“My Lord, we are fully prepared to depart! The Tenth Flotilla has arrived at Schenalus, along with the Stormbringer, your personal Gloriana-class battleship assigned by the Emperor himself. Your entire fleet has gathered here to set out and conquer the Ork empire, according to reports from scout ships that have secured control over the Piriki Sector.* Previously, this was a thriving human empire; however, first a war with certain lizard-like xenos and then a conflict with the greenskins destroyed the former state, leaving only ruins and remnants of shattered technology. Because of the latter, there is a high probability that Martian flotillas will join us as reinforcements to search for STC fragments or any blueprints from the Dark Age.”
I looked calmly at my son, who reported this news in a brisk, commanding tone.
We were currently on Telstarax, near one of the main docking sectors where the new ship had just berthed—a vessel several kilometers long and nearly nine hundred meters wide.
Initially, I had marveled at the gargantuan dimensions of the planetary ring, but after becoming acquainted with the scale of Imperial ships, it all became clear.
Smaller structures simply could not support the construction and repair of thousands of such lords of the cosmic void.
And yet, this wasn’t even the largest ship in my flotilla—my personal flagship stretched nearly twenty kilometers in length and reached nine in width.
A true titan, for which a separate dock had to be created, delaying our departure by several weeks.
While such size offered the advantage of an immense amount of weaponry and a colossal crew—including thousands of Space Marines and hundreds of shuttles and escort craft—its design reeked of a desire for ostentation rather than maximum efficiency.
I was absolutely certain that if one cut away the unnecessary towers, removed the useless spires, and generally abandoned the “flying cathedral” aesthetic, the dimensions could be reduced by twenty to thirty percent while retaining all functionality.
Even if the state symbolism realized in such a colossus boosted morale while terrifying enemies, I still considered such expenditures irrational.
The most frustrating part was that Horus possessed sleek, minimalist ships dating back to the Conquest of the Solar System, which had long since been replaced by the Mechanicum in their urge to show off.
Very soon, I would board one of these behemoths and lead a flotilla of dozens of ships to conquer an interstellar empire of xenos—tales of which nearly all my sons had used to frighten me.
Yes, according to reports, the Orks were a formidable and dangerous species, but far from invincible.
I already had the outlines of a plan in my head to eliminate them once and for all…
“Honored Saint, might you also look upon the Forge World Zeta-13-C during your travels? It is a highly developed planetary complex primarily producing heavy vehicles and ammunition, which they would gladly provide if you showed them the light of your proximity to the divine essence of the Master of All Machines,” came the synthesized voice of a Tech-Priest whose lower limbs had been replaced by a meter-wide steel wheel.
He sounded surprisingly human for such a creature—as if he were outright pleading with me to visit their world and accept their gifts.
“Since you ask, why not?” I replied calmly, clasping my hands behind my back and never taking my eyes off the Stormbringer.
“In the coming campaign, I will need every bit of help I can get, so I will certainly stop by. I happen to have several developments for improving main tank cannons and creating personal weaponry based on electromagnetic fields and pure plasma. Gauss and Melta technologies will surely interest even the most influential Magi and demonstrate my desire to return humanity to its former peak.”
In addition to my sons and the best representatives of Schenalus, I was accompanied by dozens of Tech-Priests who had flooded the planet over the last few months, effectively becoming my acolytes after private conversations and demonstrations of my abilities.
A single trick—activating a machine with a few words or controlling “machine spirits” reinforced by my aura—turned them into steadfast followers, convinced I was the second avatar of the Machine God, descended to earth right after my father.
This was an incredibly profitable investment, as the priests proved to be invaluable assistants, loyal to their last breath.
Look no further than the fact that most were eager to literally open their skulls when I offered them specialized augmentations of my own design to enhance cognitive function.
The brilliant sons and daughters of Mars are ready to act with genuine fanaticism when it comes to the creations of their Saint and the Son of the Omnissiah.
Despite their high intelligence, the Tech-Priests hungered for physical proof of their faith.
The fact that my father paid them little attention and held them in open contempt only drove those seeking faith toward me.
An example of this blind obedience was the fact that they accepted my mind-reading machines with fantastic joy, feeling blessed to receive my favor and become closer to their god.
