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The Prime Conduit

The Fabricator Minoris tries to access memories very long ago moment in her life that have never quite been recorded correctly.

Adepta Aleph-Gimmel of Deimos in those days was only a young tech priestess. She had left the flesh vats of Deimos over a century and a half ago by standard reconing. Against her own desires she had been assigned as a diplomat to the First Deimos Explorator Fleet, to meet with both representatives from other forgeworlds including both extremes from beautiful Metallica to wonderous Sanctum Novis as well as members of other imperial organizations such as the stalwart Imperial Guard or frustrating ecclesiarchy. Such a position was, in her thoughts at the time, a waste for an Adepta of her aspirations. She often wondered if she would have been better staying on Sanctum Novis and actually getting to work as a Magos. Maybe Metallica would have been a better choice due to her more stringent orthodox practices and beliefs. There was something to be said about the pure white robes.

The diplomatic corp was of course was deeply insightful especially for the practical applications of the lessons of the Sciences of Charisma but it otherwise held little long term attraction.

Unfortunately her duty tied her to her home forgeworld and its fleets and to her dear friend Adept Tsephor-10.54 was not someone she wanted to leave behind! He was too important to her to leave behind or abandon. Maybe when she eventually was about to break away to pursue her long goal of technoarcheology he would come with. She dearly hoped so; Aleph-Gimmel could not imagine life without her closest friend. Technoarcheology, however, the wild adventure on the fringes of the galaxy to recover humanity's sacred past was her dream. The adventure! The excitement! The sacred duty and dreams of it filled her cogitators down time. There is course was supporting to be said about the glory of discovering an STC fragment that is as of yet unknown to the greater Mechanicus. It was all part of her duty to show the superiority of humanity's technology against the failures of xenotech.

During the latest part of her stint as a diplomat the young and hopefully rather unoutwardly augmented tech priestess received to communicate from further up the command chain. She was to meet with the delegation from an Ark Mechanicus ship.

Aleph-Gimmel sat down with her morning cup of recaff. It was nice to enjoy this quiet moment in the cramped quarters she shared with Tsephor, though his notes on the pttreaxii spiraled across the room. She began to go through the dataslate of assigned diplomatic tasks; there was always more to do. Meet with the archmagos of the Zar-Quaesitor, give the greetings from Deimos, and other standard information exchanges that occurred whenever the First Deimos Explorator Fleet met up with other Mechanicus ships. There were protocols, there were always protocols. Such protocols were what superated the Mechanicus from chaos worshiping fools and perfidious xenos.

The young woman took a moment to savor her recaff and enjoy the sweet taste present after she had added some synthesized sugar. She still had her stomach and taste buds intact mainly out of sentimentality. An odd trait among the mechanicus but given how stringent she was in all other matters of faith it was accepted as a foible that has occurred as a result of diplomatic duties. In truth Aleph-Gimmel simply enjoyed eating. The diplomatic path had led to many hidden augmentations however as she quickly learned other members of imperial organizations were likely to react better to say only one false eye and some cog tattoos rather than an entire steel face, and it was her honor to do her job efficiently and well.

Adept Tsephor-10.54 stirred from his own bunk. His rest cycle had finished. He like many other in the mechanicus has removed the need for direct sleep but still needed to plug directly into a nutrient recycling system in order to receive some rest. “Good morning Aleph, you look nervous.”

“Good morning, Tsephor. I'm not nervous just intrigued.” She responded calmly while scrolling through the rest of the data slate about the archmagos she was supposed to meet.

“Really Aleph? Your eye has that twitch it does when you get stressed.” Tsephor said now as he began to gather up his scattered notes on his beloved birds.

“Fine. I'm just a bit stressed because frankly I don't know who this Belisarius Cawl that I'm meeting is supposed to be.” She huffed out at him. Her organic hand reached up to cover her brown eye. She would need to get that fixed.

Tsephor stopped where he stood though mechandrites kept moving. “Aleph. Be serious with me now. You,” there was a pause. “Don’t know who Belisarius Cawl is?”

“No? Should I? I mean he's an archmagos so probably. I simply haven't heard of him in reality cage studies so he can't be important can he?”

The other techpriest simply stared at her as if feathers had begun to sprout from her robes. “Aleph, he is, look, did you ever install a dataport? It would be easier to send you the information.”

“No. I don't have one yet. You can send it over the noosphere. Having a direct connection like that to my brain seems unwise to me.”

Tsephor simply sighed and did his best to send over all he knew about the Prime Conduit to Adepta Aleph-Gimmel through a noosphereic packet though he was frankly confused how she knew so little about him, when even he himself did.

