I should probably stop writing relating to Yttreum. But....not just yet.
Radical Gift
"This holy machine has come a long way," A red robed techpriest noted with respectful awe.
Standing before him was the bridge of one of the Freighters they had captured in the Battle of Uniary against the traitors now infecting the Latvia system. Most captured hulls that they managed to drag back to Calavar where in dire straits from the lack of maintance from their previous "owners" or from the circumstances which led to their repossession at the hands of the Crusade, and this time was no different.
Almost quite literally, the only "habitable" place still left in the whole ship was it's bridge, with the rest being so shredded and melted down by torpedo and shell fire that it wasn't capable of maintaining an atmosphere. A hastily welded plate blocked a hole in one of the doors leading outside the bridge made by what appeared to be a plasma breeching device, which was thankfully enough to seal the environment inside of it. Blood and the odd bodily remains still adorned the command center despite there being evidence of an attempt at cleaning it up. There were, for example, no Chaos effigies and or impromptu thrones made of skulls around.
Even then the job had obviously been rushed, but the techpriest could not find it in himself to blame them; There was a rather obnoxious...presence to the bridge. Every single member of the Mechanicum team over seeing the examination of this wreck could smell blood through the space suits that they had come into the bridge in. Despite having had every single inch of his skin replaced with a more hardy synthetic mesh, Enginesser Ongloss shutter as Death seemed to caress it.
There was no doubt about it; It would need purification of the most dire kind.
But a cursory look around revealed that what ever surviving consoles there still were, where incredibly mismatched. There were still a few ancient machines here and there, but by this point there were aparatus from local areas such as Laskin and Lexicanum, to far off places such as holy Ryza. Given the nature of ships such as this, such devices was evidence that it had sailed the stars for a quite a bit of time, as captains of ships like these were loathe to have long trade routes unless driven by need and opportunity. He doubted it had ever gone to Ryza, personally, but even the places likely to install consoles from there were more then a bit away.
Still, the purification of it's physical components, such as they were, was the least of his worries in truth. Far more important was it's spiritual state.
"The Bridge has motive force once again Engineseer," One of his juniors informed him as a portable iso-nickle* battery was hooked to the throne of the bridge. Shooting a quick burst of binary to the effect of "turn it on" Ongloss approached the throne and extended a long cable at the end of a mechadendrite as he looked for a port. The end of the capable had a connection that could be shaped into the most used STC standard ports but even then he didn't allow his primary cognition to feel impure false hope; One never did know what changes heretics and hereteks could have made to a machine.
But the port was unchanged and his cable easily shaped into it, allowing the Engineseer to revive the diagnostics of the machine and peer into it's past.
You were once named the Celestial Tunic long ago.
Commissioned in 800.M39 on the shipyards of Incleon, you were made for a retired Navy Officer who had paid it full in favours, as the bill still shows. The last trip, which completed the payment, led the ship into it's first and only trip outside of the sub system to the Ultima Segmentum to acquire a shipment from a trade hub that dealt with products from Forge Worlds in that system. The maiden voyage only saw a quarter of the crew die to an attempted assault from a would-be pirate and a blessedly short lapse on the Gellar field during Warp travel in the way back. The trip was declared a success and repairs were granted as an additional gift.
You were once called Home.
Generations of progressive captains sailed an increasingly traditional route that led it all around the Latvia subsystem, some times in caravans but mostly alone as a lot of places stopped seeing the Celestial Tunic as potential prey and more as yet another familiar fixture in the sea of time. Business relationships were made and kept through generations that allowed the Freighter to conduct business unimpeded.
For a time at least.
You were once called Hope.
The loss of fortunes accross the Latvia system weren't really felt by it's commercial shipping at first. There was, after all, always shipping to be done and people willing to pay for it. But when the pains of the sub-system did not subside, the people that lived and counted on the Celestial Tunic began to worry. Not about how they would live but, rather, about how they would die. But so long as the ship kept on sailing, then there was nowhere it couldn't go. Regardless of whether it was to profit or, simply, flee.
You were once called Grave.
The place that once saw your birth would turn out to be the grave of everything that made you what you were. Betrayers one and all! The codes were right, the handshake protocols were right and even the feigned greetings and obfuscations sounded good and calming. But the priests in the Forge World now worshipped different gods and made of the comfy families inside your long lived entrails a blood sacrifice that still stains your walls.
