the conference room swung open.
A young girl dressed as a maid stepped gracefully into the room, placing a silver platter beside Tech-Priest Gauss.
The platter itself was unremarkable, but its contents instantly drew the gaze of both Gauss’s real eye and his bionic one.
It was a data slate, a common Imperial design.
“This… this is…” Gauss’s voice trembled slightly.
“An STC for an ancient piece of machinery known as a ‘Replicator Terminal.’ The prerequisite technologies required to construct it are also stored within.”
The maid-dressed girl said softly, “A complete Replicator Terminal can scan and store molecular-level data of various objects, allowing for mass production through a process similar to replication…”
Before she could even finish, a mechadendrite extending from Gauss’s back eagerly snatched the data slate from the table.
“O-Omnissiah…”
With utmost care and reverence, he slowly inserted the data slate into the neural socket near his left ear and began reading the data.
His posture was so devout it bordered on a holy pilgrimage.
Just thirty seconds later, Gauss, trembling, pulled the data slate from his port and placed it back onto the platter.
He slid from his chair and knelt on the floor.
Though he knelt facing Russell, Russell knew that Gauss was not bowing to him, but to the slate.
Thirty seconds was far from enough to browse through all the design schematics of a Replicator Terminal, but the fraction of information he had read in that brief window was enough for him to cry out at the miracle and worship this otherwise ordinary data slate. This chapter is updated first at novelping(.)com.
A Replicator Terminal was hardly a legendary relic to the wider Imperium, but in a backwater like Faya, even the local Adeptus Mechanicus had never seen much of the galaxy.
Gauss muttered prayers that Russell couldn’t understand, chanting praises to the Omnissiah thirteen times in various pitches and tones before rising from the floor with a slight shudder.
He carefully tucked the data slate into his chest cavity—placing it alongside his mechanical heart.
The look Gauss now directed at Russell was one of absolute fanaticism.
His sole remaining human eye burned with boundless greed and piety.
In a raspy voice, he slowly murmured, “Praise the Omnissiah…”
Beside them, the maid frowned, her youthful face written with sheer disgust.
Russell gave Gauss a polite smile and instructed, “I need you to distribute this technology publicly. No hoarding. Once you have completed this task, there will be even more ancient technologies for you to study and decrypt.”
“There’s more? Even more?!”
An overwhelming wave of bliss nearly short-circuited Gauss’s brain.
It took him several minutes of struggle to force himself to calm down, after which he bowed deeply—extremely deeply—to Russell.
“Yes, yes… I shall dedicate everything I have…”
Gauss left.
The girl in the maid outfit walked around the table to Russell’s side.
Tilting her head, she asked curiously, “Commander, why did you specifically tell him not to hoard it?”
“That is just how the Adeptus Mechanicus operates,” Russell said.
“They possess an incomprehensible religious fanaticism toward knowledge and technology, obsessing over seeking lost lore and advanced tech only to hoard it like hamsters, never sharing it with anyone until they take it to their graves.”
Russell found himself chuckling at the thought, shaking his head.
“If I didn’t dangle even more knowledge as bait, he would rather die than let anyone else catch so much as a glimpse of that data slate.”
Grey Wind placed her hands on her hips and sighed helplessly.
“They really are beyond saving. No wonder you chose the Imperial Truth over them, Commander.”
Russell remained noncommittal.
Suddenly, a thought occurred to him. Enjoying the story? Read on at g.com.
“By the way, Grey Wind, why did you look at Gauss with such contempt earlier? Did he try something sneaky?”
Grey Wind shook her head.
“No, nothing sneaky. But the moment Gauss grabbed that data slate, my sensors detected a reaction in his reproductive system. Simply put, he became aroused by a piece of plastic and circuitry.”
Well, that was classic cogboy behavior.
Russell was thoroughly impressed—and disturbed.
After spending five minutes mocking Gauss with Grey Wind, Russell stood up, stretched, and walked toward the exit.
“Let’s go, Grey Wind. Time to head back to the room.”
“Hooray!”
Grey Wind’s eyes lit up, and she happily jogged after him, bubbling with excitement.
“Commander, you fell asleep last night before finishing the story… I want to know what happened to Vulkan, Lord of the Drakes, in the end! Did he really perish alongside the Beast? Isn’t he perpetual and able to resurrect? You have to finish the story today before you sleep!”
Russell rubbed the dark circles under his eyes, thinking to himself that being a Commander was sometimes a thankless job.
Admittedly, Warhammer 40K was an incredibly vast and complex mythos.
Russell had only planned to explain the general worldview to Grey Wind to aid their future operations.
But as he kept talking, the lore only grew deeper and wider.
After all, explaining humanity’s extreme aversion to artificial intelligence naturally required mentioning the Cybernetic Revolt.
Explaining the relationship between the Astartes and Chaos Astartes necessitated a retelling of the Horus Heresy.
Pulling on one thread unraveled the whole tapestry.
Fortunately, Grey Wind didn’t mind the stories at all; in fact, she loved them.
At present, Russell had just reached the end of the War of the Beast and the fall of Vulkan.
Grey Wind had been pestering him relentlessly, refusing to let him sleep until he finished this part.
Perhaps in Grey Wind’s long and monotonous existence, rarely had anyone stayed by her side to share such novelties with her.
Honor and courage, betrayal and wrath, pride and prejudice…
all of it was incredibly novel to a lifeform composed of a nanite swarm.
“…If the Horus Heresy broke the spine of the Imperium of Man, the War of the Beast drained its flesh and blood. Since then, the state has been functionally dead—nothing but a bloated, rotting corpse, barely sustaining its existence through sheer mass and religious fanaticism, all the way to the present day.”