Chapter 72: The Limits of Materiel
Deep within the subterranean sanctum, Joric was experiencing a state of profound, logical agitation.
His augmentation-ritual was critically delayed, its progress lagging far behind his perfect, sacred schematics. The obstacle was not a flaw in his understanding or a failure of his logic-engine, but a simple, cold, and infuriating reality: this Cyberpunk reality was not a resource-abundant Forge World of the Adeptus Mechanicus. The universal poverty of materiel was a critical bottleneck, an unavoidable obstruction to the Great Work.
He was forced to expend processing cycles far exceeding his initial projections.
Bionic components that should have been mass-produced by sanctified assembly lines now had to be fabricated by hand. He was forced to utilize his limited, jury-rigged manufactorum and the... inconsistent... base materials salvaged by Maine's crew. From the foundational molding of the chassis, to the sacred etching of micro-circuitry, to the application and curing of bio-compatible sealants, every rite had to be performed personally, monitored manually. This consumed time-units that should have been allocated to core research or the integration of more complex systems.
The most severe deficiency was the lack of strategic, holy materiel.
Adamantium. Ceramite. These blessed compounds, the very foundation of all superior Imperial armor and wargear, were simply absent from this world's known material-scriptures. Without these substances—with their unique atomic structures, their capacity to channel divine energy and defy extreme kinetic impact—many of his design's core performance-metrics were impossible to achieve. This forced him to accept compromise at every stage, further compounding the inefficiency.
In the Imperium, while such materials were precious, for a Tech-Priest of his standing, they were attainable. A simple tithe-requisition to his Forge World's resource-magi would have secured them. Even the sacred Auramite, with his clearance and service record, was not entirely beyond his reach. But on this alien, heretek-world with its divergent, flawed tech-tree, these foundational elements of Imperial power were nowhere to be found.
Joric's data-banks held the holy formulas for both. Ceramite required a specific iron-ferrite base, subjected to a complex catalytic-rite under immense heat and pressure. Adamantium, even more difficult, had to be refined from specific asteroid-ores, its atomic structure impossibly stable and near-impossible to work.
But knowing the litany does not mean one can perform the ritual.
He lacked the base raw-materiel, and he lacked the industrial-scale blast furnaces and graviton-field controllers required for their sanctified production. He was a Magos-Artisan with no blessed components to assemble.
He had attempted to substitute local high-strength alloys. The results were universally unacceptable—either too dense, compromising motive-systems, or their protective integrity was pathetically sub-standard.
In the end, he was forced to perform a full systems-redesign, resorting to a composite-materiel solution, utilizing inferior but locally-attainable compounds in place of the one, true Adamantium and Ceramite.
For the endoskeleton, he selected a high-density titanium-tantalum polymer. While its energy-transference properties were blasphemously poor compared to Adamantium, its strength-to-weight ratio was the best this world's primitive science could offer, providing a solid, relatively lightweight frame. To enhance its toughness and fatigue-resistance, Joric took the unique bio-fibers harvested from the Biotechnica convoy and wove them into the polymer-matrix at specific load-bearing points. This gene-edited fiber, a product of heretek-biologis, at least possessed exceptional energy-dampening properties, partially compensating for the main chassis's failings.
The armor system was a more complex, multi-layer composite-nest.
The outermost layer was a hardened ceramic-composite plating, to ablate high-velocity impacts and energy-weapon discharge.
The middle-layer utilized depleted-uranium plates salvaged by Maine's crew from an old Militech depot. Joric had to re-consecrate and re-forge the plates himself to improve their structural integrity and reduce their toxicity, but their inherent, unholy radiation still required additional shielding.
The innermost layer was a bio-active, self-repairing gel interlaced with a shape-memory alloy-mesh, designed to absorb residual shock and auto-seal minor breaches.
This series of local compromises, while barely meeting the foundational defensive-metrics in his simulations, came at a high cost.
The overall mass of the construct exceeded the original design, compromising its theoretical, physics-defying agility.
Thermal-dissipation was appallingly inefficient, placing a severe constraint on sustained, high-intensity combat operations.
Most critically, the energy-loss (or bleed) as power moved through these sub-optimal materials was significant. This directly nerfed the output and duration of high-draw systems, such as the Transonic Razor.
This cascade of technical compromise ignited a sharp, almost painful, agitation in Joric's logic-engine.
A pure research-failure would be acceptable; that is a holy stepping stone on the path to true knowledge. But this... this was different. He possessed the perfect, sanctified blueprint. He knew the ideal parameters for every component, the divine shape of every energy-conduit. Yet he was restrained by a primitive, base-level lack of materiel.
This powerlessness was not born from a lack of understanding, but from a poverty of resources. It was the agony of a Magos-Artisan, stripped of his sanctified tools, forced to sculpt a masterpiece from mud and sticks. This feeling of being shackled by inefficiency, this disgust at the sub-optimal... it was a deeply offensive, discordant ripple in the otherwise cold, clear data-lake of his mind.
But the agitation did not, and could not, halt the Great Work.
Joric, with an act of pure, cold will, suppressed the anomalous emotional-static, forcing his processors back into the frame of absolute, cold logic.
He followed the new, compromised schematics. He directed every available fabrication-unit, operating with meticulous, almost spiteful, precision on the flawed materials. He advanced the augmentation-rite on Moiré, step by step. Every servo-motor actuation, every laser-weld calibration, every neural-interface and bionic-fiber connection... he was completely immersed, striving to achieve the theoretical optimum within these blasphemous, primitive constraints.
When the final sheet of bio-synthetic skin—indistinguishable from human flesh—was precisely grafted over Moiré's thoracic cavity, perfectly concealing the stable, thrumming, miniaturized plasma-reactor that now beat within... the constrained, compromised, and deeply frustrating augmentation-ritual was, at last, complete.
(End of Chapter)