The Fabricator General - a title he now more and more insisted on being called by to cement his authority - stared at the many vid-feeds before him. The spycraft flying over Earth showed information that was more disconcerting with every passing moment. This new realm uniting the cradle of humanity was not just another barbarian statelet as the Martians had grown accustomed to seeing from the Terrans. However, this was… an Imperium. Places devastated by war brought by their genetically engineered armies were elevated to megapolises in just a few years after being flattened.
It seemed nobody was really able to stop the growth of this realm. Quality and quantity alike favoured this golden warlord, and even the most cynical projection showed that soon this Emperor would be able to call the entirety of Terra his own. The army that he had - if it also kept growing - would be grand and mighty enough to seriously threaten a conventional defeat of the Martian army. They could call upon the rest of the Galactic Machine cult, but with the paths of travel being as unstable as they are it could be decades before some sort of true response could be assembled, assuming it even was. Many Forge worlds greedily eyed the position of Mars as the head of the Mechanicum and it was not clear just how severe this lust for power was among some of the more powerful and independent Forgeworlds.
There was however, one thing the Terrans had no clear way to surmount. They had not the quantity of spacecraft to mount a credible invasion. The orbital defences of Mars even damaged as they were would be enough to blow whatever they could throw at the moment out of the sky. The spacecraft of Mars would cut a heavy toll on the disbelievers even before that.
But who knew what would change. Though there was nominal peace on Mars with the Fulgurites and Corpuscarii unable to maintain their war, Salkor knew that rebuilding their damage would take years. That meant that restoring lost forces, erecting further defences, and other measures to defend from a Terran invasion. Moreover, the probability of sending a punitive expedition of sorts to strangle any hypothetical spaceport being built on Terra was also at best a fantasy.
It was a race, he supposed. A question of who would recover first and faster from their respective bloodsheds and reunifications. Between this upstart warlords and perhaps the single most advanced realm of humanity, Salkor knew the simulations would all speak in favour of Mars. But, all those simulations also insisted that Terra would have just been the same wasteland of bloodshed and slaughter. They all predicted the opposite of what was happening now, and he could hardly just ignore this.
Worse yet, all the babbling of the astropaths and navigators was coming true. He had until now assumed it was just the work of tortured minds, those who had all sorts of comorbidities from constant exposure to the ill defined energies of the immaterium. But, now these ramblings seemed to hold more and more weight as sincere forces of forecast and analysis. More and more he found himself asking for what madness they spoke of, and taking it seriously. He knew that the rest of Mars would ridicule him if he tried to use this as some sort of evidence or meaningful source of prediction. He would have to justify his alarmism through other means, but he knew that he could no longer afford to ignore the psykers. They had spoken truth one time too many for it to be a coincidence. Or at least, a coincidence that wasn’t more unlikely than the fact they spoke the truth.
He wasn’t happy about this of course. Usually knowledge was something that had to be worked for, developed from first principles. This? This was organized insanity at best. To submit himself to it was inviting a path to the destruction of himself, as well as the planet and religion he shepherded.
Worse yet, was that even if the issue of the Terrans was resolved, the problem of the Electro Priests was not truly resolved. The conflict only stopped because the enablers of it had been forced to cease their efforts. The underlying hatreds were still very well present. Perhaps the would cease with time, as everyone moved on to other matters.
This was a vain hope, he knew it well enough. It was a product of the weakness of his own mind, the humanity still within weighing him down. This horrible imperfection was affecting his judgment. Maybe it was what made him give credence to the psykers too, maybe he should ignore them as yet more frail-minded humans.
No, no. The Machine was also telling him to listen to the warp-touched. Something there affected even circuits and switches.
If he still had the impulse to sigh, he would have. Salkor once more reviewed the numbers. It was a waiting game, now. There wasn’t much more he could do. Many complained about his refusal to demobilize the armies of Mars, but he couldn’t. They had to be ready at a moment’s notice to meet the Terrans on the many fortifications being erected at this very moment.
For the first time in years, he had the impulse to see things himself. The weakling human again, needing to be sated. Hovering out of the depths of his forge, he went to the surface of the Red Planet and then stared into the darkness of the sky. Through the atmosphere, he could see it:
Terra.
