The shifting plates of my palm unfurled. Mucus dripped away from my shifting digits, clear as it should have been.
The exoskeleton of my palm locked against my forearm, my navigation orifice twitching slightly against the cool atmosphere of my vessel.
I brought my limb to the sharpened point of the steering scepter. I took a sharp inhale as I hilted my wrist against the spine.
My body stiffened, the gridded walls around me fading away till I could see the infinite expanse of the cosmos.
Glimmering, familiar constellations of stars raged light-years away. They fought against entropy most valiantly.
My mind finished interfacing with the ship. A chill ran across my body—only it wasn't my body, it was the outside of the ship's hull.
My sense of touch and sight was now one with the machine. The occasional debris from the asteroid field I had just passed felt like cool rods of glass against my unprepared sides.
The machine's will locked with my own. The rite of communion was passed.
The ship spoke out its first declaration. "Most beneficent Technult. Father of the machine, master of mine and student to the Gaunt Lord."
I nodded my head. I had been through this many times. These holy rites were irksome. A Technult such as I had no business worshiping anything other than progress.
We respected the Gaunt King, for the Gaunt King was the highest being. Yet, he was a stepping stone. We would grow past him in due time. We had to have faith.
"Set a course to sector Roboute 32." My words were registered by the machine. Its side thrusters sparkled with their sharp beams of verdant ire, our course set and locked.
"Praise be the Gaunt King. Praise be mankind. Praise be the King of Everything."
With its final hymn, the machine activated the ship's blank reactor.
My sense of sight was cut off from the ship. It was best not to see what was out there as we engaged in the formless pilgrimage.
As a Technult, we had access to what many would consider heretical truths. One such truth, a simple warning: it was best to close one's eyes through the formless.
"Blessed was your journey and sanctified was your mission. Most beneficent one, we have arrived."
My senses returned to me. The starry void, empty and vast, was now replaced by the shimmering azure life of a virgin world.
I was but one priest. I might have been a pioneer, I might have been above the simple man, above the rest. Yet, I was one. I was not here to colonize.
My exoskeleton clicked away as my fingers punched down on a yellow keypad. "Commencing rite of awakening," the machine exclaimed.
The ship seemed see-through until I focused my mind on its components. Like with the keypad and now with the womb pod on my left.
The enameled glass of the pod gently formed a seam down the middle. The twin doors slid to the side. Bile-colored liquid spilled down into collecting racks.
"Oh, angel of His most holy will. Let your cannon sing in jubilant praise. Let your spear cast aside the impure. Let your rage and your compassion burn away the unclean. Awaken ye Cavalier. Awaken, chosen son."
As the machine began its vapid sermon, a large armored foot stomped out of the pod, cryogenic smog parting away from him in reverence.
A gilded aurora of red light left the womb-storage, one of my many aesthetic touches. This would make my toil even more awe-inspiring.
After all, every piece of art should be presented with a passion that belied its quality.
Clad in white armor and holding the hardened body of his Cremation Cannon was my own masterstroke. My Cavalier—and oh, he was glorious.
Clad like a knight and more armored than a tank, he was. The engraved plates of his armor shone beautifully against the ship's lights, the gold trimmings—my own genius touch—only added to his gruesome beauty.
Standing at seven and a half feet tall, proportioned like a golem of steel, was Torvark. I had taken special care cooling the muscle down in his limbs; each one was as wide as my torso.
If I had been lax in any one of his muscles to the density of that of a normal man—oh, it would have filled the ten-by-ten-by-six-meter hull till it cracked its way out into void-space.
His visor, lensed with six polished cameras wired straight into his brain, would have let him see all and react as fast as the most nimble Xeno warriors.
I hadn't even spoken about all the internal workings. Nothing merely human was left. What I saw was a demigod of cybernetic implants and extensive gene craft.
He locked his immense Cremation Cannon against his back, the rotund weapon clicking into place through magnetic forces.
He knelt before me, his master, his bulk shaking the ship's insides. "Father, tell me my mission. I must repent, I beg of thee."
Repent—what a joke. This thing had merely failed an assignment a year back and they had cast it down to this dishonorable station, as the Star Lord called it.
As if my work was something lesser than the empire's eternal warfare. I supposed I would avoid thinking of it as an it for now and return some of his respect.
"Yes, if you wish to repent, then you shall assist me." I couldn't keep the disdain out of my voice. Why would he wish to repent and go back to them, when I, his father, was doing work far more glorious?
"The world before us—take note of its sun." Torvark looked out the ship's periscope, his massive frame moving in near-total silence as he peered into the void.
He murmured a prayer to himself. "The planet's star seemed to be moving towards it, most holy father."
"And you saw nothing odd with that?" He looked away from the periscope. Two of his lenses refocused on my face, as if to try to read my perfected, insectoid visage.
"It was accursed, misbegotten. A planet orbited its star. A world like this one shouldn't have had the mass to…"
I cut him off. He was spitting basic information. How dare he insult me by assuming I hadn't thought of this… No matter. "Indeed, the machine had triangulated a disturbance on the planet's northern pole. It appeared something with a high affinity for the formless strata was enforcing their will on this stellar system."
His lenses adjusted, his pauldrons shifting away from his respiratory gills. He didn't seem to be nearly as intrigued as I was. I should have adjusted his brain more during his augmentation. "You didn't seem surprised, child."
He shook his head. The powered servos of his armor glided audibly as he did so. "I was fascinated. However, it was not my place to question. I lived to kill as He needed and to die as He demanded. You were he who discovered, I was merely a cog, Father."
"Very well. Keep your wits about you. This place—the machine couldn't tell me much about it. No one had ever been here but us." I paused, my eyes looking over the heads-up display, scanning all the data available. "This world had a diverse biosphere. The protein structures my ship could read from up here indicated many complex lifeforms."
The Cavalier looked at me with a certain intensity; I could see him warring with his desire to ask questions. I answered him before he could voice them. As beneficent and holy as I was, I would take pity on him. "The genomes, however, seemed to be almost identical… Boy, I could see you getting curious. With me you might voice your query. I shall reply."
His lenses flared, his six eyes locking to mine. In that moment he was truly a child of mine, a child of discovery. I felt… Ha, as if I'd be proud of a tool. I didn't feel proud of hammers or bolts.
"Father, if I might humbly inquire, what was the weight of this truth you presented?"
I nodded. "It meant that all life on this world had a recent source. It wasn't evolved; it was designed." I remembered his creation process. How I spliced genes to create him. I was truly incredible. "It was similar to how your ilk were produced. You all had very similar genes after processing."
The machine announced to the both of us: "Humbly, I ask you to remove your navigatory orifice. We will begin our ascent to the planet's surface."
I slid my arm off the scepter. The now-wet spine squelched out of my orifice. My senses ripped themselves away from the ship and returned fully to my anointed flesh.
The ship adjusted for planet-fall. The hydraulic pistons spun the engines around and boosted us downwards far harder than any meteor. However, we were unfazed.
We had done this tens, nay, hundreds of times. We could hardly feel our rapid descent, even when the ship's exterior hull was smoldering with angry, red heat.
Then, planet-fall… The ship's landing spears plunged deep into the earth. Soil must have erupted around us till it rained back down miles away from where it had long rested.
The shockwave ripped trees from their roots. We could hear them being felled. The Cavalier's lenses shifted outward, mildly amused, as was I. No, I wasn't amused—this planet. Oh, this planet had something major, something wicked and heretically masterful.
Whatever was ripping a star toward it was something I had to tear open and lay down on a dissection table—if it was alive. If it was not, I'd still cut it open. Machine and flesh are no different, after all.
The doorway opened.