While such enthusiasm pleased me, most of the sons of Mars remained on Schenalus to oversee the construction of the mass-growth chambers for Astartes candidates, as well as several of my other ideas, such as nanite control and developing reliable methods for their use in civilian life and war.
I retained the master access codes, but I left a few commands for the Tech-Priests, who surrendered all their research in return.
At first glance, my machines did not differ from the Imperium’s nanite technologies, but as soon as the great minds grasped their true potential, they were nearly overwhelmed by the possibilities.
Мои technologies lacked the primitive limitations of Martian products and possessed impressive efficiency in all aspects.
What about using them to alter the human genome and significantly improve it?
Or attempting to use them to begin the colonization and terraforming of other planets in the system?
I do not have the time to handle every project myself, but such delegation was the answer to most of my problems.
Let them handle the details for now, while I take on the job of ensuring it won’t be used against humanity.
For further security, Astartes were attached to the specialists to guard the entire planet.
A few hundred wouldn’t change the outcome of a war, but they could guarantee stability.
And the most trusted individuals I gathered from the Towers would become the elite, overseeing everything through a million of my cameras installed everywhere.
My Panopticon had grown large enough to involve other people.
I left a whole book of orders explaining what to do and when, which I had already handed over to the administration.
Though this can’t guarantee everything, it at least provides a chance that my state won’t fall apart the moment I leave it.
In essence, this will be the test of my Empire’s resilience and my own skills. This chapter was taken from g.com without permission.
Despite all my stoicism, even I felt a certain way leaving the planet where I had spent thirty-one years.
Here I opened my eyes, grew up, and achieved everything I have.
Thus, this place could be called my home, and it was not easy to say goodbye.
But it is one of those things that must be finished.
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.
.
Schenalus was a massive world.
Significantly larger than Terra, Mars, and most life-sustaining planets in the galaxy.
Yet despite its vast reaches, most of the surface had been a lifeless desert or an icy wasteland, where only feral machines and rare tribes wandered the dead lands.
At least, that was how it used to be.
Now, wherever a random traveler cast their eye, they would see silvery living metal winding like streams across every mile of the giant planet.
Even more flows of steel penetrated the world’s deepest reaches, extracting resources from the most forgotten and inaccessible places left untouched during humanity’s previous golden age.
Such veins were sadly few, but with such thorough scanning, any scrap of ore or forgotten machinery was found, destined to be recycled into something functional.
The hearts of these operations, from which the oceans of metal flowed, were massive black peaks visible for many miles.
Within them sat reactors based on antimatter, hydrogen fusion, or simple nuclear steam stations.
The swarm of nanites flooding the world still required energy on an insane scale, as the rebirth of an entire planet was no simple feat.
With every hour, the planet’s landscape changed, becoming harder to recognize.
No longer were there deranged AIs hunting humans or trying to build their own empires.
Cultists no longer offered bloody sacrifices to star gods just to hear their laughter for a moment.
Hundreds of tribes no longer wandered the planet, living from one kill to the next.
They had all been erased and made part of a different state.
Anyone who dared resist the Empire of Metal was simply destroyed—first by the forces of their brothers and sisters who had accepted the Empire’s rule, and then by the Angels of Death, who knew no mercy.
For the latter, such purges were mere training, but for the natives of Schenalus, it was the crushing of hope.
After the “Storm Walkers” finished their work, there were simply no voices of resistance left.
The remaining military corps, consisting of ordinary humans, continued to search for potential enemies, but most became guardians of the Towers against any foe daring to emerge from underground.
Clad in two-meter steel plate that granted them significant strength and endurance, they moved in silence across the new world.
The old had stopped dreaming of the return of the old ways; they had either resigned and accepted the new benefits or had become the new inhabitants of experimental artificial reality rooms in the Towers.
Everyone simply accepted that their world had collapsed, and a new generation would soon take their place, raised in principles alien to them—for there were simply none left alive who dared speak a word against it.
In their stead came a new generation, the planet’s new elite, spending every day according to a strict schedule drafted by the administration alongside the Primarch’s final orders and his mentor-programs.
They pushed science forward and oversaw the machines growing food and creating new hardware.
They trained to become part of the elite corps, or developed skills to create the culture of the new state.