There was a feeling he hadn’t in a while, that of witnessing beauty. The plasglas lenses of his ocular implants couldn’t convey it all, but it was beautiful. All the lights, all the flames, the planet looked almost… golden. Gold. There was something prophetic there, he would have to speak to the psykers of this, ask them if they had sensed it. But first, he still had many Archmagoses sending complaints to attend to.
It seemed nobody was really able to stop the growth of this realm. Quality and quantity alike favoured this golden warlord, and even the most cynical projection showed that soon this Emperor would be able to call the entirety of Terra his own. The army that he had - if it also kept growing - would be grand and mighty enough to seriously threaten a conventional defeat of the Martian army. They could call upon the rest of the Galactic Machine cult, but with the paths of travel being as unstable as they are it could be decades before some sort of true response could be assembled, assuming it even was. Many Forge worlds greedily eyed the position of Mars as the head of the Mechanicum and it was not clear just how severe this lust for power was among some of the more powerful and independent Forgeworlds.
There was however, one thing the Terrans had no clear way to surmount. They had not the quantity of spacecraft to mount a credible invasion. The orbital defences of Mars even damaged as they were would be enough to blow whatever they could throw at the moment out of the sky. The spacecraft of Mars would cut a heavy toll on the disbelievers even before that.
But who knew what would change. Though there was nominal peace on Mars with the Fulgurites and Corpuscarii unable to maintain their war, Salkor knew that rebuilding their damage would take years. That meant that restoring lost forces, erecting further defences, and other measures to defend from a Terran invasion. Moreover, the probability of sending a punitive expedition of sorts to strangle any hypothetical spaceport being built on Terra was also at best a fantasy.
It was a race, he supposed. A question of who would recover first and faster from their respective bloodsheds and reunifications. Between this upstart warlords and perhaps the single most advanced realm of humanity, Salkor knew the simulations would all speak in favour of Mars. But, all those simulations also insisted that Terra would have just been the same wasteland of bloodshed and slaughter. They all predicted the opposite of what was happening now, and he could hardly just ignore this.
Worse yet, all the babbling of the astropaths and navigators was coming true. He had until now assumed it was just the work of tortured minds, those who had all sorts of comorbidities from constant exposure to the ill defined energies of the immaterium. But, now these ramblings seemed to hold more and more weight as sincere forces of forecast and analysis. More and more he found himself asking for what madness they spoke of, and taking it seriously. He knew that the rest of Mars would ridicule him if he tried to use this as some sort of evidence or meaningful source of prediction. He would have to justify his alarmism through other means, but he knew that he could no longer afford to ignore the psykers. They had spoken truth one time too many for it to be a coincidence. Or at least, a coincidence that wasn’t more unlikely than the fact they spoke the truth.
He wasn’t happy about this of course. Usually knowledge was something that had to be worked for, developed from first principles. This? This was organized insanity at best. To submit himself to it was inviting a path to the destruction of himself, as well as the planet and religion he shepherded.
Worse yet, was that even if the issue of the Terrans was resolved, the problem of the Electro Priests was not truly resolved. The conflict only stopped because the enablers of it had been forced to cease their efforts. The underlying hatreds were still very well present. Perhaps the would cease with time, as everyone moved on to other matters.
This was a vain hope, he knew it well enough. It was a product of the weakness of his own mind, the humanity still within weighing him down. This horrible imperfection was affecting his judgment. Maybe it was what made him give credence to the psykers too, maybe he should ignore them as yet more frail-minded humans.
No, no. The Machine was also telling him to listen to the warp-touched. Something there affected even circuits and switches.
If he still had the impulse to sigh, he would have. Salkor once more reviewed the numbers. It was a waiting game, now. There wasn’t much more he could do. Many complained about his refusal to demobilize the armies of Mars, but he couldn’t. They had to be ready at a moment’s notice to meet the Terrans on the many fortifications being erected at this very moment.
For the first time in years, he had the impulse to see things himself. The weakling human again, needing to be sated. Hovering out of the depths of his forge, he went to the surface of the Red Planet and then stared into the darkness of the sky. Through the atmosphere, he could see it:
Terra.
There was a feeling he hadn’t in a while, that of witnessing beauty. The plasglas lenses of his ocular implants couldn’t convey it all, but it was beautiful. All the lights, all the flames, the planet looked almost… golden. Gold. There was something prophetic there, he would have to speak to the psykers of this, ask them if they had sensed it. But first, he still had many Archmagoses sending complaints to attend to.