Her eye winded. “Oh. Fuck me.” That was not the reaction Tsephor expected. “That's…certainly going to put a damper on today but he is still an archmagos. Hopefully, hopefully there won't be too much technoheresey.” Tsephor could not tell if that was a joke or not.

“It all depends on how much you see of him I suppose, now I do have to report to Magi Barks-Sof 23/3, so meet up with you after your important meeting?”

“Yes, I'll probably be by the midship cathderum for prayers, based on the average time it takes to finish these diplomatic meetings. Let's meet there.” Adepta Aleph-Gimmel put her half finished recaf cup on the shelf mainly absentmindedly. She would finish it later.

She said a prayer of thank you to the machine spirits in the shared dormitories before quickly hurrying out the door and towards the docking bays where Deimos’s Cog would connect with the Zar-Quaesitor. Using the most express methods she would be able to arrive approximately within 14.6731 minutes of when she left the dormitories which would give her about 8.9523 minutes until the expected meeting time. As she walked, the usual accompanying swarm of servoskulls began to flit around her. It was usually a congregation consisting of incense carriers, datapslam speakers, and a few pic recorders. It was always welcome to feel the choir of machine spirits around her reaching out through the noosphee.

Arriving at the bulkhead doors, Adepta Aleph-Gimmel had little to do but wait. Her cogitators began to whir wondering exactly how this meeting would go. Most Archmagi she had met would usually not meet her here, but would such a flouter of time honored traditions and rituals follow that? Maybe not, but she has no idea what this so-called Prime Conduit would do nor how she would be greeted. Anxiety began to creep into her circuits and she did get beat to shut that down. The bulkhead doors were the standard Adeptus Mechanicus steel embossed with the cogwheel and skull and countless purity seals affixed after every inspection. Focusing on the waxen prayer seals helped get focus and banish any of the remaining thoughts from her head about way the upcoming meeting could to badly. She did not want to disappoint the Fabricator Minoris of the Fleet Omega Bellerov-1.0. Battleline duty awaited those who disappointed her and Aleph-Gimmel liked keeping her head.

After about 7.85781 minutes had passed with Aleph-Gimmel nearly frozen in place simply thinking about how to extol the virtue of the fleet she called home and the greatness of their human technology to such a heretic. The bulkhead doors between the ships began to open and creak their way open. Someone forgot the proper rites of maintenance was the main thought in her head, as she heard the metal groaning as it moved.

In the vast hallway between ships instead of the normal getting party there was a small what she assumed to be tech priest, it was a small box with a swarm of mechandrites attached, treads reminiscent of a tank from the Imperial Guard, and a human head atop it all. All of this was draped in the standard red robes of a Martian techpriest. This was honestly the least surprising form a tech priest she would have seen has taken but she did question the treads when so many more efficient and effective modes of transport were known to the Mechanicus. Once the lone figure had approached her fully, Adepta Aleph-Gimmel bowed deeply and transmitted the following message.

<<<Greetings to the Zar-Quaesitor, to Archmagos Dominatus Dominius Belisarius Cawl. We wish all the blessings of the Omnissiah upon thee. I am Adepta Legatia Aleph-Gimmel of the First Deimos Explorator Fleet and bring gifts and the welcomings of Fabricator Minoris Magos Dominia Omega Bellerov-1.0. I would be eager to aid you and your Archmagos in whatever way I can on behalf of the Synod of the Fleet and Fabricator Minoris>>>

The gifts were data packets and discoveries sent over to this newcomer by several of the floating servoskulls. In less than a millisecond after her own message has been received the techpriest in front of her transmitted a simple response. The simplicity of it annoyed her.

<<<Greetings! I am Magos Qvo-76. A servant of Archmagos Belisarius Cawl. Cawl sends word he apologizes he cannot meet you here in person but has extended a warm welcome to meet you in his personal labs.>>>

<<<This will be acceptable I will meet him.>>> This was an understatement; the kind of invite shw was receiving was a rare accolade for an Adepta of her station and she was more than well used to being brushed off by various Archmagi and other senior techpriests to talk with functionaries. Suspected heretic by her estimations or not.

<<<Wonderful! I've transferred this information to Cawl. Please follow.>>>

And with that the tech priest known as Qvo-76 scuttled back into the ship where he had come from. Aleph-Gimmel knew better than to tardy and engaged the autowalk feature on her legs that she might better focus on what Qvo was saying. The rest of their conversation was concluded in a similar manner through noospheric messages primary, Aleph-Gimmel surmised, because Qvo-76 no longer had enough flesh to speak via the organic method and apparently neither had installed a vox box.

