"The honor is mine," Cawl replied perfunctorily. "Since you're already here, quit hiding and playing games. Send the living metal over immediately; my drones are already waiting at the airlock."
"What's the rush?" Trazyn said unhurriedly, seemingly oblivious to the fact that the subject had been changed. "Material transmission takes time, and my stealth field is currently in a brief period of instability. I can't just open the hatch whenever I want. Will you die if you wait another three to five minutes?"
"Yes," Cawl said, pointing to the energy monitoring screen beside him. "My shields can hold for another 120 hours, but I have no idea when the next warp turbulence will hit. If I don't fix this pylons array before then, I'll be forced to crawl through realspace. At that point, never mind reaching Cadia—whether I can even make it to the next sector before turning into a giant piece of space junk will be an open question."
"Fine, fine, stop your nagging," Trazyn waved a hand impatiently. "Wait there, I'm sending it now."
The holographic image flickered and vanished. The scarab curled back into a ball, falling onto the table to play dead once more.
Cawl didn't waste a moment, immediately connecting to the bridge communications. "Adume, open port airlock 3. Prepare to receive supplies."
On the other end, Adume paused. "Supplies? Where from? There isn't a soul out here; the scanners are completely blank!"
"They're falling from the sky," Cawl said flatly. "A kind passerby saw our plight and offered a little charity."
A few minutes later, in the pitch-black void, ripples like water appeared in a spot that previously seemed empty. An elegant, crescent-shaped Necron ship revealed itself for a fleeting moment. Immediately following, a green teleportation beam shot toward the port side of the Ark Mechanicus.
A metal box no larger than a fist slid precisely into the airlock. The surface of the box was covered in complex Necron runes, emitting a faint green glow. Adume, leading a squad of Skitarii, surrounded the box as if facing a mortal enemy.
"What the hell is this? A phase bomb?" Adume held a scanner, but the device couldn't read a single byte of data.
"It's your father. Get it to the meditation chamber, immediately," Cawl's voice came over the vox. "And don't touch it with your hands; the phase coating on it will slice your fingers right off."
Adume shuddered and quickly had a servitor pick up the box using an anti-gravity tray.
Inside the meditation chamber, Cawl opened the box. Lying within was a small piece of silver-grey metal. It looked like flowing mercury, yet it maintained a fixed shape. Living metal—the core material of Necron technology.
With this, the problem with the focusing lens that had been plaguing him would be easily resolved. Cawl set to work immediately.
Just then, the "dead" scarab lit up again. Trazyn's large face reappeared.
"Well? Quality looks good, doesn't it?" Trazyn looked smug. "I scraped that off someone's coffin lid. You'd better use it sparingly; giving this stuff to you monkeys is a total waste."
"Understood. Thank you for the coffin lid," Cawl replied testily.
"By the way, one more thing." Trazyn suddenly became somewhat serious (though it was hard to tell on that skeletal face). "While I was scanning, I noticed some... unclean things have crawled onto your ship."
"Unclean things?" Cawl paused his work. "You mean rats? Genestealers? If it's those, my internal defense systems can handle it."
"No, something more disgusting," Trazyn's tone was filled with loathing. "Warp fleas. Down on your lower decks, in what looks like a macro-cannon magazine, a few suicidal crew members are performing some sort of summoning ritual. They've drawn a very ugly array and are busy killing people for blood—oh, wait, killing monkeys for blood. Oh heavens, it's so foul, so hideous. It's a total eyesore."
As a collector with severe obsessive-compulsive tendencies toward cleanliness, Trazyn utterly detested such aesthetically bankrupt acts of blood sacrifice.
"I suggest you go clean it up. Otherwise, when that thing crawls out and soils my Primaris Space Ma—soils your ship, it'll be a mess to deal with."
Cawl's electronic eyes instantly turned red, entering combat mode.
Damned Chaos cultists! These wretches were like cockroaches in a sewer; no matter how many you killed, they never stayed gone. Even under such strict surveillance, they managed to stir up trouble in the lower decks.
"Adume!" Cawl opened the channel. "Lower decks, Zone E-2, macro-cannon magazine. Take the Skitarii and a squad of newly awakened Kastelan-class battle servitors. Clear out the trash. Leave no survivors. Burn them with flamers."
"Understood," Adume's voice dripped with murderous intent. "I'm on my way."
Having handled the internal threat, Cawl looked back at Trazyn. "Thanks."
Though he hated to admit it, the old bastard had indeed been a huge help. Without his multi-dimensional scan, those heretics hiding behind the shielding layers might have actually caused a disaster.
"Oh, spare me the sentiment, you amateur monkey," Trazyn waved it off. "I simply don't want to see this ship—which has some marginal collection value—turn into a fleshy space-clot full of tentacles and eyeballs. That would be in poor taste. Anyway, I'll stop bothering you while you play in the mud. Get back to your lens, amateur. If you can't even make it to Cadia, I'll just have to reluctantly turn you into a specimen and display you in my 'Gallery of Failures.'"
With that, the hologram vanished. Cawl looked at the silent scarab and shook his head helplessly.
The old bastard. His tongue was venomous, but he was... somewhat useful. Though this "cooperation" was filled with mockery, heated arguments, and mutual exploitation, it was the best option in this desperate universe.
Cawl refocused on the living metal in his hands. "Fine. From now on, no one is going to stop me from researching those damned Blackstone Pylons. This ship is going to fly. Even if I have to crawl, I'm crawling to Cadia."
While Cawl was busy bickering with Trazyn, repairing the ship, and hunting traitors, the Cawl-Explorer sub-mind responsible for scanning—whose radar was constantly sweeping—suddenly flagged a strong signal response.
[High-energy readings detected.]
[Coordinates: Western edge of the Scalland Sector, Forge-7.]
[Signal Signature: Unknown.]
[Remarks: Extremely strong warp engine pre-ignition signal detected, along with—]
[Massive Crustal Displacement Warning.]
Cawl's primary consciousness immediately took over the sub-mind, pulling up the detailed data for those coordinates.
Forge-7? Why did that sound like some... godforsaken, second-rate industrial world?