Chapter 34: Omega is a Cold-Blooded Killer
"It's over? Who won?"
Omega stopped and raised the magnoculars hanging from his chest to look at the "guest house," but the area was shrouded in smoke and dust, and he couldn't see anything clearly.
"The Temple Magos," Jacob explained. "He pulled out a strangely shaped device that emitted a purple light. The Manufactorum Magos's body started to lose control, and the Temple Magos took the opportunity to cut off his head."
"Oh, that old fox had a lot of tricks up his sleeve. Couldn't you have tried a little harder, Manufactorum Magos? I was hoping you two would take each other out. Now I have to trouble myself to finish the job." Omega shook his head, criticizing the dead Magos for not being strong enough. Jacob and the others winced.
With that, Omega pulled out a remote control and, without any hesitation, pressed the button. Less than a second later, a pillar of fire erupted from the "guest house," soaring into the sky. With a massive explosion, the "guest house" was reduced to a pile of rubble.
Paul, who had already considered the dead Magos's belongings his own, looked at the blazing ruins and asked worriedly, "Won't it have been destroyed?"
"It shouldn't have, right?" Louis, thinking along the same lines, added.
Omega: "..."
"Omega, you could have at least hesitated! What if the Temple Magos was at the end of his rope?!" Rhea complained, also worried that the loot had been destroyed.
"That's right! We didn't necessarily need to use that trick. We could have taken him. There are so many of us! It would be such a shame if it was all destroyed!" Aedus looked as if he himself had been blown up.
Jacob said nothing, still stroking the relic pistol at his waist. He was feeling nostalgic again.
Omega: "..."
Omega turned on the greedy cog-heads. "That's enough out of you! Didn't you see how fiercely that cog-head was swinging his axe? What if he had a teleporter hidden on him? Would the five of us have just lined up for him to chop down?! And who told you he was definitely dead?!"
Chastened, the group lowered their heads and said nothing. They knew Omega was right.
The fire didn't burn for long; the buildings on a Forge World weren't very flammable. Omega sent his servo-skull to investigate. As expected, the Temple Magos, who had very little flesh left on his body, was not dead. However, he had been crippled by the blast. He needed Omega to send him on his way.
Omega didn't approach to deliver a villain's victory speech. He simply maxed out the power of his exosuit's lascannon from a distance and fired, sending the Magos off and scoring his first kill of this life.
After confirming there were no life signs, Rhea, Louis, Aedus, Paul, and Jacob rushed into the rubble like madmen, sifting through the remains of the dead Magi and priests. Omega didn't move. He was savoring the feeling of having just killed someone. He found that he felt... nothing. He concluded that he was probably a natural-born cool... cold-blooded killer.
(Who would feel anything after killing a robot from eight hundred meters away?!)
Omega, the cold-blooded killer, looked with disdain at the cog-heads and cog-girls who were picking through the rubble like vultures, disassembling the corpses of their own kind. It was definitely not because he felt a slight urge to urinate when he saw Rhea pull a spine and head, dripping with blood, from a dead body. Such dirty work was beneath a "great man" like himself.
As it turned out, the weapons and equipment of a high-ranking priest were not only powerful but also extremely durable. Most of it was intact.
For the division of the spoils, Omega decided that he would keep all the damaged items, and the five of them could divide the intact ones among themselves. Rhea and the others objected, saying it was unfair to Omega. Omega replied that he had already gotten what he wanted most; he didn't care about the rest. In the end, unable to dissuade them, he took the strangely shaped device of the Temple Magos—a device that looked suspiciously like xenos technology.
Regarding the fact that the Temple Magos, a loyal follower of the Machine God, was using xenos technology, a clear heretical act strictly forbidden within the Adeptus Mechanicus, Omega just thought: This fits the cog-head stereotype perfectly.
Why wasn't Omega interested in the intact, powerful weapons and equipment? Of course he was interested. But the damaged items held something he was even more interested in: two broken Kastelan Robots! That's right, the same robots from Magos Laust's treasury, the robots Omega had begged to "borrow" several times to no avail.