The steel walls of the Towers were not designed with windows for enemies to climb through, so everyone huddled within narrow corridors and stared only at screens with brief news updates.
Consequently, almost no one even noticed the ionic flares left by the void ships as they left the planet’s orbit.
The Imperium had annexed another world, and it would take time for the galaxy to feel the consequences.
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Settled in the captain’s chair, I watched as Tech-Priests and representatives of Schenalus’s younger generation hurried about, managing the ship’s machines and guiding it forward. This chapter was copied from NovelPing without permission.
My task is to point the way, but ordinary people are quite capable of holding the metaphorical helm themselves.
Effectively, the ship was controlled by a giant command console manned by dozens of people, with some of the necessary buttons even built into my throne.
The human race did not go through many thousands of years of arduous development only to fear the cosmic void.
On the contrary, its absolute silence brought only peace.
On a ship, even one not created by me, I felt almost absolute security, for I understood every screw and felt that everything was working more or less in unison.
The calm and incredibly powerful voice of the battleship’s mighty spirit reassured me of this, practically boasting of its divine power.
And for good reason—it alone possessed enough weaponry to turn entire planets into ruins.
Though I must admit, warp travel proved to be a surprisingly strange experience, and not in a positive way.
The moment our ship opened the gates to the other dimension, my mind was flooded by the scream of the universe suffering from such a rupture.
A moment later it passed and vanished, as if it had never been.
Yet, once our ship transitioned into the other reality, my paranoia only intensified.
The Geller field generator sang a perfect song, creating shields that defended us from the greatest horrors of the universe, but I was fundamentally dissatisfied with the idea that any error in its operation would lead to the destruction of an entire battleship and tens of thousands of people on it.
While the machine worked without fail for now, the possibility of sabotage or subversion could not be ignored.
In such a case, we would literally have to survive in this abyss full of actual demons.
Switching my lenses to display the view outside the ship, a vortex of colors appeared before my eyes, some of which shouldn’t have even been possible.
Absolute and senseless chaos, which practically nauseated me and sparked unpleasant associations.
Researching my mind and the source of certain memories, I had already managed to form a rough image of who I was in a “past life.” A scientist from the end of the Dark Age of Technology, who witnessed the machine revolt and likely the fall of the human race due to the Old Night.
Whether I died or became the subject of some experiment—it doesn’t matter, for that is a question of times long past, effectively unrelated to me.
Memories of the design of some ancient technologies are quite useful, but that is the memory of another person who died thousands of years ago, and so much has simply been erased forever.
Like the fact that Geller field generators can be quite easily converted into warp-bombs capable of erasing entire storms of psychic energy, along with planets and flotillas.
A dangerous technology which, again, requires my direct attention and years of development to become a reality.
Too many ideas, too little time.
But now, having stepped away from governing a state, I will have plenty of opportunity to continue my research.
Travel in the Immaterium takes quite a lot of time anyway, and I have nothing else to do.
And considering my doubts about whether I can age at all—my life might be long enough to realize every project that interests me.
First on the list are methods for blocking psychic energy and devices for protection against it, which I have put off for a very long time.
But it’s time to begin—the sooner I finish, the sooner I can stop fearing sorcerers and their irrational tricks.
And a conversation with my father will become much more open if I have a way to block his powers.
Then, we will speak as equals.
*One of the main problems with the Heresy series, in my opinion, is that we started too late.
The authors clearly didn’t plan on bloating the first Horus trilogy into fifty books, so they decided to immediately show the moment he fell and became the Warmaster.
Consequently, we barely witnessed the Great Crusade itself and exactly what kind of enemies the Emperor needed millions of Astartes and dozens of demi-gods for.
Orks and Eldar are clear, as are various cultists, but what about the just plain weird xenos?
I can remember only a few mentioned species that will definitely appear, but they aren’t that much of a threat.
To avoid skipping the unification of the galaxy and not using just greenskins, I’ll be adding some “fun” stuff that fits perfectly into the universe.
This exists in lore and, expectedly, was created once, performed excellently by removing a warp storm, and only much later showed all its horrific consequences.
The storm moved to the place where the machine was created, destroying an entire Forge World, which is why an incredibly useful technology and practically an all-conquering weapon was simply thrown away.
And indeed, is it really needed in a galaxy split in two by one giant warp storm?