As they walked and rolled through the bowels of the Zar-Quaesitor, Qvo-76 and Aleph-Gimmel kept conversing, the she could tell simply by looking at the variety of purity seals on the walls of the ship and how old the walls themselves were that she was now onboard a truly ancient Ark Mechanicus.

<<<So, Aleph-Gimmel, what is your field of study? An adepta such as yourself surely won't stay a Legatia forever in the diplomatic corp.>>> Qvo-76 took an interest once they were according to him, half way through the journey to Cawl’s laboratory.

<<<Technoarcheolohy and eality fields, Magos, are my current study, and yes. I…do not wish to stay at my current position forever. Magos Dominia Omega Bellerov-1.0 has promised once I prove myself here, I might begin a new path.>>>

<<<Reality fields?>>>

<<<Yes! The distortion of the fabric of reality due to the immaterium can be hopefully through carefully study proactively counter acted through the application and discovery of the proper STCs. That is my current aim.>>>

<<<Interesting. Gimmel, if I might be so familiar, you ever thought about using other sources for You're research.>>>

<<<No. It's important to maintain the purity and lineage of human technology.>>>

<<<I see. I see. You offer to help earlier, would you be willing to help provide this?>>>

<<<Yes I don't see why not?>>>

And after that the conversation melted back into pedantic back and forth about the nature of technology and how to best please machine spirits. After a while they approached the set of brass stores embossed similarly with the cog mechanicus. They were vast, at least seven times the height of Aleph-Gimmel herself. The doors slowly and soundlessly opened at their approach and inside all she could see was a future that was a cross between an arthropod and centaur of old Earth myth. The entire place was backlit so brightly compared to the dim Halls that they had been wandering in. Qvo-76 rolled on in. The unknowable figure that smelled of death itself gestured her to continue in.

Aleph-Gimmel not know why and she did not like not knowing but she did not know why she was filled with the horror and terror that were the namesake of her home forgeworld. She thought such emotions had been turned off in her.

She was wrong.

ERROR. DATA NOT FOUND. MEMECORE CORRUPTION DETECTED.

RESUMING MEMORY PLAYBACK.

Aleph-Gimmel stumbled out the brass doors once more. She knew the way back to her ship. The back of her neck ached the way it did when you implant or augmentation had been done but there was no augmentation that she knew of according to her memecore memory. How long had it been though? Once inside of Cawl’s labs her internal clocks had stopped working. Probably some standard dread number-oh-dread number error.The last few hours did sometimes stretch on for days or maybe they really were days as she thought more about her time and his company either way it was deeply enlightening. Cawl was a genius she had to admit!

As she wandered back to the Deimos’s Cog, normal machine cult curiosity suppressed by the desire to get home and talk with Tsephor, she just dreamed and wondered about that application that xenos technology might have to the design of creating and enforcing reality cages… necrodermis and blackstone was the object to study du jour for those well first and what the sage magi of Sanctum Novid termed neotech. However her mind could only turn now with ideas of what The wraith bone of the eldar could accomplish when turned to several sanctified practice using its psychoactive properties to reinforce the physical world instead of drawing in on the Immaterium.

I'm talking about the same amount of time though how much she could not know to return back to recorders where she wished me dealing with her friend her oldest friend that dearest friend.

Come entering she saw that he had a wild expression on his face, some shocking mix of concern worried that she did not know why and could not have them on she was talking with one of the geniuses of the Galaxy the honor of conversing with Cawl to worry about really!

“Aleph! Aleph where have you been!” The young tech priest obsessed with birds practically crooned at her. She ran over to hug her and soon wrapped her in his arms and mechandrites.

A grin spread wild across her face as her mind tried to search for any record of what had happened over the past few days by and large came up blank or maybe it was only just hours. “I was at my diplomatic meeting!”

“Aleph. Aleph.” And his voice lowered with as much care and worry better follower of the cult mechanicus could have. “It's been over a week.”

Her head glazed at that and she shook her head but couldn't be true could it no it's simply wasn't she rubbed her neck that ache in her neck had not gone away despite everything. She ignored the statement. “Could you see what's on my neck?”

And as gently as he could, Tsephor pulled down her foot from the robe knowing that she very rarely let anyone, even him, see her like this, it was almost a form of nakedness most others did not understand. Recovering with all the signs of typical fresh augmentation on the back of her neck in the place where she would never be able to see it, there was a dataport connecting directly into her central nervous system.

#ouuughhghghg love that

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