Chapter 450: The Titan's Adjutant
Once the testing was complete, Kian piloted the Preceptor back to the outfitting hangar.
The moment he disconnected the neural link and climbed down from the Knight, an entire crowd of tech-priests dropped to their knees before him.
"My lord! We wish to pledge ourselves to you, to pledge ourselves to this sacred engine, to become components of the sacred machine. We humbly beg your permission!"
Kian's face lit up. He'd been worrying about finding tech-priests to maintain the Knight, and here they were, showing up at his doorstep on their own.
Normally, a Knight House would send its less important junior members off to the nearest forge world to study. Once trained, that person's entire life would become bound to the Knight, transformed into a living component. The chief maintenance tech was exactly that kind of arrangement.
But there were exceptions too, like right now, with these tech-priests coming forward of their own accord.
That was simply how the Mechanicus were. They worshipped the machine with an almost fanatical devotion.
Given the chance, they would gladly surrender their own human rights and bind their entire lives to a Knight, becoming nothing more than components of it.
Kian asked, "How many of you are there?"
One tech-priest answered:
"My lord, five hundred tech-priests wish to become components of this divine machine!
They have already sold off every possession they own and converted it into maintenance equipment.
If you allow them to kneel and pray at the sacred engine's feet, day and night, they swear on their own lives that not a single speck of dust, not a trace of rust, will ever be permitted to sully its holy form!"
Kian let out a low whistle. Trading away everything you own for nothing but the privilege of kneeling at the feet of a machine. These people were genuinely out of their minds.
"Alright then. Starting now, all five hundred of you are joining my retinue. Keep this Preceptor in perfect condition."
The tech-priest said, "From this day forward we shall cease all independent thought, surrender our humanity, and become walking components, in service to this sacred engine until death!
A component does not think. A component only functions!"
With that, all five hundred tech-priests immediately settled into position, surrounding the Preceptor, chanting and prostrating themselves without pause.
There was something bizarrely absurd about the whole scene, religion and science tangled together so tightly it blurred the line of what was even real.
Kian shook his head, found Tech-priest Boothe, and asked, "You told me earlier you'd repaired two Knights. Where's the second one?"
"My lord, the second is in the adjacent outfitting hangar. Please, follow me."
Tech-priest Boothe led Kian toward the next hangar over, and along the way, he said:
"My lord, the second repaired Knight is a Lancer-pattern. Have you managed to find a pilot for it? Anyone else, I mean.
From what I understand, this Lancer belonged to a Knight of House lineage named Luca, with an extraordinarily long line of history behind it.
The data-redundancy stored within its command throne can be traced back all the way to the era of the Great Crusade itself, back when the Emperor still walked the earth in person!
A sacred engine with that much history behind it has developed an extremely settled, stubborn machine spirit. It's exceedingly difficult for such a spirit to accept a new pilot."
Kian asked, "So the beat-the-machine-spirit-into-submission approach isn't going to work this time?"
Tech-priest Boothe genuinely wondered for a moment if his hearing had failed him.
"My lord, did you just say beat it into what, exactly?"
Kian waved it off. "Never mind. Let me just sit in it and see. Let's see if I can win this one over."
The doors to the next hangar opened, and once again, surrounded by a crowd of tech-priests, a towering Knight stood encircled by scaffolding.
This pure white Knight had once belonged to Luca. A Lancer-pattern, its frame not especially bulky, but slender and elegant instead.
What set the Lancer-pattern apart from other Knight classes was its long, slender mechanical legs, with remarkably refined joints.
That meant a pilot running the Lancer got a sense of motion nearly identical to running on their own two legs, fast, agile, natural.
Back on Glory, Luca's Lancer had been fitted with a powered gauntlet and a chainsword. But here, the tech-priests had outfitted it with something far more traditional.
A long powered lance, and a large ion shield, turning it into a proper charging heavy cavalryman.
The lance, as thick and long as a telephone pole, could punch clean through tanks and enemy Knights alike with ease.
The reinforced, oversized ion shield, meanwhile, could deflect nearly any frontal fire thrown at it.
If Luca had had these two weapons back on the battlefield of Glory, he might never have died at all.
Kian's Preceptor was built for ranged dominance. This Lancer was built for melee dominance.
If he could tame this Knight's machine spirit too, he'd be able to switch between the two, ranged and melee, depending on whatever the battlefield called for.
With the tech-priests' assistance, he slid into the cockpit, settled into the mechanical throne, and connected the neural interface.
Then, looking up at the deeds carved into the walls, he began reciting the litany.
"By the will of His Holy Majesty, we charged the walls of a lawless, brutal techno-warlord and brought them down.
By the will of His Holy Majesty, we hunted down abominations of vile alien flesh and technology.
By the will of His Holy Majesty, we slew the great beast of a savage world."
He recited them one line at a time, an endless, dense record of deeds covering every single wall of the confessional chamber.
This was a genuinely ancient sacred engine, a legend that had fought in the Emperor's own Great Crusade.
Honestly, Kian thought, if you piloted this thing straight into Terra, the human capital, the High Lords themselves, the supreme power of all mankind, would probably line up to kowtow before its sheer seniority.
But no matter how long Kian sat there reciting the litany, the neural connection never completed.
He kept at it for over two hours, and the machine spirit inside remained utterly still, dead silent, unresponsive. Not even the faintest tingle of current came through the neural interface.
After all that effort with nothing to show for it, Kian had no idea what was going on, and climbed back down out of the Knight.
"What's going on here? Why won't it connect?"
Tech-priest Boothe explained:
"My lord, this sacred engine is simply too ancient. Its record of glory stands as tall as the Himalayas, its honor shines like the sun itself.
A Knight with that kind of history, once it loses its pilot, is exceedingly difficult to pair with a replacement.
And my lord, you mentioned yourself that Lord Luca has passed, leaving no bloodline heir behind. Which means this Knight may well go decades, centuries, even millennia without ever being piloted again.
It's like an old warrior who has seen everything there is to see, settled into stillness, sitting quietly on a mountainside, watching the storms of the world roll by from a distance.
It has its own pride, its own stubbornness. A stranger like you climbing aboard won't provoke it the way a young, hot-blooded spirit might try to kill you. It will simply ignore you entirely."
Kian frowned. What was he supposed to do about that?
At least the Preceptor's young machine spirit had actually engaged with him. There'd been contact, communication, however violent. This ancient sacred engine's spirit wouldn't even acknowledge he existed.
While Kian stood there, at a loss for what to do next, a sudden commotion rose up behind him, the tech-priests around him gasping in a wave of astonishment.
Kian turned and saw a mysterious figure standing there.
The figure wore a long black robe, with no eyebrows and no hair at all.
At the back of his skull, a thick mechanical braid emerged, one end plugged directly into his brain, the other trailing free, a neural interface waiting to be connected.
The moment he arrived, every tech-priest present bowed low in deep respect, clearing a path for him.
Tech-priest Boothe leaned in and whispered urgently into Kian's ear:
"My lord! Show proper respect. This is the Titan's Adjutant!"
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