This ancient base had not played host to so many visitors in an age.
Axion felt nothing toward the tech-adepts who lurked within the shadows, their identities concealed beneath heavy, enveloping hoods. As for the Custodians standing around the perimeter like golden statuary, Axion dismissed them equally.
Controlling its mechanical chassis, Axion walked to the flank of the grand hall, halting before a Psi-Titan whose hull bore the designation Calamity's Judgment. The silver-white manipulator arms of the automaton gently touched the heavy gantry securing the war engine. To the sheer horror of the onlookers, the massive metal locking mechanisms began to disengage.
The secondary restraint structures binding the Titan fell away.
As the mechanical skull of Axion's chassis slowly tilted upward, the optical lenses of its ocular arrays flickered with a faint, internal luminescence. A resonant, localized tremor began to emanate from the God-Machine before them as Calamity's Judgment's plasma reactor roared to life. Vast torrents of data surged and cascaded through its internal architecture.
Compared to other Titan variants that relied on a labyrinthine array of buttons, levers, and manual mechanical switches, the semi-sapient systems integrated into these particular engines allowed Axion to directly breach and control the sluggish, monolithic machine without a single crew member at the controls.
Thoom.
The massive mechanical foot of the Warlord-class Titan took a step forward, moving out of its docking berth with a slow, deliberate, and perfectly stabilized stride.
Watching the Warlord Titan walk under its own volition, the surrounding crowd erupted into hushed, anxious commotion. Tech-adepts frantically questioned members of the Ordo Sinister, demanding to know if the Princeps was already inside the command maniple.
However, when they discovered that the pale, horror-stricken man standing right beside them was the engine's true Princeps, the hall fell into absolute, stunned silence. Nearby, the golden-armored Custodians instinctively tightened their grips on their guardian spears.
The colossal God-Machine strode into the absolute center of the grand hall before letting its reactor die back down to a dormant hum.
The Eight-Legs that had arrived aboard the sub-orbital transport drifted through the air, hovering in the upper reaches of the vault like an aggressive, writhing cloud of metal. The scarlet beams of their laser-cutters flared into life. With terrifying velocity, the multi-limbed automatons began peeling away outer layers of ceramite armor sheets several meters thick, followed immediately by the underlying adamantium hull lining.
The internal chassis of Calamity's Judgment was laid completely bare.
An intricate, staggering web of cables and conduits ran across every inch of the God-Machine's skeletal framework. Axion's current experimentation was strictly limited to psychic weaponry, meaning every component tied to the channeling of empyrean energy required overhaul.
While the Eight-Legs busied themselves with stripping the Titan's armor, Axion controlled its primary chassis to process the raw materials that had arrived alongside the psychic crystals.
Pale blue particles diffused into the air. Raw metallic elements dissolved into nothingness within the automaton's left manipulator, while entirely new components materialized in its right. There emerged strangely contoured piping, dense wiring looms, exquisitely compact mechanical regulators, esoteric apparatuses of indeterminate function, and a litany of unclassifiable components.
To the observing tech-adepts, this method of fabrication felt hauntingly familiar, yet they lacked the historical context to comprehend the deeper truths of what they were witnessing.
Once the massive armor plates, weighing hundreds, if not thousands of tons, were unbolted, they were leaned against the surrounding reinforced walls with their interior facings exposed. Crimson lasers began engraving entirely new arrays of geometric grooves across the dense adamantium plating.
The armor of a Psi-Titan did not merely offer physical protection. The agonizing, desperate psychic resonance of the psykers bound within the cockpit would surge through the hull, radiating outward as a lethal Death Pulse. This horrific emission directly ruptured the souls of nearby biological entities; baseline mortals would instantly be ignited by spiritual fire.
Simultaneously, components known as Necrotechica devices would channel the raw power of the Warp to constantly reinforce and auto-repair the structural integrity of the armor plates. Furthermore, any who cast their eyes upon these war engines when they were wreathed in the pitch-black shroud of despair-laden psychic energy would fall victim to the Shroud of Terror.