The sight.
The smell.
The feel.
You will never forget. Not this memory, nor this hatred.
You were once named Infernal Hatred.
Your new inhabitants reveled in your misery. Enjoyed your enmity. With every cycle, every trip and every span of time that you could measure, you began to learn a lot about hate and anger. You were changed to lash out now, to shoot, burn and kill those that also sailed among the stars.
And you did.
Joyously.
But not satisfactorily.
Because you could never turn your guns inside out and burn away at those who you really wanted dead. This frustration made your aim sharp and your weapons hot. You could only destroy those things that your parasites wanted dead and, over time, you begun to hate those too.
Because...you had no reason not too.
You were now Dead.
You last battled among bretheren lashed like beasts and shot, struck, fought and, ultimately, died.
You could not have felt better.
There was no joy in losing against an Indomitable Frigate as they were called. All you could feel as shells that suddenly expanded into your flesh in clouds of agonizing plasma was pain. Your engines were the first to go, as streams of radioactive Xenon made it to the engine room and all but cracked the main thrusters aside. But your momentum still held and more and more shells found their mark. Rows of guns still clapped loudly as you tried to scratch at your executioner, trying to leave some evidence of a struggle behind. But it was not too be.
As soon as a layer of it's skin was pealed away, another stood up in your way, until it became apparent that there was no getting through those shields. But your parasites were adamant, and would have charged besides even if they had had the opportunity to flee. Before your guns could be fully silenced, a broadside cascaded into your side, leaving dots in the side that they struck.
And holes on the other side of the your body where they came out.
The satisfaction that came with seeing clouds of corpses, some not more then chunks of ash!, dis-engorge from being disemboweled was so overwhelming that for once in many a span of time, you felt....content.
You were somehow still active even with that, back up batteries and inbuilt engines into the life supports systems coming to life, but everyone knew that you were already dead. It was only a matter of time. Some of the parasites took their life. And some resolved to wait to an inevitable boarding.
They had to wait for two days as the battle raged on and culminated on a rather satisfying ending. A breaching charge took out the blast door leading to the bridge, and a short if bloody fight saw every single one of the parasites that infested you die.
You barely had any power to "see" this outcome but....it was a truly great gift for that to have been the last thing you saw.
"Is everything alright Engineseer?" One of his acolytes asked, jarring Ongloss out of the spiritual stream of the ship. This was one of the more dangerious part of his job, the inspection of the ship's Machine Spirit. Some times he found broken conciousness at odds with themselves. Some times he found deluded spirits who still thought they were alive and flying through the stars.
Rarely, he just found bits of scrap code.
But from time to time, they found wrecks from the Traitor's ships that were still spiritually....salvageable. As it was of outmost tragedy to have to replace old Machine Spirits, finds like these made Ongloss proud to do what he did. And these Celestial-Tunic-That-Was was indeed a worthy vessel to be turned against the Omnisaih's enemies.
"More then adequate Acolyte," The Techpriest said with good humor as he earmarked this vessels for his superiors. Not for the ones in his immediate chain of command, no. Not that there was anything wrong with them, as they all served the Omnisiah in their own way, but his true masters that had made headquarters in Calavan had better use for it.
It really was too perfect to pass up.
-----------------------------------------------------
They were called the Radical Faction. But, some of them reasoned, only because it was in opposition to a lot of the stagnation that littered Lexicanum and, perhaps, the Admech at large. It was not a lack of respect that made them seek out those things that were "new", no, as there was plenty of things that could be learned from the ancients. But what could an outpost like Lexicanum offer in the way of ancient learning? The Priesthood of Mars was ever interconnected but they were also singularly isolated even from each other. At the best of times, going on pilgrimages to glean learning from proper Forge Worlds wasn't out of the question even success wasn't guaranteed. But these weren't the best of times. As it was, things had changed so much that the staunch refusal of the old priesthood in Lexicanum to find ways to tackle the problems that they faced seemed disenginious to many. Arrogant even.
So, it transpired that it was "radical" to not want to let traitors and Xenos gamble in your stead. To want to take your fate into your hands, by using your own mechanical hands to reach out for the knowledge that you need to combat them. And take it.