This time, he had acquired two at once. This made Omega so happy he stomped his feet. He would never tell anyone that it was the sight of these two robots that had made him start plotting how to kill the two Magi. It didn't fit his "noble" image.
Of course, the plan had been born of necessity. He couldn't just let them use his people as cannon fodder. But it was the robots that had turned his original plan of "deceiving them" into "killing them." He had weighed the risks and rewards. Deceiving them was less risky but offered little reward, and a single misstep could lead to a direct confrontation, leaving them completely passive. Killing them, on the other hand, was risky but offered great rewards. It was a direct confrontation, but as long as he had a plausible excuse to shift the blame, neither the Temple nor the Archmagos would have time to investigate at this critical juncture. After the war, they would have evidence, and with the key players dead, the matter would likely be written off as an unsolved case. If they wanted to settle scores after the war, they would have to deal with the Magi who were the main targets anyway.
This plan had been discussed with the other Magi, based on the current situation and future projections, before it was implemented. It wasn't just some harebrained idea Omega had come up with that the Magi had blindly agreed to. The real difficulty had been getting them to kill each other, so that Omega and his group would have evidence to absolve themselves of responsibility. Fortunately, the plan had gone off without a hitch. They had the food, and they had the evidence.
According to the intelligence gathered by the Magi, the Temple's final assault was imminent. Soon, neither side would have the energy to bother with them. Now, they could sit on the mountain and watch the tigers fight.
Back to the two Kastelan Robots. They had a more imposing name: "Cataphron Battle Automata." To be honest, if it weren't for Laust's three robots as a backup, Omega wouldn't have dared to dream. These robots, which stood nearly twice the height of a Space Marine, were simply too powerful. He couldn't imagine the price his "militia" would have had to pay to fight them.
Laust's three robots had been lying in ambush near the "guest house." If the plan had gone wrong, they would have charged in to hold the line, allowing the "militia" to provide heavy fire support from behind. The only unseemly thing Laust had done was to give control of the robots to Rhea, not Omega.
Omega had immediately protested, "Magos Laust is discriminating against me."
Laust had immediately replied, "Yes, I am."
And in front of everyone, he had told Rhea, "No matter how he begs, you are not to give him control. Who knows what that brat will do once he gets his hands on the robots he's been coveting for so long."
This was why Rhea and the others hadn't included the two damaged but still extremely valuable robots in their division of the spoils. They knew how much Omega wanted them. It was their unspoken agreement to let him have his heart's desire.
As for their greatest prize—the knowledge in the data-slates of the dead Magi and priests—Omega proposed that they decipher and share it together. Although this went against the cog-heads' usual practice of hoarding knowledge, Rhea and the others did not object. Firstly, Omega had been the leader of this operation from start to finish. Secondly, the prize was so great that, given time, it was inevitable they would all become Magi in their own right. They would be spending a long time deciphering and learning this encrypted knowledge. Cooperation would greatly reduce the time required. Of course, that was without Omega's participation. With him involved... heh heh, he had a system.
And what was Omega doing now? He was climbing all over the two Kastelan Robots that had taken each other out. After a thorough inspection, he concluded that they were quite thoroughly broken. In anyone else's hands, without spare parts, they would be scrap. But that was for anyone else. Omega had his system.
As he stared at his "battle-damaged" robots, he couldn't have been happier. With two of these big guys standing behind him, who would dare to speak loudly to him again?
Hmm! What are you looking at?! I'll flatten you into a "biscuit"! Hmph!
To be fair, Magos Laust's strict control over Omega was justified. It wasn't just because of Omega's "mischievous" personality. More importantly, "Battle Automata" were a restricted technology within the Adeptus Mechanicus. That's right. In the Adeptus Mechanicus, where a Tech-Priest could legally own a building-leveling weapon, "Battle Automata" were still restricted. This was because these robots danced on the red line of the "Crimson Accords," which prohibited artificial intelligence. A single misstep and they could be deemed in violation of the Accords. And the punishment for any who crossed that line was one thing, and one thing only—death.