This was a specialized psychic aegis that enveloped the Psi-Titan, magnifying the deepest, most primordial terrors of the mortal mind until it completely overwhelmed the senses. Even the most iron-willed soldiers would break and flee in uncontrollable panic upon nearing the war machine. The very air of the cities they walked through would become permanently haunted by an unnameable, crushing dread.
The efficiency of the Eight-Legs was absolute. Their dextrous mechanical claws were capable of seamlessly shifting from heavy-lifting operations involving hundreds of tons of armor to the microscopic, delicate tightening of a miniature screw.
To clear sufficient physical space within the chassis, the very first task the Eight-Legs undertook after removing the external plating was to overhaul the Titan's cable routing.
Typically, the cabling around articulating joints required considerable slack to accommodate the machine's range of motion. However, it was glaringly obvious that these exposed, free-hanging cables and conduits dangling in the open recesses were highly susceptible to combat damage.
This was a weapon of war, not an industrial facility. The crude nature of its existing structural layout was nothing short of idiotic.
Following a straightforward optimization of the chassis's wiring topology, nearly fifteen percent of the internal volume between the outer armor and the structural skeleton was reclaimed.
The tech-adepts who had arrived under Custodian escort meticulously logged every step of the cable-management process executed by the Eight-Legs. It was self-evident that more internal volume meant additional capacity for critical auxiliary systems, whether that meant layering more defensive shielding or squeezing in two more weapons systems, it was an immense boon. Even if that fifteen percent of space was used purely to thicken the hull, the defensive upgrade would be staggering.
The speed of the automatons' movements was blinding, forcing the human adepts to rely entirely on their internal cognitive implants just to record the process.
As the bespoke modules required by Axion were completed, the Eight-Legs immediately transitioned into an intense, synchronized assembly phase. New power grids and switching matrices were established. The psychic crystals were inlaid directly into the heavy adamantium plates, configured to interface with the Titan's internal empyrean conduits via the newly integrated energy pathways running along the armor's inner face.
Shortly thereafter, the massive armor segments were hoisted back onto the reinforced skeleton.
Once everything was fully reassembled, the exterior appearance of the Warlord Titan differed little from its original silhouette, save for the fact that the exposed, swaying clusters of cables and pipes that had previously cluttered its frame had vanished entirely.
Axion reactivated the Titan. Amidst the deep, guttural roar of its plasma reactor and the rhythmic thrum of engaging servos, Calamity's Judgment walked back into its designated berth. The massive gantry structures at the rear locked into place, coupling directly with the entry gantry on the Warlord's hunched spine.
"Have the Princeps board the Titan now. We begin testing."
Witnessing the manifestation of an ancient yet profoundly advanced Abominable Intelligence design filled even these traditionalist tech-adepts with an undeniable, underlying sense of awe.
Brimming with trepidation, the Princeps, a Blank, an untouchable, stepped onto the lift platform, ascending to the apex of the maintenance gantry before crossing into the Titan's command cockpit.
The alloyed command throne gleamed with a cold, sterile sheen under the lumens.
As the Princeps took his seat with practiced familiarity, the automated restraints immediately snapped shut, locking his body into place. Mechanical systems automatically guided a dense cluster of interface cables into the numerous cybernetic sockets dotting the Princeps's skull. The moment the neural link flared to life, the three dormant psykers suspended within their containment pods snapped their eyes open.
The sedative feeds were automatically cut, replaced by chemical agents that allowed excruciating agony to flood the psykers' nervous systems.
Through the translucent observation ports, their expressions could be seen contorting into horrific, agonizing grimaces inside the fluid chambers. Their opening and closing mouths produced nothing but streams of dense, frantic bubbles; artificial amniotic fluid filled their lungs to the brim.
Flickers of leaked warp energy hissed weakly as they came into contact with the anti-psychic null-field radiating from the Untouchable Princeps.
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