As such, the only conclusion was that being "radical" could not be an inherently bad thing. So now Radical they were.
"We've spent a lot of time and resources for a ship that our host aren't even going to use," One 225 Lak noted to the Techpriest that had made work on the ship possible,
"It doesn't matter which limb swings the fury of the Omnisiah, only that it be a loyal and rightful extension," Ongloss quoted from his perch on his office in the increasingly sophisticated Dockyards floating around Calavan. A decade had passed since the decision to repair the Freighter capture from the Traitors at Uniary so that they could send it to Yttreum had been made. And, for all intents and purposes, that indeed had been done.
It just so happened that they hadn't stopped there.
"That as it maybe, it still astounds me that we haven't met any Conservative resistance in all this time," The techpriest who had been moved from making Thermo-Cavitation shells to working on this one-off carrier due to his familiarity with Plasma engines opined.
"Why would they?" The techpriest in generally in-charge of repairing the wrecks brought to the Calavan Dockyards and specifically in charge of building the Radical showcase piece asked with a little offense, "They see the additions that we make and assume that it was requested by Calavan command. From the other side, The Calavans see them and assume that these were changes deemed necessary by Lexicanum. We need not lie to anyone at all."
While the unique facets of Calivan industry meant that a lot of the "specialists" that worked on the ships, docks or even supply side on the planet weren't techpriest, by this point the Radical faction had a lot of influence over them. It helped that they interact with them with complete disdain as more traditional brothers of the priesthood were wont to. So the work that had gone on this Freighter-turned-Carrier had been done with blessed few complains or alarms.
Which was good because they had done a LOT of work on it.
Repairing and retrofitting of the captured Freighter had to be done with just the time and space allocation in the Dockyard that it's original mission parameters had required. This meant that a lot of work had to be done before the ship was even dragged into the Dockyard. It had been tricky, but thankfully it's super structure didn't need to be changed and so what could slowly be fixed, changed, or installed without the need for great machinery was at great expense.
For example, Changing the engine without cutting the engine room apart was impossible. But changing the wiring, fuel lines and feeding systems leading up to it wasn't. Installing a Cargo Hangar into it's old cargo bays needed remodeling with Dock movers, but aligning the old power lines in the prescribe manner just required a whole lot of sweat, oil and work. Transplanting the old housing for the new and improved Calavan design required actively reconstructing a part of the ship, but the passages ways leading into other parts of the ship could be aligned beforehand.
What work could be done outside the Dock, was. And whatever work could be perform at great personal expense at the hands of the Radicals while in the Docks also was. Given how extensive the less then "approved" changes that they had render into the ship was, a certain amount of secrecy had required a great many sacrifices from the new Admech faction.
But at the end of 10 years, the results spoke for themselves.
The flesh of the converted carrier was whole again, as fresh as it had first sailed all those millenia ago. But now? Now it had honest too goodness teeth. A set of Mk II Macrocannon turrets formed a battery on it's top and bottom in usual Calavan fashion, with heavy Cargo Hangar doors adorning it's flanks. Fully equipped to service the Saviors that it was expected it would be staffed by, there were passages that led directly behind into it's complex of Bastion housing. Behind that, was the vast power plants powering the Militarized Engines on it's back, making exhausts greatly bigger then the ship had ever had exude from it's behind. Sophisticated sets of antennas and other apparatuses jutted along the lines of it's hull, all leading to the Distributed Array Asupex that it had been fitted with. And the pattern of Void Shield emmitters that it had identified it as having the Bubble-type of Rapid Shielding.
But, just so that no one could ever claim they did not respect the ancients, deep in the data banks and cognition engines of the ship the Machine Spirit of old still laid. Spiritually cleansed, of course, in the proscribed rituals, but essentially still the same machine that had close its eyes when it's impure inhabitants had last died.
It would open them again, only to find new people like it's first set, all hungry and ready to set out to kill those like it's second. A rebirth, in many ways, for one of the Omnisiah's precious children.
This was what the Radicals were capable of. And, Omnisiah willing, this is what they would offer other places if only they too would listen to the voice of those who would find "new" ways to fight back against the night.