Chapter 447: The Preceptor Knight, Reborn
Kian had no idea what shape the Great Gretchin-ism he'd sparked, purely to stir up trouble between the Gretchin and the Orks, would eventually grow into. Right now, he'd just woken up on the bed in his Sanctum.
He held a black needle in his hand, hesitating over whether to shoot up again, but the string of back-to-back failures had left him with something like PTSD over the whole thing.
While he was still deciding, his personal comm chimed, and Tech-priest Boothe's voice came through.
"My lord, good news, your two Knight suits have been repaired. Would you like to come see them?"
Kian's eyes lit up. He'd just learned from the Gretchin that Three-Arm was building his own war-machine, and here he was worrying about not having anything to counter it with. Perfect timing, his Knights were finally ready.
He quickly gathered his gear, suited up in a set of Standard Reactive Power Armour, boarded a shuttle, and flew for the Titan Temple.
The shuttle set down directly at the outfitting hangar. Kian jumped out and was led by Tech-priest Boothe into one of the workshop bays.
Standing at the center of the bay was a fifteen-meter Knight, and it was none other than the Preceptor-pattern Knight he'd salvaged back on Glory.
The Preceptor-pattern was the largest, most heavily built of all the Knight classes. Standing upright, it looked less like a war-machine and more like a small, mobile fortress.
This particular Preceptor had been in rough shape, all but scrap, and Kian had even set it on fire once with holy flame, leaving it a scorched, blackened wreck. It had been a genuinely pathetic sight.
Now, though, it had been rebuilt to perfection, every inch of it wrapped in thick, solid adamantium plate.
And per Kian's specific request, the whole Preceptor had been repainted gold.
A black longsword, the Imperial Aquila, the cog-skull of the Mechanicus, and passages from the Ecclesiarchy's ceremonial liturgy had all been worked into the paint scheme from top to bottom, layered and re-layered until it was practically a walking shrine.
Tech-priest Boothe explained:
"We've fully restored this sacred engine, and equipped it with a devastating suite of ranged weaponry.
First, both of its mechanical arms now carry an ultra-large-caliber Annihilator-pattern plasma cannon.
The Annihilator is the largest-caliber plasma weapon in existence. Every shot it fires could ignite a small sun on the surface below.
After each shot, the Annihilator cannon will drop into an overheated state, at which point its advanced cooling system will need at least one minute of active venting before it can fire again. Use it with discretion.
The four cannons mounted on the head are lascutter-pattern las-weapons, capable of firing a continuous linear beam. You could carve four straight lines clean across the terrain with them.
Each cannon can sustain a continuous high-energy las-beam for over twenty seconds before requiring ten seconds to cool, after which it can fire another twenty-second burst.
We'd recommend cycling the four cannons in rotation, so you can maintain continuous fire without a gap.
On either side of the mechanical skull are two twin-linked heavy bolters, each carrying a thousand rounds, four thousand rounds total.
That covers this sacred engine's offensive capabilities. A single volley could wipe out the majority of enemies on any given battlefield.
Now, its defenses.
The adamantium skeleton and heavy plating are a treasure gifted by the Omnissiah himself, capable of shrugging off the overwhelming majority of battlefield ordnance.
Should you face fire beyond even that, you have an ion shield for additional defense.
Unlike a Void Shield, the ion shield can't simply be left running continuously to protect the whole body.
To conserve power, the ion shield stays off by default, and only activates the instant the Knight's pilot chooses to raise it.
The proper technique is this: the moment you sense an incoming attack, activate the shield and angle it toward the direction of fire, letting the enemy's shot strike the shield and deflect harmlessly away.
Then immediately deactivate the shield again, to conserve power."
Tech-priest Boothe walked Kian through the Preceptor's full weapons and defensive suite in careful detail, and Kian listened intently.
The Preceptor Knight's whole setup honestly reminded him a bit of a Thor unit deployed in siege mode, back in StarCraft.
It stood surrounded by scaffolding and a crowd of tech-priests, a hundred of them kneeling on either side, praying without pause, burning incense and sacred candles, as though it were a king receiving the devotion of its court.
Which, fittingly enough, was exactly what it was.
To the Mechanicus, the larger the machine, the greater its glory, and something on the scale of a Preceptor Knight demanded round-the-clock veneration, without a single minute's pause, or risk defiling its machine spirit.
Kian couldn't wait to get inside and pilot the thing. "Can I take it out now? I want to drive it immediately. What do I need to do?"
Tech-priest Boothe said:
"My lord, I need to caution you. Piloting something the size of a Preceptor is nothing like piloting a squire-suit.
A body this massive generates an information flow powerful enough to burn out a human brain outright.
If the machine spirit takes exception to you, it can generate a data surge strong enough to fry your mind instantly.
You'll need to demonstrate real strength of will to master this machine spirit and earn its acceptance.
You'll be pitting the will of your flesh-and-blood mind against this body of steel, and it will likely be a long, drawn-out struggle, until one of you yields."
Something occurred to Kian, and he asked, "This Preceptor's machine spirit died once already, didn't it? Has a new one formed inside it since?"
The Preceptor's previous pilot had been the High King, fallen to Chaos, and the machine spirit inside it had been corrupted right along with him.
Kian had since burned the whole chassis clean with Holy Amasec, colloquially "reflashing" it, which should have thoroughly purged whatever corrupted spirit had lingered inside.
Tech-priest Boothe said:
"Yes, my lord. A body this powerful naturally cultivates a soul of its own over time.
Since restoring it, we've kept up round-the-clock prayer, and a newborn machine spirit has since taken root within the chassis.
We don't yet know its temperament, so we can't tell you what the first pilot to ascend the command throne and undergo the trial will actually face."
Kian nodded, understanding, and began stripping off his power armour.
"Send me up. I'll tame this newborn myself!"
"My lord, the Preceptor's cockpit is spacious. There's no need to remove your power armour. You can board as you are."
At Tech-priest Boothe's reminder, Kian stopped mid-motion, climbed the scaffolding, and slid in through the hatch that opened at the rear-top of the Knight, entering the cockpit.
The Preceptor's cockpit was, indeed, enormous, easily roomy enough to fit two fully armoured Kians with space to spare.
Like the squire-suit's cockpit, this one had no display screens of any kind. The walls were carved from top to bottom with scripture and prayer, giving the whole space the feel of a confessional chamber.
Much of the surface, though, had been left blank, since this was a newly reforged engine, and that empty space was reserved for recording the great deeds it would go on to achieve.
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